CHAPTER XVI
"We'll Steal 'Em Blind!"
"Truly, you are in earnest—you borrowed money from Bob to go in partnership with Mr. Blakely?"
Ben nodded somewhat sheepishly.
"Ben, how could you!" It was Nan who flushed with mortification.
"Why, not? What's wrong about that?"
"Oh, can't you see!" she cried miserably. "You don't see—that's the worst of it to me—you don't see! You cannot seem to understand—some things."
"He'll get it back," he defended, mystified.
"But that is not the point at all; it is that you should ask this favor from him, of all persons."
"He's got plenty of it, hasn't he?"
"Irrespective of that, which has nothing at all to do with it, to think that you would place yourself under obligations to a man to whom you have scarcely been civil, one to whom—if I must say it—you have been positively boorish.
"If only you had told me—I would have arranged the loan for you through my father sooner than this. What must Bob think of you! And he has not even hinted it to me."
"I can give it back," said Ben finally, in a kind of sullen contrition; not because he thought he had made a mistake, but because Nan, for these incomprehensible reasons, thought he had.
"No, it is done. You would as well keep it."
"Don't be mad at me!"
"I'm not 'mad'—I'm disappointed."
Ben, who had ridden to Las Rubertas prideful and elated over his ambitious venture, rode back to the Longhorn bosque crestfallen by Nan's disapproval, while Nan, in her sensitive pride, all but writhed as she tried to imagine Bob's opinion of Ben.
It could be nothing less than the mild contempt a man like Bob would feel for an inferior when that person acted as such. She was ashamed for Ben, and fearful that Bob would see her shame.
Nan knew well enough that Bob's seeming blindness to Ben's persistent sulkiness and discourtesy was solely upon her account. His trained self-repression, his instinctive good manners and breeding, were in constant contrast to Ben's raw selfishness—the selfishness of a child who has not seen enough of the world to recognize the claims of others.
Yet Ben was the embodiment of the spirit of the cowboy, an incarnation of the sand and brawn and grit of the far West, and, as such he made a mighty appeal to the primitive in the girl, to her youth, imagination, and markedly romantic nature.
Spiser heard the news of the partnership with glee, and the trend of his thoughts may be gathered from his jubilant exclamation:
"Good! We'll steal 'em blind!"
Spiser wanted revenge with savage intensity, and in his new foreman he found a willing tool. Heretofore his wishes in regard to Blakely's cattle and Blakely's range had been conveyed in veiled terms, though sufficiently strong to make Kansas Ed understand that for every "stray" branded by him he would receive an extra five on his monthly check. But now, in his eagerness, Spiser no longer took this slight precaution.
"Brand every hoof you can get your rope on and run 'em off. We'll clean those fellers out, and we'll clean 'em quick!"
"I'm agreeable," and Kansas Ed looked it, "but you can't trust any of the outfit here; they wouldn't rustle from Ben. I'll have to have outside help."
"You can get that in Las Rubertas. There isn't a greaser in the place that isn't layin' for him. The Ospinos ought to be good hombres for this job."
"They're handy with a brandin'-iron all right," his foreman agreed; "I'll sound 'em."
The same day that Juan Ospino went into the employ of Spiser, Ben met him on the range, though the meeting was not of Ospino's choosing.
"What you huntin', Ospino?"
"Strays" was the answer, with a touch of malice.
"Strays?" Ben looked at him hard. "Go back to your boss, Ospino, and tell him that there are no strays on Blakely's range—that we ride it all the time, and," significantly, "we always keep our rifles where we can get at 'em easy."
And in due season Ospino reported the conversation, with the additional information that Blakely and Ben seemed everywhere at once. A discouraging state of affairs, he declared plaintively, for a hard-working thief who was paid on a percentage basis.
Kansas Ed corroborated the Mexican's story of their vigilance, and Spiser fumed. He had no notion of being thwarted and outwitted—it was demoralizing to his self-respect.
"There's more ways than one of killing a cat, Kansas."
"Cats is my speci-ality," Kansas grinned.
The reports of the annoyances, petty and otherwise, to which Nan was now subjected in Las Rubertas were some gratification to Spiser, but not enough to satisfy him.
He wanted to hit her harder, and to this end he was willing to take long chances.