“But this is my home,” Ann protested. “It is all I have.”
“Not quite all.” Her eyes fell before his gaze. “Ann, how would yuh like to go to Saint Louis?”
She looked up, startled. “To Saint Louis? But how …?”
“Not so loud.” He glanced apprehensively at the door. There was no telling who might be listening. “I don’t want anybody to know about it unless yuh decide, and nobody to know till after we’re gone. But Ann, we could go. I’ve always wanted to marry yuh, and there’s no time better than now.”
She got up and walked to the window. St. Louis. It was another world. She hadn’t seen a city in six years, and, after all, they had been engaged for several months now. “How would we get there?” she asked, turning to face him.
“That’s a secret.” He laughed. “Don’t tell anybody about it, but I’ve got a wonderful trip planned for yuh. I always wanted to do things for yuh, Ann. We could go away and be married within a few hours.”
“Where?”
“By the chaplain, at the fort. One of the officers would stand up with me, and there are a couple of officers’ wives there, too.”
“I don’t know, Bruce,” she said hesitantly. “I’ll have to think about it.”
He smiled and kissed her lightly. “Then think fast, honey. I want to get yuh away from all this trouble, and quick.”
When he got outside in the street, he paused, smiling with satisfaction. I’ll show that Dan Shute a thing or two, he told himself grimly. I’ll leave him standin’ here flat-footed, holdin’ the bag. I’ll have the girl and the ranch, and won’t be within miles of this place. Abruptly he turned toward the cabin where he lived.
Dan Shute stood on the boardwalk, staring into the dust, big hands on his hips above the heavy guns, his gray hat pulled low, a stubble of corn-white beard along his hard jaws. I think, he said to himself, looking up, that I’ll kill Bruce Barkow. And I’m goin’ to like the doin’ of it.
XIII
Gene Baker was sweeping his store and the stoop in front of it when he saw a tight little cavalcade of horsemen trot around the corner into the street. It was the morning after the fiasco of the trial, and he had been worried and irritated while wondering what the reaction would be from Barkow and Shute. Then word had come to him of the break between the two at Gomer’s office.
Dan Shute, riding a powerful gray, was in the van of the bunch of horsemen. He rode up to the stoop of Baker’s store, and reined in. Behind him were Red and Tom Blazer, Joe Gorman, Fritz Handl, Fats McCabe, and others of the hard bunch that trailed with Shute.
“Gene,” Shute said abruptly, resting his big hands on the pommel of the saddle, “don’t sell any more supplies to Caradec or any of his crowd.” He added harshly: “I’m not askin’ yuh. I’m tellin’ yuh. And if yuh do, I’ll put you out of business and run you out of the country. You know I don’t make threats. The chances are Caradec won’t be alive by daybreak, anyway, but, just in case, yuh’ve been told.”
Without giving Baker a chance to reply, Dan Shute touched spurs to his horse and led off down the south trail toward the Crazy Man. The door slammed behind Baker.
“Where are they going?” Ann wanted to know, her eyes wide. “What are they going to do?”
Gene stared after them bleakly. This was the end of something.
“They are goin’ after Caradec and his crowd, Ann.”
“What will they do to him?” Something inside her went sick and frightened. She had always been afraid of Dan Shute. The way he looked at her made her shrink. He was the only human being of whom she had ever been afraid. He seemed without feeling, without decency, without regard for anything but his own immediate desires.
“Kill him,” Baker said. “They’ll kill him. Shute’s a hard man, and with him that’s a mighty wicked lot of men.”
“But can’t someone warn him?” Ann protested.
Baker glanced at her. “So far as we know, that Caradec is a crook, and mebbe a killer, Ann. You ain’t gettin’ soft on him, are yuh?”
“No!” she exclaimed, startled. “Of course not! What an idea! Why, I’ve scarcely talked to him.”
Yet there was a heavy, sinking feeling in her heart as she watched the riders disappear in the dust along the southward trail. If there were only something she could do! If she could warn them!
