by Short, Luke;
He settled down to steady riding, crowding Connie’s chestnut as hard as he dared. In late afternoon, as he was crossing the ridge, the first big sparse drops of rain fell. By the time he had put his slicker on, the rain began, a drenching downpour that soon slacked off into a drizzle which might last days.
Night came early, when he was still a couple of miles from 66. He was shivering a little from the cold, and a vast impatience was riding him. Presently a faint sound came to him and he reined up, listening. It came again—the sound of a gunshot. While he listened he heard two more shots, far apart, and he tried to read something into their spacing, and could not. Lifting his horse into a lope then, he rode on, and when he came upon the ranch it was cautiously, from the hill to the north.
Everything was dark and silent below him. Suddenly, from the house, the sound of a rifle shot slapped sharply through the drizzling night. Immediately there was a wink of orange from beside the wagon shed, and then the answering crack. On the heel of it, five guns opened up from the house, and he could hear their slugs booming into the wagon shed.
It couldn’t be Bill Schell in the house, unless he had exceeded his orders and hired more men than he was authorized to, so it must be Bill in the shed. Which meant that either Ben Dickason or Frank Ivey or both had sent a crew over in his absence to take over Circle 66. It was neat and effective and cunning, he reflected somberly. Connie couldn’t run an outfit without shelter for her crew, or corrals, wagons, feed, and all the hundred things needed to keep a ranch working. They had been too smart to drive off her stock and leave themselves open to a bald charge of rustling. This way, they simply claimed grass and a shack—and hamstrung the outfit.
Dave pulled back over the brow of the hill and made a wide circle which brought him up behind to the barn. He dismounted here and moved over so that the shed lay between him and the house, and then tramped toward it.
A voice challenged him abruptly out of the darkness, “Sing out!”
“Dave Nash!” He bumped into a wagon which had been shoved out of the shed and walked around it.
He heard Bill Schell’s soft swearing, and then he tramped into the shed, which was open on the side toward the barn. Someone struck a match, and the faint light from a lantern bloomed. Bill Schell and three men who were strangers to Dave knelt behind the cordwood which had been stacked against the shed’s rear wall out of the weather.
Bill Schell came slowly to his feet, rifle in hand. He was soaked to the skin, and his lips were almost blue with cold, his boots caked with mud, which was smeared over his shirt and levis.
Bill grinned swiftly, but his eyes were questioning. “Who was asleep, Kid?”
“I was,” Dave answered.
Bill turned to the three men. The closest looked half Indian; his taciturn dark face scarred deep on one cheek. He too was soaked, and had a torn slicker thrown over his shoulders for warmth.
“Meet your crew,” Bill said dryly. “This is Bailey—no last name. This”—he indicated a slight, tough-faced puncher who seemed to be the possessor of the only slicker, because he was dry—“is Tom Peebles.” He pointed to the third man and laughed. “Curley Fanstock. He ain’t happy even when he’s dry.” Curley, of course, was bald and middle-aged, and he had the appearance of a steady hand.
They all looked at him, and they did not smile, and Dave felt a slow despair mingled with wrath. He said softly, “Welcome to a nice warm bunkhouse and hot grub, boys.”
Curley grinned at that, and Dave said to Bill, “What happened?”
“Nothin’. We just rode up at dark and all hell broke loose from the house. My horse is lyin’ out there gutshot. I got pitched thirty feet and skidded forty more on my face. We forted up here, and they started to saw this thing off on our heads. That’s about all.”
A sudden fusillade from the house made Bill Schell drop swiftly to his knees, and Dave followed.
The slugs ripped through the thin slabs, and some of them pounded solidly into the stacked wood. The firing ceased as abruptly as it began.
Dave peeled out of his slicker and threw it to Bill, and said, “Let’s have a look, Bill.”
He tramped out into the night, Bill at his heels. When they reached the corner of the barn, Dave halted, feeling the rain cold on his shoulders.
Bill hauled up beside him, and for a moment they didn’t speak. Bill said then, “You can’t ask ’em to brace that crew, kid. Not on an empty belly, anyway.”
