Trails to Two Moons/Chapter 1
TRAILS TO TWO MOONS
A NOVEL OF THE BIG COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
The day Old Man Ring, the sheepman of Teapot Creek, rode to Two Moons with news of importance, Original Bill Blunt, inspector for the Stockmen's Alliance, fared over the illimitable face of the Big Country at his duty.
His duty was simple: A range inspector protected his employers from theft. This meant anything from reading a burnt brand on a yearling's flank to matching shot by shot, at any and all odds, with thieves. A dull day was one wherein the inspector convinced some raw nester from Missouri that every fat steer happening to pass his claim was not meat divinely sent to still the mouths of a clamorous brood in his ten-by-twelve cabin. It was a cardinal day which saw him flat behind the belly of his horse stretched head to ground—and with hot lead whimpering low, while behind the cut bank of yonder coulee picked marksmen of Zang Whistler's gang were coolly engaging to kill while their comrades ran off the stolen stock.
Original Bill's life was one of variety; it was ebullient and replete with unpremeditated climaxes. Withal, the life of his choosing.
He was of the cattle clan,—born to it in that day when every youth in Texas looked forward to riding the trail with the longhorns, just as the Gloucester and New Bedford boy of the heroic age of sail looked through schoolhouse windows to high harbor spars. The chivalry of the cattle clan had been bred in him by long hours on night herd, by the harrowing moments of stampede in a thunderstorm, the rollicking fellowship of the round-up.
Puncher, trail boss, outfit boss and owner; all four grades of the cattle clan's hierarchy had he passed; its wild, free code was his accolade. In this evil day when barbed wire crept across the free range and a meaner race of sheep herders and their voracious bands was come to dispute with his own people right to what had always been theirs by preëmption, Original Bill Blunt took his place on the covering line of the Great Retreat. A sense of duty, of loyalty to the order that was passing, placed him there. Certain peculiar qualifications, such as a watch-spring movement of hand to holster, a deadly aim and courage passing ordinary made him a competent inspector,—the most competent in all the Big Country. His name was known from Platte Crossing to the Musselshell.
Of smaller stature than the average man, bowed as to legs through a life on horseback, Original's arresting feature was a chest rounded as a wine tun by the great winds he 'd ridden against and the wild, free life of the range. Endurance passing ordinary was spelled by this torso. His head was small by comparison, thatched heavily with coal black hair. A smooth face was all broken into curious sectors by innumerable wind wrinkles. Black eyes had a disconcertingly steady gaze.
Original rode freely but with an occasional eye to the ground for certain tracings and markings, the clay-stained bottom of an overturned pebble, a stalk of Jimson weed still green but broken. Unconsidered trifles such as any one not of the Big Country might very well fail to see, but telling a rounded story to the trailer. As he rode he crooned to himself—and to Tige, his little cutting horse, who was always an appreciative listener—a mournful ballad of the Black Hills:
For cute little Two Bears or Commanche Bills;
They'll lift your back hair in them dreary Black
Hills.
He sang because the trail was plain, because it carried to him intelligence he eagerly sought and there was every chance trouble lay ahead.
So he descended from the high lands round Bad Water and came into the valley of the Teapot, a rough and tumble stream dropping straight down from the Spout, back in the Broken Horns. The dim trail he followed cut through some rough land, over a ford and up the tortuous alleys of coulees straight for a ranch house and corral set on the edge of hayfields. Before he came to the ranch house Original made a detour up a broad draw and drew rein at the rough poplar bars of a smaller corral,—an inclosure not more than twenty feet square neatly hidden away in an alder thicket. Four yearling calves in the corral eyed him askance, shifting restlessly after the silly fashion of their kind.
The horseman's trained eye picked out, even at a distance, burnt hair lines on their flanks, crude jobs with a running iron. He laughed shortly, turned his horse and pushed on to the log-built ranch house. Dropping carelessly from the saddle, he bridle-tied Tige to the ground and walked to the open door. A girl answered his knock on the slab frame.
Her appearance in the sun-washed doorway, with the dark interior of the log house for a background, was a little startling. Startling because of the vivid white and gold of her,—milk-white the full arms bared almost to shoulders; milk-white, with a carnation stripe on lips and morning blush on cheeks, her face. And above the brow the glow and glory of pale dandelion; where her hair dropped in a single thick braid over one shoulder it reflected against her round throat the color of mellow bellflowers. Crisp, like those golden fruits, crisp and inviting was her beauty. Only the eyes repelled. They were blue and cold as deep fiord water, sleepy slow in glance, innocent of all feminine tricks of coquetry. The brooding fatalism of the north countries lay behind their large irises. Yes, and something of the sultry anger of a spoiled child.
Original swept off his hat and stood a bit abashed under the girl's steady, impersonal stare.
"Ole Man Ring lives here, I take it," he began tentatively. She curtly nodded.
"Maybe he 's out riding round somewheres?" Original ventured after a moment's pause in which no invitation to enter—cardinal courtesy of the Big Country—was forthcoming.
"He 's gone to Two Moons," she said. She was standing with arms wide and hands braced against the rough frame of the door. The sunlight cut from the dark background a silhouette of her figure, all blue-gingham clad and cinctured loosely at the waist. A figure of lithe strength, more masculine than suggestive of womanly softness, albeit gloriously rounded. Her pose, blocking the doorway and with competent arms thrown out, emphasized the absence of welcome in her eyes. Original read the subtle hint of challenge in both pose and eyes and was piqued.
"My name is Blunt—inspector for this range. If he was at home I was aiming to ask your father some particular questions, Miss—ah—Miss"
"My father don't know any cowmen," Hilma Ring answered shortly.
