Trails to Two Moons

Front matter

TRAILS TO TWO MOONS

A full half minute before smoke jetted from the barrel; the bullet struck many yards too short. Frontispiece. See page 13.

BY

Chapter 1

TRAILS TO TWO MOONS

A NOVEL OF THE BIG COUNTRY

CHAPTER I

The day Old Man Ring, the sheepman of Teapot Creek, rode to Two Moons with news of importance, Original Bill Blunt, inspector for the Stockmen's Alliance, fared over the illimitable face of the Big Country at his duty.

His duty was simple: A range inspector protected his employers from theft. This meant anything from reading a burnt brand on a yearling's flank to matching shot by shot, at any and all odds, with thieves. A dull day was one wherein the inspector convinced some raw nester from Missouri that every fat steer happening to pass his claim was not meat divinely sent to still the mouths of a clamorous brood in his ten-by-twelve cabin. It was a cardinal day which saw him flat behind the belly of his horse stretched head to ground with hot lead whimpering low, while behind the cut bank of yonder coulee picked marksmen of Zang Whistler's gang were coolly engaging to kill while their comrades ran off the stolen stock.

Original Bill's life was one of variety; it was ebullient and replete with unpremeditated climaxes. Withal, the life of his choosing.

He was of the cattle clan,—born to it in that day when every youth in Texas looked forward to riding the trail with the longhorns, just as the Gloucester and New Bedford boy of the heroic age of sail looked through schoolhouse windows to high harbor spars. The chivalry of the cattle clan had been bred in him by long hours on night herd, by the harrowing moments of stampede in a thunderstorm, the rollicking fellowship of the round-up.

Puncher, trail boss, outfit boss and owner; all four grades of the cattle clan's hierarchy had he passed; its wild, free code was his accolade. In this evil day when barbed wire crept across the free range and a meaner race of sheep herders and their voracious bands was come to dispute with his own people right to what had always been theirs by preëmption, Original Bill Blunt took his place on the cov line of the Great Retreat. A sense of duty, of loyalty to the order that was passing, placed him there. Certain peculiar qualifications, such as a watch-spring movement of hand to holster, a deadly aim and courage passing ordinary made him a competent inspector,—the most competent in all the Big Country. His name was known from Platte Crossing to the Musselshell.

Of smaller stature than the average man, bowed as to legs through a life on horseback, Original's arresting feature was a chest rounded as a wine tun by the great winds he 'd ridden against and the wild, free life of the range. Endurance passing ordinary was spelled by this torso. His head was small by comparison, thatched heavily with coal black hair. A smooth face was all broken into curious sectors by innumerable wind wrinkles. Black eyes had a disconcertingly steady gaze.

Original rode freely but with an occasional eye to the ground for certain tracings and markings, the clay-stained bottom of an overturned pebble, a stalk of Jimson weed still green but broken. Unconsidered trifles such as any one not of the Big Country might very well fail to see, but telling a rounded story to the trailer. As he rode he crooned to himself—and to Tige, his little cutting horse, who was always an appreciative listener—a mournful ballad of the Black Hills:

For cute little Two Bears or Commanche Bills; They'll lift your back hair in them dreary Black Hills.

He sang because the trail was plain, because it carried to him intelligence he eagerly sought and there was every chance trouble lay ahead.

So he descended from the high lands round Bad Water and came into the valley of the Teapot, a rough and tumble stream dropping straight down from the Spout, back in the Broken Horns. The dim trail he followed cut through some rough land, over a ford and up the tortuous alleys of coulees straight for a ranch house and corral set on the edge of hayfields. Before he came to the ranch house Original made a detour up a broad draw and drew rein at the rough poplar bars of a smaller corral,—an inclosure not more than twenty feet square neatly hidden away in an alder thicket. Four yearling calves in the corral eyed him askance, shifting restlessly after the silly fashion of their kind.

The horseman's trained eye picked out, even at a distance, burnt hair lines on their flanks, crude jobs with a running iron. He laughed shortly, turned his horse and pushed on to the log-built ranch house. Dropping carelessly from the saddle, he bridle-tied Tige to the ground and walked to the open door. A girl answered his knock on the slab frame.

