THE NESTER
With the jingle of trailing spur Buck Weaver passed from the post-office
to the porch, where public opinion was wont to formulate itself while
waiting for the mail to be distributed. Here twice a week it had sat for
many years, had heard evidence, passed judgment, condemned or acquitted.
For at this store the Malpais country bought its ammunition, its
tobacco, and its canned goods; and on this porch its opinions had sifted
down to convictions. From this common meeting ground the gossip of
Cattleland was scattered far and wide.
Weaver filled the doorway while he drew on his gauntlets. He was the
owner of the Twin Star outfit, the biggest cattle company in that
country. Nearly twenty years ago, while still a boy of eighteen, he had
begun in a small way. The Malpais had been a wild and lawless place
then, but in all the turbid days that followed Buck Weaver had held his
own ruthlessly by adroit manipulation, shrewd sense, and implacable
daring. Some outfits he had bought out; others he had driven away. Those
that survived were at a respectable distance from him. Only the
settlers in the hills remained to trouble him. He had come to be the big
man of the district, dominating its social, business, and political
activities.
"What's this I hear about another settler up on Bear Creek?" he asked
curtly after he had gathered up his bridle and swung to the saddle.
"That's the way Jim Budd's telling it, Mr. Weaver. Another nester
homesteaded there," old Joe Yeager answered casually, chewing tobacco
with a noncommittal air.
"Fine! There'll soon be a right smart settlement up near the headwaters
of the creeks, I shouldn't wonder. The cow business is getting to be a
mighty profitable one when you don't own any," Buck said dryly.
The others laughed, but with small merriment. They were either small
cattle owners themselves or range riders whose living depended on the
business, and during the past two years a band of rustlers had operated
so boldly as to have wiped out the profits of some of the ranchers. Most
of them disliked Buck extremely for his overbearing ways. But they did
not usually tell him so. On this particular subject, too, they joined
hand with him.
"You're dead right, Mr. Weaver. It ce'tainly must be stopped."
The man who spoke rolled a cigarette and lit it. Like the rest he was in
the common garb of the plains. The broad-brimmed felt hat, the shiny
leather chaps, the loosely knotted bandanna, were as much a matter of
course as the hard-eyed, weather-beaten look that comes of life under an
untempered sun. But Brill Healy claimed a distinction above his fellows.
He was a black-haired, picturesque fellow, as supple as a panther,
reckless and yet wary.
"We'll have rustling as long as we have nesters, Brill," Buck told him.
"If that's the case we'll serve notice on the nesters to get out," Healy
replied.
Buck grinned. Indomitable fighter though he was, he had been unable to
roll back the advancing tide of settlement. Here and there homesteaders
had taken up land and had brought in small bunches of cattle. Most of
these were honest men, others suspected rustlers. But Buck's fiat had
not sufficed to keep them out. They had held stoutly to their own
and--he suspected--a good deal more than their own. Calves had been
branded secretly and cows killed or driven away.
"Go to it, Brill," Weaver jeered. "I'm wishing you all the luck in the
world."
He touched his pony with the spur and swept up the road in a cloud of
white dust.
Not till he had disappeared did conversation renew itself languidly, for
Seven Mile Ranch was lying under the lethargy of a summery sun.
"I expect Buck's got the right of it," volunteered a brawny youth known
as Slim. "All you got to do is to take up a claim near a couple of big
outfits with easy brands, then keep your iron hot and industrious.
There's sure money in being a nester."
Despite the soft drawl of his voice, he spoke with bitterness, as did
the others. Every day the feeling was growing stronger that the rustling
must be stopped if they were going to continue to run cattle. The
thieves had operated with a boldness and a shrewdness that fairly
outwitted the ranchers. Enough horses and cattle had been driven across
the line to stock a respectable ranch. Not one of the established
ranches had escaped heavy losses; so heavy, indeed, that the owners
faced the option of going broke or of exterminating the rustlers. Once
or twice the thieves had nearly been caught red-handed, but the leader
of the outlaws had saved the men by the most daring strategy.
Healy, until lately foreman of the Twin Star outfit, had organized the
ranchmen as a protective association. In this he had represented Weaver,
himself not popular enough to coöperate with the other ranchmen. Once
Brill had led the pursuit of the rustlers and had come back furious from
a long futile chase. For among the cattle being driven across to Sonora
were five belonging to him.
Other charges also lay against the hill outlaws. A stage had been robbed
with a gold shipment from the Diamond Nugget mine. A cattleman had been
held up and relieved of two thousand dollars, just taken as part payment
for a sale of beef steers. The sheriff of Noches County, while trying
to arrest a rustler, had been shot dead in his tracks.
Brill Healy leaned forward, gathered the eyes of those present, and
lowered his voice to a whisper. "Boys, this thing has got to stop. I've
sent for Bucky O'Connor. If anybody can run the coyotes to earth he can.
Anyhow, that's the reputation he's got."
Yeager nodded. "Good for you, Brill. He's ce'tainly got an A-one rep. as
a cattle detective, and likewise as a man hunter. When is he coming?"
"He writes that he's got a job on hand that will keep him busy a couple
of weeks, anyhow. After that we'll hear from him. I'm going to drop
everything else, if necessary, and stay right with him on this job till
he finishes it right," Healy promised.
