The former supposition seemed the more likely. Somewhere up in the heart of the hills the black storm cloud had broken, and its contents, collected by nameless creeks and gulches, had swooped down on the Coldstream, raising it bank high, booming down to the lower reaches, practically a wall of water, against which only the strongest structures might stand. Temporary ones would go out before it, washed away like a child's sand castle in a Fundy tide.
Ignoring trails, they struck straight across country. The land had been washed clean. Beneath the brown grasses the earth lay dark and moist. A hundred fresh, elusive odours struck the nostrils, called forth from the soil by the rare moisture, a silent token of its latent fertility. On the way there were no houses, no fences, no cleared fields. The land lay in the dawn as empty as when the keels of restless white men first split the Western ocean; and more lifeless, for the great buffalo herds that of old gave the men of the plains and foothills food and raiment were gone forever.
The sun was up when they reached Talapus. Mrs. McCrae had just discovered her daughter's absence; and her husband was cursing the leg that held him helpless. Casey told them the events of the night, and Donald McCrae was proud of his daughter, and but little worried about his son.
"Show me another girl would have ridden in that storm!" he exclaimed. "She's the old stock—the old frontier stock! And Sandy, locking the detective in the harness room!" He chuckled. "Go down and let them out, Casey, and give them breakfast. A fine pair of children we've got, mother."
"Sandy can take care of himself," said Mrs. McCrae practically. "He always did, since he could walk, and he took his own ways, asking nobody. And Sheila, for a girl, is the same. They take after you, Donald, not me. But now, Casey, Mrs. Wade is at Chakchak, isn't she?"
"Mrs. Wade and Miss Burnaby," Casey replied. "It's all right, Mrs. McCrae."
"Sheila needs no chaperon," said her father.
"Not with Casey," said her mother. "But there's the gossip, Donald, and the dirty tongues. It's not like the old days."
"True enough, maybe," McCrae admitted. And he added, when his wife had left the room: "What have they got hold of to arrest the boy, Casey?"
"I don't know," Casey replied. "But we'll face the music, Donald."
When Casey entered the harness room Glass and another man, a stranger, lay in one corner on a heap of sacks. Sandy had done a most workmanlike job, and he had put a neat finish to it by strapping each man to a stanchion with a pair of driving reins.
"Good morning, gentlemen," said Casey.
"Is it?" said Glass, sourly. His old hesitating manner had quite vanished.
"Beautiful," Casey replied. "Sun shining, birds singing, crops growing. 'God's in His heaven; all's well with the world.' Like to take a look at it? Or are you too much attached to your present surroundings?"
"You can cut out the funny stuff," said Glass. "I don't ever laugh before breakfast."
"Quite right, too," Casey replied. "Just roll over a little till I get at those knots. There you are, Mr. Glass. Now your friend here. Don't think I know him."
"Jack Pugh, sheriff's officer," said Glass, rising stiffly, with considerable difficulty.
"I'll have him in shape to shake hands in a minute," said Casey, as he worried at the knots. "And so, Mr. Glass, instead of an innocent landlooker you are a real live, mysterious detective. You don't look the part. Or perhaps you are still disguised."
"I can stand a josh better now," said Glass. "Maybe I'm not such a live proposition as I might be. When two grown men let a kid hogtie them it sort of starts them thinking."
"It sure does," Pugh agreed. He was a saturnine gentleman, with a humorous eye. "I been wantin' to scratch my nose for eight solid hours," he affirmed irrelevantly, rubbing that organ violently with his free hand.
"He's some kid," said Glass. "Where is he?"
"I haven't seen him. He left word where to find you."
"Beat it somewhere, I suppose," Glass commented. "He fooled us up in great style, I'll say that much. At first he acted about the way you'd expect a country kid to act—scared to death. He wanted to change his overalls for pants before we took him anywhere. Said they were hanging up in here. We fell for it. We came in, and there was a pair of pants hanging on a nail. He walked over to them, and the next thing we knew he had a gun on us. I hope I know when a man means business—and he did. He had half a notion to shoot anyway."
"That's right," Pugh confirmed. "He's one of them kids that makes gunmen. No bluff. I know the kind."
