The Slasher strode in, and Barney tried a left to the head that missed, and the Slasher grabbed him by the waist and hurled him to the ground. Shaw lit in a pile of dust, and the sheriff sprang in. “Round!” he shouted.
Shaw walked to his corner.
“He’s strong,” he said. He waved away the water bottle.
“Them new Queensbury rules would be better for you,” his second said out of the corner of his mouth. “London Prize Ring rules was never no good. Yuh hurt a man and if he goes down the round is over.”
They started again at the call of time, and Barney walked out quickly. The Slasher rushed, and Barney lanced the fellow’s lips with another left and then stepped around and jabbed with the left again. There was a mix-up. Then Barney stepped away, and the Slasher hit him.
It was a hard right, and it shook Shaw to his heels, but he stepped away. He was skillfully, carefully feeling the bigger man out. Instinctively he knew it would be a hard fight. The other man was like iron, big and very, very strong. It would take time to down him. Barney was trying each punch, trying to find out what the big man would do.
All fighters develop habits. Certain ways of blocking lefts, ducking or countering. By trying each punch a few times Barney Shaw was learning the pattern of the Slasher’s fighting, getting a blueprint in his mind.
When the second round had gone four minutes, he took a glancing left to the head and went down, ending the round.
When the minutes was up, he went out with a rash. The Slasher put up his hands and without even stopping his rush, Barney dropped low and thrust out his left. It caught the Slasher in the midriff and set him back on his heels.
Instantly Barney was upon him. Hitting fast, he struck the Slasher five times in the face with a volley of blows before the bigger man was brought up by the ropes. Then setting himself, he whipped a hard right to the Slasher’s ribs!
_______
THE CROWD WAS yelling wildly, and the Slasher came off the ropes and swung. Barney went under it and whipped a right to the heart. Then the Slasher’s left took him and he rolled over on the ground!
He was badly shaken. In his corner, “Turkey Tom” Ryan, his second, grinned.
“Watch it,” he said. “He can hit, the beggar!”
They had wiped the blood from the Slasher’s face, and the big man looked hard. Near the Slasher’s corner Barney could see George Clyde.
Barney Shaw went up to scratch and as the Wyoming Slasher rushed he stabbed a left to the mouth, parried a left himself, and hit hard to the body. Inside, he hammered away with both hands. He took a clubbing right to the head that cut his forehead and showered him with blood. But suddenly he knew that his time had come, and instead of backing away, he set himself and began slugging with everything he had.
The Slasher was caught off balance. He tried to get set, but he was too heavy. He struck several ponderous blows, but Barney was knifing his face with those skintight gloves. Jabbing a left, he turned his fist as it struck and ripped the Slasher’s face. Then he stepped in and threw a wicked uppercut to the body. Then another and still another.
The Slasher started to fall, but Shaw caught him under the chin with the heel of his glove and shoved him erect against the ropes. Stepping back, he smashed both hands to the chin.
With the crowd roaring, Shaw leaped away and the Wyoming Slasher rolled off the ropes and fell flat on his face!
Instantly his seconds were over the ropes and swarming over him. Harrington rushed across the ring and seized one of Barney Shaw’s hands, shouting something about his fists being loaded.
Turkey Tom shoved him away, and Shaw took off the glove and showed him his bare fist. Harrington snarled something, and Shaw slugged him in the ribs. As the big man started to fall, one of his friends stepped up, and instantly the ring was a bedlam of shouting, fighting men.
It was ten minutes before the ring was cleared, and then the Slasher was able to get to the scratch. He rushed immediately, and Shaw ducked, but as he ducked he slipped and the Slasher hit him and knocked him to his knees. He started to get up, and the Slasher rushed and struck him another ponderous blow. He went down hard.
And the round ended.
He was barely on his second’s knee when the call of “time” came again and, groggy, he went to scratch. The Wyoming Slasher charged. Shaw ducked, went into a clinch, and threw the Slasher with a rolling hiplock. The Slasher went down with a thud.
