by T. T. Flynn
When Travis turned back, Doyle sullenly said: “Wasn’t no way of knowin’ they was Markham hosses till the old man yelled it.”
Travis gave Doyle another malevolent look. “You let this man Mara raid your camp, slash your saddles, take your horses and bridles and canteens . . . and then find you here at the ranch.” And, because anger was no help now, Travis forced calm and ordered: “Wait here. I’ll be back.”
Young Jim Rapburn was sitting uncertainly in his livery buggy, ready to leave.
“You can start back, Jim.” Travis was calm because he had made many decisions as he crossed the big yard. “Don’t wait in Soledad for the Socorro stage. Hire a buckboard and driver from the stageline and use their relay teams to get through as fast as possible. Get that deed to half this ranch recorded in the courthouse at once. And start everything else quickly.”
Rapburn’s thin face sobered. “Is it that bad?”
“Gid Markham will make trouble now. I’ll move before he can.” And, because he was sure of young Rapburn now, Travis spoke with conviction he tried to feel himself: “With Markham pushed out of this country, I’ll be so solidly set I can handle anything else that happens. But it must be done fast now.”
Rapburn hesitated. Caution filled his question. “Will Matt Kilgore support every move? He hasn’t been told everything, you know . . . and this is his ranch.”
“Half Matt’s ranch now,” reminded Travis brusquely. “The moment you get that deed recorded, my word carries as much authority here as Matt’s. I’ll handle Matt. And, Jim?”
“Yes?”
“You’re my lawyer, not Matt’s lawyer. My interests come first.”
“Of course.” Rapburn had another thought. “Shall I retain the other three lawyers in Socorro for you?”
“Tie ’em up,” Travis decided. He stood by the buggy, estimating the young lawyer. “One more thing, Jim. Perhaps the most important. I want you to put out feelers in Socorro for any strangers who might ask questions about me or the Kilgores or this ranch. Any sort of curiosity at all.”
Puzzled, Rapburn said: “Strangers?”
“Anyone you or your friends don’t personally know. If you hear of any such curious person, get word to me as fast as possible.”
“It would be someone connected with Gid Markham, I suppose?”
“The man wouldn’t admit it.” Travis eyed the slight flush of excitement that had come on young Rapburn’s sensitive face. His warming smile came. “Jim, have you decided what you’ll be one of these days? The delegate to Congress? Or a judge? Or merely the leading lawyer in the territory?”
Rapburn’s smile came, too, as he visualized again the rich future Travis was boldly driving for now. “I’ll not have any trouble deciding when the time comes,” he said. The smile was still on his face as he drove off on the long, fast trip back to Socorro.
Travis’s smile faded as the grinding tension tightened inside once more. How much time did he have before the real Roger Travis appeared?
Last night, alone in his quiet bedroom, he had read again in the journal kept by the man, and the real Roger Travis had come alive with sweating clarity—taking the form of the stranger who had tried to draw money from the Travis account in the South Bay Bank in San Francisco. Travis had not slept well. And Grady Doyle’s sullen confession just now had deepened the uneasy feeling that luck might be turning against him.
His luck wasn’t turning, Travis assured himself. A man made his own luck, as he was making it now. Digging in swiftly, until no stranger with a fantastic story could dislodge him—or live long while trying. On his way back across the yard, Travis picked up Grady Doyle’s revolver and hat and caught the reins of Doyle’s gray horse standing nearby. He ran an estimating eye over the crew loitering around the yard, still talking about the fight. They were tough men. They were ready and tired of waiting—and they would not wait long now.
Doyle had steadied when Travis got back to him. “Where are your men?” Travis coldly demanded.
Doyle punched out the trampled hat. “They got a lick of water into the old man’s hosses an’ run ’em on southwest. Joe an’ me rode this way an’ split up, lookin’ for them three men.”
“Joe,” Travis made a biting guess, “must have found them. He won’t be back.” He considered Doyle. “I can still use you.” Doyle started to grin, and Travis added with abrupt viciousness again: “But you’ll take orders.”
Doyle’s kind understood such talk; his lopsided squint peered as he agreed. “I ain’t arguin’. What’s orders?”
“Ride the country and look for any stranger who shows interest in the Kilgores or me. If he smokes a straight-stemmed pipe, get word to me fast.”
