She nodded, unable to speak. It was true then, she thought. He was a killer! He had just shot that man.
One of the horsemen caught the riderless horse and two of the others dismounted to load the body across the saddle. The other man sat very still, holding his hand on the pommel of his saddle.
As the other riders remounted he said, “Well, this is one you won’t bury in Buckskin Run!”
“Get going!” Morgan said. “And keep a civil tongue in your head, Jeff. I’ve no use for you or any of your rustling, dry-gulching crowd.”
Loma Day drew back into the stage, her hands to her face. Horror filled her being. That limp, still body! Rod Morgan had killed him!
“Well!” Em Shipton said triumphantly. “What did we tell you?”
“It’s too bad you had to see this,” Brewer said. “I’m sorry ma’am.”
“That’s a right handy young feller!” Blue said admiringly. “Looks to me like you picked you a good one, ma’am. Stood off the five of them, he did, and I never seen it done better. Any one of them would have killed him had they the chance, but he didn’t even disarm them. And they wanted no part of him!”
The stage started to roll.
“Hey?” Blue caught at Loma’s arm. “Ain’t you even goin’ to call to him? Ain’t you goin’ to let him know you’re here?”
“No! Don’t tell him! Please, don’t!”
Blue leaned back, shaking his head admiringly. “Handy, right handy! That gent who was down in the road was drilled plumb center!”
Loma did not hear him. Rod! Her Rod! A killer!
AS THE STAGE swung back into the road and pulled away, Rod Morgan stooped and picked up the dead man’s six-shooter. No use wasting a good gun, and if things went on as they had begun he would have need of it.
He walked back to where his gray mustang was tethered, and swung into the saddle. A brief glance around and he started back up the canyon. There was so much to do, and so little time.
Perhaps he had been wrong to oppose the ingrained superstition and suspicion of the Cordova country, but working as a cowhand would never allow him to save enough to support a wife or build a home. Buckskin Run, from the moment he had first glimpsed it, had seemed the epitome of all he had dreamed.
The stream plunged happily over the stones, falling in a series of miniature cascades and rapids into a wide basin surrounded by towering cliffs. It flowed out of that basin and through a wide meadow, several hundred acres of good grassland. High cliffs bordered the area on all sides, and there were clumps of aspen and spruce.
Below the first meadow lay a long valley also bounded by sheer cliffs, a valley at least a half-mile wide that narrowed suddenly into a bottleneck that spilled the stream into another series of small rapids before it swung into the timbered land bordering the desert.
When Rod Morgan had found Buckskin Run there had been no tracks of either cattle or horses. Without asking questions, he chose a cabin site near the entrance and went to work. Before he rode out to Cordova on his first trip to town his cabin was built, his corrals ready.
In Cordova he ran into trouble with Em Shipton.
Em’s entire life was ruled by prejudice and superstition. She had come to Cordova from the hills of West Virginia by way of Council Bluffs and Santa Fe. In the Iowa town she married Josh Shipton, a teamster freighting over the Sante Fe Trial. She had already been a widow, her first husband dropping from sight after a blast of gun-fire with his brother-in-law.
Josh Shipton was more enduring, and also somewhat faster with a gun, than Em’s previous spouse. He stood her nagging and suspicion for three months, stood the borrowing and drunkenness of her brother for a few days longer. The two difficulties came to a head simultaneously. Josh packed up and left Em and, in a final dispute with her quarrelsome, pistol-ready brother, eliminated him from further interference in Em’s marital or other affairs. But Josh kept on going.
Em Shipton had come to Cordova and started her rooming and boarding house while looking for a new husband. Her first choice, old Henry Childs himself, was a confirmed bachelor who came to eat once at her table. Wiser than most, he never came again.
She was fifteen years older and twenty pounds heavier than slim, handsome Rod Morgan, but he was her second choice.
“What you need,” she told him, “is a good wife!”
Unaware of the direction of the conversation, Rod agreed that he did.
