by Jonas Ward
Gibbons fell back, dazed for that moment, and Rosemarie lashed out at him again. Better to have run, for half the victory in the first blow was its very surprise. Gibbons all but invited the next one, the better to imprison both her arms, to close her half-naked, unyielding body against him.
"Fight me," he said raggedly, his lips pressed to her ear. "The harder you make it, the sweeter the victory .. ."
The girl intended to make it as sweet as she possibly could. Both hands clawed at her tormentor's face, left their mark in his flesh. At the same time she kicked at him, then brought the hands up again, into his hair, tried to pull it loose by the very roots.
Gibbons, in his passion, was immune to pain or indignity. He stripped the robe completely away and bore hex back to the divan with a relentlessness that was overpowering.
It was not a silent struggle, and the sounds of it drew the militiamen from their labors at the well to the porch of the house. Not one of them felt any compulsion to interfere. They had all seen the beautiful girl who worked at the Glasgow, and made the same snap judgment as Hamp Leach. That made what was happening to her now a kind of sport—a soldier's pastime—and they envied the man involved.
But one of them, a man named Apgar, chanced to look around, and spotted the two riders bearing down an the place. Two coming on with an unmistakable urgency, and neither one belonging to Gibbons' Militia.
"Look sharp!" Apgar shouted the alarm. "May be trouble!"
"Who the hell are they?"
"May be trouble," Apgar warned again. "Hey Cap— Cap'n Gibbons! Two riders out here!"
Gibbons heard, whirled furiously from the writhing, twisting Rosemarie, and crossed to the door. The animal look was still strong in his face, but as he watched the determined approach of the two horsemen he brought his thoughts to heel.
"Spread yourselves," he ordered. "Get off the porch and fan out around the yard." The bright sun made the pupils of his eyes contract swiftly, and now he could make out one of the riders. The missing old man, Mulchay—and in the moment of recognition he thought he knew where the troublemaker had been and what he was up to.
"Stand fast," Gibbons called to his deploying men. "And by God be ready to fight!" He turned back into the room for a moment then, just as the bitterly sobbing girl ran into her own bedroom. The door slammed shut.
"A good idea, if you stay there," Gibbons said warningly. "If you don't, there may be a life on your hands." He went out of the house to stand at the top of the short flight of stairs, his face and the set of his body defiant.
Angus Mulchay wheeled to a stop below him.
"What are ye doin' here?" the old man asked suspiciously. "Where's the lass?"
"Not at home to callers," Gibbons said, but all his; attention was on the other horseman, a grim-visaged character with the look of winter in his eyes and the small silver badge of the Rangers pinned to his shirt front The man himself was noting the number and disposition of the force spread out in a semicircle around the yard.
"I'll have a word with the lass," Mulchay announced.
"You'll wheel right around, if you know what's best for you," Gibbons said.
"Your day is done on the Big Bend," Mulchay answered, continuing to dismount. "Ranger Keroon has your warrant in his pocket."
Seth Keroon and Jack Gibbons had known each other nearly twenty years, but the men they were seeing now were like two strangers. Mulchay hitched his horse to the porch rail and started up the steps. Gibbons raised his booted foot, shoved it against Mulchay's chest, and sent him sprawling in the dust.
"I'm all the law that's needed in the Big Bend," Gibbons said, speaking directly to Keroon. The Ranger squared his shoulders, as if he could feel the weight of the eyes staring intently at his back, the position of his gun hand.
'The governor sent me to bring you up to Austin," he said calmly.
"Sam Bradford's a traitor to Texas," Gibbons answered. "He's betrayed the men who died to free us from Mexico."
"Don't waste that kind of talk on me, Jack," Keroon told him. "You and I understand what you're trying to do down here."
"If you understand that, Seth, you won't try to serve any piece of paper on me."
"But you know I'm going to . . ."
"Come back here, you old fool!" Gibbons shouted to Mulchay, diverted by the man's attempt to circle to the door of the house.
"I mean to see the lass," Angus shouted back. "Something tells me she's had trouble with ye!"
"Apgar!" Gibbons called, and the man nearest to Mulchay drew his gun and stood across the old man's path.
"Let him pass," Seth Keroon ordered in his quiet voice, and Apgar's glance went nervously to the famous badge, Then to Gibbons' face for reassurance. He stayed in Mulchay’s way.
Tm all the law that's needed," Gibbons repeated to the Ranger. "Ride out."
""No," Keroon said, then swung so that he faced the expectant men behind him."I'm here to arrest c Gibbons," he told them. "Him alone. If your orders to interfere, then I rescind them—and I speak for the State of Texas!"