Doyle’s puffy mouth grinned. “That oughta be easy.”
“If you spot the right man,” said Travis evenly, “he’s worth two hundred dollars to you.”
Doyle’s puffy grin lingered. “Want ’im killed?”
“I’m not telling you to.” And, because he knew Doyle’s kind, Travis warned coldly: “Don’t put a pipe in a dead man’s pocket. I’ll know.”
Grady Doyle did not glance back as he rode away. And it occurred to Travis that young Chet Davis, who was watching the Markham Ranch, could watch for strangers, also. And all the large crew here could watch.
Dark amusement briefly pushed back the tension as Travis thought how the money of the real Roger Travis was shaping a trap for the fellow. Then the bronzed stranger in the house, the man named Clay Mara who rode for Gid Markham, took over Travis’s immediate thinking. Mara, too, could be handled with money. All men could. And Mara could be used. What was coming quickly now against Gid Markham would be violent and ruthless, Travis knew. Thinking about it in hardening purpose, Travis walked to the house.
XVI
The men had dropped Clay Mara on the wide, worn planks of the kitchen floor like a dead man. Only he wasn’t a dead man, Patricia knew with antagonism as she tossed his dusty hat and revolver on the checked tablecloth. Men laid out with a gun barrel were quickly as dangerous as ever.
Without sympathy, Patricia located a slow, steady pulse in his muscular wrist. Yard dirt covered his dark wool pants and canvas jacket, and smeared his face. Red, raw scratches reached across his strong jaw. With a damp towel from the sink, Patricia wiped his face impersonally, like a piece of furniture. She used the towel to slap dirt off his clothes. His bronzed face, shaved smooth today, looked younger. Deceptively harmless, helpless, peaceful. A purplish, swollen bruise on the side of his head marked where Roger’s gun barrel had struck him down. Patricia coolly examined the spot and let it alone. A leather sheath on his hip held a long, keen knife. She took the knife. A slight bulge in the front of his shirt was a second revolver. A tricky man, ready for trouble. An object in the pocket of his brush jacket was not the small gun Patricia expected. Her hand brought out a reeking, straight-stemmed pipe.
Patricia’s greenish-blue, resentful eyes looked at the pipe. Matt always said that a pipe smoker was steady and dependable. Wrong on this stranger. Patricia tossed the pipe, revolver, and knife on the table beside his old hat. A moment later Matt’s worn boot heels thumped into the kitchen with a vigorous sound of purpose.
Matt’s seamed face was grim under his youthful shock of gray hair. He scooped her into a hug, wiping out his temper in the yard, and then bent over the man.
“Now,” Matt said, “what about that black hoss you sold him?”
“Two days ago, Dad, he came walking in to the Soledad road, leading a sorrel horse . . .”
Matt rocked on his boot heels and listened intently. With his vest sagging open, thumb hooked on the wide, cartridge-studded gun belt, he had the old look of solid force that had been the shield and strength of the family through so many years. And Matt’s irrepressible humor, back also these days, found a grin in her account of the black gelding substituted for the sorrel.
“You made a try,” Matt said. “All anyone can do.” He looked at the stranger on the floor and said s
lowly: “That Doyle that Roger hired is mixed in it.”
“You hired Doyle,” Patricia reminded.
“Never seen him before,” Matt said flatly. “Wouldn’t ’a’ hired him if I had. Don’t like his looks.”
“Roger said . . .”
Matt flicked her an odd look. “Roger said I hired Doyle?”
“I probably misunderstood . . .” Anything that made Roger seem less than perfect to Matt could be pushed aside. Like sweeping stray dirt under the carpet, Patricia’s guilty thought came.
Matt’s odd, level look stayed on her face for a moment. “You heerd wrong,” said Matt calmly. “Doyle rode in saying he worked for Roger, an’ Roger wanted to see him.”
Roger had lied about Doyle in Soledad. Why? Patricia tried not to think so. But she remembered clearly.
Matt was studying the stranger on the floor. “This feller,” Matt said, “knowed who Doyle was when Doyle rode up behind him. This one turned and said . . . ‘I carried the canteens at the Red Rocks.’ An’ Doyle grabbed for his gun.”
