Ironheart

Sheriff Daniels rode across the hogback above Elk Creek to a small ranch recently taken up by a homesteader, much to the annoyance of Jake Prowers. He found the man in a shed that served temporarily as a barn.

Here a cow was proudly licking a very wobbly calf.

“’Lo, Sheriff. How’re things comin’ with you? Fine an’ dandy?”

“No complaint, Howard. Had an increase in yore herd, looks like.”

“Yessir, though it didn’t look much thataway ’bout three o’clock this mo’ning a.m.”

“Come near losing her?”

“Bet I did. Both of ’em. But you never can tell, as the old sayin’ is. I stayed with it, an’ everything’s all right now.”

“I come across the hogback to have a chin with Black. Know whether he’s home?” the officer asked.

“No, sir, I don’t. He passed down the road whilst I was up with old bossie here right early.”

The sheriff complimented his humor by repeating it. “At three o’clock this mo’ning a.m.?”

“Yessir. I figured he must be going somewheres to be settin’ off at that time o’ day.”

“Alone, was he?”

“Why, no, I reckon there was some one with him.”

Daniels threw a leg across a feed-rack, drew out a knife from his pocket, and began to sharpen it on the leather of his boot. “Dark as all git out, wasn’t it? How’d you know it was Don?”

The homesteader grinned. “Every daisy in the dell knows his story too darned well,” he parodied.

“Singin’ ‘Sweet Marie,’ was he?”

“Yep. Say, what kind of a mash would you feed her? She’s right feverish yet, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The sheriff gave advice out of his experience before he came back ten minutes later to a subject that interested him more.

“Don was out rounding-up cattle yesterday, wasn’t he? Seems some one told me so.”

“Likely enough. He was away from the shack all day. Wasn’t home by dark. I seen a light up there somewheres about nine-thirty.”

The officer rode up to the cabin Black was using. The door was hospitably unlatched, but nobody was at home. Daniels walked in and looked around. It was both dirty and untidy, but it told no tales of what its occupant had been doing in the past twenty-four hours.

Daniels remounted, skirted the edge of the Government reserve, and descended a draw which led into a small gorge almost concealed by a grove of young quaking asps. This received its name from box elders growing up the sides. If Black and his friends had rounded up a bunch of cattle during the day, and wanted to keep them unobserved until they could be stampeded into Elk Creek Cañon, there was no handier spot to hold them than in this little gulch. The sheriff had ridden these hills too many years as a cattleman not to know the country like a familiar book. In his youth, while riding as a puncher for Prowers, he and a companion had been caught in a blizzard and reached Box Elder Cañon in time to save themselves by building a fire. Since then he had been here many times.

A one-room log cabin clung to the slope at the edge of the quaking asps. It had been built by a hermit prospector thirty years before, and had many times in the intervening years been the refuge of belated punchers.

The officer walked in through the sagging door. On the floor was a roll of soiled blankets. Greasy dishes and remnants of food were on the home-made table. Three persons had eaten here as late as this morning. He could tell that by the live coals among the charred ends of wood in the fireplace. Also, the lard left in the frying-pan had not yet hardened.

Daniels made deductions. Of the three, one had spent the night here to keep an eye on the cattle, assuming that his guess about the herd was a correct one. The other two had ridden up to Black’s cabin and slept there, returning in the early morning for the drive to Elk Creek.

From the cabin the sheriff walked down into the bottom of the gulch. There was plenty of evidence to show that a large number of cattle had been here very recently. He followed the trail they made out of the cañon to the mesa and saw that it headed toward Elk Creek. He could not be quite sure, but he believed that three horsemen rode after them. The character of the ground made certainty impossible. The tracks were all faint and blurred. Daniels followed them for two or three miles to the rim of the draw down which the frightened herd had been stampeded.

The sheriff rode across the hills to the Circle J P ranch. He found Jake Prowers and Don Black greasing a wagon.

