CHAPTER XI

THE COURT ON THE TRAIL

THE sun swung low. Nabours rode back, addressing his point men impersonally. “We bed on the slope, yon. Let ’em water full.”

As the cattle quenched their thirst the men quietly pressed them to the left of the route, urging them one side, blocking further progress. The half-wild cattle seemed to know that here, on high, smooth ground, breeze-swept and dry, with good mattress not only of new but old grass, they could get a good night’s lodging. They grazed, slowed down, and the men held them till they should bed down for sleep. Over four thousand cattle, of all ages—too large and too mixed a body for good trailing—now were by way of forming good trail habits.

But Nabours left the herd and spoke a time with Del Williams, five other men of his oldest. Together they rode to where Dan McMasters sat his horse, idly watching the cattle in the cool of evening. They rode so silently, so grimly, that a shadow of menace must have lain before them. Without a word the tall, slender figure whirled his horse to front them. Like a rattler, he always was on guard. His elbows nearly level with his hips, his two hands touched his guns.

“Yes, gentlemen?” McMasters spoke quietly.

“Better drop the guns,” said Nabours, also unagitated. “There’s six of us.”

“There’s twelve of me,” said Dan McMasters evenly. “You wanted me?”

“Yes. Drop yore guns on the ground.”

“Don’t any of you make a move,” was the other’s reply to this. “I don’t know what you mean.” Both guns were out.

“We came to arrest you, for trial, to-night, now. That’s my duty.”

“Nabours,” said McMasters, slowly, at last, “I ought to kill you for that. But I’ve got to have this clear.”

“Give up your guns and stand fair trial. We’ll make it clear.”

“No man lives who shall touch my guns. But who brings charge against Dan McMasters, sheriff and ranger and deputy marshal of the United States? What sort of mean joke is this?”

“It’s Miss Taisie Lockhart brings the charge,” said Nabours.

The young man flinched as though struck.

“What charge?”

“Theft; stealing from a friend; stealing from folks that has fed you.”

Slowly the black muzzles drooped. With a movement as deliberate as their withdrawal had been swift, McMasters thrust both guns into their scabbards, unbuckled his belt and hung it over his saddle horn.

“Has she sent for me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll come.” McMasters spoke as though with difficulty.

Nabours pointed to a little fire whose smoke arose at the edge of a clump of cover a quarter of a mile away; a small tent, two white-topped carts making an individual encampment, apart from the trail cook’s mess. Without a word the accused man, his head slightly dropped forward, rode toward the fire, both hands on the pommel of his saddle, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

Anastasie Lockhart came from her little tent at the call of Nabours. Her hands suddenly were clasped at her throat as she saw the tall figure among these other stern-faced men. It was too late for her now to reason, to withdraw her charge.

“We brung in the man,” announced Nabours. “You are the judge. We’ll hear what he has to say.”

A strange, inscrutable quality was one of the singular characteristics of Dan McMasters. His face was a coldly serene mask now as he stood beside his horse, looking straight at the tall girl who stood, woman in spite of her man’s garb, her men’s surroundings. If any emotion could be traced on his face it was a shade of pity, of great patience. Concern for his personal safety seemed not to be in his mind. This indifference to danger, this calm, did not lack effect. The men who guarded him suddenly wished they were well out of it.

“I a judge? No! I’ve nothing to say,” Taisie choked.

“Yes, you have had something to say, and you done said it to me,” rejoined Nabours. “You started something and you got to go through with it. Set down there on that bed roll. You got to tell us all what you told me. As owner of this herd, you’re the main judge. There can’t nobody shirk no right and no duty here.

“Set down here, prisoner. It seems to me you’d orto give up your weapons to the court.”

“I’ll give Miss Lockhart anything on earth but my guns,” said McMasters evenly. “No one touches them but me.”

“I reckon no man here is scared to do what he’s got to do,” remarked Nabours simply.

