Buck raised his eyebrows. "Do for me? Why, I don't know as there's anything right this minute. I s'pose you'll be wanting to put me to work in the morning."
"You've sure got nerve a-plenty," rasped the foreman. "I ain't hirin' anybody that comes along just because he wears chaps."
"That so?" drawled Buck. "Funny the lady didn't mention that when she signed me up this afternoon."
Lynch's face darkened. "Yuh mean to say--"
He paused abruptly, his angry eyes sweeping past Stratton, to rest for an instant on Flint Kreeger, who sat just beyond McCabe. What he saw there Buck did not know, but it must have been something of warning or information. When his eyes returned to Stratton their expression was veiled under drooping lids; his lithe figure relaxed into an easier position against the door-casing, both hands resting lightly on slim hips.
"Miss Thorne hired yuh, then?" he remarked in a non-committal voice which yet held no touch of friendliness. "Well, that's different. Where've yuh worked?"
"The last outfit was the Three-Circles in Texas." Buck named at random an outfit in the southern part of the state with which he was slightly acquainted. "Been in the army over two years, and just got my discharge."
"Texas?" repeated Lynch curtly. "How the devil do yuh happen to be lookin' for work here?"
"I'd heard Joe Bloss was foreman," explained Buck calmly. "We used to work together on the Three-Circles, and I knew he'd give me a job. When I found out in Paloma he'd gone, I took a chance an' rode out anyhow."
He bore the foreman's searching scrutiny very well, without a change of color or the quiver of an eyelash. Nevertheless he was not a little relieved when Lynch, with a brief comment about trying him out in the morning, moved around the table and sat down on a bunk to pull off his chaps. That sudden and complete bottling up of emotion had shown Buck how much more dangerous the man was than he had supposed, and he was pleased enough to come out of their first encounter so well.
With a barely perceptible sense of relaxing tension, the poker game was resumed, for which Buck was devoutly thankful. Throughout the interruption he had not forgotten his hand, which was by far the best he had held that evening. He played it and the succeeding ones so well that when the game ended he had managed to break even.
Ten minutes later the lights were out, and the silence of the bunk-house was broken only by the regular breathing of eight men, or the occasional creak of some one shifting his position in the narrow bunk. Having no blankets--a deficiency he meant to remedy if he could get off long enough to-morrow to ride to Paloma Springs--Buck removed merely chaps and boots and stretched his long form on the corn-husk tick with a little sigh of weariness. Until this moment he had not realized how tired he was. But he had slept poorly on the train, and this, coupled with the heady air and the somewhat stirring events of the last few hours, dragged his eyelids shut almost as soon as his head struck the improvised pillow.
It seemed as if scarcely a moment had passed before he opened them again. But he knew that it must be several hours later, for it had been pitch-dark when he went to sleep, and now a square of moonlight lay across the floor under the southern window, bringing into faint relief the outlines of the long room.
Just what had roused him he did not know; some noise, no doubt, either inside the bunk-house or without. Nerves attuned to battle-front conditions are likely to become sharp as razor-edges, and Buck, starting from deep slumber to complete wakefulness, was almost instantly aware of a sense of strangeness in his surroundings.
In a moment he knew what it was. Even though they may not snore, the breathing of seven sleeping men is unmistakable. Buck did not have to strain his ears to realize that not a sound came from any of the other bunks, and swiftly the utter, unnatural stillness became oppressive.
Quietly he swung his stockinged feet to the floor and was reaching for the holster and cartridge-belt he had laid beside him, when, from the adjoining bunk, Bud Jessup's voice came in a cautious whisper.
"They're gone. The whole bunch of 'em just rode off."
CHAPTER VI
THE BLOOD-STAINED SADDLE
"Hello, kid!" said Stratton quietly. "You awake? What's up, anyhow?"
There was a rustle in the adjoining bunk, the thud of bare feet on the floor, and Jessup's face loomed, wedge-shaped and oddly white, through the shadows.
"They're gone," he repeated, with a curious, nervous hesitancy of manner.
"I know. You said that before. What the devil are they doing out this time of night?"
In drawing his weapon to him, Buck's eyes had fallen on his wrist-watch, the radiolite hands of which indicated twenty minutes after twelve. He awaited Jessup's reply with interest, and it struck him as unnaturally long in coming.
"I don't rightly know," the youngster said at length. "I s'pose they must have gone out after--the rustlers."
Buck straightened abruptly. "What!" he exclaimed. "You mean to say there's been rustling on the Shoe-Bar?"
Again Jessup hesitated, but more briefly. "I don't know why I shouldn't tell yuh. Everybody's wise to it, or suspects somethin'. They've got away with quite a bunch--mostly from the pastures around Las Vegas, over near the hills. Tex says they're greasers, but I think--" He broke off to add a moment later in a troubled tone, "I wish to thunder he hadn't gone an' left Rick out there all alone."
Stratton remembered Las Vegas as the name of a camp down at the southwesterly extremity of the ranch. It consisted of a one-room adobe shack, which was occupied at certain seasons of the year by one or two punchers, who from there could more easily look after the near-by cattle, or ride fence, than by going back and forth every day from the ranch headquarters.
"Who's Rick?" he asked briefly.
"Rick Bemis. He--he's one dandy fellow. We've worked together over two years."
"H'm. How long's this rustling been going on?"
"Three or four months."
"Lost many head, have they?"
"Quite a bunch, I'd say, but I don't know. They never tell me or Rick anythin'."
Bud's tone was bitter, and Stratton noticed it in spite of his preoccupation. Rustling! That would account for several of the things that had puzzled him. Rustling was possible, too, with the border-line comparatively near, and that stretch of rough, hilly country which touched the lower extremity of the ranch. But for the stealing to go on for three or four months, without something drastic being done to stop it, seemed peculiar, to say the least.
"What's been done about it?" Buck asked briefly.
"Oh, they've gone out at night a few times, but they never caught anybody that I heard. Seems like the thieves were too slick, or else--"
He paused; Buck regarded him curiously through the faintly luminous shadows.
"Well?" he prodded
Bud moved uneasily. "It ain't anythin' special," he returned evasively. "All this time they never left anybody down to Las Vegas till Rick was sent day before yesterday. I up an' told Tex straight out there'd oughta be another fellow with him, but all he done was to bawl me out an' tell me to mind my own business. It ain't safe, an' now they've gone out--"
Again he broke off, his voice a trifle husky with emotion. He was evidently growing more and more worked up and alarmed for the safety of his friend. It was plain, too, that the recent departure of the punchers for the scene of action, instead of reassuring Bud, had greatly increased his anxiety. Buck decided that the situation wasn't as simple as it looked, and promptly determined on a little action.
"Would it ease your mind any if we saddled up an' followed the bunch?" he asked.
Jessup drew a quick breath and half rose from the bunk. "By cripes, yes!" he exclaimed. "Yuh mean you'd--"