Dru came alongside him. "Is . . . that them?" she asked, low voiced.
"It couldn't be anyone else." Her hand was on his arm and he put his own hand over it. "I've got to go up there alone, Dru. I'll have to kill him, you know."
"Yes," she said, simply, "but don't you be killed!"
He started to ride forward, and she caught his arm.
"Mike, why have you done all this?" she asked. "She isn't your sister."
"No." He looked very serious in the vague light. "She's yours."
He turned his head and spoke to the horse. The animal started forward.
When, shortly, he stopped the mount, he heard a sound nearby. Dru Ragan was close behind him.
"Dru," he whispered, "you've got to stay back! Hold my horse. I'm going up on foot."
He left her like that and walked steadily forward. Even before he got to the fire, he could see them. The girl, her head slumped over on her arms, half dead with weariness, and Ducrow bending over the fire. From time to time Ducrow glanced at the girl. Finally, he reached over and cuffed her on the head.
"Come on, get some of this coffee into you!" he growled. "This is where we stay-in Peach Meadow Canyon. Might as well give up seein' that sister of yours, because you're my woman now!" He sneered. "Monson and them, they ran like scared foxes! No bottom to them. I come for a woman, and I got one!"
"Why don't you let me go?" Juliana protested. "My father will pay you well. He has lots of money."
"Your pa?" Ducrow stared at her. "I thought Voyle Ragan was your uncle?"
"He is. I mean Ben Ragan. He ranches up north of the canyon."
"North of the canyon?" Ducrow laughed. "Not unless he's a Mormon, he don't. What's he look like, this pa of yours?"
"He's a great big man, with iron-gray hair, a heavy jaw-" She stopped, staring at Ducrow. "What's the matter with you?"
Ducrow got slowly to his feet. "Your pa- Ben Ragan? A big man with gray hair, an' maybe a scar on his jaw-that him?"
"Oh, yes! Take me to him! He'll pay you well!"
Suddenly, Ducrow let out a guffaw of laughter. He slapped his leg and bellowed. "Man, oh, man! Is that a good one! You're Ben Curry's daughter! Why, that old-" He sobered. "What did you call him? Ragan? Why, honey, that old man of yours is the biggest outlaw in the world! Or was until today! Well, of all the-"
"You've laughed enough, Ducrow!"
As Mike Bastian spoke, he stepped to the edge of the firelight. "You leave a tough trail, but I followed it."
Ducrow turned, half crouching, his cruel eyes glaring at Bastian.
"Roundy was right," he snarled. "You could track a snake across a flat rock! Well, now that you're here, what are you goin' to do?"
"That depends on you, Ducrow. You can drop your guns, and I'll take you in for a trial. Or you can shoot it out."
"Drop my guns?" Ducrow chuckled. "You'd actually take me in, too! You're too soft, Bastian. You'd never make the boss man old Ben Curry was. He would never even of said yes or no; he would have seen me and gone to blastin'! You got a sight to learn, youngster. Too bad you ain't goin' to live long enough to learn it."
Ducrow lifted one hand carelessly and wiped it across the tobacco-stained stubble of his beard. His right hand swept down for his gun even as his left touched his face. His gun came up, spouting flame.
Mike Bastian palmed his gun and momentarily held it rigid. Then he fired.
Ducrow winced like he had been slugged in the chest, and then he lifted on his tiptoes. His gun came level again.
"You're . . . fast!" he gasped. "Devilish fast!"
He fired, and then Mike triggered his gun once more. The second shot spun Ducrow around and he fell, face down, at the edge of the fire.
Dru came running, her rifle in her hand, but when she saw Mike still standing, she dropped the rifle and ran to him.
"Oh, Mike!" she sobbed. "I was so frightened! I thought you were killed!"
Julie started to rise and then fell headlong in a faint. Dru rushed to her side.
Mike Bastian absently thumbed shells into his gun and stared down at the fallen man. He had killed a third man. Suddenly, and profoundly, he wished with all his heart he would never have to kill another.
He holstered his weapon and, gathering up the dead man, carried him away from the fire. He would bury him here, in Peach Meadow Canyon.
Chapter XI
Sunlight lay upon the empty street of the settlement in Toadstool Canyon when Mike Bastian, his rifle crosswise on his saddle, rode slowly into the lower end of the town.
Beside him, sitting straight in her saddle, rode Dru Ragan. Julie had stayed at the ranch, but Dru had flatly refused. Ben Curry was her father, and she was going to him, outlaw camp or not.
If Dave Lenaker had arrived, Mike thought, he was quiet enough, for there was no sound. No horses stood at the hitch rails, and the doors of the saloon were wide open.
Something fluttered on the ground, and Mike looked at it quickly. It was a torn bit of cloth on a man's body. The man was a stranger. Dru noticed it and her face paled.
His rifle at ready, Mike rode on, eyes shifting from side to side. A man's wrist lay in sight across a window sill, his pistol on the porch outside. There was blood on the stoop of another house.
"There's been a fight," Mike said, "and a bad one. You'd better get set for the worst."
