Scarlet Sunset, Silver Nights

by Leigh Greenwood

  The chilling sound of a single gunshot from the direction of the Slash Seven fires brought the whole panorama of action to an abrupt halt. Pamela raced toward Mongo’s camp as fast as she could run, her heart pounding in her throat. She had seen Slade ride over there just minutes earlier. The sight that met her eyes caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up in fear.

  Slade stood in the center of Mongo’s crew, his gun drawn on Peak Bolin who, moments before, had been holding a branding iron. No one drew a gun when Mongo and Pamela shoved their way inside the circle, but Pamela could tell the men were tense, on the verge of a gun battle.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Mongo demanded, his face a mask of rage. “What do you mean busting into my camp like this?”

  “He shot at me,” the stupefied Peak told Mongo, the hand which had held the branding iron still shaking. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Slade …” Pamela began.

  “That’s a maverick,” Slade said pointing to the calf still lying on its side. He spoke to Mongo, but his glance included everyone who had joined the circle. “We agreed there would be no branding of mavericks without every owner being represented.”

  “You tried to kill me,” the cowhand repeated somewhat hysterically.

  “I shot the branding iron out of your hands.”

  “No man can shoot like that,” Mongo contradicted. He approached Slade menacingly, his hand on his own gun. “You were trying to kill him.”

  “Get your hand off that gun. Shepherd. I’d take you before you could clear leather.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, cowboy. I have boys who can shoot you out of a running saddle without opening their eyes wide.”

  “But you’d already be dead.” Slade’s gun pointed directly at Mongo. “Now I don’t aim to start a fight,” Slade said addressing the assembled men, “but there’ll be no branding of mavericks by individual crews.”

  “That’s no maverick,” Mongo said.

  “Then show me it’s ma,” Slade challenged. “Let him up,” he shouted to the cowboy who, so startled by the unsuspected turn of events, still held the calf down. The man loosed the ropes and the calf leapt to its feet. But no cow emerged from the herd to claim it as its own. The calf ran off by itself, away from the herd.

  “It was an accident. I didn’t know,” Peak sputtered. “I just brand what they throw.”

  “So he made a mistake,” Mongo shouted. “That’s no reason to kill a man.”

  “I’ve already told you I shot the branding iron out of his hand.”

  “And I already told you nobody can shoot that good. You’re lying. I think we ought to hang him.” The rumble of agreement was stilled when Pamela stepped inside the circle.

  “I can prove he’s telling the truth,” she announced. She didn’t know what to do, the idea was only half formed in her mind, but she couldn’t afford to wait. If the mob mentality ever got hold of these men, there’d be no way to stop them.

  “Pamela, honey, you don’t have any business being here,” Mongo said solicitously, coming immediately to her side. “Hanging is a messy business. You don’t want to see it.”

  “Nobody is going to hang anybody,” Pamela said, her voice quivering slightly. “Slade can prove what he said.” Think, she told herself. What can he do to prove to everybody, once and for all, that he’s not only telling the truth but that he’s too dangerous to mess with?

  “That’s impossible,” Mongo said, confident of himself, determined to get Pamela out of the way and back to the business of hanging Slade. But Pamela knew what to do now, and she didn’t move an inch.

  “Do you have any coins in your pocket?”

  “Sure, but…”

  “Give them to me.” Mongo grumbled, unsure of what she intended to do, but he handed her three twenty-dollar gold pieces. “I need three more. Anybody else got any?” She just hoped Slade turned out to be as good as Dave thought he was.

  The other ranchers, who had all joined the circle by now, managed to come up with three coins among them. Gold was not all that common, even among wealthy ranchers, and they weren’t too pleased to part with them.

  “I’m going to give them to Gaddy.” The boy pushed his way through the crowd, anxious to take his part in the show. “When I give the nod, Gaddy will toss them as high as he can. Are you ready, Slade?”

  Slade hadn’t moved. He had known the danger when he shot the branding iron out of Peak Bolin’s hand, but he had laid his plans well. He still didn’t know but what he may have made a mistake, but he would be the one to pay if something went wrong.

  He never expected Pamela to step into the circle in his defense. The trick she proposed nearly bowled him over. Did she have any idea how difficult it was to hit anything that small? The idea that he could hit six coins in the air made him feel weak in the knees.

  But he had to bring it off. He risked ruining Pamela’s credibility as well as his own. Everybody expected her to back her own man, but they clearly hadn’t expected her to make a public stand out of it. They had all heard of Dave’s injury, and they could all guess that Slade must have given her some proof that he could handle the job. But they hadn’t expected to be faced down by a woman. It had taken tremendous courage for her to step out of that crowd. He couldn’t let her down.

  No woman, no matter what she said or what she thought she felt about ranches, cowboys, Baltimore, or anything else, no woman would put herself on the line for a man, like Pamela had just done for him, unless that man meant one helluva lot to her.

  For the first time Slade believed he had a chance against this Frederick. In the same moment he realized he wasn’t just in love with Pamela. He wanted her to be his wife.

