Troublesome Range

by Peter Dawson

  It seemed an eternity before he could command his muscles to move. He struck out feebly, trying to swim, but the strong current sucked him deeper under the surface. A jagged rock slashed the left side of his chest. One of his boots touched another rock. Panic hit him and his lungs seemed about to burst as he thrust out with that boot and again pushed his head above the water to catch two gasping breaths.

  He managed to keep his head up this last time, only to find that he lacked the strength to fight the current. Time and again he would strike out for the looming shadow of the bank, but his arms flailed the foaming water with no visible effect. Once again, as he rolled onto his back, his head went under. He came up, gagging and coughing, at the fiery pain of water in his lungs. He glimpsed a rosy glow cutting the darkness far upstream, not then knowing that it was the light of the fire at Saygar’s camp.

  He fought now with a dull fear making him waste his strength. He felt that strength slowly going. At last he even lacked the energy to move his arms. When a wave sucked his head under, he didn’t struggle against it. He relished the pleasing languor of exhaustion settling through him, wondering only what he would do when his lungs used up the last deep breath he had taken.

  His lungs were beginning to crowd him again when, face down, his chest scraped the bottom. His first thought was that the current had sucked him under again. Instinct made him lift his head. It came above water and the tonic of the fresh, sweet air he drew into his lungs braced him.

  Joe found himself lying belly down in a shallows where the water no longer moved in oily, fast-flowing swells but foamed whitely to each side, vaguely reflecting the sheen of starlight. He pushed himself up onto his knees and let the water foam about his thighs until his breathing came easier. Then, struggling to his feet, he started for the nearest bank. Once he stepped into a hole and went under, but now he had more strength, and three powerful strokes took him to the shallows again. He reached for the knob of a boulder and pulled himself up. Standing once more, he waded to within reach of the bank, stumbled, let himself fall, and lay there for long minutes, his strength slowly building.

  When he finally drew his legs from the water and looked about him, he saw that he was on the east bank of the creek at the point where he had earlier crossed on the bay. Out there in the darkness he could vaguely make out the shape of the mounded island that divided the stream into two channels. Getting his bearings further, he knew that he had less than a quarter mile walk to his bay. And, knowing that Saygar might not yet have found the horse, he got on his feet and started for the knoll on the far side of which lay the outlaw camp.

  It hurt him to walk. The throb of his head was less painful than the cuts and bruises all along his body. Only now did he realize what punishment he had taken while struggling against the stream. His lips were puffed and swollen from the blow Saygar had struck, his jaw ached, and, when he breathed deeply, there was a pain deep in his chest.

  The farther Joe walked the less urgent it became for him to find the bay and get out of here. Now that he could think rationally, he saw that he had gained an advantage over Saygar and Harper. They would naturally think him dead. Their vigilance would be relaxed. And when that thought came to him, he stopped abruptly, trying to figure out how best to use his advantage. When he went on again, he angled back in the direction of the Troublesome’s low roar, so as to circle the foot of the knoll and come in on the camp from the south.

  His first glimpse of the camp showed him Whitey stretched out on a blanket near the fire, his right shoulder bare, Pecos and Saygar kneeling beside him. A whiskey bottle lay on the ground nearby. Whitey’s face was lined with pain and he winced sharply once as Pecos wrapped his bullet-punctured shoulder in a rag. Beyond the wounded man, farther toward the outer margin of firelight, lay Reibel’s inert figure; his gun lay beyond one of the outstretched lifeless hands.

  Harper stood across the fire from the others, his back to the near corner of the lean-to. He stood with one hand hanging, thumb hooked from his sagging shell belt, a cigarette drooping from his mouth, idly watching the attention Saygar and Pecos were giving the wounded man.

  Joe was careful to take note of each detail, of the three saddles and the stack of grub against the back sloping wall inside the lean-to, of the coffee pot and Dutch oven on the fire. He tried hard to see into the lean-to’s back corner but there the shadows were too dense. He wondered if there were any rifles in there, remembering now another item he had planned on settling when he rode in here. It concerned that telltale sign that marked the gun of the man who had tried to bushwhack him, the print of the scarred Winchester butt plate Blaze had mentioned finding by the rock in the upper basin.

