“All finished, Perry. Tomorrow, to be precise. Manuel assures me the whole job will be finished late tomorrow.”
“I’ve seen some fancy spreads in my day,” remarked Storl, “but this sure beats all.”
“Back to business,” said Magnus. “Tell me about this stranger.”
Chapter Four – Challenge in Main Street
For almost a quarter-hour, Kane Magnus and his chief henchman discussed the intrepid and seemingly indestructible stranger who had made three of XL’s toughest employees look like amateur brawlers. It had occurred to Magnus that the stranger might be kin to his rival, one of the illustrious Page brothers, but Storl reassured him on this point.
“He wasn’t a Page. This I can guarantee, because Howie Moss knows a couple of the Pages by sight—and Cass Hillary has seen all four of ’em.”
“If he’s ignorant of the general situation,” mused Magnus, “it might not be too late to win him over.”
“Win him over?” frowned Storl. “You’d want him on our payroll?”
“We can always use an extra gun, Perry,” smiled Magnus. “Guns have built the old XL into the biggest spread in the territory-and guns will keep us big.”
“Moss tells me they were beatin’ up on some fool bar-fly, when this big hombre bought in,” offered Storl.
“Ah, ha!” Magnus chuckled softly. “Our newcomer has an instinct for gallantry, a feeling of sympathy for the oppressed. Well, well, well. All the more reason why I should talk to him. Yes, I think I’d best look him over and size him up, and as quickly as possible.”
“He might’ve quit town by now,” suggested Storl. “He could’ve been a drifter passin’ through—only I figured you’d want to know about him.”
“Let’s not take any chances,” said Magnus. “You take a ride, Perry. Hustle into town and, if this hero is still around, invite him out here for a little conference. I may decide to make him an offer.”
“And—if he won’t talk turkey?” prodded Storl.
“We may have to dispose of him,” frowned Magnus. “It will depend.”
“On what?” demanded Storl.
“Let me put it this way,” drawled Magnus. “If our righteous friend has quit town, I don’t see that we have any problem. If he hangs around, he just might become a damn nuisance. Hero-types are much admired by the ordinary citizens, the no-accounts who—as a rule—haven’t the courage or the imagination to stand up against an outfit like ours. He might even become their leader. And then, after we’ve disposed of him, they’ll think of him as a martyr. He’ll be as big a problem dead as when he was alive! You see what I’m getting at, Perry? If it does become necessary to get rid of him, it must be done quietly. His blood on the main street of San Rafael could be a symbol. The little people, the ordinary folk, can’t be permitted a symbol of that kind, a hero figure, a martyr.”
“Yeah, sure,” nodded Storl. “I savvy what you mean. We put him away, but not with the whole town watchin’.”
“Exactly,” smiled Magnus. He clamped his cigar between his teeth, extended an arm in a gesture of dismissal. “Hurry along now. Ride to town and find out if he’s still there. If he is, invite him out here for a parley—and ride escort on him.”
Some little time before, the ambitious Craig Vinson had ridden out of Trinidad Canyon. He was now riding fast towards the settlement, deliberately ignoring the commands of the XL ramrod. The temptation to challenge and outshoot the formidable stranger was too strong for him to resist.
At the Garfield Emporium, while shaking the storekeeper’s hand and exchanging pleasantries with the smiling Rose, Jim sensed the same unnerving serenity, the same dogged calm, the same complacency that so infuriated the doughty Trish. It was manifest in the attitude of her father, a merchant whose preoccupation with staple provisions, haberdashery and hardware far exceeded any apprehension he might feel about the increasing threat to San Rafael’s freedom, as personified by the power-hungry boss of the XL ranch. It was equally apparent in Rose Garfield’s cheerful talk of the proposed ceremony to be performed next Saturday; her only thought was for the wedding.
He was profoundly impressed by Selma—impressed by her eye-filling physical beauty. As to her intellect, he marveled that a woman so vague could be kin to a girl as mentally alert as Trish, the most vital personality of the Garfield family.
“We are all surely delighted, Mr. Rand, that you’ve consented to stand up with my dear Nathan,” Selma gracefully announced, while the big man briefly held her soft hand. “My, oh my, you and dear Nathan will look so handsome.”
