CHAPTER XIA BREATHING SPACE

CHAPTER XIA BREATHING SPACERobin walked to where his horse stood, mounted and rode to camp. In half an hour he was jogging out the south trail behind his thirteen loose horses. Dark overtook him twenty miles from town. He penned his string in the corral of an abandoned horse ranch, spread his bed in an old cabin and slept, supperless. At dawn he tightened his belt a hole and rode again. At ten-thirty his horses ran nickering down the bank into the Mayne yard. A ranch hand working on a woodpile sauntered over to the corral. Robin saw Ivy come to the kitchen door and draw back.“The old man around?” he inquired as the ranch hand helped him strip the gear off the pack horse.“Uh-uh. Makin’ a ride somewheres,” the man said.Robin shook off his spurs and chaps and went to the house. Ivy sat by the kitchen table, nursing her face in her hands. She looked up as Robin entered, in a way that gave him a pang. She seemed sad, even a little afraid of him, and although Robin had seen her in a temper, had seen her sulky, he had never known her to grieve, to look subdued and unhappy.He went up and put his arms about her.“Hello, hon,” he greeted. “How are you? What for you look like the blue devils had got you? Aren’t you glad to see me back?”For answer Ivy put her dark head against him and wept. She tried to speak and the words seemed to choke her.“I was scared,” she got out at last. “It’s all my fault. I was a darned fool, Robin. I’ve made all the trouble. My heart’s been in my mouth all day. I felt bad enough before—since that dance. But to-day.”She shuddered.“What’s worryin’ you now?” Robin asked.He did not see how news of his clash with Mark Steele could possibly have reached the Bar M Bar so soon. Therefore something else had cropped up to trouble Ivy. But he was wrong.“One of the Davis boys was in town yesterday,” Ivy told him. “He got home in the night. Dad was up there seein’ the kids. Sam told him about you and Mark and Thatcher lockin’ horns. Oh, Robin, I was lookin’ to hear you’d been killed. I was scared—scared and sorry.”“You got nothin’ to be sorry for about that,” Robin soothed her.“Didn’t I act like a fool at that dance and stir things up?” Ivy mourned. “I asked Mark to take me to Davis’s just to spite you. Ugh!”She peered up into Robin’s face.“Did you—did Mark?” She seemed unable to go farther.Robin shook his head.“I didn’t have a gun. I couldn’t get one in Big Sandy. Maybe he’d ’a’ got me if I’d been heeled. ’Tain’t finished.”Ivy’s sobs broke out afresh. She clung to Robin and would not be comforted. She felt that this clash had come about solely because of her. And Robin couldn’t enlighten her. Outside of himself and her father no one knew what happened that day below Cold Spring, no one knew the motive that was the mainspring of Shining Mark’s actions, nor Robin’s. Telling wouldn’t help. It might easily prove fatal. Let them all, including Ivy, think the trouble arose over her, until time and chance and effort proved Mark Steele a common thief—if he, Robin, lived that long. And he meant to live.“I hate him,” Ivy wailed. “I’m afraid of him. And still—oh, Robin, it’s awful. When I’m with him I feel—as if—as if—he could do what he liked with me. I wish he was dead! He’ll kill you. I know it. He’s a wolf—a wolf!”“Wolves get trapped now an’ then,” Robin muttered. “Don’t you worry about Mark Steele no more, hon. I don’tsabewhy he should make you feel that way if you really like me. Do you really, truly?”Ivy put her arms around his neck and held up her tear-wet face.“You know I do,” she cried passionately. “You know I do. You’re worth all the Mark Steeles that ever wore boots. It’s me that’s no good. Why should I go crazy because another girl looked at you the way May Sutherland did, if I didn’t care? But Robin—say—have you never met with another girl since you’ve loved me that made you feel—oh, I don’t know. As if you’d like to run your fingers in her hair and have her kiss you. You don’t really want to, but, but, you think about it. Oh, Robin, Robin, what’s the matter with me?”Robin couldn’t answer that except by shaking his head. He was troubled. It hurt him to think of Ivy nursing the least tenderness for another man. And still—Robin remembered himself sitting on a hill with May Sutherland, looking off into a sunset. He did not know whether the thing that troubled him was the beauty of evenfall drawing in across a painted sky, or the girl’s presence, her physical nearness, the deep sweet tones of her voice. Even now, standing with his arms about Ivy, stirred to unsuspected depths of tenderness by her sorrow, he could not shut out May Sutherland’s image. It was there, vivid, alluring. Still May was nothing to him, nor he to her. He was promised to Ivy and he did not desire it to be otherwise.He shook himself free of these abstractions. Ivy loved him. That was good enough. If Shining Mark could momentarily fascinate her as a snake is said to charm a bird, that was something against which he must protect her. Mayne’s cattle and Mayne’s daughter—who was another man’s promised wife. Shining Mark was decidedly a thief. Robin despised him but he did not make the mistake of under-estimating Mark’s ability and courage in pursuing his desired ends. But for the time——“Say, hon, I’m famished,” he said presently. “No supper. No breakfast. Forget your troubles and rustle me somethin’ to eat. Everything’s goin’ to be all right.”Ivy smiled, kissed him, and flew about the kitchen to prepare him food. She sat beside him while he ate. She perched on his knee while he smoked a cigarette and her sorrows vanished. She could laugh again. She promised Robin, assured him repeatedly, that she would never be jealous again. She was glad to think that Shining Mark would not again come riding to the ranch. Robin could assure her of that without telling her more than she already knew. He felt that Mark would not risk bearding both himself and Dan Mayne on their own ground.In the middle of the afternoon Mayne came home. He sat down to talk it over with Robin.