The Ranch at the Wolverine Part 14

"That's good. Trail's a little narrow for three, isn't it? I'll ride ahead and open the gate."

"They've got a new gate down here," said Billy Louise trivially. "I forgot that important bit of news."

"Well, it is important--to us Covers," smiled Charlie, glancing back at them. "No more bars to be left down accidentally. This gate shuts itself, in case someone forgets."

"And you haven't lost any more cattle, have you?" The question was a statement, after Billy Louise's habit.

"Not out of the Cove, at any rate. I--can't speak so positively as to the outside stock--of course."

"You've missed some?" Billy Louise never permitted a tone to slip past her without tagging it immediately with plain English. Charlie's tone had said something to which his words made no reference.

"I don't like to say that, Miss Louise. Very likely they have stray--drifted, I mean--back toward their home ranch. Peter and I can't keep cases very closely, of course."

Billy Louise s.h.i.+fted uneasily in the saddle and pulled her eyebrows together. "If you think you've lost some cattle, for heaven's sake why don't you say so!" (Ward smiled to himself at her tone.) "If there's anything I hate, it's hinting and never coming right out with anything.

Have you lost any?"

Charlie turned with a hand on the cantle and faced her with polite reproach. "Peter says we have," he admitted, with very evident reluctance. "I hardly think so myself. I'd have to count them. I know, of course, how many we've bought in the last year."

"Well, Peter knows more about it than you do," Billy Louise told him bluntly. "If he has missed any, they're probably gone."

"I was in hopes you would be on my side, Miss Louise." Charlie smiled deprecatingly. "I've argued with Aunt Martha and Peter until-- But I didn't know you were a confirmed pessimist as well!"

"You didn't neglect to put your brand on them, did you?" asked Billy Louise cruelly.

Charlie flushed under the sunburn. "Really, Miss Louise, you've no mercy on a tenderfoot, have you?" he protested. "No, they are all branded, really they are. Peter and Aunt Martha saw to that," he confessed navely.

"It seems queer," said Billy Louise, thinking aloud. "Ward, there certainly is rustling going on around here; and no one seems to know a thing beyond the mere fact that they're losing cattle. Seabeck has lost some--"

"Oh, are you sure?" Charlie's eyes widened perceptibly. "I hadn't heard that. By Jove! It sort of makes a fellow feel shaky about going into cattle very strong, doesn't it? It--it knocks off the profits like the very deuce, to keep losing one here and there."

"A fellow has to figure on a certain percentage of loss," said Ward.

"This the new gate?"

"Yes." Charlie seemed relieved by the diversion. "Just merely a gate, as you see; but we Covers are proud of every little improvement. Aunt Martha comes up here every day, I verily believe, just to look at it and admire it. The poor old soul never had any conveniences that she couldn't make herself, you know, and she thinks this is great stuff. I put this padlock on it so she can lock herself in, nights when I'm away. She feels better with the gate locked. And then I've got a dog that's as good as a company of soldiers himself. If either of you happen down here when there's no one about, you will have to introduce yourselves to Cerberus--so named because he guards the gates--not the gate to Hades, please remember. Surbus, Aunt Martha calls him, which is good Idahoese and seems to please him as well as any other. Just speak to him by name--Surbus if you like--and he will be all right, I think." He held open the gate for them to ride through and gave them a comradely look and smile as they pa.s.sed.

Ward took in the details of the heavy gate that barred the gorge. He did not know that he betrayed the fact even to the sharp eyes of Billy Louise, but he could not quite bring himself to the point of meeting Charlie Fox anywhere near half-way in his overtures for friends.h.i.+p.

"The weight is so heavy that the gate shuts and latches itself, you see," Charlie went on, mounting on the inside of the barrier and following cheerfully after them. "But that doesn't satisfy Aunt Martha. She and Surbus make a special pilgrimage up here every night."

"She must be pretty nervous." Ward could not quite see why such precautions were necessary in a country where no man locked his door against the world.

"Well, she is, though you wouldn't suspect it, would you? When one thinks of the life she has lived, and how she pioneered in here when the country was straight wilderness, and all that. Of course, I didn't know her before Uncle Jason died--do you think she has changed since, Miss Louise?"

"Lots," Billy Louise a.s.sured him briefly. She was wondering why Ward was so stiff and unnatural with Charlie Fox.

