Boomer

by Clifton Adams

  Grant grinned to himself. By the time they finished one of Rhea's workdays they were too tired to do anything but sleep, himself included.

  He added more green wood to his small fire. The wind was razor sharp, steel flavored with snow, and at last he got up and walked in a small circle about his fire, stamping his feet against hard ground. Suddenly he came alert, reaching instinctively for his carbine. Far down the brush-lined banks of Slush Creek he saw a horseman break through the blackjack and head in his direction. It was Turk Valois.

  Grant breathed easier and waited for the runner to come within calling distance.

  “This is quite a job you've got,” Valois said wryly, dropping stiffly from the saddle.

  “It's not so bad with the windbreak. You come from Sabo?”

  “Kiefer,” the runner said, holding his hands to the dancing flame. “I heard something in town I thought you might be interested in. You ever hear of a man named Kirk Lloyd?”

  Grant shook his head.

  “Over in the Oklahoma country,” Valois went on soberly, “Lloyd's got a reputation as a gun shark. Usually he works on the side of the law, special marshal or something like that, when a town's filled up with hard cases and the city fathers decide to fight fire with fire. Usually, like I say, he's on the side of the law, but not always. It depends on which job pays the best.”

  The name of Lloyd meant nothing to Grant, but he had seen enough hired gunmen to know that they were full of trouble. “Does this gun shark have anything to do with me?”

  “With both of us. I learned this morning that he's on Ben Farley's pay roll.” Valois squatted down by the fire and looked up at Grant. “I own a gun, and I'm not such a bad shot, but I'm not in a class with Kirk Lloyd. Are you?”

  “I never hired out my gun, if that's what you mean.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Do you think Lloyd had anything to do with Zack Muller's murder?”

  The runner shrugged. “Killing's his business, but he didn't show up in Kiefer till after the murder. I think it's you he's after—and me. Farley wouldn't have needed an expert gunman to bushwhack an old man like Zack Muller.”

  Grant smiled without humor. “Well, thanks for the warning.”

  They stood together on the windy slope, each man thinking his own thoughts. From below they could hear the hammering and see the derrick form slowly lifting on its four thick legs. Valois shook his head as if in wonder. “I never thought the Muller kid would get that much work out of the hands I brought him.”

  Grant said, “Bud's got nothing much to do with it. Rhea's the one who's getting the work out of them.”

  The runner did not seem surprised. Then as they stood looking they saw Rhea come out of the dugout and stand for a moment gazing out at the derrick and the land that were hers. Even from the distance of the slope her energy and her ambition could be felt. There was nothing feminine about her from that distance, only a relentless, hurried urgency.

  Grant found himself studying the runner's face. Valois was unaware of it, he had eyes only for Rhea Muller. And suddenly Grant had the answers to all his questions—why Valois had stepped into the Wheel House fight, why he had deliberately turned Farley against him, why he had brought them workers....

  It was all written in the runner's face at that moment: he was in love with Rhea Muller. Still in love with her. Always would be in love with her.

  Grant was faintly surprised to see it written there so plainly, for he still remembered Valois' bitterness when he had spoken of Rhea before. He was a proud man and Rhea had broken him—her ambition and greed had broken him, but they hadn't changed a thing. He still loved her.

  An uneasy chill walked over Grant's back. Maybe, he thought, I'm looking at myself a few days or weeks from now. He, too, was proud, but if he let himself fall in love with a girl like Rhea...

  He'd rather not think about it, and he looked away and tried to put his mind on other things. But in some dark part of his mind he knew that it was already too late. A dart of jealousy, almost anger, went through him when he saw the runner looking at Rhea the way he was looking at her now. He liked Turk Valois but he did not like the things he saw in his face. With an abrupt movement he pulled up the collar of his windbreaker and said:

  “Thanks again for the warning, Valois. I'll try to keep my eyes open.”

  “It's more than Kirk Lloyd that you have to worry about,” Valois said quietly. “Well...” The two men shook hands two men much alike, big, strong, and proud. Both with eyes for the same girl.

