CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LANCE TRAILS A MYSTERY
Lance, rising at what he considered an early hour--five in the morningmay well be considered early,--went whistling down to the corral tosee what plans were on for the day. It was the day of Aleck Douglas'sfuneral, but the Devil's Tooth outfit would be represented only by awreath of white carnations which Belle had ordered sent up fromPocatello. White carnations and Aleck Douglas did not seem toharmonize, but neither did the Devil's Tooth and Aleck Douglas, andthe white wreath would be much less conspicuous and far moreacceptable than the Lorrigans, Lance was thinking.
He paused at the bunk-house and looked in. The place was deserted. Hewalked through it to the kitchen where the boys ate--the chuck-house,they called it--and found nothing to indicate that a meal had beeneaten there lately. He went out and down to the stable, where SamPretty Cow was just finishing his stall cleaning. Shorty, who now hada permanently lame leg from falling under his horse up in the LavaBeds a year ago, was limping across the first corral with two fullmilk buckets in his hands.
"Say, what time does this ranch get up, for heck sake?" Lance inquiredof Sam Pretty Cow, stepping aside so that Sam might carry in a forkfulof fresh hay.
"I dunno--long time ago." Sam Pretty Cow turned the hay sidewise andwent in to stuff his fragrant burden into the manger.
"I was going out with the boys, if they went anywhere. Where have theyall headed for, Sam? I could overtake them, maybe."
Sam Pretty Cow, returning to the doorway, shifted a quid of tobaccofrom one cheek to the other and grinned.
"I dunno, me," he responded amiably.
"You don't _know?_ Didn't dad say anything? Didn't the boys?" Andthen, with faint exasperation, "Doesn't any one ever talk any more onthis ranch?"
Sam Pretty Cow gave him a swift, oblique glance and spat accurately ata great horsefly that had lighted on a board end.
"Not much, you bet. Nh-hn."
Lance called to Shorty, who had set his milk buckets down that hemight open the little gate that swung inward,--the gate which horseswere not supposed to know anything about.
"Oh-h, Shorty! Where did dad and the boys go this morning?"
Shorty turned slowly, pulling the gate open and propping it with astick until he had set the buckets through. Deliberation was in hismanner, deliberation was in his speech.
"Las' night, you mean. They hit out right after midnight."
"Well, where did they _go?_" Lance ground his cigarette under hisheel.
"You might ask 'em when they git back," Shorty suggested cryptically,and closed the gate just as carefully as if forty freedom-hungryhorses were milling inside the corral.
Lance watched him go and turned to Sam Pretty Cow who, having thrusthis hay fork behind a brace in the stable wall, was preparing to varyhis tobacco-chewing with a smoke.
"What's the mystery, Sam? Where did they go? I'm here to stay, and I'mone of the family--I _think_--and you may as well tell me."
Sam Pretty Cow lipped the edge of his cigarette paper, folded it downsmoothly on the tiny roll of tobacco, leaned his body backward andpainstakingly drew a match from the small pocket of his grimy blueoveralls.
"I'm don' _know_ nothing," he vouchsafed equably. "I'm don' asknothing. I'm don' hear nothing. You bet. Nh-hn--yore damn right."
From under his lashes Lance watched Sam Pretty Cow. "I was overhelping hold old Scotty in his bed, the other day," he saidirrelevantly. "He was crazy--out of his head. He kept yelling thatthe Lorrigans were stealing his stock. He kept saying that a few moremarks with a straight branding iron would turn his Eleven into an NL,ANL, DNL, LNL--any one of the Devil's Tooth brands. Crazy with fever,he was."
Sam Pretty Cow studied the match, decided which was the head of it,and drew it sharply along his boot sole.
"Yeah--yo're damn right. Crazy, you bet yore life. Uh-huh."
"He said the Miller's Block brand could easily be turned into the NBlock--Belle's brand. He said horses had been run off the range--"
"He's dead," Sam observed unemotionally. "You bet. He's gettin'fun'ral to-day."
