War on the Cimarron

by Short, Luke;

  “I didn’t sneer,” Frank said. “But maybe you’re lookin’ for sneers because way inside you might think you deserve ’em.”

  Luvie came to her feet, eyes flashing. “For what?”

  Frank shrugged. “I dunno. You’re the one that thinks I’m sneering.”

  “You are,” Luvie said. “You think Dad’s a coward, don’t you?”

  An anger which had never been far from the surface these last few days again bobbed up, and Frank said just as recklessly. “Now you pin me down, I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t call him a coward. He just likes to take things lyin’ down. I don’t.”

  “You’re a grateful person,” Luvie said scornfully.

  “Grateful for what?” Frank said. “A promise? Thanks, and thanks again, if that’s what you want. It was a nice promise, that load of corn. I almost believed it!”

  Luvie’s hands were fisted at her sides. She took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I hope you do get run off here, Frank Christian! And you will! My dad has a good business and he’s at peace with everyone. But in a foolish moment he went against his better judgment and—”

  “Your better judgment, wasn’t it?”

  Luvie stamped her foot. “Let me finish! He did a foolish thing, and now you think he’s a coward because he won’t risk his whole business to help you. Well, you’ll find nobody likes to help a fool! Most of us here on this reservation can’t talk as fool brave as you can. We don’t even try to, because we know we can’t back it up! And neither can you!”

  She brushed past Frank, and he watched her walk to her horse. Her back was as straight as a gun barrel and somehow conveyed the outrage she felt. She mounted and rode off the place. Frank looked at the house. Otey was standing in the doorway, his glance accusing.

  So he talked brave but he couldn’t back it up, she thought. In other words, he was a Texas loudmouth, the kind of man he hated more than any kind alive. Luvie Barnes couldn’t tell the difference between a braggart and a man who meant what he said.

  Frank saw Red in the wagon shed. The chuck wagon was up on blocks and had two wheels off.

  Still smarting under the memory of Luvie’s words, Frank walked over to Red.

  “Red, you know where Scott Corb hangs out?”

  Red looked up, mild surprise on his face. “Sure. Why?”

  “You don’t want to pay a call there with me tonight, do you?”

  “Why don’t I?”

  Frank looked down the slope. Luvie was almost at the creek.

  “Nobody likes to help a fool,” Frank murmured, repeating Luvie’s words. “I just wondered.”

  “Try me.”

  Chapter V

  After supper Frank and Red went out to the corral and in the fading light saddled their horses. Before they were half finished Otey drifted out to the corral and watched them. Presently, when their horses were saddled, Otey said to Red, “You drift. I want to talk to Frank.”

  At a nod from Frank, Red went out, and Otey came over to Frank. “You’re out to make trouble, Frank, ain’t you?”

  Frank said, “I can’t tell yet,” and stroked his horse’s nose.

  “That girl was right, Frank. She told you the truth. And it made you mad. You’re listenin’ to that redhead, and he’s makin’ fight talk. He’s got nothin’ to lose, and you have. You goin’ to do it?”

  “You want to quit, Otey?”

  “Not me,” Otey said. “I give you your first pony, and you aren’t chasin’ me out. I’ll just stick around until they carry you home in a basket, and then you’ll have some sense.” He grunted and turned away. “Providin’ that redhead don’t get you killed off first.”

  Frank didn’t say anything. He rode out and joined Red, and he was thinking of Otey. Discounting a natural jealousy between Otey and Red, Otey’s words still made sense. Luvie Barnes’s nagging had made him see red, and Red Shibe was just reckless enough to join in with him in anything he wanted to do.

  Red, sensing what Otey must have said, murmured, “Maybe we better go back, Frank.”

  “Hell with it,” Frank said flatly, stubbornly. “Go back if you want, or come along with me. I got a bellyful of bein’ pushed around.”

