A HOT TRAIL
IT happened that Sheriff Matson was in the hills on official business
and slept at Bovier’s Camp the night of the sheep raid. He was by custom
an early riser. The sky was faintly pink with the warning of a coming
sun when he stepped out of the house to wash in the tin basin outside
the kitchen. As he dried his face on the roller towel there came to him
the sound of dragging steps and laboured breathing.
Matson turned. A pallid little man sank down on the step and buried his
face in his hands.
“What’s up?” demanded the officer.
The panting man lifted to him eyes which still mirrored the fear of
death.
“They—they’ve killed Tait and Gilroy.”
“Who?”
“Raiders.”
“When?”
“This morning—two hours ago.” A shiver shook the fellow like a heavy
chill. “My God—it was awful!” he gasped.
The sheriff let fall a strong brown hand on his shoulder. “Tell me about
it, Purdy. You were there at the time?”
The man nodded assent. He swallowed a lump in his dry throat and
explained: “I been herding for Tait. We bedded at Bald Knob last night.
Joe was aiming to go to Thunder Mountain. They—shot up the camp and
killed Tait and Gilroy. Jim and me just escaped. We got separated in the
brush.”
“Just where was the camp?”
“Right at the foot of Bald Knob.”
“Did you recognize any of the raiders?”
“No. They wore masks.”
“How many were there?”
“About twenty; maybe twenty-five.”
“You’re sure they killed Tait and Gilroy?”
“Don’t I tell you I saw them dead?” quavered the unstrung man with weak
irritability.
The cool, hard eyes of the sheriff narrowed to slits. Matson belonged to
the class of frontier man hunter which sleeps on the trail of a criminal
until he is captured. Not hardship nor discouragement nor friendship
would stand in his way. He had a fondness for his work that amounted to
a passion and an uncanny capacity for it.
With the news that had just come to him he was a changed man. The
careless good nature was sponged from his face. His features seemed to
have sharpened. His body had grown tense like a coiled spring. There was
in his motions the lithe wariness of the panther stalking its prey for
the kill.
A few more sharp, incisive questions told him all Purdy knew. He ordered
his horse to be saddled and asked for breakfast at once. Meanwhile he
got Wagon Wheel on the long-distance, and rang his deputy up from sleep.
“There has been a big killing at Bald Knob, Lute. Drop everything else.
Get together half a dozen good men and ride up to Bovier’s Camp. Bring
with you supplies enough for several days. Wait at the camp until you
hear from me. Tait and Gilroy killed. By cattlemen, looks like. I’ll
know more about that later.”
He ate a hurried breakfast, gathered together a couple of sandwiches for
lunch, and struck across country for the raided sheep camp. He plunged
into the gray desert, keeping the rampart of hills at his left. In the
early-morning light the atmosphere gave to the panorama in front of him
an extraordinary effect of space.
As soon as he came in sight of the sheep camp Matson dismounted and tied
his horse. He had to pick up a cold trail covered with snow. The fewer
unnecessary tracks the better.
The bodies of the sheepmen lay where they had fallen, a light mantle of
snow sheeting the still forms. Three empty shells lay close to the rifle
of Tait, but Gilroy’s gun had not been fired. It was lying in the wagon,
where he had left it when he made his dash to escape.
The contour of the country was such that the attack must have been made
from in front. Matson put himself in place of the raiders, and guessed
with fair accuracy their plan of operations. The sun had already melted
most of the snow, and for hours he quartered over the ground, examining
tracks that the untrained eye would never have seen. Sometimes a bit of
broken brush, sometimes a leaf trampled into the ground, told him what
he wanted to know. Again, it was a worn heel plate that stood out to him
like a signpost on the road. Twice he picked up an empty shell that had
been thrown out of a rifle during the rush forward.
The boot tracks, faint though they were, led him to the pine grove where
the horses had been tethered. Here he went down on his hands and knees,
studying the details of every hoofprint that differentiated it from
others. The care with which he did this, the intentness of his
observation, would have surprised and perhaps amused a tenderfoot. An
unskilled tracker, though he might be a Sherlock Holmes in the city,
could have discovered nothing here worth learning. Matson found
registered marks of identification for horses as certain as those of the
Bertillon system for criminals.
With amazing pains he traced the retreat of the raiders to the Three
Pines. It was a very difficult piece of trailing, for the snow had wiped
out the tracks entirely for stretches of hundreds of yards. Once it was
a splash of tobacco juice on a flat rock that told him he was still on
the heels of those he wanted. In Shoshone County men will still tell you
that Aleck Matson’s feat of running down the night raiders in spite of
an intervening snowstorm was the best bit of trailing they ever knew.
From the Three Pines the tracks of most of the party took the sheriff
straight to the Circle Diamond Ranch. He dropped in just in time to join
Mrs. Stovall at her midday dinner.
They exchanged the casual gossip of the neighbourhood. Presently he
steered the talk in the direction he wanted.
“Mac is up at the round-up, I reckon.”
“Yes. He drove a bunch of cattle down last night.”
“So? Any of the boys with him?”
“Three of them. They stayed in the bunk house.”
“I’ve been wanting to see Art Philips. Was he one of them?”
“No. Young Silcott and Jack Cole and Hal Falkner.”
“Went back this morning, did they?” asked Matson casually. He gave
rather the impression that he was making conversation to pass the time.
“Right after breakfast.”
“Jack Cole was talking about trading me a Winchester. Don’t suppose he
had it with him.”
“No. Hal Falkner had one. A deer had been seen near camp, and he brought
it on the chance he might see it again.”
“I like a .30-30 for deer myself. Didn’t happen to notice what Falkner
carried?”
Mrs. Stovall shook her head. “A gun is a gun to me.”
