Part 18 (2/2)

”You are all right,” laughed Ballard, with a sudden access of light-heartedness. ”But the first thing to do is to get a little hay out of the rack. Come in and let us see what you can make of a camp supper.

Fitzpatrick bets high on his cook--which is more than I'd do if he were mine.”

XIV

THE MAXIM

Ballard and Blacklock ate supper at the contractor's table in the commissary, and the talk, what there was of it, left the Kentuckian aside. The Arcadian summering was the young collegian's first plunge into the manful realities, and it was not often that he came upon so much raw material in the lump as the contractor's camp, and more especially the jovial Irish contractor himself, afforded.

Ballard was silent for cause. Out of the depths of humiliation for the part he had been made to play in the plan for robbing Colonel Craigmiles he had promised unhesitatingly to prevent the robbery. But the means for preventing it were not so obvious as they might have been. Force was the only argument which would appeal to the cattle-lifters, and a.s.suredly there were men enough and arms enough in the Fitzpatrick camps to hold up any possible number of rustlers that Carson could bring into the valley. But would the contractor's men consent to fight the colonel's battle?

This was the crucial query which only Fitzpatrick could answer; and at the close of the meal, Ballard made haste to have private speech with the contractor in the closet-like pay office.

”You see what we are up against, Bourke,” he summed up when he had explained the true inwardness of the situation to the Irishman. ”Bare justice, the justice that even an enemy has a right to expect, shoves us into the breach. We've got to stop this raid on the Craigmiles cattle.”

Fitzpatrick was shaking his head dubiously.

”Sure, now; _I'm_ with you, Mr. Ballard,” he allowed, righting himself with an effort that was a fine triumph over personal prejudice. ”But it's only fair to warn you that not a man in any of the ditch camps will lift a finger in any fight to save the colonel's property. This s.h.i.+ndy with the cow-boys has gone on too long, and it has been too bitter.”

”But this time they've got it to do,” Ballard insisted warmly. ”They are your men, under your orders.”

”Under my orders to throw dirt, maybe; but not to shoulder the guns and do the tin-soldier act. There's plinty of men, as you say; Polacks and Hungarians and Eyetalians and Irish--and the Irish are the only ones you could count on in a hooraw, boys! I know every man of them, Mr. Ballard, and, not to be mincin' the wor-rd, they'd see you--or me, either--in the hot place before they'd point a gun at anybody who was giving the Craigmiles outfit a little taste of its own medicine.”

Fitzpatrick's positive a.s.surance was discouraging, but Ballard would not give up.

”How many men do you suppose Carson can muster for this cattle round-up?” he asked.

”Oh, I don't know; eighteen or twenty at the outside, maybe.”

”You've got two hundred and forty-odd here and at Riley's; in all that number don't you suppose you could find a dozen or two who would stand by us?”

”Honestly, then, I don't, Mr. Ballard. I'm not lukewarm, as ye might think: I'll stand with you while I can squint an eye to sight th' gun.

But the minute you tell the b'ys what you're wantin' them to do, that same minute they'll give you the high-ball signal and quit.”

”Strike work, you mean?”

”Just that.”

Ballard went into a brown study, and Fitzpatrick respected it. After a time the silence was broken by the faint tapping of the tiny telegraph instrument on the contractor's desk. Ballard's chair righted itself with a crash.

”The wire,” he exclaimed; ”I had forgotten that you had brought it down this far on the line. I wonder if I can get Bromley?”

”Sure ye can,” said the contractor; and Ballard sat at the desk to try.

It was during the preliminary key-clickings that Blacklock came to the door of the pay office. ”There's a man out here wanting to speak to you, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” he announced; and the contractor went out, returning presently to break into Ballard's preoccupied effort to raise the office at Elbow Canyon.

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