  That night the trouble started.

  Grant had expected it from the outside, but it came from within. Bud and Lon Calloway were riding the lease boundary, Grant was in the bunkhouse when he heard the shrill, desperate scream pierce the darkness. It was Rhea's voice and it was the voice of despair, the voice of a person who sees her world suddenly crash down around her in ruins.

  Grant was on his feet immediately. Grabbing his wind-breaker and carbine, he was out in the bitter wind before Rhea's first cry was dead. From the bunkhouse he ran into a world of black shadow and dancing red light and suddenly realized that the partially finished derrick was burning.

  He heard Rhea calling out again, in the darkness, “Joe, the derrick's on fire!”

  Even then, it struck him as faintly amusing that she should call him “Joe” again in this time of need. He rushed headlong into the flickering darkness, but Rhea was not there. He fired his carbine three times into the air—a prearranged signal to the line riders.

  Almost immediately he heard Bud Muller's big-footed clay-bank stallion pounding in from the north. And the sound of shooting also woke up the crew in the bunkhouse and they came staggering out in the shocking wind, bleary-eyed and sullen as they gazed unfeelingly at the burning derrick. Then he saw Rhea racing toward the fire dragging a heavy piece of canvas tarp through the mud.

  Grant paused for a moment in his blind race and tried to get the complete picture in his mind and form a decision. It looked as if the fire had started in the partially completed belt house near the windward corner of the derrick floor, and now the bright flames were racing over the floor and up the stout legs of the structure. He knew that in a matter of minutes the fire would be beyond control. Everything about a derrick like this was soaked with oil—even before the well was spudded in, even before the structure was completed— it came from the grease and oil of the engine and drilling tools, from the oil-soaked wood of the reclaimed derrick timbers.

  The ground was covered with mud and icy little ponds, and the bend of Slush Creek was less than a hundred yards away, still he knew that water was not the answer. Then he thought of the tent—the bunk tent that they had taken down when the bunkhouse was built—and he wheeled in his tracks and raced toward the shielded side of the dugout.

  Now he could see Bud's claybank headed toward the derrick, and Grant raised his carbine once more and fired into the air. “Bud, over here!” Young Muller hesitated a moment, then wheeled the horse around and headed toward the shack.

  “Get that crew over here!” Grant yelled. “I don't care how you do it, use your gun if you have to, but get them over here!”

  Now the boy saw Grant grab hold of the cumbersome mass of folded canvas and pull it out on the ground, and he understood.

  As Grant worked he could see the blaze dancing higher about the derrick legs, and he could see Rhea beating frantically with her piece of canvas. Rhea had the right answer. Water was no good against an oil fire, even if they could get enough of it to the derrick. The fire had to be smothered if it was to be stopped at all; it had to be clubbed lifeless like some hungry monster.

  Straining against the tough canvas, Grant tore it with the sharp heel of his boot and ripped the bunk tent into several pieces. Bud Muller was herding the reluctant crew toward the dugout, cursing wildly, threatening them with his revolver. When they reached the shack, Grant handed out the pieces of canvas.

  “Get them to the derrick fast!” he shouted to Bud. “And get your crazy sist
er away from there before she gets hurt!”

  By this time Calloway had ridden in from the far corner of the lease. Morphy, the other driller, had produced a shotgun and was helping Bud herd the crew toward the burning derrick.

  There are enough of them to handle the fire, Grant thought to himself. Young Muller will shoot them if they don't. And if he doesn't, Rhea will.

  Grant did not follow the others but moved back into the deep shadows, shielding his eyes against die glare of the fire as he raked the barren landscape with a searching gaze. Until now there had not been time to wonder how the fire had got started, but common sense told him that it had been no accident.

  He moved deeper into the darkness, watching for some sign of movement against the fire-splotched land. The night wind sliced through his windbreaker like an icy razor; a flurry of misty snow began to fall, causing a curious halo of light to form about the burning rig.

