by Zane Grey
Wade watched this meeting of the rivals and enemies with an attention powerfully stimulated by the penetrating scrutiny Burley laid upon them. Jack did not speak quickly. He looked hard into the tense face of Moore. Wade detected a vibration of Jack’s frame and a gleam of eye that showed him not wholly in control of exultation and revenge. Fear had not struck him yet.
“Well, Buster Jack, what’s the charge?” demanded Moore, impatiently.
The old name, sharply flung at Jack by this cowboy, seemed to sting and reveal and inflame. But he restrained himself as with roving glance he searched Moore’s person for sight of a weapon. The cowboy was unarmed.
“I accuse you of stealing my father’s cattle,” declared Jack, in low, husky accents. After he got the speech out he swallowed hard.
Moore’s face turned a dead white. For a fleeting instant a red and savage gleam flamed in his steady glance. Then it vanished.
The cowboys, who had come up, moved restlessly. Lem Billings dropped his head, muttering. Montana Jim froze in his tracks.
Moore’s dark eyes, scornful and piercing, never moved from Jack’s face. It seemed as if the cowboy would never speak again.
“You call me thief! You?” at length he exclaimed.
“Yes, I do,” replied Belllounds, loudly.
“Before this sheriff and your father you accuse me of stealing cattle?”
“Yes.”
“And you accuse me before this man who saved my life, who knows me—before Hell-Bent Wade?” demanded Moore, as he pointed to the hunter.
Mention of Wade in that significant tone of passion and wonder was not without effect upon Jack Belllounds.
“What in hell do I care for Wade?” he burst out, with the old intolerance. “Yes, I accuse you. Thief, rustler!… And for all I know your precious Hell-Bent Wade may be—”
He was interrupted by Burley’s quick and authoritative interference.
“Hyar, young man, I’m allowin’ for your natural feelin’s,” he said, dryly, “but I advise you to bite your tongue. I ain’t acquainted with Mister Moore, but I happen to know Wade. Do you savvy?… Wal, then, if you’ve any more to say to Moore get it over.”
“I’ve had my say,” replied Belllounds, sullenly.
“On what grounds do you accuse me?” demanded Moore.
“I trailed you. I’ve got my proofs.”
Burley stepped off the porch and carefully laid down his package.
“Moore, will you get off your hoss?” he asked. And when the cowboy had dismounted and limped aside the sheriff continued, “Is this the hoss you ride most?”
“He’s the only one I have.”
Burley sat down upon the edge of the porch and, carefully unwrapping the package, he disclosed some pieces of hard-baked yellow mud. The smaller ones bore the imprint of a circle with a dot in the center, very clearly defined. The larger piece bore the imperfect but reasonably clear track of a curiously shaped horseshoe, somewhat triangular. The sheriff placed these pieces upon the ground. Then he laid hold of Moore’s crutch, which was carried like a rifle in a sheath hanging from the saddle, and, drawing it forth, he carefully studied the round cap on the end. Next he inserted this end into both the little circles on the pieces of mud. They fitted perfectly. The cowboys bent over to get a closer view, and Billings was wagging his head. Old Belllounds had an earnest eye for them, also. Burley’s next move was to lift the left front foot of Moore’s horse and expose the bottom to view. Evidently the white mustang did not like these proceedings, but he behaved himself. The iron shoe on this hoof was somewhat triangular in shape. When Burley held the larger piece of mud, with its imprint, close to the hoof, it was not possible to believe that this iron shoe had not made the triangular-shaped track.
Burley let go of the hoof and laid the pieces of mud down. Slowly the other men straightened up. Some one breathed hard.
“Moore, what do them tracks look like to you?” asked the sheriff.
“They look like mine,” replied the cowboy.
“They are yours.”
“I’m not denying that.”
“I cut them pieces of mud from beside a water-hole over hyar under Gore Peak. We’d trailed the cattle Belllounds lost, an’ then we kept on trailin’ them, clear to the road that goes over the ridge to Elgeria.… Now Bridges an’ Lindsay hyar bought stock lately from strange cattlemen who didn’t give no clear idee of their range. Jest buyin’ an’ sellin’, they claimed.… I reckon the extra hoss tracks we run across at Gore Peak connects up them buyers an’ sellers with whoever drove Belllounds’s cattle up thar.… Have you anythin’ more to say?”
