Rimfire

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hold it, Mr. Fairfield,” Ace said quickly. “Don’t crowd them.”

  “Yeah,” put in Dave Wingate. “You don’t want to give that snake Mitchell any excuse to slap leather.”

  Fairfield stopped where he was and sat there on his horse looking confused and angry. He turned to frown at the others and ask, “What are we going to do, then?”

  “Lemme have a talk with ’em.” Carefully, Wingate drew his revolver and handed it to Rufe. “Hang on to that hogleg, boy.” He pulled his rifle from its sheath and passed it over to Ace. “I’ll leave this with you.”

  Then Wingate urged his horse forward and held up his empty hands. “I ain’t armed!” he called to the men at the other end of the bridge. “Just want to palaver with you, McPhee.”

  Clade Mitchell said something in a low voice to McPhee. Ace couldn’t make out the words, but he knew they probably weren’t anything good.

  Wingate walked his horse to the center of the bridge and stopped. “How about meetin’ me halfway, McPhee?”

  The cattleman didn’t respond immediately, but after glaring at Wingate for a moment, he started ahead. His men watched tensely.

  Ace could tell that they were keyed up and ready to fight. It wouldn’t take much to start the ball.

  McPhee jerked his horse to a stop facing Wingate and demanded, “Didn’t you damn sodbusters hear me? You’re not wanted here in Rimfire.” His angry voice was loud enough that Ace and the others had no trouble understanding him. They could make out Wingate’s answer, too.

  “Now hold on there, mister,” the scout said. “I’m no homesteader. My nephew and I just signed on to guide these pilgrims here.” Wingate nodded toward Clade Mitchell, who had remained at the other end of the bridge. “The same as did that no-account, double-crossin’ varmint yonder, name of Mitchell.”

  “Don’t listen to that old fool, Mr. McPhee,” Mitchell called. “He’s soft in the head.”

  Wingate ignored that and went on. “You ain’t doin’ yourself any credit by associatin’ with an outlaw like him. He and his gang attacked that wagon train twice in the past twenty-four hours. They killed three of our folks and wounded a good deal more.”

  “That’s a damned lie!” Mitchell yelled.

  McPhee lifted a hand and motioned imperiously for Mitchell to be quiet. He said to Wingate, “Whatever trouble there is between Mitchell and your bunch, it’s none of my business. He came to warn me that a wagon train full of homesteaders was on the way to Rimfire. All I care about is keeping a bunch of dirt-grubbing farmers off my range!”

  From the north end of the bridge, Edward Fairfield called, “It’s not your range, sir. It’s government land, designated for homesteading.”

  “It’s open range!” McPhee shouted back at him. “Open range meant for grazing, and by God, it’s going to stay that way! If you think I’ll allow you to tear it up with your plows and fence it off from my stock, you’re mad!”

  Wingate rubbed the silvery stubble on his chin. “I’ve seen the papers these folks have. The government done give ’em the right to claim land in a parcel south o’ Rimfire, betwixt here and the Little Belts, and homestead it. You may not like it, Mr. McPhee, but those are legal documents and the law says that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

  “Don’t throw the law in my face,” snapped McPhee. “Where was the law when savages tried to wipe me out? Where was the law when rustlers nearly stole me blind? Where was the law when the temperature was forty below, the wind was so hard the snow was falling sideways, and my cows were freezing to death? I’ll tell you where—nowhere!” McPhee clenched a fist and thumped it against his chest. “I fought off all those things! No government, no law, no fancy papers! Just one man with blood and guts and sweat!”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. McPhee, and I admire you for what you done. I purely do. But that don’t change a thing here. These folks got a right to come into town, and they got a right to homestead that land.”

  “All those guns behind me say they don’t,” replied McPhee.

  It was shaping up to be pretty bad, thought Ace. The immigrants were tough and had plenty of backbone—they had proven that by the way they had fought off Mitchell’s gang not once but twice—and they outnumbered McPhee’s crew, but the cattle baron’s gun-wolves were hardened killers. If it came down to a full-fledged battle between the two sides, McPhee’s men might well wipe out all the men from the wagon train. Maybe a United States marshal might come in someday and hold McPhee responsible for what he’d done . . . but those pilgrims would still be dead, one way or the other.

