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Treve

[Pg 247] <h2>CHAPTER X: THE RUSTLERS</h2> Three miles to eastward of the Dos Hermanos ranch runs the Black Angel Trail. Far to northward it has its beginning. It cuts the state from top to bottom, like a jaggèd swordstroke. Up above the Peixoto Range it starts; and it runs almost due south across the Mexican border. Nearly a century ago this trail was blazed. Of old it was the chief artery between the north counties and Mexico. The state roads and the railways have long since taken its place; and have diverted from it the bulk of traffic. Bumps and dips and narrow cuts between canyonsides render it impassable to motor car or to other modern vehicle. But in spite of all this, the grass does not grow over-thick in the Black Angel Trail. No longer a main highway, it is a mighty convenient byway. Burro trains still traverse it. So do cattle drovers and shepherds. So do less reputable forms of traffic. It has great advantages over the thronged and town-fringed state roads, for the driving of livestock as well as for the transporting of goods which are best moved with no[Pg 248] undue publicity. Sojourners of the Black Angel Trail have a way of minding their own business. The law seldom patrols the backwater route or takes cognizance of it. Along this trail, from southward, one day in earliest spring, fared a bee caravan, five wagons strong. Each wagon carried full complement of hives. The only noteworthy detail of the procession was that it numbered several more grown men than can usually find time to accompany such a caravan. The chief work of the bee route can be done by women and boys; leaving most of the men of the family or community to attend to the crops at home. Every year, these bee caravans are loaded with hives, as soon as the fruit blossoms in the southernmost corner of the state have been despoiled of their honey-making possibilities. Northward move the caravans; following the various blossom seasons; and camping in likely spots along the way, to let their bees ravage whatever blooms happen to be most plentiful at that place and at that time. There is a regularly marked-out rotation of blossom-ripening, in one section of the state after the other. And this rotation the beekeepers follow; thus gathering the choicest honey everywhere and all season long. [Pg 249] The five-wagon caravan halted and pitched camp in a sheltered arroyo, a few miles from the borders of the Dos Hermanos ranch. It was the first year a bee outfit had done such a thing. But then it was the first year the new almond orchard of the Goldring ranch, a mile to east of the arroyo, had put forth any profusion of blossoms. Thus there was nothing remarkable about the occurrence. Indeed when Royce Mack rode back from collecting the mail at Santa Carlotta, and told his partner about their temporary neighbors, old Joel Fenno did not deem the news worth so much as a grunt of comment. Instead, he glared dourly at Treve, who had trotted homeward alongside Royce’s mustang. “That cur,” he railed, “is gettin’ wuthlesser an’ wuthlesser ev’ry day of his life. Here I go an’ train poor little blind Nellie to work sheep with him; an’ this morning I took her along to help me shift that Number Four bunch to Number Five. It was a two-dog job; ’count of the twist by the coulée an’ ’count of some of the bunch bein’ new. I took her and Zit. What d’ye s’pose? She wouldn’t work with him! Acted like she didn’t know how. An’ no more she did, I reckon; her havin’ worked only with Treve and only knowin’ his ways, an’ all that. I couldn’t do a thing with her. Only that she’s[Pg 250] blind an’ that she was most likely doin’ her best, I’d ’a’ whaled the daylights out’n her. An’ where was Treve, all that time? Where was he, I’m askin’ you? He was pirooting over to Santa Carlotta, along of you; pleasurin’ himself an’ holiday-makin’, while there was work to do;—the measly slacker!” “It wasn’t Treve’s fault,” rejoined Mack, wearily. “I took him along for comp’ny. I didn’t know you were aiming to shift that bunch till to-morrow. You said—” “Took him ’long for comp’ny?” gibed Fenno. “Comp’ny, hey? You got plenty of comp’ny here, without no useless dog traipsin’ after you. Ain’t I ‘comp’ny,’ if comp’ny’s what you’re honin’ after. Ain’t I?” “Yes,” said Mack, briefly. “That’s why I took Treve.” Leaving his glum partner to digest this cryptic speech, Royce stamped off to the back steps to wash up for dinner. Left alone with Treve, the elder partner lost his disgusted glower. Glancing furtively after Mack, he drew something from his pocket. “Trevy!” he called under his breath. The big collie had been following Royce out of the room. At the whisper of his name he halted and turned quickly back. Tail wagging and eyes full of eager friendliness to the old man[Pg 251] who had just been denouncing him so harshly, he