The Man From Bar-20, Clarence E. Mulford [distant reading TXT] 📗
- Author: Clarence E. Mulford
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It was a very cheerful cowpuncher who rode to the new cabin that evening, for he was matching his wits against those of his natural enemies, he was playing a lone hand in his own way against odds, and the game was only beginning.
In perfect condition, virile, young, enduring, he had serene confidence in his ability to take care of himself. He admitted but one master in the art of gunplay, and that man had been his teacher and best friend for years. Even now Hopalong could beat him on the draw, but barely, and he could roll his two guns forward, backward and “mixed;” but he could shoot neither faster nor straighter than his pupil.
Johnny could not roll a gun because he never had tried very hard to master that most difficult of all gunplay, regarding it as an idle accomplishment, good only for exhibition purposes, and, while awe inspiring, Johnny had no yearning for it. He clove to strict util: ity and did not care to call attention to his wooden’ handled, flare-butt Frontiers. There was no ornamentation on them, no ivory, inlay, or engraving. The only marks on their heavy, worn frames were 3 few dents. He had such a strong dislike for fancy guns that the sight of ivory grips made his lips curl, and such things as pearl handles filled him with grieving contempt for the owner.
He never mentioned his guns to any but his closest friends, and they were as unconscious a part of him as his arms or his legs. And it was his creed that no man but hhnself should touch them, his friends excepted. He wore them low because utility demanded it; and to so wear them, and to tie them down besides, was in itself a responsibility, for there were men who would not be satisfied with the quiet warning.
In other things, from routine ranch work to manhunting, from roping and riding to rifle shooting, the old outfit of the Bar-2O had been his teachers and they had taken him in hand at an early age. His rifle he had copied from Hopalong; but Red had taught him the use of it, and to his way of thinking Red Connors was without a peer in the use of the longer weapon.
Johnny was a genius with his six-guns, one of those few men produced in a generation; and he did not belong to the class of fancy gun-workers who shine at exhibitions and fall short when lead is flying and the nerves are sorely tried. He shot from his hips by instinct, and that is the real test of utility. Had he turned his talents to ends which lay outside the law he would have become the most dangerous and the most feared man in the cow-country.
John Logan awoke with a start, sat up suddenly in his bunk and grunted a profane query as his hand closed over his Colt.
“It’s Nelson,” softly said a voice from outside the window. “Don’t make so much noise,” it continued, as its owner dropped a handful of pebbles on the ground. “I wanted you awake before I showed myself. Never like to walk into a man’s room in th’ dark, when he’s asleep an’ not expectin’ visitors. ‘Specially when he’s worryin’ about rustlers. It ain’t allus healthy.”
“All right,” growled the foreman, “but you don’t have to throw ‘em; you can toss ‘em, easy, from there. I’ve got a welt on my head as big as a chew of tobacco. I’m shore glad you couldn’t find nothin’ out there that was any bigger. You comin’ in or am I comin’ out?”
The door squeaked open and squeaked shut and then a chair squeaked.
“You got a musical room,” observed Johnny, chuckling softly. “Yore bunk squeaked, too, when you sat up.”
“It was a narrow squeak for you,” grunted Logan, reluctantly putting down the Colt. “If I’d seen a head I’d ‘a’ let drive on suspicion. I was havin’ a cussed bad dream an’ was all het up. My cows was goin’ up Little Canyon in whole herds an’ I couldn’t seem to stop ‘em nohow.”
“Keepin’ my head out of trouble is my long suit,” chuckled Johnny. “An’ there ain’t none of yore cows goin’ up Little Canyon not till I steal some of ‘em. Been wonderin’ where I was an’ what I was doin’?”
“Not very much,” answered the foreman. “Got a match? We been gettin’ our mail reg’lar every week, an’ th’ boys allus drop in for a drink at Pop’s; an’ they’re good listeners. Say! What th’ h—l is this I hears about puttin’ blankets on my cows an’ shovin’ ‘em into th’ river every night? Well, that can wait. You’ve shore made an impression on Ol’ Pop Hayes. Th’ old Piute can’t talk about nothin’ but you. Every time th’ boys drop in there they get fed up on you. Of course they don’t show much interest in yore doin’s; an’ they don’t have to. They says yo’re a d–-d quitter, an’ stuff like that, an’ Pop gets riled up an’ near scalps ‘em. What you been doin’ to get him so friendly? I never thought he’d be friendly, like that, to anythin’ but a silver dollar.”
“I don’t know just treat him decent,” replied Johnny.
“Huh! I been treatin’ him decent for ten years, an’ he still thinks I’m some kind of an unknown animal. If he saw me dyin’ in th’ street he wouldn’t drag me five feet, unless I was blockin’ his door; but he’s doin’ a lot of worryin’ about you, all right. What you been doin’ besides courtin’ Pop an’ Andy Jackson, washin’ gravel an’ ketchin’ fish?”