McMasters made no reply. He never had a hand far from his revolvers. He seated himself now so that he could face all his accusers, flat on the ground. His buckled pistol belt lay over one leg. An exact observer must have noted that the toe of one boot rested inside the farther end of the buckled belt, so that proper resistance would be offered in case their owner should snatch at the butts of the heavy guns, both of which were turned ready for convenient grasp. So he sat, facing the jury, facing his Portia—facing what was a far worse thing than death itself to any man of honor.

They were a jury of his peers, as nearly as might be, though he had had no hand in their selection. Had he known all the histories of these men he might have challenged for cause Del Williams, trail segundo, who rode right point. He had heard a man or two pass a rude joke or so, although he did not know that as Del Sol ranch hand Del Williams, ten years her senior, had known Burleson Lockhart’s daughter from her infancy. The way of Del Williams’ love was silence and reverence. But Del Williams was of some chivalric strain. That now was to be proved. That his most dangerous rival was this prisoner he knew perfectly well by the primal instincts of man; and now came a certain test.

“Del,” began Nabours, turning to his lieutenant as next in authority, “tell us what you know about this man since he come to our house.”

“I don’t know anything at all,” answered Williams slowly. “Ef I did I wouldn’t tell it.”

His thin, brown-bearded face was set in quiet resolution. Talebearer he would not be. His fellows looked at him stolidly.

“Ma’am,” went on the prosecutor, “you told me yore trunk was stole out of yore parlor. It had papers in it—land scrip, God knows how many sections.”

“Yes, I missed the trunk.” Taisie was very pale, her voice a whisper.

“Mr. Dan McMasters, did you ever see that trunk? I hate to ask you.”

“Oh, yes; I did.”

“What was in it?”

“I don’t know. It was open, close to me, where I sat in the parlor. I saw some lace, some women’s gloves, or mitts. I didn’t look again.”

“Did you see it after that?”

“Yes.”

“Where was it?”

“Near the gate—outside the gate, in the edge of the brush. I thought it odd it should be there. I was sure I’d seen it up at the house, the only time I was in the house. You were there.”

“Shore I was! She said all her father’s land scrip was in that box; we all said it’d be worth money some day to any cowman. You heard it. You knowed where the trunk was and what was in it.”

“Yes; so did you.”

“Then why did you put it in your wagon that was going back to Gonzales.”

“I did not. That is either a mistake or a lie.”

“But it was there. Sanchez found it there. He taken it and put it in Anita’s carreta. It’s there now. We declare that to you. It was missing from the house. It was found in yore wagon. Yore wagon was going back home. That was right where some men was laying up in the brush when you left. You didn’t let me foller them. You didn’t show up when them same men—we proved by the split-hoof track—was trying to cut our herd. Only the Rangers saved that. Ef you’re a Ranger, why wasn’t you there?”

“I’ll not have any man ask me such questions.”

“Don’t tell us what you’ll have or won’t have. You’ll have what we give you, no more, no less. Explain how come that trunk in your wagon. Not a man on Del Sol except you and me knowed what was in it or where it was. Now who done put it in yore wagon? It looked right easy to sneak that south while we was going north, huh? And it with half a million acres in it.”

“How come him to bring ary wagon up here anyhow?” demanded Cal Taney, a top rider on Del Sol.

“I wouldn’t ask him that,” said Del Williams quietly.

“But I do”—retorted Nabours.

“Well, I had some supplies, you know,” answered McMasters. “A wagon goes better than a cart. You said you didn’t want my wagon.”

“A wagon carries trunks or boxes better.”

“Yes.”

“Shore! Was you planning fer a load both ways—what you’d kerry in a wagon from Del Sol?”

“You may guess,” said McMasters, suddenly dull red. “Most of you have guessed.”

“We have!” asserted Nabours. “Miss Taisie, ma’am”—he turned to the white-faced girl—“this here is hard for you. Del won’t talk and won’t vote. The rest of us thinks the trunk and wagon is not explained. Am I right, men?”

