ONCE more the nights were very cold, and darkness fell early. The wranglers headed homeward blowing on their stiffened fingers, and guided by the oil lamps in the bunk house. The mountains were powdered softly white, and the leaves of the aspens and the cottonwoods were giving up their last feeble clutch at life and drifting helplessly, tiny gold and brown corpses, before the cold winds that whistled down their slopes.
In the mornings the pools along the creek were covered with a delicate coating of ice, and at dawn the deer, coming down from their frozen pastures to the still green grass below, broke through with dainty feet to drink.
Mrs. Mallory had already moved into Ursula, taking a small house and hoping to rent a room or two. Nellie had gone with her, and Jake was sleeping in the bunk house. It was understood that the sale was practically consummated, but while Jake was despondent and silent those days, nothing could daunt the spirit of the men. Soon they would be on their way before the winter storms, some heading South to the cow country in Arizona or New Mexico, others merely drifting. It was all in the game. Their hard lives had taught them philosophy.
"Bad luck's followed me so close," said Bill, "that if ever I'd turned round I'd a bumped into it."
They sorted out their gear, ready for their war bags, and the stove gave out queer odors sometimes. And up in the barn there was many a feed of surreptitious oats to the horses which had carried them long and well.
Gus the Swede was staying. He had filed on a homestead near the Reservation, and Bill had a chance as freight brakeman on the railroad. One or two of the others were joining up with other outfits, to ride out in the winter snows from line camps; raw-hiding, with an iron ring on their saddles with which to etch on the brand, or looking out for sick and unthrifty cattle. But most of them were following the sun.
In the endless discussions around the long oilcloth covered table Tom took little part. Not only was his future vague in the extreme, but the joy of life, after that first home-coming, had gone out of him. His pride was hurt, his heart sore. He was less truculent than he had ever been.
Only once did his quick temper show itself. He was getting ready to turn in one night when some one of the crowd playing blackjack in the next room began to sing. "I ain't got no father. I ain't got no"
He jerked the door open savagely.
"Stop that racket," he said, "and let a fellow get to sleep."
"Why, you ain't turned in yet."
"I'm telling you," he said shortly, and closed the door. It was Bill who broke the silence that followed.
"I feel kinda better about Tom now," he said. "He was so gentle before I thought maybe he was fixing to get sick."
The news from the Reservation was not good.
With the arrival of winter the Indians were moving from their tepees into their bleak untidy houses, where the younger generation had set up hideous sagging white iron beds, with an occasional rocking chair or cheap oak bureau, ordered by catalogue through the post trader; but where the old full-bloods still slept on their buffalo robes on the floor. The squaws were taking off the hide or canvas coverings of their summer homes and folding them away, and the lodge poles stood like gaunt skeletons; the ashes and stones of their dead fires exposed little hearths now desecrated and abandoned.
Only the medicine man, Howling Wolf, still remained in his tepee, carefully tended by his wives, a trade blanket over his knees as he sat on his skin couch, his medicine pipe tiedto a pole over his head.
The Reservation doctor, making his daily visits to Weasel Tail, found him one day in his house on the floor, lying among skins so old and filthy that he made a protest to one of his wives.
"Get him onto a bed," he said in Indian. "And get some clean blankets for him, or he will die."
"He will die anyhow," she told him.
He had a talk with Howling Wolf that day, but it did no good. The visit was very formal. In the center of the tepee was burning a small fire, and the doctor knew better than to pass between it and the medicine man. They smoked together in silence at first, and the women brought in food which he dutifully ate.
But the conference ended nowhere. Weasel Tail would die, and the white man who had shot him would die also. That was Howling Wolf's medicine. Old Man had sent him a dream, and this was how it was to be.
The doctor, in conference later with the Superintendent, reported all this.
"I don't like the looks of things," he said. "Weasel Tail could have recovered under ordinary conditions, but he hasn't a chance. And a lot of young bucks are making it a personal matter. Ever since McNair beat up Little Dog at the Fair there's been trouble."
