THERE had never been a question in Tom's mind as to who and what lay behind his ruin.
He had known rustlers all his life; men who made their pick-ups of cattle, drove them off, hid them and later rebranded and sold them. His easy philosophy had accepted them with the same easy tolerance with which at one time he had accepted his own drinking; like himself, they were tempted and they fell.
But this had been an organized raid against him, personally. The thieves had cut out his stock, and outside of the hospital cattle at the ranch, had made a clean sweep. It differed from the occasional pilfering of the Indians, the small depredations of a meat-hungry people which the stockmen accepted because they must.
He saw in it the Oriental patience of all Indians, and of Little Dog in particular; and he saw too the fiendish ingenuity with which he had worked, waiting until he had saved them through that ghastly winter, until they had fattened all spring and summer, and then making off with them, to hide and rebrand them, and to ship from some distant point in safety.
He went to the Agency, tramping in, throwing aside any one who stood in his way, and confronted the Superintendent with his fists clenched. But the Agent could not help him. He was an able man, administering a difficult duty to the best of his ability. He only shook his head.
"I'm sorry, McNair. Of course we'll do what we can, but you know about these cases. You're only guessing as to Little Dog and his crowd. Personally I don't think he's on the Reservation. I haven't seen him for months."
When the magnitude of Tom's loss dawned on him, however, he became more alert. Now and then he had cases of small pilfering brought before him; he had a sneaking sympathy for the Indian who was hungry and killed a steer for food. But this was different.
"Of course," he said. "I always felt it was a mistake for you to come on the Reservation at all. I told you so at the time. But I'll have Little Dog looked up, if he's here."
"If he's here, I'll kill him on sight," Tom said, white to the lips. "I'm warning you."
He went back to the ranch, got out his revolver, oiled and filled it. He was afraid to carry a rifle, for fear they would take it from him. For he was not alone in his search. The cattlemen were uniting now against the criminals as a matter of self-protection. Outfits were starting, small posses from different points, going in different directions. A telephone message to Ursula had started out the Sheriff, and shipping pens and way stations along the main line were being watched by deputies sworn in for the purpose.
But Tom hunted alone. He was quiet enough on the surface; but the men who met him knew and let him be. He had little or no hope of his cattle; even the Reservation, with its wild broken country, offered a thousand hiding places. But they would not be on the Reservation, he knew that. Like the Indian Medicine Man, blowing his smoke to the four corners of the world, he could take his choice of direction. Up and down the line, however, was already being watched; the range far across the valley meant long forced drives through open country. But the mountains close at hand offered, if harder territory, more chances of quick concealment.
He took to them, then, with death in his heart and within easy reach of his hand, and as has been said, he rode alone. As he rode he rebuilt the tragedy from start to finish; the conspiracy, its deft and sudden execution. The rustlers closing in, cutting, holding; then the first night out, the forced drive, the riders camping on the tails of the cattle, urging, cursing, pushing on; dawn, and a sheltered spot somewhere, with the thieves far enough from the herd for safety, looking down from rocks, sleeping while a sentry watched. And then another night drive, and another.
Two weeks, three weeks ago! Already the new brands would be healed or healing. They iwould pass inspection; be shipped and sold, and nothing would be left to him. Nothing, that is to say, but Little Dog.
He even resented the posses, the machinery of the law. Let them keep out; this was between him and the Indian. Each would kill the other on sight, and knew it. He was convinced that Little Dog was hiding in the mountains.
After a time he had stopped thinking, to all practical purposes. He had become a killing machine, moving rapidly but automatically; riding to the top of some steep slope, surveying the country, going on. When he climbed through a cañon his revolver was in his hand. At night he lay where he happened to be; sometimes he got himself a meal of sorts, but he had no hours for food, no hours for anything. The day was divided into two parts; darkness and light. He resented the darkness fiercely, because it stopped the search.
One day, finding that his foot was again too swollen for his boot, he took off the boot and threw it away. Then he went back and got it again, for fear it would put Little Dog on guard. Another time he came across an old mining camp back in the range. He circled it carefully, watching, and was astonished to see Gus, crutches and all, come out of a cabin and go to the creek for water. The thing puzzled him. He rode down and confronted Gus at the door of his shack. He was vaguely suspicious, but Gus met him with a cheerful smile.
"What are you doing here, Gus?"
"Me? I yust come to shoot deer. That's all I'm good for now. Shootin'."
"You're sure it's deer?"
And Gus chuckled.
"Don't you worry about me, Tom. I'll send you a haunch, when I get it."
The Swede wanted him to spend the night, but Tom remembered the night in the cabin and grimly refused. Not that he gave a damn for his life now, but he had work to do first. He mounted his horse again, and Gus stood by, still grinning.
"You'll never get him, Tom. He's a smart Indian."
"Maybe not, but I'll die trying."
The time came, however, when he had to start back. His provisions were gone, his horse exhausted. He started down for fresh animals and more food, and on his way down he came across his first and only clue to his herd.
