The Settling of the Sage Part 12

When Bangs had left a pair of them had ridden a distance with him and accomplished their aim.

"It's coming dark," Harris said. "And by morning they'll be thirty miles away. That sort of a killing was never fastened on to any man yet."

The old man raised a doubled fist and his face was lined with sorrow.

"Bangs was almost a son to me," he said. "I taught him to ride--and we've rode together on every job since then. You hear me! Some one is going to die for this!"

It was an hour after sundown when they reached the wagon with all that was earthly of Bangs lashed across the blue horse and it was midnight before the five men who had followed the trail returned with the word that they had been unable to even sight the man they tracked.

During the next week the girl inwardly accused the men of heartlessness. They jested as carelessly as if nothing unusual had occurred and she heard no mention of Bangs. It seemed that it took but a day for them to forget a former comrade who had come to an untimely end. Rile Foster had disappeared but on the fifth day he turned up at the Three Bar wagon and resumed his work without the least explanation of his absence.

The old man was gloomy and silent, his face set in sorrowful lines as he went about his work, and it was evident that he was continually brooding over the fate of the youth he had loved. It seemed to the girl that the men were even more cheerful and thoughtless than usual, that they concerned their minds with every conceivable topic except that which was uppermost in her own. The death of Bangs had affected them not at all.

She could not shake off the remembrance of the boy's adoring gaze as his eyes had followed every move she made and in some vague way she felt that she was responsible for the accident. She often rode near Rile Foster, knowing what was in his mind. He spoke but little and, in common with the rest, he never once mentioned Bangs.

At the end of a week Slade rode up to the wagon as the men were working the cows gathered in the second circle of the day. He jerked his head to draw her aside out of range of Waddles's ears.

"How's the Three Bar showing up this spring?" he asked abruptly.

"Better than ever," she retorted and he caught a note of defiance in her voice.

"You're lying, Billie," he a.s.serted calmly. "The Three Bar will show another shrinkage this year."

"How do you know?" she flashed; and the distrust of him that Harris had roused in her, lately submerged beneath the troubling thoughts of Bangs, was suddenly quickened and thrown uppermost in her mind. In gauging him from this new angle she sensed a ruthlessness in him that was not confined solely to business efficiency; he would crush her interests without a qualm if it would gain his end.

"I know," he a.s.serted. "It's my business to know everything that goes on anywhere near my range. There's not another outfit within a hundred miles that's on the increase. They're just hanging on, some of them making a little, some of them not. You say you want to run the Three Bar brand yourself. There's not a man in this country that would touch a Three Bar cow if you was hooked up with me."

"And then the Three Bar would be only one out of a dozen or more Slade brands," she said. She pointed to the men that worked with the milling cows in the flat. "That's what I want," she said. "To run an outfit of my own--not one of yours."

For no reason at all she was suddenly convinced of the truth of Harris's suspicions concerning Slade. She noted that his eyes traveled from one man to the next till he had scrutinized every one that worked the herd.

"Are you looking for Morrow?" she demanded, and instantly regretted her remark. Slade's face did not change by so much as the bat of an eye and he failed to reply for a s.p.a.ce--too long a s.p.a.ce, she reflected--then turned to her.

"Morrow--who's he?" he asked. "And why should I look for him?"

"He rode for you last year," she said.

"Oh! That fellow. I recall him now. Bleak-looking citizen," he said.

"And what about him?"

"You tell me," she countered.

"That new foreman of yours--the fellow that was scouting round alone for a few months--has been talking with his mouth," Slade said. "If he keeps that up I'll have to ask him to speak right out what's on his mind."

"He'll tell you," she prophesied. "What then?"

"Then I'll kill him," the man stated.

The girl motioned to Lanky Evans and he rode across to them.

"Lanky, I want you to remember this," she said. "Slade has just promised to kill Harris. And if he does I'll spend every dollar I own seeing that he's hung for it," she turned to Slade. "You might repeat what you just told me," she suggested.

Slade looked at her steadily.