"How long will the boys be out?" Lance pulled a splinter off the railbeside him and began separating the fibers with his finger nails thatwere too well cared for to belong to the Black Rim folk.
"I dunno, me."
"Scotty sure was crazy, Sam. He tried twice to kill me. Once he jumpedup and ran into the kitchen and grabbed a butcher knife off the tableand came at me. He thought I was there to rob him. He called me Tom."
"Yeah," said Sam Pretty Cow, blowing smoke. "He's damn lucky you ain'tTom. Uh-huh--you bet."
Lance lifted his eyebrows, was silent while he watched Shorty limpingdown from the house, this time with table scraps for the chickens.
"Scotty was certainly crazy," Lance turned again to Sam. "Over andover he kept saying, while he looked up at the ceiling, 'The Lorrigandays are numbered. Though the wicked flourish like a green bay tree,they shall perish as dry grass. The days are numbered--their evil daysare numbered.'"
Sam Pretty Cow smoked, flicked the ash from his cigarette with acoppery forefinger, looked suddenly full at Lance and grinned widely.
"Uh-huh. So's them stars numbered, all right. I dunno, me. TomLorrigan's damn smart man." He reached down for an old bridle andgrinned again. "Scotty, I guess he don' say how many numbers them daysis, you bet." He started off, trailing his bridle reins carelessly inthe dust.
"If you're going to catch up a horse, Sam, I wish you'd haze in thebest one on the ranch for me."
Sam Pretty Cow paused, half turned, spat meditatively into the dustand jerked a thumb toward the stable.
"Me, I dunno. Bes' horse on the ranch is in them box stall. Them'sCoaley. I guess you don' want Coaley, huh?"
Lance bit his lip, looking at Sam Pretty Cow intently.
"You needn't catch up a horse for me, Sam. I'll ride Coaley," he saidsmoothly. Which brought a surprised grunt from Sam Pretty Cow, Indianthough he was, accustomed though he was to the ways of the Lorrigans.
But it was not his affair if Lance and his father quarreled when Tomreturned. Indeed, Tom might not return very soon, in which case hewould not hear anything about Lance's audacity unless Lance himselftold it. Sam Pretty Cow would never mention it, and Shorty would notsay a word. Shorty never did say anything if he could by any meanskeep silence.
Lance returned to the house, taking long strides that, without seeminghurried, yet suggested haste. He presently came down the path again,this time with a blanket roll and a sack with lumpy things tied in thebottom. He wore chaps, his spurs, carried a yellow slicker over hisarm. On his head was a black Stetson, one of Tom's discarded oldhats.
He led Coaley from the box stall where he had never before seen himstand, saddled him, tied his bundles compactly behind the cantle,mounted and rode down the trail, following the hoof prints that showedfreshest in the loose, gravelly sand. Coaley, plainly glad to be outof his prison, stepped daintily along in a rocking half trot thatwould carry him more miles in a day than any other horse in thecountry could cover, and bring him to the journey's end with springygait and head held proudly, ears twitching, ready for more miles ifhis rider wanted more.
The tracks led up the road to the Ridge, turned sharply off where thebrush grew scanty among the flat rocks that just showed their facesabove the surface of the arid soil. Lance frowned and followed. For along way he skirted the rim rock that edged the sheer bluff. A scantfurlong away, on his right, a trail ran west to the broken land ofIndian Creek. But since the horsemen had chosen to keep to the rockyground along the rim, Lance followed.
He had gone perhaps a mile along the bluff when Coaley began to tossup his head and perk his ears backward, turning now and then to look.Lance was sunk too deep in bitter introspection to observe these firstwarning movements which every horseman knows. He was thinking of MaryHope, who would be waking now to a day of sorrowful excitement.Thinking, too, of old Aleck Douglas and the things that he had said inhis raving.
