Before him the hard-packed earth was pinkish white, and he could see that despite the comparative coolness the windows were lifted in the bunkhouse. Snow was gone from the small plaza except close to the buildings.
The sun glared brightly on the walls and was reflected from the windows. Hopalong Cassidy stepped out from the corner of the building to the edge of the long porch that ran before the house.
"Span!" His voice rang loudly in the empty plaza. "Come on out!" As if on signal, Avery Span stepped from the barn. "You want me, Cassidy?"
Hopalong could see the big gunman scowling to pick him out against the dull wall of the house where it was shaded by the porch. It was going to be tougher for him now, and those men inside the house would not find it easy to shoot at him if Mesquite failed.
But Hopalong knew he would not fail. He had never failed.
"Why, sure! Heard you were huntin' me, Avery. Reckoned I'd make it easier for you, seein' as we have a little score to settle."
"You crabbed my game, Cassidy." Sparr walked forward two steps into the open. "Come on out where I can see you!"
Hopalong Cassidy's quick eyes had been gauging the situation. He found he could step out into the open and still not leave himself a target for the men in the house, and that unless Ed Framson shifted fast, he would be blocked off by Sparr's own body. Moving with easy steps, Hopalong walked into the open, and the two men faced each other seventy yards apart. As if eager to draw Hopalong still farther into the open, Avery Sparr started toward him.
Meanwhile, Johnny Nelson had skirted the timber and raced his horse through the snow to the foot of the hill atop which one of the Gleason boys would be waiting. The thick snow, partially shaded by trees, muffled the hoofbeats, and Johnny swung down and started up through the rocks. He was moving swiftly and surely, fierce with eagerness and desperate with the necessity of closing in on this man in time to back Hopalong up, for well he knew the dangerous position into which his friend had stepped. He went up the rocks swiftly, and atop the hill saw a husky man in a sheep-lined coat crouching behind some rocks.
He took two quick steps before his boot crunched on snow and Gleason saw him. His face wolfish, the man dropped his rifle and drew a knife. He lunged at Johnny, eager for the kill. And Johnny Nelson knew that a shot from him would explode the whole yard into a blazing pit of gunfire, where Hoppy would be the focal point. He took one step back, and as the long arm thrust wickedly with the low-held knife, Johnny grabbed the man's wrist and he spilled him over on his head into the piled-up snow and leaves.
The fellow hit hard and lost hold on his knife, but he was tough, and came up with a lunge.
No more than Johnny did he wish to spoil the ambush down below, and he was a bearlike man who loved to fight. He closed in swiftly and took a ramlike fist in the mouth that lost him some teeth, and then a right on the jaw that made his skull ring. He ducked his head to get in close and caught a fist and then an elbow. He lunged again, slipped, and his chin encountered a lifting knee.
He went down hard, and Johnny Nelson dived for the rocks and the rifle.
At the very same time as Johnny mounted the rocks, Mesquite reached the house. There were no doors on the back, so he tried a window. It was shut, and either locked or frozen. Hastening, he tried a second and a third. All were tightly closed. Desperate, he was about to round the house and come into the open when the Mexican woman cook saw him. She came quickly to the window and tried to lift it. No luck.
Grabbing a kettle from the fire, she poured it over the middle sash and the bottom. Mesquite shoved and the window came loose. In an instant he was through the window and into the house. Stepping around her, he pushed past into the huge living room.
Leven Proctor lounged against the fireplace, a rifle in his hands. Crouched by a window was the second Gleason, a small man with a wizened rat face. "Drop "em, boys," Mesquite said softly, "or gamble!"
At that instant the yard broke into a thunder of gunfire and Gleason gambled-and lost. His gun, already drawn, swung around, and Mesquite opened fire with both guns. Leaping from his holsters like a magician's gesture, they vomited flame.
