CHAPTER XXVSNIPPED THREADSOn a little hillock that gave a clear view all around Robin pulled up his horse. He rode alone. Now of all times he must be wary. Thatcher had failed. If Steele knew Thatcher had not only failed but had confessed his sins to save his neck, he would certainly be in the mood to take a desperate chance. Hemightbe riding the hills on the same errand as Thatcher. So Robin looked well from all the high ground and rode fast in the low places. There was no shame in being cautious. A second bullet might not simply graze him.Over westward he could see a little dark cluster moving rapidly across the rolling land. That was Sam Connors and his prisoner with two J7 men for bodyguard. Connors could make the evening train by riding hard. Nightfall would see the Texan safe in the county jail. Nightfall, Robin hoped, would also see Mark Steele at the end of his tether. The blank warrant in his pocket Robin had already filled in. He meant to leave no loopholes because he meant to take Mark Steele wherever he found him. If Mark anticipated his purpose and resisted then the outcome was on the knees of the gods.Shining Mark might be at the Bar M Bar; he might be at the Block S camp, he might be in town. He was bold and crafty. He might indeed be anywhere, but in those three places in the order named Robin proposed to look for him. He had a grim satisfaction to stiffen his purpose. There was no loophole left for Shining Mark now. Robin had been patient, he had endured much, and he did not love his enemies.Steele was not at the Bar M Bar. Neither was Mayne nor his daughter. A ranch hand told Robin they had gone to town. He bore on up to the Block S. The round-up tents stood white on the green border of an irrigated meadow but the Sutherland riders knew nothing of Mark. Jack Boyd did inform Robin that old Adam and May had departed in the buggy three or four days earlier. Robin knew that the bay trotters were likely to have but one destination.“Me for Big Sandy,” he reflected—and borrowed a fresh horse out of the Block Sremuda.Thus mounted he burned the earth, in range parlance, toward town. As he rode his personal danger from ambush became less of moment than the possibility of Mark Steele slipping through his fingers. Mark would do one of two things the moment he learned that Thatcher had been taken red-handed; either he would go gunning for Robin or he would jump the country. He had money. That inheritance of fifteen thousand dollars which he hadnotput into the Bar M Bar partnership would take him far and fast—if he chose to own himself beaten and quit the field.That contingency worried Robin. He had made two definite promises both to himself and Shining Mark, one in anger, the other in cold blood, to kill him or put him in the penitentiary. He meant to keep one or the other.In the freshness of his anger that morning with Thatcher’s fear-wrung story to cap the climax, Robin had set out to take his man single-handed.Now, as he loped out of the foothills, he was not so sure of the wisdom of that plan. To act alone savored a little of satisfying a personal grudge, which he admitted to himself—and he reflected that making Steele’s arrest a personal, single-handed affair might easily permit Mark to evade justice altogether.Wherefore, by the time town loomed in the tenuous heat haze that quivered above a parched earth, Robin had decided to consult Adam Sutherland first. He could still grab Steele wherever he found him, but perhaps the entire machinery of the sheriff’s office had better be in motion. Montana covered a lot of territory. If Shining Mark went on the dodge he would take some catching.So he rode to the store on an angle that took him between the stockyards and the rows of houses that formed the one short street. A clerk stood in the door that Robin had to pass on his way to the front. He pulled up.“Sutherland inside?”“Went over to the house a while ago,” the man told him.Robin didn’t tarry. In two minutes he was striding up the front steps of the white cottage. Sutherland rose out of a chair behind a canvas screen. May appeared in the doorway.“Come on inside,” Sutherland said. “What’s up?”“How do you know anything’s up?” Robin asked when he doffed his hat in the cool room. He stole a look at May. She smiled welcome but there was a sort of shadow in her blue eyes, a something Robin had never seen there, a troubled, apprehensive expression.“I see two of your men with Sam Connors an’ that Texican ride in just as the west-bound stopped. Connors an’ Thatcher took the train. Your two boys say they just rode in for fun. You come ridin’ a Block S horse all sweat an’ foam.”“You notice things, don’t you,” Robin drawled. “Well, somethin’ is up. Do you happen to know if Mark Steele is in Big Sandy?”A look flashed between father and daughter.