&nb
sp; What Douglas had shouted hoarsely was not true, of course. He did notbelieve,--and yet, there was Shorty's enigmatical answer to a simplequestion; there was Sam Pretty Cow, implying much while he actuallysaid very little; there was this unheralded departure of all theDevil's Tooth riders in the night, in the season between round-ups.There was Coaley feeling fit for anything, shut up in the box stallwhile Tom rode another horse; and here was Lance himself taking thetrail of the Devil's Tooth outfit at a little after sunrise on a horsetacitly forbidden to all riders save Tom.
Coaley, in a place where he must pick his way between boulders, pausedand lifted his head, staring back the way they had come. Lance rousedhimself from gloomy speculations and looked back also, but he couldnot see anything behind them save a circling hawk and the graymonotone of the barren plateau, so he urged Coaley in among theboulders.
There must be something back there, of course. Coaley was toointelligent a horse to make a mistake. But it might be some driftingrange stock, or perhaps a stray horse. Certainly it was no one fromthe Devil's Tooth, for Sam Pretty Cow had set off to mend a fence inthe lower pasture, and Shorty never rode a horse nowadays for morethan a half mile or so; and six o'clock in the morning would be ratherearly for chance riders from any other ranch. With a shrug, Lancedismissed the matter from his mind.
Where a faint, little-used trail went obliquely down the bluff to thecreek bottom, Lance saw again the hoofprints which the rocky groundhad failed to reveal. He could see no reason for taking thisroundabout course to go up the creek, but he sent Coaley down thetrail, reached the bottom and discovered that the tracks once morestruck off into rocky ground. His face hardened until his resemblanceto Tom became more marked than usual, but where the tracks led hefollowed. Too often had he trailed stray horses in the past to bepuzzled now, whether he could see the hoofprints or not.
They must have made for the other side of the creek, gone up WildHorse gulch or the Little Squaw. There was just one place where theycould cross the creek without bogging in the tricky mud that wasalmost as bad as quicksand. He therefore pulled out of the rocky patchand made straight for the crossing. He would soon know if they hadcrossed there. If they had not, then they would have turned again upSquaw Creek, and it would be short work cutting straight across to theonly possible trail to the higher country.
He had covered half of the distance to the creek when Coaley againcalled his attention to something behind him. This time Lance glimpsedwhat looked very much like the crown of a hat moving in a dry washthat he had crossed not more than five minutes before. He pulled up,studied the contour of the ground behind him, looked ahead, saw themark of a shod hoof between two rocks. The hoof mark pointed towardthe crossing. Lance, however, turned down another small depressionwhere the soil lay bare and Coaley left clean imprints, trotted alongit until a welter of rocks made bad footing for the horse, climbedout and went on level. Farther up the valley an abrupt curve in SquawCreek barred his way with scraggly, thin willow growth that hadwinding cow trails running through it. Into one of these Lance turned,rode deep into the sparse growth, stopped where the trail swung rounda huge, detached boulder, dismounted and dropped Coaley's reins to theground and retraced his steps some distance from the trail, steppingon rocks here and there and keeping off damp spots.
He reached the thin edge of the grove, stood behind a stocky bush andwaited. In two or three minutes--they seemed ten to Lance--he saw thehead and shoulders of a rider just emerging from the gully he himselfhad so lately followed.
Back on Coaley, following the winding trail, Lance pondered thematter. The way he had come was no highway--no trail that any riderwould follow on any business save one. But just why should he befollowed? He had thought at first that some one was trailing theDevil's Tooth outfit, as he had been doing, but now it seemed plainthat he himself was the quarry.
He flicked the reins on Coaley's satiny neck, and the horse broke atonce into a springy, swift trot, following the purposeless winding ofthe cow path. When they emerged upon the other side where the creekgurgled over a patch of rocks like cobblestones, Lance stopped and lethim take a sip or two of water, then struck off toward the bluff,letting Coaley choose his own pace, taking care that he kept to lowground where he could not be seen.
