Paradise Bend

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

TOM LOUDON

"And don't forget that ribbon!" called Kate Saltoun from the ranch-house door. "And don't lose the sample!"

"I won't!" shouted Tom Loudon, turning in his saddle. "I'll get her just like you said! Don't you worry any!"

He waved his hat to Kate, faced about, and put his horse to a lope.

"Is it likely now I'd forget?" he muttered. "We'd do more'n that for her, wouldn't we, fellah?"

The horse, a long-legged chestnut named Ranger, turned back one ear. He was accustomed to being questioned, was Ranger. Tom Loudon loved him. He had bought him a five-year-old from the 88 ranch the year before, and he would allow no one save Kate Saltoun to ride him. For the sun and the moon, in the estimation of Tom Loudon, rose and set in the black eyes of Kate Saltoun, the exceedingly handsome daughter of John T. Saltoun, the owner of the great Bar S ranch.

This day Loudon was riding into Farewell for the ranch mail, and Kate had commissioned him to do an errand for her. To serve his lady was joy to Loudon. He did not believe that she was aware of his state of mind. A flirt was Kate, and a charming one. She played with a man as a cat plays with a mouse. At which pleasant sport Kate was an adept. But Loudon realized nothing of all this. Shrewd and penetrative in his business, where Kate was concerned he saw nothing but the obvious.

Where the trail snaked over Indian Ridge, ten miles from the ranch house, Loudon pulled up in front of a lone pine tree. On the trunk of the pine a notice was tacked. Which notice set forth briefly that two hundred dollars' reward was offered for the person or persons of the unknown miscreant or miscreants who were depleting the herds of the Bar S and the Cross-in-a-box outfits. It was signed by Sheriff Block.

Who the miscreants were no one knew with certainty. But strange tales were told of the 88 punchers. It was whispered that they carried running-irons on their saddles. Certainly they displayed, when riding the range, a marked aversion to the company of men from the other ranches.

The remains of small fires had been found time and again in draws bordering the 88 range, and once a fire-marked cinch-ring had been picked up. As the jimmy and bunch of skeleton keys in a man's pocket so are the running-iron and the extra cinch-ring under a puncher's saddle-skirts. They indicate a criminal tendency; specifically, in the latter case, a whole-hearted willingness to brand the cattle of one's neighbour.

Loudon read the notice of reward, slow contempt curling his lips.

"Signs," he said, gently. "Signs——! What we need is Vigilantes—Vigilantes an' a bale o' rope!"

He turned in his saddle and looked back over the way he had come. Fifty miles to the south the Frying Pan Mountains lay in a cool, blue, tumbling line.

From where Loudon sat on his horse to the Frying Pans stretched the rolling range, cut by a thin, kinked strip of cottonwoods marking the course of a wandering river, pockmarked with draws and shallow basins, blotched with clumps of pine and tamarack, and humped with knolls and sprawling hills....