by Short, Luke;
Eons ago, a strong spring had started to gouge this valley out. Today it was a canyon two hundred feet deep, quite wide, with a grassy floor. Its sides were sheer dark sandstone, eroded first by water and later by wind. On its far rim, Bonsell could see two big bunches of cattle that his men had already gathered in. Letting his own big herd rest, he dispatched a messenger to the men across on the opposite rim. By one o’clock the last and fourth herd, huge and unwieldy, was pushed up to join his. The cattle were so tired they almost dropped in their tracks, and bedded down thankfully a half mile from the rim.
Bonsell drew his men off out of sight and let the milling herd quiet. The men smoked in silence, ears cocked for any sounds of pursuit. But the guards, stationed at high points of land, signaled everything was quiet.
Presently, Bonsell rose and said, “String out in a line. Anything that doesn’t move, kill it. The signal to begin is a shot from me.”
They mounted and, still out of sight of the tired cattle, strung out in a long line. When they were ready, Bonsell raised his gun and fired.
With a long Comanche yell, guns booming, the crew poured down onto the resting cattle. Harried, tense, nervous from too much running, it took little to startle the herd. The cattle took one look at these men pouring toward them, then heaved to their feet and started off in the opposite direction—which was straight for the Mimbres rim.
By the time the lead steers were approaching the rim and, sensing the danger, were trying to veer off to the south, the whole herd had got under way. Nothing could turn it, for blind panic guided its ponderous pushing.
In one thundering, bawling mass of moving backs, a mighty brindle sea flooded over the rim, stepping off into space and slowly arcing out to drop. Those in the rear pushed so hard that the ones in front were helpless. It flowed on and on, slow and majestic, to the rim, then continued in an unbroken line to drop thunderously to the canyon floor below.
Max Bonsell stood aside and watched it, his only thought being what a pity it was to destroy so much money. His glance at the opposite rim showed him that the two herds opposite were meeting a similar fate. His own signal to start the stampede had been the signal for them, also.
The last dozen steers in the drag refused to go over and had to be shot. Once it was done, the Excelsior crew dismounted and looked down at their handiwork. It was an awesome sight, so terrible a piece of destruction that it defied discussion. Already, the scavenger buzzards were collecting, wheeling overhead in motionless, hungry circles, probably wondering if their eyes deceived them.
The crew joined at the canyon bottom a mile to the south. Max Bonsell allowed himself a meager smile of satisfaction when he thought of it.
“Back to your camp, boys,” he announced. “This will make Cruver’s bunch so salty we’ll be busy—or it’ll take the heart right out of ’em.”
Chapter Ten: QUIET—AND DEADLY
Mary Buckner, for decorum’s sake, had registered at the Exchange House the night she arrived. After catching up with her sleep at Cope’s quarters, she went back to her room. The hardest part of her duty from now on would be the waiting. But for the first time since Uncle Jack Cope, roused to an injustice that strangled him with rage, planned to some day win back the Ulibarri grant for her, she was at peace. Perhaps it was Uncle Jack’s confidence that at last he had found the man for the job, or maybe it was just Jim Wade’s quiet way that gave her confidence. Anyway, she had it and she was happy.
When she thought of Jim Wade’s breaking Ben Beauchamp out of jail, she shuddered a little with fright. She was glad that nobody had told her he planned it, and now that it was over she felt a little faint when she thought of what might have happened. But in a few words, Uncle Jack had made her see why it was necessary.
Still, there was so little she could do. Nobody in this town knew her. Only a handful could remember her, and she could remember none of them, except Jack Cope. But when Jim Wade rode out of San Jon he had left certain instructions with her, instructions as elaborate as they were preposterous. She determined, however, that she would carry them out to the letter.
That was what brought her into Kling’s emporium, on this afternoon, for thread and needles. Mr. Kling himself, who remembered her, waited on her. She shook hands with him, and, after some indecision on his part, he inquired after the health of her father. He understood, of course, that this might not be polite, since James Buckner had simply skipped the country in the middle of the night, leaving his daughter to be raised by a saloonkeeper and his wife. Mary answered his inquiry offhandedly.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. Kling,” she said. “You know as much about him as I do.”
