by B. M. Bower
They came closer, after they had gained the top. Ward, leaning against the dull-gray rock before him, heard the murmur of their voices. Once he caught the unmistakable tones of the man he would like to kill. “I’ll keep cases and git him.” Plotting against some poor devil, as usual, Ward thought, and wondered if the man knew he lived in this part of the country; if he did, it might easily be—
“I’ll keep cases some myself, you damned reptile,” he muttered under his breath. “You won’t get me again, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”
They went on, and presently Ward was looking at their backs as they rode over the ridge. He stood for some time staring after them with what Billy Louise called his gimlet look. He was breathing shortly from the pressure he had put upon his self-control, and he was thinking—thinking.
The silence came creeping in on the heels of the faint, interrupted sound of their voices. Ward took a long breath, discovered that he was gripping his gun as though his life depended on hanging to it, and rubbed his numbed fingers absently. After a minute or so, he mounted and rode down to the corral.
Five dry cows and two steers snorted at his approach and crowded against the farther rails. Ward gave Rattler a touch of the spurs, rode close to the fence, and stood in his stirrups while he studied the bunch.
“Hell!” he said, when the inspection was over, and dropped back into the saddle while he gazed unseeingly at the canyon wall. It was a very real hell that his mind saw; a hell made by men, wherein other men must dwell in torment because of their sins or the sins of their fellows.
Seabeck’s brand was a big V, a bad brand to own, since it favors revision at the hands of the unscrupulous. These cattle were Seabeck cattle, and their brand had been altered. For the right slant of the V had been extended a little and curled into a 6, so that in time the brand would stand casual inspection as a Y6 monogram—Ward’s own brand. The work was crude—purposefully crude. The V bad not been reburned enough to make it look fresh, and the newly seared 6 had been added with a malevolent pressure that would make it stand out a fresh brand for a long time—in case of a delay in the proceedings, as Ward knew perfectly well.
So he sat there and looked over the fence and saw himself a convicted “rustler.” There was the evidence, all ready to damn him utterly before a jury. They would be turned loose on the range near his claim, and they would be found before the scabs had haired over. It was a good time for rustling; round-ups were over for the winter, and the weather would confine range-riding to absolute necessity.
Of course, the work was coarse—so coarse as to reflect against his intelligence; but when brands are worked over and the culprit has been caught, the law is not too careful to give the prisoner credit for brains.
Ward stared at the altered brands and wondered what he had best do. He bethought him that perhaps it would be as well to put a little scenery between himself and that particular locality, and he started back up the hill. Once he pulled up as if he would go back, but he thought better of it. It was out of the question to turn those cattle loose. He could not kill them and dispose of the bodies—not when there were seven of them. He might go down and blotch the brands so that they would not read anything at all. He had thought of that before and decided against it. That would put those three on their guard and would probably not benefit him in the long run. They could work the brands on other cattle.
He hunched forward in the saddle and let Rattler choose his own trail up the hill. Though he did not know it, trouble had caught Billy Louise in that same place, and had sent her forward with drooping shoulders and a mind so absorbed that she gave no attention to her horse; but that is merely a trifling coincidence. The thing he had to decide was far more complicated than Billy Louise’s problem.
Should he go straight to Seabeck and tell him what he had found out? He did not know Seabeck, except as he had met him once or twice on the trail and exchanged trivial greetings and a few words about the weather. Besides, Seabeck would very soon find out—
There it stood at his shoulder, grinning at him malevolently—his past. It tied his hands. Buck Olney he could deal with single-handed; for Olney had the fear of him that is born of a guilty conscience. He could send Buck “over the road” whenever he chose to tell some things he knew; he could do it without any compunctions, too. Buck Olney, the stock inspector, deserved no mercy at Ward’s hands; and would get none, if ever they met where Ward would have a chance at him.
