PAID OFF

I

“Bow-legged runt, eh? And my Skewball pony’s a crow-bait, eh? And I’m too —— small for a growed-up man tuh tackle, am I?”

Each grunting, panting question was punctuated by a stinging slap. Shorty Carroway’s breath came in gasps from between a pair of bruised, bleeding lips.

His weight resting on the heaving chest of the big man under him, knees jammed into the bulging muscles of that beaten man’s forearms, Shorty’s full-swung slaps jolted the swollen, battered face. Then the little cowpuncher’s hand gripped the shock of hair and raised the big head from the sawdust-covered floor.

“Got a plenty?”

Shorty shifted his weight to one side and a sharp-roweled, long-shanked spur raked the ribs beneath the big man’s heavy mackinaw. He grinned mirthlessly into the bloodshot eyes of the heavyweight champion of the Little Rockies.

“Yuh made a crack a few minutes ago that you was the toughest gent in Montana,” grunted Shorty. “Yuh took in too much range, yuh sway-backed, muscle-bound, stove-up ox. Well I’m from Arizona, sabe? And down there, we got cripples that kin lay aside their crutches and whup you. Yuh picked on me because I’m kinda small and a stranger, and yuh grabbed yorese’f a handful uh hornets, didn’t yuh? Got a plenty, —— yuh?”

Another slap sent the miner’s head back into the sawdust.

Tad Ladd, partner of the fighting cowpuncher, paced up and down before a crowd of miners and cowpunchers who crowded backward behind the battered pool table and abandoned faro layout.

“That’s my li’l’ ol’ runt of a pardner, yonder,” he taunted the surly crowd. “My danged li’l ol’ bench-legged pard. Watch him, hombres! Watch him clost while yuh see yore Alder Gulch champeen git his needin’s. Got ary more sledge-swingin’, snuff-eatin’, loud-mouthed fightin’ men that wants tuh git worked down to Shorty’s size and whupped by a gent that does it scientific? Got ary more nasty remarks tuh make about the ponies that me and my pardner rides? Got ary——”

“What the —— goes on in here?”

The voice came from the doorway in no uncertain tones. A gray mustached, white-haired man of stocky build stepped through the swinging doors. To the lapel of his open vest was pinned a sheriff’s badge. A blue-barreled .45 covered Tad.

Behind the sheriff stood a mottle-faced, white-aproned man in shirt sleeves. The man’s clothes were torn and dust-covered. His pudgy hands and mottled face were covered with small cuts.

Tad shoved his gun back into the waistband of his faded overalls. He grinned pleasantly at the sheriff, nodded, then his grin widened as he looked at the portly man in the discolored apron.

“So yo’re back, eh?” he said pleasantly. “Jest like a danged jack-in-the-box. I pitch yuh out the window and yuh come back through the door.”

Tad turned to Shorty, who, heedless of the interruption, was lending an attentive ear to the pleadings of the whipped miner.

“Let up on the big rock-buster, Shorty,” he called. “John Law has done took chips in the game.”

Tad’s words had much the same effect as a bucket of ice water thrown on a couple of fighting dogs. Shorty got to his feet, felt of a discolored and partially closed eye, and reached for papers and tobacco. He grinned uneasily into the cold-blue eyes of the sheriff.

“Hand me my gun, Taddie,” he said, his breath coming in labored gasps. “We’d jest as well be moving along, I reckon.”

But the sheriff blocked the exit.

“I’m takin’ charge uh the shootin’ irons,” he said sternly. “Ante, big ’un. Butts first. Thanks.”

He shoved the tendered weapons into his waistband.

“Will you two come peaceable er do I put the ’cuffs on yuh?”

“Yuh mean we’re arrested?” gasped Shorty.

“Yuh don’t think fer a minute that you trouble hunters kin come into my town, bust out windows and raise —— in general, and not see the inside uh my jail, do yuh?”

Shorty turned a sorrowful gaze on his big partner.

“Kin yuh beat it, Tad? Kin yuh ever tie it? Looks like it’s ag’in the law tuh trim down oxes like that bohunk settin’ yonder, a-feelin’ his sore spots. Down home there’s a bounty on ’em.”

“But we’re a long ways from home, runt. And as the sayin’ goes, we has fell among strangers. Montana ain’t Arizona and our footin’ ain’t so —— solid as she might be.”

“But dang it all, Sheriff,” pleaded Shorty, “the low-down skunk was blackguardin’ my Skewball pony. The best hoss, barrin’ none, that ever packed a cow hand. Yuh seen him outside? Bald-faced black with stockin’ legs? The fastest cow pony north uh —— is Skewball, and I ain’t aimin’ tuh have no quartz-clawin’ pick-rassler hoo-rawin’ me regardin’ him! I’ll gouge his eyes outa him an’——”

Tad’s restraining hand kept Shorty from renewing the fight. The crowd surged forward angrily.

“Easy, runt,” cautioned Tad. “Yuh won yore fight. We’re plumb overmatched.”

“Why the —— don’t you take ’em to the hoosegow?” whined the white-aproned saloon man. “They’ll be gettin’ away if yuh ain’t careful.”

“I reckon not,” said the sheriff. “I got their guns.”

“Yo’re plumb welcome to the smoke-poles, Sheriff,” grinned Tad. “Neither uh the durned things is loaded. Like our pockets, our guns is empty, as the sayin’ goes. Likewise, our bellies. I hope yuh feeds yore pris’ners. We ain’t et since day afore yesterday.”

The sheriff gave the pair an odd look, then herded them outside. They almost collided with an extremely tall, black-clad man who stood on the sidewalk. The man had evidently been taking in the scene from outside. His height permitted him to see over the short, swinging doors into the saloon.

The long-tailed black coat, white shirt and black string tie gave the tall man the appearance of a minister. The man’s face, however, belied such a worthy calling. Lean, thin-lipped, unsmiling, it was a face without a single redeeming feature. His eyes were small, a pale gray in color, set close together on each side of a thin beak of a nose.

A wide-brimmed, weather-worn black Stetson covered the head that Tad felt sure must be bald. The man’s reddish eyebrows met in a scowl as he met the cowpuncher’s frankly curious gaze.

“I bet he’s a cross between a buzzard and a rawhide rope,” said Shorty as the sheriff shoved them along.

“One uh these here fire an’ brimstone sky pilots gone wrong, is my bet. Which of us wins, Sheriff?” added Tad.

“Neither.” The sheriff’s tone was sharp with annoyance. “You shore cooked yore goose with them bright remarks. Yuh’ll git the limit now when yore trial comes up. That was Luther Fox.”

“And who,” inquired the punchers in unison, “is Luther Fox?”

“Yuh mean tuh say yuh never heerd tell uh Fox?”

“We’re plumb strangers, mister. Let’s have it. Both barrels.”

“He couldn’t help hearin’ them remarks,” mumbled the sheriff, musing aloud. “Hmmm. ——’s tuh pay all around.”

“But you was goin’ to tell us about this Fox,” hinted Tad.

“Was I? I reckon not. I don’t talk to nobody about that gent.”

The sheriff’s tone was decisive.

Tad, glancing covertly at the old sheriff, caught a glimpse of tightly clamped jaws. Beneath shaggy white brows, the sheriff’s keen eyes smoldered with some inner fire. It was a dogged, sullen look, strangely out of keeping with the general make up of the grizzled law officer.

“Yuh don’t mean tuh say that ole scarecrow has yuh buffaloed?” put in Shorty, wincing as Tad’s spur raked his shin with meaning vigor.

The sheriff turned on Shorty, eyes ablaze with hot resentment.

“Who said I was scared? Whoever told yuh that, lied. Lied, hear me?”

The sheriff fairly trembled with fury. He seemed about to hit Shorty with the .45 in his hand.

Tad, poised easily on the balls of his feet, clenched his big fist and his practised eye picked the point where the well-placed blow would put the sheriff to sleep. There was a look of resignation in the big puncher’s eyes.

Then the sheriff, with an effort, regained control of himself and turned from Shorty. Tad gave a sigh of relief. Striking an officer, even in defense of his partner, was little to his liking.

The trio moved on in silence for some moments. Tad, meeting Shorty’s eyes, gave his little partner a ferocious look. Shorty squirmed uneasily.

“I’m askin’ yore pardon, Sheriff,” he said meekly. “I was jest tryin’ tuh be funny. It was a fool crack to make and I’m plumb sorry.”

His tone was sincere. The sheriff nodded his silent acceptance of the apology.

“I reckon it’s shore gally uh me tuh be askin’ ary favors, Sheriff,” Shorty put in as they halted before the padlocked door of the log jail, “but would yuh kinda look after our hosses while me and Tad is penned up?”

“Uh course,” agreed the sheriff. “Yore hosses will be took care of. Yuh won’t be needin’ ’em where yo’re goin’. Better sell ’em tuh git lawyer money.”

“Is it goin’ tuh be that bad?” asked Tad seriously.

“Wuss,” came the cryptic reply, and the two prisoners heard the click of the padlock as the sheriff locked them in.

In dejected silence, the two listened to the receding tinkle of the sheriff’s spurs.

“Well, my short-complected amigo, yuh shore done us proud this day,” Tad broke the silence. “You and that hair-trigger temper uh yourn kin shore git us into more trouble than ten judges and a herd uh law sharps kin git us outa. Yuh mighta put off the show till after we’d grazed some. I’m ga’ant as a dogie in the spring follerin’ a hard winter.”

“And if I hadn’t took it up when that box-ankled shovel swinger insulted us, we’d uh bin run outa town for a coupla uh sheepherders. You was doin’ a heap uh yellin’ and so on, fer a gent that hates fightin’. It was you that busted that purty, shiny window by th’owin’ that drink mixer through it. Yuh mighta slung him out the door, jest as easy, but no, yuh had tuh go bustin’ things. That glass’ll set us back the price of ten good drunks and a reasonable fine. Got ary terbaccer tuh go with this here brown paper, Ox?”

Tad handed over a thin sack with a pinch of tobacco in the bottom.

“Gimme butts on ’er, runt. It’s the tailin’s uh the last sack uh what was once a full caddy uh smokin. Fer which yo’re still owin’ me for yore half uh the price. Say, what ails that sheriff, I wonder? He like tuh busted a ham-string when yuh joshed him about that Fox feller. Shorty, there’s somethin’ danged queer about the whole deal. Raisin’ a li’l’ ol’ ruckus in yonder saloon ain’t no penitentiary offense. The way that ol’ sheriff took on, a man’d thought we’d killed a few folks. Is them bars yonder solid?”

“Solid as rocks, Tad. Even if they was loose, we bin on short grazin’ so long that we’re too weak to pry ’em loose. If the paint hoss hadn’t got drowned crossin’ the Missouri and our beds and grub got lost, we’d uh bin to the Wyomin’ line by now.”

“And if you and that overworked temper uh yourn hadn’t broke out and run hog wild yesterday, we’d uh got a square meal and a job with that outfit we struck at noon.”

“Work fer that spread after that black-muzzled wagon-boss asked me was I expectin’ boy’s wages and could I hold down a hoss wrangler’s job! I wisht yuh had let me finish workin’ that smart Aleck over, Ox. I was jest gettin’ my second wind when yuh drug me off him.”

“Say!”

“Huh?” Shorty, startled by the vehemence of his partner’s exclamation, turned from his inspection of the bars across the one window. “What bit yuh?”

“I was jest rememberin’ that black-whiskered gent’s talk. Yuh mind, Shorty? He says to us that Luther Fox don’t pay out good money to undersized gents that can’t do a man’s work.”

“Man’s work! I showed him what a man——”

“Dry up. Fergit it. Yuh don’t foller my meanin’. Luther Fox must own that cow outfit that Black Whiskers works for. Sabe?”

“Uh-huh. And supposin’ he does? What of it? Go on from there, big ’un, and let’s see if yore words makes sense.”

“Well, from where I was settin’, that round-up looked like a big spread. They was holdin’ a herd that a man couldn’t shoot across. Looked like three hundred head uh hosses in their remuda. If this Fox feller owns that outfit, he’s one danged big cowman, and son, we shore set into a hard game if we’ve hurt the ol’ rannyhan’s feelin’s. I don’t like the lay uh the land, Shorty; None whatsomever.

“If that ol’ wolf sets his mind to it, our hides’ll be hangin’ on the fence afore mornin’. Yeah. And if him and his black-muzzled wagon boss ever gits tuh makin’ medicine and the black gent ’lows we’re the same parties that rode into his camp and raised a ruckus, me and you is due tuh stretch some rope.”

“That big bohunk of a quartz wrangler’ll be rearin’ tuh work in the lead uh sech a necktie party, too,” was Shorty’s wry comment. “What’ll we do, Taddie? Shucks, I hates tuh stay bogged down here till they come tuh hang us. I don’t have no —— of a lot uh confidence in that ol’ sheriff feller, if it comes to a fight.”

“Yuh might uh done some heavy thinkin’ along them lines afore yuh got us into all this, yuh fire-swallerin’ li’l’ ol’ rooster. Now gimme butts on that smoke so’s I kin smudge some thoughts outa my brain.”

II

Shorty’s voice, loud and high pitched, filled the small cabin. For once, Tad found no fault with his partner’s singing. This, because the sound of the singer’s voice drowned out what noise Tad might be making as he whittled doggedly at the pine log wherein the iron bars of the window were embedded.

Shorty, eyes fixed on the heavy pine door, sang with the air of one who does his duty in the face of great obstacles. Without missing a note, he gathered in a handful of whittlings and shoved the shavings under his hat, which lay on the floor. Then his toe poked Tad’s shin with none too gentle contact and the whittling ceased. Shorty, resuming his seat on the edge of the bunk, sang on, head tilted upward, eyes half closed.

Thus the sheriff found them when he entered, bearing a heavily laden tray.

They looked innocent enough, these two. Shorty, reclining on the bunk, Tad gazing broodingly out between the rusty bars in an attitude of silent dejection.

“Ten o’clock breakfast, Taddie.” Shorty thus broke off his song. “Come and git it er I th’ow it away! Gosh a’mighty, Tad, it’s real grub! Steak and ’taters and pie! Sheriff, yo’re a plumb white man!”

The sheriff grinned and set the tray on the table. The grin gave the old officer an almost benign appearance.

“Have at it cowboys, afore she gits cold. It’s the best I could rustle at the Chink’s place. Yuh earned it, both uh yuh. My hat’s off tuh ary two gents that kin clean up Alder Gulch on empty bellies and with empty guns.”

“Yuh ain’t holdin’ no hard feelin’s?”

“Not me. Joe Kipp ain’t that kind. Personal, it done me good tuh see that big miner whupped. That —— bartender had it comin’ too.”

“Gosh!”

Tad swallowed a mouthful of food, washed it down with a swallow of coffee and eyed the sheriff in mild surprise.

“’Pears tuh me like you’d had a sudden change uh mind, Sheriff. Yuh acted plumb ringy when yuh nabbed us.”

“Folks was watchin’. The bartender had swore out a complaint and with Fox a-watchin’, I had tuh go through.”

“Yuh mean this Luther Fox gent is after yore taw? He’s rearin’ tuh jump yore frame?”

“Somethin’ like that. Him and me don’t waste no soft-spoke love words on one another.”

He paused, scowling at the floor as if worrying out some problem.

“There’s more than a few gents on this range that’ll tell yuh I’m scared uh Luther Fox and ‘Black Jack’,” he finished.

“Black Jack?”

“Fox’s wagon boss. Runs the LF spread.”

Tad and Shorty exchanged grins. “Black-whiskered gent? Eyes like a Injun?”

Kipp nodded.

“You boys know him?”

“We come by the LF round-up. Yeah, we know him tuh look at.”

“Ain’t yuh the boys from the south?” inquired Kipp. “I see yuh both ride double-rigged saddles and yore hosses pack strange brands.”

“We’re from Texas fust, Arizona after barb wire run us outa our home range. We come tuh Montana tuh close a deal that was hangin’ fire. Wound up our deal and was headin’ fer our home range when we loses our life’s gatherin’s in yore Missouri River. Pack hoss, bed, money, grub, the hull works goes. Shorty’s paint hoss which we’re packin’ makes a shore game fight, but ’twan’t no go. The undercurrent ketches him and he goes under and don’t come up no more.

“I’d uh gone the same way only fer Shorty. Yuh see, me’n my yaller hammer hoss bein’ brung up in a windmill country, we ain’t neither of us used tuh water in sech big doses. Mebbeso I got Yaller’s cinch too tight er he gits water in his ears er suthin’. Anyways, he goes belly-up in the middle uh the crick and fer a spell it looks like me’n him’s a-headin’ fast fer the Big Range.

“I’m a thinkin’ along them lines, as the feller says, when Shorty on his Skewball pony, bustin’ that water like a side gougin’ steamboat, jest nacherally ropes me, takes his winds and yanks me ashore. Yaller drifts to a sand bar and wades out while Shorty bails the mud and water outa me. Drunk er sober, my Shorty pard ain’t much tuh look at, but there’s times when he shows good p’ints.”

“Shucks, Sheriff, don’t pay no mind tuh Tad,” grinned the self-concious Shorty. “He shore likes the sound uh his own voice. If yuh was tuh th’ow him and mouth him, yuh’d find his front teeth plumb wore down. That comes from his havin’ his mouth open fer talkin’ so much. The wind, a-blowin’ to and fro across his teeth, consequential, has wore ’em down.”

The sheriff was beginning to like these two oddly mated partners thoroughly. He moved across the floor to a chair. As he did so, he accidentally moved Shorty’s hat, revealing the pile of whittlings. Shorty manfully stepped into the breach.

Before the sheriff noticed, the little puncher had grabbed the handful of shavings and shoved them into his mouth.

“Now swaller,” whispered Tad in an undertone, as he dropped his neckscarf on the sill to cover the freshly whittled notch at the base of the steel bar.

Shorty swallowed, choked, gasped and his tanned face grew purple.

Tad, moving swiftly, promptly up-ended Shorty, thumping him on the back with an unconcern that hinted of boredom. A wad of mashed potatoes, well wadded with shavings, spewed forth and Tad promptly kicked the sodden mass under the bunk.

“Will yuh hand me the water pitcher, Sheriff? Thanks. Now irrigate, runt.”

He held the pitcher to Shorty’s mouth and poured a generous potion down the little puncher’s throat. Then, with a paternal air, he sat Shorty on the edge of the bunk and loosened his collar.

“Ain’t I told yuh, time and again, not tuh swaller yore grub whole, little ’un? Dang me if I can see how yuh ever growed up without chokin’ tuh death.”

Tad turned to the sheriff with an apologetic grin.

“In spite uh all I tell him, that li’l’ varmint will wolf his grub. It ain’t the fust time he’s choked down on me thataway. Onct, at a ice-cream sociable down on the Gila, a brockle-faced school marm, a-ketch-in’ him off his guard with a face full uh cake, ast him was his hair nacherally curly afore it slipped and left him bald between the horns. I’m out in the kitchen when the play comes up and he like tuh perished complete afore I gits there. The fiddler, a-thinkin’ the li’l’ cuss had th’owed a fit, empties a pailful uh pink lemonade on him. I tips him upside down, knocks the hunk uh cake loose from where it’s lodged between his buck teeth and his briskit, and the show is over. We spends a good half-hour huntin’ the loose change which drops outa his pocket durin’ the proceedin’s. I bin thinkin’ serious uh knockin’ his teeth out so’s he’d have tuh graze on mush and sech light truck.”

“Aw, let a man be, Ox,” grinned Shorty, buttering his fourth biscuit. “If yuh gotta run off at the head, tell about the time that Hash-Knife hoss crow hopped with yuh and yore set uh store teeth swapped ends and like tuh bit yore tongue off. Only for the hoss a-pilin’ yuh into the sourdough pan, you’d uh gone through life without a tongue. Yuh mind, Taddie, how that kettle-paunched ol’ cook run yuh outa camp fer sp’ilin’ his batch uh bread dough? He’d uh whittled yuh down tuh his size and whupped yuh, too, only I tripped him up. There’s times when I wisht I’d let that ol’ grub sp’iler ketch yuh.”

A shadow passed the window. The grin on Kipp’s face vanished.

“Here comes Fox,” he whispered. “Play yore cards keerful, boys. Yuh whupped the best man he has in camp, Shorty. And he’s done heard how Tad stood off his gang uh tough men with a empty gun. Down in that black heart uh hisn, he respects nerve like yourn. He may put yuh some kind of a proposition. Better consider keerful afore yuh turn it down.

“He’s got yuh in a tight. He owns that saloon and the busted window. Fact is, he owns the camp. Reckon I’d better let him in now. He’s poundin’ out yonder fit tuh bust the door down.”