Her appearance in the sun-washed doorway, with the dark interior of the log house for a background, was a little startling. Startling because of the vivid white and gold of her,—milk-white the full arms bared almost to shoulders; milk-white, with a carnation stripe on lips and morning blush on cheeks, her face. And above the brow the glow and glory of pale dandelion; where her hair dropped in a single thick braid over one shoulder it reflected against her round throat the color of mellow bellflowers. Crisp, like those golden fruits, crisp and inviting was her beauty. Only the eyes repelled. They were blue and cold as deep fiord water, sleepy slow in glance, innocent of all feminine tricks of coquetry. The brooding fatalism of the north countries lay behind their large irises. Yes, and something of the sultry anger of a spoiled child.

Original swept off his hat and stood a bit abashed under the girl's steady, impersonal stare.

"Ole Man Ring lives here, I take it," he began tentatively. She curtly nodded.

"Maybe he 's out riding round somewheres?" Original ventured after a moment's pause in which no invitation to enter—cardinal courtesy of the Big Country—was forthcoming.

"He 's gone to Two Moons," she said. She was standing with arms wide and hands braced against the rough frame of the door. The sunlight cut from the dark background a silhouette of her figure, all blue-gingham clad and cinctured loosely at the waist. A figure of lithe strength, more masculine than suggestive of womanly softness, albeit gloriously rounded. Her pose, blocking the doorway and with competent arms thrown out, emphasized the absence of welcome in her eyes. Original read the subtle hint of challenge in both pose and eyes and was piqued.

"My name is Blunt—inspector for this range. If he was at home I was aiming to ask your father some particular questions, Miss—ah—Miss2"

"My father don't know any cowmen," Hilma Ring answered shortly.

"Never too late to get acquainted," he smiled. There was something disarming and ingenuous in Original's smile which on occasion had carried farther than a .45 bullet, but the Norsk stolidity in these blue eyes blasted his best efforts.

"My father and I pick and choose the folks we know." Hilma gave the insult in a studied drawl; her chin was tilted out from the firm round of her throat, and blue-black eyes looked out from beneath lowered lids like the eyes of a panther firming herself for the spring. Original still smiled, but with the lips alone.

"Well, you picked a good one when you chose Zang Whistler of Teapot Spout," he retorted hardily. "He 's one of the politest outlaws and all-round bad men we have in our midst, which is saying something."

Hilma made no answer save through her eyes, which flashed like feldspar in the sun. She took a backward step as if to close the door in the visitor's face.

"An' I take it I did n't miss meeting Zang Whistler right here in your dooryard by a very long time," Original pursued with studied cold . "Those yearlin' calves, now, they 've still got the lather on 'em from hard runnin'."

This roused her. What knowledge was this stranger advertising by veiled hints? The prick of danger loosed her tongue:

"I don't know what you 're talking about—Zang Whistler—calves. If you have any questions to ask I can answer them as well as my father."

Just a flicker of triumph about Original's mouth. He plumped his challenge at her before she could recover the vantage of silence:

"Zang Whistler rode up here not more 'n an hour ago, driving a bunch of four yearlin' calves. The calves are wearing a skillet-of-snakes brand over their rightful S O Bar, which is so new you can smell the burnt hide. After Zang penned those burnt calves in that tidy little corral you have down in the draw—you directing him from the back of a smallish horse with one skelped hoof—you and him rode up to the house, and Zang sat his horse right here," Original pointed to three tiny damp spots on the dooryard's hardened 'dobe, "while you gave him a goord of water. Then he rode off yonder to Teapot Spout to join his merry companions."

Hilma had unconsciously lifted one hand away from the door frame to bring its fingers playing about her lips while Original delivered this smooth flow of magic. Now she burst forth in hot anger:

"I always heard you cow inspectors were crawling Indians, dodging and twisting in the grass to spy on folks. If you saw all this why did n't you come right out and talk about it then? Afraid of Zang Whistler's gun?" This last shot with a wintry smile.

