The Arrow-Point Estate/Chapter 10

Blue River was little more than the traditional general store, saloon and hotel which go to make up many so-called towns of the range West. Reid did not find Burns in the store or hotel, though the man who owned the latter told him that Burns was stopping there. Reid tried the saloon and found no one there in whom he was interested.

He was sitting at a card-table playing a desultory game of solitaire when a hand came down heavily on his shoulder.

“Hello! When did you get canned?” asked Burns, standing over him and grinning.

Reid swept the layout together and left it. “Just the other day.”

“Too many ideas to suit uncle?” Burns resettled his hat and sat down on an edge of the table facing Reid; and his face showed that he was glad to see some one from the Arrow-Point.

“I had an accident,” said Reid, grinning a little at the memory of it.

“How’s everybody? I wrote yuh a letter the other day.”

“I know you did. That’s why I happen to be here,” Reid told him laconically. “I felt like having a talk with you.”

The eyes of Burns asked question, but he only said: “Glad yuh did. I was going out to work to-morrow. How are the folks—how’s Skookum?”

“She’s well,” Reid informed him, to the confusion of Burns. “Say,” he added, looking full at the other, “what was that about Arrow-Point cattle out here, Burns?”

“Nothing. I just mentioned seeing some. The Dipper—a new outfit—located here this summer. They’ve been putting in Arrow-Point stuff, I heard. I saw a few of the cattle, and asked some one who owned them. What about it?”

Reid got out cigarette material, took a paper and sifted in a thin stream of tobacco. “I’m here to find out ‘what about it?’ Burns. If you’re not too taken up with that job you’ve rustled, you can help me out maybe.” He rolled and lighted the cigarette with a deliberation that irritated Burns.

“Well, throw it out of yuh, man!” he cried impatiently. “What’s the row? Is it a crooked deal, eh?”

“Crooked?” A splotch of dark red showed in the cheeks of Reid. “If my sights are right, old-timer, it’s so crooked the horns of a mountain-sheep would look like a carpenter’s rule beside it. How many cattle did John Burkell run? You were with him long enough to know.”

“Right around seven thousand,” Burns answered quickly. “Last spring—Burkell was killed just as we finished the general—we branded out fifteen hundred calves.”

“And how much stock do you reckon was reported when the appraisers were through? Just three thousand one hundred and eighty-six.” Reid leaned forward, eying the other intently.

“Hell! Why”

“Uncle Howard,” Reid went on, “counted the stock himself. The appraisers couldn’t hardly tell a saddle-horse from a cow; and the crew! He fired all the old hands, and collected the greenest, most idiotic lot of pilgrims I ever saw outside of a freak show. You can imagine what a layout like that knew about brands or counting cattle. I was kept on—and I’ve wondered since what kind of looking jay I am, to be classed with that bunch. Uncle Howard may have thought I’d just ambled out of the East. Anyhow, I was around most of the round-ups, and I kept a rough tally, as any stock-hand naturally would. I didn’t know till about a week or two ago how many cattle they estimated in the Arrow-Point herds. Soon as Miss Burkell showed me the report I began to prick up my ears.”

“The damned, low-down sneak!” Burns gritted. “It’s always been a case of ‘I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,’ with me. But being the brother of a white man like John Burkell, and so pious and all, I never suspected the old thief.”

“Well, I’ve got the joker up my sleeve,” said Reid with some satisfaction. “He’s just turned in his quarterly report, all in red and black ink to show what he didn’t and what he did get off with; and the red ink wasn’t conspicuous. I thought when I read it that the beef shipments looked mighty shy—you know he’s been running two outfits—one of his own, and one for the Arrow-Point. I was with the Arrow-Point wagon all the time, and he gravitated between the two. The two layouts gave him a good chance to do some fancy juggling stunts with cattle if he wanted to. I'll know for sure when I get back. I happen to have a friend that’s a stock inspector in the Chicago yards, and I wrote to him to look up all shipments of Arrow-Point stuff, and any other brands owned by John Burkell. I got him his job. And he’s such a methodical cuss it will run back to the first hoof John Burkell ever shipped to that yard. I guess maybe we won't have uncle on the hip!”

