Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  “Never touched me, Brazos.... Git yore hands up, thar!... Wal, if it ain’t pard Talman! — Howdy, Beef. Kinda in the wrong grub-line, ain’t you?”

  Britt came forward, his gun smoking. He had been in action. The standing rustler was no other than Lascelles, the card-sharp from Louisiana. He looked his fallen estate. Brazos hopped with a wild yell when he recognized the gambler. The second was Talman, on his knees, ghastly livid of face, and petrified with horror. The third was a young, blue-lipped, lean-jawed cowboy who realized his peril.

  “Jackson, grab their guns,” shouted Sloan, bloody of visage and fearful to behold. He had met a bullet in that mêlée.

  “Anybody else hit?” queried Britt, sharply. Tex Southard sat on a stone, his head bent down. Mex, with a suspicious red on his hands, was fingering his brother’s shoulder.

  “Tex bored, but not bad,” he called.

  “Which one was Trinidad?” queried Brazos.

  “I reckon thet one who run first,” replied Britt. “Go see. But slow, Brazos.”

  The cowboy gave the rock a wide berth, and with rifle half up, he sheered around, alert and formidable, to peer ahead. Like a hunter stalking game he started, stiffened, then slowly forged forward to halt and look down. He remained in that posture a long moment.

  “Daid!” he called, with the piercing note in his high voice. But he still gazed on. Then in strangled voice he burst out.

  “Yu —— yellow fool! Game, but yu’re daid!”

  Brazos came striding back, his hair up like a tawny wave, his eyes narrowed to blue dagger points.

  “Jack — Santone. Search these men — an’ tie their arms back,” ordered Sloan.

  Swift hands carried out this command. Brazos poked with the nose of his rifle at the various articles piled on a rock, markedly among them a huge roll of greenback bills which had been taken from Talman.

  “Hundred-dollar bills,” muttered Brazos, his tone and action strangely significant. Then, like a gold-headed striking snake, he leaped to confront Talman. “If yu’d had guts, like Trin, yu wouldn’t hev to swing!”

  “Swing?” squeaked Talman, his visage like beaded wax. In profound egotism or arrogance or sheer blind folly the cowboy had not counted the cost of failure. “For God’s sake! — Brazos!”

  The inexorable cowboy turned his back. He bent over Mason, who sat humped on a pack. “Laigs, air yu shore yu ain’t hurt bad?”

  “I ain’t hurt — none.... Rustle this necktie party — along.” Santone, left-handed and careless, tossed a noose neatly over Lascelles’ head and whipped it tight. Then he made as clever a throw with the other end of his rope, sending it over a branch ten feet up. The gambler, evidently sodden and dazed, awoke to his extremity.

  “Lay hold — cowboys!” yelled Sloan, crisply, springing to Santone’s side. Brazos was as quick, and Mex Southard left his brother, to participate. One concerted lunge cut Lascelles’ hideous blasphemy to a gasping wheeze, and jerked him into the air.

  “Make fast.”

  Britt saw the cowboys hold and tie the rope in a twinkling, and duck to evade the tremendous grotesque kicks of the swinging man. But it was not possible to remove his gaze from Mason, who leaned back with bloody hands pressed to his abdomen and leered up at Lascelles.

  “Hey, my caird-sharp galoot. — How you like thet shuffle?... Slip out from under now. Haw! Haw! — Kick, you — ! Stick out yore tongue!... Say, you got any jumpin’-jack I ever seen beat to hell an’ gone!... To hell with you, Lascelles!” —

  Meanwhile the other cowboys were not idle. The ugly business must be done quickly. Jackson threw a noose over Talman’s head and grinned in the act.

  “Beef, you is sho a wonnerful kicker,” he shouted. “But yo won’t kick no me niggers on dis green earth.”

  Talman was sagging down when the ropes strung tight from another branch. His voice had failed; only sickening gasps issued from his lips. Up he shot, six feet above the ground. And Britt turned away. Just then the sun rose, bright and red, over the eastern wall and flooded the glade with crimson light. Shadows of the writhing victims danced across the sunlit rocks.

  Rebel Sloan confronted the pallid third of that trio, and waved a ruthless hand aloft.

  “Rustler, you see them?”

  The reply was an incoherent affirmative.

  “Do you want to save yore neck?”

  “Gawd Almighty! — Yes — yes! — Gimme — a chance.”

