by Lauran Paine
“I understood her to say they only shot up the ranch about sunrise and about sunset.”
Rufe was straining to detect the southward, onward sound, and glared without comment. Jud subsided and rode with one hand on the butt of his holstered Colt. He did not need an answer to his comment, any-way. Unless those three riders were strangers, which seemed improbable since they were coming directly from the area where Chase’s cow camp was located, they had to be some of Chase’s men.
Rufe formed his own opinion while he was riding. Perhaps Elisabeth Cane’s foemen only harassed her at sunup and sundown ordinarily, but now they knew she had two riders on the Cane place, and that might very well have decided them to stop the harassment and move directly against her. It was entirely possible that Arlen Chase had sent his men over to frighten Miller and Hudson off the mesa, or, if that failed, actually Tomake a serious raid.
As nearly as Rufe could figure it out from what Elisabeth had said, this private range war had been in progress for about two years.
Rufe did not know Arlen Chase, would not have known him if they suddenly met face to face, but he knew cowmen, and he had yet to meet one who was possessed of enormous patience. It was about time for Chase Tomake his move to take over the mesa and get rid of the last of the Canes.
He and Jud were slightly farther back than they could have been while Rufe rode along seeking to second-guess those quiet riders on ahead. The invisible men up ahead suddenly veered northward, and that puzzled both Jud and Rufe. The Cane place was southward and westerly.
At Jud’s scowl of enquiry, Rufe threw up his hands. They turned, also, but now they began closing the distance a little, and, when the horsemen up ahead halted, it was not the abrupt atrophy of hoof falls that signaled this back to Rufe and Jud, it was a strongly resonant voice softly saying: “Remember, just the barn. And as quick as you’ve got it going, get the hell back here.”
Rufe and Jud exchanged a look, then turned off southerly, riding very quietly at a steady walk down through the matted grass on an angle that would put them between Chase’s men and the Cane place.
They did not actually have very much ground to cover. Chase’s men, who they had detected and followed, had been on the right course up until they had veered northward, so Rufe and Jud had simply turned back in the direction from which they had originally ridden out.
They made no particular attempt to determine whether all three of those range riders, or one or two of them, were actually going to try and reach the Cane barn. All they really had to know was that someone was heading for the barn, and the way that man with resonant voice had said it, neither Rufe nor Jud was required to possess perspicacity to guess what he had been talking about. Burning someone’s barn was a very old act of enmity in the range country. It was also very fatal if a man was caught in the act of doing it.
They struck out at a slightly swifter pace once they had plenty of distance between them and Arlen Chase’s riders. The barn’s high hulking silhouette emerged from the night on their right, and they reined over there, swung off, and led their horses in-side where it was like off-saddling in the depths of an ink bottle.
They conversed only once, very briefly, after the horses had been stalled. Rufe said he would watch the front if Jud would watch out back, then they briefly mentioned the advantage of being practical instead of heroic, and parted with a couple of hard smiles.
The night was as hushed as death, and to Rufe, up near the front of the log barn, whose visibility in the direction of the main house where Elisabeth was blissfully slumbering was totally unimpeded, it seemed most probable that those skulkers—one, two, or all three of them for all he knew—would enter the barn from out back. It did not especially worry him that Jud was alone back there. The interior of the old barn was almost Stygian. Jud had a great advantage—none of Chase’s men knew there was an ambush established—and, finally, Rufe knew for a fact that an angrily aroused Jud Hudson was the equal of just about any two cowboys west of the Missouri.
He listened, relaxed a little with one hand on his holstered Colt, and was reflecting upon Arlen Chase’s strategy—which, to Rufe Miller, appeared needlessly prolonged—when he heard what sounded like the rub of two bits of dry wood, one against the other.
He eased just a fraction more in the direction of the wide front opening and detected the sound again. It was someone’s leather boot soles gliding with infinite care across gritty soil, and it was close by, perhaps slightly south of the front barn opening, but not as far down alongside the log wall as the rear of the barn.
