Robber's Roost (1989)

by Grey, Zane

  "Mr. Herrick, this is my new hand I was tellin' you about," announced Hays, glibly. He was absolutely shining of eye and face.

  "Jim Wall, late of Wyomin'. . . . Jim, meet the boss."

  "How do you do, Mr. Wall," returned Herrick, extending his hand, which Jim took with a bow and a word of acknowledgement. "Hays has been ringing your praises. I understand you've had wide experience on ranches?"

  "Yes, sir. I've been riding the range since I was a boy," replied Jim, aware of being taken in by intelligent blue eyes.

  "Hays has suggested making you his foreman."

  "That is satisfactory to me."

  "Are you a Mormon?"

  "No, sir."

  "To what church do you belong?"

  "My parents were Methodists," replied Jim.

  "Married?"

  "No, sir."

  "You are better educated than these other men. It will be part of your duties to keep my books. I'm in a bloody mess as to figures."

  "Mr. Herrick, if you haven't kept track of purchases, cattle, supplies, wages--all that sort of thing--it won't be easy to straighten it all out. I've tackled that job before."

  "So I was tellin' the boss," interposed Hays. "But I'm shore, Jim, you're equal to thet."

  "As I understand ranching," went on Herrick, "a foreman handles the riders. Now as this ranching game is strange to me, I'm glad to have a foreman of experience. I was advised in Salt Lake City and at Grand Junction not to go in for cattle-raising out in this section. The claim was that the Henry Mountains was a rendezvous for several bands of steer thieves. That fact has been verified here by the ranchers from whom I bought land and cattle. My idea, then, was to hire some gunmen along with the cowboys. Hays' name was given me at Grand Junction as the hardest nut in eastern Utah.

  Not so flattering to Mr. Hays, by Jove! but eminently satisfactory to me. So eventually my offer reached Hays and he consented to work for me, in the capacity, you understand, as a buffer between me and these cow-stealers. It got noised about, I presume, for other men with reputations calculated to intimidate thieves applied to me. I took on Heeseman and his friends. . . . Would you be good enough to give me your opinion, Wall?"

  "It's not an original idea at all, Mr. Herrick," responded Jim, frankly, seeing the impression he was making on the Englishman.

  "That has been done before, in some cases, even to the setting of a thief to catch a thief. Its value lies in the fact that it works.

  But you really did not need to go to the expense--and risk, I might add--of hiring Heeseman's outfit."

  "Expense is no object. Risk, however--what do you mean by risk?"

  "Between ourselves I strongly suspect that Heeseman is a rustler and head of the biggest Mount Henry gang."

  "By Jove! You don't say? This is ripping. Heeseman said the identical thing about Hays."

  Jim was on the lookout for that very thing.

  "Hays will kill Heeseman for that," retorted Jim, curtly. "But of course not while he's in your employ. . . . It seems important, Mr. Herrick, for you to understand something of Western ways.

  There is a difference between hard-riding, hard-gambling, hard- shooting Westerners and rustlers, although a rustler can be that, too. But rustling is low-down. Hank Hays' father was a Mormon prospector. Hank never grew up with cattle. But with horses. He has been a horse-trader ever since I knew him. If you go over to Green River, to Moab, and towns to the east you will hear that Hays is absolutely not a rustler."

  "I took Hays at his word," replied the Englishman. "Heeseman did not impress me. It's rather a muddle."

  "Wal, Mr. Herrick, don't you worry none," interposed Hays, suavely.

  "Shore I don't take kind to what Heeseman called me to your face, but I can overlook it for the present. Just let Heeseman ride on till he piles up. Then it won't be our fault, an' whatever blood- spillin' comes of it can't be laid to you. Besides, so long as you hire his outfit you'll be savin' money. Jim had it figured wrong about expense. You see, if Heeseman is workin' for you he can't rustle as many cattle as if he wasn't."

  "Meanwhile we will be learning the ropes," put in Jim. "Such a big outfit as this needs adjustment. You oughtn't sell a steer this summer."

  "Sell? I'm buying cattle now."

  "That makes our job easier," returned Hays, with veracity.

  "Anythin' come of thet deal you had on with the Grand Junction outfit?"

  "Yes. I received their reply the other day," rejoined Herrick.

