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Title: The Flying U Strikes
Author: Bower, B. M. [Bower, Bertha Muzzy] (1871-1940)
Illustrator: Anonymous
Date of first publication: 1933
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1934
Date first posted: 4 May 2010
Date last updated: 4 May 2010
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #527

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




THE
FLYING U STRIKES

By
B. M. BOWER

[Illustration]

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK


_Copyright, 1933, 1934,_

By Little, Brown, and Company

_All rights reserved_

Published May, 1934
Reprinted May, 1934
Reprinted June, 1934

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


CONTENTS


    I Trouble Begins                         3

   II Chip Takes the Hint                   14

  III A Man-Size Job                        23

   IV Horses for Sale                       32

    V A Clue in Hand                        42

   VI First Aid from Polly                  49

  VII Why Wait for Proof?                   61

 VIII Big Butch                             69

   IX Polly Buys In                         81

    X Milt Makes His Talk                   89

   XI The First Real Clue                  102

  XII Beef Haulin's Over                   113

 XIII Seventy Below Zero                   127

  XIV Prisoner's Loose                     138

   XV The Flying U to the Rescue           150

  XVI Chip Still Wants Proof               163

 XVII Fight the Devil with Fire            174

XVIII The Wind's in the North              186

  XIX "It's Life and Death, Polly"         202

   XX A Fine Scheme Cooked Up              212

  XXI One Spy the Less                     222

 XXII Make Ready for War                   233

XXIII Chip Rides Again                     245

 XXIV Polly Plays Lady                     256

  XXV At Butch's Window                    267

 XXVI Polly Puts It Over                   280

XXVII A Chinook Strikes Chip               293



THE FLYING U STRIKES




CHAPTER ONE

TROUBLE BEGINS


A raw March wind such as only the high prairies ever know poured like
ice water over the bald benchland that forms a part of the Flying U
range. It roughened the hair on the two saddle horses; it tossed their
manes and it whipped their tails around their hocks as they loped down
to the bluff edge where the rough country began.

Chip Bennett, younger of the two riders, broke a silence of half an
hour. "Those horses will be hugging the brush on a day like this," he
said, and drew a hand across his smarting eyes.

"That's right," Weary Davidson agreed. "No use combing the benches
to-day. Mamma! That wind sure does go through a fellow! What say we
swing over to the left here, Chip, and kinda bear off more towards the
river? They're in the breaks, that's a cinch. We've had this wind for
four days. I look for 'em to be watering along Rabbit Creek where
there's lots of shelter."

"That's what I was thinking." Chip hunched his shoulders within his
sour-dough coat. "We can make it down off that point over there
easiest."

With one accord their rein hands twitched to the left and the horses
obeyed that slight pressure against the right side of their necks.
Instant relief was felt from that biting wind, now pushing hard
against their backs instead of flat against their right sides. The
tear lines dried upon their cheeks. They let their horses down to a
walk, pulled off their gloves and sat on them while they rolled and
lighted cigarettes. Neither spoke again. Neither was conscious of
their long silences which held a satisfying companionship not to be
broken by idle chatter. They were content and that was enough.

Overhead the sky was blue and the sun shone with a spring brightness.
After awhile, when they turned off the sloping point of the bench and
picked their way down a rocky gulch, a pleasant warmth surrounded
them. Here the cold wind could not search them out. Riding ahead, Chip
leaned suddenly from the saddle and plucked a crocus from the bank.
Straightening again, he took off his hat and tucked the downy stem
beneath the hatband in front, and set the hat atilt on his brown head.
With his overcoat unbuttoned, Weary rode slack in the saddle,
whistling an aimless little tune under his breath.

Down in the sheltered coulee it was spring. A few fat prairie dogs
were already bestirring themselves, hunting grass roots or running
from mound to mound to gossip with their neighbors. As the two cowboys
approached, a shrewish chittering met them, the village inhabitants
all standing up on the mounds with their front paws folded like hands.
Abruptly they lost courage however and ducked down into their holes,
the flirt of their stubby tails as insolent as a thumbed nose.

Out of that coulee and up over another small bench went the riders,
the chill wind hounding them over the high ground only to give up the
chase when they dipped down into the next hollow. In spite of their
seeming casualness, their questing glances went here and there,
scanning each wrinkle and hollow that lay exposed to their gaze. The
bunch of horses they were hunting might be almost anywhere in this
kind of weather.

Weary suddenly pointed a gloved finger. "Ain't that a dead critter
down there by that brush patch? Looks like the wolves have been at
work down in here."

"Not one but six carcasses down there," Chip answered him. "We better
go take a look. If it's wolves, they sure have been holding high
carnival down there." He reined his horse straight down the slope
toward the spot, Weary after him.

It was so steep that when they struck a shale patch both horses slid
on their rumps for some distance. But they made the bottom without
mishap and rode down to the thicket. A deep bowl of a place it was,
the center a jungle of wild berry bushes growing in such luxuriance as
would indicate a spring close by. On the sunny side of the thicket lay
a group of carcasses, evidently some time dead.

The two rode up and stopped, staring about them. "Mamma!" gasped
Weary. "Looks like here's where the wolves have held an old-timer's
reunion. Six beef critters pulled down all in one bunch! Now what
d'you know about that?"

"Not half as much as I'm going to know before I'm through," Chip
retorted. He stepped off his horse and walked over to the first
carcass. With his hands on his hips he stared down at the unlovely
heap for a minute, then walked on to the next and the next. He turned
back and looked at Weary, standing just behind him.

"Shot in the head. The whole damn bunch," Weary answered the look.
"You saw that, didn't yuh?"

"I'd tell a man I saw it. Take hold, here. Let's see the brand--if
they left one."

They caught hold of the mauled and shriveled hide where the hind
quarters should have been and flipped it over. The brand was the
Flying U, and as they went from one to the other, they verified the
brand on each. Six Flying U beeves, still showing the bullet holes in
their heads where they had been shot down. And while the fore quarters
had been half devoured by wolves, the hind quarters had been skinned
out of the hides and carried off.

"Beef rustlers," said Weary, as they returned to their horses. "I sure
would like to know who pulled that stunt. Looks to me like they either
want to advertise the fact they're after the Flying U or else they
don't give a darn. Never even took the trouble to cut out the brands,
you notice." He looked at young Bennett. "That mean anything to you,
Chip?"

"It certainly does. After that trouble last summer with Big Butch's
outfit, it means they're making war medicine again. I was wondering
what made 'em so damn peaceable; after losing four men in that fight
we had, it looked to me like they'd take another whack at the Flying
U, just to break even." Young Bennett frowned down at the nearest heap
of bones and hide. He did not add what loomed blackest in his
thoughts: that he himself, with a personal quarrel to settle with one
of Big Butch's men, had really brought the Flying U into the trouble
with Butch Lewis' outfit.

He hated to admit it, even to himself, but it was true. He had been
looking for his brother, up in this country along the Missouri, and
had run into mystery and trouble in his search. Brother Wane was
dead--murdered, he believed, in spite of assurances that Wane's death
was an accident. And one day he had seen one of Butch Lewis' men
riding Wane's horse and saddle, the EB brand botchily changed. Well,
he had gone after Cash Farley and got the horse away from him, but in
the long run the Flying U had paid high for that reckless adventure.
Paid with a hundred head of saddle horses stolen out of the pasture in
Flying U coulee; paid with a bullet in Jim Whitmore's leg, beside. And
now, good old "J.G." was paying again, with good beef slaughtered on
the range, his brand left insolently as a challenge and a defiance to
the outfit.

It was plain enough to Chip Bennett. Last summer the trouble had
culminated in a hair-raising afternoon when he had been hunted from
rock to rock by Cash Farley and his cronies with rifles. Well, his own
rifle had taken up the argument pretty decisively. Fighting for his
life, he had held them off until the Flying U boys had come to the
rescue--Weary, here, was one of the first to arrive. He knew just
what these carcasses meant. Big Butch Lewis was taking up the fight
where it had been dropped last summer.

Then Weary dissented from that conclusion. "Big Butch might be makin'
war medicine, like you say, but not this way. It's somebody else
rustling beef off us."

"I'll bet it's Butch, building up another scrap with this outfit,"
Chip said glumly. "Come on. I'll bet we'll find more."

They mounted and rode up out of the little basin and over into the
next gully. Sure enough, here were several more, all showing the
Flying U brand. In another deep coulee they counted twelve carcasses,
and with a stubborn thoroughness young Bennett insisted upon examining
each one. Flying U. Not one Hobble-O, though plenty of Shep Taylor's
stock ranged in here, as did the Lazy Ladder and a few nester brands.
Whoever had butchered these cattle certainly picked his brand with
care.

All that afternoon they rode through the sequestered places where
Flying U cattle had wintered for sake of the shelter. Hundreds of them
were grazing there now, looking fat and strong after the long months
of cold. Once Weary remarked that the calf crop ought to be a banner
one that spring, but Chip only nodded agreement. Banner calf crops
could not alter the fact that his own personal enemies were taking
their grudge out on the Flying U and that there didn't seem to be
anything much that he could do about it.

They found the bunch of horses they were after and hazed them up on
the bench and headed them toward the ranch, then continued their
scrutiny of the coulees and gulches that webbed the strip lying
between the level benches and the Badlands along the river. Again and
again they came upon the mutilated remains of Flying U stock, and
judging from what was left, they guessed them all to be young beef
steers just under shipping age.

"Good beef," commented Weary, "but damned expensive eating, just the
same. J.G's going to be shy a couple of carloads of beef next fall.
And believe me, that sure runs into money!"

"I know it," growled Chip. "You don't have to rub it in." In a little
memorandum book he was keeping a methodical tally and the mounting
figures stunned him into silence. Just as sure as the sun was shining,
the Flying U was being baited into a fight. No use talking about
it--words wouldn't change the facts, no more than they could ease his
heartsick feeling of responsibility in the matter. No, there wasn't
much to be said about it. Jim Whitmore was being stolen blind. It had
been going on all winter, almost under their noses. It was still
going on. Some of these last butcherings they had found looked fresh.
A couple of days old at the most.

"Whoever it is, they're sure doing a land-office business in beef,"
Weary remarked, as he lifted himself into the saddle after inspecting
the last and freshest one. "I can't think it's the Butch Lewis bunch,
though. They're supposed to be in the horse business. I never heard of
them peddling beef."

On his horse, Chip concentrated upon the little book open in his hand,
adding a column of figures twice; once from the bottom up, then, with
an incredulous oath, starting at the top and going on down.

Weary watched him over the cigarette he was making. "How many, Chip?"
he queried, glancing down at the match and turning it head down, to
draw it along the fork of his saddle. "I started to keep count in my
head--but hell, I give it up ten mile back."

"Eighty-three," young Bennett told him without looking up. "It doesn't
seem possible--"

"_Eighty-three?_ That's damn near three carloads of beef the sons uh
Satan have got away with. Yuh realize that? And half of it plumb
wasted and fed to the wolves!" Weary blew smoke from his nostrils with
the snort he gave. "Say, J.G.'ll go straight in the air when he hears
about this. . . . Well, we might as well be getting back."

He reined toward the steep slope of the gully, Chip following behind.
The horses climbed nosing out their footing as they heaved themselves
over the worst places in rabbit hops. On the long hogback ridge that
sloped gently up to a thicket-crowned swale just under the bench top,
Weary looked back down into the gully.

"Mamma! That's a lot of meat, Chip," he observed in a shocked tone.
"J.G's a lot poorer than he thought he was."

"It'll be paid for," Chip said shortly, though he could have had no
clear idea of just how it would be paid. Uneasily he was adding the
little column of figures again, as his horse walked steadily up the
slope. He was hoping that he had made a mistake, but there it was.
Eighty-three which they had found and inspected; how many more there
might be hidden away in this broken country he had not the courage to
guess. They hadn't found them all; he knew that.

He had put away the book again and was fumbling for the button to
close his flapping overcoat, when the heavy canvas gave a vicious
twitch in his fingers. It wasn't the wind. He glanced down at his
coat, gasped with astonishment and spurred ahead into the shelter of
a brush patch. And as he did so, the faint _pow-w_ of a rifle shot
came to his ears, the sound dimmed by distance and almost whipped away
entirely by the gusty howl of the wind.




CHAPTER TWO

CHIP TAKES THE HINT


Weary turned with a twinkle in his eyes at the sudden haste Chip
displayed. "What's the matter? Got a snake bite?" he inquired mildly,
knowing full well that the hardiest snake would scarcely be abroad in
March.

"No. A flea," Chip came back at him instantly, while he pulled up to
search the gully with his eyes.

Big Butch without a doubt, he was thinking; Big Butch or one of his
men, trying to get even for Cash Farley. Not even a wisp of smoke
across the gulch gave a clue to his whereabouts, and to go back and
search for him was worse than useless. He might be anywhere amongst
the rocks and brush on the farther wall, and to reach him except with
a bullet was practically impossible. No use saying anything to Weary
about it, either. Might stir him up to want to go hunting the
shooter--and while they were getting into the gully and across to the
other side, they would be easy targets. Chip had enough experience
with that sort of thing to feel no desire whatever to make the
attempt.

It was plain Weary had not heard the shot. "No more carcass hunting
to-day," he declared, misinterpreting Chip's pause. "You couldn't get
me down into another coulee on a bet. I've got enough on my mind with
them eighty-three we already counted. Come on. We'll pick up them
horses and hit for home. That's work enough for to-day, if you ask
me."

"I'd like to get one crack at whoever's doing it," Chip said, reining
reluctantly alongside. "I'll sure do it too."

"Not here and now you won't. Gosh, that wind's a corker, ain't it? I
feel like my bones are packed in ice. For the lordsake, Chip, come
on!"

They overtook the horses just as they were swinging off toward another
coulee to get out of the wind, and hazed them along at a hard gallop
across the bench and down a gravelly ridge. Heads bowed to the bitter
wind, they rode doggedly, eyes red and smarting. On this bare slope
the gale gouged loose patches of gravel and flung it in clouds high
into the air. Small pebbles flew like hailstones, pelting horses and
riders alike. The short grass, its curly blades showing green at the
roots, whipped flat to the ground.

Hating to face the cruel blast, the loose horses spread out where
they could and tried to dodge back to more sheltered places they knew;
but two shrill-voiced demons seemed always just where escape was most
easily blocked, and outguessed them, outran them, turned them back
into the teeth of the wind. Manes and tails whipping, ears laid back,
they tore down the hill, blinding their captors in the dust their
unshod hoofs flung up for the whooping gale to seize and sweep along;
a wild and picturesque flight which a Russell would have loved to
paint.

The brushy bottomland of Flying U creek received them at last. A
hundred yards from the new pasture fence below the camp Chip spurred
ahead to open the gate. The half-broken horses shied, snorted in
pretended panic and streamed through the opening, and Weary swung off
to drag the wire-and-pole gate into place again and fasten it with the
chain loop.

"What'll we do, Chip--tell J.G. right away about them butchered
steers, or wait maybe till morning?" he wanted to know, as he galloped
up alongside again.

"Why wait? It's got to be told."

"Yeah, it's got to be told. But I thought we might maybe give the Old
Man one more night's sleep before he knows it." He leaned and spat
wide of his horse. "Just as you say, though."

Chip rode ten rods at a walk, his hands clamped over the saddle horn,
his slim young body swaying slightly in perfect rhythm with his
horse's steps, like a dancer catching the beat of the music that is in
his blood. He drew his teeth gently across wind-chapped underlip while
he came to a decision and suddenly he looked at Weary.

"It's something more than slaughtered beef," he said, and caught the
edge of his coat between thumb and finger, turning it out for Weary to
see. "That's why I jumped my horse behind the brush. Pretty good
shooting, when you take distance and wind into consideration. Whoever
did it, he was so far off you didn't hear the shot. I did, because I
was listening for it."

"Mamma!" gasped Weary, leaning to squint at the round hole with its
brownish rim. "Took you all this while to jar loose a word about it,
hunh? You sure are a mouthy guy!"

"What was the use? We couldn't get at him. He was over across the
gully, cached somewhere in the rocks. Been watching us, most likely.
The funny part is that he waited till we were both almost out of sight
before he made up his mind to take a shot at us."

"That ain't funny," Weary corrected him soberly. "That's luck."

"That's enlightening, you mean. Shows who it is he really wanted to
get."

"You?"

"Who else? He let you get by into the brush. For that matter, he let
us both get out of the gully and up on the ridge where we couldn't
very well take after him--which shows he didn't want a gun battle on
his hands. All he wanted was to pot me while he had the chance."

"I wish," said Weary complainingly, "you'd of said something about it
at the time, Chip. I'd 'a' gone back after the dirty son-of-a-gun."

"And that," Chip retorted, "is exactly why I didn't say anything about
it."

"No," Weary made sarcastic comment, "I suppose you'd let him beef yuh
like he did them steers, before you'd condescend to mention the fact.
You sure are a self-sufficient cuss, but some of these days you'll
bump into the fact that you can't buck this game all by your
lonesome."

"Yes?"

"Yes! Daw-gone you, _yes_! Sometimes, Chip, you make me so damn mad--"

"Because why? I haven't done a thing, so far."

"Mamma!" sighed Weary. "Ain't I just been telling yuh? It's you trying
to play a lone hand that started all this ruckus in the first place.
If you'd passed the word to us boys, that day at Cow Island, instead
of foggin' off after Cash Farley by yourself, you wouldn't be getting
buttonholes cut in your coat like this, maybe."

"I don't see how you figure that. I got the horse I went after, didn't
I? If I'd waited to holler for help--"

"You'd of showed your brains," Weary finished the sentence, according
to his own ideas. "We'd likely have tangled with Cash right then and
there, and chances are he'd of been laid away. That would of settled
it. Instead of that, you let him go and frame up ways of getting even.
Now the Flying U's out two, three carloads of beef, to say nothing of
that bunch of horses they got away with last summer."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Chip inquired acrimoniously. "You've
changed your tune, seems to me. I thought it wasn't the Butch Lewis
gang doing all this?"

"Well, it ain't." Weary's face relaxed into a brief grin. "I'm just
carrying out your argument, is all--running you into a corner with it.
It's this idea you've got of bowin' your neck and going head on after
a thing. I'm showin' you how you pan out when you try and take things
into your own hands. If this is Big Butch's work, which it ain't by a
long shot, and if you're chump enough to try and settle with him
alone, which you couldn't do, why, I'm tellin' yuh right now, Chip,
that Big Butch'd just make one bite of you."

"Oh, go to hell!" snorted Chip, and pulled the big collar of his
sour-dough coat higher around his ears as he spurred his horse into a
faster pace.

"If I do, I'll sure have you along for company," Weary retorted. "You
certainly are about as bullheaded a cuss as I ever met up with."

To that statement Chip deigned no reply, and with ill feeling between
them for the first time in months, they rode in silence to the creek,
splashed through a paper-thin glaze of new ice and loped up to the
corral. In silence they unsaddled, stabled their horses and went
crunching through freezing mud on the path to the cabins. Where the
trail forked near the bunk house, Chip swung off toward Jim Whitmore's
cabin, conscious of Weary's surprised glance as he went on.

An uneasy feeling that Weary was right, that nothing would be gained
by telling J.G. now of his loss, slowed Chip down to a laggard pace
which halted beside the little square window beside the door. Glancing
in, he saw J.G. lying on his bunk asleep, his lips gently puffing in
and out with the subdued snores he emitted. The lamplight shone on
the bald patch coming on his head. . . .

Seconds ago the bunk house door had slammed behind Weary. Chip looked
that way, looked in again at the window. When a cowboy is in doubt, he
usually rolls a cigarette,--or did in the days before the
tailor-mades. Chip took his time doing it, his thoughts dwelling
miserably upon the trouble and loss he had caused Jim Whitmore in the
months since he had come riding north, looking for his brother Wane.
Discord and enmity seemed to have followed him like a cloud of hungry
mosquitoes.

There was the trouble at Cow Island, when he had been all but hung on
a trumped-up charge of stealing his own horses. Dave Burch and Tom
Shaner, glorying in their authority as leaders of the Vigilantes,
would never forgive the Flying U for making them back down.

And there was the Butch Lewis outfit (or maybe his name was Butch
McGoon; Hec Grimes at Cow Island had called him that). His trouble
with Cash Farley, one of Butch's men, was the direct cause of all this
beef stealing now. Chip would have sworn to that. All through the
summer he had piled up trouble for good old J.G., and now he had to go
in and tell him of this last outrage. His cigarette was smoked down
to the stub before he could bring himself to the ordeal; a bitter
thing to face--but it wouldn't be better for the waiting.




CHAPTER THREE

A MAN-SIZE JOB


His cigarette was smoked down to the stub when he heard a prodigious
yawn inside. He pinched out the fire in his cigarette, ground the stub
carefully under his heel and opened the door.

He was not long in the cabin. When he came out, his eyes held a bleak
look they had not worn before. Opposite the window he halted again for
a glance inside--and flinched at what he saw; J.G. sitting on the edge
of his bunk, absently crowding fresh tobacco into his pipe, while he
stared unseeingly at the wall before him, looking somehow years older
than he had ten minutes ago, when he lay peacefully asleep after a
hard day in the saddle.

One look and a sharp indrawn breath, and Chip turned away and walked
with squared shoulders to the bunk house. Instant silence fell upon
the place when he opened the door. The Happy Family, evidently deep in
discussion a moment before, sat in awkward self-consciousness as he
came in and pushed the door shut with a twist of his shoulder. Eyes
followed him to the stove, watched him while he stood there with his
back turned upon them, warming his hands. For all the sign he gave,
the room might have been empty--which was the cold aloof way he had
when life struck at him too harshly. And for the moment no one seemed
willing to batter against that wall of silence with which he held them
off.

Then Weary, combing his thick dark hair before the small mirror that
made him crouch down to see himself in it, he was so tall, turned with
the comb poised just over his right ear.

"Well, what'd he say, Chip?" he asked, with a complete disregard of
any past disagreement. "Jar loose a little information, can't yuh?
What's J.G. think about it?"

"I didn't ask him what he thought."

Cal Emmett, sure to blunder into touchy subjects, gave a constrained
laugh. "Hear you've been annexin' some extra buttonholes, Chip."

Chip half turned toward him. "Yes? News travels fast in this country."
His tone was tart.

"Meaning I'm too damn gabby," sighed Weary. "Sure, I told the boys
about that. Keep 'em off the sky line, maybe, till we can glom the
jasper that done it. Take a look at that hole, boys."

He came over to Chip, looked straight into his moody hazel eyes with
his own sunny blue ones, and twitched the sheepskin-lined canvas coat
open. "See that? If Chip had been setting three inches forward, that
bullet would of bored plumb through his lungs and heart sideways.
That's--"

"His _what?_" Cal Emmett chortled, to hide the shock he felt.

"Oh, he's got a heart, all right. You ask that family of silver-maned
horses of hisn." Weary gave the coat an affectionate yank and let Chip
go. "Mamma! A little better shooting, and I'd 'a' had to pack him all
the way home against that wind. You can't," he plaintively explained,
"drive a bunch of horses worth a damn when you're packin' a corpse on
a led horse behind yuh."

From the corner of his eye he saw Chip grin at that oblique
acknowledgment of gratitude, and a tension left Weary's mouth. "The
great and burning question now is, who do we know that's as good a
rifle shot as that? Three hundred yards, if it was an inch, and a high
wind to allow for."

"Aw," Happy Jack croaked unbelievingly, "there ain't nobody that good
a shot. I betcha he was aimin' at somep'm in the gully and shot over."

"Shep Taylor's a wiz with a rifle," Ted Culver offered. "Been sellin'
beef all winter too. Yuh mind, Cal, we met him and Snuffle haulin'
two four-horse loads out to the fort. That was about a month ago, when
we was comin' out from Dry Lake."

Weary gave a quick shake of the head. "Wouldn't be Shep. Way I figure,
it's some of them nesters that moved in last fall down along them
creek bottoms. Shep Taylor's an ornery cuss to work for, but he's
straight. I'd bank on that."

"Just the same, I wouldn't put it past the Hobble-O," Ted persisted.
"By gosh, if I'd of known what was goin' on, I'd sure as hell clumb up
and took a look in them wagons. I'll gamble there was more hind
quarters than there was front."

At the washbasin Chip lathered hands and face with a cake of yellow
soap and listened to the argument that ensued. Some of the others
seemed to think the Hobble-O was guilty, though Weary stoutly defended
the ginger-whiskered, irascible old Shep Taylor. Not once, Chip
noticed, did anyone mention Butch Lewis as a possible suspect, nor any
of his outfit. Their studied attempt to throw the blame elsewhere made
his lip curl. They couldn't pull that sort of thing on him, he told
himself. They must be crazy if they thought all this chewing the rag
would make him change his mind about it.

At the time he failed to appreciate their motive as a friendly attempt
to ease his feeling of responsibility. At supper he ate in silence,
his eyes turned toward his plate. For one thing he had no wish to see
J.G's face, with its deeper lines of worry, nor did he want to meet
his boss's grave, questioning glance. What had passed between them
there in the cabin stood out in Chip's consciousness as if all must
see the words written in the air. Food choked him. Hungry as he had
been, he was the first to push back his plate and straddle backward
over the bench at the long table, and he knew that glances followed
him when he left the mess house.

In his bunk, with his face turned to the wall and his blankets pulled
up over his ears so that only his brown scalp lock was visible, he lay
thinking miserably of many things best forgotten. It seemed to him
that a curse lay on his life, though why that was so he could not
understand. For himself he did not greatly care--or so he said to
himself that night. He could take all the hard knocks Fate wanted to
hand out to him and take them on his feet. But why must he carry
trouble with him to the place that had come to be the only home he
knew anywhere in the world? Why must good old J.G. suffer because he
had taken in a hoodoo?

Youth touches the heights of exaltation and plumbs the depths of
despair. Long after the bunk house was dark and silent, save for the
snoring of weary young men asleep, Chip Bennett lay motionless under
his blankets, every nerve athrob with thoughts too bitter for the boy
he was, after all was said. Toward morning he slept, but he did not
waken to any brighter mood, and he lay in bed until after the others
had gone to breakfast.

Then he rose and dressed quickly and busied himself about his bunk.
When he went at last to his breakfast, his warbag was packed, his
blankets rolled in his bed tarp. The last stragglers joshed him a
little and went their way, telling each other that Chip was a damn
fool to fight his head over something he couldn't help. And they
saddled and went off to comb the range for more saddle horses to throw
in the pasture and shape up for spring round-up, planning as they rode
how they would handle the beef butchers if they could have their way,
and wondering what action J.G. meant to take. They speculated somewhat
upon the fact that so far he had not said a word about it, even to
Shorty. It was damned queer. They wondered if maybe Chip had lost his
nerve after all and didn't tell the Old Man about it.

The trouble was that Chip had not lost his nerve. Jim Whitmore would
have felt better if he had. He waited in his cabin, smoking and
walking, restless as a caged grizzly, from window to window, pausing
at each to look out into the windy, sun-drenched morning. Standing at
one window, he saw Chip saddle the blue roan he liked best in his
string, and ride away to the upper pasture. Moving uneasily to the
opposite window, he watched until Chip came riding back to the corral
leading Mike, his own private saddle horse. The others, Jeff the pack
horse, Silvia and her two colts, Rummy the irrepressible two-year-old
and little Silver the yearling, trotted eagerly behind and around him.
They seemed to know that they were going to travel new trails. Their
tossing silver manes, the way they lifted rumps at one another in
sheer exuberance, told eloquently of their elation.

Jim Whitmore grunted an oath and clamped his teeth down on his
pipestem. He turned away from the window--and turned back again,
muttering something about a damned young fool. He watched until,
saddle changed to Mike's back and the empty packsaddle cinched gauntly
on Jeff, Chip stepped limberly astride Mike and trotted up to the bunk
house. He waited, smoking furiously in savagely spasmodic puffs,
until Chip led his horses up to his door, dropped reins and came in.

J.G. glared at him through a blue cloud. "Bound you'll act the damn
fool, ay? Can't take advice from nobody, I s'pose?"

"Not in this case, I can't." Chip looked at him, a swift glance that
looked away again. "There's times when a man's got to pick his own
trail."

"Man!" J.G. snorted. "Better wait till you're old enough to vote! Wait
till you're dry behind the ears--"

"I'm old enough to tackle any job I know is mine, J.G." Chip spoke
gruffly, perhaps to hide how shaken he was. "You wouldn't have much
use for a fellow that wouldn't."

Jim Whitmore yanked his pipe from his mouth, glared at it, cursed it
for having burned itself out. He turned away to the blanketed table,
turned back with his hand outstretched. "Well, here's your pay. Don't
go actin' the fool any more'n you have to." He thrust his pipe into
his pocket, took it out again, looked at it and thrust it cold between
his teeth. "Well, so long. Take care of yourself--and if you--don't be
any bigger fool than the good Lord made yuh."

"I'll try not to. Uh--good-by."

He picked up Mike's reins as if he were in a great hurry to be gone,
swung into the saddle and trotted away down along the pasture fence
and so out into the old Whoop-up Trail that wound its devious way
southward to the river and across to the hills beyond.




CHAPTER FOUR

HORSES FOR SALE


Barr Lang stood in the doorway of his hotel dining room and eyed the
little group of horses clustered about his hitch rail. Across the road
at the blacksmith shop, Dave Burch, captain of the Vigilantes (also
expert blacksmith between hangings) smoothed his grizzled beard and
stared at Chip from under shaggy brows. No doubt he was thinking of
the time he came near hanging that young fellow across the way,
thinking those same horses had been stolen. Chip thought of it and
hated himself for the crimply chill that went up his spine into the
roots of his hair, when he saw Burch's cold gaze upon him. For that he
walked a little straighter to the door of Lang's store, crowded in
between hotel and saloon on the long platform.

Barr Lang came toward him with his fat-throated chuckle. "Well! Looks
like you're pullin' your freight! Ain't quittin' the Flying U, are
you?"

"Kinda looks that way, don't it?" Then Chip repented of his
churlishness. "Yes, I'm heading south again, Mr. Lang. How about a
little grub?"

"Sure, sure! Jim'll fix ya up, all right. So you're headin' back down
the trail, ay? Colorado, I s'pose?"

Chip forced a grin. "Might, unless I land a job before I get there."

Lang followed him into the store, leaned an elbow on a showcase while
Chip found the list he had in his pocket. "Well, now, if you'd of come
along yesterday mebby you coulda drawed pay on the trip. Part of the
way, anyhow. Butch sent a bunch of horses through here. Headin' for
Cheyenne. That might of been a chance to work your passage." His
little shrewd eyes studied Chip's profile, caught the pinching in of
his mouth and drew down his own lip to head off a smile.

"Give me the sugar in a cloth bag, if you can, will you? And if you've
got an extra gunny sack for the stuff--" At the clerk's nod, Chip
turned and looked full at Lang, meeting the quizzical gleam in his
eyes without a sign of understanding.

"I thought Butch was hauling beef this winter," he said carelessly.
"What's the matter? Market play out on him?"

Barr Lang's eyes narrowed to slits, then opened their fullest.
"Butch? First I heard of it. No, Butch's outfit has been gentlin'
saddle horses all winter, far as I know. Got a nice bunch shaped up,
from what Hec said. He seen 'em cross the river; said they looked like
jim-dandies, every one of 'em." He paused. "The Hobble-O hauled out
some beef. Took it out the other way, though. Where'd you hear Butch
was sellin' beef?"

"Why, I don't know--somebody said something about it. Might have got
things mixed."

"Yeah, I guess they did, all right." Lang gave a goodnatured chuckle.
"Wasn't Butch, I'd bet on that. How's the river to-day?"

"Don't know," Chip answered. "I patronized the ferry. I wasn't sure
just how the ford was, so I didn't try it. Quite a lot of slush ice
along the bank."

"Butch forded yesterday, all right," Lang told him. "She won't be high
for a month yet, unless they get a chinook up above here, or it comes
on to rain. Got your same bunch of horses, I see."

"Yes, same bunch."

"Don't want to sell that mare, do yuh?"

"Not just yet I don't," Chip rebuffed him and paid for his supplies
with a gold piece.

Again Lang chuckled. The whole country knew how Chip Bennett felt
about those horses of his. He followed Chip to the door and stood on
the porch while the sack of provisions was being tied on Jeff. "Well,
if you overhaul Butch, mebby he'll give you a job," he called as Chip
mounted. "Take care of yourself!"

With lifted hand Chip acknowledged the farewell and rode away from
there, scowling thoughtfully at the trail ahead of Mike's nose. Just
what had Barr Lang meant to convey? A warning? Or was it just his idea
of a joke? He decided that Barr Lang, standing in with everybody as a
good hotel-store-saloon keeper must, if he would prosper, merely
wanted to let him know that Butch was on the trail ahead of him.

He did not loiter because of that fact. He rode hard, the silver-maned
mare and her two colts, fleet as deer, traveling easily where Jeff,
the lightly packed bay, puffed and grew gaunt under the pace Chip set,
and even the hardy Mike sweated to his ears. Then, miles short of
Billings, he turned sharply west in a drizzling rain, and rode to the
gate of a snug ranch snuggled back in a coulee, the house hidden among
trees.

The front door opened to his knock, lamplight streaming out upon his
tall slickered figure and his young face looking old and hard and
purposeful. His voice too was metallic with strain.

"Mr. Benton? I'm the fellow who owns the flaxen-maned chestnut mare
and colts you wanted to buy in Billings last spring. I've decided to
sell. Do you still want them?"

"Why, come in! Come in! I remember you--"

"Thanks. I'm in a hurry. Do you want to buy?"

"Well, if the mare's as good as she was last spring, and if the colts
have shaped up the way they should, I'll buy, yes. Got them with you?"

"They're down by the gate. I want to make Billings before the stores
close."

Benton gave him a sharp look. "In trouble, young man?"

Chip's nostrils flared affrontedly. "Nobody's after me," he retorted.
"I need money, is all." But for all that, he drove a hard bargain and
got his price. But at the last, when he had led up Silver and Rummy
and the yearling, his young stoicism broke and he was just a boy
seeing his beloved horses taken from him.

His arm went round little Silver's neck, pulling the colt's head close
to his breast. "Knock off the price of this colt, Mr. Benton. I'm
keeping him. I'll give you a bill of sale for the other two and get
going."

With eyes hard as agates--they were so close to tears--and with his
heart heavy in his chest, Chip rode away from Benton's ranch. Each
lonesome whinny of the colt was like a knife in his chest, and once
he stopped and hunted through all his pockets for a lump of cut-loaf
sugar, and fed little Silver what solacing crumbs he could find,
standing there in the drizzling rain, petting and comforting the
orphan until Silver seemed to understand and left off straining at the
lead rope and looking back along the trail.

In Billings, with the rain still falling dismally and the streets
practically deserted, he left the horses at a livery stable just
across from a general store that made a point of remaining open until
midnight to accommodate late travelers such as he. Tired though he
was, he wrote a short letter to J.G., folded it around the money he
had received for the two horses, and got the storekeeper's promise to
register and mail it first thing in the morning.

Three trips he made across the street, carrying his purchases into the
livery-stable office where they would be safe until morning. The last
load he carried was a sack of grain for his horses. He went back and
looked them over to make sure they were well fed and comfortable, and
fed little Silver more sugar from a fresh sack.

Then he hunted a rooming house close by and went to bed, and slept
like one drugged until an hour or so before dawn.

At a little all-night lunch place near the depot he ate breakfast,
not because he was hungry, but because he wanted to save time and he
knew that with his stomach filled now he could ride for half a day
without stopping to make camp. He had left orders for the horses to be
grained at four o'clock, so they would be ready for the trail by the
time he was and would have the heart for a hard day's travel, and now
he packed swiftly and dexterously, adding all his supplies to Jeff's
load. He was out of town before daylight, just as he had planned.

Two nights later--riding wide of the trail where he could, without
losing too much time--he rode down across the willow flat in the teeth
of wind and a sleety rain and approached the Missouri. Barr Lang's
place showed no glimmer of light, not even in the saloon, which kept
late hours. He did not attempt to strike a match and look at his
watch, but he knew it must be close to three o'clock in the
morning--and this too was as he had planned. Snubbed to its post
beside Turk Bowles' squalid shack, the ferry showed its black bulk
chuckling at the current, its planks probably a glare of ice.

But he wanted nothing of the ferry that night. With the horses roped
together, he urged them into the sullen black water, their hoofs
crunching ice at the brink. The next few minutes were a nightmare to
Chip. This was the place where his brother Wane had met death in the
night; some said by drowning, though Milt Cummings had told Chip it
was a bullet from Cash Farley's gun that had sent Wane Bennett down
the river. Whatever the cause of Wane's death, Chip always hated the
Cow Island crossing, always felt a prickling of the scalp when he must
ride into it.

To-night, with the storm beating in his face and his very bones crying
out for rest, the river was a black monster sliding down upon him out
of nowhere, pushing against Mike's legs, worrying and clutching,
trying to pull him under. In the hissing of the sleet, it seemed that
Wane was there beside him, whispering to him that he must not venture
upon the trail he meant to ride; urging him back to the Flying U;
telling him he had done all he could, selling Rummy and Silvia and
sending the money to J.G. Two hundred dollars was quite a lot of
money--hardly a drop in the bucket, though, when it was counted
against J.G.'s loss. Still, it was all he could do; more than most
cow-punchers would think of doing.

With his teeth clamped hard together and his face bowed to the storm,
Chip rode doggedly ahead, letting Mike pick his way to suit himself.
The horses came out shivering. Tired though they were, he forced them
to a lope until the blood ran warm through their chilled bodies, and
as they struck into the familiar trail, he could feel the new spring
in Mike's stride. Thought he was going home, back to the Flying U. But
presently Chip reined him short off the trail, into a long narrow
valley leading off toward the Hobble-O and the Lazy Ladder farther
down the river.

Neither place drew him, however. He turned again, this time to the
left, and entered a brushy draw which opened, a half mile farther on,
into a little high-walled basin filled with scrubby timber at its
upper end, where a spring creek flowed sluggishly.

