So, thinking piously of his duty to Peterson, he rode splashing into Bad Cañon Creek. A mountain trout the length of his forearm slid from under the very feet of his horse and, with one flip of his tail, darted into the shadow of a still pool sheltered by a mossy boulder, and Ranger O’Neill forgot the duty which brought him there and pulled back to the gravelly bank, dismounting in haste. For fishing stood close to fighting in his Irish heart, and there were other trout lying like slaty, living shadows in the depth of that pool.
To cut a short, pliable willow row and take a white miller from the fine assortment of flies hooked into his hatband was the work of two minutes, with another spent in unwinding trout line and leader from a small card in his breast pocket, where he kept his book of cigarette papers. Then O’Neill led his horse into the shade and tied him there against wandering, pulled his hat low over his eyes to shield them from whipping brush and sun glare alike, and stepped catwise to the brink of the pool.
His tutelage of Peterson could wait, while the trout stream called to the sporting blood of him. He got two trout from that small pool, threaded their panting gills on a bit of line which he tied to his gun belt—on the left side of him, since he was no fool after all—and began fishing upstream, going stealthily from riffle to pool, oblivious to all else for the time being, like all born anglers held entranced with the whipping of a fly out over a mountain stream, skittering it above the water to tempt the king of all wiliness from his dusky retreat beneath a rock.
Any trout fisherman knows the lure of the next pool above, and the next, and yet another. Patrick O’Neill crept warily upstream, parting the bushes with care, landing each trout in silence and putting back all but the largest of his catch. Just one more pool would he whip before he turned back, he promised himself, and stole up to a willow-bordered spot, where the slack water lay enticingly under a high bank grown thick with bushes.
He stopped to reach forward, poised for the cast, then froze in his tracks as some one beyond the bushes spoke his name. He turned his head and stared upward, but could see nothing save the yellow-leaved thicket.
“Aw, that damn ranger!” came Peterson’s drawling voice. “Forget him! Plenty of time for gettin’ him outa the way. Now we’ll settle about the cattle for Whiskers. When will he be through gatherin’ ’em?”
“We’re through now with the bunch I told yuh about,” the voice of Little Bill made reply. “All you can git away with safe. They was throwed in on Castle Creek yesterday. That’s the reason the old man’s been keepin’ cattle outa Castle Creek, so the feed’ll be good to hold his beef steers on till he gits ready to trail ’em out.”
“Somebody’ll stay with ’em, perhaps. Will you be the one, Bill?”
“Aw, they don’t need herdin’, Gus. The drift fence holds ’em from crossin’ to Drew’s range and they won’t work back up over the ridge the other way—not with the feed like it is in there. That’s the way old Boyce figures on savin’ men’s wages. He’ll throw all the beef in there fast as we gather, and make one drive out. I’m s’posed to be huntin’ strays over here, Gus.”
Peterson grunted, and another voice which O’Neill did not recognize spoke up, offering a few choice remarks on the subject of Boyce’s stinginess. He was answered by yet another, and when Peterson spoke again, a third man’s voice was raised in protest.
“If you take ’em up around Lodgepole Basin and across Squaw Gulch and that way—why, hell! You might just as well ride up to Boyce and tell ’em you got his steers—and what’ll he do to yuh! He’s goin’ to miss the bunch first time any one rides to Castle Creek, an’ a blind man could foller their trail.
“Now, what yuh want to do is take ’em out on Drew’s range, on Limestone. We can break the drift fence there and make it look like the cattle done it, and take the bunch out that way, on Drew’s range, and haze some of Drew’s cattle back through the fence onto Castle Creek. That way, old Boyce won’t miss his cattle for a week, maybe. Neither will Drew, because he ain’t half through with his round-up yet. When they’re ready to make their drive out, it’ll look like the cattle got mixed up, is all. And if Boyce don’t find his steers over on Drew’s range, let ’em lock horns over it if they want to! They’re always fighting, anyway, over the line or some darn thing.
“That way, there ain’t any mysterious tracks across Myers Creek and up Squaw Gulch way, and it’s about as close to where you want to hold ’em, Gus. Time the brands is healed and you get ’em down outa that high basin, winter’ll be on and you’re dead safe. You’ll make a late drive this year with your beef, that’s all, and you’ll have all Box S brands—see? If that damn O’Neill don’t go prowling around up there-”
“Aw, what’s goin’ to take him up there? That basin is hemmed in on all sides with young lodgepole pines, and the chances are he don’t even know it’s there. Yeah, that scheme oughta work fine, Gus. We’ll see yuh as far as the hideout, for five dollars a head, and from then on you’ll have to handle it alone.”
