The Duke Of Chimney Butte Page 11

  CHAPTER XI

  ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS

  The news quickly ran over the country that Vesta Philbrook had hired thenotorious Duke of Chimney Butte and his gun-slinging side partner toride fence. What had happened to Nick Hargus and his boy, Tom, seemed toprove that they were men of the old school, quite a different type fromany who had been employed on that ranch previously.

  Lambert was troubled to learn that his notoriety had run ahead of him,increasing as it spread. It was said that his encounter with Jim Wilderwas only one of his milder exploits; that he was a grim and bloody manfrom Oklahoma who had marked his miles with tombstones as he traveled.

  His first business on taking charge of the Philbrook ranch had been todo a piece of fence-cutting on his own account opposite Nick Hargus'ranch, through which he had ridden and driven home thirty head ofcattle lately stolen by that enterprising citizen from Vesta Philbrook'sherd. This act of open-handed restoration, carried out in broad daylightalone, and in the face of Hargus, his large family of sons, and theskulking refugees from the law who chanced to be hiding there at thetime, added greatly to the Duke's fame.

  It did not serve as a recommendation among the neighbors who had preyedso long and notoriously on the Philbrook herd, and no doubt nothingwould have been said about it by Hargus to even the most intimate of hisruffianly associates. But Taterleg and old Ananias took great pains tospread the story in Glendora, where it passed along, with additions asit moved. Hargus explained that the cattle were strays which had brokenout.

  While this reputation of the Duke was highly gratifying to Taterleg, whofound his own glory increased thereby, it was extremely distasteful toLambert, who had no means of preventing its spread or opportunity ofcorrecting its falsity. He knew himself to be an inoffensive, ratherbackward and timid man, or at least this was his own measure ofhimself. That fight with Jim Wilder always had been a cloud over hisspirits, although his conscience was clear. It had sobered him and madehim feel old, as Vesta Philbrook had said fighting made a person feel.He could understand her better, perhaps, than one whom violence hadpassed undisturbed.

  There was nothing farther from his desire than strife and turmoil,gun-slinging and a fearful notoriety. But there he was, set up againsthis will, against his record, as a man to whom it was wise to give theroad. That was a dangerous distinction, as he well understood, for atime would come, even opportunities would be created, when he would becalled upon to defend it. That was the discomfort of a fighting name. Itwas a continual liability, bound sooner or later to draw upon a man tothe full extent of his resources.

  This reputation lost nothing in the result of his first meeting withBerry Kerr, the rancher who wore his beard like a banker and passed fora gentleman in that country, where a gentleman was defined, at thattime, as a man who didn't swear. This meeting took place on the southline of the fence on a day when Lambert had been on the ranch a littlemore than a week.

  Kerr was out looking for strays, he said, although he seemed to overlookthe joke that he made in neglecting to state from whose herd. Lambertgave him the benefit of the doubt and construed him to mean his own. Herode up to the fence, affable as a man who never had an evil intentionin his life, and made inquiry concerning Lambert's connection with theranch, making a pretense of not having heard that Vesta had hired newmen.

  "Well, she needs a couple of good men that will stand by her steady," hesaid, with all the generosity of one who had her interests close to hisheart. "She's a good girl, and she's been havin' a hard time of it. Butif you want to do her the biggest favor that a man ever did do undercircumstances of similar nature, persuade her to tear this fence out,all around, and throw the range open like it used to be. Then all thisfool quarreling and shooting will stop, and everybody in here will be ongood terms again. That's the best way out of it for her, and it will bethe best way out of it for you if you intend to stay here and run thisranch."

  While Kerr's manner seemed to be patriarchal and kindly advisory, therewas a certain hardness beneath his words, a certain coldness in his eyeswhich made his proposal nothing short of a threat. It made all theresentful indignation which Lambert had mastered and chained down inhimself rise up and bristle. He took it as a personal affront, as athreat against his own safety, and the answer that he gave to it wasquick and to the point.

  "There'll never be a yard of this fence torn down on my advice, Mr.Kerr," he said. "You people around here will have to learn to give it agood deal more respect from now on than you have in the past. I'm goingto teach this crowd around here to take off their hats when they come toa fence."

