Rock staved off Nona Parke’s agitated questions when he asked for food.
He robbed his own bed reluctantly, but a promise was a promise, apart
from his desire to have Stack out of the country between dusk and dawn.
The blood on his face and the strange sight of him riding a Maltese
Cross horse stirred Nona to a curious pitch. But Rock moved fast, told
her nothing, and got away again.
He made the round trip in an hour. As he drew up on the brink of the
ravine, Stack walked up to meet him, carrying on his back Rock’s saddle
which he had stripped from the dead horse.
“I reckoned you’d want this,” he said genially.
Rock sat on his own horse, watching the man ride away. Stack headed
south. As far as Rock could see him, he bore straight for Fort Benton.
He would never turn back, Rock felt assured. Stack had shot his bolt.
There was a certain strange relief in that. He marveled at the queer
compound of savagery, cupidity, cunning and callousness that
characterized such a man. They were rare, but they did exist.
Stack admitted that Hurley had shot Doc Martin. He admitted that he and
Hurley were to share five hundred dollars for ambushing Rock. He didn’t
seem to have any emotion about it, except a mild shame over his
failure. He didn’t seem to regard Rock with anything except a grudging
admiration for beating him at his own game. Owning himself beaten, he
withdrew. And, at that, Rock muttered to himself, Stack had nothing on
Buck Walters when it came to vileness and treachery.
Rock turned his horse and rode homeward, reaching the TL about supper
time. He was tired. His head ached intolerably, now that the bleeding
had ceased. When he took off his hat and removed the handkerchief
compress, he could feel the slash cut by that bullet. A quarter of an
inch lower! By such narrow margins chance operates. Rock sat on the
side of his bed, wondering if he should wash and bandage that wound.
Now he began to fear that it might give him a good deal of trouble. He
hoped not, because, unless he had guessed wrong, some rapid-fire action
lay ahead of him. And while he pondered thus, Nona walked into the
room.
He scarcely remembered how he had accounted to her for the crimson
stains on his face. But her quick glance took in the discolored
handkerchief and the matted brown hair. She stood over him with a
worried look.
“You _are_ hurt,” she said. “What happened?”
“Fellow took a shot at me--one of Buck Walters’ men. Keep that under
your hat,” he warned. “It’s only a scratch.”
She bent over his head and parted the hair with gentle finger tips.
“It isn’t bad,” she murmured. “But it must be painful. And it ought to
be cleaned. I’ll get some stuff and dress it.”
She returned in a minute with a basin, scissors and carbolic acid. Very
deftly she snipped the hair away from about the wound, cleaned it with
a solution that burned like fire, and drew the edges together with a
patch of court-plaster. Then she sat down on the bed beside Rock and
said earnestly:
“Now tell me about it.”
“Nothing much to tell,” Rock demurred.
“You mean you won’t?”
“Not just now,” he said. “It has nothing to do with you, anyway. Buck
seems to want me out of the way. I am quite a bit wiser about things
than I was this morning, but I still have a few guesses coming. There’s
nothing to worry about. Don’t let on to any one that I have been shot
at. I will say a horse fell with me and cut my head.”
“But it does worry me,” she protested. “I feel uneasy. Something’s got
to be done about this, if a man riding for me can’t go anywhere except
in danger of his life.”
“Something is going to be done about it,” Rock assured her. “Darned
quick, too! It isn’t because I am riding for you. It is because I am
supposed to be dangerous, just as Doc was dangerous for something he
knew or guessed. He was foolish enough to tip his hand to Buck. I am
not going to talk. I’m going to get busy. All you can do is to wish me
luck.”
“I do,” she murmured. “I wish the Maltese Cross had never come into
this country.”
“In that case I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “And I’m darned glad I
came.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, lots of reasons.” Rock smiled. “I’ll tell you some of these days,
when the dove of peace spreads her wings across this part of the
world.”
“I wish you’d tell me,” she begged. “I hate mysteries. I’m getting so I
go around here with my heart in my mouth, wondering what terrible thing
will happen next.”
