Many a time in the next two days did Robin’s eyes turn on the King’s
castle, sprawling brown and green and white on its knoll above the
ranch buildings. Like a fire that had been smoldering a long time
and broken at last into flames under the winds of circumstance, so
love burned in his breast, a new love beside which the old one
seemed only a pale flicker--something feeble, born of propinquity
and unconscious desire.
Yet for all the commotion that made his heart flutter and set him to
dreaming whenever his hands were idle, Robin did not let the spring
grass grow under his feet in shouldering the new responsibility
Sutherland had laid on him. He set his men diligently attending to
the various details that would enable the Block S to start the
spring round-up as a smoothly functioning machine.
If the Block S riders wondered at the lightning change in wagon
bosses they wondered silently and accepted Robin at his face value.
They knew that he had somehow beaten Shining Mark and any man who
could do that was to be respected in any capacity. Robin had no
strain put on his authority. The Block S crew knew its business.
They knew a cowman when they saw him. Robin was born to the range
and running a round-up was only a logical step up.
Wherefore he had no need to either train or watch his men. Mark
Steele had left few loose ends behind him. There was only the
regular routine of getting ready. Robin had time to burn. Some of it
May helped him to consume. Somehow they did not need to talk much to
achieve understanding. Robin was no fool. He knew he had his spurs
to win. He did not know how Adam Sutherland would take him as a
prospective son-in-law. When he voiced that doubt to May she only
smiled.
“Do you remember saying to me that I’d probably marry a French count
or an English lord and live in a castle and wear silk dresses all
the time?” she teased. “Do you suppose dad has that sort of ambition
for me?”
“Would it make any difference to you--far as I’m concerned--if he
had?”
He had his arm around her at that moment. May looked up into his
earnest face.
“Nobody ever quite knows what’s in my father’s mind,” she answered
slowly. “He never gives himself away. He keeps his own counsel and
acts. But I know what’s in my mind--and in my heart. He’s been good
to me in so many different ways. But when it comes to this--there’s
no use borrowing trouble, Robin. Wait and see. I’m yours. You’re
mine. Nobody can get around that.”
“Is it real?” he asked. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just a fancy of
yours--or if I’m dreaming.”
She stopped his mouth with a kiss by way of answer.
“I’ll penalize you if you say things like that,” she threatened. “If
it’s a dream I never want to wake up.”
Robin, sometimes when he was alone, would look away south over the
foothills, to the dark line that marked the course of Birch Creek in
which nestled the Bar M Bar, recalling a dream out of which he had
wakened with a bitter taste in his mouth. But this--this was
different.
He would try to peer into the future. When he did it seemed
unreckonable. There was still a tangle to unravel, enemies to cope
with. Life hadn’t become less complicated because he was off with an
old love and on with a new.
It became even more complicated before long. At noon of the third
day Adam Sutherland arrived. Robin rode over from camp when he saw
the bay team and top buggy roll into the ranch yard.
“Come up to the house,” Sutherland invited. “I got to augur with you
awhile.”
They walked across the yard, Sutherland silent and thoughtful. May
met them on the porch. Old Adam held her at arm’s length admiringly.
“You look like a new twenty-dollar gold piece,” he said. “The
mountain air sure agrees with you.”
Color deepened on the girl’s cheeks.
“It always did,” she laughed.
“Tell ’em to have lunch ready in half an hour, an’ leave me and
Tyler be for awhile,” he said. “I got to go back to town right
away.”
May disappeared within. Sutherland planted himself in a wicker chair
on the porch.
“Well kid,” he said bluntly, “I was a little bit previous about Mark
Steele. Likewise, I’ve made other plans about you.”
Robin stiffened but said nothing, waiting only with a touch of
uneasiness for what was coming. There was bound to be a fly in the
ointment, he thought morosely.
“Mark hasn’t quit.” Sutherland eyed him a moment before he
continued. “It seems he only went off for a spell to attend some
private business. Likewise, seein’ as he ain’t got no grudge against
you, and don’t exactly fancy havin’ to shoot you up, an’ not
proposin’ to quit the country just because you’re on the war path,
he thought he better give you a chance to cool off.”
“Oh, hell!” Robin exploded. “I don’t care two whoops about Mark
Steele’s reasons for anything. Come to the point. Have you changed
your mind about me runnin’ the Block S?”
“Well, not exactly,” Sutherland returned unruffled. “But for good
an’ sufficient reasons of my _own_,” he stressed the possessive,
“I’ve concluded to let Mark run the round-up on the home range
again. I got another wagon boss’s job for you, though.”
Robin didn’t speak. He couldn’t understand. It seemed to him like
blowing hot and cold. There was a double disappointment in being
deposed before he had fairly taken up the reins--and to stand aside
for Shining Mark galled him more than he wished to admit. He rose
and took up his hat.
“Set down an’ listen to me, kid.” Sutherland’s tone was friendly.
Robin didn’t sit down, but he stood to listen.
“There’s one thing most of us don’t like,” Sutherland continued.