"Got me wrong, Miss Corntossel," he teased, no spite, but a secret attempt at provocation registering in his voice. "I saw all this, as you say, on the ground. Tracks tell no lies. Zang Whistler rides a horse with one notched hoof; he 's fair in love with that little horse and won't give him up, howbe it leaves a wide trail everywhere. A calf with a healing brand limps on the leg he 's favoring; that 's easy to see in any middlin' soft ground. Anyway, I mostly find cattle with sore brands clustering round the tracks Zang Whistler's horse makes. It 's a funny habit they have."

She stood irresolute for the space of two breaths looking up to the smiling eyes under the shadowing hat brim. Then without hurry she stepped back into the house and closed the door. Original heard a bar sliding into place behind the heavy slabs. He gazed at the shut door with mingled amusement and chagrin; the situation had not been at all distasteful despite the girl's churlishness. That he set down as but of a part with the bad manners of the sheep people. But the chill glory of her face upon which the heavy rope of hair cast a reflected golden sheen! Girls with looks like that were scarce upon the range.

Tige turned to the pressure of a knee and trotted down to the scars of the creek bank behind the ranch house through which the questing trail had led. This track Original pursued up the secret draw to the hidden corral where the stolen yearlings were penned. He dropped the bars and rode in among them.

"Hi! Yip—yip!" The calves milled about the pen foolishly, then plunged out through the opening; wise little Tige nosed and nudged them into a close core of galloping flesh. Down the draw and on to where the Teapot spread its waters wide for a ford Original drove the bunch.

A clean, sharp crack sounded from over where the cliff of the coulee lifted above the scars of winter freshets. A puff of dust kicked up twenty feet or more ahead of the foremost calf. Original whipped his eyes to the right. He saw the clean, chiseled shape of the girl he had just left against the raw blue of the sky on the brink of the gorge a hundred and fifty yards away. She was mounted on a scrubby horse. Even as he looked she raised her rifle again and covered him. A full half minute before smoke jetted from the barrel; the bullet struck many yards too short.

Just as the first calf plunged into the shallows of the ford Original turned in his saddle and with elaborate gesture of politeness lifted his hat. He made a sweeping bow which carried him low over his saddle horn. Then he suddenly reined Tige to his haunches, whirled him about to face the distant figure on the coulee bank and held him steady. Horse and rider presented a fair, wide mark.

Original saw the girl drop the rifle down to her side, eject the empty shell, then slowly lift the shining lance of light once more to her shoulder. Her vivid golden head tipped as she laid her eye along the sights. He sat moveless, smiling, curiously stirred by the deliberate workings of a murder impulse. It flashed upon him that the girl behind that rifle was different from any girl he had ever met. She was a regular stinger—that is what she was—a stinger.

Just as light struck from the far-away barrel lanced itself fair in the man's eyes the trigger was pressed. High over his head the bullet sang. Once more Original swept his hat in a mocking arc, then turned and dashed across the ford to round the scattering yearlings into a traveling unit. He did not even look back. No more shots came. But as he rode the range inspector chuckled deep down in his throat.

"Bluffed, by criminy—bluffed! Original, boy, I reckon the pot 's yours."

For Original Bill Blunt knew that even poor shooting could not excuse that last shot so far over his head. A hand had elevated the rifle barrel at the last saving quarter second.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

A saddle-colored horse, dust streaked and weary, topped the long rise of the Poison Spider Divide and, willing enough to obey the slight tug at bridle, shambled to a halt on the crest. The rider, a shrunken figure in overall blue under a flapping black hat, straightened a bit in his seat and looked down on the town of Two Moons in the hill pocket. Always in the Big Country there is this pleasurable prick of surprise when the last billowing divide of an interminable succession falls below horse's hoofs to reveal destination. After thirty miles of desolation—ranked buttes like organ pipes shooting into the blue; bald mesas; leprous waves of alkali hills—first sight of town crashes on the dulled senses like smitten iron.

Shabby, both horse and rider. No pride of the sleek-limbed cutting horse, aristocrat of the cow outfit's remuda, showed in the beast's slack neck and limp ears; in his dull eye no spark of deviltry awaiting opportunity to flare into open revolt. Christian—for that was his name—was earth-born in a land where the horse is long. The man who rode him was plebeian, loutish even in the careless sag of his overalls tucked into square-toed boots, the hump of his collar high round his ears. His wizened face was all fallen into hollows and crevasses beneath protuberant cheek bones and outstanding ears; skin above the scraggy gray beard baked a pipestone red; blue eyes which never cleansed themselves of dazedness. His features seemed to be set in a perpetual substrata of frost.

