Sneed tore his hair and swore when he was not choking.
“And after I told them to let up on that blasted outlaw’s trail!” he yelled. “Where will it end, between war-whoops and murders? What sort of a God-forsaken layout is this, anyhow? A man can’t stick his nose out of his own house after dark without having it skinned by a slug! He’s a h–l of a hefty orphant, he is! Poor thing, ain’t got no paw or maw to look after his dear little hide! He needs a regiment of cavalry for a papa, that’s what he needs, and a good strong lariat for a mamma! Orphant! He’s a h–l of a sumptious orphant!”
“Have you trailed him?” asked the sheriff, having to smile in spite of himself at the execution on all sides of him, and at the foreman’s words.
“Trailed him!” yelled Sneed, raising on his toes in his vehemence. “Trailed him! Good God, yes! But what good is it, what can we do when our cayuses are so dod-gasted tired that they can’t catch a tumble bug? Trailed him! Yes, we trailed him, all right! We trailed him until we fell asleep in the saddles on our sleeping cayuses! And while we were gone, d––d if he didn’t blow in and smash up our furniture! We trailed him, all right; just like a lot of cross-eyed, locoed drunken ants! We had to wake each other up, and he could-a killed the whole crowd of us with a club! And my punchers who were so cock-sure they’d get him! How in h–l did they go and mess up with Apaches? They wasn’t no fool kids!”
“The last time we saw them they were leaving the stage to go south after him,” Charley said. “They hadn’t got more than ten miles south when they must have met the Apaches. I have a suspicion that The Orphan had a hand in that meeting, but how he did it I don’t know. But I know that the spot was lovely for a head-on collision. Punchers riding south would turn the corner of the chaparral and run into the war party before they knowed it. And I didn’t see The Orphant’s body laying around all full of arrows, neither.”
Sneed’s rage was pathetic. He almost frothed, and tears stood in his blood-shot eyes. His neck and his face were red as fire and the veins of his neck and forehead stood out like whip-cords, while his face worked convulsively. He was incapable of coherent speech, his words being unintelligible growls, a series of snarls, and he could only pace back and forth, waving his arms and cursing wildly.
Shields glanced about the ranch and gave a few orders, his men executing them without delay. One man was to keep guard in the bunk house while Sneed and his woe-begone men slept. The sheriff and Charley rode away toward the north to begin the search for the outlaw; and there was to be no quarter asked or given if his deputies had anything to do with it.
The remaining deputy busied himself about the ranch in executing a plan the sheriff had thought out, and his actions were peculiar. First selecting a position from which a man could command an extensive view of the premises, he began to pace off distances in all directions. The place was about eight hundred yards west of the ranch house and bunk house, and formed one angle of a triangle with them; and from it it was possible to look in through the windows of both of them. Any one passing within good rifle range of either house would show up against the lights in the windows; and if a man had been covered over with sand on that particular outlying angle, he could pick off the intruder without being seen. The Orphan was due to meet with a surprise if he paid his regular visit the coming night.
The deputy, after completing his work to his satisfaction found three more positions where they respectively commanded the corrals, the wagons and the rear of the bunk house. Then he paced more distances and was careful that bulky objects interposed in the direct lines between the positions, this latter precaution being to make it impossible for the deputies to shoot each other. This done, he went into the house and consulted with his companion in arms, laughing immoderately about the joke they would play on the marauder.
While Shields and Charley vainly searched the plain and while the deputy paced and thought and paced, and while Sneed and his exhausted cow-punchers slept as if in death, safely under guard, two men were riding along the Ford’s Station Sagetown Trail well to the east of the Backbone, chatting amicably and smoking the same brand of tobacco. One of them sat high up in the air on the seat of a stage coach, from where he overlooked his six-horse team. His face was wreathed in grins and his expression was one of beatific contentment. The other cantered alongside on a dirty brown horse which had a white stocking on the near front foot, keeping close watch of the surrounding plain, his mind active and alert.