“No. Not here,” replied Moore, quietly.
“Then I’ll have to arrest you an’ take you to Kremmlin’ fer trial.”
“All right. I’ll go.”
The old rancher seemed genuinely shocked. Red tinged his cheek and a flame flared in his eyes.
“Wils, you done me dirt,” he said, wrathfully. “An’ I always swore by you.… Make a clean breast of the whole damn bizness, if you want me to treat you white. You must have been locoed or drunk, to double-cross me thet way. Come on, out with it.”
“I’ve nothing to say,” replied Moore.
“You act amazin’ strange fer a cowboy I’ve knowed to lean toward fightin’ at the drop of a hat. I tell you, speak out an’ I’ll do right by you.… I ain’t forgettin’ thet White Slides gave you a hard knock. An’ I was young once an’ had hot blood.”
The old rancher’s wrathful pathos stirred the cowboy to a straining-point of his unnatural, almost haughty composure. He seemed about to break into violent utterance. Grief and horror and anger seemed at the back of his trembling lips. The look he gave Belllounds was assuredly a strange one, to come from a cowboy who was supposed to have stolen his former employer’s cattle. Whatever he might have replied was cut off by the sudden appearance of Columbine.
“Dad, I heard you!” she cried, as she swept upon them, fearful and wide-eyed. “What has Wilson Moore done—that you’ll do right by him?”
“Collie, go back in the house,” he ordered.
“No. There’s something wrong here,” she said, with mounting dread in the swift glance she shot from man to man. “Oh! You’re—Sheriff Burley!” she gasped.
“I reckon I am, miss, an’ if young Moore’s a friend of yours I’m sorry I came,” replied Burley.
Wade himself reacted subtly and thrillingly to the presence of the girl. She was alive, keen, strung, growing white, with darkening eyes of blue fire, beginning to grasp intuitively the meaning here.
“My friend! He was more than that—not long ago.… What has he done? Why are you here?”
“Miss, I’m arrestin’ him.”
“Oh!… For what?”
“Rustlin’ your father’s cattle.”
For a moment Columbine was speechless. Then she burst out, “Oh, there’s a terrible mistake!”
“Miss Columbine, I shore hope so,” replied Burley, much embarrassed and distressed. Like most men of his kind, he could not bear to hurt a woman. “But it looks bad fer Moore.… See hyar! There! Look at the tracks of his hoss—left front foot—shoe all crooked. Thet’s his hoss’s. He acknowledges thet. An’, see hyar. Look at the little circles an’ dots.… I found these ’way over at Gore Peak, with the tracks of the stolen cattle. An’ no other tracks, Miss Columbine!”
“Who put you on that trail?” she asked, piercingly.
“Jack, hyar. He found it fust, an’ rode to Kremmlin’ fer me.”
“Jack! Jack Belllounds!” she cried, bursting into wild and furious laughter. Like a tigress she leaped at Jack as if to tear him to pieces. “You put the sheriff on that trail! You accuse Wilson Moore of stealing dad’s cattle!”
“Yes, and I proved it,” replied Jack, hoarsely.
“You! You proved it? So that’s your revenge?… But you’re to reckon with me, Jack Belllounds! You villain! You devil! You—” Suddenly she shrank back with a strong shudder. She gasped. H
er face grew ghastly white. “Oh, my God!… horrible—unspeakable!” … She covered her face with her hands, and every muscle of her seemed to contract until she was stiff. Then her hands shot out to Moore.
“Wilson Moore, what have you to say—to this sheriff—to Jack Belllounds—to me?”
Moore bent upon her a gaze that must have pierced her soul, so like it was to a lightning flash of love and meaning and eloquence.
“Collie, they’ve got the proof. I’ll take my medicine.… Your dad is good. He’ll be easy on me!’
“You lie!” she whispered. “And I will tell why you lie!”
Moore did not show the shame and guilt that should have been natural with his confession. But he showed an agony of distress. His hand sought Wade and dragged at him.
It did not need this mute appeal to tell Wade that in another moment Columbine would have flung the shameful truth into the face of Jack Belllounds. She was rising to that. She was terrible and beautiful to see.
“Collie,” said Wade, with that voice he knew had strange power over her, with a clasp of her outflung hand, “no more! This is a man’s game. It’s not for a woman to judge. Not here! It’s Wils’s game—an’ it’s mine. I’m his friend. Whatever his trouble or guilt, I take it on my shoulders. An’ it will be as if it were not!”
