The Fighting Edge

by Raine, William MacLeod

  They stood on the bank above the edge of the ford. June looked down into the tumbling water. Bob waited for her to speak. He had achieved a capacity for silence and had learned the strength of it.

  Presently June lifted her eyes to his. “Dud says you an’ he are going to take up preëmptions and run cattle of your own,” she began.

  “Yes. Harshaw’s going to stake us. We’ll divide the increase.”

  “I’m glad. Dud ought to quit going rippity-cut every which way. No use his wastin’ five or six years before he gets started for himself.”

  “No,” Bob assented.

  “You’re steadier than he is. You’ll hold him down.”

  Bob came to time loyally. “Dud’s all right. You’ll find him there like a rock when you need him. Best fellow in all this White River country.”

  Her shining eyes sent a stab of pain through his heart. She was smiling at him queerly. “One of the best,” she said.

  “Stay with you to a fare-you-well,” he went on. “If I knew a girl—if I had a sister—well, I’d sure trust her to Dud Hollister. All wool an’ a yard wide that boy is.”

  “Yes,” June murmured.

  “Game as they make ’em. Know where he’s at every turn of the road. I’d ce’tainly back his play to a finish.”

  “I know you would.”

  “Best old pal a fellow ever had.”

  “It’s really a pity you haven’t a sister,” she teased.

  Bob guessed that June had brought him here to talk about Dud. He did, to the exclusion of all other topics. The girl listened gravely and patiently, but imps of mischief were kicking up their heels in her eyes.

  “You give him a good recommendation,” she said at last. “How about his friend?”

  “Tom Reeves?”

  “No, Bob Dillon.” Her dark eyes met his fairly. “Oh, Bob, I’m so glad.”

  He was suddenly flooded with self-consciousness. “About us preëmptin’?” he asked.

  “No. About you being the hero of the campaign.”

  The ranger was miserably happy. He was ashamed to have the thing he had done dragged into the light, embarrassed to hear her use so casually a word that made him acutely uncomfortable. Yet he would not for the world have missed the queer little thrills that raced through him.

  “That’s plumb foolishness,” he said.

  “Yes, it is—not. Think I haven’t heard all about it? How you dragged Jake Houck into the willows right spang from among the Utes? How you went to the river an’ got him water? How you went for help when everybody thought you’d be killed? An’ how you shamed Dud into going back with you? I made Mr. Harshaw tell me all he knew—and Dud too. He said—Mr. Harshaw said—”

  Bob interrupted this eager attack. “I’ll tell you how it was, June. When I saw Houck lying out there with a busted leg I didn’t know who he was—thought maybe it was Dud. So I had to go an’ get him. If I’d known it was Houck—”

  “You knew it was Houck before you dragged him back, didn’t you?” she charged. “You knew it when you went to the river to get him water?”

  “Truth is, I was scared so I shook,” he confessed humbly. “But when a fellow’s sufferin’ like Jake Houck was—”

  “Even your enemy.”

  “Oh, well, enemies don’t count when you’re fightin’ Utes together. I had to look after him—couldn’t duck it. Different with Dud when he rode back to get Tom Reeves. Did you hear about that?”

  She put a damper on the sudden enthusiasm that lilted into his voice. “Yes, I heard about that,” she said dryly. “But we’re talking of another man now. You’ve got to stand there an’ take it, Bob. It won’t last but a minute anyhow. I never was so tickled in my life before. When I thought of all you’ve suffered an’ gone through, an’ how now you’ve stopped the tongues of all the folks who jeered at you, I went to my room and cried like a little girl. You’ll understand, won’t you? I had to tell you this because we’ve promised to be friends. Oh, I am so glad for you, Bob.”

  He swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. “Yes, I’ll understand, June. It—it was awful nice of you to tell me. I reckon you ought to hate me, the way I treated you. Most girls would.”

  She flashed a quick look at his flaming face. His embarrassment relieved hers.

