LATE one afternoon Doc Lantry returned to the ranch on Ghost Creek after an extended trip around the Basin. He had sold a number of the horses at a good price, and was in excellent spirits.
“The dang fools around here take me fer a hoss-trader,” he told Santee. “Blamed if they ain’t been tryin’ to git me to buy some o’ their scrub stuff!”
“Didn’t you take a few head?” Reb asked.
“Why sh’d I do that?”
“For the looks of it, for one thing,” Reb caught him up. “Doc, I’d play the game straight if you don’t want to pick up an’ run again in a month or so.” The warning was plain; only his tone was mild.
“I been studyin’ my hand. It looks purty good to me,” Lantry retorted levelly. “There’d be a lot of sense in me buyin’ stock I could have fer the trouble of runnin’ it off, wouldn’t there.” He went on to describe some easy hauls that he thought could be made in the Basin.
Reb was not interested. While he couldn’t see his way to tell Doc that rustling and horse stealing held no appeal for him, he listened with an inattention that left Lantry testy.
“What’s got into you?” he growled. “Is yore conscience botherin’ yuh at this late last? Or mebbe yo’re gittin’ keen on this C 8 gal yuh saved from tippin’ out of the wagon,” he changed his front with a touch of ridicule, probing to learn where Santee’s scruples lay. He had heard the story of the girl’s rescue, given a wide currency by the good offices of Mrs. Farragoh.
The easy smile went out of Reb’s eyes. Their blue became the chill hue of sun on an ice pack. “We won’t discuss the girl,” he bit off, an edge to his tone.
It should have warned Lantry to ease off. But it did not. “Why won’t we? ... By God, you are sweet on ’er!” he cried in disgust.
Reb caught his arm in a vise-like grip, “I said we’d leave her out of it,” he jerked out. “Don’t go too far with me, Doc!” There was no mistaking his hard intent now.
Lantry met his boring gaze for a moment, breathing heavily. Then he jerked free. “What’re yuh goin’ lame on me for, then?” he backed down, not without animosity. “My hell, Reb! Here we got a lay in a thousand, an’ you have to go gittin’ religion.” He was expostulating, a hand held out in appeal.
“All the religion I got is common sense,” Reb told him bluntly. “A little of the same won’t hurt you none.”
Doc snorted angrily. He could find no adequate rejoinder, turning away with a face like a thundercloud. He had no more to say to Santee that day. Something told him that his arguments would have no effect. Reb was forced to listen to the pessimistic complaints of Gloomy Jepson. During supper and throughout the evening he was conscious of Lantry’s brooding eye on him, asking a question the man would insist on having answered some time. Reb was indifferent to it.
In the morning Doc was as taciturn as ever. He rode out and set Gloomy to work on the pasture fence. Then he left for the day, without having made any suggestion to Reb as to how he might put in his time. Reb loafed around the dugout for an hour and then saddling the grullo, cantered out to join Jepson.
If Gloomy was surprised at the unexpected company he was careful not to reveal it.
“I dunno whut Doc wants this blasted bob-wire strung up fer, anyway,” he grumbled. “He’ll see to it that we pull out of here ’fore long, leave it to him—an’ there goes all this work fer nothin’.”
Reb had himself wondered over Lantry’s order to fence the pasture. He at first attributed it to Doc’s desire to keep up appearances, for at the rate he was disposing of the horses it was apparent the enclosure would not be needed for them; but from Doc’s course in other matters he had drawn different conclusions. The outlaw cared little for the good opinion of the range, so long as he was left to himself; of that Reb was now convinced. He voiced none of his mystification to Gloomy. “Where’s Doc headin’ for today?” he queried casually, as they worked at the fencing.
“Said he was studyin’ ’bout the trails out,” Gloomy answered. “He’ll ride around the hills fer a day or two. Doc don’t never feel to home till he knows where to find the back door. It won’t do him no good. Some day he’ll slip, an’ it’ll be too bad.”
Reb knew then that Lantry had no intention of giving up outlawry, even for the time, unless something occurred to shunt him off on another tack. Not that Doc needed the money; he had plenty for the present; it was the habit of years that drove him on to his nefarious activities.
When he arrived at this conclusion, Reb felt easier in his thinking. For some reason he had no desire to turn his back on the whole business and ride out of the Basin. He told himself he had met with something here that had never come his way before, even in prospect. If bringing a little pressure to bear would keep Doc in the traces for a while, it was worth trying.
Lantry appeared to have experienced a change of heart when he rode in that evening. He had been doing some thinking of his own. He talked easily and seemed to have forgotten what had passed between them. Reb was cool to him, for Doc deliberately lied about where he had been that day. Moreover, Reb had not forgotten the other’s contemptuous reference to Ronda Cameron. Doc chose to overlook his aloofness and was almost affable. It secretly pleased Santee, for he knew he had the man coming his way.
But cool as he was in a pinch, Lantry was not noted for patience. Having tried his best to regain Reb’s full confidence, and failing, the next morning he rose in a surly temper. The shorter he grew, the broader Reb’s tantalizing smile became.
“Damn him anyway!” Doc fumed under his breath. “He c’n shore git under the skin with that infernal grin of his!” He flung out of the dugout with a thundering scowl.
There could be no question they were at odds; and when Doc rode away alone once more to be gone for the day, Reb felt that he did so to avoid an open breach.
“Lantry wants me,” he told himself. “He thinks he needs me. It’s the only hold I have got on him.” He had no illusions about what would happen the moment Doc made up his mind he no longer needed him.