For an hour he rode and came to the junction of Mill Creek and theSquaw. Then, climbing through chokecherry thickets up a draw that ledby winding ways to higher ground, Lance stopped and scrutinized thebottomland over which he had passed. Coaley stood alert, watching alsothat back trail, his ears turned forward, listening. After a moment,he began to take little mincing steps sidewise, pulling impatiently atthe reins. As plainly as a horse could tell it, Coaley implored Lanceto go on. But Lance waited until, crossing an open space, he saw arider coming along at a shambling trot on the trail he had himselflately followed.
He frowned thoughtfully, turned Coaley toward home and rode swiftly ina long, distance-devouring lope.
He reached the ranch somewhere near ten o'clock, surprising Belle inthe act of harnessing her pintos to a new buckboard at which theyshied hypocritically. Belle stared at him round-eyed over the backs ofher team.
"My good Lord, Lance! You--you could be Tom's twin, in that hat and onthat horse! What you been doing--doubling for him in a lead?"
Lance swung down and came toward her. "Belle, where did dad and theboys go?"
"Oh--fussing with the stock," said Belle vaguely, her eyes clouding alittle. "We're getting so many cattle it keeps Tom on the go day andnight, seems to me. And he _will_ keep buying more all the while.Did--did you want to go with them, honey? I guess Tom never thoughtyou might. You've been away so long. You'd better not ride Coaley,Lance. Tom would just about murder you if he caught you at it. Andwhere did you get hold of that hat?"
Lance laughed queerly. "I just picked it off the table as I came out.Mine is too new and stiff yet. This seemed to fit. And Coaley's betteroff under the saddle than he is in the stable, Belle. He's a peach--Ialways did want to ride Coaley, but I never had the nerve till I gotbig enough to lick dad."
He caught Belle in a quick, breath-taking hug, kissed her swiftly onthe cheek and turned Coaley into the corral with the saddle still on.
"Are you going over--to the funeral?" he asked as he closed the gate.
"I'm going to town, and I've got the letters you left on the table tobe mailed. No, I'm not going to the funeral. I don't enjoy having myface slapped--and being called a painted Jezebel," she added dryly.
Under his breath Lance muttered something and went into the house, notlooking at Belle or making her any reply.
"Lance," said Belle to the pintos, "thinks we're rough and tough andjust about half civilized. Lord, when you take a Lorrigan and educatehim and _polish_ him, you sure have got a combination that's hard togo up against. Two years--and my heavens, I don't _know_ Lance anymore! I never thought any Lorrigan could feaze _me_--but there'ssomething about Lance--"
In the house Lance was not showing any of the polish which Belle hadmentioned rather regretfully. He was kneeling before a trunk, throwingbooks and pipes and socks and soft-toned silk shirts over hisshoulder, looking for something which he seemed in a great haste tofind. When his fingers, prying deep among his belongings, closed uponthe thing he sought, he brought it up, frowning abstractedly.
A black leather case, small and curved, opened when he unbuckled theconfining strap. A binocular, small but extremely efficient in itsmagnifying power he withdrew, dusting the lenses with the sleeve ofhis shirt. He had bought the glasses because some one had advised himto take a pair along when he went with a party of friends to the topof Mount Tamalpais one Sunday. And because he had an instinctivedislike for anything but the best obtainable, he had bought thehighest-priced glasses he could find in San Francisco,--and perhapsthe smallest. He buckled them back into their case, slapped them intohis pocket and closed the trunk lid with a bang. From the mantel inthe living room he gleaned a box of cartridges for an extrasix-shooter, which he cleaned and loaded carefully and tucked
insidethe waistband of his trousers, on the left side, following an instinctthat brought him close to his grandfather, that old killer whom allmen feared to anger.
"The horse and the hat; he thought it was dad he was trailing!" hesaid to himself, with his teeth clamped tight together. "Oh, well,when it comes to that kind of a game--"
He went out and down to the corral, watered Coaley and mounted again,taking the trail across pastures to Squaw Creek.