Suddenly she remembered the bay horse her father had given her. Because of the Indians, she had not been riding in a long time, but if she took the mountain trail … Hurrying through the door, she swiftly saddled the bay. There was no thought in her mind. She was acting strictly on impulse, prompted by some memory of the way the hair swept back from Rafe’s brow, and the look in his eyes when he met her gaze. She told herself she wanted to see no man killed, that Bo Marsh and Johnny Gill were her friends. Yet even in her heart she knew the excuse would not do. She was thinking of Rafe, and only of Rafe.
The bay was in fine shape and impatient after his long restraint in the corral. He started for the trail, eagerly, and his ears pricked up at every sound. The leaves had turned to red and gold now, and in the air there was a hint of frost. Winter was coming. Soon the country would be blanketed, inches deep, under a thick covering of snow.
Hastily Ann’s mind leaped ahead. The prairie trail, which the Shute riders had taken, swept wide into the valley, then crossed the Crazy Man, and turned to follow the stream up the cañon. By cutting across over the mountain trail, there was every chance she could beat them to the ranch. In any case, her lead would be slight due to the start the bunch had had.
The trail crossed the mountain side through a long grove of quaking aspens, their leaves shimmering in the cool wind, dark green above, a gray below. Now with oncoming autumn, most of the leaves had turned to bright yellow intermixed with crimson, and here and there among the forest of mounting color were the darker arrowheads of spruce and lodgepole pine.
Once, coming out in a small clearing, she got a view of the valley below. She had gained a little, but only a little. Frightened, she touched spurs to the bay, and the little horse leaped ahead and swept down through the woods at a rapid gallop. Ahead, there was a ledge. It was a good six miles off yet, but from there she would be able to see the cañon of the Crazy Man and the upper cañon. A rider had told her that Caradec had been putting up hay in the wind-sheltered upper cañon and was obviously planning on feeding his stock there near the warm spring.
She recalled it because she remembered it was something her father had spoken of doing. There was room in the upper valley for many cattle, and, if there was hay enough for them, the warm water would be a help, and with only that little help the cattle should survive even the coldest weather.
Fording the stream where Caradec had encountered the young squaw, she rode higher on the mountain, angling across the slope under a magnificent stand of lodgepole pine. It was a splendid avenue of trees, all seemingly of the same size and shape as though cast from a mold. Once she glimpsed a deer, and another time in the distance in a small, branching valley she saw a small bunch of elk. This was her country. No wonder her father had loved it, wanted it, worked to get and to keep it.
Had her father paid the mortgage? Wouldn’t Bruce have told her if he had? She could not believe Bruce dishonest or deceitful, and certainly he had made no effort to foreclose, but had been most patient and thoughtful with her. What would he think of this ride? To warn a man he regarded as an enemy. But she could never forgive herself if Rafe Caradec were killed, and she had made no effort to avert it.
Too often she had listened to her father discourse on the necessity for peace and consideration of the problems of others. She believed in that policy whole-heartedly, and the fact that occasionally violence was necessary did not alter her convictions one whit. No system of philosophy or ethics, no growth of government, no improvement in living came without trial and struggle. Struggle, she had often heard her fa
ther say, quoting Hegel, was the law of growth.
Without giving too much thought to it, she understood that such men as Rafe Caradec, Tex Brisco, and others of their ilk were needed. For all their violence, their occasional heedlessness and the desire to go their own way, they were men building a new world in a rough and violent land where everything tended to extremes. Mountains were high, the prairies wide, the streams roaring, the buffalo by the thousand and tens of thousands. It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes.
The bay pony trotted down the trail, then around a stand of lodgepole. Ann brought him up sharply on the lip of the ledge that had been her first goal. Below her, a vast and magnificent panorama, lay the ranch her father had pioneered. The silver curve of the Crazy Man lay below and east of her, and opposite the ledge was the mighty wall of the cañon. From below, a faint thread of smoke among the trees marked the cabin.
Turning her head, she looked west and south into the upper cañon. Far away, she seemed to see a horseman moving, and the black dot of a herd. Turning the bay, she started west, riding fast. If they were working the upper cañon, she still had a chance.