Moaning and wringing her hands, Columbine staggered with the burden of the struggle in her.
“I’m quite—quite mad—or dreaming. Oh, Ben!” she cried.
“Brace up, Collie. It’s sure hard. Wils, your friend and playmate so many years—it’s hard to believe! We all understand, Collie. Now you go in, an’ don’t listen to any more or look any more.”
He led her down the porch to the door of her room, and as he pushed it open he whispered, “I will save you, Collie, an’ Wils, an’ the old man you call dad!”
Then he returned to the silent group in the yard.
“Jim, if I answer fer Wils Moore bein’ in Kremmlin’ the day you say, will you leave him with me?”
“Wal, I shore will, Wade,” replied Burley, heartily.
“I object to that,” interposed Jack Belllounds, stridently. “He confessed. He’s got to go to jail.”
“Wal, my hot-tempered young fellar, thar ain’t any jail nearer ’n Denver. Did you know that?” returned Burley, with his dry, grim humor. “Moore’s under arrest. An’ he’ll be as well off hyar with Wade as with me in Kremmlin’, an’ a damn sight happier.”
The cowboy had mounted, and Wade walked beside him as he started homeward. They had not progressed far when Wade’s keen ears caught the words, “Say, Belllounds, I got it figgered thet you an’ your son don’t savvy this fellar Wade.”
“Wal, I reckon not,” replied the old rancher.
And his son let out a peal of laughter, bitter and scornful and unsatisfied.
CHAPTER 17
Gore Peak was the highest point of the black range that extended for miles westward from Buffalo Park. It was a rounded dome, covered with timber and visible as a landmark from the surrounding country. All along the eastern slope of that range an unbroken forest of spruce and pine spread down to the edge of the valley. This valley narrowed toward its source, which was Buffalo Park. A few well-beaten trails crossed that country, one following Red Brook down to Kremmling; another crossing from the Park to White Slides; and another going over the divide down to Elgeria. The only well-known trail leading to Gore Peak was a branch-off from the valley, and it went round to the south and more accessible side of the mountain.
All that immense slope of timbered ridges, benches, ravines, and swales west of Buffalo Park was exceedingly wild and rough country. Here the buffalo took to cover from hunters, and were safe until they ventured forth into the parks again. Elk and deer and bear made this forest their home.
Bent Wade, hunter now for bigger game than wild beasts of the range, left his horse at Lewis’s cabin and penetrated the dense forest alone, like a deer-stalker or an Indian in his movements. Lewis had acted as scout for Wade, and had ridden furiously down to Sage Valley with news of the rustlers. Wade had accompanied him back to Buffalo Park that night, riding in the dark. There were urgent reasons for speed. Jack Belllounds had ridden to Kremmling, and the hunter did not believe he would return by the road he had taken.
Fox, Wade’s favorite dog, much to his disgust, was left behind with Lewis. The bloodhound, Kane, accompanied Wade. Kane had been ill-treated and then beaten by Jack Belllounds, and he had left White Slides to take up his home at Moore’s cabin. And at last he had seemed to reconcile himself to the hunter, not with love, but without distrust. Kane never forgave; but he recognized his friend and master. Wade carried his rifle and a buckskin pouch containing meat and bread. His belt, heavily studded with shells, contained two guns, both now worn in plain sight, with the one on the right side hanging low. Wade’s character seemed to have undergone some remarkable change, yet what he represented then was not unfamiliar.
He headed for the concealed cabin on the edge of the high valley, under the black brow of Gore Peak. It was early morning of a July day, with summer fresh and new to the forest. Along the park edges the birds and squirrels were holding carnival. The grass was crisp and bediamonded with sparkling frost. Tracks of game showed sharp in the white patches. Wade paused once, listening. Ah! That most beautiful of forest melodies for him—the bugle of an elk. Clear, resonant, penetrating, with these qualities held and blended by a note of wildness, it rang thrillingly through all Wade’s being. The hound listened, but was not interested. He kept close beside the hunter or at his heels, a stealthily stepping, warily glancing hound, not scenting the four-footed denizens of the forest. He expected his master to put him on the trail of men.
