The Free Range Part 31

"It is a long worm that has no turning," someone has remarked, and Caldwell had reached his length. The pure cruelty of Stelton's conduct revolted him, and now, sure that Stelton could do him no harm because of his tied hands, he took a vicious dig at his former leader.

"He wanted to marry you himself," he said, "and offered me a hundred dollars to write you that letter."

Stelton sat for a moment open-mouthed at the temerity of his subordinate and then leaped up with a roar like the bellow of a bull.

Juliet pounded hastily on the floor, and the sheepmen appeared just as Stelton fetched Caldwell a kick that sent him half-way across the room.

"Take them both away," ordered the girl, suddenly feeling faint and ill after the mental and physical struggle of the interview.

When the two had gone she sank back in her chair and faced the awful facts that these men had given her.

"Bud! Bud! My lover!" she cried brokenly to herself. "I want you, I need you now to tell me it is all a lie!"

She remained for several minutes sunk in a kind of torpor. Then, as though she had suddenly arrived at some great decision, she rose slowly, but determinedly, and left the room. Finding one of the men, she ordered her horse saddled and retired to change her clothes.

Her mother came in and asked if she were going riding alone.

"Yes, mother," replied the girl quietly. "I am going to Bud and find out the truth about him. I cannot live like this any longer. I shall go crazy or kill myself. But I promise you this, that I will find father and bring him home to you."

The eyes of Martha Bissell clouded with long-suppressed tears.

"G.o.d bless you, Juliet," she said. "I can't live without him any longer."

CHAPTER XXII

THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

It was noon and the great column of parched animals and hot, dusty men had come to a halt under their alkali cloud beside a little stream. The foot-weary sheep and cattle, without the usual preliminaries, lay down where they stood, relieved for once from the incessant nipping of the dogs and proddings of the men.

Sims, walking among the sheep with down-drawn brows, noted their condition, how gaunt they were, how dirty and weary, and shook his head in commiseration. Had he but known it he was as gaunt and worn-looking as the weakest of them. Returning to where Larkin had dropped in the shade of the cook-wagon, he said:

"We've got to make it to-night if the Old Boy himself is in the way."

Larkin realized the seriousness of the situation. Water and feed were plentiful, but owing to the hurry of the drive the animals were starving on their feet. Less than five miles away was the Gray Bull River, the goal of their march. Once across that and they would be out of the Bar T range and free to continue north, for the next ranch-owner had gone in for sheep himself (one of the first to see the handwriting on the wall), and had gladly granted Larkin's flocks a pa.s.sage across his range.

"What I can't understand is where all those cowpunchers are," continued Sims. "I'm plenty sure they wouldn't let us through if we was within a foot of the river, they're that cussed."

He had hardly got the words out of his mouth when from ahead of the herd appeared a horseman at a hard gallop, quirting his pony at every few jumps.

Pulling the animal back on its haunches at the cook-wagon, the rider vaulted out of the saddle and was blurting out his story almost before he had touched the ground.

"Up ahead there!" he gasped. "Cow-punchers! Looks like a hundred of 'em. I seen 'em from a b.u.t.te. I 'low they've dug fifty pits and they've stuck sharp stakes into the ground pointed this way. They're ready fer us, an'

don't yuh ferget it."

Sims and Larkin looked at each other without speaking. Now it was plain that the punchers had had plenty of reason for not molesting them; they had been preparing a surprise.

"An' that ain't all, boss," went on the rider. "I took a slant through my gla.s.ses, and what d'yuh suppose I seen? There, as big as life, was old Beef Bissell an' Red Tarken, and a lot more o' them cowmen. How they ever got there I dunno, but it's worth figurin' out of a cold winter's evenin'."

This information came as a knockdown. The two men questioned their informant closely, unable to credit their ears, but the man described the ranch-owners so accurately that there was no room left for doubt.

"Then what's become o' Jimmie Welsh and his nine men?" asked Sims wonderingly.

"Mebbe they're captured; but I couldn't see anythin' of 'em."

"Nope," said Bud slowly, "they aren't captured. They're dead. I know Jimmie and his men, and I picked them for that job because I knew how they would act. Poor boys! If I get through here alive I'll put a monument where they died."

He ceased speaking, and a sudden silence descended on all the company, for the other men had been listening to this report. Each man's thoughts in that one instant were with Jimmie and his nine men in their last extremity at Welsh's b.u.t.te, although the site of the tragedy was as yet unknown to them.

"What about the lay of the country?" Sims finally asked of the scout.

"Dead ahead is the big ford, but that is what the punchers have protected.

I could see that either up or down from the ford the water's deep, because there ain't no bottoms there--the bank's right on top of the river."

"Where is the next nearest ford?"

"Ten miles northeast, this season of the year," was the reply.

"Thunderation, boss, what'll we do?" inquired Sims petulantly.

"Call Lester, and we three will talk it over," said Bud, a half-formed plan already in his mind.

Presently the three were alone and discussing the situation. Bud proposed his scheme and outlined it clearly. For perhaps a quarter of an hour he talked, interrupted by the eager, enthusiastic exclamations of Lester.

When he had finished, Sims lay back on his two elbows and regarded his employer.

"If yuh keep on this-a-way, boss," he remarked, "I allow we might let yuh herd a few lambs next spring, seein' yuh _will_ learn the sheep business."

Bud grinned at the other's compliment and noted Lester's enthusiasm. Then they plunged into the details.

"Better ride your horse around by way of the ford ten miles away," were the instructions as Lester saddled up. "Then you can come at 'em by the rear."

No word of young Larkin's intention had pa.s.sed about the camp, and the sheepmen watched with considerable wonder the departure of the boy, placing it to Bud's fear of his receiving an injury in the trouble that was almost surely bound to happen that night.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, or thereabouts, Lester, with his outfit strapped on his dejected horse, rode slowly away from the sheepmen's camp.

Meanwhile, behind the various defenses that had been erected against the coming of Bud Larkin and his animals, the cowmen and their punchers were making ready for their night's battle. The chief actor in these fevered preparations was Beef Bissell, whose hatred of Larkin was something to frighten babies with at night.

Since the gallant battle at Welsh's b.u.t.te, Bissell had changed some of his ideas regarding sheepmen in general; but he had changed none regarding Larkin in particular. It was now a matter of pride and determination, almost of oath with him, to fight this matter of the range to the finish.

The other cowmen stood by him out of principle and because of the need of a unified stand by men of their a.s.sociation.

So here in the last ditch, ready to sacrifice men, animals, and money, wrong and knowing it, these beef barons prepared to dispute the last inch of their territory. It should never be said, they had sworn, that sheep had crossed the cattle-range of any of them. On this elevating platform they proposed to make their fight.

To be perfectly just to all concerned, it is only right to add that all who did not choose to remain, either owners or punchers, were perfectly free to withdraw, but in doing so they forfeited their members.h.i.+p in the a.s.sociation. But one man had taken advantage of this--Billy Speaker.

"If there's any damage to be done, those sheep have already done it. Why don't yuh let 'em through, yuh ol' fat-head?" said Speaker to Bissell as, with his cowboys, he threw his leg over the saddle and started homeward.