The Last Straw Part 26

"Then you've got to act that way, ma'am," he replied in rebuke. "Your men have got to understand that you care whether school keeps or not ... or school ain't going to keep. Get that straight in your head."

He looked down at her a moment and his face changed, that little dancing light coming into his eyes at first; then he smiled openly.

"There's a word we use out here that I guess that they didn't use in the country you come from. It's Guts. They're necessary, ma'am."

He waited to see how she would take his a.s.sertion, but she only flushed slightly.

"If Hepburn don't show up soon, it might be wise to go prospectin', but it won't be best to think more about him than you do about the men he's after ... least, it won't be wise to show you do. I ain't advisin' you to be hard hearted. Just play the game; that's all."

He left her, with a deal to think about.

After all, there had been no occasion for concern because at noon, dust covered, on a gaunt horse, the foreman brought eight HC horses into the ranch.

The men hastened from the dinner table but Hepburn did not respond to their queries and congratulations. He bore himself with dignity and had an eye only for the completion of his task.

"Open the gate to the little corral, Two-Bits," he directed and, this done, urged the horses within.

Next he dragged his saddle from the big bay and rubbed the animal's back solicitously, let him roll and led him to the stable where he measured out a lavish feed of oats.

Meanwhile he had been surrounded by insistent questioners but he put them off rather abruptly; when he emerged from the stable, slapping his palms together to rid them of moist horse hair he stopped, hitched up his chaps and looked from face to face until his eyes met those of Tom Beck, who had been the last to approach. Their gazes clung, Hepburn's in challenge, now, and in the other's an expression which defied definition.

"I brought 'em in," the foreman said, still staring at Beck and bit savagely down on his tobacco. "Does _that_ mean anything?"

Beck smiled, as though it did not matter much, and said:

"For the present ... you win."

The others had not caught the significance of this exchange and when Dad moved forward their talk broke out afresh. The foreman grinned, pleased at the stir.

"Now, now! Don't swamp a waddie when he comes in after next to no sleep an' ridin' from h.e.l.l to breakfast!" he protested. "One at a time, one at a time."

"Tie to the story an' drag her past us," advised Curtis.

"It ain't much,"--with a modesty that was somewhat forced. "It wasn't nothin' but a case of goin' and gettin' the goods. Picked up the trail at the mouth of Twenty Mile early the mornin' after I set out and dragged right along on it. There was three of 'em, so I laid pretty low after noon. Then one cuts off towards the rail road and at night the others turned the horses into that old corral at the Ute's buckskin camp. I waited until they got to sleep, saw I couldn't sneak the stock away so,"--he spat and wiped his mustache, "I just naturally scattered their fire all ways!"

He laughed heartily.

"You'd ought to seen 'em coming out of their blankets! I dropped two shots in the coals and then blazed away at the first man up. Missed him but cut 'em off from their ridin' horses, got ours out of the corral while their saddle stock was stampedin' all over the brush and lit out for here, hittin' the breeze!

"That's about all. Stopped at Webb's last night and tried to figure out the men, but they're strangers, I guess."

There were comments and questions. Then Jimmy Oliver, looking at Dad's saddle, said:

"What happened to your horn, there?"

The foreman chuckled.

"One of 'em almost got me, boys, but a miss is as good as four or five days' ride, ain't it? Was circlin' for the horses, shootin' sideways at 'em when one of 'em put some lead in betwixt me and the horn, only quite close to the horn, it seems."

"Well, I'll be darned if you didn't have a close shave, and--"

Just then Jane Hunter rode up on her sorrel and when she saw her foreman she smiled in relief.

"You're back, and safely!" she said as she dismounted.

"With the bacon, ma'am."

"An' they almost got his bacon, Miss Hunter," Oliver said. "Look here!"

He indicated the damaged saddle and explained.

"They came that close to shooting you?" she asked Dad. Her voice was even enough but she could not conceal her dismay at his narrow escape.

"Why, Miss Hunter, that ain't nothin'! I was just tellin' the boys that a miss is as good as a long ride. I'm your foreman, they was your horses--"

"Such things have to be," she broke in, making an effort to be decisive and convincing, but her voice was not just steady and Beck, at least, knew how desperately she tried to play up to her part, to smother her impulse to show that she held life dearer than she did her property, to shrink from the hard facts of the hard life she faced.

"So long as I'm your foreman n.o.body's goin' to get away with your stock without a fight," Hepburn went on pompously, well satisfied with the impression he had made. "If necessary they'll come a lot closer to lettin' blessed suns.h.i.+ne in to my carca.s.s than this! There ain't a man of us who wouldn't do it for you an' gladly. If they're goin' to try to fleece you they've got us to reckon with first.

"Ain't that the truth, Tom?"

Beck did not reply but watched Jane Hunter as she stood looking down at the saddle with its tell tale scar.

The Reverend remained when the group broke up. He leaned low over the saddle and examined the leather binding about the horn. He fingered it, then lowered his face close against it. For a moment he held so and then straightened slowly. He walked toward the bunk house so absorbed that he talked to himself and as he pa.s.sed Beck he was muttering:

"... wolf in sheep's clothing ..."

"What's that?" asked Beck.

The Reverend stopped, surprised that he had been overheard. He looked at Tom and blinked and rattled the pens in his coat pocket; then looked about to see whether they were observed.

"Brother, when a man is honest does he go to great pains to make that honesty evident? Does he lie to make people believe he does not act a lie?"

"Not usually. What are you drivin' at, Reverend?"

The other stepped closer.

"If you'll examine that saddle horn, you'll discover that the shot which tore it was fired from a gun held so close that the powder burned the leather. More: that it was fired so recently that the smell of powder is still there.

"There is something rotten, brother, in a locality nearer than Denmark!"

Beck whistled softly to himself.

CHAPTER XII

A NEIGHBORLY CALL