Texas by this time,' he guessed, a surprising note of relief in his voice.
'Or burning up rubber to get there,' the owner of the M K added.
From the stable a big bowlegged man in chaps walked across to join them. Above a crook nose very light blue eyes were set a little too close in a brown leathery face. Jim Frawley, foreman of the Seven Up and Down, had the reputation of being a tough nut to crack. His gaze met and clashed with that of Stevens. These two did not like each other. There was no declared war between them, but both knew that some day trouble would flare up.
'Hal says the rustlers have got to our stuff again,' Frank told the foreman sulkily. 'We sure look after our stock well. A neighbor even has to tell us when we have lost some.'
Frawley flushed angrily. His stormy eyes fastened on Stevens. 'I'm listening,' he snapped. 'Where and when?'
The M K man looked with bland insolence at his questioner and turned to Dale. 'Nice meeting you again, Miss Lovell, but there is no use asking me to stay longer. Got a date to see a man at Big Bridge. I really must go.' He gathered the reins, an ironic smile on his face. 'Hope you catch the thieves. Must be annoying to have them load up a truck from your herd so often. This is the third time, isn't it?'
'You seem to know all about it,' Dale retorted. 'But we can do without your sympathy, Mr. Stevens. Give it to the robbers. They'll need it one of these days soon.'
'If I meet the scalawags I'll tell them you are gunning for them. Maybe they'll lay off. Be seeing you, Frank.'
Frawley's beefy face was purple with anger. He was not used to being ignored. 'Fellow, I asked you a question,' he blustered, blocking the way in front of the horse.
Stevens did not explain that he did not answer questions put in that tone of voice. He said, with a cool, insulting drawl, 'I deal with principals, Mr. Frawley.'
The foreman choked with rage. 'For two bits I'd drag you outa that saddle and break you in two.'
The visitor spoke to Dale, polite inquiry in his voice. 'Have you two bits with you, Miss Lovell?'
Frawley caught the bridle rein in his fist and jerked it. 'You can't pull that line of talk on me,' he cried.
Hal Stevens did not argue the point. A spur touched the flank of his horse. It went into the air, and as it came down plunged forward. Its shoulder struck Frawley and flung him headlong.
The rider turned in the saddle and waved a farewell to the Lovells.
FRAWLEY LEAPED to his feet and ran a few yards after the racing horse. He shook his fist in the air and broke into raucous curses. With them he interspersed threats.
'That will do, Jim,' ordered Dale sharply. 'You can do your swearing in the stable when I'm not there.'
The foreman turned to her furiously. 'He rode me down. The scalawag rode me down.'
'He certainly did,' she answered. 'Don't you know better than to snatch at a man's reins when he starts to go?'
Frank had private reasons for being glad to see Frawley humiliated. 'Funny to see him send you spinning,' he said.
'Funny!' The foreman glared at him. 'Pleased you, did it? After the fellow wouldn't answer my question — treated me like I was the dirt under his feet.'
'Next time you ask a question of Hal Stevens, you'd better make your voice real gentle and polite,' Frank suggested maliciously.
'I'll get him if it's the last thing I ever do in the world,' stormed Frawley, and strode in a rage to the stable.
Dale watched their visitor ride down the hill, a figure light in the saddle, flat-backed, strong. He was a man who went his own reckless, devil-may-care way, too careless or too proud to explain himself to those who criticized his manner of life. He might be a lawbreaker, as his father had been before him. Homer Stevens had started the M K spread more than fifty years ago when the ownership of cattle had been as much an adventure as a business. In those days cattle ranged far over a territory thinly populated, and it was easy to build up a herd by the overfree use of a running iron. Dale was not sure that Homer Stevens was a proved rustler, though he had been suspected by many. He had been a hard, tough citizen, one whom few cared to challenge. Her father, Frank Lovell, was one of the few. Bold and hot-tempered, he had spoken his mind. There had been a gun-fight, and both of them carried the bullet scars until the days of their deaths.
Dale turned on her younger brother bitterly. 'Do you have to treat Hal Stevens like a friend?' she demanded. 'After the trouble we've had with the M K all these years, I should think loyalty to father's memory, if nothing else, would prevent it.'
'What's the sense in keeping up an old feud that ought to have been dead a dozen years?' he asked sulkily. 'We've got to live and let live. Hal is all right. He came over here to tell us about the raid. Why can't we be neighborly too?'
'He came to jeer at us,' she differed. 'And what do you mean he is all right? He let that killer Wall lie in the hills back of his place last year. They say he even fed him. Men with clean records don't shelter outlaws.'
'Wall wasn't an outlaw. He was a friend of Hal who got in a jam. He was cleared later, with Hal's help.'
'And I suppose the Black outfit are friends of his caught in a jam,' she suggested, with obvious sarcasm. 'They ride through his pastures to rustle our stock and he doesn't lift a hand to prevent them.'
'Why should he — if they do — and you're not sure of it. Hal isn't sheriff of this county. They let his stuff alone. They're not barking his shins.'
'You have a fine sense of a citizen's duty to the community!' she flung out. 'A man is honest — or he is a thief. You can't touch mud without being defiled.'
Frank shrugged his shoulders. There was never any use in arguing with Dale. She was one of those persons who are always one hundred per cent right, he told himself bitterly. Her opinions were fixed, and she was usually hell-bent on having her own way. He had as much interest in the ranch as she had, but because he was three years younger Dale acted as if he was still a child. One of these days he was going to show her, though it was going to be difficult to get control of the Seven Up and Down, since their father's will had fixed it that she was to be sole manager until Frank was twenty-five. If she had any sense and would allow him more money to spend, he would not be in the trouble he now was.
Dale walked back into the house to telephone Sheriff Elbert of the raid on their pasture. It would do no good. If, as was likely, the stock had been lifted about midnight, the thieves would have had eight or nine hours to reach safety. By this time they were probably holed-up in their hide-out. This might be two hundred miles away, or it might be in the next county if they were selling to a black market.
Ever since her father had first settled here, rustling had been a problem. He had fought the thieves whenever they grew active. Some, he and the other cattlemen had sent to the penitentiary. A few had been shot down when caught. Others had been driven out of the district. As the country grew more settled, cattle-stealing became riskier and thefts decreased. But of late years it had again become prevalent. The rustlers no longer drove the bullocks into the hills, but hauled them away in trucks to an arranged market. A nest of the scoundrels lived in the hills on the outskirts of the Seven Up and Down. Dale had set her stubborn will in a resolve to clean them out.
In this she realized her brother would be no help. Apparently he had in him none of the fighting tallow that had made his father a formidable opponent. A streak of softness ran through him, and already he was drinking too much. They were paying Jim Frawley to run the ranch, he had several times reminded her petulantly. It was a man's job. Why stick out her head and interfere? Dale had a different opinion. As long as she was boss of the Seven Up and Down, she meant to run it.
AS HAL STEVENS jogged down to the main road there was a small smile of amusement on his sardonic face. He had made an enemy of Frawley, but that did not disturb him. He had made a good many in his life. His thoughts were of the young woman he had just left. The vividness of her youth and the hardness of her spirit were
