Square Deal Sanderson, Charles Alden Seltzer [best ereader for comics TXT] 📗

Double A and Bar X brands. [Illustration: Double A and Bar X brands.]

"That's an 'A' lookin' at it straight up an' from the right side, like this, just reversin' it. But when you turn it this way, it's the Bar X:

"An' there's a bunch of your steers with the brand on them that way. I'll have to take charge of the herd until the thing is cleared up!"

Sanderson's lips took on a straight line; the color left his face.

Here was authority—that law with which he had unaccountably clashed on several occasions during his stay at the Double A. Yet he knew that—as on those other occasions—the law was operating to the benefit of his enemies.

However, he did not now suspect Silverthorn and the others of setting the law upon him. The Double A men might have been careless with their branding, and it was unfortunate that he had been forced by the closing of the Okar market to drive his cattle over a range upon which were cattle bearing a brand so startlingly similar to his.

His men were silent, watching him with set faces. He knew they would stand behind him in any trouble that might occur. And yet he hesitated, for he did not wish to force trouble.

"How many Bar X cattle do you think are in the herd?" he asked.

"Mebbe a hundred—mebbe more."

"How long will it take you to get Bill Lester here to prove his stock?"

The big man laughed. "That's a question. Bill left last night for Frisco; I reckon mebbe he'll be gone a month—mebbe more."

The color surged back into Sanderson's face. He stiffened.

"An' you expect to hold my herd here until Lester gets back?" he said, slowly.

"Yep," said the other, shortly.

"You can't do it!" declared Sanderson. "I know the law, an' you can't hold a man's cattle that long without becomin' liable for damages."

"We'll be liable," grinned the sheriff. "Before Bill left last night he made out a bond for ninety thousand dollars—just what your cattle are worth at the market price. If there's any damages comin' to you you'll get them out of that."

"It's a frame-up," growled Carter, at Sanderson's side. "It proves itself. This guy, Lester, makes out a bond before we're within two days' drive of his bailiwick. He's had information about us, an' is plannin' to hold us up. You know what for. Silverthorn an' the bunch has got a finger in the pie."

That suspicion had also become a conviction to Sanderson. And yet, in the person of the sheriff and his men, there was the law blocking his progress toward the money he needed for the irrigation project.

"Do you think one hundred and fifty heads will cover the suspected stock?" he questioned.

"I'd put it at two hundred," returned the sheriff.

"All right, then," said Sanderson slowly; "take your men an' cut out the two hundred you think belong to Lester. I'll stop on the way back an' have it out with you."

The sheriff grinned. "That'll be square enough," he agreed. He turned to the men who had come with him. "You boys cut out them cattle that we looked at, an' head them toward the Bar X." When the men had gone he turned to Sanderson.

"I want you men to know that I'm actin' under orders. I don't know what's eatin' Bill Lester—that ain't my business. But when I'm ordered to do anything in my line of duty, why, it's got to be done. Your friend has gassed some about a man named Silverthorn bein' at the bottom of this thing. Mebbe he is—I ain't got no means of knowin'. It appears to me that Bill ain't got no call to hog your whole bunch, though, for I've never knowed Bill to raise more than fifteen hundred head of cattle in one season. I'm takin' a chance on two hundred coverin' his claims."

It was after noon when the sheriff and his men started westward with the suspected stock.

Carter, fuming with rage, watched them go. Then he turned to Sanderson.

"Hell an' damnation! We'll hit Devil's Hole about dusk—if we start now. What'll we do?"

"Start," said Sanderson. "If we hang around here for another day they'll trump up another fake charge an' clean us out!"

The country through which they were forced to travel during the afternoon was broken and rugged, and the progress of the herd was slow. However, according to Carter, they made good time considering the drawbacks they encountered, and late afternoon found them within a few miles of the dreaded Devil's Hole.

Carter counseled a halt until morning, and Sanderson yielded. After a camping ground had been selected Carter and Sanderson rode ahead to inspect Devil's Hole.

The place was well named. It was a natural basin between some jagged and impassable foothills, running between a gorge at each end. Both ends of the basin constricted sharply at the gorges, resembling a wide, narrow-necked bottle.

A thin stream of water flowed on each side of a hard, rock trail that ran straight through the center of the basin, and on both sides of the trail a black bog of quicksand spread, covering the entire surface of the land.

Halfway through the basin, Sanderson halted Streak on the narrow trail and looked at the treacherous sand.

"I've seen quicksand, an' quicksand," he declared, "but this is the bogs of the lot. If any steers get bogged down in there they wouldn't be able to bellow more than once before they'd sink out of sight!"

"There's a heap of them in there," remarked Carter.

It was an eery place, and the echo of their voices resounded with ever-increasing faintness.

"I never go through this damned hell-hole without gettin' the creeps," declared Carter. "An' I've got nerve enough, too, usually. There's somethin' about the place that suggests the cattle an' men it's swallowed.

"Do you see that flat section there?" he indicated a spot about a hundred yards wide and half as long, which looked like hard, baked earth, black and dead. "That's where that herd I was tellin' you about went in. The next morning you couldn't see hide nor hair of them.

"It's a fooler for distance, too," he went on, "it's more than a mile to that little spot of rock, that projectin' up, over there. College professors have been here, lookin' at it, an' they say the thing is fed from underground rivers, or springs, or somethin' that they can't even guess.

"One of them was tellin' Boss Edwards, over on the Cimarron, that that rock point that you see projectin' up was the peak of a mountain, an' that this narrow trail we're on is the back of a ridge that used to stick up high an' mighty above a lot of other things.

"I can't make it out, an' I don't try; it's here, an' that's all there is to it. An' I ain't hangin' around it any longer than I have to."

"A stampede—" began Sanderson.

"Gentlemen, shut up!" interrupted Carter. "If any cattle ever come through here, stampedin', that herd wouldn't have enough left of it to supply a road runner's breakfast!"

They returned to the camp, silent and anxious.

CHAPTER XX DEVIL'S HOLE

Sanderson took his turn standing watch with the other men. The boss of a trail herd cannot be a shirker, and Sanderson did his full share of the work.

Tonight he had the midnight shift. At two o'clock he would ride back to camp, awaken his successor, and turn in to sleep until morning.

Because of the proximity of the herd to Devil's Hole an extra man had been told off for the nightwatch, and Soapy and the Kid were doing duty with Sanderson.

Riding in a big circle, his horse walking, Sanderson could see the dying embers of the camp fire glowing like a big firefly in the distance. A line of trees fringing the banks of the river near the camp made a dark background for the tiny, leaping sparks that were shot up out of the fire, and the branches waving in the hazy light from countless coldly glittering stars were weird and foreboding.

Across the river the ragged edges of the rock buttes that flanked the water loomed somberly; beyond them the peaks of some mountains, miles distant, glowed with the subdued radiance of a moon that was just rising.

Back in the direction from which the herd had come the ridges and depressions stretched, in irregular corrugations, as far as Sanderson could see. Southward were more mountains, dark and mysterious.

Riding his monotonous circles, Sanderson looked at his watch, his face close to