“I don’t spend no time keepin’ track of Mark myself,” Sutherland said dryly. “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. Why? Sit down an’ spin your yarn.”Robin spun it briefly.“So I took a second thought and figured two heads was better than one,” he ended. “Maybe it’ll be as well to stir up Tom Coats and notify the other county officers, so they’ll all be on the lookout for him if he hides out. If he does happen to be in Big Sandy or rides in here I’ll drop my own loop on him. If he don’t know we got Thatcher he’ll feel safe to go anywhere.”“Hm—m.” Sutherland nursed his chin in one hand, twirled and tugged by turns at his mustache. He looked first at Robin, then at his daughter. His expression told nothing. He rose at last.“You’ve done a good stroke of business, kid,” he said. “I’ll amble over an’ send a wire to Fort Benton. You stay here.”“I ought to stable my horse,” Robin took thought. “I sure rode him hard.”“He’ll keep. Block S saddle stock is used to hard ridin’,” Sutherland observed. “I won’t be gone but a minute or two. I want to talk this over with you some more. You stay right here till I come back. I guess May won’t mind.”“All right,” Robin agreed. He had to suppress a self-conscious grin at the last sentence. He didn’t know why Sutherland took that tack, unless May had worked some magic on him. But Robin certainly didn’t think she would mind.May flung herself into his arms the moment her father was out the door.“Glad to see me?” Robin asked with a tender smile.She nodded, her head on his breast.“I worry about you now I know you’re this side of the river.” She lifted her head to look into his face. “That man is deadly—deadly and despicable. Ivy Mayne came up to the ranch one day last week.”“Yes? I met her at my old homestead one morning. She was pretty wild then. She started off toward the Block S, but I didn’t think she’d go through.”“She was nearly insane with fear and grief,” May told him soberly. “And she blurted out all her troubles to dad and me when she found Mark wasn’t there. Did she tell you what was wrong, Robin?”He nodded.“Poor thing! She’s a queer, awfully intense creature, and foolish—but it is rather terrible for her, Robin. I’m so sorry.”“So am I,” Robin murmured. “But I can’t do anything about it, that I know of.”“I can’t do much but I’m going to do what I can. Ivy’s here now.”“Here in your house?”“Yes,” May nodded. “In one of the bedrooms. I’ve got her calmed down from that frenzy she was in. I’m going to take her away to Helena. Her father doesn’t know. He’s a poor stick anyway. He’s been raving to dad all morning about this wretched cattle business. And——”She stopped suddenly. Her arms tightened about Robin.“You’re an angel,” he whispered.“You were fond of her, weren’t you, Robin?” she muttered.“That was before I knew you,” Robin answered slowly. “And I guess it wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyway. Mark was always in her mind more or less. I did like her, though. You’ve liked other men before you ever saw me, I guess, hon?”“Not much. Well, yes, I once liked a boy who broke horses for us long before I knew you, Robin,” she said honestly. “He was a rider like you. A horse fell with him and killed him. I thought a lot of him. But somehow not the way I think and feel about you, dear.”Robin kissed her.“I guess maybe it was the same with both of us,” he said. “We were both lookin’ for somebody we wanted. I had the feelin’ that I’d found something real the first time I met you—the night we rode up the hill above Little Birch and talked while the sun went down. Remember?”“Yes,” she smiled. “I had the same feeling about you—and it grows stronger. I’ll be glad when that murdering thief is dead or in jail. I’m afraid for you Robin. You’ve taken so many chances. You may not always be lucky. What would I do if anything happened to you, Robin?”“I’ve got to take chances,” Robin declared. “A man has to. Mark is about at the end of his rope now. He’s overplayed his hand.”May shuddered a little.“Yes,” she sighed, “but he’s still in the game.”“I wonder if heisin town,” Robin’s eyes hardened.“It isn’t your place to go after him if he is,” she demurred. “Let the county officers get him. He’ll try to kill you, if it’s the last thing he does.”“By jiminy!” Robin put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her searchingly. “I believe he is in town an’ you know it. Your dad knows he’s here?”May flushed.“Steele is in Big Sandy,” she admitted. “He’s been here since yesterday drinking and—and——”Robin turned. May caught him with both hands.“Robin!” she cried. “No. You promised dad you’d stay here till he came back.”“While I stand here talkin’ Steele may be ridin’,” Robin said. “Gettin’ him is my job. If I didn’t owe it to him, I’m an officer. I got myself deputized to have the law on my side. Even if I wasn’t I’d go after him anyway. He rode me rough. He murdered a good friend. He’s a thief. I will get him—alive if I can; but I’ll get him if he’s here.”