by Ray Hogan
“You’re putting it better than I can.”
Hagerman brushed at his jaw. “Well, don’t you get the idea I like it! God knows I want my son to be the man I’ve always hoped for.”
“Only answer to that is for you to give him an opportunity—”
“Expect when you come right down to it, that’s the big problem. I’m plain scared to let him try—scared he’ll fall down on me again like he’s always done before, and I don’t think I can swallow that another time.”
“Which is the wrong way to feel about it,” Starbuck said, looking out over the flat now warming rapidly to the touch of the sun.
He glanced again to the hogback. The course they were following had veered nearer to it. Imperceptibly, he began to alter direction, force the rancher’s buckskin more to the south, thus place more ground between them and the rocks.
“You’ll never know if Ron can come up to your expectations unless you let him try ... You’re just closing the book on him, saying he can’t without really knowing.”
Hagerman was silent for a long time. Finally: “Maybe it is my fault. Maybe me being scared of him failing is what the big trouble is.”
Shawn nodded to the older man, smiled. He realized what it took for Price Hagerman to make that admission. “You’re on the right track now.”
“What’s the answer? What ought I do?”
“I’d start off letting Ron head up that trail drive. Might cost you some steers if things don’t pan out exactly right, but you’d at least know—both of you.”
“Hell, cattle don’t mean nothing to me. I’d give Crockett the whole damned herd for free if it would help any. Be rough on him, however. It’s a mean trip. Had plenty of trouble myself making it last time.”
“All the better. Ron comes through it without losing a lot of cattle, you’ll both be satisfied.”
“Yeah, reckon that’s right ... You be willing to ride along, sort of help him out in case he gets in over his head?”
Starbuck shook his head. “Be the worst thing you could do, having me go with him. You’ve both got something to prove; you that you’ve got faith in him, and he that he can do the job. You send me he’ll know right away that you don’t trust him and think he still needs looking after.”
Again a stillness came over the rancher. Larks were skimming over the short grass, wheeling and dipping, pausing to alight now and then on a clump of weeds or a rotting stump. In the clean sky overhead crows straggled brokenly for the ranch and the feed they knew could be found around the corrals.
“All right,” Hagerman said abruptly, pulling his horse to a stop. “I’m going to do it. I’m telling him tonight it’s his job, and if he can do it he’ll take over Archer’s saddle and run the whole damned she-bang.”
Shawn grinned. “And I’m laying odds you won’t regret it. About time you started taking it easy, anyway.”
“For a fact! Been pounding leather day in and day out for a lot of years ... You know, never would admit it to myself, but I’ve been sort of looking forward to—”
A faint, hollow crack sounded in the warm hush. Price Hagerman stiffened. A strange, puzzled look crossed his face as he raised a hand to his chest.
Starbuck reacted instantly. He lunged from the sorrel, caught the rancher around the waist and dragged him from his horse.
“Keep low!” he shouted, drawing his gun and pivoting as the rifle spoke again.
Eighteen
Starbuck threw himself forward, went flat on his belly. Steadying himself on his elbows, he squeezed off two quick shots. He had only a puff of smoke arising from a ragged clump of brush along the hogback for a target. The killer had chosen his position well.
A stir of movement behind the weedy growth caught Shawn’s eye. He triggered a third bullet. The clatter of metal upon rock came faintly to him—the sound, perhaps, of a rifle being dropped. Starbuck grinned tightly. He had scored, but how badly hurt the bushwhacker was he could only guess. Rolling to one side, he rodded out the spent cartridges in the cylinder of his pistol and reloaded.
He heard the hoof beats of oncoming horses approaching from the south, turned to look. Three riders. Hash Knife men who had heard the shooting and were moving in to investigate. Holstering his weapon, he swung about to Price Hagerman. The rancher lay on his back, a hand pressed to a flowing wound in his chest.
“Got me ... pretty good ... seems,” the older man muttered.
Starbuck jerked off his bandana, folded it into a pad, and lifting the rancher’s fingers, placed it against the wound.
