“We’ve had trouble with Galusha Reed in Yellowjacket. Tony Sikes picked a fight with Billy. He wanted to kill him, and Billy wouldn’t fight. He—he backed down. Everybody said he was a coward, and he ran. He went—away.”
Matt Sabre frowned thoughtfully, staring at the floor. The boy who picked a fight with him, who dared him, who went for his gun, was no coward. Trying to prove something to himself? Maybe. But no coward.
“Ma’am,” he said abruptly, “you’re his widow. The mother of his child. There’s something you should know. Whatever else he was, I don’t know. I never knew him long enough. But that man was no coward. Not even a little bit!
“You see,” Matt hesitated, feeling the falseness of his position, not wanting to tell this girl that he had killed her husband, yet not wanting her to think him a coward, “I saw his eyes when he went for his gun. I was there, ma’am, and saw it all. Bill Curtin was no coward.”
Hours later, lying in his bunk, he thought of it, and the five thousand was still a mystery. Where had it come from? How had Curtin come by it?
He turned over and after a few minutes went to sleep. The next day, he would be riding.
THE SUNLIGHT WAS bright the next morning when he finally rolled out of bed. He bathed and shaved, taking his time, enjoying the sun on his back, and feeling glad he was footloose again. He was in the bunkhouse belting on his guns when he heard the horses. He stepped to the door and glanced out.
Neither the dark-faced Rado nor Judson were about, and there were three riders in the yard. One of them he recognized as a man from Yellowjacket, and the tallest of the riders was Galusha Reed. He was a big man, broad and thick in the body without being fat. His jaw was brutal.
Jenny Curtin came out on the steps. “Ma’am,” Reed said abruptly, “we’re movin’ you off this land. We’re goin’ to give you ten minutes to pack, an’ one of my boys’ll hitch the buckboard for you. This here trouble’s gone on long enough, an’ mine’s the prior claim to this land. You’re gettin’ off!”
Jenny’s eyes turned quickly toward the stable, but Reed shook his head. “You needn’t look for Judson or the breed. We watched until we seen them away from here, an’ some of my boys are coverin’ the trail. We’re tryin’ to get you off here without any trouble.”
“You can turn around and leave, Mr. Reed. I’m not going!”
“I reckon you are,” Reed said patiently. “We know that your man’s dead. We just can’t put up with you squattin’ on our range.”
“This happens to be my range, and I’m staying.”
Reed chuckled. “Don’t make us put you off, ma’am. Don’t make us get rough. Up here”—he waved a casual hand—“we can do anything we want, and nobody the wiser. You’re leavin’, as of now.”
Matt Sabre stepped out of the bunkhouse and took three quick steps toward the riders. He was cool and sure of himself, but he could feel the jumping invitation to trouble surging up inside him. He fought it down and held himself still for an instant. Then he spoke.
“Reed, you’re a fat-headed fool and a bully. You ride up here to take advantage of a woman because you think she’s helpless. Well, she’s not. Now you three turn your horses—turn ’em mighty careful—and start down the trail. And don’t you ever set foot on this place again!”
Reed’s face went white, then dark with anger. He leaned forward a little. “So you’re still here? Well, we’ll give you a chance to run. Get goin’!”
Matt Sabre walked forward another step. He could feel the eagerness pushing up inside him, and his eyes held the three men, and he saw the eyes of one widen with apprehension.
“Watch it, boss! Watch it!”
“That’s right, Reed. Watch it. You figured to find this girl alone. Well, she’s not alone. Furthermore, if she’ll take me on as a hand, I’ll stay. I’ll stay until you’re out of the country or dead. You can have it either way you want.
“There’s three of you. I like that. That evens us up. If you want to feed buzzards, just edge that hand another half inch toward your gun and you can. That goes for the three of you.”
He stepped forward again. He was jumping with it now—that old drive for combat welling up within him. Inside, he was trembling, but his muscles were steady, and his mind was cool and ready. His fingers spread, and he moved forward again.
“Come on, you mangy coyotes! Let’s see if you’ve got the nerve. Reach!”
