A CHALLENGE
THE road meandered over and through brown Wyoming in the line of least
resistance. It would no doubt reach the Fryingpan some time and
ultimately Wagon Wheel, but the original surveyors of the trail were
leisurely in their habits. They had chewed the bovine cud and circled
hills with a saving instinct that wasted no effort. The ranchman of the
Hill Creek district had taken the wise hint of their cattle. They, too,
were in no haste and preferred to detour rather than climb.
If Rowan McCoy was in any hurry he gave no sign of it. He let his horse
fall into a slow walk of its own choice. The problem of an overstocked
range was worrying him. Sheep had come bleating across the bad lands to
steal the grass from the cattle, regardless of priority of occupancy. It
was a question that touched McCoy and his neighbours nearly. They had
seen their stock pushed back from one feeding ground after another by
herds of woolly invaders. Rowan could name a dozen cattlemen within as
many miles who were face to face with ruin. All of them had well-stocked
ranches, were heavily in debt, yet stood to make a good thing if they
could hold the range even for two years longer. The price of a cattle
had begun to go up and was due for a big rise. The point was whether
they could hang on long enough to take advantage of this.
With a sweeping curve the road swung to the rim of a saucer-shaped
valley and dipped abruptly over the brow—a white ribbon zigzagging
across the tender spring green of the mountain park. Bovier’s Camp the
place was still called, but the Frenchman who had first set up a cabin
here had been dead twenty years. The camp was a trading centre for
thirty miles, though there was nothing to it but a blacksmith shop, a
doctor’s office with bachelor’s quarters attached, a stage station, a
general store and post office, and the houses of the Pin and Feather
Ranch. Yet cow-punchers rode a day’s journey to get their “air-tights”
and their tobacco here and to lounge away an idle hour in gossip.
A man was swinging from his saddle just as McCoy rode up to the store.
He was a big, loose-jointed fellow, hook-nosed, sullen of eye and mouth.
His hard gaze met the glance of the cattleman with jeering hostility,
but he offered no greeting before he turned away.
Two or three cow-punchers and a ranch owner were in the store. The
hook-nosed man exchanged curt nods with them and went directly to the
post office cage.
“Any mail for J. C. Tait?” he asked.
The postmistress handed him a letter and two circulars from liquor
houses. She was an angular woman, plain, middle-aged, severe of feature.
“How’s Norma?” she asked.
“Nothin’ the matter with her far as I know,” answered Tait sulkily. His
manner gave the impression that he resented her question.
A shout of welcome met McCoy as he appeared in the doorway. It was plain
that he was in the good books of those present as much as Tait was the
opposite. For Rowan McCoy, owner of the Circle Diamond Ranch, was the
leader of the cattle interests in this neighbourhood, and big Joe Tait
was the most aggressive and the most bitter of the sheepmen fighting for
the range.
Bovier’s Camp was in the heart of the cattle country, but Tait made no
concession to the fact that he was unwelcome here. He leaned against the
counter, a revolver in its holster lying along his thigh. There was
something sinister and deadly in the sneer with which he returned the
coldness of the men he was facing.
He glanced over the liquor circulars before he ripped open the envelope
of the letter. His black eyes, set in deep sockets, began to blaze. The
red veined cheeks of his beefy face darkened to an apoplectic purple.
Joe Tait enraged was not a pleasant object to see.
He flung a sudden profane defiance at them all. “You’re a fine bunch of
four-flushers. It’s about your size to send a skull-and-crossbones
threat through the mail, but I notice you haven’t the guts to sign it.
I’m not to cross the bad lands, eh? I’m to keep on the other side of the
dead line you’ve drawn. And if I don’t you warn me I’ll get into
trouble. To hell with your warning!” Tait crumpled the letter in his
sinewy fist, flung it down, spat tobacco juice on it, and ground it
savagely under his heel. “That’s what I think of your warning, McCoy.