This was Old Man Ring, the sheepman of Teapot Creek come to Two Moons to tell the sheriff of Broken Horn something important.

Never before in his drab life of grubbing had Old Man Ring anything important to tell anybody. Never, even, had he been important in himself except in a limited way and that a bread-winning way—a hard-necessity way. The Big Country round about distinguished him above his fellow sheepmen only because he was the father of Hilma Ring. And Hilma Ring was counted a peach—a loo-loo.

"You, Christian!" Old Man Ring laid blame for the halt on his horse and querulously jerked at the bit. Christian sighed and took the down grade at what long years of service had established as a courtesy trot. They drew nigh the Thirst Cutter Saloon, outpost of Two Moons' convivial welcome. Old Man Ring turned yearningly in his saddle and caught a whiff of ardent spirits wafted out from swinging screen doors. But, no; he had something important to tell the sheriff of Broken Horn. "You, Christian!" Again a yank at the bridle. Main Street received them.

In those days before the railroad Two Moons was a scrawny town even in the full flush of its boom. Seat of the new county of Broken Horn, but recently cut out of the anarchy of No Man's Land and not yet smoothly geared to the machinery of law, Two Moons was scarce two decades beyond that dim historic time when its site was that of an Indian massacre. Just a plot of buffalo grass where the Poison Spider and Prairie Dog converge.

When Pack Saddle Owens hauled logs down from Piney Cañon and built his general store Till Driscoll was trail boss of the pioneer herds of longhorns up from Texas. Till stocked his outfits from Pack Saddle's store, and another store sprang up, and another. So came Two Moons—a cattlemen's town—to squat down in the hill pocket in the heart of the Big Country; the saw-tooth range of the Broken Horns behind, and before it more square miles of fat range land than a man dared reckon by hundreds.

A cattlemen's town it remained as long as freight wagons had to haul one hundred and seventy miles up from the nearest reach of the Union Pacific—as long as the bunch grass grew fat and no man stretched wire between Denver and the Dominion Line. But a new railroad rocketed down in a north-and-south slash through the wilderness, and freight wagons had to haul only forty miles. A stage appeared. Two Moons began to change.

A government land office opened on Main Street. Then, as flies to the honey pot, came straddling and stumbling across the bad lands, first the unlovely hordes of the homesteaders, "nesters", in the vernacular of the cattle clan; then the sheepmen with their devastating flocks to contest the range, which the nesters did not fence, with the cattlemen, who abominated sheep a little more than they did barbed wire. There was an upheaval in the town's social life. Where one saloon had served the boys in from the fall round-up, five, six—a dozen must needs mushroom along Main Street. And in the saloon, as nowhere else, caste lines were laid down in increasing bitterness. The Capitol, over whose bar Till Driscoll's 2800-pound steer spread his six-foot span of horns as a sign for the faithful, was exclusively the drinking place of the cattle clan; a sheep herder put his foot on dynamite when he eased it against the Capitol's rail. By the same code a cow-puncher never visited the Granger or the Homesteader unless his credit at the Capitol was utterly depleted; then he gave his patronage to the pariah barkeepers with an air of condescension.

Main Street, as Old Man Ring saw it this day of his coming to town, was a block wide and four long. False fronts of tin and wood reared themselves gawkishly over one and two-story pine stores. Here and there a lot given over to tumbleweed gaped like a missing tooth. To right and left of Main Street houses of the townspeople—for the most part tar-papered boxes extravagantly painted in ocher and blues—trailed down to hide among the cottonwoods along the banks of the streams, where some Crow families had their tepees. Dominating the whole clutter of Two Moons was the new courthouse and jail at the far end of Main Street, a prideful extravagance of brick hauled at untold dollars of tax money by freight wagons from Lost Soldiers, on the railroad.

