Mulvaney had not returned after informing the Boxed M of Maclaren’s death. And there was no sign of Jolly Benaras.
“One thing,” I said suddenly, “I’d like to call to your attention.”
There were no friendly eyes in those that turned to me.
“Chapin,” I said, “will you turn Maclaren over?”
He looked from me to the body, then swung down and walked over. In looking at Maclaren’s face. I had lifted the body but had let it fall back in place. I heard Moira’s breath catch as Chapin stooped to turn the dead man. He rolled him over, then straightened up.
He looked at me, puzzled. The others simply waited, seeing nothing, understanding nothing.
“You accuse me because he is here, on my ranch. Well, he was not killed here. There’s no blood on the ground!”
Startled, their eyes turned to the sand upon which Maclaren had been lying. The sand was ruffled, but there was no blood.
“One wound bled badly and there must have been quite a pool where he was lying because his shirt is covered with it. The sand would be bloody if he was killed here.
“What I am saying is that he was killed elsewhere, then carried here and left.”
“But why?” Chapin protested.
“You suspect me, don’t you? What other reason would there be?”
“Another thing,” I added, “the shot that I heard was fired into him after he was dead!”
“How d’you figure that?” Fox was studying me with new eyes.
“A dead man does not bleed. Look at him! All the blood came from one wound.”
Suddenly, we were aware that more horsemen had come up behind us. It was Mulvaney and the Benaras boys, all of them.
“We’d be beholden,” Jolly said, “if you’d all move back. We’re friends to Brennan and we don’t believe he done it. Now move back.”
The Boxed M riders hesitated, not liking it, but they had been taken from behind and there was little chance to even make a fight of it if trouble started.
Carefully, the nearest riders eased back. The situation was now at a stalemate and I could talk. But it was Moira I most wanted to convince, and how my words were affecting her I had no idea. Her face was shadowed with sadness, nothing more.
“There are other men who wanted Maclaren out of the way. What had I to fear from him? I had already showed I could hold the ranch…I wanted peace.”
Then more horses came up the trail and I recognized the redhead with whom I’d had trouble before. With him was Bodie Miller.
Chapter 15
*
BODIE MILLER PUSHED his horse into the inner circle, and I could see that the devil was riding him again. His narrow, feral features seemed even sharper today; his eyes showed almost white under the brim of his tipped down, narrow-brimmed hat.
Bodie had never shaved, and the white hair lay along his jaws mingled with a few darker ones. These last, at the corners of his mouth, lent a peculiarly vicious expression to his face.
He was an ugly young man, thin and narrowshouldered, and the long, bony fingers seemed never still.
He looked up at me, disregarding the body of Maclaren as if it was not there. I could respect the feeling of Tom Fox, for his eagerness to destroy me was but a reflection of his feudal loyalty for Maclaren. There was none of that in Miller. He just wanted to kill.
“You, is it? I’ll kill you, one day.”
“Keep out of this, Bodie!” Canaval ordered, stepping his horse forward. “This isn’t your play!”
Miller’s hatred was naked in his eyes. In his arrogance he had never liked taking orders from Canaval, and that fact revealed itself now.
“Maclaren’s dead,” he said brutally. “Maybe you won’t be the boss any more. Maybe she’ll want a younger man for boss!”
The leer that accompanied the words gave no doubt as to his meaning, and suddenly I wanted to kill, suddenly I was going to. In the next instant I would have made my move, but it was Canaval’s cool, dispassionate voice that stopped me.
“That will be for Miss Moira to decide.” He turned to her. “Do you wish me to continue as foreman?”
Moira Maclaren’s head came up. Never had I been so proud of anyone.
“Naturally.” Her voice was level and cold. “And your first job as my foreman will be to fire Bodie Miller.”
Miller’s face went livid with fury, his lips bared back from his big, uneven teeth, but before he could speak I interfered.
“Don’t say it, Bodie. Don’t say it.”
