Robin walked to where his horse stood, mounted and rode to camp. In
half an hour he was jogging out the south trail behind his thirteen
loose horses. Dark overtook him twenty miles from town. He penned
his string in the corral of an abandoned horse ranch, spread his bed
in an old cabin and slept, supperless. At dawn he tightened his belt
a hole and rode again. At ten-thirty his horses ran nickering down
the bank into the Mayne yard. A ranch hand working on a woodpile
sauntered over to the corral. Robin saw Ivy come to the kitchen door
and draw back.
“The old man around?” he inquired as the ranch hand helped him strip
the gear off the pack horse.
“Uh-uh. Makin’ a ride somewheres,” the man said.
Robin shook off his spurs and chaps and went to the house. Ivy sat
by the kitchen table, nursing her face in her hands. She looked up
as Robin entered, in a way that gave him a pang. She seemed sad,
even a little afraid of him, and although Robin had seen her in a
temper, had seen her sulky, he had never known her to grieve, to
look subdued and unhappy.
He went up and put his arms about her.
“Hello, hon,” he greeted. “How are you? What for you look like the
blue devils had got you? Aren’t you glad to see me back?”
For answer Ivy put her dark head against him and wept. She tried to
speak and the words seemed to choke her.
“I was scared,” she got out at last. “It’s all my fault. I was a
darned fool, Robin. I’ve made all the trouble. My heart’s been in my
mouth all day. I felt bad enough before--since that dance. But
to-day.”
She shuddered.
“What’s worryin’ you now?” Robin asked.
He did not see how news of his clash with Mark Steele could possibly
have reached the Bar M Bar so soon. Therefore something else had
cropped up to trouble Ivy. But he was wrong.
“One of the Davis boys was in town yesterday,” Ivy told him. “He got
home in the night. Dad was up there seein’ the kids. Sam told him
about you and Mark and Thatcher lockin’ horns. Oh, Robin, I was
lookin’ to hear you’d been killed. I was scared--scared and sorry.”
“You got nothin’ to be sorry for about that,” Robin soothed her.
“Didn’t I act like a fool at that dance and stir things up?” Ivy
mourned. “I asked Mark to take me to Davis’s just to spite you.
Ugh!”
She peered up into Robin’s face.
“Did you--did Mark?” She seemed unable to go farther.
Robin shook his head.
“I didn’t have a gun. I couldn’t get one in Big Sandy. Maybe he’d
’a’ got me if I’d been heeled. ’Tain’t finished.”
Ivy’s sobs broke out afresh. She clung to Robin and would not be
comforted. She felt that this clash had come about solely because of
her. And Robin couldn’t enlighten her. Outside of himself and her
father no one knew what happened that day below Cold Spring, no one
knew the motive that was the mainspring of Shining Mark’s actions,
nor Robin’s. Telling wouldn’t help. It might easily prove fatal. Let
them all, including Ivy, think the trouble arose over her, until
time and chance and effort proved Mark Steele a common thief--if he,
Robin, lived that long. And he meant to live.
“I hate him,” Ivy wailed. “I’m afraid of him. And still--oh, Robin,
it’s awful. When I’m with him I feel--as if--as if--he could do what
he liked with me. I wish he was dead! He’ll kill you. I know it.
He’s a wolf--a wolf!”
“Wolves get trapped now an’ then,” Robin muttered. “Don’t you worry
about Mark Steele no more, hon. I don’t _sabe_ why he should make
you feel that way if you really like me. Do you really, truly?”
Ivy put her arms around his neck and held up her tear-wet face.
“You know I do,” she cried passionately. “You know I do. You’re
worth all the Mark Steeles that ever wore boots. It’s me that’s no
good. Why should I go crazy because another girl looked at you the
way May Sutherland did, if I didn’t care? But Robin--say--have you
never met with another girl since you’ve loved me that made you
feel--oh, I don’t know. As if you’d like to run your fingers in her
hair and have her kiss you. You don’t really want to, but, but, you
think about it. Oh, Robin, Robin, what’s the matter with me?”
Robin couldn’t answer that except by shaking his head. He was
troubled. It hurt him to think of Ivy nursing the least tenderness
for another man. And still--Robin remembered himself sitting on a
hill with May Sutherland, looking off into a sunset. He did not know
whether the thing that troubled him was the beauty of evenfall
drawing in across a painted sky, or the girl’s presence, her
physical nearness, the deep sweet tones of her voice. Even now,
standing with his arms about Ivy, stirred to unsuspected depths of
tenderness by her sorrow, he could not shut out May Sutherland’s
image. It was there, vivid, alluring. Still May was nothing to him,
nor he to her. He was promised to Ivy and he did not desire it to be
otherwise.
