At the store in Cordova he told his woes4 to the countryside, and he had an attentive5 audience, for his issue was theirs, and in a broader way.
On a pleasant day in late June, the old man reiterated6 his grievance7, pulling his long grey beard and flailing9 his gaunt arms in eloquent10 gesture.
“Whoever they be that lifted my steers11,” he said grimly, “I damn their souls to hell! I’d damn their bodies, too, believe me, men, if I knowed ’em an’ could throw my gun on ’em. Shuriff, here, might take me to jail next minute an’ I’d go happy.”
Selwood, sitting at a table desultorily13 playing cards, pushed back his hat and smiled.
“Nobody’s going to take you to jail for killing14 a rustler15, Jake,” he said, “we’d give you a reward instead. I’d give a lot to have the chance myself.”
“Yes?” said Selwood, laying his cards flat on the table for a moment and facing him, “what would you do if you were sheriff?”
“I’d try, anyway,” said the old man, with a touch of scorn, “to find a trace of somethin’. I’d not stay on my own ranch18 an’ let th’ world go hang! I’d ride th’ hills, ’tenny rate.”
A slow paleness crept into Selwood’s face, giving it an odd ashen19 hue20, like a candle. He laid down his hand definitely and looked round at the ten or twelve men lounging in the room.
Among them were Bossick and one or two others who had suffered at the hands of the mysterious thieves of Nameless.
“I know that Jake here voices the feeling which has been growing against me for some time,” he said evenly, “and this is as good a time as any to speak about it.”
“You’re our sheriff, Price, an’ a damned good one,” spoke21 up Bossick loyally, “an’ I for one have nothing to say against you. I know—no one better—what you’re up against. I trailed my own stuff into that river with you, an’ I know that they simply vanished. I’ve done my own darndest to unravel22 th’ mystery, an’ I can’t see what more any man’d do, sheriff or not!”
Selwood smiled at him.
“Thanks, John,” he said, “I’ll not forget that. But I hate to have my friends think I’m laying down on the job. I haven’t said anything about what I’ve been doing, preferring to wait until I had something to show, but that time seems far off still. This is the smoothest work I ever saw, baffling——. I don’t stand to simple reason. We know beef cattle don’t fly—and yet that seems the only way they could have got out of the country. They go—and they leave no trail. I know, for I’ve ridden the hills, Jake, notwithstanding, in dragnet fashion. Ask my wife how many nights I’ve slept at home since the last raid. Take a look at my horse out there. He’s hard as iron and lean as a rail. And there’s another at home that looks just like him. If I haven’t found anything it’s not because I haven’t traveled.”
Several men stirred and one spoke.
“I don’t think many of us blame you, Price,” he said, “but it does gall23 a feller to lose stock an’ have to stand helpless.”
“And how do you think it galls24 me to fail to catch the lifters?” asked Selwood quietly. “It’s my job—my—my honor.”
He picked up his cards again and turned to the table.
“But no matter what is said, or thought, about me,” he finished, “every day of my further hold on office will be given over to the same hunt—until I find what I’m after, or give up as a failure.”
Hink Helsey, the bearded man who had sat on the store porch that day of the fight between Selwood and McKane, now dropped the forward legs of his chair to the floor and sat up, doubling his knife and putting it away in a pocket.
“Sheriff,” he said, “I’m stackin’ on you, along with Bossick. I think you’ll ketch yer game—an’ I think you’re already on th’ right trail.”
McKane looked at him as if he could kill him and his tongue itched25 to flail8 both men, the speaker and Selwood, for he knew that they meant the same thing.
There was one listener, however, who said nothing and whose sharp eyes scanned each face in the room with painstaking26 thoroughness. This was Sud Provine, a rider from Sky Line who had come down for the mail.
The Sky Line men never stayed long at Cordova, except as they came now and again for a night at play.
When the talk had changed from the all-absorbing topic of the stolen cattle, this worthy27 rose, took his sack and departed.
Several pairs of eyes followed him, but no one spoke of him.
