The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 24
THE strand of Nearing's life hung only by a shred. Dan Gustin and Fred Grubb, who had come hot-riding with the cattlemen, helped Barrett carry him to his bed. One pair of hands could do as much as a hundred to stay the parting of this almost severed thread; Barrett saw this at a glance. He waited no longer than to give Manuel some hurried instructions, when he mounted and rode with the cattlemen in what promised to be the greatest roundup of rustlers that ever took place on that range.
So it was that after thirty hours in the saddle the three friends had rounded back to Eagle Rock camp. The posse comitatus was still sweeping the range in search of Findlay.
Worthy Glass, alone of the number who had worked under Findlay's direction in robbing not only the Diamond Tail, but the herds of adjoining ranches, the cattlemen had taken alive. He was lame from a bullet wound in the heel, result of the noisy fight a few days before in Bonita. They hung him to a piñon pine barely tall enough to clear his feet from the ground.
Three other members of Findlay's crew, all of whom had drawn wages as herdsmen on the Diamond Tail, the cattlemen shot from their saddles as they fled. But Findlay they did not find. The cunning rascal had left no more trail behind him when he fled from Nearing's house than if he had walked on water.
After a few hours' sleep Barrett was up again at dawn, eager to resume the hunt. Fred Grubb joined him before he had his boots on; together they had breakfast, Alvino setting it out on the end of the oilcloth-covered table, Barrett's plate laid, either by chance or design, in the boss' place where Dale Findlay commonly sat.
Dan came in, his face fresh from the washpan, the forelock of his fair hair over his eye. Habit of rising before the stars began to fade out of the sky was too strong on him to let him rest in his bunk ten minutes past the usual time. He stood at the glass, which was not big enough to show all of his face at once, arranging his hair with the steel comb that Alvino had anchored beside it on a string.
"Boss man, you're in the right place," he said, combing with one hand, holding down his hair with the other, as particularly as if he prepared to ride to another dance.
"I just happened to light here," Barrett said.
"Manuel told me he saw it in the cards that you'd be the big boss of the Diamond Tail," said Fred, nodding very solemnly.
Barrett said nothing more. The fact was, it had been running through his head all night, awake and asleep, that somebody must step temporarily into Nearing's place. The property of the company, his own property, which he had faced no small peril to salvage, must be guarded. New men must be employed to fill the places of the fifteen or twenty rustlers driven off or removed from the reckoning in other ways. Fred began to talk along this line.
"The old Diamond Tail's short-handed today," he said, "shorter than it's ever been since this company was organized. But them cattle's safer than they've been in many a day. If you was to leave 'em on the range without a man to watch 'em for the next year, Ed, you'd have more in the end than you would if Dale Findlay and that gang was steppin' around."
"I bet you," Barrett assented.
Dan came and sat with them, drumming boyishly on his plate for flapjacks, to which Alvino was treating them as a special favor that morning. The tragedies in other men's lives did not affect Dan's spirits, no matter how near to him the shadows fell.
"What're you goin' to do about puttin' somebody in Nearing's place?" Dan inquired.
"I don't know, Dan. That will have to be taken up with the stockholders; it will take time. I guess you and Fred and the rest of us that are not hung, will have to make a stagger at runnin' things till we get word from the men whose money is in the game."
"Well, ain't you one of 'em?" said Fred.
"I've only got a few chips, boys."
"I thought my wranglin' days was over, but if you need me, Ed," Fred offered.
"We need you, all right. What do you say, Dan?"
"I'm in. And you won't even have to fire that foreman to get me back—they laid him out over on the mesa yesterday. Say, there was a hole through that feller's head you could 'a' strung him on a wire by."
"All right," said Barrett, suddenly determined on his course, "as self-elected representative of the stockholders in this company, I appoint you, Dan, superintendent of this ranch. You'll begin work this morning, and keep it up till further notice. Hire what men you need and can get, fire any you don't want."
"Hell!" said Dan, staring at Barrett in amazement.
"Fred, I want you to go to the ranch with me to see how Nearing is. If Manuel hasn't got the doctor from the post, as I told him to, we'll have to attend to that."
"If I'm goin' to be horse wrangler, Ed"
"You're promoted from horse wrangler. It's a job beneath your dignity."
"Well, what in the seven snakes am I?"
"Guide; my private and personal guide. I couldn't any more get around this range alone than a one-legged duck."
"We'll go ahead short-handed till spring," Dan announced, looking up like a man from his calculations, his way clear before him.
"Give us five years and we'll put fur collars on them stockholders," Fred declared.
