by Noel Loomis
“Yeah, but it was in code. Billy Walters wouldn’t give me any copy. I only got a quick look at it, and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it; but it was a long one. Billy had a big time getting it took down right.”
“I don’t understand it; I don’t understand it,” Oliver Major kept saying. “Old Theron Replogle…”
A silence fell upon them, the dazed, uncertain silence of men who find themselves suddenly frustrated by powers far beyond their control. The shadow of destiny, malignant and implacable, seemed suddenly to have become a monstrous thing.
Hughes had already felt before that old Oliver Major was leading them into the face of tremendous odds. Yet the old range wolf had slashed out at his energies savagely. It had been a bold move to seize Earl Shaw himself; but it had apparently been a successful one in that it had given the Lazy M a temporary grip upon the local law. However certain old Major might be in his own mind that Earl Shaw was behind the murder of Hugo Donnan, the Lazy M would be helpless as soon as Shaw resumed the reins of law enforcement.
Major did not dare yield into the hands of Earl Shaw’s gang either Clay Hughes, who was supposed to know more about the killing than he had told, nor Dick Major, whom Shaw would certainly try to make suspect of the killing of Donnan. Until he should be able to gather evidence against the true killers, Major’s hold upon the sheriff’s office was the only defense of the Lazy M.
It had been a precarious position at best, and obviously a temporary one; but while they held Grasshopper Tanner, whom Major now believed to hold the key to the mystery of Donnan’s death, it had seemed that the boss of the Buckhorn water, by his very daring, might emerge victorious.
The striking away of that slender strategy had come with the force and unexpectedness of a thunderbolt. The abrupt power of the stroke was almost contemptuous in its arrogance, its irresistibility, and its finality. There was a long silence.
“You all see what this means?” said Major at last.
No one spoke; until Bart Holt muttered, “I guess it’s pretty plain.”
“There’s two of us here,” said Major, “who have to see this thing through to a finish. The rest of you have no call to stay here and take your chance. If Earl Shaw has his way, and it sure looks like he’s got a good chance, it’s going to come awful dry weather for us all. The time to pull out of it is now, before it’s too late. Will you go, Bart?”
“No,” said Holt. “We’re laughing at you. Unless Hughes—”
“I like it here too,” said Hughes. “You give me a pain, Holt.”
Major made a gesture of futility, the first of its kind that Hughes had ever seen him use. “There’s just one chance,” he said. “The governor don’t know what he’s done—of that I’m sure. I’ve always said that Theron Replogle was a small man, and a crooked one, but he wouldn’t dare go as far as this if he wasn’t riding blind. I don’t doubt he’s got a finger in the Silverado project and he’s backing Earl Shaw because of that. What he don’t know—and probably can’t know from where he sits, is that Earl Shaw will never dare let Dick be brought to trial.”
“He’ll charge him, and he’ll have Alex Shaw here after him, just the same,” said Crawford.
“Yes, he’ll do that. It’s his chance to bust the Lazy M, after all these years. But do you think he’d ever dare let Clay Hughes go on the stand—supposedly the only man that knows what Donnan said before he died? And do you suppose he’d dare let Grasshopper Tanner come up and testify, with nobody knowing what Grasshopper found out, nor what he’ll say on the stand? What Theron Replogle can’t know is that Earl Shaw will take the shorter way. Only a man that knows Shaw like I do can be dead certain of that, like I am certain now!”
“What do you think he’s going to do?”
“I ain’t telling you what I think. I’m telling you what I know. You youngsters keep forgetting what me and Bart Holt—and Earl Shaw too—will always remember: that there’s many a cowboy deep under this prairie because of Shaw’s trying to grab the Buckhorn water. Do you think he cares any more about the lives of two or three men, or sees any difference between the law and a gun in the dark when it comes to finishing a man off? I tell you, if Shaw makes a clean sweep of this range, neither Dick, nor Hughes, nor old Tanner neither, will ever live to see a court room.”
“What’s your play?” Bart Holt asked.
