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Title: Out of the blue

Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair

Release date: May 5, 2024 [eBook #73542]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Street & Smith Publications, 1927

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUT OF THE BLUE ***


OUT OF THE BLUE

By Bertrand W. Sinclair

Author of “North of Fifty-three,” “The Land of Frozen Suns,” Etc.

    Headed north, a carefree young ranger rides on a risky
    mission--rides in the open, spacious days of a West with
    worlds of elbowroom, when the winds came winging, when
    hoof beats came ringing, when bullets came singing,
    “out of the blue.”




CHAPTER I: A RETAINING FEE


Once upon a time, as the old tales used to begin, a young man came
riding down the main street of Fort Worth in the sovereign State of
Texas. He was mounted on a bright sorrel horse, which stepped daintily
in the dust of the thoroughfare, for Fort Worth had not yet come to the
high estate of asphalt paving and such civic ornamentation as followed
in the wake of petroleum and cotton. The longhorn was still king of the
plains, a source of wealth in his unnumbered thousands. The cattle
kings and their followers were like the ancient Romans; they made their
own roads--made them into far places, in a spirit of high emprise. They
did not mind a little dust here and there.

This rider, who looked out from under a gray Stetson hat, holding his
reins in a buckskin-gloved hand, while he scanned the windows of the
various establishments that fronted on the street, was plainly of the
range. He was young and deeply tanned. He was armed, as men commonly
were in those times. His saddle, bridle, and spurs were beautifully
made, and the silver-inlaid steel clinked faintly, as his horse moved.
The coiled-rawhide reata at his saddle fork was limber with much use.
He might have been considered picturesque. That idea would never have
occurred to him or his fellows. The seed of romance indubitably lay in
the stout hearts of Rock Holloway and his like, living and moving and
having their being on the fringes of an encroaching civilization, but
they were practical in their activities, which had to do with a major
industry, wherein there was doubtless romance, but also a considerable
portion of hard work and long chances which the range man accepted as
incidental to his calling. This long-limbed youth, with the keen eyes
and pleasant face, could probably have told why he preferred the range
to a university campus; but he was merely the occasional exception. And
he may have had glimpses of the future, apart from cattle and trail
herds and the wide pastures that were in process of reclamation from
the bison and the Indian. But he would never have embodied such dreams
in words. And he was not steeping his soul in the color and aspect of a
little cow town when he rode along that street. He was looking for a
certain place. Presently, and without very much trouble, he found it.

He pulled up before a one-story adobe building. On the paneled door,
across the plate-glass windows, ran a legend in gilt lettering:

“The Trinity Bank.”

Rock dismounted and left his sorrel standing on dropped bridle reins,
as securely anchored in the utilitarian fashion of the plains as if he
had been tied to a post. He paused a moment at the door to grin. On
this piece of plain oak some wag had lately scrawled in red chalk the
word “Holy” between “The” and “Trinity.” It was not inappropriate, Rock
knew. The Trinity Bank of Fort Worth was owned and operated by three
men who were old and wise and upright, as near to a state of holiness
as bankers in the cow country ever got. That is to say, “Uncle Bill”
Sayre, who was president, manager, and chief stockholder, and Marcus
Proud, and Abel Stewart were square men, whose word was as good and,
indeed, sometimes went farther than an explicit bond.

Rock thrust his face at the first wicket in a low grille along a
counter.

“Is Mr. Sayre in?”

“Did you want to see him?” The teller looked up from his work.

“If he isn’t too busy. Tell him it’s Rock Holloway.”

The man walked back a few steps and put his head inside a doorway. He
beckoned Rock and indicated an opening in the counter through which
Rock could enter.

When Rock reached the inner office, a tall, thin-faced man of sixty
rose to greet him, shook hands, shoved forward a chair, and closed the
door. Then he seated himself, smiling benignantly.

“Well, well,” said he. “Yo’ young fellows change fast. Le’s see. It’s
nigh two years since I saw yo’, Rock. Yo’ favor yo’ ol’ dad mo’ and mo’
all the time. How’s yo’ mammy and Cecilia?”

“Fine,” Rock replied. “Mother says Austin suits her right down to the
ground to live in. Cissy’s going to be married this fall.”

“Yo’ don’t say! Why, she ain’t but seventeen. Who to?”

“Nobody I know personally,” Rock answered. “But I know of his family.
He’s a Brett. Son of the Brett that runs the B X over toward El Paso.
Mother says he’s a nice boy.”

“I know the Bretts. Pretty good people, take ’em all around. Still,
pretty young, pretty young, for marryin’. Kinda sudden after yo’-all
fixin’ it so she could get whatever advantages lie in an education.”

“Pshaw, Uncle Bill,” Rock said. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t give up
anything. There was only so much money to go around, and I’m certainly
able to rustle for myself. I had all the show I needed, when I needed
it. I don’t know as I would have stayed back East long enough to take a
degree, anyhow, only to please the old man. It’s lots of fun to make a
hand on the range, and I don’t figure to be a cow hand forever, nohow.
But, say, how did you know I was passing this way? Of course I would
have come in to say hello, anyhow, but you beat me to it, sending out
word you wanted to see me.”

“Oh, I keep tab on lots of things, son.” Old Sayre’s eyes twinkled.
“There’s a lot of cowmen an’ cow business passes through this bank.
Su’prise yo’, how well they keep me posted on who’s who, and what’s
what. Now, I didn’t send fo’ yo’, Rock, just to ask after yo’ health,
this time. Yo’ goin’ No’th with a Seventy Seven trail herd?”

“Right through to Montana,” Rock nodded.

“What do yo’-all aim to do after yo’ get there?” Sayre inquired. “Stay
on with the Seventy Seven?”

“Don’t think so.” Rock frowned slightly. “I’d as soon work right along,
but I don’t know as I like this outfit well enough to tie to.”

“Yo’ mean yo’ don’t cotton much to yo’ boss?” the old man supplied.

“Well, perhaps. Know him?”

“A Duffy, ain’t he?”

Rock nodded.

“I know the tribe. They’s four boys--all big--all inclined to be
high-handed. Le’s see. There’s Joe, Elmer, Ed, an’ Mark. Elmer’s
handlin’ this herd yo’-all are with?”

Again Rock nodded.

“Elmer ain’t bad. Joe’s noisy, but harmless. Ed is real tough. Mark’s
both noisy and mean. He always aimed to be bad, unless he’s changed a
heap lately. He’s big as a house. Overbearin’ accordin’ to his size.”

“Mark’s trail hand with this Seventy Seven herd,” Rock said.

“Huh? If Elmer’s startin’ No’th with _that_ handicap, he’ll have
trouble on the trail, I reckon. Ought to have more sense than have that
disturber in his outfit. I don’t expect yo’ and Mark love each other,
eh? No, I shouldn’t imagine yo’d want to stay with the Seventy Seven
after the drive’s over, not if yo’ got to rub elbows with Mark. He sure
is the wrong kind.”

“Maybe not even all the way,” Rock said casually. “Mark’s inclined to
ride me. No particular reason. Just don’t like me, I expect.”

“Better quit the Seventy Seven, son,” Sayre counseled after a moment’s
silence. “There’s other herds drivin’ No’th that need good men.”

Rock shook his head. A little smile flitted across his face.

“Would you?” he challenged. “Just to get away from a man that don’t
like the shape of your head, or something? Would you, Uncle Bill, after
you’d promised a trail boss you’d go?”

“Well, no, I reckon I wouldn’t, come to think it over,” the old man
answered dryly. “At least, when I was twenty-five I sho’ wouldn’t. At
my age, now, I c’n see the wisdom of side-steppin’ trouble. Still, yo’
better quit the Seventy Seven soon as yo’ get to yo’ destination,
providin’ yo’ and Mark both do _get_ there all right.”

“I certainly aim to do both.” Rock smiled. “Mark’s welcome to flourish,
so long as he don’t step on my corns too frequent. I want to get into
this North country. I hear there’s chances there for a fellow with a
little money. Time I’ve worked another year I’ll have a couple of
thousand dollars. I might find a place where I could start in with a
hundred cows or so, and grow up with the country.”

“When yo’ get around to that, let me know,” the banker said. “I hear
good reports of that Montana country. I might put in some money if yo’
locate a range. Texas is full up. She’ll spill a heap of stock and men
into the Northwest in the next five years. Cattle grow into money
tol’able fast.”

That was an indubitable fact. Sayre, as Rock knew, was a cattle owner
as well as a banker. And Texas _was_ getting crowded. That was why the
longhorns were swarming North and West to free grass and plentiful
water, like droves of horned locusts. They were grazing year by year
farther afield into regions dotted by the bones of the buffalo,
bleaching where they but lately fell before the rifles of the hide
hunters. Rock promised that he would remember the suggestion. They
talked a while longer desultorily. Then a clerk asked if Mr. Sayre was
busy. A man wanted to see him. Rock rose to his feet.

“Sit still,” Sayre told him. To the clerk he said: “Tell him to come
back in half an hour, and I’ll see him.”

And when the door closed again he put both feet up on his desk, looked
Rock over with an appraising eye, and said:

“Fact is, young man, I sent fo’ yo’ because I want yo’-all to do
something fo’ me when yo’ hit Montana. The question is, will yo’? Yo’
the man I want fo’ the job. Yo’-all will be well paid, and yo’ sho’
will be doing yo’ Uncle Bill Sayre a favor.”

“Name your poison,” Rock said lightly. “What is it you’d have me do?
I’m open to any kind of engagement, Uncle Bill. So long as you don’t
aim to have me bushwhack some enemy for you and mail you his scalp.”

Sayre grinned. Then he grew sober.

“This is strictly confidential, son,” said he. “First off, do yo’ know
the Maltese Cross? Dave Snell’s outfit. Used to range on the west fork
of the Trinity.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

From where he sat, Rock could see the silver of the Trinity River
looping by the town. He knew the upper Trinity only by hearsay. Texas
is an empire, and its cattle kings were many, not all with honor and
fame beyond their own little kingdoms. He shook his head.

“Don’t matter. Dave Snell was a friend of mine. Yo’ dad knew him, too.
He owned a lot of range. Ran about thirty thousand cattle. More’n a
year ago he started to move all his stock to Montana. Took two herds up
that season. There’s three more on trail now. Meantime Dave ups and
dies. He leaves all he has to two children. A girl just come
twenty-one, a boy sixteen. Said estate to be carried on as a going
concern until the boy’s twenty-five. The income from this is to be paid
to each annually, as he or she comes of age, and finally equally
divided in the end. I’m an executor of this document. The other
executor is a man named Walters-- ‘Buck’ Walters. Know him by name?”

“No.”

“Thought yo’ might. Don’t matter. He was once in that Pecos country
yo’ve frequented lately. I’ll get down to cases pretty soon. This Buck
Walters was range boss for old Dave for quite a spell before he died.
Dave thought a heap of him. I don’t.”

Uncle Bill stopped to roll a cigarette.

“No, suh, I sho’ don’t think a heap of my fellow executor,” he resumed.
“Dave Snell was pretty specific in his will. He had a couple of months
to think up all the details. I have a free hand with the business end,
and all money is checked in and out of this bank. Buck Walters has a
free hand with the cattle. The outfit’s pretty well moved into Montana.
It was Buck’s notion in the first place. He says there’s no room to
range the Maltese Cross on the Trinity no mo’. He says no sense havin’
ten thousand cattle in Montana and another ten thousand in Texas.”

“May be right, at that,” Rock commented.

“Maybe so, maybe so,” Sayre agreed. “But I’d a heap rather the Maltese
Cross stock wasn’t on a range two thousand miles from Fort Worth, even
if it is a mite better range. To cut it short, Rock, I don’t know
what’s goin’ on up there, an’ I got ideas that make me uneasy. I want
to know how he handles this outfit, and how he handles himself. I sent
for yo’ specifically to ask if yo’-all would consider going up there
and keep cases on the Maltese Cross fo’ me, Bill Sayre, personally.
Will you?”

“I’d do most anything you wanted me to do, Uncle Bill,” Rock said
promptly. “But I’m no detective.”

“Yo’ a practical cowman,” Sayre countered. “Yo’ know all the tricks of
the trade. I don’t want no detective. What I want up there is a man
that can size up what’s going on on a cattle range--a man that can’t be
bought and is not easy fooled. I picked on yo’-all, for that reason.”

“Thanks. Just what would you aim for me to do?” Rock asked.

“Well, it’s easy to keep tab on what a man does with thirty thousand
cattle if yo’ circulate in his vicinity,” Sayre observed. “_You_ ain’t
no fool, Rock. I don’t care how yo’ manage it--whether yo’ work for
another outfit or get a job with the Maltese Cross. Don’t care whether
yo’ work at all; yo’ll be paid direct by me. What I want is fo’ yo’ to
linger around in that territory and use yo’ eyes and ears. Yo’ll know
in one season whether the outfit is going up or down, and whether Buck
is shootin’ straight.”

“You think maybe he isn’t?”

“Buck Walters is young, ambitious, high-handed with men, and powerful
fond of women,” Sayre said frowningly. “He dresses flash. He’s mighty
fond of stiff poker. He’s a smart cowman, I’ll admit. But he’s been
drawin’ big wages fo’ ten years and never held onto a dollar. Yo’ put a
man like that in complete control of three hundred thousand dollars’
worth of live stock, with nobody to check up on him----”

Sayre threw out his hands in an eloquent gesture.

“He had old Dave hypnotized,” he went on. “I think Dave was a damn fool
to give him such a swing. I may be wrong about Walters. If I am, so
much the better fo’ him. But I aim to play my hunch. I mean to see that
the Snell estate don’t get the worst of it, no way. I feel more than
ordinary responsibility in this. Dave was my friend. I can’t leave my
business here to go up into Montana every few weeks to keep tab on Buck
Walters. Next best thing is to send a man I can trust.”

“I’m young and ambitious,” Rock mused. “I don’t shy none from poker
games; in fact, I horn into ’em deliberate because I frequently beat
’em. I’ve held down good jobs, too, in the last three years, without
savin’ much of my wages. Gosh, Uncle Bill, are you sure I’m to be
trusted?”

The old man gazed at him affectionately.

“I know yo’,” he said, “and I know yo’r breed. Will yo’ do this for me,
Rock?”

“Why, sure,” Rock agreed. “I don’t suppose it would be very difficult
for me to get a pretty good idea of how this Buck Walters is handling
the Maltese Cross.”

“That’ll be good enough,” Sayre nodded. “If yo’re on the ground takin’
notice, I’ll be satisfied. Le’s see,” he stopped to reflect, “yo’ll be
into Montana about September. I don’t issue no orders, son. Use your
own judgment. Barrin’ a hard season, nothing much ever happens on a cow
range in the winter.”

“Don’t you fool yourself,” Rock said seriously. Then he stopped. Old
Uncle Bill was grinning at him understandingly.

“I ain’t going to prime yo’ with no false ideas, Rock,” he declared.
“Yo’ just circulate around in that vicinity as it suits yo’ and let me
know how she stacks up.”

“Whereabouts in Montana is the Maltese Cross located?” Rock inquired.

“Marias River. Their post office is Fort Benton--no’thern part of the
territory. You’re bound for the Marias with the Seventy Seven. Course,
she’s a long stream. The Maltese Cross is on the lower end, near where
the Marias joins the upper Missouri.”

“I understood the Seventy Seven was headed for the Musselshell,” Rock
observed.

“Maybe yo’-all understood that, son, but that herd’ll be turned loose
on the Marias,” Sayre said positively. “I get that info’mation from the
men that’s backin’ the Duffys. Joe Duffy is on trail with a herd in the
same brand, too, from the Panhandle.”

“I didn’t know. Don’t matter to me, nohow,” Rock said, “so long as I
get to Montana. I’m bound North, like the bear that went over the
mountain, to see what I can see. And I won’t be on the Seventy Seven
pay roll after I get there. I sort of feel that in my bones.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Sayre opened a drawer. His hand came out with a small canvas bag which
clinked gently, as he laid it on the oak desk and slid it across to
Rock.

“There’s five hundred dollars’ advance in gold,” he said abruptly.
“I’ll allow yo’ sixty dollars a month from date, until I notify yo’
this arrangement is canceled. Now”--he lifted a hand to silence Rock’s
protest--“I don’t want yo’ to hesitate about nothing that’s calculated
to protect the Snell interests. When yo’ protect them yo’ protect me.
You’re a smart boy. Yo’ been raised in a cow country and had
considerable Eastern education rammed down yo’ gullet. I don’t need to
tell yo’ what a range boss can do to a cow outfit, if he sets out to do
some good for himself at the outfit’s expense. It’ll be yo’ job to let
me know if Buck Walters shows any such symptoms. If, to make sure of
anything in connection with him, yo’ find it necessary to spend money,
draw on this bank in yo’ own name. There is a railroad and a telegraph
line through the southern part of Montana now. Yo’ can wire me direct
anything important. If yo’-all get into trouble, I’ll back yo’ play.”

“You certainly sound pessimistic, Uncle Bill,” Rock declared.

“I don’t trust that fellow executor of mine no farther than I could
throw him,” Sayre stated bluntly. “He’s a mighty powerful man, so yo’
can reckon how far that is. I feel a powerful sight of responsibility.
I aim to see that Dave Snell’s children inherit this estate unimpaired
by other persons with ambitions to enrich theirselves by methods that
ain’t strictly accordin’ to Hoyle.”

“All right, Uncle Bill,” Rock promised. “I’ll wander around the Maltese
Cross and keep you posted on how she stacks up to my innocent eye. It
won’t be soon. I’ll be six months on the drive. It may take me some
time to learn anything. I can’t saunter onto the Maltese Cross range
and say right off who’s who, and what’s what. So I’d just as soon not
take your money until I start earning it. If you hear from me inside a
year, you’ll be lucky.”

“I’m not expectin’ Buck to try and put thirty thousand cattle in his
hip pocket right off,” Sayre grinned. “He couldn’t. And he’s too
all-fired smart to let his work--if any--be coarse. I’m merely insurin’
against contingencies. I could have picked thirty men to send into
Montana, with a big cow outfit apiece, and never have an uneasy moment
over any one of ’em. As I size up this situation----”

Again that eloquent spread of his hands.

“So,” he went on, “yo’ keep that money, because yo’-all might need it.
That’s like a lawyer’s retaining fee, my son--an earnest of an’
undertakin’ entered into for a duly acknowledged consideration. Yo’ the
man for the job, Rock. Yo’-all are entitled to pay. So don’t get
highfalutin’ about a few measly dollars.”

“Never found ’em measly yet,” Rock said lightly. “Though I’ve known
lots of measly things done in behalf of ’em.”

He slid the bag of gold into his trousers pocket, where it sagged
uncomfortably when he arose.

“Well, Uncle Bill,” said he, “now you’ve got that off your chest,
suppose we go out and have a farewell drink together? The Seventy Seven
is moving. I’ve got quite a ways to ride to catch that herd to take my
regular turn on guard to-night.”

A mile from the last scattered houses of Fort Worth, Rock paused on the
north side of the Trinity. The river flowed beneath him, a lovely,
sparkling stream. Its banks were green with spring growth. Texas wore
an April smile for her sons that were departing into far lands with
many a herd. Rock looked down at the river and back at the town.

“Well, Sangre,” he addressed the twitching ears of his sorrel horse,
“if Uncle Bill Sayre’s hunch about this fellow executor of his happens
to be right, we ought to be able to keep time from hanging heavy on our
hands after we hit Montana, provided we get that far in peace and
quietness.”

Rock frowned slightly, as he muttered this. He had his doubts; not of
the mission he had promised to undertake, however. He was thinking of
something else when he repeated the last sentence. It wasn’t just an
idle phrase.




CHAPTER II: IN THE ODEON


East and west across the flat face of Nebraska runs a river, which
needs no naming, looping, like a great watery rope, the Rocky Mountains
and its ultimate confluence with the Big Muddy. It was once said of
this stream that it resembled the speeches of a well-known politician,
inasmuch as it was a thousand miles long, a mile wide, and about four
inches deep.

In one particular year of our Lord, when herds of longhorn cattle were
spilling out of Texas like milk seeping over a polished table top, from
an overflowing bowl, the curses of many a trail boss and cattle owner
were heaped upon this wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed river. Northbound
herds must cross it. Under its ankle depths of flow lurked miles of
quicksand. The first drives to the North suffered. Later, hard bottom
crossings were located.

In the height of the great bovine exodus, such crossings were like the
junction of two great thoroughfares. They were heavily traffic laden.
From May to September the march of the herds never slackened. Every
herd had its quota of riders. Wherever there are men there is money,
and money is made to be spent. So, at each of these river crossings,
enterprising merchants set up with stocks of goods. Equally
enterprising individuals set up establishments where a cowpuncher could
find something for his throat besides dust and alkali water, where he
could take a fling at faro bank and poker. In other words, the saloon
and gambling hall arose, side by side, with the general store, to the
profit of their owners and the glory of the trail.

Clark’s Ford was such a place. When Ben Clark bogged his first herd in
the quicksands, he lay on the bank, and his riders scouted for hard
bottom, found it, passed over and passed on, leaving his name to the
place and bequeathing future herds on that route the only safe crossing
in a hundred miles.

A year later a cluster of frame buildings on the north bank greeted the
lead of each herd, as it emerged from the stream. Here outfits could
replenish their grub supply, get or send mail by a stage route, before
they vanished into the empty land that spread north to the Canada line,
a land that was empty even unto the arctic circle.

And into Clark’s Ford one July evening Rock Holloway rode alone, on the
same sorrel horse, one of his own private mounts, that had stepped
light-footedly in the dust of a Fort Worth street that spring. For
weeks he had faced the dip and roll and flatness of plains as bare as
the seas Columbus faced when he crossed the Western ocean. Ride, eat,
sleep, and ride again, in the dust of eight thousand hoofs, on that
pilgrimage from the Rio Grande to the forty-ninth parallel, across
silent leagues of grass, from which the bison had but lately vanished,
and where the Indian had not yet forgotten how to take a white man’s
scalp.

                 *       *       *       *       *

So Rock, who had nothing much on his mind but a Stetson hat, rode into
Clark’s Ford. Little sinks of iniquity like this were not new in his
experience. He was too sensible to take a moral attitude. They were
not, with their gaudy activities, much to his taste, but they supplied
a want. He didn’t drink much at any time, preferring poker for pastime,
and he had been known to wander about for hours in the midst of
cow-town hilarity doing nothing but watch his fellows make merry.

Clark’s Ford numbered scarcely a dozen buildings. One general store,
one blacksmith shop, one combined saloon and dance hall. A gaunt
boarding house purveyed food and sleeping quarters to clerks, gamblers,
bartenders, and transients. Clark’s Ford was little more than a camp, a
mushroom growth with neither a past nor a future.

It was not a place that Ben Clark would have been proud to bear his
name. If it catered in some measure to the legitimate necessities of
these Argonauts of the plains, it likewise battened on their
weaknesses. Cattlemen and their riders had few illusions about such
places, except in moments of alcoholic exaltation. They were tolerant
of them, that was all, because they were centers of human contact, in
the midst of an unpeopled wilderness.

It was a dreary place in the glare of day. Sagebrush flowed to the very
doors--gray--monotonously gray. A river, with a dozen channels plowed
by the spring floods in its yellow sands, slunk at the feet of Clark’s
Ford. For a mile about no green thing flourished. Only the tough
sagebrush defied obliteration under the trampling hoofs that passed in
myriads. That valley had yet to become verdant under irrigation canals.
Even the red brother shunned it in bygone days except when the buffalo
herds passed that way. The cattleman would have shunned it if he could.
But the herds focused at this point, but, once across, they radiated
like the spokes of a wheel to pleasanter ranges farther north, where
grass waved like fields of ripe wheat; where clear streams flowed in
gravelly beds, and now and then a man’s eye would be gladdened by a
tree.

But at night Clark’s Ford shook off its daytime somnolence, shrouded
itself in the dusky mantle of night and decked itself with yellow
jewels. Night and lamps! There is magic in those two. A pianist and a
fiddler strummed in the dance hall. The women glowed in silk and satin
and smiled their mechanical smiles. Within, the light softened hard
faces, struck glints from glass, and spread over green-topped tables,
the racked silver and gold behind the games, and the multicolored poker
chips. A man could get action there. Seldom any one paused outside
those doors, behind which the piano tinkled, and the fiddle wailed, and
the voices of men and women were pitched a little above the normal key.

Rock paused now, after he had swung down from his horse. He stared up
at the sky, the inverted bowl of the Persian poet, studded with stars.
He looked absently upward, the fingers of one hand tangled in Sangre’s
mane. Perhaps he studied the stars in their courses. Perhaps he saw
something invisible save to the imaginative eye, off in that calm,
obscuring night. And then he shrugged his shoulders, gave his gun belt
a hitch, and walked into the Odeon. Why the exploiter of Clark’s Ford
bestowed on a tin-pot dance hall a name that derived from ancient Greek
through modern French, Heaven only knows. Perhaps that was what made
Rock smile, as he noted the name painted in white on a door illuminated
by a hung lantern. He had a way of noting such things.

A bar ranged along one side of the Odeon. A low platform lifted against
the opposite wall, where the two musicians played, and now and then a
woman sang the sentimental ballads of the period. A clear space in the
middle was left for dancing. One side was set with pine tables and
chairs. The other wall made a backstop for gambling paraphernalia,
operated by bored men with impassive faces, who dealt for the house and
watched winning or losing with equal indifference.

                 *       *       *       *       *

All this Rock took in rapidly. He had heard about Clark’s Ford and the
Odeon a thousand miles south. He reflected that there were other places
of the same stripe, which he had seen here, and they were more
impressive, if less widely known. Yet it was a fairly big night at the
Odeon. Four herds had made the crossing that day. Three more lay within
ten miles. There were riders from all in Clark’s Ford this night,
seeking diversion. The gabble of voices and laughter filled the big
room. The click of chips greeted Rock’s ears, a faint, penetrating
sound. A woman was singing, “Drink to me only with thine eyes.” It
sounded at once incongruous and highly appropriate in that atmosphere.
She had a fairly good voice, too. He stood within the door until the
last note sounded, then walked across the room to a poker game, where
he recognized a cattleman he knew from Waco.

“Well, well!” Al Kerr reached up to shake hands. “Seems like
everybody’s headed North these days. How’s tricks?”

“So, so,” Rock answered. “Laying up much wealth in this noble pastime?”

