THE LINE CABIN
The two men had walked to a point near the big fireplace that occupied
the greater part of one end of the cabin. The hatless one, big,
assertive, belligerent, grinned defiantly, saying nothing in answer to
Lawler's words.
The other man, slighter, and plainly apprehensive, glanced swiftly at
his companion; then dropped his gaze to the floor.
"You skunks bunked here last night!" charged Lawler, sharply. "When I
was here, yesterday, these bunks were made up. Look at them now! Talk
fast. Were you here last night?"
The smaller man nodded.
"Why didn't you cut the fence last night?"
The smaller man grinned. "We wasn't aimin' to get caught."
"Expected there'd be line riders here, eh?"
The other did not answer. Lawler watched both men derisively.
"Then, when you saw no one was here, and that it was likely the norther
would keep anyone from coming, you cut the fence. That's it, eh?"
The two men did not answer, regarding him sullenly.
Lawler smiled. This time there was a cold mirth in his smile that caused
the two men to look quickly at each other. They paled and scowled at
what they saw in Lawler's eyes.
Half a dozen bunks ranged the side walls of the cabin, four on one side,
two on the other, arranged in tiers, upper and lower. A rough, square
table stood near the center of the room, with a low bench on one side of
it and several low chairs on the other. A big chuck-box stood in a
corner near the fireplace, its top half open, revealing the supplies
with which the receptacle was filled; some shelves on the other side of
the fireplace were piled high with canned foods and bulging packages.
The bunks were filled with bedclothing; and an oil-lamp stood on a
triangular shelf in a corner near the door. The walls were bare with the
exception of some highly colored lithographs that, evidently, had been
placed there by someone in whom the love of art still flourished.
It was cold in the cabin. A window in the north wall, with four small
panes of glass in it, was slowly whitening with the frost that was
stealing over it. In the corners of the mullions were fine snow drifts;
and through a small crevice in the roof a white spray filtered,
ballooning around the room. The temperature was rapidly falling.
During the silence which followed Lawler's words, and while the two
fence cutters watched each other, and Lawler, all caught the voice of
the storm, raging, furious, incessant.
With his free hand Lawler unbuttoned his coat, tossed his cap into a
bunk and ran a hand through his hair, shoving it back from his forehead.
His movements were deliberate. It was as though catching fence cutters
was an everyday occurrence.
Yet something in his eyes--the thing the two men had seen--gave the lie
to the atmosphere of deliberate ease that radiated from him. In his eyes
was something that warned, that hinted of passion.
As the men watched him, noting his muscular neck and shoulders; the slim
waist of him, the set of his head--which had that hint of conscious
strength, mental and physical, which marks the intelligent fighter--they
shrank a little, glowering sullenly.
Lawler stood close to the door, the pistol dangling from his right hand.
He had hooked the thumb of the left hand into his cartridge belt, and
his eyes were gleaming with feline humor.
"There's a heap to be told," he said. "I'm listening."
A silence followed his words. Both men moistened their lips; neither
spoke.
"Get going!" commanded Lawler.
"We was headin' south," said the small man. "We cut the fence to git
through."
Lawler's eyelids flickered slightly. The heavy pistol swung upward until
the dark tube gaped somberly into the small man's eyes.
"I've got loads of time, but I don't feel like wasting it," said Lawler.
"You've got one minute to come clean. Keep your traps shut for that time
and I bore you--both--and chuck you outside!"
His smile might have misled some men, but the small man had correctly
valued Lawler.
"Gary Warden hired us to cut the fence."
The man's voice was a placative whine. His furtive eyes swept Lawler's
face for signs of emotion.
There were no signs. Lawler's face might have been an expressionless
mask. Not a muscle of his body moved. The offense was a monstrous one in
the ethics of the country, and the fence cutter had a right to expect
Lawler to exhibit passion of some kind.
"Gary Warden, eh?" Lawler laughed quietly. "If you're lying----"
The man protested that he was telling the truth.
At this point the tall man sneered.
"Hell," he said; "quit your damn blabbin'!"
"Yes," grinned Lawler, speaking to the small man. "You're quitting your
talk. From now on your friend is going to do it. I'm asking questions a
heap rapid, and the answers are going to jump right onto the tails of
the questions. If they don't, I'm going to see how near I can come to
boring a hole in the place where he has his brains cached."
The man glared malignantly at Lawler; but when the first question came
it was answered instantly:
"How much did Warden pay you?"
"A hundred dollars."
"When were you to cut the fence?"
"When the norther struck."
"You saw us cache grub in the cabin?"
The man nodded.
"What if you had found a couple of line riders here? What were you told
to do if you found line riders here? I'm wanting the truth--all of it!"
The man hesitated. Lawler's pistol roared, the concussion rocking the
air of the cabin. The man staggered back, clapping a hand to his head,
where, it seemed to him, the bullet from the pistol had been aimed.
The man brought up against the rear wall of the cabin, beside the
fireplace; and he leaned against it, his face ghastly with fright, his
lips working soundlessly. The little man cowered, plainly expecting
Lawler would shoot him, too. And Lawler's gun did swing up again, but
the voice of the tall man came, blurtingly:
"Warden told us to knife any men we found here."
Lawler's lips straightened, and his eyes glowed with a passion so
intense that the men shrank, gibbering, in the grip of a mighty
paralysis.
Lawler walked to the table and sat beside it, placing the gun near his
right hand. The men watched him, fascinated; noting his swift movements
as he plunged a hand into a pocket and drew out a small pad of paper and
a pencil. He wrote rapidly upon a leaf of the pad; then got up, stepped
back and ordered the tall man to approach the table.
"Write your name below what I have written--and date it."
When both men had signed the paper, Lawler folded it, stuck it between
some leaves of the pad, and replaced pad and pencil in his pocket.
"That's all," he said. "You'll hang out here until the norther blows
itself out; then you'll hit the trail to town and tell your story to the
sheriff. I'll be doing the honors."
He sheathed his gun and flung open the door, stepping back as a white
avalanche rushed in; grinning broadly as he saw the men shrink from it.
He divined that the men thought he was going to force them out into the
storm immediately, and he grinned coldly.
"You can be tickled that I'm not sending you out into it, to drift with
the cattle you tried to kill," he said. "You'd deserve that, plenty.
You'll find wood beside the dugout. Get some of it in here and start a
fire. Move; and don't try any monkey business!"
He closed the door as the men went out. He had no fear that they would
try to escape--even a threat of death could not have forced them to
leave the cabin.
When they came in they kindled a fire in the big fireplace, hovering
close to it after the blaze sprang up, enjoying its warmth, for the
interior of the cabin had become frigid.
Lawler, however, did not permit the men to enjoy the fire. He sent them
out for more wood, and when they had piled a goodly supply in a corner,
and had filled a tin water pail from a water hole situated about a
hundred feet straight out from the door of the cabin, he sent them again
to the dugout after their ropes. With the ropes, despite the sullen
objections of the men, he bound their hands and feet tightly, afterward
picking the men up and tossing them ungently into upper bunks on
opposite sides of the room.
He stood, after watching them for a time, his face expressionless.
"That's just so you won't get to thinking you are company," he said.
"We're holed up for a long time, maybe, and I don't want you to bother
me, a heap. If you get to bothering me--disturbing my sleep trying to
untangle yourselves from those ropes, why----"
He significantly tapped his pistol. Then he pulled a chair close to the
fire, dropped into it, rolled a cigarette, and calmly smoked, watching
the white fleece trail up the chimney.