The Hash Knife Outfit Read online

  “Quién sabe? But I won’t bet you, Stoneface. You get hunches from the air, an’ Gawd only knows—you might be communicatin’ with the dead.”

  A silence ensued, during which the hunter gazed with questioning eyes at the shadowed leader, but he did not voice his thought. He returned diligently to the cigar that appeared to be hard to smoke. The rain pattered on the roof; the wind moaned under the eaves; beyond the log wall horses munched their feed; the fire sputtered. And presently Jed Stone broke the silence.

  “Men, I rode on the first Hash Knife outfit, twenty years ago,” he began. “An’ Arizona never had a finer bunch of riders. Since then I’ve rode in all the outfits. Some had good men an’ bad men at the same time. Thet Texas outfit in the early ’eighties gave the Hash Knife its bad name. Daggs, Colter, an’ the rest didn’t live long, but their fame did. Yet they wasn’t any worse than the cattlemen and sheepmen who fought thet war. I’ve never had a real honest job since.”

  Stone paused to take a long pull on his cigar and to blow smoke. He kicked a stick into the fire and watched it crackle and flame.

  “An’ thet fetches me down to this day an’ the Hash Knife outfit here,” he went on. “There’s a heap of difference between fact and rumor. Old Jim Traft knows we’re rustlin’ his stock, but he can’t prove it—yet. Bambridge knows we are stealin’ cattle, but he can’t prove it because he’s crooked himself. An’ same with lesser cattlemen hereabouts. If I do say it myself, I’ve run this outfit pretty slick. We’ve got a few thousand head of cattle wearin’ our brand. Most of which we jest roped out on the range an’ branded. We knowed the mothers of these calves had Traft’s brand or some other than ours. But no posse or court can ever prove thet onless they ketch us in the act. We’re shore too old hands now to be ketched, at least at the brandin’ game. But … an’, men, here’s the hell of it, we can’t go on in the old comfortable way if Traft sends thet Diamond outfit down here. Yellow Jacket belongs to him. An’ don’t you overlook this Diamond bunch if Slinger Dunn is on it. Reckon thet will have to be proved to me. Slinger is even more of an Indian than a backwoodsman. I know him well. We used to hunt together. He’s run a lot in the woods with Apaches. An’ no outfit would be safe while he prowled around with a rifle. I’m tellin’ you—if Slinger would ambush us—shoot us from cover like an Indian, he’d kill every damn one of us. But I’ll gamble Slinger wouldn’t never do thet kind of fightin’. An’ we want to bear thet in mind if it comes to a clash between the Diamond an’ the Hash Knife.”

  “If,” exploded Anderson, as the leader paused. “There ain’t no ifs. Any kind of reasonin’ would show you thet Traft has long had in mind workin’ up this Yellow Jacket. It’ll run ten thousand head, easy, an’ shore will be a fine ranch.”

  “Wal then, we got to figger close. Let me make a few more points an’ then I’ll put it to a vote. I wish I hadn’t always done thet. For I reckon I see clear here. … We’ve had more’n one string to our bow these five years. An’ if we wasn’t a wasteful outfit we’d all be heeled right now. Bambridge has been playin’ a high hand lately. How many thousand unbranded calves an’ yearlin’s we’ve drove over to him I can’t guess. But shore a lot. Anyway, he’s figgerin’ to leave Arizona. Thet’s my hunch. An’ he’ll likely try to drive some big deals before he goes. If he does you can bet he’ll leave the Hash Knife to bear the brunt. Traft has come out in the open. He’s on to Bambridge. There’s no slicker cowman on the range than Traft’s man, Ring Locke. They’ll put the Diamond down here, not only to watch us, but Bambridge too. An’ while we’re at it let’s give this young Jim Traft the benefit of a doubt. They say he’s a chip of the old block. Wal, it’d jest be a hell of a mistake for Croak to kill thet young fellar. Old Traft would rake Arizona from the Little Colorado to the Superstitions. It jest won’t do. Slinger Dunn, yes, an’ any of the rest of the outfit. But not young Jim. … Wal, I reckon it’d be wise fer us to make one more drive, sell to Bambridge, an’ clear out pronto.”

  “My Gawd!” croaked Malloy, in utter amaze.

  “Boss, do I understand you to hint you’d leave the range your Hash Knife has run fer twenty years?” demanded Stoneface Carr.

  And the Texan rustler Pecos asked a like question, drawling and sarcastic.

