CHAPTER V
ORDERS TO MOVE ON
IF you have ever penetrated deep into some shadowy forest with never the feel of a man-made trail under foot, if you have known that unique thrill which comes with the sensation of being utterly alone save for the tall trees and silent mountains, the sunlight and bickering waters, if there has come to you the grateful emotion born of the thought that perhaps, except for your own, no human foot has ever come into this particular sequestered spot since old time was in swaddling clothes, if just then a chance glance at a creek's edge showed you an old fragment of newspaper or an empty and rusting sardine can … then could you understand and sympathetically condone the first rush of disgust with the situation which filled Steele's heart. Long and across many miles had this hidden, little trodden corner of the big world called to him, long had he enjoyed in anticipation those first few idle hours alone with the solitude. This late afternoon had found him in tune with his surroundings; he was "ready for it." And, though a man usually as slow to anger as he was quick to mirth, for the moment he yielded to a wrath as instinctive as it was illogical.
The two men came on. They were big, rough looking fellows who might have been timber jacks, pick and shovel men strayed from Camp Corliss, or any other undesirable representatives of the human species for whose companionship Steele had no present craving. As he faced them the low sun was full in their blinking eyes. So, while it was given them to read little or nothing in Steele's expression, he did not fail to note that they approached him with purpose in their very stride, that had business with him.
"Say, pardner," said the foremost of the two whom, had she seen the physique of him, Beatrice Corliss must have admitted one of Hurley's best men, "orders is to move on. No prospectors or campers allowed. Guess you'll have to hit the trail again. It's only a little piece that way," and he swung out a long arm toward the south, "an' you're off the ranch an' there's a good campin' spot."
With the first words the anger in Steele's heart had swollen so that his big fists shut down hard; before the last word had come the anger had passed, instantly replaced by a rising sense of the humour underlying the situation. Startling the two bearers of orders to him as perhaps nothing else short of his sprouting wings on the instant and sailing off over their heads could have done, he greeted them with the sudden boom of his big laughter. Hurley's two messengers stopped dead in their tracks like one man, their eyes running swiftly from him to each other, back to him in frowning uncertainty. It is not to be wondered at if their initial impression was that they had to do with a lunatic.
"Look here," growled the spokesman, drawing his hat brim down to shut the sun out of his eyes a little, "don't you try to get fresh, stranger. Orders is, get out. Now suppose you travel!"
Steele, resigning himself utterly to the pure joy he extracted no less from the two somewhat bewildered countenances confronting him than from the situation itself, greeted them with a second volley of laughter.
"I wouldn't have missed this for a house and lot," he choked.
"What's that?" demanded the other, failing to catch the words and naturally suspicious of their portent. "If you think you can guy me, why damn you, just you try it on an' see."
"Wait a minute before you sail into me," chuckled Steele. "It's funny, only you don't see the funny part yet. You will in a minute. You order me off and that's what I was getting ready to do for you! As you show up I'm saying to myself: 'They're two real nice looking boys, but I want the woods to myself a little. They'll just have to move on!' And before I can get the words out you're wanting me to clean out!"
Even with the explanation before them they did not appear to laugh with him. A score of paces away they frowned against the sun, staring at him, entirely out of harmony with his mood.
"We ain't got all night to chin in," offered the man who as yet had not spoken. "Suppose you take your traps an' beat it back to where your horse is. We're gettin' ready to make a fire an' eat."
"Well," rejoined Steele, safe again in his serene good humour, "you'd better hurry. For if you eat your own cooking tonight it'll be back at the Little Giant. I'm strong for two things: first, staying just exactly where I am, second, being alone. Don't like to appear inhospitable, but since you've started it, you've got to skip out. And say, you Bill Rice, you tell Ed Hurley for me he ought to know better than to try an old game of bluff on me."
"Huh!" said Bill Rice, the bulkier, squattier of the two, who still stood a pace in the fore. "Know me, do you? I ain't got you, though, stranger."
"Come a little closer, Bill," laughed Steele. "And get the sun out of your eyes."
Rice did both, moving slowly, curiosity in his eyes. Suddenly an amazed grunt broke from him, followed by a wide grin and an extended hand that was gripped hard in Steele's.
