The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  Then he had passed out of the tree growth of the valley’s narrow entrance, and all the wide, flat floor of the Little Comanche lay beyond. Old Willy’s warning was in his mind as he crossed the creek and went down the west side.

  But in this upper part the high rimrock made an unbroken wall, with no canyons coming down from the Staked Plain. Crazy Woman was twenty miles ahead. He rode for a time with only an instinctive part of him on guard.

  The Little Comanche had changed even more, he saw, in his absence of a year. Once a man could ride down this valley through a waving sea of bluestem grass knee-deep on a horse. But Tom Arnold, like every cattleman in Texas now, had stocked his range beyond its limit in this mad race to supply the northern demand. The bluestem had vanished, never to grow again. There was left only the short curly buffalo grass—nature’s last stand—even that showing great dusty patches. The Little Comanche could be wholly worthless in another five years.

  At least, he thought, he had learned that lesson, and his own land in Wyoming came into the drifting gaze of his eyes. That was virgin now as this once had been, a sweet-grass country, ten thousand acres he had got control of by plastering his homestead entries over every water hole and spring. The opportunity was there for a big ranch, as big as Arnold’s Cross T. He needed only cattle or money to stock it. That brought him back to Tom Arnold’s letter, puzzled and wondering, yet sure of one thing. Tom’s promises were never small.

  You come south and boss this trail drive for me, the letter said, and I’ll make you a proposition.

  A hawk wheeled out, screaming, from the high rim-rock. Warned, he pulled in suddenly to search the sky line there, until with a flash of bronze wings the bird wheeled in again, a false alarm. He jogged on steadily south.

  As always, when riding the Little Comanche certain familiar landmarks rose ahead, each one with a special meaning, and he could see in them the ten years he had spent here, ever since he was a homeless, drifting kid of fourteen and Tom Arnold had taken him in.

  He could see those growing years of school and ranch life and the close, wild companionship of Three Apaches—himself and Joy and Steve. In his young way then he had thought it would go on like that as long as they lived. The three of them would always be together. Even earlier in that evening of the Ox Bow dance, a year ago, there had been nothing to warn him. That was why it had struck so hard.

  He remembered Joy’s strange silence on the ride home, with Clay Manning holding his horse close to her stirrup, his talk and laughter even more gusty than usual; and then the secret that had burst from him against Joy’s sudden protest, “No, Clay! Not yet!”

  But Clay had said, “Why not? I’ll tell the whole world, honey, you’re going to be my wife!”

  He remembered how that word wife had struck into his brain. She was only a little girl! But then he had looked across his saddle at her in a new way, brought by that word, and she was no longer a little girl; she was a woman, nineteen, ready to marry a man.

  Something had ended for him that night, something he had taken for granted and counted on, unknowingly, until it was suddenly gone. He had tried to fill that gap with a new life in Wyoming and knew now that he never could. It was not only Joy, he realized. It was what the three of them had had together, himself and Joy and Steve.

  The sun grew hot and his pack mule lagged. It was past midday when he approached the mouth of Crazy Woman. He dropped back and untied the mule’s halter rope and then went on, leading her up close behind him.

  This had always been the Cross T’s trouble spot. Down this narrow slash from the Staked Plain the dreaded Apaches had come in the early days to attack the log cabin that Tom Arnold had built at the mouth of the valley. There was the story of how Tom’s young wife, alone there once, had held off ten of the murdering devils with a shotgun and at the same time had managed, someway, not to burn the bread she was baking. Flour cost twenty-five dollars a barrel then.

  Rustlers had used this way later to run off Cross T cattle, even as they were running Cross T horses now.

  Guardedly, with all his alert senses centered on the dark choked growth of Crazy Woman’s mouth, he moved across the narrow entrance at a slow pace, watching for sign. He listened for the chatter of blue jays, those dependable traitors of men moving or in camp. But the dim canyon was completely silent. Then in a sand wash below the opening he came upon a swath of tracks and halted to read them with a detailed care.

  They were all of horses, unshod, all going into Crazy Woman, none coming out. That would have been the bunch, he judged, which old Willy Nickle had told about last night. At least twenty in the herd. He shook his head gravely. Unless Tom Arnold was more overstocked on horseflesh than he ever had been this cutting was bad. It would take a hundred saddle animals for his men going up the trail.

  He rode out of the wash and found no sign that the rustlers had returned to the valley. Farther on a swell in the bottom land lifted him up for a full view down the Little Comanche, and in this clear sunlight of afternoon he could see the dark sprawl of Cross T buildings, fifteen miles away—the end of his month long journey.

  He urged his black horse forward, and in another hour, when a patch of willow at Ten Mile Spring blocked the way, it was his eagerness that made him cut into an opening through the trunks instead of going around. He knew instantly it was a mistake.

  Nothing had warned him. This was an isolated five acres of growth on the barren valley floor. But it was also, he saw at once, an ideal lookout post for the men stationed here.

  His first urge was to rein back and make a run. Yet it was already too late for that. Four men had spread out in a little clearing directly ahead of him, hands close to their holstered guns. And then, even as the urge ran through him and was gone, he knew that whatever game he was to play here on the Little Comanche would have to open some time. He might as well open it now.

