Judith of Blue Lake Ranch Part 40

"Where are the rest of the men?" Lee asked.

"Watching the fires an' seeing no more don't get started."

Then Lee told him of Judith. Carson's good eye opened wide with interest. Carson's bruised lips sought to form for a whistle which managed to give them the air of a maidenly pout.

"He had the nerve!" he muttered. "Trevors had the nerve! Bud, we ought to make a little call on that gent."

Then, seeing Lee's face, Carson realized that anything he might have to remark on this score was superfluous. Lee had already thought of that.

They roped a couple of the wandering horses, improvised hackamores from the rope cut in two, and went to meet Judith. Carson s.n.a.t.c.hed eagerly at her hand and squeezed it and looked inexpressible things from his one useful eye. He gave his saddled horse to her, watched her and Lee ride on to the ranch, and sent Tommy to the old cabin for another rope, while he rounded up some more horses in a narrow canon for Burkitt and Hampton.

"You d.a.m.n' fool," he said growlingly to Hampton, "look what you've done."

"Of course I'm a d.a.m.n fool," replied Hampton, by now his old cheerful self. "I've apologized to Judith and Lee and Burkitt. I apologize to you. I'll tell you confidentially that I'm a sucker and a Come-on-Charlie. I haven't got the brains of a jack-rabbit."

Carson went away grumbling. But for the first time he felt a vague respect for Pollock Hampton.

"He'll be a real man some day," thought Carson, "if the fool-killer don't pick him off first."

"You may come and see me this evening," Judith told Bud Lee as he left her to Marcia's arms. "I'll be eating and sleeping and taking baths until then. Thank you for the bacon--and the water--and----"

She smiled at him from Marcia's excited embrace. Bud Lee, the blood tingling through him, left her.

"Before I come to you, Judith girl," he whispered to himself as he went, "I'll have to have little talk with Bayne Trevors."

XXIX

LEE AND OLD MAN CARSON RIDE TOGETHER

Bud Lee, riding alone toward the Western Lumber Camp, turned in his saddle to glance back as he heard hoof-beats behind him. It was Carson, and the old cattleman was riding hard. Lee frowned. Then for an instant a smile softened his stern eyes.

"Good little old Carson," he muttered.

Carson came to his side, saying merely in his dry voice:

"Mind if I come along, Bud? You an' me have rid into one thing an'

another more'n just once."

"This is my fight," said Lee coolly.

"Who said it wasn't?" demanded the other querulously. "Only you ain't got any call to be a hawg, Bud. Besides, I got a right to see if there's a fair break, ain't I? Say, look at them cow brutes back yonder! Don't it beat all how silage, when you use it right, shapes 'em up?"

Few enough words were said as the miles were flung behind them; few were needed. A swift glance showed Carson that Lee carried a revolver in his shirt; his own gun rode plainly in evidence in front of his hip.

What little conversation rose between them was of ranch matters. They spoke of success now with confidence. These two foremen alone could see the money in late winter and early spring from their cattle and horses to carry the Blue Lake venture over the rapids. Then there were the other resources of the diversified undertaking, the hogs, the prize stock, the olives, poultry, dairy products. And soon or late Western Lumber would pay the price for the timber tract, soon, if they saw that they had to pay it or lose the forests which they had so long counted upon. Lumber values were mounting every day.

Neither man, when it chanced that Bayne Trevors's name was casually mentioned, suggested: "Why not go to the law?" For to them it was very clear that, once in the courts, the man who had played safe would laugh at them. Against Judith's oath that he had kidnapped her would stand Trevors's word that he had done nothing of the kind, coupled with his carefully established perjured alibi and the lying testimony of the physician who had visited Judith in the cave. This man and that might be rounded up, Shorty and Benny and Poker Face, and if any of them talked--which perhaps none of them would--at most they would say that they had no orders from anybody but Quinnion. And where was Quinnion, who stood as a buckler between Trevors and prosecution? And what buckler in all the world can ever stand between one man and another?

Now and then Carson sent a quick questioning glance toward Lee's inscrutable face; now and then he sighed, his thoughts his own. Bud Lee, knowing his companion as he did, shrewdly guessed that Carson was hoping that events might so befall that there would be an open, free-for-all fight and that he might not be forced to play the restless part of a mere onlooker. Bud Lee hoped otherwise.

"There's two ways to get a man," said Carson meditatively, out of a long silence. "An' both is good ways: with a gun or with your hands."

"Yes," agreed Bud quietly.

"If it works out gun way," continued Carson, still with that thoughtful, half-abstracted look in his eyes, "it don't hurt to remember, Bud, that he shoots left-handed an' from the hip."

Lee merely nodded. Carson did not look up from the bobbing ears of his horse as he continued:

"If it works out the other way an' it's just fists, it don't hurt to remember how Trevors put out Scotty Webb last year in Rocky Bend.

Four-footed style, striking with his boot square in Scotty's belly."

Trevors's name was not again referred to even in the vaguest terms.

The road in front of them, at last dropping down into the valley in which the lumber-camp was, straightened out into a lane that ran between stumps to the clutter of frame buildings.

"Something doing at the office," offered Carson, as they drew near.

"Directors' meeting, likely."

Two automobiles stood in the road ten steps from the closed door of the unpretentious shack which bore the printed legend, "Office, Western Lumber Company." The big red touring-car certainly belonged to Melvin, the company's president. Carson looked curiously at Lee.

Bud dismounted, dropped his horse's reins, shifted the revolver from his shirt to his belt where it was at once unhidden and loosely held, ready for a quick draw. Then he went up the three steps, Carson at his heels, his gun also unhidden and ready. From within came voices, one in protest, Bayne Trevors's ringing out, filled with mastery followed by a laugh. Lee set his hand to the door. Then, only because it was locked from within, did he knock sharply.

"Who is it?" came the sharp inquiry. But the man who made it and who was standing by the door, threw it open.

"What do you want?" he demanded again. "We're busy."

"I want to see Trevors," said Lee coolly.

"You can't. He----"

Lee shoved the man aside and strode on. Carson, close at Lee's heels, his eyes glittering, stepped a little aside when once he was within the room and took his place with his back against the wall close to the door.

It was a big, bare, barn-like room, furnished simply with one long table and half a dozen chairs. Here were five men besides Bayne Trevors. All except Trevors and the man who had opened the door were seated; Trevors, at the far end of the room, was standing, an oratorical arm slowly dropping to his side.

His eyes met Lee's, ran quickly to Carson's, came back to Lee's and rested there steadily. Beyond the slow falling of his extended arm, he did not move. The muscles of his face hardened, the look of triumph which just now had stood in his eyes changed slowly and in its place came an expression that was twin to that in Bud Lee's eyes, just a look of inscrutability with a hint of watchfulness under it, and the hardness of agate. While a man might have drawn a deep breath into his lungs and expelled it, neither Lee nor Trevor stirred.

"What the devil is this?" demanded Melvin from across the table.

"Hold-up or what?" He rapped the table resoundingly.

"Shut up!" snapped Carson. "It's just a two-man play, Melvin: Lee an'

Trevors."

"Oh," said Melvin, and sank back, making no further protest. He was no stranger to Carson or to Bud Lee, and he sensed what might be between Lee and a man like Trevors. Then shrugging his shoulders, he said carelessly: "I'm not the man to get in other men's way, and you know it, Carson. But you might tell your friend Bud Lee that Bayne Trevors is rather a big man influentially to mix things with. I've just resigned this morning and Trevors is our new president."

"Thanks," returned Carson dryly. "I don't think that'll make much difference though, Melvin. Most likely you'll have two presidents resigning the same day."