White Wolf's Law

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LONG TRAIL

Jim Allen and his companion kept their horses at a gallop for a mile or so, then realizing there was no pursuit, they pulled them down to a fast walk.

“That’s the seventh town, since we hit New Mex, that we had to leave suddenlike,” Slivers growled.

Jim-twin Allen started singing:

Slivers interrupted Allen’s song with an oath, and putting spurs to his horse, galloped on ahead. Allen watched him and then shook his head.

“Reckon the kid’s plumb cured of hankerin’ to be the bad boy from Bitter Creek,” he commented to himself. “Guess he’s thinkin’ more of how to clear himself of the charge agin’ him now than to make it definite by bustin’ into Little Deadman’s Branch an’ shootin’ up the gents what double crossed him. Reckon I showed him just in time what it means to ride the long trail.”

Allen had deliberately taken Slivers through the small towns to give him a taste of what it meant to be hunted.

That night the two camped in a thicket close to the Pecos. After they had finished their frugal meal, Slivers smoked several cigarettes and stared silently into the fire.

“Jim, yuh win,” he said at last.

“Meanin’?”

“Meanin’ yuh can boss things when we get to Little Deadman’s. I ain’t sayin’ that ‘Spur’ Treadwell, the gent what planted the killin’ of ‘Iky’ Small on me, ain’t due to die. But I figger on runnin’ with the law instead of agin’ it from now on, so we’ll get Spur legal.”

“Yuh ain’t hankerin’ to be my partner no more an’ ride the long trail with me?” Allen bantered.

Slivers flushed and moved uncomfortably.

“Shucks, I ain’t desertin’ yuh, ’cause yuh’d never took me along no way. But I’m plumb sick of bein’ chased ragged. Hell, I dream of sheriffs sneakin’ upon me,” Slivers said slowly and a little shame-facedly.

Suddenly Allens’ face was old, lined with countless wrinkles. His eyes grew somber, as he stared at Slivers’ face. When he spoke again, it was like a father speaking to a son.

“Kid, remember them words. No matter how rotten yore cards, play them straight. It sounds excitin’, this outlaw stuff, but the end of the long trail is sartin sure. Yuh get so yuh can’t trust no one. Friends try to pot yuh in the back, an’ excuse themselves by sayin’ it’s their civic duty, while they’re thinkin’ of the blood money on your carcass. No, kid, there ain’t nothin’ in ridin’ the long trail.” Allen’s voice had been serious when he began, but it was flat, expressionless, as he finished.

Slivers glanced at Allen’s face and then looked hastily away.

When Slivers next glanced at Allen, the outlaw’s face was once more young. There was a broad grin on his face, as he stuffed some brown sugar in his pockets.

“How long yuh been hidin’ out, Jim?” Slivers asked.

“Since I was eighteen. I’m twenty-eight now,” Allen replied cheerfully, as he stepped into the brush to feed sugar to his two grays.

Ten years. Ten long, lonely years. Betrayed by friends, pursued by the law, constantly on the move. Yet there was no bitterness against his fate, only a great fatigue. Slivers cursed himself for a weakling and a baby.

He stood up and shook his shoulders, and his growing hatred of the world fell from him like a cloak. From now on he would fight like a man, fight to clear his name and confine his hatred to the man who had framed him.

Before dawn the following day, they crossed the Pecos a little above Pilgrim’s Crossing and started on their long ride across the Staked Plains. On the third day, they turned northeast and headed toward Wichita Falls and then, little by little, they swung about until they were traveling almost due north.

They traveled slowly, for it was necessary to keep their horses fresh in case it became necessary to run for it. It was ten days after they crossed the Pecos that they struck the rolling hills and dense thickets that marked the country to the south of the Nations, hangout of hunted men.

One morning they looked down from the top of a heavily wooded hill into the smooth cuplike valley through which flowed the Little Deadman’s Creek. At the farther end, doll-like buildings marked the site of the Double R Ranch.

“There she is,” Slivers cried.

“I’m bettin’ yuh can pick out that gal of yourn settin’ on the porch,” Allen grinned.

Slivers did not reply, but continued to stare out across the valley to the ranch buildings. Allen’s words were true, for he saw, even if it were in his imagination, Dot Reed sitting on the front porch, just as he had last seen her on that day he had had to flee from the mob which was intent on lynching him.

CHAPTER XIX

DOT REED

The two went over their plans, arranging camp. Slivers was to remain there while Allen went on to the ranch to ascertain if the feeling against Slivers was still vindictive. Jim Allen knew that the fame of his grays had traveled all over the West and that if he took both with him, it would make the chances of his being recognized that much greater, so he hobbled Honeyboy and saddled Princess. The stallion uttered shrill neighs of protest at being left behind, and Princess balked at leaving her constant companion.

