ON the third day after the rustling of the C 8 beef cut, half-a-dozen trail-gaunted men rode up to Lantry’s ranch a little after noon, their horses jaded. lube Cameron was at their head. Once back in the Basin, the posse had split up, to make its way home; these men were on their way to the Cameron spread.
Doc and Reb stepped out of the dugout to meet them. It was the former who put the question burning on his tongue.
“Wal, boys! Yuh made a real ride of it. How’d yuh make out?”
“We did our work the best way we knew how,” Cameron replied. His grim expression did not relax as he explained that they had gone to Lucas and Tapper’s place in the hills, that the pair had fled and they had dung to the trail without let-up. On the morning of the second day they had caught up; Stony Tapper, game to the last, had been slain in the gun-fight which ensued. Ike Lucas made good his escape.
“Did yuh find the steers?” Lantry put in. Watching him, it was easy for Reb to read Doc’s thoughts. He was wondering about the Sundance Kid, asking himself whether the latter had gotten clear without difficulty.
“Not a trace of ’em,” Cameron admitted. But there was no doubt in him, or in his companions, that they had gone after the right men. Innocent men did not run, he pointed out. It was plain that confederates of Lucas and Tapper had gotten the steers out of the country. “There was three of ’em when they pulled away from the shack up in the Owl Creeks,” Jube went on, in corroboration of this. “That’s enough to tell me there was more of ’em ... My foreman says there must’ve been half-a-dozen that shot it out at the bed grounds.”
“Who was the extra man, up in the hills?” Lantry queried. “Did yuh git a flash at him?” Santee awaited the answer, a cold chill visiting his spine.
“No,” Cameron’s response relieved him. “He made a clean getaway, whoever he was. We couldn’t even cut his trail. But I reckon he savvies how healthy it’ll be fer him an’ his kind around here from now on.”
There was more about the affair, and then Cameron and his men rode on, anxious to get home. They left a silence behind them in which both Reb and Lantry were busy with their own thoughts.
Doc was far from pleased. What he had just learned made him realize that there was no nonsense about these Wind River men when they went after a rustler. When he spoke, it was to touch nearly the thing which preoccupied Santee:
“Wal, how do yuh explain gittin’ Tapper killed fer a crime he didn’t commit, to yoreself?” he growled.
Reb met him with a level regard. “Never mind, Lantry. He had it comin’, an’ you know it. They would’ve caught up with him sooner or later. Yuh don’t seem to get that I was coverin’ you as well as myself.”
“That’s dealin’ yoreself out of it, all right,” Doc retorted. He had more to say, but Reb let him think it left him untouched. He did not need to be told that Lantry cared nothing for Lucas and Tapper, or what happened to them. All his attention was concentrated on the vengeance the Logans and their companions had so narrowly escaped. To himself Red said that Tapper would not have been killed if he had gone when he had first told him to pull out.
The rustling and the activities of the posse had made a change in the plans of a number of the women. Ronda Cameron and her mother, at least, had not left yet for Lander by the time Jube returned from the chase. Santee learned this on the day he rode over to see if there was anything he could do in the absence of the men.
He didn’t try to conceal his pleasure. Little of the work got itself done that he had come to do. He had a whole, happy unexpected afternoon with Ronda during which the problems and perplexities of the recent past rolled off his back as if they had never been. They did a dozen things they had planned to do together, and somehow missed doing before; even the addition of Billy Farragoh to the little party could not dull the edge of Reb’s large contentment.
No girl in his experience had ever had the effect on him that this one exerted. Her sweetness and simplicity he could only contemplate with wonder. That she was so frank and natural with him did little to prosper his suit. Her candid gray eyes, the demure curve of humor at the corners of her soft lips, left him tongue-tied. The wayward tendrils of jet hair at the nape of her neck, the round smoothness of her arms—a dozen and one things about her warm, strong face and happy nature—only served to augment the inexplicable trouble that was with him whenever he thought about her.
Once more he lost his chance to speak. Ronda, who thought of him as the most joyous and gay-hearted of irresponsible companions; who admired his manliness and feared for his recklessness, had no inkling of the thing that was in his mind.
On the day after Cameron’s return, Reb rode over to the C 8 ranch again. It was well he did so. The women were making ready to depart at last; they had little time to lose. Each day now the sun shone less, the sky wore a steely look that threatened snow. They faced the prospect of a rigorous trip if they did not get away before the winter storms closed down.
