She glanced at the pack behind his saddle. “Dad told me you were going to bring his stock down,” she said. “But you’re hoping to find the sniper too, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Clay said.
“And you think Bick Damson or that man Vanner is behind the sniper. You’re hoping to prove that.” Her voice was stiff.
Clay gave her a puzzled look. “What are you trying to say, Tonia?”
“I don’t want you to go up there,” she said simply.
Clay could only stare at her in surprise. She spoke quickly now, the words rushing out of her. “Things have changed here since I was visiting on the coast,” she said. “I can’t explain it but everybody is different — even dad and Roy Ponders. It’s that man Vanner. He’s using Bick Damson and his money to get control of the valley.”
“He might want to,” Clay said dryly, “but he’s got a long way to go yet. If there was any sign of that, your father would stop it.”
“That’s what I mean,” Tonia cried. “It seems so obvious-Damson going into politics and buying up the Cattlemen’s Bar and the mortgages on a lot of property from the Helena bank. And nobody seems concerned. They just say it’s good business on Damson’s part.”
She waved a hand around her. “If there’s a drought or cattle prices drop, he’ll own half this end of the valley. Most of the little ranchers on the west side won’t be their own bosses anymore. They’ll work for Bick Damson.”
“You’ve been listening to Tom Roddy,” Clay said.
“What of it?” she demanded. “Tom can see what’s going on, and he’s not afraid to speak up.”
“I don’t like it any better than you and Tom do,” Clay told her. “But what’s that got to do with my not going into the mountains?”
“Don’t you see?” she cried. “Damson can’t afford to have you around — not after the threats he’s made. And Vanner can’t afford it either. Because if you did manage to make a success of your ranch, then you and dad together would be bigger than Damson could ever hope to be.”
Clay gave her a puzzled look. “You’re afraid of Damson’s power but you don’t want me to try to fight him. What kind of sense does that make?”
Tonia flushed. “I’ve waited for you for five years,” she whispered. “People laughed at me and told me you’d never come back. But I knew you would, and I kept on waiting.” She turned her eyes away from him. “I could stand waiting again — if I knew you would come back. But I couldn’t stand it if there was — wasn’t anyone to wait for.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Turn tail and run? Leave the valley to Damson and Vanner?”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she said in a low, controlled voice. “Even if you hadn’t promised to bring dad’s cattle down to the valley, you wouldn’t stay away from the mountains.”
“Why should I?” he demanded. “It’s my land. I have a right to be on it.”
She swung toward him, her eyes blazing with sudden anger. “Is that why you’re going? Because it’s your land and you want to live on it? Or are you trying to make a fool of Bick Damson? Trying to dare him to do something to you? Dad told me how you plan to make your place into a paying ranch. But you’d risk that — you’d risk everything — just to prove that Damson and Vanner can’t run you out of the valley! It’s your stupid pride that makes you go back up there now!”
She raked her heels across the sorrel’s flanks and sent it flying down the road toward the Winged L. Clay made no effort to follow. Her sudden attack had caught him by surprise and left him confused.
A woman in love just made no sense sometimes, he decided as he jogged the dun along. With a man it was different. He had to learn to put his feelings aside when there was work to be done. Clay was not a man who expressed his emotions easily, and he knew he had not let Tonia know how empty these past five years had been.
But, he thought, there was more behind Tonia’s outburst than her fear for him. He was sure she’d had more reasons than she’d given for not wanting him to go up into the mountains. For the first time since he’d known her, Clay had the feeling she had not been completely frank with him. And that was so unlike Tonia that it made no sense at all. Yet the more he turned over her words, the more sure he was that he was right.
He worried the problem past Bick Damson’s land with its new fencing and elaborate house and on to the north edge of the Winged L. The road turned here, starting east toward its climb over the pass. Clay saw two men working in a hayfield bordering the road, and he recognized Pete Apley, the foreman of Judge Lyles’ ranch, and Bert Coniff, one of the hands who had hired on the year before Clay left the valley.
