Solemnly Ross Haney wrote out a note, and handed it to Scott. The old man chuckled as he read it.
I hereby agree to pay on or before the 15th of March, 1877, to Westbrook Scott, the sum of $500 and the fun of watching what happens for the 160 acres of land known as Hitson Spring.
“All right, son. Sign her up. I’ll get you the deed.”
III
When Ross had pocketed the two papers, the deed from the government to Scott and deeded over to him, and the skin deed from the Comanches, the old man sat up and reached for the coffee pot.
“You know what you’ve done? You’ve got a claim on the three best sources of water in Ruby Valley, the only three that are sure-fire all the year around. And what will they do when they find out? They’ll kill you!”
“They won’t find out for a while. I’m not talking until the fight’s been taken out of them.”
“What about your claim stakes at Thousand Springs?”
“Buried. Iron stakes, and driven deep into the ground. There’s sod and grass over the top.”
“What about proving up?”
“That, too. You know how that spring operates? Actually it is one great big spring back inside the mountain, flowing out through the rocky face of the cliff in hundreds of tiny rivulets. Well, atop the mesa there is a good piece of land that falls into my claim, and back in the woods there is some land I can plow. I’ve already broken that land, smoothed her out, and put in a crop. I’ve got a trail to the top of that mesa, and a stone house built up there. I’m in business, Scott!”
Scott looked at him and shook his head. Then he pushed back from the table and, getting up, went into the store. When he returned, he had several boxes of shells.
“In the mornin’ come around and stock up,” he suggested. “You better make you a cache or two with an extra gun here and there, and some extra ammunition. Maybe a little grub. Be good insurance, and, son, you’ll need it.”
“That’s good advice. I’ll do it, an’ you keep track of the expense. I’ll settle every cent of it when this is over.”
With money in his pocket he walked around the store and crossed the street to the Bit and Bridle. The bartender glanced at him, then put a bottle and a glass in front of him. He was a short man, very thick and fat, but, after a glance at the corded forearms, Ross was very doubtful about it all being fat.
A couple of lazy-talking cowhands held down the opposite end of the bar, and there was a poker game in progress at a table. Several other men sat around on chairs. They were the usual nondescript crowd of the cow trails.
He poured his drink, and had just taken it between his thumb and fingers when the bat-wing doors thrust open and he heard the click of heels behind him. He neither turned nor looked around. The amber liquid in the glass held his attention. He had never been a drinking man, taking only occasional shots, and he was not going to drink much tonight.
The footsteps halted abreast of him, and a quick, clipped voice said in very precise words: “Are you the chap who owns that fast horse, the one with the black forequarters and the white over the loin and hips?”
He glanced around, turning his head without moving his body. There was no need to tell him that this was Bob Vernon. He was a tall, clean-limbed young man who was like her in that imperious lift to his chin, unlike her in his quick, decisive manner.
“There’s spots, egg-shaped black spots over the white,” said Haney. “That the one you mean?”
“My sister is outside. She wants to speak to you.”
“I don’t want to speak to her. You can tell her that.” He turned his attention to his drink.
What happened then happened so fast it caught him off balance. A hand grasped him by the shoulder and spun him around in a grip of iron, and he was conscious of being surprised at the strength in that slim hand. Bob Vernon was staring at him, his eyes blazing.
“I said my sister wanted to speak to you!”
“And I said I didn’t want to speak to her.” Ross Haney’s voice was slow-paced and even. “Now take your hand off me and don’t ever lay a hand on me again.”
Bob Vernon was a man who had never backed down for anyone. From the East he had come into the cow country of Ruby Valley and made a place for himself by energy, decision, and his own youthful strength. Yet he had never met a man such as he faced now. As he looked into the hard eyes of the stranger, he felt something turn over deeply inside him. It was as though he had parted the brush and looked into the face of a lion.
Vernon dropped his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid your manner made me forgetful. My sister can’t come into a place like this.”
