Nevertheless, with a few hands and some supervision the ranch would be a good operation. Because of the natural fencing offered by the mountains the stock could be controlled with no difficulty. Only at roundup time would they need outside help.
The dun was a fast walker, and they were making good time. Looking ahead he could see no way out for a man on horseback, and only a possibility for a man afoot. The mountain before him rose in a rugged, tree-and brush-clad slope so steep a man would have to cling to the brush to climb up its side.
When he came close to the mountain he turned the dun and rode along its base, studying the ground. If there was a way out, some of the stock would have found it, or at least wild animals would have done so. He had seen a few deer tracks … where had they come from?
Deer, unless driven by fire or by drought, will rarely get more than a mile or two from the area where they are born. Usually they sleep in an open place somewhere up on a slope, and shortly before daybreak they feed down toward water, drink, idle about a bit, and gradually feed back up the slope. This valley might be home to them, but they might have found a trail to somewhere high up on the mountain.
Riding a horse alone, as Jonas was doing now, was a time for thinking, and again his thoughts returned to his problem. The questions remained. Who was he? What was he? Where was he from?
Although he had no memory, he realized that he did have his habit responses, and this could offer a clue. Suppose he began to test himself little by little, trying different things to find out the range of his skills?
He had already discovered that if he let himself go without trying to direct his actions he functioned fairly well. When he had saddled the dun he deliberately allowed his muscles free rein and he had worked with practiced ease. And now he thought about the dun.
Why had the horse come to him so easily? Had he known the horse before? Had it, perhaps, belonged to him at some time? He remembered that the old man, Henneker, had said he was a bad one. Was he? Searching himself, he could find no such motivations. He felt no animosity toward anyone, nor any desire to do evil.
Yet, did evil men ever think of themselves as evil? Did they not find excuses for the wrong they did?
He noticed the deer tracks without paying much attention, his thoughts busy elsewhere. Only when a second set of tracks joined the first did his mind really focus on the matter. Deer were creatures of habit, he knew, more so than men. The tracks of the first deer were several days old; the tracks of the second had been made that morning.
They disappeared suddenly, near the mouth of a canyon, but search as he might he could not find them entering the canyon. Knowing, from some bygone store of knowledge, that quite often a human or game trail will skirt the edge of a canyon, he rode back and studied the approaches to the canyon.
At first he found nothing, but he persisted, and after nearly an hour of searching he found where a vague trail went between two close-set clumps of cedar, rounded a boulder that appeared to block any progress in that direction, and went upward under the pines.
It was at that moment he thought of the letters.
Chapter Five
He drew up in the shade of some pines near the trail and took the letters from his pocket. Both were addressed to Dean Cullane, El Paso, Texas. The first was short and to the point.
The man I am sending is the best. He knows what to do and how
to do it. Do not interfere or try to communicate with him.
Matherbee
The second letter, posted a few weeks later, was from the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
Our investigation has, I regret to say, been inconclusive. The
man of whom you require information first appeared in Missouri,
where he was reported to have arrived on a freight train. He
worked there for a tie-cutting camp, where he became involved
in a brawl with two men, who were beaten severely. The first
shooting of which we have record took place a few weeks later
in a saloon when a trouble-hunting outlaw from down in the
Nation started a fight.
Both men went for their guns, and the outlaw, who had quite a
reputation, came out a poor second. It is reported that a
cattleman was in the saloon, saw the action, and later had a
talk with the man you are interested in, whose name is reported
to be Ruble Noon.
The next day Noon bought a complete outfit, including a horse
and several hundred rounds of ammunition, and then he drifted.
Stories get around. The report is that this cattleman had been
having rustler trouble, he had lost stock, and one of his hands
had been murdered after apparently coming upon some brand
blotters. That was in western Nebraska.
Ruble Noon was not seen around, but a few days later one of the
rustlers was found dead in his cabin, a gun in his hand that
had been fired once.
A few days later two of the others were found dead on the
plains covered by the hide of a steer with a brand half blotted.
Both men were shot from in front, both were armed.
A few days later the last of the rustlers, three in number, were
seated at their fire. They were in possession of thirty head of
stolen cattle.
A man stepped from the trees about sixty feet away. He said, “I
am Ruble Noon, and I killed Maxwell.”
They’d been saying what they would do if they caught him, and
he had come to them. They went for their guns. Two died before
they could get off a shot, but the third, one Mitt Ford, got
into the brush, tried a shot from there. The answering shots
burned his shoulder and wounded him in the side, and he got
away, fast.
Mitt Ford told the story. He had not got a good look at Noon,
for he was standing against a wall of tall trees, his hat pulled
low. All Mitt could say was that he was tall, slim, and hell on
wheels with a gun.
There was an express company up Montana way. Too many holdups.
They lured Noon. When the next holdup took place somebody shot
from the brush and there were three dead outlaws. No more holdups
on that line.
There was more. He scanned the report with care. Ruble Noon had apparently only one contact, the cattleman who first hired him. This man acted as go-between in every case, and there had been a dozen more cases, from Canada to Mexico. There was no description beyond that given by Mitt Ford, and the tie-cutting outfit had scattered. The cattleman claimed to know nothing about him.
There was one final note. The cattleman in question had at one time made a cattle drive with Tom Davidge. They had been friends.
Ruble Noon folded the letters and returned them to his inside pocket. The legal document was a deed to three hundred and twenty acres of land and a cabin; it was made out to Ruble Noon and signed by Tom Davidge. Appended to the document was a small hand-drawn map showing how to get to the property.
The dun was growing restive, and he started on, knowing no more about himself than before.
The letters and the document had been in the possession of one Dean Cullane, of El Paso, whoever he was. Why did Cullane have a deed destined for Ruble Noon? Were Cullane and Noon the same man? It seemed doubtful.
Was he Cullane? Or was he Noon? Or was he neither one?
Slipping off the coat he was wearing, he checked it with care. The sleeves were too short, and the shoulders too narrow, though not by much. The coat was tailored, not a ready-made.
“Tailored,” he said aloud, “but not for me.” He knew he would never have accepted a coat that fitted so badly. If the coat was not his, it must be Dean Cullane’s, for the letters were addressed to him. … Or could the coat belong to Ruble Noon? For the deed had been there, too.
Was there any way in which he could discover who Ruble Noon was? Or Dean Cullane? Or Matherbee?
He looked again at the map. Only a few lines on a bit of paper, but that X might be this very ranch, and the dotted line could be that faint trail he had discovered.
Why had Ruble Noon a ranch in the area? What was his connection with Tom Davidge? He had no answers – nothing but questions.