The Bar M riders were circling around. Their faces were cold, and they started an icy chill coming up my spine. These men were utterly loyal, utterly ruthless when aroused. The night before, they had given me the benefit of the doubt, but now they saw no reason to think of any other solution but the obvious one.
TOM FOX, A lean, hard-bitten Bar M man, was staring at me. Coolly, he took a rope from his pommel. “What we waitin’ for, men?” he asked bitterly. “There’s our man.”
Turning, I said, “Fox, from what I hear you’re a good man and a good hand. Don’t jump to any hasty conclusions. I didn’t kill Rud Maclaren and had no reason to. We made peace talk last night an’ parted in good spirits.”
Fox looked up at Canaval. “That right?”
Canaval hesitated, his expression unchanging. Then he spoke clearly. “It is—but Rud Maclaren changed his mind afterward!”
“Changed his mind?” That I couldn’t believe, yet at the expression in Canaval’s eyes, I knew he was speaking the truth. “Even so,” I added, “how could I be expected to know that? When I left, all was friendly.”
“You couldn’t know it,” Canaval agreed, “unless he got out of bed an’ came to tell you. He might have done that, and I can think of no other reason for him to come here. He came to tell you—an’ you killed him when he started away.”
The hands growled and Fox shook out a loop. It was Olga who stopped them. “No! Wait until the others arrive. If he killed my father, I want him to die! But wait until the others come!”
Reluctantly, Fox drew in his rope and coiled it. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I could fight, and I would if it came to that, but these men only believed they were doing the right thing. They had no idea that I was innocent. My mouth was dry and my hands felt cold. I tried to catch Olga’s eye but she ignored me. Canaval seemed to be studying about something, but he did not speak a word.
The first one to arrive was Key Chapin, and behind him a dozen other men. He looked at me, a quick, worried glance, and then looked at Canaval. Without waiting for questions, the foreman quietly repeated what had happened, telling of the entire evening, facts that could not until then have been known to the men.
“There’s one thing,” I said suddenly, “that I want to call to your attention.”
They looked at me, but there was not a friendly eye in the lot of them. Looking around the circle of their faces, I felt a cold sinking in my stomach, and a feeling came over me. Matt Sabre, I was telling myself, this is the end. You’ve come to it at last, and you’ll hang for another man’s crime.
NOT ONE FRIENDLY face—and Mulvaney had not returned with the Bar M riders. There was no sign of Jolly Benaras.
“Chapin,” I asked, “will you turn Maclaren over?”
The request puzzled him, and they looked from me to the covered body and then to Chapin. He swung down and walked across to the dead man. I heard Olga’s breath catch, and then Chapin rolled Maclaren on his back.
He straightened up then, still puzzled. The others looked blankly at me.
“The reason you are so quick to accuse me is that he is here, on my ranch. Well, he was not killed here. There’s no blood on the ground!”
Startled, they all looked. Before any comment could be made, I continued. “One of the wounds bled badly, and the front of his shirt is dark with blood. The sand would be too, if he’d been killed here. What I am saying is that he was killed elsewhere and then carried here!”
“But why?” Chapin protested.
Canaval said, “You mean to throw guilt onto you?”
“I sure do mean that! Also, that shot I heard fired was shot into him after he was dead!”
Fox shook his head, and sneered. “How could you figure that?”
“A dead man does not bleed. Look at him! All the blood came from one wound!”
Suddenly we heard more horsemen, and Mulvaney returned with his guns and the Benaras boys. Not one, but all of them.
Coolly, they moved up to the edge of the circle.
“We’d be beholden,” the older Benaras said loudly, “if you’d all move back. We’re friends to Sabre, an’ we don’t believe he done it. Now give him air an’ listen.”
They hesitated, not liking it. But their common sense told them that if trouble started now it would be a bloody mess. Carefully, the nearest riders eased back. Whether Olga was listening, I had no idea. Yet it was she whom I wanted most to convince.
“There are other men with axes to grind beside the Pinders and I,” I said. “What had I to fear from Rud? Already I had shown I could take care of myself against all of them. Face to face, I was twice the man Rud was.”
