The Cross Pull/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
Kinney and Moran sat on the edge of the rims above the cabin and Flash sprawled near them. He eyed Kinney suspiciously each time he spoke or shifted his position. Ever since finding the girl Flash’s out-look on life had been gradually swinging back to the one he had held before Moran had left him at the Bar T ranch. Since Moran’s arrival at the cabin the change had been even more pronounced. Flash himself was unconscious of this change, it being the very natural consequence of his renewed association with man; but it was noticeable to Maran. His attitude toward men was now more that of dog than wolf. He did not fear Kinney but he resented his presence here, his intrusion into the life that had been so full and complete for Flash before he came. The one joy Kinney’s arrival had brought to him was that he brought Moran’s horses with him.
These old favorites had thrilled Flash with all the old pride and responsibility of the days long past when he had wrangled them night after night for Moran. Since Kinney had turned them out the evening before Flash had guarded them jealously, holding Kinney’s horses along with Moran’s on a meadow a mile or more below the cabin. The horses had been tired from the long trip across the Wapiti Divide and had alternately fed and rested quietly without attempting to leave. This had slightly disappointed him for he craved one of the long chases after the runaways. From where he lay he could see them grazing on the open meadow.
Kinney and Moran spoke but little. Both men were thinking of Betty’s father who had so recently found his last resting place near the cabin he had built so long ago. Teton Jackson’s secret was buried with him. Aside from these three at the cabin—and Nash—no man had knowledge that this quiet, successful New York business man was the wild rider of the Tetons whose daring had been proverbial almost half a century before. Kinney seemed to know all about the other’s past and Moran once more recalled the rumors which linked the old man beside him with Teton Jackson’s band.
“He was my friend,” Kinney said, after a long and thoughtful silence. “As a boy he was wilder than a hawk—but square. Ideas was different then. All men throwed a pretty wide loop those days. Looking back, I can see that way maybe wasn’t the best—but rustling was what you might call an honorable profession then. Half the men who own big outfits in this country to-day started in business years ago with nothing but a long rope and a running iron. Half the countryside stood in with Teton Jackson then. He was just about the king of this whole country. I’ve heard men link his name along with the riffraff they say is holed up back in here somewheres. That’s all wrong. If they’re here at all it’s because this country affords a thousand natural places where a man can hide away, not because they was connected in any way with him. He wouldn’t have let a gang of those petty larceny murderers light out here at all when he was running things. They’re of a different breed from him. Don’t make any mistakes, son, in your judgment of that little girl’s father. Teton Jackson was a man!”
Moran laid his hand on the old man’s arm.
“His name doesn’t need any defense,” he said. “He changed sides when he saw that his former game was wrong. He played that end even better than the first. But I’m glad you told me all this, Dad.”
Flash had been gazing steadily in one direction, Moran eventually noted this concentration and turned his eyes in the same direction. The horses were quiet and he knew that it was something else that held the dog’s interest for so long.
He looked on beyond the horses, down the valley which widened where each new stream flowed in. Five miles below, it opened onto the meadows of the Thoroughfare, one green strip of which was visible. A lazy ribbon of smoke ascended, twisting oddly about as the shifting breezes caught it. Moran turned his glasses on the spot.
“A camp,” he said. “It’s behind the point of a spur and I can’t see the camp itself but I saw a man haze the horses out onto the meadow. It’s a big outfit. There were more than thirty horses in the string. I’ll go down and see who they are.”
“It won’t hurt any to find out,” Kinney agreed.
Moran called Flash and started for the camp. When they passed the horses Flash looked them over until satisfied that all were there, then followed on after Moran. When they neared the other camp he was vastly uneasy at crossing the trails of so many men. He knew from the fact that Moran held to the open bottoms and used no caution in his approach that he expected to find none but friends. Hard experience in the old days at the Bar T had taught Flash many things. He knew that he must be with some man in order to be safe from others. When alone, all men shot at him on sight. Therefore, he did not forge ahead for a first view of the camp as most dogs would have done but turned the corner of the spur a few feet behind Moran.
Several men who lounged there eyed them curiously as they approached. While Moran was still fifty yards away one of them rolled over and set his toe against a large, blackened coffee pot, pushing it into the edge of the smoldering fire. Distances are far in the western hills and the first thought is that any approaching stranger should be fed. The man’s move had been almost an unconscious one from long experience. They all nodded a greeting as Moran came up and another man pulled a tarp from over the remains of their noonday meal.
“Thanks, boys, but I’ve fed,” Moran, declined. He sat down cross-legged and rolled a cigarette from the makings which one of them offered him.
One of them questioned Moran as to the likelihood of their finding many bear in this locality and they all discussed that topic with enthusiasm.
“I’ve always lived in Vermont,” said the man who had pushed the coffee pot. “I’d like to kill a bear.”
