The door closed, and in a few moments she could hear him as he rode away, leading her horse. She covered her face with her hands and let the flood of tears she had been holding back break forth.
CHAPTER TEN
Fine, hard pellets of ice that looked like tapioca but stung their faces like shot peppered Wagon's boss and his foreman all the way back to Wagon. With the collars of their sheepskin coats turned up over their ears, they rode in silent discomfort.
Doc Williams, in his official capacity of town coroner, had headed a panel, and the jury had quickly decided that Bill's two hired gunmen had met "death by accident." Bill hadn't appeared, nor had any member of his crew shown up at the inquest. Two fresh mounds of earth were all that was left of two men who, living by the gun, had expected no other end… no other mourners.
"Don't believe this is going to turn into a blizzard," Josh said, shrugging deeper into his coat collar. "Does look like the beginning of a heavy snow, though. I'd as soon be at Wagon as out here on the range."
Kirby felt like saying that he felt like riding as far away from Wagon as his horse would carry him, now that Jen was no longer there, but he merely nodded in agreement and gigged his bronc into a hard, fast trot, making further conversation impossible.
In town, Kirby had learned two things over which he puzzled as they rode through an increasingly heavy snowfall; facts for which there seemed to be no logical explanation. First of all, banker Burch had told him about Bill's precarious financial condition. It had been something of a shock to learn that Bill had run through the money Muddy had left him as well as the proceeds from the sale of his herd. On top of that, Burch had told him worriedly, Bill had borrowed five thousand dollars, giving the title to Lazy B as security. Kirby hated the thought of the mortgage. On several occasions Muddy had been forced to borrow, but it was always in times of drought or blizzard, and the loan had always been repaid as soon as the notes fell due.
"I heard somewhere that Bill was going to restock Lazy B with blooded cattle," he told the banker.
"I did, too," Burch replied, "but so far I haven't heard he has bought a single bull."
Sheriff Lon Peters had been able to fill in some of the gaps. "Bill is over his head in the company he's been keeping," he said. "He's been gambling for pretty high stakes over at Galeyville. One of my deputies heard of a game he was in where white chips were twenty dollars apiece. Dropped a couple of thousand that one night." Lon had known the brothers since they were mere buttons, and he was frankly distressed as he said, "Whiskey and poker don't mix. But the way I get it, the harder Bill drinks the more he wants to get back his losses. What surprises me is that Hub Dawes has been sitting in some of those high stake games. Where's he gettin' the money? Some of my boys think Dawes may be a come-on for those rough Galeyville gambling men. I know for sure he hasn't got cows enough on his spread to buy a new saddle. By the way, I met a friend of yours when I was out there this morning."
Kirby looked at him in astonishment. "Friend of mine?"
The sheriff sighed. "I was just tryin' to make a joke, boy. The gunhawk I run outa town is making his headquarters at Dawes' place. Claims him and three or four more like him are on the payroll. What they do for their thirty and found is more than I can see, unless they're havin' a whiskey-drinkin' contest. There's a wagonload of empty bottles in the bunkhouse. The gunnie up and dared me to do something about it. I wanted to bend my iron back in shape over his head, but I can't do anything until I catch him actually breakin' the law." The sheriff looked wistful. "I'd sure admire to find out how fast he really is. Which I aim to do if he ever sets foot in Streeter, even if my old lady does say I'm too old to draw flies."
Josh had been right about the weather. By the time they trotted in the Wagon corral, it was hard to find the gate because of the swirling snow.
But there was little wind and no below zero drop in temperature to announce a blizzard such as those to which they had become accustomed. It seemed that winter had vented its spleen before Christmas. When the weather continued consistently good after New Year's, Josh was worried.
"Probably have a whale of a drought the next couple of years," he prophesied gloomily.
To Kirby each day was much like its predecessor. He didn't return to town, but immersed himself in the hardest work he could find to do. Only by crawling into bed dead tired was he able to sleep… to forget for a few hours the trouble hanging over the Wagon… the trouble that had already cost him the one girl in the world.
Josh saw her on the trips he made for supplies. He told Maria, in words intended for Kirby's ears, that she was well and busy making up the school she had missed during her bout with pneumonia.
Spring made a timid appearance at Wagon before Kirby was even aware of the changing of the seasons. He felt a shock one day when he realized that the things that usually gave him such deep pleasure were going unnoted. He tried to regain the thrill of his boyhood at the sight of long V-shaped strings of wild geese, the first shivering robins. I must be getting old, he thought, as he remembered the clear spring days when he and Jen had searched out the year's first violets and proudly carried them in for Ma's enjoyment. He was grateful, in a way, for the change of seasons brought new chores. He busied himself with the mending of fences; the new crop of calves to be attended to; and, finally, the back-breaking work of spring roundup.
Josh was jubilant over the calf crop. "They more than make up for winter kill," he reported. "Wagon sure come through the winter a lot better than I thought after the first blizzard. I'm a heap worried that we'll get one of those late blue northers and lose every danged calf on the range."
It was the spring gather that brought trouble back into focus; the trouble all knew was merely waiting for winter to blow away before laying its own pattern of misery and woe on the range. Things had been quiet since the Christmas shooting, partly because Kirby and his crew had stayed away from town and a possible encounter with Bill or his henchmen. He overheard a couple of the hands in the bunkhouse talking about a poker game that had been going on continuously in Galeyville for more than a month. They stopped when they discovered he was listening, but not before one of them had dropped the news that Bill was a part of the marathon game and was still drinking heavily. I'll find out from Burch how deep Bill has gotten into debt, he thought. But the news Josh brought crowded everything else out of his mind.
"Boss, I've been over every mile of our graze and counted every critter on it, dead or alive. And no matter how I figger, there's something wrong. Wagon is missing close to three hundred head." He showed Kirby his tally. He was right, as Kirby realized before he checked. A part of the Wagon herd had disappeared.
The next day he sent his foreman to Streeter and then on to Galeyville. He waited, tight-lipped and silent, until Josh returned.
"Every head of cattle that has been shipped out of this range is accounted for, and our brand hasn't turned up in any stuff that has been sold. But that ain't half of it," Josh told him. "Every outfit I talked to has been rustled. They've all lost fifty head or more… just recent. I hate to say it, but there's a lot of talk about Bill being mixed up in the thing."
"Has anyone braced Bill about it?" Kirby asked thoughtfully.
"I don't think so," was the reply. "I heard that a couple of Triangle punchers rode out to Lazy B. Bill wasn't there, but Hub Dawes ordered them off the place at gun point. They left without seein' a single steer… but that don't mean he couldn't have 'em hid away somewhere."
Kirby was lost in thought for so long that Josh started to walk away.