Читать книгу Outlaw Ranch - Frank C. Robertson - Страница 8

SOMEHOW Chet felt the humiliation of an unnecessary rebuff; even though his sense of justice told him that the Harrisons couldn’t be blamed for not speaking. The girl had never spoken to him, but he was sure that she knew who he was. He believed Bud would have hailed him had his sister not told him not to.

They had been held up and robbed, and undoubtedly they suspected Biggers and Fossum regardless of the masks the men had worn. Now seeing him in their company they naturally placed him in the same category.

It was his own fault, he admitted. He had had an opportunity to make himself known when he gave them back their property, but he hadn’t done it. Now he would have a hard time making them believe he had been their benefactor.

“Gosh, they act like they don’t know us,” Jack Fossum grinned.

“That’s the trouble—they know you too well,” Chet retorted, before he had time to consider the effect.

Instantly Al Biggers gave him a quick, malignant glance.

“I reckon a gal out here like this can’t figger she’ll git anything that she ain’t got comin’,” the fellow growled, and then added an obscene comment.

Chet paled with anger, and he involuntarily turned his horse toward the outlaw. Biggers had his hand upon his gun, and his eyes glared hatred. Chet hesitated. He was determined not to let the insult to the girl pass unrebuked, but he was reluctant to start anything within sight and hearing of the Harrison camp. But before either man could disclose his intentions Jack Fossum intervened.

“Cut that, Al,” he said crisply. “That’s a decent girl, an’ there’s no call for you makin’ a crack like that. Git me?” The smaller outlaw’s voice fairly bristled.

“The hell yuh bawl out,” Biggers snarled, turning his attention to his partner. “Who was gittin’ gay with her yesterday?”

“I was drunk,” Fossum said. “But I didn’t make no rotten remark to or about her. I know a thoroughbred when I see one.”

“Oh, yeah?” Biggers sneered.

Chet wisely dropped back a pace. So long as Fossum had taken it up first he saw no reason to interfere.

“Yeah,” Fossum shot back. “An’ if you ever make a crack like that again I’ll climb yuh like a tree. An’ git yore hand off’n that gun.”

“Oh, all right; it ain’t wuth havin’ a row about,” Biggers growled.

“An’ what Jack says goes for me,” Chet said. “I’ve never spoke to that girl in my life, but if I’ve got any say about it she can travel as safely here as she could in her own door-yard.”

“I’ve noticed that you’ve kinda appointed yoreself her guardian,” Biggers said.

“I don’t have tuh do that—she don’t need a guardian,” Chet retorted.

He could see that Jack Fossum was trying to signal his companion, and he guessed that Fossum’s interference had been dictated solely by a desire to prevent a quarrel which might result in the loss of profits the Wild Ones hoped to gain.

“Well, here we are,” Fossum said cheerfully. “Let’s quit chewin’ the fat an’ see about supper.”

They were told to turn their horses into a pasture, and invited to sleep in the haymow of a large barn. The rancher refused to take pay for their meals.

At supper Chet noticed that in spite of all the hospitality displayed the rancher and his family were afraid of them. He was later to learn that it was this fear on the part of the people in the remote localities which made the depredations of the Wild Ones possible. They dared not inform on the Wild Ones or refuse to aid them when necessary. In return, Kirk Holliday and his men offered them a certain immunity from their merciless exploitation.

Notwithstanding the attitude of the Harrisons, Chet was determined to have a talk with them before he left Boxtown. He knew it might be his last opportunity, for he and his companions would travel much faster than the buckboard possibly could. But the opportunity did not present itself until the next morning.

Chet was the first one out of the loft after they heard the rancher come out to milk his cows. There was a small pony in the stable and he promptly borrowed it to run in their horses. He mounted the animal bareback, and had just found the horses at the lower end of the pasture when he saw Bud Harrison coming after their team on foot. It had been turned into the same pasture.

Immediately Chet cut the team of ponies in with his own horses and drove them toward the boy. He helped Bud catch the one which Nevada called Coley, and when the boy had got on the horse Chet proceeded to help him drive the entire band toward the Harrison camp.

“Well, how have you liked the trip this far, Bud?” he asked.

The boy gazed at him uncertainly. He had not as yet spoken.