“I don’t think anything more will happen around this ranch,” Rock
declared. “I’m the center of this trouble, and I’m going to take myself
away from here--for a while. But I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be sorry to see you go,” she whispered. “But perhaps it’s best,
if you are going to be ambushed at every turn.”
She looked down at the floor frowningly for a few seconds. Rock stared
at the curve of her neck, the scarlet twist of her lips, the dark cloud
of hair, and a queer breath-taking sensation stirred in him, an almost
uncontrollable impulse to draw her up to him. He shook himself. Why the
devil should a woman have that effect on a man? And Nona seemed to be
unconscious of it--even to be irritated by the manifestation of a
feeling she was the factor in arousing.
* * * * *
Nona got up. She looked at him with such frowning composure that Rock
couldn’t meet those level gray eyes. It seemed to him they read him
through and through.
“Come along to supper. It’s all ready,” she said.
Rock shook his head. “Don’t feel like eating,” he replied. “After a
while I’ll have a cup of coffee, maybe; but not just now. Will Charlie
be back to-night, I wonder?”
“I think so.”
“I’m going to pull out at daylight,” he told her. “If I am gone before
you get up, so long.”
“I’ll be up,” she said briefly and left him.
Charlie Shaw came jingling his spurs across the porch at sundown.
“Did Buck have anything to say to you while you were at camp?” Rock
asked.
“Didn’t see hide nor hair of him,” Charlie replied. “He took one of the
wagons, about half his crew, a bunch of saddle stock, and pulled his
freight as soon as they all got back from that session here this
mornin’. So the boys told me.”
“I thought the spring work was all over,” Rock commented.
“It is.”
“Nobody know where Buck headed for?”
Charlie shook his head.
“I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut,” Rock said, “that he took with him
only his special pets.”
“You’d win your bet,” Charlie growled. “I didn’t count noses, but the
hard pills were among the missin’. How’d you guess?”
“‘Birds of a feather.’” Rock quoted the old proverb. “I’m leaving you,
myself, in the morning, Charlie.”
“What for?” Charlie inquired.
“Well, for public consumption.” Rock smiled. “I’m pulling out because I
find life here much too exciting. I don’t like vigilance committees and
private wars. Privately, between you and me and the gatepost, I’ll be
back before long. And I’m coming back with bells on.”
Charlie frowned.
“Kinda hate to see you go,” he said. “But I guess you know your own
business best.”
“Did Doc Martin ever tell you about finding a set of corrals with a
branding chute, tucked away somewhere in the Sweet Grass?”
“Hell!” Charlie exclaimed. “How’d you find _that_ out?”
“Did he tell you where they were?”
“No,” Charlie shook his head. “He didn’t tell me nothin’. If he’d kept
as close a mouth to everybody as he did to me, he’d be alive yet, I
guess. I know he did, that’s all.”
“And he made some sort of crack at Buck about this, didn’t he?” Rock
hazarded. “After that the fireworks began.”
Charlie nodded.
“Doc was awful outspoken when he got his back up about anything,” he
said. “Buck tried to horn him away from the Maltese Cross on account of
Alice, I guess. They had words about it. Nobody was around to hear what
was said, but Doc told me he put a bug in Buck’s ear about range bosses
with ambitions to get rich off the outfit they worked for. I asked him
if he meant that Buck wanted to grab Alice an’ the outfit, with a
parson’s assistance, an’ he just grinned. I told him if he knew
anything he better keep his mouth shut where Buck Walters was
concerned. Been better for him if he had.”
“I wish he had, too,” Rock said. “He’d be alive now, and he’d be darned
useful. I got ideas about Mister Buck Walters, myself.”
“How?”
“Better not be too curious, kid,” Rock advised. “What you don’t know
won’t hurt you. Better you aren’t mixed up in anything. Nobody aims to
hang you to a cottonwood, or bushwhack you in some lonely coulee. I
only asked you about these mysterious pens to check up on something I
found out. If you don’t know, of course you can’t put me wise.”
