by Short, Luke;
Lottie didn’t answer, and Sam shifted his weight a little. His oily slicker peeled away from the desk top, diverting him for an instant.
Then he said, “Lottie, you’re not the kind to dodge things. I think you know this anyway.” He paused, isolating this. “There’d be no trouble here if Will would move. Bide would tame.”
“Will says he wouldn’t.”
Sam shook his head. “Bide lived to get even with Phil Evarts, and now Will has taken Phil’s place. When he hasn’t got Will to fight, he’s like any other man.”
Lottie stroked the smooth desk with her hand, and she was not looking at Sam. He knew he had said enough, only he could not resist a last telling point.
He came off the desk and said, “You’re the schoolteacher, Lottie. You remember that one about it’s better to be a live coward than a dead hero.”
“It’s just the other way around in the schoolbooks, Sam.”
“No,” Sam said gently. “You don’t believe it’s the other way around either, do you?”
Lottie held his glance for a few seconds and then said quietly, “No, Sam. I want him alive.”
“Then you’d better be quick about it,” Sam said gently. He nodded to her and went out.
Chapter 4
This camp puzzled Will. He and Ike Adams were bellied down in the mud of a ridge top, a piñon screening them from the camp in the draw below. The rain fell steadily, persistently, and the two men in cracked slickers down there in the scrub cedar were trying, and not very successfully, to rustle wood for their fire. A tarp strung between two of the cedars sheltered their outfit, and their underfed horses—two saddle animals and a pack horse—were foraging dismally and halfheartedly down the draw.
Ike said, “Hell, they ain’t even bothered to put out a guard,” and he looked at Will, puzzled. They had seen a scattering of gaunted strange cattle at the mouth of this draw that opened out from the Indian Ridge country and had made a careful circle to pull in above the camp. Will had expected to see more men, and careful men, for stealing range had never been anything but a serious matter. These men seemed concerned about nothing except how to keep warm. It was a curious procedure for an outfit at open war with Hatchet. For it was war now, after what Bide had said yesterday.
Will said, “We’ll walk down and brace ’em.”
“I dunno,” Ike said cautiously. He had ridden with Hatchet when it really knew trouble and had learned caution the hard way. He was a middle-aged man, taciturn to surliness, except where work was concerned. He had a fierce unthinking loyalty for Hatchet which, for him, meant Will. He shook his head. “This don’t look right.”
He pushed himself to his knees and said, “I’ll drop down-canyon a ways and walk up to their horses. You drift down behind ’em.”
Will nodded, and Ike set off, his boots balling up with the greasy mud before he had taken ten steps.
Will waited, watching the pair by the fire. He could place neither them nor the Star 22 brand on their horses, which was not the brand the strange cattle had carried. But he was certain of what he would do with them, and John Evarts had agreed.
He shuttled his glance down the canyon where the horses were grazing. Now he saw Ike come down off the slope and, once in the open, walk up slowly to the pack horse that stood watching him alertly.
The two men at the fire had seen Ike now, and one of them yelled, “Hey!”
Ike paid no attention, walking up to the horse as if he had not heard. The two men looked at each other, and then the nearest man dropped the dead branch he had just picked up and started toward Ike. The second, squatted by the fire, rose and hurried to join him.
They walked below Will, and when they were past he rose, rifle in hand, and started silently down the slippery slope. He hit the canyon floor behind them, and then they halted in front of Ike.
Will heard one of them say, “What’re you lookin’ for?”
Ike had reached the pack horse now, and he scratched its nose, and Will heard him answer, “What you got under those slickers, boys?”
Will came on, walking quietly, and again Ike spoke. “Just leave ’em buttoned and take a look behind you.”
One of the men turned and saw Will, who was holding his cocked rifle hip-high. The other one turned a moment later, and they watched Will approach.
Will saw they were brothers; they had the same long faces and bleach eyes, and in both their faces was an instant, sober alertness. They were a young and hungry-looking pair, but they eyed him levelly, with more respect than fear.