“When it comes to guns I reckon a man and a woman are made different. I
never see one without wanting to look it over. Mac was going to show me
one of his next time I came up to the ranch. I don’t suppose——”
“All his guns are in that little room off the living room, as Mrs. McCoy
calls the parlour. Go in and look ’em over if you like.”
The sheriff thanked her and availed himself of the chance. When he came
out he found Mrs. Stovall clearing off the table.
“Expect the boys were glad to come down and eat a home-cooked meal at a
real table. I’ll bet they were so frolicsome at getting away from camp
that they kept you up all hours of the night.”
“They woke me when they first came, but I soon fell asleep. Likely they
were tired and turned right in.”
“Sounds reasonable. Well, I’ll be moving along, Mrs. Stovall. Much
obliged for that peach cobbler like Mother used to make.”
On his way to the stable Matson dropped in at the bunk house. He made
the discovery that at least one of McCoy’s guests had lain on top of the
blankets and not under them. Nor had he taken the trouble to remove his
boots. The mud stains of the heels were plainly printed on the wool.
The officer smiled. “Just made a bluff of lying down; figured it wasn’t
worth while taking off his boots for a few minutes. I’ll bet that was
Falkner. He’s a roughneck, anyhow.”
Matson rode back to the Three Pines, and from there followed the trail
of the two horses that had turned into the hills at this point. By the
middle of the afternoon it brought him to the Circle B R, a ranch which
nestled at the foot of the big peaks in a little mountain park.
It took no clairvoyant to see that Mrs. Rogers was not glad to see him.
Unless her face libelled her, she had been weeping. Her eyes flew a flag
of alarm as soon as they fell upon him.
“G’afternoon, Mrs. Rogers. Brad home?”
“No. He’s at the round-up.”
“Gone back, has he?”
She considered a moment before a reluctant “Yes” fell from her lips.
“Reckon I’ll ride over to the camp. Is it still at the foot of the Flat
Tops?”
“Yes.” Then, as if something within forced the words out in spite of
her, she added: “Are you looking for Brad?”
“I want to have a talk with him.”
His eyes told him that she was in a flutter of apprehension. He guessed
that the dread which all day had weighed on her heart was no longer a
dull, dead thing in her bosom. Her lips were ashen.
“Maybe—maybe I could tell him what it was.”
“Oh, I’ll ride over. When did he leave?”
“I don’t rightly know just when,” she faltered.
It was clear that she feared to arouse his suspicion by refusing to talk
and that she was equally afraid of telling too much.
The sheriff smiled grimly as he rode across the hills. He had five of
the raiders identified already—five out of either six or seven, he
wasn’t quite sure which. He glanced across toward Bald Knob, and judged
from the sky that it was already snowing over there. If he had been at
Wagon Wheel instead of at Bovier’s Camp when Purdy panted in with the
news of the killing he could not have arrived in time to pick up the
trail. His luck had stood up fine. That the evidence against the
lawbreakers would sift in to him now he had no doubt. He intended that
this should be the last night raid ever made in Shoshone County. Unless
the district attorney fell down on his job, more than one of the Bald
Knob raiders would end with a rope around his throat.
Matson admitted to himself a certain surprise that McCoy and Rogers
should be involved in such an affair. Sheep raids were one thing; murder
was quite another. The sheriff liked Rowan. The cattleman was straight
as a string. His word was good against that of any man in the district.
It was known that he would fight, but it was hard to think of him as
planning the cold-blooded murder of an enemy.
The sheriff knew how high the feelings ran between the sheep and cattle
interests. The cattlemen knew they were facing ruin because Tait and his
associates maintained the right to run sheep upon any range just as
others ran stock. To them it seemed that the intruders had no right
whatever to the range. It belonged to cattle by right of a long-time
prior occupancy. Moreover, under the leadership of Tait the sheepmen had
been particularly obnoxious. They had refused to recognize any dead line
whatever and their attitude had been in the nature of a boastful
challenge.
It was generally known that several of the cattlemen had personal
grievances against Tait. First there was McCoy, with one that dated back
several years. Silcott had been wounded by the sheepman and Falkner had
been badly beaten by him. Cole, too, had quarrelled with him. One of
these four might have started the shooting, Matson reasoned, or Tait
might have done so himself. Legally, the question was not a vital one,
since Tait had been shot down while defending his property against
attack. Those who had ridden on the raid were guilty of murder no matter
who fired the first shot.
Yet Matson was puzzled. McCoy had been the leader of the group. There
could be no doubt about that. His was far and away the strongest
personality. And McCoy usually thought straight. He did not muddle his
brain with false reasoning. How, then, had he come to do such a thing?
As the sheriff sat by the campfire at the round-up later, it was even
more difficult to think of this clean, level-eyed boss of the rodeo as
an ambusher by night. The whole record of the man rose up to give the
lie to the story that he had ridden out to kill his foe in the dark.
While Sam Yerby entertained the boys with one of his trail songs,
Matson’s mind was going over the facts he had gathered.
“Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own.
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.”
Sam looked around carefully, selected a flat rock at the edge of the
fire, and splashed the centre of it accurately with tobacco juice. Give
him a chew of tobacco as a weapon and the Texan was the champion shot of
Wyoming.
His singsong voice took up the next stanza:
“Oh, you’ll be soup for Uncle Sam’s Injuns!
‘It’s beef, heap beef!’ I hear them cry.
Git along, git along, git along, little dogies,
You’re going to be beef steers by and by.”
Matson did not listen to the song. He was no longer thinking of McCoy.
From the shadow where he lounged his narrowed eyes watched Yerby
intently. He had not moved a muscle of his big body, but every nerve had
suddenly grown taut. For he guessed now who the sixth man was that had
ridden on the sheep raid. Sam’s habit of selecting a rock target for his
tobacco juice had betrayed him.