Here, in a fair-sized niche in the bluff that gave some shelter from
the storm--where a fire, too, would not be seen unless a man rode
right up to the place--he made camp, clawing in the dark amongst a
thicket for dry wood that would burn. Mike and Jeff, even little
Silver, stood close to the fire, snug under blankets Chip pulled from
his own bedding. Their contented munching of oats from the feed bags
Chip hung over their heads made a pleasant, homey sound within the
whistlings of the wind. Their eyes shone green in the reflection of
the blaze. When he turned to look at them, Chip saw that they were no
longer trembling with cold and weariness.

For himself, he set up the little brown tent bought in Billings. A
pup tent, the storekeeper had called it. It was so low that any patch
of brush would hide it from view, but it held his bed and his
belongings snug from the storm, and when he crawled into it and lay
facing the crackling flames, Chip forgot a little of his misery and
was almost satisfied with what he had so far accomplished.

There is a content that comes with doing what you have set out to do,
however disagreeable the task. When he slept at last, it was his
immediate future that had held his last waking thoughts, and not the
things he had left behind him.




CHAPTER FIVE

A CLUE IN HAND


Deep in the Badlands Chip lived the life of the gray wolves that slunk
into the shadows when he rode near. Like the gray wolves he prowled up
and down the canyons, though he took the trail at dawn, when the
wolves were slinking home from the hunt. Twice he came upon fresh
carcasses of beef, too late to catch the killers in the act. For hours
at a time he would lie hidden on some high point and watch the country
below, using the field glasses he had bought for that purpose in
Billings.

On such a day, when he had been nearly a week down there by himself,
he lay in a nest between two boulders on a ridge and saw four men ride
single file down the gulch beneath him; Weary, Ted Culver, Jack Bates
and big, slow-voiced Dick Bird, whom the Flying U boys feared for his
sudden rages--but whom they called Dickybird behind his back because
the name was so grotesquely inappropriate.

Through his field glasses he watched them lonesomely out of sight,
tempted to hail them and hear the sound of a human voice once more.
He half rose from his place to shout down to them the chance they were
taking of being shot, then settled back again out of sight. They
weren't such fools they didn't know all he could tell them about risk.
He would be the fool, advertising himself now, after going to all the
trouble he had to make his presence in that country a dead secret.

Probably they were down there for the same reason he was,--to catch
the killers of beef, if they could. They must know that a man cached
in the rocks as he was could drop them one by one out of their
saddles--like shooting grouse off a pine branch.

Thinking of that, he swung the glasses slowly along the opposite
hillside, holding them startled on a wisp of something like smoke
drifting across his field of vision. While he watched uneasily,
listening for the crack of a rifle, the wisp thickened, widened, until
rocks and bushes were completely obscured.

Fog! He lowered the glasses and saw it come flowing into the gulch,
reaching with long gray brush strokes to every rock and jutting crag,
painting a smooth blankness wherever it touched. He glanced down into
the canyon behind him and saw it was the same; and even up where he
crouched, the clammy gray was enfolding him. He might have expected
it, he thought disgustedly, when the wind died that morning and the
air had that muggy, damp feel. Damn such weather, anyway. If he had to
waste much more time getting nowhere, the weather would be so warm the
damned thieves would have to lay off until fall--unless they were
devilish enough to butcher and let the meat rot. They were capable
even of that, in his opinion.

Well, the boys would head for home now--and be lucky to make it, if
this fog drifted in any worse. And that went for himself, if he didn't
slide down off that ridge mighty quick and get back to where he had
left Mike. He was inclined now to wish that he had not chosen his camp
in the most inaccessible place he could find where a horse could get
in and out; a grassy hollow that must have been an old blowhole ages
ago, with no outlet except one narrow, twisting fissure between two
red hills. The Badlands were full of strange places like that, hard to
find even when one knew their location. He hadn't counted on fog.

His horse was tied in a thicket where the grass was too scanty to
attract stock and the men he was looking for would not be likely to
come. Maybe a mile back to him, the way Chip would have to go, and
the sooner he covered that mile the better.

By the time he had reached the foot of the ridge, the gray wall had
closed in until he could not see ten feet, and a glance at his watch
told him that it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon--too few
hours from darkness to please him much. The sooner he got to camp the
better.

He was picking his way carefully along the water-gouged base of the
hill, looking for the place where he had climbed up to the grassy
slope above the loose red wall of the bank. A tricky place where a
fellow could easily sprain an ankle or even break his leg, if he
stepped off the edge and took a tumble down that bank. It was
considerably farther along where he had started up. He remembered now
that he had followed the top of the ridge down quite a long way,
keeping under cover as much as possible while he looked for a vantage
point with a view into both canyons. He had not come this way where
the hill cut straight down, almost as if railroad graders had been at
work cutting a level roadbed through.

Damn such a country, anyway. The short grass, curled and matted under
the winter storms, was slick as wet soap here, where the slope was
steepest. Twice he had to lean and clutch the grass alongside him to
keep from going over when his riding boots slipped on fog-jeweled
tufts. What he should have done, he now realized, was go back along
the top of the ridge to the barren, rocky fold where he had climbed
up. But the hill was too steep for that now.

How far he had gone he could not tell with any certainty; half a mile
or more, he guessed. The cut bank seemed lower along there, and in
places he could almost see the red soil of the canyon floor. Too far
down to risk a jump, however, unless he had to do it. So he kept on,
edging along with his rifle balanced in his left hand, his right
outstretched ready to grab a handful of grass if he felt his feet
slipping.

And it was then, while he was sweating over that precarious footing,
that he felt and heard rather than saw something just beneath him.
Whether it was an animal or a man, he could not at first determine. He
waited, peering over the edge, a growing excitement quickening his
pulse so that he felt the blood beating against his temples. Two
minutes--three--and a breath of air stirred the gray blanket so that
for an instant he saw.

Twenty feet or so down the sheer bank a man was stooping over a
carcass lying sprawled on the ground; a beef critter, he knew by the
chunky head and wide stubby horns. It was only a glimpse he got, then
the fog blanket swung in and blotted the scene.

Chip's teeth snapped together on the oath he had almost shouted. That
would have warned the fellow, given him a chance to duck into the fog
and get away. And here he was, after almost a week of hunting him,
skinning a Flying U critter as bold as you please! If the damned fog
would lift again. . . .

He jerked up his rifle, meaning to take aim and wait for another
glimpse of the thief. The movement threw him off balance as a
treacherous grass tuft suddenly gave way under the foot uphill. As he
threw his weight instinctively upon the other foot, that slipped as if
he had stepped on grease. Flailing wildly with both arms, he fought to
recover his balance--and shot over the grassy brink in a sickening
plunge.

"What the hell!" The man below yelped as if the words were jarred out
of him, when Chip came hurtling down upon him. Had he remained
stooping, his back must have been broken by the impact, but he
straightened just as Chip landed in a heap on the carcass.

Dazed, the wind knocked out of him and his rifle gone, Chip half rose,
groping blindly, clutching for a hold on the thief before the fellow
got away. A fist struck him a vicious blow on the side of the head,
but his arms went out in a sweeping, grappling motion, got a handful
of coat and hung on grimly, as a sharp pain slashed his upper arm and
shoulder. He wondered why he couldn't see, then knew that the landing
had jammed his hat down over his eyebrows. And he couldn't let go and
yank it up out of the way. The fellow struck again, jerked loose and
ran.

By the time Chip had gotten to his feet and pulled up his hat, the fog
was folded round him in a chill gray wall. Clattering hoofbeats went
up the canyon, were presently muffled and lost in the distance.

All he had to show for the encounter were the burning pain across his
shoulder, a handful of torn pocket from somebody's coat, a bruised and
aching body and a terrible, consuming rage, the greater because
humiliation lay beneath it.




CHAPTER SIX

FIRST AID FROM POLLY


The clip-clup of a shod horse trotting amongst scattered rocks came up
the canyon, the sound muffled yet magnified in the fog. Seemed close
too. Another damned cow thief, Chip thought, and fumbled for his
six-shooter. Shaken, still dazed from his fall and the blow that
followed it, he leaned against the red bank and waited grimly, teeth
set hard together. There'd be no getaway for this one if he could help
it--and he thought he could.

The hoofbeats were almost upon him before he could see the rider, a
formless gray shape in the suffocating mass of fog. Chip raised his
gun as the hammer clicked back.

"I've got the drop," he announced harshly. "Put up your hands, you
blinkety-blink, blank-blank-blank! I'd like nothing better than to
fill you so full of lead you'd break your horse's back trying to carry
yuh. Pile off, damn yuh, and come over here--and make damned sure you
don't crook an elbow while you're getting here."

"Well, of all the gall! You put down that gun and stop your swearing
at me, or I'm liable to try a little shooting myself!"

"Hunh?" Chip's mouth fell open and hung there in blank amazement.

"You heard me." The rider, a small, slim figure on a chunky brown
horse, reined closer. "Don't you try any of your holdup tactics on me
or you'll wish you hadn't. What do you want, anyway, yelling and
bellowing around the way you've been doing?"

Chip found some sort of a voice to use. "And who the devil may you
be?" he wanted to know. "If you haven't any more sense than to be down
in here, you can't complain at what you may see or hear." His eyes
narrowed, blinking a little at the fog which seemed to be creeping
into his brain. "What are you, anyhow? One of these beef butchers?"

The girl kicked her horse, forced it to stand near the fresh carcass
and like it. "No, I'm not. And I must say I'm not crazy about your
manners. What's going on here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to
be headed for Denver."

Chip stared. "Denver? You sure have got the advantage of me--"

"Well," she retorted, "I wouldn't brag about it, if I were you. Last
Fourth of July you filled my pitcher with coffee a dozen times, there
at the picnic at Cow Island. But of course you didn't see anybody but
Julie Lang. You're Chip Bennett and I'm nobody at all--but I would
like to know why you're down here, pulling a gun on me and swearing
like a trooper at me. I never did anything to you, did I?"

"I--you must be Shep Taylor's girl," Chip muttered confusedly. "I
didn't--"

"Well, I'm surprised!" The Taylor girl's tone was elaborately
sarcastic. "You actually figured that out! Of course, being introduced
to me a couple of times at that darned picnic wouldn't give you the
least idea--" She stopped abruptly, drawing in her breath. Her eyes
darted here and there, quick glances that saw and registered whatever
they fell upon. "What's that blood dripping off your hand for?" she
demanded sharply. "I didn't hear any shot. What's been taking place
here, anyway? You look," she stated judicially, "sort of as if you'd
been sent for and couldn't go."

She swung off her horse like a cowboy and came to him, her gloved
hands laying hold of him, lifting his left arm to look at it, turning
him a little so that she could see where the blood came from.

"Who slashed you like that?" she demanded fiercely. "You've had a
fight, it looks like to me. Was it you that hollered, a few minutes
ago?"

"No." Chip's voice was dull, unaccountably listless. "That was the
other fellow--yelling when I dropped down the bank on him."

She glanced quickly up the bank, gasped at the height of it, which
looked more than it really was, because the top was hidden in the fog.
"The fellow that was butchering this beef," she said and looked again
at the arm she was holding. "He slashed you with his skinning knife,
from the looks of things. I heard a yell and in a minute a horse
galloping off up the canyon. Well, we've got to do something about
this cut. You're bleeding like a stuck pig, do you know that?"

"I--sure I know it."

His blurred tone made her look at him closely. "Where's your horse?
No--wait a minute. We've got to stop this bleeding first thing. Sit
down--there on the beef--where I can get at you. You're so tall--"

Chip sat down, leaned his head back against the red bank. Dimly he was
aware that the Taylor girl was doing things to his shoulder and upper
arm, tearing cloth, wrapping and binding. Funny she should be off down
here by herself--no, he remembered now; some of the boys were joshing
Weary about Polly Taylor last winter. They said he ought to sling his
loop on Polly and take up a ranch. He could run a lot of cattle and
never hire help, because Polly was as good as four cow-punchers any
day. They said she brought in the strays and held things together. . .
. So her being here wasn't so strange, maybe. He began wondering
vaguely what she might know about all this. . . .

"That'll have to do till you get where it can be washed out with
carbolic," she said. "It's a nasty long slice he took, but it isn't
very deep, thank goodness." She was pulling up his shirt collar, his
coat. . . . "Lucky for you, old boy, you had on that thick sour-dough
coat. If you'd been in your shirt sleeves, he'd have just about taken
your arm off." She was buttoning him up like a small boy, talking
briskly while she worked. "What in the world did you go and jump off
that high bank for? It's a wonder you didn't break a leg or something.
Why," she asked petulantly, "didn't you shoot him?"

Chip wouldn't tell her then that he fell off the bank. He was afraid
she might think that was funny. He didn't see why he had to go weak as
a sick cat all at once. It didn't seem as though he had lost enough
blood for that. He forgot to consider the shock of that fall added to
the knife wound, and it surprised and disgusted him to find himself
staggering when he tried to walk. He was like a man drunk.

"What's that you're hanging onto?" Polly Taylor demanded. "Oh. A piece
of a coat. I suppose that's your clue," and she smiled unexpectedly up
into his face. "Well, keep it, but it probably won't do you much good.
Every store in the country sells hand-me-downs of that kind of cloth."

She bullied him into getting on her horse and she insisted upon
walking up to where he had left Mike. She wasn't lost, exactly, she
declared; she couldn't be, with old Pathfinder there. He'd take her
home even in this fog. He'd done it before, when it was dark as a
stack of black cats in a cellar. Where was he camped--if it was a fair
question? She'd stop by and fix up that cut for him before she went on
home.

Chip did not feel much like arguing the point. Sick as he was, lame in
every muscle from the fall, he was put to the shameful necessity of
riding a girl's horse and letting her walk; though she could have
climbed on behind, if she had wanted to. He didn't have much use for
girls, anyway. Pretty ones especially. Darned double-crossers, every
one of them. This one wasn't pretty--not with those freckles and that
red hair in pigtails down her back--but if he let her tag along to
camp, she'd go and blab her head off to every one she saw, telling all
she knew about him, and then some. Dressed like a man. Pants and
boots, chaps and a man's coat and hat--Chip hated to see a girl trying
to ape men. She wore a gun too. He could see why the boys joshed
Weary.

Rambling, inconsequential thoughts, but they carried him along through
the fog, Polly Taylor leading the horse he rode. She didn't have to,
he thought irritably. He was holding the horn just because she had
kept the reins herself. He didn't have to be treated like a sick calf,
but if she wanted to make herself important around there, let her go
to it. He couldn't hunt that fellow in the fog, anyway.

As they neared the thicket where he had left his horse, Mike whinnied
to let them know he was there. "Thanks. I'm all right now," Chip said
apathetically. "You better go on home. And I wish you'd do me the
favor not to say anything about me--"

Polly Taylor stood beside Mike's shoulder, looking up at Chip,
watching to see if he were going to fall out of the saddle.

"You'll look nice if you get blood-poisoning in that arm," she told
him sharply. "Of course, I won't say anything about you. How big a
fool do you think I am? You're down here on the quiet, trying to get
the goods on whoever's killing Flying U cattle. Well, what do you
suppose I'm here for? You must know they're trying to frame the
Hobble-O. We've been filling a beef contract with Fort Assiniboine--"

"Not with hind quarters, I hope?"

"Not on your life. Not any more than belongs to the critter. And we've
got the hides to show for every beef we've hauled out." Her chin went
up with a sidewise tilt of her head. "We may be hard up, but we
haven't come down to peddling any meat but our own. So I'm on a still
hunt, same as you. Pa and Snuffle have got their hands full, and the
boys have all the chores to do, and we can't afford to hire help
except in round-up time."

"A girl's got no business prowling down in here--"

"Why not? I'm no Julie Lang." In that gray half-light, her face looked
shadowed. "I'm pretty handy with a gun, and that's what all you men
bank on for protection, isn't it? And I'd comb hell backwards to help
Pa." She glanced around her, an involuntary movement that betrayed her
fear. "What I'm afraid of, Mr. Bennett, is that they're trying to
frame up a case against him for--the Vigilantes. If they can--"

She broke off abruptly and lifted Chip's rifle to its scabbard. "I
picked this up and brought it along. I thought it must be yours," she
said and smiled faintly. "And here's something else I found. Belongs
to the other fellow, I guess." She swung up into his view a small,
blood-stained ax of the kind easily carried behind the cantle,
probably wrapped in a gunny sack. A necessary implement, used for
splitting down the backbone of a beef and separating the quarters.

"One of the tools of his trade," she said. "You had a taste of the
other one. Cheer up, Mr. Bennett. At least, he'll have to hunt himself
a new ax."

In his misery Chip took that as a sly dig at his failure to get the
man when he had the chance. Had the fellow right there within reach
and this was all he had to show for it! Even lost his rifle--and of
course it had to be the girl who found it and brought it along--and
then gave it back to him with that sarcastic smile on her face. Hell,
she was treating him like a tenderfoot!

He came near refusing to tell her where his camp was, but that knife
cut was throbbing and burning so badly he thought maybe she was right
about blood-poisoning and he had better let her fix it up; it was in
such a darned awkward place he couldn't attend to it himself; on the
point of his shoulder and running down the back of his arm, like that,
he'd have to be a contortionist to get at it. And he cursed the luck
that made him need the girl's help.

He resented too the fact that she was not impressed with his hide-out.
Oh, yes, she said, she knew about that little basin. The Devil's
Dipper, she called it, because of its shape. She didn't know how many
knew about it; not many, she guessed. It would do for the present,
though the spring in there always dried up along in July, and it was
the worst place for snakes she'd ever seen. Safe enough now, though.
But if he wanted a real hide-out, she'd show him one that certainly
was a dandy. Folks could hunt till they were blind and they'd never
find it.

All this when they had wormed their way into the Devil's Dipper.
Outside, she hadn't talked more than was absolutely necessary, because
you couldn't tell how close some one might be in the fog and it didn't
pay to take a chance.

Chip resented her shrewdness. And he hated the unconcerned efficiency
she displayed in getting a fire started, boiling water and a flour
sack he'd swear was clean as soap and water could make it; boiled a
needleful of white thread too, and dried it by the fire, while she
washed the cut with carbolic water so hot he could scarcely keep from
yelling when it touched the raw flesh. She was very efficient too, in
sewing up the wound. At least, he judged she was, she hurt so
damnably, sewing over and over and taking as many stitches as she
thought were needed, with no apology for the pain.

She had Chip sweating and gritting his teeth with the agony of her
ministrations, but all he said was, "I'll bet you're a dandy at
doctoring horses." His tone left no doubt whatever of his meaning.

Polly Taylor calmly buttoned his collar and tied another flour sack
around his neck for a sling. "Yes. When Pathfinder got cut up in our
new barb-wire fence, you should have seen the sewing I had to do. He
looked like a crazy quilt when I got through, and he kicked three
boards off the stable. But he sure healed up nice."

Darn her, she didn't even crack a smile to show whether she meant it
or not.

He had to admit, though, that he felt better after the first pain was
over, and that the supper she cooked was the best meal he had eaten
since Billings; which was surprising, since Chip privately considered
himself the best camp-fire cook in the country. He had also a
reluctant appreciation of the way she washed the dishes and tidied
camp afterwards, but that did not mean he liked her any better.

He was glad when she finally led up her horse, stuck a very small
boot toe into the stirrup and went up with a springy lightness into
the saddle. Thanks he gave her, as his mother had taught him to do.
She dismissed them with a shrug and a wave of her hand, oddly out of
keeping with her rle as simple ranch girl.

"The unwritten law of the range," she said, with an arresting irony in
her voice. "Lie around camp and don't try to use that arm, and don't
monkey with the bandage, either. I'll be back in a couple of days to
take a look at it."

"Don't put yourself out on my account." Chip hoped that didn't sound
like a snub, but he didn't want her fussing around him, and that was
the truth. "And don't get lost," he added perfunctorily.

"Oh, Pathfinder will take care of that, all right," she said
carelessly, and gave him a long studying glance as she swung her horse
out into the smothery blackness of the night.

Well, she was good-hearted, all right, but he was glad she was gone.
He must have been. He told himself so at least a dozen times before he
slept.




CHAPTER SEVEN

WHY WAIT FOR PROOF?


The next day snailed by, a sodden century between dripping dawn and a
drizzling dusk. Chip remained within the Devil's Dipper and would have
slept the hours away, if his arm had let him. Since its throbbing kept
him awake, he did plenty of thinking. The result of his meditations
slipped out while Polly Taylor was talking next day about the
stealing. He hadn't intended to discuss the matter--or any other--with
Polly, but somehow he found himself telling her all about the trouble
with Cash Farley and the rest of Big Butch's gang, and just why he had
taken it upon himself to run them down on this beef rustling.

Polly hadn't thought about Butch Lewis as the guilty party. She was
sure that it was an attempt to implicate the Hobble-O and Butch had
always been a pretty good neighbor. "Anyway, he doesn't pay any
attention to cattle," she argued. "What he goes after is horses."

The same old argument. It made Chip tired. "He goes after whatever
will put the biggest crimp in the other fellow," he stated. "He's
after the Flying U because I'm working there; or was. I've got to
catch him pretty quick, now, or the weather'll be too warm to haul out
more beef. He must take it out the other way, toward Glasgow. He'll
have to lay off pretty soon now, so I'm going to get busy."

"Not with that arm," Polly told him flatly. "And they're not selling
the beef. They don't care how warm the weather gets; they'll go on
killing whenever they find a critter handy. It isn't any selling
proposition at all."

"No?"

"Why, no! Haven't you caught on yet?" Polly sweetened the dried apples
and set them aside to cool. Her cheeks were red from bending over the
fire, almost as red as her mouth, Chip noticed. All the short hairs
curled in little ringlets around her face. . . . If she had a mind to
fix herself up a little, she'd be good-looking--not that it mattered.

"Caught on to what?" he asked guardedly, knowing beforehand it was
just some silly girl notion of hers.

"Why, the--the devilish meanness of them. The foxy way they're keeping
clear and making it look like Papa's work. They aren't selling any
beef. All they do is skin out the hind quarters and pack them off
somewhere and dump them. I can show you one place where they threw at
least a dozen into a ravine."

"You sure of that?"

"Of course." She gave him a quick, impatient glance. "Didn't I just
say I saw a whole pile of them?" She stood up to go and suddenly rage
took hold of her. Both her small hands doubled into fists. "Killing's
too good for a man that will do such a thing! I'll pin it on him
before I'm through--"

"_You_ will!" Chip's snort of amused contempt was maddening. It placed
her down where children strut and brag. "I expect to handle this
situation myself," he added, with a tightening of the mouth. "It's a
little outside a woman's province, I'm afraid."

"Oh, yes, you'll handle it!" Polly Taylor looked furious. "If it's
left for _you_ to handle--You'd let them make a case against the
Hobble-O that would cost my father his life! That Cow Island bunch is
just waiting for a chance--"

"Calm yourself," was Chip's ironical advice. "Your father has nothing
to do with this. I'm the one they're after, and I'm going to Butch
Lewis and call for a show-down right now!" Though his voice was calm
enough, Chip's eyes and the flare of his nostrils betrayed how angry
he was. "I'll thank you not to meddle in this affair."

"Oh, _will_ you!" Polly's breath was coming fast. "You must think
you're some punkins, having Butch Lewis and his bunch spending their
time killing Flying U cattle just because they're mad at you! Let me
tell you one thing, Chip Bennett: If Big Butch was after you, he'd
_get_ you! Don't make any mistake about that. He certainly wouldn't
take out his spite killing beef--he'd hunt you up and put a bullet
through you, and no ifs or ands about it!"

"Yes?"

"_Yes!_" stormed Polly. "And you needn't speak to me in that
supercilious tone of voice, either. You're so darned conceited you
think you've started a range war, just because you got Butch Lewis
down on you!" She snatched up her gloves, buttoned herself into her
coat with indignant haste, and with an angry toss of her head, she
went over to her horse and mounted him like a boy who was so mad he
couldn't see straight.

But she could not resist a last fling at Chip. She reined over to the
fire and looked at him stormily. "If you ever should accidentally find
out the truth of this matter," she said, in a suppressed tone of
bitterness, "I'm afraid you're going to get the worst jolt you've ever
had. You'll find out you don't figure in it at all. And you needn't
waste your time on Butch Lewis, I can tell you that much."

Chip permitted his mouth a scornful twist at one corner. "Sorry if
he's a particular friend of yours, Miss Taylor--"

"Oh, you--"

"Because I'm certainly going after him."

Miss Taylor gave another toss of her head. "Yes, I've got a picture of
you going after Big Butch!" And with that she kicked Pathfinder with
her spurs and hurtled off toward the crevice before Chip could
translate his emotions into language permissible in the presence of a
lady.

"Damn it, I wish she'd been a man when she said that," he gritted
helplessly, glaring after her. And he began to pack his
belongings--with one hand mostly--and left the Devil's Dipper with his
mind wrathfully fixed upon following his own trail regardless. He had
talked pretty big about going after Big Butch and calling for a
show-down; he wasn't quite ready to commit suicide, he told himself
glumly; he'd have to wait for some proof before he did anything quite
so drastic as that. But he also told himself that he'd be damned if he
were going to let Polly Taylor or any other girl lead him around by
the nose. He wasn't broken to lead, he'd have her know.

That day he spent in finding another camp where that darned Taylor
girl couldn't locate him. It wasn't easy. He was obliged to go deeper
into the Badlands, where few cattle had been tempted to stray, and
where the beef butchers would not bother to look for them, their
object being to kill beef where they would be found.

The camp he chose didn't suit him, and by night he was so mad at Polly
Taylor and so miserable with his arm and certain bruised areas that
began to raise cain with him after hours in the saddle, that he was
ripe for any crazy notion that seized him. And in the night one came
and found him awake and eager to receive it.

Why wait for proof? Didn't he know enough already--all he needed to
know? The brilliance of that short cut of logic dazzled him so that he
could hardly wait for daylight. It never occurred to him that a touch
of fever was behind the brilliance.

A light snow had fallen in the night. Fine weather for trailing the
beef killers, he thought; but he wasn't going to monkey around any
longer hunting them.

"When you want to kill a snake, you don't start in on his tail," he
muttered. "You go to work on his head, by thunder." Which he
immediately proceeded to do, breaking camp again and taking the pack
horse and colt along with him. The particular snake he was after
holed up in a canyon he did not know, but he did know one end of the
trail that led to it, and rather than spend hours of haphazard
searching in that wild and broken country, he headed toward the
Whoop-up Trail.

Where three canyons branched like spread fingers, Chip took the one
farthest to the left--a turning that had nearly spelled disaster for
him last summer, when he had three outlaws in tow and the horse he
rode had known this trail all too well. That ride had been in
moonlight, and now the shadowless gray light gave an altogether
different aspect to the narrow winding gulch he followed. But certain
little landmarks there was no mistaking and Chip's memory held like
glue any trail he had once ridden over. He made the right turnings
into several different gulches and canyons and so came out finally
into the one he wanted. If he had had any doubt of that, two sets of
fresh horse tracks pointed the way before him. He followed them
boldly, still pleased with his idea.

He came out into a basin which on a map must have looked like the fat
body of a tarantula, it was so surrounded by crooked legs of canyons
and ravines. At one side, where a willow-fringed creek flowed through,
he glimpsed a crude rail fence through the trees, but the hoofmarks
led straight on through the snow to where the hills came down in a
notch filled with juniper and pines. The end of the trail, by the look
of things. He loosened the gun in his holster and rode forward, grim
and watchful as a wolf.




CHAPTER EIGHT

BIG BUTCH


Several horses loafed in a round-pole corral, and three of them
carried sweaty saddle marks and had been hard ridden, by the look of
them. Behind the corral a log stable squatted against the
brush-fringed wall of the basin, and farther along, half concealed
within the thicket, huddled a log cabin larger than the average size
favored by bachelor outfits. Chip found the trail of boot tracks in
the snow and followed.

He had no special plan, except that he was going to face Butch Lewis
and call for a show-down. After that--well, he didn't much care what
came after that, so long as he put a stop to the depredations against
the Flying U. They might kill him, but he'd go down fighting, anyway.

In that crazy mood he dismounted stiffly before the cabin and limped
to the door. With his good hand, he rapped peremptorily upon the stout
planking.

"Come in!" two voices bellowed in chorus, and Chip pushed open the
door and stepped inside.

Silence greeted him. After hours of looking at snow, the room seemed
to him black dark, but he knew that he stood sharply revealed to
others who were watching him. He could feel their eyes upon him,
probing for his errand there; could feel too how fingers caressed
triggers, waiting for his first hostile move.

"Is Butch Lewis here?" Even though he could not see a thing, Chip's
glance moved around the room.

"Sure, I'm here. Shut the door."

Chip leaned his back against it, a little scared now at his
foolhardiness in coming here like this. It did not show in his face,
however, nor in his manner, which was stony calm. As his eyes adjusted
themselves to the half light, objects revealed themselves, vaguely at
first, then with sharper details. Four men sat around a table smoking,
the remains of a meal before them. All were eyeing him distrustfully,
their right hands hidden--holding guns, he knew well enough without
being told. He waited.

"Well, what you want of me? Who in hell are yuh, anyway?"

That was Big Butch, then. Chip had not been sure. Butch was sitting
facing him, eyeing him curiously, with his hands out of sight.

"I guess you knew Wane Bennett--heard of him at least. I'm his
brother Chip, that took Wane's horse away from Cash Farley last Fourth
of July. I also rounded up Cash and a couple more of your men and
turned them over to Dave Burch for horse thieves. I'm the man they
tried to kill last summer, over toward One Man Coulee--the time Cash
Farley and three of your men were shot."

"Yeah? And what you braggin' about it now for?"

Chip eased his sore arm in its sling, his eyes never leaving Butch's
face. "I'm not bragging. I'm just laying my cards on the table and
calling for a show-down. I'm off the Flying U payroll now--quit them
almost two weeks ago--"

Big Butch eyed him curiously. "What the hell difference does that
make?"

"Well, damn it, I'm the one you've got it in for. Not the Flying U.
J.G. never did a thing to you in his life. You've been taking out your
grudge on him and you've got to quit it. I'm willing to fight it out
alone. Leave the Flying U strictly out of it. Do your Injun act with
me. But I'll tell you right now, Cash Farley asked for all he got and
so did those others."

Big Butch darted a sidelong glance at one of the men, who immediately
rose and hitched up his pants, as if he were getting himself ready
for action, though all he did was sidle over toward Chip and wait for
further orders. Butch's light blue eyes showed in gleaming slits
between his blond lashes.

"Who all's with yuh?"

"Nobody. I don't ask any one to fight my battles for me."

"Sam, you go take a look around."

A lean dark man got up and disappeared through a dark doorway in the
far corner of the room, his sliding gait somehow like a coyote's.
Butch waited, his blank speculative stare never leaving Chip's face.

Then Sam slipped in the back way, puzzled creases between his black
eyebrows. "He come alone, Butch, far as the canyon, anyway. Got a pack
horse and a yearlin' colt out front here, beside his saddle horse.
Looks like he's moved in."

Butch grunted something under his breath. "Might be a blind, at that.
You and Flicker go take a look back in the canyon. Don't show up here
till you're dead sure nobody's trailin' him. Anybody you run acrost,
bring 'em in. Sime, you better go along." He brought a hand up in
sight, laying his gun on the table. Its muzzle stared like a round
black eye at Chip.

"Come and set down, feller. Sam, pour him some coffee before yuh go."
With his left hand, Butch smoothed down his reddish mustache, his
watchful gaze still on Chip. "Seddown, I told yuh! You're just as easy
to kill settin' down as you are standin' up, ain't yuh? You and me has
got some chin whackin' to do here."

He waited until Chip decided to sit down at the table, his hat on the
floor beside him. He watched while Chip deliberately drew his gun,
laid it on the table beside him.

"Maybe you'd just as soon not shoot a man that hasn't got a chance,"
Chip said matter-of-factly, as if he did not know that at least one of
the three had stopped at the back door and was watching every move he
made. "Your gun's cocked. Mine isn't. If you call that an even
break--"

"Hell, you're crazy as a loon," said Butch and grinned. He turned his
gun aside, let down the hammer with his thumb. "That, or you've got
the nerve of a brass monkey. I ain't goin' to shoot yuh, kid; not
unless you crowd me into it. Drink your coffee and eat a little
something. You look like you needed it."

The door behind Chip clicked shut. The two were alone together in the
cabin. "Well," Chip said harshly, "what are you going to do about it?
Are you going to let the Flying U alone--quit butchering their
beef--or what?"

Butch passed a dish of fried venison, setting it down within easy
reach, when Chip made no move to take it. "So that's what's eatin' on
yuh? Beef rustlin', hunh?" He pursed his lips, his mustache ends
standing straight out. "You think I been doin' all that butcherin'?
That why you rode in here, just to bone me about it?"

"What else?" Chip's glance bored into Butch's light eyes. "To make you
fight in the open. If you've got it in for me--"

"Hell's fire, kid!" swore Butch. "Any little trouble you might of had
with Cash, it was him and you for it. You never heard me make any
complaint, did you? Matter uh fact, you done me a favor and didn't
know it. Cash was gittin' too big for his boots around here. Pullin'
some of the boys over to him. Why," Butch confided earnestly, "damn
it, kid, I never had a thing to do with it that time they run off them
Flyin' U horses last summer. That was Cash, branchin' out fer himself.
It was him wanted to git you for draggin' him in to Cow Island. Why,
hell, I'd sent that bunch off the other way to see about gittin'
delivery on some horses I bought. I never knowed they was over
swappin' lead with you boys till it was all over."

"According to you, then, you're plumb overflowing with gratitude to
me. Is that the idea?" Chip's voice dripped sarcasm.

"Wel-l, I ain't hos-tyle any," drawled Butch, laugh wrinkles showing
around his eyes. "You done me a favor last summer, whether you knowed
it or not. Me and Cash was about due to lock horns over who was boss
around here. All them boys you folks beefed over your way, they was
trouble-makers from the word go." He slid the bean dish invitingly
toward Chip. "No, I ain't got it in for yuh, kid. You saved me some
trouble, maybe."

"Then if that's the case," Chip retorted, "what's your object in
butchering Flying U cattle and letting half of 'em lay and rot? If
that isn't spite work, what is it? Even a coyote has his own reasons
for pulling down calves."

Dull crimson flowed up to roots of Butch's sandy hair. "Go easy there
on the name callin'," he warned. "Where'd you git the idea't I'm back
of that beef rustlin'? Hell, I ain't no beef peddler--and skinnin'
cattle on a cold day ain't my idee of fun."

It was Chip's turn to grow red. "Well, after all that trouble last
summer with your outfit, a fellow 'd naturally suppose--" He broke
off. He hadn't a scrap of real evidence against Butch. He was just
guessing; had been all along. "No one else has any grudge against the
Flying U," he finished lamely.

"Say!" cried Butch hotly. "When I git a grudge agin a man, he knows it
right now! Him and his fond relations, when they send out for the
body." He leaned angrily across his dirty plate, his pale blue eyes
like polished steel. "If I had a grudge agin you or the outfit you
work for--damn it, I'd be bouncin' bullets offn your damn' carcass
long ago. I sure wouldn't go round skinnin' cattle to git even. That's
a cinch."

Chip eyed him doubtfully, convinced in spite of himself. He chewed a
corner of his lip, laid a hand on his sore arm, aware now of its
throbbing, which in the heat of his accusations he had not noticed.

"Well, maybe I've been barking up the wrong tree," he said wearily.
"But if you aren't at the bottom of it, who is?"

Butch stared him down. "You know who's been haulin' out beef by the
four-horse loads all winter," he said finally. "Or don't yuh?"

"The Hobble-O, you mean? I don't believe--"

"Suit yourself," Butch said gruffly. "If old Shep can git away with
it, that's all right with me. I ain't buyin' in on what's none of my
business."

"But they've got hides to show for all the beef--"

"Yeah? That's fine. All their beef contracts with the fort, I
s'pose--and all the hind quarters they peddle between here and there!"
Butch laughed a little.

Chip gave him a quick, sharp look. "Have they been peddling hind
quarters along the road? Do you know that for a fact?"

Butch settled back in his chair, chuckling to himself. On a sudden
impulse he leaned farther, twisted his huge body and with a long arm
reached the coffeepot steaming on the stove. He filled his cup, held
the pot toward Chip.

"Lemme pour yuh some hot coffee," he said. "It ain't goin' to poison
yuh to eat outlaw grub, as they call it. You keep your business under
your own hat in this country and you git the name of bein' an outlaw.
Cash and some of the boys kinda got it into their heads they oughta
live up to it, looks like. Served 'em damn right. Kid, you look sick.
What happened your arm?" His voice changed, was gruffly friendly and
sympathetic. Casting a glance around the table, he picked up a clean
tin cup, filled it and held it out to Chip. "You and me oughta git
along fine," he grinned. "You sure have got nerve--comin' here and
jumpin' me about that beef killin', like you had a regiment uh
soldiers behind your back. By--I'll put in any time with a man that's
got guts!"

Chip was human enough to soften a little to that friendly attitude.
He took the cup and drank the strong hot brew thirstily, but over the
rim his brown eyes still held their look of purpose that would not be
turned aside.

"Just what do you know about the Hobble-O peddling hind quarters--?"

"Say!" Butch's tone was a direct protest. "I don't want to git mixed
up in this, kid. Me and the Hobble-O has been gittin' along just fine,
leavin' each other strictly alone. Shep's got women folks and a couple
of kids to feed. I wouldn't want to git him into no trouble."

"But that remark you made; that's straight goods, is it?"

Butch spooned more sugar into his coffee. "That they've been peddling
on the side? Sure, it is. I know of several places where they sold a
hind quarter on the way up to the fort. Course, you can't tell by the
color of the meat what brand it wore." He grinned. "I don't
know--Flyin' U beef tastes about the same as Hobble-O, I reckon."

"Somebody might be trying to frame the Hobble-O." When Polly Taylor
had said that, Chip had thought it silly. It looked more plausible
now.

Butch gave a snort of dissent. "Who? The Flyin' U, maybe? It sure as
hell ain't me. I got my work cut out, mindin' my own business and
livin' down the lies folks peddle about me."

Chip watched Butch refill his cup with coffee, said "Whoa" at the
proper time and drank it straight down. "Well, looks like I've strayed
into a box canyon on this rustling business," he said gloomily. "I was
so dead certain it was you, Butch, I never looked for anybody else. I
sure would like to know who it was I jumped the other day in the fog."

