Laurie Shannon appeared in the doorway. “Matt! I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing over here?”
He grinned at her. “Ridin’ the grub line, Laurie. Figured you might have a cup of coffee for a driftin’ man.”
“Surest thing you know. Joss, do you want a cup?”
“Maybe later, ma’am.”
“Where’s Free?” Laurie asked.
“Over to Horse Heaven, scoutin’ grass. Ain’t likely he’ll be back before sundown.”
Matt sank into his chair, suddenly relieved. He did not want to see Freeman Dorset. He did not want to cope with whatever that young man represented. He simply wanted to rest.
It was shadowed and cool in the ranch kitchen, and he liked the smell of the coffee, liked to see Laurie moving about. Slowly the tension went out of him. He sipped the coffee and felt his muscles relax. Only here did he feel at ease, only here could he completely let go. Whatever else Laurie Shannon had done, she had built a place of security and comfort.
“How did you do it?” he asked suddenly. “Build this place, I mean?”
She held the coffeepot in her hand, gazing out of the window. Then she shrugged a little. “It was what I wanted—it is as simple as that. We had a home in Ireland, a lovely place. I never knew until later that we didn’t own it…it was only a tenant’s cottage. We came over to the States when I was seven, and we settled in Pennsylvania, where pa worked in a mill. He was a wild Irishman, all right, but underneath he was quite canny. He saved a bit of money, brought us west, and then he worked on the railroad. After a while we went on to Oregon, where we had a farm. Ma died and I kept house for pa and my brothers, and then pa was killed in a logging accident.
“The farm had come to be worth something, and the cattle, too. We sold the farm and split the money amongst us, and I kept forty head for breeding stock. I moved more than once, and then I found this place…and here I’ll stay.”
She sat down opposite him. “Our first cattle were Durhams, then we bought a small herd of longhorns, and by the time I settled here I had some good mixed stock, as you’ve seen.”
She looked up at him suddenly. “What are you going to do, Matt? Are you going to straighten out their town for them?”
“No.”
“Is it true that Madge Healy rode to Carson with you?”
“Yes. There’s a big outfit—mine speculators—who are trying to get some property away from her. Believe me, they picked the wrong girl.”
“What’s she like, Matt? Is she beautiful?”
“There’s no doubt about that, I guess. Maybe you’d say she was striking. She’s a lady, Laurie, but down inside of her she’s tough as whipcord. She’ll give them a fight.”
“Are you going to help?”
“She didn’t ask me. She’s hired a gunfighter—Pike Sides. He’s mean, but he’s a good man. And he will have to be. The other side are hiring gunmen—they mean to make a fight.”
They went on talking until they heard a rider coming. “That will be Freeman,” Laurie said. “I want to talk to him.”
Matt looked up as she rose. “Don’t bring me into it. Let it be.”
“I want to know what he’s been doing,” she said. “There were no strays over toward Strawberry, and I think he knew it. By the time he got back he was so obsessed with his own thoughts he had forgotten why he went over there.”
“I know. Forget it.”
The rider came into the yard, swung down, and strode toward the door. His spurs jingled importantly. He rapped lightly, and entered when Laurie answered.
Dorset stopped abruptly when he saw Matt Coburn and his manner changed somewhat. “I come to tell you I’m quittin’, ma’am. I got me a gun job.”
“I’ll be sorry to see you go,” Laurie said. “What do you want with a gun job, as you call it?”
“Fightin’s my business,” he replied brusquely. “I’ve hired out to Ike Fletcher. We’ve got some gun-fightin’ to do, and he’s roundin’ up all the good men he can get.” Dorset turned to Matt. “Surprised he hasn’t asked you.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Matt replied quietly. “Ike Fletcher is a claim-jumper, a thief, and a murderer. If I were you, Dorset, I’d just forget the whole deal.”
Dorset hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “You wouldn’t talk that way to Fletcher,” he said. “He’s a mighty handy man with a gun.” He paused. “As for that, so am I.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Matt replied, “but Ike Fletcher is recruiting men to jump claims that belong to legal owners. In particular, he is after claims belonging to Madge Healy.”
