Kent gulped, blinked, and backed away from the anger blazing in her eyes. On the point of a discourteous retort, he glanced at Cousins. Here again he found eyes that held no friendship, only suspicion, mistrust.
Day by day the breach between Kent and Cousins had widened. And the loud-mouthed King never let slip an opportunity to slur the missing Montana, whom Cousins, and now Sally, were quick to defend.
“Montana isn’t to blame for this,” Cousins said hotly. “He’s taken care of this kid and loved him. That’s more than Smokey did. Let me tell you something, Kent. Smokey never carried this boy across Piney in high water with a busted arm!”
“He did if he said so,” Kent flared, yet not before he had cast a glance at Sally and modulated his voice.
“He didn’t,” Cousins disagreed stubbornly. “He admits the boy was all right when he took to the water. Says the youngster got frightened, pulled them both off his horse and hit his head on a log. But don’t forget, we found Montana’s horse back yonder by the ford that day.”
“What does that prove?” Kent growled.
“That horse had been in the water, too. And we found Montana’s boots and cartridge belt tied to the saddle string—together with Little Montana’s boots. That boy rode Montana’s horse across that river!”
“You haven’t any way of proving it unless the kid can remember,” Kent snarled. “Of course, you’d believe anything if it was against Smokey; just because you hate him you are trying to—”
“You’re right; I do hate him!” Cousins interrupted. “But that has nothing to do with it. Whatever happened to this little shaver happened right up there on this side of the ford and had something to do with the other Montana. You’re so set on clearing Tremaine, I’ll just tell you something else that ought to open your eyes. Smokey said he bandaged his own broken arm. But it was bandaged with strips of Montana’s shirt!”
“You nor nobody else can turn me against Smokey,” Kent snapped. “He found this kid and risked his life to save him in the flood.”
“You two settle that someplace else,” Sally ordered curtly before the reluctant doctor could voice a protest. “Having quiet in here is the most important thing.”
“Yes,” the doctor chimed in, “our problem now is getting the boy up and—”
“Are you plumb sure he won’t—” Cousins began, his fear for the boy again paramount.
“We are never sure of anything,” the doctor told him. “But from the clearness of his eyes and the way he has rallied I believe he will suffer no more than a loss or an impairment of memory which, as I have said, may be only temporary.”
“But isn’t there something we can do to bring him out of that?” Cousins persisted.
“He has had a terrific shock. There have been cases where another shock has brought about complete recovery. If we could locate Montana, for instance, or even his body.”
“I’m leaving no stone unturned until I do,” Cousins declared. “I liked that jasper and—” His eyes roved to the boy whose big gray eyes were now regarding them curiously. “I love this little kid. Are you sure there isn’t something we can do, Doc? Somewhere I can take him?”
The doctor shook his head.
“Rest, quiet, and the assistance of Miss Sally, who not only has proved herself an exceptional nurse, but who, it is plain to see, loves the youngster as you do yourself, are the only things. With her woman’s touch and care she can do more for him now than any of us. Of course, there is always the chance that some other shock will clear up this condition as quickly as it came.” Taking the sullen Kent by the arm he pulled him outside, leaving Cousins to resume his endless pacing.
Days passed thus; hot, sultry days of waiting, hoping.
August gave way to September. The crispness of fall crept into the air. The haze of purple deepened over the sagebrush fiats of Thunder Basin. The seared prairie carpet grew brown and drab and gray. Patches of red and yellow sprinkled the green of aspens and cottonwoods.
Under the skillful and loving care of Sally Hope, who was with him constantly, Little Montana gained strength. In time he was up and about, visibly none the worse for his experience. His physical strength was greater than ever before, his endurance marvelous. His eyes were bright and clear, gave no indication of what he had gone through. Only when Cousins questioned him concerning Montana and what had occurred at the ford, did a puzzled light flare into their depths, a puzzled light that showed plainly Little Montana had no recollection of the harrowing experiences that had resulted in his injury. Cousins strove to help him remember, reconstructed imaginary scenes, pleaded, cast about desperately for something that might provide a shock great enough to restore the boy’s impaired faculties. To no avail. The past had been completely erased from Little Montana’s mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE RECKONING
Then came the finals in the Diamond A rodeo.
