The J7 took a short swing eastward, turned back when T Bar S’s grew
scarce, and pitched camp one evening on Birch Creek below Cold
Spring within sight of where Robin first saw with a shock of
surprise the flash of silver on a rustler’s gear. The Bad Lands lay
in a tumbled stretch below. A few thickets of jack pine spotted the
valley walls, made dark patches about the heads of those torn
gulches. Birch Creek was a mere trickle in its alkali bed. It was
like the jaws of hell for heat in that deep, sage-floored bottom. At
dawn, when the riders saddled and mounted, the air was cool and
scented with the odor of bruised sage.
Robin sat half-turned in his saddle watching the wagons vanish up
the steep pitch of a draw that led to high ground. The day herd and
the saddle bunch climbed the slope in long files. Very soon he would
finish that gathering. In and around Chase Hill he expected to end
the clean-up. After that--he was wondering what would come after
that, as he sat there.
Some of his riders sat quietly resting gloved hands on their saddle
horns. Some rolled a final cigarette. Two or three were giving the
last tightening to their cinches.
Something stung Robin in the side, like a hornet, or the touch of a
live coal. Involuntarily he flinched. The prick of his spur, the
lurch of his body, startled the nervous brute under him. Touch and
movement were simultaneous. Already off balance, when the horse spun
like an uncoiled spring, Robin lost his seat--went headlong to
earth, precisely as if he had been shot.
That was no mere conjecture flashing through his brain as he fell.
He saw a dust spurt rise twenty feet beyond him while he was yet in
mid-air. And he lay still where he had fallen, listening for a sound
that made the tale complete--the clear, staccato report of a rifle.
Every detail of what occurred, every possibility, stood clear in
Robin’s mental and visual processes. He saw two other horses jump
and swerve at the spurt of dust. He knew where his own horse stood
when the shot was fired, and so marked the line of the bullet’s
flight, a point on the eastern bank three hundred yards distant,
perhaps three hundred feet above the flat, a spot masked by a clump
of scrubby pines.
He did not rise. He did not move. He lay watching, and his riders
flung themselves off their horses to gather around him. His fall and
that crack told them the story.
“Are you hurt bad?” they cried.
“Never mind me,” Robin said. “Look. See that bunch of pine? That’s
where he fired from. Go get him. Get him alive if you can, but get
him. Spread out and burn the earth. Quick, or he’ll slip you in the
rough country.”
One man stayed with him, knelt beside him. The others flung
themselves astride, broke away on the run, spreading fanwise as they
rode. Every man was armed. Robin had seen that they rode armed once
they crossed the Big Muddy. Two or three carried rifles under their
stirrup leathers. Robin smiled to himself as the dust rolled out
from under those drumming hoofs.
“He’ll have to go some to get away. And if he does he’ll think he
got me,” he reflected. Then, in answer to Jim Stratton’s anxious
query:
“I don’t know. I don’t feel as if I was finished. But somethin’ sure
stung me. Guess I’ll look.”
Baring his waist showed a red line like a scar of a brand, where the
bullet had seared his skin.
“Now that’s what I’d call close,” Robin commented. “Darned if it
didn’t feel like it had plowed right through me. She sure stings but
don’t amount to much. Get my horse, Jim. I’m all right.”
Stratton galloped over to where Robin’s mount after a brief bolt
stood still on the fallen reins. He led him back, Robin got up,
mounted, nursing that sharp pain in his side and a bruised shoulder
from the fall, but practically unharmed.
“We’ll join the hunt,” he said briefly, and rode for the eastern
bank.
Empty bench land, brown and yellow with ripe grass, a network of
coulees, canyons, ravines, clumps of pines, great areas of
sagebrush, the Bear Paws looming high and blue on the north, met
their gaze. No riders moved in sight, only a few bunches of wild
cattle stirred to flight by the pursuit.
“Hark!” said Stratton, after a minute. “They’ve opened the ball.”
A burst of shots rose, echoed, died away. The plains silence closed
in again. The morning air fanned their faces, rippled the long
grass. They waited, watching, five minutes, ten, half an hour, the
sun dazzling their eyes as they looked to the east.
“There they come,” Robin pointed.
Two miles off a group of horsemen debouched from a hollow, riding
slowly. Robin and Stratton loosed their mounts to a gallop.
On a horse led by Sam Connors and flanked by the J7 riders sat Tommy
Thatcher. He was disarmed, hatless, his hands tied behind his back.
A smear of blood streaked his face. He rode a J7 horse and the rider
of that horse sat riding double behind another man’s cantle. The J7
men grinned widely at Robin and Robin stared at Thatcher.
“Lucky we were,” Sam Connors said. “We dropped his horse at long
range an’ Mr. Man went down so hard he didn’t come to till we closed
in on him.”
“I busted him one when he started to get gay,” said the rider who
was mounted double, “so they made me give him my horse, they was so
kind to him. I’d ’a’ made the skunk trot at the end of a lass-rope.
What’ll we do with him, Tyler? Name your poison.”
Robin lifted his hat and ran his fingers through the mat of his
curly hair. He didn’t speak to Thatcher. The man stared at him in
dumb fear.
“First it was shootin’ cows to steal their calves. Then it was Tex
Matthews. Now it’s me,” he mused. Aloud, he said:
“Bring him down into the creek.”
They plowed up the loose earth on the steep bank, gained the
sage-gray bottom. Where the canyon from Cold Spring joined Birch
Creek three gnarly old cottonwoods grew, a trio like the weird
sisters. They stood within half a mile of where Mark Steele and
Thatcher shot the Bar M Bar cows. Robin remembered those trees. He
led the way until his riders were bunched in the leafy shade. Thick,
crooked limbs spread from the rough-barked trunks fifteen feet above
ground.
