by Peter Dawson
The girl’s choking sobs came as Clark drew her to him once more. Nesbit turned from them and busied himself at repacking his bag. As an afterthought, he reached over and pulled the sheet up over John Merrill’s face. Then he left the room.
When they were alone, Ruth lifted her head. “He said it was to be tomorrow?” she asked.
Clark nodded to the watch on the table. “Today,” he corrected her. Tilting her chin up so that he could look into her eyes, he asked gently: “Are you as sure of it as he was, Ruth? That I’m the man you want?”
“Yes, Clark,” she answered after a moment, and in that slight pause he knew she was thinking once again of Joe. “Yes, he was right. I do need you.”
Six-Gun Parley
Two and a half hours ago Luke Sherman and two other Anchor crewmen had ridden the Troublesome toward the herds’ bed ground, curious over the sound of distant gunfire heard by a wakeful cowpuncher. They had come across half the answer to what had happened, a thin scattering of cattle where the main herd should have been. The darkness had hidden the rest.
Now, as dawn’s light strengthened in the east, Blaze and Yace and nine other Anchor men—all but the cook—sat their horses at the edge of the rim and looked downward the 400 feet to the edge of the flats to see the final answer. The gorge lay off to the right, obscured by the lack of light. Below, at its mouth, lay evidence of destruction beyond any man’s imagining. Some fifty of the carcasses dammed the creek and diverted it in a quarter-mile-wide pool beyond which the swollen muddy waters swirled back into the main channel. As far back as they could see, clear to the gorge mouth, other bloated carcasses lined the banks of the stream or turned lazily in the side pockets out of the current. Occasionally they would glimpse the scarred Anchor brand on a distended belly, but more often it was a Singletree-branded animal. No one bothered to ride to the gorge rim and look down into the roaring chasm deeply gashed by the stream; it would be the same there, they knew, maybe even worse.
Only five minutes ago Blaze had taken a careful look at the small bunches of grazing steers and told Yace: “I make it a slim half hundred, boss.” Last night nearly 500 cattle had been left near the junction of the Troublesome and the Porcupine to graze.
“This is the damnedest thing I ever set eyes on,” Sherman drawled as he turned and put his horse far enough back from the rim so that he wouldn’t have to look any longer.
“In a few days it’ll be the damnedest stink your nose ever got hold of.” For once, Yace’s tone lacked bluster and was one of outright incredulity. He took his last long look at what would undoubtedly mean ruin to Singletree, although Anchor would not be so hard hit, and turned to Blaze. “This is nice, comin’ right after I find I’ve got a son that takes a fancy to carryin’ off women.”
“Blast it!” Blaze said savagely. “If you weren’t an old man, I’d lick the livin’ daylights out of you for that! Joe no more carried off that Vanover girl than I did.”
As soon as he’d spoken, amusement tempered Blaze’s anger. There was a moment in which he wondered what Yace’s reaction would be if he knew that Blaze had in fact been the man who had taken Jean Vanover from Diamond night before last. Then both his amusement and anger were gone before the look he caught on Yace’s face. The old man was baffled, the fight gone out of him. The news of Joe’s note found in the post office last night had been hard for him to take. Now this other was piled on top of it. Yace Bonnyman was hard hit, too troubled with his own loss and what he considered a second betrayal by his son to take Blaze’s words seriously.
“Well, what now?” he asked quietly.
The near docility of his question did more than anything to prove to Blaze how deeply the old man’s pride had been wounded. Blaze had never seen Yace this way, so strangely humbled and looking to someone else for an idea. So it was a long moment before the redhead could find a reply. When he spoke, it was to say as quietly as Yace had: “We might get something out of that sign . . . unless you want to wait here for Staples.”
“He can take care of his own end of this.” Yace motioned his foreman to take the lead and for the next twenty minutes Blaze heard no word spoken in the file of riders strung out behind. At the end of that silent interval, Blaze reached the spot where he’d seen sign on the way out. As he came stiffly out of the saddle, he drawled: “May not mean nothin’ at all, Yace.”
