CHAPTER VII: THEFT AND UNTHEFT
“That cat of yours,” commented Royce Mack,—as he paused beside the adobe shelf on his way into the kitchen of the Dos Hermanos ranch house, and addressed the slant-eyed Chang, who served him and Fenno as cook and handy man,—“that cat of yours must have more suction power than a three-horse-power gas pump. She draws up milk the way the sun draws up water. And what the skinny brute does with it all, is more than I can figure out.”
As the young rancher spoke, he nodded critically toward a pinkish-grayish-white cat that crouched in morbid indolence on the edge of the high adobe shelf, alongside an empty tin dish. She was a forlorn and gloomy thing, of scrawny ludicrousness and nasty temper. Chang loved her, beyond words.
The Chinaman wiggled apologetically, as always he did when either of the partners said more than he could understand. His slitted eyes strayed protectingly toward his beloved cat. She looked like the kind of a cat a Chinaman like Chang might be expected to own and cherish. Royce went on, in banter that his servitor took as solemn earnest:
“Twice to-day I’ve happened to see you fill that dish with milk. There must have been a quart of it, each time. It’s barely noon and the dish has been emptied again. That makes half a gallon of new milk your rainbow-colored cat has absorbed, since breakfast. Why, man, that bag of bones couldn’t hold half a gallon of milk! She must cart it off somewhere and sell it. Lucky for you that both our milch cows happen to be ‘fresh,’ just now. Or lucky for Mr. Fenno and me. Otherwise, we’d be drinking our coffee straight; and all the milk’d go to that miserable cat.”
“She good cat,” expostulated Chang, in his high voice. “Vel good catty. Catch mice. Catch lats. Keep house flee of ’em. Gland cat. Can’t get um fat; no matt’ how much eat. Not built fat. Just like Mist’ Fenno.”
A grunt of disgust from behind him made Chang spin about in apprehensive haste.
Old Joel Fenno had come padding up to the house for dinner, from one of the sheep pastures. He arrived at the kitchen stoop in time to hear his spare figure compared by the Chinaman to that of the scarecrow cat.
Though without normal vanity, Joel was not pleased. And the grunt would have been followed by more vehement expressions of distaste had not Chang scuttled nervously into the kitchen, tucking the multicolored cat under his yellow arm as he ran. Presently, out through the doorway issued the sound of many pans clattering. Dinner was in active preparation.
Joel poured water from a pail into a tin basin on the stoop-floor; and began to scrub his dirty hands with a lump of smelly yellow soap. Royce had washed; and was starting into the house when a scamper of galloping feet announced the arrival of Treve.
The dog had been helping Toni, the chief shepherd, and the latter’s squat black collie, Zit, in No. 3 pasture, that morning with the management of a new and fractious bunch of merinos. But—as ever, unless he had orders to the contrary—the big dog had trotted home, promptly at lunch-time. Always he lay on the floor, at Royce Mack’s left side, during meals; and occasionally a scrap of food from his master’s plate rewarded his presence.
Royce stooped to pat the dog, as Treve pattered to the porch. The collie looked past his master, up at the narrow adobe shelf which stood fully four feet above the level of the floor. He seemed keenly interested in that shelf. There was a glint of mischief in his dark eyes. Joel Fenno, gouging the soapy water out of his own eyes, caught the dog’s expression. Following the collie’s quizzical gaze, Joel noted that the edge of the tin dish projected an inch or so over the edge of the shelf. In picking up the cat, Chang unconsciously had joggled it forward.
While Fenno still watched, Treve arose upon his hindlegs, his white forepaws resting lightly against the wall. Taking the edge of the tin dish daintily between his jaws he dropped to earth again; depositing the dish on the floor in front of him. Then, after a single disappointed glance at the empty receptacle, Treve walked away.
Royce Mack looked after him, with speculative amusement. Then an idea dawned on him. He picked up the dish and turned to the open doorway.
“Chang!” he called. “Fill this.”