He shook himself free of these abstractions. Ivy loved him. That was
good enough. If Shining Mark could momentarily fascinate her as a
snake is said to charm a bird, that was something against which he
must protect her. Mayne’s cattle and Mayne’s daughter--who was
another man’s promised wife. Shining Mark was decidedly a thief.
Robin despised him but he did not make the mistake of
under-estimating Mark’s ability and courage in pursuing his desired
ends. But for the time----
“Say, hon, I’m famished,” he said presently. “No supper. No
breakfast. Forget your troubles and rustle me somethin’ to eat.
Everything’s goin’ to be all right.”
Ivy smiled, kissed him, and flew about the kitchen to prepare him
food. She sat beside him while he ate. She perched on his knee while
he smoked a cigarette and her sorrows vanished. She could laugh
again. She promised Robin, assured him repeatedly, that she would
never be jealous again. She was glad to think that Shining Mark
would not again come riding to the ranch. Robin could assure her of
that without telling her more than she already knew. He felt that
Mark would not risk bearding both himself and Dan Mayne on their own
ground.
In the middle of the afternoon Mayne came home. He sat down to talk
it over with Robin.
“By gosh, kid,” said he, “I’m scared you’ll have to fly the coop.
You ain’t no match for that jasper. You wouldn’t have a ghost of a
show. An’ Thatcher’ll be layin’ for you too.”
Robin looked off through the haze of Indian summer lying on the
creek bottom. The tips of the Little Rockies loomed like a mirage on
the eastward horizon above a great spread of undulating sagebrush
and the gashed desolation of the Bad Lands. The nearer hills were
dun with autumn shades, arid, brown. For a moment he visualized the
return of spring, a green and dazzling world with flowers
opening--and himself not there.
“I won’t run,” he said quietly. “I’ll play the hand I’ve got since
I’m in the game.”
“What’ll you do?” Mayne asked.
“I’ll be organized all the time,” Robin said briefly. “I ain’t
worryin’.”
The old man stuffed his pipe and puffed furiously for a second or
two.
“Well, maybe we can get a cinch on him,” he said hopefully. “I’ll
take a shoot up to Helena and see if I can’t get the Association to
put a stock detective down here for a spell. An’ we’ll have to ride,
Robin. I covered some country already. I’ve picked up some stuff
here an’ there. I guess I’ve gathered as many as forty calves.
They’ve sure cut back lots of unbranded stuff. I bet they’ve stole
five thousand dollars’ worth of calves from me in the last year.
There’s Block S’s too. I bet you they throw what they steal across
the river when she’s froze.”
Robin grasped his meaning. The Missouri runs like a broad band
across Northern Montana--a wide, deep, swift river well named the
Big Muddy. It was an effective barrier to wandering stock, since
range cattle seldom swim unless forced. Only in rare and terrible
winter storms when the northwest blizzards raged over a long period
did northern cattle move south of that barrier. Seldom did range
stock from the Musselshell and the Judith Basin cross the big ice.
No one on the south side would think twice about T Bar S stock here
and there--unless fresh iron work showed. During the fall and winter
when the ice held, Steele and Thatcher could work on unbranded
calves and throw them south. More and more Robin wondered why
Shining Mark and Thatcher had chosen to kill those cows and brand
their calves that day within riding distance of the Bar M Bar. A
calculating cow thief, Robin concluded, would take a foolish chance
when temptation offered. And Steele was really master of the broad
range covered by the Block S. He had felt safe. Every calf branded
was so much to the good. The mere chance of laming a horse by Cold
Spring had tipped his hand--mere chance alone. If Robin had not
crippled Stormy, he would not have suspected Mark Steele of
rustling. And now that Mark Steele knew his game was known he was
out to offset that whim of chance by making the country too hot for
Robin Tyler. Kill him or make him run. It was simple.
Mail for the south hill region came by stage once a week to the
ranch near Little Eagle. Robin posted an order for a .45 Colt to a
store in Fort Benton. He rode up to mail that letter with a
Winchester carbine under his stirrup leather, a short, handy weapon
in a carved leather scabbard. Robin was fairly sure of his mark with
a rifle. He had a good eye and a steady hand. Thereafter the carbine
was never far from his reach.
