A Warning and a Sign
John Carr made a special trip back to Desert Valley ranch for a word
with Howard. He rode hard and there was a look of anxiety in his eyes
when he came upon his friend smoking thoughtfully in the big
living-room of the ranch-house. It was late evening and a week after
the departure of Howard's guests.
Howard dragged his boot heels down from the table top when he saw who
it was and jumped to his feet his hand outstretched.
'Hello, John old boy,' he cried warmly. What's the good wind blowing
you over this way already?'
Carr tossed his hat to the table, drew up a chair for himself and took
a cigar before he answered. Then it was quietly and earnestly.
'Met up with Jim Courtot the other night, I hear?' he began.
Howard nodded and waited, his look curious.
'Well,' went on Carr, 'I wish you hadn't. He's a treacherous beast if
this man's land ever cradled one. He's looking for you, Al.'
'He knows where to find me,' said Alan shortly. And then, 'Just what's
worrying you, Johnnie?'
'I've known Jim for seventeen or eighteen years,' rejoined Carr. 'He's
a cold, hard, calculating and absolutely crooked proposition. During
that time I've never known him to go on a drunk more than two or three
times. And every time there was trouble.'
'He's drinking now, then?'
'He started in right after you got through with him the other night.
And he has been talking. There's no use being a fool!' he cut in
sternly as Alan shrugged his shoulders. 'Courtot doesn't talk to me,
but I've got straight what he has said. He talks to Moraga, and Moraga
talks to Barbee, and Barbee passes it on to me. He told Moraga that if
it was the last thing he did, he'd get you. And he is carrying a gun
every step he takes.'
'The more a man talks, the less killing he does, I've noticed,' said
Howard. But his tone did not carry conviction. Carr frowned
impatiently.
'He hasn't talked much. He was mad clean through when he made that
crack to Moraga. I tell you there's no use being a fool, Al.'
'No. Guess you're right, John. Anyway, it was pretty decent of you to
ride over.'
He got up and went into his bedroom. A moment later he came out
carrying a heavy Colt revolver in one hand, a box of cartridges in the
other. The gun was well oiled; the cylinder spun silently and easily;
the six chambers were loaded. He put the gun down on the table.
'I'll ride heeled for a few days, anyhow,' he decided. 'I guess I can
shoot with Jim Courtot yet.'
'Did you ever find out for sure that it was Jim the other time?'
'Sure enough to suit me,' returned Howard. 'He was in town that night.
And it was his style of work to take a pot shot at a man out of the
dark.'
'He's not exactly a coward,' warned Carr.
'No, not a coward. But that's his kind of work, just the same. He
would go after a man just as he plays poker--simply to win the surest,
quickest, easiest way. Saw Sanchia Murray in town the same day he was
there. Are they working together again?'
'I haven't seen either one of them. But I guess so. Barbee, poor kid,
is trailing after her all the time, and he comes back hating Courtot
worse and worse every day. Seen the Longstreets lately?'
Howard admitted that he had. It was only a little way over, he
reminded Carr, an hour and a half ride or such a matter, and the old
boy was such a helplessly innocent old stranger, that it didn't seem
quite right to turn them adrift altogether.
'The girl is a pretty thing.' said Carr.
'Yes,' agreed Howard. 'Kind of pretty.'
Carr looked at him steadily. And for absolutely no slightest, vaguest
reason in the wide world that he could think of, Alan Howard felt his
face going red. Carr's look probed deeper. Then, with common consent,
they turned to other subjects until bedtime. Nothing of business
matters passed between them, although both remembered that a
considerable payment was to fall due within ten days.
In particular Howard had cause to remember. He had recently balanced
his books and had found that he had cut into his last five thousand
dollars. Therefore, meaning to pay on the nail, he had arranged a sale
of beef cattle. The range was heavily stocked, he had a herd in prime
condition, the market was fair, and his system called for a sale soon
and the purchase of some calves. Therefore the next morning, before
Carr was astir, Howard and several of his men were riding toward the
more remote fields where his beef herds were. Behind them came the
camp wagon and the cook.
