THE IRON HAND OF SKY LINE
Kate Cathrew—Cattle Kate Cathrew—lived like an eagle, on the crest
of the world looking down. She looked down along the steep slopes of
Mystery Ridge, dark with the everlasting green of conifers, speckled
with the lighter green of glade and brush patch, the weathered red
of outcropping stone—far down to the silver thread of Nameless River
flowing between its grass-clad banks, the fair spread of the valley
with its priceless feeding land.
The buildings of Sky Line Ranch lay nestled at the foot of Rainbow
Cliff, compact, solid, like a fortress, reached only by cattle
trails, for there was no wagon road. There could have been none on
these forbidding steeps. The buildings themselves were built of
logs, but all that was within them had come into the lonesome
country on pack-mules, even to the big steel range in the kitchen.
The house itself was an amazing place, packed with all necessities,
beautiful with luxuries, its contents worth a fortune. It had many
rooms and a broad veranda circled it. Pine trees stood in ranks
about it, and out of the sheer face of Rainbow Cliff at the back a
six-inch stream of crystal water shot forth in a graceful arc from
the height of a man’s shoulder, to fall into a natural basin in the
solid rock by its own ceaseless action.
And stretching out like widespread wings on either side this
majestic cliff ran crowning the ridge for seven miles, a splendid
escarpment, straight up-and-down, averaging two hundred feet from
its base in the slanting earth to the sharp line of its rimrock.
Rainbow Cliff, grim guardian of the Upper Country and the Deep Heart
hills themselves, supposed to be impassable in all its length, dark
in the early day but gleaming afar with all the colors of the
spectrum when the sun dropped over toward the west at noon. It was
this gorgeous radiance, caused by the many shades of the weathered
stone, which had given the battlement its name. No man was ever
known to have scaled the cliff—save and except John Allison, found
dead at its foot two years back—for the giant spine was alike on
both sides. Men from the Upper Country had penetrated the Deep
Hearts to its northern base, but there they had stopped, to circle
its distant ends, void of the secrets they had hoped to wrest from
it.
And Kate Cathrew lived under it, a strange, half-sybaritic woman,
running her cattle on the slopes of Mystery, riding after them like
any man, standing in at round-up, branding, beef-gathering, her keen
eyes missing nothing, her methods high-handed. Her riders obeyed her
lightest word, though they were mostly of a type that few men would
care to handle, hard-featured, close-lipped, sharp-eyed, hard riders
and hard drinkers, as all the world of the Deep Hearts knew.
Once in a blue moon they went to Bement, the town that lay three
days’ ride to the north beyond the hills, and what they did there
was merely hinted at. They drank and played and took possession of
its four saloons, and when they finally reared out of it to go back
to their loneliness and work, the town came out of its temporary
retirement, breathing again.
Yet Kate Cathrew handled these men and got good work out of them,
and she belonged to none of them.
Not but what there were hot hearts in the outfit and hands that
itched for her, lips that wet themselves hungrily when she passed
close in her supreme indifference.
But Rio Charley carried a bullet-scar in his right shoulder, and Big
Basford walked with a slight limp—yet they both stayed with her.
“Sort of secret-society stuff,” said Price Selwood once, “Kate is
the Grand Vizier.”
There was no other white woman at Sky Line. She would have none.
Minnie Pine, a stalwart young Pomo half-breed, and old Josefa, brown
as parchment and non-committal, carried on the housework under her
supervision, and no one else was needed.
At noon of the day after Kate’s visit to the store at Cordova, she
sat in the big living-room at Sky Line looking over accounts. An
observer having seen her on the previous occasion, would hardly have
recognized her now. Gone were the broad hat, the pearl-buttoned
shirt, the fringed riding skirt and the boots.
The black hair was piled high on her head, its smooth backward sweep
crinkled by the tight curl that would not be brushed out. There was
fragrance about her, and the dress she wore was of dark blue
flowered silk, its clever draping setting off her form to its best
advantage, which needed no advantage. Silk stockings smoothed
themselves lovingly over her slender ankles, and soft kid slippers,
all vanity of cut and make and sparkling buckle, clothed her feet in
beauty.
She was either a fool or very brave, for she was the living spirit
of seduction.
But the sombre eyes she turned up from her work to scan the rider
who came to her, his hat in his hands, were all business,
impersonal.
“Well?” she said impatiently.
The man was young, scarce more than a boy, of a devil-may-care type,
and he looked at her fearlessly.
“Here’s something for you, Boss,” he said grinning, as he handed her
a soiled bit of paper.
