Six Feet Four

by Jackson Gregory

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE RANCH ON BIG LITTLE RIVER

  Buck Thornton had returned to the Poison Hole ranch. But first he hadridden from the Smith place down the trail to Harte's, where he madeswift, careful search for some sign to tell him who was the man who hadlamed his horse maliciously and seemingly with no purpose to be gained.Further, he had sought for tracks to tell him from where this man hadcome, where he had gone. When he had found nothing he went, he hardlyknew why, to the cabin, pushed the door open and entered. And instead oflearning anything definitely now he was merely the more perplexed. Bythe fireplace lay a chair, overturned. There had been some sort ofhurried movement here, perhaps a struggle. The table had been pushed toone side, one leg catching in the rag rug and rumpling it. He struck amatch, lighted the lamp and sought for some explanation. When had thisstruggle, if struggle there had been, occurred? It must have been afterhe and Miss Waverly had set out on the trail to Smith's, he told himselfpositively. Then there had been two people here in the meantime, for ittakes two people to make a tussel. And they had gone. Who could it be?Was he after all to find a clue to the man who had maimed his horse?

  Looking about him curiously it chanced that he found something thatdrove a puzzled frown into his eyes. It had caught in the frayed edge ofthe rug, and to have been so caught and so left meant that it had beendone during the struggle he had already pictured. He took it up into hishand, trying to understand. For it was the rowel of a spur, a tiny,sharp, shining rowel that had come loose from a spur he remembered verywell. And he remembered, too, that Winifred Waverly had had her spurs onwhen she came out to him at the barn!

  "It happened while I was out after the horses!" He sat down, the shiningspiked wheel lying in the palm of his hand, his brows drawn heavily."While I was out there ... it happened. Some jasper came in here, therewas some sort of a tussle ... and she didn't say a damned word aboutit!"

  Yes, he was certain now that something had happened during the brieftime between his going out for the horses and the girl's coming to himat the barn. Something that had changed her, that had killed herfriendliness toward him, that had made her cold and cruelly different.

  "The same man who slipped his knife across my horse's foot came in hereand saw her while I was out for the horses," he said slowly. "The sameman. It must have been. And she could tell me who it was and shedidn't. Why? After they had struggled here, too! Why?"

  He could see no reason in it all, no reason for her silence, no reasonfor a man's malicious cruelty to a horse. Nor were these the only thingswhich he could not understand. Groping for the truth, he began carefullyto run over the things which had seemed strange to him and which nowstruck him as being connected in some plan darkly hidden.

  The girl was Henry Pollard's niece. He began with that fact. She was onher way to Pollard's and on an errand which the banker Templeton hadcalled mad and dangerous. Some man had followed her, a man whom she hadtwice seen on the trail and whose outfit resembled Thornton's, resembledit too closely to be the result of chance! The same headstall with thered tassel, the same grey neck-handkerchief, a sorrel horse....

  "By God!" whispered the cowboy, a sudden light in his eyes, "he lamed myhorse so it would limp the same as his! So she'd be sure she had seen meon the trail behind her! And when she came out and saw my horse limpingshe knew I had lied to her!"

  But why? Why? What lay back of all this?

  In the end he put out the light, slipped the spur rowel into his vestpocket, and went out to his horse. Then when an hour's search broughthim no nearer to the hidden truth for which he was groping, he gave uptrying to pick up this other man's trail in the rocky soil aboutHarte's place and turned back toward the south-east and his own ranch.

  "I'm going to have a talk with you, Miss Grey Eyes," he said softly."I've got to give you back your spur, and I'm going to ask you somequestions."

  He rode late into the night, stopped for a few hours under the starswith saddle blanket for bed, and in the dawn pushed on again.

  For the few days which followed he had, in the stress of range work,little time for thought of the riddle which had been set for him tosolve, and when he had time after the day's work he was tired and readyfor sleep. He was working short handed now for the very simple and notuncommon reason that he was spending no dollar which he did not have tospend. The payments he had already made to Pollard had been heavy forhim, and there was yet another five thousand dollars to be forthcomingin six months. The contract was clear upon the point, and he knew thatif he failed to meet his obligation Henry Pollard would be vastlypleased, being in a position to keep the fifteen thousand which had beenpaid to him and to get his range back to boot.