“It’s been exciting at any rate,” he replied finally.

“Oh, is that so?” Chet asked innocently.

“When did you leave Curryville?” Bud asked bluntly.

Chet hesitated, but he found it impossible to lie to the boy.

“Not long after you did,” he admitted.

“Did you pass our camp last night?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why didn’t you stop? I invited you to camp with us.”

“Well, since I had never met yore sister I didn’t figger it would be just proper for me tuh come bustin’ in on yuh,” Chet said.

“Look here, Mr. Kelvin,” the boy burst out, “we were stuck up last night, and my sister had to turn over all our money to a couple of thugs.”

“Yuh don’t say!” Chet exclaimed.

“We think we know who they were,” the boy went on. “We think they were the two fellows you were with last night.”

“I wouldn’t put it a-past ’em,” Chet nodded.

“But somebody held them up and made ’em give our stuff back,” Bud volunteered. “He didn’t show himself, but we surely owe him a lot. I don’t know what we’d have done if we hadn’t got our money back.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad yuh had such good luck,” Chet said warmly.

“Know what my sister thinks? She thinks all three of them fellows are members of those Wild Ones we’ve heard so much about. She thinks that the one that made ’em give the money back thought it was too dirty a trick to rob us, and so he made his pals give it back. Yuh know they claim Kirk Holliday never robs poor people.”

The boy leaned far over his pony’s withers, but he was watching the cattle buyer narrowly.

“And maybe she’s wrong,” Chet contended quietly. “Maybe those two were just drunk enough to think it would be a good joke to scare you a little, an’ intended tuh give it back themselves in a little while.”

The boy was frankly astonished.

“You think that was how it was?” he asked eagerly. “They was drunk when they passed us. But Nevada says he’s dead sure they’re all three Wild Ones.”

“I think that’s how it was,” Chet said. “But I think mebbe I’ve kinda got some track of yore brother. That’s why I wanted tuh talk with you this mornin’.”

“You have? You know where Charley is? Gee, that’s great!”

“Not so fast,” Chet remonstrated. “I’ve only got the slimmest kind of a clue. It may not be anything at all. Tell me, do you remember if your brother had a thin scar from the top of his nose over above his left eye?”

“Yes, he did,” the boy said eagerly. “I remember about him having it the last time he came home. When we asked him how he got it he laughed and said he’d got it in a fight with one of Kirk Holliday’s Wild Ones.”

“Then you’d heard about the Wild Ones before you came out here?”

“Oh, yes. We’d read about ’em in the papers, and then Charley told us a lot more about their ways. But what else have you found out about Charley?” Bud demanded impatiently.

“Not a thing,” Chet answered.

They had now reached a point where he must turn off toward the corral, or else continue on to the Harrison camp. He was relieved when Bud insisted that he ride on to their camp.

For some strange reason Chet found himself trembling at the prospect of talking with Leda Harrison. He wasn’t usually nervous in the presence of girls, for all that he seldom sought their society. The cold, impersonal look the girl gave him didn’t ease his self-consciousness to any extent.

“Say, sis, Mr. Kelvin here knows something about Charley,” Bud announced excitedly.

Leda looked up quickly, and her eyes sought the cattle buyer’s face with an unvoiced hope. Her expression quickly changed to one of suspicion.

“You—you have met my brother?” she asked in a low voice.

“I’m sorry to say I never have,” Chet said. “I’m a stranger in this country, like yourself. But after Bud told me about him, I made some inquiries from the two men I’m traveling with, after I found out they worked on this I X L outfit you say your brother owned.”

Leda Harrison’s reticence disappeared before her intense desire to get information.

“Those men work for the I X L, you say? And they know my brother?” she cried.

“They claim to work for the I X L. Whether they do or not I can’t say, but they deny all knowledge of your brother.”

“But the scar?” Bud put in.

“One of them mentioned that when I was makin’ my inquiries, but the other man said the fellow who had such a scar was named Johnson,” Chet was compelled to admit.

“Then—then you don’t know anything about my brother after all,” the girl said dismally.

“But if those fellows work on the I X L they must have known Charley,” Bud argued.

