The Last Straw Part 35

CHAPTER XV

WAR!

So, for Jane and Tom, at least, Hepburn came into the open.

And for Hepburn, these two displayed their hands.

Of greater consequence, Beck's reserve, his caution was swept away. He had taken his big chance!

"You're all there is to me," he told Jane the following morning with a desperation in his eyes and a seriousness in his voice that made her search his face with alarm. "I fought against my love for you but it wasn't any use. You _made_ me love you. You'll make me keep lovin'

you, won't you, Jane?"

"I hope so! You don't know how much I hope so!" she a.s.sured him as her arms clasped his neck closely. "It frightens me, having this responsibility. It's the greatest I've ever had and I'm weak, Tom, a weak woman!"

"No, strong!" he declared and stopped her further protest with kisses.

Dad Hepburn, of course, could not stay on under the circ.u.mstances.

"There's an advantage of having a reptile in sight if you've got to have one in the country," Beck told Jane as they discussed the matter, "but he won't stay. He's got an excuse to back out gracefully now and we haven't any excuse to keep him on."

"And will you be my foreman?" she asked.

"If you'll trust me that far," he replied with the laugh in his eyes again.

Hepburn departed that day, telling Jane that he would like to stay but that he did not feel like risking his life for the sake of a job, to which she made no reply other than writing his check. This nettled him; he did not meet her gaze because, though they both had lied, her guilt was white while his was smirched with treachery.

His farewell to Beck was not open but his successor read in it an ominous quality.

"I wish you luck on your job, Beck," he said as he mounted, ready to ride away. "Lots of luck."

"Mostly bad luck, Hepburn?" Tom taunted and the flush that whipped into the face of the older man was not that of humiliation.

He reined his horse away with a growl and did not look back.

If the little gold locket which Tom wore about his neck brought luck, it supplied a dire need. He had two determined personal enemies in the country, Webb and Hepburn, and as foreman of the HC he had many others, ident.i.ties not fully established.

There was Cole and the Mexicans he had hired to build the fence and clear his land. There was the usual gathering of riff-raff at Webb's.

And there was Sam McKee, the coward, who was not reckoned as a menace by Beck and who, in later days, was to figure so largely!

Another piece of news the Reverend brought:

"They're talkin' about you in town, brother. They're saying that now some of this thieving will stop. They're looking to you to clean up the country."

"Ain't that a lot of responsibility to put on one peaceful citizen?"

Beck asked, but though he jested over the fact he did not fail to appreciate its significance.

"Be cautious. These men are without scruple, brother."

"And so am I ... but I got lots of luck, Reverend!" was his parting.

He needed his luck.

Riding alone, under a rim rock, with the country falling away to the westward, he speculated on his luck and on the talisman Jane had given him. He drew the locket from his shirt front and held it on his big palm eyeing the thing, wondering what it contained that Jane had wanted to conceal from him.

"I've got a half grown notion to open it," he muttered and stopped his horse shortly.

And he might have sprung the lid had not a zipping and a dull, dead spatter on the rock just ahead caught his attention. He looked up sharply, saw the stain of metal against the ledge and saw in the sunlight a fragment of the bullet that had shattered itself there, that would have drilled him had his horse taken the next step.

Whoever fired had calculated on that next step because he was at such a distance that no report of a rifle reached him.

Beck turned his horse and raced to cover and lay for an hour scanning the country, but his a.s.sailant did not appear.

When Tom rode away he smiled grimly to himself and said to the roan:

"We won't look in it now. Stoppin' to consider saved our skin that time; maybe we'll need that luck again ... and worse."

Another time, the same week, he threw his bed on a pack horse and started a two-day ride to the south-east for, as foreman, he gave close heed to the detail of his work.

At sundown he made camp and while his coffee boiled stripped himself and bathed luxuriously in a waterhole.

He lay looking upward at the stars that night thinking more of Jane Hunter than her property, thrilling at memory of her hair and eyes and lips, telling himself that conditions were reversed now, and that instead of fighting her off, evading her charms, he was consumed with an eagerness for them.

Drowsiness came and, turning on his side, he reached a hand for the locket to hold it fast while he slept. It was not about his neck. He remembered that he had left it on a rock where he had undressed for his bath and, slipping out of his blankets, turning them back that the night chill might not dampen his bed, he picked his way carefully to the place and groped for the trinket.

His fingers had just touched the gold disc when the quiet of the night was punctured by a shot ... then four more in quick succession.

He squatted low, holding his breath. He heard booted feet running over rocks, heard a man speak gruffly to a horse and, in a moment, heard galloping hoofs carrying a rider away. He waited a half hour, then stole back to his bed. The tarp and blankets were drilled by five bullet holes.

"Maybe I'm superst.i.tious," he muttered, fastening the gold chain about his neck, "but this thing, or whatever is in it, has saved my hide twice in one week."

The man who had fired into his blankets had trailed him deliberately, had waited until satisfied that he was asleep and had stolen up to murder him without offering a fighting chance.

"Hepburn has gone into partnership with Webb," Jane told him on his return to the ranch. "The Reverend brought in that word. What do you make of it?"

"Not much. Without my help it makes about the finest couple of snakes that could be brought together!" Tom muttered.

"And somebody tampered with the ditch in the upper field. Curtis and the men started the water down late in the afternoon. They left their tools there and the ditch bank was broken. They tell me it surely was shoveled out. The water is low and losing it hurt."

"That looks quite like war," he told her.

War it was. That night the men in the bunk house were awakened by a bright glare and looking out Beck saw that four stacks of hay, totaling more than a hundred tons of feed left from the winter, were in a blaze.

While the others hastily dressed and ran toward the stack yard in the futile hope that some portion might be saved, the foreman stayed behind ... listening. From far up the road he heard the faint, quick rattle of a running horse.

In the morning a note was found stuck in the latch of the big gate. It was addressed to Jane Hunter and, in a rude scrawl, had been written: