“Tell the stableman to give you old Groaner,” Sutherland said. “Good luck to you.”
Robin turned in his saddle when he was mounted on a strapping bay, to look back at the house. A light glowed in the windows of a room he knew was May’s. He hated to go without seeing her again. But until the issue between himself and Shining Mark was settled for good he could neither give himself up to love nor be easy in his mind. One thing at a time.
Yet it pleased him to know that Adam Sutherland treated him without question. Sutherland was right. Men had to be trusted. Life was impossible without that faith. If here and there it was betrayed—no matter. He hadn’t failed Mayne, for instance; old Dan had failed him, and so had Ivy. He wouldn’t fail Sutherland. Riding alone in that dark and silent night Robin wondered if old Adam or May would draw back, lack confidence, grow cold, if some deadly pinch came. There was an uncomfortable chill in the possibility. But it wasn’t even a possibility, Robin assured himself. Such a thing was unthinkable.
He shook off that slightly pessimistic mood and listened to the crickets, marked a waning moon peep through crevices in the cloud scud that wreathed the sky, as he covered mile after mile, riding fast and unwearied in spite of fifteen hours in the saddle. He wanted to catch his outfit at dawn, before the herd crossed the Judith River. He knew a way to hold those T Bar S’s and yet free his riders for a holiday in town. They were a mettlesome bunch and they liked him; they would back him in anything. Robin valued that unquestioning loyalty. He wanted to hold that crew intact for the fall round-up, if—the ugly thought rose unbidden—he lived to boss the J7 through the autumn months.
CHAPTER XXI
A MATTER OF BUSINESS
From the high level of the plain above the Judith River Robin looked back, gazing on the scene below and reflecting on the ease with which a range boss could arrange things to suit his own convenience, his own purposes. He knew now why Shining Mark had dared so much and felt so safe until the simple accident of a horse lamed and his rider set afoot had betrayed him. If Steele and Thatcher had not been emboldened by Shining Mark’s absolute control of the Block S range, they would never have shot those Bar M Bar cows in order to steal their calves within twenty miles of home. If they had felt less secure and been a little more discreet Robin would never have dreamed the Block S round-up was run by a thief in his own interest. It was easy to take advantage of the wide trust and power a cow outfit must necessarily repose in men.
Adam Sutherland didn’t know what he, Robin, was doing, what he might do if given full opportunity. It rested solely on the personal integrity of the man trusted. The response to that unqualified trust bred at once the peculiar devotion of the cow-puncher to his salt and by contrast gave rise to the sweeping depredations that once in a blue moon shook some individual cattle owner’s faith in men.
“Here am I,” thought Robin, as his eye dwelt on the Judith looping silver through a sage-gray and meadow-green valley in which the PN ranch buildings and the white tents of the J7 were mere specks, “here am I with the old man’s check for five thousand in my pocket, another five or six thousand to my order in a Fort Benton Bank, and me hellin’ off on a pure gamble—and the old man don’t know anything about it.”
He smiled soberly. His day herd of T Bar S’s pastured under fence at the PN by special arrangement. His riders were off in a body to celebrate the Fourth in Big Sandy. Robin himself had a destination one hundred and fifty miles to the west, on a project of his own. He might fail or he might succeed. Whether he failed or succeeded, Adam Sutherland would pay the freight. It was a matter undertaken largely in the interest of his employer—but there was also a touch of the very human motive of helping the piper present a peremptory bill to the sinister figure whose shadow had been lying more or less across Robin’s path for a long year.
Robin rode west. In the middle of the afternoon he dropped into the valley of the Missouri river, clattered across the bridge and stabled his horse in Fort Benton. Once his hunger was satisfied he went straight to the sheriff’s office. A Montana sheriff might be anywhere in his county at any moment, but luckily Robin found Tom Coats holding down a chair in his own sanctum. Robin’s business was simple, requiring only certain explanations which made Coats open his eyes and readily promise secrecy and coöperation. When Robin departed he went as a duly sworn deputy of the Sheriff of Chouteau county, in the State of Montana, with certain papers in his pocket and a nickel-plated star to pin on his breast if he chose to so ornament himself.