“You pointing any part of that remark at me?” Lee turned carefully, his flat, wicked eyes on Krag. “I want to know.”
“I’m not hunting trouble.” Krag spoke flatly. “I spoke my piece. You owe me forty bucks, Ryerson.”
Ryerson dug his hand into his pocket and slapped two gold eagles on the bar. “That pays you off. Now get out of the country. I want no part of turncoats. If you’re around here after twenty-four hours, I’ll hunt you down like a dog.”
Krag had turned away. Now he smiled faintly. “Why, sure. I reckon you would. Well, for your information, Ryerson, I’ll be here.”
Before they could reply, he strode from the room. Chet Lee stared after him. “I never had no use for that saddle tramp, anyway.”
Ryerson bit the end off his cigar. His anger was cooling and he was disturbed. Krag was a solid man. Despite Lee, he knew that. Suddenly he was disturbed—or had it been ever since he saw Dan Riggs’s white, strained face? Gloomily he stared down at his whiskey. What was wrong with him? Was he getting old? He glanced at the harsh face of Chet Lee—why wasn’t he as sure of himself as Lee? Weren’t they here first? Hadn’t they cut hay in the valley for four years? What right had the nesters to move in on them?
Krag Moran walked outside and shoved his hat back on his head. Slowly he built a smoke. Why, he was a damned fool! He had put himself right in the middle by quitting. Now he would be fair game for Leason’s friends, with nobody to stand beside him. Well, that would not be new. He had stood alone before he came here, and he could again.
He looked down the street. Dan Riggs was squatted in the street, picking up his type. Slowly Krag drew on his cigarette, then he took it from his lips and snapped it into the gutter. Riggs looked up as his shadow fell across him. His face was still dark with bitterness.
Krag nodded at it. “Can you make that thing work again? The press, I mean.”
Riggs stared at the wrecked machine. “I doubt it,” he said quietly. “It was all I had, too. They think nothing of wrecking a man’s life.”
Krag squatted beside him and picked up a piece of the type and carefully wiped off the sand. “You made a mistake,” he said quietly. “You should have had a gun on your desk.”
“Would that have stopped them?”
“No.”
“Then I’m glad I didn’t have it. Although”—there was a flicker of ironic humor in his eyes—“sometimes I don’t feel peaceful. There was a time this afternoon when if I’d had a gun . . .”
Krag chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “I see what you mean. Now let’s get this stuff picked up. If we can get that press started, we’ll do a better job . . . and this time I’ll be standing beside you.”
* * * * *
Two days later the paper hit the street, and copies of it swiftly covered the country.
BIG RANCHERS WRECK JOURNAL PRESS
EFFORTS OF THE BIG RANCHERS OF THE SQUAW CREEK VALLEY RANGE TO STIFLE THE FREE PRESS HAVE PROVED FUTILE . . .
There followed the complete story of the wrecking of the press and the threats to Dan Riggs. Following that was a rehash of the two raids on the nesters, the accounts of the killings of Grimes and Leason, and the warning to the state at large that a full-scale cattle war was in the making unless steps were taken to prevent it.
Krag Moran walked across the street to the saloon, and the bartender shook his head at him. “You’ve played hob,” he said. “They’ll lynch both of you now.”
“No, they wont. Make mine rye.”
The bartender shook his head. “No deal. The boss says no selling to you or Riggs.”
Krag Moran’s smile was not pleasant. “Don’t make any mistakes, Pat,” he said quietly. “Riggs might take that. I won’t. You set that bottle out here on the bar or I’m going back after it. And don’t reach for that shotgun. If you do, I’ll part your hair with a bullet.”
The bartender hesitated, and then reached carefully for the bottle. “It ain’t me, Krag,” he objected. “It’s the boss.”
“Then you tell the boss to tell me.” Krag poured a drink, tossed it off, and walked from the saloon.
When Moran crossed the street, there was a sorrel mare tied in front of the shop. He glanced at the brand and felt his mouth go dry. He pushed open the door and saw her standing there in the half shadow—and Dan Riggs was gone.