  Several minutes passed and he waited, not moving. And then he felt himself go rigid as something flitted across the ground from one clump of brush to the other. The figure was not recognizable as a man, but Grant knew that it was a man. It was the man who had set the fire, the man Farley had hired to burn them off the lease.

  Then he saw the movement again, a vague figure behind a gauzy curtain of snow racing toward the far bend of Slush Creek. He was now about a hundred yards behind the derrick and running to the right.

  Grant reloaded his carbine. Farley needed a lesson, and this time he was going to get it!

  At an easy, loose-jointed lope he quartered across the open field to head the man off near the bend. For a moment he lost sight of the fleeing figure in some brush. Then a rifle cracked in the darkness, the sound strangely flat and muffled by the fight blanket of snow.

  Grant crouched and ran quickly toward a thicket of blackjack; the rifle spoke again with its matter-of-fact voice, and this time Grant felt the burning hiss of the slug a few inches over his head and he dived for the ground.

  For a moment there was silence. The fire from the burning derrick still lighted a great circle around the rig, but Grant and the rifleman lay in darkness. Then Grant began to hear his own breathing and the hammering of his own heart. This was not his kind of business. But now something in the darkness told him that tonight he would have to kill or be killed. The last bullet had been mere inches above his head. The rifleman meant business.

  It was a strange feeling, lying there in the darkness with an armed enemy a bare forty yards away and suddenly to realize that within a few minutes one of them would probably be dead. It hadn't been this way at Vinita when the two cowhands had jumped him. It had never been this way before.

  But you're an outlaw now, he reminded himself. Maybe this is the kind of thing outlaws have to get used to.

  Then he remembered the beating that he had taken at Farley's hands in the Wheel House, and a good part of his anxiety became anger. Slowly, he lifted himself to his hands and knees and began crawling away from the thicket. He heard movement ahead and knew that the rifleman was working his way toward the creek.

  For one brief instant Grant heard the impatient stamping of iron-shod hoofs from the direction of the creek and immediately understood what the rifleman was trying to do. Somewhere down there he had a horse staked out. If he got to the horse there would be nothing Grant could do to stop him.

  And he had to stop him. That was the thought that commanded Grant's mind as he shoved himself erect and began racing toward that dark, twisting bend of the creek. It was strange that he should think of Dagget at a time like this, but the squat, solemn marshal was very much in his thoughts. If this rifleman was working for Farley, Dagget would have Farley's skin, and maybe the Mullers would see the end of their troubles. Maybe, Grant thought bleakly, I'll be able to pick up and get out of here.

  He did not let the thought go further than that; he did not let himself think of Rhea. Every time he thought of Rhea Muller he did something crazy, and this was no time...

  Suddenly he was stumbling in the thick growth of cotton-wood and blackjack along the bank of Slush Creek, and he saw a figure ahead of him go crashing down the brittle skin of icy water. Grant yelled, but the figure did not stop, and then he raised his carbine and fired once, twice, three times.

  The rifleman scrambled out of the water and disappeared around an eroded buttress of red clay.

  Grant wheeled quickly and ran along the top of the bank until he saw the horse standing nervously beneath the twisted limbs of a giant Cottonwood. Very quietly he slipped over the edge of the claybank, took up a position behind some driftwood, and waited.

  He had had three clear shots at the rifleman and likely he would never get another shot like that again. Maybe I should have killed him, he thought. He's sure trying hard enough to kill me!

  But in the back of his head was Dagget. The rifleman was evidence against Farley—but not if he was dead. Not even Dagget could make a dead man talk. So Grant had shot to cripple. He had been too careful and had not hit the rifleman at all.

  Now, he thought, we're right back where we started.

  There was not a sound along the creek except the nervous stamping of the rifleman's horse. From a distance Grant could hear Bud Muller's excited shouting and the other confused noises as they fought to save the derrick. It seemed a long way off and, for the time, insignificant.