So there I stood in the still, cool morning under the low gray clouds, with armed men around me in a circle, and I looked across the body of Rud Maclaren and stood ready to draw. Within me I knew that I must kill this man or be killed, and at that instant I did not want to wait for the decision. I wanted it now…here.
The malignancy of his expression was unbelievable. “You an’ me are goin’ to meet,” he said, staring at me.
“When you’re ready, Bodie.”
Deliberately, I turned my back on him.
Standing beside the spring, I rolled a smoke and watched them load the body of Maclaren into the buckboard. Moira was avoiding me, and I made no move to go to her.
Chapin and Canaval had stood to one side talking in low voices, and now they turned and walked over to me.
“We don’t think you’re guilty, Brennan. But have you any ideas?”
“Only that he was killed elsewhere and carried here to throw suspicion on me. And I don’t believe it was Pinder. He would not shoot Rud Maclaren in the back. Rud was no gunman, was he?”
“No…definitely no.”
“And Jim Pinder is…so why shoot him in the back? The same thing goes for me.”
“You think Park did it?”
Again I repeated the little I had learned from Lyell, and those few words in Booker’s office.
The Slades were to kill Canaval—and why, except that Canaval was Maclaren’s strong right hand? And it was Park who was hiring them.
This information they accepted, as I could see, with reservations. For Morgan Park had no motive that anyone could see. When I mentioned the assay report, they turned it off by saying simply that there was no mineral in this area, and there had been nothing to connect the report with Park. Nor did Morgan Park have anything to fear from Maclaren otherwise, for Maclaren had looked favorably upon Park’s visits, had welcomed him, even treated him as a son-in-law to be. Maclaren had several times asked Moira, Canaval said, why she did not marry Park. All I had was suspicion and a few words from a dying man…no more.
Smoking my cigarette, I watched them start off with the buckboard. The Boxed M riders bunched around it, a silent guard of honor. Only then did I start toward Moira.
Whether she saw me coming, I did not know. Only she chose that moment to start her horse and ride quietly away, and I stayed behind, surrounded by my little guard, Mulvaney and the Benaras boys.
Bob Benaras had stayed behind to protect the ranch, and he was waiting for me when we rode into the yard.
“We’ll be heading home,” he said, “but Jonathan an’ Jolly, they can stay with you. I ain’t got work enough to keep ’em out of mischief.”
He was not fooling me in the least, but I needed the help, as he knew.
*
AND THEN FOR a time, nothing happened.
With four men to work, the walls of the house mounted swiftly. All of us were strong, and Mulvaney was a builder. He was the shaper of the house, the planner of all our work. Forgetting everything, we worked steadily for two weeks. My side lost its stiffness and my muscles worked with their old-time smoothness. I felt better, and I was toughening up again.
There was an inquest over the body of Rud Maclaren, but no new evidence turned up. Despite the reports by the sheriff who rode out to investigate two days after the killing, many people still believed me guilty. To all appearances, there was not even another suspect. Jim Pinder had not even been in the county, and had a solid alibi, for on that night h
e had been in a minor shooting over a card game at Hite.
There had been no will, so the ranch went to Moira. Yet nothing was settled. Only, the Boxed M withdrew all claims upon the Two-Bar and any Two-Bar range or waterholes.
Jim Pinder remained on the CP and was not seen at Hattan’s Point.
Of Bodie Miller we heard much. He killed a man at Hattan’s in a saloon quarrel. Shot him down even before he could get a gun drawn. Bodie and Red were reported to be running with a lot of riffraff from Hite, many of them men from Robber’s Roost. The Boxed M was missing cattle, and Bodie was reported to be laughing at the reports. He pistol-whipped a man in Silver Reef and was rapidly winning a name as a badman.
And during all this time I continued to think about Moira. Once I rode over to the ranch, and Canaval met me in the yard. Moira would not see me.
Oddly enough, I thought there was real regret in Canaval’s voice when he told me.
