by Short, Luke;
Milt ignored the question. “A three-way cut now,” he sneered. “Maybe you’d like to ask some more of your friends in on it.”
“It’s still a two-way cut,” Pres answered bluntly. “Me and Case.”
“And I’m out?”
“That’s right,” Pres said bluntly. “You’re out. I gave you a chance, and you threw it. You couldn’t swing Will Danning, so I got hold of the man who can.”
Milt said thickly, “Damn you, Pres! You can’t do that to me! I’ve got enough on you to hang you, and I’ll tell it!”
Pres laughed then, his thick lips curling up over yellow teeth. “You ain’t goin’ to tell anybody anything, Murray Broome. Now git on your horse and go home and sulk.”
A red rage came over Milt; he clawed wildly at the buttons of his slicker to get inside for his gun. Pres saw him, and went for his own, and it was buttoned tight inside his slicker, and then he acted quickly. He dived at Milt, pinning his arms. Milt twisted loose and looped a blow in his face, and then clinched with him. A kind of maniac fury had seized Milt; Pres was taller and heavier than he, but as they wrestled there, clumsy in their cold, stiff slickers, Milt’s wild slugging backed Pres toward the arroyo.
Pres grappled with him and tried to speak. “Take it easy—I can still—turn you up.”
But Milt fought with a maniac fury, and Pres was scared. Time and again he tried to fumble under his slicker for his gun, and each time Milt slammed into him with a viciousness that took his breath away. The footing was slippery now, and they were standing toe to toe, slugging at each other. Milt missed a looping left that curled his arm around Pres’s neck and he slammed the whole weight of his body into him. Pres skidded backward, and when he finally checked the slide, the water was lapping around his ankles.
He fought to circle Milt, putting his back to the arroyo, but Milt fought with the stubborn wildness of a jungle animal. He tried to bring an elbow into Pres’s face, and when he missed he stamped savagely on Pres’s feet. Pres hauled his foot away, cursing wildly, and then Milt dove into him, shoulder in his belly. Pres went over backward into the shallow water, but before he could move Milt was clawing up onto him, fighting for a hold on his throat. Pres rolled over onto his hands and knees, and again Milt slammed into him, fighting for his throat. Pres put up his arms in front of him; Milt rose and kicked him savagely in the belly.
And now all Pres thought of was escaping from this wild man. He fought to his knees and tried to cut off downstream toward the point. Milt lunged on his back, winding both arms around his shoulders; then Pres tripped and fell into the knee-deep water, Milt on his back. Panic seized him then. He reared up in a great mooselike heave, then he lost his footing and went over backward into the deep water, Milt’s arm wrapped around his throat, choking him.
Now Pres fought with all his wild strength, fought against drowning as the flood swept him out into the torrent. The cold water took the breath out of him and seemed to make him more certain he was drowning. Milt’s arm was like a vice around his neck, immovable. He came to the surface once, and was tumbled under again, Milt clinging to him like a burr. A wild desperation was on Pres. He opened his mouth, and the muddy water boiled in. With both hands he forced Milt’s arm up to his mouth and sank his teeth in it.
Milt let go, and the torrent rolled Pres to the surface again. He saw Milt’s rage-contorted face close to him. Milt struck out again, and hit him in the face; then Pres felt his shoulder seized again. Blind panic was on him, the terror of a drowning man added to the jungle fear of a more savage animal that is sure to kill.
The sodden slicker was like a coat of lead, holding him under water. His lungs were bursting, and he already had breathed water. Now he felt Milt’s boots tromping him down, down to the very bottom of this thick flood. Pres knew death then. With every instinct he fought to reach the surface. His hand touched something solid, and he grabbed for it. It was a root of some kind, and he pulled himself to the surface. He was under the overhang of a bank; it was the root of a cedar tree he was holding.
The flood tore at him, and he saw it tumbling Milt out in midstream. Milt, with a maniacal stubbornness, was trying to swim against the stream to the spot where he last saw Pres. And then, in a few seconds, he was swept out of sight.