  It took Joe a full five minutes to make his quarter circle of the camp and come down out of the trees toward the shadowy mound that was Reibel’s body. He crawled the last twenty feet, his glance riveted on Harper, who faced his direction. The Diamond foreman still stood in that careless stance against the end of the lean-to.

  Finally Joe lay behind Reibel’s body. He was reaching over the dead man’s chest, his hand groping for the gun, when he heard Saygar say: “How soon did he say Coyle would be here?” Harper pushed out from the lean-to and flicked the stub of his smoke into the fire. “He didn’t say. It was to be sometime after dark. Only he was to come with Bonnyman. Maybe he won’t show up now.” Harper sauntered over and looked down at Whitey. “How you feelin’, kid?”

  “Like hell.” Whitey’s look was bleak.

  “It’ll heal up,” Harper said. “But it’ll never work right again. You better take up another trade, friend.”

  The expression that came to the youth’s face at that moment made it obvious how much deeper his wound had struck than the mere bone and flesh Joe’s bullet had damaged. Tonight had seen him crippled more effectively than the loss of a leg would cripple a cowpoke. Whitey’s life had been built around his skill with a gun. Now, with his right shoulder broken, his gun magic gone forever, he faced a future that was a void of despair.

  Joe heard him say tonelessly: “Pass me the bottle, Mike.” Saygar handed the bottle of whiskey across, and Whitey took three long swallows before he handed it back. Then, petulantly, he asked: “You goin’ to leave me here?”

  “You’ll be in shape to sit a saddle by mornin’.”

  As Saygar drawled his casual answer, a look passed between him and Harper. Had Whitey seen it, there would have been little doubt in his mind about what was to happen to him. In the morning, Joe knew, Saygar and Pecos would desert their crewman to whatever fate, good or bad, lay in store for him. It was the law of the pack and Joe had seen it work before; there was no room for a cripple.

  Answering Saygar’s glance with a barely perceptible nod, Harper hitched his Levi’s higher along his waist and said: “Time for me to be goin’. We’ll be through here later for that money, Mike.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Joe had a moment’s panic, thinking Harper was coming toward him. He took a chance, coming up onto his knees and snatching up Reibel’s walnut-handled .45. He cocked it and the hammer click brought Harper wheeling around to face the sound.

  “Don’t move,” Joe spoke quietly, his voice barely audible above the persistent low roar of the nearby creek. Yet Saygar and Pecos both heard it—Saygar’s thick upper body turning, Pecos straightening and staring with face slack with amazement.

  For a moment Harper stood absolutely motionless. Then his hands slowly lifted to the level of his ears. Saygar likewise put up his hands. Pecos was too startled to move: It didn’t matter, for he wore no weapon.

  Joe stood up. “Whitey, reach for that iron and you’ll never know what hit you.” He advanced toward the wounded man as he spoke, his glance running between Whitey and the others. A moment later he was close enough to Whitey to reach out with the toe of his boot and kick away the shell belt and holstered gun that lay alongside the blanket.

  He stooped, picked up the belt, and slung it over his shoulder. With a motion of his lev
eled .45, Saygar and Harper turned their backs. Joe stepped in behind them and uncinched their belts, looping them across his shoulder as he had the first.

  “Saygar, where are your rifles?” he asked flatly.

  “Where you hid ’em day before yesterday,” was Saygar’s immediate reply, “up there in the timber by the cabin. We couldn’t find ’em.”

  Joe said—“Stay set.”—and backed over to the lean-to. He stooped down, cast a quick glance inside that showed him no rifles, and came back around the fire again.

  “Where’s your horse, Harper?” he queried.

  Harper made no answer. It was Saygar who said: “Out by the corral. Off there.” He brought his hands down, motioning into the northward darkness.

  “I’ll be gone a minute,” Joe drawled. “Maybe you better not move.”