It was thin, yellowed with age, and it seemed to have been roughly
handled.
The mistress of Sky Line spread it out before her on the top of the
dark wood desk.
“The Lord is the strength of my life,” she read, “of
whom shall I be afraid? Though an host shall encamp
against me, my heart shall not fear.”
It was unsigned and the characters, while hurriedly scrawled, were
made by bold strokes, as if a strong heart had, indeed, inspired
them, a strong hand penned them.
With a full-mouthed oath Kate Cathrew crumpled the bit of paper in
her hand and flung it in the waste-basket against the wall.
“How did you get that?” she demanded.
“On the point of the knife you sent th’ girl,” he answered soberly,
“an’ right near the middle of my stomach.”
For a considerable space of time the woman sat regarding him. “I
sent you to help in the breaking of morale,” she said coldly, “not
to bring me back defiance. Next time I’ll send a more trustworthy
man.”
She nodded dismissal, and the youth went quickly, his face burning.
At the far end of the veranda he almost ran into Big Basford, whose
huge, gorilla-like shape was made more sinister and repellant by the
perceptible limp. Basford was always somewhere near, if possible,
when men talked with Kate Cathrew.
His great strength and stature, his small eyes, black and rimmed
with red, his unkempt head and flaring black beard, everything about
him suggested a savagery and power with which few men cared to
trifle.
He scanned the boy’s flushed face with swift appraising.
“I take it,” he said grinning, “that the boss wasn’t pleased with
you?”
“Take it or leave it,” said the other with foolhardy daring, “is it
any of your business?”
With a smothered roar Big Basford leaped for him, surprisingly
nimble on his lamed foot, surprisingly light.
He caught him by the throat and bore him backward across the
veranda’s edge, so that both bodies fell heavily on the boards of
the floor.
“You’ll find what’s my business, damn you,” gritted Big Basford;
“you——!”
He got to his knees and straddling the lad’s body came down on his
throat with all his weight in his terrible grip. At the sound of the
fall Minnie Pine leaped to a window.
“That black devil is killing the Blue Eyes,” she said in patois
Spanish to Josefa. “Give me that knife——”
But there was no need of Minnie’s interference.
Kate Cathrew had heard that heavy thunder of falling bodies on
boards and she was quicker than her half-breed, for she was up and
away from the desk before Big Basford had risen on his knees, and as
she rose her left hand swept down the wall, taking from its two pegs
the heavy quirt that always hung there.
With the first jab of the boy’s head back on the floor, she was
running down the veranda, her arm raised high. With the second she
was between Big Basford and the light like a threat of doom.
As he surged forward once more above the blackening face in his
throttling fingers, she flung her body back in a stiff arc to get
more impetus—and drove the braided lash forward and down like a
fury.
It circled Big Basford’s head from the back, the bitter end snapping
across his face with indescribable force.
It curled him away from his victim, tumbling back on his heels with
his murderous hands covering his cheeks.
For a moment he hung on the veranda’s edge, balanced, then slipped
off, lurching on his lame foot. He held his hands over his face for
a tense moment. Then he looked up through his fingers, where the
blood was beginning to ooze, straight at the woman.
The red-rimmed eyes were savage with rage and hurt, but behind both
was a flaming passion which seemed to swell and burgeon with a
perverted admiration.
“I’ve told you before, Basford,” said Kate Cathrew, “that I will
deal with my men myself. I don’t need your overly zealous aid. Get
out of my sight—and stay out till you can heed what I say. Minnie,
take this fool away—pump some wind into him. Give him some whiskey.”
She touched the boy contemptuously with the toe of her buckled
slipper. He was weakly trying to get up and the Pomo girl
unceremoniously finished the effort, lifting him almost bodily in
her arms and supporting him through the door into the kitchen. The
look she turned over her shoulder at Big Basford was venomous.
The owner of Sky Line walked down the veranda to her living-room
door. At its lintel she stopped and stood, drawing the heavy quirt
through her fingers, looking back at Big Basford. He had watched her
progress and now the hard, bright, sparkling gaze of her dark eyes
seemed to force him to movement, so that he picked up his hat, set
it on his head and turned away toward the corrals at Rainbow’s foot,
swinging with a rolling gait that further made one think of jungle
folk.
But the lips in the flaring beard were twitching.
Kate Cathrew went in and hung the quirt on its smooth pegs, then sat
down and took up her interrupted work just where she had left it.
“Three hundred head,” she said, “prime on hoof—at thirteen-fifty——”
and her pen began to travel evenly across the page before her.