by Short, Luke;
Frank was aiming for Milabel’s face, which the big man did not try to guard, and slowly Frank chopped blow after sickening blow into it, cutting Milabel’s lips, flattening his face, tearing an eyebrow until the blood streamed down into his face and blinded him. And then Milabel, dazed and his fury riding every wild swing, was getting sanity pounded into him. He backed up a step, and like a tiger scenting the kill, Frank stepped in, his blows surer, more savage, swifter. He hooked a left into Milabel’s midriff, and the big foreman grunted and rocked back on his heels, and Frank lashed out, all his weight behind a blow that struck Milabel on the shelving point of his jaw and skidded alongside it to tear his ear. Milabel’s head went back, and he tripped and fell on his back and rolled over. He came to his feet groggily, and now he had a bench in both hands.
Frank said, without looking at Shibe, “Let him go, Red,” and Milabel, cursing through swollen lips, threw the bench. It was too big to dodge, and Frank caught it, and the weight of it sent him sprawling. Milabel lunged for him, his tramp shaking the house. Frank rolled and came up, and with one wicked cutting blow he knocked Milabel down. The foreman came unsteadily to his feet, his guard not yet up, and Frank knocked him down again.
Shaking his head, Milabel shoved himself erect, and Frank hit him again in the face and harder. And when Milabel started to slump again Frank caught him by the shirt front and held him and slugged time and again, until the foreman’s head rolled on his neck and he was staring unseeing at the floor. Frank caught his weight and said pantingly to Shibe, “Give me a hand, Red.”
Red, his face tight and a little strained, came up and Frank said, “Throw him through the door.”
“He’s had enough, Frank.”
Frank’s wicked eyes laid their hot glare on Shibe, and he said thickly, “I’m goin’ all the way, Red! Get away if you don’t like it!”
Red took hold of Milabel’s belt, and together they threw him through the door out into the hard-packed dirt of the yard. He lit with a grunt, skidded a few feet and was utterly motionless. Hands on hips, panting, Frank said, “Call the crew off.”
Shibe stepped to the back window and called to the men to hold their fire, and the shots dribbled off into silence.
Frank stepped out under the porch and called to the corral, “Come and get your boss man, you riders.”
There was a long silence in the corrals, and then the cook, still in shirt sleeves, and another man walked tentatively out of the corral into sight. They kept looking at the timber, but the guns were silent up there. The cook and the puncher tramped across the yard and hauled up beside Milabel, their veiled glances on Frank.
Frank said, “Tote him off the place. Drive your horses off too, and if a Circle R rider shows his face on this lease again, he’ll know what kind of a welcome we’ll give him.”
The rider, a wedge-faced and dirty Texan, said shortly, “We’ll be back.”
He and the cook stooped and caught Milabel under the arms, and because of the big man’s weight they dragged him across to the corral, trailing twin furrows in the dust where his boots dug in.
Slowly, then, Frank’s crew drifted up to the house, watching the Circle R riders saddle up, gather their remuda and turn it out. Last of all came a team and buckboard driven by the cook, and Milabel’s limp body was slacked on its bed. They filed off toward the west, the Circle R men silent and furious under the slacked rifles of Frank’s crew.
When they were out of sight Red Shibe stirred faintly and looked at Frank and then at Otey. Otey shook his head soberly, regarding Frank.
“All right,” Frank said. “Bring the wagon in, Joe, and unload. We’re home.”
Chapter IV
By next morning the Circle R had not retaliated, and Frank, taking Samse with him to round up the remainder of the horses, had left orders for Red and Otey to stay at the house and for the others to scatter into the timber and up and down the creek to keep watch.
Otey, still suspicious of Red Shibe, had drifted out to the wagonshed after breakfast and was contemplating the black-smithing job necessary on the wagon. His examination was superficial, however, for Otey was thinking of other things. Ten men had left this place yesterday, ten mad men, and they would join another twenty men who would be just as angry when they heard the story of the eviction.
