Robin rode to camp alone. The Block S riders were all gathered in
the Silver Dollar when he came back to where his night horse stood
with the others in a row by the hitching rack. Through the windows
he could see that a poker game had started. Tex Matthews was
playing. Robin didn’t want to drink. With his mind fully occupied he
somehow didn’t care to talk. He was aware of a faint reluctance to
facing Mark Steele while Mark was in that hair-trigger mood--a
trouble-breeding temper, certainly quickened by a few drinks, that
might or might not have been generated by something Mayne had said
in his cups.
Steele was not rated a quarrelsome man. He could be arbitrary,
high-handed, and he had never been known to give way an inch for any
one. Even his ordinary genial manner could easily take on an edge.
He had no known notches on his gun handle. But whatever obscure
inner force it is, that makes some men positive, and others
negative, in their human contracts, it resided in Mark Steele, and
exacted a certain deference among men who were lightning-quick to
resent any form of aggression.
So Robin, deep in his own reflections, swung into his saddle and
rode away to camp. If Ivy had not been asleep in her room he would
have tarried longer. But he would see her to-morrow. He fell asleep,
in a bed unrolled on the grass, with his face turned to the stars.
He wakened once when the riders came pattering into camp and got
quietly into their beds. A cloudless sky brilliant with specks of
silver arched over him, a luminous inverted bowl. Crickets chirped
in the grass. Night horses tied to the bed wagon, on picket, made
their usual noises. The bells on the _remuda_ tinkled distantly.
Small sounds in a deep hush overlying a lonely land. Robin turned
over and slept again.
At daybreak the outfit mounted. There was a herd to trim. While the
bulk of that seventeen hundred bore the Block S there were strays of
half a dozen other brands to be shipped, and these cattle were not
jammed indiscriminately into cars to be sorted in Chicago. The
cattleman unscrambled his own eggs.
From dawn to noon the flat a mile outside the stockyards was a
scurry of dust, flying riders, steers and cows being shot out of the
main herd into little bunches held separate. Once sorted by brand
and sex each group moved into the shipping pens. By four o’clock the
last longhorn was on his way, two trainloads of him.
The riders were free until the following morning, when the Block S
would pull south. Thirty miles beyond Birch Creek, beyond the Bar M
Bar, Steele would throw his riders on circle again to comb the range
for beef. The camp would move day by day toward the railroad as the
riders gathered a herd.
But now, as the last door clanged shut on the last animal, the
cowboys flung themselves on their horses and charged down on the
Silver Dollar. For ten hours they had worked in heat and dust. They
were hot and thirsty. Cold beer was nectar to their parched mouths.
Robin stayed with the crowd for one round of elbow-crooking. Then he
crossed to the hotel. The Maynes were still in town. He sought the
store. As he clanked up the steps he passed Dan Mayne and Adam
Sutherland perched on the planking, Mayne talking with emphatic
motions of his hands and head, Sutherland big, fat, good-natured,
placidly listening, chewing on a cigar. Robin nodded and went on in,
looking for Ivy. But in that semi-public place he couldn’t talk to
her nor she to him even if she had not been deep in purchases of dry
goods aided and abetted by the blacksmith’s wife and the hotel
keeper’s daughter. Out of their natural habitat both Robin and Ivy
were shy, self-conscious. They exchanged greetings. Robin bought a
pound of Bull Durham and took himself off.
Sutherland rose as he came out and ambled away toward his house.
Robin sat down beside Mayne. The old man’s eyes were slightly
reddened. Otherwise he showed no sign of his overnight tussle with
John Barleycorn. His mind was still occupied with cows and cow
thieves.
“Sutherland don’t take no stock in any rustlin’,” he complained.
“He’s so gol darned sure nobody’s got the nerve to rustle stock on
the Block S range. ’Course I couldn’t blat it all. I only told him
what I seen myself, an’ not all that either. He just laughed. Said
if some of my cows got shot it wasn’t because somebody was stealin’
their calves, but more likely some poison mean galoot had it in for
me.”
“How’d he figure calves with no mothers and a T Bar S on their
ribs?” Robin inquired.
“I didn’t go that far.” Mayne’s normal caution was to the fore,
evidently. “I don’t want to start nothin’ I can’t finish. I got to
know more before I go hollerin’ names and brands.”
“I guess that’s good policy,” Robin agreed. “Still, I don’t _sabe_
the play. If it was Mark-- Why’d he steal calves for a man in
Helena?”
“Bond’s probably a stall. Mark’s either got an interest in that
brand or owns it. Naturally he keeps that dark,” Mayne replied
sourly. “If them calves had had a Block S on ’em I’d think my
chances were slim to make any money in the cow business around here.
I thought at first he was workin’ on me to make a good showin’ for
the Block S. I never seen a big cow outfit yet that wouldn’t back a
wagon boss in anything he did if he could show a good increase from
year to year. But when I see that T Bar S I know he’s out for
himself.”