Johnny laughed. “I’ve been playin’ cautious an’ right now I ain’t shore that I’ve fooled ‘em a whole lot. Here, lemme tell you th’ whole thing “and he explained his activitives since leaving the CL.
At its conclusion Logan grunted. “You got nerve an’ patience; an I mebby you got brains. If you can keep ‘em from bein’ shot out of yore head, you have. An’ you say they ain’t usin’ Little Canyon? I know they ain’t usin’ it now; but was they?”
“Not since th’ frost come out of th’ ground,” replied Johnny. “I can’t tell you about what they are doin’ because I’m just beginnin’ to get close to ‘em. Th’ next time you see me I may know somethin’. Now you listen to me,” and he gave the foreman certain instructions, which Logan repeated over after him. “Now, then: I want about sixty feet of rope strong enough to hold me, an’ I want a short, straight iron.”
“Come with me,” ordered the foreman, slipping on his clothes; and in ten minutes they emerged from the blacksmith shop, which also was a storeroom, and Johnny carried a coil of old but strong rope and an iron bar.
“I never thought I’d be totin’ a runnin’ iron,” he chuckled. “If my friends could only see me now! Johnny Nelson, cow-thief an’ brand-blotter!”
“You needn’t swell up,” growled Logan. “You ain’t th’ only one in this country right now.”
“Well,” said Johnny, “go back an’ finish yore dr^am mebby you can find out how to make them cows come back through Little Canyon.”
“Yo’re goin’ to do that,” responded Logan; “an I I’m goin’ to close that window in case you come back. I ain’t forgot nothin’ you said an I if we don’t see one of yore signs for a period of five days, we’ll comb yore valley an’ th’ whole Twin Buttes country. So Jong!”
Johnny melted into the dark, a low whistle sounded and in a few minutes Logan heard the rhythmic drumming of hoofs, rapidly growing fainter.
THE evening following his visit to the CL, Johnny went to bed early but not to sleep. For several hours he lay thinking and listening, and then he arose and put on his moccasins, threw on his shoulder Lo gan’s rope, now knotted every foot of its length, slipped out of the cabin and was swallowed up in the darkness along the base of the rocky wall. To cover the few yards between the cabin and the narrow crevice took ten minutes, and to go softly up the crevice took twice as long.
Reaching the top he listened intently, and then moved slowly and silently to a small clump of pines growing close to the rim of the steep wall enclosing the walled-in pasture, at a point where it was so sheer and smooth that he believed it would not be watched. Fastening one end of the rope to a tree, he lowered the rest of it over the wall and went down. Pausing again to listen, he made his way to a line of stones which lay across the creek, crossed with dry feet, and reached the northern wall of the pasture. This could be climbed at half a dozen places and he soon was up it and on his way north. After colliding with several bowlders and tripping twice he waited until the moon arose and then went on again at a creditable speed.
The crescent moon had risen well above the tops of Twin Buttes when a man in moccasins moved cautiously across a high plateau some miles north of Nelson’s creek and finally dropped to all fours and proceeded much more slowly. From all fours to stomach was his next choice and he wriggled toward the edge of the plateau, pausing every foot or so to remove loose stones. These he put aside before going on again, for there is no telling where a rolling pebble will stop, or the noise it may make, when the edge of a mesa wall is but a few feet away. Coming to within an arm’s length of the edge, he first made sure that the rim was solid rock and free from dirt and pebbles; and then, hitching forward slowly, he peered down into the deep valley.
Its immensity amazed him, for upon the occasion of his former reconnaissance he had viewed it from the outside; and as a picture of his own pasture flashed into his mind he snorted softly at the contrast, for where he had acres, this .great “sink” had square miles. It was wider than his own was long, and it stretched away in the faint moonlight until its upper reaches were lost to his eyes. It was large enough to hold one great butte in its middle, and perhaps there were more; and from where he lay he judged the wall below him dropped straight down for three hundred feet.
“There ain’t no line ridin’ here, unless th’ cows grow wings,” he muttered.
To the south of him were four lighted windows near the forbidding blackness of the entrance canyon, and from their spacing he deduced two houses. And across from the windows he could make out a vague quadrangle, which experience told him was the horse corral. As if to confirm his judgment there came from it at that moment a shrill squeal and the sound of hoofs on wood, muffled by the distance. And from the corral extended a faint line which ran across the valley and became lost in the darkness near the opposite cliff. This he knew to be a fence.
“If this valley ends like it begins, three or four men can handle an awful lot of cows, ‘cept at drive time,” he soliloquized, and then listened intently to the sound of distant voices.
…. many happy hours away,
A sittin an’ a
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