"Meaning to get the Poison Hole? Yes. It's the best cow range I ever saw."

"Meanin' to pack five thousan' aroun' in your tail pocket an' get away with it with this stick-up gang workin' the country."

Thornton shrugged his shoulders.

"There isn't any gang," he said, speaking as a man who knew. "It's one man with a confederate here and there maybe to keep him here. Every job that has been pulled off yet was a one man job."

Blackie polished his bar and shook his head.

"Jed Macintosh got cleaned out night before last," he retorted. "He'd made a clean-up right in here playin' stud. They got his wad before he'd gone to the end of the street. That was more than a one man job."

"Did Jed see more than one?" demanded Thornton sharply.

"No. Jed didn't see nothin', I guess. But we all seen the trail their horses made goin' through Jed's hayfield. There was three horses any way."

With no answer to this Thornton turned away, washed at the faucet near the back door, and settled his tall form upon one of the high stools at the counter. He ate hungrily, with no remark to the men upon right and left of him. But he heard their sc.r.a.ps of talk, noting that the one topic of conversation here in Dry Town was the work of the "stick-up party" manifesting itself in such episodes as the robbery and murder of Bill Varney, stage driver, the theft of Kemble's cattle, the "cleanin'"

of Jed Macintosh and, finally, the affair of last night at Poke Drury's.

He listened with what seemed frank and only mild interest.

"It's a funny thing to me," one little dried-up old man with fierce moustaches and very gentle eyes was saying, "what we got a sheriff for.

This sort of gun play's been runnin' high for nigh on six months now, an' Cole Dalton ain't boarded anybody in his little ol' jail any worse'n hoboes an' drunks for so long it makes a feller wonder what a jail an' a sheriff is for."

"Give him time, Pop," laughed a young rancher at his side. "You know all that's the matter with Cole Dalton is he's got his election on the Republican ticket, an' you ain't never saw a man yet as wasn't a Demmycrat as you'd admit was any 'count. Give him time. Cole knows what he's doin', an' when he does git his rope on Mr. Badman he ain't goin'

to need no jail. Cole'll give him a firs' cla.s.s funeral an' save the county a board bill."

Pop grunted, sniffed, and got to his feet to go to the door and watch the stage pull out. At the rumble and creak of the great lumbering vehicle and the quick thud of the hoofs of the four running horses several men left the lunch counter and followed him. Buck Thornton, finishing his own meal swiftly, went with the others.

Hap Smith took on fresh mail bags in front of the post-office, slammed back his brake, and with his long whip cracking like pistol shots over his leaders' heads, drove on until he had pa.s.sed the Last Chance. And then he came to a halt again, his coach rocking and rolling on its great springs, in front of the bank.

"Hi, there," he yelled mightily. "Git a move on, will you? I'm half a day late now."

Mr. Templeton himself appeared on the instant at the door, a small strong box in his hands. He tossed it up into the ready hands of the bull-necked, round-shouldered guard who sat at Hap Smith's side with a rifle between his knees, the two pa.s.sengers craned their necks with much interest, the guard bestowed the box under the seat, the driver loosened his reins, threw off his brake, and the stage rocked and rumbled down the street, spattering mud on either hand, racing away upon the last leg of its two hundred and fifty mile trip to the last town upon the far border of the great state.

"And Templeton called me a fool!" mused the tall cattle man, a look of vast contempt in his stern eyes.

He stood a little behind the other men, looking over their heads. For only a fleeting second had his glance rested upon the stage at the bank.

Then he looked swiftly at the man in front of him. It was Blackie, the bartender. When Blackie turned abruptly Thornton looked squarely into the black eyes, seeing there an unusually beady brightness, something of the hint of a quick frown upon the thin slick line of the eyebrows.

"Driver and guard will both be needing their shooting irons before they see the border, Blackie," Thornton said quietly.

And then with a short, insolent laugh he returned for the hat he had left hanging upon a nail. Blackie, making no answer, followed, going behind his bar. A little dusky red had crept up into his shallow face, his eyes burned hard into Thornton's as the man from the Poison Hole came by him.

"When you goin' back to the range, Buck?" he asked sharply.

"I'm going to start as soon as I can roll a smoke and saddle a horse,"

Thornton answered him, a little smile in his eyes. And then, as an after thought, "I follow the stage road for about ten miles before I turn off on the trail. Wish I could stick with them clean through."

"What for?" demanded Blackie in the same sharp tone.

"Oh, just to see the fun," Thornton told him lightly. "So long, Blackie."

"You seem to be mighty sure something's goin' to be pulled off this trip."

Thornton hung upon his heel, turning slowly.

"I am, Blackie," he said carelessly. And then, "Say, did you notice the two pa.s.sengers in the stage?"

"No." He put a great deal of emphasis into the denial. "Who was it?"

"I thought you might have noticed. One of them was that crooked eyed jasper I saw you staking to free drinks the last time I was in town."

