Land Grab: Jim Hatfield takes a hand in a range war! (Prologue Western)

by Jackson cole

  All this Hatfield took in at a glance. He swerved Goldy to the side of the trail. His right hand flashed down to his side.

  There was a sharp crack, a wisp of smoke from the Ranger’s side, and the severed rope snapped back and covered the prostrate man with its loosened coils.

  The horse, relieved of the strain, plunged forward, almost unseating his rider, and was jerked to a standstill. A bawling babble of protest arose from the loggers, but was abruptly stilled by the menace of the black muzzles yawning hungrily at them. And behind those gun muzzles were the terrible cold eyes of the Lone Wolf.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Hatfield demanded harshly. “You trying to kill that man?”

  The man in question had staggered to his feet, and was pawing the noose from his body. His face was covered with dust and blood, and Hatfield swore under his breath as he recognized young Rance Cranley, Clyde Cranley’s son.

  “He ain’t got no call to be up here on the mountain,” the lanky logger atop the horse yelled. “We was snakin’ him back to where he belongs.”

  Hatfield ignored the speaker, and turned to young Cranley, who was wiping the blood from his face, most of which had evidently come from a bruised nose.

  The Ranger addressed him, considerable sternness in his voice:

  “What you doing up here, Cranley?”

  Young Rance’s chin jutted forward with a stubbornness reminiscent of old Clyde.

  “That’s my business,” he returned sullenly.

  “Yeah? Well, from the way it worked out, it appears to be a sort of risky business. That’s your horse, isn’t it? I figure you’d better fork him and hightail it back to the valley before something worse than a skinned nose happens to you.”

  He gestured with a gun barrel to the logger on the horse.

  “Out of that hull,” he ordered.

  The man hesitated, then, with another look at the Ranger’s bleak face, obeyed. Young Cranley mounted, although a trifle stiffly, and began coiling up his bullet-shortened rope. He eyed his erstwhile tormentors without fear.

  “This ain’t finished yet, damn you!” he told them.

  “Shut up, all of you!” Hatfield barked, stilling the rising chorus. “All right, Cranley, get goin’!”

  Lips compressed, eyes menacing, Rance Cranley obeyed. As he passed Hatfield he looked him squarely in the eye.

  “Much obliged, feller,” he said and rode on.

  “And don’t come back!” a logger bellowed after him.

  Cranley turned in his saddle.

  “Go to hell!” he spat at them and vanished around the bend.

  Hatfield sheathed his guns, hooked one long leg comfortably over the saddle horn and proceeded to roll a cigarette. He surveyed the group of men who shuffled uneasily under his black stare.

  “Well,” he repeated his question of a few minutes before, “what’s it all about?”

  “He ain’t got no call to be up here,” the lanky logger repeated stubbornly. “All them damn cattlemen was warned off this property. We ain’t goin’ to have ‘em meddling around, settin’ fires and makin’ other trouble. We caught this one and was takin’ him back where he belongs, that’s all. He nigh shot me ‘fore I hauled him from his horse.”

  He gestured at a ragged hole in the crown of his hat to corroborate the statement.

  “Sort of taking the law into your own hands, eh?” Hatfield remarked. “Gents, that’s always sort of risky business. If you’d killed that man — and it’s easy to do dragging him at the tail of a horse — it would have been mighty like murder.”

  The loggers shifted their feet, glanced uneasily from one to another.

  “Maybe we did sort of go off half-cocked,” the lanky man admitted, “but we’ve had enough to make us. Just a couple days ago a fire was set in a cuttin’ over to the west of here. If we hadn’t caught it when we did and worked like hell to keep it from spreadin’, it would’ve burned the whole mountainside, and our camps with it. That was like murder, too. A forest fire is a mighty bad thing, cowboy.”

  Hatfield nodded agreement.

  “But have you got any proof a cowman set it?” he asked.

  “Who else?” the other countered. “Who else has been tryin’ to run us out of the district. All we ask is to be let alone, but we ain’t bein’ let alone. Plenty of bad things have been happening to us of late.”