Old Man Ring jogged down Main Street straight to the courthouse. Tying Christian to the horse rail, he entered and blundered his way to the door marked Sheriff. Within the bearer of tidings found Sheriff Red Agnew, a Viking with a flaming beard cascading down to the charm on his watch chain; a man of fearsome mien, whose eye seemed constantly searching the waistcoat of a quondam visitor to select the tidiest place to put a bullet. Red Agnew had been elected to the shrievalty of Broken Horn largely on his looks; he seemed designed of nature to be a sheriff. Moreover, he was the sheepmen's candidate; sheep money had financed his campaign, the cattle clan said.

Without preliminaries Old Man Ring launched into the mission which had brought him thirty miles from his home ranch on Teapot Creek. He spoke with a burring of the gutturals which thirty years away from his native Denmark had not sufficed to erase:

"Jed Monk on Teapot five miles below my place is murdered. The Killer, he does it."

Bang! Sheriff Agnew's heels slid from desk edge to floor. His huge body straightened itself alertly. "Murder!" he echoed.

"Yes, murdered," Old Man Ring placidly repeated. His frost-bound features changed by not so much as a wrinkle. He was standing on one foot like a tired horse; the toe of the free boot kicked languidly against the heel of the other. "It is the Killer does it because I saw him."

"Where—when?" the Sheriff snapped.

"Last night 'bout sundown when I ride by Bad Water Breaks. I look for that white-faced mulley cow of mine which makes always to go by her calf down in Jed Monk's corral which I sold to him. I hear a leetle shot—bim!—away off near Jed Monk's house, and I ride there. So I am going through the breaks—'nother leetle shot—bim!—this time leetle closer. I cut across Bad Water Breaks in a hurry and soh2" Old Man Ring interrupted his narrative to rummage for a bandanna and blow his nose. He was calm as a graveyard monument.

"So when I come to the road I see a man there on a black horse. He sees me and he turns right away over the top of that leetle hill. But I know him. Before, in this town, I have seen him. His name is2" he bent toward Agnew's ear and whispered a name. The sheriff's eyes narrowed and a fold of skin ridged the cleft above his nose.

"Then I find Jed Monk there in the road 'bout half mile from his house. Two bullets; one through his head, one by the third button of his shirt. And on his head2"

"Same mark as the others?" Sheriff Agnew put in quickly.

"On his head, where it lies a leetle by the side, is a stone 'bout as big as this," Old Man Ring marked off his thumb with fingers clamped below the first joint, bout as big as this, that stone lying there on his head."

"The stone on the head—yes, the stone on the head," muttered Agnew. "And you saw him—you got a good look at him, so 's you could go before a grand jury and swear to the name of the Killer?"

"By dam, I saw him gude!" The withered sheepman was roused to his first enthusiasm by the prospect of playing center stage; of appearing before that mysterious body called the grand jury and swearing a man's neck into a noose.

"Come over to Strayman's office and tell him what you 've told me," the Sheriff commanded. He heaved himself up from his chair and led the way down a corridor to the office of District Attorney Strayman. To the prosecutor Old Man Ring repeated this tale of a murder almost in identical words. Orpheus C. Strayman, a little man, all fuss and fury, cracked three knuckles in quick succession at the news Ring had brought in from Teapot.

"Got him, Agnew!" he exploded. "Same man—five murders—stone on the head of each victim. Got him cinched! I 'll call a grand jury2"

"Can you get a grand jury that is right?" the Sheriff interrupted. Like him, the prosecutor was by a narrow squeak the successful candidate of the new element come to Broken Horn County to oppose the barony of the cattle clan. In answer Strayman gravely lowered one eyelid.

"That 's up to you, Agnew." Then as his nimble mind leaped ahead to grapple with future contingencies: "There 'll be a fight, Sheriff, a devil of a fight! This Killer, he 's working for the cow interests and I can prove it. Why does he mark the head of each man he kills with a stone? Just to show the people paying him he 's earning his money, by God!

"Run down the list. Old Hard Winter Peters, who ran his sheep over on south prong of Beaver; he homesteaded on the only water hole in twenty miles. First to go, with a quartz pebble laid between his eyes. Jay North up in Rainhole; the K Cross outfit claimed he was branding their mavericks and there was hot talk between them. Number Two for North! I tell you, we got to make an example in the courts—got to make an example, or the cattlemen 'll have every homesteader and sheepman from here to No Wood throwing up their hands and dusting back East."