Allen circled to the east, for he did not wish to leave a direct trail from Slivers’ camp to the ranch. After an hour’s ride, he struck the road that ran south to Wichita Falls, where he turned to the north. It was close to sundown when he arrived at the small town of Malboro. This was the typical cow town of the region. It consisted of a few stores, a combination hotel and bar, a post office, and three or four saloons.

There were but a few people about the streets as he rode into town and these gave him but a casual glance. If they classified him at all, they put him down as some kid from a distant ranch. He wore no gun that could be seen, his shirt and jeans were tattered and torn. Princess was the personification of a tired, worked-out old horse. Her head drooped, her feet shuffled up little clouds of dust as she ambled along. No one would have taken her for one of the most famous horses in the West, nor her rider as the most famous outlaw of all time.

Allen swung from his horse before the Wichita Hotel, dropped the reins over the hitch rack and stood for a moment gazing about like a gawky country boy on his first visit to town.

He wandered aimlessly along the street. Spying a store that displayed candy bars in its window, he entered and reappeared a moment later sucking at a brightly colored candy bar. Munching the candy, he slipped through the doors of the hotel and entered the bar. There was no one there, so he walked briskly toward the wall where they had posted the bills for the men who were wanted. He found one for himself, but he gave a sigh of relief when he noted it was an old one and did not have his picture. He also found one for Slivers Joe Hart, which offered a reward of five hundred dollars for that young man, dead or alive. He was reading this when some one entered the room. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a stout, one-armed man, of about fifty, whom he surmised to be “One-wing” McCann, the owner of the hotel.

“Hello, bub! Lookin’ for your own picture or figgerin’ on nabbin’ some of them gents?” McCann asked genially.

“Naw, I was just lookin’,” Allen said awkwardly.

“Where did yuh come from an’ where yuh goin’?”

“I come from down Fort Worth way an’ I’m driftin’ aroun’ lookin’ for a job,” Allen replied.

“I’m goin’ out to the Double R to-morrow. Spur Treadwell, the manager, is a friend of mine. Want to go along an’ ast him for a job?” One-wing asked.

“Sure – but I don’t want no job peeling potatoes,” Allen complained.

“Yuh be aroun’ at seven to-morrow, an’ I’ll take yuh out an’ make Spur give yuh a job as top hand,” the older man chuckled.

One-wing McCann was the sort who would do a favor for some one if it did not cost him effort or money, but his generosity did not run to staking a ragged, homeless boy to a dinner and bed. He walked behind the bar and helped himself to a drink.

Allen wandered out into the street. It was dark now, and he made for a small restaurant he had seen when he entered the town. Having tucked away a beefsteak and some coffee, he wandered forth again and peered into the various saloons. He carefully studied each man he saw, but found none whom he knew or who might know him.

The following morning, when One-wing McCann came from the hotel and climbed into his buckboard, he found Allen waiting for him. He stared; his invitation of the evening before had been carelessly given and forgotten ten minutes after.

“Yuh said yuh’d take me with yuh,” Allen said with assumed ignorance.

“That so. Yuh want to ride with me, or are yuh goin’ to fork that ol’ bag of bones?” McCann asked, and jerked a contemptuous thumb toward Princess.

“She ain’t much to look at, but I’ve had her ever since I was a kid, so I reckon I’ll ride her,” Allen said aggrievedly, seeming to resent One-wing’s abuse of his horse.

“Suit yourself,” McCann said indifferently.

He climbed into the buckboard and picked up the reins. He spoke to the horses, and they started out of town at a fast trot. Allen held the indignant Princess down to an awkward gait that was half trot and half gallop.

Allen was well pleased with his good luck. His arriving with McCann would lessen the chances of his being recognized. He had felt that he would run a great risk of this, for the Double R was not many miles from the Nations, the refuge of many a hunted man. And most outlaws and gunmen hated and feared him far more than many an honest citizen.

The road wound in and out between hills and followed the course of the Little Deadman’s Creek.

It was close to thirty miles from Malboro to the Double R, and it was well past noon before the road dipped into the valley and the ranch buildings appeared before them. The scene took Allen back to his boyhood, for he had been raised in just such a place. He marked the place where the old stockade had stood, for these buildings had been built in the days when the savage Comanche had laid claim to all this part of the country. Within the old stockade, the eight or ten houses had been built in the form of a rough square, with the main ranch building forming the southern side. Where once there had been only loopholes, there were now windows. All the houses were of one story, built of heavy logs and roofed with sod.