With a faint, uneasy smile, Kipp rose and unbolted the heavy door.

Luther Fox entered with one long stride. His gimlet eyes were fixed on the remains of the prisoner’s sumptuous dinner.

“Fancy victuals that you give your prisoners, Kipp,” he spoke in a rasping, flat voice. “County payin’ for such grub?” Kipp’s eyes took on a chilly look.

“I paid the chink outa my own pocket, Fox.”

Luther Fox’s thin lips twitched at the corners. It may have been meant for a smile. Devoid of mirth, it seemed to accentuate the cruelty that lurked behind the pale-gray eyes.

“I want that I should be left alone with these two men, Kipp. Clear out.”

It was the command of a man who was accustomed to being obeyed.

Tad, watching Kipp closely, saw the sheriff’s mouth tighten so as to leave the lips a bloodless, crooked line. For a long moment the officer and the cow man held each other’s gaze.

“Fox,” said Kipp, measuring his words with deliberate slowness, “I’m sheriff here. This jail is county property. I leave here when I get —— ready. If yo’re aimin’ tuh smell powder smoke, go fer yore gun.”

Fox’s upper lip lifted, revealing long, crooked, yellow teeth. They made the man hideous. His long fingers patted the butt of an ivory-handled .45 that swung in a tied holster, low down on his thigh.

“Whenever I pull my gun, Kipp, this county will be in line for a new sheriff. However, it’s bad luck to kill an officer of the law. Our quarrel will keep without spoilin’. I’ll word my wishes differently. I’d like a few minutes pow-wow with your prisoners, Sheriff Kipp. Will you be so kind as to grant so great a favor?”

His long frame bent at the waistline in a mocking bow. Rumor had it that Luther Fox, in his youth, had been a New England schoolmaster. Like rust corroding a steel blade, frontier contact had well nigh obliterated the polish that belonged to that former life. Occasionally it was visible, usually in the form of sarcasm.

Kipp, with a visible effort, fought down the hot rage that surged up inside him. He turned on his heel and walked to the door. Without a backward glance he closed the door behind him.

Inside the jail, Tad and Shorty looked up with curious gaze at Fox and waited for him to break the silence that followed Kipp’s departure. Fox’s lips were again twitching at the corners. Otherwise, his expression did not change.

“Well, what have you two got to say for yourselves?” he asked finally.

Long legs far apart, bony fingers twisting in a knot behind his back, he glanced coldly at the two punchers.

“It don’t look to me like it was our ante,” Tad grinned easily. “The sheriff tells us yo’re holdin’ the joker.”

“Exactly. The way the play stands, I can either make or break you two.”

He paused.

“Spread yore cards, mister.”

Tad forestalled the silence that Fox had anticipated, a silence during which he had expected to watch these two cow punchers squirm.

A frown of annoyance brought his reddish brows together. He had rather expected to find the prisoners afraid and eager to please him. Instead, both were grinning as if they enjoyed the situation.

“Very well,” he snapped. “I give you your choice. Either you go to the penitentiary or on the LF payroll.”

“Penitentiary?” said Tad slowly. “Since when has it got tuh be a penitentiary offense tuh mix in a two-bit saloon fight?”

“Assault with a deadly weapon means a stretch in the big house,” smiled Fox. “Crossing Luther Fox, you may find, is even a worse crime.”

“Yuh mean you’ll railroad us, eh?” said Tad evenly. He seemed to be musing aloud. “Yeah, I reckon yuh could. Me’n my li’l’ pard is strangers in a strange land and plumb broke. Yeah, reckon yuh could do it, mister. Now supposin’ we take yuh up on the other proposition? Jest what kind uh work do yuh aim that me and Shorty should do tuh earn our pay? I might as well tell yuh now, Fox, our guns ain’t fer hire, if that’s yore game.”

“The job I have in mind for you two is legitimate and within the law,” said Fox. “A rancher named Hank Basset owes me money. I hold his note for ten thousand dollars which falls due next week. It will be your job to ride to his ranch and collect that ten thousand dollars, in cash or steers. Since the man is broke, the payment will be made by turning over to me five hundred head of steers at twenty dollars per head.”

“Mighty cheap cattle,” grunted Shorty. Fox shrugged.

“Mebbeso. That’s beside the question. I am waiting for your answer and it ain’t healthy, as a rule, to keep Luther Fox waiting.”

Fox fished a long stogie from his pocket, repaired its broken wrapper with a cigaret paper and set fire to it. His little eyes surveyed them through the haze of blue smoke. Tad turned to Shorty.

“Supposin’ we leave it to the sheriff to decide fer us, pardner?”

“Suits me, Tad.”

Luther Fox’s eyes became pin-points of glittering gray through the smoke haze. His head thrust forward on a skinny neck, he peered at the two punchers. A sinister, hate-lined face, unchanging in expression. Behind his back, the long, bony fingers intertwined until the joints cracked.

“—— old buzzard,” was Shorty’s inward comment.

Without a word, Fox turned and strode to the door. He swung it open and shoved his head outside.

“Come in here, Kipp,” he snapped. “You’re wanted.”

Kipp, a stub of cigaret sticking from the corner of his mouth, rose from his squatting posture against the log wall of the jail.

“Fox wants me’n Shorty tuh collect a bad debt from a gent named Hank Basset,” said Tad, coming to the point. “We ’lowed we’d leave it up tuh you.”

Kipp nodded.

“Kinda figgered he might pick you boys fer the job. Take him up on it.”

“We’re obliged to yuh, Sheriff,” grinned Tad. “Mister Fox, yuh done hired two hands.”

Again the twitching at the corners of Luther Fox’s thin lips.

“Get your guns from Kipp and pull out. I heard your six-shooters were empty. You’ll find ammunition a-plenty in your saddle pockets. Likewise a Winchester apiece, in your saddle scabbards. Here’s an order on Basset for the steers.”

He held out a folded paper. Tad shoved it in his vest pocket. Fox turned to the sheriff.

“Kipp, these two men are now on my payroll. The charges against them are dropped. Give ’em their guns and let ’em go. They’re wasting LF time here and they have a long ride ahead. If you have any message for Hank Basset, carry it yourself, understand? My men are paid to carry out my orders, not to deliver your messages. I think, Kipp, that you savvy what I’m driving at, even if these men don’t.”

“I savvy, Fox,” returned the sheriff evenly, as he handed Tad and Shorty their guns. He ushered them outside.

“Boys,” he said, ignoring Fox, “I loaded both yore guns. Five shells in each six-gun, leavin’ a empty chamber under the hammers. When yuh ride away from Alder Gulch, jest remember this; them is good, honest ca’tridges, bought with clean, honest money. So-long and good luck.”

Kipp nodded a brief farewell and reentering the jail, swung the door closed behind him.

Tad and Shorty gave each other a puzzled look, then followed the scowling Fox toward the livery barn.

In the corral adjoining the barn were their private horses, saddled. Also six more horses and a pack mule, the latter bearing a bed covered by a new tarpaulin.

“That gives you three mounts apiece beside your privates,” Fox explained. “You’ll help Basset gather those steers. Use your own judgment about any difficulties that come up, the same as any regular ‘rep’ would do. One week from tomorrow, I’ll meet you at the lone cottonwood on Rock Creek and receive the cattle. I don’t want either of you to forget that you’re drawin’ LF pay, and top wages at that. You’ll govern yourselves accordingly.”

“Uh-huh,” grinned Tad. “Top wages, Fox, but not fightin’ wages. Me and my pardner is peaceful fellers lessen we gits tromped on. We don’t travel none on our shapes ner lead-slingin’ qualities. We ain’t wanted no place fer no crime and we don’t figger on leavin’ this country with a posse follerin’ us. We’ll gather them steers, but we won’t fight none tuh hold ’em. I bin punchin’ cows long enough tuh know that there’s a nigger in the woodpile somewheres on this deal er you’d either gather them steers yorese’f er send some uh yore regular hands tuh do the job. We taken the sheriff’s say-so about hirin’ out and we’ll see the play through to the last card, but we ain’t doin’ no dirty jobs fer no man, mister.”

Tad had swung aboard his horse and sat slouched in the saddle, watching Fox.

“Get the cattle and I’ll be satisfied,” replied Fox. “Yonder’s the trail. Basset’s home ranch lays at the foot of that hazy peak. You should make it by daylight tomorrow. Follow this trail till you come to the lone cottonwood, where the trail forks. Take the right hand trail.”

Shorty swung open the pole gate and Tad hazed the horses into the open.

Legs spread far apart, hands clenched behind his back, Luther Fox stood in the dusty trail and watched them out of sight. Once more the corners of his cruel mouth twitched oddly. As he watched the rapidly fading dust cloud that hid the partners, his eyes glittered with a look of cunning.

III

“I dunno jest why, Tad,” Shorty broke the silence, “but I shore feel sorry fer that Kipp gent. He’s right old tuh be pestered by a skunk like Fox. His nerves ain’t so steady as they once was. I seen his hand shake when he called Fox’s hand. A man can’t do good shootin’ when his hand shakes, Tad.”

“He’d a played his string out though, Shorty. Even when he knowed Fox ’ud beat him to the draw. Kipp’s game, and I reckon that’s why we kinda cottoned to him. Besides, he shore fed us good. I’m wonderin’ what he meant by sayin’ he’d put honest ca’tridges in our guns? Reckon we’re nosin’ into a range war? Danged if we don’t git into more jams than a burglar. Yonder’s the lone cottonwood.”

The sun had just set and the rolling hills were bathed in the subdued afterglow. The greasewood flat beyond took on the appearance of a dark-green carpet. Distant peaks reflected the last rays of the sun. A covey of sage hens whirred from the brush in front of the horses, then dropped out of sight. Tad and Shorty pulled up in front of the giant cottonwood, eyes fixed on a rudely lettered sign nailed to the wide trunk, a sign riddled with bullets.

Warning to LF men. This here tree is my north boundry. The line runs due west to Squaw Butte. Ary Fox man that crosses that line will be huntin’ trouble and he’ll shore find it. HANK BASSET.

Tad waved a hand toward the sign.

“Yonder’s the reason why me and you are picked fer the steer-gatherin’ job, runt. I knowed there was a ace hid up Fox’s sleeve. What do yuh say, pard? Do we turn back from here er go through with it?”

“We done hired out fer the job, Tad. Let’s play our string out. Shucks, I’d hate tuh be bluffed out by ary sign.”

Tad nodded thoughtfully.

“Kipp aimed that we should go through. There’s more to this play than a bad debt, and I’m right curious tuh turn the next page. Haze that hammer-headed, pack-slippin’ mule on to the trail and we’ll git goin’, pardner. I’m rearin’ tuh git a squint at this here Basset hombre, providin’ he ain’t linin’ his sights on my briskit. Likewise, li’l’ ’un, bear this in mind. Don’t go clawin’ fer no gun iffen we gits jumped. Set tight and lemme augur ’em some. We ain’t crossin’ this dead-line tuh burn powder. If it comes to the wust and there’s no other way outa the tight, we takes our own parts like gentlemen. We ain’t huntin’ no trouble and, on the other hand, we ain’t stoppin’ no soft-nosed bullets with our carcasses if we kin keep from it. And git a tail holt on yore ingrowed temper, sabe? The fust sign I reads uh you comin’ to a boil and buckin’ yore cover off, I knocks yuh between the horns. Hear me, runt?”

“Yeah. I hear yuh. Yo’re bellerin’ fit tuh be heard a mile. I ain’t growed deef on this trip. Fer a forty dollar a month cow hand, yuh shore kin git shet of a heap uh advice. I’ll remind yuh about it when yo’re yellin’ fer me tuh pull this Basset feller off yuh. Git along, mule.”

Hours passed and the moon rose. If the future held any fear for these two followers of the dim trails, they gave no sign. Shorty rode in the lead, picking the trail. Sometimes he sang and as the words of the lament drifted back to Tad, the lanky puncher grinned his appreciation and hummed an off-key accompaniment. Now and then they dozed, heads swaying gently with the movements of their horses. Innumerable cigarets were rolled, smoked and the butts pinched out. Thus the night wore on and the first streak of dawn found them halted before a pole gate.

Beyond the gate, lining the near-by creek, were innumerable tall cottonwoods. A thin spiral of smoke lifted from the chimney of a hidden cabin. Twenty feet beyond the gate was a buck-brush thicket. Not a sound broke the quiet of the morning.

Shorty leaned in his saddle to pluck forth the wooden pin that held the gate closed. A moment later he straightened.

“She’s locked with a stay chain and padlock, Tad,” he called softly.

“Reckon we better call out afore we goes further with the game. Haloooooo!”

He raised his voice in a wolf-like howl. Followed a moment of silence. Then, in an ordinary tone of voice that caused both punchers to jump with surprise, a man called from the brush patch:

“Hello yoreself. Jest set where yuh be till we looks yuh over a spell. Keep the little ’un covered with the shotgun, Ma.”

“I’ll make a sieve outa him if he makes ary move, Hank. ’Tend to the big feller. Know either of ’em?”

“Nope. Light’s too dim yet tuh read the brands on their hosses but ain’t that paint hoss the LF hoss we seen in town last week?”

“—— a’mighty, Tad,” groaned Shorty in an uneasy voice. “Start a talkin’ afore we’re killed complete.”

“We’re plum peaceful, mister,” called Tad. “That’s a LF hoss and so is the others, but hold yore fire. We come here tuh——”

“To finish robbin’ honest folks, eh?” snapped a feminine voice that carried the sharp edge of a newly whetted knife. “LF men, eh? Come to do the dirty work of that pole cat, Luther Fox! Gun toters, by the looks of yuh. You seen the sign on the cottonwood?”

“Yes’m, but we ain’t——”

“Shetup! Quit interruptin’ a lady. Hank, watch that big gent, he’s got a mean eye. Dim as the light is, I kin see it. You there, little feller, keep them hands where they belongs. There’s eighteen buckshot in both these barrels and I’m takin’ a rest across this boulder. Come to git them cattle that’s due Fox?”

“Yes’m. But we ain’t cravin’ no trouble ma’am, leastways, not with women-folks. Joe Kipp, the sheriff, ’lowed that we should come.”

“Huh!” snorted the hidden lady. “And what under the sun and seven stars has that old sage hen got to say about it? If Kipp had the gumption of a rabbit, he’d run the hull LF pack outa the country. He’s stood by like a lump on a log and seen a pore ol’ couple git robbed uh their eye teeth, and never once raised a finger to stop it. He don’t dast set foot on the place, he’s that ashamed uh hisself fer——”

“Hush, Ma,” cut in the voice of Hank Basset. “Joe done his best by us. His hands is tied, drat it, the same as ours is. Now, big feller, how come that Joe Kipp ’lowed that you should come here? Don’t try no lyin’ er we turns loose these shotguns. Yuh read the sign on the cottonwood and me’n ma is within’ our rights when we shoots. Git tuh talkin’, dang yuh.”

“Me’n my li’l’ pardner is strangers, Basset, and we ain’t takin’ up no man’s fight fer him. Kipp done told us tuh take Fox up on it, when Fox give us the offer uh the job. We was in jail at the time and the ol’ buzzard was aimin’ tuh cold-deck us into the pen, savvy? It was either take this job er go over the road fer a few years. We ain’t doin’ dirty work fer no man, mister. We’re cow hands, me and Shorty is, not gun-toters. We come here peaceful and we stays thataway, lessen we’re crowded bad.

“If I was a gun man, Basset, and was aimin’ tuh th’ow lead in yore direction, I’d be doin’ it now. That there bush yo’re a squattin’ behind ain’t so thick as she might be. I kin see yuh plain. Yuh’d orter pick a boulder fer shelter.”

A muffled curse and cracking of twigs came from the brush as Hank Basset shifted his position. Tad’s eyes followed the moving brush tops. His ruse had worked. He now knew where the cow man crouched. Shorty grinned his approval at Tad’s clever lying.

“Good guessin’, Taddie. Now shoo that there settin’ hen of a female from her nest and we’ll feel easier,” he whispered. “If it comes to the wust, we gotta run. We can’t noways shoot no female women. I might try a pot shot at Basset.”

“Hush up, runt.” Then, in a louder tone. “I said my say, Basset. She goes as she lays. We ain’t burnin’ no powder here ner elsewhere fer Luther Fox. Yo’re the doctor, sabe? If we’re messin’ into ary range war er such, we’ll go back the way we come, with our guns in the scabards, and leave the job tuh them that wants it. From what I seen of the LF hands, there’s plenty of ’em that’ll take it. There’s our proposition, Basset. Take it er leave it.”

There was a long silence, broken only by whispering between the cow man and his wife. Then the answer came from behind the boulder in the voice of Ma Basset.

“Shed yore guns and light. As long as we gotta be pestered with LF men, it’d as well be you two as them others. Keerful how you handle yore hands while yo’re coming through the fence. Keep to the middle of the wagon road that leads to the house. Hank and me’ll have yuh covered, every step.”

Tad and Shorty exchanged a quick look. Tad nodded briefly.

“Shed the cannon, pard, and we’ll take her up.”

They tossed their guns to the ground, swung from the saddle and approached with their hands in the air. The presence of a woman caused Shorty to blush confusedly, but Tad seemed to rather enjoy the situation. Once through the barbed-wire fence, they kept to the road. A bend in the road brought them in view of the buildings.

The sun was just rising and both cowpunchers gazed in surprise at the scene spread before them. Low walled, log buildings, the sod roofs covered with green grass and wild mustard. Well-built horse corrals, branding shute and branding pen beyond. A well-irrigated alfalfa patch, blooming and ripe for cutting. A small blacksmith shop surrounded by mowers, rakes, and two round-up wagons. Everything neat and orderly, rare indeed, for a cattle ranch.

The ranch house and adjacent bunk house were whitewashed, and climbing the walls were masses of morning glories. Wild rose bushes, pink blossoms wet with the early morning dew, lined the gravel walk that led to the doors. All around were the tall cottonwoods.

“Gosh!” whispered Shorty, and removed his hat.

Tad followed suit. They halted on the threshold of the open door, carefully wiping their feet on the burlap sack mat. Tad sniffed the warm air that came from the kitchen.

From the service-berry brush behind the cowpunchers, stepped the oddly mated couple with their shotguns.

Hank Basset, shorter by six inches and lighter by some eighty pounds than his wife, was clad in faded flannel shirt and freshly laundered, neatly patched overalls. Slightly bent over, tanned the color of an old saddle, a bald patch showing in the center of his silvery hair, he was anything but warlike in appearance. His mild blue eyes twinkled with humor, but there was a look about his straight mouth and square chin that told of hidden determination and a fearless spirit if he were roused.

Ma Basset, red of cheek, her well-combed, abundance of gray hair glistening in the morning sun, was as neat as her rose bushes, and as fresh looking, in her red-and-white checked gingham. Despite the scowl that furrowed her wide brow, there was everything in her make-up to denote a generous, mothering personality. A bit stout, to be sure, but her step was firm and alert and her bare arms were more muscular than fat. A woman of the pioneer stock, ranch born and raised. As much at home in the saddle as in her immaculate kitchen, a fair example of the cattle man’s wife whose courage and sacrifice has played so important a role in the building of the West. Even as her mother before her had fought Indians, so now, did Ma Basset wield her sawed-off shotgun in defense of her home.

Suddenly Tad sprang forward into the open door of the kitchen.

“Coffee’s b’ilin’ over!” he bellowed over his shoulder.

Shorty, left on the threshold, shoved his aching arms higher in the air and gazed with agonized eyes into the twin barrels of Ma Basset’s raised shotgun.

Tad now appeared in the doorway, holding aloft the steaming coffee pot as proof of his good intentions.

“—— a’mighty, yuh big lummox,” groaned Shorty. “Yuh like tuh got me killed.”

There was that in the appearance of the two partners to cause even the stoniest hearted to smile. Shorty, his swollen eye a sickly green, tanned face perspiring and red from suppressed emotion and embarrassment, gazing beseechingly at his partner. Tad, his homely, rough-hewn features wreathed in an infectious grin, holding aloft the huge granite-ware coffee pot.

“Shucks, Hank,” muttered Ma Basset in an undertone of relief, “them two boys ain’t no badmen. Why that pore little feller is nigh scared tuh death. Don’t suppose he ever hurt a livin’ thing in his hull life. My gracious but that big ’un did give me a start when he tore into the house thataway. I was sure certain he was aimin’ to make a fight of it. Lawzee!”

The elderly couple did not relax their vigilance, however, until breakfast was well on its way.

Tad, with his unaffected, loquacious manner, did much to quell suspicion. He insisted on putting on an apron and helping with the breakfast, all the while keeping up an aimless chatter with the lady of the house. More than often he had her chuckling gaily.

