by E. R. Slade
“Nobody calls me a rustler,” Buck said. “Nobody steals my stock. Either honor my brand or get away from the gate.”
Inside he knew it was the Maxwell temper talking, that he wasn’t thinking things through. But it had simply come to the point where he was goddamned tired of playing by everybody else’s rules. Now they were going to start playing by his.
“I’m taking my stock out of that pen,” he said. “Anybody calculating to stop me better damn well know how to handle his lead pusher.”
Markham’s eyes brightened with fierce eagerness. “You’ll have to get them past me,” he said.
“Mack, open the gate,” Buck said. “Don’t worry about these boys. The first one pulls a hogleg goes to hell on shutter.”
“That’s right, Payson,” Markham said. “Try it. Nothin’ gives me more satisfaction than turnin’ a couple of rustlers into dead meat.”
Payson stood irresolute. Fosdick had moved aside, puffing his cigar, calmly awaiting the outcome. The brand inspector’s hand was hovering over his weapon.
Payson made his decision; and as soon as he moved it all happened at once.
Both the brand inspector and the sheriff went for their guns, but neither was very fast and Buck’s Colt roared twice before either man cleared leather. The brand inspector slammed back against the gate, slid down; Markham, being much bigger and heavier, merely jolted, then folded up and collapsed. Neither made a sound or even twitched once.
The cows beyond the gate had all crowded into the far corner and were bellowing their fright.
Buck looked at Payson, who looked back blankly, pistol half drawn. Buck dropped his own pistol into its holster.
All he could think of was what Mary Ellen would say.
Chapter Nineteen
Fosdick was backing away, watching to see if he would be allowed to leave.
“Yes, go,” Buck said irritably. “I wouldn’t sell cattle to you if you could piss liquid gold.”
Ears still ringing from the gunfire, Buck went and pulled the brand inspector’s body aside so he could open the gate. Payson said nothing as he helped get the cattle out and started for the river.
When they had returned them to the area near camp on the opposite bank, Payson finally spoke. “That was mighty fast shootin’, Mr. Maxwell. I never knowed you was that quick. They was going down before I even got hold of my hogleg.”
“They warn’t that good, actually,” Buck said, wanting to shut Payson up. “I’m surprised Markham lasted so long as a sheriff with no better draw than that.”
But Payson was warming to his subject. “Musta done a lot of back shooting. Wait’ll I tell ’em in High Plains about this. No more Markham shootin’ boys driving milk cows. You’ll be a hero.”
“I don’t care for that,” Buck said, irked. “Best to keep quiet about it. Bragging it around will only rile Snake Ed. Then there’ll be more cow-driving boys shot down.”
Payson studied him. “You wanted it to be secret you should have shot that fat buyer Fosdick.”
Buck didn’t respond.
“Who told you Snake Ed works for Fosdick?”
“Heard it around.”
“Don’t seem like it’s true.”
“No,” Buck said. “I’m going to check how the loading is going. You keep your eyes peeled. You notice anything at all you don’t like, fire three shots. Got that?”
“Three shots. What are you going to do about selling the cows?”
“I ain’t figured that out yet.”
~*~
The loading was nearly done. When Buck rode up a young man named Simms was keeping watch, rifle clutched tightly in both hands. He looked relieved to see Buck, and called to the others, “Mr. Maxwell’s back!” Then to Buck he said, “We heard shots. That’s why I’m standing guard. Do you know anything about it?”
“Yep,” Buck said. “Tell you later. You help with the loading. I’ll keep an eye open.”
“Trouble?” asked one of the men, looking anxiously in the direction of the stockyards.
“Trouble enough,” Buck said. “Keep working.”
“We only got a couple mowers to go.”
Once the wagons were loaded, Buck had them driven single file and he rode on the town side keeping watch.
If there were any deputies in Casper they seemed in no hurry to pursue. Maybe a full-sized posse was being organized.
They got across the Platte and along to camp without incident.
“There was a difficulty at the Stock Exchange,” Buck told the men. “Could be a gunfight coming. Drive up Casper Creek and find a good protected spot in the hills. Post a watch. Payson’s in charge. I’ve got unfinished business in town. Be along as soon as I can.”
“You sure you want to go back there alone?” Payson asked. “I’ll side you.”
“No, we need every man guarding the machinery and the cows. You’ll be few enough as it is.”
Buck gave them a curt nod and rode back into the Platte.
He was in a mood to ride straight into town. But, thinking better of that he rode along behind the northern row of buildings, looking between them into the street.
About midway along he got a glimpse of several men and some horses.
Buck swung down dropping the reins on the ground, then slid through the narrow space between a tent and the lean-to pigpen on the east side of King’s grocery store.
Across the street eight men were either mounted or holding saddled horses while another fellow with a self-important attitude talked to them. Everybody wore guns and some had saddle-slung rifles. Three men sitting aboard their horses also had bottles and were swigging freely.
Buck couldn’t quite make out what the talker was saying. While he talked, two more men came out of the nearby saloon, one carrying bottled courage, the other wiping a sleeve across his mouth. They got on horses at the hitch rail and joined the others.
Then everybody started checking the loads in their weapons. When the talker got on a large dun, the rest of the men mounted, and they started east at a walk, bunched tight.
Buck went back to his own horse and climbed aboard, sorting his options. He rode west at a canter, swung around the last buildings into the street.
The posse was just reaching the east end of town. The talker was pointing toward the river.
The range couldn’t be over two hundred yards, Buck thought. He pulled the Remington from the saddle scabbard and set it to his shoulder. One of the posse tipped his bottle up to drain it. Buck fired, the report slamming back and forth between the buildings, horses at hitch rails shying a little, a dog scooting under a low wooden loading platform.
The man just stared at the bottleneck he held.
Buck fired again, before any of them quite realized what had happened.
Glass shards sparkled. Horses shifted, men looked around drawing pistols.
The talker rapped out something and pointed at Buck.
Three men hauled out rifles and fired, but didn’t hit anything.
Buck fired again, and one of the men who had tried shooting back toppled off his horse. The rest of the posse fell into disarray.
The talker emptied his pistol in Buck’s direction, but nobody else tried to shoot again. Buck reloaded the Remington and started riding toward them.
One of the men threw down his guns. After that, the others did the same—but not the talker. He wheeled his mount and rode to the left at a canter, disappearing behind the buildings. Buck was tempted to go after him but thought he’d better follow up with the posse first.
When he pulled rein within a few feet of them, their guns were all on the ground and their hands in the air. Some looked plenty scared. They were just cowhands, and not particularly sober at that. The one Buck had clipped in the shoulder was sitting on the ground gingerly examining his wound.
“You boys like a drink?” Buck asked them.
They glanced at each other.
One said, cautiously, “Don’t mind if I do.”
&nbs
p; “You don’t have to wave your arms in the air no more,” Buck said. He pulled out a few dollars, rode near enough to hand it over. “It ain’t your fight,” he told them. “My advice is, stay out of it.”
“I reckon so,” said the one holding the money, and the others were quick to agree.
“Don’t drink all of that,” Buck said. “Leave enough to pay a sawbones for the fellow on the ground. Be seein’ you boys.”
Seeing no sign of the leader, Buck decided not to bother with him. He rode out of town, turned south and circled to the rear of the livery.
He checked his watch: ten fifteen. Twenty minutes to the train.
As he climbed the ladder he heard a rustling, and low voices. In the mow he paused, listening, sizing up the situation, then went up over the hay.
The liveryman, bits of hay in his hair, face flushed, was buckling his belt. A half-empty bottle of whiskey stood near Laurie, who wasn’t bothering to work too hard to cover herself up. She lay on her back smirking at Buck.
“Just checking on yer sister,” mumbled the liveryman, not meeting Buck’s eye.
“I can see that,” said Buck. He was too annoyed to bother pretending any concern for Laurie’s honor. “You’ve just had Snake Ed’s whore,” he told the liveryman. “I’d keep it quiet if I were you.”
The liveryman flinched, swallowed hard, then glanced at Laurie.
“Have a drink,” Laurie invited Buck.
“No thanks. Get yourself covered up. We’re going to the station.”
The liveryman beat a retreat, a worried look on. Laurie just lay there, sipped from the bottle, or perhaps pretended to, and held it out toward Buck. He took it, tossed it through an open window.
“Get your clothes decent,” he said irritably. “I’ll be waiting by the ladder.”
He went and sat on the edge of the hayloft, wishing he hadn’t bothered to come back to town, wishing he hadn’t come to Casper at all, wishing he’d stayed on the ranch in the Bighorns.
Laurie came to the ladder, gave him a sour look, and climbed down. They went out the rear of the livery and rode the short distance to the railroad station. The train was being put together, and they stood on the platform watching until it was possible for her to board.
“You lied about Fosdick,” Buck said conversationally.
She didn’t contradict him.
“Suppose you tell me the truth now.”
“I don’t know nothing.”
When the train pulled out, Laurie didn’t even wave.
“Don’t mention it,” Buck muttered, and turned away.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the flash of sun on a gun barrel and reacted.
There were two shots. A bullet whizzed past his ear. The posse leader’s body jolted, and he stumbled backwards, fell off the opposite end of the platform.
Buck went to look at the man. Just a cowhand gussied for town. Dead.
Men stood clear as Buck strode grimly off. He mounted his horse and rode north for the Platte, anxious to get away before he had to kill anybody else.
~*~
By the time he caught up with his men about noon—they were still traveling—Buck was in a foul temper. He knew what he was going to have to do with the cattle and he hated it.
It was going to be the last time.
The men were glad to see him until they noticed his mood. Then they became circumspect.
“Where we going, Mister Maxwell?” asked Simms cautiously, from the safety of his wagon seat.
“To look for a rustler,” Buck said shortly.
He led them up an easterly branch of the creek into the hills, found a likely box canyon, rode in to investigate. There was a makeshift corral—empty but for a couple of horses—and a log cabin mostly hidden in some trees.
Buck rode to the cabin and dismounted. The door opened a crack giving a glimpse of a bearded young face.
“I seen you got a corral here,” Buck said. “S’pose I could hire it for the night?”
Dark suspicious eyes looked him up and down. The heavy door stayed mostly closed.
“Might be,” the man said, barely audible.
“Can’t offer too much, maybe just a few dollars.”
“All right.”
“I’ll get the cows.”
Buck decided to park the wagons outside the canyon, had them circled, told the men to watch closely, keep out of sight, and signal if there was trouble. Then he and Payson hazed the cows into the corral.
The young man watched, holding a Winchester. He was a swarthy fellow with smooth skin and glimmering eyes. He was obviously looking at the brands.
Buck rode over after the gate was closed, and dismounted.
“Where you going with them cows?” asked the young man in his quiet slither of a voice.
“Hunting a market,” Buck said.
“I guess you been to Casper.”
“Yep.”
“Sometimes I deal in stock.”
“Really.”
“If you was to be willing to take ten fifty a head we might deal.”
“I wasn’t planning to start talking for anything less than thirteen.”
The young man looked into the corral, ran his eye methodically from one animal to the next.
“I’ll go eleven a head, that’s tops.”
Buck gave a doubtful look over his stock, but mostly so as not to appear to give in too easily.
“Well, all right,” he said.
A moneybag appeared from under the young man’s loose-fitting shirt. Four hundred fifty-one dollars was counted from it, held out. Buck pocketed the money, nodded, and mounted his horse. He and Payson rode out of the canyon.
“He’s a handy fellow to know,” Payson said. “I used to hate them kinds of critters, thought they was varmints, no better than rabid dogs. But now I look at things different.”
“Things is different, all right,” Buck said.
Chapter Twenty
They made camp in a canyon they could easily defend and kept watch all night in shifts. Nobody showed up to bother them. In the morning they drove the wagons out of the hills and north across open range to High Plains. They parked the wagons in the lot, planning to unload the next day since the sun had already dropped behind the mountains to the west. Buck was greatly relieved to see the place still standing—it felt like a reprieve.
“There’s somethin’ wrong,” one of the men said. “Ain’t hardly anybody on the street. You notice that?”
“I thought it seemed pretty quiet, myself,” said another.
Buck hardly heard them, going off to make a quick check of the premises, feeling more and more relief as he found the front door still locked, the windows unbroken. He went to the rear, saw nothing unusual—the hogs, chickens, sheep and horses looked all right.
Then he looked up into the timbers of the partly built barn silhouetted against the purple and gold remnants of sunset.
“Son of a bitch.”
Payson came around the corner from the machinery lot.
“Shit,” he said. Then he called to the others.
“That’s Horsely, Michael, and Tihlman,” somebody said, unnecessarily.
The bodies of Olinger’s former prisoners turned a little from side to side in the light breeze. Something fluttered. Buck went closer. A crude paper label was pinned to each shirtfront.
“Rustler,” Buck read aloud.
“Knowed we should ‘a’ turned them boys loose,” Payson said, matter of fact.
The other men looked warily at Buck, but all he said was, “Help me get them down.”
In a couple of minutes they had the bodies laid out on the clean new wood of the barn floor and the ropes cut off their necks. Buck ripped away the labels, crumpled them, tossed them down to one side.
“Been done a while,” Payson said. “Stiff as boards.”
“I guess we know who did it, though,” said one of the farmers.
Buck didn’t trust himself to speak. Payson—and his own instinct—
had been right.
He should have seen this coming. But he had misread Snake Ed. Three good men had died because of his bad judgment.
“You boys watch this place and somebody go get Dunderland,” he said.
He spun on his heel and strode down the alley. The hollow thudding of his boot heels on the board sidewalk ricocheted back and forth across the empty, darkening street.
Olinger wasn’t in his office. Buck crossed the mud and thundered down the other walk to the Bucket of Blood. He stopped just short of the doorway listening to the low mumble of quiet talk within; and then, gun drawn, he stepped to the batwings and looked in over them.
No Snake Ed. No Texans. But Olinger was bellied to the bar. Buck holstered his gun and pushed inside.
Olinger looked around, and his dull eyes widened at sight of Buck. Buck strode straight for him, stopped three feet away.
“Why ain’t you out huntin’ the lynchers?” Buck’s voice was full of dangerous calm.
“What lynchers?” Olinger rolled off his belly, put his other foot on the rail.
“Ain’t you noticed yet you’re missin’ three prisoners?”
“What prisoners?”
“You ain’t expectin’ me to believe you turned ’em loose, are you?”
“Turned who loose? I ain’t had a prisoner in over a week.”
Buck’s right snapped out; Olinger’s head went back.
But his jaw was harder than Buck had thought: Olinger’s brow darkened and a fist came sailing, nearly connected, too.
Buck drove his left up under Olinger’s jaw, but though the impact resounded throughout the saloon, Olinger reeled only momentarily before he lashed out with a right that glanced stunningly off Buck’s cheekbone, then with a left that plowed into Buck’s belly just under his rib cage with force enough to take his breath away.
Buck took a step back, felt three more blows land, saw the butt of Olinger’s pistol coming at him and swung an arm to knock it free.
With his breath back, Buck put everything he had into a right that slipped through Olinger’s crossed-forearm defense to land solidly and squarely in the middle of Olinger’s face. Blood spurted, and Olinger reeled back.