One-wing McCann brought his sweating horses to a sliding stop before the front porch. A puncher ran around the corner to take the horses, and as One-wing climbed from the buckboard, a man came out of the front door.

“Hello, One-wing.”

He was a powerfully built man, fully six feet three in height, with a large mouth, a pair of china-blue eyes and close-cut straw-colored hair.

“’Lo, Spur,” McCann replied.

Allen twisted in his saddle and studied Spur Treadwell, the man who, in Slivers’ opinion, had killed Iky Small and then placed the guilt on Slivers. Allen had the uncanny gift of being able to look at any man and shrewdly estimate that man’s real character. The little outlaw utterly disregarded the outer signs that influence most men. He was not to be fooled by a genial manner, a straight-looking eye or any of the other outer attributes which are usually worn by men to hide their real thoughts and selves.

So now, after studying Spur Treadwell, he knew him to be a man of great force, a dominating character, yet one who was utterly unscrupulous, who would fight with the brutality of a bull and the savageness of a tiger. He shrewdly surmised that the man’s weakness was his vanity. Here was a man who possessed the force to make other people carry out his wishes, but would fail because of his pride.

“Who’s the kid?” Spur Treadwell asked, as he cast a searching glance at Allen.

“A kid from down Fort Worth way – he’s lookin’ for a job.”

Allen chuckled to himself. One-wing’s words implied that he knew for a fact that Allen had come from Fort Worth. It was a little thing, but it might some day serve to throw some suspicious person off the scent.

“All right, kid, yuh go aroun’ back an’ ask cooky to get yuh some chuck, an’ I’ll see yuh later,” Spur Treadwell said.

“Yuh know right well, Spur, that ‘Arizona’ won’t give him nothin’ at this time of the day,” a young girl cried, as she stepped out of the door onto the porch.

“All right, Dot, yuh’re great at carin’ for ol’ animals, hobos, an’ kids – go feed him yourself.” Spur Treadwell laughed and shrugged his great shoulders.

Dot Reed was a young girl of about nineteen, with dark, curling hair and vivid blue eyes. Bidding Allen to follow her, she reëntered the house and led the way to the kitchen. She cut some cold meat and placed a platter of it on the oilcloth-covered table with some bread and butter. Quickly she stirred up the embers in the kitchen stove, built a fire, and placed a coffeepot on to boil. Allen followed her with his eyes as she prepared the meal.

“Gosh, I don’t blame Slivers none at all, yuh sure are a real girl,” he told himself.

“I’m bettin’ yuh’re Dot Reed,” Allen told her, with his mouth full of meat.

“How did yuh know? What is your name?” she asked with a smile.

“A gent tol’ me about yuh. He said yuh was the best-lookin’ gal in seven States,” he said, grinning. “My handle is Jim Ashton.”

She decided she liked this boy and she smiled again with the condescension of a girl of nineteen looking down at a mere boy of eighteen.

“An’ your dad, John Reed, owns this outfit?” he asked.

Her face clouded and her lip trembled. She was silent and looked away.

“He was killed a month ago,” she said at last.

This was news to Allen and came to him as a shock. Slivers had hoped that John Reed would help clear his name. It meant they had lost a powerful ally. Allen now understood the lines of worry he had noticed in the girl’s face. He waited for her to go on.

Dot Reed looked at Allen and saw something in his face that inspired her with confidence. There was a look of understanding that was unusual for one of his age.

“Dad surprised two rustlers over near Hard Pan, an’ they shot him,” she faltered.

“Did they get the coyotes?”

“Yeh, Spur Treadwell an’ the twins come along an’ shot them both. They – they – ” She faltered, and the tears sprang to her eyes.

“They?” he urged her gently.

“They said there was another man with the rustlers, but he got away. They said it was a friend of mine. Oh – oh – I won’t believe it of him!” she ended passionately.

Allen swore to himself. Without being told, he knew whom Spur Treadwell had said the third man was. Spur Treadwell was both deep and thorough. Allen had come to Little Deadman’s to help clear a boy’s name, and he now believed he had stumbled into a dark conspiracy that had a deeper motive than just the removal of a rival.

“That’s right, ma’am, don’t believe it of him, ’cause it ain’t true,” Allen said earnestly.

The girl looked at him with big, round eyes. Something of hope, of fear, sprang into them.

“What do you mean? Do you know him?”

Allen saw that he had stepped out of character. In order to gain time for thought, he busied himself with his food for a moment. After he had swallowed his meat, he looked up at her and grinned.

“I don’t mean nothin’. Only the way yuh spoke, I sorta thought yuh liked him, an’ it ain’t right to believe nothin’ of nobody unless yuh give them a chance to tell their side,” he blundered.

