Sawtooth Ranch Part 9

"I guess I understand," Al grinned sardonically. "I just wanted you to know how things is building up. The Quirt's kinda overreached itself.

I didn't want you comin' back on me for trying to keep their feet outa the trough. I want you to know things is pretty d.a.m.n ticklish right now, and it's going to take careful steppin'."

"Well, don't let your foot slip, Al," Senator Warfield warned him.

"The Sawtooth would hate to lose you; you're a good man."

"Oh, I get yuh," Al retorted. "My foot ain't going to slip---- If it did, the Sawtooth would be the first to pile onto my back!" The last sentence was not meant for the senator's ears. Al had backed his horse, and Senator Warfield was stepping on the starter. But it would not have mattered greatly if he had heard, for this was a point quite thoroughly understood by them both.

The Warfield car went on, lurching over the inequalities of the narrow road. Al shook his horse into a shambling trot, picking his way carelessly through the scattered sage.

His horse travelled easily, now and then lifting a foot high to avoid rock or exposed root, or swerving sharply around obstacles too high to step over. Al very seldom travelled along the beaten trails, though there was nothing to deter him now save an inherent tendency toward secretiveness of his motives, destinations and whereabouts. If the country was open, you would see Al Woodruff riding at some distance from the trail--or you would not see him at all, if there were gullies in which he could conceal himself. He was always "line-riding," or hunting stray stock--horses, usually--or striking across to some line-camp of the Sawtooth on business which he was perfectly willing to state.

But you will long ago have guessed that he was the evil eye of the Sawtooth Company. He took no orders save such general ones as Senator Warfield had just given him. He gave none. Whatever he did he did alone, and he took no man into his confidence. It is more than probable that Senator Warfield would never have known to a certainty that Al was responsible for Thurman's death, if Al had not been worried over the Quirt's possible knowledge of the crime and anxious to know just how far his power might go.

Ostensibly he was in charge of the camp at Whisper, a place far enough off the beaten trails to free him from chance visitors. The Sawtooth kept many such camps occupied by men whose duty it was to look after the Sawtooth cattle that grazed near; to see that stock did not "bog down" in the tricky sand of the adjacent water holes and die before help came, and to fend off any encroachments of the smaller cattle owners--though these were growing fewer year by year, thanks to the weeding-out policy of the Sawtooth and the cunning activities of such as Al Woodruff.

It may sound strange to say that the Sawtooth country had not had a real "killing" for years, though accidental deaths had been rather frequent. One man, for instance, had fallen over a ledge and broken his neck, presumably while drunk. Another had bought a few sticks of dynamite to open up a spring on his ranch, and at the inquest which followed the jury had returned a verdict of "death caused by being blown up by the accidental discharge of dynamite." A sheepman was struck by lightning, according to the coroner, and his widow had been glad to sell ranch and sheep very cheaply to the Sawtooth and return to her relatives in Montana. The Sawtooth had s.h.i.+pped the sheep within a month and turned the ranch into another line-camp.

You will see that Senator Warfield had every reason to be sincere when he called Al Woodruff a good man; good for the Sawtooth interests, that means. You will also see that Brit Hunter had reasons for believing that the business of ranching in the Sawtooth country might be cla.s.sed as extra hazardous, and for saying that it took nerve just to hang on.

That is why Al rode oblivious to his surroundings, meditating no doubt upon the best means of preserving the integrity of the Sawtooth and at the same time soothing effectively the ticklishness of the situation of which he had complained. It was his business to find the best means.

It was for just such work that the Sawtooth paid him--secretly, to be sure--better wages than the foreman, Hawkins, received. Al was conscientious and did his best to earn his wages; not because he particularly loved killing and spying as a sport, but because the Sawtooth had bought his loyalty for a price, and so long as he felt that he was getting a square deal from them, he would turn his hand against any man that stood in their way. He was a Sawtooth man, and he fought the enemies of the Sawtooth as matter-of-factly as a soldier will fight for his country. To his unimaginative mind there was sufficient justification in that att.i.tude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They'd all have to die some day, anyway.

CHAPTER X

ANOTHER SAWTOOTH "ACCIDENT"

Frank Johnson rose from the breakfast table, shaved a splinter off the edge of the water bench for a toothpick and sharpened it carefully while he looked at Brit.

"You goin' after them posts, or shall I?" he inquired glumly, which, by the way, was his normal tone. "Jim and Sorry oughta git the post holes all dug to-day. One erf us better take a look through that young stock in the lower field, too, and see if there's any more sign uh blackleg.

Which you ruther do?"

Brit tilted his chair backward so that he could reach the coffeepot on the stove hearth. "I'll haul down the posts," he decided carelessly.

"They're easy loaded, and I guess my back's as good as yourn."

"All you got to do is skid 'em down off'n the bank onto the wagon,"

Frank said. "I wisht you'd go on up where we cut them last ones and git my sweater, Brit. I musta left it hanging on a bush right close to where I was workin'."

