Marauders' Moon

by Short, Luke;

  From the back alley, now, Mitch heard the racket of shots. That would mean that the men who were firing the buildings had been ambushed.

  Mitch shrank against the building, his eyes wild with panic. The street before him was a shambles. The San Patricio raiders were not even shooting now. To a man they lay along the necks of their horses, Indian fashion, trying desperately to get out of town. Crippled horses spilled their riders; there was the raucous voice of a puncher cursing wildly as he tried to yank a down rider up onto his saddle. Two men on the Wintering Hotel roof opened up. The cursing rider, in the act of giving his friend a hand up, raised up in his stirrups and the down rider pulled him over. Before the horse had a chance to shy, its front legs buckled and it, too, went down.

  Mitch watched it to the bitter end, until the last San Patricio rider either escaped or was whipped out of the saddle and rolled in a cloud of dust.

  Then self-preservation took hold of Mitch with a vengeance. He suddenly remembered that someone had driven a shot at him from across the street—at him, who had made all this possible. Without even forming the words in his mind, he knew that that shot had been fired at Bannister’s orders. He could imagine the word being passed around the whole town: “Get the man with the red neckerchief!”

  Mitch whipped it off and stuffed it in his pocket and then turned toward the alley. He could hear men running on the board walk, their cries rising over the screams of dying men and horses.

  Mitch halted at the back of the building. Men were back there. He could hear them calling to each other.

  Casting frantically about him, he saw a barrel under an eavespout at the corner. He leaped for it, climbed its rim, and dropped inside. There was a foot of water in it, so cold it took his breath away, but he crouched down, fighting to still his laboring breath.

  Here it is, he thought with a kind of frantic calmness. I’ve been dodgin’ it for two years. And here it is.

  He heard men shouting, heard them pound past him, the earth shaking gently beneath him. Then silence. He did not move.

  Suddenly, a voice came clearly to him: “I tell you he went in here. Hell, didn’t I shoot at him?”

  “But he’s gone,” another voice said.

  “He won’t get far then. He’s likely been cut down already.”

  “All right. Let it ride that way.”

  The first speaker cursed. “Let it ride?” he echoed. “Hell, do you know whose orders it was to get him?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right, go get your drink. I’m lookin’.”

  There were footsteps. Then the second voice, fading now, but not so faint that Mitch didn’t hear it plainly, said, “Can’t we tie a red handkerchief on one of these dead rannies and say we thought it was him?”

  Mitch didn’t feel any surprise at this. It was as if somebody had spoken what was inevitable and what he had known in his own mind. He crouched there, a kind of stupefaction soothing him.

  This, he was thinking, is the end of the trail that began two years ago when I strangled that honkytonk girl.

  And then the panic returned and he was afraid again. He wanted to live, and he didn’t care how. But the fear in him was not so strong that he could not see two things clearly. If he got out of here and rode to Tolleston again, he would be killed. His cowardice there in the saloon would be the pointing finger which would lead to a hang-noose death. If he stayed here in Wintering County, Bannister would hunt him out and kill him. If he left Wintering County, there were those United States marshals, particularly the one from Tucson. For some months he had known peace from them. But now, if he was always to live in terror of them, he would rather be dead. And Bannister would be sure to write, giving them his trail.

  Mitch crouched there shivering. No, the best thing to do was to go to Bannister. Folks said Bannister never killed a man by his own hand. Go to Bannister, beg for mercy, for work, stay by him, never leave him until he gave his promise of safety. To Mitch this idea had nothing of the daring about it. It meant life.

  Waiting there was almost pleasant then, because he had hope. After another fifteen minutes in which he heard nothing but shouts and commotion on the street, he climbed out of the barrel and slunk down the alley. Halfway down it, a horse nickered. Mitch struck a light and saw a big bay standing there, a man lying face down beside the trailing reins. Mitch recognized him, recognized the horse. It was a Broken Arrow hand who owed him seven dollars. Apparently the man had tried to run for his horse, for in one hand was a swab of oil-soaked rags, in the other his gun.

