“For the present,” he said, “I’ll keep to the background as I have been doing. This woman would recognise me and be instantly alert for trouble. Another thing, Sheriff—those men with her are not cattlemen.”
“Just what I’ve always said!” cried Selwood delightedly, “I knew that long ago. There’s one or two who do pass muster—her foreman and that black devil from Texas, Sud Provine. The rest are city stuff.”
“They are, without exception, criminals who have been defended by one of the ablest lawyers in New York and acquitted. They owe him a lot—and he has something more on each one of them, so that they are his henchmen in every instance. This man is Lawrence Arnold.”
“Kate Cathrew’s partner! He owns half of Sky Line!”
“Exactly. When he gets hold of a man he wants to use, he seems to send him here. I have recognized three of these riders already, though none of them knew me.”
“Excuse me, mister,” said Selwood, “but how do you happen to know so much?”
“That question is your right, and I will answer it. Kate Cathrew was a New York woman—I knew her there some six years ago. She was clever then—and unscrupulous, always playing for her own advancement. It was along that line that she did the deed for which I have hunted her down—and found her at last. What deed that was I am not ready to say, nor to whom it was done. It must suffice for the present to tell you that it ruined one life and bade fair to ruin another until I stepped in to take a hand. These two lives were very near my own—and for their sake I have become a wanderer, a homeless tramp, searching the lone places of the West to find this woman and make her pay—to bring her to justice. I watched Lawrence Arnold for three years before I started and I knew he was in touch with her, that between them some way they were making money, but I could never get track of her through him. He was too sharp for me. I have visited every cattle ranch owned by a woman in the whole United States, it seems to me. I found seven in Texas, two in Montana, and more in Idaho. I have ridden this little chap thousands of miles, shipped him with me by rail thousands more. I knew it was cattle stuff from some of Arnold’s deals, but where they came from has been a mystery—until two months ago. Now you know what I am and why I’m on Cattle Kate’s trail like a nemesis. I think, if we work together, we’ll land her soon—and land her hard and fast where she belongs.”
“Amen to that,” said Selwood fervently.
The summer drowsed along on Nameless, sweet with sun and the little winds that stirred the pine tops, green with verdure and starred with wild flowers. The lonesome world of the jumbled hills was fair as Paradise, wistful with silence, mysterious with its suggestion of eternal waiting.
To Nance Allison, sitting listlessly on her doorstep, it seemed strangely empty. There was nothing to do, now that the heavy labor of the haying was over. She watched her three big stacks with sombre eyes, expecting each morning to find them destroyed, but nothing happened to them.