came up to Joel and sniffed interestedly at the hand extended to him. In the palm was a crumby and none-too-clean fragment of cake. It was the final morsel left from a surreptitious visit to the bakery, the last time Joel had gone to Santa Carlotta. Guiltily, the old man had bought a whole pound of stale jumbles. He had bought them for Treve’s sole benefit; and he had been doling them out, secretly, to the delighted collie ever since. It was the first present of any sort he had purchased for anybody or anything, in all his sixty-odd crabbèd years. “Here you are, Trevy!” said Joel hospitably, as the collie made a single dainty mouthful of the offering. “An’ when we go to town, next time, I’ll see can I git you some pound cake. Pound cake is dretful good. You’ll sure relish it a whole lot, Trevy. Mighty few millionaires’ dogs gits to eat pound cake, I reckon. Then—Say, Royce,” he broke off, snarlingly, as he caught the sound of his partner’s return, “call this durn cuss out onto the stoop with you. He’s tromplin’ dust all over the clean floor. Dogs don’t b’long in the house, anyhow. You’ve got him pampered till he’s no good to no one. He thinks he’s folks. Take him outside!” “I forgot to tell you,” said Royce, coming[Pg 252] into the room, red and shining from his wash, “I met up with Chris Hibben, over at Santa Carlotta. He was coming out of the sheriff’s office; and he was mad as hops. He says thirty of his beef cattle were run off the Triple Bar last night. Three of his cow-ponies were lifted right out of the home corral, too, he says.” “Strayed, most likely,” suggested Joel, with no sign of interest in his neighbor’s mishap. “Chris says not,” denied Royce. “He says they were lifted. Says it’s rustlers.” At the ominous word, Joel Fenno’s crooked brows twitched. Nobody in the sheep-and-cattle country, in those days, could hear the name “rustlers” without a twinge. In spite of watchfulness and in defiance of all law, livestock thieves had not yet been stamped out. They worked, as a rule, in gangs and with consummate cleverness. Their system of theft might vary, as occasion demanded. But whatever the system chanced to be, it had a way of circumventing the best efforts of ranchers. It was easy for crafty and organized bands to lift large or small bunches of livestock from a vast range; to drive it to the nearest safe hiding place; and thence run it across the border or sell it to some dishonest wholesale butcher’s agent. There was much money in such an enterprise;—much money and occasional death. For[Pg 253] the captured rustler expected and received short shrift. The Black Angel Trail was the local livestock thief’s route to wealth. Long and disputatiously the Dos Hermanos partners talked over the news; Fenno as usual discrediting its truth and Royce increasingly impressed by it. The conference ended with an arrangement to send word to every herder on the Dos Hermanos ranch to keep strict guard for a night or two, and to carry a shotgun. “Treve,” said Royce, at bedtime, as the collie prepared to stretch himself as usual on the rag mat at the foot of his master’s bunk, “you’ve got to do guard duty to-night. It’s outdoors for yours. There are too many sheep in the home fold, just now, for us to take any chances. The other dogs are out on the range; and they’ve got to stay there while this scare lasts. All but Nellie. She’s no good, Joel says, except when you can work with her. It’s up to you to keep an eye on the fold. Outside, son! Watch!” Treve did not catch the meaning of one-tenth of his master’s harangue. But he understood enough of it to know, past doubt, that he was expected to stay away from his cherished rag mat that night, and stand guard over the house and the stable-buildings and the adjoining fold. He sighed discontent at his banishment. Then obediently he went outdoors and lay down with[Pg 254] a little thump on the corner of the porch;—a post whence he could see or hear or scent anything going on in the clutter of outbuildings and yards in the hollow directly below. His little blind mate, Nellie, came forward from the door-mat which was her usual bed and walked across the porch to him. Mincingly she came; her mahogany coat fluffing in the faint breeze. She touched noses affectionately with the big golden dog. Then, crouching, she danced her white forepaws on the boards, excitedly, tempting Treve to a romp. But Treve was on duty, and he knew it. He resisted the temptation for a scamper and a mock battle in the soft dust. He lay still, merely wagging his plumed tail in recognition of the inviting dance. Failing to lure her mate into a frolic, Nellie lay soberly down beside him, her graceful body curled against his mighty shoulder. She loved to romp with Treve. Always he was as gentle in his play with her as with a weak child. With her, alone of the ranch dogs, would he unbend from his