The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  They plucked their running cow ponies in on bunched feet sliding in the trail, their hats beaten back by the breeze they made, their eyes alike in that they ran like quicksilver over the entire situation. Under their stares Hank Smith turned a sickly white and Hex Fontana a sort of diluted dirty purple.

  “Let’s call it a sort of mistake all ’round, huh?” suggested Bill Dorn. He tossed away the two stones he had held until now, dusted his hands together and added, “If somebody’ll sling a rope over my horse, why shouldn’t all of us ride on to the new camp on Silver Creek? That is,” he amended, “all but Smith and Fontana who’re riding the other way.”

  Hank Smith, a lean leathery Texan, said drawlingly: “Hope there’s no harm did, Bill. It was, like you say, sort of a mistake. Glad Fontana didn’t poke a bullet through you. Say, would he turn red when he found out you wasn’t carryin’ no hardware! Har, har!” He gave Fontana a look and the two rode on down trail.

  The three Dorn Ranch cowboys gawked. But also they bestirred themselves, heading off the frightened blue roan over whose neck Bud Williams’ rope settled skillfully. Bill Dorn, dusty and somewhat bruised, otherwise carrying no mark of his recent run-in with Bundy’s gunmen, swung back up into the saddle. It was good to be riding again!

  Diana Villaga spurred to his side, and he and she led the way on toward Silver Creek.

  “Tell me, Bill!” she commanded. “Tell me about everything.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Take it from one who knows, Diana Villaga was a girl to hit you in the eye at forty paces. Spoiled? Seguro que si, Señor! Spoiled from her cradle, Valgame! Pampered, if you like, even before birth, when the whole Villaga family, having two boys already, prayed to all their saints that it be a little daughter this time. The little daughter obsessed them before her arrival, making them wait their long impatient hours at the last quite like a grande dame coming late to the opera. She was as lovely as the golden springtime sunshine.

  She wore a big black hat like her brothers, but its band carried a silver buckle as big as your hand, polished bright by an old servitor at the Hacienda Villaga. She wore black chaparejos like her brothers, and in the belt another buckle to flash in your eyes. Like them, too, she wore two pistols; their grips were mother-of-pearl. Her cheeks were delicately tinted, ivory with a flush of old rose, and her hair broke into little curls that were somehow like Spanish laughter, and her eyes seemed so deep that the wary sensed danger, and her lips were as red as the pomegranate seeds.

  “Don Bill,” she said for first words, “who was that girl who danced last night in Nacional?”

  Dorn looked at her wonderingly. “That’s Señorita Diana for you,” he thought. “She’s like a nice young leopard in a jungle. You know she’ll pounce but you don’t know from where.” Any other girl would have wanted to know about what had happened just now with Hank Smith and Mex Fontana trying to kill him.

  “You weren’t in Nacional too, were you?” he asked.

  She treated him to an eloquent southern shrug. Her whole body could talk for her when she was interested, as she seemed to be now—as she had a way of being most of the time. She exclaimed impatiently: “Uf! Did I have to be there? Don’t I hear what is going on? I want to know about her. Who is she and why did she wear a mask and what made you take such an interest in her and is she the one who killed One Eye Perez?”

  “Of course she didn’t shoot Perez,” said Bill Dorn stoutly. “She is a nice girl. Her name is Lorna Kent, and she is the niece of Mrs. Kent of Palm Ranch. That’s all I know about her.”

  “Is she as pretty as they say?” Diana wanted to know.

  He gave her a shrug as good as her own. “Quien sabe, Señorita? A man can look at her without getting a headache.”

  “Uf!” said Diana. “Already you are in love with this one, no? And Don Michael too, does it not make his head ache to look at her? You go often to see Mrs. Kent, don’t you, and—”

  “You hadn’t heard that Mrs. Kent was dead?”

  “Don Bill!” Her gauntleted hand gripped his arm. She gasped. “But that cannot be! I had tea with her—she was so bright and gay for such an old, old lady. She even showed me an old dance step, a polka. Dead?” She shuddered. Death, to Diana the bright, was unthinkable. She murmured under her breath: “Oh, but I am sorry. And the niece, the Lor-r-r-na Kent? What of her?”

