"When a gent figgers to pick a quarrel with yuh, don't watch his eyes ner his gun arm. Keep yore orbs plastered in the middle o' his chest. He'll telegraph his nex' move from there."—Joe Breedlove.
It was a hurried, brief funeral and of all the crowd only Jill, the doctor and Pattipaws seemed to show grief at the old Octopus' passing. The doctor, standing beside Lilly as the grave was dug—on a knoll near the house—spoke sadly. "He never was a hand for sentiment. Never gave any and never expected any, except with Jill. There ought to be a parson to say a few right words, but he wouldn't have it that way. Said he wanted to be out of the road so he wouldn't be cluttering the affairs of live folks. My boy, there was iron in old Jim!"
It was wholly a man's affair. Jill had taken leave of her father in the bedroom and after that vanished somewhere in the dark recesses of the house. One of the hands who was something of a carpenter made a coffin and presently they were lowering it, with its great burden, into the earth. All of the crew stood about, with Theed Trono in the background. Lilly, turning his eyes on the foreman, saw nothing of sympathy in the hard, coarse face, nothing of regret. Rather, there was a kind of sardonic, illy-concealed triumph on his countenance as the coffin vanished from sight. It was an expression that, in varying shapes and degrees, could be seen among the others also. The doctor, conscious of his lack of Biblical knowledge, stooped and took up a handful of soil, letting it trickle beneath his fingers.
"There ain't nothing I could say to speed Jim along," he murmured. "There ain't much he'd want me to say. He always figured he could fight his own way, here and hereafter. He never needed help, he never turned color when he was in a hard fix. It was always up and a-doing. He took his medicine and kept his mouth shut. He was hard, but he never double crossed a friend and he never pretended to be something he wasn't." The doctor pressed his lips tightly together and surveyed the crew with a defiant, unfriendly glance. "You won't ever see another like him—never. Good hunting, Jim."
That was all. Pattipaws stretched his skinny hand toward the west and turned away. Trono stepped to the fore and pulled his gun, firing once into the air. "That was the sound he like best to hear," he explained and stared at Lilly from beneath his heavy lids. The newcomer met the challenge with a brief glance and followed the doctor down the hill. On the porch he tarried, building himself a cigarette and watching the crew drift slowly toward the bunkhouse. The doctor went inside and presently came out, looking very glum. As he climbed into the saddle he swept the ranch with an arm and spoke.
"You got a job, boy. I don't envy you. But you better be straight to the girl or I'll have something to say."
With that warning he galloped away, his little black satchel flopping from the pommel and his coat-tails streaming in the wind. In a moment he was beyond a ridge and out of sight, leaving Lilly to his problem. The crew had disappeared and the yard baked under the hard noon-day light. A Sunday's stillness pervaded the place, but it was not the silence of peace. Lilly could feel a threat in the warm, lazy air, a warning of trouble to come. Still he smoked on as if serenely unconscious of impending danger. Perhaps he put more of negligence in his bearing than he felt, for he knew that from the windows of the bunkhouse he was being surveyed by many pairs of eyes.
"If the old man had wanted to get even with me," he reflected, "he shore couldn't have picked a better way. Here I am plumb in the middle of uncertainty with nine chances out of ten that I'll get my head shot off before sundown. A pleasant prospect. If I got any value on my hide it'd be better for me to take a good long pasear and never come back."
But he was only kidding himself. He was in this fight up to his neck and he had no idea of backing out. Meanwhile time rolled on and there was something being hatched over at the bunkhouse. It would do no good standing here and letting them get the bulge on him. He had to get busy. So he tossed the cigarette into the yard and went through the door to the main room. It was dark and cool in this long, low-beamed parlor and for a moment his eyes, dilated by the sun, saw nothing.
He stood there on the threshold sweeping the dark corners until he made out a figure huddled in a chair. A silent figure who stared at him with hot, mistrustful eyes. She had been crying, he could see that; but the tears had dried, leaving her with somber, unpleasant thoughts. Lilly guessed that Breck had told his daughter many things about the JIB she had never known and that she was struggling now to reconcile them with her father's kindness and with her own sense of loyalty. He hated to break in, but he knew very well he had to come to some understanding with this girl. He could not begin unless she supported him, and already he felt he had in some manner aroused her antagonism.
"Ma'am," said he, still on the threshold. "It's a hard time to palaver, but we've got to thresh a few things out. What I want to know is: Are you acceptin' me as foreman o' this ranch?"
He thought she had not heard him, so long was the silence. In the end she moved her head slightly. "You heard what my father told you."
"Yes, I heard. But I ain't heard what you think about it. We've got to work together if we work at all."
The dam broke all of a sudden. "Who are you? What do I know about you? What did my father know? He saw you twice and then trusted you with the ranch—and with me. Am I to believe you are the only honest man in the county?"
"As to that," said he, "I don't know. I'm not claimin' any particular virtue for myself. But yore daddy appeared to be in trouble and he thought I could help you. Give him a little credit if you can't trust yore own eyes. That's about all I can ask. Maybe there's lots of honest men hereabouts, but there's also a considerable number o' crooks—a few of which are on this ranch at the present time."
"How do you know? You rode into this country yesterday and now you say you are quite honest and that the crew is not. That's taking in a lot of ground."
"You heard what yore daddy said. I'm no prosecutin' attorney. I've been given a job to do and I got to have yore help to do it. If yore goin' to buck me I might as well roll my blankets."
"You know the way out," she reminded him. "You can quit now if you want."
"I can," he admitted grimly, "but I won't. I give my word and I'll keep it. Yore old enough to know better. Don't be so foolish. I don't love this ranch, ma'am, and I don't hone to assume any responsibility for its past misdemeanors. But we're in a hole right now and we've got to pull together." He saw that he had spoken more sharply than he meant so he tried to soften his words. "There ain't any reason why you should jump on me."
"Oh, I know it! But can't you see—my father told me things—! Everything is crooked, everything is opposite what I've always believed it to be. Now you come and ask me to trust you. How can I know that the men here are not loyal, or that you are any better than they are—if they are not loyal?"
"You better believe me on that subject," said he. "And come to a decision."
Again a long silence. There was a rumbling of voices outside, a short distance from the house and the girl seemed to see the tightening of Lilly's face muscles. "Well," she admitted, "I'll do what my father asked. You are the foreman. But remember I have the final say. I won't have you discharging men who have worked here for years."
"We'll strive to please," said he, though he disliked her assumption that she was doing him a favor. "But there'll have to be a show-down between Trono and me. Unless I'm plumb wrong, one of us has got to go. We'll know in a minute, for I think I hear a committee."
When he reached the porch they were grouped around the steps—every man who had been at the funeral. It was not a committee, it was the whole crew and they were led by Trono who was standing with his shoulders squared and a light of trouble in his eyes. The man was reaching out now to new heights of recklessness. The only power that had ever been able to check him was gone and he had come to the point where he might work his own will, whatever it was. Lilly understood instantly that Trono regarded him as only a straw to be blown away, and at the thought he scanned the crew with a careful, hopeful glance. But if he hoped for supporters he was to be mistaken. The character of the JIB cowpunchers was written quite plainly on their faces. With the exception of one or two,