Shorty, in the front room with Hank, told a straightforward story of their sojourn in Alder Gulch.

“Yuh mean that you whupped that big miner by yoreself? Why, Fox claims that big hunkie is a ex-prize fighter!”

Shorty shrugged.

“I dunno about that, mister. If he’s a pug, he’s a pore ’un. You’d uh died laffin’ tuh see Tad a-holdin’ off that gang with a empty gun.”

“And you boys ain’t fightin’ fer Luther Fox?”

“Mister,” said Shorty solemnly, “when me and Tad draws our shootin’ irons, we does it because somebody’s crowdin’ us er our friends, bad. We’re aimin’ tuh go back tuh Arizony some day and we got friends down there that we want tuh look square in the eyes, sabe?”

“Breakfast is about ready,” called Ma Basset from the doorway.

Hank and Shorty got to their feet.

“Ma’am,” said Shorty, flushing hotly, “our hosses is outside the fence yonder. My grub ’ud plumb choke me if I was tuh set down to the table afore I’d took care uh my Skewball hoss. Tad, I reckon, feels the same about his Yaller Hammer hoss. He’d ’a’ said so hisse’f only he’s a-tormentin’ me by makin’ me axe yuh, kin we be excused while we ’tends to ’em. The big walloper pesters me continual when there’s women folks around.”

Shorty was the color of an Indian blanket by now. Tad, grinning widely, winked at Hank.

“Tush, son,” smiled Ma Basset. “Now don’t you pay no attention to him. He’d orter be ashamed uh hisself, tormentin’ a boy half his size. You boys hurry on now and tend to yore ponies. The key to the gate hangs on a nail on the gate post. Unsaddle and turn yore hosses into the pasture. There’s blue-joint grass and water a-plenty there. I’ll put the biscuits and eggs in the warmin’ oven. Hurry, now.”

Five minutes later there came the sound of splashing water. Ma Basset, looking out the kitchen window, nodded her approval.

“They’re washin’-up at the bunkhouse, Hank,” she whispered. “Those boys has had raisin’.”

“When a man sets down to his grub afore he’s took care uh his hoss, watch out fer him,” added Hank. “I was a-waitin’ tuh see if they was goin’ tuh let their animals wait. It don’t take no smart gent tuh see that they’re as different from the other LF riders as a gentleman is different from a sheep herder. I bin thinkin’, Ma, mebbe so them two boys kin help us. They’re kinda like home folks, sorter.”

“Help us?”

Ma Basset shoved a second pan of biscuits in the oven and closed the door thoughtfully. Then she straightened.

“Help us, Hank? I’m afeered not. The cattle’s gone, that’s all. They’re good boys, like as not, but they can’t make a herd uh cattle outa a handful uh sore-footed cows and wind-bellied calves. No, we’re beat and beat bad. But we ain’t hollerin’, neither of us. If only our Pete boy was back home, I’d feel as chipper as a meadow lark. But the thought uh him cooped up in a prison cell, kinda takes the warm feelin’ outa the sunshine, somehow.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. She seated herself on a chair and dabbed at the tears with the corner of her apron. Hank crossed over to her and put an arm about her shoulders.

Tad and Shorty had removed their spurs at the bunkhouse. They made but little noise as they came to the door and halted to wipe the dust from their boots. They could not help but see what went on inside the kitchen. Embarrassed, they looked at each other in silence.

“Our Pete sent over the road by that low-down LF spread, our cattle run off and a ten-thousand-dollar note due next week,” came the voice of Hank Basset whose back was toward the cowpunchers. “It’s hard lines fer folks as old as us, Ma. But we ain’t licked yet. I kin still hold down a job punchin’ cows.”

“And I kin beat ary round-up cook that ever burned a batch uh beans er turned a mess wagon over,” added Ma Basset bravely. “Yuh mind that fall when I cooked fer the outfit, Hank, and drove two broncs fer wheelers? I can do it again, too.”

Tad, a vise-like grip on his partner’s arm, backed quietly away from the door. On tiptoe they retreated to the bunkhouse. Then, with careless step and a whistle coming discordantly from Tad’s pursed lips, they again approached the kitchen.

Ma Basset’s eyes showed faint signs of redness and Hank seemed somewhat ill at ease. He led them back into the front room.

“Biscuits ain’t quite done,” he explained, waving the two punchers to chairs.

He moved stealthily to a cupboard and reached a hand in behind the curtain. It came forth holding a brown bottle.

“Ma keeps it fer snake bite,” he whispered. “Have a nip?”

But before he could hand the bottle to the expectant Shorty, an approaching step sounded from the kitchen. Hank deftly slid the bottle back behind the curtain, a second before his wife appeared in the doorway.

In Ma Basset’s hand was a piece of raw beefsteak and a strip of cloth.

“Fer your eye,” she told Shorty, and forthwith tied the piece of meat over the swollen and discolored member.

“Your pardner was a-tellin’ me how you fell off your hoss and bunged that eye up,” she smiled, standing aside to survey the bandage critically.

“Hoss th’owed me?” returned Shorty dazedly. “Shucks, I——”

“Nothin’ to be ashamed of,” she replied. “There ain’t a bronc rider livin’ that ain’t got it some time er another.”

“Never was a rider that never got th’owed,” chanted Tad, trying in vain to catch his partner’s eye. “Never was a bronc that never got rode,” he finished the rime.

But Shorty did not see. Hank was shifting uneasily in his rawhide-bottomed chair. He too, seemed to be trying to convey a silent message of some sort to Shorty.

“But, ma’am, I——”

“Ma, ain’t them biscuits a burnin’?” Hank was sniffing the air like a hound scenting a fox. Ma, her thoughts diverted to the bread, made her way hastily to the kitchen.

Hank’s hand darted to the cupboard and the bottle of whisky came forth once more. This time it went the rounds. Hank replaced the cork and the bottle vanished behind the curtain.

“Now, Ox,” growled Shorty. “How come yuh lied about this here eye?”

“Miz Basset ’lowed that them as mixed up in saloon fights was mighty low-down sorter humans, sabe? Tuh keep yuh from bein’ disgraced, I lied a mite about that black eye that miner hung on yuh.”

“Ma is plumb sot ag’in’ fightin’,” added Hank. “I aimed tuh wise yuh up, but it kinda slipped my mind. Onct, when I gits tangled up in a nice quiet scrap and shows up with a swole-up jaw, Ma kinda quarantined me off and I et, slept and subsisted, as the sayin’ goes, in the blacksmith shop. One uh the boys toted my grub to me. Doggone, she was on the prod. She don’t paw the earth ner beller loud ner bend no rollin’ pins across a man’s withers. No, sir. She jest swells up like a buck Injun, gits proud and haughty and kinda looks a feller over like he was lower than a sheep herder.”

Shorty was not cheered by this bit of news. Ma Basset summoned them to breakfast at this juncture and the little puncher inwardly writhed with the burden of a guilty conscience. Pangs of hunger conquered, however, and he ate as heartily as Tad.

IV

“I ain’t noways aimin’ tuh be hollerin’,” explained old Hank, spraying a sage bush with tobacco juice. “I jest want that you boys should know what kind of a skunk yo’re workin’ fer and how he’s throwed the hooks to me.”

Tad and Shorty, riding on either side of the cattle-man, nodded.

“Two years ago, come July fourth, my son, Pete, gits into a jam over a hoss that Black Jack is abusin’ on the street in Alder Gulch. Black Jack pulls a gun. He’s tanked up on Injun whisky and onery as ——, sabe? He hates the Pete boy anyhow, and comes a rearin’ when Pete tells him tuh quit beatin’ the hoss over the head.

“His bullet ketches Pete in the thigh and Pete limbers up his six-gun as he’s a fallin’. Black Jack goes down with a .45 slug in his gun arm and the fight is over.

“But the Black Jack gent and Luther Fox is playin’ of a deep game and they sets out tuh bust us. They has Pete throwed in jail and tried fer attempt tuh murder. They’s a dozen LF pole cats that swears on the witness stand that Pete starts the fight and shoots fust. Pete, not havin’ ary witness, is railroaded.

“Trials is expensive, boys. Pete’s law sharp bleeds me fer all I kin scrape up. The price uh cattle is lower’n a rattler’s belly and I’m bad crowded tuh git the coin. I borrys ten thousand dollars from the bank and gives my note, never thinkin’ they’d sell the note tuh Luther Fox. I ain’t wise tuh them throat-cuttin’ tricks that’s called good business by some.

“That fall finds me busted and in debt. I’m doin’ business with Fox’s bank, buyin’ grub from Fox’s store and the pore specimens uh cowpunchers that’s workin’ fer me is drawin’ double wages from Fox and stealin’ me blind. Up till then, Pete has bin runnin’ the round-up and takin’ care uh that end. He’s made me and Ma take it easy like, sendin’ us to Californy and Florida fer the winters and a babyin’ us scan’lous thataway. Now we’re throwed up ag’in’ it onct more and we pitches in tuh do our dangdest.

“The day Pete is sentenced to twenty-five years at Deer Lodge, Ma takes the train fer Helena tuh see the governor and I comes back and starts the fall round-up with as sorry a crew as ever rode a good hoss tuh death. My range covers the country between the lone cottonwood and the Missouri River. Some eighty thousand acres and she’s supposed tuh be fair stocked. Gents, it sounds scary when I tell it, and yuh kin believe it er not, but we works that range and we don’t gather five hundred head uh steers. Somebody’s beat us to it, understand, and I’m cleaned out complete!

“I ships the five hundred head which don’t bring no kind of a price, pays off these hoss killers, and gits Joe Kipp tuh help me home with the remuda uh sore-backed hosses. Then me and Joe starts in fer tuh hunt them stolen cattle.

“There’s old sign a plenty and when we cuts the main trail, we splits up and follers it into the bad lands. There’s mebbe so a stretch uh rough, timbered brakes fer fifteen-twenty miles betwixt the open prairie and the river. Timbered some and stood on end fer the most part. I follers a trail along a timbered ridge while Joe takes the main trail which seems tuh twist eastward towards the LF range.

“I’ve rode mebbe so eight-ten miles when my hat gits knocked off and I hears the pop of a 30-30. Some gent has drilled my hat. Over behind some boulders is a puff of white smoke. The range is upwards uh five hundred yards. I picks up my hat, unlimbers ole “meat-in-the-pot” and heads fer Mister Bushwhacker.

“Ping! Off goes my hat onct more and this time the shot comes from the other side, a good four hundred yards away.

Whoever is doin’ that shootin’ is —— good shots. Thinkin’ along them lines, and wonderin’ where the next bullet will hit, I jabs home the spurs and goes a shootin’ towards Mister Polecat behind the boulders.

“Wham! A Winchester barks and my hoss piles up, shot between the eyes. I takes my stand behind his carcass and throws some lead in the direction uh the brush patch where I sees the white smoke fadin’ away. When my gun is empty, I commences shovin’ fresh shells in the magazine. Then —— busts loose. Seems like a army is bombardin’ me. But every danged bullet is goin’ about a foot high. Sudden like, the shootin’ quits.

“Got a plenty?” calls a stranger voice. “We bin foolin’ up to now. The next shootin’ we does will be the real article. Git on yore laigs and hit fer home.”

“I feels the wind of a steel-jacket bullet as she misses my nose by about a inch. Mad? I was b’ilin’, gents. Only fer leavin Ma a widder, I’d uh stayed till they got me. But het up as I was, I sees how plumb useless it is tuh make a fight, so I drags it.

“At the edge uh the bad lands, where we’d split up, I finds Joe Kipp. He’s kinda white and shaky like, and he’s afoot, the same as me. The drawed look around his mouth and the way his eyes looks at me, makes me feel plumb sorry fer him. He’s takin’ it wuss than I am.

“‘They shot yor hoss and made a danged target outa yuh, Joe?’ I asks, not knowin’ how else tuh ease his feelin’s.

“‘Hank,’ says he, solemn like and earnest as ——, ‘I wish tuh —— they’d uh killed me, instead uh wingin’ me, like they did.’

“And he shows me his gun arm, busted between the shoulder and elbow by a soft-nosed bullet. I ties up the arm the best I kin and we commences that thirty-mile walk home. Ol’ Joe never whimpered onct durin’ that night’s walk, though I knowed he was sufferin’ bad. Ner did he do ary talkin’. Up till then he’d bin right hopeful about gittin’ them stolen cattle back. But bein’ set afoot and sech musta drug it outa him bad, fer he ain’t never bin the same man since.

“There’s them that claims he’s scared uh Fox, and sometimes it shore looks like they done read the sign right. Me, I don’t know. Seems like, if he was scared uh Fox, that he’d throw up his tail and quit. But he still holds the job down. Some day, I look fer him tuh kill Fox er git killed a-tryin’.”

“Didn’t yuh never make no more fight tuh find them cattle?” asked Tad after some silence.

“Kipp done went down into the hills two-three times. Each time he went there, he come back afoot, lookin’ like he’d seen a ghost. And somewhere in his hide ’ud be a bullet hole. Not bad, jest a kinda souvenir uh the occasion, as the feller says.

“Onct, I gathers me a posse uh cow-men from around the county and we slips into the brakes after night. Injuns couldn’t uh done it more quiet. We’d gone mebbe so five-six miles and was goin’ single file down a steep trail that led into a canyon. Sudden like, fifty feet ahead uh my hoss—I’m in the lead, sabe?—a match sputters. Before I kin unlimber my cannon, a heap uh brush blazes up. There we are, square in the light uh the blaze, the trail too narrer tuh turn around, with a dead drop uh two hundred feet on one side and a shale cliff on the other. On the trail behind us, afore we gits our senses good, another brush pile busts into flame.”

“‘Do you idjits turn back from here er does we start a shootin’?’ bellers a gent from the dark up above.

“It don’t take no more’n a half-witted sheep herder tuh decide which to do. We tells this gent that we’re turnin’ back.

“‘Fifty feet down the trail,’ says he, ‘the trail widens. When the front fire goes out, ride over it to that place and turn. Ary man that passes that wide point, gits a free ticket tuh ——. Us boys is holed up here fer a spell and we ain’t cravin’ no visitors. The next man that rides into these brakes, don’t see his happy home no more.’”

“That ended it, eh?” inquired Tad.

Hank nodded.

“I ain’t never bin back there. What’s the use? They got the bulge in that country. They kin set on a pinnacle and see every rider between the brakes and my place, if they got ary fieldglasses, which they likely has. The only way tuh git into the hills is along them trails and every danged trail is watched. Them cattle is like so many flies in a bottle and Fox’s hand over the mouth tuh keep ’em in. The same crew uh gun fighters that keeps folks from goin’ into the hills, keeps the cattle from driftin’ out.”

“Hmm,” mused Tad aloud. “Regular hole-in-the wall proposition, ain’t it? Yeah. How many trails leadin’ into that section, Hank?”

“Two,” came the prompt reply. ‘It’s a kinda pocket, widening out beyond where the brakes meets the bottom lands.”

“Trails along the river bottoms, ain’t there?”

“Nary trail ’ceptin’ late in the fall when the water’s low. It’s what they call the Narrows. Except fer where trails has bin cut out, a man can’t water his saddle hoss along the riverbank fer ten miles. Thirty and forty foot banks, sabe? And at each end uh the ten-mile stretch is a gorge cut out by spring rains and the cricks, which is so full uh quicksand that they’d bog a jacksnipe. A danged pocket, I tell yuh, a danged, gyp-water, soap-hole, shale-banked pocket. And they’s feed in them cañons tuh winter half the cattle in Montana.”

“Uh-huh. Yet, some way er another, Hank, it don’t sound noways reasonable that a man can’t git in there. Supposin’ that a man was tuh cross the river, say at one uh the ferries, ride back on the opposite bank till he come opposite them Narrers, then swim across to where one uh them trails is cut in the bank?”

Hank laughed mirthlessly. “Can’t be done, pardner. My boy Pete is the only human that ever done it and he crossed when the river was down. Now, at high water, the —— hisself couldn’t make it.”

“Yore Pete done it?” put in Shorty, silent up till now.

Hank smiled reminiscently.

“Pete knowed the river better’n ary human alive. As a kid, he used tuh kinda look after the hosses durin’ the summer. He’d go into the pocket with a pack outfit and stay there till time fer the fall round-up. Long afore I even knowed he could swim, that kid was bustin’ that river wide open, jest fer the fun of it. He like tuh drowned a dozen hosses, learnin’ ’em the channel. I never knowed nobody else that ever swum the Missouri at the Narrows.”

“Got ary uh them water hosses at the ranch, Hank?” Shorty’s eyes were dancing excitedly.

“Shore thing, but even if you was fool enough tuh tackle it, Shorty, the river’s up and boomin’ now and the current swifter’n a blue-racer snake. I wouldn’t let yuh tackle it, boy. ——’s bells, what ’ud yuh do if yuh did git across?”

“Now there’s where yuh got me guessin’,” grinned the little puncher, but that dancing light still flickered in his eyes as they rode on.

“If yo’re figgerin’ on playin’ fish, runt, fergit it,” grunted Tad as he licked the paper of a cigaret.

They rode on in silence for some time, heading back toward the Basset ranch.

“Hank,” Tad broke a lengthy silence, “Did Kipp ever try tuh git help from the Stock Association on this deal?”

“If he did, he never said so ner nothin’ ever come of it. Why?”

“I was jest a-askin’, that’s all,” came the evasive reply. “Jest tryin’ tuh git a squint at the lay from all sides. How long have yuh knowed Kipp?”

“Ever since he come to the country. Lemme see. About eighteen years, near as I kin figger.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“Don’t know as Joe ever said, and I never asked him. Look here, if yo’re figgerin’ that Joe Kipp is mixed up with Fox and ain’t square, yo’re plumb wrong. Joe’s honest, bank on that. I’d bet my last steer on it.”

“Mebbe so yuh done bet ’em already, and lost ’em,” laughed Tad.

Hank smiled bitterly.

“I reckon not, Ladd. Does ol’ Joe look like a crook er a cow thief tuh you?”

“No, Hank. If ever a man had honest eyes, it’s Kipp. A right nice ol’ feller from what me’n Shorty seen uh him. How long has this Fox pole cat bin clutterin’ up the range around here?”

“Three years. He leased and bought all the range he could git holt of and throwed in some dogie stuff from the south. Black Jack come with the cattle. He’s bin after my range ever since he come to these parts, but he never offered nowhere near a fair price. He told me, last time he made me a offer, that it was his top price and if I didn’t take it, he’d bust me. It looks like he’s shore doin’ it, too. Him and that black-whiskered Injun.”

“Is Black Jack a Injun?” asked Tad. “Half-breed, so they claim. Apache, I reckon, by his looks. It wouldn’t surprise me none if he’s a outlaw. If he wasn’t scared uh bein’ recognized, why does he wear them whiskers? I asked Joe but he ’lowed a man couldn’t arrest a man and shave him without havin’ danged good reason, and I reckon he’s right.”

They rode on, each of the three busy with his own thoughts. Ma Basset was waiting for them at the corral. Beside her stood Joe Kipp. Both seemed unusually excited. Ma Basset’s eyes showed signs of weeping.

“God help us and him, Hank!” she cried out as Hank dismounted, “Pete’s escaped the pen!”

“Have they caught him yet?” asked Hank, his lips white with fear.

“He got clean away, Hank,” said Kipp. “I rode over tuh tell yuh.”

V

If ever a man looked worried, it was Joe Kipp. Every feature of his tanned face was drawn and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot and seared with some tortuous pain. His hands shook so that he spilled the tobacco he was pouring into a brown paper.

“Pete was a sorter trusty at Deer Lodge,” he went on to explain. “He waited till the chance come, then made a clean getaway. He was gone two hours afore they found it out. I got orders tuh watch out fer him, Hank. Yuh see, they figger he’ll be showin’ up around these parts.”

“Look here, Joe Kipp,” said Ma Basset firmly, her eyes still wet, “I don’t intend to sit by with my hands in my lap while you or any other man is gunnin’ fer my Pete. Yo’re a law officer and there’s no way to keep yuh from hangin’ around here, but I’m givin’ yuh warnin’ here and now that no man kin take Pete while I kin hold a gun.”

She turned to her husband.

“Hank, I’m glad the boy’s loose and a breathin’ good clean air again. He ain’t goin’ back if I kin help it. Are you standin’ by yore wife and son er do you line up on the side uh the law that sends innocent boys tuh prison? Are yuh——”

“Hush, Ma, yo’re excited,” interrupted Hank. “Uh course, I’m stayin’ by Pete, right er wrong. But there’s no need tuh——”

Ma Basset sent him a withering glance and whirled on the uncomfortable sheriff.