Reed’s face was still and cold. His mouth looked pinched, and his eyes were wide. Some sixth sense warned him that this was different. This was death he was looking at, and Galusha Reed suddenly realized he was no gambler when the stakes were so high.
He could see the dark eagerness that was driving this cool man; he could see beyond the coolness on his surface the fierceness of his readiness; inside, he went sick and cold at the thought.
“Boss!” the man at his side whispered hoarsely “Let’s get out of here. This man’s poison!”
Galusha Reed slowly eased his hand forward to the pommel of the saddle. “So, Jenny, you’re hiring gunfighters? Is that the way you want it?”
“I think you hired them first,” she replied coolly. “Now you’d better go.”
“On the way back,” Sabre suggested, “you might stop in Hardscrabble Canyon and pick up the body of one of your killers. He guessed wrong last night.”
Reed stared at him. “I don’t know what you mean,” he flared. “I sent out no killer.”
Matt Sabre watched the three men ride down the trail and he frowned. There had been honest doubt in Reed’s eyes, but if he had not sent the two men after him, who had? Those men had been in Silver City and El Paso, yet they also knew this country and knew someone in Yellowjacket. Maybe they had not come after him but had first followed Bill Curtin.
He turned and smiled at the girl. “Coyotes,” he said, shrugging. “Not much heart in them.”
She was staring at him strangely. “You—you’d have killed them, wouldn’t you? Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because—well, I don’t like to see men take advantage of a woman alone. Anyway”—he smiled—“Reed doesn’t impress me as a good citizen.”
“He’s a dangerous enemy.” She came down from the steps. “Did you mean what you said, Mr. Sabre? I mean about staying here and working for me? I need men, although I must tell you that you’ve small chance of winning, and it’s rather a lonely fight.”
“Yes, I meant it.” Did he mean it? Of course. He remembered the old Chinese proverb: If you save a person’s life he becomes your responsibility. That wasn’t the case here, but he had killed this girl’s husband, and the least he could do would be to stay until she was out of trouble.
Was that all he was thinking of? “I’ll stay,” he said. “I’ll see you through this. I’ve been fighting all my life, and it would be a shame to stop now. And I’ve fought for lots less reasons.”
HOT NIGHT IN YELLOWJACKET
Throughout the morning, he worked around the place. He worked partly because there was much to be done and partly because he wanted to think.
The horses in the remuda were held on the home place and were in good shape. Also, they were better than the usual ranch horses, for some of them showed a strong Morgan strain. He repaired the latch on the stable door and walked around the place, sizing it up from every angle, studying all the approaches.
With his glasses, he studied the hills and searched the notches and canyons wherever he could see them. Mentally, he formed a map of all that terrain within reach of his glass.
It was midafternoon before Judson and Rado returned, and they had talked with Jenny before he saw them.
“Howdy.” Judson was friendly, but his eyes studied Sabre with care. “Miss Jenny tells me you run Reed off. That you’re aimin’ to stay on here.”
“That’s right. I’ll stay until she’s out of trouble, if she’ll have me. I don’t like being pushed around.”
“No, neither do I.” Judson was silent for severa
l minutes, and then he turned his eyes on Sabre. “Don’t you be gettin’ any ideas about Miss Jenny. She’s a fine girl.”
Matt looked up angrily. “And don’t you be getting any ideas,” he said coldly. “I’m helping her the same as you are, and we’ll work together. As to personal things, leave them alone. I’ll only say that when this fight is over, I’m hitting the trail.”
“All right,” Judson said mildly. “We can use help.”
Three days passed smoothly. Matt threw himself into the work of the ranch, and he worked feverishly. Even he could not have said why he worked so desperately hard. He dug postholes and fenced an area in the long meadow near the seeping springs in the bottom.
Then, working with Rado, he rounded up the cattle nearest the rim and pushed them back behind the fence. The grass was thick and deep there and would stand a lot of grazing, for the meadow wound back up the canyon for some distance. He carried a running iron and branded stock wherever he found it required.
