The Last Straw Part 51

"Turnin' in."

Riley settled back in his blankets and muttered:

"It's funny ... d.a.m.ned funny, Jim."

"He's like a man that's _through_. Didn't appear to have any real interest in the work today, seems like he don't give a d.a.m.n. I don't understand it."

"If it wasn't Tom Beck I'd say that they'd got his goat. It's hard to believe of him."

"It can't be that." Oliver was loyal. "It's somethin' else, but it seems like somethin' worse than a man bein' sick of his job. Still, he said twice today that he wouldn't be here long an' the way he said _long_ made me think it'd be a mighty short time."

Silence for a time.

"Mebby," said Riley, "it's her."

"Mebby you're right," the other replied. "Tom didn't used to give a d.a.m.n whether school kept or not. Then, after she come he changed, got to takin' things seriously and anybody could see he was gone on her.

Now....

"Well, he ain't afraid of men. There ain't bad men enough in this country to drive Tom Beck out.... But women.... They'll put a crimp in th' best of us!"

It was the following evening that news of the destruction of Cathedral Tank was brought to Tom Beck. Riley had ridden the far circle himself and had found no cattle at the waterhole which the HC foreman had visited only a few days before. That is, no live cattle. He found four steer carca.s.ses, already ravaged by coyotes and buzzards, found the fresh gash in the rock basin and had ridden back to help those cowboys who were on shorter circles, holding explanation of the fact that he returned empty handed until he could give it first to Beck.

Tom received the news silently.

"I expect you can fix up the basin with some concrete so it'll hold next winter," Riley said.

"It's likely," the other responded, "but next winter's plans for this outfit ain't worryin' me, Riley."

He meant, of course, that there were matters of greater importance just then. The dynamiting had been accomplished after his warning to Webb and Hepburn, which was clear evidence that the war went on as desperately as before and that these other men were not cowed, their determination to run him from the country had not been shaken. A hot rage swept through him. Next winter's plans were remote indeed! Fate had taken his woman from him; these renegades would take away the last hold on life!

But Riley did not construe his meaning as such and when, the following morning, Tom called Jimmy Oliver aside and talked to him the misunderstanding of what went on in his mind was more complicated for he said:

"Jimmy, you're goin' to lead this round-up for a while ... mebby for good."

"So, Tom?"--in surprise, and in hope that an explanation would be forthcoming.

"I'm leavin' here an' mebby I won't be back."

Beck was thinking that he would inspect that tank and track down the men responsible for its destruction and make them pay. He said that he might not be back because he had warned them away from HC property and could expect no leniency if he invaded their stronghold. Invade it he would, for this had gone past the point where he could play a waiting game. So long as it had been his safety which mattered most he could a.s.sume and retain the defensive, but now Two-Bits had all but lost his life while executing his orders and HC cattle had been driven by hundreds into high country before he had planned they should come. It was time to counter-attack.

Rapidly the word ran through the camp: Beck was leaving! As it pa.s.sed from man to man it grew, as rumors all will, and took more definite shape: Beck was quitting.

He ate silently with the others and his very silence was so marked that it quieted the rest, warded off the questions which under other circ.u.mstances might have been put to him.

The wrangler brought in the horses and Beck was the first to approach the cavet with rope ready. He selected his big roan, looked the animal over carefully and slinging a canteen over the horn, climbed rather heavily to the saddle.

Other men were catching up their horses. One was pitching and fighting the rope; two others were trying desperately to break out of the cavet.

There was running about and confusion, but as Beck rode away to the west-way, head down, so obviously absorbed in himself, men stopped to watch and to wonder.

The HC foreman was not the only individual in that country who, as the sun shoved over the far rim of the world, thought so intensely of his own, wholly personal interests that consciousness of what transpired about him was lost.

Jane Hunter sat suddenly up in her bed, golden hair in a shower about her shoulders, blue eyes that had been waking and painful until dawn, filled with tears. She stared about her as one will who rouses abruptly from a startling dream, lips parted, a hand to her flushed throat, breath quick and irregular. She held so a moment, then sank back into the pillows, calling softly:

"Tom; Tom!"

