A long, freckled, grinning ape stepped forward.
"Well, it was this way: we was a-tryin" to head the herd off, and we didn"t see the sheep till we was right into "em----"
"That"s a lie!" said Mose. "You drove the horses right down the valley into the sheep. I saw you do it."
"You call me a liar and I"ll blow your heart out," shouted the cowboy, dropping his hand to his revolver.
"Halt!" said Delmar. "Easy now, you young c.o.c.kalorum. It ain"t useful to start shooting where Andrew Delmar is."
Conrad spoke sharply: "Jim, shut up." Turning to Mose, "Where did it happen?"
"In Boulder Creek, just south of the road."
Conrad turned to Delmar in mock surprise. "_South_ of the road! Your sheep must o" strayed over the line, Mr. Delmar. As they was on our side of the range I don"t see that I can do anything for you. If they"d been on the north side----"
"That"ll do," interrupted Delmar. "I told you that so long as the north side fed my sheep I would keep them there to accommodate your stockmen.
I give notice now that I shall feed where I please, and I shall be with my sheep night and day, and the next man that crosses my sheep will leave his bones in the gra.s.s with the dead sheep, and likely a horse or two besides." He stepped toward Conrad. "Williams has had his warning; I give you yours. I hold you responsible for every shot fired at my men.
If one of my men is shot I"ll kill you and Williams at sight. Good-day."
"What"ll _we_ do?" called one of the cowboys.
Delmar turned, and his eyes took on a wild glare.
"I"ll send you to h.e.l.l so quick you won"t be able to open your mouth.
Throw up your hands!" The man"s hands went up. "Why, I"d ear-mark ye and slit each nostril for a leather b.u.t.ton----"
Conrad strove for peace. "Be easy on him, Delmar; he"s a crazy fool, anyway; he don"t know you."
"He will after this," said Delmar. "I"ll trouble you, Mr. Conrad, to collect all the guns from your men." Mose drew his revolver. "My boy here is handy too. I don"t care to be shot in the back as I ride away.
Drop your guns, every scab of ye!"
"I"ll be d----d if I do."
"Drop it!" snapped out Delmar, and the tone of his voice was terrible to hear. Mose"s heart stopped beating; he held his breath, expecting the shooting to begin.
Conrad was white with fear as he said: "Give "em up, boys. He"s a desperate man. Don"t shoot, you fools!"
One by one, with a certain amount of bl.u.s.ter on the part of two, the cowboys dropped their guns, and Delmar said: "Gather "em in, Mose."
Mose leaped from his horse and gathered the weapons up. Delmar thrust the revolvers into his pockets, and handed one Winchester to Mose.
"You"ll find your guns on that rise beside yon rock," said Delmar, "and when we meet again, it will be Merry War. Good-day!"
An angry man knows no line of moderation. Delmar, having declared war, carried it to the door of the enemy. Accompanying the sheep himself, he drove them into the fairest feeding-places beside the clearest streams.
He spared no pains to irritate the cattlemen, and Mose, who alone of all the outsiders realized to the full his terrible skill with weapons, looked forward with profound dread to the fight which was sure to follow.
He dreaded the encounter for another reason. He had no definite plan of action to follow in his own case. A dozen times a day he said to himself: "Am I a coward?" His stomach failed him, and he ate so sparingly that it was commented upon by the more hardened men. He was the greater troubled because a letter from Jack came during this stormy time, wherein occurred this paragraph: "Mary came back to the autumn term. Her mother is dead, and she looks very pale and sad. She asked where you were and said: "Please tell him that I hope he will come home safe, and that I am sorry I could not see him before he went away.""
All the bitterness in his heart long stored up against her pa.s.sed away in a moment, and sitting there on the wide plain, under the burning sun, he closed his eyes in order to see once more, in the cold gray light of the prison, that pale, grave girl with the glorious eyes. He saw her, too, as Jack saw her, her gravity turned into sadness, her pallor into the paleness of grief and ill health. He admitted now that no reason existed why she should write to him while her mother lay dying. All cause for hardness of heart was pa.s.sed away. The tears came to his eyes and he longed for the sight of her face. For a moment the boy"s wild heart grew tender.
He wrote her a letter that night, and it ran as well as he could hope for, as he re-read it next day on his way to the post office twenty miles away.
