Edward G. Cheyney

THE MYSTERY OF THE FOUR THOUSAND SHEEP

Early the next morning Scott called up Dawson to find out what his orders would be in regard to the recount. He was itching to serve notice on those herders.

“Good-morning, Mr. Dawson. Did Mr. Ramsey tell you of my report on the number of sheep that are on this district?”

“Yes, he ’phoned me last night. I heard it rumored around among the boys yesterday afternoon and mentioned it to him. How many extras do you think there are?”

“About four thousand altogether.”

“How did you count them?”

“Of course I did not count them, but I am sure that the estimate is not far off. Every band will run at least five hundred over.”

“Well, if you are sure of that notify those herders to have their bands back at the chute for a recount next.... What day is this?”

“Friday, I think,” it was pretty hard for any one to keep track of the days of the week out there in the forest.

“Friday, then tell them to be ready for the recount Monday.”

“Not before Monday?” Scott objected with disappointment.

“No, they will have to have that long to get their bands back to the chute and I advise you to check your estimates pretty carefully before you order them back. They will raise some row if you make a mistake. Heth can help you with it.”

“I have not seen Heth since I started for that fire day before yesterday,” Scott was glad of a chance to report this for he felt that he was getting very little assistance out of Heth and he wanted Dawson to know it.

“Must have gone to town with the checkings,” was the unsatisfactory reply.

“Well, I guess I can handle this alone,” Scott said, “I am mad enough to do almost anything.”

“Go to it then, but be careful not to get yourself into a hole.”

It was the most satisfactory conference that Scott had ever had with the ranger and he began to think that Baxter’s estimate of him might be right after all. He was going to have the satisfaction of ordering those herders back to the chute and he was not sure that he would have let Heth help him if he had been there. He hurried out to saddle Jed and get started on such pleasant duty. Jed seemed quite as anxious to be off as his master. He came up to the gate at Scott’s whistle and they were soon skimming away over the old ridge trail on their joyful errand.

Scott rode straight to the place where he had seen the nearest band the day before. They were nowhere to be seen even when he climbed onto a knoll which gave him a quite extensive view. He was not an expert on sheep, but he had heard from the herders themselves the day before that the sheep had been on very slim rations in the lowlands before they came onto the forest and were now so eager for the fresh spring grass that they were hard to move. There was plenty of grass here and he could not think why they had been moved, or where they could have gone.

But the trail of two thousand sheep is not very hard to find and Scott was soon trotting rapidly along their dusty track. An experienced man would have known from the barrenness of the ground, from which almost all the grass had been eaten or trampled out, that the sheep were bunched and were being driven somewhere rapidly. Scott could not tell this from the trail, but he soon overtook them and found both herder and dog busily engaged in driving the sheep as rapidly as possible down the slope toward the valley cliffs.

It was hard to guess the number when they were bunched that way, but Scott sized them up as best he could and was still convinced that there were too many.

“How many sheep did you say you had in that band?” Scott asked riding up to the herder.

“Fourteen hundred,” said the herder.

“They must have swollen since you counted them,” Scott replied sarcastically.

“I didn’t count ’em,” said the herder. “Your man did the countin’.”

“I don’t think much of the job, whoever did it,” Scott retorted. “You have those sheep up at the chute Monday morning and I’ll count them myself.”

“What, drive these sheep clear back there to that chute just to have them counted again?” the herder screamed.

“Those are the official orders,” Scott replied with dignity.

“What are you goin’ to do, count them every week? If I run all the fat off these sheep for nothing I’ll make it warm for you.”

“You won’t do it for nothing. It will be a good thing for you. You won’t have as many to bother with when you get back.”

He left the man cursing and screaming, and rode on. There was intense satisfaction in showing these fellows that he was on to them.

The chase after the second band had brought him so far down toward the valley cliffs that he decided to have a look at the little caÑons where the extra sheep had come in before he notified the other herders of the recount. He was still gloating over his little interview with the first herder when he came to the cliffs. He had never seen the caÑons but he knew their location from his map and had soon found the one farthest east. He rode clear around the rim of it. There was not a single hoof print. The upper portion of it was rather broad and shallow, but when he went down into it he soon found that it ended in an almost perpendicular drop to the valley below.

