by Frank Bonham
Serena made a small sound and turned to her father. “Dad, will you drive on?”
Puzzled, Saddler frowned at her. His eyes followed the gentle curve of her bosom. Her features were neat and perfect, with a tiny scar above one eyebrow. She was beautiful, and he thought of crushing her shoulders in his hands.
“I reckon we owe Mister Saddler the courtesy of listening to him, missy,” Jackson said severely. From under thick auburn brows he glanced at the other man. “As a guess, what would you say is going to happen?”
Saddler put one boot against the hub of the wheel. In his mind he selected his words meticulously. It was hard to say, Hurt them, don’t hurt me, without sounding too blunt. “Maybe nothing will happen,” he suggested, “if I go to work on it.”
“How’s that?”
“I mean, if I sell them on the idea of going slow.” Saddler grinned. “Most of the boys are good pack horse stock. They lead fine. If I back out on fighting you … say I want to get legal advice first, something like that … they’ll all back down. By the time they decide to go to war, the war will be over. You’ll have your papers in shape. The law will be on your side.”
“That figures,” Jackson said thoughtfully. “But what about Cameron? I thought he was the boss man.”
Saddler shrugged. “Colonel Edwards sends him to town to make peace, and he comes back lookin’ like hell wouldn’t have him. I don’t reckon Cameron will be much of a problem,” he finished.
He watched Jackson lift the buggy whip and frowningly pop it at a tuft of grass. He was big. My God, he was big! Wonder he hadn’t killed Cameron. His fists were like walnut burls, and that chin of his was an anvil. But he wasn’t big in cow savvy, and he was a fool about money. As Saddler thought of his deal with Woodbury to manage Anvil after Jackson went under, something like woman hunger tingled in him, obsessive and exciting. To manage all that land—to have first crack at it someday!
“You know what I don’t figure?” Jackson said abruptly. “What you get out of this.”
Saddler stared boldly into his face. “You can clear my land … cancel my note.” He shot a look at Serena, whose expression of suspicion was giving away to disdain. “Maybe it sounds rough,” he conceded. “But half the men up there are going to fail anyway. That’s the history of this kind of land. What’s the difference who picks up the pieces when they drop?”
Suddenly Serena rose. “I think this is the most hideous thing I ever heard! Father, aren’t you ever going to stop him?”
Saddler’s body cramped with shock. Jackson jumped down and walked toward him, the whip doubled back over his shoulder. Then at last he knew that the rancher had been playing with him. Woodbury had spilled it! Saddler’s hand dropped to his revolver. His anger took shape, like steel.
Jackson grinned like a wolf. “I just wanted to know who thought of putting you on Anvil. You or all of them. So’s I’d know how many to horsewhip. Aren’t you even going to leave me five acres along the river to raise chilies?”
“Five acres?” Saddler mocked, his dark, muscular face scornful. “You’ll finish with nothing. Big Jim! There’s nothing big about you but the mistakes you’ve made. Read the writing,” he scoffed. “Without our trees, you can’t pay the bank. And you won’t cut a tree while any of us can pull a trigger.”
“Won’t I?” Jackson retorted. “Be at Pine Meadow after Roth moves up and you’ll see me skin your ranch out like a jack rabbit. So you were going to slow me down, were you, until the bank was ready to take over Anvil? I’ll show you how I slow down the likes of you!”
In a quick rush he moved in to slash at Saddler’s wrist. Saddler yanked his Colt, but the stiff plaits of leather snatched his arm and Jackson yanked him off balance. The Colt roared—a blast of sound that deafened and stunned. The horse reared, and Serena had to snatch at the lines. Saddler yanked back, but Jackson twisted the gun away. Saddler hauled his arm free and threw an overhand punch into the rancher’s face. It struck heavily, and Jackson stumbled. Recovering, he sent the whip hissing forward again. The plaits whipped Saddler’s Stetson off and flayed his neck. He stepped back but collided with an adobe gatepost.