She smiled winsomely and said nothing more. Her mother offered a few more inconsequential remarks about Saturday’s function, after which Jim removed Benito’s grimy paw from the counter—it had been edging towards Pa Garfield’s till—and bade the family a temporary farewell.
The visitors were followed out to the porch by the bright-eyed Trish. While Nathan and the Mex descended to the sidewalk, she put a small but firm hand on Jim’s arm, gazed up at him beseechingly and asked:
“You will help him all you can, won’t you?”
“That’s what I aim to do,” he nodded.
“I’ll sleep a lot easier now,” she confided, “knowing poor Nathan has some hope of staying alive. When I first laid eyes on you...”
“Easy now, Trish.” He grinned broadly as he remonstrated with her. “You don’t have to butter me up. It turns out Nathan and I were in the same outfit, so it’s only natural I’d want to help him.”
“I knew, right at the start, that you’re a man a woman can count on,” she eagerly asserted.
“Woman?” he prodded. “Meaning your sister and mother?”
“And me!” she asserted. “I’ll thank you, Jim Rand, not to treat me as if I were a—a mere child!”
“Take it easy,” he begged. “I can stand locking horns with roughnecks and gunslingers, but I never did learn how to handle a firebrand your age and size.”
“You’re making fun of me!” she accused.
“No.” He rested a large hand on her shoulder for just a moment. “Better you should say Pm trying to remind you of something.”
“You mean the difference in our ages?” she brightly challenged. “Why—that’s nothing! I’ve always had a soft spot for older men—the more mature kind.”
“This mature man,” he growled, “is old enough to have sired you—and don’t you forget it.”
“Selma is younger than Nathan,” she pointed out. “Walking that center aisle on Saturday,” he countered, “they won’t look like father and daughter. But I can’t say the same for us, Miss Wedding Bells Garfield.”
“You don’t need to be so all-fired nervous about it,” she chided. “It’s not as though I’d up and proposed to you already...”
“Holy suffering snakes...” He scowled in exasperation.
“I was fixing to wait till after Selma and Nathan are wed,” she finished.
“That’ll be all the reason I need,” he declared, “for saddling up and quitting town in one heck of a hurry.” With that, he doffed his Stetson, began walking briskly so that Nathan and the Mex had to hustle to keep pace with him.
“Why the hurry, Jim?” Nathan queried.
“No hurry, Nate,” Jim answered gingerly. “Just anxious to find a hotel and get cleaned up, that’s all. Where do you suggest, Nate?”
“Guess the Drury House’s good as any. Right handy to my place, too—just across the street.”
“Sounds fine,” nodded Jim. “And, later on I’ll buy you some supper and a drink at Willy Shadlow’s.”
“Right,” smiled Nathan. “Be seeing you, Jim. And thanks again. It’s a big thing I’m asking of you, but...”
“That’s okay,” said Jim. “I’d do it for a stranger, so I’ll certainly do it for an old cavalryman.”
At this moment, the tyro gunslinger was ambling his pinto along the main stem, staring southward to the area between the Drury House and the carpenter’s shop. Rarely had he seen
a man as tall and as hefty as the big stranger, so he assumed Jim to be the one he sought. But, to be sure, he queried the sloppily-attired man lounging on the boardwalk outside the High Card. This was Dr. Oscar Frome, a medico well known to San Rafael’s low life and especially to the XL element, but never popular with the law-abiders. In this town, the decent folk preferred to send for the solemn, hard-working Lucien Hayward. It seemed Frome, a pudgy, cigar-chewing forty-year-old, could always be found at the High Card, rather than at his surgery.
“That him, Doc?” Vinson demanded. “That the stranger who roughed up Moss and his pards?”
“He’s the one,” nodded Frome. “I didn’t see it happen, but Rand has been pointed out to me. A lot of man, kid.”
“He’s about to get his come-uppance,” grinned Vinson.
“Who’s about to get his come-uppance?” challenged Frome.
Vinson scowled at him.
“You don’t think I can take this big hombre?”
