ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS
The news quickly ran over the country
that Vesta Philbrook had hired the notorious Duke
of Chimney Butte and his gun-slinging side partner
to ride fence. What had happened to Nick Hargus
and his boy, Tom, seemed to prove that they were men
of the old school, quite a different type from any
who had been employed on that ranch previously.
Lambert was troubled to learn that
his notoriety had run ahead of him, increasing as
it spread. It was said that his encounter with
Jim Wilder was only one of his milder exploits; that
he was a grim and bloody man from Oklahoma who had
marked his miles with tombstones as he traveled.
His first business on taking charge
of the Philbrook ranch had been to do a piece of fence-cutting
on his own account opposite Nick Hargus’ ranch,
through which he had ridden and driven home thirty
head of cattle lately stolen by that enterprising
citizen from Vesta Philbrook’s herd. This
act of open-handed restoration, carried out in broad
daylight alone, and in the face of Hargus, his large
family of sons, and the skulking refugees from the
law who chanced to be hiding there at the time, added
greatly to the Duke’s fame.
It did not serve as a recommendation
among the neighbors who had preyed so long and notoriously
on the Philbrook herd, and no doubt nothing would
have been said about it by Hargus to even the most
intimate of his ruffianly associates. But Taterleg
and old Ananias took great pains to spread the story
in Glendora, where it passed along, with additions
as it moved. Hargus explained that the cattle
were strays which had broken out.
While this reputation of the Duke
was highly gratifying to Taterleg, who found his own
glory increased thereby, it was extremely distasteful
to Lambert, who had no means of preventing its spread
or opportunity of correcting its falsity. He
knew himself to be an inoffensive, rather backward
and timid man, or at least this was his own measure
of himself. That fight with Jim Wilder always
had been a cloud over his spirits, although his conscience
was clear. It had sobered him and made him feel
old, as Vesta Philbrook had said fighting made a person
feel. He could understand her better, perhaps,
than one whom violence had passed undisturbed.
There was nothing farther from his
desire than strife and turmoil, gun-slinging and a
fearful notoriety. But there he was, set up against
his will, against his record, as a man to whom it was
wise to give the road. That was a dangerous distinction,
as he well understood, for a time would come, even
opportunities would be created, when he would be called
upon to defend it. That was the discomfort of
a fighting name. It was a continual liability,
bound sooner or later to draw upon a man to the full
extent of his resources.
This reputation lost nothing in the
result of his first meeting with Berry Kerr, the rancher
who wore his beard like a banker and passed for a
gentleman in that country, where a gentleman was defined,
at that time, as a man who didn’t swear.
This meeting took place on the south line of the fence
on a day when Lambert had been on the ranch a little
more than a week.
Kerr was out looking for strays, he
said, although he seemed to overlook the joke that
he made in neglecting to state from whose herd.
Lambert gave him the benefit of the doubt and construed
him to mean his own. He rode up to the fence,
affable as a man who never had an evil intention in
his life, and made inquiry concerning Lambert’s
connection with the ranch, making a pretense of not
having heard that Vesta had hired new men.
“Well, she needs a couple of
good men that will stand by her steady,” he
said, with all the generosity of one who had her interests
close to his heart. “She’s a good
girl, and she’s been havin’ a hard time
of it. But if you want to do her the biggest
favor that a man ever did do under circumstances of
similar nature, persuade her to tear this fence out,
all around, and throw the range open like it used to
be. Then all this fool quarreling and shooting
will stop, and everybody in here will be on good terms
again. That’s the best way out of it for
her, and it will be the best way out of it for you
if you intend to stay here and run this ranch.”
While Kerr’s manner seemed to
be patriarchal and kindly advisory, there was a certain
hardness beneath his words, a certain coldness in his
eyes which made his proposal nothing short of a threat.
It made all the resentful indignation which Lambert
had mastered and chained down in himself rise up and
bristle. He took it as a personal affront, as
a threat against his own safety, and the answer that
he gave to it was quick and to the point.
“There’ll never be a yard
of this fence torn down on my advice, Mr. Kerr,”
he said. “You people around here will have
to learn to give it a good deal more respect from
now on than you have in the past. I’m going
to teach this crowd around here to take off their hats
when they come to a fence.”
Kerr was a slender, dry man, the native
meanness of his crafty face largely masked by his
beard, which was beginning to show streaks of gray
in its brown. He was wearing a coat that day,
although it was hot, and had no weapon in sight.
