Laramie Holds the Range Part 41

"Harry, I won't try to give you a long line of talk. I can't tell it all--and I don't want to try to fool you. There's another name in the story that I don't feel I've got a right to bring in--that's all. Some day you'll hear it."

Neither Lefever nor Sawdy could get any more out of Laramie. He showed the strain of sleeplessness and anxiety. Sawdy kept the crowd away by answering all questions himself--mostly with an air of reserve, backed by intimations calculated to lead a man to believe he was really hearing something, and counter-questions skilfully dropped into the gravity of the occasion. Those who could not be put off by Sawdy were turned over to Lefever, who could hypnotize a man by asking questions, and send him away satisfied, but vacantly speculative as to whether he was crazy or Lefever was.

To Lefever also were referred the men arranging the details of the funeral. Not till two o'clock was the word given for the procession to move from the Mountain House, but for two hours before that, hors.e.m.e.n--peers of any in the world--dashed up and down Main Street before keen-eyed spectators, on business if possible, but always on display.

Stage drivers and barnmen from Calabasas and Thief River mingled with cowboys from the Deep Creek country--for Hawk himself had, years before, driven on the Spanish Sinks line. From the barn at Sleepy Cat these men brought out and drafted the old Wells-Fargo stage coach that Abe had driven on the first trip to the Thief River mines. Six of the best horses in the barn were to pull it in the procession. These horses were driven by the oldest man in service on the Calabasas run, mounted on the near wheel horse with the driver's seat on the box empty and covered with wreaths of flowers. Old-time Indians from the Reservation who had known Hawk when he first went into the Falling Wall country, were down to see him buried; they rode behind the cowboys.

At two o'clock the roundhouse whistle blew a long blast. It was taken up by the engines in the yard and those of an overland train pulling out; and the procession, long and picturesque, moved from the hotel.

Laramie, Tenison, Lefever and Sawdy rode abreast, behind the hea.r.s.e, and as the procession moved down Main Street, the cowboys chanted the songs of the bunkhouse and the campfire, the range and the round-up.

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Carpy when it was all over, "if Sleepy Cat could do that much for a thief, what would it do for an honest man?" With Sawdy and Lefever, the doctor sat at a table in the billiard room of the Mountain House. Tenison and Laramie sat near them.

"Not what they did for Abe," averred John Lefever promptly, "and don't you forget it. But I don't call Abe Hawk a thief--never. Abe was a freebooter born out of time and place. He called himself a thief--he wasn't one. He hadn't the first instincts of one--no secrecy, no dark night stuff, no lying. He never denied a raid if he made one. And never did worse when the big cattlemen protested, than to tell them to go to h.e.l.l. He had a bunch of old Barb's calves branded along with his own one year: 'Well, you're the coolest rustler in the Falling Wall,' I says to him. 'They're my share of Barb's spring drop,' was all he said. You know he lent Barb all his savings one year--that was when he used to save money, before his wife died. He never got a red cent of it back, never even asked for it. But when he wanted money he'd drive off some of Barb's steers. Yes, Abe stole cattle, I admit; yet I don't call him a thief--not today, anyway," said John, raising his gla.s.s.

"Why, if Abe Hawk owed a man a hundred dollars he'd pay him if he had to steal every cow in the Falling Wall to do it. But take a hoof from a poor man!" he went on, freshened, "The poor men all used to run to Abe when Dutch Henry or Stormy Gorman branded their calves. They'd yell fire and murder. And Abe would make the blamed thieves drive their calves back! You know that, Jim." Lefever between breaths threw the appeal for confirmation across at Laramie who sat moodily listening and trying without success to interest himself in a drink that stood untouched before him.

Laramie made no response. "Have it your own way, John," nodded Carpy tolerantly, "have it your own way. But whatever they say against old Barb, the man ain't livin' that can say a word against his girl--not while I'm in hearing. And I'll tell you, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I seen her this afternoon and she bound to ride in that procession behind Abe Hawk."

"What do you mean?" asked Lefever.

"I mean riding to the graveyard," insisted Carpy.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Lefever, to bring out the story.

"You never saw it."

"I'll tell you what I saw." Only those who knew Laramie well could have told how keenly he was listening. "I drove down Hill Street,"

said the doctor, "just after the funeral started, and sat there, quiet, to one side, waiting for it to pa.s.s; a doctor's got no business around funerals. Right then, Kate Doubleday pulled up close to me on horseback. She was just from the trail, that was sure; her horse showed the pace and the girl was excited--I seen that when she spoke to me. 'Doctor'--then she hesitated. 'Is that Abe Hawk's funeral?' 'It is,' I says. She looked at it and kept looking at it. The tail-end of the procession was pa.s.sing Hill Street. I noticed the girl bite her lip; she was as restless as her horse. 'Doctor,' she says, hesitating just the same way the second time, 'do you think people would think it awfully strange if I--rode to the cemetery with them?'

"I never was more dashed in my life. 'Well,' I says, 'I expect they would, Kate.' 'I feel as if I ought to do it,' she says. 'Don't do it for the fun of the thing, Kate. The boys wouldn't like that.' 'Oh,'

she says, looking at me mighty hard. 'I've got the best of reasons for doing it.' 'Then,' says I, 'do it, no matter what they think or don't think. That's what Abe Hawk would 'a' done!' 'I'm such a coward,' she says, but I want to tell you there was fire in her words. 'Go ahead,'

says I. 'Doctor, will you ride with me?' 'h.e.l.l!' says I, 'I never went to a funeral in my life.' 'Will you ride to this one with me? I can't ride alone; all the rest are men.' 'Dog gone it! Come over to the barn,' says I, 'till I get a horse.'