Otey looked uneasily down toward the creek and shook his head and tried to put it out of his mind. He was a little sad, for he had seen what could happen to stubborn men, rash men, and he liked Frank. He brought his attention to bear on the wagon, squatting down to see if the timbers of the frame were sprung. From underneath it he saw, standing in the doorway, a man’s boots, and he raised up to find Red Shibe looking at him.
They stared at each other a long moment, Otey’s seamed face resentful and suspicious.
Red said, “Old-timer, it’s about time you and me made medicine.”
“How come that?” Otey said distantly.
“I’m here to stay,” Red said “I like the boss. So do you, unless I’m wrong.”
“I like him,” Otey said. “I don’t much like the company he picks up.”
Red squatted against the doorway and said sparely, “Me too,” and looked squarely at Otey.
Dislike stirred in Otey’s eyes, and he said dryly, “But I ain’t quittin’, mister.”
“Neither am I,” Red said, leaving the argument at deadlock.
Otey spat and came around the wagon to face Red. “I’m an old man,” Otey said grimly. “I know cattle, and I can run ’em. I also know people, and by God I can run them too. Nobody likes the kind of man Frank is goin’ to turn into. And I reckon you had somethin’ to do with turnin’ him into it.”
“No,” Red said.
“He come back from town with sand in his craw,” Otey insisted. “He had some before he went. Not all of it.”
“You want him to run?” Red countered.
“Other outfits live at peace on this range. We kin too.”
“By payin’ Scott Corb lease money,” Red said. “That suit you?”
“Sure it does. Hell, we’re runnin’ cattle, not a day-and-night brawl.”
“Where’s the money comin’ from to pay Corb?”
“Sell part of the herd. We’ll make it up in two years,” Otey said sparely, his voice rising a little. “What the hell’s the difference where lease money goes, long’s we’re let alone to run cattle? More than that, what the hell’s it to you?”
“I work for Frank.”
“So have a lot of saddle bums, but he’s always told them! They ain’t told him!”
Red Shibe’s face flushed a deep red, and his freckles stood out blackly. He came to his feet, drawling. “The trouble with you runts is you never grow up to the size of your mouth.”
Otey said, “The trouble with you redheads is you all think you got to look for fights, just on account of the color of your hair.”
They glared at each other a long moment, and Red finally growled, “I don’t know whether to step on you or just put you in my hip pocket and forget you.”
“Let’s see you try to do either one,” Otey said truculently.
The quarrel was interrupted by the sound of a horse approaching. It was Beach Freeman. He pulled up in front of the wagon shed and said, “Somebody’s comin’.”
Red didn’t say anything, although Beach spoke to him. Otey was foreman, and this was his business.
“Just one?” Otey asked.
“Yeah. He’s in the Circle R buckboard. Gent in a nice shiny black suit, and he come from the west.”
Otey said, “All right. Git back to your post.”
Red Shibe started for the house and Otey, minding Frank’s advice, followed him. They were sitting ten feet apart on the porch, not speaking, when the buckboard rounded the corner of the building and pulled up in front of the steps. Beach Freeman had named the suit, all right, Otey thought. The man wearing it wasn’t a working cowman, as his pale face testified. He had a gray close-clipped mustache that we
nt well with his steel-trap jaws and pale cold eyes. He pulled up, looked briefly at Otey and Red and said, “Where’s Christian?”
“Ridin’,” Otey said.
“When’ll he be back?”
“Soon.”
“I’ll wait,” the man said. He got out of the buckboard, only not on the porch side. Once he was on the ground he lighted a cigar, shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled down toward the creek, ignoring Red and Otey. Red grinned secretly, for he knew about Abe Puckett, the Reservation Cattle Company’s general manager. He settled back against the wall and rolled a thin cigarette and lighted it, waiting to see the fun.
