“No.” Old Tom sat up a little. “Tell him to get out and stay out.”
The old man hunched his pillow behind him. “He forced his way in here with some cock-an’-bull story about rustlin’.”
Gerlach looked at Ryan and jerked his head toward the door. “You heard him. Get out!”
Matt Ryan walked to the door and went down the steps. Then swiftly he turned the corner, and ran for his horse. A rifle shot slammed the darkness and knocked a chip from a tree trunk, but his turn had been sudden and unexpected. He hit the saddle running and the bay bounded like a rabbit and was gone into the darkness under the trees. A second and a third shot wasted themselves in the night.
How had they gotten on his trail so suddenly? They must have left the dance almost as soon as he had. And where was Kitty Hanna?
* * *
MILES FELL BEHIND him, and the trail was abandoned for the sidehills and trees, and he worked his way across ridges and saddles, and found himself back at Pima Canyon with the sun coming up.
All was still below, and he watched for half an hour before going down. When he got there he packed his spare horse and rode out of the canyon, leaving his diggings. They were good and getting better, but no place for him now. There were too many marks of his presence.
Why had he gotten into this? It was no business of his. What if the lawless did come from the hills and the good times of the old KY were gone? Could he not ride on? He owned nothing here, he did not belong here. This was a problem for others, not himself. But was it?
Was not the problem of the law and of community peace the problem of all men? Could any safely abandon their right of choice to others? Might not their own shiftlessness rob them of all they valued?
Bedding down in the high pines under the stars, Matt Ryan thought himself to sleep over that. He had taken a foolish step into the troubles of others. He would stay out. Old Tom did not want his help, nor did Kitty want his love.
Two days he rode the hills, for two days shifting camp each night. For two days he was irritable. It was none of his business, he kept telling himself. The old man had sent him packing, Kitty had turned him down. Nevertheless, he could not settle down. He rode back to Pima Canyon and looked around.
Their tracks were everywhere. They had found this place, and had without doubt come looking for him. So he was a hunted man now. It was good to know.
Yet he did not leave. Without reason for remaining, he remained.
And on the third day he rode to Hanna’s Station. Kitty was not there, but her father was. Hanna looked at him carefully. “Maria huntin’ you. Come in here ridin’ a mule. Acted like she didn’t aim to be seen. Left word you was to see her.”
“All right,” he said.
Hanna brought him coffee and a meal. “Ain’t Kitty’s grub,” he said. “She’s to town.”
The older man sat down. Dutch Gerlach was in with two men, he told Ryan, hunting for him. Or maybe, he added, hunting Fred Hitch.
“Hitch?”
“He’s gone. Dropped out of sight. Nobody knows why.”
A rattle of horses’ hooves sounded and Matt Ryan came to his feet quickly. Outside were four men. Dutch Gerlach, two hands…and Lee Dunn.
Ryan turned sharply. He had left his horse in the trees and there was a chance it had not been seen. Stepping into the kitchen, he moved back to a door on his right. He opened it and stepped through. He was in Kitty’s room.
There was a stamp of boots outside and a distant sound of voices, then a rattle of dishes.
What had happened? If Lee Dunn and Gerlach were together, then—
* * *
SUDDENLY HE WAS conscious of a presence. In the shadowed room he had seen nothing. Now his hand dropped to his gun and he started to turn.
“Don’t shoot, Ryan. It’s me. Hitch.”
In a quick step Ryan was at the bedside. Fred Hitch lay in the bed, his face drawn and pale. His shoulder and arm were bandaged.
“It was them.” He indicated the men outside. “Gerlach egged me into sellin’ some of the KY cows for gamblin’ money, said it would all be mine, anyway. Then he began sellin’ some himself, dared me to tell the old man.
“Lee Dunn was in it with him, and I was scared. I went along, but I didn’t like it. Then, when you saw the old man, they got worried. They couldn’t find you, and they decided to kill the old man, then to take over. I wouldn’t stand for it, and made a break. They shot me down, but I got to a horse. Kitty hid me here…she went after medicine.”