  "We'll have to send a letter to Grand Junction to close the transaction. . . . By Jove! that reminds me. I had word from my sister Helen. It came from St. Louis. She is coming through Denver and will arrive at Grand Junction about the fifteenth."

  "Aw yes, I recollect--a sister comin' out," replied Hays, constrainedly.

  "Young girl--if I may ask?" added Jim, haltingly.

  "Young woman. Helen is twenty-two."

  "Comin' for a little visit?" asked Hays.

  "By Jove! it bids fair to be a life-long one," declared Herrick, as if pleased. "She wants to make Star Ranch her home. Friends of ours ranching it in Colorado were instrumental in my traveling out here. Helen and I are alone--except for distant relatives. We are devoted to each other. If she can stick it out in this bush I'll be jolly glad."

  "Ahuh," replied Hays, without his former radiance. "Utah ain't so good a place for a young woman."

  "How so? By Jove! she will love it!"

  "Rough livin'. Rough men. No women atall. An' Mormons! . . .

  Excoose me, Mr. Herrick, but is this here sister a healthy girl?"

  "All English girls are healthy. She's strong and rides like a Tartar. It's conceivable that she'll turn Star Ranch on end."

  "I reckon any good-lookin' girl would do thet, Mr. Herrick," said Hays, resignedly. "But, Jim an' me, here--we only guarantee to handle rustlers."

  "By Jove! you'll have to handle these Mormon cowboys, too," laughed Herrick. "Can you drive from Grand Junction in one day?"

  "Shore. Easy with buckboard an' good team," replied Hays.

  Jim Wall sustained his first slight reaction of dismay.

  Their colloquy was interrupted by cowboys driving a string of heifers through the yard before the stable. And when they had passed Herrick resumed his talk with Hays, leaving Jim to his own devices.

  Jim strolled around the corrals, the sheds, down the lane between the pastures, out to the open range, where for miles the gray was spotted with cattle, and back to the blacksmith shop. Here he scraped acquaintance with the smith, who proved to be a genial fellow named Crocker. He was another of the homesteaders Herrick had bought out, but he was not a Mormon. Manifestly he and his farming associates had been bewildered by the onslaught of the Englishman upon their peaceful valley and were frankly far the richer for it.

  From the smithy Jim gravitated up the winding road to the top of the bench, where the rambling, yellow ranch-house, so new he smelled the rosin from the peeled logs, and the stately pines, and especially the view down the valley, wrought from him a feeling he seldom experienced--envy. How inconceivably good to own such a place--to have a home--to be able to gaze down the trails without keen eyes alert for riders inimical to life, and to revel in the far-flung curves and spurs and deeps of the desert! It was something Jim Wall could never know. His lot did not lie in the pleasant lanes of life.

  This Englishman's sister--this Helen Herrick--she would be coming to a remote, wild, and beautiful valley that any healthy-minded girl would love. But whatever the joy of reunion with her brother and the thrill of such unfettered life in the West, such a visit could only end in tragedy. Jim did not like the idea. A woman, especially a handsome one, always made trouble for men, though on the moment Jim was thinking only of her. What queer people the English! He remembered a gambler at Abiline, an immaculate, black- frocked, white-vested Englishman who frequented the dives of that frontier cattle town. He had been the coldest, nerviest proposition Jim had stacked up against. This Herrick had something of
the same look, only one of pride and position instead of disgrace and ruin. What would the girl be like? Twenty-two years old, strong, a horsewoman, and handsome--very likely blond, as was her brother! And Jim made a mental calculation of the ruffians in Herrick's employ. Eighteen! More, for including himself there were nineteen.

  He seemed to feel disgust at the prospect of his being party to the misfortune of a young woman. But here, as in so many instances of recent years, he found discontent in the very things he might have avoided. Why rail at circumstance? Hank Hays had befriended him, even if his aim was selfish. Beggars could not be choosers. A robber should not be squeamish, and he, for one, could not be treacherous. Still--

  He strode on and let action change the current of his thought.

  Avoiding another long gaze at the vast expanse half a hundred miles below, yet exquisitely clear in the rarefied atmosphere, he found a precipitous path down to the level, whence he made his way back to Hays' cabin, satisfied yet dissatisfied with the morning.

  Chapter 5

  Jim passed the afternoon astride his horse, familiarizing himself with the valley adjacent to the ranch-house.

  Riding through the sage was a pleasure to which he had not treated himself for a long while. It added to his growing conception of Star Ranch.

