tree.”
She brought out the cake and put it upon the table. The two men sat contemplating it with genuine appreciation, and Elisabeth, like most young women, made excuses.
“My mother was better with that stove than I’ll ever be. She used to say it had a personality, just like a person, and the best way to get along with it was never to get it too hot, and always keep it clean.” She pointed to a dip in the cake’s top. “Well, I’ve always done exactly as she said, and, look there, the cake started to fall anyway.”
She cut them each a huge piece, ate none herself, and refilled the coffee cups, then sat and watched. Again, Jud did not raise his face as long as there were any crumbs on his plate. He only looked up to protest feebly when Elisabeth cut off another great slice and slid it onto his plate.
She did the same for Rufe, and smiled at him when he said he’d known when they’d first ridden in, yesterday, from the way she’d held that old buffalo rifle, that she was the best cook on Cane’s Mesa.
“The only cook, Mister Miller, except for Abe Smith, Arlen Chase’s
Afterward, they went out upon the rambling porch of the main house, and she told them stories of her father, of her mother and brothers. She even told them about the sister who had ridden off and who had never returned, or even written.
This fascinated Jud for some reason. Regardless of how their subsequent talk drifted away, Jud kept bringing it back to the mysterious disappearance of Elisabeth’s older sister.
Even later, when the pair of men went down to the bunkhouse, Jud said: “Why, unless her pa beat her, or some cowboy got her in a family way, would a girl run off from up here?”
Rufe sighed. “What’s so terrible about that? You’ve met kids with peach fuzz for whiskers from here to there, who ran off from somewhere.”
“Boys,” averred Jud. “Boys, and even some men…but she was a girl.”
Rufe went to the door, opened it slightly to look out, examined the sky, the solitary lighted window over at the main house, and sniffed the air before pulling back to say: “I wish to hell she’d turn in.”
That did not trouble Jud in the least. “She won’t hear us if we lead the horses out a mile or so before riding off. Are you ready?”
They went down to the barn, led forth the horses, and methodically saddled up without a word, slung booted carbines under
That veil of obscurity was still up there, across the high heavens. It dulled down the brilliance of the stars, and those lean clouds they had noticed in the afternoon had got reinforcements from up north and were now widening their scope and thickening their depth and height.
Rufe sniffed. “Rain coming, Jud.”
They swung up a mile out, turned eastward, and picked their way, in no hurry at all. They had the full night ahead, and the later it was when they located Chase’s cow camp, the better for their purpose.
But they didn’t reach it.
Jud was rolling a smoke when Rufe’s horse threw up its head, missed a lead, and pointed onward with its little furry ears. Rufe stopped, swung down, and lay a hand lightly upon the horse’s nostrils to pinch off a nicker, if one started.
Jud dropped the cigarette two-thirds fashioned to do the same, but it irritated him, so he hissed a little profanity while they stood, peering out into the gloomy night with its steadily decreasing visibility.
A shod hoof struck rock. They placed the direction of that sound but saw nothing. Rufe leaned close to whisper. “Maybe Chase’s remuda broke out.”
Jud did not reply. He handed Rufe his reins and went ahead like a soundless wraith.
The night was warm, but it was hard Tomake things out, even against the ghostly paleness of the grass, and Rufe had misgivings, even before his partner returned and said: “Hell, it’s three mounted fellers skulking along south of us, heading for the Cane place.” He grabbed his reins and swung away to mount and turn back. Rufe was already in the saddle before Jud reined over close to lean and whisper again.
“I understood her to say they only shot up the ranch about sunrise and about sunset.”
Rufe was straining to detect the southward, onward sound, and glared without comment. Jud subsided and rode with one hand on the butt of his holstered Colt. He did not need an answer to his comment, any-way. Unless those three riders were strangers, which seemed improbable since they were coming directly from the area where Chase’s cow camp was located, they had to be some of Chase’s men.
Rufe formed his own opinion while he was riding. Perhaps Elisabeth Cane’s foemen only harassed her at sunup and sundown ordinarily, but now they knew she had two riders on the Cane place, and that might very well have decided them to stop the harassment and move directly against her. It was entirely possible that Arlen Chase had sent his men over to frighten Miller and Hudson off the mesa, or, if that failed, actually Tomake a serious raid.
As nearly as Rufe could figure it out from what Elisabeth had said, this private range war had been in progress for about two years.
Rufe did not know Arlen Chase, would not have known him if they suddenly met face to face, but he knew cowmen, and he had yet to meet one who was possessed of enormous patience. It was about time for Chase Tomake his move to take over the mesa and get rid of the last of the Canes.
He and Jud were slightly farther back than they could have been while Rufe rode along seeking to second- guess those quiet riders on ahead. The invisible men up ahead suddenly veered northward, and that puzzled both Jud and Rufe. The Cane place was southward and westerly.
At Jud’s scowl of enquiry, Rufe threw up his hands. They turned, also, but now they began closing the distance a little, and, when the horsemen up ahead halted, it was not the abrupt atrophy of hoof falls that signaled this back to Rufe and Jud, it was a strongly resonant voice softly saying: “Remember, just the barn. And as quick as you’ve got it going, get the hell back here.”
Rufe and Jud exchanged a look, then turned off southerly, riding very quietly at a steady walk down through the matted grass on an angle that would put them between Chase’s men and the Cane place.
They did not actually have very much ground to cover. Chase’s men, who they had detected and followed, had been on the right course up until they had veered northward, so Rufe and Jud had simply turned back in the direction from which they had originally ridden out.
They made no particular attempt to determine whether all three of those range riders, or one or two of them, were actually going to try and reach the Cane barn. All they really had to know was that someone was heading for the barn, and the way that man with resonant voice had said it, neither Rufe nor Jud was required to possess perspicacity to guess what he had been talking about. Burning someone’s barn was a very old act of enmity in the range country. It was also very fatal if a man was caught in the act of doing it.
They struck out at a slightly swifter pace once they had plenty of distance between them and Arlen Chase’s riders. The barn’s high hulking silhouette emerged from the night on their right, and they reined over there, swung off, and led their horses in-side where it was like off-saddling in the depths of an ink bottle.
They conversed only once, very briefly, after the horses had been stalled. Rufe said he would watch the front if Jud would watch out back, then they briefly mentioned the advantage of being practical instead of heroic, and parted with a couple of hard smiles.
The night was as hushed as death, and to Rufe, up near the front of the log barn, whose visibility in the direction of the main house where Elisabeth was blissfully slumbering was totally unimpeded, it seemed most probable that those skulkers—one, two, or all three of them for all he knew—would enter the barn from out back. It did not especially worry him that Jud was alone back there. The interior of the old barn was almost Stygian. Jud had a great advantage—none of Chase’s men knew there was an ambush established—and, finally, Rufe knew for a fact that an angrily aroused Jud Hudson was the equal of just about any two cowboys west of the Missouri.
He listened, relaxed a little with one hand on his holstered Colt, and was reflecting upon Arlen Chase’s strategy—which, to Rufe Miller, appeared needlessly prolonged—when he heard what sounded like the rub of two bits of dry wood, one against the other.
He eased just a fraction more in the direction of the wide front opening and detected the sound again. It was
