Bronco had bought several extra saddle horses during the fall. Now he and Mark rode every daylight hour, keeping the cows close to the middle of the valley on clean pasture where they could be watched for calving signs. It was not such a difficult task with so few, but Mark wondered what it would be like if they had a thousand head ready to calve.
Still, it was work, and Mark was glad to have so much to do. He learned to know each cow. Most of them were driven into the corrals when they began to make bag. Usually the calves were born with little difficulty, but occasionally a cow had to be helped.
Since it was instinctive for a cow to hide out at such a time, Bronco gave Mark the job of watching the brush along the creek and the gullies that cut across the valley from the mountains for the few cows that had escaped. He rode with gunny sacks tied to his cantle, and on a few occasions he had to carry a new calf out of a brush pocket and rub it dry, for this was the in-between time, half spring, half winter, with an unexpected shower or snow squall coming at the wrong time.
When it was over, Bronco was pleased. “Not a hundred percent,” he said, “but damn’ near it. If we get Jacob Smith here this summer, we’ll show him the best calves he ever saw.”
“You can’t work this way with a big herd,” Mark said. “I got so I could tell you about every cow we’ve got right down to the kind of mother she is.”
“And you’ve felt the horns of a few of ’em in your butt, haven’t you?” Bronco laughed. “Learned to keep one eye on the calf and the other on the cow, didn’t you?”
Mark was irritated, but he held his tongue. A few times when a cow had misunderstood his motives had been almost disastrous to him, but humorous to Bronco. Ignoring the question, Mark said: “Well, how about it? I’d like to see you and me nurse a thousand head the way we did the shirt tailful we’ve got now.”
“We’ll have some buckaroos to help,” Bronco said. “Anyhow, it ain’t anything I’m going to tell Jacob Smith. I’m just going to say we done good this spring and show him the percentage.”
It was May then, with no snow visible from the valley and the sun warm enough to prove that summer was just around the corner. Late in the month two small bands of Paiutes rode through the valley, headed toward the reservation. Once Bronco was there and said just to ignore them. The other time he had gone to the fort, and Mark was alone. He ran into the house and shut and barred the door, then crouched at the window with his rifle in his hand.
Mark counted a dozen braves in the outfit, young ones as near as he could tell. They stopped on the other side of the creek, which was running high, and seemed to be carrying on an argument, but their voices were lost in the roar of the creek. Several pointed to the corral that held the horses.
Mark gripped his rifle so hard his hands ached. He hadn’t seen anyone but Bronco all winter, and if Bronco had heard at the fort that an uprising was imminent, he hadn’t mentioned it. Now Mark remembered hearing some talk last summer about the Indians being restless.
He had never been as frightened as he was at this moment. If they came after the horses, he had to stop them, but one rifle against a dozen made hopeless odds. They’d get him and the horses and probably burn the buildings, and then where would Bronco and his fine dreams be?
But nothing came of it. The Indians rode on, and, when they were out of sight beyond the gap at the east end of the valley, Mark opened the door and sat down, so weak his knees refused to hold him. He probably couldn’t have hit one of them if he’d tried.
He didn’t get any sympathy from Bronco when he told him that evening. Bronco slapped him on the back as he laughed, and said: “You’re as good as a regiment. They knew you were forted up in here, and they didn’t want the horses bad enough to get shot to hell.”
“Damn it, what have you heard at the fort?” Mark demanded. “You don’t tell me anything.”
“I don’t know nothing,” Bronco said, “but I’ll stick around close if you’ll feel any better. We’re going to have to start branding in a little while. I’ve been thinking some of putting in a garden, but I guess that’s too much to do. Maybe you’d better start getting in next winter’s wood. We’ll use three times as much with our new house, a cook shack, and a bunkhouse.”
Mark didn’t feel any better with Bronco home. Two rifles were twice as good as one, but they still made short odds against a dozen Indians. For several days nothing happened, and he began to think he was excited over nothing. Bronco had told him before that with the Cross Seven so close to the reservation, they were bound to have a few Paiute visitors, and maybe that was all it amounted to.