“He needed coffee,” Carol said quietly. “I told him I’d stay until you came back.”
He looked at her and felt something moving deep within him, an old feeling that he had known only in the lonesome hours when he had found himself wanting someone, something—and this was it.
“I’m back.” She still stood there. “But I don’t want you to go.”
She started to speak, and then they heard the rattle of hoofs in the street and suddenly he turned and watched the sweeping band of riders come up the street and stop before the shop. Chet Lee was there, and he had a rope.
Krag Moran glanced at Carol. “Better get out of here,” he said. “This will be rough.” And then he stepped outside.
They were surprised and looked it. Krag stood there with his thumbs hooked in his belt, his eyes running over them. “Hi,” he said easily. “You boys figure on using that rope?”
“We figure on hanging an editor,” Ryerson said harshly.
Krag’s eyes rested on the old man for an instant. “Ryerson,” he said evenly, “you keep out of this. I have an idea, if Chet wasn’t egging you on, you’d not be in this. I’ve also an idea that all this trouble centers around one man, and that man is Chet Lee.”
Lee sat his horse with his eyes studying Krag carefully. “And what of it?” he asked.
Riggs came back across the street. In his hand he held a borrowed rifle, and his very manner of holding it proved he knew nothing about handling it. As he stepped out in front of the cattlemen, Carol Duchin stepped from the print shop. “As long as you’re picking on unarmed men and helpless children,” she said clearly, “you might as well fight a woman, too.”
Lee was shocked. “Carol! What are you doin’ here? You’re cattle!”
“That’s right, Chet. I run some cows. I’m also a woman. I know what a home means to a woman. I know what it meant to Missus Hershman to lose her husband. I’m standing beside Riggs and Moran in this . . . all the way.”
“Carol!” Lee protested angrily. “Get out of there! This is man’s work! I won’t have it!”
“She does what she wants to, Chet,” Krag said, “but you’re going to fight me.”
Chet Lee’s eyes came back to Krag Moran. Suddenly he saw it there, plain as day. This man had done what he had failed to do; he had won. It all boiled down to Moran. If he was out of the way . . .
“Boss”—it was one of Ryerson’s men—“look out.”
Ryerson turned his head. Three men from the nester outfit stood ranged at even spaces across the street. Two of them held shotguns, one a Spencer rifle. “There’s six more of us on the roofs!” Hedrow called down. “Anytime you want to start your play, Krag, just open the ball.”
Ryerson shifted in his saddle. He was suddenly sweating, and Krag Moran could see it. Nevertheless, Moran’s attention centered itself on Chet Lee. The younger man’s face showed his irritation and his rage at the futility of his position. Stopped by the presence of Carol, he was now trapped by the presence of the nesters.
“There’ll be another day!” He was coldly furious. “This isn’t the end!”
Krag Moran looked at him carefully. He knew all he needed to know about the man he faced. Chet Lee was a man driven by a passion for power. Now it was the nesters, later it would be Ryerson, and then, unless she married him, Carol Duchin. He could not be one among many; he could not be one of two. He had to stand alone.
“You’re mistaken, Chet,” Moran said. “It ends here.”
Chet Lee’s eyes swung back to Krag. For the first time he seemed to see him clearly. A slow minute passed before he spoke. “So that’s the way it is?” he said softly.
&n
bsp; “That’s the way it is. Right now you can offer your holdings to Ryerson. I know he has the money to buy them. Or you can sell out to Carol, if she’s interested. But you sell out, Chet. You’re the troublemaker here. With you gone, I think Ryerson and Hedrow could talk out a sensible deal.”
“I’ll talk,” Hedrow said quietly, “and I’ll listen.”
Ryerson nodded. “That’s good for me. And I’ll buy, Chet. Name a price.”
Chet Lee sat perfectly still. “So that’s the way it is?” he repeated. “And if I don’t figure to sell?”
“Then we take your gun and start you out of town,” Krag said quietly.
