“Who’d you think it might be, then?” he inquired. “Or has Mark got you buffaloed so’s you dassent think out loud to me? ’S he been puttin’ the fear uh God into you? You ’fraid of him?”
“I don’t know,” Robin answered truthfully. “He’s done some pretty high-handed things in this country and made ’em stick, hasn’t he? He’d be a bad man to tangle with. He’s never made a gun play that I know of. Still, everybody seems to take him for walkin’ dynamite.”
“He is, too,” Mayne agreed moodily. “He looks it, acts it once in a while. I sized him up as dangerous the first time I ever saw him. Some men are that way. Soon as you look ’em in the eye, you know they’ll be poison if you go up against ’em. Same time, nobody, if he was deadly as a Gila monster, is goin’ to keep stealin’ my stock and get away with it, make me think I like it. I seen plenty wild west before Mark Steele was born. You watch he don’t keep cuttin’ back unbranded stuff on you when the outfit works south of the mountains, Robin. The time to keep cases on him is all the time. If he drags the long rope on my territory after round-up’s over, I bet you I get him before the grass comes up in the spring.”
“Suppose you were dead sure, but had no evidence a stock inspector could make an arrest on, what’ you do?” Robin asked curiously.
“More’n one way of killin’ a cat besides chokin’ it to death with butter,” Mayne drawled cryptically.
As the Block S wagons, saddle bunch and riders traveled south the next forenoon they passed one equipage and were themselves passed by another on the trail that ran to the Sutherland ranch on Little Eagle.
The first was Dan Mayne and Ivy rolling home with a team and wagon. Robin jogged beside them for a mile or so bantering Ivy. Then Mark Steele detached himself from the other riders and joined him, and somehow the light-hearted chaffering between Ivy and Robin ceased. Mark did the talking. He was as genial as the sun. Even old Mayne had to grin. But Robin didn’t. He kept pace and was casual, but he wasn’t happy. And when Mark said: “Well, kid, the outfit’s leavin’ us behind,” Robin lifted his hat and rode on with Steele, in spite of the fact that it was his privilege to join the outfit when he chose. He wasn’t a Block S man. He was a “rep.” But he went.
Steele tightened up as soon as they were clear of the Maynes. It wasn’t anything he said because he didn’t open his mouth. It was his manner, a subtle something Robin could feel. Mark looked back at the team and wagon once. Then he looked searchingly at Robin and smiled—without a word. The mocking flicker in his eyes made Robin uneasy. It was not the first time Steele had manifested an interest in Ivy Mayne, although everybody within fifty miles knew she was Robin’s girl.
“Maybe,” thought Robin, “he thinks he can get her the way he’s gettin’ the old man’s calves.”
They joined the other riders. As they paced along the trail some one noticed a little banner of dust far behind.