“I know, I know,” May pleaded. “I wouldn’t have you shirk. But wait till dad comes back. He’s old and very wise, Robin, and he likes you. If he says you should go ahead and arrest Mark Steele I won’t say another word.”They stood for a second or two, clasped close. The blood leaped quicker in Robin’s veins. So Shining Mark was in town? Very soon now there would be an end to this coil in which he had been entangled so long. One way or the other it would be finished. If Mark opened war on sight it would be an even break—and Robin asked no more, wanted no more. And if Steele hesitated the fraction of a second then he would get the drop on him and Shining Mark would go to Fort Benton alive to answer before the law for his misdeeds. Even with his sweetheart in his arms Robin’s instinct was to seek Steele and get it over.As he made a move to put May’s arms aside, distantly, as if muffled, faintly through the open door two shots sounded so close together that an untrained ear might have heard but one. Then another single report. After that dead silence, in which Robin, already on the top step, halted to listen.“I wonder?” he said to May at his elbow.He had no definite reason for wondering. When cowboys were in Big Sandy revolver shots were a commonplace. The cow-puncher in his exuberance used a six-shooter in much the same spirit a small boy sets off fire-crackers. His Colt was at once a weapon and a toy.But there was no sound of hilarity, no light-hearted whooping. Neither of the J7 men had been in long enough to get drunk. All the Block S riders were on Little Eagle. There might be stray stock hands in town. Yet Robin was troubled by those shots, that uncommon stillness which followed. It was a scant two hundred yards to the hotel, the Silver Dollar, the other saloons. Not a sound, not a voice, was uplifted in that hush.“That’s funny. I’m going over.”“Robin—please!”“I got to,” he said desperately.He pressed a kiss on her lips, shook off her clutching hands, and ran. He glanced back once. May stood where he left her looking after him, the raking sun rays striking golden gleams on her head. Through Robin’s mind flashed the thought that it might be his last sight of her. But he went on quickly. If he met Shining Mark and luck was against him at any rate her kiss was sweet on his lips.The corpulent host of the hotel stood outside his bar-room door.“What was the shootin’?” Robin asked.“Somet’ing happen ober dere, yes,” the man said placidly. “Everybody go to see. Vot iss, I do not know, already yet.”Robin crossed the street, walked in through the open door of Monty’s Place, alert, nerves tense, looking first of all for sight of a lean, dark face with gray eyes that held malice whenever they rested on him.And Shining Mark was almost the first man he saw. But there was no malice in his eyes now. He was stretched full-length on the floor, a white-handled Colt three feet from his outspread fingers. A shaft from the sinking sun played on his face through a window and a fly buzzed over him in the yellow beam.Adam Sutherland sat in a chair. Men stood about him in a circle. A professional looking person in a white shirt, with his sleeves rolled up, was swathing a bandage about Sutherland’s naked middle. The old man looked up at Robin and smiled.“I beat you to him,” he said a little hoarsely. “He was on the warpath an’ I settled his hash.”Robin said nothing. There was nothing to say. Death is sobering. No one talked much. When a man did speak he lowered his voice. Some one appeared with a canvas and spread it over Shining Mark. Even old Mayne, bearing all the marks of drunkenness which made his tongue wag always beyond all restraint, looked silently at Sutherland and kept still. The man who owned the saloon said to Robin:“Lucky Doc happened to be here. Came up from Havre to look after a sick woman. So we got him right off.”“There you are, Mr. Sutherland,” the doctor stood back and surveyed his handiwork. “Rest easy for a few days and you’ll be as good as ever. I’ll look in in the morning and dress that again. Better get a rig to take you over to your house.”“Shucks.” Sutherland stood up and tucked in his shirt, waving off the men who would have supported him. “I don’t need nobody but Tyler to help me home. A scratch like that. Shucks!”Robin lent him his arm. They passed out the door, crossed the dusty street, Sutherland leaning on Robin, walking slowly. As they cleared the hotel, May watching from the porch saw them and came on flying feet.“Oh,” she cried, and again, “Oh, dad, dad!”“It’s nothin’a-tall. Now don’t fuss, for the love of Mike. I’m all right. It’s all over. Let’s not have any shoutin’.”May took his other arm. They passed up the steps, inside, into Sutherland’s bedroom.“Now you leave us be, May,” he said. “I want to talk to Robin.”“Please, daddy, tell me,” she begged. “Are you hurt badly? I must know.”