Shane and Jonah 3

by Cole Shelton

  Andrea flushed. “I’m sorry! Please join us in a meal! It—it won’t take me long to cook you something.”

  “No thanks, ma’am,” Shane said. “We’ll be moving on.”

  “I suppose you’ll be heading right on through the valley?” O’Reilly queried. The sweat of fear was still bright on his face.

  “Not for a while,” Shane Preston murmured. “In fact, we’re headed for another cabin in this valley. Marcia Harding’s.”

  There was a long silence, during which the nester and his wife exchanged looks. Then Andrea stepped forward and clasped one of Shane’s hands in both of hers.

  “Praise the Lord!” she whispered fervently. “You’ll be Shane Preston, and this other gentleman’s Mr. Jones.”

  She whipped away from Shane and grabbed the old-timer’s hand in another clasp. Jonah gaped at her display of gratitude and shrugged as Andrea’s husband joined in the hand-shaking.

  “Marcia told us about you both,” the nester said warmly, scrutinizing them with wide-open eyes. “And come to think of it, you sure fit her description.”

  “Mr. Preston,” Andrea said, “the whole valley’s been waiting for you to ride in.”

  “Huh?” Jonah was open-mouthed.

  “We had a meeting of homesteaders a few days ago,” O’Reilly informed them, “and Marcia told us she was writing to you. She—uh—happened to let slip that you’re no slouches when it comes to gunplay, and we were hoping that if you came to help Marcia, then maybe you’d help us, too.”

  Shane could see the hope on their faces, a hope born of desperation. Like hundreds of other settlers all over the territory, they’d come out to start a new life, to carve out a small spread for themselves, but instead they’d met prejudice, hatred, and the ominous swing of the hanging rope.

  “We haven’t the money to hire you,” Andrea O’Reilly admitted. “I mean, from what Marcia said, you put a high price on your services—”

  “Slim Harding was an old pard of mine,” Shane Preston cut in. “So I’m not interested in a fee. But I’ll be looking for something else when the chips are down.”

  “Just name it, Mr. Preston,” O’Reilly said hoarsely.

  “Backing,” said Shane simply. “We’ll need all the help we can get. Nesters with guts and guns.”

  The gunfighter turned and walked back to his horse.

  “You goddamn fools!”

  The bloated, fleshy face of Lincoln Boormann was dark red with rage as he stood behind his desk and glowered at the four men lined up in front of him.

  “Hell, Boormann,” Klaus spread his hands, “we had no choice. They had the drop on us, and cut down poor Dace here like it was nothin’.”

  Boormann didn’t even bother to look at the squirming, wounded range rider. Instead, he opened his cigar box and his fat fingers selected a long, tapered cigar which he stuck between his puffy lips.

  “The facts are plain,” the Circle B owner said, measuring his words with care, “I sent you down into the valley to do a simple chore. Hang O’Reilly and his wife. Four men to organize a neck-tie party. And what happens? Four ninnies!”

  “Mr. Boormann,” Ridge Martin whined, “they was ready for us. That fool Irishman started blasting the minute we rode into the clearing.”

  “So what happens?” Boormann lit his cigar. “Two no-account strangers, most likely saddle bums, horn in and you ride back with the chore still to be done.”

  Klaus stepped forward. “Boss, they weren’t just saddle bums.”

  “How come?”

  “They just didn’t talk and act like bums,” the ramrod said. “And that tall hombre certainly knew how to use a gun.”

  Linc Boormann digested this piece of information while he walked over to the window. His boots trod deeply into the pile carpet.

  “Better get Dace to the medic,” he grunted. “Matt, you stay here.”

  The ramrod glanced at the open cigar box as the others filed out, but he figured the climate wasn’t healthy enough for him to start sampling Boormann’s cigars. Instead, he took out his own tobacco sack and rolled a cigarette. The door closed.

  “Tell me about the two strangers,” Boormann said.

  “One was tall,” Klaus recalled. “Dressed in black.”

  “All in black?”

  “From Stetson to boots,” the ramrod frowned, concentrating.

  “And his pard?”

  “Older, much older. White-haired with a bushy beard, a bigger beard than mine.”