But it did. Here, along the slope of a barren and sage-studded knoll, one of the few grassless spots on the entire mesa, the tracks of three shod ponies struck a straight line across the knoll toward last night’s position of the herd. Stranger yet was the fact that, looking the opposite direction along the line of those tracks, Diamond’s clutter of buildings lay shadowed in the strengthening light some four miles distant.
Blaze started to say something after the others had gathered around him but thought better of it. Sherman, too, appeared to have an idea, but he had nothing to say. Instead, he glanced at Yace as the others did.
Yace’s color didn’t seem any too good this morning. His face looked tired. And now, as they waited for him to say something, he appeared hesitant. But in the end he nodded toward Diamond. “They came from over there,” he said. “Didn’t bother to ride around this bare ground because no one would think of comin’ way over here to take a look.”
What he said was true. This spot was well isolated from any trail. Cattle rarely grazed this far back on the mesa, for the grass was thicker and taller farther out. Blaze saw the conviction that was gradually building in all of them. It scared him a little.
“Let’s make sure before we go any further,” he suggested. He went into the saddle again and followed the line of the sign over the crest of the knoll and down the far side, where it came out of the thin stand of grass. He didn’t stop there but went on, the others coining up on him. And once again they rode without speaking.
The sign was hard to follow. When Blaze lost it, he didn’t stop to study it out. He went on. Luck was with him, for occasionally he glimpsed faint patches of flattened grass and once or twice the clear print of a horse’s shoe along a bare patch of soft ground. When he came to the trail that led from Diamond on up to the basin, he had to make a cast of less than ten rods to pick up the sign again. It came from downtrail, in the direction of Diamond, now less than a mile distant.
Once again the men closed in around Yace, waiting for what he had to say. He seemed to sense that he had a grave decision to make. Deliberating over it, his glance went down the trail, and for the first time that morning Blaze saw his face set doggedly in the old familiar look of gathering anger.
“It was Harper,” Yace said finally, with a suddenness that startled them all. “It’s the sort of a play he’d make, blamin’ us for costin’ him his job. It’s a good thing we thought to bring along our irons. Sherman, you take five men and . . .”
“Hold on!” Blaze cut in. “We’ve got a law in this country. Lyans is the man we ought to see first.”
“The devil with the law!” Yace flared. “Besides, Lyans is out lookin’ for the Vanover girl.” He turned, one hand on the cantle of his saddle, the other resting on the horn, and looked at his men. “Any of you want to head for home? No one’ll hold it against you if you do.”
No one spoke or made a move to leave. Yace’s glance went to Sherman. “Me and Blaze and a couple others will go on. You take the rest, Sherman, and circle up into the timber and come down back of the barn where you’ll be handy. If we buy into trouble, you’re to bail us out. Got it straight?”
Sherman nodded, saying only: “Better give me a couple of rifles.”
The three riders with rifles in saddle scabbards reined over alongside him. As Sherman left, leading his men over into the timber, Yace called: “If it comes to burnin’ powder, make it count!”
Yace, Blaze, and two others sat watching while Sherman disappeared into the trees immediately beyond the trail.
“Better give ’em time to get set,” Blaze advised.
As he spoke, the cl
ang of Diamond’s meal iron sounded clearly across the distance, summoning the crew to breakfast. The man beside Blaze, Shorty Adams, drawled: “I could do with a feed about now.” No one so much as smiled at the remark and Shorty’s gaunt face flushed at the silent reprimand.
“Let’s go,” Yace said finally, and he and Blaze took the lead down the trail, going slowly at first until Blaze drawled: “Now would be a good time to arrive, while they’re eatin’.” After that Yace set the pace to a fast trot.
The six of them came into Diamond’s barn lot from behind a flanking row of outbuildings. Across the way was the rear of the low adobe bunkhouse, beyond it the grove of locust trees that hid the house.
“I take one side, you the other, Blaze,” Yace said curtly as he swung to the right to round the bunkhouse. Blaze struck left, one man following him.
Blaze hurried a little, not wanting to let Yace get there first. Along the side wall of the building he came abreast a window and glanced in but could see nothing. He was keenly aware of the weight of the gun at his thigh and let his hand fall to it, lifting the heavy .45 a little out of the holster. Having made sure that it rode free, he let it drop back into leather again.
