by Zane Grey
Kinsey wiped the sweat from his face, coughed, drew a deep breath and resumed his story.
“We gained, an’ their bullets began to spang off the rocks under our horses’ hoofs. So I told Kid, who’s the best rifle shot, to open up. He missed half a dozen shots. Then I couldn’t stand it any longer. My second shot piled Neal up an’ his hoss ran off the trail. We kept on. Carter used up all his shells, threw away his rifle, an’ pulled his gun. We knew we had him then an’ we let him shoot. Meanwhile we drew close to Pine Mound. I tried to keep Kid from shootin’. I had an idee of my own. But finally Kid broke a laig of Carter’s horse. The fall stunned Carter. We got off, took his gun an’ what he had on him before he came to. We mounted an’ I told Kid to loose his lasso. I did mine. Carter seen thet, an’ yellin’ like a madman he plunged for the brush. I roped him. . . .”
Here Kinsey broke off, with an expulsion of breath his pallid face working. “Boss, I don’t like—to tell the rest—before Miss Jacqueline.”
“Go on Kinsey,” spoke up the girl for herself, with spirit. “I want to hear every word. These men tried to kill my brother. They almost killed Brandon.”
The cowboy, evidently strengthened from a weak and sickening spell, went on in short jerky exclamations.
“I roped him. . . . Rode down the trail. . . . Didn’t look back. . . . I came to—that big cottonwood—outside Pine Mound. . . . I jumped off. . . . Kid was right behind. . . . He piled off. . . . Carter was floppin’—like a chicken with it’s head cut off. . . . We hanged him—tied the lasso. . . . Carter kicked somethin’ terrible. . . . When he quit—I wrote some words on a piece of paper—an’ fastened it to his vest button.”
Jacqueline turned away to the window. Pencarrow expelled his breath loudly.
“Kinsey,” he said, hoarsely, “it was an extreme action. . . . But I must uphold you. . . . Brutal—just!”
“Wal, I say good!” ejaculated Elwood Lightfoot, harshly.
“Kinsey heard my plan,” flashed Wade. “I’m responsible. He obeyed orders. . . . Hogue, what did you write on that paper?”
“Warnin’ to rustlers. Harrobin an’ Drake beware!” replied the cowboy. “But thet wasn’t all Kid an’ I did. By thet time we was shore mad. We hid our hosses an’ went on in to Pine Mound. I’m not sure what was in our heads—maybe unloadin’ our guns if we had half a chance—but it darn soon got knocked out.”
Jerry said: “Don’t forget what we found on Carter.”
Then Kinsey produced a large roll of dirty greenbacks which he handed to Wade. “Boss, Carter took this to double-cross you.”
“Keep thet,” replied Wade, sharply, moving it aside. “Divide it among the boys.”
The cowboy let out a nervous laugh, devoid of mirth, hard, metallic, and again he breathed like a man with a weight on his chest.
“Yep, we had any hifalutin’ idees knocked plumb galley-west. . . . Boss, we run smack into Harrobin an’ Band Drake, with a bunch of men, in front of Bozeman’s store. Harrobin spotted us. Half an eye could have seen we’d been ridin’ hard.”
“ ‘Hullo there Kinsey,’ sang out Harrobin, most damn curious an’ mean. He would have drawed his gun then—an’ got bored for his pains ’cause I’d have beat him to it—but for Drake, who called him an’ stepped between. I’d sold Drake cattle, an’ I used to take letters to a girl for him. Drake always liked me.
“ ‘Let me do the talkin’, he said. ‘Hogue, what’s the idee, bustin’ in here, lookin’ as if you’d played up the range?’
“ ‘Kid an’ I been trailin’ some cattle,’ I said, offhand-like. ‘Lost their tracks out here close. An’ we come in for a drink an’ some grub. Mr. Drake, did you happen to see thet bunch of steers?’
“You should have heard them haw! haw! All except Harrobin. They was in a good humor. Been tippin’ at a bottle. But Harrobin was sore. He had his arm in a sling, an’ I reckon sight of me recalled how he got thet injury. But I’ve half an idee he doesn’t know yet thet we rustled the cattle he stole.
“ ‘Cowboy, you get thet drink an’ mosey without the grub,” said Drake. ‘Onhealthy for you here.’