"So when he told me to tie Pugh I did it," Glass continued. "Then he dropped a loop over me, and that's all there is to tell. The joke's on us just now."
"So it is," said Casey. "Whatever made you think that kid had anything to do with blowing up the dam?"
"Hadn't he?"
Casey smiled genially. "Why, how should I know, Mr. Glass? I was just asking what you were going on."
"I'm not showing my hand. I don't say the kid did it alone."
"And so you thought you'd round him up and sweat some information out of him. That was it, wasn't it?"
"You're quite a guesser and you show a whole lot of interest in the answer," retorted Glass. "Keep on guessing."
"I don't need to. Come up to the house and have breakfast. And for Heaven's sake don't say anything to frighten the kid's mother."
"What do you take us for?" said Glass. "We'll treat the whole thing as a joke—to her."
Casey breakfasted with them, and after they had gone sought Simon. The old Indian, full to repletion, was squatting on the kitchen steps, smoking and blinking sleepily.
"No see um Sandy," he observed. "Where him stop?"
"No more Sandy stop this illahee," Casey replied. "Sandy klatawa kopa stone illahee, all same Tom." Meaning that Sandy had gone in the direction of the hills, as had McHale.
"Why him klatawa?" Simon asked.
Casey explained, and Simon listened gravely. His receptiveness was enormous. Information dropped into him as into a bottomless pit, vanishing without splash.
"Sandy hyas young fool," he commented. "Me tell him mamook huyhuy moccasin. S'pose moccasin stop, ikt man findum, then heltopay. Polisman mamook catchum, put um in skookum house, maybeso hang um kopa neck."
"What are you talking about, anyway?" Casey demanded. And Simon told him of the track of the patched moccasin and of his warning to Sandy.
Casey immediately fitted things together. He knew that Sandy's right moccasin was almost invariably worn through at the toe. Before they left he had seen him patching them, and because they wore through at the same place the patches were of nearly the same shape. So that if Glass had found a patched moccasin it was not necessarily the one which had made the track. But that would make little difference. Either Farwell or his assistant must have told Glass about this track. If he had found a pair of Sandy's moccasins to correspond with the footprint he had come very near getting Sandy with the goods. But Farwell or somebody must have directed Glass's suspicions to Sandy.
However that was, Sandy had made a clean get-away into a region where he would be hard to catch. He was familiar with the trails, the passes, the little basins and pockets nestling in the hills. He was well provisioned and well armed. And the last caused Casey some uneasiness, for having once resisted arrest Sandy would be very apt to do so again.
"Simon," he said, "I want you to take papah letter to Tom."
"Where Tom stop?" Simon asked naturally enough.
"Maybe at Sunk Springs," Casey replied. "Maybe not. You try Sunk Springs. S'pose no Tom stop there, you nanitch around till you find him."
"All right," said Simon. "Me nanitch, me find Tom." He considered a moment. "Halo grub stop me?"
"I'll tell them to grubstake you here," Casey reassured him. "I'll pay you, too, of course."
"You my tillikum," said Simon, with great dignity. "Tom my tillikum. Good! Me like you. How much you pay?"
"Two dollars a day," said Casey promptly.
Simon looked grieved a
nd pained. "You my tillikum," he repeated. "S'pose my tillikum work for me, me pay him five dolla'."
But Casey was unmoved by this touching appeal to friendship. "I'll remember that if I ever work for you," he replied. "Two dollars and grub is plenty. You Siwashes are spoiled by people who don't know any better than to pay what you ask. That's all you'll get from me. Your time's worth nothing, and your cayuses rustle for themselves."
And Simon accepted this ultimatum with resignation.
"All right," said he. "You my tillikum; Tom my tillikum. S'pose you catch hiyu grubstake."
Having arranged for a message to McHale, it occurred to Casey that he should see whether the sudden rise of the river had swept the company's temporary dam. Accordingly he rode thither.