“By gosh, kid,” said he, “I’m scared you’ll have to fly the coop. You ain’t no match for that jasper. You wouldn’t have a ghost of a show. An’ Thatcher’ll be layin’ for you too.”Robin looked off through the haze of Indian summer lying on the creek bottom. The tips of the Little Rockies loomed like a mirage on the eastward horizon above a great spread of undulating sagebrush and the gashed desolation of the Bad Lands. The nearer hills were dun with autumn shades, arid, brown. For a moment he visualized the return of spring, a green and dazzling world with flowers opening—and himself not there.“I won’t run,” he said quietly. “I’ll play the hand I’ve got since I’m in the game.”“What’ll you do?” Mayne asked.“I’ll be organized all the time,” Robin said briefly. “I ain’t worryin’.”The old man stuffed his pipe and puffed furiously for a second or two.“Well, maybe we can get a cinch on him,” he said hopefully. “I’ll take a shoot up to Helena and see if I can’t get the Association to put a stock detective down here for a spell. An’ we’ll have to ride, Robin. I covered some country already. I’ve picked up some stuff here an’ there. I guess I’ve gathered as many as forty calves. They’ve sure cut back lots of unbranded stuff. I bet they’ve stole five thousand dollars’ worth of calves from me in the last year. There’s Block S’s too. I bet you they throw what they steal across the river when she’s froze.”Robin grasped his meaning. The Missouri runs like a broad band across Northern Montana—a wide, deep, swift river well named the Big Muddy. It was an effective barrier to wandering stock, since range cattle seldom swim unless forced. Only in rare and terrible winter storms when the northwest blizzards raged over a long period did northern cattle move south of that barrier. Seldom did range stock from the Musselshell and the Judith Basin cross the big ice. No one on the south side would think twice about T Bar S stock here and there—unless fresh iron work showed. During the fall and winter when the ice held, Steele and Thatcher could work on unbranded calves and throw them south. More and more Robin wondered why Shining Mark and Thatcher had chosen to kill those cows and brand their calves that day within riding distance of the Bar M Bar. A calculating cow thief, Robin concluded, would take a foolish chance when temptation offered. And Steele was really master of the broad range covered by the Block S. He had felt safe. Every calf branded was so much to the good. The mere chance of laming a horse by Cold Spring had tipped his hand—mere chance alone. If Robin had not crippled Stormy, he would not have suspected Mark Steele of rustling. And now that Mark Steele knew his game was known he was out to offset that whim of chance by making the country too hot for Robin Tyler. Kill him or make him run. It was simple.Mail for the south hill region came by stage once a week to the ranch near Little Eagle. Robin posted an order for a .45 Colt to a store in Fort Benton. He rode up to mail that letter with a Winchester carbine under his stirrup leather, a short, handy weapon in a carved leather scabbard. Robin was fairly sure of his mark with a rifle. He had a good eye and a steady hand. Thereafter the carbine was never far from his reach.He and old Mayne rode far in the next few days, looking through the twisted and torn confusion of gulch and canyon for calves slipped out of various drives by Shining Mark and his Texan confederate. The days slid by without event. Ivy seemed happy once more, as if she had forgotten. She would laugh and tease, plague Robin as she had always done for the fun of having him catch her close in his arms and playfully threaten her with dire consequences. Sometimes Robin had to stop and assure himself that he hadn’t suffered from a waking nightmare, that Shining Mark’s sinister activity and all its aftermath were not some sort of evil dream. Once or twice he pulled up on the height of land where he parted that evening from May Sutherland to sit and ponder. He could visualize her so clearly. Then he would shake himself and ride on. There seemed to be a vague disloyalty involved in even thinking of May. Yet he wondered where she was, what she did, what she thought. Strangely he never indulged in such speculation about Ivy. He didn’t have to—he knew Ivy, all her moods and tenses; or he thought he did. Once he said to himself whimsically:“Wonder if everybody sometimes gets wishin’ for the moon?”That was as far as he went along that road.From the drift of gossip that ebbed and flowed through the Bear Paws, Robin learned, somewhat to his private satisfaction, that he had done Tommy Thatcher an uncommon amount of damage with one stout blow. Tommy had suffered a broken jaw. Incidentally the iron foot-rail had fractured his skull. They had shipped him to a Fort Benton hospital and he would not be about for at least a month. When he did come Robin surmised that he might come shooting. Still, that was no certainty. Tommy might let it ride. Tommy had started it, and he might conclude that it wasn’t worth following up—or at least inaugurate his private war under the rose, so to speak. In any case what Thatcher might do was less concern to Robin than what Mark Steele would certainly try to do as opportunity offered.He began practice with the new six-shooter when it came. Riding here and there he would flip it from its scabbard and let fly at a bit of sage, a prairie-dog, a tin can by a water hole, anything that loomed as a mark. He accustomed himself to the wicked crack of the explosion, the jump of the weapon in his hand. He would draw and draw, as a pugilist in training shadow boxes, for