The Quirt Part 8

"But you're fighting just the same, aren't you, dad? You're not letting them----"

"We're makin' out to live here--and we've been doin' it for twenty-five year," Brit told her, with a certain grim dignity. "We've still got a few head uh stock left--enough to live on. Playin' poker with a nickel, mebby--but we manage to ante, every hand so fur." His mind returned to the grisly thing Lorraine had seen.

"We can't run down the man that got Fred Thurman, supposin' he was killed, as you say. That's what the law is paid to do. If Lone Morgan told you not to talk about it, he told you right. He was talking for your own good. What about Al--the man from Whisper? You didn't tell _him_, did you?"

His tone, the suppressed violence of his manner, frightened Lorraine.

She moved farther away from him.

"I didn't tell him anything. He was curious but--I only said I knew him because he was wearing a brown hat, and the man that shot Mr. Thurman had a brown hat. I didn't say all that. I just mentioned the hat. And he said there were lots of brown hats in the country. He said he had traded for that one, just yesterday. He said his own hat was gray."

Brit stared at her, his jaw sagging a little, his eyes growing vacant with the thoughts he hid deep in his mind. He slumped down into his chair and leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his fingers clasped loosely. After a little he tilted his head and looked up at her.

"You better go to bed," he told her stolidly. "And if you're going to live at the Quirt, Raine, you'll have to learn to keep your mouth shut.

I ain't blaming you--but you told too much to Al Woodruff. Don't talk to him no more, if he comes here when I'm gone." He put out a hand, beckoning her to him, sorry for his harshness. Lorraine went to him and knelt beside him, slipping an arm around his neck while she hid her face on his shoulder.

"I won't be a nuisance, dad--really, I won't," she said. "I--I can shoot a gun. I never shot one with bullets in, but I could. And I learned to do lots of things when I was working in that play West I thought was real. It isn't like I thought. There's no picture stuff in the real West, I guess; they don't do things that way. But--what I want you to know is that if they're fighting you they'll have to fight me, too.

"I don't mean movie stuff, honestly I don't. I'm in this thing now, and you'll have to count me, same as you count Jim and Sorry. Won't you please feel that I'm one more in the game, dad, and not just another responsibility? I'll herd cattle, or do whatever there is to do. And I'll keep my mouth shut, too. I can't stay here, day after day, doing nothing but sweep and dust two rooms and fry potatoes and bacon for you at night. Dad, I'll go _crazy_ if you don't let me into your life!

"Dad, if you knew the stunts I've done in the last three years! It was make-believe West, but I learned things just the same." She kissed him on the unshaven cheek nearest her,--and thought of the kisses she had breathed upon the cheeks of story fathers with due care for the make-up on her lips. Just because this was real, she kissed him again with the frank vigor of a child.

"Dad," she said wheedlingly, "I think you might scare up something that I can really ride. Yellowjacket is safe, but--but you have real _live_ horses on the ranch, haven't you? You must _not_ go judging me by the palms and the bay windows of the Casa Grande. That's where I've slept, the last few years when I wasn't off on location--but it's just as sensible to think I don't know anything else, as it would be for me to think you can't do anything but skim milk and fry bacon and make sour-dough bread, just because I've seen you do it!"

Brit laughed and patted her awkwardly on the back. "If you was a boy, I'd set you up as a lawyer," he said with an attempt at playfulness. "I kinda thought you could ride. I seen how you piled onto old Yellowjacket and the way you held your reins. It runs in the blood, I guess. I'll see what I can do in the way of a horse. Ole Yellowjacket used to be a real rim-rider, but he's gitting old; gitting old--same as me."

"You're not! You're just letting yourself _feel_ old. And am I one of the outfit, dad?"

"I guess so--only there ain't going to be any of this h.e.l.l-whoopin'

stuff, Raine. You can't travel these trails at a long lope with yore hair flyin' out behind and--and all that d.a.m.n foolishness. I've saw 'em in the movin' pitchers----"

Lorraine blushed, and was thankful that her dad had not watched her work in that serial. For that matter, she hoped that Lone Morgan would never stray into a movie where any of her pictures were being shown.

"I'm serious, dad. I don't want to make a show of myself. But if you'll feel that I can be a help instead of a handicap, that's what I want. And if it comes to fighting----"

Brit pushed her from him impatiently. "There yuh go--fight--fight--and I told yuh there ain't any fighting going on. Nothing more'n a fight to hang on and make a living. That means straight, hard work and mindin'

your own business. If you want to help at that----"

"I do," said Raine quietly, getting to her feet. Her legacy of stubbornness set her lips firmly together. "That's exactly what I mean.

Good night, dad."

Brit answered her noncommittally, apparently sunk already in his own musings. But his lips drew in to suppress a smile when he saw, from the corner of his eyes, that Lorraine was winding the alarm on the cheap kitchen clock, and that she set the hand carefully and took the clock with her to bed.

CHAPTER NINE

THE EVIL EYE OF THE SAWTOOTH

Oppression is a growth that flourishes best in the soil of opportunity.

It seldom springs into full power at once. The Sawtooth Cattle Company had begun much as its neighbors had begun: with a tract of land, cattle, and the ambition for prospering. Senator Warfield had then been plain Bill Warfield, manager of the outfit, who rode with his men and saw how his herds increased,--saw too how they might increase faster under certain conditions. At the outset he was not, perhaps, more unscrupulous than some of his neighbors. True, if a homesteader left his claim for a longer time than the law allowed him, Bill Warfield would choose one of his own men to file a contest on that claim. The man's wages would be paid. Witnesses were never lacking to swear to the improvements he had made, and after the patent had been granted the homesteader (for the contestant always won, in that country) the Sawtooth, would pay him for the land. Frequently a Sawtooth man would file upon land before any other man had claimed it. Sometimes a Sawtooth man would purchase a relinquishment from some poor devil of a claim-holder who seemed always to have bad luck, and so became discouraged and ready to sell. An intelligent man like Bill Warfield could acquire much land in this manner, give him time enough.

