A SHOT IN THE DARK
Winter, long delayed, came at last in earnest. On the morning of the seventeenth of January—the ranchers did not soon forget the date—a warm snow, soft with moisture, drove tumbling in from the east. All the morning it came, thicker and thicker, until on the level, several inches had fallen; then, so rapidly that one could almost discern the change, the temperature began lowering, the wind shifting from the east to the north, from north to west, and steadily rising. The surface of the snow froze to ice, the snowflakes turned to sleet, and went bounding and grinding, forming drifts but to disperse again, journeying aimlessly on, cutting viciously at the chance animal who came in their path like a myriad of tiny knives.
All that day the force of the Box R ranch labored in the increasing storm to get the home herds safely behind the shelter of the corral. It was impossible for cattle long to face such a storm; but with this very emergency in mind, Rankin had always in Winter kept the scattered bunches to the north and west, and under these conditions the feat was accomplished by dusk, and the half-frozen cowboys tumbled into their bunks, to fall asleep almost before they assumed the horizontal. The other ranchers wondered why it was that Rankin was so prosperous and why his herd seldom diminished in Winter. Had they been observant, they could have learned one reason that day.
All the following night the storm moaned and raged, and the cold became more and more intense. It came in through the walls of houses and through bunk coverings, and bit at one like a living thing. Nothing could stop it, nothing unprotected could withstand it. In the great corral behind the windbreak, the cattle, all headed east, were jammed together for warmth, a conglomerate mass of brown heads and bodies from which projected a wilderness of horns.
The next morning broke with a clear sky but with the thermometer marking many degrees below zero. Out of doors, when the sun had arisen, the light was dazzling. As far as eye could reach not a spot of brown relieved the white. The layer of frozen snow lay like a vast carpet stretched tight from horizon to horizon. Although it was only snow, yet so far as the herds of the ranchers were concerned it might have been a protecting armor of steel. Well did the tired cowboys, stiff from the previous day's struggle, know what was before them, when at daylight Graham routed them out. Food the helpless multitude must have. If they could not find it for themselves it must be found for them; and in stolid disapproval the men ate a hasty breakfast by the light of a kerosene lamp and went forth to the inevitable.
Rankin and Ben and Graham were already astir, and under their supervision the campaign was rapidly begun. For a few days the stock must be fed on hay, and seven of the available fifteen men of the ranch force were detailed to keep full the great racks in the cattle stockade—a task in itself, with the myriad hungry mouths swarming on every hand, all but Herculean. The others, Rankin himself among the number, undertook the greater feat of in a measure opening the range for the future.
The device which the big man had evolved for this purpose, and had used on previous similar occasions, was a simple triangular snow-plough several feet in width, with guiding handles behind. Comparatively narrow as was the ribbon path cleared by this appliance, its length was only limited by the endurance of the horses and the driver, and in the course of the day many an acre could be uncovered. Half an hour after sunrise, the eight outfits thus equipped were lined up side by side and headed due northwest to a range which had been but little pastured.
For five miles straight as a taut line they went, leaving behind them eight brown stripes alternating with bands of white between. Then back and forth, back and forth, for the distance of another mile they vibrated until it was noon, when eight more connecting brown ribbons were stretched beside their predecessors back to the ranch-house. In the afternoon the labor was repeated, until by night the clearing, a gigantic mottled fan with an abnormally long handle, lay in vivid contrast against the surrounding white.
The second day was the same, except that but seven bands stretched out behind the moving squad. Rankin, game as he was, could scarcely put one foot ahead of the other, and in consequence, changing his tactics, he mounted the old buckboard and departed on a tour of inspection toward the north range. He was late in returning, and, as usual, very taciturn; but after supper, as he and Ben were smoking in friendly silence by the kitchen fire, he turned to the younger man.
"Someone stayed at the north range last night," he announced abruptly. "He slept there and had a fire."
Ben showed no surprise. "I thought so, probably," he replied. "Late this afternoon I ran across a trail leading in from the west along our clearing, and headed that way. It was one lone chain of footprints."
Rankin shivered, and replenished the fire. His long drive had chilled him through and through.
"I suppose you have an idea who made that trail?" he said.
