by Lauran Paine
“I’m John Rockland,” he said, and let it lie there for a second before continuing. “I think you must be the King brothers.” None of the big men acted as though they had heard. Rockland’s pause this time was longer. Bannion could see the big vein in the side of his neck swelling.
“Well, are you the King brothers or aren’t you?”
Hank answered, saying simply: “You’re the one who’s got something to say, Rockland. Get on with it.”
Bannion saw the back of John Rockland’s neck turn dark red. He could not see Rockland’s face but he could plainly hear his voice, and that was just as good, for the words fell like steel balls striking glass now.
“I’ve heard why you’re here,” Rockland said. “That killing was a very unfortunate thing, but it was purest accident. Everyone is sorry about it. That’s going to be the end of it. Your father is dead and buried. He can’t be brought back and the wisest thing for you to do is saddle up and ride back where you came from.”
A man came up beside Doyle Bannion, reached out to catch his attention, and said in a whisper: “What’s going on?”
Bannion said fiercely: “Shut up!” It wasn’t until then was he conscious that people were standing like statues on both sides of the roadway, watching as this drama unfolded. The bystanders were captivated, gripped by the stillness, the mortal hush that filled in after Rockland stopped speaking, waiting and scarcely breathing, for an answer from those four big men.
It was Al who spoke. With something very close to scorn in his voice, he said: “Why didn’t you bring McAfee with you? But you should know that talking won’t change anything. Just send McAfee into town. Or maybe the lot of you’d like to come in with him. That’s all we want...so go on away, Rockland, unless you’re buying into this, too, because we’re not a damn’ bit interested in you...or your riders.” Al paused, then concluded with: “Make it easy or make it hard...it’s up to you. Send McAfee in and he can take his pick which of us he wants to meet. That way only one or two men’ll die. That’ll be the easy way.” Al paused briefly before continuing. “You buy in, Rockland, and pay your riders a bonus so they’ll also buy in, and things won’t be so simple for any of us. That way, we figure, maybe a half dozen or even a dozen men’ll die. It’s up to you.”
John Rockland sat there with his distant, withdrawn look, regarding the four Kings from a face iron-like and unafraid. “Maybe Bannion didn’t tell you,” he said, “but I protect my own. That goes for McAfee, too.”
Ray King spoke for the first time. “I’m not surprised about that. I got the impression the way you rode into town you’d be the kind who’d protect a murderer, Rockland. I’ve seen a dozen just like you across Texas. Big men, powerful men, above the law and beyond it. All right. You called the tune, we didn’t. You want to dance, so I reckon you’ll just have to pay the musicians.”
Ray stood up. He walked fifty feet to the south. Hank got up, also. He passed fifty feet to John Rockland’s right. Young Austin, the fiery, proud, and fearless one, walked dead ahead and halted three feet in front of John Rockland’s handsome blood bay gelding. His pale eyes were fully settled upon the owner of Texas Star.
Al, the one Bannion watched next, went along to the livery barn door and faded from sight around it.
Something like a sigh passed up and down the roadway. Men turned, took the women with them, and passed without delay into whatever store was nearest. In a twinkling the main roadway of Perdition Wells was empty except for Doyle Bannion, the thoroughly exposed Texas Star men on their unmoving horses, and those three visible and one invisible big man from west Texas.
It was very clear to Doyle Bannion that John Rockland had not expected it to come to this so quickly. In fact, Bannion began to feel that Rockland probably had thought, up until Hank King had spoken, that his name, his known wealth and power, would do the whole thing for him.
Now that it hadn’t, Bannion wished he dared move, dared go down into the roadway and walk along until he could turn and see up into John Rockland’s face. To his knowledge this was the first time he’d ever heard of Rockland being called in his own town, with his crew around him, and with a gun on his hip.
“We’re waiting,” Ray King called softly, and said no more.
