by Lauran Paine
“Jack,” asked Frank McCoy mildly, “you want this one now?”
Miggs nodded. He was sucking in great lungsful of thin, high-country air and staring across at old Denver Holt.
Fred Brian broke in. “Let me take the old man, Jackson. You’re tired.”
Miggs’ face instantly and faintly clouded. He said nothing, only shook a peremptory arm at Morton and Fred Brian.
“Push him out here,” he said to Frank. “Let’s see just how tough he really is. If talk’s any measure, then he’ll eat me alive. Give him a shove, Frank.”
McCoy roughly heaved Denver Holt forward.
The rugged old cowman minced ahead a little, sidestepping around Miggs and holding both massive, scarred fists low. He was not speaking now. In fact, he was not looking at all like the old arrogant, challenging Denver at all. He knew he was up against the fight of his life and meant to concentrate entirely upon this one thing.
Miggs turned as Holt circled him, but he gave no ground at all. He kept turning and Holt kept circling.
Finally, Frank McCoy said sarcastically: “Jack, he’s going to give you dancing lessons … he isn’t going to fight.”
That was when Denver Holt made his lunge. He came in low with one arm crooked up high to protect his face and chin, with his other arm straight out like a battering ram. It was a clumsy action, but, with all Holt’s considerable weight behind it, if an opponent had been caught off guard, it could have dropped a man,
But Miggs, with thirty years of fighting behind him, was no greenhorn at rough-and-tumble. He’d guessed at once, from the way Holt had circled around and around, what manner of battler the old cowman was, so when Holt made his savage rush, Miggs dropped far down, threw all his weight in behind a cocked right fist, and fired it.
The blow whipped upward over Holt’s bent arm, ground along Holt’s forearm, ripping the sleeve, passed on through, and cracked with a loud report squarely between the cowman’s eyes. Holt’s own momentum had given Miggs’ strike added impetus.
Holt’s head snapped back. If his neck had not been as thick as the trunk of a young tree, it would have snapped under that violent, sledging blow. As it was Denver Holt threw up both arms, reeled back, stumbled over the legs of his unconscious son, and toppled. He struck the ground hard. Dust burst upward. He did not move again.
Fred Brian was the first to move, to make a sound. Fred bent to peer in amazement at those two big men lying there. “I’ll be damned,” he breathed.
The Holt range rider, with his injured side, forgot for this taut moment his own wound to sit there dumbly staring.
All Jackson Miggs said was: “Red, go fetch the horses. It’ll be suppertime before we get back.”
Morton started, jerked back to the present by those quietly spoken words. “Sure,” he said. “Yes … sir.”
Frank walked over, leaned upon his rifle, and skeptically considered the Holts—father and son—spat aside, and kneeled to slap Denver Holt’s face. It took a little time, but when Red returned with Lex Murphy and the horses, Denver’s eyes opened, rolled aimlessly for a moment, then gradually, wetly focused upon Jackson Miggs standing there with both arms hooked around his rifle.
Frank yanked Holt upright by his ragged shirt, pushed his thin, raffish face up close, and wickedly scowled. “You want some more?” he asked.
Holt didn’t answer. His eyes had not entirely focused yet.
Frank roughly shook him by the shirt front and repeated the question.
This time Holt wagged his shaggy head from side to side, lifted his face, and gazed over at Jackson Miggs. “You win,” he croaked huskily. “Mr. Miggs, you win.”
Jackson nodded. “All right, Mr. Holt,” he said. “Have your cattle out of the Ute Peak country by tomorrow afternoon.”
“They’ll be out, Mr. Miggs. What about my riders?”
“We’ll send ’em back to you, Mr. Holt. And one other thing. That boy of yours … he’s got some need for a strong hand on the reins. Someday he’s going to touch the wrong girl again and get himself killed.”
Holt tried to rise up off the ground. If Frank and Red hadn’t supported him, he’d never have made it, but, back upon his feet, he said: “You’re right, Mr. Miggs. He’s near been the death of me before. You’re plumb right. You’ve got my word for this … this time is the last time.”
Miggs turned, went over to the horses, and swung up.
The others followed his example.
Frank McCoy squinted around. “Hey, Lex,” he queried, “where’s them cussed prisoners?”
“Tied to trees. Why?”
“Go set ’em loose,” ordered McCoy, and turned his horse to head out.
* * * * *
They were halfway back toward Miggs’ meadow when Fred Brian eased up beside Miggs, cleared his throat, looked a little apprehensive, and said: “Jackson … like I told you last night … there’s something I’d admire to speak to you about.”
Miggs looked quickly around, then away. That pained, worried expression mantled his rugged old features. He knew Frank McCoy had heard and was staring back at him, and this didn’t help any.
“It’s about Beverly.”
Frank cleared his throat loudly and made an imperative frown at Miggs. “Well,” said Frank, “answer him, consarn it.”
Miggs did, but in a tone of diminishing force. “I know how it is with you, Fred. Sure, it’s all right with me if it’s all right with Beverly.” Miggs looked relieved at having said this. Then he added: “But, Fred, when you bring up Tolman’s cattle next summer …”
“Sure,” said Brian gently, understanding a little of how the older man felt. “Sure, Jackson, I’ll bring her with me.”
“Now,” pronounced Frank McCoy loudly, “maybe we can get a little doggoned hunting done, Jack, since all this other stuff’s taken care of.”
THE END
About the Author
Lauran Paine, under his own name and various pseudonyms, has written over a thousand books. He was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved to California when he was at a young age, and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra, because of his expert horsemanship, in several films starring movie cowboy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the previous century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later recalled. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the US Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that all of his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market, and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact. Adobe Empire (1956), one of his best novels, is a fictionalized account of the last twenty years in the life of trader William Bent and, in an off-trail way, has a melancholy, bittersweet texture that is not easily forgotten. In later novels like The White Bird (1997) and Cache Cañon (1998), he showed that the special magic and power of his stories and characters had only matured along with his basic themes of changing times, changing attitudes, learning from experience, respecting nature, and the yearning for a simpler, more moderate way of life.
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