Her slender body quivered spasmodically and her sobbing became like that of a child. One hand, flung across the cover, clenched feebly and feebly beat the bedding, as though it hammered hopelessly at walls which held her in, making her a prisoner ... as she was, a prisoner to her pride.

And high up on the point which formed the western flank of the Gap to Devil's Hole, Sam McKee dropped down from his gray horse and stood looking far out across the level country beneath him. In the clear air he could see the smoke of the round-up camp fire.

Yesterday he had watched from there, with Hilton's words still in his ears, Hilton's hope in his heart, and had known that Riley rode to the tank. Last night he had talked and walked in the darkness with the Easterner again, had heard Hilton's crafty questioning of Hepburn and Webb which caused them to repeat again and again their belief that Tom Beck would take it upon himself to inspect the damage done by dynamite.

He had slept fitfully, in a fever of antic.i.p.ation.

And yet he had kept secret his achievement in shooting down Two-Bits.

There was a time for all things and the time to divulge that minor accomplishment was not yet. For long he had been belittled, and had no standing among his a.s.sociates; now they were banded in common cause, he had made one step toward triumph and that move had reestablished the confidence that had lain dormant for long. It had enabled Hilton's suggestions to take hold, enabled him to whet his own hate, to work himself into a paroxysm of rage, and today he was to emerge a figure of consequence, for he was to remove the obstacle which was in the path of all.

Webb's battered field gla.s.ses were slung over his shoulder and as he picked out the lone dot of moving life, coming slowly in his direction, he unstrapped the case with hands that trembled. It required but one moment to identify that horse for none but Beck's roan swung along with the same distance-eating shack; but McKee stared for a long interval, his body tense, his breath slow and audible, as if tantalizing himself by sight of that isolated rider, teasing his hatred, teasing it....

Then he mounted the gray and swung down the treacherous point, seeking a big wash that made a wrinkle on in the floor of the desert where storm waters had rushed toward the tank for countless decades. In this he could ride unseen and he went forward at a trot, eyes straight ahead, moistening his lips from time to time....

CHAPTER XXIV

IN THE SHADOW

The outcropping which formed Cathedral Tank stood stark and saffron in the lap of the desert under the morning sun, flinging out slow waves of heat even at that early hour, as Sam McKee rode from the wash into the basin and stopped his horse.

Since the mountains themselves were made that group of pinnacles and ledges had jutted up from the seamed desert, a landmark for miles around, catching the flood waters that rushed toward it from far hills.

The name of the tank was result of no far-fetched imaginings for the granite rose in long, slender spires, as though the thirsty desert reached great fingers toward the sky in stiff appeal. Narrow defiles struck back into the granite and sharp crevices cut deeply down between the natural minarets, and at one place a larger opening led backward into the rocks, widened and narrowed again, forming the rough outlines of transept and nave. More, the wind which always blew there often sounded deep notes as of an organ when it wandered through narrow s.p.a.ces.

On three sides this abrupt, ragged rise of rock shut in the basin and the other was open to the waters that swept down from the south and eastward. When McKee neared this entrance he stopped his horse and reconnoitered. The other rider was not in sight, lost in some of the many depressions of the valley and many miles yonder, for the gray horse had traveled a shorter distance and that at a trot. The roan could not arrive for some time.... So he reasoned....

The man stopped his horse at the edge of the fresh, deep scar which Hepburn's explosive had made. Other tracks were there, made by Riley yesterday. Across the way lay the dead steers and overhead a buzzard wheeled slowly, waiting to return to the feast from which he had been frightened by Sam's approach.

"Bone dry!" the man said aloud, and laughed.

Then he drank from his canteen and wiped his lips with a long sigh, either in satisfaction or antic.i.p.ation, and then looked about; not absently, but with plan and craft.

To that point Beck would come, there he would stand, and behind was a ledge on the face of the towering rock, higher than a mounted man's head, deep and with enough backward pitch to conceal thoroughly a man's body. It would be a hard scramble, but he could gain it by aid of a tough stub which grew on the wall. Once there he would be protected.

McKee rode close under this ledge and stood in his saddle, lips parted and eyes alight. He could hold off a regiment there; what chance would one unsuspecting man have? As he stood so he unstrapped his gun and lay it with its belt on the shelf.