Gunsmoke Masquerade

by Peter Dawson

  Streak was half angered by the change in the man, for it raised his own doubts. Bishop had been really pleasant last night. And, contrarily, Streak’s temper had been short with Cathy Bishop simply because she was betraying her father. He admitted that she had good reason for doing so. Still, some devilish urge in him had prompted his waylaying her there on the trail after seeing that door letting off Crescent B’s living room slit open to reveal her standing there, listening. The same impulse had made him brutally frank with her; he wished now he’d ridden herd on his tongue. At this moment he was heavily conscious of his own part in all this. He, and he alone, was responsible for Fencerail’s having found a way of getting sheep onto the west slope without being stopped by the big ranchers. Buchwalter’s scheme of bluffing Bishop by bringing this small band in today wouldn’t have worked, he knew. So he had himself become the chief instrument for sheep invading an unspoiled and virgin cattle country. Thought of that sobered him.

  The more he considered the rights and wrongs claimed by each side, the more confused Streak became. He had instinctively taken to Tom Buchwalter at first sight, regardless of the man being in the sheep business. To Paight, too, without reservation. Prenn and the others were good men. Fencerail had a just grudge to work off against Bishop for, according to their reasoning, Bishop was wholly responsible for the death of Pete Dallam if for nothing else. On the other hand, Streak’s talk with Bishop last night had shown him a man far different from the aloof and cool-mannered autocrat he had glimpsed on Ledge’s street after the ambush. He decided that the man’s earlier manner had been only a shield behind which Bishop hid in fighting for the things he believed right and just. He had made a point of accusing Bishop of hiring the killing of Dallam and Sternes; the genuineness of the rancher’s surprise and denial had impressed him. In that moment—all through their talk, in fact—Bishop had seemed sincere to the point of pleading, not proud but harassed and worried over the violence that had been unleashed, terribly hurt by his daughter’s loss of faith in him.

  Weighing the grievances of both sides, finding that both had rightful claims, Streak’s anger was now settling on the one man responsible for all this trouble. Although he had never known Pete Dallam, he knew he would have been galled by the man’s rash ways. But for Dallam, the west-slope outfits might have made some sort of a settlement with the big ranchers over the building of the Association dam. Dallam’s contrariness had been impulsive, reckless in the extreme. Before this was over, the seeds of hate he had sown would sacrifice more lives. Worst of all were the deep-seated feelings Dallam had aroused in Catherine Bishop, feelings that remained strong enough to have started the breaking up of her family life. The scar of her devotion for Dallam would be with her always, unless something happened to show her how ill-founded they were, and Streak suspected that nothing the future might bring would change her idealistic memory of Dallam.

  “Damned if I make head or tail of it!” he muttered, half aloud.

  “What’s that?” Buchwalter queried.

  “Nothing,” replied Streak. “I was just wondering what luck we’re having.”

  Hardly had he spoken when Buchwalter reached across and laid a hand on his arm to say gently: “Careful! Something just moved over there.” He nodded obliquely off to the left.

  Looking that way, downward across a small open swale, Streak was in time to see a thinnish blue puff of powder smoke blossom from a thicket at the instant a rifle sent its sharp explosion ringing through the trees. A bullet ricocheted with a coarse buzzing from a boulder face a few feet away, and then a harsh querulous voice called from the thicket: “This is as far as you go, Buchwalter!”

  “That’ll be Jensen,” the Fencerail man breathed. He lifted his voice to call back: “Who says so?”

  “Me and enough others to make it stick!”

  The voice was strongly hostile and sure. Buchwalter smiled meagerly. “Looks like they bit on it,” he drawled to Streak.

  “Tell ’em we’ll think it over,” Streak suggested.

  “We’ve got to argue this some first,” was Buchwalter’s reply. He called again to Jensen: “We’re goin’ right on through! It’s none of your affair what we do across the valley!”

  The rifle spoke again, the bullet slapping the dust so close to one side of Buchwalter’s pony that the animal shied nervously, taking a mincing step away from the sound. “There’s more where that one come from!” Jensen called. “Only that’s the last one we waste!”