speed and certainty, until certain movements became almost automatic, until he did not have to look or grope or fumble. It became a game of skill, like the golf swing, or the timing of a return in tennis. He found himself acquiring a control beyond what he expected when he began.In a month, during which he burned up forty dollars’ worth of ammunition, Robin found himself taking a genuine pleasure in mastery of the weapon. Simply to snap the gun at something on the ground, to see the can or whatever it was, jump in a blob of dust, gave him a peculiar satisfaction, very like the concealed pride a roper gets from putting his loop over a cow’s horns at the limit of his throw. If Shining Mark had never crossed his trail, he reflected, he would never have thought of getting fun out of pistol-practice with a Colt .45. It was fun, a form of play he had never indulged in before. He wondered sometimes if his father, who had been reputed handy with a gun, had liked to play thus. And if his play had led in the end to using a gun in deadly earnest, to his mother’s sorrow? Robin’s mother had hated guns. She blamed Colonel Colt, not the passions of men, for her untimely widowhood. Robin felt a little glad she was not alive to grieve over her son who was following in his father’s footsteps—perhaps to the same end. A woman, he reflected, couldn’tsabe. Ivy didn’t understand. Neither did May Sutherland. He doubted if even May knew that while a man might love life dearly, under certain conditions it wasn’t worth living—not if a man had to crawl before another to hold life in security.So he kept his daily practice to himself, and the real purpose of his practice.Meantime, old Dan Mayne made a trip to Helena. When he came back he seemed a little surprised.“They tell me there’s been a stock detective layin’ low on this range for six months past,” he said. “Just on general principles, they say. He ain’t reported nothin’ yet, so they don’t take me serious seein’ I couldn’t name no names. I didn’t dare do that. Jim Bond’s the registered owner of the T Bar S all right. He claims it. Looks like the only way I can keep Mark from stealin’ me blind is to beat him to everythin’ that belongs to me.”So they continued to ride. The school term ended. The two Mayne children came home from the Davis ranch. Robin kept pretty well out of the Bear Paws. He did not go to dances. It irked him a little to know what construction people would place on that. But he had no intention of putting his head in the lion’s mouth until he felt he had a chance to blunt the lion’s teeth. And Ivy didn’t seem to miss dancing—at least, not much.November brought frost, hard, steel-bright nights, days when the ground rang under shod hoofs like an anvil. There were flurries of snow but no great storm, only a tightening of the cold grip of winter.When the first snow whitened the range Robin and old Mayne were in a river bottom forty miles from the Bar M Bar with a pack outfit. Here they picked up a few head of Mayne stock. They drove them out of that bottom into another. In this second flat they rounded up a hundred head of wild cattle, getting a stand on the bunch against a steep earth wall. There was a sprinkling of unbranded Block S calves, fat sleek beasts still being suckled by their mothers. This was not the first time they had spotted unbranded Sutherland calves in out-of-the-way places.“He ain’t playin’ no favorites, is he?” Mayne grunted. “Before spring every one uh these’ll be packin’ a T Bar S. I wonder if Adam Sutherland is asleep?”The little herd stood quiet. Robin pointed silently, twice. Each time his finger marked something they had not yet encountered—a T Bar S cow with a big unbranded calf. This was a bunch the round-up had missed altogether. Old Mayne spotted the calves Robin indicated. He sat sidewise in his saddle, staring, scowling. Then he jerked the Winchester out from under his stirrup-leather and fired twice. The first T Bar S cow dropped like a stone. The second ran fifty yards and collapsed. Mayne thrust the rifle back into place, grinning wolfishly. The bunch scattered in a panic. He began to undo his rope.“You get your twine on that other calf,” said he.Robin rode up beside him.“Do you know what you’re doin’, darn you?” he demanded hotly.“’Course I know. I’m gittin’ back some of my own, by thunder,” the old man swore. “You git that calf.”“No,” Robin said. “I’m no thief. If you’re goin’ to get down to Mark Steele’s level, I quit you right here and now.”“Hell’s fire!” Mayne lifted both hands and cried aloud. “Ain’t he stole hundreds from me? Ain’t I a right to get even?”“Not this way,” Robin persisted stubbornly. “I’ll back you in any legitimate play as far as you want to go. But not in this. You’ve killed those cows and that can’t be helped now. But if you mark those calves, I tell you I’m through with anything that has to do with the Bar M Bar.”“You’re through anyhow,” Mayne raved in fury. “Mark’s got you buffaloed. He’ll nail your hide to his barn door. You’re just plumb scared, that’s all. I’ve done this before to T Bar S’s, and by the Lord, I’ll go on doin’ it!”“You’ll do it by yourself, then,” said Robin. He swung his horse about. The pack animal grazed a hundred yards distant. Robin rode straight to him. Mayne sat still a second, then followed.“What you goin’ to do?” he demanded harshly.“Take my blankets and some grub and hit the trail,” Robin said. “When it comes to makin’ a common thief outa myself, I quit before I begin.”“Aw, hell, kid!” Mayne changed his tone. He began to expostulate.In the end they rode out of that bottom together taking only Bar M Bar stock. The unbranded T Bar S calves remained with the wild bunch. Mayne grudgingly promised that he would kill no more cows. He was full of vindictive resentment against everything and everybody. But he didn’t want to lose Robin.