“No,” Dave said. He was trying to throttle his anger and think. Even the weather seemed to be playing into Frank Ivey’s hands. Chilled and hungry and tired men, pulled cold into an ambush and without even the prospect of shelter, would quit on him, and he wouldn’t blame them.
Bill swore briefly, passionately. “Give ’em a toehold, Dave. That scar Bailey wears come from Frank Ivey’s boot. Tom Peebles got pushed off American Creek and his shack burned on him. Curley Fanstock was a top hand at Bell for ten years until the morning a horse throwed him and broke his leg. Ivey paid him off that afternoon. They’ll nail Ivey’s hide—”
Bill ceased talking as Dave laid a hand on his arm. They both listened. They heard the soft splash of a horse walking, and the sound of its labored breathing. A scattering of shots came from the house, and then it was quiet again, and again they heard the horse, closer now. They both faded against the wall of the barn, and now the horse was in front of them.
Dave said softly, “Connie?”
“Dave,” Connie answered.
They walked in the direction of her voice and they heard her dismount, and then she was a small figure before them. Dave put his hand out to steady her and she shook it off. She too had no slicker, and she was soaked as the wettest of them.
“Who’s in the house?”
“Bell, I reckon,” Bill said laconically. “Your crew,” he added bitterly, “is holed up behind a pile of wood in the wagon shed.”
“It’s my fault,” Connie said glumly. “I fell for their stupid trick, and I even pulled Dave in with me.” She paused, and Dave heard her sigh deeply. “Well, it was a good idea while it lasted. I guess I can’t finance an army to throw them out of here, though.”
“You won’t have to,” Dave said quietly.… “Bill, go pull the boys out of there. Get your horses. You got one?”
“Curley brought his string.”
“Bring them around here.”
Bill faded off into the night, and Dave felt Connie’s hand on his arm. “What is it, Dave?”
“Wait,” Dave said.
Presently, the crew appeared, leading their horses, and pulled up in front of him.
David said quietly, “You boys figure a five-mile ride is too much to pay for a crack at Ivey?”
There was a moment of silence, and then Bill Schell said, “Not me. Twenty ain’t.”
“There’s a Bell line camp over the ridge,” Dave said. “It’s a tight stone shack bigger than ours. It’s got grub and, likely, beds.” He paused, and then said with a quiet exultation, “Come to think of it, it might make a good headquarters ranch for 66, seeing as we’re movin’ up to American Creek.”
Curley Fanstock said, “Ah,” with a quiet satisfaction, and Dave knew then these men were his.
The ride over to the ridge was a dismal hour of chill misery, and Dave rode alongside Connie. She did not speak once, and Dave knew then, if he had ever doubted it, that she had stamina enough.
They passed the crown of the ridge, the hooves of their horses sinking deeply into the soupy clay of the top, and slanted down the slippery trail on the far side. Once on the flats, they were in plain sight of the Bell line camp; lamplight dimly framed a window, and it looked warm and cheerful through the steady straight-down drizzle. They approached within several hundred yards before Dave reined up.
“Bill, you’re the drifter, and they know you. Ride up like you were on the grub line. Keep ’em inside and we’ll do the rest.” He turned to Connie. “You keep the horses, Connie.”
He dismounted, a
nd the others with him, all except Bill and Connie. They walked ahead until they were close to the shack, and then Bill, whistling thinly, pulled ahead of them. As he approached a man appeared in the doorway, and Bill called, “Hello the house. I can lick anybody inside for a meal and bed.”
“Bill Schell! Ain’t you got sense enough to get out of the rain?” the man at the door called. “Come in here.”
Bill unsaddled, threw his saddle under the shed and turned his horse into the corral, as he would normally do, all the while carrying on an exchange of name-calling with the man at the door.
He disappeared inside, and Dave waited a moment, and then tramped on toward the house. Curley and Bailey, without having to be told, headed for the rear door and the end window.
Dave pulled his gun then and stepped silently through the door. There were three men here, and they were all seated on one bench, their backs to the door, talking with Bill Schell, who was standing in front of the warm stove. A partition separated this big room, which was the bunkhouse and cookshack combined, from the kitchen. There was food cooking, and the smell of a mulligan lay thick in the room.