Price Selwood had told the truth.
There was not a night of the long warming weeks of spring which had not seen him, a shadow in the shadows, riding the slopes and flats of Nameless. Sometimes he sat for hours high on some shoulder of the hills watching the bowl beneath with the moonlight sifting30 down in a silver flood. Again, when the nights were dark, he rode up under the very lip of Rainbow Cliff and watched and listened, his every sense as acute as a panther’s. There were times when he sat for half a night within hailing distance of Kate Cathrew’s stronghold, and once her dogs, winding31 him, yammered excitedly. This brought out a stealthy listener, whose only betrayal was the different note in the dogs’ voices.
But someone was there in the darkness of the veranda32, and Selwood outstayed him, whoever he was—outstayed the animals’ excitement, their curiosity, and left with the hint of coming dawn to drop back down the slants33 and sleep the day away at home.
Night again saw him travelling, and always his one obsession34 travelled with him—the hard-and-fast presentiment35 that Kate Cathrew was the tangible36 element in the smoke-screen of mystery which rode the country.
It was not long after the talk at the store, perhaps a week or such a matter, when he got the first faint inkling of a clue. It was scarcely more, yet it served to sharpen his wits to a razor edge. It was not moonlight, neither was it clear dark of the moon, but that vague time in between when a pale sickle37 sailed the vault38 and shed its half-light to make shadows ghostly and substance illusive39.
Selwood had ridden all the lower reaches of Nameless that week, had skirted the western end of Mystery and even trailed far into the Deep Hearts themselves in an effort to find something, anything, which might tell him he was at least on the right track.
He hardly knew what it was for which he searched—perhaps an old trail, perhaps a secret branding fire. But he had found nothing. So he fell back on his night riding again, and as always this led him instinctively40 into the region of Sky Line Ranch. He had crossed the river near the head of Nance41 Allison’s tilled land, and had sat a moment peering down the length of the brown stretch where the rows of young corn were springing bravely.
It pleased the sheriff to see this promise of a fair crop, for he knew the girl, and had known her father for an honest, straightforward42 man. The hard effort of the family to get along was known to all the ranchers and earned its mead43 of admiration44 in a land where work was regarded almost as a religion.
And this girl was not shiftless.
Instead her sharp management and her heavy labor46 were matters of note. So the sheriff took special cognizance of the look of her big field of corn and nodded in pleased satisfaction.
“Too bad she lost those six steers,” he told himself, “they’d have helped a lot in her year’s furnishing. Game young pair.”
Then he moved on up into the blue-brush that clothed the slants by the river and made for the heights.
Three hours later he was sitting sidewise in his saddle beside the well-worn trail which led up to Sky Line. He was not too close, being ensconced in a little thicket47 of maple48 about fifty yards back and above. He had spent many an hour here before.
It afforded a good view of the trail, and better still, a splendid chance to hear.
Twice in the last month he had heard and seen a bunch of Kate’s riders coming home from Cordova where they had gone to gamble. But this fact had been unproductive of anything sinister49.
They had ridden boldly, as behooves50 innocent men, their horses climbing slowly with rattle51 of spur and bit-chain, the squeak52 and whine53 of saddles.
Selwood had reached a hand to his horse’s nose to preclude its neighing, and had seen them pass on up and disappear.
Next day he had unostentatiously made sure that these men had played at McKane’s—in both instances.
And now he waited again, seemingly in a foolish quest.
He knew it would seem so to an observer. It seemed so to him when he regarded it with reason. But reason was not actuating him. It was instinct—hunch.
So Sheriff Price Selwood—whom Kate Cathrew quite frankly54 hated—sat in the darkness and watched and listened beside her trail, a lost little thread on the vast expanse of the wooded slopes.
A long hour passed, filled with the soundful silence of the wilderness55. He heard an owl29 call and call in mournful quaver from far below, another answer. He knew that some hunting animal was abroad in the manzanita to his right, for he caught a thud and rustle16, the pitiful, shrill56 scream of a rabbit. A night bird gave out a sweet, alert note from time to time and an insect drummed in a pine tree.