  “She’s down there at the ranch house. Pretty much alone. And—”

  “La pobrecita! The poor little thing! I shall go to her. Now. Today. Anyhow tomorrow.”

  Then they came out upon the lower end of the flat, where the base of the mountain let Silver Creek escape, and saw the new camp. On a bit of bench land beyond the creek were gathered a hundred, perhaps two hundred men. Dusk was deepening; here in the embrace of the mountains which rose loftily about the spot it was already nearly dark. A camp fire burned brightly; near by a red glow went up into the air from a freshly contrived barbecue pit. Down the air drifted the scent of beef broiling. Two men squatted by the pit, their faces red like devils’ over one of hell’s open furnaces, slowly turning their long green willow poles with their chunks and slices of browning meat. A couple of hungry cowboys had found a fat young steer that had strayed, had hazed it into the little valley—and now supper was almost ready.

  “There is Señor Bundy!” cried Diana, sounding eager as she rose in her stirrups and lifted her riding quirt, pointing. “He is easy to see, eh, Don Bill?”

  Bill Dorn only nodded. Sure, Michael was always easy to see in any crowd. Not only was he a striking man physically, tall and blond and handsome, but he had a way of dramatizing himself. You could hardly say that he was affected; it was just that he was Michael Bundy who was what they called in those days a “big gun”; a man to mix with any crowd yet somehow to stand apart and above it. He even dressed with a flourish; his shirt was white, a heavy silk, and about his muscular throat he wore a flaming red silken handkerchief. He struck a note anywhere—among his lady friends, and they were legion; among hard, two-fisted men no less. This gathering in the Blue Smokes was Michael Bundy’s party, and not a man of them was foolish enough to dream otherwise. The best they could look for were such scraps as the hyena picks up after the lion’s kill.

  The latest riders up the trail to Silver Creek Flats came rocketing into the gathering, Bill Dorn and Diana Villaga at the fore, the two Villaga boys just behind them, the three cowboys from the erstwhile Dorn Ranch crowding them close. Diana came down out of her richly ornamented Mexican saddle like a feather. Bill Dorn struck ground, his boot heels solidly planted, his big spurs jangling. He and Michael Bundy almost rubbed noses, so close did Dorn’s sliding blue roan bring him.

  Bundy without stopping to think, without needing to stop to think, sped a hand down to his belt where his gun rested loosely in its old blackened leather holster. But both of Diana’s quick gauntleted hands extended toward him stayed him a moment. And then Bill Dorn spoke.

  “Hello, Bundy,” he said casually, though his voice sounded thin and hard.

  “Hello, Bill,” said Bundy. With one hand, the left, he imprisoned both Diana’s gloved ones. His other hand remained on the grip of his belt gun. “I hear you’re looking for me.”

  It was Diana who spoke up then, laughing as though the funniest thought in the world had just struck her.

  “Don Michael,” she gasped, “would you like to laugh with me? Then laugh at this: This funny Don Bill Hop-Along Dorn has lost his gun—and a while ago he was going to start fighting like a little boy—throwing rocks! It is so true, Don Michael! Tomorrow you can ask your friends, Hank Smith and Mexico Fontana; they will tell you. They tried to shoot Don Bill out of his saddle; they thought he was going for his gun to shoot them; they were so red in the face when we all found out that he didn’t have any gun! Isn’t that funny, Don Michael?”

  “Look here, Bill,” began Bundy angrily, but Diana broke in:

&nb
sp; “Oh, Michael! Tell me! They say you have found so much gold here that you and all the rest of these men can’t use it all! Is that true, Michael? You aren’t going to forget the Villagas!”

  Bundy squeezed the two little hands which he held such willing prisoners, and the lines of his face softened fleetingly as he looked down into Diana’s eyes, which seemed to yearn upward through the fire-flushed semi-dark.

  “There’s anyhow one Villaga no man on earth could ever forget,” he told her, and sounded earnest and sincere; one would have said that he was fully aware of the appeal of the mercuric girl, and that something deep down within him responded to the challenge which was Diana. Then he returned his gaze, intent and watchful, to Bill Dorn’s face, ruddy in the fireglow.

  “Right now,” Bundy continued, “there may be a bit of unfinished business between Dorn and me; business before pleasure you know, Señorita.” After staring a moment longer at Dorn in that arrogant, high-headed way of his, he demanded curtly: “Well, Dorn? What’s on your mind?”