A cowboy near Bannion said into the ensuing silence: “Hold it, fellers. Hold it just a minute. I’m paid to work cattle, not fight no wars. I’m goin’ to turn south and ride off down that damned road and I’ll have both hands plumb in plain sight.”
Bannion looked at the cowhand who made the announcement. He was a raffish-looking rider who hadn’t been working for Texas Star very long, and he now did exactly as he’d said. He worked his horse out of the crowd around him, reined southward, and walked along with both elbows held out wide and both gloved hands up in plain sight.
“Me, too,” said another man. This one rode southward, too.
Bannion could not place this man. He had to be a new rider, but Bannion could, and did, step forward now, since that hush and stillness was broken. He walked along until he was able to turn and see Rockland’s face as well as the faces of his remaining riders, and halt there. He was a little distance to one side of Austin King.
Bannion knew what he was going to say. He knew, too, that Rockland was going to obey him because no man set to fight ever waited this long to do it. The longer Rockland sat there trying to make his decision, the less was the likelihood of there being a shoot-out.
“Mister Rockland,” Bannion declared. “Lead out with your men and head for home. At any rate get out of Perdition Wells.”
Rockland shifted his attention. His eyes had no expression, only a peculiar shininess. He considered Doyle Bannion for a moment, then, without speaking or looking back, he reined his horse northward and started along.
Four Texas Star riders went slowly out of town behind their employer. Two of these men were old Texas Star hands. They twisted to glare backward because this town had been theirs a hundred times. They had treed its citizens and shot out its lights; they had brawled in its saloons and run the riders of other cow outfits out of it in a shower of lead. This exodus now was the bitterest humiliation either of them had ever experienced. It was like poison in their minds and acid in their bellies.
Bannion watched these two men in particular. It would only take one wrong move to start gunfire even yet. He remained in the roadway’s center until those two bleak-eyed men were shut off by a building, then he turned, saw that the four King brothers were back by their bench, standing solemnly, watching him, saying nothing, and seemingly unaffected by the near thing they had just passed through.
Bannion went up to them. He stopped and looked into each of the four faces.
The Kings returned this prolonged regard. They showed no fear, no paleness at all.
“You think that ended it?” Bannion asked.
Ray King shook his head; the others said nothing. Al sat down on the bench and began examining his fingernails. Austin went over to stand behind him, ignoring the sheriff to glance along the roadway where people were standing in little clutches heatedly talking and looking occasionally up where Bannion stood facing those four big men.
“That only started it, and the advice Rockland gave you was plenty sound,” the sheriff added.
“It probably was,” Ray responded in his soft way of speaking. “Only we’re not here for advice, Sheriff.”
“Some big man,” muttered young Austin, contempt dripping from these words, and grunted his disdain to Bannion. “What’s everyone hereabouts think so highly of him for, I’d like to know.”
Bannion continued to regard Ray. “You’re not so young,” he said.
Ray nodded, saying quietly: “I’m not underestimating him, Sheriff. Not at all. But nothing’s changed. I’m only sorry McAfee wasn’t with him, otherwise the whole thing would be over with now.”
“Yeah,” Bannion said fiercely, �
�and maybe the lot of you wouldn’t be riding home, either.”
Al looked up. “Sheriff, you worry too much. Now I got a feeling Mister Rockland’s going to get rid of McAfee like he was a jinx, and you won’t have to worry about any of this any more.”
Bannion regarded Al for a long time, then he walked away without another word to any of them.
He was almost to his office when he was stopped by a heavy-set older man with a cowman’s ruddy complexion and perpetually narrowed eyes.
“What’s going on?” the man asked. “I just rode in. The damned town acts like someone just run up and down the road dragging a bag full of skunks behind his horse.”
Bannion said tartly: “John, that rider of yours who shot it out with Dale McAfee did more harm by dying...accidentally...then he’d have done if he’d killed Rockland’s foreman.” Bannion started past.
The rough-looking old cowman hooked his arm, bringing his around. “Doyle, who are those four big fellers up there?”