  The rope corral lay half a dozen rods out from the camp. He walked fast in reaching it and at once spotted Harper’s saddled horse tied along its near side. There was a rifle in a scabbard on the far side of the saddle, and Joe took it down. He saw Harper’s silhouetted shape take a step out from the fire and levered a shell into the rifle, lined it, and put a bullet into the ground a foot ahead of the Diamond man. Harper stiffened and lifted his hands again, not moving a muscle.

  Approaching the fire again, Joe drawled: “Funny, but I had you pegged for havin’ some brains, Harper.”

  His pulse slowed as he rocked the rifle’s butt up and held it to the light. Then his hopes died. The butt plate was of smooth steel, marked with rust but unscarred by any line that would fit Blaze’s description of the bushwhacker’s rifle.

  Joe stood there a moment debating what to do next. Saygar’s story of not having been able to find the hidden guns up by Hoelseker’s cabin had carried a ring of truth. It would be a simple matter to check his story later, when there was more time. Harper’s Winchester wasn’t the one.

  Then who was the man who had tried to kill him, in fact left him for dead? Joe’s thinking hadn’t gone beyond this point, this meeting with Saygar. He hadn’t found the rifle and he didn’t believe he could make Saygar talk. What was he to do now?

  “You gents ought to eat well for the next few days,” he said tonelessly. “The county’s goin’ to be buyin’ your meals and . . .”

  A sound out of the darkness to his left made him wheel in that direction, lifting the rifle to his shoulder. His muscles tightened at the expected slam of a bullet, for what he had heard off there was the hoof fall of a walking horse.

  Abruptly the tension drained out of him at the sound of a voice that called: “That you, Joe? If it ain’t, whoever it is better reach for the stars. I got a line on your belt buckle!”

  Joe lowered his rifle. “Come on in, Blaze.”

  Half a minute later, the red-headed Anchor foreman was standing alongside him, a wide grin slashing his homely face.

  “Now ain’t this a nice catch,” Blaze drawled, eying the trio standing before him, the dead man, and the wounded outlaw. His look came around finally to Joe and he was visibly shocked at what he saw, his friend’s bruised face and cut and swollen lips, the torn Levi’s exposing a blood-reddened thigh, Joe’s still wetly clinging shirt.

  He holstered his gun, unbuttoned one cuff, and began rolling his sleeve. “Which one do I take on first?” he demanded, “None, Blaze,” said Joe. “We’ll take ’em down to Yace. He’ll do a better job.”

  “Yace! You go in there? Man, don’t you know Yace has been hellin’ around up here most of the day on your trail?”

  “Then you’ll take them in.” Joe was looking at Harper and Saygar, seeing the outlaw’s face set doggedly in an impassive way, Harper’s in a faint arrogant smile. When he added—“I hope they’ll give them a chance to talk before they string ’em up.”— the gunman’s smile faded.

  Waiting for Trouble

  The rider was close, entering the yard, before Ruth Merrill recognized him in the light of the lantern at the gate. It was Clark Dunne.

  She turned from the window and stood a moment debating what to do, her pulse stirring to a quicker beat. In that brief interval, alone, her face mirrored the swift run of her thoughts in a sharp, calculating way. When she finally went to the door and stepped out to call him before he turned down to the corral, the look on her face was serene.

  She told him—“I’ve been hoping you’d come back tonight.”— as he came out of the saddle at the foot of the porch steps. Then, haltingly, she said: “Clark . . . I . . . I’ve been thinking.”

  Ignoring her words, he came on up the steps. He took her in his arms, kissing her on the lips and resisting the pressure her arms made to draw away. When he let her go, she laughed nervously and pretended to smooth down her flawlessly brushed hair.

  “Clark! What if one of the men should see?”

  “What if they should?” Clark’s face was handsome under its smile as the lamplight from the open door struck it. He put his arm around her waist. “And now what were you thinking?”

  She went serious, looking up at him with her head cocked to one side. It was a glance at once appealing and tender. “It’s only this, Clark. Dad might not . . . might not have known what he was saying last night. It doesn’t seem right that we should be getting married so soon after . . .”

  She paused there, letting her thought complete itself.

  He let his arm fall abruptly and stepped back from her, trying to see beneath her expression. “You’ve heard about Joe, haven’t you?” he asked.