Cousins, who now had no thought for anything except Little Montana, was for calling off the exhibition. But Smokey was loud in his demand that it be held on schedule. And, through the insistence of Kent, he won his point.
The same crowds dotted the hillsides of the natural amphitheater. Smokey, his arm done in splints, even insisted on riding. At first Cousins, to the anger of Kent, had refused to allow him to do so, reluctant, some thought, to let the Diamond A foreman out of his sight for a moment. But finally he had consented. And Smokey rode, hampered by his broken arm and heavy cartridge belt with its two thonged-down forty-fives he always carried now.
The fact that the crippled Tremaine was nervy enough to ride won favor with the crowd. When he came out on Crow Bar, he was given a tremendous roar of applause. And, for an injured man, he made a spectacular ride, raking the pitching brute from shoulder to rump and lacing its sides with his rowels. But before they could pick him up the pain in his arm overcame him. Crow Bar won the battle, then went trotting riderless across the field, empty stirrups flapping, hackamore rope flying.
The doctor urged the worried Cousins to attend the rodeo. At first the old cowman had refused, reluctant to leave Little Montana, to whom, along with Sally, he had become a constant companion.
“Why not take the youngster with you?” the doctor suggested. “The color and excitement, now that he is fit physically, might do him good.”
Cousins’s seamed and wrinkled face brightened. Ordering the buckboard, he drove Little Montana, together with Sally and the doctor, to the rodeo grounds.
“Chuck Wagner, the second rider in the finals, coming out of Chute Number Four on Dirty Cow!” bellowed the announcer just as the four reached the grounds and went into the judges’ stand, where Kent already was seated. Making the boy comfortable in a seat between them, Cousins and Sally watched Wagner come out, while Little Montana gazed off across the field, obviously more struck with the thunderous cheers, the blare of the brass band, and the color than with the pitching contest.
Unlike Tremaine—whom they had carried out of the bowl to revive with water beside the chutes—Wagner, a T6 puncher, loudly praised by Hartzell who swaggered about with a new and surprising air of arrogance, managed to withstand the sledge-hammer assaults of his wild-eyed bronc. But his poor exhibition of riding stamped him as only a pretender in the championship class. After the pick-up he came limping back, a champion for lack of a better one, but nevertheless a sadly disillusioned bronc twister.
The announcer, directly beside Little Montana, arose.
“That ladies and gents, ends the finals for a whirl at the world championship at Cheyenne next summer,” he shouted through a megaphone. “I reckon Chuck Wagner will be the lucky boy. There should have been three riders in the finals. But we all know that Montana won’t be—” Cousins leaped to his feet.
“But folks,” he cut in on the announcer, while Kent glared savagely. “Let’s give Montana a silent tribute. He made a good ride in this bowl to enter
the finals. The least we can do is to give him a—Hats off, folks, for Montana, one of the squarest cowboys who ever bucked a snake-eye down on Tongue River!”
A pulsing hush fell like a stroke on the field. The great crowd came up with bowed heads. As they stood in silence two riders dashed onto the field, their curveting horses bathed in lather. One held his hat aloft. The other—It was Sally who recognized them, started up, screaming.
“Montana! Whitey!”
The crowd caught the name. A deafening cheer went up. Men yelled themselves hoarse. The group in the judges’ stand went wild. All but King Kent who only stared with a sneer on his lips. Men and women alike rushed toward the cowboys only to stop in blank amazement. For the newcomers were alike as two peas.
Then suddenly one roweled his horse in the direction of the chutes, threw himself from the saddle. A man lurched to his feet, whirled to face him. Smokey Tremaine!
Minutes passed—poignant, nerve-racking minutes. The two eyed each other without moving. A lane opened between them. From the corner of his eyes, which burned into Tremaine’s, Montana could see the chalk-white faces of the crowd about them. Whitey, his pal, who had roweled forward, now sat his horse directly beside him.
And Hartzell was on the fringe of the mob, watching every move with hawkish eyes.