Though each knew that the other had heard the details of Pete's death, neither had mentioned the incident. To do so had seemed superfluous. Now, however, each realized the thought in the other's mind, and chose not to avoid it.
"Yes," answered Ben, simply. "I suppose it was made by Tom Blair."
Never before had Rankin heard Benjamin Blair speak that name. He stretched back heavily in his chair and lit his pipe afresh.
"Ben," he said, "I'm getting old. I never began to realize the fact until this Winter; but I sha'n't last many more years." Puff, puff went two twin clouds of smoke toward the ceiling. "Civilization has some advantages over the frontier, and this is one of them: it's kinder to the old."
Never before had Rankin spoken in this way, and the other understood the strength of his conviction.
"You work too hard," he said soberly, though he felt the inadequacy of the trite remark. "It's unnecessary. I wish you wouldn't do it."
Rankin threw an outward motion with his powerful hand. "Yes, I know; but when I quit moving I want to die. I know I could get a steam-heated back room in a quiet street of a sleepy town somewhere and coddle myself into a good many years yet; but it isn't worth the price. I love this big free life too well ever to leave it. Most of the people one meets here are rough, but in time that will all change. It's changing now; and meantime nature compensates for everything."
There was a moment's silence, and then, as though there had been no digression, Rankin went back to the former subject. "Yes," he said slowly, "I think you're right about those being Tom Blair's tracks." He turned and faced the younger man squarely. "If it is, Ben, it means he's been frozen out from his hiding-place, wherever that is, and he's crazy desperate. He'd do anything now. He wouldn't ever come back here otherwise."
Ben Blair's blue eyes tightened until the lashes were all but parallel.
"Yes," Rankin repeated, "he's crazy desperate to come here at all—especially so now." A pause, but the eyes did not shift. "God knows I'm sorry he ever came back. I was glad we found that trail too late to follow it to-day; but it's only postponing the end. I believe he'll be here at the ranch to-night. He's got to get a horse—he's got to do something right away; and I'm going to watch. If he don't come I'll take up the old trail in the morning."
Once more the pause, more intense than words. "He can't escape again, unless—unless he gets me first—He must be desperate crazy."
Rankin arose heavily and knocked the ashes out of his pipe preparatory to bed.
"There are a lot of things I might say now, Ben, but I won't say them. We're not living in a land of law. We haven't someone always at hand to shift our responsibility onto. In self-protection, we've got to take justice more or less into our own hands. One thing I will say, though, and I hope you'll never forget it. Think twice before you ever take the life of another human being, Ben; think twice. Be sure your reasons are mighty good—and then think again. Don't ever act in hot blood, or as long as you live you'll know remorse." The speaker paused and his breath came fast. Something more—who knew how much?—trembled on the end of his tongue. He roused himself with an effort and turned toward his bunk. "Good-night, Ben. I trust you as I'd trust my own son."
The younger man watched the departing figure and felt the irony of the separation that keeps us silent even when we wish to be nearest and most helpful to our friends and makes our words a mockery.
"Thank you, sir, I shall not forget. Good-night," he said.
When a few minutes later the young man sauntered out to the barns, everything was peaceful as usual. From the horse-stalls came the steady monotonous grind of the animals at feed. In the cattle-yards was heard the sleepy breathing of the multitude of cattle. Perfect contentment and oblivion was the keynote of the place, and the watcher looked at the lethargic mass thoughtfully. He had always responded instinctively to the moods of dumb animals. He did so now. The passive trustfulness of the great herd affected him deeply. Twice he made the circuit of the buildings, but finding nothing amiss returned to his place. The sound of the horses feeding had long since ceased. The sleepy murmur of the cattle was lower and more regular. In the increasing coldness the vapor of their breath, even though the night was dark and moonless, arose in an indistinct cloud, like the smoke of smouldering camp-fires over the tents of a sleeping army. For two days the man had been doing the heaviest kind of work. Gradually, amid much opening and closing of eyelids, consciousness lapsed into semi-consciousness, and he dozed.
Suddenly—whether it was an hour or a minute afterwards, he did not know—he awoke and sat up listening. Some sound had caught and held his sub-conscious attention. He waited a moment, intent, scarcely breathing, and then sprang swiftly to his feet. The sound now came definitely from the sheds at the left. It was the deep chesty groan of a horse in pain.