  Her air of coquetry vanished before a run of cool aloofness. His insight had destroyed the calculated edge of her approach and he had his answer when she said accusingly: “What about Joe? Why would that make a difference?”

  Something in him hardened. “Suit yourself about the weddin’,” he said, for a moment forgetting that this independence in him was neither wise nor diplomatic.

  A haughtiness edged into Ruth’s look now. “Clark, I asked you about Joe. Please tell me.”

  “He was seen north of here this afternoon,” he told her, willing now to pretend as she was pretending. “They’re looking for him.” “I hope he gets away,” she said directly. Then: “You won’t mind waiting for a few days, will you?”

  “No. It’s probably better that way.” He turned and went back down the steps and picked up his reins.

  “Will you have supper here at the house?” she asked.

  “I’d better eat with the men. We’re expectin’ word from Yace Bonnyman any minute.”

  Ruth let him go without further urging, a little frightened at not wanting him to be with her tonight and at showing it. Two hours ago one of the men coming down from the herd camp had brought her word of the renewed hunt for Joe. Since then her dismal world had brightened; it had also become complicated, chiefly by her promise to Clark. Now she was excited and wary, not knowing what to do but wait.

  Until just a moment ago she hadn’t consciously tried to picture her wants. But they stood out clearly now and Joe Bonnyman formed the core of them. She had come to the abrupt realization that Joe was the only man who mattered to her. She wanted terribly to see him; her hope that he would live through this seething trouble was a constant and heavy pressure on all her thoughts.

  She watched Clark walk off into the shadows and turned back into the house, avoiding the main living room where her father’s body lay in its simple pine coffin before the huge center fireplace.

  The six men down from the herd camp had already eaten and were loafing along the front of the bunkhouse, enjoying their after-supper smokes, their talk running icily and low against their expectation of what the coming night might hold. At the side kitchen door, Clark called in to the cook—“One more plate, Jim.”—and, having rolled up his sleeves, ladled out a basinful of water from the cedar bucket on the bench.

  The cool lathering Clark gave his face and hands seemed to cleanse him of more than the dust and grime of this afternoon’s ride. By the time he had toweled his face dry, he could look with some amusement on Rut
h’s poor show of affection. He was fully aware of her reason in asking that the wedding be delayed. Joe was much in her thoughts, he realized. Well, he wouldn’t be there long. Tonight, tomorrow at the latest, and Joe Bonnyman would no longer be a threat.

  He was halfway through his meal in the kitchen when he heard a horse running in along the road. He stepped to the door and saw a rider swing across the yard and come straight on for the bunkhouse.

  It was an Anchor man, Ed Dennis. He came directly to the kitchen entrance, seeing Clark there, with a casual—“Hi, yuh, boys.”—to the men outside the bunkhouse door.

  Dennis’s message was brief and he began it as soon as Clark had closed the door. The mesa men had lost Joe just below the pass at dusk. They were on the way back to Yoke now. They would take time out to eat there and start for Diamond around 9:00. Workman would take half the men and circle to come in on Diamond from the east. Bonnyman, with the others, would follow the basin trail in from the west.

  “You’ve got the tough job,” Dennis concluded. “The boss wants Harper tolled out into the open, if it can be worked, sharp on ten o’clock. That’s where you come in. You’re to ride straight in the road from the south. You’ll likely get within range of the layout before you’re stopped. Throw a lot of lead at it, and then hightail. The boss thinks Harper’ll follow you. If he does, once he’s clear of the trees, we’ll have him on two sides.”

  Clark frowned, seeing the simplicity and workability of Yace’s plan. It didn’t seem to have a hole in it. Harper would naturally take the initiative once he saw he wasn’t outnumbered, especially in view of what Clark had told him this afternoon. Clark’s six men would look like easy odds to him. He wouldn’t be expecting a trap because he was relying on Clark to arrange matters.

  Misunderstanding Clark’s frown, Dennis said: “If you’re careful, none of you will even get scratched. The boss said not to get too close but to raise plenty of hell with your powder, then run.”