He waved to them and then glanced back along the road. He caught a glimpse of Tonia and her sorrel racing up the lane leading to the Winged L headquarters; then she disappeared behind the big white house. Clay turned his dun east and started toward the pass.
He saw a pair of riders moving fast along the hill road. They reached the crossing with the main road and went on past, toward Clay’s land. When he came to the crossing, he slowed the dun and reached down, loosening his rifle in the boot under his left thigh.
He saw the riders again as he rounded a bend in the trail. They sat their horses in the middle of the road, looking his way, clearly waiting for him.
Damsons men, Clay thought angrily. They had seen him in the valley and had been ordered to ride this way to head him off. The trick was typical of Bick Damson. Vanner would have been more subtle. But not Damson. Money wouldn’t have changed his belief that, by throwing enough force against a man, you could break him.
As Clay drew close, the men moved their horses so that they blocked the trail. Clay pulled the dun up and looked the pair over slowly.
They were strangers to him. The smaller one was short and wiry, with narrow, bright eyes and sharp features; the other was as big as Bick Damson but soft looking, with a dull, almost empty expression on his heavy face.
The small one moved his horse closer to Clay. “You’re Belden?” he demanded in a thin, reedy voice.
“That’s right,” Clay said.
“I’m Abe Marnie,” the small man said. “And this here is Ben Pike. We work for Mr. Damson.” He grinned at Clay, showing a badly broken set of teeth.
Clay looked quietly at him, saying nothing.
“We figured you might need a little help getting out of the valley,” Marnie said. His grin broadened. “What with snipers in the mountains and all.”
Clay said slowly, distinctly, “Go tell Damson that if he wants to fight me, to crawl out of his hole and do it himself.”
He lifted the reins as if to move the dun along. He saw eager desire for action spring into Marnie’s face and he had a quick glimpse of Pike making a clumsy move toward the gun on his hip. Clay jerked the reins suddenly, wheeling the dun around and ramming it against Marnie’s horse, pinning the small man’s leg down.
Marnie cursed shrilly and leaned back to reach for his gun. Clay caught the front of his coat with both hands. He urged the dun back and then jerked Marnie out of the saddle. He pressured the dun with his knees, urging it forward so that Marnie’s horse stumbled back toward Pike.
Pike had his gun up now but he couldn’t shoot with Marnie hanging between him and Clay. The dun drove forward as Clay raked a heel across its flank. Pike tried to back his horse away but he moved too slowly. Clay threw Marnie at him and Pike raised his hands and dropped his gun in an effort to keep the smaller man from knocking him out of the saddle.
Marnie hit the ground on his side, rolled and staggered to his feet. He reached for his gun and stopped only when Clay pulled his rifle from the boot.
Marnie stared at the rifle and then his head swiveled slowly around toward his partner. Pike had both hands on his saddlehorn. His eyes were on Clay’s rifle, and his expression said that he wasn’t interested in going after his gun lying on the ground.
Clay said quietly, “Throw your gun down, Marnie.”
Ma
rnie looked back at Clay, his eyes squinted as if he was trying to find some advantantage in this for himself. Then he pulled his gun and let it fall to the road. He stepped back toward Pike’s horse.
Clay rode the dun to Mamie’s horse and caught the reins. He looked at Pike. “Climb down,” he ordered.
“It’s my horse!” Pike objected in thick voice.
Marnie turned a scathing look on him. “Do what the man says. Don’t you know when you’re whipped?”
Pike left the saddle and Marnie led the horse to Clay and tossed him the reins. “I never argue with another man’s gun,” Marnie said dryly. His broken-toothed grin showed again. “But you’re wasting your time, Belden. Like Mr. Vanner would say, you’re just postponing the inevitable.”
Clay studied Marnie silently. He figured there wasn’t much to Ben Pike but blubber, but Abe Marnie was a different story. The way Clay read Marnie was grim. With someone to lead him, Marnie was a man who could cause serious trouble.
