When Charlie Shaw, the carefree cow-puncher, was accused of being ashallow josher, and therefore worthless for rounding up cow thieves,Charlie got angry and proved that even a “kidder” can get down tobusiness.
The cool autumn wind riffled across Lonesome Prairie. It fluttered themanes and tails of a dozen saddled horses standing in a compact group,awaiting the pleasure of their riders, who stood and squatted in variouspostures, casting occasional glances at a number of flat, wrinkledobjects in the grass of a tiny hollow. They had come upon these objectsquite unexpectedly and had stopped to examine them. One rider had gonegalloping back toward camp. The rest waited.
“Gosh, old Elmer’ll go straight in the air when he sees this,” oneremarked.
Two miles distant a herd was stringing south. Heavy-loaded wagons,tooled respectively by a cook and a night herder, with a comet’s tail ofsaddle stock following behind, bore in the same direction. And from thatdirection three men were now riding full tilt toward the dismountedcow-punchers.
When they pulled up at the group, Elmer Duffy gave an immediateexhibition of what his rider had termed “going straight in the air.”Elmer was past forty, a sandy-haired Texan, with a capacity forirritable conduct that remained mostly hidden beneath a placid exterior.He had a long, solemn face. He took his position as the active head of abig cow outfit rather more seriously than range bosses usually did. Thisattitude, together with his slumbering crabbedness, did not make himpopular with his men.
“What’s all this?” he demanded.
“Well,” one sunny-faced young fellow explained, “as near as we can see,it’s eight beef hides with the Seventy-seven brand, that’s been skinnedoff their rightful wearers and laid out to dry in the sun by some kindsoul. We happened on ’em an’ sent Mike back to tell you, because wethought maybe you’d be interested.”
Mr. Duffy prowled from one hide to the other. The skulls and shin bonesand hoofs of the defunct animals were scattered about for all and sundryto behold, where the coyotes had gnawed them. But they knew very wellthat neither wolf nor coyote had pulled down a bunch of mature cattlelike that. And, as the foreman of the Seventy-seven gathered the importof these remains, he grew red in the face, and his language becameeloquent but unprintable.
“Some dirty thieves has been butcherin’ beef an’ gettin’ away with it,”he stormed. “I’d give five hundred dollars cold cash to lay hands on’em.”
“If you’d advertise that in the River Press,” the same youngsterlaughed, “maybe they’d come in and give themselves up for the reward.”
Elmer glared at him.
“Don’t get fresh,” he growled. “This here’s serious.”
“So it seems,” Charlie Shaw replied carelessly. “But there’s no lawagainst joshin’.”
“This ain’t no josh,” Duffy declared, embellishing his statement with anearnest oath. “And I suppose all a man can expect when he finds that abunch of thieves is loose on the range is for featherheads like you tomake a joke of it. If it was your cattle that’d been killed, you’d singa different tune.”
Charlie Shaw’s laughing mouth shut in a tight line.
“I would, Elmer,” he said quietly. “I’d keep my mouth shut and go after’em. I wouldn’t waste my breath cussin’.”
“You wouldn’t waste your breath cussin’!” Elmer exploded. “No! All youc’n waste is the outfit’s time an’ your money at poker. If I had todepend on boneheads like you to protect the outfit’s interests, theSeventy-seven would go