Free Winds Blow West

by L. P. Holmes

  Martell’s gun bounced, jammed its recoil back against the heel of his hand, and filled the store with the pound of its report. Over there, across the street, speeding lead told with an ominous thud. It lifted Dyke Thorpe up on his toes, seemed to hold him there while he swayed from side to side then fell in a slow, loose turn, his rifle crashing in report again, its bullet blowing a burst of street dust into the air.

  Whip Thorpe started toward his stricken brother—changed his mind swiftly when a haze of splinters lifted from the hitch rail beside him, and a slug buzzed away in droning ricochet. Whip looked for shelter and raced for it, diving past the corner of a building just ahead of another searching bullet.

  Martell heard Bully Thorpe yell. “Dyke! Dyke! Whip—damn your yellow soul!”

  Martell made a guess and took his chance. He drove through the store doorway, out onto the open porch, swung low, and crouched to face the treacherous corner where Bully Thorpe waited. The guess was good, the chance legitimate.

  For Bully had committed that cardinal mistake of a gunfighter. He had let the fine focus of his attention be diverted. Seeing Dyke go down had shocked and rattled him, pulled him a couple of strides beyond the protective corner of the store building. He was staring at Dyke and cursing Whip when Bruce Martell exploded into view.

  In the split second, Bully Thorpe realized his mistake and tried to rectify it, tried desperately. His lips peeled back as he lunged for shelter again, trying to throw a shot at the same time. He was slow both ways. Martell’s lead took him heart high, spinning him against the corner he wanted so frantically to reach. He bounced off and crumpled down.

  Bruce Martell went across the street at a run, plugging fresh loads into his reeking gun. He was after Whip Thorpe, bleak and merciless. The Thorpes had started this, just as they had started that other ruckus. Now he’d finish it.

  Men, crowding into the street, drawn by the roar of gunfire, stopped in their tracks and stood motionlessly, watching Martell. There was that about him that even the most dull-witted could understand and want none of. Bruce raced past the corner beyond which Whip Thorpe had dodged, went on looking for his man.

  Out there at the far edge of town was a broken-down wreck of a wagon. Whip dodged behind this, pausing momentarily to look back. And when he saw Bruce Martell move into sight, he turned and ran again. For Whip knew now that both Dyke and Bully were dead, else this tall deadly figure would not be coming after him. Stark terror caught up Whip. He ran blindly. But he ran. And Martell let him go.

  Martell came back to the street. The crowd was mostly in front of Donovan’s store or at the corner of it. Pat Donovan was in the middle of things, bristling. The knees of Pat’s pants were split and the palms of his hands skinned from violent contact with the ground, but there was nothing wrong with his spirit.

  “They asked for this, the Thorpes did!” he yelled. “They started it. They were out to get Martell. They damned near got me. I tell you they started all of it!”

  Sam Otten and Pete Martin were also part of the crowd. Now it was Martin, with his flaming eyes, who had his say.

  “This is the kind of end that was in the cards for the Thorpes. All the way in along the road to War Lance Creek, and along the creek, and after the jump-off, the story was always the same. Whenever or wherever you heard the word trouble mentioned, then you heard the name of Thorpe spoken, too. I say there was no good in any of them—and never could be.”

  At the edge of the crowd a sullen voice said, “They were settlers and a cowman killed them. That’s enough for me.”

  The speaker was a burly, bullet-headed man, hatless, with a thick mop of tightly curled black hair. His eyes were little, black, and flatly hard.

  Another voice said, “Curly Garms said something, there.”

  Sam Otten spoke up sharply. “That’s stupid talk. Settlers or not, the Thorpes were no damned good. Every decent person in Indio Basin that ever had any dealings with them will tell you that. They started this thing, and whether the man who took care of them sits a saddle or a wagon box makes no difference. For every man has a right to protect his own skin.”

