THE hours of daylight shortened and the nights grew colder over Wind River Basin. The aspens were a blaze of gold on the high slopes. The hair of the ponies began to fluff out, bare hands stiffened on ropes. Winter was not far off. On the day the first white caps appeared on the Wind River peaks, a Cameron rider dropped in at the little ranch on Ghost Creek with news.
Next week the women of the Basin, with the exception of Mrs. Farragoh, were going out to Lander for the winter. On Monday, as was the custom, a big get-together was being held, something in the nature of a farewell party for them. Jube Cameron was giving it this year. Everyone was invited.
“Sure, we’ll go to that,” said Santee, scenting fun from afar. The fall work was almost over. It would be the biggest affair of the year.
“Mebbe we will,” said Lantry grudgingly, as soon as the rider was gone.
Reb looked at him in surprise. His first thought, on hearing the news, was that Ronda Cameron would be gone. Doc must have followed him that far. For some reason Doc had taken an unreasoning dislike to the girl. He would have been glad to see the last of her. But Reb had given up trying to read the man’s surly impulses. He said nothing. But he certainly intended to see Ronda before she left.
In the morning the three started out with the last of Lantry’s horses. Before noon Santee rode away to a branding, and was seen no more that day. He had got acquainted with most of the men in the Basin, and everywhere received a cordial welcome. For more than a month he had thoroughly enjoyed himself, lending a helping hand wherever the opportunity arose, spending hours in the saddle or at the store with Billy Farragoh, and even seeing a good deal of Ronda Cameron. Moreover, he had grown to have little liking for Lantry’s morose silences and escaped them whenever he could.
Doc met him at the ranch that night with poorly suppressed resentment. “Where’d you disappear to?” he growled.
“Jest ridin’ around.”
“Look here,” Doc took him to task, in a voice Santee was coming to recognize; “It’s all right to put yoreself in solid if yuh want to, doin’ other men’s work fer nothin’; but business is business. We got to turn a dollar, an’ don’t you fergit it.”
Santee had him there. “I’ve sold more hosses, head fer head, than you’ve been able to git rid of,” he pointed out good-humoredly.
“Hosses ain’t what I’m thinkin’ about. They’re small p’tatoes ’longside of what’s layin’ under our noses, an’ you know it.” Lantry reminded the other of the beef cuts invitingly near at hand, plainly unable to get out of his mind the opportunities for easy profit they were passing up.
It brought home to Reb their real reason for being there, something he had almost forgotten, so pleasantly had he been spending his time.
“Lay off, Doc,” he warned, thinking fast. “No use fightin’ yore head. There’s nothin’ here fer us before spring.”
“How so?”
“Look at it yoreself. We can’t do nothin’ before that party; folks’d be shore to notice if we didn’t turn up there. An’ snaggin’ a beef herd now’d mean a long, hard drive, with the chance of gittin’ caught in a storm.”
“That sounds a hell of a lot like you!” Doc snapped impatiently.
“You think it over,” Reb urged. “If yuh expect to make use of this layout, yuh gotta keep up appearances. A few more months an’ the Basin’ll git used to us. Then we’ll have a freer hand. I’m tellin’ yuh, Doc.”
Lantry jerked away, openly disgruntled.
There were several days of this kind of arguing. By degrees Santee won his point. It was not because he wanted to that Doc gave in; his capitulation drove another wedge in the widening breach between them, which, however, he concealed as well as he could. For his part, Reb knew that the agreed-on delay was only putting off a decision he would sooner or later be called on to make, but he was content to let it stand that way.
The day picked for Cameron’s fiesta for the women arrived. The party was to be held in the evening. Reb spent the afternoon getting ready, humming snatches of song to himself. Gloomy Jepson surveyed his preparations with distrust.
“I sh’d think the men’d wait an’ have their bust after the women’re gone,” he gave his opinion sourly.
“You don’t sound like yuh was aimin’ to go, Gloomy,” Reb grinned at him.
“Who—me? Go over there an’ git tangled up in a bunch uh calico, sweat my head off, an’ like as not ketch rheumatiz ridin’ home in the dead o’ night?” Gloomy snorted. “I reckon not!” But as dusk drew on, Reb saw him surreptitiously slicking his tangled hair down with grease and making ineffectual dabs at his boots with a gunny sack.
“How ’bout it, Doc?” Reb accosted Lantry after supper. “Yuh goin’ along?”
“Naw.” Doc was almost huffy. “Why should I? None of them women want t’ say goodby t’ me.”
Reb’s smile was deliberately provoking. “The men folks ’ll be there,” he said. “It won’t hurt none to mix with ’em.”
“You go on an’ do yore mixin’,” Doc told him brusquely.
Reb made sure that his shave was close, gave a last yank to his kerchief, and said, “C’mon, Gloomy. Time to pull out.”
“I tole yuh I wasn’t figgerin’ to go,” Jepson began testily, stealing a glance at Doc.
Reb disappointed him by refusing to argue. “Oka-a-y. I’ll be seein’ yuh,” he sang out, pulling on his coat as he left.
Gloomy followed him to the door. “Shore yuh don’t need nobody t’ look after yuh, now?” he called uncertainly.
“Well, I might—” Santee grinned.
“I better go ’long, then,” was Gloomy’s decision.
They rode away to leave Lantry alone in the dugout. Reb wondered how long it would take him to make up his mind to come too.
The Cameron ranch was a blaze of lights as they drew near. Laughter and talk drifted out over the range; evidently a good many people had already arrived. Wagons stood in the yard, saddle horses lined the corrals, the fences. The music—supplied by two fiddlers, all the talent the Basin could muster—had commenced. Gloomy held back, lingering with a bunch of punchers who had just come, but Reb headed straight for the house.
