"Come into Kamloops with us."
Pete shook his head and said nothing. But his eyes burned. Kamloops
Charlie urged him to come with them, and talked fast in the Jargon.
"You come, Pete, no one at the house now, Pete. By-by she want you.
She often talk of you with me, want to see you."
Charlie had worked for Cultus since Pete went away.
"I come by-by," said Pete. They left him standing in the road. When
some of them turned to look at him before they came where they would
see him no more, he was still standing there.
"Tell you Pete's dangerous," said Simpson. He was a long, thin
melancholy man from Missouri, with a beard like grey moss on a
decayed stump.
"He'll hev' a long account with the Quin brothers," replied Joe Batt.
"Many has," said Bill Baker. Cultus owed him money. Baker chewed
tobacco and the cud. He muttered to himself, and the only audible
word was "dangerous." Above his shoulder the hurt woman moaned.
And even when they had disappeared Pete stood staring after them.
They had time to go more than a mile before he stirred. Then he
walked a little distance from the road and cached his bundle behind a
big bull-pine. He started the way his sister had come, and went
quick. He had seen some of his sister's blood on the road.
In two hours he was at the ranche, and found it as the others had
found it, when Kamloops Charlie had come to tell them that Cultus had
killed Mary. The door was open, the table was overturned, there was
broken crockery on the floor. There was a drying pool of blood by
the open fire which burnt logs of pine. Scattered gouts of blood
were all about the room: some were dried in ashes. The dreadful
shovel stood in the corner by the fire. Pete took it up and looked
at it. Many times he had heard old Cultus say he would give Mary the
edge. Now he had given her the edge. Pete's blood boiled in him: he
smashed the window with the shovel. Then he heard a bellow from the
corral in which some of the best of Cultus' small herd were kept up,
some of them to fatten for the railroad.
"I do that," said Pete. In the stable he found Mary's horse, a good
old grey, but past quick work save in the hands of a brute, or a
Mexican or an Indian. Pete put the saddle on him and cinched up the
girths. He found a short stock whip which he had often used. He led
the horse out, and going to the corrals, threw down the rails. Going
inside he drove thirty cows and steers out. On the hills at the back
of the ranche about fifty more were grazing. Pete got on the horse
and cracked his whip. He drove them all together up the hills and
into a narrow valley. It led towards a deep cañon. There was little
water in the creek at the bottom, but there were many rocks. From
one place it was a drop of more than two hundred feet to the rocks,
and a straight drop too. The mountain path led to it and then turned
almost at right angles. The valley in which the cattle ran grew
narrow and narrower and Pete urged them on.
Cultus loved his steers and had half-a-dozen cows that he milked
himself when they had calves. Whenever Pete came near one of these
he cut at her with the whip, and urged them all to a trot. They were
lowing, and presently some of the rowdier steers bellowed. They
broke at last into a gallop, and then Pete shrieked at them like a
fiend and raced the old pony hard.
"I fix 'em," said Pete.
Now they were in thickish brush, with no more than a big trail for a
path. Pete lashed the grey till he got alongside the very tail of
the flying herd and made them gallop faster still. They were all
dreadfully uneasy, alarmed, and curious, and as they went grew
wilder. They horned each other in their hurry to escape the devil
behind them, and the horned ones at last fairly stampeded as if they
were all wild cattle off the range in the autumn. They went
headlong, with a wild young cow leading. Pete screamed horribly,
cracked with his whip, cut at them and yelled again. The brush was
thick in front of them on the very edge of the cañon. The little
thinning trail almost petered out and turned sharply to the left.
The leader missed it and burst through the brush in front of her.
The others followed. Behind the maddened brutes came Pete. He saw
the leader swerve with a horrid bellow and try to swing round. She
was caught in the ribs by a big steer and went over. The ones who
came after were blinded, their heads were up in the crush: they saw
nothing till there was nothing in front of them. They swept over the
edge in a stream and bellowed as they fell. On the empty edge of the
cañon Pete pulled up the sweating grey, who trembled in every limb.
Below them was a groaning mass of beef. They were no longer cattle,
though one or two stumbled from the thick of the herd and the dead
and stood as if they were paralysed.
"I wis' Ned was there," said Pete, as he turned and galloped back
down the beaten, trampled trail. "I wis' I had him here. I serve
him out."
He rode as hard as the wretched grey could go to where he had left
his bundle. He picked it up and turned the horse loose. Perhaps it
was hardly wise to ride it into Kamloops. It was night before he got
there. He found Kamloops Charlie in town, drinking, and reckoned
that no one would find out for days what had happened to the cattle.
He told Charlie that he had stayed where he was left, and had at last
determined to come into town.
"Kahta ole Cultus?" he asked.
But Cultus had taken steamer, having caught it as it was on the point
of leaving. Pete saw Simpson at the hotel and spoke to him.
"Your sister says as it warn't Cultus as done it," said Simpson.
"That's what she says: she allows it was a stranger, poor gal!"
They said she would live. But those who had seen her said it would
be best if she died. One side of her face was dreadfully injured.
"She must ha' bin' mighty fond of Ned Quin," said Simpson. "She's
the only one araound ez is, I reckon."
He stood Pete a drink. Pete told what he had told Kamloops Charlie.
"I tho't you'd kem along bymby," said Simpson. "I'm sorry for the
poor gal, so I am. There's them as don't hanker after any of you
Siwashes, Pete, but I maintain they may be good. But dern a nigger,
anyhaow. You'll be huntin' a job, Pete?"
Pete owned sulkily enough that he was hunting a job.
"Then don't you stay araound hyar," said Simpson. "Barrin' sellin' a
few head o' measly steers there ain't nothin' doin'. When the
railroad is through, the bottom will fall out of B.C. fo' sewer. You
go up to the Landing: things is fair hummin' up to the Landing, an'
Mason hez gone up there to start up a kin' o' locomotive sawmill at
what they calls the Narrows. You hike off to the Landing and tackle
Mason; say I named him to you, Pete, and if he ain't full-handed
you'll be all hunkey."
He stood himself another drink, and grew more melancholy.
"A few measly steers in a Gawd-forsaken land like B.C.! Don't you
hanker arter revenge agin Ned for mishandling Mary. Revenge is sweet
to the mouth, Pete, but it's heavy work on the stummick, ondigestible
and apt to turn sour. If it hadn't been that I hankered arter
revenge (and got it) I'd ha' bin now in Mizzouri, Gawd's kentry, whar
I come from. A few head o' weedy miserbul steers! You leave Ned
alone and I'll be surprised if he don't leave you and Mary alone. To
half cut off a gal's head and her not to squeal! I calls it noble.
Ned will be sorry he done it, I reckon. You go up to the Landing,
boy."
And Pete did go up to the Landing.