CHAPTER XVIII
A CATCH OF MORE THAN FISH
Long before the guests appeared at the breakfast table next morning Cockney was away on Pink Eye; so that there was nothing to fear from him. A singular and confusing reticence was on them. Several times the Professor cleared his throat as if he would speak of the things they were avoiding, but he thought better of it each time and continued his meal in silence.
Imp was there, slinking close to Mary's skirts wherever she went, cowering, every bit of his chirpy impudence gone. His mistress reached down and rubbed his ears.
"He leaped through my window this morning and ran under the bed. He would scarcely come out. If you'll tell me how I can keep you, little fellow, I'm willing to try. It's home in a storm, isn't it? Dakota doesn't wear, does he?"
Imp waggled a lifeless tail and relapsed into obscurity.
A heavy knock startled them, and Dakota walked in.
"Mr. Aikens here?"
"He went away early, Dakota—perhaps across to the Double Bar-O. I know he was intending to see Mr. Gerard soon on business."
Dakota's eyes were roving about the room. Imp tried to slink to the other side of the concealing skirts, and Dakota's face lit up. He reached over and prodded the terrier with a forefinger.
"Scared o' the wolves, little shaver, eh? I don't wonder. We don't hear 'em often up here."
"Were they wolves?" asked Stamford, eager to believe mere dogs had not so shattered his nerves.
"Come down from the north, I guess," explained Dakota.
"But how could they cross the river?" queried the Professor. "They must have a better ford than I use."
"Hm-m! Perhaps they drifted up from the Cypress Hills, or across from the west. Maybe they smelt the little shaver here. If they ever got after him they'd shore peel the bark offen him. I'll be warning the boys to keep a look-out on the calves. I wouldn't like to meet the beggars on the prairie without a horse, no, not even with an arsenal on me. They're dangerous devils."
"Isabel!" The Professor was looking anxiously at his sister. "I guess we'd better hasten our task. This isn't safe for you. Wolves! Gr-r-r! It sounds uncivilised."
Dakota shook his head gravely and left. Imp tagged humbly at his heels.
"Of course," the Professor grinned, "if there are only the two we heard last night, I might be able to satisfy them myself. A couple of hundred pounds ought to hold them for one meal. At any rate, I'd make a point of lying so heavy on their innards that you'd have a chance to escape, Isabel."
He looked out through the window to the ranch buildings. Dakota had picked up Imp and was hurrying along with the little terrier tucked under his arm.
"I think, Isabel, we'll try this side of the river to-day. That Monodonious skull can wait another day. It's managed to stick it long enough to forgive another twenty-four hours, don't you think? I'll get the horses."
He lumbered off along the path to the stables, calling as he passed the cook-house for a good Samaritan to lend him a hand in deciding which end of the harness went first on Gee-Gee. Bean Slade beat the Dude and General to it, while the Professor watched proceedings as if it were a new experience.
"Some day," he declared, "I'm going to invent a harness that can be grafted on a horse for a few generations until it's handed down as part of his natural equipment, like teeth and eyes. I've a warm spot for tenderfeet—even tenderfeet of ten centuries hence. If I lived that long I'd never forget my troubles with Gee-Gee.... Hello, Dakota! Teaching Imp to ride?"
Dakota was in the saddle, with Imp still under his arm.
"Naw! I'm taking him for his morning constitooshunal. He's changed his doctor, and this one prescribes lots of exercise. What Imp needs is muscle; he's got gall enough for a Great Dane."
The cowboys grinned, and Dakota chirruped to his horse and moved away.
"Why don't you train him to hunt wolves?" suggested the Professor.
Dakota threw him a quick glance over his shoulder.
"By Samson, Prof., you've a head! Alkali 'n' me'll perceed to take your advice—Alkali 'n' me 'n' the dread avenger o' the Red Deer, Imp. Wolfies, we're on your trail."
"If you'd wait a few minutes," said the Professor, all excitement, "I'd like to join you. To be able to tell my colleagues at the Institute that I, the old-bone man, had hunted wolves—that would be pride, indeed."
Dakota merely waved a refusal and trotted away.
But the Professor picked up his sister at the ranch-house and bumped away to the south-west over the prairie in the direction Dakota had taken, Isabel hanging to the low arm of the seat with both hands.
Far out they descried Dakota and Alkali riding in circles. Imp was running about with his nose to the ground. The Professor shouted and stood up in the buckboard to wave his arms. But long before he was close enough to speak, Imp yelped and struck off to the north-west as fast as his little legs would carry him, Dakota and Alkali spurring behind.
The Professor waved in vain for them to wait, then turned the horses' heads to the north-east and his day's work.
