She rode inside the corral and made a complete circuit of the fence, and
saw nothing whatever of Johnny's saddle and bridle. They would be
somewhere around, surely, if he were here. She avoided the cabin, but
rode down to the pasture in the creek bottom where Johnny's extra horse
would be feeding. The horse was there, and came trotting lonesomely
up to the fence when he saw Jake. But there was only the one horse,
which seemed to prove that the other horse was with the saddle and
bridle--wherever they were.
Mary V returned to the corral, still keeping far enough away from the
cabin to hide the sound of Jake's hoof beats from any one within. She
tied the horse to a corral post and went on foot to the cabin. She
carried her six-shooter in her hand, and she carried in her throat a
nervous fluttering.
First she sidled up to a window and listened, then peered in. She could
see nothing, for the moon had slid over toward the west, and the room was
a blur of shade. But it was also silent, depressingly silent. She crept
around to the door, and found that it was fastened on the outside.
That heartened her a little. She undid the rawhide string and pushed the
door open a little way. Nothing happened. She pushed it a little farther,
listened, grew bolder--yet frightened with a new fear--and stepped
inside.
It was very quiet. It was so quiet that Mary V held her breath and was
tempted to turn and run away. She waited for a minute, her nostrils
widened to the pent odor of stale cigarette smoke that clings to a
bachelor's cabin in warm weather. She tiptoed across the room to where
Johnny's cot stood and timidly passed her hands above the covers.
Emboldened by its flat emptiness, Mary V turned and felt along the window
ledge where she had seen that Johnny kept his matches, found the box, and
lighted a match.
The flare showed her the empty room. Oddly, she stared at the telephone
as though she expected it to reveal something. Some one had stood there
and had talked with her. And Johnny was not at camp at all; had not been,
since--
With a truly feminine instinct she turned to the crude cupboard and
looked in. She inspected a dish of brown beans, sniffed and wrinkled her
nose. They were sour, and the ones on top were dried with long standing.
Johnny's biscuits, on a tin plate, were hard and dry. Not a thing in that
cupboard looked as though it had been cooked later than two or three days
before.
A reaction of rage seized Mary V. She went out, tied the door shut with
two spitefully hard-drawn knots, mounted Jake without a thought of his
height or his dancing accomplishments, and headed for home at a gallop.
She hated Johnny Jewel every step of the way. I suppose it is
exasperating to ride a forbidden, treasured horse on a forbidden,
possibly dangerous night journey to rescue a man from some unknown peril,
and discover that the young man is not at hand to be rescued. Mary V
seemed to find it so. She decided that Johnny Jewel was up to some
devilment, and had probably hired that man to answer the 'phone for him
so her dad would not know he was gone. He thought he was very clever, of
course--putting the man up to pretending he had a cold, just to fool her
dad. Well, he had fooled her dad, all right, but there happened to be a
person on the ranch he could not fool. That person _hoped_ she was
smarter than Johnny Jewel, and to prove it she would find out what it was
he was trying to be so secret about. And then she would confront him with
the proof, and then where would he be?
She certainly owed it to the outfit--to her dad--to find out what was
going on. There was no use, she told herself virtuously, in worrying her
dad about it until she knew just exactly what that miserable Johnny Jewel
was up to. Poor dad had enough to worry about without filling his mind
with suspicious and mysterious men with fake colds, and things like that.
Mary V unsaddled a very sweaty Jake before the sky was reddening with the
dawn; before even the earliest of little brown birds were a-chirp or a
rooster had lifted his head to crow.
She wakened Tango with the bridle, slapped her saddle on him and
tightened it with petulant jerks, got her rifle and her camera out from
under the sacks, mounted and rode away again before even the cook had
crawled out of his blankets.
CHAPTER TEN
SIGNS, AND NO ONE TO READ THEM
Bill Hayden's mouth was pinched into a straight line across his
desert-scarred face. He shortened his hold on the rope that held Jake and
passed the flat of his hand down Jake's neck under the heavy mane. He
held up a moistened palm and looked at it needlessly. He stepped back and
surveyed the drawn-in flanks, and with his eye he measured the length and
depth of the saddle marks, as though he half hoped thereby to identify
the saddle that had made them. His eyes were hard with the cold fury that
lumped the muscles on his jaw.
