by Bliss Lomax
Eudora gazed at him incredulously. “I hadn’t expected to hear you say that. I’m green; I know very little about your Western ways. But I’m not so innocent, Mr. Roberts, as to think there can be any compromise between you and such men as Jennings. It’s your job to hunt them down. Their answer will be to kill you whenever they get the opportunity. And yet, you don’t seem to have any feeling about it. It’s hard for me to understand.”
“My quarrel with them isn’t personal,” Clay said. “They happen to be on one side of the fence and I’m on the other. As for the rest of it, I prefer not to think about it. I know my luck may run out on me some day. It’s the chance I’ve got to take.” His momentary seriousness faded. “I won’t keep you any longer,” he told her. “I’d appreciate it if you’d permit me to stop by again some other afternoon.”
“Of course—if you happen to be passing,” Eudora said casually, not wanting him to suspect her eagerness to see him again. “I hope you won’t have any great difficulty with Mr. Caney. He’s a violent-tempered man.”
“So I understand,” Clay remarked lightly. He swung up into the saddle with effortless grace. “Do you ride at all, Miss Stoddard?”
“No, I’m a real tenderfoot.”
“You wouldn’t have any trouble with a gentle horse. It’s beautiful up on the Ledge, riding through the timber. I hope we can arrange it sometime—if you think you’d enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I would,” she murmured with complete honesty.
Something ran between them as they stood there, and her eyes were suddenly warm and appealing. Clay nodded silently, and lifting his hat in farewell, rode away, tall and straight.
Eudora hurried inside, her heart singing. When she glanced up the road, he was just a bobbing figure in the distance.
Somehow, the school, her difficulties with Verne and Jeb, Webb’s dire predictions and the ever-present threat of conflict of one sort or another no longer seemed as important as they had. When she started home, her step was light and there was a smile on her lips.
I hope he won’t stay away too long, she mused. It’s no great distance from the Santa Bonita to Willow Creek.
Chapter Nine
PLAIN POISON
ROBERTS RODE into the Caney yard several minutes after Jeb reached home with Cissy and young Lorenzo. Shad and his wife had rushed out of the house and were standing a few feet from the kitchen door, with the children gathered around them. Jeb’s battered face, and the tale he had told had thrown Shad into a convulsive rage. When he saw Clay coming, he slammed Lorenzo and Cissy out of the way and darted into the kitchen. He popped out a minute later, clutching his rifle.
“Hand over the boy’s gun, and you turn around then and git outer here!” he roared.
Clay pulled up and regarded him calmly.
“You better hear what I have to say,” he advised. “It may save you some trouble. Your boy put up a good fight; but he got licked, which isn’t to his discredit; that Nichols kid is too big for him.”
“Jeb would’ve settled his hash if you’d kept out of it!” Shad raged. “Why in hell did you have to stick yore nose in?”
“I didn’t till this lad of yours knew he was beaten and ran for his rifle. Fortunately, I’d picked it up quite some time before the fight started. You seem to be boiling over because I didn’t give him a chance to use his gun. That’s your business, Caney, but he’s pretty young to be turning killer.”
“I ain’t interested in yore opinions!” Shad half raised his rifle.. His rocky face was cruel and murderous. “Yank his rifle out of yore saddle boot and pass it over to him, as I told you!”
“I’ll get around to that after I’ve had my say,” Clay returned, watching him closely. “You’re making a mistake to threaten me. I don’t scare easily, for one thing; and for another, I’m wearing a forty-four in a shoulder holster and I’m reasonably fast with it. Don’t make me reach for it, Caney; I never bluff with a gun.”
Though Shad was beside himself in his black rage, the warning was not wasted on him. “Wag yore jaw and git done with it!” he snarled, lowering his gun a few inches.
Clay nodded. “It won’t take me long. I don’t know whether this boy acted with your knowledge or not, but he tried to beef one of Ringe’s steers yesterday. He was all set to have a second try this morning, when he changed his mind. I was watching him. I figure he saw me.”