Pres clung to the branch and gagged for air. The stream was tugging at him like a thousand hands trying to pull him loose. When the worst of the coughing and choking had passed, Pres felt around with his feet, trying for bottom. There wasn’t any. He looked about him for some hold to cling to so he could work his way out from under this bank, which might cave at any moment. There was no other branch. The thought of drifting out into that flood again made him tighten his hold on the branch until his fingers ached.
He tried to fight down his fear and to reason. If he could stay here till this flash flood subsided, he would be safe. He was too weak, too exhausted to hunt for a place downstream where the bank wasn’t so high. But it was still raining, and it would be hours after the rain ceased before the flood decreased. A bleak despair settled on him; it was his own bull strength against the flood. He could help by shedding his slicker. He started, then stopped.
On the opposite bank he saw Milt.
Like an animal frightened into immobility, Pres didn’t move. Milt was slowly pacing up the bank, looking at the flood. His slicker was gone now, and he held a gun in his hand. He looked as wild and implacable as a jungle animal and he slowly walked along the shore, wet and filthy and muddy.
When he was out of sight, Pres moved. His first thought was his gun, which he had forgotten. It was gone. Sometime, in that turmoil, it had slipped out of its holster. He contemplated this with a kind of fatalistic indifference. He was completely at Milt’s mercy now, and unless he stayed where he was, hidden from Milt by the tangle of roots in front of him, he was gone. His teeth chattered with the cold and with naked fear.
Fifteen minutes had passed before he saw Milt again. This time Milt had a pole, and was prodding under each overhang of the bank. He worked with an implacable patience, his head bare in the rain, the gun rammed in his waistband. Pres watched him with a dismal fascination. If Milt was so thorough with that bank, surely he would cross over to this one. Hysteria seized Pres then; he knew he’d have to get out of here, and he knew he couldn’t. No, he’d wait like an animal in a trap until the trapper came along and disposed of him.
An hour passed, an hour of the purest misery Pres had ever known. In spite of the great strength in his arms and shoulders, his grip on the root was lessening. He had to change hands more often. And the cold of this water was eating into his very bones; he couldn’t stop his teeth chattering, and his body seemed to be only a chunk of heavy wood, refusing to respond to the orders from his brain.
Soon he knew he could stand it no longer. He decided to risk everything on holding his breath and letting the stream whirl him down to a less steep shore. He didn’t even care if he drowned.
It took some minutes to work up to the decision, but he did it. He relaxed his hold on the branch and pushed the small sucker roots out of the way ahead of him.
And then he saw a pole lowered from the bank above. He knew instantly, with cold terror, that it was Milt prodding. He dodged back under the bank and shrank into its farthest corner. Slowly, the pole came toward him. Milt felt the sucker roots and brushed them aside and then the pole started to explore the cave. It started at the far end and worked toward him, and in voiceless terror Pres shrank his great hulking body into the mud. The pole was almost on him now, and then it stopped moving. It had met a stubborn sucker root. It gave a couple of tentative lunges that did not seem to dislodge the root, and then it was withdrawn.
Pres almost fainted with relief. He abandoned all thought of leaving his cave now. Gathering every ounce of strength, he clung to the root and was utterly motionless, except for the chattering of his teeth.
The rain kept on, the gray sky slowly darkening as evening approached, and still Pres did not move. Tow
ard dusk, the pole came again. And again, Pres clung to his old position, watching it with the fatalism of a man who is prepared to die. And again it missed him, stopped by the tough sucker root.
Afterward he concentrated all his strength on holding out until darkness. The water was falling a little, but it was still tumbling past in a brown turgid boiling that was a constant roar in his ears.
When darkness came, Pres knew that he was safe from Milt. Yet the dark moil of the flood in front of him was even more terrifying. He made up his mind to stay here until he drowned. It was later, much later, that he felt a log nudging into his cave. He felt it, saw that it was thick, and with fumbling and numb hands, grasped it to see if it would support him. It did.
He gave himself up to the flood, pushing out from his cave into the torrent. It had ceased its boiling now and flowed in a swift and steady stream, draining the grasslands of the bench and the barren clay hills of the brakes. It seized him like some strong hand, and Pres clung blindly to his log, holding his head out of water.