Mesquite saw Proctor's face over the darting flame of his guns and saw the tall man swing the rifle and fire. He felt himself stagger and saw Leven Proctor go down to his knees, coughing blood. Gleason was dead over the windowsill, and Mesquite darted for the door. It was like him that he wasted not a look at Hopalong. He had been given his chores, and he knew what he should do was what he had been told to do. He started on a run for the corral. Framson, about to get into a new firing position at last, saw him coming. His eyes swung one way, then the other, but Mesquite was too close a danger, and he snapped a quick shot at him, felt a bullet smash his shoulder. He dropped his gun, scooped it up, and dodged across the corral. Mesquite circled it, firing between the planks. Framson went down coughing, got up, and leaped for the corral fence, grabbing the top pole with his hands. He swung himself over and Mesquite stood, wide-legged with lifted guns, and for an instant they looked at each other. And in the cold eyes of Mesquite Jenkins, Ed Framson saw death. He grinned suddenly, feeling the red heat of the bullets he had taken in his body.
"Why, you lucky blister!" he said. "You lucky blister! I'll kill you!" He dropped, landing miraculously on his feet, his grin wide. "You got me, but I want company!"
His gun swung up, and Mesquite's Colts hammered death into him, knocking him back step by step, until he fell.
Even as Mesquite was crawling through the window and Johnny fighting among the rocks, Hopalong Cassidy was walking out into the open against Sparr. And Avery Sparr, who had never known fear of another man, suddenly felt a strange certainty welling up within him. The battered gray hat, the fringe of silver hair, the frosty blue eyes, the sloping shoulders, and the curious, shortstepping cowman's walk-that was Hopalong Cassidy, and it was death.
In that clear, sun-bathed luminous instant Avery Sparr knew his time had come. It came to him with a flash of realization, such a certainty as he had never known before. He knew he was going to die, and somehow then he knew that it had been in his mind ever since he had first seen this man. All his plans had gone wrong. His big gamble, which until then had been so safe, so sure, all had failed.
Yet in that clear instant of realization, his cold and haggard face revealing nothing, Avery Sparr knew that a man has but one time to die. All other things he can do many times, but he can die but once, and if a man cannot live proudly, he can at least die proudly.
Tall, gray, and bleak, he stopped, facing Hopalong across the thirty yards of distance that separated them. In that instant-such is the way of fighting men-he felt almost an affection for the gunfighter facing him. At least he wouldn't be like Hickok, shot in the back without a chance by a tinhorn, or shot from the dark like Billy the Kid.
He could end it out here in the sunshine and take Cassidy with him.
"How d'you like it, Cassidy?" His voice was harsh. "Let's see how good you really are!"
They stared at each other, each knowing well how the other felt, for both were fighting men. No matter how far apart the ways of life, the divisions of color, creed, or living, there is between fighting men an understanding, and such these felt now.
Starr spoke once more before the guns began to talk.
"You know, boy, it's a nice way to go, out in the sunshine, with the sound of the first snow meltin"!"
His hands dived for his guns, and as if on order, guns began to crash about them.
To men in great moments of suspense, moments of great emotion and action, comes a suspension of time, so that the action of seconds seems to drag to long, long minutes.
Avery Sparr's big hands dropped in that old familiar gesture of death, dropped for the butts of the big guns he loved so well, and, like darting lightning, the guns cleared their holsters and leaped to position, yet in a breathless instant before him, flame shot from the guns of Hopalong Cassidy.
Sparr's teeth bared in a snarl as he took
the hammering lead; his cheeks seemed to sink to deep hollows. His hat was gone somehow, and there was the dark, smoky taste of battle in his mouth, and he was shooting, shooting, shooting!
He had no way of knowing in those last gun-blazing split seconds of his life that his equilibrium had been destroyed by the first bullet he took, that the second had torn his left arm, smashing the bone and tearing flesh as the misshapen bullet found a way through. He had no way of knowing that the big guns in his hands were hammering into the sun-baked earth and that his own body was knocked right and then left by lead from Cassidy's smoking guns.
Hopalong, his face bleak, stepped around the big gunman as a fast boxer steps around a slow-moving slugger-stepped around and shot him to doll rags, for Hopalong knew that while one tiny breath of life wavered in this man he was a fighter still. Cruel he might be, criminal he might have been, but he was a fighting man.
Once only he paused to flash a shot at a window. Then he finished the job and left Sparr flat on his face in the sunshine. Wheeling, he ran for the storeroom.