“That’s a lie!” Shad burst out viciously. “If he’s out shootin’ rabbits and one of Ringe’s critters gits in the way, that ain’t the boy’s fault!”
“It’ll be your fault if it happens again.” Clay’s tone was hard and flat. “Bushwhacking stock is a game both sides can play. You’ll find it expensive. That’s all I have to say.”
He pulled Jeb’s rifle out from under his leg and tossed it to the boy.
“High and mighty, ain’t you?” Shad’s eyes blazed their hatred. “Yo’re beginnin’ to show yore hand, Roberts, ridin’ in here and tryin’ to push me around! Some of the damned idiots who’ve been listenin’ to the Humes will begin to git their eyes open, now that you’ve let the cat out of the bag!”
Clay considered it an empty threat and was singularly undisturbed.
“Go ahead if you think this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to work up some feeling against me,” he invited. “Maybe Frank Dufors will be interested. I understand he runs me down, behind my back, whenever he can get anyone to listen. I don’t believe you’ll have any luck in other directions; you cut your own throat when you turned sheepman.”
“It’s my business if I want to run sheep!”
“Sure!” Clay agreed. “But it’s your funeral, not mine, Caney.”
He swung his horse and rode away without a backward glance, though he realized that Shad might find the temptation to pick him off too strong to resist. Experience had taught him, however, that in such circumstances a bold front was the best insurance.
The half-expected blast did not come, and in a few minutes he was out of range.
He’d be dangerous if he had any backing, he thought, his mouth losing its tightness.
There wasn’t any question in Clay’s mind but what Jeb had been acting on his father’s instructions when he tried to kill one of Big John’s steers. The purpose of it wasn’t difficult to understand. Usually, in such cases, there was immediate reprisal by the injured party. Obviously, he felt, that was what Shad had counted on, even though it meant seeing the Diamond R crew sweeping across his line and destroying some of his stock. He could move his cows out of danger and let the sheep take it. Sheep were sheep, and though a score were slaughtered, he would have created a situation that could be exploited.
“His story would have been that the boy shot the steer by accident,” Clay said to himself. “I don’t know how far he’d have got with it but it’s just as well Ringe let me handle it my way.”
The scheme had misfired so badly that he refused to believe Caney would have another try at it. He was of an entirely different opinion regarding Jeb’s quarrel with Verne Nichols.
“That trouble is a long way from being ended,” he predicted. “With the encouragement they’ll get at home those kids will be sure to go at each other again, and it may not be with their fists.”
He had heard enough about the Caney-Nichols feud to convince him it would reach a bloody finale some day. The little he had seen of Verne and Jeb was more than enough to prove they had inherited all of its partisan hatred and were anxious to demonstrate how well they had learned their lesson.
For Webb Nichols and Shad Caney to feed youngsters of that age into their bitter, unreasoning feud was as reprehensible in Clay’s eyes as in Eudora’s. He realized there was little or nothing he could do about it; that it was not his concern. And yet, on her account, he was concerned.
Those brats will make trouble for her, was his sober thought. She’ll never be able to hold them in line, no matter what she does.
He knew she’d try; that she had courage and a mind of h
er own. The course she had taken when Steve Jennings walked in on her was proof enough of that.
A smile played over Clay’s mouth as he imagined her surprise when she discovered the identity of her visitor. To have her confirm his surmise that she had helped Steve to elude capture meant little to him. He knew John Ringe wouldn’t feel that way if he ever learned about it. Undoubtedly, Eudora would lose the school; Big John had suffered too many losses at Jennings’s hands to be satisfied with anything less.
Roberts put the thought away from him; Ringe would never hear anything from his lips. Heading up the basin for the Diamond R and the Santa Bonita, he indulged in some pleasant daydreaming. He had been many places and known many women but had always remained fancy-free. The prospect of settling down somewhere and trading the freedom of his foot-loose existence for the responsibilities of a family man had never appealed to him. He had many reasons for feeling as he did; the dangerous nature of his calling was always a handy and potent argument. But in some obscure way the music of Eudora’s voice and the magic in her blue eyes had put them in retreat.