As the ranch had been shorthanded for a year, there was much to do. Evenings, he mended gear and worked around the place, and at night he slept soundly. During all this time, he saw nothing of Jenny Curtin.
He saw nothing of her, but she was constantly in his thoughts. He remembered her as he had seen her that first night, standing in the living room of the house, listening to him, her eyes, wide and dark, upon his face. He remembered her facing Galusha Reed and his riders from the steps.
Was he staying on because he believed he owed her a debt or because of her?
Here and there around the ranch, Sabre found small, intangible hints of the sort of man Curtin must have been. Judson had liked him, and so had the half-breed. He had been gentle with horses. He had been thoughtful. Yet he had hated and avoided violence. Slowly, rightly or wrongly Matt could not tell, a picture was forming in his mind of a fine young man who had been totally out of place.
Western birth, but born for peaceful and quiet ways, he had been thrown into a cattle war and had been aware of his own inadequacy. Matt was thinking of that, and working at a rawhide riata, when Jenny came up.
He had not seen her approach, or he might have avoided her, but she was there beside him before he realized it.
“You’re working hard, Mr. Sabre.”
“To earn my keep, ma’am. There’s a lot to do, I find, and I like to keep busy.” He turned the riata and studied it.
“You know, there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. Maybe it’s none of my affair, but young Billy is going to grow up, and he’s going to ask questions about his dad. You aren’t going to be able to fool him. Maybe you know what this is all about, and maybe I’m mounting on the off-side, but it seems to me that Bill Curtin went to El Paso to get that money for you.
“I think he realized he was no fighting man, and that the best thing he could do was to get that money so he could hire gunfighters. It took nerve to do what he did, and I think he deliberately took what Sikes handed him because he knew that if Sikes killed him, you’d never get that money.
“Maybe along the way to El Paso he began to wonder, and maybe he picked that fight down there with the idea of proving to himself that he did have the nerve to face a gun.”
She did not reply, but stood there, watching his fingers work swiftly and evenly, plaiting the leather.
“Yes,” she said finally, “I thought of that. Only I can’t imagine where he got the money. I hesitate to use it without knowing.”
“Don’t be foolish,” he said irritably. “Use it. Nobody would put it to better use, and you need gun hands.”
“But who would work for me?” Her voice was low and bitter. “Galusha Reed has seen to it that no one will.”
“Maybe if I rode in, I could find some men.” He was thinking of Camp Gordon, the Shakespeare-quoting English cowhand. “I believe I know one man.”
“There’s a lot to be done. Jud tells me you’ve been doing the work of three men.”
Matt Sabre got to his feet. She stepped back a little, suddenly aware of how tall he was. She was tall for a girl, yet she came no farther than his lips. She drew back a little at the thought. Her eyes dropped to his guns. He always wore them, always low and tied down.
“Judson said you were a fast man with a gun. He said you had the mark of the—of the gunfighter.”
“Probably.” He found no bitterness at the thought. “I’ve used guns. Guns and horses; they are about all I’ve known.”
“Where were you in the army? I’ve watched you walk and ride and you show military training.”
“Oh, several places. Africa mostly.”
“Africa?” She was amazed. “You’ve been there?”
He nodded. “Desert and mountain country. Morocco and the Sahara, all the way to Timbuktu and Lake Chad, fighting most of the time.” It was growing dark in the shed where they were standing. He moved out into the dusk. A few stars had already appeared, and the red glow that was in the west beyond the rim was fading.
“Tomorrow I’ll ride in and have a look around. You’d better keep the other men close by.”
Dawn found him well along on the trail to Yellowjacket. It was a long ride, and he skirted the trail most of the time, having no trust in well-traveled ways at such a time. The air was warm and bright, and he noticed a few head of Pivotrock steers that had been overlooked in the rounding up of cattle along the rim.
He rode ready for trouble, his Winchester across his saddlebows, his senses alert. Keeping the roan well back under the trees, he had the benefit of the evergreen needles that formed a thick carpet and muffled the sound of his horse’s hoofs.
