The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  Descending the Fandango steps, Redding sauntered over to Teague Darkin with a confidence that came from knowing that this man, whatever secrets might lie back of his officious exterior, had never laid eyes on Redding before.

  “Crowfoot?” Redding asked. “Saw you tack up the sign.”

  Darkin’s yellow-flecked eyes ranged over the big puncher before him for a moment before he nodded. “I’m Darkin, foreman of the outfit. Lookin’ for work?”

  “Right the first time.”

  Darkin’s penetrating glance came to rest on Redding’s clean-shaven jaw, his nostrils catching the scent of fresh bay rum. Something was chewing the foreman; Redding thought he saw a hint of suspicion enter the big man’s narrowed eyes.

  “A man who shaves off a beard as old as yours must have been is either fresh out of jail or trying not to look like a picture on a bounty dodger. Which boot fits you, stranger?”

  Redding thought, Could be he’s trying to place me with somebody he’s known on his back trail.

  Before he could answer, Joyce Melrose spoke from behind. “Teague, you mustn’t talk like that. Since when are we choosing a man by his looks on Crowfoot? We’re in no position to turn down a rider on what you imagine his past history to be.”

  Anger flared behind the metallic surfaces of Darkin’s eyes. He snapped to Joyce without taking his gaze off Redding’s newly shaven jaw, “I don’t cotton to making our bunkhouse a hideout for men on the dodge, Joyce. Something about this hombre—”

  Redding grinned. “I know I look tough, sir. I landed in this town with a Mex dollar in my pants. Spent half of it for a meal and the rest of it for a shave.”

  Joyce, coming around to face him, said gently, “What’s your name?”

  Redding removed his Stetson. “Blagg, ma’am. George Blagg.”

  “Where from?” Teague Darkin cut in.

  “Texas. Nueces country.”

  Darkin’s scowl faded. “Good at popping the brush for ladino steers, I take it?”

  “No thickets anywhere can touch a Nueces brasada patch, sir.”

  Darkin said in an altered tone, “No offense, Blagg. Miss Melrose here owns the outfit. If she says so, you’re hired. You can throw your war sack and bedroll in the buckboard yonder.”

  Redding replaced his Stetson, thinking, Darkin will bear watching. He’s not clear in his mind about me yet. Aloud he said, “Be with you soon as I throw a saddle on my crowbait, Mr. Darkin. How do I get to this Crowfoot Ranch?”

  Joyce said quickly, “Mr. Darkin and I will be driving out in the wagon shortly. Meet us here. Will two o’clock be time enough, Teague?”

  “Reckon.” Teague turned on his heel, carrying Joyce’s luggage to the buckboard and stowing it under a tarp. Then he lifted a pair of empty five-gallon kerosene cans from the box and headed downstreet toward a mercantile store.

  Joyce was thus legitimately alone with her new cowhand. Pretending to be engrossed in drawing on a pair of elbow-length gloves, she spoke in the lowest of tones. “You’re a Crowfoot man now, Doug. What next?”

  There was something Redding urgently had to settle in his mind, and since privacy between them would be an uncertain thing in the days to come, he phrased his question bluntly, not sparing her feelings. “Do you trust Teague Darkin completely, ma’am?”

  His question froze the girl, her eyes staring down at her gloves without seeing them. Redding saw a nerve twitch at the corner of her mouth and got the distinct impression that she was wavering between outrage at the inference he had cast on her future husband and an instinct to cover her true feelings with a lie.

  Her reply came as a surprise to him. “No.”

  “Nor has he got my trust.” Redding spoke swiftly. “I’ll tell you why. He has made you think he was on Crowfoot these past three days?”

  “Yes. Yes, he has.”

  “Well, I saw Teague Darkin in Paloverde the night you arrived. He and another man rode over the Pass that night, before the shooting in the Foothill House. Which means he’s either a jealous lover, checking on your whereabouts—or he may have got wind of the fact that you were in Paloverde to meet a cattle detective.”

  Joyce had not altered her posture during his speech.

  She forced herself to go on with the business of smoothing the gloves snug to her finger tips now.