Several other women were starting with the Cameron party. Husbands and brothers were present. Much to his disgruntlement, Reb found time for no more than a brief exchange with Ronda, and that after he thought he had lost all chance for any. She and her mother were busy with last-minute preparations when he arrived. He joined the men, warming their reddened hands at the stove in the kitchen.
“Well, Reb,” said a rancher from over west, “you’ll see a real winter this year.” Santee had talked much in a casual way of his life in the rim rocks of southern Utah, where the winters were more moderate. “There’s no foolin’ around about it here in the Basin,” the man went on.
“We ought to ’nitiate him on the winter round-up,” another suggested.
Reb was only half listening, his mind centered on Ronda, moving about in another part of the house in her preoccupation with feminine concerns, the clear tones of her voice coming through the door occasionally. But when the man who had last spoken jabbed him playfully in the ribs, he swung back with a jar.
“Shore, I’ll take a whirl at it,” he grinned.
He had heard before of the winter round-up, which was no real round-up, but an organized effort by the Wind River stockmen to keep their cattle from drifting out of the Basin when the snows buried the grass deep under the drifts and freezing winds blew down out of the north. Never one to shrink before the rigors of his calling, Reb had no fears of riding the line in the worst weather.
The talk went on, punctuated with easy silences—the deliberate discussion of shrewd men with time to think. At last the women were ready. They crowded themselves and their luggage into a democrat wagon. The men gathered around to assist, calling farewells, cracking jokes about the men of Lander.
Ronda turned to Reb before she climbed up. There was a ready smile on his lips as she put her small hand in his big one.
“Good-bye, Reb,” she said simply. “I haven’t forgotten what you did for me. I never shall. I will look forward to seeing you when we return in the spring.” There was a wistfulness in her tone that said she meant every word of it.
Reb felt a warm glow steal over him. He found his tongue after a fashion.
“It won’t give you no more pleasure than it does me, Ronda,” he said fervently. “I’ll be lookin’ ahead real keen.” He little realized, then, that the day was not far off when the arrival of spring would mean to him something vastly different from this, and that he was to wish for its delay with all the strength of his being.
She responded with a ravishing smile, and talked on for a moment; but with that smile something reached out from her delightfully to confuse him and entrap his senses. He could only stammer out a thoughtless reply to her unheard remarks. A moment later, she had climbed to her seat; the driver picked up the reins; there was a chorus of exchanges as the vehicle moved off—and she was gone.
Winter settled down without much delay. There was a knife-like edge to the ceaseless blasts of Boreas; for days the gust-driven clouds spat flakes, and the massive, gleaming shoulders of the Wind River peaks were obscured from sight. Although Lantry bothered himself little, Reb and Gloomy busied themselves making the dugout snug for the months to come. Not long after the task was completed, the first real snow whitened the range and made the ground crunch in the crisp mornings under the hasty step of boots.
Three days later, the Sundance Kid and his friends arrived at the ranch, on their way south to Colorado. Heavily clothed, they were seeking a milder climate, their breath hanging on the air in white plumes. They tramped into the dugout stamping their feet to warm them.
“Wal, Kid, yuh drew it purty fine when yuh left here last, whether yuh know it or not,” Doc greeted.
Logan was unimpressed. “We traded lead with a few cowpokes,” he responded indifferently. “After that it was jest work.” An old and seasoned campaigner, there was a casualness in his manner that always made him seem inattentive. Yet he was alert to everything about him. He read without difficulty in the way Lantry told of the misplaced retribution which had overtaken Tapper and Lucas, that Doc had something to tell him which he hesitated to voice.
“What’s on yore mind?” he braced Doc later, in a corner of the dugout. Reb had stepped out to break up a little wood.
“Logan, it’s young Santee,” Lantry began, with an assumption of frankness. “He ain’t really with us, an’ it bothers me. I told yuh what he done to Ike an’ Stony. He’s been makin’ friends allover the Basin—doin’ their work fer ’em—he’s gone on Cameron’s girl—an’ now, damned if he ain’t fixin’ to take part in this here winter ridin’.” Doc shook his head soberly. “I can’t make up my mind about him. He’s got too much on us to pass over.”
They talked it over in lowered tones. With characteristic bluntness, once he had got the situation straight in his mind, the Sundance Kid carried Doc’s grievances straight to Reb himself.
“Santee,” he said, “I hear yuh expressed the opinion we was damn fools to plug that Cameron puncher. How ’bout it?” Still amiable, almost negligent, his tone carried a challenge it would have been fatal to take lightly.
