"Well, what are you waitin' for?" he cried. "Get out!"

It was all the thanks the men got for the unctuously given story, and their hard work.

They vanished rapidly through the door, and hastened to air their grievance and repeat their story with added "frills" to ready ears at the bunk house.

Jim gazed through the doorway after them, and Dan furtively watched him for some silent moments.

"Well?" he said at last.

The tone of his inquiry was peculiar. There was no definite anger in it, nor was it a simple question. Yet it stung the man to whom it was addressed in a way that set his teeth gritting, and the blood running hot to his head.

"Well?" he retorted. And their eyes met with the defiance of men of big physical courage.

Dan was the first to avert his gaze, but it was only to hide that which lay behind in his thoughts. And when he spoke there was a harsh smile in his eyes.

"What ha' ye got to say t "--he jerked a thumb in the direction of the bunk house--"that feller's yarn?"

Jim's answer was unhesitating. He shrugged as he spoke.

"Guess there's no definite reason to doubt it. There are the cattle.

They're all re-branded with my brand. I've seen 'em. The hand that did it was a prentice hand, though. That's the only thing. The veriest kid could detect the alteration."

"It's your brand." Dan's eyes were still averted.

"Sure it's my brand. There's no need for more than two eyes to see that."

McLagan's quirt again began to beat his boot-leg. Jim understood the temper lying behind that nervous movement. He felt sick.

"Wher' d'ye keep your brands?"

"There's one here and one up in the hills, in my little implement shack, where I run my cattle. I keep that there for convenience."

"Just so."

Jim was groping under the bed on which Dan was reclining. He heard the reply, but chose to ignore it.

But he knew by its tone that suspicion had been driven home in this cattleman's mind. He drew an iron out from amongst the litter under the bed, and held it up.

"That's the iron," he said. "It would be well to compare it on the brands. It is identical with the iron I keep up in the hills."

"For convenience."

The men's eyes met again.

"Yes--for convenience." There was a sharpness in the foreman's acquiescence.

The Irishman's eyes grew hot. The whites began to get bloodshot.

"Seems to me it's fer you to see if that iron fits, an', if so--why?"

In spite of Dan's evident heat his tone was frigid, and its suggestion could no longer be ignored. Jim Thorpe, conscious of his innocence, was not the man to accept such innuendoes without protest. Suddenly his swift rising anger took hold of him, and the fiery protest which McLagan had intended to call forth broke out.

"Look here, McLagan," he cried, vainly trying to keep his tone cool, "I've been with you about four years. You know something of my history, and the folks I spring from. You know more than any one else of me. For four years I've worked for you in a way, as you, yourself, have been pleased to say in odd moments of generosity, in a way that few hired men generally work out here in the West. You've trusted me in consequence. And you've never found me shirking responsibilities, nor slacking. You've helped me get together a bunch of cattle with a view to becoming independent, and shown me in every way your confidence. You've even offered to lease me grazing. These latter things have not been without profit to you. That's as it should be.

However, I just mention these things to point the rise in confidence which has grown up between us. You understand? Now the cattle stealing begins. These cattle are brought in here with my brands on. There is no doubt they are your steers. You listen to the story of the manner of their finding. You witness the cold suspicion of me which those two men possess. Those four years go for nothing. Your confidence won't stand the least strain. You do not accuse me straight out, but show me the suspicion with which you are contaminated in a manner unworthy of an honest man. I tell you it's rotten. It's--it's despicable. Do you think I'm going to sit down under this suspicion? It will be all over the countryside by to-morrow, and I--I shall be a branded man. I tell you I'm going to sift this matter to the bottom. But make no mistake.

Not for your sake--nor for anybody else but myself. Those four years of hard honest work don't count with you. Well, they shan't count with me. I'll stay here with you so that I'm handy whenever wanted--you understand me, I suppose--'wanted.' But I'll thank you to let me pursue my investigations in the way I choose. Your work shan't suffer.

If I don't lay my hands on the thief or thieves in a month's time, then write me down a wrong 'un. If I do round 'em up I'll at once take my leave of you, for I've no use for a man of your evident calibre."

He was standing when he finished speaking. His dark eyes said far more than his words, and the clenching hands at his sides conveyed a threat that Dan was quick to perceive. However he felt the other's words he gave no sign. And his att.i.tude was once more disconcerting and puzzling to the furious Jim. He wanted one of those outbursts of Celtic pa.s.sion he was used to; he wanted a chance to hand out unrestrained the fury that was working up to such a pitch inside him.

