Before dawn Robin saddled and headed south on the trail of Red Mike.
Minus supper and breakfast he was hungry. But his mount was fresh
and fed with grazing in the little pasture. Robin was tough. A meal
more or less didn’t greatly matter. And sunrise brought him a
happier mood. Luck also bestowed a double quantum as if to make up
for past niggardliness. Ten miles from the Bar M Bar he ate hot
cakes and coffee with a lowly sheep herder tending his flock on the
northern flank of Chase Hill. Within an hour of that camp he found
his sorrel horse, ranging as the cow horse at liberty was wont to
range, with a band of the untamed.
The wild bunch broke headlong in the general direction of the Bar M
Bar. Robin fell in behind them. The direction suited his book. He
had a bed roll and a packsaddle still at Mayne’s, and a
cow-puncher’s bed was part of his working outfit. He would need that
bedding.
So he loped behind the wild horses until they ran themselves out.
Once Robin caught up and jogged at their heels he headed them where
he wished. With rope ready he watched his chance. A touch of the
spurs, a deft throw, and the rawhide noose closed about Red Mike’s
burnished copper neck.
Robin led him on to Mayne’s, changed his saddle to Red Mike’s back
and lashed his bedding on the livery horse. He saw Ivy’s face for a
moment at a window. Her father strolled over to say a word or two.
Robin answered in monosyllables, not because he was still angry or
resentful--that had all evaporated--but because there was nothing
more to say. When the last hitch was taken in the pack rope he rode
on.
He slept that night at a horse ranch in the foothills halfway
between Shadow Butte and Big Sandy. Before noon he was in sight of
the town, the pack horse trotting to keep up with Red Mike’s running
walk. He did not know what he was going to do but that uncertainty
sat lightly on his mind. He had money in his pocket. An able range
rider was welcome anywhere. In all the long tier of states bordering
the east slope of the Rockies a man who could ride and rope could be
a rolling stone and still gather moss. If the Bar M Bar and the
Block S were both taboo there was still the Bear Paw Pool, the
Shonkin, the YT and the Circle within a radius of seventy miles. He
did not have to quit Montana, only that immediate section of the
Bear Paw mountains--and that merely because he chose, because the
south side of the hills had grown distasteful as well as dangerous.
On the latter count alone he would not have retreated. He was not
even sure he would leave. He would never run again. Once was enough.
But still he was minded to leave Birch Creek and Little Eagle and
Chase Hill, all that varied region he had haunted for three happy
years. Robin wanted to go clean, to be rid of every tie. Most of
them were broken. There remained only that hundred and sixty acres
which he had dreamed of making a home. He would sell it if he could,
for what he could get. Since the Block S was the only outfit that
set any store by land Robin thought he might sell it to Adam
Sutherland. Looking far-sightedly into a future that should long
outlast himself Sutherland had increased his acreage as his herds
increased. Sutherland would give him something for that homestead,
although old Adam owned thousands of acres he had got for a song and
sung the song himself. Robin didn’t want to see it again. Shining
Mark in partnership with Dan Mayne. Mark marrying Ivy. Pah!
Yet in spite of these dolors riding across earth that exhaled the
odor of new growth under a sun blazing yellow in a sapphire sky,
Robin’s spirits gradually rose. A man couldn’t be sad in the spring
astride of a horse that bounced under him like a rubber ball. Robin
whistled. He sang little snatches of song. He pulled up on a hill to
stare across the flat in which Big Sandy lay. Space and freedom!
Room to move and breathe--and some to spare. The sunrise plains
before they were fenced and trammeled. A new, new land but yesterday
wrested by the cattleman with his herds from the Indian and the
buffalo. Robin could not wholly and consciously visualize the old
wild west of which he was a part. He could only feel instinctively
that as it was it was good.
Concretely his mind turned upon matters of immediate concern. Below
him, where Big Sandy creek debouched from the rolling country he saw
tents and wagons and a cluster of horses.
“Aha,” he said to Red Mike, “there’s the Block S. They’re in off
Lonesome Prairie. They’ll be draggin’ it to the home ranch to get
organized for round-up. I reckon Shinin’ Mark’ll be in town.”