“ ‘All right,’ I said. We’!! mosey, an’ much obliged.’ . . . Then Harrobin stepped out, black as the ace of spades. ‘Kinsey, is it true you’re ridin’ for Pencarrow?’ he asked me. I told him yes, that we’d got a good offer, an’ bein’ tired of starvin’ we took it up. . . . ‘Thet’s all right, if you want to risk it,’ he went on. ‘But keep out of Pine Mound. I’ll let you off this time to take a message to your boss, Tex Brandon.’
“‘All right, sir. I’ll take it,’ I chirped, glad to get off so easy. . . . ‘Tell Brandon,’ lit out Harrobin, ‘thet Blue has throwed in with me an’ thet Holbrook Kent has come with him!’”
“Blue!” echoed Wade, curiously, a bolt shooting back on a door of memory.
“Shore, Blue,” interposed Pencarrow. “Drake’s real name is Rand Blue. I forgot to tell you. He hails from the Panhandle of Texas. Bad man. Ran a rustler gang in Colorado. Came to Arizona under the name of Drake. He lived at Windsor for a while, posed as a respectable cattleman. Cut quite a swath. Sold me this ranch an’ cheated my eyes out—an’ at the same time had the gall to try to win Jacqueline.”
“Dad Pencarrow!” burst out Jacqueline, heatedly. “So that was it! You never told me.”
“Wal daughter, I didn’t know so much then as I learned later. Aulsbrook was mixed up in it. I know now he put Drake or Blue on to me to do me dirt. I wiped it off my mind. . . . But Band Drake is really Rand Blue.”
“Wal, the throwin’ together of those two rustler outfits is turrible bad news for this range,” put in Elwood Lightfoot, gravely concerned.
“Boss,” interposed Kinsey. “I knew Drake was or had been Blue. But names mean so little out here. I never thought to tell you.”
“Rand Blue!” whispered Wade, overwrought beyond his strength. The faces before him strangely faded. He seemed left alone, forced back into the past.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN HIS own mind Wade corroborated Elwood Lightfoot’s fears. Rand Blue and Harrobin, with picked riders and the choice of all the rest of the riffraff of the canyoned range, would be too much for any cowboy outfit under any leader. That was the logical way to figure it out.
“No!” muttered Wade. “I’ll make figures and facts lie!” His incentive and motive were too great to allow failure to stay an instant before his consciousness. And he began to think as if he had never before exercised that faculty.
He was out of doors and around next day, but did not feel fit for the saddle. In truth he would have stayed in bed but for the fear—the yearning hunger which was worse than fear—that Jacqueline would come to him, a ministering angel, a generous-hearted girl who placed too high a value upon him.
The cowboys had orders to ride out before dawn and return after dark. Wade climbed the nearest knoll and watched the range with his glass. He could not cover the important flats and swales. He saw no riders and but few cattle. The day dragged. When he could stay out no longer he returned to his cabin to find wild flowers on his table. Jacqueline had been there. The golden columbines, that must have come from the green depths of the canyon, seemed to speak to him. Later Lightfoot called and told him that he had fetched the columbines to Jacqueline. She must have picked the bluebells herself.
The homesteader was gloomy. He advised an immediate sale of all Pencarrow’s cattle. Wade agreed that would save a good deal of money, but it would make the rustlers master of the situation.
“I’m not cattle wise, Elwood,” said Wade, “but I can’t see that. . . . If Pencarrow sold out how would that effect this range? It’s free, you know.”
“It’d be bad. Aulsbrook an’ Driscoll would throw their herds up here. An’ they’d be hard to dislodge.”
“Wouldn’t Harrobin and Drake . . . I mean Blue—wouldn’t they clean out other cattlemen the same as Pencarrow?”
“They never have.”
“Hell you s
ay! That’s strange.”
“Wal, it always struck me queer. Aulsbrook never lost cattle enough to appreciate. He was friendly with Drake when Drake was lordin’ it around Winslow. Driscoll, though, has been hard hit at times, but never cleaned out.”
“This cattle game is sure queer—and as crooked as a rail fence,” muttered Wade.
“Shore it is. An’ I reckon for Pencarrow to sell out would be equivalent to quittin’.”