“You fellows should help change the brands, too, for five dollars,” Peterson objected. “A five-spot just for drivin’ the cattle is too much. I won’t pay five dollars for just to-night’s work.”
While they wrangled over the money, Patrick O’Neill went down the creek to where his horse was tied, mounted and urged the animal across the creek and up the farther side of the cañon, taking a trail that led sharply away from his objective, which was the trail up from Bad Cañon to the Box S Ranch. He wanted very much to see the three men whose voices he failed to recognize.
Little Bill and Peterson, the ranger could swear to, if it came to a court trial for cattle stealing, but he would feel much easier in his mind if he had the added evidence of meeting the group riding up the cañon where he had heard them planning the details of the crime.
Morenci, the horse, was sweating to his ears when O’Neill finally reached the trail he wanted and loped along it to Bad Cañon. The detour had been made in record time, but even so he was too late, as he was forced to admit when he rode down to the creek at the point where he had heard the discussion, and found the men gone. A windowless log hut set back from the creek bank beyond the willow thicket had been their meeting place, he discovered. There were signs enough of their presence—cigarette stubs on the dirt floor, burned matches, boot tracks, while farther back from the creek he found the place where they had tied their horses.
“They went down the creek, and I missed them entirely,” he decided ruefully, at last. “Rode straight away from them as if the devil was after me, when all I had to do was stop where I was, at the creek with my fishing tackle, and they’d have been atop of me before they knew I was there—and me with the best and most peaceful excuse any man could want! Pat, me lad, you should be well booted for that blunder!”
That night they would make the drive, they had said. They were wise to hurry the job, since there was little time to spare before the winter snows would send the stolen herd down from the high basin; and the altered brands would take some time to heal so that the theft would not be apparent. Furthermore, it was only a matter of days until Boyce or Drew would discover the broken drift fence and begin to search for strayed cattle.
Ranger O’Neill rode with a cigarette gone cold from neglect between his lips while he pondered the best manner of protecting Boyce. He could ride to the Bar B and warn them——
“But what if those strange men are Bar B riders?” he argued the point with himself. “Or what if Boyce is not at home, or more likely starts his tongue wagging at me and stirs the Irish before I get out the news? I’d ride away and let Peterson put through the steal—if Boyce makes me mad enough. And the time is short for a ride to the Bar B and back again to Castle Creek soon enough to stop them.
“Morenci, you’ve the mark of a good cow pony in the way you handle yourself on range inspection, and if you work fast enough, I’m thinking we can handle this little matter alone; though it’s little encouragement I’ve lately received for playing the patron saint to old Boyce. Still, there’s a way to work it that appeals to my sense of humor, and it’s that we’re going to do. So shake a leg, Morenci! You’ve a lot of violent exercise between you and your feed box to-night.”
And Patrick O’Neill, for the first time that day, whistled under his breath, as he galloped, to show how content he was with his mission.
Later Pat O’Neill did not whistle, though he still rode in haste. The afternoon was older than he had suspected when he rode up out of Bad Cañon and across the high grazing ground that lay between his fishing place and Lodgepole Basin. He had a plan which he felt would work beautifully, if only he had time for it; but now with the sinking of the sun, he was not so sure. A great deal depended upon his horse, and he had not spared the animal in his roundabout ride to cut the homeward trail of Peterson and his men.
“First, I must be sure that Boyce’s steers are safe,” he decided, and crossed Limestone Creek with a splash and a clatter of hoofs on the stones. “It’s a new range the Bar B cattle are on, and if I can read the mind of cow brutes, they have traveled as far down the creek as they can go. They will not be satisfied to stay at the upper end of the bottom where the grass is quite as good, but must range farther in the vain hope of finding range that pleases them better. At any rate, it’s worth the gamble.”
As he opened the wire gate in the drift fence which separated Drew’s range from Boyce’s on Castle Creek just above its junction with Limestone, the parklike basin was dusky with the coming of night, but as he led his horse through, closed the gate and remounted, a steer snorted dew from its nostrils not far away. O’Neill turned and rode that way, peering down satisfiedly at the dark forms of the Bar B beef steers bedded down on a rise of ground just back from the creek and the mosquitoes and close to the fence.