In much the same manner his herds increased. He bought out small ranchers who were crowded to the selling point in one way or another.

They would find themselves fenced off from water, the Sawtooth having acquired the water rights to creek or spring. Or they would be hemmed in with fenced fields and would find it next to impossible to make use of the law which gave them the right to "condemn" a road through. They would not be openly a.s.sailed,--Bill Warfield was an intelligent man. A dozen brands were recorded in the name of the Sawtooth Cattle Company, and if a small rancher found his calf crop shorter than it should be, he might think as he pleased, but he would have no tangible proof that his calves wore a Sawtooth brand.

Inevitably it became necessary now and then to stop a mouth that was ready to speak unwelcome truths. But if a Sawtooth man were known to have committed violence, the Sawtooth itself was the first to put the sheriff on his trail. If the man successfully dodged the sheriff and made his way to parts unknown, the Sawtooth could shrug its shoulders and wash its hands of him.

Then whispers were heard that the Sawtooth had on its pay roll men who were paid to kill and to leave no trace. So many heedless ones crossed the Sawtooth's path to riches! Fred Thurman had been one; a "bull-headed cuss" who had the temerity to fight back when the Sawtooth calmly laid claim to the first water rights to Granite Creek, having bought it, they said, with the placer claim of an old miner who had prospected along the headwaters of Granite at the base of Bear Top.

By that time the Sawtooth had grown to a power no poor man could hope to defeat. Bill Warfield was Senator Warfield, and Senator Warfield was a power in the political world that immediately surrounded him. Since his neighboring ranchmen had not been able to prevent his steady climbing to the position he now held, they had small hope of pulling him down. Brit was right. They did well to hang on and continue living in that country.

An open killing, one that would attract the attention of the outside world, might be avenged. The man who committed the crime might be punished,--if public opinion were sufficiently ma.s.sed against him. In that case Senator Warfield would cry loudest for justice. But it would take a stronger man than the country held to raise the question of Fred Thurman's death and take even the first steps toward proving it a murder.

"It ain't that they can _do_ anything, Mr. Warfield," the man from Whisper said guardedly, urging his horse close to the machine that stood in the trail from Echo. It was broad day--a sun-scorched day to boot--and Senator Warfield perspired behind the wheel of his car. "It's the talk they may get started."

"What have they said? The girl was at the ranch for several days. She didn't talk there, or Hawkins would have told me."

"She was sick. I saw her the other day at the Quirt, and she more'n half recognized me. h.e.l.l! How'd _I_ know she was in there among them rocks?

Everybody that was apt to be riding through was accounted for, and I knew there wasn't any one coming horseback or with a rig. My hearing's pretty good."

Warfield moved the spark lever up and down on the wheel while he thought. "Well," he said carefully at last, "if you're falling down in your work, what are you whining about it to me for? What do you want?"

Al moistened his lips with his tongue. "I want to know how far I can go.

It's been hands off the Quirt, up to now. And the Quirt's beginning to think it can get away with most anything. They've throwed a fence across the pa.s.s through from Sugar Spring to Whisper. That sends us away around by Three Creek. You can't trail stock across Granite Ridge, nor them lava ledges. If it's going to be hands off, I want to know it. There's other places I'd rather live in, if the Quirt's going to raise talk about Fred Thurman."

Senator Warfield pulled at his collar and tie as if they choked him.

"The Quirt has made no trouble," he said. "Of course, if they begin throwing fences across our stock trails and peddling gossip, that is another story. I expect you to protect our interests, of course. And I have never made a practice of dictating to you. In this case"--he sent a sharp glance at Al--"it seems to me your interests are involved more than ours. As to Fred Thurman, I don't know anything about it. I was not here when he died, and I have never seen this girl of Brit's who seems to worry you. She doesn't interest me, one way or the other."

"She seems to interest Bob a whole lot," Al said maliciously. "He rode over to see her yesterday. She wasn't home, though."

Senator Warfield seemed unmoved by this bit of news, wherefore Al returned to the main issue.

"Do I get a free hand, or don't I?" he insisted. "They can't be let peddle talk--not if I stay around here."

Senator Warfield considered the matter.

"The girl's got the only line on me," Al went on. "The inquest was as clean as I ever saw. Everything all straight--and then, here she comes up----"

"If you know how to stop a woman's mouth, Al, you can make a million a month telling other men." Senator Warfield smiled at him. Then he leaned across the front seat and added impressively, "Bear one thing in mind, Al. The Sawtooth cannot permit itself to become involved in any scandal, nor in any killing cases. We're just at the most crucial point with our reclamation project, over here on the flat. The legislature is willing to make an appropriation for the building of the ca.n.a.l, and in two or three months at the latest we should begin selling agricultural tracts to the public. The State will also throw open the land it had withdrawn from settlement, pending the floating of this ca.n.a.l project. More than ever the integrity of the Sawtooth Cattle Company must be preserved, since it has come out openly as a backer of the irrigation company.

Nothing--_nothing_ must be permitted to stand in the way."

He removed his thin driving cap and wiped his perspiring forehead. "I'm sorry this all happened--as it has turned out," he said, with real regret in his tone. "But since it did happen, I must rely upon you to--to--er----"

"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.