THE DECISION
Roy’s breakfast was flavored with the tale of his moonlight ride to
Harver’s Gully. Between bites he told the story of his meeting with
Froud and of the rustler’s strange insistence that he did not know
Checkered Shirt.
“You say Froud wasn’t riding one of our horses?” Teddy asked.
“No. He was sitting on a bronc I never saw before. One of his own,
or maybe one he rustled from another outfit. Somehow, he seemed
puzzled after he had me covered, as if he didn’t know what to do
with me. Took him a mighty long time to decide to bring me to
Harver’s Gully.”
Neither Mr. Manley nor Teddy had yet taken to their beds, having
reached the X Bar X but an hour before Roy. All night they had spent
in looking for the missing youth, and at last they had decided he
might have returned home. They were about to start on another search
when Roy rode into the yard.
“Say, Dad, did you find that flivver?” Roy asked, leaning back in
his chair with a satisfied sigh. A strip of adhesive tape marked the
spot where the bullet had torn his ear.
“We did,” the ranchman stated. “Teddy marked it in a ditch. Wasn’t
hardly worth sweepin’ up. They’d stripped it clean and smashed the
motor to pieces with a wrench. Bug Eye was seein’ red. He could
hardly talk. By golly, if the same gang is doin’ all this dirty
work, they’ve got an awful lot to settle for!”
“I’ll tell a maverick they have!” Roy declared hotly. “And they’ll
settle, too! Froud made a mistake when he brought me over to
Harver’s Gully. I’ve got an idea that the gang’s headquarters is
around there some place. Teddy, you and I will have to take a ride
over there soon. It’s right on a deep part of the river, you know,
and we might get a few fish--though the kind of fish I’d like to get
can’t be caught with a hook and line.”
It was eight o’clock before Roy threw himself upon his bed and gave
himself over to the blissful luxury of complete relaxation. The
others who had joined in the chase, including of course Mr. Manley
and Teddy, were likewise catching up on some sleep. At twelve
o’clock the ranch yard presented a strangely deserted appearance.
When usually the cowboys would be yelling loudly for Sing Lung to
hurry up with that grub, now from the bunk-house sounded only the
snores of punchers sunk deep in slumber. Those who had not gone on
the night ride stayed as silent as possible, out of respect for
their fatigued brothers. But it would have taken a salvo of
twenty-one guns to awaken those buckers.
At four o’clock Roy opened his eyes full upon a beam of sunlight
that shot through his window and played upon his face. Automatically
he turned upon his side, then saw that in the bed across from him
Teddy still slept peacefully. Reaching over, Roy gently raised the
window shade, so that the sun now shone upon Teddy. The boy moved
restlessly, threw his hand over his eyes, then turned and saw his
brother grinning at him.
“What time?” he asked in a monotone.
“Six-thirty! You going to sleep all day? I’ve been up hours. Had
lunch and went for a ride with Curly.”
“Curly? You mean Nell?”
“No, I mean Ethel. Why?”
“Oh, nothing.” Then, when he saw the grin on his brother’s face,
Teddy turned to the wall with a snort of disgust.
“Don’t be silly! You just woke up yourself. Six-thirty! Humph! I’ll
bet it’s about twelve o’clock. Well--” as he looked at a watch on
the chair beside him--“it’s only a little after four, anyway. I knew
you were kidding.”
“Yes, you did! I noticed that as soon as I said I’d been riding with
Curly. But say, we’d better get up.”
“Wait a minute. I want to ask you a few questions about Froud, Roy.
You say he got sore when you mentioned Checkered Shirt?”
“I’ll tell a maverick he did! There’s something up between those
two. I wish we could come across that hombre in the cross-word
puzzle laundry-piece!”
“He probably’s got another by now. Even rustlers have got to change
their shirts once in a while. But, seriously, what made you think
that Harver’s Gully is headquarters for Froud’s gang?”
“Because, didn’t he head right for there? And then when we got there
he seemed sort of sorry he’d come. He thought I knew too much for
the good of his health. Golly, Ted, when you rode by that grove of
trees I sure held my breath! Froud had his gun stuck hard into my
ribs, and if you had taken it into your head to ride in I’d be
strummin’ a harp right now.”
“Oh, well, if I had come in, Froud might have beat it off. Can’t
tell. Roy, you should have seen that flivver! The top was ripped
completely off. Two tires were flat. The motor was a wreck. It
looked as though it had been struck by lightning.”
“Wonder what they did all that for? I suppose you didn’t find the
dresses Mrs. Ball sent over?”
“Not a trace. Looked like a spite job to me. Bug Eye said the same.
If he ever catches the gang who held him up, he’ll spite ’em!”
