Hopalong grinned. “Easy to tell you were raised on a cow ranch,” he said. “That’s an old trick.”
“Not on this ranch it isn’t!” Sue was positive. Then she turned to the cupboard and took out a large apple pie cut in four pieces. “I don’t suppose you could eat more than two pieces of this pie?”
“Well”—he studied the pie seriously—“I don’t know, but I doubt if I could eat less.”
“If you want more than that you’ll fight Dad for his share.” She winked at Hoppy.
“I’ll just have to make do.” Hopalong grinned. “Although, since we’ve got a sick man here, I don’t know that he’ll have enough appetite for that other half.”
“You just watch me, Cassidy! You just watch!”
They all laughed, but then Hopalong became serious. “Is there someone you could send up to Copper Mountain to check on Red? He’s a tough old bird but I’m worried about him.” Gibson appeared to think for a moment and Hopalong went on: “I think whoever it is should be from town or one of your neighbor’s ranches. I don’t trust this man Pod, an’ you’re going to need your other hand right here.”
“Joe Gamble,” Sue said immediately. “He rides for the 3F and he’s worried about rustling just like we are.”
“She’s right. Joe’s a good boy,” Gibson agreed.
“All right, can you get word to him?”
“First thing in the morning,” Sue said as she put a pot on the stove.
While the coffee was heating, Hopalong got busy on the beef and beans. While he was eating, a horse came into the yard, and Sue’s eyes grew darker. “That’s probably Pod come back.”
“How far could he ride in that time?” Hoppy asked. “As far as the 8 Boxed H?”
Sue nodded, her eyes flashing. “That’s about the only place he could ride, unless he met somebody in the hills.”
“Possibly,” Hopalong suggested, “I should have a talk with him.”
Yet he remained, talking to Sue and then to her father about the country, listening to their descriptions of places and people, knowing that every comment might someday be vital, for they knew this country as he did not. It was after ten when he finally got to his feet. There was still a light in the bunkhouse. Saying good night, he walked outside.
Carelessly, without a glance toward the bunkhouse, he strolled down to the corrals, but had hardly rounded the corner of the corral before a boot grated on gravel behind him. Wheeling, Hopalong was just in time to catch Pod grabbing for his gun.
Cassidy sidestepped quickly and flashed his Colt. It spat flame, and Pod sprang back, gripping his bloody wrist and swearing.
Hopalong closed in instantly, hearing a door slam at the house and then from the bunkhouse. Pod stared at him, his eyes ugly in the dim light from the window.
“You durned near shot my hand off!” he exclaimed.
Cassidy picked up the fallen pistol, then spun the man around and started him toward the house. Sue stood in the doorway, a shotgun in her hands. Frank Gillespie had come from the bunkhouse with a Winchester.
“Got him, huh?” Gillespie stared from Cassidy to Pod. “I figured he was up to somethin’. Usually he can’t get to sleep too soon, but tonight he sat up and kept sittin’ up. I was keepin’ an eye on him, but sort of dozed off.”
“Better go back in the house, Sue,” Hopalong said quietly. “We got us a job to do.”
She was close to him now, but evidently what she saw in his eyes reassured her, for she turned and walked back to the house. When the door slammed, Hoppy motioned to Frank.
“Get a rope,” he said. “This hombre’s horse’ll be saddled, so we’ll use it. That cottonwood over there ought to do the job.”
Pod’s face went white as death. “Hey! You ain’t goin’ to hang me? You can’t do that!”
“No?” Hopalong’s voice was icy. “Why not? You’re workin’ with rustlers, aren’t you? You sold out your boss, didn’t you? You tried to shoot me in the back, didn’t you? What do you expect?”
Terror flooded the man’s features. “No!” He almost screamed the word. “Don’t hang me—don’t! I didn’t mean it!”
“All right, then,” Hopalong replied reasonably. “Tell us who you are working for and what the setup is.”
“They’d kill me!” Pod protested.
Hopalong’s chuckle was unpleasant. “Rather get it from them or us? Perhaps they’ll shoot you, but I promise, if you don’t talk, I’ll hang you!”