“You’re so damned straight you lean over backward, kid,” he said grudgingly. “Idon’t feel like I was a thief. Maybe you’re right, but I sure don’t reckon it no sin to play even thataway when I think of what Mark Steele’s doin’ to me.”That was Mayne’s last long ride. He had grown old in the saddle. He could not face the weariness and discomfort of riding and lying out in bitter weather as lightly as Robin could.“I guess we got most of mine, anyway,” Mayne said. “You can circulate around, if you like. I can’t stand this no more.”Robin meant to circulate, as Mayne graphically put it. There were plenty of Block S calves in places he knew. Robin meant to ride and watch. In the back of his mind was a pretty definite idea of what he would do if he ever caught Steele and Thatcher at work. His purpose was hardening. He didn’t really expect such luck. They would probably see him first. But there was always the chance.At no time did Robin see anything of the Block S riders, except one or two casual meetings. Sutherland had a winter line camp, fifty miles or more east, deep in the Bad Lands, another twenty miles southward of Cold Spring in the mouth of Birch Creek. While a range boss did in winter occasionally drift about the various camps belonging to his outfit, Robin neither met, saw nor heard of Shining Mark. It seemed indeed as if Christmas might come and go and spring flowers bloom again before the normal round would bring him face to face with his enemy—if the enemy did not take up his trail.Then one day, Robin, who occasionally spent an afternoon or night at his own homestead, met Tex Matthews leading a pack horse with bed lashed on, just by his own claim. They stabled their horses, carried the Texan’s bed inside, lit a fire in the stove, and sat down to warm their feet.“Well, kid, how’s tricks—the tricks of the trade?” Tex smiled.“So, so,” Robin said. “Nothin’ to write home about.”“Thatcher’s back,” Tex informed him. “I hear him and Steele is down at the Cow Creek camp. Better keep your eye pealed.”“Has he made any cracks?”“Heard none. But he’ll have it in for you. That’s a cinch. By the way,” Matthews abruptly changed the subject. “I wonder if old Dan wants another rider?”“He might,” Robin answered. “You ain’t quit the Block S?”“The Block S quit me,” Matthews grinned. “Mark let me out a week ago.”“What’d the old man say?” Robin pricked up his ears. Tex had ridden for Sutherland long before Shining Mark joined the outfit.“He’s away. Don’t reckon he’d say anything. He never interferes with a range boss.”Robin stared at him.“I wonder——” he began, and stopped short. He wanted to ask “Why?” Matthews understood. He shrugged his shoulders.“Mark has ways of his own—and reasons,” he remarked indifferently. “It just don’t suit him to have me around, I guess.”“Maybe you saw too much.”Tex laughed outright.“You’re gettin’ to be a regular Sherlock Holmes, kid. I dunno. Maybe he thinks I did. Anyhow, I’m kinda sorta lookin’ for a job.”“What you want to work for a one-ring circus like the Bar M Bar for?” Robin asked. “You could ride for any of the big outfits.”“Just a notion. Maybe I want to steal your girl?” he grinned cheerfully at Robin. “I tell you, kid,” he went on whimsically, “I’d like to ride around with you on this range a spell looking over cut-banks and cow tracks just to see what goes on—just for fun. Besides—oh, well, I got to work, and I’ve a notion to work for Mayne.”“Come on down and ask him,” Robin counseled. “I’d sure like to have you with me. He’s got to put on a rider in the spring anyhow. I couldn’t ride with the Block S if I wanted to.”Old Mayne looked at Tex and told him he could consider himself on the payroll forthwith. Later, he asked Robin in an aside:“Reckon we better put Tex wise to Shinin’ Mark or leave him find out for himself?”“I’ll wise him up,” Robin volunteered. “I have a hunch he don’t need much tellin’.”Nor did he. When Robin discreetly broached the subject and related what lay behind Mark Steele’s venom, Tex merely grinned.“I figured it somethin’ like that,” he observed. “It’s a tough proposition. Mark’s smooth and aggressive. He’s got a big swing. Sutherland has confidence in him, trusts him to the limit. That’s the way old Adam is. If he’s with you he’s with you all the way. Still—Mark has made a fatal mistake.”“What?” Robin inquired.“Hidin’ behind another man’s ownership of a brand,” Tex knitted his brows. “If he’d said to Sutherland: ‘I’m goin’ to have a few cows of my own an’ make a start,’ Sutherland would have done one of two things. Either told him straight he couldn’t own cattle an’ run the Block S at the same time, or he would have said it was a good scheme an’ for him to go right to it, save his money an’ get somewhere. But Mark has played it too foxy. If he’s rustlin’ under the T Bar S brand he owns it, or the biggest share in it. If Sutherland ever finds out his range boss has a silent ownership in a brand on his own range, right there Mark’ll come to the end of his rope. Old Adam’d get him an’ get him right. Barrin’ that, Mark’s got all the best of it just now. He’s put you in wrong. He’ll get you if he can. You know too much. He can always bluff Dan Mayne. If he wasn’t afraid, old Dan would have bellowed it all out loud long ago. There’s nothin’ but your word against Mark yet. But as a matter of fact, kid, I——”Tex broke off. He grinned.“I won’t talk, right now,” said he. “From now on I’m a Bar M Bar rider. Two heads are better’n one. I can’t tell youallI may know or think, Robin, old boy. But I’ll say this: If you go up against Shinin’ Mark too soon an’ do kill him, you’ll have to go on the dodge, because Sutherland’ll sure try to put you in the pen. So you keep clear of a fight with Mark Steele if you can. Maybe by spring you won’t have to throw lead with him. Maybe a deputy with a warrant’ll save you the trouble.”They slept on that.

