by Bliss Lomax
“I don’t know that it did—”
“Well, that was the case this afternoon. That Nichols kid knows Caney would have killed him but for me. The idea will grow on him that he better do something about it. If I’ve got the situation sized up correctly, those two young bucks will be throwing lead at each other one of these afternoons.”
“And what would you have me do about it?” The big man leaned back in his chair and shook his head disgustedly. “I’m not responsible for what those boys do! They’ve been raised wrong! It’s up to Shad Caney and Webb Nichols to keep them from going hog wild!”
“That’s all true,” Clay admitted. “I wasn’t suggesting that you could do anything about the two boys. I’m more concerned about what may happen to the younger children and Miss Stoddard if those fools start a gun fight near the school. She’ll try to stop it. You know the chance she’ll be taking, walking into that sort of shooting.”
“That’s something I hadn’t considered,” the boss of the Santa Bonita acknowledged, forgetting his umbrage. “I don’t want to expose her or the little ones to that sort of danger. The best thing to do would be to close the school for the rest of the term and send Miss Stoddard into Mescal. But, hell’s fire! Neither Caney nor Nichols would ever agree to that. The only thing I can do is to urge the girl to go into town. Without a teacher, the school will have to close.”
“She won’t go, John. She’ll consider it her duty to stick it out. You know her a lot better than I do, but I didn’t have to talk to her five minutes to see she’s got plenty of iron in her. There’s something you can do though. It won’t come easy to you.”
“I’m listening,” Ringe said cautiously.
“See Harvey Hume in the morning and ask him to keep an eye on her.”
Big John rejected the suggestion with a violent shaking of his head. “I can’t ask a favor of him!” he declared flatly.
“You can if you’re big enough,” Clay insisted. “You could afford to break the ice and meet him on even terms. It might prove to be the wisest move you ever made.”
Ringe mulled it over soberly. “You’re going to be away for a few days and so am I,” he said, finally. “If I’m going to speak to anyone it will have to be Hume; there’s no one else down there I’d even consider approaching. There’s things about that youngster I admire. I’ve got to admit it.”
Clay kept his eyes on his plate and smiled to himself. “What time tomorrow will you see him?”
“I’ll make it early in the morning,” was the gruff response. Ringe glanced across the table at Cleve. “Where are you heading for first?”
“The San Carlos Swell. They’ll have to cross it. Clay agrees that we couldn’t find a better place to cut their trail.”
Big John nodded. “I don’t have to tell you boys to be careful. No matter how things break, I don’t want you to attempt to close in on that bunch till help reaches you.”
“We won’t make that mistake,” Clay assured him.
“Well, I hope not!” the big man growled. “Jennings will have his pals Utah Sims and Slick Carroll siding him, and they’re just plain poison! I’ll get out of here now so you can finish your supper. If we don’t hear from you by tomorrow or the next day, we’ll know you’ve run into trouble, and we’ll start looking for you.”
He was on the gallery steps when Clay and Cleve jogged out of the yard twenty minutes later. He raised his hand in a farewell salute.
“That advice he was givin’ us was meant mostly for me,” Cleve remarked, with a grin. “The old man remembers that Jennings put a slug into me a couple of years ago that had me flat on my back for two months. Reckon he figures I might be a little overanxious about squarin’ things.”
“If you feel anything like that coming on, you want to change your mind about it,” Clay said grimly. “It was good advice he gave us, and I’m following it whether he meant it for me or not.”
Chapter Ten
THE FIGHT AT SKULL TANKS
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN Roberts and Cleve stood on the crest of the barren San Carlos Swell. They picketed their horses and curled up in their blankets until sunup.
Daylight revealed a world that bore no resemblance to Magdalena Basin. Here was no living green thing, not even dwarf sage. As far as the eye could see there was only sand and grotesquely carved sandstone peaks. Along the swell, the rimrock was decayed and tottering. It was a world that was old and lifeless. The wind had been at work here for centuries, eroding and sculpturing a fantastic land. To the south, it dropped away in a series of gigantic stairs toward the Colorado.