“Did he go back to the 8 X 8?”
“No; he’s asleep in the bunk-house. He wants to have another look
for the thieves, I guess. If his boss thinks it’s the same gang that
stole his cattle, he’ll let Bug Eye search all he wants to--and
maybe help him. I’ve got a hunch that something is bound to break
soon. The people around these parts are pretty sick and tired of
having those roughnecks play fast and loose with their property.”
“You said a mouthful! Come on! Let’s hit the deck. We’ve got plenty
to do.”
“Think we ought to have another go at the dance tonight?”
“Not me! Anyway, the evening dresses of Nell and Ethel are lost, and
so they won’t be so keen for it. We’ll just let it slide. Things are
going to be pretty lively here from now on. There won’t be much time
for dancing.”
Springing from his bed, Roy walked to the bathroom and doused his
head and face with cold water. Teddy did the same, and after
“slicking up” a bit the two boys made for the yard. Mr. Manley was
standing talking to Nick Looker when Roy and Teddy approached.
“Roy,” his father called, “c’mere a second, will you? Want to ask
you some more about that scar-faced friend of yours. Whereabouts in
Harver’s Gully did he take you?”
“Well, there’s a grove of quakermasts down on the near side of the
river. If you keep on going, you’d come to a small rise, from which
you could see for a good distance on either side. I rode over there
only last fall.”
“Yore dad said you had an idee the rustlers hang out around there,”
Nick stated. “That so, Roy?”
“I don’t know whether it’s so or not, Nick; but that’s what I think.
As I told dad, Froud seemed kind of sorry he’d brought me to the
gully. Then he ducked as soon as he could without waiting to fight
it out with me, though I winged him in the arm after he’d nicked me
here,” and Roy pointed to his ear. “He’s got to have that arm of his
treated some place, or he’ll get poisoned. The nearest doctor is
over at Hawley. Say, I think I’ll--”
“Telephone to him to hold a man with a wounded arm?” Teddy
interrupted. “I thought of that, too. Go ahead, Roy. Myself, I don’t
figure much on getting Froud that way. But it won’t do any harm to
try.”
Mr. Manley said they would wait there while Roy telephoned. When the
boy returned his face bore a disappointed look.
“Doc said he’d been there early this morning and gone,” Roy
declared. “We might have had a chance if I had called up sooner.
Well--”
“The doc couldn’t have held him,” Mr. Manley broke in. “Suppose it
happened to be the wrong man? Doc ’ud be in a fine fix then. No,
boys, we’ve got to work this thing out for ourselves. No use foolin’
around. The thing to do is to ride that varmint down an’ snub his
horns so he can’t do no more damage. Seems to me he’s got a streak
of real meanness in him. Didn’t do him no good a-tall to steal that
flivver. He just wanted to act up. Well, his time will come. An’
when it does, he’s got an awful lot to account for!”
Bug Eye made his appearance at six o’clock. He had slept off his
wild anger at finding his flivver wantonly wrecked, but still the
indignity of being made to walk all those miles to the X Bar X
smouldered within him. A cowboy’s legs are not for walking, they are
to keep him steady on a horse.
Upon being told of Roy’s adventure with Froud, Bug Eye asked Mr.
Manley for a horse to ride after the rustler, but he was persuaded
to calm down and sit tight for a bit.
“This waitin’ gets on my nerves,” he proclaimed to the world in
general. “If I had my way, I’d get a gang together an’ stick so
close to that hoss-thief’s neck that his feet would bust through the
soles of his shoes.”
“Yea, an’ have his head for cover, pronto,” Nick sneered, “with
twenty head of yore cattle, our three horses, an’ Pete knows how
much else. Then where’d we be? No sir, the thing to do is to go
about this thing like you was eatin’ custard pie. Soft an’ easy, but
sure to get there. We don’t want no more flare-backs. Twice we
almost stumbled on their heels, an’ both times they stepped out o’
their shoes an’ vamoosed right quick. Why, Teddy an’ Roy got within
shootin’ distance of Froud up on Mica Mountain, but it didn’t do no
good, an’ it wasn’t the boys’ fault that they got away, either. So
when we get ’em, we want to get ’em good. None of this half-way
business for us.”
This seemed the general consensus of opinion at the X Bar X, and
nothing was done immediately except to notify the sheriff at Hawley
that a hold-up had occurred and that some property was stolen from a
car.
“Though I might as well have told a cigar store Indian for all the
good it’ll do,” Mr. Manley declared, with a grim laugh. “That
sheriff is more politics than he is sheriff. Whatever roundin’ up of
thieves we want done, we’ve got to do ourselves.”