“But – the rustlers were blottin’ the Double R to Double B, an’ that’s his brand. He – he – Some one said he killed a man an’ he had to hide out. Spur said he came back an’ tried rustlin’ to get even.”

“Did yuh see your dad after he was shot?” Allen asked quickly, as thought materialized in his brain.

“No.”

“Then he didn’t live to say nothin’?”

“Yeh, he talked to Spur an’ wrote a – a – ” She broke off, as a heavy tread sounded in the next room.

A moment later, the door opened and Spur Treadwell entered. Allen noticed he was so tall that he had to stoop as he came through the door. He glanced swiftly at Allen and then to the girl. His eyes were penetrating, inquiring, and Allen saw a glint of suspicion in them.

“If yuh’re goin’ to work for me, yuh have to hustle down your grub faster than that,” he said with a touch of harshness in his voice.

“It was my fault, an’ it is my ranch, an’ if I want to talk to one of my men, I will.” The girl was quick to spring to Allen’s defense.

“Let’s not go into that again, Dot. It’s your ranch all right, but don’t forget I’m your guardian until yuh are of age an’ that I do the hirin’ an’ firin’,” Spur said tolerantly with the touch of authority in his voice that one uses to an unruly child.

The girl flushed. Allen rose to his feet and picked up his hat. A moment before, he had been irritated that Spur Treadwell had entered before the girl had time to tell him what her father wrote before he died, but he now felt that it made no difference, for he was certain that he knew what John Reed had written, or at least what Spur Treadwell had said was written.

“Well, anyway, it was my fault the boy stayed here to talk,” Dot said after a pause.

“Talk?” Again Spur glanced from the girl to Allen.

“He was tellin’ me about his home,” she said. She cast a quick glance at Allen as if to beg him not to contradict her lie.

CHAPTER XX

SHORTY TALKS

Later, while the outlaw was watering and feeding his horse, he went over his talk with the girl. He knew from her last lie that she feared Spur and that for some reason all talk to strangers about her father’s death was taboo. He decided he would like to see that last note written by John Reed. The whole thing sounded natural enough, for two of the rustlers had been killed – yet he felt there was something wrong. He believed in Slivers, believed the boy had been framed by some one; and the fact that Spur Treadwell had taken trouble to fasten on Slivers this second killing and rustling went to prove that perhaps the boy was right in his belief that the big manager of the Double R was the one who had framed him. If he had not known Slivers, Allen would have unquestionably accepted, as others had apparently done, Spur Treadwell’s story of the killing of John Reed.

Two of the rustlers had been killed, and if a murder is committed and you produce the bodies of the murderers, people will usually accept your story and not inquire further. Allen told himself grimly, that he had known other men who had double crossed their tools. Perhaps these two rustlers knew too much, and Spur Treadwell had killed two birds with one stone, shut their mouths and got rid of John Reed.

“Shucks, it’s plumb easy to talk an’ figger out things for yourself, but it’s a cow of another color makin’ other folks see along with yuh. An’, Mr. Jim-twin Allen, if that there hombre, Spur, gets one little suspicion yuh’re snoopin’, you’ll take a ride one day an’ never come back,” he told himself seriously.

Later, Spur Treadwell turned Allen over to Bill McAllister, the boss horse wrangler, and told him to put the boy to work with the cavvy. The Double R was a large outfit and employed between twenty to forty men, depending on the season, so there were always two or three hundred horses in the cavvy.

Bill McAllister was a weather-beaten man of fifty. His lined and seamed face had been tanned by wind and sun to the color of leather. His grizzled hair was thin over his temples, and his blue eyes were faded. He was a taciturn man whose jaws got their exercise from chewing, not talking. His greeting to Allen was short but friendly enough.

The little outlaw decided McAllister was honest and could be trusted. This bothered him for a time. He could not see how McAllister could be honest and yet be a sort of foreman for Spur Treadwell; especially as the few punchers he had seen loafing about the ranch were obviously more used to handling their Colts than their ropes. Their smooth hands, free of callouses, marked them as gunmen rather than cow-punchers.

“I’m sure in luck to get a job like this,” Allen said, grinning. “I’ve worked aroun’ hosses since I was a kid, but I never been on such a big outfit as this before. Yep, I’m sure in luck.”

The old horse wrangler’s reply was only a grunt. Allen refused to be discouraged by this and continued to prattle like a schoolboy on vacation. Bill McAllister listened to him for a time in a disgruntled silence, but little by little his reserve fell away, and before he knew it, he was chuckling at the boy’s remarks and answering his apparently pointless question without reserve.