by Alan Lemay
Campo Ragland still stood in the doorway as he had before, with his hands against the frame on either side; but Kentucky Jones knew that the man was tight as a banjo string. He did not miss the flick of Campo's eyes as they dropped for an instant to Kentucky's holstered gun.
"What I can make stick and what won't stick," Campo said, "I don't pretend like I know. I only know what I'm convinced of in my own mind."
"As, for instance?"
"As, for instance," repeated Campo, his eyes red and steady on Kentucky's face, "that you like to ruined us all when you shot John Mason down."
They looked at each other for a moment more, then Kentucky Jones moved his hands to the buckle of his belt. He saw the quick start of Campo Ragland's right hand toward his holster; but Kentucky only loosed his belt and tossed it aside.
"You needn't fret yourself," said Kentucky. "You're never going to get a gunfight out of me, Campo."
Campo said, "I expect not. But if you're holding off because you're gone on my girl, you can pick your gun belt up again. Because no damn sneaking killer is fit to so much as walk where her shadow's been."
In the little pause Kentucky heard the outer door. of the kitchen open and close, and knew that Jean had come. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Maybe I couldn't ever bring myself to gun you, because of the reason you've named. Maybe, if it wasn't for just that one thing, you'd have been talking for your life, Campo, these many days ago."
Campo Ragland's voice rose hard and tight. "If you think you can "He checked himself.
"I don't think about what I could have done, because that's past. But I'm asking myself why you don't sing mighty small."
"What's the meaning of that?" Ragland snarled.
"I'll give you just one little pointer as to what's the meaning of that. Where's the rifle that killed John Mason? You don't know. But I know! And I could lay hands on it now."
The rounded receding sweep of Campo's forehead was marked with tortuous distended veins that stood out in bold relief in the unfavorable slant of the light. "Bring it out then," Campo cried out. "If you think I'm afraid to have that rifle brought out
"No," said Kentucky. "It isn't me that you're afraid of. It wasn't that, that sent you prowling around in the dark trying to find a way to deliver up another man. It's the man that's swamping your range, while you sit by and watch your riders go out and get shot."
"If you mean I'm afraid of Bob Elliot," said Campo, "you lie, and I put it to your face. And when it comes to you come out with what you've got, and all you've got! I'd rather be dead than think you held back from it for the sake of for the reason you're trying to make me think."
"Put that reason out of your head," said Kentucky. "When this thing's over I'm going to turn my back on the batch of you, and move on."
"No," said Campo, his voice very deep and strong, but shaken with a repressed turbulence, "you'll never be moving on." He came into the room and stood close in front of Kentucky, red-eyed as a roused bear. "Not any more," he said again. "You hear me? I've found out what you supposed nobody would ever find out. I found out that you had more reason to kill Mason than any living man!"
"And I'll make it easy for you," said Kentucky. "I'll admit it."
Ragland stared at him a moment, thunder-struck. "You----you----what?"
Suddenly Kentucky laughed in his face, silently, with an ugly twist of the mouth. "You're a fool, Campo," he said.
Campo Ragland blew up. "I've stood enough," he shouted, his voice rising in a shuddering gust. He snatched up Kentucky's gun belt and tried to thrust it into his hands. "Take your gun belt, and I'll give you the break! Take it and draw!"
"And if I don't?" said Kentucky.
"Then I'll see you crack your neck at the end of a rope!"
There was a small sound behind Campo Ragland, voiced inarticulately, like a word that had tried to make itself heard and could not. Looking past Campo, Kentucky saw that Jean was standing there, in the doorway where her father had stood.
Her words broke throatily, jerked and twisted, forcing their way out against an all but overmastering emotion. Yet they carried no inflection of appeal, but instead were bitter with an insupportable conviction.
"No! No, no, no! You'll never do that!"
Campo Ragland whirled. "What what"
The room in which they stood was shadowy, and the doorway was bright with light, so that they saw her in grey silhouette, with only the red-gold backlight upon her hair to give her figure color; and the shadows half concealed the quiver of her lips, the pallor of her face. But shadow could not hide the tormented intensity of her eyes.
