His question was answered in the next moment when Lou George emerged from the darkness dragging the limp body of Bill Wilkes. “He fell and bumped his head on somethin’,” Lou said. “I think it was my gun butt.” His comment caused the two Rocking-D riders to roar with laughter while he dragged Bill over by the fire and dropped him.
“You two low-down skunks.” Tom sneered. “Get the hell offa Bar-M range.” He crawled over to his partner, whose head was split beside his eye and blood covered half his face. “What’s the matter?” he spat. “Couldn’t you find no cattle to shoot? Damn Rocking-D scum.”
“Shut your mouth, you old fart,” Lou snorted, “before I knock you in the head.” He turned to grin at his partner then. “Besides, I believe we found about a dozen right here.” He whirled around and started shooting blindly into the cows gathered in the small ravine, laughing at the resulting panic among the bawling cows. Tom tried to charge him, but was knocked down again by Jack Teach. When Lou had emptied his pistol, he turned back to Tom while he reloaded. “All right, old man, where’s Colt McCrae? We got some business with him.”
“Is that what you two snakes come ridin’ in here for?” Tom replied. “Well, he ain’t hereabouts, and I don’t know where he is.” For his answer, he received a sharp rap across his cheek with Lou’s pistol barrel.
“Old man, I know damn well he’s ridin’ for Burt McCrae. Now, suppose you start givin’ me some straight answers.”
“You go to hell,” Tom spat. “I’m too damn old to be bulldogged by trash like you.”
“Wrong answer again,” Lou said. He aimed his pistol at Tom’s foot and pulled the trigger. Tom screamed in pain. Lou looked up at his partner and grinned. “I bet he starts rememberin’ pretty soon.”
While Tom writhed in pain, Jack Teach, his pistol drawn, stood over Bill Wilkes as the dazed old man began to show signs of consciousness. Aware of Tom’s groans, Bill started to get up on his hands and knees, only to feel the cold hard steel of Teach’s revolver barrel against his skull. “You just stay right there,” he was warned. With little choice, Bill was forced to do as he was told.
“I’m gonna lay it out plain and simple,” Lou said, his patience draining. “If one of you don’t tell me where we can find Colt McCrae, and pretty damn quick, then there ain’t no use in keepin’ you alive.” He reached down and grabbed a handful of Tom’s hair. Jerking his head back, he stuck his gun barrel up against the wounded man’s cheek. “Now, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Tom gasped. “I swear I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe they know where he is,” Jack said. “We might as well clean up this mess and head over to the Broken-M.”
Lou nodded his agreement and released his hold on Tom. He stepped back in preparation to execute the witnesses, but suddenly staggered drunkenly when the sharp crack of a rifle rang out. Shot in the gut, Lou doubled over in pain and collapsed. Stunned by the sight of his partner sprawled upon the ground, Jack Teach stood motionless, his mouth agape, when a second shot smacked into his chest, backing him up a few steps before he fell to the ground beside the fire.
A ghostly figure astride a big buckskin horse slowly emerged from the darkness and slow-walked into the fire-lit circle, the only sound that of a Winchester cranking a new round into the chamber. His rifle ready, Colt watched the two bodies carefully as he dismounted. Before checking on his friends, he kicked the pistol away from Jack Teach. With the toe of his boot, he then rolled him over to confirm that he was dead. When he got to Lou George, the wounded man gasped painfully, “You gut-shot me, you son of a bitch.”
“I reckon so,” Colt replied calmly. “I’m still gettin’ used to this rifle. It shoots a mite low.” Anticipating Lou’s next move, he put a bullet into the belligerent bully’s forehead when he suddenly made a move for the pistol beside him. His grim work done, he then turned to help his friends.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” Bill said. “We was as good as dead.” When Colt knelt down to look at him, he said, “I ain’t as bad as I look. Just a bump on the head. Tom needs lookin’ after. The son of a bitch shot him.”
Although he was seemingly calm and unhurried in his execution of Drummond’s two men, the tide of anger that had washed over Colt when he arrived at the brow of the ravine was slow in receding from his mind. When he saw Drummond’s paid gun hands preparing to murder the two innocent men, men who had worked for his father since Colt and Vance were boys, he was overcome with rage. There were no guilt feelings over the disposal of these two predators. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner, Tom,” he said. “I was about a mile away when I heard the shots.”