He drew his Colt, thinking that he had been wrong; they weren’t going to slip into the barn from out back, after all.
It was a fair guess, considering he had only heard one sound, that of a man in boots approaching on an angle in the direction of the front of the barn. What changed his thinking was when a man with a carbine in his right fist gradually emerged from the darkness moving to the northeast corner of the barn and halted there, leaning almost comfortably, gazing in the direction of the main house, and also in the direction of the log bunkhouse, which was within the man’s same visionary perimeter.
The man put carbine against the side of the barn, fished forth a plug of twist, gnawed off a piece, pouched it into one cheek, put away what remained of the twist, then nonchalantly lifted his carbine again.
Rufe guessed now that this man was someone else’s bodyguard. He shot a swift look down through the blackness toward the back of the barn. Since the second man did not appear out front, he undoubtedly would be around back. Rufe had no misgivings. Jud was more of an Indian than Rufe was; he would take care of the other one.
Rufe tipped up his pistol barrel, stepped across through the blackness on the balls of his feet, eased around, and without haste projected his entire body out into the night gloom along the front of the barn, no more than twenty feet from that calmly chewing man with the carbine hanging loosely over one bent arm, and cocked his six-gun.
That little, muted but unmistakable sound made the slouching cowboy’s rhythmically moving jaws suddenly freeze. The man did not move anything but his eyes. He saw Rufe, saw the cocked gun aimed straight at his stomach, and seemed momentarily to stop breathing.
Rufe smiled and said very softly: “Not one sound.”
VI
The night was serenely velvet, endlessly quiet, and, except for that tiny space in the vault of the night where Rufe disarmed Arlen Chase’s cowboy, there did not seem to be even so much as a mote of discord anywhere in the universe. He shoved the cowboy’s carbine and Colt away with his boot toe from where they were standing, asked the man quietly if he had a belly gun or a boot knife, got a headshake, then said: “Where’s your friend?”
The cowboy answered in a half husky whisper. “Out back.”
“To fire the barn?”
The cowboy nodded.
“The third feller…where is he?”
The cowboy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Holding our horses. How’d you know there was three of us?”
Rufe ignored the question and motioned for the cowboy to sit down. The man looked warily at the cocked gun, evidently believing the worst, but he obeyed; he sat down with his back to the log wall— and Rufe chopped hard downward, driving the man’s hat over his ears with the pistol barrel. The cowboy loosened all over, then gently toppled sideways.
Rufe returned swiftly to the black interior of the barn, heading through as soundlessly as he could. When he saw the opening, he knelt low, then peered out. Jud was invisible. Rufe surmised he probably was around the corner of the barn, and stood up to ease out into the lighter gloom, then halt and listen. Eventually he heard something. It could have been simply an animal out beyond the corrals drowsily moving, or it could have been a man around the corner alongside the barn’s north wall. He started around there and was almost to the corner, when he heard a soft voice say: “I ain’t moving, mister.”
He stopped and waited. That hadn’t been Jud’s voice. For a moment
there was no sound, until his partner growled in his familiar way, then Rufe called quietly: “Jud, you got him?”
The answer came swiftly in the same growling tone: “Yeah, the son-of-a-bitch’s got a bundle of rags soaked in coal oil.”
Rufe walked on around. This range man was tall, half a head taller than Jud but only half as thick. Even if Jud hadn’t had his Colt ten feet from the rider’s middle, it was unlikely that Chase’s cowboy would have been Jud’s match.
The cowboy looked from Jud to Rufe, then back again. He was both badly shaken and frightened. In the poor light he also looked guiltily uncomfortable about the wad of smelly rags in his gloved left fist.
Jud leathered his weapon and ordered the cow-boy to drop the oil-soaked rags, which Chase’s man did, then Jud stood glowering while Rufe asked if the man’s name happened to be Fenwick. The cow-boy said: “No, sir, my name’s Smith.”
Jud sneered. “Mine’s Santa Claus.”
