THE SHADOWS THICKEN
Old man Conlan was, as McKane had said, half crazy with the loss of
his cattle. They were not so many, only a matter of some twenty-two
head, but they meant a lot to him. He owned no patented land. He was
merely a squatter in the lower fringes of the Upper Country around
at the western end of Mystery Ridge where Rainbow Cliff stopped
spectacularly. He lived with his wife in a disreputable old cabin
and worked beyond his years and strength in the white fire of an
ambition—a laudable ambition, for he had a crippled son back East in
college. He ran cattle in the hills and he knew every head of his
brand to the last wobbly calf, an easy matter, since they were few.
At the store in Cordova he told his woes to the countryside, and he
had an attentive audience, for his issue was theirs, and in a
broader way.
On a pleasant day in late June, the old man reiterated his
grievance, pulling his long grey beard and flailing his gaunt arms
in eloquent gesture.
“Whoever they be that lifted my steers,” he said grimly, “I damn
their souls to hell! I’d damn their bodies, too, believe me, men, if
I knowed ’em an’ could throw my gun on ’em. Shuriff, here, might
take me to jail next minute an’ I’d go happy.”
Selwood, sitting at a table desultorily playing cards, pushed back
his hat and smiled.
“Nobody’s going to take you to jail for killing a rustler, Jake,” he
said, “we’d give you a reward instead. I’d give a lot to have the
chance myself.”
“Why don’t ye hunt fer it, then?” demanded Conlan testily, “ef I was
shuriff——”
“Yes?” said Selwood, laying his cards flat on the table for a moment
and facing him, “what would you do if you were sheriff?”
“I’d try, anyway,” said the old man, with a touch of scorn, “to find
a trace of somethin’. I’d not stay on my own ranch an’ let th’ world
go hang! I’d ride th’ hills, ’tenny rate.”
A slow paleness crept into Selwood’s face, giving it an odd ashen
hue, like a candle. He laid down his hand definitely and looked
round at the ten or twelve men lounging in the room.
Among them were Bossick and one or two others who had suffered at
the hands of the mysterious thieves of Nameless.
“I know that Jake here voices the feeling which has been growing
against me for some time,” he said evenly, “and this is as good a
time as any to speak about it.”
“You’re our sheriff, Price, an’ a damned good one,” spoke up Bossick
loyally, “an’ I for one have nothing to say against you. I know—no
one better—what you’re up against. I trailed my own stuff into that
river with you, an’ I know that they simply vanished. I’ve done my
own darndest to unravel th’ mystery, an’ I can’t see what more any
man’d do, sheriff or not!”
Selwood smiled at him.
“Thanks, John,” he said, “I’ll not forget that. But I hate to have
my friends think I’m laying down on the job. I haven’t said anything
about what I’ve been doing, preferring to wait until I had something
to show, but that time seems far off still. This is the smoothest
work I ever saw, baffling——. I don’t stand to simple reason. We know
beef cattle don’t fly—and yet that seems the only way they could
have got out of the country. They go—and they leave no trail. I
know, for I’ve ridden the hills, Jake, notwithstanding, in dragnet
fashion. Ask my wife how many nights I’ve slept at home since the
last raid. Take a look at my horse out there. He’s hard as iron and
lean as a rail. And there’s another at home that looks just like
him. If I haven’t found anything it’s not because I haven’t
traveled.”
Several men stirred and one spoke.
“I don’t think many of us blame you, Price,” he said, “but it does
gall a feller to lose stock an’ have to stand helpless.”
“And how do you think it galls me to fail to catch the lifters?”
asked Selwood quietly. “It’s my job—my—my honor.”
He picked up his cards again and turned to the table.
“But no matter what is said, or thought, about me,” he finished,
“every day of my further hold on office will be given over to the
same hunt—until I find what I’m after, or give up as a failure.”
Hink Helsey, the bearded man who had sat on the store porch that day
of the fight between Selwood and McKane, now dropped the forward
legs of his chair to the floor and sat up, doubling his knife and
putting it away in a pocket.
“Sheriff,” he said, “I’m stackin’ on you, along with Bossick. I
think you’ll ketch yer game—an’ I think you’re already on th’ right
trail.”
McKane looked at him as if he could kill him and his tongue itched
to flail both men, the speaker and Selwood, for he knew that they
meant the same thing.
There was one listener, however, who said nothing and whose sharp
eyes scanned each face in the room with painstaking thoroughness.
This was Sud Provine, a rider from Sky Line who had come down for
the mail.
The Sky Line men never stayed long at Cordova, except as they came
now and again for a night at play.
When the talk had changed from the all-absorbing topic of the stolen
cattle, this worthy rose, took his sack and departed.
Several pairs of eyes followed him, but no one spoke of him.