Will murmured dryly, “Go ahead. Tell me you don’t know where you are.”
The older one shook his head slowly. “I know too damn well where we are, mister.”
The honest reply puzzled Will momentarily, and he did not speak.
The younger one, with a kind of wry humor, said to his brother without looking at him, “He the one they said would be so busy he couldn’t get to all of us?”
The older one smiled embarrassedly but did not answer. He watched Will carefully, alertly.
Will said, “Where was this?”
The older one tilted his head toward the mountains. “Back in Ten Mile.”
“Who said it?”
“Redheaded fellow in the saloon there.”
Will seemed to ponder this while Ike watched him with a deepening alarm. Will said then, “You’re not from around here.”
The older brother shook his head. “We come up with one of them Indian trail herds. They paid off on the reservation, and we took our wages in cull stuff. Figured to drive across the mountains and find us some grass, and back there in Ten Mile we heard about this outfit.”
Ike spoke with a surly truculence. “Heard what?”
The older one looked at his brother and shrugged. “This outfit was s’posed to be bustin’ up. They said there was all the grass a man wanted, just for the takin’.”
Ike said grimly, “There is, if you can take it.” He came up to the younger one, ripped open his slicker, and lifted out a gun. The second man held his arms away and let Ike do the same to him. They both kept watching Will, however, for a clue to what would happen to them.
Will’s face was impassive, but a slow anger smoldered in his eyes. It did not touch these men, for in their places he would have done the same. His anger was at Bide and his sly, tireless schemings. Ten Mile was up in the Indigos at the end of a logging road. There was a rickety hotel there, the old logging-camp bunkhouse, along with a saloon and a store. It was Red Courteen’s town, out of which he and his men peddled whisky to the Indians and smuggled the beef they received in payment out of the country. A furtive trade in stolen horses and cattle was carried on there, and a few small outfits under Indian Ridge who were more than a day’s ride from Boundary traded there. Red Courteen had always been too wise to provoke Hatchet, but now that was changed too. Bide had persuaded him, and Red, in turn, had sent on these two ragged punchers who only wanted grass to give them a start. They had risked the gamble and lost.
Will let his rifle swing to his side. “Let ’em go, Ike.”
The outrage in Ike’s face was immediate, and he only stared at Will.
Will asked curtly, “What’s your name?”
The older one said, “Mel Young. Brother’s name’s Jim.” Only now that Will had let them go did he seem ashamed and somehow eager to please.
Will wiped a muddy hand on his slicker, framing his orders to them, and he was aware that Ike was watching with fierce disapproval. He looked at the younger brother, who grinned faintly, his sole gesture of thanks for letting them go.
A sudden thought struck Will. “Those your cattle down-canyon?”
Jim Young nodded. Will wheeled and looked back at their outfit, which was small enough that a pack horse could carry it. When he faced them again his mind was made up. “What do you do now?”
“Get off your range,” Mel said soberly.
“Want grass for your stuff?”
The two brothers looked at ea
ch other, and Jim Young said cautiously, “Sure.”
“Want it bad enough to work for nothing? I’ll feed you and put you up, but there’s no pay in it. You can run your stuff along with ours.”
Mel said immediately, “Hell, yes, we’ll take it.”
“We’re having trouble, you understand.”
“We’ll take that too,” Jim Young said.
While Ike held his surly silence Will gave them directions to Hatchet. After their guns had been returned he and Ike left them and climbed the slope in the still-falling rain and sought their horses. Ike paused as he was about to mount and looked at Will. “Know what a rawhider is, Will?”
Will shook his head in negation.
“They travel in wagons, whole famblies of ’em,” Ike said wryly. They’ll clean a country, quicker’n locusts. Steal you blind and deef. All their sorry gear they patch with rawhide.”
Will frowned, and Ike spat and said mildly, “Notice that youngest kid’s gun handle was tied with rawhide?”
“No.”
Ike said gloomily, “You’re goin’ to be sorry you didn’t run ’em out of the country. I’d sooner trust Red Courteen than them two.”
