Langford of the Three Bars

by Kate Boyles Bingham; Virgil D. Boyles

Arrived at the bottom, he found his clothes torn and his hands bleeding; but that was nothing. With grim determination he made his way through the ravine and struck across the sand trail with a sure realization of his danger, but without the least abatement of his resolution. The sand was firm under his feet. The water had receded a sufficient length of time before to make the thought of quicksands an idle fear. No puff of cloudy smoke leaped from a rifle barrel. If, as he more than half suspected, the island was a rendezvous for cattle thieves, a place surely admirably fitted by nature for such unlawful operations, the rustlers were either overconfident of the inaccessibility of their retreat and kept no lookout, or they were insolently indifferent to exposure. The former premise was the more likely. A light breeze, born of the afterglow, came scurrying down the river bed. Here and there, where the sand was finest and driest, it rose in little whirlwinds. No sound broke the stillness of the summer evening.

What was that? Coyotes barking over yonder across the river? That alien sound! A man’s laugh, a curse, a heart-breaking bellow of pain. Williston parted ever so slightly the thick foliage of underbrush that separated him from the all too familiar sounds and peered within.

In the midst of a small clearing,—man-made, for several stumps were scattered here and there,—two men were engaged in unroping and releasing a red steer, similar in all essential respects to a bunch of three or four huddled together a little to one side. They were all choice, well-fed animals, but there were thousands of just such beasts herding on the free ranges. He owned red steers like those, but was there a man in the cattle country who did not? They were impossible of identification without the aid of their brand, and it happened that they were so bunched as to completely baffle Williston in his eager efforts to decipher the stamp that would disclose their ownership. That they were the illegitimate prey of cattle rustlers, he never for one moment doubted. The situation was conclusive. A bed of glowing embers constantly replenished and kept at white heat served to lighten up the weird scene growing dusky under the surrounding cottonwoods.

Williston thought he recognized in one of the men—the one who seemed to be directing the procedure of this little affair, whose wide and dirty hat-rim was so tantalizingly drawn over his eyes—the solitary rider whose unexpected appearance had so startled him a short time before. Both he and his companion were dressed after the rough, nondescript manner of cattle men, both were gay, laughing and talkative, and seemingly as oblivious to possible danger as if engaged in the most innocent and legitimate business.

A little to the left and standing alone was an odd creature of most striking appearance—a large, spotted steer with long, peculiar-looking horns. It were quite impossible to mistake such a possession if it had once been yours. Its right side was turned full toward Williston and in the centre of the hip stood out distinctly the cleanly cauterized three perpendicular lines that were the identifying mark of the Three Bars ranch, one of those same big, opulent, self-centred outfits whose astonishingly multiplying sign was becoming such a veritable and prophetic writing on the wall for Williston and his kind.

Who then had dared to drive before him an animal so branded? The boldness of the transgression and the insolent indifference to the enormity of attendant consequences held him for the moment breathless. His attention was once more called to the movements of the men. The steer with which they had been working was led away still moaning with surprise and pain, and another brought forward from the reserve bunch. The branded hip, if there was a brand, was turned away from Williston. The bewildered animal was cleverly roped and thrown to the ground. The man who was plainly directing the affair, he of the drooping hat and lazy shoulders, stepped to the fire. Williston held his breath with the intensity of his interest. The man stooped and took an iron from the fire. It was the end-gate rod of a wagon and it was red-hot. In the act of straightening himself from his stooping position, the glowing iron stick in his right hand, he flung from his head with an easy swing the flopping hat that interfered with the nicety of sight requisite in the work he was about to do, and faced squarely that quiet, innocent-looking spot which held the watching man in its brush; and in the moment in which Williston drew hastily back, the fear of discovery beating a tattoo of cold chills down his spine, recognition of the man came to him in a clarifying burst of comprehension.

But the man evidently saw nothing and suspected nothing. His casual glance was probably only a manifestation of his habitual attitude of being never off his guard. He approached the prostrate steer with indifference to any meaning that might be attached to the soft snapping of twigs caused by Williston’s involuntary drawing back into the denser shadows.

“Y’ don’t suppose now, do you, that any blamed, interferin’ off’cer is a-loafin’ round where he oughtn’t to be?” said the second man with a laugh.

Williston, much relieved, again peered cautiously through the brush. He was confident a brand was about to be worked over. He must see—what there was to see.

“Easy now, boss,” said the second man with an officious warning. He was a big, beefy fellow with a heavy, hardened face. Williston sounded the depths of his memory but failed to place him among his acquaintances in the cow country.