Chapter Three

As Ted was leaving the room, his father called him back. He glanced at Ted’s empty holster—for Ted had merely discarded his gun in the kitchen and still wore his belt—and then looked his son squarely in the eyes. “Was there any shooting?” he asked succinctly.

“No,” replied Ted readily. “I saw to that.”

Ed Wayne nodded and satisfaction shone in his eyes. “That’s good, Ted. It’s dangerous for a man to be as fast and sure with a shooting iron as you are, and you can make your gun your worst enemy.” He nodded absently. In his day, Ed Wayne had been listed with the best of them. He had several notches to his credit. Secretly he was proud of Ted’s prowess, but he dared not flaunt this pride openly. “You want to be right careful on this trip, Ted.”

“Is this Jim Hunter a gunfighter?” Ted asked curiously.

“When he has to be,” Ed Wayne returned.

“Will he know who I am? Maybe I ought to have some kind of identification, if he never has seen me.”

The stockman thought a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he confessed. “But I would have thought of it before you left in the morning. Come in the office … no, go get your hat and bring it in with you.”

When Ted returned with the hat, his father sat at his desk in the little office off the living room. Before him was pen and ink. He took the hat, turned out the sweatband, and on its inside on the right inked his brand, WP, and after it he fashioned a crude wing.

“There,” he said, handing Ted his hat, “if he wants identification, show him that. I don’t have to tell you not to show it to anyone else, I reckon.”

Ted grinned. “I’d be likely to cut it out and wear it for a badge,” he said. For the first time that night Ed Wayne smiled.

The stockman sat at his desk, fingering the pen absently, staring straight ahead, thinking, and remained thus for a long time after Ted had left. He was sending Ted on an errand of much greater importance than the youth could realize. Several times he was tempted to change his mind and try to get word to Hunter in some other way. Had he listened to Ted and learned of the trouble his son had had with Jake Barry in town, Ted never would have been entrusted with the mission assigned him. He might change his mind yet, he thought, not knowing that Ted would not give him a chance to change it, that he would be on his way in the morning with the first faint glimmer of the dawn.

When Ted left the house, he hunted up Jack McCurdy and they sought seclusion in a corner of the nearly deserted bunkhouse.

“Listen, Mac, I’m not supposed to tell a soul a thing about this, but I know I can trust you, and maybe you can give me some information of the right brand,” said Ted. “You’ve had more than one confidence from me before and I reckon you can handle another. Am I right?”

“Right as rain,” said McCurdy with a nod.

“Don’t breathe a word of this, Mac,” said Ted earnestly. “Dad is sending me to find a man in the Rainbow Butte country and the first place I hit is the town of Rainbow itself. I’ve only been there once, and that was when I was a kid. But I know how to get there and I’ve been within a few miles of the town several times.”

“Why, you can’t miss it,” said McCurdy. “It’s just south of the butte, about halfway between the butte and the river on Rainbow Creek. Any trail out there will take you to town so long as you keep south of the butte. But holy smoke!” He paused and looked at Ted curiously.

“Yes, holy smoke.” Ted nodded. “Now where does this Darling gang hang out over there?”

“Isn’t that a question,” snorted McCurdy. “If they’re not working some job, they’re in town or in their hangout in the butte breaks. You know there’s a swamp east of the butte where the creek goes to pieces and runs everywhere before it gathers itself together again in the south. Tumbled country, willows and trees, and some soap holes, too, where the quicksand is fine as salt. Be careful about how you wander about there, boy, and, if you meet up with Jake, there’s goin’ to be fireworks. Funny to me the Old Man should send you over there after what happened in town.” He shook his head in perplexity.

“He doesn’t know a thing about what happened in town, Mac. Nobody has been along to tell him and he wouldn’t let me tell him, and, when I found out he wanted me to go over there, I wouldn’t have told him on a bet. Just asked me if there had been any shooting.”

“I see,” said McCurdy. “Who you goin’ over there to find?”

Ted hesitated, and then shook his head. “I can’t answer that, Mac,” he said slowly. “I expect you’ll understand. Maybe you’ll know the man I’m going for, and maybe you won’t … but I can’t tell you. But there’s one thing I want to ask you. Just how fast is this Jake Barry with his gun?”

“I thought it would come to that,” drawled McCurdy. “He’s fast, Ted, but he’s tricky. He’s awful tricky. After what you told him, he’ll be on the lookout. If you meet up with him, you must draw on sight. And make your draw good. Say, Ted”—he put an arm about the younger man’s shoulders—“I’m just in for a day or two and I’m supposed to go right back on the range. But I can sneak a day or two or three. Won’t you let me go with you, buddy?”

Ted shook his head. “It isn’t in the cards, Mac, old boy. I’ve got to do this alone. But you know how I appreciate it. And if I need you, I’ll send for you some way, don’t worry. One thing more, Mac. Are they antagonistic out there toward the WP?”

“They’re nothing else but!” exclaimed McCurdy. “That’s why I hate to see you go alone. But the whole outfit is ready and at your disposal. All we need is the word, and, if you’re not back in three days, out we come, whether you like it or not. Paste that in your hat!”

Ted put a hand on McCurdy’s knee. “You’re several kinds of a brick, Mac … but use your own judgment. Remember, we … I don’t want any gun play, but if it has to come …”

“I hope you’ll be first,” interrupted McCurdy grimly, “and I have a hunch you will.”