  The realization almost rattled his nerve. Whether he knew it or not, that’s what he’d been wanting from the moment he saw her standing on the porch, maybe even from the moment he left Texas. It was the reason he left the carnival, the reason he changed his name, the reason he’d never been able to stay in one place very long. All the time he’d been looking for some place he could call home.

  Now he’d found it.

  It wouldn’t be easy to convince Pamela she had misunderstood her feelings. It would be even harder to convince her she liked what she thought she hated, but he would worry about all that in good time. Right now he had to bring off this trick.

  If he failed, Mongo would do his best to hang him.

  Slade ejected the empty shell, dropped a new cartridge into the chamber, settled the gun back in its holster, and backed a little way from the group. Tense, his concentration on Gaddy’s handful of coins, his own hands suspended above his guns, he forced himself to empty his mind of everything except the challenge before him. Slowly his body relaxed and his mind stopped teasing itself over the consequences of failure. His vision narrowed until he saw nothing but Gaddy’s hand. He waited until the sounds around him dimmed from his ears, until his mind emptied itself of everything except his gun and those six coins.

  Only then did Slade nod his head.

  “Toss them,” Pamela called out.

  Pamela watched the coins sail into the air more than twenty feet above the heads of an audience that strained its necks to follow them. The coins turned and spun in the sunlight, sending streaks of gold light flashing in all directions. They shot upward quickly, slowed, and seemed to hang in the air for a slender moment before plummeting to earth.

  During that brief pause, Slade fired six rapid shots.

  The circle of cowboys surged forward the moment the coins hit the ground. No one made a sound as Gaddy laid them before Mongo. All six had holes in them, four of them dead center.

  Chapter 12

  Pamela didn’t dare look at Slade. She felt such a wave of relief that for a moment she feared her legs would go out from under her in front of all these goggling men. But that really didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now that danger no longer threatened Slade. Nobody would even think of hanging him now.

  “In the future, I
think it’s safe to assume Mr. Morgan hits what he aims at,” she said. Ostensibly she spoke to Mongo, but she allowed her gaze to wander over the crowd, to make eye contact with as many men as possible. She wouldn’t let them easily forget what they had almost tried to do.

  “That’s no excuse for him shooting at Peak,” Mongo said when he could pull his gaze away from the incredible sight of the six coins. But the steam had gone out of his anger. Even he believed Slade had fired at the branding iron.

  “Then you’d better see that your men are more careful about what they brand,” Pamela said, this time looking directly at Mongo. “All of us have a stake in those mavericks.” The other ranchers nodded their agreement, and she finally relaxed. Slade no longer held their complete attention. Their thoughts had returned where they belonged, on the cows.

  Only Slade didn’t let it stop there.

  “All the land north of Blue River is Bar Double-B range,” he said after everyone had satisfied himself that Slade really had been able to hit all six coins. “After the branding is done, everybody make sure your beef is off our range. Anything there in the fall will be sold.”

  Everybody forgot the coins. Slade had just challenged every man in the group.

  “You can’t do that,” Pamela squeaked, too startled to keep her voice down. “Cows wander all over.”

  “Not across the river,” Slade said loud enough for everyone to hear him. “They have to be driven.”

  Pamela’s gaze focused on Slade’s face, but his gaze was locked on the hard, pioneering men around them. Pamela looked from Slade to the circle of severe faces that surrounded them, and for the first time she saw these men as enemies—grim, hard-fighting men. They didn’t think of her as Josh White’s little girl any more, and they weren’t here to put themselves out to please her Ma or to make her laugh. She stood for the Bar Double-B, the boss of the man who threatened their ability to survive in this harsh environment. Each one of them deliberately measured the man who opposed them.

  Only one man stands in their way, Pamela thought. And it’s so easy to get rid of one man when he stands alone.

  What could have possessed Slade to make such a threat? Not even her father had dared to go that far. But she knew Slade wouldn’t back down now. One brief glance told her he had lost every bit of support his shooting might have won from the ranchers. For years, they had looked at her father’s land with envious eyes. For years they had been in the practice of swimming part of their herds across the river to graze on the more bountiful grass.

  They were hard men who had taken their range from the Indians and held it against long odds. They had all killed men in their time. Maybe that had been a long time ago, but she doubted they would be overly worried about killing one more. Now a stranger, a common cowboy, a nameless drifter had told them there was something they couldn’t do any more. They might take that from Josh White, but they sure as hell wouldn’t take it from Slade Morgan.

  She had to talk to him, warn him of the danger, or he might not be alive come fall.

  “You can’t make that stick,” Mongo said, arrogance in his voice and facial expression. “Look around. There’s not a man who’ll support you. If Pamela hadn’t thought of that coin trick, you’d be dangling from a rope by now.”

  Slade smiled, and Pamela shuddered; she had never seen such a menacing smile.

  “You look around,” Slade said. “Do you see any Bar Double-B men?”

  Mongo scanned the crowd and then broke out laughing. “Hell, you’re all alone except for a woman and a boy. I could still hang you if I wanted.”

  Slade gave an ear-piercing whistle. All along the perimeter of the group, men stood up from where they had crouched or stepped forward from where they had hidden themselves. All were Bar Double-B men, and each carried a rifle and a gun. Mongo’s color became a little less ruddy; the laugh froze on his lips.