“Have they got anything to do with us bein’ shy a few calves this
spring, d’you suppose?” Charlie asked thoughtfully. “Because, if it
has, I might get mixed up in it yet. I don’t know as I’d sit tight an’
keep quiet if I thought anybody was rustlin’ off Nona. She needs all
she’s got.”
“That I don’t know, yet,” Rock said frankly. “I can tell you this much,
Charlie: If there is any connection between what I know and suspect and
Nona’s missing calves, she’ll get ’em back with interest.”
“Gosh! You sure got me goin’,” Charlie grumbled.
“Don’t let it get away with you,” Rock told him. “Keep mum. I’ll be
back here again, by and by. If anybody inquires about me, say I quit
the Marias because there was too much high life around here to suit
me.”
* * * * *
The boy grinned and said no more. In an hour the TL was severally and
collectively asleep. It seemed to Rock that he had no more than closed
his eyes before they opened again at the first streak of dawn. He had
caught up his two horses the night before. Now he went down to the
stable to feed them. A lot of miles lay ahead of those ponies. When he
came back to the house, smoke streamed from the kitchen chimney, and
Nona was making coffee and slicing bacon. The two of them were the only
souls astir. It was still an hour and a half before the regular rising
time.
“You didn’t have to get up at this unearthly hour,” Rock protested.
“I heard you, and I didn’t want you to go away without your breakfast,”
she said.
“For a fellow that has no use for men,” Rock teased, “you are awful
darned good to them. You’d make an excellent wife for a ranchman.”
“I am a pretty darned good ranchman myself, without being a wife, thank
you, Mister Holloway,” she retorted.
“You won’t escape forever,” he told her. “Some of these days somebody
will spread a wide loop and snare you.”
Nona slid three strips of bacon on a hot plate and set it before him,
with a toss of her head.
“Men,” she said disdainfully, “seem to think that a woman’s chief
business in life is to be captured by some man.”
“Well,” Rock said between mouthfuls, “when you stop to consider it,
isn’t it? It seems that way, when you think of it.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She laughed. “That may be some women’s ambition, but
not mine.”
“It isn’t an ambition,” Rock murmured. “It’s just human nature. You ask
Alice. When you get to be a cattle queen, you’ll find yourself a heap
more interested in men than you are in cows. You’re darned haughty
about this poor worm man, right now. Your father was a man, old girl,
and I expect your mother was glad of it.”
Nona stared at him, half astonished, half amused.
“I don’t know whether you’re preaching,” she said artlessly, “or
drumming up trade for a matrimonial bureau.”
“Neither,” Rock said. “Just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
He rode up to the house and, dragging out his bed, lashed it across the
black horse. Sangre stood shaking his glossy head, with the white star.
Rock swung up. He hesitated a second. He wanted to say good-by, and
still---- Then Nona came out of the kitchen with a package in her hand.
“Here’s a lunch,” she said. “You didn’t say where you were going, but
if it’s an all-day ride a bite will come handy.”
“Thanks!” He tucked it in a saddle pocket. “Well, here’s hoping there’s
no more excitement around here till I come back, Nona. And if I don’t
come back, you’ll know it’s because I can’t, not because I don’t want
to.”
“You’re not going on the warpath after Buck Walters, are you, Rock?”
she asked uneasily. “Please don’t. It isn’t worth while. A man like
that always gets what’s coming to him. Let him be.”
“I’m going on the warpath, but not the way you mean,” Rock answered. “I
am not going after anybody with a gun in my hand and blood in my eye.
Not yet. Listen! Let me whisper something in your ear.”
Nona stood beside Sangre, one hand resting on the red horse’s curved
neck. Rock bent down as if to whisper. And when Nona turned her face
up, he kissed her lightly on the red mouth that was beginning to haunt
him and to trouble him wherever he went, very much to his dismay.
And when she drew back with startled eyes, Rock touched his horse
gently and rode away without a backward glance. If he looked back, he
would turn back, whether to apologize or plead, he could scarcely say.
