CHAPTER XXSOUTH OF THE RIVERRobin crossed the Big Muddy on a steel bridge at Fort Benton to take his first look at the J7. He found the camp on a river flat, introduced himself to a lean, dark-faced youth in charge, counted his saddle stock and began to reorganize. Being short-handed his first task was to engage more riders. Luck came his way. In a week the J7 was cap-a-pie—fourteen cow-punchers, two horse wranglers, a capable cook, wagons stocked with grub. Then the J7 round-up vanished into the heart of the Arrow Creek country and Robin flung his men on circle as he moved from creek to creek.He rode out of Fort Benton on May the tenth. By the middle of June he was combing the Bad Lands opposite the mouth of Cow Creek. Two days before the Fourth of July dawned he was lying on a bench across from Birch. For all practical purposes the spring round-up of the J7 was over. He had covered the range.He sat now in the burning sunshine on earth so parched that it was hot to the bare hand, looking over the J7 day herd—thinking. The herd had watered, and taken to its noonday siesta. Two riders lolled in their saddles on watch, striving to keep awake in that hot noon silence.The “reps” who had worked with Robin’s crew all spring had cut their horses and cattle and gone home. In that herd under his eye only a few Block S cattle showed, a few strays of other northern brands. The bulk of those grazing or resting cattle bore the T Bar S and the bulk of those T Bar S’s were yearlings and two-year-olds—the ripe harvest of two seasons’ industrious stealing. There was not among them, Robin surmised, thirty head of the original T Bar S cattle which had been turned loose south of the Bear Paws. Decidedly Jim Bond’s herd had shown a miraculous increase.Robin looked them over and smiled—smiled and went on thinking. For two months he had played a lone hand. Sutherland had given him the briefest outline of work to be performed and left him alone. Robin had done his work. He knew he had done it well. And in addition to legitimate range work the gathering of this T Bar S stuff had exceeded his expectations. He grinned when he thought of what his spring gathering might mean to Shining Mark.Off in the north the Bear Paws loomed blue out of the heat haze that shimmered on the plains. Robin gazed longingly at those distant mountains. He was hungry for a sight of May. He wanted to talk with Adam Sutherland. He had a crew of lusty, eager youths who had served him faithfully and he wanted them to celebrate the Fourth. He had a fancy for riding into Big Sandy with those fourteen sunburned riders at his back.The fruit of his reflection ripened speedily to action. He rode into camp, bade the horse wrangler bunch theremudaand catch him a certain horse. He drew aside Tom Hayes, the hawk-faced rider who had proved himself a capable second in command.“I’m going for a littlepasearby myself,” he said. “You move up to the Judith in the cool of evenin’. To-morrow shove on to the mouth of Eagle Creek. If we can cross this stuff there maybe we’ll ride into Big Sandy for the Fourth. I’ll be back sometime to-morrow. If I don’t,” he added as an afterthought, “you hold camp opposite Eagle Creek till I do come.”An hour later Robin was breasting the Missouri river. He had picked a good water horse. He went in naked, holding his clothes in a dry bundle above his head while his mount traversed that half-mile breadth of swimming water.He loped past the empty line camp where he had left Mark Steele sprawled on the dirt floor that cold December afternoon. It was hot in that sage-floored canyon. Robin took to the benchland, where cooler airs blew.In all the broad sweep of Chase Hill and upper Birch he saw no sign of the Block S round-up. With the Bar M Bar two miles on his right he bore up into the Bear Paws and rode a sweat-lathered horse into the Sutherland ranch at sundown. A stable hand told him Sutherland was at home. Robin stalked over to the house. When his spurs clinked on the first front step a yellow head raised out of a hammock and May came with outstretched hands and shining eyes to meet him.“It’s been a long spring,” she whispered. “I’m a patient creature, Robin, but the time has seemed so long, so long!”“And maybe my time with you will be short,” he answered tenderly. “It all depends. Where’s your dad?”“He took his rod and went up the creek to catch some trout for breakfast,” May said. “He’ll be back soon, I think. Has anything new cropped up? Where have you been all these weeks, and what have you been doing, Robin Hood? You vanished so quickly. What happened? I ask dad, and he merely grins.”