benign dignity. But since he would not play to-night, it was next best to cuddle close to him and to join in his vigil. The long nights were a stupid and lonely time to Nellie, out there by herself on the porch. It made her happy, now, to have Treve’s companionship in the hours of dark. [Pg 255] The two collies dozed. Yet they dozed as only a trained watch-dog knows how to; with every sense subconsciously alert. A little after midnight both their heads were lifted in unison, and both sets of ears were pricked to listen. Along the road beyond the ranch-house gate came the pad-pad-pad of a slow-ridden horse that wore no shoes. This, by itself, was not a matter for excitement. Both collies knew the ill-kept road was public, and that passersby were not to be molested. Thus, they did not give tongue, nor do more than look up and listen as the horse padded by. The night was close-clouded; though there was a moon behind the banks of gray vapor. There was light enough for even a human to detect dimly any objects moving at a reasonable distance. To Treve’s night-accustomed eyes there was no difficulty in making out the figures of horse and rider as they passed the gate. The man was sitting carelessly in the saddle. His face was turned toward the house, on whose porch-edge the two silent collies were wholly visible to him. He watched them a moment or so, and they returned his gaze. Then gradually his horse carried him past and on a line paralleling the outbuildings. Treve’s eyes followed him, but only in the mildest [Pg 256]interest, as an incident of a quiet night. Nellie’s uncannily keen nostrils sniffed the rider’s unfamiliar scent, as the breeze bore it to her. Then, of a sudden, Treve got to his feet; his hackles bristling. Dutifully, Nellie followed his example. The rider had jogged on for more than a hundred yards. But at the far end of the outbuildings he had halted his horse. Dismounting, he took a hesitant step toward the palings which separated the ranch from the road. Instantly, both dogs were in motion. Running shoulder to shoulder, they bore down upon the man to resent the threat of intrusion. Now “Greaser” Todd was anything but a fool. Hence the deservedly high place he occupied in his chosen trade. He knew dogs. A man in his line of business must know them and know them well. Of these two dogs he had gained casual knowledge, not only on an earlier ride past the ranch, but from chat with one of the herders whom he had managed to engage in idle talk that day. Thus, he was not silly enough to suppose he could hope to climb the paling undeterred. But he had no desire to climb it just then. His plan was to get the dogs down here, well away from the house and from any possibly wakeful occupant thereof. Moreover, their dash[Pg 257] would unquestionably bring forth any other of the ranch dogs which might be quartered around the fold. As Treve and Nellie ran silently toward him, Todd sprang to the saddle again and set his mount in motion. The two collies came alongside, just inside the paling, as Greaser touched heel to his horse. He was grateful that they had advanced in silence, instead of barking in a way to disturb weary sleepers’ rest. He was a most considerate man, was Greaser Todd. As he cantered off, he drew from his saddlebags two objects, each about half the size of a man’s fist, and tossed them over the paling at the angrily dancing collies. The two flung objects were hunks of cooked meat; savory and alluring. One of them, on its downward flight, would have hit Treve in the head had not he flashed aside from the strange missile. It struck against a sloping stone and bounced back again through the gap between two palings into the dust of the road. There it lay, out of his reach; unless he should care to go all the way around to the gate and retrieve the tempting food. There Fenno found it next day. The second bit of well-aimed meat fell to earth directly in front of Nellie’s quivering nostrils. Lightly fed and perpetually hungry,[Pg 258] she pounced upon the titbit; guided by her powers of scent. One gulp and she had swallowed it. Treve was of two minds as to the advisability of waking the echoes with a salvo of barking by way of farewell insult to the intruder, or to go around and get the delicious-smelling meat that had rolled so provokingly out of his reach. The man was gone. His horse’s light hoofbeats were dying away, up the coulée. The logical thing to do now was to get that generously-given meat and devour it. Already, Nellie was beside the palings, thrusting her slender nose through the gap, in quest of the food she could smell but could not get. Being blind, she could not know, as did Treve, the futility of pushing her nose through one paling-gap after another in the hope of finding a space wide enough to let her jaws close on the meat. But as Treve set off, along the inner side