Josh slipped off his mount and walked over to a calf and its mother huddled against a wall of rock at the far end of the canyon. He had noticed the mother’s brand from his saddle and it bothered him.
Pete dismounted also and together they examined the brand. There was no doubt in Joshua’s mind. The brand had been altered. It had not been a very careful or skillful job. Most likely a cinch ring was used as a running iron. The bar of the first B had been altered crudely to resemble the S of the Snake Bar, transforming Double B cattle into Snake Bar property.
Joshua looked at Pete. “When we get these cattle back to grass, I want you to help me separate the Snake Bar from the Double B.”
Pete looked startled. But he said nothing, just nodded.
“Good,” said Joshua, swinging back onto his horse. “So let’s get to it.”
The beef had to be coaxed to the far end of the canyon and then worried through a long narrow gully that wound for better than one hundred yards along the base of a rock wall that leaned straight up. As Josh coaxed the brawling critters along the narrow defile, he found himself wondering for the hundredth time how creatures as useful as beef cattle could be so dumb. They had followed one steer in as he followed the sparse grass with his nose and then promptly forgotten the way out. If the canyon floor had not been unusually rich in buffalo grass—that curly, dun-colored forage, dry-looking even in spring—most of them would have had to be hauled out of here on the end of a rope.
As soon as they broke into the clear the beef took flight for the lush pastureland below them. Pete and Joshua had to ride hard to keep them together. Once they had settled down to steady grazing, Pete and Joshua began separating the Double B’s from the Snake Bars.
It was close to sundown when they finished, and both their horses were close to exhaustion.
“What’s the count?” called Pete from the top of his horse. His Stetson was off and he was mopping his brow with his bandanna. His horse was gratefully cropping the grass at its feet.
“Thirty-two Double B, ten Snake Bar, twelve doubtful.”
“What are you going to do with those last?”
“Split ’em down the middle. Six to Double B, six to Snake bar.” Joshua took a deep breath and looked south into the Snake Valley. “You can go on back to the ranch if you want. I’m going to take these critters to the Double B and do some right smart apologizing.”
“Don’t you think you better speak to your Pa before you do that?” Pete asked grimly. It was plain to Joshua that Pete thought him already gone in the head—or, worse, a traitor to the Snake Bar.
“No, I don’t think nothing of the sort. Someday Snake Bar’s going to be my spread, Pete. I don’t need to build on stolen property.”
“You’ll be the first rancher I ever rode for that didn’t pick up a few mavericks now and then to flesh out his herd.”
“Maybe. But those days are in the past, Pete. You go on back to the ranch. This is my play—and nothing you should worry about.”
Pete’s tanned face set grimly and he sat back in his saddle and slapped his hat back on. It was clear to Joshua that he wanted to protest still more; but Joshua was the boss’s son. So that settled that.
Without another word he clapped spurs to his mount and took off at a gallop for the Snake Bar. Joshua watched him ride off, feeling just a mite lonely all of a sudden. What he was doing was bound to infuriate his father. Furthermore, he was going to have a great deal of difficulty driving these cattle during dusk. It would most likely be dark by the time he reached the Double B spread.
And once there, how would the son of John Blackmann be greeted as he drove ahead of him Double B cattle that Snake Bar had rustled?
Well, there was only one way to find that out. Whistling shrilly and slapping his coiled rope against the flanks of his horse, Joshua began to drive the cattle across the darkening grassland toward Snake Valley.
Six
Wolf sat listening in a corner astride a chair, his forearms across its back, his chin resting on his forearms. Two coal-oil lamps had been brought in from the stable and hung from hooks in the ceiling. They shed enough light in the cabin for everyone to see clearly, but they were already beginning to smoke.
Standing at the end of the table, his back to the door, was Bob Steele—a hefty, full-throated fellow with a broad chest and an easy, booming laugh. His voice and his manner were serious enough now as he spoke to Pike, his three fellow ranchers and to Clem Jenks, the sodbuster.
“… and that’s the way I see it,” Steele finished up. “If Double B goes, we’re next—every one of us.”
