Crossfire Trail (1953)

by L'amour, Louis

  Boyne's eyes were hard and reckless. Rafe knew he was the one to watch. He wore his gun slung low, and that he fancied himself as a gunhand was obvious. Suddenly Rafe knew the man was going to draw.

  "Hold it!" A voice cut sharply across the air like the crack of a whip. "Boyne, keep your hand shoulder high! You, too, Red! Now turn your horses and start down the trail. If one of you even looks like you wanted to use a gun, I'll open up with this Henry and cut you into little pieces."

  Boyne cursed wickedly. "You're gettin' out of it easy this time!" he said viciously. "I'll see you again!"

  Rafe smiled. "Why, sure, Boyne! Only next time you'd better take the rawhide lashin' off the butt of your Colt. Mighty handy when ridin' over rough country, but mighty unhandy when you need your gun in a hurry!"

  With a startled gasp, Boyne glanced down. The rawhide thong was tied over his gun to hold it in place. His face two shades whiter than a snake's belly, he turned his horse with his knee and started the trek down the trail.

  Bo Marsh stepped out of the brush with his rifle in his hand. He was grinning.

  "Hey, Boss! If I'd known that six-gun was tied down, I'd a let you mow him down! That skunk needs it. That's Les Boyne. He's a gunslinger for Dan Shute."

  Gill laughed. "Man! Will our ears burn tonight! Rafe's run two of Shute's boys into the ground today!"

  Marsh grinned. "Figgered you'd be headed home soon, and I was out after deer." He glanced at the squaw with the broken leg. "Got more trouble?"

  "No," Rafe said. "Those hombres had been runnin' this girl down. She busted her leg gettin' away so we fixed it up. Let's ride."

  The trail was smoother now, and drifted casually from one canyon to another. Obviously it had been a game trail which had been found and used by Indians, trappers, and wandering buffalo hunters before the coming of the cowhands and trail drivers.

  When they were still several miles from the cabin on the Crazy Woman, the squaw spoke suddenly. Gill looked over at Rafe.

  "Her camp's just over that rise in a draw," he said.

  Caradec nodded. Then he turned to the girl. She was looking at him. expecting him to speak.

  "Tell her," he said, "that we share the land Rodney bought from Red Cloud. That we share it with the daughter of Rodney. Get her to tell Red Cloud we will live on the Crazy Woman, and we are a friend to the Sioux, that their women are safe with us, their horses will not be stolen, that we are a friend to the warriors of Red Cloud and the great chiefs of the Sioux people."

  Gill spoke slowly, emphatically, and the girl nodded. Then she turned her horse and rode up through the trees.

  "Boss," Johnny said, "she's got our best horse. That's the one I gave the most money for!"

  Rafe grinned. "Forget it. The girl was scared silly but wouldn't show it for anything. It's a cheap price to pay to get her home safe. Like I said, the Sioux make better friends than enemies."

  When the three men rode up, Tex Brisco was carrying two buckets of water to the house. He grinned at them.

  "That grub looks good!" he told them. "I've eaten so much antelope meat the next thing you know I'll be boundin' along over the prairie myself!"

  While Marsh got busy with the grub, Johnny told Tex about the events of the trip.

  "Nobody been around here," Brisco said. "Yesterday I seen three Injuns, but they was off a couple of miles and didn't come this way. Today there hasn't been nobody around."

  During the three days that followed the trip to Painted Rock, Rafe Caradec scouted the range. There were a lot of Bar M cattle around, and most of them were in fairly good shape. His own cattle were mingling freely with them. The range would support many more head than it carried, however, and toward the upper end of Long Valley it was almost untouched. There was much good grass in the mountain meadows, and in several canyons south of the Crazy Woman.

  Johnny Gill and Bo Marsh explained the lay of the land as they knew it.

  "North of here," Gill said, "back of Painted Rock, and mostly west of there, the mountains rise up nigh onto nine thousand feet. Good huntin' country, some of the best I ever seen. South, toward the end of the valley, the mountains thin out. There's a pass through to the head of Otter Creek and that country west of the mountains is good grazin' land, and nobody much in there yet. Injuns got a big powwow grounds over there.