He reined in around the front corner of the building and in close to one side of the door, seeing Yace do likewise opposite. A man came out the door, stopped abruptly at sight of the pairs of riders flanking him, and took an involuntary backward step before he caught himself. His look was wary as it went to Yace.
“What’ll it be, gents?” he asked flatly.
“Harper,” Yace snapped. “Send him out.”
The man’s look was impassive as he said: “He ain’t here.”
“Where is he?”
“Over there.” The man nodded out across the space separating the bunkhouse from the trees.
Blaze’s glance went to the trees. Neal Harper stood within an arm’s length of the thick trunk of the nearest locust. His boots were apart in a firm stance. He held a gun in each hip-high hand, carelessly almost, but those guns covered Anchor’s two pairs of riders.
Harper waited a moment, seeing Yace’s massive frame go rigid, Blaze’s relax in a seeming slacking off of tension. Then he drawled: “You wanted me, Bonnyman?”
It was obvious that the Anchor men had been spotted on the way in and that Harper was taking no chances. Yace saw this and it heightened his anger to think that he had been taken in by such a simple ruse. Sherman, in the timber directly backing the big barn, couldn’t possibly see Harper and know what was taking place and he was too far away to hear voices.
Yace was stumped on how to begin. His ideas on how easily he was to deal with Harper underwent quick revision. Still, he didn’t know what to say.
As had happened many times before in a tight spot, it was Blaze who came to his rescue.
“We wanted you and Vanover,” Blaze told Harper. “A little something to talk over.”
“Vanover’s somewhere up in the hills lookin’ for his daughter,” Harper said.
Blaze’s brows lifted in polite interest. “So?” he drawled. “Then we’d better go find him. Because we’ve located the girl.”
Harper’s guns dropped an inch or two. His look narrowed. He eyed Yace, then Blaze, and what he saw in the Anchor foreman’s expression made him drop his guns into his holsters.
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said, smiling meagerly. “You looked like you were huntin’ bear when you rode in here.” He nodded to the man who had come out the bunkhouse doorway. “Tell ’em it’s all right, Bill.”
“But it ain’t all right,” Blaze drawled, and rocked a gun up into line, resting his forearm on the horn of the saddle.
A moment ago, seeing Yace cocked for making the most of his first chance, Blaze had settled on the only possibility of turning Harper’s advantage into one for himself, and had given that inspired reply. For a brief instant Harper’s glance had gone to the man at the door. As Harper had holstered his guns, Blaze’s right hand, away from the Diamond foreman, had lifted his .45 clear. Now his forehead was cool with beads of perspiration, so close had the margin been between Harper’s seeing and not seeing his move.
As Blaze’s drawled words struck across to Harper, the man froze in a posture with his elbows out, cocked for the draw. Quickly he calculated his chances and saw there weren’t any. Blaze was well out of line with both the door and the single front window. His gun wasn’t quite in line but would be before Harper could get a weapon clear. And the tree Harper had intended as a shelter in the last extremity was a long stride away, too far to be reached before Anchor’s foreman could get in a shot.
Harper had little respect for Yace Bonnyman but a healthy one for Blaze Coyle. Most redheads, Harper knew, had hair-trigger tempers and were unpredictable in a spot like this. He didn’t know Blaze well, but something about the man warned him that here he faced a cool brain and a judgment keener than his own perhaps. A cold fury took him when he saw how nicely Coyle had used his mention of Vanover’s daughter to trick him and dull his wariness.
He lifted his hands out and away from his guns, saying nothing, waiting, as Yace and the pair of Anchor crewmen drew their weapons.
“Call the others out, Harper,” Blaze said. “They’re invited to this party.”
“You call ’em,” Harper drawled.
Blaze shrugged briefly and said to the man at the door, without looking at him: “Harper’s a little shy, Bill. Get your sidekicks out here unless you want a new boss.”
Bill looked at Harper and, getting no signal from him, called: “You heard what he said in there! Pile out!”
