The Free Range

CHAPTER VIII

FOR REVENGE

Breakfast next morning at the Bar T ranch was disturbed by the arrival of a cowboy on a lathering, wicked-eyed pony who announced to Stelton that Bud Larkin and his sheep had crossed over into the range. What then occurred is already known, and after Bissell had returned from his final parley with Larkin, he retired sullenly into himself to rage silently.

In his perturbed state of mind, the sheepman’s double-edged remark about clearing out had had but one meaning, and he took it for granted that Larkin had been awed or frightened into the better part of valor. This was a partial relief, but he foresaw that although this danger to his cattle was averted, it was merely the first of many such struggles that he might expect.

Human desires, particularly those of great urgency, are of such domination that they take little thought for anything but themselves, except in persons of particularly adroit mind. It was Stelton’s misfortune, therefore, to embark on an ill-timed conversation with his chief.

The foreman for ten years had secretly adored Juliet Bissell with all the intensity of a soul made single of purpose by the vast, brooding immensity of his surroundings. So long as he might be near her, serving her in many little ways, he had been, in a manner, content with the situation.

But the sudden appearance of Larkin and the enthusiastic renewal of a former intimacy had spurred Stelton to seek some sort of a definite understanding. Bissell’s retirement to the veranda after the noonday meal was shortly followed by Stelton’s appearance there, timorous and abashed.

The interview had been short and not very satisfactory. The cowman, remembering with considerable pain the conversation with his daughter, told his employé frankly that he had better give up any such ideas as evidently possessed him. Stelton, who had with some right formerly felt he might count on the favorable attitude of his chief, was astounded, and took the venom of the curt refusal to heart.

Retiring without betraying his emotion, he had resolved to speak to the girl herself, and that same afternoon asked permission to accompany her on her daily ride across the prairies, a thing not unusual with him.

Juliet, although she wished to be alone, consented, and at four o’clock they set out, unobserved by Bissell.

It was not until they had turned their horses homeward that Stelton spoke, almost tongue-tied by the emotions that rent him, alternate waves of fear and hope.

“Miss Julie,” he began, “I allow I’ve known you a long while.”

“Yes, Mike, you have.”

“An’ I allow that I would be plumb miserable if you ever went away from here again.”

“Thank you, Mike; I should miss you, too,” replied the girl civilly, growing uneasy at the unusual trend of the man’s speech, halting and indefinite though it was.

“Miss Julie, I ain’t no hand at fine talk, but I want to ask yuh if you will marry me? I’ve thought about it a lot, an’ though I ain’t noways good enough fer yuh, I’d try to make yuh happy.”

Juliet, taken aback by the suddenness of this declaration, particularly after her talk with her father, remained silent.

“Take yore time, Miss Julie,” pleaded Stelton, riding closer to her. “I ain’t in no hurry.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve said, Mike,” she replied slowly. “I’ve always liked you and I always will, but I don’t love you, and I would sooner tell you now than keep you in suspense. I can’t marry you.”

Stelton bit his lip and his dark face grew even blacker with rage at the futility of his position. With anyone other than Juliet Bissell, perhaps, he realized that insistent pressure of his suit might have favorable results. But this cool, calm girl offered no opportunity for argument or hope.

“Mebbe if yuh waited a bit, yuh might think different about it,” he ventured nevertheless. She shook her head.

“No, Mike, I wouldn’t, I am sure. If you care for me you will never mention this again. And for my part, I shall always remember what you have said to me to-day. It is a sweet thing for a girl to know that a man loves her.”

Such gracious refusals are effective with most men, both because they succeed in closing a tender subject and at the same time leave an unwounded pride. But Stelton was not the ordinary type of lover.

Repressed emotions in somber minds feed and grow fat upon their own substance, and it was inconceivable that Stelton’s genuine though distorted love, an abnormal product of ten long years, should be dismissed thus with a few words.

“Why won’t you marry me?” he demanded, looking angrily into her level, brown eyes.

“I have told you I did not love you. That is the reason and the best reason in the world. Now I ask you to drop the subject.”

“Love somebody else, I suppose,” he sneered, baring his teeth in a fatal attempt at an ugly smile.

“If I do, it is none of your business,” she replied, her eyes beginning to blaze.

“That dude sheepman, I allow. He’s a gilt-edged vanderpoop, he is! But I’d hate to be in his boots, if you want to know it.”

“Look here, Mike Stelton,” and Juliet drew her horse abruptly to a stop, “either you say nothing more on this subject or I shall tell my father what you have done this afternoon when we reach home.”