  “I’ve got to know why your faith in Darkin has wavered,” Redding went on ruthlessly. “I know you want to be loyal to him, that you feel guilty about calling on the SPA without his knowledge. But if I am to work on this case—”

  Joyce turned as if to head for the sidewalk. Her eyes were bright with moisture. “All I can tell you, now or ever,” she whispered, pulling the traveling-veil down over her face to shield the movement of her lips from the possible notice of onlookers, “is that I think Teague lied when he said he found Dad’s body over in Tondro’s foothills. I think Dad was killed on his way to the Indian Reservation—and I think Teague knows it. I think he may have even learned the truth about Dad’s death. Don’t ask me why. Call it—intuition.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Grub-Line Visitor

  Four new riders, including Doug Redding—or George Blagg, as his name appeared in the pay book—had supper in the Crowfoot cookshack at sundown.

  The ranch headquarters occupied the head of a narrow valley between two rocky spurs of the Navajada range, less than twenty miles north of the Mexican boundary. Crowfoot’s range formed a belt across the entire Basin, from the summit of the Navajadas on the east to the summit of the Axblades on the west, its drift fences paralleling the Mexican boundary. It was thus one of the largest working outfits in the Lavarim country, and its barns and corrals and other outbuildings were lavish in proportion.

  Joyce Melrose’s home was a rambling tile-roofed adobe, boxing in a patio in the tradition of a Mexican hacienda; the site of Major Melrose’s donation claim cabin of a generation ago, his bonus for distinguished service in the war with Mexico.

  During supper, Redding noticed that Teague Darkin did not eat with his crew. As Joyce’s foreman and fiancé, he took his meals in the main house—a habit he had adopted, Redding learned, immediately following Major Melrose’s bushwhacking.

  A poker game got under way at the bunkhouse. Redding declined an invitation to join it, on the excuse that he wouldn’t have the price of a stack of chips until after payday. Lying on his bunk, studying the faces around the blanket-covered deal table under the glare of a lantern hanging from a crossbeam, the range detective had his try at sizing up what breed of men Darkin had gathered on Crowfoot for this, the first beef roundup since the boss’s death.

  His first impression of the Crowfoot crew was that Joyce had had ample grounds for wondering if Blaze Tondro might have spies planted in Crowfoot’s bunkhouse. Without exception, these tough-visaged waddies carried six-guns, even while engaged in a friendly poker session.

  Long schooled in making snap judgments of character, Redding took this display of guns as the mark of men who had been, or were, riding the owlhoot trail. With a few exceptions—oldsters from the Major’s original crew—Darkin’s riders were of a tough stripe who might easily fit in with a midnight crossing of the border, hazing stolen stock ahead of them.

  Joyce had done her part well this morning, giving him a spot on Crowfoot, a vantage point from which he could dig up evidence that Blaze Tondro’s hideout might well be located on Crowfoot soil. He had wondered, on the ride out from Trailfork, what had been behind Darkin’s catechism regarding his past. On the face of it, it would seem that Darkin was striving hard to keep the outlaw element out of his crew. Judging from his riders, the foreman had done the opposite.

  At midnight, Darkin came into the bunkhouse and ordered the poker game to break up.

  “You new men,” Darkin said, “will be assigned your personal strings by the wrangler tomorrow. Crowfoot runs cattle on two ran
ges, the home spread here on the Navajada side of the Basin, and on leased graze abuttin’ our holdings in the Axblades over west. Which means we got two roundups to handle.”

  Darkin dug a notebook out of his pocket and consulted it.

  “Blagg,” he said, glancing at Doug Redding, “you and the other new riders I hired in town this morning will work with the straw boss, Shorty Hadley, chousing anything that wears a Crowfoot brand out of the canyons on this side of the Basin. It’s rough range, brush and rocks. Hadley will show you where to bunch the stuff you pop out of the thickets.”

  Darkin paused to make sure his roundup orders were clear to everyone concerned. Then he resumed.

  “The bulk of our beef are on the west side. With luck, both our crews will finish about the same time, and we’ll pool the stuff for the drive over the Pass to the railroad at Paloverde. Any questions?”

  A stripling in his late teens whom Darkin had hired along with Redding at Trailfork this morning spoke up hesitantly. “Seems from where I sit you’re givin’ us new hands the dirty end of the stick, boss. What’s this talk I hear about it bein’ risky business chousin’ beef critters out of the Navajadas?”

