by Frank Bonham
“Where to, Papoose?”
“I don’t know. I’m going away. Take your hand off me!” She pulled away, and Jackson’s big hand dropped.
“All right, we’ll go together.” He gazed up at the mountains, then out over the desert, and his face was old and ironic. “This range … I don’t know, Papoose. They’ve ruined it, I reckon. There’s nothing much left, is there?”
“There’s nothing left,” she said. She was watching the rider working up through the folds of scrub timber and brush.
“We’ll go to Mexico,” Jackson said with warmth. “We’ve got the money Croft paid me. We’ve got those notes of yours. We can leave them for collection. And I can sell my equity in Anvil for something. With that kind of money I’ll be as big there as I ever was here.” He helped her mount.
“I don’t know where I’ll go, Dad,” she told him, “but it won’t be with you. They didn’t spoil this country. You spoiled it. You whipped the grass out of the range. You spilled blood and tricked an old preacher to save what was left of Anvil. You’ve worked hard for whatever comes to you. But whatever it is, good or bad, I don’t want to share it.”
Jackson’s face hardened. “All right, Serena. I’ve learned to do without ’most everything in my time. I can do without a daughter who never did understand what I wanted. You know,” he remarked thoughtfully, “you’d better not count on those notes being worth much, if you were figuring to finance an elopement with Cameron with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, there’s no telling what will happen now,” he replied, frowning down at the body of Mike Saddler. “I’m just superstitious enough to think a good thing for me would be to travel fast.”
“What’s that got to do with the notes?”
Jackson took a match from his hatband and examined it. “I mean that I don’t want to be bothered with people sharpshooting at me after I take off. So I’m going to give them something to do for a few days.” He struck the match with his thumbnail. As it flared up, he said: “A mortgage on timber lands wouldn’t be worth much if the timber burned, would it?”
He scanned the long sweep of mountains. Serena clenched the reins. She looked at his profile for an instant, seeing the hardness of his chin and the heavy brow line, the battering-ram determination and ruthlessness in his face.
“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?” she marveled.
“Stick around and see. They say you can’t take it with you … but I’ll bet I don’t leave much, either.”
“Horsebacker comin’,” Doyle growled.
Jackson regarded the rider working up through the brush. “Looks like that Basco cowpuncher of Saddler’s.” He glanced down at Saddler’s body. “Maybe a good idea would be to let him think Saddler’s still alive. We could cut him off and say Saddler’s holding Becket at the ranch.”
Doyle shrugged. “There’s another way to handle him, ain’t there?”
“I’m thinking we can use his gun,” Jackson replied.
Serena understood. If Wiley were coming in such a hurry, Troy might be behind him. As if he had read her thoughts, Jackson looked fully into her face as he passed.
“Papoose, you don’t think I’m fool enough to leave a trained man hunter on my back trail? Not when I can put him out of action first.”
She did not reply. But as soon as they rode away, heading on a detour around the high cleft of the canyon to meet Joe Wiley, she loped into the brush on a game trail that led toward Hay Ranch.
XXIII
Now and then, stopping to listen, Troy caught the sounds of Wiley’s horse breaking through the mesquite thickets. Once he caught a glimpse of him crossing an open space. Wiley had about a quarter mile lead. He wondered how deep Joe Wiley’s craft ran. Would he lead him to where they were holding Gil, or would he know that was what Troy wanted him to do, and take him on a long swing into the hills?
He checked his horse, hearing shots. He had grown pessimistic about Gil’s chances. Yet he had to keep pushing after Gil as if he were alive and there were a way to save him. Like a lost soldier, he thought yearningly of his companions riding high in the Defiances.
The shots were too distant to have come from Wiley’s gun. Wiley was moving on. Troy followed quickly. The foothills were ragged with mesquite and creosote brush, the ground bare at intervals, then so densely thicketed that the starved soil supported no graze at all, and a rider must shield his face with his arm as he passed.
For a quarter of an hour he worked up along the tilted hillside. All at once as he came to the crest of a knoll he saw three riders lined up on a ridge not far ahead. Between Troy and the horsemen lay matted thickets of tornillo. As though they had been waiting for him to come in view, one of the riders gave him a hat signal and his voice came far off and deep.