He and old Mayne rode far in the next few days, looking through the
twisted and torn confusion of gulch and canyon for calves slipped
out of various drives by Shining Mark and his Texan confederate. The
days slid by without event. Ivy seemed happy once more, as if she
had forgotten. She would laugh and tease, plague Robin as she had
always done for the fun of having him catch her close in his arms
and playfully threaten her with dire consequences. Sometimes Robin
had to stop and assure himself that he hadn’t suffered from a waking
nightmare, that Shining Mark’s sinister activity and all its
aftermath were not some sort of evil dream. Once or twice he pulled
up on the height of land where he parted that evening from May
Sutherland to sit and ponder. He could visualize her so clearly.
Then he would shake himself and ride on. There seemed to be a vague
disloyalty involved in even thinking of May. Yet he wondered where
she was, what she did, what she thought. Strangely he never indulged
in such speculation about Ivy. He didn’t have to--he knew Ivy, all
her moods and tenses; or he thought he did. Once he said to himself
whimsically:
“Wonder if everybody sometimes gets wishin’ for the moon?”
That was as far as he went along that road.
From the drift of gossip that ebbed and flowed through the Bear
Paws, Robin learned, somewhat to his private satisfaction, that he
had done Tommy Thatcher an uncommon amount of damage with one stout
blow. Tommy had suffered a broken jaw. Incidentally the iron
foot-rail had fractured his skull. They had shipped him to a Fort
Benton hospital and he would not be about for at least a month. When
he did come Robin surmised that he might come shooting. Still, that
was no certainty. Tommy might let it ride. Tommy had started it, and
he might conclude that it wasn’t worth following up--or at least
inaugurate his private war under the rose, so to speak. In any case
what Thatcher might do was less concern to Robin than what Mark
Steele would certainly try to do as opportunity offered.
He began practice with the new six-shooter when it came. Riding here
and there he would flip it from its scabbard and let fly at a bit of
sage, a prairie-dog, a tin can by a water hole, anything that loomed
as a mark. He accustomed himself to the wicked crack of the
explosion, the jump of the weapon in his hand. He would draw and
draw, as a pugilist in training shadow boxes, for speed and
certainty, until certain movements became almost automatic, until he
did not have to look or grope or fumble. It became a game of skill,
like the golf swing, or the timing of a return in tennis. He found
himself acquiring a control beyond what he expected when he began.
In a month, during which he burned up forty dollars’ worth of
ammunition, Robin found himself taking a genuine pleasure in mastery
of the weapon. Simply to snap the gun at something on the ground, to
see the can or whatever it was, jump in a blob of dust, gave him a
peculiar satisfaction, very like the concealed pride a roper gets
from putting his loop over a cow’s horns at the limit of his throw.
If Shining Mark had never crossed his trail, he reflected, he would
never have thought of getting fun out of pistol-practice with a Colt
.45. It was fun, a form of play he had never indulged in before. He
wondered sometimes if his father, who had been reputed handy with a
gun, had liked to play thus. And if his play had led in the end to
using a gun in deadly earnest, to his mother’s sorrow? Robin’s
mother had hated guns. She blamed Colonel Colt, not the passions of
men, for her untimely widowhood. Robin felt a little glad she was
not alive to grieve over her son who was following in his father’s
footsteps--perhaps to the same end. A woman, he reflected, couldn’t
_sabe_. Ivy didn’t understand. Neither did May Sutherland. He
doubted if even May knew that while a man might love life dearly,
under certain conditions it wasn’t worth living--not if a man had to
crawl before another to hold life in security.
So he kept his daily practice to himself, and the real purpose of
his practice.
Meantime, old Dan Mayne made a trip to Helena. When he came back he
seemed a little surprised.
“They tell me there’s been a stock detective layin’ low on this
range for six months past,” he said. “Just on general principles,
they say. He ain’t reported nothin’ yet, so they don’t take me
serious seein’ I couldn’t name no names. I didn’t dare do that. Jim
Bond’s the registered owner of the T Bar S all right. He claims it.
Looks like the only way I can keep Mark from stealin’ me blind is to
beat him to everythin’ that belongs to me.”
So they continued to ride. The school term ended. The two Mayne
children came home from the Davis ranch. Robin kept pretty well out
of the Bear Paws. He did not go to dances. It irked him a little to
know what construction people would place on that. But he had no
intention of putting his head in the lion’s mouth until he felt he
had a chance to blunt the lion’s teeth. And Ivy didn’t seem to miss
dancing--at least, not much.
November brought frost, hard, steel-bright nights, days when the
ground rang under shod hoofs like an anvil. There were flurries of
snow but no great storm, only a tightening of the cold grip of
winter.
