by B. M. Bower
In much the same manner his herds increased. He bought out small ranchers who were crowded to the selling point in one way or another. They would find themselves fenced off from water, the Sawtooth having acquired the water rights to creek or spring. Or they would be hemmed in with fenced fields and would find it next to impossible to make use of the law which gave them the right to “condemn” a road through. They would not be openly assailed,—Bill Warfield was an intelligent man. A dozen brands were recorded in the name of the Sawtooth Cattle Company, and if a small rancher found his calf crop shorter than it should be, he might think as he pleased, but he would have no tangible proof that his calves wore a Sawtooth brand.
Inevitably it became necessary now and then to stop a mouth that was ready to speak unwelcome truths. But if a Sawtooth man were known to have committed violence, the Sawtooth itself was the first to put the sheriff on his trail. If the man successfully dodged the sheriff and made his way to parts unknown, the Sawtooth could shrug its shoulders and wash its hands of him.
Then whispers were heard that the Sawtooth had on its pay roll men who were paid to kill and to leave no trace. So many heedless ones crossed the Sawtooth’s path to riches! Fred Thurman had been one; a “bull-headed cuss” who had the temerity to fight back when the Sawtooth calmly laid claim to the first water rights to Granite Creek, having bought it, they said, with the placer claim of an old miner who had prospected along the headwaters of Granite at the base of Bear Top.
By that time the Sawtooth had grown to a power no poor man could hope to defeat. Bill Warfield was Senator Warfield, and Senator Warfield was a power in the political world that immediately surrounded him. Since his neighboring ranchmen had not been able to prevent his steady climbing to the position he now held, they had small hope of pulling him down. Brit was right. They did well to hang on and continue living in that country.
An open killing, one that would attract the attention of the outside world, might be avenged. The man who committed the crime might be punished,—if public opinion were sufficiently massed against him. In that case Senator Warfield would cry loudest for justice. But it would take a stronger man than the country held to raise the question of Fred Thurman’s death and take even the first steps toward proving it a murder.
“It ain’t that they can do anything, Mr. Warfield,” the man from Whisper said guardedly, urging his horse close to the machine that stood in the trail from Echo. It was broad day—a sun-scorched day to boot—and Senator Warfield perspired behind the wheel of his car. “It’s the talk they may get started.”
“What have they said? The girl was at the ranch for several days. She didn’t talk there, or Hawkins would have told me.”
“She was sick. I saw her the other day at the Quirt, and she more’n half recognized me. Hell! How’d I know she was in there among them rocks? Everybody that was apt to be riding through was accounted for, and I knew there wasn’t any one coming horseback or with a rig. My hearing’s pretty good.”
Warfield moved the spark lever up and down on the wheel while he thought. “Well,” he said carefully at last, “if you’re falling down in your work, what are you whining about it to me for? What do you want?”
Al moistened his lips with his tongue. “I want to know how far I can go. It’s been hands off the Quirt, up to now. And the Quirt’s beginning to think it can get away with most anything. They’ve throwed a fence across the pass through from Sugar Spring to Whisper. That sends us away around by Three Creek. You can’t trail stock across Granite Ridge, nor them lava ledges. If it’s going to be hands off, I want to know it. There’s other places I’d rather live in, if the Quirt’s going to raise talk about Fred Thurman.”
Senator Warfield pulled at his collar and tie as if they choked him. “The Quirt has made no trouble,” he said. “Of course, if they begin throwing fences across our stock trails and peddling gossip, that is another story. I expect you to protect our interests, of course. And I have never made a practice of dictating to you. In this case”—he sent a sharp glance at Al—“it seems to me your interests are involved more than ours. As to Fred Thurman, I don’t know anything about it. I was not here when he died, and I have never seen this girl of Brit’s who seems to worry you. She doesn’t interest me, one way or the other.”
“She seems to interest Bob a whole lot,” Al said maliciously. “He rode over to see her yesterday. She wasn’t home, though.”
Senator Warfield seemed unmoved by this bit of news, wherefore Al returned to the main issue.
“Do I get a free hand, or don’t I?” he insisted. “They can’t be let peddle talk—not if I stay around here.”
Senator Warfield considered the matter.
“The girl’s got the only line on me,” Al went on. “The inquest was as clean as I ever saw. Everything all straight—and then, here she comes up——”
“If you know how to stop a woman’s mouth, Al, you can make a million a month telling other men.” Senator Warfield smiled at him. Then he leaned across the front seat and added impressively, “Bear one thing in mind, Al. The Sawtooth cannot permit itself to become involved in any scandal, nor in any killing cases. We’re just at the most crucial point with our reclamation project, over here on the flat. The legislature is willing to make an appropriation for the building of the canal, and in two or three months at the latest we should begin selling agricultural tracts to the public. The State will also throw open the land it had withdrawn from settlement, pending the floating of this canal project. More than ever the integrity of the Sawtooth Cattle Company must be preserved, since it has come out openly as a backer of the irrigation company. Nothing—nothing must be permitted to stand in the way.”