Clay gazed at it with narrowed eyes. In all that vast expanse, lost in the far distance in a blue haze, nothing moved. The dawn breeze was beginning to kick up little dust devils that danced in the thin, shimmering air.
“Looks tough, eh?” Cleve inquired, catching the expression on Clay’s face. The latter nodded.
“Steve must know this country, to think he can run a bunch of cattle through it. A stranger wouldn’t have a chance.”
They ate a cold snack before they began moving along the swell. Half a hundred cows would kick up enough dust to pollute the air for some time after they passed. Clay caught Cleve sniffing the air for sign of it.
“No use, Cleve,” he said. “They must be hours ahead of us.”
They followed the swell for four miles or more. In such country as this it was impossible to move a herd without leaving a trail a child could follow. The sun was over an hour high when Clay found it.
“From what I see, Steve and his pals wasn’t hazin’ that stuff along very fast when they passed here,” Cleve observed.
“No, taking their time all right,” Clay agreed. “It could mean they know they’ve got a long piece to go without water and just letting the stock drift along is the only way to get it through.”
They came down from the swell and followed the trail until noon. It was still heading south. It was evident to Clay by now that Jennings wasn’t going to attempt to cross Hurricane Ledge.
“I guess the old fox figured I’d have it blocked off,” he said. “The only reason he’s dropping down this far is so he can swing wide around the Ledge and hit into the lower hills of the Desolations.”
“I’d stake my life on it,” Cleve declared. “He’s goin’ to be lookin’ for water and he knows that’s where he’ll find it.”
He got down from the saddle and drew a map in the sand. On it he traced the rustlers’ course, as he saw it.
“You’ll find some springs here,” he said, making an indentation with his finger. “The only name I ever heard for them is Skull Tanks. It’s noon now. By this time tomorrow Jennings will be showin’ up there. Do you figure you can find the tanks?”
“Can you give me a landmark I can go by?”
“Sure! Hat Butte! It looks like one of those old stovepipe hats. You can’t miss it. Stay to the north a mile or two. If I go now I can be on the Santa Bonita before midnight. The boss said he’d be ready to ride whenever I got in. If he is, we can join up with you just about noon tomorrow.”
“All right,” Clay told him. “Get started; we won’t lose any time.”
He turned east after they parted. Save for an occasional beady-eyed lizard, sunning iself on a rock outcropping, he saw no living thing through the afternoon. When evening came on, and he had the sun behind him, he caught his first glimpse of Hat Butte. Its outline was unmistakable.
His mind was free of anxiety as far as rustlers were concerned. He had every reason to believe Steve Jennings would find a surprise waiting for him at Skull Tanks that would prove his undoing.
If we snag him, my job here will be about finished, he mused.
It turned his thoughts to Eudora; when his job was done, he’d be moving on. The prospect, for some reason, was not pleasant to contemplate. He promised himself he would see her as soon as he got back to the ranch. It might be two or three days from now. She’d hardly know what was keeping him away. He could explain that to her; he didn�
��t want her to think he’d forgotten her.
He slept that night in a sandy depression north of Hat Butte. In the morning he would have risked a fire and boiled some coffee had he been able to find anything that would burn.
Locating Skull Tanks was a simple matter, for even at a distance of half a mile he could see a fringe of green around a limestone outcropping. He had water in his canteen, so he did not go up the tanks. Several hundred yards north of them, a crumbling ridge rose above the plain. He placed his horse where it was not likely to be seen and climbed the ridge on foot. It gave him a view of the broken country to the south. From any one of half a dozen low ridges and tangled piles of malpais a man could safely reconnoiter Skull Tanks. He considered it a certainty that Steve would look things over carefully before he drove in.
The morning was still young but Clay asked himself what he would do if they appeared before help reached him. He had to admit it would be suicide, facing them alone, one man against seven. He shook his head over it.
That’s borrowing trouble, was his scolding thought. I’ve always found John Ringe as good as his word; he’ll be here in time.