“You got my letters, didn’t you?” Robin asked. “I wrote twice. I told you I’d gone to run a round-up south of the river. I didn’t have much chance to send mail. I’ve been in the Judith Basin and the Bad Lands all spring.”“You write dear letters,” she smiled. “But you don’t give much information about what you’re doing—only about how you feel.”“Well, isn’t that what you mostly want to know?” he teased. “Don’t you like me to say I love you in as many different ways as I can set it down in black and white?”“Of course, silly,” she reproved. “But why didn’t you stay here and run our round-up instead of Mark Steele?”“Did your dad tell you?”“He’s like you,” she murmured. “He thinks and looks and acts more than he talks. There he is now.”Adam Sutherland came ambling slowly across the yard bearing a rod and reel. He nodded to Robin, opened his basket to show them half a dozen glistening fish; then he shouted through an open window. A Chinese house boy came to bear away tackle and trophies. Sutherland lit a cigar.“Well, Tyler,” he said. “I expect you want to see me about something, eh?”May rose and withdrew, stopping behind her father’s chair to pat his head with one hand while she blew Robin a kiss off the other. When they had the porch to themselves Sutherland turned an impassive eye on Robin.“I was sort of expectin’ you’d turn up,” said he. “How’d you get along with the spring work?”“All right. I’m through except for a day herd we’re holdin’. The outfit’s movin’ in opposite Eagle Creek ford to-morrow,” Robin told him. “We’ve covered the range. Branded out a tally of seventeen hundred calves. Beef stock is shaping up pretty good in the Basin. Feed’s good. Looks like it might be a little overstocked, though, on a dry year. Too many sheep outfits over there.”Sutherland nodded.“I’ll move that J7 stuff north next year,” he remarked absently.Robin sat silent a moment.“Look,” he said abruptly. “I’ve got to stir up somethin’. You asked me twice why I called Mark Steele a thief. I’m goin’ to tell you why, now.”Sutherland took the cigar out of his mouth, inspected critically the ash.“Shoot,” he said casually. “I’m listenin’.”Robin began at the beginning, the day he lamed Stormy, the gray horse, by Cold Spring. He spared nothing, no one, himself, Mayne, Ivy, Mark Steele. All that had grown out of Shining Mark’s depredations had burned in Robin’s breast so long it was a relief to speak freely. Sutherland sat staring at the porch floor, frowning a little, forgetting to puff at his cigar. Once or twice he shifted abruptly in his chair. Once or twice he stared at Robin with narrowed eyes. Dusk deepened into dark while Robin talked. The crickets chirped in the dry grass. Stars twinkled above.“So all the young stuff that’s been branded T Bar S and thrown over the river on the ice I’ve got in my day herd,” Robin concluded. “There is a little over three hundred head. I expect a round-up of T Bar S’s on the home range would show a lot more. Short of killin’ Mark Steele if he jumps me—and I suppose he will jump me if he gets a chance because he knows he isn’t safe with me on this range—I don’t know as I can do any more single-handed. I see no way of provin’ Mark owns the T Bar S or any interest in it. I do know that he and Thatcher rustled those calves. I’ve told you how. The increase in young T Bar S stuff proves it. I’m just as sure they shot Tex and tried to get me as I am that you’re settin’ in your chair. But I don’t know whether what I know and have guessed would convict ’em in court. There it is. What do you think? And what do you want me to do with those T Bar S’s?”Sutherland rose.“Come on in where there’s a light,” he invited.He led the way into a room originally built of logs and now paneled to the ceiling with oak. Robin had never been inside the Sutherland house before. There was a homelike air of comfort in this room, a peculiarly satisfying atmosphere that Robin could feel even if he did not understand how it was attained. Soft thick rugs lay underfoot. There were deep, upholstered chairs, a few pictures on the walls, trophies of Sutherland’s rifle in the way of deer and elk antlers, and a great bearskin spread before a yawning fireplace. An oil lamp burned at each end of the room. Sutherland motioned Robin to a chair, shoved a box of cigars across an oaken table, sat down himself and frowned at the floor.“This ain’t so new to me,” he said at last. “Only it comes a lot straighter than I expected. Tex Matthews was my man. I sent him to work for Mayne on purpose. A man with cows scattered over a hundred miles square can’t afford to sleep. If you’ve got anything there’s always some smart feller layin’ awake nights figurin’ how he can take it away from you. A thiefwillsteal. Men you trustwillgo wrong. It seems like——”He fell silent for a minute.