CHAPTER XII
THE OPENING GUN
In between the high moments of any man’s existence life seems to flow evenly, with a monotonous smoothness, like the placid reaches of a slow stream between foaming rapids. For a time it was like that with Robin. He rose before dawn, performed small tasks, rode abroad more or less perfunctorily during the day. Storms blew up and blew over. Between blizzards the range lay quiescent. Cattle and horses fed on high ground where the sun warmed them. When night came or harsh winds stung too bitterly they sought shelter in canyons, in the sparse timber of the foothills, in the rough tangle of the Bad Lands. Winter for the range herds was a period of endurance, a struggle to survive. In this dumb struggle man had little part. Cattleman and cowboy alike kept to warmed quarters. Their saddle horses munched hay in log stables. The range stock attended by their enemies, the blizzard and the prowling wolf, drifted at will until spring should bring green grass.
Probably Tex Matthews and Robin were abroad more than the ordinary business of the range required. They rode partly because old Mayne chafed under an uneasy sense of property rights wantonly violated—partly because they desired of their own accord to overlook nothing. In that wide sweep of plain and rolling hill and endless canyons, wherever that four-legged loot was abroad, there was always the chance of the unexpected, a chance to catch Mark Steele red-handed, to get evidence that would convict him before the law which reflected the dominant material interest of the time and territory, inasmuch as it functioned with greater speed and precision in the matter of stolen stock than it ever did in a mere question of human life.
Sometimes Robin, in the kitchen helping Ivy dry the supper dishes or sitting beside her by the rough fireplace in the front room, would wonder if this ugly tangle was quietly unraveling itself—or if this were just a lull.
Since the day they clashed in Big Sandy he had not laid eyes on Shining Mark. Except for remaining away from dances in the Bear Paws where Mark was likely to be, he had not deliberately avoided the man. Indeed, from Chase Hill to the mouth of Cow Creek, from Cold Spring to the Missouri he had ridden alert and watchful, eager to come on the man about his nefarious undertakings. He doubted now that he would. Mark would be well aware that he must step more softly than ever since Tex Matthews rode for Mayne. Yet Mark might be abroad with his running iron in spite of everything.
About three weeks after Tex joined Robin one of the Davis boys rode into Mayne’s and stopped for a meal.
“There’s a dance at the schoolhouse Saturday night,” he announced.
“Saturday night?” Robin regarded him intently. “All right. We’ll be there with bells on.”
They were all looking at him curiously, young Davis, Tex, Ivy, her father, even the two juveniles. Robin felt that he was under fire.
“We’ll be there,” he repeated. “You tell ’em so.”