  The rifleman on the other side of the jutting claybank waited tensely, as Grant waited. At last Grant pressed back against the bank and called:

  “I'm between you and your horse, mister. You haven't got a chance.”

  “I've got my rifle,” a voice snarled. “That's all the chance I need!”

  Grant frowned, and wondered where he had heard that voice before. It was familiar but he couldn't place it. It didn't belong to Farley, nor to the roustabouts who had given him the beating in the Wheel House.

  He called again:

  “All I have to do is stay where I am and keep it a standoff till the others get through fighting the fire, and then you're through. After what you did to their derrick, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes if young Muller gets you in his sights.”

  “You're wastin' your time, Grant!”

  The sound of those words rolled in Grant's brain, then fell in place suddenly like a roulette ball falling into the right slot, and he knew who the rifleman was.

  He was one of the crewmen, one of the rig builders that Turk Valois had swept out of the gutters of Sabo and Kiefer. Well, Grant thought, it makes sense, I guess. Farley must have heard that Valois was making up a crew for the Muller lease so he got one of his own men on it. When you fought Ben Farley you threw the rule book away.

  Grant tried to think of the man's name, and soon that fell into place, too.

  “I know who you are, Jagger,” he said quietly. “How much did Farley pay you to sign on with Turk Valois? How much did he pay you to burn the Muller rig?'”

  The rifleman laughed harshly. “I didn't think you'd know me, Grant. From the way you gape at that Muller girl, I didn't think you knew anybody else was on the lease.”

  “I noticed you, Jagger. Now why don't you throw your rifle down and try to stay alive? It's Farley I'm after, not you.

  Jagger laughed again, as though something were actually funny. “You think turnin' me over to that marshal will help you get even with Farley?”

  “It might. Anyway, you haven't got much choice. Stay where you are and it will only mean a bullet in the gut when help comes from the well.”

  “I can wait.”

  But he was worried; Grant could hear it in his voice. “I can stand you off all night, Jagger, and you know it. Come on out and you'll get a fair trial.”

  Then both of them heard the sound of a horse picking its way upstream from the direction of Sabo. Grant glanced quickly at the sky and saw that the glow of the derrick fire had diminished considerably.

  “Bud,” he called quietly, “Bud, is that you?”

  Suddenly, surprisingly, Jagger laughed,
and Grant heard him scrambling downstream toward the horseman. Grant hadn't been prepared for this. He had thought that by putting himself between Jagger and his horse he had cut off the rifleman's escape. He shoved himself away from the bank and yelled loudly into the wind.

  “He's headed down the creek toward you, Bud! Stop him!”

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth he heard a .45 bark four times, one shot crowding on top of the other. Grant fought his way downstream after Jagger, stumbling in the darkness, falling over driftwood and brush. And then, by the edge of the water, he saw the form of a man sprawled in the frozen mud.

  “Grant!” a voice called. “You all right?”

  It wasn't Bud Muller's voice, after all, it was Turk Valois'. Grant snapped his head around in surprise and saw the horse standing on the lip of the creek bank.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Sabo,” Valois said, ducking his head into the peppery wind. “I saw the fire over here and guessed what had happened.” He pointed down at Jagger's still form. “Is he the one that started it?”

  Grant nodded, still surprised and vaguely worried. The runner swung down from the saddle and skidded down the bank to where Grant was standing. “That was a funny thing. When you yelled to stop him, he came running right toward me. He must have thought I was somebody else.”

  “Farley, maybe,” Grant said flatly, his anger and violence suddenly gone.

  Valois frowned and grunted. “You think he was working for Farley?”

  “Who else would go to the trouble of getting a man on the Muller crew? Who else has an interest in the Muller well?”

  Together they dragged Jagger out of the icy water. The body was limp and heavy, rolling lifelessly as Grant knelt and methodically went through the dead man's pockets. He hoped to find something there to tie Jagger with Farley but all he found was a tight roll of bills.