  A scowl drew Darkin’s brows together. Redding thought, He’ll be a tough man to buck.

  “Referring to the poppycock that Blaze Tondro’s bunch is waitin’ to pounce on any Crowfoot herd you gather out of the foothills on this side of the Basin, Seymour?”

  Seymour clamped his jaw doggedly. “Maybe it was whisky talk, maybe not, boss. I don’t cotton to workin’ the Navajadas.”

  The straw boss, Shorty Hadley, spoke up from a corner bunk. “Darkin needs experienced men to handle the main beef gather over on the west lease, kid. My crew won’t have one cow to round up agin ten that Darkin’s boys will be handling.”

  Young Seymour cleared his throat, not wanting to admit to a kid’s misgivings in front of these men. “But Tondro’s bunch don’t bother beef on the west side. It was my understandin’ when I signed on in town this mornin’ that I’d work the Axblade lease.”

  Darkin snapped his book shut with a force that made the lantern jump. “You’re free to drift in the mornin’, Seymour. Other outfits in the Basin are hirin’. Tondro ain’t choosy what ranches he raids, if that’s what’s gallin’ you. Naturally Crowfoot gets hit the oftenest, our graze straddlin’ the border.”

  Seymour’s cheeks flashed, his temper crowding him hard. “It ain’t that I’m yellow, you understand. It’s just—”

  “Shut up or get out!” roared Darkin. “I don’t tolerate chuck-wagon lawyers stirrin’ up trouble in my crew.”

  Seymour grinned. “Reckon I’ll drift come daylight, boss.”

  Teague Darkin’s glance raked the bunkhouse, singling out Redding and the other new riders. “If any of you other new ones feel like the kid, pull out after breakfast.”

  Redding grinned, drawling from his bunk, “Reckon we’ll work where you tell us to work, boss.”

  Before daylight on the morrow, Teague Darkin left Crowfoot with better than half the crew, his pick including every one of the salty specimens Redding had ticketed for potential rustlers.

  This puzzled him. If Darkin was working with Blaze Tondro here on the east side of the Basin, it would seem more likely that he would have remained in charge of the crew assigned to that part of Crowfoot’s range which was exposed to Tondro’s operations.

  For himself, Redding had the assignment he wanted. He would even welcome an attack by Tondro’s rustlers, for that would give him trail sign to follow back into the Navajadas to the lair Matt Redding had discovered before death struck him down from behind. Somewhere in these tangled uplands he might track down the riddle of Zedra Stiles, the girl to whom Matt had given his love and his golden lizard ring as pledge of that love.

  Daylight was a gray stain in the east when Shorty Hadley’s chuck wagon pulled out of the ranch grounds with a crew of nine, including Doug Redding, and a cavvy numbering six horses per man. Joyce Melrose had been nowhere in evidence at this early departure of her roundup crews.

  By noon the straw boss had his roundup under way. They would work southward, canyon by canyon and ridge by ridge, gathering Crowfoot beef into a holding herd at a point near the Springs, where Redding had made his deal with the horse trader.

  This roundup should be completed in two weeks, by which time they would be ready to pool their cattle with the main Crowfoot herd being rounded up under Darkin’s personal direction on the leased Axblade graze across the Basin.

  For Doug Redding, the next four days were filled with the man-breaking labor of popping the brushy Navajada draws for half-wild Crowfoot steers and she-stuff. The men worked in pairs, hazing jags of cattle down to the prairie flats whenever they had assembled herds which would be hard to handle without extra riders.

  Redding found himself tormented with the thought that, for a range detective working on a case, he was, up to now, wasting his time. Joyce Melrose had called him to the Basin to investigate the mysterious murder of her father. This sharing the risks and grueling labor of a beef roundup seemed to fit no part of a manhunt pattern.

  And yet, as Shorty Hadley’s crew worked its dogged way southward, Redding knew that each time the chuck-wagon camp moved it was probably penetrating closer into the sprawl of foothills dominated by Tondro’s renegades.