“If you was as eager tuh git back them stolen cattle as yuh are tuh shoot our Pete boy, we’d not be facin’ poverty in our old age. It’s a wonder tuh me that you got the nerve tuh show yore face on this ranch, Joe Kipp.”

The sheriff winced as if struck. Shoulders sagging, eyes fixed on the ground, he made no reply. Tad and Shorty, unwilling spectators, were heartily wishing themselves elsewhere.

A mother cat will face a dog fifty times her size in defense of her young. Face him without fear. Men call it mother instinct and there is in this life no more courageous, more self-sacrificing, nor more beautiful trait. Not a man there but respected Ma Basset for the stand she took, Joe Kipp included.

“Ma’am,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the ground, “I don’t reckon I blame yuh none fer the way yuh feel. But yo’re plumb wrong about me gunnin’ fer Pete Basset. No matter how the play comes up. I ain’t drawin’ no gun on him if I should cut his trail. If I was as onery as you figger I am, I’d uh kept my mouth shet and laid low till Pete showed up. My idee in ridin’ over was tuh kinda let yuh know it in time tuh warn him. In doin’ that I’m violatin’ my oath uh office.”

Kipp turned abruptly and swung into his saddle. Before Hank Basset or his wife could say a word, he had ridden through the pole gate and was lost to sight in the trees.

“I’d orter have my tongue cut out,” said Ma Basset contritely. “Talkin’ to the pore ol’ feller thataway when he was doin’ us a good turn. Hank, git on yore hoss and ketch him. Tell him I was jest a fool woman talkin’ a lot uh fool nonsense.”

Hank shook his head.

“I reckon ol’ Joe savvys, Ma. He ain’t holdin’ no grudge. Supposin’ we tackles some grub? It’s past sundown and we kin talk this thing over better after we’ve took on a bait uh beef and beans.”

He jerked the saddle off his horse and followed his wife to the house.

“Holler when supper’s ready, Hank,” Tad told him. “Me’n Shorty wants tuh tack a shoe on one of our hosses.”

Hank nodded appreciatively. He knew that there was no horse to shoe and he thanked Tad with a look for the kindly lie that gave him and his wife a chance to discuss in private the escape of their son.

When Hank had gone in the house, Tad turned serious eyes on his partner.

“Shorty, I got a hunch that Joe Kipp’s a worryin’ over somethin’ besides this Pete gent. He’s sick inside as if he was gut shot and I aim tuh find out what’s eatin’ on him. Yuh seen how he flinched when Miz Basset lit on him?”

“Yuh don’t think the ol’ feller’s playin’ a double game do yuh, Tad?” Shorty’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“I hate tuh be thinkin’ he’s that ornary, but dang me if there ain’t some things about this deal that has me guessin’. I’m goin’ tuh foller Kipp and see what comes uh it. Tell Hank and Miz Basset some durned lie er another about why I rode off. Look fer me when yuh see me ride through yonder gate, sabe? This may be a hour’s job, er on the other hand, mebbe so it’ll take a week.”

“Why can’t we both go?”

“Because, my well-meanin’ but plumb onsenseless amigo, it’s a one man job, this trailin’ business. Stick around here, keep yore eyes peeled, and if the Pete boy shows up, tell him not tuh quit the flats till I show up and kin make a medicine talk with him. This deal has my curious bump a-itchin’ and we’ll see ’er through, no?”

“I’d tell a man. Taddie, ol’ war hoss, I’m rearin’ tuh tackle that river from yon side and——”

“Of all the plumb dehorned, knee-sprung, narrer-foreheaded idiots that ever dealt his pardner misery, yo’re the wust! We ain’t here tuh do no fightin’, dang it. And I don’t want tuh put in the rest uh the summer hangin’ around them sand bars waitin’ fer yore fool carcass tuh come floatin’ along. Haze that fool idee plumb outa yore system and start all over on some plan that listens sensible.

“A man ’ud think yuh had more lives than a tom cat. Fork yore geldin’ and come down the pasture with me while I ketches me my Yaller Hammer pony. And git this here idee circulatin’ through yore system, son: We’re peaceful cow hands, me and you. This ain’t our scrap that’s goin’ on and the best we’ll git is the sharp end uh the prod-pole if we cuts in heavy.

“Leave the thinkin’ parts tuh yore pardner. If I hollers fer he’p, come a runnin’ but not lessen I hollers. We want tuh be all in one piece and enjoyin’ health and prosperity, as the sayin’ goes, when we presses our ponies fer Arizony this fall. Keep yore tongue between yore jaws and yore gun in the scabbard and we stand a fair tuh middlin’ show uh makin’ our home range, come Christmas. Go rearin’ and fightin’ yore head and like as not we’ll winter in a two by four hoosegow somewheres in Montana.”

Ten minutes later, Shorty watched his partner ride his fresh horse out the pole gate and along the trail Kipp had taken. A wide grin spread across the little cow puncher’s weather-tanned face.

“Yuh long-legged preacher,” he muttered good humoredly. “Yo’re plumb —— on givin’ forth wise words, ain’t yuh? Yuh give more danged advice than a Jersey cow gives milk. Then yuh rides away tuh hog all the fun whilst I hangs around the kitchen door like a dad-gummed blowfly and whittles sticks till yuh chooses tuh come back. Now I gotta go in there and lie tuh cover yore trail, dang yuh. We’ll see about swimmin’ that river, big ’un.”

“Grub pile!” called Hank from the kitchen door, thus putting an end to Shorty’s muttered tirade against the tyranny of his big partner.

A wicked look gleamed in his eyes as he made his way to the cabin.

“Where’s yore partner?” asked Ma Basset.

“Gone,” said Shorty, shaking his head sadly.

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Tuh town, I reckon, ma’am. I done the best I could tuh stop him but ’twan’t no use. Yuh see, Miz Basset, he’s one uh these here habitual drunks. Goes fer months without tetchin’ a drop. Then, sudden like, he jest busts out. He’ll swim rivers, climb pinnacles, go afoot if he has tuh, till he locates licker. Then he bogs down till he’s soaked up enough tuh kill ary ten men, forks his hoss and comes back. And the queer part of it is, he looks cold sober all the time. I bet a new hat yuh won’t be able tuh tell he’s had a drink when he gits back.”

“Land sakes! The pore, diseased critter. Who’d uh thunk he was inflicted thataway, Hank? I hope he gits home safe.”

Hank gave Shorty a suspicious look and when Ma Basset’s broad back was turned, the little puncher winked broadly. Hank chuckled.

“Hank Basset!” Ma whirled at the sound. “Shame on yuh. Makin’ fun uh that pore, diseased boy. If that ain’t like a man. Cow punchers is the most cold-hearted humans livin’, I do believe.”

“Yes’m,” agreed Hank. “Shorty, if yuh’d crave the use of a brush and comb, I’ll herd yuh to it.”

He led the way into the living room and to the bed room beyond. As he passed the cupboard, his hand slipped behind the curtain and when the two gained the bed room, Hank uncorked the bottle of snake bite cure.

“Happy days, Hank.”

“Drink hearty, Shorty,” came the reply, soft whispered, barely audible above the ensuing gurgling noise.

VI

With Shorty left behind to excuse his partner’s absence at supper, Tad, despite gnawing pangs of hunger, made no complaint.

In the graying dusk of twilight, he rode slowly along the dusty trail, a solitary, graceful figure as he sat his horse with a careless ease, a cigaret drooping from the corner of his straight lips. Not a trace of weariness was perceptible, in spite of the fact that he had been in the saddle since dawn. He had the appearance of some cowpuncher bent on a careless mission and time was a minor factor. Yet his keen eyes constantly swept the rolling hills with a restless gaze. Always, that gaze came back to focus on the moving speck far ahead on the trail.

“Looks like he was headin’ straight fer town, Yaller Hammer,” he said softly to the twitching, dun colored ears of his horse. “Mebbeso I’m havin’ this here ride fer nothin’, I dunno.”

From his chaps pocket he produced a weatherbeaten square of plug tobacco, gnawed to a ragged edge at one end. He surveyed it critically; wiped it carefully on the sleeve of his jumper and bit off a generous piece.

“Nothin’ like chawin’ tuh keep down the hungry feelin’s,” he mused aloud. “Ain’t smelt grub since daylight. Mebbeso won’t sniff none till mornin’, neither. It’s —— but it’s honest, pony, if yuh want tuh figger it thataway.”

Darkness slowly gathered and Tad and Yellow Hammer closed the gap that separated them from Joe Kipp. Tad grinned his thanks to the full moon that rose majestically from beyond the skyline.

He rode more alertly now, eyes and ears strained to catch any sign of the man he followed. Also, he watched the wagging ears of his horse. When those furry points stiffened, pointed forward, Tad would halt. Twice, when he thus stopped, he was rewarded by the sounds of a traveling horse, ahead on the trail. Once, Kipp’s horse had nickered and Tad’s big hands closed over Yellow Hammer’s black muzzle just in time to prevent an answering nicker. He allowed Kipp a bigger lead from that point on.

The hours dragged. Tad dared not risk lighting a cigaret now. The plug of tobacco was gradually being gnawed to smaller size. Then, silhouetted against the skyline, showed the lone cottonwood that marked Hank Basset’s border line. Tad could make out the form of a horseman, halted beneath the wide branches. The waiting man lighted a cigaret and Tad recognized the features of Joe Kipp.

Nodding sagely to himself, Tad dismounted and led Yellow Hammer into the tall greasewood.

“Hate tuh treat yuh so or’nary,” he whispered as he slipped a burlap sack across Yellow Hammer’s muzzle and fastened it to the cheek bands of his bridle, “but I jest can’t have yuh makin’ no hoss howdy’s, sabe? This ain’t the fust time I’ve cluttered yuh up with one uh these contraptions, so don’t act spooky. That’s the good hoss. I wisht Shorty had half yore sense, dang his or’nary li’l hide. I bet he’s in the saddle this minute, streakin’ it fer the river. Playin’ hookey like a school kid and worryin’ a man plumb ga’nt.”

With the caution of an Indian, Tad, devoid of spurs and chaps which were hung to his saddle horn, crept through the brush toward the cottonwood. Two horses stood beneath the lone tree now. The glowing ash of two cigarets showed where the dismounted horsemen squatted against the wide tree trunk.

A clear space separated the tree and the greasewood patch where Tad lay prone on the ground. A space wide enough to prevent him making out the words of the low-toned conversation. Only when the voices momentarily laid stress on some spoken thought, could he make anything of the murmur. The voice of Kipp was clearly recognizable. The other speaker’s voice was vaguely familiar.

“I tell yuh,” came Kipp’s voice, raised with emotion, “I’ve come to the breakin’ point! I’ve stood it till I can’t stand it no longer. Why, in ——’s name, can’t you and Fox let me quit and pull outa the country? I tell yuh now, I can’t be crowded no more. I’ll tell the whole —— miser’ble story!”

“Like —— you will,” came the sneering reply, low pitched, calm, distinct. “You’ll play yore string out. When we clean up the Basset deal, you kin go. Not till then. We need yore protection.”

Kipp’s reply came in a hoarse whisper, indistinguishable to the listener hidden in the brush.

A coarse, jeering laugh came from the other man in reply. A match flared to light a cigaret and Tad recognized the black-bearded face of the half-breed, Black Jack.

“You know —— well you won’t do no talkin’,” came the breed’s voice with cold conviction.

“Where’s Fox?” asked Kipp, breaking a brief silence.

“Somewhere on the LF trail, headin’ this way. And I don’t aim that he should ketch me here, neither. I’m draggin’ it for the Pocket.”

Black Jack got to his feet and took a step toward his horse. Then he halted.

“Goin’ to stay here all night? Better be gettin’ to town where yuh belong. Fox’ll be along directly and he’ll wonder what brung you here. Pete Basset breakin’ his stake rope has put the old gent in one —— of a humor, and he might treat yuh rough. Better hit the grit.”

“I’m aimin’ tuh wait fer Fox,” replied Kipp hoarsely.

“Don’t be a plumb —— fool. He’ll mebbe kill yuh.”

“Reckon not.”

“It’s yore funeral. I’m driftin’. Good luck. Mind what I say, now. Fox’ll beat yuh to it, if yuh make ary gun play. That ol’ ——’s a snake. So-long.”

Tad listened to the thudding of hoofs as the breed rode away into the night. A few moments and all was silent as a grave yard.

Kipp got to his feet, pinching out the glowing ash of his cigaret. He led his horse to a patch of brush beyond the tree. When he returned, the pale rays of the moon fell on the blued-steel barrel of the Winchester in the crook of his arm.

Tad, watching the sheriff’s every move, whistled noiselessly. He saw Kipp settle down behind a small patch of brush. This shelter hid Kipp from the trail but Tad could see him plainly, outlined against the pale sky. Came the clicking of the sheriff’s carbine lever as he threw a cartridge from the magazine into the barrel. Then the gun raised and Tad saw Kipp squint along the barrel.

“Testin’ his sights,” mused Tad. “If ever a man went through the motions uh bushwhackin’ a enemy, Kipp’s a-doin’ it now. He don’t noways aim tuh give Fox a chanct.”

Tad pondered this decision for some time, his eyes fixed on Kipp.

“——,” he muttered inwardly. “Puts me in one —— of a mess. Fox needs killin’ and needs it bad. Shore does. Even shootin’ him from the brush is mebbeso what’s comin’ to him, I dunno. But that won’t keep Kipp from bein’ a low-down, bushwhackin’ killer iffen he does the job. Looks tuh me like this Black Jack Injun and Fox is shore th’owin’ the hooks to the ol’ sheriff plumb scan’lous. They got him nigh loco, ’pears tuh me. But shore as he’s a foot high, Kipp’ll hate hisse’f fer pullin’ the trigger, afore his gun barrel cools off. Yessir. Bound tuh. Then what’ll he do? He’ll go to the bad, complete. Booze’ll put him in the bog fer keeps. Either that, er he’ll turn that gun on hisse’f and blow his own head off. Which won’t do nobody no good ’ceptin’ mebbe this Black Jack skunk. Hmm. I never cut into no man’s game up till now, but I’m shore declarin’ myse’f in on this.”

Noiselessly, he slipped back to his horse and swung into the saddle. As Yellow Hammer scuffed along the dusty trail at a running walk, Tad raised his voice in song to herald his coming. He rightly guessed that his approach would, for a few moments, so startle Kipp that the old sheriff would not have time to beat a retreat until Tad was too close.

The words of the old range song came in full-toned, discordant abandon as Tad rode into the clearing.

From the brush, Kipp’s horse nickered and this time Tad allowed Yellow Hammer to give answer.

“Whoa, geldin’,” mumbled Tad, loud enough for Kipp to hear. “Looks like we got company. Halloo, pardner. Come out so’s we kin read yore brand.”

A second of silence, then Kipp stepped into sight. The sheriff’s bushy white brows bristled in a frown of annoyance. Yet Tad was certain that the old fellow looked relieved. He eyed Tad with suspicion. “He’s wonderin’ if I’m suspectin’ him,” was Tad’s inward comment. Aloud he said with hearty pleasantness:

“Howdy, Sheriff. Yuh git bucked off er was yuh ketchin’ some shut-eye?”

“Dozin’ a spell,” lied Kipp. “What brings you out this time uh night on this trail?” Tad had not expected this question but his ready wit came to his rescue.

“Miz Basset ’lowed she’d acted plumb or’nary towards yuh and ’lowed that Hank should ride after yuh and bring yuh back. I knowed Hank was tuckered out and a-feelin’ a heap upset about Pete, so I took the job off his hands. They want that I should bring yuh back.”

This last statement came to the nimble-witted Tad as a happy after thought. If the sheriff returned with him, Fox would ride his homeward trail without being shot.

“No need uh me ridin’ plumb back there, Ladd. I done told her and Hank I didn’t bear no hard feelin’s. I got business in Alder Gulch that should be tended to.”

“’Twon’t do, Kipp. I give my word that I wouldn’t come back till I brung you along. Don’t make me go follerin’ yuh around fer a week er so.”

Tad’s tone was that of light banter. Yet there lay an undercurrent of determination that did not escape the sheriff.

“All right, if there’s no other way to it, let’s git goin’.”

He led his horse from the brush and mounted. Together, they headed back for the Basset ranch.

For some time, they rode in silence. Tad, from the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, studied the sheriff’s features. Kipp was staring fixedly at his saddle horn, deep in brooding thought. The reaction was setting in now and he was shaking like a man with palsy. Then this passed and the old sheriff’s shoulders straightened.

“Ladd,” he said abruptly. “You don’t know it, but yuh saved my life tonight. I wisht I could tell yuh about it, but I can’t. There’ll come a day when I will, though.

I come —— nigh doin’ somethin’ that would uh made life a livin’ hell. I come nigh bein’ a low down, or’nary coyote. I’m plumb obliged. I hope, some day, I kin pay yuh back in full.”

“——, that’s all right, Kipp. Fergit it. If I he’ped yuh ary way, I’m right glad tuh uh done it. Yuh know, there ain’t none uh us humans that ain’t got a or’nary streak hid out somewhere in our innards. And some time er another, that there or’nary streak jest nacherally busts all holts and comes a-rearin’. Sometimes, we kin grab a tail-holt and jerk ’er back in time. More often it’s some other gent that heads off that or’nary streak and herds it back into our system tuh stay put fer the rest uh our life. I mind the night mine broke out.”

Tad grinned into the sheriff’s eyes, lighted a cigaret, and went on, the words coming lazily in his soft, Southern drawl:

“My mammy died when I was little more’n a yearlin’, leavin’ me tuh grow up kinda keerless like, my daddy not payin’ me much attention when I shows I kin kinda do my own rustlin’. He’s a cowpuncher fer the Turkey Track at the time and I’m wranglin’ hosses fer the spread. When they ships, I goes tuh town with the boys and while they’re a-blowin’ their coin fer licker and gamblin’ and such, I’m squanderin’ my ten a month fer sody pop and sweet truck. I’ve likewise bought myse’f a sore-backed, ring-boned Mexican mule which I gits from a drunken Pisano fer six-bits and a pint uh rot-gut licker.

“My daddy, bein’ a good drinkin’ man and jest about slick enough at stud poker tuh hang and rattle all night afore he loses his taw to the tin-horns, ain’t much better off, financial, as me.

“Then one fall night, in a Mex town along the Rio, my daddy gits downed in a gun scrap. I’m sleepin’ on a poker table at the time, waitin’ till paw goes broke so’s I kin load him on his hoss and go tuh camp. By the time the smoke’s cleared away and I gits full waked up, dad’s a-passin’ out fast and callin’ fer me. I sets there on the ’dobe floor and wipes the blood off his mouth while he crosses the Big Divide, a grin on his face while his eyes goes glassy.

“‘Kid,’ says he, afore the blood chokes him, ‘it was Pedro Sanchez, the bronc peeler, that done it. Here’s my gun. When the time comes, git that greaser.’

“I’m some twelve years old then. That night I pads that mule uh mine with gunny sacks, throw’s my dad’s saddle on him and proceeds tuh foller this Sanchez gent who has left town pronto after the killin’. My ol’ rusty Chihuahua spur is tied to my bare foot and the long-barreled .45 gouges my ribs and starts wearin’ the hide off my hip bone. Thus burdened, as the sayin’ goes, I hits the trail uh the gent that’s downed my daddy.”

Tad smiled reminiscently.

“Yuh found him?” asked Kipp, his own troubles momentarily forgotten.

“Ten years later, I finds him. He dealin’ faro bank in Juarez and alongside him on the table lays a white-handled six-gun with five notches filed on the handle, plain and insultin’ like. Sanchez, havin’ got off to a good start, has done turned out tuh be a killer, sabe?

“Up to now, I bin as peaceful a kid as ever follered a long-horned steer. I’ve done got outa the notion, almost, uh shootin’ up this greaser. I’ve done met up with fellers, as the years passes and I gits rings around my horns, that tells me as how paw was or’nary mean when he’s lickered and the Sanchez gent has done no more than right when he’s kills him off. I’m beginnin’ tuh think that mebbeso I’m not bound and beholdin’ tuh down this Sanchez after all. Right’s right and wrongs no man, thinks I, and if paw had it comin’, he done got it and jack-pot’s played and won. So yuh see I ain’t noways huntin’ no trouble ner makin’ no play tuh hunt down this greaser feller. It jest pops up sudden.

“There I stands, a awkward, long-legged, high-withered ol’ kid, and I’m lookin’ into the wickedest pair uh snake eyes that I ever seen. His lips is kinda smilin’ but the smile don’t go higher than his black mustache which is twisted to sharp points. Sudden like, I recollects a-holdin’ of my daddy’s head and wipin’ that sickish lookin’ pink froth from his mouth so’s he kin talk. Somehow, my gun has got into my hand and I’m coverin’ this snake-eyed killer.