Olney he could deal with, alone. But with the evidence of those rebranded cattle, and the testimony of two men, together with the damning testimony of his past! Ward lifted his head and stared heavily at the pine slope before him. He could not go to Seabeck and tell him anything. In the black hour of that ride, he could not think of anything that he could do that would save him.
And then quite suddenly, in his desperation, he decided upon something. He laughed hardly, turned Rattler back from the homeward trail, and returned to the corral in the canyon. “They started this game, and they’ve put it up to me,” he told himself grimly, “and they needn’t squeal if they burn their own fingers.”
He hurried, for he had some work ahead of him, and the sun was sliding past the noon mark already. He reached the corral and went about what he had to do as if he were working for wages and wanted to give good measure.
First, he rebuilt the little fire just outside the corral where the cattle could not trample it, but where one might thrust a branding iron into its midst from between the rails. When it was going properly, he searched certain likely hiding-places and found an iron still warm from previous service. He thrust it in to heat, led Rattler into the corral, and closed the gate securely behind him. Then he mounted, took down his rope and widened the loop, while his angry eyes singled out the animal he wanted first.
Ward was not an adept with a “running iron”; he was honest, whatever men might say of him. But he knew how to tie down an animal, and he sacrificed part of his lariat to get the short rope he needed to tie their feet together. He worked fast—no telling what minute someone might come and catch him—and he did his work well, far better and neater than had his predecessors.
When he left that corral, he smiled. Before he had ridden very far up the bluff, he stopped, looked down at the long-suffering cattle, and smiled again sardonically. One could read their brands easily from where he sat on his horse. They were not blotched; they were very distinct. But they were not Y6s within that corral. There were other brands which might be made of a Y6 monogram, by the judicious addition of a mark here and a mark there.
“There, damn yuh: chew on that awhile!” he apostrophized the absent three. He turned away and rode back once more toward home.
Rattler turned naturally into the trail which ran up the creek to the ranch, but Ward immediately turned him out of it. “We aren’t going to overlook any bets, old-timer,” he said grimly and crossed the creek at a point where it was too rocky to leave any hoof-prints behind them. He rode up the lower point of the ridge beyond and followed the crest of it on the side away from the valley. When he reached a point nearly opposite his cabin, he dismounted, unbuckled his spurs, and slipped their chains over the saddle-horn. Then he went forward afoot to reconnoitre. He was careful to avoid rock or gravelly patches and to walk always on the soft grass which muffled his steps.
In this wise he made his way to the top of the ridge, where he could look down upon the cabin and stable and corrals and see also the creek trail for a good quarter of a mile. The little valley lay quiet. His team fed undisturbed by the creek not far from the corral, which reassured Ward more than anything. Still, he waited until he had made reasonably sure that the bluff held no watcher concealed before he went back to where Rattler waited patiently.
“I guess they didn’t plan to stir things up till they got those critters planted where they wanted them,” he mused, while he rode down the bluff to his cabin. “But when they visit that bunch of stock again, I reckon things will begin to tighten!”
CHAPTER XVI
“I’M GOING TO TAKE YOU OUT AND HANG YOU”
The trouble with a man like Buck Olney is that you can never be sure of his method, except that it will be underhand and calculated to eliminate as much as possible any risk to himself. Ward, casting back into his memory—he had known Buck Olney very well, once upon a time, and in his unsuspecting youth had counted him a friend—tried to guess how Buck would proceed when he went down to that corral and found how those brands had been retouched.
“He’ll be running around in circles for awhile, all right,” he deduced with an air of certainty. “Blotched brands he’d know was my work; and he could have put it on me, too, with a good yarn about trailing me so close I got cold feet. As it is—” Ward smoked two cigarettes and scowled at the scenery. As it was, he did not know just what Buck Olney would do, except— “If he makes a guess I did that, he’ll know I’m wise to the whole plant. And he’ll get me, sure, providing I stand with my back to him long enough!” Ward had his back to a high ledge, at that moment, so that he did not experience any impulse to look behind him.