Bill looked up and saw Dave, and he asked idly of the man closest to him, “How many you boys are here, Jess?”
“Just us.”
Bill grinned and said to Dave, “They’re all here.”
The three Bell hands turned almost as one, and looked straight into Dave’s gun, held hip-high. At the same moment Bill Schell pulled his gun, and stepped back against the wall.
One of the Bell hands came slowly to his feet, and Bill drawled, “Meet Ed Burma, Dave. He’s Ivey’s tough ramrod.”
Dave recognized the short, blocky foreman, who was regarding him with a hard-eyed caution.
Bill said sharply, “Stand up, you two.” The other two Bell hands came to their feet, and Bill indicated the tallest man, an unwashed, stupid-looking puncher whose bony, taciturn face was expressionless. “Virg Lea,” Bill murmured. “Try to hang him and he’d chew through the rope. And Jess Moore. He likes to play Injun.” Moore was slighter than Bill, and at Bill’s words he turned and spat precisely at Bill’s feet, and Bill only grinned. “It’s a hell of a night out, boys,” Bill drawled. “Go try it.”
Ed Burma turned his head toward Bill and murmured, “You damn saddle-tramp. I’ll remember this.”
“I hope so,” Bill said cheerfully. “You might even remember it better if you walked.”
“No,” Dave said quietly. “Put your guns on the table and ride out of here. Tell Frank Ivey we don’t mind the trade. Tell him it’s for keeps, too.”
The three men surlily laid their guns on the table and filed over to their slickers hanging on the wall. Bailey drifted in from the kitchen with a lighted lantern, a sheltering gunny sack held over it, and stepped out the door on his way to the corral. Connie came in then, and she walked past the Bell hands without so much as a glance at them.
Under Dave’s gun, with Curley holding the lantern and Bailey posted by the corral gate, the three Bell hands saddled up and mounted.
As Burma rode past Dave he looked down at him and said quietly, “You can’t get away with it, Mister. We’ll be back.”
“Any time,” Dave invited, and watched the three of them ride off into the night.
He tramped back into the bunkhouse and found Connie ladling out Bell’s stew onto tin plates and Bill pouring coffee into tin cups. Wordlessly, all of them sat down and ate, and Dave knew then that he could keep this crew. With a full belly and warm fire, they would forget the misery of the day, and it would come to them that it was too late to back out now. They were in it together.
Afterwards, Dave rigged a bed for Connie in the tiny kitchen and hung a curtain in the partition doorway, while the rest of the crew rolled up in Bell’s blankets. Finished, Dave surveyed the bed, and then his glance lifted to Connie. She was standing with her back to the warm range drying out her clothes. She looked small and indomitable, and she caught Dave’s glance and smiled.
“It’s not a bad trade. I can rig up one of the sheds for Josefa and me.”
Dave nodded and turned to go, and Connie said quietly, “I was a fool today, Dave. It almost cost us everything.”
“That’s the way you learn.”
Connie said, “Dave, I want to ask a question. We have five men. Dad has six and Ivey has eight or so. What happens?”
Dave took a last look about the kitchen, and when he glanced at Connie he saw her watching him questioningly. “What happens?” he repeated idly. “Well, it will be mostly Jim Crew, Connie.”
When she shook her head, not understanding, Dave put his shoulder against the wall and regarded her gravely. “Jim Crew,” he murmured, “is worth a dozen of Frank Ivey’s hands, Connie. More than that, he’s sheriff. The first time any of us make a wrong move, Crew will move against us, and the outfit he moves against will be licked.”
Connie was silent, listening intently, and Dave went on, “We’ll play our hand straight, Connie, and all the time we’ll try to pull Frank and Ben into a wrong move. Once we do that, Jim Crew is ours, and Ivey’s beat.”
“But this is a wrong move,” Connie pointed out. “This camp isn’t ours.”
Dave came erect, smiling faintly. “It will be. Wait and see. Good night, Connie.”
