by Max Brand
And what did they do with their cattle? Did they drive them off in small herds, every two or three years, toward the nearest railroad—far, far away as that was—or did they butcher them on the place, render the fat, and take the hides and horns for sale?
Ranger was much intrigued. He could not tell what they might be most likely to do, but he was rather inclined toward the second viewpoint.
Well, now that he had found the position of the ranch, he could not help feeling that the major portion of his work had been accomplished. Already, in fact, he knew from hearsay that the Crossons were most odd, and even the character of their oddities had been told him during his stay in Tuckerville. If only he could now scratch the soil a little.
That problem of getting in touch with the Crossons was a difficult one, and neither by day nor by night was a solution revealed to him. In the meantime, he had the task of laying out his traps. He selected for that purpose a looping line that ran eight miles along the hills, so arranged that at every place where the ground rose up it looked down upon the ravine—cut flat in which lay the Crosson Ranch. The work of laying out the trap line and of putting up his meager scattering of traps here and there occupied him during two whole days, and occupied him so thoroughly that each night he went to sleep a very tired man, to waken in the dawn hardly ready to resume his work. For the warmth of the climate was as yet far too much for him. He perspired over the slightest exertion, and sweat streamed off him as he toiled over the slopes in the full blast of the afternoon sun. When he got up on the morning of the third day, he found a mockery of his trapping efforts awaited him. For the burro, which he had hobbled loosely and turned out to graze, lay on its side hardly a hundred yards from his camp, with its throat torn open.
The signs of timber wolves were all around it, but not a morsel of the kill had they touched. Pure malice had led to the murder of that inoffensive little beast. Its open eyes were as bright and living as ever, while the dawn light glittered far into their depths. Only the red slash at the throat told him that the burro would never stand up and wag its ears again.
To get the nuisance of the corpse away from his camp, he rolled it to the lip of the nearest ravine and watched it tumble away far below him, plunging into the brush, from which it knocked up a great cloud of dust, almost as though it had set off a charge of powder in striking the shrubbery.
Lefty Bill Ranger went back to his camp with a grimly set jaw. If there were no other men in that district of the world capable of showing beasts of prey how they should behave and whether or not a grown man should be feared and respected and his habitat left in peace, he, Bill Ranger, would now start giving lessons broadcast.
With this resolution strong in his mind, he had barely got to the little lean-to out of which he was making a home among the rocks when a gray head and shoulders rose from a nest of boulders near him and a lordly lobo grinned its teeth hatefully toward him.
Was it imagination or did he indeed see a splash of blood staining the broad, white vest of the brute?
At any rate, out came his revolver with a slash of light, and he fired straight at the lobo. It seemed to wince as his finger pressed the trigger, but he knew that the wincing came after rather than before the bullet was launched, and, as the wolf dropped among the rocks, out of sight, Ranger knew that he had sent the shot home.
He hurried to the place, near the edge of the hill’s shoulder, to finish the business in case the single bullet were not enough, and with a beating heart he told himself that he had done well indeed, and in the cause of justice rather than of himself.
But when he got to the nest of rocks and cautiously entered among them, he found that the wolf was gone.
A few large drippings of blood caused him to hurry on outside the rocks again, and, dropping his eye down into the flat of the Crosson Ranch, he saw his quarry again. It had been hit and wounded, as its flinching and the bloodstains proved, but it was able to run as hardly a lobo ever had run before. Its huge frame humped like a frightened rabbit. It doubled and then stretched, and made no more than a gray streak as it shot in and out among the boulders, and then began to shoot across the open green grasslands.
This amazed the trapper. For he knew that the gray wolf, when it is hurt, runs, of course, but rather for covert than for its home. And here was this evening prowler, speeding out into the open, and heading, in fact, toward the habitation of man.
Perhaps it was a young wolf. No, from its size it appeared fully mature, and therefore in full possession of its senses.
