ON A COLD TRAIL
"Dog it, Jack, we got to go after the Dinsmores," said Ellison, pounding
the table with his fist. "I've just had a letter from the old man
wantin' to know why we don't get results. It's not the Ranger policy to
wait for outlaws to come to us. We go after 'em."
Tex smiled cheerfully. "Suits me fine. What are your instructions,
Captain? Want me to arrest Homer Dinsmore again?"
"What would I do with him if you got him?" snapped the old-timer.
"You could turn him loose again," suggested Roberts, not entirely
without sarcasm.
"If you boys were worth the powder to blow you-all up--!" exploded the
veteran.
"Instead of bein' a jackpot bunch of triflin' no-account scalawags,"
murmured Jack.
"--You'd hustle out an' get evidence against 'em."
"Sounds reasonable." The Ranger lifted his heels to the seat of a second
chair and rolled him a cigarette.
"You'd find out where they're hidin' the cattle they rustle."
"Are you givin' me an assignment, Captain?"
"You done said it, son. There's a bunch of rustled stock up in the rocks
somewheres. You know it. Question is, can you find the cache?"
"I can try."
"Wasn't it you told me once about bumpin' into a rustler doin' business
whilst you was ridin' the line?"
"At the mouth of Box Canon--yes."
"Well, wha's the matter with you scoutin' up Box Canon an' seein' what
you find?"
"They're roostin' up there somewheres. I'll bet a hat on that."
"How many boys you want with you?"
Jack considered. "One. I'll take Ridley if you don't mind."
"He's a tenderfoot," suggested Ellison doubtfully. "Won't be of any help
to you a-tall in cutting sign. If you leave him he's liable to get lost.
Better take Moser, hadn't you?"
"Rather have Ridley. He doesn't claim to know it all. Besides, we've got
to break him in sometime."
"Suits me if he does you. It's yore party."
"We'll start in the mo'nin'."
"The sooner the quicker," agreed the Captain. "I want the old man to
know we're not spendin' our time settin' around a office. He's got no
call to crawl my hump when you boys are doin' the best you can. Well, go
to it, son. See if you-all can get evidence that will stand up so's we
can collect that bunch of hawss-thieves."
Before daybreak the two Rangers were on their way. They drove a
pack-horse, their supplies loaded on a sawbuck saddle with kyacks. Jack
had been brought up in the Panhandle. He knew this country as a
seventh-grade teacher does her geography. Therefore he cut across the
desert to the cap-rock, thence to Dry Creek, and so by sunset to Box
Canon. At the mouth of the gulch they slept under the stars. As soon as
they had cooked their coffee and bacon Roberts stamped out the fire.
"We don't want to advertise we're here. I'm some particular about my
health. I'd hate to get dry-gulched[7] on this job," said Jack.
"Would the Dinsmores shoot us if they found us?" asked Ridley, searching
with his head for the softest spot in his saddle for a pillow.
"Would a calf milk its mother? They're sore as a toad at me, an' I
expect that goes for any other Ranger too. Homer might give us an even
break because we stayed with him on the island, but I'd hate to bet my
head on that."
"If we get any evidence against them they can't afford to let us go,"
agreed Arthur.
"An' if they jump us up, how're they goin' to know how much we've seen?
There's one safe way, an' they would ce'tainly take it."
"Dead men tell no tales, it's said."
"Some of 'em do an' some don't. I never met up with a proverb yet that
wasn't 'way off about half the time. For instance, that one you quoted.
Rutherford Wadley's body told me considerable. It said that he'd been
killed on the bluff above an' flung down; that he'd been shot by a rifle
in the hands of a man standin' about a hundred an' fifty yards away;
that he'd been taken by surprise an' probably robbed."
"It wouldn't have told me all that."
"Not till you learn to read sign closer than you do. An outdoor
education is like a school-book one. You can't learn it in a day or a
week or a year."
"You're no Methuselah. There's still hope for me."
"Lots o' hope. It's mostly keepin' yore eyes open an' yore brain
workin'. I'm still only in the A B C class, but a fellow learns
somethin' every day if he's that kind."
"If it's a matter of brains, why do Indians make the best trailers? You
wouldn't say their brains are as good as a white man's, would you?"
