Judith of Blue Lake Ranch Part 9

"I'm Crowdy," he said. "Want me?"

"I told Masters to tell you to stop the sulphur treatment for the lung-worm calves. Hasn't he told you?"

"Mr. Trevors said I was to give it to them," said Crowdy. "I can't be taking orders off'n every hop-o'-my-thumb like that college kid."

"Then Masters did tell you?"

"Sure, he told me," said Crowdy in surly defiance. "But if I was to listen to everything the likes of him says----"

Judith's eyes were fairly snapping.

"You'll listen to the likes of me, Bill Crowdy!" she cried pa.s.sionately, a small fist clinched. "You get those calves out into some fresh air just as quick as the Lord will let you! Into a pen by themselves. Doc Tripp will attend to them in the morning."

"Tripp's gone."

"He's on his way back, right now. And you're on your way off the ranch. Understand? You can come to the office for your pay to-night."

Crowdy shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

"If I'm fired," he growled in that ugly voice which was so fitting a companion to that ugly mouth of his, "I quit right now. Get some of your other w.i.l.l.i.e.s to turn your calves out."

For a moment, in the heat of her anger, Judith's quirt was lifted as though she would strike him. Then she turned instead and ran to do her own bidding. A moment later Miller was with her. The two of them got the calves--there were seven of them--out of the sulphur-laden air and into the corral. The poor brutes, coughing softly in paroxysms, some of them frothing at the mouth, two of them falling repeatedly and rising slowly upon trembling legs, filed by in a pitiful string. One of the youngest lay still in the hospital, dead.

"He would have killed them all," said Judith, her teeth set as she looked at the living calves in the corral where, with necks thrust far out, they fought for each breath. "And Bayne Trevors ordered a treatment that he knows has gone into the discard! Charlie, that man has gone further than I thought he had the nerve to go."

"Crowdy did something else that don't look just right," said Miller, gazing with eyes of longing after the burly, departing figure. "I saw him do it just after Masters carried him your message. He drove three of the sick calves--there's a dozen or more got the worms, you know--out into the pasture with the well calves."

Judith didn't answer. She looked at Miller a moment as though she thought this must be some wretched jest of his. And when she read in his eyes the earnestness in his heart, there rose within her the question: "How far has Bayne Trevors gone?"

"Charlie," she said finally, "I want you to close store for the rest of the day. Get some one to help you and cut the sick calves out from the bunch. Haze them back here into the detention corral. Tripp will attend to them all in the morning. Now, tell me--what's wrong down at the milk corrals? What are all of those men up to?"

"We're going to see, me an' you," answered Miller. "I don't just know.

But I do know there's a big guy down there that come onto the ranch a couple of hours ago an' that don't belong here. He's that guy talking.

Name of Nelson. He ain't done any talking to me, but from a word or two I picked up from one of the milkers I got a hunch he's been sent over by Trevors."

Nelson, the big emissary for Trevors--for he admitted the fact openly and pleasantly--took off his hat to Judith and said he guessed he'd be going. And the men with whom he had been talking, including all of the milkers and all of the other workmen upon whom Nelson could get his meddlesome hands at short notice, all men whom Trevors had placed here, made known in hesitant speech or awkward silence that they were going with Nelson. There were good jobs open with the lumber company, it seemed. Nelson even expressed the hope that the quitting of these men wouldn't work any hardship to the Blue Lake ranch.

Judith, her eyes flashing, asked no man of them to remain, seeing that thus she would but humiliate herself fruitlessly, and turned away. And yet, with the herds of cows with bursting bags soon ready for the nightly milking, she watched the men move away, her heart bitter with anger.

"They've got to be milked, Charlie," was all that she said. "Who will milk them until I can get a new crew?"

"I'll tuck in an' help," answered Miller ruefully. "I hate it worse'n poison, an' I can't milk more'n ten cows, workin twenty-four-hour shifts. I'll try an' scare up some of the other boys that can milk."

But he shook his head and looked regretfully at the pick-handle. "Good milkers is scarce as gold eggs," he muttered. "And the separator men has quit with the rest."

