“I’ll tell the world! He says life’s too short to 152 take any more chances of bein’ bumped off. Tried to make me believe my turn’ll come next.”
Stratton shrugged his shoulders. “I reckon there isn’t much chance of that. They’re not keen to get the sheriff down on their trail. Well, if he feels like that he wouldn’t be much use here even if we could persuade him to stick.”
About half-past five they decided to call it a day and went down to the bunk-house, through the open door of which Buck presently observed the arrival of the remainder of the outfit. They came from the east, and Kreeger and Siegrist were with them. As Buck expected, the former rode the sorrel with distinctive white markings, while the latter bestrode a nondescript bay. The second of the two riders he had watched that afternoon had been mounted on just such a bay, and if there had been a lingering touch of doubt in Stratton’s mind as to the identity of the two criminals, it remained no longer.
CHAPTER XVI
THE UNEXPECTED
More than once during the following few days, Stratton was forced to a grudging admiration, of Tex Lynch’s cleverness. Even knowing what he did, he failed to detect the slightest sign in either the foreman or his men that they were waiting expectantly for something to happen. The only significant feature was their marked avoidance of the middle pasture. This might readily be accounted for by the fact that the work now lay on the other side of the outfit, but Buck was convinced that their real purpose was to allow the blackleg scourge to gain as great a hold as possible on Shoe-Bar cattle before its discovery.
The cold-blooded brutality of that quiescence made Stratton furious, but it also brought home more effectually than ever the nature of the men he had to deal with. They were evidently the sort to stop at nothing, and Buck had moments of wondering whether or not he was proceeding in the right way to uncover the mystery of their motive.
So far he had really accomplished very little. The 154 unabated watchfulness of the crowd so hedged in and hampered him that it was quite impossible to do any extended investigating. He still had the power of ending the whole affair at any moment and clearing the ranch of the entire gang. But aside from his unwillingness to humiliate Mary Thorne, he realized that this would not necessarily accomplish what he wanted.