CHAPTER IV.
It was afternoon when Strong came back to consciousness the next day. The doughty Maria had evidently put something into the broth she had given him that had made him sleep soundly. He could not remember going to bed. There was salve on his wound under a clean bandage and his rib was plastered. The old woman had tended him like a child.
His fever had left him and he felt vigorous, clear-headed. Against Maria's desire he got up and dressed and ate some breakfast. Before he had finished the meal, invigorated by the strong coffee, the vaqueros arrived, bringing the herd. They had had no more adventures, but he heard them talking volubly in Spanish with Maria after they had turned the herd into a fenced-in pasture through which the creek ran.
Strong was relieved. He would not have to go through it all with Maria. He kept himself from dwelling on the details. The death of Bramley seemed like a dull weight that lay on his heart. He remembered the table and looked in the drawer. There was a folded paper there, torn from a ruled letter pad, addressed to himself. He remembered now that Bramley had sat up late the night before they started. His eyes misted as they read the scrawl that was Bramley's last will and testament.
In case anything should happen to me on this trip I leave all my share in the Bar B—ranch, stock, and tools and what money there is on hand—to my partner Sam Strong, who now has a half interest in it. I do this of my free will, being in sound mind, because he is my friend and partner.
Henry Bramley.
Witnessed by Maria Valdez.
It was properly dated and without doubt a valid document. He had been more thoughtful than Strong. There was a scrap of paper pinned to the sheet.
Dear Partner Sam: I've got a sort of hunch we may run into something this trip. So I'm fixing things. There ain't anybody else belongs to me, but look out for Marla as long as she lives. Also Bill Hurley and Perro. He was all the real pal I had before you come along, Hen.
Bramley had known enough not to mention Maria in the document that she witnessed. Strong read it through again and folded it up, putting it away in his wallet. He decided to tell Maria about it. How to probate it as a will he did not know and he did not feel keen about doing it—not yet.
There was a broken-down lawyer in Laguna who might advise him—a hard-drinking, disappointed man whose main practice of his profession consisted in making speeches upon every occasion for oratory and some that were not. There was a story back of him and Strong imagined he had been disbarred. But his advice was good and, when he was neither too sober nor too drunk, he had his redeeming qualities. One of these, to Strong, was his unqualified condemnation of Lobo Smith whom he denounced as an unmitigated scoundrel.
Curiously enough, Lobo did not seem to resent this but found more sport in getting Clayborne drunk—for the lawyer could not resist an invitation from any one when alcohol got its grip on him and dulled his pride—then goading him into declamatory invective.
But that could rest. There were other matters more vital. He had been so supremely confident of his ability to trail that he had made one mistake in his rage against the raiders. That was to have left the three bodies to the buzzards and, after them, the coyotes. They would be beyond recognition. It had seemed to him like a fitting vengeance at the time but in it he had destroyed his chance of identifying them with Lobo's men. And he had failed to trace them by trailing, failed utterly.
He meant to go back to the ravine again and try to solve the puzzle, but he feared he could not do so. He had gone over the ground too thoroughly and there was no solution. In some way Lobo had been too clever for him.
But he resolved to call a meeting of the association, which should be done in any event. He would show them Bramley's will and the note, strive to urge them to some action though now, without proof, only suspicion, he knew his efforts were destined for failure.
The ranch affairs had to be attended to. There was the beef contract. He had to carry on. Bramley would wish it. Strong was conscious of feeling older, of deeper sentiments than he had believed himself capable of. It almost seemed as if Bramley was about the ranch, liable to appear at any moment. The ranch house was primed with tokens of him. Perro, coming in to sit mournfully by Strong, or following him about the ranch, no longer full of life, barking, helping to herd the cattle, was a constant reminder, staying close to him, day and night, as if aware of the mutual loss they had suffered.
The meeting of the association turned out as he had expected. There was grief shown and fitting sentiments expressed but all spoke of the folly of attempting to prove anything against Lobo. They passed resolutions of regret, offered help, advised him that in their opinion no one would disturb his full tenancy and promised him support if it was needed, but they plainly discounted his story of trailing the sign. They evidently considered that he had run across disconnected traces and that the signs by the river were those left by some one seeking strays, as he had done, signs that, because they happened to be on higher ground, had been left when a freshet—a frequent occurrence—had wiped out others. The next time Strong had visited the ravine there had been a rise in the stream and all trail was missing.