  On the way in he passed Heeseman's camp, a group of soiled tents and a chuck-wagon, situated on the opposite side of the bench from that of Hays', and farther back. The bench was stony there and unscalable. A road passed the camp, heading straight for the notch in the valley, and the pass between these two spurs of the Henrys.

  This was the main road to Grand Junction, a long fifty miles distant.

  Jim halted to pass the time of day with the cook, a burly fellow busy at the shelf end of his wagon.

  "Howdy! Is this Heeseman's outfit?" asked Jim, civilly.

  "Howdy yourself! Git down an' come in," replied the man, taking stock of Jim. "The boss hasn't rid in yet."

  "Then I won't wait. About grub-time over at Hays' cabin. Will you tell Heeseman I left my respects? Jim Wall, late of Wyoming."

  "Jim Wall, huh? Sure I'll tell him. It's more'n any other of Hays' outfit has done," replied the cook, gruffly.

  "They're an unsociable bunch. We're not that way in Wyoming."

  Jim rode on back through the barnyards, meeting lean-faced riders, mere boys in years, who eyed him askance and whispered among themselves. Upon arriving at the corral near Hays' cabin he unsaddled and turned Bay loose with the other horses there. He left his saddle, too, but took his Winchester.

  Hays greeted him from the porch bench, where he sat among several of his men.

  "Where you been, Jim? Gettin' the lay of the land?"

  "Just taking 'heap look' round, as an Indian would say. Stopped to say hello to Heeseman, but he wasn't in camp."

  "Wal, there's nothin' wrong with your nerve, Jim. I've just been tellin' Brad an' Sparrowhawk here how favorable you hit the boss."

  "Come an' get it before I throw it out for the other hawgs," yelled Happy Jack, cheerfully, from within.

  There ensued a scramble. Jim did not rush. Entering last, he came upon Smoky Slocum just in the act of sitting down on a box seat, at the end of the long table. Jim kicked the box, which moved away just the instant Smoky stooped and sank. He thudded heavily to the floor with a most ridiculously clumsy action. A howl of glee ran from that end of the table up to the head, when Hays, standing aside to see, suddenly roared.

  Smoky slowly got up, feeling of his rear and glowering at Jim.

  "Can't you see where you goin'?" he growled. "Accidents like that have cost damn fools their lives before this."

  "Slocum--I can't lie--about it," laughed Jim. "It wasn't an accident."

  "You dumped me on purpose?" bellowed the little man.

  "I kicked the box. . . . Just couldn't help it. You'd have done the same to me."

  "Wal, I'll be--!" ejaculated Smoky, suddenly animated. "So we've got a trick-player in camp. If you'd lied about thet, Mr. Wyomin'

  Wall, I reckon I'd burned you where you set down. . . . Laugh, all you durned jackasses! But it ain't funny. It jarred my teeth loose."

  Hays laughed longest, evidently taking the incident as another clever move of Jim's, upon whom he beamed. Then he led the assault upon Happy Jack's ample dinner. At the conclusion of the meal he said: "Fellers, we've a pow-wow on hand. Clear the table. Fetch another lamp. We'll lay out the cards an' some coin, so we can pretend to be settin' in a little game, if anybody happens along.

  But the game we're really settin' in is the biggest ever dealt in Utah."

  So it came to pass that Jim Wall sat down with a crew of robbers to plot the ruin of a rich and eccentric rancher.

  "Talk low, everybody," instructed Hays. "An' one of you step out on the porch now an' then. Heeseman might be slick enough to send a scout over here. 'Cause we're goin' to do thet little thing to him. . . . Happy, dig up thet box of cigars I've been savin'."

  "Cigars!" ejaculated Smoky Slocum.

  "Hank, trot out some champagne," jeered Brad Lincoln.

  "Nothin' to drink, fellers," returned Hays. "We're a sober outfit.

  No gamblin' for real money. No arguin' or fightin'. . . . Any of you who doesn't like thet can walk out now."

  They were impressed by his cool force, as well as by the potency of the future. Certainly not one of them moved.

  "All right. Wal an' good. We're set," he went on. "Today I changed my mind about goin' slow with this job. Never mind why."

  Jim Wall had a flash of divination as to this sudden right-about- face. Hays was deeper than he had appeared at first.

