The Song of the Wolf Part 10

Red's protest was suspiciously grave: "Ridic'lous! suttinly not, ma'am.

Yuh looked just like a angel, floppin hes wings--upside down."

They all shouted at that, their hilarity exciting the antelope kid into a rear charge upon Red, who used the incident to cover his retreat. He turned at the door to impart some good news.

"We've got the whole bunch corralled. Reckon thu shootin' an' yellin'

you done, Ken, scared 'em in. I got thu bars up befoh I missed thu blue; fact is I didn't see him break, thu dust were so thick."

A minute later he returned with the additional good; tidings that Abbie was in sight; ten minutes more and he strode into the room, bearing in his arms a struggling, scratching, scolding burden which he deposited with much aplomb on the sofa besides Miss Carter.

"Reckon I'm some pumpkins on thu carry, mahself!" he said with much unction, grinning at the scandalized Abbie, who was quaintly anathematizing him. "No use yuh yowlin', Miss Abbie. The fas.h.i.+on's been sot an' yuh cloth is cut. But yuh sh.o.r.e got to gentle up a heap or Ken, yeah, will hev to do thu totin'."

Quick as a flash the old woman's arms went around Grace and the fair head was pillowed upon her bosom.

"What is it, honey?" she cooed, gently stroking the silken hair and entirely ignoring the men. The tensely strung nerves gave way and in the reaction the tears were softly welling. The two cowpunchers sneaked out sheepishly and once out of hearing, Red swore wonderingly.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned! Never peeped till it was all over with, and then clapped on the water-works. Wouldn't that bust yuah cinche!"

Dougla.s.s smiled but said nothing. Actuated by a common impulse, both men mounted their horses and rode over to where the blue stallion lay doubled up in a thickening pool of scarlet. Dismounting, they gave the dead beast a critical examination.

"Good shootin'!" said Red, touching approvingly six blue-black blots on the muscular hip that could be covered with the open palm; "but the range were too far--over two hundred, I reckon--and they had lost their force. Stern on all thu time, wa'nt he?"

Dougla.s.s nodded. "I tried to break his hip but the bullets were spent at that distance. This is what got him, Red." He touched an oozing puncture just forward of the shapely shoulder. "Looks like a small caliber high pressure to me; let's have it out."

Some minutes later both men were bending over a bit of metal lying in Red's palm. They were very thoughtful and a curious expression was playing over their faces. "It's a seven millimeter Mauser," said Dougla.s.s, quietly, "and there's only one such gun on this range. It's a pretty big payment on account, Red!"

McVey's lips hardened but he evaded the other's eye. "Let's get the direction," he said, "and maybe we can work it out."

In an incredibly short time these experienced frontiersmen had not only located the spot from which had been fired the shot that undoubtedly saved Miss Carter's life, but Dougla.s.s had as well found the discharged cartridge sh.e.l.l. It was a seven millimeter Mauser case, and Matlock was the possessor of the only weapon of the kind on this range! Furthermore, they found the depressions in the loose soil where he had knelt when firing the shot. It was a good three hundred yards from where the horse lay and Red once more said, "d.a.m.n good shoot in,' Ken! It's worth remembering when the time comes. A six-shooter ain't deuce high against that Dutch joker at long range."

Tracking the shooter's footprints back to the gully oil the other slope of the hill, they were found to lead to where a horse had been tied. The horse tracks showed that the beast had cast his left hind shoe!

Back-tracking still farther, they ascertained that the tracks had proceeded to this spot from an eminence at the head of a wooded coulie which commanded the valley where the horses had been found. To these men it was as plain as a printed page that Matlock had followed their movements unseen, finally establis.h.i.+ng his position on the crest of the little hill where the empty sh.e.l.l was found, a position that commanded the corral and all the country likely to be traversed by the blue in his attempt to escape!

"He figgered the blue would break back, and that you would try to turn him," said Red. "Yuh have had a close call, son!"

"Yet he saved her," said Dougla.s.s, steadily. "That's a big payment, Red, a big payment!"

"Yep!" answered McVey, noncommittally, "but only part payment."

CHAPTER X

THAT WHICH IS CaeSAR'S

The round-up was over, the marketable beef cut out and s.h.i.+pped, and life at the C Bar had resumed the normality of quiet routine. From now until spring the ranch labor would be nominal; a few weaklings to be fed and nurtured through the rigors of winter, a few likely colts to be broken and "gentled" against the next season's requirements, a few necessary repairs to equipment and fences, much wood hauling for the long night's consumption, and an engaging season of rest and recuperation for man and beast.

All throughout the range there is a general reduction of working forces at this period, the superfluous men seeking the larger towns for the commendable purpose of putting into active circulation their season's h.o.a.rdings; that they are almost always obsessed with a weird delusion that somewhere in the gilded halls of Chance the fickle dame Fortune awaits their coming with a whole cornucopia of royal favors, aces by preference, only insures the economy of time to that end. For whether she smile or not, there be always dames and favors of price to reward the ambitious; and to be lucky in love is even more expensive than to be unlucky at cards. The process may be conditionally prolonged, but the final result is always the same. By the time the gra.s.s greens again they have been divested of everything, even of their cares, and are ready to take up the broken threads of the endless chain that links them indissolubly to the old traditions.