“‘I come tuh kill yuh, Sanchez,’ I says, and my voice sounds weak and unconvincin’ as ——.

“‘So?’ says Sanchez, laughin’ short and nasty, like I’d sprung a josh on him. ‘I wish yuh luck, sonny.’ And with that he goes right on dealin’ like he’s clean fergot I’m there.

“If he’d a knocked the gun outa my hand, er slapped me alongside the jaw, I could uh waded in and done battle. But he’s treatin’ me like I was a yearlin’ kid a-packin’ of a pea gun. I feels my face go hot like I was settin’ over a fire. My hands is cold as ice and bigger’n snowshoes. The barrel uh my gun is rattlin’ on the edge uh the table, I’m that shaky. Wust of all, a kinda blurry look looms up in my eyes and I know it’s tears. Man, it was jest nacherally ——!

“The crowd snickers and grins. A Mex vaquero makes a funny crack and his friends giggles. Sanchez, holdin’ his head kinda sideways tuh keep the smoke uh his cigaret outa his eyes, goes on dealin’ without lookin’ up, payin’ bets and rakin’ in chips uh them that loses.

“Somehow, I makes it across to the door, dizzy and all sickish inside me like a kid that’s swallered a chaw uh terbaccer. It ain’t till I gits out into the dark and sets down on a empty beer keg, that I finds that I’m still holdin’ my gun in my hand.

“Fust off, I starts tuh th’ow that —— gun as fur as I kin sling it. Then I gits a idee. I’m goin’ tuh lay out there in the dark till this Sanchez comes out. Then I’ll down him. I ketches myse’f talkin’ out loud like a loco sheep herder and tears is runnin’ like cricks down inside my shirt collar.

“I wipes off the tears, blows my nose and takes a chaw uh line-cut tuh make me feel more like a man. Then, squattin’ in the shadow near the door, I cocks my gun and waits fer Sanchez tuh come out fer his midnight lunch, which I knows most dealers does.

“Sudden like, there’s a noise behind me. I swings around, startled sorter.

“‘Fer gosh sake, put up that cannon yuh got stuck in my belly,’ says a good Texican American voice that don’t sound none too old. ‘She might go off, bein’ cocked that-away. Ease ’er tuh half-cock and shove ’er back in yore jeans. Me’n you’s gonna have a medicine talk, Slim.’

“I dunno yet why I done it, but I does as he says without a whimper. He leads me into a saloon down the street and orders two sody pops. I gits a good look at him in the light.

“He’s a kinda runty built kid with a face that’s plenty sprinkled with freckles like some cow has coughed bran in his face. He ain’t much tuh look at till he grins, then he’s right easy tuh stand. He’s got one uh these grins that makes yuh grin right back afore yuh know it. His left eye is black and swole up and his lower lip is split bad. He’s about twenty and a cowpuncher.

“‘My last two bits,’ he ’lows, as he pays fer the sody pop. ‘I bet that’s two bits more than you got, long boy.’

“I admits the charge and he nods happy like.

“‘Then we starts even, feller. Down yore p’izen and loan me the use of a fresh chaw. Then I’m gonna take yuh back and watch yuh pull that Sanchez gent’s fangs.’

“‘Yuh seen him bluff me down?’ I asks, plumb ashamed.

“‘Yeah, I seen it. And I follered yuh outside. I seen yuh while yuh made up yore mind tuh shoot him from the dark.’

“‘How come yuh know I was layin’ fer him?’ says I.

“‘You was talkin’ to yorese’f about it, pardner. All set? Then rattle yore hocks and we’ll git goin’. They th’owed me outa that wigwam last evenin’ after the poker dealer had robbed me uh two months pay.’

“Mebbeso it’s because I’m cooled off, er mebby it’s because this short-legged boy is so danged sure that I kin turn the trick, anyhow, when I goes back into that gamblin’ house, I’m steady as a work ox.

“‘Whup him a plenty, Slim,’ whispers my new pardner, as we steps inside. ‘I’m standin’ at yore back till yore belly caves in. I’ll keep the gang off yuh. Whup him with yore hands.’

“Which I does. Sanchez goes fer his gun there on the table when he sees me comin’ but he’s slow and my bullet tears that fancy cannon loose from under his hand without hurtin’ him, though it plumb ruins that white handle with the notches. He unlimbers a knife as I clears the table but I weans him away from it pronto when my gun barrel ketches him across the wrist. Then I hands my smoke pole to my new pardner and proceeds tuh work Mister Snake Eyes over with my hands.”

Tad paused to light his cigaret. Kipp was again staring at his saddle horn.

“That fight wins me two things that night. One was Shorty Carroway, the gamest pardner a man ever had. The other was what book-learnt folks calls se’f-respect. Only fer Shorty, I’d uh killed that Sanchez from the dark that night and lost my right tuh call myse’f a man.”

Kipp shot Tad a covert glance, laden with suspicion. Did the cow puncher suspect him of lying in wait for Fox? But Tad’s homely features were guileless. They rode on in silence.

In telling this story, Tad felt that he was accomplishing two purposes. He was perhaps giving the nerve-racked sheriff a new grip on his ebbing courage and self-control. Likewise, he was explaining to his own conscience, his reason for breaking one of the unwritten laws of the cow country. The law that says a man shall tend to his own affairs and leave the affairs of his fellow men strictly alone.

Kipp busied himself with a sack of tobacco and brown papers. In the gray light of dawn, Tad watched the gnarled fingers of the sheriff, pouring the flaky tobacco into the paper. Those fingers were steady now.

“Nigh sunup and yonder’s the ranch. I’m ga’nt as a coyote,” grinned the cow puncher.

“Kinda feel thataway myself, pardner,” smiled Kipp. “Don’t know when I’ve felt as hungry.”

VII

Surprise, consternation, and a trace of suspicion were written on Ma Basset’s face when she greeted Tad and Kipp at the gate.

“There’s—there’s nothing wrong, Sheriff?” she cried, her work-reddened hands gripping the gate pole.

“Figgered you and Kipp ’ud want tuh talk over this here Pete business, so I done brung him back,” Tad explained easily, wondering why Ma Basset looked at him so sharply.

Fresh in Ma Basset’s memory was Shorty’s fabrication regarding his partner’s absence at supper the night before and she was searching the big puncher’s rugged features for traces of his debauch.

Tad’s eyes flitted to the log barn fifty feet away. He smiled faintly as he saw six inches of blued rifle barrel protruding between the chinks of the logs. The gun was covering Kipp who had not seen it.

“Any sign of Pete?” asked Ma nervously.

“Not nary, ma’am,” returned Kipp. “I’d like fer tuh pow-wow some with Hank regardin’ him and them cattle. Beginnin’ this mornin’, Miz Basset, I’m turnin’ this here sheriff star over tuh Hank. Then I’m makin’ a trip into the bad-lands. Iffen I comes out with them lost cattle I’ll be askin’ fer the badge. Iffen I don’t bring them cattle out, I won’t be needin’ it no more nohow. As fer Pete, I ain’t a-huntin’ the boy ner would I lay a hand on him, was I tuh run acrost him. Until I come back from the Pocket, I’m a plain, everyday citizen.”

Tad and Ma gazed at the old officer in startled surprise. Tad was smiling oddly. The rifle barrel slid out of sight in the barn and Hank Basset, holding the gun in the crook of his arm, stepped into sight.

“Howdy, Joe. I done heered yuh. What’s the idee in actin’ that-away?”

Kipp grinned.

“A feller done told me a story last night, Hank. I don’t reckon he meant tuh, but he sorter showed me which trail tuh take, beginnin’ here. I want that you should keep this here badge fer me fer a spell. After breakfast, I’ll be askin’ the loan of a fresh hoss.”

“Land sakes!” gasped Ma, reminded of her duty to those who ride within one’s gate. “Light and come to the house. There’s flapjacks and steak that’s sp’ilin’ to be et.”

Hank gazed thoughtfully for a moment at Kipp’s badge, now lying in the palm of his hand. Then he pocketed the star and reached for the bridle reins of the two horses.

“Foller Ma to the house, Joe. Tad, will yuh lend me a hand fer a minute er so here at the barn?”

Kipp and his wife out of sight, Hank led Tad to the barn with an air of one who has news to impart.

“Where’s Shorty?” asked Tad.

“Gone,” came the cryptic reply. “He done left a message fer yuh. He said tuh tell yuh that you was a long-geared, psalm-singin’ ol’ sand-hill crane and that he’d learn yuh to leave him tuh tell yore lies fer yuh. Likewise that he was free, white and past votin’ age and that he could take keer uh hisse’f in ary tight. Them’s his exact words.”

“Then the danged li’l’ banty rooster is up tuh suthin’. What hoss did he ride?”

“Pete’s Water Dog pony. He——”

“I knowed it! I knowed it!” groaned Tad. “I seen it in his eye, drat his pesky, speckled hide. I should uh tied him up afore I left. Ever since you said no man could swim that river, I seen that or’nary, contrary, mule-minded li’l’ varmint a-millin’ over a idee in his head. All yuh gotta do is tell that li’l’ ol’ son of a gun that no human kin do somethin’ and he don’t sleep easy ner swaller his grub right, till he makes yuh out a liar. I knowed it and when I pulled out last evenin’, I was plumb skeered he’d do somethin’ like that. If he’s killed, Hank, I’m tuh blame. How long has he bin gone?”

“They pulled out two hours afore daylight,” came the reluctant answer.

“They?”

“Pete went with him.”

“Pete?” Tad’s lips pursed in a silent whistle. “Tell me about it, Hank,” he finished grimly.

“The boy showed up afore midnight. Seems like he’d got word somehow, while he was at Deer Lodge, that Fox was cleanin’ me out. That’s why he run away. He made me and Ma tell him the hull thing, how the cattle had bin run off and how Fox is aimin’ tuh jerk the rope tight next week when that note falls due. Then he takes my gun and ’lows he’s startin’ then and there fer town. He’s goin’ tuh kill Fox like he’d kill a mad dog and Ma’s tears ner my arguments don’t stop him.

“‘Hold on a minute, Pete,’ calls a voice from the door. There stands Shorty, grinnin’ pleasant like. Tut up that gun and listen fer a spell while we talks sense. Killin’ Fox won’t git yuh nothin’ but a hangin’ bee. But you and me, barrin’ accidents and good shootin’ on the part uh the LF polecats, kin git them cattle back. Say we throws our hulls on yore top-water hosses, swims that crick and kinda give them gents a su’prise party?’”

Hank’s hands went out in a gesture of helplessness. Tad nodded understandingly.

“Shorty’s jest plumb fool enough tuh win out, too,” he mused aloud.

“Pete ’lowed that the swimmin’ was a cinch,” admitted Hank. “But then, mebbeso he was jest lyin’ tuh make me and Ma feel easy. Say, what’s come over Joe Kipp? He acts plumb queer. Yuh don’t reckon the ol’ feller’s losin’ his mind, do yuh?”

“Noooo. Don’t know as I’d go so fur as tuh say Kipp was gittin’ weedy. Fact is, I think he’s jest kinda pullin’ hisse’f together. Yeah. Supposin’ we eases ourselves over to the house, Hank? My belly’s so empty that the chaw uh terbaccer I swallered tuh keep from goin’ tuh sleep, is rattlin’ around in my stummick like a bronc in a corral.”

On the way to the cabin, Hank told Tad how Shorty had excused his partner’s absence.

“The wust of it is, Tad, she believes it. Said I was a kinderd spirit and a whisky soak when I tries tuh explain that Shorty was jest funnin’. I thought fer a minute that she was goin’ tuh haze me into the blacksmith shop again, dang it.”

Hank grinned twistedly.

“I’ll wring that danged li’l’ rooster’s neck when I ketches him,” grinned Tad.

“He ’lowed he was breakin’ even fer that windy yuh told Ma about a hoss throwin’ him and givin’ him the black eye.”

During breakfast, Tad caught Ma Basset’s gaze fixed on him, and he felt his ears growing red. No doubt the woman thought that bringing Kipp back with him was some sort of drunken whim. Moreover, Kipp’s odd behavior did much to convince Ma that the sheriff was also under the influence of liquor. Tad breathed a sigh of relief when they were safely back at the corral and Kipp had caught a fresh horse.

“I’d like tuh go along, Joe,” said Hank. “Them’s my cattle, yuh know and it’s no more’n right that I should be goin’.”

“It’s a one-man job, Hank. There’ll like as not be some powder burnt. Yuh don’t want tuh leave no widder behind yuh. In case I don’t come back, here’s the combination to my safe.”

He handed Hank a slip of paper on which were some penciled figures.

“In the safe is a sealed envelope addressed to you. It has some papers which will be uh use to yuh. But it ain’t tuh be opened till I’m dead, savvy?”

Hank nodded, then looked at Tad. “Reckon I’d best tell Joe about Pete?” Tad pondered this a moment, then: “Might as well. Can’t do no harm, Hank.”

“Pete’s aimin’ tuh swim the river from yon side uh the Narrers and come into the Pocket, Joe.”

“——!” Kipp’s eyes filled with pain.

“He’ll never make it, Hank. Even if he crosses, there’s a man watching the trail from the river. He’ll be killed, shore.”

“Then I reckon I’ll be goin’ along with yuh, Kipp,” said Tad. “Shorty went with Pete. If Shorty gits killed, all —— can’t stop me till I downs every last man that’s mixed up in this. All of them, sabe?” Tad’s eyes had gone hard as ice. The good-natured expression had given way to hard, grim lines.

“I reckon,” said Kipp slowly, meeting Tad’s gaze without flinching, “that I sabe, Ladd. That bein’ the case, I want that you should come along with me.”

They saddled in silence. Tadd slipped a Winchester into the saddle scabbard and emptied a box of 30–40 shells into his pocket.

“I told Fox I’d meet him at the lone cottonwood to deliver those cattle, Hank,” said Tad with a grimness that gave the statement the tone of a threat. “That’ll be Sunday noon. I reckon you’ll be there. So-long till then.”

“Remember the paper in the safe,” Kipp reminded Hank. “It’ll explain a heap that I reckon yo’re a big enough man tuh understand, Hank.”

Without another word, Tad and Kipp rode away, leaving Hank standing in the gateway, scratching his head in a puzzled manner.

“Hank Basset,” called Ma from the doorway, some time later. “Whatever in the world are yuh standin’ there in the road fer? A person ’ud think you’d jest said good-by to yore last friend, a standin’ around like a hoot owl with yore hat in yore hand, gawkin’.”

“Last friend?” muttered Hank, as he turned to the house. “I don’t know but what she done guessed it right. The hull danged business has got beyond me, dad gum it.”

“If you bin hittin’ that bottle,” warned Ma, her voice firm with determination, “you’ll put in the rest of the week at the blacksmith shop. I’ll have no drunken rowdies set foot over my door sill.”

Ten feet from the cabin, Hank halted. He saw Ma Basset holding the bottle of snake-bite medicine to the light. Memory of Shorty’s healthy-sized drinks came to Hank’s mind.

“A good three inches below my last mark,” he heard his wife mutter. “I suspected as much.”

With a groan, Hank turned and with dragging steps, entered the blacksmith shop.

“Beat her to it that time,” he muttered, seating himself on a keg of horse shoes and biting off a corner of plug tobacco.

VIII

“As well marked as a prize-winnin’ white-face, and as quick actin’ as a top-cuttin’ hoss,” was Shorty Carroway’s mental summing up of young Pete Basset. “He’d orter act plumb purty in a scrap, be it six-gun er knock down and drag out.”

Nor was Shorty far from being wrong in his estimation of his companion. Straight-featured, clean-limbed, his clear eyes honest and alight with the fire of unspoiled youth, the son of Hank Basset sat his horse with a careless grace that marked him a born horseman. Even college had left him unspoiled by the flattery and idolatry that is the unmaking of many a crack athlete.

“I don’t much like the idea of you getting mixed up in this mess, Carroway,” he said in a troubled tone. “It’s really not your scrap, you know, and there’s going to be some nasty battling before it’s over. It sure is white of you, and darn few men would do what you’re doing now, even friends of long standing. Hang it all, we’re little more than strangers to you and it’s not fair to——”

“Fergit it, Pete,” grinned Shorty, reddening. “Strangers? I reckon not. There’s some folks that I’ve knowed since I was hock high to a cotton-tail rabbit, that’s more strangers tuh me than yore paw and mammy. They done took me and my Tad pardner into the house like we was kin folks. Dang it, I ain’t et such grub since I was a yearlin’.

“Anyhow, my reasons fer takin’ chips in this here game is sorter vary and sundry, as the feller says. Tad’s bin abusin’ me scan’lous and I aim tuh git even. That’s one reason. Then, this here Fox hombre is nacherally goin’ tuh rear up and fall over backward on hisse’f when we brings out this herd. Thirdly and mostly, I’m sp’ilin’ tuh lay hands on this here gent which goes by the handle uh Black Jack, thereby completin’ a job uh manhandlin’ which I was forced tuh quit sudden like onct at the LF wagon.

“Again, I’m honin’ fer tuh show yore daddy that there’s one human besides his son which kin bust that Missouri wide open. All uh which, amigo, downs ary argument on yore part. Ain’t it about time we was gittin’ to that place acrost from the Narrers? We bin ridin’ right along since we crossed on the ferry and she’s nigh dark.”

“We’re about opposite the upper end now, Shorty. See that high-cut bank below the first little bend? That’s her. That lighter brown strip is their trail where they water the stock. We’re a mile above, rough figuring. That means we’ll drift to that trail nicely, starting here. We’ll angle it as much as we can. Current’s swift and the channel lays full against the cut back on the other side.

“See that sharp pinnacle? Well that’s the point we’ll head for. It’ll show plain against the sky when the moon rises. Barring undercurrents and snags, we stand a fighting chance of hitting it. If we don’t, it’s thumbs down for us. That cliff is ten miles to the lower end and not six inches toe-hold in the ten miles. I wish you wouldn’t tackle it, pardner.”

Shorty shook his head and, following Pete’s actions, dismounted and unsaddled. Hobbles were adjusted and the two partook of a meager repast of jerky and canned tomatoes. Brush screened them from the opposite bank as they squatted beneath a big cottonwood and waited for darkness and a rising moon.

Already, the approaching danger was fast cementing a strong friendship between these two. As men will do on such occasions, they exchanged confidences, swapped stories and lighted their cigarets from the same match.

Pete’s quick movements and the dancing light in his gray eyes betrayed the nervous tension within. Shorty showed not a trace of whatever emotion lay behind his soft-spoken banter. Though a scant ten years older than his companion, Shorty had been well tutored in the school of hard knocks. Like his partner, Tad, he was an orphan, range-reared and self reliant. The only living thing that he was afraid of was a woman. The more beautiful, the more fear she instilled in the heart of the little cowpuncher. Danger merely quickened his pulse as strong drink affects a man unused to it. Yet he masked his feelings as effectively as the seasoned gambler hides four aces. It was as if risking his life was an everyday occurrence, all in a day’s work.

Twilight deepened into night and a white moon pushed itself over the ragged skyline. A horned owl hoo-hooed in the cottonwoods. The timid white-tail deer bedded down in their red willow thicket. Back in the brakes, a wolf gave voice to a long-drawn howl. A ripple showed on the smooth surface of the water as a muskrat swam from its hole in the clay bank. Plunk! A beaver tail slapped the water with such abruptness that Shorty’s hand dropped to his gun.

“I reckon we might as well tackle it,” said Pete quietly, getting to his feet.

They saddled in silence, with great care. Cinches were left loose. Hackamores took the place of bridles. Boots and chaps were rolled in a neat bundle and tied to the backs of the saddles. Shorty bit off a large chew of plug and swung into the saddle.

“There’s no way of keeping you from coming along, Shorty?”

“Not nary, Pete. I done hired out fer a tough hand and I plays my string out. Chaw?”

He held out the gnawed plug.

“Thanks, but I never chaw, pardner.”

“Then don’t never learn. I gotta own up though, that there’s nothin’ quite so plumb downright soothin’ as a man-size hunk uh plug at a time like this. It’s as intoxicatin’ as a shot uh tea is to a ol’ maid school-marm. Take the lead, pard. I’m follerin’ clost behind. The sooner yuh starts, the better. These dad-gummed mosquiters is shore a-eatin’ off me fierce.”

Pete in the lead rode out on a sand bar and his horse waded out into the stream. The swift-flowing water swirled and eddied about the animal’s legs.

“That high peak yonder, Shorty,” he called softly as his horse hit swimming water. “Right yuh are, Peter.”

