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  GUARDIANS OF THE SAGE

  GUARDIANS OF THE SAGE

  HARRY SINCLAIR DRAGO

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1932 by the Macaulay Company

  Renewed in 1960 by Harry Sinclair Drago

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014947819

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-474-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-475-5 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  TO ROBERT KRUMBINE Foreman of the Diamond S

  Bob, you used to work for old Slick-ear—only you had another name for him. Today you go to town in an automobile. You’ve traded the jingling of spur chains for the rattling of a Ford truck. You speak learnedly of tractors and Diesel engines.

  Well, it was not always so. You knew that big sweep of country between Quinn River and the Steen Mountains when it was country and a pair of chaps didn’t make a man a top-hand.

  Maybe I’ve scrambled my geography a little—maybe I’ve taken some liberties with the names of men and places; but you’ll be able to correct that and to understand why it was necessary.

  It is September. The aspens in the little parks above the ranger’s cabin must be all gold and yellow now. Old National and Buckskin will be looming up as though they were only a stone’s throw away. The deer will be moving toward the rimrocks. The memory is still sharp with me.

  I’d like to be back there with you and young Hank. I want to see the high places again, Bob; I want to smell the sage.

  CONTENTS

  I. RANGE HOG

  II. “SAY WHAT YOU MEAN!”

  III. TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER

  IV. THE LETTER OF THE LAW

  V. BACKS TO THE WALL

  VI. TRAGEDY RIDES THE RANGE

  VII. FLAMING SKIES

  VIII. WHEN TRACKS SPELL FRIEND OR DEATH

  IX. REPRISAL

  X. THE HYPHEN FLASH OF DEATH

  XI. WHERE THE DARK ANGEL WALKS

  XII. HOME ON THE RANGE

  XIII. HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

  XIV. “VENGEANCE IS MINE!”

  XV. LONG RIDERS

  XVI. DANGEROUS GROUND

  XVII. SPEAKING OF MISTAKES

  XVIII. THUNDERING HOOFS

  XIX. THE END OF HIS TETHER

  XX. THE FOREMAN OF SQUAW VALLEY

  GUARDIANS OF THE SAGE

  CHAPTER I RANGE HOG

  THE long twilight of late June was fading rapidly into night as a horseman crested the low hills to the east of the Willow Vista Ranch. Momentarily, man and beast were silhouetted against the skyline, for behind them the moon was already tipping the mountain-desert with silver.

  Both bore evidence of a slashing ride.

  A tight-lipped grunt of satisfaction escaped the man as he caught his first glimpse of the distant lights that marked the ranch-house—pale, buttery daubs of yellow, glowing dimly against the black bulk of the Steen Mountains beyond.

  “Old Slick-ear better be there,” he grumbled desperately as he raked his horse with his spurs.

  The big dun, obviously winded, was heaving violently, its distended nostrils blood-flecked. The spurs bit cruelly. The horse trembled and tried to hold back, eyes rolling wildly. Heart and lungs were bursting, and fear—not unlike that known to humans—was clamping its icy fingers on the animal.

  The man realized that the end was not far away. By choice, he was not a killer of horses; but the business on which he rode was urgent enough to make him reckless of horseflesh as well as himself. The news he brought was important, and in the end, minutes would spell the difference between success and failure.

  The way was down hill now, a scant two miles.

  The horse plunged onward in a last gallant effort. The man’s eyes were alert, as though expecting the animal to go down any moment. Danger to himself was great, unless he managed to jump clear. He was not unmindful of it, nor was he unmoved by the dun’s gameness. Since late afternoon, they had covered the fifty long, desert miles that lay between the Bar S on the South Fork of the Owyhee and the home ranch on Rebel Creek.

  The man had come even farther. He had been in the saddle since morning. The horse he rode now was the fourth that had served him that day. He was not an emotional man, but the dun happened to belong to him. Maybe that made a difference.

  “I reckon if there’s a horse heaven you’ll just about reach it, Baldy,” he muttered grimly, a tortured look in his eyes. But of course a man gets to know a horse rather well in four years.

  Suddenly the wooden bridge at Rebel Creek loomed out of the darkness at him. A tattoo of flying hoofs rang out sharp and pregnant with alarm as the dun thundered across the planks. In the stillness of the early evening the drumming echoed and re-echoed across the valley until it reached the house.

  Supper was over, but two men and a girl sat at the long table in the dining-room, memorandum books and a pile of freight bills spread out before them. All three looked up sharply.

  “What was that?” the girl asked apprehensively. Her father, seated across the table, was busy with his note-books again. He smiled to himself over her anxiety.

  “Just somebody crossing the bridge, Letty,” he said.

  “Whoever it is, he ain’t losin’ no time,” the other man remarked. He was Joe Tracey, the foreman of Willow Vista. “He’s sure comin’ fast,” he added to himself. His thin face was hawk-like in the lamplight.