Black looked up as the officer came around the corner of the house and thrust his hand beneath the belt of his trousers. Prowers said something to him in a low voice and the hand came out empty.

Daniels rode up and looked down at them. He gave a little nod of greeting.

“How do, Jake—Don? I dropped over to talk with you about that business in Elk Creek Cañon,” he said.

“What about it?” asked Black suspiciously.

“I’d like to hear all you know about it.”

Prowers answered promptly and smoothly. “I don’t know a thing about it, if you’re meanin’ me, except what I’ve heard over the ’phone. The story is, some cattle stampeded an’ a fellow got in their way—”

“Yes, I know the story, Jake,” the sheriff interrupted quietly. “I’m askin’ you what you can tell me about that stampede.”

“Me! Why pick on me?” the wrinkled little man piped. “Didn’t I tell you I didn’t know a thing about it?”

“How about you, Don?” asked Daniels.

“Don don’ know a thing—”

“Talk for himself, can’t he, Jake?” the sheriff wanted to know.

“Don’t get on the prod, Frank,” advised the owner of the Circle J P. Voice and manner were still mild and harmless.

“No,” agreed Daniels, smiling. “How about it, Don?”

Black met his steady gaze sulkily. “Didn’t know there was a stampede till Jake told me so after he’d been at the ’phone.”

“I expect you’ll have a chance to prove that, Don. I got to arrest you.”

“What for?” demanded the dark man.

“For causing the death of that fellow in the cañon this mo’ning by stampeding cattle down the draw.”

“Any evidence, Frank?” This from Prowers, on whose face a thin lip smile rested.

“Some. Don made threats yesterday. He spent the day rounding-up cattle and drove ’em into Box Elder Cañon for the night. About nine in the evening he reached home an’ ate supper there, him and another fellow. They took the road back to the cañon before daybreak this mo’ning—not later than three o’clock. A friend of theirs stayed in the old Thorwaldson cabin to watch the stock. They ate breakfast with him.”

A flicker of fire burned in the skim-milk eyes. “My, Frank, you know a lot. Anything more?”

“Some things I don’t know, I only guess, Jake. I know Don an’ his friends had ham and cornbread and coffee for breakfast, but I don’t know yet who his two friends are.”

“Only guess that, eh?”

“That’s right, Jake.”

“You’ll know that soon,” jeered Prowers. “Any one with an imagination active as yore’s won’t let a li’l’ thing like facts stand in his way.”

“I’ll have to take Don down to Wild Horse with me,” Daniels replied impassively.

“That’s yore business,” the old cattleman said. “You’re makin’ a mistake. Don spent the night with me, if you want to know.”

“Sure you didn’t spend it with him?”

“You arrestin’ me, too, Frank?”

“No.”

“Only guessin’ at me?”

“I’m not doing my guessin’ out loud—not all of it.” Prowers’s splenetic laugh cackled. “You’d ought to get one o’ these brass stars from a detective agency, by jiminy by jinks. A fellow that can mind-read Don here an’ tell what he had for breakfast is a sure-enough sleuth and no ornery sheriff.”

The old cattleman’s irony did not disturb Daniels. “I know what he had for breakfast because I saw the fry-pan an’ the dishes.”

“Better go slap a saddle on yore horse, Don,” jeered Prowers. “Frank’s arrestin’ you because you had ham an’ cornbread an’ coffee for breakfast.”

“You know why I’m arrestin’ him. He’ll have plenty of chances to show he’s not guilty if he ain’t,” the sheriff answered, not unamiably.

The owner of the Circle J P spoke to Black. “Saddle old Baldy for me. I’ll ride down to Wild Horse with you. Reckon I’ll have to go on yore bond. No use us gettin’ annoyed. Election ain’t so fur away now. Frank has got to make a showing. We hadn’t ought to grudge him some grandstandin’.”

Daniels smiled. “That’s the way to look at it, Jake.”