No further word was spoken. Shorty set his jaws as the swift current swept his horse downstream. Easily, he slipped from the saddle and with a hand holding to his horse’s mane, swam alongside. The water was cool enough to freshen his tired nerves. He grinned to himself and jerked his hat down on his head with his free hand. Ahead of him he could see Pete and his horse. Both horses swam high in the water.

Suddenly, like a bobbing cork pulled by a string, Pete and his mount were sucked beneath the surface.

“Undercurrent,” muttered Shorty as he filled his lungs with a deep breath of air.

Then he and his horse went under as if drawn by an invisible hand. In reality but a moment, yet it seemed an hour to the cowpuncher, and they again came to the top.

“All right?” called a voice from ahead.

“Settin’ purty,” he called back.

The horses were blowing softly with a rattling noise. Unexcited, swimming stoutly, they battled against the current. Shorty splashed water against the side of his horse’s head to guide the animal a point downstream. Once more he was heading straight for the sharp point that loomed black against the sky.

A dark, misshapen object bobbed up ahead. It was a big tree, half submerged, floating downstream. With swift, sure movements, Shorty swung his swimming horse to face straight up-stream against the current.

“Easy now, ol’ hoss,” he murmured soothingly. “Jest kinda mark time fer a minute till yon snag drifts on to St. Louis. That’s the idee. Now she’s gone.”

And they were under way once more. Ahead, Pete was watching for snags and had worked his way back until he now clung to his horse’s tail. Behind him, Shorty was doing the same. A scant hundred feet ahead the black shadow of the bank rose ominously. Pete scanned the unbroken shadow for a trace of the trail.

Momentary panic clutched Pete. Where the trail should be, only a perpendicular wall showed. Either he was above or below the trail that meant escape from the treacherous river. Then the panic passed, giving way to dogged, unyielding determination. He dared not call out to his companion for fear of being overheard by the men they sought. He swung his horse to breast the current and waited for the coming of Shorty.

A moment and the little puncher was alongside, careful to keep his distance lest the horses paw each other. The animals were breathing hard now. It had been a desperately hard swim. How long their strength and courage would hold out was a problem that might easily mean death to men and beasts.

“Missed ’er,” whispered Pete hoarsely. “We got to chance it downstream, I reckon.”

Swimming squarely against the current, their horses had been losing ground slowly. Shorty nodded and, gripping his floating saddle strings, pulled himself alongside the neck of his horse. He deftly slipped free his rope strap and flipped the end of his lariat to Pete. Pete caught it and with a nod, slipped the end under his armpits and knotted it. Shorty passed his loop over his head and under his arms, then drew it tight. Now, if one of them should find footing along that treacherous bank, he could save his companion. On the other hand, if one of them went under, the other would meet the same fate.

“Both or neither,” explained Shorty in a grim whisper, then swung his horse downstream. “Here goes nothin’.”

Two pairs of bloodshot, straining eyes swept the bank that slipped past so swiftly. Shorty now was in the lead, Pete ten feet behind, the slack of the rope coiled in his hand to keep from tangling. Both men were taking it with deadly calm as they fought their battle against the death that lurked in the muddy, swirling water.

Suddenly Shorty’s horse ceased swimming. The animal’s legs were swept downstream and he floated.

“Gone belly-up, Pete,” Shorty grunted.

“Look out!” called Pete in a hoarse whisper, as his horse lunged forward in the water in an effort to climb on top of the floating horse.

Now indeed, the situation was critical. Shorty ducked beneath the striking forefeet of Pete’s horse and with every ounce of his strength, jerked at his hackamore rope. Pete did likewise. The melee of struggling horses and men drifted apart. To the left, a narrow ribbon of light cut the dark wall of the bank.

“The trail, thank ——,” muttered Pete and, with a jerk that seemed to tear the ligaments in his arm, wrenched at the hackamore rope. An agonizing moment, then his horse lunged shoreward and found footing.

The weight of Shorty’s horse, swimming once more, hindered the puncher greatly as he fought the current, his eyes fixed on that strip of light that meant safety. Loath to let loose his horse, he fought off the temptation to turn the animal loose. The horse was becoming panicky now, snorting and lunging, pawing at the man ahead of him in the water. Flinty, steel-shod hoofs broke the water a scant two feet behind Shorty’s head.

Pete, in the saddle now, dallied the slack rope around his saddle horn. His stockinged heels pressed the heaving sides of his tired horse.

Back in the water, Shorty felt the rope beneath his arms go tight. Both his hands grasped the hackamore rope of his struggling horse. The noose beneath his arms tightened till it seemed to be cutting him in two. He clamped his jaws and gripped the hackamore rope. His arms seemed to be stretching until they loosened in the sockets. Seconds seemed eternity. Then he felt himself being dragged along the clay bank of the trail that led upward. He dimly saw his horse flounder ashore and stand with wide-spread legs and lowered head on the bank. With a grunt of utter relief he let go the hackamore rope.

“Stick ’em up!” bawled a hoarse voice from above.

A spurt of flame and the roar of a gun, then Pete’s voice, trembling a bit.

“Got him, Shorty. Are you all right?”

A violent choking, gasping sound from Shorty and Pete, gun in hand, cast off the rope and, leaping to the ground, slid down the trail to his companion’s side.

“Good gosh, man! What’s wrong?” he whispered, loosening the rope and peering into Shorty’s writhing features.

Shorty scrambled to his feet, reaching for his gun.

“My chaw. Swallered ’er. Let’s go,” he gasped, and lunged forward to throw himself upon a dark blot that moved along the bank.

The dull thud of a gun barrel sounded as it struck something.

“Your shot jest winged him, Pete. He’s out fer a spell now. Gimme the rope and we’ll hog-tie him. Then let’s git outa here.”

“Yo’re covered, —— yuh!” called a hidden voice. “Plug ’em if they make a move, Bill. “Stick them —— hands in the air.”

Two rapid shots cut the darkness and Shorty felt the air of a lead slug pass his cheek.

“Whupped!” he grunted and raised his hands. “I’ve laid down my hand, feller,” he called. “Foller suit, Pete, they got us foul.”

IX

A killer is, with mighty few exceptions, a killer because of his own desires. Black Jack, foreman for the LF, was no exception. He did not even, secretly or openly, offer the plea that he was a victim of circumstance. He had killed men. He would kill more men. His past was a sealed book, his future a gamble and thus he met each day as it came. Making no prayer, he branded as weak any man who believed in a God. A half-breed, and the blend was dangerously bad for he had inherited the baser traits of both races.

Now, as he looked along the barrel of his Winchester to find Pete Basset at the end of it, his white teeth flashed in a smile that was unpleasant to see. The bushy black beard hid the cruel lines about his mouth, but the narrow slits of black that were his eyes, glittered as the moonlight struck them. A brown finger pressed the trigger, then paused uncertainly.

The taint in his mixed blood, thrown back to some breech-clouted ancestor, now stayed his hand. He hated Pete Basset and a bullet between the boy’s eyes would be too mercifully quick an end. His trigger finger eased off.

Pete Basset, shocked and not a little disappointed at Shorty’s easy surrender, hesitated uncertainly, gun lowered, making no move to raise his hands nor return the fire. He realized with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, that Black Jack and his men were well hidden and on higher ground that prevented a rush. He and Shorty, on the other hand, stood in plain view. Resistance meant death. Shorty had shown judgment, not a yellow streak. He dropped his gun and raised his hands.

Shorty, the lariat still in his hands, elevated his arms skyward and grinned weakly. The soft drip-drip of water from their soaked clothes on to the hard clay was the only sound that broke the quiet of the night.

Behind the willow clump, Black Jack lay aside his Winchester and drew his .45.

“The little ’un brung a rope, Bill,” he announced in a jeering tone as he stepped into the open. “Mebbeso it’ll come in right handy to string ’em up. Ketch ropes is scarce and hangin’ a man spoils a rope fer use. Bad luck to use one that’s snaked a man tuh ——.”

Followed by another man, he stepped carefully down the incline.

“Howdy, Black Whiskers,” said Shorty glibly. “When yuh go through my pockets after you’ve made a corpse outa me, yuh’ll find four bits in my off flank pocket. Buy yorese’f a shave with it.”

Holding his gun in careless readiness, Black Jack stepped closer, still on the incline. Shorty noticed that the single action gun was not cocked but that the breed’s thumb was on the hammer.

“If yuh got ary more comical sayin’s in yore system,” he sneered, git shet of ’em. I understand as how hangin’ kinda interferes with a man’s voice. Bill, tie Basset up. I’ll tend to this mouthy one.”

Black Jack’s hand slipped hipward and produced a pair of steel handcuffs. He was clear of the incline now and on a level with Shorty, standing but a couple of feet distant.

“Jest lay aside yore hangin’ rope, little man, and hold yore lily white paws out fer a nice pair uh bracelets.”

Shorty’s right hand flicked forward from the wrist with a deft, swift movement. The round noose shot out, settled, and tightened with such abruptness that Black Jack was caught off his guard. Shorty hurled himself backward, jerking the breed from his feet. The .45 exploded harmlessly.

Pete threw himself forward as Bill shot. The youth’s hand clutched the gun on the ground and, rolling over with a catlike twist, he fired at the shadowy form that came through the air at him like a mountain lion springing on its prey. His shot missed Bill by inches and their bodies met in a thudding crash to writhe and twist in locked embrace.

Shorty’s wet socks slipped on the water-soaked clay bank as he jerked the rope. Black Jack, the shining handcuffs now a nasty weapon, was upon him, the steel manacles crashing full into Shorty’s face. A grunt of pain and the little puncher’s hand gripped the black whiskers and jerked. His other fist swung at the man’s jaw.

Again and again the steel cuffs clinked and clashed against the cowpuncher’s face. They came away each time speckled with blood. Shorty, on his back underneath the breed, pulled the harder on the black whiskers and his free arm went around the sinewy brown neck. Muscles flexed and tightened like a steel-jawed trap and the blows from the handcuffs became less effective as Shorty slowly pulled the breed down to him.

Then, with a writhing, twisting movement used by professional wrestlers, the little puncher slid from under the other’s bulk, still holding the black head in the crook of his arm. A short arm jab, vicious and effective, caught Black Jack’s jaw, bringing a grunt of pain from the breed.

From the shelter of the high bank moved the man whom Shorty had knocked out with his gun. The man was crawling toward Shorty and Black Jack, his eyes on Shorty’s gun that lay close by. His hand closed over the weapon and he sprang forward, his right arm dangling awkwardly at his side, the gun in his left hand.

Shorty saw him and with a terrific effort rolled over, dragging the striking, snarling half-breed with him. The wounded man, cursing methodically to fight off pain and dizziness, stumbled forward and flung himself on top the two. His gun thudded against Shorty’s head. Once, twice, three times. Shorty’s grip on the black-bearded head relaxed and he went limp, his bleeding, mangled features ghastly in the light of the white moon.

Pete and Bill, panting and fighting like wild beasts, fought without rules nor thought of fair tactics. Not a word passed their clamped jaws as they rolled to the water’s edge and under the feet of Shorty’s horse.

The horse, frightened, lashed out at the struggling forms. A shod hoof struck Bill in the ribs and with a groan, he relaxed his grip. Rolling free of the horse’s flying hoofs, Pete staggered to his feet, aiming a kick at Bill’s face. The stocking-clad heel caught Bill on the cheek. With a last effort, the outlaw clutched Pete’s leg and wrapped his arms about it, jerking Pete off balance and bringing him to the ground.

Black Jack, his breath coming in sobbing gasps, had regained his feet. He saw Pete lurch to a sitting posture.

“Here!” called the wounded man and thrust the .45 into Black Jack’s hand. “Finish the ——!”

The half-breed jumped forward. The next instant the gun barrel crashed against Pete’s head and the fight was over.

X

“Ladd,” said Joe Kipp, breaking a long silence that followed their departure from the Basset ranch, “how long was you at the lone cottonwood afore yuh let me see yuh?”

“Mebbeso half an hour, Kipp. I laid in the brush watchin’ yuh.”

“Figgered yuh must ’a’ bin cold-trailin’ me er you’d uh ketched up with me long afore yuh did. I’d kinda like tuh know jest how yuh figger me out.”

“That’s a hard question, pardner. Dang me if I kin read yore hand even when I’ve had a look at yore hole card. The sign all says that yo’re playin’ a double game. Yet I’d shore hate tuh think it.”

“I’m obliged, Ladd. I hope tuh clear some things up afore many hours. Supposin’ I tell yuh that by comin’ along with me now, yo’re hinderin’ instead uh helpin’ things?”

“’Twouldn’t keep me from comin’, Kipp. Not when my Shorty pardner is mixed up in the deal. I aim tuh see it through, regardless.”

Tad’s tone and the look in his eyes forbade further argument.

“You heerd me and Black Jack talkin’?”

“Only some, when yuh raised yore voices. I heered enough tuh sabe that you was aimin’ tuh lay fer Fox, that was about all.”

“You got reason tuh want Fox killed. Yet yuh kept me from doin’ it. Why?”

“Because, like I said, I knowed you wa’n’t that sort uh man and it wouldn’t he’p none tuh kill Fox from the brush. I reckon yo’re goin’ tuh clear up things if yuh kin and I’ll lend a hand if the play comes up. I hope yuh come out winners, Kipp.”

“Yet yuh won’t trust me tuh go alone?”

“Not when Shorty’s needin’ me, no.” Again an uncomfortable silence fell over them, unbroken till they reached the edge of the bad-lands.

“There’ll be a man on guard farther along this trail,” said Kipp. “If I ride up alone, he’ll let me pass. If you come along, there’ll be shootin’ and we’ll lose a horse apiece and go back afoot. Will yuh trust me to go that far by myself? I’ll signal yuh from that bald knoll when I’ve cleared the trail.”

Tad pondered this for a long moment as he searched Kipp’s eyes. Apparently satisfied with what he read in the older man’s face, he nodded briefly.

“I’ll wait half an hour, Kipp. Then I’ll be comin’, regardless uh ary signal. Them that tries tuh stop me will find they got a game.”

Kipp nodded and, leaving Tad squatted on the ground rolling a cigaret, rode on.

Tad consulted a battered silver-cased watch and shoved it back in his overall pocket. A squint at the sun told him that dusk was but an hour distant. Smoke curling lazily from his nostrils, he watched Kipp out of sight.

Despite Kipp’s apparent duplicity, Tad liked the white-haired old man and felt certain that he was not being tricked. There had been an indefinable something in the sheriff’s eyes that puzzled Tad. He felt certain that whatever hold Fox and Black Jack had on Kipp, it must be a terrible one. He knew that Kipp’s momentary lapse of physical courage was a minor point. There was something far greater than any fear of physical pain that threatened the sheriff. Now Kipp was about to break that hold. What would be the outcome?

Thus pondering, Tad saw Kipp ride to the bare knoll and signal with his hat. Tad was on his feet and in the saddle before the hat quit waving. Across Tad’s saddle pommel lay his Winchester, a shell in the barrel, the hammer at half-cock.

Kipp met him, smiling thinly.

“Where’s the guard?” asked Tad. “Gagged and hog-tied in the brush yonder. He quit easy when I threw down on him. We’re safe now till we hit the river bottom. They only had one man on guard today. They bin brandin’, so the gent told me. We’ll take our time now. Dark’ll come on quick here in the cañons and we’ll slip into the Pocket afore they spot us.”

“How many men down there?”

“Hard tuh tell. Mebbe three-four. Mebbe so a dozen. They drift in and out. If they bin brandin’, like as not there’ll be half a dozen.”

Kipp led the way along the narrow trail that now led along the side of the shale cliff. Tad understood now why it required but one man to guard the trail. A single man could, by hiding behind the rimrock above, drop as many men as he had cartridges in his gun. If Kipp were bent on tricking him, now was his chance.

Tad felt a shiver pass along his spine, and glanced uneasily about him. Then he shifted his gun to cover Kipp, grimly determined to shoot if treachery showed in the shape any movement near the rimrock.

Kipp, turning in his saddle to address some remark, saw Tad’s gun covering him. The faint smile on the old officer’s lips could not hide the pain of humiliation in his eyes. Tad grinned uneasily but did not shift the position of his gun.

The sheriff faced forward once more, the remark he had been about to make unspoken. In the fading light, Tad gazed at the tufts of snow-hued hair beneath the battered hat. The shoulders beneath Kipp’s faded jumper sagged as if beneath the weight of some great load.

“——,” muttered Tad, and shifted his Winchester so that the weapon rested across his saddle, muzzle toward the cliff.

“I’ll borry the use of a chaw if yuh got ary handy,” he called.

In the pocket of his chaps was a plug, but he somehow felt ashamed of mistrusting Kipp and wanted the old fellow to know that he was no longer covered.

Kipp tossed him a piece of tobacco, noticing the while that Tad’s Winchester now pointed in another direction. He grinned understandingly and they rode on down the steep trail.

Dark fell like a black blanket, to be followed by the pale moonlight. From the river bottom, miles below, the faint sound of shots echoed, reechoed, and died away, leaving a silence charged with a sinister foreboding that caused Tad Ladd’s eyes to narrow dangerously.

“Can’t we make better time down this —— trail, Kipp?” he growled. “I don’t like them shots.”

“Goin’ faster might mean a fall, Ladd. The more haste, the less speed, right now. We can’t do them boys much good if we gits crippled up.”

Tad, boiling with impatience, realized the truth of Kipp’s assertion. It seemed hours before the trail widened and they found themselves on level ground in the deep shadow of towering cottonwoods.

The bawling of a cow, hunting her calf. The distant crack of brush as a white-tail buck broke cover. The mournful call of a horned owl. Then silence.

“The corrals is nigh a mile from here,” whispered Kipp. “The cabins lays beyond them a hundred yards. It might be wise fer me tuh go on alone. They know that Pete Basset broke out and there may be a man er two scattered along the trail. Two of us ’ud look queer. If I was tuh go on alone, I’d sorter spring ary traps they had set fer visitors, savvy, and not git shot. Trust me?”

“Them shots we heered, Kipp. I don’t like tuh set here doin’ nothin’ while mebbeso Shorty’s needin’ me bad.”

“If he was needin’ yuh tuh help out ary gun scrap, there’d be more shots. If that shootin’ was sign of a fight, the fight’s done fit and won long ago. Best let me go on alone. Iffen I gits in a tight, I’ll shoot and you kin come a foggin’. Gimme half a hour. Then come on keerful.”

If Kipp was bent on leading him into a trap, thought Tad, he would have done so before they quit the narrow trail.

“I’ll chance it, Sheriff,” he replied.

Kipp nodded briefly and in a moment was lost to sight along the trail that faded into the tall trees.

The sheriff’s horse made but little noise as it traveled along the trail. Minutes passed and his coming was not challenged. Then without warning, a sickening crash of breaking timber under the horse. Kipp and his mount dropped out of sight in the thinly covered pit. Snorting with fear, the horse went down, Kipp striving desperately to free himself from the falling animal. The sheriff’s head struck something solid and he lost consciousness.

Two heavily armed men stepped from a clump of choke-cherry brush.

“I’m right glad that —— deadfall ketched somethin’,” grinned one of them. “I shore sweat a plenty diggin’ her. Wonder how this gent got past the guard.”

“I ketched sight uh his face as he dropped in,” growled the other. “It was Kipp. That’s how-come he got down the trail without bein’ drilled. Hope it didn’t bust the hoss’s leg.”

“Ner Kipp’s neck. Black Jack’ll raise —— if he gits killed and a stranger gits put in the sheriff office. Fox’d have a shore tough time of it if a hard man was put in Kipp’s place. Lower the ladder and we’ll look over the damage.”

“I’d give somethin’ tuh know what they got on old Kipp,” muttered the other as he lowered a ladder into the pit.

One of them went down the ladder. A moment later a match sputtered and lit up the inky blackness of the hole.

“Kipp’s knocked out and the hoss is good as ever,” he called in guarded tones. “Better shove down the gangplank so we kin lead the critter up.”

A cleated plank runway was lowered and after some minutes of work the frightened horse was led to solid ground. Kipp, still unconscious and bleeding from a nasty scalp wound, was carried out.

“You lead his hoss. I’ll pack him across my saddle.”

Thus Joe Kipp was carried to the lighted cabin where Black Jack sat on the edge of a bunk smoking cigarets and taunting the two prisoners who were on the dirt floor, bound hand and foot, their backs against a log wall.

“Where’d yuh git him?” asked Black Jack.

“He rode into the pit.”

Black Jack picked up a water bucket and threw the contents roughly into Kipp’s face. The sheriff groaned and opened his eyes. The breed stooped and plucked the .45 from Kipp’s scabbard, then resumed his seat on the bunk. Behind his half-closed eyes lay some nervous tension and his brows knitted in a scowl as he watched Kipp sputter and struggle to a sitting posture on the floor.