  “We’ll think it over, Jensen!” Buchwalter yelled across to him. He and Streak turned back. A little less than a quarter mile back up the slope, they met the leaders of the band coming through the trees. Behind, the aisles of the timber were filled with sheep kicking up a fog of dust that caught the early morning sunshine and laid sharp planes of light against the elongated shadows under the trees. Buchwalter reined his pony over to the nearest herder and spoke to him in Spanish. The Mexican called a summons that brought two more herders down, and presently the rams in the lead were turned, the band was halted, and the cook’s tent pitched part way up a short incline away from the band.

  Satisfied with the way his herders had handled the maneuver, Buchwalter came back to Streak. “That’s all we have to do,” he explained. “They won’t warn us back over the pass for another hour or two. I’ve told Manuel to take his time when they do. By then, it’ll be too late. You and I can go across and help with the drive if you feel like it.”

  “I ought to see Kelso first,” Streak said. “Go on ahead. I’ll pick up your sign and follow.”

  He watched as Buchwalter cut off through the trees, marking the direction the Fencerail man was taking. He didn’t know this country any too well and the quickest way of getting to the cañon back in the Arrowheads was to follow Buchwalter’s tracks. Once the foreman was out of sight, Streak put the gray up the slope toward the pass. Twenty minutes of riding took him across the broad saddle of the pass and down the farther side, into sight of the four tents of the main camp.

  He found Fred Kelso and Catherine Bishop sitting beneath a big blue spruce behind the tents. Beyond, a carbine across his knees, the herder Buchwalter had left to guard the two was hunkered down with his back to a low rock outcrop. Kelso was idly whittling on a stick and looked up as Streak approached. His look was bleak and his hawkish face patterned a distasteful grimace when he saw who it was.

  “You’re beginnin’ to carry the same stink as the others,” he said flatly.

  Strangely enough, Streak saw the same distaste reflected in the look Cathy Bishop gave him. Seeing that, he said: “What’s got into you two? You ought to be glad we’re doing a real job.” He looked at the girl. “I thought this was what you wanted. Dallam’s sheep are on their way in.”

  Cathy’s glance refused to meet his. She had no answer for him, but Kelso did. “You’ve let us in for a hell of a lot of trouble, Kincaid.”

  “How did you think this could be done without trouble? You’ve had plenty anyway. This way, someone gets something out of it.”

  Kelso shrugged. “Forget it,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Here again was a contradiction, the same sort of contradiction that had all morning been plaguing Streak. It wasn’t only the sheriff’s attitude that pressed home this fact, but the girl’s, too. He had expected to find some animation in her; instead, she held the same unexplained resentment toward him as did the lawman.

  “Just where do you stand, miss?” he asked querulously. “For or against us?”

  Now Cathy’s eyes lifted to meet his. “I don’t know,” she breathed. “I just wish I had never come back here.”

  Streak was suddenly impatient to be gone, to be alone and try again to unravel the stubborn knot of his thinking. “Sing out if you want anything,” he said tonelessly. “You can ride back down around noon, as soon as it’s safe to let you go.” He wheeled the gray around, threw in his spurs, and left the camp at a high lope.

  Back down the valley slope near the
sheep, he purposely cut a wide circle, already feeling a strong distaste for even the sight of the dirty-gray, blatting animals. He picked up Buchwalter’s sign without difficulty and began following it, trying now not to think but unable to keep from doing so. For the first time he caught himself wondering if Fencerail was going too far in this move against Bishop. Would the coming of sheep to this valley in the end mean what it had meant on every other range Streak knew where sheep had been allowed to gain a foothold? Would it mean the end of cattle raising in the valley? That was a sobering and awful possibility. And when it happened, wouldn’t the name of Mathiot become a hated one? There was only one answer and Streak flinched as he realized it.

  He rode warily for better than two miles, not wanting to meet any of the east-slope men. Coming down on the vast hill meadow, Buchwalter’s sign swung right and kept to the timber. In the before dawn hours, as he rode the meadow with Kelso and the girl, Streak hadn’t quite realized the enormity of this hill graze. Now, scanning it in the full light of day, he breathed a low whistle of surprise. Seldom had he seen such good grass and never so much of it in one spot. Regardless of the drought that was threatening the lower valley, the grass here was green and high and lush. There were countless bunches of sleek fat cattle grazing the downward distance. Below, the crooked mirror of Elbow Lake reflected the brightness of the early morning sun. Far downward, blue-hazed in this beginning of another hot cloudless day, was the long north and south channel of the timbered valley. Beyond that stretched the tawny monotony of Dry Reach, table-flat to the westward horizon.

