'Hey, Bill, the noo foreman wants to see yu.'
'Is that so?' a rumbling voice replied. 'Which I'm shorely sorry to keep His Royal 'Ighness waitin'. What's he like, this foreman fella?'
They could not hear the answer, but the deep voice was not so reticent. 'So we gotta be bossed by a boy, huh?' it said.
'Well, Kit warn't no greybeard.'
'He was the Old Man's son--future owner o' the ranch, which is some different. How do we know this yer hombre ain't been planted on us by the Circle B? He may've pulled the wool over Purdie's eyes, but he's gotta talk straight to me, yu betcha. Just yu watch yore Uncle Bill.'
He swaggered through the bunkhouse door, and the new foreman's eyes twinkled when they rested on the short, sturdy figure, with its broad shoulders, long arms, and slightly-bowed legs, of this man he might have trouble with. The amusement was only momentary, and his face was gravity itself when he nodded to the newcomer. None of the outfit noticed that in removing his cigarette his fingers had rested for an instant on his lips; their attention was centred on their companion. What had come over him they could not imagine, but at the sight of the new foreman the belligerent frown had vanished, and his craggy, clean-shaven features expressed only goggling amazement.
'Yu wantin' me?' he had growled on entering, and straightway become dumb, one hand pushing back his big hat and revealing the straggly wisps of hair beneath.
'Glad to meet you, Mister...?' The foreman paused. 'Yago--Bill Yago,' the man replied like one in a dream.
'Shore,' the newcomer nodded. 'Purdie said yu would put me wise. Now, yu tell the boys what needs doin' today, an' then yu an' me'll take a look at the range.'
'I'm a-watchin' yu, Uncle,' whispered a voice.
Yago whirled round. 'Yu, Curly, go get some wire an' mend the fence round The Sump,' he ordered. 'I had to pull two critters out'n her yestiddy.'
The joker's face dropped in dismay; a coil of barbed wire is awkward to handle on foot; on horseback it becomes a pest; moreover, it was some distance to the quagmire, and if there is anything a cowboy thoroughly detests it is making or mending a fence.
'Aw, Bill...' the victim began.
'Beat it,' Yago snapped, and proceeded to apportion work to the rest of the outfit.
Ten minutes later he and the new foreman were riding up the slope at the back of the ranch. Not until they were hidden by the pines did either of them speak, and then Yago turned to his companion.
'Jim, I'm almighty glad to see yu, but what in thunderation brung yu to these parts?' he asked.
Sudden's reply was incomplete.
'As for bein' glad, yu looked more like yu'd been struck by lightnin',' he smiled. 'There's me, shiverin' in my shoes, waitin' for a big stiff to come an' crawl my hump, an' in sifts a ornery little runt like yu.'
Yago's face creased up. 'I shore declared war, didn't I?' he grinned, and then another aspect of the affair occurred to him. 'Say, Jim, yu'll have to let me tell the boys who yu are.'
'Yu breathe a word o' that an' I'll take yu to pieces an' put yu together again all wrong,' the foreman threatened.
'But I gotta explain,' the little man protested. 'Hell's bells, Jim, they'll laugh the life out'n me.'
'Yu can say I'm an old friend, an' seem' yu'll be my segundo, I reckon they'll let yu off light,' Sudden conceded.
'Can't I just mention how yu stood up the posse that time an' kept my neck out of a noose?' Bill pleaded.
'Yu--can--not,' was the decided answer. 'Time yu forgot it yoreself. Yu an' me rode the same range back in Texas, an' so yu let me off that callin' over yu promised. Sabe?'
'Awright,' Yago said resignedly. 'Yu ain't told me why yu come here.'
'For the same reason yu did, yu of pirut. The climate down south was gettin' hotter an' hotter, an' my medical man advised a change.'
'Yu ain't on the dodge, Jim, are yu?' Bill asked anxiously. 'Yu see, I heard o' yu from time to time.'