Will said mildly, patiently, “We need a crew if we’re going to fight, Ike. That’s one way to get one.”
When John Evarts saw the first scattering of cattle in the dripping timber, he grunted with satisfaction. Bide had been right yesterday when he said Ray had moved his stuff down onto Hatchet grass.
A Hatchet hand who had ridden over for a confirming look pulled up beside Evarts and the other Hatchet hand. “They’re Cavanaugh’s, all right.”
“Gather ’em up,” Evarts ordered.
For two hours he combed the surrounding country with his men in the steady rain, and when they met they had seventy head of cattle bunched on the wet flats.
Evarts said, “Take them back to the corrals, and we’ll wait for, Cavanaugh to show up.”
He and Will had agreed last night that it was impossible for Hatchet, undermanned and weak, to push every outfit off Hatchet grass. An easier way, and just as effective, would be to gather up all strange cattle, hold them at the ranch pasture, and face the men who came to redeem them.
Of one of the men now he asked, “Who has that place over there in the hills closest—Kennedy?”
“Back yonder,” the puncher said, nodding toward Indian Ridge.
“He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“Wes?” The puncher grinned. “He’s too tired to steal, I reckon.”
“You boys get along,” Evarts said. “I’ll catch up with you.”
He turned his pony north toward the hills as his men got the bedraggled cattle moving toward home.
A change had come over John Evarts since yesterday, and he scarcely knew what to make of it himself. He knew one thing however: for the first time since coming to Hatchet he had broken through Will Ballard’s reserve. He knew what had done it, too, knew the second it took place. It was when he had given his unspoken consent yesterday for Will to go ahead with the disarming of Bide and his men and the wrecking of the chuck wagon. Up to that moment he had been headed in one direction; at that moment, he swerved, and immediately Will Ballard was with him. It was that simple really.
He shifted in the wet saddle and wondered why he did not find it uncomfortable. Presently he dropped down into the valley where the argument had taken place yesterday.
He reined up and looked at it curiously. There was the chuck wagon on its side, its canvas vanished, its bed gutted, but its frame and two wheels holding together to mark the time the rain started and doused the fire. Pots, pans, and canned goods littered the ground.
Evarts regarded it wonderingly, and his mild face, wet and flushed now in the cold rain, reflected a grim pleasure. He wanted to fix this lonely scene in his mind, because it was a milestone in his life. If Bide had been content with claiming Russian Springs instead of overplaying his hand by coming to Ray Cavanaugh’s help, things would have gone their worrisome way. For John Evarts wasn’t a coward and he knew he wasn’t. It was just that up to yesterday he had believed, against Will’s quiet contradiction, that Bide had a normal man’s hunger for land and power whipped a little raw by Phil Evarts’ victories. Now he knew Bide’s appetite went beyond that. He wanted Hatchet brought to its knees, so he could take it, and John was going to fight him—now.
John had only a vague idea of where Kennedy’s place was and, feeling his way into this rough country, he came across a trail that swung a little west through the scrub timber. He followed its lift for three hours until it let onto a long meadow, at the end of which he could see a shack and outbuildings.
As he approached Evarts looked around the place and grimaced. A brush corral, a pole-and-brush shed, and a crude log shack made up the place, and it was a dozen outfits like this that Marriner had enlisted to help him in his fight against Hatchet.
Coming into the yard, Evarts saw a man step out onto the porch and lean against the post, watching him.
Evarts reined up and said, “How are you, Kennedy?”
“Pretty good, Mr. Evarts,” Kennedy drawled. He had the reputation of being a garrulous young man with a kind of shiftless, cheerful foolishness about him. His vest and shirt were close to tatters, his boots cracked and barely holding together. But in spite of his smile, his air of foolish unconcern, there was an uneasiness about him that Evarts couldn’t fathom. This impression was strengthened by the fact that Kennedy didn’t ask him to step down, although it was the custom of the country and the day was foul.
Kennedy just watched him uneasily, hands in pockets.