  “The cattlemen in the valley say the same thing,” Hatfield replied. “Maybe you might both be wrong.”

  The lanky man stared at him, but before he could speak, another voice broke in. A blocky, bearded individual stepped forward, a sudden light of recognition on his lined face.

  “Say,” he exclaimed, “ain’t you the feller what saved Lem Hawkins’ life?”

  “I picked him up and packed him to the store down in the settlement, if that’s what you mean,” Hatfield replied.

  “Reckon Lem would’ve died if you hadn’t,” the other declared with conviction. “Yeah, you’re the feller, all right. Well, the Boss says you’re okay, and that’s good enough for me, and for the rest of these fellers, too, I reckon, even if you did spoil our fun.”

  There was a murmur of agreement. The blocky man regarded Hatfield with frank admiration.

  “Never would’ve believed it possible to shoot a rope in two like that,” he declared. “Why, you didn’t even raise your gun — didn’t even take aim!”

  Hatfield smiled. “Maybe I was just lucky,” he drawled.

  “Maybe,” the other grunted. “Well, I wouldn’t want to have you shootin’ at me, luck or no luck. Why, you shoot like we hear tell them Ranger fellers can shoot. Wish we had some of ‘em up here now. They’d show them blasted cattle raisers where to get off.”

  He turned to his companions. “Well, boys,” he said. “Guess we’d better be gettin’ back to the cuttin’ before the Boss is down here raisin’ hell. Reckon this is one cattle hand we don’t have to watch.”

  He nodded to Hatfield and, the others jostling behind him, crossed the clearing and vanished among the trees.

  Hatfield pinched out his cigarette and rode on up the trail, his eyes thoughtful.

  “Now what business could that young hellion have up here?” he wondered. “This is getting to be more of a mess all the time.”

  The trail rose more steeply. Soon Hatfield was riding past extensive cuttings that flanked the logging road. But these differed greatly from the vast scar that marred the south side of the mountain. The stumps were low. The tangle of tops and branches had been cleared away, and between the stumps were long rows of small trees that looked healthy and flourishing.

  The Ranger nodded approval. “Now that’s the way timber should be cut,” he told Goldy.

  Two more miles and the trail entered a large clearing. Here were bunkhouses, storerooms, great piles of logs ready for hauling, barns, workshops and other paraphernalia of the main lumber camp. On top of a low hill nearby was a well built house which Hatfield rightly surmised was Justin Flint’s dwelling.

  A number of men were busy at various tasks about the camp. They paused to stare curiously at the tall Ranger atop his great golden horse. Their eyes were not particularly friendly as they noticed his cow country costume and riding gear, but no comment was offered.

  “The Boss?” one said in answer to Hatfield’s query as to the whereabouts of Flint. “He’s up to the house — be down any minute. Here he comes now.”

  Glancing up the hill, Hatfield saw the lumberman’s stocky form just descending the veranda steps. He strode vigorously down the well kept driveway that led to the house. A moment more and he had recognized his visitor and greeted him with a cordial wave of his hand.

  “Come on up to the house and eat,” he invited. “I’ll have a man look after your horse. Good stable over there where I got mine stalled. He’ll get proper care.”

  Hatfield turned Goldy over to a stableman who put in an appearance in answer to Flint’s hail. Together he and Flint ascended the drive and entered the house.<
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  The big living room his host ushered him into was well and comfortably furnished, and showed evidence, Hatfield thought, of a woman’s hand. But Flint’s cook, who shortly afterward called them to the dining room, was a wrinkled Mexican man and no woman put in an appearance during the course of the meal.

  The meal was consumed mostly in silence, the true masculine appreciation of good food.

  After the dishes had been emptied and cigar and cigarette were lit, Flint suggested:

  “How about looking the job over? We can ride out to the big cutting east of here. I’ve a notion you’d find it interesting.”

  “I’ve a notion I would,” Hatfield agreed.

  Together they rode a rutted road that wound through stands of virgin timber, the great trees towering often as much as two hundred feet into the air, their massive trunks in instances more than eight feet in diameter. The air was redolent with the scent of the needles and a-quiver with their soft music.