“Hold that there—tight. I’ll get you back to the house.”
He rose to his feet, faced the riders pounding to a stop before them. “Over there—behind that biggest juniper,” he said, pointing toward the hogback. “Think I put a bullet into him but I’m not sure ... Don’t let him get away!”
The men nodded, spurred off. Starbuck knelt beside the rancher, took him under the armpits and helped him to his feet. He had a bit of difficulty with the buckskin but finally Hagerman was on the saddle. Shawn mounted at once, and, taking the reins of the man’s horse, struck for the ranch.
Off to his left he could see the riders closing in on the cedar. Sunlight glinted on their guns, and as he watched all halted abruptly. They seemed to listen for a few moments and then, as one, they rode over the crest of the ridge and disappeared beyond ... It could mean but one thing; the killer had fled and they were giving chase. His bullet had missed its mark after all—or else had inflicted only a minor wound.
Price Hagerman was having trouble staying on his horse. He gripped the horn with both hands, swayed back and forth brokenly even at the slow pace Shawn had set. As they reached the rise to the west of the ranch, he almost toppled from the saddle.
Starbuck, fearing such would occur, halted at once. Dropping from the sorrel, he turned to the buckskin and swung up behind the suffering rancher. Encircling him with an arm and holding firmly, he gripped the leathers in his free hand and dug spurs into the horse. The buckskin was not big enough to carry double for any distance, but they were almost home and that worried him little.
Rhoda saw them when they entered the yard. She crossed to the edge of the porch, stared, turned quickly back to the doorway.
“Mamacita! Pa’s been hurt!” the girl cried into the house.
She came off the gallery then, hurried to meet them. Behind her the screen slammed as the Mexican woman ran into the open. Shawn did not halt but continued on until he was opposite the entrance. Rhoda, keeping pace at the buckskin’s flank, looked up at him anxiously.
“Is it bad?”
Starbuck nodded as he swung down. “Get somebody going for the doctor.”
The girl whirled away, ran toward the crew’s quarters. Mamacita Salazar, dark face sober, stood at the door holding it wide.
“There is a bed—” she began, pointing to her left.
Shawn, gathering the rancher in his arms, headed for the stairway. “Better for him to be in his own.”
“But the steps, senor—”
“I can make it. Bring some hot water, and rags for bandages.”
The woman scurried off toward the kitchen.
Halfway up the stairs he heard Rhoda enter and rush to assist him.
“Go on,” he said. “Get things ready for him.”
Lips tight, she moved ahead of him. “I’ve sent for the doctor.”
Starbuck gained the upper floor, carried the wholly quiet Hagerman into his room and placed him on his bed. The rancher’s contorted face was beaded with sweat and a sallowness had replaced the weathered brown of his skin. At once Shawn began to remove the man’s shirt. Rhoda worked to take off his boots.
Mrs. Salazar appeared, a steaming kettle in one hand, a quantity of clean, white cloths in the other. She hustled Starbuck aside, bent over the rancher to examine the ugly, puckered hole in his chest from which a steady trickle of blood flowed.
Shawn felt Rhoda’s fingers grip his wrist. “Is ... is he—”
“He lives,” Mamacita cut in before Starbuck could reply. “But it will be good if the doctor comes soon.”
Folding a strip of cloth, she dipped it into the hot water, squeezed it almost dry and began to clean away the crusted blood surrounding the wound.
“He looks so pale ... and he doesn’t move or make a sound,” Rhoda murmured.
“It was a rifle bullet. They hit a man plenty hard. He’s in sort of a coma from it.”
A small sound of desperation escaped the girl’s lips. “Isn’t there something we can do? I—”
“Go—I will care for him!” Mrs. Salazar broke in, jerking her head at the door. “I will call if there is need ... Go—now!”
Shawn took Rhoda’s arm, steered her into the hallway and down the stairs.
“There’ll be coffee on the stove,” she said when they had reached the lower floor.