  “Will you talk?”

  “I — I’ll tell — all,” he whispered, in eager huskiness, and dark, awful eyes lighting with hope.

  “Boss, come heah,” called Sloan.

  Britt hurriedly got out his pencil and note-book, and ran over. Brazos joined them.

  “Watch them ropes, you cowboys,” yelled Sloan. The rustling and threshing of foliage above attested to the violence of the hanged men.

  “What’s yore name?”

  “Jeff Saunders.”

  “Wal, Saunders, this heah is Britt — Holly Ripple’s foreman. What he says you can rely on.”

  “Britt — if — if I squeal will you let me go?”

  “Yes, provided yore information is conclusive, an’ you swear to leave the country.”

  “I know enough, sir, an’ I swear.... I’m only too glad.”

  “Who you ridin’ fer?”

  “Sewall McCoy.”

  “How long hev you rode fer him?”

  “Two years. I come to New Mexico with his outfit.”

  “Is McCoy back of this deal involvin’ my cowboys?”

  “McCoy an’ Slaughter together,” rejoined Saunders, gulping to get his words out quickly. “They joined outfits. Slaughter was the dark hoss. He’s got fourteen hands, not countin’ this Lascelles. They’re located at Aspen Springs, up in the hills.”

  “What was their game?”

  “A few quick drives this fall. Then big deals next spring. McCoy has buyers all over. When the railroad gets heah he aims to ship a hundred thousand cattle, before the law comes.”

  “How many cattle in his herd?”

  “Five thousand. All Texas longhorns. He aims to keep thet herd as is, only addin’ branded calves.”

  “Who’s he stealin’ from?”

  “A little from all cattlemen. But concentratin’ on Ripple stock.”

  “From Chisum, too?”

  “No. I reckon McCoy is shy of Jingle-bob cattle.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Mebbe ‘cause Chisum will let him alone, so long as he steers clear of the Seven Rivers range.”

  “How did McCoy corrupt Talman an’ Trinidad?”

  “Money. Talman was leavin’ the range before winter. Trinidad was sore because Talman didn’t divvy. Thet’s why they camped with us last night. Trinidad refused to go back to your ranch. He cussed Talman mighty hard.”

  “All right, Saunders. Thet will do. Sign your name heah.... Somebody untie his hands.”.

  After this signature was added to Britt’s note-book, Sloan turned Saunders loose. “Grab your saddle, an’ things. Pick oot yore gun. Fork yore hawse an’ ride a bee-line somewhere far an’ wide. Fer yore good luck might not last.”

  A poignant cry caused Britt to wheel as on a pivot. Brazos was on his knees beside Mason, who had slumped off the pack to the ground and now sat propped there with strange ashen face.

  “Laigsl.”

  Agony rang in that cry. Brazos’ nervous hands plucked at Mason’s stained shirt.

  “It’s all — right, pard,” replied the wounded cowboy, weakly. “We done fer thet outfit... what we come fer! — Funny, how most of these double-crossers show yellow. Pity aboot Trin.

  ... I’m glad he cashed game.”

  “Old man, you’ve lied to me,” exclaimed Brazos, fearfully.

  “Wal, it’s the — last time,” replied Laigs, with a ghost of a smile.

  “Fellars, come heah,” faltered Brazos, appealing for help, when perhaps he felt instinctively there was none. He opened Mason’s wet
shirt. In the middle of the cowboy’s chest, just below the breast bone, showed an ugly red hole. Only a froth of blood appeared outside. Brazos slipped his hand round to Mason’s back.

  “Oh — my — Gawd!” he cried, in terror, and when he brought his hand out it was dripping blood. “Laigs! Yu got in front — of me!” Brazos’ passionate protest of remorse and sorrow broke at the end.

  “Wal, pard — you’d done the same for me.... Only I wasn’t — quick enough. — I oughta shot — an’ yelled afterwards.... Don’t take on so, Brazos.”

  Britt bent over to examine Mason’s injury. A heavy 45- calibre slug had gone clear through the lad. His moments were numbered.

  “Laigs. You haven’t got long.... Is there anythin’?”

  “Don’t know what become of — my people. But thet’s no matter.... Gimme a smoke.”

  They gathered around Mason and someone gave him a lighted cigarette. He puffed with difficulty, but composedly. He could not inhale.

  “Let’s play a hand of draw.”