He sat looking Lambert straight in the eyes for a
moment upon the delivery of this bill of intentions,
his brows drawn a bit, a cast of concentrated hardness
in his gray-blue eyes.
“I’m afraid you’ve
bit off more than you can chew, much less swallow,
young man,” he said. With that he rode away,
knowing that he had failed in what he probably had
some hope of accomplishing in his sly and unworthy
way.
Things went along quietly after that
for a few weeks. Hargus did not attempt any retaliatory
move; on the side of Kerr’s ranch all was quiet.
The Iowa boy, under Taterleg’s tutelage, was
developing into a trustworthy and capable hand, the
cattle were fattening in the grassy valleys.
All counted, it was the most peaceful spell that Philbrook’s
ranch ever had known, and the tranquility was reflected
in the owner, and her house, and all within its walls.
Lambert did not see much of Vesta
in those first weeks of his employment, for he lived
afield, close beside the fences which he guarded as
his own honor. Taterleg had a great pride in the
matter also. He cruised up and down his section
with a long-range rifle across his saddle, putting
in more hours sometimes, he said, than there were in
a day. Taterleg knew very well that slinking
eyes were watching him from the covert of the sage-gray
hills. Unceasing vigilance was the price of reputation
in that place, and Taterleg was jealous of his.
Lambert was beginning to grow restless
under the urge of his spirit to continue his journey
westward in quest of the girl who had left her favor
in his hand. The romance of it, the improbability
of ever finding her along the thousand miles between
him and the sea, among the multitudes of women in
the cities and hamlets along the way, appealed to
him with a compelling lure.
He had considered many schemes for
getting trace of her, among the most favored being
that of finding the brakeman who stood on the end of
the train that day among those who watched him ride
and overtake it, and learning from him to what point
her ticket read. That was the simplest plan.
But he knew that conductors and brakemen changed every
few hundred miles, and that this plan might not lead
to anything in the end. But it was too simple
to put by without trying; when he set out again this
would be his first care.
He smiled sometimes as he rode his
lonely beat inside the fence and recalled the thrill
that had animated him with the certainty that Vesta
Philbrook would turn out to be the girl, his
girl. The disappointment had been so keen that
he had almost disliked Vesta that first day.
She was a fine girl, modest and unaffected, honest
as the middle of the day, but there was no appeal
but the appeal of the weak to the strong from her
to him. They were drawn into a common sympathy
of determination; he had paused there to help her
because she was outmatched, fighting a brave battle
against unscrupulous forces. He was taking pay
from her, and there could not be admitted any thought
of romance under such conditions.
But the girl whose challenge he had
accepted at Misery that day was to be considered in
a different light. There was a pledge between
them, a bond. He believed that she was expecting
him out there somewhere, waiting for him to come.
Often he would halt on a hilltop and look away into
the west, playing with a thousand fancies as to whom
she might be, and where.
He was riding in one of these dreams
one mid-afternoon of a hot day about six weeks after
taking charge of affairs on the ranch, thinking that
he would tell Vesta in a day or two that he must go.
Taterleg might stay with her, other men could be hired
if she would look about her. He wanted to get
out of the business anyway; there was no offering for
a man in it without capital. So he was thinking,
his head bent, as he rode up a long slope of grassy
hill. At the top he stopped to blow old Whetstone
a little, turning in the saddle, running his eyes casually
along the fence.
He started, his dreams gone from him
like a covey of frightened quail. The fence was
cut. For a hundred yards or more along the hilltop
it was cut at every post, making it impossible to
piece.
Lambert could not have felt his resentment
burn any hotter if it had been his own fence.
It was a fence under his charge; the defiance was
directed at him. He rode along to see if any cattle
had escaped, and drew his breath again with relief
when he found that none had passed.
There was the track of but one horse;
the fence-cutter had been alone, probably not more
than an hour ahead of him. The job finished, he
had gone boldly in the direction of Kerr’s ranch,
on whose side the depredation had been committed.
Lambert followed the trail some distance. It
led on toward Kerr’s ranch, defiance in its very
boldness. Kerr himself must have done that job.
One man had little chance of stopping
such assaults, now they had begun, on a front of twenty
miles. But Lambert vowed that if he ever did have
the good fortune to come up on one of these sneaks
while he was at work, he’d fill his hide so
full of lead they’d have to get a derrick to
load him into a wagon.