With a savage shake of the head Tremaine threw off the trickles of sweat that suddenly had started coursing across his leathery cheeks. Montana smiled, a cold, lifeless smile, but remained motionless as the stones on the hillsides that glared like upturned mirrors in the sun.
An eddy of dust spiraled across the field. Sheltered for an instant, with his good hand Tremaine whipped a forty-five from its holster, fired.
The smile froze on Montana’s whitened lips. He advanced a step, a Colt now dangling in his own hand. On he came, body taut, muscles rigid, bulging—a grim-visaged Montana with hard lines at the corners of his mouth, a deadly shafted light in his eyes once cool blue-gray. Seconds dragged—unbearable seconds filled with dread expectancy. Less steady nerves strummed, wavered under the strain.
Tremaine stood it as long as he could. Then he fired again, wildly, nervously. The bullet droned harmlessly past Montana’s ear. On he came, step by step.
Again Tremaine’s forty-five belched flame. Montana swayed. Tense watchers waited for him to go down. Sally, her face ashen, stifled a scream, clung frantically to Cousins’s shoulder.
“Stop them!” she managed to get out in a tiny voice.
Out from the crowd burst the sheriff, who apparently had just arrived. He sized up the thing with a precision born of other desperate encounters.
“Stop!” he commanded, going for his own gun. “There’ll be no killing here!”
“Keep your bill out of this, walloper!” It was Whitey Hope who spoke; spoke in a tone that crackled like ice. “You had your chance to clean up this mess; now the Buzzard is doing it, like I warned you we would.” The sheriff blinked, backed off. Whitey sat his horse, forty-five on his hip.
But if Montana even heard he gave no sign. Not so Smokey Tremaine. Obviously relieved by the break in the dead tension, he holstered his gun.
Then Montana was before him. The Diamond A foreman was staring into the barrel of a forty-five. A hoarse cry escaped him. He started backing away.
Cousins, with Sally still clinging to his arm, bolted down from the judges’ stand.
“I told you so, Kent,” the rancher was bawling. “I knew Smokey was lying; his arm was bandaged with Montana’s shirt. You can’t fool me. I’d have staked my life on that Montana jasper. Down him, Montana!”
But Montana’s gaze was all for the man before him. With a snort of disgust, he lowered his Colt, leaped forward and sent Tremaine reeling backward with a stunning blow to the chin.
“You’re not worth killing, you crippled coyote,” he said softly. “Hell is too full of your breed now. Take off those gloves!”
The light of a trapped beast flared into Smokey’s eyes. Montana’s gun jerked up, set him to stripping off the gloves. Montana seized them. Two fingers of the right glove were stuffed! The placard in Mother Hope’s Café the day of his arrival flashed before Montana’s vision. The reward for—The sheriff, too, saw it. He started forward.
“Stay back!” Whitey’s voice broke the gripping stillness. “It’s our party, feller.”
“The lousy coyote kicked me into Piney to drown,” Montana was saying. “Shot me from ambush, kidnapped my buddy. I told you there’d be a reckoning, Tremaine.”
Plainly fearful to cross the deadly serious pair, the sheriff halted. With maddening slowness Montana’s finger contracted on the trigger. Cousins stopped, rooted in his tracks. Sally screamed, the only sound, save the hoarse rasping of Tremaine’s breath, to break the piercing stillness-stillness tangible, that clogged men’s throats, made breathing difficult.
“But it’s Three-Finger DeHaven!” the sheriff roared as the gloves came away to reveal two fingers missing from Smokey’s right hand. “Montana—you’ve got Three-finger DeHaven!” Montana withered him with a glance.
“You could’ve caught him long ago, if you’d had any brains, or wanted to,” he jerked out. “Him always wearing gloves—I was suspicious the day I came, saw that reward notice. Then a stunt he pulled in the line camp, when I caught him with my buddy. He packed two guns, but he grabbed for his left first—And that night Masterson was killed. His left gun was smoking. He shot at me just now with his left. Of course, his right arm is crippled. But that right gun is just a bluff. He can’t use it. He’s a two-gun man who shoots with his left—because his right trigger finger is missing.”