“We got to carry the fight higher. We got to tie into them on their own ground. I say Theron Replogle don’t see what’s going to happen. We got to show him. There’s one man on our string that can talk to the governor and make him see it, and only one. That man’s Stephen Sessions. I’ve sent for him, I had his wire in Walkerton that he was on his way. He should be here now—if he’s coming at all. Why he isn’t here I don’t know. He’s the only card we’ve got left.”
“If he’s going to be a day behind Alex Shaw he might as well stay home,” said Bart Holt.
“And what if he doesn’t come?” said Hughes.
“Then we’ve got to stand ’em off any way we can.”
“Meantime,” Macumber put in, “we can damn well go up to Crazy Mule Canyon with Tanner and see what we can find out there. We can do that much anyway.”
“You’re sure you want to do that?” said Hughes.
“Why not?”
“If Tanner’s your blue chip, like you think he is, then it looks to me like you’re throwing him into an awful risk by sending him up to Crazy Mule now. If I was Earl Shaw, the first thing I’d want to do would be to get Grasshopper Tanner cut out of the herd. The Crazy Mule looks to me like a fine place for him to work it. Tanner can’t even hide out like an ordinary man, the way his dogs hang around and yell.”
“Grasshopper find something, did he?” asked Dick.
In a few words old man Major told the three from Adobe Wells what was known about Grasshopper Tanner.
“Suppose he is cut off in the Crazy Mule,” said Macumber. “He won’t be alone by no means. I say leave us take him on up there, and if Alex Shaw comes up, don’t make it any matter of just shooting our way clear! Let Alex Shaw worry about how he’s going to shoot his way clear.”
Old man Major appeared to consider. “No,” he decided. “No, we’re not ready for that. We’re in awful deep. We don’t dast get in any deeper—until Stephen Sessions comes.”
“If he comes,” said Holt.
Chapter Twelve
That was a hard day to wait out. It is hard enough to wait for the turn of an event which is to happen at a known time. To wait for a thing which may be indefinitely postponed, or may never happen at all, can, if the turn is of supreme importance in many lives, strain human endurance to the cracking point.
After the held stock had been taken care of, nobody tried to work. The few horses that had been saddled drowsed unridden after the early chores. The cowboys were mostly silent behind the eternal restless smoke of their cigarettes. Even the cottonwoods seemed waiting, unwhispering in the hot air. Stephen Sessions and the possibility of his intercession with the governor now seemed the only hope of the Lazy M. There was almost a prayer in the air that the next drift of dust on the southern horizon would mean that he had come.
For the moment they were helpless, unable to do anything but wait. They no longer even had access to a telegraph wire. The unsatisfactory Lazy M telephone was still out of commission, and would undoubtedly remain so; and no Lazy M man dared show himself in either Adobe Wells or Walkerton, now that Shaw was in the saddle once more. To do so would have been to risk a prompt choice between fight and imprisonment. None of them were ready for either one.
When in mid-afternoon a column of dust appeared to southward, marking the approach of a car upon the Adobe Wells road, watchful eyes picked it up a long way off. Most of the Lazy M had gathered with a vague, strained attempt at casualness before the ranch house by the time the dusty touring car wheeled to a stop before the house. And there was grimness and silence in the waiting group; for while the car was still a long way off, the shrewd-guess
ing eyes of the cattlemen had made out that it was not Stephen Sessions who had come.
Of the two men in the dusty touring car, one was the blond giant called Dutch Pete, who had stood behind Earl Shaw when the Lazy M posse had invaded the Bar S. The other Hughes had never seen before; yet he immediately knew that it could be no one but Alex Shaw.
Alex Shaw was younger than his brother by a good ten or fifteen years. He had more height and less beef; more sinew and less bone. His hard-carved face, with its twisty grin, lacked the intelligence and the force of character apparent in that of Earl Shaw, so that at first sight Alex looked like a raffish caricature of his older brother. Where Earl Shaw would be ruthless, Alex would be merely reckless; Alex would be explosive in situations where Earl Shaw would hold back his hand and wait. Yet, Alex had a certain hard strength of his own. In some situations he would be more dangerous than his brother, because quicker in violence, and more careless of cost.