But the opportunity was not given. Dan spoke coldly and quietly, a process which maddened the injured man.

"Words make elegant pictures," he said, "an' I hate pictures. See here, Jim Thorpe, you've ladled it out good an' plenty. Now I'm goin'

to pa.s.s you a dipper o' hash. There's the cattle; there's your brands; there's wher' they was found. Three nuts that need crackin'. You guess you're goin' to crack them nuts. Wal, I'd say it's up to you. Crack 'em. An'--you needn't to stop here to do it. You can get right out an'

do the crackin' where you like. An' when you've cracked 'em, an' you feel like it,--mind, I don't ask you to--you can come along and you'll find this shack still standin'. That, too, is up to you. Meanwhiles, Joe Bloc'll slep right here. Guess you'll be startin' out crackin'

nuts to-morrow morning. There's just one thing I'd like to say before partin', Jim," he added, his frigidity thawing slightly. "I'm a cattleman first an' last. It's meat and drink an' pocket-money to me.

My calibre don't cut any figure when there's cattle stealin' doing. As sure as St. Patrick got busy with the snakes, I'd help to hang the last cattle-rustler, an' dance on his face after he was dead--if he was my own brother. Think o' that, and maybe you'll understand things."

He rose from the bed and walked out of the hut without waiting for a reply.

For a full minute Jim stood staring after him through the doorway.

Then his eyes came back to the branding-iron on the bed. He stared at it. Then he picked it up and mechanically examined the stars at the end of it. Suddenly he flung it out of sight under the bed where it had come from, and sat on the blankets with his face resting in his hands.

It was a hideous moment. He was dismissed--under suspicion. Suddenly he laughed. But the sound that came was high-pitched, strained, and had no semblance of a laugh in it. A moment and he sprang to his feet.

"By G--, he can't--he can't know what he's done!" he muttered, a new horror in his tone. "Sacked--'fired'--kicked out! he's branded me as surely--as surely as if he'd put the irons on me!"

CHAPTER XX

APPROACHING THE TRIBUNAL

The sun was mounting royally in the eastern sky. There was not a breath of air to temper the rapidly heating atmosphere. The green gra.s.sland rolled away on every hand, a fascinating, limitless plain whose monotony drives men to deep-throated curses, and yet holds them to its bosom as surely as might a well-loved mistress. It was a morning when the heart of man should be stirred with the joy of life, when lungs expand with deep draughts of the earth's purest air, when the full, rich blood circulates with strong, virile pulsations, and the power to do tingles in every nerve.

It was no day on which a man, branded with the worst crime known to a cattle country, should set out to face his fellow men. There should have been darkening clouds on every horizon. There should have been distant growlings of thunder, and every now and then the heavens should have been "rent in twain with appalling floods of cruel light,"

to match the hopeless gloom of outraged innocence.

But the glorious summer day was there to mock, as is the way of things in a world where the struggles and disasters of humanity must be counted so infinitesimal.

This was the morning when Jim Thorpe turned his stiffly squared back upon the "AZ" ranch. He wanted no melodramatic accompaniment. He wanted the light, he wanted the cheering sun, he wanted that wealth of natural splendor, which the Western prairie can so amply afford, to lighten the burden which had so suddenly fallen upon him.

It was another of Fate's little tricks that had been aimed at him, another side of that unfortunate destiny which seemed to be ever d.o.g.g.i.ng him. Well might he have cried out, "How long? How long?"

Whatever the fates had done for him in the past, whatever his disappointments, whatever his disasters, crime had found no place in the accusations against him. It almost seemed as though his destiny was working its heartless pranks upon him with ever-growing devilishness.

With subtle foresight, and knowledge of its victim it timed its efforts carefully, and directed them on a course that could hurt his spirit most. Even when his inclinations, his sensibilities were at their highest pitch, down came the bolt with unerring aim, and surely in the very direction which, at the moment, could drive him the hardest, could bow his head the lowest.

Four years in the cattle world had ingrained in him the instincts of a traffic which possesses a wholesome appeal to all that is most manly in men. Four years had taught him to abhor crime against that traffic in a way that was almost as fanatical as it was in such men as McLagan and those actually bred to it. He was no exception. He had caught the fever; and the cattleman's fever is not easily shaken off. As McLagan would show no mercy to his own brother were he a proven cattle-thief, so Jim loathed the crime in little less degree. And he was about to face the world, his world, branded with that crime.