And Lobo was away. He did not visit Laguna, nor any of his men. Such absences on his part were periodical, sometimes lasting two and three weeks. When he was in Three Corners nothing kept him away from Laguna longer than three or four nights and, on his return from his excursions, he would invariably ride in full force, and hold carousal, flinging gold about—always gold coins, tens and twenties. Some few men were always left to guard the cañon fence.
These few who had ventured to explore were always warned before they reached the barrier, a voice from an unseen guard giving caution and, if it was not promptly heeded, a rifle bullet would come humming from some spot high up the cliff, unbetrayed by smoke from the high-powered charge, its source confused by the volleying echoes the report aroused. For Strong to attempt to force a way would be suicide.
Maria was stanch, nodding her old head until her triple chins worked like the bellows of an accordion, using her Mexican proverbs.
“Make haste slowlee, señor,” she would say. “He who walk slow go sure. To walk to Sevilla, ees a long way. But I am a woman. Thees men of Lobo they have their girls in the cantinas. Weeth them they quarrel, and of them they tire. Then, perhaps, the women tell what they know. What there is I shall learn an' spin together, weave like Navajo blanket. Then we see the pattern.”
She told him how Bramley had found her in a miserable hovel, ill from nursing her husband who had died, how he had helped her, how he had got her two sons out of trouble by giving them money, traveling to Santa Fe where they had been arrested for a larceny charge, breaking and entering an empty house with some other lads, foolish with mescal. How he had brought her to the ranch after he had got some one to nurse her back to health, given her money for necessities, even for masses for her husband's soul.
“Now, since I cannot work for heem until I die, I shall help to avenge heem. I have sworn eet, señor, an' I have made my sons swear weeth me. Did they not fight weeth Señor Bramley? They have tell me they were afraid but they shoot. They do not run. An' they shall fight again.”
Juan, the plucky little cocinero, stayed on the ranch. He had proven himself and he also vowed to help revenge Strong. Hurley turned stolid ill his grief, moody, spending his spare time cleaning and polishing his guns. Once he called to Juan to bring him some onions and spoke to Strong to watch.
Juan tossed them in the air on request and Hurley's guns sprang from their holsters and barked. He fired right and left at will and each bullet smashed an onion as they rose and fell in rapid succession.
“So,” he said to Strong. “I am an old dog. I am lame, I ain't fit for much an', when this damned rheumatics grabs me I ain't fit fo' nothin' but to feed to the hawgs when it comes to girtin' around. The boys have been tellin' me you kin throw lead whar it belongs. I'm showin' you thet I can shoot some, so's when you git the chance agin' them murderin' dogs thet done in Hen, you'll let me be along.
“Leastwise, you won't think me jest a cripple. Hen's toted me an' paid me wages when most men would leave me to lean up agin' a hitchin' rail, hopin' some one with a skinful would come along an' buy me a drink so's I could git a chance at the free lunch.”
“I know how you feel agin' the cuss thet shot Hen. You reckon he's yore meat. Thet's all right. But it ain't too likely you're goin' to run into him all alone an' made to order fo' you. Thet kind runs in a pack. I've had my innings in my time an' I kin come close to tellin' what a man feels by the look of his eyes an' the way his face is fixed. You're set to git out after thet Lobo pack soon's they come back an' you bin git a chance to be sure they done it. You an' me know it was them but we got to prove it.
“Maria'll help on thet. She's a woman—and an old one. Wiser than any man when it comes to wormin' secrets. Some of those fellers'll give hisse'f away sooner or later. Mo' bad men tripped up on a skirt than any other way. Yes, suh. Those cantina gals air nigh all greasers an' you kin bet yo' last cartridge thet Maria's got her plans sot an' workin'.
“Hombre shoots another feller down or pulls some crooked deal he thinks is smart an', sooner or later, he'll brag about it. When he's cold sober he may not be so derned proud of it but when he's het up with licker he figgers it's somethin' to be proud about an' he tells the gal he happens to be stuck on, jest to show her what a wonder he is.
