Winter Range

by Alan Lemay

  HE buildings of the 88 were made variously of adobe, clapboards, and square-hewn logs. The layout could not be called compact; yet somehow it had a stripped look, barrenly efficient.

  Bill McCord stood in the doorway of the barn as Kentucky Jones came up. Kentucky had a feeling that he had been seen and watched from a long way off.

  "You want to see me?" McCord asked.

  "I'll talk to your boss, if he's here."

  Bill McCord rolled a crooked cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other. "All right. He's up at the house." He did not offer any accommodations for Kentucky's horse.

  Kentucky rode to what appeared to be the main door of a squat adobe which a glance of McCord's eye had indicated. The door opened as he pulled up, and Bob Elliot stood there, looking at him without expression.

  "Hello, Bob," Kentucky said.

  Bob Elliot leaned against the side of the doorway, lean-shouldered, straight-backed, looking com petent and tall. "It seems very peculiar," he said with casual frostiness, "to see you here."

  "I suppose so," said Kentucky, swinging down without invitation. "Are you going to ask me in or not?"

  "I hadn't thought of it," said Elliot; "is there any special call for it?"

  "There is."

  "Let's hear what your business is, then."

  "It's a little matter of range rights," Kentucky told him.

  "In that case," said Elliot, "go back and tell your boss you fell down. I understand my rights on the Bake Pan, and Wolf Bench too, just as well as he does. And when he wants to talk to me he can come himself!"

  "Ragland," said Kentucky, "can speak on his own behalf, what and where he wants to, without advice from me or from you either. It happens that this time I'm speaking for myself, I came over to tell you that I've bought a fifth interest in the Bar Hook."

  Bob Elliot's face went blank with perfectly real astonishment. "You bought a - what?"

  "You heard me, I think."

  Bob Elliot stared at him for a moment more. "Come in here," he said at last. He turned his back and walked into the house; and Kentucky followed him. "I thought I understood you to say you'd bought into the Bar Hook," said Elliot as soon as the door was shut. "Now what in all hell can be your idea in that?"

  "I was able to buy some hundreds of head of Bar Hook cattle at a very favorable price," Kentucky told him. "I'll make something on those cattle in the spring."

  "In the spring," Elliot repeated. "And where did you expect to hold them through the winter?"

  "Right where they are."

  Bob Elliot stared at him again while this soaked in. Then abruptly, unexpectedly, he turned away from Kentucky Jones and began to laugh, as Kentucky had seen him laugh before in Sheriff Hopper's office at Waterman. There is no laughter so mirthfully sincere as that which defies its owner's effort to suppress it; and though Bob Elliot's face showed something more like pain than mirth, his laughter had that sincerity now. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and seemed to fight the paroxysm, which shook him as if he had been trying to strangle a fit of coughing. "This is rich," he said at last. "Nothing trivial about this transaction, I hope?"

  "Hardly."

  "So now naturally you want to talk to me."

  "Naturally. Both technically and practically, for the time being I am a part owner of the Bar Hook. More particularly as regards the Bar Hook grazing rights."

  "Of course you recognize," said Bob Elliot, "that you and I probably don't see eye to eye on grazing rights."

  "We can understand each other without going into that very much, I think," Kentucky said. "When it comes to this herd you've shoved onto Bar Hook range"

  "Look here, Jones," Elliot said. "Your object is to bring these cattle you've bought through the winter in good condition, I suppose."

  "I mean to bring 'em through."

  "Well, you've got one chance to get out of this," said Elliot. "Cut your cattle out of the Bar Hook herds. Lease you a good piece of ground, and take your cattle there. I'll tell you frankly, Jones; it's going to be a tough winter for the Bar Hook herds where they are now."

  "I'll leave them where they are," said Kentucky again. "I've already told you I'm swinging with the Bar Hook."

  "In short," said Elliot, "what you came here to tell me is that your share in the Bar Hook is a fighting share."

  "You can call it that."

  Bob Elliot lighted a tailor-made cigarette. His keen knife-carved face was not exactly smiling; but behind it Kentucky Jones now perceived that there was a smouldering satisfaction, a grim content. The ironically humorous glance of his frosty blue eyes had a snap like the flick of a whip. "That girl certainly got you in for something," he said.