“Yes,” the girl said. “They must know what has happened to him. If—if—he has been done away with they must have had a hand in it. They are outlaws, I’m sure. I’m certain that the man who took our money last night was the fellow who offered me a drink from his whisky bottle.”

“And the other cuss was the one who shot the heel off my boot,” Bud added.

The boy lifted a brand-new boot and gazed ruefully at the place where the long, forward-jutting heel had been.

“There does seem to be something queer about the business,” Chet admitted. “They say the I X L belongs to a man by the name of Adam Broome—a man well past sixty. Don’t you think it would be well if you had somebody else investigate for you, before you went down there?”

All the girl’s latent suspicion flared anew.

“Outlaws or not, I mean to find out for myself what happened to my brother,” she declared.

“Hey, look out!” Chet yelled, pointing toward the fire. A pan of bacon on the coals had suddenly caught fire. Nevada was busy at the buckboard. Leda turned, and grasped the handle of the skillet in her bare hand. The handle was hot and she juggled it wildly for a minute from one hand to the other. Then, just as she had to let it go, a calloused paw seized the handle just below her hand and placed the skillet on the ground.

“I’m afraid I was too late tuh save the bacon, but I hope yuh didn’t git burned,” Chet said.

The girl displayed two soft palms across which wavered-several long white welts.

“I—I—guess I’m not much good at this camp-fire cooking,” she faltered. “But I’ll learn,” she added grimly.

“Have yuh got some soda?” Chet demanded, and when Nevada hurriedly produced a package he put some on the girl’s painful burns, and urged her to continue the application until the pain was relieved.

“It’s better already,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”

“Sorry I couldn’t do more,” Chet said. “And I’d like tuh do something tuh help yuh find yore brother.”

“I’m afraid we owe you something already,” she said. “Aren’t you the man who gave us back our money?”

She was looking straight at him out of honest golden-brown eyes which wouldn’t be denied. He couldn’t lie to her.

“Yes, I’m the man,” he admitted.

“And those other two were the men who held us up?”

“Yes.”

The question he had dreaded came as inexorably as doom.

“Then why are you traveling with them?”

He couldn’t tell her that it was because he wanted to protect her and her brother, and no other reason would suffice, unless he branded himself as a crook.

“We just happen tuh be travelin’ in the same direction,” he said weakly. “As for the robbery, it was probably a drunken prank. No doubt they would have given you back yore money later.”

“It was no prank,” she declared. “And if it was a joke it was just as reprehensible.”

“I agree with you,” was all Chet could find to say. He had no excuse for reopening the discussion about her brother; no reason for delaying his departure. Leda Harrison knew that his two companions were outlaws, and she knew that he knew it. He had returned her money, but that couldn’t condone his evil association in her eyes.

“It’d been a dang poor joke on them fellers if they hadn’t busted my rifle.” Nevada spoke up. “If they hadn’t bent the bar’l around like a letter ‘s,’ I’d uh trailed ’em tuh Kirk Holliday’s own bailiwick but what I’d uh got that money back.”

“Well, I hope you don’t have no more bad luck,” Chet mumbled, and remounted his pony. He could see Biggers and Fossum watching him, so he herded the horses on to the corral.

“Why don’t yuh invite yore friends along when yuh go callin’?” Al Biggers inquired sourly.

“I don’t pay social calls this early in the mornin’,” Chet replied evenly. “I was just helpin’ the kid ketch his horses.”

“Yeah? Took yuh a long time, didn’t it?”

“That girl burned her hand. I helped wrap it up.”

“What the hell is that outfit doin’ in here? Where they headin’?” Biggers demanded.

“To tell the truth,” Chet said, looking the man straight in the eye, “they’re lookin’ for that man Charley Harrison I spoke tuh you about. He’s their brother.”

“The hell he is!” Biggers blurted.

“Are you sure you boys don’t remember him?”

“There never was nobody in this country by that name,” Biggers asserted flatly.

“Mebbe he went by another name,” Chet murmured. “They claim that he owned the I X L.”

“Owned the—” Biggers paused abruptly and directed a glance at his companion.

Chet saw Fossum shake his head slightly.

“Somebody,” the outlaw said heavily, “has been feedin’ ’em taffy. The I X L has belonged tuh old Adam Broome for twenty years.”