“Some men’s reasons for startin’ trouble ain’t known to nobody but themselves,” Tex observed. “But they stir her up just the same.”
Matthews’ last sentence recurred to Robin as being almost prophetic before the afternoon was over. The riders had swept a range where stock was thick. They had bunched over a thousand head and were cutting beef on three sides in swirls of dust. Twilight would be on them before the last steer was separated from that milling herd. They had worked at top speed for two months. Now at the end of a hard day both horses and men were tired and short-tempered. They rode fast and silently, without smiles or laughter.
Robin was well mounted. Energetic and alert he held his own wherever he found himself, but a continuous darting of steers from the herd to the cut had kept him so steadily on the jump that when a lull came he let his horse stand and sat rolling himself a cigarette.
Steele shot an animal out of the herd. The brute went at a swinging trot and Steele pulled up. Then the beast suddenly changed its bovine mind and charged back. Steele laid his horse alongside. The animal dodged this way and that. Headed on each attempt by an active cutting horse the steer finally joined his fellows in the cut. Robin sat still and watched. It was nothing. If it had been a little nearer he might have taken the animal off Steele’s hands and left him free to cut out another. Such an action was not compulsory. On the other side of the herd these dodging contests were occurring every minute or two. But Steele reined up beside him.
“Wake up and ride, you — — —!” he snarled in a tone so low Robin knew Steele intended no one but himself should hear. “Think all you got to do is be an ornament?”
The epithet amazed Robin. It came out of the blue. His face flamed. Before he could open his mouth Steele dashed back into the herd.
Robin gasped. His first impulse was to spur his horse after Shining Mark. No man could take that. Those were fighting words. Yet Steele wasn’t making a war talk or he would have shouted so that every man could hear and there would have been no avoiding the issue. Robin’s brain worked fast. He knew that Steele was quite calm and collected. What he said he said deliberately, with a considered purpose.
“You’re lookin’ for trouble,” Robin said thoughtfully. “But you aim to make me start it. I sabe your play. You’ll have to try again. I won’t give you no openin’.”
Twice in the next three days Steele dug into Robin. Each time they were out of earshot of any rider. Each time Shining Mark flayed him with insult, with provocative abuse. The second time Robin said quietly:
“You’re wastin’ ammunition, Mark. You can’t kill me with a blank cartridge. Why don’t you make these fighting talks before the outfit?”