of the fence, on his errand of retrieving the fragment of cooked food, she seemed to understand his purpose. For she trotted eagerly alongside him; her shoulder as ever touching his, in order to guide her steps. Treve had not gone twenty feet when he felt her swing away from him, in a lurch that almost upset her. Halting to let her catch up with him[Pg 259] after her supposed stumble, he saw Nellie stagger sideways a step or two, then curl back her lips from her teeth and come to a shivering stop. She moaned once in stifled agony; then collapsed in a furry heap on the ground. Full of keen solicitude, Treve ran over to where she lay. As he gazed worriedly down upon the pitifully still little body, a trembling shook him from crown to toes. Not for the first time was the great collie looking upon Death. His adored little mate was dead;—stone dead. How or why she had been stricken down so suddenly—she who just now had been so full of life and of pretty, loving ways—was beyond his knowledge. But grief smote him to the depths of his soul. Long he stood there above her; now and then touching her still little body or face with his nose, as if entreating her to come back to him. Then, whimpering as no physical pain could have made him whimper, he turned and fled to the house. Even as man in dire distress turns to his God for aid, so did the heartbroken collie turn now to his two human gods. Bounding up on the porch, he scratched imperiously at the locked door; whining and sobbing in stark anguish of heart. Perhaps these[Pg 260] humans could bring back to life the dear mate who had meant so much to him. Fiercely impatient in his grief, he scratched the harder at the door panel; crying under his breath and quivering as in a death-chill. After an eternity came a slumbrous and cross voice from Royce Mack’s room. “Shut up there, Treve!” commanded Royce, angry at being wakened. “Shut up, you fool! No, you can’t come in! You’re spoiled—pampered—just as Joel said. You’ll stay outside, as I told you to. Shut up!” Mack rolled over, as he finished shouting his peevish order, and sank again into slumber, worn out by his long day in the open. Treve shrank back from the door as though his master’s angry reproof had been a blow. Hesitant, he crouched there. He had turned to his god in his moment of heartbreak. And his god had refused to come to his aid. Then, an instant later, the collie’s ears were raised in new eagerness. A soft, if stumpy, footfall was crossing the kitchen floor. Joel Fenno opened the door and slipped out onto the porch, in sketchy attire, closing the door behind him. “What’s the matter, Trevy?” he whispered. “What’s wrong, old sonny? Hey?” Treve caught him by the hem of his [Pg 261]abbreviated nightshirt and tugged at the garment, frantically; backing off the steps and seeking to drag Fenno after him. Joel gave one sharp look at the quivering dog; then nodded. “I’ll take your tip, Trevy,” he whispered, disengaging his shirt from the hauling jaws. “Wait!” He tiptoed indoors. But Treve was content. He knew the man would rejoin him. In less than a minute Joel came back. He had yanked on his trousers and had stuck his feet into a ragged pair of carpet slippers. Under his arm he carried a loaded shotgun. In a trouser pocket were stuck four buckshot cartridges and a flashlight. “Now, then,” he bade the dog, “come on!” Treve waited for no second bidding. He wheeled and made for the outbuildings. At every few rods, he would pause and look back to make sure Fenno was following. “All right!” grumbled Joel, as if to a human companion. “All right! I’m a-comin’, Trevy. I heard Royce call you a fool, jes’ now. Maybe it’s me that’s the fool for trailin’ along with you. And then ag’in, maybe not. You ain’t given to actin’ like this. Besides, with all this rustler-talk—” He stopped short. Treve was no longer leading him on. The dog had halted at the fence[Pg 262] edge, and was standing there, looking downward in drooping misery at something small and dark that lay at his feet. Joel pressed his flashlight button. Almost instantly he released the pressure. But not before he had seen Nellie’s lifeless body and had taken cognizance of her writhen lips. Her attitude and her convulsed mouth told their own story. “Pizen!” muttered Joel, aghast. His first sharp thought was for Treve. He went over to the disconsolate collie and felt his head and jaws. “Nope,” he said. “She was the only one that got it. If it was strong enough to git her as quick as that, it’d ’a’ got you, too, before now. An’—an’, Trevy, I’m thankin’ Gawd it didn’t! I’m a-thankin’ Him, reel rev’rent!” The old brain was working and working fast. Now that the Dos Hermanos ranch was at peace with the Triple Bar outfit, there was no neighbor who would poison any of the collies. The only person to do such a damnable thing must be some one who desired to get the ranch