Jackson began to slash at him, the leather tearing Saddler’s jacket, burning like an iron across his ear. Saddler ducked his head and waded in, caught the whip and crashed against Jim Jackson. He locked his arms to his sides and drove him back against the buggy. They fell to the ground and Saddler searched frantically for his gun. They rolled under the buggy, and, as the horse began to rear, they separated and crawled from under the wheels. Saddler scrambled up with Jackson still on his knees. He was afraid now, having felt Jackson’s strength and knowing he could not match it. He gazed about for a weapon of some kind. Then he saw Big Jim Jackson rising from the ground with a stone as big as an anvil in his hands. Jackson came toward him, raising the stone to chest height.
Saddler’s mouth twisted. “Don’t,” he gasped. He began backing but came up against the gatepost. Jackson kept coming. In the buggy, Serena turned her face away. Abruptly the rancher tossed the rock at Saddler. He arched it across the few feet separating them, but for some reason he did not hurl it with force. He was merely tossing it to the settler. The stone dropped toward Saddler’s belly, and he hunched as he braced himself to catch it. When he caught it, it bore him to his knees.
Jackson lunged in swiftly, smashing at the rancher’s head as he dropped the stone, his right fist thundering against Saddler’s ear, his left crashing against his jaw. Finally there was a hard, clean blow to his chin. Everything in Mike Saddler’s vision had a glistening soap bubble shimmer for an instant. Then the brightness burst, and Saddler felt himself drowning in blackness.
* * * * *
When Saddler came to his senses, the Jacksons had gone and it was almost dark. He lay face down between the gateposts. Saddler painfully sat up and a strong breeze blew on his face and began to restore him. At first it was all pain and dullness. But then his mind started putting it together, and he struggled to his feet and rolled a cigarette and knew before he had lighted it the impossible situation he was in.
If Cameron still worked out the compromise he had been talking about when Saddler left town, Mike Saddler was on his own. Jackson was going to clean him out. Irrespective of any deal with the others, he would clean him out to square for Saddler’s arrangement with the bank.
Standing there in the mesquite, the night wind off the desert stirring his long coarse hair, he felt desperately alone. How could one man buck Jim Jackson, Red Roth, and that poisonous little gunslinger, Tom Doyle? Saddler drew on the cigarette grimly, going through his cards like a poker player. He had thought himself finished with the Defiance Mountains crowd—those small, bungling ranchers. But now he realized he had to have them. They were the only allies left to him.
With cold alarm, he knew that, if the others compromised with Jackson, he himself would be left out. That could not happen. Cameron with his compromise talk had to be stopped cold.
In the clotting shadows of the brush, Saddler found his bridle, bitted up his pony, and started up the wagon road into the Defiances. He was weary and shaken, but his desperation was beginning to scale away. With bitter logic he considered what had to be done. Cameron and the rest must be put into a frame of mind where they would stop talking compromise. At the same time, Jackson’s will to break them had to be made even stronger.
When he had ridden a couple of miles, he decided how it could be done. But he could not manage it alone. He would need help. All right, he had two cowpunchers. Let them start earning their pay.
As it grew dark, Saddler let the horse push along without reining. The road crested before dropping into Pine Meadow. Saddler looked down on the long, winding valley toward his ranch, tasting the cold wind. Below him and at the north end of the valley he saw the light—a lonely spark lying in blackness. Saddler’s two cowpunchers were at the cabin, keeping things going while S
addler followed the mountain roundup.
The cabin lay at the edge of the timber. In pole corrals some horses whickered and Saddler’s horse trembled and trumpeted back. Saddler smelled the rotting carcass of a calf. That damned Wiley, he thought. Wiley was his half-Basque cowpuncher. Basques never felt comfortable without some meat rotting near them. Inside the cabin the lamp went out suddenly and something was laid on a windowsill.
“That’s far enough!” a voice called.
“It’s me,” Saddler retorted. “If it was anybody else, you’d have your heads shot off by now. Git out here and fork up some hay for this horse.”
The rusty shade of a storm lantern grated up and the Basque came out and turned the beam on Saddler. “What the hell happen?” he asked, staring at the rancher’s cut face.
Saddler grimaced. “Jackson and Doyle bushwhacked me. Where’s Bill?”