Robin walked to where his horse stood, mounted and rode to camp. In half an hour he was jogging out the south trail behind his thirteen loose horses. Dark overtook him twenty miles from town. He penned his string in the corral of an abandoned horse ranch, spread his bed in an old cabin and slept, supperless. At dawn he tightened his belt a hole and rode again. At ten-thirty his horses ran nickering down the bank into the Mayne yard. A ranch hand working on a woodpile sauntered over to the corral. Robin saw Ivy come to the kitchen door and draw back.

“The old man around?” he inquired as the ranch hand helped him strip the gear off the pack horse.

“Uh-uh. Makin’ a ride somewheres,” the man said.

Robin shook off his spurs and chaps and went to the house. Ivy sat by the kitchen table, nursing her face in her hands. She looked up as Robin entered, in a way that gave him a pang. She seemed sad, even a little afraid of him, and although Robin had seen her in a temper, had seen her sulky, he had never known her to grieve, to look subdued and unhappy.

He went up and put his arms about her.

“Hello, hon,” he greeted. “How are you? What for you look like the blue devils had got you? Aren’t you glad to see me back?”

For answer Ivy put her dark head against him and wept. She tried to speak and the words seemed to choke her.

“I was scared,” she got out at last. “It’s all my fault. I was a darned fool, Robin. I’ve made all the trouble. My heart’s been in my mouth all day. I felt bad enough before—since that dance. But to-day.”

She shuddered.

“What’s worryin’ you now?” Robin asked.

He did not see how news of his clash with Mark Steele could possibly have reached the Bar M Bar so soon. Therefore something else had cropped up to trouble Ivy. But he was wrong.

“One of the Davis boys was in town yesterday,” Ivy told him. “He got home in the night. Dad was up there seein’ the kids. Sam told him about you and Mark and Thatcher lockin’ horns. Oh, Robin, I was lookin’ to hear you’d been killed. I was scared—scared and sorry.”

“You got nothin’ to be sorry for about that,” Robin soothed her.

“Didn’t I act like a fool at that dance and stir things up?” Ivy mourned. “I asked Mark to take me to Davis’s just to spite you. Ugh!”

She peered up into Robin’s face.

“Did you—did Mark?” She seemed unable to go farther.

Robin shook his head.

“I didn’t have a gun. I couldn’t get one in Big Sandy. Maybe he’d ’a’ got me if I’d been heeled. ’Tain’t finished.”

Ivy’s sobs broke out afresh. She clung to Robin and would not be comforted. She felt that this clash had come about solely because of her. And Robin couldn’t enlighten her. Outside of himself and her father no one knew what happened that day below Cold Spring, no one knew the motive that was the mainspring of Shining Mark’s actions, nor Robin’s. Telling wouldn’t help. It might easily prove fatal. Let them all, including Ivy, think the trouble arose over her, until time and chance and effort proved Mark Steele a common thief—if he, Robin, lived that long. And he meant to live.

“I hate him,” Ivy wailed. “I’m afraid of him. And still—oh, Robin, it’s awful. When I’m with him I feel—as if—as if—he could do what he liked with me. I wish he was dead! He’ll kill you. I know it. He’s a wolf—a wolf!”

“Wolves get trapped now an’ then,” Robin muttered. “Don’t you worry about Mark Steele no more, hon. I don’tsabewhy he should make you feel that way if you really like me. Do you really, truly?”

Ivy put her arms around his neck and held up her tear-wet face.

“You know I do,” she cried passionately. “You know I do. You’re worth all the Mark Steeles that ever wore boots. It’s me that’s no good. Why should I go crazy because another girl looked at you the way May Sutherland did, if I didn’t care? But Robin—say—have you never met with another girl since you’ve loved me that made you feel—oh, I don’t know. As if you’d like to run your fingers in her hair and have her kiss you. You don’t really want to, but, but, you think about it. Oh, Robin, Robin, what’s the matter with me?”

Robin couldn’t answer that except by shaking his head. He was troubled. It hurt him to think of Ivy nursing the least tenderness for another man. And still—Robin remembered himself sitting on a hill with May Sutherland, looking off into a sunset. He did not know whether the thing that troubled him was the beauty of evenfall drawing in across a painted sky, or the girl’s presence, her physical nearness, the deep sweet tones of her voice. Even now, standing with his arms about Ivy, stirred to unsuspected depths of tenderness by her sorrow, he could not shut out May Sutherland’s image. It was there, vivid, alluring. Still May was nothing to him, nor he to her. He was promised to Ivy and he did not desire it to be otherwise.

He shook himself free of these abstractions. Ivy loved him. That was good enough. If Shining Mark could momentarily fascinate her as a snake is said to charm a bird, that was something against which he must protect her. Mayne’s cattle and Mayne’s daughter—who was another man’s promised wife. Shining Mark was decidedly a thief. Robin despised him but he did not make the mistake of under-estimating Mark’s ability and courage in pursuing his desired ends. But for the time——

“Say, hon, I’m famished,” he said presently. “No supper. No breakfast. Forget your troubles and rustle me somethin’ to eat. Everything’s goin’ to be all right.”

Ivy smiled, kissed him, and flew about the kitchen to prepare him food. She sat beside him while he ate. She perched on his knee while he smoked a cigarette and her sorrows vanished. She could laugh again. She promised Robin, assured him repeatedly, that she would never be jealous again. She was glad to think that Shining Mark would not again come riding to the ranch. Robin could assure her of that without telling her more than she already knew. He felt that Mark would not risk bearding both himself and Dan Mayne on their own ground.