  Curly Garms turned his flat, hard eyes on Otten. “There’s only two sides to this argument. Settlers or cowmen. You’re either for one or the other. You can’t play it mealymouthed and try and straddle the fence.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” retorted Sam Otten stoutly. “The two sides are right and wrong. Personally I’m getting damn well fed up with all this blind hurrah and drumbeating against the cow interests. So are a lot of other responsible settlers. We’re beginning to wonder just what’s behind it all. We’re wondering just why Jason Spelle is carrying the torch against the cow interests. So far as I know, they’ve never done him any personal wrong. Now I’m wondering about you, Garms.”

  “How about Jake Hendee and Enos Dopkins?” blurted Garms. “Cow interests lynched them.”

  “How do you know?” snapped Otten. “Did you see them? Did Spelle see them? Did anybody else see them? No—no all the way! In my mind, and in the mind of plenty of others, the Rocking A stands completely cleared of that dirty business. I’m no damned sheep to be led around by the nose by a tub-thumper like Jason Spelle. Time some of the rest of you opened your eyes and your minds.”

  Bruce Martell stood quietly, listening to this crowd wrangle. The dark mood of the moment was still on him, and he turned a look on Curly Garms that made Garms shift uneasily and quiet his hostility to an unintelligible muttering. Bruce swung his glance around at the others.

  “If there’s any man here,” he said harshly, “who’s been actually harmed in any way by the Rocking A, and can step up here and prove his claim, I’ll see that it’s made good to him in hard money. But if you haven’t been harmed, what are you hollering about?”

  No one stepped up, but one man did say, “Neighbor of mine had his camp gone through by Rocking A ’punchers. They searched his wagon. Said they were looking for slow-elked beef. What d’you say to that, mister?”

  “I’m not denying that it probably happened,” Bruce answered. “It wasn’t good headwork on the part of the Rocking A, but I can understand why they did it. Somebody’s been slow-elking Rocking A beef. I know that to be a fact. Would you expect Rocking A to sit by quietly and do nothing about that sort of thing?”

  “What’s a few head of cows to Hack Asbell?” blurted the man. “He’s got lots of them.”

  Bruce elbowed his way over to the fellow. “You’ve staked your quarter section … filed on it?”

  “Sure have and it’s a good one.”

  “How about me moving in on about twenty acres of your land? You’ve got lots of it.”

  A rumble of grim amusement ran through the crowd. “I guess that answers you, Pittman,” said Pete Martin.

  Pittman reddened, but was argumentative. “A man’s got a right to believe only what he sees. And I never saw no slow-elked beef. So, mebbe they were and mebbe they weren’t.”

  A hand plucked at Bruce Martell’s sleeve. It was Joe Leggett, the livery barn owner.

  “Something mebbe you’d like to see,” he mumbled. “The Thorpes’ wagon. It’s out back of my place. Plenty of greenflies buzzin’ around it.”

  Bruce got the implication instantly. “Everybody,” he told the crowd. “Let’s take a look at this.”

  All but one or two followed him, with Joe Leggett leading the way. The wagon was an old Conestoga, canvas ragged and patched and stained. Leggett was right about the flies. Their humming set up a thin, persistent dissonance. Inside the wagon were several sheets of tumbled canvas. These, dragged out into full sun glare, showed unmistakable stains.

  Freshly butchered meat had lain on these tarps, been covered by them.

  Bruce Martell’s glance sought out Pittman among the crowding settlers. “I won’t say a word of what I think. You give me your answer.”

  Stubborn
as he was, Pittman had to admit the evidence. “You win, cowboy. Slaughtered beef’s been hauled in this wagon, and the Thorpes never owned a beef critter in their lives. So it must have been somebody else’s. I reckon you collected two of your slow-elkers this day.”

  * * * * *

  In the back room of the Land Office, Jason Spelle sat with a whiskey bottle at his elbow. His face was flushed, partly with liquor, partly from the frustrated fury that still boiled in him. The beaked, predatory cast to his features was pronounced. Cashel Edmunds came into the room. Edmunds was nervous, restless. Edmunds had just returned from a trip up and down the street.

  “Well?” snarled Spelle.

  “They’re getting away from you, Jason,” said Edmunds. “This sort of thing keeps on, you won’t have a dozen of those damned sodbusters willing to follow you. Those fool Thorpes! Bunglers … bunglers all the way. They even left their wagon with a lot of bloodstained tarps where it could be found.”