"DEAR MARY: Jack has just sent me a long letter and has told me what you said. I hope you will forgive me. I thought you didn"t want to see me or write to me. I didn"t know your mother was sick. I thought you ought to have written to me, but, of course, I understand now. I hope you will write in answer to this and send your picture to me. You see I never saw you in daylight and I"m afraid I"ll forget how you look.
"Well, I"m out in the wild country, but it ain"t what I want. I don"t like it here. The cowboys are all the time rowin". There ain"t much game here neither. I kill an antelope once in a while, or a deer down on the bottoms, but I haven"t seen a bear or a buffalo yet. I want to go to the mountains now. This country is too tame for me. They say you can see the Rockies from a place about one hundred miles from here. Some day I"m going to ride over there and take a look. I haven"t seen any Indians yet. We are likely to have shooting soon.
"If you write, address to Running Bear, Cheyenne County, and I"ll get it. I"ll go down again in two weeks. Since Jack wrote I want to see you awful bad, but of course it can"t be done, so write me a long letter.
"Yours respectfully, "HAROLD EXCELL.
"Address your letter to Mose Harding, they don"t know my real name out here. I"ll try to keep out of trouble."
He arrived in Running Bear just at dusk, and went straight to the post office, which was in an ill-smelling grocery. Nothing more forlornly disreputable than "the Beast" (as the cowboys called the town) existed in the State. It was built on the low flat of the Big Sandy, and was composed of log huts (beginning already to rot at the corners) and unpainted shanties of pine, gray as granite, under wind and sun. There were two "hotels," where for "two bits" one could secure a dish of evil-smelling ham and eggs and some fried potatoes, and there were six saloons, where one could secure equally evil-minded whisky at ten cents a gla.s.s. A couple of rude groceries completed the necessary equipment of a "cow-town."
There was no allurement to vice in such a place as this so far as Mose was concerned, but a bunch of cowboys had just ridden in for "a good time," and to reach the post office he was forced to pa.s.s them. They studied him narrowly in the dusk, and one fellow said:
"That"s Delmar"s sheep herder; let"s have some fun with him. Let"s convert him."
"Oh, let him alone; he"s only a kid."
"Kid! He"s big as he"ll ever be. I"m goin" to string him a few when he comes out."
Mose"s breath was very short as he posted his letter, for trouble was in the air. He tried his revolvers to see that they were free in their holsters, and wiped the sweat from his hands and face with his big bandanna. He entered into conversation with the storekeeper, hoping the belligerent gang would ride away. They had no such intention, but went into a saloon next door to drink, keeping watch for Mose. One of them, a slim, consumptive-chested man, grew drunk first. He was entirely harmless when sober, and served as the b.u.t.t of all jokes, but the evil liquor paralyzed the small knot of gray matter over his eyes and set loose his irresponsible lower centers. He threw his hat on the ground and defied the world in a voice absurdly large and strenuous.
His thin arms swung aimlessly, and his roaring voice had no more heart in it than the blare of a tin horn. His eyes wandered from face to face in the circle of his grinning companions who egged him on.
His insane, reeling capers vastly amused them. One or two, almost as drunk as he, occasionally wrestled with him, and they rolled in the dust like dirty bear cubs. They were helpless so far as physical struggle went, but, unfortunately, shooting was a second nature to them, and their hands were deadly.
As Mose came out to mount his horse the crowd saw him, and one vicious voice called out:
"Here, Bill, here"s a sheep walker can do you up."
The crowd whooped with keen delight, and streaming over, surrounded Mose, who stood at bay not far from his horse in the darkness--a sudden numbness in his limbs.
"What do you want o" me?" he asked. "I"ve nothing to do with you." He knew that this crowd would have no mercy on him and his heart almost failed him.
"Here"s a man wants to lick you," replied one of the herders.
The drunken man was calling somewhere in the crowd, "Where is he? Lemme get at him." The ring opened and he reeled through and up to Mose, who was standing ominously quiet beside his horse. Bill seized him by the collar and said: "You want "o fight?"
"No," said Mose, too angry at the crowd to humor the drunken fool. "You take him away or he"ll get hurt."
"Oh, he will, will he?"
"Go for him, Bill," yelled the crowd in glee.
The drunken fool gave Mose a tug. "Come "ere!" he said with an oath.