  Kerr was a slender, dry man, the native meanness of his crafty facelargely masked by his beard, which was beginning to show streaks of grayin its brown. He was wearing a coat that day, although it was hot, andhad no weapon in sight. He sat looking Lambert straight in the eyes fora moment upon the delivery of this bill of intentions, his brows drawn abit, a cast of concentrated hardness in his gray-blue eyes.

  "I'm afraid you've bit off more than you can chew, much less swallow,young man," he said. With that he rode away, knowing that he had failedin what he probably had some hope of accomplishing in his sly andunworthy way.

  Things went along quietly after that for a few weeks. Hargus did notattempt any retaliatory move; on the side of Kerr's ranch all was quiet.The Iowa boy, under Taterleg's tutelage, was developing into atrustworthy and capable hand, the cattle were fattening in the grassyvalleys. All counted, it was the most peaceful spell that Philbrook'sranch ever had known, and the tranquility was reflected in the owner,and her house, and all within its walls.

  Lambert did not see much of Vesta in those first weeks of hisemployment, for he lived afield, close beside the fences which heguarded as his own honor. Taterleg had a great pride in the matter also.He cruised up and down his section with a long-range rifle across hissaddle, putting in more hours sometimes, he said, than there were in aday. Taterleg knew very well that slinking eyes were watching him fromthe covert of the sage-gray hills. Unceasing vigilance was the price ofreputation in that place, and Taterleg was jealous of his.

  Lambert was beginning to grow restless under the urge of his spirit tocontinue his journey westward in quest of the girl who had left herfavor in his hand. The romance of it, the improbability of ever findingher along the thousand miles between him and the sea, among themultitudes of women in the cities and hamlets along the way, appealed tohim with a compelling lure.

  He had considered many schemes for getting trace of her, among the mostfavored being that of finding the brakeman who stood on the end of thetrain that day among those who watched him ride and overtake it, andlearning from him to what point her ticket read. That was the simplestplan. But he knew that conductors and brakemen changed every few hundredmiles, and that this plan might not lead to anything in the end. But itwas too simple to put by without trying; when he set out again thiswould be his first care.

  He smiled sometimes as he rode his lonely beat inside the fence andrecalled the thrill that had animated him with the certainty that VestaPhilbrook would turn out to be _the_ girl, _his_ girl. Thedisappointment had been so keen that he had almost disliked Vesta thatfirst day. She was a fine girl, modest and unaffected, honest as themiddle of the day, but there was no appeal but the appeal of the weak tothe strong from her to him. They were drawn into a common sympathy ofdetermination; he had paused there to help her because she wasoutmatched, fighting a brave battle against unscrupulous forces. He wastaking pay from her, and there could not be admitted any thought ofromance under such conditions.

  But the girl whose challenge he had accepted at Misery that day was tobe considered in a different light. There was a pledge between them, abond. He believed that she was expecting him out there somewhere,waiting for him to come. Often he would halt on a hilltop and look awayinto the west, playing with a thousand fancies as to whom she might be,and where.

  He was riding in one of these dreams one mid-afternoon of a hot dayabout six weeks after taking charg
e of affairs on the ranch, thinkingthat he would tell Vesta in a day or two that he must go. Taterleg mightstay with her, other men could be hired if she would look about her. Hewanted to get out of the business anyway; there was no offering for aman in it without capital. So he was thinking, his head bent, as he rodeup a long slope of grassy hill. At the top he stopped to blow oldWhetstone a little, turning in the saddle, running his eyes casuallyalong the fence.

  He started, his dreams gone from him like a covey of frightened quail.The fence was cut. For a hundred yards or more along the hilltop it wascut at every post, making it impossible to piece.

  Lambert could not have felt his resentment burn any hotter if it hadbeen his own fence. It was a fence under his charge; the defiance wasdirected at him. He rode along to see if any cattle had escaped, anddrew his breath again with relief when he found that none had passed.

  There was the track of but one horse; the fence-cutter had been alone,probably not more than an hour ahead of him. The job finished, he hadgone boldly in the direction of Kerr's ranch, on whose side thedepredation had been committed. Lambert followed the trail somedistance. It led on toward Kerr's ranch, defiance in its very boldness.Kerr himself must have done that job.

  One man had little chance of stopping such assaults, now they had begun,on a front of twenty miles. But Lambert vowed that if he ever did havethe good fortune to come up on one of these sneaks while he was at work,he'd fill his hide so full of lead they'd have to get a derrick to loadhim into a wagon.

