CHAPTER VII. FROM BAD TO WORSE.
“Sure and a most loyal subject bows before the queen this day!” cried Patrick O’Neill, with his best brogue and a somewhat self-satisfied grin on his face. “I was scarce hoping you’d ride out to meet me, and that’s why I was taking the short cut to the Bar B this morning. I’ve things to report that——”
“I should think you would have,” Isabelle Boyce told him sharply. “With all this mix-up over the cattle, and the trouble it’s making, I should think you would have something to say on the subject! Do you know how Tod Drew’s cattle came to be on father’s best range, and father’s beef herd over on that barren ground that wouldn’t furnish grazing for a sheep? And the drift fence down——”
“Do I know? It’s a night’s sleep I lost in getting full knowledge of the mystery, Queen Isabelle! I drove your father’s cattle to the Picket Pin——”
“Indeed?” So much meaning may be crowded into one word with a rising inflection that Patrick O’Neill felt a momentary panic. “I hope, Mr. O’Neill, you will oblige me with your reasons for so astounding a piece of trouble making. I am frankly curious to know what possessed you to commit such a deed.”
“It was a good deed, of which I am proud to tell,” he informed her, secretly pleased at the dramatic change he would presently produce in her mood. “On last Friday afternoon I chanced to hear a plan to steal your father’s gathering of beef steers which he was holding on Castle Creek. Peterson was the leader, and they meant to tear down the drift fence between your father’s range and Drew’s, and drive out the steers that way. They would then drive as many of Drew’s cattle as they could handily gather through the fence and onto Castle Creek, so that it would look as though the cattle had broken down the drift fence and were trespassing of their own accord, and it would not be suspected at once that the beef herd was stolen. Castle Creek Basin being brushy in the hollows, the plan had a fair chance of success.
“I failed to see the men—and that was a bit of bad guessing, of which I am not proud. But I recognized the voice of a Bar B rider, among others. It was late, and though I could have waited at the drift fence and held them up when they came, I could bring no charge against them unless they had actually stolen the cattle. So I thought I would play a trick on Peterson.
“I went to Castle Creek and moved the Bar B steers out of harm’s way—regretting the poor pasturage but having little time to choose a range for them. Then I rode back to Lodgepole, where a bunch of Peterson’s cattle grazed, took them across Squaw Gulch to the head of Myer’s Creek, and up over the divide and through the gap to Castle Creek Basin. It was fast work and it was pretty work, Miss Boyce, and I repeat that I am proud of it!”
With lips slightly parted and eyes wider than usual, Isabelle stared at him and did not speak. So presently the grin smoothed itself from his lips and the twinkle died in his eyes and left a puzzled look there, which could easily turn hostile.
“Would you rather I had let them take your father’s whole beef herd and run the fat off them getting them into some hidden place in the mountains? Or perhaps you think I should have confronted Peterson and fought the lot of them!”
“Of course I don’t think you should do anything so insane! But it couldn’t be much worse. Why didn’t you come and tell father? Why did you let days go by without saying a word? Is it possible you don’t know that father and Tod Drew are always at sword’s points over something, and jump at the least excuse for quarreling? You’ve managed to stir up a pretty mess, Mr. O’Neill. You may have saved father’s beef herd—but what is that when he and Drew have sent each other warning that it will be shoot on sight from now on? I’ve had all I could do to keep father from riding over and killing Drew deliberately!”
“It couldn’t be for what I did the other night,” O’Neill protested. “What if the fence is down and Drew’s cattle were found on your father’s range? That’s not a shooting matter, with sane men.”
Isabelle gave him a withering look. “Oh, how can you be so dense! Do you suppose for one minute that father could ride to Castle Creek and discover Tod Drew’s cattle there, and his own driven over on Picket Pin—because there was no fence broken down there to lay the blame on the cattle!—without doing something about it? He drove Drew’s cattle off with his six-shooter. He killed one and crippled another so Drew had to have it shot. If Tod Drew had been at that drift fence, Mr. O’Neill, there would have been murder! There will be yet, if something isn’t done to stop them, for Tod Drew shot our cattle with a shotgun! For a man who was going to do such great things in psychology,” she cried distractedly, “and instill both liking and respect for the forest service into the hearts of the Stillwater men, you have promoted as bloodthirsty a feud as ever happened anywhere! The only difference is that it is confined to two men, so far—though the cowboys are just as likely to take it up as not, just for the excitement of it!”