  “And you didn’t hear their names?”

  “Nope.”

  Linc Boormann dragged on his cigar.

  “Know something, Matt?” he murmured. “Last time I went east to Hangman’s Creek the folks there told me how their town was cleaned up by two men who took on a bunch of hombres who’d been running the town. One of them was a gunslick dressed in black. They worked for paydirt.”

  “Can’t be the same riders,” Klaus grinned. “There’s no one in the valley apart from you with cash money to hire gunslingers.”

  Boormann apparently seemed satisfied with his ramrod’s summary of things, and with a nod he came back to sit down at his desk.

  “And talking about hired guns, boss,” Matt Klaus said. “When are Cluny’s bunch due to show up?”

  “Coupla days,” the owner of the Circle B said, chewing on his cigar. “And once they show up, we’ll make one clean sweep of the valley. Cluny’s boys combined with ours should be enough to wipe out every damn nester down there, but in the meantime, there’ll be no let up as far as we’re concerned. If we leave those nesters alone for a day, more will move into the valley. They’re riding west like an army!”

  “Boss,” Klaus reminded him. “How about the Widow Harding?”

  Boormann raised his eyebrows.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s still around,” Klaus grunted. “We passed her homestead on the way back.”

  “Still around! Hell—didn’t you hang her husband?”

  “I was there myself,” Klaus assured him. “But maybe she’s a mite more determined than we figured.”

  “Mark her and those two O’Reilly fools down, Matt,” Boormann said coldly. “Mark them down for another visit.”

  “Before Cluny’s boys arrive?”

  Boormann stubbed his cigar. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  The door suddenly swung open. A lanky youth stood there with his hands planted on his hips. Boormann’s only son was seedy-faced, with round shoulders and thin limbs, the result of an unholy union between Linc Boormann and a one-time saloon girl whom he’d recently discarded and run out of the valley. The heir to the Circle B had obviously been drinking.

  “Pa,” Bart Boormann said, “have you seen this?”

  He made a flamboyant gesture of tossing a folded newspaper onto his father’s desk.

  “Just come from town,” Bart explained with a flourish. “Picked up a copy.”

  Just come from town and right from the saloon, Klaus silently figured. Ever since Bart had turned eighteen, he’d spent a good deal of his time in the Last Deuce, soaking up liquor. There was a lot of gossip that Bart’s tough, iron-willed father, king of the valley, never bothered to control his wayward son.

  Boormann grabbed the paper. The issue of the Lodestone Clarion was fresh and ink-smudged. The editorial blazed boldly on the front page. The heading, set in the largest type available from the Clarion’s press, proclaimed:

  TIME TO END VIOLENCE IN THE VALLEY!

  The Circle B’s owner scanned the editorial while his son leaned on his desk.

  “It seems like Verrier didn’t learn his lesson,” Bart remarked.

  “Maybe that fool editor needs to be taught another one,” Klaus smiled sourly.

  Boormann folded the broadsheet and slid it into his desk drawer.

  “What did Verrier say?” Klaus asked. “Did he name us?”

  Boormann shook his head. “Nope. He’s too damn smart for that. Whining on about ‘live and let
live.’ If he doesn’t get into line, Verrier might get his own life shortened some.”

  Klaus ran his thick tongue over his lips. “Just say the word, boss.”

  The cattleman slammed his desk drawer shut.

  “There are chores to be done,” he dismissed them, curtly. “Later on, Matt, you can come back here and we’ll work on a coupla plans I have in mind.”

  Linc Boormann watched them saunter out into the long passage which led from the office to the front door. He stood in thought for a moment, then went out of the room. He could hear Emily moving around in the parlor, and the rancher congratulated himself on his wisdom. Emily was Abe Rankin’s widow, and now she was filling the place left by the former saloon girl, Louise. Granted, Emily wasn’t exactly a looker, and when he made love to her it was like kissing a cold cousin, but she was heir to Rankin’s Double R on the other side of Wolf Valley. And as Emily’s new husband, Boormann aimed to control the Double R once Rankin’s will was untangled. Then he’d own the biggest empire of grass and beeves in the territory, and for that he could put up with Emily’s dowdiness and her inability to excite him.