The two men measured each other, and the suddenly alert audience in the Bit and Bridle let their eyes go from Vernon to the stranger. Bob Vernon they knew well enough to know he was afraid of nothing that walked. They also knew his normal manner was polite to a degree rarely encountered in the West where manners were inclined to be brusque, friendly, and lacking in formality. Yet there was something else between these two now. As one man they seemed to sense the same intangible something that had touched Bob Vernon.
The bat-wing doors parted suddenly, and Sherry Vernon stepped into the room.
First, Haney was aware of a shock that such a girl could come into such a place, and, second, of shame that he had been the cause. Then he felt admiration sweep over him at her courage.
Beautiful in a gray, tailored riding habit, her head lifted proudly, she walked up to Ross Haney. Her face was set and her eyes were bright.
Ross was suddenly conscious that never in all his life had he looked into eyes so fine, so filled with feeling.
“Sir”—and her voice could be heard in every corner of the room—“I do not know what your name may be, but I have come to pay you your money. Your horse beat Flame today, and beat him fairly. I regret the way I acted, but it was such a shock to have Flame beaten that I allowed you to get away without being paid. I am very sorry. However,” she added quickly, “if you would like to run against Flame again, I’ll double the bet.”
“Thank you, Miss Vernon.” He bowed slightly, from the hips. “It was only that remark about my horse that made me run him at all. You see, miss, as you no doubt know, horses have feelin’s. I couldn’t let you run down my horse to his face thataway!”
Her eyes were on his and, suddenly, they crinkled at the corners and her lips rippled with a little smile.
“Now, if you’ll allow me . . .” He took her arm and escorted her from the room. Inside, they heard a sudden burst of applause, and he smiled as he offered her his hands for her foot. She stepped into them, then swung into her position on the horse.
“I’m sorry you had to come in there, but your brother was kind of abrupt.”
“That’s quite all right,” she replied quickly, almost too quickly. “Now our business is completed.”
He stepped back and watched them ride away into the darkness of early evening. Then he turned back to the saloon. He almost ran into a tall, carefully dressed man who had walked up behind him. A man equally as large as Pogue.
Pale blue eyes looked from a handsome, perfectly cut face of city white. He was trim, neat, and precise. Only the guns at his hips looked deadly with their polished butts and worn holsters.
“That,” said the tall man, gesturing after Sherry Vernon, “is a staked claim!”
Ross Haney was getting angry. Men who were bigger than he always irritated him, anyway. “If you think you can stake a claim on any woman, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
He shoved by toward the door, but behind him the voice said: “But that one’s staked. You hear me?”
* * * * *
Soledad by night was a tiny scattering of lights along the dark river of the street. Music from the tinny piano in the Bit and Bridle drifted down the street, and with it the lazy voice of someone singing a cow camp song. Ross Haney turned up the street toward the two-story frame hotel, his mind unable to free itself from the vision that was Sherry Vernon.
For the first time, the wife who was to share that ranch had a face. Until now there had been in his thoughts the vague shadow of a personality and a character, but there had been no definite features, nothing that could be recognized. Now, after seeing Sherry, he knew there could be but one woman in the ranch house he planned to build.
He smiled wryly as he thought of her sharing his life. What would she think of a cowhand? A drifting gun hand? And what would she say when it became known that he was Ross Haney? Not that the name meant very much, for it did not. Only, in certain quarters where fighting men gather, he had acquired something of a reputation. The stories about him had drifted across the country as such stories will, and, while he had little notoriety as a gunfighter, he was known as a hard, capable man who would and could fight.
He was keenly aware of his situation in Soledad and the Ruby Hills country. As yet, he was an outsider. They were considering him, and Pogue had already sensed enough of what he was to offer a job, gun or saddle job. When his intentions became known, he would be facing trouble and plenty of it. When they discovered that he had actually moved in and taken possession of the best water in the valley, they would have no choice but to buy him out, run him out, or kill him. Or they could move out themselves, and neither Walt Pogue nor Chalk Reynolds was the man for that.