“They’ll wonder why she isn’t here now,” Ryan said half aloud. Then he looked down at the man on the bed. “What about Tom? Did they kill him?”
“Don’t think so. They want me for a front…or him. Then they can loot the ranch safely. After that, other outfits.”
Ryan stepped to the window. With luck he could make the trees without being seen. He put a hand on the window and slid it up.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah.”
“I ain’t much, but the old man was good to me. I wouldn’t see no harm come to him. Tell him that, will you?”
“Sure.”
He stepped out the window and walked swiftly into the woods. There he made the saddle and started for the KY. He had no plan, he had not even the right to plan. It was not his fight. He was a stranger and…but he kept riding.
It was past midnight when he found the KY. He had been lost for more than an hour, took a wrong trail in the bad light…there were no lights down below. He rode the big horse down through the trees and stepped out of the saddle.
There were a dozen saddled horses near the corral. He could see the shine of the starlight on the saddles. He saw some of those horses when he drew closer, and he knew them. They were riders from Thumb Butte…so, then, they had the ranch. They had moved in.
And this ranch was the law. There were no other forces to stand against Gerlach and Dunn now. There were ten thousand head of cattle in the hills, all to be sold. It was wealth, and a community taken over.
He stood there in the darkness, his face grim, smelling the night smells, feeling the danger and tension, knowing he was a fool to stay, yet unable to run.
The old man might still be alive. If he could move in, speak to him once more…with just the shadow of authority he might draw good men around him and hold the line. He was nobody now, but with the authority of old Tom Hitch, then he could move.
He loosened his gun in his belt, and taking his rifle walked across the clearing to the back door. He saw a man come to the bunkhouse door and throw out a cigarette. The man started to turn, then stopped and looked his way. He kept on walking, his mouth dry, his heart pounding. The fellow watched him for a minute, barely visible in the gloom, and then went back inside.
* * *
MATT RYAN REACHED the back of the house and touched the latch. It lifted under his hand and he stepped in. Carefully, he eased across the room, into the hall. When he made the old man’s room, he hesitated, then spoke softly. There was no reply.
He struck a match…it glowed, flared. Matt looked at the old man, who was slumped back against the headboard of his bed, his flannel nightshirt bloody, the eyes wide and staring. They had murdered Tom Hitch. Killed him without a chance.
Matt drew back, hearing a noise at the bunkhouse. The match died and he dropped it, rubbing it out with his toe.
A faint rustle behind him and he turned, gun in hand.
A big old form loomed in the dark, wide, shapeless. “It me…Maria. He say give you this.” A paper rattled and he took it. “You go…quick now.”
He went swiftly, hearing boots grating on the gravel. They were suspicious, and coming to look. He stepped out the back door and a man rounded the corner. “Hey, there!” the fellow started forward. “Wait…!”
Matt Ryan shot him. He held the gun low and he shot at the middle of the man’s body, and heard the other man’s gun blast muffled by his body.
He started by him, and a light flared somewhere and its light caugh
t the man’s face. He had killed Indian Kelly.
Rifle in hand, he ran, ducking into the trees. There were shouts behind him, and he saw men scatter out, coming. He could see their darker shapes against the gray of the yard. He fired four fast shots from the hip, scattering them across the yard. A man stumbled and went down, then the others hit the dirt.
He ran for the bay, caught the bridle reins, and stepped into the leather. “Let’s get out of here!” he said, and the big red horse was moving…fast.
Day was graying when he neared Hanna’s Station. He saw no horses around, so he rode boldly from the woods to the back door. In the gray of the light, he swung down and knocked.
Kitty opened the door. He stepped in, grim, unshaven. “Got some coffee?” he said. “And I want to see Fred.”
“You…they killed him. Gerlach and Dunn. They found him.”
“Your father?”
“He’s hurt…they knocked him out.”
He looked at her hungrily, anxious to feel her need of him. With his fingers he spread the paper Maria had given him.
Matt Ryan: Take over.
