“No, I wouldn’t; and what’s more, I never will do it,” replied Ned, walking up and down the porch with his hands behind his back. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he added, suddenly, while a smile of triumph lighted up his face, “take his money away from him. He keeps a lot of it in a box in his room. I saw it there.”
“What good will that do?”
“Why, how is he going to keep a herdsman unless he has money to pay him?”
“O, that would never do. He’d raise an awful row about it, and then go off and sell some of his cattle and get more money.”
“That’s so,” replied Ned, the triumphant smile disappearing as quickly as it had come. “He’s got luck on his side, hasn’t he? I wish the raiders would jump down on him and take the last steer he’s got. I’d be glad to see some of them long enough to tell them where to find him. I’d tell them to catch George too and hold fast to him,” added Ned, under his breath, as his father turned and walked into the house. “I never can carry out my scheme while he owns those cattle; I can see that very plainly. If I could only make him lose them some way, I should have things just as I want them. But how can I do it? I must keep my mind on it until I hit upon something.”
This conversation and Ned’s soliloquy will serve to show that certain plans calculated to work serious injury to the young herdsman had been laid by the new occupants of the ranche, and that one of them, at least, was ready to resort to desperate measures in order to carry those plans into execution. Ned had set himself deliberately to work to drive his cousin away from his home. One would suppose that if he had any affection for him, or had possessed the least spark of honor, he would have been above such a thing; but the truth was, Ned was not above doing anything that he thought would advance his own interests. He never forgot that clause in his uncle’s will, which provided that in a certain contingency all the immense property, of which his father now had control, was to fall to himself. It was the last thought he dwelt upon at night when he went to bed and the first that passed through his mind when he awoke in the morning. George was very much in the way there. Ned thought so, and he knew that his father thought so, too. They could not do as they pleased while he was about, for George knew everything that was going on in the ranche. He knew just what the expenses amounted to every month, could tell how many cattle had been sold, the price they brought, and how much money his uncle ought to have put into the bank.
Uncle John did not like to be watched so closely, and Ned didn’t like it either, for the reason that his father could not give him as much money as he wanted. Ned would have cut a fine dash if he had possessed the necessary funds, and Uncle John would have been only too glad to furnish him with all the cash he demanded if he could have done so without George’s knowledge. All Uncle John wanted was to fill his pockets and Ned’s; and the latter, to assist him in accomplishing his object, set himself to work to make the house so unpleasant for George that he would not stay there. He had determined upon this before he had been two days at the ranche, and he had succeeded beyond his expectations. George seemed to think a great deal more of Zeke’s company than he did of Uncle John’s and Ned’s, and often said that he preferred a blanket at night and a life in the saddle to his room at home and the lonely existence he led while he was there. He spent more than half his time in camp, but came home whenever he wanted supplies for himself and herdsman, and spent three or four days in riding about taking note of things. Ned always dreaded these visits, and wished he could hit upon some plan to put a stop to them.
“I thought I had hit upon something,” said Ned, to himself, as he jumped down the steps and walked toward the corral, which was the name given to the enclosure in which the riding-horses belonging to the ranche were kept. “And I believe yet that if father would only take his herd away from him he would be too discouraged to start another. He would have to do something, of course—George isn’t the one to remain long idle—and as there is no other business he can go into in this country, perhaps he would go off somewhere to seek his fortune and leave us a clear field. I wish Gus Robbins was here now. Two heads are better than one, and perhaps he could suggest something.”
Ned was looking for his friend Gus every day, although how the latter was going to find his way over the hundred and fifty miles of wilderness that lay between Palos, which was the end of the stage route, and the rancho, Ned didn’t know. If Gus could have told him when he expected to reach Palos, the case would have been different. Ned could have sent one of the herdsmen down there to meet him and show him the way home; but, as it was, Gus would have to take his chances. He would have to wait at Palos until he fell in with some of the neighbors who might happen to go there on business, as some of them did nearly every month. But a month was a long time to wait. He wished his friend was with him now, for he was growing more lonely every day. He ought to be on the way by this time, Ned often told himself, and of late he had fallen into the habit of riding to the top of a high swell about five miles from the rancho, and spending the most of the day there waiting for Gus. When he came he would pass along the trail leading over the top of that swell, and Ned could see him while he was yet a long distance away.
When Ned was mounted and fully equipped for a gallop, a stranger would have taken him for a masquerader on his way to a ball. If he had sported a big mustache and had a few more years on his shoulders, he might have easily passed for the leader of a band of brigands. He always wore a Mexican sombrero, buckskin coat, fawnskin vest, corduroy trowsers, and high top-boots, the heels of which were armed with huge silver-plated spurs. These was intended for ornament and not for use, for Ned could not have been hired to touch his horse with them. He had tried it once. The animal was as steady an old cob as Uncle John could find in the settlement, but he did not like spurs, and on one occasion he had convinced his rider of the fact by throwing him head over heels into a ditch. That was when Ned first purchased him, and before he knew anything about riding on horseback. He was growing somewhat accustomed to the saddle now, and was beginning to look about him for a better mount. There were plenty of horses on the ranche—fleet, hardy animals they were, too—but Ned wanted a thorough-bred, such as some of the settlers were purchasing in Kentucky.