“Not much chance there,” Scott thought as he mounted Jed and started in search of the next caÑon. The second caÑon was very much like the first. It was a little larger at the top but ended in the same precipitous drop.

Before he reached the third caÑon a new idea occurred to him. Perhaps it would be just as well not to leave any tracks around these caÑons. He did not know just why but he had a hunch that he did not want the herders to know that he had been to those other caÑons.

He began to suspect that the report was a joke to make him investigate all those impossible caÑons.

“I’ve got to look at every one of them now,” Scott fumed, “just to make sure that it was not a fake, but I’ll see that nobody knows that I have done it.” He rode doggedly on to the next caÑon, but he dismounted at some distance from it and took care to cover up his tracks wherever he went. And so he inspected every one of those little caÑons along that five miles of valley cliffs, and everywhere he found the same thing. Not a sign of a sheep trail anywhere and the same steep drop at the bottom.

“Self-respecting squirrel would not try to climb any of them,” Scott muttered disgustedly as he finished the inspection. “Well, they worked their joke all right but they’ll never have the satisfaction of knowing it,” and he carefully covered up the last sign of his visit.

“Now to notify those other greasers,” Scott exulted as he rode back toward the grazing grounds.

All of a sudden he straightened up with a jerk. He had found out that the entrance of the sheep through the valley caÑons was a fake, but if they did not come in there, where under the sun did they come from? He had forgotten all about that in his anxiety to get away from those caÑons. There was only one way to find it out now and that was to ride around the boundary of his whole district.

He hurried off to find the other herders for it was a long way around the boundaries and he would have to ride hard if he was to make it before dark. Well, he had the horse to do it. He patted Jed’s arching neck affectionately and the big black fellow pricked up his ears in answer.

When he started on his search for the sheep it took him longer than he expected to find the other bands because they had all left the feeding grounds where he had seen them the day before and were for some unaccountable reason moving southward toward the valley cliffs. He did not have time to try to figure it out or even to enjoy an argument with the herder. He simply gave them terse orders to have their sheep at the chute for recount Monday morning without fail and left them cursing the empty air.

No sooner had Scott notified the last herder than he turned about once more and galloped back to the point where the boundary line of his district met the valley cliffs. From there he followed the line northward. From what he had seen of Baxter he did not think it probable that the sheep had come over from his district, but he rode with eyes on the ground determined to draw a complete circle around those bands and not overlook any possible loophole.

He ate his lunch at the same place where he and Baxter had eaten the day before in the hope that he would meet him again but no one came. The same old question which he thought the supervisor had answered for him the day before was still buzzing ceaselessly through his head. How could those four thousand sheep have been spirited onto his district? He had not come any nearer to the solution when he mounted again and started once more on his long search.

The boundary led him far up to the head of the valley and close to the foot of the peak where the lookout tower was located. A steady up grade on a side hill trail finally brought him out on a ridge trail which he knew from the map led from the lookout station to the ranger’s cabin. He rode rapidly now but still scanned every foot of the trail carefully.

Jed was keeping a careful lookout too and he shied violently at a little patch of brush beside the trail. Scott glanced back to see what had startled him and reined in with a jerk. A little child was curled up in the shade of the bushes. Jed refused to go near it so Scott dismounted to investigate. It was a little girl about three years old and she was sleeping peacefully.

Scott straightened up to see if there was any one belonging to the child in sight. He could see for a mile down either side of the barren ridge but there was not a sign of life. He did not know the child and could not imagine where she had come from. It was at least three miles to the lookout station and about two miles to the ranger’s cabin. He decided to take the child with him and have Mrs. Dawson identify her.

He picked her gingerly up in his arms and started toward Jed. Jed sniffed at her suspiciously and backed away. Scott caught the rein but the horse jerked it indignantly out of his hand and circled out of reach. Jed had never seen a child before and was determined not to carry one until he knew more about it. He let Scott get hold of the rein again, but blocked all his attempts to mount.