The C Bar outfit had narrowed down to four men besides Dougla.s.s. Red, Woolly, Punk and a saturnine-faced Texan whose addiction to unique expletives of an unconventional nature had secured for him the sobriquet of "Holy Joe." The two latter were detailed to "riding fences" while Red and Woolly did desultory choring and hauled wood.

Robert Carter had returned for the rodeo and he and Dougla.s.s had enjoyed several hunting trips in company afterward; that is to say, the former did, Dougla.s.s evincing a certain restlessness which he, however, successfully strove to conceal from the younger man. He was all impatience for the departure of Carter and his sister, for reasons that he did not care to share with either, and he felt a positive relief when the day of their leaving was definitely announced.

Carter had been vainly endeavoring to persuade him to accompany them, and one night enlisted his sister s influence to that end; her gentle insistence precipitated Dougla.s.s's proffer of repayment of the losses incurred through Matlock's emity.

"I haven't either the time or means at my disposal for such a junket,"

he said with decision. "I alone am responsible for all the losses occurring on this ranch of late, and there's just about enough due me on salary account to square it up. I've got it all figured out here,"

producing a memorandum sheet, "and I think my estimate of the damage is a fair one; I'd like your approval of it. It leaves a trifle over a hundred left coming to me and I've got other and more urgent uses for it. Besides, I've got work to do that can't be postponed."

Carter heard him in open-mouthed amazement, his astonishment changing first to amus.e.m.e.nt, then to indignation as he gathered the drift of Dougla.s.s's intent. Grace, suddenly comprehending many things previously only hinted at, looked genuinely distressed and tapped nervously on the carpet with her sandaled foot.

"Why, man, you're crazy!" shouted Carter. "Do you think for a moment that I will permit you to even contemplate such an absurdity?"

"Pardon me," said Dougla.s.s, suavely; "the question of your permit does not enter into the matter at all; and I've done all the thinking necessary. I have had it under contemplation for a long time. This business is going to be settled right here and now!" There was no mistaking his determination and Carter was dumb-foundered.

"But--" he stammered, protestingly, "the thing is utterly inconceivable!

I could not even momentarily entertain such a preposterous proposal.

Why, supposing for argument's sake, that Matlock's private animosity to you in person had brought this about, how does that inculpate you? And if it did, do you think I would stand for your only taking a paltry hundred dollars for a whole season's hard work, the best work ever done on this range? Nonsense, old fellow; you've got another think coming!"

"Well, I'm thinking that a hundred odd is just what's coming to me, and just what I'm going to get!" said Dougla.s.s, obstinately. "It'll be plenty for what I am going to do with it."

Carter sprang up, stormily: "Don't be any more of an a.s.s than G.o.d intended you to be. Quixotism went out centuries ago. You're going to get what's actually due you!"

"And that is a hundred odd, I believe you make it, Mr. Dougla.s.s?"

interrupted Grace, evenly, with a look of imperious warning at her brother. "Can't you see, dear, that he is right! Now no more petty bickering between you two foolish boys. Don't look so desolated, Bobbie; Mr. Dougla.s.s does not intend this as a preamble to his resignation; he is not going to leave us. There are no quitters on the C Bar."

"Let me write the check," she continued, in hasty trepidation, not daring to look at the man she had so audaciously preempted to their service. "Not a word, leave it to me!" she whispered tensely to her brother, whose lips were again opening in protest. "For heaven's sake, don't spoil it all!"

As she dipped the pen in the ink she hesitated: "Your given name, Mr.

Dougla.s.s? I have never learned it in full."

"Kenneth--Kenneth Malcolm," he said shortly. She bit her lip as she wrote hurriedly; he was so deliciously pompous!

"And the exact amount?" He handed her the memorandum. "One hundred and six dollars. Please approve this, Bobbie." She extended the paper to her brother, pinching him viciously under the table as he hesitated.

"Quick!" she breathed, almost hissingly, and he scrawled the necessary endors.e.m.e.nt. Then she wrote the amount in the body of the check. Carter signed it wrathfully, and she tendered it to Dougla.s.s with a smile.

"There! Now you are square with the world," she said, facetiously, but her lips were tremulous with anxiety; he had been so distressingly noncommittal as to that resignation!

"Not exactly with the whole world!" he said, grimly. "I've got a few other trifling obligations to discharge before I can subscribe to that flattering a.s.sumption."

"Don't think me ungrateful for your kindness," he continued, earnestly.

"I appreciate your invitation more than you know; but you see, this would not go very far in luxurious old New York. It wouldn't more than hardly pay my fare there, and really my presence here is imperative for some indefinite time. I had no intention of resigning, but I am going to ask the favor of a month's leave of absence. McVey is perfectly competent to handle the outfit until my return."

"Take two months if you like," said Carter, cordially. "And while I am not at all easy in mind about that money business, I respect your wishes in the matter and we will consider that over and done with. But I insist on your being our guest at the old home next year. I have your promise?"

Dougla.s.s hesitated. "A great deal can happen in a year," he said, quietly; "but if I am alive and other conditions serve I shall be delighted."