The distance from the Park to Gore Peak, as a crow would have flown, was not great. But Wade progressed slowly; he kept to the dense parts of the forest; he avoided the open aisles, the swales, the glades, the high ridges, the rocky ground. When he came to the Elgeria trail he was not disappointed to find it smooth, untrodden by any recent travel. Half a mile farther on through the forest, however, he encountered tracks of three horses, made early the day before. Still farther on he found cattle and horse tracks, now growing old and dim. These tracks, pointed toward Elgeria, were like words of a printed page to Wade.
About noon he climbed a rocky eminence that jutted out from a slow-descending ridge, and from this vantage-point he saw down the wavering black and green bosom of the mountain slope. A narrow valley, almost hidden, gleamed yellow in the sunlight. At the edge of this valley a faint column of blue smoke curled upward.
“Ahuh!” muttered the hunter, as he looked. The hound whined and pushed a cool nose into Wade’s hand.
Then Wade resumed his noiseless and stealthy course through the woods. He began a descent, leading off somewhat to the right of the point where the smoke had arisen. The presence of the rustlers in the cabin was of importance, yet not so paramount as another possibility. He expected Jack Belllounds to be with them or meet them there, and that was the thing he wanted to ascertain. When he got down below the little valley he swung around to the left to cross the trail that came up from the main valley, some miles still farther down. He found it, and was not surprised to see fresh horse tracks, made that morning. He recognized those tracks. Jack Belllounds was with the rustlers, come, no doubt, to receive his pay.
Then the change in Wade, and the actions of a trailer of men, became more singularly manifest. He reverted to some former habit of mind and body. He was as slow as a shadow, absolutely silent, and the gaze that roved ahead and all around must have taken note of every living thing, of every moving leaf or fern or bough. The hound, with hair curling up stiff on his back, stayed close to Wade, watching, listening, and stepping with him. Certainly Wade expected the rustlers to have some-one of their number doing duty as a lookout. So he kept uphill, above the cabin, and made his careful way through the thicket coverts, which at that place were dense and matted clumps of jack-pine and spruce. At la
st he could see the cabin and the narrow, grassy valley just beyond. To his relief the horses were unsaddled and grazing. No man was in sight. But there might be a dog. The hunter, in his slow advance, used keen and unrelaxing vigilance, and at length he decided that if there had been a dog he would have been tied outside to give an alarm.
Wade had now reached his objective point. He was some eighty paces from the cabin, in line with an open aisle down which he could see into the cleared space before the door. On his left were thick, small spruces, with low-spreading branches, and they extended all the way to the cabin on that side, and in fact screened two walls of it. Wade knew exactly what he was going to do. No longer did he hesitate. Laying down his rifle, he tied the hound to a little spruce, patting him and whispering for him to stay there and be still.
Then Wade’s action in looking to his belt-guns was that of a man who expected to have recourse to them speedily and by whom the necessity was neither regretted nor feared. Stooping low, he entered the thicket of spruces. The soft, spruce-matted ground, devoid of brush or twig, did not give forth the slightest sound of step, nor did the brushing of the branches against his body. In some cases he had to bend the boughs. Thus, swiftly and silently, with the gliding steps of an Indian, he approached the cabin till the brown-barked logs loomed before him, shutting off the clearer light.
He smelled a mingling of wood and tobacco smoke; he heard low, deep voices of men; the shuffling and patting of cards; the musical click of gold. Resting on his knees a moment the hunter deliberated. All was exactly as he had expected. Luck favored him. These gamblers would be absorbed in their game. The door of the cabin was just around the corner, and he could glide noiselessly to it or gain it in a few leaps. Either method would serve. But which he must try depended upon the position of the men inside and that of their weapons.
Rising silently, Wade stepped up to the wall and peeped through a chink between the logs. The sunshine streamed through windows and door. Jack Belllounds sat on the ground, full in its light, back to the wall. He was in his shirt-sleeves. The gambling fever and the grievous soreness of a loser shone upon his pale face. Smith sat with back to Wade, opposite Belllounds. The other men completed the square. All were close enough together to reach comfortably for the cards and gold before them. Wade’s keen eyes took this in at a single glance, and then steadied searchingly for smaller features of the scene. Belllounds had no weapon. Smith’s belt and gun lay in the sunlight on the hard, clay floor, out of reach except by violent effort. The other two rustlers both wore their weapons. Wade gave a long scrutiny to the faces of these comrades of Smith, and evidently satisfied himself as to what he had to expect from them.