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Updated: June 8, 2025
There followed four surprising days of calm, during which the Shoe-Bar, to every outward seeming, might have been the most ordinary and humdrum of outfits, with not a hint of anything sinister or mysterious beneath the surface. Each morning the men sallied forth to work, returned for noon dinner, and rode off again soon afterward. Lynch was neither grouchy nor over-jovial.
As I was sayin', Terry's death was pernounced a accident, an' they allowed Bennett was plugged by one of them greaser rustlers I hear tell of. I ain't sayin' nothing to the contrary. All I'm tellin' yuh is the Shoe-Bar ain't a healthy outfit to work for, an' this business about Rick Bemis proves it. I wouldn't sign on with 'em, not for a hundred a month."
The dawn was just breaking when he left camp mounted on Pete, the Rocking-R horse that he had found so reliable in the rough country. The simplest and most direct way would have been to descend to level ground and ride along the edge of the Shoe-Bar land. But he dared not take any chances of being observed by Lynch or his gang, and was forced to make a long detour through the hills.
"Acts to me like he was holding back something," he thought as he rode briskly on through the wide, rolling solitudes. "Now, I wonder what sort of a guy is this Tex Lynch, and what's going on at the Shoe-Bar that an old he-gossip like Pop Daggett is afraid to talk about?"
"The railroad takes a bend, an' Harpswell ain't more than a mile or two further from the Shoe-Bar than Paloma." Evidently Dr. Blanchard must have been at home, for Buck had just finished unsaddling and was coming away from the corral when he rode up.
Her father's financial reverses, his reticence about the acquisition of the Shoe-Bar, the strange hold Lynch had seemed to have on him, rose up to torment her. Suddenly she glanced quickly at Buck for reassurance. "It isn't so!" she cried. "It can't be. My father " Slowly the words died on her lips. There was love, tenderness, pity in the man's eyes, but no denial! "Ain't it, though?"
He hunted out a few simple cooking-utensils and enough canned goods and other stores to last two weeks, picked a pack-animal and a riding horse, and by dinner-time had everything ready for Buck to start immediately afterward. The six or seven cow-punchers who responded to the gong presented a marked and pleasant contrast to the Shoe-Bar outfit.
By this time a little individual trick of carriage made him suspect that the foremost puncher was Butch Siegrist, and when the men came into clearer view, he recognized scarcely without question the big sorrel with white trimmings on which Kreeger had ridden off that morning. The two men had found a Shoe-Bar stray; that was all.
And if darkness threatened, he could return to his little camp through the open Shoe-Bar pastures, where neither Lynch nor his men were at all likely to linger after dusk. The trail followed a natural break in the hills and, though not especially difficult under foot, was twisting and irregular, full of sharp descents and equally steep upward slopes.
During the winter before the war he sold out for a handsome figure, spent several months looking over new ground, and finally located and bought the Shoe-Bar outfit. The deal was hurried through because of his determination to enlist.
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