“Ned Bannister runs a bunch of about twelve thousand not more'n fifteen or twenty miles from your place.”
“And you say they are spoiling the range?”
“They're ce'tainly spoiling it for cows.”
“But can't something be done? If my cows were there first I don't see what right he has to bring his sheep there,” the girl frowned.
The assembled company attended strictly to supper. The girl, surprised at the stillness, looked round. “Well?”
“Now you're shouting, ma'am! That's what we say,” enthused Texas, spurring to the rescue.
“It doesn't much matter what you say. What do you do?” asked Helen, impatiently. “Do you lie down and let Mr. Bannister and his kind drive their sheep over you?”
“Do we, Soapy?” grinned Texas. Yet it seemed to her his smile was not quite carefree.
“I'm not a cowman myself,” explained Soapy to the girl. “Nor do I run sheep. I—”
“Tell Miss Messiter what yore business is, Soapy,” advised Yorky from the end of the table, with a mouthful of biscuit swelling his cheeks.
Soapy crushed the irrepressible Yorky with a look, but that young man hit back smilingly.
“Soapy, he sells soap, ma'am. He's a sorter city salesman, I reckon.”
“I should never have guessed it. Mr. Sothern does not LOOK like a salesman,” said the girl, with a glance at his shrewd, hard, expressionless face.
“Yes, ma'am, he's a first-class seller of soap, is Mr. Sothern,” chuckled the cow-puncher, kicking his friends gayly under the table.
“You can see I never sold HIM any, Miss Messiter,” came back Soapy, sorrowfully.
All this was Greek to the young lady from Kalamazoo. How was she to know that Mr. Sothern had vended his soap in small cubes on street corners, and that he wrapped bank notes of various denominations in the bars, which same were retailed to eager customers for the small sum of fifty cents, after a guarantee that the soap was good? His customers rarely patronized him twice; and frequently they used bad language because the soap wrapping was not as valuable as they had expected. This was manifestly unfair, for Mr. Sothern, who made no claims to philanthropy, often warned them that the soap should be bought on its merits, and not with an eye single to the premium that might or might not accompany the package.
“I started to tell you, ma'am, when that infant interrupted, that the cowmen don't aim to quit business yet a while. They've drawn a dead-line, Miss Messiter.”
“A dead-line?”
“Yes, ma'am, beyond which no sheep herder is to run his bunch.”
“And if he does?” the girl asked, open eyed.
“He don't do it twict, ma'am. Why don't you pass the fritters to Miss Messiter, Slim?”
“And about this Bannister Who is he?”
Her innocent question seemed to ring a bell for silence; seemed to carry with it some hidden portent that stopped idle conversation as a striking clock that marks the hour of an execution.
The smile that had been gay grew grim, and men forgot the subject of their light, casual talk. It was Sothern that answered her, and she observed that his voice was grave, his face studiously without expression.
“Mr. Bannister, ma'am, is a sheepman.”
“So I understood, but—” Her eyes traveled swiftly round the table, and appraised the sudden sense of responsibility that had fallen on these reckless, careless frontiersmen. “I am wondering what else he is. Really, he seems to be the bogey man of Gimlet Butte.”
There was another instant silence, and again it was Soapy that lifted it. “I expaict you'll like Wyoming, Miss Messiter; leastways I hope you will. There's a right smart of country here.” His gaze went out of the open door to the vast sea of space that swam in the fine sunset light. “Yes, most folks that ain't plumb spoilt with city ways likes it.”
“Sure she'll like it. Y'u want to get a good, easy-riding hawss, Miss Messiter,” advised Slim.
“And a rifle,” added Texas, promptly.
It occurred to her that they were all working together to drift the conversation back to a safe topic. She followed the lead given her, but she made up her mind to know what it was about her neighbor, Mr. Bannister, the sheep herder, that needed to be handled with such wariness and circumspection of speech.
Her chance came half an hour later, when she stood talking to the landlady on the hotel porch in the mellow twilight that seemed to rest on the land like a moonlit aura. For the moment they were alone.
“What is it about this man Bannister that makes men afraid to speak of him?” she demanded, with swift impulse.
Her landlady's startled eyes went alertly round to see that they were alone. “Hush, child! You mustn't speak of him like that,” warned the older woman.
“Why mustn't I? That's what I want to know.”
“Is isn't healthy.”
“What do you mean?”
Again that anxious look flashed round in the dusk. “The Bannister outfit is the worst in the land. Ned Bannister is king of the whole Big Horn country and beyond that to the Tetons.”
“And you mean to tell me that everybody is afraid of him—that men like Mr. Sothern dare not say their soul is their own?” the newcomer asked, contemptuously.
“Not so loud, child. He has spies everywhere That's the trouble. You don't know who is in with him. He's got the whole region terrified.”
“Is he so bad?”
“He is a devil. Last year he and his hell riders swept down on Topaz and killed two bartenders just to see them kick, Ned Bannister said. Folks allow they knew too much.”
“But the law—the Government? Haven't you a sheriff and officers?”
“Bannister has. He elects the sheriff in this county.”
“Aren't there more honest people here than villains?”
“Ten times as many, but the trouble is that the honest folks can't trust each other. You see, if one of them made a mistake and confided in the wrong man—well, some fine day he would go riding herd and would not turn up at night. Next week, or next month, maybe, one of his partners might find a pile of bones in an arroyo.
“Have you ever seen this Bannister?”
“You MUST speak lower when you talk of him, Miss Messiter,” the woman insisted. “Yes, I saw him once; at least I think I did. Mighty few folks know for sure that they have seen him. He is a mystery, and he travels under many names and disguises.”
“When was it you think you saw him?”
“Two years ago at Ayr. The bank was looted that night and robbed of thirty thousand dollars. They roused the cashier from his bed and made him give the combination. He didn't want to, and Ned Bannister”—her voice sank to a tremulous whisper—“put red-hot running-irons between his fingers till he weakened. It was a moonlight night—much such a night as this—and after it was done I peeped through the blind of my room and saw them ride away. He rode in front of them and sang like an angel—did it out of daredeviltry to mock the people of the town that hadn't nerve enough to shoot him. You see, he knew that nobody would dare hurt him 'count of the revenge of his men.”
“What was he like?” the mistress of the Lazy D asked, strangely awed at this recital of transcendent villainy.
“'Course he was masked, and I didn't see his face. But I'd know him anywhere. He's a long, slim fellow, built like a mountain