He proceeded to tell exactly how that encounter had come about,
watching Butch's face while he talked. Butch was interested, but it
was perfectly apparent that he was hearing it for the first time. And
he had no idea who might have slashed Chip; or said he had none. But
he asked how far it was from the Hobble-O, and he looked slightly
amused when Chip told how the girl had come along just then and had
sewn up the wound for him.

"And uh course you swallowed all she told yuh," Butch commented.

"Well, not--"

He did not finish the sentence. The door was pushed open and some one
was propelled into the room, the man Sime following immediately after.

Butch stared in astonishment, and with his cup poised halfway to his
mouth, Chip turned to look at the newcomer.

It was Polly Taylor. Her hat was knocked aslant on her head, a lock
of hair had fallen down across her forehead and across one blazing
eye. From shoulders to hips a rope was wound round and round her slim
body, pinioning her arms to her sides.




CHAPTER NINE

POLLY BUYS IN


The box Chip was sitting on turned over with a bump as he sprang up,
reaching for his gun on the table. A purely instinctive action born of
his impulse to rescue the girl, Polly chose to put a different
interpretation upon it.

"So you're in on this too!" she flung at him. "You didn't come here to
fight Butch--you just decided to move in out of the weather. And I,
like a fool, thought you were going to need protection! Made it in
time for dinner, I see." Her voice was high, strident with impotent
fury. "Well, go ahead, why don't you? Shoot me for finding out what a
liar you are!"

"I wouldn't be any bigger a fool than the Lord made me, if I were
you," Chip advised her bitingly. "I certainly didn't give you the
impression I needed a woman's protection, I hope!"

Butch was on his feet, brushing past Chip. "What you bring that girl
here for?" he demanded harshly of Sime, his glance going past him to
Sam and Flicker, who had come in and were standing by the door,
uncertain of the next move. "Take that damned rope off her, you
chump!"

"She's a hell-cat, Butch," Sime demurred. "We trailed her up among the
rocks, where she was watchin' camp with a rifle. Had her glove off all
ready to shoot when me and Flicker nabbed her--and lookit what she
done to me!" He displayed scratches on his face, one close to the
corner of his eye and another deep one raked down the side of his high
nose. "Tried to claw m' eyes out. We brung her in, like you said, but
we shore had one hell of a time till we roped her. You better leave it
stay right where it's at, Butch--"

"Who the hell's runnin' this camp? You or me?" And as Sime flung up
his hands in a gesture of dismissal, throwing all responsibility on
the boss, Butch untied the rope and flipped it off the girl. But his
eyes had not softened in the slightest degree.

"What you doing down in here, anyway?"

Polly Taylor twitched her shoulders as the rope left them, tucked back
the lock of hair and pulled her hat straight, while Butch eyed her.

"That's none of your business, that I can see. You make that cutthroat
of a Flicker give me back my guns and be quick about it too!"

"What was you spyin' on this camp for? You know what happens to spies,
don'tcha?" Butch scowled down at her with the fearsome air of a man
trying to scare a child into good behavior.

"Fiddlesticks!" snapped Polly. "You're not going to do a thing and you
know it as well as I do. You wouldn't dare." Her glance swung
contemptuously to Chip. "I did think I might be needed here. But I
guess not. You don't seem to be in any great danger, after all."

"If I were," Chip snapped back at her, "I certainly wouldn't holler to
you for help. It seems to me you're taking a good deal upon yourself,
Miss Taylor, when you follow me around with the mistaken idea of
taking care of me."

"I sure was a fool for believing a word you said," she cried.
"Pretending you had it in for Butch and all the time--"

"Why," Big Butch cut in, "me and Chip's the best of friends. I was
just offerin' him a job breakin' horses." He looked at Chip.

Polly gasped. "Why--is that--would you go to work for Butch Lewis?"

Her tone was so shocked, so incredulous, that Chip's pride was stung
to a cold fury. "And why not, if I took the notion?" His tone asked
further if it were any business of hers what he did. It was as if
there were two of him standing there, looking at the girl, and as if
one of him were furious because the rest of him was touched by her
concern for his welfare; touched and sorry for the humiliation she
would die rather than admit. But the furious one was the stronger one
just now and did all the talking, because he was young enough to be
terribly afraid these men might think he was under a woman's thumb;
tied to this girl's apron string. His face and voice chilled. "Busting
bronks is my line of work," he added, not looking at her.

Polly gave him a withering stare. "Yes, you certainly are in fine
shape to bust bronks," she reminded him. "It's nothing to me, of
course--but I was under the impression you had another job staked out
for yourself. I see I was wrong. It's worth the trip down here to get
the facts."

"You've got no call to be down here," Butch said severely. "Your folks
oughta keep you to home. Taggin' a feller around over the country--it
ain't purty. You'd better be home helpin' your maw."

"T-tagging a fellow around--". Rage choked Polly Taylor. "Oh, I could
kill the whole bunch of you!"

From the corner of his eye Chip stole a glance at her, saw her swallow
with clenched teeth, her eyes blinking back the tears. In spite of his
affronted pride, in spite of those four scowling men eyeing her, he
had a strong impulse to put an arm around her straight little
shoulders and comfort her somehow. It was a damned shame. Butch and
all of them rowing with her like that. She meant all right. . . .

"Give me my guns, Butch Lewis!"

Butch grinned. "What for? To shoot me with? Not on your life." He
looked at her, twisting his mustache. From under his eyebrows he shot
a glance at his men. "Sam and Flicker, you go with her as far as the
Hobble-O line fence--"

"They shall not! I won't have them near me!"

"--and give her back her guns when she's on her own land; or her paw's
land, rather." He picked up her rifle, pumped out all the shells,
picked them off the floor and handed them gravely to Polly. He
motioned to Sime for her six-shooter, took it and emptied the cylinder
before he gave the two guns to Sam.

"Good-by, Miss Taylor; sorry you can't stay longer," he said, with a
sardonic smile. "The boys'll see yuh safe home. And if you'll take a
fool's advice, you'll stay there after this and keep your nose out of
other folks' business."

Chip made an impatient movement, looked past Polly at the three men.
Evidently they did not impress him, for he turned to Butch and said,
"I'll see that she gets home all right." He stooped for his hat.

"No need of your going, Chip. She'll get home all right--or I'll know
the reason why." He sent a glance toward his men that made them stir
uneasily and look away.

"That isn't the point, Butch," Chip said curtly. "She doesn't want to
go with them. That's reason enough, I should think."

Polly threw up her chin--a mannerism he knew well. "Oh, if it comes to
that," she declared, "I'll choose the least of two evils. I'll go with
Sam and Flicker." And without a glance toward Chip, she turned and
walked to the door, opened it with a jerk and paused to say over her
shoulder, "There's another day coming; just remember that!" and went
out with that defiant upward tilt of her head.

Sam and Flicker started to follow. Butch's voice overtook them in the
doorway. "You two make sure that girl gits home all right--and watch
your dodgers, or I'll hang your hides on the fence."

Without a word they went out. Butch rolled himself a cigarette, his
face thoughtful. Sime picked the water bucket from the bench beside
the door and disappeared, going to the spring. Over the match blaze as
he lighted his cigarette, Butch studied Chip's face set in inscrutable
calm.

"Sharp as they make 'em, that Taylor girl," he drawled, after a puff
or two. "Been out all winter scoutin' for her dad. Couldn't a
jackrabbit move an ear within a mile that she wouldn't know." He drew
at his cigarette, savoring the smoke. "Wish I knowed what she really
was after, down here. Trailin' you, maybe--suspicious as hell. You
don't want to swallow all she hands yuh, kid."

Chip did not speak. He was thinking, maybe that accounted for Polly
Taylor being so close when he fell on that rustler. Maybe it _was_ her
dad, or Snuffle Jones, and maybe that was why she stuck beside him,
found out where he camped, kept in touch afterwards. Maybe she knew
that ax she picked up. Hell, was there any one a fellow could trust?

Butch sauntered to the bunk, sat down and leaned back at ease against
a roll of blankets. Left his gun on the table, which no outlaw would
be likely to do. Chip wondered at that, wondered too if people didn't
have a wrong impression of Butch Lewis.

Sime came in, set the sloshing bucket on the bench. Butch yawned
loudly. "How's the weather, Sime?" he called in a lazy tone of
well-fed comfort.

"Fixin' to storm agin. Wind's switched to the northwest. She'll be
blizzardin' before mornin', I reckon." Sime dipped water into a
dishpan, refilled the stove with wood and set the pan on to heat.

"Better go show the kid here where to put his horses. He can unpack
and throw his stuff in here. His horses'll stand in the stable
to-night." Butch sat up. "No, I'll go myself." He got up, went over
and picked up his gun. "Come on, Chip. Might as well gentle down to
the fact that you're here to stay awhile."

Threat or invitation, Chip could not tell. "Suits me," he said briefly
and went out ahead of Butch.

One thing was certain. Before he left that basin, he meant to know to
his own satisfaction whether Butch Lewis were a much maligned man,
blamed for the deeds of such men as Cash Farley had been, or whether
he merited the name of outlaw. At that moment Chip did not know what
to think. While Butch stuck beside him, helping him put his horses in
the stable, casually friendly talk lightening the task, Chip watched
for some hint, some sign that would give him a clue to his real status
with Big Butch Lewis. He watched in vain. Prisoner or welcome
guest--to save his life, he could not tell which name he might apply
to himself.

And that was something he meant to find out.




CHAPTER TEN

MILT MAKES HIS TALK


With shrieking fury of wind, the powdery snow drove across the high
ranges. Before it the cattle drifted miserably mile after mile, with
heads bent and swinging in rhythm with each plodding step they took.
Hunting shelter, they left the benches and sought the deepest coulees
and creek bottoms, where they huddled close together in the bushes.
The snow, fine as flour packed in the hair, made hard, little ridgy
drifts along their backs. Standing so, while the blizzard lasted, they
ate the twigs with buds all frozen, and were hungry still.

Three days that blizzard lasted, and the leanest cows died standing in
the drifts that packed certain low places. Through other days and
nights the cold wind blew from out the north, packing the show deep in
every crease and hollow. By then it was April and the early calves
shivered on their bandy legs and only the toughest survived; which
meant a poor calf crop that year, in spite of all the good weather to
follow.

Jim Whitmore rode grimly out with his men to see what toll the storm
had taken and to judge for himself what damage the beef rustlers had
done to his fall shipments. He saw enough to set him glowering in his
cabin at night, his tough old jaws clamped hard upon his pipe, while
he meditated upon protective measures--yes, and upon reprisals as
well. Though all he could do now would not bring back his slaughtered
steers nor lessen the ravages of the big March storm upon his cows and
calves.

He was thinking about it one Sunday forenoon--the first pleasant
Sunday since the blizzard--when Weary, jingling his spurs, walked up
the path from the corral and put his head into J.G.'s open doorway.

"Couple of riders coming up the creek," he announced in his pleasant
drawl. "Milt Cummings' paint pony that he rides on Sundays--and I
think it's Spike Reilly with him." He paused, his head turning for
further inspection of the approaching horsemen. "Yep, it's them, all
right. I just thought I'd tell yuh, J.G., in case you didn't happen to
be in the mood for company."

J.G. hadn't been in the mood for anything except a fight lately, and
he proved it now by jerking his pipe from his worried-looking mouth
and swearing querulously at Weary. "And what call has any one on this
ranch got to think I ain't in the mood fer any daw-goned thing that
comes along?" he finished--though not so mildly as it is set down
here. "You tell Milt Cummin's I want to see him. By this and by that,
there's a few questions I want to ask--"

Weary, however, was gone out of hearing, walking fast to the corral.
He needn't have hurried so much. Milt Cummings halted only long enough
to say hello to what boys were in sight and to ask where he would find
their boss. He and Spike met Weary in the path and rode on with a curt
greeting.

Weary kept on to where he found an audience. "Mamma! The Old Man sure
is fighty to-day," he reported, in a tone of concern. "Damn near
blowed me outa my boots when I asked him was he in the mood for
company. Milt's liable to be huntin' a high fence if he ain't careful;
kinda looked like he was on the prod himself about something, didn't
yuh think?"

"Sure has got something on his chest," Shorty agreed. "Maybe I better
go along up there and see what he wants."

Weary grinned widely. "Better ride your runnin' horse then. You're
liable to need him."

Up at the boss's cabin, Milt Cummings was off his horse and squatted
on his boot heels beside the doorway where J.G. sat sucking at his
pipe. Beside Milt his top hand, Spike Reilly, leaned against the log
wall and built himself a cigarette with a noncommittal air of
detachment from the conversation.

Cigarette between the fingers of his left hand, Milt picked up a
dried-weed stalk and was absently drawing meaningless patterns on the
hard-trodden earth. He looked up at J.G. and the sun brought out a
greenish tint in his gray eyes.

"J.G., I've been losing a hell of a lot of cattle, the last six
months," he said abruptly.

J.G. grunted, took his pipe from his mouth and spat out to one side of
the doorway. "Got it figured out how a Lazy Ladder can be worked over
into a Flying U, Milt?"

Milt made a disclaiming gesture with the cigarette hand. "You know
damn well I ain't. I've been wondering if maybe--mine's been
butchered," he explained. "I've been wondering if maybe you've lost
some that way."

"Some."

"Any idea who's been doing it?" Milt's green-gray eyes swung a glance
to Jim Whitmore's face, hung there, keenly watchful.

"No proof, so fur." Weary would have been astonished at J.G.'s calm
and at the placid, unrevealing mask of his lined and leathery
countenance.

"You know, I s'pose, the Hobble-O's been hauling out beef all winter?"

"I know that; sure. And there's quite a few Hobble-O cattle runnin'
the range. I know that too." J.G. crowded the charred tobacco down
into his pipe. "S'spicion ain't proof, Milt. Taylor's got a right to
kill his own beef and sell it any way he's a mind to."

Milt flung away the weed with a quick, angry motion. "Well, by gosh,
he's got no right to kill mine and sell it! Uh course, if you're a
mind to donate a carload of good beef to the cause, that's your own
lookout. No skin off my nose if he beefs every critter you've got to
your name. But me, I ain't built that way."

J.G. took three hard, slow pulls at his pipe. "You got any proof,
Milt, that it was them done it?"

"Proof?" Milt snorted. "Spike, have we got any proof?" Glance and tone
were ironic.

"Proof enough to hang 'em twice over," Spike stated with stolid
emphasis and relapsed into silence.

"This beef killin'," J.G. observed, in that strangely quiet tone that
so little matched the state of mind he had been in lately, "looks
like spite work to me. There's been no trouble with the Hobble-O 't I
know of. And daw-gone it, I always put Shep Taylor down as a pretty
straight kinda fellow."

"Foxy. If it's them hind quarters you're thinkin' of, I can see
through that all right. They work fast and they work at night mostly.
Skin out the hind quarters, throw 'em on a pack horse and git to hell
outa there. Only takes a few minutes to do that and they're gone. Slip
them hind quarters into a freight load uh beef, and who the hell's
goin' to know which from t'other? Front quarters ain't worth quite as
much, either."

He smoked, again threw out an expressive hand. "It's a cinch," he
summed up his reconstruction.

"Wel-l, mebby so. Workin' in the night like that--they must be
daw-goned good shots to plug every critter right between the eyes.
Don't vary an inch one way or the other, far as I've seen."

Milt shrugged. "Starlight nights, it ain't so hard to do. Locate your
cattle just before dark, and when you go after 'em, ride up easy. Most
every one has got white in their faces, you'll notice. Get close and
watch your chance. A critter'll turn and look at yuh--if you're up
close, it's no trick at all to drop him in his tracks. Nothing to it.
Not if a man's any shot at all." "Looks reasonable," J.G. admitted.
"What proof you got as to who done it, Milt?"

"Well, me and Spike's been scoutin' around considerable lately. You
might say we caught 'em in the act. Rode down a coulee just about
three minutes after they'd left. This was in broad daylight,
J.G.--before dark, anyway. We come on the carcass, fresh killed, and
took on after 'em. Pretty brushy on down farther, but we trailed 'em
to where they crossed over a little ridge. It was Shep Taylor, all
right. I'd know him far as I could see him. Snuffle was with him. They
had a pack horse."

"You jumped 'em, I s'pose?"

Milt shook his head. "Well, no, we didn't. It was a Flying U critter.
If it had been one of mine--but it was off up this way, farther north
than Lazy Ladder stock is liable to range. No, we moseyed on home. But
I'm putting you wise, J.G.--just in case you didn't have a line on who
was doing it."

"Much obliged, Milt. No, I ain't had it figured out yet." J.G. looked
at his pipe, tapped out the hot ash against the door jamb and put the
pipe in his pocket. "The boys has been scoutin' around some
themselves," he added. "Found plenty of sign, but it never pointed to
any particular person. Might of been most any one."

"Well, I know damn good and well who's doing it." Milt looked at the
older man measuringly. "Maybe you're willing to let 'em get away with
it, J.G. Looks like it. Far as I can see, the Flying U hasn't turned a
hand to stop it." He got up, pinched out his cigarette and ground the
stub under his heel. "You can suit yourself, of course--"

"What you think we ought to do, Milt?" The mildness of his tone would
have widened the eyes of any one of his cowboys.

"What am I goin' to do?" Milt looked down at him with a crooked smile.
"There's only one thing _to_ do, isn't there? Turn 'em in." He
hesitated. "Uh course, I hate it like the devil--on account of Shep's
family. But them boys--now's the time to learn 'em not to be so damn
free with other folks' stock. Let the old man git away with this and
there's two fine outlaws comin' up. Them kids 'll be swinging a wide
loop themselves, three or four years from now. They're learnin' fast,
them little buggers."

"Be purty daw-goned tough on the old lady--and the girl."

"Tough on the old lady, yes. But she'd no business marryin' a damn
thief. The girl--well, if it wasn't for her _being_ a girl--" He
looked down at J.G. sitting humped on the doorstep, his hands
unconsciously groping again for pipe and tobacco.

"It sure beats me," Milt said impatiently, "how you folks over here
never seemed to get wise to what's going on. You live as close to the
Hobble-O as I do. How come you ain't got next to 'em before now? That
girl's workin' hand in glove with the old man. Acts as lookout--I know
that, for a fact. But uh course, being a girl, I reckon there ain't
much can be done about it."

"Might string her up alongside her dad," J.G. suggested. "Might make
quite an object lesson."

Drawing on his gloves, Milt stiffened. His eyes flashed a glance at
Spike Reilly before they rested suspiciously on J.G.'s face. "Might
stir up a hell of a stink," he grunted. "I ain't a fool, quite. We've
got a way of handling rustlers in this country. It's been used before
and it can be again. But that ain't saying--" He broke off with an
uneasy laugh. "Hell, this thing has got me so jumpy I can't even see a
joke when it's labeled. I don't feel like kidding about it. I can tell
you those."

"When you figuring on havin' your necktie party, Milt?" J.G. rose, as
Milt swung easily into the saddle.

"That's up to Dave Burch." Milt's tone was surly. "I might turn in and
settle this thing myself, but that ain't my style. I don't go for
these bad-man tactics myself. I'm goin' to report my loss to Dave. I
did think," he added, with sarcasm, "you might want to put in with me
on it. Make a stronger case. You suit yourself, though."

"Well, I'll think about it," J.G. promised without enthusiasm.
"Daw-gone it, Shep's been a purty good neighbor though--"

Milt's laugh was a slur. "Yeh, he sure has been payin' you a fine
compliment, J.G. He'd ruther have your beef than his own, any old
time. If that's the way you like to have it, why that's your funeral."
He lifted a gloved hand, turned it in the casual gesture of farewell
and trotted his horse down to the corral, Spike Reilly following close
behind.

This time Milt pulled up, grinning with acrid humor. "Your old lion
has just about turned sheep on yuh, I see," he remarked, by way of
opening the subject which filled his mind. "That, or he's made some
kinda dicker with the Hobble-O to supply 'em with hind quarters of
beef as long as the supply lasts. Damned if I can figure out which it
is."

"How's that?" The rising inflection of Weary's voice sharpened his
tone almost to a challenge. "I don't sabe you, Milt."

"Yuh don't? I s'pose you don't know anything that's been going on
around here. What you fellows been doing all winter and spring,
anyway? Layin' with your heads under the blankets? My God, you oughta
lose every hoof on the range! I'll gamble you ain't been outa this
coulee since fall round-up. You don't know how the Hobble-O's been
butcherin' Flying U beef right and left--that's a cinch. Or maybe
you're in cahoots--"

"Easy on that kinda talk, Milt Cummings!" Cal Emmett bristled and
started to climb down off the fence.

"Aw, keep your shirt on, Cal." Milt salved the statement, half
laughing. "On the square, it made me so damn sore to see old J.G. set
there and suck his pipe like he was hearin' good news, all the while I
was talkin', I've got to blow off or bust."

"Maybe you better bust," Weary suggested dryly. "We've had about all
the blowing off around here we can stand. What yuh know, Milt?"

"I know it looks damn funny to me, the way the Flyin' U lets itself be
robbed right and left and never makes a move to stop it," Milt said
bluntly, twisting the reins around the saddle horn, that his hands
might be free to roll another smoke. "Here I've been ridin' day and
night, the last month, getting the goods on the Hobble-O. Not a day
passed that I didn't see plenty of Flyin' U carcasses--and yet I never
run across a one of you boys on the prowl to see who was doing the
butchering. I've got all the proof I want, now--and we rode over
to-day to kinda get together with you folks and make a clean-up."
While he rolled the tobacco tightly into its little paper cylinder, he
eyed the boys with questioning contempt.

"Looks like your boss is going to set and take it, but I'm damned if I
thought you fellows would stand back and let Shep Taylor or anybody
else steal cattle right under your noses. I'd have bet anything I got
you'd be ready to wipe out that damned thievin' bunch. What I can't
understand--"

"J.G's the boss around here," Shorty broke in on him. "He don't go off
half-cocked, without actual proof. So far, we ain't been able to pin
it on--"

"You ain't? You're a hell of a bunch, ain't yuh? Didn't take _me_ long
to pin it where it belongs. I'm going to turn 'em over to the
Vigilantes. You going to back my play or are yuh going to roost on a
rail like a bunch of damned chickadees and let other folks do all the
dirty work, cleaning up the range for yuh?"

"No use getting snorty, Milt," Weary protested mildly. "J.G.'s
collectin' evidence. When he gets a cinch on who's doin' it, there's
liable to be quite a dust raised. But we don't go agin his orders, not
for you or anybody else. Whatever else we may do, this outfit sticks
together. You know that."

"Like hell!" Milt looked disgusted. "How about that Bennett rooster?
He stuck--in a pig's wrist!"

"Chip? He had to go back to Colorado. His mother left some property
that had to be settled," Weary informed him stiffly.

"Hunh! He sure must have settled it damn quick. He's got a job with
Butch Lewis, breakin' horses. Saw him there the other day, big as
life. I thought it was damn funny he'd quit this bunch and throw in
with Big Butch. Must be the way you fellows stick together!" He
snorted. "Always knew he was outlaw."

With that jibe, he slid straight in the saddle and spurred his horse
into a gallop from the first jump; the way Milt usually started off.
Spike rode after him, a sneering backward glance flung over his
shoulder.

Dickybird and Weary hit the ground together, glaring after Milt. "Too
damn yella to stay and let me take a crack at him for that!" raged
Weary.

"When I see that man again," Dickybird said slowly, teetering on his
little feet as he watched Milt out of sight, "he'll take that back or
else I'll kill him." And though he said it quietly, Cal Emmett
shivered.




CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE FIRST REAL CLUE


Chip pulled open the cabin door and stood looking out, warm sunlight
on his lean, tanned face. Behind him sounded the chuckling laugh grown
familiar in the last week.

"Well, how about it, kid? Feel like tacklin' a bronk this morning?"

Chip turned his head to look at Butch. In spite of his seventy-three
inches plus his high-heeled riding boots, his glance lifted before his
brownish hazel eyes met Butch's light blue ones. "No, I don't think
so. Thanks all the same, but I've got a job of my own, Butch."

Butch's light eyes hardened perceptibly. "Afraid you'll git a bad
name, workin' for me; is that it?"

"Not on your life. If I wanted the job, I'd take it quick enough. But
I've got other fish to fry, right now, Butch. You know that."

Butch's fingers were busy with a cigarette. He finished it, got it
going before he spoke. "Chasin' beef rustlers, hunh? Well, yuh don't
have t' go far to find 'em, kid. Not if yuh ride in the right
direction."

"That's your theory."

"One theory's good as another, I reckon. What you figure on doin'?"

Chip lifted a foot, drew a match along the boot heel. "Oh--just start
out and ride, I guess."

"You won't find nothin' that way, kid. A bullet, maybe."

"That," said Chip, blowing out the match, "is a chance a fellow has to
take."

"Goin' to drag that colt along?"

"You bet your life. Little Silver's going right where I go, long as
we're both able to travel." A new vibrancy was in Chip's tone.

Butch laughed. "I got the name of bein' a horse thief, kid, but you
could leave that colt here with me and he'd be dead safe till you come
after him."

"I know that. I want him along, though. I--I like the darned little
skeezicks, Butch. He's lots of company for a fellow."

"Oh, all right. When you get your belly full of chasin' around, come
back. Your job'll be open."

Riding out of the basin with his outfit, Chip wondered how Big Butch
had got the name of being an outlaw. He certainly had been fine, this
past week; no more outlaw than Weary or any of the rest of them. The
way he had doctored that arm of Chip's--why, he wasn't half as rough
as Polly Taylor had been. Butch had laughed when he took out those
stitches. Said Polly must have thought she was mending a mitten when
she sewed up that cut.

That remark returned now to Chip, as he rode out of the canyon. The
idea of Polly Taylor doing anything so domestic as mending mittens
struck him as something grotesque. He tried to picture her in a
ruffled dress, sitting beside a sunny window sewing. The shine of gold
over her hair where the sun caught it he could see all right, but not
Polly mending mittens or anything else. He had a much more vivid
picture of her lying up above him in the rocks somewhere, watching
Butch's place over the front sight of her rifle.

That was queer too. Butch seemed to think she was up to some
devilment. Thought she was helping her dad rustle beef--at least, he
had hinted it. Chip tried to see Polly in that rle, and he had to
admit that certain facts fitted into the picture; everything except
his deep-seated conviction that she was honest. Still, what was she
doing there so close, when he had the scrap with that fellow under the
bank? That couldn't have been her father, because Chip hadn't felt any
whiskers. Might have been Snuffle Jones, though. Seemed about the same
size and build, as nearly as Chip could recall those few dazed
seconds. If it were Snuffle, that would account for Polly being so
close. Only, he couldn't believe Polly Taylor was a thief.

But his thoughts were not long with Polly Taylor. He was riding back
into the canyons he knew, following a fresh theory which he had worked
out in the long wakeful nights while Big Butch and his men snored
raucously in their bunks. Over and over again he retraced in memory
his days of fruitless searching for clues, trying to discover just
what stood out as the most noticeable feature of the killings. He had
passed by the one glaring fact that all the cattle had borne the
Flying U brand; that was, of course, what brought him down here. There
must be something else . . .

One night he had found the elusive thread of coincidence. Never had he
noticed any horse tracks around the kills. Now that he thought of it,
that was mighty strange, because pack horses must have been used to
carry away the meat. In some places, there must have been several
horses used, because two hind quarters would be a load for any horse.
And there hadn't been any tracks. He was sure of that now, though he
had been looking for horsemen and had not watched the ground very
closely as he rode.

Another thing he had decided was that all the killings had been done
within a radius of ten or twelve miles. All the Flying U beef, that
is. Milt Cummings, stopping at the cabin a night or two ago, had told
of losing a good many cattle, but they ranged off the other side of
the Hobble-O ranch and had nothing to do with the case. It was the
Flying U cattle, drifting deepest into the Badlands, that he was
thinking of now. He meant to find out, if he could, why the butchers
had kept to one part of the breaks, and what were the most feasible
trails out of there with loaded horses.

Before, he had been hampered by the belief that Butch Lewis was behind
the killings. He had watched the likely places, hoping to catch him in
the act. Now he was just as certain that Butch had nothing to do with
it. He wasn't going to tie himself up to any fixed idea again. If the
Hobble-O were rustling beef, the trail would have to lead to them.
He'd made a damned mess of things so far, because he'd thought he knew
all about it and had only to collect proof. This was going to be
different. He'd look for clues and follow them, even if they led him
straight back to the Flying U Coulee.

Down in these sheltered canyons the air was warm and springlike, and
except on the northern slopes, where the sun did not strike, the snow
was nearly gone. He couldn't blame the cattle for hunting these
sheltered basins when the winter winds howled across the open land,
nor could he wonder why Big Butch had burrowed into his little hidden
valley with his stock. Since he never kept one bunch of horses very
long, Butch didn't need much range, and the location he had chosen was
fine for his purpose. Let the granny gossips talk their tongues off.
They couldn't make Chip believe any of their yarns about Butch. When
he cleaned up this beef rustling, maybe he'd go back and take Butch up
on that offer of a job.

But even while he told himself that, thinking he meant it, in the back
of his mind he was wondering what the boys were doing to-day, and what
they thought of the way he had pulled out without a word. He'd bet
Weary wasn't fooled a minute. Maybe they were scouting around looking
for him that day he saw them. They'd know darned well he wasn't going
to pull out and leave the country until this thing was cleared up.

Traveling steadily back the way he had come, by noon he reached a
nameless canyon fixed forever in his memory by what had happened here
last summer. It was farther down this same canyon where he had held up
Cash Farley and his cronies, as they were coming back after a few
stolen horses that had broken away from the herd in a thunderstorm and
were making for the ranch. It was over north of this canyon where he
had fallen almost into the arms of the beef butcher in the fog.

Now, in the light of his clearer understanding, this place seemed
especially important. Before, he had passed it by because he was
convinced Butch Lewis was behind the killings, but with Butch out of
it, he saw the place from a new angle. Down this canyon there must be
a trail of some sort leading out toward the Larb Hills and the country
beyond. If the killers had packed meat out this way, he'd find it out,
because somewhere along the trail they must have left some evidence of
their passing; and if it were there, he told himself grimly, he'd see
it. He wasn't riding with his eyes glued to field glasses this time.

Where he had camped last summer, when he was trailing the stolen
horses, he stopped again and measured a pint of oats into each nose
bag. Just a snack, but it would give the horses heart for the trail
ahead. Even little Silver had a handful just to make him feel
grown-up, though he forgot his dignity and begged for sugar when Chip
took off the nose bag and made ready to start on.

Down the boxlike ravine and into the narrow winding gorge Chip rode,
watching for sign. Around the clump of junipers where last summer he
had waited until the three outlaws rode into range of his rifle.
Beyond that point he never had been, and his nerves tingled now as he
rode into the bottle-neck pass that looked as if it were tightly
stoppered with granite just around the next turn. But a hundred horses
had gone this way last summer and had never been seen again by the
Flying U, so there must be a way out.

Horses had gone this way just before the storm, though he could not
tell how many, for there were no tracks. Yet his own three horses left
plain hoofprints in the hard-packed sand that covered the fissure's
floor, except where rock outcropping streaked across. An eerie zigzag
crack in the hills it was, where the horses walked uneasily, ears
tilted forward expectantly, eyes alert for anything that moved.

Nothing did, save themselves. They emerged from that dark and gloomy
gorge into a sunny sage-covered flat where tufts of grass were showing
green in the shelter of the bushes. The trail might cross to the hills
beyond, or it might not. Chip pulled up to scan this baldly open
valley before he went any farther and to roll himself a cigarette. It
was while he was holding a match flame to the tobacco mat little
Silver stepped aside to see what was to be had in the way of
browsing, walking along the rough shoulder of the gorge through which
they had come.

With fond indulgent eyes, Chip watched the colt go nosing and nipping
along, grace in every movement he made. He laughed when Silver sniffed
at something on the ground and lifted his nose high in air with lip
turned back, the picture of disgust. But when the colt persisted in
pawing and snuffing, he stepped off Mike and went to see just what the
thing was.

A piece of cowhide, roughly round and deeply cupped, a broken rawhide
string dangling from a row of slits near the outer edge. "Hunh!"
snorted Chip and picked it up from under little Silver's disdainful
nose. "Looks like you're worth your oats to-day, young feller." He
turned the object over, and studied it. "I'd tell a man you are!" he
cried and gave the colt a boyish hug. "You've sure called the turn
this time. Know that?"

Never in his life had he seen such a thing, yet he knew exactly what
it was and how it had been used. It was a "boot" designed to pull over
a horse's foot and muffle his tracks. Drawn around the ankle above the
hoof and tied there, it would last a long while, Chip supposed; when
it wore through--well, hides were cheap and easy to get. It would be a
simple matter to fashion another.

A simple trick. He should have suspected it long ago. Perhaps he would
have, if he had not been all the while looking for the riders
themselves. He wondered if the thieves had worried over this boot when
they found the string had broken. They must do their traveling at
night, not to have noticed it, and that was probably why he never had
any luck finding them. Except that man in the fog, and that struck him
now as being an impromptu performance with no direct bearing on the
others. For one thing, the man had been alone and he had not had a
pack horse with him. There had been only the one horse galloping away
in the fog, and the hoofbeats certainly had not sounded muffled. Dazed
as he had been, he remembered the clink of shoes striking rock.

This was a different matter. Some one had come this way with cowhide
boots on his horse. He bent and studied the ground, wondering a little
if the wind might not have blown that boot over against the hill. He
thought not. Here in the shade a little snow still lay, and under the
boot was a tiny bare spot. It had lain up against a small, scraggy
sage bush fairly well protected from the wind. He thought it must have
dropped there before the storm.

It looked, too, as though the travel had been close alongside the
hill, heading south from the gorge. Chip would have struck out east,
thinking they had gone that way. But now that he knew what to look
for, he could see several faintly dimpled depressions in the sand
between the shallow drifts; marks easily overlooked unless one knew
their meaning.

With a light of excitement in his eyes, he hurried back to Mike,
mounted and reined in close to the bold rocky bluff and rode warily,
heading south.




CHAPTER TWELVE

BEEF HAULIN'S OVER


At a point where the valley edge was broken into rocky gullies and
steep, water-worn little ridges impossible to climb, Chip pulled up to
examine more closely the possibilities of a trail through. At first,
it seemed all further progress was blocked. Not one of those gullies
was passable for a burro, much less a horse. The gaunt shoulder of the
butte came down upon his right--no possible way of getting over that,
even if it would not lead him back into the hills. The beef went out
east; he was sure of that now, just as he was sure those hooded tracks
had come this way.

He looked back, studying the way he had come, two creases deepening
between his straight dark eyebrows. The muffled tracks he was trying
to follow might be mostly seen with his imagination, but the imprints
of his two horses and the colt were certainly plain enough. He
couldn't advertise himself any better, even if he chalked his name on
the rocks as he rode. Little Silver's tracks were a dead give-away.

That disquieting thought made him wary; that, and the way Mike was
acting, turning his head to stare back along the way they had come. He
looked again for a way forward, and finally--because there was no
other possible outlet--urged Mike into a V-shaped notch in the wall
beside him. Solid rock it was, the bottom so narrow the horses had
barely room to set their feet. But it was a shelter, and when he had
gone a couple of hundred yards along it he slipped off, tied the colt
to Jeff's pack, and ran down the crevice to the opening, his rifle
swinging from his hand.

Silence and the long shadow of the butte upon the little valley
greeted him as he peered cautiously out, and he half turned to go
back, calling himself a fool for his fears. No one would be following
him. That was just a crazy notion he had got somehow. But he did not
go back at once. Instead, he scrambled up the north side of the notch,
to where he had glimpsed a little clump of half-starved sage, and
crouched there on a precariously narrow knob, where a bit of earth had
found lodgment and the bushes fought for meager life.

Fifteen or twenty feet above his horses' tracks, he had a clear sweep
of the valley, though his view of the trail was cut off by a bulge in
the bluff wall a hundred yards away. As he settled himself to watch,
a jackrabbit bounced into sight and ran for a few rods before he
kicked himself out of range among the rocks of the nearest gully.

Chip threw a shell into the chamber of his rifle, laid the gun across
a convenient splinter of rock and with his boot heel stamped and
gouged himself a secure foothold just above the sage root. He wasn't
going to take another slide just at the wrong moment if he could help
it. Then he squinted along his sights and waited.

Barely had he settled himself when a rider appeared around the bulging
rock, coming ahead cautiously with his rifle at half aim, looking and
craning. But he wasn't looking for that jackrabbit, Chip would bet
money on that. He rode as if he knew all about the barrier ahead and
the broken country no horse could cross to reach the valley. He seemed
all prepared to meet some one. And as he drew nearer, another detail
impressed itself upon the mind of the watcher. The horse wore boots of
cowhide, hairy side out, and the rider reined him close against the
hill, well to one side of the tracks clean-cut there in the sand.

Chip's thumb drew back the hammer of his gun. His mouth pinched in at
the corners, then his head lifted. "Hey! Where d'you think you're
going?" he called down peremptorily, spoiling the perfect ambush.

For answer, the fellow swung up his rifle and fired. The bullet kicked
rock dust against Chip's face before it whined off into the gully. He
fired again, three quick shots before Chip squeezed the trigger and
dropped him out of the saddle.

Short and sharp as it was, Chip saw how his hand was shaking when he
lifted it to feel the spot on his cheek bone where a bit of granite
had struck and knocked off the skin. No use--he never would get used
to this gun-fighting. Yet a man had to fight, if he would live in this
country. It was like war, he told himself, as he slid down from his
perch. The law didn't reach out into the wild places. A man had to
fight his battles as best he could. No use being squeamish about
it--the man was a thief or he wouldn't have those things on his
horse's feet. And he was a killer, too. His actions proved that.

Yet Chip went reluctantly out to see what could be done for the
fellow. He was so slow about it that by the time he got out of the
crevice where he could see, there was neither horse nor man to be seen
anywhere.

