Paradise Bend.

by William Patterson White.

CHAPTER I

TOM LOUDON

"And don't forget that ribbon!" called Kate Saltoun from the ranch-house door. "And don't lose the sample!"

"I won't!" shouted Tom Loudon, turning in his saddle. "I'll get her just like you said! Don't you worry any!"

He waved his hat to Kate, faced about, and put his horse to a lope.

"Is it likely now I'd forget?" he muttered. "We'd do more'n that for her, wouldn't we, fellah?"

The horse, a long-legged chestnut named Ranger, turned back one ear.

He was accustomed to being questioned, was Ranger. Tom Loudon loved him. He had bought him a five-year-old from the 88 ranch the year before, and he would allow no one save Kate Saltoun to ride him. For the sun and the moon, in the estimation of Tom Loudon, rose and set in the black eyes of Kate Saltoun, the exceedingly handsome daughter of John T. Saltoun, the owner of the great Bar S ranch.

This day Loudon was riding into Farewell for the ranch mail, and Kate had commissioned him to do an errand for her. To serve his lady was joy to Loudon. He did not believe that she was aware of his state of mind. A flirt was Kate, and a charming one. She played with a man as a cat plays with a mouse. At which pleasant sport Kate was an adept.

But Loudon realized nothing of all this. Shrewd and penetrative in his business, where Kate was concerned he saw nothing but the obvious.

Where the trail snaked over Indian Ridge, ten miles from the ranch house, Loudon pulled up in front of a lone pine tree. On the trunk of the pine a notice was tacked. Which notice set forth briefly that two hundred dollars' reward was offered for the person or persons of the unknown miscreant or miscreants who were depleting the herds of the Bar S and the Cross-in-a-box outfits. It was signed by Sheriff Block.

Who the miscreants were no one knew with certainty. But strange tales were told of the 88 punchers. It was whispered that they carried running-irons on their saddles. Certainly they displayed, when riding the range, a marked aversion to the company of men from the other ranches.

The remains of small fires had been found time and again in draws bordering the 88 range, and once a fire-marked cinch-ring had been picked up. As the jimmy and bunch of skeleton keys in a man's pocket so are the running-iron and the extra cinch-ring under a puncher's saddle-skirts. They indicate a criminal tendency; specifically, in the latter case, a whole-hearted willingness to brand the cattle of one's neighbour.

Loudon read the notice of reward, slow contempt curling his lips.

"Signs," he said, gently. "Signs----! What we need is Vigilantes--Vigilantes an' a bale o' rope!"

He turned in his saddle and looked back over the way he had come.

Fifty miles to the south the Frying Pan Mountains lay in a cool, blue, tumbling line.

From where Loudon sat on his horse to the Frying Pans stretched the rolling range, cut by a thin, kinked strip of cottonwoods marking the course of a wandering river, pockmarked with draws and shallow basins, blotched with clumps of pine and tamarack, and humped with knolls and sprawling hills. The meandering stream was the Lazy, and all the land in sight, and beyond for that matter, was the famous Lazy River country held by three great ranches, the Cross-in-a-box, the Bar S, and the 88.

Of these the 88 was the largest and the farthest west of the three, its eastern line running along the high-bluffed banks of the Falling Horse, which emptied into the Lazy some ten miles from the 88 ranch house.

East of the 88 lay the Bar S, and east of the Bar S was the Cross-in-a-box. The two latter ranches owned the better grazing, the more broken country lying within the borders of the 88 ranch.

Beyond the 88 range, across the Falling Horse, were the Three Sisters Mountains, a wild and jumbled tangle of peaks and narrow valleys where the hunter and the bear and the mountain lion lived and had their beings. East of the Lazy River country lay the Double Diamond A and the Hog-pen outfits; north and south stretched other ranches, but all the ranges ended where the Three Sisters began.

