“Is the excitement all over?” Charlie Shaw asked, grinning. “Guess I’ll
go put my _caballo_ in the barn. I’ll go back an’ cut my string this
afternoon.”
“Round-up over?” Nona asked.
She had put one arm protectingly about Alice Snell. That disturbed
young woman, her tawny hair in a tangle, her cheeks tear stained,
stared at Rock. Her eyes expressed complete incredulity, surprise and a
strange blend of grief and wonder.
Charlie nodded. “Glad, too,” he said. “Hope you don’t send me with that
outfit this fall.”
“Some one will have to go,” Nona said dispiritedly.
“Oh, well!” Charlie shrugged his shoulders and took his horse away to
the stable. Nona led Alice inside. Rock stood his rifle against the
wall and sat down on the porch steps to roll a smoke. He found the
fingers that sifted tobacco into the paper somewhat tremulous. Odd that
a man could face a situation like that with cold determination and find
himself shaky when it was all over. Rock smiled and blew smoke into the
still air. He could see the teams plodding in the hayfield. The whir of
the mower blades mingled with the watery murmur of the river. A
foraging bee hummed in a bluster of flowers by his feet. Except for
these small sounds, the hush of the plains lay like a blanket, a void
in which men and the passions of men were inconsequential, little
worrying organisms agitated briefly over small matters, like flies on
the Great Wall of China.
He sat there a long time. Charlie came back and went into the bunk
room. Rock saw him stretch out on a bed. Good kid--loyal to his friends
and his outfit. What a mess there would have been if a fight had
started. Like the Alamo. Two of them intrenched behind log walls, and
thirty angry men in the open, spitting lead. Alice Snell must certainly
have thought a lot of Doc Martin. Rock could see the look on Buck
Walters’ face when she flung her scornful epithets in his face. Funny
about Doc and Nona Parke and Elmer Duffy. Not so funny, either. Hearts
were caught on the rebound. Alice Snell was worth a second look.
Passionate, willful, beautiful. Her fingers had clutched his arms with
a frenzy of possession, when she pleaded with him to get away from
danger. She was certainly capable of loving.
Nona came out. She, too, sat down on the edge of the porch near him.
She stared at the haymakers, off down the river, where that hanging
squad had departed, up at the banks where the plains pitched sharp to
the valley floor.
“Isn’t it peaceful?” she said absently.
“Yes, by comparison. Sweet Alice calm her troubled soul?”
“How can you joke about it? I made her lie down. She’s in a terrible
state--all on edge. I didn’t think she was like that.”
“Like what?” Rock inquired.
“I didn’t think she had it in her to feel so much about anything. She’s
heartbroken,” Nona said. “Doc, it appears, meant a lot to her. She just
babbles about him.”
“Everybody seems to know that but you,” Rock told her.
“I don’t understand it,” Nona said slowly. “Doc--oh, well, I guess he
made love to her, same as he did to me.”
“You blame him?” Rock inquired. “She’s attractive. Offhand, I’d say she
loved this rider of yours a heap. You didn’t have any use for him
except in his capacity as a cowpuncher. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, a man
craves affection. If he can’t find it one place he’ll look elsewhere.
Maybe he was in love with you both. You’re funny, anyhow. You didn’t
want him, yourself. But it seems to jar you because he consoled himself
with another girl.”
“It isn’t that,” she replied in a bewildered sort of fashion. “Why
should he lie to me? Why should he quarrel with Elmer Duffy about
me--make an issue of me--if--if--”
“I don’t know. I do know that I may have a man-size quarrel with Elmer,
myself, now, if Buck Walters makes a few more public cracks about my
run-in with Mark. Elmer’s apt to brood over that, and I’m handy if he
concludes it’s up to him to get action over a grievance. And it’s
likely he will.”
“What’ll you do, if he does?” she said anxiously.
“Oh, take it as it comes. There’s something fishy to me about all this
upheaval. Of course I can savvy why Buck Walters wanted to get your
man, Doc. Alice would be reason enough. Buck’s face gave him away. But
I somehow don’t believe that’s the whole answer. Perhaps both Elmer and
Buck are such honest, God-fearing cattlemen that the very idea of
rustling would make them froth at the mouth simultaneously. But I don’t
know.”
“I don’t believe for a single instant that Doc Martin had anything to
do with any rustling whatever,” Nona declared. “I don’t care what these
Burrises said, or anybody.”
“I’m not an awful lot interested in that, now,” Rock remarked
thoughtfully. “It would appear from the way these fellows were ready to
act that there has been rustling. Duffy wouldn’t back a play like that
just to satisfy either his own or Buck Walters’ grudge. Between the
Seventy Seven and the Maltese Cross, ranging around forty thousand
cattle, a few rustled calves by the Goosebill don’t cut so much figure,
except as an excuse for action. No; ‘there’s more in this than meets
the eye,’ as Shakespeare or some other wise gazabo said once. You have
lost calves, yourself.”