But Weasel Tail was still alive when, around the middle of November, the Potter company took over the ranch.
By Jake's arrangement with the Dowlings he had kept some stock of his own at the ranch, a hundred odd head of cattle and a dozen horses. Under ordinary circumstances he might have arranged with the Potter outfit for winter feed for them, but the circumstances were not ordinary. Not only was the company carrying all the stock it could manage, so that it needed every ton of hay, but there was an old grudge between Jake and the heads of the concern, and he was asking no favors of them.
On a raw day then, a week or so later, Tom and Jake started to drive the stock to Jake's homestead in the bad lands. Both men were bundled to the eyes, but the win pierced their plaid Oregon coats, their mufflers and gloves. Jake was not well at the start; he rode huddled in his saddle, staring ahead, brooding. He had no hay at the homestead, nothing. The stock would have to winter in the breaks as best they could. On the first night out they slept in a barn, having put the cattle and horses into a pasture, but he shivered all night and slept very little.
Tom was worried, but Jake seemed better the next day, except for a small hacking cough. He was not cold any longer, and he talked more than usual. Tom, trying to forget the Dowlings, found himself willy-nilly involved in long discussions of them. It was a painful business all round, and it was not improved by Jake's revelation that Henry Dowling had refused to finance the defence in the forthcoming trial.
"What pains me," he said, "is that I sure thought he'd do it," Jake finished. "But it seems like something made him change his mind. You didn't write a letter to the girl, Tom, did you?"
"No," Tom said shortly.
When, after five days on the way they reached the homestead, Jake was a very sick man. Tom turned out the stock and came back to find Jake in one of the built-in bunks in the cabin, just as he had left the saddle. He built a roaring fire and Jake roused and looked around.
"I can't bring her here, Tom. Never."
"It looks bad now, but it won't take much to make it weather tight."
But Jake only groaned.
By morning Tom knew Jake had pneumonia, and that unless he had help he would die. He saddled the Miller, piled wood by the fire, put water by Jake's bunk and started off. It took him half a day to make the ride, going at his horse's best speed, and when he finally got to Ursula Doctor Dunham was out in the back country somewhere on a case. It was almost evening when they started back, this time in the doctor's car. There were no roads; only a track which led down into ravines, turned precariously on itself, led up again. Tom drove, the little old medical man sat huddled in the seat beside him. Only once, after the car had lurched and almost gone over a bank, did he protest.
"Hell's bells, Tom!" he said. "If you've got another attack of that recurrent homicidal mania of yours, better wait until we're on the way back."
Jake was practically unconscious when they arrived. The fire had gone out and the room was very cold. The sound of his breathing filled it. Tom, building up the fire while the doctor examined him, could think of nothing but that struggle for breath going on behind him. And soon the doctor would have to go away, and he would be left alone with it.
"How about sending for his wife?" he asked.
"Where is she?"
"In town."
"I'll get word to her, but I doubt if she'll be in time."
"It's as bad as that, is it?"
"It's about as bad as it can be."
He left some medicines and some whisky and went away again. He had secured Mrs. Mallory's address and promised to bring her with him the next day, and Tom held a lantern for him while he started the car. But the last words he heard over the engine sent him back into the cabin savage with anger.
"Remember, Tom, that whisky's for Jake."
He sat up all that night. He piled wood on the fire until the floor boards smoked in front of it, but back by the bunk where Jake lay it was still cold. And all night long that struggle for breath went on, all night and into the dawn. Then it quieted somewhat, and Tom fell into an exhausted sleep.
When he wakened the sun was up, and Jake was dead.
It was noon and snowing when the doctor arrived. Mrs. Mallory was with him. She looked old and gray, and Tom, meeting them outside, stumbled over what he had to tell her. She crawled out of the car and stood swaying, with her face working, and he put his arm around her and helped her inside.