Meanwhile Stamford, left to his own resources for the day, collected his fishing tackle and made for the river. He was not a fisherman, but such fishing as the Red Deer afforded gave him excuse for getting away where he could tell himself without restraint what a fool he had been to undertake his hopeless task.
In the shadow of a low cliff he baited his hook and tossed it into the water. A gold-eye took it at once, and for a time he played with it absent-mindedly, finally drawing it out, removing it from the hook, and tossing it back. Several more he treated in the same way, and at last cast in his hook without troubling to bait it. The sun crept higher and beat unmercifully on the bare rock, and he rolled a stone on the end of the pole and stretched himself in the shade.
"Don't seem ter be enj'yin' the fishin'," gibed a high-pitched voice from the rocks above, "or else yer too blame cosy."
Stamford raised his head lazily and surveyed Bean Slade's unkempt figure perched on a ledge over his head.
"Any fish that takes that hook's a born fool," he sighed. "I don't want 'em any more than they want me. Come on down, Bean. It's far more fun to lie about and talk."
Bean climbed down and picked up the rod.
"Yu don't know no more about fishin', boss, then yu do about—about lots o' things yu'd like to know. Gi' me that bait. See that smooth spot out there? That's deep water. Watch yer Uncle Ned."
He whirled the rod back and forward, and the hook shot out to the centre of the deeper water. Almost immediately the line tugged, jerked, loosened, and went taut again. Stamford leaped to his feet and grabbed the pole.
"Hang to it, Bean! There, we'll get it! Whoop! Gee, ain't he a fighter?"
Bean yielded up the rod with twinkling eyes.
"Fer a tenderfoot who don't fish, yu can work up what looks mighty like a taste fer it."
He hung precariously over the water and scooped unsuccessfully at a shining back that showed for a moment.
"Let 'er run, dang yu! Let 'er run. Yu got to get 'er to shallow water."
After a struggle, in which Stamford objected to assistance, but was unable to complete the catch himself, Bean stepped into shallow water and clutched the sturgeon. Stamford looked down on it with blazing eyes.
"Mister Stamford," grinned Bean, "if yu wasn't born a fisherman, yer shure goin' ter die one."
"Bean," said Stamford, "I'll crave your kind assistance to the extent of baiting that hook again. Then—no more. I'll bring the next fellow in myself or die in the attempt."
Stamford went back to the hole. Nothing happened. He waited several minutes, yawned, frowned, and leaned back against the rock.
"That one," he declared, pointing to the still wriggling fish, "had this whole darn river to itself. My line says so." He yawned again. "Bean," suddenly, "you're my friend, aren't you?"
The cowboy studied him curiously. "I reckon I ain't got no spite again yu—none of us chaps at the cook-house have."
"Not including Dakota, of course."
Bean ruminated over that. "Mebbe yer right."
"I don't believe, Bean Slade, that you're happy with that gang."
Bean got up and started away.
"Ta-ta!" he called. "This ain't my pumpin' day."
Stamford cursed his impetuosity.
"All right," he laughed. "You've a brain of your own—and I've seen no evidences of a loose tongue in you. I was going to tell you something—perhaps—that was all."
Bean kicked over some loose stones and wandered back. Plainly he did not want to go.
And just then a fish took the bait. Stamford jumped forward, missed his footing, and tumbled helplessly into the rushing current.
At the same instant a scream broke down the river from the cliffs higher up.
Bean bounded to an overhanging rock, braced his feet in a crevice and leaned far over. Stamford came up almost beneath his hand, gasping, already half drowned, surrendering to the icy torrent that started in distant glaciers. He could not swim a stroke. Bean's bony fingers closed over his hair, stayed his progress, and the other hand moved down to his arm.
"Here, yu noodle!" he shouted. "Yu got to help yerself, or I'll let yu go. This ain't no time to faint. Grab my shoulders. Now work yer way up my body. Yu'll find bones thar to catch hold of. Now—all together!"
Stamford lay panting on the rock. Bean, perspiration bursting from every pore, leaned weakly on his elbow beside him.
"Whew!" he puffed.
That was all, but his limbs were shaking, and the perspiration trickled down his neck and dampened his loose neckerchief. A great gush of affection passed between the two men, though neither spoke. Stamford extended his hand and laid it on Bean's, and the cowboy looked away and drew a coloured bandana with his free hand and rubbed it round his neck.
Presently he sat up and stared up the river.
"Huh!" he grunted. "Yu shure don't take a bath of'en, do yu?"
"Not that way—never again!" replied Stamford fervently.
"Thought not."
"Why?"
"'Cos there's such a funny noise when yu strike the water."
