“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.