Puzzled, suspicious of some trick to call him out into the open, he
hugged the rock and made his way cautiously along to the swelling
shoulder of the bluff. Beside the spot where the man had fallen he
paused to inspect the ground with quick darting glances, afraid to
take his eyes for more than a second from the trail. The scuffed
imprint was there, all right, and a reddish stain on the ground. The
fall was no fake then. At the bulge he paused again, listening, then
inched his way around where he could see. And there went the fellow,
loping back along the way he had come, riding like a drunken man but
making good speed.

Chip scowled and watched him go. He had been alone, then. Just a spy
upon his movements, trailing him up and anxious to get a shot at him.
It wasn't a pleasant thought, but presently Chip shrugged and went
back to his horses. After all, his business was to find who had been
packing beef out on horses wearing cowhide boots. Let the damned spy
go. He guessed the fellow had enough to hold him for awhile. The way
he was sifting out of sight, he wasn't liable to be back.

With his mind more at ease--because now he knew that he was on the
right track--he went on, following the crevice, although it seemed to
be doubling back into the hills again. Later he saw why. In the days
when the land was in the making, this high barren butte had been split
and twisted in some titanic upheaval after it had probably considered
itself full grown and settled for life. The crack he followed ended
suddenly in a wider ravine, which ran eastward and a little south, as
Chip judged by the sun and the fine old watch that had been his
father's. And the ravine opened out into a deep little coulee which
lay back in the butte, yawning widely at the same valley he had left,
but farther around its southern end.

Now he saw the reason for the apparently aimless detour. Within four
or five miles he had come into new country completely removed from the
scene of the butcherings. The high rocky butte formed a natural
barrier with no discernible connection between this coulee and the
canyon he had left back there. But that there was a connection he had
just proved to himself; and by all the laws of logic, he should find
some tangible clue to the rustlers right here in this coulee. A camp,
probably. They'd need some place to store their beef until they could
gather a load to haul out. There ought to be a wagon road out of here
and a cabin, at least.

The road, when he found it, was a deeply rutted track winding down
through the willow fringe that bordered a small creek. "Not much
travel, but what there is has been heavy, all right," he decided, and
followed the road back up the coulee until he saw the corner of a
cabin roof against sheer cliff. It reminded him of the way Big
Butch's cabin was located; reminded him too of a man with his back to
the wall, forcing his enemies to come at him in front. It had a wary,
watchful look--and yet when he tied his horse in a thicket and slipped
through the willows to where he had a fair, close view of the place,
it looked innocent enough with its corrals and haystack. Like
somebody's line camp, he thought dubiously; or like some nester who
had settled in there and gotten a fair foothold.

Smoke was rising from the stovepipe, so he slipped like an Indian
through the bushes and reached the stable without once showing
himself, got inside through a back window and looked the place over.
Two sets of harness with four-horse lines was his only reward there.
He climbed out again and went to investigate the big, high-boxed wagon
that stood under a shed at the stable's south end. One look was all he
needed there. A stained and greasy canvas, commonly called a tarp in
the range country, lay loosely folded inside; and there was grease on
the inside of the end gate where beef had been slid in over it.

"And this lets the Hobble-O out of it, slick as a whistle," Chip told
himself, and felt a glow of satisfaction in the thought. All he needed
now was to find where they cached the beef while they made up a load
(two or three nights' stealings, he estimated it roughly), and to
learn who owned this camp. The horses were out in pasture, so he'd
have to go down there to read their brand--and if the thieves were
smart, they wouldn't show their own brands on their stock, anyway.

He hunted as thoroughly as he dared for a cellar, or even a cave, but
without any success. So presently he made his way stealthily back to
his horses, mounted Mike and rode up the trail to the corral, left
them there and walked on to the cabin, a fresh-made cigarette between
his lips.

"And what the hell do _you_ want?" a bony, bow-legged old fellow
demanded from the suddenly opened door. He had a double-barreled
shotgun in his hands and his yellowish eyes set close to a high beak
of a nose gave him the look of a hawk on the watch for a chicken.

Chip's engaging grin gave no hint of his purpose, but it was brief and
left his face grimly anxious. "If you're always on the job like this,
old-timer, I guess the boys didn't lie about you, after all. Got any
more private place for my horses than that damned open-face corral?"

The old man hesitated, lowered the gun a trifle. "On the dodge, be
yuh?" He looked Chip over suspiciously. "Who 'n hell sent yuh here? I
don't want no trouble."

"You sure don't hate it any worse than I do," Chip declared, walking
unconcernedly up to the door. "I don't mind layin' out in the
hills--but hell, a fellow's got to sleep sometime, and cook himself a
hot meal. I certainly do admire that smoke coming out of your
stovepipe, Mister." He pushed back his big gray hat, sighing as he
drew his fingers across his forehead.

"Where you from?"

"Well, the last roof I slept under belonged to Big Butch," he said
cautiously.

"He a friend of yours?"

"Well, he wished me luck when I rode off. That's as friendly as it's
safe to be in this country, I guess."

The old man grunted and stepped aside, motioning for Chip to enter.
"Which way'd you come over?" he wanted to know, standing his gun
behind the door. "Past Milt's, or through the saddle-string?"

"Saddle-string," Chip told him promptly, thinking that a good name for
the cleft he had followed through the butte. "When I think it's safe
to tackle the river again, I may go by Milt's place. I only stopped
for a cup of hot coffee, if you've got it handy. I was just kidding
about wanting to sleep here. I'd rather den up in the hills--and
besides, I wouldn't want to be here alone when you have to take
another load out."

The old man cocked an eyebrow at that, but he made no comment.
"Coffee's bilin'," he said gruffly. "There's a kittle uh beans. Help
yerself. I jest et."

"Thanks. A fellow on the go all the while never gets to cook a mess of
beans." With the practised ease of a man used to baching, he went over
to the wash bench, dipped water from the wooden bucket standing there
and washed his face and hands, combing his hair by the sense of
feeling, because there was no glass in sight anywhere. He'd have to be
careful, he thought, while he put his little black comb in its case
and slipped it into his pocket. That old hellion would certainly feed
him a load of buckshot if he made a slip.

In guarded silence he turned to the cupboard and got himself a plate,
filled it at the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee. While he
spooned in brown sugar, he lifted his glance and studied his host with
a level, untroubled look that was almost a challenge. Not so old after
all, he decided. Not as old as J.G. by five years, if he were any
judge. It was the man's boniness and his dirty unkemptness that gave
him the appearance of age. Chip felt better about it, somehow.

"What's Butch doin' now?" the man asked abruptly, watching Chip like
the hawk he resembled.

"Going to start in gentling a bunch of broom-tails. He just sent quite
a bunch south, a couple of weeks ago." (Only two weeks? It seemed like
six months since he had left the Flying U. But he brought his thoughts
back to the present moment. He'd have to keep his wits about him.
Couldn't let them go wool-gathering now. The old devil was watching
him. Going to try and catch him up on something.)

But that was not apparent. The man was nodding his head and stroking
his dingy whiskers thoughtfully. "Who's he got workin' for 'im now?"
The question was not so casual as he wanted it to appear. His eyes
spoiled that.

Chip finished his drink and set down the cup. "Sime and Sam and
Flicker, in camp now. The rest are on the drive."

"Ahuh." He combed his whiskers meditatively. "Seen Milt lately?"

"Three or four days ago. Friday, I believe it was." Chip looked up
from his plate. "Milt claims the Hobble-O has been getting away with
his cattle."

"He-he-he!" cackled Hawk-eyes. And then, "When's he aimin' to pull
that there necktie party over 't the Hobble-O? By cracky, I wanta be
there when that comes off." His grimy face suddenly became a mask of
malevolence. "I ain't fergot the time old Shep run me off'n the ranch
with a rifle. Be better'n a meal uh vittles to watch him dance on
air." He swore horribly, with a fluent blasphemy that made Chip's
flesh crawl.

But nerves must be steady now. Like a landslide after the long calm,
enlightenment rushed in upon him. As if the whole vile scheme had been
carefully explained to him, he saw it all. The Hobble-O ranch and
range, which would double the Lazy Ladder holdings. But Milt Cummings!
Even his dislike of Milt had never held a suspicion of his honesty.
Why, Weary had worked for Milt and liked him just fine. The fiendish
cunning of the plot stunned him, turned him physically sick. He pushed
back his plate, unable to swallow another mouthful.

Lucky for him that Hawk-eyes was absorbed in his own poisonous
gloating: "--tell 'im, 'Kick an' be damned. Shep,' I'll say, 'yuh
won't never kick Skelp Turner agin--"

Chip's back hair prickled at the roots. Skelp Turner! He'd heard the
boys talk about Skelp, who had lived with the Indians and was reputed
to have white men's scalps stretched on little hoops and hoarded as
trophies of the hunt. Five scalps, Slim had declared, and one of them
had long yellow hair . . .

He forced the loathing out of his eyes, forced his voice to speak
calmly. "But Milt'll be sending you out with another load of beef
pretty quick now, won't he, Skelp?"

Skelp ripped out an obscene oath. "If he does, and goes t' work an'
strings Shep Taylor up while I'm gone, I'll skin 'im alive!" Then he
chuckled, at ease again. "Shucks, what'm I fussin' about? Beef
haulin's over, if this good weather keeps up. That's why he's aimin'
to clean out the Hobble-O. Couldn't haul no beef after that." He pried
off a chew of tobacco, looking like a wolf yanking at a tough tendon.
"How's the Flyin' U settin'? Milt say what fer luck he's had, ringin'
them in on the hangin'?"

Chip set his teeth and busied himself with a cigarette. "No, he didn't
say," he answered that, when he could trust his voice. "I don't
believe he'd been over there yet." And to cover his ignorance of
Milt's movements, "They sure have lost a lot of cattle, all right.
Milt played foxy there. Just the hind quarters skinned out--I'll bet
that outfit's right on the warpath."

"_He-he-he!_" tittered Skelp, and Chip could scarcely keep his hands
off the wretch's throat. "Foxy as they make 'em. Laid his plans quick
as he heard about the Hobble-O gittin' that beef contract.
_He-he-he!_ Now 't round-up's comin' on purty soon, he'll let the
neighbors come in an' clean up for 'im." In great detail he dwelt upon
the proposed cleaning up, until Chip rose tight-lipped, unable to bear
more.

"What'n hell ails yuh?" Skelp broke off to demand fretfully. "What yuh
lookin' so squawmish about? Ain't yuh never saw a hangin'?"

"Your damn beans are sour," Chip grunted, picking up his hat and
heading for the door. "Come on, Skelp. We better be moving. Milt'll
beat you to it, if you don't look out."

Skelp swore and picked up his shotgun. "Thought you was on the dodge."
He peered sharply into Chip's face.

"I'm not dodging Milt Cummings," Chip retorted, in a hard voice. "I
want to know what his plans are. If he's through peddling beef, he'll
move quick." He looked at Skelp with a sardonic gleam in his eyes.
"Better hurry--you're liable to miss the show!"

"Like hell! Milt promised me--" But he darted out ahead of Chip, and
he almost trotted on his way to the corral.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SEVENTY BELOW ZERO


While Skelp took long steps to his saddle horse, staked on a grassy
flat just beyond the willows back of the corral, Chip made certain
preparations of his own and waited, fighting down an uneasy feeling
that this was too easy not to have a slip-up later on. It seemed
almost incredible that Skelp Turner's obsession for revenge should rob
him of all caution toward a stranger. He had every reason to be wary.
He was, at first. It was talking about Shep Taylor that had thrown him
off guard, made him accept Chip as one of the gang without any proof
whatever; yet he must have lived by suspicion and wolfish cunning to
have survived so long. Unless he was a little cracked on the subject
of Shep Taylor--Chip drew a deep, worried breath, hoping that was the
solution.

Skelp came bow-legging back with a depressed little sorrel, muttering
to himself an imaginary dialogue which was to take place between
himself and Shep Taylor, just before the noose tightened around
Shep's neck; rehearsing iniquitous taunts which he mouthed like savory
morsels, tittering to himself while he saddled. He mounted and reined
into a faint stock trail, wandering aimlessly toward the mouth of a
canyon vaguely outlined against the hills, as the sun swung farther
toward the west.

He was still mumbling into his ragged whiskers when Chip, riding
behind him, lifted his coiled rope from where he had hung it over the
saddle horn, settled himself with feet firm in the stirrups and softly
shook out his loop.

Swift as a striking rattler he swung the loop once and shot it
straight forward. So quick was the throw that when Skelp heard the
swish of the rope the loop was already tightening around his gaunt
body, pinning both arms to his sides, and he was being yanked off his
horse backward as Mike swung off and braced himself for the shock. One
yelp of astonishment died in Skelp's throat when he hit the ground.

The thud of his fall drowned the fainter thud of Chip's boots on
gravel, as he jumped off and ran forward, piggin string between his
clenched teeth. Like a man after the championship prize in a roping
contest, he threw himself on Skelp, grabbed his arms and pulled them
together behind him and took his half hitches with the practised
twist and yank of a veteran. The little sorrel had run a few steps and
turned, eyeing the proceedings with flared nostrils and a curious look
in his patient eyes.

Chip pulled Skelp's gun out of its holster, caught a glimpse of
something at his boot top and pulled out a wicked-looking bowie knife.
He felt for a second gun and found it under his left armpit. "You sure
don't figure on giving the other fellow a chance," he snorted and
searched more carefully. A second knife he sent spinning into the
brush. "A rattlesnake's a gentleman alongside you, you old reprobate,"
he observed contemptuously as he stood up.

Abruptly he leaned and slapped a particularly vile epithet back into
Skelp's yellowed teeth. "I've listened to all that kind of talk I'm
going to," he grated and gagged Skelp with his own dirty neckerchief.
"I oughta kill you as I would a snake, but I won't. I'll leave that
for Shep Taylor. Get up, damn yuh!"

Tied though he was, Skelp fought savagely with his feet, kicking with
amazing force and dexterity, throwing himself about until he seemed to
have the legs of a centipede; until Chip rapped him alongside the head
with the barrel of his gun and sent him limp as a shot coyote.
Whereupon he loaded him onto the little sorrel, tied his feet into
the stirrups, roped him to the saddle so he couldn't fall off, led the
sorrel back and tied him to Jeff's pack and stood surveying his
handiwork while he rolled himself a smoke.

His breath came panting, but it was more anger than exhaustion that
set him trembling. He could scarcely get the tobacco into its tiny
paper trough, after spoiling three papers by tearing off too wide a
strip. He felt as though he had just captured alive some loathsome
monster whose breath poisoned the air around him, and he could
scarcely credit the luck he seemed to have had. The malignant glare
which Skelp focused upon him gave him the uneasy sense that this was
all too easy and that he would presently find that he had walked
straight into a trap set for him.

But that was nerves, and he couldn't afford to get jumpy now, when his
job was only half done. He forced himself to smoke that cigarette as
calmly as if he hadn't a worry in the world, and he even walked over
and offered a lump of sugar to little Silver and petted and talked to
him a minute. It steadied him to feel the colt's satiny muzzle in his
palm, his lip seeking daintily for the last sweet grain; furthermore,
it pleased him to show Skelp that catching him wasn't anything to get
excited about. Still, he couldn't afford to waste too much time,
either. It was well past the middle of the afternoon already and there
was no telling what lay before him.

He was thrusting his toe into the stirrup when hoofbeats sounded quite
close behind him, coming at a trot down the trail from the corral. He
had just time to snatch his rifle from its scabbard on the saddle and
duck behind a boulder beside the trail when a rider's hat crown
appeared above the bushes. Only one, however. Chip swung up his rifle
and stepped out into sight again just as Polly Taylor rode up.

She seemed to grasp the situation at a glance. "Well, forever more!"
she exclaimed. "_Now_ what have you been doing?"

"Well, what does it look like?" Chagrin roughened Chip's voice.

"Looks to me as if you were liable to need some help if you keep on
traveling in this direction," Polly retorted briskly. "Why don't you
turn and head the other way--back to the Flying U?" She looked at
Skelp. "That outfit will know how to handle _him_."

Here she was, trying to interfere again in his business. Chip put up
his rifle and mounted. "You'd better go on home," he told her, and
instantly thought of the man he had turned back with a bullet in him
somewhere. "Did you meet any one on the way over? I suppose you
trailed me over here." His tone was resentful.

"I didn't meet any one and I certainly did trail you. You left a spoor
like a herd of elephants, so I can't feel swell-headed over it. How'd
you manage to get the best of Skelp? He's about the slimiest creature
the good Lord ever made--if He did make him. I suppose he's one of the
beef rustlers. What are you going to do now, Chip?"

For answer Chip merely lifted his shoulders in the gesture calculated
to set presumptuous persons in their places.

It got nothing but a ladylike sniff from Polly. "Still seventy below
zero, I see," she observed calmly. "All right, if that's the way you
feel. But just remember I'm more deeply concerned in this business
than you are. My father's life is worth a lot more than your precious
pride. So freeze up and bust, for all I care. I'm going along."

She went. There was no stopping her. She rode behind little Silver,
bringing up the rear and keeping a watchful eye on Skelp Turner, her
rifle laid across the saddle in front of her. And Chip, conscious of
her watchful presence behind him, told himself that he wished to the
Lord she'd stay home and mind her own business, and all the while knew
in his heart that he was glad she was there. There wouldn't be any
one slipping up behind him, maybe shooting him in the back, while she
was on guard.

When the roofs of the Lazy Ladder buildings showed black against the
setting sun, a hay corral with two old stacks just ahead, his manner
was almost gentle when he swung Mike around and rode back to her.

"I'm going to leave you here behind these haystacks with Skelp," he
said. "Keep out of sight--but if you hear shooting, make tracks out of
here."

"I understand," she answered meekly.

"Whatever happens, don't you go mixing into any trouble. You sabe?"

"Of course." But she didn't look at him when she said it.

"Skelp's tied for keeps. He can't do a thing. You'll be all right
here." He was uneasy, hating to leave her. He didn't know what she
might take it into her head to do. "Don't you take any crazy idea of
helping--"

"Why, do you think you may need help?" Her eyes turned questioningly
upon him.

"No. If I do, it wouldn't do any good. You watch Skelp and the horses
for me." He hesitated, gave her a shy, resentful look. "You'll help me
a lot right here."

"You--be careful, won't--"

He had touched Mike with the spurs and was gone, loping up the rutted
meadow road, a last yellow sun ray pouring down upon him as the sun
slipped behind a jagged pinnacle just beyond the ranch. Then he rode
into shadow and disappeared around a turn.

It would be madness to attempt to reach the place by stealth; Chip
knew better than to try it. He rode up at a leisurely fox trot and
stopped at the corral gate. Three saddle horses stood inside, but
there were no saddles anywhere around. No one hailed him, no door
opened anywhere.

He rode on to the house, where lazy smoke drifted up from the chimney.
Still no one appeared, so he dismounted and knocked on the door. Quick
steps inside, a pause, and then, "Who is it?" a young voice demanded.

Chip winced a little. A few months ago he had thought that voice the
sweetest he had ever heard. Julie Lang--Mrs. Milt Cummings now. His
shoulders squared as his chin went up.

"Chip Bennett, Mrs. Cummings. Is your husband at home?"

Before he had finished speaking, the door was wide open and Julie
stood there, blue eyes wide as she looked at him. "Oh! I--I never
_dreamed_ it was you! C-come in, stranger." She smiled when she
called him that, but Chip did not smile back.

"I can't stop," he told her brusquely. "I wanted to see Milt."

"Milt--oh, don't you know what horrible--haven't you heard?"

He stared at her. "You mean the Hobble-O?" It was a shot in the dark,
but it hit the mark.

Julie shivered. "Milt and the boys went to round up the Cow Island
bunch. They left just a little bit ago. Oh, I think it's _horrible_
that such things have to happen. But, of course, you can't let folks
just go on stealing right and left--" Her starry blue eyes lifted to
Chip's face. He looked down into them but they could not set his pulse
leaping now. They could do nothing whatever to him except show him
that they were just shiny blue eyes such as a Christmas doll in a
store window might own.

His thoughts raced after Milt and his crew, turned to the Hobble-O, to
the trail Milt would follow. He was counting hours and minutes, trying
to guess how long they would stop in Barr Lang's saloon, drinking
whisky to stiffen their courage. Two seconds, maybe, of silence--but
Chip's thoughts had covered the whole gruesome subject during the
brief pause.

"How long since they left?"

"Oh, I don't know--fifteen minutes, maybe. If you don't catch them,
you'll find them at Uncle Barr's place, I guess. Milt said you boys
were all set on it, when I tried to make him give it up and just run
them out of the country or something. But he said the Flying U
wouldn't stand for that, because you've lost more cattle than he has,
even. Have you really, Chip?"

"We lost a plenty. Well, thanks, Jul--Mrs. Cummings. I'll have to be
going."

"I think it's awful! But Milt simply _can't_ let it go on any
longer--"

Chip left her talking there in the doorway. The swift beat of Mike's
hoofs must have warned Polly, for she was halfway from the stacks to
meet him, her rifle in her hands ready for battle. She looked past
Chip, saw he was not followed, and her face went so white all her
freckles stood out with startling distinctness.

"What is it? Have they gone to get Dad?"

Chip gave her a quick glance. It was no time for lying. "Gone to round
up the Cow Island Vigilantes. You better stay here with Julie. I'll
beat them to the ranch--we'll stand 'em off, all right. We'll be ready
for them, Polly. Don't you worry. You stay here."

"Like hell," swore Polly, and wheeled Pathfinder in the trail and
raced off up the road. Before Chip could stop her, she was lifting a
dust banner along the road home. Even while he stared she whipped
around a point of rocks and was gone like a scared antelope.

"Little fool!" Chip ground out between his teeth. But a warm light
sprang into his eyes and his blood flowed a little faster.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PRISONER'S LOOSE


Shep Taylor walked to the fireplace, spat into the flames and kicked a
juniper root in against its mate. He turned and looked at Chip.

"We could stand off a regiment uh soldiers in here," he said,
recurring to an argument just ended. "When I built this house outa
rock, I calc'lated she'd be solid, and she is. Burnt my own lime for
the chinkin', had good clean sand right down there by the crick for
mortar, and a querry uh rock right alongside uh me. Me and Snuffle
done a good job. Built her up high enough for a chamber to hold the
raft uh kids we're raisin'. They'll have to burn the roof off the damn
place--and even then I don't see how they're goin' to git at us."

He canted a look at his wife, turned and spat again into the fire.
"Maw, you hush your bawlin'. You know damn well you'll be givin' that
young one the colic, if you go workin' yourself up." And he added for
comfort, "I ain't in a mite of danger."

"Oh, I ain't worryin' about you," Maw retorted with a sniff. "I'm
worried to death about Polly. Mr. Bennett says she started for home
ahead of him and she ain't showed up yet. If any of them hellhounds
have got hold of her, there's no tellin' what they'll do."

"I don't see how they could get her," Chip told her, though he had
said it before. "I followed right along as fast as I could with my
outfit and there was no sign of any one on the trail. I believe she
must have turned off somewhere to do a little scouting on the way." He
got up restlessly, picking up hat and short sour-dough coat from a
chair.

"I'm going to scout around some myself," he answered Shep's inquiring
look. "I hate to stay penned up inside, I don't care how safe it is.
If they show up, there'll be shooting. That will give you notice
they're here." He looked at Mrs. Taylor. "I don't think this is going
to amount to anything at all; when they find out we're expecting them,
they'll back off."

"If you see Polly, you send her right in here to me," she told him.
"Harve and Ernie, you come right back in here and set down!" She
strode toward the doorway into the kitchen, a year-old baby riding
astride her bony hip. "Pa, make them young ones stay inside!"

Shep shifted his cud of tobacco and spat juice hastily. "Ernest, you
go and set down over there," he sternly commanded the younger, a
freckled boy of eight or nine. "Here, Harve, you take this shotgun of
old Skelp Turner's, if you want to go out and fight. You can't hit
nothin' in the dark with that rifle."

"Aw, I c'n shoot the bill off'n a musketeer with this gun, Pa! It
ain't very dark, anyway."

"You do as I tell yuh! Here's the shells Chip took off'n Skelp. You
hide in them rocks out there by the woodpile and fill their hides with
buckshot if they come to the house. You'll have to fight your way, if
you live in this country, and you might just as well start in now as
any time."

"Put on your overshoes, Harvey, and wear your mittens till you see 'em
comin'," his mother admonished him. "You'll likely have quite a while
to wait. They'll hang around Barr Lang's drinkin' and screwin' their
courage up till all hours of the night, most likely. Button up your
coat good and tie that scarf up around your neck."

"I don't want to fight lynchers with no shotgun," Harvey grumbled.
"Gosh, you'd think they was chickadees!"

Chip grinned in spite of himself. "Skelp Turner didn't carry a shotgun
for chickadees, kid. You see the length of that barrel? And heft one
of those shells. That's a young cannon you've got there."

"Anyway," Harve's mother settled the matter unexpectedly, "I may want
to use your rifle myself, if the baby ain't too fretful. You be a good
boy, Harvey, and do as your father tells you."

A strange family, Chip thought, as they slipped out of the back door.
With such a mother Polly was explained. Pioneer stock; he did not need
to be told that. Probably Shep and his wife had stood at loopholes and
defended their cabin from Indians not so many years ago. The big-eyed
solemnity of the three little tots sitting in a row on a bench beside
the fireplace remained long in his memory.

That lean dark woman hushing her baby and crying slow tears over
Polly's unaccountable absence one moment, and calmly planning to use a
rifle on the expected lynching party the next, stirred him with an odd
sympathy. Unaccountably he wondered if Abraham Lincoln's mother was
like that. And old Shep warming his back and spitting into the
fire--but with his rifle lying handy on the mantle and a full belt of
ammunition buckled around his middle, the scarred butt of a forty-five
drooping over its holster--would be a hard proposition to tackle.

Snuffle Jones, big and swarthy and with an habitual sniff, waited in
the kitchen, where he would have a clear view of the stable and
corrals. Lacking the element of surprise, Milt Cummings and his bunch
would have their work cut out for them, Chip thought. Only Polly was
lacking to complete the picture of competent defence.

He wished he knew where Polly was. Saying she must be off scouting
around was merely an attempt to ease her mother's worry. Polly knew
where Milt and his men had gone and she knew why. She wasn't crazy
enough to think she could go to Cow Island and persuade them to give
up their plan, and there was no other possible reason for going there.
And there was nothing to be found out by riding. Something must have
happened to her or she would have been home long before now, for he
had traveled more slowly with Jeff and the colt--he would not have
hung back for the comfort of Skelp Turner!--and he had been here about
an hour; more, he guessed by the stars. Darn the girl! If she had gone
to Cow Island, the whole bunch would know the Hobble-O expected them.
No telling what they'd do then.

From the rocks by the woodpile Harvey's voice came to him. "Gee whiz,
how long have we got to wait?"

"No telling, Harve." Chip had made a tour of the yard and corrals just
to familiarize himself with the place, and had swung back near the
house. "They might be along any time now or maybe not for two hours."

"Will they come a-whoopin' and a-yellin', or will they kinda sneak up
on us?"

"That depends on how much they've been drinking, I guess."

"Gee, I wisht they'd hurry up and come," the boy complained. "It's
darned cold, layin' here on the watch."

"You could go in and get warm," Chip suggested. "I'm going to prowl
down the road a ways. You'll hear a shot if they show up."

Without waiting to see what the boy did, he walked on, down past the
rock storehouse where Taylor had put Skelp to wait until they decided
what to do with him. Chip halted there, half tempted to go in and take
a look at the prisoner. But he would have to strike a match to see
anything, and he thought it would be just as well not to show a light
outside the house just then. Anyway, it wasn't necessary to look.
Skelp was tied and the gag was in his mouth, so he couldn't call for
help. Yes, and the door was padlocked, Chip remembered now, and old
Shep had the key in his pocket; if he wasn't so edgy, he'd have
remembered that. The old devil was safe enough.

He went on slowly, not wanting to get too far from the house, yet too
restless to remain in one spot. In the clear starlight the coulee wall
showed vaguely, without shadows. They'd come by the road, he told
himself again. The creek had cutbanks and its windings crowded the
road against the west wall of the coulee. They wouldn't want to tackle
crossing the creek at night, even if it were possible. They wouldn't
see any reason for it, if Polly had stayed away from Cow Island and
kept her mouth shut. They'd just ride up quietly, maybe two or
three--Milt Cummings probably--with some yarn that would bring Snuffle
and old Shep outside, where they could grab them, while the main crowd
waited down here somewhere. . . .

It happened so suddenly he did not know what hit him. He was passing a
boulder lying close to the road, where it dipped down into a little
hollow, and something landed on his head and shoulders, hurling him to
the ground. Hands clawed for his throat and a voice snarled like some
wild animal fighting and clawing. As he dropped his rifle and threw up
his hands to defend himself, one hand brushed against whiskers and
clamped down upon a handful.

So he knew it was Skelp. He could tell by the snarling whine in the
voice, by the whiskers and by the terrible strength in those fingers.

Chip clung and twisted, brought up his other hand and found Skelp's
throat. They rolled together on the frozen ground and the stars Chip
saw were red as blood. The beating of a thousand drums was in his
ears. Skelp's legs clamped around his so tight he could not move. The
world was bursting like a rocket, but he would not let go. His
tortured brain told him to press harder--hard as Skelp was pressing.
Skelp had to breathe too. Skelp couldn't live without air in his
lungs--Skelp was seeing stars--if he could only dig his thumbs a
little deeper--cut off his wind . . .

He couldn't. He had reached his limit. It wasn't worth while--let
Skelp go . . .

The air rushing into his starved lungs strangled Chip. He gasped,
groaned, lifted his heavy arms and tried to push off the dead weight
that held him down. He blinked and saw the stars far off in their
firmament, and they were no longer red as blood but yellow and crisply
twinkling. So he had choked Skelp down. He had beaten him to it. And
with that thought, he rolled out from under and sat up.

"D' yuh s'pose I killed 'im?" Harvey asked in a sibilant whisper.
"Gosh, Chip, he was chokin' the daylights outa yuh! I couldn't make
out which was which, for a minute. An' then, when I did, I sure
slammed 'im. Bent this old shotgun barrel double, I bet!"

Chip got to his feet, stood there swaying groggily. "Good for you,
kid. You sure got here in time." He stooped to examine the limp figure
at his feet.

"Got here? Hell, I _was_ here!" Harvey snorted. "I was right behind
yuh. I seen him jump on yuh."

"Get--get a rope." Chip was rubbing his neck where Skelp's fingers had
bruised it. "I've got to tie him."

The boy hesitated. "Say, if he ain't dead yet, why don't you shoot
him? Pa told Snuffle that's what you'd oughta done in the first place,
'stead of bringin' him here, like you done. He's bad medicine. Go on,
Chip."

Chip picked up his rifle and stood leaning on it, while he stared at
Harvey. "You don't know what you're talking about. I don't kill men
that can't fight back. You march and get that rope."

"I bet you'll wisht you killed him before you're through," Harvey
prophesied grimly, as he started off. "Pa was sorry he didn't last
fall, stid of just runnin' him off'n the ranch. Skelp was after Polly,
tryin' to make her marry him--and he's lousy and keeps white men's
skelps hangin' up on the wall."

"Don't stand there gabbing. Hurry up."

Left alone, Chip gave Skelp an investigative poke with his boot. The
man was limp, inert--dead so far as movement went. Perhaps two knocks
on the head within a few hours of one another had been more than even
Skelp could stand. Still, a man who could crawl out of those ropes and
escape from a stone building locked as that storehouse was would take
more killing than that. His heart was beating fairly strongly, a
minute ago; he'd come out of it all right.

But there was no sign of life, no gasp of returning consciousness.
Chip leaned against the bank, the boulder at his back, and proceeded
to roll himself a smoke. Soon as Skelp came to, he'd march him up to
the house and let the folks watch him. Pity you couldn't kill a skunk
like him and think no more about it. It certainly would save a lot of
trouble.

Down the coulee there was no sound save the whisper of a keen little
breeze that rose in faint gusts and died again. He hadn't really
expected the Vigilantes to come for some time yet. About midnight was
the time they usually got in their work, according to all he'd heard
of them. You couldn't tell, though. It wouldn't do to bank on that.

He smoked half his cigarette before he knelt again to inspect his
captive. Still dead to the world. That kid sure must hit hard. What
was keeping the little devil, anyway? He could have gathered all the
rope on the ranch in the time he had been gone. Chip walked a few
steps up the road, peering through the starlight. A fine fix he'd be
in, if that lynching party showed up before he had Skelp tied up
again!

That thought turned him back to listen for hoofbeats down the coulee.
He thought he heard a slight scuffing of gravel near the boulder, but
it might have been the breeze; though he hurried a little, in case
Skelp was beginning to show signs of life. He did not hurry fast
enough. When he had taken the dozen steps to the place where he had
left Skelp, the road was empty.

For a few seconds Chip stood motionless, straining his ears to hear
some sound. It was as silent there as though no other human being had
been within a mile of the spot. Instinctively he moved back away from
the boulder, searching each hiding place with his eyes as he slowly
retreated, walking backwards up the road with his six-shooter out,
ready to fire at any moving thing he saw.

Luckily he had taken his rifle with him when he took those few steps
away from the boulder, looking for Harvey. Had he left it leaning
against the rock where he placed it while he made a cigarette, Skelp
would have been armed. As it was, he was by no means helpless, as
Chip's bruised and aching throat attested. He had the strength of two
men and the swiftness of a weasel; a dangerous beast in the dark,
likely to spring out from hiding without warning.

Harvey came tardily, trailing a loose coil of rope. "I sure had to
hunt," he explained. "There wasn't nothin' but lass ropes and what's
on the halters, and I'd git a lickin' if I gloomed them. There wasn't
nothin' but Maw's clothesline, and I had a dickens of a time untying
it. I didn't dast to cut it--Maw'd be awful mad."

Chip sent him back to his station by the woodpile. For himself, he
decided that the rock storehouse would be as good a place as any. He
would have a wall at his back, and he could slip around it and cover
the corrals and stable as well as the road and house yard. With Skelp
loose, he had a double reason for sticking close to the trouble
center. No telling what Skelp would take a notion to do now. Something
devilish, Chip was willing to bet on that.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE FLYING U TO THE RESCUE


By the slow march of the stars overhead it was nearly midnight. Two
hours or so ago Chip had heard the faint slam of the kitchen door and
guessed that Harvey had tired of guard duty and gone in. Soon after
that the lights in kitchen and living room went out. Lamplight shone
briefly from the upstairs window and was extinguished. Apparently the
Taylor family was tucked in for the night. Only Chip knew better than
that.

And still no Polly. From his post beside the storehouse, Chip watched
the road, looking for the girl. In spite of himself, he forgot the
Vigilantes for long minutes at a time and strained his eyes through
the darkness, hoping to see that slim little rider on the chunky brown
horse come up the trail. Between the slow gusts of wind pushing down
over the coulee rim he listened for the quiet hoofbeats of one horse.

So absorbed was he in his worried watching that a sliding shadow
disappearing into the blacker shade of the stable failed just at first
to register in his mind. It looked like a dog, he thought
indifferently--and then he remembered that the Taylors had no dogs.

With long noiseless strides he headed for the spot, which brought him
to the far end of the long low stable. There a door opening out of a
small corral stood open; a door which he remembered was closed when he
left his horses inside. In the corral Skelp Turner's horse moved
uneasily, head up and facing the doorway. Starlight was reflected from
his eyes which glowed in the half darkness.

Beside the door Chip stopped and listened. He heard a stealthy rustle
in the hay, heard a horse's rump thud against a stall and little
Silver's distrustful snort. Some one was inside, no doubt of that.
With a sudden impulse he bent and laid his rifle carefully on the
ground close up against the stable wall, drew his six-shooter and,
still stooping, slipped inside. Silver he knew was in the stall next
the end, a pole fencing him in; whoever was down at that end couldn't
see the doorway very well.

Standing in the blackness beside the door, he heard the brief
scratching sound of a match. A small yellow glow followed, then the
faint crackle of burning hay. There was a frightened trampling, the
crack of a board as the colt lunged against the wall, and the hated
snarl of Skelp Turner's vicious tones.

"Roast now,--damn yuh! I wish t' hell I had yer owner tied in here
with yuh, where you could all fry together!" There followed the
clatter of a fork against the boards as Skelp snatched it up. "How'd
yuh like a taste uh pitchfork, hunh?"

The colt's agonized leap against the manger brought a cackle of glee
from his tormentor. In the light of the small pile of burning hay Chip
saw it all as he rushed forward.

"You drop that fork!" he thundered, and leveled his gun.

Skelp whirled, the three-pronged hay fork lifted like a lance. "You,
ay?" The wolfish grin as his lips drew back from yellowed teeth made
his face scarce human. "I'll fork your liver into the fire!" he
snarled. "I'll roast yuh like a rat in a haymow!" Animal courage of a
sort he possessed, for he lunged straight at Chip in spite of the gun
that roared almost in his face as he sprang.

The impact of the bullet threw him backward across the blaze. Chip
dragged him writhing out of the flames and left him lying there,
gasping foul threats and curses while he himself stamped out the fire.

With the light of a match he was standing tight-lipped beside the
colt, examining the wounds in his sleek rump where three trickles of
blood ran down, when suddenly the quiet night outside became clamorous
with the roar of Harvey's shotgun and the instant reply of two rifles.

With a sidewise scrape of his foot he made sure that no smoldering
sparks of the fire were left and started for the door. His foot struck
against Skelp Turner, as limp and quiet now as he had been once before
that night. Chip grunted an oath, groped in the dark for a moment,
then picked him up and carried him outside the stable, where he dumped
him unceremoniously and closed the door. Blood was high up on the
man's chest and there was lots of it by the soggy feel of his clothes,
but Chip had neither the time nor the mood now to see whether Skelp
was dead or alive. Lest he revive to do further harm, Chip snatched
Skelp's rope off his saddle there on the ground and trussed him
hastily before dragging him over by the corral fence. It seemed
brutal--but he felt brutal when he thought of little Silver.

That done, he slipped over to the storehouse, keeping the building
between himself and the house yard. After that first burst of
shooting, quiet had fallen, and he was afraid the attackers were
scattering. He did not want to run into them unexpectedly--and so he
nearly did that very thing. For just as he was about to ooze around
the corner of the building, a man spoke within four feet of him.

"I wisht I knew who in hell put 'em wise!"