Brit's grunt signified a.s.sent, and Frank went out. Jim and Sorry, the two unpicturesque cowboys of whom Lorraine had complained to the cat, had already departed with pick and shovel to their unromantic task of digging post holes. Each carried a most unattractive lunch tied in a flour sack behind the cantle of his saddle. Lorraine had done her conscientious best, but with lumpy, sourdough bread, cold bacon and currant jelly of that kind which is packed in wooden kegs, one can't do much with a cold lunch. Lorraine wondered how much worse it would look after it had been tied on the saddle for half a day; wondered too what those two silent ones got out of life--what they looked forward to, what was their final goal. For that matter she frequently wondered what there was in life for any of them, shut into that deadly monotony of sagebrush and rocks interspersed with little, gra.s.sy meadows where the cattle fed listlessly.

Even the sinister undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could not whip her emotions into feeling that she was doing anything more than live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch of cattle, but it had been nothing more than a hot, thirsty, dull ride, with a wind that blew her hat off in spite of pins and tied veil, and with a companion who spoke only when he was spoken to and then as briefly as possible.

Her father would not talk again as he had talked that night. She had tried to make him tell her more about the Sawtooth and had gotten nothing out of him. The man from Whisper, whom Brit had spoken of as Al, had not returned. Nor had the promised saddle horse materialised.

The boys were too busy to run in any horses, her father had told her shortly when she reminded him of his promise. When the fence was done, maybe he could rustle her another horse--and then he had added that he didn't see what ailed Yellowjacket, for all the riding she was likely to do.

"Straight hard work and minding your own business," her father had said, and it seemed to Lorraine after three or four days of it that he had summed up the life of a cattleman's daughter in a masterly manner which ought to be recorded among Famous Sayings like "War is h.e.l.l" and "Don't give up the s.h.i.+p."

On this particular morning Lorraine's spirits were at their lowest ebb.

If it were not for the new stepfather, she would return to the Casa Grande, she told herself disgustedly. And if it were not for the belief among all her acquaintances that she was queening it over the cattle-king's vast domain, she would return and find work again in motion pictures. But she could not bring herself to the point of facing the curiosity and the petty gossip of the studios. She would be expected to explain satisfactorily why she had left the real West for the mimic West of Hollywood. She did not acknowledge to herself that she also could not face the admission of failure to carry out what she had begun.

She had told her dad that she wanted to fight with him, even though "fighting" in this case meant was.h.i.+ng the coa.r.s.e clothing of her father and Frank, scrubbing the rough, warped boards of the cabin floor, and frying ranch-cured bacon for every meal, and in making b.u.t.ter to sell, and counting the eggs every night and being careful to use only the cracked ones for cooking.

She hated every detail of this crude housekeeping, from the chipped enamel dishpan to the broom that was all one-sided, and the pillow slips which were nothing more nor less than sugar sacks. She hated it even more than she had hated the Casa Grande and her mother's frowsy mentality. But because she could see that she made life a little more comfortable for her dad, because she felt that he needed her, she would stay and a.s.sure herself over and over that she was staying merely because she was too proud to go back to the old life and own the West a failure.

She was sweeping the doorstep with the one-sided broom when Brit drove out through the gate and up the trail which she knew led eventually to Sugar Spring. The horses, sleek in their new hair and skittish with the change from hay to new gra.s.s, danced over the rough ground so that the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would later do duty as a brake on the long grade down from timber line on the side of Spirit Canyon, rattled and banged over the rocks with the clatter that could be heard for half a mile. Lorraine looked after her father enviously. If she were a boy she would be riding on that sack of hay tied to the "hounds" for a seat. But, being a girl, it had never occurred to Brit that she might like to go--might even be useful to him on the trip.

"I suppose if I told dad I could drive that team as well as he can, he'd just look at me and think I was crazy," she thought resentfully and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had approached too closely. "If I'd asked him to let me go along he'd have made some excuse--oh, I'm beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman's place is in the house--preferably the kitchen. And here I've thought all my life that cowgirls did nothing but ride around and warn people about stage holdups and everything! I'd just like to know how a girl would ever have a chance to know what was going on in the country, unless she heard the men talking while she poured their coffee. Only this bunch don't talk at all. They just gobble and go."

She went in then and shut the door with a slam. Up on the ridge Al Woodruff lowered his small binocular and eased away from the spot where he had been crouching behind a bush. Every one on the Quirt ranch was accounted for. As well as if he had sat at their breakfast table Al knew where each man's work would take him that day. As for the girl, she was safe at the ranch for the day, probably. If she did take a ride later on, it would probably be up the ridge between the Quirt and Thurman's ranch, and sit for an hour or so just looking. That ride was beginning to be a habit of hers, Al observed, so that he considered her accounted for also.

He made his way along the side hill to where his horse was tied to a bush, mounted and rode away with his mind pretty much at ease. Much more at ease than it would have been had he read what was in Lorraine's mind when she slammed that door.