“What did I tell you, Morenci? Now, rout them up and we’ll haze them on down the fence toward Picket Pin. If it’s through a fence they want to travel, they may try the other side of the fence on Picket Pin and welcome—and the farther they drift, the safer they’ll be, though it will make more work for the Bar B riders.”
When he had finished that job and the Bar B steers were plodding in the dark to find another bed ground on Picket Pin, Patrick O’Neill cautiously lighted a match in the crown of his hat and looked at his watch.
“Eight o’clock and our work only begun! Get away from here, Morenci, and show the stuff that’s in you!” And striking into a cow path that wound through thickets of aspen and across little open glades, he pelted away up Castle Creek to the steep trail where the rim rock broke down in a great slide of boulders on the divide between Myers Creek and Castle.
When he reached Lodgepole Basin, his watch said ten o’clock and Ranger O’Neill had a deep crease between his eyebrows, for Morenci was wet to his ears—and that not from splashing through creeks, though he had crossed two—and there were more cattle to be moved.
But these were Peterson’s and Ranger O’Neill was not so gentle. Across Lodgepole Basin, he galloped, to where a hundred head or more of Box S cattle ranged happily enough and had for their bed ground a knoll not far from Squaw Gulch, which was not very distant from the Myers Creek divide. For the Stillwater Forest Reserve, you must know, is a network of streams and their cañons, once you are back in the hills.
So Ranger O’Neill made a hasty gathering of Peterson’s cattle and hazed them along at a lumbering gallop to the fenced gap in the rim rock and so down into the Castle Creek pasture which was leased to Boyce. Just for good measure he rode after them and threw a hastily gathered rock or two, and the cattle went down the creek as if a full crew rode hard at their heels.
Ranger O’Neill pulled up and listened until the last sound of whipping brush and the clicking of cloven feet against the rocks had died to silence. The cattle were tired after that headlong drive up Myers Creek to the rim. It had been steep in places and only the manner in which he had rushed them along had held them to the trail. Morenci was standing with his feet slightly braced—the mark of a tired horse—and his flanks palpitating with exhaustion. O’Neill listened while the horse caught his wind, then suddenly he leaned forward and gave the reeking neck a grateful slap.
“Not a dozen horses in the district could have done it, and that’s the truth, Morenci!” Then he fell silent, though his thoughts went on quite as definitely as if he were actually speaking them.
“No sound of riders down below there, so the cattle will quiet down before Peterson comes for them—he chooses late hours for his stealing, thank the Lord! So now let him steal his own stock, though what he’ll think or what he’ll say when he sees their brands in the morning, I sure would like to know. I’d like to go and collect a bit of gratitude from Queen Isabelle and the Honorable Standish Boyce for this night’s work, but that will have to wait until Thursday, for I’m due at Blind Bridger to-morrow. But when I do see her, she will admit I’m doing much to promote peace and quiet along the Stillwater, I’m thinking.”
Wherefore Ranger Patrick O’Neill was a contented young man although a weary one as he rode home under the cool stars of midnight. Morenci got an extra rubdown as well as his supper before O’Neill went away to the cabin to fill his own empty stomach. The fish he had caught were far past their fresh toothsomeness and he threw them away and dined upon what happened to stand ready cooked in the cupboard. But it was a good night’s work and he grinned over it frequently.
“Murray would appreciate that!” O’Neill chuckled, as he pulled off his boot. He was thinking of Peterson’s slack-jawed amazement when he recognized the cattle he had stolen away from Castle Creek that night.
The ranger’s last thought as he put his head on the pillow was of the peppery Bar B owner and his probable mystification when he found his beef herd over on the Picket Pin. Some one would catch a tongue lashing, O’Neill suspected.
“But I’ll ride over and tell him about it before he has time to discover the change of pasture,” he comforted himself. “Peterson was counting on a week or so before the rustling would be suspected, and I’ll see Boyce before then. And Isabelle,” he added sleepily, and then began to dream of all that he would have to say.