  He rode in and stepped down from his saddle, while the outspread four closed in again to face him across the ashes of their camp. He nodded. “How are you, gentlemen? Had my eyes peeled for bucks and feathers. Glad to see white men again.” He jerked his head south. “Maybe you can tell me how far to Ox Bow town?”

  That eased them. It placed him as a stranger. He saw the tight readiness go out of their arms a little.

  One asked, “You headed for Ox Bow?”

  “And beyond,” he said. He pulled out his pipe and loaded it, explaining, “Been coming down the trail.” Squatting, he searched the ashes for a live coal, and it was not because he wanted to light his pipe that way but to gather information. He found the ashes warm with a bed of fire underneath. So these men had cooked a noon meal here and were waiting—for what?

  He used two sticks for tweezers and lifted a coal to his pipe. Rising, he faced the one man who had spoken. “What’s the brand on this range?”

  The answer came gruffly, “Cross T. Know it?”

  He shook his head. “New to me.” The man was hard to place, squat and powerfully built, black-bearded over a pugnacious jaw, shrewd gray eyes. There was the look of the cattleman about him, except for his hands. Even gloves could not have protected them so much from the calluses and burns of a cowman’s rope. They were soft; the skin above his wrists was white.

  In the other three he saw more to go by. They were younger, all of one stamp, tall and lean-ribbed, surveying him now with a certain high-headed arrogance. It was a conceit he had seen often enough in men who rode with the wild bunch, the young and green ones especially, having their first reckless fling beyond the law. When one asked, “You been up the trail as far as Dodge?” his voice had the sharpness of the north in it.

  He nodded. “Dodge, sure. But that’s no trip! I’ve had my horse drink in the Yellowstone three times.”

  “That so?” the squat man asked. His gray eyes showed a sudden interest. “What outfit?”

  “Circle Dot,” Lew said, naming a brand far
to the south.

  He saw the gray eyes hold a moments speculation, move to the other three men and pause, and there seemed a silent question asked and answered. They came back then, veiled behind drooping lids. “You looking for a trail job?”

  “No, not yet. I aim to get my old one with the Circle Dot.” He knocked out his pipe and put it in the side pocket of his rawhide coat, standing there afterward with the thumb of his right hand hooked over the pocket edge.

  “If you’ve been north three times and know enough,” the man suggested, “maybe you can get a better deal here. What routes do you know?”

  “My own,” he said and smiled faintly. “And that knowledge comes high.”

  “Keep it then!”

  “Sure, I’m not asking you for a job.” Puzzled, he turned away. He had thought this was a camp of horse thieves.

  But the talk was of cattle. Going north. It couldn’t be Tom Arnold’s herd, and he wanted to know more. Halting, he added, “I’ll give you a pointer, though. If it’s a big drive you’re making you’ll find short grass beyond the Red River. A big herd will have to leave the old route after Doan’s Crossing.”

  Interest showed again in the veiled gray eyes. “What way would a man turn from there?”

  “Up North Fork,” he said. “And keep far over west in Kansas. You going beyond Dodge?”

  “Some.”

  “Ogallala?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then you’ll meet trouble with squatters in Nebraska. I’d drive close to the Platte River all the way. The prairie water holes are fenced.”

  “You seem to know,” the man granted.

  “I do.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you.” The decision came slowly, still with a guarded reluctance. “We need a good man. We’re shorthanded on a herd starting north tomorrow. The right kind can draw seventy a month.”

  That was almost double the usual wage.

  Lew grinned. “What’s wrong with the color of your herd?”

  “Nothing. It goes out of here with a clean bill of sale. We’re traveling fast, that’s all. I’m willing to pay for a man who knows some short cuts.”

  “I see.” He had his information, a big herd going north tomorrow to Ogallala or beyond. He turned himself a little, facing squarely toward the four bunched men. “It’s a tempting offer. But I guess not.” He saw their quick suspicion and the move that all four started to make. But his own right hand hooked on his coat pocket had only to drop slightly and the gun came up in the curved grip of his fingers.

  Under its level aim the group froze. Dryly he said, “Nobody asked you to talk so much! Now then, school’s out.”

  Moving backward slowly, he reached around with his left hand for the bridle reins of his horse. He watched the four men. They held their hands rigidly away from their guns.

  His groping fingers touched the reins’ smooth leather. He heard the animal’s nostrils rattle in a snort, felt a quick pull, yet could not take his eyes from the men. He started to say, “Easy boy—” when a rope slapped out of the air behind him, pinned his arms and jerked him over backward to the ground.

  The four men rushed him. One sat on his head. He heard the squat man’s thick voice. “Good enough. We’ll put this smart pilgrim away!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mystery At The Cross T

  Afterward, coming out of the sudden darkness that a downward blow against his jaw had brought, he felt first the dull ache where he had been struck and then the tight rope that held him. He was lying off at one side of the camp, where they had bound him with the thoroughness of experts, ankles together, hands tied behind his back, a length of rope snubbing him close to the trunk of a tree. All five were crouched now at the ashes of their fire, again in that attitude of waiting.