Still groggy, he came to scratch again, but as they came together, he feinted suddenly. As the Slasher swung, Shaw threw his right, high and hard. It caught the Slasher coming in and knocked him to the ropes. As he rebounded Shaw hit him with a one-two, so fast the the two blows landed with almost the same sound.
The Slasher hit the ground all in one piece and rolled over. After ten minutes he was still unable to stand.
As he shoved, to his feet and held there, Harrington suddenly shouted. As one man, his thugs charged the ring and began tearing down the posts.
But even as they charged, the four cattlemen leaped into the ring, as did the man with the blue anchors on his hands. In a breath there was a cordon of men with guns drawn around Barney, around the two stakeholders, and around the shouting Turkey Tom.
Harrington’s thugs broke against the flying wedge formed by the cattlemen and Shaw’s friends, and the wedge moved on to the hotel.
Tess met them at the door, her eyes wild with anxiety.
“You’re all right? Oh, I was so afraid! I was sure you’d be hurt!”
“You should see the Slasher, ma’am,” Turkey Tom said, grinning to show his five gold teeth. “He don’t look so good!”
“We’ve got the money to pay off now,” Barney told her, smiling. His lips were puffed and there was a blue welt alongside his ear. “We can pay off and start over.”
“Yes, and that ain’t all!” One of the cattlemen, a big man wearing a black hat, stepped in. “When yuh wired about the water, I was in Zeb’s office. We went to the governor and we got it all fixed up. So I decided it might be a right good idea for me to come up here and get yuh to feed about five hundred whiteface cows for me—on shares!”
“She can’t,” snarled a voice behind them.
_______
AS ONE MAN they turned. George Clyde stood in the doorway, his lips thinned and his face white.
“She can’t, because there’s mineral on that place, and I’ve filed a mining claim that takes in the spring and water source!”
His eyes were hard and malicious. Harrington, his face still bloody, loomed behind him. The big man with the anchors on his hands stepped forward and stared hard at Clyde.
“That’s him, Sheriff,” he said. “The man who killed Rex Tilden!”
George Clyde’s face stiffened and went white.
“What do you mean?” he shouted. “I was here that night!”
“You were in Santos that night. You met Rex Tilden on the road outside of town and shot him. I was up on the hill when it happened and I saw you. You shot him with that Krag Jorgenson rifle! I found one of the shells!”
“He’s got one of them Krags,” the sheriff said abruptly. “I seen it! He won it from some Danish feller last year in a game of faro. I never seen another like it!”
Barney Shaw had pulled on his trousers over his fighting trunks and slipped on his shirt. He felt the sag of the heavy pistol in his coat pocket and put on the coat. Half turning, he slid the pistol into his waistband.
“That means,” he said coolly, “that his mineral claim won’t be any use to him. I know he hasn’t done any assessment work, and without that he can’t hold the claim!”
Clyde’s eyes narrowed.
“You!” he snarled. “If you’d stayed out of this I’d have made it work. You’ll never see me die! And you will never see me arrested!”
Suddenly his hand dropped for his gun, but even as his hand swept down, Barney Shaw stepped through the crowd, drew, and fired!
Clyde staggered half turned, and pitched
over on his face. Harrington had started to reach, but suddenly he jerked his hand away from his gun as though it were afire.
“I had nothin’ to do with no killin’,” he said, whining. “I never done nothin’!”
When the sheriff had taken Harrington away, Barney Shaw took Tess by the arm.
“Tess,” he asked hesitantly, “does the fifty-fifty deal still go?”
She looked up, her eyes misty and suddenly tender.
“Yes, Barney, for as long as you want it!”
“Then, he said quietly, “it will be for always!”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
__________
MAN RIDING WEST
FRANK COLLINSON, writing of buffalo hunter Jim White, whom he knew: “White was a fine shot, the best I ever knew…I once knew him to kill 46 buffalo on Duck Creek with 47 shots.”
At another point he quotes White as saying: “I can hit a half-dollar at fifty yards.”
Frank Collinson, from Yorkshire, England, began his western experiences in 1872, as a cowboy, buffalo hunter and rancher. He died in Texas in 1943.