Dru said nothing, but her mouth held firm. At the last building, the mess hall, a man lay dead in a doorway. They rode on and then drew up at the foot of the stone steps and dismounted. Mike shoved his rifle back in the saddle scabbard and loosened his six-guns.
"Let's go!" he said.
The wide veranda was empty and still, but when he stepped into the huge living room, he stopped in amazement, five men sat about a table playing cards.
Ben Curry's head came up and he waved at them.
"Come on in, Mike!" he called. "Who's that with you? Dru, by all that's holy!"
Doc Sawyer, Roundy, Garlin, and Colley were there. Garlin's head was bandaged, and Colley had one foot stretched out stiff and straight, as did Ben Curry. But all were smiling.
Dru ran to her father and fell on her knees beside him.
"Oh, Dad!" she cried. "We were so scared!"
"What happened here?" Mike demanded. "Don't sit there grinning! Did Dave Lenaker come?"
"He sure did, and what do you think?" Doc said. "It was Rigger Molina got him! Rigger got to Weaver and found out Perrin had double- crossed him before he ever pulled the job. He discovered that Perrin had lied about the guards, so he rushed back. When he found out that Ben was crippled and that Kerb Perrin had run out, he waited for Lenaker himself.
"He was wonderful, Mike," Doc continued. "I never saw anything like it! He paced the veranda out there like a bear in a cage, swearing and waiting for Lenaker. Muttered, 'Leave you in the lurch, will they? I'll show 'em! Lenaker thinks he can gun you down because you're gettin' old, does he? Well, killer I may be, but I can kill him!' And he did, Mike. They shot it out in the street down there. Dave Lenaker, as slim and tall as you, and that great bear of a Molina.
"Lenaker beat him to the draw," Doc went on. "He got two bullets into the Rigger, but Molina wouldn't go down. He stood there spraddle-legged in the street and shot until both guns were empty. Lenaker kept shooting and must have hit Molina five times, but when he went down, Rigger walked over to him and spat in his face. 'That for double-crossers!' he said. He was magnificent!"
"They fooled me, Mike," Roundy said. "I seen trouble a-comin' an' figured I'd better get to old Ben. I never figured they'd slip in behind you like they done. Then the news of Lenaker comin' got me. I knowed him an' was afraid of him, so I figured to save Ben Curry I'd get down the road and dry-gulch him. Never killed a gunslinger like him in my life, Mike, but I was sure aimin' to! But he got by me on another trail. After Molina killed Lenaker, his boys and some of them from here started after the gold they'd figured was in this house."
"Doc, here," Garlin said, "is some fig
hter! I didn't know he had it in him."
"Roundy, Doc, Garlin, an' me," Colley said, "we sided Ben Curry. It was a swell scrap while it lasted. Garlin got one through his scalp, and I got two bullets in the leg. Aside from that, we came out all right."
Briefly, then, Mike explained all that had transpired, how he had killed Perrin and then had trailed Ducrow to Peach Meadow Canyon and the fight there.
"Where's the gang?" he demanded now. "All gone?"
"All the live ones." Ben Curry nodded grimly. "There's a few won't go anywhere. Funny, the only man who ever fooled me was Rigger Molina. I never knew the man was that loyal, yet he stood by me when I was in no shape to fight Lenaker. Took that fight right off my hands. He soaked up lead like a sponge soaks water!"
Ben Curry looked quickly at Dru. "So you know you're the daughter of an outlaw? Well, I'm sorry, Dru. I never aimed for you to know. I was gettin' shet of this business and planned to settle down on a ranch with your mother and live out the rest of my days plumb peaceful."
"Why don't you?" Dru demanded.
He looked at her, his admiring eyes taking in her slim, well-rounded figure. "You reckon she'll have me?" he asked. "She looked a sight like you when she was younger, Dru."
"Of course, she'll have you! She doesn't know-or didn't know until Julie told her. But I think she guessed. I knew. I saw you talking with some men once, and later heard they were outlaws, and then I began hearing about Ben Curry."
Curry looked thoughtfully from Dru to Mike.
"Is there something between you two? Or am I an old fool?"
Mike flushed and kept his eyes away from Dru.
"He's a fine man, Dru," Doc Sawyer said, "and well educated, if I do say so-who taught him all he knows."
"All he knows!" Roundy stared at Doc with contempt. "Book larnin'! Where would that gal be but for what I told him? How to read sign, how to foller a trail? Where would she be?"
Mike took Dru out to the veranda then.
"I can read sign, all right," he said, "but I'm no hand at reading the trail to a woman's heart. You would have to help me, Dru."
She laughed softly, and her eyes were bright as she slipped her arm through his. "Why, Mike, you've been blazing a trail over and back and up again, ever since I met you in the street at Weaver!"
Suddenly, she sobered. "Mike, let's get some cattle and go back to Peach Meadow Canyon. You said you could make a better trail in, and it would be a wonderful place! Just you and I and-"
"Sure," he said. "In Peach Meadow Canyon."
Roundy craned his head toward the door and then he chuckled.
"That youngster," he said. "He may not know all the trails, but he sure gets where he's goin'. He sure does!"
the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) Page 45