"Bill Steele, by God!" he cried warmly. "Why, you ol' son of a gun! Say, you fit in a man's eyes nice as a new bottle o' hootch! I had the notion you was dead down in Mexico an' your bones picked over by a coyote. You ol' son of a gun, you! 'Member when me an' you, jus' two U. S. Bills, stood 'em off down to Dos Hermanas?"
"You sawed-off, hammered-down old rock of ages, of course I remember. Only four years ago, after all, Bill. Who's your friend?"
"Turk Wilson," answered Bill Rice. "Step up, Turk, an' shake hands with Mr. Steele, Bill Steele that I've tol' you about more'n once when you an' me was both drunk."
Turk, whose name smacking of the oriental was obviously bestowed to him for the fiery red of his complexion, came forward much after the fashion of an old bear with the rheumatism, grasped Steele's hand and said, "Howdy."
"If you boys haven't eaten," suggested Steele, "why not take chuck with me? I was just going to get a fire started."
"Sure," agreed Rice heartily. "If you got plenty?"
"You start the fire, Bill," said Steele, kneeling beside his saddle, his fingers busy with the thongs about his rod. "Open my roll of blankets and you'll find coffee and the Hibernian fruit and some flour and stuff. Give me ten minutes and I'll bring in the trout. There's the spot handy where I can get 'em any time, day or night."
"Go to it, Bill," retorted Rice. "I'm listenin'. … Ol' Bill Steele, by gravy!"
Then as Steele slipped away among the great boulders, seeking a pool whose memory had been a bit of treasure carried long, Bill Rice squatted on the ground and slowly a wide grin stretched his mouth.
"Orders to chuck a man off the ranch," he beamed upon his friend Turk Wilson, "an' that man turns out to be ol' Bill Steele. The son of a gun! Can you beat it, eh, Turk? Haw!"
Turk Wilson, content to watch Rice working with the blanket roll, made himself comfortable with his broad back to a tree and with big knotted hands set about cutting himself a chew from a slab of plug tobacco.
"Hurley tol' me we was lookin' for a man name of Steele mos'ly," he admitted slowly. Not a man given to much talk, Turk Wilson drew out what few words he used drawlingly, "to make 'em go as far as possible," as Bill Rice had remarked about him.
"You di'n't say so to me," grunted Rice.
"Nope," responded Turk.
"If you had," resumed the man, who now had the roll open and was sorting out the medley of its contents, "I wouldn't of come. I'd of tol' Ed to get some other guy on the job."
Turk shut his monster pocket knife and put it away, replacing what he had left of the plug in a hip pocket.
"’Cause," resumed Bill Rice thoughtfully, "Bill Steele's as good a frien' as I ever had."
Turk scratched his head, nodded and seemed on the verge of drowsing.
"Bacon an' spuds," said Rice. "Onions an' cawffy. Sugar, I guess. Prunes. Say, I tol' you already, didn't I, about me an' Bill mixin' with them ginks down to Dos Hermanas?"
"Can't say as you have," returned the non-committal Turk.
"It was this way: You see I was carryin' a reglar pay day load an' when I'm that-away I don't like a man to talk the lingo like he's makin' fun o' me. So I get somethin' started with the Mex barkeep an' some frien's of his'n. In about a minute, before I good an' got started, we'd busted some chairs an' bottles an' furniture an' things, about a hundred dollars' worth, Mexican money. There was seven or eleven of them dark, han'some little gents pokin' knives at me when ol' Bill Steele walks in. Say, Turk, you oughta heard him war-whoop when he sees it's one white man an' that white man me, stacked up against that congregation of greasers! Nex' thing anybody knows … Say, for the love of Mike, Turk, are you jus' goin' to squat there all night waitin' fer me to peel the spuds an' make the hot cakes an' cawffy an' things? Get a fire goin', can't you?"
Turk sighed, bestirred himself and began to gather dry sticks for the evening blaze. Fifteen minutes later through the little staccato noises of a further lot of fuel snapping in his big hands and the booming of the waters of Hell's Goblet, there came the sound of Steele's voice, lifted mightily. Turk paused in his labours and cocked his head to one side, listening. Bill Rice, laying knife blade to side of bacon, stopped and turned a little to hear better.
"Fell in, maybe," suggested Turk. "Can't he swim?"
"Fell in, nothin'," grunted Rice. "He's singin'. Lord, ain't that man got a voice!"