  “Damn the wagon!” burst out Spelle furiously. “Who’d worry about the wagon if they’d just made good on the other deal? They had him dead to rights … dead to rights, I say. And they missed him. Bully missed him at fifty feet. And Dyke … standing out there … just because he had a rifle. That Martell … he’s got the luck of the devil with him.”

  “Maybe luck … maybe something else,” said Edmunds. “I’m remembering what Brazos said about him. Deadly.”

  Spelle gulped another drink. He said something that he’d said before in this same room. “He’s just one man. He’s mortal.”

  “He’s still alive, and Bully and Dyke Thorpe are dead,” persisted Edmunds. “And nobody could ever have a better chance than they did. Our luck began to go sour the day he rode into this basin, Jason. I don’t know. I think we’d be wise to slow up.”

  “Slow up? Not me.” Spelle emphasized this with a clenched fist banging the table beside him.

  “But I tell you the settlers are slipping away from us. Martell may be lucky. But he’s still deadly … and he’s smart. He’s got some damned-influential men in this basin already on his side. He’s making friends, and we’re losing them. I don’t know how he got Asbell to agree to it, but having Donovan selling fresh beef, Rocking A beef, ain’t going to hurt his case at all. Give him time—he’ll have the settlers setting up law and order across Indio Basin … and he’ll probably be the law.”

  Spelle grinned wolfishly and without mirth. “He won’t have time … and it’s a big basin. To hell with the sodbusters. They’re just sheep, anyhow. All of them. I’ll spread so much hell across this basin, they’ll be afraid to stick their heads above ground. If they’re not for me, then they’re against me, and will have to take the consequences.”

  “But I thought we needed them with us … on our side.”

  “I thought so, too. But I see now that the idea was wrong. Didn’t I just say they were sheep? Well, sheep can be managed up to a point. But they stampede … go every which way when something unexpected jumps up. To do what we intend to do, we’ve got to have a bunch of men who don’t scatter, or stampede … who don’t pull and haul and stop to argue.”

  “Where’ll we get ’em? That’s the big question.”

  “We got Pitch Horgan and his crowd. There’s more like ’em to be had. I’ll get ’em. I’ll be pulling out tonight. May be gone for two or three weeks. Keep your mouth shut, your eyes and ears open. Be a good idea, maybe, to let things quiet down. But when I get back, look out.”

  “You’ll be missed,” said Edmunds nervously. “People will ask questions. What’ll I tell ’em?”

  “Tell ’em nothing. Tell ’em you don’t know where I am. Do ’em good to wonder. Only they won’t, much, after a day or two. They’re happier with their damn dumb noses in a plow furrow. They’ll know when I get back … don’t worry about that.”

  Cashel Edmunds’ uneasiness grew. This was a different Jason Spelle than he had known before. There was a wildness about the man, as though something that he had kept carefully under a leash before was now free and rampant—the look of a man prepared to burn every bridge behind him, to throw everything into the pot, with the sky the limit.

  Cashel Edmunds was as crooked as a snake in a wagon track, but he was a sly and cautious man and, though inevitably drawn to others of his kind, preferred to lurk always in the background, to move deviously and let scheming carry more of a load than open violence. At first he thought that in Jason Spelle he’d found a man to fit his own mold. Now he realized differently. Spelle would allow scheming as long as it worked. When it no longer did, he would go to the other extreme. And a man like that could be highly dangerous, not only to those who opposed him, but to those who worked with him; he could drag down the temple and crush not only himself, but everyone in it.

  “Sodbusters may be sheep,” said Edmunds, “but there are an awful lot of them, with sharp hooves. Caught in front of enough of them, a man could be cut to pieces. I wouldn’t go too wild, Spelle.”

  Spelle looked at him with open contempt. “No, you wouldn’t, Cash. We’re both crooks, you and me. But you’re just a fleabite crook. A few dollars here, a few dollars there suits you fine. Just your meat. What do you expect to get that way?”

  “I expect to keep my hide in one piece and my neck the same length it is now,” answered Edmunds sulkily. “Flatly I don’t like the things you’re hinting at. If you go trying to run completely wild, you can count me out. I’m remembering Bully and Dyke Thorpe laying in the street. I don’t like contemplating a picture of myself in the same place.”