Starbuck followed her into the kitchen, sat down at the oil-cloth covered table in the center of the room while she poured a cup for each. When she had settled onto her chair, she looked directly at him, her eyes frank and steady.
“How did it happen?”
“Somebody was hiding along that ridge below here. Was afraid of the place—all that brush and rock made it a good spot for an ambush ... Tried to keep it at a distance.”
“Whoever it was—did you see him?”
“Got only a look at something moving. Threw a bullet into it and I thought I heard a gun bang into the rocks like it had been dropped. Maybe nothing to it, though. Three of the crew showed up and I sent them over for a look. He was gone when they got there.”
Starbuck stared moodily into his cup, swished the dark liquid about slowly. “Should have made your pa stay here—in the house ... Might’ve known this would happen.”
“Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have kept him here unless you roped him down. Do you think it was the man you saw last night?”
“Probably. No way of knowing for sure—yet.”
Lifting the cup, he took a long swallow. A disturbing thought had crept into his mind, one he did not like to consider. Setting the cup in its saucer, he said:
“Has Ron been back? He was out there ahead of us ... Expect he ought to be told what’s happened.”
The underlying meaning of the question was not lost to Rhoda. Aware of the deal he had made for a gunman, it was only natural that she glide to a conclusion.
“Do you think it was Ron who did it—ambushed Pa?”
Starbuck shrugged, regretting now that by his words he had planted the idea in her mind.
“Sort of doubt that it was him.”
But he was not entirely convinced himself. Ron had seemed to change, become more reconciled to a reasonable approach where his problems with Price Hagerman were concerned, but later, frustration and anger could have taken over again. He could have concluded that proceeding on such basis was hopeless and settled with himself for a more direct and immediate method ... It came suddenly to Shawn that he did not actually know Ron Hagerman well enough to judge; the son could be everything the father declared him to be.
“Your pa had just decided to let him handle that cattle drive to Crockett’s when the bullet hit him. Said, too, that if he made good at it, he was to be the new foreman.”
Rhoda, coffee yet untouched, looked away, gaze reaching through the window to the yard beyond. Two men were speaking with the cook in front of the kitchen shack, a third was moving up from the bunkhouse. Evidently, word of Price Hagerman’s shooting had spread fast.
“Poor Ron,” she murmured. “He’s always doing the wrong thing at the wrong time ... I expect you had something to do with Pa changing his thinking.”
“Not specially,” Starbuck replied, shifting about on his chair. “We just talked. He made up his own mind.”
“Of course. That’s the way he is—never really listens to anybody ... Shawn ... if anything happens to him, what will I do?”
“Just go right on living and doing the same as other folks have to do when somebody dies. Ron can run this ranch—and you can help. Can’t see as there would be any big change for you. But don’t count your pa out yet. He’s bad hurt, but he’s a tough one.”
She was only half listening. “I... I don’t know about Ron. There’s never been much between us. He’d resent me, I’m sure, and if I thought he was the one who’d hid along the ridge—and knowing he had hired that killer, too, I couldn’t stay around him. I’d hate him too much.”
“Don’t brand him with that bushwhacking yet. Good chance it was the killer, not him. Far as the other goes, he’s walking through hell barefooted regretting it. He was drunk and mad both when he did it—and I’m pretty sure he’d die keeping that killer from getting to your pa if he could.”
Rhoda frowned. “Then you don’t blame him—”
“Sure I do! No excuse for a stunt like that, sore and drunk or not. But anybody can make a mistake. Some make worse ones than others. That’s the kind he’s made—the worst there is. He admits it and he’d do anything to call it back.”
“Mistakes,” she said quietly, woodenly. “Guess we’d all like to change some of the things we’ve done ... If it turns out bad for Pa, is there a chance you can stay around, at least for awhile?”
He considered that for a time. Then, “I signed on for a month, Rhoda. When that’s finished I’ll have to move on. I—”
Shawn hesitated as a quick hush of hooves sounded in the yard. Rising quickly, he glanced through the window.