guards out of the way in order to rob the place. Rustlers! Joel listened. Except for an occasional bleat or stir in the nearby fold, no sound broke the awesome stillness of the early spring night. The[Pg 263] collie stood statuelike above his dead mate, his sorrowful dark eyes fixed on Joel in dumb appeal. “We can’t bring her back, Trevy,” said Fenno, gently, caressing the bowed silken head with rough tenderness. “Only the good Gawd c’d do that. An’ in His wisdom, He don’t ever do it no more—nowadays.... He knows why. I don’t. We ain’t so lucky as them folks in Bible times.... But maybe we c’n git the swine that killed her, Trevy!” There was a fiery thread of menace in the old voice, a note that made the collie lift his drooping head and turn toward the rancher. Just then, blurred and from far off, came a scent and a sound. They were indistinguishable to gross human senses. But Treve read them aright. The sound was of three cautiously-ridden horses. The scent was of men;—one of them the man who had loitered beside the fence and flung the meat that had killed Treve’s mate. The dog stiffened. His teeth bared. Deep down in his throat a growl was born. He remembered; and now he understood. This was the man who had somehow done Nellie to death. It was directly after he stopped there, on the far side of the fence, that she had died. Red rage flamed in the dog’s heart and eyes. “Quiet, Trevy!” breathed Joel, at the sound of[Pg 264] the low growl. “Hear suthin’, do you? Quiet, then, an’ wait!... Huh! Royce Mack called you a fool, did he? Called you a fool! In the mornin’—” He fell silent. To his own straining ears now came the faint beat of muffle-hoofed horses. Nearer they came and nearer. Joel gripped his shotgun and peered through the high fence palings. Presently, in the dim light, he was aware of three mounted men and two more men on foot, coming toward him from the direction of the coulée. At the same moment one of the three riders spurred forward from the rest. Drawing his horse alongside the high fence, he vaulted lightly from the saddle, coming to earth on the inner side of the palings. As his feet touched ground, something hairy and terrible whizzed at him through the darkness; awful in its murderous silence. Before Greaser Todd could get his hand to his knife or shove back his mysterious assailant, Treve’s mighty jaws had found their goal in his unshaven throat. The rustler crashed to earth, the mutely homicidal collie atop him; the curved white eyeteeth grinding toward the jugular. “What’s the matter, Greaser?” queried the[Pg 265] rider behind him, hearing his leader stumble and fall. “Bootsoles too slippery?” As he spoke, he, too, vaulted the palings and dropped to his feet in the yard. One of the unmounted men was climbing the fence in more leisurely fashion, his head appearing now over the top. As calmly as though he were shooting quail, Fenno went into action. One barrel of his shotgun was fired point-blank at the rustler who had just landed in the yard. Wheeling, he emptied the left barrel into the head of the climber. There was a panic yell from the road; then pell-mell a scurry of hoofs and of running feet. Slipping two new cartridges into the breech, Joel Fenno climbed halfway up the fence and fired both barrels down the road into the muddled dust-cloud that was dashing toward the coulée. Royce Mack, still drunk with sleep, came staggering and shouting down from the ranch house, his flashlight playing in every direction. At the edge of the outbuildings he slithered to a dumbfounded halt. The arc of white radiance from his flashlight illumed a truly hideous and incredible scene. Athwart the fence top, like a shot squirrel, sprawled an all-but headless man. On the[Pg 266] ground, just inside the palings, lay another slumped figure. Somewhat nearer to Mack knelt Joel Fenno, his gun on the earth beside him. He was stanching the blood of a third man—a man whose throat was that of a jungle beast’s victim. Beside him, tense and raging, and held in check only by Joel’s crooning voice, towered the huge gold-white Treve. “I reckon we c’n save this one of ’em, Royce, long ’nough for the sheriff to git his c’nfession,” airily observed Joel, continuing his first-aid work. “I pried Trevy loose before he got to the jug’l’r. With Trevy standin’ by, to prompt him like, the feller’s due to talk all the sheriff wants him to. Me an’ Trevy will see to that. As f’r them other two—” “What—what the—?” sputtered Mack, stupid with horror. “Trevy’s a ‘fool,’ all right!” scoffed Joel. “Jes’ like I heard you call him, awhile back. He tries to be more like you all the time. Likewise he s’cceeds. Now run an’ phone for the sheriff. Me an’ Trevy has had a busy night. It’s up to you to do the rest of the chores.” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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