But the morning wore away without bringing either friend or foe. As he lay stretched out on the ridge, the sun hot on the back of his neck, he asked himself repeatedly if anything could have happened to Cleve Johnson to prevent him from reaching the Santa Bonita. A horse could break a leg; even an experienced rider could be thrown. These and a dozen other possible mishaps occurred to him. The position of the sun told him it was noon.
“Nothing for me to do but sweat it out,” he muttered grimly.
He stubbornly refused to believe he was waiting in the wrong place for Steve and his men; water they must have, and it would draw them to Skull Tanks as surely as a magnet attracts steel.
He scanned the horizon to the south for sight of a moving cloud of dust. Several times in the following thirty minutes he was sure he saw one. It hung in the air briefly and then disappeared. He realized the wind was stiff enough to account for that.
Scanning a ridge off to his right a quarter of a mile, he thought he saw something move. A few moments later a horseman stood outlined against the sky. The rider stood up in his stirrups and waved his arm in a signal for someone to come ahead. He rode down the far side of the ridge then. Ten minutes later Clay saw the bunched cattle moving toward him. He counted the men with them and they totaled seven.
“I’ll have to let them come in,” he decided. “If they spot me, I’ll hold them off as long as I can; if they don’t I’ll let them water and then tag along after them.”
The cows smelled the water and began to run. Suddenly, however, Jennings and his men whipped ahead of them and turned them back and sought the protection of a ridge.
Clay instantly surmised the reason. Ringe and his party were here at last! A few minutes later they swung into view—Ringe, Pat Redman, old Coconino, Ed Stack, their foremen, and several others including Cleve. A dozen in all. Clay went down to his horse and rode out to meet them.
“Thank God we got here in time!” Stack barked at him. “We’ll make short work of that bunch of blacklegs!”
Clay glanced at Ringe and Coconino and was relieved to see they didn’t share Stack’s opinion that it was going to be an easy matter to finish off Steve and his bunch.
“We better talk things over before we try to close in,” Coconino advised. “They can make a stand on that ridge. If we go at ’em head on, they’re goin’ to pick off some of us.”
“What of it?” Stack rapped. “Didn’t any of us figure this was going to be a tea party!” A slug from the ridge kicked up the dust a few feet in front of him. The spent slug ricocheted off a rock. He glared at it disdainfully. “There’s nothing stopping us from dropping back to the west and getting on top of that ridge with them!”
Big John turned to Clay. “What do you suggest?”
“I’d swing around the ridge and try to take them from the rear.”
“That’s leavin’ the door wide open for them to make a run for the mountains,” Pat Redman objected. “I agree with Ed that we didn’t make this ride to see them slip through our fingers. We can throw as much lead as they can. I’m for sailin’ into’ em and wipin’ out the whole damned bunch!”
The majority felt as he did.
“All right,” Ringe accepted grudgingly. “I think it’s a mistake, but since that’s the way you want it, that’s what we’ll do. Spread out and keep the Tanks at your back. When we’re in position, I’ll raise my hand. That’ll be the signal to charge.”
He rode aside with Clay and told him he had seen Harvey. “He promised to watch things at the school. I’m glad I had the talk with him.”
In the course of the next two hours they tried no less than five times to rush the ridge before even Stack was convinced the rustlers couldn’t be dislodged by a frontal attack. Pat Redman was down with a bullet in his groin and seriously wounded; Cleve’s right shoulder had been shattered; Bill Rowan, Coconino’s foreman, his trigger finger shot away by a bullet that had struck his rifle and pinged off to bury itself into his chest, had dropped out of the fight.
Clay took off his hat and smiled grimly at the bullet hole just above the hatband, as they dropped back to Skull Tanks, out of range of the guns on the ridge. It had been close enough to clip his hair.
“We’ve had enough of this nonsense!” Big John growled. “We’ll never flush them out this way! Roberts had things sized up correctly!”
