to this! I can go to town with th' boys once more! I can cuss out loud an' swagger around regardless! An' some mangey gent is careless with his gun! You can lose me just as easy as a cow can lose a tick. I feel right at home."
"All right, then. Strip off yore saddle and turn that fine cayuse loose," replied Logan, chuckling. He hoped that he might be able to coax the new man to swap horses. "Th' cook's callin' his hogs, so let's go feed."
CHAPTER III
THE WISDOM OF THE FROGS
For two weeks Johnny rode range with the outfit and got familiar with the ranch. There was one discovery which puzzled him and seemed to offer an explanation for the shot on the trail: He had found the ruins of a burned homestead on the northern end of the ranch and he guessed that it had been used by "nesters;" and the evicted squatters might have mistaken him for Logan. His thoughts constantly turned to the man who had shot at him, and to the country around Twin Buttes; and often he sat for minutes, stiffly erect in his saddle, staring at the two great buttes, eager to explore the country surrounding them and to pay his debt.
From where he rode, facing westward, he could see the Deepwater, cold at all seasons of the year. Flowing swiftly, it gurgled and swished around bowlders of lava and granite and could be forded in but one place in thirty miles, where it spread out over a rocky, submerged plateau on the trail between the CL and Hastings, and where it grew turbulent and frothy with wrath as it poured over the up-thrust ledges. Along its eastern bank lay the ranch, in the valley of the Deepwater, and beyond it a short distance stood the Barrier, following it mile after mile and curving as it curved.
The Barrier, well named, was a great ledge of limestone, up-flung like a wall, sheer, smooth and only occasionally broken by narrow crevices which ran far back and sloped gradually upward, rock-strewn, damp, cool, and wild. It stretched for miles to Johnny's right and left, a wall between the wild tumble of the buttes and the smooth, gently rolling, fertile plain, which, beginning at the river, swept far to the eastward behind him, where it eventually became lost in the desert wastes. On one side of the rampart lay the scurrying river and the valley of the Deepwater, rolling, sparsely timbered and heavily grassed, placid, peaceful, restful; on the other, seeming to leap against the horizon, lay the grandeur of chaos, wild and forbidding.
Highest above all that jagged western skyline, shouldering up above all other buttes and plateaus, Twin Buttes peremptorily challenged attention. Remarkably alike from all sides, when viewed from the CL ranch-house they seemed to have been cast in the same mold; and the two towering, steep-sided masses with their different colored strata stood high above the Barrier and the chaos behind it like concrete examples of eternity.
Twin Buttes were the lords of their realm, and what a realm it was! Around them for miles great buttes rose solidly upward, naked on their abrupt sides except for an occasional, straggling bush or dwarfed pine or fir which here and there held precarious footholds in cracks and crevices or on the more secure placement of a ledge. Deep draws choked with brush lay between the more rolling hills along the eastern edge of the watershed where the Barrier stood on guard, and rich patches of heavy grass found the needed moisture in them. On the slopes of the hills were great forests of yellow pine, a straggling growth of fir crowning their tops. Farther west, where the massive buttes reared aloft, the deep canyons were of two kinds. The first, wide, with sloping banks of detritus, were covered with pine forests and torn with draws; the second, steep-walled, were great, narrow chasms of wind- and water-swept rock, bare and awe inspiring. They sloped upward to the backbone of the watershed and had humble beginnings in shallow, basin-like arroyos, which gradually became boxes in the rock formation as the level sloped downward.
But the chaos stopped at the Barrier, which marked the breaking of stratum upon stratum of the earth's crust. Ages ago there had been a mighty struggle here between titanic forces. To the west the earth's crust, battered into buttes, canyons, draws, and great plateaus, had held out with a granite stubbornness and strength defying the seething powers below it; but the limestone and the sandstone, weaker brothers, betrayed by the treachery of the shales, had given under the great strain and parted. The western portion had held its own; but the eastern section had dropped down into the heaving turmoil and formed the floor of the valley of the Deepwater. And as if in compensation, the winds of the ages, still battling with the stubborn buttes, had robbed them of soil and deposited it in the valley.
One evening, when Johnny rode in for supper, Logan met him at the corral and held out his hand.
"Shake, Nelson," he smiled. "Crosby went to town today and brought me a letter from th' Tin Cup. After you have fed up, come around to my room an' see me. I want to hold a right lively pow-wow with you."
"Shore enough!" laughed Johnny, an expectant grin on his face. "Bet he laid me out from soda to hock, tail to bit, th' old pirate!"
"Well, you've got a terrible reputation, young man. Go an' feed."
Johnny was the first at the table that night, and the first away from it by a wide margin. Rolling a cigarette, he lit it and hastened to Logan's quarters, where he found the foreman contentedly smoking.
"Come in an' set down," invited the foreman. "We're goin' to do a lot of talkin'; it's due to be a long session. There's th' letter."
Johnny read it:
"Mr. John C. Logan. Dear Sir: I take my pen in hand to answer your letter of recent date. Pete paid Red the 8 dollars to even up for the pants, but nobody paid me for the shirt, ask him why he took the best one. William, Junior, hates tobacco. We was scared hed die. He swears most suspicious like Johnny Nelson. I hid the gun in the storeroom. It cost me $12 damages the first week, besides a calf. Can you use Pete Wilson? I'll pay ½ his wages the first 6 months. I'd ruther have boils than him. He's worse since Johnny left. Don't let Johnny come north again, and God have mercy on your soul. He's easy worth $70, if you are in trouble. If you ain't in trouble he'll get you there. Excuse pensil. Yours truly, Wm. Cassidy, Senior. P.S. His old job is waiting for him and he can have the shirt. It must be near wore out anyhow. Tell him it only costs 2 cents to write me a letter, but I bet hell freezes before I get one. William, Junior, raised the devil when he missed Johnny. Yes, he worked on the Bar-20. If he sends the kid a shotgun, I'll come down and bust his neck. Excuse pensil."
Johnny looked steadily out of the door, ashamed to let Logan see his face, for homesickness is no respecter of age. He gulped and felt like a sick calf. Logan smiled at him through the gloom and chuckled, and at the sound the puncher stiffened and turned around with a fine attempt at indifference.
The foreman nodded at the letter. "Keep it if you wants. They must be a purty fine bunch, them fellers. I never knowed any of 'em, but I've heard a lot about 'em. 'Youbet' Somes used to drop in here once in a while, an' he knowed 'em all. I ain't seen Youbet for quite a spell now."
Johnny managed to relax his throat. "Finest outfit that ever wore pants," he blurted. "Youbet's dead. Went out fightin' seven sheep-herders in a saloon, but he got three of 'em. Hoppy met up with two of th' others th' next summer an' had words with 'em. Th' other two are still livin', I reckon." He thought for a moment and growled: "It's th' wimmin that done it. You wouldn't believe how that crowd has changed! D—n it, why can't a man keep his friends?"
The foreman puffed slowly and made no answer beyond a grunt of understanding. Johnny folded the letter carefully and put it in his pocket. "What's th' cow business comin' to, anyhow?" he demanded. "Wimmin, railroads, towns, sheep, wire—" he despaired of words and glared at the inoffensive corral.
"An' rustlers," added Logan.
"They're only an incident," retorted Johnny. "They can be licked, like a disease; but th' others—oh, what's th' use!"
"Yo're right," replied Logan; "but it's the rustlers that have got me worried. I ain't thinkin' about th' others very much, yet."
Johnny turned like a flash. He wanted action, action that would take his thoughts into other channels. The times were out of joint and he wanted something upon which to vent his spleen. He had been waiting