  Perhaps because Henry Pollard had never lived upon the ranch during thetwenty years he had owned it improvements were few and poor. There wasthe barn, too small now, which must come down in another year; there wasthe old corral which was little used since Thornton had had the newer,bigger one builded. Then, for ranch house, there was a single roomcabin, its walls of heavy logs from the hills at the head of the BigLittle River, its door of great thick planks rough and nail studded, itsroof of shakes. A hundred yards from it, at the foot of the knoll uponwhich the ranch house stood, was a similar cabin, a dozen feet longer,serving as the men's bunk house.

  Big Little River wound about the foot of the knoll, separatingThornton's cabin from the bunk house, three or four feet deep here andspanned by a crude footbridge. In its windings it made a sort ofhorseshoe about the knoll so that looking out from the door of thecattle man's cabin one saw the sluggish water to east, west and north.

  Upon the third morning after his return to the range Thornton roseearly, scowled sleepily at the little alarm clock whose strident clamourhad startled him out of his sleep at four o'clock, kicked off hispajamas and with towel in hand started down to the river for his morningplunge. Subconsciously he noted a scrap of white paper lying upon thehewn log which served as doorstep, but he paid no heed to it. He had hisdip, diving from the big rock from which most mornings of the year hedived into the deepest part of the stream; and in a little came backthrough the brightening daylight rosy and tingling and with the lastwebs of sleep washed out of his brain. Again he noted the paper; thistime he stooped and caught it up. For now he saw that it was folded,carefully placed where he must see it, pinned down with a sharp pointedhorseshoe nail.

  "Now who's sending me letters this way?" he demanded of himself.

  And he flushed a little and called himself a fool because he knew thathe half expected to find that it was a note from a certain girl withunforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soonin fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructedletters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not comefrom her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters,initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by a verysmall capital C.

  "Now, who's J.C.?" he muttered. "I can call to mind no J.C. who would bewriting me letters!"

  As he read the note a look of astonishment came into his eyes. It ran:

  "Deer buck, I am shure up against hard luck. Dont know nobody but youcan give me a hand remember that time down in El paso I was yore freind.Come to old shack by Poison hole tonight & dont tell nobody & bring sumgrub Buck remember El paso.

  "j.c.

  "p.s. I was yore freind buck."

  Thornton remembered. He went slowly about his dressing, turning againand again to look at the note he had placed upon his little pine table.That had been five years ago. He was riding between Juarez and El Paso,having just sold a herd of steers from the range he had owned in Texasthen. He had been detained in the Mexican town until after dark, andbefore its lights had ceased winking behind him he had known that thoughhis precaution of taking a check instead of gold had saved his money tohim it had not saved him from coming very close to death. There werestill three scars, two in the shoulder, one in the right side, to showwhere the bullets had bitten deep into him, fr
om behind. He had beensearched swiftly, roughly, his clothing torn by the hurried fingers ofthe man who had shot him.

  It had been close to midnight when his consciousness came back to him. Alittle man, hard featured but gentle fingered, was working over him. Itwas Jimmie Clayton. And Clayton had found the crumpled check in thedarkness, had gotten the wounded man on his own horse, had taken him toEl Paso, and finally had saved his life, nursing him, working over himday and night for the two weeks in which his life was in danger.

  Since then Thornton had seen little of Clayton. He had known even at thetime of the shooting that the man was as hard a character as hisclose-set, little eyes and weasel face bespoke him; he had come to knowhim as an insatiate gambler, the pitiful sort of gambler who is too muchof a drunkard to be more than his opponent's dupe at cards. He had foundhim to be a brawler and very much of a ruffian. But though he did notclose his eyes to these things they did not matter to him. Forgratitude and a sense of loyalty were two of the strong silver threadsthat went to make up the mesh of Buck Thornton's nature, and it wasenough to him that little Jimmie Clayton had played the part of friendin a town where friends were scarce and at a time when but for a friendhe would have died.