Clay turned the horses in the direction of town and lashed his reins across their rumps. Pike yelled in dismay as both animals kicked up their heels and galloped down the road.
Clay said, “Now start walking.”
Marnie stepped toward his gun and then away as Clay waggled his rifle. Marnie said, “You’ve had all the warnings you’re going to get, Belden.”
“So has Damson,” Clay said quietly. “Now move.”
VI
THE SHADOWS were growing long and the air was turning cool with the threat of coming night when Clay rode up the meadow trail to the spot where he had been ambushed the night before.
He wasted little time looking for signs the sniper had left. A few quick looks showed him that the man had been back and brushed out his tracks.
In making his final check, he walked to the edge of the drop-off where he had shot at the sniper. He glanced around, expecting to find nothing. Suddenly he bent down and studied the ground with close attention. The sniper had overlooked one clear heelprint. The print showed a heel that had been worn away on the inside so that the outer edge made the deeper impression. In the center of the print there was a small puncture, as if a nail was working loose in the heel itself.
Clay straightened up with a grunt. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was tangible. It was something he could show Roy Ponders if he ever had the chance.
He glanced toward the west and saw that the last of the sun was sliding over the distant Bitterroots. He hurried back to the dun and rode it down to the big bench that fronted the mouth of Deadman Canyon. He made his camp where a high shoulder of rock jutted from the steep hillside marking the north edge of the bench. He built his fire in front of a shallow overhang formed where the shoulder of rock met the hillside. Here he was protected on three sides, so that the sniper could approach only across the open bench.
Clay half expected an attack, but the night remained quiet. In the morning, work pushed the problem of the sniper to the back of his mind. Clay’s plan was to avoid wasting time by driving the judge’s stock down to the valley day by day. Instead, he decided to corral them until he had a fair-sized gather and then move them onto Winged L graze in a bunch.
With this in mind, he threw a brush fence across the small opening leading into Deadman Canyon. The canyon itself was long and narrow, well grassed and well watered, and enclosed by barren rock walls that rose sheer from the floor higher than a man could look without cricking his neck.
The canyon had not been a place Clay liked to come as a boy. The towering rock walls kept out the sun most of the day, making it gloomy. And he had never ridden near it without remembering how the canyon had got its name. In the early days a silver propsector had died there when a snowslide caught him at the back of the canyon and buried him alive.
Clay glanced toward the far end of the draw now as he worked to set up his brush fence. A great scar on the cliff face and a tumble of boulders at the end of the grass floor told him that flood and storm had been at work here since his last visit some seven or eight years before.
He reminded himself to ride to the end of the canyon soon and see if the rockslide might not have uncovered one of the old watercourses that honeycombed these mountains. He had found a number of them not far away when he was a boy — long smooth tunnels burrowed out of the rocky cliffs by long departed rivers. They had fascinated him then, but he had never ventured far into them because the air inside always had the rank smell of bears clinging to it.
The brush fence finished to his satisfaction, Clay rode into the high country to see how many of the judge’s cattle he could spot easily. The judge had told him a hundred head were driven up in early summer. Checking the largest of the meadows, Clay counted only forty beeves. That meant the rest would be scattered, in the brush and higher up the mountains.
Clay squinted at the sky. It was bright blue and the sun still held a certain warmth. But he could feel the chill of coming winter whenever he stepped into the shade, and he knew he had no time to waste if he was to find all the cows and get them safely into the valley before the first snow came up here.
He spent the first days moving down those cattle grazing in the meadows. They were ornery and stubborn after a summer spent in the mountains, and none of them wanted to leave. Clay found that working alone he could only shag a few head at a time down the steep trails to the bench, and he spent the better part of three days before he had forty head corralled in Deadman Canyon.