In their fight Ross had no plan to take sides. He was a not too innocent bystander as far as they were concerned. When Bob and Sherry Vernon were considered, he wasn’t too sure. He scowled, realizing suddenly that sentiment had no place in such dealings as his. Until he saw Sherry Vernon, he had been a free agent, and now, for better or worse, he was no longer quite so free.
He could not now move with such cold indifference to the tides of war in the Ruby Hills. Now he had an interest, and his strength was lowered to just the degree of that interest. He was fully aware of the fact. It nettled him even as it amused him, for he was always conscious of himself, and viewed his motives with a certain wry, ironic humor, seeing himself always with much more clarity than others saw him.
Yet, despite that, something had been accomplished. He had staked his claim at Thousand Springs, and started his cabin. He had talked with Scott, and won an ally there, for he knew the old man was with him, at least to a point. He had met and measured Walt Pogue, and he knew that Emmett Chubb was now with Reynolds. That would take some investigation, for from all he had learned he had been sure that Pogue had hired Chubb to kill Vin Carter, but now Chubb worked for Reynolds.
Well, the alliance of such men was tied to a dollar sign, and their loyalty was no longer than their next pay day. And there might have been trouble between Pogue and Chubb, and that might be the reason Pogue was so eager to have him killed.
He directed his thoughts toward the Vernons. Bob was all man. Whatever Reynolds and Pogue planned for him, he would not take. He would have his own ideas, and he was a fighter.
What of the other hands who Scott implied were loyal to Levitt rather than Vernon? These men he must consider, too, and must plan carefully for them, for in such an action as he planned, he must be aware of all the conflicting elements in the valley.
The big man in the white hat he had placed at once. Carter had mentioned him with uncertainty, for when Carter left the valley Star Levitt had just arrived and was an unknown quantity.
With that instinctive awareness that the widely experienced man has for such things, Ross Haney knew that he and Star Levitt were slated to be enemies. They were two men who simply could not be friends, for there was a definite clash of personalities and character that made a physical clash inevitable. And Haney was fully aware that Star Levitt was not the soft touch some might believe. He was a dangerous man, a very dangerous man.
IV
Ross Haney found the Cattleman’s Rest Hotel was a long building with thirty rooms, a large empty lobby, and off to one side a restaurant. Feeling suddenly hungry, he turned to the desk for a room, his eyes straying toward the restaurant door.
When Haney dropped his war bag, a young man standing in the doorway turned and walked to the desk. “Room?” He smiled as he spoke, and his face was pleasant.
“The best you’ve got.” Ross grinned at him.
The clerk grinned back. “Sorry, but they are all equally bad, even if reasonably clean. Take Fifteen at the end of the hall. You’ll be closer to the well.”
“Pump?”
The clerk chuckled. “What do you think this is? New York? It’s a rope and bucket well. It’s been almost a year since we hauled a dead man out of it. The water should be good by now.”
“Sure.” Ross studied him for a moment. “Where you from? New York?”
“Yes, and Philadelphia, Boston, Richmond, London, and San Francisco, and now . . . Soledad.”
“You’ve been around.” Ross rolled a smoke and dropped the sack on the desk for the clerk. “How’s the food?”
“Good. Very good . . . and the prettiest waitress west of the Mississippi.”
Ross smiled. “Well, if she’s like the other girls around here, she’s probably a staked claim. I had a big hombre with a white hat tell me tonight that one girl was staked out for him.”
The clerk looked at him quickly, shrewdly. “Star Levitt?”
“I guess.”
“If he meant the lady you had the race with today, I’d say he was doing more hoping than otherwise. Sherry Vernon”—the clerk spoke carefully—“is not an easy claim to stake.”
Ross pulled the register around, hesitated an instant, and then wrote his name: Ross Haney, El Paso.