“I hate it!” he began again presently. “For three years I trusted him like he was my son. He’s aggressive and he’s got brains. But I guess it’s the wrong kind of brains—the fox kind. Heisfoxy. If he has laid off rustlin’ this spring, he’s pretty well in the clear. I can’t touch him on suspicion. Unless——”He sat tugging at his drooped mustache.“Like havin’ a skunk under your house where you can’t get at him, and you can’t hardly stand the smell,” he said. “No wonder he wanted to kill you.”“And you never suspected him?” Robin asked. “If Tex was your man didn’t he tell you anything? He knew. And why did you send him to work for Dan Mayne?”“I wasn’t really suspicious of Mark till this winter, not till after he was supposed to have shot himself, an’ you jumped the country. I had nothin’ but a hunch last year that somebody was rustlin’. Tex Matthews was on the lookout with the round-up. Another man worked on the outside. I got a notion Mayne might be draggin’ his rope. That’s why I had Tex edge in there. Tex told me straight he thought Mark was usin’ the T Bar S for a blind. I didn’t believe him. Not till he was dead. I felt kinda bad about that. There’s a big bill for those two to pay, Tyler. But it’s got to be collected legal. I don’t want no strangler work on this range, nor shootin’—unless deputy sheriffs do the shootin’. The gun fighter’s day ought to be over. We got organized law an’ law officers. You keep that in mind when your trigger finger itches for Mark Steele.”“My gun hand don’t ever itch,” Robin answered slowly. “Only if he jumps me, or even acts like he might jump me, I got a lot of things to remember that don’t incline me to be peaceful.”“A man has a right to defend himself,” Sutherland admitted. “But you have too much chalked up against Steele to stop at defendin’ yourself. You burn inside when you face him. I’ve seen it in your eye twice now. An’ I want him alive,” he finished grimly. “I want to make him a shinin’ example to cow thieves an’ murderers.”“Meantime you keep him in charge of your outfit where he’s got all the chance in the world to do most anything he wants to do,” Robin said tartly. “I don’tsabethe play.”Sutherland smiled faintly.“I want him where I can keep cases on him,” he said. “Suppose he does get away with a few calves. What’s a few hundred calves more or less? I’d lose a thousand head of stock cheerful, to catch a cow thief out of my own outfit. I’ll get them cattle all back anyway, sometime. The only question is: How can we nail him an’ Thatcher dead right?”An idea which had lurked nebulously in Robin’s mind for days took definite form in that instant.“Look,” said he, “you spoke rather peevish a while ago about trustin’ men. Do you reckon you can trust me?”Sutherland looked at him thoughtfully.“Yougotto trust men,” said he. “You wouldn’t be runnin’ the J7 if I didn’t have a certain amount of confidence in you.”“Maybe you got better reasons for trustin’ me than you know,” Robin observed. “Probably I hate a thief and a crook and a cold-blooded killer worse than you do, even if I have no stock to be stolen. Anyway, I have an idea. Will you stake me to about five thousand dollars?”Sutherland stared at him for a minute, reached into a drawer and took out a check-book.“I suppose,” he rumbled as he handed over the green slip, “it ain’t any of my business what you aim to do with my money?”“You’ll get good value for it or you’ll get it back.” Robin grinned. “Now, about this T Bar S stuff? Will you leave me handle ’em my own way for a while?”Sutherland nodded.“One other thing,” Robin continued. “Have you figured out any move of your own about Shinin’ Mark? Because I’m apt to try something and we don’t want to work at cross-purposes.”“No,” Sutherland shook his head. “I’ve kept close tab on him an’ Thatcher all spring. They haven’t made a move except the old game of throwin’ back unbranded calves, which ain’t criminal until they start usin’ the iron. Ten years back I’d ’a’ picked my own men an’ treated Mark to a rawhide necktie or shot him like any other wolf. But takin’ the law into your own hands ain’t either necessary nor good policy no more. I’ll have to think over this a while. He’ll keep. When I figure out a move, I’ll let you know. Meantime, go ahead your own way.”“The boys are kinda wishful to celebrate the Fourth,” Robin said. “I might let ’em ride into Big Sandy. Where’s the Block S round-up?”“Finishin’ up on the flats east of town,” Sutherland told him. “They’ll be in for the Fourth. There’s to be some sports. I’d as soon you weren’t there, kid. You’re hot-headed. You might run foul of Mark. Heisbad. Don’t think he ain’t because you made him weaken in the store that day. I wouldn’t want you to go to hell in a fog of powder smoke from a cow thief’s gun.”