It was a cool answer and it put Kling in his place. He resented her tone and recalled with considerable satisfaction what a little liar she used to be. All the old timers remembered that whopper she had told on the night James Buckner left San Jon—about him being murdered by some of the cattlemen near here. Some of the old fogies even believed it for a while, until James Buckner turned up in Santa Fe. Men who remembered him had seen him down there. He was a changed man, maybe a little crazy. Certainly he had a pretty daughter, though, even if she was a little uppish and inclined to stretch the truth.
But Mary’s smile soon won him over. She was in trouble, she said.
“What trouble?” Kling inquired kindly.
“I want some dresses made, Mr. Kling. Do you know of a dressmaker in town?”
“Why, there’s two of them. There’s Mrs. Benson. My wife goes to her, I think. Then there’s Lily Beauchamp. She’s young and flighty, but she needs the money powerful bad.”
“Does she do good work?” Mary wanted to know.
“I—I—not so good as Mrs. Benson,” Kling said honestly.
“But she does need money. Well, these things are pretty simple to make. Perhaps I ought to give her my trade,” Mary said.
“That’s right kind of you, Miss Buckner,” Kling said, and proceeded to tell Mary where Lily Beauchamp lived.
All this was to advertise the fact that the meeting of Mary Buckner and Lily Beauchamp was purely by accident. Jim Wade and Cope both needed Lily in their scheme and had her promise through Ben that she would help. Scoville, who was posing as a saddle tramp wanting work, was to live there. It would afford him a place to live and her protection in Ben’s absence. With Mary’s introduction to Lily, this small band of conspirators would be as tight-knit as possible, and yet their associations must seem casual and accidental to the public.
Ten minutes after Mary left Kling’s, she was knocking on Lily Beauchamp’s door. Lily opened it, and for a moment these two women looked at each other, and with none of the animosity of their sex.
“I’m Mary Buckner.”
“I know. Come in, please.”
Once the door was closed, Lily smiled. “I’ve heard so much about you through Ben, who heard it through Jim.”
“And I about you from Jim,” Mary replied. “He hasn’t forgotten your willingness to help him—and thought it might include me.”
Lily’s weary face lighted up at the mention of Jim’s name, and in a flash Mary Buckner knew that this girl loved Jim Wade. And why shouldn’t she, Mary thought, after what Jim had done for her brother Ben? All the same, Mary felt a pang of jealousy, for Lily Beauchamp was a pretty girl, and a nice one.
Once seated, Lily asked shyly if Mary would tell her the whole story. What she knew now had come from Ben, in two-and three-minute-snatches when he sneaked into the barn at night to see her. Mary told her story, and when she was finished, Lily nodded gravely.
“I think Cope was right in picking Jim. He—he can do it if anyone can, Miss Buckner.”
“You love Jim Wade, Lily?” Mary asked simply.
Immediately, that cold mask of defiance settled on Lily’s face, and her eyes were angry, but when she looked at Mary, she saw only another woman, a kind woman, who understood her secret already. She only nodded, pleating the cloth of her dress with nervous fingers, watchi
ng Mary.
“Are you ashamed of it, then?” Mary asked.
“No,” Lily answered abruptly. “I never would be. Only—only I don’t think he loves me.”
A gladness stirred in Mary that she was immediately ashamed of. “He speaks kindly of you, Lily,” she said.
“He does of his horse, too,” Lily said, with tired irony. “It’s—well, he just doesn’t need a woman.” She watched Mary’s face, and could see only sympathy in it, and she was not afraid to go on. “He’s different, Miss Buckner. He—”
“Mary, Lily.”
“But he is, Mary. That night out in the street in the rain, I saw it, and I understood how different. Men look at him and they are in his power, whether they know it or not. Any man in that crowd of toughs that night could have pulled a gun on him and danced him out of town, with everyone laughing. Only they didn’t. They were afraid to. He never raised his voice, didn’t even make a threat, but they were afraid of him. That’s what Jack Cope saw, what I saw, what Ben sees.”