“You, Maria an' me, we'll round 'em up. It's all I got to live for, to look at thet crowd through smoke. I'm plumb willin' to go out with my guns hot, long as I kin take one or two of thet outfit along with me to hell an' brand 'em thar for what they stands fer. I've allus reckoned thar would be grades in hell. They won't stand for a coward, even down thar. No, suh, they'll put 'em whar it blisters most. Maria's the same in her woman's way. Perro, too. He don't know jest what's happened, but if he did, he'd pass out to git his teeth clamped in the throat of the man who done it.
“I'm workin' my jaws like a windmill in a gale. You think likely it's all wind. Here's an old cuss, says, you, thet kin shoot some, if he happens to be on the spot, an' the way he's busted up with rheumatics the odds is a hundred to one agin' his bein' within ten mile of the right place at the right time. Like the cannon my dad told me was left behind at Vicksburg. Mighty fine artillery but plumb useless where it was.
“But I showed you I kin shoot an' I'm tellin' you now I'm goin' into trainin'. Maria's allus been after me to try thet lot of hot springs over in the malpais beyond Dry Crick. She says the Injuns hev used 'em for ages to cure 'em when the git cold, or stiff. Even the bears wander down from the mountains when the git old and rheumatic an' waller round in 'em. I took all thet with a grain of salt—mebbe two.
“But I go take a look-see one day, an' I come back. You could smell them springs forty miles off with the wind right, like all the rotten aigs in the world had been brung together an' busted. I come back an' I says to Maria, 'I wouldn't try thet if it cured hams,' I says. But it was sure powerful. Now see here what I been readin'. Come with a batch of stuff in thet last dozen of pain killer I got from Santa Fe.
“Advertisin' junk, but it tells about what marvelous cures they're makin' of 'flammatory rheumatism in Europe, also Californy, with hot-mud packs. All these here steamin' peat-bogs air controlled by 'millionaire corporations,' says the pamphlet. Only those with a bank roll long as here to the mint an' back, kin afford to go thar. So this concern offers a chemical composition thet's an exact copy of the mud. You make a puddin' of it an' smear it over yourself while it's steamin' hot an' it does the trick same as the real article.
“Mebbe yes an' mebbe not. It's artificial an' it can't work like the natural stuff. Don't stand to reason. But thar's a spring of this mud stuff bubblin' up over to these Dry Crick mineral an' sulphur springs—looks like a lot of black porridge in a lava pot, blisters oozin' up an' breakin'. Jest the sort of thing you'd figger was a foretaste of hell.
“If I was a preacher, I'd take my flock out an' preach to 'em right round thet place, 'stead of in church. Make 'em taste thet sulphur water an' tell 'em thar was hell with the lights out an' how they'd have to waller round in mud like that for a million years if they didn't line up an' sign the book.
“Yes, suh. If any one told me I'd go voluntary an' willin' an' squat in thet porridge pot like a toad in a puddle, I'd have cracked him one for insinuatin' I'm crazy.
“But I'm goin' to try her out, Strong. I'm askin' you now for a chance to ride over a couple times a week to see how she works. I'm goin' to lower me into thet bowl o' muck an', while I'm thar, as long as my hide'll stand it, with my nose stuffed so I won't keel over with the smell of it, I'm goin' to pray. I'm goin' to pray for a miracle, so's I kin fork a hawss ag'in without bein' lifted into it, so's I kin move around without sweatin' blood every time I beat a crawl. I don't expect to grow out my laig so it mates up with the other; I don't ask fer it to be permanent. Jest so's you'll give me a chance when you go to clean up thet outfit.”
Strong did not crack a smile. It was the first time he had ever felt like laughing since he had come back to the Bar B, but Hurley's very earnestness made his talk more ludicrous in a way.
“I've heard about the mud packs,” Strong said. “You hop to 'em, Bill, an' stew all you want. An' I'm tellin' you right now thet I wouldn't want anything better than you alongside of me workin' yore artillery when I git lined up agin' the Lobo pack.”
“Hell, I'll be thar! I'm testin' this peat stuff, till I git slick—or bust.”
“Go over any time you feel like it,” said Strong. And forgot the matter.
On the advice of some of the older men of the association he took the will into Laguna to see Clayborne, scarcely hoping to find him in condition to talk. Clayborne sobering up was apt to be worse than Clayborne drunk. To his amazement the lawyer was not merely free from taint or effect of alcohol, but he was clean shaven, clean collared, and his shoes were polished, a combination never before achieved by him in the memory of Laguna, He had no office but the lobby of the hotel, with its dingy writing room for a private sanctum, and there he took Strong.