The Chinaman, delighted that his adored cat was apparently arousing so much interest in Royce, hastened to fill the dish to the brim and replace it on the high shelf. After which he returned to the kitchen to find the cat and bring her out to feast. Meantime, Joel Fenno snorted contempt at his partner’s prodigal waste of milk and at his interest in a mere cat.
“Lord!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t it enough for you to pamper that measly collie all the time, without dry-nursin’ Chang’s cat, too? Don’t you know, the more good milk she drinks the fewer rats she’ll bother to catch? She ain’t wuth her salt, now. You’ll make her wuth even less’n that if—”
He stopped abruptly his flow of chronic complaint. Treve had seen the Chinaman place the refilled dish on the shelf. Instantly, and with no hint of concealment or of snooping, the collie trotted over to the wall, upreared himself again and once more caught the edge of the dish in his teeth. A second time he lowered it carefully to the floor, not spilling a drop. Then he proceeded to lap appreciatively at its contents, his pink tongue busily emptying the dish as fast as possible.
The dog had an inordinate fondness for milk. Indeed, it was because of this fondness and to insure his cat from loss of her meals that Chang had formed the habit of placing the milk dish on the shelf, presumably well out of the dog’s reach. Finding it, empty, but upright, on the porch floor, several times, the Chinaman supposed the cat had knocked it thither in jumping on or off the shelf.
Chang appeared now, in the kitchen doorway, a fatuous smile on his yellow face and with the cat in his arms. He arrived just in time to see Treve lift down the dish to the floor and begin to drink.
The Chinaman’s little eyes bulged. His nerveless arms let the cat slump to the ground. To him, the simple spectacle he was witnessing had all the earmarks of black magic.
This was not the first time he had suspected Treve to be a devil in guise of a furry dog.
He had thought it when the collie learned to manipulate the kitchen door latch with his forepaw and let himself into the house. He had thought it when Treve had sniffed disdainfully at a bit of tempting looking meat the Chinaman had drenched in carbolic acid solution with the idea of getting rid of him. The dog had sniffed, then stared coldly from the meat to its giver, and had walked off in icy contempt. (Not knowing it was the rank smell of the acid which revolted the dog, Chang had supposed Treve realized the meat was poisoned and that he knew who had poisoned it. Wherefore he forbore to try to poison him again; deeming such efforts useless.)
Chang had been even more assured the dog was a demon when once he chanced to see Joel Fenno—who blatantly and eternally professed dislike for the collie—surreptitiously slip Treve the choicest meat morsels from his own plate; and pat his head.
Now the Chinaman’s last doubts were removed. It was not in nature that a dog could reach up, forty-eight inches, and lift down from a shelf a full dish of milk; setting it unspattered on the floor. It didn’t make sense. The dog was a devil. It was not well to abide in the house with a devil. Yet the ranch job was one that Chang did not like to lose. Something must be thought up. Something must be done! Meantime, Chang retired into his kitchen.
Royce Mack was laughing loudly at his canine chum’s exploit. Joel glowered at the placidly drinking dog.
“Gee, but that was clever!” Mack declared. “It took a lot of thinking out, too. Treve, you’ve sure got brains! So that’s where all the cat-milk has been going! I wondered—”
“Clever, nuthin’!” grumbled Joel. “Any fool would have sense enough to steal food when he’s hungry. He’s stoopid. An’ he’s lazy, too. If I had my way—”
To shut off his partner’s eternal invective against the dog, Mack passed on into the house, leaving Joel in mid-swing of his diatribe. Chang happened to glance apprehensively out of the window, a second later. He saw Joel bend over the lapping dog, a silly grin of admiration on his wizened face, and pat the collie’s head in approving friendliness.
“Trevy,” the old man was whispering, “it was clever of you. One of the plumb cleverest things I ever seen you do. An’ I’ve seen you do a passel of slick things. You know more’n ten humans an’ a Chink, Trevy.”
Treve wagged his tail vigorously at the praise and caress. He even paused in his stolen meal long enough to lick milkily the petting hand. Joel, grinned, resentless of the milk spattered on his sleeve. Then, catching sight of Chang’s bobbing head, through the window, the old man favored Treve with a glare of utter detestation; and stumped into the house and slammed the door.