“You got here,” Tom said, grunting as Colt removed his boot. “And you were the best sight these old eyes had ever seen. Me and Bill was about to go under, and that’s a fact. I ain’t worried about my foot. It ain’t that bad, just hurts like hell.”
“Maybe so,” Colt said, examining the bloody foot. “But it looks like you ain’t gonna be doin’ a lot of walkin’ for a spell. Looks like the bullet went clean through, but we’d best have the doctor tend to it.” Tom was about to protest that it wasn’t necessary, but Colt interrupted him. “I’ll take you into town. Bill, it might be a good idea if you went back to the house in case some more of Drummond’s men are snoopin’ about. Tell Vance to keep a sharp eye about him.”
“They was lookin’ for you,” Bill said.
“I figured,” Colt replied. “Like I said, I’ll take Tom to the doctor, and I’ll drop these two off on the way.”
With Bill’s help, he caught the Rocking-D horses and loaded the bodies across their saddles. After he got Tom settled comfortably on his horse, he turned to Bill Wilkes. “You gonna be all right?”
“Hell yeah. Don’t worry about me. I ain’t afraid of Drummond’s men, now that I know what’s goin’ on. They ain’t likely to surprise me again.”
It was still a good two hours before sunup when a lone rider, leading two horses behind him, walked his mount slowly past the garden fence and up to the wide front porch. Dismounting, the rider tied the reins of the two horses he had been leading to the hitching post. Stepping up in the saddle again, he turned and rode away at an unhurried lope, unnoticed by anyone in the sleeping bunkhouse and generating only casual interest from the horses milling around in the corral.
Dr. Henry Taylor pulled the curtain back to peer out his front window to see who was seeking his services at such an early hour. There were two riders. One he recognized as Tom Mosley; the other was a stranger. “I ain’t even had my coffee yet,” he complained to his wife. He pulled up his suspenders and went to the door. “Tom, what in the world have you gotten into?” he asked when he saw the rag wrapped around Tom’s foot. “You cut your foot or something?”
“Howdy, Doc,” Tom replied. “I got shot.”
Dr. Taylor walked out on the short porch and stood watching while Colt helped Tom down. “Bring him on in here,” he directed. “Gunshot, you say? You shoot yourself in the foot?” He looked hard at the silent man helping Tom, wondering if he had anything to do with it.
“Nope,” Tom answered, “one of Drummond’s trash did it.”
“You don’t mean it,” the doctor exclaimed. “How’d it happen? He didn’t do it on purpose, did he?” Remaining a quiet observer, Colt let Tom do the talking. After Tom had told of the late night visit from two of Drummond’s men, Dr. Taylor shook his head and sighed, “I reckon I’d better get ready to patch up a few more crazy cowhands. You’re already the second gunshot I’ve seen this week. Frank Drummond sent one of his boys in yesterday.” He glanced up, his gaze focusing on Colt. “I don’t reckon you boys had anything to do with that?” When there was no response from either, he held the door to his examining room open and waited for Colt to help Tom inside. “Sit down on the table, there, Tom.” When Tom was settled, Dr. Taylor said, “Who’s your friend, here? I don’t recollect seeing him around town before.”
“Colt McCrae,” Colt answered.
Tom quickly interceded on Colt’s behalf. “It ain’t Colt that started the shootin’. If it weren’t for him, I reckon me and Bill Wilkes would both be dead. Them Drummond coyotes jumped us in the middle of the night.”
“Bad business,” Dr. Taylor muttered as he removed the rag from Tom’s foot. “We haven’t had any serious gunfighting around Whiskey Hill for quite a spell. I’d hate to see it start again.”
“Except for my father,” Colt quietly reminded him.
“Well, yes, young fellow, I’m sorry about that. Still, we don’t need any more, and that’s a fact.” He looked at Tom again. “Have you told the sheriff about this? He might wanna go after them two that jumped you.”
“Ain’t no hurry,” Tom said. “They ain’t likely to go nowhere.”
