by Peter Dawson
He drew rein, let Fred come even with him, then softly said: “Pick your spot, get set, and give me plenty of time. I’ll start things off unless you have to first.”
“Which I won’t. No reason for ’em to be moving about.”
Frank nodded. “How you feeling?”
“Never better. Never.”
“Watch that shoulder. And remember to move around. I don’t want to be packing you home across that hull.”
“Nor me you.”
Frank drew on ahead now, beginning a wide circle that in ten more minutes took him to the top of a low ridge at a point a hundred yards below the tent and rope corral Beavertail’s crew had put in sometime yesterday.
He tied the buckskin on the far slope of the ridge, drew the Winchester from its scabbard, then began working his way down through the trees on the slope below the camp. Once when he paused and looked below, he could plainly make out figures squatting or standing near the fire. And his pulse quickened as he counted four men instead of three and plainly recognized one of these as being Lute Pleasants.
This was more than he’d hoped for, certainly more than Fred had, either, and a heady excitement was building in him as he walked carefully on. He had tied his spurs to his saddle and he moved soundlessly except for the occasional faint metallic jingling of the shells cramming both pockets of his pants.
In two more minutes he had forgotten the men at the fire above the tent and was carefully scanning the shadows ahead where seven horses were feeding in the improvised corral made of ropes stretched between the trees.
Once he reached the bottom of the draw, he came straight in on the animals, knowing that to walk openly up to them was less liable to spook them than if he tried to approach too carefully. He was pulling a big clasp knife from his pocket the moment a gelding, seeing him, lifted its head and whickered, alerting the others.
They stood quietly watching him as he sauntered in on the ropes. He made three quick slashes with the knife, cutting the ropes. Then, moving on around and toward the tent, he reached the upper side of the corral, the animals turning slowly, warily, still eyeing him.
He took off his hat now and all at once lifted it over his head and violently waved it.
The nearest horse reared, turned, and bolted. The others panicked instantly, whirling and following the first, their hoofs drumming solidly against the damp earth as they ran out through the gap in the ropes.
Suddenly from close behind him came a shout: “Who’s that?”
Instinctively, without looking around, he lunged for the trunk of the nearest pine. That same instant the hard explosion of a gun behind him sent its deafening thunder out across the draw.
Chapter Nineteen
Two minutes ago, standing at the fire in front of the tent at the fence camp, Lute Pleasants had told Red, Ben, and Harry: “I’d better be getting back to the layout. You’re to just go ahead like you have been, working the fence. But stay together. And if anyone from Anchor shows up, don’t take any guff. If it’s Rivers, give him a working over like you did Bond.” He intercepted the skeptical glance Ben Galt gave Red Majors, and bridled: “Hell, he’s only one man, isn’t he?”
No one spoke up in answer to his barbed question, and on this truculent note he turned and left them, going on past the tent and down through the trees toward the corral.
His thoughts were still disdainfully centered on the scene back there, on the doubt he had seen in the eyes of all three of his crewmen at his suggestion of their standing up to Rivers. For that reason he wasn’t wholly prepared for what he encountered as he came down to the corral.
He had a fleeting glimpse of what he took to be a man’s vague outline standing between two trees. One instant he thought he saw the figure with arm upraised, waving something. The next he caught the muffled pound of the horses, bolting away down the draw.
“Who’s that?” he bawled stridently, snatching his gun from his holster.
He tried to lay his sights on that indistinct figure close ahead, yet whoever it was moved sharply aside at the precise moment the .45 pounded against his wrist.
Pleasants bellowed an oath and tried to line his weapon once more. But the figure had disappeared somewhere off to his left. From up the slope there sounded the sudden racket of a man running through brush, and Pleasants swung the .45 around and emptied it at the sound.
His trembling hands were shucking fresh shells from his belt when all at once a rifle shot cracked down into the draw from high along the ridge above the tent. At the fire Ben Galt shouted lustily, either in pain or fear, the sound of his voice cut short by a second explosion from the rifle off there.