  "Yes?" Kentucky Jones smiled on one side of his mouth. Until now neither had mentioned the incident in the sheriffs office which had terminated when Kentucky Jones had knocked Bob Elliot out. He held his peace, and began the making of a cigarette; but he thought that Elliot must have known what was in his mind.

  "I'll tell you a couple of things for your own good," Bob Elliot went on, half sitting on the edge of a table; his penetrating blue eyes watched Kentucky through the smoke of his cigarette. "You're butting into a situation that you know very little about, Jones. You seem to think that this little difference of opinion that's coming up now between me and Ragland is something new. It isn't. We've had it all the time. Even without this new crisis brought on by Mason's death, there never could have been room for both the Bar Hook and the 88, in the long run. Sooner or later one or the other would have had to go. Up until now I've been willing to give Ragland a break for the sake of the peace. It just happens that the way things fall out I'm not able to baby him any more. Don't you forget for a minute that the land in question is public domain."

  "And that you're entitled to graze half way from your water to his. You'll have to govern your cattle count by that; and we don't want to see one head more."

  Elliot made an impatient gesture with his cigarette. "It'll be a long day," he said contemptuously, "when you tell me something about the cattle business in the rimrock, Jones. If you think Ragland has a case ask Campo why he's sitting back in his corner, and sending you to make his bluff. Ask him. You might find out something you need to know."

  Kentucky Jones shrugged. "I can't speak for what Campo will do. I've bought in on the understanding that the land my cattle are on is Bar Hook range - has always been Bar Hook range. I'll tell you straight out, Elliot - I don't mean to have that range forced. And if I have to take my boys and ram your stock right back down your throat, in order to hold my graze, stand from under! It's up to you."

  Bob Elliot eyed him speculatively. "I haven't the least doubt," he decided, "that you'd run hog wild and make a lot of trouble for yourself and everybody else once given the chance. No horse on earth is so dangerous to ride as a blind horse. I don't think, though, that you're going to make much of a war on the 88."

  "I'll make what push I need to, no more and no less."

  Elliot allowed himself a faint smile. "I suppose you know you'll have to fight Campo himself, first?"

  "What makes you think so?"

  "For one thing," Elliot told him, "because when you hooked up with Campo Ragland you hooked up with a yellow quitter."

  "I reckon," said Kentucky, "you might not be so quick to say that to Campo's face."

  "You think not? I'll tell you one more thing you don't know about. I understand that you heard Bill McCord cuss out Lee Bishop, and send him home with his tail between his legs. Well, you can take it that Bill was only copying after his boss. Because this range has seen the day when I sent Campo Ragland home with his tail between his legs, under much the same circumstances. And that wasn't so long ago. Not so long ago!"

  "It kind of stumps a man to swallow that one, Elliot-seeing that you're still alive."

  "Oh, it does, does it?" Elliot smiled in an ugly way. "Campo went home to get his gun, aiming to kill me. If you want to see Campo bust a cinch, ask him why he never
carried that through!"

  "This gets no place," said Kentucky. "I told you what I came to tell you that lets me out. From now on look to yourself. And don't drive cattle into Bar Hook range my range without expecting them to come right home to roost in a cloud of yells."

  "Suits me," Elliot agreed. "Don't think I've forgotten the sore jaw you gave me in that run-in at Waterman. God knows I never hoped for such a chance to smash the two of you at once!"

  Kentucky Jones grinned and turned to the door. "That's what I like to hear!" He stepped out to his horse and threw the reins over the animal's head.

  "Go tell that girl," said Elliot from the door, "that her father can't hide behind you this trip you ain't big enough in size. And-try and make her tell you what she knows!"

  Kentucky was ready to admit to himself-that that parting shot went home. What he could not escape from was the sure knowledge that Jean Ragland did know something, perhaps several things, which he should have known. He was working precariously and in the dark. But he returned Bob Elliot's sardonic grin.

  "Come and see me some time," he said; and he went away from there.