“Not so you could notice,” Kerr grinned. “Just amusin’ myself. This
here table sort of attracted me. First green thing I’ve seen for six
weeks. Here, cash these.”

He shoved half a stack of reds to the dealer, got five silver dollars
in exchange, and pushed back his chair.

“Let’s inhale a drink,” he suggested. “Maybe you and me could horn into
an easier game later on.”

“I’m due on guard at one thirty, and it’s eleven now,” Rock said, “so I
won’t play poker to-night. But I will have a glass of beer.”

“Beer’s no good except off ice in hot weather,” Kerr told him. “And ice
is as scarce as square men among the regular population of Clark’s
Ford. Better drink rye.”

As the choice lay between lukewarm beer and the stronger drink, Rock
chose whisky. It didn’t matter what he drank.

He didn’t intend to tarry long in the Odeon.

Nor did he. If he could have foreseen the manner and necessity of his
departure, he might not have entered the place. And again he might have
braved fate, even with certain knowledge, since he was not by nature
inclined to dodge issues either present or potential. A man on the
frontier seldom got anywhere if he were always counting costs. If Rock
had not got anywhere, he was at least on his way.

They walked over to the bar and stood near the farther end from the
main entrance. Rock was not a tall man, perhaps a little over medium
height. Even so he towered over his companion. Kerr barely reached his
shoulder. He was a little wisp of a man, with a gnomelike face. Small
bodied, but big-hearted, full of humorous quips and kindly impulses, Al
Kerr was the type of Texas cowman who never figures in song and story.
He had never killed any one. He had never found it necessary. Probably
he had not exchanged a dozen harsh sentences with another man in his
life. Yet he was a successful man. He had cattle scattered over the
length of three States. He had fifty riders on his pay roll. And for
every rider he had a score of friends. Rock happened to be one of them.
And Rock looked down on the little, middle-aged man, whose hair was
thin, but whose blue eyes were merry, and he wondered what it was that
made some men succeed in whatever they undertook. It wasn’t size, it
wasn’t blatant force, and it wasn’t always the power of possessions.
What was it, Rock wondered?

A dance had just ended. Several lusty, perspiring young trail hands had
led their ladies to the bar to liquidate the Terpsichorean debt, after
the custom of such places. They were lined up twenty in a row. As they
stood there, glass in hand, some in the act of pouring their drink, the
door of the Odeon flew open, and a man swaggered in.

                 *       *       *       *       *

He stood a moment staring with eyes a trifle reddened. He was a
mountain of a man, well over six feet, and thick in proportion. He wore
a rider’s usual costume. Like most of those who trafficked across the
plains, he was armed. He took two quick strides from the door to the
bar end and, picking up the nearest glass of whisky, drank it at a
gulp. Then he stood, towering above the man whose drink he had taken,
grinning, as if at a capital joke.

“Well, well,” Kerr murmured. “The village cut-up is with us again. He
was around here this afternoon raisin’ Cain. He aims to be bad, it
looks like. Wonder where he escaped from?”

Rock smiled. He knew the man. He watched with a detached sort of
interest to see what would happen. For a second nothing happened. A
quick-witted bartender hastily set up another glass, thus stifling the
protest that was evidently on tap by the man whose drink had been
taken. That, to Rock, was an indication of how far Mark Duffy’s size
and disposition had carried him in Clark’s Ford. But he was hardly
prepared for the big man’s next action. Considering the time and place,
it seemed suicidal.

Duffy walked right down the bar, shouldering all and sundry out of his
way. His big red face was wreathed in a sardonic grin, and his
bellowing voice uttered a warning to all in his path:

“Make room for a man. I’m goin’ to drink, an’ when I drink I need lots
of room.”

He seemed in a fair way to get all the room he desired without
opposition. Probably any other man would have been smelling powder
before he got halfway, Rock reflected. But Duffy looked neither to
right nor left nor hesitated in his ponderous stride, nor heeded the
curses that were hurled at him. He was asserting himself, he wanted
room, and he got it--a clear path, until he came to Al Kerr and Rock
Holloway.

Neither moved. Their second drink was before them. Rock had one elbow
on the bar, and he kept it there. Kerr stood between him and Duffy.

The big man loomed over Kerr. He looked down.

“Say, runt!” he bellowed. “Did you hear me say I wanted room?”

“Seems to me you got plenty,” Kerr answered. “Nobody’s crowdin’ you.”

For answer Duffy seized him by both shoulders, picked him off his feet,
as if he had been a child, and set him on the bar. Kerr stood probably
five foot four. He never carried a six-shooter. He was handy with a
rifle, but that was not a weapon he carried in town.

Duffy kept that iron grip on his shoulders. The little man was
helpless. Faint snickers arose in the room. Kerr’s face flushed. He
felt the indignity. But he said nothing, only looked Duffy coldly in
the eye. And Duffy began to shake him until his head snapped back and
forth, yanking him at last roughly off the bar, so that his boot heels
struck the floor with a crack.

“Buy a drink for the crowd, runt,” he commanded.

“You go to hell,” Kerr defied him. “Buy your own drinks. You’re too big
for me to fight with my hands. But you lay off’n me long enough for me
to get a gun, and I’ll shoot with you for the drinks, you side of raw
beef on the hoof!”

Duffy’s face wreathed in a grin. He reached his gorilla-like arms and
took a step forward. Kerr dodged sidewise. And for the first time Duffy
seemed to see and recognize Rock. He stared briefly. Rock looked back
at him, expressionless. Duffy turned on Kerr again. His hand crept
toward the gun in his belt.

“You’ll buy a drink, or you’ll dance,” he said meaningly. “Look spry,
little feller! Buy drinks or dance.”

He punctuated the last sentence with a shot into the floor at Kerr’s
feet. Whereat Rock stepped between the little man and his tormentor.
His Colt was in his hand. Like Duffy’s, it pointed at the floor. There
was a swift surge of men away from the bar.

“You’ve gone far enough with this, Duffy,” Rock said quietly. “Don’t be
a damn fool.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

For five tense seconds Duffy glared at Rock; then his gun jerked. At
the movement, Rock fired. He was pitching himself sidewise, as he
pulled trigger. He knew when he interfered that there would only be one
end to such interference, and he had discounted that. Duffy’s bullet
sped somewhere past his face. And Rock held his second shot, for the
big man was sagging slowly forward, until suddenly he collapsed on the
floor.

Rock slid the fallen six-shooter with his toe toward Kerr, his eyes on
the crowd.

“Take that till we get out of here,” he said. “Maybe he’s got friends.”

But other friends were at hand. Half a dozen of Kerr’s men came
shouldering their way toward him.

“That was neat,” one grinned at Rock. “We couldn’t very well bust our
way through that crowd, but if anybody wants to go farther with it,
we’re here to take ’em on.”

Evidently no one did. They walked, Kerr and Rock and five trail hands,
the length of the room to the entrance door, while the hush that sudden
death always brings held the crowd in the Odeon.

Once in the street beside their mounts, Kerr said:

“Well, I think I better amble off to camp before some other ambitious
drunk picks on me. You fellers comin’ along?”

“I expect we better,” they agreed. “That joint is no great shakes for
amusement, nohow.”

“Where’s your outfit camped?” Rock asked.

“About nine miles north,” Kerr answered. “Where’s your camp, Rock?”

“Same direction. Not quite so far,” Rock answered. “I’ll ride with you
a ways.”

They went jingling away from Clark’s Ford, Kerr’s riders laughing and
joking. Rock and the little cowman silent. The Dipper wheeling on its
ancient circle of the pole star gave them bearings. The night hush
enfolded them, as the lights and sounds were swallowed in the dark
hollow by the river. Three miles out Rock pulled up his horse.

“Here’s where I turn aside,” he said. “So long, boys.”

“Look, Rock,” Kerr said slowly. “You done me a good turn back there. If
you’re ever in a jack pot, you let me know. I’m locatin’ in Montana for
good this season. You’ll find me in the Judith Basin, on Arrow Creek.
Capital K they call my outfit up there. Post office is Lewistown. My
house is yours any time you show up.”

“Maybe, I’ll call your bluff some time, Al,” Rock laughed. “You never
can tell. I’m bound for Montana, myself, so I may see you-all again
this summer. So long. Be good, and if you can’t be good be careful.”

Rock sat his horse, listening to the patter of departing hoofs. So Kerr
was bound for the Judith Basin. Rock had said that the outfit he was
with was also bound for Montana. But he had omitted to mention that he
would not be with it when it arrived.

In fact, Rock was not wholly certain that he would ever arrive. He had
another private horse beside Sangre with the Seventy Seven. His bed was
in the wagon. He had two months’ wages due. Before he could get
anywhere, he had to collect his belongings and his pay.

And that might very well lead to a continuation of the unpleasantness
this night had already spanned. The man whom he had killed in the Odeon
was the brother of the trail boss of the Seventy Seven, and the Duffys
were a clannish lot, with more nerve than good judgment.

He mighn’t be lucky twice in one night. The pitcher that goes often
enough to the well---- Rock shrugged his shoulders and shook his horse
into a lope. In twenty minutes he drew up to where the Seventy Seven
herd lay bedded, a huge dark blot on the bleached grass, with the chuck
tent looming a ghost-white outline, half a mile past the sleeping herd.




CHAPTER III: THE STEERING WHEEL


When the sun flung its Midas touch across the Nebraska plains the
morning after what was but an episode in Clark’s Ford, it struck a
ruddy sheen on the sorrel horse Rock Holloway bestrode and made the
sleek coat of the black pony that carried his bed, shine like a piece
of widow’s silk.

Rock hummed a little tune as he rode. He had lived through that
unavoidable encounter with Mark Duffy. He had avoided open clash with
Duffy’s brother by quitting the Seventy Seven. A blood feud is no light
thing to be involved in. Rock had no regrets over Mark. The man’s
bulldozing disposition had brought them to the verge once or twice on
the trail. But Rock had no desire to burn powder against a man who
would be actuated chiefly by some vague notion that it was proper to
avenge a dead kinsman.

Duffy, the trail boss, had been a little stunned by the death of his
domineering brother. He had tentatively agreed that Rock was not to
blame. He had paid him his wages and let him go unmolested. But later
on, Rock knew, the surviving Duffy would ponder and brood, be urged to
reprisal, as in the cloak-and-sword period gallants brooded upon a
slight to their honor, whether real or fancied, until they had no
course but to draw blade.

So Rock was well satisfied to be a lone horseman in a waste of grass
and sage in the cool of a summer morning. On the flat area running
unbroken by mountain or forest, from horizon to horizon, he marked
northbound herds in the offing, as a lookout might descry distant sails
at sea. Over yonder was a Matador herd, yonder marched the horned
regiment of the Turkey Track. At a guess, Rock could have named the
brand of the five herds visible within the radius of his sight.
Northbound, headed for free grass and abundant water, as the Israelites
of old went forth seeking the land of milk and honey. Texas was full of
cattle, full to overflowing, and the overflow in that season swept in
full volume over twenty-three degrees of latitude to end in Montana,
with sundry minor spillings into the Canadian northwest.

Rock, like the cattleman with his herds, had set his face North. Like
many another young Texan, he had lent eager ear to tales of this _terra
incognita_, out of which scouting cattlemen sent reports that it was a
paradise for herds, now that the bison were exterminated, and the
Indians herded on reservations. Nine hundred miles still lay between
Rock and his destination. But that was nothing. He had two good horses,
a rifle and a .45 Colt, ammunition, food, bedding and a sanguine soul.
Many a pioneer had set forth with less. It was not precisely hostile
country he had to traverse alone. True, a lone rider was a temptation
to scouting braves who might have jumped the reservation. But that was
a detail. In thirty days, more or less, he could reach Fort Benton.
Once there--well, even if he had not the mission bestowed on him in
Fort Worth, an able range rider could always find useful employment in
his calling.

So Rock rode with a little tune on his lips and wondered how far it was
between water holes.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Three days out from Clark’s Ford he sighted the mass of a trail herd
and caught up with it at sundown. Four riders were bunching the cattle
on the bed ground. Rock exchanged greetings with one, noted the brand,
a Maltese Cross, and went on to the chuck wagon, camped by a nameless
creek, meandering out of an endless sweep of plains to the westward
into an equally limitless void on the east. The Maltese Cross made him
welcome. It was a rare thing for a lone man to come out of those empty
spaces. But the range properly held that a man’s business was his own
until he chose to divulge it. The Cross herd was bound for northern
Montana, they told him. Rock knew that already. The trail boss casually
remarked that he was welcome to keep them company if he liked.

Since they had a full crew, Rock didn’t care to be a guest and crawl
North at the mad speed of ten miles a day, when he could make thirty or
forty a day on his own. So he accepted a hunk of beef from the cook
next morning and rode on.

Two weeks brought him into Wyoming, into a different type of country.
The flat, undulating surface of the great plains became sharply rolling
ridges. He crossed creeks lined with willows and clumps of quaking
aspen. He rode through open forests of pine. He made lonely camps in
spots of rare beauty. Once or twice he stopped overnight at ranches
well established.

Off to the northwest, mountains began to loom. He bore on until these
white and purple peaks were behind him on the left, and so came to a
watershed dipping in a long slant to the north. By which he guessed
that he was well within the Territory of Montana, following a stream
that flowed to the Yellowstone.

When he came to that turbulent river, in a valley traversed by the
first transcontinental railway to cross the Northwest, he found eight
men with a mixed herd at a fording place. They were a weary lot. Eight
men to twelve hundred cattle was a short trail crew. They had left
Kansas early that spring, they told Rock. They had made fast time, and
their horses bore the trace, being gaunt and leg weary, although the
cattle were in fair flesh. And the men were even more tired than their
stock. Of the scores of trailed herds Rock had passed, this was the
first that was short-handed. A trail outfit left the South with a full
crew. Barring accident or death, the riders stayed with the herd to the
journey’s end. It was equivalent to desertion in the face of the enemy
for a trail hand to quit for a whim. In all that bovine pilgrimage,
there was no place where riders could be secured, no more than a ship
can replace its crew a thousand miles offshore.

“I can use you plenty,” the trail boss said, as soon as he sized Rock
up, “if you hanker to be usefully employed.”

“Where you bound for?” Rock asked.

“Canada. Old Man River in the Fort MacLeod country,” the man said.

“In the home of the mounted police, eh?” Rock drawled. “We go through
the Blackfeet country. That’s about as far North as cattle range, isn’t
it?”

“Just about; although, if this Northern drive keeps extendin’ itself,
there’ll be longhorns winterin’ at the north pole, it looks like,” the
wagon boss replied. “If you want to see some new country, here’s a
chance.”

“From Mexico to Canada, personally conducted!” Rock laughed. “All
right, I’m with you.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Thus did he come into the foothills of the Rockies, north of 49°, in
the month of September. They crossed the Missouri where Chief Joseph
had forded it with his braves ten years earlier, with U. S. cavalry in
hot pursuit. They plodded west and north to their destination, leaving
the Bear Paws to the right, Sweet Grass Hills on their left, sweeping
across a country where grass grew to their stirrups, driving before
them twelve hundred cattle of divers age and sex, marked with a brand
on the left ribs, called a steering wheel.

Rock looked once or twice to the westward before they reached the
boundary line. Somewhere in that great empty area the Marias River
split the plains. Somewhere on the Marias was the headquarters of the
Maltese Cross. The Cross would keep. He had given his word to go
through with the Steering Wheel. In the winter or in the spring he
would drift into Fort Benton, and he would contrive to make himself
familiar with the ways and works of Buck Walters. For the present----

The Old Man revealed itself as a pleasant country, well grassed, well
wooded with small pine, and with a small, swift-flowing stream in which
trout lurked in eddying pools. Axes and saws they had in the chuck
wagon. By some mysterious agency of freighting across the plains, they
found themselves in possession of a mower and a dump rake. For once,
faced as it were by an emergency, these knights of the saddle, who had
all the man-on-horseback’s traditional contempt for labor on foot, fell
to as carpenters, corral builders, reapers and stackers of hay.

So that, when the first November snows hit them, they were housed in a
comfortable log dwelling. Each man had a saddle horse tied in a warm
stable, and hay stacked to feed his mount till spring. The Steering
Wheel cattle had sun-cured grass to graze upon and brushy creek bottoms
to shelter them against the blizzard.

“It might be worse,” Rock said to a fellow rider a few days before
Christmas. “I had an idea this Canada country was like the arctic
regions. But it shapes up like a real cattle country. It’s colder than
Texas, but there’s more grass and better shelter. These mounted police,
with their funny red coats and striped pants, are about like the Texan
rangers, only they don’t shoot so frequent nor play as tight a game of
poker.”

“She’s a lonesome country,” the other rider said.

It was indeed a lonely land. When spring opened, with streams in flood
and blue windflowers thrusting ahead of the first grass blades, Rock
missed the gathering of the clans, the scope of great round-ups, and
the hundreds of riders with gossip from a thousand miles of range. It
was like being a chip in an eddy, he thought to himself, being given to
similes and metaphors. The Steering Wheel seemed to have the entire
Northwest to itself. They heard that another big outfit lay somewhere
north of them. The STV had headquarters two hundred miles east. But
from September to April Rock saw no four-footed beast on the range
outside of the Steering Wheel brand. Nor did any rider ever come up
from the horizon to pass the time of day. Fort MacLeod was a police
barracks chiefly. It boasted a trading store, where trappers from the
mountains sold their furs and bought supplies. Community life there was
none at all.

The nine men of the Steering Wheel had a sinecure over the winter. Rock
took to speculating on what brought that particular one-horse cow
outfit all the way to Canada, when there were magnificent ranges to be
had for the taking south of the line. None of the men knew who owned
the Steering Wheel. A typical Texan, tall, thin-faced, with a drawly
voice, and a good-natured soul, who knew cattle, ran the outfit. When a
man needed money to buy goods at the fort, Dave Wells produced cash.
His reticence discouraged curiosity. Rock, who knew the cow business
both in practice and in theory, wondered at this dead silence--this
absence of outlined plan. Twelve hundred cattle didn’t need nine riders
in comparative idleness.

                 *       *       *       *       *

This gave him a good excuse in April for leaving. When he told Wells,
that individual looked thoughtful.

“I sho’ don’t need eight riders right along,” he said. “I kept yo’ boys
over the winter, mostly because I didn’t want to turn yo’ loose in a
country where they’s no chance for a job. I’m aimin’ to let four of yo’
go. But not for a spell. I’d like for yo’ to stay on three-fo’ weeks
yet. I got to take a pasear after some stock. If yo’ drift back across
the line in May, yo’ll still be able to get on as hands with some
round-up.”

Rock agreed. May would do as well as April. He had written once to
Uncle Bill Sayre, and had received a reply. If he got around to the
Maltese Cross range that summer, it would be good enough.

Immediately thereafter, Dave Wells flung his men out on a
horse-gathering expedition. The Steering Wheel ponies were brought in
by tens and dozens. They ranged uniformly within ten miles of the
ranch. Most of the cattle grazed in the same area. And, as soon as
forty horses were in the pasture, Wells organized a pack outfit, took
four men with him, and vanished.

He left a red-headed youth in nominal charge. The duties of the riders
left at home were to build an extension of the pole pasture and to
gather the rest of the Steering Wheel saddle stock. Thereafter they
were to scout around the outer fringes of the range and throw all
cattle close home.

“The old he-coon gone South for another trail herd?” Billy Gore asked
the deputy foreman, once he was in Rock’s hearing.

“Naw,” the red-headed one divulged the first information. “Said he was
goin’ somewhere after a bunch of doggies.”

“Doggy” in range parlance meant farm cattle, scrubs, nondescript stock
generally, sometimes cheaply bought to help stock a range.

Rock recalled that remark three weeks later, when Wells and his four
riders rode into the ranch. They had left with forty saddle horses.
These mounts were ridden to a standstill. The five men were heavy-eyed
and obviously weary. Wells kept his own counsel, as did the four who
had ridden with him. They appeared at noon, turned loose their horses,
ate, and then slept still sunrise of the next day. After breakfast Dave
Wells called the four riders who had stayed on the ranch, told them
courteously that he would have to let them go, and paid them off in
gold.

The discharged quartet rode south, leading pack horses, within two
hours. They discovered, once clear of the ranch and free to air their
personal views, that they were mutually eager to be away to a real cow
country. They had had enough of comparative isolation. They were all
Texans. Three of them were for home, via Butte and south over the
Oregon Short Line to the Union Pacific. They had had enough of the
North for the present. Only Rock proposed to linger, and he would keep
them company until they were well into Montana.

Five miles south of the ranch they jumped a bunch of cattle out of a
draw, mature cattle, with a freshly burned Steering Wheel black on
their ribs. On the slope which they breasted were others; by a cluster
of sloughs were still more.

Doggies! The cowpunchers, free of any loyalty or responsibility to any
outfit, glanced and kept on talking of home. Rock looked and kept his
thoughts to himself. They were _not_ doggies. They were simon-pure
longhorns, with a touch of Hereford blood, here and there--the type of
cattle that poured annually by the hundred thousand out of Texas. If
they were purchased range stock, other brands, vented or barred out,
should have shown. All the mark that Rock saw on any beast was a
fresh-burned Steering Wheel. But he kept his speculations to himself.
After all, it was no business of his. The Steering Wheel might have
cattle all over the Northwest, for all he knew or cared. If his fellow
riders thought it queer, they were not concerned enough to mention the
fact.

Five days later he parted from his companions under the shoulder of the
Sweet Grass Hills. They were bearing off for Silver Bow Junction,
homeward bound. Rock’s course lay a trifle east of south, toward Fort
Benton. Ahead of him, in that spring-green void, big round-ups were
mustering from the upper Teton to the Larb Hills. The Bear Paws loomed
faintly on the horizon. Milk River, Sun Prairie, the Bad Lands--place
names to conjure with. There was nothing petty in all that sweep of
plain and mountain. It gave Rock a curious sense of thrilling
possibilities. He rode alone without being lonely, fired by some subtle
anticipation.

He often asked himself afterward what it is that gives a man a definite
urge along a definite line that may lead him to both triumph and
disaster. But he was never able to answer that question, any more than
he was able to answer it that June day when, parting company with his
fellows, he pointed the red horse’s head toward Fort Benton murmuring
whimsically:

    “Here we comes, and there we goes,
    And where we’ll stop nobody knows.”




CHAPTER IV: A DEAD DOUBLE


Rock knew where he was going and why. But it was not on the cards that
his course was to be direct. Halfway between Milk River and the Marias
he rode down a coulee in search of water for a noon camp. He found
water eventually and beside it a troop of United States cavalry, in the
throes of getting under way. “Throes” is correct. They had a
considerable amount of equipment to be packed upon mules. They were
cantankerous mules. A dozen men were fighting them with pack lashings
and profanity.

Rock drew rein to watch the circus. A man, a civilian, approached him,
mopping the sweat from his brow.

“Stranger,” said he, “you look like a cowpuncher.”

“Looks don’t deceive you this time,” Rock admitted.

“Can you pack a mule?”

“I have lashed packs on a variety of animals,” Rock said. “But I have
no ambition to be a government muleteer.”

“Be a good sport an’ help me out,” the man appealed. “It won’t be but
for four or five days, till we get to the post. I’m short-handed, and
these mules is bad medicine. I shore need a man that’s handy with a
rope. I’ll give you five dollars a day.”

Rock grinned and accepted. The mules were certainly bad medicine, and
he _was_ handy with a rope, and a few days more or less didn’t matter.

Fort Assiniboine lay eighty miles eastward. Fort Benton hugged the
north bank of the Missouri, some sixty miles southwest. But here was a
job just begging to be taken in hand. So for five days thereafter he
was a mule packer, learning something of the way of men and mules in
Uncle Sam’s service. He even had an officer suggest that he would make
a likely cavalryman. But Rock had different ideas. He took his
twenty-five dollars in the shadow of this military post and set his
face westward again.

He left in the gray of dawn. The second evening he dropped from the
level of the plains, full three hundred feet into the valley of the
Marias, where a little stream sang and whispered over a pebbly bed,
through flats of rich, loamy soil. Sagebrush grew here, and natural
meadows spread there. Willows lined the banks. Groves of poplar studded
the flats, thickets of service berry. Great cottonwoods, solitary
giants and family groups, cast a pleasant shade from gnarly boughs in
full leaf.

“Gosh, places like this,” Rock murmured, “fairly shout out loud for a
fellow to settle down and make himself a home. No wonder Texas is
flocking North.”

In the first bottom Rock crossed, he stirred up a few cattle, then a
band of horses, several of which bore trimmed manes and tails and marks
of the saddle--fine-looking beasts, bigger than the Texas mustang. He
couldn’t see the brand.

“I wonder if we’re anywhere near the Maltese Cross, Sangre, old boy?”
he asked the sorrel horse. “Funny, if we’d stumble in there for the
night.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

He rounded a point masked by thickets of young, green poplar and saw a
house with smoke curling blue from the chimney. There was a stable
beyond, corrals, a stack of last year’s hay, and the lines of a pole
fence running away along the river. It was a typical cow outfit’s
headquarters. The house was roomy, of pine logs, L-shaped, with a low
porch in front. Rock stopped at the front of the house. He saw no one
anywhere. The only sign of life about the place was that wisp of blue,
a wavering pennant in the still air.

He hesitated, sitting in his saddle. There was life here. Why didn’t it
show itself? Range hospitality was more than a courtesy to friends and
neighbors. Even outlaws in a hidden camp would share food and blankets
with a passing stranger. The logical accepted thing for any man faring
across the plains was to make himself free wherever nightfall or
mealtime overtook him. He was expected to put his horses in the stable
and make himself at home. It wasn’t altogether good form to wait for an
invitation. The open-handed hospitality of the old West did have its
forms, and Rock knew them.

He was a little surprised at himself, at his hesitation, this
unaccountable feeling of delicacy, as if he were intruding. Why should
he expect some one to rush out of that house to bid him welcome? Why
did he hesitate? He asked himself that question in so many words, as he
rode on to the stable.

It was a large stable, well kept, with room in it for twenty horses.
Harness hung on pegs against the wall. The mangers were full of hay.
The doorway was wide and high, so that Rock rode in before he
dismounted. And from his seat he looked down at two horses, standing on
bridle reins in their stalls, saddled, still rough with sweat. He
stared at them.

The saddle of the nearest, the mane and foreshoulder, was stained with
blood, not yet dried to the blackening point. It stood like the brand
of Cain on the gray beast--on the yellow leather.