“Maybe it ain’t Mark, after all,” Robin murmured. “I’m not dead
sure, you know. I went mostly on the flash of silver.”
Robin didn’t say that he had been confirmed in his first impression
largely by Mark’s behavior since.
Mayne looked at him peevishly.
“Who’d you think it might be, then?” he inquired. “Or has Mark got
you buffaloed so’s you dassent think out loud to me? ’S he been
puttin’ the fear uh God into you? You ’fraid of him?”
“I don’t know,” Robin answered truthfully. “He’s done some pretty
high-handed things in this country and made ’em stick, hasn’t he?
He’d be a bad man to tangle with. He’s never made a gun play that I
know of. Still, everybody seems to take him for walkin’ dynamite.”
“He is, too,” Mayne agreed moodily. “He looks it, acts it once in a
while. I sized him up as dangerous the first time I ever saw him.
Some men are that way. Soon as you look ’em in the eye, you know
they’ll be poison if you go up against ’em. Same time, nobody, if he
was deadly as a Gila monster, is goin’ to keep stealin’ my stock and
get away with it, make me think I like it. I seen plenty wild west
before Mark Steele was born. You watch he don’t keep cuttin’ back
unbranded stuff on you when the outfit works south of the mountains,
Robin. The time to keep cases on him is all the time. If he drags
the long rope on my territory after round-up’s over, I bet you I get
him before the grass comes up in the spring.”
“Suppose you were dead sure, but had no evidence a stock inspector
could make an arrest on, what’ you do?” Robin asked curiously.
“More’n one way of killin’ a cat besides chokin’ it to death with
butter,” Mayne drawled cryptically.
As the Block S wagons, saddle bunch and riders traveled south the
next forenoon they passed one equipage and were themselves passed by
another on the trail that ran to the Sutherland ranch on Little
Eagle.
The first was Dan Mayne and Ivy rolling home with a team and wagon.
Robin jogged beside them for a mile or so bantering Ivy. Then Mark
Steele detached himself from the other riders and joined him, and
somehow the light-hearted chaffering between Ivy and Robin ceased.
Mark did the talking. He was as genial as the sun. Even old Mayne
had to grin. But Robin didn’t. He kept pace and was casual, but he
wasn’t happy. And when Mark said: “Well, kid, the outfit’s leavin’
us behind,” Robin lifted his hat and rode on with Steele, in spite
of the fact that it was his privilege to join the outfit when he
chose. He wasn’t a Block S man. He was a “rep.” But he went.
Steele tightened up as soon as they were clear of the Maynes. It
wasn’t anything he said because he didn’t open his mouth. It was his
manner, a subtle something Robin could feel. Mark looked back at the
team and wagon once. Then he looked searchingly at Robin and
smiled--without a word. The mocking flicker in his eyes made Robin
uneasy. It was not the first time Steele had manifested an interest
in Ivy Mayne, although everybody within fifty miles knew she was
Robin’s girl.
“Maybe,” thought Robin, “he thinks he can get her the way he’s
gettin’ the old man’s calves.”
They joined the other riders. As they paced along the trail some one
noticed a little banner of dust far behind.
“Somebody’s foggin’ it on our track,” Tommy Thatcher remarked.
The “somebody” turned out to be Adam Sutherland, in a fancy buggy,
holding taut reins over a pair of standard-bred bays kicking the
dust out from under them as if they were hitched to a racing sulky.
The buggy passed like a rider at the gallop. Sutherland nodded. The
cowboys lifted their hats when they saw a girl in the seat beside
Sutherland. The shiny top was up and all they had was a glimpse. But
that was sufficient, for some of them.
“May’s back, eh?” one commented.
Robin had a flash of a pale face, fair hair, bright blue eyes. He
knew about Sutherland’s only daughter although he had never seen her
until now. She was getting a formal education in the State capital,
where Sutherland lived in the winter, and sometimes she came to the
home ranch a few weeks in summer. She had been born on Little Eagle
when the Block S cattle numbered hundreds instead of thousands. She
was good-looking, the cowboys said, and she had been very pleasant
to crippled riders laid up at the home ranch, but none of them knew
her well. She rode about in the hills a little with her father, and
a great deal more alone. The Sutherland riders discussed her freely
as the buggy grew small on the trail ahead and disappeared at last
over a rise.
“She used to love a good rider,” Amby Phillips said reflectively.
“So you bronco fighters can have hope. One time she was half-stuck
on a kid that broke horses on Little Eagle--about four years ago, if
I remember right. I seen her sit on the fence and clap her hands
when he topped off a colt that jumped high, wide an’ handsome. She
used to run around with him a lot. An’ one day a bronc went over
backward on this kid an’ killed him. She went all to pieces over it,
they say. She ain’t been here much since. You know her, Mark?”
Steele nodded. “Met her two or three times,” he drawled. “I was over
to the house last night. Nice lookin’, all right. Kinda acts as if
she was proud as hell about something, though.”
Old Tex Matthews snickered audibly and Steele flashed a cold glance
at him.
“What you say, Tex?” he inquired with exaggerated politeness.