He stared straight into the smaller man's eyes, saw the colour deepen in his cheeks, shrugged his big shoulders and went to the door. Several of the men who had come back into the room looked after him curiously, then as though for explanation, into Blackie's narrowed eyes. The bartender's hand dropped swiftly out of sight under his bar. Thornton's back was turned square upon him. And yet, as though he had seen the gesture and it had been full of significance to him, he whirled with a movement even quicker than Blackie's had been, and standing loosely, his hands at his side, looked coolly into the bright black eyes. For a moment no man moved. Then Blackie, with a little sigh which sounded loudly in the quiet room, brought his hand back into sight, letting his fingers tap upon the bar. Thornton smiled, turned again and stepped quickly out of the door.

"As long as they don't get any closer to the Poison Hole it's none of my funeral," he muttered to himself. "But if they do, I know one little man who could do a powerful lot of squealing with the proper inducement!"

Not turning once he pa.s.sed swiftly down the street toward the stable, his meditative eyes upon the rocking stage sweeping on to the south-east, already drawing close to the first of the wooded foothills.

He waited ten minutes, watching his horse eating, and then saddled and rode out toward the hills.

CHAPTER VII

AN INVITATION TO SUPPER

It was hardly noon. Here the county road, cutting straight through the rolling fields, was broad, wet and black, glistening under the sun. Out yonder in front of him the stage, driven rapidly by Hap Smith that he might make up a little of the lost time, topped a gentle rise, stood out briefly against the sky line, shot down into the bed of Dry Creek and was lost to him. A little puzzled frown crept into Thornton's eyes.

"A man would almost say old Pop was right," he told himself. "This state is getting too settled up for this kind of game to be pulled off so all-fired regularly. Cole Dalton must be blind in his off eye.... Oh, h.e.l.l! It is none of my business. Any way ... not yet."

He pulled his horse out into the trail paralleling the muddy road, jerked his hat down lower over his forehead, slumped forward a little in the saddle, and gave himself over to the sleepy thirty mile ride to Harte's Camp. He rode slowly now, allowing Hap Smith's speeding horses to draw swiftly away ahead of him. He saw the stage once more climbing a distant ridge; then it was lost to him in the steepening hills. A little more than an hour later he turned off to the left, leaving the county road and entering the mouth of the canyon through which his trail led. He would not see the road again although after a while he would parallel it with some dozen miles of rolling land between him and it.

Behind him lay the wide stretch of plain in which Dry Town was set; about him were the small shut-in valleys where the "little fellows" had their holdings and small herds of long horns and saddle ponies. Before him were the mountains with Kemble's place upon their far slope and his own home range lying still farther to the east. There were many streams to ford in the country through which he was now riding, all muddy-watered, laced with white, frothing edgings, but none to rise higher than his horse's belly.

Here there was a tiny valley, hardly more than a cup in the hills, but valuable for its rich feed and for the big spring set in the middle of it. He dismounted, slipped the Spanish bit from his horse's mouth, and waited for the animal to drink. It was a still, sleepy afternoon. The storm had left no trace in the deep blue of the sky; the hills were rapidly drying under the hot sun. Man and horse seemed sleepy, slow moving figures to fit into a glowing landscape, harmoniously. The horse drank slowly, shook its head in half tolerant protest at the flies singing before its eyes, and played with the water with twitching lips as though, with no will to take up the trail again, it sought to deceive its master into thinking that it was still drinking. The man yawned and his drowsy eyes came away from the wood-topped hills before him to the moist earth under foot. For the moment they did not seem the eyes of the Buck Thornton who had ridden to the bank in Dry Town a little before noon, but were gentle and dreamily meditative with all of the earlier sharp alertness gone. And then suddenly there came into them a quick change, a keen brightness, as he jerked his head forward and stared down at the ground at his feet.

"Now what is she doing out this way?" he asked himself aloud. "And where is she going?"

Though the soil was cut and beaten with the sharp hoofs of the many cattle that had drunk here earlier in the day, it was not so rough that it hid the thing which the quick eyes of the cattle man found and understood. There, close to the water's edge and almost under his own horse's body, were the tracks a shod horse had left not very long ago.

The spring water was still trickling into one of them. There, too, a little to the side was the imprint of the foot of the rider who had gotten down to drink from the same stream, the mark of a tiny, high heeled boot.

"It might be some other girl," he told himself by way of answer to his own question. "And it might be a Mex with a proud, blue-blooded foot.

But," and he leaned further forward studying the foot print, "it's a mighty good bet I could tell what she looks like from the shape of her head to the colour of her eyes! Now, what do you suppose she's tackling?

Something that Mr. Templeton says is plumb foolish and full of danger?"

He slipped the bit back into his horse's mouth and swung up into the saddle.

"She didn't come out the way I came," he reflected as for a moment he sat still, looking down at the medley of tracks. "I'd have seen her horse's tracks. She must have made a big curve somewhere. I wonder what for?"