Was _that_ why he had hesitated at the house? Could a man sense the
unknown? Could fear or awe or the presence of tragedy impregnate the
atmosphere like a sinister mist? These were uncommon questions for a
cowpuncher to stand asking himself, but Rock Holloway had an uncommon
sort of mind.

Still he was not merely mind. He had a body and appetites and all the
natural passions man is heir to. If he had the mentality to analyze a
situation, he had also a capacity for instantaneous, purposeful action.
He had proved that long before he waited by the Odeon bar to halt Mark
Duffy’s high-handed career. He proved it once more. He left his two
horses standing where he dismounted and walked quickly toward the
house. He was conscious that he merely obeyed instinct--a hunch, if you
will, except that Rock distrusted hunches which had no basis in
reason--because he had felt an intuition of something wrong before he
laid eyes on that bloodstained saddle. He strode toward that house with
the certainty that he was needed there, yet in one portion of his mind
he wondered how he came by that conclusion.

A door opened out of the north wall, which was guiltless of porch. One
stepped from the threshold to the earth. The door stood wide. Rock
looked in. He had seen many ranch rooms like this--a stove against one
wall, a set of shelves for dishes and utensils, a long table in the
middle of the room.

Beside this table, her back to him, a woman sat with her face buried in
her hands. A few feet beyond a little girl in green calico, no more
than three or four years of age, sat looking at Rock, out of blue baby
eyes, her little, round, red mouth opened in a friendly smile.

“’Lo ‘Doc,’” she piped.

The woman lifted her head, looked, sprang to her feet, and shrank back.
For one instant, unbelieving terror stood in her wide gray eyes, in the
part of her lips, as plain as Rock had ever seen it on any human face.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said quickly. “I’m merely a passing
stranger.”

“Ah!” Her pent breath came with an explosive release. She put her hands
to her breast for a second. Her features relaxed into a somber
intentness.

Wordless, she stared at Rock, her eyes sweeping him from head to foot,
coming back to rest searchingly, with a look of incredulity, on his
face. And Rock stared back, wondering, yet alive to the strange
compelling quality that seemed to radiate from this woman like an aura,
to command interest and admiration and profound respect.

She hadn’t been afraid of him. No; timidity was no attribute of that
dark, imperious face. She had been shocked, startled, by something
about him. Rock wondered what it could be.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Two spots of color crept slowly into her cheeks. A very
striking-looking creature, Rock thought. Not beautiful; not even
pretty. Proud, passionate, dominant--yes. Slender as a willow, with a
cloud of dark hair. Deep-gray eyes, like pools; scarlet lips.

“’Lo, Doc,” the little girl repeated, in a childish treble. She
clambered to her feet and toddled forward a step or two, waving a rag
doll by one arm. “W’y don’t oo tum in?”

“Hello, baby!” Rock answered and doffed his hat. “You don’t seem to
find me a fearsome object, anyway.”

“Nor do I.” The woman suddenly had found her voice--a deep, throaty
sound, like water rippling gently over pebbles. “But I thought I was
seeing a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Rock grinned. His interest quickened at the tone, the
clean-clipped words. No semiliterate range beauty this. Education had
done one thing for Rock Holloway. It had made his ear sensitive to
enunciation. “I’m a pretty substantial spook, I wish to remark. Rock
Holloway is my name. I hail from Texas, via the Canadian Northwest and
way points. I’m poor, but honest, and my intentions are reasonably
honorable, even if my performances aren’t always up to par. No, lady,
I’m no ghost. I’m a stock hand in search of occupation. I stopped in
here because this was the first ranch I’ve seen to-day, and it’s near
sundown. But, if I make you uncomfortable, I’ll ride on.”

“No, no!” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that. Come in. I’ll show you
what I mean. I think you’ll understand. It may startle you, too.”

Rock stepped into the room. The baby generously offered her doll in
token of amity.

“I’s hung’y,” she announced, with juvenile directness. “I wan’ my
suppah. Nona just sits an’ cwies. Make her ’top, Doc.”

The girl--Rock decided she could be no more than twenty-one or
two--gathered the child up and set her on a chair.

“Sit right there till I come back, honey,” she murmured. “Then you
shall have your supper.”

The fair-haired, blue-eyed mite obeyed without question. The girl
beckoned Rock. She walked to the other end of the room, through a
doorway. Rock followed her. He found himself in a narrow hallway that
bisected the house. She opened a door off that and motioned him to
enter.

He found himself in a woman’s room. No man ever surrounded himself with
such dainty knickknacks. It was an amazing contrast to the bare utility
of the kitchen.

A man lay stretched at full length on the white counterpane that
covered the bed--a dead man. One glance told Rock that. Crimson marked
the pillow that held his head, and crimson speckled the yellow and blue
of a hooked rug on the floor. A hand basin, with crimson-stained cloths
in it, stood on a chair.

“Look at him!” the girl whispered. “Look closely at his face!”

But Rock was already looking. He needed no prompting. He stared. The
amazed certainty came to him that, except for very minor differences,
he might well have been looking at his own corpse.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Yet he was alive, never more so. And he had no brothers, nor indeed any
kin that so resembled him. Coincidence, he reflected. Such things were.
No great mystery that, of the millions of men cast in the image of
their Maker, the mold for two should be strangely alike. He did not now
wonder at the shock he must have given this girl, when he stood in the
doorway, the image of the man dead in her room.

But Rock passed at once to a more practical consideration. The man had
been shot. His bared chest showed a blue-rimmed puncture.

“Do you wonder?” the girl’s voice said in his ear. “You see the
resemblance. It is uncanny. You could pass for him anywhere. My heart
stood still when I saw you in the doorway.”

Rock nodded. He put his hand on the body. The flesh was still soft, not
yet cold.

“He hasn’t been dead long,” he remarked.

The girl looked down at the dead man and reached one slim-fingered hand
to smooth the brown hair back from his forehead with a caressing
gesture. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“About half an hour,” she whispered. “It was like lightning out of the
blue. We were up the river a couple of miles. He had separated from me
to look at some cattle around the bend. I heard a shot--just one. I
didn’t think anything of that until he came back to me, holding himself
on his horse by main strength, dying in his saddle. He couldn’t talk.
He never did speak again. I got him home. He died in a little while.”

“Where are the other men?” Rock asked.

“There are no other men.”

“Any neighbors?”

“Not near. There is the Maltese Cross on the river, seven miles below,
and the Seventy Seven about the same distance above.”

“The Seventy Seven? Texas outfit? Pull in here last fall? Fellow name
of Duffy run it?”

She nodded.

A curious conviction, based on less than nothing, arose in Rock’s mind.
It couldn’t be--and still---- Absurd--of course.

“And you don’t know who shot him nor why? Well, I suppose it isn’t my
business. Only he might be my twin. He isn’t, but----” Rock stopped. He
had very nearly spoken what was in his mind.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I only suspect.”

Rock did not press for particulars.

“It hurts you,” he said kindly. “I expect you thought a lot of him. But
it’s done. Now, is there anything I can do?”

“What can you do?” she cried, the first despairing note that had
entered her voice. “Can you give back life? Can you----”

She checked herself in the middle of the sentence.

“Oh, I mustn’t be silly,” she said, after a moment. “It’s so useless.
Only, it seems---- Ah, well.”

She turned away. Rock closed the door behind them. The baby sat on the
chair by the table, waiting patiently.

“If you’ll put up your horse,” she said, “I’ll get some supper.”

“Look here,” Rock said bluntly, “I’m foot-loose for the time being. Is
there anything you want done? Anybody you want notified about this? My
horses are fairly fresh.”

She stood a second. “Oh, I’ve got to think,” she said. “No, not
to-night. And there is no one, anyway. In the morning we may----”

She turned to the kitchen stove and lifted a lid. It had gone down to a
few charred sticks. Rock took that matter off her hands. He rebuilt the
fire and noted empty water pails on a bench.

“Get your water out of the river?” he asked.

“No. There’s a spring by those willows to the right.”

Rock found the spring, a small pool bubbling out of white sand, clear
as crystal and cold as ice. He filled the pails and brought them back.
The girl was peeling potatoes when he came in. Sliced bacon sizzled in
a pan.

Rock went to the stable by the river bank, unsaddled the three horses,
took off his pack, fed and watered all four. When he reached the house
again supper was on the table. They ate in silence. The sun filled the
valley with the fire of its last beams. Bright shafts shot dazzling
through the windows, a yellow blaze that grew red and then rose pink
and faded into a pearly gray. Yellow-haired Betty laid down her spoon,
slid off her chair, climbed on Rock’s knee, and snuggled her round face
against his shirt. In two minutes she was fast asleep.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The girl, who had been sitting with her eyes absently on her plate,
smiled briefly--a phantom smile that strangely transformed her face.

She was young to have a kid like that, Rock thought. And it was tough
losing a man by the gun route. Was it going to be his lot to step into
the breach? If--if---- Well, he had to get to the bottom of this,
somehow. Here was a fellow who looked exactly like him, same build,
same age, same features, shot down in a river bottom. It smelled of
ambush. The Seventy Seven was less than an hour’s ride to the west. And
Elmer Duffy was running the Seventy Seven. For the moment the Maltese
Cross and Buck Walters and the mission he had undertaken for Uncle Bill
Sayre had no place in Rock’s mind.

The girl took the baby out of his arms and carried her off into a
bedroom. Rock put away these reflections and gathered the dishes off
the table and began to wash them.

“I might as well earn my night’s lodging,” he murmured whimsically,
probably to hide the fact that he was moved by a desire to make his
sympathy take some practical form.

The girl reappeared, put the food away in a pantry, took a cloth, and
wiped the dishes as Rock washed. She made no comment. She moved
quickly, and efficiently. Her hands were deft. But her mind was
elsewhere. She was scarcely conscious of him, Rock perceived. And when
the supper things were finished, he went outside and sat down on a
chopping block to smoke a cigarette in the twilight.

Dusk gathered. The pearl-gray mist of the evening sky merged into the
lucent shroud of a plains night. Crickets chirped in the grass. The
Marias whispered its sibilant song in a stony bed. A lamp glowed
through a window in the house. Rock saw the girl sitting by the table
again, as when he first saw her, elbows on the wood, face buried in her
palms.

“She aches inside,” he thought. “Poor devil! She needs folks or friends
or something, right now.”

But he couldn’t be one or the other, he knew. He was too sensible to
blunder with well-meant, useless words. She had forgotten he was there.
So he walked softly down to the stable, drew his blankets in the canvas
tarpaulin off to one side, under the stars, and turned in.

So the Seventy Seven did locate on the Marias instead of the Judith?
Uncle Bill was right. This might be no healthier a neighborhood for him
than it had proved for his double.

“Well, you got to be in this neighborhood for a spell, whether it’s
dangerous or not, you darned fool,” Rock apostrophized himself. “This
is the Maltese range, and you’ve promised to look over the Cross.”

Thus Rock, with the blankets drawn up to his chin and his gaze
meditatively on the three stars that make Orion’s belt.

His last drowsily conscious act was to smile at the obliquity of his
thought. In the morning he would do whatever that dark-haired,
gray-eyed young woman requested. He had ridden slap into this thing.
Whatever it was, he would see it through. Yet he couldn’t imagine her
requiring anything of him except that he would perhaps ride into Fort
Benton and notify whatever authorities functioned there that a man had
been shot on the Marias. And that didn’t call for any great resolution
on his part.

Just the same, he desired greatly to know who this man was who looked
so much like him, who shot him, and why?




CHAPTER V: WRAPPED IN CANVAS


Birds twittering in the poplars and willows by the river wakened Rock
when the rose-pink dawn was turning to gold. He lay watching,
listening. He could hear the ripple of running water. He could see the
bleached hills rising abrupt from the gray-green valley floor. The cool
air was like balm on his face. Beyond all doubt this was a pleasant
country. If a man could settle on one of these river bottoms, with a
couple of hundred cows, in ten years---- But Rock was a long way from
peering anxious-eyed into the future.

He sat up and rolled a cigarette. The sun thrust searching yellow
fingers into the valley of the Marias. The winter-bleached log walls of
the house drew his gaze and set his mind to work in fruitless
speculation. This must be quite an outfit, he reflected. The house was
big, built to accommodate a score of men. He had marked a bunk room
across that hall from the roomy kitchen. The stable argued plenty of
riding stock in winter. There were machinery and wagons, even a spring
buggy, under a lean-to shed. Yet apparently the place was held down by
a young woman, a baby, and one man. Hadn’t the girl said there were no
other men? Still, she had been more or less fussed at the time. The
riders might be afar on round-up. But Rock had that sense of
abandonment, just the same. It was rather puzzling. Whereupon he
reached for his boots, dressed, fed and watered the horses, and sat
down on the river bank to watch the clear water sparkle in the sun,
while he waited some sign of life from the house.

He didn’t wait long. A voice at his elbow roused him to attention. The
girl had come unseen and unheard. Her dark hair was coiled in a neat
rope about her head. She had on a short gray skirt and a white blouse.
Her skin, in the clear morning light, was like a piece of satin, dusky
and transparent. Rock had seen enough of slatternly women on ranches to
make him appreciate freshness. There was a peculiar interest-compelling
quality about this girl, over and above her youth and charm. Rock had
felt it last night. He felt it now, even when she said no more than a
low-toned: “Good-morning, Mr. Holloway.

“I thought you had gone,” she continued, “until I saw you moving around
here. I must have seemed rather inhospitable last night, not even
thinking where you were to sleep.”

“A cowpuncher,” Rock drawled, “generally carries his bed with him when
he’s on the move. And there’s all outdoors to spread it in.”

“Of course. But when you come to a ranch---- Well, breakfast’s ready.”

He walked with her to the house.

“I got up early,” she said when they had finished. “Betty generally
sleeps till seven or eight o’clock. I thought----”

She stopped a moment, then continued with quiet decision:

“I want to bury him.”

“Here?” Rock didn’t mistake her meaning.

“Yes. I’m sure he’d as soon be buried here as anywhere. There is
nothing else we can do for him. You know what this country is like.
We’re practically out of the world.”

“Isn’t this part of the country organized at all?” Rock asked. “No
local authorities?”

“Are you a complete stranger here?” she countered. “I didn’t think so
by the way you spoke of the Seventy Seven last night.”

“I passed through this country last fall with a trail herd bound from
Texas to Canada.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Well, this Territory of Montana is a good deal
of a no man’s land, outside of the western part, where there is a lot
of mining. Fort Benton is the nearest thing to a town. It’s quite a
place, but it isn’t a regularly organized community. There’s a United
States marshal there, I think, and a judge comes down from the western
part of the State, once a year, to hold court. There aren’t enough
people to form a proper county organization yet, although it’s talked
of. When my father came in here four years ago, we were the first
outfit on the Marias. Betty is the first white child born north of the
Missouri River in the Territory, I believe. So, you see,” she motioned
abruptly with her hands, “there’s not much use running around in
circles telling that Doc Martin has been shot. Last night I was in a
terrible state. But I can think straight now. Doc is dead. We can’t do
anything but bury him. I’d like to get it over with before Betty wakes
up. She doesn’t know. She was awfully fond of Doc, and he of her.”

“All right,” Rock agreed. If there were no formalities to be complied
with, no coroner to sit in inquiry, no sheriff to seek trace of the
killers, the sooner the dead man was buried the better. Trail outfits
buried their dead and went on. And, perhaps, the last rites men
performed for their dead under such circumstances lost nothing of
sincerity because they were informal.

                 *       *       *       *       *

So Rock, shovel in hand, followed her to a spot a hundred yards east of
the house, near the river bank. Under a giant cottonwood stood a small
picket inclosure. Within that inclosure lifted two grassy mounds, long
and narrow, a painted board at the end of each. For a second Rock
thought the girl would break down again.

“It’s ghastly,” she whispered. “It’s almost as if there were a curse on
this place, if I believed in such a thing. Mamma died when Betty was
born. A horse fell on dad. They’re both there. Now Doc.”

The soft mold dug easily. When Rock had a hole deep enough, they
returned to the house. Some time between dark and dawn the girl had
changed the man’s clothing and wiped clean every trace of blood. She
had put on him a clean, soft shirt, with a coat and trousers of blue
serge. He looked calm and contented, as if he slept. And Rock, gazing
at the still face, marveled again at the resemblance to himself. He
would have liked to meet this man alive, he thought.

They wrapped the body in heavy canvas, swathed like a mummy. A coffin
was out of the question. Sawed lumber there was none. Except furniture,
freighted in from afar, everything about that place was hewn from raw
timber with axes. And canvas, Rock thought, was as good as a steel
casket. The dead are careless of their housing. Only the living fret
over such things.

He piled on the last shovelful of earth and stood aside. The girl
looked down at the raw soil. Her lips quivered. She dropped to her
knees. She seemed to whisper something like a prayer. Rock stood with
bared head in the morning sun that sent bright shafts of light through
the crooked boughs above. Then he left her, still on her knees, her
head bowed, her fingers locked tight together.




CHAPTER VI: VERY ADROIT ROCK


Some minutes later he heard her stirring in the house. The sun grows
hot early on the plains in midsummer. Rock had planted himself on the
porch steps, in the shade, debating his next move. Should he ride on
about his business? Logically, yes. He had a definite task to perform.
It was time he set about it. He was on the ground. This was only an
incident, a happening by the way. Yet his mind was full of this woman
and child, alone on a ranch in the wilderness. The girl had said there
were no other men. But this ranch and equipment spelled men and stock.
It was more than the cabin of a settler striving for a foothold and
security in a virgin land. A woman with a three-year-old baby had no
business alone on a ranch in this waste, without a man in the
background.

That problem--which was more a state of feeling than a problem, Rock
knew--was solved for him in unexpected fashion. He rose at last and
entered the house, specifically to ask her if there was anything else
he could do before he departed.

The girl had the child in a high chair and was giving the youngster her
breakfast. Silently she poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Rock.
When he drank it she said:

“Come outside. I want to talk to you.”

Rock followed her to the porch.

“You told me last night you were a stock hand in search of occupation.
Do you want to go to work for me?”

Rock liked her directness. His mind was quick to grasp possibilities.
Work to Rock meant activity on the range He was next door to the
Maltese Cross. Two birds had been killed before with one stone. Still,
he wasn’t fond of mysteries that involved sudden death. He liked to
know where he was going when he took a new trail.

“I’d as soon ride range here as anywhere,” he said. “It’s immaterial to
me who I work for, so long as it’s my kind of work.”

“Are you one of these stock hands that considers it beneath his dignity
to work for any outfit with less than ten thousand head of cattle?” she
asked, with a comical note of asperity.

“Well, no,” he laughed. “Hardly so finicky as that. If you’ve got a
rider’s job for me, consider me on the pay roll. Only, I’d like to
know, if I’m going to work for you, whether I’m likely to find myself
being buried some morning at sunrise--and why?”

“Wait a minute,” she said. She turned back into the house. In a second
she was back with a hat on and two shiny tin pails.

“Come down to the stable with me, and we’ll talk this over while I
milk. I was in such a state last night that I forgot the cows. Will you
saddle up and bring them in out of the pasture?”

Rock drove two amiable-looking red cows from the far end of a small
pasture to the corral. The girl tied both to the fence and sat down
beside one on a low stool.

“Can you milk?” she asked, with the faintest shadow of a smile.

“Never did,” he answered truthfully.

“It’s considered woman’s work, I suppose,” she replied. “But even the
wild and woolly cowboy, I notice, likes real milk and cream and butter.
I don’t want you to milk cows, though. I’m not running a dairy. I have
about eight hundred cattle scattered around here.”

“Your ranch outfit looks like about eight thousand,” Rock remarked.

“We had more than eight thousand when we came here,” she said. “That is
why the house is big and the stable. My father drove three trail herds
in here from the Pecos. But we lost most of them.”

“Oh, I see,” Rock commented.

“So, as I said, I have about eight hundred cattle on the range. I have
a rider with the Maltese Cross round-up. I need another rider on the
ranch.”

“But if you keep a rep with the Cross,” Rock interpolated, “does it
matter if your stock does scatter considerable? The outfit would brand
the calves and ship your beef as long as you supply a man and a string
of horses.”

“Yes and no,” she said. “I see you know range work. I suppose what you
say is true. Only I have reasons for handling cattle in my own way. But
that’s all beside the point. What you want to know is whether you’ll be
expected to step into a dead man’s boots and take the risk of getting
shot for some reason or other, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rock admitted. “I have no hankering to inherit a private war
along with a forty-dollar job.”

“It’ll be fifty if you work for me,” she said. “There may be a risk.
Not if you can be around here and work for me, without getting
sentimental and jealous. That was what got Doc killed, I believe. I’m
sure it was.”

Perhaps Rock looked his curiosity and surprise. The girl stood up. She
had worked, as she talked, and finished milking the first cow.

“I had better explain a little,” she said calmly. “As I said, four
years ago we came in here with nearly nine thousand cattle and a dozen
riders in our outfit. I was eighteen then. I had just finished school.
Our first winter here was a bad one--a terrible winter of hard frost
and deep snow and storms. In the spring a round-up out two months
gathered less than five hundred cattle in our brand. Betty was born
that winter, and mamma died. The next summer a horse fell on my father,
injured his back, so that he was a helpless cripple for nearly a year.
Then he died. He left all there was to me and Betty. I have full
control of everything until she comes of age. So I have managed here
ever since. Mostly with one man, sometimes with two.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

So that was that. The dead man was a range rider, not a husband, and
the baby was a sister. She was a level-headed, plucky girl to run a
shoe-string outfit by herself. Yet he suspected that in this man’s
country, men would make it easy for this capable and determined young
person. Rock’s interest quickened.

“Wonder you didn’t sell out and go back to your folk,” he suggested.

“I have none--at least none that I care much about,” she replied. “And
how much would I get for five or six hundred cattle? A few thousand
dollars. The ranch isn’t salable. Who would pay money for a ranch, when
land and water can be had anywhere for taking? Why should I sell out? I
know cattle. This is a new country, a good range. We may not have
another hard winter in a lifetime. It just happened. The old trappers
and the Indians never saw a winter like that. Every four years my
cattle will double. After a while it will make Betty and me
independent. Why should I sell out? What would I do? Go to some town
and be a clerk in a store?”

The vehemence in her voice made Rock smile.

“Oh, you got the right idea,” he admitted. “You’re working on the same
principle that has built up every big outfit in the country. Only, it’s
sort of unexpected in a woman no bigger than a minute.”

“Please understand me clearly,” she said, with a peremptory note in her
curiously musical voice. “I don’t need any sympathy from anybody. I
know what I’m doing, and I’m doing very well here. I want any one who
works for me to work on exactly the same basis as he would work for any
cow outfit. I don’t want any of this ‘That’s all right, little girl,
we’ll see you through,’ business. That’s mostly what got Doc Martin
killed, I suspect. Every man who works for me gets the idea that he’s
in love with me.”

“Why blame ’em for that?” Rock interrupted.

“It embarrasses me. I’ve fired two or three for getting mushy. I don’t
want that sort of thing. Do you think you can ride for me without
getting sentimental--without presently getting the attitude that it’s
your duty and privilege to protect me from every man in the country
except yourself?”

Rock’s amused smile faded.

“Miss---- I don’t think I got your name.” He stopped.

“Nona Parke. The baby’s name is Betty,” she supplied promptly.

“Well, then, Miss Parke,” Rock said a little stiffly, “I can assure you
that if I do draw wages from you I’ll try to earn them without making a
bid either for your gratitude or your affection.”

Nona Parke’s gray eyes rested on his for a second with cool
appraisement.

“You talk like a man with some sense. If you can handle horses and
cattle the way you handle the English language, you ought to be
useful.”

“You’re getting too personal,” Rock said rudely. “Tell me about this
shooting. That’s what I want to know before I decide whether I want to
make myself the same kind of a target. I have ambitions to live and do
well in the world, myself.”

“Now you’re getting offended,” she reproached. “And I’m only trying to
be frank and have things understood. You can’t imagine what a nuisance
men can be sometimes. Doc worked for me ever since dad died. He was a
good man. But he persisted in wanting to love me. I let him go once and
then took him on again. He promised to behave himself. But he wouldn’t.
He was jealous. He couldn’t bear other men coming here to see me. He
stirred up trouble for himself with Elmer Duffy, the boss of the
Seventy Seven outfit. I am fairly sure that Elmer shot Doc yesterday
afternoon.”

She said this reluctantly, but with an earnestness that convinced Rock
she really believed it. To him it seemed rather simple. He had seen men
quarrel over women before.

“Elmer, I suppose, is a victim, too,” Rock commented. “Was he inclined
to be jealous of a good-looking fellow like Doc Martin being in your
company all the time?”

“Yes; that’s about it.” She sighed. “It sounds horrid, but it’s true.
I’m quite sure Duffy was a little afraid of Doc. Doc had a quick
temper, and he was supposed to be rather deadly. I don’t know how he
got that reputation, because I never knew of him having trouble with
anybody in this country.”

“And you think they met and shot it out around the bend?” Rock queried.

“No.” She replied soberly. “I think Doc was ambushed. There was only
one shot. He had been mean and arbitrary with Elmer Duffy the last time
they met. In fact, he threatened him and told him never to set foot on
this ranch when I was here alone.”

“Listen, Miss Parke,” Rock said positively. “I know something about
Elmer Duffy, myself. I’ll confess that I don’t like his style with men
very much. I don’t know what it would be like with women. Elmer belongs
to a family that walks roughshod over people when they feel like it.
But I don’t think he would lay for your man and bushwhack him.”

“I tell you simply what I believe,” she said gravely. “I don’t know.
There is no proof. I wouldn’t breathe this to any one. I only say it to
you because I’m asking you to work for me. I don’t know that I would
even tell you, if you didn’t look so much like Doc that you could
easily be taken for him. If you ride for me, you _may_ fall heir to
whatever bad blood did exist between him and Elmer Duffy. If Doc hadn’t
made an issue of me with this man he would still be alive. I don’t want
to be a bone of contention. I won’t be. I like men well enough until
they get too friendly. If a man works for me, he’s working for me, and
that’s all there is to it. So now you know all about it. And I do need
a rider to take Doc’s place.”

“It was very inconsiderate of him to get himself killed off when you
needed him.” Rock couldn’t forbear the ironic note. “Riders can’t
always be picked up in this country just when you want ’em.”

“You’re brutal.” Nona drew herself up, and her eyes filled. “I liked
Doc. He _was_ nice. He was loyal. It made me sick to see him die like
that. It made me feel guilty, because I was partly the cause. But I
can’t help it that I’m a woman. Can’t you understand? I’m not a callous
beast.”