  “As if you knew what most girls would think,” she derided. Nevertheless she shifted the conversation to grounds less personal and dangerous. “Now you can tell me some more about that Dud you’re always braggin’ of.”

  Bob did not know as he talked of his friend that June found what he said an interpretation of Robert Dillon rather than Dudley Hollister.

  * * *

  [4] Piling up brush to protect the bank from being washed away.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  A RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN

  Dillon and Hollister were lounging on the bank of Elk Creek through the heat of the day. They had been chasing a jack-rabbit across the mesa for sport. Their broncos were now grazing close at hand.

  “Ever notice how a jack-rabbit jumps high when it’s crowded?” Dud asked idly.

  Bob nodded. “Like a deer. Crowd one an’ he gets to jumpin’ high. ’D you see that jack turn a somersault just as I threw my rope the last time?”

  Dud’s keen eyes ranged the landscape. They were on the edge of the mesa where it dipped down into the valley. Since he and Bob had decided to preëmpt a quarter-section each, it had become a habit of his to study the localities over which they rode.

  “Country looks good round here,” he suggested.

  “Yes,” agreed his friend.

  “What we lookin’ for anyhow, Bob?”

  “Wood, grass, and water.”

  “Well, they’re right here, ain’t they?”

  Bob had been thinking the same thing himself. They saddled and quartered over the ground carefully. There was a wide stretch of meadow close to the junction of Elk Creek and the river. Upon part of it a growth of young willow had sprung up. But he judged that there was nearly one hundred and fifty acres of prairie. This would need no clearing. Rich wild grass already covered it luxuriously. For their first crop they could cut the native hay. Then they could sow timothy. There would be no need to plough the meadow. The seed could be disked in. Probably the land never would need ploughing, for it was a soft black loam.

  “How about roads?” Bob asked. “The old-timers claim we’ll never get roads here.”

  “Some one’s going to take up all this river land mighty soon. That’s a cinch. An’ the roads will come right soon after the settlers. Fact is, we’ve got to jump if we’re going to take up land on the river an’ get a choice location.”

  “My notion too,” agreed Bob. “We’d better get a surveyor out here this week.”

  They did. Inside of a month they had filed papers at the land office, built cabins, and moved their few possessions to the claims. Their houses were made of logs mud-chinked, with dirt floors and shake roofs instead of the usual flat dirt ones. They expected later to whipsaw lumber for the floors. A huge fireplace in one end of each cabin was used for cooking as well as for heat until such time as they could get stoves. Already they planned a garden, and in the evenings were as likely to talk of turnips, beets, peas, beans, and potatoes as of the new Hereford bulls Larson and Harshaw were importing from Denver.

  For the handwriting was on the wall. Cattlemen must breed up or go out of business. The old dogy would not do any longer. Already Utah stock was displacing the poor southern longhorns. Soon these, too, would belong to the past. Dud and Bob had vision enough to see this and they were making plans to get a near-pedigreed bull.

  Dud sighed in reminiscent appreciation of the old days that were vanishing. He might have been seventy-two instead of twenty-two coming February. Behind him lay apparently all his golden youth.

  “We got to adopt ourselves to new ways, old Sure-Shot,” he ruminated aloud. “Got to quit hellin’ around an’ raisin’ Cain. Leastways I have. You never did
do any o’ that. Yes, sir, I got to be a responsible citizen.”

  The partner of the responsible citizen leaned back in a reclining chair which he had made from a plank sawed into five parts that were nailed together at angles.

  “You’ll be raisin’ little towheads right soon,” he said through a cloud of smoke.

  “No, sir. Not me. Not Dud Hollister. I can boss my own se’f for a spell yet,” the fair-haired youth protested vehemently. “When I said we got to adopt ourselves, I was thinkin’ of barb-wire fences an’ timothy hay. ’S all right to let the dogies rough through the winter an’ hunt the gulches when the storms come. But it won’t do with stock that’s bred up. Harshaw lost close to forty per cent of his cattle three years ago. It sure put some crimp in him. He was hit hard again last winter. You know that. Say he’d had valuable stock. Why, it would put him outa business. Sure would.”