He must once have been an impressive-looking man, Strong fancied, looking at the lawyer's wide brow, his well-shaped nose and square jaw. He did not look like a man who would be easily downed by liquor or any other cause. But the tremulous hands, the watery eyes with the sagging skin beneath, showed a battle lost. Yet he held himself with real dignity as he spoke of Bramley's death.
“You know who caused it?” he asked.
“I have no direct proof,” Strong answered, “only my suspicions.” He did not think it necessary to go over the whole affair, but briefly said that he suspected the Lobo pack, a little fearful that the lawyer would launch off into one of his violent tirades. But he made no direct comment.
“Strong, you see me sober, sir—entirely sober—for the first time. You have not been in Laguna long, but you have heard about me. The prize drunkard of Three Corners, the jester, the butt of the cantinas. There are sometimes reasons why a man loses grip of himself. I speak without excuse. We will dismiss that plea. But now, if there is any manhood left in me, I aim to foster it. Doubtless I shall fall, but I need not fail. A man is not always beaten because he is down.
“Either I must do this or sink below the semblance of humanity. I have seen a vision of myself, sir; senile, feeble, old, in the last stage, the final scene of life's eventful history; stripped of everything, whining for gruel to suck between my toothless jaws, an object beyond man's sympathy, that most miserable of beings, an ancient human being who has forfeited his manhood.
“What gives me this urge? Because, even here in Laguna, the bottom of the cup where the dregs gather, there is a wholesome stirring. Men like you and your late partner, cattlemen and ranchers, are leavening the stagnant life with honorable activity. The inevitable tide sets in, rising, rising.
“Men will breast the flood and swim with it to the highlands of prosperity. Others will slink away, be swept by its cleansing current or flung up on the beach in worthless flotsam and jetsam. The railroads are pushing forward. And, for me, once more comes the knock of Opportunity. The law is coming to Laguna. There must be some one to represent it here, to conduct its course after the heralds have withdrawn.
“That one shall be myself, sir. Nicholas Clayborne, of Boston, sir—of Back Bay, Boston. Once a counselor—still, by the grace of Heaven, a man. I shall once more uphold the law. I have taken steps toward it, and, when the law comes to Laguna, sir, the baying, bullying pack of Lobo Smith goes!”
There was a similarity, Strong could not help observing, between this rhetorical outburst of Clayborne with its almost pitiful determination to re-establish himself, and the declaration of Hurley to make his physical self over again for a set purpose.
He wondered whether there was any real reason for the lawyer's declaration that the law was coming and that the law would be directed against Lobo. If some word of his mysterious doings had reached the high places and offended justice meant to strike. Clayborne proved evasive, and Strong at last believed that much of his talk was merely through his usual spigot of the desire to exhibit his oratory. He hoped so. Lobo and the man who had shot Bramley were, as Hurley had put it, “his meat;” he did not want the law to cheat his personal revenge.
The talk turned to the will.
“I can have this probated for you,” said Clayborne. “A very human document that contains the essentials of a testament. You may rely upon me to attend to it.” He sat with his trembling hands on the arms of his chair, his watery eyes blinking, and drew himself up.
“I may tell you this, Mr. Strong, lest you hesitate to give me the first item of legal business that has been entrusted to me for many a day, to be the first client of Nicholas Clayborne, that I have been approached by one who is in a position of trust and authority, who has placed in me a confidence, sir, that I would rather die than forfeit. My enemies—or, let us say, those who are not my friends—have brought him tales, doubtless, but he is a judge of men, sir, necessary in his profession.
“He has honored me with his trust, and I shall show him that it is not misplaced. I may say, sir, that I never abused the interests of a client. I may have temporized, even neglected them, but never to the extent of loss. When I became, in the course of an unfortunate appetite, unable to look out for clients, I ceased to practice my profession,”
Strong was sorry for the man, and there was something about his frank exposition that was not altogether pitiful. There were sparks of fire in the ash heap yet that might be blown to flame.
“Shucks,” he said. “I was hatin' to bother you with it, thet's all. I'll be mighty obliged if you'd look after it fo' me. Here it is an' if thet ain't enough for the fees, let me know.”
Clayborne took the twenty-dollar bill and his face flushed.