And Rock knew she was not. He knew he had hurt her with that thrust.

“Well, I’ll guarantee not to afflict you with my admiration if I feel
any,” he smiled. “And it’s a cowpuncher’s nature to be loyal to the
people he works for. If I ever lock horns with Elmer Duffy, it won’t be
for the reason you say your man, Doc, did. No. And I like the looks of
this country. I’d sort of like to linger on this range for a while. So
there doesn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t work for you.”

“All right,” she answered composedly. “If you’ll bunch those horses
that are in the pasture, I’ll show you what ones to saddle. I want you
to go down the river with me after I’ve milked this other cow.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

While Rock gathered a few horses out of the pasture, he saw a rider
cross the flat. The milch cows were in a small corral. Rock bunched the
horses in a larger one and walked through the stable to where Nona
finished her dairymaid’s task. From the door he saw that the man was
Elmer Duffy. Rock’s mind worked fast. He was bound to encounter Duffy
some time, and it might as well be now. Duffy’s business was with Nona
Parke, not with him. But Rock cared nothing for that. He remembered
that he had killed this man’s brother. He was going to live for a time
in Duffy’s immediate neighborhood. If Duffy had taken Mark’s death to
heart and brooded over it, Rock wanted to know and be ready for what
might follow.

But he was hardly prepared for what did happen. He walked straight
toward Duffy. The man’s back was toward him. He was talking to Nona.
She was just rising from her stool. Duffy was in no way excited. His
tone was the habitual slow drawl of the native Texan.

Then Rock spoke.

“Hello, Duffy,” said he.

Duffy wheeled. His arms hung by his sides. There wasn’t the faintest
twitch of the fingers hanging a little below his gun belt, nor any
quick lighting of his slaty eyes, nor the frowning recognition Rock
half expected. True, recognition impended in the man’s attitude. And he
was wary--wary without being hostile.

“Hellow, Doc,” he answered evenly.

“Doc!” A ripple of sardonic amusement stirred in Rock. Duffy thought he
faced Nona Parke’s dead rider. Rock stood perfectly still for a second
or two. The man’s eyes never left his.

“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” Rock asked.

Surely his voice would establish his identity. Duffy had been in daily
contact with Rock Holloway for two months on trail and had known him
casually the season earlier. But he didn’t know him now. His words
proved that.

“Why, I reckoned I might,” he answered, “seein’ I rode in here. You
didn’t expect me to take what you said serious, did you?”

Rock had a retentive memory.

“About you keeping off this ranch?”

Duffy nodded. Rock could understand his watchfulness.

“Shucks! I’ve changed my mind about caring a whoop whether you come
here, there, or the other place,” Rock said slowly, “so long as you act
white. But there’s something I do want to tell you, Duffy. Up the river
yesterday somebody took a pot shot at me. Nona heard it.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

He looked at her. For a second her face was a study. Would she play up
to his lead? Rock didn’t know himself precisely why he did this, except
that instinctively he took the opening Duffy gave him.

But her words came with sharp emphasis. Her wits were nimble.

“I heard the shot. I didn’t see who fired.”

“I don’t like to be shot at from ambush,” Rock said pointedly.

“You say I’d do that? Did do that?”

A rising inflection put an edge in Duffy’s tone. The tan of his long,
homely face went a brick red.

“I didn’t say so. I said I don’t like to be shot at from ambush.”

Duffy stared at him for a second or two.

“Lissen, Doc Martin.” His tone was flat--squeezed dry of all feeling.
“You don’t like me. You’ve been kinda high-handed with me more’n once.
I don’t suffer with admiration for you, myself. But I’ll tell you this:
if I want you, I’ll take you with an even break. I’m no bushwhacker. If
somebody shot at you, an’ you think it was me, you got another think
comin’. When I shoot at _you_, I’ll be lookin’ you in the eye.”

“I’m inclined to take your word for that, Duffy,” Rock said coolly. “If
you say you didn’t, we’ll let it go at that.”

“The way you’ve acted with me the last few months,” said Duffy, growing
querulous, “I’d as soon shoot it out with you as not. I’m tellin’ you
straight, Martin, but it’s up to you to make the break. I don’t _hunt_
trouble.”

“Nor do I,” Rock assured him truthfully.

“You musta changed your ways mighty sudden, then,” Duffy retorted.

Rock grinned amiably.

“I have,” said he. “I’ve sort of convinced myself I’ve been barking up
the wrong tree, Elmer. I aim to change my ways. Don’t know whether for
better or worse. But if you don’t go gunnin’ for me, I certainly don’t
hanker to pick a fuss with you.”

Duffy eyed him doubtfully. He turned to the girl.

“Do you reckon he means what he says?”

“He always does, so far as I know,” she told him shortly.

“Well, we might as well let it go at that,” Duffy finally said. “Sounds
reasonable.”

“All right. Let her go as she lays.” Rock closed the conversation
abruptly by turning on his heel. He walked back through the stable,
into the larger corral, where he perched himself on the top rail. He
looked down on the sleek backs of Nona Parke’s saddle stock, but his
mind was wholly on the amazing fact that he had practically committed
himself to a dead man’s identity.

He watched Duffy walk up to the house with Nona, carrying the two pails
of milk, saw him stand at the door and talk for a minute. Then he came
back, swung into his saddle, and rode around the stable end. Rock
tightened up a little. The girl had been a restraining influence. Now,
perhaps Duffy would have more to say or do. Long ago Rock had privately
estimated Elmer Duffy as the most dangerous of the Duffy quartet,
chiefly because he was tenacious of an idea or a grievance and inclined
to be moody. But he only looked up at Rock and said:

“You kinda got me goin’. Martin. You’ve changed your tune a heap. You
recollect what you told me last time we talked?”

Rock nodded, with only a hazy idea of what he was supposed to have
said.

“Let’s get down to cases,” Duffy persisted. “Do I understand that
you’ve changed your idea that you got a license to close-herd this girl
of Parke’s, any time another man acts like he wanted to speak to her?”

Rock sifted tobacco into a paper.

“I don’t know as I like your way of putting it,” he said, with a
pretense at being sullen. “But she’s convinced me she aims to be a free
agent. It’s nothing to me who she talks to, from now on. I don’t claim
no special privileges no more. She’s made it clear that she’s able to
look out for herself, as far as men are concerned.”

Duffy ironed out the smile that started to overspread his face.

“It don’t look to me,” he said thoughtfully, “like any man’s got the
inside track with that girl. She sure don’t favor nobody that I know
of. So you were just naturally buildin’ up trouble for yourself, takin’
the stand you did.”

“I guess so,” Rock admitted indifferently. “Anyway, I got something
else besides her on my mind, now. I’d sure like to find out who tried
to pot me yesterday, Duffy. I’d make him hard to catch.”

“Don’t know as I blame you,” Duffy remarked. “But don’t you never think
it was me, Doc. I’ve done told you where I stand. So long.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Yes, Duffy had made it clear enough where he stood. Still, somebody had
shot Doc Martin. Rock was still pondering on that problem when Nona
came back from the house. She had changed into a pair of overalls and
leather chaps. She wore a beautifully made pair of tan riding boots.
She looked like a slim, capable boy, with her dark hair tucked out of
sight under a felt hat.

“What on earth did you do that for?” she demanded irritably.

“Do what for?” Rock affected ignorance.

“Let him think you were Doc Martin?”

“Well, he was so darned sure of it, for one thing,” Rock answered
thoughtfully. “It struck me as a good chance to feel around and find
out if he did take that crack at Doc. I don’t believe he did. Also, I
think I’ve convinced him that I’m going--as Doc Martin--to mind my own
business so far as you’re concerned.”

“I noticed how you managed to create that impression,” Nona admitted.
“You were very--very----”

“Adroit,” Rock suggested dryly.

“That’s the word.” She smiled.

“You certainly have----”

“I meant to be,” Rock interrupted, frowning. “I value my scalp, and I
never like to scrap over nothing.”

He looked intently at her.

“See here: If people around here persist in taking me for Doc Martin,
why not let it go at that?” he suggested.

“Why do you want to pass for him?” she demanded. “Are you on the dodge
for something?”

Rock shook his head. He didn’t want to explain to her the possibility
of Elmer Duffy starting a blood feud with him over Mark’s death. He had
disarmed Duffy, he thought, in his rôle of Doc Martin, no longer
jealously hostile toward any ambitious male who came wooing Nona Parke.
And Rock was quite willing to chance some unknown enemy of the dead
rider. Pity and wonder had stirred in his breast when he looked at his
double stretched on the bed, and when he helped to bury him. He had a
sense of outrage in a man being murdered from ambush. He was puzzled
about that shooting--curious about the how and why.

“No,” he said. “I have told you my name, and where I came from. I have
nothing to hide. Just the same, I have a notion to play Doc Martin for
a while. I might find out who killed him. Duffy didn’t.”

“Perhaps not. I’d hate to believe it. And, still, I don’t know. It’s
just a feeling. If Elmer Duffy didn’t shoot Doc, I can’t imagine who
would. Doc never quarreled with any one else around here that I know
about, and I think that I would know if he had.”

“Sometimes,” Rock said, and he was thinking of himself when he spoke,
“things that are a long way behind a man crop up. Queer things happen
in the cow country. Well, what about it? Do you want to keep it dark
about Doc being shot and let me play his hand for a while? Or shall I
announce myself to Elmer Duffy and everybody else who takes me for Doc
Martin?”

“Suit yourself,” she said. “You will be taking your own chances.”

“On what?”

“On whatever happens.”

“Oh, well, I don’t mind taking a sporting chance now and then.” Rock
swung lightly off the fence. “What’s the program now, Miss Parke?”

“Rope that sorrel for me and that chunky bay for yourself,” she said
crisply. “And catch me that black pony.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Nona saddled her horse as soon as Rock, and she had him saddle the
small black horse with an extra rig in the stable. They rode to the
house. The girl swung down, darted in, and came out with a cushion,
which she fastened across the fork of her saddle. Then she called
Betty, and that chubby person toddled forth.

Nona put her on the cushion and swung up to her seat. The child, all
smiles for Rock, rode easily within the protection of her sister’s arm.
The extra horse trotted at the end of Rock’s lead rope, as they set off
down the valley.

“Didn’t she see him?” Rock muttered. “How come she takes me for him?”

Nona shook her head. “I left her shut in the house when we made that
ride yesterday. You can see she takes you for granted.”

Betty undoubtedly did. She prattled away, calling him “Doc.”

“I don’t like to leave her alone much,” Nona explained. “That’s why
we’ve got this extra cayuse. There’s a half-breed family lives down
river a few miles. One of the girls has been nurse for Betty most all
the last year. She’s been away for a while, and I’ve got to get her
back. I’ve carried this child hundreds of miles like this, but it’s too
hard on her and on me. I’ve got to be free to ride when I need to.”

Rock nodded comprehension. He had been wondering how she managed with
the baby.

They traversed long river flats, gray with sage, heavily grassed here
and there, spotted with natural meadows of blue-joint hay. Meadow larks
caroled. In the still pools, where foaming riffles ended, wild ducks
mothered flapping broods. Gray and brown buffalo birds haunted the
berry thickets and fluttered out at their approach. Except for this
wild life, the bottoms were deserted. Few cattle grazed in those
valleys, so hotly scrutinized by a brassy sun. They kept to high ground
and cooler airs. And, just as Rock was beginning to wonder if his day’s
ride should consist of acting solely as Nona’s escort, she pulled up
and pointed to a wide-mouthed draw, opening into the Marias from the
north.

“Ride up that about six or eight miles, then swing west, and circle
back to the ranch,” she said. “My brand is a TL, same as on your horse.
Left rib on cattle. Make a sort of rough estimate of how many you see.
You ought to get in about two or three o’clock. I’ll have some dinner
cooked.”




CHAPTER VII: MARINERS


Rock’s horse splashed knee-deep through the sparkling Marias, where it
raced down a long, pebbled stretch to foam into a black pool. The draw
indicated by Nona opened a yawning mouth, coming in from the
illimitable spread of Lonesome Prairie, although Rock had yet to learn
the name and its aptness. A small creek trickled through this
depression. The draw narrowed and lifted, as he rode. He climbed at
last to the upper levels, where the eye could span fifty miles. Here
cattle lay in the midday heat, along the tiny stream that meandered in
a shallow trough, or they fed in bunches on the tops of low rises,
where vagrant airs stirred.

Rock counted and estimated, as he jogged from bunch to bunch, noting
brands and earmarks, admiring the glint of sun on slender curving
horns, the chubby roundness of fat calves and sleek yearlings, and the
massive bulk of challenging bulls.

Most of these cattle were branded TL. A few bore the Maltese Cross.
Rock smiled to himself. Here he was where Uncle Bill Sayre wanted him
to be. The odd part of it was that, if he had never ridden into Fort
Worth, he would still be here. It was as if some obscure force had been
heading him toward this spot for more than a year. He noted, too, as he
glanced over these cattle, an odd 77. He might still be a Seventy Seven
rider he reflected, if Mark Duffy had not been a wanton bully in a
region where there was no law save that enforced by Colonel Colt.

“Yes, I seemed bound to land here, anywhere,” Rock thought, “whether I
came with the Seventy Seven or on my own. I suppose that’s just
chance.”

Blind, blundering chance. Very likely. Yet chance might be a maker of
secret patterns, Rock reflected, when he had put ten miles between
himself and the Marias. The far-rolling land seemed to carry only
cattle with the Maltese Cross and few of those. For here he dropped
into a low hollow, and on top of the next small lift in the plains he
rode into three riders, one of whom was a woman.

Rock had keen eyes. Moreover, since that meeting with Elmer Duffy he
was acutely conscious of his newly acquired identity. Thus he marked
instantly the brands of the horses. Two were Maltese Cross stock, the
other, bestridden by a youth of twenty or less, carried Nona Parke’s
brand on his left shoulder. His rider was a blue-eyed slender boy, with
a smile that showed fine white teeth when he laid his eyes on Rock.

“Hello, Doc, old boy,” he said. “How’s the ranch an’ the family and
everythin’?”

“Same as usual,” Rock answered genially. “What you expect?”

They had reined up, facing each other. The second man nodded and
grunted a brief, “Howdy.” The girl stared at Rock with frank interest,
as he lifted his hat. Her expression wasn’t lost on him. He wondered if
he were expected to know her well, in his assumed identity. In the same
breath he wondered if a more complete contrast to Nona Parke could have
materialized out of those silent plains. She was a very beautiful
creature, indeed. It was hot, and she had taken off her hat to fan her
face. Her hair was a tawny yellow. A perfect mouth with a dimple at one
corner fitted in a face that would have been uncommon anywhere.
Curiously, with that yellow hair she had black eyebrows and eyelashes.
And her eyes were the deep blue, almost purple, of mountains far on the
horizon. To complete the picture more effectually her split riding
skirt was of green corduroy, and she sat atop of a saddle that was a
masterpiece of hand-carved leather, with hammered-silver trimmings. It
was not the first time Rock had seen the daughters of cattle kings
heralding their rank by the elaborate beauty of their gear. He made a
lightning guess at her identity and wondered why she was there, riding
on roundup. She seemed to know him, too. There was a curious sort of
expectancy about her that Rock wondered at.

However, he took all this in at a glance, in a breath. He said to the
boy on the Parke horse:

“Where’s the outfit?”

“Back on White Springs, a coupla miles. You might as well come along to
camp with us, Doc. It’s time to eat, an’ you’re a long way from home.”

“Guess I will.” Rock was indeed ready to approach any chuck wagon
thankfully. It was eleven, and he had breakfasted at five.

They swung their horses away in a lope, four abreast. What the deuce
was this Parke rider’s name, Rock wondered? He should have been primed
for this. Nona might have told him he would possibly come across the
Maltese Cross round-up. This must be her “rep.”

And he was likewise unprepared for the girl’s direct attack. Rock rode
on the outside, the girl next. She looked at him sidewise and said
without a smile, with even a trace of resentment:

“You must be awful busy these days. You haven’t wandered around our way
for over two weeks.”

“I’m working for a boss that don’t believe in holidays,” he parried.

“I’d pick an easier boss,” she said. “Nona never lets the grass grow
under anybody’s feet, that I’ve noticed. Sometimes I wish I had some of
her energetic style.”

“If you’re suffering from lack of ambish,” Rock said, merely to make
conversation, “how’d you get so far from home on a hot day?”

“Oh, Buck was in at the home ranch yesterday, and I rode back with him.
Took a notion to see the round-up. I think I’ll go home this
afternoon.”

“Say, where’d you get that ridin’ rig, Doc?” the young man asked. He
craned his neck, staring with real admiration, and again Rock felt
himself involved in a mesh of pretense which almost tempted him to
proclaim himself. But that, too, he evaded slightly. He _did_ have a
good riding rig. It hadn’t occurred to him that it might occasion
comment. But this youth, of course, knew Doc Martin’s accustomed gear
probably as well as he knew his own. Naturally he would be curious.

“Made a trade with a fellow the other day.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Rock registered a mental note to cache Martin’s saddle, bridle, and
spurs as soon as he got home.

“I bet you gave him plenty to boot,” the boy said anxiously. “You
always were lucky. He musta been broke an’ needed the mazuma.”

“I expect he was,” Rock agreed.

Again the girl’s lips parted to speak, and again the boy interrupted.
Rock out of one corner of his eye detected a shade of annoyance cross
her alluring face. He wondered.

“How’s Nona an’ the kid?”

“Fine,” Rock informed him. “I left her riding down to Vieux’s after
that dark-complected nurse girl.”

“Are you going back home to-night?” the girl asked abruptly.

“I’d tell a man,” Rock said. “As soon as I do business with the chuck
pile, I’m riding. I’m supposed to be back by three, and I’ll certainly
have to burn the earth to make it.”

“You won’t lose your job if you don’t.”

“Well, if I do, I know where I can get another one,” Rock said lightly.
“But I aim to be on time.”

“Him lose his job!” the TL rider scoffed. “You couldn’t pry him lose
from that job with a crowbar. Now don’t shoot,” he begged in mock fear.
“You know you got a snap, compared to ridin’ round-up with the Maltese
Cross--or any other gosh-danged cow outfit. I’m goin’ to put up a
powerful strong talk to Nona to send you on beef round-up this fall an’
let me be ranch boss for a rest.”

“You got my permission,” Rock said a little tartly. These personalities
irked him. “I’ll be tickled to death if you do.”

He didn’t know what there was in his words, or tone, perhaps, to make
the boy stare at him doubtfully, and the yellow-haired girl to smile
with a knowing twinkle in her eyes, as if she shared some secret
understanding with him.

By then they were loping swiftly into a saucerlike depression in the
plains, in the midst of which a large day herd grazed under the eye of
four riders, and the saddle bunch was a compact mass by the round-up
tents.

Rock left his horse standing on the reins. The others turned their
mounts loose. The Cross riders were squatted about the chuck wagon in
tailor-fashion attitudes, loaded plates in their laps. Rock followed
the other three to the pile of dishes beside the row of Dutch ovens in
the cook’s domain. Some of the men looked up, nodded and called him by
name. And, as Rock turned the end of the wagon, he came face to face
with a man holding a cup of coffee in one hand--a man who stared at him
with a queer, bright glint in a pair of agate-gray eyes, a look on his
face which Rock interpreted as sheer incredulity.

He was a tall man, a well-built, good-looking individual, somewhat past
thirty, Rock guessed. His clothing was rather better than the average
range man wore. Neither his size nor his looks nor his dress escaped
Rock’s scrutiny, but he was chiefly struck by that momentary
expression.

And the fellow knew Rock. He grunted: “Hello, Martin.”

“Hello,” Rock said indifferently. Then, as much on impulse as with a
definite purpose, he continued with a slight grin: “You seem kinda
surprised to see me.”

Again that bright glint in the eyes, and a flash of color surged up
under the tan, as if the words stirred him. Rock didn’t stop to pry
into that peculiar manifestation of a disturbed ego. He was hungry.
Also, he was sensible and reasonably cautious. He felt some
undercurrent of feeling that had to do with Doc Martin. Between the
vivacious blonde and this brow-wrinkling stockman, Rock surmised that
posing as Doc could easily involve him in far more than he had
bargained for.

                 *       *       *       *       *

So he filled his plate and busied himself with his food. No one tarried
to converse. As each rider finished eating, he arose, roped a fresh
horse out of the _remuda_, and saddled. The girl and the other two
riders ate in silence. From the corner of one eye Rock could see the
girl occasionally glance at him, as if she were curious or tentatively
expectant. He couldn’t tell what was in her mind. He was going it
blind. He didn’t know a soul whom he was supposed to know. That amused
him a little--troubled him a little. The quicker he got on his way the
better. He had got a little information out of this visit, though. He
heard one of the riders address the big, well-dressed man as “Buck.” He
heard him issue crisp orders about relieving the day herders. Old Uncle
Bill Sayre’s words floated through his mind: “Buck Walters is young,
ambitious and high-handed with men an’ fond of women. He dresses flash.
A smart cowman.”

That was Buck Walters, the range-functioning executor of the Maltese
Cross estate. And there was some distaste in Buck Walters for Doc
Martin. More wheels within wheels. Rock wondered if this tawny-haired
girl could be the daughter of the deceased Snell. Probably. That didn’t
matter. But it might matter a good deal to him if there was any
occasion for bad blood between Walters and the dead man into whose
boots he, Rock, had stepped.

He finished and rose.

“Well, people,” said Rock, “I’ll be like the beggar, eat and run. I
have a long way to go.”

“Tell Nona to ride over to see me,” the girl said politely, but with no
particular warmth. “I’ll be at the ranch most of the summer.”

“Sure,” Rock said laconically. “So long.”

He was a trifle relieved when he got clear of that camp. He had plenty
of food for thought, as he covered the miles between White Springs and
the Marias. Stepping out of his own boots into those of a dead man
seemed to have potential complications. When Rock pulled up on the
brink of the valley, he had just about made up his mind that he would
be himself. Or, he reflected, he could turn his back on Nona Parke and
the TL, and the curious atmosphere of mystery that seemed to envelope
that ranch on the Marias. He was a capable stock hand. He could
probably work for the Maltese Cross and learn all he wanted to know
under his own name. Why burden himself with a dead man’s feud, even if
the dead man might have been his brother?

As far as Nona Parke went, one rider was as good as another to her. And
Rock had no intention of remaining always merely a good stock hand.
Other men had started at the bottom and gained independence. No reason
why he should not do the same. Land and cattle were substantial
possessions. Cattle could be bought. From a small nucleus they grew and
multiplied. Land could be had here in the Northwest for the taking. Why
should _he_ commit himself to a dead man’s feuds and a haughty young
woman’s personal interests? For a monthly wage? He could get that
anywhere. He could probably go to work for the Maltese Cross, without
question and in his own identity.

Rock, looking from the high rim down on the silver band of the Marias,
on the weather-bleached log buildings, asked himself why he should not
ride this range and fulfill his promise to an uneasy man in Texas in
his own fashion? Why shouldn’t he work for some outfit where there were
neither women to complicate life, nor enemies save such as he might
make for himself?

The answer to that, he decided at last, must be that one job was as
good as another, and that somehow, for all her passionate independence,
Nona Parke needed him. There was a peculiar persuasiveness about that
imperious young woman. Rock could easily understand why men fell in
love with her, desired her greatly, and were moved to serve her if they
could. She seemed to generate that sort of impulse in a man’s breast.
Rock felt it; knew he felt it, without any trace of sentimentalism
involved. He could smile at the idea of being in love with her. Yet
some time he might be. He was no different from other men. She had made
a profound impression on him. He knew that and did not attempt to shut
his eyes to the truth. All these things, sinister and puzzling, of
which her dead rider seemed the focus, might be of little consequence,
after all. As far as he was concerned, every one simply insisted on
taking him for a man who was dead. That had a comical aspect to Rock.

                 *       *       *       *       *

He stared with a speculative interest at the Parke ranch lying in the
sunlight beside that shining river. Nona Parke had the right idea. She
had the pick of a beautiful valley, eight hundred cattle, and the
brains and equipment to handle them. That outfit would make a fortune
for her and Betty. Yet it was a man’s job.

“She’s an up-and-coming little devil,” Rock said to himself. “Mind like
a steel trap. Hard as nails. A man would never be anything more than an
incident to her.”

Thus Rock unconsciously safeguarded his emotions against disaster. He
was neither a fool nor a fish. He liked Nona Parke. He had liked her
the moment he looked into the gray pools of her troubled eyes. But he
wouldn’t like her too well. No; that would be unwise. She had warned
him. But he could work for her. Her wages were as good as any--better,
indeed, by ten dollars a month. And if there should be trouble in the
offing---- Rock shrugged his shoulders. Bridge crossing in due time.

A moon-faced, dark-haired girl of sixteen was puttering around in the
kitchen when Rock walked up to the house. Betty came flying to meet
him, and Rock swung her to the ceiling two or three times, while she
shrieked exultantly.

“Where’s Miss Parke?” he asked the half-breed girl.

“Workin’ in the garden.”

“Where the dickens is the garden?” Rock thought, but he didn’t ask. He
went forth to see.

Ultimately he found it, by skirting the brushy bank of the river to the
westward beyond the spring. Its overflow watered a plot of half an
acre, fenced and cultivated. Rich black loam bore patches of
vegetables, all the staple varieties, a few watermelon vines, and
cornstalks as tall as a man. In the middle of this, Nona was on her
knees, stripping green peas off a tangle of vines.

“Did Mary give you your dinner?” she asked.

“I struck the Maltese Cross round-up about eleven and ate with them,”
he told her.

“Oh! Did you see Charlie Shaw?” she asked. “Did he say whether they
picked up much of my stuff on Milk River?”

“Charlie Shaw is the name of that kid riding for you, eh? Well, I saw
him, but he didn’t say much about cattle. And I didn’t ask. I had to
step soft around that outfit. I don’t know any of these fellows, you
see, and they all persist in taking me for Doc Martin. I suppose I’d
have a deuce of a time persuading anybody around here that I wasn’t.”

“It’s funny. I keep thinking of you as Doc, myself. You’re really quite
different, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “Somehow, I can’t think
of Doc as being dead. Yet he is.”

“Very much so,” Rock answered dryly. “And I’m myself, alive, and I wish
to stay so. I’ve been wondering if posing as your man, Doc, is, after
all, a wise thing for me to do. What do you think?”