"I think myself that the shock of losing him must have made the difference in her. There's Surbus; how's that for a voice? And he's just as blood-thirsty as he sounds, too. I'd hate to have him tackle me in the gorge, on a dark night. He's too savage, though it's only with strangers, and we don't see many of them. He almost ate Peter up, when he first came. And he gave you quite a scare last spring, didn't he, Miss Louise?"

"He came within an ace of getting his head shot off," Billy Louise qualified laconically. "Marthy came out just in the nick of time. I absolutely refuse to be chewed up by any dog; and I don't care who he belongs to."

"Same here, William," approved Ward.

Charlie laughed. "I see Surbus is not going to be popular with the neighbors," he said easily. "I do feel very apologetic over him. But Marthy wanted me to get a dog, and so when a fellow offered me this one, I took him; and as Surbus happened to take a fancy to me, I didn't realize what a savage brute he is, till he tackled Peter--and then Miss Louise."

"Well, Miss Louise was perfectly able to defend herself, so you needn't feel apologetic about that," said Billy Louise a trifle sharply. She hated Surbus, and she was quite open in her hatred. "If he ever comes at me again, and n.o.body calls him off, I shall shoot him." It was not a threat, as she spoke it, but a plain statement of a fact. "You'd better serve notice too, Ward. He's a nasty beast, and he'd just as soon kill a person as not. He was going to jump for my throat. He was crouched, just ready to spring--and I had my gun out--when Marthy saw us and gave a yell fit to wake the dead. Surbus didn't jump, and I didn't shoot. That's how close he came to being a dead dog."

She glanced at Ward and then furtively at Charlie Fox. If expression meant anything, Surbus was yet in danger of paying for that a.s.sault.

She caught Ward's truculent eye, smiled, and shook her head at him.

"We're pretty fair friends now," she said. "At least, we don't try to kill each other whenever we meet. 'Armed neutrality' fits our case fine."

"I think I'll volunteer under your flag," said Ward. "I'll leave Cerberus alone as long as he leaves me and my friends alone. But I'd advise him not to start anything."

"That's all Surbus or anyone else can ask. Come on, old fellow!

Pardon me," he added to his companions and rode past them to meet the great, heavy-jowled dog. "Be still, Surbus. We're all friends, here."

The dog lifted a non-committal glance to Ward's face, growled deep in his chest, and dropped behind, nosing the tracks of Blue and Rattler as if he would identify them and fix them in his memory for future use.

Ward had never seen the Cove in summer. He looked about him curiously, struck by the atmosphere of quiet plenty. Over the crude fence hung fruit-laden branches from the jungle within. There was a smell of ripening plums in the air, and the hum of bees. Somewhere in the orchard a wild canary was singing. If he could live down here, he thought, with Billy Louise and none other near, he would ask no odds of the world or of heaven. He glanced at Charlie Fox enviously. Well, he had a fairly well-sheltered place of his own, up there in the hills.

He could set out fruit and plants and things and have a little Eden of his own; though of course it couldn't be like this place, sheltered as it was from harsh winds by that high rock wall, and soaking in suns.h.i.+ne all day long. Still, he could fix his place up a lot, with a little time and thought and a good deal of hard work.

He looked at Billy Louise and saw how the beauty of the place appealed to her, and right there he decided to study horticulture so that he could raise plums and apples and hollyhocks and things.

CHAPTER XI

WAS IT THE DOG?

"That old dame down there thinks a lot of you, William." Ward had closed the gate and was preparing to remount.

"Well, is there any reason why she shouldn't?" The tone of Billy Louise was not far from petulant.

"Not a reason. What's molla, Bill?"

"Nothing that I know of." Billy Louise lifted her eyes to the rock cabbages on the cliff above them and tried to speak convincingly.

"Yes, there is. Something's gone wrong. Can't you tell a pal, Wilhemina?"

There was no resisting that tone. Billy Louise looked at him, and though she still frowned, her eyes lightened a little.

"No, I can't tell a pal--or anybody else. I don't know. Something's different, down there. I don't know what it is, and I don't like it."

She thought a minute and then smiled with that little twist of the lips Ward liked so much. "Maybe it's the dog," she guessed. "I never see his ugly mug that I don't feel like taking a shot at him. I like dogs, too, as a general thing. He's got a wicked heart! I know he has.

He'd like nothing better than to take a chunk out of me."

"I'll go back and kill him; shall I, Bill Loo?"

"No. Some day maybe I'll get a chance at him myself. I've warned Marthy, so--"