“Buck don’t want to drag me up before a jury,” he reasoned further. “He’d a heap rather pack me in all wrapped up in a tarp, and say how he’d caught me with the goods, and I resisted arrest.”
The assurance he felt as to what Buck Olney would do did not particularly frighten Ward, even if he did neglect to go to bed in his cabin during the next few days. That was common sense, born of his knowledge of the man he was dealing with. He went to the cabin warily, just often enough to give it an air of occupancy. He frequently sat upon some hilltop and watched a lazy thread of smoke weave upward from his rusty stovepipe, but he slept out under the stars rolled in his heavy blanket, and he never crossed a ridge if he could make his way through a hollow. It is not always cowardice which makes a man extremely careful not to fall into the hands of his enemy. There is a small matter of pride involved. Ward would have died almost any death rather than give Buck Olney the satisfaction of “getting” him. For a few days he was cautious as an Indian on the war trail, and then his patience frazzled out under the strain.
At sunrise one morning, after a night of shivering in his blanket, he hunched his shoulders in disgust of his caution. If Buck Olney wanted anything of him, he was certainly taking his time about coming after it. Ward rubbed his fingers over his stubbly jaw, and the uncomfortable prickling was the last small detail of discomfort that decided him. He was going to have a shave and a decent cup of coffee and eat off his own table, or know the reason why, he promised himself while he slapped the saddle on Rattler.
He was camped in a sheltered little hollow in the hills, where the grass was good and there was a spring. It was a mile and more to his claim, straight across the upland, and it was his habit to leave Rattler there and walk over to the ridge, where he could watch his claim; frequently, as I have said, he stole down before daylight and lighted a fire in the stove, just to make it look as if he lived there. There was a risk in that, of course, granting that the stock inspector was the kind to lie in wait for him.
Ward rode to the ridge, with his blanket rolled and tied behind the cantle. His frying-pan hung behind his leg, and his rifle lay across the saddle in front of him. He was going home boldly enough and recklessly enough, but he was by no means disposed to walk deliberately into a trap. He kept his eye peeled, as he would have expressed it. Also, he left Rattler just under the crest of the ridge, took off his spurs, and with his rifle in his hands went forward afoot, as he had done every time he had approached his cabin since the day he found the corral and the cattle in the canyon.
In this wise he looked down the steep slope with the sun throwing the shadow of his head and shoulders before him. The cabin window blinked cheerfully in the sunlight. His span of mares were coming up from the meadow—in the faint hope of getting a breakfast of oats, perhaps. The place looked peaceful enough and cozily desirable to a man who has slept out for four nights late in the fall; but a glance was all Ward gave to it.
His eyes searched the bluff below him and upon either side. Of a sudden they sharpened. He brought his rifle forward with an involuntary motion of the arms. He stood so for a breath or two, looking down the hill. Then he went forward stealthily, on his toes; swiftly, too, so that presently he was close enough to see the carbuncle scar on the neck of the man crouched behind a rock and watching the cabin as a cat watches a mouse-hole. A rifle lay across the rock before the man, the muzzle pointing downward. At that distance, and from a dead rest, it would be strange if he should miss any object he shot at. He had what gamblers call a cinch, or he would have had, if the man he watched for had not been standing directly behind him, with rifle-sights in a line with the scar on the back of his thick neck.
“Throw up your hands!” Ward called sharply, when his first flare of rage had cooled to steady purpose.
Buck Olney jumped as though a yellow-jacket had stung him. He turned a startled face over his shoulder and jerked the rifle up from the rock. Ward raised his sights a little and plugged a round, black-rimmed hole through Buck’s hat crown.
“Throw up your hands, I told you!” he said, while the hills opposite were still flinging back the sound of the shot, and came closer.
Buck grunted an oath, dropped the rifle so suddenly that it clattered on the rock, and lifted his hands high, in the quiet sunlight.