  "Still further south, there's a long red wall, runnin' purty much north and south. Only one entrance in thirty-five miles. Regular hole in the wall. A few men could get into that hole and stand off an army, and if they wanted to hightail it, they could lose themselves in back country."

  Rafe scouted the crossing toward the head of Otter Creek and rode down the creek to the grass lands below. This would be good grazing land, and mentally he made a note to make some plans for it.

  He rode back to the ranch that night and when he was sitting on the stoop after the sun was down, he looked around at Tex Brisco. "You been over the trail from Texas?" he asked.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Once aboard ship you was tellin' me about a stampede you had. Only got back about sixteen hundred head of a two-thousand-head herd. That sort of thing happen often?"

  Tex laughed. "Shucks, yes! Stampedes are regular things along the trail. You lose some cattle, you mebbe get more back, but there's plenty of maverick stock runnin' on the plains south of the Platte--all the way to the Canadian, as far as that goes."

  "Reckon a few men could slip over there and round up some of that stock?"

  Brisco sat up and glanced at Rafe, "Shore could. Wild stuff, though, and it would be a man-sized job."

  "Mebbe," Caradec suggested, "we'll try and do it. It would be one way of gettin' a herd pretty fast, or turnin' some quick money."

  Chapter V

  THERE WERE days of hard, driving labor. Always, one man stayed at the cabin keeping a sharp lookout for any of the Shute or Barkow riders. Caradec knew they would come, and when they did come they would be riding with only one idea in mind--to get rid of him.

  In that visit to Painted Rock he had laid his cards on the table, and they had no idea how much he knew, or what his story of Charles Rodney could be. Rafe Caradec knew Barkow was worried, and that pleased him. Yet while the delayed attack was a worry, it was also a help.

  There was some grumbling from the hands, but he kept them busy cutting hay in the meadows, and stacking it. Winter in this country was going to be bad--he needed no weather prophet to tell him that--and he had no intention of losing a lot of stock.

  In a canyon that branched off from the head of Crazy Woman, he had found a warm spring. There was small chance of it freezing, yet the water was not too hot to drink. In severe cold it would freeze, but otherwise it would offer an excellent watering place for his stock. They made no effort to bring hay back to the ranch, but stacked it in huge stacks back in the canyons and meadows.

  There had been no sign of Indians. It seemed as if they had moved out and left the country.

  Then one night he heard a noise at the corral, and the snorting of a horse. Instantly he was out of bed and had his boots on when he heard Brisco swearing in the next room. They got outside in a hurry, fearing someone was rustling their stock. In the corral they could see the horses, and there was no one nearby.

  Bo Marsh had walked over to the corral, and suddenly he called out.

  "Boss! Lookit here!"

  They all trooped over, then stopped. Instead of five horses in the corral there were ten!

  One of them was the paint they had loaned the young squaw, but the others were strange horses, and every one a picked animal.

  "Well, I'll be durned!" Gill exploded. "Brung back our own horse and an extry one for each of us. Reckon that big black is for you, Boss."

  By daylight when they could examine the horses, Tex Brisco walked around them admiringly.

  "Man," he said, "that was the best horse trade I ever heard of! There's four of the purtiest horses I ever laid an eye on! I always did say the Sioux knowed horse flesh, and this proves it
."

  Rafe studied the valley thoughtfully. They would have another month of good haying weather if there was no rain. Four men could not work much harder than they were, but the beaver were building their houses bigger and in deeper water, and from that and all other indications the winter was going to be hard.

  He made his decision suddenly. "I'm ridin' to Painted Rock. Want to come along, Tex?"

  "Yeah." The Texan looked at him calculatingly. "Yeah, I'd like that."

  "How about me?" Bo asked, grinning. "Johnny went last time. I could shore use a belt of that red-eye the National peddles, and mebbe a look around town."

  "Take him along, Boss," Johnny said. "I can hold this end. If he stays he'll be ridin' me all the time, anyway."

  "All right. Saddle up first thing in the mornin'."