Perhaps it was struck by the bullet somewhere about the brain? No, for it did not stagger about, and its wits hardly could be affected so long as it ran so straight.
What was the goal of its running, then?
It had a den, perhaps, on the farther side of the green sea that made the central part of the Crosson Ranch.
Ranger pulled out his field glasses. They were strong, and the lenses in them were as good as money could buy, but just as he focused upon the wolf, it disappeared into a flashing mass of greenery. He lowered the glass with a muttered oath. The wolf, in fact, had actually entered the plantation of trees around the Crosson house. In a moment it would be issuing on the farther side, continuing its headlong flight for its den. Ranger put this down as a marked freak in wolf behavior, and one well worth noting to its end. It might be a female, perhaps, returning to its young. He told himself that he never had seen a female so high in the shoulders or possessed of such a lordly, shaking mane. However, that was the handiest explanation, and he repeated it to himself as he swept the region of gently rolling grass on all the farther sides of the trees.
But the wolf did not appear again.
No, though he focused the glasses with the greatest care and studied every inch of the features of the landscape, he could not see a token of the big fellow again. Male or female, it had disappeared among the woods of the Crosson place as though it were entering its own home.
Ranger shook his head. He knew much about the impertinence and the cunning of these wild rovers, but he never would have suspected one of them of denning up among trees where man was so close a neighbor. It was almost too much to be given credence.
He lowered the glasses at length, when he had waited a full quarter of an hour vainly, and he went off, shaking his head as many another trapper has shaken his over the antics of the overwise timber wolf.
So he went about his work of the day, visiting his trap line. His catch was good, very good indeed. It was the sort of a catch that a man would expect to snare in a country so filled with tracks.
He got two red foxes in successive traps, then a pair of coyotes in the next two—a catch in every trap, and in pairs, as it seemed. Then there was a bobcat, and three empty traps in a row. He found in the next an idiotic rabbit whose head had been torn off by a mousing hawk or eagle, and the body left secured in the trap. In the last trap of all, as he completed the round and neared his home, with the pelts born on his shoulders, there was another coyote, and such a huge one as he never had seen. It must have weighed close to sixty pounds, and it was in the very pink of fat condition. Much flesh went to coating the sleek ribs of that rascal, to be sure.
He came back to his lean-to very well satisfied with himself. He had been a hunter and an independent roustabout so much of his life that a successful day of shooting or of trapping had its own significance, quite apart from any ulterior motive that led him to remain in this region of the hills.
He had already made the beginnings for several frames, and now he stretched the skins upon them, finished the cleaning and first dressing, and ranged them aside for drying. A month of such trapping as this—this and better, as he learned the ways of the animals and the tracks they frequented—and he would have a whole wagonload of spoils.
He was thinking over this as he went out with the small hand axe to chop wood for the supper fire, but, as he went, a sudden deep chorus of baying came to him out of the Crosson valley.
What dogs were out
at this time of day, beginning a hunt?
Then he stopped in mid-stride, for he recognized the fresh outbreak. It was not the chorus of a dog pack. It was the yell of a stream of wolves following a blood trail straight toward his lean-to on the hillside.
The nerves and the brain of the trapper congealed for an instant with cold.
Chapter Seven
He ran to the edge of the hill, and with his glass he looked down upon the flat of the Crosson Ranch, the smooth sweep of beautiful green, spotted here and there with groves, and above all, with dense places of shrubbery.
Across the open he saw a mountain lion bounding at full speed, and well behind it came the wolves. And such a pack!
The lobo is a solitary brute as a rule. It prefers to work alone. Sometimes there will be a couple, followed by three or four half-grown cubs, but this is the great exception. Again, in a winter of great famine, half a dozen may band together for more efficient hunting. But this was no season of famine; all of these animals were full grown. And yet there were more than a dozen of the monsters racing after the puma.
