The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
but their hunting don't seem to bring home any meat.”
“By the way, how IS your ankle, Mr. Bannister? I forgot to ask.” This shot from the young woman.
He enjoyed it with internal mirth. “They did happen on the target that time,” he admitted. “Oh, it's getting along fine, but I aim to do most of my walking on horseback for a while.”
They swept past the first dangerous grove of cottonwoods in safety, and rounded the boundary fence corner.
“They're in that bunch of pines over there,” said the foreman, after a single sweep of his eyes in that direction.
“Yes, I see they are. You oughtn't to let your boys wear red bandannas when they go gunning, Miss Messiter. It's an awful careless habit.”
Helen herself could see no sign of life in the group of pines, but she knew their keen, trained eyes had found what hers could not. Riding with one or another of her cowboys, she had often noticed how infallibly they could read the country for miles around. A scattered patch on a distant hillside, though it might be a half-hour's ride from them, told them a great deal more than seemed possible. To her the dark spots sifted on that slope meant scrub underbrush, if there was any meaning at all in them. But her riders could tell not only whether they were alive, but could differentiate between sheep and cattle. Indeed, McWilliams could nearly always tell whether they were HER cattle or not. He was unable to explain to her how he did it. By a sort of instinct, she supposed.
The pines were negotiated in safety, and on the part of the men with a carelessness she could not understand. For after they had passed there was a spot between her shoulder-blades that seemed to tingle in expectation of a possible bullet boring its way through. But she would have died rather than let them know how she felt.
Perhaps Bannister understood, however, for he remarked casually: “I wouldn't be ambling past so leisurely if I was riding alone. It makes a heap of difference who your company is, too. Those punchers wouldn't take a chance at me now for a million dollars.”
“No, they're some haidstrong, but they ain't plumb locoed,” agreed Mac.
Fifteen minutes later Helen drew up at the line corner. “We'll part company here, Mr. Bannister. I don't think there is any more danger from my men.”
“Before we part there is something I want to say. I hold that a man has as much right to run sheep on these hills as cows. It's government land, and neither one of us owns it. It's bound to be a case of the survival of the fittest. If sheep are hardier and more adapted to the country, then cows have got to vamos. That's nature, as it looks to me. The buffalo and the antelope have gone, and I guess cows have got to take their turn.”
Her scornful eyes burned him. “You came to tell me that, did you? Well, I don't believe a word of it. I'll not yield my rights without a fight. You may depend on that.”
“Here, too,” nodded her foreman. “I'm with my boss clear down the line. And as soon as she lets me turn loose my six-gun, you'll hear it pop, seh.”
“I have not a doubt of it, Mr. McWilliams,” returned the sheepman blithely. “In the meantime I was going to say that though most of my interests are in sheep instead of cattle—”
“I thought most of your interests were in other people's property,” interrupted the young woman.
“It goes into sheep ultimately,” he smiled. “Now, what I am trying to get at is this: I'm in debt to you a heap, Miss Messiter, and since I'm not all yellow cur, I intend to play fair with you. I have ordered my sheep back across the deadline. You can have this range to yourself for your cattle. The fight's off so far as we personally are concerned.”
A hint of deeper color touched her cheeks. Her manner had been cavalier at best; for the most part frankly hostile; and all the time the man was on an errand of good-will. Certainly he had scored at her expense, and she was ashamed of herself.
“Y'u mean that you're going to respect the deadline? asked Mac in surprise.
“I didn't say quite that,” explained the sheepman. “What I said was that I meant to keep on my side of it so far as the Lazy D cattle are concerned. I'll let your range alone.”
“But y'u mean to cross it down below where the Bar Double-E cows run?”
Bannister's gay smile touched the sardonic face. “Do you invite the public to examine your hand when you sit into a game of poker, Mr. McWilliams?”
“You're dead right. It's none of my business what y'u do so long as y'u keep off our range,” admitted the foreman. “And next time the conversation happens on Mr. Bannister, I'll put in my little say-so that he ain't all black.”
“That's very good of you, sir,” was the other's ironical retort.
The girl's gauntleted hand offered itself impulsively. “We can't be friends under existing circumstances, Mr. Bannister. But that does not alter the fact that I owe you an apology. You came as a peace envoy, and one of my men shot at you. Of course, he did not understand the reason why you came, but that does not matter. I did not know your reason myself, and I know I have been very inhospitable.”
“Are you shaking hands with Ned Bannister the sheepman or Ned Bannister the outlaw?” asked the owner of that name, with a queer little smile that seemed to mock himself.
“With Ned Bannister the gentleman. If there is another side to him I don't know it personally.”
He flushed underneath the tan, but very plainly with pleasure. “Your opinions are right contrary to Hoyle, ma'am. Aren't you aware that a sheepman is the lowest thing that walks? Ask Mr. McWilliams.”
“I have known stockmen of that opinion, but—”
The foreman's sentence was never finished. From a clump of bushes a hundred yards away came the crack of a rifle. A bullet sang past, cutting a line that left on one side of it Bannister, on the other Miss Messiter and her foreman. Instantly the two men slid from their horses on the farther side, dragged down the young woman behind the cover of the broncos, and arranged the three ponies so as to give her the greatest protection available. Somehow the weapons that garnished them had leaped to their hands before their feet touched the ground.
“That coyote isn't one of our men. I'll back that opinion high,” said McWilliams promptly.
“Who is he?” the girl whispered.
“That's what we're going to find out pretty soon,” returned Bannister grimly. “Chances are it's me he is trying to gather. Now, I'm going to make a break for that cottonwood. When I go, you better run up a white handkerchief and move back from the firing-line. Turn Buck loose when you leave. He'll stay around and come when I whistle.”
He made a run for it, zigzagging through the sage-brush so swiftly as to offer the least certain mark possible for a sharpshooter. Yet twice the rifle spoke before he reached the cottonwood.
Meanwhile Mac had fastened the handkerchief of his mistress on the end of a switch he had picked up and was edging out of range. His tense, narrowed gaze never left the bush-clump from which the shots were being pumped, and he was careful during their retreat to remain on the danger side of the road, in order to cover Helen.
“I guess Bannister's right. He don't want us, whoever he is.”
And even as he murmured it, the wind of a bullet lifted his hat from his head. He picked it up and examined it. The course of the bullet was marked by a hole in the wide brim, and two more in the side and crown.
“He ce'tainly ventilated it proper. I reckon, ma'am, we'll make a run for it. Lie low on the pinto's neck, with your haid on the off side. That's right. Let him out.”
A mile and a half farther up the road Mac reined in, and made the Indian peace-sign. Two dejected figures came over the hill and resolved themselves into punchers of the Lazy D. Each of them trailed a rifle by his side.
“You're a fine pair of ring-tailed snorters, ain't y'u?” jeered the foreman. “Got