Robin knew the modus operandi. You had a few cattle on the range. You owned a duly registered brand. You rode abroad in lonely places, where range riders seldom came except when the round-up swept through. Having found a cow with a desirable calf you shot the cow, roped the calf, ran your brand on him and hazed the orphan off two or three miles from his dead mother. Then you rode on and repeated the operation. Presently, if you were wary, well-mounted, a good roper, and craftily evaded being caught in the act, your natural increase assumed great proportions. The cow, being dead, could not embarrassingly claim a calf bearing a brand not her own. A dead cow here and there on the range excited no comment. Cows died from a variety of causes. The cattleman knew that to his sorrow and the cowboy accepted dead cattle as he accepted the sun and the wind and rain, as natural properties of his environment.
Only—when too many cows were found to be dying of sudden death there were sure to be riders abroad with Winchester carbines under their stirrup-leathers. It was apt to be unhealthy for those who sought to augment their herd by other than natural increase.
Since every rustler knew that, he himself was not likely to permit any one to view his activities with rope and iron and depart untroubled. Hence Robin Tyler lay very quiet in the grass. He was unarmed, to begin with. He was not sure he wished to know the identity of those two men, the brands on the dead cows nor the fresh iron marks on the calves. That knowledge spelled trouble. Somehow Robin had a distaste for trouble of a personal nature. He had seen plenty. He wasn’t combative. He seemed to have little of that primitive instinct to fight, to kill, to harry other men, which crops out now and then in even highly civilized persons.
Yet, as he stared at the two men in the silent flat, now flinging themselves across their saddles to start the stolen calves to new feeding grounds afar, he felt a touch of resentment. He had an intuitive knowledge of what brand could be read on those dead cows, because he was sure he knew one of the men—the flash and glitter of sun on silver ornaments as the rider’s horse wheeled and danced under the restraining bit gave Robin this unwelcome knowledge; unwelcome, because if confirmed, it was knowledge upon which he would have to act, if he dared. Would he dare? He didn’t know.
When they were gone out of sight down the Birch Creek flats hazing the calves before them on the run, Robin turned back to Cold Spring.
CHAPTER II
“KEEP OFF THE GRASS!”
The range cattle had finished their siesta and grazed afar when Robin once more hid among the willows. He was hungry but he had the solace of tobacco. He waited with dogged patience. Perhaps the broom-tails Red Mike ran with would yet come. If not there was always the chance of others. If the cool of evening brought no mount within reach of his loop he could still walk home.
So Robin lay thinking about those dead cows and the men who shot them. He couldn’t get rid of the certainty that came over him when silver conchos on bit and spur and saddle flashed in the sun. He knew the man. He was aware that he could be mistaken. Other riders caparisoned with silver ornaments could be abroad on that range. But the first conviction held.
Hornets and wild bees hummed among the willows. Meadow larks swooped to the cold water, washed, preened their feathers, swung on low bushes and caroled their sweet, throaty songs within ten feet of him. Pungent odors from sagebrush bruised by hoofs, the faint smell of mud stirred by watering cattle, all the manifold airs off a wide, hot land wafted across his nostrils as he lay there. The sun dipped westward, fiery in the crystal blue. The willows supplied a grateful shade. He grew drowsy, dozed, and was wakened by nickering and the thud of hoofs.
Luck had come his way. His sorrel horse stood with forefeet in the mud, drinking from the cold trickle. The band was ranged about the spring. Red Mike had set himself as if posed to receive the waiting loop, within range of a short and easy throw for a hand as true as Robin Tyler’s, whose first toy had been a rawhide string.