The Free Range Part 22

At last the girl disengaged herself from his eager hands, with hot cheeks and bright, flame-lit eyes. Her breath came fast, and it was a moment before she could compose herself.

"Where are you going now, Bud?" she asked.

"Back to the sheep."

"Can I do anything to help you?"

"I can only think of one thing, and that is to marry me."

"Everything in time, sir!" she reproved him. "Get your muttons out of the way and then you can have me."

Larkin groaned. Then he said:

"If anything comes for me or anybody wants me, I want you to do as I would do if I were here. Things are coming to a climax now and I must know all that goes on. Watch Stelton especially. He is crooked somewhere, and I'm going to get him if it takes me the rest of my life."

Suddenly there was a loud knock from outside the girl's bedroom door, and they both listened, hardly daring to breathe.

"Julie, let me in!" cried Mrs. Bissell's querulous voice. "Where's your father?"

"Run, dear boy, for your life!" breathed the girl.

Larkin kissed her swiftly and hurried back to the underbrush, where Sims was awaiting him in an access of temper.

"Great Michaeljohn, boss!" he growled as they rode along the bank, "ain't yuh got no consideration fer me? From the way yuh go on a person'd think yuh were in love with the girl."

CHAPTER XVI

A MESSAGE BY A STRANGE HAND

What were the feelings of Mr. Mike Stelton that dawn had better be imagined than described. The first he knew of any calamity was when Mrs.

Bissell, unable to find her husband near the house, shook him frantically by the shoulder.

"Get up, Mike," she cried into his ear. "Somethin's wrong here. Henry's nowhere around."

Dazed with sleep, unable to get the proper focus on events, the foreman blundered stupidly about the place searching cursorily, and cursing the helplessness of Beef Bissell.

Presently he got awake, however, and perceived that dawn was coming up in the east. Then he reveled in the delightful antic.i.p.ation of what was to occur out under the old cottonwood along the river bank. Mentally he licked his chops at the prospect of this rare treat. He intended if possible to make Juliet witness her lover's degradation.

After vainly hunting some valid excuse for Bissell's untimely departure, Stelton thought he would call the boys, which he did. Then he turned his attention to the bunk-house, for he knew the cowmen were in a hurry to get away and would want to be called early.

"All out!" he bawled jovially, thrusting his head in at the door.

Not a sound came in response. Then for the first time Stelton had a premonition of trouble. He walked into the bunk-house and took quick note of the ten tumbled but empty bunks. Also of the ten belts and revolvers that hung on wooden pegs along the wall--the sign of Western etiquette.

In those days, and earlier, if a man rode by at meal-time or evening he was your guest. He might take dinner with his hat on, and get his knife and fork mixed, but if he hung up his belt and revolver he was satisfied that all the amenities had been observed, whether you thought so or not.

The one other unspoken law was that every man's business was his own business and no questions were allowed. You might be entertaining a real bad man like Billy the Kid, and you might suspect his ident.i.ty, but you never made inquiries, and for three reasons.

The first was, that it was bad plains etiquette; the second, that if you were mistaken and accused the wrong man, punishment was sure and swift; and the third was, that if you were right the punishment was still surer and swifter, for an escaping criminal never left any but mute witnesses behind him.

Looking at these ten indications of good-will along the bunk-house wall, Stelton's alarm was once more lulled. Perhaps the men had all gone for a paddle in the stream before breakfast, he thought. If so, they would take care of themselves, and turn up when the big bell rang. He couldn't waste any more time this way.

Now to relieve the man who was guarding Larkin outside the window.

He hurried around the house and came upon the p.r.o.ne figure of a cow-puncher, rolled close against the house. The man's head was b.l.o.o.d.y, his hands were tied behind him, and his neckerchief had been stuffed into his mouth and held there by another. He was half-dead when Stelton, with a cry of surprise, bent over him and loosened his bonds.

With a prolonged yell the foreman brought all hands running to him and, giving the hurt man into the care of a couple of them, ran along the house to Bud's window. The bent bars showed how the bird had flown.

Stelton was about to give way to his fury when another cry from the rear of the cook-house told of the discovery of the second watchman's body, that had lain hidden in the long gra.s.s which grew up against the walls.