“Yes, I know I have, and I can’t afford to. I certainly hate a thief.”
“So do I,” Rock murmured. “Still, I don’t hate you.”
“Me?” she uttered in astonishment. Her head went up imperiously. “What
do you mean?”
“You steal hearts.” Rock said calmly. “You admitted it. You told me you
did, only, of course, you said you didn’t mean to.”
* * * * *
The blood leaped to her cheeks. It was the first time he saw her
momentarily at a loss for words, embarrassed by an imputation.
“It worries me a little,” Rock continued meditatively. “You may steal
mine. Of course, you don’t intend to. You hate to do it, as the fellow
said when he took the town marshal’s gun away from him. But, on the
other hand, you don’t care a boot if you find you’ve got the darned
thing. You’re immune. And mine is an innocent, inexperienced sort of a
heart. It’s useful to me. I’d be mighty uncomfortable without it. Maybe
I’d better pull out while the going is good.”
“You want to quit now?” she asked. “There won’t be any more trouble, I
think,” she said stiffly. “And I’m just getting used to you. I hate
strange men around. Can’t you think of me as your boss instead of as a
woman? Oh, dear, it’s always like this!”
Her distress was so comical, yet so genuine, that Rock laughed out
loud.
“Good Lord, Nona--everybody calls you Nona, so it comes natural--I’m
the world’s crudest josher, I guess,” he declared. “Say, you couldn’t
drive me off this range now. I promised you, didn’t I, that if my
admiration for you did get powerful strong I wouldn’t annoy you with
it? Don’t you give me credit for fully intending to keep my word?”
Nona smiled frankly at him and with him.
“You like to tease, don’t you?” she said simply. “You aren’t half so
serious as you look and act.”
“Sometimes I’m even more so,” he drawled lightly.
“You were serious enough a while ago,” she said. Her next words
startled Rock, they were so closely akin to what had been running in
his mind not long before. “If Elmer hadn’t known you, there would have
been a grand battle here. You and Charlie in the bunk house. I would
probably have bought into it from one of the kitchen windows. I have
dad’s old rifle, and I can shoot with it probably as straight as most
men. They wouldn’t have won much from us. Buck Walters and his cowboys,
I don’t think.”
“What makes you think Charlie would have backed me up?” he asked
curiously.
“He did, didn’t he?” she asked. “I know that boy.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Of course I was scared,” she admitted. “But that didn’t paralyze me.
It never does. Do you think I’d stand and wring my hands, while a man
was fighting for his life?”
“I see,” Rock nodded. “Sort of united we stand, eh?”
“Well, neither Buck Walters nor anybody else will ever take a man out
of my house and hang him to a cottonwood tree if I can stop it,” she
said hotly. “There is law in this Territory, if it is not very much in
evidence. They don’t have to take it in their own hands in that brutal
way.”
“No,” Rock agreed. “And when they do, there is a reason. I am rather
curious about the real reason. As a matter of fact, speaking of law, I
heard something in Benton which may be news to you. Buck Walters must
have known about it, too, which makes his move seem all the more hasty.
They have organized county machinery. There is to be an election in
about a month for a judge of the superior court, a sheriff, a
treasurer, a clerk, and a board of county commissioners. There will be
no good excuse for Judge Lynch after that.”
“I’m glad,” the girl said seriously. “It’s time we were getting
civilized.”
Rock laughed.
“It will take more than a set of duly elected county officers to
civilize this country the way you mean. Texas is well civilized in that
way, but it is still not so tame that bad men eat out of an officer’s
hand. Organized law isn’t always a guarantee of peace in a country
where it’s a hundred miles between ranches, sometimes. As often as not,
it’s some peaceful citizen instead of a sheriff that unlimbers his gun
to pacify the bad actor. Ten or fifteen years from now---- Oh, well,
what’s on the program as soon as Charlie gets home with his string?”
“We’ll bring in and brand what few calves still have to be marked,” she
said. “Then I wonder if you’d mind haying for two or three weeks.
Charlie takes a whirl at it for me.”
“I’d do pretty much anything for you because you’re a good game sport,”
Rock said quite casually. “I’m not too proud to shovel hay. I may have
to do it for myself some time. I reckon I have to earn my wages.”
An odd twinkle showed in Nona’s gray eyes.
“And perhaps you’ll be able to console Alice. She says she will never
go back to the Maltese Cross while Buck Walters runs it.”
“She didn’t have to go there in the first place,” Rock said. “She is
her own mistress, and she has a home in Texas.”
“Well, she’s going to stay here with me for a while,” Nona said, “until
she makes up her mind what to do. So you and Charlie better be nice to
her.”
