by Lauran Paine
This premise at least was sound; he cut across Salter’s bedding ground without seeing anything except cattle. Afterward, he made for the forested corridor from which he had shot at Salter. Beyond that site he remembered the trail reasonably well, but it was slow going in the dark.
Unexpectedly he cut the trail of Joe Mitchell’s rustled herd and this was a fortuitous thing; here were broken branches, trampled pine needles, and a dim but discernibly broad pathway leading around under the high peaks. Here, too, he rode faster, knowing that even if Salter had a man or two up in here, they would hesitate to fire on anyone coming from the direction of their home ranch, particularly in the forest’s gloom, night-heightened so that recognition would be nearly impossible.
The tree scatter thinned a little before Ray came within sight of the meadow from which Duncan Holt had stolen Joe Mitchell’s herd. He did not slow until at the very edge, when he needed a moment to make certain no Salter men were beyond in the open country. Afterward, he rode carefully forward, cut southerly over the meadow, and did not relax until he was back into the forest on the meadow’s lower side. It was, he thought, very reassuring even to a man who had spent most of his life on the plains to have the darkness and the forest around him.
It was a goodly ride from the upper, large meadow to JM and he fretted because caution forbade traveling fast. He could not approximate the time very well because the shades of night varied greatly.
Coming finally to within sight of Mitchell Meadow, he dismounted and went warily forward on foot. Having angled southeasterly for the past hour, he found himself where he expected, within hailing distance of Joe Mitchell’s house. It was not difficult, here, to estimate the distance because nearly every window in Mitchell’s low log residence shone with bright lamplight.
Leaving the buckskin tied beyond sight from the yard, he crept forward, carbine in hand. He felt a growing fear, having expected to hear gunshots; he found this heavy silence much worse. Yellowish light touched along the saddled backs of a number of horses tied in front of Mitchell’s house. Two lounging figures near the animals, one smoking, were clearly Salter’s outside guards.
He straightened up, peering ahead. What was Salter doing in there? He surely had known Ray and perhaps the sheriff as well would be showing up at JM before daybreak.
Speculation, though, resolved nothing. Keeping a sidling watch on the guards, he studied the rest of the yard. George Fenwick’s house also had a lamp burning, but turned low. The bunk house was dark and, except for the guards, the yard was empty. There was something eerie about all this. It never crossed his mind that Mort Salter might have set a trap, not even when he moved softly around through the trees so as to emerge into the yard in such a way as to keep the bunk house between himself and the lounging guards—and out of nowhere a man hurled himself upright from a low bent-over crouch, swinging from the hips to catch hold of Ray with his straining arms.
Ray had no time to shoot; he had scarcely time enough to react defensively, then the man was on him. One arm began a high overhand swing. Ray ducked away and the clubbed gun whooshed past his face. He dropped the carbine, twisting away and throwing a short jab, but the shadow bore in, and having two advantages, that of surprise and offence, carried Ray jarringly back against a huge old red fir tree seeking to slam his head against the rough trunk. Again Ray anticipated his attacker and rolled sideways, avoiding the bent, groping fingers.
He hit the stranger a short, powerful blow in the stomach. The man sucked back and bent a little to protect himself. Ray brought a knee up hard before the cowboy could straighten up. There was a meaty sound followed by an expulsion of explosive breath. The man moved back heavily; he was in pain and raised his face to search the near night for Ray’s next move. He had not long to wait. Without having the least idea who his attacker was, Ray nonetheless recognized in him a much experienced rough-and-tumble battler. Moreover, he could tell from the man’s pressure against him that he was easily fifty pounds heavier. He could not, therefore, confine himself to defense if he hoped to walk away, and, taking full advantage of the stranger’s immediate discomfort, he lunged outward, away from the tree, whipped his body sideways, and threw a long, blasting blow that rocked his adversary.