  “Men, I read the signs of the times,” replied the leader, briefly and not without heat. “I’ll put it up to you one by one. … Anderson, shall we pull up stakes fer a new range?”

  “I reckon so. It ain’t the way of a Hash Knife outfit. But I advise it fer thet very reason.”

  Sonora, the sheep-herder, leaned significantly and briefly to Stone’s side. But the gambler was stone cold to the plan. Malloy only croaked a profane and scornful refusal. The others came out flat with derisive or affronted objections.

  “Wal, you needn’t blow my head off,” declared Stone, in like tone. “If you do there shore won’t be a hell of a lot of brains left in this outfit. … It’s settled. The Hash Knife stays until we are run out or wiped out.”

  That ultimatum seemed to be final. The force of Stone’s grim voice had a thought-provoking effect, except upon the cold Malloy, and perhaps the silent Texan. One by one they unrolled their beds, talking desultorily and sleepily. Madden had already fallen asleep with his head on a sack. His sombrero had slipped back, exposing a heavy tired face, dark with shadows.

  Jed Stone still stood in the darkening shadow by the chimney. Presently, when the members of his gang had quieted down he stepped out to seat himself on a box by the fire, and took to throwing chips on the red embers, watching them burn.

  Outside, the storm appeared to be letting up. The wind moaned faintly and intermittently; the rain pattered softer; the trees ceased to lash their branches against the roof.

  Stone must have been thinking of the past. He had the look of a man who saw pictures in the glowing embers. Twenty years ago he had been a cowboy riding the ranges, free, honest, liked, with all the future before him. The dark sad eyes told that then there had been a girl. Only twenty years! But the latter number of them were black and must be expiated. He had seen cattlemen begin honestly and end by being hanged. Sighing, he evidently dispelled something familiar yet rare and troublesome, and rising he began to pace the floor before the fire.

  The replenished embers glowed fitfully, augmenting the shadows on the walls, playing on the sinister faces of the sleeping men. Malloy’s had a ghastly sardonic mockery. Even in sleep he showed his deadliness. What were life and death to him? Young Reed, the cowboy lately come to the outfit, lay flat, his weak handsome face clear in the ruddy light. Stone pitied him. Did he have a mother living—a sister? He was an outlaw now at twenty-two. That should have meant nothing to Jed Stone, considering how many cowboys he had seen go to the bad. But somehow for the moment it meant a good deal. Stone saw with eyes grown old in the wild ways of the West. Sonora there—he had a dark sleek face, inscrutable like an Indian’s, that did not betray he was thief and murderer. The gambler Carr, too, wore a mask. Pecos was the only other member of the gang who lay with face exposed to the firelight. Silent, mysterious Texan, he had always fascinated Stone. Pecos was a deadly foe, and to a friend true as steel. He cared little for money or drink, not at all for cards, and he shunned women. Could that be his secret?

  Stone went to the door and looked out. It had cleared somewhat. Stars shone in the open spaces between the black clouds. A misty rain from the pines wet his face. A mountain to the East stood up wild and black. Out there a wolf bayed a deer. A chill in the air—or was it the haunting voice of the wolf? struck down Stone’s spine. He had an honest love for this lonely range, which sooner or later, and one way or another, he must leave.

  He went back to unroll his bed near the fire, and he for one pulled off his boots. Throwing more chips and bits of bark on the coals, he stretched his long length, feet to the warmth, and his head high, and watched the blaze rise and fall, the red glow pale, the ruddy embers darken, and the shadows dim and die.

  CHAPTER

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  THAT same stormy night in early November, when the members of the Hash Knife gang had their fateful colloquy in the old log cabin on the Yellow Jacket range, Jim Traft sat with his nephew in the spacious living-room of the big ranch-house on the edge of Flagerstown.

  It was a bright warm room, doubly cozy owing to the whine of wind outside and the patter of sleet on the windowpanes. Old Traft had a fondness for lamps with rosy globes, and the roaring fire in the great stone fireplace attested to his years on the open range. A sleek wolf-hound lay on the rug. Traft occupied an armchair that looked as ancient as the hills, and he sat back with a contented smile on his fine weather-beaten face, occasionally to puff his pipe.

  “Dog-gone-it, Jim, this is somethin’ like home,” he said. “You look so good to me these days. An’ you’ve come through a Westerner. … An’ the old house isn’t lonesome any more.”

  He nodded his gray head toward the far end of the room, where Molly Dunn curled in a big chair, her pretty gold-brown head bent over a book. Opposite Molly on the other side of the table sat Mrs. Dunn, with eager expectant look of enchantment, as one who wanted to keep on dreaming.