"No; an' I'd say there's nothin' on earth an Indian can do as well as a
white man, given the same chance to learn it. Indians know the outdoors
because they have to know it to live. The desert's no prodigal mother.
Her sons have to rustle right smart to keep their tummies satisfied. If
the 'Paches and the Kiowas didn't know how to cut sign an' read it, how
to hunt an' fish an' follow a trail, they'd all be in their happy
huntin' grounds long ago. They're what old Nature has made 'em. But I'll
tell you this. When a white man gives his mind to it he understands the
life of the plains better than any Indian does. His brains are better,
an' he goes back an' looks for causes. The best trailers in the world
are whites, not redskins."
"I didn't know that," Arthur said.
"Ask any old-timer if it ain't so."
They were eating breakfast when the light on the horizon announced a new
day on the way. Already this light was saturating the atmosphere and
dissolving shadows. The vegetation of the plains, the wave rolls of the
land, the distant horizon line, became more distinct. By the time the
sun pushed into sight the Rangers were in the saddle.
Roberts led through the polecat brush to the summit of a little mesa
which overlooked the gulch. Along the edge of the ravine he rode,
preferring the bluff to the sandy wash below because the ground was less
likely to tell the Dinsmores a story of two travelers riding up Box
Canon. At the head of the gorge a faint trail dipped to the left.
Painted on a rock was a sign that Jack had seen before.
THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD--
TAKE ANOTHER.
He grinned reminiscently. "I did last time. I took the back trail under
orders."
"Whose orders?" asked Ridley.
"Pete's, I reckon."
"If there's a story goes with that grin--" suggested Arthur.
"No story a-tall. I caught a fellow brandin' a calf below the canon. He
waved me around. Some curious to see who the guy was that didn't want to
say 'How?' to me, I followed him into Box."
That seemed to be the end of the yarn. At any rate, Jack stopped.
"Well, did you find out who he was?"
"No, but I found this sign, an' above it a rifle slantin' down at me,
an' back of the rifle a masked face. The fellow that owned the face
advised me about my health."
"What about it?"
"Why, that this rough country wasn't suited to my disposition,
temperament, an' general proclivities. So I p'inted back to where I had
come from."
"And you never satisfied your curiosity about who the rustler was?"
"Didn't I?" drawled Jack.
"Did you?"
"Mebbe I did. I'm not tellin' that yarn--not to-day."
The country was rougher and hillier. The trail they had been following
died away in the hills, but they crossed and recrossed others, made by
buffaloes, antelopes, and coyotes driven by the spur of their needs in
the years that had passed. Countless generations of desert life had come
and gone before even the Indians drifted in to live on the buffalo.
"Why is it that there's more warfare on the desert than there is back
East? The cactus has spines. The rattlesnake, the centipede, the Gila
monster, the tarantula, all carry poison. Even the toad has a horn.
Everywhere it is a fight to survive. The vegetation, as well as the
animal life, fights all the time against drought. It's a regular hell on
earth," Arthur concluded.
Jack eased himself in the saddle. "Looks kinda like Nature made the
desert an' grinned at life, much as to say, 'I defy you to live there,'
don't it? Sure there's warfare, but I reckon there's always war between
different forms of life. If there wasn't, the world would be rank with
all sorts of things crowdin' each other. The war would have to come then
after all. Me, I like it. I like the way life came back with an answer
to the challenge. It equipped itself with spines an' stings an' horns
an' tough hides because it had to have 'em. It developed pores an'
stomachs that could get along without much water. Who wants to live in a
land where you don't have to rustle for a livin'?"
"You belong to the West. You're of it," Ridley said. "If you'd seen the
fine grasslands of the East, the beautiful, well-kept farms and the fat
stock, you'd understand what I mean. A fellow gets homesick for them."
Roberts nodded. "I've seen 'em an' I understand. Oncet I went back East
an' spent three months there. I couldn't stand it. I got sick for the
whinin' of a rope, wanted to hump over the hills after cows' tails. The
nice little farms an' the nice little people with their nice little ways
kinda cramped me. I reckon in this ol' world it's every one to his own
taste." His eye swept the landscape. "Looks like there's water down
there. If so, we'll fall off for a spell an' rest the hawsses."
[Footnote 7: A man is said to be "dry-gulched" when he mysteriously
disappears,--killed by his enemies and buried under a pile of rocks.]