CHAPTER XVI

A “NORTHER”

When Lawler returned to the Circle L ranchhouse he found that Mary had gone East, to school.  She had left for Willets on the second day following Lawler’s departure; and Mrs. Lawler had already received two letters from her.  Mrs. Lawler watched her son keenly when she told him that Joe Hamlin had brought a letter stating that Hamlin was to be permitted to take a number of mixed cattle from the Circle L—­and that he had driven away one hundred.  She smiled gently when she told Lawler that on the day before her departure Mary had visited Ruth Hamlin—­had spent the whole day with her, and had come home, mysteriously delighted.  Ruth had given up the school.

“Mary loves her, Kane,” said Mrs. Lawler.  And she smiled again when she saw a flush reach Lawler’s face.

Lawler intended to ride to the Hamlin cabin this morning.  It was the third day following his arrival at the ranch; and until now he had had no time for anything except to attend to the many details of work that had been neglected during his absence.

There were still three thousand head of cattle on the Circle L range—­the men had held them in the valley for a time during his absence on the trail, but the grass had grown sparse, and the herd was now grazing on the big plain beyond the northern slope of the valley.

During the time he had been home the outfit had been busy.  The Circle L had a dozen line camps—­little adobe cabins scattered over the range, occupied during the winter by Circle L cowboys whose duty it was to guard the cattle against the aggressions of timber wolves, rustlers, cold, and starvation.

For two days the chuck-wagon had been sent rattling to the various line camps, stocking them with supplies against the winter.  As the weather was threatening the hoodlum wagon had been pressed into service this morning; and all the men, with the exception of the blacksmith—­who was working diligently in his shop near the corral; and two punchers—­Davies and Harris, who had been assigned to Number One camp—­were away with the two wagons.

Davies and Harris had not been able to resist the lure of “town.”  The prosperity that had descended upon them had made them restless, and the night before they had importuned Lawler to permit them to spend “one more night in town before holin’ up for the winter.”

Lawler had consented; and now he was wishing that he hadn’t.  For when he emerged from the ranchhouse this morning he saw a dark cloud bank far in the north, moving southward on the chill wind.

The herd, he knew, was somewhere on the big level beyond the slope of the valley, in the vicinity of Number One line camp.  It was an isolated section, off the trail that led to town—­a section of featureless level near a big break in the valley.  The break opened upon another big level that stretched southward for a hundred miles.  In other days Luke Lawler had lost many cattle here; they had drifted through the break by hundreds, with a blizzard behind them; and had been swallowed by the great waste.