When the first snow whitened the range Robin and old Mayne were in a
river bottom forty miles from the Bar M Bar with a pack outfit. Here
they picked up a few head of Mayne stock. They drove them out of
that bottom into another. In this second flat they rounded up a
hundred head of wild cattle, getting a stand on the bunch against a
steep earth wall. There was a sprinkling of unbranded Block S
calves, fat sleek beasts still being suckled by their mothers. This
was not the first time they had spotted unbranded Sutherland calves
in out-of-the-way places.
“He ain’t playin’ no favorites, is he?” Mayne grunted. “Before
spring every one uh these’ll be packin’ a T Bar S. I wonder if Adam
Sutherland is asleep?”
The little herd stood quiet. Robin pointed silently, twice. Each
time his finger marked something they had not yet encountered--a T
Bar S cow with a big unbranded calf. This was a bunch the round-up
had missed altogether. Old Mayne spotted the calves Robin indicated.
He sat sidewise in his saddle, staring, scowling. Then he jerked the
Winchester out from under his stirrup-leather and fired twice. The
first T Bar S cow dropped like a stone. The second ran fifty yards
and collapsed. Mayne thrust the rifle back into place, grinning
wolfishly. The bunch scattered in a panic. He began to undo his
rope.
“You get your twine on that other calf,” said he.
Robin rode up beside him.
“Do you know what you’re doin’, darn you?” he demanded hotly.
“’Course I know. I’m gittin’ back some of my own, by thunder,” the
old man swore. “You git that calf.”
“No,” Robin said. “I’m no thief. If you’re goin’ to get down to Mark
Steele’s level, I quit you right here and now.”
“Hell’s fire!” Mayne lifted both hands and cried aloud. “Ain’t he
stole hundreds from me? Ain’t I a right to get even?”
“Not this way,” Robin persisted stubbornly. “I’ll back you in any
legitimate play as far as you want to go. But not in this. You’ve
killed those cows and that can’t be helped now. But if you mark
those calves, I tell you I’m through with anything that has to do
with the Bar M Bar.”
“You’re through anyhow,” Mayne raved in fury. “Mark’s got you
buffaloed. He’ll nail your hide to his barn door. You’re just plumb
scared, that’s all. I’ve done this before to T Bar S’s, and by the
Lord, I’ll go on doin’ it!”
“You’ll do it by yourself, then,” said Robin. He swung his horse
about. The pack animal grazed a hundred yards distant. Robin rode
straight to him. Mayne sat still a second, then followed.
“What you goin’ to do?” he demanded harshly.
“Take my blankets and some grub and hit the trail,” Robin said.
“When it comes to makin’ a common thief outa myself, I quit before I
begin.”
“Aw, hell, kid!” Mayne changed his tone. He began to expostulate.
In the end they rode out of that bottom together taking only Bar M
Bar stock. The unbranded T Bar S calves remained with the wild
bunch. Mayne grudgingly promised that he would kill no more cows. He
was full of vindictive resentment against everything and everybody.
But he didn’t want to lose Robin.
“You’re so damned straight you lean over backward, kid,” he said
grudgingly. “_I_ don’t feel like I was a thief. Maybe you’re right,
but I sure don’t reckon it no sin to play even thataway when I think
of what Mark Steele’s doin’ to me.”
That was Mayne’s last long ride. He had grown old in the saddle. He
could not face the weariness and discomfort of riding and lying out
in bitter weather as lightly as Robin could.
“I guess we got most of mine, anyway,” Mayne said. “You can
circulate around, if you like. I can’t stand this no more.”
Robin meant to circulate, as Mayne graphically put it. There were
plenty of Block S calves in places he knew. Robin meant to ride and
watch. In the back of his mind was a pretty definite idea of what he
would do if he ever caught Steele and Thatcher at work. His purpose
was hardening. He didn’t really expect such luck. They would
probably see him first. But there was always the chance.
At no time did Robin see anything of the Block S riders, except one
or two casual meetings. Sutherland had a winter line camp, fifty
miles or more east, deep in the Bad Lands, another twenty miles
southward of Cold Spring in the mouth of Birch Creek. While a range
boss did in winter occasionally drift about the various camps
belonging to his outfit, Robin neither met, saw nor heard of Shining
Mark. It seemed indeed as if Christmas might come and go and spring
flowers bloom again before the normal round would bring him face to
face with his enemy--if the enemy did not take up his trail.
