Clay tried to hold in his temper. He’d met this type before and he’d tamed a few of them. He wasn’t going to let this pale-haired man—or anybody for that matter—stand between him and his avowed purpose. He meant to keep these steers at a walk and then fatten them on Spade grass and sell them at the railroad.
“I’m asking you as a favor, friend,” Clay said, and saw that the three riders with Perry had spread out.
The brown-bearded Bailey acted scared, but he started up the team again. He glanced anxiously at some of Clay’s men, led by Sam Lennox, who were coming up to investigate the trouble. Some of them had drawn rifles from boots. Disaster hung by a slender thread. If a gun crashed now that herd would be running full tilt before the echoes died.
But Lon Perry’s sudden howl of laughter eased the tension. Clay turned in his wet saddle to see what had caused this outburst. Lon Perry’s slender shoulders were shaking. He threw back his head, guffawing, pointing at Joe Alford.
The big redhead looked worried as he came up. “I’d admire if you’ll let us get by, Perry—”
Lon Perry’s thin mouth tightened on the laughter. “You shoulda stayed in Mexico,” he said.
“I got a right—”
“You comin’ home is going to make a lot of people unhappy,” Perry went on.
Clay tensed, expecting Perry to say something about Nina Alford and Byrd Elkhart. Things were bad enough without that.
“Won’t take us long to get the herd across the road,” Alford said lamely.
Perry said, “Elkhart needs this wire for fence. So you’re goin’ to wait till we get by, savvy?”
Big Sam Lennox looked at Clay for a signal, but Clay shook his head. He didn’t want shooting; not with the lead steers milling only a dozen yards away from the team pulling the overloaded wagon. Yet he couldn’t back down.
Perry had jerked his head at his three men and they spurred toward the wagon, now moving up the road. Clay started after them but Alford grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t mix with Perry. He’s bad medicine. He’d shoot you dead and then laugh about it.”
“He won’t do any laughing if he tries it with me,” Clay said thinly. He was staring at the coils of wire on the wagon. “Bobwire,” the peddler had called it. The barbs told him the rest. Already “barbed wire” had gained a nickname—and provided it didn’t rip the hides off of cattle it could change the whole concept of ranching.
Alford said, “Sometimes you talk like a gunfighter, Clay.”
“Maybe,” Clay said, and gave Alford a reassuring smile.
Then he spurred away, intending to stop that wagon if he had to shoot Lon Perry to do it. But at that moment the right front wheel of the wagon struck a deep rut. The top-heavy load shifted. The sudden weight snapped one of the ropes holding the load. The coils of wire came tumbling across the road. One of them bounced crazily, struck a steer on the forelegs. With a bellow the steer whirled, racing to the north. The whole herd plunged after it.
“Stampede!” Clay shouted. But his voice was lost in the roar of hoofs.
As Clay sent his horse at a lunging run he saw the wagon team panic. They wheeled sharply, overturning the wagon. The driver and the rest of the load spilled over.
Skirting the wagon and the wire coils, the herd roared across the road. Cursing his bad luck, Clay tore after them. He caught a glimpse of Lon Perry and his men riding for high ground to escape the stampede. The wagon driver had managed to scramble safely atop some boulders.
Clay kept his horse at a hard run. Riding full tilt through the mud was risky. He saw one of his men go down as the rider’s mount stumbled. The horse floundered, then regained its feet. The rider scrambled back into the saddle.
Clay paralleled the racing herd, dodging horns. He had pulled off his slicker. He whipped it over his head, trying to turn the herd. The rain had tapered off—thank God, he thought—but lightning still plagued them. It struck a butte not a hundred yards away and the accompanying roar shook the ground. Clay knew it was useless to try to get the herd milling. He was too short-handed for that.
He waved at his men to ride for it. Those nearest him were already spurring to get out of the way. Sam Lennox lost his hat as he slapped it at the face of a crazed Chihuahua steer. With his black hair flying, Lennox got away from one steer, but another caught his horse on the left flank and tipped it. Knocked off balance, the horse went down, throwing Lennox.