“It’s Ron,” he said and wheeled to the door.
Nineteen
Ron Hagerman’s features were strained as he entered the house. He saw Shawn and Rhoda waiting just inside the room, pulled up.
“Pa ... is he—”
“Alive,” Starbuck said. “We’re waiting on the doctor.”
Ron moved on, mounted the stairs hurriedly and crossed to his father’s room. Shawn stepped to the entrance, glanced out. Hagerman’s horse, reins dragging where he had been hastily abandoned, was directly in front of the house. A rifle was in the saddle boot. Starbuck shook his head at the thought nesting in his mind. It meant nothing. There were very few riders who didn’t pack a long gun on the range. He turned, aware that Rhoda was at his shoulder.
“You’re not sure that it wasn’t him after all, are you?”
“Not certain of anything,” he said grudgingly. “I’ve still got my doubts ... That doctor ought to be showing up, seems.”
“Be awhile yet. Are you going to ask Ron?”
“Ask me what?”
Hagerman, thin lipped and features drawn, had descended the stairs quietly, was now only a step behind them. Rhoda’s eyes flashed defiantly.
“If it was you who shot Pa!”
Ron’s head came up angrily. “You think I could have done that—” he began, and then his shoulders sagged. “I guess you’ve got a right to.”
“Was it?” the girl persisted.
“No,” Ron said in a low voice.
Shawn considered him narrowly. “You hear the shots?”
The younger Hagerman stirred helplessly. “No.”
“Understood from a couple of the crew we ran into that you were there ahead of us.”
“Expect I was. Was riding over for a look at Crockett’s herd and to get word to the men about that killer while I was doing it. Went far as the line shack on Mule Creek, then cut back to the west range.”
“Still seems to me you could have heard the shooting,” Rhoda said quietly.
“Well, I didn’t!” Ron replied, face hardening. “You hear it?”
“No, of course not. I was—”
“About the same distance. You’ve got no more right to think I should have heard it than I have of you—”
“Not important now,” Starbuck cut in, putting an end to the senseless wrangling. “How was he?”
“Like he was dead. Just lays there hardly breathing. How did it happen?”
“We were riding along below that hog
back—”
“I know where. One of the boys told me that. Like to know how.”
Shawn related the incident, completed it by saying that three of the crew had given chase to the bushwhacker and were yet to return.
“When they get back—and if they had some luck—we ought to have the answers to several things.”
Ron’s glance met Starbuck’s, held. “And if they don’t run him down it’s going to look all the more to you like it was me, that the way of it?”
“I figure the truth will come out, no matter what,” Shawn replied, evenly.
Rhoda, still bristling, said, “Here’s something that ought to make you proud of yourself—Pa had decided you would make the trail drive to Crockett’s.”
Hagerman stared at his sister. “He tell you that?”
“Told Shawn. Also said that if you did the job right you’d take over as ranch foreman.”
Ron stood mute and disbelieving.
Starbuck said, “Something else that doesn’t make much difference now. You’ll have to head up the drive, same as you’re now running Hash Knife.”
“Guess that’s so. It hadn’t come to me yet. What does is that Pa was going to let me do it, and that’s a big thing to me.” He hesitated, looked squarely at Shawn. “Guess I’ve got you to thank for it.”
“We just talked it over. Don’t give me a lot of credit I don’t deserve.”
Hagerman glanced at Rhoda, then back to Starbuck. “That other thing—the hired killer—did you tell him?”
“No.”
Rhoda frowned. “Are you going to?”
“We’ll see. Right now I don’t figure there’s a need to. Damage has been done, and feeling the way your pa does about Ron for maybe the first time in his life, I wouldn’t want to tear it all down for him.”
“Pa wouldn’t want it that way,” Rhoda declared firmly. “He’d prefer knowing. He’s always been strong for being honest and straight talk.”
“On most things, I expect he would. This is different—like telling a man he’s going to die. There’s times when it’s best to keep quiet about it.”
Rhoda continued to frown. “I think you’re wrong—”