As Steele folded his big frame back down at the table alongside Phil Olsen, his neighbor on the northern range, Pike—who was propped up in a chair at the far end of the table—stirred himself.
“Double B ain’t going down,” he said, his voice small but firm.
Phil Olsen spoke up. “You can maybe say that, Pike, because you’ve got kind of ... well, special help.” His glance in Wolf’s direction underlined pretty clearly what he had in mind. Wolf smiled in spite of himself as the others at the table muttered their agreement.
“Now you know better than that,” protested Pike, beginning to stir himself alarmingly. “With or without Wolf Caulder, I’d fight.”
Steele spoke up quickly. “Pike’s right. We know the stake he’s got in Double B. He’ll fight with pitchforks and ball bats if he has to, and I don’t think any of us disagree with that.”
“But that don’t help us much, Pike,” Olsen said. “Look at you. A bullet through your shoulder, propped up in a chair. You ain’t dead by a damn sight, but you came pretty close—and all because, you stood up to Snake Bar.”
“You fellers going to turn tail and run?” Pike demanded.
“No, we ain’t, Pike,” Olsen protested. “But the trouble is, we don’t have the manpower Blackmann has. And we don’t own the law and half the town. We’ve got to fight him—but how?”
“Steele just said it,” Clem Jenks said. “I just heard him. We all got to stick together—like Poor Richard says—or we’ll all hang separately.” He was a wiry man with red curly hair and wild, beetling eyebrows. “I might have got that all wrong, but you know what I mean.”
“Okay. We stick together,” agreed Phil Olsen. His lower face was hidden in a rich black beard he kept trimmed just below the jawline and when he smiled his teeth flashed like summer lightning in a thundercloud. “Them’s fine sentiments and I heartily agree. But we can go down sticking together just as easy as we can one by one.”
Rod McCracken stirred himself. A lean, bald man with a prominent Adam’s apple and startlingly blue eyes, he spoke so rarely that now everyone grew quiet to hear what he had to say. “We’ve got to have a plan of operation,” he said. “And the first thing we’ve got to do is convince Obermeyer to allow Double B to trade at his place. If we back him to the hilt against Snake Bar, he might go along.”
Bob Steele nodded vigorously, his powerful face alert suddenly. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do!”
Pike looked at Paul Rawson. Rawson had said little all evening. “Paul, what do you think?”
“I think it’s time I pulled out,” Rawson said quietly.
“You mean sell your place—move out?”
“That’s what I mean.”
The five others at the table were astonished. Obviously they had had no inkling that Rawson was this close to giving up the struggle with Snake Bar.
“Since when, Paul?” Bob Steele demanded. “You never said nothing to me about this.”
“Didn’t know I had to,” said Paul mildly. “I’ve been listening to Maude. She’s been right most of the time. I think she’s on target for sure this time. We ain’t got the law, we ain’t got the riders, and pretty soon—if we back the Hansons with Obermeyer—we won’t even have a place to buy our tools, our feed and our harness. All we got’s a lord and master by the name of John Blackmann. Nope. I’m pulling out.”
He got
up abruptly, a look of cold resignation on his ruddy face, a hard bitter line about his mouth. His wife, Wolf had been told, was a harsh mistress but, it seemed, a strength Rawson appreciated all the same. “I guess I’ll be going now,” he said.
The others muttered their goodbyes, doing nothing to hide their disappointment; and as Rawson headed for the peg beside the door where he had hung his hat, he turned and nodded to Wolf, then looked across the room at Betsy, darning socks by the fireplace. “Thank you for the coffee and the biscuits, Betsy. They were right fine.”
She smiled warmly across the room at him. “You be sure to stop by with your missus and the children before you go. Hear?”
“We’ll do that, Betsy,” he said. He snatched his hat from the peg and ducked out into the night.
Those left at the table seemed at a loss. Rawson’s cold appraisal of their situation and his abrupt departure had punctured what little enthusiasm they had been able to muster. Sensing the low ebb of their resolution at this moment, Wolf got to his feet and walked out of the shadow of the corner, across the room to the table.
“Mind if I put in my two bits?” he said, sitting in the chair vacated by Rawson.
“Go ahead, Wolf,” said Pike, obviously pleased.
But the others—with the exception of Bob Steele—seemed a little put out by Wolf’s appearance at the table. Pike and the others were owners of land, ranchers, farmers. What was Wolf but a drifter, a hired hand—worse, a hired gun that Pike had evidently turned to in his desperation. Wolf felt all this resentment clearly, but he did not blame the men for it. He accepted it as casually as he accepted cold coffee at an inhospitable camp site. It was something a man on the move had to accept from those who put down roots.
“Let me go in tomorrow morning and talk to Obermeyer,” Wolf said. “I think Obermeyer’s a fair man. I got that impression anyway. The rest of you fellows can keep out of it. No threats. I’ll simply explain to him how much to his advantage it would be for him to let the Double B steal the wire—and any other supplies we might need.”
“But Blackmann would know it was a deal,” said Olsen.
“Of course he would. But what could he do? We’d have the wire and the supplies—and we would have paid for them.”
“Paid for them?”
“Do you have the cash, Pike?”
“I have it. It’s all I do have. But we’ve got it.”
Wolf looked around at the others. “We ‘steal’ it but we pay for it. Obermeyer’s in the clear and we have what we need, and everyone in the valley knows it.”
“But suppose Blackmann moves against Double B then?”
“We let him know he’ll be moving against all of us if he does. Time enough then for collective action. But it may not come to that.”
The other men at the table exchanged quick glances. It was the kind of proposal they could endorse without committing themselves to any immediate overt action. For the moment this plan put matters squarely back in the lap of Pike and the Double B. Wolf could sense an almost collective sigh of relief.
Bob Steele spoke up. “Sounds like a good idea, Caulder. But what if Obermeyer won’t go along? We’ll be right back where we started.”
“That’s a possibility, Bob,” Wolf admitted. “But that barbed wire that Obermeyer ordered for Double B is sitting in his warehouse right now—gathering dust. That’s a hell of a way to run a business. All I’m going to do tomorrow is give him the opportunity to sell those posts and all that barbed wire at a nice profit—and still stay clear of Blackmann.”
Bob Steele shrugged. “All right, then. I say give it a chance.”
Pike looked at Wolf. “You’ll be going in tomorrow then?”
“That’s right, Pike.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Wolf smiled. “No, you won’t.”
Olsen shrugged unhappily. “Okay. Looks like we give this a try, but that damned German drives a hard bargain. And he’ll be putting himself out on a limb too, don’t forget.”
Jenks spoke up then. “For a profit, don’t forget. Obermeyer won’t be forgetting that, I’m sure.”
That comment appeared to have exhausted the argument. The men looked around the table at each other, then shoved back their chairs and got to their feet. There was a confusion of goodbyes at the door; they all crowded out—and a moment later Wolf was standing in the doorway with Pike, watching them clatter off into the night.
“You let them off the hook,” Pike said. “For now. But they sure as hell better be around when we need them.”
“I know, Pike. But when they go after Snake Bar, their hearts sure as hell better be in it. They weren’t tonight. Blackmann needs more rope—before we can get these fellows to hang him.”
Wolf became aware of Betsy standing just behind him in the doorway. He looked down at her small, faintly freckled face. She was looking with cool appraisal at Wolf. “What is your stake in all this, Mr. Caulder?”
“Betsy,” Pike protested. “Wolf’s part of Double B now.”
“Why is he? Who are you, Mr. Caulder? You still haven’t answered my question. I’ve been here since Wednesday. Here it is Friday and you haven’t said one word to me—one word of explanation for your presence on Double B. If it weren’t for you, my father would be out of this now. He and Ben would be back in St. Louis, building a decent existence in a civilized community.”
Betsy’s outburst came as a complete surprise to Pike.