Instantly the man saw he had gone too far, and, with a quickness born of hatred, immediately changed his front.

“I was only thinkin’ of protectin’ you,” he muttered, “and I’m sorry I was ornery about things. That feller Larkin is a bad lot, that’s all. He wouldn’t be out here if he wasn’t.”

Perhaps it was that Juliet had given a greater place to Larkin in her thoughts than she realized; perhaps his eloquent defense of wool-growing had not been sufficient explanation for his unheralded appearance on the range. Whatever the reason, the girl rose to the bait like a trout when the ice has left the rivers.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

“You remember that feller Caldwell that rode in late to supper the night Larkin come?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I heard him blackmail Larkin for five hundred dollars back by the corral fence. An’ Larkin knew what he had to do as soon as Caldwell showed up. Didn’t yuh see him turn yaller at the table?”

As a matter of fact Larkin’s perturbation at that time had been puzzling and inexplicable to Juliet. Also the disappearance of the two men immediately after supper had mystified her. But without admitting this to Stelton she asked:

“What was it all about?”

“I don’t know exactly, Miss Julie, but it worked in somethin’ he done back in Chicago a year or so ago. From what I heard ’em say, Larkin just dodged the calaboose. Now there ain’t no disgrace in that – that’s really credit – but that don’t clear him of the crime noways. Why, I even heard ’em talk about two thousand dollars that Larkin give this Caldwell a couple of years back.”

“How did you learn all this?” she asked.

“I was a goin’ back to the corral for a rope I left hangin’ on a post there, an’ I heard ’em talkin’.”

“And you listened, I suppose,” remarked Julie contemptuously.

“Mebbe I did,” he retorted, stung by her tone. “But you can be thankful for it. I’d be plenty mad if you throw’d yourself away on a man like-a-that. A hoss that’ll kill one puncher’ll kill another. Same with a man.”

“What are you saying, Mike?” cried the girl, frightened out of her attitude of aloof reserve. “Kill a man! He’s never killed a man, has he?”

“He didn’t say so in so many words, no ma’am, but that talk o’ their’n was mighty suspicious.”

Unwittingly Stelton had struck his hardest blow. To him, as to other rough and ready men in the West, life was a turbulent existence conducted with as few hasty funerals as was absolutely necessary. But in the girl who had absorbed the finer feelings of a civilized community, the horror of murder was deep-rooted.

She knew that to a man in Larkin’s former position the slightest divergence from the well-defined tenets of right and wrong was inexcusable. Crime, she knew, was a result of poverty, necessity, self-defense or lack of control, and she also knew that Bud Larkin had never been called upon to fall back on any of these. How much of truth, therefore, was there in Stelton’s innuendoes?

“Would you swear on the Bible that you overheard what you have told me?” she asked suddenly.

“Yes, ma’am, I shore would,” Stelton answered with solemn conviction.

There was no question now in her mind but that Larkin was paying the piper for some unsavory fling of which she had heard nothing. She did not for a moment believe that the affair could be as serious as Stelton wished her to imagine; but she was sorely troubled, nevertheless, for she had always cared for Larkin in a happy, wholehearted way.

Many times since her final coming West she had remembered with a secret tenderness and pride that this wealthy and popular young man had been willing to trust his life to her. It was one of the sweetest recollections of those other far-off days.

Now, because the thought of Stelton’s revelations was unbearable to her she resolutely put it from her until a time when she could mourn alone over this shattered illusion.

“Thank you, Mike, for telling me this,” she said gently. “Please never say anything further about it.”

And Stelton, elated that his plan of revenge had worked so well, smiled with satisfaction and relapsed into silence during the remainder of the ride home.

All of these events are set down here with some pretense at detail to indicate the important trend of affairs after Larkin had said a more-or-less indifferent good-by to Juliet Bissell at the fork of Grass Creek. While he was wrestling with material problems, these others that destiny had suddenly joined to him were undergoing mental disturbances in which he was the principal though unconscious factor. And this unconscious prominence was to be the main reason for what next occurred.

It was perhaps noon of the day following Larkin’s capture by the rustlers, when from a point directly east of the ranch house a cowboy appeared, riding at a hard gallop. Contrary to most fictions, cowboys rarely ever urge their ponies beyond a trot, the only occasions being the round-up, the stampede, the drive, or when something serious has occurred.

Mike Stelton saw the puncher from a distance and walked to the corral to meet him. Jerking his pony back on his haunches, the rider leaped from his back before the animal had fairly come to a stop.

