The King of Arcadia Part 16

"I'll fix that," said Ballard, and when the boy came from the corral with the saddled horses, he went to do it, leaving Bigelow to finish his pipe on the flat rock of conference.

The "fixing" was not accomplished without some difficulty, as it appeared to the young man sitting on the flat stone at the stream side.

d.i.c.k brought his father to the door, and Ballard did the talking--considerably more of it than might have been deemed necessary for the simple request to be proffered. At the end of the talk, Ballard came back to the flat stone.

"You stay," he said briefly to Bigelow. "Carson will give you your dinner. But he says he has a sick man on his hands in the cabin, and you'll have to excuse him."

"He was willing?" queried Bigelow.

"No; he wasn't at all willing. He acted as if he were a loaded camel, and your staying was going to be the final back-breaking straw. But he's a Tennessean, and we've been kind to his boy. The ranch is yours for the day, only if I were you, I shouldn't make too free use of it."

Bigelow smiled.

"I'll be 'meachum' and keep fair in the middle of the road. I don't know anything that a prosecuting attorney could make use of against the man who has given me my breakfast, and who promises to give me my dinner, and I don't want to know anything. Please don't waste any more daylight on me: d.i.c.k has the horses ready, and he is evidently growing anxious."

Ballard left the Forestry man smoking and sunning himself on the flat boulder when he took the down-canyon trail with the sober-faced boy for his file leader, and more than once during the rather strenuous day to which the pocket-gulch incident was the introduction, his thoughts went back to Bigelow, marooned in the depths of the great canyon with the saturnine cattle thief, the sick man, and doubtless other members of the band of "rustlers."

It was therefore, with no uncertain feeling of relief that he returned in the late afternoon at the head of a file of as hard-looking miscreants as ever were gathered in a sheriff's posse, and found Bigelow sitting on the step of the Carson cabin, still nursing the bandaged arm, and still smoking the pipe of patience.

"I'm left to do the honours, gentlemen," said the Forestry man, rising and smiling quaintly. "The owner of the ranch regrets to say that he has been unavoidably called away; but the feed in the corral and the provisions in the kitchen are yours for the taking and the cooking."

The sheriff, a burly giant whose face, figure, garmenting and graceful saddle-seat proclaimed the ex-cattleman, laughed appreciatively.

"Bat Carson knows a healthy climate as far as he can see the sun a-shinin'," he chuckled; and then to his deputies: "Light down, boys, and we'll see what sort o' chuck he's left for us."

In the dismounting Ballard drew Bigelow aside. "What has happened?" he asked.

"You can prove nothing by me," returned Bigelow, half quizzically. "I've been asleep most of the day. When I woke up, an hour or so ago, the doors were open and the cabin was empty. Also, there was a misspelled note charcoaled on a box-cover in the kitchen, making us free of the horse-bait and the provisions. Also, again, a small bunch of cattle that I had seen grazing in a little park up the creek had disappeared."

"Um," said Ballard, discontentedly. "All of which makes us accessories after the fact in another raid on Colonel Craigmiles's range herd. I don't like that."

"Nor do I," Bigelow agreed. "But you can't eat a man's bread, and then stay awake to see which way he escapes. I'm rather glad I was sleepy enough not to be tempted. Which reminds me: you must be about all in on that score yourself, Mr. Ballard."

"I? Oh, no; I got in five or six hours on the railroad train, going and coming between Jack's Cabin and the county seat."

The posse members were tramping into the kitchen to ransack it for food and drink, and Bigelow stood still farther aside.

"You managed to gather up a beautiful lot of cutthroats in the short time at your disposal," he remarked.

"Didn't I? And now you come against one of my weaknesses, Bigelow: I can't stay mad. Last night I thought I'd be glad to see a bunch of the colonel's cow-boys well hanged. To-day I'm sick and ashamed to be seen tagging this crew of hired sure-shots into the colonel's domain."

"Just keep on calling it the Arcadia Company's domain, and perhaps the feeling will wear off," suggested the Forestry man.

"It's no joke," said Ballard, crustily; and then he went in to take his chance of supper with the sheriff and his "sure-shots."

