From the Hashknife ranch their trail led to many places. Soldiers of fortune they became, although Hashknife referred to themselves as cowpunchers of disaster. From the wide lands of Alberta to the Mexican Border they had left their mark. They did not stay long in any place, unless fate decreed that a certain time must elapse before their work was finished. And then they would go on, possibly poorer in pocket. Their life had made them fatalists, had made them very human. To salve their own consciences they declared that they were looking for the right spot to settle down; a place to live out the rest of their life in peaceable pursuits.
But down in their hearts they knew that this place did not exist. They wanted to see the other side of the hill. Hashknife’s brain rebelled against a mystery. It seemed to challenge him to combat. Where range detectives had failed utterly because they were unable to see beyond actual facts, Hashknife’s analytical mind had enabled him to build up chains of evidence that had cleared up mystery after mystery.
But solving mysteries was not a business with them. They did not pose as detectives. It merely happened that fate threw them into contact with these things. Sleepy’s mind did not function with any more rapidity than that of any average man, but he was blessed with a vast sense of humour, bull-dog tenacity and a faculty for using a gun when a gun was most needed.
Whether it was merely a pose or not, Sleepy always tried to prevent Hashknife from getting interested in these mysteries of the range country. He argued often and loud, but to no avail. But once started, Sleepy worked as diligently as Hashknife. Neither of them were wizards with their guns. No amount of persuasion would induce them to compete with others in marksmanship, nor did they ever practise drawing a gun.
“Leave that to the gun-men,” Hashknife had said. “We’re not gun-men.”
Which was something that many men would take great pains to disprove, along the back-trail of Hashknife and Sleepy.
And right now, while he ate heavily of the HJ food, Sleepy Stevens knew he was being dragged into the whirlpool of the Tumbling River range. He could tell by the twitch of Hashknife’s nose, by the calculating squint of his gray eyes; and if that was not enough—Hashknife was cutting a biscuit with a knife and fork.
“Five thousand is a lot of money for the HJ to lose,” agreed Honey. “Take that along with the seven thousand owin’ to the Pinnacle City bank and it jist about nails the HJ to the floor and leaves it there to starve.”
“Was Jim Wheeler a sickly man?” asked Hashknife.
“Sickly? Not a bit; he was built like a bull.”