“Also,” she said, “you must move away from that awful canyon. It’s haunted!”
Rod laughed. “Sure, and I’ve seen no ghost, ma’am. Not a one. Never seen a prettier valley, either. No, I’m staying.”
Em Shipton coupled her ignorance with assurance. Women were scarce in the West, and she had come to consider herself quite a catch. She had yet to learn that women were not that scarce.
“Well,” she said definitely, “you can’t expect me to go live in no valley like that.”
Rod stared, mouth open in astonishment. “Who said anything—” He swallowed, trying to keep a straight face but failing. He stifled the laugh, but not the smile. “I’m sorry. I like living there, and, as for a wife, I’ve plans of my own.”
Em might have forgiven the plans, but she could never forgive that single, startled instant when Rod realized that Em Shipton actually had plans for him herself, or the way he smiled at the idea.
That was the only the beginning of the trouble. Rod Morgan had walked along to the Gem Saloon, had a drink, and been offered a job by Jake Sarran, Henry Childs’ foreman. He refused it.
“Better take it, Morgan,” Sarran advised, “if you plan to stay in this country. We don’t like loose, unattached riders drifting around.”
“I’m not drifting around. I own my own place on Buckskin Run.”
“I know,” Sarran admitted, “but nobody stays there long. Why not take a good job when you can get it?”
“Because I simply don’t want a job. I’ll be staying at Buckskin Run.” As he turned away a thought struck him. “And you can tell whoever it is who wants me out of there that I’ve come to stay.”
Jake Sarran put his glass down hard, but whatever he intended to say went unspoken. Rod left the saloon, his brow furrowed with thought and some worry. On this first visit to town he had come to realize that his presence at Buckskin Run was disturbing to someone.
For a week he kept busy on the ranch, then he rode south, hired a couple of hands, and drove in three hundred head of whiteface cattle. With grass and water they would not stray, and there was no better grass and water than that in Buckskin Run. He let the hands go.
But the thought worried him. Why, with all that good pasture and water, had Buckskin Run not been settled?
When next he rode into Cordova he found people avoiding him. Yet he was undisturbed. Many communities were clannish and shy about accepting strangers. Once they got acquainted it would be different. Yet he had violated one of their taboos.
It was not until he started to mount his horse that he discovered his troubles were not to stop with being ignored. A sack of flour tied behind his saddle had been cut open, and most of the flour had spilled on the ground.
Angered, he turned to face the grins of the men seated along the walk. One of them, Bob Carr, a long, rangy rider from Henry Child’s Block C, had a smudge of white near his shirt pocket, and another smudge near his right-hand pants pocket, the sort of smear that might have come from a man’s knife if he had cut a flour-sack open, then shoved the knife back in his pocket.
Rod had stepped up on the walk. “How’d you get that white smudge on your pocket?”
The rider looked quickly down, then, his face flushing, he looked up. “How do you think?” he said.
Rod hit him. He threw his fist from where it was, at his belt, threw it short and hard into the long rider’s solar plexus.
Bob Carr had not expected to be hit. The blow was sudden, explosive and knocked out every bit of wind he had.
“Get him, Bob!” somebody shouted, but as
Bob opened his mouth to gasp for air, Rod Morgan broke his jaw with a right.
Rod Morgan turned, and mounted his horse. From the saddle he looked back. “I didn’t come looking for trouble, and I am not asking for it. I’m a quiet man, minding my own affairs.”
Yet when he rode out of town he knew he had opened a feud with the Block C. It was trouble he did not want, and for which he had no time, but whether he liked it or not he had a fight on his hands.
When he returned to his cabin a few days later, after checking some cattle in the upper canyon, there was a notice nailed to his door to get out and stay out. Then his cabin was set afire and much of his gear burned.
Ad Tolbert picked a fight with him and got soundly whipped, but a few days later Tolbert was murdered in Buckskin Run. Rod Morgan took to packing a gun wherever he went.