  During his stint of nighthawk duty with the pool herd, every other night, Redding kept his senses keyed for the sudden break of gunshots and roar of hoofs which would signal a surprise raid from the outlaws hidden in the upper reaches of the Navajadas.

  During the day, invading the chaparral with rope and peg pony to flush hidden cattle out of the brush, he carried the thought that this roundup might well be under the constant observation of some Tondro sentinel, posted on the lofty volcanic rimrock which gave the Basin its name.

  If Tondro’s band struck, Redding’s part in this grim game would find him ready. His job would not be to defend the herd against attack, but to fade into the timber and keep an eye on wherever Tondro’s rustlers headed with the cattle.

  That trail might head into Mexico by some other route than the obvious one through the bottleneck at the south end of the Basin. Wherever it led, the answer to the mystery of Tondro’s hideout would surely be found at its end.

  At noon on this fourth day of grinding range work, Doug Redding headed for the chuck-wagon camp to pick up a snack of bait and saddle a fresh horse from the cavvy. Riding down to the chuck wagon, camped five miles from the growing herd on the flats, Redding saw from a distance that a grub-line visitor had hit Slim-Jim, the cook, for a handout.

  None of Hadley’s other riders had appeared yet for their noon meal. During a roundup in country as rough as this, the cook of necessity had to keep his grub ready at all hours, for the job of combing the foothill canyons often took a rider miles away from the camp at mealtime.

  Riding in, Redding thought he saw something vaguely familiar about the chunky-built grub-line rider and the grulla horse hitched out by the pile of wood Slim-Jim had had his visitor chop into kindling size as the price of a handout.

  Redding was off-saddling out at the rope corral, where the cavvy was bunched, when he saw the grub-liner toss his dishes into the wreck pan and turn around to face Redding.

  One glance at the shaggy red beard depending from the visitor’s jaw identified the man. That and his greasy buckskins.

  “Jace Blackwine!” Redding muttered, and felt the hair on his neck nape lift to the challenge of it. “What’s that damn mustanger doing on this side of the range?”

  Blackwine’s presence in this Crowfoot roundup camp had all the makings of a calamity for Redding. Blackwine would know about the supposed shooting of Doug Redding in Paloverde last week. In any event, he would not greet Redding by the alias of George Blagg. Such a discrepancy would be sure to catch the cook’s attention.

  T
he beefy mustanger put a long look on the rider out by the cavvy corral and then turned to stroll over to his tethered pony. A wash of relief went through Redding. Blackwine had apparently failed to recognize him with his whiskers shaved off. The fact that Redding had gotten rid of his roan saddler had kept Blackwine from spotting the horse Redding had used this summer during the mustang hunt. Redding tarried overlong at the business of unsaddling. The cook was out of earshot, tending his Dutch oven; as yet no other riders had shown up.

  Hoofbeats made their abrasive crunch over the gravelly patch near the cavvy pen, and Redding glanced over his pony’s withers to see that Blackwine was spurring straight toward him, a grin lurking behind his beard.

  He’s spotted me, Redding groaned inwardly. Talking my way out of this will be rough.

  Five feet away, Blackwine reined up. “Mighty healthy looking for a corpse, son. They got your name on a boot-hill headboard over in Paloverde.”

  Redding felt the fast race of blood in his temples. “What brings you to the Basin, Jace? Thought you were hunting oreanas up north of here.”

  Jace Blackwine shifted his ponderous weight in the stirrups to delve deep in a pocket of his buckskin pants. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure his next move would not be observed by the Crowfoot cook. Then he withdrew his hairy paw from his pocket, and Redding saw the flash of a silver star in the mustanger’s hand.

  “You played your cards wrong when you were workin’ for me, Redding,” Blackwine said softly. “If you signed up with my boys tryin’ to get a line on where Blaze Tondro holes up, I could have told you. How was I to know you were an SPA bloodhound?”

  Redding was silent a long moment, pondering how far he could trust Blackwine. He saw the mustanger thrust the badge back in his pocket and settle himself in saddle, waiting for Redding to speak. If Blackwine had his star, then Blackwine knew the Rickaree Kid had been the dead man on his bed at the Foothill blouse that night. Had Blackwine tipped off the Paloverde marshal that a law badge had been planted on the Kid?