"Get Masters, the electrician, on the job. Get anybody you can. I'm going back to the ranchhouse pretty soon and I'll try to send some one from there."

"Cowboys can't milk," said Miller positively. "An' besides, they won't. But somehow we'll make out for a day or so."

"We've got to make out!" exclaimed Judith. "We've got to beat that man Trevors, Charlie, and do it quick. If he'll try to keep us short-handed, if he'll spend money to do it, if he'll do a trick like giving sulphur for lung-worm and then send infected stock out into the herds, I don't know just where he will stop--unless we stop him."

In spite of her intentions, it was nearing the time of dusk when she returned to the ranchhouse. As she came up the knoll from the barn, she saw for the first time a thin line of bluish smoke rising from the north ridge. Saw and understood the new menace.

For that way had Benny, the discharged cook, gone.

VI

YOUNG HAMPTON REGISTERS A PROTEST

It was after eight o'clock when Tripp rode in on a sweat-wet horse.

Judith met him in the courtyard, giving him her two hands impulsively.

"I'm so glad you've come, Doc!" she cried softly. "Oh, you don't know how glad--yet."

She called Jose to take Tripp's mount and then led the way into the great living-room where deep cushions and leather chairs made for comfort.

"I'll give you time to draw a second breath," she told him, forcing into her tone a lightness which she did not quite feel, even though a surge of satisfaction had warmed her at the first thud of his horse's hoofs. "Then we'll talk."

She switched on the lights and turned to look at Tripp. He was the same little old Doc Tripp, she noted. His wiry body scarcely bigger than a boy's of fourteen, he was a man of fifty whose face, like his body, suggested the boy with bright, eager eyes and a frank, friendly smile.

"Prettier than ever, eh, Judy?" Tripp c.o.c.ked his head to one side and gave his unqualified approval of the slim, supple body, and superb carriage of this girl of the mountains, warming to the vivid, vital beauty of the rosy face. "Been driving those cow-college boys down at Berkeley plumb crazy, I'll bet a prize colt!"

Judith laughed at him, watched his slight form disappear in the wide arms of a chair which seemed fairly to smother him in its embrace.

Then from her own nook by the fireplace she opened her heart to him:

"It's not just that Trevors has crippled me by taking all of my milkers away; not just that he has come near doing I don't know how much harm in having Crowdy turn those calves with the lung-worm out into the fields with the others; not just that during the last few months, he has lost money for us right and left; not just that Benny, the cook, has tried to fire the range."

"What's that last?" said Tripp quickly. "Tried to smoke you out, huh?"

She told him briefly. How she had first seen the smoke as she came back to the ranch-house; how she had sent Jose on the run to get some of the other hands to see that the fire did not spread; how, a little while ago, Carson, the cattle foreman, had come in and a.s.sured her that the damage was negligible.

"It was just a brush fire," said Judith. "Thank Heaven, things are pretty green yet. Carson says it might have been lighted by Benny, who, it seems, is one of Trevors's hirelings and not above this sort of thing; or it might have been accidentally started by some careless hunter. Anyway, and that's enough for me, the fire broke out close to the trail that Benny travelled on his way to the Western Lumber camp.

But it isn't just these things which have set me to wondering, Doc.

What I want to know is this: in how many other, still undiscovered ways, has Trevors been knifing us? And what else will he have ready to spring on us now?"

"Just what do you mean?" Tripp looked a her keenly.

"This case of lung-worm, to begin with: where did it come from?"

"Imported," said Tripp. "Trevors bought those calves, or at least four of the sick ones, last month. Brought them in from somewhere down the river. Smuggled 'em in, so far as I am concerned. Never gave me a chance to look them over." He paused a second. "Specially imported, I might say."

"I knew it!" cried Judith. "That's the sort of thing I am afraid of.

If he has gone to the limit of introducing one disease among our cattle, what other plagues has he brought to the ranch? Has he imported any other outside stock?"

"No. He's been busier selling at a sacrifice than buying, just as I wrote you. Never another head has he bought lately--unless," and Tripp's eyes twinkled at her, "you count pigeons!"