It was out of his way to swing over to the Block S camp. He had no
qualms about bearding the wolf (Robin couldn’t think of Mark Steele
as a lion; a lion in his mind had a certain majesty) but he saw no
reason for seeking the wolf in his own lair. Town would do as well.
He had no desire to avoid Shining Mark. In fact he had a certain
curiosity about what Mark would do or say when they met. To Thatcher
he gave scarcely a second thought.
He stabled his horses. By the hitching rack before the Silver Dollar
a row of cow ponies drooped their heads in equine patience. Robin
walked into the saloon. His gun was belted on his hip, the first
time he had ever carried a six-shooter openly in Big Sandy. Steele
was not there. Block S men, Jack Boyd among them, greeted him
hilariously. Thatcher alone neither spoke nor smiled. Robin looked
him in the eye.
“Well,” he said casually, “if there’s anything on your mind I’m
listenin’.”
“Nothin’ much besides my hat,” Thatcher made a feeble effort at
grinning. “I’m not lookin’ for trouble--unless you are.”
That was fair enough in all outward seeming, and Robin felt that
Thatcher, for whatever reason, spoke the truth. Most decidedly Tommy
Thatcher was not keen for trouble. He showed that plainly enough. It
didn’t occur to Robin that his own attitude was aggressive, that he
was taking a wild bull by the horns with a confidence that made the
bull give ground. Thatcher’s words and bearing simply gave him an
opportunity publicly to close that incident in so far as it could be
closed.
“I never went lookin’ for trouble in my life,” Robin said quietly.
“I side-step it if I can. If I can’t----”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Come on, have a drink an’ let her slide,” Thatcher proffered the
peace symbol of the range. Men with bad blood between them didn’t
drink together.
“It happens I’m not drinkin’ to-day, not with anybody,” thus Robin
announced to all and sundry that he was not refusing the olive
branch merely because it came from Thatcher--although he would have
died thirsty rather than drink with a man he felt sure had sped one
of the bullets that snuffed out Tex Matthews’ life. “Thanks, just
the same.”
Probably no one but himself detected the sardonic note in that
phrase of declination.
He walked on up toward the store. He didn’t know Mark Steele’s
whereabouts and he cared less. He wanted to see Adam Sutherland. The
old man was in town. If in seeking the owner of the Block S he ran
across Shining Mark that was as it happened.
He didn’t have to ask a clerk if Sutherland was about. Back by the
bookkeeper’s desk Sutherland occupied his favorite roost deep in an
armchair. The cattleman’s face, round and red about a walrus-like
mustache didn’t alter its normal placidity as Robin approached.
“Hello, kid,” he greeted. “I haven’t seen you for quite a spell.”
“No, and you maybe won’t see me for quite a spell again,” Robin
answered, “if I can do some business with you.”
“Well, shoot,” Sutherland encouraged.
“It’s nothin’ much,” Robin said, “except that I’ve been away for
quite a while. Since I’ve been back and looked the ground over I
reckon I’ll move on again. Nobody loves me and I’m out of a job,” he
finished with a whimsical twist. It was true, but a truth so stated
that it contained for Robin the germ of humor. “I thought maybe I’d
sell you that hundred and sixty I homesteaded on the creek above
Mayne’s.”
“Oh, did you? You reckon I’m in the real estate business?”
Sutherland rumbled. “You got your deed to it?”
Robin nodded.
“How much you reckon it’s worth?”
“As much as I can get for it.”
“Well, I might----” Sutherland stopped abruptly. Robin saw the
change of expression cross his face. He heard the front door click.
Out of one corner of his eye he saw Shining Mark come striding down
between the counters.
“You might what?” Robin prompted.
But Sutherland clasped his hands over his rotund stomach and leaned
back in his chair, silent and expressionless as a poker player
nursing a pat hand.
“Hello, Tyler.”
Robin turned his head at Mark’s greeting. The quality of the man’s
voice was the same, arrogant, subtly menacing.