He removed his thin driving cap and wiped his perspiring forehead. “I’m sorry this all happened—as it has turned out,” he said, with real regret in his tone. “But since it did happen, I must rely upon you to—to—er——”
“I guess I understand,” Al grinned sardonically. “I just wanted you to know how things is building up. The Quirt’s kinda overreached itself. I didn’t want you comin’ back on me for trying to keep their feet outa the trough. I want you to know things is pretty damn ticklish right now, and it’s going to take careful steppin’.”
“Well, don’t let your foot slip, Al,” Senator Warfield warned him. “The Sawtooth would hate to lose you; you’re a good man.”
“Oh, I get yuh,” Al retorted. “My foot ain’t going to slip—— If it did, the Sawtooth would be the first to pile onto my back!” The last sentence was not meant for the senator’s ears. Al had backed his horse, and Senator Warfield was stepping on the starter. But it would not have mattered greatly if he had heard, for this was a point quite thoroughly understood by them both.
The Warfield car went on, lurching over the inequalities of the narrow road. Al shook his horse into a shambling trot, picking his way carelessly through the scattered sage.
His horse traveled easily, now and then lifting a foot high to avoid rock or exposed root, or swerving sharply around obstacles too high to step over. Al very seldom traveled along the beaten trails, though there was nothing to deter him now save an inherent tendency toward secretiveness of his motives, destinations and whereabouts. If the country was open, you would see Al Woodruff riding at some distance from the trail—or you would not see him at all, if there were gullies in which he could conceal himself. He was always “line-riding,” or hunting stray stock—horses, usually—or striking across to some line-camp of the Sawtooth, on business which he was perfectly willing to state.
But you will long ago have guessed that he was the evil eye of the Sawtooth Company. He took no orders save such general ones as Senator Warfield had just given him. He gave none. Whatever he did he did alone, and he took no man into his confidence. It is more than probable that Senator Warfield would never have known to a certainty that Al was responsible for Thurman’s death, if Al had not been worried over the Quirt’s possible knowledge of the crime and anxiou
s to know just how far his power might go.
Ostensibly he was in charge of the camp at Whisper, a place far enough off the beaten trails to free him from chance visitors. The Sawtooth kept many such camps occupied by men whose duty it was to look after the Sawtooth cattle that grazed near; to see that stock did not “bog down” in the tricky sand of the adjacent water holes and die before help came, and to fend off any encroachments of the smaller cattle owners,—though these were growing fewer year by year, thanks to the weeding-out policy of the Sawtooth and the cunning activities of such as Al Woodruff.
It may sound strange to say that the Sawtooth country had not had a real “killing” for years, though accidental deaths had been rather frequent. One man, for instance, had fallen over a ledge and broken his neck, presumably while drunk. Another had bought a few sticks of dynamite to open up a spring on his ranch, and at the inquest which followed the jury had returned a verdict of “death caused by being blown up by the accidental discharge of dynamite.” A sheepman was struck by lightning, according to the coroner, and his widow had been glad to sell ranch and sheep very cheaply to the Sawtooth and return to her relatives in Montana. The Sawtooth had shipped the sheep within a month and turned the ranch into another line-camp.
You will see that Senator Warfield had every reason to be sincere when he called Al Woodruff a good man; good for the Sawtooth interests, that means. You will also see that Brit Hunter had reasons for believing that the business of ranching in the Sawtooth country might be classed as extra hazardous, and for saying that it took nerve just to hang on.
That is why Al rode oblivious to his surroundings, meditating no doubt upon the best means of preserving the “integrity” of the Sawtooth and at the same time soothing effectively the ticklishness of the situation of which he had complained. It was his business to find the best means. It was for just such work that the Sawtooth paid him—secretly, to be sure—better wages than the foreman, Hawkins, received. Al was conscientious and did his best to earn his wages; not because he particularly loved killing and spying as a sport, but because the Sawtooth had bought his loyalty for a price, and so long as he felt that he was getting a square deal from them, he would turn his hand against any man that stood in their way. He was a Sawtooth man, and he fought the enemies of the Sawtooth as matter-of-factly as a soldier will fight for his country. To his unimaginative mind there was sufficient justification in that attitude. As for the ease with which he planned to kill and cover his killing under the semblance of accident, he would have said, if you could make him speak of it, that he was not squeamish. They’d all have to die some day, anyway.
CHAPTER TEN
ANOTHER SAWTOOTH “ACCIDENT”
Frank Johnson rose from the breakfast table, shaved a splinter off the edge of the water bench for a toothpick and sharpened it carefully while he looked at Brit.
“You goin’ after them posts, or shall I?” he inquired glumly, which, by the way, was his normal tone. “Jim and Sorry oughta git the post holes all dug today. One of us better take a look through that young stock in the lower field, too, and see if there’s any more sign uh blackleg. Which you ruther do?”
Brit tilted his chair backward so that he could reach the coffeepot on the stove hearth. “I’ll haul down the posts,” he decided carelessly. “They’re easy loaded, and I guess my back’s as good as yourn.”