  “I never make a stand unless my back is protected,” Slade said.

  “You wait,” Mongo threatened as he stalked off. “You’ll open your mouth one time too many one of these days. Not even Pamela will be able to save you then.”

  “I’ve got to talk to you!” Pamela whispered imperatively as people began to drift back to their jobs.

  “Just a minute,” Slade said as he turned to speak to Gaddy. “I want you to go back to the ranch. Don’t make your departure too obvious, but I want you there by nightfall.”

  “What for?” Gaddy protested. “I ain’t never been on a roundup before. Uncle Josh wouldn’t let me.”

  “I want you to keep a careful watch on the ranch,” Slade said. Pamela could find no gleam of amusement in his eyes. This was no attempt to make Gaddy feel good by giving him a mock important job. Slade was serious.

  “You think they might try to burn the barn again?” Despite his growing disenchantment with the reality of a range war, the excitement of the struggle had a firm grip on Gaddy.

  There’s more to the ranch than a barn.”

  “You don’t mean the ranch house!” Pamela exclaimed.

  “We can’t take that chance. Gaddy, I’m depending on you to see that nothing happens while we’re away.”

  “You mean to use a gun?”

  “Do what you have to,” Slade answered.

  Gaddy swallowed, once, twice, then he stiffened up ramrod straight before Slade. “You can depend on me,” he said, just as if he were a cadet facing his commanding officer. “Anybody trying to get in that canyon will have to shoot my liver out first.”

  “Pamela wouldn’t want you to do that. She can replace stone and timber, but she can’t replace a loyal cousin.”

  Speechless with pleasure, Gaddy blushed.

  Pamela stared at Slade. She still saw Gaddy as a useless boy, but she wouldn’t say a single word that would take away from Gaddy’s developing vision of himself as a man.

  “Slade’s right. Don’t take any chances,” she added. “I’d be very upset if anything happened to you.”

  Pamela guessed if she was ever going to see a human being walk on air, she was seeing it now. Gaddy had never been so happy in his life, and he hurried to get his things together.

  “It’s about time somebody gave that boy something to do instead of telling him how worthless he is,” Slade said. “Out here boys are men long before they reach his age.”

  “Do you really think somebody will try to burn the ranch while we’re away?”

  “I don’t know. I might if I could only figure out what’s going on.”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “So did I, but I’m not so sure any more.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Pamela looked at him in considerable surprise. “I’ve never known you to be unsure of yourself.”

  Slade smiled. “It’s playacting,” he said, and Pamela blushed at the memories that word brought back. “There haven’t been many times in my life when I have known what I was doing.”

  “You sure gave a good imitation just a minute ago.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “That just might have gotten you killed. Whatever possessed you to tell those men you’d sell their cows?”

  “It seemed like as good a time as any.”

  “Even Dad didn’t dare go that far.”

  “He should have. Then he wouldn’t have to be going to Santa Fe for barbed wire and gunfighters.”

  “Slade, be careful. These aren’t mean men, but Dad says they’ll stop at very little. They’ve each killed several men. That’s how they got where they are now, and they’re not going to give it up because of you.”

  “Are you backing down?”

  “Of course not,” she replied angrily, “but you don’t have to hurl a challenge in their faces. You certainly didn’t have to do it to everybody at once.”

  “It saves time.”

  Didn’t this man understand the seriousness of her warning? She had grown up mostly in Baltimore, yet it looked like she had a better understandi
ng of western men than he did. “It could also get you killed,” she snapped.

  Slade’s eyes twinkled in amusement, and Pamela had to banish the thought of how handsome he looked so she could remember she wanted to hit him. Couldn’t he understand? This was no joking matter.

  “I would never have made such a statement except for two things,” Slade explained. “First, the river gives us a perfectly good fence everybody can see. It’s also pretty deep. Everybody knows those cows don’t come over on their own. Anybody who pushes his cows over now does it knowing he risks a fight. Second,” he added before Pamela could argue, “pressure’s been building up on this range for months. If something isn’t done to let everybody know where you stand, one of those greedy fools is going to keep on pushing until all hell breaks loose.”

  “For God’s sake, Slade, are you determined to start a fight?”

  “I don’t need to. There’s one headed your way right now. This is just a last attempt to stave it off. I hope it’s not too late.”

  “You should never have shot the branding iron out of that boy’s hands. You don’t know these men. You could get hurt. Will you never learn that guns don’t solve anything?”

  “Is this lecture just for me, or does it go for the other ranchers too? If you’re going to reform them, do it right away. I’d feel a little foolish if I kept my hands behind my back while they filled me full of lead.”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Slade Morgan,” she hissed. “Not after I helped save your neck.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, so startled by his question she forgot what she intended to say.

  “Why did you save me? You didn’t even know if I could do that trick.”

  “I had to think of something that would convince them you were good enough to shoot that branding iron intentionally instead of by mistake. Those coins were all I could think of.”

  “I’ve never done a trick like that,” Slade said.

  Pamela saw amusement literally do somersaults in his eyes.