“You talk yourself up mighty well,” Fox said.
“You had your chance in the canyon,” I said brutally, “and when I say I can hold this ranch, you know I’m not lying.”
Horses came up the trail, and the first faces I recognized were Bodie Miller and the redhead I’d whipped at the Two Bar. Bodie pushed his horse into the circle when he saw me. The devil was riding Bodie again, and I could see from Canaval’s face that he knew it.
Right at the moment, Bodie was remembering how I had dared him to gamble at point-blank range. “You, is it?” he said. “I’ll kill you one day.”
“Keep out of this, Bodie!” Canaval ordered sharply.
MILLER’S DISLIKE WAS naked in his eyes. “Rud’s dead now,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be the boss anymore. Maybe she’ll want a younger man for boss!”
The import of his words was like a blow across the face. Suddenly I wanted to kill him, suddenly I was going to. Canaval’s voice was a cool breath of air through my fevered brain. “That will be for Miss Olga to decide.” He turned to her. “Do you wish me to continue as foreman?”
“Naturally!” Her voice was cold and even, and in that moment I was proud of her. “And your first job will be to fire Bodie Miller!”
Miller’s face went white with fury, and his lips bared back from his teeth. Before he could speak, I interfered. “Don’t say it, Bodie! Don’t say it!” I stepped forward to face him across Maclaren’s body.
The malignancy of his expression was unbelievable. “You an’ me are goin’ to meet,” he said, staring at me.
“When you’re ready, Bodie.” Deliberately, not wanting the fight here, now, I turned my back on him.
Chapin and Canaval joined me while the men loaded the body into a buckboard. “We don’t think you’re guilty, Sabre. Have you any ideas?”
“Only that I believe he was killed elsewhere and carried here to cast blame on me. I don’t believe it was Pinder. He would never shoot Maclaren in the back.”
“You think Park did it?” Canaval demanded.
“Peace between myself and Maclaren would be the last thing he’d want,” I said.
Bob Benaras was waiting for me. “You can use Jonathan an’ Jolly,” he said. “I ain’t got work enough to keep ’em out of mischief.”
He was not fooling me in the least. “Thanks. I can use them to spell Mulvaney on lookout, and there’s plenty of work to do.”
FOR TWO WEEKS we worked hard, and the inquest of Rud Maclaren turned up nothing new. There had been no will, so the ranch went to Olga. Yet nothing was settled. Some people believed I had killed Maclaren, most of them did not know, but the country was quiet.
Of Bodie Miller we heard much. He killed a man at Hattan’s in a saloon quarrel, shot him before he could get his hand on a gun. Bodie and Red were riding with a lot of riffraff from Hite. The Bar M was missing cattle, and Bodie laughed when he heard it. He pistol-whipped a man in Silver Reef and wounded a man while driving off the posse that came after him.
I worried more about Morgan Park. I had to discover just what his plan was. My only chance was to follow Park every hour of the day and night. I must know where he went, what he was doing, with whom he was talking. One night I waited on a hill above Hattan’s watching the house where he lived when in town.
When he came out of the house I could feel
the hack-les rising on the back of my neck. There was something about him that would always stir me to fury, and it did now. Stifling it, I watched him go to Mother O’Hara’s, watched him mount up and ride out of town on the Bar M road. Yet scarcely a dozen miles from town he drew up and scanned his back trail. Safely under cover, I watched him. Apparently satisfied with what he did not see, he turned right along the ridge, keeping under cover. He now took a course that led him into the wildest and most remote corner of the Bar M, that neck of land north of my own and extending far west. His trail led him out upon Dark Canyon Plateau. Knowing little of this area, I closed the distance between us until I saw him making camp.
BEFORE DAYLIGHT, HE was moving again. The sun rose and the day became hot, with a film of heat haze obscuring all the horizons. He seemed headed toward the northwest where the long line of the Sweet Alice Hills ended the visible world. This country was a maze of canyons. To the south it fell away in an almost sheer precipice for hundreds of feet to the bottom of Dark Canyon. There were trails off the plateau, but I knew none of them.