“So? If she can’t hold ’em that’s her lookout. She ain’t nothin’ but a—”
“Hold it, Dorset. Don’t say another word.”
There was something in Matt Coburn’s tone that chilled Dorset. He hesitated. There was a time, a few days ago, when he had worked himself up to a fight with Coburn; but now as he sat here in a quiet room, looking across at Coburn, somehow dominating the silence, Dorset was uneasy.
Before he could reply, Laurie Shannon came over to him. “Here,” she said, dropping coins into his hand, “now you can go, Freeman. And I’d rather you did not come back. I do not like men who hire their guns.”
“What about him?” Dorset snarled, suddenly giving way to anger. His voice raised a pitch. “What about him?”
“I never hired my gun to anybody but the law,” Matt said quietly. “There’s a difference, boy. Now, if you won’t take my advice and leave the country, stay away from Pike Sides. He’ll kill you, Dorset.”
“Fat chance!” Dorset turned on his heel and strode out.
“Well, I’m short-handed,” Laurie said. “I don’t need many men for this outfit, but I have to have two or three.”
“I know a man. He’s good with a gun, but he’s also a first-rate cattleman, and a good, solid man. His name is Tucker Dolan. I’ll send him over.” Matt paused. “He’ll cover as much ground as two of Dorset, and not jingle his spurs so much.”
“Madge Healy, Matt—are you in love with her?”
Startled, he looked up at Laurie, then grinned. “I scarcely know the girl. We’ve seen each other a bit, but I never knew her to speak to until this trip.”
“That doesn’t answer the question, Matt.”
“No, I’m not in love with her. I don’t think I’m much of a catch for any woman, and Madge has troubles of her own.”
They sat for several minutes in silence. His thoughts kept straying back to Confusion. The town worried him, for he had a deep-seated aversion to destruction, and most of all, to useless vandalism. He knew what would happen over there. They would start as they had in other places with a little robbery and smashing-up, and they would end by setting fire to the town. It made no sense, for they would destroy much that was their own along with the hard work of others.
He could stop it, he knew. But stopping it would be tough and bloody. They were not men with whom you could reason, for they understood only the law of the fist and the gun. He wanted no more of that; and yet somehow he felt responsible.
“We’re all responsible,” he said presently to Laurie. “Law and order is a job for all of us. If we shirk it long enough we will have anarchy, and all we’ve built will be destroyed. It is like building a beautiful building and then turning a lot of wild animals into it and letting them go.
“This is the old war, the war of civilization against the barbarian; of peacefulness, order, and hard work against the heedless, the cruel, the destructive.
“There was a time, right at the first, here in Confusion, when a firm hand could have kept the town under control. It’s gone too far for that now.”
“Are you going back, Matt?” Laurie asked.
He looked up at her, smiling wryly. “It’s something in me, Laurie. I know I should stay away, but I hate to see it happen. That Felton now—he doesn’t like me, and I don’t care much for him, but he represents something here. He’s the new order in this part of the country
. He stands for stability, for peace and order. You ought to latch onto him, Laurie. He’ll be a big man in the country some day.”
“Look who’s telling me!” She laughed at him. “Matt, don’t you remember? I’m wild Irish. I don’t want a man who’s stable and peaceful. I want a wild man.” She looked right at him. “Like you, Matt.”
He felt himself flushing. “Me? You couldn’t do worse, Laurie. You’d never know when they’d bring me home hung over a saddle.”
“No? Come back and see me after you’ve been to Confusion.”
*
THE TOWN WAS quiet when he rode in. Again he went by the back trails, working around the arid slopes and canyons until he could come in over the top of the ridge to Discovery I. The first thing he saw was Dick Felton with a badge on his shirt.
Coburn drew up and sat his saddle, looking from Felton’s face to the star. “You’ve got nerve. I’ll give you that, Felton.”
“Did you think I was afraid?”
