WILD WEST
By Bertrand W. Sinclair
Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1926
Copyright, 1926
By Bertrand W. Sinclair.
All rights reserved
Published March, 1926
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
I The Straw in the Wind
II “Keep off the Grass!”
III Machiavelli?
IV One Step at a Time
V Watchful Waiting
VI Evidence in the Case
VII A Rider and a Lady
VIII “On With the Dance”
IX A Different Sort of Dance
X A Word and a Blow
XI A Breathing Space
XII The Opening Gun
XIII Cornered
XIV The Line of Least Resistance
XV Echoes from Afar
XVI Resurrection
XVII A Challenge
XVIII “The Seat of the Mighty”
XIX A Course Deflected
XX South of the River
XXI A Matter of Business
XXII A Near Showdown
XXIII “Crossed Wires”
XXIV The Backwash
XXV Snipped Threads
WILD WEST
CHAPTER I--THE STRAW IN THE WIND
Where a long spur of Chase Hill pitched down to the broken land
bordering on Birch Creek, Robin Tyler came on what he had been
seeking since sunrise. He pulled up his horse, sat sidewise in his
saddle to roll a cigarette, to stare over the country, out over the
wide roll of grassy ridges and sagebrush flats that ended abruptly
in the confusion of the Bad Lands. As his eye marked single dots and
groups of dots that were cattle and horses at rest and in motion,
both near and far, a trampling of hoofs in a hollow below made his
head turn sharply. He saw within a hundred yards the back and head
and ears of a single animal and jumped his horse into a gallop with
a touch of the spurs. He recognized that arched neck and brilliant
mane; it flashed in the sun like burnished copper.
“Oh, you Red Mike,” he shouted, “you’ll have to burn the earth now
to keep me from ridin’ you on round-up.”
In two jumps the gray cow horse Robin bestrode bounded over the low
ridge. Below and beyond, a bunch of range horses, twenty or more, as
wild as the elk that once grazed those slopes, stretched themselves
like hounds on the trail of a running wolf. They were headed for a
water hole and Robin was cutting them off. They lay low to the
ground, manes and tails streaming, their hoofs beating the turf with
a roll like snare drums. The horse Robin had shouted at ran in the
lead, a beautiful sorrel beast with four white stockings and a star
in his forehead. Red Mike knew what a mounted man on his trail
meant. He was all for freedom. Behind him thundered the wild mares
with their colts.
For a week, at odd times, Robin had been looking for that particular
horse. Now he stood in his stirrups, whooping in sheer exultation of
the chase. It didn’t matter how much he excited them. They were as
wild as hawks and would run themselves out anyway. He meant to head
them off from water, turn them back up the ridge and when they tired
he would bunch them in a corral he knew, rope out Red Mike and lead
him home.
He headed the wild bunch and turned them once. But a badger hole
hidden in the grass undid him. The gray put a forefoot in the hole,
went down as if shot, rolled over twice and scrambled to his feet,
trembling. Robin fell clear, unhurt, except for the jar. He gathered
up the reins, swung to his saddle. The gray took a step. Robin
dismounted, stood looking with a frown. His mount had twisted a leg,
wrenched a shoulder. He walked on three feet. Riding him was out of
the question.
“Damn all badgers, anyway!” young Tyler muttered.
He looked after the band of broom tails streaking it westward up the
ridge. As he watched they came to a stop, stood with up-pricked
ears. Robin knew precisely what they would do; stand awhile, circle
wide and make for that watering place by a cautious detour. He
wanted Red Mike. He needed him now more than ever. And he was afoot
in the blistering midsummer heat, fifteen miles from the nearest
ranch, in a region where no rider could be expected to heave in
sight.
Robin lifted his hat and ran his fingers through a thatch of brown,
curly hair. He was hot and thirsty. Walking in high-heeled boots
under a blazing sun was not his idea of pleasure.
“I hate to leave you, old _caballo_,” he said whimsically, “but I
guess I’ll bid you a fond farewell.”
With which he stripped his riding gear off the gray and turned him
loose, undid the fifty-foot _reata_ from the bulging fork of his
saddle and with the coils in his hand bore straight down the hill
leaving his saddle, bridle and leather chaps in the grass, and the
gray horse staring after him.
Below him, in the gut of that coulee, a small spring of clear water
trickled out of a sandy hillside. Among the seepage grew clumps of
willows. In that screen a man could lie perdu with his loop spread
for a throw. If Red Mike and his friendly broncs came down to drink
he still had a chance. If they smelled or sighted him and dodged
Cold Spring they would bear down into the bed of Birch Creek. He
would follow. It was no more than a mile or two. Or he would lie at
Cold Spring. He still had hopes of snaring a mount. Small bands of
wild horses would drift in to drink. Among the wild ones there was
often an odd saddle horse, enjoying temporary escape from ranch or
round-up. At any rate he did not propose to walk home. It wasn’t
done! At the worst he could snare an unbroken horse, hog-tie him,
pack the saddle down, and make the untamed one bear him somewhere.