Four men nodded. Del Williams, gentleman in rags, sat staring straight ahead. The gray eyes of Dan McMasters were fixed on the pale face of the woman whom now he knew he had loved since first he saw her, would always love. What price?

“We’re the jury, ma’am,” said Nabours. “You’re the judge. It looks to us like all along the McMasterses was Yankee sympathizers. It looks like this man, after all, was standing in with his own kind of politics at Austin. That explains a lot of things that’s been going on. Rangers? Arrest them folks? Huh! I’ll bet they won’t stay in jail two days! You’ll have to say sentence on this man we-all thought was square, thought was our friend, a square Texan and a good man. What shall it be?”

Taisie Lockhart, Portia, spoke not of the quality of mercy. Instead, she bowed her head in her hands and wept without reserve. That act utterly changed the whole complexion of the trial.

Dan McMasters threw up a hand—his left hand. An instant later he was on his feet, but his attitude had no hostility.

“Wait, men!” he commanded. “Don’t move, any of you! I’ll pronounce sentence on myself!

“Of course, I don’t recognize any trial or any court here—I came myself. But some men do fool things. You’d like enough say death or banishment. All right! Let it be banishment! You haven’t proved more than a suspicion. I’ll accept banishment and leave the herd quietly now—not taking anything but what I have now, here.”

His face hardened into gray marble.

“If Miss Lockhart has had one suspicion in her mind that I—that I’d—well, touch anything of hers, or of any other human being’s, then it’s plain enough I don’t belong here. I can’t square that for her. She can never square that with me.

“I’m going now!”

There was no hand or voice raised at this. Turning his back on them for the first time, McMasters swung his belt to place, buckled it, caught his saddle horn and was mounted and away, not looking back. He rode gently, easily, straight. They knew no more of him now than they had before.

“Del! Del, call him back!” broke out Taisie Lockhart. But Del Williams shook his head. “I wish I could, Miss Taisie,” said he simply. “I don’t reckon any of us could now.”

“It had to be,” said Nabours after a time. “I’ll pay him back after we sell our herd. Del Sol can’t have no obligations to him now. But he’s one of the mysteriousest men ever crossed this range. He’s cold, that man. He needs watching.”

“Pay him back? What do you mean, Jim?” Taisie was still in open tears. But she got no reply from her foreman.

“He’s a killer, Jim,” broke in Cal Taney. “We know his ree-cord. He’s done killed five or six men a’ready, young as he is—four since he was sher’f and not countin’ Mexicans. He’s bad, that feller.”

“He never killed no man as sher’f that didn’t resist comin’ along,” ventured Del Williams. “Them two other men—one was coming at him with a ax, on the buffalo range, and t’other had a even break on the street o’ Uvalde. But no man has a chance with him on a even break.”

“He’s cold,” reiterated Nabours, hesitant. But he suddenly was agonized over the discharge of what he had held duty to his owner—the hardest duty he had ever known.

“Good thing fer us he was cold,” said Del Williams. “He’d never have went out alone if things had popped loose. He kep’ his mind and his hand to hisself. Why?”

But he knew why.

Taisie Lockhart, alone in her encampment except for her serving women, threw herself face down on her blankets. A black and ominous world surrounded her. She knew that yonder man, riding away into the twilight, never would come back to her.

“Get your night horses staked, men,” ordered Nabours gruffly, after the return to the encampment.

Against a wagon wheel old Sanchez dreamily thrummed a guitar. Sitting on his bed roll, a little apart in the dusk, Cinquo Centavos, for the time off remuda watch, engaged in song. His face was turned toward a certain star, above a certain remote camp fire, a quarter of a mile away. He thought his voice might carry so far. He was fourteen, and very, very much in love. His voice quavered and roared and broke.

“Neeter, Wah-hah-ha-neeter, ast thy s-o-oul ef we-e-e mus’ pa-a-art!”

“Damn you, kid, shut up!” called the voice of the foreman. “We got troubles enough.”