Free Me Smith by 1870-196 Caroline Lockhart Page B

lost fortunes. Disease, droughts, and blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria.
    His hand shook as he sat down at his desk and wrote a note to the Stockmen’s Association, asking for the services of their best detective. It meant four days of hard riding to deliver the note, but the Colonel put it into “Babe’s” hand as if he were asking him to drop it in the mail-box around the corner.
    “Go, and git back,” were his laconic instructions, and he turned to pace the floor.
    When “Babe” returned some eight days later, with the deputy sheriff, he found the Colonel striding to and fro, his wrath having in no wise abated. The cowboy wondered if his employer had been walking the floor all that time.
    “My name is Ralston,” said the tall young deputy, as he stood before the old cattleman.
    “Ralston?” The Colonel rose on his toes a trifle to peer into his face.
    “Not Dick Ralston’s boy?”
    The six-foot deputy smiled.
    “The same, sir.”
    The Colonel’s hand shot out in greeting.
    “Anybody of that name is pretty near like kin to me. Many’s the time your dad and I have eaten out of the same frying-pan.”
    “So I’ve heard him say.”
    “Does he know you’re down here on this job?”
    The young man shook his head soberly.
    “No.”
    The Colonel looked at him keenly.
    “Had a falling out?”
    “No; scarcely that; but we couldn’t agree exactly upon some things, so I struck out for myself when I came home from college.”
    “No future for you in this sleuthing business,” commented the old man tersely. “Why didn’t you go into cattle with your dad?”
    “That’s where we disagreed, sir. I wanted to buy sheep, and he goes straight into the air at the very word.”
    The Colonel laughed.
    “I can believe that.”
    “Over there the range is going fast, and it’s fight and scrap and quarrel all the time to keep the sheep off what little there is left; and then you ship and bottom drops out of the market as soon as your cattle are loaded. There’s nothing in it; and while I don’t like sheep any better than the Governor, there’s no use in hanging on and going broke in cattle because of a prejudice.”
    “Dick’s stubborn,”—the Colonel nodded knowingly—“and I don’t believe he’ll ever give in.”
    “No; I don’t think he will, and I’m sorry for his sake, because he’s getting too old to worry.”
    “Worry? Cattle’s nothing but worry!—which reminds me of what you are here for.”
    “Have you any suspicions?”
    “No. I don’t believe I can help you any. The Injuns been good as pie since we sent Wolf Robe over the road. Don’t hardly think it’s Injuns. Don’t know what to think. Might be some of these Mormon outfits going north. Might be some of these nesters off in the hills. Might be anybody!”
    “Is he an old hand?”
    “Looks like it. Cuts the brand out and buries the hide.” The Colonel began pacing the floor. “Cattle-thieves are people that’s got to be nipped in the bud muy pronto . There ought to be a lynching on every cattle-range once in seven years. It’s the only way to hold ’em level. Down there on the Rio Grande we rode away and left fourteen of ’em swinging over the bluff. It’s got to be done in all cattle countries, and since they’ve started in here—well, a hanging is overdue by two years.” The Colonel ejected his words with the decisive click of a riot-gun.
    So Dick Ralston, Jr., rode the range for the purpose of getting the lay of the country, and, on one pretext or another, visited the squalid homes of the nesters, but nowhere found anybody or anything in the least suspicious. He learned of the murder of White Antelope, and of the “queer-actin’” bug-hunter and his pal, who had been accused of it. It was rather generally believed that McArthur was a desperado of a