The clump and clatter warned the gang a little too soon. Two men dashed out, guns blazing. Slugs zinged from the sides of the car. Grimes rose, a Colt in each hand. Light from inside the house silhouetted the gunners. One doubled up and rolled down the grade. The other stumbled.
Brand Thorman’s buffalo gun cut loose from the window. Grimes, however, was already ducking. The next instant, the car ploughed into the cabin. A lantern smashed. The crucible and furnace tipped over. It was the oaken chest that derailed the ore car. Guns laced the murky glare. Slugs smacked and screamed; Grimes came up shooting, but two men escaped.
Horses clattered down the grade. The wrecked cabin began to blaze. The drunken miner and one of the Mexican girls still sang, “Three gals came down from Canada, drinking rum and wine.…”
Brand Thorman and one accomplice had escaped. Grimes thrust his guns into his leather-lined hip pockets and bounded toward the tunnel where the horses had been stabled. He lost time catching a saddled nag; the fugitives had stampeded the dead men’s animals. When he set out, he could no longer hear the pounding of hooves across the mesa. But he quirted a dead man’s mount toward Broken Axe.
Thorman couldn’t leave Broken Axe. Thorman could scarcely suspect the identity of the snooper; neither could he double back to recover the unmelted coins from the blazing shack. So Grimes galloped on.
* * * *
He dismounted in front of the Thorman House Bar. None of the horses at the hitching rack were blowing or sweating. He was sure that Brand Thorman had come down a side alley and gone either to some bar or to his quarters in the hotel he owned. Grimes poked his head into several saloons and decided, “He’d go to his room and pertend he’s been in all evening. Fust find him, then find his hoss.”
Grimes bounded up the narrow stairs to the second floor. “Mistah Thorman,” he yelled drunkenly, “if you think yo’re marrying Anne Parsell, yo’re crazy—yo’re crazy, you sidewinder, you ain’t fit for Anne!”
There was no action from any hall door. But men in the lobby heard the bawling challenge. Someone shouted, “Brand’ll shoot your gizzard out, kid! You better go home to bed.”
Grimes repeated the challenge, then answered the men below: “I’ll be any dirty name if I back down, he ain’t marrying my gal!”
Just then two doors opened; one at his left, near the head of the stairs; the other at the further end of the hall. Elma came dashing out of the nearer door. She wore a transparent nightgown, and her dark hair was streaming. “If you’re that crazy about her,” she cried, “go ahead and good luck, you jughead!”
Brand Thorman stamped into the hall. His boots were dusty, and he saw the dust on Grimes’ boots, the alkali and rust and dirt on the frock coat; he saw, and his face changed. He understood.
Elma screamed, “Simon, watch it!”
But Grimes was already whirling from that lovely distraction. Thorman’s guns were clearing leather when the kid from Georgia cut loose. No one, Thorman least of all, believed that any man could get a Colt from a hip pocket and clear of a long frock coat in time to win the exchange.
But Thorman learned. His own shot went wild, just as Grimes’ Colt bucked a second time and knocked a second jet of dust from Thorman’s green vest. The big man spun, his knees buckled, and he fell face forward; his smoking gun skated down the hall.
Elma clawed her breast. Her gown was soggy, blood-soaked. Before Grimes could catch her, she caught the door jamb, missed, then slumped to the floor.
“Simon—you fool—I told you—mining towns—are poison—did he get you—?” She shivered, held to him with one arm. When he supported her in the crook of his elbow, she smiled. “Kiss me, Simon, you idiot—it’s been fun—herding you around—”
The men who came pounding up the stairs checked up short. One said, “Hell, the pore gal’s been shot, get a doctor.”
“Shot, hell!” Grimes choked. “She’s dead, and so is that son of a—!”
* * * *
He was right. Later that night, he rode to Jim Parsell’s house with the marshal and told of Thorman’s trick to palm off stolen coin as gold from a high grade mine. Anne came out, wide eyed, and laid a soft hand on his arm.