  After several miles of riding, other sounds became apparent, the rasp of saws and the ringing clack of axes. These grew louder as they progressed and became interspersed by voices shouting orders or bellowing song in time with the rhythmic beat of axe and saw.

  Suddenly a long-drawn-out, wailing cry knifed through the lesser sounds:

  “Ti-i-im-m-ber!”

  There followed a crack like a gunshot, a rustling and splintering that swiftly rose to a rushing roar and ended abruptly in a mighty crash.

  “That was a big one,” said Flint. “We’re up to the cutting, now.”

  A moment later they rode through a final fringe of growth and pulled up at the edge of a wide scene of activity.

  Before them stretched row on row of newly-cut stumps. Huge locks were strewn about, and a wild tangle of tops and branches. Hatfield could see men busily trimming other logs, their axes flashing sparkling arcs of light. Further on were other flashes where axe men swung with brawny arms at the tall shafts of standing trees. Others tugged mightily at long, two-man saws whose rasping teeth bit deep into the redolent wood. Now and again came the long drawn cry and the rushing roar that ended in an echoing crash as another forest giant thundered down on to a yielding carpet of brown needles.

  Hatfield noted that all the stumps were low, so as to obtain the greatest possible footage of lumber. He noted, too, that the litter of tops and branches were being hauled away and stacked in great piles ready for burning. He noted something else: To one side, in a space that had evidently been cleared of standing timber some time back, men were busy planting small trees between the stumps.

  Justin Flint noticed what he was looking at.

  “Every time I cut a tree, Hatfield, I plant a tree,” he said. “You see, nearly every cent I own is tied up in these holdings, and I’m here to stay.”

  Jim Hatfield looked at him with a curious expression on his bronzed face.

  “Yellow Western is a slow growing tree — three hundred and fifty to five hundred years to attain full growth. You can’t expect to cash in on your plantings during your lifetime, Mr. Flint.”

  Justin Flint smiled, and abruptly all the hardness was gone from his blocky face. His mouth was tender, his eyes filled with dreams. He stretched out a big hand and patted affectionately the shaggy trunk of a great tree that stood within arm’s length.

  “No,” he said, “I won’t cash in on ‘em, but those who come after me will. I’m thinking of the other folks, lots of ‘em not even born yet, who will owe comfort and happiness to those trees I’m planting. Trees have a destiny to fulfill, same as folks, you know. Now take this old feller, here. He was growing and getting big when only the Indians padded past his straight young trunk. Maybe Coronado and his Spaniards paused here to rest in the shade of his branches. When this old feller was young, an eagle built a nest in his top, maybe. That eagle raised his broods, lived out his full hundred years and maybe more, and passed on. Maybe his bones are buried here beneath the needles. But to the old tree that long life of the eagle was just an incident. He was old before the eagle was born, speaking in terms of the eagle’s span of years. But in relation to his own length of life he was still a young tree.”

  He paused a moment, his hand still caressing the mighty trunk of the great tree.

  “Soon this old feller will be cut down,” he continued. “But that won’t be his finish. He’ll just be fulfilling his destiny. He’ll be sawed up into boards. Years after you and I have passed on, Hatfield, there’ll be an old house standing somewhere, a house that will have sheltered lots of happiness, a house that may have sent great men and women out into the world to make it a better place for folks to live in. That old house will still be this old tree, living and serving, and fulfilling his destiny.”

  He paused again, looking out over the plantings with dream-filled eyes.

  “Yes, trees have a destiny to fulfill,” he said softly. And so have men. I’m trying to fulfill mine — trying to do something to justify my having lived. Maybe I can’t do much, but I can do something. That’s why I started that settlement down in the valley, Hatfield. That’s why I’m planting trees.”

  He turned to smile at the tall Ranger and Jim Hatfield was not ashamed of the tears that blurred the other’s face to him.

  “These cuttings are sort of different from the ones over on the south side of the mountain,” he remarked at length, when he could trust his voice to be steady.