“You don’t have to,” she said quickly. “I’m sure Elmer Duffy would be
relieved to know you aren’t Doc Martin.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rock mused. “Elmer might have just as much
to brood over if he knew who I really am.”

“Why so?” she asked point-blank.

Rock didn’t question the impulse to tell her. His instinct to be
himself was strong. The pose he had taken with Duffy that morning had
arisen from mixed motives. He wasn’t sure he wanted to carry on along
those lines. And he most assuredly didn’t want Nona Parke to think him
actuated by any quixotic idea of functioning as her protector after her
declarations on that subject.

                 *       *       *       *       *

So he told her concisely why Elmer Duffy might think a feud with Rock
Holloway a sacred duty to a dead brother. Nona looked at him with
wondering eyes and an expression on her face that troubled Rock, and
finally moved him to protest.

“Hang it,” he said irritably. “You needn’t look as if I’d confessed to
some diabolical murder. Mark Duffy was as hard as they make ’em. He was
running it rough on an inoffensive little man who happens to be my
friend. I _had_ to interfere. And Mark knew I’d interfere. He brought
it on himself. If I hadn’t killed him he would have killed me. That’s
what he was looking for.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” she said earnestly. “Of course,
you were quite justified. I was just thinking that this explains why
Elmer always hated Doc. Doc told me so. He felt it. I suppose it was
the resemblance. I don’t see, now, so far as trouble with Elmer is
concerned, that it matters much whether you pass as yourself or Doc
Martin. You’d have to watch out for Elmer Duffy in either case. I
couldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw a bull by the tail.”

“Nice estimate of a man that’s in love with you,” Rock chuckled.
“You’re a little bit afraid of Elmer, aren’t you?”

“No,” she declared. “But he’s brutal at heart. He’s the kind that
broods on little things till they get big in his own mind. He would do
anything he wanted if he was sure he could get away with it. And he
would like to run both me and my ranch.”

“Powerful description,” Rock commented. “Still it sort of fits
Elmer--all the Duffys, more or less. They’re inclined to be more
aggressive than they ought. Well, I guess it doesn’t make much
difference if I do pass as Doc. I’m not trying to put anything over on
anybody doing that. Now----”

He went on to tell her about meeting the girl at the Maltese Cross. He
described the man who had glared at him and puzzled him by his
attitude, but he didn’t tell Nona this latter detail. He merely wanted
to know who was who.

“That was Buck Walters, range foreman of the Maltese Cross,” she
confirmed Rock’s guess.

“Did Doc Martin ever have any sort of run-in with him?” he asked.

“Heavens, no! I would certainly have heard of it if he had. Why?”

“Oh, he seemed rather stand-offish, that’s all,” Rock answered
indifferently.

“Buck thinks rather highly of himself,” Nona told him. “He’s in charge
of a big outfit. The Maltese Cross is an estate, and he is one of the
administrators. He’s pretty high-handed. There are men in this country
who don’t like him much. But I don’t think Doc cared two whoops, one
way or the other. Probably Buck was thinking about something.”

“Very likely. And who is the yellow-haired _dulce_?”

“Alice Snell. She and a brother inherit the whole Maltese Cross outfit
when the boy comes of age.”

“She told me to tell you to ride down to see her--that she’d be at the
ranch all summer.” Thus Rock delivered the message. “I didn’t hardly
know what she was talking about.”

“Alice never does talk about anything much, although she talks a lot,”
Nona said coolly. “Her long suit is getting lots of attention.”

“Well, I expect she gets it,” Rock ventured. “She’s good looking.
Heiress to a fortune in cows. She ought to be popular.”

“She is,” Nona said--“especially with Buck Walters.”

“Oh! And is Buck popular with her?” Rock asked with more than mere
curiosity. This was an item that might be useful in the task of sizing
up Buck Walters and his way with the Maltese Cross.

“She detests him, so she says,” Nona murmured.

“Then why does she stick around up here in this forsaken country, when
she doesn’t have to?”

“You might ask her,” Nona replied.

Rock had squatted on his heels, picking pods off the vines and chucking
them by handfuls into the pan.

“I might, at that,” he agreed, “when I have a chance.”

“Alice is very ornamental,” Nona Parke continued thoughtfully. “But
quite useless, except to look at. She gives me a pain sometimes,
although I like her well enough.”

“You’re not very hard to look at yourself, it happens,” Rock told her
deliberately. “And I don’t suppose you object to being ornamental as
well as very useful and practical.”

Nona looked at him critically.

“Don’t be silly,” she warned.

“Don’t intend to be.” Rock grinned. “I never did take life very
seriously. I sure don’t aspire to begin the minute I find myself
working for you. I’m a poor but honest youth, with my way to make in
the world. Is it silly for a man to admire a woman--any woman?”

“I wish you’d pull those weeds out of that lettuce patch,” she said,
changing the subject abruptly. “They grow so quickly. I’m always at
these infernal weeds. After you get that done, roll up your bed and
bring it to the house. There’s lots of room.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Rock performed the weeding in half an hour. If another had asked him to
do that, he would probably have told him to go hire a gardener, he
reflected.

“She’ll have me baking bread and working the churn next,” he chuckled
to himself. “Trust Miss Nona Parke to get her money’s worth out of the
hired man.”

That was an exaggeration. Nona wasn’t a driver. Within a week Rock
found himself doing various jobs about the ranch because he saw that
they needed doing, not because she told him to do them. He rode more or
less every day, and most of the time Nona rode with him. It was easier,
if less exciting and glamorous, than round-up. He had a comfortable bed
in a big room, with a huge stone fireplace, which had been the bunk
room when the TL had a dozen riders and cattle by the thousand. Between
Nona and the half-breed girl, the vegetable garden and the two milch
cows, Rock ate better food than had fallen to his lot since he was at
school on the Atlantic seaboard.

It was pleasant to live there, pleasant to ride range with this
dark-haired, competent young person, who could be brusque and curt when
she chose, and self-sufficient at all times. They went clattering away
from the ranch in the cool of morning. They combed far coulee heads,
hidden springs, river bottoms above and below the ranch. Rock was never
quite sure what the girl looked for in these long rides. The only
actual stock work they did was to throw back straggling bunches that
grazed beyond certain limits. That, as Rock understood the range
business, was not important. He concluded that Nona simply had a
passion for looking over her possessions. He had seen men like
that--men who owned longhorns by the tens of thousands.

But she seemed to be looking for something. Rock merely surmised that.
For a week after he happened on the Maltese Cross, they covered the
surrounding country, day by day. Nona talked very little. She rode like
a man, easily, carelessly, a component part of her mount. She could
handle a rope with fair skill. There was strength in her slender arms,
an amazing endurance in her slim body. She knew her stock, bunch by
bunch-- leader cows and oddly marked bulls. She knew where to find
certain little herds. It was as if she watched over them jealously, as
a miser gloats over his hoard. There was something in that Rock
couldn’t fathom. Branded cattle on a recognized range were safer than
bonds in a steel safe, as a rule. Sometimes there were exceptions to
that rule. If there was such an exception here, Nona never breathed it,
and the riders of a cow outfit were usually the first to be warned if
there was any suspicion of rustling in the air. And Rock would not ask.
But he wondered. He began to grow a little uneasy, too. He had accepted
pay from Uncle Bill Sayre to secure certain information. He was on the
ground, but he was not learning much about the Maltese Cross and Buck
Walters. He had grown personally curious about Buck Walters, too, since
meeting him. He didn’t like the man. Rock wasn’t given to sudden likes
and dislikes. Nevertheless, on that one eye-to-eye clash he disliked
Buck Walters--a much more active feeling than he could muster up either
for or against Elmer Duffy, for instance.

Rock had plenty of time for these mental conjectures. They were like
mariners stranded on an island in midocean--himself, Nona Parke, the
half-breed girl, and Baby Betty. No riders passed. Elmer Duffy did not
come again. The sun rose, swung in a hot arc across a sapphire sky, and
sank behind the far-off Rockies. They rode, rested, and slept, while
the stars twinkled in a cool canopy, and the frogs along the Marias
croaked antiphony to the soprano of a myriad of unseen crickets in the
grass.

Then one day Rock rode alone on the benches to the North. When he
splashed through the shallows and came to the corrals late in the
afternoon, there was a bay horse in the stable, and Charlie Shaw sat
talking to Nona in the shade of the porch.




CHAPTER VIII: GETTING DOWN TO CASES


Under his ready laugh and effervescent smile, Charlie Shaw gave the
impression of entire competence. The downright self-reliance demanded
by the range of all who would pass muster in its service, was quite
apparent to Rock. In a cow camp a man was judged by the way he carried
himself, and what he could do, rather than his years. Charlie had been
giving Nona an account of things on round-up. Apparently he had just
ridden in. He nodded to Rock and went on with his talk. Rock sat down
beside them to roll a cigarette.

“I know within a dozen head how many unbranded calves are scattered
around here,” Nona said finally. “We had an open winter. We should have
at least seventy or eighty more calves than last year. Yet the tally is
less.”

“The range is covered to the last fringe,” Charlie stated. “They’ll
make a few more rides, but they won’t show much. I don’t savvy it
either, Nona, but that’s the count.”

“How did the Cross come out on their calf crop?” she inquired.

“Nobody knows but Buck. I wouldn’t ask him.”

The girl stared at the porch floor for a second, frowning.

“I don’t understand it,” she said. “There ought to be more calves than
that.”

Charlie didn’t comment. After a minute she got up and went inside. Shaw
looked at Rock smoking in silence.

“Say, old-timer,” he remarked abruptly, but in a discreet undertone,
“there’s some whisperin’ about you in the Maltese Cross outfit.”

“Yes?” Rock became alert. “What do they whisper? And who’s whispering?”

“I don’t know who started it,” Charlie said. “I heard it the first day
you rode in with me and Alice Snell and Joe Bishop. I don’t like to
repeat gabble, but seems to me you’d ought know.”

“Shoot!” Rock smiled.

“It’s just a whisper,” Charlie mumbled seriously. “Nobody said a word
to me direct. I just overheard here and there. They say you’re
rustlin’.”

“_Me_--rustling?” Rock perked up in astonishment. For the moment he
forgot his assumed identity. The idea was so utterly ludicrous. He
laughed. Recollection sobered him. This must be more Martin history.

“Ye’ah. Got you hooked up with them Burris boys over behind the
Goosebill,” Charlie murmured. “Talkin’ about rawhide neckties. Some of
them Texicans in Buck’s crew are bad hombres, Doc.”

Rock knitted his brows. He hadn’t heard before of the Burris boys. The
Goosebill he had seen only as an oddshaped hill standing blue on the
southwestern sky line, halfway between the Marias and Fort Benton.

“Well, you reckon I’ve been draggin’ the long rope in my spare time and
should be a candidate for their kind attentions?” he asked.

Shaw snorted.

“I might ’a’ known you’d make a joke of it,” he complained.

“I wonder who wants to get me so bad as that?” Rock said under his
breath.

“Buck Walters, of course,” Charlie returned promptly. “Who else? Just
like his damn left-hand ways. Didn’t you never figure he’d shoot at you
over somebody else’s shoulder? As a matter of fact, I’m satisfied Buck
aims to get you.”

“Why?”

“Say, you know why well enough,” Charlie blurted irritably. “You been
flirtin’ with the undertaker all spring. You ain’t a fool.”

“You mean Alice Snell?” Rock hazarded a guess.

“Sure.” Charlie looked at him out of narrowed eyes, the bright blue of
which held a peculiar gleam, whether of friendship or disapproval Rock
could not tell from the boy’s otherwise impassive face. No; not
disapproval; merely the recollection of something unpleasant, either in
the past or threatening in the future. This capable youngster was by no
means an open book. “I wouldn’t yeep, only to give you a hint to step
soft. Buck’s mean. He’ll make trouble. Nona’s had a hard enough row to
hoe. Long as we draw wages from her, we got to do the best we can for
her. The TL ain’t so popular as it used to be with the Maltese Cross.”

“Account of me?” Rock inquired.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said frankly. “I’ve told you all I know. That
talk about rustlin’ an’ hangin’ parties was _meant_ for me to hear.
Savvy?”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Rock didn’t, but he nodded. His brows wrinkled deeply. The solution
finally came to him. To make a decision with him was to act.

“Do you recollect asking me where I got that riding rig?” he asked.

“Sure. Why?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute. Meantime I want to show you something.” He
rose. “Come on in!”

Charlie followed him into the kitchen.

“Will you open up that room?” Rock asked Nona. “The one where that
stuff is we put away?”

“Why----” She stopped short. Something on the faces of the two men
checked the question on her lips. Silently she took a key out of a
drawer and walked into the hall, the narrow passage that divided the
house. She opened a door--the only locked door in all those log-walled
rooms.

“You better come in,” Rock said.

“Charlie’s got to know. You better tell him.”

A window from the south let sunlight into the room. A bed long unslept
in stood against one wall. On the floor lay a saddle, bridle, a pair of
black, Angora-faced chaps, and a pair of silver-inlaid spurs. Beside
them a pair of worn riding boots, a brown calfskin belt full of .45
cartridges, and in the holster a plain, black-handled Colt. On a nail
above hung a man’s felt hat. A canvas war bag lay across a chair,
stuffed with the dead man’s belongings.

Rock pointed to the saddle. On the yellow leather a stain lay black
like dried paint.

“Do you know that rig?” he asked. “Do you see that smear? That’s
blood.”

“Well?” The boy looked at the dead man’s outfit in puzzled wonder. He
looked at Nona Parke and back again at Rock. “Well?” he repeated. “I
see it. What’s it all about?”

“Am I Doc Martin or not?” Rock asked softly.

“Are you crazy?” Charlie demanded. “What are you getting at? Who do you
think you are? Have you gone loco?”

“Tell him,” Rock commanded the girl.

“Doc is dead,” she whispered. “He was shot from ambush a week ago
yesterday.”

Nona Parke’s cowpuncher looked at her unbelievingly. She gave him
details, chapter and verse, describing that tragic afternoon, Rock’s
coming, and the burial at sunrise.

“That’s all,” she said wearily. “You can see his grave beside dad and
mamma.”

“Poor old Doc,” Shaw muttered. He looked at Rock with new interest. “I
wouldn’t ’a’ believed it if _she_ hadn’t told me. You’re the dead spit
of him. You talk like him. Only, you seemed a little different, some
way, from what Doc used to be.”

“Come on into the bunk room,” Rock invited. “Let’s try to get down to
cases.”

“Has anything happened?” Nona asked sharply.

“Gosh, no,” Rock equivocated. “Nothing at all. I wanted this kid to
know how things stand, though. I couldn’t go on and not tip my hand,
for fear he’d think there was something queer about me.”

“Probably it’s best,” Nona agreed. “Supper will be ready in a few
minutes. Charlie has to ride back to the round-up. I’ll call you.”

“All right.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

They turned out of the hall into the huge room where Rock slept. Side
by side, they sat on a bed that seemed lost in that empty space, where
forgotten riders had clanked their spurs and joked and told stories
through long winter nights, while the fireplace roared.

“Now you see where I stand,” Rock said. “I’m having a dead man’s
troubles wished on me. Tell me just how Doc Martin stood with Alice
Snell, and why Buck Walters had his knife out for Doc.”

“That’s simple,” the boy answered. “This blond _dulce_ was soft on
Doc--crazy about him. I don’t blame you. Darn it, I keep thinkin’ of
you as Doc Martin. I can’t get it that he’s cashed in.”

“You can see how hard it is for me to make any one believe I’m _not_
Doc,” Rock observed.

“Hell, yes. They’d have to have it _proved_. They’d laugh and think you
were trying to put it over ’em.”

“Were you and Doc friends?” Rock asked. He wanted to know where this
boy stood.

“I liked Doc,” the boy said simply. “He showed me lots of things. He
was kinda high-handed with anybody he didn’t like. But he was darned
good to me. Doc was a white man.”

“No chance of him being mixed up in anything underhanded?”

Charlie Shaw snorted disdainfully, which was explicit enough answer for
Rock.

“Go on, tell me about Alice Snell and Doc--and Buck Walters,” he
prompted.

“Buck’s the fly in the ointment.” Charlie frowned. “As I said, I don’t
blame Doc for playin’ up to Alice. She’s a mighty sweet-lookin’ girl.
Only----”

“I gathered somehow,” Rock filled in the pause, “that the late Doc was
pretty sweet on Nona Parke. So much so, that he was jealous of any man
that paid her much attention, and that he got himself in wrong with
Elmer Duffy over that.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But Nona don’t want nothin’ of a man except that he
be a good stock hand around her outfit. Sure, Doc thought a heap of
her. So do I. But not the way he did. Even if he got to consolin’
hisself with Alice, I expect he still felt like protectin’ Nona from
fellers like Duffy. Elmer ain’t such a much. I’d be inclined to horn
off fellers like Duffy, myself. An’ _I’m_ not stuck on Nona. Me ’n’ Doc
worked for her two years, off ’n’ on. She’s been like a sister to me.
She’s game as they make ’em. Darned few girls would have the nerve to
run this one-horse show the way she’s done. I’d rather have her for a
boss than anybody I know.”

There was a sincerity in this stumbling, embarrassed declaration that
Rock admired. But he was still on the trail of the unknown, and he
quizzed Shaw further.

“This Snell girl’s of age. She’s rich. I guess she’s been spoiled.
Always had her own way about anythin’. She come up here last summer,
first time. Come back again this spring. Took a dickens of a shine to
Doc and didn’t hide it much. Everybody in the country knows it, except
Nona. She ain’t got eyes nor ears for anything but her ranch and her
cattle. An’ Buck Walters is crazy about this Snell girl, himself,
though she has no use for him. She told Doc once that she’d can Buck
off the Maltese Cross if her dad hadn’t made him an administrator of
his will. I don’t know if there was anythin’ definite between Doc an’
Alice. I do know Buck has turned to hatin’ you--Doc I mean--like
poison, lately. His eyes burn whenever your name comes up. That’s why I
said he aims to get you--get Doc. Darn it, I keep gettin’ you all mixed
up.”

“Better go on thinkin’ of me as Doc Martin,” Rock suggested, “until
something breaks. I’m interested in this. Listen, now, Charlie: Do you
remember where the Maltese Cross was a week ago yesterday--the day Doc
was shot? Were they in easy reach of the Marias? Do you recollect if
Buck Walters was missing that afternoon?”

“I know where we were,” Charlie said. “Couldn’t say for sure whether
Buck was early or late off circle that afternoon. Anyhow, I’m here to
tell you that he wouldn’t be likely to do his own bushwhackin’. Too
foxy for that. He’s got at least half a dozen riders in his outfit
that’d kill a man for two bits--especially if Buck told ’em to.”

“Got something on ’em, I suppose,” Rock suggested.

“Maybe; I don’t know. I know he’s got some hard citizens in his crew.
None of ’em has made a crooked move since they come to Montana, but
they got ‘Killer’ written all over ’em. There’s two fellers that never
ride with the round-up. They hang around the home ranch all the time,
foolin’ with horses. They got a name down South. A rider in Benton told
me their history last fall.”

“I see. Buck Walters has a lot of hard pills on his pay roll.” Rock
nodded. “Not because they’re such good range hands, eh? Most
cowpunchers aren’t killers--not by choice or for money. Now, why do you
reckon he keeps men like that around, Charlie?”

But all Shaw could answer was a shake of his head and a muttered,
“Search _me_.”

“It would sort of seem as if Buck kept a crowd around that would burn
powder free and easy, if the play came up,” Rock mused. “Consequently,
he must expect something to break. What would it likely be? A cow
outfit don’t have to fight for nothin’ in this country.”

And again Charlie Shaw shook his blond, youthful head.

“He wouldn’t surround himself with bad men from Bitter Creek, waiting
for their night to howl, just to deal with Doc Martin for shining up to
a girl he has his mind on.”

“No; because he brought most of his crowd up from the South with him,”
Charlie answered. “But he’ll put your light out, just the same, if he
gets a good chance.”

“Doc Martin has already had his light put out,” Rock said.

“I keep forgettin’,” the boy muttered. “If I was you I’d advertise that
fact pronto. It ain’t healthy to be in Doc Martin’s shoes around here.”

“I have a notion to fill ’em for a while, just to see what comes of
it,” Rock said slowly. “You’re sure Buck Walters had it in for Doc over
this girl--and nothing else?”

“Nothing else that _I_ know of,” Shaw said.

Something in the boy’s tone made that denial unconvincing and warned
Rock that there was more in Charlie Shaw’s mind than he would utter.

“Do you suppose there was something that Doc Martin knew or had found
out or suspected, that would make Buck want him out of the way?”

Shaw stared at Rock for a minute, as if trying to fathom his
purpose--as if he were suspicious of subtleties beyond his
understanding.

“I can’t answer for what Doc might have known. All I know is that I’m a
Parke rider, and I don’t aim to horn into nothin’ that don’t concern me
nor the outfit I ride for--nor my friends.”

“I’m a TL rider, too,” Rock said pointedly. “I aim to be as good a
hand, if not better, to the outfit I work for as any rider that ever
forked a cayuse. Even if you don’t know anything positive, Charlie, you
could tell me what you _think_ about Buck Walters.”

“I might tell you when I know you better,” the boy said bluntly. “A man
that wags his tongue too free is a fool. I’ve told you what I know. It
ain’t important what I _think_.”

Rock gave him credit for a wisdom beyond his years and did not press
the matter. He had taken a liking to this slender, smiling youth.
Charlie was good stuff--that curious mixture of which all good range
men were made--loyalty, courage and a rude dignity. And he was damnably
efficient. The boy had an eye like an eagle and a discerning, practical
mind. He knew or suspected far more than he would ever admit to any one
he didn’t know inside out and could trust implicitly. He would have
told things to Doc Martin that he would only reveal to Rock Holloway
when Rock had demonstrated that he was all wool and a yard wide.

Nona called them presently to supper. They ate, then smoked a cigarette
on the porch. Charlie Shaw strolled off to the stable, mounted and rode
away to rejoin the Maltese Cross. While Rock sat on the edge of the
porch, pondering on what he had learned, Nona joined him. She leaned
against a log pillar, looking absently out across the river flats. Rock
watched her. She was so young, so utterly free from self-consciousness,
so intent upon her own purposes. Something about her warmed his heart.
It wasn’t beauty, as Alice Snell was beautiful. It was an air, an
atmosphere, something indefinable, subtle, but very powerful, like the
invisible force in a bit of bent steel that draws other bits of steel
to itself.

“I want you to take a wagon and go to Fort Benton to-morrow,” she said
abruptly, “and see if you can hire a couple of men for haying. We’ve
got to get up a couple of hundred tons of hay for next winter.”

Rock smiled. He had been brooding over life and death, treachery and
broken faith, loyalty in unexpected phases, the mystery of passion that
bred hatred and bloody clashes. Nona had been thinking of hay for her
stock.

Each to his own thoughts. He envied her a little and admired her for
that simplicity, the directness of her faith and works. His own mental
groping and convolutions would have distressed her, no doubt.




CHAPTER IX: ORDERED SOUTH


By midforenoon Rock had the striking contour of the Goosebill breaking
the sky line far on his right. As the team jogged with rattling wagon
wheels on a trail that was no more than two shallow ruts in the grassy
plateau, his mind dwelt on the Burris boys--two unsavory brothers, with
a ranch in a tangle of ravines behind that strange hump on the flat
face of Montana. Charlie had sketched them for his benefit. They were
suspected and had been for some time. They had a few cattle, and their
herd seemed to increase more rapidly than cows naturally breed. No
mavericks--unbranded yearlings; hence the property of whosoever first
got his irons on them--were ever found on their range. They were
supposed to ride with a long rope, lifting the odd calf here and there.
It was only a matter of time, Charlie declared, before some big outfit
would deal with them, as the feudal barons dealt with miscreants within
their demesnes.

And Doc Martin’s name was being coupled with these two in the Maltese
Cross camp. Rock’s lip curled. When a man with power in his hands
wanted another man out of the way, he would go to great lengths. Rock
had observed the workings of such sinister intent in his native State.
He kept thinking about Uncle Bill Sayre’s estimate of Buck Walters.

He was still more or less revolving this in his mind, when he came to
the brow of the steep bank that slanted sharply down to Fort Benton.
This one-time seat of the Northwest Fur Company was the oldest
settlement in the Territory, a compact unit of adobe and log and frame
dwellings, when the first gold was found at Bannack and Virginia City,
and when the eager miners looted the treasure of Last Chance Gulch.
Still the head of navigation on the Missouri River, it had become the
pivotal point of the cow business in northern Montana, which had
supplanted gold, as gold had supplanted furs, as a road to fortune.

A conglomeration of buildings stood by the bank of the wide, swift
river. Away southward loomed a mountain range. The Bear Paws stood
blue, fifty miles east. A ferry plied from shore to shore, for the
convenience of horsemen, teams and three-wagon freight outfits hauling
supplies to the Judith Basin. The Grand Union Hotel loomed big in the
town, a great square building in a patch of green grass, set off from
Main Street, the single street which formed the business heart of the
town. A singularly attractive spot, it had had its historic day.
Buffalo had swarmed in its dooryard not so long before. The Blackfeet
and the Crows had fought each other there and joined forces to fight
the white man. In the spring at high water the stern-wheel steamers
from St. Louis laid their flat bows against the clay bank and unloaded
enormous cargoes of goods. Otherwise, since furs and gold no longer
dominated the Northwest, Fort Benton lived a placid, uneventful
day-to-day existence, except when roundups came that way, and the
cowboys took the town.

Yet there was life in it. The exciting scenes of a decade earlier arose
on a small scale. And between these high lights business flourished.
The fort was the hub of a great area, in which herds and settlers were
taking root. It supported a permanent population of two hundred or
more, stores, saloons and the Grand Union, which had housed miners,
gamblers, military men, river pilots, rich and enterprising fur
dealers, and was now headquarters for the cattle kings and their
henchmen.

Rock put his team in a livery stable and registered at the Grand Union.
He sought the bar, his parched throat craving St. Louis beer fresh off
the ice.

In the doorway, between lobby and barroom, he halted to look. Anywhere
between the Rockies and the Mississippi, between the Rio Grande and the
Canada line, a range rider might meet a man whom he knew. They were
rolling stones, gathering moss in transit, contrary to the proverb. And
Rock was not disappointed, although it would be wrong to say that he
was pleased.

For he saw two men whom he recognized. They leaned on the bar at one
end, deep in talk, glasses before them. They did not see him. Their
backs were toward the doorway in which he stood. Their eyes were on
each other, not on the broad mirror over the back bar, which showed
Rock their faces.

