FOR REVENGE
Breakfast next morning at the Bar T ranch was disturbed by the arrival of
a cowboy on a lathering, wicked-eyed pony who announced to Stelton that
Bud Larkin and his sheep had crossed over into the range. What then
occurred is already known, and after Bissell had returned from his final
parley with Larkin, he retired sullenly into himself to rage silently.
In his perturbed state of mind, the sheepman's double-edged remark about
clearing out had had but one meaning, and he took it for granted that
Larkin had been awed or frightened into the better part of valor. This was
a partial relief, but he foresaw that although this danger to his cattle
was averted, it was merely the first of many such struggles that he might
expect.
Human desires, particularly those of great urgency, are of such domination
that they take little thought for anything but themselves, except in
persons of particularly adroit mind. It was Stelton's misfortune,
therefore, to embark on an ill-timed conversation with his chief.
The foreman for ten years had secretly adored Juliet Bissell with all the
intensity of a soul made single of purpose by the vast, brooding immensity
of his surroundings. So long as he might be near her, serving her in many
little ways, he had been, in a manner, content with the situation.
But the sudden appearance of Larkin and the enthusiastic renewal of a
former intimacy had spurred Stelton to seek some sort of a definite
understanding. Bissell's retirement to the veranda after the noonday meal
was shortly followed by Stelton's appearance there, timorous and abashed.
The interview had been short and not very satisfactory. The cowman,
remembering with considerable pain the conversation with his daughter,
told his employe frankly that he had better give up any such ideas as
evidently possessed him. Stelton, who had with some right formerly felt he
might count on the favorable attitude of his chief, was astounded, and
took the venom of the curt refusal to heart.
Retiring without betraying his emotion, he had resolved to speak to the
girl herself, and that same afternoon asked permission to accompany her on
her daily ride across the prairies, a thing not unusual with him.
Juliet, although she wished to be alone, consented, and at four o'clock
they set out, unobserved by Bissell.
It was not until they had turned their horses homeward that Stelton spoke,
almost tongue-tied by the emotions that rent him, alternate waves of fear
and hope.
"Miss Julie," he began, "I allow I've known you a long while."
"Yes, Mike, you have."
"An' I allow that I would be plumb miserable if you ever went away from
here again."
"Thank you, Mike; I should miss you, too," replied the girl civilly,
growing uneasy at the unusual trend of the man's speech, halting and
indefinite though it was.
"Miss Julie, I ain't no hand at fine talk, but I want to ask yuh if you
will marry me? I've thought about it a lot, an' though I ain't noways good
enough fer yuh, I'd try to make yuh happy."
Juliet, taken aback by the suddenness of this declaration, particularly
after her talk with her father, remained silent.
"Take yore time, Miss Julie," pleaded Stelton, riding closer to her. "I
ain't in no hurry."
"I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you've said, Mike," she
replied slowly. "I've always liked you and I always will, but I don't love
you, and I would sooner tell you now than keep you in suspense. I can't
marry you."
Stelton bit his lip and his dark face grew even blacker with rage at the
futility of his position. With anyone other than Juliet Bissell, perhaps,
he realized that insistent pressure of his suit might have favorable
results. But this cool, calm girl offered no opportunity for argument or
hope.
"Mebbe if yuh waited a bit, yuh might think different about it," he
ventured nevertheless. She shook her head.
"No, Mike, I wouldn't, I am sure. If you care for me you will never
mention this again. And for my part, I shall always remember what you have
said to me to-day. It is a sweet thing for a girl to know that a man loves
her."
Such gracious refusals are effective with most men, both because they
succeed in closing a tender subject and at the same time leave an
unwounded pride. But Stelton was not the ordinary type of lover.
Repressed emotions in somber minds feed and grow fat upon their own
substance, and it was inconceivable that Stelton's genuine though
distorted love, an abnormal product of ten long years, should be
dismissed thus with a few words.
"Why won't you marry me?" he demanded, looking angrily into her level,
brown eyes.
