Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"Is there such a man?" asked Nightingale. "If so, I'll give him the bloomin' ranch and go fishin'."

"Behold the man," said Denver, pointing to the advancing Steers. "He looks good, and he's better than he looks."

Steve Steers jingled across the yard, casting an apprehensive glance through Leverage's front door.

"You got a job," announced Denver. Steve's countenance expressed dismay. "Shucks, Dave, I just had a job. Where's Debbie?"

"Listen to me, you homely bunchgrass biter," stated Denver firmly, "this is a job. You are now foreman of Mr. Nightingale's Bucket outfit. Your pay is eighty dollars. You run the ranch and everybody that's on it, high, wide, and handsome. No interference. I'm responsible for the suggestion, and, by golly, you've got to sweat!"

"Accept the nomination," said Steve.

"Seems settled," remarked Nightingale calmly and rose to depart. "Now, ah, Steve—should I ask a few questions around my ranch or call on you for an occasional pony to ride, I trust I shan't be considered as intrudin'." With that he galloped off.

Eve and Debbie Lunt came from the house. Debbie went to her waiting mount and was seated in the saddle before the ambling Steve could get around to help her. She looked sweetly at him and with equal sweetness remarked:

"You're a little late, Steve."

"Yeah, Debbie," he muttered.

Together they rode away, Steve looking straight ahead, the girl stiffly erect and silent. Watching them depart, Eve shook her head. "That sounded too much like Mrs. Jim and her husband. Debbie's not wise to carry on so, and Steve's not wise to let her."

"The girl's not bad," reflected Dave, "but she figures she's got to hold the whip on a man to make him mind. One of these days she'll slap him a little too hard."

Eve was surprised at his accurate knowledge of Deborah Lunt and said so. "I'm afraid you know more about women than you ought, Dave. You're staying to supper?"

"Wish I could. But the day's almost gone, and I want to look at a stretch of country before it gets too dark." He got astride his horse, half puzzled, half smiling. "Eve, you're like the drink habit on a man. Seems like I always calm down and forget the grief of a weary world when you're around."

She put an arm around a porch post and lifted her face; some small breath of wind ruffled the curling hair at her temples, and suddenly a foreboding anxiety lay darkly in her eyes. "David, it is none of my business, but you are too strong a man not to have enemies. No matter how aloof you try to keep from the quarrel in Yellow Hill, you will always be in danger. I know how you feel. Dad's told me. And I'm not trying to change your mind. All I say is you never will be able to keep free of trouble—and I wish you would be a little more careful. These last few months I have had a horrible feeling of things about to happen."

"I know," he agreed slowly. "And I hate to see your dad makin' a target out of himself for other people. But remember this, Eve: No matter how much I keep away from this business, I'm always ready to help the Leverage family. If anything should happen to your dad I'd never sleep until I found the man who was responsible for it. I don't agree with the vigilante business, and sometimes I actually can sympathize with these poor fools makin' a living by stealing beef. But there's a line none of them can step over, as far as I'm concerned. If they do, then I'll be ridin'. Not with any committee, but on my own account."

"You don't have to tell me," said she. "I have known it a long time. It's a queer thing to say, but sometimes at night I have the feeling that you are not far away—out in the night somewhere, taking care of us."

He looked sharply at her. "How long have you been thinking that?" was his quick question.

"Oh, for the last three or four nights. Why?"

He shook his head. "Just wondered. See you later." Raising his hat he cantered away. Eve rested against the post and watched him go, with grave attention. Long after, when he reached the high bend of the road and was about to swing from sight, he turned and lifted an arm; and she answered the farewell hail with quick pleasure. As he disappeared the last ray of sun drew away from the hills, and purple twilight shaded the land. She turned inside.

Dave Denver did not go directly home. Instead he paced along the curving road for a few miles and left it to climb a tall ridge adjoining. From the summit he commanded a good view of the cupped-in pockets and the narrow valleys roundabout. Here was a house, there a bunch of cattle, and occasionally a rider questing down some trail. Yet as high up as he was he could not gain a clear sweep of the hills; the broken land formed a thousand dark and isolated patches, and ridges kept cutting in to shield whatever went on yonder.

"Perfect layout for the wild bunch," reflected Denver. "There's spots in this country yet unsurveyed and untouched." Rolling a cigarette he considered Eve Leverage's last remark. The intuitive truth in it had startled him; twice in the last few nights he had made a night patrol around the Leverage section. "Two things," he mused thoughtfully, "I never will understand if I live to be a thousand. First, the whispers that cross this country like light flashes. Second, the way of a woman's mind."

There was but a brief interval of evening left him, and so he brought his mind back to its original thought. To his right, or east, ran the stage road; to his left and nine miles deeper in this cut-up country, lay the Wells. At some point Redmain's renegade riders, driving out of the Sky Peak country, had crossed the highway and headed for the evil shell of a town that was their stronghold. He wanted to find the marks of their path to satisfy his own curiosity and to answer a question slowly forming in his head.

"They were out on a hunt the other evenin'," he murmured. "What did they take home with 'em? I might hit straight for the Dome and look around; but I doubt if they'd return the same way they came. That'd require too much ridin' on the stage road. My guess is they cut over more southerly."

He pushed his horse down the rather steep slope and presently was threading a tortuous trail that undulated from draw to ridge and down into draw again. Rather roughly he paralleled the stage road, curving as it curved, and all the while watching the soft ground beneath. At every mark of travel he stopped to study and reject it, and so pressed on until the waning light warned him. Thereupon he abandoned the patient method and made a swift guess. "If I was leadin' that bunch and on my way to the Wells I'd use the alley of Sweet Creek—providin' I was bashful about bein' seen."

Sweet Creek was on another tangent. He ran down a draw, crossed the succeeding ridge via a meadow-like notch, and veered his course. The tendrils of dusk were curling rapidly through the trees and the ravines were awash with cobalt shadows. The breeze stiffened; far up on the stage road he heard the groaning of brake blocks; then he was confronted with fresh tracks in the yielding earth. He reined in.

The tracks were made by a solitary beef followed by a lone rider; they led out of the west—out of the Wells direction—and seemed headed toward the east. This he considered slowly. His own range was just over the stage road, and from all indications one of his own riders had found a stray and was pushing it back to proper territory. "But who would that be?" Denver asked himself. "All the boys are workin' the Copperhead side today."

He changed his mind about reaching Sweet Creek and pursued the tracks as they went upward, crossed the road, and kept on. A freighter's lantern winked from a hairpin turn of the road above him; a creek purled and gurgled down the hillside. It was dark then, and he had lost all clear sight of the spoor he was tracing, but he kept going and never hesitated until there came a place in the ravine where the trail forked. Dismounting, he struck a match and cupped it to the earth. Rider and cow had turned north; and north was the way to his own D Slash quarters.