The heavier man, however, did not go down. He gave more ground, though, and covered up as best he could, trading space for time. Ray, resolved to give him no rest, kept stalking him with his knuckles, jarring him constantly backward until the rider’s arms dropped and his glazed eyes, scarcely seen in the gloom, blinked stupidly, half consciously. Then he halted, drawing heavily for wind, waiting for his adversary’s eyes to clear.
It was a long, still moment full of unnaturalness, and, when Ray saw the big man’s face regain its color, he said: “Had enough?”
Instead of conceding, the big man dug his toes in and catapulted forward, bearing Ray to the ground, staking his chances on this desperate maneuver, striking at Ray’s face with his fists, clawing for his eyes, and using his weight to hold the lighter, more vigorous man beneath him. But it was in any case the final act of an injured fighter and Ray threw the man off, whirled upright, and was waiting with a cocked fist. He fired it as the larger man was rising, knocking him backward. He never did collapse, but held himself numbly off the ground, dimly reflexing to protect his vital parts from further injury, reacting instinctively while the memory of other battles came cloudily into his half consciousness.
He was beaten. Ray knew it and pushed him into a sitting position, frisked him for a hide-out gun, found nothing, not even a boot knife, and hunkered forward, facing the stranger while his lungs sucked in powerful lungfuls of the insufficient night air.
“Had enough?” he asked again, and this time the beaten man nodded his head, raised a hand to feel his cut and swelling mouth, and gazed with clearing vision at his vanquisher.
“They’ll get you just the same,” he mumbled, gazing at the back of one hand. “For a thousand dollars one of ’em’ll get you, Kelly.”
Ray threw the man a tough look. “They’ll get the chance.” He got up, winced from an ache in his side, and moved closer, unbuckled the man’s shell belt and trouser belt, and growled: “Lie down and roll over on your belly.”
The cowboy made no resistance while Ray bound his ankles and arms, and rolled him over, face up, but his eyes were eloquent with malevolence.
“Where is Salter…in the house?”
The glittering stare remained unwavering and the man’s battered lips did not part.
Ray gazed steadily downward for a moment, then very deliberately knelt beside the man, tore a strip from his shirt, fashioned and applied a gag, then drew a match from his pocket, removed his hat to shield the flame, and lit it. “Your last chance to talk,” he said, moving the match forward so that its heat touched the bound man’s jaw. “Where is Salter…what’s he up to?”
The flame speared upward, touching flesh. The bound man jerked his head away, growling beneath the gag. Ray doused the match and pulled away his gag.
“He’s in the house, waitin’ for you,” the cowboy said bitterly. “He’s got Joe an’ Fenwick and Fenwick’s girl in there.” The fire-pointed eyes flared. “He’s goin’ to hang you, Kelly. Hang you slow.”
“How many more are out here, hidin’?”
“Couple more. One behind the house to the east. Another feller down at the lower end of the meadow, waitin’ for you to come up from the plain.”
“That one’s harmless,” Ray said, referring to the man down near the forest’s edge. He got up. The hurt in his side made him flinch a second time. “But I’d better take care of the one behind the house.” He started to readjust the gag.
“Wait a second,” the cowboy said rapidly. “Listen, you can’t leave me lyin’ here like this.”
“Someone’ll find you,” Ray said, reaching forward toward the gag again.
“No! Listen, Kelly, if they get you, no one’ll know where I am.”
“I’m gambling no one’ll get m
e,” Ray said dryly.
“Don’t be a fool. Mort’s got seven men up here. Six not countin’ me. He knows cussed well you’ll show up here sooner or later and he’s waiting. You don’t stand a chance.”
“Pretty sure of himself, isn’t he?”
“He knows you’ll try an’ help Mitchell. Listen, turn me loose, an’ I swear I’ll get my horse and slope. I give you my word, Kelly.”
Ray pushed the gag roughly into place without answering, made sure it was securely tied, checked the bound man’s other fastenings, ignored the choked incoherence coming from behind the gag, and moved off through the forest, heading around toward the rear of Joe Mitchell’s house.