"I have told you I did not love you. That is the reason and the best
reason in the world. Now I ask you to drop the subject."
"Love somebody else, I suppose," he sneered, baring his teeth in a fatal
attempt at an ugly smile.
"If I do, it is none of your business," she replied, her eyes beginning to
blaze.
"That dude sheepman, I allow. He's a gilt-edged vanderpoop, he is! But I'd
hate to be in his boots, if you want to know it."
"Look here, Mike Stelton," and Juliet drew her horse abruptly to a stop,
"either you say nothing more on this subject or I shall tell my father
what you have done this afternoon when we reach home."
Instantly the man saw he had gone too far, and, with a quickness born of
hatred, immediately changed his front.
"I was only thinkin' of protectin' you," he muttered, "and I'm sorry I was
ornery about things. That feller Larkin is a bad lot, that's all. He
wouldn't be out here if he wasn't."
Perhaps it was that Juliet had given a greater place to Larkin in her
thoughts than she realized; perhaps his eloquent defense of wool-growing
had not been sufficient explanation for his unheralded appearance on the
range. Whatever the reason, the girl rose to the bait like a trout when
the ice has left the rivers.
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.
"You remember that feller Caldwell that rode in late to supper the night
Larkin come?"
"Yes."
"Well, I heard him blackmail Larkin for five hundred dollars back by the
corral fence. An' Larkin knew what he had to do as soon as Caldwell showed
up. Didn't yuh see him turn yaller at the table?"
As a matter of fact Larkin's perturbation at that time had been puzzling
and inexplicable to Juliet. Also the disappearance of the two men
immediately after supper had mystified her. But without admitting this to
Stelton she asked:
"What was it all about?"
"I don't know exactly, Miss Julie, but it worked in somethin' he done back
in Chicago a year or so ago. From what I heard 'em say, Larkin just dodged
the calaboose. Now there ain't no disgrace in that--that's really
credit--but that don't clear him of the crime noways. Why, I even heard
'em talk about two thousand dollars that Larkin give this Caldwell a
couple of years back."
"How did you learn all this?" she asked.
"I was a goin' back to the corral for a rope I left hangin' on a post
there, an' I heard 'em talkin'."
"And you listened, I suppose," remarked Julie contemptuously.
"Mebbe I did," he retorted, stung by her tone. "But you can be thankful
for it. I'd be plenty mad if you throw'd yourself away on a man
like-a-that. A hoss that'll kill one puncher'll kill another. Same with a
man."
"What are you saying, Mike?" cried the girl, frightened out of her
attitude of aloof reserve. "Kill a man! He's never killed a man, has he?"
"He didn't say so in so many words, no ma'am, but that talk o' their'n was
mighty suspicious."
Unwittingly Stelton had struck his hardest blow. To him, as to other rough
and ready men in the West, life was a turbulent existence conducted with
as few hasty funerals as was absolutely necessary. But in the girl who had
absorbed the finer feelings of a civilized community, the horror of murder
was deep-rooted.
She knew that to a man in Larkin's former position the slightest
divergence from the well-defined tenets of right and wrong was
inexcusable. Crime, she knew, was a result of poverty, necessity,
self-defense or lack of control, and she also knew that Bud Larkin had
never been called upon to fall back on any of these. How much of truth,
therefore, was there in Stelton's innuendoes?
"Would you swear on the Bible that you overheard what you have told me?"
she asked suddenly.
"Yes, ma'am, I shore would," Stelton answered with solemn conviction.
There was no question now in her mind but that Larkin was paying the piper
for some unsavory fling of which she had heard nothing. She did not for a
moment believe that the affair could be as serious as Stelton wished her
to imagine; but she was sorely troubled, nevertheless, for she had always
cared for Larkin in a happy, wholehearted way.
Many times since her final coming West she had remembered with a secret
tenderness and pride that this wealthy and popular young man had been
willing to trust his life to her. It was one of the sweetest recollections
of those other far-off days.