“Inside. What the hell they bushwhack you for?”
“Feed the horse and get inside,” Saddler ordered.
Bill Thorne was pulling on old stovepipe boots as Saddler tramped inside the cabin. He gave Saddler a nervous grin of greeting. Thorne was a wiry man of about thirty with a wizened, ugly face; he looked very cagey, but he wasn’t. He had ambition but no ability; he thought he had much in common with Mike Saddler because he had foolish dreams of being a rancher. Thorne missed the difference between dreams and plans.
Saddler threw his hat on a cot. Standing hands on hips, he glared about the main room of the three-room cabin.
“This layout,” he said disgustedly, “looks like a sheepherder’s convention had just broken up.”
Thorne grinned. “Yeah, well, we were going to swamp out tomorrow, Mike.”
Saddler gave him a crooked smile. “Bill, you ought to make out a list of things you’re going to do tomorrow. Gonna make you a pretty full day, you know.”
“Getcha some coffee,” said Thorne, hastening, in long underwear and boots, to the sheet-iron stove where a blue enamel coffee pot thumped.
Saddler lay back on the cot, frowning. Thorne brought the coffee. “Did you say you had a run-in with somebody?” he asked, regarding Saddler’s cuts.
Saddler repeated what he had said to Joe Wiley. “It’s comin’, Bill. There’s no gettin’ away from it. Jackson’s turning his guns on us.”
Wiley came in, set the lantern beside the door, and stood looking at Saddler, a tall man with a warped shoulder, slender and dark as a cheroot. His was the mind Saddler had not entirely plumbed, but he thought he knew enough about the Basque to risk saying what he had to. Wiley was a capable cowboy, long-lasting in the saddle, willing to take a chance. He had a short neck, flattened features, and skin the color of a penny.
“What’s comin’?” he asked.
“The big scrap,” Saddler said. “Jackson and Doyle could have killed me, instead of drug me off my horse and whipped me. This was just a warning. I was supposed to run right to Cameron and the others and tell them it was time to clear out.”
“Going to do it?” Thorne asked.
“What’s the use? I can fumble around alone as well as with them. There ain’t a man among them knows how to fight.”
The Basque cocked one eyebrow. “Cameron,” he said.
“All right, but he can’t carry them all on his back. No.” Saddler ruminated, shifting on the cot. “I’m going to give them something to fight about. Both sides … Jim Jackson as well as those hayseed compadres of mine.”
Thorne brought a tin cup of coffee and set it on the floor. He put one foot up on a stool and peered at the rancher. There was silence. Saddler met his eyes boldly, then looked at Wiley again and waited for one of them to ask it. But no one spoke.
“Can you keep your mouths shut?” Saddler asked.
Bill Thorne hunched forward on the stool. He liked secrets. Tell him you had a secret reason for it and he would pack a cow ten miles on his back.
“I’ve got a deal on with Ira Woodbury,” Saddler said. “Woodbury figures Jackson will go under. He’s picked me to ramrod Anvil for the bank after he forecloses.”
“Fact?” Thorne whispered, his dark monkey’s face eager.
“Looks like my cue to make sure Jackson goes under, don’t it?” Saddler chuckled.
“Yeah,” Thorne whispered.
Saddler glanced from him to Joe Wiley. The Basque was listening, half smiling. Saddler sipped some of the acrid coffee. “You men want to be knot-head cow prods all your life?” he asked. “Or do you want a shot at owning your own irons some day?”
“All my life …,” Thorne began huskily.
But Saddler interrupted: “Joe, you ain’t talking much.”
“Listenin’, though.” Wiley smiled.
“Likin’ what you hear?” Saddler asked.
“Int’restin’.”
“OK. If you come with me, I’ll let both you boys keep your own brands when I take over Anvil. You can take out part of your pay in calves and just pay the bank for the graze you use. I’ve got an option to buy the ranch someday, if it all works out. Savvy? Stick with me and one of these days we’ll all be carrying bankbooks.”
“That sounds like blood money,” Wiley commented.