Then didn't Stelton curse! Never had he been so moved to profane eloquence, and never did he give such rein to it. He cursed everything in sight, beginning with the ranch house; and he took that from chimney to cellar, up and down every line and angle, around the corners and out to the barn. Then he began on the barn and wound up with the corral. The cowboys listened in admiration and delight, interjecting words of approval now and then.

But once having delivered himself of this relief, the foreman's face set into its customary ugly scowl, and he snapped out orders to saddle the horses. Presently a man rode up from the river bottoms and told of the discovery of many hoof tracks there, and the place where they had waited a long while.

"I've got it!" bawled Stelton, pounding his thigh. "Larkin's men have been here and carried off all the owners. Oh, won't there be the deuce to pay?"

Then he picked out the cowboys who had come with their bosses and added:

"Crowd yore grub and ride home like blazes. Get yore punchers an' bring grub for a week. Then we'll all meet at the junction of the Big Horn and Gooseberry Creek. If yuh punchers like a good job you'll get yore owners out o' this. And I'm plumb sh.o.r.e when we get through there won't be a sheepman left in this part of the State. To-morrer night at Gooseberry!"

Then was such a scene of hurry and bustle and excitement as the Bar T had seldom witnessed. The parting injunctions were to bring extra horses and plenty of rope, with the accent on the rope, and a significant look thrown in.

By seven o'clock, the time that Larkin, b.l.o.o.d.y, humiliated and suffering, would already have paid his penalty, there was scarcely a soul at the Bar T ranch, for the cowboys had disappeared across the plains at a hard trot.

The Bar T punchers were sent out on the range to scour for tracks of the fugitives, but, after following them some distance from the river bottom, gave up in despair when a night herder admitted that the Bar T horses had been feeding in the vicinity the night before, thus entangling the tracks.

Meantime the cook was preparing food for the punchers to carry, guns were being oiled and overhauled, knives sharpened, and ropes carefully examined.

Yet as the men went about their duties there was a kind of dazed, subdued air in all they did, for it was, indeed, hard to realize that the ranch owners of nearly a quarter of Wyoming's best range had disappeared into the empty air apparently without a sound or protest.

The following afternoon the entire Bar T outfit, excepting a couple of punchers who were incapacitated from former round-up injuries, swept out of the yard and headed almost directly east across the plain.

Julie and her mother watched them go and waved them farewell, the former with a clutch of fear at her heart for her lover and the latter in tears for her husband, thus unconsciously taking opposite sides in the struggle that they knew must ensue.

It must not be thought that Juliet had turned against her father since their final difference. After her first outbreak against his narrow views and unjust treatment of Larkin, the old love that had been paramount all her life returned, and with it a kind of pity. She knew that in a man of her father's age his nature could not be made over immediately, if ever; the habits of a rough lifetime were too firmly ingrained. But at the same time there was something gone from the sweet and intimate affection that had formerly characterized their relations.

Lovers or married folk who declare for the efficacy of a quarrel as a renewer of love are wrong in the last a.n.a.lysis. Loss of control always entails loss of respect, and fervent "making up" after such an outbreak cannot efface the picture of anger-distorted features or remove the acid of bitter words. Thus it was with Juliet and her love for her father.

As to his safety she was not worried, for she knew that Bud would not allow any harm to come to him as he was in command of the men who had effected the taking-off. What Larkin's plans were she did not fully realize, but she knew this sudden _coup_ had been executed to further his own ends in the imperative matter of getting his sheep north. And of this she finally convinced her mother, although that lady wept copiously before the thing was accomplished.

The evening following the departure of Mike Stelton and his punchers was made notable by the arrival of a man on horseback, who carried across his saddle a black box, and in thongs at his side a three-legged standard of yellow wood. His remaining equipment was a square of black cloth.

Without invitation he turned his dejected animal into the Bar T corral and made himself at home for the evening. At the supper table he revealed his ident.i.ty and explained his purpose.

"I'm Ed Skidmore," he announced, "and I take photographs. This thing I've got is a camera." He had already mounted the instrument on his tripod.

"I've been going around from ranch to ranch and the pictures have been selling like hot cakes."