  How much time had passed he didn’t know, but more than he could afford to lose. High rimrock had already cut off the sun.

  Night began to flow swiftly in long shadows across the valley bottom. Still the men waited. Then he could not see them any more; only their low monotone of talk came to him, droning on against the silent background of the evening. His cramped position brought sharp pain into the joints of his arms and legs. He struggled and found it was no use. The low, time-killing talk ran on.

  Later it ended abruptly. He raised his head, made out one form that rose and moved along a lighter patch between the tree trunks, going toward an opening south. There was a little time of silence, until that one came back, his footsteps rustling quickly through dry leaves. At once the others rose around him, standing motionless in the dark.

  It was still another moment before he caught what had warned them, the drumming run of a horse. Unchecked, the rush of hoofbeats aimed in toward the willows, slowing only when they reached the outer edge. Then the rider entered with no signal—someone wholly familiar in the camp.

  He twisted his head for a better look, but could see no more than the dim shape of man and animal blended together.

  A voice growled, “You’re late!”

  The blended shape moved a little. The rider’s answer seemed forced out of him in a desperate way. “You’re lucky I came at all! I told you last night there’d be no more!” Something cold and hard tightened down the long length of his body. He’d recognize this voice anywhere. Clay Manning!

  “I’ve filled your bargain. I’m through!”

  “You think so!” There was a shifting movement of the dim figures standing on the ground. “We don’t. Quit now and you know what happens.”

  “That’s what I rode to tell you.” Clay Manning’s voice and the blurred whirling of his horse came in the same instant. “Not tonight!”

  One of the group yelled, “Stop him!” and a gun’s yellow flame streaked across the dark. But the crash of Clay Manning’s horse through the willows continued, and then he was running free down the valley floor.

  The men made a quick shuttling movement among the trees; Lew heard the slap of saddles and cinch leather. Then someone came and bent over him, jerked at the knots, testing them, and without a word ran back. The horses were visible now and the shapes of the riders swinging up. He heard a moment’s mutter of talk, like a plan being made and changed and suddenly decided upon. Bolting from the camp, they, too, aimed their headlong run toward the south.

  The drumming of hoofbeats died away. The night’s hush closed around him. He strained again at the knotted rope futilely. The job was too well done. He knew they would come back for him when whatever this riding meant had been accomplished, and they would take no chances on letting him go free.

  What troubled him most when he lay back again was Clay Manning’s deal with this outlaw crew. It looked like rank treachery, the Cross T foreman selling out its owner. And yet that wasn’t Clay’s kind either. He had his faults, but playing traitor in the dark had never been one of them.

  Somewhere toward the high rimrock a horned lark’s lost, plaintive cry fluttered down, directionless. It turned him strangely cold. He didn’t believe in superstition. Yet plenty of others swore by this bird that men almost never saw. When its cry sailed out like this in the early evening, they said, someone had died that day.

  Twisting, he made another savage attempt to loosen the ropes until the breath went out of him in a gasp of their cutting pain. And when he dropped back again, face up, a man was standing over him in the dark.

  “Thought so!” said old Willy Nickle and came silently forward. “Fixin’ to get yourself rubbed out, so you were. Don’t you never take an old coon’s advice, no sirree!” The sharp blade of his scalping knife parted the loops of rope.

  Forcing his stiffened body up onto legs that had gone numb, Lew said, “I had to know.” He threw open the camp bedrolls until he found one where his gun had been hidden.

  “So you did,” old Willy admitted. He wiped the knife on his greased sleeve. “Seems like I was watching f
rom the rims. Saw you come in here. Never saw you come out. But didn’t them five go south in a hurry? And what for?”

  “You don’t know?” Lew asked.

  His horse was in the willows, the pack mule nearby. He was up in his saddle when old Willy answered, “Couldn’t say. Was a fire off south after sundown, too far to tell what.”

  Lew nodded. The horse was moving. Behind him Willy Nickle warned, “They’ll lift your hair yet, boy. You better watch!” Then the black’s strong lunge carried him beyond the spring and he was out on the open valley floor, running, with the mule trailing in the dark.

  The miles fled past, and it was not until a barbed-wire fence cut across his path and he had run through the open gate that he held to a more cautious pace. This was the ranch pasture; the house was less than another mile beyond. But even as he rode on, the emptiness of fenced ground where Cross T cattle always grazed made him throw his horse forward again.

  Off on his left the river growth curved in to form a black wall around the ranch yard. Against that bank of trees the bunk shacks and the big house itself stood without lights. Even the pole horse corral was empty. He swung away from the row of smaller buildings and reached the Cross T’s long plank-roofed gallery.

  The house seemed wholly deserted. He was not aware that a front door had opened until he had stepped down from his saddle, off at a little distance from the building’s shadowed adobe wall. Then a faint glow of light from some inner room made an inch-wide slit along the door’s casement. He stood rooted, knowing the darkness shielded him, determined to let the watcher speak first.

  His sense of everything wrong here settled upon him with a heavy weight; the empty corrals, the silence, the absence of Cross T men. The faint slit of light widened a little.