“Get up from there and go on down to the shack—and keep your hands up. And remember all the reasons I’ve got for wanting to see you make a crooked move, so I’ll have an excuse to shoot.” Ward came still closer as he spoke. He was wishing he had brought his rope along. He did not feel quite easy in his mind while Buck Olney’s hands were free. He kept thinking of what Billy Louise had said to him about shooting this man, and it was the first time since he had known her that he disliked the thought of her.
Buck got up awkwardly and went stumbling down the steep slope, with his hands trembling in the air upon either side of his head. From their nervous quivering it was evident that his memory was good, and that it was working upon the subject which Ward had suggested to him. He did not give Ward the weakest imitation of an excuse to shoot. And so the two of them came presently down upon the level and passed around the cabin to the door, with no more than ten feet of space between them—so inexorably had Ward crowded close upon the other’s stumbling progress.
“Hold on a minute!”
Buck stopped as still as though he had gone against a rock wall.
Ward came closer, and Buck flinched away from the feel of the rifle muzzle between his shoulder blades. Ward reached out a cautious hand and pulled the six-shooter from its scabbard at Buck’s right hip.
“Got a knife? You always used to go heeled with one. Speak up—and don’t lie about it.”
“Inside my coat,” grunted Buck, and Ward’s lip curled while he reached around the man’s bulky body and found the knife in its leather sheath. Evidently Buck was still remembering with disquieting exactness what reasons Ward might have for wanting to kill him.
“Take down your left hand and open the door.”
Buck did so and put his hand up again without being told.
“Now go in and stand with your face to the wall.” With the rifle muzzle, Ward indicated which wall. He noticed how Buck’s fingers groped and trembled against the wall, just under the eaves, and his lip curled again in the expression which Billy Louise so hated to see.
Ward had chosen the spot where he could reach easily a small coil of
rope. He kept the rifle pressing Buck’s shoulders until he had shifted the knife into one hand, leaned, and laid its blade against Buck’s cheek.
“Feel that? I’ll jab it clear through you if you give me a chance. Drop your hands down behind you.” He spent a busy minute with the rope before he pushed Buck Olney roughly toward a chair.
Buck sat down, and Ward did a little more rope-work.
“Say, Ward, you’re making a big mistake if you—”
“Shut up!” snapped Ward. “Can’t you see I’m standing all I can stand, just with the sight of you? Don’t pile it on too thick by letting me hear you talk. I heard you once too often as it is.”
Buck Olney caught his breath and sat very still. His eyes followed Ward as the eyes of a caged animal follow its keeper.
Ward tried to ignore his presence completely while he lighted a fire and fried bacon and made coffee, but the hard set of his jaw and the cold intentness of his eyes proved how conscious he was of Buck’s presence. He tried to eat just to show how calm he was, but the bread and bacon choked him. He could feel every nerve in his body quiver with the hatred he felt for the man, and the bitterness which the sight of him called up out of the past. He drank four cups of coffee, black and sweetened at random, which steadied him a little. That he did not offer Buck food or drink showed how intense was his hatred; as a rule, your true range man is hospitable even to his enemies.
He rose and inspected the ropes to make sure that they were proof against twisting, straining muscles, and took an extra turn or two with the loose end, just to make doubly sure of the man’s helplessness.
“Where did you leave your horse?” he asked him curtly, when he was through.
Buck told him, his eyes searching Ward’s face for mercy—or at least for some clew to his fate—and dulling with disappointment because he could read nothing there but loathing.
Without speaking again, Ward went out and closed the door firmly behind him. He felt relieved to be away from Buck’s presence. As he climbed the bluff and mentally relived the last hour, he wondered how he had kept from shooting Buck as soon as he saw him. Still, that would have defeated his main purpose, which was to make Buck suffer. He was afraid he could not make Buck suffer as Buck had made him suffer, because there were obstacles in the path of a perfect retribution.
