Outlaw Ranch. Frank C. Robertson

get two, three thousand head from him, an’ he’ll know just where yuh can get more if you want ’em! We work for the I X L which is ’bout fifty miles south of there. Right now we’re on our way tuh Pipe Springs tuh buy some thoroughbred horses for our boss.”

      “Might be a right good idea,” Kelvin agreed. “I’ll think it over.”

      He had another drink with his two young friends and returned to the corrals, where the cattle he had bought were now in charge of one of the Mormon ranchers and his two sons. Chet had arranged for them to be held in the Mormon’s pasture until his trail herd was made up. The animals, slim, narrow-hipped, wild-eyed heifers, were already being let out of a gate, which they approached with loud and terrified snorts, and then ran as if the devil was after them when they got through.

      Good enough stuff, Kelvin thought, but he had paid a little more than he had expected to. It was his first trip to this section. The cattle grew small, but they would fatten up and grow big on the better ranges of Idaho and Montana if taken young enough.

      What the two punchers had told him stuck in his memory, for all that he had no intention of following the minute directions they had given him. Those two had all the earmarks of outlaws, and he was no stranger to their ways. What they said might all have been in good faith, but, on the other hand, if he was green enough to ride the lonely trail they had outlined it would be easy for them to stage a hold-up.

      He gave a few instructions to the Mormon who had charge of the cattle, and was about to start back toward his hotel when his eyes fell upon the boy he had noticed before roosting on the fence. The lad was still looking at the vanishing cattle with star-eyed interest.

      “Those your cattle?” he asked eagerly.

      “Yes, sonny, I reckon they are,” Chet admitted.

      “You must be a big cattleman,” the boy said.

      “No, I reckon not. Yuh see I’m just a sort o’ buyer for a company up in Idaho,” Chet smiled.

      “Then you’re a stranger here, too?”

      “I reckon I am, son. Which way are you-all headin’?”

      Unconsciously the boy lowered his voice. “I don’t know,” he said. “You see my sister and me are out here looking for our older brother. He owns a big cattle outfit, the I X L. It’s close to a place called Highriver, because that’s where he used to mail his letters. But we ain’t heard a word from him for over a year, so we are on our way to find out what’s happened to him.”

      “Then you must know where yo’re goin’,” Chet remarked.

      “The trouble is everybody says we’re foolish to go there. One man here, a Mormon bishop by the name of Carey, told us straight out that Highriver was no place for a decent girl to go, and he had the nerve to say that the I X L belonged to an outlaw named Broome, and that nobody had ever heard of my brother.”

      “What was yore brother’s name?”

      “Charles Harrison. I’m Bud Harrison, and my sister’s name is Leda—that’s her signaling to me now. Well, guess I’d better jump. We’ve bought an outfit to drive out there and see what’s happened to Charley anyway. My sister is afraid he’s dead. Well, so-long,” the boy said.

      “Just a minute,” Chet murmured. “You got any idea how long a trip yo’re undertakin’?”

      “They say it’s all of a hundred miles.” Bud Harrison grinned.

      “You got a guide?”

      “Just an old feller to drive the team and do the cooking. He calls himself ‘Nevada.’ Kind of a peculiar old boy.”

      “You startin’ right away?” Chet asked.

      “Yes; I see the buckboard is all ready to start,” Bud said.

      “It’s a kind of coincidence, but I’m headin’ for that country myself,” Chet drawled. “Goin’ in there tuh buy cows. Likely I’ll overtake you before you get there.”

      “That’ll be fine,” Bud said. “We’d be glad to have you camp with us.”

      As Kelvin walked toward the hotel he got a good look at a flaxen-haired, sweet-faced girl of about twenty who was just then climbing into a buckboard beside a grizzled old desert rat whose skin, where it was not covered by a wiry gray beard, resembled nothing so much as an old and wrinkled piece of boot leather. The girl obviously was a stranger to the West, but Chet liked the capable way in which she moved.

      Chet’s sudden resolution to cross the mountains had been caused by a recollection that his new-found friends, Biggers and Fossum, claimed to be employees of the I X L. It had occurred to him to tell Bud that they were in town, but on second thought he had decided to do the questioning himself.

      The two punchers hadn’t yet left Curryville, and they had absorbed several whiskies during his absence from the saloon. They greeted him uproariously. He bought a round of drinks, which were consumed at a table, and then ventured an inquiry.

      “How long have you boys worked for this here I X L?”

      “Oh, ’bout five years,” Jack Fossum answered with a maudlin laugh.

      “Tell me—what does Charley Harrison do there?” Chet queried.

      “Harrison? Ain’t nobody o’ that name I ever heard tell of over there,” Fossum answered. “You, Al?”

      “Nope. There’s no Harrison in that country I ever heard of,” Biggers said. “What made yuh think there was?”

      “Well, a man who give that name, an’ said he belonged there, was tellin’ me how cheap I could buy cows there long before I saw you boys,” Chet prevaricated.

      “What sort of a lookin’ jigger was he?” Fossum asked.

      For a moment Chet was stumped. Then he decided to take a chance that Charley Harrison looked like his brother Bud, only larger.

      “Well, as I remember,” he frowned, “he was jist short o’ six feet tall, and he had wavy brown hair, brown eyes, a straight nose an’ kinda big mouth, an’ a funny little cleft in his chin like a dimple.”

      “An’ did he have a thin scar runnin’ from the bridge of his nose to the top of his left eye?” Fossum asked eagerly.

      “I believe he did,” Chet replied, but he was aware that Al Biggers had given his companion a vicious kick on the shin under the table.

      “Yuh musta been mistaken in the name, stranger,” Biggers said. “That feller’s name was Johnson, not Harrison. He ain’t there now.”

      Chet knew that no more was to be got out of the men, but he had heard enough to know that there was something queer at the I X L ranch, toward which Bud Harrison and his sister were headed. It was none of his business, he knew; and he had made it a lifelong practice to let other people’s affairs alone with great diligence. Nevertheless, he didn’t like the idea of a girl and a mere boy going alone and unprotected into a known outlaw country, and he had a reasonable excuse for taking the same trail through the mountains.

      “I think I’ll just act on that tip you boys gave me,” he said softly. “Reckon, I’ll start for that Highriver country first thing in the mornin’.”

      “Yuh’ll never regret it, stranger,” Al Biggers said fervently. Chet could see the gleam of satisfaction in their eyes. They were too drunk to conceal their animation; yet not drunk enough to overlook any bets.

      “I gotta go to Bishop Carey’s place tonight, so I may not see you boys again,” he remarked.

      “Oh, yuh’ll see us again—be shore o’ that.” Biggers laughed. “But let’s hoist one.”

      They had a final drink, and Chet took his departure.

      On his buying trips Chet always rode his own private horse, a long-legged, raw-boned gray