The Range Boss Part 15

"It don't make no difference to me _how_ you get off!"

He watched Masten get down, and then he slid to the ground himself, the pistol still in hand, and faced Masten, with only three or four feet of s.p.a.ce separating them.

Masten had been watching him with wide, fearing eyes, and at the menace of his face when he dismounted Masten shrank back a step.

"Good Heavens, man, do you mean to shoot me?" he said, the words faltering and scarcely audible.

"I reckon shootin' would be too good for you." Again Randerson's face had taken on that peculiar stony expression. Inexorable purpose was written on it; what he was to do he was in no hurry to be about, but it would be done in good time.

"I ain't never claimed to be no angel," he said. "I reckon I'm about the average, an' I've fell before temptation same as other men. But I've drawed the line where you've busted over it. Mebbe if it was some other girl, I wouldn't feel it like I do about Hagar. But when I tell you that I've knowed that girl for about five years, an' that there wasn't a mean thought in her head until you brought your dirty carca.s.s to her father's shack, an' that to me she's a kid in spite of her long dresses and her newfangled furbelows, you'll understand a heap about how I feel right now. Get your paws up, for I'm goin' to thrash you so bad that your own mother won't know you--if she's so misfortunate as to be alive to look at you! After that, you're goin' to hit the breeze out of this country, an'

if I ever lay eyes on you ag'in I'll go gunnin' for you!"

While he had been speaking he had holstered the pistol, unstrapped his cartridge belt and let guns and belt fall to the ground. Then without warning he drove a fist at Masten's face.

The Easterner dodged the blow, evaded him, and danced off, his face alight with a venomous joy. For the dreaded guns were out of Randerson's reach, he was a fair match for Randerson in weight, though Randerson towered inches above him; he had had considerable experience in boxing at his club in the East, and he had longed for an opportunity to avenge himself for the indignity that had been offered him at Calamity. Besides, he had a suspicion that Ruth's refusal to marry before the fall round-up had been largely due to a lately discovered liking for the man who was facing him.

"I fancy you'll have your work cut out for you, you d.a.m.ned meddler!" he sneered as he went in swiftly, with a right and left, aimed at Randerson's face.

The blows landed, but seemingly had no effect, for Randerson merely gritted his teeth and pressed forward. In his mind was a picture of a girl whom he had "dawdled" on his knee--a "kid" that he had played with, as a brother might have played with a younger sister.

CHAPTER XII

THE RUSTLERS

At about the time Randerson was crossing the river near the point where the path leading to Catherson's shack joined the Lazette trail, Ruth Harkness was loping her pony rapidly toward him. They pa.s.sed each other within a mile, but both were unconscious of this fact, for Randerson was riding in the section of timber that he had entered immediately after crossing the river, and Ruth was concealed from his view by a stretch of intervening brush and trees.

Ruth had been worried more than she would have been willing to admit, over the presence of Chavis and his two men in the vicinity, and that morning after she had questioned a puncher about the former Flying W foreman, she had determined to ride down the river for the purpose of making a long distance observation of the "shack" the puncher and Randerson had mentioned as being inhabited by Chavis. That determination had not been acted upon until after dinner, however, and it was nearly two o'clock when she reached the ford where she had pa.s.sed Randerson.

The puncher had told her that Chavis' shack was about fifteen miles distant from the Flying W ranchhouse, and situated in a little basin near the river, which could be approached only by riding down a rock-strewn and dangerous declivity. She had no intention of risking the descent; she merely wanted to view the place from afar, and she judged that from the edge of a plateau, which the puncher had described to her, she would be able to see very well.

When she pa.s.sed the ford near the Lazette trail, she felt a sudden qualm of misgiving, for she had never ridden quite that far alone--the ford was about ten miles from the ranchhouse--but she smiled at the sensation, conquering it, and continued on her way, absorbed in the panoramic view of the landscape.

At a distance of perhaps a mile beyond the ford she halted the pony on the crest of a low hill and looked about her. The country at this point was broken and rocky; there was much sand; the line of hills, of which the one on which her pony stood was a part, were barren and uninviting.

There was much cactus. She made a grimace of abhorrence at a clump that grew near her in an arid stretch, and then looked beyond it at a stretch of green. Far away on a gentle slope she saw some cattle, and looking longer, she observed a man on a horse. One of the Flying W men, of course, she a.s.sured herself, and felt more secure.

She rode on again, following a ridge, the pony stepping gingerly. Another half mile and she urged the pony down into a slight depression where the footing was better. The animal made good progress here, and after a while they struck a level, splotched with dry bunch-gra.s.s, which rustled noisily under the tread of the pony's hoofs.

It was exhilarating here, for presently the level became a slope, and the slope merged into another level which paralleled the b.u.t.tes along the river, and she could see for miles on the other side of the stream, a vista of plain and hills and mountains and forest so alluring in its virgin wildness; so vast, big, and silent a section that it awed her.

When she saw the sun swimming just above the peaks of some mountains in the dim distance, she began to have some doubts of the wisdom of making the trip, but she pressed on, promising herself that she would have a brief look at the shack and the basin, and then immediately return. She had expected to make much better time than she had made. Also, she had not antic.i.p.ated that a fifteen-mile ride would tire her so. But she believed that it was not the ride so far, but the prospect of another fifteen-mile ride to return, that appalled her--for she had ridden much since her coming to the Flying W, and was rather hardened to it. In one of his letters to her, her uncle had stated that his men often rode sixty miles in a day, and that he remembered one ride of ninety miles, which a cowpuncher had made with the same pony in twenty-two hours of straight riding. He had told her that the tough little plains pony could go any distance that its rider was able to "fork" it. She believed that, for the little animal under her had never looked tired when she had ridden him to the ranchhouse at the end of a hard day.