Tom Hitch
The signature was big and sprawled out, but a signature known all over the Slumbering Hills.
So…there it was. The problem was his now. Looking back, he could remember the old man’s eyes. Hitch had known that if he had shown the slightest willingness to listen to Ryan, they would both have been killed. But now the battle had been tossed to him.
Kitty looked at him, waiting. “There it is, Matt. You’re the boss of Slumbering Hills.”
The boss…and a hunted man. His only supporters an old man with an aching head, and a girl.
One man alone…with a gun.
* * *
THEY WOULD BE combing the hills for him. They would come back here. Kitty had been left alone, but then they were in a hurry to find him and Tom Hitch was living. Now it would be different.
“Saddle up,” he said. “You and your dad are riding. Ride to the ranches, get the men together.”
“What about you?” Her eyes were very large. “Matt, what about you?”
“Me? I’ll wait here.”
“But they’ll come here! They’ll be looking for you.”
“Uh-huh…so I show ’em who’s boss.” He grinned suddenly, boyishly. “Better rustle some help. They might not believe me.”
When they had left, he waited. The stage station was silent, the throbbing heart gone from it. He poured coffee into a cup, remembering that it was up to him now.…Suppose…suppose he could do it without a gun.…A time had come for change, the old order was gone…but did Lee Dunn know that? And in his heart, Matt Ryan knew he did not. For Lee Dunn was the old order. He was a relic, a leftover, a memory of the days when Tom Hitch had come here, Hitch already past his prime, Dunn not yet to reach his.…
In the silent house the clock ticked loudly. Matt Ryan sipped his coffee and laid his Winchester on the table.
He checked his gun while the clock ticked off the measured seconds.
It was broad day now.…Kitty and her father would be well into the valley. Would the ranchers come? His was a new voice, they did not know him. They had only that slip of paper and the words Take over.
He got up and walked to the window. And then he saw them coming.
* * *
HE PLACED HIS rifle by the door and stepped outside. There were ten of them…ten, and one of him. A fleeting smile touched his lips. Old Tom Hitch had stood off forty Apaches once…alone.
“Tom,” he whispered, “if you can hear me…say a word where it matters.”
He stepped to the edge of the porch, a tall man, honed down by sparse living and hard years, his wedge-shaped face unshaven, his eyes cool, waiting. It had been like this on the Nueces…only different.
They drew up, a line of men on horses. Lee Dunn and Gerlach at the center.
He saw no others, he thought of no others. These were the ones.
“Hello, Dunn.”
The knifelike man studied him, his hands on the horn of his saddle.
“Dunn, I’m serving notice. Tom Hitch sent me a note. His orders were for me to take over.”
“Think you can?”
“I can.”
Lee Dunn waited…why he waited he could not have said. He had heard from Gerlach that this man was yellow. Looking at him, seeing him, he knew he was not. He knew another thing—this man was a gunfighter.
“Who are you, Ryan? Should I know you?”
“From the Nueces…maybe you heard of the Kenzie outfit.”
Lee Dunn’s lips thinned down. Of course…he should have known. It had been a feud…and at the last count there were five Kenzies and one Ryan left. And now there was still one Ryan…
“So this is the way it is,” Matt said, making his plea. “The old days are over, Lee. You an’ me, we’re of the past. Old Tom was, too. He was a good man, and his guns kept the peace and made the law. But the old days of living by the gun are gone, Lee. We can admit it, or we can die.”
“Where’s the girl?” Gerlach demanded.
“Gone with her father. They are in the valley now rounding up all of Old Tom’s supporters from the Slumberin’ Hills.”
His eyes held on them, seeing them both, knowing them both. “What’s it to be, Dunn?”
A voice spoke behind him. “I did not go.…Dad went. I’m here with a shotgun and I’m saying it’s between Matt Ryan and the two, Gerlach and Dunn. I’ll kill any man who lifts a gun other than them.”
“Fair enough.” It was a lean, hatchet-faced hand. “This I wanta see.”