“Those are the King brothers. They just backed John Rockland down and his whole Texas Star crew.”
The cowman’s grip tightened on Bannion’s arm. He began to smile flintily. “Tell me about it, Doyle.”
“Come in the office.”
Chapter Four
Rugged Clell Durham was a free-graze cowman; that is, he owned no land in the county. He bought big steers in early spring and grazed them over unclaimed range until their weight gain was sufficient to make him a good profit, then he trailed them to rail’s end and shipped them to whatever beef market was paying well. His breed of Texas cowman was fast becoming extinct because fences were coming and also because big ranchers such as John Rockland were building empires of deeded land.
That had been the actual reason for the shoot-out between Durham’s Box D cowboy and Rockland’s ranch foreman at the Union Eagle. Antagonism existed between free-graze men and established land-owning cattlemen.
Durham, holding the killing of his rider against Rockland even more than against McAfee, the actual killer, heard all that Doyle Bannion had to tell him, and was pleased about it. He left Bannion’s office with a springy step, went up where the King brothers were sitting silently in the sun, and introduced himself. He then explained about his dead rider, and launched into a good offer of employment. He was certain, because Rockland’s power was great, that these four big men would join forces with him and be delighted for the opportunity. He could see that these were not ordinary men. They would be smart enough to know that four men by themselves could not hope to stand against Rockland’s Texas Star.
But grizzled old Durham got a surprise. Ray King told him he didn’t believe he and his brothers wanted jobs right now. Maybe later, after they’d taken care of some personal business.
Durham’s anticipation wilted. “Listen, boys, Doyle Bannion just told me your story and how you run Rockland out of his town. Take my advice and make some friends, fast.”
“You got an axe to grind?” asked Al King. “We’re obliged for your offer, mister, but we fight our own battles and I guess you’ll have to fight yours.”
Durham said a sharp word. “Two of Rockland’s men quit him. He’ll replace ’em with gunmen, now he knows he’s got a battle on his hands.”
“Mister Durham,” Ray said in his deceptively mild way, “you want guns for a range war with Texas Star. Go somewhere else to get them. We don’t want to start any range war. We just want one man...and we’ll get him.”
Durham snorted. “Like hell you will. From this morning on Dale McAfee won’t be alone, even when he beds down.”
“We know about that,” Austin King said, showing his short temper to Durham. “We’ll mind our business and you mind yours, Mister Durham. You got your war bonnet set for Rockland...do what you got to do. Just keep your nose out of our affairs.”
Durham teetered there, looking at those four men. He twisted a little at the sound of approaching footsteps, saw Sheriff Bannion coming up, and said in parting: “All right, fellers, but when the smoke clears away, those of you who survive come see me.” Then Durham hastened away.
Bannion watched the free-graze cowman turn in at the saddle shop nearby. His gaze was ironic. Without looking down, he said to the Kings: “He try to hire you boys?”
Hank King nodded. The others paid no attention to Bannion.
“It makes me think more of you that none of you took him up on it.”
“We’re not here to get involved in a range war,” said Ray. “He’s got his problem and we got ours. What he does about his is none of our affair...and we don’t need him to take care of our problem.”
Bannion shot a sidelong glance at the sun. It was nearing high noon. “You’re going to get a big dose of Rockland medicine, I think, unless you get some common sense about that problem of yours, though,” Bannion said. “You should know that Rockland told me to run you fellers out of town.”
Hank, who was trimming fingernails with a sharp Barlow knife, snapped the thing closed and pocketed it. “That wouldn’t change anything,” he told Bannion. “This way, at least we’re where you can see us. The other way, we’d camp up some arroyo somewhere, you wouldn’t know where we were...and we’d still get McAfee.”
Ray stood up suddenly. He was tired of this conversation. It showed in the way he looked beyond Bannion at store fronts, at roadway traffic, and strolling pedestrians.