The storm had entirely passed, and the sun shone brightly. Great, white, billowy, fair-weather clouds rolled up in open order before the fresh west wind, and the shadows of them trailed across the face of the earth, moving swiftly, sharply defined, sweeping patches of shade against the green and gold of a clean-washed, sunny summer world. Off to the westward, where the ranges thrust gaunt, gray peaks against the sky line, the light shimmered against patches of white, the remnants of the last winter's snows. Far away, just to be discerned through a notch in the first range, was a vivid point of emerald or jade, the living green of a glacier.
It was a day when it was good to be alive, and Casey Dunne, hard, clean, in the full power of his manhood, the fresh west wind in his face, and a strong, willing horse beneath him, rejoiced in it.
As he rode his thoughts reverted to Clyde Burnaby. Indeed, she had never, since the preceding night, been entirely absent from them; but because his training had been to do one thing at a time, and think of what he was doing to the exclusion of all else, he had unconsciously pigeonholed her in the back of his mind. Now she emerged.
"Shiner, m'son," he apostrophized his horse, "if things break right you're going to have a missus. What d'ye think of that, hey, you yellow-hided old scoundrel? And, by the Great Tyee! you'll eat apples and sugar out of her hand, and if you so much as lay back your ears at her I'll frale your sinful heart out with a neck yoke. D'ye get that, you buzzard-head?"
Shiner in full stride made a swift grab for his rider's left leg, and his rider with equal swiftness kicked him joyously in the nose.
"You would, hey? Nice congratulations, you old man-eater. I'll make a lady's horse of you if you don't behave; I sure will. And we'll build a decent house and break two thousand acres, and keep every foot of it as fine and clean as a seed bed, and have it all under ditch, the show place of the whole dry belt. You bet we will. We won't sell an acre. Fancy prices won't tempt us. We'll keep the whole shootin' match till we cash in." His mood changed.
"Cash in! It's funny to think of that, old horse, isn't it? And yet ten years from now you'll be no good, and thirty years from now I'll be near the end of the deal. And Clyde! Why, Shiner, we can't think of her as an old lady, can we? With her smooth cheeks a little withered and the suppleness gone from her body, and her eyes dim and her glorious hair white. Lord, horse, we mustn't think of it! She'll always be the same dear Clyde to us, won't she? 'Sufficient unto the day,' my equine trial and friend. Others will come after us, and there will be evil-tempered buckskins loping this foothill country and maybe a Casey Dunne cursing them when you and I are ranging the happy hunting grounds!"
Out of the sunlit distances a horse and rider appeared, rapidly approaching. It was Farwell, and, recognizing Dunne, he pulled up.
"In case you don't know it," he said, without preliminary or greeting, "I'll tell you that our dam went out with the flood. You didn't need to use dynamite this time."
"Providence!" Casey suggested.
Farwell's comment consisted of but one word, which, unless by contrast, is not usually associated with providential happenings.
"Call it that if you like," he growled. "We'll get the men responsible for it one of these days."
"You made a beginning with young McCrae," Casey reminded him.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you know that Glass tried to arrest him?"
"What?" cried Farwell.
His surprise was too genuine to be feigned. Thereupon Casey told him what had occurred in the last few hours both at Talapus and Chakchak.
Farwell listened, biting his lips and frowning. And his first words were an inquiry as to Sheila.
"Miss McCrae rode through that storm last night!" he exclaimed. "Good Lord! Is she badly hurt?"
"Only shaken up, I think."
"Thank God for that," said Farwell, with evident sincerity. He hesitated for a moment. "See here, Dunne, do you mind if I ask you an impertinent question?"
"Fire away."
"Are you going to marry her?"
"Certainly not. What put that notion in your head?"
"It got there. You were pretty thick. And if she rode there in that storm—unless she thought a lot of you——"
"I'm mighty proud of it. We're good friends—like brother and sister. No more. She has the best brand of clean-strain pluck of any girl I know."
"So she has," Farwell agreed. "She's a girl in a million. She's——" He stopped, reddening.
"By George, Farwell," said Casey, "is it that way with you?"