“No, girl, I ain’t, and that’s God’s truth,” he answered. “If I was I’d tell you. You ain’t the screamin’ kind. A bullet ripped up the flesh between my ribs, an’ that’s all. You seen me tore up a heap worse, one time. There’s nothin’ to worry about. You run along.”She kissed him and left the room. Sutherland sat down on the edge of his bed, eased himself to the pillows, grinned feebly.“I ain’t so young as I used to be,” he mumbled to Robin. “I want to get my wind for a spell. Then you can pull off my boots an’ help me undress.”He shut his eyes. Robin stood waiting, silent.In a minute or so old Adam spoke again.“There. I felt kinda wabbly but it’s gone now. Give me a hand.”Robin helped him get ready for bed, put his clothes away in a closet.“I’ll be off my feet for a spell, I reckon,” Sutherland began to talk with something of his old vigor. “You’ll have to be a sort of general superintendent, Tyler. Pick a good man out of your crew to run the J7. Leave Boydsegundoon the home wagon till you can take it over yourself. Run the Block S on them cattle you got. We’ll keep ’em, every darned hoof. Well, I expect they stole quite a few from old Mayne, so you better mark, say, about a hundred head for him. I guess that’s all for just now. You’ll have to be in an’ out of here pretty frequent while I’m on my back.”“Why did you tangle with Mark Steele?” Robin demanded. “Why didn’t you leave him to me? It was my job.”“Mine too. He stole from me. He murdered a man I thought a lot of. He was a dirty dog all around. He give that fool girl of Mayne’s a raw deal. I felt kinda responsible, because I put him in a position to do some of them things. I been boilin’ inside the last two or three days. An’ he was makin’ breaks about you here in town. He was bad an’ he was game. I didn’t feel like lettin’ you take a chance.“Gosh darn it, this hole in my ribs don’t amount to much, but it sure hurts,” he complained. “No, kid, I couldn’t let you go up against thathombre. I’ve lived my life an’ it don’t matter so much. This kid of mine thinks a heap of you. I couldn’t let you go against as hard a proposition as Mark Steele. An’ there was no time to wait for deputies. You would ’a’ gone after him in spite of hell an’ high water the minute you knew he was in town. So I went after him myself. I’ve stood out against gun play for years now. But you notice I ain’t sheddin’ no tears.”“Nor me,” Robin replied. “Only I wish you hadn’t took him off my hands at your own risk.”“Shucks,” Sutherland rumbled. “You take the runnin’ of the Block S offmyhands an’ we’ll call it square. If there’s anything in what I’ve had to listen to from May the last few days it’s all in the family anyhow.”“You mean that?” Robin asked.“Yes. You’ll do,” Sutherland grinned. “I was only joshin’ you at the ranch last week. Wanted to see how you’d take it. I’d trust May’s judgment in a matter of that kind, even if I doubted my own—which I don’t. Hit the trail an’ tell her how the play come up with Mark—an’ tell Lum Yip to bring me some ice water.”Robin delivered this order to the Chinese boy. Then he found May, told her briefly what had happened. She dashed off to her father’s room again. In a minute she came back, flushed, laughing.“Isn’t he the grandest old person,” she said to Robin. “Do you know what he said to me? He said: ‘Get to blazes out of here and leave me rest! Go an’ plague that fellow you’re goin’ to marry. He’ll be sorry when he gets to know what he’s got on his hands as well as I do.’”“Huh!” Robin grunted. “If the fellow lives till he’s sorry he’ll beat Methuselah’s record for old age.”“Let’s go out on the porch,” she suggested.Robin stood with his arms about her looking off toward the blue dome of Old Centennial, the sharp cone of Shadow Butte. The sun dipped low, its rim touching the horizon. Distant windows flashed like heliographs. A cool breeze fluttered the porch awnings.In his mind’s eye Robin could see all the beauty of those distant hills, the far reach of the plains. Something seemed to have been mysteriously restored to him, some dark cloud blown away, something seemed to have set his heart singing and uplifted him with a strangely comforting sense of peace and security.He drew the girl up close to him, and they stood for a long time in silence, Robin’s fingers playing hide and seek in the tangle of her yellow hair.THE END
On a little hillock that gave a clear view all around Robin pulled up his horse. He rode alone. Now of all times he must be wary. Thatcher had failed. If Steele knew Thatcher had not only failed but had confessed his sins to save his neck, he would certainly be in the mood to take a desperate chance. Hemightbe riding the hills on the same errand as Thatcher. So Robin looked well from all the high ground and rode fast in the low places. There was no shame in being cautious. A second bullet might not simply graze him.