“All you got to do is skid ’em down off’n the bank onto the wagon,” Frank said. “I wisht you’d go on up where we cut them last ones and git my sweater, Brit. I musta left it hanging on a bush right close to where I was workin’.”
Brit’s grunt signified assent, and Frank went out. Jim and Sorry, the two unpicturesque cowboys of whom Lorraine had complained to the cat had already departed with pick and shovel to their unromantic task of digging post holes. Each carried a most unattractive lunch tied in a flour sack behind the cantle of his saddle. Lorraine had done her conscientious best, but with lumpy, sour-dough bread, cold bacon and currant jelly of that kind which is packed in wooden kegs, one can’t do much with a cold lunch. Lorraine wondered how much worse it would look after it had been tied on the saddle for half a day; wondered too what those two silent ones got out of life,—what they looked forward to, what was their final goal. For that matter she frequently wondered what there was in life for any of them, shut into that deadly monotony of sagebrush and rocks interspersed with little, grassy meadows where the cattle fed listlessly.
Even the sinister undercurrent of antagonism against the Quirt could not whip her emotions feeling that she was doing anything more than live the restricted, sordid little life of a poorly equipped ranch. She had ridden once with Frank Johnson to look through a bunch of cattle, but it had been nothing more than a hot, thirsty, dull ride, with a wind that blew her hat off in spite of pins and tied veil, and with a companion who spoke only when he was spoken to and then as briefly as possible.
Her father would not talk again as he had talked that night. She had tried to make him tell her more about the Sawtooth and had gotten nothing out of him. The man from Whisper, whom Brit had spoken of as Al, had not returned. Nor had the promised saddle horse materialized. The boys were too busy to run in any horses, her father had told her shortly when she reminded him of his promise. When the fence was done, maybe he could rustle her another horse,—and then he had added that he didn’t see what ailed Yellowjacket, for all the riding she was likely to do.
“Straight hard work and minding your own business,” her father had said, and it seemed to Lorraine after three or four days of it that he had summed up the life of a cattleman’s daughter in a masterly manner which ought to be recorded among Famous Sayings like “War is hell” and “Don’t give up the ship.”
On this particular morning Lorraine’s spirits were at their lowest ebb. If it were not for the new stepfather, she would return to the Casa Grande, she told herself disgustedly. And if it were not for the belief among all her acquaintances that she was queening it over the cattle-king’s vast domain, she would return and find work again in motion pictures. But she could not bring herself to the point of facing the curiosity and the petty gossip of the studios. She would be expected to explain satisfactorily why she had left the real West for the mimic West of Hollywood. She did not acknowledge to herself that she also could not face the admission of failure to carry out what she had begun.
She had told her dad that she wanted to fight with him, even though “fighting” in this case meant washing the coarse clothing of her father and Frank, scrubbing the rough, warped boards of the cabin floor, and frying ranch-cured bacon for every meal, and in making butter to sell, and counting the eggs every night and being careful to use only the cracked ones for cooking.
She hated every detail of this crude house-keeping, from the chipped enamel dishpan to the broom that was all one-sided, and the pillow slips which were nothing more nor less than sugar sacks. She hated it even more than she had hated the Casa Grande and her mother’s frowsy mentality. But because she could see that she made life a little more comfortable for her dad, because she felt that he needed her, she would stay and assure herself over and over that she was staying merely because she was too proud to go back to the old life and own the West a failure.
She was sweeping the doorstep with the one-sided broom when Brit drove out through the gate and up the trail which she knew led eventually to Sugar Spring. The horses, sleek in their new hair and skittish with the change from hay to new grass, danced over the rough ground so that the running gear of the wagon, with its looped log-chain, which would later do duty as a brake on the long grade down from timber line on the side of Spirit Canyon, rattled and banged over the rocks with a clatter that could be heard for half a mile. Lorraine looked after her father enviously. If she were a boy she would be riding on that sack of hay tied to the “hounds” for a seat. But, being a girl, it had never occurred to Brit that she might like to go,—might even be useful to him on the trip.
“I suppose if I to
ld dad I could drive that team as well as he can, he’d just look at me and think I was crazy,” she thought resentfully and gave the broom a spiteful fling toward a presumptuous hen that had approached too closely. “If I’d asked him to let me go along he’d have made some excuse—oh, I’m beginning to know dad! He thinks a woman’s place is in the house—preferably the kitchen. And here I’ve thought all my life that cowgirls did nothing but ride around and warn people about stage holdups and everything! I’d just like to know how a girl would ever have a chance to know what was going on in the country, unless she heard the men talking while she poured their coffee. Only this bunch don’t talk at all. They just gobble and go.”
She went in then and shut the door with a slam. Up on the ridge Al Woodruff lowered his small binocular and eased away from the spot where he had been crouching behind a bush. Every one on the Quirt ranch was accounted for. As well as if he had sat at their breakfast table Al knew where each man’s work would take him that day. As for the girl, she was safe at the ranch for the day, probably. If she did take a ride later on, it would probably be up the ridge between the Quirt and Thurman’s ranch, and sit for an hour or so just looking. That ride was beginning to be a habit of hers, Al had observed, so that he considered her accounted for also.