old man conlan was, as mckane had said, half crazy with the loss of his cattle. they were not so many, only a matter of some twenty-two head, but they meant a lot to him. he owned no patented land. he was merely a squatter in the lower fringes of the upper country around at the western end of mystery ridge where rainbow cliff stopped spectacularly. he lived with his wife in a disreputable old cabin and worked beyond his years and strength in the white fire of an ambition—a laudable ambition, for he had a crippled son back east in college. he ran cattle in the hills and he knew every head of his brand to the last wobbly calf, an easy matter, since they were few.
at the store in cordova he told his woes to the countryside, and he had an attentive audience, for his issue was theirs, and in a broader way.
on a pleasant day in late june, the old man reiterated his grievance, pulling his long grey beard and flailing his gaunt arms in eloquent gesture.
“whoever they be that lifted my steers,” he said grimly, “i damn their souls to hell! i’d damn their bodies, too, believe me, men, if i knowed ’em an’ could throw my gun on ’em. shuriff, here, might take me to jail next minute an’ i’d go happy.”
selwood, sitting at a table desultorily playing cards, pushed back his hat and smiled.
“nobody’s going to take you to jail for killing a rustler, jake,” he said, “we’d give you a reward instead. i’d give a lot to have the chance myself.”
“why don’t ye hunt fer it, then?” demanded conlan testily, “ef i was shuriff——”
“yes?” said selwood, laying his cards flat on the table for a moment and facing him, “what would you do if you were sheriff?”
“i’d try, anyway,” said the old man, with a touch of scorn, “to find a trace of somethin’. i’d not stay on my own ranch an’ let th’ world go hang! i’d ride th’ hills, ’tenny rate.”
a slow paleness crept into selwood’s face, giving it an odd ashen hue, like a candle. he laid down his hand definitely and looked round at the ten or twelve men lounging in the room.
among them were bossick and one or two others who had suffered at the hands of the mysterious thieves of nameless.
“i know that jake here voices the feeling which has been growing against me for some time,” he said evenly, “and this is as good a time as any to speak about it.”
“you’re our sheriff, price, an’ a damned good one,” spoke up bossick loyally, “an’ i for one have nothing to say against you. i know—no one better—what you’re up against. i trailed my own stuff into that river with you, an’ i know that they simply vanished. i’ve done my own darndest to unravel th’ mystery, an’ i can’t see what more any man’d do, sheriff or not!”
selwood smiled at him.
“thanks, john,” he said, “i’ll not forget that. but i hate to have my friends think i’m laying down on the job. i haven’t said anything about what i’ve been doing, preferring to wait until i had something to show, but that time seems far off still. this is the smoothest work i ever saw, baffling——. i don’t stand to simple reason. we know beef cattle don’t fly—and yet that seems the only way they could have got out of the country. they go—and they leave no trail. i know, for i’ve ridden the hills, jake, notwithstanding, in dragnet fashion. ask my wife how many nights i’ve slept at home since the last raid. take a look at my horse out there. he’s hard as iron and lean as a rail. and there’s another at home that looks just like him. if i haven’t found anything it’s not because i haven’t traveled.”
several men stirred and one spoke.
“i don’t think many of us blame you, price,” he said, “but it does gall a feller to lose stock an’ have to stand helpless.”
“and how do you think it galls me to fail to catch the lifters?” asked selwood quietly. “it’s my job—my—my honor.”
he picked up his cards again and turned to the table.
“but no matter what is said, or thought, about me,” he finished, “every day of my further hold on office will be given over to the same hunt—until i find what i’m after, or give up as a failure.”
hink helsey, the bearded man who had sat on the store porch that day of the fight between selwood and mckane, now dropped the forward legs of his chair to the floor and sat up, doubling his knife and putting it away in a pocket.
“sheriff,” he said, “i’m stackin’ on you, along with bossick. i think you’ll ketch yer game—an’ i think you’re already on th’ right trail.”
mckane looked at him as if he could kill him and his tongue itched to flail both men, the speaker and selwood, for he knew that they meant the same thing.
there was one listener, however, who said nothing and whose sharp eyes scanned each face in the room with painstaking thoroughness. this was sud provine, a rider from sky line who had come down for the mail.
the sky line men never stayed long at cordova, except as they came now and again for a night at play.
when the talk had changed from the all-absorbing topic of the stolen cattle, this worthy rose, took his sack and departed.
several pairs of eyes followed him, but no one spoke of him.