But these recollections did not console her, and she urged the pony on, into a gallop that took her over the ground rapidly.

At last, as she was swept around a bend in the plateau, she saw spreading beneath her a little valley, green-carpeted, beautiful. A wood rose near the river, and at its edge she saw what she had come to see--Chavis'

shack.

And now she realized that for all the knowledge that a look at Chavis'

shack would give her, she might as well have stayed at the Flying W. She didn't know just what she had expected to see when she got here, but what she did see was merely the building, a small affair with a flat roof, the spreading valley itself, and several steers grazing in it.

There were no other signs of life. She got off the pony and walked to the edge of the plateau, discovering that the valley was much shallower than she thought it would be, and that at her side, to the left, was the declivity that the puncher had told her about. She leaned over the edge and looked at it.

It was not so steep as she had expected when listening to the puncher's description of it. But she thought it looked dangerous. At the point from which she viewed it, it was not more than fifteen or twenty feet below her. It cut into the plateau, running far back and doubling around toward her, and the stretch below her, that was within range of her eyes, was almost level. The wall of the cut on which she stood was ragged and uneven, with some scraggly brush thrusting out between the crevices of rocks, and about ten feet down was a flat rock, like a ledge, that projected several feet out over the level below.

She was about to turn, for she had seen all she cared to see, when an impulse of curiosity urged her to crane her neck to attempt to peer around a shoulder of the cut where it doubled back. She started and turned pale, not so much from fright as with surprise, for she saw a horse's head projecting around the shoulder of the cut, and the animal was looking directly at her. As she drew back, her breath coming fast, the animal whinnied gently.

Almost instantly, she heard a man's voice:

"My cayuse is gettin' tired of loafin', I reckon." Ruth held her breath.

The voice seemed to come from beneath her feet--she judged that it really had come from beneath the rock that projected from the wall of the cut below her. And it was Chavis' voice!

Of course, he would not be talking to himself, and therefore there must be another man with him. At the risk of detection, and filled with an overwhelming curiosity to hear more she kneeled at the edge of the cut and listened intently, first making sure that the horse she had seen could not see her.

"I reckon Linton didn't pull it off--or them Flyin' W guys are stickin'

close to the herd," said another voice. "He ought to have been here an hour ago."

"Linton ain't no rusher," said Chavis. "We'll wait."

There was a silence. Then Chavis spoke again:

"Flyin' W stock is particular easy to run off. Did I tell you? B---- told me"--Ruth did not catch the name, she thought it might have been Bennet, or Ben--"that the girl had give orders that anyone ketched runnin' off Flyin' W stock wasn't to be hung!" Ruth heard him chuckle. "Easy boss, eh, Kester?" He sneered. "Ketch that d.a.m.ned Flyin' W outfit hangin'

anybody!"

Kester was one of the men who had quit the day that Ruth had met Randerson, when the latter had been riding in for the money due them. It did not surprise Ruth to discover that Kester was with Chavis, for Randerson had told her what might be expected of him. Linton was the other man.

Nor did it surprise Ruth to hear Chavis talking of stealing the Flying W stock. But it angered her to discover that her humane principles were being ridiculed; she was so incensed at Chavis that she felt she could remain to hear him no longer, and she got up, her face red, her eyes flashing, to go to her pony.

But the pony was nowhere in sight. She remembered now, her heart sinking with a sudden, vague fear, that she had neglected to trail the reins over the animal's head, as she had been instructed to do by the puncher who had gentled the pony for her; he had told her that no western horse, broken by an experienced rider, would stray with a dragging rein.

She gave a quick, frightened glance around. She could see clearly to the broken section of country through which she had pa.s.sed some time before, and her glance went to the open miles of gra.s.s land that stretched south of her. The pony had not gone that way, either. Trembling from a sudden weakness, but driven by the urge of stern necessity, she advanced cautiously to the edge of the cut again and looked over.

Her pony was standing on the level below her, almost in front of the rock under which had been Chavis and Kester! It had evidently just gone down there, for at the instant she looked over the edge of the cut she saw Chavis and Kester running toward it, muttering with surprise.

For one wild, awful instant, Ruth felt that she would faint, for the world reeled around her in dizzying circles. A cold dread that seized her senses helped her to regain control of herself presently, however, and scarcely breathing she stole behind some dense weeds at the edge of the cut, murmuring a prayer of thankfulness for their presence.

What Chavis and Kester had said upon seeing the pony, she had not heard.

But now she saw crafty smiles on their faces; Chavis' was transfigured by an expression that almost drew a cry of horror from her. Through the weeds she could see their forms, and even hear the subdued exclamation from Chavis:

"It's the girl's cayuse, sure. I'd know it if I saw it in the Cannibal islands. I reckon she's been snoopin' around here somewheres, an' it's sloped! Why, Kester!" he cried, standing erect and drawing great, long breaths, his eyes blazing with pa.s.sion as for an instant she saw them as they swept along the edge of the cut, "I'd swing for a kiss from them lips of hers!"

"You're a fool!" declared Kester. "Let the women alone! I never knowed a man to monkey with one yet, that he didn't get the worst of it."

Chavis paid no attention to this remonstrance. He seized Ruth's pony by the bridle and began to lead it up the slope toward the plateau. Kester laid a restraining hand on his arm. He spoke rapidly; he seemed to have become, in a measure, imbued with the same pa.s.sion that had taken possession of Chavis.

"Leave the cayuse here; she'll be huntin' for it, directly; she'll come right down here. Give her time."