  He paced to the front porch, and it was then that the dark cloud came over his face. His eyes took in the valley, and he had a mental picture of all the little nester spreads with their fences and pigs, their truck gardens and ugly soddies and cabins. His chest heaved. It was men like him, he mentally boasted, pioneers with raw courage, who’d wrested this land from the Indians. Three decades ago he’d come out here and carved a ranch out of virgin wilderness. He’d fought, killed, sweated and worked to make this spread what it was today. He’d even helped to build the town of Lodestone by hiring men who spent their money in the stores and saloons. And he’d schemed and double-crossed his fellow frontiersmen to get control of their lands to add to the Circle B, making it the giant sprawl that it was today. But just a few months ago that fool law had been passed. The State wanted to open up the West by permitting settlement on open range, and scores of nesters had swept in like a tide. The new settlers had staked out farms right through the valley he’d been using to graze overspill herds. Linc Boormann needed that valley for free grazing. By his book, no homesteaders were going to take it. Accordingly, his riders had raped and burned and hanged the intruders—but some settlers still grimly hung onto their claimed land.

  But not for long, Boormann told himself.

  Brett Cluny was on his way with his gunslinging bunch and Boormann aimed to give them free rein.

  There was going to be carnage such as the valley had never seen before, and no one was going to stop the inevitable: not that fool crusading editor, not the stubborn nesters who remained to fight, not men like those two strangers who’d intervened at the O’Reilly cabin, not anyone!

  Three – Valley of Terror

  The coffee was the kind only a woman like Marcia Harding could brew. It was good, strong, aromatic coffee that felt good in the throats of two men who’d swallowed dust on a long trail. And in addition to Marcia’s coffee, there were plates of home-baked soda biscuits.

  “It was good of you to come, Shane,” Marcia Harding said.

  Shane stirred his coffee. He’d listened carefully to her summing-up of the situation in Wolf Valley and now she stood by the wood stove with the sunlight touching her hair.

  “I owe Slim a debt,” the gunslinger said.

  Marcia looked out of the window at the freshly-dug grave.

  “You know,” she murmured, “it seems like a long time ago that Slim was killed.”

  “Marcia,” Shane prompted her, “how has it been since Slim’s death? Have they threatened you again? Those Circle B riders?”

  She swallowed, turning so Shane could see the face he used to know so well, and the gunfighter’s frank eyes met and leveled on hers.

  “I’ve seen them twice,” Marcia recalled. “Once there was a lone rider on the other side of the creek. It was Faulkland, the one who—who—”

  Her voice died away.

  “The other time?”

  “Today, earlier on. Four of them reined in and looked over the cabin. I just stood here with my rifle, Shane.”

  Jonah sampled one of the biscuits. “Did you ever figure on returning east to your folks? I mean, out here’s no place for a woman on her ownsome.”

  “This is my home.” There was a slight flash of anger in Marcia’s reply, and Shane remembered that Slim’s wife wasn’t exactly the most even-tempered female he’d ever met. “We pulled up stakes to come here, and here I stay.”

  Taken aback by her display of firmness, Jonah buried his nose in his coffee cup.

  Shane stood up and stood by the open door. “Marcia, you wrote me a letter asking for help. Today a coupla nesters were being attacked by some Circle B galoots, and they asked for help. The question I’ve got is why haven’t you settlers gone to the sheriff in Lodestone? You’ve got your rights—law’s on your side!”

  “Sheriff Crawford!” Marcia’s contempt showed in the tone of her voice. “We’ll get no help from him!”

  “He’s in Boormann’s pay?”

  “Crawford’s yellow, and Boormann scares him. In fact, Shane, the whole town’s spooked by Boormann. It’s almost impossible for a nester to get served in the shops, and not many of the settlers dare drink in the saloons. I reckon there’s just one man in Lodestone who’s ever stood up to Boormann.”

  “That editor you talked about?”

  “Anton Verrier,” she supplied. “He’s been crusading for a better town and a peaceful valley ever since he took over the Clarion. The trouble was, though, he had a visit from Boormann’s bunch one night.”