And then he heard, or thought he did, another sound.
It was so far off and faint that he could not be sure, and for a time he fancied he might have been mistaken. Then it came again—the crack of hoofs57 on stone, and once more silence.
He held his breath, listening.
Once again he heard that cracking of hoofs—and this time he knew them for cloven hoofs. A cattle-brute was coming up the trail toward him. There was nothing in that fact to cause undue58 excitement—except one thing.
Under ordinary conditions that steer12 would be lying in some snug59 glade60 chewing its cud. In no natural case would it be coming up a trail at . a smart pace—with a horse behind it!
And there was a horse behind it.
Selwood heard now distinctly the quieter step of a saddle horse.
He leaned forward, gripping his own mount’s nose, and strained his eyes in the illusive half-light. Presently he saw what he knew he would see—a rider, driving one lone61 steer up the trail to Sky Line.
It was too dark to see anything else—who the man was, or what manner of steer he drove, or what horse he rode.
And though he waited till the cooler breath of the night warned him of coming day he saw nothing more.
He spent half the next day at Cordova, listening, but though several cattlemen came in there was nothing said of a loss among them.
But the day after old man Conlan was in and fit for durance.
He threw his ragged62 hat on McKane’s floor and jumped on it, reviling63 the law and all it stood for.
“Two more!” he bellowed64 with a break of tears in his old voice. “By——! ef this ain’t th’ limit! I only had sixteen left an’ th’ two best out th’ lot come up missin’ this mornin’! Ain’t no trail agin. They’s tracks all over, sure—but th’ other stock is on th’ slope an’ this time there just ain’t nothin’!”
Barman, from up on Nameless, was at the store and he and McKane tried to calm the old man down, though the cattleman’s own blood was roiled65.
“It is a damned dirty shame!” he said indignantly, “have you told Selwood?”
“He’s here now,” said McKane, “just getting down.”
Price Selwood entered in time to hear the last of the old man’s tirade67, to catch the drift of what had happened, and his eyes glowed for a second.
He laid a hand on Conlan’s arm.
“Jake,” he said, “hold in a little longer.”
“Hold hell!” said the other shaking off the hand, “I’ll be ready for the county house in Bement in another three months!”
“I don’t think so, Jake,” said the sheriff quietly, “tell me—were those two steers branded?”
“’Course. Plain as day. J. C. on right hip68, swaller-fork in left ear. One was roan an’ t’other a bay-spot.”
Selwood turned without a word, left the store, mounted and rode away.
“Jest like him!” said Conlan bitterly, “goes a’ridin’ off all secret-like an’ snappy—’s if he knowed somethin’ or wanted us to think he did.”
“Mebby he does,” said Barman.
Sheriff Selwood rode straight up to Sky Line Ranch. It took him a good three hours, going fast, and it was far after noon when he pulled rein69 at Kate Cathrew’s corral gate and called for her.
She came, frowning and inhospitable.
“What do you want of me?” she asked coldly.
“Nothing,” said Selwood, “except to tell you I’m going to take a look around your place.”
“Well—” he drawled, smiling, “I might find a couple of steers branded with J. C. on the right hip.”
For one fraction of a second the black eyes burning sombrely on his flickered71, lost their direct steadiness.
Selwood laughed, though he was alert in every nerve and his right hand was on his thigh72 near to the butt73 of the gun that hung there. Caldwell and several other riders stood close, their eyes on him. He thought of John Allison, found dead at the foot of Rainbow Cliff, to all intents the victim of accident.
And he turned to ride over toward the corral.
“Go with him,” they telegraphed, and Caldwell went.
Selwood covered every foot of the home place of Sky Line in a grim silence, looking for anything. He looked into corral and stable, brush pasture and branding pen, but found no sign of the stolen steers.