Just then from the slope above Pleasants a second rifle opened up deliberately, bullet after bullet smashing down through the nearby trees. One whining ricochet from the trunk of a tree close at hand suddenly drew Pleasants’s muscles tight. He turned and ran as hard as he could back up the draw toward the tent.
Ahead of him a shower of sparks flew into the air as a bullet from one of the rifles smashed into a glowing log. Then, as Pleasants swung sharply to his left toward the shelter of a windfall, the metallic clang of a bullet smashing Red Majors’s Dutch oven rode down the draw.
Pleasants threw himself behind the two-foot-thick trunk of the windfall. He was breathing hard, cursing with every breath, realizing now that whoever had been down at the corral had stampeded the horses, that he and his crew were afoot.
Longing for a target, he peered up the opposite slope. And shortly, as the rifles kept up their deliberate, slow-timed fire, he did spot the flash of one of them, the closest. But as he came to his knees and brought up the Colt, he abruptly checked himself, sanity finally having its way with him.
If he fired at the flash of that rifle, he would give away his own position. Every muscle in him went rigid at the thought of the rifle searching him out if he missed the man firing it. And common sense told him that his target was too distant for a sure hit.
So he crouched there, wincing at each shot that lanced down from the ridge into the camp. He heard a bullet smash into the water bucket and send it rolling in toward the tent. He heard the lantern on the front pole of the tent clang and fall to the ground. And afterward flames leaped up, outlining the tent until its canvas caught and burned, shedding a blaze of strong light over this lower reach of the draw.
Up ahead he could see Harry hugging the thick trunk of a pine. Ben and Red were out of sight, and the thought that their rifles were in the burning tent, that not one of the three had had the foresight or the guts to go after a Winchester, infuriated him until he could feel his pulse pounding at his temples.
Exactly how long it was before the two rifles on the ridge went silent, Pleasants didn’t know. But suddenly he was aware that the two men up there had stopped shooting.
Warily, his quick glance searching the ridge, he came up out of his crouch and walked slowly up toward the smoldering ruin of the tent. From off to his left Ben Galt called very softly: “That you, boss?”
“Who the hell else would it be?”
Galt’s thick bulk materialized out of the blackness. “You hear that?” he asked.
“What?”
“Cattle bawlin’. Listen.”
Pleasants halted. Then he caught it. Out of the distance, from very far to the south, he could hear it, the bawling of cattle.
“Well, guess we was a little late on that fence,” Galt said solemnly, ruefully. “There goes Anchor, chousin’ their beef for the pass road. Come noon tomorrow and they’ll be in sight of the Springs.”
Chapter Twenty
This past hour and a half had seemed a near eternity to Kate. In the beginning it hadn’t been so bad, for with only the help of Will Hepple and Wade Collins, ranging the flanks of the herd, she had her hands full to keep the straggling, bawling animals in the drag moving steadily on along the Summit road.
But then suddenly the sounds of the guns had rolled in out of the westward distance, and her imagination had
begun to run riot. She reined in and listened, noticing that Will and Wade also momentarily forgot their work.
When the rifles’ slow-spaced racket kept on for minute after minute, she found it unbearable not knowing what was going on across there. And a feeling of utter helplessness gripped her as she began riding once more, determined not to pay the sound of the guns the slightest attention.
For upward of the next quarter hour she had ridden so hard and fast that her horse began playing out. Finally, reining him in to a walk, she let the herd draw on ahead. And all at once she had become aware of those far-away shots having died out.
That had been forty minutes ago. And now, as each minute dragged by without Fred or Frank appearing, her worry heightened until she scarcely knew what she was doing.
The herd was straggling badly. Will and Wade seemed unable to keep the swing animals moving so as to push the lead ones on at any speed at all. She did what she could to keep the drag bunched and on the move. But minute by minute the gait of the heifers and steers dropped to a slower walk until finally she knew that she and Wade and Will could no longer manage this chore without help.
