“It was. It’s used quite a bit back East, with that brand of safe. If you run that bank, you’d better get you another.”
He climbed the stairs, gathered up his blanket roll and haversack. For a moment he glanced around the room.
A bed, a chair, a stand with a white bowl and a pitcher, two pictures on the walls. How many such rooms had he seen? How many times had he slept in nondescript hotels in nondescript towns? And how many more would there be?
Some men would operate cattle ranches or stage lines or banks. While they got rich, he would be keeping the peace so they could make it, but it was a job somebody had to have; somebody was needed to hold the line against lawlessness.
He went down the steps. The lobby was empty. They had gone. Bill Culver and Rita to be married, Pete Mendoza and King Cowan to their ranches.
Lisa?
He hesitated. She had gone back to wherever she was when it all began.
As for him, there was a man down toward the border who had been losing cattle, and there was an outlaw killer who had just disappeared into the Big Thicket.
He strapped his roll behind the saddle and swung aboard.
Josh came to the door. “Cuppa coffee before you go?”
“It’s a long trail, Josh! Another time! Come on, Crowbait,” he said to the roan. “Move it!”
Historical Note
FRANK JONES WAS one of the saltiest of a salty lot of men. A native Texan, born in Austin in 1836, he died with a gun in his hand in Mexico where he had pursued some fleeing outlaws.
Often wounded, he never gave up a fight and usually emerged a winner, either bringing back his prisoners or leaving them where they had chosen to shoot it out. On one occasion, shot from the saddle and left for dead, he succeeded in getting into the criminals’ camp while they slept. In the pistol discussion that followed, Jones killed one man, and the two others decided to surrender.
There were several other gun battles before his final fight in which he pursued outlaws into Mexico and was badly shot up. He died there by the Rio Grande.
TOO TOUGH TO BRAND
HE RODE INTO the ranch yard at sundown, and the big man standing in the door lifted a hand. “ ’Light an’ set! You come far?”
“Fort Griffin. How’s for some grub?”
Two men lounged on the steps of the bunkhouse, both studying him with interest. “This is the O Bar O, isn’t it?”
The man came down the steps. He was unshaved, and his lips were thin and cruel. Chick Bowdrie tried to keep his thinking unclouded, but this was a man it would be hard to like. “Are you the Ranger?”
“I am. Name of Chick Bowdrie.”
“Heard of you. Figured you’d be an older feller.”
“I’m old enough.” Bowdrie was irritated. “Lead me to some grub an’ tell me what happened.”
“My name is Lee Karns,” the big man said when they were seated. “I own this outfit. My foreman was Bert Ramey and he took off for town to bank money for a cattle sale. He skipped with it. It was fifteen thousand dollars.”
A girl with a lonely, frightened face brought coffee to the table. She was a pretty girl, but now her cheeks were tearstained. He looked away hurriedly, not to make her self-conscious.
“Was all that money yours?” Chick glanced casually around the room. It was painfully neat. The dishes were clean, yet Karns himself was an untidy man.
“It was mine. Ramey had been with me six years, a steady, all-around man.”
The door opened and a tall, slender young man came in. He was flashily dressed, but there was nothing dressy about the well-worn Colts in his holsters.
Karns indicated him. “Mark DeGrasse, my new foreman. This here’s Chick Bowdrie, Mark.”
DeGrasse threw Bowdrie a quick glance. It was the glance of a man sizing up a rival, and with inner excitement and a flick of warning in his brain, Chick realized this was one of those gunmen who can brook no rivals, a man who must always be top dog. He had met such men before, and they were dangerous.
DeGrasse dropped into a place at the table. He glanced at the girl. “You’d better eat. It won’t bring your father back if you starve yourself.”
Bowdrie glanced inquiringly at Karns, and the rancher said, “This is Karen Ramey, Bert’s daughter. She’s upset over what happened.”
“How long has he been gone?” Bowdrie hated to continue with questions when Karen was unhappy, but he must have answers.