  “Mr. Fairfield,” Ace said quietly, “maybe you’d better hold off here.”

  “You mean not cross the bridge? You’re telling me we should back down?”

  “It sticks in my craw, too,” admitted Ace, “but the way it shapes up, you’re about to get a bunch of your people killed.”

  “My God, it’s an injustice!”

  “Yes, sir, it is,” said Chance, “but Ace is right. McPhee’s got you outgunned.”

  Clearly, Fairfield was torn between outrage and caution. After a moment, caution won—but just barely. “Dave, come on back. We’re not going to get anywhere arguing.”

  Wingate looked around, obviously reluctant to follow Fairfield’s order. He sat silently on his horse for a moment, as conflicted as Fairfield had been, then sighed and turned his mount.

  “That’s right,” McPhee sneered. “Turn and run.”

  Wingate stiffened.

  Ace saw the reaction and eased his hand closer to his Colt. He halfway expected Wingate to go after McPhee, even though he was unarmed.

  Then Wingate said, “There’ll be another day.”

  “Aye, that there will. And this town and this valley will still belong to me on that day, too.”

  Slowly, Wingate walked his horse back toward the north end of the bridge. McPhee stayed where he was, alone in the center of the span, sitting straight and haughty in the saddle.

  Fairfield’s shoulders slumped in despair as Wingate reached the group. “What do we do now, turn around?”

  “Nope.” Wingate took his gun from Rufe and pouched the iron, then reclaimed his rifle from Chance. “Circle the wagons and make camp here on this side of the creek.”

  “What good will that do? That reprobate’s not going to let us go through the town to get to our land.”

  “Ain’t no rule says you have to go through the settlement,” Wingate pointed out.

  “You mean . . . we should go around?”

  “I reckon the important thing is where you’re goin’, not how you get there.”

  “But Uncle Dave,” said Rufe, “I ain’t sure we can get these wagons across that crick without usin’ the bridge. The banks are too steep for that.”

  “Right here they are. But we’re scouts, ain’t we, boy? We’ll find another place where the wagons can ford that stream. Then, if we pull out in the middle of the night and be quiet-like about it, we might be able to get these folks to that stretch of range ’fore McPhee knows about it.”

  That seemed like a risky plan to Ace, but he knew it stood a chance of success. However, even if Wingate was able to pull that off, it wouldn’t mean that the trouble was over. “McPhee will still try to run you off of what he considers his range.”

  “He’ll have a harder time of it once folks are dug in,” Wingate countered.

  Fairfield took off his hat, raked his fingers through his thick white hair, and scowled. “I don’t like this. I don’t like anything about it. But I won’t just abandon all of our plans. I won’t turn tail and run. We’ll make camp here, at least until we’ve considered all our options.”

  Ace looked across the bridge. McPhee had ridden back to join his men. Most of them headed south along the settlement’s main street, although three riders remained behind, probably to keep an eye on the bridge and probably at McPhee’s order. They would alert the others if the immigrants tried to take the wagons across.

  Fairfield and the
Wingates started toward the wagons to spread the word that they were making camp. Ace and Chance stayed where they were at the head of the bridge.

  “What do you think?” asked Chance. “We threw in with these folks, but we’re not actually part of their bunch. Do we stick with them?”

  “We came to find Ling and Haggarty and that money they stole from us.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. And maybe, if we can get into town, there might be something we could do to help those pilgrims after all.”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” Ace admitted.

  Rufe Wingate paused and turned in his saddle to call to the Jensen brothers, “Are you boys comin’ with us?”

  “You go ahead,” Ace told him. “Maybe we’ll see you later.” He heeled the chestnut out onto the bridge and Chance followed suit on his gelding.

  The three guards had dismounted. With rifles in hand, they stepped up onto the bridge.