It was a sight to dream of, not to tell, for no words could reproduce the ghoulish howling of the timber wolves as they fled on the trail with the quarry in full view. The race had hardly begun, for the puma was putting the wolves behind him almost as though they were standing still, but with such a short-breathed animal as the mountain lion—made to start like an arrow from the bow and to fail almost as quickly—a creature designed for stalking and a single lightning attack, the deep-lunged wolves were sure to gain rapidly after the first burst of sprinting.
But neither the puma nor the lobos were what started Lefty Bill Ranger so greatly.
Behind the mountain lion, behind the wolf pack, appeared a single man on horseback—an Indian, doubtless, for his bronzed body was naked to the waist, and he wore trousers and leggings of the old Indian deerskin fashion, and moccasins on his feet, so far as the glass could tell. Like the Indians of another day, also, he rode without a saddle, and therefore without stirrups. And in place of a bridle he appeared to have a rope noosed over the head of the horse.
A wild mustang that horse appeared to be, with a shaggy, flying mane, and a tail blown straight out by the wind and by the speed of its running. Now it bounded across a little ditch, now it shied violently from the flashing face of a rock that reflected the sunset light, but the rider sat on the bare back with perfect ease.
He was young. He was straight and lithe. The blowing, black hair whipped and snapped behind his head. And as he looked from side to side, he seemed interested in the blue colors that were filling the cañon like ghostly water, or in the rose and gold of the upper lighted mountains, rather than in the strange hunt that was taking place before him.
What was he doing there? Why did he follow the wolves? Was he hunting them as they were hunting the puma? Or did he wish to shoot the puma and scatter the wolves when the time came for the great cat to stand at bay?
If there was any shooting to be done, it would not be with a rifle, at least, for there was no sign of one borne by the young cavalier. There was no token of a revolver, either, but only the sheath of a knife at the right hip, fastened to the belt. The strong glass showed these small details quite clearly, but it showed no sign of a firearm of any sort.
And then the trapper remembered what Sol Murphy had told him. No guns were ever allowed upon the Crosson Ranch.
Was this one of the Crossons, then? Was this one of the men into whose lives he had been sent to peer and listen like an eavesdropper?
No. What white man would gallop half naked across the plain in this manner, on an unbridled, unsaddled mustang? It must be an Indian, of course. No white man could be tanned so dark by mere sun and wind, he told himself. Why, the fellow was almost black. If not an Indian, a Negro, or a mulatto. So thought old Bill Ranger as he stared down and studied the scene, which now began to change rapidly.
For the lion, which at first had been covering the ground with enormous leaps, had now slackened its gait suddenly. Its wind was gone. And up on it swept the wolf pack, yelling like deep-throated demons on their course.
The puma almost halted and half swung around, as though it would make its stand out there in the open, desperate as it was, but, when the wolves drove nearer, its cowardly mind was changed again, and it fled for the shelter of a mass of tall, standing brush.
The wolves were on its heels when it entered, but, as they saw the whipping branches close behind the long tail of the fugitive, they fanned out suddenly and formed a circle around the place.
Was that the end of the puma hunt? For certainly, on the part of the lion, the patience required to remain there would be as great as the wolves’ in watching and starving the great cat into submission!
But now came the rider on the horse. Right up among the wolves he drove, and before the mustang was stopped he had swung from its back and landed on the ground with a light, bounding stride. He was not a single stride from two of the huge lobos. What monsters they were the watcher could tell by a comparison of their bulk with that of the man. Yet neither of them offered to spring at the human throat. Neither did either of them skulk away. But they turned their heads with red, lolling tongues and glittering eyes toward the boy, as though asking directions from him.
Bill Ranger gaped like one who has seen the end of the world.
The swarthy youth was in no haste. First he took out a cord and bound it around his head, as if to keep the long black hair from sweeping into his eyes. Then he drew his knife and thumbed the edges of it. The glass showed every detail. Ranger grew feverish with excitement. It seemed as though the youngster were actually mad enough to attempt to enter the dusky shadows of that brush.