“I won’t make no such finish. You can gamble on that,” Robin answered. “Anyway the J7 riders may be in Big Sandy for the Fourth but I won’t be among those present. I’ve got a goodsegundo, Tom Hayes by name. I’m goin’ to let him run the outfit for a few days. Now, I’m goin’ to ride. I could use a fresh horse.”“Tell the stableman to give you old Groaner,” Sutherland said. “Good luck to you.”Robin turned in his saddle when he was mounted on a strapping bay, to look back at the house. A light glowed in the windows of a room he knew was May’s. He hated to go without seeing her again. But until the issue between himself and Shining Mark was settled for good he could neither give himself up to love nor be easy in his mind. One thing at a time.Yet it pleased him to know that Adam Sutherland treated him without question. Sutherland was right. Men had to be trusted. Life was impossible without that faith. If here and there it was betrayed—no matter. He hadn’t failed Mayne, for instance; old Dan had failed him, and so had Ivy. He wouldn’t fail Sutherland. Riding alone in that dark and silent night Robin wondered if old Adam or May would draw back, lack confidence, grow cold, if some deadly pinch came. There was an uncomfortable chill in the possibility. But it wasn’t even a possibility, Robin assured himself. Such a thing was unthinkable.He shook off that slightly pessimistic mood and listened to the crickets, marked a waning moon peep through crevices in the cloud scud that wreathed the sky, as he covered mile after mile, riding fast and unwearied in spite of fifteen hours in the saddle. He wanted to catch his outfit at dawn, before the herd crossed the Judith River. He knew a way to hold those T Bar S’s and yet free his riders for a holiday in town. They were a mettlesome bunch and they liked him; they would back him in anything. Robin valued that unquestioning loyalty. He wanted to hold that crew intact for the fall round-up, if—the ugly thought rose unbidden—he lived to boss the J7 through the autumn months.
Robin crossed the Big Muddy on a steel bridge at Fort Benton to take his first look at the J7. He found the camp on a river flat, introduced himself to a lean, dark-faced youth in charge, counted his saddle stock and began to reorganize. Being short-handed his first task was to engage more riders. Luck came his way. In a week the J7 was cap-a-pie—fourteen cow-punchers, two horse wranglers, a capable cook, wagons stocked with grub. Then the J7 round-up vanished into the heart of the Arrow Creek country and Robin flung his men on circle as he moved from creek to creek.
He rode out of Fort Benton on May the tenth. By the middle of June he was combing the Bad Lands opposite the mouth of Cow Creek. Two days before the Fourth of July dawned he was lying on a bench across from Birch. For all practical purposes the spring round-up of the J7 was over. He had covered the range.
He sat now in the burning sunshine on earth so parched that it was hot to the bare hand, looking over the J7 day herd—thinking. The herd had watered, and taken to its noonday siesta. Two riders lolled in their saddles on watch, striving to keep awake in that hot noon silence.
The “reps” who had worked with Robin’s crew all spring had cut their horses and cattle and gone home. In that herd under his eye only a few Block S cattle showed, a few strays of other northern brands. The bulk of those grazing or resting cattle bore the T Bar S and the bulk of those T Bar S’s were yearlings and two-year-olds—the ripe harvest of two seasons’ industrious stealing. There was not among them, Robin surmised, thirty head of the original T Bar S cattle which had been turned loose south of the Bear Paws. Decidedly Jim Bond’s herd had shown a miraculous increase.
Robin looked them over and smiled—smiled and went on thinking. For two months he had played a lone hand. Sutherland had given him the briefest outline of work to be performed and left him alone. Robin had done his work. He knew he had done it well. And in addition to legitimate range work the gathering of this T Bar S stuff had exceeded his expectations. He grinned when he thought of what his spring gathering might mean to Shining Mark.
Off in the north the Bear Paws loomed blue out of the heat haze that shimmered on the plains. Robin gazed longingly at those distant mountains. He was hungry for a sight of May. He wanted to talk with Adam Sutherland. He had a crew of lusty, eager youths who had served him faithfully and he wanted them to celebrate the Fourth. He had a fancy for riding into Big Sandy with those fourteen sunburned riders at his back.