  Santone had a greasy pack of cards which he proceeded to shuffle, and dealt to Laigs, Jackson, Mex and himself.

  “Dog-gone! I was always lucky,” said Mason. “Gimme two cairds.... What’re you bettin’, Jack?”

  “I done got you skinned, Laigs. I sho has.... It’s goin’ up.”

  “Raise you.... Rest of you layin’ down, huh? You darn black scamp! I’ll call an’ lay down three aces.”

  “Thet’s good, Laigs. I wuz bluffin’.”

  “You oughta know better, Jack.... Yore deal, Mex....

  An’ rustle — Gettin’ kinda dark already.”

  But the sun was shining bright and gold now, bathing the glade in a glamour of light. A breeze stirred the tree-tops. Somewhere a raven croaked. The cattle were bawling. Across the golden patch of grass where the cowboys knelt swayed the sinister black shadows of the hanging men — now quiet.

  Laigs picked up his cards with steady fingers. Brazos knelt behind, holding him up.

  “Thet’s dog-gone funny,” said Mason, faintly. “These cairds — sorta blur.... Fellars — I cain’t see!”

  He dropped the cards to the grass and his head fell back against Brazos.

  “Pard — sing — Lone Prairiee.”

  Brazos appeared to quiver through all his lithe frame. He lifted his working face to the sunlit boughs and closed his eyes. In a moment the convulsive quivering ceased. His features shone with a stern, sad and beautiful light. Brazos was the singer of the outfit. He had a clear tenor voice. It broke and | quavered, piercingly sweet. He began again.

  “‘O bury me not on the lone prairie,’

  The word came low and mournfully

  From the pallid lips of a boy who lay

  On his death-bed at the close of day.

  He had wrestled with pain till o’er his brow

  Death’s shadows fast were creeping now;

  He thought of his home and the loved ones nigh

  As the cowboys gathered to see him die.

  ‘O bury me not’ — and his voice failed there,

  Bui we paid no heed to his dying prayer;

  In a shallow grave just six by three

  We buried him there on the lone prairie.

  Where the dewdrops shine—”

  Britt reached out to silence the singer. Laigs was dead.

  CHAPTER XI

  1874, AS HAD been predicted by Buff Belmet and other frontiersmen, ushered in for eastern and central New Mexico the bloodiest era that ever made history for the West.

  There were two reasons for this fact — the rich vast grass ranges that had lured venturesome cattlemen in the ‘sixties to run cattle over the limitless acres once owned by the Spanish dons; and secondly because there was no semblance of law in all the broad land. Rustlers, desperadoes, wild cowboys, adventurers flocked into New Mexico. At one period, from 1874 to 1879, New Mexico held more desperate and vicious men than ever assembled at any other place or time in the settlement of that range country west of Texas and Kansas.

  This period saw the inception and development of the Lincoln County War, the bloodiest of all frontier wars, in which three hundred men were killed. It saw the rise of Billy the Kid, Jesse Evans, mere youths in years, but who had no peers in cold nerve, or guncraft, or bloody deeds. At sixteen they were cowboy comrades, riding the same ranch. Before they were twenty they got into different factions and swore to kill each other. But Billy the Kid and Jesse Evans never met face to face. Evans admitted Billy’s superiority with a rifle, but claimed he could beat him to a gun. The saloons of Lincoln and Roswell waited and gambled on the meeting of these two cowboys. No doubt Billy and Jesse avoided the encounter that meant a draw on sight.

  Don Carlos’ Rancho stood at the gateway of the pass through which the Old Santa Fe Trail wound up off the Great Plains. The Mexican village had at one time or another har-

  boured every Western character, good or bad, who passed that way. In the spring of 1875 Holly Ripple closed her famous, hospitable door to the travelling public. The old, leisurely, singing, glamorous Spanish days passed away; and the new day was hard, keen, vivid, uncertain and raw.

  Britt saw with regret the snow gradually melt off the uplands of the rolling range. The flowers sprang up as if by magic, and so did riders coming down out of the hills.

  May brought the first caravan and the news from outside. Las Animas was teeming. The railroad was forging west. Cattle, stage-coaches, pack-trains, lone, furtive-eyed riders, wagon-trains of settlers, bands of horsemen who asked no questions and said nothing about themselves — movement of all these came upon the heels of the vanishing snow.