Robin was a rider. He preferred them gentle, but he could ride. So
he trudged toward the spring, keeping to the low ground, hoping that
Red Mike would not change his flighty horse mind about where he
wanted to drink.
Evidently Red Mike did. Robin lay behind the willows until
mid-afternoon, parched by the heat, chafing at inaction. Of all the
roving bands of horses none trooped into Cold Spring. The wild
cattle came down, drank, lay in the grass until the slopes near by
carried a thousand head of resting longhorns. Some got wind of him
and departed in haste, snuffing and tossing their heads. It did seem
to Robin as if that fifteen-mile tramp grew more threatening.
He decided to take a chance on Birch Creek. It was no great way to
the high banks that overlooked the deep sage-covered bottoms through
which a lukewarm stream slunk like a great lazy snake, looping fold
on fold. He stole away from Cold Spring with care to dodge the range
cattle, to whom a man afoot was an unknown sight, a strange upright
creature to be attacked or fled from as their bovine impulses
chanced.
A little before Robin gained the first cut-bank whence he could look
into Birch Creek bottoms for a horse, he heard a shot, then a second
and a third. Robin had a keen ear. He recognized those reports as
from a rifle. It held no particular significance, beyond the fact
that shooting argued riders somewhere near, and a rider could soon
solve the problem of a mount for Robin Tyler. Since these shots came
from the bottom directly below him, Robin broke into a trot to reach
the rim of the bank and call to the man or men below, if they were
within hearing distance.
What he saw made him drop flat and do his looking through a fringe
of long grass.
Robin had grown up in a cow country. There was little pertaining to
the range, lawful or unlawful, which had escaped his awareness. So
he was at no loss to read the signs below.
What he could not read were the brands involved nor the faces of the
two men. The three dead cows, dark lumps in the gray sage, the three
well-grown calves hog-tied for the running-iron that made little
wisps of blue smoke puff from their ribs, were an open book to him.
It was as old as the cow business, that trick. It originated in
Texas in the chaos following the Civil War. In the years since it
had been intermittently practiced with varying success from the
Pecos River to the Canada line--and beyond.
Robin knew the _modus operandi_. You had a few cattle on the range.
You owned a duly registered brand. You rode abroad in lonely places,
where range riders seldom came except when the round-up swept
through. Having found a cow with a desirable calf you shot the cow,
roped the calf, ran your brand on him and hazed the orphan off two
or three miles from his dead mother. Then you rode on and repeated
the operation. Presently, if you were wary, well-mounted, a good
roper, and craftily evaded being caught in the act, your natural
increase assumed great proportions. The cow, being dead, could not
embarrassingly claim a calf bearing a brand not her own. A dead cow
here and there on the range excited no comment. Cows died from a
variety of causes. The cattleman knew that to his sorrow and the
cowboy accepted dead cattle as he accepted the sun and the wind and
rain, as natural properties of his environment.
Only--when too many cows were found to be dying of sudden death
there were sure to be riders abroad with Winchester carbines under
their stirrup-leathers. It was apt to be unhealthy for those who
sought to augment their herd by other than natural increase.
Since every rustler knew that, he himself was not likely to permit
any one to view his activities with rope and iron and depart
untroubled. Hence Robin Tyler lay very quiet in the grass. He was
unarmed, to begin with. He was not sure he wished to know the
identity of those two men, the brands on the dead cows nor the fresh
iron marks on the calves. That knowledge spelled trouble. Somehow
Robin had a distaste for trouble of a personal nature. He had seen
plenty. He wasn’t combative. He seemed to have little of that
primitive instinct to fight, to kill, to harry other men, which
crops out now and then in even highly civilized persons.
Yet, as he stared at the two men in the silent flat, now flinging
themselves across their saddles to start the stolen calves to new
feeding grounds afar, he felt a touch of resentment. He had an
intuitive knowledge of what brand could be read on those dead cows,
because he was sure he knew one of the men--the flash and glitter of
sun on silver ornaments as the rider’s horse wheeled and danced
under the restraining bit gave Robin this unwelcome knowledge;
unwelcome, because if confirmed, it was knowledge upon which he
would have to act, if he dared. Would he dare? He didn’t know.
When they were gone out of sight down the Birch Creek flats hazing
the calves before them on the run, Robin turned back to Cold Spring.