“Mike, we’ve been tricked!” he cried. “That whole two thousand head of sheep are tracking north as fast as they can go far over east on the range, beyond the hills.”

“What!” cried the foreman, hardly able to credit his ears. “The boys down on watch at the Big Horn swore they had scattered the flock last night when Larkin started to run them north on the range.”

“Well, they swore wrong, then, for I’ve just come from where I seen ’em. I was over back of them hogbacks and buttes lookin’ for strays and mavericks when along come them muttons in a cloud of dust that would choke a cow. I allow that darned sheepman has made us look like a lot of tenderfeet, Mike.”

Stelton at this intelligence fairly gagged on his own fury. Larkin had scored on him again. The two were joined at this moment by Bissell who had noted the excitement at the corral. When apprised of what had happened, the cowman’s face went as dark with anger as that of his foreman.

Beef Bissell was not accustomed to the sensation of being outwitted in anything, and the knowledge that the sheep were nearly half-way up the range put him almost beside himself.

For a few moments the trio looked at one another speechless. Then Bissell voiced the determination of them all.

“By the devil’s mare!” he swore. “I won’t be beaten by any sheepman that ever walked. Stelton, how many men will be in to-night?”

“Fifteen.”

“Get ’em and bring ’em to me as soon as they come.”

While the foreman went off about this business Bissell learned from Chuck, the cowboy, just where he had seen the sheep last, how fast they were traveling, and how far he calculated they would go before bedding down for the night.

“I reckon the outfit ought to camp somewhere about Little Creek,” said Chuck. “That’s runnin’ water.”

“And how far beyond that is Little River?”

“Two miles more or less.”

“Fine. Wait around till the rest of the boys come in, Chuck. Oh, by the way, how near are the sheep to our eastern herd of cows?”

“Five miles more will bring ’em to the range the cows are on now.”

An hour before supper the rest of the punchers began to come in from riding the range and rounding up strays. Before they were permitted a mouthful, however, Bissell went out to the bunk house with Stelton.

“Boys,” he said, “which of you was down at the Big Horn last night an’ turned them sheep back?”

A man spoke up and then two more who had been left on guard in the vicinity.

“How many did you scatter?”

“Dunno, boss,” replied the first judicially. “From the noise they made I allow there was at least a thousand.”

“Well, I bet you a month’s wage there wasn’t more’n a hundred,” said Bissell, glaring at the puncher.

“Won’t take yer, boss,” returned the other calmly. “Why?”

“Because practically the whole flock is beddin’ down at Little Creek now. Chuck seen ’em. Now I want all you fellers to get supper an’ then rope an’ saddle a fresh hoss. There is shore goin’ to be some doin’s to-night.”

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN IN THE MASK

As Bud Larkin jogged along on Pinte, apparently one of the group of men with whom he was riding, he wondered mechanically why his captors insisted on traveling ten miles to a tree sufficiently stout to bear his weight.

“I should think they’d stand me up and do the business with a bullet,” he thought.

But a moment’s reflection furnished the answer to this query. These men were cattle-rustlers and horse-thieves, than which no more hazardous existence ever was since the gentle days of West Indian piracy, and to them merely a single pistol shot might mean betrayal of their whereabouts, capture and death.

The character of the country through which they rode gave sufficient evidence of their care in all details, for it was a rough, wild, uninhabitable section that boasted, on its craggy heights and rough coulees, barely enough vegetation to support a wild mustang.

It was three o’clock of the afternoon and behind them the party could still see the place where they had camped. Joe Parker, fearful of stirring about much until the thoughts of range-riders were turning homeward like their ponies’ steps, had delayed the departure beyond the hour first intended.

The rustlers really did not want to dispose of Larkin. Being plainsmen, their acute sense of justice told them that this man was absolutely guiltless of any crime deserving of death. Untoward circumstances had forced him into their hands, and, like the boy with the fly-paper, they were unable to get rid of him peaceably. Their abuse of his insane folly was colorful and vivid.

But Larkin had reasons for his stubborn attitude. With the arrogance of youth and the inexperience of real danger, he had resolved that as soon as his sheep should be safely up the range he would devote some time, money, and effort to the running down of these rustlers. Some of their faces were unforgetably stamped on his memory now, and he had no doubt that he could be of great service to Wyoming Territory, which was just at this time petitioning for the dignity of Statehood.

He had known the losses and insolence of rustlers on his own sheep ranch in Montana, and, like every sympathizer with justice and order, had sworn to himself many times that all of them should be run to earth.