Yet as he rode, he considered the problem of the land grant. If Jenny were to retain her land and be free of trouble he must look into the background of the grant and see which had the prior and best claim, Fernandez or Sonoma.
Next, he must find out, if possible, where Bill Curtin had obtained that five thousand dollars. Some might think that the fact he had it was enough and that now his wife had it, but it was not enough if Bill had sold any rights to water or land on the ranch or if he had obtained the money in some way that would reflect upon Jenny or her son.
When those things were done, he could ride on about his business, for by that time he would have worked out the problem of Galusha Reed.
In the few days he had been on the Pivotrock, he had come to love the place, and while he had avoided Jenny, he had not avoided young Billy. The youngster had adopted him and had stayed with him hour after hour.
To keep him occupied, Matt had begun teaching him how to plait rawhide, and so, as he mended riatas and repaired bridles, the youngster had sat beside him, working his fingers clumsily through the intricacies of the plaiting.
It was with unease that he recalled his few minutes alone with Jenny. He shifted his seat in the saddle and scowled. It would not do for him to think of her as anything but Curtin’s widow. The widow, he reflected bitterly, of the man he had killed.
What would he say when she learned of that? He avoided the thought, yet it remained in the back of his mind, and he shook his head, wanting to forget it. Sooner or later, she would know. If he did not finally tell her himself, then he was sure that Reed would let her know.
Avoiding the route by way of Hardscrabble, Matt Sabre turned due south, crossing the eastern end of the mesa and following an old trail across Whiterock and Polles Mesa, crossing the East Verde at Rock Creek. Then he cut through Boardinghouse Canyon to Bullspring, crossing the main stream of the Verde near Tangle Peak. It was a longer way around by a few miles, but Sabre rode with care, watching the country as he traveled. It was very late when he walked his roan into the parched street of Yellowjacket.
He had a hunch and he meant to follow it through. During his nights in the bunkhouse he had talked much with Judson, and from him heard of Pepito Fernandez, a grandson of the man who sold the land to Old Man Curtin.
Swinging down from his horse at the livery stable, he led him inside. Simpson walked
over to meet him, his eyes searching Sabre’s face. “Man, you’ve a nerve with you. Reed’s wild. He came back to town blazing mad, and Trumbull’s telling everybody what you can expect.”
Matt smiled at the man. “I expected that. Where do you stand?”
“Well,” Simpson said grimly, “I’ve no liking for Trumbull. He carries himself mighty big around town, and he’s not been friendly to me and mine. I reckon, mister, I’ve rare been so pleased as when you made a fool of him in yonder. It was better than the killing of him, although he’s that coming, sure enough.”
“Then take care of my horse, will you? And a slip knot to tie him with.”
“Sure, and he’ll get corn, too. I reckon any horse you ride would need corn.”
Matt Sabre walked out on the street. He was wearing dark jeans and a gray wool shirt. His black hat was pulled low, and he merged well with the shadows. He’d see Pepito first and then look around a bit. He wanted Camp Gordon.
Thinking of that, he turned back into the stable. “Saddle Gordon’s horse, too. He’ll be going back with me.”
“Him?” Simpson stared. “Man, he’s dead drunk and has been for days!”
“Saddle his horse. He’ll be with me when I’m back, and if you know another one or two good hands who would use a gun if need be, let them know I’m hiring and there’s money to pay them. Fighting wages if they want.”
IN THE BACK office of the Yellowjacket, three men sat over Galusha Reed’s desk. There was Reed himself, Sid Trumbull and Prince McCarran.
“Do you think Tony can take him?” Reed asked. “You’ve seen the man draw, Prince.”
“He’ll take him. But it will be close—too close. I think what we’d better do is have Sid posted somewhere close by.”
“Leave me out of it.” Sid looked up from under his thick eyebrows. “I want no more of the man. Let Tony have him.”
“You won’t be in sight,” McCarran said dryly, “or in danger. You’ll be upstairs over the hotel, with a Winchester.”
Trumbull looked up and touched his thick lips with his tongue. Killing was not new to him, yet the way this man accepted it always appalled him a little.
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