“Cameron! Wait there!”
He knew Jackson’s voice. And that was Wiley beside him.
“I’ve got Becket!” Jim Jackson shouted. “Do you want to trade for him?”
“Where is he?” Troy called back.
“Will you trade?”
Either Gil was dead or he had escaped. For Jackson could not afford to trade him off. He was the one thing Jackson could not trade, because Gil Becket belonged to Red Roth.
“If you can show him to me,” he agreed, “I’ll make a trade.”
Jackson spoke to the men with him and they reined away into the thickets. Jackson stayed on the ridge. “I’ll show him to you in five minutes. He’ll be right here beside me.”
Troy remained there on the knoll in the mesquite. What’s his game? he asked himself. He won’t trade, so what’s to gain by pretending he will? Was Jackson trying to slow him down while they hauled
Gil off somewhere?
He waited, keeping his eye on Jackson. Then his pony quivered and turned its head. Birds and rodents were making small sounds in the brush, but the horse had spooked at something else. At last he heard it. A horse was moving up from the left, down the hill. In a short time he heard the other horse above him. Then he realized that Jackson was holding his attention while Wiley and the second rider closed in.
Troy set the butt of his rifle against his shoulder and waited. But the rider below him was coming too rapidly for a cautious man like Wiley. Through a break in the thicket he saw a flash of black horsehide and a sparkle of harness trim. He set himself. A moment later the horse broke into the open. He went slack with relief. It was Serena.
Seeing him, she rode hurriedly to his side. Her black hair was shining and loose, and in the early dusk her face was pale. “Troy, it’s an ambush!” she cried.
“I’d about decided that,” Troy said. “How many men does he have with him?”
“Just Doyle and Joe Wiley. Roth has quit him.”
He listened to the brush. Wiley was not the only one moving in. Another rider was working up on almost the line Serena had followed.
“Quit him?” Troy said. “Why? He’s got Gil, hasn’t he?”
She shook her head. “No one has Gil, now.”
Across the mesquite he gazed at Jackson. Now at last he knew the man he had been fighting. If I’d known him before, he thought, if I’d known there’s no line he draws, we could have had our showdown early. But Gil was gone. A logger had been killed. Jackson had pulled them into a losing war because they gave him credit for ethics.
“Who killed him?” he asked.
“Dad and the others. I found his body near our road. Then I came on and found them finishing Mike Saddler. But Roth quit because he realized Saddler was being murdered for business reasons.”
The rider up the hill was behind them now. He was coming quietly and steadily. In his mind Troy could see Joe Wiley’s oaken features peering through the brush. He and Jackson and Doyle had him in the shrinking center of a triangle.
Serena was explaining the deal Croft and Saddler had forced
on her father. “But now you’re the only one left that he’s afraid of. He’s getting out, but he knows you’d lead the hunt for him, where the others would probably lose heart.”
Listening to the riders drawing closer, he had the picture in his mind. It was too late now to break out without a fight. And now he had Serena to worry about, too. “The safest place for you,” he said quickly, “is right here. If you’re moving, they might fire at you by accident. Wiley’s back of us now, and Doyle’s down the slope.”
“Troy, I won’t leave you. We’ll go together.”
Wiley was closing in, stopping every few yards to study, then moving on again. “If you’re with me,” Troy said, “you’ll be hurt. Stay here and they won’t bother you.”
He touched the horse with his spurs, but she clutched his arm, moving with him. “Troy, I’m not Big Jim’s girl any more. Don’t you know that? I’m just Serena. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
He looked at her plainly. She would always be Big Jim’s girl, although she might not know it. She would always trade for the quick escape, even when a man’s life was the commodity.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It used to mean everything. But whatever we had, it went with Gil.”
Her face changed. She could still be haughty. “No, it went with his sister,” she said. “She’s waiting for you, isn’t she?”
“If I get back.”
“Even though I’m the one who took the risk to help you. Troy, are you blind? Do you think a man with your ambition can ever be happy with a little seamstress?”