He was a quiet man, stern, yet not unfriendly. His hair was prematurely gray, and he had an easy way about him that drew friendships that he rarely developed. He was a lone wolf, never mingling with the men of the ranch, usually riding alone.
He said nothing about the Slades, nor did I ask him. I knew that he was closer to Moira than ever before. She relied on his judgment, although she knew more than a little of how to handle a cow ranch.
Maclaren had wanted more land. She began within two weeks after his death to make the most of what they had. For the first time in Boxed M history, hay was cut and stacked, and grain was planted for feed for the horses.
A fence without a gate was run along the line between the Boxed M and the Two-Bar.
The day they finished it, I was riding over that way. Tom Fox was in charge.
He rode out to meet me as I came near. His animosity had died, and we sat our horses, watching the fencing.
“No gate?” I asked.
“No…no gate.”
She was shutting me out, cutting me off. Whatever might have been, had Rud Maclaren lived, his death seemed to have ended it, once and for all.
My thoughts returned to Morgan Park. He had gone back to his ranch and was not seen around, but he was never really out of my mind. There had been no sign of the Slades, and I could imagine what Canaval would be thinking.
There were changes with me, too. The old devil-may-care spirit was there, but it rarely came out. The work was hard and I kept at it steadily. My house was completed, and the garden we had planted was showing signs of coming up. We had even transplanted several trees and moved them up to the ranch yard.
We built furniture and we bricked up the waterhole. We planted vines around the house, and one day we drove to town and loaded up household things to carry back.
That was the day I saw Moira.
She had come from the post office in the stage station and she was waiting for her buckboard which was coming up the street from the general store.
She came out of the building into the sunlight just as our wagon came by. I was behind, just putting my foot in the stirrup, and looked over my saddle at her, almost a block away.
I could not see her eyes, but as our wagon drew abreast I saw her turn to look at the pots and pans, at some rolled-up Indian rugs. Her face turned with the wagon and she watched it out of sight, and then I swung my leg over the saddle. As I turned the buckskin, she saw me and turned quickly away. Before I could reach her she got into the buckboard and was driving off.
It was a slow ride back to the Two-Bar, for wherever I looked I saw the pale, lovely features of Moira, saw her standing alone before the stage station, watching my wagon go by. These household things, these might have been ours. I wondered if she thought of that?
Jolly Benaras was waiting for me when I rode into the yard.
“Nick was over. Said he seen tracks over east of here. Three, four men.”
Three or four men…in the broken, lonely country to the east, the land where no man rode willingly.
“Where’d he see them?”
“Plateau above Dark Canyon…mighty wild country.”
“Might be Bodie Miller.”
“Might…he didn’t think so. Bodie sticks close to towns. He likes to brag it around, playin’ big-man.”
Who then?
The Slades…
“Thanks,” I said, “tomorrow I’ll ride that way. I’ll have a look. There’s a valley over there where we could run some cows, anyway. I’ll check it.”
If it was the Slades, what were they waiting for? Had the killing of Rud Maclaren made it seem too risky to take a chance on more killings? It could be…and if anyone wanted what Maclaren had, Canaval still stood between them.
We moved the rugs into the house, put the pots and pans in the cupboards. I walked in the wide living room and looked around. It looked bare, cold. It was a house, but it was not yet a home.
At night I was restless. So much was left unfinished. Bodie Miller was around, rustling Boxed M cattle, no doubt. Sooner or later the Boxed M hands would meet him, and from talk I heard around, the least he could expect was a rope.
And there were the unknown riders east of us, lurking back in those mysterious, unknown canyons near the Sweet Alice Hills.
Saddling up a tough bay pony, I rode out toward the Maverick Spring where Rud Maclaren had fallen. In the darkness my horse made little sound as he cantered over the bunch grass levels.
We stopped at the spring and I drank, then watered my horse. It had been hours later than this when Maclaren was killed.…Suddenly my horse jerked up his head.