He turned his head and surveyed the scattered group of boys busy with
ropes, bridles and saddles--making ready for the day's work, which
happened to be the gathering of more horses to break, for the war across
the water used up horses at an amazing rate, and Sudden was not the man
to let good prices go to waste. The horse herd would be culled of its
likeliest saddle horses while the market was best.
To-day, and for several days, the boys would ride north and west, combing
the rough country that held two broad-bottomed streams and therefore fair
grazing for horses. Bill had meant to ride Jake, but he was changing his
mind. Jake, from the look of him, had lately received exercise enough to
last him for one day, at least. Suspicion dwelt in Bill's eyes as they
rested on each man in turn. They halted at Tex, who was standing with his
head up, staring at Jake with more interest than Bill believed an
innocent man had any right to feel. Tex caught his glance and came over,
trailing his loop behind him.
"What yo' all been doing to Jake, gantin' him up like that, Bill?" Tex
inquired, his black eyes taking in the various marks of hard riding that
had infuriated Bill.
Bill hesitated, spat into the dust, and turned half away, stroking Jake's
roughened shoulder.
"Me, I been workin' him out, mebby. What's it _to_ yuh?"
"Me? It ain't nothin' a-tall to me, Bill. Only--yo' all shore done it
thorough," grinned Tex, and passed on to where a horse he wanted was
standing with his head against the fence, hoping to dodge the loop he
felt sure would presently come hissing his way.
Bill watched him from under his eyebrows, and he observed that Tex sent
more than one glance toward Jake. Bill interpreted those glances to suit
himself, and while he unobtrusively led Jake into a shed to give him a
hurried grooming before saddling another horse, Bill did some hard
thinking.
"Shore is a night-rider in this outfit," he summed up. "He shore did pick
himself a top hoss, and he shore rode the tail off'n 'im just about. Me,
I'm crazy to know who done it."
Bill had to hurry, so he left the matter to simmer for the present. But
that did not mean that Bill would wear "blinders," or that he would sleep
with his head under his tarp for fear of finding out what black-hearted
renegade had sacrilegiously borrowed Jake. Black-hearted renegade, by the
way, was but the dwindling to mild epithets after Bill's more colorful
vocabulary had been worn to rags by repetition.
All unconsciously Mary V had set another man in the outfit to sweating
his brain and swearing to himself. Tex would not sleep sound again until
he knew who had taken to night-riding--on a horse of Jake's quality. Tex
would have believed that Bill himself was the man, had he not read the
look on Bill's face while he studied the marks of hard riding. Tex was
no fool, else his income would have been restricted to what he could earn
by the sweat of his skin. Bill had been unconscious of scrutiny when Tex
had caught that look, and Bill had furthermore betrayed suspicion when
Tex spoke to him about the horse. Bill was mad, which Tex took as proof
that Bill had lain in his bed all night. Besides, Bill would hardly have
left Jake in the corral where he could have free access to the water
trough after such a ride as that must have been. Some one had brought
Jake home in such a hurry that he had merely pulled his saddle and bridle
off and--hustled back to bed, perhaps.
Tex was worried, and for a very good reason. He had been abroad the night
before, dodging off down the draw to the west until he could circle the
ridge and ride south. He had been too shrewd to ride a fagged horse home
and leave him in the corral to tell the tale of night prowling, however.
He had taken the time to catch a fresh horse from the pasture, tie his
own horse in a secluded place until his return, and re-saddle it to ride
back to the ranch, careful not to moisten a hair. He felt a certain
contempt for the stupidity that would leave such evidence as Jake, but
for all that he was worried. Being the scoundrel he was, he jumped to the
conclusion that some one had been spying on him. It was a mystery that
bred watchfulness and much cogitation.
"What's that about some geeser riding Jake las' night?" Bud, riding
slowly until Bill overtook him, asked curiously, with the freedom of
close friendship. "Tex was saying something about it to Curley when
they rode past me, but I didn't ketch it all. Anything in it?"
Bill cleared his mind again with blistering epithets before he answered
Bud directly. "Jake was rode, and he was rode hard. It was a cool
night--and I know what it takes to put that hawse in a lather. I wisht
I'd a got to feel a few saddle blankets this morning! The--" Bill cussed
himself out of breath.