Time and again he felt for bottom, and sometimes found it, but he did not have strength enough to buck the current. Miles below his cave, the stream seemed to broaden, the current to relax a little. Gently, wearily, he guided the log toward shore. And he found the slope was not steep.
He abandoned his log then, and summoned all the strength left to pull himself out of the flood. Inch by inch, he clawed his way up the bank in the cold drizzle. When his feet were clear he stopped to rest. And when he tried to start again, he was too tired, too sleepy. This cold rain seemed warm beside the stream. He relaxed and let it warm him, and then went to sleep that way, the muddy earth for a pillow.
He wakened at dawn, with the rain still pelting down on him. It was agony to move, and he was so cold that his hands were numb claws. Pulling himself to his feet, he looked around him. He knew where he was. A Nine X line camp lay a couple of miles down the arroyo. If he could make that, he was safe, for it was miles back to his horse. His matches were wet, he was exhausted, hungry, and in fever.
Pres didn’t remember much of that walk. He remembered falling time and again; he remembered cattle watching him with dull and kindly curiosity. He remembered seeing the shack where it lay between a couple of big piñons against the hill, and he remembered how it took him longer to make it after he’d seen it than it took him to walk from the arroyo.
But he made it, and he fell into the bunk and pulled the straw over him and slept.
For how long he didn’t know. When he woke it was night, and he was weak with hunger. He staggered out of the bunk and over to the table and lighted a candle. He built a fire in the rickety stove and wolfed down some moldy pan bread that had been cached in a sack hung by a wire from the ridgepole.
The shack was just warming up when he heard the horses outside. He forgot his bread, forgot his hunger, forgot his weakness, and staggered to the door and threw it open.
“Tip? Barney? That you?” he yelled hoarsely.
Out in the darkness he heard a quiet chuckle, and then a man walked into the light of the doorway.
“Pres Milo,” the voice drawled. “Sittin’ up to meet us, eh?”
Pres almost cried. It was Will Danning, tall and unshaven, his eyes a smoky, sultry gray, who came into the room and pushed him back onto the bunk.
Chapter Fifteen
A FOOLPROOF SCHEME
Will looked at Pres’s beefy face, drawn and harried-looking and unshaven, and then regarded his clothes, torn and muddy and holding a fine sand in each crease. The Rainey brothers, Jack and Phil, stepped into the room behind him.
“Who’s this?” Jack Rainey growled.
Will’s eyes glinted with a secret amusement. “This? Why, he’s the man that signs the bill of sale, boys.”
Jack looked at him. “Then you ain’t Milo?”
Will shook his head. “I was goin’ to forge his name. Now I don’t reckon we’ll have to.”
Pres was bewildered by all this talk. Will had to repeat his question. “What happened to you, Pres?”
Pres flagged his weary brain into action. He knew that if he told Will Danning the true story of how Milt Barron had almost killed him, Will would want to know why. And in learning why, Will would learn that he knew Milt’s name. Will would kill him then. If he didn’t, Milt would. The memory of Milt pacing that bank yesterday—or was it the day before—would never leave his mind. He didn’t want another man like Milt after him, too.
He said weakly, “I got caught in the storm and set afoot in a floodin’ arroyo. I damn near died.”
Will’s long face was touched with sardonic enjoyment of this.
Pres said, “I don’t care what you do with me, Danning. Only I got to eat! I’m starved!”
Will’s glance traveled to the cans up on the shelf. “Rig up some grub, Phil,” he said to the younger man. To Pres he said dryly, “Do you think you can stagger to the door while I show you somethin’?”
He stepped out into the night and struck a match. There, among their horses was Pres’s own black gelding still saddled, its fetlocks muddy, its hair dried curly.
“He was standin’ at the ford when we passed it this mornin’,” Will drawled. “We figured to use him, but now we got you, and we won’t need him. I’ll give him to you.”
Pres said shakily, “What you aimin’ to do, Danning?”
Will laughed softly. “Now that,” he drawled, “is a surprise. I wouldn’t aim to spoil your grub.”