Once upon his feet, Ben Blair ran toward the barn, not cautiously but precipitately. He had not grown to maturity amid animals without learning something of their language; but even if such had been the case, he could scarcely have mistaken that sound. Mortal pain and mortal terror vibrated in those tones. No human being could have cried for help more distinctly. The frozen snow squeaked under the rancher's feet as he ran. "Stop there!" he shouted. "Stop there!" and throwing open the nearest door, unmindful of danger, he dashed into the interior darkness.
The barn was eighty odd feet in length, and as Ben swung open the door at the east corner there was a flash of fire from the extreme west end, and a bullet splintered the wood just back of his head. His precipitate entry had been his salvation. He groped his way ahead, the groans of the horses in his ears—for now he detected more than one voice. A growing realization of what he would find was in his mind, and then a dark form shot through the west door, and he was alone. Impulse told him to follow, but the sound of pain and struggle kept him back. He struck a match, held it like a torch above him, moved ahead, stopped. The flame burned down the dry pine until it reached his fingers, blackened them, went out; but he did not stir. He had expected the thing he saw, expected it at the first cry he heard; yet infinitely more horrible than a picture of imagination was the reality. He did not light another match, he did not wish to see. To hear was bad enough—to hear and to know. He started for the door; and behind him three great horses, hopelessly maimed and crippled, struggled to rise, and failing, groaned anew.
It seemed Ben's fate this night to be just too late for service. Before he reached the exit there sounded, spattering and intermittent, like the first popping kernels of corn in a pan, a succession of pistol-shots from the ranch-house. There was no answer, and as he stepped out into the air the sound ceased. As he did so, the kitchen of the house sprang alight from a lamp within. There was a moment of apparent inactivity, and then, the door swinging open, fair against the lighted background, shading his eyes to look into the outer darkness, stood Rankin. Instantly a wave of premonition flooded the watching Benjamin.
"Go back!" he shouted. "Go back! Back, quick!" and careless of personal danger, he started running for the ranch-house as before he had raced for the barn.
The warning might as well have been ungiven. Almost before the last words were spoken there came from the darkness at Ben's right the sound he had been expecting—a single vicious rifle report; and as though a mighty invisible weight were crushing him down, Rankin sank to the floor.
Then for the first time in his history Ben Blair lost self-control. Quick as thought he changed his course from the house to the direction from which the shot had come. The great veins of his throat swelled until it seemed he could scarcely breathe. Curses, horrible, blighting curses, combinations of malediction which had never even in thought entered his mind before, rolled from his lips. His brain seemed afire. But one idea possessed him—to lay hands upon this intruding being who had in cold blood done that fiendish deed in the barn, and now had shot his best friend on earth. The rage of primitive man who knew not steel or gunpowder was his; the ferocity of the great monkey, the aborigine's predecessor, whose means of offence were teeth and nails. Straight ahead the man rushed, seeming not to run, but fairly to bound, turned suddenly the angle at the corner of the machinery shed, stumbled over a snow-plough drawn up carelessly by one of the men, fell, regained his feet, and heard in his ears the thundering hoof-beats of a horse urged away at full speed.
For a moment Ben Blair stood as he had risen, gazing westward where the other had departed, but seeing nothing, not even a shadow. Clouds had formed over the sky, and the night was of intense darkness. To attempt to follow a trail now was waste of time; and gradually, as he stood there, the unevolved fury of the man transformed. His tongue became silent; not a human being had heard the outburst. The physical paroxysm relaxed. As he returned to the ranch-house no observer would have detected in him other than the usual matter-of-fact rancher; yet beneath that calm was a purpose infinitely more terrible than the animal blaze of a few minutes before, a tenacity more relentless than a tiger on the trail of its quarry, than an Indian stalking his enemy; a formulated purpose which could patiently wait, but eventually and inevitably would grind its object to powder.