Finally he said: “If I’d been Rockland, Sheriff, I’d never have done what he did this morning, because now we know every man who works for him by sight. A man can’t surprise his enemies by revealing who his hired hands are.”
“Not all of them,” retorted Bannion. “He’s got a crippled-up old range rider who is the ranch cook.”
Ray looked at Bannion, then he said, “Come on,” to his brothers and the four of them hiked out into the roadway bound for the Union Eagle.
Bannion watched them go. He watched them halt outside the saloon doors, speak briefly together, then only three of them pushed on inside.
Al King stepped back to the plank walk’s edge, leaned there against an upright with his thumbs hooked into his shell belt, and kept a solemn watch as Bannion turned to saunter into the stage office. When Bannion was out of sight, Al stepped back down into the roadway, trudged to the livery barn, and five minutes later rode out the back way, heading north.
Bannion left the stage office, hurried out the back way, and passed along northward to the stable, also. There, he rigged out his saddle animal, sprang astride, and rode out into the rear alleyway, heading north.
A man, once understanding the stratagems of other men, is a fool only if he doesn’t profit by what he’s observed. Doyle Bannion was far from a fool. A philosophical man he was and a tolerant man he might be, but a fool he was not, regardless of what Al King and perhaps Austin King thought of him.
In broad daylight upon the Texas plains it required a seasoned and wily tracker to trail another man without being seen. Because there were no trees worth the name, no hills or land swells or ridges in the correct direction or in any sufficient profusion, an experienced desert horseman borrowed a leaf from the book of the prairie Indians. He made his careful way through the thorn-pin brush, the chaparral, sage, bitter brush, and also through places where deep shadows lay. He moved steadily only when it was completely safe to do so, and he sometimes sat without moving a muscle for as long as ten minutes before crossing an area where unavoidable sun smash glittered, waiting to reveal his movement forward.
Bannion knew these tricks and a bagful of other ones just as useful. And today he used most of them in order to keep Al King in sight. He also had another useful advantage. After a mile of trailing, he knew from the direction in which King was riding that he was making for one of the holding grounds where Texas Star cattle were worked this time of year.
It was not difficult from this to surmise King’s purpose, either. He
knew enough about the four west Texas brothers to attribute motive to Al’s steady onward riding.
Another mile forward, then a third one, and Al drew into the north-south run of a cutbank arroyo. Here, he disappeared entirely and because Al could not see out any more than Bannion could see in, the sheriff was able to lope ahead into a bois d’arc thicket and take his position there in perfect safety.
Al rode up out of that arroyo at its northernmost end. He was on the lee side of a little hill where some red bark grew. Bannion saw him get down, tie his horse, and ascend the little hill, get down on his belly up there and lie perfectly motionless for a long time, gazing ahead at that holding ground.
Bannion had his answer, but he lingered until long after King had gone back to his horse, got astride, and turned to go back toward Perdition Wells. Then Bannion also climbed that hill and lay down.
Ahead a long quarter mile was a Texas Star ranch wagon, a little ragged smoke from a fresh-laid cooking fire, and the strewn bedrolls and camp gear of several riders. There were six men gathered there, evidently newly arrived at this place because they had not yet off-saddled. They were hunkering near the wagon, smoking and conversing. Behind them, at the wagon’s tailgate, was Texas Star’s ranch cook, a soiled flour sack lashed about his middle, working over a big pan.
One of those men in the wagon shade caught and held Bannion’s attention. He knew this rider by his wide hat and his ivory-butted six-gun. He also knew that Al King had identified this man by the simple process of elimination. As Ray had said, the Kings now knew Rockland’s riders by sight. It had been no great thing for Al, lying there ticking off the men he recognized as men he’d seen with John Rockland in town, to ascertain that the one man he did not recognize was Dale McAfee.
Bannion got up and started back for his horse.
The hell of it was—Al King was perfectly correct. That man with the ivory-butted gun and wide-brimmed black hat was Dale McAfee.