Mary nodded, intent upon the soft loveliness of Lily’s face as she spoke of Jim. When Lily was finished, Mary said softly, “And you think I’m selfish in asking him to help me, Lily?”
“I didn’t say that!” Lily said.
“But you think it, don’t you? You think I am a lucky woman already, with a job and an education and enough good looks that a good man will marry me and take care of me. And instead of being satisfied, I want more. I want a huge land grant, property, power, and influence, to live like a great lady. And you think I’ve persuaded Jim Wade to risk his life to get it for me, don’t you?”
Lily was agonized with embarrassment when Mary began, but when she was finished, Lily was calm, level-eyed, unafraid.
“Do you know what you’ve asked him to do?” she asked.
Mary nodded mutely, knowing what Lily would say. She had said it to herself a thousand times since that morning she had asked Jim Wade’s help.
“He’s a fugitive now,” Lily went on. “There are ten thousand dollars in the bank waiting for the man who walks up behind him and shoots him. Or catches him asleep and shoots him. Half this town is still in the saddle, scouring the country for him. They hate him here, hate him because he is better than they are. He isn’t safe a minute.” She paused. “All that has happened to him because he wants to help you.”
“But a lot of that happened before I asked him, Lily.”
“No. If you hadn’t asked him, he could have ridden out of here to safety. But now he stays, with one eighteen-year-old boy and a saddle tramp to help him.”
Mary’s glance wavered.
“I wasn’t going to say this, but you guessed it,” Lily said quietly, implacably. “Yes, I think all those things about you. And why shouldn’t I? Aren’t they true?”
“But can’t you understand that getting this grant back is my life, everything to me—and to Jack Cope? It belongs to me! I’m part of it! My father died on it and is buried on it! It’s been my dream, the only thing that’s kept me going for years!”
“No,” Lily said quietly. “The only thing I can understand is that it will mean Jim Wade’s death.”
“No!” Mary cried. “That’s not so!”
“Max Bonsell has a dozen killers out there at the Excelsior. Sooner or later, he’ll see that he and his men have to kill Jim Wade or be killed. Will-John Cruver has a dozen men, too. And sooner or later they will see they have to kill Jim Wade. That’s twenty-five men against one—not counting your uncle and the sheriff and all these men in San Jon that Jim Wade has made a fool of!” She ceased talking, waiting for Mary to speak. “How great a man do you think he is?” she asked quietly. “It only takes one lucky bullet to kill him.”
Mary, her lips pale, only shook her head and said nothing.
“If you only loved him,” Lily said softly, wonderingly, “then I could understand. A woman in love thinks there’s nothing her man can’t do for her. But you haven’t even that excuse. You want a piece of land. You haven’t the money to pay for it. So you catch a man—a good man—in the heat of anger and ride to glory on his revenge.”
“Lily, Lily,” Mary murmured, her eyes wide in horror. “How you must hate me!”
The hardness drained out of Lily’s face. “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t know why it is, but I don’t.”
“Is there anything I can do now?” Mary asked. “You’ve—oh, it’s true. I see it now! I was ashamed of it when I asked him, but somehow I didn’t realize what I was asking.” She looked up at Lily. “What can I do, Lily?”
“Has Jim promised you that he’ll see it through for you?”
“Yes.”
Lily said slowly, her voice resigned, “You can’t do anything, then—except pray.”
When Mary was gone, Lily got to work again. Now and then, out of pity, people brought her sewing to do, because Tom Beauchamp’s drinking was a legend in the town. Tom worked like a slave at his blacksmith shop during the day and drank all the night. Along toward morning he would stumble home, a violent-tempered man who could not understand his children, and who still grieved over the death of his wife these ten years past. Lily hated him with a passion, but it had been Tom Beauchamp’s own idea that he fix up a room in the blacksmith shop for his own. He seldom came near the house, or contributed money to its support, and while it put a poverty on Lily and Ben that was breaking them, she was thankful she was spared her father’s company.