"The voice ain't so bad," remarked Turk. "But the tune is. He goes up when by rights he oughta come down."
Whereupon Turk began whistling softly, melodiously indicating just what notes were demanded by the composer of a very popular selection from Il Trovatore. He could whistle, could Turk Wilson, and beautifully.
"That's the way she goes by rights," he amended the procedure.
"Yes, sir, Bill Steele's got a voice a man might travel a mile to hear … if travellin' was necessary. Which it ain't. Why, Turk, I remember the time me an' Bill was prospectin' down in Arizona an' him an' me got separated an' Bill climbs up on a sand hill an' turns that ol' voice of his loose an' I hear him across five miles sand an' sage. Fact."
"Hm." Turk resumed his labour of fuel gathering. "Five mile? Hm."
"But then you see," added Bill Rice hastily, "that was down on the desert. It's different there, the air bein' that clear I've saw a mountain off fifty mile that didn't look more'n a two hours' walk."
"Well," and Turk surrendered to unanswerable argument, "that might be, too."
"How in heck am I goin' to boil cawffy when he's forgot to bring along a cawffy pot to boil it in?" demanded Rice. "Now, Bill Steele oughta know better'n that."
Turk lighted his fire, piled sufficient dry branches ready to hand and returned to his tree. He watched his companion interestedly but offered neither advise nor aid. His air was plainly that of a man whose worries, of whatsoever nature, lay behind him.
"We got to chase him off the ranch, jus' the same," was his cheerful remark after a long silence. "I got my orders straight from Ed Hurley."
"Damn Ed Hurley," was Rice's outspoken way of removing a difficulty. "He didn't know which Steele it was."
"He did, though; he said 'A big, copper headed guy name of Bill Steele.' An' what's more he wrote a letter I'm to give him."
"Well," snapped Bill Rice, with more of disgust than of irritation in his voice, "if you ain't the most secreetive cuss I ever travelled with I'm a Mexico dawg. Why didn't you say so? That letter'll make it all right with Steele an' all we got to do is fork it over an' we're through."
"Ain't so," said Turk equably. "It don't explain nothin' a-tall."
"Did Hurley tell you what it says?"
"Can't I read? It jus' says … Wait a minute."
Turk brought out of an inside vest pocket a folded bit of paper and a crumpled envelope; the latter he discarded as of no moment. And in the singsong of an illiterate man who reads aloud, he declaimed:
"Dear Billy: If this comes to you the boys will tell you as much as I know. Orders from headquarters for you to keep off the ranch. First I knew of your being back in this part of the world. Run over and see me as soon as you can and we'll try to straighten matters out. Don't get your back up and start something, because the Queen has got you dead to rights this trip; it's her ranch and that's an end of it. Look me up. Good luck.
"Edw. Hurley."
"There you are," finished Turk. "So far as bein' any news in it you might as well throw it away, huh?"
The sun was down among the trees upon the ridge when Steele came back into camp. And, though he had gone downstream upon leaving Rice and Wilson, he now appeared from above so that again the sun was in their eyes as they looked up at him. With a willow branch through their dripping gills he carried three fat trout; in the other hand was an old, black coffee pot.
"I didn't think you was the man to forget it," said Bill Rice as he accepted it and spilled some coffee into the water it contained. "By the way, Bill, ol' Turk's got a letter for you from Hurley."
Steele read the few words by the fading light, stood for a moment regarding them thoughtfully, then tossed the paper to the flames.
"Judging by the finger and thumb marks on it," he said evenly, "I hardly suppose it's necessary to tell you what he says? Fry out some bacon, Bill, and Turk and I will have the fish ready to go into the hot grease. Fresh trout in bacon grease, washed down with good black coffee … you can't beat it, eh, boys?"
"Goin' to do like Hurley says, Bill?" asked Rice, busy with the coals.
"I'll be tickled to pieces to see him. Tell him I'll run in and swap talk with him just as soon as I finish my vacation."
"How long did you say that was?"
Steele laughed.
"Can't tell, Bill. When a man is just back in the woods after a long spell in town he doesn't know any more than the man in the moon just how long it will be before he wants to break out of them. A week, or a couple of weeks, I'd say."
Turk, employing his big knife at fish cleaning, looked up briefly.
"Let's eat an' talk business afterwards," he suggested.