“There’s a lot of JHF stock missin’.”
“Yeah?”
Pastry got slowly to his feet and leaned against the wall.
“And what about the bar-shoe?”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair and considered the ceiling for
several moments.
“There’s a yearlin’ somewhere in the hills, wearin’ a vented brand on
the right hip, and on the other hip is a Lightnin’ mark, run on with
an iron rod.”
“Well, f’r gosh sake!” exploded Pastry. “Does John the Baptist know it?”
“Yeah, he knows it.”
“Huh!”
Pastry’s thin face seemed to twist with eagerness. This surely was a
choice morsel; something worth the telling, and it would surely be
told with elaborations and variations.
“Hot, ain’t it?” grunted Pastry, moving toward the door. “I ain’t never
seen it so hot, ’cept in Death Valley, and I ain’t never been there.
Hope we have a rain.”
“Be a long dry spell, if we don’t,” remarked the sheriff, but his
sarcastic reply did not quite reach Pastry Pell, who was already
hurrying to the hitch-rack in front of the Buck Horn saloon.
For a long time the sheriff stared down at the mass of papers in front
of him, a calculating look on his face. He knew that John Fann would
not prosecute Barr Wyeth, on account of Barr’s wife, and he wondered
what Barr Wyeth would do when he found himself branded publicly as a
cattle-rustler.
* * * * *
Pastry lost no time in going to the Lightning ranch; in fact, his horse
was a-lather when he swung off at the ranch-house and clumped loudly up
the rickety steps. Mrs. Wyeth met him at the door, and even in his
excitement, Pastry could see that she had been crying.
She stepped aside to let him in. In the next room a baby was crying
fretfully. The room was poorly furnished, but clean as wax. The walls
were hung with cheap crayon enlargements of the Wyeth ancestors, but
there were no likenesses of any of the Fann family. An old upright
organ stood in one corner, with oil lamps surmounting the brackets on
each side.
“Where’s Barr?” asked Pastry hoarsely.
“He--he’s asleep,” faltered Mrs. Wyeth, half-indicating a closed door
with a jerk of her head.
Pastry knew that Barr Wyeth had spent most of the night at a roulette
table in the Buck Horn and had consumed quantities of liquor.
“What did you want of him?” queried Mrs. Wyeth anxiously.
Pastry fidgeted. He wanted to talk to Barr Wyeth, but not in the humor
that he would probably find him now; so he decided against waking him
up to receive the news.
“I jist wanted t’ tell him t’ look out for the sheriff,” said Pastry
nervously.
Mrs. Wyeth’s face went white. She knew that Barr had come home
drunk--what had he done that he should look out for the sheriff?
“What is it, Pastry?” she breathed the question. “What has he done?”
Neither of them saw Barr Wyeth’s door open several inches.
“I got this from the sheriff,” said Pastry slowly, “and I dunno what
he’s goin’ t’ do, but it kinda looks like Barr has been stealin’ cows
from the JHF.”
“From the JHF?”
Mrs. Wyeth shut her eyes tightly, as if trying to blot out the thought.
“Yes, ma’am. Seems that there’s a horse that wears a bar-shoe mixed up
in it, and yore husband rides a horse that’s shod thataway. And then
there’s a yearlin’ that’s had the JHF blotted and a lightnin’ has been
burned on with a runnin’-iron.”
Mrs. Wyeth clutched the top of the table with both hands and stared at
Pastry.
“Are you--sure--of--this?” she panted.
“That’s what the sheriff said,” nodded Pastry. “I asks him if John the
Baptist knows about it and he said that he did.”
The door behind them creaked warningly and Barr Wyeth came toward them.
His eyes were blood-shot and his tousled hair hung down low over his
forehead. He had only removed his boots, and his clothes were wrinkled
and disarranged. Several days’ growth of beard made Barr Wyeth anything
but the handsome young man he had been a year before.
“Barr, you--” began Mrs. Wyeth, but he stopped her with an impatient
motion of his hand and walked up close to Pastry.
“What’s this stuff you’ve been tellin’ her?” Barr’s voice was
half-angry, half-inquiring.
“Just what the sheriff told me,” explained Pastry nervously. “He
said----”
“That I was a rustler?” interrupted Barr.
“Yeah, and he said----”
“Drop that!” snapped Barr, grasping Pastry by the shoulder. “Did Chet
Gunning tell you to come out here and tell this to my wife?”
“----, no! He never told me to tell it to anybody.”
“But you found this out from him, didn’t yuh?”
“Yeah, he--don’t pinch me thataway! How’s a feller goin’ to talk with
you pinchin’ off his arm? He said that there was a yearlin’ with a
vented brand and that the Lightnin’ had been run on with----”
Barr had drawn slightly away, after he had released Pastry’s arm, and
now he smashed the luckless Pastry full in the mouth with his clenched
fist.
Pastry reeled backward, reaching blindly for support, while into him
went Barr, smashing with both fists, driving Pastry out through the
open door and knocking him backward off the porch, where he landed on
his shoulders in a scraggly rosebush.
Barr halted at the edge of the porch, panting, cursing, while Mrs.
Wyeth clung to his sleeve and begged him to stop. Barr shoved the hair
out of his eyes and stared at her. He was berserk with rage and shoved
her roughly aside as he went back into the house.
Pastry got wonderingly to his feet, dazed, bleeding. He had lost all
sense of direction and his first two steps brought him in violent
contact with the porch, after which he sat down real hard and held
his face in his hands.
Mark Ells and Windy Hart had seen the fight on the porch from down
by the corral, and now they hurried up to the porch. Ells was a
stoop-shouldered, hard-faced young man with sagging lips and a flat
nose. Windy Hart was a big man, narrow between the eyes, almost
chinless and with a generous-sized nose, heavily veined in red.
They walked up and considered the fallen Pastry, who managed to get
to his feet. He sopped some of the gore off his face with the sleeve
of his shirt and groaned whiningly. Mrs. Wyeth was still standing on
the porch, one hand braced against a post.
“What’s a matter, Pastry?” asked Windy curiously.
Pastry spat painfully and shook his head.
“Can’tcha talk?” queried Mark.
“Yeth,” Pastry lisped from the loss of teeth.
“Tell us what was the matter, won’t-cha?”
“No, thir,” Pastry shook his head. “I ain’t goin’ t’ thay nothin’.
I--I--” Pastry glanced toward the open door of the ranch-house--“I
thed too much ath it wath.”
As Pastry turned toward his horse, Barr Wyeth came out of the house. He
was dressed now, even to his belt and holster, and under one arm he was
carrying a carbine in a scabbard.
He did not speak to his wife, but as he started past her she grasped him
by the arm.
“Where are you going, Barr?”
He jerked away from her and started down the steps.
“Barr, where are you going?” she asked again.
He stopped and looked back at her:
“Well, if you want to know so ---- bad; I’m goin’ down to see the
sheriff and then I’m goin’ out to the JHF.”
“What for, Barr?”
“What for?” Barr laughed hoarsely. “That’s a ---- of a question.”