Trigger’s own hand moved first, his own hand gripped the gun butt first, and then he was staring into a smashing, blossoming rose of flame that seemed to bloom beyond the muzzle of that big black gun in the hands of Rafe Caradec. Something stabbed at his stomach, and he went numb to his toes.
Stupidly he swung his gun up, staring over it. The gun seemed awfully heavy. He must get a smaller one. That gun opposite him blossomed with rose again, and something struck him again in the stomach. He started to speak, half turning toward the men in front of the stage station, his mouth opening and closing.
Something was wrong with him, he tried to say. Why, everyone knew he was the fastest man in Wyoming, unless it was Shute! Everyone knew that! The heavy gun in his hand bucked and he saw the flame stab at the ground. He dropped the gun, swayed, and then fell flat on his face.
He would have to get up. He was going to kill that stranger, that Rafe Caradec. He would have to get up.
The numbness from his stomach climbed higher, and he suddenly felt himself in the saddle of a bucking horse, a monstrous and awful horse that leaped and plunged, and it was going up! Up! Up!
Then it came down hard, and he felt himself leave the saddle, all sprawled out. The horse had thrown him, bucked him off into the dust. He closed his hands spasmodically.
Rafe Caradec stood tall in the middle of the gunman’s walk, the black, walnut-stocked pistol in his right hand. He glanced once at the still figure sprawled in the street, and then his eyes lifted, sweeping the walks in swift, accurate appraisal. Only then, some instinct prodded his subconscious and warned him. There was the merest flicker of a curtain, and in the space between the curtain and the edge of the window, the black muzzle of a rifle!
His .44 lifted and the heavy gun bucked in his hand just as flame leaped from the rifle barrel and he felt quick, urgent fingers pluck at his sleeve. The .44 jolted again, and a rifle rattled on the shingled porch roof. The curtain made a tearing sound, and the head and shoulders of a man fell through, toppling over the sill. Overbalanced, the heels came up and the man’s body rolled over slowly, seemed to hesitate, and then rolled over again, poised an instant on the edge of the roof, and dropped soddenly into the dust.
Dust lifted from around the body and then settled back. Gee Bonaro thrust hard with one leg, and his face twisted a little.
In the quiet street there was no sound, no movement.
____________
FOR THE SPACE of a full half minute, the watchers held themselves, shocked by the sudden climax, stunned with unbelief. Trigger Boyne had been beaten to the draw and killed. Gee Bonaro had made his try and died.
Rafe Caradec turned slowly and walked back to his horse. Without a word he swung into the saddle. He turned the horse and, sitting tall in the saddle, swept the street with a cold, hard eye that seemed to stare at each man there. Then, as if by his own wish, the black horse turned. Walking slowly, his head held proudly, he carried his rider down the street and out of town.
Behind him coolly and without smiles, Bo Marsh and Tex Brisco followed. Like him, they rode slowly, and like him, they rode proudly. Something in their bearing seemed to say, “We were challenged. We came. You see the result.”
In the window of the National, Joe Benson chewed his mustache. He stared at the figure of Trigger Boyne with vague disquiet, and then irritation.
“Cuss it!” he muttered under his breath. “You was supposed to be a gunman. What in thunder was wrong with you?”
A bullet from Boyne’s gun, or from Bonaro’s for that matter, could have ended it all. A bullet now could settle the whole thing, quiet the gossip, remove the doubts, and leave Barkow free to marry Ann, and the whole business could go forward. Instead, they had failed.
It would be a long time now, Benson knew, before it was all over. A long time. Barkow was slipping. The man had better think fast and get something done. Rafe Caradec must die.
____________
THE FORT LARAMIE Treaty of 1868 had forbidden white men to enter the Powder River country, yet gold discoveries brought prospectors north in increasing numbers. Small villages and mining camps had come into existence. Following them, cattlemen discovered the rich grasses of northern Wyoming. A few herds came over what later was to be known as the Texas Trail.
Indian attacks and general hostility caused many of these pioneers to retreat to more stable localities, but a few of the more courageous had stayed on. Prospectors had entered the Black Hills following the Custer expedition in 1874, and the Sioux, always resentful of any incursion upon their hunting grounds or any flaunting of their rights, were preparing to do something more than talk.