there was something about the sky line riders which seemed to preclude discussion in the open.
price selwood had told the truth.
there was not a night of the long warming weeks of spring which had not seen him, a shadow in the shadows, riding the slopes and flats of nameless. sometimes he sat for hours high on some shoulder of the hills watching the bowl beneath with the moonlight sifting down in a silver flood. again, when the nights were dark, he rode up under the very lip of rainbow cliff and watched and listened, his every sense as acute as a panther’s. there were times when he sat for half a night within hailing distance of kate cathrew’s stronghold, and once her dogs, winding him, yammered excitedly. this brought out a stealthy listener, whose only betrayal was the different note in the dogs’ voices.
but someone was there in the darkness of the veranda, and selwood outstayed him, whoever he was—outstayed the animals’ excitement, their curiosity, and left with the hint of coming dawn to drop back down the slants and sleep the day away at home.
night again saw him travelling, and always his one obsession travelled with him—the hard-and-fast presentiment that kate cathrew was the tangible element in the smoke-screen of mystery which rode the country.
it was not long after the talk at the store, perhaps a week or such a matter, when he got the first faint inkling of a clue. it was scarcely more, yet it served to sharpen his wits to a razor edge. it was not moonlight, neither was it clear dark of the moon, but that vague time in between when a pale sickle sailed the vault and shed its half-light to make shadows ghostly and substance illusive.
selwood had ridden all the lower reaches of nameless that week, had skirted the western end of mystery and even trailed far into the deep hearts themselves in an effort to find something, anything, which might tell him he was at least on the right track.
he hardly knew what it was for which he searched—perhaps an old trail, perhaps a secret branding fire. but he had found nothing. so he fell back on his night riding again, and as always this led him instinctively into the region of sky line ranch. he had crossed the river near the head of nance allison’s tilled land, and had sat a moment peering down the length of the brown stretch where the rows of young corn were springing bravely.
it pleased the sheriff to see this promise of a fair crop, for he knew the girl, and had known her father for an honest, straightforward man. the hard effort of the family to get along was known to all the ranchers and earned its mead of admiration in a land where work was regarded almost as a religion.
nameless could condone wrong, but not shiftlessness.
and this girl was not shiftless.
instead her sharp management and her heavy labor were matters of note. so the sheriff took special cognizance of the look of her big field of corn and nodded in pleased satisfaction.
“too bad she lost those six steers,” he told himself, “they’d have helped a lot in her year’s furnishing. game young pair.”
then he moved on up into the blue-brush that clothed the slants by the river and made for the heights.
three hours later he was sitting sidewise in his saddle beside the well-worn trail which led up to sky line. he was not too close, being ensconced in a little thicket of maple about fifty yards back and above. he had spent many an hour here before.
it afforded a good view of the trail, and better still, a splendid chance to hear.
twice in the last month he had heard and seen a bunch of kate’s riders coming home from cordova where they had gone to gamble. but this fact had been unproductive of anything sinister.
they had ridden boldly, as behooves innocent men, their horses climbing slowly with rattle of spur and bit-chain, the squeak and whine of saddles.
selwood had reached a hand to his horse’s nose to preclude its neighing, and had seen them pass on up and disappear.
next day he had unostentatiously made sure that these men had played at mckane’s—in both instances.
and now he waited again, seemingly in a foolish quest.
he knew it would seem so to an observer. it seemed so to him when he regarded it with reason. but reason was not actuating him. it was instinct—hunch.
so sheriff price selwood—whom kate cathrew quite frankly hated—sat in the darkness and watched and listened beside her trail, a lost little thread on the vast expanse of the wooded slopes.
a long hour passed, filled with the soundful silence of the wilderness. he heard an owl call and call in mournful quaver from far below, another answer. he knew that some hunting animal was abroad in the manzanita to his right, for he caught a thud and rustle, the pitiful, shrill scream of a rabbit. a night bird gave out a sweet, alert note from time to time and an insect drummed in a pine tree.
and then he heard, or thought he did, another sound.
it was so far off and faint that he could not be sure, and for a time he fancied he might have been mistaken. then it came again—the crack of hoofs on stone, and once more silence.
he held his breath, listening.
once again he heard that cracking of hoofs—and this time he knew them for cloven hoofs. a cattle-brute was coming up the trail toward him. there was nothing in that fact to cause undue excitement—except one thing.
under ordinary conditions that steer would be lying in some snug glade chewing its cud. in no natural case would it be coming up a trail at . a smart pace—with a horse behind it!