“Smokey Tremaine—Three-Finger DeHaven?” Cousins gulped incredulously. “Why DeHaven is the worst rustler—Could he have—”
“Sure, he could.” Montana cut him short. “And he did. Smokey wrote you that warning. I thought it was written with the left hand.”
“And Smokey is—” Cousins began.
“The rustler who has been stealing you ragged for years. There isn’t any gang, only Three-Finger DeHaven and—That’s why you never got sight of rustlers. And this sneaking coyote is the jasper who plugged you tried, to down me, figuring I was really a detective.”
“Figuring you were really a detective?” Cousins cried. “Aren’t you?”
“I tried to tell you the day we met here,” Montana grunted. “And again at the barn. You wouldn’t give me a chance.”
Cousins whirled on the sheriff.
“Isn’t he the detective you sent when I wrote that letter?” he demanded.
“What letter?” the sheriff asked blankly.
“Did I pick the wrong jasper?” Cousins gasped. “And he turned out to be the best detective of them all.” He wheeled savagely on Tremaine, “So the sheriff never got my letter asking for a detective? You’re the jasper I told to mail it. That’s how you found out I’d asked for a detective? Why you wrote that warning. Tried to plug me, at the barn that night, like you threatened. I suspected you. I was going to tell Montana I suspected you when you plugged me.” He turned back to Montana. “If you aren’t a detective, who in the devil are you?”
“The man who killed Masterson!” the sheriff yelled. “I’ve got a warrant—”
“You’ve got nothing,” Whitey snarled. “But you will have if you open that yawp of yours again.”
“I came down here from the Yellowstone to bring you a letter, Cousins,” Montana was saying calmly. From his pocket he fished the badly crumpled envelope. “I’ve been trying to give it to you for a year. Seemed like something always came up. Reckon it’s pretty badly water-soaked now. But mebbeso you can read it.”
“Who’s it from?” Cousins faltered.
“From my uncle, Nat Ellis. Know him?”
“Know him?” Cousins shouted. “I’ll say I know him. He used to be my foreman. He disappeared about the time—” Wit
h palsied fingers he tore open the envelope. As he read the letter a spreading pallor whitened his cheeks. “God,” he breathed hoarsely. “He—” Crumpling the letter in his hands, he whirled. “You lousy—” he hurled at Tremaine. “Nat Ellis has squealed. After all these years. You—Stop!” as Smokey started for his horse. “Stop him, sheriff, or I will!”
“I’ll take care of him, Al!” the sheriff shouted. “Stop, Three-Finger DeHaven!”
Smokey lurched about with an oath. He started for his gun. A forty-five cracked. Smokey’s knees sagged. He went down in his tracks.
“Stay back! Stay back!” It was Whitey Hope warning the crowd away while he blew the smoke from his hot-barreled forty-five. “He isn’t hurt bad. I just winged him. A potshot for luck!”
The sheriff blinked up at the cool puncher.
“Call a wagon,” he managed to get out.
The onlookers halted, appalled by the swift-moving tragedy. A buckboard rolled onto the field. Smokey was lifted up, placed inside. The sheriff climbed up beside the driver and the team lunged away toward town.
“We don’t know what this is all about, but if Al Cousins says it’s all right, you can bet your bottom dollar it is,” came the voice of the announcer, who had seized upon the moment of calm to reassure the panicky crowd. “I reckon but for it everybody would be happy. But, ladies and gents, let’s forget it and make a great announcement. Montana, coming out of Chute Number One on—We didn’t figure on you, cowboy. It will have to be Foghorn again. Will you ride?”
“You tell the world I’ll ride,” Montana shouted. “Bring on that horse.”
“Montana coming out of Chute Number One on Foghorn!” the announcer roared.
At the words, Little Montana, who had remained passively watching the affair from the stands, jerked with muscular violence. A cry escaped his whitened lips. Montana, striding toward the chutes did not hear it. But Sally did—and Cousins. They came back to the stands on the run. The girl seized hold of the boy. The doctor, too, was on his feet.
The 7th Western Novel Page 22
