Northwest! Part 15

"Perhaps Bob will enlighten you," said Stannard coolly.

"Ah," said Deering, "he didn't mean to leave the sheep around, and although I didn't get his object for pushing the body off the rocks, I reckon it went down a thousand feet into the timber--" He stopped and looking hard at Bob resumed: "What was your object?"

Bob's dark face was inscrutable.

"I saw smoke. When we got busy, I calculated the game-warden had located at the other end of the range."

"You greedy swine!" said Stannard, and Deering began to laugh.

"Jimmy doesn't get it! Well, Bob meant to earn his bonus, and since he took us shooting on a government game reserve, I admit his nerve is pretty good. Anyhow, I won't grumble because I haven't killed a big-horn. Stannard's may cost him two or three hundred dollars."

"Why did you play us this shabby trick, Bob?" Jimmy asked in a stern voice.

Bob gave him a rather strange look.

"I sure wanted the bonus and the reserve is new. I allowed I'd beat the warden and you wouldn't know. He got after me another time and I had to quit and leave a pile of skins."

"You wanted to get even?" Deering remarked and turned to Stannard. "What are you going to do about it? In a way, the thing's a joke, but our duty's obvious. We ought to give up the heads and take Bob along to the police."

Stannard said nothing, but Jimmy imagined he did not mean to give up the heads. Bob's calm was not at all disturbed.

"Shucks!" he said. "You're pretty big, Mr. Deering, but I reckon the city man who could take me where I didn't want to go isn't born. Why, you can't get off the mountains unless I help you fix camp and pack your truck!"

"I don't like packing a heavy load," Deering admitted. "We'll talk about it again, and in the meantime you had better take the frying-pan from the fire. I hate my bannocks burned."

XII

STANNARD FRONTS A CRISIS

At Kelshope ranch fodder was scarce and so long as the underbrush was green Jardine let his cattle roam about. The plan had some drawbacks, and Jardine, needing his plow oxen one afternoon, was forced to search the tangled woods. Sometimes he heard cow-bells, but when he reached the spot the animals were gone. A plow ox is cunning and in thick timber moves much faster than a man.

Jardine, however, was obstinate and for an hour or two he pushed across soft muskegs and through tangled brushwood. When at length he stopped he saw he had torn his new overalls and broken an old long boot. Besides, he hated to be baffled and since he could not catch the oxen he could not move some logs.

When he got near the ranch he stopped. Somebody was quietly moving about the house, as if he wanted to find out who was at home, and Jardine, advancing noiselessly, saw it was Bob. He admitted he had expected something like that, for Bob's habits were not altogether a white man's.

Jardine imagined he did not know Margaret had gone to the railroad.

Had he found his team, he might have given Bob supper and sent him off before Margaret arrived, but he had not found the team and Bob's creeping about the house annoyed him. In the Old Country Jardine was a poacher, but he sprang from good Scottish stock and he hated to think Bob bothered Margaret. Moving out of the shadow, he went up the path.

He did not make a noise, but Bob turned, and Jardine thought had the fellow been altogether a white man he would have started. Bob did not start. His look was calm, like an Indian's, and his pose was quiet.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "I reckoned you'd gone after your plow team."

"Ye didna reckon I'd come back just yet!"

Bob smiled, but his eyes got narrower and his mouth went straight. He was a big man and carried himself like an athlete.

"Well," he said, "I allowed Miss Margaret was around and I'd wait a while."

Jardine wondered whether Bob meant to annoy him. As a rule the fellow was not frank and now his frankness was insolent.

"If ye come another time, ye'll come when I'm aboot. What have ye in yon pack?"

"Berries," said Bob, opening a cotton flour bag. "I reckoned Miss Margaret wanted some. Then I brought a pelt; looked the sort of thing to go round her winter cap."

In the woods, the Indians dry the large yellow raspberries and Bob had brought a quant.i.ty to the ranch before. Now he pulled out a small dark skin that Jardine imagined was worth fifty dollars. The value of the present was significant.

"Ye can tak' them back. We have a' the berries we want."

"Anyhow, I guess Miss Margaret would like the skin."

"She would not. Margaret has nae use for ony pelts ye bring."

For a few moments Bob was quiet. Then he said, "Sometimes I blew in for supper and you let me stay and smoke. When you put up the barn, you sent for me to help you raise the logs. The English tenderfoot hadn't located in the valley then."

The blood came to Jardine's skin. To some extent Bob's rejoinder was justified; but Jardine had not until recently imagined Margaret accounted for the fellow's coming to the ranch.

"When we put up the barn ye got stan'ard pay. I allow ye're a useful man to handle logs, but I'm no' hiring help the noo."

"You reckoned me your hired man?" said Bob in an ominously quiet voice.

"That was all the use you had for me?"

"Just that!" Jardine agreed. "Margaret has nae use for ye ava'."

"Then, if you reckon you're going to get my highbrow English boss for her, you're surely not very bright. His sort don't marry--"

"Tak' your pack and quit," said Jardine sternly. "Get off the ranch, ye blasted half-breed!"

Bob was very quiet, but his pose was alert and somehow like a hunting animal's. Perhaps instinctively, he felt for his knife. Jardine's ax leaned against a neighboring post. If he jumped, he could reach the tool, but he did not move. For a moment or two they waited, and then Bob picked up the flour bag and went down the path. Jardine went to the kitchen and lighted his pipe. Bob was gone, and Jardine hardly thought he would come back, but he was not altogether satisfied he had taken the proper line. Indian blood ran in Bob's veins; an Indian waits long and does not forget. For all that, Jardine did not see himself warning Leyland and enlightening Margaret.

A week afterwards, Stannard one evening occupied a chair at his table on the terrace. He had returned from the mountains with two good big-horn heads and nothing indicated that the game-warden knew the party had poached on the reserve. Stannard, however, was not thinking about the hunting excursion. The English mail had arrived and sometimes he studied a letter and sometimes looked moodily about.

Laura, Dillon, and two or three young men were on the steps that went down to the woods. Laura wore her black dinner dress and Stannard thought she had not another that so harmonized with her beauty. Dillon obviously felt her charm. He was next to Laura, and since it looked as if the others were ready to dispute his claim to the spot, Stannard imagined Frank would not have occupied it unless Laura meant him to remain.

After a time Stannard pushed the letter into his pocket and gave himself to gloomy thought, until Deering came along the terrace and asked him for a match.

"You look as if you were bothered," Deering remarked.

"Sometimes one is bothered when one's mail arrives."

"That is so," said Deering, with a sympathetic nod. "Opening your mail is like dipping in a lucky bag; your luck's not always good. I got some bills in my lot."

"I got a demand for a sum I cannot pay. I expect you haven't two thousand dollars you don't particularly need?"

Deering laughed. "Search me! All I've got above five hundred dollars you can have for keeps. Looks as if you must put the fellow off."