“Oh, I see,” Rock said. But somehow he didn’t feel comfortable about
that. He wasn’t sure that he cared to be thrown too much in the company
of this yellow-haired girl with the pansy-blue eyes and the come-hither
smile lurking always about her mouth. He had no intention of stepping
into Doc Martin’s shoes a second time.
“I expect I’d better get some dinner on,” Nona said finally. “After
dinner you’d better go with Charlie when he heads for the Maltese Cross
and have him show you where those work horses run. We’ll need them for
this haying business.”
Rock went into the bunk room when Nona departed to cook. Charlie Shaw’s
long form was still draped on a bunk, but he was merely resting.
“Gosh, I’ll get caught up on sleep when I get home,” he grumbled. “The
man who rides with the Maltese Cross don’t need a bed. He’d just as
well trade it off for a lantern, so he could see to catch his saddle
horse before daylight.”
“We’re going to be hay diggers for a spell, you and me,” Rock informed
him.
“Don’t hurt my feelin’s.” Charlie yawned. “Have a good bunk to sleep in
an’ fancy home grub. Make up for all these hardships in the winter.
Nothin’ to do then but play crib with Nona and take a ride to town once
in a while. Say, there was pretty near something to clean up around
here, wasn’t there? All will be peaceful along the Potomac now, I
guess. Buck was hell-bent to string Doc to a cottonwood bough. They
cleaned up the Burrises last night, so the boys said.”
“Was the Seventy Seven in on that?” Rock inquired.
“No; not even the whole Maltese Cross bunch. Just Buck and a few of his
pets--the hardest nuts in the outfit.”
“Then their word was all that was plastered on Doc. No wonder Elmer
Duffy wasn’t overly eager about the job,” Rock commented.
“Just Buck’s word, so far as I know,” the boy drawled. He turned on his
side and eyed Rock attentively. “The other fellows just grunted.”
“Yet the whole of two outfits came along to get Doc Martin. And Elmer
took Buck’s word for it.”
“Elmer didn’t love Doc exactly, no more than Buck did,” Charlie said.
“An’ I guess Elmer won’t love you none, by the look of him when Buck
made that crack about you gettin’ his brother. So you’re the feller
that put Mark Duffy’s light out, eh? I was in the Odeon myself, once,
first summer it opened. Some joint. One of the Seventy Seven men told
me about ‘Big’ Duffy’s downfall. But I’d forgotten your name. He told
me. I guess you don’t need to worry about any of these bad actors
troublin’ you much.”
He stared at Rock with a trace of admiration.
“I don’t know, Charlie,” Rock answered. “I can’t help thinking there
was more in this than just jealousy over women, or a few stolen calves.
And I have a hunch you could give me an idea what the _real_ reason was
for Buck being so dead set to get Doc Martin out of the way.”
“Forget it,” Charlie counseled. “You’re a kind of a mind reader. But
Doc’s dead. Let his troubles stay buried with him. I’d go all the way
with Doc if he was alive and in trouble. He was a white man. I think
myself that this talk about the Burris boys sayin’ Doc was in with them
is pure bunk. But it ain’t our funeral now. Forget it. Buck’s wise
enough to leave sleepin’ dogs lie--when they’re dead. Our job is to
look out for ourselves an’ the TL an’ let the Seventy Seven an’ Maltese
Cross skin their own cats.”
* * * * *
Farther Charlie would not go. Nor did Rock try pressing. The boy knew
something. Rock suspected it was something he would like to know. But
Charlie would not tell, and doubtless he had what seemed to him cogent
reasons. Rock conceded that the wisdom of this youth might be sound, so
he let it drop. He lay in a bunk opposite to Charlie. They smoked and
chatted until the hay diggers stabled their horses for noon, and the
half-breed girl called them to dinner.
After that Rock set out with Charlie Shaw to gather in a few work
horses ranging by some springs over toward the Maltese Cross. The river
made a bend toward the south, away below the Parke Ranch. So they cut
across the bench.
Five miles out from home, Charlie, glancing back over his shoulder,
spotted a couple of riders on a rise less than a mile behind them.
“Funny we didn’t see them,” he remarked. “Musta been in some low ground
somewhere.”
They saw the horsemen sit motionless for half a minute or so, then drop
out of sight in a hollow. A mile farther along Charlie pointed out the
location of the spring, and they parted. Rock jogged along, keeping to
high ground and looking for small bands of horses. A half circle of the
springs brought him on the bunch he wanted. A short, sharp dash cut
seven or eight TL horses off from a band of broom-tail mares and colts,
and he headed them homeward, thundering down a long, gentle slope
toward the river. The work horses knew the way better than he, for they
knew where they were headed, as mountain cattle know where the roundup
grounds lie on the flat. They ran the bench for two miles and dropped
into a swale that deepened and narrowed to a ravine scarred by spring
torrents. Water holes dotted the dry course of its bed. Small flats
spread here and there. Willows grew in clumps. Patches of high
service-berry brush made thickets.