It didn’t matter so much about
the fence, so long as they didn’t get any of
the stock. But stragglers from the main herd would
find a big gap like that in a few hours, and the rustlers
lying in wait would hurry them away. One such
loss as that and he would be a disgraced man in the
eyes of Vesta Philbrook, and the laughing-stock of
the rascals who put it through. He rode in search
of the Iowa boy who was with the cattle, his job being
to ride among them continually to keep them accustomed
to a man on horseback. Luckily he found him before
sundown and sent him for wire. Then he stood
guard at the cut until the damage was repaired.
After that fence-cutting became a
regular prank on Kerr’s side of the ranch.
Watch as he might, Lambert could not prevent the stealthy
excursions, the vindictive destruction of the hated
barrier. All these breaches were made within
a mile on either side of the first cut, sometimes
in a single place, again along a stretch, as if the
person using the nippers knew when to deliberate and
when to hasten.
Always there was the trace of but
one rider, who never dismounted to cut even the bottom
wire. That it was the work of the same person
each time Lambert was convinced, for he always rode
the same horse, as betrayed by a broken hind hoof.
Lambert tried various expedients for
trapping this skulker during a period of two weeks.
He lay in wait by day and made stealthy excursions
by night, all to no avail. Whoever was doing it
had some way of keeping informed on his movements
with exasperating closeness.
The matter of discovering and punishing
the culprit devolved on Lambert alone. He could
not withdraw Taterleg to help him; the other man could
not be spared from the cattle. And now came the
crowning insult of all.
It was early morning, after an all-night
watch along the three miles of fence where the wire-cutter
always worked, when Lambert rode to the top of the
ridge where the first breach in his line had been made.
Below that point, not more than half a mile, he had
stopped to boil his breakfast coffee. His first
discovery on mounting the ridge was a panel of fence
cut, his next a piece of white paper twisted to the
end of one of the curling wires.
This he disengaged and unfolded.
It was a page torn from a medicine memorandum book
such as cow-punchers usually carry their time in, and
the addresses of friends.
Why don’t you come and get me,
Mr. Duke?
This was the message it bore.
The writing was better, the spelling
more exact than the output of the ordinary cow-puncher.
Kerr himself, Lambert thought again. He stood
with the taunting message in his fingers, looking
toward the Kerr ranchhouse, some seven or eight miles
to the south, and stood so quite a while, his eyes
drawn small as if he looked into the wind.
“All right; I’ll take you up on that,”
he said.
He rode slowly out through the gap,
following the fresh trail. As before, it was
made by the horse with the notch in its left hind hoof.
It led to a hill three-quarters of a mile beyond the
fence. From this point it struck a line for the
distant ranchhouse.
Lambert did not go beyond the hill.
Dismounting, he stood surveying the country about
him, struck for the first time by the view that this
vantage-point afforded of the domain under his care.
Especially the line of fence was plainly marked for
a long distance on either side of the little ridge
where the last cut had been made. Evidently the
skulker concealed himself at this very point and watched
his opening, playing entirely safe. That accounted
for all the cutting having been done by daylight,
as he was sure had been the case.
He looked about for trace of where
the fellow had lain behind the fringe of sage, but
the ground was so hard that it would not take a human
footprint. As he looked he formulated a plan of
his own. Half a mile or more beyond this hill,
in the direction of the Kerr place, a small butte
stood, its steep sides grassless, its flat top bare.
That would be his watchtower from that day forward
until he had his hand on this defiant rascal who had
time, in his security, to stop and write a note.
That night he scaled the little butte
after mending the fence behind him, leaving his horse
concealed among the huge blocks of rock at its foot.
Next day, and the one following, he passed in the blazing
sun, but nobody came to cut the fence. At night
he went down, rode his horse to water, turned him
to graze, and went back to his perch among the ants
and lizards on top of the butte.
The third day was cloudy and uneventful;
on the fourth, a little before nine, just when the
sun was squaring off to shrivel him in his skin, Lambert
saw somebody coming from the direction of Kerr’s
ranch.
The rider made straight for the hill
below Lambert’s butte, where he reined up before
reaching the top, dismounted and went crawling to the
fringe of sage at the farther rim of the bare summit.
Lambert waited until the fellow mounted and rode toward
the fence, then he slid down the shale, starting Whetstone
from his doze.
