the sheriff went back to the store at cordova and looked the proprietor in the eye.
“mckane,” he said, “is there anything you want to say to me?”
mckane looked at him sullenly.
“don’t know’s there is,” he answered frankly, “you’re able to answer it if i have, i find. i didn’t wake up for two hours after you left that day.”
“i’m sorry,” said price selwood earnestly, “but you know you run against my fist yourself. i’d never mess up with a friend if i didn’t have to. you’d ought to know me well enough to know that.”
“i guess i do—but that damned sneering threat of yours, price—it just set me to seeing red. you don’t seem to know a woman from a man, somehow.”
there was a petulant complaint in his voice.
“not when the woman’s kate cathrew,” said the sheriff grimly, “i don’t.”
“you’re a good sheriff, price, and a good man, but you’re stupid as hell sometimes. to hold miss cathrew under your two-bit magnifying glass of suspicion as you do is drivelling twiddle—silly child’s play. true, she lives an out-of-the-ordinary life——”
“i’ll say she does,” interrupted selwood, “by what power does she hold together the worst set of off-scourings this country ever saw? why do they obey her lightest word, step lively when she speaks in that high-and-mighty tone of hers? tell me that. it ain’t natural—not by a long shot. and here’s another thing—a good two-thirds of them ain’t cattlemen. never were. i know that every new one, as he has come in from time to time during these past three or four years, has had to be taught the cattle business. caldwell, her foreman, is a cowhand—he came from texas—and so is that long black devil they call sud provine, and one or two others, but the rest are city products, or i’m a liar—and why does she want that kind? and she keeps a heavy force for the amount of cattle she runs.”
mckane spread his hands in eloquent resignation. “you two-bit officers!” he said. “you make me sick.”
“make you sick because you’re already sick for kate cathrew—who wouldn’t wipe her boots on you, and you know it.”
“sure, i know it. but that don’t prevent me taking up for a woman, anywhere, any time.”
uncertain of morals and dealings as the trader was, there was a simple dignity in his words which demanded respect, and they struck selwood so.
“i’m sorry i can’t see cattle kate in the proper light, mckane,” he said, “and that we’ve come to words and blows over her. maybe i lack something fine which you possess—but she’s under my glass, all right, and i’m as sure as i stand here that some day its rays will show her up.”
“as what?”
“i’m not saying.”
“men have died in their boots for less than that.”
“true—but i won’t.”
“maybe not.”
“look here, mckane—don’t mess into kate cathrew’s affairs. i’m giving you my hunch that the man who does is due for tragedy sooner or later—and you have no reason, for kate don’t care for you.”
“no—nor for any other man.”
“wrong,” said the sheriff succinctly.
“eh?”
“don’t forget the man who comes in once a year—and he’s due before so very long again—the man who sends her that regular letter from new york and who comes across the continent to see her?”
“mr. lawrence arnold? why, he’s her business partner—owns a full half-interest in sky line.”
“well? you watch kate’s face when you see them together again this summer.”
“hell!” said mckane again in that resigned voice, “how’d you ever get elected with those reasoning powers of yours?”
“oh—all right. but stay clear of cattle kate’s fringes—for some day there’s going to be the prettiest blow-up ever seen in the cattle country of the deep heart hills—and kate’s going mile high on the explosion.”
“if you’re so damned bright as a sheriff why don’t you busy yourself with trying to find out who stole that last bunch of steers from conlan a month ago? the old man’s half crazy with the loss. yes—and that ninety head from bossick—and the ones run off jermyn’s range last year? it looks like there’s plenty he-man stuff around nameless to interest your keen powers of perception without picking on a woman.”
the sheriff was tying his sack of purchases on behind his saddle and didn’t look round.
“i’ll never find those cattle, mckane—nor will anyone else—this side of cow-heaven,” he said as he mounted, “but they, and their manner of disappearance, along with a few other things are all under that magnifying glass of mine. i think their ghosts will be in at that blow-up.”
“that’s rustler talk, price,” said the trader shortly.