“I could be wrong,” shrugged the medico, “but it’s my hunch you’d need a lot more experience, a lot more gun-savvy, before you could take a man like Rand.” He grinned blandly, jerked a thumb towards the batwings of the High Card. “I’ll be waiting for you in the bar—when you need patching.”
Vinson spurred his pinto to a run. By now, Jim and the Mex had parted company with Nathan and were climbing the steps to the hotel porch. At the hitch rail of the building nearest the hotel, Vinson reined up. He swung down, tethered his mount and hurried to the hotel entrance. The big man and the Mex were in conversation with the proprietor, when the youthful gunman came barging in. Harshly he addressed the portly Ansell Drury.
“You got no room for ’em, Drury!”
The hotelkeeper threw the young hardcase a sidelong glance. Jim had marked him as a placid, easy-going fifty-year-old. He appeared more embarrassed than frightened at this moment.
“What was that?” he asked.
“You heard me!” grated Vinson. “I said you got no room for these two. Send ’em someplace else.” And now he grinned derisively at the newcomers. “Some two-bit doss-house is good enough for the likes of them.”
“Now see here, young feller...” began Drury.
“You cravin’ trouble from XL, Drury?” challenged Vinson.
Drury hesitated. He looked worried now, and Jim was sorry for him—sorry for Drury and undismayed by the tactics of the gunhawk. The low-slung, pearl-butted Colts hadn’t intimidated him—not even slightly. The air of bravado, the insolence were contrived to force him into a shootout; this was all too obvious. And, while he was reluctant to engage in gunplay with this smooth-faced hell-raiser, he wasn’t about to retreat.
Drury was still hesitating, when Vinson scathingly told Jim, “You’d best check m someplace else.”
“Oh?” Jim propped an elbow on the counter, eyed him impassively.
“Is that what I’d best do?”
“Or quit town,” nodded Vinson. “Yeah. That would be your smartest move, big man, because a lot of rough hombres are gettin’ plenty mad at you. Like me, for instance. Those three fellers you beat up—they just happen to be friends of mine.”
Jim smiled bleakly. “I wouldn’t brag about such friends, if I were you,” he drawled.
Vinson moved towards him, his jaw jutting aggressively. “Somebody ought to even the score for Moss and the others,” he breathed, “so I reckon it’s up to me.”
“Any excuse will do, huh, boy?” mused Jim.
“Don’t call be ‘boy’!” snarled Vinson.
“Hold on now...” began Drury.
But the damage was done. In a quick, flashing movement, Vinson swung a backhander to Jim’s face. The blow stung the giant, but caused him more regret than anger. Tough, case-hardened, a veteran of many conflicts, he saw a touch of the ludicrous, the pathetic, in his being braced by this flashy amateur. Maybe that same thought had occurred to Drury, because his round face was as sad as Jim’s.
Benito discreetly edged away, as the gunslick gasped out his challenge. On such occasions, this was the little Mex’s routine reaction.
“And now you’ll draw on me, big man! You’ll draw—unless you’re a yellow-belly!”
Vinson took a step backward, and then another, the better to get into position for a shootout at close quarters. Probably he intended making his play from the region of the entrance to the lobby, assuming Jim would remain standing by the reception desk. But it didn’t work out that way. When Vinson took two paces backward, Jim took two forward, moving with him. He was grinning again, and his grin was downright ugly. Vinson called him a name and back stepped again, this time more hurriedly.
“Stay put, damn you!” he snarled. “We can’t shoot at each other this close!”
“You’re a boy,” said Jim. His large hand took possession of the gunslick’s shirtfront, bunching it, hauling the tails away from the pants-belt. “A hairless, sass-mouthed boy playing at a man’s game.”
“Let go of me!” panted Vinson. “You’re a yellow-belly, Rand! You haven’t got the guts to...!”
“Don’t talk to me about guts!”
Jim finally lost his temper. He had forced Vinson all the way to the entrance. Now, roughly, he spun the gun-slick around, seized him by collar of shirt and slack of pants and, with one lunging movement, hurled him out. Passers-by were treated to the startling sight of Craig Vinson hurtling across the porch as though propelled by a gale-force wind; he seemed to take flight when he reached the edge of the porch. Unable to stop himself, he pitched down the steps and into the dust.