"She doesn't care a tinker's dam for me," said Farwell bluntly. "That's not saying what I think of her. I'm no ladies' man—don't pretend to be. Let that go. I suppose I'll be blamed for young McCrae's arrest. Well, I didn't know a thing about it. I've tried to give the family a good deal—better than the rest of you, anyway. I don't like the boy, and he doesn't like me. Pulled a gun on me once—well, never mind that. Here, you've been straight with me, and I'll tell you: When the dam was blown up we found the track of a patched moccasin in soft earth. Keeler took an impression of it, or made a cast or something—I don't know just what, but I do know that he photographed it. Since then I've noticed young McCrae's foot, and I believe he made the track, though it didn't strike me at the time. That was about the only clew we found. Mind you, Dunne, I believe you were in it yourself, but I haven't a thing to go on. If Glass has found a patched moccasin of McCrae's he's pretty near got him to rights. I don't know what he's got, though. About Cross and McHale, I don't care a curse which shot the other. These men—Cross, Dade, Lewis, and some more—were protecting our property. And that's all."
"Not quite all. They blew up our dams."
"Just as man to man," said Farwell, "let me ask you if you expected to run a dynamite monopoly?"
"I'm not kicking," said Casey. "I'm merely stating facts. I can take my medicine."
"You're a good deal of a man," Farwell acknowledged grudgingly. "I hate a squealer. Anyway, it was no part of their job to break into your house. See here, Dunne, the last five minutes has got us better acquainted than the last two months. I'll fire these fellows to-morrow if you'll promise me that our ditches won't be interfered with again."
"As long as we have water there will be no trouble," said Casey. "I'll promise nothing more."
"That's good for some weeks, anyway," Farwell predicted. "I guess we'll have to fight it out in the end. Still, I'm glad to have had this talk. I like you better than I did. And I can tell you there was lots of room for it—is yet, for that matter. Good-bye."
Without waiting for a reply, he dug a heel into his horse and swept on. Casey watched him go, with a thoughtful smile.
"Odd devil!" he muttered. "Queer combination. I don't like him, but—well, he's a fighter, and I believe he's straight. To think of him being fond of Sheila! I wonder if he has a chance there? She never mentions him now. H'm!" Finding no answer to the question, he wheeled Shiner and headed for home.
CHAPTER XXVI
Just before utter blackness shut down on the land, Sandy McCrae dismounted and stripped saddle and pack from his horses. He looked up at the sky, shook his head, and, taking a light axe, cut two picket pins; after which he staked the horses out in the abundant pasture at th
e bottom of the draw, driving the pins in solidly beyond the possibility of pulling. Then he set about making a hasty camp.
Beside him a little spring bubbled out of the bottom of the draw and seeped away under tangled roots and fallen brush. A thirst-parched stranger might have ridden past twenty times on the bench above without suspecting its presence. The faint cattle trail leading to it entered the draw a quarter of a mile away, and led along under low but almost perpendicular banks.
Sandy's camp preparations were simple, but much more elaborate than if the night had been clear. Then he would have made his fire, boiled coffee, spread his bed, and gone to sleep beneath the stars; but because of the ominous storm cloud he constructed a lean-to by driving two forked stakes and joining them with a crosspiece. From these he slanted two poles to the ground, and on the poles laid a tarp, lashing it in place. The mouth of the lean-to faced away from the cloud bank. In addition it had the partial shelter of cottonwoods in full leaf. In this lean-to be collected his outfit. Next he made a fire and cooked supper. Afterward he smoked, squatting in the mouth of his shelter, staring silently at the dying embers, listening to the rising wind sighing above him sweeping across the bare grasslands, but scarcely fanning the coals in his protected camp.
He felt no loneliness whatever. Solitary camps and the love of them were his by right of inheritance. He neither required nor desired companionship. Fire, food, tobacco, and solitude satisfied his inmost soul. This was the life he loved. The fact that he was a fugitive from the law did not trouble him at all; it merely gave an added zest to the situation. Just once he chuckled grimly as he recalled the faces of Glass and Pugh when he had whirled on them, gun in hand. Glass had interpreted his intentions very correctly; he would have shot either or both on the slightest provocation. He was of the breed of the wolf, accustomed from childhood to deadly weapons, brought up in tradition of their use, and, like many outlaws who have bulked large in the history of the West, young enough to act on impulse without counting the ultimate cost.
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