"I'll never what?" her father demanded in a strange taut voice, like the ring of overdrawn wire.
"You-you'll never deliver up Kentucky Jones!"
Campo's voice rose to a thunder. "And why will I not?"
"Because-when you do tell them all the- the truth!"
Her father's face went empty as he stared at his daughter, as if faced by an enormity too great for him to comprehend For a moment he wavered as if his mind refused comprehension, like a horse refusing a jump. "What truth?" he managed to get out at last. "What are you talking"
Jean's voice, broken, all but hysterical, cut him down. "You you know what truth! If I tell what I know, it's you that'll be hooked for the murder of Mason!"
Watching Campo, Kentucky saw the boss of the Bar Hook fold up. His height left him, and all the strength and aggression went out of his wide lean shoulders, and a ragged palsy came into his hands. In those moments Campo Ragland turned, before their eyes, into an old man; and his voice was old, quavering, and weak, and ineffectual, as he tried to speak. "Why, Jean-" he faltered; -Jean "
His daughter stood rigid, shoulders up, and arms stiff at her sides, her eyes wide with the glazed brilliance of frozen waterholes as she watched her father. Then her breath caught in her throat, and she began to sob brokenly; and her face streamed with the tears that had been held back for so long.
"Child, child," said Kentucky softly, "you didn't need to do that!"
Jean cried out, "Don't talk to me! Don't"
The telephone ripped the quiet apart with a whirring clamor.
Kentucky stepped to the phone and took the receiver down. "Well?"
"Who's that?" came the small voice over the wire.
"Kentucky Jones, at the Bar Hook."
"This is Floyd Hopper. Kentucky, you sure got me up in the air. There ain't any question about it Sanders was killed with the gun that was found in his hand!"
"Well?"
"It's your move, Kentucky. By God, it sure is time this thing was cleared up! What goes on here, man? Put a name to it!"
Jean said in a strangled sort of voice, "Is that the sheriff?"
"Just a minute, Hopper," Kentucky said, and turned to Jean.
"What what are you going to do?"
"What can I do? Your father has stampeded us all. If I'd had another week I could have gentled this thing, but now the whole works has blown up under us. All we can do is try to ride it through to a finish, now!" He turned back to the phone. "Tell you what you do," he said, slow and distinct into the phone. "Are you there, Hopper?"
"Yes, I'm here."
"Go get Ted Baylor. Arrest him if you have to, but get him. Give a deputy the job of keeping hold of him, and don't let him out of your sight until this thing is cleared up!"
"I've already got Ted Baylor," came the sheriff's voice from Waterman. "I had that from Campo before you called. What's the matter with you fellers out there?"
For a moment Kentucky Jones faltered, and his face went blank, but he spoke to the phone again. "All right. Then go out to the 88 and get Bill McCord."
"That's liable to be a job for a regiment," said Hopper.
"Then get your regiment. When you've got both Ted Baylor and Bill McCord, bring them out here."
"What if Bob Elliot wants to come along with Bill McCord?" the sheriff asked. "McCord is Elliot's foreman. Elliot'll probably want to come along and st
and by."
"If Elliot wants to come, let him. I don't care what Elliot does. You bring Baylor and McCord. When you've done that, I'll give you the man that killed Mason."
"Which of 'em is it?" the sheriff demanded.
"Hold the rope a minute." Kentucky turned to where Campo Ragland sat, his hands dangling limply over the arms of his chair; he was staring vaguely at the wall, and his mouth was slightly open, as though he might be a thousand miles deep in thought. "Campo," Kentucky demanded, "why did you send for Ted Baylor?"
Campo Ragland, returning slowly from the distances, stared at Kentucky a moment, almost as if without recognition. Then he got up and walked toward the door, slowly and unsteadily, like an aged man. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. "To hell with you," he said. "To hell with you all."
Kentucky turned back to the phone. "I said," came Sheriff Hopper's voice, "which one of 'em is it?"
"Neither one," said Kentucky. He hung up the receiver.
HE long dusk of the winter rim had given way to night, star bright and frostily clear, before a car was heard upon the Waterman road Kentucky Jones walked out alone in shirt sleeves.