“Heave a rope over that branch,” Robin pointed.
The Texan’s face blanched. For a second or two the J7 men looked
startled.
“I sure do despise a bushwhacker,” one reckless youth said at last.
“I’ll donate my rope in a good cause.”
He flung the noosed end deftly over a stout limb.
“Lead him under,” Robin spoke again.
Connors gave the lead rope to a J7 man, wheeled his horse aside and
sat looking thoughtfully at Robin. The J7 man led the horse Thatcher
bestrode under the dangling noose.
“Put it around his neck. Tighten it up and tie the end to the tree,”
Robin ordered.
Robin’s young face was hard as iron. He looked at the shrinking
Texan and there was no mercy in his eyes. The horse that bore
Thatcher was gentle. He stood passive, a living scaffold, such as
the old West devised for the speedy execution of malefactors long
before Robin Tyler was born. A flick of a rope-end and the beast
would leap from under, to leave Thatcher’s spurred heels kicking
three feet clear of mother earth. Robin raised his braided quirt.
Thatcher’s lips trembled.
“For God’s sake, Tyler, take this rope off my neck!” he pleaded.
“Give me a chance for my life. I’ll talk.”
“What chance did you give Tex Matthews or me?” Robin sneered.
“You’re not gagged. Speak out if you want.”
“Take away the rope,” Thatcher begged. “I’ll cough it all up, if you
won’t hang me here. Shinin’ Mark’s the man you want, not me.”
“Say what you want,” Robin answered coldly. “I make no promises.
It’s hangin’ or the pen for you, anyway.”
“If I hang, I want him to hang with me,” the Texan mumbled. “He got
me into this. I’ll take a chance on the penitentiary if you’ll keep
me off’n this tree.”
“Say your say,” Robin lowered his quirt.
“Steele’s been rustlin’ off the Bar M Bar an’ the Block S for two
seasons, brandin’ what he stole with the T Bar S, which he owns on
the quiet. I’ve been in with him from the start. He got a hold over
me an’ I had to go through. At first we shot the cows, like we did
that day a year ago in this here bottom, when you rode down an’
looked for the brand on that cow. It was Mark took a crack at you
that day. Mostly we cut back cows with big calves an’ separated ’em
later. We had a corral in the Bad Lands down toward Cow Creek where
we got in our work late in the fall. A lot of the stuff we threw
across the Missouri on the ice. It was Steele shot Tex Matthews when
we got onto you fellers prowlin’ down there. He tried to get you
too. An’ we was lookin’ for you, figurin’ how we could get away with
you the time we walked in on you asleep in the Birch Creek line
camp--the day you turned Mark’s gun back on him an’ shot him in the
neck.
“When you jumped the country thinkin’ you’d killed him, he figured
it was all clear. When you come back this spring he was scared to
rustle, and he was leary of jumpin’ you in public. He began to think
you was tougher game than he’d reckoned. Then he got worried when he
knew you was runnin’ the J7 round-up in the Judith because he knew
you’d come on lots of T Bar S yearlin’s. When you blew into the
Block S the other day an’ made that play about havin’ bought the T
Bar S an’ undertook to sell it to Sutherland, he knew the stuff was
off an’ he had to claim ownership. He figured he could bluff
Sutherland since there wasn’t enough proof to convict him. But he
was afraid you’d either keep on his trail until you got evidence, or
you an’ Sutherland would just naturally grab every T Bar S in sight
an’ hold ’em in spite of hell. So he foamed around after Sutherland
fired him an’ decided we had to kill you first chance an’ that would
be the end of it. You were the only man in the country that really
knew how it was worked. So he put it up to me to ambush you. I’ve
been layin’ for you for three days. That’s all. I’ll swear to that
in court if you take him alive.”
The J7 men had crowded close to listen.
“By the Lord,” one growled. “You sure ought to hang. A cow thief an’
a murderer. Will I hit old Bones a clip, Robin?”
“Untie the rope,” Robin said calmly. “We’ll let the sheriff of
Chouteau county hang him an’ Shinin’ Mark together.”
“One other thing,” Robin said when Thatcher’s neck was free of the
noose. “Where is Mark Steele now?”
“I dunno. I expect,” Thatcher mumbled, “he’ll be around somewheres
in public establishin’ a alibi for himself, in case he got accused
of shootin’ you. I’ve had to do the dirty work.”
“All right.” Robin nodded to Sam Connors. That individual moved up
beside Thatcher.
“You’re under arrest by a qualified officer,” he said pleasantly.
“We’ll treat you nice, an’ have you safe in jail at Fort Benton
inside of twenty-four hours. So behave yourself.”
“Listen,” Robin addressed his crew. “You’ve heard his yarn. It’s
true. I’ve been up against this for a year. Keep your mouths shut
tight about all this until you’re called in court as witnesses.
Shinin’ Mark won’t be as easy to handle as this fellow. Now, two of
you ride, one on each side of him, to camp.”
They moved off in a cavalcade. Sam Connors fell in beside Robin,
looking curiously at him.
“If he hadn’t weakened would you ’a’ hung him?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know,” Robin answered truthfully. “Maybe. But he did
weaken.”
“You had me guessin’,” Connors observed. “I couldn’t hardly ’a’
stood for a lynchin’. Did you figure he’d squeal when you made that
hangin’ play?”
“Yes,” Robin admitted. “That’s why I made it. I’ve got ’em both dead
to rights now. Next thing is to round up Shinin’ Mark Steele. Then
this range’ll be clean once more.”