“Hanging,” Burns observed vindictively, “would be a lot too good for that old Siwash. What does Lorrie think?”

“I didn’t tell her. I wanted to hear from Chicago first, and have something to back my play. Then I got your letter, and it looked like it might be a good idea to come out here and scout around here a little. I can’t say I just savvy this deal. Holding out on beef shipments would be dead easy, but so far as I know there hasn’t been any other stock sold except some horses. However, it would be easy for him to ship a train or two of stock cattle without me knowing it. I want to find out who got them, and how.”

“I’m with yuh, of course,” said Burns, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Reid nodded approval of the scorching epithets which Burns proceeded to apply to Uncle Howard, but stuck to the business in hand. “If you know where I can rustle a good horse,” he said, “we'll pull out in the morning and try to locate this Dipper outfit. We ought to be able to squeeze enough out of them to do for uncle. I know the deal’s a crooked one. Why, Burns, according to that report, he’s hardly been able to meet expenses! And at the rate he’s going, there won’t be enough left when he is through to pay their way to the poorhouse. Every day that he runs things, as I see it, the estate is whittled down a little.”

“We'll start to-morrow at sunup,” averred Burns. “The Dipper’s on some creek north of here. I'll find out near as I can before we start.”

Next morning there was no sunrise to mark their going, but a gray dawn and a drizzling rain. It speaks eloquently of their earnest intent that they started without hesitating over the discomforts of the trip. With the prudence of much experience they took with them a pack outfit, so that, if need came, they could camp out indefinitely. Of the exact location they could glean but little information. It lay somewhere to the north, and it was fifty or sixty miles away. Blue River was not the new outfit’s home town, though a train of Arrow-Point cattle had been unloaded there about six weeks before, and immediately driven north. There was nothing about the Dipper to excite the curiosity of Blue River, so that no one had taken much notice of their affairs.

All that day, humped in their yellow slickers, they jogged northward. When the dark came down with a fresh burst of rain, they camped uncomfortably beside a little creek churned yellow by. the storm, and boiled their coffee and fried their bacon over a sputtering fire in the shelter of a cut-bank. They talked but little, and then not of what was large in their thoughts.

By morning the rain had not ceased, and they went on cheerlessly. By noon the sky showed light spots in the clouds, and their spirits responded enough so that they talked of what they would find at the end of their journey. It was all very matter-of-course. It never occurred to either of them that it was none of their business, and that success meant no reward for them. A man was systematically robbing a girl they cared for, and they meant to stop him at all costs. That neither expected thereby to win favor with the girl did not in the least affect their determination.

That afternoon the clouds settled on them in a dense fog, and though they kept doggedly on till dark, they did not travel north. So they missed any sign of habitation and were obliged to camp again. For this, and because they wandered far out of their way and knew too little of the country to realize the fact until many miles had been wasted, it was late on the third day before they rode up to the Dipper corrals.

Too wise to ask questions at the start, they made up by listening to the desultory conversation of the men. It was all of the trivial happenings about the ranch, and beyond knowing for a certainty that this was the place they were seeking, they learned little. After supper they smoked and began warily to question.

“Who owns this layout?” Reid asked boldly and casually.

A short, bow-legged stock-hand lit a cigarette and answered: “Feller name uh McGraw; come from Wyoming. Goin’ to stock up here pretty big, I guess. He don’t stay here himself. Got a partner in it. Yuh lookin’ for work?”

“If there isn’t too much of it,” Reid parried. “Don’t the old man ever show up here?”

“Not very often,” the cow-puncher told him. “Just once, since I went to work. Stayed overnight and pulled out again.”

That was the extent of their information, and it might mean much or little. Reid wished that he could ask Burns what he thought of “McGraw.” It sounded to him significant, and brought to mind a possibility that hadn’t occurred to him before. Judge McGraw—eh? Maybe. And if so, was Uncle Howard the partner?