“Mr. Strong, sir,” he said as he rose and offered his hand. “I have spoken thus freely to you because you have not seen as much of my conduct as others in Laguna, though doubtless you have heard much. You are the first man to trust me with money—as a loan, a gift, or a payment—for many months. I thank you, sir, as a gentleman to a gentleman.”
“That's all right, jedge,” said Strong, embarrassed, gripping the flabby hand. “You'll have a seegar, seein' you're not drinkin'?”
“I shall be glad to. Glad to. I would rather it were purchased elsewhere than at the bar. There is an aroma there that disturbs my mental equilibrium. It creates an appetite that is—er—painful to control.”
“Sure. They sell 'em in the office.”
Clayborne wrestled with the cigar lighter, and Strong felt in his vest pocket for a match, finding none, but encountering the brass button he had placed there for safety. Maria had said that she knew of none like it. He showed it to Clayborne.
The attorney rolled it about in the palm of his hand, poked at it with one wavering forefinger, shook his head.
“H'm! Now that indicates something to me. I've seen such buttons before. Where, I am not certain. My memory is rusty. It does not respond. Lack of exercise. May I ask where you found it?”
Strong walked out of possible hearing of loungers. He did not see how the button was going to materially aid him, but it was a clew, nevertheless, and he treated it as such.
“I trailed those raiders quite a ways that day, jedge. As far as the ravine thet ends the big mesa. An' I picked this up along thet trail, among the lava hills. I never guessed thar was a way through them hills, an', if I hadn't been follerin' sign, I'd never have found it in fifty years. Looks like they go through thet way sometimes on their trips, like the one they're on now, mebbe.”
“You mean Lobo?”
“Yep.”
“Ah! Strong, there's a man in town, connected with the railroad, I understand. I'd like you to meet him. I'd like to show him this button and get his opinion on it. He's a man who's traveled a great deal. I value his judgment highly. If you're not in a hurry.”
Strong was waiting for supplies to be put up at the store, and he had time to spare. He guessed easily enough that this railroad man was the one Clayborne had meant when he talked of having certain confidences reposed in him by one in authority. He wondered what the railroad man was after in Laguna. Probably looking quietly around for a depot-and-yards site. That meant the workmen would soon begin to lay the rails. It meant supplies, beef. It would do him no harm to meet the man, to humor Clayborne. It might lead to later contracts.
Time had not lessened Strong's determination to avenge his partner, but he found that work dulled the sharp edge of the grief that cut into his vitality and efficiency. He was due to meet the Indian agent in a few days at Escondida. It looked as if prosperity was coming halfway to meet him and Bramley, the man who had started the ranch, could not share it. It was all going to Strong, the rover. But his saddle itch was cured now. Bramley was still in spirit a half owner of the Bar B. Strong was going to make a success of it for his sleeping partner, sleeping under the cairn of stones beside the Texas cattle trail.
They found Edmonds practicing pool shots in the room behind the bar. It was empty, save for the railroad man and the bartender, lounging in the doorway, admiring the play. Strong noticed Clayborne's uneasiness as the smell of liquor floated out from the barroom. So, it seemed, did Edmonds, for he laid down his cue and immediately suggested an adjournment.
“Have you got those papers ready, Mr. Clayborne?” he asked, with a ready tact that mollified the bartender, unable to understand why the meeting of three “gents” should not lead immediately to a “licker-up.”
They went back into the reading room, where the flies droned and wooden-bladed ceiling fans driven by springs rustled ancient newspapers.
“Mr. Strong, one of my clients. Mr. Edmonds. Mr. Strong is a cattleman. Mr. Edmonds representing certain railroad interests.”
The two looked at one another. Strong saw a stocky man in blue serge, with a quiet voice, an unassuming manner, nothing especial of feature save a pair of keen blue eyes that seemed to say to Strong that Edmonds had already heard all about him. He said so, frankly, the next minute.
“I have heard of your recent trouble, Mr. Strong,” he said simply. “Naturally it's talked of. It is a pity it happened through lack of authority and the toleration of a certain type of so-called citizens. I'm sorry. I've known a personal loss like that myself. I can appreciate your feelings.”
It was well said, and the handshake was firm and cordial. Strong began to take a liking to this unaffected Mr. Edmonds, to think that there was more to the man than his outward appearance at first suggested.
“Clayborne suggested I should show you this,” he said. “I found it while I was back trailin' the hombres thet tried to ambush us.”