There was not a man in Eagle Rock camp for Dan to superintend, save Alvino, the cook. All the honest ones working on the Diamond Tail had joined the pursuit of the thieves, and probably a few of the thieves who hoped to pass in this extremity for honest men until they might slip safely away. Dan, who took his honors soberly and seriously, appeared to have put down the lightness of his youth when he rose from the breakfast table to ride forth on his new duties. Barrett knew that he had not made a blunder in this appointment, no matter for the many others which seemed to strew his way on the range like the bones of faminekilled cattle.
Dan announced that his first work would be to take a census of the Diamond Tail cattle, roughly, as such counts are made on the range, yet generally found remarkably exact when it comes to checking them off head by head. This move Barrett applauded. An inventory would be the first thing asked by the other stockholders, and he would gain their confidence by forestalling the request. Barrett shook hands with Dan as he stood by his horse ready to ride away in an importance greater than the simple-hearted, honest lad ever had dreamed of as being his.
The sun was just reddening on the crags and stunted cedars of Eagle Rock canyon when Barrett and Fred set out for the ranch. They rode silently down the dewy, shadowed canyon, where quail whistled in the tall grass, for there were unhappy memories for both of them within the rocky walls. As the canyon broadened, and the place where Barrett had fought the rustler, leaving his body for Fred Grubb to come and cart away, was passed and left behind, the sun struck over the lower rampart and cheered them on their way. Fred Grubb found his tongue.
"I never did have no funeral poertry in me," he sighed.
"Funeral poetry, Fred? We're not going to a funeral."
"It'll turn out to be one," Fred declared. "I wish I could think up a verse or two so I could leave it on Hal Nearing's grave."
"Time enough to think of that when he's dead, old feller."
"He's as good as dead, if he ain't dead already. No man never gits over it when he's shot through the silo that way."
"I was shot through the lung," Barrett reminded him, an inflection of censure in his voice for the poet's gloomy view.
"Yes, but there ain't so much to leak out of a man up there, Ed. You take and shoot a man through the di-gestion that way, and he'd just as well send 'em out to dig his grave. Hal Nearing was a dead man the minute that bullet got him in the waistband of his britches."
They talked of Nearing's chances as they rode up to the mesa out of the canyon, their shadows grotesquely long before them. Unconsciously they passed into speaking of him as a man who had been and was no more.
"And I don't believe I've got erry piece of funeral poertry in that sack," Fred regretted.
"I guess the other poets have written enough of it to last a while," Barrett suggested. "I never could see where a verse on a man's tombstone comforted him very much, anyhow."
"No. I always thought the wind up here on these peraries could sing a man's requisition better 'n me. But it was a disgraceful way for a man to go."
"Tough luck, to be shot down in his own home."
"Yes, and by a woman. It wouldn't 'a' been so disgraceful if Dale'd 'a' done it, but to think of that little Cattle Kate drillin' him through the gizzard when she was drawin' her last breath! That girl was a queen, Ed; she was the queen of trumps."
Barrett did not dispute poor Cattle Kate's right to this lowly royalty, nor speak any word of the sad and gloomy things which freighted his heart. However his going might be classed, disgraceful or merely unfortunate, it was best that Nearing should go, and that he should take with him the secret so nearly revealed. So nearly revealed, indeed, that all who had heard Dale Findlay's unfinished accusation could guess the rest. The rest, all but the name. There was no doubt what Nearing's crime had been.
It was as if some subtle current carried Barrett's thought to Fred, who spoke thoughtfully, in the voice of a man moving out of his meditations.
"It was the Englishman," he said.
"It must have been," Barrett agreed.
"I never said so before, but I always had my notion who it was plugged that poor feller down there in the canyon when he was ridin' off singin', I'll bet a dime, the way he always went."
"Poor cuss!" said Barrett, the picture rising before him.
It must have been in the dusk of day, he thought, for in the dusk the tragedies of Eagle Rock canyon commonly fell.
"Well, Hal Nearing had his good points," Fred allowed, still speaking as of a man who had finished his allotment of troubles in this life.
"Yes; the same as every man."
"But they was further apart than onl's eyes, Ed. If they'd 'a' been feathers, he'd 'a' been a mighty cold bird."
"I expect he'll need all the good that can be figured for him, the same as you and me."
"Yes, but the Poet Lariat may let him down easy, seein' he was drove by the devil so long. Maybe I can make up a little poertry on him. If I can I'll lay it on his grave like a posy of flowers. Maybe it'd help him out a little."
"They say every good thought helps a man, living or dead. But I don't know; you can search me, Fred."
Fred saved further comment on the mercies which Hal Nearing might stand in need of, whatever his situation might be at that hour. He lapsed into a long silence, from which he started abruptly to inquire:
"What made you rush off so sudden the other night?"
"Rush off?"
"After the shootin' at the ranch. I looked to see you stay a little while and comfort Alma, and pat her hand."
"I haven't got any more right to pat her hand than you have!"