Strayman had worked himself into a fearful passion; his cowlick was roached up like a fighting rooster's crest, and his eyes were beady. The less emotional Agnew turned to Ring:

"Told anybody what you know—this murder business?"

"I tell my girl Hilma. She knows everything I know," the informer from Teapot answered defensively as if he expected his testi might somehow be invalidated by this indiscretion.

"All right, keep your mouth shut," the Sheriff warned. "We don't want every cowpuncher in town to know what we got up our sleeve. Now, Strayman, when 'll you want this man to testify? "

"Um—let me see. This is Tuesday; be here in my office at nine o'clock Friday morning, Ring. And remember what the Sheriff says: Not a word to anybody—not even to yourself. Friday—yes, Friday—so long!"

Old Man Ring went blinking out into the sun. He rode Christian down to the Fashion Stables and there arranged for the beast's board overnight. It was not to be doubted Christian, approved his master's decision to remain in Two Moons until the following day; even though the drab little horse could not "see some of the boys", the near presence of a fiery bronco who kicked his stall to flinders during the night gave Christian the feeling he was enjoying metropolitan life.

As for Old Man Ring, after he had stoked to repletion at the Rhinoceros Eating House he ambled over to the Homesteaders and had a drink. At the Granger he had another. Also, he met friends. It was the sunset hour and all Main Street was blocked into indigo and pale lemon by fardels of waning light flung down from the crest of the Broken Horns. An hour for confidences.

"I was yust riding by the Bad Water Breaks," Old Man Ring was saying, back to bar and arms spread along the rail expansively, "when I hear a leetle shot—bim!—away off near Jed Monk's house2"

Quick night fell and along the black channel of Main Street splashes of light sprayed out from saloon doors. Dark shapes of men waded through these fountains of light. Men met and one said to another: "Have you heard about it? Ye-ah, another murder. C'm on over to the Cloud's Rest and listen to Old Man Ring tell about it. He knows who done it."

"Soh I find Jed Monk like I tell you," Old Man Ring, firm as a jack pine upon his feet and with the liquor in him showing only by an increased dazedness in his eyes, was repeating for the twentieth time. Something of an oratorical quality had come into his voice. "And on his head, where it lies a leetle on the side, there is a stone 'bout as big as this2"

Two Moons, alive, stirred by the tale of another murder done, found itself restless under vague premonition. A spirit of portent, raw and rough as the temper of the Big Country round about, rode the night wind. Along the black spine of the Broken Horns fluttered the brooding fires of heat lightning.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

Hilma Ring was not emotional. The petty reflexes of thought and action that come to women of finer fiber, of more pampered lives—to your idle beauty of the flowered boudoir—were unknown to her. Impulse and emotion were with her primitive, direct, unaffected by any reaction of sensitive nerves. The springs of her life were elemental as that secret force which each year covers the face of the Big Country with lusty verdure. When, after that last shot and that derisive farewell by the one coolly daring it, Hilma turned to ride back to her house she was conscious of but a single response to the events of the past few moments, cold anger. Anger at the impudent stranger who had driven off the yearlings in the face of her fire; anger more particularly at herself. Why had her hand tipped up the head on the barrel's end that instant her finger pulled the trigger? Why, when she had every intention of shooting to kill when the smiling face of that cowman looked at her between the prongs of the buckhorn—why had she let him live? Hilma did not find an answer to this question. Her anger but fed itself on answer denied.

She rode her sorry pony into the corral, unsaddled him and threw him an armful of hay, for the beast was her sole companion in much lonesomeness and there was love between them. Then she carried her rifle to the doorstep and, sitting there, fired many shots at the rusty butt of a tomato can a hundred paces away. Every shot missed and at each miss her anger increased—that curious double anger linking the smiling stranger and her own self for its object. Hilma only stopped her savage practice shooting when the growing clutter of empty shells at her feet suddenly aroused her to the waste. Rifle cartridges cost money; her father would fly into one of his rages when he discovered what she had done. Then they would quarrel; perhaps he would strike her, as he sometimes did, and she would strike back. All that would not be worth while.