Over westward he could see a little dark cluster moving rapidly across the rolling land. That was Sam Connors and his prisoner with two J7 men for bodyguard. Connors could make the evening train by riding hard. Nightfall would see the Texan safe in the county jail. Nightfall, Robin hoped, would also see Mark Steele at the end of his tether. The blank warrant in his pocket Robin had already filled in. He meant to leave no loopholes because he meant to take Mark Steele wherever he found him. If Mark anticipated his purpose and resisted then the outcome was on the knees of the gods.
Shining Mark might be at the Bar M Bar; he might be at the Block S camp, he might be in town. He was bold and crafty. He might indeed be anywhere, but in those three places in the order named Robin proposed to look for him. He had a grim satisfaction to stiffen his purpose. There was no loophole left for Shining Mark now. Robin had been patient, he had endured much, and he did not love his enemies.
Steele was not at the Bar M Bar. Neither was Mayne nor his daughter. A ranch hand told Robin they had gone to town. He bore on up to the Block S. The round-up tents stood white on the green border of an irrigated meadow but the Sutherland riders knew nothing of Mark. Jack Boyd did inform Robin that old Adam and May had departed in the buggy three or four days earlier. Robin knew that the bay trotters were likely to have but one destination.
“Me for Big Sandy,” he reflected—and borrowed a fresh horse out of the Block Sremuda.
Thus mounted he burned the earth, in range parlance, toward town. As he rode his personal danger from ambush became less of moment than the possibility of Mark Steele slipping through his fingers. Mark would do one of two things the moment he learned that Thatcher had been taken red-handed; either he would go gunning for Robin or he would jump the country. He had money. That inheritance of fifteen thousand dollars which he hadnotput into the Bar M Bar partnership would take him far and fast—if he chose to own himself beaten and quit the field.
That contingency worried Robin. He had made two definite promises both to himself and Shining Mark, one in anger, the other in cold blood, to kill him or put him in the penitentiary. He meant to keep one or the other.
In the freshness of his anger that morning with Thatcher’s fear-wrung story to cap the climax, Robin had set out to take his man single-handed.
Now, as he loped out of the foothills, he was not so sure of the wisdom of that plan. To act alone savored a little of satisfying a personal grudge, which he admitted to himself—and he reflected that making Steele’s arrest a personal, single-handed affair might easily permit Mark to evade justice altogether.
Wherefore, by the time town loomed in the tenuous heat haze that quivered above a parched earth, Robin had decided to consult Adam Sutherland first. He could still grab Steele wherever he found him, but perhaps the entire machinery of the sheriff’s office had better be in motion. Montana covered a lot of territory. If Shining Mark went on the dodge he would take some catching.
So he rode to the store on an angle that took him between the stockyards and the rows of houses that formed the one short street. A clerk stood in the door that Robin had to pass on his way to the front. He pulled up.
“Sutherland inside?”
“Went over to the house a while ago,” the man told him.
Robin didn’t tarry. In two minutes he was striding up the front steps of the white cottage. Sutherland rose out of a chair behind a canvas screen. May appeared in the doorway.
“Come on inside,” Sutherland said. “What’s up?”
“How do you know anything’s up?” Robin asked when he doffed his hat in the cool room. He stole a look at May. She smiled welcome but there was a sort of shadow in her blue eyes, a something Robin had never seen there, a troubled, apprehensive expression.
“I see two of your men with Sam Connors an’ that Texican ride in just as the west-bound stopped. Connors an’ Thatcher took the train. Your two boys say they just rode in for fun. You come ridin’ a Block S horse all sweat an’ foam.”
“You notice things, don’t you,” Robin drawled. “Well, somethin’ is up. Do you happen to know if Mark Steele is in Big Sandy?”
A look flashed between father and daughter.
“I don’t spend no time keepin’ track of Mark myself,” Sutherland said dryly. “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. Why? Sit down an’ spin your yarn.”
Robin spun it briefly.