Moran glanced at him in surprise. His instinctive move to warm the coffee had identified him with the west. The courtesy of an easterner might have been as instantaneous but it would never have taken just that form. The leathery complexions and sun-squinted eyes indicated that these men had spent their lives in the open. This was ne sporting camp. Holsters, belts and guns were old with wear as were their clothes. Every saddle which straddled a log nearby carried a battered saddle scabbard and the rifle butts which protruded from them were all the same—.30-.40 Winchester carbines. For some reason they wished him to believe that their object was solely that of hunting bear.
Moran smiled at them and they knew that here was a man of their own kind; one who knew they lied. But no man volunteered any information as to the real reason of their presence here nor inquired the reason for his own.
“Fine dog,” said he of the coffee pot, and they turned and looked admiringly at Flash.
“Part wolf—most wolf,” he qualified. He stretched forth his hand to Flash. “Come here, boy!” he ordered.
Flash avoided the hand and moved stiffly away.
“He’s more or less peculiar and set in his ways,” Moran explained. “I raised him and he never lets any man handle him but me.”
“He’d soon make up with me,” the other persisted, “I’d like to own that dog. I’ve got a pack horse,” he suggested. “He’s about as wicked looking as your wolf. He can kick, strike, buck and bite at the same time; but man—he’s built! And he sure can tote a pack; weighs eleven hundred lean and was raised in the hills.”
“Of Vermont?” Moran mildly queried.
“Bullseye!” the would-be Vermonter said regretfully. “Will you swap?”
Moran shook his head.
“He can’t be bought,” he said.
One of the men leaped suddenly to his feet and crossed to the point of the spur. After looking up the meadow he turned hurriedly to a picketed horse and led him back to the log which held the saddles.”
“Horses pulling out?’ Moran inquired, as he jerked a saddle from the log and threw it on the horse.
“Out of sight,” the other admitted. “I forgot it was my turn to wrangle.”
“I’ll save you a trip,” Moran offered. He walked with Flash to the point of the hill and pointed up the meadow.
“Horses! Horses!” he said. “Go get ’em, boy! Go bring ’em in.” He swung his arm and Flash raced away in the direction which he pointed out.
There were numerous horse tracks in the meadow but they all led one way. A quarter of a mile beyond, he found many spots where the long grass was mashed flat and he knew that after feeding they had bedded down here for a rest. One broad trail led away from here, heading straight up the meadow, and he followed it.
The men watched until he appeared but a swift-moving speck against the green. The pine clad hills closed in upon the ever narrowing valley until the timber pinched out the last slender tongue of open meadow. The speck vanished among the trees.
“There’s a game trail there that leads on up the hills,” the wrangler commented. “He’s on their trail all right. We came in that way and they’re taking their back track out. Someone will have to ride herd on those willow tails every living second or they’ll leave us all afoot.”
Twenty minutes later Moran pointed. The horses fled from the timber and swept straight down the meadow, well bunched and running smoothly. It was a picture which appealed to these men as no other could have done. Each laggard was heeled in turn and each one laid his ears and lashed out with vicious heels as he felt the teeth. As he brought them abreast of the camp Flash veered widely to the right and forged ahead, then inclined toward the leaders and forced them to the left. He held this point of vantage and wheeled them in a circle; then a smaller circle and a smaller until they milled in one spot and at last stood while he sped round them, driving back any bunch quitter who made a break to leave.
The men watched this exhibition and their faces expressed unqualified approval. The alleged Vermonter turned to Moran.
“I’ve got your number,” he said. “You’re Clark Moran. I never laid eyes on that dog before to-day but I’ve heard many a bunkhouse yarn from men who have seen him work. I heard he turned killer on Wind River and that a wolfer trailed him clear back to the Bar T ranch on the Greybull and that they shot him there. It’s my belief that they didn’t shoot deep enough and that he got away. That lobo look; that wolf droop at his hips and that sliding gait of his; those yellow eyes and the way he handles stock. You say yourself he’s a one man dog. There’s only one like that. I’ll bet my spurs he’s the champion of the Greybull—Flash.”
“You’ve guessed it,” said Moran. “Funny how the news filters into an out-of-the-way place like Vermont.”
“It is for a fact,” the other admitted.
Moran’s mind had been working on a solution of the reason for presence here of these eight men under pretense of hunting bear and he thought he had fathomed it at last.
“I’m going to ask you one question, Vermont,” he said.
The man answered readily to the name; thus are new nicknames easily acquired in this land of loose nomenclature.
“I’ll answer it,” he promised.
“I’m no man hunter,” said Moran. “But I think I know what you’re looking for and there’s at least a chance that I can help you find it. You’re a marshal, a ranger or a sheriff. Do you mind telling me which one?”
All eyes turned to Vermont for guidance, seeking a clew as to how to answer it, and from this Moran knew that Vermont was the man in charge.
Vermont turned back his leather vest and exposed a marshal’s badge.
“U.S.,” he said. “I’ve deputized these other boys.”