There was still sufficient daylight for the upper canyon pa.s.sage when the rough-riders had eaten Carson out of house and home, and were mounted again for the ascent to the Kingdom of Arcadia. In the up-canyon climb, the sheriff kept the boy, d.i.c.k, within easy bridle clutch, remembering a certain other canyon faring in which the cattle thief's son had narrowly missed putting his father's captors, men and horses, into the torrent of the Boiling Water. Ballard and Bigelow rode ahead; and when the thunderous diapason of the river permitted, they talked.

"How did they manage to move the sick man?" asked Ballard, when the trail and the stream gave him leave.

"That is another of the things that I don't know; I'm a leather-bound edition of an encyclopaedia when it comes to matters of real information," was the ironical answer. "But your guess of this morning was right; there was a sick man--sick or hurt some way. I took the liberty of investigating a little when I awoke and found the ranch deserted. The other room of the cabin was a perfect shambles."

"Blood?" queried the engineer; and Bigelow nodded.

"Blood everywhere."

"A falling-out among thieves, I suppose," said Ballard, half-absently; and again Bigelow said: "I don't know."

"The boy knows," was Ballard's comment. "He knew before he left the ranch this morning. I haven't been able to get a dozen words out of him all day."

Just here both stream-noise and trail-narrowing cut in to forbid further talk, and Bigelow drew back to let Ballard lead in the single-file progress along the edge of the torrent.

It was in this order that they came finally into the Arcadian gra.s.s-lands, through a portal as abrupt as a gigantic doorway. It was the hour of sunset for the high peaks of the Elk range, and the purple shadows were already gathering among the rounded hills of the hogback.

Off to the left the two advanced riders of the posse cavalcade saw the evening kitchen-smoke of Riley's ditch-camp. On the hills to the right a few cattle were grazing unherded.

But two things in the prospect conspired to make Ballard draw rein so suddenly as to bring him awkwardly into collision with his follower. One was a glimpse of the Castle 'Cadia touring car trundling swiftly away to the eastward on the river road; and the other was a slight barrier of tree branches piled across the trail fairly under his horse's nose.

Stuck upon a broken twig of the barrier was a sheet of paper; and there was still sufficient light to enable the chief engineer to read the type-written lines upon it when he dropped from the saddle.

"Mr. Ballard:" it ran. "You are about to commit an act of the crudest injustice. Take the advice of an anxious friend, and quench the fire of enmity before it gets beyond control."

There was no signature; and Ballard was still staring after the disappearing automobile when he mechanically pa.s.sed the sheet of paper up to Bigelow. The Forestry man read the type-written note and glanced back at the sheriff's posse just emerging from the canyon portal.

"What will you do?" he asked; and Ballard came alive with a start and shook his head.

"I don't know: if we could manage to overtake that auto.... But it's too late now to do anything, Bigelow. I've made my complaint and sworn out the warrants. Beckwith will serve them--he's obliged to serve them."

"Of course," said Bigelow; and together they waited for the sheriff's posse to close up.

XIII

THE LAW AND THE LADY

It touched a little spring of wonderment in the Forestry man when Ballard made the waiting halt merely an excuse for a word of leave-taking with Sheriff Beckwith; a brittle exchange of formalities in which no mention was made of the incident of the brush barrier and the type-written note.

"You have your warrants, and you know your way around in the valley; you won't need me," was the manner in which the young engineer drew out of the impending unpleasantness. "When you have taken your prisoners to the county seat, the company's attorneys will do the rest."

Beckwith, being an ex-cattleman, was grimly sarcastic.

"This is my job, and I'll do it up man-size and b'ligerent, Mr. Ballard.

But between us three and the gate-post, you ain't goin' to make anything by it--barrin' a lot o' bad blood. The old colonel 'll give a bond and bail his men, and there you are again, right where you started from."

"That's all right; I believe in the law, and I'm giving it a chance,"

snapped Ballard; and the two parties separated, the sheriff's posse taking the river road, and Ballard leading the way across country in the direction of Fitzpatrick's field headquarters.

Rather more than half of the distance from the canyon head to the camp had been covered before the boy, Carson, had lagged far enough behind to give Bigelow a chance for free speech with Ballard, but the Forestry man improved the opportunity as soon as it was given him.