  "Boss--" Johnny threw one leg over the other and lighted his smoke. "One thing I better tell you. I hadn't said a word before but two, three days ago when I was down to the bend of the Crazy Woman I run into a couple of fellers. One of 'em was Red Blazer, that big galoot who was with Boyne. Remember?"

  Rafe turned around and looked down at the little leather-faced cowhand.

  "Well," he said, "what about him?"

  Gill took a long drag on his cigarette. "He told me he was carryin' a message from Trigger Boyne, and that Trigger was goin' to shoot on sight, next time you showed up in Painted Rock."

  Rafe reached over on the table and picked up a piece of cold cornbread.

  "Then I reckon that's what he'll do," he said. "If he gets into action fast enough."

  "Boss," Marsh pleaded, "if that red-headed Tom Blazer, brother to the one you had the run in with--if he's there, I want him."

  "That the one we saw on the National stoop?" Rafe asked Gill.

  "Uh-huh. There's five of them brothers. All gun-toters."

  Gill got up and stretched. "Well, I'll have it purty lazy while you hombres are down there dustin' lead." He added, "It would be a good idea to sort of keep an eye out. Gee Bonaro's still in town and feelin' mighty mad."

  Rafe walked outside, strolling toward the corral. Behind him, Marsh turned to Gill.

  "Reckon he can sling a gun?"

  Tex chuckled. "Mister, that hombre killed one of the fastest, slickest gun throwers that ever came out of Texas, and done it when he was no more'n sixteen, down on the C Bar. And also, while I've never seen him shoot, if he can shoot like he can fist-fight, Mr. Trigger Boyne had better grab hisself an armful of hossflesh and start makin' tracks for the blackest part of the Black."

  Nothing about the town of Painted Rock suggested drama or excitement. It lay sprawled comfortably in the morning sunlight in an elbow of Rock Creek. A normally roaring and plunging stream, the creek had decided here to loiter a while, enjoying the warm sun and the graceful willows that lined the banks.

  Behind and among the willows the white slender trunks of the birch trees marched in neat ranks, each tree so like its neighbor that it was almost impossible to distinguish between them. Clumps of mountain alder, yellow rose, puffed clematis and antelope bush were scattered along the far bank of the stream, and advanced up the hill beyond in skirmishing formation.

  In a few weeks now the aspen leaves would be changing, and Painted Rock would take on a background of flaming color-a bank of trees, rising toward the darker growth of spruce and fir along the higher mountainside.

  Painted Rock's one street was the only thing about the town that was ordered. It lay between two neat rows of buildings which stared at each other down across a long lane of dust and during the rainy periods, of mud.

  At any time of day or night a dozen saddle horses would be standing three-legged at the hitching rails, usually in front of Joe Benson's National Saloon. A buck-board or a spring wagon would also be present, usually driven by some small rancher in for his supplies. The two big outfits sent two wagons together, drawn by mules.

  Bruce Barkow sat in front of the sheriffs office this morning, deep in conversation with Pod Gomer. It was a conversation that had begun over an hour before.

  Gomer was a short, thick-set man, almost as deep from chest to spine as from shoulder to shoulder. He was not fat, and was considered a tough man to tangle with. He was also a man who liked to play on the winning side, and long ago he had decided there was only one side to consider in this fight--the side of Dan Shute and Bruce Barkow.

  Yet he was a man who was sensitive to the way the wind blew, and he frequently found himself puzzled when he considered his two bosses. There was no good feeling between them. They met on business or pleasure, saw things through much the same eyes, but each wanted to be king pin. Sooner or later, Gomer knew, he must make a choice between them.

  Barkow was shrewd, cunning. He was a planner and a conniver. He was a man who would use any method to win, but in most cases he kept himself in the background of anything smacking of crime or wrongdoing. Otherwise, he was much in the foreground.

  Dan Shute was another type of man. He was tall and broad of shoulder. Normally he was sullen, hard-eyed, and surly. He had little to say to anyone, and was more inclined to settle matters with a blow or a gun than with words. He was utterly cold-blooded, felt slightly about anything, and would kill a man as quickly and with as little excitement as he would brand a calf.

  Barkow might carve a notch on his gun butt. Shute wouldn't even understand such a thing.