"You ain't?" Fred looked at him in blank surprise, which quickly softened into knowing incredulity. "Who has?"
"You can search me."
Fred jogged along a little way, throwing a sly look across at his companion now and then.
"Well, who's goin' to marry her, then?" he wanted to know.
"I expect somebody will step up to fill the bill. She wouldn't consider a feller that muddles and messes everything he touches."
"Oh, you ain't done so bad for a green man on the range," Fred encouraged him.
"Bad! I let that scrub Findlay insult me the first time I met him without knockin' his teeth through the back of his neck. And then I let him shoot me through the bellows, and go and lie around on the sunny side of a haystack instead of goin' right after him and cuttin' his eyelids off."
"Didn't we go after him as soon as you was able to sling a gun? Yes, and before you was able, by rights. It wasn't your fault that he didn't happen to be in Bonita that night we cleaned things up."
"Cleaned things up! Fred, we shot one poor, gangle-shanked cattle rustler in the heel."
"Well, we might 'a' missed him," said Fred, not at all ashamed of the record of that noisy night.
"Yes, and Findlay was at the ranch the other night, and I had him where I wanted him, but I didn't have the nerve to give it to him then. I guess I was afraid I'd spoil the carpet."
"No man wants to shoot a feller before a lady, 'specially a feller that ain't got no gun on him. You done right; you done what any man that is a man would 'a' done in the same compunction. Don't grieve over that, Ed."
"And I'll bet that thief has stood right here laughin' at us all the time—I'll bet any man money he's within forty miles of the ranch right now."
"I wouldn't take you up." Fred admitted. "I've had the same kind of a eachin' in me myself."
"He intends to hide around here till this excitement dies down, then slip out. This business broke too soon for him, away sooner than he expected. He wasn't ready to leave, he wasn't done suckin' Nearing's blood. It's my opinion, Fred, he's got money cached up there in Eagle Rock canyon somewhere."
"I don't know, Ed. Don't you think he's too bright for that? I'd say he's got it salted down in a bank in Denver or Omaha, or some of them towns back East."
"No; he'd want it where he could put his hand on it when it came time for him to hit the trail out of here. He'd never risk his neck in any of the big towns after the cattlemen got after him."
"Maybe he has got a stache up there in the canyon, Ed. Maybe we'd better take a bunch of fellers up there and see if we can tree him."
"It's a one-man game from now on; it's between him and me. I'll go alone."
Fred protested in pantomime, too full of emotions to speak at once.
"You can't go up there after him alone, Ed!" he finally found tongue to say.
"You've got a right to think that of me, after what you've seen," Barrett said, bitter against himself for his touching and passing, and overturning nothing completely, since he came to the range.
"He ain't alone, Ed. He's got three or four fellers with him, maybe more. Boy, they'd eat you up like a redish."
Barrett rode on, his face solemn and determined, thinking it over.
"No, he's alone," he declared. "Findlay's not the man to stick to his friends in trouble—he'll throw them and go his way alone. And he's not a man to split with anybody else, either. What he's got cached he's going to carry away in his own jeans, if he can."
"I think you're right about that, but you're wrong about goin' alone. I'm goin' with you. You'd be like a blind colt on this range without a guide—you said so yourself."
Barrett was kind, but sternly firm. He would see what could be done for Nearing if he still lived, bury him if dead, and then turn his face to the range.
"I'll make one complete job of it, one way or another," he declared. "Can't you see it's cut out for me alone, Fred?"
"No, I can't see it any whichaway," said Fred.
He argued, he begged, he swore softly under his breath at such behavior, which he declared beat his time. 'And he kept up his argument and soft swearing, all to no purpose, until Barrett pulled up suddenly and pointed ahead.
A single horseman was cutting the trail two miles or more ahead of them, coming from the shelter of an arroyo. When he struck the trail, he bore straight onward.
"Let me take your spy-glass," Barrett requested.
Fred produced the instrument, a small brass telescope such as was in common use on the range among cowboys of that day. Barrett fixed it on the fast-riding horseman, and handed it back without a word.
"You was right, he's ridin' alone," said Fred, lowering the glass from his eye. "What do you suppose his game is now, headin' towards the ranch?"
"He's makin' for the railroad, the back door's open for him," Barrett replied.
"Yes, I guess we're the only ones on this part of the range, the others're all up north. He's headin' for the ranch after a fresh horse."
"That's about it."
They paused there on top of a little high ground, looking after Findlay as he drew off rapidly, a handful of dust rising behind him.
"Maybe we can git there before he leaves," said Fred.
Barrett did not speak. He leaned forward in his saddle as he gave rein to his horse, urging it onward as he had ridden that night at the summons of Manuel, pressed by what he felt now to be even a greater and graver need.