It was not yet daylight when Ted Wayne had his breakfast in the cookhouse and rode away on his charging gray—the best saddle horse on the ranch. McCurdy watched him go, and, if he harbored any misgivings, he kept them to himself. When old Ed Wayne rose an hour later, his son had gone.

“How long has he been gone?” the stockman asked McCurdy.

“Since about daylight,” replied the foreman. “Maybe an hour, maybe …”

“Look here, McCurdy,” Ed Wayne interrupted sternly. “Don’t be beating around any bushes with me, understand?” It was the harshest tone he ever used in speaking to his chief aide. But the rancher was annoyed this morning to the point of anger. He had wanted to see Ted before he started. He hadn’t been altogether sure that he wanted the youth to start on this mission alone. He had been disturbed by his ignorance of what had happened in town and had regretted some of the things he had said to Ted. He was not sure of himself and this was enough to upset him. “Did Ted tell you where he was going?” he demanded.

“Said he was riding over Rainbow Butte way,” drawled McCurdy. He knew Ed Wayne’s moods, and suspected what was coming. But he knew, too, that his services were of great value to the stockman, in more ways than just running the ranch, had been, for that matter, for many years. Like Ted, he was not afraid of the ranch owner.

“I see.” Wayne scowled. “How much did he tell you of what he was going over there for?”

“Said he was goin’ over to see somebody,” replied McCurdy. “But he didn’t tell me who he was goin’ to see. Took the big gray, so I don’t expect he’ll be long gone.”

“Is that all he said?” Wayne asked sharply.

McCurdy looked at him coolly. “Now, listen, Ed, if you’re tryin’ to get something out of me that I don’t know, you’ve got both feet stuck in the gumbo. I don’t know anything, and that’s all there is to it. You know me well enough …”

“I know both of you well enough to know you don’t keep anything from each other. But there were things I told Ted before I sent him out that I asked him to keep to himself. If he told you those things, then I’ve got something to tell you. If he didn’t, then I haven’t a thing to say.”

“I don’t know what the things were, so I can’t answer your question straight,” McCurdy retorted stoutly. “But I have strong reason to believe he didn’t tell me any of those things. He wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know, if that’ll help you any.”

Wayne frowned doubtfully and tugged at his mustache. Then he tossed his head in a characteristic gesture that seemed to close the matter. “By the way, McCurdy,” he said casually, “Ted told me he had been in a fight in town yesterday, which I knew he had, of course, the minute I set eyes on him.”

“Yeah?” said McCurdy languidly. “Who was he fighting with?”

“Humph,” said the stockman with a scowl. “I didn’t let him tell me. I let on I wasn’t interested in any more of his fights, and, if he wanted to go on tearing up, to go ahead.”

“Well, then you haven’t got any kick coming.” The foreman nodded sagely.

“Of course, he told you about it,” the rancher went on, “and I knew I could get the details from you later. I just asked him, if there was any shootin’, and he said there wasn’t. Did he tell you that?”

“Yep,” replied McCurdy cheerfully. “I can vouch for that.”

“All right, let’s hear about the fight,” said Wayne briefly.

McCurdy was carefully rolling a cigarette. He now lighted it just as deliberately. “So you want to hear about the fight, Ed? And you wouldn’t let Ted tell you about it?”

“I thought it was best I didn’t let him tell me,” was the stockman’s answer. “I usually know something about the way to handle my business.” He was irritated by his foreman’s tone.

“But he wanted to tell you, didn’t he?” McCurdy asked blandly.

Ed Wayne was suddenly angry. “Look here, Mac,” he snapped out, his face reddening. “I don’t like the way you’re acting this morning. I had my own reasons for not wanting him to tell me about it. And I won’t let anyone else except you tell me about it. Of course I want to know, naturally have to know. You can see that. He told you … I’d lay a hundred head of shorthorns to that … so let’s hear about it.”

But McCurdy shook his head. “I won’t do it, Ed,” he said slowly. “Here Ted came back from town expecting that the news of the row had got here ahead of him, as it always had before. He was glad it hadn’t. He told me … ‘For once I’ll have a chance to tell him myself’ … meaning to tell you. He went in there to give you the details and you turned him down flat with a mean remark. Wait a minute! It won’t do you any good to get mad. You wouldn’t let him tell you himself when he wanted to, and now you want to double-cross him and get the story behind his back. Go right ahead and get sore, but you won’t get the story from me, and I’ll fire any man under me that lets out a word of anything he hears. That’s flat.”

Ed Wayne stared at his foreman in astonishment. Then he cooled again and tugged at his mustache, which was a sure indication of one of two things—either he was mad or thinking deeply.

“I suppose you know,” he said coldly, “that I can ride into town, if I choose, and hear plenty.”

“You can,” McCurdy agreed, “and you can hear plenty that isn’t so. You could have got the facts from Ted firsthand. He doesn’t lie. Seems to me that instead of gettin’ all het up about it, the squarest thing you can do is to wait and let Ted tell you when he comes back.”

“Humph!” snorted the stockman. “Go out and look over things on the east range, for a change. The bunkhouse will still be here when you get back.”

With this he stamped off toward the house, leaving McCurdy with a satisfied grin on his face.