  It didn't matter so much about the fence, so long as they didn't get anyof the stock. But stragglers from the main herd would find a big gaplike that in a few hours, and the rustlers lying in wait would hurrythem away. One such loss as that and he would be a disgraced man in theeyes of Vesta Philbrook, and the laughing-stock of the rascals who putit through. He rode in search of the Iowa boy who was with the cattle,his job being to ride among them continually to keep them accustomed toa man on horseback. Luckily he found him before sundown and sent him forwire. Then he stood guard at the cut until the damage was repaired.

  After that fence-cutting became a regular prank on Kerr's side of theranch. Watch as he might, Lambert could not prevent the stealthyexcursions, the vindictive destruction of the hated barrier. All thesebreaches were made within a mile on either side of the first cut,sometimes in a single place, again along a stretch, as if the personusing the nippers knew when to deliberate and when to hasten.

  Always there was the trace of but one rider, who never dismounted to cuteven the bottom wire. That it was the work of the same person each timeLambert was convinced, for he always rode the same horse, as betrayed bya broken hind hoof.

  Lambert tried various expedients for trapping this skulker during aperiod of two weeks. He lay in wait by day and made stealthy excursionsby night, all to no avail. Whoever was doing it had some way of keepinginformed on his movements with exasperating closeness.

  The matter of discovering and punishing the culprit devolved on Lambertalone. He could not withdraw Taterleg to help him; the other man couldnot be spared from the cattle. And now came the crowning insult of all.

  It was early morning, after an all-night watch along the three miles offence where the wire-cutter always worked, when Lambert rode to the topof the ridge where the first breach in his line had been made. Belowthat point, not more than half a mile, he had stopped to boil hisbreakfast coffee. His first discovery on mounting the ridge was a panelof fence cut, his next a piece of white paper twisted to the end of oneof the curling wires.

  This he disengaged and unfolded. It was a page torn from a medicinememorandum book such as cow-punchers usually carry their time in, andthe addresses of friends.

  _Why don't you come and get me, Mr. Duke?_

  This was the message it bore.

  The writing was better, the spelling more exact than the output of theordinary cow-puncher. Kerr himself, Lambert thought again. He stood withthe taunting message in his fingers, looking toward the Kerr ranchhouse,some seven or eight miles to the south, and stood so quite a while, hiseyes drawn small as if he looked into the wind.

  "All right; I'll take you up on that," he said.

  He rode slowly out through the gap, following the fresh trail. Asbefore, it was made by the horse with the notch in its left hind hoof.It led to a hill three-quarters of a mile beyond the fence. From thispoint it struck a line for the distant ranchhouse.

  Lambert did not go beyond the hill. Dismounting, he stood surveying thecountry about him, struck for the first time by the view that thisvantage-point afforded of the domain under his care. Especially the lineof fence was plainly marked for a long distance on either side of thelittle ridge where the last cut had been made. Evidently the skulkerconcealed himself at this very point and watched his opening, playingentirely safe. That accounted for all the cutting having been done bydaylight, as he was sure had been the case.

  He looked about for trace of where the fellow had lain behind the fringeof sage, but the ground was so hard that it would not take a humanfootprint. As he looked he formulated a plan of his own. Half a mile ormore beyond this hill, in the direction of the Kerr place, a small buttestood, its steep sides grassless, its flat top bare. That would be hiswatchtower from that day forward until he had his hand on this defiantrascal who had time, in his security, to stop and write a note.

  That night he scaled the little butte after mending the fence behindhim, leaving his horse concealed among the huge blocks of rock at itsfoot. Next day, and the one following, he passed in the blazing sun, butnobody came to cut the fence. At night he went down, rode his horse towater, turned him to graze, and went back to his perch among the antsand lizards on top of the butte.

  The third day was cloudy and uneventful; on the fourth, a little beforenine, just when the sun was squaring off to shrivel him in his skin,Lambert saw somebody coming from the direction of Kerr's ranch.

  The rider made straight for the hill below Lambert's butte, where hereined up before reaching the top, dismounted and went crawling to thefringe of sage at the farther rim of the bare summit. Lambert waiteduntil the fellow mounted and rode toward the fence, then he slid downthe shale, starting Whetstone from his doze.