“A Texan quit!—You couldn’t make him. And Jacqueline and the twins are as game as he is. That’s not the way, Elwood.”
“Wal, there is only one way as I can see. More cattle an’ more riders. An’ fight these rustlers tooth an’ nail!”
“Ah!” It was a sound like a gasp.
“What’s the matter, son? Did you hurt your head, jerkin’ up thet way?”
“Yes,” lied Wade, confronted by an appalling temptation. The old cattleman had solved the problem of the Pencarrows. More cattle—more riders—and fight! Wade remembered the fortune in tainted money he had hidden under the floor of his cabin. He could buy fifty thousand head of cattle—more if he wanted to—at a price far cheaper than the future would ever offer. He could quadruple Hogue Kinsey’s hard-riding outfit and rid the range of these parasites. He could save the Pencarrows— make their fortune. But at the price of dishonor. He had been a robber. He still held a robber’s ill-gotten, bloodstained wealth. And on the moment Jacqueline’s magnificent eyes seemed to shine intent upon him, wondering at him, marveling in her faith, betraying more than gratitude. No! Never that way! She would loatne him if she ever found out. And the old specter of recapture stalked out with the memory of Rand Blue. That traitor had put the ranger hounds upon the trail of his father. They had tracked him to his death. That called for revenge. Of all men, Wade knew Blue would be the one to recognize him—to have a pack of rangers yapping at his heels.
The homesteader left Wade to his strange gloom, no doubt accounting for it by the head wound. Presently it was broken by Jacqueline’s quick soft tread on the porch, her pale face in the doorway.
“Brandon! How—are you?” she panted. “Elwood said you looked and talked strange—that your head hurt.”
“I reckon I’m—all right,” replied Wade, which was a half lie. And he closed his eyes because he had not the courage to look at her. Then he lay there silent, quivering under her soft cool hands as she bathed his hot face and re-dressed his wound. And he strained in a torture of happiness. If he had not been an outlaw, beyond the pale—if he had not owed her more than his life—if fate had not placed him in such an insupportable situation, great if he were great enough to fulfill it—he would not have been at the mercy of a love that made her touch bliss. She left him in the dusk as he feigned sleep.
The cowboys had no report to make which was favorable. The next morning Wade’s fever had left him. After breakfast, which the maid brought, he took his glass and went to a farther and higher knoll, from which he could command a view of half the range. It was pleasant and lovely there high up among the pines. He found that he loved this wild, gray, rocky, canyoned, purple Arizona land. The bluebells smiled out of the brown mats of needles, the white grama grass moved in the gentle breeze, the pines sang their soft swishing song, with its eternal note of sadness, the sage stretched away to the black-belted mountain, looming grandly, and to the dim hazy mystic desert with its specters.
Wade sighted strange riders that day. He saw dust clouds over the rolling ridge. At night Kinsey sought him with the news that he and Kid Marshall suspected the rustling of cattle off the far side of the range. Wood and Hicks had been across there, but had not yet ridden in.
“Keep under cover and watch,” said Wade. “Shoot if any riders come in range. It’s all we can do until I find a better way.”
Jerry and Hal, hiding along the cedar belt, had seen no riders. Later Wood and Hicks rode in on lame horses. They had surprised a bunch of rustlers in a brazen raid, driving cattle toward the Holbrook road.
“We emptied three saddles emptyin’ our rifles,” said Bilt, with dark elation. “Then they bore down on us, six or eight of the bunch, an’ tried to head us off from the ranch. Shore we had a ride for ten miles.”
Wade was fired anew with that report. His riders began to loom in his sight, cold-nerved, matchless horsemen, imbued with fighting spirit. They were a supreme outfit in the making. As they sat in the starlit night, with cigarettes glowing like sparks, their lean faces clean-cut and cold, Wade talked.
“Boys, the odds seem to be a hundred to one against us. Ranchers on this range wouldn’t give two-bits for our cattle or our lives. But I can’t see it their way—I can’t. Sure I’m burning deep down. All the same I’m thinking hard and clear. Quien sabe? Who knows what we can do? I know and you know. It depends on us—our eyes, our ears, our brains. I tell you, see everything, hear everything and beat these rustlers to it. Outfigure them! Get the jump on their thoughts! They are all slow thinkers. Ride and hide like men who are being hounded to death. And shoot first, as Wood and Hicks did today. . . . For the rest, practice your draw.