When at last he rode away it was straight down along the face of Rainbow Cliff toward the west. He did not know why he skirted the rock-face, since it was hard going. The earth at the foot of the great precipice76 was slanting77 and covered with the loose stone that was forever falling from the weathered wall. It was rough on his horse’s feet, but he held him to it—and he was surprised to find that Caldwell was still with him, and riding inside next to the Cliff.
“Think I need escort, Caldwell?” he asked sarcastically78.
“Mebby as much as we need spyin’ on,” returned the other and rode along.
Three miles further on the sheriff turned down the mountain and the foreman reined79 up, sitting in silence to watch him out of sight.
“Wings is right,” said Selwood to himself, “those steers must have them—but that woman’s eyes were guilty, or I’m a liar80.”
At the same moment Caldwell was heaving a long breath of relief as he pulled his horse around and headed home.
“This here sheriff is gettin’ a little bit inquisitive,” he thought, then grinned sardonically81.
“But if he never gets any wiser than he is now he won’t set anything on fire. In fifteen feet of th’ Flange82 an’ never saw a thing! Holy smoke! Some sheriff! An’ yet—can’t blame him—the Flange’d fool th’ devil himself.”
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1
squatter
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| n.擅自占地者 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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reiterated
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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8
flail
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| v.用连枷打；击打；n.连枷（脱粒用的工具） | |
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flailing
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| v.鞭打( flail的现在分词 )；用连枷脱粒；（臂或腿）无法控制地乱动；扫雷坦克 | |
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10
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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steers
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| n.阉公牛，肉用公牛( steer的名词复数 )v.驾驶( steer的第三人称单数 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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desultorily
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| adv. 杂乱无章地, 散漫地 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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rustler
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| n.[美口]偷牛贼 | |
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rustle
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| v.沙沙作响；偷盗(牛、马等)；n.沙沙声声 | |
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testily
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| adv. 易怒地, 暴躁地 | |
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ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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ashen
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| adj.灰的 | |
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hue
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| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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22
unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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galls
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| v.使…擦痛( gall的第三人称单数 )；擦伤；烦扰；侮辱 | |
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25
itched
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| v.发痒( itch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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preclude
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| vt.阻止，排除，防止；妨碍 | |
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owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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30
sifting
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| n.筛，过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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slants
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| （使）倾斜，歪斜( slant的第三人称单数 )； 有倾向性地编写或报道 | |
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34
obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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presentiment
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| n.预感，预觉 | |
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tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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sickle
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| n.镰刀 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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illusive
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| adj.迷惑人的，错觉的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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nance
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| n.娘娘腔的男人，男同性恋者 | |
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42
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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43
mead
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| n.蜂蜜酒 | |
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44
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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45
condone
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| v.宽恕；原谅 | |
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46
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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47
thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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48
maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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49
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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50
behooves
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| n.利益，好处( behoof的名词复数 )v.适宜( behoove的第三人称单数 ) | |
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51
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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52
squeak
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| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
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53
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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56
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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57
hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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58
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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59
snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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60
glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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61
lone
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| adj.孤寂的，单独的；唯一的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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63
reviling
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| v.辱骂，痛斥( revile的现在分词 ) | |
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64
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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roiled
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| v.搅混（液体）( roil的过去式和过去分词 )；使烦恼；使不安；使生气 | |
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66
grunted
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| （猪等）作呼噜声( grunt的过去式和过去分词 )； （指人）发出类似的哼声； 咕哝着说 | |
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67
tirade
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| n.冗长的攻击性演说 | |
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68
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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69
rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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70
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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71
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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73
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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74
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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75
orbs
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| abbr.off-reservation boarding school 在校寄宿学校n.球，天体，圆形物( orb的名词复数 ) | |
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76
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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77
slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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78
sarcastically
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| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
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79
reined
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| 勒缰绳使（马）停步( rein的过去式和过去分词 )； 驾驭； 严格控制； 加强管理 | |
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80
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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81
sardonically
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| adv.讽刺地，冷嘲地 | |
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82
flange
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| n.边缘，轮缘，凸缘，法兰 | |
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