When the partners had bolted dinner and, with Treve at their heels, had gone back to work, Chang repaired to his own cubbyhole room under the roof. There, in front of his bash-nosed Joss, he proceeded to burn a flight of faintly perfumed prayer-papers, accompanying the process with certain pious “setting-up exercises” before the idol.
To his Joss and to the spirits of his innumerable ancestors, Chang offered orisons for the instant vanishing of that devil collie.
The dog’s size and buoyantly noisy ways had jarred him, from the first. Then the collie had taken sinful pleasure in treeing Chang’s dear cat; and in making playful little rushes at her, even when she sought refuge on her master’s thin shoulder. The uncanny wisdom of the dog had long ago completed the wreck of Chang’s nerves. The big beast, assuredly, was a devil; and might in time be expected to wreak awesome torments upon the Chinaman himself.
Not a week earlier, on ironing day, Chang had burned a hole in the arm of Royce Mack’s only silk shirt. To hide his fault, he had taken the ruined shirt out back of the stables and had buried it. Then he had gone smugly to his kitchen, prepared to deny with innocent smiles that he had ever set eyes on the garment.
Indeed, an hour later, he was in the midst of that convincing denial, when Treve frisked up to the credulous Royce, shaking merrily between his jaws the muddy and burnt shirt he had exhumed. Nothing short of a demon could have done that!
Yes, Treve must go. And Chang prayed fervently and burned many scented papers. Then, hoping, yet doubting, the efficacy of his devotions, he went down again to his kitchen.
Seldom is such immediate and complete answer vouchsafed to prayer-papers and Joss-genuflections as was granted to Chang.
Scarcely had he been puttering around the kitchen for three minutes, when a car stopped at the gate and a fat man in fine raiment came striding up the walk. Chang was alone in the house. Neither of the partners could be expected to return until supper-time. The Chinaman desisted from his task of dishwashing; wiped his wet yellow arms on a drying flannel shirt of Joel’s, and shuffled forward to meet the stranger.
Fraser Colt had come three hundred miles, to claim his collie.
Recovering from his rough treatment at the hands of Fenno and at the teeth of Treve, at the Dos Hermanos dogshow, he had returned to the show, next day, only to learn that collie and rancher had departed.
To trace them had been a simple enough matter. In the back of every show catalog are the names and addresses of the exhibitors. Thus, to locate the owner of Treve was the work of a minute. “J. Fenno, c/o Dos Hermanos Ranch, Dos Hermanos County.” That was the line at the back of the book. And a score of people at La Cerra knew the exact location of the partners’ ranch.
A telegram had called home the bitten and bruised Colt, on the second day of the show. And the business involved therein had kept him occupied for the next few months. But in the first lull of work, he prepared to get back the collie whose cash value would make worth while any trouble involved in the quest.
By law, Treve belonged to Fraser Colt. Colt held the bill of sale whereby he had bought the dog, as an eight-month pup. He had lost him; and now had found him again. Any law-court on earth would uphold his claim to the collie’s ownership.
So, with no fear of successful opposition he had come to the wilderness to recover his property. If Fenno should refuse, he could take the case to court and make the rancher not only give up the dog but pay trial costs. Several folk could swear to Treve’s identity as the collie bought by Colt.
Then, when at last he should have the costly animal safe in his own kennel—well, it would be time to pay a little personal bill of his. At the thought, Colt was wont to glance at his bite-mangled hand and then swing his arm viciously; as though it already wielded a blood-flecked rawhide. Yes, there would be a sweet little hour of revenge for the way the dog had attacked him.
“I want to see Fenno,” announced Colt, as the smiling Chang confronted him at the ranch house door.
“Not in,” cooed the Chinaman. “And Mist’ Loyce Mack not in. Not in till sup’ time he come.”
Colt did not reply at once. But neither did he depart. Instead, he stood surveying the Chinaman’s face, from between thoughtfully squinted lids.