“You ain’t—”
Will’s face changed, and the match died, but his voice was thoughtful. “No, we don’t aim to kill you, Pres. Maybe you’ll wish we had when we’re through with you, though.”
Pres didn’t pay attention to anything but the food. But once he was finished eating, he looked at the two men with Will. They were hardcases, all right, tight-lipped, silent, suspicious-looking men. They didn’t talk and looked to Will for a cue to their behavior. Will was silent, smiling now and then in secret amusement.
When they were finished, Will rose. “Well, we better get to work, boys.”
“Where you goin’?” Pres asked suspiciously.
“We’re goin’ to take your horse with us,” Will drawled. “You just go to bed, and we’ll call you around daylight.”
Pres watched them file out into the night, and his curiosity was whetted. Something was up, but he was too tired to figure it out. He had a feeling that if he was smart he’d light out afoot tonight, but he knew he couldn’t make more than a couple of miles in his condition.
Outside, when they had ridden out of earshot, Jack Rainey pulled up. “Better tell us about this,” he said to Will.
“I lied to you,” Will said calmly. “I figured I couldn’t get you to throw in with me any other way. There was no risk for you. I ain’t Pres Milo. That’s Pres Milo back there. He’ll ride with us, and I reckon he’ll do anything I say.”
“But if he ain’t in on this, he’ll squeal.”
“Nobody’ll believe him,” Will said. “He’s forked himself, and his boss knows it. By the time I let him go, you’ll have your stuff clear, and nobody will look for you. Case will settle with him.”
“And not us?”
“It’s his name will be on the bill of lading,” Will pointed out. “That’s all Case needs, that’s all he wants.”
Jack Rainey said dubiously, “How do we know?”
“You don’t,” Will said. “But will you take a chance on it for my third of the cattle?”
Both the Raineys were silent. Finally Phil blurted out, “Then what in hell are you doin’ this for?”
“Not money,” Will said calmly. “I’m doin’ it to get him in a jam. You got it all right there. And I won’t get him in any jam if I let you two get caught with the beef, will I?”
“No,” Rainey said reluctantly.
“Then you’ll be clear. I got to have you get away with the beef to nail him. I can’t double-cross you, any way you look at it.” He paused. “I’m not
crowdin’ you into it. If you don’t want a hundred and fifty head of beef, pull out. If you do, stick.”
“I’ll take a chance on it,” Rainey said. “I don’t understand it, but I’ll take the chance.”
“Wait a minute,” Will said. “You’ll have those two men you hired waitin’ for you in the brakes, won’t you? You figured to have them drive the shippin’ beef down, and you aimed to drive the stolen beef off, didn’t you?”
“That’s what we said.”
“Then you come along with me, Jack, and let Phil go with them. That way, you’ll see I won’t cross you.”
“Okay.”
There was a moon at ten, and with the aid of its light they rounded up the small clusters of beef that dotted this rolling Nine X range. It was open country, and the bedded cattle were not hard to spot.
It was like a leisurely, fumbling roundup. Jack held the herd while Will and Phil rode the ridges pushing down the stuff. At their approach, even the cattle hidden in the brush came to their feet with an alarmed snort. By daylight, Jack was easing the growing herd north and east toward the brakes, while the other two pushed the other cattle down to join the big herd. By midmorning, they had an easy three hundred head moving north, and Will dropped out and rode back to the line shack, on his way picking up Pres’s horse, which they had staked out.
Pres, looking haggard but rested, was waiting for him at the shack. Will ordered him to mount, and they set out after the herd. Pres kept watching Will with an uneasy expression that made Will smile. Then, topping a ridge, they caught sight of the herd trailing north.
Pres hauled up, looked at it, and turned to Will, eyes goggling.
“You’re runnin’ off Nine X beef!”
“And you’ll help us,” Will said gently. “This time we got the guns, Pres, and you haven’t. So line out there and ride drag with the boys.”
“Case’ll get you for this!” Pres said savagely. “You can’t get away with it.”
“Will he?” Will grinned. “Light a shuck, now.”