The clerk glanced at it, then looked up. “Glad to meet you, Ross. My name is Allan Kinney.” He looked down at the name again. “Ross Haney. I’ve heard that name from somewhere. It’s funny,” he added musingly, “about a name and a town. Ross Haney, from El Paso. Now you might not be from El Paso at all. You might be from Del Río or Sanderson or Uvalde. You might even be from Cheyenne or from Fort Sumner or White Oaks. What happened to you in El Paso? Or wherever you came from? And why did you come here? Men drift without reason sometimes, but usually there is something. Sometimes the law is behind them, or an outlaw ahead of them. Sometimes they just want new horizons or a change of scene, and sometimes they are hunting for something. You, now, I’d say you had come to Soledad for a reason . . . a reason that could mean trouble.”
“Let’s drink some coffee,” Haney suggested, “and see if that waitress is as pretty as you say.”
“You won’t think so,” Kinney said, shaking his head, “you won’t think so at all. You’ve just seen Sherry Vernon. After her all women looked washed out . . . until you get over her.”
“I don’t plan on it.”
The two men entered the restaurant and selected a table. Kinney dropped into a chair. “That, my friend, is a large order. Miss Vernon usually handles such situations with neatness and dispatch. She is always pleasant, never familiar.”
“This is different.” Ross, seated now, looked up and suddenly he knew with a queer excitement just what he was going to say. He said it. “I’m going to marry her.”
Allan Kinney gulped. “Have you told her? Does she know your intentions are honorable? Does she even know you have intentions?” He grinned. “You know, friend, that is a large order you have laid out for yourself.”
The waitress came up. She was a slender, very pretty girl with red hair, a few freckles, and a sort of bubbling good humor that was contagious.
“May,” Kinney said, “I want you to meet Ross Haney. He is going to marry Sherry Vernon.”
At this Ross felt his ears getting red and cursed himself for a thick-headed fool for ever saying such a thing. It may have been startled from him by the sudden realization that he intended to do just that.
“What?” May said quickly, looking at him, “another one?”
Haney glanced up and suddenly he put his hand over hers and said gently: “No, May. The one!”
Her eyes held his for a moment, and the laughter faded from them.
“You know,” she said seriously, “I think you might!”
She went for their coffee. Kinney looked at Ross with care. “Friend Haney,” he said, “you have made an impression. I really think the lady believed you. Now if you can do as well with Miss Vernon, you’ll be doing all right.”
The door opened suddenly from the street and two men stepped in. Ross glanced up, and his dark eyes held on the two men who stood there. One of the men was a big man with sloping shoulders, and his eyes caught Haney’s and narrowed as if in sudden recognition. The other man was shorter, thicker, but obviously a hardcase. Ross guessed that these men were from the Vernon ranch—or they could be, riders at least who knew about Ross Haney and were more than casually interested. These could be the men who worked for Star Levitt, and as such they merited study, yet their type was not an unfamiliar one to Ross Haney, or to any man who rode the borderlands or the wild country. While many a cowpuncher has branded a few mavericks or rustled a few cows when he needed drinking money, or wanted a new saddle, there was a certain intangible, yet very real difference that marked those who held to the outlaw trail, and both of these men had it. They were men with guns for hire, men who rode for trouble, and for the ready cash they could get for crooked work. He knew their type. He had faced such men before, and he knew they recognized him. These men were a type who never fought a battle for anyone but themselves.
No sooner were these two seated than May brought their coffee. Then, without warning, the door pushed open again and two more men came into the room. Ross glanced around and caught the eye of a short, stocky man who walked with a quick, jerky lift of his knees. He walked now—right over to Haney.
“You’re Ross Haney?” he said abruptly. “I’ve got a job for you! Start tomorrow morning! A hundred a month an’ found. Plenty of horses! I’m Chalk Reynolds an’ my place is just out of town in that big clump of cottonwoods. Old place. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”
Ross smiled. “Sorry, I’m not hunting a job.”
Reynolds had been turning away; he whipped back quickly. “What do you mean? Not looking for a job? At a hundred a month? When the range is covered with top hands gettin’ forty?”
The Man from Battle Flat Page 4