There was something about the Sky Line riders which seemed to
preclude discussion in the open.
* * * * *
Price Selwood had told the truth.
There was not a night of the long warming weeks of spring which had
not seen him, a shadow in the shadows, riding the slopes and flats
of Nameless. Sometimes he sat for hours high on some shoulder of the
hills watching the bowl beneath with the moonlight sifting down in a
silver flood. Again, when the nights were dark, he rode up under the
very lip of Rainbow Cliff and watched and listened, his every sense
as acute as a panther’s. There were times when he sat for half a
night within hailing distance of Kate Cathrew’s stronghold, and once
her dogs, winding him, yammered excitedly. This brought out a
stealthy listener, whose only betrayal was the different note in the
dogs’ voices.
But someone was there in the darkness of the veranda, and Selwood
outstayed him, whoever he was—outstayed the animals’ excitement,
their curiosity, and left with the hint of coming dawn to drop back
down the slants and sleep the day away at home.
Night again saw him travelling, and always his one obsession
travelled with him—the hard-and-fast presentiment that Kate Cathrew
was the tangible element in the smoke-screen of mystery which rode
the country.
It was not long after the talk at the store, perhaps a week or such
a matter, when he got the first faint inkling of a clue. It was
scarcely more, yet it served to sharpen his wits to a razor edge. It
was not moonlight, neither was it clear dark of the moon, but that
vague time in between when a pale sickle sailed the vault and shed
its half-light to make shadows ghostly and substance illusive.
Selwood had ridden all the lower reaches of Nameless that week, had
skirted the western end of Mystery and even trailed far into the
Deep Hearts themselves in an effort to find something, anything,
which might tell him he was at least on the right track.
He hardly knew what it was for which he searched—perhaps an old
trail, perhaps a secret branding fire. But he had found nothing. So
he fell back on his night riding again, and as always this led him
instinctively into the region of Sky Line Ranch. He had crossed the
river near the head of Nance Allison’s tilled land, and had sat a
moment peering down the length of the brown stretch where the rows
of young corn were springing bravely.
It pleased the sheriff to see this promise of a fair crop,
for he knew the girl, and had known her father for an honest,
straightforward man. The hard effort of the family to get along was
known to all the ranchers and earned its mead of admiration in a
land where work was regarded almost as a religion.
Nameless could condone wrong, but not shiftlessness.
And this girl was not shiftless.
Instead her sharp management and her heavy labor were matters of
note. So the sheriff took special cognizance of the look of her big
field of corn and nodded in pleased satisfaction.
“Too bad she lost those six steers,” he told himself, “they’d have
helped a lot in her year’s furnishing. Game young pair.”
Then he moved on up into the blue-brush that clothed the slants by
the river and made for the heights.
Three hours later he was sitting sidewise in his saddle beside the
well-worn trail which led up to Sky Line. He was not too close,
being ensconced in a little thicket of maple about fifty yards back
and above. He had spent many an hour here before.
It afforded a good view of the trail, and better still, a splendid
chance to hear.
Twice in the last month he had heard and seen a bunch of Kate’s
riders coming home from Cordova where they had gone to gamble. But
this fact had been unproductive of anything sinister.
They had ridden boldly, as behooves innocent men, their horses
climbing slowly with rattle of spur and bit-chain, the squeak and
whine of saddles.
Selwood had reached a hand to his horse’s nose to preclude its
neighing, and had seen them pass on up and disappear.
Next day he had unostentatiously made sure that these men had played
at McKane’s—in both instances.
And now he waited again, seemingly in a foolish quest.
He knew it would seem so to an observer. It seemed so to him when he
regarded it with reason. But reason was not actuating him. It was
instinct—hunch.
So Sheriff Price Selwood—whom Kate Cathrew quite frankly hated—sat
in the darkness and watched and listened beside her trail, a lost
little thread on the vast expanse of the wooded slopes.
A long hour passed, filled with the soundful silence of the
wilderness. He heard an owl call and call in mournful quaver from
far below, another answer. He knew that some hunting animal was
abroad in the manzanita to his right, for he caught a thud and
rustle, the pitiful, shrill scream of a rabbit. A night bird gave
out a sweet, alert note from time to time and an insect drummed in a
pine tree.
And then he heard, or thought he did, another sound.
It was so far off and faint that he could not be sure, and for a
time he fancied he might have been mistaken. Then it came again—the
crack of hoofs on stone, and once more silence.
He held his breath, listening.
Once again he heard that cracking of hoofs—and this time he knew
them for cloven hoofs. A cattle-brute was coming up the trail toward
him. There was nothing in that fact to cause undue excitement—except
one thing.
Under ordinary conditions that steer would be lying in some snug
glade chewing its cud. In no natural case would it be coming up a
trail at a smart pace—with a horse behind it!