Then one day, Robin, who occasionally spent an afternoon or night at
his own homestead, met Tex Matthews leading a pack horse with bed
lashed on, just by his own claim. They stabled their horses, carried
the Texan’s bed inside, lit a fire in the stove, and sat down to
warm their feet.
“Well, kid, how’s tricks--the tricks of the trade?” Tex smiled.
“So, so,” Robin said. “Nothin’ to write home about.”
“Thatcher’s back,” Tex informed him. “I hear him and Steele is down
at the Cow Creek camp. Better keep your eye pealed.”
“Has he made any cracks?”
“Heard none. But he’ll have it in for you. That’s a cinch. By the
way,” Matthews abruptly changed the subject. “I wonder if old Dan
wants another rider?”
“He might,” Robin answered. “You ain’t quit the Block S?”
“The Block S quit me,” Matthews grinned. “Mark let me out a week
ago.”
“What’d the old man say?” Robin pricked up his ears. Tex had ridden
for Sutherland long before Shining Mark joined the outfit.
“He’s away. Don’t reckon he’d say anything. He never interferes with
a range boss.”
Robin stared at him.
“I wonder----” he began, and stopped short. He wanted to ask “Why?”
Matthews understood. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Mark has ways of his own--and reasons,” he remarked indifferently.
“It just don’t suit him to have me around, I guess.”
“Maybe you saw too much.”
Tex laughed outright.
“You’re gettin’ to be a regular Sherlock Holmes, kid. I dunno. Maybe
he thinks I did. Anyhow, I’m kinda sorta lookin’ for a job.”
“What you want to work for a one-ring circus like the Bar M Bar
for?” Robin asked. “You could ride for any of the big outfits.”
“Just a notion. Maybe I want to steal your girl?” he grinned
cheerfully at Robin. “I tell you, kid,” he went on whimsically, “I’d
like to ride around with you on this range a spell looking over
cut-banks and cow tracks just to see what goes on--just for fun.
Besides--oh, well, I got to work, and I’ve a notion to work for
Mayne.”
“Come on down and ask him,” Robin counseled. “I’d sure like to have
you with me. He’s got to put on a rider in the spring anyhow. I
couldn’t ride with the Block S if I wanted to.”
Old Mayne looked at Tex and told him he could consider himself on
the payroll forthwith. Later, he asked Robin in an aside:
“Reckon we better put Tex wise to Shinin’ Mark or leave him find out
for himself?”
“I’ll wise him up,” Robin volunteered. “I have a hunch he don’t need
much tellin’.”
Nor did he. When Robin discreetly broached the subject and related
what lay behind Mark Steele’s venom, Tex merely grinned.
“I figured it somethin’ like that,” he observed. “It’s a tough
proposition. Mark’s smooth and aggressive. He’s got a big swing.
Sutherland has confidence in him, trusts him to the limit. That’s
the way old Adam is. If he’s with you he’s with you all the way.
Still--Mark has made a fatal mistake.”
“What?” Robin inquired.
“Hidin’ behind another man’s ownership of a brand,” Tex knitted his
brows. “If he’d said to Sutherland: ‘I’m goin’ to have a few cows of
my own an’ make a start,’ Sutherland would have done one of two
things. Either told him straight he couldn’t own cattle an’ run the
Block S at the same time, or he would have said it was a good scheme
an’ for him to go right to it, save his money an’ get somewhere. But
Mark has played it too foxy. If he’s rustlin’ under the T Bar S
brand he owns it, or the biggest share in it. If Sutherland ever
finds out his range boss has a silent ownership in a brand on his
own range, right there Mark’ll come to the end of his rope. Old
Adam’d get him an’ get him right. Barrin’ that, Mark’s got all the
best of it just now. He’s put you in wrong. He’ll get you if he can.
You know too much. He can always bluff Dan Mayne. If he wasn’t
afraid, old Dan would have bellowed it all out loud long ago.
There’s nothin’ but your word against Mark yet. But as a matter of
fact, kid, I----”
Tex broke off. He grinned.
“I won’t talk, right now,” said he. “From now on I’m a Bar M Bar
rider. Two heads are better’n one. I can’t tell you _all_ I may know
or think, Robin, old boy. But I’ll say this: If you go up against
Shinin’ Mark too soon an’ do kill him, you’ll have to go on the
dodge, because Sutherland’ll sure try to put you in the pen. So you
keep clear of a fight with Mark Steele if you can. Maybe by spring
you won’t have to throw lead with him. Maybe a deputy with a
warrant’ll save you the trouble.”
They slept on that.