"Somebody sure did. That's a cinch. Wonder what--"

The crunch of footsteps and then Milt Cummings' cautious tones.
"They've got the bulge on us, boys. Somebody blabbed, looks like." He
swore with fluent viciousness.

"Well," another spoke impatiently, "what yuh go'na do, Milt? Back off
and let 'em have the laugh?"

"Not on your life. They've got two men a'ready." He swore again,
thickly, as if he had been drinking. "That sounded like Skelp Turner's
shotgun. If I thought that old -- had double-crossed me--"

"Yeah, but what you go'na _do_? Chew the rag till sun-up?"

"Aw, keep your shirt on, can't yuh? We're leavin' 'em think we're
scared off fer awhile. You two boys mosey down there in the field and
touch a match to them haystacks. Make all the noise you can; might
pick up a couple of the boys and take 'em along. If that don't bring
them two -- outa their holes, we'll burn the whole damn' works. If it
wasn't for the women and kids, I'd do it anyway--"

"Yuh needn't git chicken-hearted over them women, Milt. That old
battle-ax can sure take care of herself, and as for the little
hell-cat of a Polly, I'd like nothin' better than to take her down a
peg or two m'self. She--"

"You get goin' and fire them haystacks," Milt cut him off.

"Not much, you don't!" cried Chip, stepping around into sight. "Put up
your hands--_empty_!"

It was a mad thing to do, with so many others within call, but he was
beyond measuring chances. They heard the click of his gun and their
hands went up as they whirled to face him. In the dim light they
stared at him in silence, not knowing just how many of his friends
might be just around the corner.

Chip thought of bluffing, but gave up the idea. Once he had bluffed
and captured three men. But this was different. He couldn't make it
work again like that. But he had to do something at once. Others might
come, or one of the three might make a break, and if he fired a shot
it would certainly raise hell. Let them once see he was alone . . .

"Walk straight up toward the house," he said curtly, "and keep your
hands up." And when they hung back, "Don't think I won't shoot--"

"It's that damned Bennett kid!" Milt Cummings said bitterly. "He ain't
with the Flying U, he's on his own. Throwed in with the rustlers." And
suddenly he shouted, "This way, boys!" and threw himself to one side,
firing from his hip as his hand swept downward.

"Take it, then," Chip muttered through his teeth, as he sent a shot at
Milt, backing toward the corner.

Milt fired again, cursing Chip. From the house vague forms came
running, shooting at random. One of the men with Milt gave a yell and
collapsed against the rock wall. A bullet twitched Chip's hat as he
ducked out of sight. From the woodpile the shotgun bellowed and a man
running across the yard fell headlong, scrambled to his knees and
sprawled again.

On his toes, Chip raced around the little building, rounded the third
corner and ran head-on into a man who grunted and reached out to grab
him. Chip swung his foot in a terrific kick, aimed a blow with his gun
and heard the man grunt again, his arms jerking up, weakly clawing at
the air. He went down and Chip turned the corner.

No one was there, but he heard steps behind him and raced for a
hayrack, sitting on four rocks not far away. A bullet whined past his
head as he ran and there was the crisp rattle of buckshot falling
short of him on the frozen ground when the shotgun roared again.
Evidently Harvey had lost all track of him and mistook him for a
lyncher.

There was no way to show Harve who was fighting from the hayrack.
Behind its shelter with his rifle laid across it, he began firing
systematically at whatever moved out there in the dark. Whether he hit
any one he could not tell for certain, though dark formless shapes at
which he fired sometimes seemed to waver as they merged into the
shadows.

Up by the house the firing grew more continuous, as though the attack
was concentrating there and was being hotly defended. For a few
minutes the shotgun bellowed frequently, then was silent. While he
dodged from place to place behind that rack, shooting to confuse the
aim of those who fired at his gun flashes, Chip had a thought to spare
for Harvey, hoping he was all right.

Dodge as he would, a bullet found his scarcely healed left arm just
above the elbow, numbing that hand until it was useless, at least for
a time. So he left the rack, which was no real protection after all,
and ducked back among the rocks at the base of a cliff wall and edged
nearer to the stable corner. There he took shelter behind a boulder
and prepared to fight it out with his six-shooter.

It bothered him that the shotgun by the woodpile had no more to say;
but two rifles--old Shep and Snuffle Jones, he was sure--spoke their
little pieces pretty regularly from the house, so he knew the lynchers
were not getting inside. Nevertheless, he had an uncomfortable feeling
that it could not go on much longer like this. Three against a
crowd--they wouldn't come less than a dozen on their savage errand,
and they were more likely to be twice that number, he thought. It
would be hard to get into the house unless one of the men was hit.
Harvey was out of it--dead, maybe; out of shells, perhaps. Out of the
fight, that was a cinch. His own arm was bleeding a small, hot stream
that dripped off his numbed fingers, and it seemed as though he
couldn't hit anything he aimed at, any more. But he was keeping them
away from the corrals, anyway. They'd have a sweet time trying to set
anything afire so long as he could see to shoot.

Dizziness caught him just as he was standing up with some vague idea
of going out into the open and offering to shoot it out with Milt.
Storehouse, corral, even the dark hills began to revolve before his
eyes. Spurts of flame out there showed double, and when he lifted his
gun to shoot, it hung heavy from his hand. He took an uncertain step,
saw the shadowy ground come up at him. So he sat down on it--to hold
it still, he declared afterwards, though he knew all the while that
the blood running down his arm was draining the strength from his
body, and that if it didn't stop pretty darned soon, it would be all
off with him.

How long he sat there, leaning against the boulder, he did not know.
Two minutes or five--certainly not ten, the way he was bleeding. He
had a hazy impression that the lynching party had for some reason
separated, half of them climbing the hill back of the house and
shooting down at the other half; vicious, stabbing spurts of fire
which came nearer all the while. He didn't know what was the meaning
of this new maneuver, but he saw the gun flashes and heard the _pow-w_
of the shots.

Those down in the yard were backing up. Three or four blurred figures
started running down the road--to their horses, he guessed. He wanted
to hurry them up with a shot or two, but the effort didn't seem worth
while after all.

And suddenly from the hillside there came a chorus of yells that
brought Chip up, clawing the rock to regain his feet, laughing
foolishly all the while. The Happy Family with their own special war
whoop were charging down upon the lynchers, coming miraculously out of
nowhere. Happy Jack's raucous voice, fat old Slim's unmistakable
bellow, Weary and Cal and Penny and Dickybird--their exultant tones
rose and blended in a heavenly chorus. "Give it to 'em, boys! Pour it
into them!" He thought he shouted that at the top of his voice, though
no one seemed to hear him.

Down the last few feet of slope charged the boys of the Flying U,
shooting as they ran. Before them, men scattered as chaff before a
gust of wind, leaving choice strongholds (where they had settled for a
siege that would end only when they could leave two men--or three, if
they could get hold of Chip Bennett alive--dangling from the nearest
tree), running like rabbits for farther coverts.

With a supreme effort, Chip steadied himself against the rock and sent
one shot after the nearest, then settled back with a deep sigh of
satisfaction. Let the boys clean up the rest, he thought vaguely.
Couldn't cheat them out of their fun. . . .

Dreamily he was next aware of a lantern bobbing here and there about
the yard, looking like a huge firefly. Taking tally, he guessed. It
never occurred to him that he might be the object of their search. Let
'em hunt. He was too tired to care.

Then the lantern was shining in his face and all the boys were
standing around, staring down at him. Some one was holding him--that
darned girl again! In the lantern light her eyes were big and shining.
A drop of water fell on his nose, another on his cheek.

"You--took your time," Chip said in a washed-out tone.

"You're a nice one, getting that sore arm shot up again."

Her voice sounded queer; as if she were crying. That's where those
drops came from, then. It wasn't rain, it was Polly Taylor crying. He
wished she wouldn't. Nothing to cry about now, unless--

"Anything wrong--up at the house? Harve--"

"They're all right. Where's Skelp Turner?"

Skelp. That's right, he had forgotten all about Skelp. "Got him
hog-tied--over by the fence. Tried to burn the stables." He sighed
again wearily. Too much trouble to explain. No use, anyway. Let them
go hunt up Skelp--find out for themselves. And he thought of little
Silver with those three deep stabs in his hip. He had to go and wash
them out with carbolic water. No telling what filth was on that fork.
. . .

Struggling to rise, he was seized upon by Weary and Dick Bird.

"Let go. I'll pack him in," Dickybird's mild voice protested. "He's
been bleedin' like a stuck pig. Got to stop it."

"I can walk. What's the matter with you fellows?" Chip tried to push
them off with his one good arm, puzzled because the strength had
seeped out of his body.

Then big Dick Bird gathered him up like a baby in his long arms and
went teetering on his little feet to the house, the lantern keeping
pace beside him.

"I've got to--got to--"

"You ain't got to do nothin' but keep quiet," Dickybird cut him off.

"Little Silver. Skelp jabbed him with a pitchfork. I've got to--"

"Us boys'll look after that. We'll take care of the colt--and Skelp
too." Bearing his burden of six feet of bone and muscle (and nerve)
along, Dickybird's breathing was still even and unlabored.

"Skelp Turner, he's took care of a'ready," Slim announced, puffing up
alongside. "Dead as a mackerel, by golly. Who done it? Chip, did you?"

"Sure as hell tried. Take care of the colt." And with that, soft
blackness descended upon Chip.




CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHIP STILL WANTS PROOF


Savory smoke from frying venison steaks rose to the low ceiling and
hung there, mixing agreeably with the aroma of coffee, the warm wheaty
smell of pancakes flavored with a dash of corn meal in the batter.
Clatter of table things, the scuff of boot soles on the rough board
floor, a voice now and then uttering a terse sentence. "More coffee,
Mr. Whitmore?" . . . "Drive that cream pitcher this way." . . . "Who's
got a corner on them pancakes?" . . . "Pass the butter, somebody."
Yellow lamplight shining on tanned faces bent over filled plates. The
quick light tread of the women moving from stove to table and back
again.

Pancake turner in one hand, in the other a dish towel folded into a
bunglesome makeshift holder, Polly Taylor pushed her slim body between
Weary and Cal Emmett, leaned and drew in a long, deep breath; let it
go with a rush over the lamp chimney. The flame jumped and went out.
Acrid odor of burning oil wick scented the warm steamy air of the
room. She shifted the towel to her shoulder and picked up the lamp.

"Morning," she announced succinctly. "I want to get those blankets off
the window and let out a little of this smoke. It's thick enough to
cut with a knife."

Eyes turned her way in wordless approval of her caution. Too sharp to
uncover a window while the lamp was lit, even if there was a guard
outside. Smart as the next one, that girl. Glances followed her as she
walked in momentary gloom to a window, reached up and pulled a blanket
off the two nails at the top of the sash, letting the heavy dark
shield fall to the floor.

Filtered gray light enveloped her. Weary Davidson, who was nearest,
straddled backward over the bench and went to help her where she stood
struggling with a warped sash. As it went up, a keen, sweet breeze
rushed in and set the breakfast smoke curling. From somewhere down
near the stables two roosters were crowing a duet. A cow bawled down
in the pasture.

Against the breeze Polly's check apron flapped, showing blue overalls
beneath it and the .38 Colt swinging in its holster at her side.
Strands of her copper red hair lifted on her temples and the shadows
of weary sleeplessness beneath her fine eyes lay like splashes of
purple paint.

She turned and looked back at the table filled with armed range men,
her eyes seeking the one whiskered face in the group. "Can't I go out
and tell those fellows to come in and eat, Pa? I'll stand guard till
the rest of you are through."

"I'll go," Weary's quick tones intervened. "I'm full to the eyebrows.
You stay inside. I guess we ain't reached the point yet where a girl's
got to stand guard over us." His smile, sunny, even though his face
was drawn and tired, robbed the words of any offence.

"Well, I'll go take a look at the patient then," Polly yielded in a
carefully casual tone. "Maybe he can handle some breakfast." She drew
in a long breath of fresh air and turned back toward the stove. "You
watch the cakes, will you, Ma? They're about filled up, anyway." She
referred to the dozen men around the table.

"Good thing they are," her mother made querulous retort. "If I hadn't
been on the job, this whole griddle full would of been black as your
hat. Go on with you. You better go to bed. I'll roust the boys out and
make 'em wash the dishes." As Polly left the room, her mother's voice
called after her, "He better not eat much. Something light. Ask him if
he wouldn't like some milk toast. I can fix it in a minute--I've got
the milk hot right here."

"All right, Ma. I'll ask."

But she didn't. She went first to the windows and raised the blinds
and stood there looking out. From the wide, homemade couch in a
corner, Chip turned his head and looked at her, conscious of the
picture she made with the faint flush of early dawn lighting her face
and her coppery hair lying in loose waves from crown to neck. It was
the first time he had ever seen Polly Taylor without that big Stetson
pulled down on her head. It had never occurred to him that her hair
might be beautiful. Long silky lashes never impressed him much,
possibly because women had raved about his own eyelashes as far back
as he could remember--until he grew too big to stand for that kind of
slush. But her profile as she stood there looking out into the coulee
gave him an odd feeling of never having seen the girl before.
Certainly he had never seen just that phase of Polly.

He wondered if it was just a crazy notion he had, that she had spilled
tears on his face last night. She looked tired and worried and her
shoulders drooped, as did the corners of her mouth, but she did not
look as if she were at all likely to cry; certainly not over him or
any other man. He guessed he kind of caved in, last night. Bullet in
his arm. He remembered now. He was about all in when the boys showed
up--And that was funny, their coming just in the nick of time. He
wondered how they happened along; and then he knew. It was Polly, over
there. That's where she disappeared to last night. Fogged over to the
Flying U and notified the bunch. . . .

"How'd it pan out, last night?" he asked suddenly. "Anybody hurt on
our side?" He lifted himself with an effort to his good elbow and
balanced there, waiting for the room to quit spinning and settle down.

Polly turned and gave him a long enigmatic look. "Oh, no!" she said
with much sarcasm. "Not at all. You came within an inch of bleeding to
death, but of course that's nothing."

"Nothing at all." His tone closed the subject effectively. "I believe
I asked how the fight turned out, but you needn't bother. If Weary's
here, I'd like to see him, if it isn't too much trouble to ask. . . ."

Red flamed up into her face. She took a step toward him, storm in her
eyes. "Oh, you--I'd like to slap you!"

"Yes?" The room refused to steady itself. Chip let himself down on the
pillow again. "Go ahead. You have my permission." As his head cleared
and the girl's figure ceased to waver like disturbed water in a pool,
he saw that she was really trembling, glaring at him with her hands
doubled into fists at her side. He honestly wondered why; he couldn't
see what he had said or done that was so terrible. "When you get
around to it," he said ironically, "would you mind asking Weary or--"

With a whispered word of suppressed fury, she turned and left the
room, slamming the door after her so that the wail of an awakened baby
rose within the next room.

Now that he was alone, Chip tried again to get up, with a little
better success. He was sitting owlishly on the side of the couch when
Weary came in with J.G., Shorty and old Shep Taylor behind him.

Weary set down a large milkpan in which a cup of coffee, two boiled
eggs and a dish of milk toast were assembled. "How yuh feel, Chip?
Mamma, you sure gave us a scare last night. Seems like you can't ever
go into a fight without getting yourself all bunged up somehow. Throw
this into you and maybe you'll feel better."

J.G. slumped into a near-by chair, hitching it closer to the couch.
"If yuh feel like talkin', Chip, I wish you'd tell us just what you
found out about all this business. You was down at Butch's place, the
girl told us. He have any hand in the stealin'?"

Chip tasted the coffee, found it right and knew that Weary had
probably sweetened it for him. "Not as far as I could find out. I was
there a week, during the storm, and Butch was fine. I didn't take to
the men he had with him, but I'm sure they didn't have any hand at all
in the rustling."

"One of 'em was laid out cold last night," J.G. informed him flatly.
"Feller they called Sime. Know 'im?"

"Sime?" Chip looked up so quickly it made his head whirl. "Sure, I
know him. Rat, the way I sized him up," he said, when the vertigo
passed. He dipped into the dish of egg, trying to steady the shaking
of his hand; gave it up and groped for his cigarette material, letting
it go when Weary offered him a fresh-rolled smoke.

"You lay down and take it easy, old boy," Weary admonished. "You ain't
in any shape to mix into this business now."

"We've got to get the straight of this," J.G. snubbed him. "I guess it
won't kill him to talk a minute."

"Certainly I can talk. I'm not that far gone," Chip said peevishly,
his face reddened with what blood was left in his lean body. He looked
at Shep Taylor with some embarrassment. "You may as well get the fact
that Butch and his men believed it was the Hobble-O doing the
butchering. Butch as much as said so. He didn't want to get mixed up
in it, but it looks like the jaspers he's got working for him were
ready enough to take a hand in any little lynching that was going on.
I don't believe Butch was here last night. He doesn't strike me as
being that kind. It's the men he's got--"

"Poppycock!" snarled old Shep, with sudden violence. "You let 'im pull
the wool over your eyes. Butch ain't no saint. He's in fer any
deviltry that's goin'. He knows damn well I ain't no rustler." He
walked over to the fireplace and spat fiercely into the half-dead
embers of last night's fire.

"Just the same, I don't believe he was here with that gang last
night," Chip contended. And then he thought of something and turned
white under his tan. "I'll damn soon find out," he declared, after a
breathless pause, during which he was remembering how quickly Skelp
Turner had softened toward him, when Chip spoke intimately of Big
Butch and his men. "I'll make it my business to see where he stands.
Soon as I'm on my feet again--"

Old Shep was raking the coals, laying on more wood, for the room was
chilly. He turned with the long poker in his hand and strode to the
couch. "Think I'm goin' to set around in the house and wait for you to
scurrup around playin' deetectiff?" he demanded in his rasping voice.
"I got work t'do. They'll be layin' in the hills tryin' to bushwhack
us f'm now on till we git 'em cold."

J.G. gestured for silence. "What's all this about Milt Cummings being
mixed up in it? Shep, here, says you told him you've got the goods on
Milt, but you never told him how."

Chip had done a good deal of thinking on that subject. "I thought we
could sweat it out of Skelp Turner," he confessed, "but by rights he
oughta be dead. He is, if I can shoot worth a damn."

"Deader'n salt pork," Shorty gruffly attested. "How'd that happen,
Chip? He was wrapped up in rope like a kid would tie a man. You do
that?"

Chip colored again. "It was dark and the shooting had started up here
at the house, and he'd played dead on me once before and crawled off
in the dark to set the stable afire," he explained briefly. "I wasn't
taking any more chance with him, that's all. I was pretty sure he was
dead when I tied him."

"Mamma!" Weary murmured. "You sure are getting to be a real wolf!" He
squatted on his heels beside the couch. "How'd Skelp get into the game
in the first place?"

That much Chip told them. "But I haven't any proof except what Skelp
said," he added dispiritedly. "I was going to jump Milt about it, but
he was gone when I got to his place. I guess if he was honest, he
might be just as liable to get a mob together and try and wipe out the
Hobble-O."

"Not on your life," Weary grunted. "Milt plays cinches. If he was
honest, he'd wait and get the goods on the Hobble-O."

"I heard him down by the storehouse telling a couple of fellows to
hustle down and burn the haystacks down in the coulee," Chip suddenly
recalled. "He did say one thing that showed Skelp wasn't just talking
through his hat. He threatened what all he'd do if Skelp had
double-crossed him. Some one had blabbed, he said." He looked around
the group. "I guess that shows plain enough Milt's the one."

J.G. got up, caught old Shep's eye and tilted his head toward the
door. "That's good enough for me," he said, "and I guess it is for all
of us. Milt's started this thing now and he's got to go through.
Shorty, you go git the boys together. We've got to make a round-up
here."

"Damn right there'll be a round-up," snarled old Shep as they went
out.

Left alone, Chip tried to get up and follow. No use. His knees buckled
under him and he lay back, cursing his luck. He looked at his bandaged
arm that had put him down just when he needed to be at his best.
Blood. He needed more of it in his veins to replace what had leaked
out.

In the pan beside him the deep dish of milk toast stood cold and
soggy. The eggs too were cold, and so was the coffee. No matter, his
stomach wouldn't know the difference, maybe. Blood was made from food,
wasn't it?

"Thank the Lord, I don't have to wait for a broken leg to mend," he
muttered, and set himself doggedly to the task of swallowing
everything in that pan except the dishes. And when he had finished, he
lay down and as doggedly went to sleep. For he had a purpose to
accomplish and his full strength was the one thing he needed.




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FIGHT THE DEVIL WITH FIRE


While Chip lay glumly waiting until the healing forces of his body
built new blood and fresh tissue--one for the whole length of him and
the other for the bullet hole in his arm--events moved at what he
considered a slow and uncertain pace. It must be that J.G. and Shep
Taylor had lost their grip of things, he thought carpingly. They
certainly didn't go after Milt and his crowd the way they should have
done and so they made a flat fizzle of the whole thing.

Weary told him about it while the rest were eating supper that night.
They had gone to Milt's place, the whole bunch of them, and they were
ready for war. They had seen Milt all right--rode right up and called
him to the door. Spike Reilly and Bill Hurst were there, monkeying
with a bronk in the corral. Carl Jahn, another Lazy Ladder man, was
laid out in the blacksmith shop, dead. They planned on burying him
that afternoon, and a couple of the boys were up beyond the pasture,
digging him a grave.

So that was the layout. "Milt talked straight," Weary sighed. "Setting
there on my horse, listening to him, I couldn't see but what Milt was
the injured party right from the word go. He claimed that all the
evidence pointed straight to the Hobble-O, and he said he was so damn
tired of being robbed that he made up his mind to make a clean-up.
Claimed he still thought old Shep had stole about fifty head of beef
from him. And he also made the claim that he's been losing calves
right along, ever since Shep moved in here. Mamma, but he's a
convincing cuss when he wants to be!"

Chip grunted. "Didn't anybody bone him about Skelp Turner, for the
Lord sake?"

"Yeah, J.G. brought that up. Told him what Skelp had said. Milt, he
offered to go and choke the truth outa Skelp. Said he was a liar by
the clock and had it in for him because he wouldn't have Skelp on the
place." Weary shook his head. "I tell yuh, Chip, a feller can't help
himself--he's got to believe Milt while Milt's talkin', anyway."

Chip turned himself impatiently on his bed. "Well, did you tell him
what I heard last night? Heard him say--"

"Yeah--Cal busted out with that, way he always does horn in on any
subject. Milt claims you got your lines crossed. He was cussin' Shep
out and talkin' about Skelp at the same time, and you got things
mixed. Milt says he thought he knowed the sound of Skelp's shotgun,
and he thought mebby Skelp had been snoopin' around, gettin' an
earful, and was trying to get a whack at 'em just for devilment. Milt
said it would be just Skelp's idea of a joke to stand 'em off at the
Hobble-O, and down Milt if he could, and then turn around and kill old
Shep himself, and let on like it was all done in the fight. That's all
he had in mind, he said, and you got the wrong idea. He says him and
Skelp Turner have been on the outs for the last two years and more,
and he's had to ride with one eye peeled for the old cuss whenever he
was over in Skelp's part of the country."

"And you damned chumps swallowed that?"

"Well, I didn't myself--I don't know about the rest. But it did kinda
ball things up some. You can't," sighed Weary, "just take a man out
and hang him, unless you've got his guilt cinched on him so tight he
can't crawl out of it." He licked his cigarette down and twisted the
ends, meditating upon the statement. "You can't, unless you're the
strangler type yourself and kinda take to the job natural," he
amended, while he hunted for a match.

He gave Chip the cigarette, lighted it for him and began making
another for himself.

"I could," Chip said savagely. "Milt, anyway." He blew a mouthful of
smoke and gave a characteristic snort. "He's guilty as hell and you
know it."

"I expect he is, all right. But this was a bright sunny morning.
Anyway, Milt put up a damned good argument, Chip. If I didn't know you
like I do, darned if I wouldn't of taken his word for it." He looked
at Chip. "Skelp Turner was a skunk," he said tentatively.

"Sure he was. He also thought I was one of the gang and talked
accordingly. If you want to think Milt Cummings is a little tin angel,
go to it--"

"Aw, come off your perch. I don't think nothing like that. I used to,
but not any more. None of us do. Shep's going up around Milk
River--starts in the morning--and pick up a bunch of riders that'll
put the fear of the Lord into that Lazy Ladder outfit, if they so much
as wall an eye toward the Hobble-O. We kinda ride herd around here
till he gets back."

He turned his head, listening to the supper sounds in the next room.
He tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the fire and yawned. "I sure
do hope I don't have to leave the bed-ground to-night," he said. "They
know we're on the job, so I guess they'll ride the other side the
crick to-night. They know damn well they got off cheap, losin' only
Carl Jahn. If it had been Spike, now--"

"The last card isn't turned yet," Chip muttered.

Weary stood up, yawned again. Thirty-six hours, most of them in the
saddle, had taken toll of him. "Well, they'll be bringin' in a hot
mash for yuh, any time now," he observed. "How's the arm, anyway?"

"Not so worse." Chip bit his lip. "I'll be outa here in another day."

Weary grinned skeptically. "Not if Polly's rope don't bust, you won't.
Boy, you're sure goin' to convalesce accordin' to Hoyle this time."

"I'm damned if I do!" snapped Chip. But Weary only grinned the wider.

"You got things to learn about Polly," he stated darkly, as he went
out.

Calm days of sunshine followed and Weary was very nearly right, at
least where Polly was concerned. So many riders ranging about made it
plainly unnecessary for her to be riding from dawn to dark, and Chip
saw Polly in checked gingham and flowered calico, with her sleeves
rolled up most of the time, showing unsuspected dimples in her elbows.
Also the untaught waves in her copper-red hair disturbed him,
especially when she stooped to smooth his pillow or to bring him
food. But he would have died before he admitted it, and that gave him
a sullen look when she was in the room and made his manner toward her
aloof, with a frigid politeness that almost drove Polly to man-sized
cusswords.

But there was plenty of work to keep her elsewhere. There were the
children, with their incessant demands and their fiercely sudden
quarrels to arbitrate. There was the cooking for hungry riders who
came and went. There was the boot-tracked kitchen to scrub every day
or two, and the baby to hush, while her mother snatched a little rest
or did the more expert baking.

Four full days of that, while Chip forced himself to lie as quiet as
the scabbarded rifles on the saddles of the Flying U boys. It irked
him terribly that not a gun smoked during all that time. They were
letting Milt Cummings get away with it and he called them fools and
worse. Milt was just holing up like a coyote, waiting until things
quieted down. He'd get old Shep where the hair was short and it would
just about serve the old fool right. Milt was nobody's fool. He proved
that when he soft-soaped J.G. into thinking he was a hell of a fine
feller that just lost his temper and made a pass at hanging some of
his neighbors before he cooled off. That was what it all amounted to,
the way Milt talked.

Chip held his impatience in with as tight a rein as if it were a horse
that kept trying to bolt. He couldn't afford to crowd that cussed arm
right now. Start that vein, or whatever it was, to leaking again, and
he might just as well cut his throat and make a quicker job of it. He
did not fool himself. He had come as near bleeding to death as was
comfortable, and like it or not, he had to take it easy for awhile.

Fortunately, the bullet wound was a clean puncture, that had missed
the bone, and healthy flesh heals quickly. Polly's mother had learned
a good deal about bullet wounds in her years on the frontier and with
rare common sense she did the necessary things and left Nature to
attend to the rest. So, while it seemed a terribly long while to Chip,
strength flowed swiftly back into his flaccid muscles, no doubt
speeded by his indomitable will to be back at his job.

On the fifth day after the fight, several incidents marked a change at
the Hobble-O. Early that morning, the Happy Family rode with J.G. back
to the Flying U, openly expecting Chip to follow as soon as he was
able to ride. Chip felt able to ride whenever he chose, but he lay
quiet until they were well away from the ranch.

Late the night before, old Shep had returned from up Harve way. Half a
dozen wire-muscled men with the brown faces of riders had unrolled
their blankets in the Hobble-O bunk house. Real go-getters by the look
of them, Weary reported to Chip, when he said good-by in the morning.
Three of them packed 30-30's, two had long-barreled 45-70's--he didn't
get a chance to see what the sixth man carried; a carbine of some
sort. Anyway, they'd be hard customers to go up against, and he
guessed the Hobble-O wouldn't need to call on the neighbors again to
help 'em out.

That being the case, Chip turned again to his own affairs. When the
ranch was quiet and even the two boys had climbed the coulee wall on
some mysterious business of their own, Chip drew his bandaged arm out
of its sling and worked it carefully into his sour-dough coat. He
pulled on his chaps and buckled on his spurs and his gun and took his
rifle from the corner where Polly had stood it the day after the fight
(she having cleaned it with meticulous care).

He told the surprised Mrs. Taylor that he was going for a ride and he
didn't know when he might be back, but he was mighty grateful for all
she had done for him, and his arm was all right now. As an
afterthought, he asked her if she would tell Shep he'd like to leave
his colt there for awhile.

"You be careful you don't start that arm bleeding again," she
admonished him, hushing the baby cuddled over her shoulder. "I'll tell
Shep, but it don't matter, anyway. Anything you want on this ranch is
yours and you know it. Or you ought to. We don't forget a kindness
here--nor a wrong, either."

"Same here," Chip declared, with one of his rare smiles. "I certainly
won't forget the way you took care of this arm of mine, and--"

"Well, I hope I don't have it all to do over again," she broke in,
with a brusqueness that would deceive no one. "You be careful; that's
all I got to say. You going back to work for the Flyin' U again?"

Chip reddened. "Well, I--I've got a little something to do first--" It
was difficult to lie to a person like Lavina Taylor, more difficult
still to parry that direct and piercing gaze which she sometimes
employed. "I--"

"When you get outside this coulee, you better have eyes in the back of
your head," she stated surprisingly, one red-knuckled hand patting the
baby with a mechanically soothing motion. "No use tryin' to talk you
out of it, I guess--you're about as stubborn as they make 'em. But
remember one thing, Chip. If there ain't a bounty on your skelp right
now, there will be. I wish you'd stay quiet till that arm's well."

"It's well enough." His mouth had pinched in at the corners. "I'll
take care of my scalp, all right."

"Well, I'd hate to see--" Her voice trailed into silence. Her eyes
clouded, looking back along the dim years to other bold young fellows
who had made that boast--and failed to keep it, some of them. "They
all know how it was we had warnin' in time," she said. "They've got
that chalked up against you and don't you forget it." Her breath
sucked in with a sibilant sound, as if a sudden pain had caught her.
"You're goin' after Milt yourself--now, ain't yuh?"

Chip gave her a startled glance. "What makes you think that, Mrs.
Taylor?"

"I don't think it. I know it. And I want to give you a word of
advice." She hesitated. "You never fought Injuns--but you've heard
tell of how cunning they are. You're goin' up against them that's
worse than Injuns. More treacherous. Recollect, Milt Cummings has
passed as a nice fellow and a good neighbor. He's married into the Cow
Island clique. The way he's worked his scheme to get two honest men
hung for his own devilment--Daniel in the lions' den had a cinch
compared to what you're starting out to do."

"I know that. But I'm planning to live in this country and I'm not
going to spend the rest of my life dodging bullets. The only way to
clean up this business is to dig up proof that'd stand in court.
Milt's making me out a liar and that's something I don't stand for a
holy minute." As his hot angry eyes met hers, he forced a smile that
seemed to beg her pardon for his boasting. "When I lie down it'll be
for a bullet," he explained, a boyish diffidence overtaking him. "It
won't be because I've quit." And he added, "All anybody can do is
try."

"Well, I only hope and pray you succeed," sighed Polly's mother. "I
know Shep's life ain't safe, and it won't be, till that bunch is
cleaned out. And if I was a man, Chip, I'd look at it the way you do."
She turned abruptly and set the baby down on the floor, heedless of
his resentful squall. "You won't feel much like cookin' for a day or
two and chances is it won't be any too safe to show a fire. You wait a
minute and I'll put you up a meal or two of grub."

"What I want most," Chip found courage to say, "is a couple of those
cowhides stacked in the shed."

"My land, take all yuh want," she called from the pantry. "Fight the
devil with fire, is what I always say."

Chip's spirits lifted. Polly's mother was a brick; not a bit like that
darned daughter of hers. With a flour sack half filled with
fresh-baked bread and a couple of pies and plenty of doughnuts, he
went stilting down to the corrals in his high-heeled boots. The
friendly admonitions of Polly's mother warmed his heart and put a glow
of optimism in his purpose.

With his hat tilted over one eyebrow, his gun riding snug at his hip
and his big-roweled spurs making pleasant clinking sounds against the
stirrups, he rode away down the coulee with Jeff well packed and
following amiably at Mike's heels. His back was straight and his chin
was stubborn, and he didn't give a darn if he met Polly Taylor square
in the road. He'd show her, by thunder, that he was his own boss and
would do as he pleased. He wasn't broke to the halter yet, he'd tell
her. He didn't lead worth a cent.




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE WIND'S IN THE NORTH


In a hidden little pocket in the hills Chip spent nearly the whole
afternoon fashioning eight crude but satisfactory boots of the
cowhides begged from Mrs. Taylor, and in helping the two horses
accustom themselves to the feel of the awkward things on their feet.
When Mike quit kicking and with a final disgusted snort resigned
himself to the indignity, Chip mounted and rode on, following a
carefully thought-out plan he had made while he lay apparently dozing
in his bed at the Taylor's.

That night he camped in the Devil's Dipper, with a rope stretched
across the six-foot entrance, and the certainty that no one could ever
trail him to the spot. Regardless of Polly's slighting remarks about
the place, he considered it as good a hide-out camp as he could expect
to find; at least, for the time being.

Daybreak next morning found him away over in the canyon that led by
devious windings to the eastward valley, riding slowly and scanning
every inch of the ground, as he neared the rocky gorge down which his
trailer the other day must have gone. Now that he knew the kind of
mark those cowhide boots left behind them, tracking was possible
wherever a hoof would leave a print. There were faint impressions to
be seen even where the ground was hard, and in the softer soil were
blurred shapeless tracks that resembled hoofprints months old. It was
no wonder he had failed to trace the killers in his first week and
more of hunting this broken country; but it angered him now to think
how he had been fooled.

With their trick known, he read aright certain vague impressions in a
dry wash branching off from the southern side of the canyon, just
before it narrowed to the bottle-neck gorge. The mild and windless
days since these marks were made had not blown the sand, and the
prints remained as they had been that day. By looking back and
studying Mike's muffled tracks, he could tell just what marks to look
for ahead of him. His lip curled. Smart, weren't they? But they hadn't
been smart enough to pick up that boot when it dropped off a horse's
foot. They had left it by a sagebush to give their show away. So now
it was a snap.

As he rode on and on, turning and twisting amongst the network of
narrow gulches and draws that seamed the butte's ragged base, he saw
many marks such as Mike was making; so many, that without Mike's
tracks before his eyes as a sample, he would have thought the marks
were made by the freakish gouging of vagrant winds. Now he knew
better. He knew he had struck the trail where the Lazy Ladder men rode
across to the northern part of the breaks to do their stealing.

A rough and difficult trail it was in spots, with steep pitches in and
out of pinched gullies. No one would ever dream of looking for a trail
through here. There were places where his stirrups touched the rock on
either side and he had to turn his knees in against his horse to avoid
scraping them. Certainly no packed horses ever came through this way.
Chip saw very clearly why the stolen beef was taken around the other
side of the butte to Skelp Turner's camp.

Simple! So simple that when he arrived suddenly at a distinct fork in
the vague trail he was following, the significance of the circumstance
at first did not occur to him. A divided opinion about a bad bit just
ahead, he thought it, and chose the right-hand gulch for no particular
reason except perhaps that Mike showed interest in that direction,
walking with the springy knees of expectancy, ears tilted forward.
There was no mistaking that attitude. Chip swung off where a splinter
of rock offered some concealment for his horse and went forward to
investigate afoot.

Not following the blurred trail, however. Instead, he climbed a tilted
seam along the rock wall--for he had no intention of meeting some of
the Lazy Ladder gang face to face in that narrow place. True, they
might shoot him off the side where he couldn't very well hide himself,
but he counted on not being discovered. Men with wide-brimmed hats
bend their glances toward the ground, as they ride, or look out at a
level, as a rule. Unless they heard him, they would not be likely to
look up. And furthermore, the broken seam kept climbing, fairly easy
to follow. Another minute or so and he was up above a bulging
out-thrust which would hide him from any one on the ground. And still
he heard no one approach.

Then, looking always ahead, he glimpsed trees and knew that the gulch
must end in an open space. Perhaps some secret basin where something
might be learned. He went on. And he heard a man shout some phrase of
greeting. Though the words did not reach him, he could tell by the
tone.

Unexpectedly he was facing a valley which looked vaguely familiar.
Below him rose the smoke from a cabin chimney, and a corral fence
swung out from the cliff. Men were talking, immediately beneath him,
and in the windless air of midmorning their words came to him with a
disquieting clearness.

Big Butch was one and he was asking some strange man what kind of a
trip he had had. The stranger said it was all right, and the boys were
at the river and would be drifting in that night.

"Didn't know as we better head this way all in a bunch," he explained.
"We heard about the fizzle the other night--"

They talked of the fight at the Hobble-O and another voice joined in,
then another. Voices Chip knew, talking in a way that set the blood
pounding in his veins.

With a slow and careful movement, he reached up and pulled off his
hat, afraid that some one might chance to look up and get a glimpse of
it. On his belly he inched forward to the very edge, hoping for a
sight of the speakers; but all he saw was a black hat, set far back on
a head and hiding it completely, and a pair of shoulders drooped
forward; some one roosting on the corral fence, he knew by the
posture. The stable roof, jutting out, hid all the others from his
sight. Probably, he thought, they were hunkered down on their boot
heels against the stable wall, smoking while they talked, as range men
have a fashion of doing.

"I hear they got Sime."

"Yeah, the damn fool didn't have sense enough to crawl into his hole,"
Butch's voice answered. "I told him to keep his nose out--"

"Flicker, he picked up a bullet too, some one was tellin' me."

"Not that night, he didn't. Flicker was home in bed when that jamboree
was goin' on. I've been side-steppin' this cattle stuff, much as I
could."