“Week. It’s only a day’s ride into Comanche. Bert went alone. We’d no reason to expect trouble, as nobody knowed he was carryin’ money. When he never came back, we rode into town and found he’d never even gotten there. Looks like he just hightailed it out of the country.”
“It isn’t likely that he’d go off and leave his daughter!”
“That’s just it,” Karns said. “She ain’t his daughter. She’s just a girl his wife took in to raise, an’ after his wife died, he was saddled with her.”
Karen Ramey looked up resentfully. “He didn’t think of me as a burden, and I thought of him as my own father! I’ll never believe he ran off! I think he was murdered! Somebody knew he had that money!”
“There, there, honey!” Karns reached a hand for hers. “Don’t fret none. You’ll be took care of.”
She sprang to her feet, eyes blazing. “I can take care of myself, thank you! I’ll go into Comanche and get a job! Or…”—her eyes turned on DeGrasse—“I’ll go to El Paso!”
The foreman’s lips tightened. There was nothing pleasant in the way in which he looked at her. Bowdrie sipped his coffee and listened. There was something under the surface here, something strange going on. Why had DeGrasse reacted so oddly to Karen’s reference to El Paso?
Turning abruptly, she went through a door into what was apparently her room, and for a time the men ate in silence.
“Can’t blame her, bein’ upset,” Karns said smoothly. “Matter of fact, she can stay right here. She’s a fine-lookin’ girl, and a man could go a long ways to find a better wife.”
Mark DeGrasse stared at Karns with thinly veiled contempt.
“Did anybody else know he was to be carryin’ money?” Bowdrie asked.
“Al did, I suppose,” DeGrasse said. “He’s one of the punchers, and he was outside when Lee brought the saddlebags to Bert before he left for Comanche.”
After further questioning, Karns and DeGrasse sat on the steps and talked in low tones. Chick loafed about, his eyes missing nothing. There was every evidence the ranch was in good shape, to judge by the area around the house. Judging by Karns’s appearance, Bowdrie was willing to bet the condition of the place was due to Ramey.
The hands seemed to have liked Ramey, but they were not inclined to talk. Not even Al Conway, a hard-faced cowhand with a lean jaw and irritable eyes. Not until Bowdrie mentioned marriage between Karns and the girl.
Al spat disgustedly into the dirt. “If she was to marry anybody, it would be that snake in DeGrasse!”
One of the hands chuckled at the pun, but added, “Better keep your voice down, Al. You ain’t the hand to buck him with a gun, and he’s touchy, mighty touchy!”
“I ain’t afraid of him.” Al spoke coolly, and while Bowdrie doubted that Al was afraid, he also doubted that Conway wanted to tangle with DeGrasse.
Chick dropped his blanket roll near some cottonwoods not far from the house. He had no love for sleeping inside and wanted his horse near him. There was something about lying under the stars that was conducive to thought, and he had some thinking to do.
Bert Ramey was missing with fifteen thousand dollars, yet everything seemed to indicate he was not a man to steal. The fact remained that he was missing. Lee Karns, on the other hand, acted oddly in some respects, but that could be due to a good many things. There were undercurrents here that disturbed him.
Al Conway was a character to be considered
as well. Obviously he was smoldering with resentment, the reason for which was not plain. If Ramey had been murdered, he left behind strange tensions on the O Bar O that stemmed from an unknown source. Perhaps they tied in with his disappearance, perhaps not.
It was very late and he must have just fallen asleep when movement awakened him. He glimpsed the girl standing in the shadows close by. “I have to talk to you!” she whispered.
“Anybody see you leave the house?”
“No, I am sure they did not. Oh, Mr. Bowdrie, I am sure my father didn’t run off. He was such a good man! And there’s something wrong here. Something terribly wrong!”
“Tell me about it,” he whispered.
“It may have no connection, but a few days ago Father said he wanted to get me away from here, that something was going on behind his back. He said cattle were disappearing, that a good many had vanished while he was gone with the herd.”
“Ramey sold the cattle? Who collected the money?”
“Father did. He took the drive to Julesberg, collected the money, and returned. Some of the money should have been his, too.”