“Simon, darling,” she said, “I’m so sorry about that poor girl. And I’m not angry about the way…the way she called my hand. You saved us all, Simon, and—”
Grimes kissed her, then gently thrust her from him. He said to Anne, and to Jim Parsell, and to the marshal: “Folks, you all been mighty nice, but I’m leaving tonight. I’m going back to my uncle’s spread, like Elma wanted me to—” He choked, blinked, then jammed his hat on and ran down the front steps. As he stumbled toward town, he muttered, “Damn it, I wish I’d let her herd me around.”
YOU CAN’T FIGHT A WOMAN
“Slim—don’t!” the red haired girl protested. Her voice was tremulous, and her eyes were misty in the moonlight. “I’ve got to get home before dad gets back from town. He’d kill me if he knew—”
Reluctantly, Slim Crane let Madge slip from his arms. For a moment, he watched her pat her disheveled hair into shape, and smooth out the blouse that a close embrace had pulled all awry.
“Shucks, honey,” he answered, broad month twisting ruefully, “what do you low my old man’d do if he knew about me, sneaking away like this!”
Madge’s sigh, and the way she laced her fingers behind her finely poised head as she leaned back against the rock that sheltered them brought pert young curves into charming relief as her blouse drew taut.
Slim watched the play of moonlight accentuate her beauty. He abstractedly ran his fingertips over his thumb, as though still trying the texture of a fine fabric. He was thinking, “Gosh…she’s wearin’ silk…an’ she smells nicer every time.…”
Madge Daley in gingham was fascinating enough to make him a traitor to every cow country tradition. As she slowly rose and smoothed out her rumpled skirt, he caught her hand. “Honey—I don’t think my dad’s going to have time to cut your bob-wire fences again, not fo’ a spell, no-how.”
A frown puckered her smooth brow. They had not until this moment mentioned the feud that forced them to meet on the sly. Then her eyes brightened. “Oh—Slim! You mean, he’s getting reasonable?”
Slim Crane loved Madge enough to swallow the unintended jab. “No, dang it! There’s a passel of skunks beefing our critters. Killin’ ’em and hauling ’em off.”
“And that,” Madge said, a sly bit of malice creeping into her voice, “is even worse than a nester putting a fence about his lawful property?”
“Aw, blazes, honey!” He tried to be grim, but he simply could not, so he tried to laugh it off. “You and your pappy don’t understand nothing. Look-ee here. My dad and his’n, afore him, fit the Injuns to get this yere country. They starved, froze, kilt varmints and Mexicans and brought cow critters into this corner of what used to be forsaken hell.
“Now a bunch of galoots in Washington pass laws, giving nesters the rights to settle down, put fences aroun’ the water holes our critters need—”
“But Slim, darling.” She sadly shook her head. “Your cows aren’t hungry and they’re not thirsty!”
“Makes no difference!” He stubbornly shook his tow head. “Fust drought that comes along, the Diamond C critters won’t have a thing to drink except whar your pappy’s squatted.”
“He’s not a squatter!” she flared. “He’s a homesteader!”
“I don’t give a tarnation damn!” He snatched his hat and jammed it on his head. “Between homesteaders and this new passel of varmints that’s beefing our critters and selling ’em in Paso del Norte, we’ll git shoved to the wall.”
“Why—you—you—putting my father in the same class with beef thieves!” She slapped him, and it sounded like a pistol shot. “Thieves, are we! You listen here, Slim Crane! Your father, the pig
headed old fossil, he’s a thief! Tearing down a mile of barbed wire that cost dad every cent he made—”
“Made outen hogging our water hole!”
But Madge was in the saddle, galloping recklessly from the grove toward the section that Herb Daley, lawfully enough, had “proved up.” Crane, just as sore, mounted his blue roan, and growled, “Gol dang my hide, she’s a snake, like all them nesters! Thief, huh?”
But as he rode, he had more and more difficulty in keeping his rage white hot. He could not forget those stolen moments when Madge looked up, lashes drooping and lips half parted for a kiss; he could not forget how a runaway team had flung her into his arms, that day before he knew that she was the daughter of the first nester to come to Arroyo Rojo.