and there was a horse behind it.
selwood heard now distinctly the quieter step of a saddle horse.
he leaned forward, gripping his own mount’s nose, and strained his eyes in the illusive half-light. presently he saw what he knew he would see—a rider, driving one lone steer up the trail to sky line.
it was too dark to see anything else—who the man was, or what manner of steer he drove, or what horse he rode.
and though he waited till the cooler breath of the night warned him of coming day he saw nothing more.
he spent half the next day at cordova, listening, but though several cattlemen came in there was nothing said of a loss among them.
but the day after old man conlan was in and fit for durance.
he threw his ragged hat on mckane’s floor and jumped on it, reviling the law and all it stood for.
“two more!” he bellowed with a break of tears in his old voice. “by——! ef this ain’t th’ limit! i only had sixteen left an’ th’ two best out th’ lot come up missin’ this mornin’! ain’t no trail agin. they’s tracks all over, sure—but th’ other stock is on th’ slope an’ this time there just ain’t nothin’!”
barman, from up on nameless, was at the store and he and mckane tried to calm the old man down, though the cattleman’s own blood was roiled.
“it is a damned dirty shame!” he said indignantly, “have you told selwood?”
“him?” grunted conlan. “hell!”
“he’s here now,” said mckane, “just getting down.”
price selwood entered in time to hear the last of the old man’s tirade, to catch the drift of what had happened, and his eyes glowed for a second.
he laid a hand on conlan’s arm.
“jake,” he said, “hold in a little longer.”
“hold hell!” said the other shaking off the hand, “i’ll be ready for the county house in bement in another three months!”
“i don’t think so, jake,” said the sheriff quietly, “tell me—were those two steers branded?”
“’course. plain as day. j. c. on right hip, swaller-fork in left ear. one was roan an’ t’other a bay-spot.”
selwood turned without a word, left the store, mounted and rode away.
“jest like him!” said conlan bitterly, “goes a’ridin’ off all secret-like an’ snappy—’s if he knowed somethin’ or wanted us to think he did.”
“mebby he does,” said barman.
sheriff selwood rode straight up to sky line ranch. it took him a good three hours, going fast, and it was far after noon when he pulled rein at kate cathrew’s corral gate and called for her.
she came, frowning and inhospitable.
“what do you want of me?” she asked coldly.
“nothing,” said selwood, “except to tell you i’m going to take a look around your place.”
“look and be damned!” she flared. “what do you think you’ll find?”
“well—” he drawled, smiling, “i might find a couple of steers branded with j. c. on the right hip.”
for one fraction of a second the black eyes burning sombrely on his flickered, lost their direct steadiness.
selwood laughed, though he was alert in every nerve and his right hand was on his thigh near to the butt of the gun that hung there. caldwell and several other riders stood close, their eyes on him. he thought of john allison, found dead at the foot of rainbow cliff, to all intents the victim of accident.
“what’s the matter, kate?” he asked pointedly. “suffering from nerves? didn’t think you had any.”
and he turned to ride over toward the corral.
kate’s flaming orbs sought the face of her foreman.
“go with him,” they telegraphed, and caldwell went.
selwood covered every foot of the home place of sky line in a grim silence, looking for anything. he looked into corral and stable, brush pasture and branding pen, but found no sign of the stolen steers.
when at last he rode away it was straight down along the face of rainbow cliff toward the west. he did not know why he skirted the rock-face, since it was hard going. the earth at the foot of the great precipice was slanting and covered with the loose stone that was forever falling from the weathered wall. it was rough on his horse’s feet, but he held him to it—and he was surprised to find that caldwell was still with him, and riding inside next to the cliff.
“think i need escort, caldwell?” he asked sarcastically.
“mebby as much as we need spyin’ on,” returned the other and rode along.
three miles further on the sheriff turned down the mountain and the foreman reined up, sitting in silence to watch him out of sight.
“wings is right,” said selwood to himself, “those steers must have them—but that woman’s eyes were guilty, or i’m a liar.”
at the same moment caldwell was heaving a long breath of relief as he pulled his horse around and headed home.
“this here sheriff is gettin’ a little bit inquisitive,” he thought, then grinned sardonically.
“but if he never gets any wiser than he is now he won’t set anything on fire. in fifteen feet of th’ flange an’ never saw a thing! holy smoke! some sheriff! an’ yet—can’t blame him—the flange’d fool th’ devil himself.”
