The Free Range Part 15

Bissell shrugged his shoulders. He still had the upper-hand of the situation, and his temper, in that case, was not hard to control.

"I allow I can look out for myself," he said.

"No doubt, but you had better look out for me," was the retort.

"I reckon I'll manage," remarked Bissell contemptuously. "But all this isn't what I wanted to ask you. I'd be some pleased if you'd tell me about them rustlers you were with."

"Why do you want to know about them?" countered Bud.

"Because they're ruinin' the cattle business. I dunno how many head they run off last year, but I do know that profits were cut in half by 'em. You was with 'em long enough to know some of 'em again, I allow?"

"Yes. I would know nearly all of them. What's left of three is out there near the cottonwoods along Little River, but I don't believe there's enough to bury."

"How is that?" inquired Bissell, who had evidently not heard of Larkin's narrow escape from death at the rustler's hands.

Bud told him briefly.

"You sh.o.r.e were lucky," remarked the cowman with a Westerner's appreciation of the situation. "Now, I'm the head of the cattlemen's a.s.sociation in this part of the State, and o' course it's our business to clear the country of those devils. You're just the man we want, because you've seen 'em and know who they are. You tell me what yuh know and there'll be the biggest hangin' bee this State ever seen."

As has been said, Bud Larkin had the legitimate owner's hatred of these thieves who preyed on the work of honest men, and had sworn to help run them out of the country as soon as his own business was finished. Now, in the flash of an eye he saw where he could turn the knowledge he had gained to good account.

"You have rather queer ideas of me, Mr. Bissell," he said. "First, you fight me until I am nearly ruined, then you expect I will turn around and help you just as though nothing had happened."

"But in this," cried the cowman, "you've got to help us. This is all outside of a war between the cows and the sheep. This is a matter of right and justice."

"So is the matter of my sheep. The range is free and you won't let me use it. Do you call that right or just, either one?"

Bissell choked on his own reply, and grew red with anger. Suddenly, without exactly knowing how, the tables had been turned on him. Now, instead of being the mighty baron with the high hand, he was the seeker for help, and this despised sheepman held the trump cards.

Furthermore, Larkin's direct question was capable of a damaging reply.

Bissell sought desperately for a means of escape from the trap in which he found himself.

"Do you mean, young feller, that you won't tell me about them rustlers?"

"That's about it. But I might on one condition."

"What's that?"

"That your cattlemen's a.s.sociation give the rest of my sheep undisturbed pa.s.sage north across the range to Montana."

"By gos.h.!.+" yelled the cowman, beside himself, springing out of his chair and glaring at the other with clenched hands on his hips. "That's your game, is it? Yuh pull our teeth an' then offer us grub, eh? Why, tan my hide--" he gagged with wrath and stood speechless, a picture of impotent fury.

Larkin laughed quietly.

"The shoe's on the other foot, but it doesn't seem to feel any too good,"

he sneered. "Better be reasonable now, hadn't you?"

"Reasonable? Sure, I'll be reasonable!" cried the other vindictively, almost suffocated with his emotion. "Let me ask yuh something. Do you absolutely refuse to tell about them rustlers if I don't do as you want and let your sheep through?"

"Well, not exactly," replied Bud, grinning. "I'll tell you this: they're going to run off a hundred head or so of your stock yet this week for the railroad camps up the State. I think it's fair to give you warning beforehand."

"Darn you and your warning! What I want is the names and descriptions of them men. Will yuh give 'em to me?"

"No, not unless we can strike a bargain. You talk about right and justice.

Now let's see a little of it," answered Larkin.

"All right, young feller, you've said your say. Now listen to me. I'm a deputy sheriff in this county"--he ripped open his vest and showed the badge pinned to the inside lining--"an' I hereby arrest yuh for bein' a party to them rustlers. Yer either a criminal or yuh ain't, accordin' to our notions out here, an' if yuh wun't help us catch yer friends there ain't nothin' more to be said. Now roll that into a cigarette an' eat it alive if yuh want to."

He glared defiantly down on Larkin, whose brows had drawn together as he went into executive session with himself.

In five seconds the situation between these men was once more reversed. It was not that Larkin had overreached himself; he simply had encountered a circ.u.mstance of which he was unaware. The possibility of Bissell being a deputy sheriff had never occurred to him, and now he sat balked and perplexed, balancing his chances on either hand.

It was not in the man to yield supinely to this new danger. He could not even think of the possibility without shame. He was right, he told himself over and over again, and, listen as he would, he could detect no contradictory reply from the still, small voice we are all credited with possessing.

His mission in life was to get his sheep through. In that circ.u.mstance the rustlers were unexpected allies and he hoped they would put burs under the tails of every steer on the range and drive them to the Gulf of Mexico.

Once his merinos and angoras were safe across the line Bud would gladly return and help round them up.

The idea that he, clipped, helpless, and harmless as he was, should now turn in and a.s.sist his despoilers to better their own fortunes was so maddening that he grinned with fury as he thought of it. No, the thing was impossible!

Bissell had not changed his menacing position during all of Bud Larkin's ponderings and was waiting patiently for some outbreak from his victim.

But at last he could stand it no more.

"Well," he snarled, "say something! What's your answer?"

"That bargain goes as she stands," said Bud, after a moment's thought.

"You help me and I'll help you. Otherwise you won't get a word out of me, and you can do whatever you like."

"You're under arrest," snapped Bissell. "Give me your gun!" and he covered Bud with a single swift motion of his hand.

The younger man did as commanded and rose.

"Now go into that room; you're a prisoner," ordered Bissell.

CHAPTER XII

JULIET a.s.sERTS HERSELF

Now that the owner of the Bar T ranch had succeeded again in a match of wits with Larkin, he put sheep out of his mind and turned his attention to the more-immediate danger of rustlers. It had been a matter of a couple of years since the last determined attempt of the cowmen to oust these poachers by force of arms, and Bissell thought that the time was ripe for another and, if possible, final expedition.

With Larkin in his power, he had no doubt that the necessary information could be procured from him in one way or another, and, after talking matters over with Stelton, dispatched cowboys at top speed to the ranches in his district, asking that the owners and as many men as they could spare should come at once to a conference at the Bar T.

Having got them there, it was his intention to sweat Larkin for names and descriptions, and then let him go. Should the sheepman refuse all information, then his case could be acted upon by the members of the a.s.sociation without any further delay.

All these plans Larkin learned from Juliet and her mother, who looked after most of his wants. The latter, good woman, quite fl.u.s.tered at having what she termed a "regular boarder," became rather fond of the patient young man from the East who never failed to listen attentively to her narrative of the famous trip to St. Paul.