The view was breathtaking, overlooking miles of columned and whorled sandstone, towering escarpments, minarets, and upended ledges. This had once been inhabited country, for there were ruins of cliff dwellings about, and Indian writings.
The trail divided at the east end of the plateau, and the flat rock gave no indication of which fork Park had taken. It looked as though I had lost him. Taking a chance, I went down a steep slide into Poison Canyon and worked back in the direction he must have taken, but the only tracks were of rodents and one of a bighorn sheep. Hearing a sound of singing, I dismounted. Rifle in hand, I worked my way through the rocks and brush.
“No use to shave,” the man at the fire said. “We’re stuck here. No chance to get to Hattan’s now.”
“Yeah?” The shaver scoffed. “You see that big feller? Him an’ Slade are talking medicine. We’ll move out soon. I don’t want to get caught with no beard when I go to town.”
“Who’ll care how you look? An’ maybe the fewer who know how you look, the better.”
“After this show busts open,” the shaver replied, “it ain’t goin’ to matter who knows me! We’ll have that town sewed up tighter than a drum!”
“Maybe.” The cook straightened and rubbed his back. “Again, maybe not. I wish it was rustlin’ cows. Takin’ towns can be mighty mean.”
“It ain’t the town, just a couple of ranches. Only three, four men on the Two Bar, an’ about the same on the Bar M. Slade will have the toughest job done afore we start.”
“That big feller looks man enough to do it by himself. But if he can pay, his money will look good to me.”
“He better watch his step. That Sabre ain’t no chicken with a pair of Colts. He downed Rollie Pinder, an’ I figure it was him done for Lyell over to the Reef.”
“It’ll be somethin’ when he an’ Bodie get together. Both faster than greased lightnin’.”
“Sabre won’t be around. Pinder figures on raidin’ that spread today. Sam wouldn’t help him because he’d promised Park. Pinder’ll hit ’em about sundown, an’ that’ll be the end of Sabre.”
WAITING NO LONGER, I hurried back to my horse. If Pinder was to attack the Two Bar, Park would have to wait. Glancing at the sun, fear rose in my throat. It would be nip and tuck if I was to get back. Another idea came to me. I would rely on Mulvaney and the Benaras boys to protect the Two Bar. I would counterattack and hit the CP!
When I reached the CP, it lay deserted and still but for the cook, bald-headed and big bellied. He rushed from the door but I was on him too fast, and he dropped his rifle under the threat of my six-gun. Tying him up, I dropped him in a feed bin and went to the house. Finding a can of wagon grease, I smeared it thickly over the floor in front of both doors and more of it on the steps. Leaving the door partly open, I dumped red pepper into a pan and balanced it above the door, where the slightest push would send it cascading over whoever entered, filling the air with fine grains.
Opening the corral, I turned the horses loose and started them down the valley. Digging out all the coffee on the place, I packed it to take away, knowing how a cowhand dearly loves his coffee. It was my idea to make their lives as miserable as possible to get them thoroughly fed up with the fight. Pinder would not abandon the fight, but his hands might get sick of the discomfort.
Gathering a few sticks, I added them to the fire already laid, but under them I put a half dozen shotgun shells. In the tool shed were six sticks of powder and some fuse left from blasting rocks. Digging out a crack at one corner of the fireplace I put two sticks of dynamite into the crack and then ran the fuse within two inches of the fire and covered it with ashes. The shotgun shells would explode and scatter the fire, igniting, I hoped, the fuse.
A slow hour passed after I returned to a hideout in the brush. What was happening at the Two Bar? In any kind of fight, one has to have confidence in those fighting with him, and I had it in the men I’d left behind me. If one of them was killed, I vowed never to stop until all this crowd were finished.
Sweat trickled down my face. It was hot under the brush. Once a rattler crawled by within six or seven feet of me. A packrat stared at me and then moved on. Crows quarreled in the trees over my head. And then I saw the riders.