  One of them called, “Stop right there, you two!”

  Ace kept his horse moving but raised his hands slightly. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

  “Mr. McPhee said not to let any of you sodbusters set foot on this side of the creek.”

  “Do we look like sodbusters to you?” Chance inclined his head toward the wagon train. “We rode with those folks for less than a day. Never laid eyes on any of them before yesterday afternoon. My brother and I just happened to be riding in the same direction they were headed. We’ve got business of our own in Rimfire.”

  “Yeah?” challenged the gunman as the Jensen brothers reined to a halt near the southern end of the bridge. “What business is that?”

  “Poker,” Chance said with a smile. “I can see several saloons from here. You think I can find a good game in one of them, and maybe a few pretty girls?”

  McPhee’s men relaxed slightly.

  The spokesman said, “I got to admit, you two don’t look like farmers. You’re gonna have to wait right here, though, until I’ve checked with Mr. McPhee.” He jerked his head at one of the other men, who mounted up and galloped along the street, even though he didn’t have very far to go. The man reined in, swung down in front of a saloon called The Branding Iron, and disappeared through the batwings.

  Ace and Chance waited as several minutes ticked by. On the north side of the creek, the immigrants had begun pulling the wagons into a rough circle, as they had the previous night.

  One of the guards said in a surprised voice, “Them sodbusters ain’t leavin’.”

  “McPhee didn’t tell them they had to,” said the man who’d been doing the talking earlier. “He just said they couldn’t cross the creek. They’re probably gonna sit over there and stew for a while until they realize there’s nothin’ they can do except go back where they came from.”

  Ace hoped that all of McPhee’s men felt that way and would continue to do so. That would make it easier for Dave Wingate’s plan to succeed, provided that Wingate and Rufe could find a place for the wagon train to cross the stream.

  The man who had ridden down to The Branding Iron emerged from the saloon, mounted up again, and returned to the bridge. “The boss said it was all right for these two to come into town.”

  “Good,” said Chance. “I could use a drink, too.”

  “In fact,” the hardcase went on, “Mr. McPhee said he wants to talk to you fellas. I’m supposed to take you to him right now.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ace. “We don’t have anything to say to McPhee.”

  The man put his hand on the butt of his gun. “That don’t matter. He’s the one who has words for you.”

  Ace and Chance looked at each other.

  Chance said, “What the hell does McPhee want with us?”

  “One way to find out,” Ace replied with a shrug.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Jensen brothers rode along the street toward the saloon with McPhee’s gunman following them. Rimfire looked like a fairly decent little town with a number of businesses in addition to the saloons—a couple general mercantile stores, a hotel, two cafés, a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, a saddle maker’s, a doctor’s office, and even a newspaper, the Rimfire Herald. If what Ace and Chance had heard was true, Angus McPhee either owned or held a note on most, if not all, of those establishments.

  They reined to a halt in front of The Branding Iron and swung down from their saddles.

  Chance looked at their escort and asked dryly, “Will our horses be all right here?”

  The man flushed angrily. “We ain’t horse thieves, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. Nobody’ll bother your horses.”

  Ace looped his reins around the hitch rail and nodded to Chance. “Let’s see what McPhee wants with us.”

  “Better call him Mister McPhee,” the gunman warned. “Show some respect.”

  “Fine. Mr. McPhee.” Chance’s tone didn’t sound very respectful, however.

  Ace pushed through the batwings first, followed by Chance. They stopped just inside the saloon and looked around. The Branding Iron bore a distinct resemblance to dozens of other saloons they had visited during the time they had been roaming the frontier, although it was cleaner and more opulently appointed than many of those places. Ace thought it was likely McPhee owned the saloon outright and made it his headquarters while he was in town.

  At the moment, the rancher was sitting at a large table in the back of the barroom. Clade Mitchell was with him, as were a couple other hardcases. McPhee saw Ace and Chance and gestured curtly for them to come over.