Fraser Colt was a good deal of a scoundrel. He was a good deal of a brute. But his worst foe never doubted his queer power of reading human nature. Especially, could he read crookedness in the face of his fellow-man. He had an unerring eye for that quality—long possession of it having made him expert.
So now he was reading Chang as though the Celestial’s usually inscrutable visage had been a printed page. Colt’s alert brain was working fast.
He had come hither prepared for a scene of possible violence; perhaps for a long legal delay to follow it. And now appeared the chance for a short cut out of all that. If he could secure the dog without giving Treve’s owners a chance to protest, then so much the better. Back at home he could register the collie under another name. If, in future, Joel should chance to recognize Treve at some show, there would be no redress for the rancher. The dog was Colt’s. Chang was to be the means to this easy end.
As the Chinaman still wiggled nervously from one felt-slippered foot to the other, under the silent appraisal of Colt’s eyes, the fat man drew forth a lump of bills; and began to riffle them. Chang’s eyes beamed admiration on the handful of money.
“Listen, Chink!” said Colt, at last. “There’s a collie dog lives here. He’s mine. And I want him. Get that?”
“Tleve?” quavered Chang, wonderingly.
“Yep. Treve. That’s his name in the catalog. It wasn’t his name when I had him. And it won’t be when I get him back. He—”
“You want—you want take Tleve away—to take him away, so he not be heah no longeh, at all?” demanded Chang, dizzy with the speed wherewith his prayer-papers were paying double dividends.
“That’s it,” assented Colt. “And you’re the man to help me. It’s worth just—just fifty dollars to me to get that cur, without any fuss being made. To get him, quiet, and get him away, quiet. Want to earn that fifty, Chink? Nobody’ll ever know.”
Now, Chang was a man of much finesse. But this delirious prospect of having his prayer answered and of getting fifty whole dollars, to boot, drove him for once to simple directness.
“Yes-s-s,” he simmered, ecstatically; his claw-hand outstretched for the money.
Into his moist palm, Fraser Colt laid a ten-dollar bill. The rest of the roll he pocketed.
“You get the other forty when I get my dog,” said he. “Where is he, now? In the shack?”
“Nope. He out with Mist’ Loyce Mack, Tleve is,” replied Chang. “Not back till sup’ time. At lanch house allee night, though,” he added, consolingly.
“Good!” resumed Colt. “Now, let’s you and me go into executive session. This thing ought to be easy to fix up. Do you get a chance at the dog, alone, any time;—when the others aren’t likely to horn in?”
At supper, that evening, Treve lay as usual on the floor beside Royce’s chair. He was more or less tired from a hard workday on the range, and he looked forward with joy to his own approaching supper.
Apart from such stray tidbits as Mack might happen to toss to him at the table, Treve had but one daily meal;—one big meal a day being ample for any grown dog and far better for his health and condition than is more frequent feeding. This one meal was always served to Treve on the kitchen hearth, by Chang, when the partners’ supper was ended.
To-night, when Joel and Royce pushed back their chairs and lighted their pipes and Chang began to clear the table, Treve as usual arose and made his way to the kitchen. As a rule, his supper was awaiting him on the hearth. But to-night Chang had not placed it there.
As the dog turned toward the adjoining room in surprise at the omission, Chang came scuttling into the kitchen, laden with dishes. These dishes he set down, then tiptoed back to the door and shut it. From a cupboard he took Treve’s heaped supper plate and set it on the hearth bricks.
The dog wagged his tail in appreciation and followed the Chinaman to the hearth; his white paws beating out an anticipatory little dance on the puncheon floor. He neither liked nor disliked this shuffling and queer-smelling Celestial. But always he was keenly interested in the plate of table-scraps Chang gave him at night.
Hungrily, now, he set to work on his supper. Eating with odd daintiness, yet with egregious speed, the dog became oblivious to everything around him.
Chang stepped back to the cupboard and drew therefrom a huge canvas bag and a length of thin rope. Then, with an apprehensive glance at the door of the adjoining room, he set ajar the outer kitchen door and stole over to where the collie was eating. Holding the bag and rope ready, he came up behind Treve.