"Where's Campo?" Sheriff Hopper demanded, climbing out from behind the wheel.
"He's here. Come on in."
Into the light of the kitchen Sheriff Floyd Hopper now herded the four other men who were with him. They were Ted Baylor, whose eyes were alert and watchful, and perhaps slightly puzzled in a poker face; Bill McCord, grimly expressionless; Bob Elliot, looking sardonic and self-sufficient; and a blonde Norwegian-faced young deputy named Willie Helmar.
"You-all just have a cup of coffee and make yourselves at home," Kentucky said. "Sheriff, Campo and I would like to talk to you a minute, here in the other room."
"All right," Hopper said.
"You fellers sure are a. secretive bunch," Bob Elliot grumbled, warming his hands over the stove.
"Come on in, if you want to, Bob," Kentucky said. "You might just as well sit in on this."
Elliot accepted, following as Kentucky led the way through the main living room to a little room at one side, which the boss of the Bar Hook used as a sort of office. This room was small, and its gunracks and deer horns made it seem smaller, as if there were hardly room for the three men to find places here. Kentucky Jones could not look at this trophy-cluttered room, which gave a curious effect of being a cross section of Campo Ragland's soul, without thinking of that other contrasting room at the other end of the house, which belonged to Jean's mother. So different must have been the people that made those rooms that the wonder was not that Mrs. Ragland was now far away, but that she had ever been able to make herself a part of this household at all.
Here among his things Campo sat, backed into a corner. His heavy desk was pulled diagonally across in front of him, as if he were at bay there, futilely barricaded. He sat on the small of his back, his chin dropped upon his chest; from beneath the sweeping dome of forehead his eyes regarded them as redly as the eyes of a dog in firelight. Suddenly Kentucky wondered if Campo's evident sense of standing stubbornly at bay had been caused more by himself and Sheriff Hopper than by the now far-off woman who had made him fear a showdown upon Mason's death so fear it that he was held in a paralysis of indecision while Jim Humphreys was killed, and Lee Bishop, and the 88 herds poured over his range.
In the shadows of a recessed widow-seat Jean Ragland sat, her feet drawn up under her so that she looked very small and no more conspicuous there than a kitten.
Sheriff Hopper said, "Howdy, Campo; howdy, Miss Ragland."
Campo flicked him a glance, then dropped surly red eyes to his thick freckle-blotched hands; his mouth moved as if he were about to spit, but remained closed.
Kentucky Jones began the making of a cigarette. "Seems like we been a little bit disorganized out here, Hopper," he said. "The fact is Campo and I haven't seen eye to eye on this, in all things."
Sheriff Floyd Hopper waited; and Bob Elliot, who had made himself comfortable in an easy chair, crossed his legs and laced his fingers together.
"It seems," said Kentucky, "that Campo became convinced that I did away with Old Ironsides myself."
There was a sharp silence here during which Kentucky Jones finished and lighted his cigarette. Hopper turned a questioning glance on Campo. "Yes?"
Ragland glanced at Kentucky Jones, but did not speak.
"Everybody's known all along," Kentucky said, "that I was out here at the Bar Hook just before snow flew on the day Mason was killed; and I've admitted it. Assuming for a minute that I could easily have got hold of the weapon that killed Mason, the next thing needed against me was my reason for this act of unseemly violence. Campo found out where I did have a good reason and naturally figured that he'd come to the end of the trail."
"You admit you had a reason for killing Mason?" Hopper said.
"I'm not denying that I had," said Kentucky. "Come to find out, that was one of the reasons that Campo Ragland wanted Ted Baylor brought out here. Ted is one of very few that know that Mason turned me down on a renewal that I'd counted on and like to broke me."
"You're broke, Jones?"
"Close to it."
"You sure are free-handed about making a case against yourself!"
"Campo was overlooking a couple of things," said Kentucky. "It's true that you can show I was broke by Mason. But what about all those other cowmen that Mason had to close down on? To those men Mason's decisions meant salvation or ruin-exactly as to me. He could not carry us all. In digging up a reason for me to kill Mason, Campo only dug up a motive that forty or fifty rimrock cowmen would own to."