Anse Mowry was there. Anse, who had cursed Hopalong and sworn to kill him. Anse, who was vicious and cruel, but who had watched with amazement as the mighty Avery Sparr went down beneath Hopalong's guns. Suddenly something thick and bitter climbed in his throat, andwitha cry of half-animal fear he saw Hopalong wheel away from Sparr and come toward him. Wheeling, Mowry clawed at the window. Forgotten were all the boasts he had made; forgotten his claims and his meanness.
He clawed at the frozen-shut window, then grabbed a chair and smashed out the glass. With a lunge he dived through, the glass ripping his flesh.
He started on a run for the woods, his throat torn with cries of fear. Sanity had left him, and he had only one idea: to get away, to escape.
Suddenly, fearfully, he glanced disover his shoulder and snapped a wild shot at the window where Hopalong's face was framed. The long gun spoke, and he turned half around and stretched out in the snow, his boasts as dead as his fears, his blood staining the snow, as red as any man's. A spatter of shots came from the buildings, and Hopalong sprang back. Somewhere a horse's hoofs hammered and died away, and then the air was soft with sunshine and the smell of melting snow. Hopalong fed bullets into his guns and stepped into the open. Mesquite was coming toward him, limping. "Burned me," he said.
"You hurt?"
"No." And then, thoughtful as he always was, "Where's Joey?,. "Comin'!" Johnny Nelson came down the rocky hill toward them. "Mowry?"
Mesquite asked.
"Dead."
"I got two in the house," Mesquite said, "an' Framson's gone."
Johnny Nelson waited until he recovered his breath. "The Piute an' his sidekick lit a shuck when Sparr went down."
"How about Lydon? Wasn't he the one in the bunkhouse?" "My first shot. Let's look."
Lydon lay inside the window, beyond the rustling of cattle. "That other hombre, the one up in the rocks, I knocked him out, but he got up an' came for me with a knife. He's finished too."
Hopalong picked up his hat, which he had lost in the fight. "One man still missing," he said. "Where's Johnny Rebb?"
"Lit out, maybe?" Nelson suggested.
"Uh-uh. Not him." Mesquite was positive.
"He ain't the runnin' kind." At the sound of approaching horses all three turned swiftly.
Mesquite's rifle swung up.
"Hold it!" Hopalong grasped the gun barrel. "That's Sim Thatcher an' his crowd."
Thatcher rode up, his horse shying at the body of Avery Sparr. The rancher stared at him, then turned to Hopalong. "Dead, huh? You did it?"
"Yeah. I reckon two or three got away.
The Piute an' one of the Gleasons. No sign of Johnny Rebb.
"Sun, I'm ridin' to Alma to tell Dick about this. While I'm over there I'll pick up that buckskin o' yours. Now look, that's the best mountain horse I ever rode, an' I want him."
He paused, and sobered. "Of course he's a mite old, an' a little sway-backed, but-was "You durned no-account, silver-headed liar!"
Sim Thatcher chuckled. "That buckskin ain't quite five yet, and if he's swaybacked I'm the next Emperor of China. Don't start runnin' him down to beat me out of him. I like that horse.
He's one of the best I ever saw, but you done me a big favor, Hopalong, so if you don't take that horse as a present, you need never speak to me again.
Nor," he grinned, "you don't eat no more apple pie at my place!"
Hopalong rubbed his jaw, his blue eyes twinkling. "I reckon that last argument cinches it, Sim! I sure was figgerin' on more pie!"
Mesquite looked at Johnny Nelson.
"Did he say pie? Apple pie?" "Sounded like it." Johnny looked serious. "I don't believe it, but in the interests of truth an' veracity, not to say science an' history, I figger we better ride over to the T Bar an' carry on a little investigation-like." Hopalong watched them start for their horses. "Better leave a couple of men here, Sim, if you can spare "em. I'm headin" for Alma. Also," he added, "you better take all the rest of them back to your spread if they want to protect that pie. There's only one thing those boys do as good as fight, an that's eat!"
Dick Jordan was sitting up in bed when Hopalong entered the room. "Confound it all!" he bellowed. "These here women sure keep a man hemmed in! They don't give me enough grub to keep a yearlin' youngster goin' an' expect me to get better!" He held out a hand. "I sure am pleased, Hoppy! Fact you're here proves things is better! Leastways, you're still on your feet!"
"Yeah."