Pod hesitated, desperately searching for some way out, but the faces of the two men convinced him. Frank Gillespie had neither liked nor trusted him, and as for Cassidy—
“All right,” Pod said hoarsely. “It was”—he hesitated, and a crafty light came into his eyes—“it was the Aragons. They are the rustlers. They tried to kill your friend Red Connors, and wanted to get you. They didn’t set me on to it, though,” he added honestly enough. “I figured I’d do it on my own.”
“Aragon?” Hopalong stared at the man, trying to see his eyes better. It was difficult to tell whether the man was telling the truth or not, but it sounded like he was lying. “You sure?”
“Who else could it be?” Pod demanded. “I should know, shouldn’t I?”
“It might be Jack Bolt,” Hopalong said calmly. “It might be those hands of his—Grat, Bones, and the rest.”
“Don’t know how you’d figure it was them,” Pod said. “I don’t know ’em at all.”
“You lie!” Gillespie said harshly. “I saw you with ’em more than once! You and that Grat are thicker than thieves! Haul on that rope, Hoppy. Let’s hang this hombre!”
“No!” Pod gasped hoarsely. “Don’t hang me! It was Bolt! He’s in with Aragon! They are hittin’ your north herd tonight!”
“What?” Gillespie roared. “Tonight?”
“Take the rope off him,” Hopalong said quietly. “Then go saddle up.”
“You lettin’ him go?” Gillespie was incredulous.
“He talked, and I’m lettin’ him go. If I ever see him again I’ll start shooting on sight. Hear that, you coyote?”
“I hear it.” Pod was sullen, still unbelieving of his luck.
“All right, get goin’!”
Pod sprang into the saddle and raced for the trail; then his hand dropped to the rifle scabbard, viciousness mounting within him. “I’ll kill that sidewinder!” he growled. His hand struck emptiness. He grabbed again, but his Winchester was gone. Hopalong had quietly slipped it from the scabbard.
Swinging from the trail, Pod slapped the spurs into his mount. There was still time. He might beat them to the herd and warn Jack Bolt. And when he did he would get a rifle and take care of that Cassidy. Make him talk, would they? All the innate viciousness within him surged to the fore. He had been forced to crawl, made to show that deep streak of yellow that lay within him, and the knowledge of his action brought out all the evil in his nature.
They would see. He was not through. Just wait until he got a gun!
Chapter 6
AGATE
As the two riders raced for the holding ground Hopalong’s thoughts were busy. Actually there was no substantial evidence against Jack Bolt—or the Aragons, for that matter. They were suspected, and Red Connors had found a trail that might have led to something definite, but he had been wounded and the trail lost. Pod had talked, but he was not a man who could be relied upon in any case. What was needed now was to catch them in the act or find some convincing evidence of their crookedness.
Even the trail Red had found did not begin at the 8 Boxed H, but back in the hills, and would not be accepted in any court. It was one thing to know an outfit was rustling, but quite another thing to prove it, and proof would be needed, for Jack Bolt was unsuspected by most of the cattlemen in the area. According to Red and what others he had found time to talk to, Bolt’s herds had not been increasing at an unusual rate. Obviously the cattle were being speedily taken out of the country or held somewhere out of sight.
The moon was ri
sing when they crossed the saddle at breakneck speed and drew up in the valley below. The air was heavy with the smell of dust and of cattle, but there was not an animal in sight. Faintly, Hopalong could see the tracks of the herd moving off to the north. Walking his horse and leaning far over in the saddle to watch the trail, he led off.
After a few minutes he could see that the cattle were headed toward a break in the hills before them, and he slipped his rifle from the scabbard and drew up. “Frank,” he asked quietly, “you know this country?”
“Most of it. That country north and west is bone-dry as far’s I know. It sure ain’t good cow country.”
Hoppy nodded. “Bone-dry? Ever hear of High Rock Canyon?”
“Uh-huh, but never been there. That’s a long way over west. This outfit’s headed north. There’s no water either way so far as I know.”