There were several prayer-papers and three anti-devil charms in the bag. In one lightning move, Chang slipped the sack over the unsuspecting dog’s head and forequarters; jamming a double handful of the loose canvas, gag-wise, into the protestingly parted jaws of the victim.
Swiftly and dextrously the man trussed up his prisoner; pinioning his indignant struggles with wily twists of the rope. Then, in the same scared haste, and murmuring Chinese spells, he heaved the squirming burden over his shoulder; and ran staggeringly from the house.
Across the dooryard he ran and out into the road. There, though the load was heavy and restless, he continued at as rapid speed as he could, through the darkness, until he came to the bend of the road, a furlong beyond; where the coulée began.
Just beyond the bend waited a car with dimmed lights; a bulky man crouching beside it. With an exclamation of joy, Fraser Colt hurried forward to meet the burden-bearer.
Eagerly, he snatched from Chang the indignantly tossing bag, and heaved it into the tonneau. Jumping to the driver-seat, he pressed the self-starter.
“Hey!” squealed Chang, as the machine woke into motion. “Hey, Mist’! Fo’ty doll’ I get, now. Gimme!”
He caught hold of the door, as he spoke, lifting himself to the running board.
“Sure!” pleasantly assented Colt. “You get what’s coming to you, Chinkie.”
As he spoke, he slugged his plump right fist to the point of the unsuspecting Chinaman’s jaw; and at the same time stepped on the accelerator. The car lurched forward. The Chinaman lurched back.
On into the night sped the automobile, at as fast a pace as Colt dared to drive it along that bumpy twisting road, at the coulée-edge. Chang slumped, half-senseless, into a wayside clump of manzanita.
Colt had taken no foolish chances when he gave the Chinaman a fist-punch instead of the promised forty dollars. He was thrifty, was Fraser Colt. He was averse to unnecessary expense. He knew Chang would not dare betray him to Fenno or to Royce; and thus confess his own share in the kidnaping. With a smile of pure happiness, he drove on, not troubling to look back at his dupe.
Now, Treve was anything but a fool. When frantic struggles availed only to enmesh him the tighter and to exhaust what little air could still seep into the close-woven canvas sack—when his growls of wrath were smothered in the almost sound-proof bag—he sought the next expedient for escape.
By the time he had reached the gate, on Chang’s shoulders, the dog had rid his mouth of the stuffed folds of cloth which had been thrust therein as a gag. The first use he made of this freedom of teeth was to seize the nearest fold of canvas between his scissors-sharp incisors; and begin to gnaw.
Any one who has watched a mischievous puppy gnaw holes in a mat can imagine the power exerted by the skilled and mighty jaws of a grown collie; if put to such infantile use. By the time he was flung into the tonneau, Treve had worked a hole in the canvas, wide enough to permit his protruding nose to escape.
Wasting no time in vain howls, he wrought furiously and deftly on such portions of bag and rope as seemed to bind him most tightly. When it came to severing the twined rope, he resorted again to gnawing tactics. But with the rest of the bag, his curved tusks as well were brought into play.
Twice he heaved himself upright, only to find some part of him was still fast to the bag. Both times, he whirled about and bit fiercely into the trammeling folds or rope. He worked now with added zest of fury. For his nostrils had caught the hated scent of Fraser Colt, the man he detested above all the world. The man who had maltreated him and had fought with Joel Fenno,—the only unfriendly human the dog had known! And he saw and smelt that his mortal enemy was in the seat just in front of him.
Too wise to risk attack until he should be free, he continued to rend loose his bonds. The car was jolting and bumping and rattling at first speed over the bad bit of climb in the trail-like road; rendering its driver deaf to the muffled sounds behind him.
Then, as Colt bent forward over the wheel, to negotiate a particularly tricky twist of the climbing road, something silent and terrible launched itself upon him from behind.
Sixty-odd pounds of furry muscular weight crashed against his fat shoulders. A double set of razor-teeth sheared like red-hot iron into the back of his fat neck.