“sure,” returned selwood as he rode away.
that talk set going in the sheriff’s mind a train of thought which was recurrent with him, which was forever travelling with him somewhere in his consciousness. sometimes one thing set it going, sometimes another. in the two years already passed of his term of office it had been a matter of deep annoyance to him that he had not been able to put his hands on the mysterious rustlers who from time to time got away with stock up and down nameless river.
this unseen, baleful agency was baffling as smoke.
it struck here—and there—with a decisive clean stroke like the head of a killing hawk, and there was nothing to show the how and wherefore. cattle disappeared from the range with a smooth magic which was maddening. they left no trace, nothing. it seemed ridiculous that ninety head of steers could be driven out of the country leaving no trail, but such had been the case.
selwood himself, with a picked posse, had trailed them into the river, and there they must have taken to themselves wings, for they had apparently never come out. to be sure kate cathrew was driving out her fall beef at the time, and the trampling band had crossed the river a bit below where the ninety head had entered the stream. that trampled crossing was the only spot for miles each way where a cattle-brute could have left the water, for selwood searched every foot with eagle eyes. the coincidence of time stayed with the sheriff doggedly, even though the cathrew cattle, honestly branded, went boldly through cordova and down the strip, as the narrow valley beside nameless was called, and thence out to the railroad, three long days’ drive away.
and the smaller thefts—old man conlan’s bunch, and those of jermyn—all lifted light as a feather. these had left not even a hoof-mark. it was smooth stuff—and it galled the sheriff, was a secret source of humiliation. he had heard a good many remarks about his own inaction, though nearly all of the ranchers in the country were his friends.
but deep inside himself he laid a spiritual finger on the handsome, frowning-eyed woman at sky line and held it there.
sooner or later, he told himself, as he had told mckane, the steady rays of his searching glass would reveal in her the thing he knew was there.
this was not logic, it was instinct—a poor thing for a sheriff to base his actions on, apparently, but price selwood based his thereon in unwavering confidence.
and if he could have looked into the living-room at sky line that day he would have jotted in his mental note-book as correct, one premise—for the mistress sat again at her dark wood desk and read a letter, and her face was well worth watching.
the letter bore a new york postmark, and its terms were sharp and decisive, almost legal, leaving no doubt of their meaning.
thus they carried to her consciousness a clear presentment of satisfaction concerning the last shipment of cattle, and just as clear an avowal of affection.
kate cathrew’s sharp face was suffused with a light not meant for any eyes at sky line as she read and reread the sheets in her hands.
at their concluding words—“and so think i shall be with you at the usual time”—her lips parted over her teeth in a slow smile which was the visible embodiment of passion, while her dark eyes became for a moment slumbrous with the same surging force.
there was a man this woman loved, if ever a face spoke truth, and he was the writer of the letter.
though the scattered denizens of the outside world of nameless knew nothing of this, it was covertly known at sky line.
every one of the hard-eyed band of riders knew it, with varying feelings, minnie pine knew it and old josefa. big basford knew it and his red-rimmed eyes glowed with the light of murder when he watched kate sit on the veranda with lawrence arnold in the long summer days while the light drowsed down from the high blue vault and rainbow cliff sent down its prismatic colors shining afar over the slopes of mystery. there was a look in the woman’s dusky eyes that was plain as print—the hot, unsmiling, inflammable look of untempered passion.
now she folded the letter, slipped it back in its envelope and put it away in a drawer of the desk which she locked securely with a key on a ring that she took from a pocket in her neat outing skirt. the act was indicative of kate cathrew’s mode of life in her high domain. all things were ordered, filed and locked, so to speak, and she alone was the master.
a little later she went out on the broad veranda and sat down in the deep willow chair which rocked there, stirred fantastically by the stiff breeze which swept in across the great blue gulf of space between the peaks. her eyes dropped down and down the wooded slopes of mystery slanting beneath her to the long green flats on nameless, the equally long brown spaces of nance allison’s tilled field. sight of that field was a barb in her consciousness. it never failed to stir her to slow and resurgent anger. it was an affront to her arrogant autocracy, a challenge and a taunt.
she who hewed to her mark with such brilliant finesse, who had not so far failed to get what she wanted from life, had failed to get those flats—the best feeding ground for cattle in a hundred miles of range.
cattle kate cathrew frowned as she regarded the tiny brown scar on the green bowl so far below and tapped her slim muscular fingers on the peeled arm of the hand-made rocker.
for half an hour she sat so, her chin on her hand, thinking.
then at last she straightened and called minnie pine from the inner regions.