“I didn’t say. But I was thinkin’ that if it don’t rain soon and
soften up this ground I’ll have to shoe a couple of horses.”
Steele made no comment. There was a funny little quirk about the
Texan’s mouth when he made that answer, and he looked straight at
Shining Mark. For some reason there was a brief silence, and after
that there was no more mention of May Sutherland. Presently they
stirred up their horses and tore down into a creek bottom where the
wagons were to stop for noon.
That night they camped under Shadow Butte again. The following day
took them far east of Birch Creek, east of the Bar M Bar. The Little
Rockies loomed blue on the horizon beyond the broad reach of the
Gros Ventre Reservation. On their first ride they picked up a fair
sprinkling of beef cattle and Robin cut a score of Bar M Bars into
the day herd to throw back on his home range. After that the routine
of each day followed its usual order of saddling at dawn, riding
circle, bunching the gathered cattle in a compact mass near the camp
while they cut out the prime beef and branded such calves as had
been missed on the spring round-up. Each day they moved a few miles
back toward Big Sandy, working the range on either side of the
wagons as far as they could reach in one ride.
Robin noted a T Bar S here and there. Some of the riders knew a
Helena man owned that brand. None of them cared about the question
of ownership. They were not owners. There were other brands on the
range with absentee owners. Somehow, because a generous honesty was
the accepted range standard the calves of such got branded with the
mark their mothers bore, and the steers got shipped to market. If no
special arrangement was made for looking after such cattle the big
outfits looked after them anyhow. It kept the range in order.
Unbranded stock at large was a temptation to men anxious to build up
a big herd off a shoestring foundation. If a rustler could get away
with stuff from a little owner he soon extended his operations to
the big outfit. To the big cattleman a cow thief was an affront to
his jealous sense of property rights--to the man with only a few
head the same thief was a poisonous sneak who took the bread out of
his mouth while he slept.
Robin went about with his keen eyes wide open. He saw nothing
suspicious nor did he expect to see such except by chance. For that
chance he was always alert. And within a week, when the Block S
worked certain ridges east of Birch Creek chance came his way.
He had noted one thing. Invariably when Mark Steele led his riders
on circle and scattered them by twos and threes to make a sweeping
drive back toward the wagon, he kept Tommy Thatcher with him. That
might have been accident or inclination. Every man has his
preferences. If Mark preferred Thatcher’s company there was no one
to gainsay his choice. For whatever reason, Thatcher and Steele were
Siamese twins when it came to riding the outside. The odd fancy that
the T Bar S spelled Thatcher & Steele took hold of Robin’s mind. He
knew better. The T Bar S was an old brand. It had changed hands many
a time. Still the idea lingered with Robin.
On a certain afternoon the riders finished working a gathered herd.
Every outfit, on its home range, took the first cut. When they had
finished with the round-up the “reps” could ride in to see if
anything of theirs had been overlooked.
Steele waved to Robin.
“Look ’em over,” he invited. “I cut a couple of your cows with
unbranded calves.”
Robin had seen that. It was his business to see such things. But he
had spotted another cow with a calf well-grown in that milling mass
and he knew other men must have seen them also. None of them would
mention the fact, unless he asked. A “rep” was supposed to know his
business. He turned and twisted in that jumble of moving beasts
until he found what he looked for, and cut them into the bunch being
held. He knew precisely how many unbranded calves with Mayne mothers
were in that cut. While four riders threw the beef into the day herd
the rest built a fire, put in the irons. There were perhaps forty
calves to be branded. Robin was delegated to run an iron. As each
calf came dragging to the fire the roper called the brand of his
mother cow. With a dozen men on the job it was soon done.
“’At’s all.” Thatcher stopped and coiled his rope.
“All right. Turn ’em loose,” Steele ordered curtly.
Robin flung himself on his horse and tore after the cattle that were
already departing at a trot, running out a noose as he went. He knew
what he was after. He had an extremely tenacious memory for animals.
He spotted his objective, swung his loop, took his turns and came
back dragging a red calf full six months old. Fifty yards behind a
Bar M Bar cow came bawling a loud protest at the maltreatment of her
offspring.
The irons had been drawn, the fire partly kicked apart. But when
they saw Robin with his calf an iron went back into the coals.
“Good eye, kid,” Steele commented. “They overlooked one on you. Some
of these stock hands losin’ their eyesight, I guess.”
No more was said. The calf ran free, squirming at the smarting mark
on his side. But Robin wondered how often that sort of thing
happened to Mayne cows in the course of the season’s round-up. He
couldn’t be everywhere. It was not humanly possible for him to see
everything. And he nursed the conviction that any Bar M Bar calf
overlooked like that would carry a T Bar S before spring.
It was a tough proposition, he said to himself, a hard game. The
cards were stacked; the play crooked.
If he could just once get Mark Steele dead to rights! Robin had
never fired a shot in anger in his life. But he felt now, at rare
moments, that under certain circumstances homicide was not only
justifiable but righteous.