With a yell, Colt threw back both clawing hands, instinctively, to fend off this unseen and agonizing Horror.
It is not well to abandon the wheel of a light touring car, just as one is driving around a right-angle pitch in an uneven road, by night;—the less so if the gully-sides of a steep coulée are within six inches of one’s left wheel.
The left tire struck glancingly against a wayside bowlder. The impact twisted both front wheels sharply to the left. There was no hand at the wheel to correct the wrenching shift of direction.
Obliquely, the machine shot over the edge of the coulée and down its abrupt side. Ten feet farther on, the fender smote a scrub-tree. The tree was smashed. The speeding car turned turtle.
Before Fraser Colt was well aware of what had happened, the down-plunging car came to a jarring stop, then rose in air and fell on him, pinioning him beneath it. Treve was flung clear of the car and landed in a scratchy mass of greasewood. Beyond a bruise or so, both he and Colt were unhurt.
The man had been caught in the front seat-well of the topless little car; alongside and under the steering wheel. One side-door was jammed irremediably shut. The other had been knocked clean off. Through the aperture thus left, Colt began to squeeze his rotund bulk, to reach firm ground and to get free of the imprisoning car. But, as his head protruded, turtle-like, from its shell, something whizzed at it through the darkness; and two sets of teeth raked the fat face in a laudable effort to tear it off.
Back shrank Fraser Colt, screeching. Blocking the outlet as best he could with the torn seat cushion, he cowered in his tiny prison; while outside ravened and snarled the great dog who hated him.
Colt fumbled for his pistol. Somehow, in the course of the wholesale spill, it had fallen out of his pocket. Once he reached out a tentatively feeling hand from behind the leathern barrier of cushion. Swiftly as he yanked it back, Treve’s raking teeth were a fraction of a second swifter.
Around and around his barricaded foe whirled the roaring collie. Then, failing to get at or dislodge the man, Treve accepted the situation. He lay down at full length, alongside the car, as close as possible to the blocked aperture behind which the cramped and bleeding Colt was huddled.
Joel Fenno was awake at grayest dawn. He woke with a vague memory of unpleasantness. Then he located the cause.
Treve had strayed away after supper, the night before; and had not showed up as usual at bedtime. This was not the dog’s habit. Always he was in the house and on his mat beside Royce Mack’s bunk, before the partners went to sleep.
Royce had asked Chang if he knew what had become of their collie. Chang said he had given Treve his supper and that the dog had then strolled out of the kitchen, into the yard; and had not returned. Fenno had sneered ostentatiously at his partner’s solicitude over the beast. But, secretly, he had worried.
Now, waking, he peeped into Mack’s room. No, Treve was not lying on his mat at the snoring Royce’s feet. Joel dressed and went out into the dim morning.
A very few miles up the coulée was the southern boundary of the Triple Bar cattle range. Chris Hibben’s Triple Bar outfit, like most cow-men, had no use for sheep ranchers or for sheep-ranchers’ dogs. If, by any chance, Treve had strolled over their line and should be seen by any gun-packing puncher—
Joel set off at a worried walk, towards the coulée. The farther he went the faster he walked; the while cursing himself for a silly old fool, for wasting good sleep and good exercise on such a wild-goose chase.
At last, giving up the idea of squandering his energy by a trudge to the boundary of the Triple Bar, he stopped and made as though to turn back. As a salve to his feelings, he peeped over the wooded edge of the coulée, on the chance that Treve might be coursing jack rabbits somewhere along its dry bed. At the same time he bawled, perfunctorily:
“Treve!”
To his amaze, there was an answering bark, from somewhere along the coulée’s upper sides, not a hundred yards ahead of him. Joel broke into a shambling run.
Around the sharp turn in the road, just in front of him, appeared Treve. After a glance of appeal at his master, and a pleading bark, the collie turned and vanished into the chaparral along the lip of the gorge. Joel knew enough of the dog to read this plea aright. He followed, and, at the road-turn, he peered once more over the edge, along the general direction in which the dog had disappeared.