Clay felt a cold numbness along his spine as a thousand-pound steer barely missed trampling Lennox into the mud. Swinging dangerously close to the panicked cattle, Clay kicked a foot out of a stirrup. Lennox caught the empty stirrup and Clay’s outstretched right hand. The momentum of the racing horse pulled Lennox up behind Clay. Watching his chance, Clay veered away from the on-rushing herd. Then the cattle were gone, flinging mud from their hoofs.
Bitterly Clay watched them. Lennox, pale around his black beard, swung down.
“I won’t forget you saved my hide, Clay,” Lennox said, shaken. He turned to peer at Alford who was spurring toward them. “If that yellow-livered partner of yours had backed you up this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Joe’s got gun fever. No use holding it against him.” Clay reined away. “I’ll send a horse back for you, Sam.”
He rode to meet Alford. The big redhead said, “Jeez, I’m sorry, Clay, but—”
“Let’s not cry about it,” Clay said. “Let’s go get that herd.”
Clay peered toward the hills where he had last seen Lon Perry, having an urge to put a bullet in the man. But he could see nothing. To bring a herd all this way from Mexico and have it stampede because of a spilled load of stuff they called bobwire!
Finally the herd began to lose momentum. To the left, Clay caught a glimpse of ranch buildings. The left flank of the spent herd was tight against a corral. Spurring ahead, he tried to outrun them, for a ridge of hills abruptly narrowed the valley and he didn’t want the crazy bastards to swerve and smash those buildings to pieces. Already the van of the herd was starting to mill. He felt better when he saw Alford riding recklessly, firing his gun into the air as he helped turn the herd. Clay shook his head, wondering about Alford’s makeup: afraid of powder smoke on the one hand, yet willing to risk his neck in a stampede.
When the herd finally halted the men sat their saddles, coated with mud. They looked whipped. From the distance came a final rumble of thunder. The sun peeped out. There had hardly been enough rain to moisten the ground.
A quick count told Clay they had lost at least a dozen steers that had stumbled and been crushed by the others. Sick, disgusted at the needless waste, he went with some of the men to round up the scattered remuda. With a led horse he rode back to where he had left Sam Lennox. The black-bearded Texan rode on after the spooked cattle.
Then, turning his grulla, Clay saw Lon Perry sitting his saddle a short distance down the road. Perry had a leg hooked over the saddle-horn. He was ordering his men to load the spilled wire back on the wagon that had been righted.
When Perry saw Clay approach he unhooked his leg from the saddle-horn, and his small teeth bit down on a cigar.
“You got any complaints?” he said.
“I have complaints,” Clay snapped. He saw that Perry’s men had looked up from their work to watch him.
A voice in the back of Clay’s mind warned, Don’t be a fool. You can’t fight five men. You want to be buried here? Perry sat stiffly in his saddle. The man appeared tough, capable.
Perry was looking Clay over, seeing the bristle of beard on the lean jaws, the steel in the gray eyes. But mostly he seemed interested in the black-butted .45 that swung at just the right angle from Clay’s hip. A gun obviously for use, not show.
Perry seemed to lose a shade of his truculence. “If you got any complaints, you make ’em to Elkhart. He runs this outfit.”
“I will,” Clay said, and rode off before h
e did some damn fool thing and got himself shot out of the saddle. His men were far across the flats, holding the herd, and he was here alone. No, he told himself, it wasn’t the time for a showdown.
CHAPTER 2
Heading north again Clay reached the cluster of buildings he had seen earlier. There he ran into Kate French. Four dead steers lay at the edge of a smashed corral where they had been caught when the herd swerved across Kate’s yard. Beyond the corral, a shed had been overturned.
“This is a working ranch,” Kate told him. “I need that corral and shed.”
Tired, disheartened, he answered her gruffly. “I’ll take care of it.”
His tone caused her to stiffen. “You have until tomorrow to make repairs,” she said. She stood rigid. He could see the points of her breasts against the front of a cotton shirt. She might be something to look at, he conceded, but he pitied the fool who married such a short-tempered wench. Her face was red with anger, her eyes bright.