  Mitch let the match die and took the horse, leading it down the alley. When he came to the cross street he boldly turned into it and rode out of town, not answering questions the townspeople on the walks called to him.

  Once in the clear, he rode frantically for the Dollar spread. When he arrived, he rode into the plaza. Some Mexicans stopped him and asked him what had happened.

  “Nada,” Mitch said wearily. “Nothing.”

  He put his horse up in Mooney’s corral and then made his way through the dark to Bannister’s office. The door was locked. He hunted around the front of the blacksmith shop for a scrap of iron and, finding one, broke the lock on the door. The office was dark. He didn’t light a lamp.

  He sat down in one of the chairs to wait, his eyes sleepless, knowing that if he went to sleep before he saw Wake Bannister, he would never wake.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Twenty-two missing out of seventy,” Will Wardecker said gently into the night. “We were lucky.”

  All around him he could hear the labored breathing of blown horses, could smell gun smoke and blood. The forms around him he could not distinguish, but occasionally he could hear the caught breath of a man trying to hide pain.

  “Buck Tolleston,” Wardecker called.

  “Yes,” a voice answered from beside him.

  Before Wardecker could speak, a puncher out in the night said, “My horse is blowed. I’m ridin’ on! They’ll be after us!”

  “Stay here!” Buck ordered sharply. “They won’t follow us! They don’t have to.” Then he said to Wardecker in a weary, dead voice, “Who’s here?”

  “Better ask.” The sheriff said.

  Tolleston called, “Hasker.”

  “I got through.”

  “Kindry.”

  No answer.

  “Bindloss.”

  No answer.

  “Anders, Pillsbury, Dale, Sweetser.”

  Sweetser answered.

  And so it went. Only five out of seven names called answered. At the end of it, Tolleston, sick and miserable, said, “Let’s ride. This is no place for us.”

  Once under way, Wardecker turned his horse in beside Tolleston’s. There was that comradeship between them which only years can bring, and tonight Buck Tolleston needed it more than he ever had before.

  Wardecker said, “Who was it sold us, Buck?”

  “I don’t know,” Buck answered after a while. “Whoever it was knew everything we planned and how to nail us down.”

  “I hope he’s dead,” Wardecker said. “I hope he has been shot in his guts and stays in agony for hours.”

  Tolleston said nothing, and presently Wardecker said, “No, I don’t, either. I can’t imagine anything worse than havin’ to live with that crime on your mind. I hope he’s alive.”

  Buck only sighed. Behind all the grief he felt over lost friends, over the ruin and desolation that this night would mean, loomed one fact that Buck was secretly ashamed of, but which he could no more deny than he could deny he was alive and safe. And that fact was that Bannister had won, finally and irrevocably.

  Wardecker understood a little of what Buck was thinking. He said without any reproof, “Well, Buck, I reckon it took this to prove we’re second fiddle.”

  “Yes,” Tolleston said, not believing it.

  The rest of the long night they rode in silence. The sunrise which caught them just over the county line did not help any. Some time in the night, a Chain
Link rider had dropped out of his saddle without being heard. Almost all of them had gunshot wounds, some bad, some not serious. Most were gray of face, exhausted, beaten. Lou Hasker’s right pants leg was stiff with blood, and he was not riding a Chain Link branded horse. Somehow, in that massacre when his horse was shot from under him, he had managed to catch another and ride free. His hard young face was pinched and wooden, and the old confidence seemed drained out of him, Tolleston noticed. Young Sweetser rode as if in a trance. But the bulk of the casualties had been borne by the punchers, as was always the case in range wars. A hard, loyal lot, they had sold their lives for a wage. Buck couldn’t help but think of Mac. He of course, was dead, killed in the shooting which started the fight.

  Buck hung his head in shame and weariness, too numb to hate, even. He was riding in the rear of the group when they rounded the curve in the road that should have put them in sight of Wagon Mound, but he did not look up.

  The first hint of anything wrong was the bitter wild cursing of a man up front. Then Buck noticed that these men had stopped. He reined around those ahead and walked his horse until he had a clear view of the shallow plain on which Wagon Mound was situated.