And there _was_ a horse behind it.
Selwood heard now distinctly the quieter step of a saddle horse.
He leaned forward, gripping his own mount’s nose, and strained his
eyes in the illusive half-light. Presently he saw what he knew he
would see—a rider, driving one lone steer up the trail to Sky Line.
It was too dark to see anything else—who the man was, or what manner
of steer he drove, or what horse he rode.
And though he waited till the cooler breath of the night warned him
of coming day he saw nothing more.
He spent half the next day at Cordova, listening, but though several
cattlemen came in there was nothing said of a loss among them.
But the day after old man Conlan was in and fit for durance.
He threw his ragged hat on McKane’s floor and jumped on it, reviling
the law and all it stood for.
“Two more!” he bellowed with a break of tears in his old voice.
“By——! ef this ain’t th’ limit! I only had sixteen left an’ th’ two
best out th’ lot come up missin’ this mornin’! Ain’t no trail agin.
They’s tracks all over, sure—but th’ other stock is on th’ slope an’
this time there just ain’t _nothin’_!”
Barman, from up on Nameless, was at the store and he and McKane
tried to calm the old man down, though the cattleman’s own blood was
roiled.
“It is a damned dirty shame!” he said indignantly, “have you told
Selwood?”
“Him?” grunted Conlan. “Hell!”
“He’s here now,” said McKane, “just getting down.”
Price Selwood entered in time to hear the last of the old man’s
tirade, to catch the drift of what had happened, and his eyes glowed
for a second.
He laid a hand on Conlan’s arm.
“Jake,” he said, “hold in a little longer.”
“Hold hell!” said the other shaking off the hand, “I’ll be ready for
the county house in Bement in another three months!”
“I don’t think so, Jake,” said the sheriff quietly, “tell me—were
those two steers branded?”
“’Course. Plain as day. J. C. on right hip, swaller-fork in left
ear. One was roan an’ t’other a bay-spot.”
Selwood turned without a word, left the store, mounted and rode
away.
“Jest like him!” said Conlan bitterly, “goes a’ridin’ off all
secret-like an’ snappy—’s if he knowed somethin’ or wanted us to
think he did.”
“Mebby he does,” said Barman.
* * * * *
Sheriff Selwood rode straight up to Sky Line Ranch. It took him a
good three hours, going fast, and it was far after noon when he
pulled rein at Kate Cathrew’s corral gate and called for her.
She came, frowning and inhospitable.
“What do you want of me?” she asked coldly.
“Nothing,” said Selwood, “except to tell you I’m going to take a
look around your place.”
“Look and be damned!” she flared. “What do you think you’ll find?”
“Well—” he drawled, smiling, “I might find a couple of steers
branded with J. C. on the right hip.”
For one fraction of a second the black eyes burning sombrely on his
flickered, lost their direct steadiness.
Selwood laughed, though he was alert in every nerve and his right
hand was on his thigh near to the butt of the gun that hung there.
Caldwell and several other riders stood close, their eyes on him. He
thought of John Allison, found dead at the foot of Rainbow Cliff, to
all intents the victim of accident.
“What’s the matter, Kate?” he asked pointedly. “Suffering from
nerves? Didn’t think you had any.”
And he turned to ride over toward the corral.
Kate’s flaming orbs sought the face of her foreman.
“Go with him,” they telegraphed, and Caldwell went.
Selwood covered every foot of the home place of Sky Line in a grim
silence, looking for anything. He looked into corral and stable,
brush pasture and branding pen, but found no sign of the stolen
steers.
When at last he rode away it was straight down along the face of
Rainbow Cliff toward the west. He did not know why he skirted the
rock-face, since it was hard going. The earth at the foot of the
great precipice was slanting and covered with the loose stone that
was forever falling from the weathered wall. It was rough on his
horse’s feet, but he held him to it—and he was surprised to find
that Caldwell was still with him, and riding inside next to the
Cliff.
“Think I need escort, Caldwell?” he asked sarcastically.
“Mebby as much as we need spyin’ on,” returned the other and rode
along.
Three miles further on the sheriff turned down the mountain and the
foreman reined up, sitting in silence to watch him out of sight.
“Wings is right,” said Selwood to himself, “those steers must have
them—but that woman’s eyes were guilty, or I’m a liar.”
At the same moment Caldwell was heaving a long breath of relief as
he pulled his horse around and headed home.
“This here sheriff is gettin’ a little bit inquisitive,” he thought,
then grinned sardonically.
“But if he never gets any wiser than he is now he won’t set anything
on fire. In fifteen feet of th’ Flange an’ never saw a thing! Holy
smoke! Some sheriff! An’ yet—can’t blame him—the Flange’d fool th’
devil himself.”