"Milt, he kinda overplayed his hand, looks like to me," another voice
spoke carpingly. "Why'n hell didn't he wait a week or so, before he
opened up the ball?"

Butch's voice was explanatory. "Well, for one thing, the weather
turned off warm all of a sudden and the butcherin' had to stop--unless
they wanted to pitch good beef into a gully somewhere. The boys made a
big killin' and done that a coupla times, but Milt, he don't go very
strong on that kinda work. Milt hates like hell to see a dime git away
from him. Then . . ."

"Thought he was goin' to ring the Flyin' U in on it and make--"

"Seems like they wouldn't ring . . ."

A pulse in Chip's throat started hammering so hard it almost choked
him while he listened. They talked about Milt, criticizing him behind
his back and naming his faults and his weaknesses. They drifted into
intimate and terribly revealing talk of their own plans and how they
meant to carry them out. They discussed old Shep Taylor as if he were
a man already dead, and seemed to know a surprising lot about his
ranch, his family and his affairs. They knew the names of the men he
had hired up Milk River way, and their general characteristics. There
was one, Blink Roberts, whose presence at the Hobble-O seemed to
furnish them with a good deal of amusement. They said, over and over,
leave it to Blink.

They talked of the Flying U. . . .

Until Sam's raucous voice called them in to their dinner, Chip lay up
there among the rock rubble and listened, eyes fixed with a terrible
intentness upon that black hat and the bowed shoulders beneath. Once
his hand reached back and closed upon the butt of his gun, then
loosened and came away, as sober sense warned him that this was not
the time. He did not know whose head that hat covered, nor did he
identify any particular voice with the wearer; but an occasional
outflung hand told him when that man was speaking and the temptation
to end his speech with a leaden period was almost irresistible at
times.

But to kill the man in the black hat would have accomplished nothing
except to bring them all like hounds on his trail, and that he could
not afford. Not now. Not now, while all their desultory talk, so
self-revealing, and all the plans they had discussed together was
locked away in his memory. Risk enough now that a bullet might blot
out the knowledge he carried before he could make use of it. Milt and
Milt's men were hunting him--or they would be, as soon as they
discovered he had left the Hobble-O. "--and damn it, I keep tellin'
Milt that Chip Bennett's only one white chip in this game--" While
Chip lay up here, fingering his six-shooter, they had all laughed at
Butch's pun. But it was true, nevertheless. In this game he was just a
white chip--and yet, sometimes a white chip may win or lose the game.

No, he couldn't take a chance more than he had to now. Lucky for him
he had borrowed their trick of muffling their horses' feet, he
thought, as he made his way cautiously back down to where Mike stood.
If they used this secret trail--as they no doubt would sooner or
later--they would see no strange tracks. It might, he thought, be an
advantage sometime to know this back way in to Fishback Canyon, as
Butch called his place.

Riding back the way he had come, at the fork in the trail he paused
just long enough to note the other trail's direction. The trail over
to the Lazy Ladder, he was now certain. And he rode half turned in the
saddle after that, watching back the way he had come, feeling his
back muscles relax whenever he turned a sharp bend and knew that a
bullet could not follow him there.

But the winding way lay empty to the noon sun. The canyon was still
with that breathless silence of a barren land, lying forsaken by men.
As quickly as he could, he got back into the Devil's Dipper where he
could feel secure. Yet even here he was suspicious and uneasy, almost
certain some one had been there in his absence. Some things were moved
in his makeshift camp, the rope across the entrance tied with a
different knot.

With his rifle close at hand and his glance straying often to that
crevice through the ridge which was the only means of getting to him,
he ate a little and rolled a cigarette and thought of his next move.

It wasn't easy to decide. Sometimes his thoughts reeled round and
round, the different diabolical things he had heard that day weaving
drunkenly together, darting thoughts flying from one to another like a
swarm of midges that never alighted anywhere. And he had to do some
straight, hard thinking. Those devils back there--it was up to him
whether they made a go of their plans.

Chip never dreamed how thin and drawn his face looked, nor how his
eyes were sunken in their sockets and gleamed with pin-point pupils,
as he sat there on his bed roll, staring down the rocky handle of the
Devil's Dipper, his rifle laid across his knees while he tried to
smoke and relax, so that he could think things out and decide just
what he ought to do first. Relax!--While his wounded arm ached like a
throbbing tooth and his whole body cried out for rest; and the
cigarette he had started to smoke went cold in his tense fingers, and
the consciousness of being hunted glued his gaze to the one vulnerable
point in his retreat.

But after a little, one thought detached itself from the spinning
confusion. Haste! What he had to do, he must do quickly, before the
Lazy Ladder stopped him with a bullet. After that, it didn't matter
very much. If they got him, he thought moodily, they wouldn't get
much; not after he had told what he knew. But he had that one job to
do first. He had to get out of here and tell. He _had_ to.

That much then was clear in his mind now and it brought a certain
release from the strain. The horror of his knowledge was passing,
settling into a determination to give those devils back there a
surprise. There was only one way to do that and the job was his. If he
weren't man enough to put it over . . .

Mechanically his shoulders lifted in a shrug at that contingency, and
the movement had an odd effect of throwing off the spell of confused
dismay at what he had learned. He looked at his cigarette, tossed it
into the ashes of his breakfast fire and made himself a fresh one,
being particular to tear off a strip of paper of the exact width he
preferred.

"And I hope I get a chance to tell Butch he better not talk so loud
next time," he muttered grimly as he snapped the tiny paper pellet
into the dead fire. "He sure as hell stuck his head in the noose that
time--and I hope I can tell him so before he steps off on nothing.
Give me a job breaking bronks! Hunh!"

Now he smoked quietly, satisfyingly, drawing long meditative breaths
through the little brown cylinder. The lines around the taut bow of
his lips eased perceptibly. He got up, broke small sage twigs and
stacked them precisely in the exact center of his placed rocks in the
ashes, held a match flame steadily beneath a handful of frayed bark
under the twigs, set other sticks, one by one, crisscross on the blaze
that leaped and spread. He carried his coffeepot to the spring,
emptied it and rinsed it well and half filled it with water. While it
was heating, the pot balanced nicely upon two rocks over the fire, he
got out his battered little coffee mill, filled the hopper full of the
roasted beans and ground vigorously with his good right arm, the mill
gripped between his knees. Twice as much as he usually ground for
himself alone, but he wanted the brew double strength to-day.

There was need of haste, of course, and yet there was time enough to
rest for an hour, he knew. In the face of his inner urge to hurry,
hurry, he forced himself to take this hour quietly, letting Mike graze
at will. They both needed the rest. Moreover, he had gathered that
"big medicine" was to be made that afternoon at Butch's place. Milt
and all his men would probably be there, working out details of their
plan. This afternoon his only danger lay in some lone sniper set to
watch for him--and even a Lazy Ladder man could only be in one place
at a time. He wouldn't look for Chip Bennett away down in here. And as
for the fancied meddling with his outfit--well, that was probably some
of that darned Polly Taylor's work. It would be kinda funny if she
didn't come nosing around, looking for him. He never saw such a girl.

Yet his eyes brightened in spite of him when he met her as he emerged
into the main canyon and was stopping on a patch of shale rock to take
the cowhide off the horses' feet. She rode up and sat looking down at
him in disapproving silence, while he tied the pieces of hide under
the canvas on Jeff's pack.

"I suppose," she said at last, "you think you're being smart,
scurruping off like this with that arm of yours."

From under his gray hatbrim Chip looked up at her. "I couldn't very
well scurrup off without it, could I?"

"You didn't have to scurrup at all," Polly retorted, pinching a smile
in at the corners of her red mouth. "I'd like to know what you think
you're doing, away off down here."

"Yes? I rather suspected as much." Chip's smile was calculated to
infuriate her and it almost succeeded.

"Sometime," she observed darkly, "I think I shall have to choke you,
or brain you with an ax, or put strychnine in your pancake batter, or
something."

"The ax, please," Chip made his choice unmoved; "and be darned sure
you make a good job of it or I'm liable to resent it."

"You'll stay where you belong, if I ever start in on you," she
promised. And then her tone changed as he finished and swung up on
Mike, reining in alongside her. "Been taking a leaf out of Milt
Cummings' book, I see. I hope you found out all you wanted to know?"

"Certainly. I usually do, don't I?"

"Depends on how much you want to know." And suddenly she shivered
exaggeratedly. "I do wish the wind would change out of the north," she
complained. "I've been frozen for a month."

Chip gave her a quick surprised glance before he understood. It was a
hint for him to thaw out, but perversely he would not take the hint.
If she wouldn't butt into his affairs all the time, maybe he . . .

"Pa wants you to come straight on back," she told him, breaking into
his thoughts. "He says you'll get yourself killed, if you don't look
out, riding around in these breaks the way you do, with a hundred
chances to potshot you."

"And how about yourself? I should think your dad would tie you up if
you can't be kept on the ranch any other way." He looked at her,
frowning. "You're taking long chances, if you only knew it."

"Not as long as you take. Milt wouldn't bother me and you know
yourself that Butch wouldn't let anybody touch me." She drew in her
breath, looking at him queerly. "His bunch is back from driving those
horses south," she said. "At least, Snuffle came in from Cow Island
and said they were all ganged in at Lang's, drinking and gambling. A
dozen or more strangers, he said, besides the men that were here all
winter. Looks like he means to do a land-office business, breaking
horses to sell. Are you going to work for him?"

"That," said Chip, "remains to be seen." It was on the tip of his
tongue to tell Polly something of what he had heard; as if it might be
safer to pass on what he knew to the first person he saw.

But he did not, and for a reason he could not quite understand. He did
not want to worry Polly. Stealing sidelong glances at her, as they
rode side by side, he felt an odd desire to keep trouble and worry far
from her; keep her saucy and smiling and courageous and never let her
guess what terrible knowledge was in his mind.

"Besides," Polly said irrelevantly, breaking the silence between them,
"Dad said if I had any idea whereabouts to find you, I'd better bring
you in. He said Milt had men on the prowl, and you'd get in safe, as
long as I was with you."

Her tone challenged him to biting resentment, but in that moment Chip
was only conscious of old Shep's shrewdness and was grateful.

"Well, if you're appointed bodyguard," he said dryly, "better shake
that cayuse of yours up a little. The sooner we get in, the better
I'll be pleased."

And Polly could only look at him in blank amazement, wondering what
had come over him.

But Chip knew. For the next few hours his life, as he saw it, was
about the most precious thing north of the river and it had to be
preserved. After to-night--well, he'd stack up just about as high as
any other bone-headed cowpuncher, he guessed, and if somebody put his
light out, he wouldn't be greatly missed.




CHAPTER NINETEEN

"IT'S LIFE AND DEATH, POLLY"


Supper was ready in the Taylors' big kitchen, and Polly in her
overalls, and with her hair braided down her back, was taking up fried
eggs expertly with a thin old table knife and cuddling them into all
the spaces and hollows on a huge platter of fried ham. From under his
straight dark brows Chip watched her, without seeming to do so, and
snubbed her with a frigid politeness when she brought the platter
first to his elbow. And for that, Polly deliberately spilled a drop or
two of boiling hot coffee on his hand when she later made the rounds,
refilling empty cups. The revenge was robbed of its sweetness,
however, when Chip refused to flinch or to move so much as a finger.
And from this, one may gather that their relations were perfectly
normal and Chip was himself again.

Along the kitchen wall, behind the door, eight rifles leaned, chambers
loaded and with the magazines full as they would hold. The ninth,
which belonged to Chip, stood behind the door in the living room. And
that was for a reason which he kept to himself.

He was the first one through. As he pushed back the stool which served
for the end of the table--his place by the authority of Polly's
mother, she having a care for his sore arm--his glance traveled
swiftly down the line of heavy, absorbed, feeding faces bent over
their plates. Unlike the boys of the Flying U, these men ate without
speech, minds wholly concentrated upon the food before them. His lip
curled a little at the animal display of them as he stood there
fumbling a pocket for his smoking material.

He was playing for time until he could meet old Shep's eye. But Shep
was hungry after a full day in the saddle and he was busy. Chip turned
away, passed close to Polly and gave her a deliberate nudge. Polly
almost dropped the plate of piled biscuits she was carrying to the
table, she was so surprised. "Come to me," said Chip's eyes when she
looked up at him, and he went on into the other room.

Within two minutes she was there, breathing a little fast, a flush in
her cheeks and starry question in her eyes. She stood with her back
against the door and looked at Chip, where he leaned against the
fireplace, rolling a smoke. "Well?"

Chip drew a match across a jutting rock, held the blaze up where it
cast a flickering glow on his thin dark face. "Can you get your dad in
here without stampeding that bunch of long-horns out there?" In spite
of himself, his voice hinted at dark things untold.

"Why, of course!" She left the door and came swiftly toward him. "They
aren't so wild as all that." She stood before him, watching him light
his cigarette. "You did find out something down there. What did you
find out?"

"Plenty. Go get your dad before he goes out. He came in so late I
didn't have a chance--"

"He's just started on his pie. He'll fill his pipe before he gets up
from the table. He always waits and smokes till Ma's through eating.
I'll tell him then. What did you find out?"

Chip looked down at her, his eyes softening in spite of himself.
"Nothing to worry you about--" And he caught himself on the verge of
tenderness, "--and curiosity killed the cat, remember."

"Oh! Of all the mean, despisable--" She stamped a foot.

"Yes, I know that song by heart. Trot along and do as you're told, why
don't you?"

"I won't!" But she retracted that. "If it wasn't important, maybe, I
wouldn't go a step."

"But it is important. It's life and death." It was a slip and his look
proved it.

"And you won't tell me?"

"No."

"It seems," she said bitterly, "that I haven't earned your
confidence--or any consideration even."

His face whitened a little. "You know better than that. This is
a--it's something for your father and J.G. to settle. I've no right to
tell anybody but them. I--it's too--it goes away beyond you and me,
Polly. We don't cut any ice at all. I wish you'd go get your dad. He
can do his smoking in here, for once." He looked at her so that she
turned her eyes away. "This isn't a time to squabble over words," he
said almost gently. "After I've done what I've got to do--I'll tell
you the whole thing."

She gave him one long look, turned and left the room without a word.

Old Shep came, cuddling the bowl of his pipe, his eyes two boring
questions. And, "What you got on your chest?" he demanded. "Know
anything new?"

"Yes. You and I are going to ride over to the Flying U to-night. I'll
take my outfit along and leave it there. I won't be needing it any
more, I guess."

Old Shep took his pipe from his mouth, held his whiskers out of the
way and spat into the fire. "What'n hell's happened?"

"Nothing--yet. Tell Snuffle you'll be back to-morrow, and one man on
guard will be enough to-night. Or none at all. Let them think
everything's riding along about the same."

"Ain't it?" Shep stabbed the question into Chip's measured speech.

"Just about, only I don't think there'll be any trouble for a day or
two. And say, take Blink Roberts along with you. Make any excuse you
want to--but take him along and don't let him know where we're headed
for."

"Dammit, I don't make excuses to my men," snapped Shep.

"Suit yourself. That's up to you." Chip rubbed out his cigarette
against the rock and flipped the stub into the blaze. "Better take
Blink on some errand with you, and I'll come along and ask which way
you're riding, and invite myself along, as far as you happen to be
going my way." His cheeks darkened as the blood rushed in. "I don't go
much on private theatricals," he added, "but not knowing just who
might be up on the rim, or--" he flung out a hand "--just how the
cards lie here, it's best to make the play natural and not excite
anybody's curiosity."

Shep drew a long breath through his pipe. "Why yuh want that feller
Blink Roberts in pa'ticular?"

Chip's look told nothing. "Well, he's a good man to have along, isn't
he?"

"S'posed t' be. Come an' boned me for a job and give a good account of
hisself, so I hired him."

"Well, take him. I--I want him along, that's all."

Shep eyed him thoughtfully. "Any reason why yuh can't spill what yuh
know?"

Chip shook his head. "Only, it's a long story and I want you and J.G.
to hear it together." He glanced out the window. "We ought to get
started before dark," he said. "We don't want this to look mysterious
to anybody that might be interested."

He had thought this all out, weighing and deciding during the long
ride in with Polly. Now he was aware of Shep's disapproval--almost his
disgust at being asked to make foolish mystery and go riding off
without knowing why. He couldn't blame Shep if he refused to stir away
from the ranch without knowing why. Almost he was tempted to tell what
he knew; almost. But there was the danger that Shep would want to act
alone, go off half-cocked with his seven men. . . .

Shep grunted and swore and deluged the feebly burning juniper roots.
But he did not finish his pipe before he was gone from the room and
telling his wife she could look for him back sometime to-morrow, for
he was going on up to the Flying U and she was not to peddle the
information to any one, not even Snuffle.

The play went forward as Chip had planned it. He let the two ride off
while he was fussing with his pack, then trotted his horses to
overtake them, while they were still in the coulee. He thought that
Blink Roberts looked curious and even a little perturbed, and he
caught the man glancing up at the eastern rim more often than any save
a frightened man would do, or one who had a special interest in the
spot. But no signal was attempted--indeed there was nothing Blink
could possibly know that would be of immediate interest to any
watching enemy, except perhaps the fact that Chip Bennett was riding
off with his pack horse and his pet colt; and that any man on the rim
could see for himself.

It was a touchy half mile and Chip was glad the shadows lay so dark
beneath the hill and that the willows along the creek blurred the
outlines of any riders along the trail. Until he caught the upward
glances of Blink, he hadn't realized how fine a target he would make
nor the risk he would run. But it seemed that the rim was for the time
being clear of spies. At any rate, they left the coulee and turned
into the Whoop-up Trail going north, and no bullet came seeking him
out.

There on the level the fading glow of sunset gave a stronger light and
he could study the man they called Blink Roberts. An unobtrusive type;
at the table an hour ago, Chip had tried to guess which man among the
strangers was Blink Roberts and never guessed that this was he.
Sandy-haired, with a roundish face reddened by riding all day in the
sun, and a pair of mild, light blue eyes and a reddish mustache. He
looked, Chip thought, like a nester who would keep a dirty stable and
raise a swarm of kids, with a wife who always put too much saleratus
in her biscuits. As he rode beside old Shep, his stiffened legs thrust
his stirrups out forward and they lifted and fell with the motions of
his horse. Limber Chip Bennett, graceful as a young Indian in the
saddle, curled his lip at such awkwardness.

But two guns were holstered on Blink's full cartridge belt and the
stock of his rifle sticking out of its scabbard under his stirrup
fender showed the marks of use. He chewed tobacco with a slow,
deliberate working of his jaws and winked his light eyelashes every
time his teeth clamped down. He seemed to have a great capacity for
silence, for he never spoke a word or betrayed any interest whatever
in the journey. He just chewed and spat neatly off to the side, and
rode along, keeping his thoughts--if he had any--to himself.

A stolid, harmless type except in a fight, to look at him. But there
was his name, spoken familiarly in that group by Big Butch's stable,
and there was the statement that they could leave it to Blink. Leave
what to Blink? The killing of Chip Bennett? But Big Butch liked him,
Chip knew. He hadn't spoken so enthusiastically of Milt's grudge.
Leave Blink to some treachery of his own, the giving of information
perhaps?

Whatever it was, Chip was not sorry that Jeff and little Silver gave
him a natural reason for bringing up the rear. In all that long and
silent ride, Chip held his gaze upon the dim moving figure of Blink
Roberts and wondered what was in the man's mind. Whatever it was, it
certainly failed to include a suspicion of the knowledge hidden behind
the stern face of the quiet young fellow behind him.

And so they jogged along the rutted trail, three silent riders and a
pack horse and a flaxen-maned yearling colt, looking at peace with
their world and with themselves, in no great hurry to get where they
were going.




CHAPTER TWENTY

A FINE SCHEME COOKED UP


A depressed feeling of utter failure caught Chip unawares as they rode
up the creek into Flying U Coulee, lying so quiet under the stars,
with the young moon just sliding backwards over the western line of
hills. What he had decided was the wisest plan he could devise
suddenly became no plan at all, or at the best a cheap gallery play.
The truth was, he had stared too long at Blink Roberts' back. He began
to wonder what he was going to do with him when they reached the ranch
and he wished to thunder he had left him back at the Hobble-O where he
belonged.

Back there it had seemed the only sensible course to take. Old Shep
and J.G. had to get together right away--no two ways about that--and
Chip had been afraid to leave Blink on the ranch. No telling what he
was supposed to do or what might happen. For all he knew, it might be
Blink's job to burn Shep out. And there were five other strange men
for Snuffle to keep an eye on. . . . No, the safest way was to bring
Blink along, he guessed.

But what was he going to do with him now? He wished he had told Shep
more about it. But there again he had felt he would be taking too long
a chance of the thing leaking out. Shep would maybe have wanted to
handle the thing alone. . . . No, the best way was to bring Shep and
Blink over to the Flying U. Thank the Lord, he knew this bunch to a
fare-you-well. If he could handle the first few minutes all right,
without tipping his hand too much to Blink, or letting Blink pull
anything, he'd be all right.

Just the same, he hated the rle he had given himself. If they gave
him the laugh--if they didn't take what he told them and let it go as
it lay . . . It did sound pretty darned far-fetched--as if he'd had a
pipe dream of some kind.

They were at the corrals now. In spite of his worry, it was like
coming home. There was Weary's top horse, a buckskin called Fiddler,
calmly munching hay in the corner he always appropriated for himself,
even at the cost of much squealing and biting. There were the other
horses he knew--a night horse apiece for the Happy Family, as if they
were prepared to mount and ride at a moment's notice. Milt Cummings
was the cause of that, he knew. The significance of that string of
top horses in the corral at night heartened him, gave him the
assurance his weary nerves needed. His tired shoulders straightened as
his chin went up. Come hell or high water, the Flying U was a solid
wall at his back. You bet your sweet life.

"I'll leave my horse outside," said Blink--the first words he had
spoken on the trip. "He'd raise hell with all them strange cayuses in
there."

Shep grunted some unintelligible reply to that. Chip was inside,
pulling the saddle off Mike. Some of the other boys would drag the
pack off Jeff, he was thinking. Now that he was home again, he felt as
though every problem he had could be left to the other boys. His job
was almost done. He had to tell them what he knew--after that, he
could roll in his blankets and sleep the clock around.

It was, in fact, the first really relaxed moment he had had since that
windy day more than a month ago, when he and Weary had first
discovered the butchered beef. Walking up the path to the bunk house
his stride lengthened perceptibly. It wasn't so late yet, he was
thinking. Couldn't be much after ten o'clock. And though the lights
were out, maybe the boys weren't asleep yet. Or if they were, it
didn't matter much.

The other two walking single file behind him, Chip went into
blackness only a little lightened by the starry squares of windows.
From a wellknown corner, Weary sat up staring at Chip's face lighted
by the lamp, as he set the chimney within its brass guards.

"Mamma! Where'd you drop down from, Chip?"

Heads bobbed up, profane exclamations of surprise filled the long low
room; vituperations hurled at Chip in tones of affectionate welcome
made him grin while he swore back at them.

Then he sobered. "Get up, you wall-eyed yahoos. I'll go get J.G. over
here. . . ."

"What's broke loose now, Chip?" . . . "What's eatin' on yuh?"

To these and other questions Chip made no reply. Again he was feeling
slightly foolish, as if maybe he should have done this differently.
Calling a mass meeting like this before he'd open up with what he
knew--he was going to feel like seven kinds of a fool when he got
ready to speak his piece, if they didn't believe him. They'd maybe
think he was crazy. Sometimes he kind of thought so himself.

But he went doggedly on with his job. He'd tell them--they could do as
they pleased about believing him. Damn it, he wasn't responsible for
the way it was going to sound. . . .

J.G. gave him a strange intent stare from his bed, then without a word
he reached for his pants. "Milt on the rampage again?" And when Chip
shook his head, J.G. grunted something under his breath and followed
to the bunk house, buckling on his gun as he went. Not that he would
need it, but because habit goes on with the routine of dressing when a
man's thoughts are elsewhere.

The Happy Family, half dressed and looking owlishly uneasy and
curious, sat on the edge of their rumpled beds and rolled cigarettes
while they waited. By the rough board table old Shep sat crowding
tobacco into his pipe, his face a lined mask above the whiskers. And
by the door Blink Roberts moved aside when Chip and Jim Whitmore came
in.

"I was following some tracks this morning, down in that canyon where I
picked up those horses last summer," Chip began, without prelude or
apology. "Struck the trail Milt's gang had made with those cowhide
boots, getting over this way from the Lazy Ladder and back again. Or I
thought I had. I followed it through an ungodly mess of dry washes and
little gulches and deep gorges, to where it forked, and I took the
right-hand fork. My horse heard something ahead, so I left him and
climbed up the side of that crack in the hill I was following, and I
came out where I could look down on Big Butch's corral and the front
part of his stable."

"Thought you said it was the Lazy Ladder," Cal Emmett blurted.

"I thought so myself till I got where I could see. Butch was down
there by the stable, talking to some fellows that had just ridden in,
evidently. They hunkered down and proceeded to mill over their
affairs--" His glance moved from old Shep to J.G. "I thought you folks
better hear about it right away."

With fingers that shook a little, he started to roll a cigarette, gave
it up and held tobacco sack and papers clenched in his hand. The flesh
on his thin face seemed to harden and shrink, like the face of an old
man. His voice, too, was harsh and had a husky note when he spoke.

"They've got a fine little scheme cooked up; Butch and the Lazy Ladder
and most of--well, all of the Cow Island bunch, as near as I could
tell--"

"Figurin' they'll raid this outfit, ay?" J.G. anticipated shrewdly. "I
been wonderin'--"

"Raid hell! They've got their sights raised to killing you off, wiping
out the Flying U and the Hobble-O and all the nesters scattered up and
down the creeks--make a clean sweep, that's all!" Chip's voice cracked
on the last words. "They're going whole hog. Then some of their
outlaw friends from down Wyoming way will trail in cattle and horses
and annex all the range. They're figuring on having what Butch calls
an outlaw paradise. They've got men lined up in Dry Lake--up there
somewhere, anyway--to protect them on the north, and with Cow Island
keeping tally on the river, they'll be riding high, wide and handsome
from the Bear Paws to the Missouri."

"The dirty sons--uh guns!" swore Shorty, only that is not just what he
said. "And what do they figure we'll be doin' all this time?"

"Occupying your six feet of earth," Chip told him succinctly. "All
that beef stealing was to pull the Flying U into a scrap with the
Hobble-O. Milt did his damndest to cook that up. Then they'd jump in
and do a little shooting in the back. They didn't give a cuss whether
Shep and Snuffle got hung or not. If they could have got J.G. and Shep
locking horns, and all this outfit killed off in the fight, word would
go out that the two outfits had fought to a finish. And they'd make
sure that J.G. was one of the casualties. . . ." He flung out a hand
in the expressive gesture he used to invite one's imagination to
finish a picture for him.

"Well," slow-witted Slim stated heavily, "it didn't work, by golly!"

"It didn't the other night, simply because Milt took the bit in his
teeth and thought he'd open the ball with a lynching bee. The weather
turned off warm and he figured the Hobble-O was through hauling out
beef--and then he was sore too, because you fellows wouldn't set into
the game with him. Butch cussed him out plenty for being too
previous." Chip bit his underlip, trying to steady it.

"What for scheme they got now?" J.G. wanted to know. "You happen to
hear?"

"Enough to fill in the gaps. A lot of gun fighters came up from the
south and they're at Butch's place. A lot more have been drifting in
to Cow Island. I gathered there's about twenty or more, all told. Then
the Lazy Ladder has been hiring a round-up crew too, the last couple
of days." He slanted a meaning look at old Shep. "To-morrow night
there's going to be a big setting at Butch's. They're going to lay
their plans then as to just how the play is to be made. But I got it
straight enough that J.G. is to get his ticket about the first thing.
Dry-gulch him, I guess. That would leave the Flying U without a
boss--nobody owning the stock or having any authority to go ahead.

"Butch told the fellows--strangers, they were--all about the Flying U,
and how it's the key ranch of this country, north of the river. He
said J.G. didn't have any relatives and he said"--Chip stopped to
swallow--"he said when Jim Whitmore was found with a bullet in him,
that would be the time to clean up on the nesters. And while that was
taking place, all you fellows would be taken care of--leaving the
nesters, I suppose, for the last, and stringing them up for a bunch of
wholesale killings they didn't do. He said it would be a cinch to put
the blame where it would do the most good."

"That's quite a contract," some one remarked, in a grim tone.

"And surprise is the essence of their contract," Chip said, with a
bleak kind of humor. "I don't know just how they mean to go about
starting, now that Milt has tipped his hand. Butch was plenty sore
about that. It would have been all right," he added laconically, "if
it had worked the way Milt expected. They'd have put the blame on the
Flying U and then the Vigilantes would have cleaned up this outfit,
and half the job would have been done. That's the way Butch wanted to
work it, but he wanted to wait till this new gang pulled in. Now--"

"Now," old Shep snarled interruption, "they got the Hobble-O to reckon
with. I've got seven fightin' men at my back. They better not overlook
that fact!"

"Butch said leave it to Blink Roberts--" Chip could have bitten his
tongue in two for the blunder, but the words were out. He glanced
swiftly at Blink, gave a sharp cry of warning and reached for his gun.

"You damn fool, this is how it starts!" Blink shouted, and fired from
his hip as he jerked the door open. While their eardrums still rang
with the roar of his forty-five, he slammed the door behind him and
ran.

Some one was on the floor and Chip jumped over him and caught the door
while it still quivered from Blink's hurried exit. His bullet sped
after the fleeing spy, caught up with him and whirled him half around,
breaking his stride. But he did not go down. He ran on, shouting back
curses, emptying his six-shooter at the lighted doorway.




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ONE SPY THE LESS


The Happy Family rushed like stampeding bronchos through the
bunk-house door and gave chase. Ahead of them ran Chip, shooting at
the fleeing shadow and calling back to the others as he went.

"Get him--don't let him get away--It's all my own damn fault--" He
stumbled, tried to catch himself and pitched forward as the others
tore past.

A wave of nausea that was partly mental seized him when he attempted
to regain his feet and go on. He wasn't hit, or if he was, he couldn't
tell where. It was a sage root or something of the sort that had
caught his toe and tripped him. His ankle hurt with a sickening
pain--but more than that, despair had him by the throat. That he could
have forgotten Blink Roberts and the part he was to play seemed
incredible. Yet it had happened. His mind had held nothing but the
horror that was being hatched. He had given Blink the cue to shoot
some one and go warn Butch and Milt.

Like hounds on hot scent, the boys were giving tongue down there by
the corral. An orange flower blossomed by the stable as a gunshot
smashed through the darkness. Another and another. Then silence,
followed by murmurous sounds. A match blaze flared, went out. A second
glow cupped between palms bent low, lighting something on the ground.
Horses in the corral were snorting and there was a trampling of feet
as they surged across to the farther fence.

In the doorway behind Chip the querulous voice of J.G. called out
impatiently, "Git back here, some of you fellers! I want some help
here! Don't take more'n a regiment to ketch one man--Shorty! Somebuddy
go git some hot water! Daw-gone it--"

Steadying himself against the wall, Chip moved toward him giddily, his
knees still unaccountably wabbling under him. He remembered now, some
one on the floor had almost tripped him. "Is--any one hurt?"

J.G. craned forward, peering through the gloom. "That you? Yuh hit?"
He reached out a hand, got Chip by the shoulder as he swayed. "Git in
here! My Lord, if some of them crazy loons don't show up--What's the
matter?" His blue eyes looked black and piercing as he stared into
his youngest cowboy's face. "You're white around the gills as a dyin'
fish."

"I--I don't know . . . I'm--just--sick. I--"

"About time you caved in. Daw-gone chump--don't know when to quit . .
. What you think you are--a gove'ment mule or somethin'? There. You
lay down there an' behave yourself." He gently propelled Chip limping
to the nearest bunk and pushed him down upon it. "If there ain't men
enough in this outfit to take a holt now and handle this job, daw-gone
it, I'll go hire me some real hands."

Chip only half heard him. In a vague and dreamy fashion he knew that
he was on Shorty's bunk, and alongside it there seemed to lie a vast
gulf of velvety blackness into which he wanted to slide so that he
could sleep. Never in his life had he wanted anything so much as to
let go all holds and sleep forever.

But he couldn't do that. A nagging guilt and a responsibility held him
to the bunk. He mustn't slip over the edge into the blackness. He had
let Blink Roberts shoot some one and get away--down to tell Butch and
Milt the Flying U outfit was wise to their hellish scheme. He had a
terribly clear picture of Blink down there at the Big Butch cabin,
spilling the news. He had to go after Blink and bring him back--in a
minute, when he had rested a little.

It was his fault that Blink got away. Killed J.G.--or no, he guessed
it wasn't J.G. either, because he heard him swearing. Swearing at him,
because he had made a damned mess of things. What ever got into him,
to tell everything before Blink? He guessed he thought the boys would
grab Blink--or--if he weren't so damned sleepy, he'd know why he
forgot that Blink was standing there by the door, wearing two
guns--Blink wasn't such a hell of a bad man or he'd have slaughtered
the whole works. . . .

In a minute he'd have to go bring him back. It was up to him--he was
the one who played right into Blink's hands. But that bunk--there was
something the matter with it. He kept slipping over the edge . . .
Polly made it that way just for devilment. It was hard to hang
onto--or maybe he didn't have much of a grip on himself. Seems like he
hadn't slept or rested for a month--and his damned arm aching like the
toothache . . .

Some one was talking--saying they got him. Got who? If he could just
get a grip on something, so he could lift himself up where he could
find out--find out . . . Big Butch was a Judas--treating him like a
long-lost brother, and all the time planning to massacre--kill off
all the honest men. . . . Make an outlaw paradise, hunh? . . . He'd
show Butch--tell him he had another think coming . . . In a minute, he
would--just as soon as he could . . . He was down so far now . . . so
far he couldn't even hear who it was they had got. Butch, maybe--the
Judas . . .

So Chip's rambling thoughts--if such they could be called--drifted off
into oblivion, and he slipped over the edge into a deep, dreamless
sleep of exhaustion.

Six feet away from him J.G. and Shorty bent together over another bunk
where Shep lay with his lips pulled so tightly together his whiskers
stood straight out. His eyes were squinted halfshut, staring up into
the faces of the two and trying to read their minds. Shorty held a pan
of pinkish water smelling strongly of carbolic acid, into which J.G.
dipped a torn corner of clean flour sack.

Shep's side was bared, surprisingly white and smooth save where the
ugly torn hole in front showed ragged lips from which the blood seeped
persistently. At the back, through several inches of stringy muscle
and tissue, a round little hole, bluish around the rim, received scant
attention.

"You hadn't oughta pushed in between us like that," Jim Whitmore
grumbled, his voice gruff to hide his emotion. "Little more, and all
hell couldn't 'a' saved yuh. One rib's busted, but I guess your
innards was outa the way. Prob'ly glued together like a starved
chicken, and they don't take up no room scarcely--you're so daw-gone
skinny."

"How's m' liver?" Shep's voice was weak, anxious.

J.G. squinted and considered. "Wel-l, if she lays where she'd oughta,
she was outa line with the bullet. Don't seem to be nothin' punctured
bad but straight meat. That rib'll have to knit before you can git
around much."

"Just when I'm goin' to be needed!"

"Chip," said Shorty heavily, "had oughta told us about that feller.
Didn't you know, Shep?"

Shep shook his head. "Only what the kid hinted. Said I'd have to fetch
Blink along with us. He never said why."

"Damn poor management, looks like to me," Shorty criticized. "Left him
standin' right there, where he had the drop on the hull bunch of us.
Biggest wonder in the world he didn't make a killin' in here."

Weary came in, looked down at Shep for a minute, and turned to where
Chip lay slack, one leg drooping over the bunk's edge. He glanced
across at Shorty. "You're a mile off, Shorty. A bigger wonder is that
this sick kid here got down in to Butch's place and got out again with
all the dope on their plans, and then got up here with it and brought
Blink along. Hell, he ain't endowed with omniscience, is he?" And when
Shorty's face went blank, he clarified the statement: "You couldn't
expect Chip to think of everything and read a man's mind at the same
time, could you?"

Shorty grunted. "All I'm thinkin' is, that dirty hound come within an
ace of killin' J.G. He would of, if Shep hadn't pushed in between."

"Chip done all right," J.G. told them gruffly. "My fault as much as
anybody's. He told me on the way in here what-fer coyote he'd brought
along. I was so worked up over the hull cussed scheme I forgot to keep
an eye on Blink. Daw-gone it, Shorty, don't go blamin' Chip any."

"Hell, I ain't blamin' him," Shorty recanted. "I was just sayin' it's
a damn close call for more'n Shep, here. Might of cost us dear."

Others were coming in, anxious over Shep and trying to appear casual
and unalarmed. "Well, we got 'im, by golly," Slim stated heavily,
looking around as if it were news to all save himself. "Big Butch sure
will wait a long time for any spyin' from that there jasper. Say,
who's got his guns an' belt?"

By the bunk, drawing off Chip's boots as if he were disrobing a dead
man, Chip lay so inert, Weary looked up and tilted his head toward the
table by the window. "Over there. He sure was heeled for bear, all
right." He looked at Dick Bird, huge and helpless in his diffidence,
standing near by. "Catch hold of him, will you, Dickybird? Raise him
up so I can get his coat off without maulin' that game arm."

As if he were handling a child, Dickybird lifted Chip's head and
shoulders in his arms. "Didn't git hit again, did he?"

Weary shook his head. "Just all in, I guess. Fine large day he's had.
Maybe we better take a look at that arm while we're about it. What yuh
think?"

"I've got some salve that's awful good," Penny volunteered. "Swab some
of that on, why don't yuh? Helps the itchin' when a bullet hole starts
to git well."

"Dig her up, then. Won't do any hurt to slap some on."

J.G. turned around from Shep's bedside, pulling down his sleeves. "Ted
and Penny, you go round up a team and hitch 'em to the bed-wagon," he
said, in the tone of a round-up boss. "Pile in lots of hay and
blankets--we better haul Shep home b'fore daylight. I want the rest of
you fellers to saddle up and go pass the word around amongst the
nesters. Them that's got families, tell 'em to bring their folks here.
With camp outfit, so they can be comf'table." He looked at Shep for
confirmation and received a nod of approval.