It took longer to locate Salter’s second hidden guard, but feeling that time was no longer as important as he had formerly considered it, and basing this upon what the beaten man had told him about Salter’s using Joe Mitchell and the Fenwicks as hostages, he lingered in the tree shadows for nearly half an hour before catching a dark blur of movement down near the last fringe of forest where a man’s broad back moved.
He began inching onward, placing one foot carefully forward and bringing his weight to bear upon it before moving the second foot. It took an indeterminate length of time to stalk close enough to halt and draw his handgun and straighten up with less than ten feet between his pistol barrel and the drowsing sentry, but he accomplished it without a sound.
“Mister, if you so much as open your mouth, you’re dead.”
The sentinel did not move; he might not have heard Ray’s strong whisper at all, he was so still. Ray moved in behind him, took away his pistol, and kicked the carbine that the man had leaned against a tree into the darkness, then ordered the man to face around.
This second rider was also a stranger. They stood in dank gloom, gazing upon one another, and the cowboy seemed neither greatly surprised to find himself captured nor particularly annoyed, either. He even grinned at Ray.
“Funny how folks misjudge people, ain’t it?” he said conversationally, studying Ray’s features thoughtfully. “Mort said you didn’t have sense enough to come in outta the rain. Duncan Holt said you was real good with a gun but pretty much of a kid in everything else.” The man’s gaze lowered, held briefly to the cocked pistol, then came up again. “Now, me…I’d say you wasn’t no kid and you wasn’t no fool, either, slippin’ up on me like that. How’d you find me, Kelly?”
“A friend of yours told me you were over here.” The cowboy’s brow wrinkled; the respect in his gaze heightened. “You mean Bull Markly?”
“I don’t know his name. He’s lying over there in the trees. He was watching for me, too.”
“You slipped up on him, too?”
“No, he jumped me and I whipped him.”
The cowboy’s smile faded and his gaze widened. “You…whupped Bull Markly in a fair fight?”
“Not too fair a fight,” Ray said dryly. “But he’s whipped and hog-tied. Now you turn around and back up close to me.”
The range man understood at once and began wagging his head. “You’ll have to shoot me,” he said. “I got a pretty thin skull an’ don’t favor bein’ knocked over the head.”
Ray, feeling no animosity for this man, in fact seeing in him the image of dozens of range men like him who had been his friends and campfire companions in years past, nodded his head. “All right, lie down then, and I’ll tie you up.”
The rider hesitated only briefly. It was as typical of him that he expected no treachery as it was of Ray Kelly that he planned none. The man eased down. Ray holstered his gun and secured the sentinel without a word passing between them until he made the gag and was beginning to apply it. Then the rider said: “Kelly, be smart and ride on. Mort’s got enough men on your trail to smother you. You can’t help Mitchell, either. He’s got him hog-tied with mortgages and such like.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Ray said, tied the gag in place, turned the man upon his back, touched his hat brim in salute, and faded out in the darkness, heading for the rear of Mitchell’s house.
Chapter Thirteen
Ray moved out of the trees and halted to keen the night. There was neither sound nor movement. The thin, winey night air would have shown one and brought echoes of the other. His thoughts ran fast now and uncertain. Perhaps the wisest course would be to wait. Perry Smith, he thought, would eventually come up. He even considered, but only very briefly, riding back to Welton for help. But this would use up too much time, and, knowing how Mort Salter thought, he knew the rustler baron would not wait at JM indefinitely. Presently making up his mind, he paced light-footedly forward, coming down near the dark rear wall of Mitchell’s log house. By his nearest calculation, if Salter had ridden to JM with six riders and had detached three as hidden sentinels, he could not now be in Joe’s house with more than one man because obviously two others were outside with the horses—or had been outside at any rate.
That, he knew, would make no difference. At the first sound of trouble from within the house, those two would immediately burst in. He could therefore count on odds of four to one. Joe and George Fenwick would be disarmed and helpless to help him, he knew. He was not, for that matter, convinced Fenwick would not join Salter against him. He made a wry grimace—when a man was thinking in terms of four to one odds adding another man did not make any appreciable difference.