Hopalong dropped to a chair and tried to comb his hair with his fingers, conscious of Pamela's presence. They were bursting with questions and it was like him to tease them by ignoring their curiosity. "Looks like a good winter, Dick. Nice fall of snow, some meltin' now, but that's only in the low places.
Purty quick she'll snow real hard again, an' we'll have good summer grass. Now-"
"Consarn you, Hoppy!" Jordan interrupted.
"Stop that infernal beatin" around the bush! What happened? Where's Sparr?"
Hopalong glanced at Pamela, who was staring at him, avid with interest and excitement.
"Span?" he inquired. "Oh? Oh, yeah!
Sparr."
"Well, what happened?" Jordan demanded, scowling. Pamela leaned forward, looking even more charming than usual. "Hoppy, stop teasing!
Please, please tell me!"
Cassidy chuckled. "All right. Well, there ain't much to tell. Mesquite an' Johnny had a run-in up in Turkey Springs-was Quietly he told them the story, adding no unnecessary details, merely giving them the information.
"About all it amounts to is that your ranch is in your hands again and those outlaws are either dead or runnin' for the border."
"You didn't say nothing about Rebb," Jordan complained. "What happened to him?"
"Not a word or a sound. He vanished just like the earth swallowed him. I wanted to leave the same day to come over here, but couldn't. One of Thatcher's boys found Soper. He was dead, had been shot and killed at that guard cabin on the ford of the West Fork. From sign around he figgered Johnny Rebb done that.
"Mesquite trailed Rebb's horse up to the cabin an saw where he was joined by Soper. Soper evidently tried to kill him because we saw Rebb's tracks goin' away, then where he turned real fast. And Soper had a stingy gun lyin' near by him."
"What about Rebb's trail?"
"He started for the Circle J, but evidently heard the shootin' an' saw the T Bar outfit come up. Maybe he ran into some of the boys who took out, but anyway, he never showed up."
Outside, the moonlight was bright as moonlight can only be on an early winter night. The street was empty of snow, save in a few sheltered places where the day's sunlight could not reach, but in the east the high peaks of the Mogollons sparkled like moonlit diamonds, impossibly, unbelievably beautiful.
In an empty cabin almost a block away from the house where Hopalong Cassidy talked with the Jordans, a man fed a fire in a glowing red stove, and close to the stove he held his h
ands, and from time to time he kneaded his fingers with care.
The room in which he sat was dark but for the fire, but it had the lonely, empty feeling of a room long deserted. This was the home of one of the men Hopalong had run out of the Eagle. The room's only window opened on the street, and from it one commanded an excellent view of the house where Dick Jordan lay recuperating from his mountain journey.
The man in the cabin smoked a cigarette, then carefully put it out, and sat still beside his fire, waiting with such patience as only the hunter knows. And he was, indeed, a hunter Johnny Rebb, waiting to kill Hopalong Cassidy.
He had not much longer to wait. Death is rarely impatient and can conjure up a multitude of tiny delays. Death definitely has dramatic sense and understands the rules of suspense, for upon this night Johnny had come to his feet more than once, his gun ready. First it had been the doctor coming out, and then somebody who delivered an armful of groceries, and then a visitor. Hopalong was staying a long time.
He would not stay the night. Johnny Rebb had taken precautions to find out, but it did not matter, for Rebb was prepared to wait a week, a month if necessary. He had a good store of dry wood. He allowed little smoke to emerge, no light to be seen. His supplies had been brought in by night.
Hopalong Cassidy was a careful man. Always a fighting man, he had learned that survival was a matter of intelligence, of knowing things first, and being always ready for the unexpected. Pamela had come with him to the door, and they stood there, talking.
"Will you go back to Buck now, Hoppy?" she asked. "No." His eyes strayed down the street and rested upon a dark house; rested, then moved on.
"No, I reckon not. I want to ride south from here, down near the border. Little town down there I want to see, and some new country."
"Won't you ever settle down? Stay in one place?" Her hand was on his sleeve. "Why don't you stay here, Hoppy? SomehowOh, I feel so much better when you're near, and lately I've been almost sick when you were gone." He avoided her eyes, reflecting miserably that she would probably be sicker if he stayed and then went. And he would go.
the Rustlers Of West Fork (1951) Page 19