Lambert calculated that he was more
than a mile from the fence. He wanted to get
over there near enough to catch the fellow at work,
so there would be full justification for what he intended
to do.
Whetstone stretched himself to the
task, coming out of the broken ground and up the hill
from which the fence-cutter had ridden but a few minutes
before while the marauder was still a considerable
distance from his objective. The man was riding
slowly, as if saving his horse for a chance surprise.
Lambert cut down the distance between
them rapidly, and was not more than three hundred
yards behind when the fellow began snipping the wire
with a pair of nippers that glittered in the sun.
Lambert held his horse back, approaching
with little noise. The fence-cutter was rising
back to the saddle after cutting the bottom wire of
the second panel when he saw that he was trapped.
Plainly unnerved by this coup
of the despised fence-guard, he sat clutching his
reins as if calculating his chance of dashing past
the man who blocked his retreat. Lambert slowed
down, not more than fifty yards between them, waiting
for the first move toward a gun. He wanted as
much of the law on his side, even though there was
no witness to it, as he could have, for the sake of
his conscience and his peace.
Just a moment the fence-cutter hesitated,
making no movement to pull a gun, then he seemed to
decide in a flash that he could not escape the way
that he had come. He leaned low over his horse’s
neck, as if he expected Lambert to begin shooting,
rode through the gap that he had cut in the fence,
and galloped swiftly into the pasture.
Lambert followed, sensing the scheme
at a glance. The rascal intended to either ride
across the pasture, hoping to outrun his pursuer in
the three miles of up-and-down country, or turn when
he had a safe lead and go back. As the chase
led away, it became plain that the plan was to make
a run for the farther fence, cut it and get away before
Lambert could come up. That arrangement suited
Lambert admirably; it would seem to give him all the
law on his side that any man could ask.
There was a scrubby growth of brush
on the hillsides, and tall red willows along the streams,
making a covert here and there for a horse. The
fleeing man took advantage of every offering of this
nature, as if he rode in constant fear of the bullet
that he knew was his due. Added to this cunning,
he was well mounted, his horse being almost equal in
speed to Whetstone, it seemed, at the beginning of
the race.
Lambert pushed him as hard as he thought
wise, conserving his horse for the advantage that
he knew he would have while the fence-cutter stopped
to make himself an outlet. The fellow rode hard,
unsparing of his quirt, jumping his long-legged horse
over rocks and across ravines.
It was in one of these leaps that
Lambert saw something fall from the saddle holster.
He found it to be the nippers with which the fence
had been cut, lying in the bottom of the deep arroyo.
He rode down and recovered the tool, in no hurry now,
for he was quite certain that the fence-cutter would
not have another. He would discover his loss when
he came to the fence, and then, if he was not entirely
the coward and sneak that his actions seemed to brand
him, he would have recourse to another tool.
It did not take them long to finish
the three-mile race across the pasture, and it turned
out in the end exactly as Lambert thought it would.
When the fugitive came within a few rods of the fence
he put his hand down to the holster for his nippers,
discovering his loss. Then he looked back to
see how closely he was pressed, which was very close
indeed.
Lambert felt that he did not want
to be the aggressor, even on his own land, in spite
of the determination he had reached for such a contingency
as this. He recalled what Vesta had said about
the impossibility of securing a conviction for cutting
a fence. Surely if a man could not be held responsible
for this act in the courts of the country, it would
fare hard with one who might kill him in the commission
of the outrage. Let him draw first, and then
The fellow rode at the fence as if
he intended to try to jump it. His horse balked
at the barrier, turned, raced along it, Lambert in
close pursuit, coming alongside him as he was reaching
to draw his pistol from the holster at his saddle
bow. And in that instant, as the fleeing rider
bent tugging at the gun which seemed to be strapped
in the holster, Lambert saw that it was not a man.
A strand of dark hair had fallen from
under the white sombrero; it was dropping lower and
lower as it uncoiled from its anchorage. Lambert
pressed his horse forward a few feet, leaned far over
and snatched away the hand that struggled to unbuckle
the weapon.
She turned on him, her face scarlet
in its fury, their horses racing side by side, their
stirrups clashing. Distorted as her features were
by anger and scorn at the touch of one so despised,
Lambert felt his heart leap and fall, and seem to
stand still in his bosom. It was not only a girl;
it was his girl, the girl of the beckoning hand.