Lee Dunn sat very still, but he was smiling. “Why, Matt, I reckon mebbe you’re right. But you know, Matt, I’ve heard a sight about you…never figured to meet you…an’ I can’t help wonderin’, Matt—are you faster than me?”
He spoke and he drew and he died falling. He hit dust and he rolled over and he was dead, but he was trying to get up, and then he rolled over again, but he had his gun out. The gun fired and the bullet plowed a furrow and that was all.
Gerlach had not moved. His face was gray and seemed suddenly thinner. As though hypnotized, he stared at the thin tendril of smoke from the muzzle of Ryan’s .44 Colt.
Slowly, his tongue touched his dry lips, and he swallowed.
“You boys will be ridin’ on,” Ryan said quietly. “That rope you got there should be handy. There’s a tree down the trail…unless you want to ride out with a yella-belly.”
“Ain’t honin’ to,” the hatchet-faced man said. He looked down at Lee. “He made his try, Ryan. Give him a send-off, will you?”
Matt nodded, and Kitty walked out and stood beside him, watching them ride away, gathered around Gerlach, who sat his horse as if stunned. Only now his hands were tied.
Matt Ryan looked down at Kitty, and he took her arm and said, “You know, you’ll do to ride the river with, Kit. You’re a girl to walk beside a man…wherever he goes.”
“Come in,” she said, but her eyes said more than that. “I’ve some coffee on.”
NO MAN’S MESA
* * *
IT DOMINATED THE desert and the slim green valleys that lay between the peaks or in the canyon bottoms. It was high—over six hundred feet.
The lower part was a talus slope, steep, but it had been climbed. The last three hundred feet was sheer except upon one corner where the rock was shattered and broken edges protruded. This, it was said, was the remnant of the ancient trail to the flat top of the mesa.
There was, legend said, a flowing spring atop the mesa, there were trees and grass and an ancient crater, but all this was talk, for no living man had seen any of it.
The place fostered curious stories. After the Karr boys tried to climb it, there was no rain in the country for two months. After Rison fell from the remnant of the path, there was no rain again. Cattle seemed to shun the place, and people avoided it. The few horses and cattle who did wander to the mesa were soon seen stumbling, vacant-eyed and lonely, lo
sing flesh, growing shaggy of coat, and finally dying. Their whitened bones added to the stories. “This,” Old Man Karr often said, “wouldn’t be a bad country if it wasn’t for Black Mesa.”
Matt Calou rode up to Wagonstop in a drenching downpour. When his mount was cared for he sloshed through the rain to the saloon.
“Some storm!” Calou glanced at the four men lining the bar. “Unseasonal, ain’t it?”
“Floodin’ our gardens.” The man jerked his head westward. “It’s Black Mesa, that’s what it is.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
They shrugged. “If you lived in this country you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”
He took off his slicker and slapped rain from his hat. “Never heard of a pile of rock causin’ a rainstorm.”
They disdained his ignorance and stared into their drinks. Thunder rumbled, and an occasional lightning flash lit the gloom. Old Man Karr was there, and Wente, who owned the Spring Canyon place. And two hardcase riders from the Pitchfork outfit, Knauf and Russell. Dyer was behind the bar.
Calou was a tall man with a rider’s lean build. His face was dark and narrow with an old scar on the cheekbone.
“Lived here long?” he asked Dyer.
“Born here.”
“Then you can tell me where the Rafter H lies.”
All eyes turned. Dyer stared, then shrugged. “Ain’t been a soul on it in fifteen years. Ain’t nothin’ there but the old stone buildin’s and bones. Not even water.”
Old Man Karr chuckled. “Right under the edge of Black Mesa, thataway, you couldn’t give it to anybody from here. It’s cursed, that’s what it is.”
Matt Calou looked incredulous. “I never put no stock in curses. Anyway, I’m goin’ to live there. I bought the Rafter H.”
“Bought it?” Dyer exploded. “Man, you’ve been taken. Even if it wasn’t near Black Mesa, the place is without water an’ overgrown with loco weed.”
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