There, before him, he saw an upside-down and badly smashed automobile. Treve was mounting guard alongside. From an opening in the inverted front section of the car, as Joel crashed through the chaparral toward the wreck, appeared a blood-splotched and distorted face.
At sight of the face, Treve charged. The head was withdrawn, and a doubled seat-cushion was thrust hurriedly into its place. But not before Fenno had recognized the ample features of Fraser Colt.
The old man stood, blinking down at the upset car. Then his gaze fell upon a badly torn canvas bag, lying nearby; a bag whose few remaining bindings of rope showed sure signs of having been gnawed asunder by teeth. Joel whistled, long and low.
“I c’n understand how he cotched you, all right, Mister Colt,” said he, addressing the invisible occupant of the car. “Trevy c’n do ’most anything, when he reely puts his mind to it. But how you ever managed to ketch him is beyond me. He—”
“Grab your dog and help me out of here!” bleated Colt, feebly, his nerve gone. “I’ll—I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Why should I butt in to help a dirty dog-stealer?” snarled Joel. “Tell me that, Mister. Why—?”
“I didn’t steal him!” wailed Colt. “He’s mine. He— Say, here’s his bill of sale to prove it, friend!”
Cautiously, he shoved forth through a cranny in the cushions a crumpled paper. Joel picked it up and read it, at the same time mechanically ordering Treve back from an abortive charge at the disappearing fingers.
“H’m!” grunted Joel, after a long pause for thought. “The dog seems to b’long to you, all right. Selling him?”
“No!” whined Colt, in a last flare of spirit.
“All right,” acquiesced Fenno, with something akin to geniality in his grouchy voice. “I’ll drop around, in a day or two, and see if you’ve changed your mind. Nobody’s li’ble to find you, down here in the chaparral, till then. Watch him, Trevy! Watch him, till I get back.”
He started off, up the coulée side. A pitiful howl from the prisoner recalled him.
“Hold on!” wheedled Colt. “Don’t leave me here, with this rabid brute. I— What’ll you gimme for him? I paid—”
“I’m not honin’ to hear what you paid; or even what you say you paid,” retorted Joel, scribbling a line or two on the bottom of the bill of sale. “I’ll buy him from you for one dollar in cash an’ for the priv’lege of taking him away; so you c’n crawl out an’ get to a place where they’ll fix up your car an’ lift it to the road again. Take my bid or leave it.”
Colt “left” it. He did so, right blasphemously. Joel said nothing, except: “Watch him, Trevy!” and strolled away. He had reached the road before Colt recalled him.
“Good!” approved Joel. “Lucky I got my fount’n pen, in this vest. Here’s the bill of sale. Here’s the pen. Here’s the dollar. Sign under where I’ve writ that you’ve sold him to me. It’ll keep you from comin’ back to claim him ag’in. In this neck of the woods, my word’s better’n any stranger’s, like yours. An’ I’m p’pared to depose in court that you sold him to me of your own free will. If you try to steal him a second time, it’ll sure mean jail for you. Not that you wouldn’t be more to home there, than where decent folks is. C’mon, Trevy. Le’s you and me go to breakfast. So long, stranger. There’s a garage jes’ up the road. Not more’n about nine miles. By-by.”
As Joel and the collie neared the ranch house, Treve beheld the scrawny cat dozing on the kitchen stoop. In playful mischief, he rushed at her. The cat ran back into the kitchen, spitting blasphemously. Chang appeared on the threshold to learn the cause of his pet’s fright.
One look at the approaching dog, and the Celestial grabbed up his cat and ran gibbering from the house. Nor did he stop in his headlong flight from the supposed devil, until he had left the Dos Hermanos ranch far behind him.
“We’re out one good Chink,” mused Joel Fenno to himself, as he and Mack prepared their own breakfast, at sunrise. “But we’re in one grand dog. An’ I’m figgerin’ that’s nineteen times better.”
“Here, Trevy!” he called, slyly, taking advantage of Mack’s momentary departure from the kitchen. “Here’s a big hunk of fried pork for you—the kind you’re always beggin’ for. Ketch it!”