Saddler shook his head. “Well, we may have to half kill a couple of people, like Jackson did me. I want Jackson to be mad enough to eat those settlers whole. And I want the settlers sore enough to take pot shots at Jackson and Red Roth. Me? I’ll sort of string along with the settlers, until it begins to get smoky.”
“Us?” Wiley asked.
“Well, suppose I want you to help me burn some cabins.” Saddler grinned. “Ain’t afraid of fire, are you?”
“Love it,” Thorne said. “Saints, Mike, you mean that after they dust each other off an’ the bank forecloses Jackson …?”
“I mean you’ve got a job at twice the pay you’re drawing now,” Saddler snapped. “You get to keep a brand. Thing is, I ain’t asking you to do anything I won’t be right there doing myself.”
Wiley’s dark face still kept its own counsel. Suddenly Saddler was irritated.
“Get out, then, if you don’t like the deal,” he told the Basque harshly. “Joe and me can handle it.”
“I was just thinkin’, Mike,” Wiley said. “This cabin burning sounds risky.”
“At night? With the owners gone and too poor to leave anybody on the place?” Saddler rose, ambition and a vicious desire for retaliation tormenting him. “Easy as strikin’ a match. But the devil of it is there’s so little time. Red Roth’s moving in tomorrow. We can’t let those logs start going out. Once Jackson’s makin’ money, hell won’t have us.”
Wiley’s slow, sour smile broke his lips. “Then we better not let him make no money, Mike. We better dig a little pit for the hound and the badger to fight in, eh?”
Saddler slacked onto the cot, relieved. Wiley was intelligent and tough; best of all, he was not weighted down with scruples. Saddler raised a boot and thrust it at Thorne. Thorne took hold of it and helped tug it off.
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
“Tomorrow night,” the rancher said. “Tomorrow I’m going to be busy. Cameron’s packin’ Becket’s sister in to Becket’s place. Somebody ought to be around to welcome them. Nothing like a scared female to start settlers moving out.”
VIII
“You shouldn’t have horsewhipped him,” Serena told her father again.
A fire burned on the hearth in the low-ceilinged room. They sat at the heavy, fumed-oak dining table. Beyond small windows set in adobe walls three feet deep the night was cold and moonless. Jim Jackson ate steadily, knife in one hand, fork in the other.
“No,” he agreed, “I should have shot him.”
Serena sat with both hands about her coffee cup, a light shawl thrown over her shoulders. She had been cold all evening. Her father was packed and ready to travel. He was goi
ng to Pine Meadow to be there when Red Roth’s wagons started coming in tomorrow. The loggers had left Frontera that afternoon.
“When will Roth start cutting trees?” she asked her father.
“Directly.”
“Is there any reason,” she asked, “why it must be so soon?”
Jackson wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin. He gave her a dry glance. “Yes. Because I can’t sell them until I log them out.”
He went to his room and returned with his Stetson on the back of his head and a heavy-caliber rifle in his hand. He laid an envelope before her.
“What is this?” Serena asked.
Jackson opened a compartment in the big cabinet against one wall and found inkwell and pen. “Power of attorney,” he said gruffly. “I might as well have it when I go up. Just to be sure.”
“Oh … on the store,” Serena said. And a tiny bell tinkled in her mind. “In other words, since the mortgages are in my name, you need permission to act on my behalf.”
“You’re quick, Papoose,” Jackson commented.
He locked the loading lever of the rifle down, ran his little finger into the chamber, closed it, and filled the loading tube.
“You know,” the girl said briskly, “I believe I’ll go up tomorrow myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jackson snapped.
“I’ve camped before. I’m a good camper.”
“You know what I mean. There may be—”
Brushed by the lamplight, Serena’s face showed color. Her eyes, under the slightly quirked brows, were lively. “Dad, there doesn’t have to be trouble if everyone gives a little. No one wants to fight.”
Jackson supported the rifle on his palm. “Papoose, did I waste my money educating you? I know to the nickel what that timber will bring. We’ll have no triflin’s money left after we buy the range and stock it.”
“I don’t believe it,” Serena pouted. “I think we could get by on much less.”
