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Oliver Strange - Law O' The Lariat v1
Oliver Strange - Law O' The Lariat v1
By
Oliver Strange
PROLOGUE
“WELL, Forby, yu got anythin' to say afore we string yu up?”
The harsh question conveyed the inevitability of death, and the
speaker evidently regarded it as a mere formality. A powerfully-built man
of little more than thirty, attired in the garb of the cattle ranges, he stood
rocking on his heels, both thumbs caught in his gun-belt. His deep-set eyes,
hooked nose and out-thrust jaw gave him a predatory appearance, and had
the thin, cruel lips not been concealed by a drooping black moustache he
would have suggested a vulture even more patently. That he possessed
both force and passion was evident.
The man to whom he spoke was of a different type. Older by twenty
years, with greying hair and beard, he had the strong patient face of one
who plods on, knowing his task in life is well-nigh hopeless, but doing it
nevernheless to the best of his ability. He was of those who peopled the
great waste spaces of the American continent, fighting against almost
impossible odds, and wresting a bare subsistence from the untamed soil. He
sat now on a log, hands tied behind his back, chin sunk in his chest, his whole
attitude one of despair. At the words, however, he straightened up, and his
gaze went instinctively to the rough little log cabin he had built with his
own hands, the rude corral, the patch of fenced ground, which was only
now beginning to be productive, and the stream with its shady willows and
cottonwoods. He had made the place, he loved it, and now he must leave it,
perhaps in a shameful way. Somehow it seemed unreal. The sun shone, the
birds chirped, the murmur of the stream came like a whisper, and yet the
air was pregnant with tragedy.
His gaze swept the six men who stood round in a half-circle regarding
him curiously but implacably. They were cowboys—hired creatures of the
man who had spoken, and he knew he had nothing to hope for from them;
they would do as they were bid. And then he looked their leader squarely in
the face and spoke, his voice low, steady and without rancour.
“I can on'y repeat what I said afore—I never touched any o' yore
stock, Bartholomew," he said heavily.
“Yet we find 'em in yore pasture, with the brand changed from Bar
B to Four B," retorted the other; adding with a sneer, "Yu chose a mighty
convenient brand, didn't you?"
“The Four B was my brand years afore I come to these parts, an' I'm
usin' my own name, too," the older man pointed out. "If T'd done what
yu say, d'yu think I'd be such a fool as to leave 'em run along with my
cattle with the brands unhealed?"
“Oh, yu dam nesters think yu can get away with anythin', an' yu didn't
know we suspected yu," said Bartholomew. "How d'yu account for 'em
bein' there anyways? Yore pasture's fenced an' cows ain't got wings."
“I dunno how they come there," said the other dully. "I was in Hope
last night, gettin' supplies. Someone musta driven 'em in while I was away."
“Likely tale that," said the big man. "Yu done it yoreself an' went to
town to put up an alibi. Mighty smart, but it don't go.”
The accused man shook his head dubiously. This was the end. Ever
since he had taken up his quarter section he had had to fight. He had been
threatened, his cattle stolen, his horses maimed, and once his little crop of
hay for winter feed burned, but he had hung on doggedly, hoping that strict
attention to his own affairs would overcome the local prejudice against
"nesters". And this might have come about but for the hostility of the
man before him.
“I've a right here," he said, answering his own thought. "It's State
land."
“It's 'free range'," Bartholomew said tersely.
“Yes, free to yu an' not to me," flashed the prisoner.
“I was here first," the other pointed out; then : "but we've had all
this out a'ready; nothin's free to a rustler except a rope.”
The seated man shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation. "I
ain't a thief, but seein' yu got me thrown an' tied, I reckon I gotta pull my
freight," he said. "If it warn't for my boy I dunno as I'd care; I'm tired o'
buckin' the odds, but he ain't got no one else."
“Pull yore freight?" gibed the big man, a cruel scorn in his tone.
"It's too late, my fine fella, yu should 'a' done that when yu were told to,
months back.”