6
Frank Ivey ate a leisurely breakfast after the rest of the crew had finished. He had waited purposely until they had scattered for work this morning, because he wanted to think this out alone. Last night he had been roused by the trio that had been kicked out of the Ridge line camp by Dave Nash and Connie, and he had dispatched a man immediately to D Bar with the news. Right now, he was a little sorry he had sent word to Ben; it looked too much as if he were asking for advice or help, neither of which he wanted. He had done it on impulse, since it was D Bar’s crew who had occupied Circle 66; but this morning he wondered if that was important.
Now, in the cold light of a sunny day, he reviewed what had happened. Obviously, Connie and Nash both thought it was Bell who had moved in on them, and they had retaliated on Bell. Which was all right with him. The first move against 66 had been Ben Dickason’s idea, and, because it was a good one, Frank regretted it had not been his own. But the brunt of the fight, as had been proved last night, would fall on Bell, however, and Frank wanted it that way.
He rose and stepped over the bench, put on an ancient and curl-brimmed Stetson, paused to pick a toothpick from the glass in the center of the long table, yelled, “All done,” to the cook, and strolled out into the fresh morning. The earth was a blazing, washed brightness after the rain.
One glance at the corral told him the boys were stalling, and he smiled faintly. The indignity suffered by Bell last night was smarting, and they were waiting for orders from him. That, he reflected, was the way to keep a crew—proud, jealous, on edge, and quick to revenge a slight. In this instance, though, there was no hurry.
He tramped down to the corral—a solid, burly man with a light, careful walk, his toothpick jutting out of one corner of his wide mouth. His vest, old and buttonless, was split at the back by some forgotten exertion; he looked comfortable and was completely at ease in the work clothes that no way differed from those worn by his men.
Ed Burma broke away from the corral and came out to meet him out of earshot of the crew. This, too, was ritual; they would discuss the day’s work a moment, then Ed would go back and give the orders, and Frank would go on about his business. Today, Ed’s unshaven face was a little tight as he nodded good morning, and there was an air of expectancy in his glance.
Frank saw the crew watching them, pretending not to, and he said idly, “Mornin’, Ed. My gray come in with the bunch?”
Ed turned and yelled to one of the crew, “Frank’s gray in there?”
The man looked over the horses inside and called, “Yeah.”
“Saddle him up,” Ed directed, and when he turned to Frank there was a gleam of anticipation in his eye.
“Not so fa
st,” Frank murmured. “You gettin’ in a hurry, Ed?”
“You’re damn right.”
“Well, don’t. Send Jack over to 66 to see what happened there. Tell Virg to have the boys at the ford in the middle of the morning, where I can pick ’em up on my way back from town. You, you’re goin’ to Relief.”
The disappointment in Ed’s face was so keen it made Frank smile. “She’s buyin’ beef, and the only outfits that’ll sell to her are on the other slope. I want to know how much stuff she’s buyin’ and who from, and what she’s payin’, and where it’s goin’.”
“All right,” Ed said, and he asked, almost sulkily, “You goin’ to leave her there at the Ridge?”
“Just long enough to find out where I stand.”
Ed hesitated a moment and then said, “Did I tell you Curley Fanstock is workin’ for her now?”
“You did. Him and Bill Schell.” Frank’s heavy face was bland and hard and musing as he murmured, “All in good time, Ed. All in good time.”
He went on to the corral and got his horse, mounted, and rode off toward the mouth of the valley. It was a beautiful day, such as a man saw in midsummer only after a drenching rain. Frank turned his thoughts to last night, and, reviewing what had happened, he saw nothing to merit alarm. Connie was crowded off 66, and furthermore, she would stay off, for Walt Shipley had merely slipped in there and thrown up a shack, with no jot of title to the land.
Thinking of Connie, then, he was mildly troubled. It was natural, he supposed, for a woman to be hurt when the man she was to marry was revealed as a coward. And when people were hurt they struck out blindly. That explained this sudden stubborn rage of Connie’s; it was her way of striking out. This thought satisfied him completely, because he knew no man alive was as stubborn as he was—or woman either for that matter. He’d have Connie some day, if only through wearing down her resistance. Besides, he admired her spirit. He didn’t want a meek, demure wife; he wanted a woman with fire and a mind of her own, and Connie had both. It never occurred to him that she might, in the end, refuse to marry him. He was the best man he knew, and that’s what any woman wanted.