rubbed his hand slowly along the back of the chair, watching her as the anger seemed to mount. Perhaps he would have washed his hands of the affair then and there, have taken his horse and ridden over the ridge—if the saving grace of humor had not helped him. She was a spitfire and no mistake! But he knew, or thought he knew, what was behind those hard words. Her pride and her loyalty had been shaken by Jim Breck's confession of fault and in the after hours of tragedy when she was trying to rebuild something from the wreck, trying to regain her own self-respect, she had unconsciously laid the blame on the nearest man. Which happened to be himself. "She hates to have me see her humbled like this," he reflected. "She thinks I'm passin' judgment." Well, that would pass and she would be sorry for it. He could bear it. If she didn't change he would still stick until the trouble was averted and then pull freight. He hated a shrewish woman.
So he turned her accusation aside. "Well, if you think they're all right that settles the matter. Maybe I'm wrong. I've always been taught to be suspicious until I was shown otherwise. Now, ma'am, if you don't mind I'd like to see yore daddy's books. I've got to understand his business before I can start working."
She turned this over in her mind for some time and Lilly thought she was about to refuse him. "I guess you have a right to that," she admitted. "His office was at the end of the house. Look for yourself."
"Look for himself," he judged was going to be his motto on the JIB. Entering the old man's office—which was a bare room with only a great roll-topped desk and pine chair to relieve its emptiness—he sat down and tried to find his way through the mass of letters, catalogues and bills of lading. Everything was in confusion and according to the dates of the letters nothing had been filed for six months. The drawers and the pigeon holes were jammed full of unrelated things as if the old man, suddenly tired of seeing the top of the desk so cluttered, had swept it clear with his fist.
It grew dark long before Lilly had reduced anything to order or had found what he most wanted to find—the tallies of the spring roundup. Abandoning the job for the day he strolled to the porch. A light burned in the kitchen and he saw the girl bending over the stove; her white, strong arms moved swiftly and once as she turned Lilly thought she looked somewhat happier. She had forgotten for the moment the troubles of the day. Work did that, Lilly reflected, strolling across the yard. Many a time he had plunged headlong into any kind of labor to keep himself from thinking. Dusk fell across the land in gray, swirling waves, bringing with it a cool night breeze. There was a light in the bunkhouse and he heard one of the hands singing a doleful ditty about Sam Bass.
He moved by the corner of an Indian house and started toward the corrals. There was a slight, hissing sound to his rear and the crunch of a boot. He turned swiftly, arm dropping toward his gun; but he was too late to save himself. A loop fell over his shoulders and tautened with such a force that it threw him to the ground. In the dusk he heard a man breathing heavily, advancing on the run; and when the fellow stooped to take another hitch in the rope he saw it to be Slim the spokesman. Slim grunted his satisfaction. "Yu' damn rascal! I knew I'd ketch yu' if I waited long enough. Quit that squirmin' or I'll bust yu' to aitch! Hey, Billy—come on now. I done snared him!"
Slim was on his knee, one arm planted in Lilly's chest. Lilly bent upward and with one desperate wrench of his shoulders butted the puncher beneath the chin, throwing the man off balance. A stream of profanity followed, and though Lilly tried to pull his hands clear of the rope he failed. Slim's fist shot through the shadows and took Lilly in the temple. "Yu' damn fool, I could smash yu' fer that! Now git up an' travel to'rds the bunkhouse!"
"Here," said Lilly, "what kind of a game are you playin'? Just what's yore profit in this?"
Bill, who had joined Slim, chuckled. "You'll have to ask Trono that, amigo. Hey, Slim, it's the smokehouse we want. Yeah. All right, fella, back in there an' hold yore nose."
Lilly could not see where they were putting him. A door groaned and Slim's hand went rummaging through his pockets for knives and sundry weapons. The gunbelt dropped from his hip and he was shoved none too gently across the high sill of a shed no more than three feet square. Then the door closed and the hasp fell over a staple, to be locked. The two men, retreated speaking softly. By-and-by Lilly heard three shots near the main house. Three shots evenly spaced—the ancient signal of the range. Within ten minutes he heard many men riding into the yard. Trono had returned.
LAW
"The picture o' a gal blindfolded an boldin' a pair o' scales is shorely a fine sentiment as regards equal justice to all. But sometimes the lady ain't blind. Sometimes she's cross-eyed, which is shorely sad."—Joe Breedlove.
Trapped. Neatly put out of the way in a place so small that he could touch all four walls without moving. Above his head was a sharp steel hook; from below a current of air scoured through an aperture in one corner of the hard-packed floor. Long seasons of meat curing had impregnated the pine boards with a sharp, woody smell and left heavy layers of soot. His exploring fingers found it everywhere; found, too, an occasional rafter charred from the heat. Still, it was not an unsubstantial prison for when he put his shoulders against the door it did not give. The old man had built this house as he had built all others—solidly and meant to endure.
His head ached from the blow Slim had given him on the temple; blood trickled down his jaw. But that didn't matter. What really hurt was to have been so easily captured and put into Trono's power. What would the old man say if he knew what was going on? Lilly saw Breck's heavy, fighting face scowling at him through the black pit. This was not what he had expected of the red- headed stranger. Lilly reached for his makin's, growing impatient with himself. What he ought to have done was to have kicked those two agents off the ranch in spite of Jill's say-so. After all, he was responsible for her—responsible for the JIB. She wasn't the one that had to do the fighting.
"Well," he muttered, "this ain't no time to hold postmortems. Every minute I stay here means money in Trono's pocket. That gent used his head proper. Instead o' bein' bull-headed and shootin' it out he saved himself the trouble an' snares me like a rabbit. Oh, fine! That's what I get for not followin' my original idea. The question becomes, what does he aim to do now that he's got control?"
It was very puzzling. Not that a man couldn't wreck a ranch and make it thoroughly unprofitable for the owners to stay on. Between Trono and Stubbins, Jill couldn't hold her own. By sundry devices, most of which were illegal, they could haze her off. Just bring the pressure to bear hard enough and she would have to quit. It was a matter of rustling JIB cows, of sending 3Cross stock in to graze on JIB territory, of preventing cow-punchers from working for JIB. Threats—and actual violence. Oh, the road was wide enough for them to follow and no doubt they had examples set them by old Breck himself in earlier days.
Still, what was their next move? Having control, what would they do with him? They couldn't kill him outright. That would—or it should—create a stink in the country. Probably they'd escort him down the line and see that he didn't get a chance to come back. What would they do with Jill? Lilly shook his head and drew a deep breath of cigarette smoke. There was one girl they'd have to treat with gloves. She could fight and she might be able to draw enough sympathy to her throughout the county so that both Trono and Stubbins would find it entirely disagreeable. So, if they figured to do the thing neatly they'd have to keep Jill from getting where she could make herself heard.
But they couldn't keep her prisoner forever. That would leak out. What they ought to do was withdraw from the ranch and do their dirty work from the sidelines. If he was Trono and in that kind of a game it would be his tactics.
"Followin' which train of thought," he mused, "they got to put me out o' the road. Then, if they've got the county buffaloed, which it seems they have, it's only a waitin' game before the JIB is busted. Tom Lilly, my boy, it's yore move, even though you only got four feet to move in."
Someone passed near the smokehouse, feet shuffling on the hard earth. Lilly flattened himself against the door, listening. Presently the sound died. The crew appeared to be in the bunkhouse