An hour later, the little bay showing signs of his rough traveling, she came down to the floor of the cañon. Not far away, she could see Rafe Caradec, moving a bunch of cattle into the trees.
He looked around at her approach, and the black, flat-crowned hat came off his head. His dark, wavy hair was plastered to his brow with sweat, and his eyes were gray and curious.
“Good mornin’!” he said. “This is a surprise!”
“Please!” she burst out. “This isn’t a social call! Dan Shute’s riding this way with twenty men or more. He’s going to wipe you out!”
“You shore?” She could see the quick wonder in his eyes at her warning, then he wheeled his horse and yelled: “Johnny! Johnny Gill! Come a-runnin’!”
Jerking his rifle from his boot, he looked at her again. He put his hand over hers suddenly, and she started at his touch. “Thanks, Ann,” he said simply. “You’re regular.”
Then he was gone, and Johnny Gill was streaking after him. As Gill swept by, he lifted a hand and waved.
There they went, and below were twenty men, all armed. Would they come through alive? She turned the bay and, letting the pony take his own time, started him back over the mountain trail.
Rafe Caradec gave no thought to Ann’s reason for warning him. There was no time for that. Tex Brisco and Bo Marsh were at the cabin. They were probably working outside, and their rifles would probably be in the cabin and beyond them. If they were cut off from their guns, the Shute riders would mow them down and kill them one by one at long range with rifle fire.
Rafe heard Gill coming up, and slacked off a little to let the little cowhand draw alongside.
“Shute!” he said. “And about twenty men. I guess this is the pay-off!”
“Yeah!” Gill yelled.
Rifle fire came to them suddenly. A burst of shots, then a shot that might have been from a pistol. Yet that was sheer guesswork, Rafe knew, for distinguishing the two was not easy and especially at this distance.
Their horses rounded the entrance and raced down the main cañon toward the cabin on the Crazy Man, running neck and neck. A column of smoke greeted them, and they could see riders circling and firing.
“The trees on the slope!” Rafe yelled, and raced for them.
He reached the trees with the black at a dead run and hit the ground before the animal had ceased to move. He raced to the rocks at the edge of the trees. His rifle lifted, settled, his breath steadied. Then the rifle spoke.
A man shouted and waved an arm, and at the same moment Gill fired. A horse went down. Two men, or possibly three, lay sprawled in the clearing before the cabin. Were Tex and Bo already down? Rafe steadied himself and squeezed off another shot. A saddle emptied. He saw the fallen man lunge to his feet, then spill over on his face. Coolly then, and taking their time, he and Gill began to fire. Another man went down, and rifles began to smoke in their direction. A bullet clipped the leaves overhead, but too high.
Rafe knocked the hat from a man’s head and, as the fellow sprinted for shelter, dropped him. Suddenly the attack broke, and he saw the horses sweeping away from them in a ragged line. Mounting, Rafe and Gill rode cautiously toward the cabin.
There was no cabin. There was only a roaring inferno of flames. There were five sprawled bodies now, and Rafe ran toward them. A Shute rider—another. Then he saw Bo. The boy was lying on his face with dark, spreading stain on the back of his shirt. There was no sign of Tex.
Rafe dropped to his knees and put a hand over the young cowhand’s heart. It was still beating! Gently, with Johnny lending a hand, he turned the boy over. Then, working with the crude but efficient skill picked up in war and struggle in a half dozen countries, he examined the wounds.
“Four times,” he said grimly. He felt something mount and swell within him, a tide of fierce, uncontrollable anger. Around one bullet hole in the stomach the cloth of the cowhand’s shirt was still smoldering!
“I seen that!” It was Tex Brisco, his face haggard and smoke-grimed. “I saw it! I know who done it! He walked up where the kid was laying, stuck a gun against his stomach, and shot! He didn’t want the kid to go quick. He wanted him to die slow and hard!”
“Who done it?” Gill demanded fiercely. “I’ll git him now! Right now!”