  "Herrick reckons there are upwards of ten thousand head of stock on the range. Some of these Mormons he bought out sold without a count. I bought half a dozen herds for Herrick. An' I underestimated say rough calculatin' around two thousand head. So there's twelve thousand good. Thet's a herd, fellers. Can it be drove?"

  "Are we a lot of cowboys?" queried Lincoln, scornfully.

  "No, an' neither air we a lot of rustlers," resumed Hays, just as sarcastically. "If you can't help me figger, why, just keep still. . . . Air there any of you who wouldn't care to play a game for twelve thousand head of cattle at forty dollars per?"

  There did not appear to be a single one.

  "Ahuh. Wal, thet's okay. Now can we drive such a big herd?" Hays this time directed his query at Jim.

  "How far?" asked Jim.

  "Fifty miles. Fair to middlin' road. We can meet buyers there who'll pay an' no questions asked. No stiff count."

  "Yes. With eight riders well mounted it can be done in three days-- provided they don't have to fight."

  "Aha!" said Smoky puffing a cloud of smoke.

  "Wal, we'd have to fight shore as hell. An' Heeseman's outfit is bigger than ours."

  "No sense in stealin' stock for some other outfit," added Brad Lincoln.

  "Agree with you," returned Hays, promptly. "I didn't like the idee. But it's so damn easy!"

  "Boss, listen to this idee," spoke up Smoky. "Most of these Star cattle range down the valley twenty miles below here. How'd it do for say five of us to quit Herrick an' hide below somewhere?

  Meanwhile you go to Grand Junction an' arrange to have your buyers expect a bunch of cattle every week. A thousand to two thousand head. We'd make the drives an' keep it up as long as it worked.

  You're boss, an' Wall here is foreman. You could keep the cowboys close to the ranch."

  "Smoky, it's shore a big idee," declared Hays, enthusiastically.

  "But what about Heeseman?"

  "Wal, we couldn't keep it from him."

  "Not very long, anyway."

  "Heeseman's the rub. We gotta do away with him."

  "Let's clean out his bunch."

  Hays shook his shaggy head over these various replies.

  "Fellers, if we pick a fight with thet outfit, some of us will get killed an' others crippled. Then we couldn't pull the deal. A better idee is for one
of us to kill Heeseman."

  "Reckon it would. Thet'd bust the outfit."

  "Who'd you pick on to do thet, Hank?"

  Jeff Bridges boomed out: "Why, Smoky, of course, or Brad."

  "Nope," said Hays, shaking his head. "With all thet's due Smoky an' Brad I wouldn't choose either. Jim, here, is the man for thet job."

  "An' why?" demanded Smoky, in the queerest of tones.

  Whether he was insulted or jealous would have been difficult to say.

  "Wal, for two reasons. Jim has it on any of us handlin' a gun, an' second--"

  "How do you know thet?" interposed Lincoln, acidly.

  "Hell's fire!" burst out Hays, suddenly ablaze. "There you go, you ---- ---- ----! I suppose you think I ought to let you try Jim out? Wal, you can gamble on this. If I did we'd be two men out."

  His fiery intensity silenced them. Jim personally was relieved to see this little by-play. It showed Hays was a strong leader and it gave a line on the testy Slocum and the taciturn Lincoln.

  "Go on, boss. I'm shore we figger you have the best for all of us at heart," spoke up Mac, for the first time. "You never played no favorites."

  "Jim, it'd be murder for you to throw a gun on Heeseman," said Hays, spreading wide his hands.

  "I'm like Brad. How do you know that?" rejoined Jim, coolly.

  "Wal, Heeseman's gifts don't lie thet way. He's killed a couple of men that I know of. But I'll bet I can go pick a quarrel with him an' do it myself. To be dead certain, though, we'd better sic Jim on him. Besides, Heeseman doesn't know Jim."

  "If you ask me, I say the better plan is to waylay Heeseman an' his outfit," said Lincoln. "Do for him sure an' all or most of his men. There's a couple of rattlesnakes among them."

  "Waylay them, huh," mused Hays, scratching his unshaven chin.

  "Sort of low-down for US."

  "We're playin' for big stakes."

  "Mebbe we could drive off six or eight thousand head of stock before Heeseman ever found out," put in Smoky. "What's the sense of fightin' it out till we have to? Let's don't cross any Dirty Devils till we come to them."

  The suggestion found instant favor on all sides.