  Letty Stall went to the open window and peered out, but she could not see anything. The moon was just beginning to peep over the hills to the east. Even as she tarried at the window, it grew lighter. Presently, she could make out a moving smudge of blackness in the dark. Recognition was still impossible.

  Just why a madly driven horse at this hour of the evening should tighten her throat with a premonition of trouble, she could not say. Usually it meant sickness or possibly the death of one of her father’s men—something that had been happening ever since Old Henry had brought her up from San Francisco to spend her first summer on one of the Bar S ranches.

  But that was years ago. She was twenty now, and if San Francisco regarded her only as a charming debutante, she was quite used to the exigencies of ranch life, with doctors and hospitals miles away. Still, it in no way explained the feeling that gripped her to-night.

  Eastern Oregon was a new country. Stall and Matlack had done well in Harney and Malheur counties. They owned no less than eleven ranches in that big sweep of country between the Steen Mountains and the Snake, an empire unto themselves. Their brand, the Bar S, was as well-known—and hated—there as it long had been in Nevada and certain parts of California.

  Steve Matlack was no longer active in the affairs of Bar S. In the truest sense, he never had been active. From the beg
inning, Henry Stall had been the moving force behind their success. He had led the invasion into Nevada, and later into Oregon.

  He had been in the Steen Mountain country for twelve years now—a period in which he had never failed to arrogate to himself all the rights and privileges of a reigning monarch. What he wanted, he took; and he managed to keep it, too—either with the aid of the courts or without them. It was his boast that he had never vented a brand of his on horse or steer, nor sold an acre of land once he had acquired it.

  Letty knew the feeling against her father often ran high. Cowmen called him a range hog. Threats had been made against his life. Only a few days back, over in Harney Valley, he had been fired on from ambush. If the bullet had missed him it was because the shot had been intended only as a warning.

  It had not deterred him. She knew nothing could change her father. He would go on grabbing land and water rights, running more and more cattle, until he died. Trouble was sure to come of it, sooner perhaps than he supposed, and as she stood at the window, her blood thinning, she could not throw off the depressing feeling that, whoever the rider was, his business there brought that day nearer.

  The moon hung low above the hills now, bathing the valley with its soft glow. Barns and corrals gleamed whitely. The oncoming horse splashed across the shallow irrigation ditch that supplied the ranch truck-patch, lashing the water to spray. As it fell back, the moonlight touched it and it glistened like tiny particles of silver tinsel drifting on the air.

  “Who is it?” old Henry asked.

  “Can’t make out,” Tracey answered, his eyes screwed into a piercing squint. Across the yard, someone came to the door of the bunkhouse and held up a lighted lantern. “We’ll know in a minute who it is.”

  The old man leaned over the table and peered out with the others, his face, ruddy against the gray of his closely-cropped hair, as stolid as usual.

  It was only a moment or two before the horse galloped into the ranch-yard. Then, before anyone could speak, the animal crashed to earth, throwing its rider headlong.

  “Rode him till he dropped!” Tracey exclaimed. “Whoever he is he got a good shakin’ up.” He put a leg through the window to hurry to the stranger’s aid. Men were running from the bunkhouse, too. The man who had been thrown had not moved.

  “He’s dead!” Letty gasped, unable to look away.

  “No danger of that,” her father said sourly. “It’s the horse that’s dead. They’re cheap enough, but it’s a waste of good money to ride them until they drop.”

  Before Tracey could climb through the window, the man sat up. He shook his head as though to clear it and then got to his feet. He was tall, and thin, almost to emaciation.

  Old Henry bit at the ends of his stubby mustache. “Hunh,” he muttered with genuine surprise. “That’s Mr. Case of the South Fork ranch, isn’t it?”

  He always addressed his foreman as Mister. It was equivalent to knighthood with Bar S men.

  “It’s Judd as sure as shooting!” Tracey exclaimed. He turned to the old man, and his eyes were suddenly grave. “What’s he doin’ way over here?”

  The owner of the Bar S dropped his ever-handy note-books into his pocket. Judd Case had been working for him for years. The man was altogether too level-headed to have ridden fifty miles over nothing at all.

  “I daresay it won’t be anything pleasant,” he muttered glumly. “Good news doesn’t travel fast like that.”

  From the conversation without, they knew Judd was not seriously hurt. The Willow Vista men started back to their quarters. A moment later, the foreman of the South Fork ranch limped into the dining-room.

  Old Slick-ear looked him over as though he hoped to discover the reason for his presence there even before Case could speak. Failing in that, he put his question into words. “What is it, Mr. Case?” he asked abruptly.

  “Certainly glad to find ya here,” Case replied. “Mind if I sit down? Got shook up a little.” Now that he had arrived he seemed strangely unexcited. He nodded to Tracey. “Hi, Joe? And you, Miss Letty?” Unhurried, he turned to Stall once more. “I was afraid you and Miss Letty might have gone back to the Quinn River ranch, on your way south.” He paused momentarily, hunting for words. “I came a right smart ways to-day, Mr. Stall. I was in Wild Horse this morning.”