“I have received no instructions, Miss Boyce, for guarding the morals of other men,” Patrick O’Neill said somewhat stiffly. “But since your respected parent has not yet committed a murder as well as a felony against his neighbor’s property, I have time enough perhaps to curb his homicidal tendencies. A bit of an explanation will clear the air, I’m thinking.” And he reached for Morenci’s dragging bridle reins.
“You’re never going to face them now and tell them you did it?” Isabelle’s voice rose to a high note of protest. “They’ll kill you!”
But Ranger O’Neill was in the saddle and away, pelting along to Drew’s place, since that was closer than the Bar B. Isabelle watched him out of sight, then mounted and galloped up the road in the dust cloud he left behind him, her heart beating queerly, away up in her throat.
It is strange how training oft will drop away from a man like a garment of winter grown uncomfortable as summer approaches, yet fall into place when the need of it arises again. So with Ranger Patrick O’Neill when he pulled up his horse at Drew’s gate. In the years since West Point he had put aside much of his military bearing in everyday life, and he had gone rather irresponsibly out to meet life, with his rollicky Irish manner to the front because it was easy to wear.
Yet when he dismounted and walked up the path to the house, his back was straight and his step was alert, his chest was out and his belt was in and his eyes looked with keen discernment straight into the leathery countenance of Tod Drew, who glanced cautiously out of a near-by window before he opened the door to his insistent knocking.
“Mr. Drew, I came to report what I know of the drift fence being broken between your range and the Bar B lease on Castle Creek last Friday night.” And Ranger O’Neill forthwith explained, with malice toward none and naming no names, but making himself perfectly clear for all that.
“I have no direct evidence upon which to convict these men, for I failed to get a sight of them. There was little time to forestall them, Mr. Drew, but I did what seemed to me best as a measure of precaution. Since there has been a misunderstanding in the matter of the cattle, I stand ready to make a fair adjustment of whatever damages may have resulted from my removal of the Bar B herd without due notice. I want you to go with me to call upon Mr. Boyce, and I feel sure we can arrive at a friendly understanding.” Then, and not until then, Drew had a glimpse of the grin that was so much a part of Patrick O’Neill.
Drew gave O’Neill a peculiar, squinting look. “Say, me and that old he-wolf has promised to swap lead however and wherever we meet up with each other!” he stated emphatically, at last. “I’ll have to ride up a-shootin’, or he’ll likely think I’m scared and plug me fer a sheep!”
“Not if I ride with you,” urged Patrick O’Neill.
“Dern that ole pelican! he shot two steers fer me——”
“And you killed one or two for him, but if necessary I can arrange to pay for the damages. There’s nothing like going straight out toward trouble, Mr. Drew. Nine times in ten it backs out of sight as you ride toward it. If you’re willing to take a chance——”
“Oh, I was goin’ to ride over there and have it out with him,” Drew told him, with dark meaning. “I’m willin’ to meet the old coot halfway, whether it’s shootin’ or shakin’ hands!”
“I’ve had it in mind to get you two together and see what can be done about clearing out this rustling. You may be the next to suffer, you know. I’m here to do whatever you two think best——”
“Well, I got an idea we might set some kinda trap——”
Shortly thereafter, Isabelle Boyce reined her horse out of the trail to let the two riders pass. Her heart was still beating heavily in her throat, but she would not acknowledge the smiling salute she received from Ranger O’Neill. They were headed for her father’s ranch, but she refused to hurry after them; instead, she waited a while before she turned her horse toward home. Of course, with Tod Drew talking and gesticulating in his usual manner, she could not think that he was going to do murder. Ranger O’Neill would put a stop to all that. But her father would rave and threaten and she doubted whether he would stop long enough to listen to the story which Ranger O’Neill had to tell, or believe it when it was told.
But when she rode up to the house, there stood the two horses tied to the fence, and there were no high voices to be heard. She stood for a minute on the porch, looking and listening. A murmur of conversational tones floated out from the living room, and she went in and stood just outside the closed door, eavesdropping with no compunction whatever.
“If one of my men is involved in this nefarious spoilation of the range,” her father’s rasping voice was saying, “I see no way of exculpating the others until such time as the thieves are apprehended. Mr. O’Neill, I must concur in one statement which you have made, and that is the statement that leasers of government property are entitled to government protection. I shall write to my relative, who stands very close to the head of the department of forestry in Washington——”
Isabelle gave a relieved little laugh which caught in her throat like a strangled sob, and ran upstairs to choose a dainty dress—just in case Ranger O’Neill was invited to stay for supper.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 7, 1926 issue of The Popular magazine.