While he worked, he kept his eyes open to see if the country was as he remembered it, and if it would fit into his idea of turning this mountainside into a paying spread. His plan was to run a small herd of his own in these meadows during the summer and keep them in feed lots during the winter. The problem that had always stopped him whenever he’d considered this before was how to get the large amounts of hay he would need for winter feed.
Then a few years back he had found the answer while helping on a fall roundup in Colorado. There, a large swampy area had been drained and made into hay meadow. Clay’s own hundred acres of swamp had never been anything but a nuisance — all cattails and bogland. Now he realized that if he cut his ditches right, he could not only drain the area, but he could catch all the water from the springs that caused the swamp.
The one flaw in the plan was the fact that by taking over the meadows for himself, he would hurt the Winged L. Clay knew the judge had put a lot of money into extra beef and haying machinery so he could take advantage of Clay’s offer to use his mountain grazing land. In Helena he and the judge had talked about what could be done with the extra stock Winged L would have once there was no longer any place to graze it.
The judge had suggested that he sell the beeves even though it would mean taking a heavy loss on them. But if he did that, he would still have a lot of extra hay and haying machinery on his hands. Clay pointed this out, but the judge waved the objection aside. If the judge believed in a man, he had always been ready to make personal sacrifices to help that man out.
Now, as Clay stared down into the valley, he saw the solution to this final problem. The slope of the land was just right for him to channel his swamp drainage over to the judge’s dry south section. Under irrigation, it would provide all the graze the judge needed to keep his extra cattle.
Excitement ran through Clay as he studied this new plan carefully. He even took time to ride into the valley and trace a possible channel from the swamp to the judge’s dry section. It would work! He curbed an impulse to ride to town and tell the judge about it. After he got the stock all rounded up would be time enough since nothing could be done until spring anyway.
That problem taken care of, Clay turned his attention back to his own meadows. He saw that they were even better than he remembered. In a few places the trails between one meadow and another were little more than animal tracks snaking up steep mountainsides or edging along the lips of canyons. But in every case, Clay noted, he could blast out fair trails with a few sticks of dynamite.
Finally he. wo
rked his way to the high grasslands, a sprawled prairie, boggy right up to the end of the summer when it usually dried up just in time to catch the first heavy frosts. He found a dozen head of Winged L beef grazing on the browning grass, and he started them down to the lower country.
The trail from the high grasslands dropped steeply down a mountainside, narrowed to a cut across the face of a cliff rising out of a deep-bottomed gorge, and then broadened to enter a pine-fringed meadow.
Clay shagged the bawling steers onto the narrow part of the trail and reined in the dun. He watched the steers as they plunged in panic across the cliff face to the safety of the meadow. There, in typical ornery cow fashion, they calmed down and began to crop grass as if the idea of coming down here had been their own all along.
Clay studied the rough surface of the trail and the sheer drop alongside it. The fact that he had not been bothered by the sniper since coming up here bothered him. He had seen no one after sending Marnie and Pike running home with their tails between their legs.
A delayed attack wasn’t Bick Damson’s usual way of operating. He had never waited in his life that Clay could remember, but always bulled in, arrogantly sure of his own strength. And Damson wasn’t a man to stand by and let the story of how Clay had handled his men get around. Even if Damson wasn’t behind the sniper, Clay reasoned, he would have tried by now to get back at Clay for what he’d done to Marnie and Pike.
Unless Vanner had talked Damson into waiting. Clay considered this possibility. Vanner was a man who would seldom rush hurriedly into anything. He would bide his time, looking for the approach that would let him do the most damage with the least risk.
Clay had the uneasy feeling that moment wasn’t far off. Each night he built a small signal fire on the rock above his camp, letting the judge and Tom Roddy know that he was all right. By now, the meaning of that fire would have circulated around town, and everyone would know Bick Damson hadn’t made good on his threat to run Clay out of the valley. And once the townspeople started to laugh at Damson, something would have to give. Clay didn’t think that even a man like Kemp Vanner could hold Damson back once the big man realized he was being made a public joke.
Deadman Canyon Page 4