Rufe had another question. “I knocked your friend over the head out front. Is his name Fenwick?”
“No sir,” replied the cowboy, sounding believable.
“Charley didn’t come in. He’s out yonder holding the horses.”
This was all Rufe needed. He turned slightly. “Fetch some chain from the barn, Jud. Let’s lash these two, then go find Mister Fenwick. He owes me for the bay horse.”
After Jud had hiked back toward the barn opening, Rufe studied their prisoner. He was not only tall and thin; he did not look to be more than per-haps twenty years old. He also looked worried.
“You ever see what happens Tomen who burn folks out?” Rufe asked, then pointed upwards where a pole rafter extended from the barn’s sloping roof. “Folks hang them.”
The cowboy involuntarily glanced upwards, then down again very quickly.
Jud returned, dragging some chain harness. With-out speaking, he pointed earthward and Chase’s man sat down so that Jud could chain his arms behind his back, and lash his ankles with the same length of trace chain. When Jud finished, the subdued cowboy was helpless. Unless someone came along to release him, he would rot right where he sat. There was no way for him to get free.
They went around front where the other man lay on his side. Jud leaned and pulled the man up into a sitting position, propped him against the barn, then knocked his hat away to see his face as he said to Rufe: “Maybe you killed the bastard.”
But the man groaned, so Jud sighed, then returned to the barn for another set of chain harness. The man did not rouse until Jud had returned and was roughly chaining his arms and ankles exactly as he had done with the other night rider. Finally, when it was done and Jud arose to knock dust from his knees with his hat, the man opened his eyes, feebly groaned again, and gradually focused his sight upon the two lean men gazing dispassionately down at him. When he tried to move and the chains clanked, he looked down at his ankles.
Jud said: “Hope you don’t get too cold before we bring Mister Fenwick back to join you.”
The captive raised his eyes to Jud’s bitter face, un-willing to speak until Rufe put a question to him.
“Who’s left at Chase’s camp with you three fellers gone?”
“Abe, the cook, Arlen, another of the riders, and some whiskery feller who rode in today from down at Clearwater.”
Except for the man from Clearwater, all this jibed with what Elisabeth had told Rufe and Jud. They were interested in the newcomer and asked about him. But the cowboy did not seem to know much.
“I think Arlen met him down in town couple of days back. He said his name was Bull Harris. That’s all I know. Him and Arlen went around together to-day. They didn’t come over where the rest of us was. Then Arlen called us in tonight and told us to come over here…. ”
“And burn the lady out,” growled Jud.
The cowboy, eyeing Jud warily, nodded his head very slightly. “Yeah.”
Rufe picked up the carbine from the dust and jerked back the slide to reveal a shiny brass casing, slid the breech closed, and looked at Jud. Without a word they started away.
The cowboy called softly: “Supposing you don’t make it back?”
“Then you’ll likely catch pneumonia,” replied Jud. “But that’s better’n the hanging you’ll get if we do come back.”
They knew about where Charley Fenwick, the third Chase rider, was waiting with the three horses. They also knew he would be as wary as a fox, and for that reason, when they got two-thirds of the way out there, with those silently swelling high clouds begin-ning to coalesce and blot out more starlight, they split off, one going to the left, one to the right.
It was not hard to skyline the horses even in the deepening gloom, because one of them was gray— someone’s oversight; no night rider in his right mind would ride a gray horse on a dark night, if he did not want to be detected.
Rufe was to the east, to the right of where he and Jud had split up, and, as he started directly westward in the direction of that gray horse and the pair of darker lumpy silhouettes standing with the gray, he palmed his weapon while still holding the Winchester. The range was too close for a carbine. He walked another few yards, halted, dropped to one knee, and for a long while remained that way, separating silhouettes up ahead in an effort to define the one belonging to a man.
Suddenly someone softly called. “Smith? What the hell happened? I don’t see no fire.”
Jud answered, and Rufe thought he was lying prone because his bitter words appeared to rise up from the earth. “You son-of-a-bitch…make one little move and I’ll kill you.”