Meanwhile, back at the scene of the tragedy, there had been feverish action. Many of the cowboys were already about the barns, and lanterns gleamed in the horse corral. Within the house, in the nearest bunk where they had laid him, stretched the proprietor of the ranch. About him were grouped Grannis, Graham, and Ma Graham. The latter was weeping hysterically—her head buried in her big checked apron, the great mass of her body vibrating with the effort. As Ben approached, her husband glanced up. Upon his face was the dull unreasoning indecision of a steer which had lost its leader; an animal passivity which awaited command.
"Rankin's dead," he announced dully. "He's hit here." A withered hand indicated a spot on the left breast. "He went quick."
Grannis said nothing, and walking up Ben Blair stopped beside the bunk. He took a long look at the kindly heavy face of the only man he had ever called friend; but not a feature of his own face relaxed, not a muscle quivered. Grannis watched him fixedly, almost with fascination. Gray-haired gambler and man of fortune that he was, he realized as Graham could never do the emotions which so often lie just back of the locked countenance of a human being; realized it, and with the grim carelessness of a frontiersman admired it.
Of a sudden there was a grinding of frosty snow in the outer yard, a confused medley of human voices, a snorting of horses; and, turning, Ben went to the door. One glance told him the meaning of the cluster of cowboys. He walked out toward them deliberately.
"Boys," he said steadily, "put up your horses. You couldn't find a mountain in the darkness to-night." A pause. "Besides," slowly, "this is my affair. Put them up and go to bed."
For a moment there was silence. The hearers could scarcely believe their ears.
"You mean we're to let him go?" queried a hesitating voice at last.
Blair folded up the broad brim of his hat and looked from face to face as it was revealed by the uncertain light from the window.
"I mean what I said," he repeated evenly. "I'll attend to this matter myself."
For a moment again there was silence, but only for a moment.
"No you won't!" blazed a voice suddenly. "Rankin was the whitest man that ever owned a brand. Just because the kyote that shot him lived with your mother won't save him. I'm going—and now."
Quicker than a cat, so swiftly that the other cowboys scarcely realized what was happening, the long gaunt Benjamin was at the speaker's side. With a leap he had him by the throat, had dragged him from the back of the horse, and held him at arm's length.
"Freeman,"—the voice was neither raised nor lowered, but steady as the drip of falling water,—"Freeman, you know better than that, and you know you know better." The grip of the long left hand on the throat tightened. The fingers of the right locked. "Say so—quick!"
Face to face, looking fair into each other's eyes, stood the two men, while the spectators watched breathlessly as they would have done at a climax in a play. It was a case of will against will, elemental man against his brother.
"I'm waiting," suggested Blair, and even in the dim light Freeman saw the blue eyes beneath the long lashes darken. Instinctively the victim's hand went to his hip and lingered there; but he could no more have withdrawn the weapon which he felt there than he could have struck his own mother. He started to speak; but his lips were dry, and he moistened them with his tongue.
"Yes, I know better," he admitted low.
Ben Blair dropped his hand and turned to the spectators. "Men," he said slowly and distinctly, "for the present at least I'm master of this ranch, and when I give an order I expect to be obeyed." Again his eye went from face to face fearlessly, dominantly. "Does any other man doubt me?"
Not a voice broke the stillness of the night. Only the restless movement of the impatient mustangs answered.
"Very well, then, you heard what I said. Go to bed, and to-morrow go on with your work as usual. Grannis will be in charge while I'm gone," and without a backward glance the long figure returned to the ranch-house.
The weazened foreman and the tall adventurer had been watching him impassively from the doorway. In silence they made room for him to pass.
"Grannis," he asked directly, "have those horses been taken care of?"
"No, sir."
"See to it at once then."
"Yes, sir."
The blue eyes rested for a moment on the other's face.
"You heard who I said would be in charge while I'm away?"
"Yes, sir," again.
Ben moved over to the bunk opposite to that in which lay the dead man and took off his hat and coat.
"Graham!"
The foreman came close, stood at attention.
"Keep awake and call me before daylight, will you?"
"I will."
"And, Graham!"
"Yes."
"I may be gone several days. You and Ma attend to the—burial. Dig the grave out under the big maple." A pause. "I think," steadily, "he would have liked it there."
The foreman nodded silently.
Benjamin Blair dropped into the bunk, drew the blankets over him and closed his eyes. As he did so, from the direction of the barn there came a succession of pistol shots—one, two, three. Then again silence fell.