“So I took a second thought and figured two heads was better than one,” he ended. “Maybe it’ll be as well to stir up Tom Coats and notify the other county officers, so they’ll all be on the lookout for him if he hides out. If he does happen to be in Big Sandy or rides in here I’ll drop my own loop on him. If he don’t know we got Thatcher he’ll feel safe to go anywhere.”
“Hm—m.” Sutherland nursed his chin in one hand, twirled and tugged by turns at his mustache. He looked first at Robin, then at his daughter. His expression told nothing. He rose at last.
“You’ve done a good stroke of business, kid,” he said. “I’ll amble over an’ send a wire to Fort Benton. You stay here.”
“I ought to stable my horse,” Robin took thought. “I sure rode him hard.”
“He’ll keep. Block S saddle stock is used to hard ridin’,” Sutherland observed. “I won’t be gone but a minute or two. I want to talk this over with you some more. You stay right here till I come back. I guess May won’t mind.”
“All right,” Robin agreed. He had to suppress a self-conscious grin at the last sentence. He didn’t know why Sutherland took that tack, unless May had worked some magic on him. But Robin certainly didn’t think she would mind.
May flung herself into his arms the moment her father was out the door.
“Glad to see me?” Robin asked with a tender smile.
She nodded, her head on his breast.
“I worry about you now I know you’re this side of the river.” She lifted her head to look into his face. “That man is deadly—deadly and despicable. Ivy Mayne came up to the ranch one day last week.”
“Yes? I met her at my old homestead one morning. She was pretty wild then. She started off toward the Block S, but I didn’t think she’d go through.”
“She was nearly insane with fear and grief,” May told him soberly. “And she blurted out all her troubles to dad and me when she found Mark wasn’t there. Did she tell you what was wrong, Robin?”
He nodded.
“Poor thing! She’s a queer, awfully intense creature, and foolish—but it is rather terrible for her, Robin. I’m so sorry.”
“So am I,” Robin murmured. “But I can’t do anything about it, that I know of.”
“I can’t do much but I’m going to do what I can. Ivy’s here now.”
“Here in your house?”
“Yes,” May nodded. “In one of the bedrooms. I’ve got her calmed down from that frenzy she was in. I’m going to take her away to Helena. Her father doesn’t know. He’s a poor stick anyway. He’s been raving to dad all morning about this wretched cattle business. And——”
She stopped suddenly. Her arms tightened about Robin.
“You’re an angel,” he whispered.
“You were fond of her, weren’t you, Robin?” she muttered.
“That was before I knew you,” Robin answered slowly. “And I guess it wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyway. Mark was always in her mind more or less. I did like her, though. You’ve liked other men before you ever saw me, I guess, hon?”
“Not much. Well, yes, I once liked a boy who broke horses for us long before I knew you, Robin,” she said honestly. “He was a rider like you. A horse fell with him and killed him. I thought a lot of him. But somehow not the way I think and feel about you, dear.”
Robin kissed her.
“I guess maybe it was the same with both of us,” he said. “We were both lookin’ for somebody we wanted. I had the feelin’ that I’d found something real the first time I met you—the night we rode up the hill above Little Birch and talked while the sun went down. Remember?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “I had the same feeling about you—and it grows stronger. I’ll be glad when that murdering thief is dead or in jail. I’m afraid for you Robin. You’ve taken so many chances. You may not always be lucky. What would I do if anything happened to you, Robin?”
“I’ve got to take chances,” Robin declared. “A man has to. Mark is about at the end of his rope now. He’s overplayed his hand.”
May shuddered a little.
“Yes,” she sighed, “but he’s still in the game.”
“I wonder if heisin town,” Robin’s eyes hardened.
“It isn’t your place to go after him if he is,” she demurred. “Let the county officers get him. He’ll try to kill you, if it’s the last thing he does.”
“By jiminy!” Robin put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her searchingly. “I believe he is in town an’ you know it. Your dad knows he’s here?”
May flushed.
“Steele is in Big Sandy,” she admitted. “He’s been here since yesterday drinking and—and——”
Robin turned. May caught him with both hands.
“Robin!” she cried. “No. You promised dad you’d stay here till he came back.”
“While I stand here talkin’ Steele may be ridin’,” Robin said. “Gettin’ him is my job. If I didn’t owe it to him, I’m an officer. I got myself deputized to have the law on my side. Even if I wasn’t I’d go after him anyway. He rode me rough. He murdered a good friend. He’s a thief. I will get him—alive if I can; but I’ll get him if he’s here.”