Startled, Patricia said: “This man didn’t start it?”
“Nope,” said Matt, “but he sure finished it. He jumped like a broom-busted pup and dragged Doyle off the hoss.” A glint in Matt’s eye made clear the sight had stirred and delighted him. Matt reached for one of the revolvers on the table and examined it. “He packin’ two guns?”
“That gun was inside his shirt.” Patricia could not resist a barbed: “Look at his pipe. What do you think of a pipe smoker now?”
Matt’s eyes twinkled at her. “Same thing I always did. Means a steady man.”
“This man steady?” Patricia was scornful.
Matt’s wry smile came. “You ain’t learned much about men, honey. He had two guns an’ he didn’t even use one. He could ’a’ blowed that Doyle off the hoss, but he dragged the big loudmouth off an’ used his hands.”
“He was brutal.”
“He was a pure pleasure to watch,” said Matt, and his grin spread at the memory. “Fast as a cat. After he got goin’, he tore the feller apart. It was a sight.”
“You sound as bad as he is!”
Matt chuckled. “I’ve tore a few apart myself when I was a young rooster. Got tore, too.” Soberness returned as Matt laid the gun back on the table. “Plain enough now there was a big hassle out at the Red Rock Tanks. Doyle an’ this one was in it, an’ Mara caught Doyle here.” Matt’s voice hardened. “An’ I mean to hear why any man that Roger hired was swappin’ shots away out there at the Red Rocks with Markham men.” Matt’s thumb jerked at the table. “Get Mara’s truck out of reach before he gets on his feet and we got a hassle here in the house. He won’t feel kindly, an’ he ain’t a feller to fool with.”
Patricia was dropping the stranger’s possessions into a drawer by the sink when Roger walked in and casually inquired: “How is he?”
Matt was cool. “He was doing all right, son, till you butted in.”
Patricia had heard that deliberate edge in Matt’s voice before. All her brothers had heard it—and always apprehensively. When Matt sounded like that, he was about to crack down, sternly, relentlessly . . . but to Roger?
Roger was indifferent. “I did what I thought best.”
“Like hirin’ that feller Doyle an’ givin’ him a horse?”
“If you put it that way, Matt.”
“I’ve just started puttin’ it,” said Matt’s deliberate voice. “You been talkin’ to Doyle. What happened out at the Red Rocks?”
Roger’s shrug held regret. “Matt, I hired the wrong man, it seems. Doyle knew this man would tell everything, so Doyle admitted that he rode out on his own with some men and stole some horses.”
“At the Red Rocks?”
“Yes.”
Matt’s level guess came. “Markham hosses?”
“It seems so.”
“And a Markham man was shot,” said Matt evenly.
“Not killed.”
Matt looked bigger, suddenly, than Roger—big, fierce, and stern. “You got any idea what a mess you’ve made?”
Roger said the wrong thing, hardening: “Look, Matt, I’m not a kid. Don’t talk to me like I am.”
Coldly Matt said: “You’ll get it from me like one of my own boys’d get it. You’re in the family now. It’s time you learned. We never took a step back from the Markhams.”
“We won’t now, Matt.”
“I’m talkin’! You listen! Amos Markham was a mean one. He raised Gid the same way when it come to us. But Amos an’ Gid always knew . . . an’ we knew, too, nobody’d get shot in the back. We all knew there’d be no stock rustled. The Markhams kep’ pride. I’ll give ’em that. An’ never a day a Kilgore couldn’t give ’em the same!”
Patricia understood all the great, fierce bitterness that filled Matt’s tone.
“Thirty years,” Matt said. “An’ now a Markham can call us horse thieves . . . an’ this feller on the floor can make it stick!”
Roger’s long-boned face was hardening in anger and resentment when Patricia quickly warned: “This man’s eyes are open. He’s listening.”
Through hot flickers of pain, Clay had heard, first, Matt Kilgore’s jarring boot heels entering the room. Motionless, while haze cleared from his mind, Clay had listened. And in brief minutes he had come to know the Kilgores as they were. After Patricia’s sharp warning, hostile silence fell.
With gritting effort, Clay sat up. Pain jumped in his head as he braced with a hand on the floor. His guns had been taken. His back-brushing arm found the sheath knife gone. And Travis was armed.
