British Columbia -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction; Sawmills -- Fiction
In two hours he was at the ranche, and found it as the others had
found it, when Kamloops Charlie had come to tell them that Cultus had
killed Mary. The door was open, the table was overturned, there was
broken crockery on the floor. There was a drying pool of blood by
the open fire which burnt logs of pine. Scattered gouts of blood
were all about the room: some were dried in ashes. The dreadful
shovel stood in the corner by the fire. Pete took it up and looked
at it. Many times he had heard old Cultus say he would give Mary the
edge. Now he had given her the edge. Pete's blood boiled in him: he
smashed the window with the shovel. Then he heard a bellow from the
corral in which some of the best of Cultus' small herd were kept up,
some of them to fatten for the railroad.
"I do that," said Pete. In the stable he found Mary's horse, a good
old grey, but past quick work save in the hands of a brute, or a
Mexican or an Indian. Pete put the saddle on him and cinched up the
girths. He found a short stock whip which he had often used. He led
the horse out, and going to the corrals, threw down the rails. Going
inside he drove thirty cows and steers out. On the hills at the back
of the ranche about fifty more were grazing. Pete got on the horse
and cracked his whip. He drove them all together up the hills and
into a narrow valley. It led towards a deep cañon. There was little
water in the creek at the bottom, but there were many rocks. From
one place it was a drop of more than two hundred feet to the rocks,
and a straight drop too. The mountain path led to it and then turned
almost at right angles. The valley in which the cattle ran grew
narrow and narrower and Pete urged them on.
Cultus loved his steers and had half-a-dozen cows that he milked
himself when they had calves. Whenever Pete came near one of these
he cut at her with the whip, and urged them all to a trot. They were
lowing, and presently some of the rowdier steers bellowed. They
broke at last into a gallop, and then Pete shrieked at them like a
fiend and raced the old pony hard.
"I fix 'em," said Pete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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