  Young Jim laughed. It looked more than something like home to him, and seldom was there a moment his eyes did not return to that brown head of Molly Dunn.

  “Shore is, Uncle,” he drawled, in the lazy voice he affected on occasions. “You wouldn’t think we’re only a few weeks past that bloody fight. … Gosh! when I think! … Uncle, I’ve told you a hundred times how Molly saved my life. It seems like a dream. … Well, I’m back home—for this is home, Uncle. No work for weeks! No bossing that terrible bunch of cowboys! You so pleased with me—though for the life of me I can’t see why. Molly here for the winter to go to school—and—and then to be my wife next spring. … And Slinger Dunn getting well from those awful bullet wounds so fast. … It’s just too good to be true.”

  “Ahuh. I savvy how you feel, son,” replied the old rancher. “It does seem that out here in the West the hard knocks and trials make the softer side of life—home an’ folks—an’ the girl of your heart—so much dearer an’ sweeter. It ought to make you keen as a whip to beat the West—to stack cunnin’ an’ nerve against the wild life of the range, an’ come through alive. I did. An’, Jim, if I’d been a drinkin’, roarin’ cowpuncher I’d never have lasted, an’ you wouldn’t be here tonight, stealin’ looks at your little Western girl.”

  “Oh, Uncle, that’s the—the hell of it!” exclaimed Jim. “I’m crucified when I realize. Those weeks building the drift fence were great. Such fun—such misery! Then that fight at the cabin! O Lord! I could have torn Hack Jocelyn to pieces with my hands. Then when Molly was fighting him for possession of his gun—hanging to him like grim death—with her teeth, mind you—when he lifted and swung her and beat her—I was an abject groveling wretch, paralyzed with horror. … Then when Slinger leaped past me round the cabin, as I sat there tied and helpless, and he yelled like an Indian at Jocelyn. … I thrill and shiver now, and my heart stops. … Only since I’ve been home do I realize what you mean about the West. It’s wonderful, it’s glorious, but terrible, too.”

  “You’ve had your eye teeth cut, son,” said Traft, grimly. “Now you must face the thing—you must fight. I’ve fought for forty years. An’ it will still be years more before the range is free of the outlaw, the rustler, the crooked cattleman, the thieving cowboy.”

  “Uncle Jim,” called Molly, plaintively, “please hush up aboot the bad West. I want to study, an’ I cain’t help heahin’.”

  “Wal, wal, Molly,” laughed Traft, in mild surprise. “Reckon I thought you was wrapped up in that school book.”

  “An’, Jim—shore the West’s not as wicked as Uncle makes out,” went on Molly. “He wants you to be another Curly Prentiss—or even like Slinger.”

  “Ha! Ha!” roared the rancher, rubbing his hands. “That’s funny from Molly Dunn. My dear, if you hadn’t had all the Western qualities I’m tryin’ to inspire in Jim, where would he be now?”

  Even across the room Jim saw her sweet face blanch and her big dark eyes dilate; and these evidences shot an exquisite pleasure and happiness through him.

  “Uncle, I’ll answer that,” he said. “I’d be in the Garden of Eden, eating peaches.”

  “Maybe you would, Jim Traft,” retorted Molly. “A little more bossin’ the Diamond outfit an’ your chances for the Garden of Eden are shore slim.”

  Mrs. Dunn spoke up, exclaiming how strange and delightful it was to hear the sleet on the pane.

  “Wal, this is high country, Mrs. Dunn,” replied Traft. “Down on the Cibeque where you live it’s five thousand feet lower. There’s seldom any winter in the Tonto. But she’s shore settin’ in here at Flag.”

  “Will there be snow on the ground, tomorrow?” asked Molly, wonderingly.

  “I reckon, a little. Couple of feet.”

  “How lovely! I can go to school in the snow.”

  “I’m sorry, Molly,” interposed Jim. “Tomorrow is Saturday. No school. It will be very tame for you, I’m afraid. Only wading out to the corrals with me. A snowball fight or two. Then a sleigh ride into town.”

  “Jim!” she exclaimed, ecstatically. “I never had a sleigh ride in all my life.”

  Her rapture was reflected in the old cattleman’s face. Jim imagined it must be pure joy for his uncle to see and hear Molly. What a lonely hard life the old fellow had lived! And now he wanted young folk around, and the children that had been denied him. Jim’s heart swelled with longing to make up to his uncle for all that he had missed.