The six of them shifted uneasily. Then one of them said, "Ride out like you were told to mister. Rangers ain't no special breed to Gibbons' Militia." Keroon sighed, turned back to Gibbons. "I arrest you in the name of the people of Texas," he said and reached for the warrant. Some gunman thought he was going for a breast gun. He drew and fired, the slug catching the lawman in the small of the back. Four more times he was hit in that many seconds, the bullets driving him lifeless from the saddle.
"You foul cowards!" Mulchay cried at them. "You miserable butchers—" Apgar raised his gun high, brought it down with sickening force on the man's head. Mulchay went to his knees, fell head down and lay there.
The door at Gibbons' back swung open and Rosemarie stepped onto the porch, dressed again and wide-eyed with terror. Her glance took in the murdered man and the crumpled figure of Mulchay, but when she would have gone to him, Gibbons' arm circled her waist and held her back.
"What have you done?" she demanded brokenly. "What have you done?"
"Get your things together, missy. We're traveling fast . . ."
"No! I won't go with you!"
"You will—or you can stand here and watch Mulchay take a bullet in the back of his head!" "You wouldn't!"
"Apgar, at the count of three finish the old meddler One! Two—" The stolid Apgar thumbed the hammer back.
"No, no!"
"Get packed in three minutes," Gibbons ordered, and the girl reentered the house. Gibbons then had the dead man and the unconscious one tied across their saddles Rosemarie came down the steps, carrying a small duffle bag, and a horse from the small remuda was made ready for her. Leaving one man behind to take Lauren into custody, the strange party rode off.
TWELVE
IT WAS Angus Mulchay's nature to speak and to act impetuously—and on the morning that he had taken it into his mind to ride off to Austin for help, the man had done so without informing any of his friends what he was up to. Naturally, those cronies wondered about him—it was all they talked about during the first few days of his disappearance—but when two weeks had passed without a word, Hamlin, Macintosh were of the opinion that a delegation of Gibbons' hardcase army had put the fear of God into him and packed him off.
"He'll be back in the country soon," they told each other confidently.
"Ay, and denyin' that Gibbons was the cause." And when they gathered at the Glasgow this hot Tuesday evening they had no idea that Mulchay had, indeed, come back. But there were other things to talk about tonight, for the families of the Tompkins, the Alreds and the Bryans were in town lock, stock and barrel, and the three heads of those families were hopping mad about it. " 'Load up your wagon, you're moving,' this dirty-faced gunman tells me," Jock Bryan reported to the assemblage ii the saloon. " 'And why am I moving?' I asks him. 'Because you're in a battle zone,' he tells me in that surly voice. Imagine! The land I've ranched for twenty-five years is a battle zone!"
"The same as
they did to me," Cy Tompkins added. "Only I was told it was for the safety of my family. So I said I'd decide about the safety of my family, as I've always done—and he says, no, Captain Gibbons does all the deciding in the Big Bend for everyone."
"Well?" the big-chested Alex Aired demanded. "What are we going to do about Captain High-and-Mighty Gibbons?"
"Turn him and his rascals out!" shouted the usually retiring Bryan. "I'm a Godfearing man, and violence offends me—but there comes a first time for everyone!"
"Ay!"
"Gibbons has gone too far! I say we elect a captain of our own. My vote goes to Cy Tompkins."
Alex Alred was the last speaker, and it was not until he had made his nomination that he was aware he was talking into a dead silence. All the excited clamor in the big room had vanished into thin air, and the puzzled man turned slowly around to stare at a trio of militiamen inside the doorway.
"Who is Cy Tompkins?" Lou Kersh asked Alred.;
"Trot him out here." [
"This is a private meeting," Ken Hamlin said. "It's going to be, as soon as every Mex-lover in the place pulls stakes."
"We're getting a little tired of that," Hamlin countered. "All opposed to Gibbons get tarred with the same old brush."
"As soon as every Mex-lover pulls stakes," Kersh said again, as if the other man hadn't spoken. "Clears out of the country. Now, which one is Cy Tompkins?"
There was a pause, then the man cleared his throat nervously and stepped forward. "My name is Tompkins,! he said.
"Do you accept the nomination?"
"What?"
"For captain of the home guard, mister. Are you number one here?"
"Give the fellow some peace," Hamlin spoke "You've already done enough for one day."
"You're the big talker," Kersh told him. "Maybe you’re the one they want to rep them." "Hamlin is not concerned in this. It's my ranch you’ve moved on to." Tompkins walked three strides closer to the three gunmen. "If my friends want me," he said, "I'm their captain."