  Ahead of him was a smoking heap of ashes, one long building—the brick bank—standing upright. The cottonwoods which had shaded part of the town were shriveled and sere.

  Something died in Buck Tolleston then. He turned haunted eyes to Wardecker. When he tried to speak he couldn’t, for a growing rage was throttling him. Savagely he rammed his spurs into his tired horse and galloped into town at the head of the weary band.

  People—mostly women and children—were on the streets at the four corners, and Buck pulled up in a moil of dust to survey the sight. Everything was destroyed: stores, homes, buildings, corrals, everything that was inflammable—which meant the whole town. It was as level as the plain around it, except for the blackened fingers of a few stone chimneys which poked up from the charred ruins.

  Iron Hat Petty hobbled up to the horsemen. “They met you, I reckon,” Iron Hat said.

  And then a girl broke through the ranks of watchers.

  “Dad! Dad!” she cried.

  It was Martha. Buck took her in his arms and let her cry, holding her close, stroking her hair. Other women now were hunting their men, and those that did not find them were hearing out the story of the massacre in Bull Foot. Buck buried his face in Martha’s hair and closed his eyes.

  Presently she looked up at him. “Can you stand any more of this, dad—more news that will hurt?”

  Buck only looked at her.

  “The spread was fired last night by Bannister. All the big places were. The Seven A, the Wagon Hammer, Pillsbury’s, Winterhovens—all of them. Burned to the ground.”

  Buck took it without a change of expression. A man can absorb only so much shock. The others were like him, too, unable to comprehend at first the extent of their loss.

  Later, Buck took Iron Hat to one side. “What happened, Iron Hat?”

  “Just what you see. Bannister rode into town with half a hundred riders and took over the town. Warned all the women and kids out of the houses and stores. Wally Hubbel thought he’d fort up in the sheriff’s office and fight, so they just burned it down on top of him. Outside of that, I don’t reckon there was a man killed. They drove all the horses in town off. Then they split and started ridin’ over the county. Folks—mostly womenfolks—have been driftin’ in all day with news of what they done. Most of the big ranches is burned clean to the ground, all except the Chain Link and yours. They was made of stone and wouldn’t take fire, but they burned everything around it.” Iron Hat recited this in his dull, flat voice. He needed whisky. There was none to be had.

  Buck walked away from him. Wardecker had called a meeting of the men as they were resting in front of the bank.

  “First thing we got to do is feed these women and kids,” Wardecker said. “I’ll need three men besides myself to rustle up a couple of steers and haze ’em into town. Some of you others ought to dig around in the ashes and see if there’s any flour left over in Samuelson’s cellar. As soon as we get somethin’ to eat, we can take stock.”

  By afternoon a rude camp of sorts had been made in the street at the four corners. Beefs had been killed and skinned out, and the camp was fed. Children were sleeping. The women had taken over and there was some semblance of order. Again the men lying exhausted before the bank were wakened, and again Wardecker assumed charge.

  “You’ll all want to go back to your places,” he began, “but first we ought to have some idea of what’s in the future.” He turned to Tolleston. “Buck, what do you think?”

  “Build up the place again,” Buck said immediately. “We got our stock, accordin’ to what I’ve heard. We did it fifteen years ago. We can do it again.”

  Frank Winterhoven, a gnarled, silent man, who lived over west, spoke then. “Not me, Buck. I’m pullin’ out. I ain’t blamin’ you nor any man for what happened, but I’ve had a bellyful. I got two youngsters, a few horses, a couple of wagons, and plenty of cattle, but I owe notes that’ll wipe me out, and I don’t aim to fight over a dead horse. I’m pullin’ out.”

  Several other men seconded him. Many of the big ranches in the county did not have a man left to run them. Most of them had borrowed money or saved it, and the bank robbery had cleaned them out. Buck could understand this, and he respected it, but he did not agree with it.

  “I’m stayin’,” he said quietly. “All my money’s gone, my place is burned and the town’s burned, but I’m stayin’. This country has kept me for fifteen years. I reckon it’ll keep me another fifteen.” He gestured south, and said quietly, “As for that outfit, I’ll square myself with ’em one day. Time enough.”

