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It seemed that he had gone to kill a man Oldring! The name riveted his consciousness upon the one man of all men upon earth whom he had wanted to meet. He had met the rustler. Venters recalled the smoky haze of the saloon, the dark-visaged men, the huge Oldring. He saw him step out of the door, a splendid specimen of manhood, a handsome giant with purple-black and sweeping beard.
Stanton dismounted and struck several matches. The flame burned steadily, but it showed none of the marks for which he searched the beaten snow with practised eyes. "No," he said, "I'd stake a month's pay that the fellow's not ahead." They looked at each other, frankly puzzled; and then Prescott broke out angrily: "Where can the blasted rustler be?"
"Oh, I see what you mean!" exclaimed the taller lad, immediately. "Perhaps the secret hiding place of Mendoza and his crowd of cattle thieves may be somewhere around this same old rock pile. It'd be just like the tricky rustler to have a hide-out where nobody else ever came!" "Now, why didn't somebody ever think of that before?" ejaculated Frank, in a tone of mingled surprise and disgust.
I've got gold in plenty, sure, and you're going to get it if you stay right here, and don't say a word to any one about Will or this cattle-rustling. If you do anything that prevents Will getting clear away, or let folks know that he's the rustler, then you get no gold not one cent." "Then, wot's this I've heerd about Jim? Guess you want him to get the blame. You want 'em to hang Jim Thorpe?"
"I've a dim memory of some other place, and women and children; but I can't make anything of it. Sometimes I think till I'm weary." "Then you can read you have books?" "Oh yes, I can read, and write, too, pretty well. Oldring is educated. He taught me, and years ago an old rustler lived with us, and he had been something different once. He was always teaching me."
The syndicate wisely gave Tom a free hand, knowing that, in everything which concerned the working of men and machinery to the limit, Tom would begin at the point where their less elastic consciences might leave off. The syndicate, therefore, remained in Victoria, or Vancouver, or San Francisco, and said of Tom that he was a rustler from "Way back, and as lively as they make 'em."
They're cattle thieves, born in 'em and bred in 'em, and set in the hide and hair of 'em!" "Couldn't it be settled without all this fighting and killing?" she went on, pressing her point. "It's all over now but the shoutin'," said he. "There's only one way to handle a rustler, Miss Frances, and that's to salt his hide."
No feller don't take no account o' her bein' a pot-wallopin', hash-slingin' mutton rustler. It sure ain't no worse than ladlin' swill to prize hogs. It's jest in the way o' business. 'Sides, she don't need to care what no fellers thinks. She ain't stuck on men-folk wuth a cent." "That I sure ain't," asserted a smothered voice from the bosom of his dirty shirt. "That you ain't," he reassured her.
Then, with a swift sweep, he jerked a gun from its sheath and fired. The bullet zipped through the sage-brush. Flying bits of wood struck Venters, and the hot, stinging pain seemed to lift him in one leap. Like a flash the blue barrel of his rifle gleamed level and he shot once twice. The foremost rustler dropped his weapon and toppled from his saddle, to fall with his foot catching in a stirrup.
Moreover, he wanted to deserve it. No man had ever spoken to him in just the tone of this little Irish cowpuncher, who had come out of nowhere into his life and brought to him his first big problem for decision. Even though the man had confessed himself a rustler, the young lawyer could not escape his judgment.
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