But Lantry couldn’t make up his mind. It stayed with him that with his likeable nature, Reb was an ideal confederate for his business, and one no man not unnaturally suspicious would be likely to doubt. Hadn’t he already made an easy conquest of the Basin? Too easy, Lantry growled to himself. Santee did these things and went on his way, unaware of his own capacity. Doc wavered between the hope of awakening the puncher to his potentialities and the fear that Reb was playing a shrewd game of his own and would never come around to seeing things his way. And Reb read all this and more in his baffled demeanor, and laughed at him.
The situation was not improved when, several weeks later, two men dropped in at the ranch at a time when Doc and Reb and Gloomy were about to sit down to a meal. It was Lantry who went to the door and invited them down.
“Ike Lucas an’ Stony Tapper, boys,” he introduced, as the men shambled in. “They got a little place up in the Owl Creek Mount’ns.” He gave out that he had met the pair on his horse-selling trip.
Tapper and Lucas were blunt-faced and close-lipped. Both were around Doc Lantry’s age, but bigger, and wore an unprepossessing stubble of beard. Red didn’t take to their shifty eyes or their way of sizing him up. Neither struck him as being self-respecting enough to make good punchers, let alone ranchmen. Their boots were run over and their clothes threadbare. Everything about them was cheap.
“Sit up an’ help yoreselves, boys,” Lantry told them, sliding out extra plates and rattling the tin forks.
Reb wasn’t done eating yet, but he got away from the little table to make room. He seemed to find it worth while to roll a smoke and keep his mouth shut, as cagy as the newcomers.
Lucas and Tapper shoved up without much ceremony. They ate fast, wolfing their food down; and it was noticeable that neither would sit with his back to Santee or to the door. He made occasion to get a look at their horses. They hadn’t ridden either very far or very fast, he noted. Exactly what they were was not apparent, though there might be some indication in the fact that a running iron was thrust under the guard of each saddle together with a rifle, and a different brand had been vented on the flank of each mount.
Doc was talking to the pair at the table as if they were old friends. They opened up to him grudgingly. They seemed to want to appear not so much suspicious as just unaccustomed to talking a lot, for they paid Reb little or no direct attention. Their eyes rested on him briefly, heavily, when Doc referred to him in a casual way, and then were gone again.
The things they knew about the range, however—the movements of different outfits and the like—finally gave them away. From an occasional unguarded remark they dropped, Reb wasn’t long in deciding that their particular business was running an iron on other men’s stock.
What they had come to see Lantry about, if anything, did not develop. Reb was sure it was not alone for the sake of a meal. They left after a while, as noncommittally as they had arrived. As soon as they had ridden out of ear-shot he took Doc to task in his easy, telling way.
“I wouldn’t say they was the best comp’ny,” he pointed out, gazing after the departing riders. His inflection was brusque.
Lantry whirled on him. “I didn’t ask fer no opinion on ’em,” he rasped. “Far’s that goes, you don’t always make the best there is either.”
Santee was looking at him with a half-smile, not at all ruffled—an expression that goaded Doc at a time like this more than harsh words would have done.
“Look here, Doc,” he said, and his tone was lazy. “Nobody needs to tell me those gents ride with a wide loop. An’ not only that, but they’re small fry. I got no use for ’em—an’ if yo’re wise, you won’t have either. If you an’ me have got to turn to rustlin’ fer a livin’, we’ll do it with bigger men.”
It made sense. And it was entirely unexpected. Reb could see the struggle going on behind Doc’s visage. The man’s gaze was hard and glinting. He fronted Reb squarely, and his next words were in the tone of an ultimatum: “Do you mean that, Santee?”
The lines in the corners of Reb’s eyes crinkled deeper. His white teeth showed.
“Would I be fool ’nough not to?” he countered, without any change in his bearing.
Lantry’s chest swelled with a long breath. “By God, that relieves me aplenty!” he burst out. “I ain’t knowed what to make of you fer days. If the wind sets in that quarter—”
“Mebbe we’ve differed a bit on these picayune deals,” Reb bluffed without batting a lash; “but that’s all, Doc. Why, hell’s fire! What’s the sense of me sayin’ anything if you can’t see it? We don’t want to git ourselves in bad here because we’re too lazy to ride out a ways. If Lucas an’ Tapper git in a jam they’ll be on the long ride again; an’ if we’re thick with ’em, or even known to be seen with ’em, we’ll be asked some mighty embarrassin’ questions. It ain’t worth it.”
Doc was ready to agree, persuaded as he was by his desire to have Reb on his side.
“An’ that ain’t all,” he took him up now. “Reb, you’ll find I’ve been doin’ some prime figurin’ on my own hook. Look here.” His manner had undergone a remarkable change in the past few minutes. Gone were his suspicions and doubts. Tapping the palm of one hand with a finger of the other, and lowering his voice, he revealed his plan to make the little ranch on Ghost Creek an over-night hideout for the big-time outlaws who were running stolen stock down from Montana to Brown’s Park and the Robbers’ Roost, as well as those who were working the other way.
“There’s always a break fer a little spread like ours here,” he explained his scheme. “The big fellers are most of ’em so well known they don’t dast try to dispose of their stuff. Somebody’s got to do it. That’s where we come in.”
Doc’s face was lit up now with something like lust; there was little Reb could not have got out of him for the trying; but by the same token there was little he wanted to learn that Lantry was holding back. He contented himself with a shrewd expression as he listened, nodding his head or offering suggestions.
“Now it sounds like you was playin’ a real bet,” he said at the end; “an’ that’s all the more reason for not bein’ fast an’ loose about it. It’s up to us to put up an eighteen-karat front here in the Basin, an’ we’ll do it.” Lantry reluctantly agreed, and Reb had to let it go at that for the time; but inwardly he was conscious of chagrin to think that he had committed himself, at least in Doc’s mind, to a full share in this proposed wholesale outlawry.