  “Mike Bundy,” said Bill Dorn, “killing is too good for you.”

  “So your murder-mania of which I’ve heard so much, was just a flash in the pan?”

  “Last night I wanted to kill you,” said Dorn. He spoke quietly and steadily yet there was in his voice a queer quality which made perfectly clear to all who heard him that he was holding himself in check only with the greatest difficulty. As he had flown at Bundy last night down in the border town, so did every instinct and blind purpose within him drive him toward doing now. But at this particular moment a clear thought in a cool brain over-mastered rebellious instincts, whipping them like snarling beasts back into their cages.

  “You interest me!” Bundy mocked him, a flash coming up into his hard steel gray eyes.

  “Last night I would have killed you, but when I saw you I forgot my gun!” retorted Dorn. “And now I thank God that I did.”

  “Let’s not drag God into this,” jeered Bundy. “But just why the change of mind, why the softening of heart?”

  “You deserve killing,” said Dorn sternly. “You’re a crook and a cheat and a damned traitor, but I’d rather have you alive than dead, and I’ll tell you why. You have robbed right and left, you have gutted those who trusted you; you have shown the world that you’re as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. And instead of turning you into a lump of carrion I am going to make it my job, if I never get another chore done, to see you alive long enough to make restitution for at least the bulk of your robbery of my friends.”

  “You rat,” said Bundy, slow and deliberate and angry yet controlled as was his erstwhile friend. “I’ve heard you out, and now you’re free to tuck your tail between your legs, like the yellow dog you are, and run. If you want me to beat you to death with my hands, why just tuck in! If you want me to fill you full of lead, just get you a gun and say the word. Outside of that I’m done with you.”

  “No,” said Dorn a trifle huskily, “you’re not done with me, Bundy. Rather, we’re just starting. I’m not going to get a gun, and if I’m found shot to death—well, there’ll be no trouble for the crowd to guess who did it! Jake Fanning’s dead; One Eye is dead; someone shot the two of them. Better go slow about making me the third, Bundy!”

  “Why, damn you!” Bundy roared out at him. “If you mean—” Bill Dorn had to lift his own voice to a shout for his words to cut across Bundy’s.

  “I’ve got a question to ask which you can answer or not as you damned please! Did you—”

  “To hell with you and your questions!”

  “About Palm Ranch. There was a sign on the door saying, ‘Keep Out.’ I went in. Does Palm Ranch belong to you?”

  “Yes! And by God, if you trespass there again—”

  “Did you buy the ranch from Mrs. Kent?” demanded Dorn, sharp and eager. “If you did, you’ll show the deed. If you didn’t—well, I’ve an interest in that place myself.”

  “I warn you to keep away from that place, you fool Dorn!”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” retorted Bill Dorn, sounding cool, and turned away. “If you had bought it, you’d have said so.”

  “I’ve warned you!”

  Bill Dorn went on his way through the crowd that had formed a tight ring but which now opened up to let him through. He was thinking: “He didn’t buy the place or he would have said so. He has got a strangle grip on it somehow, but he’s lying when he says that it’s his. His he means to make it, like everything else, but he can’t know about Lorna and—By thunder!”

  Maybe Mike Bundy did know about Lorna Kent! Maybe that was why Bundy’s two hellions, Smith and Fontana, had grabbed her in the border town and yanked her into full notice, swearing that it was she who had shot Perez. Conceivably their act, ordered of course by Bundy, could have had a dual purpose—to pin the murder on someone, to get rid of the Kent heiress for good and all.

  At some little distance from the barbecue pit yet in the full glow of the camp fire, seeking someone to tell him of what had happened out here in the day, Dorn came to a small knot of friends. They were young Ken Fairchild, old Middleton and Stock Morgan. Before he could speak Stock Morgan took a step toward him, saying crisply: “Well, there ain’t no hard feelin’s, is there, Bill?”

  Bill Dorn stared at him, failing to understand.

  “Between you and me, Stock?” He shook his head. “Not on my part. Why should there be?”

  “Know who hit you last night, Bill?”