  Red gave the general direction of Corb’s place, and during the three-hour ride he explained Corb’s layout. Corb had come into the Nations to run cattle. He had traded with the Indians before that and had been in the Nations long enough to build himself a frame house and acquire a reputation for easy bachelor living. But long since Corb had given up the idea of running cattle for money. His whisky peddling was more lucrative. He had a slick method of selling it, caching it in a dozen secret and remote places where it could not be found. He never sold the whisky himself; his men were the agents. The army and the agency both knew Corb peddled it, but proof was impossible to get. Any Indian, drunk or sober, who hinted at the source of his liquor was found beaten up, his tepee burned and his possessions taken. Corb had a way with Indians, especially the malcontents, and his position was so strong with them that the army could not move against him without provoking rebellion. Corb was the power in the Nations, and gradually he had drifted into the lease business, the most important of all. Only the Reservation Cattle Company, with its thirty riders, was powerful enough to defy him. All the rest paid tribute to Corb.

  Frank listened, and he was sobered by what he heard. He was afraid to tell Red now what he had planned for tonight, for fear Red would try to stop him. And right now Frank didn’t want to be stopped.

  Frank asked one question. “Does Corb run a lot of horses, Red?”

  “That’s right,” Red said and looked over toward Frank. But Frank said no more. They rode north until Red picked up a certain creek, and then they turned west. Presently a pin point of light showed ahead, and Red said, “We better go careful now.”

  They stopped under the black shade of two cottonwoods some seventy yards from the house, and Frank studied the layout in silence. The house was a two-story affair with a light in only the ground-floor corner room. Beyond the house the dark shape of a barn and sheds bulked large and black against the lighter horizon, for there were no trees close to the house. A man came to the door, a dipper in his hand, spat out a mouthful of water into the night and called over his shoulder, “Don’t you believe the damn liar, Scott,” and laughed and disappeared from sight. There was utter silence then.

  Frank stirred and said, “Bring your rope, Red,” and started for the house, Red behind him. Ten yards from it Frank paused again. The ground-floor windows were uncurtained, and through them they could see a segment of a table and two men, both with cards in their hands. Corb was one, and he had his face to the hallway door.

  Frank moved on ahead and stepped noiselessly through the open doorway into the bare hallway. A rectangle of naked plaster was lighted by the glare of the unshaded lamp in the next room, and now the talk was audible. It was careless, murmurous talk of idle card playing and it droned on uninterrupted.

  Frank slipped his Colt .45 out his waistband and, once it was leveled, stepped into the room doorway, squinting against the sudden glare of light. He said nothing, waiting, noting another door in the side wall and the two windows.

  The talk ribboned on above the muffled slap of cards being dealt. It was fifteen seconds before Corb reached into a pocket of his unbuttoned vest for a match and lighted his short stub of cigar. The cigar was so short that he tilted his head back, and then he saw Frank.

  His match, almost touching the cigar, remained motionless, and his black baleful eyes studied Frank curiously, and they were unafraid. The talk welled up around him, and still Corb held the match.

  When it burned him he dropped it on the table, and it still flamed. The player next to Corb slapped it out and looked up at Corb and then swiveled his head to see Frank. The others saw him, one by one, and each turned to look at the doorway, and the talking from these five men died.

  “Keep your hands on the table,” Frank said gently. “All right, Red. Take their guns.”
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  Corb’s wicked little eyes marked Red as he stepped past Frank. Then he looked at Frank until Red had taken every gun and methodically thrown it through the window into the yard outside.

  Corb said then, in a curious impatient voice, “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m after my corn, Corb.”

  “Corn?”

  “I tried in Reno, but I reckon I leased my land from the wrong man,” Frank said gently. “Barnes offered me some, but he changed his mind. So I thought I’d borrow from a neighbor. You run horses. You have some.”

  Corb’s riders quit looking at Frank and turned to regard Corb. He said to Frank, “Take it.”

  “I aim to,” Frank murmured. “But I’m no hand at freightin’. Neither is Shibe.”

  Corb’s attention narrowed. “Rob,” he said, “go harness a team and take the spring wagon.”

  One of Corb’s riders shoved his chair back and was rising.

  Frank said sharply, “Sit down!” and the man sank down in his chair.

  Frank went on, watching Corb. “You peddle the corn in this country, Corb. Maybe you better freight it for us too.”