But late in the month he learned it was more than that. A military courier headed for Camp Sherman rode through the valley and stopped long enough to tell Mark and Bronco that the Bannocks in Idaho had gone on the warpath and were headed toward Oregon.
After the courier had gone on, Bronco made light of the whole business. “These are Paiutes. Hell, they’re just Digger Indians. They won’t fight. Anyhow, the military will stop the Bannocks before they get to the Oregon line.”
He might be right, Mark thought, but he wasn’t sure. Bronco would naturally look at it this way. He wasn’t one to run off and leave his horses to be stolen without a fight and maybe have his cattle butchered and the buildings burned. Not that they amounted to much, but they’d do until the lumber was hauled from the sawmill and the carpenters arrived from the Triangle R.
That was the way it stood until early in June when Monk Evans, a buckaroo from the Triangle R, rode in on a lathered horse with news that the Bannocks had reached Shadow Mountain and had been joined by most of the Paiutes from the reservation.
The Bannock chief, Buffalo Horn, had been killed in a fight near the Oregon-Idaho line, and several isolated ranches had been burned and a stage driver killed. Runyan and his crew were headed for the fort, and Evans had been sent to warn Bronco and Mark.
“Thanks, Monk,” Bronco said, “but we’re a long ways from Shadow Mountain. I reckon they won’t come this way.”
“You can lose your scalp if you’ve a mind to,” Evans said, “but I’m going to the fort. I want a fresh horse.”
“Sure, you can have one,” Bronco said affably, and walked to the corral with him.
In five minutes Evans was on his way and Bronco returned to the cabin. He looked at Mark and grinned. “It just goes to show that if a man has money and knows he can start over again, he’ll think enough of his skin to keep it in one piece, but, if we lose what we’ve got, we might just as well go to work for thirty a month and beans.”
Mark, staring at Bronco’s expressionless face, knew there was no use to argue, that the Cross Seven meant more to Bronco than his own life, but Mark could not keep from saying: “What good is a ranch to a dead man?”
“If you’re scared,” Bronco said, “saddle your sorrel and light out for the fort.”
Mark shook his head. “I’m staying if you are.”
“Good,” Bronco approved. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll head for the fort the first time we hear an Indian gun pop. I don’t think we will. Indian scare talk is like a grass fire. Spreads like hell when it starts.”
That, Mark thought, was a bigger concession than he had expected to get from Bronco Curtis, and it was proof that he honestly believed there would be no serious trouble.
Chapter Ten
Through the days following Monk Evans’s warning, both Mark and Bronco rode with revolvers in their holsters and rifles in the boots. They watched the rim to the south and the brush along the creek and the wooded hills to the north. At night they blanketed the windows so no light showed, they barred the door, and, when they slept, they kept their rifles and revolvers close to the bed.
“I ain’t scared, you understand,” Bronco told Mark. “I can handle a dozen Paiutes myself. You might even be able to take care of one or two.”
“For a man who isn’t scared,” Mark said, “you’re mighty careful.”
“Careful,” Bronco repeated, and g
rinned. “That’s the right word. A careful man lives longer’n one who ain’t, and I’ve got a hell of a lot to live for.”
Mark worried about the Jacksons, but he told himself he had no reason to be concerned. Monk Evans would certainly have stopped at the Jackson place on his way to the fort. If they chose to stay home, that was their privilege. Besides, it was unlikely that a raiding band of Paiutes would attack a ranch in Sherman Valley, at least one as close to the fort as the Circle J.
Bronco kept Mark so busy there was no time to visit the Jacksons. Still, he would have gone at night if there had been any doubt in his mind about their safety. He told himself that, if they hadn’t believed Evans, they wouldn’t believe him. No, they must be at the fort by now. Herb Jackson had more to lose than Bronco, but he wasn’t bull-headed.
Each night when they came home and turned their horses into the corral, Bronco said: “Guess the Indian scare’s over. We can leave our guns at home tomorrow.” But the following morning he had his rifle and revolver with him as usual, apparently forgetting what he had said the night before.