One was Buck Walters; the other was Dave Wells, the Texan boss of the
Wagon Wheel on Old Man River, north of the Canada line.

Rock drew back, unseen, sought a chair in the lobby, and sat down, with
some food for thought. Here were two men, each of whom knew him quite
well--one as Doc Martin, a Parke cowpuncher; while the other had
employed him for nine months in his real identity. Fort Benton was
small. He could not remain in that town over the night without meeting
both, face to face. Which identity should he choose?

                 *       *       *       *       *

It did not take Rock long to decide. He rose and made for the bar. This
time he put his foot on the rail and made an inclusive sign to the
bartender, after the custom of the country.

There were other men in the bar now. Walters and Wells looked up to see
who was buying. A shadow, very faint, flitted across Buck Walters’
face. He nodded, with a grunt. Wells grinned recognition and stuck out
his hand.

“You got the best of me,” Rock drawled. “But shake, anyway.”

“I’d know your hide on a fence in hell,” Wells declared. He was jovial,
and his eyes were bright. He had been hoisting quite a few, Rock
decided. Walters seemed coldly sober.

“Gosh, who do you think I am?” Rock asked. “Your long-lost brother or
something?”

“Why, you’re Rock Holloway, darn you!” Wells said bluntly. “I’d ought
to know you. I paid you off less’n a month ago. Course, if you’re
layin’ low for somethin’----” He paused significantly. Over his
shoulder Rock marked the surprised attention of Buck Walters.

“If that is so, I sure must have a double,” Rock said. “I been drawin’
wages from the TL on the Marias River for goin’ on two years, without a
break. Does this Holloway fellow you speak of look so much like me,
stranger?”

Wells looked him up and down in silence.

“If you ain’t Rock Holloway, I’ll eat my hat,” he said deliberately.

“Let’s see a man eat a Stetson for once,” Rock said to the manager of
the Maltese Cross. “Tell him who I am.”

“Eat the hat, Dave,” Walters said. “This feller never rode for you--not
in this country. His name is Doc Martin. He rides for a lady rancher on
my range. I know him as well as I know you.”

Wells scratched his head.

“I need my sky piece to shed the rain,” he said mildly. “Maybe the
drinks are on me. If you ain’t the feller I think you are, you
certainly got a twin.”

“I never had no brothers,” Rock declared lightly and reached for his
glass. “Never heard of anybody that looked like me. Well, here’s luck.”

That was that. He got away from the barroom in a few minutes.

Wells kept eying him. So did Walters. He felt that they were discussing
him in discreet undertones. They did not include him in their
conversation after that drink. Once out of there, Rock set about his
business. He had no desire to paint the town. He went seeking casual
labor. Luck rode with him. Within an hour he had located and hired two
men--the only two souls in Fort Benton, he discovered, who needed jobs.
He went back to the Grand Union for supper. In the dining room he saw
Wells and Walters still together, seated at a table by themselves. He
observed them later in the lobby, deep in cushioned chairs, cigars
jutting rakishly from their lips.

Early in the evening Rock went up to his room. He had left the Marias
at sunrise, and had jolted forty miles in a dead-axle wagon. He would
hit the trail early in the morning, with the hay diggers, before they
changed their mind and hired themselves to some one else. He needed
sleep.

But he couldn’t sleep. The imps of unrest propped his eyelids open. An
hour of wakefulness made him fretful. His mind questioned ceaselessly.
Could a man like Buck Walters deliberately set out to destroy another
man merely because he was a rival for a girl’s capricious affection? It
didn’t seem incentive enough. A man with as much on his hands as
Walters, could scarcely afford petty feuds like that. Still----

Rock dressed again, drew on his boots, and tucked his gun inside the
waistband of his trousers. He would stroll around Fort Benton for an
hour or so. By that time he would be able to sleep.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A battery of lighted windows faced the Missouri. Saloons with quaint
names, “Last Chance,” “The Eldorado,” “Cowboy’s Retreat,” the “Bucket
of Blood.” They never closed. They were the day-and-night clubs of
frontier citizens. Business did not thrive in all at once. It ebbed and
flowed, as the tides of convivial fancy dictated. In one or two the
bartender polished glasses industriously, while house dealers sat
patiently playing solitaire on their idle gambling layouts. But in
others there were happy gatherings, with faro and poker and crap games
in full swing. Rock visited them all and chanced a dollar or two here
and there. Eventually he retraced his steps toward the hotel.

In the glow of lamplight from the last saloon on the western end of the
row, just where he had to cross the street to the Grand Union, sitting
in its patch of grass and flanked by a few gnarly cottonwoods, Rock met
Buck Walters and Dave Wells.

He nodded and passed them. A little prickly sensation troubled the back
of his neck. It startled Rock, that involuntary sensation. Nervous
about showing his back to a potential enemy? Nothing less. The
realization almost amused Rock. Absurd! Nobody would shoot him down on
a lighted street. Yet it was a curious feeling. Expectancy, a sense of
danger, a conscious irritation at these psychological absurdities. He
was not surprised when a voice behind him peremptorily called:

“Hey, Martin!”

He turned to see Buck Walters stalking toward him. Wells’ long, thin
figure showed plain in the glimmer of light. He stood on the edge of
the plank walk, staring at the river.

“Got somethin’ to say to you,” Walters announced curtly.

“Shoot,” Rock answered in the same tone.

Walters faced him, six feet away. His face, so far as Rock could see,
told nothing. It was cold and impassive, like the face of a gambler who
has learned how to make his feature a serviceable mask to hide what is
in his mind. Buck’s face was unreadable, but his words were plain.

“This country ain’t healthy for you no more, Martin.”

“Why?”

“Because I tell you it ain’t.”

“You’re telling me doesn’t make it so, does it?”

“I know. Talk’s cheap. But this talk will be made good. You need a
change of scenery. I’d go South if I was you--quick. You’ve been on the
Marias too long.”

“Why should I go South, if I don’t happen to want to?” Rock asked.

“Because I tell you to.”

Rock laughed. For the moment he was himself, Doc Martin forgotten, and
he had never stepped aside an inch for any man in his life.

“You go plumb to hell,” he said. “I’ll be on the Marias when you are
going down the road talking to yourself.”

“All right,” Buck told him very slowly. “This is the second time I’ve
warned you. You know what I mean. You’re huntin’ trouble. You’ll get
it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rock retorted. “Say it in plain English.
What’s eating you?”

“I’ve said all I aimed to say,” Walters declared. “You know what I
mean, well enough.”

“If I had never laid eyes on you before,” Rock answered quietly, “you
have said enough right now to justify me in going after you. Is that
what you want? Do you want to lock horns with me? The light’s good. Pop
your whip, you skunk!”

Rock spat the epithet at him in a cold, collected fury. He meant
precisely what he said. There was such an arrogant note in that cool
intimidation. It filled him with a contemptuous anger for Buck Walters
and all his ways and works and his veiled threats.

“You are just a little faster with a gun than I am,” Walters replied,
unruffled, the tempo of his voice unchanged. “I take no chances with
you. I am not afraid of you, but I have too much at stake to risk it on
gun play--by myself. If you do not leave this country, I will have you
put away. You can gamble on that.”

Rock took a single step toward him. Walters held both hands away from
his sides. He smiled.

“If you so much as make a motion for that gun in your pants,” he said
in an undertone, “my friend Dave Wells will kill you before you get it
out.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Now Rock had made that step with the deliberate intention of slapping
Walters’ face. No Texan would take a blow and not retaliate. He
couldn’t live with himself if he did. But, “my friend, Dave Wells,”
made him hesitate. Rock’s glance marked Wells, twenty feet away, a
silent watchful figure. And it was more than a mere personal matter.
Down in Fort Worth, Uncle Bill Sayre had joint responsibility with this
man for the safeguarding of a fortune, and a medley of queer
conclusions were leaping into Rock’s agile brain. Reason, logic,
evidence--all are excellent tools. Sometimes instinct or intuition,
something more subtle than conscious intellectual processes,
short-circuits and illuminates the truth with a mysterious flash of
light. This man before him was afraid of Doc Martin. He was afraid of
Doc, over and above any desire for possession of a woman--any passion
of jealousy. There was too much at stake, he had said. Rock would have
given much to know just what Buck Walters meant by the phrase. Doc
Martin would have known. Rock didn’t regret the surge of his own
temper--the insult and challenge he had flung in this man’s teeth. But
he fell back on craft.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d expect you to take no chance on an even break,
with anybody or about anything. You’ll play safe. You’ll pass the word
that I’m to be put away. You tried it already.”

“Next time there will be no slip-up,” Walters answered with cold
determination. “You have said things you shouldn’t have said. You have
shot off your mouth at me. You have made a play at a fool of a girl
that I aim to have for myself. I have a cinch, Martin, and I am goin’
to play it for all it is worth.”

“A cinch on me--or on the Maltese Cross?” Rock taunted.

“Both,” Walters muttered, in a whisper like a hiss, the first emotion
that had crept into his cold, malevolent voice.

“That’s a damaging admission to make,” Rock sneered.

“Not to you,” Walters said flatly. “You’ll never have a chance to use
it. You are goin’ to be snuffed out, if you don’t pull out. I don’t
like you, for one thing; you are interferin’ with my plans, for
another.”

“Those are pretty strong words, Buck,” Rock told him soberly. “I’m not
an easy man to get away with.” He tried a new tack. “If you are so dead
anxious to get rid of me, why don’t you try making it worth my while to
remove myself?”

Walters stared at him.

“I ain’t buyin’ you,” he said at last. “There’s a cheaper way.”

“All right, turn your wolf loose on me.” Rock laughed. “See what’ll
happen. Now you run along, Mister Buck Walters, before I shoot an eye
out of you for luck, you dirty scoundrel!”

Rock’s anger burned anew, but he did not on that account lose his head.
He abused Walters in a penetrating undertone, with malice, with intent,
with venom that was partly real, partly simulated. But he might as well
have offered abuse and insult to a stone. He could not stir Walters to
any declaration, any admission that would have been a key to what Rock
sought.

“Talk is cheap. I don’t care what you say. It don’t hurt me,” the
Maltese Cross boss told him stiffly. “I will shut your mouth for good,
inside of forty-eight hours.”

And with that he turned his back squarely on Rock and walked to rejoin
his friend, Dave Wells, who stood there, ready to shoot in the name of
friendship.

Rock stood staring at their twin backs sauntering past lighted saloons.
He wouldn’t have turned _his_ back on Walters, after that. Which was a
measure of his appraisal of the man’s intent. Buck would make that
threat good!

Rock shrugged his shoulders and strolled across the dusty street into
the Grand Union. He was little the wiser for that encounter, except
that he could look for reprisal, swift and deadly. He wondered calmly
what form it would take.

Certainly he had stepped into a hornet’s nest when he stepped into the
dead cowpuncher’s boots. Rock lay down on his bed with his clothes
still on and stared up at the dusky ceiling. He was trying to put one
and one together, to make a logical sum. It made no difference now,
whether he was Doc Martin or Rock Holloway. After to-night Buck Walters
was an enemy. And Rock reflected contemptuously that he would rather
have him as an enemy than a friend.

He recalled again Uncle Bill Sayre’s distrust of his fellow executor.
Uncle Bill’s instinct was sound, Rock felt sure in his own soul, now.

“I expect I am in for some exciting times,” Rock murmured to himself.
“Yes, sir, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.




CHAPTER X: THIRTY ANGRY MEN


He had been given forty-eight hours! When twenty-four of them had
elapsed, Rock lay in his bunk at the TL, staring at roof beams dim
above his head. The small noises of the night, insect voices, and the
river’s eternal whisper drifted through an open window. In an opposite
corner the two hired men snored. Perhaps to-morrow something would
happen. Perhaps not. Yet Rock could not take easy refuge behind the
idea that Buck Walters’ talk had been a bluff. Fire burned under that
smoke. To-morrow would tell the tale.

Sunrise came and breakfast. Rock set the men at work in a meadow. The
whir of the mower blades droned in the quiet valley. There were odds
and ends of work that kept him busy until ten o’clock. While he
attended to these jobs, he debated with himself whether to tell Nona
Parke about his encounter with Buck. He concluded to keep it to
himself. He wished that he had taken advantage of Dave Wells’ presence
to establish his own identity. Yet who the devil, he asked himself
fretfully, would have expected Buck Walters to declare open war?

At the next opportunity, he decided, he would be himself and be done
with a dead man’s troubles. It had been altogether too easy to let
people go on thinking he was Doc Martin. But there was no use worrying
Nona Parke with that just now. She wasn’t concerned. If anything
happened to him, she could get other riders. And she was quite helpless
to prevent anything happening. Rock didn’t intend that anything should
happen to him. He would be wary, watchful, his weapons always handy.

Something took him to the house.

Nona sat on the porch, darning stockings for Betty. She stopped Rock to
mention the need of getting in more work horses, and while they talked,
her eyes, looking past Rock, began to twinkle.

“Well,” she said, “we are about to have a distinguished visitor.
There’s Alice Snell, and she’s certainly burning the earth.”

Rock turned. That range phrase for speed was apt. Alice came across the
flat on a high gallop, her skirt flapping, bareheaded, and the gold of
her hair like a halo in the sun. Her bay horse, when she jerked him to
a stop, was lathered with sweat, his breast spotted with foam flecks.
The girl’s face struck Rock as being stricken with a terrible fear. She
swung down. To Nona Parke she gave no greeting whatever. Her eyes never
left Rock, except for one furtive, backward glance. And she cried with
a hysterical tremble in her voice:

“Buck Walters and Elmer Duffy, with all the boys, are coming to hang
you! For God’s sake, Doc, get away from here before they come! I heard
them talking it over, and I sneaked away from the ranch. They can’t be
far behind me.”

So that was it. Rock’s lip curled. But a vigilance committee from two
big outfits didn’t function without some excuse.

“What are they going to hang me for?” he asked.

Alice Snell put her hands on his arms, her white face turned up to his
in a fever of anxiety.

“They say--they say,” she gulped, “you’re stealing cattle. They mean to
hang you.”

Rock laughed.

“They won’t hang me,” he said lightly. “Thank you, just the same, for
coming to tell me of their kind intentions.”

“Doc, please! There’s a lot of them. Elmer Duffy and his crew as well
as the Maltese Cross riders. You can’t fight that bunch. Get a horse
and ride fast.”

Rock smiled and put Alice Snell’s trembling, clutching hands off his
own. But there was no mirth in that smile, for a squad of horsemen, a
long line of them abreast, had swung around the point of brush, a
quarter of a mile away. Nona Parke stared at the two of them in blank
amazement. Alice didn’t seem to know that she was there. She had no
thought for anything but this man she took for Doc Martin. But out of
one corner of her eye she marked the approaching riders and began to
babble incoherently.

“Take her into the kitchen,” Rock commanded Nona. “Stay in there. If
she’s right, there’ll be a fuss. I can’t run. And neither Buck Walters
nor anybody else is going to hang me.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

He darted into the bunk room. His rifle hung above his bed, and he took
it down. Out of his war bag he snatched two boxes of cartridges and
stuffed them in his trousers pocket. He had on his belt gun. Both
six-shooter and carbine were the same caliber. Then he went back to the
door. The line of riders drew close, bobbing in unison, a long row. The
sun made their silver ornaments gleam--white hats and black, red
horses, blacks, bays, dun, and spotted--on they came, a brave sight.
Thirty riders to confront a single miscreant. Rock wondered if Charlie
Shaw rode with them, and if he would stand by, unprotesting. But he had
brief time to speculate. The two girls were still on the porch. Nona
had her arms about Alice, steadying her, encouraging her, and Alice was
sobbing in a panic of grief and fear.

“For Heaven’s sake get her and yourself inside,” Rock snapped. “This is
not going to be a Sunday-school picnic. Buck Walters warned me in Fort
Benton that he’d get me inside of forty-eight hours. He’s going to make
it good, if he can. This is nothing for you to be mixed up in.”

“This is as good a place as any for her and me,” Nona declared. “This
is my ranch. They won’t dare!”

“Dare!” Rock grinned. “The man leading that bunch will dare anything.
But I aim to fool him, if I get a chance to declare myself.”

“And if you don’t, they won’t stop to listen to anything,” she
declared. Her eyes were full of questions.

“From the bunk room,” Rock said softly. “I will give them a good run
for their money. The walls are thick, and I have plenty of ammunition.”

The eyeballs of horses and men were visible now, faces staring from
under hat brims. Rock could see Seventy Seven riders he had worked with
on trail. Charlie Shaw rode beside Buck Walters and Elmer Duffy. They
slowed to a trot, then to a walk and drew up before the house. Rock
moved back a little in the doorway, his rifle in the crook of his arm.
He stood in plain sight; but if a hand moved toward a weapon he would
be under cover before it could be drawn, or fired, at least.

Walters, Duffy and Charlie Shaw dismounted. Buck Walters looked at
Alice Snell, her face hidden yet against Nona’s shoulder. His own face
remained impassive, but his eyes burned. And Rock got in the first
word.

“Miss Snell, not liking the idea of coldblooded murder to satisfy a
personal grudge, rode up a little ahead of you-all to tell us you aimed
to hang Doc Martin. If----”

“If that is true,” Nona Parke’s voice cut like a knife across his
sentence, “you are a pack of dirty cowards--and you are too late.”

She thrust the weeping girl away from her and faced them, with her head
up, her gray eyes wide with scorn.

“Is it true?” she demanded. “What do you want here, all of you with
rifles, as if you were going to war?”

“We want him,” Buck Walters pointed at Rock. “And we will take him,
dead or alive. He is a thief.”

“That,” said Nona without a moment’s hesitation, “is a lie.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Duffy, Walters, and Charlie Shaw had stepped up on the porch. They
stood within eight feet of Rock, apparently secure in the belief that
under thirty pairs of watchful eyes he could neither escape nor menace
them.

“You two girls better go inside,” Duffy said. “Leave us men handle this
thing. They ain’t no room for argument, I guess.”

“Guess again, Elmer,” Rock said quietly. “There is lots of room for
argument. In the first place, I am not Doc Martin. I can prove that by
you, Duffy, and by Buck Walters himself.”

“What the hell are you givin’ us?” Walters growled.

“It is quite true,” Nona declared. “Doc Martin is dead. He was shot
from ambush ten days ago. This man, no matter how much he may look like
Doc, is not Doc.”

“I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen, you were so hell-bent to
hang somebody,” declared Charlie Shaw, opening his mouth for the first
time and addressing Buck Walters. “Now it can be proved right here,
unless you got to hang _somebody_ for your own personal satisfaction.”

“Listen, all of you!” Rock put in. “I have told you, and Miss Parke has
told you, I am not Doc Martin. Do you want to listen to proof, or do
you want it proved to you after a bunch of men have gone to hell in a
fog of powder smoke? Because, if you don’t want to listen to reason,
there will be a lot of shooting before there is any hanging. And I will
get you, Mr. Buck Walters, first crack, in spite of all your men. Just
think that over.”

Charlie Shaw winked at Rock, then took two quick steps to the doorway
and slid through. Walters’ right hand moved ever so little,
suggestively and involuntarily, and the muzzle of Rock’s carbine
pointed straight at his breast.

“Just one move,” said Rock, “one more little move like that, Buck, and
the Maltese Cross will be shy your services for good. I will give you
leave to hang me or shoot me, if you can, but this crowd is going to
hear who I am before the ball opens. I am going to keep this gun right
on your middle. If I feel anything or hear anything, I pull trigger. If
one of your men should pot me, I can still kill you, even if I were
dead on my feet. Now, I tell you again I am not Doc Martin. I came to
this ranch the day he was killed--murdered, as a matter of fact. I
helped to bury him. His riding gear and all his stuff is here in the
house.”

The riders edged their horses nearer and craned their necks. At best,
destroying a thief was an unpleasant task even for honest men who
despised stock thieves with the contempt such a thief inspired on the
range. Every word uttered on that porch carried distinctly to their
ears. They were not fools. They knew, and Rock banked on that
knowledge, that, whether the man in the doorway was Doc Martin or not,
he had the drop on Buck Walters, and the chances were a hundred to one
he would kill not only Walters but several of them before they got him.
Perhaps too late they realized the tactical error of letting Charlie
Shaw get inside. He was a TL man. Right or wrong, if there was a fight,
Shaw would fight against them. They would have been confirmed in that
supposition if they could have looked behind Rock. That young man’s
heart warmed at the boy’s quick wit and unhesitating loyalty. A little
behind him Charlie whispered:

“Stand pat. I’ll back any play you make. I got two guns on me.”

Elmer Duffy stared at Rock. He glanced sidewise at Buck Walters, then
back to the man in the door.

“If you ain’t Doc Martin,” he said at last, “there’s only one other man
you _could_ be.”

“Hell and damnation!” Walters burst out. “Who else could he be? Are we
goin’ to be old women and let him bluff us out with a fairy story?”

“We got plenty of time, Buck,” Elmer Duffy reminded him. “He can’t get
away. We don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. Young Shaw did tell
us this before we started.”

“Rats!” Rock laughed. “You sure don’t want to be convinced, do you,
Buck? You surely want to see Doc Martin dance on a rope end. Maybe
you’d just as soon hang me, even if I’m not Doc. You recollect what
Dave Wells named me in Fort Benton, night before last, don’t you? Well,
you have Elmer Duffy say who _he_ thinks I might be if I’m not Doc.”

“If Doc Martin is dead an’ buried,” Duffy said, “there’s only one man
you can be.”

“You are right,” Rock said. “I will bet you a new hat, Walters, that
Elmer Duffy names me what Dave Wells called me in Benton. I can see
half a dozen riders in this crowd I worked on trail with, until we came
to Clark’s Ford in Nebraska. If you want to be dead sure, Elmer, there
is a sorrel horse with two white hind feet and a big star on his
forehead, branded JB, and a black, branded a Bleeding Heart, grazing in
the pasture back of the barn. And I could tell you more that only one
man could know, Elmer. Tell Buck Walters who I am.”

“You’re Rock Holloway,” Duffy muttered.

“Bull’s-eye!” Rock said. “I have been in Montana less than three weeks.
It seems a plumb exciting place. Are you satisfied, Buck? Are you still
eager to hang me under the impression that I’m Doc Martin? Do you want
to see his saddle, with bloodstains on it, where somebody--who also
wanted to see him dead--shot him, while he rode along the river
bottoms? Maybe you’d like to dig up his body, where he’s buried over by
those poplars?”

“What is the use of carrying this on any longer?” Nona demanded. “I
don’t believe Doc did what Alice says you claim he did. I don’t believe
he was a thief. But, whether he was or was not, he is dead. This man is
what he says he is. He came here the day Doc was killed. He told me his
name was Rock Holloway. I hired him. That is all there is to it.”

“Isn’t that what Dave Wells called me?” Rock said to Walters. “Are you
satisfied?”

“You denied it,” Walters said. “When he spoke to you, you used me to
prove you _were_ Doc Martin.”

“A man can have a joke with his friends, if he likes. It isn’t against
any law that I know of. He probably told you I joined his outfit on the
Yellowstone last summer and worked for him all winter.”

“I don’t recollect him mentionin’ it,” Walters replied. “Why have you
passed yourself off for Doc Martin, anyway?”

“Shucks!” Rock said. “Everybody just naturally insisted on taking me
for Doc. Miss Parke knew my name. I explained myself to Charlie Shaw as
soon as I had a chance. I didn’t care much, one way or the other. I
didn’t know anybody in this neck of the woods, barring the Seventy
Seven. I fooled Elmer Duffy purposely, the first time I saw him,
because I was kinda interested in trying to find out who killed Doc
Martin, seeing I looked so much like him and was taking his place as a
TL rider. Are you satisfied, or is there still something you’d like to
know about?”

“Yes, I can see there’s been a mistake,” Walters said in a different
tone. “You can’t blame us. We got it straight that Martin was standing
in with some pretty bald-faced stealing. We’ve cleaned out his
partners. I guess this settles it as far as you’re concerned. I’ll have
to take Elmer’s word for it. He ought to know you, seein’ you killed
his brother.”

It seemed to Rock that Walters raised his voice a trifle, and that he
managed to impart a sneer into those words. Every man could hear. It
seemed to Rock like a deliberate taunt, a barb purposely planted to
rankle in Duffy’s skin. For a second there was silence. Elmer Duffy’s
Adam’s apple slid nervously up and down his lean throat. His face
flushed. Rock read the signs for himself. A few spiteful reminders like
that, and Duffy would feel that he _had_ to go gunning for his
brother’s slayer. Buck Walters broke that strained hush. He lifted his
hat to Nona.

“I’m sorry if this has been disagreeable,” he said politely. “But those
Burris thieves incriminated your man Martin. He has been in with them
on their rustling. We’ve lost a lot of stock. Maybe they didn’t
overlook you. It’s as well Doc Martin has cashed in. We would certainly
have hung him to the nearest cottonwood. We don’t reckon there’ll be
any more trouble. I hope you don’t hold grudges,” he said, turning to
Rock. “In our place you’d do the same. Nobody told us what happened to
Martin. You passed for him. We got to protect our range. There’s only
one way to deal with rustlers.”

He turned to his men with a wave of his hand.

“All right, boys,” he said. “You’ve heard the whole show, and we’re
saved a nasty job. Ride on. We’ll catch up with you.”

Elmer Duffy muttered something, stepped down off the porch, and swung
into his saddle, without a word or a look at Rock. Buck Walters stepped
over beside Alice. She had listened, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Now
she shrank away from Buck.

“Come on home with us, Al,” he said coaxingly.

“Go home with _you_!” Alice Snell shrilled. “I’ll never go on that
ranch again till you’re off it for good, you blackhearted beast! If Doc
Martin was murdered, I know who did it and why. I hate you--I _hate_
you!”

“You’re all worked up,” Walters said diffidently. “You’ll be sorry for
saying such a thing about me when you cool off. I didn’t kill Doc
Martin, although he had it coming. A man who steals can’t flourish on
any range I have charge of.”

“Doc Martin never stole anything in his life,” the girl cried. “He was
a better man than you, any day. You were afraid of him,” she raved. “I
know. You hated him because I loved him, and he loved me. Get away from
me, you--you toad!”

Walters’ face flamed. He shot a quick sidewise look at Nona and Rock
Holloway. But he was cool and patient.

“Hysterics,” he said to Nona. “I guess I’ll have to leave her to you,
Miss Parke. See she gets home, will you? Sorry about all this fuss.
Couldn’t be helped, the way things stood.”