  HAT was a good long-stepping horse Kentucky rode that day; so that it was still a little before the long winter dusk as he reached the half way point on his return ride. He was on the part of the trail which followed the rim, and two miles short of the point where it turned across Wolf Bench to the Bar Hook layout, when his pony pricked its ears forward sharply, and Kentucky brought the horse to a stop while he listened.

  Far ahead-whether it came from the Bake Pan or the Bench he could not tell sounded a curious drum tattoo, a thin popping whisper of gunfire. The tricky echoes of the rim caught that sound, shook it, and tossed it into the wind curiously broken and prolonged; it seemed to rise and fall, so that a man could not count the number of guns, nor how often they were fired, but could only say that the firing was rapid and from several guns.

  For perhaps half a minute the far-off gun talk continued, oddly like the popping of grease in a skillet Then it stopped abruptly, as if all of the guns had fallen silent together, and in the utter quiet of those vast snowy spaces there was no longer any indication that anything had happened. Kentucky Jones felt a short ugly stir in the pit of his stomach, such as a man feels sometimes when he knows that someone is hurt, perhaps killed, in an event of unknown character.

  All that he could be definitely sure of was that the sound of the guns had come from somewhere ahead. He struck the spurs to his horse and went up the irregular trail at the dead run, unbuttoning his coat as he rode so that it would not interfere with his gun.

  He rode a mile, a mile and a half, his hard-run horse was snorting visible puffs of frosty breath, like smoke, at every jump. From somewhere ahead of him in the trail came a muffled ground murmur, inarticulate and confused. He pulled his horse down to a gait at which he could listen to something beside his own pony's hoofs. The sound ahead developed swiftly into the hoof-drum of an approaching horse, that supremely stirring, unmistakable sound of a horse running desperately, full-stretch, half frantic under the punishment of spur and quirt

  Kentucky Jones hesitated, then put his horse ahead again at a high lope. Within two furlongs the approaching horse burst suddenly from around a jutting outcrop of rock; and he saw that the rider was Jean Ragland.

  So close were they as they became visible to each other that as they pulled up their horses Jean's pony slipped to its haunches and almost went down. It recovered itself, however, and the two horses stood blowing and stirring restively on their feet, too steamy and nervous from their running to stand quiet.

  "Jean! What's busted?"

  She spoke rapidly but with clear coherence. "Jim Humphreys and Billy Petersen have run foul of four 88 cowboys, down on the Bake Pan. Lee Bishop and I were sitting on the rim we saw the whole thing. Jim Humphreys is down. And they got Billy's horse he took cover behind his dead horse and began firing back. Oh, God, Kentucky- it was terrible! Sitting there and seeing it all, and unable to do anything-as if we were in another world"

  "Is Billy hit?"

  "I don't know. Billy's horse bolted and went into a bucking fit; they were all peppering at him, but he got control of his horse and rode back to cover Jim. Then his horse somersaulted, and the 88 cowboys drew off as he fired from cover."

  "Where's Lee Bishop?"

  "He's riding down the rim trail to Billy and Jim, fit to break his neck. He wanted me to ride like the devil and get help. I didn't think the others would be back home yet, so I came down this trail hoping to pick you up."

  "Come on," said Kentucky, jumping his horse up the trail. Jean put her horse into the trail behind him and they pushed on a steady run to where the fork of the trail led on the one hand precipitously down the rim and on the other up the Bench to the Bar Hook. Here Kentucky stopped his horse and Jean pulled in alongside.

  "Go back to the Bar Hook," he told her. "Harry Wilson ought to be back there by now. Tell him to take the best of the two cars and drive like hell to Waterman. I want five more men out here by sunup tomorrow. I want Bud Jeffreys and Crazy Harris-" he named three others he wanted, and four or five alternates in case some were not to be found. All were men he knew, now laid off for the winter at or near Waterman. "Can you remember those?"

  "Sure."

  "When you've put Harry Wilson on his way, bring a couple of horses and come back. If your father's there"

  "He isn't."

  "If you see a couple of poles that would make a stretcher, bring 'em along one of the horses can trail 'em like a travois. We'll take the boys to the Bake Pan camp."