"My place is too--close to trouble," Shep explained. "Better have 'em
here."

"Get Johnson, Pilgreen--all them fellers that's moved in on the
creeks, and up in the draws this side uh the Bear Paws. Tell 'em
what's bein' cooked up for 'em down in the Badlands and git 'em here,
quick as the Lord'll let 'em come. Tell 'em it's their funeral as much
as ours, and we need all the men we can git."

"If you can make out alone here, J.G., I'll go along," Shorty was
reaching for his rifle.

"Sure, go along. Daw-gone it, it'll take every man on the ranch to git
the word around before mornin' and not miss anybody. And say! Make it
plain that we don't want no inklin' to git outside. You remember what
Chip said about their havin' men scattered around up this way--Dry
Lake and so on. That's how Shep happened to git let in, hirin' one of
their men unbeknown to him."

Shep lifted a hand. "They're liable to miss Blink to-morrow, if
they're watchin' my place," he pointed out. "They might be expectin'
him to meet 'em somewhere--with what he'd picked up."

"All he picked up is about four hunks of lead, by golly," Slim
gloated.

"They'll think it's funny if he don't show."

"They'll think some other things is a damn sight funnier," J.G.
snorted. "Well, you toll off the riders, Shorty. Make a circle--two by
two. Might be all right to ride alone, but we ain't takin' no chances
we don't have to."

"Chip took a chance and rode alone," Weary commented, with a side
glance at Shorty.

"Hell, I wasn't diggin' my spurs into Chip in p'ticular," Shorty
answered the look. "No need givin' me the bad eye--I know he's a
go-getter all right and that they don't come any gamer than that kid.
Just the same, if that feller Blink had been onto his job, this woulda
looked like a slaughterhouse in here. It sure was takin' an awful
chance, what I mean. I don't back down from that."

Since he was their boss under Jim Whitmore himself, no one took up the
argument. Even Weary, jealous for Chip's honor though he was, knew
that Shorty spoke the truth and said no more about it. It was an
incredible blunder and one that no normal man would ever have made.

"He was dead on his feet when he got here," J.G. summed it up in his
querulous voice. "Daw-gone it, I don't want to hear no more about it."
His tone changed as the Happy Family crowded toward the door. "That
feller way up next the mountain--git him too. Tell 'em all to fog over
here quick as they can make it--like the Injuns had broke loose off
the rese'vation er something. We got to move fast--make that plain to
'em."

"Darn right," Shorty nodded from the doorway. "You goin' down with
Shep?"

"No," said J.G., "I'll be here. Ted and Penny'll be enough to git him
home, all right. There won't be anything break loose till after
to-morra night, prob'ly."

"Well, all right. We'll have the nesters rounded up by daylight or
we'll know the reason why." And Shorty closed the door behind
him--softly, in deference to the sleeping boy and the old man who had
taken the bullet meant for another.




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MAKE READY FOR WAR


While the Big Dipper wheeled its slow majestic march round the North
Star, Chip lay drugged in the bottomless pool of sleep. And while he
slept, the message he had brought out of the Badlands took life and
form in the brains and bodies of men and drove them forth upon grim
business through the night.

While he lay as moveless as the dead, the cluck of wagon came up from
the corrals and ceased for a space outside the bunk-house door. Ted
Culver's voice, subdued but holding harsh authority in its tones,
admonished the restless sleek team that did not want to stand still
but backed and sidled, cramping the front wheel against the wagon box.
"Stand still, you wall-eyed, hammer-headed thus-and-so's!"

Walking carefully to and fro, into the cabin and out to the wagon
standing there, blurred in the chill starlight, blankets were spread
upon crisp fragrant hay of last summer. An impish gusty breeze caught
a blanket corner from Penny's hand, snapped it like the pop of a
whip. The uneasy horses jumped ahead and both men swore, Penny clawing
for the high spring seat to steady himself, Ted Culver leaning
backward, feet wide apart on the ground, sawing with the lines.

"Make that damned team stand still, can't yuh?" hurrying Penny
snarled, angry because he had come near falling.

"Not while you go poppin' blankets behind 'em," Ted snarled back,
adding profane phrases born of worry.

Penny replied in kind and finished his careful bedmaking. As he
climbed down, he spoke from a wider experience than Ted's. "Say, you
better unhook them bronks till we git him in and bedded down. Liable
to raise hell with him, if the horses git to cuttin' up just when
we're loadin' him in."

"Why didn't yuh think of it before the damn buzzard-heads pulled both
arms off?" Ted grumbled and acted upon the suggestion, Penny helping.

They loaded Shep in, lifting him carefully in a blanket, J.G. in the
wagon, steadying the disposal of his shrunken, pain-racked body upon
the springy hay. "Better rustle a coupla fur coats to spread over him.
It's goin' to be cold as all git-out, ridin' back here. He ain't got
the circulation--"

"I'm hot as hell-fire right now!"

"Might feel that way now, but you could ketch cold in that side just
the same."

He spread two heavy coats, tucked in the blankets, pushed up the hay
beneath Shep's head into a snug hollowed nest. Penny and Ted were
hitching up the team again.

With the night breeze roughing his graying hair around the bald spot,
J.G. climbed down and went to where Penny was hooking the tugs of the
nigh horse.

"You got plenty of ca'tridges, Penny? 'Tain't anyways likely 't you'll
be molested, but you want to be ready. If you have any trouble at all,
it'll be after you hit the Hobble-O coulee."

"I'll sure keep both eyes peeled, J.G."

And around on Ted's side--"Drive careful, Ted. And you boys git right
back here. Better tell Snuffle and the bunch what's up--Shep's liable
to be out of his head when yuh git there. Tell Snuffle to stick close
to the coulee to-morrow and wait till I give 'em orders."

"How is he, J.G.?" Ted's lowered voice inquired.

"Perty bad off, to my way of thinkin'. Bad place to git shot. Mis'
Taylor's good as a doctor, though. Well, you better git goin'. Careful
how you hit the bumps, now!"

He climbed up a wheel, peered down at the wounded man. "How yuh
comin', Shep? Lay'n all right and comf'table?"

"I'm--all right. Long as they git me home--"

"They'll git yuh home, all right. Well, so long--see yuh later, Shep."

Long after the wagon and the two cowboys side by side on the high
spring seat had merged with the night shadows down by the corral, J.G.
stood abstractedly gazing down the way they had gone. When the rattle
of the wagon down the creek trail was stilled by distance, and the
silence seeped in again and filled the coulee to the rim, and only the
darkness and the brilliant pattern of stars remained, he turned and
went inside, groping abstractedly for his pipe in his pocket.

Already on the high benchland, over bald ridges, down into coulees and
creek bottoms the boys of the Flying U were galloping, two fleet
riders here, two more speeding in another direction, another couple
riding north to the foothills of the Bear Paws--wherever the
venturesome small ranchers had nested their cabins in a sheltered spot
where there was water fit to drink and where a little wild hay could
be cut and stacked to feed a saddle horse, a team--perhaps a milk cow
or two. In the last year or two, a dozen or so had moved in within
riding distance of the Flying U. And these must be warned of the
monstrous outrage being plotted.

Some had wives, two or three were feeding young mouths precariously,
while they got a foothold on the range. Several were bachelors living
like hermits in some secluded coulee. Most of them were honest
fellows; but if they now and then ate "slow elk" it was only when
necessity drove them to poach upon their neighbors, and Jim Whitmore
made no quarrel over what he could only suspect.

It was the women who furnished the surprises that night.

"Who'll do the milkin' and take care of the chickens, if I go
traipsin' off over to the Flyin' U? My land, it ain't like an Injun
massacree, is it?"

"No, ma'am, I guess it ain't that bad. But Jim Whitmore kinda thought
you'd be scared to stay alone for a coupla days maybe--"

"Scared, my foot! If I was scared to stay alone, I wouldn't be here in
the first place. Don't I stay alone all durin' round-up time and when
my man is off puttin' up hay?"

"J.G. thought maybe it'd be safer at the Flyin' U till we get this
thing settled."

"Well, my conscience! Ain't you fellows goin' to keep that miserable
gang of cutthroats busy fightin'?"

"Yes, ma'am." (This was Weary.) "We sure hope to."

"Well, then, seems to me the safest place for me is right to home,
where I belong. They ain't goin' to have time to come larrupin' away
off over here. And if they do--well, get Big Butch in front of the old
shotgun and I couldn't tell him from a chicken hawk. You go on and
clean 'em up. You don't have to worry a mite about me."

At every cabin it was the same. Called from their beds and their
sleep, the nesters listened and turned to pick up rifles, buckle on
their cartridge belts, and their spurs. But the women's thoughts flew
to the cow, the chickens, the pigs. Perhaps an early calf in the
sod-roofed stable tipped the scale. They would not leave, but hurried
their men off into the night, fierce-eyed because of what threatened
their lives and their homes.

Goin' to be strung up for killin' Jim Whitmore, huh? Have the word go
out that the Bear Paw nesters were starting a range war against the
Flying U! Why, thunder! How would any of them ever get through the
winter, if the Flying U didn't give 'em work through the summer? What
the devil would they want to start fightin' against their own bread
and butter for? They saddled and rode, rifle across their thighs.
Cowboys, most of them; range-hardened men, every one.

Patsy's pet Plymouth Rock rooster, bestirring himself on his roost
promptly at two o'clock in the morning, stood up in the dark of the
henhouse, shook the fine ruff on his neck and sent his sonorous call
out into the night. "Oo-oo-_oo-o_-oo-_OOO-OOoo!_"

The first of the nesters were just riding down over the coulee rim on
the north. "Gettin' along toward mornin'," said one. "Roosters
crowin'--we made good time."

"Wonder if they figure on startin' the ball rollin' to-day?"

"Search me. The sooner the quicker, far as I'm concerned."

"Yeah. Same here. They got their gall, all right. But d' yuh know,
Jim, if nobody'd got wise to their play, they coulda made it stick,
all right."

"You're damn tootin' they could. Wonder how the Flyin' U got next to
it!"

"Search me. There wasn't no time to find out. They just rode up an'
give me the word and pulled out."

"Same here. They wanted me to hitch up and bring the old woman over
here to stay. But, hell, you couldn't git her off the ranch with
dynamite."

"They'll never git this far up, anyway. Not with old J.G. on his hind
legs, waitin' for 'em."

Below them the coulee lay steeped in silence threaded by the
bell-clear crowing of the old speckled rooster. Over their heads as
they rode, the Big Dipper stood tiptilted. Job's Coffin twinkled
diamond bright.

"Wonder how many Big Butch has got?"

"Shorty never said. Imported some from Hole-in-the-Wall, chances is.
That's where Butch come from, they tell me."

Down in the corral a horse whinnied. A door--J.G.'s-opened; light
streamed out.

"Damn fools, they'd oughta blow out the light before they open that
door."

From down the creek a man whistled a shrill, rather complicated run of
notes.

"That's Weary Davidson. I know that whistle," the one called Jim
remarked, as he touched a spur to his horse. "All serene so far, by
the looks. I guess the gang is still powwowin' down at Butch's."

"We'll give 'em something to powwow about!"

"You bet your sweet life!" And when Weary's call was repeated, he
answered it with a cowboy yell, the _Yip-yip-yoeee_ of the Flying U.
Up on the bench behind him faint echo sounded. Behind that still
another shrill yell. Like wolves when the hunting call goes ululating
out under the moon, from far and near wraithlike ribbons of sound came
drifting into the coulee. A yip-yip, the thud of galloping hoofs, the
far-off chuckle of the wagon returning.

It was a reckless thing to do. They had expected to ride in
stealthily. The man who cursed because J.G. stood in the doorway with
light behind him gave a throaty whoop as he charged down through the
willows and across an elbow of the creek. Reckless, and yet it was not
without some measure of assurance. That first whistle, coming from a
rider who had taken the trails nearest Big Butch's hide-out, had
released a tension. Without a word it had spread the news that the
trails to the south were yet clear. The rattling wagon confirmed it.
For this night, the northern range was safe.

In the cook house a big hanging lamp blossomed. Sparks from dry,
burning sage bark floated briefly above the roof. Riders converged
upon the saddle-horse corral, calling rough greetings as they rode up
and dismounted. Penny and Ted drove into the yard, jumped down over
the wheel and started to unhitch.

"Well, how yuh make it?"

"Fine and dandy. Never had a word uh trouble."

"Shep stand the trip all right?"

"Seemed to. Face looked all ganted up when we packed him into the
house, but he never made any holler or fuss."

Later, to J.G., Penny reported, "Nary a whimper of anything around the
Hobble-O. Empty as a line camp on Fourth of July. If anybody's
night-herdin' Shep's place, they sure as hell never let on they saw or
heard a thing."

"You tell Snuffle what I said?"

"We sure did. He said he'd keep the bunch busy shoein' horses and
gettin' things shaped up for spring round-up, till he heard from you.
He was certainly surprised about Blink Roberts, but he thinks the rest
is all right. Just the same, he ain't going to spill any news of
what's bein' cooked up. Snuffle thinks the safest bet is to watch 'em
close and tell 'em nothin'."

"Yeah, Snuffle Jones is a good man down there," J.G. assented. "Well,
roll in and git yourselves some sleep."

That was the order he gave to cowboys and nesters alike, as they
arrived. A shrewd man, Jim Whitmore. Because he could not tell what
another day might reveal, he caught at this respite and used it to
freshen his men and horses. Well he knew that eyes heavy with sleep
lose something of their keenness, and that tired hands are less
steady; nerves must be steel when these men faced Big Butch.

Stars paled and the sun rose and looked upon a sleeping ranch. But
hidden amongst the boulders, on the rim that walled the coulee, two
men kept watch against a surprise attack, even though it seemed from
Chip's terse report that Big Butch did not plan to strike so soon. One
never knew; and so it would not do to take a chance.

By sunrise every man north of the Hobble-O and south of the Bear Paws
had arrived; fourteen nesters and two grizzled trappers malodorously
proclaiming their calling and looking competent to whip a dozen of
anything from Big Butch's gang to grizzlies. Twenty-three noses around
the breakfast table wrinkled at the rancid smell of half-cured pelts
emanating from these two, though the owners of the noses were careful
to make no comment. Trappers are touchy fellows, and these two had
fought Indians in their day and were going to be extremely valuable.

"Well," J.G. observed, as he straddled a bench and sat down to his
breakfast, "I guess everybody's accounted for. Fill up--no tellin'
when we'll git another chance."

"Yuh going to start action right off?" some one down at the other end
of the table wanted to know.

Ears pricked up to hear the answer to that, but J.G. took his time,
spearing two pancakes onto his plate and helping himself to meat and
potatoes before he spoke.

"The boy that knows the lay of the land ain't woke up yet, and I want
he should get his rest. When he gits up and I've had another talk with
'im, I'll know better what the plans are. Just stick around and take
it easy--but be ready to jump off the bed-ground at a minute's notice.
Pass the molasses, somebody."




CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHIP RIDES AGAIN


With his pipe cooling in his palm, Jim Whitmore stared out through his
cabin doorway, where the sun shone in straight to prove the hour was
midday. "There's times," he said, "when bein' law-abidin' ties a man's
hands and gives crooks all the advantage."

"Meaning this is one of the times?" Sitting on a corner of J.G.'s
table, with his hat pushed back from his lean sensitive face, Chip
turned a somber questioning gaze upon his boss.

"It sure is. If we was their stripe, we could go after 'em right now,
on the strength of what you heard. But seein' we ain't none of us
outlaws, we can't just ride down there and string 'em up 'cause they
shot off their mouths about what they was aimin' to do. C'rell talk's
most generally wind. Ain't there some way of ketchin' 'em in some
skullduggery er other?"

"Well, you might wait till somebody bush-whacks you," Chip told him
dryly. "From the way Butch talked, I don't believe you'd have to wait
long."

Haze thickened between them, J.G. smoked so furiously, "Daw-gone it,
you come bustin' into camp with a story that'd stampede a graveyard--"

"Have you got any doubts of its being true?"

"Hell, who's talkin' about doubts? 'Course it's true! But that ain't
sayin' I know which way to turn. What we'd oughta do," he went on more
calmly, "is go down there and clean out the gang and do it quick. But
there's the daw-gone law. Fu'thermore, there's such a thing as
justice. Yuh can't go by talk an' guesswork. So fur, Big Butch ain't
never made a crooked move toward us, ner the Hobble-O either."

"No, he's merely been laying his plans to wipe out both outfits and
glom all this range for him and his outlaw friends. He wouldn't bother
with one killing, or even two. What he figures on is killing on a big
scale--and have it look as if he was pushed into it, trying to uphold
the law!" Bitter sarcasm was in Chip's look and tone. He finished with
a snort of disgust.

"Hear him say just where they aim to make a start?"

"No. There was something said about the Hobble-O, but nothing
definite. That's to be settled to-night, when all of them--those new
imported outlaws--get in."

"Any idee how many they figure on?"

"No, I haven't. I could find out, though, easy enough."

"Hunh?" J.G.'s head jerked around as though something had stung him.
"Find out how?"

Chip drew in his underlip, raked even teeth across it. His eyes had
suddenly sharpened to an intent frowning stare. "I could high-tail it
down there again and get in where I could see--and hear."

"You could git your fool brains blowed out," J.G. snorted. "If you're
that sick of livin', I can have somebuddy knock yuh in the head with
an ax."

"I wouldn't be taking any great chance. I know their secret trail in
from the big canyon, where their outlaw trail heads through to the
east. They won't be using that trail to-night--it was mostly for
getting over onto Flying U range, I think. After dark, I can get right
up to the cabin."

"You can stay outa there too!"

"It'd be pickings. The cabin sets back in a thicket of brush and
trees, and there's a little window set pretty high--about up to my
shoulder. Some ambitious yahoo threw a boot or fired a shot or some
darned thing--anyway, there's a hole about the size of a hen's egg in
the glass." His lips twitched into a half smile. "I sure would like to
pin my ears back outside that window when their big powwow comes off
to-night."

J.G. moved restlessly on the box that served him for a seat. "You'd
play hell, eavesdroppin' on that gang!"

"It's a cinch." Chip's tenseness eased a shade. With a purely
automatic impulse, his hand moved to the pocket where he kept the
makings. "I had that all figured out last night," he said, and blew a
gentle breath into his book of papers, singling out a leaf. "I can
hear all that's said in that cabin and I can count noses and bring you
the tally." He began tearing a neat, thin strip from the paper. "You
can--"

"I can hog-tie yuh till you come to your senses, daw-gone yuh!" But by
his tone and his look, J.G. betrayed how the idea tempted him.
"Anyway, it wouldn't work. Time you got back up here they--"

"Not here," Chip cut him short. "You could take this bunch to the
Hobble-O and wait there. That's the place to work from, anyway. You
must have come by a shortcut down over the rim the other night--why
not have some of the boys cut over that way again? They can find out
if anybody's cached up there, watching the coulee, and drag 'em down
off their perch."

"Yeah--and then what?" By his tone J.G. was merely holding back his
veto until the plan was all before him.

"Well, it's none of my business--you're running this--but if I was
doing it, I'd send a few men down there right now, J.G. Nobody's going
to get excited if they see a bunch of the boys ride in to the Hobble-O
this afternoon; not if there aren't too many and if they ride along
like nothing much is on their minds. You, for instance, and two or
three more."

"Me, hunh?"

"Yes, you. Nobody's going to take a potshot at you down there--not
when they're planning to lay the blame on these nesters up this way,
when you do meet up with the hot end of a bullet. That'll put you down
there where you can take charge of things and keep cases on what
Butch's gang is up to." He paused to lick his cigarette into shape.
"Then the rest could slip in there after dark." He set the cigarette
between his lips and hunted a match in his pocket. "All you'd need to
do then is lie low till I get the goods on the bunch and pass it on to
you."

"They'd pass on your soul to hell," J.G. made gloomy prediction.
"Chip, you know daw-gone well you wouldn't have a Chinaman's chance,
down in there. Sounds all right and you're just crazy enough to tackle
it if I'd let yuh--but I won't. It's too damn risky."

"Risky?" Chip gave a short laugh, as he fanned the match blaze out.
"Hell, I've been taking a heap bigger risk than that, every day since
I started digging into that beef rustling. It was a risk when I rode
into Butch's place and boned him about stealing beef, but I got away
with it all right."

"Butch was just stallin' you along. He wasn't ready to open up and
show his hand. It's different now."

"This is going to be a cinch, I tell you. Why, look! I spent a full
week down there. I know that layout as well as I do this coulee. I
know right where Butch will put a couple of men in the pass--I bet I
could show you the rocks they'll hide in while they're on guard. And
if he's got any suspicions of what the Hobble-O may do, he'll put a
guard farther down in the canyon. But--"

"It don't make a daw-gone bit of difference how many guards he puts in
the canyon--"

"Maybe not, only that canyon is supposed to be the only way into
Butch's place. That way I found is their secret trail--so damned
secret they always put boots on their horses when they go in or out
that way. Unless you knew, you never would find it. I did, because I
saw the kind of marks Mike made, and picked out others like them."

"They'll pick you out, if you don't keep clear."

"I beg to differ with you there," Chip replied, with that persistence
which made him what he was. "They don't use that trail very often, I
imagine. It seems to be a short cut out east and they duck through
that way to get onto your range for their rustlings. No reason why any
of them should come out that way to-day or to-night--it's the canyon
they'll be using and the trail over to the Lazy Ladder. They won't put
a guard out back, because they don't know anybody is wise to it. It
won't enter their heads that any one will come in that way."

J.G. shifted his position again. "Well, if you got the hang of readin'
their minds," he grumbled, "they's no use goin'. You can set here and
make a guess at what they're cookin' up."

Chip grinned in spite of himself. "I may seem to think I'm a hell of a
feller," he drawled, "but I'm willing to admit there's a limit to my
smartness."

"Y' don't say!"

Chip flushed darkly. "One thing I do know. I can get in there and
find out how many men they've got, and when they're going to open the
ball, and how. And I can get out again. Looks to me," he added
sharply, "as if that's pretty damned vital information. But, of
course, being only about half-witted, that's just my fool notion."

"Don't be a daw-gone chump," growled J.G. "You better take somebuddy
along with yuh, if you're hell-bent on goin'."

Having gained his point, Chip stood up. "I don't want any one. Two'll
make just twice as much stir outside as one. Moreover, I can hear as
much as two, and if I don't get back--"

"If you don't get back outa there," said J.G., also on his feet now,
"if they glom yuh, we won't know no more'n we do now what's goin' on."

"If I don't get back," Chip repeated steadily, "they'll know the
Flying U is wise to them, and you'll have to move quick. You'll need
every man you've got." He lifted his hat, resettled it on his head,
pulling it low on his forehead for hard riding. "I'll be back, though.
You can look for me at the Hobble-O sometime between midnight and
daylight. All depends on how long-winded they are down there."

"A gov'ment mule's got nothin' on you for stubbornness," J.G. observed
dissatisfiedly, but the look in his eyes belied the criticism.
"You're takin' the bit in your teeth--"

"Well, I've kept all four feet under me so far."

The older man walked to the door, looked out at the men roosting on
the corral fence just down the slope, turned and came to a stand
before Chip. He took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl as
if the ashes held the words he wanted.

"I'm a daw-gone fool," he said savagely. "I'd oughta let yuh go get
yourself in a jackpot and git out the best way you can. Or let you
take your medicine and scratch your name off'n the pay roll. But damn
it, Chip, I knowed your folks and I knowed you when you wasn't
knee-high to a grasshopper. You ain't got anybody but me to ride herd
on yuh and--daw-gone it--"

Chip did a most unusual thing, one he would have called silly at
another time less freighted with anxiety. He lifted a hand and laid it
across J.G.'s shoulder as though this was his father or his brother,
worried over the danger he wanted to face.

"I know," he said softly. "Same here, J.G. You've been more like a
daddy than a boss. I guess we both know about how we stack up to each
other." He paused, drawing in his breath with a faint sigh.

"You're like my own kid--if I'd ever had one," J.G. muttered
fretfully.

"And I've got to go and get the facts down there, because--it's _you_
they're planning to wipe out. You and your outfit." His hand slid away
from the other as he moved toward the door. "It'll save argument with
some of the boys if you call them all up here for a talk," he said in
his ordinary, matter-of-fact tone. "Just as well if I don't have the
whole bunch next to what I'm going to do."

J.G. looked at him, gave a grudging nod. Chip was ten feet from the
door when the final word came. "If you ain't showed up at the Hobble-O
by the first crack uh dawn, we'll be down there after yuh. And God
help 'em, if we do that!" he added half to himself.

Over his shoulder Chip sent him a quick boyish smile. "I'll be
drifting in sometime after midnight--and if I don't have the deadwood
on that bunch, it'll be because their mouths are riveted shut and they
can't talk. You can bank on that, old-timer."

After a full twelve hours of sleep, he walked with the stilted stride
of high-heeled riding boots, his shoulders back and the air of
assurance conjured by his words. At the bunk-house door he paused to
shout down to the corral:

"Hey, you fellows! Get a move on, down there! J.G. wants to see you."

"All of us?" Shorty called back, as he and some others slid down off
the fence, more getting up from the ground and brushing down their
pants with the flat of their palms.

"Yeah, the whole bunch," Chip yelled, and went into the cabin to wait,
while all the footsteps went trooping past. When the last soft
thudding sound receded up the path, he came out again, his rifle lying
in the crook of his arm.




CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

POLLY PLAYS LADY


The two women of the Hobble-O were busy in the kitchen when Jim
Whitmore knocked at the door. Or, to be exact, Polly was busy making
dried-apple pies, and her mother was hushing her fretful yearling on
her shoulder, in the hope of persuading him to sit on the floor with a
tin pan and big iron spoon and bang it happily, so that she might
"look over" a mess of beans and get them to parboiling. The other
youngsters had long since been taught to keep out from underfoot and
were playing upstairs.

With her free hand, Mrs. Taylor pulled open the door and smiled
welcome. "Well, come right in! Shep's been askin' for you and worryin'
because you didn't show up this mornin' bright and early.
Seems--uh--how-de-do?" she finished with vague politeness, seeing that
the big, lumbering fellow with the Dutch face and a sagging paunch was
coming in behind Whitmore.

"Mis' Taylor, I brought my round-up cook along to take a hold here and
give you women a breathin' spell," J.G. answered her look of inquiry.
"Patsy by name--and a cookin' fool. The rest of the boys and about a
dozen more'll be along perty soon, and there's a pack-load er two of
grub on the way. We're makin' this our headquarters for the time
bein'. You woman folks clear out now and roll down your sleeves.
Patsy'll handle the kitchen while the crowd's here."

"You pet my life," grinned Patsy. "Cooking for hungry punchers iss my
yob, alreatty. You go set down und rest yourself, Mis' Taylor. I cook
you goot grub, py colly."

"You bet your boots he will, Mom. I had some of his cooking and I
know," Polly declared, brushing flour from her rounded arms. "Well,
here's the piecrust and filling all ready for you, Patsy. Fly at it.
I'm going to play lady from now on."

Though she laughed when she said it, her eyes turned anxiously to the
window. "Did--did all the boys come down with you, Mr. Whitmore?" she
asked, in what she believed a casual tone. "I--suppose they'll all be
here for supper."

"Yeah, most of 'em, I guess. All but Chip. Well, maybe I better not
bother Shep right now, Mis' Taylor--not if he's asleep or anything--"

"Land, he ain't slept a wink and he won't, till he's had a chance to
talk things over with you. The man's about distracted, bein' laid up
at a time like this. Come on in and see him. It'll do him a sight more
good than layin' there frettin' and worryin'."

But Polly forestalled her. "You go take the baby and lie down, Ma, and
maybe he'll go to sleep. I'll take Mr. Whitmore in to see Dad." And
though her mother refused the luxury of lying down in the daytime, she
did yield to the extent of resting in the big old-fashioned rocker,
holding the baby on her lap and hushing his fretful whimpering.

So Polly had her chance to listen while the two men talked. It was not
until J.G. had finished, however, that she had anything to say.

"I believe I know where that secret trail leaves Goodwater Canyon, Mr.
Whitmore. I should think you'd want to have some of your men there,
ready to start action the minute Butch makes a move. He must have a
lot more men than we have, and if he once gets out of Fishback on the
warpath--"

"Well, Chip's goin' to find out how many men he's got and what-all he
figures on doin'," J.G. patiently explained. "There ain't been
anything but talk, so fur. We've got to have something we can get our
teeth in. No use goin' off half-cocked and mebby findin' ourselves
outside the law."

"No, we can't break the law just because they do," Shep agreed.
"Whitmore's right. We're forewarned and that's somethin'."

"And in the meantime, if Chip gets caught--and you don't find out any
more--I suppose you'll still go on waiting!" Polly's breath was
suddenly uneven, her eyes suspiciously inclined to blink.

Jim Whitmore's hands, resting on his spread knees, closed slowly into
fists. "If Chip ain't showed up here by three in the morning, we'll be
down there after him," he said grimly.

"A lot of good that'll do him!"

"Well, he claimed there ain't any risk at all, skurcely. He said he'd
wait till about dark and then git in back of the house and listen by a
window that's got a hole in the glass. He said there wasn't one chance
in a hundred anybody would spot him, and if they did, he'd git away in
the brush, back out the way he got in. I guess he's safe enough. It'll
give us a line on that bunch, so if they do aim to start anything, we
can beat 'em to it. Chip ain't nobody's fool. He'll make out all
right." He was talking to reassure himself, for he added, "Chip'll git
in there and git out again if anybody can do it. He's like his dad was
at his age. There ain't much gits past him."

"Well, of course, they'll only be about forty or fifty against one,
if they do nab him. He won't mind a little thing like that." Polly's
chin went up in the gesture Chip knew so well. "Still--he isn't
invulnerable, you know."

"No, and he ain't goin' to be!" Shep fretfully declared from his
pillow. "I'd back that boy anywhere. Quit your fussin', Polly, and go
tell your ma I want her."

"Well, all right," Polly yielded with surprising docility and departed
on her errand.

Her mother was just laying the baby down asleep, s-sh-ing and patting
his limp little body as she withdrew her hand carefully from under
him. Polly waited until the old brown shawl had been drawn up over
him, then plucked her mother's sleeve and led her across the room.

"I'm going to take a ride," she announced, when she had delivered the
message. "For goodness' sake don't tell Pa, or he'll have a fit. It's
safe enough, with all these men around and more coming. I've just
simply got to get outside. And don't go worrying--"

"Where you headed for now?" Ma Taylor's voice, though discreetly
lowered, carried strong disapproval. "I can't have you stramming
around the country and maybe getting yourself shot--"

"Oh, for pity's sake, Ma! There's more danger right here at home, far
as that goes, and it certainly is safe enough here. I'm just going to
meet Chip, but I may be gone quite a while, persuading him to have
some sense and come on in and behave himself."

"Ain't he with the rest of the boys?"

"No, he's--flocking off by himself, as usual. I--we had a fight and
he's just stubborn. I'm going to try and talk some sense into him,
that's all."

"Well," sighed her mother, "Chip's a peculiar boy; a very peculiar
boy. You shouldn't talk to him the way you do, Polly. You know he's
like a high-spirited horse--he won't stand for being beat over the
head. He's proud--"

"Beat over the head!" sniffed Polly. "That's something I never tried
yet. It might work. Anyway, don't tell folks where I've gone, will
you, Mommy? Just say I'm upstairs with the toothache or something. If
the boys ever got hold of the fact I've gone after Chip--Well, you
know."

"I should think you would be ashamed of it," her mother observed
tartly. "If you treated him like a human being, you wouldn't have to.
You better eat humble pie for once in your life, honey, and get that
boy back here where he belongs. And don't forget your rifle, and don't
wait to ask questions if you see any strangers prowlin' around. All
the law-abidin' men in the country are either here on the ranch or
they're comin'. Them that ain't is in cahoots with Milt and Big Butch.
So act according."

"I will, Mother. You're sure a brick, do you know that?" And Polly
flew to change her clothes, while her deluded parent went
unsuspectingly to assemble doughnuts and meaty sandwiches in a
generous package, on the theory that Polly might find the way to
soften Chip's pride by tempting his stomach.

Indeed, Ma Taylor admitted it, when she intercepted Polly on the way
out. "You take this. You can ketch more flies with sugar than you can
with vinegar, and the poor boy's most likely half starved for good
victuals and wouldn't own it."

"I'm not out to catch flies or anything else, Ma. I'll tell him you
sent it. Don't say anything now, will you?"

"I ain't likely to. If I didn't know you're as capable with a gun as
your father, and have got about as much sense, I wouldn't let you stir
a step away from the place. But I do think Chip oughta be persuaded to
come in with the rest of the boys and not hang off by himself like
this. Well--you git back as quick as you can, Polly."

"I will, Ma."

With her rifle under her arm and her sour-dough coat buttoned under
her chin, she would have passed as one of the boys, had any of the
strangers seen her go. But the boys, Harvey and Ernest, were busily
trailing beef rustlers in a thicket across the coulee and arguing
hotly over clues, as their distant voices testified. The men were
keeping inside to-day and a hard-fought game of penny ante was going
on in the bunk house. No one noticed Polly as she walked past the
window, on her way to the stable.

Riding out of the coulee past the guard stationed behind a rocky
hummock gave her a few uneasy moments, but she was careful not to
hurry too much and she whistled as she rode and looked like a boy on
some simple errand, so the guard merely stared and let her go. Once
away from the coulee, she turned into the hills and was lost to sight.

And this was the way in which Polly played lady that afternoon: With
her rifle across the saddle in front of her and her eyes watching
everything--but mostly the keen wise ears of her brown horse
Pathfinder--she headed for the canyon she called Goodwater, taking
every shortcut trail she knew--and you may believe that Polly knew
them all. And so, riding fast as the roughness of the country would
permit, she reached the canyon and followed it to the sandy wash where
a single line of vague prints, like horse tracks weeks old, pointed
the way for her.

Those tracks were fresher than they looked, as Polly well knew by
certain other signs and by her own shrewd reasoning. Chip had ridden
that trail not twenty minutes before, though she did not know this,
but could only guess that he had already come this way. He had started
early in the afternoon, J.G. had said; and while he would have ridden
cautiously, keeping off the sky line of ridges and following the
devious course of certain lateral canyons and gulches little
frequented and making time-eating detours, by now he must have reached
this point.

And what if outlaws out to the eastward, those accomplices who had
received and marketed the beef for Milt, had been bidden to this
devil's assembly to-night? The blood drained from Polly's cheeks when
she thought of Chip running into them in some narrow trap of a gulch.
But then she thought they would probably ride first to the Lazy Ladder
and come over with Milt, and her breath eased a little. Perhaps, after
all, he would make it safely through.

Of herself, her own danger, she scarcely thought at all. Or if she
did, it was impersonally, wishing she had had the time to fix boots
for Pathfinder so his hoofprints in the wash would not so blatantly
advertise the passing of a stranger. And she told herself that even
if she met some one, she would not be shot on sight. She'd just make
the time-worn excuse that she was hunting stray horses--something like
that. Be wide-eyed and innocent, suspecting nothing. No one would hurt
her--she could shoot as straight as any of them, if it came to that.
But Chip--they were out to get him; kill him on sight. It was a crazy
thing to do, riding right in to listen under Butch's window. Crazier
even than when he had gone to Butch before and accused him of
butchering other people's cattle. Then he had a chance. Now he knew
he'd be killed if they caught him.

It would serve him right, she told herself fiercely. She wasn't
thinking of him, it was her father and mother and the kids she was
worried about. And all the decent people north of the river. Why,
those nesters had families, some of them. Let Butch and Milt have
their way, and a dozen homes would be ravaged, women and children left
to starve, probably, because their menfolks were gone.

Of course it wasn't Chip! It was just that he would probably be
killed, and some one had to know what was going on down here. That was
all in the world that had brought her. Only for that, she would have
stayed at home.

This being the case, she rode warily, careful to take no wrong
turning, following those blurred marks where they showed. And the soft
purple shadows flowed down the eastern slopes into the deep gorges
where she must ride, and her heart and her throat felt as if they were
caught in a vise. But she kept on going, and so long as she could see
Pathfinder's ears, she knew that she would have warning of danger. And
she strained her ears for the sound of gunshots and counted each
minute of that eerie silence as something precious, since it spelled
safety for that time at least.




CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AT BUTCH'S WINDOW


Already darkness was creeping in upon Chip, so that only his memory of
that obscure and crooked trail held him from going astray and losing
himself in those labyrinthine gorges; though Mike too remembered and
took the right turns unerringly. In the last narrow gulch Chip
dismounted, tied the horse behind a clump of bushes and went on afoot,
walking carefully, his spurs hung over the saddle horn, lest the
chains betray him with their clinking against rocks.

His rifle, too, was in its scabbard on the saddle. He did not need it
now--indeed, it would only be a handicap. If it came to fighting, he'd
want his hands free, and he had his dad's old forty-five with its
steer-head butt. If that wouldn't pull him out of this, nothing would,
he thought, as he slipped along, his left hand touching the rock wall,
his right ungloved and swinging free.

To-night he did not climb the side wall, but kept straight on; though
not straight, either, since there were three distinct turns, like
crooked elbows, before he saw the blotchy shadows of trees just
ahead. Here he waited, listening and straining eyes to see. The brush
hid everything from view, however, even in daylight, and there were no
tangible sounds save the wind rustling bare branches in the thicket.
There was nothing to be gained by waiting there and he moved on into
the blackness of the grove.

It was well that he did. He was no more than a few rods from the
narrow entrance when from behind him he heard voices muttering
indistinctly, Milt Cummings' pleasing tones rising distinct above the
others. While he shrank down against a thick young pine, they rode by
so close he could have whispered and made them hear. So close that
horses shied away from him and were cursed for their skittishness.

"Bet we're late," said one; and Milt's voice answered him arrogantly:

"No, we ain't late. Time to start is when we get there, and don't you
forgit it. They can't open the ball without us."

Another voice spoke and some one else said, "Cut it out. We're there."

Then, out beyond the little grove, Big Butch called out, "That you,
Milt?"