In the tiny bunk-house they did not risk comparing impressions when they went to bed. Reid, as had almost become a habit lately, lay awake far into the night. Nor did Burns sleep over soundly.

Next day they lingered, apparently without just cause. The foreman had told them after breakfast that he needed no more men, and directed them to another ranch twenty miles west; logically, they should have saddled up and departed. They did not, however, and the foreman began to eye them distrustfully. They could not make much of the foreman, though they discussed him in discreet undertones while watering their horses.

At dinner he reminded them again that it was a long way to the next ranch, and a bad trail after dark. They could scarcely avoid taking such a broad hint, and went to the corrals after their horses.

There they got a genuine shock. They met, face to face, Uncle Howard himself. He had ridden up and was dismounting when they turned the corner of the stable. They stopped short in the path and stared. Uncle Howard stared back, his gray eyes nasty ones to meet.

Burns and Reid, without a word, saddled their horses hastily and left the ranch. Five minutes of silent riding, and then Burns turned in his saddle and looked back.

“I guess,” he remarked grimly, “we run up against the partner.”

Reid laughed shortly. “Looks like it. The thing now is to make tracks. I guess we don’t need any plainer evidence than that.”

They rode down to a little creek and pushed in, Reid crossing ahead. The horse of Burns seemed thirsty, and Burns sat with reins limp and let him drink his fill, with the pack-pony nuzzling the water beside his stirrup. Reid, on the far bank, pulled up and looked back in time to see Burns sway in the saddle and fall; a second, and then a rifle cracked faintly, somewhere from the hill behind.

Reid rolled precipitately off his own horse, just as another bullet came singing by—and he knew that it was meant for him. It occurred to him in a flash of understanding that if Lorrie Burkell’s property was to be saved to her it would be well to let the man with the rifle believe that he had not missed that second shot. From the way Burns was lying, he felt sure that he was already dead.

So Reid, instead of lighting on his feet, permitted himself to drop suggestively to the ground, taking the precaution of hanging to the bridle-reins—he had no mind to be set afoot in that wilderness. He waited, watching the hillside from under the belly of his horse. After five minutes of dead silence two riders came out upon the ragged brow of the hill and stood looking down upon the creek below. Reid did not need to speculate about their identity. He knew.

From where they were they could not ride directly down to the creek, because of the sharp slope and the washed-out bank below. The trail had turned aside from that hill and skirted its base, and Reid and Burns had followed the trail. It was evident that the two had cut straight across the hill, and so come within shooting distance. Reid lay and cursed himself for not believing the worst of them. He had not dreamed they would resort to deliberate murder.

He looked wistfully across at Burns, huddled just on the edge of the stream, partly in the shallow water. He had not so much as moved a finger. Reid came near wading over to him, but thought of Lorrie and Skookum and gritted his teeth together. Not until those two had gone did he dare to move; he lay there hoping and praying that they would ride down within range of his six-shooter.

Burns’ horse moved on, splashing unconcernedly across the creek, and the pack-pony followed obediently. Reid’s horse looked down at his prostrate master, took a step, and, feeling the tug on his rein, stopped again. It was all very natural, Reid thought—natural, supposing they both had been killed, and he had, in falling, clung to the reins in a death-grip.

Apparently those two watching thought it perfectly natural, also. They stood half a minute longer, then turned and went back whence they had come. Reid guessed that they would hurry back to the ranch before their absence was too prolonged to pass unnoticed when the murder was discovered.

He waited until he was sure they were gone, then went over to where Burns lay. It was as he had thought; Burns, shot through the back in a direct line with his heart, must have died instantly. Reid knelt beside him, blaming himself because he had urged Burns to come. He thought of Lorrie in the power of Uncle Howard—and that brought back the sober calculating sense of him. A man who would shoot two unsuspecting men in the back would stop at nothing.

He waited no longer, but laid Burns gently on his back and pulled his hat down over his face; then he waded across and mounted his own horse.

Before daylight he loped heavily into Blue River, reported the murder and the circumstances to the deputy sheriff there, and two hours later was aboard a train speeding back to Fallen Rock.