Stamford flushed. "Did I scream?"
"If 'twas you," grinned Bean, "yu shure can throw yer voice high and far."
Stamford followed his eyes up the river cliff, and flushed again, this time for a different reason.
"Pshaw, Bean! You were excited."
"Then there was two of us, I reckon."
"I'm sure I must have screamed," said Stamford. "I was never so scared in my life." But his heart sang with the knowledge that Isabel Bulkeley, somewhere in the cliffs above, had feared for him.
"All right, have it yer own way. Only if I was you I wouldn't believe myself." He drew several long breaths and looked shyly at the man he had rescued. "God, if I hadn't been here!"
"Bean, I——" The surge of Stamford's gratitude was choking him.
"Billy Windover saved me once like—like that," said Bean, his eyes fixed on the foaming water.
"Billy Windover? Wasn't that the cowboy who was shot down near the Cypress Hills a couple of months ago?"
Bean nodded. "Billy an' me was chums—the best chums in the world, I guess, pretty near. Me and him was raised together—down in Indiany. Our farms was close together, an' Billy an' me played Injun an' pirate an' stage robber together when we was knee high to a grasshopper.... We grew up together.... We loved the same gal.... He licked me and won. We fought it out on the banks of a deep stream that cut through both farms—in the woods—an' the licked one was to drown himself.... He pulled me out...."
He lifted himself higher and drew one hand angrily across his eyes.
"The gal she turned out bad ... and Billy went a bit wild.... I went with Billy. We broke out in Montany. Billy was a reckless cuss, an' he got in bad with the sheriffs and flitted over here. I came as soon's I got the chance.... And—and now he's—he's pulled out an' left me—alone."
"He was murdered, I understand," said Stamford.
Bean's face darkened, and his sunken eyes glared.
"Damned sight wuss 'n that! Shot down without a chance in the dark. Dirty cuss who did it's goin' to settle with me."
"If you ever find who it was."
"Why——" Bean's eyes peered out furtively beneath his shaggy brows, and he said no more.
Stamford led off on another tack; he had learned all that interested him there.
"There's Kid Loveridge, too. Someone shot him, and he was one of this very outfit."
"Huh!" growled Bean. "The Kid got what was comin' to him."
Stamford held himself under careful control.
"Then there's Corporal Faircloth."
Bean's lips closed, his face was inscrutable.
Presently he spoke.
"Yu thought a lot o' the Corporal?"
"He was my first and best friend in the West."
"An' yer mighty consarned to find out who shot him?"
Stamford did not reply immediately. He had a thought of throwing himself frankly on Bean's affection. It was certain that Bean could tell him what he wished to know—much more certain than that he would. But the three fruitless weeks of search on the H-Lazy Z called for desperate measures. He was debating it when Bean spoke again in an ominous tone.
"'Cos what yer doin' 's a mighty dangerous game."
"Dangerous? Do you know what I'm trying to do?"
"I'm just givin' yu a warnin', boss, that's all. It's like to end at the business end of a gun."
Stamford made a decision.
"The H-Lazy Z is crammed with mysteries. If you——"
"An' the less yu understand them the better fer yer skin. An' it shore ain't no business o' yours."
"It is my business that my best friend was murdered."
"Best leave that to the Police."
"But they're doing nothing."
"I guess ya don't know the Police," said Bean, rolling a cigarette.
Stamford sat thinking. "Bean," he said suddenly, "I'm going to tell you something. The night we returned from Medicine Hat I got Hobbles out—never mind how—and rode back to where we'd seen Dakota."
He waited in vain for a burst of surprise. Bean merely nodded.
"They were branding or something. They almost caught me."
"Yer dead right there," agreed Bean.
In a flash Stamford understood. "But it couldn't have been you pushed me from Hobbles."
"Huh!" grunted Bean, taking a long draw at his cigarette.
"You were back at the bunk-house. I saw you there an hour or so later, when Dakota came in."
"Uh-huh! An' yu purty near gave the show away—if Dakota's ears was as good as mine.... Also Hobbles couldn't 'a' been out at the branding neither, 'cos she was there in the stable then, too, eh?"
He chuckled, and coughed with the smoke.
"But I heard you tell Dakota no one had gone out—also I saw you start off right after your supper to join Dakota; you promised him to as we were driving in."
"Dear me! Did yu think yu wasn't intended to see an' hear all that? Ha! Ha!"
"But I don't understand."
"Shure yu don't! If yu did yu'd be back in town now.... An' I'm not goin' to tell yu, neither."
He got up, stretched, expectorated into the river, and sauntered away.
"Ta-ta!" he called back. "Take care o' yerself."