Now, because the thought of Stelton's revelations was unbearable to her
she resolutely put it from her until a time when she could mourn alone
over this shattered illusion.
"Thank you, Mike, for telling me this," she said gently. "Please never say
anything further about it."
And Stelton, elated that his plan of revenge had worked so well, smiled
with satisfaction and relapsed into silence during the remainder of the
ride home.
All of these events are set down here with some pretense at detail to
indicate the important trend of affairs after Larkin had said a
more-or-less indifferent good-by to Juliet Bissell at the fork of Grass
Creek. While he was wrestling with material problems, these others that
destiny had suddenly joined to him were undergoing mental disturbances in
which he was the principal though unconscious factor. And this unconscious
prominence was to be the main reason for what next occurred.
It was perhaps noon of the day following Larkin's capture by the rustlers,
when from a point directly east of the ranch house a cowboy appeared,
riding at a hard gallop. Contrary to most fictions, cowboys rarely ever
urge their ponies beyond a trot, the only occasions being the round-up,
the stampede, the drive, or when something serious has occurred.
Mike Stelton saw the puncher from a distance and walked to the corral to
meet him. Jerking his pony back on his haunches, the rider leaped from his
back before the animal had fairly come to a stop.
"Mike, we've been tricked!" he cried. "That whole two thousand head of
sheep are tracking north as fast as they can go far over east on the
range, beyond the hills."
"What!" cried the foreman, hardly able to credit his ears. "The boys down
on watch at the Big Horn swore they had scattered the flock last night
when Larkin started to run them north on the range."
"Well, they swore wrong, then, for I've just come from where I seen 'em. I
was over back of them hogbacks and buttes lookin' for strays and mavericks
when along come them muttons in a cloud of dust that would choke a cow. I
allow that darned sheepman has made us look like a lot of tenderfeet,
Mike."
Stelton at this intelligence fairly gagged on his own fury. Larkin had
scored on him again. The two were joined at this moment by Bissell who
had noted the excitement at the corral. When apprised of what had
happened, the cowman's face went as dark with anger as that of his
foreman.
Beef Bissell was not accustomed to the sensation of being outwitted in
anything, and the knowledge that the sheep were nearly half-way up the
range put him almost beside himself.
For a few moments the trio looked at one another speechless. Then Bissell
voiced the determination of them all.
"By the devil's mare!" he swore. "I won't be beaten by any sheepman that
ever walked. Stelton, how many men will be in to-night?"
"Fifteen."
"Get 'em and bring 'em to me as soon as they come."
While the foreman went off about this business Bissell learned from Chuck,
the cowboy, just where he had seen the sheep last, how fast they were
traveling, and how far he calculated they would go before bedding down for
the night.
"I reckon the outfit ought to camp somewhere about Little Creek," said
Chuck. "That's runnin' water."
"And how far beyond that is Little River?"
"Two miles more or less."
"Fine. Wait around till the rest of the boys come in, Chuck. Oh, by the
way, how near are the sheep to our eastern herd of cows?"
"Five miles more will bring 'em to the range the cows are on now."
An hour before supper the rest of the punchers began to come in from
riding the range and rounding up strays. Before they were permitted a
mouthful, however, Bissell went out to the bunk house with Stelton.
"Boys," he said, "which of you was down at the Big Horn last night an'
turned them sheep back?"
A man spoke up and then two more who had been left on guard in the
vicinity.
"How many did you scatter?"
"Dunno, boss," replied the first judicially. "From the noise they made I
allow there was at least a thousand."
"Well, I bet you a month's wage there wasn't more'n a hundred," said
Bissell, glaring at the puncher.
"Won't take yer, boss," returned the other calmly. "Why?"
"Because practically the whole flock is beddin' down at Little Creek now.
Chuck seen 'em. Now I want all you fellers to get supper an' then rope an'
saddle a fresh hoss. There is shore goin' to be some doin's to-night."