Dr. Taylor shifted his gaze up to fix on Colt’s eyes. “Oh,” he said, getting Tom’s meaning. “I suppose I’m going to be busier than I thought.” Turning his attention back to the injured foot, he said, “Looks like a pretty clean wound to me. Went in the top and out the bottom. As long as it bled out pretty good, and it looks like it did, it oughta be all right. Hard to say if you broke any bones or not—be damn lucky if you didn’t. I’ll dress the wounds and you can see how it goes. You’ll be able to tell after a few days if the swelling doesn’t go down.”
“What do I do if there is a broke bone and the swellin’ don’t go down?” Tom asked.
“Limp,” Dr. Taylor replied. Then, after a long pause, with Tom looking obviously astonished, the doctor laughed. “I’ll take a look at it after a day or two. Then we’ll see. Now get on outta here. I ain’t even had my coffee yet.”
“How much I owe you?” Tom asked.
“Never mind, I’ll give Vance my bill.” He held the door open for them again, and as they passed him, he spoke to Colt. “You’d better be real careful, young fellow. You ain’t the most popular man around this town. I’m sorry about your father. Sam McCrae was a damn good man.” Colt nodded in reply.
Outside, Colt helped Tom up in the saddle, then stepped up on Buck and wheeled the big horse around. “Well, since the good doctor’s gonna save the bill for Vance, I figure I’ve got enough money to buy us a breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”
“That suits me just fine,” Tom said.
For the second morning in a row, Frank Drummond was awakened by the sound of someone pounding on his front door. Already irritated, he listened for the sound of Alice Flynn’s unhurried footsteps in the front hall. After a few moments, he could hear some excited talk from one of his cowhands. Who it was or what he was saying was not discernible, but Drummond knew it was not good news. Feeling his bile rising, he threw back the heavy quilts he had been sleeping under and got up. Throwing a long robe over his nightshirt, he stormed out of the room to see what trouble awaited.
“Mr. Drummond . . .” Pete Tyler started, but stepped quickly out of the way when Drummond pushed on by him, having looked past his foreman’s shoulder at the two corpses lying across their saddles.
Livid, Drummond sputtered, “Where’d you find them?”
“Right where they are,” Tyler answered. “They were tied right there at the rail when I came out this mornin’.”
Clucking her disgust, Alice returned to her kitchen, leaving the men to their foolish business. She never questioned her employer’s methods of acquiring his many holdings, although she never disguised her disapproval. A woman of her status—a widow for more than twelve years and no family to fall back on—had little choice but to do whatever was necessary to survive. Keeping house and cooking for Frank Drummond was not difficult. He had no family, so there was just the two of them to clean up after, and he seemed indifferent to her perpetual frown and sharp tongue. The saddle trash Drummond hired soon learned to stay clear of the cranky old witch that ran the house. Alice preferred it that way.
Turning to direct his rage toward Tyler, Drummond demanded, “How in hell can someone just ride right in here and nobody see him?” Drummond didn’t have to be told that these stiffening corpses were the two men Pete had selected to take care of Colt McCrae.
“I don’t know,” Tyler started. “I noticed them tied up here before sunup when I started to—” That was as far as he got before being interrupted again.
“War!” Drummond roared. “If it’s war he wants, then by God, I’ll see he gets it!” His face a maelstrom of fury, he glowered at his foreman as if seeing right through the man. The image in his mind’s eye was that of the insolent face of Colt McCrae sitting on his horse where the two horses of his men now stood, a rifle aimed at his gut. In the ten years since he had come to this valley, he had never been openly challenged. His gang of ruthless gunmen, loosely called cowhands, ensured his acquisition of most of the open range in the wild young territory, and led to his dominance of the town itself. And now to be seemingly stalemated by one insolent man, a troublemaker the town had gotten rid of years ago, was more than Drummond intended to tolerate. His first thought was to call out his entire crew, now minus three dead, and hunt this menace down, and in the process, clean out the hangers-on at Bar-M and Broken-M.
Accurately reading his boss’ thinking, Tyler asked, “Want me to round up the men?”
