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Doubtless the two plotters had proposed to themselves that Captain Rugley would be too ill to take the lead in any chase after the kidnappers. Perhaps Pete even hoped that the old ranchman would agree immediately to the terms of ransom set forth in the note Ratty had taken to the Bar-T.
He was convinced that something sinister lay behind their silence. After breakfast the ranchman rode away. Jeff and Slim Sanders jogged off on their cowponies to mend a broken bit of fence. Hal sat on the porch replacing with rivets the torn strap of a stirrup. Beaudry could stand it no longer. He found his hostess digging around the roots of some rosebushes in her small garden.
The dim light of the fire showed the picture open, and befogged as his brain was by the whisky, he realized he was being robbed, and with a roar like a mad bull he sprang upon Cummings. Swift as a flash Cummings' fist, sent forward with all the force of his powerful frame, struck the ranchman under the ear, and tossing his arms above his head he fell like a dead man on the floor.
After one of the blizzards a young ranchman who had gone into the nearest town some twenty miles away to get some Christmas things for his wife and little ones, was found frozen to death on Christmas morning, his poor little packages of petty Christmas gifts tightly clasped in his cold hands lying by his side.
Of course, the old ranchman could not go; but Frances and Sam were at Cottonwood Bottom soon after sunrise, waiting for the party from Mr. Bill Edwards' ranch.
Let me go to fight the fire!" pleaded the youth. "All right. Only take care of yourself," was the caution. "I'll go and help the boys mill the cattle," offered the water engineer. "I believe I can do that." "I think so, though it isn't going to be an easy task," said the ranchman. The glare of the distant fire was now brighter, and a dull roar could be heard.
He knew Fred and Terry, for he had frequently stopped at their ranch, so he, on his way to town, notified every farmer and ranchman whom he passed that Fearnot and Olcott were going to hang four cattle thieves down at the lower end of their ranch. Everybody who heard the news wanted to see the lynching, so they came down there.
"Then you think there's no question but that they did it?" as had Dave of Mr. Carson. "Hardly any doubt," was the reply. "But of course I'll look into it. Watch out now, Dave. Those cattle are fairly wild, and I don't want you to be hurt." The ranchman looked affectionately at the youth, and Dave felt a warm spot in his heart for the man who had done so much for him.
Several times, she caught herself laughing softly at the recollection of how she had triumphed over the daring young ranchman, and at the predicament in which she had left him, standing there near the bridge, in a locality that was entirely unknown to him, from which he must have some difficulty in finding his way to a place where he could secure another conveyance.
A born mystic and visionary as to the state of his soul, a boy of light in quest of the real wisdom that is necessary for the lyrical embodiment, this was Rex Slinkard, the western ranchman and poet-painter. "I think of the inhabitants of the earth and of the world, my home." It might have been spoken from out of one of the oaks of William Blake.