  It was not alone the fact of Clayton's turning up here and now thatsurprised the cattle man; it was the fact of his turning up anywhere.For he had thought that Clayton, weak natured and so very often theother man's tool, was serving time in the Texas penitentiary. For, threeyears ago, rumour had brought to him word of a sheriff's clean-up, andthe names of three men who had been working a crude confidence game,bold rather than shrewd, and Jimmie Clayton's name was one of the three.He had heard only after the men had been convicted and sentenced forfive years apiece, and had at the time regretted that he could not haveknown sooner so that in some way he might have returned the favour hehad never forgotten.

  At last having dressed, he shoved the letter into his pocket, and wentdown to the bunk house for breakfast. To the cook and to the three menalready at the table he had little to say, so full were his thoughts ofJimmie Clayton. He was wondering what "hard luck" the little fellow hadrun up against, why he was hiding out at a place like the Poison Holeshack, how he had gotten the letter to the range cabin, and, if he hadbrought it himself, why he had not made himself known last night.

  He gave his few, succinct orders for the day, made his hurried meal,and went to the corral for his horse. And all that day he rode hard outin the broken country where the eastern end of the range ran up and backinto the gorges of the mountains, shifting herd, collecting stragglers,bringing them down into the meadow lands where the feed was abundant nowthat he had sold the cattle he had had ranging there in order that hemight raise the money to make up the five thousand dollars for HenryPollard.

  As he rode he spoke seldom to the horse running under him or to the boyswith whom he worked, his thoughts flying now to another horse, lamedfrom a knife cut, now to a girl whose spur rowel he carried in his vestpocket, now to a man whose appealing letter he carried in anotherpocket. And he was glad when the day was done and the boys raced awaythrough the dusk to their supper.

  Not infrequently did he ride on after he had told the others to "knockoff," working himself harder than he could ask them to work, riding lateto look at the water holes or find a new pasture in some of the littlemountain valleys or to bring in a fresh string of saddle horses for themorrow's riding. So now, as darkness gathered, he watched the boysscamper away to their food and smoke and bunks, and rode on slowlytoward the north.

  He chose this time, the thickening darkness before moonrise, for he hadcaught the insistent plea for secrecy running through the lines of theletter. And so, though he was not a little impatient and curious, he lethis tired horse choose its own loitering gait, willing that the nightdraw down blacker about him.

  He crossed the Big Flat, rich grassy land watered by the Big LittleRiver, and struck off into the hills that closed in about it, followingthe river trail. It was very still, with no sound save the swish of thewater against the willows drooping downward from its banks, no lightsave the dim glimmer of the early stars. For two miles he followed thestream, then left it for a short cut over the ridge, to pick it up againupon the farther side. Now he was in a tiny valley with the mountainsclose to the spot which gave its name to the range.

  Big Little River writhed in from the east, twisted out to the south. Andin the shut-in valley it made and left behind it to all but cover theentire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over aquarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep. Upon the far side, alittle back and close under the overhanging cliffs, there was a great,jagged-mouthed, yawning hole, of a type not uncommon in this part of thewestern country, from which heavy, noxious gases drifted sometimes whenthe wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened andmade deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly bydaylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground,the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen intothis natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had beenoverpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides. Andthe odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was indescribably foul andsickening.

  Not a pretty place, and yet some man many years ago had builded him ahabitation here that was half dugout, half log lean-to. The door of theplace faced Poison Hole, and was not two hundred yards from it. Thehovel had been in disuse long before Buck Thornton came to the rangesave as a shelter to some of the wild things of the mountains.

  From the southern shore of the lake Thornton stared across the littlebody of water trying to make out a light to tell him that Clayton wasexpecting him. But there was no fire, and the stars, reflectingthemselves in the natural mirror, failed to show him so much as theoutline of the lean-to in the shadows of the cliffs. He turned down intothe trail which ran about the shore, passed around the western end ofthe lake, and riding slowly, his eyes ever watchful about him as was theman's habit, he came at last to the deserted "shack."