Emerson Mead's ranch house was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe
building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water
from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past
the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of
rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of
an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. There were also some colored
posters and prints from weekly papers. A banjo stood in one corner of
the dining room, while guns and revolvers of various kinds and
patterns and belts heavy with cartridges hung against the walls or
sprawled in corners.
The cook and housekeeper was a stockily built, round-faced Englishman,
whom Mead had found stranded in Las Plumas. He had been put off the
overland train at that place because the conductor had discovered that
he was riding on a scalper's ticket. Mead had taken a liking to the
man's jovial manner, and, being in need of a cook, had offered him the
place. The Englishman, who said his name was Bill Haney, had accepted
it gladly and had since earned his wage twice over by the care he took
of the house and by the entertainment he afforded his employer. For
he told many tales of his life in many lands, enough, had they all
been true, to have filled the years of a Methuselah to overflowing.
Mead did not believe any of his stories, and, indeed, strongly
suspected that they were told for the purpose of throwing doubt upon
any clue to his past life which he might inadvertently give.
Good-natured and jovial though he was in face and talk and manner,
there was a look at times in his small, keen, dark eyes which Mead did
not like.
As Haney bustled about getting a fresh breakfast for the three men he
said to Mead, "It's mighty lucky you've come 'ome, sir. There's been
merry 'ell 'erself between our boys and the Fillmore boys, and they're
likely to be killin' each other off at Alamo Springs to-day. They 'ad
shots over a maverick yesterday, and the swearin' they've been doin'
'ad enough fire and brimstone in it to swamp 'ell 'erself."
Haney's conversation contained frequent reference to the abode of lost
spirits, and always in the feminine gender. Mead asked him once why he
always spoke of "hell" as "her," and he replied:
"Well, sir, accordin' to my reckonings, 'ell is a woman, or two women,
or a thousand of 'em, accordin' as a man 'as made it, and bein' female
it 'as to be called 'er."
As the three men mounted fresh horses after a hasty breakfast, Nick
Ellhorn said to Mead:
"Emerson, you're in big luck that that confounded thug in the kitchen
hasn't cut your throat yet."
"Oh, he won't do anything to me," Mead replied, smiling. "I reckon
likely he is a thug, or a crook of some sort, but he won't do me any
harm."
"Don't you be too sure, Emerson," said Tuttle, looking concerned.
"It's the first time I've ever seen him, but I don't think I'd like to
have him around me on dark nights."
"He is a good cook and he keeps the house as neat and clean as a woman
would. He won't try to do anything to me because I'm not big enough
game. He knows I never keep money at the ranch, and that I haven't got
very much, any way. Besides, he's seen me shoot, and I don't think he
wants to run up against my gun."
They were hurrying to Alamo Springs, a watering place which Mead
controlled farther up in the Fernandez mountains, where they arrived
just in time to stop a pistol fight between the cow-boys of the
opposing interests, half-a-dozen on each side, who had quarreled
themselves into such anger that they were ready to end the whole
matter by mutual annihilation.
Mead found that the round-up had progressed slowly during his absence.
There had been constant quarreling, occasional exchange of shots, and
unceasing effort on each side to retard the interests of the other.
The Fillmore Company had routed the cow-boys of the small cattlemen,
Mead's included, and for the last two days had prevented them from
joining in the round-up. Mead found his neighbors and their and his
employees disorganized, angry, and determined on revenge. Accompanied
by Tuttle and Ellhorn, he galloped over the hills all that day and the
next, visiting the camps on his own range and on the ranges of his
neighbors who were leagued with him in the fight against the Fillmore
Cattle Company. He smoothed down ruffled tempers, inquired into the
justice of claims, gave advice, issued orders, and organized all the
interests opposed to the cattle company into a compact, determined
body.
After those two days there was a change in the way affairs were going,
and the allied cattlemen began to win the disputes which were
constantly coming up. There were not many more attempts to prevent the
round-up from being carried on in concert, but there was no lessening
of the bad temper and the bad words with which the work was done. Each
side constantly harassed and defied the other, and each constantly
accused the other of all the cattle-crimes known to the raisers of
hoofed beasts. The mavericks were an unfailing source of quarrels.
According to the Law of the Herds, as it is held in the southwest,
each cattleman is entitled to whatever mavericks he finds on his own
range, and none may say him nay. But the leagued cattle growers and
the Fillmore people struggled valiantly over every unbranded calf they
found scurrying over the hillsides. Each side accused the other of
driving the mavericks off the ranges on which they belonged, and the
_vaqueros_ belonging to each force declared that they recognized as
their own every calf which they found, no matter where or on whose
range it chanced to be, and they branded it at once with small saddle
irons if the other side did not prevent the operation.
Mead was the leader of his side, and, guarded always by his two
friends, rode constantly over the ranges, helping in the bunching,
cutting-out and branding of the cattle, giving orders, directing the
movements of the herds and deciding quarrels. Colonel Whittaker came
out from Las Plumas, and was as active in the management of the
Fillmore Company's interests as was Emerson Mead for those of his
faction. Ellhorn and Tuttle would not allow Mead to go out of their
sight. They rode with him every day and at night slept by his side. If
he protested that he was in no danger, Ellhorn would reply:
"You-all may not need us, but I reckon you're a whole heap less likely
to need us if we're right with you in plain view."
And so they saw to it that they and their guns were never out of
"plain view." And, possibly in consequence, for the reputation of the
three as men of dare-devil audacity and unequalled skill with rifle
and revolver was supreme throughout that region, wherever the three
tall Texans appeared the battle was won. The maverick was given up,
the quarrel was dropped, the brand was allowed, and the accusation
died on its maker's lips if Emerson Mead, Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn
were present or came galloping to the scene.
The look of smiling good nature seldom left Mead's face, but his lips
were closely shut in a way that brought out lines of dogged
resolution. He was determined that the cattle company should recognize
as their right whatever claims he and his neighbors should make.
Tuttle and Ellhorn talked over the situation with him many times, and
they were as determined as he, partly from love of him and partly from
lust of fight, that the cattle company should be vanquished and
compelled to yield whatever was asked of it. But they took the
situation less seriously than did Mead, looking upon the whole affair
as something of a lark well spiced with the danger which they enjoyed.
Ellhorn heard one day that Jim Halliday was at the Fillmore ranch
house, and they decided at once that his business was to lay hands
upon Mead. It was also rumored that several people from Las Plumas had
been riding over the Fernandez plain and the foothills of the
Fernandez mountains trying to find Will Whittaker's body or some clue
to his disappearance. The three friends learned that all these people
had been able to discover was that he had left the ranch on the
morning of his disappearance with a _vaquero_, a newly hired man who
had just come out of the Oro Fino mountains, where he had been
prospecting, in the hope of making another stake. A man had seen them
driving down through the foothills, but after that all trace of them
was lost. Old Juan Garcia and his wife, past whose house the road
would have taken them, had been away, gathering firewood in the hills,
but Amada, their daughter, had been at home all day, and she declared
she had seen nothing of them, and that she did not think they could
have gone past without her seeing them. It was accordingly argued that
whatever had happened must have taken place not far from the junction
of the main road with the road which led to Emerson Mead's ranch, and
all that region was searched for traces of recent burial.