Jim came after him, briskly descending the steps, then bending over him and, in a couple of deft movements, whisking the fancy Colts from their holsters. Vinson rolled over and rose to his knees, cursing m impotent rage, as the big man deprived him of his prized weapons. Jim flung them in opposite directions, to the great glee of the watching townsfolk. One ended its flight on the roof of a building on the other side of Main Street. The other sped in a perfect arc and thudded to ground a full thirty yards farther along the thoroughfare.
“Now get on your horse,” Jim ordered the gunslick, “and out of my sight.”
He was more than ready, when Vinson lurched to his feet with his right hand delving inside his pants for the derringer. By the time that tiny weapon was in sight, Vinson’s wrist was gripped in Jim’s left hand. He bent it mercilessly. Vinson wailed in anguish; his smooth face turning pasty white, as the derringer dropped. And Jim’s method of disposing of the sneak-gun was characteristic; he didn’t deign to pick it up and throw it. He rendered it useless by grinding it under the heel of his boot. Vinson made a sobbing sound, lashed out at him with his free hand, but without effect. When Jim turned him round and landed a kick to his backside, he was already a defeated gunhawk; his right arm was broken.
That kick sent him reeling forward for five yards. His humiliation was deep and unbearable now, because the crowd had increased and it seemed there were no XL men on hand to lend him aid. Crazed with rage and frustration, he tripped and fell on face and hands, struggled up again and, sighting one of his Colts in the dust ahead, began stumbling towards it. He fell again, a short distance from that gleaming, nickel-plated weapon. On hands and knees he crawled towards it, and Jim permitted him to get within inches of it before he made his play.
As the big man drew his long-barreled .45, he called a warning—not to Vinson, but to the locals.
“Everybody stand clear.”
They remained firmly rooted to the boardwalks, watching. The range was long for accurate pistol shooting, but sun was dancing off the shining target, increasing his chances of hitting it with a bullet before Vinson’s hand could reach it. He did exactly that. He held his Colt with the barrel resting on his raised left forearm; he aimed with care, squeezed trigger and, simultaneous with the roar of the report, Vinson’s gun seemed to leap out of the dust and spin away from his trembling hand.
The would-be killer gave vent to an anguished groan. Curtly, Jim offer
ed him a few words of advice.
“Better not try to use that iron till it’s been checked by a gunsmith.” He bolstered his own Colt. “Now go find yourself a doctor and, from now on, stay out of my sight.”
Abruptly, he turned and re-climbed the steps to the hotel porch, where Drury and the Mex awaited him. Vinson’s face was contorted, as he struggled up and began trudging along the street towards the High Card. He needed strong liquor to boost his pulverized ego. More than that, he needed the professional attention of Doc Frome.
When Perry Storl arrived some twenty-five minutes later, he made straight for the High Card. It was his intention to buy a drink before seeking the man who had so spectacularly fought and defeated three of the XL rowdies; that drink had to be a double-shot. He was, ill-prepared for the sight that confronted him when he entered the saloon—Craig Vinson sitting slumped at a corner table, whimpering like a hurt child, while the cigar-chewing Frome unhurriedly rigged splints for his useless right arm. Fred Usher poured the double-shot for Storl and offered a brief report of the incident; he had watched most of it from the boardwalk outside the High Card.
“…hurled one of the kid’s guns up to a roof, threw the other along the street,” he finished. “When the kid tried to use his hideaway pistol, Rand broke his arm. Yeah—this sure was a bad day for young Craig.”
“It hasn’t ended yet!” said Storl, between clenched teeth.
He swigged his drink, turned and strode to the corner. Leaning over the now-demoralized braggart, he gave him an order.
“Get out of town just as soon as Doc has rigged that splint! You’re fired as of right now!”
“I wanted to take that big...” began Vinson.
“You’re no use to XL if you can’t follow orders,” scowled the ramrod. “I told you to stay out of town, but you just had to play a lone hand, didn’t you? And now look at you.” He straightened up. “Till sundown, kid. That’s all the time you have. If you’re still in the territory then, you’ll be a target for every gun on the XL payroll—and that’s a promise.”
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