  As his words died he heard a door slam somewhere in the rear of the house, and he looked at Red. “Get down,” he said, and he backed against the wall to one side of the door. Red squatted on the floor, hidden from the door by the table.

  Every man in the room was watching Frank, waiting to see if this was the time to break. Their faces were hard and angry and wickedly calculating.

  The footsteps swung into the hall, and the man called Rob shoved his chair back imperceptibly, gathering his feet under him. Frank smiled derisively then and moved his gun to point directly at him, and the man subsided, his lips moving. The steps were coming down the hall now and were almost at the doorway, and now they were at the doorway when Corb yelled, “Watch out, Steve!”

  Almost in the same second the man in the hall must have realized by the attitude of the others that there was someone in the room. He lunged for the hall door to the yard, and at the same moment Red dove headfirst through the window. He landed with a great grunt of expelled breath and immediately shot, and now the men at the table all lunged to their feet and were held there by Frank’s gun. Almost into the corner now, Frank listened.

  He heard the man dodge back into the hall after Red’s shot, and then there was a whisper of cloth scraping plaster. Frank, gun still trained on the players, moved swiftly toward the door along the wall.

  The rider lunged into the room, already shooting toward Frank’s corner before he was fully into the room. Frank raised his gun and lashed out at the man’s head and hit him, and that was the signal for the whole room to explode. The rider nearest Frank leaped for him, but Frank stepped in behind the falling rider, the other man’s hands ripping his shirt sleeve. Corb lunged for the side door, and Frank flipped a shot toward him that chipped the doorframe by Corb’s head. But Corb went on through, and then Frank wheeled back into the hall doorway and pulled his gun close to his belly. He said in a wild voice, over the racket of the room, “Sit down!” and slashed a man full in the face who was coming toward him. The man went back on his heels, lost his balance, crashed into the flimsy table and took it with him to the floor, and Frank shot once into the ceiling.

  Then a kind of uneasy silence settled on the room as these men froze at the sound of the shot. And above the noise Frank heard a savage thrashing in the other room that Corb had gone into. In a moment Corb hurtled through the door, tripped on an overturned chair and sat down abruptly against the wall. His mouth ribboned a faint stream of blood.

  Red Shibe loomed in the doorway, licking his knuckles, a gun in his other hand. He had anticipated Corb’s move and had gone around to the back door.

  The sight of him broke their fight. The downed man came up off the floor, cursing, as Frank took his foot off the man’s hand that had been tyring to grab the loose gun. Frank shoved him away, picked up the gun and said to Corb, “Stand up, Corb.”

  Corb’s black eyes were burning with hatred as he came slowly to his feet. “I’ll run you out of the country, Christian,” he said. “I’ll burn you out and I’ll run you out and then I’ll kill you!”

  “Step over here,” Frank said.

  Corb shuffled over to face him. Frank said, “Tie up the rest, Red, all except one.”

  Red shoved a man over beside Corb, and then he sat all the others in chairs, back to back, and with the two ropes tied them all together in their seats.

  Then Frank prodded Corb and the other man into the kitchen and picked up the lantern, and they tramped out to the barn. Red took a lantern and the other man and left for the corral. By the lantern light Corb, his spare movements swift and savage, tugged and heaved at the spring wagon until it was near the cornbin in the barn. And under Frank’s gun, as Frank leaned against the stall, Corb loaded sacked corn into the wagon.

  Presently the other rider, prodded by Red, brought the team into the barn and it was harnessed to the wagon, and then Red and Frank climbed onto the high-piled sacks in the wagon bed and Corb and his rider climbed into the seat.

  “Did you drive off their horses?” Frank asked, and when Red nodded Frank gave the word to start. When they were past the house and beyond rifleshot Red kicked the rider off the seat, and Frank moved down beside Corb while Red ducked off into the night for their horses.

  Corb was still breathing hard from his exertion, and he did not speak. Frank said pleasantly, “That’s the way I like to see a man work,” and still Corb didn’t talk.

  Presently Red caught up with them, and Frank took his horse, and they sided the wagon through the long night on the trip back to the shack.