  Streak soberly admitted a real let-down at seeing this picture before him. He felt a disquieting shame at realizing that he alone might be selling out this rich cattle country to sheep. But then, because he had made his decision and intended to stick to it, he closed his mind definitely to this turn of thought and went on along Buchwalter’s sign.

  Two hours later he was well up a strange cañon far to the north and west, judging it to be several miles east of the one he and Paight had traveled the night before to reach the camp at the needle rock. Buchwalter’s sign had led him in a wide arc through the tangle of foothills in the northeast quadrant of the valley. He had distantly glimpsed Ledge, but only twice had he come within sight of a human habitation.

  The first of these was a big layout lying downward across a big fenced pasture. Later Streak was to know that this was Jensen’s place. The second, at almost the northern limit of the valley proper, was much smaller, an unpainted frame house with a log barn, one small slab shed, and an untidy corral. He was close enough to make out through the trees a legend carved in the key log of the weathered barn’s roof: M.L. PRENN, A.D. 1884.

  This cañon Streak now traveled had been wide at the mouth and had held its generous span for some three gradually climbing miles. But now, as that other cañon had last night, it was narrowing down to the bare width of a streambed. At that narrowing, Streak abruptly knew where he was, for there was but a feeble trickle of water running along the rocky bottom, and out from the main channel stood pools of water not yet seeped into the ground and the moss that coated the rocks hadn’t yet dried. This, then, was the cañon that had been blocked and down which the sheep were being driven.

  Streak had long ago lost the sign of Buchwalter’s pony over the rocky going and had stopped trying to spot it, knowing there was only one way up the cañon. He wouldn’t have noticed the tracks leading out of the drying streambed had it not been for a minor accident. As he was rolling a smoke, reins looped over left arm, the gray slipped on a moss-covered rock and threw him urgently sideways in the saddle. The motion made him lose his hold on the string of the Durham sack and he dropped it. It fell in the black mud of what had only an hour or so ago been the right bank of the stream.

  Swearing mildly, Streak swung aground to retrieve the tobacco sack, standing on the narrow grassy bank between the rocky bed of the stream and the steep talus slope that footed the precipitous left wall. As he stooped to retrieve the tobacco, he noticed the fresh imprint of a horse’s hoof in the grass. He went to his knees to study it more closely, a sudden constriction of excitement in his chest. The hoof mark was clear and was definitely not that of Buchwalter’s horse. The Fencerail animal had been newly shod, but this print showed a worn shoe and, when lined with a second track close by, was definitely splayed.

  As he straightened and dropped the gray’s reins, Streak was struck by the realization that he hadn’t once today given Ed Church a thought. So engrossed had he been in the job at hand that he had momentarily forgotten his real reason for being here. And now he had come across the sign of a splay-foot horse. Ed had ridden Snyder’s splay-foot out of Agua Verde better than two weeks ago. Yesterday morning a man on a splay-foot had made an attempt against Frank Bishop’s life. Of course there were many horses with toed-out hoofs, but mightn’t this track have been made by the horse Ed had ridden? And wasn’t it possible that yesterday’s bushwhacker had been forking the same animal?

  Streak’s glance followed the line of the tracks and he saw a break in the sheer wall behind a thicket of white oak. It was nothing but a narrow cleft, a fissure where the wall had split open narrowly, and he barely noticed it. Two paces brought him to another track. He was within a stride of the edge of the thicket now and he scanned the ground to either side of it. More tracks, another set coming from a different direction! Walking over to them, he was further puzzled to find that they had been made by Buchwalter’s pony, whose sign he now knew well. There were two sets of these last prints, coming and going out of the thicket. Buchwalter had been here and ridden away.