He smiled. How little she ever knew me, he thought. If she believed the distinction of having Big Jim’s daughter on his arm had been part of his love for her, she had never known him at all. He said quietly: “A seamstress should be just right for me. The only real ambition I have is to stay out of fights for the rest of my life.”
He moved her hand from his arm and spurred ahead. This time she did not follow. The brush came between them. He heard Doyle’s and Wiley’s horses break into a run.
Doyle was ahead of him on the left, his horse lunging up the slope to intercept him as he rode toward Jim Jackson. He saw Jackson leave the ridge and rowel his horse over to Troy’s right. That closed the ring. The only strategy worth anything was strategy of the club: to go in fighting.
He chose Doyle. Doyle had been in the saddle all day on a bad leg and should be the weakest link. Clouds of gnats swarmed through the oppressively fragrant brush. About fifty yards away, Doyle slowed down. Troy slipped from the saddle. He moved along an aisle in the brush until he was fifty feet from his pony. There he stopped.
Again Doyle was in motion. He would move on, check his horse, and again advance. Troy brought the rifle up. The footfalls of the gunman’s horse were very close. Then he saw Doyle come through a thicket. Without warning, Doyle’s gun blasted. Troy’s pony reared, terrified. Doyle fired again and charged in at the horse half seen by him. The horse swerved and went buck jumping into the brush. Doyle dropped his Colt and pulled his saddle gun. He looked taut and sick as he searched for Troy. Blond stubble spiked his jaws, thorns had scratched his face, and his trouser leg was black with drying blood. He looked crazy with anger, but the slitted gunfighter’s eyes saw Troy’s empty saddle and he swiveled abruptly. Across the reddish ground they stared at each other, and in the action of turning Doyle slapped his cheek against the stock of the carbine and pulled the trigger.
He was fast as a cat, but this was gambler’s speed, the speed of a man desperately trying to catch up. The shot split a branch beside Troy’s head. The sound of it was shattering. Doyle whipped the loading piece down, slammed it back, and fired again. Between them the smoke thickened. Troy fired, feeling cool and sure, and then he watched. Doyle dropped his gun. His pony began pitching, and he fell. He raised his head and saw Troy, and, swearing, he crawled after his gun. Troy put the second shot at the base of his neck. Tom Doyle’s body eased down on the earth as the stiffness and restless urging went out of him.
Then Troy heard them coming—Wiley from the rear, Jackson driving in hard from the right. He paused to reload and started after his pony. He whistled, but could not hear it. Cutting right, he tried to spot Doyle’s horse. It was gone. He turned, hearing Jim Jackson’s big horse traveling up the slope. Then he heard Jackson shout in a voice like a shotgun: “Wiley! He’s afoot! Yonder’s his horse. This way!”
Wiley called something back. He sounded very close. Desperately Troy cast about for cover. The mesquite trees, shade starved and spindly, were the only shelter in sight. Troy stood behind one. Jackson and the cowboy were trying to time it to strike him at once. They were coming fast, sure of their man. Troy knelt by the tree. He held his saddle gun.
Then a woman screamed. The sound was short and clear and delivered the way only a woman could do it—with an edge that sliced your nerves like a fleshing knife. It stopped Jackson, up on the slope. It stopped Wiley. Wiley said something. Then a small-bore rifle cracked, and Wiley cried out. In the brush it was utterly silent. Jackson halted. Troy stared toward the thicket where he had left Serena. Then he understood. With that foolish little .25-caliber buggy rifle of hers, Serena had stopped Wiley! As Jackson came in view, he turned to make a smaller target. Jackson had lost his hat, and branches had ripped his face, but he looked enormous in the saddle. Huge and dangerous, like a grizzly flushed by a cowboy who was after a steer. He came with the menacing force of rage and physical power, a man who had just been beaten at something for the first time in his life. Troy waited for his first angry, wild shot, but finally realized Jackson was playing the same game—holding the single shot that would settle everything.
With a snap, the rancher checked his horse. He took aim. Troy fired, but in the same moment he felt the concussion of Jackson’s gun. Smoke roiled between them. Troy leaned back against the mesquite as he cocked the rifle. He did not think he had hit Jackson. Jackson was still in the saddle. He was levering another bullet into the breech, grinning the way he had grinned that day they had fought in the street. He tilted his head to aim, taking it easy, doing it right.