The sleek brutes ahead of him settled to a sedate trot. Rock jogged
along at their heels, whistling.
Something that felt like the sting of a giant bee struck him on the
head. His horse went down under him, as if pole-axed in midstride,
throwing Rock clear. And, as he fell, he saw two wisps of powder smoke,
blue on the edge of a thicket. His ear had heard two shots, so close
together that they were like one.
He wasn’t hurt. A heavy mat of grass on turf softened the shock of his
fall. He felt no wound beyond that sharp sting on his scalp. His wits
worked as usual. He lay quite still where he fell, his eyes on the
place where the smoke drifted lazily. His gun was in his hand, and he
was searching for movement, although he lay like a man dead. He could
hear the rasping death rattle in his horse’s nostrils. The beast
sprawled on its side a few feet away, a convenient bulwark if he should
need one. He noted thankfully that it lay left side up, the carbine
scabbarded under its stirrup leather unharmed. The varnished stock
pointed toward him invitingly. But he dared make no move toward it as
yet.
* * * * *
Inert as a log, both hands clasped on the butt of his Colt, Rock waited
for the ambush to show. He depended on that. They would want to be
sure. Presently his stratagem and patience were rewarded. A hatless
head took form in the edge of the brush a matter of thirty yards
distant. Still Rock waited. Another face joined the second. After a
time one extended a hand. Rock could see the gun muzzle trained on his
prone body, as his own eye lined the foresight on a spot slightly below
that extended arm.
Rock fired. That lurking figure in the brush must have pulled trigger
in the same breath, for a bullet plowed dirt in the region of Rock’s
breast. But the man spun and staggered clear of the brush, waving his
arms, reeling. He was a fair mark now, and Rock fired again.
The other had vanished. Rock lay waiting. He was in the open, true, and
the second man secure in tall thickets. But all about him stood heavy
grass. He knew that very little of his body was visible, so long as he
did not move.
“One bird in the hand and another in the brush,” he exulted.
Crimson trickled in a slow stream into one eye and spilled over his
cheek. He wiped it away. That first shot had grazed his scalp. That
troubled him very little. That second assassin, still lurking in the
thicket, troubled him much more. And at that instant he heard the quick
drum of hoofs.
Rock knew precisely how far that thicket of berry brush extended. Their
saddle horses would be tied in that. Whether the second man was scared,
or merely acting on the prudent theory that he who shoots and rides
away will live to shoot another day, did not matter to Rock. He wanted
them both. He leaped for his carbine, snatched it, and ran for the
brush. One downward glance, as he passed, showed him a dead man. The
next second he was in the thicket. A few quick strides took him out the
other side.
Straight for the next brush patch, over an intervening grass flat of
two hundred yards, a sorrel horse was stretching like a hound in full
flight, his rider crouched in the saddle, looking back over one
shoulder.
Rock dropped flat on his stomach, propped his elbows, and drew a bead.
He hated to kill a horse, but he wanted that man alive, if he could get
him. The sorrel ran at a slight angle. Rock could just see his
shoulder. He held for that, low on the body, just ahead of the cinch.
He was a fair shot with a six-shooter, deadly with a rifle. And he was
neither hurried nor excited. His forefinger tightened as deliberately
as if he had been shooting at a tomato can.
The horse went down, as if his feet had been snatched out from under
him in mid-air, which was precisely what Rock had banked on. His rider,
sitting loose, was catapulted in an arc. His body struck the earth with
a thud. And Rock ran for his man. There was no craft in that sprawl.
The fall had stunned him as effectually as if he had been slung from a
train at thirty miles an hour.
He wasn’t unconscious, merely dazed. But Rock had a gun in his face
before he got control of his senses. And, after disarming him, Rock did
exactly what he would have done with a wild steer he wanted to keep
harmless. He hog-tied him, hands behind his back, one foot drawn tight
up to the lashed wrists, with a hair _macarte_ off the dead horse.
Incidentally, Rock examined the sorrel horse, which bore the Maltese
Cross. Rock didn’t know the man and had never seen him before. He was
none of the riders Rock had seen either at the Cross round-up, or in
the vigilance committee that morning.
Rock stood looking down at the man reflectively, for a time. Then he
took him by the armpits and dragged him over the grass back to the very
thicket where the ambush had been held. He walked through to take a
look at the body on the other side. Rock did not know him, either. But
he took his weapons and a short search of the thicket presently located
a saddled horse securely tied.
This beast also carried a Maltese Cross. Rock took him by the reins and
went back to his prisoner.