CHAPTER XVII
SUSPICION
After all it seemed that for some reason the time was not yet ripe for Cole Dalton to put his rope on "Mr. Badman". For the days ran on smoothly for Buck Thornton, the weeks grew out of them and he rode, unmolested, unsuspicious of any threatened interference, about his own business.
He had gone a second time to the dugout at Poison Hole, carrying provisions enough to last Jimmie Clayton several days. Clayton seemed assured that Bedloe would look out for him now and insisted that there was danger of some of the range hands learning of Thornton's trips here. So, for a week he did not ride near the man's hiding place, and when one day he did visit the dugout again there was nothing to show that Clayton had been there and no hint of how or where he had gone. Thornton felt a deep sense of relief, believing that the episode, so far as he was concerned, was closed.
Another week and he was close to forgetting Jimmie Clayton altogether. The demands of the routine of range work kept him busy every day, early and late, and as though that were not enough to tax his endurance there came a fresh call upon him.
The stage had not been robbed that day he had seen it leaving Dry Town, and he had begun to persuade himself that the epidemic of crime from one end of the county to the other was at an end; that the highwayman had left the country while he could. But now came news of fresh outlawry, news that ran from tongue to tongue of the angered cattle men and miners who demanded more and more loudly that Cole Dalton "get busy".
Rumour flew back and forth, indignant, voluble, accusatory. It stacked crime upon crime; it mouthed the names of many men whom the county would be glad to entertain in its empty jail, the names of the three Bedloe boys, of Black Dan, of Long Phil Granger, of certain newcomers to Hill's Corners who, naturally, were to be looked upon with suspicion. It listed the depredations committed during four weeks with a result that was startling. It told of the theft of a herd of steers from Kemble's place; the shooting of Bert Stone and the looting of Hap Smith's mail bags; the robbery of Seth Powers who left the poker table at Gold Run at two o'clock one morning with seven hundred dollars in his overalls and was found at eight o'clock beaten into unconsciousness and with his pockets turned wrong-side out; the stage robbery in which Bill Varney of Twin Dry Diggings had been killed; the robbery of Jed Macintosh in Dry Town. A hundred and fifty miles lay between the most widely removed of the places where these things had happened, but no two of them had occurred within a time too short for a man to ride from one to the other.
And now came the list of the bold crimes committed since the day, four weeks ago, when Buck Thornton had ridden into Dry Town with the five thousand dollars. Kemble, to the westward of the Poison Hole, told of again losing cattle, seven big steers run off in a single night, nothing left of them but their tracks and the tracks of a horse which disappeared in the rocky mountain soil; Joe Lee, of the Figure Seven Bar, to the north of the Poison Hole, reported the loss of nine cows and two horses, all picked stock; Old Man King of the Bar X grew almost speechless with trembling wrath at the loss of at least a score of cattle. And Ben Broderick, the mining man who was working his claim to the eastward of the Poison Hole, admitted quietly that a man, a big man wearing a bandana handkerchief as a mask, had slipped into his camp one night, covered him with a heavy calibre Colt, and had taken away with him a six hundred dollar can of dust.
As yet no single loss had been noted by the Poison Hole outfit. But Thornton believed that he saw the reason: now, there were few nights that found him at the range cabin or his cowboys in the bunk house. His cattle had been brought down from the mountains, herded into the open meadow lands, and the night riders kept what watch they could upon the big herds. Many a night he lay in his blankets close to the border of his range upon the south, knowing that here and there upon other borders, watching over his cattle, guarding the mouths of cañons down which a rustler might choose his way, his men lay. He began to wish that his property might be attacked, feeling secure in his alertness, thinking that an over bold "badman" might come suddenly to the end of his depredations here. And yet no attack came, not so much as a wandering yearling was lost to him.
Men of the stamp and calibre of these ranchers who were hearing of a neighbour's losses only as a sort of prelude to their own, were not patient men at the best, nor did such lives as they led permit of lax hands and natures without initiative. It was in no way a surprise to Thornton, upon riding to the Bar X, to learn that the cattle men were now rising swiftly and actively to a defence of their own property. Many of them lifted frank and angry voices in condemnation of their county sheriff, many of them more generously admitted that Dalton was up against a hard proposition and was doing all that any one man could do. But they were unanimous in saying that what Cole Dalton couldn't do they would do.