  Flint’s face hardened. “Yes, that is a bad and wasteful cutting,” he agreed. “That’s Nelson Haynes’ holding over there.”

  “I can’t understand Haynes,” he went on. “He’s cutting just like the old timber pirates in Maine and Michigan used to cut when they figured they had an unlimited supply of white pine to draw from. They totally underestimated what this country’s growth would be, with the result that they almost depleted the white pine supply before measures were taken to conserve it. What Haynes is doing will have the same effect on yellow pine, which is now largely taking the place of white. He doesn’t plant, and he disregards utterly all the principles of economic cutting. In winter, he cuts just like they did in the old days. Instead of clearing away the deep snow, he lays boards on top of the drifts and cuts. That means a terrible waste. Stumps ten feet high and more. And he always cuts high. You can cut faster that way, but your stumps are way higher than necessary.”

  He gestured toward his own low stumps.

  “The difference is millions of board feet per acre,” he said. “Haynes seems mad for money. His idea seems to be to cut as fast as possible and accumulate as much ready cash as he can. The market is excellent right now, prices high. Haynes seems terribly anxious to get his hands on a lot of ready cash in a hurry. Why, I can’t figure. In the end he’ll lose plenty by his waste. And he doesn’t bother to clear away the litter left after cutting. That’s bad for the soil, and it makes a bad fire hazard, too. If a fire should ever get started in that mess of tops and trimmings over there, it would sweep the whole mountain.”

  “Endanger your holdings?” Hatfield asked.

  “Yes, it does,” Flint replied. “I’ve remonstrated with him, but it hasn’t done any good. He says he has a good fire patrol on the job and that there is nothing to worry about and that his hands are too busy cutting to take time to clear up the litter. Says he’ll attend to it later. There should be a law to make him do it, but so far I’ve been unable to find one in the statutes that would apply.”

  Hatfield nodded, his face sober.

  “I’m doing what I can to safeguard my property,” Flint went on. “Like to ride up the mountain and see?”

  Hatfield nodded and they crossed a corner of the clearing and entered the forest again, following a narrow track that slanted up the mountainside. On either side the great trunks stood like sentinels, their branches often interlacing overhead to form a green pagoda through which the sunlight filtered in thin, dazzling rays.

  For nearly two hours they rode, saying little, each busy with his own thoughts. Finally they came to anot
her cutting, a fairly wide cutting that flowed east and west as far as the eye could reach.

  “This is the best I can do,” Flint said. “It has cost me plenty to make this cut, but it will stop anything but a bad top fire. But with the woods as dry as they are now, all that’s needed is a hard wind blowing from the south and a fire would be mighty liable to jump the tops, no matter what we’d try to do to prevent it.”

  “The cutting extend the whole length of the ridge?” Hatfield asked.

  “Not yet,” Flint replied. “There are still several miles to go to the east before a line of cliffs and rocky ground, where the growth is very sparse, provides a natural fire brake.”

  He gestured up the tree-covered slope. “Top of the mountain is not more than a quarter of a mile distant,” he said. “A few hundred yards beyond the far side of the cutting is the line between Haynes’ holdings and mine. Well, reckon we’d better be riding back. It’s getting along toward evening.”

  The shadows were already long and the sun was not far above the western crags as they turned their horses. The aisle between the trees was beginning to grow gloomy.

  An hour passed, and they were considerably more than halfway back to the big cutting they had passed and their way up to the mountain. Flint seemed absorbed in his thoughts and rode with his chin on his breast, glancing neither to right or left; but the Lone Wolf’s eyes were constantly scanning the ground over which they passed, alert to the minutest topographical detail. The trail ahead came in for its share of inspection, for it was second nature with Jim Hatfield to miss nothing that went on around him.

  Without warning, his long arm shot out, gripped the bit of Flint’s horse and by a tremendous burst of strength, he whirled the snorting animal around as if it were on a pivot. At the same instant his voice rang out like a trumpet-blare of sound as the sorrel spun about in obedience to Hatfield’s knee pressure: