As a result of the conversation, the party headed up into the mountains, and pitched a dry camp at the old shack where Hammond had been hiding out. Webster left them and was gone the rest of the night and part of the day.
It was the evening of the day following, that one of the men who had been stationed at the road came back to the shack to report the sound of approaching horses.
Webster got his horse and rode out to the lane and met the approaching horsemen. Merle Tate and Ike Flint were in the lead, and it was to them that Webster spoke.
“Are you boys sober enough to do a little fighting?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Flint grunted. “That storekeeper ran out of likker before we was through. Why?”
“You’re going to have to burn a little powder if you want to sleep in your own bunks tonight.”
“How come?” Tate asked.
“There seems to have been a reorganization since we left. Brother Faulkner has decided that he could get along better without us, and he’s moved a new crew in, with orders to burn us down if we try to get back home. Personally, I don’t care to be fired like that.”
“Who’s up there?”
“Fellow by the name of Cloyd Martin and his gang. They’re all set to blast us off the face of the earth when we try to get back in.”
“What are they doing there?”
“They’ve got a big herd of cattle in there. Must have taken them while we were gone. That’s a lot of stock to let those hombres have without a fight. What we ought to do is to go and burn those boys out and take the cattle for ourselves.”
“Now that’s the most sensible thing I ever heard you say,” Flint opined eagerly. “I don’t like nobody horning in on my job, either.”
“That’s what I thought,” Webster said. “And from now on out, I don’t think we need Faulkner any more than he thinks he needs us.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking for a long time,” Tate said. He turned to the boys who had pulled their horses up close. “How about the rest of you? Do we tuck in our tails and turn back?”
“I’m not turning back,” one of them said. “I’ve got used to that place. All the home I’ve got.”
Another man said, “Faulkner can’t take a man’s livelihood away from him. It ain’t right.” The rest were in agreement.
“Then you boys go on and make it right. I’ll take the back trail, and keep any of them from running out the back door.
After the men got going, Webster returned to his group at the hidden shack, and reported his success.
“We’ll give them a little start on us,” he said. “Then we’ll pull in behind them and see what happens.”
* * * *
Cloyd Martin did not like the uncertainty of this waiting. Faulkner had insisted that they stay put, and they had now spent two restless days and nights with the tension growing momentarily as the time got shorter.
They didn’t know anything; they didn’t know whether the old crew would come back or not, or whether they would be able to spring a trap on them if they did come. The men grew nervous, and drank too much, and quarreled among themselves. Martin moved about restlessly between the store and the corrals, and out on the road, where he could look downhill, but could see nothing except the trees swallowing up the trail.
Faulkner kept more or less to himself, his injured pride feeding the fires of his hatred of Dustin and Webster, and of the rest of the world. He gave an occasional order in his flat voice, and the malignancy in his eyes made the men more jumpy.
Going out into a light where you knew what the odds were and could either shape them to your advantage or pass up the fight, that was one thing. But sitting and waiting for a group to come along so you could slaughter them—or be slaughtered—that was another thing. The men didn’t like it. Martin did not relish it either, and he had difficulty in keeping them in line.
It was night now, and Faulkner had called them all in from the various shacks among the trees, and kept them bunched up in the big storeroom.
“I have an idea they’ll be along tonight,” he told Martin, as they sat at one of the tables in the store. “As soon as the guard hears them coming and lets us know, we will go out into the trees and wait until the bunch of them come in. We’ll open the lean-to gate, and they’ll start riding in. Have some of your men out behind the sawmill shed. Then as they ride into the lean-to, we’ll have them cut off front and back. I don’t want even one of them to get away.”
Martin shook his head. “Like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“No, it is simply the practical way to do it. Why do a thing halfway when you can do it the right way easier?”
A man came into the doorway leading from the trail, and looked around. Another came in behind him. One of them was Merle Tate, the other was Ike Flint.
Flint said, “Howdy, Faulkner,” and then whipped out his gun and fired.
Faulkner fell sideways out of his chair as the bullet pinged into the wall behind him. He saw Tate’s gun come up, and between Tate and Flint, more of the old crew were pouring into the door. Somebody, it could have been Martin, shot out the hanging lamp, plunging the whole room into darkness.
And then the room became a confusion of shuffling feet, shouting men, and the deafening explosion of shells in a confined space. The air was pungent with burned smoke, and gunflame blossomed here and there like giant deadly fireflies in the darkness.
Faulkner drew his gun and shot toward the outer door; a volley of fresh fire came from that direction, another came from outside the window, accompanied by the dancing explosions of guns and the crashing of window glass.
He heard the advancing feet of the attackers, spread out and coming toward them as they threw a withering fire toward Martin’s men. He crawled away from the table he had overturned, and dragged it with him toward a wall, where he pulled it along as a kind of breastworks as he lay as low as he could. The thought came to him then—in that mad confusion—that men did foolish things for the sake of living a little longer. Things like expecting a tabletop to stop a bullet.
Faulkner started crawling along the wall then, and pushed his way on hands and knees toward the bar in the corner. Passing behind it, he found the door leading to the merchandise room, and reached up to open it.
He was afraid to get onto his knees and reach for the door knob with all the crashing of chairs and tables and the shouts and the firing, and the whining bullets about him. He cowered there for a long moment, and he now realized that in spite of all he had done to convince himself that he was afraid of nothing, there was a deep-seated fear in him that was now forcing itself to the surface. It was a kind of helpless terror, a new experience for him.
He heard the impact of bullets on human bodies; he heard men grunt, and shriek out their last death cries. Panic seized him. A man worked his way to the bar in the darkness and was trying to cower behind its scant protection. The man bumped against Faulkner. Faulkner cursed and hit him over the head with his own gunbutt, and shoved him back out of the way, so that he would have more room for himself.
Now, in his panic, he got to his feet and found the handle of the door. He passed through it into the empty merchandise room, where he leaned against the wall and tried to recover his wits.
He thought of the man who had been on guard, the man who should have warned them of the approach of the old crew. He must have been ambushed. Which meant that even while he was laying his trap for his old crew, they had known what to expect, and had come prepared to wipe the intruders out instead.
Then there had been leaks in his plans; for his trouble, he had managed to set half his men against the other half. They were wiping one another out, and no matter which group won, he would have very few men left under his orders.
It was disaster, it was a dirty trick that Dustin or Webster had played on him when they had turned on him with the old crew. He
had spoken casually to Martin about the butchery of the old crew, and the significance of the idea had been only a superficial thought to him. Now in the middle of a savage slaughter turned against himself, he was shaken to the very roots of his being. He could hear men shouting and dying, and he was not entirely out of it himself. He, a man who had never sweated, was now sweating, and his muscles were so tense that there was physical pain in his lungs and a cramping in his legs. J.B. Faulkner was now tasting fruits he had heretofore sent other men to gather. And his only thought was that he could not stomach it, that he had to get away.
He knew that his leadership was destroyed here; he had turned his men against one another, and he was running out on the fight himself. Nobody would take orders from him again.
Well, he had prepared for this day, though he had not expected it to come. All he had to do was to get back to Woodbine, gather up a fortune in Government bonds, a small package, and move on to new and safe territory.
He started to make his way out the front of the building, guiding his movements by the sound of the battle in the other room. He heard the feet and voices of the men on the outside who had the building surrounded, and he heard the men inside.
He came along the wall to a side window, and covered by the sound of battle, he smashed the glass with the barrel of his gun.
He stuck his head out, and then pulled it in again quickly.
More horsemen were coming up. Who could they be?
He waited until they had rounded the front of the building and were dismounting. Then he crawled out the window, letting himself down in the dark shadows beside the building. He was free of the death trap. Some of his courage returned to him.
He paused here while he noted the movements of the new arrivals, locating them by the sound of their feet. They had dismounted and were encircling the building.
After he had judged that they were all away from their horses, he tightened his grip on his gun and circled the store front, keeping to the darkest patches of shadow. He made it this way to a saddle horse, and untied the animal just as a new burst of fire came from the new arrivals. They were pouring lead into the building with no regard for which group of fighters they hit.
Then Faulkner knew! He had sense enough to know the whole bitter truth. Webster—he supposed it was the man who, he now knew, had engineered the whole coup—Webster had outsmarted him.
He knew without having the evidence that Webster had turned his first crew on his second one, thus making them kill themselves off, thus dividing them against themselves and reducing their numbers. And finally, even as they were destroying one another, Webster was sending in a posse to clean up those who survived.
He saw the whole business in a flash from beginning to end. He did not need to know all the details to realize that Webster had come in at Swanson’s request and had wiped him out. That was the sum total of the whole matter; that was all that counted. Webster had destroyed Faulkner.
The gunfire behind him was deafening as he mounted the horse. Somebody had set fire to the building in three or four places along the outer walls, and now the red flames were licking upward. Men were shouting and dying, and the air quivered with the rattle of pistols and rifles.
That was the end of Faulkner’s handiwork; that was the funeral pyre of his vindictive hostility toward a world of better men than himself. He turned his back on it, and headed the horse away from the burning sawmill shed.
Then a figure loomed out of the shadows of the trees, and he recognized the voice of Jim Webster.
“Pull up, Faulkner. We’re not through with you yet.”
Faulkner was riding with his gun in his hand, and now his fury was boundless. He did not speak, but lifted his weapon and spurred the animal directly at the man who was now blocking his path, as he had blocked it ever since coming to Woodbine.
He held his gun well forward as he pulled the trigger one time after another at the figure which loomed up before him, as though to reach him the quicker with his lead. His rage was now in complete mastery; his fears had been drowned in it. His vindictiveness was in full control, and it drove him full tilt at his tormentor.
He saw Webster weave in the saddle, and grab onto the horn. And still he triggered the wavering gun in Webster’s direction. He saw Webster’s hat sail off his head, and still he came on.