Five men filed out the doorway. All wore guns and all surrendered them to Billings, the Anchor man who had rounded the north end of the bunkhouse with Blaze. Harper came last, after Billings had taken a quick look in the bunkhouse, then crossed the yard to the Diamond foreman, keeping well out of line with him and Blaze.
“There, Yace,” Blaze said, as Billings stepped away from Harper, the gunman’s twin belts slung over his shoulder. “What’ll you do with ’em?”
“There’s a jail in town,” Yace said. “Shorty, go give Sherman a call and get him down here.”
As Shorty Adams rounded the bunkhouse, headed for the barn lot to call to Sherman, Neal Harper drawled: “Is this a guessin’ game? Or do you tell us why you’re takin’ us in?”
“You got a little careless last night,” Yace said. “We picked up your sign on that sage knob four miles out.”
Blaze saw Harper’s face break from its impassiveness into puzzlement. “Not our sign, Bonnyman.”
“You can tell it to Lyans when . . .”
“Hold on, Yace,” Blaze cut in, intrigued by the genuineness of Harper’s surprise. He eyed the Diamond foreman sharply. “You claim you were here last night, Harper? All night?”
“All night,” Harper said. “We were gatherin’ together our possibles, gettin’ ready to pull out. Maybe you hadn’t heard, but you rannies cost us our jobs.”
“Any way of provin’ where you were?” Blaze asked.
Yace snorted. “You’re wastin’ time, Blaze. Get ’em . . .”
“Let him have his say!” Blaze cut in. “Well, Harper?”
The Diamond foreman shrugged. “If it’s proof you want, we don’t have any you’d take. It’s our word against yours. What are we supposed to have done?”
“Stampeded my herd and Staples’s into the head of the gorge,” Yace told him.
The look on Harper’s face underwent a quick change. His lips became tightly drawn. Blaze thought he could see his face lose color. Then Harper was saying: “So you’re not only runnin’ me out but framin’ me, too! You’re a pack of low . . .”
The flat explosion of a gunshot, sounding from behind the bunkhouse, cut off his words. Hard on the heels of the first came a second, prolonged by a third. As a pony’s hoofs pounded around the far side of the adobe building, the glances of the Anchor men went that way. Harper wheeled unnoticed behind the nearest tree as Shorty Ad
ams, who had gone to call Sherman, rounded the corner of the bunkhouse.
Shorty’s pony shied away from Yace’s horse. The abrupt move unseated the Anchor rider. His spare high frame fell loosely from the saddle and he rolled over twice from the momentum of his fall, then lay still. The riderless Anchor pony ran up the slope toward the timber close above. From out behind the bunkhouse a man called hoarsely: “Harper! Sing out, Harper!”
Blaze, as startled as the others, only now thought of Neal Harper. He looked over toward the trees, saw that Harper was gone, and touched his pony’s flanks with spurs, sending him across there. Behind, Yace shouted something Blaze couldn’t make out. Blaze reined his horse in through the trees, bringing the house and Harper, making for the door, into sight.
Blaze took a snap shot at the Diamond man, at the last moment pulling his gun out of line, in the hope that the mere sound of the shot would stop him. But Harper made the door and disappeared into the house. Back beyond the trees two guns spoke, one the heavy pound of a .45, the other the sharper report of a .38. Blaze heard Yace yell—“Head him off! Over there by the barn!”—and knew that one of Diamond’s crew must have been busy at some chore in one of the outbuildings when Anchor rode in. That man had undoubtedly awaited developments on the hunch that the mesa crew was looking for trouble. That he had made the best of his chance was now evidenced by the fact that one Anchor man lay dead, or badly wounded, and that Harper had made the house where he could get hands on a gun.
Blaze heard the glass go out of a house window with a shattering crash. He wheeled his pony sharply around and in behind a tree barely in time, for Harper’s first bullet struck the tree trunk and ricocheted away in a high whine. Blaze struck on back through the trees, going fast.
When he came into sight of the bunkhouse, it was to see Shorty lying exactly as he had been before.
Billings was back in the saddle, his gun trained on three Diamond men. There should have been five. The remaining two had disappeared, along with Yace.