  “They beat him up?”

  “He wasn’t in,” Marcia Harding said, “so they took it out on his wife. Julie Verrier was raped in front of her kids.”

  “Holy smoke!” Jonah exclaimed.

  “And Sheriff Crawford was too yellow to take action?” Shane Preston guessed.

  “Verrier got no help from him. So Verrier must be a lonely man,” said Marcia. “I haven’t seen this week’s editorial as yet, but I’m afraid it’ll be somewhat tamer than usual.”

  “Well,” Shane mused, “looks like we can’t count on the law, and this Verrier must have had the fight knocked out of him. Kinda leaves the nesters in the valley to stand up for their own rights.”

  Marcia came over to stand next to him, and for a moment her hand brushed his arm.

  “The nesters, Shane, and hopefully, you and Jonah.”

  Shane looked around at her. The top of her head came only to his shoulder, and he could smell the freshness of her nut-brown hair. He glanced down at those sad, but expectant eyes and his gaze drifted lower to her full, sensuous lips. He knew Marcia’s age to be about thirty, but just one look told him that she’d retained the firm curves of a woman in her early twenties. Her breasts were twin cones pushing against the thin blouse she wore, and her levis accentuated the slim curves of her hips and thighs.

  “I reckon we’ll be around to lend a hand,” Shane said.

  “Thank you,” she whispered gratefully.

  Her hand reached up to touch his face. Standing on her toes, she planted a quick kiss on his cheek and Shane felt the swell of her bosom against him.

  “Reckon I’ll mosey outside to cut some wood,” the tall gunslinger said.

  Marcia remained at the door.

  Shane found the axe and strode towards a heap of logs. The widow watched as the gunfighter unbuttoned his black shirt and shrugged out of it. Shane Preston was a lean, rangy figure of a man with a chest that rippled with power. Her eyes lingered on him, taking in the spread of black matted hair and the way his skin glistened in the hot sun. The axe whipped into the log, splitting it cleanly.

  “You used to know him real well, didn’t you?” Jonah Jones drawled beside her.

  “Our two families were close friends,” she said. “I used to see a lot of Shane.”

  “But that was before—?”

  “Before Grace died.”
Marcia was still looking at the gunfighter as he lopped the logs in two. “You see, Jonah, I know what happened and how Shane came to be riding as a hired gunfighter. It must have been terrible for him to come home and find Grace murdered by those outlaws!”

  “He found one and killed him,” Jonah filled her in. “Then he caught up with the other. A scar-face. Shane was shot in the belly and that’s where I came in. I picked him up and cut the bullet outa him, and we’ve been saddle-pards ever since.”

  “Shane wrote to Slim a couple of times,” Marcia watched as the tall man measured up another log. “Just to keep in touch. In fact, I found his address on one of his old letters. He used to tell Slim why he kept on hiring out his gun. It was to give him a stake so he could keep hunting down Scarface.”

  “Maybe there’s another reason.” Jonah squinted up at the sky. “When we ride for hire we always come up against hardcases, rustlers, gunhawks—men beyond the law—and Shane figures that someday he’ll come up against Scarface himself, because Scarface is of the lawless breed. Like for instance, it could be Scarface is riding for this Boormann.”

  “Could be,” she said.

  Perspiration was streaming from Shane’s skin as he split the last log. He paced over to the creek and crouched down to splash cold water over his chest and face. He cupped his hands together and scooped up water to dash into his hair, and the dark strands flopped wetly down over his forehead. He walked swiftly back to the cabin where Marcia was waiting on the porch for him.

  “Where are you planning to stay?” she asked.

  “We’ll make camp and bed down some place,” Shane Preston told her.

  “I’ve a spare room,” she said. “I’ll fix a couple of bunks for you. Slim kept them for visitors.”

  “Don’t want to put you to any trouble, Marcia,” Shane stated.

  “No trouble,” she replied quickly. “No trouble at all.”

  “In any case,” Shane said, “I won’t be turning in till late. I’ll be heading into town now.”

  “Town?” At once, she seemed agitated.

  “I want to call on Sheriff Crawford,” the tall gunslinger informed her.