CHAPTER VI. A QUICK CHANGE.
Later Pat O’Neill did not whistle, though he still rode in haste. The afternoon was older than he had suspected when he rode up out of Bad Cañon and across the high grazing ground that lay between his fishing place and Lodgepole Basin. He had a plan which he felt would work beautifully, if only he had time for it; but now with the sinking of the sun, he was not so sure. A great deal depended upon his horse, and he had not spared the animal in his roundabout ride to cut the homeward trail of Peterson and his men.
“First, I must be sure that Boyce’s steers are safe,” he decided, and crossed Limestone Creek with a splash and a clatter of hoofs on the stones. “It’s a new range the Bar B cattle are on, and if I can read the mind of cow brutes, they have traveled as far down the creek as they can go. They will not be satisfied to stay at the upper end of the bottom where the grass is quite as good, but must range farther in the vain hope of finding range that pleases them better. At any rate, it’s worth the gamble.”
As he opened the wire gate in the drift fence which separated Drew’s range from Boyce’s on Castle Creek just above its junction with Limestone, the parklike basin was dusky with the coming of night, but as he led his horse through, closed the gate and remounted, a steer snorted dew from its nostrils not far away. O’Neill turned and rode that way, peering down satisfiedly at the dark forms of the Bar B beef steers bedded down on a rise of ground just back from the creek and the mosquitoes and close to the fence.
“What did I tell you, Morenci? Now, rout them up and we’ll haze them on down the fence toward Picket Pin. If it’s through a fence they want to travel, they may try the other side of the fence on Picket Pin and welcome—and the farther they drift, the safer they’ll be, though it will make more work for the Bar B riders.”
When he had finished that job and the Bar B steers were plodding in the dark to find another bed ground on Picket Pin, Patrick O’Neill cautiously lighted a match in the crown of his hat and looked at his watch.
“Eight o’clock and our work only begun! Get away from here, Morenci, and show the stuff that’s in you!” And striking into a cow path that wound through thickets of aspen and across little open glades, he pelted away up Castle Creek to the steep trail where the rim rock broke down in a great slide of boulders on the divide between Myers Creek and Castle.
When he reached Lodgepole Basin, his watch said ten o’clock and Ranger O’Neill had a deep crease between his eyebrows, for Morenci was wet to his ears—and that not from splashing through creeks, though he had crossed two—and there were more cattle to be moved.
But these were Peterson’s and Ranger O’Neill was not so gentle. Across Lodgepole Basin, he galloped, to where a hundred head or more of Box S cattle ranged happily enough and had for their bed ground a knoll not far from Squaw Gulch, which was not very distant from the Myers Creek divide. For the Stillwater Forest Reserve, you must know, is a network of streams and their cañons, once you are back in the hills.
So Ranger O’Neill made a hasty gathering of Peterson’s cattle and hazed them along at a lumbering gallop to the fenced gap in the rim rock and so down into the Castle Creek pasture which was leased to Boyce. Just for good measure he rode after them and threw a hastily gathered rock or two, and the cattle went down the creek as if a full crew rode hard at their heels.
Ranger O’Neill pulled up and listened until the last sound of whipping brush and the clicking of cloven feet against the rocks had died to silence. The cattle were tired after that headlong drive up Myers Creek to the rim. It had been steep in places and only the manner in which he had rushed them along had held them to the trail. Morenci was standing with his feet slightly braced—the mark of a tired horse—and his flanks palpitating with exhaustion. O’Neill listened while the horse caught his wind, then suddenly he leaned forward and gave the reeking neck a grateful slap.
“Not a dozen horses in the district could have done it, and that’s the truth, Morenci!” Then he fell silent, though his thoughts went on quite as definitely as if he were actually speaking them.
“No sound of riders down below there, so the cattle will quiet down before Peterson comes for them—he chooses late hours for his stealing, thank the Lord! So now let him steal his own stock, though what he’ll think or what he’ll say when he sees their brands in the morning, I sure would like to know. I’d like to go and collect a bit of gratitude from Queen Isabelle and the Honorable Standish Boyce for this night’s work, but that will have to wait until Thursday, for I’m due at Blind Bridger to-morrow. But when I do see her, she will admit I’m doing much to promote peace and quiet along the Stillwater, I’m thinking.”
Wherefore Ranger Patrick O’Neill was a contented young man although a weary one as he rode home under the cool stars of midnight. Morenci got an extra rubdown as well as his supper before O’Neill went away to the cabin to fill his own empty stomach. The fish he had caught were far past their fresh toothsomeness and he threw them away and dined upon what happened to stand ready cooked in the cupboard. But it was a good night’s work and he grinned over it frequently.
“Murray would appreciate that!” O’Neill chuckled, as he pulled off his boot. He was thinking of Peterson’s slack-jawed amazement when he recognized the cattle he had stolen away from Castle Creek that night.
The ranger’s last thought as he put his head on the pillow was of the peppery Bar B owner and his probable mystification when he found his beef herd over on the Picket Pin. Some one would catch a tongue lashing, O’Neill suspected.
“But I’ll ride over and tell him about it before he has time to discover the change of pasture,” he comforted himself. “Peterson was counting on a week or so before the rustling would be suspected, and I’ll see Boyce before then. And Isabelle,” he added sleepily, and then began to dream of all that he would have to say.