This morning Thornton found old man King saddling his horse in the Bar X corrals and snapping out orders to his foreman and the two cowboys who sat their horses watching him with speculative eyes. His recent loss had driven him to a towering rage and his voice shook with anger in it.
"Twenty head they've took from me," he spat out angrily. "Twenty head in one night an' they think they c'n git away with it an' go on doin' jest what they damn please!" He jerked his cinch tight, climbed into his saddle and as his young horse whirled about Thornton saw that he had a rifle under his leg.
"Them cows," he went on wrathfully, merely ducking his head at the new comer, "will average a hundred dollars a head. Two thousan' bucks gone like a fog when the sun's up! What in hell do you fellers think I'm payin' you for?"
"It ain't goin' to happen one more time," growled Bart Elliott, the foreman whose wrath under the direct eyes of the "Old Man" was no less than King's. "I jes' wish they'd try it on again…."
"Ain't goin' to happen again, ain't it?" retorted King. "That's got to satisfy me, huh? Jest so long as they take a couple thousan' dollars out'n my pockets, an' then don't come back for all I got, it's all right, huh? Now you boys can jest nacherally take the glue out'n your ears an' listen a minute: I'm goin' to know who took them cows an' where they went, an' I'm goin' to have 'em back, every little cow brute of 'em! Git me, Elliott? An' you, Jim an' Hodge? If you fellers are lookin' for jobs where you ain't got nothin' to do you better look somewhere else. Now, listen some more."
He told them that they would find two more rifles and a shotgun at the range house. To this information he added that they could pack up some grub and hit the trail along with him. For he was going to bring his cattle back if he had to ride through three states to get them and back through hell to drive them home.
The men rode away to the range house talking among themselves, and King swung about upon Thornton.
"Hello, Buck," he said shortly.
"Hello, King. Anything I can do?"
"Not for me," said King drily. "How about yourself? Lost any cows off'n the Poison Hole?"
"Not a one. The rustlers seem to be giving me a wide berth. I've had my men out every night, though. Maybe they've got wise."
King looked at him sharply. And Thornton was vaguely aware in that swift glance of something which made but little impression on him at the time, something which he forgot even as he saw it, imagining he had misread but something to be remembered in the days that followed: it was a cool, steely look of suspicion.
"Mebbe," King grunted. "It's happenin' all aroun' you. I wasn't sayin' much so long's it didn't come too close the Bar X. An' now I ain't goin' to say much."
Thornton finished his errand with Old Man King and saw him with his men ride away into the little hills of the range. Then he was turning back toward the Poison Hole when young King, riding around the corner of the barn, called to him.
"Hello, Bud," Thornton said casually. "What's the word?"
Bud King rode up to him before he answered. Then, sitting loosely in the saddle, his eyes meditative upon one free, swinging boot, he answered.
"There's a dance over to the school house tonight, for one thing.
Coming, Buck?"
Thornton shook his head.
"No. Hadn't heard of it and I guess I'll be busy enough without prancing out to dances." And then, a little curiosity in his even tones, "How does it happen you're not out hunting rustlers with the old man?"
Young King lifted his head and again Thornton saw in a man's eyes a thing which was so vague that it went almost unnoted, a look of veiled suspicion.
"The old man hunts his way and I hunt mine," Bud King said briefly. "And besides, I haven't been to a shindig for six months."
A little flush ran up into his face under Thornton's level glance, and
Buck laughed softly.
"Who's the girl, Bud?" he challenged.
"Aw, go chase yourself," Bud flung back at him, but with a reddening grin. To Thornton came a swift inspiration.
"Wonder if Miss Waverly will be over from the Corners?" he asked.
"Dunno," Bud replied innocently, so innocently that Thornton laughed again.
Thornton rode back to the Poison Hole. And as he went, his thoughts ran now to the mission upon which old man King had set forth, now upon the wisdom of shaving, putting on his best suit and new hat and going to a dance….
"It isn't so much I want to see her again," he told himself, "as I want to give back her spur rowel!"