"That's the way it happened.

"When we got to the graveyard we kept back to one side. All the same, she saw the whole thing. But just the minute the boys turned from the grave, away we went down the hill lickety-cut. We took the back streets till we struck the divide road, and she turned for home. When we stopped there, she says: 'Doctor, tell me the truth: Did Abe Hawk drown?' 'No,' I says, 'he didn't drown. I reckon he strained himself.

Anyway, one of his wounds opened up. The old man bled to death."

Laramie felt no inclination that night to go home. In his depression, he could think only of Kate Doubleday and reflect that the years were pa.s.sing while he faced the future without an aim, and life without an outlook.

It was not the first time this conviction had forced itself on him.

And it was getting harder and harder, he realized, to shake it off.

But tonight, talk served in some degree as an anodyne, and he sat with the idlers late. The one bit of news that did stir him in his torpor was that Kate Doubleday had had at least the feeling to appear at the funeral of the man who, though rightly regarded as her father's enemy, had, Laramie knew, let go his own life, without a thought, to save hers.

This was the last reflection on his mind before he went to sleep that night. It was the first when he woke. Late in the morning he was sitting in Belle Shockley's at breakfast when McAlpin walked in.

"Jim," exclaimed the excitable barn boss, "I got a word this morning from the Falling Wall."

Laramie regarded him evenly, but did not speak till McAlpin looked inquiringly toward Belle: "No secrets here, Mac," he said briefly.

"Probably couldn't keep 'em from a woman if you tried," returned McAlpin, grinning. He pointed calmly toward the kitchen: "If we're all alone here----"

"Go ahead," intervened Belle impatiently, "we are."

"Punk Budd brought the stage from the Reservation this morning. Coming down the Turkey he met Van Horn. They had a bunch of Barb's boys with them driving in some cattle."

"Whose cattle?"

"Punk says when he run into 'em they was roundin' up yours."

"Was Punk sober?" asked Laramie.

"He sure was," replied McAlpin.

Belle, with folded arms, stood in the archway immovable as a statue; McAlpin sat in silence; Laramie, continuing his breakfast, looked only at his plate. The silence grew heavy, but two of the three had no reason to break it and the third did not choose to.

Laramie, at length, took up his coffee, and, drinking slowly, finished the cup. Setting this down, he wiped his lips and looked at McAlpin.

"Much obliged, Mac," he said, laying down his napkin.

McAlpin regarded him inquiringly: "What you going to do about it, Jim?"

he demanded, when he saw Laramie would say no word.

Laramie pushed back his chair: "What would you do?"

McAlpin spoke seriously: "I'm askin' you."

"I can tell better after I know more about it, Mac."

The barn boss evidently thought Laramie was taking the news too quietly. He was for violent measures but Laramie calmed him. "If they've got any of my cattle, they won't run away," said he, "and they won't blow up. They'll keep, and I'll get them back--every hoof. I'm riding home this morning, anyway, so I'll be over after my horse in a minute."

McAlpin went away somewhat disappointed. Laramie only laughed when he talked it over with Belle: "So long as they don't burn my place, I can stand it," he said, philosophically.

Nevertheless, he felt disturbed at McAlpin's news--not for its substance so much as for what it might note in renewed warfare.

Getting his horse, he followed the railroad right of way out of town and struck out upon open country toward the north. He had no intention of taking the direct road home; that had long become dangerous, and he rode along abandoned cattle trails. At times he struck, swiftly and straight, across open country, at times disappeared completely in favoring canyons, and emerging again, headed winding draws up to the divide--any ground that carried him in his general direction was good ground.

He tried always to be thinking just what the other fellow must be thinking as to favorable points to pick a man off--the fellow patiently waiting with a rifle day after day in ambush for him. And not having gone home of late twice by the same route, he meant to keep the other fellow continually guessing. Today, he was somewhat handicapped, in that he was riding in broad daylight instead of in the dawn or in the twilight when the uncertain light made it more difficult with the fine sights of a Winchester or Savage to cover a distant man.

This hazard, however, called only for a little more precaution, which Laramie did not begrudge to the pride of disappointing an enemy. At points in his route where the main road could not well be avoided, he rode faster and with quickened circ.u.mspection. The Double-draw bridge he could not avoid without a long and difficult detour. Moreover, there, or beyond, he might expect to intercept the raiding party, and this was his business.

He did, however, approach the Double-draw bridge with an uncertainty and a caution not reflected in the pace which he rode toward it; but his horse was under close control and his rifle carefully in hand.

Despite his misgivings, no enemy was sighted. Only a flight of bank swallows, disturbed by the footfalls of his horse, darted noisily from their nests under the south bridge abutment and scattered twenty ways in the sunshine. Spurring freely, as they flew away, Laramie galloped briskly across the bottoms and up the hill. Skirting the long trail toward home, he rode on without meeting a living soul or hearing the unwelcome singing of a bullet.

In fact, things were too quiet; the silence and the absence of any sort of life as he approached his ranch were a surprise. The few head of cattle and horses he usually met, when riding home along the creek, were nowhere to be seen. Evidently the raid had been made. To survey the whole scene without exposing himself, Laramie rode out of the tangle along the creek bottom and took the first draw that would bring him out among the southern hills. As he emerged from the narrow gorge, his eyes turned in the direction of the house. But where the house should be he saw above the green field, only a black spot with little patches of white smoke drifting lazily up from it into the still sunshine.