Rock said nothing. He had declared himself. This was a matter between
these others, interesting, dramatic, and with hints of passionate
conflict. Rock knew Nona Parke’s side of it. What she had told him
about Doc Martin was fresh in his mind. And there was Martin’s attitude
and actions toward Elmer Duffy. She, like himself, stood silent, while
Alice leaned against the log wall and lashed at her foreman, her breast
heaving, a fury blazing in her pansy-blue eyes.

Walters stepped off the porch and mounted his horse. The riders were
crossing the flat at a walk. Buck lifted his hat to Nona, flung “So
long, boys!” over his shoulder to Rock and Charlie Shaw, and loped away
after his men.

A very cool hand, Rock reflected. Smooth and dangerous. He had denied
that Dave Wells mentioned anything. Rock felt that to be a lie. It was
simpler now that he had established his real identity. But he wasn’t
done with Buck Walters yet. No! Rock couldn’t quite say why he had that
conviction; but he had it very clear in his mind.




CHAPTER XI: RIDERS ON A RISE


“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.




CHAPTER XII: STACK DECIDES TO TALK


The crimson stream kept trickling down over Rock’s face. He had no pain
except a burning sensation on the top of his head, but the crimson flow
annoyed him. He finally hit upon the expedient of stuffing the black
silk handkerchief which he habitually wore about his neck, into the
crown of his hat, adding thereto a smaller one from his pocket. Then he
jammed the crown tightly down on his head to absorb the flow. That
done, he rolled himself a cigarette. Then he stood looking
speculatively down at his captive.

“Are you Joe Stack or Bill Hurley?” he inquired.

“Stack,” the man grunted. He stared at Rock out of sullen eyes.

“Then I suppose that was Mr. Hurley that I downed, eh?”

The man assented with a nod. Those were the names of the two hard
citizens Buck Walters kept hanging around the Cross home ranch, so
Charlie Shaw had told him. Rock was not in the least surprised to find
his guess correct. Men who had acquired notches on their guns in the
South were not usually averse to adding more notches when they drifted
North--either for profit or satisfaction.

“Well, you took on a contract,” he said. “And you have fallen down on
it. I am going to tell you a few things, Stack, then I am going to ask
you some questions. You’re a Texan. Did you ever hear of Steve Holloway
who was a U. S. marshal at Abilene for a spell? I expect you did. He
cleaned out a nest of outlaws up in the Childress country, where I
understand you made yourself a reputation. Steve was my father. Then
there is Tom Holloway, who is a captain in the rangers. ‘Long Tom’ they
call him. He’s an uncle. Then there’s Ben Holloway who owns the Ragged
H down on Milk River, not so awful far from this neck of the woods.
He’s a cousin of mine. There are other Holloways scattered here and
there west of the Mississippi. Most any one of them would go a long way
to shoot a skunk, especially of the two-legged variety. I’m something
like that myself. You were sure hunting big game when you camped on my
trail. Did you know it?”

The man didn’t answer. But the look of apprehension in his eyes
deepened.

“And Buck didn’t tell you? Maybe he didn’t know, himself,” Rock said.
“Now, why did Buck Walters set you to kill me the way he got Doc Martin
killed? Will you answer me that?”

“You got me foul,” Stack muttered. “I tried to get you, an’ you got me,
instead. But I ain’t talkin’.”

“No?” Rock said very softly. “Well, I was raised in an Apache country,
Stack. I expect I can _make_ you talk.”

He turned away with a frown. No use wasting words. All about in the
thicket were dry twigs, dead sticks. He gathered an armful of these,
broke them up into short lengths, and dumped the lot by his prisoner.
He took out his knife and whittled a lot of shavings. Once he stopped
to roll another smoke.

“Don’t you reckon you better talk, Stack?” he suggested.

The man’s mouth shut in a tight line.

Rock lit the fire with the same match he used for his cigarette. When
it began to crackle briskly he laid hold of the boot on Stack’s free
foot and jerked it off. The man’s face went livid. For a second he
struggled in a momentary panic, then lay still, his face gradually
turning ashy, little beads of moisture breaking out on his forehead.

Rock addressed him quite casually.

“I want to know just why Buck Walters is so anxious to have me killed
off. I want to know what sort of skin game he is working on the Maltese
Cross, and how he works it. I want to know why he was so eager to hang
Doc Martin when he thought he had failed at bushwhacking him. You know
why, I am pretty sure. Cough up what you do know.”

“I don’t know nothin’ except that Buck offered me and Hurley five
hundred dollars to put your light out. That’s all I know.”

“You are lying,” Rock said. “I will jog your memory a little, I think.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

With a jerk he drew the man close to the fire and thrust his foot at
the small, hot blaze. Stack jerked his knee up. Rock put his spurred
foot on that cocked knee, forced it down, and stood on it with all his
weight. The heat made a singeing smell rise from the man’s sock. His
eyes bulged. He set his teeth in his under lip. Rock stood over him,
holding him helpless. Outwardly Rock was hard and merciless, but
inwardly he felt his stomach turning. He hated the thing he had set his
hand to. It was a contest of a sort between his fundamental humanity,
his sense of decency, and the nerve of this cowardly assassin. And
Stack weakened a trifle before Rock felt he could go no farther with
that fiery ordeal.

“Oh!” Stack groaned. “Let up! I’ll tell you.”

Rock kicked the glowing coals aside. His own face was white.

“Spill it all,” he snarled. “I know enough to tab you if you try to
stall.”

For the next ten minutes words tumbled out of Stack in short, jerky
sentences. Here and there Rock put a question.

“An’ that’s all I know,” Stack gasped at last.

“It’s enough--plenty,” Rock said. “I’m tickled to death you waylaid me
to-day.”

“What you goin’ to do with me?” Stack muttered, as Rock stood over him
in brooding silence.

“If I were some people I know you’d never get out of this draw alive,”
Rock said. “You certainly have it coming. I’m not just sure I ought to
turn you loose.”

“All I want is a chance to get a long ways from this country now,” the
man declared.

“I wonder what Buck Walters would do to you if you went to him and told
him I pried all this out of you?”

“I ain’t crazy,” Stack protested. “You turn me loose, an’ neither you
nor Buck Walters’ll ever see me for the cloud of dust I’ll raise
foggin’ it to Idaho or Oregon, or some place a long ways from the
Marias River. I know when I got enough.”

“I expect that would be your best move,” Rock agreed.

He bent over Stack and undid the rope. The man sat up, rubbed his foot
gingerly, and drew on his boot.

“Now,” Rock said sternly, “people like you sometimes say one thing and
do another. You may change your mind, once you get hold of a gun again
and get a horse between your legs. You may figure you’d like to get
even with me. I am not letting you go out of sympathy. I haven’t time
to bother with you, or I would take you to Fort Benton and throw you in
the calaboose and land you eventually in the pen. But I am after Buck
Walters--not small fry. It is not going to be healthy for him nor any
of his crowd around here very soon. So, I will make you an offer and
give you a piece of advice. The offer is that if you will walk out in
plain sight on the hill, in about an hour, I will give you back this
horse. The advice is that you mount him, head south, and keep going.”

Stack rubbed his wrists where the hair macarte had sunk deep in his
flesh.

“That suits me down to the ground,” he said. “I don’t never play in a
losin’ game if I get a chance to draw out. You needn’t worry about me
changin’ my mind. I don’t want none of _your_ game, no more. But I got
stuff at the Maltese Cross I’d like to have.”

“Buck Walters is too clever for a man like you,” Rock declared. “He
would get out of you what has happened before you knew where you were
at. And I don’t want him to know. He’d probably end up by throwing a
bullet into you.”

“Maybe. Only I don’t think he’d be there at the ranch,” Stack declared.

“What makes you think that? Where would he most likely be.”

“I have only got a hunch,” Stack said slowly. “But I think he’s goin’
North for a spell, with a hand-picked crew.”

Rock considered this gravely.

“Look,” Stack offered. “I ain’t hankerin’ to take a chance with Buck. I
don’t see nothin’ in this country for me no more, nohow. Can’t you
stake me to an extra horse, a bed, an’ some grub? Then I can light
right out.”

“You’ve sure got gall,” Rock said coldly. “To ask me to stake you to
anything after trying to kill me.”

“Well, long as I’m alive I got to eat,” the man retorted. “I got some
money on me, but it might be quite a ways to another job.”

Rock regarded the man for a moment. He was not moved by any feeling of
kindness. Stack was a gunman whose services were for sale to the
highest bidder. He would kill for money, and he would kill for lack of
it. There was nothing of loyalty in his make-up. He would embark on
desperate undertakings without any personal rancor toward his victims.
And he would desert with as little compunction if the game didn’t seem
worth the candle.

Stack had had enough of Rock Holloway. To save his feet from being
toasted, he had divulged information which made northern Montana no
place for him. He had blood money in his pocket. With a horse under
him, a dead running mate behind him, he would leave for new fields,
where his peculiar talents might find suitable employment. Buck Walters
would be a long time finding out what had become of his two thugs, if
this one had a horse, a blanket, and a little food to start him on his
journey.

“You don’t get no extra horse,” said Rock. “I’ll bring you back this
one. A Maltese Cross horse is as good for you to ride out of the
country as any. I’ll stake you to a blanket and a little grub. You can
take it or leave it.”

“You’re the doctor,” Stack agreed indifferently. “I’d like another
cayuse, but if you ain’t got one to spare----” He shrugged his
shoulders in acceptance of those terms.

Rock swung into the saddle and left him. He had all the guns. He
galloped down the ravine after Nona Parke’s work stock, picking them up
where they had stopped to graze, half a mile below. He had to haze them
into the ranch, catch a fresh mount, secure the things he had promised
Stack, and return here.

After that--well, riding fast toward the Marias, with an ache beginning
to make his temples throb, Rock could still smile with anticipation. It
was worth a sore head. He would very soon have a weird tale to relay to
Uncle Bill Sayre in Fort Worth. He would surprise that estimable
banker. And it was not impossible that he might surprise Buck Walters
even more in the immediate future.




CHAPTER XIII: ON THE WARPATH


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.”




CHAPTER XIV: HOT ON THE TRAIL


Rock chewed a pencil butt until it looked as if it had been mouthed by
an earnest puppy. He wrote and erased the length and breadth of half a
dozen telegraph forms before he evolved a suitable communication. And
finally he thrust the lengthy message through the wicket at the
operator. The man pawed over the sheets.

“All one message?” he asked incredulously.

“One message,” Rock assured him.

He counted the words.

“Gee whiz, partner, that’ll cost you a young fortune,” he said in a
tone compounded of surprise and awe. “That ain’t a telegram. It’s a
letter.”

“Send her just the same,” Rock requested. “And get it on the wire as
soon as you can. How long will it take to get an answer?”

“Depends. It’ll have to be relayed from St. Paul to Chicago and then to
Fort Worth. With close connections and your man on the job at the other
end, maybe four hours, maybe twelve, maybe longer.”

“Is there any way I can get quick action?” Rock asked. “It’s darned
important. Time is money.”

“Gosh, money is certainly no objection to nobody that sends
two-hundred-word telegrams,” the man replied. “I might ask the St. Paul
office to rush it if they can.”

“Look!” Rock laid a ten-dollar gold piece on the counter. “That’s to
grease your axles. Go as far as you like to get that message hurried.
Shoot her quick. I’m going to the N. P. Hotel and turn in. The clerk
can tell you my room number. You get the answer to me hot off the
griddle when it comes. If I’m asleep, wake me up.”

The operator grinned, as he pocketed the ten. “I’ll get you all the
action there is,” he promised.

Rock dragged himself across the street, too tired to seek a restaurant,
despite his hunger. Within twenty minutes he was fast asleep, at three
in the afternoon. Billings went about its daily affairs. The sound of
rattling wagons in the street, the voices of men, the intermittent bang
of carpenter’s hammers and the whine of saws floated in through his
open windows on the hot summer air. These sounds receded and died away,
powerless to break the deep slumber of weariness. Rock was really
exhausted.

A pounding at his door wakened him. Dark had closed in. His room was
like a cellar. For a second, in that subterranean gloom, Rock struggled
to remember where he was, and why he was there. Then sleep fell away
from him like a discarded garment, and he leaped up, opened the door to
a man in shirt sleeves, with a green eye shade, a lantern in one hand,
and a telegram in the other.

“Here’s your wire from Texas,” he said. “Just come.”

Rock ripped open the envelope.

    Act on your own judgment. Will back any action you take.
    Suspected this. Coming north, first train.

                                                      Sayre.

“Thanks. There’s no answer,” Rock told the operator, and the man left.
Rock fumbled for a match, lit a lamp, and read the telegram again. It
told him nothing, but it authorized him to act. Very well; he _would_
act. He looked at his watch--ten thirty. He had slept seven hours. He
felt fresh. He dressed. The clerk in the hotel office told him where he
could find a night lunch counter. This Rock located. Fortified with ham
and eggs and two cups of coffee and a cigarette, he sought the livery
stable where his tired horses stood in stalls. No use depending on them
to carry him back to the Capital K. He had ridden them too hard. But he
had to go. Therefore, he routed out a sleepy proprietor and made a
bargain with him for a rig and a driver. Twenty minutes later he was
burrowing through the night, in a buggy behind a pair of slashing bays,
his saddle and bed lashed on the back of the rig, and a cheerful youth
driving.

Over rough roads and smooth, over stretches where no road at all marked
the rolling land, nodding beside the driver, dawn found Rock looking
down the northern slope toward the Judith country. They halted by a
spring, grazed the team, fed them grain, and went on again.
Mid-afternoon brought them to the Kerr Ranch, a hundred and ten miles
in seventeen hours.

                 *       *       *       *       *

At sunrise the following morning Rock turned north once more. But this
time he rode with a dozen men at his back, the pick of the Capital K,
who, when Rock frankly asked them if they were willing to follow him
and burn powder, if necessary, laughed and told him to lead them to it.
Ahead on the trail rattled a chuck wagon drawn by a four-horse team,
tooled by a capable cook. A hundred head of saddle horses, urged on by
a wrangler, made an equine tail to the rolling wagon. And every man
carried a rifle under his stirrup leather and a belt full of shiny
brass cartridges, ready for action.

They reached Fort Benton in two days, swam their stock, and ferried the
wagon. Twenty-four hours later Rock pointed his outfit down to the
Marias Valley, a mile above the western end of Nona Parke’s upper
fence. He sat on his horse on the rim and stared north to where the
blue spires of the Sweet Grass stood like cones on the sky line. He
gazed at those distant buttes with something akin to anticipation. Over
there lay the solution of a problem. It might prove a battle ground,
and he might draw a blank; but he did not think so. He sat there
visualizing mentally what strange sights those insentient buttes had
imperturbably beheld, what nefarious secrets lay darkly in some scarred
ravine or mountain meadow. And, away beyond the Sweet Grass, the
Steering Wheel crowd on the Old Man River had a finger in this devil’s
pie. Or did they? That he would presently discover.

And, while he pondered, fretfully impatient because another night and
day must elapse before he could breast the steep escarpments of the
Sweet Grass, he saw a rider lope up along the river flat. His men were
staking tents for the night and disposing their beds. Rock rode down
the bank and crossed the flat. As he neared the camp, which already
flung a blue pennant from the fire under the Dutch ovens, this rider
drew near, a familiar gait and color to his mount. Presently he
materialized into Charlie Shaw.

They shook hands.

“How’s everything and everybody?” Rock asked.

“Fine. Alice is still at the ranch. She ain’t so sad as she used to be.
Mentions you quite frequent. Hopes you’ll blow back so she can get
acquainted. You’re a brave man, she says, an’ it’s awful strange how
much you look like poor old Doc. She makes Nona look at her sidewise
sometimes. You was a wise man to pull out when you did.”

Rock laughed at the mischief in the boy’s bright blue eyes.

“I got other fish in the pan, right now,” he said. “I guess you’ll have
to console Alice.”

“I wondered where a round-up blew in from,” Charlie said. “So I rode up
to have a look. What outfit’s this?”

“Capital K from Judith Basin.”

“There ain’t no such outfit this side of the Big Muddy, that I’ve ever
seen,” Charlie remarked. “That’s the Kerr outfit from Buffalo Creek,
ain’t it? What do you aim to round-up over here?”

“Oh, hidden branding pens and men that hire gun fighters to shoot up
other people, and such.” Rock had lowered his voice discreetly.

“You runnin’ this round-up of undesirable stock?” Charlie questioned.

“Uh-huh. Borrowed some men an’ horses from old Al, and came over here
on a---- Oh, well, call it a prospecting tour.”

“I kinda suspected as soon as I seen your phiz,” Charlie murmured.
“You’ll be goin’ up around the Sweet Grass for a spell, eh? You
full-handed?”

Rock laughed.

“Do you crave excitement that much?” he bantered. “Don’t you reckon
Nona needs you worse than I do?”

“Not for a few days. I might be darned useful to you, if you’re lookin’
for corrals in out-of-the-way places.”

“Oh, no!” Rock said. “A few days back you sung a different tune. You’re
remembering things you’d forgotten. You do know something, then?”

                 *       *       *       *       *

The boy shook his head. He got down off his horse. Rock followed. There
was a clear space of dusty clay by Charlie’s feet. He squatted on his
spurred heels.

“Not the way you think,” he said in an undertone. His boyish face grew
sober and intent. A trace of excitement warmed his eyes. “What you said
that last night started me thinkin’. I got uneasy. I never did have
much likin’ for Buck Walters. Too darned smooth and high-handed--too
arbitrary. I got to thinkin’ that if anybody was puttin’ over somethin’
in the rustlin’ line, why should they overlook the TL? A little outfit
is always safe to pick. So I organized myself the next day and whooped
it up for the Sweet Grass. An’ I found that set of corrals with the
brandin’ chute that Doc mentioned. I didn’t know where they were, but I
worked on round-up all around the Sweet Grass last summer an’ this
spring. I knew where not to look for such a thing.”

“And you found them? Did you find out anything else?” Rock questioned
eagerly.

“Nothin’ to find out. The only two outfits that ever touches those
hills is the Cross an’ the Seventy Seven. Neither outfit ever used
those pens.”

“But they have been used?”

“I rise to remark they been used,” Charlie declared. “Used plenty--used
recent. I have a hunch they’re goin’ to be used again pretty pronto.”

“Why?” Rock demanded.

“Well,” Charlie grinned, “Buck an’ six of his pet snakes are camped on
a creek about five miles from them corrals--layin’ low and doin’
nothin’. An’ there’s heaps of cattle in their vicinity. An’ five riders
with pack outfits an’ about forty loose horses joined ’em from the
North yesterday afternoon.”

“Yesterday afternoon?” Rock took quick reckoning of the distance and
the hour. “How do you know?”

“I seen ’em,” Charlie murmured. “I lay low, lookin’ at ’em. I rode all
night to get home. I was out of grub, an’ between you an’ me an’ the
gatepost, I didn’t want none of that outfit to catch me circulatin’
there alone. I don’t hanker to get caught in no lonely coulee all by my
lonesome.”

“You couldn’t see what brand was on the horses those fellows rode in
from the North?” Rock went on.

“Uh-uh. Too chancy. I pulled my freight. That bunch wasn’t there on no
picnic.”

“Well, I’m going up there with these boys on a picnic party.” Rock
smiled sardonically. “If you’re fond of picnics, you can come along.
You’ll be welcome as the flowers in May. I may go farther North--plumb
up into Canada. But first I would like to look at these mysterious
corrals on the Sweet Grass. And I would like to know what Buck Walters
is doing there.”

“Will I come? Say, watch my smoke!” Charlie grunted. “You might as well
amble down to the ranch with me, while I collect my bed and three or
four horses.”

“I don’t think I will,” Rock declined. A swift memory of the startled,
indignant blaze in Nona Parke’s eyes when he stole that farewell kiss
troubled him. “You can tell Nona anything you want. Better bring along
your Winchester. There’s liable to be dirty work at the crossroads.”

Charlie laughed and swung up on his horse, declining Rock’s invitation
to supper. He had an odd job or two to see about that evening, but he
would join the Capital K with a string of horses by dusk. The two hay
diggers, he told Rock, were good, reliable men, and, with Nona
fortified by Alice Snell and Mary Vieux, it was all right to leave the
ranch alone.

Rock smiled at Charlie’s air of responsibility when he said that. He
couldn’t imagine Nona Parke being gratified at such manly solicitude
for her welfare, nor of being in need of Charlie’s protection under any
circumstances--according to her. But it was decent of the kid to feel
that way about her, just the same. Loyalty untainted by sentimentalism.
To Charlie wild horses, hard riding, moving herds, night guards, the
trail, and all that vast panoramic sweep of the range, with its
incidental excitements, crowded the importance of women as a part of
life into the very background. And so far as Nona Parke was concerned,
Rock half wished that he could say the same of himself. But he couldn’t
truthfully. He was too fundamentally honest to deny the impulse behind
that stolen kiss. He had ridden too much with Nona and watched her too
often, with a clear consciousness of what was happening to himself. He
couldn’t help it. Damn it! How could a man help his feelings?

And he shrugged his shoulders impatiently and joined his men, as the
cook called, “Gru-u-b pi-i-le!” He loaded his plate with food and
squatted on the ground to eat. But his mind grew busy with
abstractions. Things sometimes worked curiously in harmony toward a
given end, almost as if there were a design, a pattern of some sort, a
definite impulse from some obscure source. He had expected to spend
days seeking those hidden corrals. Joe Stack had known about them, too,
but without knowing their location. They were not something Doc Martin
had dreamed about. And here was Charlie Shaw prepared to lead him to
the very spot.

Rock looked away to the north, coffee cup in hand, with a thrill of
eagerness. He despised murder, theft and betrayal of a trust. He was
hot on the trail of all three, unless he had made an error in
deduction. If he were in error, he would be laughed out of Montana, and
his name made a synonym for a fool, and his works would be derided on
every range between the Marias and the Texas Panhandle.

But the laugh, Rock felt in his soul, would be on another man; if,
indeed, any unseemly merriment should arise out of this matter, which
had already cost two lives and bestowed upon him a hurt of which his
chafing hatband still reminded him.




CHAPTER XV: POPPING GUNS


Viewed from the southern approach, the triple buttes of the Sweet Grass
Hills rise like immense cones abruptly from the level of the plains.
Gold Butte stands in the middle. West Butte looks toward the Rockies.
East Butte faces the rising sun. Between each the prairie flowed in
glades, carpeted with grass, dotted with sloughs, and threaded by
aimless streams. It was, indeed, as if some whimsical giant had
snatched three peaks off some distant mountain range and set them there
for geologists to puzzle over.

Upon East Butte, the larger of the three and the most northerly, where
the plains began to wrinkle and lift to foothills, like a grassy sea
frozen into immobility, as it laved the shore of the peak, Rock camped
his wagon. At daybreak, while the sun was yet merely a promise uttered
by a golden haze in the east, he rode with all his men up that
precipitous slope. An hour’s climbing brought them to the top, but not
to the uttermost pinnacle; for that was a gray, rocky spire, where
bands of mountain sheep took refuge against less sure-footed creatures.
They had climbed to a shoulder that brought them under the rim rock,
around to the head of the north slope.

Milk River lay a shining silver thread in its valley, with broken
country extending on either hand, deep canyons and gray sage flats.
They looked from this height into a foreign land, for the Canada line
ran east and west, six miles below. Like a monument the Butte towered
over the boundary and over a wilderness. In all the Sweet Grass country
no man had as yet laid the foundation logs of a home. Within a radius
of fifty miles the land was as it spread when Columbus brooded on the
poop of his caraval, except that the buffaloes were gone, and wild
cattle from Texas grazed where the bison had recently fed.

East Butte threw a long, westward shadow, away past its fellows. Its
eastern declivities blazed yellow in the eye of a sun just clear of the
horizon. The riders sat there, watching the sunbeams hunt slinking
shadows out of every hollow. Birds twittered in thickets about them.
The air was full of pine smells and the scent of the aromatic grass
that gave the hills their name. It was cool and fresh at that sunrise
hour, five thousand feet above the sea.

“Lord,” one rider drawled, “if you could marry this here grass and
scenery to the Texas climate, you’d have a paradise to live in.”

Rock and Charlie Shaw had their heads together. Charlie was pointing at
something.

“You can see where those three coulees come in,” he said. “There’s a
peach of an open basin. A place like a park--maybe three-four hundred
acres. The corrals are one side of that, under a bank, tucked in the
edge of some pines. Down where you see that white clay bank, Buck
Walters’ outfit was camped on a creek.”

“How close can we all ride without showing ourselves?” Rock asked.

“That depends on whether there is anybody on lookout,” Charlie told
him. “If there is any monkey business goin’ on, they will have an eye
peeled, you can gamble. Somebody could be lookin’ at us now, if he was
rangin’ around. But we could go on a mile or so together by keepin’ in
the bottom of that gulch. It’s timbered.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

They moved down into this hollow, quiet now, for Rock had explained to
them that they might happen on men who would not welcome visitors. The
gulch Charlie indicated made a screen for their passage. It was full of
lodgepole pine, slender, graceful trees, with tufted tops like ostrich
plumes. The earth was a litter of dried needles, a carpet for shod
hoofs. The jingle of a spur, the faint clank of a loose-jawed bit
mouthed by a fretful horse; a low squeaking of saddle leather--these
were the only sounds, as they rode. Suddenly the draw ended. Grassy
contours showed through a screen of timber. In the edge of that Charlie
Shaw pulled up.

“It’s pretty open below here for a crowd,” he suggested.

“How far now?” Rock inquired.

“Coupla miles.”

“I don’t want to show a squad of armed men around here till I know what
we’re going up against,” Rock mused. “If we got to take action, it
would better be a surprise party, with us doing the surprising. I think
you and me had better scout a little, Charlie.”

“I was goin’ to suggest that,” Charlie said.

“All right. You boys lay low here,” Rock ordered. “From the edge of
this timber you can look down over the slope, without anybody seeing
you or your horses. If we should happen to get in a mix-up, there will
be guns popping. And if they pop too long and loud, you had better come
running. I don’t want to stage any wild play, if it can be helped, but,
if we have to throw lead to protect ourselves, we will. Otherwise, we
will be back in a couple of hours at the outside. Now don’t show
yourselves unless you have to. Use some judgment.”