“Shore he did!” old Coconino burst out fiercely. “That bunch will fight like wolves as long as we got ’em cut off! Git around in back of ’em and they may take a run! If they do, they’ll turn them cows adrift!”
“That won’t satisfy me, but it’ll be something!” Stack muttered. “We better get Pat started for home; I reckon Bill and Cleve can get him in.” They tied Redman in his saddle and Rowan and Cleve started off with him on the long ride back to the basin.
Attacking the rustlers from the rear was successful on the first try. With the way to the north and possible escape left open, they took it promptly for they had two men down, one of them Steve himself. They forgot all about Stack’s cows and streaked for Skull Tanks. Ringe and his posse dashed after them, but the rustlers stood their ground and drove them back. The position of quarry and pursuers was now reversed.
Longyear and three others had been given the job of holding the cows. From the ridge, the others saw the rustlers water their broncs and quench their own thirst. They flattened down on the limestone outcropping then, and gave every indication of their intention to remain there. Old Coconino gazed at them with squinting eyes. “By grab, they’re invitin’ us to come ahead whenever we git ready, John!”
Ringe nodded. “The price will be high if we try it. The way they’re settling down they intend to stick it out there till dark. If they can do that, you know what it means.” He was speaking to all now. “They’ll pull away before the moon gets up and shake us off during the night. We’ll have had our trouble for nothing, or almost. Ed’s recovered his stock; I suppose that counts for something.”
“We’ve done better than that, John,” Clay declared. “They’ve had two, maybe three, men wounded. One of them is Jennings. I was in close enough to be sure about that. He had to be helped down from the saddle. This raid doesn’t show them any profit.”
“You arguing against shooting it out with them?” Stack demanded with surly contempt.
“I think it would be worse than foolish!” Clay whipped back, his patience with Stack running out. “You had things your way this afternoon and we lost three men and accomplished nothing. If you want to make another mistake like that, go to it, but don’t ask the rest of us to follow you.”
“What would your idea be?” Stack challenged.
“Those cows are crazy for water. Instead of trying to hold them, I’d let them go. They know there’s water ahead of them. They’ll put their tails up and stampede into it. When Jennings sees them coming he’ll re
alize they’ll be climbing over his bunch in a few minutes. It won’t leave him anything to do but pull out in a hurry.”
“By Christopher, I ain’t getting those steers back to see ’em shot down before my eyes!” Stack roared.
“Steers are cheaper than men!” Big John interjected. “I think Roberts has hit the nail on the head!”
“Sounds good to me!” Coconino joined in. “I don’t know as there’ll be any cows killed! When those gents out there see that bunch comin’ at ’em, spooked up with thirst, they’ll skedaddle! It’ll be a stern chase for us, but we may be lucky enough to drop a couple of ’em!”
Stack continued to protest, only to be overruled. The cattle needed no persuasion to be put in motion. With their heads down and tails high, they broke around the end of the ridge and made a wild dash for Skull Tanks.
Steve and his men tried to turn them with a blast of gunfire. When that failed, they took to their horses and fanned out for the north.
Though they were hotly pursued, they managed to win across several miles of open country to the first fold of the lower foothills of the Desolations. The terrain was in their favor now, and they took advantage of it, making a brief stand whenever they had the enemy at a disadvantage, and then dropping back to the next likely looking ridge or rocky dike. They were fighting for time as much as anything else. The sun was getting low. Another hour, and they could well hope to fade away into the mountains.
They were firing from behind a shoulder-high ledge, when Roberts, Coconino, and Charlie Petrie, broke away from the others and swung around them. Caught on the flank, they retreated at once.
Clay saw a man topple out of the saddle as they fell back. A second rider turned and started to pick him up. A glance was enough for him, however, and he let him drop and scurried after his companions.
When Coconino came up to the dead man, he identified him as Chuck Beeson. “That ole sidewinder’s been outside the law for twenty years! He’s deader’n a mackerel!”
They left Beeson where he had fallen and pressed on. Stack greeted the news that Jennings had lost a man with vociferous satisfaction.