And then he felt the stunning blow of something kick him in the chest. It was just one blow, but it was as if a mountain had fallen on him and benumbed his body and his senses. He felt himself falling off his horse, and he could do nothing to right himself. He was swimming in a sea of blackness which engulfed him, and swallowed up feeling, swallowed up hatred and pride, swallowed up the very consciousness of life itself…
J.B. Faulkner was dead when his body hit the ground. One of his feet was caught in the stirrup, and the panicky horse reared and turned, and ran insanely toward the burning lean-to shed, disappearing into its flaming red cavern….
* * * *
Jim Webster had lost consciousness on the road where he had sat his horse and shot it out with Faulkner. And when he again knew he was alive, he was lying in a bed in one of Mrs. Halsell’s rooms. And Dick Hammond, covered with an assortment of bandages, was lying in another, while Sonia sat beside him, feeding him soup with a spoon.
There were quite a number of people in Mrs. Halsell’s, it seemed. And soon, after the doctor had punched Webster around a little more, some of them came in. Swanson and the traveler Webster had picked up, Hoot Ballew.
They talked a little while about the fight, and Swanson said it was all over now except to settle with Webster, and to keep him quiet until the superficial scalp wound healed.
“I’ll tell you one thing you can do for me,” Webster told Swanson. “If you could manage some way to get word to the Rangers, we ought to turn this whole business over to them. After all, one of their men was killed, along with a U.S. Marshal, and so that brings the officials into the picture. And by the way, I owe Ballew something for giving me a hand in flushing Dustin out of the bush.”
Swanson laughed. “I guess we can take care of all that without leaving the room. Ballew tells me that he is now a Ranger, and that he was up here covering Clanton in the first place. Seems Ballew and Clanton were partners. Ballew’s old partner had succumbed to the virus of matrimony, having got strict orders from his new wife to give up the ways of a peace officer if he expected any peace at home. So Ballew is ready to take over where you left off. Leaving you free to accept an offer of partnership in my business, if I can persuade you to join up with me.”
Webster’s eyes went across the room to Hammond and Sonia, and he did not need to be further informed that their situation was well in hand.
“You’d better take it easy,” he told the girl. “You might end up having to spoon-feed that fellow for quite a while. It could get to be a habit.”
She smiled at him. “Well, it was your idea. I took care to make sure that I would be doing just that. I had to catch him crippled up, so that he couldn’t escape, but I’ve got him lassoed now. We’re going to make it a double hitch when Dad and Cora get married. And you, of course, are going to be best man for the whole tribe of us.”
Jim Webster shook his head. This was the kind of thing that brought sadness to him. It hurt him too deeply when he saw the happiness that was for those around him; it made him too conscious of what life had failed to give him; it was a deep, melancholy pain that he did not like to arouse.
“No,” he said. “No to all offers. As much as I would like to, I’ve got a job waiting for me as soon as I can get going. I’ve got some meddling to do down on the Sabine River. But if Mrs. Halsell would offer me a piece of that famous apple pie of hers, and a glass of milk, I doubt if I’d have the stamina to refuse, being in such a weakened condition.”
LAST-CHANCE RANCH, by Dean Owen
Copyright © 1955 by Dudley Dean McGaughy.<
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CHAPTER 1
The choking dust coated a man’s nostrils and dried out his throat. When he spat into the wind he spat mud. Or so it seemed to Clay Janner. He pulled in his grulla at the crest of a ridge and looked ahead at the parched range, knowing he had probably allowed sentiment to shape his destiny—sentiment in a business where such a luxury could not be afforded. He jerked the dirty bandanna from the lower half of his brown face and glanced back at the sixteen hundred head of Chihuahua steers they had brought out of Mexico. Dust rose in a frightening cloud against the sky, a banner that proclaimed the aridity of this vast and lonely land. The steers were edgy, bawling for water.
Clay’s eyes narrowed against the harsh sunlight as he saw his big redheaded partner spur up from the herd. Joe Alford looked glum and once again Clay regretted letting the man talk him into this. Just because Alford had not seen his wife in fourteen months…
“What do we do for water?” Clay asked.
“Must’ve been a dry year,” Alford said worriedly.
“We can dig for it,” Clay said. “If we dig deep enough we’ll have the whole Pacific Ocean in our laps.” He felt temper rise in him, and he wanted to cuss Alford out for jeopardizing their whole venture on this sorry range. But he owed Alford too much for that. If it hadn’t been for Joe Alford, Clay would now be lying under the stony parade ground of San Sebastian Prison.
“Guess you wish we’d split the herd at ’Paso,” Alford said. “You’d have your half sold by now and—”
“You’re my partner, damn it. We’ll see this thing through.” He slapped Alford on the arm. “If your wife don’t like me then we’ll talk about splitting the herd.”
“She’ll like you,” Joe Alford said.
Alford was bigger than Clay, older by three years. His long red hair, last cut by a Mexican barber at the prison of San Sebastian, curled against the back of his freckled neck. They had spent many months in the prison and only now was the bronze color returning to their faces. Their desperate gamble to bring a herd out of Mexico had finally paid off. But now they could lose everything.
The Fifth Western Novel Page 40