Matt Kilgore brusquely warned as Clay got to a knee and unsteadily to his feet: “Easy, Mara. I got enough trouble now to settle.”
“Think you can settle it?” Clay asked sourly. He spoke to Patricia. “Where’s my sorrel horse?”
She faced him, her black, piled hair no more than shoulder high to him, and greenish-blue eyes direct and antagonistic. “I gave you a better horse.”
Pretty, full of spirit, Clay thought. Maliciously he said: “It’s your business if you go around giving horses to strangers. I still want my sorrel.” Clay turned his tightening stare to Travis. His hand lifted to his head where the man’s gun barrel had slashed in. “You dropped me from behind,” Clay said with such low threat that it tightened Travis’s long-angled, handsome features.
Travis’s hand loosed a coat button, and the coat opened over his shell belt and gun. “So what?” Travis said so viciously that Patricia’s startled look flashed to him.
“Let be, you two! I’ll talk,” Matt Kilgore said grimly. “Pay heed, Mara! Roger figured a Markham man was beating one of our crew an’ jumped in to help.”
Clay’s retort was caustic. “I heard you try to stop him. Who’s boss on this ranch?”
Kilgore’s rope-scarred hand gestured impatiently. “No matter now. You laid on the floor, hearing we had no thought that Doyle was stealin’ hosses. Let alone Markham hosses.”
“Gid Markham didn’t hear it,” said Clay shortly. He was eyeing Travis, trying to judge the man’s intent.
From the floor the fellow had looked tall, wide-shouldered, aggressive, sure of himself in the expensive blue suit. My money bought that suit, Clay’s acid thought came. Travis was measuring him with a flinty, calculating look. Tough, Clay judged. He knew the type; he’d met many such. This sort of man would try anything. Clay’s hard, braced wariness tried to guess: Does he know me?
They were watching each other with hard alertness when Matt Kilgore made another impatient gesture. “Gid Markham will hear it from Doyle’s own mouth, young feller, before you can run to Markham with the story.” The fierceness and bitterness of moments ago had become heavy, forceful calm in Kilgore.
Travis pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his blue coat and frowned as he jerked a match into flame under the table edge. When the cigar was going, Travis bent the match absently between his fingers and said coolly: “Matt, I fired Doyle and ran him off.”
Matt Kilgore’s soft “God ’lmighty” was fierce in its restraint. Kilgore’s creased face went stony as he walked to the warm range, caught a white mug off a shelf, and reached for the big pot on the back of the stove. His voice was heavy. “Get coffee, Mara. You need it, too.”
Dismay was plain on Patricia Kilgore’s oval face. It filled her question to Travis: “Why, Roger? How can we explain that?”
Cynically Clay watched Travis’s expression warm indulgently.
“Doyle,” Travis said, smiling now, “wasn’t a fool, Pat. He’d have sworn we sent him after those horses . . . and who would Markham have believed?”
Matt Kilgore, pouring coffee, said bluntly: “Gid’d believe Doyle, because he’d want to.”
“Doyle’s gone,” Travis said, still smiling. “Mara here is the only one who knows about Doyle now. And I’d rather have Mara with us, if he’ll believe I made a mistake about him and can be friendly. I came in here to hire him, Matt. He’s a better man than any we’ve got. We need him.”
“Tried to hire ’im myself,” Matt admitted.
Mildly Travis said: “Mara, how about it?”
Kilgore went motionless, mug in hands. Clay saw Patricia’s greenish-blue, direct eyes fixed on him with something like bated hope.
“Friendly?” Clay said. “Working for you?” The humor of it bent Clay’s mouth in a grin as he took a swallow of coffee from the mug he had accepted. “Miss Kilgore might object. She owes me a sorrel horse I mean to collect.”
Patricia bit her lip. She was a striking girl, Clay thought now, slender, alert as she gazed directly at him, flushing slightly. Coolly she said: “You can have the sorrel.”
“Want me to work here, ma’am?”
“I have nothing to do with it.”
“I come high when I work.”
Travis said: “Name it.”
“I hear in town you’ve got plenty of money,” Clay said, the humor still in him at thought of working for this man and being paid with his own money.
Travis said easily: “I’ve got enough money.”