  “Yes,” admitted Bob. “There’s a schoolmarm down at Meeker was askin’ me about you. You know her—that snappin’-eyed brunette. Wanted to know all about yore claim, an’ was it a good one, an’ didn’t I think Mr. Hollister a perfect gentleman, an’—”

  Dud snatched a blanket from the bunk and smothered the red head. They clinched, rolled on the floor, and kicked over the chair and stool. Presently they emerged from battle feeling happier.

  “No, we got to feed. Tha’s the new law an’ the gospel of the range,” Dud continued. “Got to keep our cattle under fence in winter an’ look after ’em right. Cattle-raisin’ as a gamble will be a losing bet right soon. It’s a business now. Am I right?”

  “Sounds reasonable to me, Dud.”

  Bob’s face was grave, but he smiled inwardly. The doctrine that his friend had just been expounding was not new to him. He had urged it on Dud during many a ride and at more than one night camp, had pointed to the examples of Larson, Harshaw, and the other old-timers. Hollister was a happy-go-lucky youth. The old hard-riding cattle days suited him better. But he, too, had been forced at last to see the logic of the situation. Now, with all the ardor of a convert, he was urging his view on a partner who did not need to be convinced.

  Dillon knew that stock-raising was entering upon a new phase, that the old loose range system must give way to better care, attention to breeding, and close business judgment. The cattleman who stuck to the old ways would not survive.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  BEAR CAT ASLEEP

  Bear Cat basked in the mellow warmth of Indian summer. Peace brooded over the valley, a slumberous and placid drowsiness. Outside Platt & Fortner’s store big freight wagons stood close to the sidewalk. They had just come in from their long overland journey and had not yet been unloaded. A Concord stage went its dusty way down the street headed for Newcastle. Otherwise there was little evidence of activity.

  It was about ten o’clock in the morning. The saloons and gambling-houses were almost deserted. The brisk business of the night had died down. Even a poker player and a faro dealer must sleep.

  Main Street was in a coma. A dog lazily poked a none too inquisitive nose into its epidermis in a languid search for fleas. Past the dog went a barefoot urchin into a store for two pounds of eight-penny nails.

  Three horsemen appeared at the end of the street and moved down it at the jog-trot which is the road gait of the cowpuncher. They dismounted near the back door of Platt & Fortner’s and flung the bridle reins over the wheel spokes of the big freight wagons with the high sides. They did not tie the reins even in slip knots.

  The riders stood for a moment talking in low voices before they separated. One went into Dolan’s. He was a good-looking young fellow about twenty. A second wandered into the hotel saloon. He was not good-looking and was twice twenty. The third strolled past the bank, glanced in, turned, and walked past it a second time. He straddled, with jingling spurs, into the big store.

  Tom Platt nodded casually to him. “Anything I can do for you, Houck?”

  “I reckon,” Houck grunted.

  Platt noticed that he limped slightly. He had no feeling of friendliness toward Houck, but common civility made him inquire how the wounded leg was doing. After the Indian campaign the Brown’s Park man had gone to Meeker for his convalescence. That had been two months since.

  “’S all right,” growled the big fellow.

  “Good. Thought you kinda favored it a little when you walked.”

  The Brown’s Park man bought a plug of chewing tobacco and a shirt.

  “Guess the soldiers got the Utes corralled all right by this time. Hear anything new about that?” Platt asked by way of making conversation.

  “No,” Houck replied shortly. “Got an empty gunnysack I could have?”

  “Sure.” The storekeeper found one and a string with which to tie it.

  “I’ll take a slab of side meat an’ a pound of ground coffee,” the big man growled.