“Sure and a most loyal subject bows before the queen this day!” cried Patrick O’Neill, with his best brogue and a somewhat self-satisfied grin on his face. “I was scarce hoping you’d ride out to meet me, and that’s why I was taking the short cut to the Bar B this morning. I’ve things to report that——”
“I should think you would have,” Isabelle Boyce told him sharply. “With all this mix-up over the cattle, and the trouble it’s making, I should think you would have something to say on the subject! Do you know how Tod Drew’s cattle came to be on father’s best range, and father’s beef herd over on that barren ground that wouldn’t furnish grazing for a sheep? And the drift fence down——”
“Do I know? It’s a night’s sleep I lost in getting full knowledge of the mystery, Queen Isabelle! I drove your father’s cattle to the Picket Pin——”
“Indeed?” So much meaning may be crowded into one word with a rising inflection that Patrick O’Neill felt a momentary panic. “I hope, Mr. O’Neill, you will oblige me with your reasons for so astounding a piece of trouble making. I am frankly curious to know what possessed you to commit such a deed.”
“It was a good deed, of which I am proud to tell,” he informed her, secretly pleased at the dramatic change he would presently produce in her mood. “On last Friday afternoon I chanced to hear a plan to steal your father’s gathering of beef steers which he was holding on Castle Creek. Peterson was the leader, and they meant to tear down the drift fence between your father’s range and Drew’s, and drive out the steers that way. They would then drive as many of Drew’s cattle as they could handily gather through the fence and onto Castle Creek, so that it would look as though the cattle had broken down the drift fence and were trespassing of their own accord, and it would not be suspected at once that the beef herd was stolen. Castle Creek Basin being brushy in the hollows, the plan had a fair chance of success.
“I failed to see the men—and that was a bit of bad guessing, of which I am not proud. But I recognized the voice of a Bar B rider, among others. It was late, and though I could have waited at the drift fence and held them up when they came, I could bring no charge against them unless they had actually stolen the cattle. So I thought I would play a trick on Peterson.
“I went to Castle Creek and moved the Bar B steers out of harm’s way—regretting the poor pasturage but having little time to choose a range for them. Then I rode back to Lodgepole, where a bunch of Peterson’s cattle grazed, took them across Squaw Gulch to the head of Myer’s Creek, and up over the divide and through the gap to Castle Creek Basin. It was fast work and it was pretty work, Miss Boyce, and I repeat that I am proud of it!”
With lips slightly parted and eyes wider than usual, Isabelle stared at him and did not speak. So presently the grin smoothed itself from his lips and the twinkle died in his eyes and left a puzzled look there, which could easily turn hostile.
“Would you rather I had let them take your father’s whole beef herd and run the fat off them getting them into some hidden place in the mountains? Or perhaps you think I should have confronted Peterson and fought the lot of them!”
“Of course I don’t think you should do anything so insane! But it couldn’t be much worse. Why didn’t you come and tell father? Why did you let days go by without saying a word? Is it possible you don’t know that father and Tod Drew are always at sword’s points over something, and jump at the least excuse for quarreling? You’ve managed to stir up a pretty mess, Mr. O’Neill. You may have saved father’s beef herd—but what is that when he and Drew have sent each other warning that it will be shoot on sight from now on? I’ve had all I could do to keep father from riding over and killing Drew deliberately!”
“It couldn’t be for what I did the other night,” O’Neill protested. “What if the fence is down and Drew’s cattle were found on your father’s range? That’s not a shooting matter, with sane men.”
Isabelle gave him a withering look. “Oh, how can you be so dense! Do you suppose for one minute that father could ride to Castle Creek and discover Tod Drew’s cattle there, and his own driven over on Picket Pin—because there was no fence broken downthereto lay the blame on the cattle!—without doing something about it? He drove Drew’s cattle off with his six-shooter. He killed one and crippled another so Drew had to have it shot. If Tod Drew had been at that drift fence, Mr. O’Neill, there would have been murder! There will be yet, if something isn’t done to stop them, for Tod Drew shot our cattle with a shotgun! For a man who was going to do such great things in psychology,” she cried distractedly, “and instill both liking and respect for the forest service into the hearts of the Stillwater men, you have promoted as bloodthirsty a feud as ever happened anywhere! The only difference is that it is confined to two men, so far—though the cowboys are just as likely to take it up as not, just for the excitement of it!”
“I have received no instructions, Miss Boyce, for guarding the morals of other men,” Patrick O’Neill said somewhat stiffly. “But since your respected parent has not yet committed a murder as well as a felony against his neighbor’s property, I have time enough perhaps to curb his homicidal tendencies. A bit of an explanation will clear the air, I’m thinking.” And he reached for Morenci’s dragging bridle reins.