Scott looked helplessly down at the child in his arms and found her smiling at him with wondering eyes.

“What is your name, little girl?” Scott asked gently. He was not used to children and was almost as much afraid of her as Jed.

She only gurgled and stretched out her hand to Jed. He sniffed the tiny fingers with a tremendous snort which made the little girl laugh aloud. She was evidently used to both horses and men.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Jed,” Scott pleaded. “Why don’t you take her on like a good fellow?” But Jed was not reconciled and snorted loudly every time the little hand was extended in his direction.

It was rather exasperating to have to walk and carry a baby with a perfectly good horse trailing along behind, but there was nothing else to do, and the strange procession started for Dawson’s. Scott continued to watch for the trail of the sheep and the child amused herself by reaching out to tickle Jed’s nose whenever he came within reach. Jed seemed to rather enjoy the game and was fast getting over his scare. The child had seemed light as a feather when Scott first picked her up, but she soon began to get heavy, and he had to shift her frequently from one arm to the other. He was not sorry when the smoke of Dawson’s cabin showed about a quarter of a mile ahead. All attempts at conversation with the child had proven fruitless. She only smiled and laughed when he spoke to her.

He had just turned a crook in the trail which brought him in sight of the cabin when he saw a woman run wildly from the gate and start toward him. It was Mrs. Dawson half wild with fright. Scott pointed her out to the child who promptly proved her identity.

“Hurry up, muvver,” she called to the already flying figure, “I want to show you something.”

“Oh, darling,” Mrs. Dawson cried as she snatched the child from Scott’s aching arms, “where have you been? Mother has been almost wild about you.”

The child only struggled in her mother’s arms. “Look, muvver, look,” she exclaimed excitedly, and reached once more for Jed’s nose. She squealed with delight at the gentle snort.

Her mother snatched her up again and held her fast. “Oh, Mr. Burton,” she cried, “where did you find her?”

“Asleep under a clump of bushes about two miles down the lookout trail,” Scott explained.

“Two miles! I sent her in to take a nap. I supposed she was asleep, but when I went in the house a little while ago I could not find her. I have run myself half to death looking for her. It is the first time she has ever run away and I was almost frantic.”

“She seems perfectly contented,” Scott replied. “The horse would not let me ride with her and she has been playing with him over my shoulder all the way home.”

“It was awfully kind of you to carry her up and I can never thank you enough.” She seemed rather embarrassed, hesitated a moment as though about to say something, but was silent.

“It was pleasure enough to have found her,” Scott said as he swung into the saddle, “please don’t say anything more about it.”

“Do be careful,” she called after him excitedly.

“Oh, he’s all right now,” Scott laughed over his shoulder, thinking she referred to Jed.

He followed the trail down to the chute. Not a track. Not a single sheep track had he seen since he left the valley cliffs. He had made a complete circuit of his boundaries and was absolutely certain that no sheep had entered his district except at the chute. He rode slowly up the trail to his cabin in the gathering darkness trying to analyze the situation. There seemed to be only one solution and yet he hesitated to accept that without even more definite proof than he already had.

As he approached the cabin he thought he saw some one moving about it and he wondered what Heth would have to say for himself, but there was no one there. He put Jed into the corral, ate his lonely supper and settled down to write up a detailed account of the day’s work in his diary. He became very much absorbed in the task because he felt that it was extremely important under the circumstances.

Suddenly there was the bark of a revolver and a bullet shattered the window pane above his head. The shock dazed him for a second, but the next instant the angry blood boiled through his veins and sent him tearing out of the cabin to find the coward. He searched the surrounding woods without finding any trace or hearing a sound. He was unarmed and it would have been an easy matter for his assailant to have shot him, but there were no more shots. Scott realized that no man in that country could have missed such a target as he must have presented at the lighted window except intentionally.

“Think you can scare me out of the country, do you? Well, you have another guess coming,” and he went doggedly back to the table determined to finish his report.