“send me caldwell,” she said briefly.
when presently the foreman came from the corrals and stood before her, his hat in his hand, his attitude one of strict attention, she spoke swiftly with a certain satisfaction.
when she had finished, he said, “sure. it’s a pretty long trick, but it can be done.”
“then do it,” said kate cathrew, “when i give the word. we’ll wait a little, however—until the corn shows green from here. the better it looks one day the greater will be the contrast next. that’s all.”
“the devils are working in the boss’s head again,” said minnie pine, who had listened behind the window, speaking to old josefa in their polyglot spanish and pomo, “and hell’s going to pop for the sun-woman on nameless.”
“how do you know?” asked the ancient dame, weaving a basket in dim green grasses.
“because i heard what she said to caldwell.”
“you hear too much. an overloaded basket—breaks.”
“huh,” grunted the half-breed, “the open eye sees game—for its owner’s fattening.”
“what are you two talkin’ about?” asked the slim boy whom big baston had so nearly murdered that day on the porch, “always talkin’ in that damned native tongue. why don’t you learn white man’s talk, minnie?”
the girl wheeled to him where he leaned in the kitchen door, and her comely dark face flushed with pleasure.
“would you like me any better?”
“sure,” he said, “make you seem a little whiter anyway.”
there was cruelty in the careless speech, and it did not miss its mark, though minnie pine’s dark eyes gave no sign.
“the young-green-tree-with-the-rising-sun-behind it may want to talk the white man’s tongue,” said old josefa grimly, “but she’s a fool. all half-breeds are. they reap sorrow.”
the boy laughed and his face came the nearest to wholesome youth of any at sky line. it still held something of softness, of humorous tolerance and good temper, as if not all its heritage of good intent had been warped away to wickedness.
his blue eyes regarded the big girl with approval, passing over her sleek black hair that shone like a crow’s wing, her placid brow and unwavering dark eyes, her high cheeks and repressed thin lips.
“i’ll give you a kiss, minnie,” he drawled, “for half that cream pie yonder.”
minnie looked at the pie and at josefa, speaking swiftly.
the old woman nodded.
“if the mountain-stream wants to waste itself on the greedy sands,” she said, “who am i to counsel otherwise? yonder is the pie.”
minnie crossed the clean white floor and taking the pie from the window ledge where it sat cooling, divided it neatly. she fixed the two quarters on a plate from the cupboard and adding a fork, carried the whole to the boy.
she was the embodiment of the spirit of womanhood since the world was—selling her service to man for love.
“take it, rod stone,” she said.
it was indicative of her race that she did not exact her payment first. it was sufficient that she serve. if the white man chose to pay, to keep his word, so much the better.
stone took the plate and put one arm about the splendid broad shoulders.
bending down he kissed the half-breed full on the lips—and for a second the black eyes glowed. minnie pine put a hand on his cheek with a caress infinitely soft.
“humph,” said josefa, in english this time and pointedly, “i, too, have stood in the bend of a man’s arm—but mine was a full-blood pomo. i did not live to cover my head and weep.”
“shut up, josefa,” said the boy laughing again, “neither will minnie, through me.”
at that moment the door to the south part of the house opened noiselessly, and kate cathrew stood there scanning the group with her keen glance.
“stone,” she said coldly, “is this the best you can do to earn your wages? get out with the men—go quick. minnie, if i see any more of this you’ll go back where i got you. josefa, what’s the matter with your rule out here? do you let all the morning be wasted without care?”
josefa gazed at her out of old eyes, calm with much looking on life, undisturbed.
“not always,” she answered, “but i, too, have been young. minnie will work better for the kiss.”
“well,” said kate, “you’d better see that she does.”