It seemed to him that there was a sudden flash in Edmonds' eyes before he finally lowered them for a close examination of the button. There was nothing out of the way in their expression when he spoke. For a moment Strong wondered whether he had made a mistake in exhibiting this clew. He prided himself on being something of a judge of men, to the extent that, when he received a distinctly favorable impression, as he had with Edmonds, he had never yet known it to be contradicted. If Lobo's outfit learned that he had found a brass button on the trails south of the mesa that they had certainly used more than once, what might it mean to them? Clayborne seemed to sense his dilemma.
“I am not at liberty to state the exact official connections of Mr. Edmonds,” he said, “but I can assure you, Mr. Strong, as my client, that he is entirely to be trusted, and in sympathy with my own opinions—and ours—concerning the outfit of Lobo Smith and his rascally associates.
“I am sure of it,” Strong answered. “It just struck me thet I ought to go easy, mebbe, on showin' this button round. I ain't shown it to but three people, all told, but I was merely thinkin' generally. I kin read sign an' foller trail an' handle the cattle business, but I don't aim to set up as a detective sharp.”
“You're quite right, Strong,” said Edmonds earnestly. “I would suggest your not showing this button any more than you have to. It's a small thing, but it might mean much. I've seen buttons like this before, and I think I can place where, without much difficulty. I would not care to be positive at this moment. It is my opinion that this may lead to the clearing up of the secret surrounding Smith's sources of income and his mysterious trips. If so, it will probably mean the disposal of his outfit where they will not disturb the peace of Laguna, or any other place, for a long while to come.
“If you could see your way to letting me have this button, I am in a position to forward it to where certain investigations are already in hand. It is an important thing in the railroad transportation of passengers and freight, especially in the West, that the type of men like Lobo is eliminated. That is public service. They seem to be just the sort to hold up a train and this back road or trail of theirs should be an asset in their plans.
“I lost their trail in the ravine,” said Strong. “Mebbe the sign was washed away by a freshet. It was, later, when I went back. Thet way keeps 'em clear of the pass comin' up from the south. They could rob trains near El Paso an' jump east into the Hueeos an' so home. I reckon they figger the lava an' malpais blinds their trail.
“But, if they worked north or direct east from Doom Cañon, they'd have to leave plain sign almost up to their gate No one ever sees 'em go out or come back, but thet's because the cañon's a way off an' thar's no holdin's nigh it. Also, few of 'em ever comes out befo' dark, I reckon. May go back by daylight after they've had a session in Laguna, but no one trails 'em. It wouldn't be healthy.
“Now I'll talk man talk to you, Mr. Edmonds. I'm anxious to have Lobo cleaned out, jest as the railroad is. But Lobo planned thet ambush thet killed my pardner. I want him fo' thet, an' I want the man thet did the shootin'. The law ain't come here yet, an' I want to git thet thing settled outside the law—my way. If thet button's goin' to cut me out of my chance I'll keep it or chuck it away first. I want to see those men over the sight of my six-gun.”
Strong spoke without emotion, and the eyes of Edmonds rested on him interestedly. Then he nodded.
“I can respect your feelings,” he said. “I gather you're looking for proof that Lobo was mixed up in the killing, and that the man who did it is one of his gang?”
“In a general way, yes. Yes, so far as Lobo is concerned. As fo' the other hombre, I'm carryin' a photograph of him right back of my eyes. I don't need no proof fo' him.”
“Except to clear yourself, in case of trouble,” said Clayborne.
“I'll hire you fo' thet.”
“I take the case, sir,” said Clayborne solemnly.
“My point is,” continued Edmonds, “that I doubt very much whether this button, which is tarnished and has evidently been exposed to the weather for some time before the date of your finding it, can possibly have any direct connection with connecting Lobo with the shooting. I do think it may lead to serious charges against them. You would not wish to appear as a hindrance to law and order? It is your duty as a citizen to do anything that may enhance the peace and quiet of your community without regard to your own private vengeance. Isn't that so?”
“Reckon so.” Strong spoke doggedly.
“On the other hand, I do not imagine that Lobo will tamely submit to arrest. I understand Doom Cañon is well protected. I think I can guarantee that you will be notified—as I shall be—of any action, and there should certainly be no difficulty in arranging for you to be of the posse that will proceed against him.”