"I see what you're driving at," said Hopper. "But you're getting the whole thing scattered out and shuffled again, like cattle turned loose after a roundup. Maybe Mason did have such an enemy, or six of them, or fifty; the fifty of them weren't having no barbecue at the Bar Hook the day Mason was killed."
"So I gathered," Kentucky admitted. "But bear in mind this-if any one of the fifty had been there, he might have gun-whipped Mason. The bad times have borne down mighty heavy on Wolf Bench. For a year and a half here the brands have been on edge, watching each other and suspicious of each other. There's plenty gun smoke in the history of the rim; and in a time like this, that gun smoke comes up out of the past and gets men's minds fogged up. There's been an awful lot of wearing of guns in the rimrock the past ten, twelve months, what with riders hoping for a chance to shoot a coyote, or a rabbit-with a .45 slug! Cowmen's minds can work that way only about so long before something boils over and busts."
"Yes," Hopper admitted, "I was looking for it all right; but when it come to killing Mason"
"He was a right ambitious victim," Kentucky agreed; "but there were big reasons for killing him, too. When you build up pressure like that you can figure on an explosion. But it was the gun smoke in the history, and the pressure of the bad times, that wiped out John Mason-and incidentally Zack Sanders."
"And Jim Humphreys and Lee Bishop," the sheriff put in.
"That's partly true," Kentucky allowed; "the killing of Humphreys and Bishop sure do make up an angle of this thing. It took two things to kill off Humphreys and Bishop the smoky feeling between the brands before Mason's death, and Mason's death itself. Humphreys and Bishop were killed in the weirdest damn one-sided range struggle that has ever been seen on this or any other range."
The sheriff said slowly, "Mason's death comes first. But don't you ever think, Elliot, that I've forgotten the funny look of this so-called range war that's rubbed out Humphreys and Bishop. Everybody knows you've swamped Campo's range; and Campo's hardly raised his hand against it. I'll tell you plain, Elliot, if it turns out that Bishop and Humphreys were killed in the kind of shenanigan it looks like, I'll"
Bob Elliot reddened. "I didn't come here to talk about range rights," he said, "but if you want a showdown on that, I'm ready, any time. As long as there's been cattle run on the rim, or on the Bake Pan either, no brand has ever leaned any harder
against another brand than the Bar Hook has borne down on the 88. If Campo's pulled in his horns, maybe it's because he knows that the rights of the 88 are going to be backed up for a change."
Campo Ragland spoke for the first time. "Rights!" he said bitterly. "Rights!"
Sheriff Floyd Hopper said angrily, "You're a funny one, Elliot, to bring in talk about rights!"
"You said yourself," Elliot answered, "the Bar Hook has folded up."
They all turned their eyes to Campo Ragland; but the boss of the Bar Hook was rolling a cigarette with slow meticulous care, and he did not contribute any observations.
Sheriff Floyd Hopper swung restively in his seat. "I can't understand it," he said. "I can't understand it."
"You'll understand it now," said Kentucky Jones. "I can tell you exactly why Elliot has thought he could shove his beef all over Bar Hook range in full peace and comfort."
Bob Elliot said, "If the idea is to sit here half the"
"Let him alone, Bob," Hopper snapped.
Kentucky Jones looked Elliot over with a cool unfriendly eye. "I'll tell you another little thing that happened the day Mason was killed," he said. "Bob Elliot and Campo Ragland were riding the Bake Pan range; and it happened that they met on that ride."
"Where did you get this?" Hopper put in.
"Partly," Kentucky said, "from Elliot himself."
Elliot said, "I'll be damned if"
"Will you be still?" said Sheriff Hopper. "What then, Jones?"
"Elliot was armed; Campo Ragland was not. It seems to be a kind of custom with the 88 to take advantage of a situation like that-as Lee Bishop and I found out one day in a little conversation we had with Bill McCord. Naturally I wasn't there when Ragland and Elliot met; but I can tell you that what happened was this-Elliot gave Ragland such a cussing out as you couldn't hardly expect any man to stand for, or put up with."