He had been at work since dawn. The cabin was clean and a good fire going. Jake lay in the lower bunk, his hands folded over his breast. He looked very placid and faintly smiling; and the blankets were neatly folded over him. Mrs. Mallory got down on her knees heavily and gazed at him.
"Jake!" she said. "My Jake! How am I going to live without you?"
After a while she got up. Tom had made coffee but she would not touch it. She went to the window and stood staring out at the falling snow.
"I can't leave him here," she said, without turning. "We've got to get him back somehow."
They knew what she meant. If the snow kept on soon the roads would be closed entirely, and they would have tr bury him there. And every hour counted. There might not be time even to send for the body; they would have to take it along.
Tom went with them, supporting Jake in the rear of the car. Mrs. Mallory sat in front, and not once did she turn around. She sat staring ahead of her, thinking of God knows what; remembering, no doubt, after the fashion of women at such times, the small contentions, the missed affections of all those years; blaming herself; looking back. Looking back.
When the funeral was over Tom went back to the cabin. There was nothing else to do. The stock required some sort of supervision. He carried back with him tar-paper to line the shack, groceries, what not. But his heart was heavy. One thing he did at once on his return. He took the half emptied pint of whisky the doctor had left, and put it out of sight on a rafter.
"Now," he said grimly to himself, "we'll see how much of a man you are, Tom McNair."
He never touched it. There were times later on when he came in, frozen to the bone, and looked up at the rafter with eyes almost swollen shut with snow blindness and the hard cold winds; once he even drew a chair under it. But he flung the chair away violently, and made himself some hot coffee instead.
The days were not so bad. He rode out, examining the fences, cutting water holes in the creek with an ax. Before his death Jake had leased some additional land, and the cattle fed along the bare ridges where the wind had blown the snow away. But the nights were terrible.
There were times, sitting by his fire, when he seemed to hear once more that struggle for breath behind him, and he would look fearfully over his shoulder.
Now and then he had a letter from Clare, fervid, immature notes to which, sitting at his table in the long evenings, he wrote occasional perfunctory replies.
Dear Clare:
Things are going along here all right. I keep busy and I guess that's the answer to a lot of things. Don't you worry about the Indian matter. I'm not pulling leather any yet. You might go around and see the Mallorys sometimes. I guess they are pretty lonesome.
Sometimes he talked to himself aloud, as lonely men often do. Perhaps there were even times when he was not quite balanced; there was that obsession about Jake's bunk, for instance. And because he refused to admit Kay to his waking thoughts, she began to trouble him in his sleep. He wakened one night to see her standing by the fire in her riding clothes. He had to sit up in the bunk to convince himself she was not there.
Then, shortly after Christmas Weasel Tail finally died, and a Deputy Sheriff took advantage of a chinook and a spell of warm weather to ride out and tell him. The trial was set for February.
He was scarcely interested. He did not much care, these days, how the affair turned out. He was gaunt and unshaven most of the time. His small supply of clothing had practically given out, and he had refused money except for necessary food from Mrs. Mallory. His hands were broken and blistered under his ragged gloves, his eyelids swollen, his lips cracked.
"I'll be there. You tell 'em," he said to the Deputy.
And before the Deputy left he gave him the bottle from the rafter.
"You'd better keep it, Tom. You look as if you needed it."
There was a trace of his old swagger in his reply.
"Who? Me? Never felt better in my life. I'm as tough as a boiled owl."
But the story that went back did no harm to his case when it finally went to trial. The fact that he had taken hold of the Mallory situation and was staying alone to save Mrs. Mallory's stock was operating in his favor. Men who had only known the reckless side of him were more favorably impressed. When it was learned that he was taking no money from the widow, this feeling grew, and it was not decreased by the general opinion that Henry Dowling had shirked a responsibility that was his by right; that he had not only done this, but that by selling the ranch at an unseasonable time and turning Jake off, he had contributed to his death.