Snead grinned in open contempt. “Yeah—I’d do that if I was you, neighbor. It isn’t healthy to come around accusing people of ruining crops.”
Snead moved off to the left, casually. His sneer had not been missed by Bendorf. It inflamed the man anew.
“It was deliberate! That’s what it was!” Bendorf yelled. “What do you want to break me and starve my wife and kids for?”
He still spoke to Frake. Snead had circled and was standing behind him. Frake moved close to Bendorf. Frake was scowling now and the two approaching horsemen were close enough to identify.
Frake pushed close to Bendorf. “You son-of-a—!”
Frake’s arms were high up and his gun side turned toward Bendorf. A pyro-gun hung there invitingly.
In a frenzy, the maddened Bendorf snatched at the gun. Instantly, behind him, Snead shook his arm downward in a stiff motion. A knife slid along the inner side of his forearm and into the palm of his open hand. His arm came up—flashed downward again—and a silver streak flew toward Bendorf’s back.
Bendorf stiffened. The gun he’d snatched from Frake’s holster was clutched for a moment in his hand. Then the gun dropped to the ground and Bendorf wilted down on top of it. Out on the prairie the two men whipped into a gallop, covered three swift furlongs and were in the yard.
Frake had not moved. He said: “Hello, Bates. We had a little trouble here. This pilgrim came prancing in on us yelling for blood. He tried to grab my gun and Snead nailed him. Saved my life, Snead did.”
Bates stared down at the dead man; “I wonder what got into him?” he said. “By the way—meet Henry Dalton, marshal of Ngania.”
The men exchanged nods and Bates went on: “Henry came and told me Bendorf had been to see him and that he was on the rampage. Something about his corn crop being ruined. We thought he was heading this way so we followed along. Looks as though we’re too late.”
“If Snead hadn’t been on the alert, you’d have found me dead instead of Bendorf,” Frake growled.
Bates had dismounted, but Dalton stayed on his goff, saying nothing. Expressionless, he watched Snead bend over and pull the knife from Bendorf’s back. The knife had gone in almost to the hilt. Snead had to exert considerable pressure to get it loose.
“It’s too bad,” Bates said. “A damn shame that a man flies off the handle like that. He has a wife and two kids.” Bates sighed. “Guess it’s up to me to see that they get back home.”
He turned to Dalton. “Henry, you’d better ride back to town and round up a jury to hear the evidence. Bring them back here and we’ll hold an inquest. In the meantime don’t touch the body.”
“We’ll keep it legal, huh?” Frake asked.
There was a hint of mockery in his voice; a touch of contempt so faint that it evidently escaped all but Bates.
Bates turned away and looked up at Dalton. “Get going,” he ordered. “I’ll wait here. Hurry it up, now.”
Like an obedient child, Dalton kneed his horse around and started back toward Ngania. Bates watched until Dalton was well on his way. Then he turned to Snead: “Get a blanket and throw it over him,” he said harshly. “I’m going to water my goff.”
Snead went into the house. When he returned, Bates was already leading his animal across the corral toward the trough near the well at the far end.
Snead covered the corpse and straightened up. There was amusement in his voice as he said: “Looks like the big boss gets a little disturbed at the sight of blood.”
FRANK BATES had only wanted to be alone for a few minutes in order to assemble his scattered thoughts.
This initial foray in his land grabbing scheme had not gone according to his plan. He had not anticipated a killing and he wanted to ascertain the effect of that killing upon his own mind.
He was rather surprised to find himself taking it so calmly. Bendorf was dead and his land would revert to the bank. Of these two facts, Bates found himself far more satisfied by the latter than he was disturbed by the former. Already his brain was planning ahead. He would send Mrs. Bendorf and her children back to Terra—shoulder all the expense himself—so that no one could point a finger at him. The bank would take over the land, quietly, and that would be that.
A life for two hundred acres.
