Could there be two bunches of badmen causing trouble around here?
Longarm considered that possibility for several moments, then tentatively discarded it. Everything pointed to the fact that someone was trying to play the Mcentire Timber Company and the Diamond K against each other. Longarm's instincts told him that one person was behind the trouble, one schemer who was perfectly capable of hiring both renegade loggers and drifting hard-cases with cowboy skills to carry out his plans.
The knife blade practically flew over the wood as Longarm whittled and thought, thought and whittled.
He was on to something, he sensed. If Callahan was the culprit, he could recruit some of his own men to attack the Mcentire operation, but he would still need some place for the owlhoots he had hired to hole up whenever they weren't creating more deadly mischief on the Diamond K. And even if Callahan wasn't involved, whoever the boss was would still have to have a hiding place for his men. Some place handy, where he could get word to them fairly quickly.
Longarm turned his head, looking up at the peaks of the Cascades rising above this lower valley. Somewhere up there was the place where the troublemakers lurked, awaiting the word from their mysterious boss so that they could ride out and bring death and destruction once more to those in their path. Longarm's fingers clenched tightly on the clasp knife.
There was a little matter of a couple of bushwhackings too. The attempts on his life had come before anyone on the Diamond K knew who he really was. That was important, and he realized now that he had tried to grasp that fact several days earlier, as he was going to sleep in the spare bedroom of the ranch house following the meal Wing had brought to him. No one on the ranch--not Kinsman or Traywick, or Seth Thomas, or any of the other hands, no matter how young and hot-headed--had had any reason to try to have him killed so early on in the game. Seth held a grudge against him, sure... but the young cowboy would have tried to settle it himself, not hired a back-shooter. Longarm was sure of that.
Which left Callahan as the only logical suspect. Callahan had a spy in the Mcentire camp; that was beyond dispute. Eli could have told Callahan that a federal lawman was poking around, and Callahan could have issued orders to have that potentially thorny problem nipped in the bud--with a bullet.
But despite everything that pointed to Callahan, there was still one problem: The man had an explanation for his actions, and one that could even be considered halfway logical if you made allowances for how love could addle a man's mind.
Longarm kept coming back to the fact that the gang, no matter who their boss was, had to have a place to hide out. Those stolen cows had gone somewhere. Why not up into the mountains, to some isolated high valley? Some place above the Diamond K range, maybe along the border between the timber leases of Aurora Mcentire and Ben Callahan. It was possible. Longarm knew he was going to have to find out for sure.
He was deep in those thoughts when a familiar voice asked, 'What you carvin' there, Custis?'
Longarm looked up and saw Traywick standing there in front of him. Then he glanced at the branch in his hand, which he had whittled down to practically nothing while he was thinking. There was only a thin length of pale white pine left. Longarm grinned and said, 'Reckon it's an albino snake.'
Traywick hooked another stool with his foot, drew it over, and sat down wearily. 'You ought to see the things one of our hands named Hank can whittle. Boy carved out a little bitty Studebaker wagon once. Wheels turned and the wagon tongue went up and down, just like a real one.' The ranch foreman shook his head. 'Boy's got a gift.'
'I've been thinking, Joe,' said Longarm, changing the subject. 'You've been in this part of the country for a long time, haven't you?'
Traywick nodded. 'Man and boy, nigh onto thirty years. I've ridden over most of it.'
'Are there any places high up in the mountains, maybe just under the timberline, where a group of men could hole up, maybe even keep a small herd of cattle?'
'You're thinkin' of that stock we had rustled back when this whole mess started, ain't you?'
'Those cows had to go somewhere,' Longarm pointed out. 'And those cowboys who raided the lumber camp have to have some place to hide too.'
Slowly, Traywick nodded. 'I suppose there are some places that fit the bill. We never really went lookin' because-' He abruptly fell silent.
'Because you just figured that Aurora Mcentire and her men were to blame,' Longarm finished.
'Made sense at the time,' Traywick muttered with a shrug.
'Think I'll take a ride up into the mountains tomorrow,' Longarm said. 'See what I can find if I look around a mite.'
Traywick glanced over at him. 'Want some company?'
'I'd like that, Joe,' said Longarm. 'Reckon I'd like that just fine.'
As it turned out, though, Joe Traywick didn't ride with him. Longarm planned to start early, before dawn, and as he walked toward the barn in the grayness of approaching day, he heard yelling from inside the big building. A moment later, Traywick came hopping through the open double doors. Longarm hurried over to him to steady him.
'What happened?'
'Son-of-a-bitchin' horse stomped the hell out of my foot,' Traywick groaned. 'My boot's full of blood, Custis.'
'Come on, let's get you in the house.'
Longarm helped Traywick to the back door of the ranch house, knowing that Wing was already up and about in the kitchen. Wing took one look at the foreman's gray, haggard face and exclaimed in Chinese. 'Don't start talkin' that gibberish,' said Traywick as Longarm helped him sit down at the table, 'nor that pidgin English neither. I know you can talk as good as anybody on the ranch, Wing, maybe better.'
Wing gave a mock sigh. 'Can a man have no secrets around here?' he asked rhetorically. 'What in Tophet happened to you, Joe?'
