The sheriff looked steadily at him. 'I mean that you buy cattle from some of them and sell the stuff to a packing house, thereby vouching for them as the
'I did not do any vouching,' Black disagreed. 'I showed Gibson a bill of sale. You can't touch me, if that's what you are getting at. Maybe the boys made a mistake or two in branding. You can't always be sure what cow a calf belongs to, and errors are made.'
'These were not legitimate errors. I have proof that brands were changed.'
'But not that I changed them. Gibson can bring a civil action for damages in case he isn't satisfied.'
'That won't go, Black. The brands were changed outside Casa Rita after you had bought the cattle.' The sheriff took from his pocket a paper. 'I have a warrant for your arrest.'
'I'll be out of jail inside of two hours after you put me in,' Black said, and tossed the paper back contemptuously so that it fell on the porch.
'I don't doubt it,' Elbert answered. 'But after your trial you'll be behind bars quite a while.'
'What evidence you got, outside of this mistake in the brand, which may be some trumped-up evidence fixed by Stevens?'
The sheriff did not intend to tip the hand of the prosecution. 'You'll find out when the time comes. If you want to pack a suitcase, one of the boys will go in and help you.'
Black clumped into the house, Arnold at his heels. He reappeared shortly carrying a shabby valise of imitation leather.
'Let's go,' he snapped. 'I won't need this suitcase at yore jail, but I'll probably stay in town a day or two while I'm starting a suit for false imprisonment.'
Arnold and Wall took the prisoner to the M K ranch, from which they could travel by car to Fair Play. A man was leading a horse across the yard to the blacksmith shop.
'Where is Hal, Mike?' asked Arnold.
'He left on horseback just after you fellows did,' Mike replied. 'Didn't say where he was going, but he carried some grub and a coffee pot with him like he was going camping for a day or two. Told me to tell you not to begin worrying till you saw him again, that he was aiming to commune with nature.'
'That's queer,' Wall said.
'I don't like it,' Arnold replied. 'This is no time for him to be going off alone. He's probably got some crazy idea in his nut.'
'I thought it was funny when he slid out of being on the posse,' Wall remarked. 'Even though he told us we were going on a wild goose chase and wouldn't bag any more than Black was willing for us to get.'
'Hal can look after himself pretty well,' Mike said, by way of consolation. 'I reckon he knows what he is doing.'
None the less, Arnold was troubled all the way to Fair Play and back again. Hal was too fond of playing hunches. Some day one of them would not work out.
WHEN HAL reached the first mesa that looked down on the valley, he rested the buckskin for a minute and his gaze swept the country he was leaving. Distance softened the harshness of the desert, lent it a golden harmony that satisfied his sense of beauty. White billowy clouds were drifting across the sky, and the shadows from them moved very slowly along the undulating floor. He could see here and there a bunch of cattle 'standing on their heads,' as he had heard his father say of stock when grazing.
On this he turned his back and pushed to the far side of the mesa, his horse sidestepping the catclaw and the prickly pear. The ground rose gradually, and when he entered a rocky gulch with yucca sprinkling the steep sides, the ascent grew less easy. It brought him to a grassy park with a growth of live oaks rising to the yonder rim in the midst of which a low log house nestled. He circled around the lip of the park, out of sight of the house, and from the rear dropped down to it through the grove.
It was not a bad stand, he thought. The grass was good. A small stream ran into the meadow, and when he reached the house he saw pans full of sweet milk resting on the sandy bottom of the shallow brook. At the water's edge a woman stood washing clothes. When she turned, startled at the sound of the cowpony's hoof striking a stone, he saw that she was long and lean as a starved Yaqui, with the dry parched face Arizona gives to women who do not take care of their complexions.
'Good evening, Mrs. Kendall,' he said, every sense keyed to alertness. Danger might be ready to explode at him from the house, though his relaxed attitude in the saddle showed no evidence of his awareness of it. 'Aleck at home?'
Hal could see that her angular body was braced rigidly. That might mean only that the word had run through all the gulches and pockets of these hills that he was an enemy who must be guarded against.
'No, he's not,' she answered. 'He's gone — I don't know where.' She added, as an apparent afterthought, 'Looking for strays.'
Her visitor was relieved. She had been about to tell him where her husband was and had remembered in time to be cautious. Hal did not care where Aleck was, since he was not on the ranch watching him.
In spite of her obvious hostility, Hal felt a little rush of sympathy for her. As children they had gone to the same public school at Big Bridge. He had watched her grow up into a pretty girl with the color of wild roses fluttering in her cheeks. Several times, on his summer vacations from college, he had treated her to ice cream sodas at the drugstore, and once he had taken her to a barn dance. In those days she had been gay and full of laughter. But she had made a bad mistake in marriage, and life had done this to her.
'No see you for a long time, Sally,' he said. 'We ought to be more neighborly. Great Scott, it's — why, it must be ten years since I took you to the Peterson dance. You were the prettiest girl in the valley.'
A slow flush beat into her thin cheeks. She needed no reminder of the time when she could not see him without a pulse of excitement beating fast in her throat. She would have jumped then at the chance to marry him, but she knew now that no thought of such a result of their friendship had been in his mind.
'What are you doing here?' she asked stiffly.
'I'm hunting a bull that broke through a fence. Thought it might have strayed up this way.'
'You had better turn and go home,' she warned. 'Don't you know that any one of half a dozen men in this district would shoot you as they would a coyote?'
'Can you tell me where any of them are today?' he asked, smiling at her.
'No, I can't, and I wouldn't if I could.' She flung out the retort violently, then let her voice drop to an anticlimax. 'Aleck isn't one of those who would hurt you,' she said sullenly.
'I know that, Sally,' he agreed gently. 'Aleck is all right. It's a pity he homesteaded here, though it is a good spread.'
Kendall was a shiftless rancher. The rundown appearance of the house and other buildings testified to that, but he was a friendly and good-natured wastrel. 'There is a gang of ruffians around here who have murdered one man and want to kill more of us. Do you blame me for throwing in against them?'
'I blame you for riding up here alone, since you know that. Haven't you a lick of sense, Hal Stevens? Why did you come here? What do you want of me?'
'Sheriff Elbert rode in to the Double B today with a posse to arrest some of these outlaws,' he told her. 'He doesn't want Aleck. There is no charge against him. I hope he has kept his hands clean. But the sheriff wants Frawley and Fenwick and Polk, and three-four others. He won't get them, because news of his coming will have got in ahead of him. They have holed-up somewhere. I don't want to run into them. I am not asking you where they are, but where they are not.'
'What do you mean?' she frowned, puzzled.
'I want to go into the Rabbit Ear Gulch country — or at least into the outskirts of it — without meeting any of the Black gang unexpectedly,'
'But what do you want to do there?'
'Never mind about that, Sally. If Aleck isn't one of them, I'm not going to do him any harm.'
'He isn't. Aleck keeps out of their deviltry, but you're not fool enough not to know that he must keep his mouth shut and so must I.'
