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Updated: June 2, 2025
He called Goodheart to one side. "As soon as it's dark I'm goin' in to find out what's doin'. We haven't heard a murmur from these birds for hours. Perhaps they've flown. Anyhow, I'm goin' to find out." "How many of us are goin'?" "Just one of us Billie Prince." "If two of us went " "It would double the chances of discovery. No, I'm goin' alone. Maybe I can have a talk with Albeen or Yankie.
Now he's come through I'll be doggoned if I want to jump on him again." "You're too soft for this country, Reb," sneered Albeen. "Better go back to Arkansas or wherever you come from." "When I get ready. You don't mean right away, Albeen, do you?" demanded the old-timer sharply. "Well, don't hang around all day," said Prince, his eye full in that of the foreman.
I'll leave him in charge of this bunch of stock overnight on. the berrendo. He'll run like a scared deer at the first shot. Hustle the beeves over the pass an' keep 'em movin' till you come to Lost Cache." Crouched over the blanket, they discussed details and settled them. Yankie rose to leave and Roush followed him to his horse. "Don't git a notion I'm scared of Albeen, Joe," he explained.
The chill eyes of Albeen, narrowed to shining slits, focused on Roush menacingly. All present understood that he was offering Devil Dave a choice. He could draw steel, or he could side-step the issue. The campers had been playing poker with white navy beans for chips.
Roush, undecided, gathered up in his fingers the little pile of them in front of him and let them sift down again to the blanket on the edge of which he sat. Some day he and Albeen would have to settle this quarrel once for all. But not to-night. Dave wanted the breaks with him when that hour came. He intended to make a sure thing of it.
"I've known fellows before that got all filled up with talk an' had to steam off about every so often," commented Albeen to the world at large. "Meanin' me?" Albeen carefully raked a live coal from the fire and pressed it down into the bowl of his pipe. The eyes in his leathery, brown face had grown hard as jade. For some time he and Dave Roush had been ready for an explosion.
He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with nerves of unflawed steel.
It could not come any too soon to suit the one-armed man. "Meanin' you if you want to take it that way." Albeen looked straight at him with an unwinking gaze. "You're not the only man on the reservation that wears his gun low, Roush. Maybe you're a wolf for fair. I've sure heard you claim it right often. You're a two-gun man. I pack only one, seem' as I'm shy a wing.
Got nothin' but jerked beef an' hard-tack. How are things a-stackin', Joe?" asked a heavy-set, bow-legged man with a cold, fishy eye. "Looks good, Dave. I'll lead the cattle to you. It'll be up to you an' Albeen an' Dumont to make a get-away with 'em." "Don't you worry none about that. Once I get these beeves on the trail there can't no shorthorn cattleman take 'em away from me."
"The riff-raff of the county are back of it, but the worst of it is that they've got a lot of good people in with them. Some of the Flying V Y riders are in town too. I never saw so much drinking before." "When is it to be?" "I don't know." "Who told you?" "Bud Proctor. He says Yankie and Albeen and that crowd are spending hundreds of dollars at the bars."
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