“You’re never going to face themnowand tell them you did it?” Isabelle’s voice rose to a high note of protest. “They’ll kill you!”
But Ranger O’Neill was in the saddle and away, pelting along to Drew’s place, since that was closer than the Bar B. Isabelle watched him out of sight, then mounted and galloped up the road in the dust cloud he left behind him, her heart beating queerly, away up in her throat.
It is strange how training oft will drop away from a man like a garment of winter grown uncomfortable as summer approaches, yet fall into place when the need of it arises again. So with Ranger Patrick O’Neill when he pulled up his horse at Drew’s gate. In the years since West Point he had put aside much of his military bearing in everyday life, and he had gone rather irresponsibly out to meet life, with his rollicky Irish manner to the front because it was easy to wear.
Yet when he dismounted and walked up the path to the house, his back was straight and his step was alert, his chest was out and his belt was in and his eyes looked with keen discernment straight into the leathery countenance of Tod Drew, who glanced cautiously out of a near-by window before he opened the door to his insistent knocking.
“Mr. Drew, I came to report what I know of the drift fence being broken between your range and the Bar B lease on Castle Creek last Friday night.” And Ranger O’Neill forthwith explained, with malice toward none and naming no names, but making himself perfectly clear for all that.
“I have no direct evidence upon which to convict these men, for I failed to get a sight of them. There was little time to forestall them, Mr. Drew, but I did what seemed to me best as a measure of precaution. Since there has been a misunderstanding in the matter of the cattle, I stand ready to make a fair adjustment of whatever damages may have resulted from my removal of the Bar B herd without due notice. I want you to go with me to call upon Mr. Boyce, and I feel sure we can arrive at a friendly understanding.” Then, and not until then, Drew had a glimpse of the grin that was so much a part of Patrick O’Neill.
Drew gave O’Neill a peculiar, squinting look. “Say, me and that old he-wolf has promised to swap lead however and wherever we meet up with each other!” he stated emphatically, at last. “I’ll have to ride up a-shootin’, or he’ll likely think I’m scared and plug me fer a sheep!”
“Not if I ride with you,” urged Patrick O’Neill.
“Dern that ole pelican! he shot two steers fer me——”
“And you killed one or two for him, but if necessary I can arrange to pay for the damages. There’s nothing like going straight out toward trouble, Mr. Drew. Nine times in ten it backs out of sight as you ride toward it. If you’re willing to take a chance——”
“Oh, I was goin’ to ride over there and have it out with him,” Drew told him, with dark meaning. “I’m willin’ to meet the old coot halfway, whether it’s shootin’ or shakin’ hands!”
“I’ve had it in mind to get you two together and see what can be done about clearing out this rustling. You may be the next to suffer, you know. I’m here to do whatever you two think best——”
“Well, I got an idea we might set some kinda trap——”
Shortly thereafter, Isabelle Boyce reined her horse out of the trail to let the two riders pass. Her heart was still beating heavily in her throat, but she would not acknowledge the smiling salute she received from Ranger O’Neill. They were headed for her father’s ranch, but she refused to hurry after them; instead, she waited a while before she turned her horse toward home. Of course, with Tod Drew talking and gesticulating in his usual manner, she could not think that he was going to do murder. Ranger O’Neill would put a stop to all that. But her father would rave and threaten and she doubted whether he would stop long enough to listen to the story which Ranger O’Neill had to tell, or believe it when it was told.
But when she rode up to the house, there stood the two horses tied to the fence, and there were no high voices to be heard. She stood for a minute on the porch, looking and listening. A murmur of conversational tones floated out from the living room, and she went in and stood just outside the closed door, eavesdropping with no compunction whatever.
“If one of my men is involved in this nefarious spoilation of the range,” her father’s rasping voice was saying, “I see no way of exculpating the others until such time as the thieves are apprehended. Mr. O’Neill, I must concur in one statement which you have made, and that is the statement that leasers of government property are entitled to government protection. I shall write to my relative, who stands very close to the head of the department of forestry in Washington——”
Isabelle gave a relieved little laugh which caught in her throat like a strangled sob, and ran upstairs to choose a dainty dress—just in case Ranger O’Neill was invited to stay for supper.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 7, 1926 issue ofThe Popularmagazine.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the June 7, 1926 issue ofThe Popularmagazine.