“She’s different,” he admitted. “I don’t know what a man could look for in a woman that he wouldn’t find in her. But I’ve been a fiddle-foot too long to think of turning serious now; if I ever get around to hanging up my hat and calling some place home, it won’t be Magdalena Basin.”
Though he knew how to assert himself when occasion demanded, he was essentially a humble man, and not for a moment did he consider himself a great catch.
Not for her nor for anyone else, for that matter, was his disparaging thought. She hasn’t been waiting for me to come along and charm her. Someone from Ohio will be showing up in Mescal one of these days and will carry her off. The sooner I put her out of my mind, the better.
That attitude was not reflected in his resolve to arrange his riding so that he might see Eudora again soon. Some afternoon, after school had been dismissed, he’d drop in on her and pretend he just happened to be in the neighborhood on business; he didn’t want her to get the idea he was running after her.
The days were getting long; the sagebrush was losing its greenish spring tinge. Now, wherever a rider moved over the road, his horse kicked up a tell tale cloud of dust. It reminded Clay that May was slipping away.
He had the sun at his back all the way to the Santa Bonita. Several times he saw little moving balls of dust that indicated horsemen, moving in the direction of the Diamond R. He thought nothing of it until he noticed several more. The speed at which they traveled suddenly began to interest him. He considered it unlikely that any of Big John’s riders would be pushing their broncs in that fashion, after a hard day’s work. Coconino Williams, Pat Redman, and other cowmen often rode over to see Ringe in the early evening, but they hardly would be in such haste unless something were amiss. The thought was enough to prompt him to use the spurs.
When he rode into the yard, he found half a dozen horses tethered at the rail outside Ringe’s office. He recognized old Coconino’s gray dun and Pat Redman’s favorite claybank gelding. Before he could swing down, Big John stepped out on the gallery and beckoned to him urgently.
In addition to Coconino and Redman, Clay found Ed Stack and his foreman, Cape Longyear, and two other members of Association gathered in the office with Big John. A glance at their faces told him there was something decidedly wrong. An angry outburst from Stark greeted him.
“You’ve been busy on the wrong side of the basin, Roberts! Jennings got into me sometime today, and good! Do you know what we call the Painted Meadows?”
“Yes—”
“That’s where he hit me! Cape, here, rode up there this afternoon and had a look around!”
“I don’t know how much they got away with,” Longyear spoke up. “Fifty, sixty head, at least.”
“And all graded stuff!” Stack stormed. “We’re paying you a fancy figure for your services, and this is what I get!” He glared around the office at the others. “I went along with you against my better judgment in hiring this man! I told you hiring a stock-detective wouldn’t help us a bit!”
“Yeh, you didn’t want to do nuthin’, Ed,” old Coconino reminded him caustically. “You was all for meetin’ the nesters halfway and lettin’ the rustlin’ take care of itself. Seems that when you git burned yo’re as warlike as the rest of us.”
“What makes you so sure it was Jennings?” Clay asked Stack.
“He left a message for me! I’ve got a corral up there. He burned it on the corral gate: Thanks, S. J.; that’s what it says! The dirty skunk took the time to heat a running iron; that’s how sure he was of himself!”
“I never heard of him havin’ more’n three or four men in his gang,” said Longyear. “He had more’n that with him today. Judgin’ by the hosstracks, I’d say six, mebbe seven.”
“Did you pick up their trail?” Clay inquired, sober but unexcited.
“Shore! I didn’t follow it no distance; I figgered it was up to me to git back to the house. It was yore idea that if anybody got touched up that word was to be spread in a hurry so we could block off the Wash and the short cuts up to the Ledge.”
“That’s been attended to,” Big John told Clay. “Between us, we’ve sent a dozen men up there. Jennings won’t find it easy to get through anywhere from the hot springs down to the Red Cliffs.”
“Which way was he heading?” Clay asked Stack’s foreman.
