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Then with the old cattleman's shrewd, hard eyes upon her she turned from a clip full of papers she had been looking through and spoke to him quietly: "You used to work for the Granite Canyon crowd, didn't you, Carson?" "Yes'm," he answered. "Cattle foreman there for several years?" "Yes'm." "Helped clean out the Roaring Creek gang didn't you, Carson?"
One son-in-law from Texas had simply surfeited that family there was no other vacancy. About the time we closed out and were again ready to go home, there was a cattleman's ball given in this little trail town. We stayed over several days to take in this ball, as I had some plans of my own. My girl was at the ball all easy enough, but she warned me that her brother was watching me.
And a real cattleman's saddle weighs a good bit! Ratty flung down the leather with a grunt, and dropped on the ground beside the fire. "What's the matter with you?" growled the man, Pete. "Been pulling leather?" "There ain't no hawse bawn can make me git off if I don't want," returned Ratty M'Gill, sharply. "I got canned." "Fired?" "Yep. And by that snip of a gal," and he said it viciously.
He glanced triumphantly at the doctor and the girl. "But I did." "You!" both exclaimed. But before he could explain, the memory of the cattleman's threat recurred to Janet to banish thoughts of aught else than Weir's danger from her mind. "Mr. Sorenson said he was going up to the dam to shoot Mr. Weir," she exclaimed. "We must give warning." "Did he say he was going himself?" Johnson asked.
As he finished speaking he turned and looked squarely into the cold gray eyes of Old Heck who, with Skinny, had entered the Amusement Parlor while Dorsey was talking and heard the Vermejo cattleman's sneering insinuation. Old Heck and Skinny had left Ophelia and Carolyn June at the Occidental Hotel, where a room was reserved by Old Heck for the use of the two women during the Rodeo.
Before Daniels could answer, the light of his lantern fell upon Black Bart, hitherto half hidden by the deepening shadows of the night, but standing now at the entrance of the shed. The cattleman's teeth clicked together and he slapped his hand against his thigh in a reach for the gun which was not there. "Look behind you," he said to Calder. "A wolf!"
"Night before last. After supper he started for the Cattleman's Club, but he never got there." "Sure he wasn't called out to one of the ranches unexpected?" "I sent out to make sure. He hasn't been seen there." "Looks like some of Brad Steelman's smooth work," admitted Dave. "If he could work yore father to sign a relinquishment " Fire flickered in her eye. "He'd ought to know Dad better."
Joan looked at him, the aging stamp of waking and worry in her face, exclaiming pityingly when she saw his hurts. "It served me right; I stumbled into their hands like a blind kitten!" he said, not sparing himself of scorn. "It's a cattleman's trick; many an older hand than you has gone that way," she said. "But if I'd have waked and watched like you, Joan, they wouldn't have got me.
He accepted the other's admittedly better understanding of these things all the more readily that he desired earnestly to dispel the last shadows of his momentary doubt. "That's so," he agreed. Then he added: "But anyway, our camp's gone." "Yes. We'll make camp some'ere else. Meanwhiles " "Yes?" "We must follow up the trail." There was irrevocable decision in the older cattleman's tone.
I hate to say it, but the runt's workin' you for range and shelter." The cattleman's ingenuous mind refused to entertain Chad's view of the case, and when, later, he came to apply the test, doubt entered not into his motives. One day, about noon, two men drove up to the ranch, alighted, hitched, and came in to dinner; standing and general invitations being the custom of the country.
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