"Never too late to get acquainted," he smiled. There was something disarming and ingenuous in Original's smile which on occasion had carried farther than a .45 bullet, but the Norsk stolidity in these blue eyes blasted his best efforts.
"My father and I pick and choose the folks we know." Hilma gave the insult in a studied drawl; her chin was tilted out from the firm round of her throat, and blue-black eyes looked out from beneath lowered lids like the eyes of a panther firming herself for the spring. Original still smiled, but with the lips alone.
"Well, you picked a good one when you chose Zang Whistler of Teapot Spout," he retorted hardily. "He 's one of the politest outlaws and all-round bad men we have in our midst, which is saying something."
Hilma made no answer save through her eyes, which flashed like feldspar in the sun. She took a backward step as if to close the door in the visitor's face.
"An' I take it I did n't miss meeting Zang Whistler right here in your dooryard by a very long time," Original pursued with studied coldness. "Those yearlin' calves, now, they 've still got the lather on 'em from hard runnin'."
This roused her. What knowledge was this stranger advertising by veiled hints? The prick of danger loosed her tongue:
"I don't know what you 're talking about—Zang Whistler—calves. If you have any questions to ask I can answer them as well as my father."
Just a flicker of triumph about Original's mouth. He plumped his challenge at her before she could recover the vantage of silence:
"Zang Whistler rode up here not more 'n an hour ago, driving a bunch of four yearlin' calves. The calves are wearing a skillet-of-snakes brand over their rightful S O Bar, which is so new you can smell the burnt hide. After Zang penned those burnt calves in that tidy little corral you have down in the draw—you directing him from the back of a smallish horse with one skelped hoof—you and him rode up to the house, and Zang sat his horse right here," Original pointed to three tiny damp spots on the dooryard's hardened 'dobe, "while you gave him a goord of water. Then he rode off yonder to Teapot Spout to join his merry companions."
Hilma had unconsciously lifted one hand away from the door frame to bring its fingers playing about her lips while Original delivered this smooth flow of magic. Now she burst forth in hot anger:
"I always heard you cow inspectors were crawling Indians, dodging and twisting in the grass to spy on folks. If you saw all this why did n't you come right out and talk about it then? Afraid of Zang Whistler's gun?" This last shot with a wintry smile.
"Got me wrong, Miss Corntossel," he teased, no spite, but a secret attempt at provocation registering in his voice. "I saw all this, as you say, on the ground. Tracks tell no lies. Zang Whistler rides a horse with one notched hoof; he 's fair in love with that little horse and won't give him up, howbe it leaves a wide trail everywhere. A calf with a healing brand limps on the leg he 's favoring; that 's easy to see in any middlin' soft ground. Anyway, I mostly find cattle with sore brands clustering round the tracks Zang Whistler's horse makes. It 's a funny habit they have."
She stood irresolute for the space of two breaths looking up to the smiling eyes under the shadowing hat brim. Then without hurry she stepped back into the house and closed the door. Original heard a bar sliding into place behind the heavy slabs. He gazed at the shut door with mingled amusement and chagrin; the situation had not been at all distasteful despite the girl's churlishness. That he set down as but of a part with the bad manners of the sheep people. But the chill glory of her face upon which the heavy rope of hair cast a reflected golden sheen! Girls with looks like that were scarce upon the range.
Tige turned to the pressure of a knee and trotted down to the scars of the creek bank behind the ranch house through which the questing trail had led. This track Original pursued up the secret draw to the hidden corral where the stolen yearlings were penned. He dropped the bars and rode in among them.
"Hi! Yip—yip!" The calves milled about the pen foolishly, then plunged out through the opening; wise little Tige nosed and nudged them into a close core of galloping flesh. Down the draw and on to where the Teapot spread its waters wide for a ford Original drove the bunch.
A clean, sharp crack sounded from over where the cliff of the coulee lifted above the scars of winter freshets. A puff of dust kicked up twenty feet or more ahead of the foremost calf. Original whipped his eyes to the right. He saw the clean, chiseled shape of the girl he had just left against the raw blue of the sky on the brink of the gorge a hundred and fifty yards away. She was mounted on a scrubby horse. Even as he looked she raised her rifle again and covered him. A full half minute before smoke jetted from the barrel; the bullet struck many yards too short.
Just as the first calf plunged into the shallows of the ford Original turned in his saddle and with elaborate gesture of politeness lifted his hat. He made a sweeping bow which carried him low over his saddle horn. Then he suddenly reined Tige to his haunches, whirled him about to face the distant figure on the coulee bank and held him steady. Horse and rider presented a fair, wide mark.
Original saw the girl drop the rifle down to her side, eject the empty shell, then slowly lift the shining lance of light once more to her shoulder. Her vivid golden head tipped as she laid her eye along the sights. He sat moveless, smiling, curiously stirred by the deliberate workings of a murder impulse. It flashed upon him that the girl behind that rifle was different from any girl he had ever met. She was a regular stinger—that is what she was—a stinger.
Just as light struck from the far-away barrel lanced itself fair in the man's eyes the trigger was pressed. High over his head the bullet sang. Once more Original swept his hat in a mocking arc, then turned and dashed across the ford to round the scattering yearlings into a traveling unit. He did not even look back. No more shots came. But as he rode the range inspector chuckled deep down in his throat.
"Bluffed, by criminy—bluffed! Original, boy, I reckon the pot 's yours."
For Original Bill Blunt knew that even poor shooting could not excuse that last shot so far over his head. A hand had elevated the rifle barrel at the last saving quarter second.