Troy’s shot went off. He rocked with the recoil.
Jackson’s body convulsed. He reeled, clutching at the saddle horn. He let his saddle gun fall. Blood streaked his face. His face darkened with effort, and then he drew his Colt, spurring the horse on. But he rode like a drunken man. The horse bucked twice and buried its head, and Jackson went over the swell. His head and shoulder took the shock as he landed. He rolled and sprawled on his back. The Colt was still in his hand. He lay about fifteen feet from Troy, his eyes open, his jaw loose.
It was silent in the thickets. Troy thought of Serena. He called to her, and after a moment she called back. “All right?” he shouted.
“Yes! Are you hurt, Troy?”
“No, but I’ve got a long walk ahead of me! I’ve lost my horse!”
“I’ll bring Wiley’s!” Serena called back.
He walked up the slope until he met her in a clearing, leading a horse. She was white and dry eyed. He took the reins. When he moved to place his saddle gun in Wiley’s empty sheath, he saw the blood on the saddle.
“Wiley didn’t think I counted,” she said stiffly. “So he rode right past me. I … I did what I had to.”
Troy swung up. He did not want to look at her. There was a debt he could not pay, and there were no gentle words left to explain it.
“I’ll ride to the ranch with you,” he told her. “You’ll be all right there.”
After they had ridden a short distance she said: “You don’t need to ride with me. I’m all right. I showed that, didn’t I?”
“I could say thanks,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be a start.”
“Apparently,” she said, “it will have to do.” She checked her horse and looked at him with a queer intensity. “Tell your friends not to worry about their notes. They can pay as they�
�re able.”
“That’s fine of you,” he said. “But what will you do about the ranch?”
“Perhaps I can save something. I have some time to sell it. I might go to Mexico. Money goes a long way there. I could buy a ranch as big as Anvil.”
Her face brightened as she saw herself in the new role that was merely the old one rewritten. Not as Big Jim’s girl, but as la patrona, the boss lady. Quickly, then, she rode away.
Troy turned his horse to return to Hay Ranch.
The sun was setting, its wine and gold flowing down from the crest of the Defiances. It was good to ride alone in the coolness and peace, riding from something ugly to something beautiful. He thought of all the things he wanted to do. But the thing he wanted most was to get back to Fran, and presently he slackened the reins and let the horse rock into a long, reaching lope.
THE END
About the Author
Frank Bonham, in a career that spanned five decades, achieved excellence as a noted author of young adult fiction and detective and mystery fiction, as well as making significant contributions to Western fiction. By 1941 his fiction was already headlining Street and Smith’s Western Story, and by the end of the decade his Western novels were being serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. His first Western, Lost Stage Valley (1948), was purchased as the basis for the motion picture, Stage to Tucson (Columbia, 1951) with Rod Cameron as Grif Holbrook and Sally Eilers as Annie Benson. “I have tried to avoid,” Bonham once confessed, “the conventional cowboy story, but I think it was probably a mistake. That is like trying to avoid crime in writing a mystery book. I just happened to be more interested in stagecoaching, mining, railroading …” Yet, notwithstanding, it is precisely the interesting—and by comparison with the majority of Western novels—exotic backgrounds of Bonham’s novels that give them an added dimension. He was highly knowledgeable in the technical aspects of transportation and communication in the 19th-Century American West. In introducing these backgrounds into his narratives, especially when combined with his firm grasp of idiomatic Spanish spoken by many of his Mexican characters, his stories and novels are elevated to a higher plane in which the historical sense of the period is always very much in the forefront. This historical aspect of his Western fiction early drew accolades from reviewers so that on one occasion the Long Beach Press Telegram predicted that “when the time comes to find an author who can best fill the gap in Western fiction left by Ernest Haycox, it may be that Frank Bonham will serve well.” Among his best Western novels are Snaketrack (1952), Night Raid (1954), The Feud at Spanish Ford (1954), and Last Stage West (1959).