  He made other purchases,—flour, corn meal, beans, and canned tomatoes. These he put in the gunnysack, tying the open end. Out of the side door he went to the horses standing by the big freight wagons. The contents of the sack he transferred to saddle-bags.

  Then, without any apparent doubt as to what he was going to do next, he dropped into another store, one which specialized in guns and ammunition, though it, too, sold general supplies. He bought cartridges, both for the two forty-fives and for the rifle he carried. These he actually tested in his weapons, to make sure they fitted easily.

  The proprietor attempted a pleasantry. “You’re kinda garnished with weapons, stranger. Not aimin’ to hold up the town, are you?”

  The amiable laugh died away. The wall-eyed stranger was looking at him in bleak silence. Not an especially timid man, the owner of the place felt a chill run down his spine. That stare carried defiance, an unvoiced threat. Later, the storekeeper made of it a stock part of his story of the day’s events.

  “When the stranger gave me that look of his I knew right away something was doing. ’Course I didn’t know what. I’ll not claim I did, but I was sure there’d be a job for the coroner before night. Blister come into the store just after he left. I said to him, ‘Who’s that big black guy?’ He says, ‘Jake Houck.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘Jake Houck is sure up to some deviltry.’”

  It is easy to be a prophet after the event. When Houck jingled out of the store and along the sidewalk to the hotel, none of the peaceful citizens he met guessed what he had in mind. None of them saw the signal which passed between him and the young fellow who had just come out of Dolan’s. This was not a gesture. No words were spoken, but a message went from one to the other and back. The young puncher disappeared again into Dolan’s.

  Afterward, when Bear Cat began to assemble its recollections of the events prior to the dramatic climax, it was surprising how little that was authentic could be recalled. Probably a score of people noted casually the three strangers. Houck was recognized by three or four, Bandy Walker by at least one. The six-foot youngster with them was known by nobody who saw him. It was learned later that he had never been in the town before. The accounts of how the three spent the hour between ten and eleven are confusing. If they met during that time it was only for a moment or two while passing. But it is certain that Bandy Walker could not have been both in the blacksmith shop and at Platt & Fortner’s five minutes before eleven. The chances are that some of the town people, anxious to have even a small part in the drama, mixed in their minds these strangers with others who had ridden in.

  Bob Dillon and Dud Hollister dropped from their saddles in front of the hotel at just eleven o’clock. They had ridden thirty miles and stood for a moment stretching the cramp out of their muscles.

  Dud spoke, nodding his head to the right. “Look what’s here, Sure-Shot. Yore friend Bandy—old, tried, an’ true.”

  Walker was trailing his high-heeled boots through the dust across the street from Dolan’s toward the big store. If he saw Bob he gave no sign of knowing him.

  The two friends passed into the hotel. The
y performed the usual rites of internal and external ablutions. They returned to the bar, hooked their heels, and swapped with Mike the news of the day.

  “Hear Larson’s bought the K T brand. Anything to it?” asked Dud.

  “Paid seven thousand down, time on the balance,” Mike said. “How you lads makin’ it on Elk?”

  “Fine. We got the best preëmptions on the river. Plenty of good grass, wood an’ water handy, a first-class summer range. It’s an A1 layout, looks like.”

  “At the end of nowhere, I reckon,” Mike grinned.

  “The best steers are on the edge of the herd,” Dud retorted cheerfully. “It’s that way with ranches too. A fellow couldn’t raise much of a herd in Denver, could he?”

  A sound like the explosion of a distant firecracker reached them. It was followed by a second.

  It is strange what a difference there is between the report of one shot and another. A riotous cowpuncher bangs away into the air to stress the fact that he is a live one on the howl. Nobody pays the least attention. A bullet flies from a revolver barrel winged with death. Men at the roulette wheel straighten up to listen. The poker game is automatically suspended, a hand half dealt. By some kind of telepathy the players know that explosion carries deadly menace.

  So now the conversation died. No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of casual talk.