  Momentarily there was a strong wariness in Streak Mathiot. Then that eased; he knew that Buchwalter must have spotted the sign of the splay-foot and been curious enough about it to investigate. That fact alone, the fact of Buchwalter’s having been here ahead of him and ridden away, put down Streak’s wariness. But his curiosity was still strong and he walked back to the line of the first tracks that pointed toward the thicket. He pushed into the bushes, following it, noticing several broken branches where the horse had pushed through.

  Once clear of the thicket at its back margin, he stood only about ten feet from the rock cleft that seemed to go back into the wall to form a narrow box-end pocket. Still, the splay-foot’s sign had scarred the loose rocky soil of the talus slope that led up to the narrow slit in the wall. Now why would anyone be heading in there? Streak mused.

  Regardless of the sign of Buchwalter’s pony joining the splay-foot’s up the slope, Streak experienced a spine-tingling feeling as he climbed. It was strong enough to make him brush his low-hung holster with the flat of his hand as he stopped in front of the two-foot-wide crevice. He entered the narrow notch to find it not much wider than his shoulders. It climbed steeply for several strides, then leveled out. Three paces brought him to the point he had thought to be the end of the pocket. But there he came to a right-angle turning, and this deeper fissure seemed to be like the first, dead-ending against the sheer limestone wall a few feet ahead.

  He went along it, the sunlight suddenly shut out and the sound of his boots sending up cavernous echoes. The air here was chill and damp, a contrast to the sultry heat Streak had been riding in for the past hours. And now his wariness was keen again, despite the knowledge that Buchwalter had been here before him. He walked with his hand on the butt of the Colt, and, because of the deep echoes announcing his presence, he instinctively tried to move quietly.

  Reaching the end of this second leg of the crevice, he came to a second turning, one that swung inward again, following a line almost at right angles to the main wall. Rounding that abrupt bend, pausing there, he saw the narrowed notch stretching on for another twenty feet or so. But beyond that he could glimpse a narrow wedge of sunlit ground. He edged on until, two paces from the notch mouth, he was looking across a grassy pocket to another sheer wall that shut it in. Good hide-out, he breathed to himself as he went on, wishing he were to find Tom Buchwalter waiting for hi
m. He came to the end of the slotted passageway and stood there, trying to understand what he saw. The pocket was less than a half acre in area, lushly grassed, greenest at a spot halfway across and to the right where a spring evidently seeped from the ground. On all sides the walls rose sheerly, straight up for a hundred feet or more, as though some giant hand had dug this deep well in the solid bastion of the high cañon shoulder. But Streak’s glance took this in only briefly, settling longest on what lay to his left.

  Over there a cave mouth holed the wall. It was a little raised from the floor of the pocket. In front of it a smoldering fire sent a blue finger of smoke straight upward into the still air. Beyond the fire a grulla horse stood down-headed, hipshot, grazing. The splay-foot Ed Church had ridden out of Agua Verde had been a grulla. Streak stood a little straighter at sight of the animal, some strong instinct telling him he was on the threshold of an important discovery. Then that inexplicable wariness flooded through him again and made him take a backward step to put himself out of sight of the cave opening. He had to have time to think, to discover why Buchwalter had also seen this and ridden away. Suddenly from behind him came a furtive whisper of sound. Streak threw himself into a headlong turning lunge, lifting the heavy Colt clear of holster. A blow caught him on the back of the head, put a blinding blaze of light before his eyes. He couldn’t stiffen his knees to hold up his weight. They all at once buckled and he was falling. Before he hit the ground, unconsciousness had taken him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was a little after 11:00 when two quick-timed shots, then another single one sounded up through the timber below the pass where the east-slope ranchers were waiting.

  “That’ll be Ralph,” said Ed Jensen. Drawing his .45, he answered the signal with one like it.

  Four men had been stationed about a quarter mile above to keep a watch on the sheep band. The others, fourteen of them, were waiting with Jensen and Bishop; what they waited for they had no way of knowing, for the halting of the sheep and the lack of any fight from Buchwalter’s men still puzzled them and made them undecided what to do next. Shortly they could hear the quick hoof falls of a fast-running horse coming in on them. Then they saw the Jensen rider down through the trees. He was using spurs and rein ends to keep his lathered pony in its tired run. Both man and horse were breathing hard when they came up.