One look told me. Whatever had happened at the Two Bar, I knew these men were not victorious. There were nine in the group, and two were bandaged. One had his arm in a sling and one had his skull bound up. Another man was tied over a saddle, head and heels hanging. They rode down the hill and I lifted my rifle, waiting for them to get closer to the ranch. Then I fired three times as rapidly as I could squeeze off the shots.
ONE HORSE SPRANG into the air, spun halfway around, scattering the group, and then fell, sending his rider sprawling. The others rushed for the shelter of the buildings, but just as they reached them one man toppled from his horse, hit the dirt like a sack of old clothes, and rolled over in the dust. He staggered to his feet and rushed toward the barn, fell again, and then got up and ran on.
Others made a break for the house, and the first one to hit those greasy steps was Jim Pinder. He hit them running. His feet flew out from under him and he hit the step on his chin!
With a yell, the others charged by him, and even at that distance I could hear the crash of their falling, their angry shouts, and then the roaring sneezes and gasping yells as the red pepper filled the air and bit into their nostrils.
Coolly, I proceeded to shoot out the windows and to knock the hinges off the door, and when Jim Pinder staggered to his feet and reached for his hat, I put a bullet through the hat. He jumped as if stung and grabbed for his pistol. He swung it up, and I fired again as he did. What happened to his shot I never knew, but he dropped the pistol with a yell and plunged for the door.
One man had ducked for the heavily planked water trough, and now he fired at me. He was invisible from my position, but I knew that he was somewhere under the trough, and so I drilled the trough with two quick shots, draining the water down upon him. He jumped to escape, and I put a bullet into the dust to left and right of his position. Like it or not, he had to lie there while all the water ran over him. A few scattered shots stampeded their horses, and then I settled down to wait for time to bring the real fireworks.
A few shots came my way after a while, but all were high or low, and none came close to me.
Taking my time, I loaded up for the second time and then rolled a smoke. My buckskin was in a low place and had cover from the shots. There was no way they could escape from the house to approach me. One wounded man had fallen near the barn, and I let him get up and limp toward it. Every once in a while somebody would fall inside the house. In the clear air I could hear the sound, and each time I couldn’t help but grin.
There was smashing and banging inside the house, and I could imagine what was happening. They were looking for coffee and not finding it. A few minutes later a slow trickle of smoke came out the chimney. My he
ad resting on the palm of one hand, I took a deep drag on my cigarette and waited happily for the explosion.
THEY CAME, AND suddenly. There was the sharp bark of a shotgun shell exploding and then a series of bangings as the others went off. Two men rushed from the door and charged for the barn. Bullets into the dust hurried them to shelter, and I laid back and laughed heartily. I’d never felt so good in my life, picturing the faces of those tired, disgruntled men, besieged in the cabin, unable to make coffee, sliding on the greasy floor, sneezing from the red pepper, ducking shotgun shells from the fire.
Not five minutes had passed when the powder went off with a terrific concussion. I had planted it better than I knew, for it not only cracked the fireplace but blew a hole in it from which smoke gulped and then trickled slowly.
Rising, I drifted back to my horse and headed for the ranch. Without doubt, the CP outfit was beginning to learn what war meant. Furthermore, I knew my methods were far more exasperating to the cowhands than out-and-out fight. Your true cowhand savors a good scrap, but he does not like discomfort or annoyance, and I knew that going without water, without good food, and without coffee would do more to end the fight than anything else. All the same, as I headed the gelding back toward the Two Bar, I knew that if any of my own boys had been killed I would retaliate in kind. There would be no other answer.
Mulvaney greeted me at the door. “Sure, Matt, you missed a good scrap! We give them lads the fight of their lives!”
Jolly and Jonathan looked up at me, Jolly grinning, the more serious Jonathan smiling faintly. Jolly showed me a bullet burn on his arm, the only scratch any of them had suffered.
They had been watching, taking turnabout, determined they would not be caught asleep while I was gone. The result was that they sighted the CP riders when they were still miles from the headquarters of the Two Bar. The Benaras boys began it with a skirmishers’ battle, firing from rocks and brush in a continual running fight. A half dozen times they drove the CP riders to shelter, killing two horses and wounding a man.
Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) Page 22