What did he care for the Red Butte Ranch, except that his mother was buried there? That it was rich in minerals which could be exchanged for money, wealth, was outside his purposes. It was not the legal but the spiritual ownership which determined him. When we understand more about psychical phenomena we shall know more about our Indians. It wasn't only that the big appeal of the open was here intensified. Half memories, vague instincts, ghostly and subliminal concords met him here, took him by the hand, and said: "Come apart and be at peace." But all this was there, would wait. He never doubted his ultimate possession of the ranch. The Shades who owned it would eventually hand it over to him, their rightful heir. All that was only a matter of time. It could wait. Meantime, what was he doing? He was riding into the future unwillingly. He had left the Agency, and knew it was forever. He knew in a dull way that he had finished a chapter in his life, and that it would never be quite the same again. How did it happen? Ought he to have prevented it?
His thought wandered back over the devious ways he had come. His life seemed so impersonal, his own will and purpose had had so little to do with it. He could only think of a boat swept from its moorings, floating about on the waves of circumstance, driven before this wind, twisted by that current, tossed on the shore to be caught up again in the high tide and taken back to the deeps, back to the wanton winds and waves. He knew it would be useless to turn the horses' heads and try to go back. Always before he had submitted; what did it matter? Now it mattered. When was it he first cared? Swiftly his thought travelled back until it focussed on those two rough men in the library at Portman Square—awkward, shy, fumbling their broad-brimmed hats in their hands, dressed in their "store clothes"; all the more unmistakable for the London setting and for the contrast with his father with whom they were talking! He recalled his own wonder that the high-bred, delicate man with his distinguished face could ever have been tanned and weather-stained like these uncouth men and been their companion on the frontier. He recalled his own surprise at the familiarity of his father with them. The Earl had called them "Andy" and "Shorty," and he was rather punctilious about the forms and ceremonies. It was a revelation of a hitherto unsuspected talent for unbending. How his father had plied them with cigars and liquors, and their astonishing capacity! The amount of neat liquor they had taken at a gulp!
These men, so different from all the types with which he had been familiar, and each so unlike the other! "Andy," an Austrian Jew, was so determined to be conciliatory and ingratiating that he had developed a conservative stutter which, with its saving clauses and roundabout phrases, enabled him to estimate the effect upon his listener even before he had actually committed himself to the proposition in hand. "Shorty," quick, sharp, explosive, going direct to the point and disarming suspicion by a method the reverse of the other! There was something about these men that had interested him from the first, then amused him, then fascinated him. The subject of the talk did not immediately claim his attention. Every one knew that the ranch had been an expensive experience to the Earl, and it was a foregone conclusion that he would jump at the chance to sell it. The negotiations had gone quickly to a conclusion. The Earl had accepted their first offer and a deed had been prepared and was about to be signed. Then the young man interposed for the first time. He had suddenly received an impression, a "hunch," as the cowboys say, that seemed later to be clairvoyant. At first it was only a vague sentiment, too vague to be expressed, too vague to be used as an argument, or to influence practical men, so he only asked that the matter might be postponed until the following morning. His father and the Westerners were annoyed by this freak of eccentricity, but humored him as we humor children, or the irresponsible, for he remembered that he had been drinking, was perhaps drunk, as he often was in those evil days. The following morning a cable came from Big Bill saying: "Don't sell ranch. Have sent letter." The letter which followed explained what we already know, that asphalt had been found, that in Bill's opinion a lot of this valuable mineral was on the ranch, which had been "jumped" by the cowboys, and he strongly advised the Earl to send some one out there to investigate the matter; he suggested that this investigation should be conducted as secretly as possible; that he was himself too well known, and his former affiliations with the Earl were too well known, to permit of his doing this successfully. There was a job open at the Agency, the chief of Indian police, and Bill offered to use his influence to get it for any one the Earl would send out to look after his interests.
Then something in the young man's soul rose up and said: "Here am I." And when he turned his face to the West the winds and the waves beckoned to him and recognized him and led him to his own. Then for the first time he recognized purpose in his life. Ladd had seen in him only the usual adventurer trying to hide away from his past and one likely to be amenable and useful. It would have been difficult to find any one more suitable to the position of chief of police. In a country where men required initiative, self-reliance, and courage he had found conditions suitable to his temperament and abilities. He had felt "at home" and had been a success from the start. About the time that he took charge of the police, Wah-na-gi returned from Carlisle, and every phase of her struggle with her environment and heredity was obvious to him. He saw at once what she did not see, that it was hopeless, but it lent to her the charm of poetry and romance, and she was pretty enough not to require such assistance. For a long time he was very cunning in concealing and disguising his interest in the girl, and he continued to fool himself long after he had ceased to fool any one else. And now he was riding away from everything that made life worth living, and the fact that he had just come successfully through a big fight meant nothing to him. He would have liked to go back, but that was impossible, and he rode in bitterness and rebellion.
The cowboys had found the holding of the asphalt territory rather irksome. At first it had been all hurrah, but as week followed week and month followed month, and no armed conflict took place, they grew very tired. The Trust had entered upon the long siege with bomb-proof galleries and an elaborate system of underground approaches. No isolated fort ever successfully withstood such a siege. The asphalt vein stretched across considerable country and to police it all and hold it by force of arms against an invisible enemy that did not materialize but might at any moment do so, and at some unexpected place, was a nerve-racking job for a time, and then grew monotonous, and with monotony came carelessness. The Red Butte Ranch was their base of supplies and operations, and in possession of this they felt legally and morally secure, having been held up for it by two robbers in the usual and conventional way of the business world.
The majority of their men were therefore, as Hal knew, distributed along the asphalt vein, but he also knew that there were more than enough left at the ranch to put up a winning fight against two men. So it was necessary to exercise caution and strategy, and fight only if cornered and compelled to.
In his capacity of chief of police, Hal had ridden over every foot of the country and knew it as well as Bill. It was therefore greatly to the surprise of the latter when the young man, after crossing a spur of the Bad Lands, left the trail and struck into the hills.
"Where you goin', son?" he asked with obvious disapproval.
"We got to do this on the jump, Bill, or not at all. Time is the important thing, particularly if any of those bandits try to follow us. It's an awful bluff, but we'll get away with it."
"You can't git through that-a-way. You'll just run up against the 'Knife-edge'!"