The names of such chiefs as Red Cloud, Dull Knife, Crazy Horse, and the medicine man Sitting Bull came more and more into frontier gossip. A steamboat was reported to be en route up the turbulent Yellowstone, and river traffic on the upper Mississippi was an accepted fact. There were increasing reports of gatherings of Indians in the hills, and white men rode warily, never without arms.
Cut off from contact with the few scattered ranchers, Rafe Caradec and his riders heard little of the gossip except what they gleaned from an occasional prospector or wandering hunter. Yet no gossip was needed to tell them how the land lay.
Twice they heard sounds of rifle fire, and once the Sioux ran off a number of cattle from Shute’s ranch, taking them from a herd kept not far from Long Valley. Two of Shute’s riders were killed. None of Caradec’s cattle were molested. He was left strictly alone. Indians avoided his place, no matter what their mission.
Twice, riders from the ranch went to Painted Rock. Each time they returned they brought stories of an impending Indian outbreak. A few of the less courageous ranchers sold out and left the country. In all this time, Rafe Caradec lived in the saddle, riding often from dawn until dusk, avoiding the tangled brakes, but studying the lay of the land with care.
There was, he knew, some particular reason for Bruce Barkow’s interest in the ranch that belonged to Ann Rodney. What that reason was, he must know. Without it, he knew he could offer no real reason why Barkow would go to the lengths he had gone to get a ranch that was on the face of things of no more value than any piece of land in the country, most of which could be had for the taking….
____________
ANN SPENT MUCH of her time alone. Business at the store was thriving, and Gene Baker and his wife, and often Ann as well, were busy. In her spare time the thought kept returning to her that Rafe Caradec might be honest.
Yet she dismissed the thought as unworthy. If she admitted even for an instant that he was honest, she must also admit that Bruce Barkow was dishonest—a thief and possibly a killer. Yet somehow the picture of her father kept returning to her mind. It was present there on one of the occasions when Bruce Barkow came to call.
A handsome man, Barkow understood how to appeal to a woman. He carried himself well, and his clothes were always the best in Painted Rock. He called this evening looking even better than he had on the last occasion, his black suit neatly pressed, his mustache carefully trimmed.
They had been talking for some time when Ann mentioned Rafe Caradec.
“His story sounded so sincere!” she said, after a minute. “He said he had been shanghaied in San Francisco with Father and that they had become acquainted on the ship.”
“He’s a careful man,” Barkow commented, “and a dangerous one. He showed that when he killed Trigger Boyne and Bonaro. He met Boyne out on the range, and they had some trouble over an Indian girl.”
“An Indian girl?” Ann looked at him questioningly.
“Yes.” Barkow frowned as if the subject was distasteful to him. “You know how some of the cowhands are—always running after some squaw. They have stolen squaws, kept them for a while, and then turned them loose or killed them. Caradec had a young squaw, and Boyne tried to argue with him to let her go. They had words, and there’d have been a shooting then if one of Caradec’s other men hadn’t come up with a rifle, and Shute’s boys went aw
ay.”
Ann was shocked. She had heard of such things happening and was well aware of how much trouble they caused. That Rafe Caradec would be a man like that was hard to believe. Yet, what did she know of the man?
He disturbed her more than she allowed herself to believe. Despite the fact that he seemed to be trying to work some scheme to get all or part of her ranch, and despite all she had heard of him at one time or another from Bruce, she couldn’t make herself believe that all she heard was true.
That he appealed to her she refused to admit. Yet when with him, she felt drawn to him. She liked his rugged masculinity, his looks, and his voice, and was impressed with his sincerity. Yet the killing of Boyne and Bonaro was the talk of the town.
The Bonaro phase of the incident she could understand from the previous episode in the store. But no one had any idea of why Boyne should be looking for Caradec. The solution now offered by Barkow was the only one. A fight over a squaw! Without understanding why, Ann felt vaguely resentful.