Reb found himself in a tight spot. He had more than half expected Lantry to make the attempt to turn Logan and the others against him, but he had not looked for it so soon. Long ago he had satisfied himself of the lethal potentialities of the Kid, and knew that in this moment his own test had come. He thought swiftly.
“Why shore, Kid,” he responded, with a nice shade of gravity; “I don’t mind sayin’ I’m some disgusted with yuh. I know Doc can’t see it,” he added, with a meaning glance at that individual; “but the way I look at it, it’s stupid to run these chances so close to yore hideouts.”
The boldness of his opinion served to catch the attention of them all. They gathered around to follow what they believed was coming. Even Lantry began to feel that it would result in nothing less than annihilation for Reb.
“Suppose you explain that,” the Kid told him, a trifle more dryly.
Reb proceeded to do so, first telling his own version of the part he had played in establishing the false scent the stockmen’s posse had followed, resulting in death for Stony Tapper. He repeated the estimate of the pair he had once expressed to Doc. “They didn’t use no sense at all,” he declared and proved it by relating their crudeness at the store at Washakie Point. “But Doc played up to ’em, an’ they both knowed what our game was. A little pinchin’, an’ they would shore’s hell’ve spilled it all to Cameron’s crowd. We would’ve had to clear out, an’ you boys wouldn’t’ve had this place to come to no more.”
Logan nodded understandingly, his misleading liquid eyes slitted as he glanced at Lantry. Doc scowled. “Go on, Reb,” said the Kid; and Reb continued with renewed energy, a trace of authority creeping into his tone as his inventive inspiration carried him away. It was too late now to think of where his ready tongue and nimble brain were taking him.
The gist of his suggestions was that if they were smart they would organize their activities on an even greater scale, banding all the frequenters of the Outlaw Trail with a common interest; establishing an even closer-knit chain of hideouts, after the fashion of the Underground Railway of the South; and carrying on their depredations at a safer distance and regulating them to a system, instead of by the sporadic and haphazard method they were using now.
“That way yuh could levy on the railroads an’ banks an’ mines—nab the big money, from those who can afford it—an’ after a job, the boys’d simply fade from the scene without leavin’ a trace.” Reb jerked his chin downward decisively, as if he had thought all this out carefully, and couldn’t see a loophole or a flaw in it.
“By God, he’s got somethin’ there, boys!” Flat Nose George exclaimed admiringly. Others nodded. Even the Kid caught fire at the idea. He had many questions to ask.
Reb emerged from the discussion which followed with a different status. No longer could the insinuations of Doc injure his standing with these men. He had painted a picture of easy spoils that left them amazed at his cleverness. Very definitely it made him their real leader, in brains, at least. They deferred to his judgment on a hundred points, while Lantry, frowning and none too well satisfied, kept his own counsel. He alone, of them all, suspected the truth—that Reb had talked his way out of another jam with his usual adeptness.
The Wild Bunch stayed over a day, perfecting plans. There was much to talk about. Excited by his prominence, Reb kept them all laughing over his jokes. Then, the next night, they were gone.
“Dammit, Santee, you won’t go through with this!” Doc Lantry snarled, the minute they were alone. Suppressed indignation twanged in his tone; his lips were set in the vise of his distrust.
“Do yuh mean that—or are yuh hopin’ I won’t?” Reb countered, grinning. There was a blank opacity in his blue eyes which baffled Lantry, left him impotent with wrath. But inwardly, Reb was asking himself the same question the other had posed.
Would he go through with this thing? He thought of Ronda Cameron, of his hopes of her and her faith in him, and told himself that of course he could not. It wasn’t to be thought of. Yet neither had he any desire to leave the Basin, where, as long as he remained, the influence of the Wild Bunch could reach out at will to touch him. What was he going to do?
“My own imagination is doin’ me dirt,” he thought with an amusement tinctured with chagrin. “I’m gettin’ into this deeper’n I had any thought of doin’, jest tryin’ to pull my foot out of the bog. Damn Doc an’ his jealousy, anyway!”
Fortunately all his lightly voiced plans must wait on the arrival of spring. It gave him some months’ grace of decision, of continued freedom of conscience, and—lightness of heart. It was the latter impulse that bade him put his fears away for the time being.
“I never got in a fix yet that I didn’t get out of somehow,” he consoled himself. He was willing to leave it up to the same Providence which had aided him in the past to see to it that his good fortune continued to hold.