“I'd ruther act independent,” said Strong. “In a posse you're actin' under orders. You got to go whar they put you. Might give me orders not to shoot or somethin'. Jest you see I'm notified, Mr. Edmonds, an' if I ain't pulled somethin' off befo' then, on my own account, I'll be on han' to do the best I kin. Thar's the button, if it is a button.”
“It answers that general purpose, I'm sure,” said Edmonds, “although it may have another name. Could you give me an idea of the way this trail ran through the lava cliffs?”
Strong pursed up his mouth. It began to look as if the law was coming to Laguna too soon to suit him, as if it might take things out of his own hands. Railroads, he knew, had detective systems of their own. Edmonds, as an official, would be naturally interested in all branches of the service. Holdups, especially where two roads were making for the same junction point—El Paso—from the East, might seriously damage the reputation of the line attacked, prohibit profits. He meant to be orderly, and he believed he was.
“I kin give you a general idea,” he said. “Thar ain't no maps of thet territory an', of course, I kin only line out from whar I cut in. I mean by thet their trail might go quite a ways farther south, might swing west down to the Rio Grande an' over to Mexico.”
Edmonds nodded. Strong pulled toward him ink, pen, and an odd sheet of paper, and made a rough sketch.
“Here's Comanche Crick,” he said, “where we got the cattle. Runs into the Pecos. Here's our route north over Topah Crick, swingin' west, south of Sierra Diablo, over toward Round Mountain, up over the Sierra Prieta. Here's the Guadalupe Mountains due east, beyond Salt Basin. The regular pass lies between Huecos an' Cornudas. The raiders went plumb west toward the lower end of the Huecos. It ain't really the Huecos, which ends proper with the big mesa whar Doom Cañon is. It's what we call a breakdown whar the mesa wall has give way, an' then a lot of these lava hills.
“When they struck these hills they worked north, an' I follered. But it was sure a track to break a snake's back. Here's the crick thet runs round the base of the mesa whar the trail ended when they rode into the water. I couldn't find whar they come out. The crick, risin', might have washed thet off the slate. A ravine opens above the pass in mo' or less broken country. Once thar, they could easy keep out of sight plumb to the cañon.”
Edmonds took the rough but serviceable sketch and studied it. Then he put it into his pocket and shook hands again with Strong.
“You may feel that we've tried to cajole you out of what you consider your right to punish the men who killed your partner, Mr. Strong. As I said before, I can appreciate your feelings. Where there is no law, justice must find its own agents as it invariably does. Feuds are often started that way. But, if the law comes, you will not obstruct it?”
“I'm always on the side of justice an' I'll help the law all I kin,” said Strong and left for the store.
“Railroad or no railroad,” he told himself, “they ain't goin' to beat me out, of my show to even things up. Bramley would feel the same way.”
Vaguely he regretted giving over the button. In another way he did not. The law was all right, but it was coming too late for Bramley.
He loaded up the wagon and drove through the town. On the sidewalk he saw Sprague, the gambler, and Ramon, joint owners of the Tent cantina. The look they gave him was not friendly. Strong wondered if they had any further interest in Lobo and his men, outside of the money they spent with them and lost over the tables. Perhaps they had not been back since the night that Gardner was shot, on the gambler's superstition that fresh-spilled blood brought bad luck. That would account for the sour looks of the two partners.
Farther on he passed two cantina girls. One nodded to him and the other one checked her greeting. Strong pulled off his sombrero in salute. To him a woman was always a woman, whatever her status in or out of society. And this was the girl he had danced with, the one who had warned him not to go out alone. A nice kid he had thought her at the time, not too hardened as yet by the life she followed.
He drove on. He felt terribly lonely these days. Loneliness obsessed him so that he thought continually about it, and the fact that he had lost interest in all things, driving himself to the routine of the ranch only because he thought he was doing what Bramley would have had him do. He was not aware that he was brooding until he was almost becoming morbid, but old Maria did.
There was scant satisfaction, she complained, in cooking for a man who did not know what he was eating, but sat looking into space without caring what fork or spoon conveyed to his mouth.
“You should get marree,” she told him bluntly. Strong shook his head.
“That's all right,” countered Maria. “You shake the head. Jus' the same, I pray to Heaven to send you the right girl. Pretty soon she come along, then you wake up.”