MAN RIDING WEST
_______________
THREE MEN WERE hunkered down by the fire when Jim Gary walked his buckskin up to their camp in the lee of the cliff. The big man across the fire had a shotgun lying beside him. It was the shotgun that made Gary uneasy, for cowhands do not carry shotguns, especially when on a trail drive, as these men obviously were.
Early as it was, the cattle were already bedded down for the night in the meadow alongside the stream, and from their looks they had come far and fast. It was still light, but the clouds were low and swollen with rain.
“How’s for some coffee?” Jim asked as he drew up. “I’m ridin’ through, an’ I’m sure hungry an’ tuckered.”
Somewhere off in the mountains, thunder rolled and grumbled. The fire crackled, and the leaves on the willows hung still in the lifeless air. There were three saddled horses nearby, and among the gear was an old Mother Hubbard style saddle with a wide skirt.
“Light an’ set up.” The man who spoke was lean jawed and sandy haired. “Never liked to ride on an empty stomach, m’self.”
More than ever, Gary felt uneasy. Neither of the others spoke. All were tough-looking men, unshaven and dirty, but it was their hard-eyed suspicion that made Jim wonder. However, he swung down and loosened his saddle girth and then slipped the saddle off and laid it well back under the overhang of the cliff. As he did so he glanced again at the old saddle that lay there.
The overhang of the cliff was deep where the fire was built for shelter from the impending rain. Jim dropped to an ancient log, gray and stripped of bark, and handed his tin plate over to the man who reached for it. The cook slapped two thick slabs of beef on the plate and some frying-pan bread liberally touched with the beef fryings. Gary was hungry and he dove in without comment, and the small man filled his cup.
“Headed west?” The sandy-haired man asked, after a few minutes.
“Yeah, headed down below the rim. Pleasant Valley way.”
The men all turned their heads toward him but none spoke. Jim could feel their eyes on his tied-down guns. There was a sheep and cattle war in the valley.
“They call me Red Slagle. These hombres are Tobe Langer and Jeeter Dirksen. We’re drivin’ to Salt Creek.”
Langer would be the big one. “My name’s Gary,” Jim replied. “Jim Gary. I’m from points yonder. Mostly Dodge an’ Santa Fe.”
“Hear they are hirin’ warriors in Pleasant Valley.”
“Reckon.” Jim refused to be drawn, although he had the feeling they had warmed to him since he mentioned heading for the valley.
“Ridin’ thataway ourselves,” Red suggested. “Want to make a few dollars drivin’ cattle? We’re shorthanded.”
“Might,” Gary admitted. “The grub’s good.”
“Give you forty to drive to Salt Creek. We’ll need he’p. From hereabouts the country is plumb rough, an’ she’s fixin’ to storm.”
“You’ve hired a hand. When do I start?”
“Catch a couple of hours sleep. Tobe has the first ride. Then you take over. If you need he’p, just you call out.”
Gary shook out his blankets and crawled into them. In the moment before his eyes closed he remembered the cattle had all worn a Double A brand, and the brands were fresh. That could easily be with a trail herd. But the Double A had been the spread that Mart Ray had mentioned.
It was raining when he rode out to the herd. “They ain’t fussin’,” Langer advised, “an’ the rain’s quiet enough. It should pass mighty easy. See you.”
He drifted toward the camp, and Gary turned up his slicker collar and studied the herd as well as he could in the darkness. They were lying quiet. He was riding a gray roped from the small remuda, and he let the horse amble placidly toward the far side of the meadow. A hundred yards beyond the meadow the bulk of the sloping hill that formed the opposite side of the valley showed blacker in the gloom. Occasionally there was a flash of heat lightening, but no thunder.
_______
SLAGLE HAD TAKEN him on because he needed hands, but none of them accepted him. He decided to sit tight in his saddle and see what developed. It could be plenty, for unless he was mistaken, this was a stolen herd, and Slagle was a thief, as were the others.
If this herd had come far and fast, he had come farther and faster, and with just as great a need. Now there was nothing behind him but trouble, and nothing before him but bleak years of drifting ahead of a reputation.