  “This fellow, Martell, got you scared that bad, has he?”

  “Yes,” admitted Edmunds, “he has. Before he showed up, everything was working fine, just the way we figured it would. We had all the settlers with us. We had them looking the direction we wanted them to look. Hack Asbell and his outfit were just bullheaded enough to keep on playing right into our hands. In a few months we could have cleaned up … big. But not now. Things have changed, Jason, and the smart thing is to recognize that fact and act accordingly.”

  “Which,” sneered Spelle, “in your case would be to lay down and quit, is that it?”

  Edmunds flushed. “Maybe not quit, exactly, but at least to do some longheaded thinking.”

  Spelle poured himself another drink. “I’ve done my thinking,” he said harshly. “The money that was in the settler camps before is still there. Rocking A is still there. I want all of it. I’m going after it. And you don’t sneak out of the picture just because the going may be a little rough. The day you try that, Cash … then you’ll be on the street, just like Bully and Dyke Thorpe were. And I’m the man who’ll put you there. That’s a promise.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Over settler fires across Indio Basin, in pot and pan and Dutch oven, fresh beef boiled and fried and baked. Hours before daylight every morning, a wagon loaded with beef—slaughtered the late afternoon before and cooled out during the night—rolled away from Rocking A range, jounced across the Button Willow ford of the Hayfork River, and covered the miles to Starlight—there to hang in Pat Donovan’s cool room. And back at Rocking A headquarters, Hack Asbell, up and around again now, looked at the money Bruce Martell placed in his hand and swore in amazement.

  “Never made a better profit on a beef critter in my life,” he admitted. “Or done it easier. This keeps up, I won’t have to move a shipping herd across the Lodestones, son.”

  “It’ll keep up,” Bruce told him. “Pat says he can use an extra carcass tomorrow. We’re selling more than beef, Hack. We’re selling good will all across the basin. And I think it’s about time you did a little riding around down there, dropping in on different settler camps, saying hello and getting acquainted. Those people are going to be your neighbors for a long time. There’s still a few diehards amongst them, but mostly you won’t have any rocks thrown your way again.”

  “Huh!” grun
ted Asbell. “No sodbuster would ever cotton to me, or me to them. We jest ain’t the same kind of folks, that’s all. I’m better off sticking to my own wickiup.”

  Bruce showed his slow-breaking smile. “Don’t be so cussed crusty. Get that chip off your shoulder. Go down there prepared to meet men with two arms and two legs just like you’ve got, men who happen to feel more at home at a plow handle than in the saddle, men who ask only a decent living out of the world, the same as you do. Make some friends. The day may come when you’ll need ’em.”

  Asbell looked at Bruce narrowly. “Why do you keep saying that? You admit yourself, that bigmouthed blatherskite of a Spelle seems to have drifted out. When you cleaned that Thorpe gang, you put a stop to the slow-elking. Everything’s quiet. No more of that night riding an’ lynching going on. Everything smooth as a fresh-licked calf.”

  “Right now, yes,” admitted Bruce. “It won’t stay that way. There’s something phony in the way Spelle dropped from sight. I’m remembering the Horgan gang was around once. Maybe they still are. When things quiet down so sudden after stormy doings … that’s the time to look out. This basin is still a long ways away from lasting peace and quiet. You do some of that riding. It’ll pay off.”

  The grizzled cattleman scowled. “You keep on making up my mind for me and I’ll end up without any. But you been right in so many other things, I got to admit you may be right in this. I’ll do my best not to walk around them sodbusters like a stiff-legged dog around a porcupine. But I ain’t promising a thing. Understand, not a thing.”

  Bruce watched Hack Asbell ride off, then turned back to work. There was plenty to do, what with slaughtering beef and moving it into town on schedule. This, along with the regular ranch work, kept everybody on the jump. Through Pat Donovan, Bruce had sent outside for a couple of men trained in the trade of slaughtering and handling meat. When these men arrived, things would be better, but for the present there was no idle time for anyone.