“I'm in no humor for gals, Maria,” he said.
“That's no matter. When the right one she come, she sweep you off yo' feet. That humor change queek. I hope she come soon. Señor Bramley, he would not weesh to see you all the same skeletons.”
This she said to Strong, on his return from town, while she checked up what she had asked him to bring.
She was exercised also about Hurley, who had departed for the sulphur springs and had not returned as expected. Maria was afraid he had been overcome by the fumes or that his horse had got away from him. She had meant to dispatch one of the vaqueros, but they were still away, riding the range herd, turned out, while the cows Strong hoped to sell for the reservation-beef issue fattened in home pastures.
“I'll go,” said Strong, got out the roan, and loped off.
It was not very far to the springs, and they advertised themselves long before one arrived by the fumes of sulphuretted hydrogen and the sulphur deposits about their rims. There were seven or eight water holes of various types—not all sulphur—including an immature geyser that bombed intermittently. Strong did not know the location of the mud bath, but he saw Hurley's pony standing disconsolately between two bubbling and malodorous basins, and then he saw the mass of heaving, steaming peat.
There was no sign of Hurley, and he thought that the heat might have affected the old man's heart, and that he might have choked to death, swallowed up in the messy stuff, on the surface of which great bubbles slowly formed and burst, for all the world like a giant's portion of porridge.
As he gazed anxiously he heard a yell and, riding round a mound of crusty, siliceous stuff, he saw a steaming pool of green water and, in it, seated on a rock, but submerged to the neck, was Bill Hurley. His long mustache was limp and his face the color of a ripe tomato.
“You trainin' fo' the circus as a tame seal?” Strong demanded.
“Seal be damned!” said Hurley, rising naked, his gaunt form scarlet with his immersion, first in the mud and now in the hot spring. Strong could not control his mirth. For the first time since he had come up from Texas he broke into laughter, and it did him a world of good to find that he could do so.
“Laugh yore fool self into a fit an' fall off yore cayuse,” said Hurley, wading gingerly out of the pool toward his clothes. He said it savagely, but he said it with a grin. “Listen, boss; if you'd been twinged up the way I've been fo' eight years an' got rid of it, you'd stay in thet pool till you plumb dissolved. Hell's bells! I'm like a kid with the toothache after he's been to the dentist! Only mine was a damn sight worse than toothache. Look at me. I don't say I'm cured, but it's a miracle, jest the same. I ain't got a mite of pain no mo' an' I'm limber as a young cottontail.”
He capered, trying a pigeon wing, with a lopsided result on account of his short leg. He cracked his fingers and pranced like a Navajo buck at a sun dance. Strong looked on with amazement, as well as he could for the tears running down his face, rocking in his saddle while he held his sides and the roan snorted.
“Cottontail!” he shouted at last. “You look mo' like a skinned jack rabbit. Ain't you got no sense of decency? Want to stampede my hawss? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“Waal, I ain't. I bet if my laigs was even I could give you a hundred yards in a mile an' beat you.”
He put his clothes on with a running comment of delight.
“First time I've stood on one laig an' put my pants on this a way for nigh ten years,” he said. “Usually I have to lie in my bunk an' draw 'em on, with a cuss fo' every shift. Lookit! I kin wrastle my shirt on like I was a kid, I kin sit down an' bend over an' pull on my boots like I was human, 'stead of a creaky back-numbered goat. Boss, the pain jest melted right out of me when I was in thet mud. Took me nigh an hour to make up my mind to git into the mess. Took me more'n thet to scrape off with a flat stone after I come out an' then I finished in thet hot water. I feel great. I could whip any grizzly b'ar thet wanted to dispute thet cure with me. Whoop, for Maria! Two whoops an' a whizzer fo' thet pamphlet!
“Thar's a fortune thar, boss. Two of 'em. Course I ain't cured by a long shot, but gimme a sweat in thet peat once a week an' I'll run hurdle races. You watch me fork thet hawss.”
“Maria figgered you was cooked,” said Strong. “So did I till I saw you squattin' thar like a crimson grasshopper.”
“I'll show Maria how to dance the tarantula waltz to-night.”
It was astounding how the medicinal mud had relieved him, and the effect remained for the next few days. Strong left for Encinada with Hurley a different man, many times as useful, and almost as renewed as if he had discovered Ponce de Leon's fabled fountain of youth.