For a young man who had always been rather egotistically sure of
himself he found his breast filled with a strange commotion.
“That,” he sighed at last, with a backward look into the Marias Valley
from the south bank, “is sure a hell of a way for a fellow to treat a
girl that got up at daybreak to get him his breakfast. Well, I guess
it’s either kill or cure.”
* * * * *
As the sun rose, a hot ball in the east, flinging its careless gold
over the bleached grass, that rolled away to limitless horizons, and
Rock gradually left that familiar, pleasant valley far behind, he
thought less and less of that unpremeditated kiss and more and more of
the business in hand. He had set out on what seemed a mad undertaking,
but there was method in his madness.
He came down to the bed of the Missouri and into the streets of Fort
Benton shortly after noon. He let his horses rest and munch hay in a
livery stable for three hours. Then, with a little food tied on his
pack, he embarked on the ferry and so gained the southern shore, whence
ran the great freight trails to the Judith Basin and farther to towns
along the Yellowstone, threaded like forlorn beads on that steel string
which was the Northern Pacific Railway.
His specific destination was Billings, two hundred miles in an air line
southeast. But first he turned aside into the rich grazing lands of the
Judith Basin to find Al Kerr of the Capital K. It was a far cry to the
Odeon and Clark’s Ford on the bleak plains of Nebraska. But Rock was
riding into the Judith to draw on a promise the little man had made him
that night under the stars.
He forged southeast all that afternoon, picketed his horses overnight
by a rippling creek, wiped the dew off his saddle at dawn, and rode
again--rode at a jog trot, hour after hour. He met a stage and held
converse with the driver, passed on and came to a stage station on that
rutted artery of travel to Lewistown. Here a hostler gave him specific
directions. And at sunset he rode into the home ranch of the Capital K.
The first man that hailed him was Kerr himself.
“Well, well, well,” Kerr said. “You have shore been a long time gettin’
around to pay a sociable call.”
“Can you stake me to two horses in the morning?” Rock asked, after they
had exchanged greetings. “I got to hotfoot it on to Billings early.”
“Sure,” Kerr said. “Give you the best we got.”
They sat up late that night, talking. The Capital K had taken over a
lovely valley watered by a shining stream, bordered by natural meadows.
Kerr had concentrated all his cattle there. They swarmed by tens of
thousands over a radius of forty miles. The little man was well
content. He would move no more. He had preëmpted a kingdom, and there
were no more worlds to conquer. He had built a substantial house and
brought his family from Texas for the summer. But, beyond these visible
evidences of prosperity, he didn’t talk much about himself. Rock’s
story engrossed all his attention. And to the tentative, provisional
request with which Rock ended, he gave hearty assent.
“Sure, I will,” he declared. “Hell, I’d do it like a shot, just on your
own account. As it happens, I know Uncle Bill Sayre darned well. He
loaned me twenty thousand dollars on my unbacked note, one time. I had
a speakin’ acquaintance with Dave Snell, too. You go on to Billings and
get word to him. Once you get back here I can throw an outfit together
for you in a matter of hours. I have saddle horses to burn. An’ I got
men that’ll foller you to hell and back again. By gum, that’s some
formation up there, if you got it figured right. Same old story--the
beggar on horseback. What a fool that man is. Ain’t satisfied with a
good thing. Tryin’ to grab the earth, regardless.”
“It may be covered up so that it’ll be hard to get at him personally,”
Rock said. “But if I can make sure of the Steering Wheel, I can force
his hand. It looks air tight, but there’s always a weak spot in that
sort of undertaking you know.”
“You watch he don’t dynamite you. He may have a joker up his sleeve as
well as an ace in the hole,” Kerr warned. “I have heard of Buck Walters
plenty down South. He’s a smart man. He’s got to be that an’ a
cattleman, besides, or he’d never got in so strong with Dave Snell. If
you get the goods on him, don’t give him a chance--the dirty dog. Gosh,
a man that hires his killin’ done is lower’n a snake in the bottom of a
forty-foot well.”