The fruit of his reflection ripened speedily to action. He rode into camp, bade the horse wrangler bunch theremudaand catch him a certain horse. He drew aside Tom Hayes, the hawk-faced rider who had proved himself a capable second in command.
“I’m going for a littlepasearby myself,” he said. “You move up to the Judith in the cool of evenin’. To-morrow shove on to the mouth of Eagle Creek. If we can cross this stuff there maybe we’ll ride into Big Sandy for the Fourth. I’ll be back sometime to-morrow. If I don’t,” he added as an afterthought, “you hold camp opposite Eagle Creek till I do come.”
An hour later Robin was breasting the Missouri river. He had picked a good water horse. He went in naked, holding his clothes in a dry bundle above his head while his mount traversed that half-mile breadth of swimming water.
He loped past the empty line camp where he had left Mark Steele sprawled on the dirt floor that cold December afternoon. It was hot in that sage-floored canyon. Robin took to the benchland, where cooler airs blew.
In all the broad sweep of Chase Hill and upper Birch he saw no sign of the Block S round-up. With the Bar M Bar two miles on his right he bore up into the Bear Paws and rode a sweat-lathered horse into the Sutherland ranch at sundown. A stable hand told him Sutherland was at home. Robin stalked over to the house. When his spurs clinked on the first front step a yellow head raised out of a hammock and May came with outstretched hands and shining eyes to meet him.
“It’s been a long spring,” she whispered. “I’m a patient creature, Robin, but the time has seemed so long, so long!”
“And maybe my time with you will be short,” he answered tenderly. “It all depends. Where’s your dad?”
“He took his rod and went up the creek to catch some trout for breakfast,” May said. “He’ll be back soon, I think. Has anything new cropped up? Where have you been all these weeks, and what have you been doing, Robin Hood? You vanished so quickly. What happened? I ask dad, and he merely grins.”
“You got my letters, didn’t you?” Robin asked. “I wrote twice. I told you I’d gone to run a round-up south of the river. I didn’t have much chance to send mail. I’ve been in the Judith Basin and the Bad Lands all spring.”
“You write dear letters,” she smiled. “But you don’t give much information about what you’re doing—only about how you feel.”
“Well, isn’t that what you mostly want to know?” he teased. “Don’t you like me to say I love you in as many different ways as I can set it down in black and white?”
“Of course, silly,” she reproved. “But why didn’t you stay here and run our round-up instead of Mark Steele?”
“Did your dad tell you?”
“He’s like you,” she murmured. “He thinks and looks and acts more than he talks. There he is now.”
Adam Sutherland came ambling slowly across the yard bearing a rod and reel. He nodded to Robin, opened his basket to show them half a dozen glistening fish; then he shouted through an open window. A Chinese house boy came to bear away tackle and trophies. Sutherland lit a cigar.
“Well, Tyler,” he said. “I expect you want to see me about something, eh?”
May rose and withdrew, stopping behind her father’s chair to pat his head with one hand while she blew Robin a kiss off the other. When they had the porch to themselves Sutherland turned an impassive eye on Robin.
“I was sort of expectin’ you’d turn up,” said he. “How’d you get along with the spring work?”
“All right. I’m through except for a day herd we’re holdin’. The outfit’s movin’ in opposite Eagle Creek ford to-morrow,” Robin told him. “We’ve covered the range. Branded out a tally of seventeen hundred calves. Beef stock is shaping up pretty good in the Basin. Feed’s good. Looks like it might be a little overstocked, though, on a dry year. Too many sheep outfits over there.”
Sutherland nodded.
“I’ll move that J7 stuff north next year,” he remarked absently.
Robin sat silent a moment.
“Look,” he said abruptly. “I’ve got to stir up somethin’. You asked me twice why I called Mark Steele a thief. I’m goin’ to tell you why, now.”
Sutherland took the cigar out of his mouth, inspected critically the ash.
“Shoot,” he said casually. “I’m listenin’.”
Robin began at the beginning, the day he lamed Stormy, the gray horse, by Cold Spring. He spared nothing, no one, himself, Mayne, Ivy, Mark Steele. All that had grown out of Shining Mark’s depredations had burned in Robin’s breast so long it was a relief to speak freely. Sutherland sat staring at the porch floor, frowning a little, forgetting to puff at his cigar. Once or twice he shifted abruptly in his chair. Once or twice he stared at Robin with narrowed eyes. Dusk deepened into dark while Robin talked. The crickets chirped in the dry grass. Stars twinkled above.