The bound man looked at him in slow surprise. Hitherto he had
believed that he had only to quit the country, but now he saw that
Bartholomew was ruthless and meant to have his life. The charge against
him was a "frame-up", probably contrived by the man who had
condemned him, but he could not prove his innocence. He studied the
faces of the other men, but while one of them, whom he knew as Darby,
turned his eyes away, the rest showed nothing but sardonic contempt; to
them he was a cattle thief and deserved no mercy.
“Yu boys stand for this?" he asked hopelessly.
Darby was the only one who spoke. "Aw, boss, if he clears out o' the
country—" he suggested.
Bartholomew swore an oath. "No, by God ! " he gritted. "Nesters
is like Injuns—the on'y good 'uns are dead 'uns. He had notice, an' now
we've got him with the goods he's had a fair hearin'. He's outstayed his
welcome, an' p'raps it'll be a warnin' to others that nesters ain't wanted
here. Get yore rope, Penton.”
The man addressed walked to where the horses were grouped, took his
lariat from the saddle-horn and returned with it swinging in his hand.
“Yu turn my dad loose or I'll blow yu to hellamile, Bartholomew.”
The command came in a shrill, childish treble, that trembled with rage
or fear, and every eye turned to the speaker. He had stolen up unperceived
and now stood only a few yards from the group round the condemned man.
A mere lad of about twelve, shabbily dressed in a blue flannel shirt and
faded overalls, his ultimatum would have been something for men to laugh
at but for the fact that his youthful fingers gripped a heavy rifle, the barrel
of which was directed full at Bartholomew's breast. The boy's features were
distraught with passion.
“I'm meanin' it ! " he cried. "Turn dad loose, or yu'll get yores,
Bartholomew.”
The threatened man laughed. "All right, kid," he said, and stepped
towards the prisoner, at the same tirne winking significantly to the man
with the rope. The boy, watching the leader, did not see Penton's sudden
wrist-flick, and only realised the truth when the noose settled over his
shoulders and a sharp jerk flung him from his feet. Nevertheless, even as he
fell, he pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide.
“Young hell-cat," snarled the rancher, when the boy had been
overcome and bound. "If he was a bit older I'd make a clean job of it. One o'
yu take hirn into the house an' keep him there until—after.”
Darby volunteered for the job, and carried the lad, kicking and
mouthing boyish curses, into the building. Bartholomew turned to the
others.
“Put a light to the shack when yu done, an' fetch the stock along," he
ordered curtly, and, mounting his horse, rode away without another look at
the man he had left to die.
An hour later the boy crept from the brush fringing the stream,
and, with a sob as he passed the smouldering ruins, made his way to the
big cottonwood in front of what that morning had been his home. A violent
fit of trembling seized him when he saw the gruesome limp form
hanging from a lower limb, and for a moment he could not move. Then,
making an effort, he went on. Beneath the body was a small heap—a worn
purse, a tobacco pouch and pipe, a locket, which he knew con-tained his
dead mother's portrait, a jack-knife and a slip of paper. Scrawled in
pencil on the paper were the words :
“Goodbye, son. I'm goin' game. Don't forget me. I know yu'll do
what's right. Dad.”
With blurred eyes, and strangling the sobs that nearly choked him, the
boy read the pitiful message.
“I'll shore do what's right, dad, to that hell-hound," he muttered
thickly.
Then, as he had done many a time before just for amusement, he
climbed the tree, and severing the rope, allowed the corpse to slump to the
ground. For an instant he clung to the branch, sick and dizzy, and then
dropped down to kneel by his father's body. He kissed the cheek, and the
cold contact sent a shiver through him. Presently he got up, and, going to
the little garden patch, returned with a spade and began to dig.
It was a big job for hands so young, and the sun was low in the sky
before the hole was large and deep enough. Dragging the body into it the
boy covered it with a layer of green boughs, to shield the poor clay from
the earth from which it sprang, and, ere the opening was completely filled
in, he fetched heavy stones from the stream bed and packed them in that
the grave might not be violated by wild creatures.
The burial finished, he was about to depart, when a sudden thought
came to him. Opening his father's jack-knife, he set to work. When at length
he turned to leave, the tree trunk bore, in letters a foot long and deeply cut,