  Shute was a man who seemed to be without vanity, and such men are dangerous. For the vanity is there, only submerged, and the slow-burning, deep fire of hatred for the vain smolder within them until suddenly they burst into flame and end in sudden, dramatic and ugly climax and violence.

  Pod Gomer understood little of Dan Shute. He understood the man's complete character just enough to know that he was dangerous, that as long as Shute rode along, Barkow would be top dog, but that if ever Barkow incurred Shute's resentment, the deep-seated fury of the gunman would brush his partner aside as he would swat a fly. In a sense, both men were using each other, but of the two, Dan Shute was the man to be reckoned with.

  Yet Gomer had seen Barkow at work. He had seen how deviously the big rancher planned, how carefully he made friends. At the Fort, they knew and liked him, and what little law there was outside the town of Painted Rock was in the hands of the commanding officer at the fort. Knowing this, Bruce Barkow had made it a point to know the personnel there, and to plan accordingly.

  The big black which Rafe was riding was a powerful horse, and he let the animal have its head. Behind him in single file, trailed Tex Brisco and Bo Marsh.

  Rafe Caradec was thinking as he rode. He had seen too much of violence and struggle to fail to understand men who lived life along the frontier. He had correctly gauged the kind of courage Gee Bonaro possessed, yet he knew the man was dangerous, and if the opportunity offered would shoot and shoot instantly.

  "Trigger" Boyne was another proposition. Boyne was reckless, wickedly fast with a gun, and the type of man who would fight at the drop of a hat, and had his own ready to drop on the slightest pretext. Boyne liked the name of being a gunman, and he liked being top dog. If Boyne had sent a warning to Caradec it would be only because he intended to back up that warning.

  Rafe took the black along the mountain trail, riding swiftly. The big horse was the finest he had ever had between his knees. When a Sioux gave gifts, he apparently went all the way. A gift had been sent to each of the men on the Crazy Woman, which was evidence that the Sioux had looked them over at home.

  The black had a long, space-eating stride that seemed to put no strain on his endurance. The horses given to the others were almost as good. There were not four men in the mountains mounted as well, Rafe knew.

  He rounded the big horse into the dusty street of Painted Rock and rode down toward the hitching rail at a spanking trot. He pulled up and swung down, and the other men swung down alongside him.

  "Just keep your eyes open," Rafe said guardedly. "I don't want trouble. But if Boyne starts anything, he's my meat."<
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  Marsh nodded and walked up on the boardwalk alongside of Brisco, who was sweeping the street with quick, observant eyes.

  "Have a drink?" Rafe suggested, and led the way inside the National.

  Joe Benson was behind the bar. He looked up warily as the three men entered. He spoke to Bo; then glanced at Tex Brisco. He placed Tex as a stranger, and his mind leaped ahead. It took no long study to see that Tex was a hard character, and a fighting man.

  Joe was cautious and shrewd. Unless he was mistaken, Barkow and Shute had their work cut out for them. These men didn't look like the sort to back water for anything or anyone. The town's saloonkeeper-mayor had an uncomfortable feeling that a change was in the offing, yet he pushed the feeling aside with irritation.

  That must not happen. His own future and his own interests were too closely allied to those of Barkow and Shute.

  Of course, when Barkow married the Rodney girl that would give them complete title to the ranch. That would leave them in the clear and these men, if alive, could be run off the ranch with every claim to legal process.

  Caradec tossed off his whisky and looked up sharply. His glance pinned Joe Benson to the spot.

  "Trigger Boyne sent word he was looking for me," he said abruptly. "Tell him I'm in town--ready!"

  "How should I know Trigger better'n any other man who comes into this bar?" Benson demanded.

  "You know him. Tell him."

  Rafe hitched his guns into a comfortable position and strode through the swinging doors. There were a dozen men in sight but none of them resembled Boyne or either of the Blazers he had seen.

  He started for the Emporium. Behind him Tex stopped by one of the posts that supported the wooden awning over the walk, and leaned a negligent shoulder against it, a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth.

  Bo Marsh sat back in a chair against the wall, his interested eyes sweeping the street. Several men, who passed spoke to him and glanced at Tex Brisco's tall, lean figure.