The man looked at his daughter in sudden dismay and anger. “Now just hold it a minute, Missy. That’s no way to talk to Wolf! He’s stood up to Snake Bar and right beside me when they wasn’t no one else in this territory who would have dared! He ain’t the one keeping me from high-tailing it with you and Ben back East to St. Louis—it’s me. I don’t want to live in no cramped, crowded city. This is my land and my grandson’s land. And that’s the reason I’m staying—and that’s the only reason. So don’t go blaming anyone else but me.”
The man had spoken angrily, quickly—without pause, and Betsy had felt the heat of it. It caused her to back up a step. But it did not cause her to give up.
“If this man weren’t here, you’d have to leave! Look at you! You’ve been wounded. This is the first day since I’ve arrived that you’ve been able to move off that cot in there. Do you think I want to bury you out there beside my brother and his wife?”
There were tears in her eyes now. Wolf felt keenly her anguish and her desperation and looked away from her as she suddenly collapsed forward into her father’s arms, sobbing. Wolf had felt it coming since that grim business at the stage in Willow Bend. It was out in the open now—like a boil that had been lanced. Now, maybe, there was a chance for a cure.
As Pike went back inside with Betsy, Wolf left them and crossed the yard to the corral, building himself a cigarette as he went.
“Wolf!”
Wolf turned and looked back toward the cabin. The single window over the cabin door was open and a pale head was stuck out. Ben had not been able to sleep with all that going on below him, obviously. “What is it, Ben?”
“Stay, Wolf. I want you to stay.”
Wolf smiled, surprised at how pleased he was to hear Ben say that. “I will, Ben.”
“Night!”
“Night, Ben.”
Wolf made himself comfortable on his favorite spot on the topmost rail and began smoking seriously, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, luxuriously, allowing the nicotine to draw the tension out of him and dissipate it in the cool night air along with the coiling smoke. He was building his second smoke when he heard light footsteps behind him. He turned to see Betsy looking up at him in the moonlight.
“Pike’s in bed. He’s exhausted, Wolf.”
“Yes, I suppose he would be.”
“I’m sorry for what I said, Wolf. It’s just that I don’t want anything further to happen to him. You must understand that.”
“I understand, Betsy.”
She turned around and leaned back aga
inst the corral. He heard her sigh. She had evidently given it all she had back there in the doorway. Now she was resigned to Pike’s staying on—to Pike’s continuing battle to save Double B. Wolf wished he could wipe away her fears by telling her it was going to be all right, that the worst was over. But only a fool would offer that kind of comfort at this stage.
“I could build you a cigarette,” Wolf told her.
“Oh, no,” she cried, laughing lightly. “I’d rather chew tobacco. But you go ahead. It’s cleaner and I like to see a man smoke.”
He went back to making his second cigarette and was lighting it a moment later when he heard the sound of lowing cattle—and the unmistakable thunder of hoof beats striking solid grass. Many animals—a small herd in fact—was approaching across the meadow on the other side of the stable. He could not see them—but he could feel them out there. And now he could smell them.
“Wolf ...?”
Betsy could hear them now as well.
“We’ve got visitors. Someone’s driving cattle across the meadow.”
“Rustlers?” Her voice was small with fear.
“Don’t seem likely. Rustlers would go in the other direction.”
And then—out of the moonlit night—a rider materialized, trotting directly toward them. Behind him Wolf could see the pale blazed faces of the shorthorns. They were milling about in the darkness, more and more of them coming to a halt. The rider approached more slowly, carefully.
Then he pulled up abruptly as he saw Wolf’s lighted cigarette pulsing atop the corral fence.
“Hello there on the fence,” he said. “This is Joshua ... Joshua Blackmann.”
Wolf heard Betsy gasp.
“Is that you, Caulder?”
“It’s me, Josh. Kind of late for herding beef, ain’t it?”
Josh rode closer until Wolf could have reached out and stroked his horse’s neck. “I’m returning Double B cattle. I found them this afternoon on Snake Bar range. Someone had used a running iron on them—but they did a damn poor job. They’re yours all right. I’m sorry.”
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