For days a dozen of Shute’s riders hung around town. There was talk of lynching Caradec, but nothing came of it. Ann heard the talk and asked Baker about it.
The old storekeeper looked up, nodding.
“There’s talk, but it’ll come to nothin’. None of these boys aim to ride out there to Crazy Man and tackle that crowd. You know what Gill and Marsh are like. They’ll fight, and they can. Well, Caradec showed what he could do with a gun when he killed those two in the street. I don’t know whether you saw that other feller with Caradec or not, the one from Texas. Well, if he ain’t tougher than either Marsh or Gill, I’ll pay off! Notice how he wore his guns? Nope, nobody’ll go looking for them. If they got their hands on Caradec, that would be somethin’ else.”
Baker rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “Unless they are powerful lucky, they won’t last long, anyway. That’s Injun country, and Red Cloud or Man Afraid of His Horse won’t take kindly to white men livin’ there. They liked your pa, and he was friendly to ’em.”
As a result of his conversations with Barkow, Sheriff Pod Gomer had sent messages south by stage to Cheyenne and the telegraph. Rafe Caradec had come from San Francisco, and Bruce Barkow wanted to know who and what he was. More than that, he wanted to find out how he had been allowed to escape the Mary S. With that in mind he wrote to Bully Borger.
Barkow had known nothing about Caradec when the deal was made, but Borger had agreed to take Charles Rodney to sea and let him die there, silencing the truth forever. Allowing Rafe Caradec to come ashore with his story was not keeping the terms of the bargain. If Caradec had actually been aboard the ship and left it, there might be something in that to make him liable to the law.
Barkow intended to leave no stone unturned. And in the meanwhile, he spread his stories around about Caradec’s reason for killing Boyne.
CHAPTER IX
Oil!
Caradec went on with his haying. The nights were already growing more chill. At odd times when not haying or handling cattle, he and the boys built another room to the cabin and banked the house against the wind. Fortunately, its position was sheltered. Wind would not bother them greatly where they were, but there would be snow and lots of it.
Rafe rode out each day and several times brought back deer or elk. The meat was jerked and stored away. Gill got the old wagon Rodney had brought from Missouri and made some repairs. It would be the easiest way to get supplies out from Painted Rock. He worked over it and soon had it in excellent shape.
On the last morning of the month, Rafe walked out to where Gill was hitching a team to the wagon.
“Looks good,” he agreed. “You’ve done a job on it, Johnny.”
Gill looked pleased. He nodded at the hubs of the wheels. “Notice ’em? No squeak!”
“Well, I’ll be hanged!” Rafe looked at the grease on the hubs. “Where’d you get the grease?”
“Sort of a spring back over in the hills. I brung back a bucket of it.”
Rafe Caradec looked up sharply. “Johnny, where’d you find that spring?”
“Why”—Gill looked puzzled—“it’s just a sort of hole like, back over next to that mound. You know, in that bad range. Ain’t much account down there, but I was down there once and found this here spring. This stuff works as well as the grease you buy.”
“It should,” Rafe said dryly. “It’s the same stuff!”
He caught up the black and threw a saddle on it. Within an hour he was riding down toward the barren knoll Gill had mentioned. What he found was not a spring, but a hole among some sparse rushes, dead and sick looking. It was an oil seepage.
Oil!
Swiftly his mind leaped ahead. This, then, could be the reason why Barkow and Shute were so anxious to acquire title to this piece of land, so anxious that they would have a man shanghaied and killed. Caradec recalled that Bonneville had reported oil seepages on his trip through the state some forty years or so before, and there had been a well drilled in the previous decade.
One of the largest markets for oil was the patent medicine business, for it was the main ingredient in so-called British Oil.
The hole in which the oil was seeping in a thick stream, might be shallow, but sounding with a six-foot stick found no bottom. Rafe doubted if it was much deeper. Still, there would be several barrels here, and he seemed to recall some talk of selling oil for twenty dollars the barrel.
Swinging into the saddle, he turned the big black down the draw and rode rapidly toward the hills. This could be the reason, for certainly it was reason enough. The medicine business was only one possible market, for machinery of all kinds needed lubricants. There was every chance that the oil industry might really mean something in time.