There was no way to mistake Jud’s earnestness. Rufe waited, but the dim shape ahead of him, facing away, standing a scant foot or two in front of the drowsing horses, took root.
Just to lend support to Jud’s bitter order, Rufe cocked his Colt exactly as he had done before, so that the sound would chill the blood of the man whose back was set squarely to Rufe.
It worked. The silhouette stiffened and froze in place. Rufe called over: “He’s all yours, Jud, if you want to disarm him!”
The cowboy waited until Jud was walking on up, then showed a different temperament from the other two, when he said: “Mister, you’re making one hell of a mistake. Chase’ll bury you on this mesa, and you won’t be the first he’s caught out for helpin’ that damned’breed woman.”
Jud said nothing. He disarmed the man, and, as Rufe walked up, Jud looked at him. “Rufe, this here is Mister Fenwick. Mister Fenwick, I’d admire for you to meet my partner, Rufe Miller. It was his bay horse you killed day before yesterday, and to be right honest with you, Mister Fenwick, I wouldn’t want to be standin’ in your boots right now.”
Rufe studied the range man. Charley Fenwick was a little heavier, just as tall as Rufe, and did not show fear at all when he turned from Jud toward Rufe. “That was your first warning,” he stated. “To-night was to be your second warning. That’s all Arlen Chase gives, two warnings…then he buries you.”
Rufe smiled as he ambled on up. When he swung, Charley Fenwick was looking him squarely in the eye, perhaps aware that trouble was on its way. But Rufe was as swift as a striking snake. His blow grated bone over bone up alongside Charley Fen-wick’s cheek bone, on up past his temple, and into his hair. The hat flopped outward, then fell, and its owner staggered, blinked rapidly, let out a roar of pain and fury, and backed away.
Rufe did not go after him, which was a mistake. The blow had only temporarily stunned Charley Fen-wick, who was a rugged man of iron will and stamina. He swore at Rufe, rolled up his shoulders as he started forward, fists cocked, and, when he was close enough, he launched himself like a muscle-and-bone projectile, which was the standard procedure among barroom brawlers. He also sprung his arms wide, like a bear, obviously intending to lock them around Rufe’s back.
Rufe did not yield an inch of ground. They came together with violent force. Fenwick’s impetus would have compelled a bull elk to give ground. Rufe was braced, legs sprung wide, but he still had to yield a little
even as he fired blow after blow into Fenwick’s unprotected middle, and Rufe was one of those desperately lanky, sinewy men who had surprising strength and power.
He did not yield another foot, nor did he seem to be heeding the roars and wild punches of his adversary as he steadily went to work battering away at the heavier man’s soft parts.
Jud was standing to one side, arms folded, grin-ning from ear to ear. He had seen this happen be-fore. Rufe possessed a unique ability; most men who were so lightning fast lacked power. Rufe was very fast, with power. He practically smothered the heavier man with blows that hurt, beginning low and working his way upward, until Fenwick, gasping, had to give away, had to try and get away from that raining punishment by retreating. But Rufe did not allow this. Each time Fenwick would throw a punch, then step back, Rufe would ward off the strike, then step ahead, fists flailing.
He had been struck several times, and Fenwick was one of those individuals whose blows, slow in arriving and not accurately sent, were bone bruising when they connected.
Rufe would have mottled flesh on his body for a week after this fight was ended, but right at the moment, when he was landing five-to-one with his adversary, he was conscious of very little actual pain as he concentrated on downing Charley Fenwick.
Then, unexpectedly, Rufe paused, dropped both arms, and jumped clear. Fenwick’s mouth was torn and his lower body was racked with pain. His eyes, partially glazed, still showed the smoke haze of battle, though. He raised a bruised fist to push off the blood from his chin, and waited.
Rufe said: “Jud, give the son-of-a-bitch back his gun.”
Jud’s savage smile froze. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Give him his gun, damn it. This isn’t pay enough for my little bay horse. I’m going to kill him.”