Getting up from the bench, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and went to join Perry and Sim Pierce in front of the cabin.
CHAPTER XII.
AT LIGE BENNER’S RANCH.
Lige Benner had his private quarters in a big adobe house. The house capped a “rise” of ground, and from its windows Benner could look below and see the big bunk house, the huge “chuck shanty,” the blacksmith shop, the tool sheds, the wagon shelters and one of his horse corrals. In point of size the various buildings formed a small village, inhabited by at least fifty men.
The lord of the village lived on the low hill, kept ceaseless vigilance over his men and ruled them with an iron hand.
It was currently reported that a love affair, in early life, had ended disastrously for Benner and had soured his disposition.
Where he came from, when he settled on the Brazos, no one knew. He had been so long in his present location, however, that his original hailing place had long since ceased to be a matter of any interest.
Steers bearing his brand—the Circle-B—were numbered by thousands, and ranged over many square miles of country.
At this particular time the cattle business was enjoying unprecedented prosperity, and wealth flowed in on Benner far and away beyond his powers of spending. This very fact seemed to render him irritable. He pictured to himself the delights which money could buy in Galveston, San Antonio, New Orleans and New York, and fretted because he dared not leave his ranch to go to places where his money could bring him a larger return of enjoyment. He hadn’t a foreman whom he could trust. A younger brother, a hunchback, lived with him, but even this brother had little of his confidence. Jerry, as the hunchback was called, was all well enough as an aide, but if Benner had absented himself for any great length of time from the ranch, Jerry would surely have manipulated affairs to his own profit.
Jerry was a schemer. Shrewd as a fox, he was as sly as a serpent, brutal and utterly unscrupulous. His nature seemed to have been warped into ugly channels when his body was broken.
Benner had given Jerry a home, and Jerry repaid his brother by giving him advice. The advice, although not always honest, never failed to redound to Lige Benner’s benefit. So, while he had come to trust to Jerry’s shrewdness in counsel, he came also to distrust his principles—principles which Benner occasionally appropriated to his own use.