Part 45

"In what essential does it differ from the affair over on the Red Desert?" demanded Cavanagh. "Who would kill these poor sheep-herders but cattle-men warring for the grass on which we stand?"

"But they would not dare to do such work themselves."

"No one else would do it. Hired assassins would not chop and burn. Hate and greed were both involved in this butchery--hate and greed made mad by drink. I tell you, the men who did this are less than a day's ride of where we stand."

A silence followed--so deep a silence that the ranger was convinced of the fact that in the circle of his listeners stood those who, if they had not shared in the slaughter, at least knew the names of the guilty men.

At last the sheriff spoke, this time with a sigh. "I hope you're all wrong, Cavanagh. I'd hate to think any constituent of mine had sanctioned this job. Give me that lantern, Curtis."

The group of ranchers dismounted, and followed the sheriff over to the grewsome spot; but Redfield stayed with the ranger.

"Have you any suspicion, Ross?"

"No, hardly a suspicion. However, you know as well as I that this was not a sudden outbreak. This deed was planned. It represents the feeling of many cattle-men--in everything but the extra horror of its execution. That was the work of drunken, infuriated men. But I am more deeply concerned over Miss Wetherford's distress. Did she reach you by telephone to-night?"

"No. What's the trouble?"

"Her mother is down again. I telephoned her, and she asked me to come to her, but I cannot go, for I have a case of smallpox up on the hill. Ambro, the Basque herder, is down with it, and another herder is up there alone with him. I must go back to them. But meanwhile I wish you would go to the Fork and see what you can do for her."

His voice, filled with emotion, touched Redfield, and he said: "Can't I go to the relief of the herder?"

"No, you must not think of it; you are a man of a family. But if you can find any one who has had the smallpox send him up; the old herder who is nursing the patient is not strong, and may drop any moment. Then it's up to me."

The men came back to the camp-fire conversing in low voices, some of them cursing in tones of awe. One or two of them were small farmers from Deer Creek, recent comers to the State, or men with bunches of milk-cows, and to them this deed was awesome.

The sheriff followed, saying: "Well, there's nothing to do but wait till morning. The rest of you men better go home. You can't be of any use here."

For more than three hours the sheriff and Redfield sat with the ranger waiting for daylight, and during this time the name of every man in the region was brought up and discussed. Among others, Ross mentioned the old man in the ditch.

"He wouldn't hurt a bumblebee!" declared the sheriff. "He's got a bunch of cattle, but he's the mildest old man in the State. He's the last rancher in the country to even stand for such work. What made you mention him?"

"I passed him as I was riding back," replied Cavanagh, "and he had a scared look in his eyes."

The sheriff grunted. "You imagined all that. The old chap always has a kind of meek look."

Cavanagh, tired, hungry, and rebellious, waited until the first faint light in the east announced the dawn; then he rose, and, stretching his hand out toward it, said: "Here comes the new day. Will it be a new day to the State, or is it to be the same old round of savagery?"

Redfield expressed a word of hope, and in that spirit the ranger mounted and rode away back toward the small teepee wherein Wetherford was doing his best to expiate his past--a past that left him old and friendless at fifty-five. The sheriff and his men took up the work of vengeance which fell to them as officers of the law.

It was nearly noon of a glorious day as Cavanagh, very tired and very hungry, rode up to the sheep-herder's tent. Wetherford was sitting in the sun calmly smoking his pipe, the sheep were feeding not far away, attended by the dog, and an air of peace covered his sunlit rocky world.

"How is the Basque?" asked the ranger.

Wetherford pointed upward. "All over."

"Then it wasn't smallpox?"

"I reckon that's what it was; it sure was fierce. I judge it's a case of Injun burial--no ceremony--right here in the rocks. I'll let you dig the hole (I'm just about all in), but mind you keep to the windward all the time. I don't want you spotted."

Cavanagh understood the necessity for these precautions, but first of all came his own need of food and rest. Turning his tired horse to grass, he stretched himself along a grassy, sunny cranny between the rocks, and there ate and afterward slept, while all about him the lambs called and the conies whined.

He was awakened by a pebble tossed upon him, and when he arose, stiff and sore, but feeling stronger and in better temper, the sun was wearing low. Setting to work at his task, he threw the loose rock out of a hollow in the ledge near by, and to this rude sepulchre Wetherford dragged the dead man, refusing all aid, and there piled a cairn of rocks above his grave.

The ranger was deeply moved by the pitiless contrast of the scene and the drama. The sun was still shining warmly aslant the heavens; the wind, crisp and sweet, wandered by on laggard wings, the conies cried from the ledges; the lambs were calling--and in the midst of it one tattered fragment of humanity was heaping the iron earth upon another, stricken, perhaps, by the same dread disease.