Читать книгу The Flying U Strikes - B.M. Bower - Страница 9

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THE next day snailed by, a sodden century between dripping dawn and a drizzling dusk. Chip remained within the Devil's Dipper and would have slept the hours away, if his arm had let him. Since its throbbing kept him awake, he did plenty of thinking. The result of his meditations slipped out while Polly Taylor was talking next day about the stealing. He hadn't intended to discuss the matter—or any other—with Polly, but somehow he found himself telling her all about the trouble with Cash Farley and the rest of Big Butch's gang, and just why he had taken it upon himself to run them down on this beef rustling.

Polly hadn't thought about Butch Lewis as the guilty party. She was sure that it was an attempt to implicate the Hobble-O and Butch had always been a pretty good neighbor. "Anyway, he doesn't pay any attention to cattle," she argued. "What he goes after is horses."

The same old argument. It made Chip tired. "He goes after whatever will put the biggest crimp in the other fellow," he stated. "He's after the Flying U because I'm working there; or was. I've got to catch him pretty quick, now, or the weather'll be too warm to haul out more beef. He must take it out the other way, toward Glasgow. He'll have to lay off pretty soon now, so I'm going to get busy."

"Not with that arm," Polly told him flatly. "And they're not selling the beef. They don't care how warm the weather gets; they'll go on killing whenever they find a critter handy. It isn't any selling proposition at all."

"No?"

"Why, no! Haven't you caught on yet?" Polly sweetened the dried apples and set them aside to cool. Her cheeks were red from bending over the fire, almost as red as her mouth, Chip noticed. All the short hairs curled in little ringlets around her face...If she had a mind to fix herself up a little, she'd be good-looking—not that it mattered.

"Caught on to what?" he asked guardedly, knowing beforehand it was just some silly girl notion of hers.

"Why, the—the devilish meanness of them. The foxy way they're keeping clear and making it look like Papa's work. They aren't selling any beef. All they do is skin out the hind quarters and pack them off somewhere and dump them. I can show you one place where they threw at least a dozen into a ravine."

"You sure of that?"

"Of course." She gave him a quick, impatient glance. "Didn't I just say I saw a whole pile of them?" She stood up to go and suddenly rage took hold of her. Both her small hands doubled into fists. "Killing's too good for a man that will do such a thing! I'll pin it on him before I'm through—"

"You will!" Chip's snort of amused contempt was maddening. It placed her down where children strut and brag. "I expect to handle this situation myself," he added, with a tightening of the mouth. "It's a little outside a woman's province, I'm afraid."

"Oh, yes, you'll handle it!" Polly Taylor looked furious. "If it's left for you to handle—You'd let them make a case against the Hobble-O that would cost my father his life! That Cow Island bunch is just waiting for a chance—"

"Calm yourself," was Chip's ironical advice. "Your father has nothing to do with this. I'm the one they're after, and I'm going to Butch Lewis and call for a show-down right now!" Though his voice was calm enough, Chip's eyes and the flare of his nostrils betrayed how angry he was. "I'll thank you not to meddle in this affair."

"Oh, will you!" Polly's breath was coming fast. "You must think you're some punkins, having Butch Lewis and his bunch spending their time killing Flying U cattle just because they're mad at you! Let me tell you one thing, Chip Bennett: If Big Butch was after you, he'd get you! Don't make any mistake about that. He certainly wouldn't take out his spite killing beef—he'd hunt you up and put a bullet through you, and no ifs or ands about it!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!" stormed Polly. "And you needn't speak to me in that supercilious tone of voice, either. You're so darned conceited you think you've started a range war, just because you got Butch Lewis down on you!" She snatched up her gloves, buttoned herself into her coat with indignant haste, and with an angry toss of her head, she went over to her horse and mounted him like a boy who was so mad he couldn't see straight.

But she could not resist a last fling at Chip. She reined over to the fire and looked at him stormily. "If you ever should accidentally find out the truth of this matter," she said, in a suppressed tone of bitterness, "I'm afraid you're going to get the worst jolt you've ever had. You'll find out you don't figure in it at all. And you needn't waste your time on Butch Lewis, I can tell you that much."

Chip permitted his mouth a scornful twist at one corner. "Sorry if he's a particular friend of yours, Miss Taylor—"

"Oh, you—"

"Because I'm certainly going after him."

Miss Taylor gave another toss of her head. "Yes, I've got a picture of you going after Big Butch!" And with that she kicked Pathfinder with her spurs and hurtled off toward the crevice before Chip could translate his emotions into language permissible in the presence of a lady.

"Damn it, I wish she'd been a man when she said that," he gritted helplessly, glaring after her. And he began to pack his belongings—with one hand mostly—and left the Devil's Dipper with his mind wrathfully fixed upon following his own trail regardless. He had talked pretty big about going after Big Butch and calling for a show-down; he wasn't quite ready to commit suicide, he told himself glumly; he'd have to wait for some proof before he did anything quite so drastic as that. But he also told himself that he'd be damned if he were going to let Polly Taylor or any other girl lead him around by the nose. He wasn't broken to lead, he'd have her know.

That day he spent in finding another camp where that darned Taylor girl couldn't locate him. It wasn't easy. He was obliged to go deeper into the Badlands, where few cattle had been tempted to stray, and where the beef butchers would not bother to look for them, their object being to kill beef where they would be found.

The camp he chose didn't suit him, and by night he was so mad at Polly Taylor and so miserable with his arm and certain bruised areas that began to raise cain with him after hours in the saddle, that he was ripe for any crazy notion that seized him. And in the night one came and found him awake and eager to receive it.

Why wait for proof? Didn't he know enough already—all he needed to know? The brilliance of that short cut of logic dazzled him so that he could hardly wait for daylight. It never occurred to him that a touch of fever was behind the brilliance.

A light snow had fallen in the night. Fine weather for trailing the beef killers, he thought; but he wasn't going to monkey around any longer hunting them.

"When you want to kill a snake, you don't start in on his tail," he muttered. "You go to work on his head, by thunder." Which he immediately proceeded to do, breaking camp again and taking the pack horse and colt along with him. The particular snake he was after holed up in a canyon he did not know, but he did know one end of the trail that led to it, and rather than spend hours of haphazard searching in that wild and broken country, he headed toward the Whoop-up Trail.

Where three canyons branched like spread fingers, Chip took the one farthest to the left—a turning that had nearly spelled disaster for him last summer, when he had three outlaws in tow and the horse he rode had known this trail all too well. That ride had been in moonlight, and now the shadowless gray light gave an altogether different aspect to the narrow winding gulch he followed. But certain little landmarks there was no mistaking and Chip's memory held like glue any trail he had once ridden over. He made the right turnings into several different gulches and canyons and so came out finally into the one he wanted. If he had had any doubt of that, two sets of fresh horse tracks pointed the way before him. He followed them boldly, still pleased with his idea.

He came out into a basin which on a map must have looked like the fat body of a tarantula, it was so surrounded by crooked legs of canyons and ravines. At one side, where a willow-fringed creek flowed through, he glimpsed a crude rail fence through the trees, but the hoofmarks led straight on through the snow to where the hills came down in a notch filled with juniper and pines. The end of the trail, by the look of things. He loosened the gun in his holster and rode forward, grim and watchful as a wolf.