In between the high moments of any man’s existence life seems to
flow evenly, with a monotonous smoothness, like the placid reaches
of a slow stream between foaming rapids. For a time it was like that
with Robin. He rose before dawn, performed small tasks, rode abroad
more or less perfunctorily during the day. Storms blew up and blew
over. Between blizzards the range lay quiescent. Cattle and horses
fed on high ground where the sun warmed them. When night came or
harsh winds stung too bitterly they sought shelter in canyons, in
the sparse timber of the foothills, in the rough tangle of the Bad
Lands. Winter for the range herds was a period of endurance, a
struggle to survive. In this dumb struggle man had little part.
Cattleman and cowboy alike kept to warmed quarters. Their saddle
horses munched hay in log stables. The range stock attended by their
enemies, the blizzard and the prowling wolf, drifted at will until
spring should bring green grass.
Probably Tex Matthews and Robin were abroad more than the ordinary
business of the range required. They rode partly because old Mayne
chafed under an uneasy sense of property rights wantonly
violated--partly because they desired of their own accord to
overlook nothing. In that wide sweep of plain and rolling hill and
endless canyons, wherever that four-legged loot was abroad, there
was always the chance of the unexpected, a chance to catch Mark
Steele red-handed, to get evidence that would convict him before the
law which reflected the dominant material interest of the time and
territory, inasmuch as it functioned with greater speed and
precision in the matter of stolen stock than it ever did in a mere
question of human life.
Sometimes Robin, in the kitchen helping Ivy dry the supper dishes or
sitting beside her by the rough fireplace in the front room, would
wonder if this ugly tangle was quietly unraveling itself--or if this
were just a lull.
Since the day they clashed in Big Sandy he had not laid eyes on
Shining Mark. Except for remaining away from dances in the Bear Paws
where Mark was likely to be, he had not deliberately avoided the
man. Indeed, from Chase Hill to the mouth of Cow Creek, from Cold
Spring to the Missouri he had ridden alert and watchful, eager to
come on the man about his nefarious undertakings. He doubted now
that he would. Mark would be well aware that he must step more
softly than ever since Tex Matthews rode for Mayne. Yet Mark might
be abroad with his running iron in spite of everything.
About three weeks after Tex joined Robin one of the Davis boys rode
into Mayne’s and stopped for a meal.
“There’s a dance at the schoolhouse Saturday night,” he announced.
“Saturday night?” Robin regarded him intently. “All right. We’ll be
there with bells on.”
They were all looking at him curiously, young Davis, Tex, Ivy, her
father, even the two juveniles. Robin felt that he was under fire.
“We’ll be there,” he repeated. “You tell ’em so.”
“I won’t go,” Ivy broke out, after the Davis boy had ridden away.
“You know what’ll happen. Mark Steele’ll be there. Please, Robin!
Let’s not go.”
“I’ve said I’d go,” Robin murmured. “An’ I’m sure goin’. I’m not
goin’ to winter in my hole like a darned badger. I won’t start no
fuss. If _he_ does----”
“We’ll all go,” Tex put in. “Tommy Thatcher’s rangin’ around. Better
to show ’em you ain’t afraid.”
So in the end they prevailed over Ivy’s fears. And neither Mark
Steele nor Tommy Thatcher attended the dance. Whether from
discretion or because they had business elsewhere Robin never
learned. They danced all night with hearts as light as their heels
and rode home in a frosty sunrise. When Robin and Tex drew off their
boots in the bunk house to sleep an hour or so Tex said:
“I heard Steele an’ Thatcher been down in the Cow Creek line camp
over a week. We might take a _pasear_ around that way.”
“If they’re down there, we better,” Robin agreed sleepily. “We’ll
take a pack outfit and jog down that way to-morrow, maybe.”
The morrow found them riding. It might be a fruitless quest but no
range man ever caught a cow thief by sitting with his feet to the
fire. So they bore away southeast from the Bar M Bar. Noon found
them deep in the Bad Lands. Dusk would bring them as near the Block
S line camp as they planned to go.
For twenty miles or more north of the Big Muddy and eastward nearly
to the Dakota line the Bad Lands spread, grim and desolate. Gouged
and ripped and distorted in some past glacial period, the confusion
heightened by centuries of erosion, it bared itself to the sky in a
maze of canyons great and small, fantastic with layers of
vari-colored earth, red, brown, gray, ochre, like painted bands on
the precipitous earthen walls. Scrub pine timber grew in clumps,
thickets, lodge-pole pine made small forests, wherever roots could
find hold and sustenance. Many of these deep gashes were
flat-bottomed, threaded by streams of bitter alkali-tainted water.