Shorty and Pete exchanged a quick look but made no sound. Both were disheveled and Shorty’s face was swollen and caked with dried blood. Yet his eyes blazed defiantly and about his bruised lips played a sardonic smile. Pete, erect and defiant, strained cautiously at the ropes that bound his arms. Both the prisoners divided their glances between Black Jack and Kipp.

“Where’s Fox?” snapped Black Jack.

“He ain’t dead, if that’s what yo’re drivin’ at,” returned Kipp.

Black Jack seemed relieved at hearing this bit of news.

“Miss him?” he sneered. “Er lose yore guts at the last minute?”

“Neither.” Kipp was gathering his addled wits. “How long have I bin knocked out?”

“Ten minutes, rough guessin’,” grinned one of the men who had taken him from the pit.

Kipp, thinking of Tad, calculated swiftly. Fifteen minutes had passed since the two had parted. That meant that in fifteen minutes more, Tad would be riding along that trail into a similar trap perhaps.

“Got ary more uh them —— holes around here fer a man tuh fall into?” he growled, feeling gingerly of his head.

Black Jack laughed harshly.

“Nope. One’s a-plenty, I reckon. How come yuh never lit no signal fire from the rimrock like yuh was told to?”

“Fergot.”

Kipp felt somewhat relieved to learn that Tad would not be trapped as he had been.

“Fergot, eh?” Black Jack sneered. “Mebbe. Mebbe not. Looks tuh me like you was aimin’ tuh sneak in and take a look around. You bin weakenin’ fer some time. When I left yuh last night, you was doin’ some nasty talkin’. ’Lowed you was through with me and Fox. By ——, I’ll see about that! Afore yo’re a hour older, I’ll have yuh messed up so —— tight you won’t never make a peep. See them two skunks settin’ yonder? They’re cashin’ in their chips tonight, savvy? And yo’re the gent tuh do the job. Then yuh kin go back to Hank Basset and be —— to yuh. Go back and tell him how yuh hung his son and the nosey runt of a would-be gunman that come in here with him! Tell Basset that. I’ll learn yuh to lay down on me!”

The breed was literally shaking with rage now. His ugly lips twisted in a leering grin.

“I aimed tuh shoot them two and dump ’em in the river. Hangin’ beats that all tuh ——, though. ’Specially with Sheriff Kipp tuh lead their hosses out from under ’em and leave ’em danglin’ to a cottonwood limb.”

“——!” said Kipp hoarsely, reading full well the cruel cunning in Black Jack’s smoldering eyes. “You won’t! If ary harm come to them two boys, you’ll hang fer it. I’ll hang with ’em afore I’ll mix up in such a low-down murder. I told yuh I’d come to the place where I was quittin’. I meant what I said. I’m givin’ you a chanct that you don’t noways deserve. I’m givin’ you twenty-four hours tuh quit the country. After that time, I’m goin’ after yuh and by ——, I’ll put yuh back in the pen where yuh belong.”

Black Jack, calm again, sneered insultingly into the face of the sheriff.

“I reckon yo’re drunk. Yo’re fergettin’ who you are, ain’t yuh?”

“No,” said Kipp evenly, “I ain’t fergittin’. I’ve left papers behind me which tell the whole —— story. If I don’t come back in twenty-four hours there’ll be a hundred men in here to see what’s become uh me and to wipe out as low-down nest uh snakes as ever lived. I never lied tuh you. I ain’t lyin’ now. I’m givin’ you a fighting’ chanct tuh make a getaway. Take it er leave it.”

“You mean yo’re double-crossin’ me and Fox?” said Black Joe, his words falling slowly.

“I mean that I’m wipin’ my slate clean afore I resigns as sheriff. Wipin’ it clean, regardless uh what it costs. I’m givin’ you a chanct tuh leave me and these two boys here and git out. Do yuh take it?”

Kipp’s eyes were fixed on a battered alarm clock. The half hour was up. Tad would be starting. Even if he had a gun to fire a signal would only be putting Black Jack on guard. Tad would come cautiously. Fate would decide.

A calculating gleam flashed in the breed’s eyes. Documentary evidence to a criminal is a dangerous weapon. Dead men may tell no tales, but a written statement is as a voice from beyond the grave.

“Looks like yuh hold all the winnin’ cards this deal,” he said flatly. “Yuh shore out-figgered Fox when yuh planted them papers in yore safe tuh cover yore trail. I suppose yore friend Hank Basset holds the combination.”

It was a shrewd bit of calculating and Black Jack’s acting was without fault. He was playing for the highest stakes a man may wager: Life and freedom. Never did a gambler play more shrewdly.

Kipp, physically and mentally worn to the breaking point, was caught off guard.

“Yes, and Hank’s the man that’ll see justice done. I——”

Black Jack’s ugly laugh caught the sheriff up short. Too late, he realized the mistake he had made.

“Bill,” ordered the breed quickly, “take a man and ketch the fastest mounts in the remuda. Ride tuh town and bust open that cracker-box safe. Bring all the papers that’s in it. Tell Fox tuh play safe fer a spell. Tell him that Alder Gulch’ll be needin’ a new sheriff. Kipp’s dead.”

Bill and another man slipped outside and closed the door behind them. There now remained but two outlaws besides Black Jack. One of them was in a corner on a bunk, moaning from the pain of the broken arm Pete Basset had given him.

Where was Tad? That was the sole thought in Joe Kipp’s mind now. The departure of Bill and the other man lessened the odds.

“Better hog-tie the blattin’ old fool,” suggested Black Jack a moment later to the man who squatted against the closed door, a .45 in his hand.

“Lemme roll a smoke first,” requested Kipp, reaching for tobacco, hoping to delay things till Tad showed.

The man who had gotten to his feet hesitated.

“Tie him, I said. Smoke be——”

Kipp leaped forward. A clubbed gun caught the old officer across the jaw, whirling him about. Another blow from the man’s gun while Black Jack looked on in scowling approval. Kipp sank limply to the floor.

“Neat work. Now tie him afore he comes to. I’ll learn him what happens tuh them that loses their guts in this game.”

XI

“Half a hour and nary a sign uh Kipp.”

Tad shoved his watch back in his overall pocket and swung into the saddle. He mentally berated himself for letting Kipp out of his sight. Here on strange ground, on a dangerous mission, he had thrown away his only vantage when he allowed the sheriff to go on alone. Kipp had as much as admitted that he had been playing a crooked game. What was to keep him from adding one more misdeed to those of the past?

A shot from the brush, well aimed, and no one the wiser. These LF men were playing a desperate game for big stakes. They would not hesitate to kill a cowpuncher to gain their ends and avoid detection. Capture, for them, meant life imprisonment. Kipp admitted being on friendly terms with them. His every action showed plainly that this was not the sheriff’s first trip into the Pocket.

With these annoying thoughts to bear him company, Tad rode on, rode with a .45 in his hand and his eyes scanning every blurred shadow beneath the cottonwoods. The big hand that held the gun did not shake. There was not a trace of fear nor weakening in the keen eyes that swept the trail ahead. He faced his future without flinching, with splendid disregard of the heavy odds against him.

Years before, Goliad and the Alamo had known such men. They came from that heroic stock that followed Moses Austin to the Brazos River. No braver men ever lined sights amid spattering bullets than these Texans. So, as his sires had faced their enemies, so now did this son of Texas ride his trail.

The ears of his horse twitched forward. The animal halted and Tad was on the ground, crouched in the animal’s shadow. Ahead in the trail gaped the pit that had trapped Kipp. On the edge of the black hole lay a hat. Kipp’s battered old felt.

A moment’s cautious search proved the pit empty. Tad left his horse in the brush, removed his spurs and chaps, and, Winchester ready, slipped on afoot, avoiding the main trail as much as possible.

Voices and the creak of saddle leather. Tad crouched in the shadow to put the approaching riders against the skyline. He could hear them talking now. Bill and his companion, bound for town. They spoke in low tones, barely audible to the listener.

“Black Jack’s carryin’ this too —— far tuh suit me, Bill. I draws the line at murder, sheriffs especially. Once clear uh these bad-lands, I’m quittin’ the flats. Kipp’s plumb right, he’s holdin’ a paw full uh jokers, even if he dies a-holdin’ ’em. No more breeds fer me. They’re too danged coldblooded. Wait a minute while I tighten my cinch. This hoss swells up like a poisoned pup when yuh saddle him.”

The two halted but a few feet from where Tad crouched. One of them swung to the ground.

“Supposin’ we skirt town complete, pardner?” suggested Bill. “If we warns Fox, we gotta go through with it er shoot it out with that buzzard. We know too danged much tuh be let run loose over the range. I ain’t cravin’ none tuh match myself with Luther Fox. He’s lightnin’ with a gun. Say we drifts east from the edge uh the Pocket?

“Let this spread hold the sack. Black Jack ner Fox wouldn’t consider us if they was in a tight. That breed ’ud kill us the same as he aims tuh kill Kipp and Pete Basset and that short waddie. Say, them two kin shore scrap, mister. Only fer Slim a-lendin’ a hand, me’n the Apache would uh bin whupped neat. My hat’s off to ’em. Dang me if I don’t hope they gits away.”

“Fat chance. The Injun is comin’ out in Black Jack. I wouldn’t give two-bits Mex. fer their chances.”

They moved on, leaving Tad grinning in the darkness. The thought of Shorty and the others being in danger but made the lanky puncher the more cool. He waited impatiently until the two riders were out of sight, then moved on at a swifter gait.

The lighted windows of the cabin showed ahead. Tad crept forward with the stealth of an Indian. A few moments and he was at one of the windows, peering inside the cabin.

Shorty, Pete, and Kipp sat side by side, propped against the wall, legs stretched out in front of them. Kipp’s head sagged forward on his chest for he was still unconscious.

In spite of the bruised and blood-caked condition of his face, it was visibly apparent that Shorty’s left cheek bulged with a huge wad of tobacco. Even as Tad looked, a brown stream shot forth from the bruised lips of the little puncher.

“Missed him, Pete,” he grinned. “Gotta raise my sights. The range is plumb long and that spider’s crawlin’ kinda zig-zag like he was dodgin’. Bet another nickel on the next shot.”

“Better put in the next few minutes sayin’ yore prayers, hombre,” said Black Jack, crossing to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee. “A man as near the end uh the trail as you gents are, had orter be lookin’ fer a shallow crossin’.”

“Injun,” said Shorty in his soft drawl, “when I’m cravin’ ary advice, I’ll ask fer it.”

Another brown stream that barely missed the breed’s boot.

“Owe yuh another nickel, Pete. That danged spider got plumb outa range. If yo’re honin’ tuh be of any he’p around here, Whiskers, herd that insect back this way.”

Pete Basset, marveling at the little cow puncher’s superb nerve, thrust aside his worries and smiled faintly. Even the guard at the door eyed Shorty with approval.

Slim, of the broken arm, groaned less loudly as he watched Shorty scan the dirt floor for another spider.

A queer lump rose in Tad’s throat as he looked at Shorty’s battered features and saw the split lips twist in a grin.

“The —— li’l’ ol’ game rooster,” mused the big puncher, racking his brain for a plan of attack.

Kipp groaned feebly and opened his eyes. Black Jack, a cup of coffee in his left hand, leered into the sheriff’s pain-shot eyes.

“Mebbe so that rap between the horns brung yuh around to some sense,” he said, fixing Kipp with narrowed gaze. “Had ary change uh mind while yuh was asleep?”

“No.”

“Yo’re forcin’ my hand, mind. I’ve gone too far tuh do any back-trailin’ in this game and you know it. I’m killin’ off these two gents because they know too much. They come a-huntin’ trouble and they got it, a hull bellyful. I sent word tuh Fox that you’d be killed. That was a lie. I’m keepin’ yuh here till that Basset deal is closed and I sell out tuh Fox. Then I’ll turn yuh loose, and me’n these boys is driftin’ to fresh range. I’m leavin’ yuh to settle with Fox if yuh got the guts tuh go through with it. I’ll be a long ways gone so yuh can’t do me no harm, but you kin make it hot fer Luther.”

Black Jack chuckled at the cleverness of his plan. He drained his coffee at a gulp.

“Want tuh be hung er shot, you two?” he asked the other two.

“Yonder comes another spider, Pete,” said Shorty, ignoring Black Jack. “What’s the odds I don’t hit ’im?”

But a moment before, while Black Jack was talking to Kipp, Shorty had looked up at the window and square into the eyes of his partner. Yet he had given no sign that he had seen Tad, save that his left eyelid had dropped in a covert wink. He did not glance again at the window lest he betray Tad’s presence. He guessed that Tad was alone and was waiting for the right moment to open the attack. Shorty felt sure that Black Jack would put up a fight, even if Tad’s gun covered him. He had seen men of Black Jack’s breed before.

Death, to the breed, would be preferable to capture. Slim could still use a gun and the guard would fight. The light would be shot out and Tad would not shoot into the darkened room lest he hit a friend. It was a situation that would require generalship.

“——, Black Jack,” put in the guard. “Hangin’s a lot uh bother. Let’s knock ’em on the head and throw ’em in the river. If their carcasses wash ashore, there’s no bullet holes in ’em and nobody tuh blame. They was drownded crossin’ the river, savvy?”

“Mebbe yo’re right. We’ll pack ’em to the river like they are. Time enough tuh cut the ropes off ’em when we’ve got ’em knocked out. Slim, keep a eye on the sheriff while we’re gone. I’ll pack the little ’un.”

Black Jack, his black eyes hard as flint, lips set in a thin line, stooped to lift Shorty.

A brown streak of tobacco juice shot out, catching the breed squarely in the eyes. With a howl of pain as the stinging nicotine blinded him, the outlaw leader sprang erect, hands to his eyes.

A shot, accompanied by tinkling glass. “Stick ’em up!” bawled Tad.

The man bending over Pete whirled, shooting from the hip at the window. Tad’s shot caught the outlaw in the shoulder, spinning him about.

“Watch the jasper on the couch, Tad!” yelled Shorty, rolling across the floor in twisting flops and striking the legs of Black Jack, who was groping for the table where the lamp stood. Cursing in a monotone, his eyes blinded and hot with pain, the half breed fell across Shorty’s form.

Tad, gun in hand, sprang through the doorway. Black Jack shot desperately at the least sound, and Tad felt the air of a passing bullet. Tad leaped forward, the high heel of his boot crunching the breed’s gun hand into the dirt. The small bones cracked sickeningly and Black Jack cursed as he groped for the gun with his left hand.

A streak of fire from the bunk. Slim’s bullet tore through the crown of Tad’s hat. Tad’s gun roared, tearing the .45 from Slim’s hand.

“Both wings busted,” snarled Slim, and followed the statement by a string of curses.

The other man was in a heap, whining and begging.

“Kill the yaller coyote,” yelled Slim. “Kill the howling ——! Fight, you —— polecat!”

Tad was on top of Black Jack now, his long arms swinging like flails as the breed fought like a trapped cougar. A terrific swing and the breed went limp.

The powder smoke was stifling. Every man’s ears rang from the roar of the big calibered six-shooters. Slim was shrieking curses and begging some one to kill the wounded outlaw who put up so tame a fight.

Tad cut Shorty’s ropes first.

“Thanks, Ox,” grinned the little puncher. “Gimme that rope and I’ll tie that Injun. Where’s yore men, big feller?”

“I come with Kipp. Quit a runnin’ off at the head, runt, and tie up that black-muzzled skunk afore he comes alive and makes me kill ’im.”

Pete and Kipp were quickly freed. They grinned their thanks and set to work silencing Slim and the other man.

“Pete,” grinned the jubilant Shorty, “meet up with my ol’ Tad pardner. Homelier’n a muley cow, but we can’t all of us be han’some. Yuh done got here jest about time, feller. The Injun was kinda goin’ on the notion that all good cow hands was dead ’uns and was rearin’ tuh convert me’n Pete. I owes Peter twenty cents, Taddie. Bein’ kinda nervous inside, I missed that —— spider every shot. I ain’t so good as I used tuh be at——”

“Fer gosh sake, dry up, runt,” grumbled Tad. “Yuh dad-gummed li’l locoed idjit. Snuk off on me and overmatched yorese’f, didn’t yuh? I’d orter ’a’ let yuh git yore needin’s.”

With a snort of disapproval, he turned to Kipp.

The sheriff had moved to the open doorway and was staring with thoughtful eyes into the night. He turned as Tad’s hand rested on his shoulder. Together they stepped outside.

“That —— hole ketched me, Ladd. The fall knocked me out and they had me foul when I come to. I done my best, which was a —— of a pore showin’.”

“No man kin do more’n his best, Joe. It’s over now, let’s fergit it.”

Tad shoved out his hand, but Kipp shook his head.

“It ain’t over fer me, Ladd. I got my work cut out fer me. When I’ve done that work, I’ll shake hands if yo’re still in the notion.”

“Meanin’ Fox and you locks horns?”

“Partly that. When we bring this herd up outa the brakes, Fox’ll know that his game is lost. It’ll be either run er shoot it out, and he ain’t the runnin’ kind. It’ll be me er him, that’s all. The range is too small tuh hold us both.”

Tad nodded.

“I’m layin’ my bets on you, Joe.”

“I’m obliged, pardner.”

They turned and entered the cabin.

There followed half an hour of cross-questioning the outlaw who had begged for mercy when he had been wounded. They learned that there were no more men to be accounted for. Tad told of the conversation he had overheard between Bill and his companion.

“Then we got clear trail ahead,” said Kipp. “Bill’ll pick up the gent at the rimrock, bein’ they’re sorter pardners. We might as well bed down and take it easy till mornin’. We’ll take turns standin’ guard. There’d orter be beds out under the trees so’s them as ain’t on guard kin rest. Come daylight, we’ll take the herd out and I’ll take the pris’ners tuh Hank’s place.”

This plan met with hearty approval. Not a man there but needed rest. Tad took first guard.

Black Jack, conscious now, had lapsed into a sullen silence. His black eyes were opaque, his bearded features expressionless. No amount of questioning could open his thin lips.

“That’s the Injun in him,” grinned Shorty as he and Pete followed Kipp outside in search of beds.

“My work is done, Sheriff,” smiled Pete Basset when Shorty was out of earshot. “I’m giving myself up to you. I’m ready to go back to Deer Lodge.”

“Better wait a day er so, Pete. I’m too danged busy tuh fool with yuh right now. Keep yor gun fer a spell. It may come in handy. Fox’ll have men with him when we meet up with him at the lone cottonwood to pay off yore dad’s note. This show ain’t over. Till it is, yo’re plumb free, savvy?”

“That’s white of you, Sheriff. I’ve had a hunch for a long time that you were in cahoots with Fox and his gang. Black Jack’s recent talk clinches that suspicion. Also, it’s plain that you’re breaking with the LF. I want you to know that I’m for you.”

Beyond the cottonwood grove near the corrals, Shorty was jerking the saddle from his tired horse and staking the animal out where the grass was high. He sang as he worked:

XII

At midnight Tad went outside to call Kipp for guard duty. He found the old officer sitting on a tarp-covered bed, smoking. “Herd’s a layin’ peaceful, Joe. I done found a jug uh licker and Slim and the yaller ’un has drunk theirselves tuh sleep. Black Jack’s the fust breed I ever run acrost that don’t tech t’rant’lar juice.”

Kipp Smiled absently and got to his feet. Tad was pulling off his boots already. The sheriff’s form was silhouetted against the lighted doorway for a moment, then the door closed.

Tad, in the act of pulling off a second tight-fitting boot, paused, his wide brow furrowed in thought. For as long as a minute he sat thus. Then he pulled the boot back on his foot and donned its mate. He listened for a moment to Shorty’s snoring then, moving stealthily, Tad made his way to the cabin, crouching by the window, the glass of which had been broken earlier in the night.

“Hurry up and cut these ropes,” Tad heard Black Jack command in a low-pitched tone.

“No,” came Kipp’s answer.

The sheriff’s voice sounded tired, the voice of an old man who carried too heavy a burden.

“Yuh know what it means fer us both if I talk?”

“Yes. I’ve done figgered it all out. I’m takin’ my medicine and givin’ you yourn. There ain’t no use talkin’. I’m goin’ through with this. I aim tuh come clean with the hull story. How you killed a man when he ketched yuh stealin’ hosses. How yuh got life fer it. How I filed the bars uh the window on that Los Cruces jail and staked yuh to a hoss tuh git away into Mexico. Yuh said you’d never bother me no more. I come north, changed my name and lets the past lay dead. Then you and this Fox hunts me out and makes me play yore dirty game. I’m tellin’ all that when the time comes. They kin do what they —— please with me. I’ll die in the pen knowin’ I’ve squared my accounts here on this side uh the Big Divide.”