It was perhaps half a minute after this disheartening realization came to her that a series of whooping shouts sounded in across the night from off beyond the west flank of the herd. That voice was unmistakably Fred’s, and, as she heard Will and Wade join him in a series of high-pitched shouts so typical of men working cattle, a wave of delight and relief gripped her. She threw her spurs into her horse’s flanks and rode recklessly in among the drag animals then, whipping them with rein ends to stir them out of their ambling.
A faint uneasiness held her as she wondered about Frank, wondered why he hadn’t called out along with Fred. But she tried not to think of that as she steadily worked back and forth across the drag, feeling the herd falter at first, then stir from its lethargy as though the shouting had awakened it. And in another minute her horse was having to move at a brisk jog to keep up with even the laggards.
All at once she made out a rider’s shape drifting back toward her from up ahead and to her right. And in another moment Fred was calling: “Wake up, Sis! We’re back.”
He had said—“We’re back.”—which could only mean that Frank was with him. Kate reached out and laid a hand on his good arm as he swung in abreast her. And her voice was none too steady as she breathed: “You’re all right?”
“Never better.” He laughed boisterously. “Guess what. Lute was there.”
“No!”
“Damned if Frank didn’t sneak down there right under their noses and turn their nags loose. He ran smack into Lute. The devil had a clear try at him and missed. That Frank now, there’s a man.”
“He wasn’t hurt?”
“Not a scratch, either of us. We shot at everything in sight. Frank even got the lantern and set their tent afire. They didn’t throw so much as one chunk of lead at us.”
Kate was feeling the aftereffects of this long interval of suspense and worry, and now she laughed delightedly, asking: “Then we’ve got an hour or two before they can catch up with us?”
“An hour or two? We’ve got a week if we want it. Frank made me tag along while he choused their jugheads about three miles off toward Beavertail. All those birds’ll do tonight will be to wear out the soles of their boots. We’re in the clear.”
“Thanks to Frank,” Kate said very softly.
“Amen.” Fred’s tone was quite solemn as he asked: “How can we ever make it up to him, Sis?”
“I don’t know, Fred.”
“Couldn’t he stick around after this is finished? Couldn’t we persuade him to …?” He shrugged, at a loss for words. Then shortly he added: “I keep forgetting. He’s got this other on his mind. Chances are we’ll see him driftin’ on in another day or two.”
“We will?”
Kate’s voice sounded small, lost. Throughout this long and anxious day she hadn’t given a thought to anything beyond the moment when, with luck, Anchor’s herd would be safely across Crowe’s range and on the pass road, headed for the low country and Ute Springs.
Now, with Fred’s unwelcome reminder coming so unexpectedly, this cool and starry night lost its heady exhilaration as an emotion akin to despair settled slowly through her.
Twenty minutes of working with Will Hepple and Wade Collins satisfied Frank that the herd was no longer lagging. Fred had some time ago disappeared back toward the drag to look for Kate, and now, knowing that Collins and Hepple could spare him, Frank drew aside and pulled the buckskin to a stand, watching the long file of bawling cattle move on past as he packed and lighted his pipe.
The first faint glow of the late-rising moon sharply etched the peaks in the upward distance, and Frank, some of the feeling of urgency having left him, welcomed the thought that in another half hour they would be able to see more of what they were doing. Luck had been with them, the night having hid their moving the herd onto and across Crowe’s range. Now, when it counted the most, they would presently have enough light to let them work the herd more easily and push on faster.
He had been sitting there for not quite two minutes, right leg crooked around the horn of the saddle and left boot hanging free of stirrup, when Fred loped up out of the blackness, saw him, and swung over to join him.
Fred was breathing hard, and it was obvious that he was excited even before he announced: “Got me an idea just now, Frank.”
“So have I. You’re to head straight on home, crawl into that bed, and sleep till noon tomorrow.”