“Practice—practice—practice! Use your rifles. Learn their range and accuracy. Shoot at every jack rabbit, coyote, wolf—every sailing hawk you see, when it is safe to shoot. And be deadly about this practice, as if your lives depended on every shot, as indeed they do. Above all never be surprised. I repeat, always see the other man first. We’ve got shells enough for an army—we’ve got the swiftest horses on this range. . . . I tell you what I can’t explain. I feel what I can’t prove. . . . We’ll kill a lot of these rustlers. We’ll hang Blue and Harrobin.”
“Boss, how about Holbrook Kent?” queried Hogue Kinsey, slowly.
“He will be my job.”
“I’ve seen Kent. Little man, lame from a bullet still in his hip. Not young. Face full of deep lines. No beard. You won’t believe it. He’s cockeyed! An’ supposed to be lightnin’-swift on the draw. Must be, for he’s credited with eight men. While I was in Harrobin’s camp one night I heard Blue had a hold of some kind on Kent. If thet’s so Kent will be bracin’ you right here some day.”
“Thanks for the hunch, Hogue. I’d prefer to meet him at Holbrook, or anywhere but here.”
“Boss, Kent is a real hombre,” spoke up Kid Marshall. “He’ll come out in the open, if he’s gonna fight you atall. But as for the rest of them fellars, I say fight them Indian fashion.”
“Ahuh. Like Hicks and Wood did today?” rejoined Wade.
“We shore did,” spoke up Wood with fire. “Boss, mebbe you didn’t know Hicks is part Apache. He’s the best man with hosses, the best tracker, the slickest in the woods thet I or any of us ever seen.”
“Hicks, are you really part Indian?” queried Wade, strongly interested.
“Half-breed, boss,” replied Hicks, simply. “Born in Tonto. Crook got me when I was a boy. I ran away from the reservation.”
“Well!—Hogue, I’m just getting acquainted with my outfit.”
“Boss, we’ll shore make this range hum. . . . Cowboys, it’s late. Let’s turn in.”
“Good night. I’ll be riding with you in a day or two,” returned Wade, and wended a thoughtful way toward his cabin.
After breakfast next morning Wade resumed his seldom neglected practice of the swift drawing of a gun. He had a mirror here to look into which helped considerably. He found that even the few days of neglect had slowed his draw perceptibly. He was stem at this task when a gasp and a little rich laugh at his back made him whirl. Jacqueline and Rona stood framed in the open doorway, contrasting pictures of young and beautiful womanhood. Rona looked awed while Jacqueline wore a fascinated smile.
“Mawnin’, Brandon. We saw you just now and wondered if we could slip up on you. . . . Suppose we had been rustlers!”
“Good morning, scamps,” drawled Wade. “Rustlers wear spurs and boots. They can ride, but not walk—at least not like two slips of girls with pretty little moccasined feet.”
“Rona, thi
s man has actually paid me two compliments. . . . Let me hold your gun, Brandon? I saw you move but couldn’t see the gun come out. I heard the click.”
Wade handed the heavy Colt to her, butt first. She took it, not gingerly yet with dilated eyes.
“Why, the trigger is gone!” she exclaimed.
“Surely. I don’t use one.”
“But how can you shoot? What makes the hammer fall?”
“I thumb it. Let me show you. . . . See? When I grab the gun my thumb fits over the hammer. The weight of the gun, thrown like this . . . snaps the hammer from under my thumb. So the gun is really fired as it is thrown.”
“I couldn’t see. How swift you are!—But never mind it again. Sort of chills me. All that magic just to kill some man!”
“Not at all. You have it wrong,” replied Wade, his voice a little stiff. “All that is a matter of self-preservation, and perhaps, incidentally, to save some one else now and then.”
“Forgive me,” said Jacqueline, hastily. “It repelled me—made me remember Uncle Glenn. . . . I’m not quite so stupid when I think.”
“Jackie, I think he’s won—der—ful,” piped in Rona, big-eyed and romantic. “Hal is learning to draw. He showed me. Let me try. I dropped the darn thing on my foot.”