“How was that? What do you mean?”
“Karns never paid Father very much. The bank was after Karns for money, as all the stock was mortgaged to them, and he kept telling Dad he would pay him when the cattle were sold. Karns owed Father more than a thousand dollars, and he owed the bank a lot, because they loaned him the money to stock the ranch.”
That altered the situation. Karns owed both his foreman and the bank, so if the money vanished, he could pay neither of them. From his standpoint that did not make sense, as he would then lose the ranch to the bank. Whatever happened, it did not seem likely that Karns was himself involved.
Nor did it make sense that Ramey, if he had that money as far away as Julesberg, would then bring it all the way back here before stealing it.
For an hour he questioned Karen, and long after she returned to her room he lay awake considering all aspects of the case.
Yet the following afternoon when he trotted the roan down the street of Comanche, he was no nearer a solution. The loss of fifteen thousand dollars, a very considerable sum, as well as the disappearance of a ranch foreman, was sure to be discussed in town, and the easiest way to learn was to listen and keep his mouth shut.
By midnight when he stretched out on his bed in his hotel room, Chick Bowdrie had learned a few things.
Lee Karns had mortgaged his stock and his headquarters land to the bank for seven thousand dollars, to be paid when the cattle were sold. The main reason the bank had loaned the money to him was because Bert Ramey was foreman. Bert was a known and respected stockman, and Ramey’s last report had been that the increase had been a shade better than normal. Nobody wanted to believe Bert Ramey was a thief, yet many believed there was no alternative. Others, frankly skeptical, were waiting until all the evidence was in.
One definite lead had come from a big whiskery cowhand. He had recognized Chick and commented in a low tone, “Seen you over to Uvalde a couple of times. This here ain’t none of my affair, but if I was huntin’ Ramey, I’d ride up to the Canadian River country an’ look up a brand called the Spectacles.”
“Why that outfit?”
The puncher shrugged. “I don’t know from nothin’, only Ramey heard I’d ridden for an outfit up that way and he was curious about that Spectacle brand. A gent named Lessinger had owned it, but he sold out and went east.”
Crossing the street to the hotel, Bowdrie saw DeGrasse standing on the steps of the saloon.
“Howdy!” The foreman smiled through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Solved the crime yet?”
“Just sort of sashayin’ about listenin’ to folks. Tomorrow will be soon enough. I guess Ramey’s got clean out of the country. Wonder what he was plannin’ on? Buyin’ his own place, maybe? I hear he was interested in the Canadian River country.”
DeGrasse stiffened sharply, and the smile left his face. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he replied. “We never talked much.”
“He didn’t like you around Karen, though, did he?” Bowdrie slipped the question into the conversation like a knife.
The gunman turned, flicking his cigarette into the dust. “That doesn’t concern you, Ranger! You get on with your lawin’ an’ don’t go nosin’ into things that don’t concern you. It was Lee Karns he had trouble with over Karen, not me. You just keep your nose out of my business!”
Bowdrie shrugged. “You may be right. I’ll just look around a little.”
As he turned away, obviously sidestepping a fight, he caught the hard triumph showing in the gunman’s eyes. DeGrasse had him pegged as a four-flusher who would back down in a pinch.
As he stepped through the door of the hotel, Bowdrie glanced back. DeGrasse had disappeared, probably into the saloon, but he saw something else. A man stepped from the shadows near the saloon, and Bowdrie recognized him as Al Conway.
Later, Chick went to the telegraph office and sent two wires, then returned to the hotel and to bed. His needling of DeGrasse had brought out two facts. Mark knew something about the Spectacle Ranch on the Canadian, and there had been trouble with Ramey about Karen.
The Spectacle brand offered interesting possibilities, and a vague theory was beginning to take shape in Bowdrie’s thinking. As yet it lacked any basis of probability, and the theory had a major flaw. What had become of Bert Ramey?
