A DISCOVERY
As soon as Scott was dressed in the morning he hurried out to see if he
could find any tell-tale tracks of the man who had shot at him the night
before. Much to his surprise he found the distinct prints of a horse’s
hoofs. He had taken it for granted the night before that it was one of
the disgruntled sheep herders, but none of them had horses. Then he
thought of the horseman who had tried to steal Jed a few days before. He
ran anxiously to the corral and was soon reassured by a cheerful nicker
in response to his whistle.
All through breakfast he turned over in his mind the problem of the
entrance of the four thousand sheep, the warning shot fired by the
mysterious stranger the night before and the prolonged absence of Heth.
He could not solve any of them to his entire satisfaction, but he came
to several important conclusions. He decided that it would be necessary
to watch the sheep herders who were in the forest just as closely now to
keep them from running the extras off of the forest before the recount,
as he would have to do to keep them from bringing other extras on. He
also decided to see Baxter and get his coöperation.
He could ’phone Baxter and get him to meet him half way but one could
never tell who might be listening in on those party lines and he wanted
to keep his business pretty much to himself for the next few days. And
so it was that he saddled Jed and rode away to take a chance on finding
Baxter, and he thereby greatly disappointed an impatient and anxious
gentleman who had been hanging onto a receiver for over an hour hoping
to discover his whereabouts.
Jed was feeling very lively that morning and made the gravel fly along
the old ridge trail, across the broad valley and up the long slope to
the patrolman’s cabin on the next district. He was fortunate in catching
Baxter just as he was starting out for the day.
“Hello, there,” Baxter called gayly, “something doing so soon after sun
up?”
“This something started long before the sun got up,” Scott replied.
“I’ve started something over my way that looks as though it would keep
me pretty busy for a while, and I want to know whether you can help me
to carry it through?”
“You bet I can,” Baxter cried eagerly, “I’m pining away for lack of
excitement. What is it?”
“Well, to begin at the beginning, somebody beat me to the report on
those sheep. I had not much more than gotten home the other day after I
left you than the super called me up, said that Dawson had told him that
the boys had run a bunch of sheep in on me up the cañons in the valley
cliffs, and called me down hard for not preventing it.”
“Up the cañons,” Baxter exclaimed, “I never examined them, but I never
supposed that sheep could get up there.”
“I told him what I had found out—did not mention you—and he recommended
a recount. He said Dawson was on his way home, but he would take it up
with him as soon as he had had time to get there.
“In the morning I called Dawson. He told me what he had heard and told
me to order a recount Monday morning if I was sure of my estimates, but
to be careful or I would get stung.”
“I told you Dawson would be all right,” Baxter interrupted.
“Yes,” Scott admitted, “he was pretty good about it. Well, I took some
satisfaction in ordering a recount and thought while I was down that way
I would have a look at those cañons. Not a sheep had been up them, and
what’s more, no sheep ever can get up them. There is a clear drop of
three hundred feet at the bottom of each one.”
“That’s what I thought,” commented Baxter, “but if they did not come up
there where did they come from?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. So I started out right there at the
valley cliffs and rode clear around my district looking for sheep
tracks. Not a single sheep has come into that district except at the
chute.”
Baxter gave a long whistle, “What does Heth say to that?”
“He has not been at the cabin since the count. At least I have not see
him.”
“Looks as though he might be able to explain it,” Baxter drawled. “I
want to see that man. If he is a sheep man I must have seen him
somewhere, but I can’t recall the name at all. What is your plan now?
Where do I come in?”
“Well, you see I have it figured out this way. I have ordered them up
for a recount Monday and they can’t get away from that. Probably their
next move will be to try to prove that the estimates were wrong and that
they did not have any extra sheep.”
“Don’t let that worry you old man,” Baxter assured him, “the estimates I
made may not be accurate but they are conservative, and I’d bet my last
dollar that every band on your district is padded.”
“I am not worrying about your estimates. I am perfectly willing to trust
them. What I am afraid of is that they will drive off the extras between
now and Monday morning. Then where would I be on the recount?”
“By George,” Baxter exclaimed, slapping his thigh, “I had not thought of
that. That is certainly what they will try to do.”
“That is where you come in,” Scott said. “I wanted to see if you would
patrol the line here and see that they do not run them over your
territory temporarily. They might try that with the idea of bringing
them back into my district when the recount is over. They probably
figure that I would not dare to order a second recount after they had
proved that I was wrong on the first.”
“You bet I will patrol that line,” Baxter exclaimed eagerly, “both for
your sake and mine. I don’t want those beggars to slip anything over on
me. I have a guard here who is a dandy and the two of us can keep that
line tighter than beeswax.”
“Are the herders in your district in with that bunch?” Scott asked
absently.
“I should say not,” Baxter replied contemptuously, “they are a different
sort. They come from the other side of the mountains, you know, and hate
Jed Clark’s gang.”
“That’s what I thought,” Scott said. “How would it do to tell them that
you have heard that some of Jed’s herders are going to try to sneak some
sheep over here and steal some of their grass?”
“Great,” Baxter exclaimed. “You are some diplomatist, Burton. I’ll tell
them and if those fellows do try to come over you want to be around and
see the fight.”
“Then I’ll count on you for this end,” Scott explained, “and that will
leave me free to watch the chute and keep an eye on them occasionally to
see that they do not sneak up over the ridge. That will help me out in
great shape. Thanks.”
Scott turned Jed toward home and Baxter rode away to warn his herders to
be on the lookout for possible interlopers.