Robin didn’t even trouble to reply. He looked at Mark calmly, an
outward, deceptive calm for within something was beginning to burn,
a flame that he knew he must keep down. It was like being too close
to a venomous snake--only, somehow, for Robin the snake’s fangs were
drawn. He didn’t know why he felt so sure of that but he did. He was
no more afraid of Shining Mark than he was afraid of Sutherland’s
elderly bookkeeper, who was mildness personified, years of clerical
work and domestic infelicity having rendered him harmless. He gazed
at Mark with deliberate, insolent scrutiny.
“They tell me you had an accident with your gun down on Birch,” he
said at length.
“Yeah. Fool thing to do,” Steele growled. It struck Robin that
Shining Mark was a little uneasy.
“Shot yourself with your own gun, eh?” Robin drawled. “Right in the
wishbone, they say. Too bad it wasn’t about six inches higher. Seems
like I heard, too, that it wasn’t quite accidental.”
“What you tryin’ to do? Provoke me?” Steele asked coolly. “You act
like you wanted to open up a package of trouble. I’d sure
accommodate you on the spot if I was heeled. You act real bad when
you happen to find me unarmed.”
“You’re a liar as well as a thief,” Robin took a step toward him.
“Do you want me to prove it?”
Shining Mark’s face flamed. He looked at Robin, then at Sutherland
sitting quietly in his chair, an impassive listener save that his
eyes were narrowly watching both men. Mark stared at Robin. That
youth laughed aloud in his enemy’s face. A whimsical thought took
form in a play on words--steel had lost its temper!
“You’re weakenin’, Mark,” he taunted. “I’ve just come in from
Mayne’s ranch. I said you were a liar and a thief. I say it again.”
“I heard you,” Steele replied, making a visible effort at
self-control, although his lean face was burning. “You don’t need to
say anything to me at all. I’ll drop you in your tracks as soon as I
get my hands on a gun, you mouthy pup. You sure do swell up when you
happen to have a six-gun on your hip and catch me barehanded.”
“I beat you barehanded once, and I can do it again,” Robin kept his
voice low, his tone casual. “I don’t reckon you understand why I
called you a liar. I know a Texas trick or two myself. You----”
He darted a forefinger at Mark and the man jumped backward--but not
so quickly that Robin’s fingers failed to tap smartly against
something hard and outline it briefly under Steele’s coat.
“You got a gun in a Texas holster under your arm,” Robin said
contemptuously. “And you talk about being unarmed. As if anything
you could say or do would throw me off my guard for a second. You
swine! When I think that you put the fear of God in me once, I could
laugh. _That’s_ how dangerous you look to me now.”
Robin took off his soft Stetson and slapped Mark across the face.
Mark put up his hand and backed away. Behind him Robin heard Adam
Sutherland grunt, heard the scrape of his chair legs. Robin laughed
again. He remembered the dead cows in Birch Creek. He remembered Tex
Matthews’ stiffened body across a bloody saddle, borne by a tired
horse, led by a tired rider through a long winter night. He
remembered with a bitter clearness Steele swinging his spurred foot
from a table in a line camp and saying cold-bloodedly, “I hate to
muss up a perfectly good camp but you’ve bothered me long enough.”
With those pictures blazing bright in his memory Robin had to
laugh--or cry. He did laugh, looking straight into Steele’s burning
eyes, but there was no mirth in the sound.
“I’ve said my say,” he kept his voice without passion. “If a gun
under your arm isn’t good enough for you, go buckle one on your hip.
I’m not even going to bother looking for you, Steele. That’s how
much I think of you. I won’t waste no time nor talk on you after
this. If you want my scalp--and you’ve been after it a long
time--you’ll have to come after me. If you jump me you won’t be able
to say it was an accident with your own gun a second time.”
Steele turned and walked away. Once he hesitated, seemed about to
turn. Robin stood watching him, one hand resting on the desk, a
half-smoked cigarette in his fingers. And when Steele passed through
the swinging doors Robin followed, his thought and vision so
concentrated on the man ahead that he did not hear Sutherland call
after him:
“Hey, Tyler. Come back here. I want to talk to you.”