WELL, Reb.” There was a gruffness in Dan Morgan’s tone that only partially masked his uneasiness. “Pony told me I’d find you sittin’ in at a poker game. I’ll admit I’m some relieved to find you ain’t. I had you figured to stop short of that.”
He was reassuring himself, but when he paused Reb only continued to meet his gaze blankly, finding nothing to say. Morgan misread his expression. He went on more easily: “I’ll ask you to step outside with me. I want to talk with you for a minute.” He did not intend to waste any more time claiming the money for the steers. Reb knew what he was getting at. He found his tongue at last, shaking his head as he spoke. “There ain’t a bit of use in goin’ outside, Dan.” Genuine regret showed in his whole manner. It told only too plainly how matters stood.
Morgan’s eyes blazed up. “What do you mean?” he barked, his voice rising angrily. “Are you tellin’ me you have lost my money? Good gravy, man—!”
Reb tried to grin, but it was a sickly effort. He was feeling acutely uncomfortable. “I reckon that’s about what happened, Dan,” he confessed reluctantly.
If the remaining men at the card table were listening, they gave no outward sign. But they held themselves silent and alert. Steve Cabanus leaned with his elbows on the bar, attentive; behind it, the bartender listened, with open mouth. Men in chairs along the wall or at the rail smiled to themselves at the fix Reb was in. Even Doc Lantry, slouched over in the shadows, lent ear as Morgan cussed out his puncher in a gust of burning resentment.
“Yo’re no damned good fer anything!” Dan wound up bitterly. “You can’t be trusted out of a man’s sight, you saddle bum! All you want to do is hell around and shoot and fight booze and let the work go to blazes!”
Reb honestly thought that was the way any sensible man looked at it in his secret heart, but there was no fun left in his eyes now. He did not need to be told that he had lost his job. Morgan told him all the same, and a good deal more with it. It began to get under Reb’s skin. “If you’ll hold on while I—” he began.
“Hold on, hell!” Morgan exploded. “Nothin’ you can tell me will mend matters!”
Hank Albee, the Mormon deputy sheriff, had been listening at the door for some minutes. He strode forward now, having got the drift of things. There was a ruthless expectancy in his beady, close-set eyes.
“Reckon yuh got use fer me, Morgan,” he said unctuously. He was no friend of Reb’s, never having made an acquaintance he considered unlikely to advance him politically. “Jest say the word, an’ I’ll take this feller in custody.”
Dan Morgan waved a scornful hand at him, his ire gushing over anyone who chanced to come under his notice. “A fine lot of good that would do, wouldn’t it?” he snapped with disdain. “No, I don’t aim to have Santee arrested, Albee. That won’t help me any. Firin’ him is about all I can see my way to do right now.” There was a sturdy practicality in the rancher, despite his smoldering glare, and it was to this that Reb was indebted for the lenience of his present course.
He was not insensible to it. “That’s white of yuh, Dan,” he put in; “an’ I won’t forget it. I’ll see that yuh get yore money back.”
Morgan had no faith in the promise. “Mebbe you can tell me how a forty-dollar-a-month puncher can turn that trick!” he retorted contemptuously.
“Well, I—” Reb was crestfallen, for this was something he had not thought of; but he did not avert his direct gaze. “I can try,” he finished lamely.
Morgan snorted his abysmal skepticism. Turning on his heel, his big frame stiff with antagonism, he left the saloon. Reb looked after him helplessly for a moment. Then shrugging, he moved to the bar. “It’s yore treat, Steve,” he declared. Cabanus accommodated.
“Man, yuh took a tongue-Iashin’ if I ever heard one,” he averred, as Reb bent over his glass. “Once, there, I thought yuh was goin’ to bust Dan one on the nose.”
Santee shook his head briefly. “Why should I?” he rejoined. “I had it comin’ to me, no two ways about it.”