The riders got down off their horses, stretched their legs, and rolled
cigarettes. Rock and Charlie Shaw bore along in the edge of the timber.
A narrow plateau, open, grassy, almost level, ran along under the low,
pine-swathed ridge, where they left the riders. Off to the left a
hillside lifted a stretch of jack pine and scrubby juniper. They darted
across a narrow bit of open and trotted along under cover once more.

“Not far now--not so far as I thought it was,” Charlie said after a
time. “I remember this place.”

In a few minutes he pulled up, lifted his face, and sniffed.

“Say, we’re right on top of them corrals,” he whispered. “An’ I’d say
they was populated. Smell that?”

“Wood smoke,” Rock muttered. But he knew that with the smell of burning
wood there was mingled another, more pungent odor--the smell of burning
hair. He had sweated around too many branding fires not to recognize
that.

“We better leave our horses here,” Charlie suggested. “Only a few steps
to where we can get a look from a bank right above the pens.”

Rock nodded. They took no chances of their mounts shifting, despite the
fact that every cow horse is trained to stand on dropped bridle reins,
as if he were anchored. They tied them to saplings. Carbines in hand,
they stole warily to a point where the thicket inched out on the edge
of a drop-off. They were on a narrow bench. Behind them, like a series
of huge steps, other benches rose, one above the other, to a bare
grassy ridge.

From the timber they could not quite see over the brow. They dropped on
all fours, crawled a few yards, crept, then crawled on their stomachs
and, at last, lay peering down a sharp slope.

Rock’s eyes lit up at the activity below. The corrals were right under
them. He could have cast a stone into the fire where the irons glowed.
The hidden pens were built the shape of a dumb-bell. Two circular
inclosures made the knobs. A chute connecting the two was the grip.
Either pen would hold fully five hundred head of stock. The one nearest
them was jammed with cattle.

Three mounted men worked in this uneasy mass of horned beasts, forcing
them, one by one, into the chute. There, at the most constricted part
of the passage, an ingenious arrangement wedged each animal fast, while
through an opening in the wall of poles an artist with a running iron
sent up little puffs of smoke from scorching hair and hide.

Rock couldn’t read the brands, either the old or the new ones, at that
distance. He had no need. He knew as well as if he had been sitting on
that fence that the brand those cattle bore when they had passed
through the chute was not the mark seared on when they were frisky
calves. They carried a different mark--the mark of a different owner,
deftly superimposed over the first. The old brand and the new could
only be what he knew they must be, because he could recognize more than
one man diligently laboring in the dust and the heat.

Buck Walters was there, unmistakable in his high-crowned hat with the
silver band; also, Dave Wells, long, lean and efficient. Neither was a
common-looking man. Rock knew every characteristic pose and action of
Dave Wells. Buck Walters loomed as distinctive. He could swear to them.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A group of saddle horses stood outside the corrals. Rock counted. Three
men mounted, three working at the fire--six. Out on the flat, where the
grassy basin spread like a pocket in the vast skirt of the butte, two
more riders rode herd on a bunch of cattle. Eight men in sight.

“That stuff on the flat isn’t worked yet, I don’t think,” Charlie
whispered. He, too, was counting noses. “So they’ll probably have a
herd of rebranded stuff down the canyon on the creek. Likely be two men
on herd there.”

“That makes ten. That tally all of ’em?” Rock asked.

“No, it don’t, darn it,” Charlie said. “Buck had six riders besides
himself. This hombre from the North joined him with five. That’s
thirteen. Coupla more somewhere. What you goin’ to do about this, Rock?
We got ’em red-handed.”

“I guess the best bet is to go back and get the boys,” Rock whispered.
“We got here unseen. The bunch can make it, if we go careful. Then
we’ll surround these festive stock hands and see just what all this
secret industry means.”

“I wonder if----”

Charlie’s wonder was cut short. He straightened out with a gasp, and
the contortion of his body coincided with a sharp crack above, so close
that it seemed in their very ears. Rock’s head twisted. He saw the
upper half of a man’s body against the morning sky, on a bank above the
brush that concealed their horses. He was drawing a careful bead on
Rock with a rifle, and Rock rolled sidewise, thrusting up the muzzle of
his carbine. Partly hidden in the long grass, Rock made a difficult
target. Twice the lookout fired. Both bullets shaved Rock. He loosed
two shots, himself, without effect, save to make the rifleman draw
back. For the moment there was silence, while an echo went faintly back
in the hills.

Lying flat, Rock parted the grass and looked over for Charlie Shaw. The
boy had gone over the edge. His body had lodged against a cluster of
wild cherry, twenty feet below. Another scalp for the enemy, Rock
thought, with anger burning in him. But his wrath did not close his
eyes. He saw that the men at the branding fire had dropped irons and
were mounting, and that those in the corral were stepping their horses
over lowered bars.

Of course they would have lookouts posted! And if that bunch of
predatory thieves ever got on the bench above him, he was trapped. His
own men couldn’t hear gunfire at that distance. It would be all off
with him before they could buy into the game, anyway, if he had to face
that bunch, single-handed, where he lay. Pretty fix! Rock gritted his
teeth. He had been a little too sanguine--taken rather too long a
chance. He had to move and move fast.

He began to worm himself hurriedly through the grass. Mount and ride;
get out of gunshot and draw pursuit after him; decoy this enterprising
aggregation right in under the guns of his own crew. Excellent! That
would be a master stroke of retaliation. Rock’s nimble brain saw all
this in illuminating flashes, while he moved.

The fellow above him kept firing at the quivering grass tops, shot
after shot. Bullets bored into the mold beside him. He didn’t bother to
shoot back. A kingdom for his horse--yes, two kingdoms! He could hear
hoofs beating earth now. He found himself on the edge of the timber.
Erect, four strides, a snatch at the tied _macarte_, the smack of his
leg across the saddle, and he went crashing through the brush.

                 *       *       *       *       *

He was none too soon. The man above was yelling to those below. They
were riding to head him off. Rock could hear the drum of their
galloping. He laughed. He was above pursuit, ahead of it. Nothing, he
felt confident, could gain on the rangy beast between his legs, bar
accident--a badger hole, unseen in the grass, or a chance shot at long
range.

The second was a chance. Because he meant to show himself--must show
himself, to draw the pursuers hot on his trail right under that low
ridge on which his riders lay. He did not mean to skulk in timber. They
might lose him altogether, and they might possibly surround him. And he
was hot with the memory of the agonized twist of Charlie Shaw’s face,
as he slid over the bank.

So now he took a chance and bored into the open. Long, bare slopes
slanted upward, contours that tried the wind and limb of stout horses.
Behind, spread in open order, like skirmishing cavalry, riders drummed
the turf. They were not so far behind that a bullet couldn’t reach him,
but they were far enough to make shooting from the back of a plunging
horse a futile business.

A yell arose at his appearance. Half a dozen guns barked at him. The
bullets whined, as the wind whines in taut cordage. Rock kept his
carbine in hand, not to shoot, but to hold safe. If his horse went down
by a fluke, he wanted no broken gun stock to stand off these ugly
customers.

They would kill him with a good deal of satisfaction and a certain
amount of venom. For their own safety, they must. Rock looked over his
shoulder. The lookout who had shot Charlie had come clear of the timber
and was converging with his fellows. The day herders had quit their
cattle to join the chase. The hunt was up strong. They would follow him
to hell. He had spied upon their operations in that secluded hollow.
Rock could imagine them confident of getting him. They had all that
wild country to run him down, as hounds run down a wolf.

And when the bulk of that race was run, with a steep slope still to
breast before he could thunder along that open plateau, overlooked by
his own riders, Rock was not so sure that he would win. For a mile he
had gained ground, had saved his mount a little, and still opened a
gap. Now the gap was closing slowly, but inexorably. By the time he
reached that bench, they would be close enough to throw lead. If he
didn’t reach that level, they would have him on an open side hill, and
they would riddle him before the firing drew his own crowd.

Very well, let the firing begin. Rock turned his carbine backward and
fired repeatedly. They did not bother to reply. They were gaining, and
they would shoot when they were ready. Their horses were fresh at the
corrals. His mount had gone fifteen miles that morning. The brute was
game. He did not falter. Head up, tail like a pennant, he took the
short, steep slope with gallant leaps. But it slowed him.

The pursuit swept to the foot of the hill. It, too, slowed. Rock had
reloaded his carbine. He fired at random now and drew reply, a
fusillade that whistled close. Surely those Capital K riders would come
alive and swoop down when they saw a dozen guns belching lead at one
lone rider.

Rock’s horse scrambled panting over the brow, out on the level. Grass
lifted yellow to the ridge above. Pines stood black against the sky,
but never the shape of a horseman. And behind him, dangerously close,
the heads and shoulders and horses of those angry thieves came over the
lip of the hill. They were shooting now in a continuous stream.

Rock’s horse went out from under him, leaving him for a moment, it
seemed, suspended in the air. He threw up one hand to protect that
precious carbine, and fell limber, slack-muscled, by a great effort of
will over instinct, ten feet ahead of his horse.

No badger hole had tripped that sure-footed beast. A bullet had done
the work. He lay on his side with scarcely a quiver, a convenient
bulwark to which Rock hastily crawled, and, flat on his stomach, he
laid his carbine across the sweat-warm body.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A most astonishing thing happened. As his forefinger sought the
trigger, that squad of riders jerked their mounts, each back on his
haunches. For a moment, the extended hands holding six-shooters, seemed
poised and uncertain. Two or three began to reel in their saddles. One
man slid off slowly, headfirst. Then the gunfire broke loose again. But
they did not charge down on Rock. He pulled, saw a man fall, drew down
on another, deliberately and unhurried--smiling, in spite of the hot
rage in his heart. For he knew his own men were in the fight now.
Behind and above him a staccato burst of firing resounded above the
nearer shooting. Pow! Pow! Rifles. Pow! Pow! Another man down. A horse
spinning around and around on his hind legs, squealing with pain.

And then out of Buck Walters’ group of hesitant horsemen, who were
shooting still, their horses plunging this way and that, one rider bent
his head and came like a quarter horse off the mark. He didn’t shoot,
and his gun hand was held stiffly straight before him. He had no great
way to come--less than a hundred yards. He rode a coal-black horse with
a white face, the same horse he had ridden the day he led his men to
Nona Parke’s to hang Doc Martin to a cottonwood limb.

For a second, Rock held his fire. He could hear hoofbeats coming down
from the pines. He saw those who had pursued him break and turn tail,
shooting over their shoulders.

And this frenzied fool was coming straight at him, at Rock, at a man
entrenched behind a dead horse, with a rifle in his hands.

The hate on Buck Walters’ face, the passion, and the sudden _pang!
pang!_ of his six-shooter fascinated Rock, even as he let the tip of
the carbine sight settle on Buck’s heaving breast.

At twenty yards he fired. Walters straightened in his saddle. His mouth
opened, as if in one last incredulous “Oh!” and he toppled sidewise.

But the black horse kept on, like a charging lion, like a cougar
launched on its spring, like anything animate or inanimate that has
acquired momentum beyond control. The brute was either blind or mad, or
both. For one instant Rock hesitated. It seemed childish to shoot down
a riderless horse. Surely the brute would see where he was going and
turn aside. He had never seen anything like that. The black’s eyeballs
were staring, his mouth foam-flecked with blood. Crazy. Hit perhaps.
Running amuck. Rock flung up his carbine and fired. But he had waited a
fraction of a second too long. The black horse loomed in the air right
over Rock, and, as the bullet paralyzed him, came down in a heap, with
crimson spurting from the hole Rock had drilled in the white blaze of
his face.

One flying hoof struck Rock, and a tremendous weight smashed down on
him. For a second or so, he seemed to be gifted with a strange,
magnified awareness of all that was taking place. He could see his own
men sweeping by on either side with exultant yells, firing. He could
see figures prone on the grass, a couple of saddle horses galloping
aimlessly, with stirrups flapping. It was all illuminated with an
unearthly radiance, a light brighter and whiter than any sun that ever
shone on the plains. In the midst of this transfigured reality, very
strangely--wondering how that could be--he could see Nona Parke’s face,
sad and troubled, but very alluring.

Then, as if some one had turned a switch, it all went black.




CHAPTER XVI: “CERTAINLY NOT SAD.”


On the plain slanting imperceptibly toward the Marias River, a herd
grazed south in loose formation, nearly a thousand head of mature
cattle. All these horned beasts bore on their ribs a freshly seared
brand--the Maltese Cross. Also, rather strangely, considering that the
Maltese Cross home ranch lay just out of sight in the valley, taken in
conjunction with this foreign brand, the four riders loafing on the
fringes of the herd rode horses with a Capital K gracefully curved on
each glossy shoulder.

A mile from the leaders of this herd, now occasionally sniffing at
water afar, the clustered buildings of the Maltese Cross stood beside
the river. In a stout log bunk house, with one door and two windows, a
group of sullen-faced men sat disconsolate. The door was shut. Each
window was boarded to the top, so that the interior lay in a sort of
gray gloom. And, outside, by the single door and by each window stood a
bored cowpuncher, doing sentry duty with a rifle in the crook of his
arm.

A pleasant, comfortably furnished house of several rooms stood apart
from the lesser buildings. In the center room, occupying an armchair,
Rock Holloway sat with an elderly, thin-faced gentleman, who stroked a
long mustache, while Rock talked.

“I would like to have got them both alive,” Rock was saying. “But Buck
must have gone loco when he saw what he was up against. I expect, he
concluded he would get me then and there, if it was the last act of his
life. Which, of course, it was. Wells fought ’em to the last, the boys
say. So we got what was left, who didn’t feel like shooting it out to
the last man. And while we were at it, we brought along all these
cattle they worked over--come home from the wars bringing our trophies,
you might say. If you know of any Indian fighting, going on anywhere,
Uncle Bill, I wish you’d tell me. I think I’d go mingle into it, so I
could lead a peaceful life for a while. This last two weeks has been
much too hair raising for my taste.”

“You done well,” Uncle Bill muttered. “You done damn well. My hunch was
right.”

“As it happens, it don’t matter whether Wells or Walters owned the
Steering Wheel,” Rock said thoughtfully. “We caught ’em red-handed,
with the goods on ’em. Funny, how things work out. If I hadn’t had
trouble with Mark Duffy, I’d never have seen the Steering Wheel or
known there was such an outfit across the Canada line. If Buck hadn’t
been so eager to shut Doc Martin’s mouth first, and then transferred
his attention to me, as soon as he found I’d been with this precious
outfit up North, I would not have tumbled to his game. I began to smell
a rat when I saw him and Wells together in Fort Benton. When I got
Stack to talk, of course, it was simple to put the whole thing
together, seeing that I’d wondered just where the Steering Wheel got a
whole herd of fresh-branded steers so early in the spring. All I had to
do was make a few marks, like those on a piece of paper to satisfy
myself. It’s an old trick--almost as old as the crime of forgery which
you bloated bankers are always hounding men for. But it was well
thought out, just the same. Buck was a pretty brainy man. He would have
stolen the Maltese Cross blind in two or three years.”

Uncle Bill stared at a piece of paper lying on the table. Rock had made
certain marks on it a few minutes earlier. To a range man the meaning
was as words of one syllable to an eighth-grade schoolboy. He had
demonstrated in four figures how easy it was to transform a Maltese
Cross into a steering wheel. The change was easy, as both men knew,
when it was a finished product on the ribs of a steer. It was a
suspicion-proof job, once the hair had grown out on the worked-over
brand.

“Yes, sir, you done well,” Uncle Bill repeated. “I can tell you how it
started--this Steering Wheel business. I found out before I left. Buck
borrowed twenty-five thousand dollars a year ago last winter on the
strength of his prospects as coadministrator of Snell’s estate. He used
that money to buy twelve hundred head of cattle in the Panhandle. But I
hadn’t connected him up with Dave Wells or the Steering Wheel brand.
The how of it, as you say, don’t matter so much now. We got to get them
cattle out of Canada. My idea would be to clean everything outa that
country. If Wells or Buck Walters has any kin or creditors to put in a
claim, we can settle with them. Eh?”

“I’d grab the Steering Wheel, lock, stock and barrel,” Rock advised.
“They may have stolen that herd in the South, for all we know. No,
hardly. I told you the brands, didn’t I? That’s how you found out he
bought ’em?”

Sayre nodded.

“There’s a heap to do,” he ruminated. “I have this whole darned thing
on my shoulders now. Say, Rock, will you take hold here for me? You can
name your own figure to run the Maltese Cross till this estate is
cleaned up? Will you?”

Rock sat thoughtful for some seconds.

“I’ll tell you ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to-morrow, Uncle Bill,” he said. “Right
now, I don’t know----”

He relapsed into frowning silence. After a time he said:

“I wonder if there’s a buggy around this ranch? I am too darned stiff
and sore to fork a horse, and I want to go up to the Parke ranch.”

“There sure is,” Uncle Bill replied. “I drove one out from Benton. Say,
Alice is up there, one of the men told me. How’d it be if I come along
an’ drive you? I want to see that young woman.”

“Fine,” Rock agreed. “Kill two birds with one stone. Alice’ll be
wanting to pin medals on us, I expect. She was death against Buck
Walters. I don’t blame her much, seeing he killed off a boy she’d set
her heart on.”

“Yes, I heard about him soon after I got here,” Uncle Bill observed.
“They say he was a twin for you.”

“Quite a lot like. That resemblance got me into a heap of trouble.”

“Maybe you could console Alice,” Uncle Bill suggested hopefully. “She’s
a mighty fine girl, and she is going to be a mighty rich girl.”

“No, thank you, kind sir. I ain’t marrying for either good looks or
riches,” Rock murmured. “Let’s get that buggy hitched and be on our
way, Uncle Bill.”

Sayre, grinning, went to call a man.

“I think them boys around the ranch are all right,” he confided to
Rock, as they went rolling across the river flats. “I don’t think they
are the sort Buck would mix into his nefarious schemes. Swear they
didn’t know he was crooked, anyhow. So I expect we got to give ’em the
benefit of the doubt.”

“Probably,” Rock agreed, with more or less indifference. He had done
his job, and he was ill at ease in mind and body for the doing. Let
Uncle Bill or some one else fret about the welfare of the Maltese Cross
and the loyalty of its riders. He had other things on his mind just
then.

“Say, Uncle Bill, although there was not much mixed stock among these
stolen cattle, there was some,” Rock said, after a long time. “And this
girl I’ve been working for is shy sixty or seventy calves this spring.”

“We’ll brand a hundred for her on fall round-up,” Sayre said largely.
“A couple of hundred, if you say so. We’ll treat our friends right and
give our enemies their due. I listened to that towhead boy rave about
Nona Parke this morning. Always did admire a woman with brains to
undertake things and the spunk to see ’em through. You tell her I said
so.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

They fell silent. A breeze from the west played on their faces, killing
the sweltering heat in that valley. A little bunch of Nona Parke’s
horses tore out of a low place, snorted, and wheeled to stand, with
heads high, watching them pass. The river sang its ancient crooning
song, white on the riffles, dark and still in the pools that mirrored
overhanging willows. Beautiful, Rock thought, peaceful, tranquil beyond
words. The last time he had crossed that flat---- It made him shiver a
little to remember. He was still sick from building a fire at Stack’s
feet, and his head swam sometimes from pain. But that was past. The
bushwhackers and hanging squads would ride no more. There had been
close shaves. Yes. Perhaps the gods had flung a protecting mantle about
him so that he could come back and enjoy this in restful security. He
had no great pride or joy in his success; only a mild satisfaction, a
relief that it was over. And he found himself afflicted with a strange
mixture of eagerness and nervousness, as they drove in to the TL.

Uncle Bill drew his team to a halt by the kitchen door. A saddled horse
stood there--a Seventy Seven mare. Rock got out of the buggy. Perhaps
he had disposed of one enemy only to encounter another. He did not want
a feud with Elmer Duffy. But who could fathom another man’s moods and
tenses? And Rock was not organized for war. Still, a man must do the
best he could, always.

“I’ll drive this team down to the barn and tie ’em to the fence,” Uncle
Bill said. “I don’t see no ranch hands around to take hold of ’em.”

“What do you think this is? A livery stable?” Rock scoffed. Uncle Bill
grinned amiably and drove on.

Rock stood, uncertain. He suspected that was Elmer’s mount, and he
hadn’t come there to exchange either civilities or animosities with
Elmer. He was tempted to go on to the porch and the bunk house. He
could hear voices in the kitchen. But he was instinctively direct. He
hated subterfuge. If Elmer Duffy was there, what did it matter? He
granted the man common sense equal to his own.

He stepped, hobbled rather, to the kitchen door, for he had a very sore
leg, where Buck Walters’ frenzied horse had fallen across him. A stray
bullet had furrowed a streak under one armpit. He had been fortunate,
but these minor injuries crippled him and made his step uncertain. His
actions were slow.

As once before he had approached Elmer Duffy unseen, from the rear, so
it happened now. Elmer was talking. Rock didn’t catch the words--had no
wish to--but the note in his voice was pleading. And Nona’s expression
was of annoyance, even of worry. But her eyes lit up at sight of Rock.
And that swift change on her face warned Duffy. He swung on his heel,
just as Rock called: “Hello, people.”

A scowl formed on Duffy’s homely, angular face. He didn’t speak. His
countenance spoke for him. A storm gathered in that look, Rock felt.
What he could, he did, to ward that off.

“Like the cat, I came back,” he said easily. “Somewhat the worse for
wear. Say, Elmer, you should have been in on the big doings up in the
Sweet Grass with us. Did it ever strike you that Buck Walters was
making some queer moves around here lately?”

Duffy looked puzzled. After a moment he asked briefly:

“How?”

“Stirring up a lot of agitation over petty rustling,” Rock said
casually, “when he was stealing wholesale from his own outfit, the
Maltese Cross.”

“Buck Walters stealin’ cattle! What you talkin’ about?”

“They say you should never speak ill of the dead,” Rock went on, “but
what I tell you is a solemn fact. Some of his crowd went over the
divide with him. The rest of them are on their way to jail. We got them
dead to rights, working over the brand in a set of hidden corrals on
the slope of East Butte. There’s been some excitement, I wish to
remark. Uncle Bill Sayre, the other executor of the Snell estate, came
up from Texas. He’s tying up his buggy team down at the stable. You
know Bill Sayre from Fort Worth, don’t you? You’ve heard of him,
anyway.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

He addressed his remarks directly to Elmer who glanced out and saw a
tall figure approaching the house.

“Well, by heck!” he said in frank astonishment. “That’s the darnedest
thing I ever heard of. You say Buck is dead?”

Rock nodded.

“I was on his trail. He knew it, I guess. That’s why he was so anxious
to put me away. He started a war, and he got what was coming to him. He
had worked the brand on nearly two thousand Maltese Crosses that we
know of already.

“I’ll be darned,” Elmer said again feebly. “I wonder if that was why he
was sicking me onto you?”

“I expect,” Rock said coolly. “He made a dirty break that morning,
here. He was pretty deep, Buck was.”

Duffy shuffled his feet, then looked at Nona and at Rock.

“No hard feelin’s about that hangin’ expedition?” He inquired
diffidently.

“None whatever.” Rock shook his head. “You spoke for me like a man,
Elmer, when you were satisfied who I was. I thank you for that.”

“Well, shake on it.” Duffy suddenly held out his hand. “You never
bamboozled me, anyway. I respect you enough to admit I’d rather be
friendly than fight.”

“Same here,” Rock agreed heartily.

“Guess I’ll step out an’ say hello to Uncle Bill,” Duffy said quietly.
“Then I guess I’ll split the breeze. So long. So long, Nona.”

So he went. As he stepped out, Alice Snell from somewhere about the
house espied the elderly gentleman from Fort Worth and ran to meet him
with welcoming shrieks. The three of them stood in a knot talking.

“So it was you that Charlie went off with!” Nona exclaimed.

Rock nodded.

“Say, mind if I camp myself in a chair, Nona? I’ve got a game leg, and
I’m more or less caved in otherwise.”

“Goodness, yes. Here.” Nona came around the table, dragging a chair to
him against his protest. “What happened, anyhow?”

“Plenty.” Rock sank thankfully on the seat. “I went up to the Sweet
Grass with that outfit, looking for something, and I found a heap.”

“Trouble?”

“Lots of it. What I really came up here to tell you, Nona, is that
Charlie got shot,” Rock said wearily. “I’m sorry, because I partly got
him into the mix-up. He knew where these hidden corrals were, and he
went along to show us. But he has lived it out three days now, and he
seems strong. He’s a nervy, husky kid. I think he will be all right. I
sent him on to Benton in a wagon. He will have the best of everything
that can do him good. He helped us clean up a dirty mess.”

“Tell me about it,” Nona begged. “All about it, please.”

Rock began at the beginning and told her briefly, but clearly, all that
had happened since the day Uncle Bill Sayre called him into Fort Worth
and laid a mission on his shoulders, down to the present. She sat
staring at him, mute, impassive-faced, but with a queer glow in her
eyes.

“I am glad that man is dead,” she said at last. “Now we can all go
about our business, easy in our minds.”

“Can we?” Rock said. “I wonder? What was Elmer so earnest and so
eloquent about when I came in?”

Nona flushed.

“Oh, pestering me to marry him, as usual,” she said. “He makes me
tired.”

“Yes? And I have a sort of feeling in my bones that when I get all
right again, if I should come back to work for you again, I’d make you
tired like that, too,” Rock said dispiritedly.

“You?” Nona looked at him earnestly. “We-ll--you’re different.”

“Eh?” He stared at her unbelievingly. She was smiling at him. A bit
wistfully, it is true, but smiling. He couldn’t find any of that old
imperious disdain. A ripple of amusement crossed her face and vanished.

Rock disregarded his game leg. Impetuously he rose. So did Nona. He put
his hands on her shoulders and looked searchingly into the gray pools
of her eyes. He could read nothing there. It seemed to him that his
heart was coming up into his throat to choke him.

“Darn you!” he whispered. “Do you like me, or don’t you?”

She looked up at him with a smile, just the faintest quiver of a smile.

“To tell the truth,” she said, in a breathless sort of tone, “I like
you a heap--and that’s saying a lot--for me.”

A minute or so later, Rock tilted her head away from his breast, to
stare down at her with a strange misgiving. The gray eyes uplifted to
his own were wet, shiny and filled with tears.”

“Why, honey,” he asked, “what’s the matter? What’s gone wrong now?”

“You silly thing,” she murmured. “Don’t you know that there are two
times when every woman cries? When she’s very sad, and when she’s very
happy. And I’m certainly not sad!”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 7, 1927 issue of
The Blue Book Magazine.]






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