In the middle of the afternoon Mayne came home. He sat down to talk it over with Robin.

“By gosh, kid,” said he, “I’m scared you’ll have to fly the coop. You ain’t no match for that jasper. You wouldn’t have a ghost of a show. An’ Thatcher’ll be layin’ for you too.”

Robin looked off through the haze of Indian summer lying on the creek bottom. The tips of the Little Rockies loomed like a mirage on the eastward horizon above a great spread of undulating sagebrush and the gashed desolation of the Bad Lands. The nearer hills were dun with autumn shades, arid, brown. For a moment he visualized the return of spring, a green and dazzling world with flowers opening—and himself not there.

“I won’t run,” he said quietly. “I’ll play the hand I’ve got since I’m in the game.”

“What’ll you do?” Mayne asked.

“I’ll be organized all the time,” Robin said briefly. “I ain’t worryin’.”

The old man stuffed his pipe and puffed furiously for a second or two.

“Well, maybe we can get a cinch on him,” he said hopefully. “I’ll take a shoot up to Helena and see if I can’t get the Association to put a stock detective down here for a spell. An’ we’ll have to ride, Robin. I covered some country already. I’ve picked up some stuff here an’ there. I guess I’ve gathered as many as forty calves. They’ve sure cut back lots of unbranded stuff. I bet they’ve stole five thousand dollars’ worth of calves from me in the last year. There’s Block S’s too. I bet you they throw what they steal across the river when she’s froze.”

Robin grasped his meaning. The Missouri runs like a broad band across Northern Montana—a wide, deep, swift river well named the Big Muddy. It was an effective barrier to wandering stock, since range cattle seldom swim unless forced. Only in rare and terrible winter storms when the northwest blizzards raged over a long period did northern cattle move south of that barrier. Seldom did range stock from the Musselshell and the Judith Basin cross the big ice. No one on the south side would think twice about T Bar S stock here and there—unless fresh iron work showed. During the fall and winter when the ice held, Steele and Thatcher could work on unbranded calves and throw them south. More and more Robin wondered why Shining Mark and Thatcher had chosen to kill those cows and brand their calves that day within riding distance of the Bar M Bar. A calculating cow thief, Robin concluded, would take a foolish chance when temptation offered. And Steele was really master of the broad range covered by the Block S. He had felt safe. Every calf branded was so much to the good. The mere chance of laming a horse by Cold Spring had tipped his hand—mere chance alone. If Robin had not crippled Stormy, he would not have suspected Mark Steele of rustling. And now that Mark Steele knew his game was known he was out to offset that whim of chance by making the country too hot for Robin Tyler. Kill him or make him run. It was simple.

Mail for the south hill region came by stage once a week to the ranch near Little Eagle. Robin posted an order for a .45 Colt to a store in Fort Benton. He rode up to mail that letter with a Winchester carbine under his stirrup leather, a short, handy weapon in a carved leather scabbard. Robin was fairly sure of his mark with a rifle. He had a good eye and a steady hand. Thereafter the carbine was never far from his reach.

He and old Mayne rode far in the next few days, looking through the twisted and torn confusion of gulch and canyon for calves slipped out of various drives by Shining Mark and his Texan confederate. The days slid by without event. Ivy seemed happy once more, as if she had forgotten. She would laugh and tease, plague Robin as she had always done for the fun of having him catch her close in his arms and playfully threaten her with dire consequences. Sometimes Robin had to stop and assure himself that he hadn’t suffered from a waking nightmare, that Shining Mark’s sinister activity and all its aftermath were not some sort of evil dream. Once or twice he pulled up on the height of land where he parted that evening from May Sutherland to sit and ponder. He could visualize her so clearly. Then he would shake himself and ride on. There seemed to be a vague disloyalty involved in even thinking of May. Yet he wondered where she was, what she did, what she thought. Strangely he never indulged in such speculation about Ivy. He didn’t have to—he knew Ivy, all her moods and tenses; or he thought he did. Once he said to himself whimsically:

“Wonder if everybody sometimes gets wishin’ for the moon?”

That was as far as he went along that road.

From the drift of gossip that ebbed and flowed through the Bear Paws, Robin learned, somewhat to his private satisfaction, that he had done Tommy Thatcher an uncommon amount of damage with one stout blow. Tommy had suffered a broken jaw. Incidentally the iron foot-rail had fractured his skull. They had shipped him to a Fort Benton hospital and he would not be about for at least a month. When he did come Robin surmised that he might come shooting. Still, that was no certainty. Tommy might let it ride. Tommy had started it, and he might conclude that it wasn’t worth following up—or at least inaugurate his private war under the rose, so to speak. In any case what Thatcher might do was less concern to Robin than what Mark Steele would certainly try to do as opportunity offered.

He began practice with the new six-shooter when it came. Riding here and there he would flip it from its scabbard and let fly at a bit of sage, a prairie-dog, a tin can by a water hole, anything that loomed as a mark. He accustomed himself to the wicked crack of the explosion, the jump of the weapon in his hand. He would draw and draw, as a pugilist in training shadow boxes, for speed and certainty, until certain movements became almost automatic, until he did not have to look or grope or fumble. It became a game of skill, like the golf swing, or the timing of a return in tennis. He found himself acquiring a control beyond what he expected when he began.