For the next few days, he tended strictly to business, scouting around the vast Diamond C spread, ready for a clash with beef thieves. The coming of the railroad to Paso Del Norte had started a boom; hundreds of pilgrims, gamblers, dance-hall women, business men and railroad contractors had poured into town, and all the newcomers needed steak—principally, it seemed, from the Diamond C herd.
Brand inspectors, supposedly, were scrutinizing each hide at the slaughterhouses, checking them against bills of sale. But the inspectors were either drunk, blind, or bribed. And old man Crane was madder than a hornet. His line riders had made no progress. Thus Slim’s father was in the saddle, stalking thieves as he once had tracked down marauding Comanches.
“Way I figger it out,” the old man said, pointing, “is that they’re fixing to turn a trick over yonder. Judgin’ from old wagon tracks, and the lay of the land, it’s got to be.”
“Why’n’t y’all put our riders over there, then?”
Crane spat, shook his grizzled head. “Son,” he said, patting the stock of “Jezebel”, his buffalo gun, “when I tends to varmints, I tends to ’em. Jails ain’t wuth a damn! Less company, the better. Now, you ride over that-away, up through that gulch.”
Stealthily, with muffled hoofs and curb chain to silence his advance, Slim went up the gulch. The full moon cast black shadows, but in the open, the shooting would be good, if it came to that. He hoped it wouldn’t. It had been bad enough when Madge’s dad had just missed stopping a hatful of .45s, that day when the first fence had been destroyed.
He rather wondered why Madge had continued meeting him. She probably reckoned he’d saved her life, or something. Then, because he’d indirectly called her old man a thief, she’d gone hog wild. Women are sure as hell funny critters.
When Slim heard vague sounds some distance ahead he crept forward on foot, his Winchester ready. If he got the drop on them, a killing might be avoided. His father would not shoot unarmed men, not even thieves. The old man liked to startle them into going for a gun, which was pretty nearly always fatal—for the other fellow.
Slim wondered if his dad’s skill was what it had been, thirty years ago. A man couldn’t keep that up forever. Not even a good one. He was vaguely worried. A premonition urged him to hurry, and to hell with noise.
A wagon was just discernible in the shadows of a grove, out there in the open. The very silence was ominous. Slim squatted, straining his eyes to outwit the treacherous blend of shadow and blue-white glare. A twig crackled. Someone whispered, “There’s the old son of a—! Yonder—”
The thunderous boom of a buffalo gun cut into that. A horse screamed, wood splintered, and wagon tires rattled over the rocky outcropping as the team bolted.
Then Slim went wild. It would take the old man just a split second to shove another cartridge into “Jezebel”, but three rifles were crackling, and Crane, enraged by his bad shot, was roaring more loudly than his .60 caliber gun.
Slim raked the flame-stabbed shadows with his Winchester. A man yelled. The kid’s gun jammed. He drew his Colt and charged, cursing as he fired.
The silence in his father’s quarter froze him. They’d killed him! A man broke from the shadows. He doubled up, cut down by a pair of slugs. Then Jezebel’s blast drowned every other sound.
The old man bobbed up from cover, a .45 in each hand. But two men escaped his wrath. They reached their saddle mounts, and galloped hell bent. When father and son met at the overturned wagon, they found only one raider, his own blood mingled with that of three butchered beeves.
“Had ye worried, heh?” old man Crane chuckled.
“Gosh, pap, you sure did!” Slim was shaking all over.
Then he felt sick. His mouth sagged, and the gun fell from his hands. His father, striking a match, was kneeling beside the dead man, and sombrely shaking his head. “By God,” he mourned, “I shore am gittin’ old. Wan’t old Jezebel that got this jasper, after all. Yes, sir, I’m shore gittin’ old, when all I kin hit is a pore, helpless hoss.” He looked up, sharply. “Whut in tunket? Ain’t you never seen blood afore!”
“Ug—uh—” Slim choked, gulped. His face was gray green in the moon glow. “That’s—um—that’s the—nester. Herb Daley—”
“Mighty nice, son.” The old man rubbed his hands together. “Smoking out a double action varmint. Though it’s too bad, him having a daughter.”
He scrutinized the wagon and the horses. He was saying, “Brands blotted out, so’s they kain’t be traced. ’Tain’t Daley’s rig.”