If he was passing through one of the worst hours in his carefree life, he refused to admit it by word or sign. Nor would he accept the consolations of Steve or the V Cross T boys who had drifted in, on hearing the news, to commiserate with him. Dan Morgan’s abuse, and even his discharge, he stolidly maintained to be justified.
“What’ll yuh do now, Reb?” Gif Inch demanded.
“I dunno.” Reb wasn’t worrying about it. “Plenty time enough to take care of that when I git to it,” he said. His blue eyes were already beginning to lose their smoky look, the indomitable snap once more brightening them. He did not bother to glance toward Doc Lantry, who had taken in the whole proceeding, and who still watched him with eyes as inscrutable as ever.
There was more talk, to which Reb listened with half-an-ear while he downed a drink bought by one of the others. He was facing the bar, and as he threw his head back his eyes dwelt on the big mirror. Something he saw there narrowed his gaze and snapped him to attention.
Clearly reflected in the glass was a corner of the gambling table. Under it, even as he looked, the knee of one of the players sagged to one side with a card lying on it, out of sight of the players across the table. From the lap of the next man a stealthy hand reached out to take the card. A similar maneuver was enacted from the other side as the trade was completed.
It told Reb plenty. He knew in a flash why he had lost so steadily. At the knowledge, hot blood surged through him with a rush. As always, he acted before he thought. A long stride took him to the card table; a darting grip nailed the clandestine hand to the knee under it, imprisoning the passed card.
“Gents,” he said softly, grinning into their startled faces, “I crave discussion of some things you’ve jest made clear to me.”
“Get the hell away from here!” snarled one of them, jerking at his hand so violently that the table rocked. The other tried to struggle up, and Santee’s fingers fastened on his shoulder.
“Don’t git previous,” the puncher warned them both with a wolfish pleasure. “All I want is an understandin’. You boys just hand me back my money, an’ we’ll consider the matter closed.” His tone said that he hoped they would take exception to his proposal.
For the moment an ugly tension held the room. A good share of the loungers here were friends of the challenged men. One of them stepped out with a belligerent mien. “Stand away, cow-poke!” he ripped out, authority ringing in his insolent words. On the instant he went for his gun. Others made a similar move.
Someone else was ahead of them. Before even the surprised punchers at the bar could make a move, Doc Lantry sprang to his feet, and his gun barrels were shining circles of menace, covering the group.
“Don’t anyone be foolish,” he purred, his eyes glinting a flinty defiance under the worn brim of the Stetson. “It’s plain enough Reb was trimmed, an’ he wants his money back.”
A greater expectancy than before held the room. What could be the meaning of this? Not a man in Moab needed to be told that Santee and Doc Lantry had nothing in common. Yet here was Doc apparently springing to the other’s aid. What was his hidden object? One and all, they waited for Reb’s reaction.
That Santee was surprised by the unexpectedness of Lantry’s intervention was evident only in his momentary stare. He recovered speedily, turning a pugnacious regard on the two gamblers. It had been these two who had relieved him of his money. “Come on,” he rasped without preamble; “shell out!”
If they were inclined to argue the matter, they repressed the impulse. First one and then the other, they counted out Reb’s money and handed it over. Santee coolly made sure of the total, and thrust it in his pocket. His chest was out again now, the old mocking smile on his lips.
“Too bad yuh couldn’t see yore way to argue the point,” he told the gamblers, fight in every line of his whip-hard body. And to Lantry he nodded briefly, “Much obliged.”
Every eye in the room watched the play of glances here. Lantry appeared to ask nothing in return; yet not a man but felt that Reb would one day pay his price, and a high one. Reb himself appeared indifferent to it all, turning to leave the bar.
But a few minutes later, walking up the dusky street in search of Dan Morgan, a question turned and screwed in his mind that would not let him alone. Why had Doc Lantry horned in the affair on his behalf? His knowledge of Lantry’s undercover occupations gave him his answer. Doc had an idea he could use a good man. There could be no better explanation.