“McGuinness wasn’t afraid, either,” Coburn said. “He was a brave man, and he wanted to be a good marshal. There are towns where you might run them the way you want this one run, without guns and without killing. But this isn’t one of that kind.”
“We will see about that,” Felton said stubbornly.
“Do you know Ike Fletcher?”
Startled, Felton looked up. “What about him?”
“He’s coming in. He’s bringing some paid gun-hands with him, and they’re going to take over Madge Healy’s claims. They’re here to run her out of town, out of the state, out of business. Madge Healy has Pike Sides, and I don’t know who else.”
Dick Felton stared down at the town, and there was a deep bitterness in him. He wanted this town to amount to something, he wanted it to become a monument to his name a thing of pride. He resented Matt Coburn and everything he stood for, and yet at this moment he was honest enough to wish he had some of Matt’s knowledge.
He looked up at the man on the horse. “What do I do? I guess it isn’t enough just to walk down there with a badge.”
“No, it isn’t. Look, Felton, this is a specialized job. Not every man can do it—you might be one of them. I’d take a shotgun if I were you. Go down there and tell them the law, and the first one who gives you any back talk or breaks a law, just give him the butt of it in the teeth. If he reaches for a gun…shoot him.”
“I can’t do that. I want to talk to them. I want them to see that if we all work together we can have a fine town here, a prosperous one.”
“Felton, law was made to protect the weak, and to save the strength of the strong. Men like Thompson and Gorman, to name just two, do not want law. They have the strength, and their strength and willingness to use it gives them power. They can take what they want. You’re asking them to give up that power for something they don’t want, and have never wanted. For them there is always another boom town.”
“Anyway, what’s so different about you?” Felton turned directly around. “If I can’t run it, why can you?”
“Maybe I can’t…but I think I can, and that isn’t all; they think I can. I have to go down there prepared to beat them at their own game, to be a little bit tougher, faster, surer. And I have the advantage that I have done it before. That helps me and handicaps them, because they know I’ve done it before, and some of them were even there when it happened.
“Because they know I’ve done it before, they won’t be sure I can’t do it again. That fact places the proof on them, and most of them don’t want to stand up and be counted.
“As long as you try to face them all, you haven’t a chance. You’ve got to single them out, you’ve got to make each man stand by himself, you’ve got to isolate them. Make each man sure that if he calls you, he is the one who will die, not the man beside him or behind him. Once you do that, they will break up and quit.”
There was reason in the argument, Dick Felton reluctantly conceded, but having gone this far, he felt he could not retreat. All his common sense told him that he should back off now and leave the job to the professional, yet he shook off the idea, and hitched his gunbelt into place. “I can do it,” he insisted, “and I am going to do it.”
Matt Coburn shrugged. “Every man must go his own way, I suppose, even if it takes him to hell on the end of a six-gun.”
Dan Cohan came up the street then, and crossed over to where they waited. “There’s to be a meeting of the council,” he said. “Olin Kingsbury is in town. He wants to talk to us.”
Felton hesitated, looking toward the town. “That will wait,” Cohan said. “Come on. I’ll get Zeller.”
He started off, then turned. “Want to drop in, Matt? If you do, come along.”
Wayne Simmons, Newton Clyde, Buckwalter, Gage, and Zeller were there, as well as Cohan and Felton. Then Fife came in, keeping to the back of the room. Kingsbury, dressed in a neat dark suit, was a tall man, not over forty, and well set up. His eyes swept the group in one quick glance.
“Gentlemen, I’ll come to the point at once.” As he spoke, Ike Fletcher came into the room with Kendrick and Dorset. “Your town is beset with lawlessness. I have business to conduct here, and you need a marshal. I have a man, the only man who can protect you…Big Thompson.”
Chapter 13
*
AS KINGSBURY SPOKE, Big Thompson stepped into the room, thumbs hooked in his belt, his small, cruel eyes taking in the men.
“No,” Felton said flatly. “Thompson has caused most of the trouble. He will not be marshal in this town.”
“If you want my business—” Kingsbury began.
