John Whitson - Justin Wingate, Ranchman

“So you’re Justin, air ye—the little boy I met one’t? I reckon you don’t know me? I wouldn’t knowed you, but fer hearin’ the name.”

Justin acknowledged that the man’s face was unfamiliar.

“Well, I’m William Sanders!” He plucked a spear of grass and began to splinter it with his teeth. “I landed hyer some seasons ago with Mr. Fogg, and stayed all night with the doctor over there. Mebbe you’ll remember me now. I’ve thought of you a good many times sense then. You’ve growed a lot. I was thinkin’ about you t’other day while on my way hyer; and a fortune teller I went to in Pueblo picked you out straight off, from the cards she told with. She showed me the jack of hearts, and said that was the young feller I had in mind. Sing’lar, wasn’t it?”

Justin recalled this young man now, and shook his hand heartily.

“It was singular,” he admitted.

“We’ll have to talk over old times by and by,” said Sanders, amiably.

But Davison was not pleased to see Sanders, whom he had never met before. Sanders, it appeared, had bought a quarter-section of land not far from the stream, and had now come to occupy it. Trouble had arisen over the fact that it was included in a large area of mortgaged and government land which Davison had fenced for his cattle. Sanders was demanding that he should cut the fence.

“Cut it and let me git my land,” he insisted, “er I’ll cut it fer ye. I know my rights under the law.”

“You can’t farm there, and you know you can’t,” said Davison, in a tone of expostulation. “This is simply a piece of blackmail. You want me to pay you not to trouble me about the fence. But I won’t do it. If I did I’d have dozens of men landed on me demanding the same thing. You know that nothing but bunch grass will grow on that land.”

Though he chewed placidly on the grass spear, Sanders’ little eyes glittered.

“Cut the fence and let me git to my land, er I’ll cut it fer ye!”

His love for Lucy, which extended now to Philip Davison as a warm regard and intense boyish admiration, would have inclined Justin to the ranchman’s side; but it was clear that Sanders was in the right and Davison in the wrong.

“I’ll see you again, Mr. Sanders,” he said; and rode on while the two men were still wrangling. It was remarkable, he thought, that Sanders should have remembered him so long, and more remarkable that a fortune teller who had never seen him should be able to describe him even in a dim and uncertain way.

Farther along he encountered Ben, ranging the mesa with dog and gun, training his young English setter. It was Ben’s duty to ride the line on this particular day; but Ben had shirked, and Justin had been assigned to his place. The current opinion of the cowboys was that Ben was shiftless and unreliable.

“What’s that hayseed mouthing about?” Ben asked.

“He has bought some land in there, and wants your father to cut the fence so that he can get to it.”

“These farmers are always making trouble,” Ben growled.

Then his face flushed.

“Why didn’t you stand up with me against that granger the other day, when I told him that his horses, and not ours, had damaged his crops?”

Justin desired to think well of Ben and remain on terms of friendship with him because of Lucy.

“I couldn’t very well,” he urged, “for I saw our horses in his millet, myself.”

“Well, he didn’t; he was in town that day. He would have believed you, if you had said they were his horses. You might have backed me up, instead of flinching; I’d have done as much for you.”

“You’ve got a handsome dog there!” said Justin.

“Oh, that setter’s going to be fine when I get him broke,” Ben asserted, with enthusiasm. “I only wish we had some Eastern quails here. Harkness put you on this line today, did he? I wanted to train my setter; so I told him I wasn’t well, and slipped out of it.”

As the dog was now far ahead, Ben hastened to overtake him, and Justin rode on, thinking of Ben, of Lucy, and of William Sanders. Ben’s easy disregard of certain things he had been taught to consider essentials troubled him. He wanted to think well of Ben.

When Justin learned the outcome of the controversy between Davison and Sanders he was somewhat astonished. Sanders’ truculence had made him think the man would persist in his demands; but Sanders had agreed to fence his own land, if Davison would but give him a right of way to it.

Within a week Justin understood why. Sanders, visiting the ranch-house to see Davison, had also seen Lucy. He became a familiar visitor, where his presence was not desired. If Lucy rode out, William Sanders invariably chanced to be in the trail going in the same direction. If she remained at home he came to the house to get Davison’s advice as to the best manner of constructing a fence, and Lucy’s advice concerning the proper furnishing of a dug-out for a single man who expected to live alone and do his own cooking.

Lucy came to Justin with the burden of her woes.

“He follows me round all the time, just as if he were my dog!”

“You ought to feel flattered,” said Justin, though he was himself highly indignant. “I don’t suppose you want me to say anything to him about it?”

“Oh, no—no!” she gasped, terrified by the threat concealed behind the words.

“I’ve noticed he hasn’t come near me since our meeting down by the line fence. He told me then that he wanted to have a talk about old times, but he hasn’t seemed in any hurry to begin it.”

As Justin rode away in an angry mood Lucy Davison looked at his receding figure with some degree of uneasiness. Justin had on a few occasions showed a decidedly inflammable temper. Ordinarily mild in word and manner, borrowing much of that mildness doubtless from Clayton, when he gave way to a sudden spasm of rage it was likely to carry him beyond the bounds of reason.

The provocation came in a most unexpected, and at the time inexplicable, way. Justin, riding along the trail by the stream, saw Lucy come out from the shadows of the young cottonwoods near Sloan Jasper’s and walk in his direction, as if to join him. The sight of her there filled his sky with brightness and the music of singing birds. He pricked up his broncho and turned it from the trail.

As he did so he beheld William Sanders appear round the end of the cottonwood grove, mounted on one of his big, raw-boned horses. Riding up to Lucy, Sanders slipped from his saddle and walked along by her side. Justin’s anger burned. It was apparent to him, great as was the separating distance, that Sanders’ presence and words were distasteful to her. She stopped and seemed about to turn back to the grove. Justin saw Sanders put out his hand as if to detain her. As he did so she stooped; then she screamed, and fell forward, apparently to avoid him.

Justin drove his broncho from a trot into a wild gallop. His anger increased to smoking rage. It passed to ungovernable fury, when he beheld Sanders catch the screaming girl in his arms, lift her to the back of his horse, and scramble up behind her in the saddle. Justin yelled at him.

“Stop—stop, you villain!”

In utter disregard of him and his shouted command Sanders plunged his spurs into the flanks of his big horse, and began to ride away from the cottonwoods at top speed. Lucy lay limp in his arms.

“I’ll have his life!” Justin cried, longing now for one of the cowboy revolvers he had made it a practice, on the advice of Clayton, never to carry; and he drove the broncho into furious pursuit of the big horse that was bearing Lucy and Sanders away.

The light, clean-limbed broncho, unimpeded by a cumbersome double weight, began to gain in the mad race. Justin ploughed its sides mercilessly with the spurs, struck it with his hands, and yelled at it, to increase its speed.