Alex Shaw swung down from the wheel, leaving his engine running, and approached Oliver Major with a quick businesslike stride. His eye was sardonic as it ran over those ostentatiously casual, waiting cowboys in the background. All those men were wearing their guns; their faces were alert, interested, and expectant, but not nervous. This time it was Oliver Major who, physically, held the upper hand, able to make fight and win his fight—if only to do so was not to lose all else.
“You got the word?” Alex Shaw asked Major. His voice was impersonal, neither friendly nor belligerent. Of them all, this man, walking into the circle of his enemies, seemed surest of his ground.
“What word?” said Major.
Alex Shaw pulled his telegram from his pocket, straightened it with a snap like the crack of a whip, and thrust it under old man Major’s nose. Dutch Pete, following more slowly, took up a position a little behind Alex Shaw and to one side, and hooked his thumbs in his belt. The big man’s face was sleepy and expressionless; yet Hughes thought he had never seen harder eyes in the face of any man. They were hard as the eyes of a carnivore are hard, without effort of will or any particular malice of intent, but merely with the complete lack of any humane scruple known to men.
Oliver Major glanced at the paper only briefly. “I suppose that’s the governor’s order giving you the sheriff’s office,” he said.
Alex Shaw nodded. “Naturally, I have to jump onto the matter of this Donnan killing,” he explained, evidently making an effort to keep his voice reasonable and detached. “I’m right sorry to trouble your outfit here; but it looks like I’m going to have to take up three of your boys, for questioning.”
“Who do you want?” Major demanded bluntly.
“I’m afraid,” Alex Shaw said, with the reasonable air of a man who knows he is asking much, but is pressed to it by duty, “I’m going to have to ask for Dick Major first of all.” He watched Oliver Major.
The boss of the Lazy M gave no sign. “Who else?”
“Clay Hughes and Grasshopper Tanner.”
“Well, they’re right here; you see ’em. Go ahead and question ’em if you want.”
“I’m going to have to take them back to Adobe Wells for that, Mr. Major.”
“You question them here,” said Major evenly, without heat.
Alex Shaw held Oliver Major’s eyes steadily as he slowly shook his head. A shadow of his twisty grin crossed his face, somehow darkening it. “No; that won’t do it, Major.”
“Then,” said Major, “you’re out of luck.”
“You mean you don’t aim to give these men up?”
Major said contemptuously, “You knew that much before you come.”
There was a long moment’s silence. “I want to be reasonable here,” said Alex Shaw at last. “All I’m trying to do is to carry out the regular process of the law, same as it’s been put on me to do. I’ve got no charge to lay against any one of these three. All I ask is a chance to question them. You know I can’t do that here.”
“You’ll do it here or not at all.”
Alex Shaw folded up the copy of the telegram that had made him sheriff and stuck it back in his pocket before he spoke again. “I don’t want trouble here. I can understand how you feel, Major, about letting your own boy go into the hands of the law. And I am willing to stretch a point so as not to stir no trouble up. I’m willing to leave Dick here, and only take the other two, Hughes and Tanner, and no more said.”
“Not a man,” said Major.
The twisty grin of Alex Shaw came and went again; the man seemed easy and relaxed. Certainly he was giving a good imitation of a man who is only trying to do his duty as he sees it, reasonably, without malice. Hughes for a moment wondered how any man could act the part so well, if indeed, the circumstance in the Buckhorn was exactly as Oliver Major supposed. He was turning this over in his mind when Alex Shaw spoke again.
“Major, you know what you’re doing I expect; but I got to warn you just the same, if only for the sake of warning these hands of yours, that’s standing here to back your play. They got a right to know what they’re up against, I guess. You realize that if you refuse to hand up these men that you’re making an open act against the due process of the law, and that if a charge of murder is brought against any one of your people here, you’ll be liable as accessory after the fact?”
“I don’t admit to that,” said Major.