“And miss all this? Think again. I’m seeing this beef all the way to the pens down at the Springs even if I have to crawl the last ten miles.”
On the ride across here from the fence camp, Frank had several times noticed that Fred’s swollen face was tight with pain. And more than once he had seen him sitting canted around in the saddle, favoring his hurt side. Thinking of that, he dryly remarked: “You’re not proving much, half killing yourself. Give it up. The four of us can manage.”
“What I’ve got in mind’ll take just the two of us,” Fred countered mysteriously. “And we’ve got to ride only three miles to do it.”
When Frank’s lean face took on a puzzled frown, Fred added: “You and me are going to pay Phil Crowe a nice neighborly visit.”
“Now? In the middle of the night?”
“Why not? He never shuts down that whiskey parlor before midnight. And it can’t be much after ten yet unless the stars are lying.”
Frank lowered his leg and thrust boots in stirrups, then reached over to knock the dottle from his pipe, asking: “What good will it do you to rub it in on Crowe?”
“The same good it did us both to bust that camp apart back there. Now you coming with me or do I go at it alone?”
Frank sighed resignedly, in no way relishing the prospect of letting Fred take on still another risk tonight. The fact of the man’s even being here seemed a minor miracle in itself when he thought back upon last night and that first glimpse he’d had of him, lying in the buckboard there alongside the corral at Anchor.
Yet here he was, his spirits still high, some indomitable drive sustaining him. Frank’s reasoning right then became much the same as it had been back at the fire on the meadow two hours ago when Fred laid down the ultimatum that he was riding tonight. After all, this was the night Fred Bond had labored and lived for these many trying weeks. He deserved whatever he could get out of it to balance the disheartening presence of Lute Pleasants’s fence and the beating he had taken little more than twenty-four hours ago.
So, dubious though he was over any good coming out of what Fred was suggesting, Frank nonetheless shrugged his concern aside, drawling: “I guess you’re writing your own ticket. So, if you say we see Crowe, we see him”
“That’s more like it. Let’s be at it.”
Frank was disappointed in one thing, something he’d been looking forward to for the past half hour. “What about Kate?”
“What about her? She
’s stuck back there on the drag. So are Will and Wade stuck if they should get to wondering where we’ve gone. Besides, we’ll be back in something like an hour.”
With a hesitant nod, Frank reined aside and led the way up along the strung-out line of cattle. In several minutes he thought he saw Collins working the near swing. Then presently they passed the point of the herd, angled over, and followed the rutted road.
In less than another mile they passed Crowe’s line camp and from there on the flanking ridges closed in on the track, which meant that when the herd reached this stretch it would be easier to keep it lined out and moving.
Summit, when they reached the pass road and climbed it, appeared as it had to Frank the other night, either deserted or asleep, with not a light showing against the blackness until they made the bend in the street. Then, as Fred announced—“Here we are.”—and swung left to the tie rail in front of a single-story building, Frank did see feeble lamplight glowing behind one large and grimy window.
“How’ll I know this Crowe?” he asked as he tied the buckskin.
“He’ll be wearing a derby, a gray one. Never’ve seen him without it. They claim he sleeps in it.” Fred joined him on the walk, asking: “Mind if I do the talking?”
At Frank’s quick shake of the head, he went on: “You back me up, if there’s anyone else around. Only I want to rub it in on Crowe all by myself.”
“Go ahead. Only don’t forget to try and tie Pleasants in with Crowe’s new fence.”
They found only five men in the Pat Hand’s stale-aired and poorly lit room. Four of these sat in a smoke-fogged wash of lamplight, playing a hand of draw poker at a table halfway the length of the bar. The fifth, wearing a gray derby, stood leaning against the adjoining table, watching the play.
Phil Crowe glanced up incuriously at the sound of the door opening. The light was bad up there and he couldn’t see who this was, though out of habit he moved across and in behind his bar, his narrow face set in its habitual impassivity. Only when he reached up and turned up the wick of the lamp over the bar did he discover who his new customers were.