“In the general direction of the Red Cliffs.”
Clay found a chair and sat down. “This may not be as bad as it seems,” he declared quietly. “When Steve finds he can’t get through, he’ll swing around the cliffs and come up on the eastern slope of the Desolations.”
“There won’t be nuthin’ else he can do!” Coconino attested stoutly. “He can drift one hell of a ways down through the bluffs; but the river will turn him back in the end! He can’t git acrost the Colorado!”
“And that’s tough country for cattle,” Pat Redman observed. “No water.”
“I know all that!” Stack countered. “Jennings is no fool! What’s to stop him from swinging west and heading for the Nevada line?”
“The best reason in the world,” Clay answered. “The market for rustled steers doesn’t lie in that direction. Your cows aren’t worth anything to Steve unless he can turn them into cash. That means the San Juan country, over in Utah. It’s as simple as that.”
There was a nodding of heads around the office. It further infuriated Stack. He leveled his eyes on Roberts. “I want something more than talk from you; I’m helping to foot the Association’s bills! I want to know what you propose to do!”
“I’m going after Steve. That’s my job. I didn’t think there was any question about it.”
“Of course not!” Big John growled, out of patience with Stack. “You don’t intend going alone, Clay?”
“No, I’ll take Cleve Johnson with me if you’re agreeable to it.”
“Certainly,” Ringe said. “He knows those wastelands better’n most of us.”
“It may take me a day or two to locate that bunch,” Clay continued. “I’ll send Cleve back as soon as I do. He’ll tell you where to find me. When you come, come strong; and carry grub and water with you so you can stay out a few days. In the meantime, sit tight and give me a chance,” he continued, speaking particularly to Stack. “I never gave the Association any reason to understand if it hired me there’d be no more rustling. If you want to call things off, this is the time to say so.”
“We’re satisfied a hundred percent with what you’ve done!” old Coconino whipped out. “I don’t blame you fer gittin’ up on yore ear, havin’ to listen to the line of talk Ed’s been givin’ you. What in hell’s wrong with you, Ed? You ain’t lost those critters yet; and if you do, it won’t be the first time Jennings has had you over a barrel! What’d you expect Roberts to do, camp up there in the Painted Meadows?”
The approving response it drew from Big John and the others took some of the belligerence ou
t of Stack. “I’m sorry if I blew up a little,” he muttered. “I only hope Roberts and the rest of you are right about Jennings driving up the eastern slope of the Desolations when he finds the way blocked on this side. If you are, maybe there’s a chance of getting my stock back. But it won’t be as easy as some of you seem to think; Jennings has got a tough bunch riding with him. They’ll put up one hell of a fight if we get them cornered. How soon are you goin’ to pull away, Roberts?”
“I’ll give myself half an hour,” Clay told him, getting to his feet. “I’ll look up Cleve and start getting organized, unless someone’s got something more to say.”
“Better have your supper before you pull out,” Ringe advised. “I’ll take care of things at this end. We’ll be ready to ride as soon as we hear from you.”
The meeting broke up and Coconino and the others rode home. Big John found Clay and Cleve Johnson in the dining-room. He sat down with them.
“Did you find out anything in the basin?” he asked.
“It was that Caney kid, John—the big one. I had it out with him and his old man. Caney’s as dangerous as a rattler, but I don’t believe you’ll have any more trouble with him for the present.”
As he ate, he gave Ringe an account of what had occurred. The big man expressed his satisfaction.
“He had the trap baited for us all right. I’m glad he knows we’re wise to his game. I figure Shad is smart enough to know he won’t have a leg to stand on if he starts beefing my cows now.”
The quarrel between Verne and Jeb was of little consequence to John Ringe. Clay was unwilling to have it that way. “You’re a member of the school board; you’ll have to share part of the responsibility for whatever happens there,” he declared pointedly.
Big John straightened up, puzzled. “Good Lord, what do you think is going to happen, that you talk that way? Another fight between those boys? They’ve been fighting for years.”
“Did a gun ever figure in their arguments?”