The breed made no reply. Tad, peering through the logs where a bit of chinking had dropped out, saw the sheriff squatted with his back against the door, a Winchester across his knees.

Black Jack’s back was toward Tad. He could see the brown, muscular hands, one of them swollen and discolored, twist at the tightly knotted rope.

“You’d bust the promise yuh made to a dyin’ woman?”

“I’ve kept that promise,” replied Kipp slowly, “more than kept it. I reckon you know that as well as I do.”

“Yes,” came the breed’s answer, “I reckon I do. You done yore share and more. I aim tuh do mine.”

One of those brown hands had so maneuvered that it had slipped inside the waistband of the overalls and was hidden. Unseen by Kipp, it now came forth, holding a tiny derringer. Before Tad grasped the import of the breed’s intention, Black Jack had pressed the muzzles of the little double-barreled gun into his own back. A dull roar as the hammer fell and the soft-nosed .44 slug ripped its way upward through Black Jack’s spine and into his chest. A second thudding roar. Then the smoking gun dropped to the floor.

Kipp was on his feet, staring strangely at the breed. Tad saw Black Jack’s face twist upward, white teeth showing in a twisted grin.

“Yuh see I’m keepin’ my word,” said the breed through smiling lips. “I won’t bother yuh no more. I’m—goin’ now. So long.”

The bearded head sagged forward. The body swayed sidewise. Kipp caught it and lowered him gently to the floor, dead.

Tad, entering the cabin, saw dimly outlined in the blue smoke haze Kipp squatting beside the body of the dead outlaw, staring into the glazing black eyes of the half-breed who had made the old sheriff’s life a living hell.

Kipp looked up. Tad was amazed to see the sheriff’s eyes wet with unshed tears.

“He was my son, Ladd,” said Kipp simply.

Tad stared stupidly for a moment, stunned at the sheriff’s words. Then he nodded understandingly. Slim and the other outlaw, stirred in their drunken slumber and slept on. Tad looked up to see Shorty, gun in hand, framed in the doorway.

“Black Jack done killed hisse’f, Shorty,” Tad explained. “Pete awake?”

“Awake and on the way, Tad. Yonder he comes, limpin’. Bet he stepped on a cactus in his sock feet.”

“I reckon Joe wants tuh be left alone, pard. Tell——”

“Hold on, Ladd,” said Kipp quietly, rising. “Let Pete come. The time has come fer explainin’ off a few things. Come in and set.”

The three younger men, awed into respectful silence by Kipp’s gravity, did as he asked.

“I won’t take long, boys,” Kipp began. “Ner will I try fer tuh git yore sympathy. Yonder lays my boy, the only child by a marriage that never should uh bin. She was Apache, I was a white man. We was both kids at the time and mistook lonesomeness fer love. We run off and was married down in Mexico.

“When she run off with me, she outlawed herself from her folks. They hated white men. I was —— fool enough tuh think I could make her over into a white woman. —— knows she was purty enough and as decent as ary white gal that ever lived. But in the towns, the white women shied off from her. Men called me a squaw-man and treated me as such. We wa’n’t so happy as we might uh bin them days, and we stuck clost to the little cow ranch I had down on the border. Then the boy come and fer a while it looked like we was goin’ tuh be happy onct more.

“But it didn’t last long. I was gone a heap, round-ups and hoss huntin’ and such. She was left alone on the ranch. There was a good lookin’ Mexican that used tuh drop in sometimes. Fancy outfit and always shaved and wearin’ of a clean shirt. He had money. I didn’t know till later that he made it sellin’ stolen hosses. She was a right purty little thing. I come in from a week’s work in the hills tuh find her gone. She’d took the boy, then a kid ten years old, with her.

“I oiled my gun and hit their trail. But ——, they was plumb gone. I rode over half uh Mexico, then come home tuh find my cattle scattered and run off and nary hoss left. The Mexicans had stole me blind, durin’ the twelve months I’ve bin gone. Travelers has tore down my corrals tuh build camp fires. A rattler strikes at me as I steps into the gutted cabin which I’d called home, and I’m that low in speerits that I goes back to my hoss without shootin’ the snake’s head off. Keepin’ clear uh town er the ranches where I’m known, I quits that range fer keeps.

“Cowpunchin’, ridin’ grub-line, breakin’ broncs, night-hawkin’, even takin’ a whirl at cookin’, and I’m driftin’ like a tumbleweed afore a norther. Doin’ my share uh drinkin’ and —— raisin’ with the rest, aimin’ tuh fergit that I got a wife an’ kid a strayin’ somewheres. But it ain’t noways easy tuh fergit and I keeps driftin’ back across the border hopin’ tuh cut their trail and always I got a shell in my gun fer the greaser that’s mavericked my wife an’ kid.

“It’s ten years from the day they run off from me, that I finds Mister Mex. I’m ridin’ into a li’l’ ol’ Mex town when I hears shootin’. I rounds the corner uh the adobe rurale fort in time tuh see a rurale firin’ squad blowin’ the smoke from their carbines. In a heap against a ’dobe wall is my Mex, plumb full uh lead. They’ve done ketched him stealin’ hosses. His pardner, a ’breed kid, has out rode ’em and got away after killin’ three uh their men. That ’breed kid, understand, is my son.

“That night I finds my wife down in a stinkin’, dirty ’dobe shack in Gopher town. She’s got fat and black lookin’ and she’s dyin’ from pneumonia. I stays by her till she dies. The kid, a good lookin’, black-eyed young tough, drifts in as she’s goin’ out. Not knowin’ me, he stands there in the door a-coverin’ me till she tells him he’s linin’ his sights on his own dad. He’s there when I promises her to look after him and get him weaned off from his wild ways. He’s laughin’ at me and her when she closes her eyes and I feels her hand go limp in mine.

“‘We’ll be startin’ fer Arizona when we’ve buried yore mother,’ I tells him.

“‘The —— we will,’ he says, blowin’ cigaret smoke in my face. ‘You shore got a good imagination. Diggin’ graves is outa my line uh work and yore ways is too tame fer me. I jest dropped in tuh git some ca’tridges and a bottle uh mescal. My father, eh? A —— of a father, you are. And —— yuh, don’t go tryin’ tuh reform me, sabe? Bury the squaw if yuh feel like it, then go back to where yuh belong.’

“He steps out into the dark and is gone. The next time I sees him, he’s in jail at Los Cruces, bound fer Florence tuh serve a life sentence. I brings him some smokin’ and pays off his law sharp and figgers I’ve done my best. But he gits under my hide about this here promise I done made his mother. He swears he’ll quit the country complete and reform if I gits him loose. I weakens and that night I lets him out.

“I changes my name and drifts to Montana, aimin’ tuh begin fresh and thinkin’ the kid has gone tuh South America and made a clean start. Fifteen years passes and I’m sheriff here. Then him and Fox shows up. The kid’s older now and his whiskers keeps me from recognizin’ him.

“Me and Hank Basset rides into the brakes follerin’ the sign uh the stolen cattle. We splits up. I gits my hoss shot out from under me and takes to the brush. I jumps this Black Jack sudden, shootin’ the gun outa his hand. I’m puttin’ the ’cuffs on him when he tells me who he is.”

Kipp paused. His hands went out in a weary gesture.

“You kin guess the rest, boys. Fox and him a houndin’ me. They tell me that the night uh the Los Cruces jail break, a deputy was killed. The kid shot him, like as not. Him er Fox who was in town at the time, dickerin’ fer stolen hosses that the kid brung across the line. But they’ve laid the killin’ on to me and I’m wanted down there. Likewise the kid plays on this promise I done made his mother, sayin’ how I done wrong by her all the way through and if he’d had the right kind uh raisin’ he’d uh turned out different. Mebbe so, by gittin’ Fox and cleanin’ up this gang, I kin make up a mite fer what or’nariness I’ve done. Then I’m goin’ back tuh Los Cruces and let ’em do what they want with me. That’s the hull —— story, boys. The story that’s writ in black and white and lays in my safe. I want that you should know this afore I meets up with Fox.”

Opening the door, Joe Kipp stepped out into the night, his hair silvery white in the bright moonlight.

“I wonder,” said Pete Basset, as if musing aloud, “what we can say to make him know we’re for him?”

“Leave it tuh Tad,” whispered Shorty. “He kin do ’er. Hop to it, Taddie. Do it and I’ll give yuh them Chihuahua spurs yuh bin wantin’.”

Tad gave his little partner a withering look, then stepped over to Black Jack’s dead body, looking down into the upturned face. Then he jerked the blanket off the snoring Slim and covered the body of Joe Kipp’s son.

“I wish you would say something to him, Tad,” said Pete earnestly. “I’m afraid I’d make a mess of it.”

“If I gotta, I gotta,” replied Tad grimly. “Shed them spurs, runt.”

Tad met Kipp at the corral. He held out his hand to the old sheriff.

Kipp’s eyes were misty as he gripped it. “That goes fer all of us,” said Tad simply.

XIII

Luther Fox swung a long leg across his saddle horn and thus at ease in his saddle, gazed at the rudely lettered sign nailed to the lone cottonwood. A cold cigar jutted from the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. The age-yellowed ivory butt of a long-barreled .45 poked itself from beneath the long tail of his rusty black coat. He removed the cigar from between his crooked teeth and sprayed the sign with tobacco juice. One or two brown specks were added to the already badly spotted white expanse of shirt front.

“Barring —— and high water,” he addressed his two roughly garbed, heavily armed companions who had dismounted and squatted on the ground, “that sign will come off that tree before sundown.”

“No more dead-line between Basset’s and the LF, eh, boss?”

Fox nodded. The corners of his mouth twitching. Then he pointed with the butt of a home-made quirt to a small dust cloud, slowly approaching from the direction of the Basset place.

“What do you make of it, boys? How many comin’?”

“Two. Two hossbackers. Nary steer.”

“That’ll be Basset and his sweet-tempered wife. We’re due to receive a tongue lashing, boys. —— a man that can’t do business without his —— cat of a woman tagging along. Killing’s too good an end for such females.”

“I wonder where’s the cattle and them two waddies yuh hired, boss?”

“Quit the country, no doubt. I sent a man over here yesterday to see ’em. They’d pulled out and Basset was making no effort to gather the few head uh stuff he has on his range. As a matter of fact, Basset’s wife had the old fool penned off in the blacksmith shop.”

Fox smiled faintly. The two punchers laughed coarsely.

“Yuh aim tuh make a dicker fer the Basset iron, boss? Watch clost that ol’ Hank don’t sluff the ol’ lady off on yuh along with the brand.”

Hank and Ma Basset came on slowly, their horses scuffing up puffs of yellow dust.

The old couple looked tired and worried. Ma, dressed in bib overalls, flannel shirt, and an old slouch hat, filled her saddle to the point overflowing. Her eyes were a bit red as if from recent shedding of tears. Of the two, Hank looked the more downcast as they approached the lone tree that marked the boundary line. Low on Hank’s thigh swung a .45 in a weather-stained holster. Across Ma’s saddle pommel rested a sawed-off shotgun.

“Looky here, Hank Basset, perk up. I don’t aim that Fox should see us down in the mouth. Land sakes, can’t yuh scare up a grin of some description to wear on yore face. You don’t see me sittin’ my hoss like a dogie in a blizzard.”

At that moment her horse, an old flea-bitten gray, stumbled and went to his knees, jolting the breath out of Ma as her saddle horn jabbed her. Hank did his best to hide a grin. Ma, red-faced and gasping, gave him an angry look.

“If that ain’t a cowpuncher for yuh! I do believe you’d laugh if I was to be killed by this crow-bait of a hoss. Now what’s so comical? What yuh grinnin’ at?”

“Yuh ’lowed I was tuh perk up, Ma. I’m perkin’.”

Hank’s hand, searching for tobacco, encountered Kipp’s sheriff badge.

“Joe Kipp and the Ladd feller ’lowed they’d be here at noon today. The sun lacks half a hour uh throwin’ the short shadder. We ain’t licked yet.”

“If ary harm had come to Pete, I’d feel it in my bones, Hank. What was it Joe Kipp said about that paper in his safe?”

“He ’lowed it ’ud be useful to us.”

“Huh! He mighta said more. Yonder’s Fox, lookin’ fer all the world like a turkey buzzard, drat him. I’d like tuh give that old skinflint a piece uh my mind. Set up straight, can’t yuh? Goodness, a person ’ud think you was a hunchback. If them new galluses is too tight, let ’em out a notch.”

The couple approached the tree. Fox, his long leg still crooked across his saddle horn, lifted his hat with an air of mocking gallantry.

“The dried up ol’ he school-marm,” muttered Ma Basset, freezing him with a hard stare.

Fox’s head, bare as a billiard ball, disappeared beneath the wide-brimmed black hat.

“I understood there was a bunch of cattle to be delivered here, Basset,” he said as if surprised to see no herd. “My two boys are bringing them, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” snapped Ma Basset. “’Tain’t noon yet.”

“On such a beautiful Sabbath morning, we mortals should forget our quarrels, Mrs. Basset. I come on an errand of peace. Ours should be a relationship of neighborly friendship instead on enmity.”

His bony hand indicated Basset’s sign. “It is my wish that such things should not exist, madam. In my pocket is your note. I would gladly destroy that bit of paper and seal, in that manner, our bond of mutual friendship. In return, I ask for something that is of little value. Namely, the transfer of your iron into my name. It is evident that but a handful of cattle in that iron exist. I am offering to lift the burden of debt from you in return for a brand that has no value.”

“Why?” snapped Ma Basset.

“That such ill feeling as is shown by yonder sign may be wiped away. You will be taken care of. Moreover, I shall myself make a plea to the governor of the State for an absolute pardon for your son. I wish to prove to you that Luther Fox is not the scoundrel you would have men think him to be.”

His bony thumbs hooked in the armholes of his grease-spotted waistcoat, he attempted a yellow-fanged smile.

“A buzzard chatterin’ like a magpie,” was Ma Basset’s audible comment to her husband.

Fox’s yellow cheeks took on a pinkish hue. His eyes glittered venomously.

“We ain’t askin’ no compromise, Fox,” said Hank. “The deal goes as she lays.”

“So be it.”

Fox bit off his words sharply. Pulling forth a huge watch, he held it in the palm of his hand.

“You have exactly twenty-eight minutes to produce those cattle, Basset.”

“And that’s a plenty, Luther Fox! Look yonder!” cried Ma Basset.

Out of a long draw came a moving mass of stock. The faint sound of bawling cattle came to them. The brownish spot widened quickly, taking form as the herd spread out across the prairie.

Fox went pasty white. The crooked smile on his thin lips vanished. A man seeing a ghost could look no more startled.

“Something’s wrong as ——,” he muttered as his leg swung to catch the ox-bow stirrup. Beads of moisture stood out on his cheeks. His claw-like fingers shook as they wrapped about the ivory butt of the low-hung .45. He gazed as if fascinated at the oncoming herd.

With those cattle came ruination and defeat. The absence of Kipp, Tad and Shorty was now accounted for. Somehow, they had gotten into the Pocket, killed or captured Black Jack and his men and were bringing out the stolen herd. The swift vision of a prison cell made him wince. He shut his eyes against it and his chin dropped to his chest. When he looked up a moment later, the color had come back into his lips. He turned to his two followers.

“You’ll find fresh horses at the corral in town. It’s a forty-hour ride to the Canadian line. You’d better lose no time.”

The two men gazed at him for a moment, then whirled their horses and were gone in a cloud of dust, without a word of parting. Fox now turned to Hank Basset and his wife who acted like people who moved in a dream, stupefied. With steady hand, Fox brought forth Hank Basset’s note and slowly tore it to bits. The scraps of paper fluttered to the ground.

“It would be better if you rode back towards your ranch, madam. I bid you good day.”

Ma Basset hesitated, her eyes moving from Fox to her husband. Something in Fox’s bearing silenced her usually ready tongue.

“Better drift, Ma,” mumbled Hank.

She turned her horse and rode away. The old horse, headed on the homeward trail, voluntarily quickened his pace and she gave him rein.

Hank licked his dry lips and stared at Fox who had taken the .45 from its holster and was spinning the cylinder, his eyes on a solitary horseman who had quit the herd and was riding toward the lone tree.

“That will be Joe Kipp,” said Fox, his voice flatly emotionless. “For a man who has spent his life in the saddle, he sits a horse badly.”

The white-handled gun went back in its holster. Then Fox rode to the cottonwood and with an abrupt movement, jerked Hank Basset’s sign from its place on the tree trunk.

“You’ll have no further need of it, Basset, and the thing was an eyesore. The spelling was miserable. Should Kipp shoot better than he rides, bury me on the LF side of the tree.”

Midway between the tree and the herd, Joe Kipp came on, his horse at a running walk. Fox, riding to meet him, halted for a moment to call over his shoulder to Hank.

“A man may be a scoundrel, Basset, but still not be a coward.”

Then he rode on.

Those that watched saw the two men ride toward each other. Saw the gap between them lessen. Two puffs of white smoke appeared at precisely the same instant. Both men swayed drunkenly in the saddle. The horses, startled, leaped forward. The riders slipped to the ground to lie quietly, but ten feet apart.

Tad was the first to reach the spot. He swung from his saddle to bend over Kipp. Fox, a red smear oozing from the hole between his eyes, lay face upward, his gun still clutched in his lifeless hand.

“Is Kipp dead?” panted Shorty, riding up.

Tad looked up, shaking his head. “Creased. He’ll come to directly. Fox’s bullet done parted his hair. The sun must’a’ somehow sp’iled the buzzard’s aim.”

Hank rode up, panting as if from a hard run.

“Toss me Kipp’s badge, Hank,” called Tad. “He’s done earned the right tuh wear it.”

From Ma Basset’s kitchen came the savory odor of roast turkey, baking pies and coffee.

In the front room, cotton covers had been removed from plush seated chairs and the place buzzed with conversation, generously punctuated by laughter. Holiday spirit prevailed.

Shorty Carroway, scrubbed, shaved, resplendent in a suit of store clothes, was gradually becoming more red of cheek due to the confines of a shining celluloid collar.

“That red tie uh yourn has slipped up under yore off ear, runt,” confided Tad, also in holiday garb, in a voice that carried the length of the room.

Shorty rescued the truant tie and grinned wickedly.

“Is it the style tuh wear one sock draggin’ low thataway when yuh got low water shoes on, Ox? Swap yuh this here Los Cruces letter uh Joe Kipp’s fer Pete Basset’s pardon paper. Dang me if I ever knowed so many big words could be herded together on one hunk uh paper. This judge gent in Los Cruces shore tells it scary. And them two reward checks fer Fox and Black Jack, man, they runs into real money. Joe ’lows the Black Jack reward goes tuh you.”

“Fer gosh sake, dry up,” muttered Tad. “Don’t go sp’ilin’ Joe’s dinner, talkin’ about the breed. Where’n —— yore manners? And mind yuh, act purty when Miz Basset sets yuh alongside thet school-marm at the table.”

Shorty squirmed, his glance darting to an angular maiden lady across the room. Tad chuckled softly.

Joe Kipp, exonerated from the Los Cruces killing and recently returned from the border town, was in a corner with Pete Basset who had that morning made his triumphant return from Deer Lodge.

Ma Basset and the school teacher were fluttering about the room collecting vacant chairs and setting the table. The school teacher, taking advantage of a lull in the operations, headed like a homing pigeon for the vacant place on the setee alongside Shorty. The little puncher grinned in a sickly fashion and swallowed hard.

“We’ll have a chance to finish that thrilling tale of yours now, Mister Carroway,” she cooed.

Shorty, catching Hank’s eye, sent a look of desperate appeal that might have brought results had not Tad interfered.

“If there’s anything Mister Carroway loves, it’s relatin’ them hair-brained escapes uh hisn. Git him tuh tell yuh about the time he stumbled over Lafe Tucker’s tame polecat in the dark, ma’am.”

Ma Basset, sensing Shorty’s agonized frame of mind, came to the rescue.

“Hattie, if yuh don’t mind, will yuh put on the red napkins. I’m gettin’ that hefty that my feet kills me when I’m on ’em long.”

She dropped into a chair and fanned herself with her apron.

Hattie reluctantly obeyed and Ma winked at Shorty. The little puncher grinned his thanks.

Hank Basset, who had been hovering in the vicinity of the cupboard where Ma’s bottle of snake-bite cure was concealed, caught Joe Kipp’s eye and a meaning glance was exchanged.

“Ma,” said Hank, sniffing audibly, “ain’t them biscuits burnin’?”