Trouble! Me, I eat trouble. If you or any of your bunch of false alarms
want any you can have it right now and here.”
McCoy, sitting on a nail keg, had been talking with one of his friends.
He did not move. There was a moment’s chill silence. Every man present
knew that Tait was ready to back his challenge. He might be a bully, but
nobody doubted his gameness.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” the cattleman said coldly.
“I thought you weren’t,” jeered Tait. “You never have been, far as I can
make out.”
The blood mounted to McCoy’s face. Nobody in the room could miss the
point of that last taunt. It was common knowledge in the Hill Creek
country that years before Norma Davis had jilted him to run away with
Joe Tait.
“I reckon you’ve said enough,” suggested Falkner, the range rider to
whom Rowan had been talking. “And enough is aplenty, Joe.”
“Do I have to get your say-so before I can talk, Falkner? I’ll say to
you, too, what I’m saying to the man beside you. There can’t any of
you—no, nor all of you—run me out the way you did Pap Thomson. Try
anything like that, and you’ll find me lying right in the door of my
sheep wagon with hell popping. Hear that, McCoy?”
“Yes, I hear you.” McCoy looked at him hard. One could have gathered no
impression of weakness from the lean brown face of the cattleman. The
blue-gray eyes were direct and steely. Power lay in the packed muscles
of the stocky frame. Confidence rested in the set of the broad shoulders
and the poise of the close-cropped head. “I didn’t write that letter to
you, and I don’t know who did. But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Keep
your sheep on the other side of the dead line. They’ll maybe live
longer.”
The sheepman shook a fist at him furiously. “That’s a threat, McCoy.
Don’t you back it. Don’t you dare lift a finger to my sheep. I’ll run
them where I please. I’ll bring ’em right up to the door of the Circle
Diamond, too, if it suits me.”
A young ranchman lounging in the doorway cut into the talk. “I reckon
you can bring ’em there, Joe, but I ain’t so sure you could take ’em
away again.”
“Who’d stop me?” demanded Tait, whirling on him. “Would it be you, Jack
Cole?”
“I might be there, and I might not. You never can tell.”
Tait took a step toward him. The undisciplined temper of the man was
boiling up. He had for nearly two days been drinking heavily.
“Might as well settle this now—the sooner the quicker,” he said
thickly.
Sharply McCoy spoke: “We’re none of us armed, Tait. Don’t make a
mistake.”
The sheep owner threw his revolver on the counter. “I don’t need any gun
to settle any business I’ve got with Jack Cole.”
“Don’t you start anything here, Joe Tait,” ordered the postmistress in a
shrill voice. She ran out from her cage and confronted the big man
indomitably. “You can’t bully _me_. I’m the United States Government
when I’m in this room. Don’t you forget it, either.”
A shadow darkened the doorway, and a young woman came into the store.
She stopped, surprised, aware that she had interrupted a scene. Her soft
dark eyes passed from one to another, asking information.
There was an awkward silence. The sheepman turned with a half-suppressed
oath, snatched up his weapon, thrust it into the holster, and strode
from the room. Yet a moment, and the thudding of hoofs could be heard.
The postmistress turned in explanation to the girl. “It’s Joe Tait. He’s
always trying to raise a rookus, that man is. But he can’t bully me, no
matter how bad an actor he is. I’m not his wife.” She walked around the
counter and resumed a dry manner of business. “Do you want all the mail
for the Elkhorn Lodge or just your own?”
“I’ll take it all, Mrs. Stovall.”
The young woman handed through the cage opening a canvas bag, into which
papers and letters were stuffed.
“Three letters for you, Miss Trovillion,” the older woman said, sliding
them across to her.
“You’re good to me to-day.” The girl thanked her with a quick smile.
“I notice I’m good to you most days,” Mrs. Stovall replied with friendly
sarcasm.
Ruth Trovillion buckled the mail bag and turned to go. As she walked out
of the store her glance flashed curiously over the men. It lingered for
a scarcely perceptible instant on McCoy.