He ranged ahead and flattened against the rear of Joe’s house, listening. There was nothing to hear; either the people within were silent, or the great logs deadened all sound. He palmed his gun, was edging toward the window he had used once before to gain entrance, when the sharp, hard sound of galloping horses coming on from the west, up and across Mitchell Meadow, turned him to stone.
There had to be no less than ten riders, he judged, dropping low and scuttling to the extreme south corner of the log wall. If it was more of Salter’s men, he not only would be unable to help Salter’s hostages, he would be in a very bad position himself.
Ahead, softly fluted in the night, came a call: “Hold up there! Hey, draw down, you fellers!”
There was no diminishing of the hoof beats and a muted gunshot blasted the night. This was instantly answered by an angry chorus of returned shots, deep-throated and booming—the sound of handguns replying to a carbine.
From within the house there was a sudden loud yell, the rattle of what might have been an overturned chair, and the slam of booted feet. Around front a door slammed back fiercely against the log wall, sending forth reverberations, and Ray, guessing that the riders were not, after all, more of Salter’s men, sprinted along the north wall until, dropping low, he could peer around in front and sight running men, scattering across the yard. He sought one particular silhouette, but Mort Salter was not among them.
The farthest man, sighting a dark blur of oncoming riders, lanced a winking red gunshot toward them. As before, the night sparkled with tongues of flame. Miraculously none of the lead caught Salter’s man, but he let off a high yelp and sped wildly for cover.
One man, less fearful, knelt, swiftly throwing up his carbine and drawing down a good bead. Ray pushed up his gun and snapped off a hasty shot. It plowed a furrow of dust less than two feet from the rifleman, who twisted frantically toward the house, then also fled out into the night.
Gunshots came intermittently now from around JM’s buildings and the riders broke up, some dismounting, some spurring savagely toward muzzle blasts, nearly all calling hoarse epithets in their anger and eagerness to reach cover or Salter’s riders, one or the other.
Ray stood fully upright when the fight was at its hottest and moved pressingly along the front of Mitchell’s house. He had not seen Salter and meant to find him now while his gunmen were diverted.
The front door was widely open. Beyond, someone had doused the parlor lights but other lamps burned and a soft, rose-colored glow suffused the living room. He stood off to one side of the door, breathing deeply, trying to imagine where the guns within would be, then sprang cat-footedly throu
gh the opening, went flat upon the floor, and rolled rapidly sideways. No shot came. He swung his gun in a sweeping gesture, straining to make out human shapes—and bumped violently into something soft and yielding. Without a thought and acting on purest instinct, he grappled with the silent stranger, swung a wild blow, missed, caught at a shirtfront, then very suddenly let go.
“Grace…?”
“Yes,” the girl’s husky voice said unevenly, then firmed up. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He was mighty thankful for the poor light. “Excuse me. I thought it was Mort.”
“He’s gone. Who’s that out in the yard?”
“Perry, I think. Where is Joe?”
“Somewhere,” the girl said, beginning to rise up off the floor. “When the firing started, he put out the lights and we all lay down.”
Ray caught her shoulder, stopping the lift of her body. “Don’t get up,” he ordered. “Stay as you were.” She flattened upon the floor again. Stray bullets were smacking into the house front. None had yet come through the door or the windows.
“Hey, Joe! Where are you? It’s Ray.”
“Over here, confound it,” came a testy and muffled reply. “What in tarnation’s going on out there?”
“A bunch of riders came from across the meadow. It might be Perry Smith. Anyway, whoever they are, they aren’t Salter’s friends.”
“You hear that?” Mitchell called triumphantly. “You hear that, George?”
“I hear it,” a dull booming voice said with what Ray thought was something akin to coolness. “Where is Salter? He’s in here with us some place.”
“No!” Grace called over the echo of gunshots. “He went out through the back of the house when his men ran out front.”
“Hell,” Joe Mitchell said with great feeling and clear disgust, something Ray was also thinking but did not say. “Hey, Ray, how come you to show up?”