"Now you're shoutin', Brill. Here, too. It's money in our pocket to stop
this thing right now, even if we pay big for it. No use jest sittin'
around till we're stole blind," assented Slim.
"It won't cost us anything. Buck, he pays the freight. The waddies have
been hitting him right hard lately and he figures it will be up to him
to clean them out. Course we expect help from you boys when we call on
you."
"Sure. We'll all be with you till the cows come home, Brill," nodded one
little fellow called Purdy. He was looking at a dust patch rising from
the Bear Creek trail, and slowly moving toward them. "What's the name of
this new nester, Jim?"
Budd, by way of being a curiosity on the range, was a fat man with a
big double chin. He was large as well as fat, and, by queer contrast,
the voice that came from that mountain of flesh was a small falsetto
scarce above a whisper.
"Didn't hear his name. Had no talk with him. Hear he is called Keller,"
he said.
"What's he look like?"
"You-all can see for yourself. This here's the gent rolling a tail this
way."
The little cloud of dust had come nearer and disclosed as its source a
rider on a rangy roan with four white-stockinged feet. Drawing up in
front of the porch, the man swung himself easily from the saddle and
glanced around.
"Evening, gentlemen," he said pleasantly.
Some nodded grimly, some growled an acknowledgment of his greeting. But
the lack of cordiality, the presence of hostility, could not be doubted.
The young man stood at supple ease before them, one hand resting on his
hip and the other on the saddle. He let his unabashed gaze travel from
one to another, understood perfectly what those expressionless eyes of
stone were telling him, and, with a little laugh of light derision,
trailed debonairly into the store.
"Any mail for Larrabie Keller?" he inquired of the postmistress.
The girl at the window glanced incuriously at him and turned to look.
When she pushed his letter through the grating he met for an instant a
flash of dark eyes from a mobile face which the sun and superb health
had painted to a harmony of gold and russet, with the soft glow of pink
pushing through the tan. The unexpectedness of the picture magnetized
his gaze. Admiration, frank and human, shone from the steel-gray eyes
that had till now been only a mask. Beneath his steady look she flushed
indignantly and withdrew from the window.
Convicted of rudeness, the last thing he had meant, Keller returned to
the porch and leaned against the door jamb while he opened his letter.
His appearance immediately sandbagged conversation. Stony eyes were
focused upon him incuriously, with expressionless hostility.
He noted, however, an exception. Another had been added to the group, a
lad of about eighteen, slim and swarthy, with the same dark look of
pride he had seen on the face at the stamp window. It was easy to guess
that they were brother and sister, very likely twins, though he found in
the boy's expression a sulky impatience lacking in hers. Perhaps the lad
needed the discipline that life hammers into those who want to be a law
unto themselves.
With an insolence extremely boyish, the lad turned to Healy. "I'm for
running out a few of these nesters. We've got more than we can use, I
reckon. The range is overstocked now--both with them and cows. Come a
bad year and half of our cattle will starve."
There was a moment of surcharged silence. Phil Sanderson had voiced the
growing feeling of them all, but he had flung it out as a stark
challenge before the time was ripe. It was one thing to resent the
coming of settlers; it was quite another to set themselves openly
against the law that allowed these men to homestead the natural parks in
the hills.
Brill Healy laughed. "The fat's in the fire now, sure enough. Just the
same, I back your play, Phil."
He turned recklessly to the man in the doorway. "You may tell your
friends up on Bear Creek that we own this range and mean to hold it. We
don't aim to let our cattle be starved, and we don't aim to lie down
before rustlers. Understand?"
The nester smiled, but there was no gayety in his eyes. They met those
of the cattleman with a grip of steel, and measured strength with him.
Each knew the other would go the limit before Keller made quiet answer:
"I think so."
And with that he dismissed the subject and his unfriendly audience. With
perfect ease, he read his letter, pocketed it, and whistled softly as he
impassively took stock of the scenery. Apparently he had wiped Public
Opinion from his map, and was interested only in the panorama before
him.
Seven Mile Ranch lay rooted at the desert terminus among the foothills,
a gateway between the mountains and the Malpais Plain. Below was a
shimmering stretch of sand and cactus tortured beneath a blazing sun.
Into that caldron with its furnace-cracked floor the sun had poured
itself torridly for countless eons. It was a Sahara of mirage and
desolation and death.
To the left was a flat-topped mesa eroded to fantastic mockery of some
bastioned fort. In the round-topped hills behind it was Noches, fifty
miles away. Beyond lay the tangle of hills, rising to the saw-toothed
range now painted with orange and mauve and a hint of deepening purple.
For dusk was already slipping down over the peaks.
"Mail's been open half an hour, boys," Phyllis announced through the
open window.
They dropped in to the store, as noisy as schoolboys, but withal
deferential. It was clear the young postmistress reigned a queen among
the younger ones, but a queen that deigned to friendship with her
subjects. Some of them called her Miss Sanderson, one or two of them
Phyllie.
Among these last was Healy, who appeared on very good terms with her
indeed. He appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, and handed
to each man his mail with appropriate jocular comments designed to
embarrass the recipient. He knew them all, and his hits were greeted
with gay laughter. To the man standing in the doorway with his back to
them, they seemed all one happy family--and himself a rank outsider. He
trailed down the steps and swung himself to the saddle. As he loped away
the sound of her warm, clear laughter floated after him.