“I didn’t ask you did you admit to it. I just wanted it clear to everybody what I said.” His voice became more distinct, dropping all trace of apology. “You realize you’re making an open stand against the law; and unless this killing clears up mighty quick in some way that ain’t expected, the law will have to move against you according.”
Once more there was silence; and abruptly Hughes thought he saw the explanation of Alex Shaw’s casualness, his failure to resent the resistance he had encountered. This was not a man who took frustration lying down. Alex Shaw was relaxed and confident because he was obtaining exactly what he had come for. Probably he had had no hope that the three men he had asked for, or any one of them, would be given into his hands.
But the flat refusal of the Lazy M boss in itself gave the Shaw faction exactly what it wanted. Right here, now, in this quiet exchange of words, Alex Shaw was establishing the circumstance that would enable Earl Shaw to make immediate war upon the Buckhorn cattleman with all the ramified power of the law on the side of the Bar S. The decision which Alex Shaw had drawn from Major, inevitable to the character of the old range wolf, reduced Major and all his supporters to the technical status of so many outlaws.
And those waiting cowboys, ready as they were to back Oliver Major—they were not all of them so astute nor so experienced that some of them would not be trapped in the end into bearing witness to this act which gave a legal foundation to any raid against the Lazy M which Earl Shaw might now conceive.
“Mr. Major,” said Clay Hughes, “for my part I think that Grasshopper Tanner and I had better go along with them.”
Oliver Major turned a wondering eye upon Hughes. “Are you crazy, man?”
Hughes saw no reason for not saying plainly what was in his mind. “If we turn down his proposition of taking me and Tanner the Bar S will be holding every card in the deck. But if Tanner and I give up, their hands are tied, so far as the Lazy M is concerned, until they cook up their next move. There’s nothing else to do.”
Oliver Major was looking at him as if Hughes were out of his head. “It isn’t questioning they want of you,” he said slowly. “You act like I never explained all that to you at all!”
“As for me,” Hughes said, “I’m ready to go along and take my chance.”
The old man was iron in his convictions, and invincible in the stubbornness of his will. Yet now for a moment he seemed to hesitate, like a horse holding back for one last instant at the brink of a precipitous descent. It gave Hughes a queer sensation to see him waver, even for a moment. It was as if the rim rock itself had swayed, bending to the wind.
And now Clay Hughes saw that Sally Ma
jor had come through the scatter of waiting cowboys to her father’s side. She had come silently, and how long she had been there he did not know. Her features were untroubled, and very still, except that deep behind her eyes was a suggestion of that slow hidden fire that Hughes had seen more than once in the eyes of her father.
The still face of the girl was an incredible contrast to the harsh uncompromising faces of the men, showing them for what they were. Behind the dark weather-scarred faces of the men lived the cross purposes, the ugly memories, and the hatreds which were once more sweeping the Buckhorn into war. As when he had first seen her, Hughes found himself unable to reconcile the fresh loveliness of Sally Major with her surroundings. It seemed to him that she made the best of the cowmen look like so many turbulent animals; while she herself was made to seem something infinitely delicate, infinitely precious, and unreal.
Sally Major’s voice was very low as she spoke to her father. “If you let this man go, you’ll never be able to lift up your head again; and you know that.” Her phrases were incongruous to her voice, so quietly she spoke, without passion nor intensity; but somehow their very quiet gave them the sound of immutable truths, detached, unassailable by the turbulent wills of men.
Oliver gave no sign of having heard. “Hughes,” he said, “nobody knows better than me that I can force no man to take my part; but I say—”
“It isn’t a question of taking your part,” said Hughes.
“But I say,” old man Major bore him down, “you got no right to go. You’ve looked like a strong card in our hand, Hughes, and Earl Shaw knows it well.”
“As to that,” said Hughes, “I’ll be the same card whether I go or stay.”
Oliver Major shook his head. “They can’t hold you, and they daren’t leave you go. There’s only one answer to that: and I think everybody here knows what I mean.”
“Sure we can hold him,” said Alex Shaw. “We can hold him on more counts than one. There’s a charge lodged against him of impersonating a United States Marshal, for one thing.”
“You’ll never make it stick,” said Hughes.
