Brand Blotters Part 14

"Oh, you were the guard."

Alan felt the suave irony that covered this man's amus.e.m.e.nt, and he resented it impotently. When Melissy came to his support he was the more grateful.

"And we all think he did just right in using his common sense, Mr.

Norris," the girl flashed.

"Oh, certainly."

And with that he was gone after her father to help him water the sheep.

"I don't see why those sheep have to be watered right now," she frowned to Alan. "Dad _did_ water them this morning. I helped him."

Together they went into the store, where Jose was telling his story for the sixth time to a listening circle of plainsmen.

"And right then he come at you and ree-quested yore whole outfit to poke a hole in the scenery with yore front feet?" old Dave Ellis asked just as Melissy entered.

"_Si, Senor._"

"One of MacQueen's Roaring Fork gang did it, I'll bet," Alan contributed sourly.

"What kind of a lookin' guy was he?" spoke up a dark young man known as Bob Farnum.

"A big man, _senor_, and looked a ruffian."

"They're always that way until you run 'em down," grinned Ellis. "Never knew a hold-up wasn't eight foot high and then some--to the fellow at the wrong end of the gun."

"If you mean to say, Dave Ellis, that I lay down to a bluff----" Alan was beginning hotly when the old frontiersman interrupted.

"Keep your s.h.i.+rt on, McKinstra. I don't mean to say it. n.o.body but a darn fool makes a gun-play when the cards are stacked that-a-way. Yore bad play was in reaching for the gun at all."

"Well, Jack Flatray will git him. I'll bet a stack of blues on that,"

contributed a fat ranchman wheezily.

"Unless you mussed up the trail coming back," said Ellis to the stage-driver.

"We didn't. I thought of that, and I had Jose drive clear round the place.

Jack will find it all right unless there's too much travel before he gets here," said Alan.

Farnum laughed malevolently. "Mebbe he'll get him and mebbe he won't.

Jack's human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona.

Here's hoping he don't get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to it for all of me. I don't care if he is one of MacQueen's bad men. I wish it had been forty thousand."

Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. n.o.body expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both lawless and b.l.o.o.d.y.

Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.

"Well, we'll see what we'll see," he wheezed complacently. "And anyways I got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy."

The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. "You're a safe prophet, Mr. Baker," she said.

"He'd be a safe one if he'd prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr.

Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days," put in a half-grown lad in leathers.

"I ain't so sure about that. You'll have to show me, and so will Mr.

Deputy Sheriff Flatray," retorted Farnum.

A shadow darkened the doorway.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen all--and Miss Lee," a pleasant voice drawled.

The circle of eyes focused on the new-comer and saw a lean, muscular, young fellow of medium height, cool and alert, with the dust of the desert on every sunbaked inch of him.

"I'm d.a.m.ned if it ain't Jack here already!" gasped Baker.

CHAPTER VII

WATERING SHEEP

The deputy glanced quietly round, nodded here and there at sight of the familiar face of an acquaintance, and spoke to the driver.

"Let's hear you say your little piece again, Jose."

The Mexican now had it by heart, and he pattered off the thing from beginning to end without a pause. Melissy, behind the counter, leaned her elbows on it and fastened her eyes on the boyish face of the officer. In her heart she was troubled. How much did he know? What could he discover from the evidence she had left? He had the reputation of being the best trailer and the most fearless officer in Arizona. But surely she had covered her tracks safely.

From Jose the ranger turned to Alan. "We'll hear your account of it now, seh," he said gently.

While Alan talked, Jack's gaze drifted through the window to the flock of sheep that were being driven up from the ditch by Lee and Norris. That little pastoral scene had its significance for him. He had arrived at the locality of the hold-up a few minutes after they had left, and his keen intelligence had taken in some of the points they had observed. A rapid circuit of the spot at the distance of thirty yards had shown him no tracks leading from the place except those which ran up the lateral on either side of it. It was possible that these belonged to the horses of the robbers, but if so the fellows were singularly careless of detection.

Moreover, the booty must be accounted for. They had not carried it with them, since no empty box remained to show that they had poured the gold into sacks, and it would have been impossible to take the box as it was on a horse. Nor had they buried it, unless at the bottom of the irrigating ditch, for some signs of their work must have remained.

Balancing probabilities, it had seemed to Flatray that these might be the tracks of ranchmen who had arrived after the hold-up and were following the escaping bandits up the lateral. For unless these were the robber's, there was no way of escape except either up or down the bottom of the ditch. His search had eliminated the possibility of any other but the road, and this was travelled too frequently to admit of even a chance of escape by it without detection. Jack filed away one or two questions in his brain for future reference. The most important of these was to discover whether there had been any water in the ditch at the time of the hold-up.

He had decided to follow the tracks leading up the ditch and found no difficulty in doing so at a fast walk. Without any hesitation they paralleled the edge of the lateral. Nor had the deputy travelled a quarter of a mile before he made a discovery. The rider on the right hand side of the stream had been chewing tobacco, and he had a habit of splas.h.i.+ng his mark on boulders he pa.s.sed in the form of tobacco juice. Half a dozen times before he reached the Lee ranch the ranger saw this signature of ident.i.ty writ large on smooth rocks s.h.i.+ning in the sun. The last place he saw it was at the point where the two riders deflected from the lateral toward the ranch house, following tracks which led up from the bottom of the ditch.

An instant later Flatray had dodged back into the chaparral, for somebody was driving a flock of sheep down to the ditch. He made out that there were two riders behind them, and that they had no dog. For the present his curiosity was satisfied. He thought he knew why they were watering sheep in this odd fas.h.i.+on. Swiftly he had made a circuit, drawn rein in front of the store, and dropped in just in time to hear his name. Now, as with one ear he listened to Alan's account of the hold-up, with his subconscious mind he was with the sheep-herders who were driving the flock back into the pasture.

"Looks like our friend the bad man was onto his job all right," was the deputy's only comment when Alan had finished.

"I'll bet he's making his getaway into the hills mighty immediate,"

chuckled Baker. "He can't find a bank in the mountainside to deposit that gold any too soon to suit him."

"Sho! I'll bet he ain't worried a mite. He's got his arrangements all made, and likely they'll dovetail to suit him. He's put his brand on that gold to stay," answered Farnum confidently.

Jack's mild blue eyes rested on him amiably. "Think so, Bob?"