As they rode along he made a clean breast of his dilemma. "It will have to be largely a case of bluff," he confided, "and we must make it stick. We have no time for lawing, and if we did, the shysters would get it all. Bart isn't easily buffaloed and will put up a stiff fight. Of course we've got the age on him—those hides are a strong card—but we're not going to have a walk-over. I can't see my way clear just yet, but it will work out as we go along. It sure won't be a picnic, but one thing is certain; we'll either get those cattle or Matlock will have to rustle a new partner."
Red shifted his cud and spat unerringly on the crest of a loco weed in the trail. "D'yuh 'spose we'll meet up with Matlock there? Reckon 'tain't likely though." Through the labored indifference of his speech, Douglass detected a certain restrained hopefulness and his face grew serious.
"I want to talk to you about that, Red. We've got nothing that we can fasten on him securely as yet, and we've got to go slow. Of course, if we get him to rights, or if he makes any bad breaks"—the pause was ominous. "But we don't want to raise any hell that we can't lay again. I'm going to give him all the rope that the game will stand; I think, however, that he has quit."
"Them kind nevah quits," said McVey sententiously, "an' yuh don't want to take any fool chances, Ken. I seen a feller oncet thet was monkeying with a rattler an' ketched 'im by thu tail. He got bit! Thu best way with a pizen reptyle is to blow his damn haid off, 'specially one thet yuh've pulled thu rattles offen."
They both grinned reminiscently at the reference to the Alcazar incident, but Douglass winced at the thought that although he had stopped Matlock's rattling for the time being, he had not neutralized the venom of his silent bite. And it is hard to side-step an unheralded stroke from behind.
"Well," he said unemotionally, "it's his first move."
"Hes last, yuh mean," muttered Red sotto voce, "fer I am to be first if he bats hes eye." But aloud he merely said, "That's what," and took a fresh chew of plug.
Douglass's perplexity as how his coup was to be executed increased with every passing hour. He carefully formulated and as regretfully discarded at least a hundred schemes, each of which appealed less and less to his practical judgment as he critically reviewed them. Never in his experience had he faced anything so intangible as the problem which now confronted him. He was at a loss for a precedent, and what was still worse, was in total ignorance of the laws governing the unique conditions. Not that he cared a rap for the laws so far as they might affect him personally, and he had an inborn contempt for conditions; but he wanted that transfer of the brand to be legally absolute and without recourse, and he did not want to involve Mr. Carter in the slightest degree.
When they eventually reached Gunnison he went straight to the office of the best lawyer in the town, a life-long friend of old Bob Carter, and succinctly and forcibly laid all the facts before him. After listening attentively to his explicit elucidation of the law in the case, and his logical course of procedure in the premises, Douglass shook his head.
"That will take months of lawing and jawing and I want those stolen cattle returned at once. It's got to be settled before I leave town, and I won't consent to involving Carter in any long-drawn-out, expensive litigation. There must be some way of settling it man to man. Will the law protect a bill of sale made out to me or Red, here, if I win it in a card game or force it out of him with a gun? That's what I want to know."