The mountain pastures were already drying up, and the cattle which had summered on the range had begun to work down again. They filled the trails, or stood on steep hillsides eying him as he passed them. He worked through them, scrutinizing their brands and ear-marks, hoping against hope, and at last among the foothills, he saw an old bull which he recognized at sight. His heart leaped. He spurred his horse and rode slowly behind and to one side of the animal. There was no doubt about it, nor of the comparatively recent reworking of the brand. It had been skillful work. The L had been extended to the D, a line drawn across, and another D reversed added to the other end. A brand changed like that would pass inspection anywhere.
For the first time, however, he felt a faint hope; the instinct to kill died away. He rode to the ranch, got out the car, flew into Ursula. But the lead, although it established certain things, led nowhere in the end. The brand had been registered some months before as the crossed link brand. It was owned by a doubtful outfit across the range, and the Sheriff went over there. But there was nothing to be done.
"They're the fellows, all right," the Sheriff told him, "but what are you going to do? The brand's theirs, the cattle have been shipped and sold. The fact that you claim the bull is yours won't help much. You can claim him all you like, but he won't come when you call him! You can go to Chicago and try to locate the hides, but even if you can, how are you going to prove it isn't some of the old L. D. stock these fellows got somewhere?"
He was three days in town, savage, sullen, heart-sick. Limping badly, too. One day he met Doctor Dunham in the street, and the old doctor stopped him.
"I thought so!" he said. "What did I tell you? From what I hear"
"I don't care what you hear, and I don't give a damn!"
The next moment he was sorry, but the doctor had gone on.
Then one day he found that he had lost even his chance to get back at Little Dog. He was stripped of everything, even of revenge.
Gus had come into Ursula, had gone to the Sheriff's office and given himself up.
"What for?" asked Allison, staring at him.
Gus smiled.
"I've yust killed a fellow," he said. "I told Tom he was too smart for him, but he wasn't too smart for me. He came into my cabin. 'Hello,' he said. 'So you come through winter all right, eh?' 'Sure I did,' says I, and holds up my leg. 'All but that,' I says. He looked and started out, but I was too quick for him."
When Tom heard the news he went to see Gus in the jail, but he had little to add to his previous story. Little Dog had run off his horses the winter before, and left him there to die, so Gus had killed him. He seemed quite cheerful, although it was clear that he was not entirely balanced. He shook hands with Tom pleasantly when he left.
"The way to catch wolves is to think like a wolf," he said, and chuckled.
The next day Tom got a letter from Arizona. The show was going to England that fall, and needed an Assistant Boss Hostler.
"I understand you've had some hard luck," he wrote, "and I've recommended you for the job. It pays good money, and we are going to show the Johnnie Bulls something to make them drop their h's right down on the ground. You know the work. There's no grand-stand stuff about it, but it's a heap sight better than sitting on your thumbs all winter to keep them warm."
He decided to accept. He saw Tulloss and told him, and the banker did not demur. He had done his best, and it had got him nowhere. The Potter company was still holding on to the L. D., although the banker knew it could not be for long. And Tom's face was the strongest argument of all.
"Well, maybe you're right, Tom," he said heavily. "You'll get a change, and—maybe later on"
"It's not a change I'm after. I've got the interest to pay on those notes, and this way I can earn it."
In the end it was so arranged. The remaining stock was to be sold, the ranch put on the market. Tulloss, worried at Tom's face, asked him to lunch with him at the Prairie Rose, but Tom refused.
"I'm not good company for man or beast these days," he said, and went out of the office as uncompromisingly as he had come in.
He went back, sold the stock, even straightened the ranch house. And on his last night there he lighted a lamp and began to pack, with a face set with misery, the small and unimportant things that Kay had left; her mending basket, her bits of clothing, even the little face pillow she had been so fond of.
"It's a pillow for a baby!"
"Well, maybe some day"
God!
On the mantel still sat the remnant of that Christmas candle he had put in the window. "Maybe somebody outside and want to come in." But there had been nobody outside to come in, and now there never would be anybody.
He stood looking at it. Then, curiously enough, he took it down and put it into the box. She would wonder about that. It would puzzle her. She would wrinkle up her forehead, the way she used to, and hold it up and look at it. But she would never know.
After he had finished he nailed the lid on the box and carried it out to the rickety car. It was a small box to carry what it held: all a man's hopes, in this life or the life to come. He put it into the car gently, like some poor dead thing.
He started early the next day, but early as it was the cattle were already on the road. Once more shipping time was approaching. At the railroad locomotives pulled their great trains of empty cattle cars and left them, so many here, so many there, on the sidetracks by the shipping pens. And from all parts of the back country the herds were converging, driven by patient cowboys with their neckerchiefs over their mouths against the dust they raised.
"So long, Tom. Good luck."
Along with the cattle was moving the wheat. Trucks and wagons, their bodies built up with temporary boardings, rocked and careened along the roads toward the small red elevators along the track. They moved onto the scales, were weighed, dumped, weighed again. The men who drove them waved their hands and shouted:
"So long, Tom. Good luck."
And as the car bumped along the box in the back seemed to echo the words:
"So long, Tom. Good luck. So long, Tom. Good luck."