I come back I’ll sure come a-ridin’ like this Lochinvar sport and marry you-all a whole lot. That’s whatever! How’d you like that!”
“When will you come?” demanded Marian.
“Oh, right soon, honey! And you’ll sure have a tame and dotin’ husband, I can tell you. But now, good-by!”
“You’ll come back?”
“You’re shoutin’, I will! With a preacher and a license and all the trimmin’s. We’ll certainly have one all-whoopin’ weddin’ when I come rackin’ in, Petty! Kiss me good-by, like a nice sweetheart and just dream once in a while of Louisiana, won’t you?”
“I’ll say your name in my prayers,” she assured him, watching him doubtfully and hopefully as he wheeled his horse, striving to keep back the tears.
And then he was gone, riding at a mile-eating pace toward the south and the Esmeralda Mountains.
Two hours later a tired group of men and horses loped in and wanted to know where he had gone. They were on his trail for, it seemed, he had shot “Snake” Murphy in his own road house in a quarrel over some drab of the place who was known as Lizzie Lewis.
Ike was cautious. It was not a regularly deputized posse and the members were rather tough friends of Murphy. Between the two, he preferred Louisiana. He remembered how unconcernedly that young man had waited until he and his horse were fed and rested, though he must have known that Death was on his trail. And how he had laughed and petted Marian. There was good in the boy, he decided, though, now he had started on his career as a killer, his end would probably be tragic. Ike had no desire at any rate to hasten it.
Nor, as a matter of fact, had the posse. Their courage had cooled during the long ride from Sulphur Falls as the whisky had evaporated from their systems. They were by no means exceedingly anxious to catch up with and encounter what was reputed to be the fastest gun in southern Idaho.
“Whatever starts this hostile play?” asked Ike of the leader of the posse.
“This here Louisiana, I gather, gets in a mix-up with Snake,” the officer explained rather languidly. “I ain’t there and I don’t know the rights of it myself. As near as I can figure it Lizzie takes a shine to him which he don’t reciprocate none. There is some words between them and Liz sets up a holler to Snake about this hombre insultin’ of her.”
“Insultin’ Lizzie Lewis?” said Ike, mildly surprised. “I’d sure admire to hear how he done it.”
“Well, Liz is a female, nohow, and in any case Snake allows it’s his play to horn in. Which he does with a derringer. He’s just givin’ it a preliminary wave or two and preparin’ his war song according to Hoyle when Louisiana smokes him up a plenty.”
“I reckon Snake starts it, then,” remarked Ike.
“You might say so. But rightfully speakin’ he don’t never actually get started, Snake don’t. He is just informin’ the assembly what his war plans are when Louisiana cracks down on him and busts his shootin’ arm. But this Louisiana has done frightened a lady a whole lot and that’s as good an excuse to get him as any.”
“Well,” said Ike, dryly, “the gent went by here maybe two hours gone headin’ south. He was goin’ steady but he don’t seem worried none as I noticed. If you want him right bad I reckon you can run him down. As for me I’m plumb neutral in this combat. I ain’t lost no Louisiana.”
Members of the posse looked at each other, glanced to the south where the gray expanse of sage presented an uninviting vista, fidgeted a little and, one by one, swung down from their saddles. The officer observed his deputies and finally followed them in dismounting.
“I reckon you’re about right,” he said. “This here buckaroo has got a good start and we ain’t none too fresh. You got a bunk house here where we can hole up for the night?”
Ike nodded his assent, noting that the posse seemed relieved at the prospect of abandoning the chase. In the morning they headed back the way they had come.
French Pete had not appeared on the following day, although he was due, and Brandon decided that he would ride south and meet him. Leaving Marian in charge of the Mexican woman, he took a pack horse and rode away, making the Wallace Ranch at Willow Spring that evening. Although Wallace was a cattleman with an enmity toward Brandon’s fraternity, it did not extend to Ike himself, and he was made welcome by the rancher and his wife. Wallace’s freckle-faced son, a lad of five years, who was known among his vaqueros as “Sucatash,” was the other member of the family. Ike, who was fond of children, entertained this youngster and made a rather strong impression on him.
On the following morning the sheepman saddled up and packed and got away at a fairly early hour. He headed toward the Esmeraldas, pointing at the break in the mountain wall where Shoestring Cañon flared out on the plains, affording an entry to the range. This was the logical path that the sheep-herders followed in crossing the range and, indeed, the only feasible one for many miles in either direction, though there was a fair wagon road that ran eastward and flanked that end of the range, leading to Maryville on the other side of the mountains, where the county seat was located.
But Ike rode until noon without seeing a sign of his missing herder and his sheep. French Pete should have entered the plains long before this, but, as yet, Ike was not alarmed. Many things might occur to delay the flock, and it was impossible to herd sheep on hard and fast schedules.
As he rode Ike looked at the trail for signs of passing horsemen, but he noted no tracks that resembled those of Louisiana, which he had observed for some distance after he had left the ranch at Twin Forks. Just where they had left the trail and disappeared he had not noted, having but an idle interest in them after all. He had not seen them for many miles before reaching Willow Spring, he remembered. This fact gave no clew to the direction the man had taken, of course, since, being pursued, he would naturally leave the trail at some point and endeavor to cover his sign. He might have continued south as he had started or he might have doubled back.
At about one o’clock in the afternoon, as he was approaching the gap that opened into Shoestring, Ike saw, far ahead, a group on the trail. There seemed to be a wagon around which several men were standing. The wagon resembled one of his own camp equipages, and he spurred up his horse and hastened forward with some idea that the cow-punchers might be attacking it.
As he came nearer, however, one of the men swung into his saddle and headed back toward him at a gallop. Ike drew the rifle from its scabbard under his knee and went more cautiously. The man came on at a hard run, but made no hostile move, and when he was near enough Ike saw that he was not armed. He shoved the rifle back beneath his knee, as the rider set his horse on its haunches beside him.
“Ike Brandon?” the man asked, excitedly, as he reined in. “Say, Ike, that Basco ewe-whacker o’ yours is back there a ways and plumb perforated. Some one shore up and busted him a plenty with a soft-nose thirty. We’re ridin’ for Wallace, and we found him driftin’ along in the wagon a while back. I’m ridin’ for a medicine man, but I reckon we don’t get one in time.”
“Who done it?” asked Ike, grimly. The cow-puncher shook his head.
“None of us,” he said, soberly. “We ain’t any too lovin’ with sheep-herders, but we ain’t aimin’ to butcher ’em with soft-nose slugs from behind a rock, neither. We picks him up a mile or two out of Shoestring and his hoss is just driftin’ along no’th with him while he’s slumped up on the seat. There ain’t no sheep with him.”
Ike nodded thoughtfully. “None o’ you-all seen anythin’ of Louisiana driftin’ up this a way?” he asked.
“Gosh, no!” said the rider. “You pickin’ Louisiana? He’s a bad hombre, but this here don’t look like his work.”
“Pete’s rifle with him?” asked Ike.
The man nodded. “It ain’t been fouled. Looks like he was bushwacked and didn’t have no chance to shoot.”
Ike picked up his reins, and the man spurred his horse off on his errand. The sheepman rode on and