“There’s water in High Rock,” Hopalong said. “Feller told me so some years back. The wagon outfits used to go through that way to Oregon and northern California. There’s a few scattered streams over that way, too.”
Gillespie agreed as far as the streams were concerned. “But they don’t flow all year. You may be right about the High Rock. I dunno.”
Hopalong headed along the trail of the missing cattle and took his time. It was true the farther they managed to travel before they were overtaken and recovered, the farther the cattle must be driven to get them back. On the other hand, the farther they went unmolested, the surer they would be of safety, and safety would lull their suspicions, cause them to grow less watchful.
“There’s a place up there,” Frank Gillespie offered suddenly, “called Agate. She ain’t what a feller would call a town, but she’s a place. To one side of the road is the hotel and saloon, to the other side a livery stable with a few old crow-bait cayuses. Feller name of Sourdough runs the livery stable and another, name of Mormon John, runs the saloon.
“Only,” Gillespie added, “Mormon John ain’t no Mormon. He just talks about Mormon women all the time. Him and Sourdough been fightin’ back an’ forth for six or seven years. Maybe it’s because they ain’t nothin’ else to do.”
“Saloon, eh? Reckon those rustlers will stop there?”
“Might. He’s got whiskey there, only it’s his own make and mean enough to make a jack rabbit run a grizzly into his hole. Worse than Injun whiskey they used to peddle when I was a kid.
“She’s just raw corn whiskey that he soups up with a little Jimson weed, but it’ll sure get you fightin’ and climbin’ if you’re in a mood for it.”
They rode on in silence, each occupied with his thoughts. The moon was floating lower in the sky, and occasionally Hopalong dismounted to study the trail. The cattle tracks were still plain, and he did not like the look of it. There was no sense to this trail. There had to be concealment somewhere. Either that or it was a trap. He said as much and they slowed down, advancing with extreme care. It was useless, for the trail led on into the mountain valleys, occasionally crossing a low saddle, but pushing on and on.
No rustler in his right mind would leave so obvious a trail. Yet this one was being left, and they were free to follow it. That meant one of two things: either a trap up ahead or something unusual in the way of disappearing cattle. Just before moonset the trail petered out.
“No use ridin’ now,” Hopalong said. “We’ll camp here and move on come daybreak.”
Morning found them in the saddle once more, but there was no trail. Swinging wide, one to each side of the dim trail they had followed, they attempted to cut sign, but there was none. The herd they had followed had disappeared without a trace!
There was but one thing to do, Hopalong decided, and that was to turn back until they found the point where the herd had vanished. Seven miles back along the trail they again came upon the tracks of the herd. Yet even here they could not decide at exactly what point the cattle had vanished. Either the herd had dwindled bit by bit into the desert or it had vanished into thin air.
The sand of the desert was not hard-packed and laden with rocks or overgrown with desert brush and cacti; instead it was loose and gray, unbelievably fine for the most part, and in this surface the prints sank and were lost. The slightest shifting wind served to wipe out a track.
Gillespie reined in and stared disgustedly at the desert. “Look there, Hoppy! That’s where we rode not over an hour ago, and the tracks are gone! Every durned breeze that can tilt a grass blade starts this sand a-blowin’. That herd walked off into the desert, and from there it might have gone anywhere!”
Hopalong stared through narrowed eyes at the mountains beyond the waste. Probably the cattle had gone over there, but those mountains stretched for seventy or eighty miles to the northward, and there was no telling how far the cattle had been driven. Yet there was a limit, too, and that limit was the distance they would go without dying of thirst.
“You might as well go back, Frank,” he said at last. “This will be a mighty long job. You head back to the ranch and tell ’em where I am. Don’t tell anybody else. Meanwhile I’ll ride on to this place called Agate. Whether I find the trail or not, I’ll be in Agate the day after tomorrow. If there’s any news, have somebody meet me there with it. I don’t think I’ll need any help yet, but they might need it back at the ranch.”