When he stopped, Bud took up the refrain. It was not his horse, of
course, but an unwritten law of the range had been broken, and that was
any honest rider's affair. Besides, Bill was a pal of Bud's. "Hangin''s
too good for 'im, whoever done it," he finished vindictively. "I'd lay
low, if I was you, Bill. Mebby he'll git into the habit, and you kin
ketch 'im at it."
"I aim to lay low, all right. And I aim to come up a-shootin' if the--"
"Yore dead right, Bill. Night-ridin' 's bad enough when a feller rides
his own hawse. It'd need some darn smooth explainin' then. But when a man
takes an' saddles up another feller's hawse--"
"I kin see his objeck in that," Bill said. "He had a long trail to
foller, an' he tuk the hawse that'd git 'im there and back the quickest.
Now what I'd admire to know is, who was the rider, an' where was he goin'
to? D' you happen to miss anybody las' night, Bud?"
"Me? Thunder! Bill, you know damn well I wouldn't miss my own beddin'
roll if it was drug out from under me!"
"Same here," mourned Bill. "Ridin' bronks shore does make a feller ready
for the hay. Me, I died soon as my head hit my piller."
"Mary V, she musta hit out plumb early this morning," Bud observed
gropingly. "She was saddled and gone when I come to the c'rel at sun-up.
Yuh might ast her if she seen anybody, Bill. Chances is she wouldn't, but
they's no harm askin'."
"I will," Bill said sourly. "Any devilment that's goin' on around this
outfit, Mary V's either doin' it er gettin' next to it so's she kin hold
a club over whoever done it. She mebby mighta saw him--if she was a mind
to tell."
"Yeah--that shore is Mary V," Bud agreed heartily. "Bawl yuh out quick
enough if they's anything yuh want kep' under cover, and then turnin'
right around and makin' a clam ashamed of itself for a mouthy cuss if yuh
want to know anything right bad. Bound she'd go with us getherin' hosses
when she wasn't needed nor wanted, and now when we're short-handed, she
ain't able to see us no more a-tall when we start off. You'll have to git
upon 'er blind side some way, Bill, er she won't tell, if she does know
who rode Jake."
"Blind side?" Bill snorted. "Mary V ain't got no blind side 't I ever
seen."
"And that's right too. Ain't it the truth! I don't guess, Bill, yuh
better let on to Mary V nothin' about it. Then they's a chance she may
tell yuh jest to spite the other feller, if she does happen to know. A
slim chance--but still she might."
"Slim chance is right!" Bill stated with feeling.
During this colloquy Mary V's ears might have burned, had Mary V not been
too thoroughly engrossed with her own emotions to be sensitive to the
emotions of others.
Mary V was pounding along toward Black Ridge--or Snake Ridge, as some
preferred to call it. She was tired, of course. Her head ached, and more
than once she slowed Tango to a walk while she debated with herself
whether it was really worth while to wear herself completely out in the
cause of righteousness.
Mary V did not in the least suspect just how righteous was the cause. How
could she know, for instance, that Rolling R horses were being selected
just as carefully on the southern range as they were to the north, since
even that shrewd range man, her father, certainly had no suspicion that
the revolutionists farther to the east in Mexico would presently begin
to ride fresh mounts with freshly blotched brands? He had vaguely feared
a raid, perhaps, but even that fear was not strong enough to impel him to
keep more than one man at Sinkhole.
Sudden was not the man to overlook a sure profit while he guarded against
a possible danger. He needed all the riders he had, or could get, to
break horses for the buyers that were beginning to make regular trips
through the country. He knew, too, that it would take more than two or
three men at Sinkhole to stand off a raid, and that one man with a
telephone and a rifle and six-shooter could do as much to protect his
herds as three or four men, and with less personal risk. Sudden banked
rather heavily on that telephone. He was prepared, at any alarming
silence, to send the boys down there posthaste to investigate. But
so long as Johnny reported every evening that all was well, the
horse-breaking would go on.
It is a pity that he had not impressed these facts more deeply upon
Johnny. A pity, too, that he had not confided in Mary V. Because Mary V
might have had a little information for her dad, if she had understood
the situation more thoroughly. As thoroughly as Tex understood it, for
instance.