On the narrow, winding benches that carried the plains level down to
overlook the river bunch grass waved like fields of wheat. In
midsummer it was hot, arid, the haunt and breeding ground of
rattlesnakes and wolves. In winter, with snow to serve in place of
water, the Bad Lands gave grazing and shelter to tens of thousands
of cattle.
To the stranger fresh from a kindlier land it was a lonely,
abhorrent place, wrapped in a sinister silence, a maze in which the
unwary traveler could lose himself and leave his bones for the
coyotes. Even to the range men who worked it every round-up, riding
the Bad Lands was far from plain sailing. A rider could get twisted,
he could travel for hours and then find himself in a cul-de-sac. He
could find himself within shouting distance of another horseman and
be compelled to make a detour of fifteen miles if he wished to shake
hands.
Yet it was not all desolation. There are oases in the desert, atolls
in the widest sea, harbors on the ruggedest coast. So in the Bad
Lands the wayfarer came unexpectedly on little valleys, small
basins, tiny grassed areas surrounding some cold spring, spots like
friendly gardens. Men had dodged the law upon occasion down there,
ever since law and order came laggardly behind the cowman and
settler. The cow thief, the outlaw, the slayer who held himself
justified in his homicide and would not brook arrest had from time
to time made the Bad Lands a sanctuary. Riders faring through that
wilderness upon legitimate business came now and then upon an
abandoned cabin huddled in a gulch, perhaps masked by pine thickets.
If it were abandoned to the rats and the weather they looked and
rode on. If it showed signs of occupancy they rode on without
looking.
Robin and Tex headed for one such place which they had found while
on circle two seasons earlier, and thought they could locate again.
The curse of the Bad Lands is the ghastly similarity; one gulch, one
canyon, one winding plateau is fellow to all the rest. There are no
peaks, no hills; it is all etched deep in a general level, like a
sunken garden planned by a madman. A man needed a keen sense of
direction, a most acute sense of location to find his way to any
given spot.
The two came at last to a point where uncertainty rested on them.
Robin knew he was within a couple of miles of that particular cabin.
But in the network of broken land he could not be certain. Nor could
Tex. It was all gray, brown, dusky pine-green, far as the eye could
reach. The chinook wind had stripped the range of snow. The frost
held. The ground was like flint. The December wind sighed mournfully
about their ears.
“The hell of this country is that you never can be sure where you
are,” Robin complained. “I thought that old camp was in the mouth of
this gulch. Let’s try the next bench.”
“Can we follow this one to the river?” Tex wondered when half an
hour brought no result.
“Yes, but I’d as soon not make camp in the river bottoms,” Robin
said.
“I don’t suppose it would be good policy,” Matthews agreed. “But
say, I’m gettin’ empty. Let’s camp the first water we strike.”
Robin nodded. They bore down a ridge that seemed to offer access to
low ground, out of that biting wind. The point of this spur ran
suddenly out into a circular depression, unsuspected, unseen until
they came upon it. It was like a meadow surrounded by a deep fringe
of jack pine and lodge-pole. They reined up in the belt of timber
and stood to gaze.
A round corral stood in the middle of this flat. A long wing ran
from one side of the bars--a typical pen for wild stock.
“Never saw _this_ before?” Robin lowered his voice.
“Don’t know as you better see too much of it right now,” Tex
murmured. “Least not till we see if anybody’s around. This here
looks like strictly private premises to me. There’ll be a cabin an’
water handy. Maybe likewise some eagle-eyed jasper with a
Winchester.”
“Let’s look her over anyhow,” Robin suggested.
“Do the lookin’ afoot, then,” Tex counseled. “I wish there was snow.
Tracks would tell.”
They were well hidden by the timber in which they had pulled up.
They tied their horses in a thick portion of the grove. Carbines in
hand they began to encircle this small basin, moving always under
cover. On the farther side where a low place pitched out of the flat
toward a gloomy canyon they found a pole cabin by a small clear
spring. They stared silently from a thicket of chokecherry. To their
right loomed the roof of another shelter. There was no sign of life.
“Let’s go clean around and take a look for tracks,” Tex whispered.
“Then we can ride up an’ investigate this here secluded dwellin’.”
They did so, returned to their horses, satisfied that the flat
harbored no life. They mounted, rode across the open, pulled up
beside the corral.
“She’s been used recent.” Robin pointed to fresh cattle-signs. His
roving eye lit on fresh charred wood. “Been some iron work.”
Tex nodded. Both were grown silent, wary. That hidden place, the
fire-sign, the trampled floor of the corral told a definite story.
No range rider needed pictures to illustrate that tale.
They rode on to the cabins. By the spring where the earth was moist
they found fresh horse tracks, shod horses, leading both in and out.
Tex squinted at the ground.
“That was yesterday,” he stated with conviction. “Let’s see how the
shack is fixed for use.”