In a month, during which he burned up forty dollars’ worth of ammunition, Robin found himself taking a genuine pleasure in mastery of the weapon. Simply to snap the gun at something on the ground, to see the can or whatever it was, jump in a blob of dust, gave him a peculiar satisfaction, very like the concealed pride a roper gets from putting his loop over a cow’s horns at the limit of his throw. If Shining Mark had never crossed his trail, he reflected, he would never have thought of getting fun out of pistol-practice with a Colt .45. It was fun, a form of play he had never indulged in before. He wondered sometimes if his father, who had been reputed handy with a gun, had liked to play thus. And if his play had led in the end to using a gun in deadly earnest, to his mother’s sorrow? Robin’s mother had hated guns. She blamed Colonel Colt, not the passions of men, for her untimely widowhood. Robin felt a little glad she was not alive to grieve over her son who was following in his father’s footsteps—perhaps to the same end. A woman, he reflected, couldn’tsabe. Ivy didn’t understand. Neither did May Sutherland. He doubted if even May knew that while a man might love life dearly, under certain conditions it wasn’t worth living—not if a man had to crawl before another to hold life in security.

So he kept his daily practice to himself, and the real purpose of his practice.

Meantime, old Dan Mayne made a trip to Helena. When he came back he seemed a little surprised.

“They tell me there’s been a stock detective layin’ low on this range for six months past,” he said. “Just on general principles, they say. He ain’t reported nothin’ yet, so they don’t take me serious seein’ I couldn’t name no names. I didn’t dare do that. Jim Bond’s the registered owner of the T Bar S all right. He claims it. Looks like the only way I can keep Mark from stealin’ me blind is to beat him to everythin’ that belongs to me.”

So they continued to ride. The school term ended. The two Mayne children came home from the Davis ranch. Robin kept pretty well out of the Bear Paws. He did not go to dances. It irked him a little to know what construction people would place on that. But he had no intention of putting his head in the lion’s mouth until he felt he had a chance to blunt the lion’s teeth. And Ivy didn’t seem to miss dancing—at least, not much.

November brought frost, hard, steel-bright nights, days when the ground rang under shod hoofs like an anvil. There were flurries of snow but no great storm, only a tightening of the cold grip of winter.

When the first snow whitened the range Robin and old Mayne were in a river bottom forty miles from the Bar M Bar with a pack outfit. Here they picked up a few head of Mayne stock. They drove them out of that bottom into another. In this second flat they rounded up a hundred head of wild cattle, getting a stand on the bunch against a steep earth wall. There was a sprinkling of unbranded Block S calves, fat sleek beasts still being suckled by their mothers. This was not the first time they had spotted unbranded Sutherland calves in out-of-the-way places.

“He ain’t playin’ no favorites, is he?” Mayne grunted. “Before spring every one uh these’ll be packin’ a T Bar S. I wonder if Adam Sutherland is asleep?”

The little herd stood quiet. Robin pointed silently, twice. Each time his finger marked something they had not yet encountered—a T Bar S cow with a big unbranded calf. This was a bunch the round-up had missed altogether. Old Mayne spotted the calves Robin indicated. He sat sidewise in his saddle, staring, scowling. Then he jerked the Winchester out from under his stirrup-leather and fired twice. The first T Bar S cow dropped like a stone. The second ran fifty yards and collapsed. Mayne thrust the rifle back into place, grinning wolfishly. The bunch scattered in a panic. He began to undo his rope.

“You get your twine on that other calf,” said he.

Robin rode up beside him.

“Do you know what you’re doin’, darn you?” he demanded hotly.

“’Course I know. I’m gittin’ back some of my own, by thunder,” the old man swore. “You git that calf.”

“No,” Robin said. “I’m no thief. If you’re goin’ to get down to Mark Steele’s level, I quit you right here and now.”

“Hell’s fire!” Mayne lifted both hands and cried aloud. “Ain’t he stole hundreds from me? Ain’t I a right to get even?”

“Not this way,” Robin persisted stubbornly. “I’ll back you in any legitimate play as far as you want to go. But not in this. You’ve killed those cows and that can’t be helped now. But if you mark those calves, I tell you I’m through with anything that has to do with the Bar M Bar.”

“You’re through anyhow,” Mayne raved in fury. “Mark’s got you buffaloed. He’ll nail your hide to his barn door. You’re just plumb scared, that’s all. I’ve done this before to T Bar S’s, and by the Lord, I’ll go on doin’ it!”

“You’ll do it by yourself, then,” said Robin. He swung his horse about. The pack animal grazed a hundred yards distant. Robin rode straight to him. Mayne sat still a second, then followed.

“What you goin’ to do?” he demanded harshly.

“Take my blankets and some grub and hit the trail,” Robin said. “When it comes to makin’ a common thief outa myself, I quit before I begin.”

“Aw, hell, kid!” Mayne changed his tone. He began to expostulate.

In the end they rode out of that bottom together taking only Bar M Bar stock. The unbranded T Bar S calves remained with the wild bunch. Mayne grudgingly promised that he would kill no more cows. He was full of vindictive resentment against everything and everybody. But he didn’t want to lose Robin.

“You’re so damned straight you lean over backward, kid,” he said grudgingly. “Idon’t feel like I was a thief. Maybe you’re right, but I sure don’t reckon it no sin to play even thataway when I think of what Mark Steele’s doin’ to me.”

That was Mayne’s last long ride. He had grown old in the saddle. He could not face the weariness and discomfort of riding and lying out in bitter weather as lightly as Robin could.