Bates contemplated this developement with inward calm. But in the mind of every man there is an independent intelligence that will not be blinded nor biased. That intelligence spoke to Frank Bates now. It said: “You’ve stepped over the line. Up to this point you were merely a sharp dealer. You were merely clever and you used your legal advantages to further your ambitions. But you’re over the line now. You’ve thrown other men’s lives into the pot. You’ve stepped across the divide, Bates. How does it feel?
It didn’t feel bad at all. In fact a new surge of power came to Frank Bates as the moral restraints slipped away. After all, why should he be held back by those with less astuteness, less ambition than he?
His conscience was now stilled forever except for one final, tiny twinge. That came three weeks later when he said good-bye to Mrs. Bendorf. The widow was seated in Bates’ own carriage in front of Bates’ own bank, and her two children were with her. Bates had arranged that she be driven cross-country to the nearest freighter head. As she looked at him, there were tears in her eyes and her hand clutched his warmly.
“Thank you for all you’ve done,” she said, and her voice was choked. “Thank you very much.”
Bates’ last twinge of conscience came and went.
He returned to his office and found satisfaction in a sudden feeling of contempt. These squatters! Men so stupid and spineless had no right to own land. The sooner they were cleaned out, the better. This vast planet was the heritage of the strong!
TIP SNEAD was comfortably and happily drunk. His winnings at the poker table of the Golden King amounted to some fifty credits and that made it a nice evening all around.
Toward midnight he pocketed his money, had one more drink, and left the saloon. He got his goff from the stable, waved a cheery good-bye, and set out for home.
His pinto had learned the way by this time and there was little need of direction. Snead let his reins hang loose and slumped forward in the saddle. His body moved to the rhythm of the animal’s jog and he drifted into a doze.
The voice awakened him. It was a sharp voice he had never before heard: “Snead—rein up!”
He pulled the pinto to a halt and looked about into the darkness, the sleep still in his eyes. On each side a goff crowded close and before he was quite awake, his reins were snatched away and his holster was emptied.
“Whu—what is this? A holdup?”
The only answer was a short laugh coming out of the darkness, and cold fear flushed through Tip Snead. He said: “I won a little in the game. You can have it. It’s in my right-hand pocket.”
“He wears a knife in his sleeve. Get it!” A different voice clipped out these words and Snead was jostled again. Two hands grasped his right arm and tore open the button holding his sleeve. The knife snapped from its spring holder.
“Got it.”
“All right. Tie his hands.”
“Do you have to tie a man up to rob him?” Snead whined.
“Your money stays in your pocket. Don’t worry about it. We aren’t thieves.”
Snead turned cold. Sickness welled into his stomach.
There were five of them. Five shapes in the dimness that rode close around Snead as his goff was hauled off the road and led across the prairie at a tangent. There was no uncertainty here. These men evidently knew why they had come and where they were going.
“What’s this about?” Snead yelled. “Where we headed?”
There was no answer.
“For God’s sake! Talk, somebody! Say something!”
He could have been pleading with deaf-mutes.
“Answer me, God-damn it! What is this?”
No reply, and Snead went swiftly to pieces.
“Look! It wasn’t
my fault. I only did what any other man would do. He tried to snatch Frake’s gun and I had to get him or he’d have gotten Frake. A man has to be loyal to his friends! You’d have done the same thing. Any of you.”
The clop-clop-clop of the hoof-beats increased in tempo as the cavalcade went into a trot. The silent men traveled north and slightly west with their prisoner. Eventually Cotter’s Creek blocked their path. They sheered eastward, following its course until they came to a grove.
“It was all legal,” Snead screamed. “I tell you it was legal. There was an inquest and a jury and they said I done right.”
For the first time, one of the men answered him, “We know all about that. We know who was on the jury and who told them to bring the verdict they brought. Hangers-on in the Ngania drinking halls We knew Sam too, and he wasn’t the kind of a man to kill unless he was driven to it.”
“But you can’t—aw please, men! Give a feller a chance! I’ll get out of the country! I’ll ride and keep right on going. You can’t hang a man in cold blood!”