Reb nodded, his indomitable smile unseen in the dark. “Once in a great while, there is use fer his kind of a gent in the world,” he mused speciously.
He found Dan Morgan in Basher’s store. The rancher turned on him in choleric disgust, his face darkening; but he trusted himself to no words, breathing noisily.
“I told yuh I’d pay yuh back, Dan,” Reb said easily. He could not resist the impulse of ostentation that impelled him to pull out his money and pay Morgan in the presence of Basher and one or two others.
Morgan looked at the money suspiciously as Reb counted it out. He listened, still without speech, as Reb told how it had been recovered. When it was reposing safely in his own pocket at last, he cleared his throat harshly. “I s’pose you understand yo’re still out of a job, money or no money,” he said severely, with no sign of relenting.
Reb grinned a ready response. “I didn’t expect yuh to look at it any different, Dan,” he replied. “But I told yuh you’d git yore steer money back, an’ you’ve got it ... I can git another job.”
Morgan grunted. He was pacified to an extent, but his judgment was no less inflexible than before. “Mebbe you can,” he said grudgingly as he turned away.
With the better part of his month’s pay once more in his pocket, Reb was indifferent to the rancher’s implied prediction that he would have trouble finding work. The next day found him still in Moab, and the next. He spent his time at the Only Chance saloon until his money ran low. In a poker game he won enough to eke out his period of idleness a little longer, and it was ten days before he was faced with the necessity of hunting a job.
During that time he got acquainted with Doc Lantry in a casual way. Lantry was a cool hand who appeared to take nothing more seriously than Reb himself. In this, at least, Santee saw a quality that he could admire. Then he began to ride out to the ranches, and he saw no more of Doc for a while.
For some reason a job did not come his way. Friendly as everyone was, he found a barrier raised against him. For a week he rode the grubline, hoping the next ranch he called at would hire him on. The time stretched over another week, and another, and Reb began to entertain moody thoughts behind his smiling exterior. Everyone was glad to see him come, sorry to have him leave; but nobody did anything about it. Finally, urged on by a curiosity to see how far this thing would go, he tackled old Ike Borden.
Borden was a slave-driver; the grub in his bunkhouse was poor and far from plentiful; the two or three men in his outfit were usually the scrapings of the range. A job with him was in the nature of a last resort. But even he found no opening for Reb Santee.
“Why not?” Reb demanded, stung to bluntness, although the cheerful crinkles still persisted in the corners of his eyes.
Ike Borden was as dry and outspoken as he was parsimonious. “If yuh wanto know,” he growled, “I can tell yuh. Santee, men’re sayin’ yuh can’t be trusted.”
Reb was astonished, but his pride was touched too. He gave up after that, riding back to Moab. Discouragement was not in him, however. Some of his friends among the M Bar or V Cross T hands could be depended on to lend him a few dollars to tide him over until he made up his mind what he would do next.
But it was Doc Lantry who met him in Moab—Doc who greeted him as though nothing had happened, and lent him money. Reb told the man his troubles in a joking way.
“What are yuh figurin’ to do now?” Lantry asked casually.
“I’ll pull out for another range, I reckon,” Reb replied carelessly.
The days slipped by, however, and Santee remained. He spent more and more time with Doc, borrowing an ever-increasing sum from the other. He knew he didn’t have the man wrong in the rustling scrape he had helped to break up, but despite this uncomfortable knowledge he had come to like Doc.
It was easy to put off the necessity for a decision in regard to his new friend even when the rustling stories started up again. Sam Heffron, out at Cottonwood Wash, lost a dozen head of prime horses, and Hank Albee, the deputy sheriff, went through the motions of doing something about it. There was little enough anyone could do. This country of pine forests and sage flats and rocky barriers was vast, its rugged acres thinly settled. The intricacies of its trails made it no hard task for rustlers to strike and fade into nothingness with bewildering speed.