“So all the young stuff that’s been branded T Bar S and thrown over the river on the ice I’ve got in my day herd,” Robin concluded. “There is a little over three hundred head. I expect a round-up of T Bar S’s on the home range would show a lot more. Short of killin’ Mark Steele if he jumps me—and I suppose he will jump me if he gets a chance because he knows he isn’t safe with me on this range—I don’t know as I can do any more single-handed. I see no way of provin’ Mark owns the T Bar S or any interest in it. I do know that he and Thatcher rustled those calves. I’ve told you how. The increase in young T Bar S stuff proves it. I’m just as sure they shot Tex and tried to get me as I am that you’re settin’ in your chair. But I don’t know whether what I know and have guessed would convict ’em in court. There it is. What do you think? And what do you want me to do with those T Bar S’s?”
Sutherland rose.
“Come on in where there’s a light,” he invited.
He led the way into a room originally built of logs and now paneled to the ceiling with oak. Robin had never been inside the Sutherland house before. There was a homelike air of comfort in this room, a peculiarly satisfying atmosphere that Robin could feel even if he did not understand how it was attained. Soft thick rugs lay underfoot. There were deep, upholstered chairs, a few pictures on the walls, trophies of Sutherland’s rifle in the way of deer and elk antlers, and a great bearskin spread before a yawning fireplace. An oil lamp burned at each end of the room. Sutherland motioned Robin to a chair, shoved a box of cigars across an oaken table, sat down himself and frowned at the floor.
“This ain’t so new to me,” he said at last. “Only it comes a lot straighter than I expected. Tex Matthews was my man. I sent him to work for Mayne on purpose. A man with cows scattered over a hundred miles square can’t afford to sleep. If you’ve got anything there’s always some smart feller layin’ awake nights figurin’ how he can take it away from you. A thiefwillsteal. Men you trustwillgo wrong. It seems like——”
He fell silent for a minute.
“I hate it!” he began again presently. “For three years I trusted him like he was my son. He’s aggressive and he’s got brains. But I guess it’s the wrong kind of brains—the fox kind. Heisfoxy. If he has laid off rustlin’ this spring, he’s pretty well in the clear. I can’t touch him on suspicion. Unless——”
He sat tugging at his drooped mustache.
“Like havin’ a skunk under your house where you can’t get at him, and you can’t hardly stand the smell,” he said. “No wonder he wanted to kill you.”
“And you never suspected him?” Robin asked. “If Tex was your man didn’t he tell you anything? He knew. And why did you send him to work for Dan Mayne?”
“I wasn’t really suspicious of Mark till this winter, not till after he was supposed to have shot himself, an’ you jumped the country. I had nothin’ but a hunch last year that somebody was rustlin’. Tex Matthews was on the lookout with the round-up. Another man worked on the outside. I got a notion Mayne might be draggin’ his rope. That’s why I had Tex edge in there. Tex told me straight he thought Mark was usin’ the T Bar S for a blind. I didn’t believe him. Not till he was dead. I felt kinda bad about that. There’s a big bill for those two to pay, Tyler. But it’s got to be collected legal. I don’t want no strangler work on this range, nor shootin’—unless deputy sheriffs do the shootin’. The gun fighter’s day ought to be over. We got organized law an’ law officers. You keep that in mind when your trigger finger itches for Mark Steele.”
“My gun hand don’t ever itch,” Robin answered slowly. “Only if he jumps me, or even acts like he might jump me, I got a lot of things to remember that don’t incline me to be peaceful.”
“A man has a right to defend himself,” Sutherland admitted. “But you have too much chalked up against Steele to stop at defendin’ yourself. You burn inside when you face him. I’ve seen it in your eye twice now. An’ I want him alive,” he finished grimly. “I want to make him a shinin’ example to cow thieves an’ murderers.”
“Meantime you keep him in charge of your outfit where he’s got all the chance in the world to do most anything he wants to do,” Robin said tartly. “I don’tsabethe play.”
Sutherland smiled faintly.