Frank Gillespie hesitated and swore. “Durn it all, Hoppy, I wanted to be in on the showdown with them rustlers! I’ve come this far. Still”—he was disgusted—“as you say, they’re gonna need me back there. We’re mighty short-handed.”
After the cowhand had gone, Hopalong sat his horse and studied the situation. The herd might have gone into that desert all right, and it might have only been walked in it a way and then driven back out on the same side. That would stand investigation before crossing the desert into the rough country beyond.
Speaking to the black, he started along the desert’s edge. Whether he found the trail or not, he had every idea that the rustlers, or some of them, might stop at Agate, and there was a chance he might get news of them there. In the meantime he would soon know whether the herd had been driven out of the sand again.
This was very rugged country; the timber of the region to the east here thinned out and most of the mountains were bare except for low brush and desert growth. Yet there was plenty of cover, and farther west there was both water and grass in the remote High Rock Canyon country. No matter who was directing the move, whether Jack Bolt or Sim Aragon, they would have a chance of holding the cattle for months in that rough country without being seen.
The tracks of the herd had not emerged from the desert but when the buildings of Agate were in sight, a lone rider came out of the sand and headed toward the town. Hopalong slowed down and took his time. The rider might be somebody he had never seen, and somebody who had not seen him. The livery stable would be the first stop, and then the saloon.
The western saloon was always a clearinghouse for information. It was much more than a drinking establishment, for it was the center of all male social life. Here trail news was repeated, cattle were discussed as were all the varied topics of interest to western men. The saloon was at once a reception room, a social club, and a source of information. Sooner or later all news came to light around a saloon, and if a man had time and patience he could learn much by simply being around and listening. Hopalong knew this and if the strange rider had been one of the rustlers, he was sure he would find out before he had been long in Agate.
The livery stable was a rambling red-painted barn with a high-peaked roof over the center part and almost flat roofs over the two wings. There was an office with two lighted windows beside the big door of the stable, and the door was open. In the rectangle of lantern light a lean, hard-faced oldster sat, smoking a pipe. From what Gillespie had said, Cassidy knew that this was Sourdough. He looked up balefully as Hopalong swung down.
“Got an empty stall? And some corn?”
The old man took his pipe from his teeth. “Corn?” He was incredulous. “You gonn
a feed corn to that cayuse?”
“That cayuse is a mighty fine horse,” Hopalong said calmly, “and any horse I ride gets the best.”
The old man pointed with his pipe stem. “Third stall. Corn is in the feed bin. Watch out for that bay—he kicks mighty wicked.”
When Hopalong had stripped the saddle from the black he fed it an ample supply of corn, then strolled outside, shoving back his black wide-brimmed hat. The lamplight gleamed on his snowy hair.
Neither man spoke. The night was very still. Far out over the desert a coyote yapped in a shrill, complaining voice, and across the street at the saloon there was a shout of laughter, then the bang of a bottle on the bar. The night air was cool, and there was a vast spread of stars that looked amazingly bright and near. The livery had the good smells of a horse barn, of stored hay and feed, of horses and sweaty leather. In the distance the serrated ridge of mountains drew a ragged black line.
Darkness had come, and in the shadow of his hat the old man’s face could not be seen. Only the glow of his pipe was visible. Beyond him the town’s street, which was also the trail, showed white against the darker earth. Two cabins were lighted, but all other buildings loomed dark and sullen except for the saloon.
“Mighty restful,” Hopalong suggested, squatting on his heels. “Does a man good to relax once in a while.”
Sourdough grunted, drawing on his pipe. It seemed to have gone out, and he struck a match, then sucked to get it going better.
“See many riders through here?” Hopalong asked.
The old man merely grunted again, but made no further reply. Hopalong decided to use strategy. “Of course,” he said, “you can’t expect much in a place like this. Out of the way, like it is. A man might come through here once a week or ten days. I don’t see how you keep alive.”
“We do all right.”
Encouraged, Hopalong shook his head. “Beats me how you do it. There aren’t enough people. I’d bet there ain’t five men in that saloon right now. And I’ll bet all of them are from right here in town.”
The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle Page 45