“I know, I know,” May pleaded. “I wouldn’t have you shirk. But wait till dad comes back. He’s old and very wise, Robin, and he likes you. If he says you should go ahead and arrest Mark Steele I won’t say another word.”
They stood for a second or two, clasped close. The blood leaped quicker in Robin’s veins. So Shining Mark was in town? Very soon now there would be an end to this coil in which he had been entangled so long. One way or the other it would be finished. If Mark opened war on sight it would be an even break—and Robin asked no more, wanted no more. And if Steele hesitated the fraction of a second then he would get the drop on him and Shining Mark would go to Fort Benton alive to answer before the law for his misdeeds. Even with his sweetheart in his arms Robin’s instinct was to seek Steele and get it over.
As he made a move to put May’s arms aside, distantly, as if muffled, faintly through the open door two shots sounded so close together that an untrained ear might have heard but one. Then another single report. After that dead silence, in which Robin, already on the top step, halted to listen.
“I wonder?” he said to May at his elbow.
He had no definite reason for wondering. When cowboys were in Big Sandy revolver shots were a commonplace. The cow-puncher in his exuberance used a six-shooter in much the same spirit a small boy sets off fire-crackers. His Colt was at once a weapon and a toy.
But there was no sound of hilarity, no light-hearted whooping. Neither of the J7 men had been in long enough to get drunk. All the Block S riders were on Little Eagle. There might be stray stock hands in town. Yet Robin was troubled by those shots, that uncommon stillness which followed. It was a scant two hundred yards to the hotel, the Silver Dollar, the other saloons. Not a sound, not a voice, was uplifted in that hush.
“That’s funny. I’m going over.”
“Robin—please!”
“I got to,” he said desperately.
He pressed a kiss on her lips, shook off her clutching hands, and ran. He glanced back once. May stood where he left her looking after him, the raking sun rays striking golden gleams on her head. Through Robin’s mind flashed the thought that it might be his last sight of her. But he went on quickly. If he met Shining Mark and luck was against him at any rate her kiss was sweet on his lips.
The corpulent host of the hotel stood outside his bar-room door.
“What was the shootin’?” Robin asked.
“Somet’ing happen ober dere, yes,” the man said placidly. “Everybody go to see. Vot iss, I do not know, already yet.”
Robin crossed the street, walked in through the open door of Monty’s Place, alert, nerves tense, looking first of all for sight of a lean, dark face with gray eyes that held malice whenever they rested on him.
And Shining Mark was almost the first man he saw. But there was no malice in his eyes now. He was stretched full-length on the floor, a white-handled Colt three feet from his outspread fingers. A shaft from the sinking sun played on his face through a window and a fly buzzed over him in the yellow beam.
Adam Sutherland sat in a chair. Men stood about him in a circle. A professional looking person in a white shirt, with his sleeves rolled up, was swathing a bandage about Sutherland’s naked middle. The old man looked up at Robin and smiled.
“I beat you to him,” he said a little hoarsely. “He was on the warpath an’ I settled his hash.”
Robin said nothing. There was nothing to say. Death is sobering. No one talked much. When a man did speak he lowered his voice. Some one appeared with a canvas and spread it over Shining Mark. Even old Mayne, bearing all the marks of drunkenness which made his tongue wag always beyond all restraint, looked silently at Sutherland and kept still. The man who owned the saloon said to Robin:
“Lucky Doc happened to be here. Came up from Havre to look after a sick woman. So we got him right off.”
“There you are, Mr. Sutherland,” the doctor stood back and surveyed his handiwork. “Rest easy for a few days and you’ll be as good as ever. I’ll look in in the morning and dress that again. Better get a rig to take you over to your house.”
“Shucks.” Sutherland stood up and tucked in his shirt, waving off the men who would have supported him. “I don’t need nobody but Tyler to help me home. A scratch like that. Shucks!”
Robin lent him his arm. They passed out the door, crossed the dusty street, Sutherland leaning on Robin, walking slowly. As they cleared the hotel, May watching from the porch saw them and came on flying feet.
“Oh,” she cried, and again, “Oh, dad, dad!”
“It’s nothin’a-tall. Now don’t fuss, for the love of Mike. I’m all right. It’s all over. Let’s not have any shoutin’.”
May took his other arm. They passed up the steps, inside, into Sutherland’s bedroom.
