Before she was out of her teens, a large cattle ranch had been turned over to her to handle. She must have soon discovered that plenty of crooks were out to do a pair of orphans. Hal chuckled. Most of those who had tried it had run into an unexpected flintiness.
He was interested to see how she would cope with the recent outbreak of rustling. That an organized band was working stood out like a bandaged thumb. With so much dude beef in Arizona now, he was a little surprised that the thieves were centering the attack on the Seven Up and Down. Newcomers from the East with money had been buying up cattle spreads and putting in patios, swimming pools, and expensive haciendas. The pastures of two of these had been raided, but the robbers had specialized in Lovell stuff. Of course they were supplying a black market.
Hal could understand one reason for this. To the night-riding gentry the pastures of the Seven Up and Down must be a temptation because so many trails ran down from the hills to them. What puzzled Hal was the weakness of the defense the ranch had shown. Frawley knew cattle. He had worked with them all his life. The ways and methods of stock thieves were familiar to him. It was not strange that they had made one successful raid. On a big acreage such as the Lovells had, it was not possible to guard all vulnerable points every night. But three steals in a month, each with a clean getaway. Frawley ought to do better than that. One of the new dude outfits could not do any worse.
From a rise Hal looked down at the flat where Big Bridge lay. The sun was high in the sky now and its rays beat down on a parched desert bounded by papier-mâché mountains gaunt and stark. Below him lay a street of flat-roofed adobe houses running parallel to the river, a thin trickling stream following the line of least resistance in a wide sandy wash. There were times when the river was a roaring torrent.
He rode across the long narrow bridge, the slap of his horse's hoofs beating up from the planks of the floor. Powdered dust lay heavy on the street, and a thin haze of it floated in the air. Hal drew up at the hitchrack in front of the Rest Easy Saloon. Three horses already drowsed there. Two or three cars were in sight. A new expensive station wagon was parked a few yards lower down the road, the property of one of the new rich dude outfits.
Hal tied and walked into the Rest Easy. He ordered a beer. While waiting for it, his glance swept the room. Three men were sitting at a table playing pitch. They stopped the game for a moment to watch him when he walked to the bar. He spoke to them and they answered his greeting. A fourth man stood alone at the end of the bar, a half-empty glass in front of him. He looked like an actor dressed for the part of a cowboy. The stranger was large, broad-shouldered, pink-cheeked. He wore high-heeled boots, brown range clothes, a big white sombrero, all of them a little too new.
The cold beer washed the dust from the dry throat of Stevens.
'Hot,' the bartender said, mopping with a towel his fat face. 'Hottest summer in forty years. A hog got loose in Yuma the other day, and when the owner rounded it up, Mr. Pig had turned into a bucket of leaf lard. Jest melted down.'
'Funny how many hottest summers we've had in the last ten years,' Hal drawled. 'I haven't found one yet that's too cool for me.'
His eyes rested on the pitch-players. They had this in common, that they were dusty, unshaven, and tough-looking customers. Hal knew them all. He had several times met them riding down from the hills where they lived close to Rabbit Ear Gorge. The smallest of them, a wiry fellow with beady eyes black as shoe buttons, had been in the district ever since Hal had been a small boy. His name was Cash Polk, and he had the reputation of being both slippery and dangerous. The other two he was not so well acquainted with, but he knew them casually. Brick Fenwick and Cad Hanford they called themselves. The underground story about them was that they were bad men, killers. Their villainous deadpan faces justified the guess. Hal understood that they had come from Texas a year or two ago. If so, they had probably migrated because that habitat had grown too hot for them.
Cash Polk commented: 'Seems like it's always hotter in a town than out in the open country. We spent the night at Tucson and like to of smothered. Had a two-by-four room right under the roof of a rooming house. It never did cool off all night.'
'If you've just got back,' Hal said casually, 'maybe you haven't heard that the Seven Up and Down was raided again last night.'
Polk's eyes slid from one pitch-player to the other before they reached those of Stevens. 'Well, I'll be doggoned. Again. Don't that beat the Dutch!'
'Lucky you can prove you were at Tucson,' Hal replied dryly. 'I haven't as good an alibi as that.'
'We don't have to prove where we were,' Hanford said, his voice heavy and harsh. He was a solidly built man past his first youth. His slate-colored eyes had no more life in them than those of a dead cod.
'That's fine.' There was a touch of contempt in the cool look Stevens let rest on the pitch-players. 'Wish my reputation would stand up like that.'
'Meaning that ours don't?' demanded Fenwick. He was scarcely more than a boy in years, but in vice he was a hundred. His figure was neat and slender, his motions quick and sure. It was easy to look at him and believe the story that he was a killer untroubled by conscience, and probably a very efficient one.
Hal hooked his elbows on the top of the bar and smiled. 'If you are satisfied with them, Mr. Fenwick, why should I worry?' he asked.
'Don't,' advised the boy, the words so low that they came in almost a whisper. 'What we do is strictly our own business. Anybody buttin' in is asking for trouble. We wouldn't stand for it a minute.'
The eyes of Fenwick and Stevens locked and held fast. Those of the cattleman met the chill threat between the slitted lids of the other with a steady scorn.
'Am I treading on your toes, Mr. Fenwick?' he asked.
'By cripes, you better not try it. Don't get nosey.'
'Orders from Black?' Stevens inquired cheerfully.
The boy slammed a fist down on the table. 'I don't take orders from anybody. I won't let you tell me I do. Keep your mouth shut.'
'I talk too much, don't I?' the cowman said, and laughed.
He knew why this young killer had a chip on his shoulder. Yesterday Hal had met Tick Black and told him where he stood on this rustling of stock to supply an illicit market; that if any evidence came to his hand, he would use it to convict the thieves if possible. Tick had agreed with him suavely that all good men must support the Government in war measures, but his assent had come a moment too late, after he had rubbed from his thin and bitter face a venomous flash of rage.
'Those who mind their own business live longer,' Fenwick reminded him out of the corner of thin lips almost closed.
'Who wants to live forever?' Stevens retorted, his manner so indifferent that the other found it insulting.
'I've told you. Ride around my reservation.'
'I ride my own trail, no matter whose it crosses,' Hal said evenly.
'If it crossed mine, that — would — be — too — bad,' the Texan answered, menace in the spaced words.
'For me, I take it,' Hal suggested carelessly. 'Already I'm feeling awfully sorry for myself.'
Cash Polk made peace talk. 'Now, gentlemen, that's no way to talk. Brick, you hadn't ought to take up Mr. Stevens thataway. He wasn't slamming at us any. We hill folks have always been friends with the M K outfit. Many is the good turn it has done us.' Cash turned to Stevens. 'You mustn't mind Brick. He's a mite rough, but lots of good dogs bark.'
'Some of 'em bite too,' Hanford added. 'But if Mr. Stevens meant no offense, none is taken. Let's top off with a drink.'