  "On the way!" Jean whirled her horse.

  "Wait! Point out to me where Jim and Billy are."

  Jean pointed. The light was failing now; but the long slant of the last sun reflected from the upper peaks of the Maricopas with a clear diffused light, so that objects were still distinct far below upon the plain.

  "By the line of that arroyo?"

  "No, no! Two hand spans to the west of that."

  Kentucky Jones made out now a far-off bottleshaped dot upon the snow among the other dark dots that were sage and grease-wood; he recognized this as Billy Petersen's fallen horse. He could not see where Jim Humphreys lay. But far off to the southwest he could see the faintly moving specks that were the 88 riders.

  "There they go," he whispered bitterly.

  "One of them tried to turn back and over-ride Jim Humphreys," she said, "but Billy Petersen drove him off. I can't see Lee Bishop down there - guess he hasn't got down the trail yet I'll be back quick as I can." She turned her horse and was gone in a flurry of hoof-lifted snow.

  Kentucky Jones took the Bake Pan trail, his horse sliding downward on braced feet as he cut the corners of the switch-back trail.

  Lee Bishop was twenty minutes ahead of Kentucky Jones in reaching Billy Petersen and Jim Humphreys; but he had sighted Kentucky on the down trail, and he waited now for Kentucky to come up. Had Lee Bishop not been there, Kentucky might well have overridden his mark, so well did the thickening dusk combine with the sparse scatter of the Bake Pan brush to conceal the dead horse and the man who sat against it.

  "They got Jim Humphreys," said Lee Bishop morosely as Kentucky pulled up, "I bet he never lived to hit the ground. If that boy was shot once he was shot half a dozen times."

  "What about Billy?"

  Billy Petersen was leaning against his dead horse, his legs stretched upon his folded saddle blanket. In the failing light his face looked a pale greygreen. "I'm all right," he said without conviction.

  "He busted his ankle, some way, when his horse flopped. We better take him over to the lower camp, Kentuck he thinks he can ride all right if we lead along easy. We'll tie Jim Humphreys on your horse, I guess. He's lying over here about a hundred yards."

  They traveled the half mile to the Bar Hook Bake Pan camp slowly, Lee Bishop and Kentucky walking and leading the horses. The horse Billy Petersen rode plodded head down, stolidly; but the other upon which they
had lashed Jim Humphreys for his last trip in the saddle fidgeted all the way, made uneasy by the unnatural position of its burden.

  "How did this thing start?"

  "Me and Jim was coming home," Billy Petersen said, "past our southwest well. The 88 had stuck up a kind of a tripod there, like as if to represent a well of their own, and it made us mad. We threw it down. Coming on about a mile farther we run into these four fellers, riding toward us. We seen 'em all the time, but a long way off. Three of 'em was together, and one laying back, when we met up."

  "Who were they?" Kentucky asked.

  "Three of 'em," Billy Petersen said, "I never knew. They're new fellers that ain't rode for the 88 long. The other feller was Paul Martinez; but he wasn't there for the bother he was still a couple of furlongs off, coming up at a high lope, when the row broke. They come up in front of us and stopped. One of 'em said, `Which of you is boss here?' Jim Humphreys said, `Who the hell wants to know?' One of 'em says, "I see you threw down our well tripod.' Jim says, `And what if I did?' Well, one word led to another, and finally one of 'em says, `Damn you, Bishop '"

  "Bishop?" said Kentucky.

  "That's what he called him. Jim didn't bother to tell him different. Then all of a sudden the guns was out."

  Who pulled the first iron?" Kentucky asked.

  "Jim did," said Billy Petersen mournfully. "Jim, he fired the first shot. Only he missed. One of the 88 fellers made the quickest draw I ever see or heard tell of. His first shot put Jim out of busi ness, I think. One of 'em took a throw at me, and the other two poured it into Jim as he went down."

  Billy Petersen paused and seemed to sway in the saddle so that Kentucky reached his hand out to him; but Billy set his teeth in his cheek and steadied himself "I'm all right," he said. "I grabbed out my gun and I threw a shot some place, but I don't know where, because right then my damn pony blew up.