  Six months had slipped away into the past, quietly for Britt and his outfit, riding less than in the summer, with their enemies holed-up, like ground-hogs, until the warm winds would blow again. There had been no rustling of cattle since those raids of last fall. But following Rebel Sloan’s round-up of one of these gangs, with report and gossip flying like wildfire over the range, there had been plenty to disturb the peace of the Ripple contingent.

  Britt had called a conference in San Marcos of a number of cattlement within a hundred-mile radius of Don Carlos’ Rancho. Doane, Halstead, Clements, his nearest range neighbours, and Bill Wood, the Sedgwick brothers, newcomers in the country, and Hardy Wilson — all these cattlemen had met Britt, to have laid before them the startling facts of the McCoy-Slaughter combine. The result was far-reaching, but very different from what Britt had planned and hoped for. One of these ranchers, in Britt’s opinion, no other than Bill Wood, had told of the conference and its purpose, with the result that Britt’s hope for a unified front against the rustlers was frustrated. It would have been better if Britt had kept his counsel, as well as the Saunders’ confession, from everybody except his own men. McCoy was stronger in the range than Britt had estimated; he had powerful friends who were not friendly to Texans. He dominated the ranchers of small herds and little means. Moreover he developed a tendency to go to town and drink and gamble, during which times he was dan-gerous. He made veiled threats, and in open defiance of Britt and his several notorious cowboys, he attached to his outfit a gunman late from the Kansas border, one Jeff Rankin, whose reputation as a killer came with him and needed no boasting by McCoy. But the loud-mouthed McCoy did brag that he had a man to match Renn Frayne.

  After this one blunder Britt kept his mouth closed and his men away from San Marcos. With the Pecos Valley War between bitter factions not wholly ended and the Lincoln County War in its incipiency Britt saw how easily he could be involved in one or the other, or have a private war on his hands.

  He and Frayne and Jim talked often and long about how to meet the future. In any case they had a fight on their hands. Doane and his neighbour ranchers feared to ally themselves openly against McCoy. But they ran few cattle compared to the Ripple estate, and knew their own losses would be inconsequential provided they were neutral.

  The foreman and his confidants, especially Frayne, worked out
a plan that to Britt seemed formidable. They would not make any more cattle drives to the railroad for an indefinite period; they would concentrate all their stock on the thirty-mile range between Cottonwood Creek and the hills; they would no longer split up the outfit into small bunches for isolated trips; they would ride and watch the range in a body, sixteen strong, on the swiftest horses. They would be heavily armed and they would shoot first.

  Frayne was the genius of this carefully thought-out defence. He did not think Slaughter and McCoy could last out the summer if they resorted to stealing cattle again. Frayne was noncommittal in regard to Jeff Rankin, the gunman imported obviously to kill him and Brazos. Nevertheless it was clear to Britt that Frayne knew beforehand the result of a possible encounter between himself and McCoy’s desperadoes. Most significant to Britt had been the constant gun and rifle practice that Frayne insisted upon. The last caravan before winter arrived the preceding year had brought a large consignment of weapons and ammunition Britt had ordered to meet the very contingency that now threatened. New -44 calibre Winchester rifles, and the new 1871 model Colt 45 guns were presented to the Ripple outfit. And Britt, urged by Frayne, had the boys constantly at practice, especially with the rifles. They all be-came skilled marksmen. The practice of shooting at coyotes and jack-rabbits from a running horse grew to be fun and spirited rivalry, instead of work. Brazos led them all with the six-shooter, but Jackson paired with the Kentuckian Blue, who had been a squirrel hunter as a boy, in pre-eminence with the rifle. McCoy’s riders would possess but few of the long arms, and constant practice with either of them or the short arms was out of the question. Ammunition in any quantity cost a good deal of money, an expense to which McCoy and Slaughter would not go. That was a detail they overlooked. McCoy had paid hundreds of dollars to corrupt Ripple cowboys, but he probably never thought of making his own unerring marksmen.

  Range gossip this spring had it that Britt’s wild outfit of Texans and half-breeds, topped by an outlaw who had killed many men, were intimidated and afraid to frequent the old drinking-saloons and gambling-halls. Gossip from San Marcos came by stage, by rider, and by queer ways that could not be traced. The whole range was buzzing. But what with Chisum about to declare war on rustlers, the Murphy-McSween factions of Lincoln up in arms, the coming of the railroad and the influx of strangers, Holly Ripple’s troubles scarcely held first place in popular clamour.