No crime could be proved without evidence, and the facts indicated Bert Ramey was the thief, yet evidence can be misleading. Ramey was gone, and the fifteen thousand dollars was gone. Bowdrie must find Ramey and the money. If Ramey did not have it, what about Lee Karns? Mark DeGrasse? And where did Al Conway fit in?
There were cattle missing, so there must be organized rustling, and a man who would steal cattle would steal money resulting from their sale.
Daylight found him on the return trip, but now he was riding warily and looking for a horse trail that would lead off across the sagebrush country. When another day was almost gone, he found what he was looking for.
He knew the trail at once, for he had taken the precaution of checking at the blacksmith shop in Comanche, learning that nearly all O Bar O horses were shod there. In most cases horses were shod right on the ranch, but the O Bar O had theirs shod in Comanche. Bowdrie had even found a set of shoes that had been recently removed from Ramey’s horse. The smith had indicated the shoes with his hammer. “Always liked his horses well-shod, Mr. Ramey did. He knew my work and figured the little extry it cost was worth it.” So Bowdrie knew Ramey’s tracks when he saw them.
When it grew too dark to follow further, Bowdrie rode off the trail and made camp. He was on the verge of sleep when the idea came to him, and he believed he knew why Bert Ramey had left the trail.
Awakening before day broke, Bowdrie hastily built a fire, for the morning was chill. While waiting for the coffee, he considered what he knew and suspected, yet trying to view all the facts objectively and trying to avoid jumping to conclusions.
The trail Ramey had taken would lead him toward the Canadian. Had Ramey stolen the money so he could buy a ranch?
Supposing, however, that Ramey was honest, and that from that high point on the trail he had observed a distant moving herd of cattle? The O Bar O had been losing cattle, and Ramey as its foreman would be inclined to investigate any such movements.
The sound of a moving horse brought him to his feet. It was Karen Ramey, riding a gray gelding.
“Trailin’ somebody?” he asked as he stepped into view.
“Yes, I am! You may think my father is a thief, but I do not. He wouldn’t run off and leave me on that ranch! He knew I hated Lee Karns and was afraid of Mark DeGrasse!”
“Maybe we should work together,” Bowdrie suggested. “Wait until I throw my gear together.” He started to turn away, then looked back. “Kar
en, you said something to Mark about El Paso. What did that mean?”
“It may be nothing at all, yet he talked to Karns about El Paso, and they were so secretive, I was curious.”
“You made a good guess, I’m thinking. You wait here until I get my horse.”
Striding swiftly through the piñons, he rolled up his bed and thrust it under his arm. He was kicking dust over the fire when a voice warned him: “Make a wrong move and I’ll kill you!”
It was a man’s voice, low and behind him. Chick was facing toward where Karen waited, so the man might have been lying in wait as he talked to her.
“What do you want?” Bowdrie started to turn.
“Hold it!” The hoarse whisper froze Bowdrie in place. “Ranger, you’re buttin’ your nose into things that don’t concern you. I’m tellin’ you now, light out of here an’ keep goin’. Another sun sets on you here, an’ you die!”
“You know I’m not goin’,” Bowdrie replied quietly, “and if you kill me, there’ll be others in my place.”
There was no reply. He waited just an instant, then dodged into the brush from which the voice came. He found himself in a nest of boulders and more piñons. The man had disappeared.
He started away, disgusted. Then, on the ground near a boulder, he saw a small black book. It was a tally book such as many cattlemen carry to keep a tally of brands and cattle. Flipping over the front pages, he glanced at the owner’s name. It was there, plainly seen: “BERT RAMEY. O Bar O, Comanche.”
“You were gone a long time,” Karen said.
He held the book out to her. “Have you ever seen that before?”
“Why, that’s Father’s tally book! Where did you get it?”
“Found it.” He turned his horse down trail. “Let’s go, shall we?” When the horses had walked a few steps, he glanced around at her. “Did you see anybody back there? Or hear anything?”
She shook her head, eyes curious. Bowdrie scowled irritably and looked along the trail that wound down into the flats, leaving the piñon behind. The tracks of Ramey’s horse, old tracks, were plain in the dust.
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