Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West. William MacLeod Raine
stormed at him he took refuge in a suddenly acquired lack of understanding of English. If they called him Charlie or John or One Lung, he accepted the name cheerfully and laid it to a racial mental deficiency of the 'melicans. Now he decided to make a selection himself.
"Vely well. Bleef steak and hlam'neggs."
"Fried potatoes done brown, John."
"Flied plotatoes. Tea or cloffee?"
"Coffee," decided Dave for both of them. "Warm mine."
"And custard pie," added Bob. "Made from this year's crop."
"Aigs sunny side up," directed his friend.
"Fry mine one on one side and one on the other," Hart continued facetiously.
"Vely well." Hop Lee's impassive face betrayed no perplexity as he departed. In the course of a season he waited on hundreds of wild men from the hills, drunk and sober.
Dave helped himself to bread from a plate stacked high with thick slices. He buttered it and began to eat. Hart did the same. At Delmonico's nobody ever waited till the meal was served. Just about to attack a second slice, Dave stopped to stare at his companion. Hart was looking past his shoulder with alert intentness. Dave turned his head. Two men, leaving the restaurant, were paying the cashier.
"They just stepped outa that booth to the right," whispered Bob.
The men were George Doble and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad, heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business of his own. He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather chaps with silver conchas.
At this moment Hop Lee arrived with dinner.
Dave sighed as he grinned at his friend. "I need that supper in my system. I sure do, but I reckon I don't get it."
"You do not, old lizard," agreed Hart. "I'll say Doble's the most inconsiderate guy I ever did trail. Why couldn't he 'a' showed up a half-hour later, dad gum his ornery hide?"
They paid their bill and passed into the street. Immediately the sound of a clear, high voice arrested their attention. It vibrated indignation and dread.
"What have you done with my father?" came sharply to them on the wings of the soft night wind.
A young woman was speaking. She was in a buggy and was talking to two men on the sidewalk—the two men who had preceded the range-riders out of the restaurant.
"Why, Miss, we ain't done a thing to him—nothin' a-tall." The man Shorty was speaking, and in a tone of honeyed conciliation. It was quite plain he did not want a scene on the street.
"That's a lie." The voice of the girl broke for an instant to a sob. "Do you think I don't know you're Brad Steelman's handy man, that you do his meanness for him when he snaps his fingers?"
"You sure do click yore heels mighty loud, Miss." Dave caught in that soft answer the purr of malice. He remembered now hearing from Buck Byington that years ago Emerson Crawford had rounded up evidence to send Shorty to the penitentiary for rebranding through a blanket. "I reckon you come by it honest. Em always acted like he was God Almighty."
"Where is he? What's become of him?" she cried.
"Is yore paw missin'? I'm right sorry to hear that," the cowpuncher countered with suave irony. He was eager to be gone. His glance followed Doble, who was moving slowly down the street.
The girl's face, white and shining in the moonlight, leaned out of the buggy toward the retreating vaquero. "Don't you dare hurt my father! Don't you dare!" she warned. The words choked in her tense throat.
Shorty continued to back away. "You're excited, Miss. You go home an' think it over reasonable. You'll be sorry you talked this away to me," he said with unctuous virtue. Then, swiftly, he turned and went straddling down the walk, his spurs jingling music as he moved.
Quickly Dave gave directions to his friend. "Duck back into the restaurant, Bob. Get a pocketful of dry rice from the Chink. Trail those birds to their nest and find where they roost. Then stick around like a burr. Scatter rice behind you, and I'll drift along later. First off, I got to stay and talk with Miss Joyce. And, say, take along a rope. Might need it."
A moment later Hart was in the restaurant commandeering rice and Sanders was lifting his dusty hat to the young woman in the buggy.
"If I can he'p you any, Miss Joyce," he said.
Beneath dark and delicate brows she frowned at him. "Who are you?"
"Dave Sanders my name is. I reckon you never heard tell of me. I punch cows for yore father."
Her luminous, hazel-brown eyes steadied in his, read the honesty of his simple, boyish heart.
"You heard what I said to that man?"
"Part of it."
"Well, it's true. I know it is, but I can't prove it."
Hart, moving swiftly down the street, waved a hand at his friend as he passed. Without turning his attention from Joyce Crawford, Dave acknowledged the signal.
"How do you know it?"
"Steelman's men have been watching our house. They were hanging around at different times day before yesterday. This man Shorty was one."
"Any special reason for the feud to break out right now?"
"Father was going to prove up on a claim this week—the one that takes in the Tularosa water-holes. You know the trouble they've had about it—how they kept breaking our fences to water their sheep and cattle. Don't you think maybe they're trying to keep him from proving up?"
"Maybeso. When did you see him last?"
Her lip trembled. "Night before last. After supper he started for the
Cattleman's Club, but he never got there."
"Sure he wasn't called out to one of the ranches unexpected?"
"I sent out to make sure. He hasn't been seen there."
"Looks like some of Brad Steelman's smooth work," admitted Dave. "If he could work yore father to sign a relinquishment—"
Fire flickered in her eye. "He'd ought to know Dad better."
"Tha's right too. But Brad needs them water-holes in his business bad. Without 'em he loses the whole Round Top range. He might take a crack at turning the screws on yore father."
"You don't think—?" She stopped, to fight back a sob that filled her soft throat.
Dave was not sure what he thought, but he answered cheerfully and instantly. "No, I don't reckon they've dry-gulched him or anything. Emerson Crawford is one sure-enough husky citizen. He couldn't either be shot or rough-housed in town without some one hearin' the noise. What's more, it wouldn't be their play to injure him, but to force a relinquishment."
"That's true. You believe that, don't you?" Joyce cried eagerly.
"Sure I do." And Dave discovered that his argument or his hopes had for the moment convinced him. "Now the question is, what's to be done?"
"Yes," she admitted, and the tremor of the lips told him that she depended upon him to work out the problem. His heart swelled with glad pride at the thought.
"That man who jus' passed is my friend," he told her. "He's trailin' that duck Shorty. Like as not we'll find out what's stirrin'."
"I'll go with you," the girl said, vivid lips parted in anticipation.
"No, you go home. This is a man's job. Soon as I find out anything I'll let you know."
"You'll come, no matter what time o' night it is," she pleaded.
"Yes," he promised.
Her firm little hand rested a moment in his brown palm. "I'm depending on you," she murmured in a whisper