Within twenty minutes Samse and Frank crossed the creek, driving a dozen horses before them. Red went out to the corral, opened the gate, and the horses, skillfully hazed by Samse and Frank, thundered through the gate and the corral and out into the horse pasture.
Red, closing the gate, saw Frank looking at the buckboard, and he said, “Gent wants to see you.”
Frank dismounted and turned his horse into the corral and afterward said to Red, “Come along.”
Frank’s jaw was set at a stubborn angle this morning. He had an angry-colored bruise on the angle of his jaw under his ear that was swollen, and his knuckles under his gloves were so raw they hurt at every movement. The beard stubble on his face, combined with that look of suppressed wildness in his gray eyes, and his worn levis and scuffed half boots made him look just a little tougher than any man in his crew.
Puckett had come back up the slope now, and he and Frank and Red, with Otey watching, met by the buckboard. Puckett said briskly, “Christian? I’m Puckett, General Manager of the Reservation Cattle Company.”
Frank barely nodded, waiting.
“I understand you had some sort of ruckus here yesterday with my men.”
“That wasn’t a ruckus,” Frank drawled. “That was what the army calls a retreat.”
The corners of Puckett’s mouth lifted imperceptibly. “Well, you’ve got the place now. Do you think you can hold it against my crew?”
“Why not?”
“What’s to prevent them from doing exactly what you did?”
“My crew isn’t sleepin’ in the shack. Puckett. We’re out in timber, and it’s goin’ to take some work to surprise us.”
“And your cattle. I suppose they’re safe too?”
“Safe enough,” Frank drawled. “They’re scattered so far you’ll have to hold a roundup to collect ’em, and I can stop that.”
Puckett looked down at his cigar and then raised his chill blue eyes to regard Frank. “That may be true. But you can’t raise cattle and still fight us, can you?”
“Tell me why I can’t,” Frank said stubbornly.
Puckett made a gesture of annoyance. “You’re a hard man to talk to, Christian. You won’t even concede me a point to bargain with.” He smiled faintly. “I know I’ve got one, though.” He paused. “I want to buy you out. Now wait! Let me talk. You know our position. We were about to lease this piece of range to join our east range when Morg Wheelon got in ahead of us. We need this strip. Otherwise our crew is split and scattered, and it makes it too easy for others to annoy us. I’m being fair and putting my cards on the table. And I’ve got a good offer to make you.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’ll pay you cash for this range, if that’s what you want. I suspect you don’t give a damn about the money part, though. So here’s the proposition. We’ll lease a range for you from the Indians, title as good as any title here, exactly as big as this and build a shack exactly like this anywhere on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation.”
Otey had drifted up now, and he said immediately, “Take him up, Frank, and do it damn quick!”
Frank didn’t even look at Otey. He said, “No,” flatly.
Puckett frowned. “Why not? That’s a fair offer.”
Frank nodded. “It’s fair, and if I was sure you didn’t kill Morg and if you’d made me the offer when I come in here, I’d have taken you up.”
“Then why not take us up now?”
Frank’s eyes glinted. “I’ll tell you why, Puckett. I don’t like the way you do things. I don’t like your crew. I don’t like your foreman. I don’t like your damn bullyin’ ways. I don’t like the way Morg died. You may make big tracks, but damned if that scares me. I wouldn’t move off this piece now for all the rest of the reservation, not for a half-million dollars. Maybe I can’t whip you, but I’m goin’ to make you almighty sorry you ever swallowed me! And I’m goin’ to find out who killed Morg!”
Puckett threw his cigar away with a savage gesture, the only clue to his anger. “All right, if you want war, you’ll get it!”
“I got it,” Frank said grimly.
Puckett strode to the buckboard, stepped up and picked up his reins. Then he turned to Frank. “Christian, you’re up against Corb on one side and us on the other. Just remember how a millstone works. Good day.”