  “You reckon we’re walking into a trap?” Chance asked under his breath.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” replied Ace. “McPhee’s so confident he’s in complete control around here, he wouldn’t try anything tricky. He’d just go ahead and shoot us if that’s what he wanted to do.”

  From behind, McPhee’s man prodded them. “Go on over to the boss’s table.”

  The saloon wasn’t very busy. A few men stood at the bar, nursing drinks, while a card game was going on at one of the tables. Chance cast a wistful glance in that direction. Even under the odd circumstances, the lure of the cards was strong.

  All of the men in the place cast glances at the Jensen brothers as they crossed the room. So did the lone woman, an attractive blonde in a low-cut dress who stood at the end of the bar. An air of tense expectation filled the saloon, as if trouble could erupt without warning at any second.

  With Angus McPhee’s volatile temper, wherever he happened to be probably felt like that, thought Ace as they came to a stop in front of the table.

  McPhee’s hat was pushed back on his head. He toyed with a glass of whiskey. The half-full bottle sat close by his hand. He looked up at Ace and Chance and said, “I know you boys.”

  Ace didn’t see any point in denying it. “We were in Fort Benton when you were talking to Sheriff Maddox and his deputy.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the only way I know you.”

  Ace glanced at Chance. Neither knew what McPhee meant by that.

  The cattleman didn’t offer to explain. He lifted the glass and threw back the drink, then splashed more whiskey into it. “What are you doing with those damned homesteaders?” he demanded. “You don’t look like farmers.”

  “We were on our way to Rimfire when we came across them yesterday afternoon,” said Ace. “They were under attack from a gang of outlaws led by this man.” He nodded toward Mitchell.

  “That’s a damn lie,” Mitchell rasped as he leaned forward in his chair.

  Chance asked coolly, “Are you denying that you signed on with them as a guide?”

  “Sure I did. I did the best job I could for them, too. But then that big lug Rufe Wingate jumped me. He claimed I was paying too much attention to the Fairfield girl, so I knew I had to either leave the train or kill him.” Mitchell shrugged. “I don’t like getting blood on my hands unless there’s a good reason, and a prissy little thing like Laura Fairfield doesn’t qualify. I prefer my women a little
more . . . earthy, let’s say.”

  Ace frowned. He and Chance had seen Rufe’s jealous anger for themselves. It was easy to imagine him blowing up at Mitchell if he thought the man had been looking lustfully at Laura.

  “After that happened,” Mitchell went on, “I felt like I didn’t owe any particular loyalty to those immigrants anymore, so I rode here to Rimfire to warn Mr. McPhee about them. Figured I’d throw in with folks who are more like what I’m used to.”

  “Owlhoots and hired killers, you mean?” asked Chance.

  “Shut your mouth, boy,” growled McPhee. “My men are plenty tough when they need to be, but they’re not outlaws.”

  “The wagon train was attacked twice,” Ace insisted. “My brother and I were there for both fights. Edward Fairfield said he saw you leading the wolf pack yesterday, Mitchell.”

  “Fairfield’s a liar,” responded Mitchell smoothly. “He’s holding a grudge against me because of what happened with Wingate and his granddaughter. I was nowhere near that wagon train yesterday.”

  “Can you prove that?” asked Chance. “Were you already here in Rimfire?”

  McPhee said, “Clade didn’t ride in until late last night, but that doesn’t prove a damn thing. Anyway, this isn’t a courtroom, boy, and you’re not a blasted lawyer, so stop acting like one. This is a saloon—my saloon.”

  “From what I hear, this is your town,” said Ace.

  “That’s right.” McPhee downed the second glass of whiskey without displaying any reaction to the fiery liquor. It might as well have been water. “Rimfire damn sure is my town, and I want to know why you two were headed here. Forget those sodbusters and Mitchell here. My business is with you.”

  Ace shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. McPhee.”

  “I reckon you do.”

  “No, I—”

  The cattleman lifted a hand.

  Ace heard footsteps behind him and Chance as the other men in the saloon shifted around. He remembered what Chance had said a few minutes earlier about a trap, and he suddenly realized that maybe his brother had been right.