  But the majority of them were apathetic, beaten. The younger men wanted to leave, all except those who were so small that Bannister had not bothered to burn them. Privately they thought Buck old, a madman too set in his ways ever to change. They looked to Lou Hasker for advice. He refused to give it.

  “You got to settle that for yourselves. I don’t know what I’ll do. When I get this leg healed up and see what’s happened to my outfit, and figure what the chances of stayin’ here and makin’ a livin’ are, then I’ll tell you. But don’t ask me.”

  So it went. Some joined in with Buck, others reserved their opinions, but many of them, the majority, intended to leave.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Wardecker,” Winterhoven said, “you can arrange for a sheriff’s sale as soon as it’s handy. And that goes for most of us. The sooner I pull out the better, and I reckon some others feel the same way about it.”

  “You’re makin’ a mistake, Frank,” Buck said.

  “I’ve made too many a’ready,” Frank said grimly. “One more won’t hurt.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bannister’s own group of riders was the last to return. It was far past sun-up when they rode into the plaza. A look at the place assured Bannister it had not been touched, and therefore that the ambush in Bull Foot had been a success. He looked across at Meeker and smiled a little, and then his face sobered.

  “Go get those Montana men and bring them to me, along with Cousins.”

  He rode over and left his horse at the corral, then walked over to his office. Symonds was working at his forge and looked up in time to see Bannister’s cheery wave and return it. Bannister opened the door, and found a man standing in the room.

  He peered sharply at the man, adjusting his eyes to the gloom of the room, and then drawled, “Why, good morning, Mitch.”

  “Morning,” Mitch replied.

  Bannister walked across to his desk, saying, “Well, how did it go in Bull Foot?”

  “Just like you planned it,” Mitch replied calmly. “They rode into it, and I reckon a lot of ’em was killed.”

  Bannister looked up from the papers on his desk. “Who?”

  “Kindry, Anders, Bindloss, I seen go down. The street was full of ’em.”


  “Not Tolleston?”

  “No. I didn’t see him, leastways.”

  “He’d better not be dead,” Bannister said grimly. “I’m not through with him yet.” He sat down, and Mitch stood there, his face utterly calm.

  “Wake,” Mitch said quietly. Bannister looked up, surprised to hear his name in Mitch’s mouth. His eyes were hard, but contrived to look pleasant.

  Mitch said huskily, “Call ’em off, will you? I’ll never sell out on you! Gosh, look what I’ve done for you already! Look what you can hold over my head. I want to live, Wake! I got to!”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Bannister drawled mildly, settling back in his chair.

  Mitch swallowed. “About me. They’re tryin’ to kill me. I know because I heard ’em huntin’ me in town when I run.”

  “Heard who?”

  “I dunno. But they was huntin’ a man with a red neckerchief. Aimin’ to shoot him. They said it was your—”

  Just then footsteps sounded outside. Bannister rose and said sharply, “Get in that room, Mitch. And don’t come out till I tell you! Quick now!”

  Mitch obediently dived for the door of the adjoining room and slipped inside just as the front door opened. Bannister was hunched over his desk.

  When he looked up the three Montana men, stony-faced and wary-looking, were standing beside Webb, whose head was mottled with blood.

  “What’s happened, boss?” Perry Warren asked. He was the least communicative of them all, Webb had learned, a truculent, nervous man of thirty or so, with a vicious, thin mouth and an irritable temper. Webb had long since concluded that if Lute ever dropped out, Warren would head the others. He slouched now, hands on hips, hat on the back of his head. He was wearing a vest, mostly from habit, since the day was warm.

  Bannister leaned back in his chair and regarded them coldly.

  “I don’t know why I bother keeping you three around,” he said quietly. “Maybe I hadn’t ought to.”

  A small shadow of fear crept into Warren’s eyes. “What’s the trouble?”

  Bannister said, “You boys thought you’d ride out on a private raiding party, didn’t you?”