“I want him where I can keep cases on him,” he said. “Suppose he does get away with a few calves. What’s a few hundred calves more or less? I’d lose a thousand head of stock cheerful, to catch a cow thief out of my own outfit. I’ll get them cattle all back anyway, sometime. The only question is: How can we nail him an’ Thatcher dead right?”
An idea which had lurked nebulously in Robin’s mind for days took definite form in that instant.
“Look,” said he, “you spoke rather peevish a while ago about trustin’ men. Do you reckon you can trust me?”
Sutherland looked at him thoughtfully.
“Yougotto trust men,” said he. “You wouldn’t be runnin’ the J7 if I didn’t have a certain amount of confidence in you.”
“Maybe you got better reasons for trustin’ me than you know,” Robin observed. “Probably I hate a thief and a crook and a cold-blooded killer worse than you do, even if I have no stock to be stolen. Anyway, I have an idea. Will you stake me to about five thousand dollars?”
Sutherland stared at him for a minute, reached into a drawer and took out a check-book.
“I suppose,” he rumbled as he handed over the green slip, “it ain’t any of my business what you aim to do with my money?”
“You’ll get good value for it or you’ll get it back.” Robin grinned. “Now, about this T Bar S stuff? Will you leave me handle ’em my own way for a while?”
Sutherland nodded.
“One other thing,” Robin continued. “Have you figured out any move of your own about Shinin’ Mark? Because I’m apt to try something and we don’t want to work at cross-purposes.”
“No,” Sutherland shook his head. “I’ve kept close tab on him an’ Thatcher all spring. They haven’t made a move except the old game of throwin’ back unbranded calves, which ain’t criminal until they start usin’ the iron. Ten years back I’d ’a’ picked my own men an’ treated Mark to a rawhide necktie or shot him like any other wolf. But takin’ the law into your own hands ain’t either necessary nor good policy no more. I’ll have to think over this a while. He’ll keep. When I figure out a move, I’ll let you know. Meantime, go ahead your own way.”
“The boys are kinda wishful to celebrate the Fourth,” Robin said. “I might let ’em ride into Big Sandy. Where’s the Block S round-up?”
“Finishin’ up on the flats east of town,” Sutherland told him. “They’ll be in for the Fourth. There’s to be some sports. I’d as soon you weren’t there, kid. You’re hot-headed. You might run foul of Mark. Heisbad. Don’t think he ain’t because you made him weaken in the store that day. I wouldn’t want you to go to hell in a fog of powder smoke from a cow thief’s gun.”
“I won’t make no such finish. You can gamble on that,” Robin answered. “Anyway the J7 riders may be in Big Sandy for the Fourth but I won’t be among those present. I’ve got a goodsegundo, Tom Hayes by name. I’m goin’ to let him run the outfit for a few days. Now, I’m goin’ to ride. I could use a fresh horse.”
“Tell the stableman to give you old Groaner,” Sutherland said. “Good luck to you.”
Robin turned in his saddle when he was mounted on a strapping bay, to look back at the house. A light glowed in the windows of a room he knew was May’s. He hated to go without seeing her again. But until the issue between himself and Shining Mark was settled for good he could neither give himself up to love nor be easy in his mind. One thing at a time.
Yet it pleased him to know that Adam Sutherland treated him without question. Sutherland was right. Men had to be trusted. Life was impossible without that faith. If here and there it was betrayed—no matter. He hadn’t failed Mayne, for instance; old Dan had failed him, and so had Ivy. He wouldn’t fail Sutherland. Riding alone in that dark and silent night Robin wondered if old Adam or May would draw back, lack confidence, grow cold, if some deadly pinch came. There was an uncomfortable chill in the possibility. But it wasn’t even a possibility, Robin assured himself. Such a thing was unthinkable.
He shook off that slightly pessimistic mood and listened to the crickets, marked a waning moon peep through crevices in the cloud scud that wreathed the sky, as he covered mile after mile, riding fast and unwearied in spite of fifteen hours in the saddle. He wanted to catch his outfit at dawn, before the herd crossed the Judith River. He knew a way to hold those T Bar S’s and yet free his riders for a holiday in town. They were a mettlesome bunch and they liked him; they would back him in anything. Robin valued that unquestioning loyalty. He wanted to hold that crew intact for the fall round-up, if—the ugly thought rose unbidden—he lived to boss the J7 through the autumn months.