Instantly I was alert, and spoke softly to the bay. He had swelled his sides for a whinny but my low word stopped him. He looked off in the darkness toward the boxed M.
Moonlight silvered in faint strands, stretching away. The fence…Stepping into the saddle, my right hand resting on my thigh near my gun butt, I rode toward the fence, walking my horse from shadow to shadow.
Suddenly, I drew up.
There was a horse standing there in the darkness, a horse with his head toward me.
And in the night I heard a muffled sob…and my bay started walking again.
We were nearing the fence when the other horse whinnied. Instantly, a dark form sat erect in the saddle.
“Moira!”
An instant she sat stiff and still in the saddle, then with a low cry she wheeled her horse and spurred him into a run.
“Moira!”
Her horse ran on, but once I thought I caught the white flash of a face turned back.
“Moira, I love you!”
But there was no sound save the echo of my own voice and the pounding of hoofs, fading away.
For a long time I sat there beside that twin strand of wire, staring off into the night and the darkness, listening, hoping I’d hear those hoofs again, bringing her back.
But there was no sound…only a quail that called inquiringly into the night.
Chapter 16
*
JOLLY BENARAS HUNKERED down and drew with his finger in the sand. His bony shoulders hunched against the morning chill, his right eye squinted against the tobacco smoke.
“Sure, that place you call the amphitheater, that’s here. Now right back of this here cliff is a trail. You can make it with a good mountain horse. When you get on top, that’s the mesa above Dark Canyon. The trail I seen was over across, nigh six mile. There’s a saddle rock over thataway, an’ when you sight it, ride for it. On the north side you’ll find that trail if the wind ain’t blowed it away.”
Jonathan had bunched forty head of cattle for me, and I walked to the buckskin and shoved my Winchester in the bucket. Then I stepped into the leather.
We started the cattle, but they had no mind to hit the trail. They had found a home in Cottonwood Wash and they aimed to stay, but we finally got them straightened out and pointed for the hills. Jonathan was riding along, but he would leave me when we got into the canyon.
He carried his Spencer in his hand, a lean, tall boy, narrow-hipped and
a little stooped in the shoulders. His face looked slightly blue with the morning chill, and he rode without talking.
As for myself, I was not anxious to talk. My mind was not on my task. Herding the cattle up the canyon was no problem, for they could not get back past us, could only move forward. Nor was I thinking of the mission that lay ahead of me, the scouting of the group of men Nick Benaras had seen near Dark Canyon.
Had it really been Moira I’d seen? And if so, had she heard my call? Restlessly, I stepped up my pace. I was angry with myself and half angry with her. Why should she act this way? Did she really believe I’d kill her father? Both Canaval and Chapin had disclaimed any suspicion of me, although there were others who still believed me guilty.
Irritably, I watched the moving cattle, pushing them faster than was wise. Jonathan glanced back, but said nothing, moving right along with me.
At the amphitheater the cattle moved into the grass, lifted their heads and looked around. We swung away from them and slowly they began to scatter out, already making themselves at home.
There was no sound but that of water running over stones. Jonathan put his rifle in the boot and hooked a leg around the saddlehorn. He rolled a smoke and glanced at me.
“Want company?”
“Thanks…no.”
He touched a match to the cigarette. “I’ll stay with the cows for a while, then. Maybe some of ’em will take a notion to head for home.”
He swung his legs down and shoved his boot into the stirrup.
I was thinking of Moira.
“You take it easy, Matt. You’re too much on the prod.”
“Thanks…I’ll do that.”
He was right, of course. I was irritable, upset by Moira’s action the night before, and I was in no mood for scouting. What I really wanted was a fight.
The trail that Jolly had told me about was there. Looking up, I backed off a little and looked again.
At this point the red sandstone cliff was all of seven hundred feet high. The trail was an eyebrow skirting the cliff face, and one which a spooky horse would never manage. But I was riding Buck, who was far from spooky, mountain-bred, and tough. He could have walked a tight wire, I think.
Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) Page 10