  “Wild Horse?” the old man grunted incredulously. The others did not try to conceal their surprise. Wild Horse was a shipping point on the Oregon Short Line, and well across into Idaho. Ordinarily, it was considered a hard two-day trip.

  But most of the Bar S beef was driven south to the Southern Pacific at Winnemucca. So, although Wild Horse was a county seat, being in Idaho, Stall and Matlack had little or no business there. That little was confined to the Government Land Office where the deputy commissioner for the Oywhee-Malheur district held forth.

  “My blacksmith quit last week,” Judd explained. “I went over to Wild Horse to see if I couldn’t hire a new man. I got that attended to last night. I was waitin’ around the hotel for breakfast this morning when I run into Clay Quantrell. I guess you know him. He’s been freightin’ out of Wild Horse and doin’ a little ranchin’ on the side for two or three years.”

  “Yes, I know him,” the old man muttered, and his tone said the memory was not a pleasant one. “What about him?”

  “He wanted to know if I’d been over to the land office. Well, I didn’t like the way he said it,” Judd went on. “I always figured he was on the other side of the fence where we were concerned. So I waited around until eight o’clock and went up to the commissioner’s office. I sure got the news.”

  “Come, come, Mr. Case, let’s have it!” old Henry exploded, impatiently. He had been making his own deductions the past few moments. “Has it anything to do with Squaw Valley?”

  “You guessed it, Mr. Stall! The Government is movin’ the Piutes over to Fort Hall next month. The Squaw Valley Reservation is going to be thrown open for sale.”

  “Well, well, no fault to find with that!” Letty saw her father rub his hands together like a money-lender. “Finest blue joint grass in Oregon!” he exclaimed. “You know I’ve had my heart set on it for a long while. This is the best news I’ve heard in months!” He actually beamed at his men as he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Jim Montana is still the deputy commissioner, eh?”

  “Yeah,” Judd answered tonelessly.

  “When is he going to hold his sale?”

  “To-morrow noon on the steps of the court-house in Wild Horse!”

  “What . . . To-morrow moon?”

  In the silence that followed, the ticking of the clock on the wall sounded loud and oppressive. Letty closed the window. Her father’s face was purple with rage.

  “Well, I do be damned!” Joe Tracey whipped out as he brought his chair down on all fours with a bang. It so perfectly expressed old Slick-ear’s feelings that he offered no reproof, though, as a rule, he objected to profanity. “You sure you got this straight, Judd?”

  “Sure I got it straight, Joe. The sale is going to be held to-morrow.”

  “But Montana promised to keep me informed,” old Henry stormed. “He was to let me know if anything like this carne up.”

  “Well, maybe this is his way of lettin’ you know, Mr. Stall,” Judd declared pointedly. “There’s no use beatin’ about the bush. I know Jim Montana used to work for you here. Don’t let that fool you. He don’t want the Bar S in Squaw Valley. If he can fix it so that the Crocketts and the Gaults and those other outfits above the reservation can grab that range and split it up between them, he’s goin’ to do it.”

  “But he can’t sell an acre of that land without advertising it! The law compels him to do that!”

  Judd shook his head wearily. “It’s been advertised—and mighty good care has been taken that only the right people saw it.”

  Letty’s head went up stiffly and her brown eyes glowed with indignation as she faced the foreman of the South Fork.

  “Mr Case—you’re not a
ccusing Jim Montana of anything underhanded, are you?”

  Her father answered for Judd. “Underhanded?” he echoed. “What else can you call it? I’ve had my eyes on that reservation for ten years, because I can claim water rights in that valley! I always figured some day I’d get it. With my water and that land I’d have a cowman’s paradise. Montana knew how anxious I was about it.”

  “Maybe he had a reason for changing his mind,” Letty argued.

  “What? Are you taking sides against me?” Old Henry’s white mustache fairly bristled.

  “Of course not, Father.” She did not flinch as she had often seen men do who had thought to cross him.

  “Well, you’re making excuses for him. What reason do you think he had for changing his mind?”

  “Maybe he feels as others do—that you’ve got range enough in this country. Just being opposed to you doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s been underhanded about anything. When he worked for you he proved himself a good man. You said so yourself.”

  “Pah!” he stormed. “You heard what Mr. Case said, didn’t you? I know when I’ve been tricked. You need not try to defend the man.”

  “I’m not,” Letty insisted. “But there’s trouble enough here now—and more coming, if I know anything about it. If Jim Montana is trying to keep you out of Squaw Valley it’s only because he thinks it’s the best thing for all concerned.”

  The head of the Bar S had to laugh, and he was not given to mirth as a rule.

  “Best for himself, you mean,” he said. “Well, he’s had his trouble for nothing.” His manner was serious enough. “I’ve always had to fight for what I got, and I’m going to fight now.” He turned to Joe Tracey. “You have my grays hitched, Mr. Tracey. I’ll be ready by the time you drive up.”

  Letty stared at him with fresh concern. “Father, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Wild Horse! I’ll be there by noon to-morrow!”