  Lambert calculated that he was more than a mile from the fence. Hewanted to get over there near enough to catch the fellow at work, sothere would be full justification for what he intended to do.

  Whetstone stretched himself to the task, coming out of the broken groundand up the hill from which the fence-cutter had ridden but a few minutesbefore while the marauder was still a considerable distance from hisobjective. The man was riding slowly, as if saving his horse for achance surprise.

  Lambert cut down the distance between them rapidly, and was not morethan three hundred yards behind when the fellow began snipping the wirewith a pair of nippers that glittered in the sun.

  Lambert held his horse back, approaching with little noise. Thefence-cutter was rising back to the saddle after cutting the bottom wireof the second panel when he saw that he was trapped.

  Plainly unnerved by this _coup_ of the despised fence-guard, he satclutching his reins as if calculating his chance of dashing past the manwho blocked his retreat. Lambert slowed down, not more than fifty yardsbetween them, waiting for the first move toward a gun. He wanted as muchof the law on his side, even though there was no witness to it, as hecould have, for the sake of his conscience and his peace.

  Just a moment the fence-cutter hesitated, making no movement to pull agun, then he seemed to decide in a flash that he could not escape theway that he had come. He leaned low over his horse's neck, as if heexpected Lambert to begin shooting, rode through the gap that he had cutin the fence, and galloped swiftly into the pasture.

  Lambert followed, sensing the scheme at a glance. The rascal intended toeither ride across the pasture, hoping to outrun his pursuer in thethree miles of up-and-down country, or turn when he had a safe lead andgo back. As the chase led away, it became plain that the plan was tom
ake a run for the farther fence, cut it and get away before Lambertcould come up. That arrangement suited Lambert admirably; it would seemto give him all the law on his side that any man could ask.

  There was a scrubby growth of brush on the hillsides, and tall redwillows along the streams, making a covert here and there for a horse.The fleeing man took advantage of every offering of this nature, as ifhe rode in constant fear of the bullet that he knew was his due. Addedto this cunning, he was well mounted, his horse being almost equal inspeed to Whetstone, it seemed, at the beginning of the race.

  Lambert pushed him as hard as he thought wise, conserving his horse forthe advantage that he knew he would have while the fence-cutter stoppedto make himself an outlet. The fellow rode hard, unsparing of hisquirt, jumping his long-legged horse over rocks and across ravines.

  It was in one of these leaps that Lambert saw something fall from thesaddle holster. He found it to be the nippers with which the fence hadbeen cut, lying in the bottom of the deep arroyo. He rode down andrecovered the tool, in no hurry now, for he was quite certain that thefence-cutter would not have another. He would discover his loss when hecame to the fence, and then, if he was not entirely the coward and sneakthat his actions seemed to brand him, he would have recourse to anothertool.

  It did not take them long to finish the three-mile race across thepasture, and it turned out in the end exactly as Lambert thought itwould. When the fugitive came within a few rods of the fence he put hishand down to the holster for his nippers, discovering his loss. Then helooked back to see how closely he was pressed, which was very closeindeed.

  Lambert felt that he did not want to be the aggressor, even on his ownland, in spite of the determination he had reached for such acontingency as this. He recalled what Vesta had said about theimpossibility of securing a conviction for cutting a fence. Surely if aman could not be held responsible for this act in the courts of thecountry, it would fare hard with one who might kill him in thecommission of the outrage. Let him draw first, and then----

  The fellow rode at the fence as if he intended to try to jump it. Hishorse balked at the barrier, turned, raced along it, Lambert in closepursuit, coming alongside him as he was reaching to draw his pistol fromthe holster at his saddle bow. And in that instant, as the fleeing riderbent tugging at the gun which seemed to be strapped in the holster,Lambert saw that it was not a man.

  A strand of dark hair had fallen from under the white sombrero; it wasdropping lower and lower as it uncoiled from its anchorage. Lambertpressed his horse forward a few feet, leaned far over and snatched awaythe hand that struggled to unbuckle the weapon.

  She turned on him, her face scarlet in its fury, their horses racingside by side, their stirrups clashing. Distorted as her features wereby anger and scorn at the touch of one so despised, Lambert felt hisheart leap and fall, and seem to stand still in his bosom. It was notonly a girl; it was _his_ girl, the girl of the beckoning hand.