Evarts said, “You’re a neighbor to Cavanaugh, aren’t you?”
Kennedy nodded cautiously.
“Ever see him?”
“Now and then, Mr. Evarts. Just every once in a while, you might say.”
“Next time you see him give him a message for me, will you?”
Kennedy looked vastly relieved. He grinned uneasily and said, “Sure.”
“Tell him we’re holding his cattle at the house. If he wants them he can come and get them.”
Kennedy said quickly, “I’ll tell him. Sure thing, Mr. Evarts.”
Evarts nodded and was about to pull his horse around when a man stepped out of the shack behind Kennedy. Kennedy wheeled, as if to stop him, and was shoved roughly aside.
Ray Cavanaugh stood there, a rifle held at his side. In the first brief glimpse of him Evarts thought he was drunk. His tight, tough face was flushed, his hair awry, and he was in his sock feet. Then he coughed. He did not cease watching Evarts with his wild, bloodshot eyes, but his coughing, deep and pulpy, almost doubled him over. He dragged in a couple of deep, almost choking breaths of air, and when he spoke his voice was rough and hoarse.
“Get down off that horse!”
Evarts just watched him in silence. “You’re sick.”
“Damn right I am,” Cavanaugh said. “I footed it for five hours in that rain to make it here. You’re goin’ to do the same.” Evarts had a swift, momentary pity for the man, and then it vanished. A man accepted the consequences of his own acts, and Cavanaugh must accept his. There was a new stubbornness in John Evarts as he shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
Cavanaugh raised his rifle almost to his shoulder. “Have I got to shoot you off that horse?”
“Yes, you do.”
For a moment the two men looked at each other, and then Evarts saw the maniac rage mount in Cavanaugh’s eyes. A cold dismay struck him, and he yanked his horse around, seeing the gun lift to Cavanaugh’s shoulder as he wheeled.
He never heard the shot. Something smashed his breath out of him. He tasted mud, and that was all.
As Evarts slipped to the ground Kennedy lunged for the rifle and wrenched it out of Cavanaugh’s hands. He dropped it, plunging off the porch into the slippery yard. He fell once, rose and raced on, and when he reached Evarts he knelt, pulled him off his back, and turned him over. A
thin ribbon of blood licked out from the corner of Evarts’ muddy mouth spread fuzzily as the rain touched it, and vanished down behind his jaw.
Kennedy, in panic, shook him, and when Evarts’ head rolled loosely he dropped him. Coming to his feet in the rain, the full horror of it held him motionless a moment, and then he turned and looked at Cavanaugh on the porch.
“You killed him.”
Cavanaugh stepped down and came across to him, his bare feet leaving big splayed tracks in the mud. Both men stood there staring at Evarts, and then Cavanaugh whispered, “O Jesus.” Kennedy didn’t even hear him.
Cavanaugh wasn’t mad any more. The memory of the bitter humiliation, of Will Ballard’s contemptuous beating, of his wild rage at anything Hatchet was gone, and only fear remained. His sick mind raced ahead now, picturing the chain of frightening events this shooting would put in movement, and he shivered uncontrollably.
“You saw him,” he said fiercely to Kennedy. “He was pullin’ his gun on me! I had to do it!”
Kennedy looked at him and said without spirit, “He wasn’t goin’ for his gun.”
“Listen,” Cavanaugh pled hoarsely. “He was goin’ for his gun. I saw him!”
Kennedy just looked at him, the honor still in his eyes.
Cavanaugh fought for a grip on himself. Like a small snake creeping experimentally, from under a stone, an idea, furtive and guileful, was coming to life in his sick brain. The rain beat down through his sandy hair, cooling the fever in him.
“Listen, Wes,” he said. His voice had lost its panic and now had an ugliness to it. “You’re in this too.”
Kennedy raised both hands and took a step backward. “Oh no,” he said quickly. “Not me. I never shot him. I never had a gun. I never even saw it.”
“I’ll tell Ballard you did.”