He slapped the reins down and the team pulled away. Otey watched him go and then looked balefully at Frank. “Now you done it,” his voice bitter with disgust.
Frank’s hot gaze whipped around to him. “Otey, any time you don’t like it I’ll pay you off.”
Otey said, “You want me to go, Frank?”
“That’s not it,” Frank said. “It’s whether you want to go.”
Otey studied him with small baleful eyes and then sighed. “I’ll stay. I dunno why. I guess someone in this crew has got to have some sense, and it might’s well be me.”
His glance shifted to Red and it increased in venom, and then he went into the house. Red Shibe drifted over to the corral and Frank followed him. Halfway there he looked down toward the creek and saw a horse and rider coming up the slope from the creek.
He hauled up, immediately wary. How come Joe Vandermeer had let a man past? And then, as the horse approached, he saw it wasn’t a man at all. It was Luvie Barnes, and she was wearing a man’s outfit of worn levis, checked cotton shirt open at the neck and a flat-brimmed black Stetson.
She pulled up at the corral, and Frank touched his hat “Mornin.’ Won’t you light?”
Luvie gave him a civil greeting and said. “Thanks. I’d like a drink.”
They walked up to the house, neither saying much except that it was hot for this early in the year, and Luvie sat down in the shade of the porch while Frank brought her a dipper of water.
Finished, Luvie thanked him, and Frank set the dipper on the porch.
Luvie said, “I guess I came at the wrong time, didn’t I?”
“Why?”
“You’re mad about something. I can see it in your eyes. Still, you were mad about something yesterday. Are you always that way?”
Frank smiled faintly. “Since I pulled in here I reckon I have been. I had to kick a bunch of squatters off my place, and this mornin’ their boss rode around to threaten me.”
“Puckett?”
“That’s right.”
Luvie regarded him steadily, then shrugged, and it was more eloquent reproof than words would have been. “Maybe I’d better get my business over, so you can be angry at everything at the same time.”
Frank just looked at her, not speaking.
“Dad isn’t an Indian giver usually, but he was yesterday. He can’t deliver your corn.”
“That’s all right,” Frank said, but he didn’t manage to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“It isn’t all right,” Luvie said defensively, “but let me explain.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I want to!” Luvie said. “You remember when we stopped you at the river day before yesterday?”
Frank nodded.
“I guess that was unwise. Somebody saw us.”
Frank frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Figure it out for yourself. Yesterday one of Dad’s trail herds was stopped about twenty miles south of Reno by a big crowd of Cheyennes. They made a levy on the herd. Thirty
beef.”
Frank looked puzzled. “They used to shake me down when I was drivin’ too, but I paid. I figured it was just grass rent for passin’ through the Nations.”
“Would you have paid thirty beef?” Luvie countered.
Frank shook his head. “I don’t reckon. But I don’t see what it means.”
“Dad talked to you there at the river. That evening he ordered more corn freighted out to our horse camp. That night one of our men started for this place with the corn. He was turned back by strange riders. And the next day the Cheyennes demanded beef from our trail herd. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to us. Dad, being a beef contractor for the Indians and the army, has always been allowed to pass his herds through without paying beef.” She leaned back. “Now do you see? It was a warning, a pretty plain one.”
“Corb?” Frank asked.
Luvie nodded.
Frank was about to say something, and then he checked himself. He stood up. “Well, that’s that. You’ll stay and eat, won’t you?”
Luvie said quietly, “You think Dad’s a coward, don’t you, Frank?”
“I never said so.”
“But you look like you did,” Luvie said resentfully. “It’s easy for a stranger, an ignorant stranger, to condemn us. But we’ve got our own way of living.”
“Sure you have,” Frank said, not wanting to argue.
“Then don’t look that way!” Luvie said.
Frank stared at her. “What way?”
“The way you looked when I talked to you in the feed office yesterday! The way you looked at me when you talked to Dad! The way you’re looking now! I don’t like being sneered at!”