  It was breaking daylight when they pulled into the shack, and Frank ordered Corb to unload the corn by the corral.

  The crew was awake and breakfasted, and they filed out to silently watch Corb’s labor. Nobody offered to give a hand. They ringed the wagon, watching Corb’s lean spare body sweating away at wrestling the feed sacks. Otey looked once at Frank, and his eyes were somber.

  Beach Freeman said presently, “He’s done this before. You can tell.”

  Corb looked balefully at him, memorizing the face, and Red grinned. “You’re dead,” he said to Beach.

  Corb’s face flushed under the taunt, but he went on with his unloading, working hard and steadily. When the wagon was empty Frank stepped up and said, “How much is it, Corb?”

  Corb’s eyes were hot with hatred. He said, “It’s a favor. I’ll expect one from you someday.”

  Frank counted out some money and tendered it to Corb, and Corb just looked at him. Frank threw it in the wagon, and Corb regarded him with a level glance.

  “Nobody’s told you, Christian, but you can’t get away with this.”

  “You told us last night,” Red drawled. “We did, didn’t we?”

  Corb stooped to pick up the reins and stood wearily in the wagon bed. He spat contemptuously over the side and then glanced at Frank again. “You made one mistake tonight, Christian.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You should have shot me. Someday you’ll be almighty sorry you didn’t.”

  He cut the team viciously across the rumps with the reins’ ends, and they jerked the wagon into motion. Beach Freeman leaped out of the way, cursing, and Corb didn’t bother to look at him. He turned the wagon in the yard and headed north again, and there was something magnificent about his anger.

  Afterward Otey looked at Frank and then at the corn. He touched a sack with his boot toe. “What you want done with this?” he asked.

  “Leave it there,” Frank said. “Before we can feed a sack of it they’ll be back for it, and us too.”

  Otey regarded him with wry disapproval. “You knew that, Frank. What in hell’s got into you?”

  “Easy, Otey,” Frank warned.

  Otey walked off, and the crew scattered, all except Red. He was leaning against the corral fence, rolling a smoke, not looking at Frank. Frank walked
over and squatted beside the corral and waited for Red to say something, and Red didn’t.

  Frank said quietly, “All right, Red. Go ahead and say it.”

  “All right. If I’d known what you aimed to do, I wouldn’t have gone with you.”

  Frank’s lean face colored deeply, and he and Red looked at each other.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Red said. “I meant I would have been too damn scared to do it.”

  Frank’s face relaxed until it almost smiled. He studied the distant creek, his eyes musing, the anger gone. Presently he said, “That was a fool trick.”

  “Sure it was,” Red agreed.

  “He’ll burn us out by sunset.”

  “You knew that,” Red said. He wiped a match alight on his levis and drew in a lungful of smoke, and then he said softly, “I know what it does to you, kid. I’m for you, all down the line. Only don’t look back. Just stay mad.” He walked away toward the house, and Frank was satisfied. In an obscure way this was the reply to Luvie Barnes.

  Chapter VI

  Frank had made his rash move, and now he had to cover up as best he could. The remuda got a feed of corn during the morning, while Otey and Red, not speaking to each other, repaired the wagon and loaded it with the rest of the grub. It was impossible to defend the shack now against an attack from either the Circle R or Corb, as they must certainly do within another twenty-four hours. Seven men, trapped in a burning shack, were useless. But seven men able to move, fluid in their attack, elusive in their defense, could fight a long time, and Frank was long since reconciled to that way.

  Frank was leaving the house, an armload of abandoned Circle R rifles in his arms, when he looked across the creek. On the downgrade of the opposite slope a line of riders was heading his way. He paused, puzzled at the similarity of most of the riders, and then he knew that this was a platoon of army cavalry troopers in uniform.

  He went out to the wagon and had the rifles stowed away when he heard Red say, “We got company.”

  They waited by the wagon as the troopers, under a lieutenant, received the order to halt in the yard. With the soldiers was a lone Cheyenne Indian, wearing only a breechclout shirt, and a member of the Indian police, unmistakable in his blue coat with the five-pointed nickel star on the breast of it.