"You misunderstood me," he stated. "I don't recall any remark to that effect or even to mentioning the name of Harris. Who is he, anyhow?"

Evans slouched easily in the saddle and twisted a smoke.

"Now let's get this straight what I'm to remember," he said. "Mr.

Slade was saying that he planned to down Cal Harris the first time he caught him out alone. I heard him remark to that effect." He turned and grinned cheerfully at Slade. "That's his very words--and I'd swear to it as long as my breath held out. I'll sort of repeat it over to myself so that I can give it to the judge word for word when the time comes."

Slade favored him with a long stare which Lanky bore with unconcern, smiling back at him pleasantly.

"I've got my little piece memorized," Evans said; "and in parting let me remark that Cal Harris will prove a new sort of a victim for you to work on. If you tie into him he'll tear down your meat-house." He turned his horse and rode back to the herd.

"I'll play your own game," the girl told Slade. "If anything happens to another man who is riding for me and I have any reason to even suspect you were at the bottom of it I'll swear that I saw you do the thing yourself. The Three Bar is the only outfit with a clean enough record to drag anything up for an airing before the courts without taking a chance. This rule of every man for himself won't hold good with me."

She moved toward the wagon and Slade kept pace with her, leading his horse. There was no sign of life around the wagon and the jerky movement of a hat, barely visible through the tips of the sage, indicated that Waddles was washing out some clothing at the creek bank fifty yards away.

Slade leaned against the hind wheel on the far side from the herd and looked down at her.

"You're a real woman, Billie," he said. "You better throw in with a real man--me--and we'll own this country. I'll run the Three Bar on ten thousand head whenever you say the word."

"I'd rather see it on half as many through my own efforts," she said.

"And some day I will."

"Some day you'll see it my way," he prophesied. "I know you better than any other man. You want an outfit of your own--and if the Three Bar gets crowded out you'll go to the man that can give you one in its place. That will be me. Some day we'll trade."

"Some day--right soon--you'll trade your present holdings for a nice little range in h.e.l.l," a voice said in Slade's ear and at the same instant two huge paws were thrust from the little window of the cook-wagon and clamped on his arms above the crook of his elbows.

Slade was a powerful man but he was an infant in the grip of the two great hands that raised him clear of the ground and shook him before he was slammed down on his face ten feet away by a straight-arm thrust.

His deadly temper flared and the swift move for his gun was simultaneous with the twist which brought him to his feet, but his hand fell away from the b.u.t.t of it as he looked into the twin muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun which menaced him from the window.

It occurred to him that the nighthawk must have been restless and had elected to wash at the creek bank instead of indulging in sleep, thus accounting for the bobbing hat he had seen, for a.s.suredly it did not belong to the cook, as he had surmised. The face behind the gun was the face of Waddles.

"I'm about to touch off a pound of shot if you go acting up," Waddles said. "Any more talk like you was just handing out and you'll get smeared here and there."

"Are you running the Three Bar?" Slade asked.

"Only at times, when the notion strikes me," Waddles said. "And this is one. Whenever you've got any specific business to transact with us why come right along over and transact it--and then move on out."

Billie Warren laughed suddenly, a gurgle of sheer amus.e.m.e.nt at the sight of the most dreaded man within a hundred miles standing there under the muzzle of a shotgun, receiving instructions from the mouth of the Three Bar cook. For Slade was helpless and knew it. Even if he took a chance with Waddles and won out he would be in worse shape than before, for if he turned a finger against her old watchdog and friend he would gain only her deadly enmity.

"Waddles, you win," Slade said. "I'll be going before you change your mind."

As the man walked toward his horse which had sidled a few steps away the big cook gazed after him and fingered the riot gun regretfully.

The wagon did not move on when the men had finished working the herd as the rest of the day had been set aside for kill-time. An hour after Slade's departure the hands were rolling in for a sleep. The girl saw Rile Foster draw apart from the rest and sit with his back against a rock. He was regarding some small object held in his hand. As he turned it around she recognized it as a boot heel and the reason for Rile's absence was clear to her. He had back-tracked the blue horse to the scene of the mishap.