  Mrs. Dunn rose to come forward and take a chair nearer the fire. “It’s getting chilly. Such a big room!”

  “Molly, come over an’ be sociable,” called Traft.

  “But my study, Uncle. I—I’ve missed so much,” replied the girl, wistfully.

  “Molly, I’ll not allow you to wear your pretty eyes out,” declared Jim, authoritatively. “Learning is very good for a girl, but beauty should not be sacrificed.”

  “You won’t allow me?” she asked, demurely, and resumed her study.

  Whereupon Jim walked over, picked her up bodily, and carried her back to set her, blushing and confused, in his own chair.

  “You’re such a slip of a girl, Molly,” he said, wonderingly. “In size I mean. You’re heavy as lead and strong as the dickens. But you’re so little. There’s quite room enough in that chair for me, too.”

  And Jim slipped into it beside her, not quite sure how she would take this. But his fear was unfounded.

  “Now, Uncle, tell us the story about the time you came West as a boy. How you rode in a caravan across the plains and were attacked by Indians at Pawnee Rock. I was six years old when you told me that story. I’ve never forgotten. It’ll make Molly think the Cibeque a quiet, peaceful country.”

  Later, when the ladies had retired, Ring Locke came in with his quiet step and his intent eye. Since Jim’s return from the disastrous failure of the drift fence (so he considered it, in contrast to his uncle’s opinion) and the fight at the cabin below Cottonwood, he had seemed to be in the good graces of this Westerner, Ring Locke, a fact he hugged with great satisfaction. Locke was a keen, strong, and efficient superintendent of the old cattleman’s vast interests.

  “Some mail an’ some news,” he announced, handing a packet of letters to Traft.

  “How’s the weather, Ring?” asked the rancher.

  “Clearin’ I reckon, but we won’t see any green round Flag till spring.”

  “Early winter, eh? Wal, we got here first. … Son, letter for you from home—two. An’ in a lady’s fancy hand. You better look out Molly doesn’t see them. … Ring, help yourself to a cigar an’ set down.”

  Jim stared at the first letter. “By gosh! Gloriana has written me at last. It’s coming Christmas, the little devil. … And the other from Mother. Fine.”

  “Glory must be growed into quite a girl by now,” remarked his uncle.

  “Q
uite? Uncle, she’s altogether,” declared Jim with force.

  “Wal, I hardly remember her, ’cept as a pretty little kid with curls an’ big eyes. Favored your mother. She shore wasn’t a Traft.”

  Locke lit a cigar. “Some of the Hash Knife outfit been in town,” he announced, calmly.

  Jim forgot to open his letters. Old Traft bit at his cigar. “Nerve of ’em! Who was it, Ring?”

  “Madden and a greaser whose name I’ve forgot, if I ever knowed it. Reckon there was another of the gang in town, but I couldn’t find out who. They bought a lot of supplies an’ left Thursday. I went around to all the stores an’ saloons. Dug up what I could. It wasn’t a lot, but then again it ’pears interestin’. One thing in particular. Curly Prentiss swears he saw Madden comin’ out of Bambridge’s, after dark Wednesday, he says. But Curly has had a ruction with his gurl, an’ he’s been drinkin’, I’m sorry to say. That cowboy would be the grandest fellar, if he didn’t drink. Still drunk or no, Curly has an eye, an’ I reckon he did see Madden.”

  “Funny, his comin’ out of Bambridge’s,” growled Traft, and the bright blue eyes narrowed.

  “Awful funny,” agreed Locke, in a dry tone, which acquainted the listening Jim with the fact that the circumstance was most decidedly not funny. “Anyway, it started me off. An’ the upshot of my nosin’ around was to find out that the Hash Knife crowd are at Yellow Jacket an’ all of a sudden oncommon interested in you an’ young Jim, an’ the Diamond, an’ Slinger Dunn.”

  “Ahuh. Wal, they’ll be a heap more so by spring,” replied Traft. “Funny about Bambridge.”

  “The Hash Knife have friends in Flag, you bet, an’ more’n we’d ever guess. Shore, nobody knows our business, onless the cowboys have talked. I’m afraid Bud an’ Curly have bragged. They do when they get to town an’ guzzle a bit. Madden did darn little drinkin’ an’ none ’cept when he was treated. Another funny thing. He bought all the forty-five caliber shells Babbitt’s had in stock. An’ a heap of the same kind, along with some forty-fours for rifles, at Davis’s. He bought hardware, too. Some new guns. An’ enough grub to feed an outfit for a year.”