THE ROPE came from somewhere to settle around his neck from behind. He screamed a thin scream and tried to throw himself out of the saddle but there were horses on each side, hemming him in.
Perspiration made his sick white face shine in the faint starlight.
“Give a poor devil a chance!”
The rope was over a limb above his head.
“It was Frake. He’s the boss—Frake is, I tell you. He made me do it. Frake’d killed me if I hadn’t. What could I do?”
There was slack in the rope—enough for a two-foot drop. The riders on either side of him faded back. A moment of silence and the sharp sound of a hand slapping the rump of Snead’s goff.
“Ghaaaaaa. Aggghhhhh.”
Snead sought to hold the stirrups but they slipped from his insteps. The goff danced ahead some twenty feet where it stopped a d turned. It snorted and there were no other sounds in the grove.
After a time Snead stopped kicking. Then the five men rode away—in different directions over the prairie.
Snead’s body dangled from the willow limb, turning slowly in the darkness.
Mel Dorken came awake with a start. He opened his eyes and wondered what had broken his slumber. Through the wall he could hear the even heavy breathing of Frake in the next room.
Dorken lay still for a moment. Then it came again—the impatient snorting of a goff. The man swung his feet to the floor and reached for his pants. He drew on his boots, pulled his gun from its holster, and went out through the back door into the yard.
The snort was repeated, along with the sound of a hoof scraping the ground, and Dorken saw a large shadow by the corral gate. He approached in long strides.
A goff. Snead’s, with no rider and its reins wound around the saddle horn.
Dorken scowled. What the devil had happened to Tip? Dead drunk and off his goff somewhere back down the road? That was probably it. Frake ought to lay the law down to the little saddle tramp. He had a weakness for liquor and he was dangerous. He’d kill somebody one of these days under the wrong circumstances and there’d be hell in camp.
Dorken unsaddled the beast and turned it into the corral. The goff galloped off toward the feed rack, and Dorken trailed back toward the house. No use waking up Frake, he thought. Tip would come straggling along, maybe before dawn if he slept off his jag.
The big outlaw looked up at the stars and forgot about Snead. He was thinking of a girl—a slim girl with blue eyes and yellow hair.
On the afternoon of the following day, Mel Dorken lounged by the hitching rack in front of the Golden King. He was watching a sorrel goff at another hitching rack down the street. Pretty soon a girl with golden hair would come out of the bank and fork that animal. Then—Dorken hoped—the girl would ride north as she had usually done before.
Her route had been—for the most part—along the eastern boundary of a section that had been homesteaded by an early hopeful and now in the possession of the Ngania Bank.
Then, at the creek, she would veer due east. Dorken had never been able to trace the girl to her destination, but that was not necessary for the purpose he had in mind. About three miles down the creek, she passed close to an abandoned shack in an otherwise deserted stretch of hilly country.
This was as far as Dorken’s thinking carried him.
The man waited almost an hour and was about to give up, when Kay Bates appeared. She mounted and Dorken turned his back and was studying the doors of the Golden King when she rode by.
Several minutes later he grunted in satisfaction, climbed on his own goff, and left town, following a line northward and slightly to the east. Clear of Ngania, he put spurs to his goff and pounded over the land, straight toward a thronga grove he had in mind. This grove, not two hundred yards from the abandoned shack, would keep him covered until the girl got close enough.
There was no finesse involved in Dorken’s plan. His approach would be as elemental as his desires and his purpose. Catching the girl unaware, he could ride down the sorrel before she would be able to react. Surprise was in his favor.
He reached the grove and edged his goff into a thick patch of thronga that formed a wall cutting off the heavier section of the grove. He dismounted and took up a post at the outer edge of the thicket.
THE GIRL was not yet in sight, but she would come from the west along the creek bank, to pass within two hundred feet of Dorken.
The outlaw growled under his breath. This was the hard part—the waiting, here in the grove, with his trap set. Her arrival would be a signal for the snapping of a spring inside Dorken’s mind—the unleashing of a tiger. It would probably all be over, he thought, before the girl knew what had happened. In no time at all.