"Sure it's me," Milt called back. "Me and twelve more--good men and
true."

"Well, put up your horses and git in here. The sooner we git started,
the quicker."

When they were gone, Chip lifted himself carefully away from the
little pine and felt his way again toward the cabin, taking slow
steps, stopping each time to listen. Once he was almost certain that
he heard some one behind him, and he froze to attention, face turned
toward the cleft. He did not hear the sound again, though he waited
some minutes, his gun in his hand.

He was just relaxing, convinced that his imagination had made
footsteps out of the whisper and rasp of the wind in the grove, when a
shadow eased away from blacker shade and drifted silently toward him.
On the nape of Chip's neck the skin tightened. His gun arm came up and
back, ready for the smashing blow that would lay the fellow out and
still avoid rousing the place with a shot. His eyes narrowed, gleamed
ruthless in the dark.

Nearer that vague shape moved, and then--"Chip!" A breathless pause,
and "Chip! It's me--Polly!" All in a whisper no louder than the sough
of the slow wind through the thicket of young pines.

Chip's knees buckled. He found himself shaking, his strength gone. Had
he walked, he would have staggered, but he stood still, making a soft
hushing sound like the hiss of a snake. As she came up to him, he
reached out and pulled her close against his trembling body.

"Go back!" he breathed peremptorily as he bent. "For godsake, what are
you doing here? Who's with you?"

Polly leaned within the circle of his arm and lifted herself on her
toes to reach his ear. "I'm alone. I came because--you mustn't be here
by yourself. If anything happened--"

"You'll have to go back. You must be crazy." He holstered his gun,
furiously trying to think what to do now. "We're within fifty feet of
the cabin. Get out of here before somebody sees you. It wouldn't be so
funny this time if they caught you."

"They won't. I'm going to stay with you. I--I'm scared to go back now,
Chip. A whole bunch of men came along just as I had tied Pathfinder
alongside Mike. I was simply paralyzed! I had to scrooch in against
the wall in a kind of niche or they'd have seen me sure. What if I met
somebody on the way back out?"

"Serve you damn right." So far as it is possible to show anger and
disgust in a whisper, Chip crowded them in. "Stay here then. I've got
to get the low-down on this bunch. And, for the lordsake, keep your
nose out of this!"

To that Polly made no reply. He thought she was crying--which she was
not--and he released her, admonished her again to stand right there
and try and have some sense, and went on, making his way cautiously
toward the rough low muttering of many voices speaking at once, after
the manner of men waiting for a speaker to begin.

The window he had mentioned revealed itself as a square of dim yellow
in the surrounding darkness. Chip edged up to the cabin corner,
flattened himself against the rough log wall and inched along until
the window was just ahead. The hum of talk was louder now, brutish
laughter riding the uneven waves of sound. Evidently the conference
had not yet started, perhaps because all had not yet arrived. Two or
three were enjoying themselves hugely at the expense of one they
called Owley, whose horse had piled him that afternoon. There was
plenty of swearing and ribald witticisms--stock phrases among rangemen
which Chip was thankful Polly was not there to hear.

And then he discovered her close behind him and dared not tell her
what he thought of her. She reached out and twitched his coat until he
bent his head to hear what she had to say.

"Have they started?" she breathed close to his face, and Chip was
forced to whisper "No!", with his lips almost touching her cheek. And
he added, "Go back!"

"No!" whispered Polly, and Chip could have shaken her.

No use now to argue the point, though. She was there and he couldn't
do anything about it. Whispering outside Big Butch's window was not
exactly a safe thing to do, once that bunch in there stopped laughing
at Owley and quieted down. Lucky for them, there was a wind rustling
the branches; that made it easier to get away with this. But if that
darned little Polly didn't keep still . . .

Polly did, though. And Chip's thoughts were diverted by a hail down
toward the corral. Instantly the talk and laughter in the cabin
ceased. He risked a glance inside, guessing that all eyes would be
turned toward the door which stood in the other wall--the one facing
south. This window looked east, away from the corral which was to the
west.

"It's the Cow Island boys," a man leaned in the doorway to announce,
and there was a general stir, a shuffling of boots on the plank floor.

Chip had never seen a room so full of men. They were standing--there
was no room to sit down. The cabin was built to accommodate ten or a
dozen men at a pinch. There must be at least three times that many
and more were coming. He heard them walking up the path, their
footsteps plainly audible on the freezing ground. There were brief
greetings as the crowd shifted to let them in.

"All set?" Big Butch's voice was lifted, dominating the room.

"All set," several answered here and there about the room.

"Well, you know what we're here for, I guess," Butch began. "We've
thrashed it out pretty thorough in the last few months. We need more
territory and we're out to get it in the only way it can be got. This
is a great country--a damn sight too good to let a bunch of mossback
farmers and a couple of cowmen glom it all. This is horse country--"

"You said it," some one filled the pause he made, and there were
muttered affirmations throughout the room.

"Well, no use goin' into all that, I guess. You boys was got together
here to git your last instructions, before you kinda scatter out and
git to work. But things has changed some. There ain't goin' to be no
scatterin', boys. We got to git action and git it quick."

"That's the stuff, Butch!" a loud voice unctuously approved. "Now
you're talkin'."

"Why the sudden change uh heart, Butch?" Milt Cummings demanded in his
most sarcastic tone. "Way you bawled me out for tryin' to speed things
up a little--hell, I thought you was goin' to wait and let Shep Taylor
and Jim Whitmore die of old age!"

"You thought nothin' of the kind, Milt. You took the bit in your teeth
the other night and damn near spilled the hull works and I called yuh
on it. This thing has got to be handled right or we're goin' to be in
the soup. And at the same time, some things have come up to-day that I
don't like the looks of none too well. Looks like our hand is liable
to be forced."

"Meanin' what?" From the sounds, Chip guessed that Milt was pushing in
closer to Butch. "Who's forcin' our hand, Butch?"

"Well, Blink Roberts never showed up to-day, like he was s'posed to,
for one thing. Him and Shep Taylor and the Bennett kid, they left the
ranch 'long about dusk yesterday, and nothin's been seen of 'em since.
And then to-day, the high mucky-muck of the Flyin' U rides over to the
Hobble-O--him and three-four fellers Sam didn't seem able to place.
And they ain't left yet; or they hadn't, a couple of hours ago. The
girl rode off alone, though--back in the hills somewheres. Too much
ridin' back and forth to suit me."

"Jest millin' around, chewin' the rag, most likely," a new voice
commented. "Prob'ly don't mean nothin' much."

"Mebby not. Then agin it might mean a damn sight too much. Git Jim
Whitmore and old Shep Taylor together, and I wouldn't put nothin' past
'em. They ain't got no time for me, never had. It's only a matter of
just so long till they try an' frame something on me and my outfit.
Prob'ly cookin' up somethin' right now."

There were mutterings and a restless stirring within the room. Strange
voices spoke stranger sentiments. Standing outside that window,
Chip--Polly too, since she could not help hearing--listened to an
amazing discussion of ethics. They heard that the Hobble-O, the Flying
U and all the nesters in the country were range hogs, grabbing right
and left and always looking for a chance to give these men a raw deal.

The country had to be cleaned up, no doubt about that; and the sooner
it was done, the quicker Butch and his friends would prosper. Why,
look how they had crowded Butch down into these canyons! Could he
range a decent bunch of horses? He could not. A hundred head was his
limit, just about. Why, he could hardly hold a horse long enough for
the brand to heal, much less hair over. Had to monkey around so much
fixing brands there wasn't a dollar a head profit any more, hardly.

It was all because of their neighbors. They made that very plain to
themselves and to one another; also that they had no recourse save to
protect their own interests. Hearing them talk, a stranger would have
thought that these were the law-abiding men, banding together to rid
the country of a bunch of dangerous outlaws.

Then Butch once more took the floor. Apparently he had let them talk
so that he could gauge anew their temper. His plans were settled long
ago in his own mind and he was ready now to give them out.

"We're ready to start and there ain't any use waitin'," he declared,
lifting his voice so that it carried to the men grouped outside the
door. "We hit for the Hobble-O first, glom their guard--my boys knows
where he hangs out at the mouth of the coulee--and go in and round up
what men's there. Blink's job was to jim all the guns he could git his
hands on, workin' at night. If he's done his work, there ain't goin'
to be much trouble.

"Work quiet as you can. We don't want to croak any women if we can
help it--"

"We'll take care uh the women!" some one by the door shouted coarsely
and laughed afterwards.

"If we work it right, the women won't know what's takin' place," Butch
ignored the interruption. "We don't want to git in bad, and botherin'
women folks sure raises hell all around. We take the Hobble-O
delegation right along with us--"

"Alive?"

"Well," Butch said dryly, "Live men rides better than dead ones and
there won't be no saddles to clean. Sure, alive, if we c'n handle 'em.
We drift on over to the Flyin' U and ketch 'em bedded down. Make a
clean-up there, d'yuh see? And we leave them Hobble-O fellers layin'
around artistic, right where they fell--to show who it was jumped the
Flyin' U and what happened to 'em. Then we go round up the nesters, as
many as we can git our hands on, and pack 'em back to the Flyin' U for
evidence they was in on it too."

"That's quite a contract for one night, Butch," Milt Cummings observed
dubiously.

Butch gave a short laugh. "It ain't much of a contract for these boys
here. Thirty miles of good road to the Flyin' U, and mebby another
twenty or twenty-five mile roundin' up the nesters. How about it,
boys?"

"Pickin's," a young-sounding voice piped up, "if we don't have to lay
in the bresh, swappin' lead with somebuddy for a hour er two on the
way."

"Nothin' like that at the Hobble-O," Butch declared. "It'll be a case
of ride in, glom every man in sight and ride out agin quiet. Might
have to drag a gun off'n somebuddy's head to git him quiet--nothin'
that had oughta take any time a-tall. Call old Shep down to the bunk
house--all straight an' simple. If Blink's back, he'll be a big help
gittin' old Shep outside. If he ain't, we'll work it some other way."

"What about the git-away?"

"Got somethin' a hell of a sight better'n a git-away. Here's Tom
Shaner, right here. Tom, you sift on back and tell Barr and the rest
we're settin' it ahead. It's to-night we're all in his place. Burch'll
vouch fer that, all right. And if you've got the captain of the
Vigilantes vouchin' for yuh," he laughed, "you don't need to worry
about no git-away! It's a dead immortal cinch."

"That's right too," the voice that had inquired assented in a relieved
tone. "You're there with the goods, Butch."

"Hell, I've been all winter figurin' how we could git this range
cleaned up," Butch modestly belittled his shrewdness. "Milt makin'
that bobble with his lynchin' party kinda knocked my plan in the head,
but I dunno as it makes much difference, in the long run. Long as we
git the job done, the quicker the sooner, I guess."

Chip had heard enough and more than enough. He turned and put out a
hand toward Polly, heard her gasp and stumble. A dead stick snapped
with a cracking sound.

"Get outa here--quick!" he hissed in her ear, and pushed her toward
the cabin corner, as a vague bulk showed ten feet away, coming from
the listening knot of men before the door.




CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

POLLY PUTS IT OVER


"Who's that?" The man hesitated, took a step forward and halted again,
as if he were half convinced it were none of his business. "What's the
matter?"

"Huh? Not a thing in the world." Chip's voice was rough and throaty as
he answered. With a purely instinctive movement, he reached for a
match, lighted it and cupped the blaze between his palms as he
pretended to light a cigarette, half turned away from the wind and the
stranger. While the glow did not reveal his face, it did convince the
fellow that Chip had nothing to hide. "Got a grand-stand seat here,"
he added, carelessly turning back to the window, as the match dropped
and he set his foot upon it.

With a careless hand he beckoned. "You can see and hear a damn sight
better than with that bunch milling around by the door," he muttered.
"Come and take a look."

Without hesitation, the man approached. One of the new men from
Wyoming, probably. Certainly he was a stranger to Chip. As he lifted a
hand and set it against the wall, leaning and peering in through the
round hole in the glass, the temptation to bring his gun barrel down
over the fellow's head was almost irresistible to Chip. His fingers
itched to lay the man cold where he stood.

But that would only invite trouble. Some one might hear the fall--they
would be almost certain to discover him later and know that an enemy
had been in camp.

Inside the cabin voices were growing louder. Butch and Milt Cummings
had locked horns in acrimonious argument over the feasibilities of
accomplishing so thorough a clean-up in one night. What if the
Hobble-O put up a fight? How were they going to make it appear to the
world afterwards that Shep Taylor had gone over to fight the Flying U?
What if they didn't locate all the nesters? There were a lot of
women--four or five, anyway--that would holler their heads off. Butch
was plumb loco if he thought he could go hog-wild like that and get
away with it.

This and more held the man to the window. And because there seemed
some doubt of the outcome, Chip stayed, looking over the shoulder of
the other. (A strange and touchy situation, and one that would have
amazed those inside had they been aware of it.)

Big Butch with his imported outlaws easily dominated the situation.
Crazy as the scheme looked, the crowd was plainly for it, and by its
very audacity it might succeed; or would if they could catch their
victims unprepared.

The moment Milt gave ground and Butch began issuing his orders,
appointing his leaders--so many men for the kidnaping, certain others
for the round-up of nesters, another group who would be responsible
for all temporary prisoners--Chip began to edge away. He was behind a
tree and out of sight when the man at the window missed him and turned
to see where he had gone. From the black shadows he watched the fellow
crane and look, and when he started toward the front of the cabin,
Chip moved on to the next tree and the next, wary as a wolf and nearly
as noiseless.

But when the sounds of departure indicated a general exodus from the
cabin, Chip ran as if they were all after him hot-foot. Within the
blackness of the gorge he went stumbling along, heedless of the noise
he made. Unless they entered the narrow twisting gorge they wouldn't
hear him, and if they were after him, the noise wouldn't matter;
they'd know he was ahead of them, anyway.

When he reached Mike, he paused a moment to listen. There was no
sound save the soft whooing of the wind overhead and the beat of his
own blood in his ears. With his knife he slashed the thongs that held
the cowhide on Mike's feet (no need of that precaution now), mounted
and started at a breakneck pace down the trail.

How long it would take that outlaw army to reach the Hobble-O he could
only guess, but his guessing increased his apprehension. Unless they
took longer than usual to get under way, they'd be at the Hobble-O in
a couple of hours. He'd have to beat their speed. Following these
damned gulches and canyons would lose time for him; he knew of no
short cuts to the big canyon. Impossible to make it in less than two
hours and yet it had to be done.

Oddly, he forgot just how much Polly had heard before he sent her
away. He was under the impression that she had stepped on that stick
when Butch was justifying himself and his ideas to his men, and that
she knew nothing of their plan to move in on the Hobble-O that night.
She had taken Pathfinder and gone home--or at least she had started.
But she wouldn't know how urgent it was and she would probably fool
along, waiting for him to overtake her.

Mike knew the trail. If he hadn't, he never could have taken the turns
the way he did, snaking around sharp corners of rock, tobogganing
down steep little slides where before he had picked his way with
cow-pony caution. In those gorges the night was pitch black, but Chip
scarcely gave it a thought. He was going to overtake Polly before Big
Butch's gang came up with her. On the last mile or two they would
travel the same road....

For the next half hour or more the way was rough. Mike smoothed it
with his unfaltering stride. He knew this country. He had a memory of
the stretches where a horse could easily break a leg if he were not
careful, and put them behind him as fast as he came up with them.
There were places too where his master often turned aside into some
box canyon or some brushy draw--places Mike remembered perfectly and
passed by to-night, as if he knew that something much more vital than
nosing into out-of-the-way places was required of him.

Where the way opened to the Devil's Dipper he slowed a little, not
quite certain whether they might be making for that little meadow. A
sharp dig of the spurs told him to keep going. He went. The Hobble-O
ranch then; it was the only other place where his master had gone in a
hurry lately, and Mike tucked his ears back flat against his head and
ran belly to the ground. Whatever was in the wind, he certainly meant
to do his part. He'd give all he had, any day, if this master of his
wanted and needed it.

Chip did. With the back of his mind he knew that he was getting it. He
had no quarrel with Mike, yet the pace seemed maddeningly slow. He
kept seeing Polly as she had looked, a vague little figure there in
the dusk among the trees. No business to be there--crazy thing for a
girl to do. Haze off down to an outlaw camp like Big Butch's, when she
knew he had a big gang there making war medicine--just to find out
what they were up to!

But he knew better than that, even while he thought it; he knew that
was not the reason she went. She went because she knew he had gone,
and she had the crazy idea that maybe she could help him somehow; the
same crazy idea that had put her down in Fishback canyon with her
rifle, ready to fight the whole outfit if she saw he was getting the
worst of it.

And now she'd hang back and wait for him to come along, and if he
didn't show up when she thought he should, it would be just like her
to turn around and come looking for him, even if she had to go in and
drag him out of Big Butch's cabin. He wouldn't put it past her. She
didn't have a lick of sense about dodging danger, that girl.

Mike slowed for a ridge he must climb over. Wet to the tip of his
ears, he still planted his feet with a sureness that carried him
steadily up to the top and down the steep slope beyond. His muscles
worked smoothly, his breathing was strong and not too fast. He was
what is called a stayer--he had need to be, to carry young Chip
Bennett along some of the trails he chose to ride.

As he came out into the narrow valley which formed the one connecting
link between the Hobble-O and that rough country where Big Butch had
his stronghold, and farther along opened into Lazy Ladder country,
Chip pulled Mike down to a walk. The horse needed the breathing spell,
but also the slower pace gave a chance to listen. Here, if anywhere
along the trail, he would get some evidence of whether he was too
late.

Dust hung in the air. He could smell it, or at least he imagined that
he could. Whether it was the dust of Polly's passing, or Butch's men,
or both, he of course could not tell. Even the wind might have swept
it up into the air. And then he resorted to an Indian trick. He
dismounted, knelt and laid an ear against the ground. Instantly he
knew that they were coming--or were they going? Unmistakably there was
the beat of galloping hoofs, like the distant throb of a small herd
running; or of cavalry. The direction, however, he could not
determine. They might have passed this point already or they might be
coming. He couldn't wait there to find out, that was certain. All he
could do was go on and trust to luck.

At least he knew now that Polly was somewhere ahead of him, and as he
tore along the trail, he tried to convince himself that Butch's gang
was behind him; that he rode between them and the girl. He'd come up
with her pretty quick now, he was sure of that. She hadn't hung back
so much waiting for him, he thought, with a perverse sense of
resentment. A lot she must have cared, after all, beating it like that
without waiting to see what kind of a jackpot she had got him into!
He'd have something to say on that subject when he caught up with her.
The way he'd haze her home wouldn't be slow--fooling along when that
devil of a Butch Lewis was on the warpath. . . .

He caught up with Polly sooner than he expected. Rather, he met her
coming headlong down the trail, lunging at him from the dark. Their
horses swung wide to avoid a collision, for they met at a bend in the
road. With one impulse they pulled up and reined around, meeting face
to face.

"Hey, where you think you're going now?" Chip cried sharply. "Don't
you know--"

"Oh, you got away!" gasped Polly. "I've been so worried--but I had to
go and warn J.G. and the boys. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? But
I sneaked away and came back as fast as I could, Chip. I was so
afraid--"

"You warned them? Did you hear what Butch framed up to do to-night? I
thought I chased you off before he spilled his plan."

"Of course I heard. I hope you don't flatter yourself I went to please
you? Somebody had to get to the ranch and tell the boys what was going
to come off to-night, didn't they? It certainly didn't look as if you
were going to leave in a hurry, so I hustled home and told them what
to expect."

"You sure must have flown."

"I'm riding a _horse_," Polly told him significantly. "Besides, I
happen to know all the short cuts. I didn't have to wander up and down
all the canyons that happened to hold an outlaw sign--I make time when
I want to."

"You sure had better show a sample of speed now, if it's so simple.
That bunch is coming somewhere behind us, and not so far behind
either, if you ask me. Clear out. Take your darned short cuts and go
home."

"There aren't any, from here on," Polly admitted. "Why don't you show
a little speed yourself, if they're so close? I don't notice you
tearing any bones out, hurrying."

In the starlight he looked at her loping along beside him, a gallant
little figure on a horse whose stiffened gait betrayed how tired he
was. Mike, too, had used his best effort and galloped heavily; a grunt
jarred from him with every leap he took.

Chip looked again at Polly. What shone in his eyes the darkness hid
well. His voice was as gruff as he could make it. "A man's supposed to
ride between a lady and harm. Kick that crowbait out of a walk and
make yourself scarce around here, or it'll take more than my natural
chivalry to keep lead from coming your way."

"Sorry, but my horse can't travel one bit faster than yours."

"He'd sure travel if I had the handling of him," Chip stated grimly.
"Don't be a darned chump--get going, why don't you?"

"Well, why don't you get going yourself? You're not bullet proof, you
know."

"Because Mike's given all he's got, that's why," Chip told her
bluntly. "He'll go till he drops, but there's no use crowding
him--he's doing his darndest right now."

"You just want to be ornery and hang back and pick a fight. You may
call that chivalry, but I've got another name for it."

Chip was riding half turned in the saddle, listening. "You hear that?
They'll be on top of us in a minute or two."

"Yes, I hear," said Polly in a squeezed, too quiet tone.

"Well, get a move on! Good Lord, don't you know what'll happen, if
they ride up on you?"

"On us, you mean. Yes--I know. They--they won't tackle two as quick as
one, and--"

"There's forty men coming, if there is one. Polly, go!"

"And one of the men is Milt Cummings, just aching to get a chance at
you. No, I won't go."

"Well, come on, then! Throw the spurs into that old pelter and come
on!"

The new burst of speed roweled from their horses lasted to the next
little hill. Both jolted to a walk halfway up; Mike because he could
gallop no farther just then, Pathfinder because Polly's hand was firm
on the reins. She hoped Chip had not noticed it and she stole a look
at him to make sure. Evidently he had not. He was twisted in the
saddle again, staring back down the road as he listened.

Behind them the drumming of many hoofs sounded closer, yet not with
any increase of tempo that would indicate pursuit. Big Butch had set
himself and his men a hard ride for that night, and although fresh
horses had been furnished for the work--good horses stolen from
ranchers off to the eastward of the Larb Hills--Butch was not setting
too fast a pace. Probably he was even holding them back a little,
wanting to give the Hobble-O time to settle down for the night.
Certainly they had no suspicion that Chip and Polly rode a scant
quarter of a mile ahead; the night was too dark and they themselves
were making too much noise for that. But at the steady lope they were
keeping, they must soon overtake the two. When that happened . . .

Each of them knew the answer very well. As they passed over the brow
of the hill and Mike lifted himself into a trot down the farther
slope, Chip turned his head and looked sharply at the girl.

"Mike's all in because I rode him down from the Flying U this
afternoon--and missed all the low places in the road, getting to
Butch's hangout. Then I certainly burnt up the trail getting over
here. And I didn't know any short cuts." He put some sarcasm into that
last statement.

"Well, I know it isn't his fault he has a hard master."

"But there's no excuse for that cayuse of yours," he went on sternly.
"Riding him down to Butch's and back shouldn't faze him. He's hard.
The way you put him over these hills, he's got the wind of a mountain
sheep. I think you're stalling. He isn't as played out as you're
trying to let on. So--get going!"

Before she realized his purpose, Chip snatched his quirt off the
saddle horn and gave the unsuspecting Pathfinder two vicious cuts
across the rump. "Now, damn it, _ride_!" he gritted, and watched the
horse go pounding off down the road, Mike valiantly trying to keep
up.




CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A CHINOOK STRIKES CHIP


A mile away yawned the mouth of Hobble-O Coulee, its bold rock rim
outlined against the stars. Half a mile farther, within those arms,
thirty rifles full fed with ammunition grimly waited to do battle.
With a fresh horse Chip would have cared nothing for those pounding
hoofbeats behind him. Even now, as Mike slowed and dropped to a walk,
he felt only a deep exultant satisfaction that he had sent Polly on to
safety. Back there, with her beside him, he had been close to panic.

He had little hope of making the Hobble-O himself. Short as the
distance was, he knew it was too long. There wasn't any more speed in
Mike. He had given every ounce and now he was ready to drop. He was
staggering as he walked, head drooping, all the fire, all the spirit,
gone out of him.

With his lips pressed into a straight line, Chip slid off, led the
horse down into a gravelly wash weed-grown along the edges, and pulled
the saddle off. A loose horse--no one would give it a second glance
as they passed by, even if it were seen. They weren't after horses
to-night, he thought bitterly.

With his rifle swinging at his side, he set off along the wash, Mike
too far gone even to lift his head and look. He had done what he hated
like poison in other men--ridden a willing horse almost to death. In a
good cause; in the best of causes. It could not lessen the hurt, for
all that. But if he hadn't done it, Polly would have ridden straight
into that gang. It took just that last effort of Mike's to put him
ahead of Big Butch and be the first to meet Polly. So it was worth it.
Even if Mike laid down there in his tracks and died, he had helped
save Polly Taylor.

Well, he had done his part, he guessed, though he would like to take a
crack at Big Butch. They weren't coming on so fast. He wasn't hearing
any hoofbeats at all now. Probably Butch had pulled up to give his
final orders, or maybe to argue something out with Milt. Or perhaps
they figured they were hitting the Hobble-O ahead of time and were
waiting awhile. He might make it in ahead of them, after all.

In the road he made better time, swinging along with his rifle over
his shoulder. Imperceptibly the black bulk of the coulee rim drew
closer. He had made half the distance when a rider bore swiftly down
upon him, coming from the Hobble-O. "_Darn_ that Polly!" gritted Chip.

But it was not Polly this time. It was Weary Davidson, wheeling his
horse in beside Chip.

"Pile on, feller--you sure picked yourself a poor night for a ramble!"
He pulled a foot from the stirrup and Chip swung himself up behind the
cantle.

"Polly get in all right?"

"Polly? Her? Say, wildcats is canary birds alongside that gal of yours
right now. Mamma! I thought J.G. was due to lose all his whiskers when
he put his foot down and wouldn't let nobody lend her a fresh horse
and come back herself after yuh. I dunno, on my soul, what you do to
'em, Chip--"

"Oh, shut up! Boys ready to give Butch a hot reception?"

"They sure are. Butch is going to find he's bit off more 'n he can
chaw. Got to hand it to yuh, boy--"

"You do your handing somewhere else. There's about forty men in
Butch's crowd. You fellows don't want to overlook that fact."

"Say, we ain't overlookin' a damn thing. How far back are they,
about?"

"Mile, maybe. They must have stopped, back there a ways, or they'd of
been on top of us before now. I thought I heard them coming again just
as you rode up."

"Well, let 'em come. You and Polly sure put a crimp in their
calculations for 'em. We'd all admire to see 'em show up--I tell yuh
those."

As they swung into the coulee, a voice challenged them from the
shadows. "Hold on there! Who are yuh?"

"Mamma! Is that all the long your memory is to-night, Pat Casey? You
know darned well who I am. And seeing as how my horse is packin'
double, you know Chip." Weary's tone was bantering.

"Shore, I know. Couldn't take a chance though, could I? I'm s'posed to
make damn shore who comes into this coulee. You heard--"

"Yeah, I heard. Well, the sheep's all in the c'rell now, Pat. Next is
wolves and they're runnin' in a pack to-night. Let 'em past and close
up the gap."

"Shore. How fur back?"

"It ain't how far back, it's how close up, you want to be thinkin'
about. Tip the boys off and keep both eyes peeled."

"I know all that." Pat snubbed him and silence closed in upon the
rocks where he was hiding.

The two rode on, splashed through the creek and loped on up to the
corral. Here no sound greeted them. The place seemed deserted. "But
you can't most always tell," chuckled Weary, when Chip spoke of the
quiet. "This same coulee's filled to the guards with dynamite and
don't you forget it!"

He turned his horse still saddled and bridled into the corral, touched
Chip on the shoulder. "We stick together from now on, feller. Down
here a ways. J.G. says to try and not hit any horses, if you can help
it. They ain't done anything, and anyway, they're prob'ly stole off
some poor devil of a rancher."

It was the huge boulder beside the trail that sheltered the two
finally--the one where Skelp Turner had waited to pounce on Chip.
Memory of that encounter brought something else to mind.

"Butch had lookouts up on the rim. What about them, Weary?"

"Them? Not a word of trouble outa either one. Some of us boys done an
Injun act and sneaked up on 'em. One got gay and tried to fight the
outfit, and kinda got the worst of it. That Sam feller, he managed to
annex a chunk of lead through his gizzard, and he's up in the house,
talkin' wild and scattering. Ma Taylor's fixed him up a damn sight
better than he deserves. The other one only got what was comin' to
him."

"Dead?"

"And then some."

Far down the coulee vague sounds betrayed the approach of riders; the
muffled tread of horses walking in sandy gravel, the creak of saddle
leather, the clink of bridle chains and spurs. Whispers of sound
scarcely to be distinguished from the rustle of weed and bush in the
wind.

"They're comin'," Weary murmured, as he shifted his position a little.
"When they git up here, we cut loose."

They waited, fingers crooked on triggers, rifles looking down the
road. "Think they're sneaking up on men asleep," Chip whispered. "We
can't let them get to the house, Weary. There's Polly--and the kids
and Shep in bed--"

"Sh-sh--"

A blurred mass of figures moved toward them, heads and shoulders
outlined against the stars.

"Get busy, you fellows!" hissed a voice above them in the rocks, and a
rifle flamed and crashed behind the two.

A dozen six-shooters answered, bullets flying wild, as the startled
horses lunged backward on those behind. The roar of outlaw guns was
met and matched as the hillside blossomed with momentary bursts of
orange flame. In the road, men ripped out blistering oaths of
astonishment and pain. Some went reeling from their saddles and were
kicked or trampled as the horses were jerked this way and that, their
riders wanting to get away from there and do it quickly.

"It's a trap!" yelled Big Butch. "Get back, boys! Damn it, get back
outa here!" And as his thoughts righted themselves, "Get the horses
back outa here and smoke the sons uh guns outa them rocks!"

"You're damned right it's a trap!" some one high above on the hillside
yelled exultantly. "You ain't the only ones smart enough to set
traps--" And the speaker's gun spoke a swift tattoo.

The raiders wheeled and fled down the coulee to safety, and threw
themselves off their horses in a hurry to get back into the fight.
While they milled about in the road, J.G.'s voice, trained to carry
across a herd, boomed down to them from the dark of a piled boulder
outcropping.

"Butch! Milt! We've got you going and coming! The coulee's blocked
agin yuh--take my advice and surrender!"

"Go to hell!" Butch yelled defiance. "You can't buffalo this
bunch--we've been dogged off the range long as we're goin' to be. Come
out into the open and fight, if yuh ain't too yella!"

"Surrender!" roared J.G. "I give yuh fair warnin'. . . ."

Butch cursed him savagely, speaking rapid words to his men in between.
A burst of gunfire from the bank of the creek where some had already
taken refuge, ducking down into the weeds and brush while Big Butch
made his war talk, answered the Flying U boss.

J.G.'s men, cached farther down near the coulee mouth, closed up on
the outlaws, keeping to the rocks and shooting down at the gun flashes
along the creek bank. Butch's men fired at the yellow spurts among the
rocks. The horses, wiser than their riders, stampeded across the creek
and followed the meadow fence pellmell up the coulee toward the
corrals and quiet.

Then the strategy of Jim Whitmore brought a new element into the
fight. Suddenly the two old haystacks just over the fence in the
meadow flamed up with a shower of sparks. The road was bathed in
orange glow. Against the brilliant light of the burning stacks the
outlaws lay plainly revealed to those above them.

"We got you, Butch! For the third and last time, surrender!" J.G.'s
stentorian voice floated down the hill.

And, "I'll see yuh in hell first!" Big Butch shouted and took careful
aim toward the voice. "Git 'em, boys! That fire shows them up same as
it does us!"

With a discordant chorus of yells, the outlaws left their flimsy
shelter--which now was no shelter at all--and charged the hill. Some
sprawled headlong. Some kept going and gained the shelter of the
scattered boulders just above the road. And the fire played no
favorites but starkly revealed the hiding places of thieves and honest
men alike. But at least it forced the battle to a definite conclusion,
which perhaps was what J.G. had in mind when he ordered those stacks
fired by men stationed behind them for that purpose.

Surrounded, their superior strength cut down with ruthless
determination by men fighting for their homes as well as their lives,
still the outlaws fought like cornered wolves. And they took their
toll and laid men groaning among the rocks, and some took lead to
themselves and fell silent. But more of the outlaws dropped their hot
rifles and crumpled down within their shelters.

Milt Cummings was one of these. When the battle was over, and the
chastened outlaws stood grotesquely invoking the quiet stars, the
Flying U boys came upon Milt lying on his back behind a rock, the
dulled glow of the burned-out stacks shining on his green-gray eyes.
Big Butch huddled over a bullet wound in his middle, sweating with the
pain of it and savage as a shot grizzly. Of the rest remaining alive,
some were sullen, others whined for leniency or made excuses, placing
the blame on Big Butch, who had led them into it, they said. In short,
the survivors behaved as their natures impelled them to do. They
expected a lynching party to follow the fight. It was what would have
happened had they been the victors.

"It's Fort Benton and a judge an' jury for you fellers," J.G. grimly
assured them. "We're law-abidin' men and we don't kill, except when
killin's forced upon us. Rustle ropes, boys, and tie 'em up so's
they'll stay tied. Come daylight, we'll haul 'em in and turn 'em over.
Dead or alive, the sheriff's goin' to have a chance to look 'em over.
Daw-gone 'em, they've got records a mile long, an' I'll bet money on
it."

Heartsick at the senseless slaughter they had brought upon
themselves--and upon honest men--Chip turned away and started for the
house. Maybe they had it coming to them; of course they had. No need
to waste pity on men born to be hanged or shot for the evil they did.
But Ted Culver didn't have it coming, and he lay dead back there,
waiting for a wagon to come down and haul him up to the ranch. And
that old trapper with an outlaw bullet in his brain--he didn't have it
coming, nor the nester whose woman was a widow and didn't know it
yet. It was like a war. It _was_ war; the senseless, cruel war of
greed against honest labor. Necessary, maybe--but he hated it and
everything pertaining to it.

He'd pull out and go where there wasn't so much of this damned
fighting and killing. There must be some place . . .

A sound beside the big boulder halted him in his tracks. Another one
hurt--only it didn't sound just like that, either. It sounded . . .

"Polly! Good Lord, girl, what are you doing out here? Are you hurt? If
you're hurt--Say, if they've hurt you, I'll go back down there and--"
He had her in his arms, holding her close, saying crazy, tender things
in a broken voice, half whispering, his cold, hard cheek against her
soft one with the tears running down.

"Polly girl, don't cry! Don't you know I--it kills me to hear you cry
like that?"

Two men passed them at a trot and Chip was silent until their
footsteps receded up the road. His hand caressed her cheek, her hair,
stilling her sobs with the very tenderness of his touch. When they
were quite alone again, he leaned and set his lips against her mouth.
And he found it very sweet and comforting, sending warm waves of
strength and courage to his heart, his brain, making him feel as
though he could fight Big Butch and all his gang alone, if only it
would make little Polly Taylor smile again.

"It's--so horrible," she said brokenly, at last. "They said some of
the cowboys were k-killed--and I thought--maybe it was you!"

"Ted Culver," he told her gently. "Through the heart--he never knew
what hit him. And they paid--half of them are down and the rest are
prisoners. Milt Cummings got it--there sure has been a clean-up. It'll
be a different country after this. And it was you, Polly . . ."

Lovers have much to say that might sound silly if it were printed in
cold type. Those two ran true to form, talking of themselves and what
they really had meant when they quarreled, and what each thought the
other had meant, and why. When they walked on up to the house, Chip's
arm was around her--that much may go on record.

At the doorstep Polly laughed to herself--so soon does love forget its
tragedies!--and was not permitted to take one step farther until she
told what it was that seemed so funny. At first she wouldn't tell, but
Chip has the name of being a persistent young man. So finally she said
she was laughing at the sudden change in the weather. And she left
Chip to figure that out for himself.


THE END

B. M. Bower's

_THRILLING STORIES of the WESTERN PLAINS_

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.


Breath-taking stories of quick action and adventure on the open range.
B. M. Bower knows the West of yesterday and to-day--its blazing feuds
and ruthless laws of survival. These yarns are packed with the kind of
romance and action you've been looking for.


THE WHOOP-UP TRAIL

OPEN LAND

TRAILS MEET

ROCKING ARROW

LAUGHING WATER

FOOL'S GOAL

THE SWALLOWFORK BULLS

HAY-WIRE

CHIP OF THE FLYING-U

FLYING-U RANCH

FLYING-U'S LAST STAND

THE LONESOME TRAIL

THE RANGE DWELLERS


GROSSET & DUNLAP _Publishers_ NEW YORK

Zane Grey's Thrilling Novels

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list.

Zane Grey has lived the rugged life he writes about in his books. The
wild fierce blood of Indian chiefs flows in his veins. All his stories
are splendidly American, thrilling, romantic, packed with action and
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Code of the West

Robber's Roost

Drift Fence

Arizona Ames

Sunset Pass

The Shepherd of Guadaloupe

Fighting Caravans

Wild Horse Mesa

Nevada

Forlorn River

Under the Tonto Rim

The Vanishing American

Tappan's Burro

The Thundering Herd

Wanderer of the Wasteland

The Call of the Canyon

The Hash Knife Outfit

To the Last Man

The Mysterious Rider

The Man of the Forest

The U-P Trail

Wildfire

The Border Legion

The Rainbow Trail

The Heritage of the Desert

Riders of the Purple Sage

Light of Western Stars

The Lone Star Ranger

Desert Gold

Betty Zane


GROSSET & DUNLAP _Publishers_ NEW YORK


=Transcriber's Notes:=

Simple errors in punctuation have been corrected without comment.
Unusual spelling has been retained. Other changes made include:

1. page 51--printer's error "fusedly" changed to "confusedly"

2. page 67--typo "guardly" changed to "guardedly"

3. page 125--typo "Skep" changed to "Shep"

4. page 141--printer's error "unexpected" chnaged to "expected" to fit
with sense of book

5. page 242--printer's error "samee" changed to "same"




[End of _The Flying U Strikes_ by B. M. Bower]
