Zane Grey - The Mysterious Rider

“Wils Moore. How d'ye do? I reckon I remember you, though I don't ride up this way much of late years.”

The cowboy returned the greeting civilly enough, but with brevity.

Belllounds cleared his throat and stepped forward. His manner showed he had a distasteful business at hand.

“Moore, I sent for you on a serious matter, I'm sorry to say.”

“Well, here I am. What is it?” returned the cowboy, with clear, hazel eyes, full of fire, steady on the old rancher's.

“Jack, you know, is foreman of White Slides now. An' he's made a charge against you.”

“Then let him face me with it,” snapped Moore.

Jack Belllounds came forward, hands in his pockets, self-possessed, even a little swaggering, and his pale face and bold eyes showed the gravity of the situation and his mastery over it.

Wade watched this meeting of the rivals and enemies with an attention powerfully stimulated by the penetrating scrutiny Burley laid upon them. Jack did not speak quickly. He looked hard into the tense face of Moore. Wade detected a vibration of Jack's frame and a gleam of eye that showed him not wholly in control of exultation and revenge. Fear had not struck him yet.

“Well, Buster Jack, what's the charge?” demanded Moore, impatiently.

The old name, sharply flung at Jack by this cowboy, seemed to sting and reveal and inflame. But he restrained himself as with roving glance he searched Moore's person for sight of a weapon. The cowboy was unarmed.

“I accuse you of stealing my father's cattle,” declared Jack, in low, husky accents. After he got the speech out he swallowed hard.

Moore's face turned a dead white. For a fleeting instant a red and savage gleam flamed in his steady glance. Then it vanished.

The cowboys, who had come up, moved restlessly. Lem Billings dropped his head, muttering. Montana Jim froze in his tracks.

Moore's dark eyes, scornful and piercing, never moved from Jack's face. It seemed as if the cowboy would never speak again.

“You call me thief! You?” at length he exclaimed.

“Yes, I do,” replied Belllounds, loudly.

“Before this sheriff and your father you accuse me of stealing cattle?”

“Yes.”

“And you accuse me before this man who saved my life, who knows me—before Hell-Bent Wade?” demanded Moore, as he pointed to the hunter.

Mention of Wade in that significant tone of passion and wonder was not without effect upon Jack Belllounds.

“What in hell do I care for Wade?” he burst out, with the old intolerance. “Yes, I accuse you. Thief, rustler!... And for all I know your precious Hell-Bent Wade may be—”

He was interrupted by Burley's quick and authoritative interference.

“Hyar, young man, I'm allowin' for your natural feelin's,” he said, dryly, “but I advise you to bite your tongue. I ain't acquainted with Mister Moore, but I happen to know Wade. Do you savvy?... Wal, then, if you've any more to say to Moore get it over.”

“I've had my say,” replied Belllounds, sullenly.

“On what grounds do you accuse me?” demanded Moore.

“I trailed you. I've got my proofs.”

Burley stepped off the porch and carefully laid down his package.

“Moore, will you get off your hoss?” he asked. And when the cowboy had dismounted and limped aside the sheriff continued, “Is this the hoss you ride most?”

“He's the only one I have.”

Burley sat down upon the edge of the porch and, carefully unwrapping the package, he disclosed some pieces of hard-baked yellow mud. The smaller ones bore the imprint of a circle with a dot in the center, very clearly defined. The larger piece bore the imperfect but reasonably clear track of a curiously shaped horseshoe, somewhat triangular. The sheriff placed these pieces upon the ground. Then he laid hold of Moore's crutch, which was carried like a rifle in a sheath hanging from the saddle, and, drawing it forth, he carefully studied the round cap on the end. Next he inserted this end into both the little circles on the pieces of mud. They fitted perfectly. The cowboys bent over to get a closer view, and Billings was wagging his head. Old Belllounds had an earnest eye for them, also. Burley's next move was to lift the left front foot of Moore's horse and expose the bottom to view. Evidently the white mustang did not like these proceedings, but he behaved himself. The iron shoe on this hoof was somewhat triangular in shape. When Burley held the larger piece of mud, with its imprint, close to the hoof, it was not possible to believe that this iron shoe had not made the triangular-shaped track.

Burley let go of the hoof and laid the pieces of mud down. Slowly the other men straightened up. Some one breathed hard.

“Moore, what do them tracks look like to you?” asked the sheriff.

“They look like mine,” replied the cowboy.

“They are yours.”

“I'm not denying that.”

“I cut them pieces of mud from beside a water-hole over hyar under Gore Peak. We'd trailed the cattle Belllounds lost, an' then we kept on trailin' them, clear to the road that goes over the ridge to Elgeria.... Now Bridges an' Lindsay hyar bought stock lately from strange cattlemen who didn't give no clear idee of their range. Jest buyin' an' sellin', they claimed.... I reckon the extra hoss tracks we run across at Gore Peak connects up them buyers an' sellers with whoever drove Belllounds's cattle up thar.... Have you anythin' more to say?”

“No. Not here,” replied Moore, quietly.

“Then I'll have to arrest you an' take you to Kremmlin' fer trial.”

“All right. I'll go.”

The old rancher seemed genuinely shocked. Red tinged his cheek and a flame flared in his eyes.

“Wils, you done me dirt,” he said, wrathfully. “An' I always swore by you.... Make a clean breast of the whole damn bizness, if you want me to treat you white. You must have been locoed or drunk, to double-cross me thet way. Come on, out with it.”

“I've nothing to say,” replied Moore.

“You act amazin' strange fer a cowboy I've knowed to lean toward fightin' at the drop of a hat. I tell you, speak out an' I'll do right by you.... I ain't forgettin' thet White Slides gave you a hard knock. An' I was young once an' had hot blood.”

The old rancher's wrathful pathos stirred the cowboy to a straining-point of his unnatural, almost haughty composure. He seemed about to break into violent utterance. Grief and horror and anger seemed at the back of his trembling lips. The look he gave Belllounds was assuredly a strange one, to come from a cowboy who was supposed to have stolen his former employer's cattle. Whatever he might have replied was cut off by the sudden appearance of Columbine.

“Dad, I heard you!” she cried, as she swept upon them, fearful and wide-eyed. “What has Wilson Moore done—that you'll do right by him?”

“Collie, go back in the house,” he ordered.

“No. There's something wrong here,” she said, with mounting dread in the swift glance she shot from man to man. “Oh! You're—Sheriff Burley!” she gasped.

“I reckon I am, miss, an' if young Moore's a friend of yours I'm sorry I came,” replied Burley.

Wade himself reacted subtly and thrillingly to the presence of the girl. She was alive, keen, strung, growing white, with darkening eyes of blue fire, beginning to grasp intuitively the meaning here.

“My friend! He was more than that—not long ago.... What has he done? Why are you here?”

“Miss, I'm arrestin' him.”

“Oh!... For what?”

“Rustlin' your father's cattle.”

For a moment Columbine was speechless. Then she burst out, “Oh, there's a terrible mistake!”

“Miss Columbine, I shore hope so,” replied Burley, much embarrassed and distressed. Like most men of his kind, he could not bear to hurt a woman. “But it looks bad fer Moore.... See hyar! There! Look at the tracks of his hoss—left front foot-shoe all crooked. Thet's his hoss's. He acknowledges thet. An', see hyar. Look at the little circles an' dots.... I found these 'way over at Gore Peak, with the tracks of the stolen cattle. An' no other tracks, Miss Columbine!”