If the hole was emptied, how fast would it refill? And how constant was the supply? On one point he could soon find out.
He swung the horse up out of the draw, forded the Crazy Man, and cantered up the hill to the cabin. As he reined in and swung down at the door he noticed two strange horses.
Tex Brisco stepped to the door, his face hard.
“Watch it, Boss!” he said sharply.
Pod Gomer’s thickset body thrust into the doorway.
“Caradec,” he said calmly, “you’re under arrest.”
Rafe swung down, facing him. Two horses. Who had ridden the other one?
“For what?” he demanded.
His mind was racing. The mutiny? Had they found out about that?
“For killin’. Shootin’ Bonaro.”
“Bonaro?” Rafe laughed. “You mean for defendin’ myself? Bonaro had a rifle in that window. He was all set to shoot me!”
Gomer nodded coolly. “That was most folks’ opinion, but it seems nobody saw him aim any gun at you. We’ve only got your say-so. When we got to askin’ around, it begun to look sort of funny like. It appears to a lot of folks that you just took that chance to shoot him and get away with it. Anyway, you’d be better off to stand trial.”
“Don’t go, Boss,” Brisco said. “They don’t ever aim to have a trial.”
“You’d better not resist,” Gomer replied calmly. “I’ve got twenty Shute riders down the valley. I made ’em stay back. The minute any shootin’ starts, they’ll come a-runnin’, and you all know what that would mean.”
____________
RAFE KNEW. IT would mean the death of all four of them and the end to any opposition to Barkow’s plans. Probably, that was what the rancher hoped would happen.
“Why, sure, Gomer,” Caradec said calmly. “I’ll go.”
Tex started to protest, and Rafe saw Gill hurl his hat into the, dust.
“Give me your guns then,” Gomer said, “and mount up.”
“No.” Rafe’s voice was flat. “I keep my guns till I get to town. If that bunch of Shute’s starts anything, the first one I’ll kill will be you, Gomer!”
Pod Gomer’s face turned sullen. “You ain’t goin’ to be bothered. I’m the law here. Let’s go!”
“Gomer,” Tex Brisco said
viciously, “if anything happens to him I’ll kill you and Barkow both!”
“That goes for me, too!” Gill said harshly.
“And me!” Marsh put in. “I’ll get you if I have to drygulch you, Gomer.”
“Well, all right!” Gomer said angrily. “It’s just a trial. I told ’em I didn’t think much of it, but the judge issued the warrant.”
He was scowling blackly. It was all right for them to issue warrants, but if they thought he was going to get killed for them, they were bloody well wrong!
Pod Gomer jammed his hat down on his head. This was a far cry from the coal mines of Lancashire, but sometimes he wished he was back in England. There was a look in Brisco’s eyes he didn’t like.
“No,” he told himself, “he’ll be turned loose before I take a chance. Let Barkow kill his own pigeons. I don’t want these Bar M hands gunnin’ for me!”
The man who had ridden the other horse stepped out of the cabin, followed closely by Bo Marsh. There was no smile on the young cowhand’s face. The man was Bruce Barkow.
For an instant, his eyes met Caradec’s. “This is just a formality,” Barkow said smoothly. “There’s been some talk around Painted Rock, and a trial will clear the air a lot. Of course if you’re innocent, Caradec, you’ll be freed.”
“You sure of that?” Rafe’s eyes smiled cynically. “Barkow, you hate me and you know it. If I ever leave that jail alive, it won’t be your fault.”
Barkow shrugged. “Think what you want,” he said indifferently. “I believe in law and order. We’ve got a nice little community at Painted Rock, and we want to keep it that way. Boyne had challenged you, and that was different. Bonaro had no part in the fight.”
“No use arguin’ that here,” Gomer protested. “Court’s the place for that. Let’s go.”
Tex Brisco lounged down the steps, his thumbs hooked in his belt. He stared at Gomer.
“I don’t like you,” he said coolly. “I don’t like you a bit. I think you’re yellow as a coyote. I think you bob every time this here Barkow says bob.”
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