On the fourth evening before they went to bed, Bronco said: “I’m going to the fort tomorrow. This could go on till fall without us hearing what’s happened. Chances are the Indians are all dead by now, and, if we don’t get at the branding in a day or two, them calves will be so big you won’t be able to wrestle ’em.”
Bronco slept as wholeheartedly as he ate. It was the same this night, but not with Mark who would drop off to sleep and then wake up with a start a few minutes later. After that, he would lie there listening for sounds that weren’t right.
For some reason he couldn’t get his mind off Ruth. Every time he woke up, his first thought was of her. He knew that if she were murdered by the Indians, he would never forgive himself. He’d ride to the Circle J tomorrow when Bronco was gone and find out if the Jacksons were still there. He’d let it go too long now.
Usually Bronco and Mark got up before sunup, but they had been sleeping later than usual the last few mornings. With the window blanketed, the interior of the cabin remained dark, so they missed the first opalescent light of dawn, which normally got Bronco out of bed as effectively as an alarm clock.
Mark woke from one of his short naps with a strange, heart-thumping feeling that something was wrong. He lay on his back, listening to Bronco’s rumbling snores and wishing they would stop for a moment. He had no notion of time, of whether it was dawn yet or not. If he woke Bronco and it was the middle of the night and nothing was wrong, he’d get a cussing and the usual admonition that they were in bed to sleep and there was work to be done tomorrow.
But Mark’s heart kept pounding. He had a strange feeling in the back of his neck that made the short hairs stand straight out. He’d have a look, he decided, whether he woke Bronco or not.
Very carefully he eased out of bed and fumbled around in the darkness for his revolver on the floor. He found it, and discovered that the hard walnut butt of the gun gave him the assurance he needed. He slipped noiselessly across the room to the window, successfully circling the table and chairs without making any sound, and lifted the corner of the blanket.
Mark’s breathing stopped as suddenly as if he’d been kicked in the stomach, and his heart went into a crazy pattern of thumping and missing and thumping and missing. In the uncertain light of dawn he saw two Paiutes bending over a pile of sagebrush and dry grass they had thrown against the wall of the cabin. A small flame was leaping up just as Mark lifted the blanket.
Under ordinary circumstance Mark would have called Bronco, but now he didn’t even think of it. He fired through the window, the bullet going through one Indian’s head and knocking him as flat as if he’d been hit by a club. The other one wheeled and started to run toward the creek. Mark’s second shot was a clean miss. The Paiute kept going until a third bullet caught him between the shoulder blades and brought him down in a lurching fall.
In that short interval of time the flame had spread and doubled in height. Mark dropped his gun and, running to the door, lifted the bar and shoved the door open. Bronco was out of bed in a lunge, yelling: “What the hell’s going on?”
By that time Mark was outside kicking the pile of sage and grass away from the cabin wall with his bare feet. He couldn’t stomp the blaze out, but he succeeded in scattering the pile and getting it far enough from the log wall so that the fire sputtered and died.
“Get back inside, you fool!” Bronco yelled. “Get back!”
Mark leaped for the door just as firing broke out from the creek. He had a horrible, fleeting fear he wouldn’t make it. There must be a hundred of them in the willows. He had never been shot at before; he had never heard a bullet that had been fired with the intention of killing him. But he did now. One snapped past his ear to go through the open door and slam into the log wall on the opposite side of the cabin. Another splintered the door casing. Others thudded into the log wall on both sides of the door.
Mark tripped and fell as a bullet ripped into the table in the middle of the room. He got to his hands and knees and lunged forward and rolled to one side as Bronco slammed the door shut and barred it, then yelled: “What the god damned hell is going on?”
Mark started to dress, his hands trembling so much he had trouble getting his shirt and pants buttoned. He said in a shaky voice: “They were firing the cabin. I got two of them.”
“The hell you did.” Bronco wheeled to the window and jerked the blanket down. “Seems like you did at that. The light ain’t good, but looks like one of ’em is lying right here by the cabin. There’s another one out there a piece, all right.” He backed against the wall and faced Mark as he said with grudging respect: “If you hadn’t woke up, we’d have fried in here just like two squirrels in a hole.”