Tex knew that any suspicion on the part of the line rider at Sinkhole, or
any failure on his part to report every evening, would be the signal for
Sudden to sweep the Sinkhole range clean of Rolling R horses. He had
worried a good deal because he had forgotten to tell his confederates
that they must remember to take care of the telephone somehow, in case
Johnny was lured away after the airplane. It had been that worry which
had sent him out in the night to find them and tell them--and to learn
just what was taking place, and how many horses they had got. When a man
is supposed to receive a commission on each horse that is stolen
successfully, he may be expected to exhibit some anxiety over the truth
of the tally. You will see why it was necessary to the peace and
prosperity of Tex that the surface should be kept very smooth and
unruffled.
Tex, of course, overlooked one detail. He should have worried over Mary V
and her industrious gathering of "Desert Glimpses," lest she glimpse
something she was not wanted to see. I suppose it never occurred to Tex
that Mary V's peregrinations would take her within sight of Sinkhole, or
that she would recognize a suspicious circumstance if she met it face to
face. Mary V was still looked upon as a spoiled kid by the Rolling R
boys, and she had not attained the distinction of being taken seriously
by anyone save Johnny Jewel. Which may explain, in a roundabout way,
why her interest had settled upon him, though Johnny's good looks and his
peppery disposition may have had something to do with it too.
Mary V, having climbed to the top of Black Ridge, adjusted her field
glasses and swept every bit of Sinkhole country that lay in sight. Almost
immediately she saw a suspicious circumstance, and she straightway
recognized it as such. Away over to the east of Sinkhole camp she saw two
horsemen jogging along, just as the Rolling R boys jogged homeward after
a hard day's work at the round-up. She could not recognize them, the
distance was so great. She therefore believed that one of them might be
Johnny Jewel, and the suspicion made her head ache worse than before.
He had no business to be away at night, and then to go riding off
somewhere with someone else so early in the morning, and she stamped her
foot at him and declared that she would like to _shake_ him.
She watched those two until they were hidden in one of the million or so
of little "draws" or arroyos that wrinkle the face of the range west.
When she finally gave up hope of seeing them again, she moved the glasses
slowly to the west. Midway of the arc, she saw something that was more
than suspicious; it was out-and-out mysterious.
She saw something--what it was she could not guess--moving slowly in the
direction of Sinkhole Camp,--something wide and queer looking, with a
horseman on either side and with a team pulling. Here again the distance
was too great to reveal details. She strained her eyes, changed the focus
hopefully, blurred the image, and slowly turned the little focusing wheel
back again. She had just one more clear glimpse of the thing before it,
too, disappeared.
Mary V waited and waited, and watched the place. If it was crossing a
gully, it would climb out again, of course. When it did not do so she
lost all patience and was putting the glasses in their case when she saw
a speck crawling along a level bit, half a mile or so to the left of
where she had been watching.
"Darn!" said Mary V, and hastened to readjust the glasses. But she had no
more than seen that it was the very same mysterious object, only now it
was not wide at all, but very long--when it crawled behind a ridge like a
caterpillar disappearing behind a rock. Mary V waited awhile, but it did
not show itself. So she cried with vexation and nervous exhaustion,
stamped her foot, and made the emphatic assertion that she felt like
_shooting_ Johnny Jewel for making her come all this long way to be
driven raving distracted.
After a little, when the mysterious thing still failed to reappear
anywhere on the face of the gray-mottled plain, she ate what was left of
her lunch and rode home, too tired to sit up straight in the saddle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THIEVES RIDE BOLDLY
Johnny Jewel heaved his weary bones off his bed and went stiffly to
answer the 'phone. Reluctantly as well, for he had not yet succeeded in
formulating an excuse for his absence that he dared try on old Sudden
Selmer. Excuses had seemed so much less important when temptation was
plucking at his sleeve that almost any reason had seemed good enough. But
now when the bell was jingling at him, no excuse seemed worth the breath
to utter it. So Johnny's face was doleful, and Johnny's red-rimmed eyes
were big and solemn.
And then, when he had braced himself for the news that he was jobless,
all he heard was this:
"Hello! How's everything?"
"All right," he answered dully to that. So far as he knew, everything was
all right--save himself.
"Feed holding out all right in the pasture?" came next. And when Johnny
said that it was: "Well, say! If you get time, you might ride up and
get one or two of these half-broke bronks and ride 'em a little. The boys
have got a few here now that's pretty well gentled, and they're workin'
on a fresh bunch. The quieter they are, the better price they'll bring,
and they won't have time to ride 'em all. You can handle one or two all
right, can't yuh?"