She knew the small sewing jobs were charity, and she was clumsy at her work, but she would accept any crust thrown her because it was her only living. She knew she should have been glad at the news that Scoville was going to take a room here, glad of the money it would bring. But Mary’s visit had unraveled again those memories of Jim Wade which she was so careful to knit up each day and lock away in that storeroom of hopeless longings. Not by any look or word had Mary Buckner betrayed that she loved Jim Wade. But how could a man look upon Mary Buckner and not love her? She was lovely and kind, the sort of woman a man could gladly die for. And sooner or later, Lily thought bitterly, Jim Wade would want to die for her. He had all but offered to now. Lily didn’t blame Mary for what she’d done. After all, Mary Buckner did not know men like she did.
It was full dusk when a knock on the door startled her. It was Scoville whom she had talked to with Ben behind the shop night before last.
She invited him in and then lighted the lamp, afterward turning to observe him carefully. He had a friendly, sober face that was lighted by a shy smile. He was slight, almost frail-looking, dressed in tattered but clean Levi’s and a gray flannel shirt. He carried his war bag in his left hand.
“I’ll show you your room,” Lily said, smiling a little.
She went into the passageway connecting the living-room with the kitchen. Two tiny rooms opened off the passageway, one her room, the other Ben’s, now Scoville’s.
Scoville looked at it and said, “It’s been a long time since I saw a bed like that, Miss Beauchamp. I’ll sleep on the floor till I get used to the idea.”
Lily laughed. “It’s held together by haywire, and the springs have been patched in a blacksmith shop. Ben always claimed that the mattress slept like Dad lost an anvil in it.”
Phil Scoville laughed easily, and Lily joined in. He put his war bag on the floor, and Lily left him.
She went out into the tiny lean-to kitchen to make supper, thinking that Scoville, like Ben, would while away the time till supper by himself. But he was on her heels, standing in the doorway while she lighted the lamp. She saw him glance at the woodbox, which was empty, then he asked, “Where’s your ax?”
“Next to the shop.”
Scoville went outside. By full dark, he chopped enough wood to fill the box to overflowing. Then he sat down at the small table and watched her get supper. It had been a long time since Lily had had this kind of company, and she found herself talking with him about things she didn’t know she remembered.
In one of the pauses, Scoville said,
“Miss Beauchamp, this is kind of awkward to ask, but I aim to ask it, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“Ben said your father slept in the shop. Don’t my comin’ make it sort of—bad for you?”
Lily smiled fleetingly. “I can’t lose a reputation when I haven’t one, can I?”
Scoville’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got one with the only folks that count around here.”
“And who are they?”
“Jim, Cope, Mary Buckner, Ben, and me.”
“Then why worry, if that’s so?” Lily murmured.
“I reckon that’s right, too,” Scoville murmured. “Only, in stories and things like that, people meet you. How will they meet you? That’s the question.”
“Like they always have,” Lily said gravely. “As if I were drunken Tom Beauchamp’s trashy daughter.”
“Then they better change their ways,” Scoville murmured.
Lily turned away, something choking up in her throat. She finished getting supper, and during it they talked of Jim Wade. Scoville told Lily of the fight at the Excelsior, and of Bonsell’s swift revenge. The herds of all those squatters remaining, except Will-John Cruver’s, were so depleted that there seemed no reason for them to hang onto their claims on the Ulibarri grant. In some ways, Scoville said grudgingly, Max Bonsell was a genius. In this particular brand of hell-raising, especially so.
When Scoville had finished, Lily said, “Then Jim’s idea is to fight them both, but in a way so that the evidence points only—”
“To Bonsell when it happens to Cruver, and Cruver when it happens to Bonsell.”
“That’s cruel, Phil,” Lily said gravely after a pause.
“I know it,” Scoville said. “It’s cruel people you’re doin’ it to.”
It was an evasive answer, but Lily saw that discussion of it made him uneasy, and she changed the subject.
Scoville helped her clean up after supper, then went into his room. He was riding out tonight.
There came a quiet knock on the front door, and Lily went through the hall to answer it.