Ronda and some of the other young people pounced on him at the door. “’Lo, Reb!” “Howdy, Santee,” the greetings sounded on every hand. He found himself in a whirl of pleasurable sensations, not the least of which were accounted for by the fact that Ronda was dressed in a dazzling fashion. It left him breathless to look at her.
“The time passed and I was afraid you were not coming,” she told him frankly.
“Did you think anything would’ve kept me away?” he countered. The warmth he put into the words was an answer to his own question.
She gave him her sweetest smile. “I should have been greatly disappointed if anything had,” she confided. “It will be some time before I’ll have the pleasure of seeing you again, you know.”
Reb was only too well aware of the fact. “When’re you fixin’ to leave?” he inquired, wondering if he could contrive another meeting before then.
“Tomorrow or the next day,” she dashed his hopes.
He soon found that he was not to have her as much to himself as he would have liked. One after another the punchers claimed her favor. She was generous with them all. It made Reb writhe, for he was hopelessly in love with her now.
Billy Farragoh was much in evidence. Reb noticed that Ronda gave Billy more dances than anyone else but himself. His consolation was that, liking the boy as he did, he would rather have her dance with him than with another. His own feelings blinded him to the fact that Ronda was falling in love with Billy.
The store at Washakie Point had been closed, and Mrs. Farragoh was present. Neither quick to laugh nor light on her feet, she knew how to be gay on occasion. She and Reb whirled through a square dance to the delight of everyone. After a few minutes she gave up, breathless, but Reb had no thought of stopping. From then on he was the bright star of the party, cracking quips and clowning in his inimitable manner.
Doc Lantry had changed his mind about coming. An hour after Reb arrived, he walked in alone. Finding a place among the older men, he lit one of the cigars Jube Cameron was handing around, drank what was offered him, and made no pretense of joviality.
The party ran on through the evening. It was midnight before Reb was aware of it. When Gloomy asked him what time he was starting for home he made an evasive answer, but the fleeting time brought him to himself. He determined to make an attempt at some kind of a talk with Ronda. It would not be easy; but if he could get in a word that would tell her where he stood it would help a lot.
He was working his way toward where Ronda stood surrounded by punchers, with that view in mind, when a shot from outside the house laid a hush on them all. Women stared toward the windows questioningly. Several men, Ronda’s father among them, made hastily for the door.
Santee was one of the first to reach the open. He was not long in discovering whence the signal shot had come. In the ranch yard stood a motionless horse, and in its saddle, darkly silhouetted against the stars, swayed a rider. The men crowded forward.
“It’s one o’ yore boys, Jube,” a man declared. And addressing the mounted man: “What’s wrong, Shorty? Why don’t yuh speak up?”
The puncher lifted a hand in which dangled his six-shooter. The movement overbalanced him. He plunged toward the ground like a man with the starch completely gone out of him. Those near at hand caught and lowered him.
“He’s been shot!” exclaimed one of them. “There’s blood all over ’im.... Git a light, somebody!”
An ominous silence held while a lantern was quickly brought. By its rays they saw the gaping wound in the throat of the victim. Jube Cameron confirmed the identification of the man as Shorty Ducro, one of his riders from Upper Shoshone Meadows, where the Cameron beef cut was being held.
A whisky bottle had been brought with the lantern. A little of the liquor was poured into Ducro’s mouth. He choked, shuddering, and his eyelids fluttered.
“Quiet, now!” Cameron warned, bending over the man. “He’s tryin’ to say somethin’.”
“Big—fight—herd’s gone—I—I can’t—” Ducro managed, and then, a stricture closing his throat, he strained forward and relaxed, limp.
“He’s gone,” said Jube Cameron bleakly, after a brief examination.
“It’s a dang shame! ... But you go some idee where yuh stand, Jube,” a grizzled veteran spoke up from the edge of the assemblage. “From the looks of things, it means rustlers.”
The words struck a momentary silence of their own over these men. The news of Ducro’s arrival, wounded, having found its way into the house, had put an end to the festivities. Everybody except the women joined the group in the yard. They all had a word to say.
“Wal! Might’s well git organized an’ start fer Jackson’s Hole,” suggested a big man, obviously a friend of Cameron’s. “Mebbe we c’n head off the skunks that done this.”
Others dissented. “We don’t have t’ look that fur away from home. How ’bout Lucas an’ Tapper—them fellers up in the Owl Creeks?” one of them pointed out. “They didn’t show up here t’night. I’ll bet they know somethin’ about this!” Several agreed with him.
A couple of the boys carried Shorty Ducro’s body to the bunk house, but the rest remained where they were. Reb Santee had nothing to say, listening keenly. He was glad he and Lantry and Gloomy had come to the gathering. It lifted them above the slightest suspicion. There was even a look of gratification on Doc’s thin features as he edged nearer the discussion; but he too held his peace.
“There ain’t nothin’ to be picked up here, that’s shore,” Jube Cameron put in now. “I aim to git out to the bed grounds in a hurry.” Gathering those of his men who had come in for the party, he made ready to ride.
The affair at the ranch was breaking up fast now. The wagons were pulling away, some with only the wives of the ranchers to drive them. Many had volunteered to ride with Cameron against the common enemy of the range. They got away hurriedly in a well-armed body.
Reb found time for only the briefest of farewells with Ronda. She was deeply affected by Shorty’s tragic death, and she listened to Reb’s words as if her mind was far away. Reb’s own thoughts were uneasy as he made ready to ride back to Ghost Creek with Doc Lantry.