When the knife had been tested, three or four of the great wolves were gathered about the boy for all the world like children at the feet of a master. They sat down in a semicircle before him and waited. And from all that circle of watchers around the brush not a single yell went up.
The man now pointed to right and left. Perhaps he gave a spoken command as well, though the glass could not show the movement of his lips. At any rate, the hair of Ranger lifted as he saw two of the big animals enter the shrubbery to the right of the man and two upon the left. The lad himself walked straight forward between the two groups, and all of them instantly were lost in the shadows of the bushes. Here and there the tops of these waved, but not violently.
Then the minutes of waiting began. The heart of Ranger thundered in his throat. It seemed to him hours, yet, when he looked to the west, the sun did not seem to have changed its position. It was as though even the great sun itself arrested its course to look down on the strange scene taking place there in the heart of the brush.
The silence suddenly ended. A loud, screeching cry from the great cat sounded plainly up to the hill shoulder where Bill Ranger was watching, and then the tawny body—head and back and stretching tail—showed for an instant among the top tips of the brush.
Had it aimed at a wolf? Or were these wolf dogs in spite of their appearance? No, it would not have leaped so high at the throat of a dog. A man was its goal, or something as tall as a man.
The thundering heart of Ranger stood still. A terrific series of screeching yells followed from the throat of the monster cat. Then silence followed. It was a silence hideously long, and now the sun began to move. It sank lower. It touched the rim of the western hills. It puffed its cheeks. It sank gradually out of sight, and still no token from the bushes. Ten great wolves lay around the brush. The four and the man who had entered with them had not appeared again. The trim mustang, frightened by the outcries, had run a hundred yards away, and now it was grazing peacefully, a beautiful little bronze-colored horse with a mane and tail of silver.
The sun was out of sight. The fires of the sunset began to grow dim, and Ranger felt a vast desire to go down and investigate the tragedy of the brush patch.
It would be an easy thing for the mountain lion to dispose of the
man with a single stroke of its saber-like claws, tearing out the boy’s throat. A wolf could be killed at a single blow, so powerful was the supple, dagger-armed paw of the great cat. Besides, it was in brush tangle, where it would be at home. And Ranger had a picture, horribly clear in his mind, of the four great wolves lying twisted in death, and of the huge cat, with eyes like yellow moons, lying on the body of the human victim and lapping the blood from the hollow of his throat.
Perhaps a wind came over the flat. Perhaps something was moving again in the brush. Ranger focused his glass as well as he could, but uncertainly, because of the dimming light and because his hand was shaking so. But now, out from the brush, tall, erect, unhurt, stepped the lad, carrying draped over his shoulder the flapping, long-tailed pelt of the mountain lion. By what miracle had he, alone and unaided, ripped the hide from the big beast in so short a time? But there he stood, and, as he waved his hand, instantly into the brush leaped the ten wolves that had lain around it in a circle, at watch.
The boy, in the meantime, waved toward the mustang, and a thin, small sound of a whistle reached to the ears of Ranger, who was waiting there in hiding on the shoulder of the hill.
Obedient to the signal, the horse left off its grazing and came at a trot, then a gallop. He stopped short, snorting, pricking his ears as he sniffed at the bloody spoil that the lad was now folding neatly. When folded, he laid it across the back of the mustang, which began to rear and buck, but the raised threatening hand of the master subdued it in a moment. As if from a springboard, the hunter leaped up and sat upon this new-made cushion of lion skin. He sat sidewise, at ease, and waited there patiently while the dusk deepened.
He had not long to pause, for now, out of the brush, in a dark cluster, came the wolves. They went at a slow, shambling trot, like beasts heavy with food, and, forming in a low-moving cloud around the dog-trotting horse, the whole group moved off across the green of the plain, and presently they were more obscure, and at last they were lost to the straining eyes of Lefty Ranger.