As is the case with any person who lives alone, or is different, stories were circulated about him, and he became suspect to many people who did not know him and had never so much as seen him. Behind it there seemed to be some malignant influence, but he had no idea who or what was directing it.
Two things happened at once. A letter came from Aloma Day, and Ned Weisl came into the canyon. He had hesitated to suggest that Loma come west with the situation unsettled as it was, yet from her letter he understood what her situation must be. He had written, explaining what he could and inviting her to come.
Weisl was a strange little man. Strange, yet also charming and interesting. From the first he and Rod hit it off well, and so he told Rod about the gold.
“Three men came west together,” Weisl explained. “Somewhere out in Nevada they struck it rich. The story was they had a hundred and twenty thousand in gold when they started back. They built a special wagon with a false bottom in it, where they hid the gold. Then, with three wagons in all, they headed east.
“They got as far as Buckskin Run, and there, according to the story, Tarran Kopp and his gang hit them. The three men were killed, and that was the end of it, only there was another story. With gold there nearly always is.
“One of Kopp’s gang was a friend of mine years later, and when asked about it he claimed they had killed nobody in Buckskin Run, nor had they stolen any gold. At the time it all took place they were in Mexico, and he showed me an old newspaper story to prove it.”
“So what became of the gold? And who did kill the people in Buckskin Run?”
“Nobody knows who killed them or how. Nobody knows what became of the gold, either. A hundred and twenty thousand in gold isn’t the easiest thing to carry around in a country where people are inclined to be curious. According to the prices at the time, that would be right around three hundred pounds of gold. There are people who were right interested in that gold who claim it never left Buckskin Run!
“There’s others who declare nobody went into the canyon from the lower end, and nobody knows who buried the three who died there. Markers were set over the graves, and on each one those words ‘No visible mark of death on these bodies.’”
“What do you think?”
“That,” Weisl said, smiling with puckish humor, “is another question. I’ve an idea, but it’s a fantastic one. You hold the land now. Will you let me look around? I will give you one-third of whatever I find.”
“Make it half?”
Weisl shrugged. “Why not? There will be enough for both.”
Ned Weisl did not return to the cabin, so Rod had gone looking for him. He did not distrust the little man, but he was worried.
He found Ned Weisl—dead. He had been shot in the back.
Rod Morgan knew they believed him guilty of the murder, as well as of the killing of Ad Tolbert. No one accused him, although veiled references were made. Only today, on the trail, had he been directly accused.
He had ridden through the bottleneck and down to the stage trail, intending to ask the driver to let him know when Loma arrived, although she could scarcely have had his letter by now.
The five riders had been about to enter the bottleneck. Jeff Cordell was leading, and one of the men with him was Reuben Hart, who had the name of being a bad man with a gun. He was the man Morgan watched.
“Howdy,” he said.
“We’re hunting strays,” Cordell said. “We thought we’d come in and look you over.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“We’re tellin’ you. We don’t need to ask.”
“Then you’ve gone as far as you go. No cattle have come in here but my own. I’ve fenced the neck, so nothing can come in or out unless they open the gate. Any time you want a look around, just come and ask me when I’m home.”
“We’re going in now,” Cordell said, “and if you’re smart you’ll stand aside.”
“I’m not smart,” Rod Morgan said, waiting. Inside he was on edge, poised for trouble. “I’m the kind of man who would make you ride in over at least three dead bodies. You decide if what you’re doing is worth it.”
Cordell hesitated. He was no fool, and Rod Morgan had already proved a surprise to both Bob Carr and Ad Tolbert. Cordell was a poker player, and Rod Morgan looked like he was holding a pat hand. He believed he could tell when a man was bluffing, and he did not believe Morgan was. He was also aware that if anybody died it was almost sure to be him.
“Let me take him.” Reuben Hart shoved his horse to the fore. “I’ve never liked you, Morgan, and I believe you’re bluffing, and I believe you’re yellow!”
Reuben went for his gun as he spoke, and Reuben was a fast man.