Scott thought it safest to go back to the chute before he tried to hunt
up the bands. There was nothing to prevent them from driving the sheep
back through the chute, if they could get them there without being seen,
and it would be difficult if not impossible to prove that they had ever
been on the forest at all. The thought made him nervous and he let Jed
swing along over the ridge at a lively pace. He stopped at the cabin for
a moment but there was as yet no sign of Heth.
“Fine help for me, that fellow is,” Scott growled as he rode on down to
the chute. “Mr. Ramsey said that he knew all there was to know about
sheep. Probably knows all about that extra four thousand, too.”
He searched the ground around the chute anxiously. There were no new
tracks. Scott heaved a sigh of relief. He felt sure that they would not
get by Baxter on the west, they had not crossed the ridge trail to the
north, they had not been to the chute on the east, and the valley cliffs
were on the south. They must be inside of that quadrangle where they had
been the day before, but Scott thought he would drop around that way to
see which way they were moving.
He was starting out once more when a snort from Jed attracted his
attention to some hoof prints. They were fresh and showed very
distinctly in the dusty sheep track. Two horsemen had ridden that way.
Instead of following the regular trail up past the cabin to the ridge
they had turned westward soon after passing the chute and skirted the
edge of the valley cliffs. Scott followed the tracks a little way along
the sheep trail but soon lost them when they turned off into the brush.
He was not interested in horse tracks, it was sheep that he was looking
for.
But he had not gone very far on his way when he pulled up suddenly,
hesitated an instant and then rode back to the chute. He dismounted to
examine the hoof prints more carefully and straightened up with a
puzzled look on his frowning face. Heth’s horse had lost a shoe from its
near front foot and the tracks in the dust showed the same missing shoe.
“I wonder what he is doing skylarking around this district and avoiding
the cabin?” he mused to himself. “Must be that he does not like my
company. Well, I am starting out in his direction and may have to force
myself on him whether he likes it or not.”
He rode slowly forward again, thinking over the question which he was
determined to make Heth answer when he finally got him cornered. He
followed the dusty sheep trail and kept a sharp lookout both to the
south toward the valley cliffs and on the ground, for he wanted to know
whether the horsemen kept to the rim of the cliffs or turned north to
the ridge trail.
Before long his careful watch was rewarded. The plain hoof prints of a
horse crossing the sheep trail from south to north were distinctly
registered in the dust. He searched the trail for some distance but
there was only the one horse and it was not the one with the missing
shoe. The prints had been made only a short time before. In one place
where the rider had apparently used the spur the hoofs had gouged deeply
into the ground and the bottoms of those tracks had not completely dried
out.
“That must mean that Heth is going to stay down there on the bench,”
Scott thought and he left the sheep trail which was turning slightly to
the northwest, so he could keep a better watch on the rim of the cliffs.
The forest was open here and by following along the face of the lower
slope he could keep a good lookout on the flat bench below. Any one
passing that way would be in plain view while he himself would be
partially concealed by the forest.
“Maybe I can get a job with a detective agency when I get through with
this gum shoe business here,” Scott growled to himself. “First you try
to keep a man from getting extra sheep onto your district and then you
try harder to keep him from getting them off.”
It was rather good fun just the same. It was funny, too, to think of
Baxter, his guard, himself, and all the sheep herders in the other
district tearing madly around the forest to prevent other herders from
driving their sheep off of a highly desirable piece of range. He was
getting very curious to see just what their scheme would be and how far
they would go to hide those extra sheep. Had he known how they came to
be on there he would have known that they would go the limit and that a
man’s life would not be considered too high a price.
Scott was beginning to get a little worried. He had passed half way
across his district, crossed two of the areas allotted to two of the
bands and had not yet seen a sheep. It looked as though they must be
moving to the southwest and he wondered if they could possibly slip by
Baxter along the rim of the valley cliffs. Then he thought of the look
on Baxter’s face when he promised his help, and grinned. “It would be
easier for them to hide the sheep in the tree tops,” he laughed.
But if that was not the plan, what could it be? Could there possibly be
a trail down over those cliffs? It hardly seemed possible that he could
have missed it. And yet the scene which unfolded from behind the next
shoulder of the slope filled him with wonder and apprehension.
There were the sheep. They looked to Scott like all the sheep in the
world. He had thought that his experience with Baxter had taught him
something about estimating sheep, but he could not tell anything about a
bunch like that. All the bands in the district must have been driven
together there. Twelve thousand sheep in one big band. It was a great
sight. There were no herders in sight but the dogs were holding the
sheep closely bunched. The innumerable bleatings blended into a mighty
raucous chorus unlike anything that Scott had ever heard. The band as a
whole was stationary but all through it there were little whirlpools of
local unrest where small groups were milling around nervously. Every now
and then a leader with a few followers would break away from the bunch,
but they never went far before they either lost their nerve and dashed
wildly back to join the main band or were driven back by the keen-eyed
dogs.
There they were, all right, but what under the sun were they doing
there? And where were the herders?
The bands were grouped around the heads of two of the largest cañons in
the valley cliffs, but Scott remembered very distinctly examining them
both carefully. He knew that there was no possibility of getting sheep
down through them. They both ended in a sheer drop of three hundred feet
to the valley below. He had crawled to the very brink of the cliff and
inspected it with great care. He had tried to imagine a man climbing it
and had come to the conclusion that it could not be done.
Scott noted a tiny wisp of smoke floating up from the mouth of one of
the cañons.
“There is certainly something doing down there,” Scott said to himself,
“and both my official duty and my own personal curiosity demand an
investigation of it.”
He dismounted, left Jed in a clump of timber, and walked slowly down
toward the cañon.