Mark had pulled on his boots and began buckling his gun belt around him. Rifles were still cracking from the brush along the creek, and now and then a bullet came singing through a window to scream as it ricocheted off the stove or made a dull sound as it buried itself into the wall.
“How many are out there?” Mark asked as he tugged his hat low over his forehead and filled his pockets with rifle shells from a box on a shelf beside the door.
“Six or eight.” Bronco took a quick look through the window and jerked back against the wall again. “Well, kid, I guess you were right. A ranch don’t do a dead man much good. Say, what are you fixing to do now?”
“I’m going out there,” Mark said. “If we stay here, they’ll get our horses. That’s what they’re after, isn’t it?”
“You’ll never make it from here to the corral,” Bronco said. “Stay inside.”
“We won’t ever make it if we wait for it to get light,” Mark said. “Do some shooting so they won’t notice me.”
Bronco swore angrily. “Wait’ll I get dressed and I’ll go with you.”
“I can’t wait,” Mark snapped. “Chances are they’ve got the horses already.”
He lifted the bar and jerked the door open and went through it on the run. Bronco opened up from the window, firing as rapidly as he could lever shells into the chamber. Mark headed for the corral that held the horses. The light was still too thin for accurate shooting, but before Mark had covered half the distance, the Indians hidden along the creek saw him and began firing.
Mark cut back and forth in a zigzag pattern, bending low and making a poor target even for good riflemen. Bronco’s firing probably helped, for he was laying his bullets low just above the creekbank, and the screen of willows gave no protection.
Mark was so intent on reaching the corral that he didn’t see the Indian on a paint pony that was trying to open the corral gate until he was almost upon him. Apparently the Paiute saw him the same instant, for he wheeled his pony and drove directly at Mark. Acting purely from instinct, Mark fell to one side and, tilting his rifle, pulled the trigger.
The Indian leaned down and made a sweep with an axe or a war club. Mark couldn’t tell what it was. He glimpsed the
brave’s almost naked body and his painted face and knew the weapon would have split his skull if it had landed. It missed by inches.
Apparently Mark had creased the pony with his shot, for he was hard to manage and lunged on past Mark. This time Mark fired from his knees. The Paiute threw up his hands and came off the back of the paint in a rolling fall.
The pony kept on, past the barn and across the meadow above the buildings. The Indian was wounded and jarred by the fall, but he was still alive. He started to sit up, and this time Mark put a bullet into his brain.
Mark got up and ran toward the corner of the corral, bullets kicking up dirt around him. Inside the corral the horses, boogered by the firing, were snorting and running in circles. Mark went on past the corral to the barn and, jerking the door open, fell forward into the litter.
He lay there, panting and scared and exhausted, but at the same time he was filled with a wild exhilaration. He may have been a fool, and Bronco would probably call him one, but he had saved the horses. If he had been a few seconds later, the Indian would have had the gate open and the horses would have been gone. Then he and Bronco would have been on foot, and it was hard to tell what would have happened.
It took a long time to get his wind back. When he did, he sat up and reloaded his rifle. Then he didn’t know what to do. Bronco was still in the cabin, and he was out here. What he had done so far had been right, but it had been on the spur of the moment. Now that he had time to think about his next move, he was confused. He crawled out of the barn to the corner of the corral and hunkered there, his eyes on the willows where the Indians were hiding.
The sun was beginning to show, a red arc above the hills that formed the eastern boundary of the valley. The light had deepened until he could see the willows clearly, but there was no movement. Maybe they were gone. He considered the possibility for a time, thinking that, if the Indians had made the raid strictly to get horses, they wouldn’t stay.
An hour passed in silence except for an occasional shot that Bronco took from the window. Mark put his hat on his rifle barrel and shoved it around the corner of the corral. Nothing happened. He thought about standing up and stepping into view, but decided against it. The screen of willows was so thick that it was possible for them to be hidden, or to have fled without being seen. He just wasn’t sure, but he had no desire to commit suicide.
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