Looking first into the brush-hidden building they discovered it to
be larger than it looked. It was a stable with room for two horses
and all the rest of the space in one end packed with hay, bunch
grass cut with a sickle. The marks of the haying were plain on the
nearby sward. They grinned at each other and walked over to the
house.
A pile of fresh-cut wood beside a clay and stone fireplace. A single
bunk in each of two corners, filled with pine needles pressed to the
shape of a man’s body. The earthen floor marked by the pointed heels
of riding boots. Otherwise it contained nothing of significance. A
rude, bare shelter with cold ashes on the hearth. They went outside.
“I wonder what she spells?” Tex murmured.
“We might find out. Maybe some _hombre’s_ startin’ a cow camp, an’
craves privacy,” Robin smiled. “Maybe this is where Mark an’
Thatcher are gettin’ in some good licks on the Block S. I’d sure
like to know.”
But it was not on the cards that Robin should learn what he wanted
to know in the immediate future. They talked a minute or two longer.
It was mid-afternoon. They had ridden far. It was a cold day and
night would be colder. Finding the cabin they sought in that network
of canyons was a slim chance now, would be merely a gracious smile
of fortune. Only those who haunted the Bad Lands could say where
each spring and meadow and deserted cabin stood. Even they might not
always find such spots as they sought.
“We might have passed within a hundred yards of this more’n once an’
never seen it,” Tex remarked. “I’d say this building was done last
year. Funny none of our riders come on it. The Pool worked this
country last spring, too.”
“There aren’t ten men in Montana,” Robin said, “that know every hole
in the Bad Lands. Likely enough,” he snorted, “Shinin’ Mark would
lead a circle right past here, wouldn’t he?”
“It’s a right good spot,” Tex drawled. “Central location. You bet.
Halfway between Boiler Bottom an’ Cow Island. Yeah--for stuff that
was missed in the breaks on round-up----”
“There was some missed, I rise to remark,” said Robin. “Between me
an’ Mayne I guess we’ve spotted two hundred Block S calves
unbranded. Most of ’em range within fifteen miles of this corral.
This place was made to order for them that’s draggin’ the long
rope.”
“Well, do we stay here, or do we make camp in the next likely place
we strike?” Tex inquired.
“I wouldn’t sleep good if I stayed here,” Robin smiled. “Let’s go
down this draw. I don’t want to hang around this place. I’m goin’ to
spot it so I can find it again, though. We sure want to cast our
gaze on this from time to time to see what goes on.”
“You’re shoutin’,” Tex grinned.
They rode down the draw from the spring, each striving to fix in his
mind the contours of the surrounding landscape. They took bearings
on the ragged peaks of the Bear Paws in the northwest, on the Little
Rockies that broke the sky line eastward. And they watched closely
the lay of the land as they rode so that later they could back
track.
The draw closed to a narrow gulch. That fell away steeply into a
canyon bottom, fairly wide, level-floored, gray with sage
stirrup-high. A good many cattle grazed on those flats. This narrow
valley came in from the south. They judged that it offered a
continuous route to the Missouri, if it was not actually a fork of
Cow Creek. They stopped a minute to consider this, to mark the gulch
they had come down. Below them the canyon took a sharp turn to the
east. Opposite this point a gorge came down from the high benches.
Its mouth was cluttered by pine and cottonwoods. There would be
shelter there and firewood, probably water. They shook up their
horses and discussed the making of a night camp.
As they came abreast of the cottonwoods and while yet some three
hundred yards distant Matthews, riding knee to knee with Robin,
straightened stiffly in his saddle, put one hand to his breast.
Robin happened to be looking directly at him--Tex had been speaking.
Robin saw the action, the strange look of surprise and pain. At the
same moment something plucked sharply at the leather band of Robin’s
chaps--and he heard two quick, clear cracks somewhat muffled in the
distance.
Thought, vision, the registering of an auditory impression--all
three were instantaneous. So was action. Being fired upon they did
not stand to gape. Their horses spun on shod heels. A hundred yards
away the dry bed of the creek was cut ten feet below the surface of
the valley floor. Into this they plunged, bullets whining by.
Once in the wash Robin threw his horse back on his haunches, jerked
the carbine from under his leg, flung out of his saddle. With the
bank for a breastwork he meant to fight, not run.
A sidelong glance as he turned showed him Tex drooping over his
saddle horn. Robin stepped back. His heart sank. He knew the signs.
“Ride, kid,” Tex whispered. “Ride like hell. They’ve got me--got me
good!”
Robin caught him as he slid down, as the horse shied at the falling
body. In an agony of sorrow and rage Robin looked once, bent to see
the glaze gathering over the Texan’s blue eyes. Then he leaped to
the edge of the bank. Lying flat with his rifle cocked and thrust
out before him he waited for the assassins to follow up their
advantage.