“That’s a man that don’t know his own mind. Right now you’re
thinkin’ I don’t know my own mind. An’ you’re wonderin’ why. Was
your heart set on runnin’ the Block S round-up this spring?”
Robin looked at him for a second or two.
“What’s the difference,” he said at last, “what my heart might be
set on? That don’t spell nothin’ to you. If you figure Mark Steele
is a better man for your purpose than me, that settles it. But I
don’t have to agree with you, do I?”
“Well, I’d kinda like to have you agree with me on one or two
things,” Sutherland commented.
“I ain’t likely to agree with you on anything in connection with
Mark Steele,” Robin declared.
“You might possibly, if you knew exactly what was in my mind,” the
old man said dryly. “You don’t tell all you know, or think. Maybe
other folks has the same habit. It’s a useful habit at that,
sometimes. I’ll say this much: I’d a little sooner have Mark runnin’
round-up for me this summer than settin’ around the Bar M Bar
figurin’ out ways of--well, of gettin’ even with you, f’rinstance,
for steppin’ into his place; an’ other little things he’s probably
got against you.”
“So in order to protect me you’ll let me go before I have a chance
to show you whether I’m any good or not,” Robin said ironically.
“Thanks awful. Maybe you reckon I need to be spoon-fed awhile yet.”
“If I did I wouldn’t waste no time on you,” Sutherland grinned. “By
gosh, you get sore quick. Didn’t I say you still had a wagon boss’s
job with me?”
“I don’t _sabe_,” Robin said impatiently.
“Listen, an’ maybe you will,” Sutherland replied. “Think you could
do any good for yourself--an’ for me--if you were turned loose in
the Judith Basin an’ Arrow Creek country with a round-up crew to
gather up five or six thousand head of stock?”
Into Robin’s mind flashed a picture of himself riding those lonely
bottoms south of the Big Muddy, seeking through bitter weather day
after day and finding here and there what he sought. He remembered
the bite of the frost, the chill of the winter winds, the glare of
ice. To cover that country again with a dozen riders at his back----
“Go on,” he said briefly.
“I’ve bought the J7 brand from the Leland estate,” the old man
explained. “It’s to be kept quiet. There’s reasons. Nobody knows it
only the Leland executors, myself an’ you. It’s not to go any
farther until I’m ready to have it known. I’ll send you to Benton
with a letter to these people. There’s an outfit organized, a
hundred an’ sixty saddle horses, some men--I don’t know how many.
You’ll have to fill up your own crew. Supposedly you’ll be runnin’
the outfit for the Leland estate, but you’ll be runnin’ it for me,
an’ you’ll report direct. There’ll be money in a Fort Benton bank
for you to draw on for pay roll an’ runnin’ expenses. You’ll cover
the usual J7 territory, an’ brand up the calves. In the fall you’ll
ship out everything that’s fit for beef. That’s all the instructions
there is just now. You’ll have a free hand.”
“Why--if you don’t mind me askin’,” Robin put it directly to his
employer, “don’t you send Mark Steele over the river and let me go
through with what you started me in on here?”
Sutherland leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across the
generous round of his abdomen. He didn’t alter his placid expression
in the slightest degree.
“Darn it,” he said quite casually. “When it comes to Shinin’ Mark
Steele you got somethin’ up your sleeve. You won’t tell me what it
is. Well, I got somethin’ up my sleeve, an’ I won’t tell you what it
is. But I tell you kid, as I told you in town, that I ain’t lived to
be sixty, I ain’t made my way in the cow business by goin’ through
the world deaf, dumb an’ blind. The reason I send you instead of
Mark Steele into the Judith Basin is because I think you’re better
qualified for that particular job. Will you go?”
“Yes,” Robin said. “Sure, I’ll go.”
“While you’re workin’ that south country,” Sutherland continued, “I
reckon you better hold anything that belongs to this side of the
river an’ throw ’em across when you’re through.”
Robin looked at old Adam placidly rolling a cigar between his lips.
For a second he had the impulse to show his hand, to tell Sutherland
wherein the feud between himself and Mark Steele originated.
Somehow, with Steele coming back to run the Block S he couldn’t
quite. He had called Steele a thief to his face. He might have
occasion to do so again. But accusation wasn’t proof. Robin hated
empty words. There was proof in plenty across the Missouri.
Consciously or unconsciously Sutherland was placing him in a
position to accumulate that proof in substantial form, in the shape
of T Bar S yearlings and two-year-olds beyond what the brand could
possibly yield.
“You’ll go back to town with me this afternoon,” Sutherland said.
“Mark’s on his way out, an’ I’d as soon you two didn’t get together,
though he promised he wouldn’t start no fuss. I didn’t want no gun
play. Will you keep your mouth shut an’ your hands in your pockets
if you should see him?”
“If he keeps away from me, yes,” Robin agreed. “You seem darned
anxious to keep peace between us two.”
“Dead wagon bosses ain’t much good to me,” Sutherland drawled. “Dead
wagon bosses an’ dead cows ain’t much good to anybody. You keep that
in mind.”