Up above Sugar Spring was timber. By applying to the nearest Forest Supervisor a certain amount could be had for ranch improvements upon paying a small sum for the "stumpage." The Quirt had permission to cut posts for their new fence which Al Woodruff had reported to his boss.

As he drove up the trail, which was in places barely pa.s.sable for a wagon, Brit was thinking of that fence. The Sawtooth would object to it, he knew, since it cut off one of their stock trails and sent them around through rougher country. Just what form their objection would take, Brit did not know. Deep in his intrepid soul he hoped that the Sawtooth would at last show its hand openly. He had liked Fred Thurman, and what Lorraine had told him went much deeper than she knew.

He wanted to bring them into the open where he could fight with some show of winning.

"I'll git Bill Warfield yet--and git him right," was the gist of his musings. "He's bound to show his head, give him time enough. Him and his killers can't always keep under cover. Let 'em come at me about that fence! It's on my land--the Quirt's got a right to fence every foot of land that belong to 'em."

All the way over the ridge and across the flat and up the steep, narrow road along the edge of Spirit Canyon, Brit dwelt upon the probable moves of the Sawtooth. They would wait, he thought, until the fence was completed and they had made a trail around through the lava rocks.

They would not risk any move at present; they would wait and tacitly accept the fence, or pretend to accept it, as a natural inconvenience.

But Brit did not deceive himself that they would remain pa.s.sive. That it had been "hands off the Quirt" he did not know, but attributed the Quirt's immunity to careful habits and the fact that they had never come to the point where their interests actually clashed with the Sawtooth.

It never occurred to him therefore that he was slated for an accident that day if the details could be conveniently arranged.

It was a long trail to Sugar Spring, and from there up Spirit Canyon the climb was so tedious and steep that Brit took a full hour for the trip, resting the team often because they were soft from the new gra.s.s diet and sweated easily. They lost none of their spirit, however, and when the road was steepest nagged at each other with head-shakings and bared teeth, and ducked against each other in pretended fright at every unusual rock or bush.

At the top he was forced to drive a full half mile beyond the piled posts to a flat large enough to turn around. All this took time, especially since Caroline, the brown mare, would rather travel ten miles straight ahead than go backward ten feet. Brit was obliged to "take it out of her" with the rein ends and his full repertoire of opprobrious epithets before he could cramp the wagon and head them down the trail again.

At the post pile he unhitched the team for safety's sake and tied them to trees, where he fed them a little grain in nose bags. He was absorbed now in his work and thought no more about the Sawtooth. He fastened the log chain to the rear wheels to brake the wagon on the long grade down the canyon, loaded the wagon with posts, bound them fast with a lighter chain he had brought for the purpose, ate his own lunch and decided that, since he had made fair time and would arrive home too early to do the ch.o.r.es and too late to start any other job, he would cruise farther up the mountain side and see what was the prospect of getting out logs enough for an addition to the cabin.

Now that Raine was going to live with him, two rooms were not enough.

Brit wanted to make her as happy as he could, in his limited fas.h.i.+on.

He had for some days been planning a "settin' room and bedroom" for her. She would be having beaux after awhile when she got acquainted, he supposed. He could not deny her the privilege; she was young and she was, in Brit's opinion, the best looking girl he had ever seen, not even excepting Minnie, her mother. But he hoped she wouldn't go off and get married the first thing she did,--and one good way to prevent that, he reasoned, was to make her comfortable with him. He had noticed how pleased she was that their cabin was of logs. She had even remarked that she could not understand how a rancher would ever want to build a board shack if there was any timber to be had. Well, timber was to be had, and she should have her log house, though the hauling was not going to be any suns.h.i.+ne, in Brit's opinion. With his axe he walked through the timber, craning upward for straight tree trunks and lightly blazing the ones he would want, the occasional axe strokes sounding distinctly in the quiet air.

Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade, following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her journey,--for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.

She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees, and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out from under the load of posts and climbed the slope farther on. She was on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.

She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her back and kicked viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a juniper thicket and sat down looking very perplexed and very permanently placed there. Lorraine stepped off on the uphill side of him, thanked her lucky stars she had not broken a leg, and tried to rea.s.sure Yellowjacket and to persuade him that no real harm had been done him. Straightway she discovered that Yellowjacket had a mind of his own and that a pessimistic mind. He refused to scramble back into the trail, preferring to sit where he was, or since Lorraine made that too uncomfortable, to stand where he had been sitting. Yellowjacket, I may explain, owned a Roman nose, a pendulous lower lip and drooping eyelids. Those who know horses will understand.

By the time Lorraine had bullied and cajoled him into making a somewhat circuitous route to the road, where he finally appeared some distance above the point of his descent, Brit was there, hitching the team to the wagon.

"What yuh doing up there?" he wanted to know, looking up with some astonishment.

Lorraine furnished him with details and her opinion of both Caroline and Yellowjacket. "I simply refuse to ride this comedy animal another mile," she declared with some heat. "I'll drive the team and you can ride him home, or he can be tied on behind the wagon."