"All his friends raise their hands," Kersh said, and they all did. Kersh laughed. "Some friends," he said to the other pair and they laughed, too. "All right, Tompkins, let's go."
"Go where?"
"To the calabozo! Where the hell did you think? As of sundown this town's under martial law, and you're looking at the provost marshal."
"But what's Tompkins done?" demanded Macintosh, outraged.
"What hasn't he done? Aiding and abetting an enemy of the State of Texas, inciting to riot, illegal assembly— Tompkins, you're a dangerous character to be running around loose. Let's go!"
The other two shifted position, gave each other arm room, and there was something not quite sane in the face of Lou Kersh, at least. He wanted them to force his hand.
"I'll go with you," Cy Tompkins said.
"Then take me as well," Jock Bryan volunteered. Alex Alred came forward at the same time.
Kersh shook his head.
"Just one criminal at a time," he said. "But if you're still here rabble-rousing when we get back, the rest will be accommodated."
The three of them left with Tompkins between them.
THIRTEEN
JACK GIBBONS' strong point was his talent for improvising. Where another man might have been badly rattled by the unexpected and thoroughly unwanted turn of events at the MacKay ranch, Gibbons had a resilience of mind, a military man's inborn ability to go ice-calm in moments of stress, to think on the spot and by the very confidence he felt in himself quell the fears of others.
For there had been fear there in MacKay's yard, a real anxiety in the hearts of all those who had helped kill a Ranger. Gibbons had sensed it, and reacted with precision and poise. His somewhat remarkable decision was to pretend that the whole thing had never happened, that he and the men had never ridden this way; he had not so much as laid eyes on the girl; Mulchay had never arrived and there was no such person as Seth Keroon.
So he cleared them all out and headed the party west to Mulchay's range, for the same thought process that produced this solution also included the basic proposition that here was the land Malcolm Lord had hired him to usurp.
And always—in all ways—he had the threat of the Mexican invaders.
At Mulchay's house his riders continued to obey his crisply spoken orders, though they had no idea what the purpose was. First they strung up the bullet-riddled body to the same eaves where the four Mexicans had been lynched fifteen days ago. Then the paint Gibbons wanted was found, and he himself got down on hands and knees and swashed the single word on the porch floor beneath the hanging man.
Venganza! it read, each letter crudely stroked, foreign-looking. Revenge. Even the dull-witted Harley could spell that out, get the inference that he hadn't pumped a bullet into the Ranger at all. It was those damn Mexicans. But some others, like Apgar, wondered about the eyewitnesses to the actual affair. What was their fast-thinking boss going to do about the unconscious, but still alive Mulchay? And the girl?
Jack Gibbons knew that a little explanation, like knowledge, was a dangerous thing. So he told them what to do.
At sundown Apgar was to set out for the Overlord spread. He should push his horse every minute of the way. He would find Gibbons at the ranch with Malcolm Lord, and excitedly report an invasion of Mulchay's place from across the river. So much for Apgar.
Riker was to stage the "raid" here. He was to watch the passage of time carefully—and one hour after Apgar started off he was to set fire to the outbuildings, and when they were ablaze put the torch to the main house.
"Cato," Gibbons said then, keeping his voice unemotional, tactical—"Cato, your work is the blabbermouth. You still pack those Mex blades in your saddlebag?"
Cato, a lean and hungry-looking man, nodded.
"Then use one you can part with. Wait until the house is on fire, then drag him out beyond the porch. Leave the knife sticking in his heart where we can all see it."
Cato nodded again.
"After that all four of you clear out. We'll rendezvous at the MacKay ranch. Any questions?"
"That's the Ranger, the house, and the old man," Apgar said. "There's one other."
"She's my problem," Gibbons told him. "You and everybody else forget about her."
He said that with the same assurance he'd said everything else, turned away from them before they could read the troubled indecision in his eyes. For Rosemarie certainly was his problem, and a mind-torturing one to solve under this kind of pressure. His coldly practical half demanded she be left here with Cato, warned him over and over that she was his damnation. But pride and passion bent him the other way, fed his hungry ego. The woman is yours, their strong voice insisted. A prize of war. Then, when he wavered again: What are you afraid of? You do run things. Or do you?
His thoughts had carried him to the back of the house, where Harley was standing guard over Rosemarie, and the girl in her turn was making Mulchay as comfortable as she could.
As soon as she saw him she stood up, almost by reflex action, and it was the defiance in her, the pure loathing for him that pushed Gibbons into his decision.