Slim went to get his horse. When he returned, he said, “I been thinking mebbe I could go to Paso del Norte and find out who’s behind this crooked stuff. It’s a cinch Daley ain’t the head man, and we didn’t ketch no one to question.”
“By gravey!” This after a moment of pondering. “That’s right. Arter daylight, when I kin study the sign, I’ll tell you what size jasper to look fer, and what kind of hosses they was riding.”
That would be an open book to an old scout. Slim nodded, then said, “Pappy, why’n’t you tell the sheriff and the coroner you done this yourself? Thattaway, won’t nobody suspect me, if anyone hears I’m going to Paso del Norte. Being as these yere are your critters, on your spread, ain’t no one going to as much as axe you a cross question.”
Old man Crane straightened up. He appreciated modesty in a young squirt. “They allus lowed you was a easy going jasper and none too dang smart, nohow.” He slapped his thigh, chuckled. “I allus looked dumb too, when I was your age. Which fooled a lot of folks. You go right now, and I’ll write you to Paso del Norte, telling you what all I larned.”
That helped. “Good God,” the kid told himself, later that night, “I’d ruther be shot than face Madge. And onct I help pappy outen this mess, I ain’t never coming back.”
Then his face hardened, and looked older, years older, than it had an hour ago. Even if Madge never learned he had fired the fatal shot, she’d still hate him for his father’s sake.…
* * * *
All the hard cases in the southwest had come to Paso del Norte. Longhaired trappers in buckskin, frock coated gamblers, waddies in faded levis, all busy with their own pursuits; and none, as far as Slim Crane could tell, with an eye for him.
As the sun dipped lower, Slim saw the women who had flocked to town. They leaned from windows, beckoning and smiling; they lounged in doorways, clad only in kimonos whose thin fabric and loosely gathered folds seconded the wearer’s brazen invitation.
Somewhere in hell roaring Paso del Norte, Crane expected to get a direct lead to the beef thieves. His father had mailed him descriptions of the fugitives who had survived the melee at the Diamond C. Hoof-prints, bits of hair rubbed off on trees, human hair in the sweatband of a hat lost in flight; boot prints, and the length of strides, all these built up the picture. A short, heavy man whose feet were cramped by new, tight boots, had ridden a grullo; a long legged, red haired man with a slight limp had escaped on a strawberry roan with one defective shoe.
From one saloon to the next, Slim hunted the pair. Appealing to the law was useless. The beef contractors, the railro
ad builders, the slaughter house operators were hand in hand. Unless he found overwhelming evidence, he had not a chance.
The only way was to catch the thieves with Diamond C hides in their possession. That would justify cutting them down in their tracks; a frontier jury would acquit him.
“And to hell with the jedge and his whereas-nevertheless-buts!” Slim told himself, as back prudently planted against the wall in the corner, his biting glance covered the smoke filled barroom.
One thing Slim had not overlooked; though leaving Arroyo Rojo by night, he could not hope to have reached Paso del Norte unheralded. Two fugitives had ridden ahead of him. Thus, his back was to a wall.
Slim watched the dancers whirling about the rough-hewn floor, and the girls who hustled drinks to the tables along the further wall. They were trim wenches, fresh and shapely; too subtle to wear short skirts. Slim had seen that type in the saloons of Arroyo Rojo, and they seemed downright indecent. But these girls stirred his blood.
Before Slim realized it, he drew a slow, deep breath. The glass in his fingers spilled little drops of whiskey. He shook his head, as if to clear it of dizziness. When a blonde girl with hair that was more silver than yellow came lithely toward him, he could not avoid her glance. Nor did he want to, when he smelled her perfume and heard her voice.
She seemed almost shy, like Madge, the first time they met by moonlight, and she nervously fingered a concha on his vest.
“I wonder if you’d not take a table, over there.” She gestured. “We could drink together.” She looked up, and hesitancy blossomed into a smile. “Wouldn’t it be fun, pretending we’re old friends? I’m…well…a newcomer, and it’s awfully hard, playing up to these tough customers. I never realized it would be like this.”
The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™ Page 28