“Now you leave us be, May,” he said. “I want to talk to Robin.”
“Please, daddy, tell me,” she begged. “Are you hurt badly? I must know.”
“No, girl, I ain’t, and that’s God’s truth,” he answered. “If I was I’d tell you. You ain’t the screamin’ kind. A bullet ripped up the flesh between my ribs, an’ that’s all. You seen me tore up a heap worse, one time. There’s nothin’ to worry about. You run along.”
She kissed him and left the room. Sutherland sat down on the edge of his bed, eased himself to the pillows, grinned feebly.
“I ain’t so young as I used to be,” he mumbled to Robin. “I want to get my wind for a spell. Then you can pull off my boots an’ help me undress.”
He shut his eyes. Robin stood waiting, silent.
In a minute or so old Adam spoke again.
“There. I felt kinda wabbly but it’s gone now. Give me a hand.”
Robin helped him get ready for bed, put his clothes away in a closet.
“I’ll be off my feet for a spell, I reckon,” Sutherland began to talk with something of his old vigor. “You’ll have to be a sort of general superintendent, Tyler. Pick a good man out of your crew to run the J7. Leave Boydsegundoon the home wagon till you can take it over yourself. Run the Block S on them cattle you got. We’ll keep ’em, every darned hoof. Well, I expect they stole quite a few from old Mayne, so you better mark, say, about a hundred head for him. I guess that’s all for just now. You’ll have to be in an’ out of here pretty frequent while I’m on my back.”
“Why did you tangle with Mark Steele?” Robin demanded. “Why didn’t you leave him to me? It was my job.”
“Mine too. He stole from me. He murdered a man I thought a lot of. He was a dirty dog all around. He give that fool girl of Mayne’s a raw deal. I felt kinda responsible, because I put him in a position to do some of them things. I been boilin’ inside the last two or three days. An’ he was makin’ breaks about you here in town. He was bad an’ he was game. I didn’t feel like lettin’ you take a chance.
“Gosh darn it, this hole in my ribs don’t amount to much, but it sure hurts,” he complained. “No, kid, I couldn’t let you go up against thathombre. I’ve lived my life an’ it don’t matter so much. This kid of mine thinks a heap of you. I couldn’t let you go against as hard a proposition as Mark Steele. An’ there was no time to wait for deputies. You would ’a’ gone after him in spite of hell an’ high water the minute you knew he was in town. So I went after him myself. I’ve stood out against gun play for years now. But you notice I ain’t sheddin’ no tears.”
“Nor me,” Robin replied. “Only I wish you hadn’t took him off my hands at your own risk.”
“Shucks,” Sutherland rumbled. “You take the runnin’ of the Block S offmyhands an’ we’ll call it square. If there’s anything in what I’ve had to listen to from May the last few days it’s all in the family anyhow.”
“You mean that?” Robin asked.
“Yes. You’ll do,” Sutherland grinned. “I was only joshin’ you at the ranch last week. Wanted to see how you’d take it. I’d trust May’s judgment in a matter of that kind, even if I doubted my own—which I don’t. Hit the trail an’ tell her how the play come up with Mark—an’ tell Lum Yip to bring me some ice water.”
Robin delivered this order to the Chinese boy. Then he found May, told her briefly what had happened. She dashed off to her father’s room again. In a minute she came back, flushed, laughing.
“Isn’t he the grandest old person,” she said to Robin. “Do you know what he said to me? He said: ‘Get to blazes out of here and leave me rest! Go an’ plague that fellow you’re goin’ to marry. He’ll be sorry when he gets to know what he’s got on his hands as well as I do.’”
“Huh!” Robin grunted. “If the fellow lives till he’s sorry he’ll beat Methuselah’s record for old age.”
“Let’s go out on the porch,” she suggested.
Robin stood with his arms about her looking off toward the blue dome of Old Centennial, the sharp cone of Shadow Butte. The sun dipped low, its rim touching the horizon. Distant windows flashed like heliographs. A cool breeze fluttered the porch awnings.
In his mind’s eye Robin could see all the beauty of those distant hills, the far reach of the plains. Something seemed to have been mysteriously restored to him, some dark cloud blown away, something seemed to have set his heart singing and uplifted him with a strangely comforting sense of peace and security.
He drew the girl up close to him, and they stood for a long time in silence, Robin’s fingers playing hide and seek in the tangle of her yellow hair.
THE END