Other stories of stock losses drifted to town. As the total piled up, the murmurs grew louder—became an angry protest. Doc Lantry evinced a mild interest in these things, but nothing more. He and Reb went on their casual way.
“Look here, Reb,” said Steve Cabanus one day when he rode in for supplies, “I know yo’re in a spot an’ all, without no job—but yo’re travellin’ in the wrong comp’ny, if yuh hope to pull out of it right soon.”
Reb waved a hand, his glance vague for once. “Lantry, you mean? I ain’t ridin’ with him, Steve.”
“Yo’re drinkin’ with him,” said Cabanus bluntly. “Ridin’ comes next.” But nothing he could say would move Reb.
“I’ll take care of myself,” was all he would say.
It began to look as if that was more than Doc Lantry could do—without assistance—for the next morning Reb received a tip from Pony Clark to the effect that the ranchmen around Moab were tired of lawlessness and were going to take matters into their own hands. Dan Morgan was one of them. It was their intention to raid Lantry’s place that night and string Doc up.
“String him up!” Reb exclaimed, jarred. “Kind of sudden, ain’t it?” There was no more proof of Lantry’s guilt than there had been before.
Pony flashed a smile. “You know whether it is or not,” he countered. “Are yuh ridin’ with us?”
“I’d be liable to ride with these cowmen around here, after the way they’ve been breakin’ their necks for me, wouldn’t I?”
Clark was sorry he had said anything. “Whatever yuh do, keep it to yoreself,” he warned.
Reb grunted noncommittally. But as soon as Pony was out of sight, he swung into the saddle himself, rode out of town toward the south, made a wide circle to the east and headed north at a brisk pace for Doc Lantry’s place.
Doc was there to meet him. His brows were shaggy as he stood waiting in the door of his shack, for Reb had never ridden out before. “What’s up?” he demanded.
“Doc, can yuh think of some place a long ways off yuh ought to git to in a hurry?” Lantry made no comment and Reb went on: “A bunch of ranchers are plannin’ to visit yuh tonight. They don’t aim to take yuh back to town with ’em.”
Doc understood him completely. “Thanks, Reb.” He hesitated, his eyes sharper than before. “I take it yuh know where I stand in this?”
“Yeah, I know. But I ain’t forgot what yuh did for me—”
“Yuh never tried to reform me,” Lantry went on, with something almost gentle in his voice. “Mebbe you’ll lend me a hand.”
He was suggesting something which Reb could not immediately see. “Name it,” he said, grinning.
Doc put his cards on the table. He had about eighty head of horses back in the canyons and he made no bones about admitting that he needed help to get them out of the country in a hurry.
“Hosses yuh couldn’t do much with around here, I expect?”
“Yeah,” said Doc evenly.
Reb knew then that they were stolen. He thought over Lantry’s proposal for a minute, and couldn’t see much in it. He didn’t want to get mixed up with that kind of business. Even as he was shaking his head, Doc put in mildly:
“ ’Tain’t as if I was askin’ yuh to go any further’n yuh want, Reb. But it’ll help me out a lot—an’ there ain’t nothin’ around her fer yuh. Yuh might’s well ride north as any other way.”
He didn’t mention Reb’s money obligation to him, and Reb was conscious of this. He reconsidered.
“I got one man out with the stock now,” Doc continued. “If it was anyone else, I might git along by myself. But Gloomy’s kind of hard to stand. I dunno’s I could do it fer three-four hundred miles.”
A mention of such a distance appealed to Reb at once. Going along with Doc would solve everyone of his immediate problems, he told himself, whatever else it led to.
“If we was to start right away, an’ keep goin’—” he began on a new note.
Lantry took his hands off his hips, his eyes flashing. He knew that he had won. “Bring up them pack an’mals in the corral,” he said. “I’ll throw a bait together an’ we’ll clear out of here.”