  “No. Hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, I did. With the end of my gun. If you wanted to beat hell out of me now, I don’t know’s I’d hold it ag’in you. It was a kind of a low down trick, sneakin’ up on you from the rear an’ hammerin’ you. But you see, Bill, I’ll swear to gran’ma I sure thought you was chokin’ Mike Bundy to death an’—Well, us boys didn’t want him dead, right then.” Bill Dorn looked him over as though of a mind to tie into him. Then a slow good-humored grin broke up the bleak sternness of his face into pleasant lines. He put out his hand.

  “Thanks, Morg,” he said. “I’m throwing in with you boys on one thing anyhow: Between us, no matter what hell breaks loose, as it’s apt to do before long, it’s up to us to make sure that Bundy is as safe as a man in jail. Might as well let the world know that any man that wants to do Mr. Bundy any harm has got us boys to reckon with. It’s closed season right now on Mike Bundy. Now tell me. What’s the line-up here?”

  Stock Morgan drew a deep breath and began hunting for his pipe. “I feel sort of better, your takin’ it that-away, Bill,” he said, and there that matter was closed. “As for today’s activities up here, well you might guess how they went, Mike Bundy bein’ top dog as usual.”

  Bundy, he explained, had consented to lead the pack to the new gold strike, but things must be done Bundy’s way. Well, that was fair enough. So Bundy designated some forty men who were to be first to stake claims after him. The spot was on the rim of the meadow, where the shaggy cliffs were based in a broken talus. And only after Bundy and his selected men had staked were the rest permitted to crowd in.

  “An’ already,” said Ken Fairchild, “Bundy’s had not only his picked lot but another dozen or so sign papers. Some sort of a pardnership racket, they think it is. Pardnership, hell, with Mike Bundy! Like a herd of muttons signing up with a mountain lion. An’ he’s told the world he’s goin’ to build him a high fence around what’s his’n, an’ the crowd of claim-hunters can keep out.”

  “You stakin’ yourse’f a claim, Bill?” asked Morgan.

  “Not any,” said Dorn. “No more kicking in with Bundy.”

  “We heard you doin’ some pretty wild talkin’ to him, Bill. How in blazes do you figger you can make a man like him cough up anything he’s swallered?”

  “Talk to you later, Morg. I’m beginning to get myself a couple of notions. Maybe you knocked ’em into my head last night, or anyh
ow sort of opened it up so a new idea could sneak in. Tell me, did you boys know that old lady Kent, down at Palm Ranch, was dead?”

  “We rode by that way today, of course. Somebody said as how she was dead, the place deserted. What did she die of, Bill?” he demanded curiously.

  “I’d like to know! Maybe sometime the sheriff’ll want to know too! Bundy claims the place is his.”

  “Shucks, Bill, you can’t go tyin’ everything to Mike Bundy! If you got him figgered goin’ aroun’ murderin’ folks, Jake Fanning and Perez an’ now ol’ lady Kent—Well, I must of knocked all the sense out of that head of yours that was ever in it. Bundy’s got a lot of fox mixed up with the gorilla blood that’s in him.”

  Bill Dorn nodded. “Yes, guess you’re right, Morg; I’m beginning to see things crooked. But all round it’s a damn funny mess.”

  It was perhaps twenty minutes later that Duke Jones, hunting everywhere for Bill Dorn, ran him down.

  “Say, Bill,” he said, “after you walked out on Bundy he did a lot of loud talkin’. He’s pretty damn’ sore, Bundy is; jumpy, kind of, too, an’ that ain’t like him. What was on his mind was that you had your warnin’ to keep off Palm Ranch. He says, so you c’n hear him a mile, the place is his an’ that already he’s sent his two killers, Mex an’ Hank, down there to guard the place, an’ that they’re to throw out anybody that tries to nose in—an’ that if you get funny with ’em they’re apt to finish what they started on the trail this afternoon. I kind of thought you might as well know.”

  “Lorna Kent is there,” muttered Dorn, as much to himself as to Duke Jones. “Bundy doesn’t know that, but—”

  “The hell he don’t! I heard that Villaga pullet tell him; I thought he was goin’ to jump clean out’n his boots.”

  “Good God!” said Dorn. “They’ll grab her the way they did last night—they’ll rush her back across the border—she’d never have a chance—”