“I am not sure that we do.” Inside, Felton was shaking, but he sounded cool. He was a man of courage, and he knew what had to be said. “I have information that you are coming in here with a crowd of hired gunmen.”
Kingsbury smiled. “I do what is necessary. The town is lawless. I have property here. You are without a marshal.”
“I am the marshal,” Felton replied quietly. “I shall enforce the law. I shall start by saying there will be no shooting in the streets. The title of every claim that changes hands from this day on will be examined by legal authority.”
Kingsbury continued to smile. “You will forgive me, Mr. Felton, if I doubt your ability to enforce that law against shooting in the streets. Thompson could enforce it. Not you.”
“He will have what help he needs.” Cohan spoke quietly. “And what backing he needs to enforce the law on claim titles. There will be no claim-jumping here.”
The door had been left open, and now Madge Healy appeared in it, with Pike Sides. “I am glad to hear you say that, Dan,” she said. “Mr. Kingsbury has some men, armed men, on the slope above the Treasure Vault. I believe they intend to move against me.”
“As the heirs of your deceased husband, Miss Healy,” Kingsbury said, “I believe you can look to us for protection. Those men are mine, there to protect you.”
“My deceased husband,” Madge said, “had no claim on my property. It was mine before I met him, and I relinquished no rights to any of it. As for protection, I have my own.”
Matt Coburn had remained outside, close to an open window. He owned no property in Confusion, he held no official position, and he had no right to speak. But he could listen. At the mention of the men on the slope above the Treasure Vault, his eyes swung that way. A line of men, in skirmish formation, were moving slowly down the hill. Sure that Madge Healy would appear at the meeting, Kingsbury had chosen this time for his men to move.
Matt’s own horse was up at the Discovery claim, but Clyde’s horse was tethered at the hitching rail. Jerking loose the slipknot, Matt swung to the saddle. The trail to the Treasure Vault was easy; it swung around a small hill, out of sight of the men on the slope.
The horse was a fast one and it started with a lunge of speed. In scarcely more than two minutes Matt was dropping to the ground at the Treasure Vault.
There was a square stone building on the claim, a tent, and a windlas
s over the shaft. A man loitered at the windlass. Matt hit the ground running, letting the horse go. “How many men down there?” he demanded.
“Two…what’s up?”
“Hell to pay. Get them up and under cover. Make it fast. Ike Fletcher’s gunmen are going to try to jump the claim. They’re right up the hill.”
The man looked up the slope, but the men were still hidden behind a rise in the ground.
He leaned over and yelled down to the men, then grabbed hold of the rope. The first of the attackers were just coming into sight when the men emerged from the shaft.
“If you boys are fighters,” Matt said, “I’ll be glad of your help. Otherwise get inside and stay under cover.”
“For Madge?” one of the men said. “Hell, I’ll fight!” He ran for the building and the others followed.
Matt Coburn looked up the hill. The gunmen were scarcely sixty yards off, and there were at least ten of them but he had an idea there were others. He went to the stone house and stepped inside. His own rifle was on his saddle, but he took one from the rack, jacked a shell into the chamber, and picked up a box of shells from a shelf. Then he went outside again swiftly.
He came into plain view of the men, who were nearer now.
“All right, up there!” he called. “This is Matt Coburn talking. You’ve come far enough.”
It was the name that stopped them. They could all see him standing there waiting for them, and not a man but knew his reputation.
One man spoke up. “Matt, this ain’t your affair. We’re workin’ for Kingsbury.”
“Never heard of him,” Matt said contemptuously, “but I know Madge Healy, and so do fifty thousand other miners in Nevada. Suppose you take her claim away from her? Where are you boys going to go afterwards?
“You’ve all heard of Madge. There’s fifty thousand men in Nevada who’ve heard her sing since she was a child. Fifty thousand who will hate your guts…if you live through this.”
There was a moment of silence, and then their leader spoke again. “Matt, you back off now. We want no trouble with you, but we’ve got our orders.”
Novel 1969 - The Empty Land (v5.0) Page 11