“And what if I won’t do it tomorrow?” he said.
“You’d better.” The tension seemed to run out of her shoulders. “I’m sorry, but my nerves are on edge. Everything happening at once—” She glanced across the flats at big Joe Alford talking to the crew holding the herd.
“If I had my way,” Clay said tiredly, “I’d push this herd north. Montana, maybe. I wish I’d never seen New Mexico.”
“Maybe you should leave,” she said. “I have a strange feeling that you’re going to bring us trouble.”
“You’ve already got trouble.” He told her about his run-in with Lon Perry. “What’s this forty-mile fence add up to?”
“It means if you want to drive cattle to the railroad at Las Rosas you’ll have to go eighty miles out of the way.”
“On account of Elkhart’s fence?”
Her lips compressed. “His damnable fence. Drive cattle across the Sink and you’ll lose a lot. And they’ll lose weight, the ones that are left.”
He nodded, feeling a grudging admiration. Ordinarily he didn’t think much of women who wore men’s clothes and tried to run a ranch like a man. But Kate French was too pretty to ignore. “Are you going to drive across the Sink or make a deal with Elkhart?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“A good-looking girl like you ought to be able to deal with a man.”
The anger flared back into her eyes. “If I thought you meant that as an insult I’d—”
He waved a hand to cut her off. “I didn’t mean it as an insult. Only a compliment.”
But she ignored the apology. “I hope you don’t try and go through Elkhart’s fence. There’s been enough warfare in this country—”
“This game is old to me. One big auger like Elkhart trying to freeze out the shirttail crowd like you. Burn houses, run off stock, fire hay, dam up creeks. This time it’s a fence.”
“You talk just like my brother did,” she said, staring down at her clenched hands. And he saw quick tears fill her eyes. She gestured toward a knoll behind the house. “He’s buried up there. That’s where that kind of talk got him.”
“A lot of good men have died,” Clay said soberly. “But you still can’t sidestep trouble.”
Her lips trembled. “Things can be worked out with Byrd Elkhart. But only if some hothead doesn’t throw a match into the powder keg.”
“I guess you mean I’m that hothead.” He shrugged wearily. “It’s plain enough you don’t have much use for me—”
When he started away she blocked him. A lock of the blue-black hair fell across her high forehead. “It isn’t that I have no use for you. I don’t even know you. But—well, you talked Joe Alford into running guns to Mexico. And while Joe’s been gone, his wife—”
“What about his wife?” Clay asked, hoping to draw her out.
“It’s Joe’s problem.” She turned abruptly toward the house, then looked back over her shoulder. “Joe’s the one to work it out. Providing everybody lets him alone.”
She hurried on to the house, skirting the dead steers and the overturned shed.
When the steers were bedded down Clay sat by the cookfire, sipping coffee Joe Alford had laced with whisky. All evening Joe Alford seemed torn between eagerness at seeing his wife tomorrow, and apprehension.
“Why don’t you ride on ahead,” Clay said, “and see her alone.” He hoped the fireworks would be over by the time he came up with the herd.
But Alford refused to consider it. “That’s one of the reasons I talked you into comin’ to New Mexico with me. Instead of splittin’ the herd at the border. I—well, I just don’t fancy facin’ up to Nina alone. I want you with me. Clay. To explain how things has been with us. She’ll believe you.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You got a way with the wimmen, Clay.”
Clay gave a snort. “So I’ve noticed,” he said, thinking of Kate French.
As he lay in his blankets that night Clay tried to get Kate French out of his mind. How would it be, he asked himself, to put down roots after all these years? Was she the kind of woman he’d been looking for? But he told himself it wasn’t time for a woman to put a brand on him yet. He had many things to do. But Kate was a challenge. It would take some doing to get her corraled. But there was nothing like the memory of a girl as pretty as Kate French to savor in the months ahead while he rode new trails. No, when he finally settled down he wanted a pretty, soft female in lace, one he could spoil by giving her all those things women seemed to think were so important. He didn’t want a self-assured girl who could ride a horse like a man and boss a crew like a man. No, that sort wasn’t what he had in mind for permanence. But as a temporary measure…
CHAPTER 3
That next afternoon Byrd Elkhart drove his buggy over to visit Nina Alford at Spade ranch. When he saw her sitting on the porch in a white dress, he felt an inner excitement. She’d soon be his, and then he would make up for the lost years. She lifted a hand to him as he wheeled the buggy into the yard and pulled in on the shady side of the house. When he tied the team and went to the porch, she offered him her hand.
