Part 5 (2/2)
”It was one or the other of them,” she told him coldly. ”Mr. Dodd was an honest, plodding man--a good citizen. Foss is a renegade. Was I so very bloodthirsty in trying to make the best of a bad situation by choosing, on the spur of the moment, which man ought to live on? I'm not the fainting kind of woman, Mr. Drew. One must be practical, if he can, even over matters like that.”
”I'm not condemning,” he said. ”I'm only wondering that a woman could be so practical in such a situation.”
”Digger Foss hasn't seen me since then,” she observed. ”He's in jail, awaiting trial, at the county seat. He'll be acquitted, of course. I'm wondering what he'll have to say to me when he is free again.”
Oliver said nothing to this.
”I must be going,” she declared, rising suddenly. ”As I said, I came down to warn you to be on your guard against the Poison Oakers.”
He caught her pony and led it to her. She swung into the saddle, then slued toward him, leaned an elbow on the horn and rested her chin in the palm of her hand. Once more that direct gaze of her frank black eyes looked him through and through.
”Well,” she asked, ”will the Poison Oakers run you off?”
”Oh, I think not,” he laughed lightly.
”They'll be ten against one, Mr. Drew.”
”There's law in the land.”
”Yes, there's law,” she mused. ”But it's so easy for unscrupulous people to get around the law. They can subject you to no end of persecution, and you won't even be able to prove that one of them is behind it.”
She looked him over deliberately.
”I'm glad you've come,” she said. ”You're an educated man, and blessed with a higher order of character than has been anybody else who stood to cross the Poison Oakers. Somehow, I feel that you are destined to be their undoing. They must be corralled and their atrocities brought to an end. You must be the one to put the quietus on that gang. And I'll help you. Good-bye!”
She lifted the white mare into a lope, opened the gate, rode through and closed it without leaving the saddle, then, waving back at him, disappeared in the chaparral.
CHAPTER VI
ACCORDING TO THE RECORDS
Oliver Drew had found a bee tree on the backbone of the ridge between the Old Ivison Place and the American River. He stood contemplating it, watching the busy little workers winging their way to and from the hole in the hollow trunk, planning to change their quarters and put them to work for him.
Far below him, down a precipitous pine-studded slope, the green American River raced toward the ocean. There had been a week of late rains, and good gra.s.s for the summer was a.s.sured.
Away through the tall trees below him he saw red cows filtering along, cropping eagerly at the lush growth after a long dusty trip from the drying lowlands. Now and then he saw a horseman galloping along a mile distant. He heard an occasional faint shout, borne upward on the soft spring wind. The Seldens were ending the drive of their cattle to summer pastures.
He turned suddenly as he heard the tramp of hoofs. Six hors.e.m.e.n were approaching, along the backbone of the ridge, winding in and out between clumps of the spa.r.s.e chaparral.
In the lead, straight and st.u.r.dy as some ancient oak, rode a tall man with grey hair that hung below his ears and a flowing grey beard. He wore the conventional cowpuncher garb, from black-silk neckerchief, held in place by a poker chip with holes bored in it, to high-heeled boots and chaps. He rode a gaunt grey horse. His tapaderos flapped loosely against the undergrowth, and, so long were the man's legs, they seemed almost to sc.r.a.pe the ground. A holstered Colt hung at the rider's side.
Silent, stern of face, this old man rode like the wraith of some ancient chieftain at the head of his hard-riding warriors.
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