On the verge of saying yes, Drummond checked himself with a calmer thought. Though ruthless, he was not a foolish man. His empire had been built under a guise of legitimacy. Even the vigilance committee that had rid the town of undesirables when the railroad was being built was heavily made up from Drummond’s men. In recent years, he had even given thought to the possibility of running for governor of the territory. A vigilante-like response to this one man might turn the town’s citizens against him. In control of his emotions now, he answered his foreman’s question. “No, not yet, I’ll talk to the men tonight. I’m going in to talk to the sheriff first.” With that, he dismissed Tyler to take care of the bodies.
At approximately the same time Drummond discovered the bodies of Lou George and Jack Teach parked at his front door, the man responsible walked into the Whiskey Hill Kitchen. In the kitchen, Mary Simmons turned to peer through the pass-through window behind the counter when she heard the door close. “Well, look who’s back,” she murmured, causing Pearl Murray to sidle over to have a look. So intense was their concentration upon Colt that they failed to notice Tom Mosley’s bandaged foot, covered only by his sock.
“He’s got plenty of brass,” Pearl commented. “I didn’t think he’d show his face in town again.” She nudged Mary and grinned. “It ain’t gonna make ol’ Oscar any too happy, is it?”
There had been a great deal of talk about the return of Colt McCrae during the last couple of days, a lot of discussion about what, if anything should be done about him. Waiting the table in the back room, Mary usually overheard most of what went on in town, and the talk the day before was of the shooting of two of Frank Drummond’s men—one of them, Lon Branch, was dead. In Mary’s mind, that wasn’t much of a loss to the world in general. The discussion at the table was whether it was a gunfight or a murder. J.D. sent Stoney Yates out to Burt McCrae’s ranch to bring Colt in, but Stoney came back without him. He said Burt told him that Colt didn’t stay at the ranch. Mary wondered what J.D. would do if he knew Colt McCrae had just walked into the dining room.
“Well, are you gonna wait on ’em?” Pearl broke into Mary’s thoughts.
“Of course I am,” Mary replied, and started toward the kitchen door.
“You know Oscar was talkin’ about not servin’ him if he ever came in again,” Pearl reminded her, then waited for Mary’s reaction, a big smile painting her face.
“Oscar’s full of hot air. He talks pretty big, but I’d like to see if he’s got the guts to tell him to get out when he comes back from the store.” She looked at Pearl and winked. �
�Besides, I still think he’s nice looking. I’ll wait on him.”
“Atta girl,” Pearl laughed. “Lady loves an outlaw.”
“Well, I see you came back to see us,” Mary greeted her two early customers cheerfully. Then, noticing Tom’s bloodstained sock, she asked, “What happened to your foot, Tom?” While he went into detail about the incident that resulted in his gunshot wound, her eyes remained fixed upon the dark brooding gaze of his younger companion, almost missing the point that there were two more dead. When it registered with her, she suddenly recoiled. Directing her question to Colt, she exclaimed, “You shot two more of Drummond’s men?”
Uncomfortable with the position in which Tom had placed him, Colt could only explain, “I reckon I didn’t have much choice.”
“Mister, for somebody who’s been away for a while, you sure didn’t slip back into town quietly. Have you got a death wish or something? That’s a rough bunch you’re taking on by yourself.”
“He ain’t exactly by hisself,” Tom spoke up.
Mary gave the remark only a sideways glance, her eyes still locked on Colt’s. “All the same, you’d better watch yourself.” She glanced around as if to see if anyone else could hear. “Why are you sitting in here? Don’t you know J.D. might come in here any minute?”
Tiring of the questions, although touched by her obvious concern, he favored her with a faint smile. “I’m sittin’ in here because I want some breakfast, and I haven’t done anything but defend myself and my friends. Now, do you think Pearl can fix me some more of those eggs?”
She shook her head, exasperated. “All right, but I’d really hate to see you hauled off to jail if J.D. comes in.”
“I appreciate that, but I’ll take my chances.”
“Me, too,” Tom piped up. “We’ll take our chances.”
"I’ll get you some coffee,” she said, and turned to go to the kitchen.
Pearl looked up expectedly when Mary breezed through the kitchen door. “Well?” she asked.
Range War in Whiskey Hill Page 6