Brisco’s eyes were red and inflamed. “Nobody gets him but me. This kid was your pard, but I seen it!” He turned abruptly on Rafe. “Boss, let me go to town. I want to kill a man!”
“It won’t do, Tex,” Caradec said quietly. “I know how you feel, but the town will be full of ’em. They’ll be celebratin’. They burned our cabin, ran off some cattle, and they got Bo. It wouldn’t do.”
“Yeah.” Tex spat. “I know. But they won’t be expectin’ any trouble now. We’ve been together a long time, boss, and if yuh don’t let me go, I’ll quit.”
Rafe looked up from the wounded man. “All right, Tex. I told you I know how you feel. But if somethin’ should happen … who did it?”
“Tom Blazer. That big redhead. He always hated the kid. The kid was shot down and left lay. I was out back in the woods, lookin’ for a pole to cut. They rode up so fast the kid never had a chance. He was hit twice before he knew what was goin’ on. Then, again, when he started toward the house. After the house was afire, Tom Blazer walked up, and the kid was conscious. Tom said somethin’ to Bo, shoved the gun against him, and pulled the trigger.” He stared miserably at Bo. “I was out of pistol range. Took me a few minutes to get closer, then I got me two men before you rode up.”
Wheeling, he headed toward the corral.
Rafe had stopped the flow of blood, and Johnny had returned with a blanket from a line back of the house.
“Reckon we better get him over in the trees, boss,” Gill said.
Easing the cowboy to the blanket with care, Rafe and Johnny carried Bo into the shade in a quiet place under the pines. Caradec glanced up as they put him down. Tex Brisco was riding out of the cañon. Johnny Gill watched him go.
“Boss,” Gill said, “I wanted like blazes to go, but I ain’t the man Brisco is. Rightly I’m a quiet man, but that Texan is a wolf on the prowl. I’m some glad I’m not Tom Blazer right now.” He looked down at Bo Marsh. The young cowhand’s face was flushed, his breathing hoarse. “Will he live, Rafe?” Johnny asked softly.
Caradec shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “He needs better care than I can give him.” He studied the situation thoughtfully. “Johnny,” he said, “you stay with him. Better take time to build a lean-to for cover in case of rain or snow. Get some fuel, too.”
“What about you?” Johnny asked. “Where you goin’?”
“To the fort. There’s an Army doctor
there, and I’ll go get him.”
“Reckon he’ll come this far?” Johnny asked doubtingly.
“He’ll come.”
Rafe Caradec mounted the black and rode slowly away into the dusk. It was a long ride to the fort, and, even if he got the doctor, it might be too late. That was the chance he would have to take. There was small danger of an attack now. Yet it was not really a return of Dan Shute’s riders that disturbed him, but a subtle coolness in the air, a chill that was of more than autumn. Winters in this country could be bitterly cold, and all the signs gave evidence this one would be the worst in years, and they were without a cabin. He rode on toward the fort, with a thought that Tex Brisco now must be nearing town.
XIV
It was growing late, and Painted Rock was swathed in velvety darkness when Tex Brisco walked his horse to the edge of town. He stopped across the bend of the stream from town and planned to leave his horse among the trees there. He would have a better chance of escape from across the stream than from the street, and by leaving town on foot he could create some doubt as to his whereabouts. He was under no misapprehension as to the problem he faced. Painted Rock would be filled to overflowing with Shute and Barkow riders, many of whom knew him by sight. Yet, although he could envision their certainty of victory, their numbers, and was well aware of the reckless task he had chosen, he knew they would not be expecting him, or any riders from Crazy Man.
He tied his horse loosely to a bush among the trees, and crossed the stream on a log. Once across, he thought of his spurs. Kneeling down, he unfastened them from his boots and hung them over a root near the end of the log. He wanted no jingling spurs to give his presence away at an inopportune moment.
Carefully avoiding any dwellings with lights, he made his way through the scattered houses to the back of the row of buildings across the street. He was wearing the gun he usually wore, and for luck he had taken another from his saddlebags and thrust it in to his waistband.
The Trail to Crazy Man Page 16