The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

      "Well, you know best. Remember, we can't afford to lose ground. That trail we passed makes me very uneasy—very uneasy."

      San Saba raised his shoulders, saying nothing. His inscrutable eyes rested momentarily on Tom and the latter thought he saw a point of light break through the red pall. A point of light that gleamed and was suppressed. Then the foreman dropped his narrow chin, murmuring, "I'm doin' the best I can, suh. If yo' aim to turn west I'll say nothin'."

      "Go ahead," replied Major Bob.

      Tom dropped to the rear where Quagmire rode. Upon the wizened face was imprinted the sorrow of the universe. But he grinned at Tom and threw a leg around the saddle horn.

      "Was a fortune teller once what told me I'd take a long trip. Paid him a dollar. Well, look what I got for my dollar. He said I was a gent that liked life. Hell, I got to like it! He tol' me I'd meet up with a dark lady an' she'd be a great influence to me. That gipsy sho' read my periscope."

      "Met the lady, did you?" inquired Tom.

      Quagmire squinted at the sun, the earth, and the remote horizon. "Rode a pitchin' hoss down by El Paso one year. Broke both collar bones, sprained a laig, an' bit myse'f in the middle o' the back. Laid up three months."

      "What's that got to do with a dark lady?"

      Quagmire spread his palms upward. "It was a black lady hoss."

      Tom smiled. "Well, we live and we learn."

      "Sometimes," amended Quagmire lugubriously, "we only live."

      "It's the only life we've got," mused Tom.

      Quagmire shifted his weight. "Now you spoke like my own son."

      "If you'd had a son. Ever tried the institution of marriage for a reasonable length of time, Quagmire?"

      "Shucks, no. I'm too stingy to divide my affections."

      But much later, after a brooding study of the matter, he amplified this. "'Tain't exactly that, either, Tom. But, I tell you—I can sleep on grass and I can eat navy beans until said navy quits makin' 'em. Sorter hate to make a woman share that. My mamma was death on havin' me comb my hair. Mebbe that got me shy. Company ahead."

      The herd came to a straggling halt Over an adjacent ridge came a solitary rider clad in fringed buckskin. Tom trotted to the fore to join the ensuing parley. Major Bob rode out to meet the stranger. The man's skin was like so much parfleche, and a beard draped itself from cheek bone to collar, out of which glittered two intensely black and exploring eyes. He raised a hand, Indian fashion, and kept his peace.

      "Know this country?" asked Major Bob.

      "Ort to," responded the man. "Yallerstone Bill be my name."

      Major Bob signalled to San Saba, meanwhile pursuing his point. "Then you'll know in what direction is the junction of Red Willow Creek with the Little Missouri."

      "If you be goin' thar," replied the plainsman, "ye sh'd of turned due west couple days back."

      San Saba arrived in time to overhear this and immediately spoke up. "They's a table-topped butte with red streaks hereabouts, ain't they, suh?"

      The plainsman spent one very short and noncommittal glance on the foreman. "Dunno of any."

      Major Bob's face turned unexpectedly harsh. "Will you guide us?"

      The man nodded after a little reflection. San Saba again broke in, a trace of heat in his words, "Major, suh, it strikes me oth'wise," but Major Bob shook his head.

      "We'll depend on this man. Forward, now. By Godfrey, we have lost time! Forward."

      San Saba held himself very straight. "Suh, if yo' mean to doubt my..."

      The Major cut him short. "Never mind—never mind! Get back with the herd!"

      The long line of cattle formed a dun-coloured crescent across the prairie. The speed increased, dust rose higher. And still Major Bob was unsatisfied, ranging back impatiently. Tom saw the mood of angry recklessness riding his father then, and it was with something akin to a shock that he discovered the same stirring impulse in himself. And when Lispenard, who seemed to hold himself aloof these days from all men but the foreman, came up with a subdued warning—"I'd trust San Saba sooner than I would that tough-looking fellow"—Tom broke in with unusual curtness.

      "I wouldn't trust San Saba out of my sight, Blondy."

      "Oh, look here! He's my friend, and I don't like to hear that said behind his back—"

      "Then," said Tom, "you are at liberty to tell him I made the statement."

      They left the level prairie behind, wound in and out of what seemed to be an old buffalo trail through the black, tree-studded hills. The guide kept almost out of sight, never stopping. Hour after hour, on the trail long before light until long after dusk. It even wrung a dismal groan from Quagmire.

      "They say death is a long sleep. Mebbe that's why we ain't doin' none of it now."

      But the day at last came when the guide poised himself on a ridge and waited for them to catch up. Major Bob galloped ahead, beckoning to the men nearest him. When Tom arrived, the guide was pointing to the west. "Thar she is."

      The rugged land formed a kind of bowl, the bottom of which made an isolated valley. In the distance, one side of the bowl gave way to the banks of the Little Missouri. Directly across the grassy plain ran a creek, sparkling under the sun. Cottonwoods fringed the edge of the distant rive and above the trees wavered a spiral of smoke. That caught and held their attention. Major Bob studied it long and in tently. "Must be Big Ruddy's fire."

      "I'm afraid it won't be that," muttered Tom. "Look over to the right—right where the ridge breaks into small pockets."

      Cattle! Cattle browsing peacefully along the slopes. And by their number and the compactness of their position it seemed to indicate they had only been thrown on the land a little while before. Major Bob rose in his stirrups, shaded his eyes. When he swung to the others there was danger in his eyes. In passing, his glance fell upon the foreman and rested there one long, grim moment. San Saba appeared to catch up his muscles, to draw off; his features became pinched. But the Major had nothing to say to him at that time. "Quagmire," he cried, "get back and bring the crew! Bring them with their guns! By Godfrey, if anyone's jumped this valley from me they'll have to fight! Come on!"

      It was not the guide's fight, and he let them go. Three together—the Major, Tom, and San Saba—they galloped down and across the little valley. Grass stood high along the ponies' legs, the creek was crystal clear; Tom surveyed this little paradise, acknowledging to himself in a wistful moment that it was worth driving a thousand miles to possess. All that man could want was right here, and though the land to either side might be equally fertile, it didn't seem to him possible there would be another site as ideal as this. The Major seemed to think so, too, for his eyes kept roving across the ground, and his head jerked from side to side as he flung out his few bitter words.

      "I was uneasy about those tracks we saw! Very uneasy! Well, it's mine by squatter's right. Mine, by Godfrey! If they've shoved Big Ruddy off they'll have to fight! They'll have to fight me!"

      San Saba lagged, saying nothing at all; his face was quite set, quite unusually devoid of expression.

      They came to a thicket and followed single file through it and on into the cottonwoods. The path broadened. Tom's eyes saw fresh ax marks and, as they went onward through the trees, his eyes discovered a lane leading into a clearing. There were wagons ahead, the smoke of a fire—and men standing in a group with rifles cradled. His father was to the fore and seemed not to see, so he called out.

      "Watch close there. I think they've got a reception committee."

      "They'll have to fight, I tell you!"

      A moment later the three of them had left the trees. Sharp warning fell athwart their path.

      "Stop where you are!"

      They reined in. In the moment of silence ensuing Tom