All day long he worked among his herds, gathering them, sorting them,
cutting out and heading back towards the home corrals those under
weight or in any way not in the pink of condition for the sale. His
men rode away into the distances, going east and south, disappearing
over the ridges seeking cattle that had strayed far. Howard changed
the horse under him four times that day, and the beast he freed long
after the stars were out was jaded and wet. In the end he threw
himself down upon the hot earth in the shade of the wagon and turned
his eyes toward the uplands of the Last Ridge. He had had no moment of
his own to-day, no opportunity to ride for a call on his new friends,
and now, after he rested a little and ate, he would go back to work
with his men, night-herding. For the rounded-up cattle were now a
great milling herd that grew greater as the night went on and other
lesser bands were brought in, a stamping, churning mass whose
deep-lunged bellowing surged out continuously across the valley
stretches and through the passes of the hills.
To-morrow, thought Howard, he would ride toward the Last Ridge, taking
it upon himself to gather up the straggling stock there, and, purely
incidentally, he would look in upon the Longstreets. He had not seen
them for three days. But the night was destined to bring events to
alter his plans. In the first place, some of his cowboys whom he had
dispatched to outlying districts of the range to round up the cattle
there had not yet returned, and he and his men here were short-handed
in their task of night-herding the swelling numbers of restless
shorthorns. Howard, having had his supper, his cigarette and his brief
rest, was saddling his fifth horse to take his turn at a four-hour
shift, when he was aware that some one had ridden into camp. And then
came a voice, shouting through the din and the dark:
'Hey, there. Where's Al?'
'Here,' called Howard. 'Who is it?'
'It's me,' and Barbee with jingling spurs came on. 'Special delivery
letter for you, old-timer.'
Letters came rarely to Desert Valley, and Howard expected none. But he
put out his hand eagerly; he had no reason to think such a thing, but
none the less the conviction was upon him that Helen had written him.
His arm through his horse's bridle, he struck a match and took into his
hand a scrap of paper. As his peering eyes made out a sweeping,
familiar scrawl, he felt a disappointment quite as unreasonable as had
been his hope. It was unmistakably from the hand of John Carr, hastily
written in lead pencil upon the inner side of an old envelope and said
briefly:
'Better look out for Courtot, Al. He has left Big Run and is headed
out your way.--JOHN.'
Howard tore the paper to bits.
'Where's Carr?' he asked quietly. 'Gone on back?'
Barbee chuckled softly.
'He was at your place last night, wasn't he? Well, he headed back and
got as far as Big Run. That's where I saw him late this afternoon when
he give me this for you. About that time I guess he changed his mind
about going home and shifted his trail. He's gone up that way.'
The vague sweep of Barbee's arm indicated a wide expanse of country
lying to the north. When Howard was silent, the boy went on lightly
and perhaps a hint maliciously:
'Get me? Gone to see how the professor and his girl are making out.
Keep your eye peeled, Al, or he'll beat you to it. Old John's a sure
heller with the women.'
Howard snapped out a curt admonition to Barbee to mind his own business
and flung himself into the saddle. As he spurred away to the outer
fringe of his herd he was not thinking over-much of Carr's warning;
somehow Barbee's stuck closer in his mind. A spurt of irritation with
himself succeeded that first desire to slap the message-bearer's face.
For he knew within his heart that he resented Carr's making himself at
home at the Longstreet camp, and he knew that to-night he was an
unreasonable beast. Had not Carr once already ridden far out of his
way to warn him? Was there any reason in the wide world why Carr
should not this time send Barbee and himself ride on wherever it suited
him to go? At that moment Howard would have been glad than otherwise
to have Jim Courtot present himself.
'Let him start something, damn him,' he growled savagely to himself,
'any time.' And he began wondering if now John Carr were sitting with
Helen and her father in front of their little home? Or if perhaps
Longstreet had gone in to his books, and Carr and Helen alone, sitting
quiet under the spell of the night, were looking out into the shining
world of stars? He cursed himself for a fool and an ingrate. Didn't
Carr have a man's right to ride where he chose? And had he not already
twice in twenty-four hours shown how clearly his thought and his heart
were with his friend? A revolver knocked at Howard's side. It was
there because John Carr had shown him its need.
Howard's impulse was to stay away from Last Ridge for a little longer.
He reasoned that Carr would be invited to stay overnight and would
naturally accept the invitation. Why should he not? There is always
room in camp for one more, and no doubt both Helen and her father would
be glad of company to break their monotony and loneliness. But before
Howard had had time for more than an impulse there came the second
episode of the night to set him thinking upon other matters.