"Yes, I guess I can," said Johnny, still waiting for the blow to fall.
"Well, how many will the pasture feed, do yuh think? You can turn out one
of the couple you've got."
"Oh, there's food enough for three, all right, I guess--"
"Well, all right--there's a couple of good ones I'd like to have gentled
down. Cold's better, ay?"
"I--why, I guess so." Johnny just said that from force of habit. His mind
refused to react to a question which to him was meaningless. Johnny could
not remember when he had last had a cold.
"Well, all right--to-morrow or next day, maybe. I'll have the boys keep
up the two I want rode regular. If everything's running along smooth, you
better come up and get 'em. And when they're bridlewise and all, you can
bring 'em in and get more. These boys won't have time to get more 'n the
rough edge off...."
When he had hung up the receiver, Johnny sat down on a box, took his jaws
between his two capable palms and thought, staring fixedly at the floor
while he did so.
It took him a full twenty minutes to settle two obvious facts comfortably
in his brain, but he did it at last and crawled into his bed with a long
sigh of thankfulness, though his conscience hovered dubiously over those
facts like a hen that has hatched out goslings and doesn't know what to
do about them. One fact--the big, important one--was that Johnny still
had his job, and that it looked as secure and permanent as any job can
look in this uncertain world. The other fact--the little, teasingly
mysterious one--was that Sudden evidently did not know of Johnny's
two-day absence from camp, and foolishly believed Johnny the victim of a
cold.
But Johnny's conscience was too much a boy's resilient fear of
consequences to cluck very long over what was, on the face of it, a
piece of good luck. It permitted Johnny to sleep and to dream happily
all night, and it did not pester him when he awoke at daylight.
Just because it became a habit with him, I shall tell you what was the
first thing Johnny did after he crawled into his clothes. He went out
hastily and saddled his horse and rode to the rock-faced bluff, turned
into a niche and rode back to the farther end, then swung sharply to the
left.
It was there. Dusty, desert-whipped, one wing drooping sharply at the
end, the flat tire accentuating the tilt; with its tail perked sidewise
like a fish frozen in the act of flipping; reared up on its landing gear
with its little, radiatored nose crossed rakishly by the gravel-scarred
propeller, that looked as though mice had nibbled the edges of its
blades, it thrilled him as it had never thrilled him before.
It was his own, bought and paid for in money, and the sweat of long,
toil-filled miles. It looked bigger in that niche than it had looked
out on the desert with nothing but the immensity of earth and sky to
measure it by. It looked bigger, more powerful--a mechanical miracle
which still seemed more dream than reality. And it was his, absolutely
the sole property of Johnny Jewel, who had retrieved it from a foreign
country--his prize.
"Boy! I sure do wish she was ready to take the air," Johnny said under
his breath to Sandy, who merely threw up his head and stared at the thing
with sophisticated disapproval.
Johnny got down and went up to it, laid a hand on the propeller, where
its varnish was still smooth. Through a rift in the rock wall a bright
yellow beam of sunlight slid kindly along the padded rim of the pilot's
pit; touched Johnny's face, too, in passing.
Johnny sighed, stood back and looked long at the whole great sweep of the
planes, pulled the smile out of his lips and went back to the cabin. He
wouldn't have time to work on her to-day, he told himself very firmly. He
would have to ride the fences like a son-of-a-gun to make up for lost
time. And look over the horses, too, and ride past that boggy place in
the willows. It would keep him on the jump until sundown. He wouldn't
even have a chance to go over his lessons and blue prints, to see just
what he'd have to send for to repair the plane. He didn't even know the
name of some of the parts, he confessed to himself.
He hated to leave the place unguarded while he made his long tour of the
fence and the range within. He did not trust the brother of Tomaso, who
had been too easily jewed down in his price, Johnny thought. He believed
old Sudden was right in having nothing to do with Mexicans, in forbidding
them free access to his domain. Johnny thought it would be a good idea to
do likewise. Tomaso was to bring back the pliers, hammer, and whatever
other tools they had taken, but after that they would have to keep off.
He would tell Tomaso so very plainly. The prejudices of the Rolling R
were well enough known to need no explanation, surely.