“Hello, Nina,” he said, and kissed her. She was wearing the dress she’d been married in four years ago, Elkhart noticed and it angered him. It made him think of the drifter named Joe Alford who had come to work here at Spade soon after her father died. Elkhart, sure of Nina, thought Alford presented no problem. But the next thing he knew they were married. Since that time he had been consumed by an intense hatred for Joe Alford.
“It was good of you to come, Byrd,” Nina said. She was a small, shapely woman. “And thanks for sending those men over to do the whitewashing last week.”
“When we get married and combine outfits you won’t have to worry about things like whitewashing.”
She peered up into his face. “Is it me you want to marry or Spade ranch?” she said, half in jest.
He laughed. “With or without a ranch I’ll take you.” His voice hardened. “And I’ll be good to you,” he added, remembering that fourteen months had passed since big, easy-going Joe Alford had ridden out with his and Nina’s savings, to meet “an old friend” named Clay Janner.
“Marry me now. Today. We’ll drive to town.”
She shook her blonde head. “Four more months,” she said. “You know what we agreed. By that time Joe will have been gone for a year and a half—”
“He’s dead. You know he is.”
She closed her eyes. She looked tired. Running a ranch this size with a three-man crew was too big a job for a woman like Nina. Byrd Elkhart could taste his hatred for Alford. “Wait just four more months, Byrd,” she urged. And when she saw the quick anger in his yellow-brown eyes, she added, “There’s lemonade in the cooler in the kitchen.”
He went into the house she had shared with Joe Alford. Well, after he married her he’d take her to his place. And once he h
ad her safe at his Arrow headquarters he’d come here some night and burn this damn house down. He wanted no memory of Joe Alford. Joe Alford had been a dreamer without the guts to make dreams come true.
He poured two glasses of lemonade and took them to the porch. He’d rather have bourbon but these things could be taken care of once he had a ring on Nina’s finger. She didn’t cotton too much to whisky. Her dad had been a handy man with a bottle. And at times Joe Alford had done his share of drinking at the cantina in Reeder Wells.
As Nina sat sipping her lemonade she said, “Joe’s dead. I’m sure of it. But I want to wait the year and a half. This I promised myself, Byrd. You understand?”
“Sure he’s dead. You’ve got Joe’s watch in the house, haven’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I know. That Mexican brought it. And he claimed he’d taken the watch from Joe’s body. And he said Joe had been shot by a firing squad—”
“What more do you want?” he said gruffly, watching her. In a dark, Frisco-tailored suit he looked the part of the most successful rancher in this part of New Mexico. His brown hair lay tight and neat against his skull. At times his yellow-brown eyes seemed hard and dangerous, but now they were soft as he looked at this woman he had loved for so long.
“Your dad wanted us to marry,” Elkhart said, and finished the lemonade. He saw her nod. He thought of how he would ride over here to Spade when Nina was just a kid. How he would take her to town and buy her things at the mercantile. There was an understanding between Nina’s father and him. In due time Elkhart would marry the girl and Spade would become part of Arrow.
Nina’s father set great store by the arrangement. It meant that if something happened to him, his daughter would be taken care of by a powerful, respectable rancher, and not end up as the wife of some shiftless cowboy who would take Spade away from her, or at best send it into bankruptcy. But that very thing had happened. The old man had been dead only a short time when Joe Alford got a job at Spade during one roundup. And the next thing Elkhart knew, they were married.
Suddenly he took her glass from her hands and pulled her out of the porch rocker and held her tight. “Nina, I don’t want to wait,” he said hoarsely.
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