As he rode he heard several voices and recognized them as those of his
own men. One guffawed loudly and there came the sound of his big hand
slapping his leg in his high delight; another swore roundly and
impatiently; a third was talking excitedly, earnestly. This third was
Sandy Weaver, an old hand, a little man characterized by his gentle
eyes and soft voice and known across many miles as an individual in
whom the truth did not abide. All up and down these fringes of the
desert he was known simply as Lying Sandy.
'What's the excitement, boys?' demanded Howard.
Sandy wheeled his horse, pressing close to his employer's side, and
burst into quick explanation. He had been working with Dave Terril
over on the east side; they had found only a handful of stock there,
and Sandy had left them to Dave, and in order to save time for the
morrow had circled the valley and combed over the north end, under the
Last Ridge cliffs. Just before dark he had made his discovery. His
horse had found it first, shying and sniffing and then trying to bolt;
Sandy was nothing if not circumstantial.
'We've got some work to do to-night, Sandy.' cut in Howard shortly.
'If you've got anything to say, go to it.'
'Haw!' gurgled Bandy O'Neil, recently from a California outfit, a man
with a large sense of mirth. 'He's got his prize ring-tailed dandy to
spring, Al. Don't choke him off or it'll kill him.'
Sandy hearkened to neither of them, but hastened on. He described the
hidden sink in a boulder-ringed draw, the difficulty he had had in
bringing his horse to the scene and his own stupefaction. And when he
had done all of this with his customary detail he declared that he had
come upon a yearling bull, dead as a door nail and slaughtered after a
fashion that made Sandy's eyes widen in the starlight.
'It's throat was just sure enough tore all to hell, Al,' he said
ponderously. 'Like something the size of an elephant had gone after
it. And I says to myself it must have been a wolf, and I go looking
for tracks. And, by the Lord, I found 'em! Tracks like a wolf and the
size of a dinner plate! And alongside them tracks, some other tracks.
And they was made by a man and he was barefooted!'
Bandy O'Neil's roar of mirth was a sound to hearken to joyously from
afar.
'And,' he cried, dabbing at his tears, 'Sandy would sure take a man by
the mit and lead him to the spot, only just then a big bird, size of
half a dozen ostriches, flops down and sinks its claws into that there
bull calf and flies right straight over the moon with it! Ain't that
what you said, Sandy?'
'You're a fool, Bandy O'Neil, and always will be a fool,' muttered
Sandy Weaver stiffly. 'That same calf is laying right there now, and
if you don't believe it or Al don't believe it, I'll bet you a hundred
bucks and show you the place as fast as a horse can lay down to it.'
He ran on with his tale, having the end yet to recount. He had headed
his cattle down to meet Dave Terril; he and Dave had swung in together
and moved still further south to herd in with the boys coming up from
that direction; and being within striking distance of the ranch-house,
Sandy had ridden there alone.
'I wasn't sure but you might be there, Al,' he explained. 'And I
wanted to tell you what I saw. I rampsed right in and found somebody
waiting for you. Know who?'
'Carr?' suggested Howard.
'No, it wasn't. It was Jim Courtot. There wasn't anybody at the house
but old Angela and the Mex kid, and they let him in. He was setting
there waiting, and when I went in the door he come up standing and he
had his gun in his hand and it was cocked. And, Al, he looked mean.'
There was a pause and a silence. Sandy Weaver might be lying, and then
again he might not.
'I got nothing against Jim, and it didn't drop on me right then that he
was out to start a row. And, being full of what I saw up there, I
spilled him the yarn. And I wish you could have had a look into that
man's face! He's no albino to speak on, and yet when I got half-way
through he looked it. His face was as white as a rag and his eyes
bulged out like he was scared, and the sweat come out on his head and
all over, I guess, and he kept looking over his shoulder all the time
like the devil was after him. And when I showed him what I found on
the rock by the dead calf, he just asks me one question. He says,
"Sandy, what way was them tracks pointed?" And when I tells him it
looked like they was pointed this way--well, Jim was gone!'
'You lying devil!' shouted Bandy hilariously.
But Howard, wondering, demanded:
'What was it you found on the rock, Sandy?'
Sandy yanked it from his pocket. They crowded closer and some one
struck a match. It was a bit of buckskin, and in the buckskin was a
little heap of raw gold.