Loudon swung his gaze westward, then slowly his eyes slid around and fastened on the little brown dots that were the ranch buildings of the Bar S. He shook his head gently and sighed helplessly.

He was thinking partly of Kate and partly of her father, the gray old man who owned the Bar S and would believe nothing evil of his neighbours, the hard-riding 88 boys. Loudon was morally certain that forty cows within the last three months had transferred their allegiance from Bar S to 88, and he had hinted as much to Mr. Saltoun.

But the latter had laughed him to scorn and insisted that only a few cows had been taken and that the lifting was the work of independent rustlers, or perhaps of one of the other ranches. Nevertheless, in response to the repeated urging of his foreman, Bill Rainey, Mr.

Saltoun had joined with the Cross-in-a-box in offering a reward for the rustlers.

Loudon was well aware of the reason for Mr. Saltoun's fatuous blindness. That reason was Sam Blakely, the 88 manager, who came often to the Bar S ranch and spent many hours in the company of Kate. Mr.

Saltoun did not believe that a dog would bite the hand that fed him.

But it all depends on the breed of dog. And Blakely was the wrong breed.

"He sh.o.r.e is a pup," Loudon said, softly, "an' yellow at that. He'd steal the moccasins off a dead Injun. An' Block would help him, the cow-thief."

Then, being young, Loudon practised the road-agent's spin on the notice of reward tacked on the pine tree, and planted three accurate bullets in the same spot.

"Here, you! What yuh doin'?" rasped a grating voice in Loudon's immediate rear.

Loudon turned an unhurried head. Ten yards distant a tall man, black-bearded, of a disagreeable cast of countenance, was leaning forward across an outcrop.

"I asked yuh what yuh was doin'?" repeated the peevish individual, glaring at Loudon.

"I heard yuh the first time, Sheriff," replied Loudon, placidly. "I was just figurin' whether to tell yuh I was shoein' a horse or catchin'

b.u.t.terflies. Which answer would yuh like best?"

"Yuh think yo're mighty funny, Tom Loudon, but I tell yuh flat if yuh don't go slow 'round here I'll find a quick way o' knockin' yore horns off."

"Yuh don't say. When yuh goin' to begin?"

Loudon beamed upon the sheriff, his gun held with studied carelessness.

Sheriff Block walked from behind his breastwork, his eyes watchful, his thumbs carefully hooked in the armholes of his vest.

"That notice ain't no target," he grunted, halting beside the pine tree.

"It is now," remarked Loudon, genially.

"It won't be no more."

"O' course not, Sheriff. I wouldn't think o' shootin' at it if you say no. It's a right pretty piece o' readin'. Did yuh write it all yoreself?"

The sheriff's eyes became suddenly blank and fixed. His right thumb slowly unhooked.

"I only fired three shots," observed Loudon, the muzzle of his six-shooter bearing on the pit of the sheriff's stomach.

The sheriff's right thumb rehooked itself hurriedly. His frame relaxed.

"Yuh shouldn't get mad over a joke," continued Loudon. "It's plumb foolish. Been hidin' behind that rock long?"

"I wasn't hidin' behind it. I was down in the draw, an' I seen you a-readin' the notice, an' I come up."

Loudon's gray eyes twinkled. He knew that the sheriff lied. He knew that Block had heard his comments on Blakely and his own worshipful person, but evidently the sheriff did not consider this an opportune time for taking umbrage.

"So yuh come up, did yuh? Guess yuh thought it was one o' the rustlers driftin' in to see what reward was out for him, didn't yuh? But don't get downhearted. Maybe one'll come siftin' along yet. Why don't yuh camp here, Sheriff? It'll be easier than ridin' the range for 'em, an'

a heap healthier. Now, Sheriff, remember what I said about gettin'

red-headed. Say, between friends, an' I won't tell even the little hoss, who do you guess is doin' the rustlin'?"

"If I knowed," growled the sheriff, "his name'd be wrote on the notice."