Up ahead was Mart Ray, and Ray was as much a friend as he had. Gunfighters are admired by many, respected by some, feared by all, and welcomed by none. His father had warned him of what to expect, warned him long ago before he himself had died in a gun battle. “You’re right handy, son,” he had warned, “one of the fastest I ever seen, so don’t let it be known. Don’t never draw a gun on a man in anger, an’ you’ll live happy. Once you get the name of a gunfighter, you’re on a lonesome trail, an’ there’s only one ending.”
So he had listened, and he had avoided trouble. Mart Ray knew that. Ray was himself a gunman. He had killed six men of whom Jim Gary knew, and no doubt there had been others. He and Mart had been riding together in Texas and then in a couple of trail drives, one all the way to Montana. He never really got close to Mart, but they had been partners after a fashion.
Ray had always been amused at his eagerness to avoid trouble, although he had no idea of the cause of it. “Well,” he had said, “they sure cain’t say like father, like son. From all I hear your pappy was an uncurried wolf, an’ you fight shy of trouble. You run from it. If I didn’t know you so well, I’d say you was yaller.”
But Mart Ray had known him well, for it had been Jim who rode his horse down in front of a stampede to pick Ray off the ground, saving his life. They got free, but no more, and a thousand head of cattle stampeded over the ground where Ray had stood.
Then, a month before, down in the Big Bend country, trouble had come, and it was trouble he could not avoid. It braced him in a little Mexican cantina just over the river, and in the person of a dark, catlike Mexican with small feet and dainty hands, but his guns were big enough and there was an unleashed devil in his eyes.
Jim Gary had been dancing with a Mexican girl, and the Mexican had jerked her from his arms and struck her across the face. Jim knocked him down, and the Mexican got up, his eyes fiendish. Without a word, the Mexican went for his gun, and for a frozen, awful instant, Jim saw his future facing him, and then his own hand went down and he palmed his gun in a flashing, lightning draw that rapped out two shots. The Mexican, who had reached first, barely got his gun clear before he was dead. He died on his feet and then fell.
In a haze of powder smoke and anquish, Jim Gary had wheeled and strode from the door, and behind him lay a dead and awful silence. It was not until two days later that he knew who and what he had killed.
The lithe-bodied Mexican had been Miguel Sonoma, and he had been
a legend along the border. A tough, dangerous man with a reputation as a killer.
Two nights later, a band of outlaws from over the border rode down upon Gary’s little spread to avenge their former leader, and two of them died in the first blast of gunfire, a matter of handguns at point-blank range.
From the shelter of his cabin, Gary fought them off for three days before the smoke from his burning barn attracted help. When the help arrived, Jim Gary was a man with a name. Five dead men lay on the ground around the ranch yard and in the desert nearby. The wounded had been carried away. And the following morning, Jim turned his ranch over to the bank to sell and lit a shuck—away from Texas.
Of this, Mart Ray knew nothing. Half of Texas and all of New Mexico, or most of it, would lie behind him when Jim reached the banks of Salt Creek. Mart Ray was ramrodding the Double A, and he would have a job for him.
_______
JIM GARY TURNED the horse and rode slowly back along the side of the herd. The cattle had taken their midnight stretch and after standing around a bit, were lying down once more. The rain was falling, but softly, and Gary let the gray take his own time in skirting the herd.
The night was pitch dark. Only the horns of the cattle glistened with rain, and their bodies were darker blobs in the blackness of the night. Once, drawing up near the willows along the stream, Jim thought he detected a vague sound. He waited a moment, listening. On such a night nobody would be abroad who could help it, and it was unlikely that a mountain lion would be on the prowl, although possible.
He started on again, yet now his senses were alert, and his hand slid under his slicker and touched the butt of a.44. He was almost at the far end of the small herd when a sudden flash of lightning revealed the hillside across the narrow valley.
Stark and clear, glistening with rain, sat a horseman! He was standing in his stirrups, and seemed amazingly tall, and in the glare of the flash, his face was stark white, like the face of a fleshless skull!
Collection 2005 - Riding For The Brand (v5.0) Page 18