Strangely, the project was not as suicidal for Dorken as it appeared. This yellow-haired dream was no scullery maid. She came of fine family, the daughter of Ngania’s leading citizen. There was a certain restraint in such people that could easily work to Dorken’s benefit. It was an even chance that no one would ever hear of this incident on the prairie. Dorken sensed that a girl of Kay Bates’ background would think twice before she accused him, because the accusation would do untold damage to her own reputation.
If it worked out this way. Dorken’s position would be unchanged. He could go on as before. If the girl pointed a finger in public— Dorken shrugged. He’d ridden out of such spots before. He could do it again.
She was coming now; a mile up the creek, Dorken could see a small speck moving closer. The speck became a goff and a rider. Then the goff became a high-stepping sorrel and the rider was clearly a girl.
Of the girl, Dorken saw first what had originally set his emotions astir—shining yellow hair. Odd, he thought, that a simple thing like that could set a man’s instincts afire. He went back into the thronga patch and mounted his goff and brought it just to the outer edge of the grove.
Now he waited.
The goff came dancing along, urged by an impatience in the girl. Her eyes were trained dead ahead as though they had no time for anything except what lay at the end of the journey.
Two hundred yards—a hundred. Dorken crouched in his saddle ready to spur into the open.
Then the girl jerked her mount to a sudden halt. She was staring at the thronga grove as though she had caught sight of the devil himself crouching there.
Dorken was thrown off balance by this development. She’d seen him! What the hell! Did the girl have eyes that bored right through wood? She’d done the impossible. She’d caught sight of him!
A scream ripped the air and Kay Bates was down over the neck of the sorrel and the goff was flying by the grove at a speed that wou’d have left Darkens mount practically standing still.
In a flash she was gone, but not until another scream followed the first, to thin out as the sorrel sped over tin red prairie.
Dorken cursed. As a vent for his rage, he pulled tight on his reins, arching his mount’s neck, and began beating the animal on the head
with his doubled fist. It was the goff! That was all it could have been. The horse had made some sound that the girl had caught. The fact that Dorken hadn’t caught the sound—seated even as he was on the goff itself—did not enter into his reasoning.
The beast reared and plunged and finally Dorken gave off beating it and rode straight off across the prairie toward Ngania.
After he had calmed down somewhat, a certain strangeness in the incident came to his mind. That yellow haired skirt was certainly touchy. After all, what had she seen? A man and a goff in the thronga grove. It was enough to startle her no doubt, but it appeared that her fright was a little over done. Was she in the habit of screaming bloody murder every time a bug jumped across her path?
Dorken mulled the thing over as he rode back to Ngania. After a while he felt better. There would be another time.
KAY BATES buried her white face in Cory Balleau’s shoulder. Her body, trembling in his arms, pressed close to him. Her voice was muffled by his clothing.
“A body hanging there from a tree. Its eyes were bulging and the tongue— Oh my God!”
Cory put a finger under the girl’s chin and raised her head. “But you don’t know who it was?”
“No. I didn’t wait. I came away from there.”
“And the man on the goff. You said you saw a man hiding in the thronga.”
“Not hiding. I looked back and saw him come out on this side of the creek. The body was on the other side in the grove—beyond the thronga thicket. I saw it from up the creek. And Cory—do you know who the man was—the one on the goff?”
“Who?”
“The same one I met out on the prairie that day—the one that scared me so.”
“The cattleman.”
“That’s right. I’ve seen him in town since then. He’s with that Mr. Frake who owns the cattle that tramped down Sam Bendorfs corn.”
“Not the knife-thrower who killed Bendorf?”
“No, but one of that gang.”
Cory pushed Kay away from him and scanned her face; “You’re over your fright a little now. You’d better head for home. I’ll have to get Uncle John and ride up to that grove. We can’t just leave a man hanging there.”
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 30