Cordell and the others were cowhands, not gunfighters. They could handle their guns, but were not in the class of Reuben or Dally Hart.
Very quickly they realized they were not in the class of Rod Morgan, either, for he had drawn and fired so fast that his bullet hit Reuben even as that gunman’s pistol cleared leather.
Reuben slid from the saddle and sprawled on the ground, and Rod Morgan was looking over his pistol at them.
Jeff Cordell noticed another thing. Morgan’s gray mustang stood rock still when Morgan fired, and he knew his own bronc would not do that. Jeff Cordell put both hands on the pommel of the saddle. For a man with a horse like that and a drawn pistol, killing the rest of them would be like shooting ducks in a barrel.
The arrival of the stage saved their faces, and they loaded Hart into the saddle and headed for the home ranch.
Andy Shank expressed an opinion they were all beginning to share. “You know,” Shank said, when they had ridden a couple of miles, “I believe that gent intends to stay.”
Nobody said anything but Andy was not easily squelched. “Anyway,” he added, “he seemed right serious about it.”
But Andy had never liked Reuben Hart, anyway.
“He’ll stay,” Cordell’s tone was grim. “Reub was never the gun-hand Dally is, and Dally will be riding to Buckskin Run.”
Back on the ranch, Rod Morgan stripped the saddle from the gray and turned it into the corral. Carrying the saddle into the log barn, he threw it over a rail. Alone in the barn, he stood for a moment in the shadowed stillness.
He had killed a man.
It was not something he liked to think about. There had been no need to look his place over for strays. It was fenced at the opening and there was nowhere else a steer could get into the canyon. Nor did the Block C have any cattle running in the area. It was purely a trouble-making venture. They knew it, and so did he.
His cabin was silent. He stood inside the door and looked around. He had built well. It had four rooms, plank floors, good, solid, squared-off logs, and windows with a view.
Would Loma like it? Would she like Buckskin Run? Or would she be afraid?
Standing in the open door he looked back toward the bottleneck, a good six hundred yards away. Green grass rolled under the slight wind, and the run, about fifty yards from the house, could be plainly heard. The high rock walls made twilight come early, but the canyon was beautiful in any light.
He closed the door an
d began preparing his supper. He knew what would come now, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it but run, and he would not, he could not do that. All he had was here. His hopes, his dreams, all the money he had been able to get together, all his hard work.
The people he had talked to had told him about the Harts, watching his expression as they told him. Now that he had killed Reuben, there was no way he could avoid trouble with Dally. He hoped that would end it. And it surely would, for one or both of them.
The Block C had been against him from the start, and he had no idea why. Were they always so clannish against strangers? Were they offended by his refusing a job?
His thoughts returned to his talk with Ned Weisl. He had liked the little man, but he had brought questions. Who had killed the three men from Nevada? What had become of their wagons? What had become of their gold? And what became of the killers themselves?
A few things he had learned. Several of the stories about him, other than those from the malicious tongue of Em Shipton, had come from the Block C, apparently from Henry Childs, a man he had never seen. He was also aware that Mark Brewer wanted him off Buckskin Run. Brewer had even gone so far as to offer him a nice little ranch some distance from the Run, and for a very reasonable price.
He fixed the barest of meals and then sat alone to eat it, thinking of Loma. Where was she now? Had she received his letter? Would she come? Dared he bring her into all this? How would she react to what happened today, for example? In the world from which she came, the killing of one man by another was a crime, and even when done in self-defense it was somehow considered reprehensible. Yet soon all that would be over, and there would be peace on Buckskin Run. Or so he hoped.
His thoughts returned to the stories. Was there gold buried here? If so, he hoped it would soon be found, so people would stop talking about it and looking for it.
When morning came again he saddled the gray and rode to the upper end of the canyon, where a dark pool of water invited the flow down from the higher mountains. He had noticed the graves there before this, but had had no time to examine them. Yet they were tangible evidence that something had happened here in Buckskin Run.
Collection 1981 - Buckskin Run (v5.0) Page 2