Lee nodded. “Yeah, I see. You and Ryerson must have had this all figured out. A nice way to do me out of my ranch. And your quitting was all a fake.”
“There was no plan,” Moran said calmly. “You’ve heard what we have to say. Make your price. You’ve got ten minutes to close a deal or ride out without a dime.”
Chet Lee’s face did not alter its expression. “I see,” he said. “But suppose something happens to you, Krag? Then what? Who here could make me toe the line? Or gamble I’d not come back?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Krag spoke quietly. “You see, Chet, I know your kind.”
“Well”—Chet shrugged, glancing around—“I guess you’ve got me.” He looked at Ryerson. “Fifty thousand?”
“There’s not that much in town. I’ll give you twelve, and that’s just ten thousand more than you hit town with.”
“Guess I’ve no choice,” Chet said. “I’ll take it.” He looked at Krag. “All right if we go to the bank?”
“All right.”
Chet swung his horse to the right, but, as he swung the horse, he suddenly slammed his right spur into the gelding’s ribs. The bay sprang sharply left, smashing into Riggs and knocking him down. Only Krag’s quick leap backwards against the print shop saved him from going down, too. As he slammed home his spur, Chet grabbed for his gun. It came up fast and he threw a quick shot that splashed Krag Moran’s face with splinters, then he swung his horse and shot, almost pointblank, into Krag’s face.
But Moran was moving as the horse swung, and, as the horse swung left, Moran moved away. The second shot blasted past his face and then his own guns came up and he fired two quick shots. So close was Chet Lee that Krag heard the slap of the bullets as they thudded into his ribs below the heart.
Lee lost hold of his gun and slid from the saddle, and the horse, springing away, narrowly missed stepping on his face.
Krag Moran stood over him, looking down. Riggs was climbing shakily to his feet, and Chet was alive yet, staring at Krag.
“I told you I knew your kind, Chet,” Krag said quietly. “You shouldn’t have tried it.”
* * * * *
Carol Duchin was in the café when Krag Moran crossed the street. He had two drinks under his belt and he was feeling them, which was rare for him. Yet he hadn’t eaten and he could not remember when he had.
She looked up when he came through the door and smiled at him. “Come over and sit down,” she said. “Where’s Dan?”
Krag smiled with hard amusement. “Getting money from Ryerson to buy him a new printing outfit.”
“Hedrow?”
“Him and the nesters signed a contract to supply Ryerson with hay. They’d have made a deal in the beginning if it hadn’t been for Chet. Hedrow tried to talk business once before. I heard him.”
“And you?”
He placed his hat carefully on the hook and sat down. He was suddenly tired. He ran his fingers through his crisp, dark hair. “Me?” He blinked his eyes and reached for the coffee pot. “I’m going to shave and take a bath. Then I’m going to sleep for twenty hours about, and then I’m going to throw the leather on my horse and hit the trail.”
“I told you over there,” Carol said quietly, “that I didn’t want you to go.”
“Uhn-uh. If I don’t go now”—he looked at her somberly—“I’d never want to go again.”
“Then don’t go,” she said.
And he didn’t.
THE END
About the Editor
Jon Tuska is the author of numerous books about the American West as well as editor of several short story collections, Billy the Kid: His Life and Legend (Greenwood Press, 1994) and The Western Story: A Chronological Treasury (University of Nebraska Press, 1995) among them. Together with his wife Vicki Piekarski, Tuska co-founded Golden West Literary Agency that primarily represents authors of Western fiction and Western Americana. They edit and co-publish twenty-six titles a year in two prestigious series of new hardcover Western novels and story collections, the Five Star Westerns and the Circle V Westerns. They also co-edited the Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction (McGraw-Hill, 1983), The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1996), The Morrow Anthology of Great Western Short Stories (Morrow, 1997), and The First Five Star Western Corral (Five Star Westerns, 2000). Tuska has also edited a series of short novel collections, Stories of the Golden West, of which there have been seven volumes.
The Man from Battle Flat Page 16