Sudden's face grew grim. 'I'll bet yu did--an' nothin' good,' he said bitterly. 'Bill, I'm shorely the baddest an' cleverest man in the south-west; I can rob a bank with one hand an', at the same time, hold up a citizen two hundred miles away with the other. I expect they are still fatherin' felonies on me right now.'
Yago nodded understandingly; he knew how it was. Though his own past had been fairly hectic, he was credited with crimes he had not been guilty of. In the West, if the dog got a bad name he was hanged--if they could catch him. It was Sudden who broke the silence.
'D'yu figure Luce Burdette shot young Purdie?'
'Nope,' was the instant reply. 'Luce ain't like the rest of 'em--don't know how he come to be in Ol' Burdette's litter a-tall. More likely one o' the other boys, or some o' that gang o' cut-throats ridin' for 'em.'
They had reached a point on the mountain-side where the trees thinned and became more stunted. Far below they could see the town, a huddled, unlovely collection of tiny boxes; a blot on the beauty of the valley with its varied green of foliage and grass; and stretches of grey sage. Behind them rose the bare, rocky fastnesses of Old Stormy.
'The C P range reaches to four-five miles out o' town,' Yago explained. 'Thunder River is our south boundary, an' our east line is Dark Canyon, the other side o' which lies the Diamond S, the marshal's lay-out.'
Sudden nodded. He was studying the salient features of the mighty panorama before him; Battle Butte, bold and forbidding, at the far end of the valley, a fitting home for the Burdettes, unless their reputation belied them; the craggy, broken, jumbled country to north and south, with the black forests, stony ridges, and deep ravines. His first impression had been correct--it was a fierce and spacious land.
'Who's doin' the rustlin'?' he asked abruptly.
'How'd yu know 'bout that?' Bill said. 'Purdie tell yu?'
'It was just a guess,' the foreman admitted. He waved at the surrounding scenery. 'The durned place was made for it.'
'Yu allus was a good guesser, Jim,' Yago told him. 'Fact is, we are losin' some--few head at a time.'
'It don't need no artist with a runnin' iron to turn a C P into a Circle B,' Sudden said reflectively. 'An' it would be a good way o' rilin' up Purdie.'
'Which it didn't do, Purdie havin' the same idea.'
'So they try somethin' stronger, an' shoot his son, huh?'
'Jim, yo're whistlin',' Yago ejaculated. 'They've allus wanted this range--it's worth five times their own, an' besides'--he hesitated--'it's generally reckoned that somewheres in these rocks behind us is the source o' the goldfound in the river. Yes, sir, the Burdettes are out to drive the Purdies off an' glom on to their property; it ain't just a matter o' revenge.'
Sudden was staring at Battle Butte, remembering the limp, pitiful form he had packed into town like a piece of merchandise. His face was hard, merciless, no trace of youth remaining. Yago knew that expression; he had seen it when the wearer was years younger--no more than a boy.
'We're goin' to have suthin' to say about that, Bill, yu an' me,' the foreman said harshly. 'Outfit to be depended on?'
'Shorest thing yu know,' the other replied.
'Purdie said there was one of mosshead who would mebbe make trouble,' Sudden said slyly, and Bill Yago swore.
'Yu'll have that trouble yet if yu overplay yore hand,' he threatened. 'What's that smoke mean?'
They had worked northwards, and were riding down the lower slope of the mountain, passing over rolling, grassy country studded with thickets, and broken here and there with brush-cluttered depressions. It was from the midst of one of these that a smudge of smoke corkscrewed into the still air, and they heard, faintly, the cry of a calf. The foreman looked at his companion.
'Any o' the boys carry irons?' he asked.
'Nope,' Yago said, and even as he spoke, the tell-tale smoke died out. 'We better look into this.'
Side by side they raced for the spot, slowing up as they neared it. A wall of dense scrub sent them circling in