“I guess we got most of mine, anyway,” Mayne said. “You can circulate around, if you like. I can’t stand this no more.”

Robin meant to circulate, as Mayne graphically put it. There were plenty of Block S calves in places he knew. Robin meant to ride and watch. In the back of his mind was a pretty definite idea of what he would do if he ever caught Steele and Thatcher at work. His purpose was hardening. He didn’t really expect such luck. They would probably see him first. But there was always the chance.

At no time did Robin see anything of the Block S riders, except one or two casual meetings. Sutherland had a winter line camp, fifty miles or more east, deep in the Bad Lands, another twenty miles southward of Cold Spring in the mouth of Birch Creek. While a range boss did in winter occasionally drift about the various camps belonging to his outfit, Robin neither met, saw nor heard of Shining Mark. It seemed indeed as if Christmas might come and go and spring flowers bloom again before the normal round would bring him face to face with his enemy—if the enemy did not take up his trail.

Then one day, Robin, who occasionally spent an afternoon or night at his own homestead, met Tex Matthews leading a pack horse with bed lashed on, just by his own claim. They stabled their horses, carried the Texan’s bed inside, lit a fire in the stove, and sat down to warm their feet.

“Well, kid, how’s tricks—the tricks of the trade?” Tex smiled.

“So, so,” Robin said. “Nothin’ to write home about.”

“Thatcher’s back,” Tex informed him. “I hear him and Steele is down at the Cow Creek camp. Better keep your eye pealed.”

“Has he made any cracks?”

“Heard none. But he’ll have it in for you. That’s a cinch. By the way,” Matthews abruptly changed the subject. “I wonder if old Dan wants another rider?”

“He might,” Robin answered. “You ain’t quit the Block S?”

“The Block S quit me,” Matthews grinned. “Mark let me out a week ago.”

“What’d the old man say?” Robin pricked up his ears. Tex had ridden for Sutherland long before Shining Mark joined the outfit.

“He’s away. Don’t reckon he’d say anything. He never interferes with a range boss.”

Robin stared at him.

“I wonder——” he began, and stopped short. He wanted to ask “Why?” Matthews understood. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Mark has ways of his own—and reasons,” he remarked indifferently. “It just don’t suit him to have me around, I guess.”

“Maybe you saw too much.”

Tex laughed outright.

“You’re gettin’ to be a regular Sherlock Holmes, kid. I dunno. Maybe he thinks I did. Anyhow, I’m kinda sorta lookin’ for a job.”

“What you want to work for a one-ring circus like the Bar M Bar for?” Robin asked. “You could ride for any of the big outfits.”

“Just a notion. Maybe I want to steal your girl?” he grinned cheerfully at Robin. “I tell you, kid,” he went on whimsically, “I’d like to ride around with you on this range a spell looking over cut-banks and cow tracks just to see what goes on—just for fun. Besides—oh, well, I got to work, and I’ve a notion to work for Mayne.”

“Come on down and ask him,” Robin counseled. “I’d sure like to have you with me. He’s got to put on a rider in the spring anyhow. I couldn’t ride with the Block S if I wanted to.”

Old Mayne looked at Tex and told him he could consider himself on the payroll forthwith. Later, he asked Robin in an aside:

“Reckon we better put Tex wise to Shinin’ Mark or leave him find out for himself?”

“I’ll wise him up,” Robin volunteered. “I have a hunch he don’t need much tellin’.”

Nor did he. When Robin discreetly broached the subject and related what lay behind Mark Steele’s venom, Tex merely grinned.

“I figured it somethin’ like that,” he observed. “It’s a tough proposition. Mark’s smooth and aggressive. He’s got a big swing. Sutherland has confidence in him, trusts him to the limit. That’s the way old Adam is. If he’s with you he’s with you all the way. Still—Mark has made a fatal mistake.”

“What?” Robin inquired.

“Hidin’ behind another man’s ownership of a brand,” Tex knitted his brows. “If he’d said to Sutherland: ‘I’m goin’ to have a few cows of my own an’ make a start,’ Sutherland would have done one of two things. Either told him straight he couldn’t own cattle an’ run the Block S at the same time, or he would have said it was a good scheme an’ for him to go right to it, save his money an’ get somewhere. But Mark has played it too foxy. If he’s rustlin’ under the T Bar S brand he owns it, or the biggest share in it. If Sutherland ever finds out his range boss has a silent ownership in a brand on his own range, right there Mark’ll come to the end of his rope. Old Adam’d get him an’ get him right. Barrin’ that, Mark’s got all the best of it just now. He’s put you in wrong. He’ll get you if he can. You know too much. He can always bluff Dan Mayne. If he wasn’t afraid, old Dan would have bellowed it all out loud long ago. There’s nothin’ but your word against Mark yet. But as a matter of fact, kid, I——”

Tex broke off. He grinned.

“I won’t talk, right now,” said he. “From now on I’m a Bar M Bar rider. Two heads are better’n one. I can’t tell youallI may know or think, Robin, old boy. But I’ll say this: If you go up against Shinin’ Mark too soon an’ do kill him, you’ll have to go on the dodge, because Sutherland’ll sure try to put you in the pen. So you keep clear of a fight with Mark Steele if you can. Maybe by spring you won’t have to throw lead with him. Maybe a deputy with a warrant’ll save you the trouble.”

They slept on that.

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