by Lauran Paine
THE MAN
WITHOUT A GUN
THE MAN
WITHOUT A GUN
A Western Duo
LAURAN PAINE
“The Crescent Scar” © 1953 by Columbia Publications, Inc. © renewed 1981 by Lauran Paine. © 2010 by Mona Paine for restored material.
E-book published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6119-3
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6118-6
Fiction/Westerns
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
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The Crescent Scar
I
Barbed wire was just beginning to show up on the range. In fact, the first that most of the riders ever saw of it was on each side of the railroad tracks where it came down out of the Tecate Mountains, ran along the smooth, gently undulating Estacado plains, and disappeared away off in the distance where they began the laborious climb over the Mogollons.
That wire was new, and, when the sun shone on it, it sparkled like a thin spider web of silver, four strands high, that rose and fell endlessly as it followed the contours of the great grassy land, coming out of nowhere and going into the vast beyond. There had been the usual amount of squawking from the cow outfits. In the first place, the railroad track was bad enough to cross, but with the wire up there was no way to get the cattle into the oak-studded little hillocks on the far side of the track. The officials of the railroad company had, at first, just shrugged. They claimed that the cattle were always on the tracks, where they either slowed up the schedules or treed the train crews who tried to run them off afoot, and, since the railroad owned all the sections bordering their track, and the cattle actually were trespassing on railroad land anyway, the cattlemen didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
What the railroad said was true enough, except for one thing — the Estacado country was open range land, which meant if a land owner didn’t want someone else’s cattle on his land, he had to fence them out — the cowmen didn’t have to fence them in. And the upshot of the affair was that the cowmen defeated the purpose of the railroad fence by cutting convenient holes in the fences where they’d drive their cattle across the tracks to the other side, when the feed got short. Even this wouldn’t have caused much trouble except that the damned, contrary critters would usually wander back through the fence and bed down on the tracks, lounging and chewing their cuds, oblivious to the huffing, belching iron monsters that howled and steamed and grumbled at them. The leery, profane crew men, who would throw rocks and curse and wave their arms, but who wouldn’t get too close because those cattle would take after a man afoot quicker than they’d chase a dog, were thoroughly disliked.
It was a peculiar state of affairs but, except for the irate name-calling and inconvenience to both factions, it wasn’t a dangerous situation at all. At least, it wasn’t until Sadler Carrel bought out the huge old Garcia holdings, overhauled the run-down ranch, and imported pure-bred Hereford bulls, shorn ones at that, and set up in the cow business.
Then things began to happen. The first danger point was when a train was sweating out a bunch of Carrel cows, half Mexican and ornery as they come, with a handsome big, slow, easy-going Hereford bull with them. As usual, the train crew was hurling rocks and cursing, and in general annoying the cattle enough to make them get off the tracks, when four Carrel cowboys rode up. Without a word one of the riders shot his .45 and the bullet kicked up dust in front of the train crew. That started it.
When the train pulled into Isabelita, the crew quit to a man. Putting up with the cattle was nerve-wracking enough, but for what they got paid they weren’t going to get shot at, too. The railroad company sent two high-powered executives out to call on Sadler Carrel. They found him basking in the late morning sun in front of his new pole corrals with two of his lean-hipped, wide-shouldered riders, discussing a little band of cattle inside the pens.
Sadler Carrel wasn’t very tall, possibly not over five feet nine inches, but he had the massive upper arms and the slightly sloping shoulders of a powerful man. His face was pleasant without being distinguished and he was polite to the executives. He even asked them to come up to the house where his Chinese cook would make them a pot of coffee. He smiled easily and told them that was the best he could offer because he was a bachelor.
“Mister Carrel, some of your men fired on one of our train crews.”
Sadler looked quizzically at the red-faced executive and his eyes were wide and guileless. “Well, I sort of figured we could discuss this in a more leisurely manner. You know...like gentlemen.” His voice was quietly good-natured.
“When that crew got to Isabelita, they all quit.” The railroad company men were showing just the right amount of indignation. Not filled with wrath or appeasing, just a little of both. Carrel appreciated their attitude as he thumbed his black Stetson to the back of his head and hunkered down with his back against a warm green pole of the corral.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen, that you lost your crew, but on the other hand I don’t want my cattle stoned and chased.”
One of the visitors grunted wryly. “From what I hear, the chasing is the other way around.” The man hadn’t spoken before. He was Edward Borein, a member of the board of directors and a very wealthy as well as influential man on the line. He lived in Isabelita, a widower, with a half-grown son and a fully grown daughter. “Carrel, this foolishness has got to stop. Our fences are constantly being cut, our schedules are delayed so that shippers lose money, which, in turn costs us money, and we’ve come to you for assurance that there will be no repetitions of this latest outrage.” He wagged his head. “Remember, Carrel, those men of yours were trespassing on railroad company property when they rode up.”
Sadler Carrel looked away from Borein. He began methodically to roll a cigarette and the silence was awkward to the railroad men. It was a full minute before he answered, then his cigarette was sending up a thin, blue spiral of smoke above his narrowed, expressionless eyes, as he thoughtfully looked over the visitors. His eyes finally settled on the bulkier of the two men. He recognized him as the leader and spokesman.
“What’s your name?”
“Edward Borein. I’m....”
Carrel shook his head peremptorily and interrupted. “I don’t care who you are, Mister Borein. All I am interested in is who I’ve got to do business with.” Again there was a pause and the trickle of smoke spiraled lazily upward. “Listen, Mister Borein, there’s been trouble ever since you put up that damned fence.”
Borein protested: “But no shooting.”
Carrel nodded his head slightly. “But no shooting,” he repeated. “Not up to now, anyway.” He shifted a little on his boot heels and the musical tinkle of his silver-inlaid spurs rang softly with his movement. “The other ranchers hereabouts have been content to cuss at you from a distance and cut your fences. That’s not my way of doing business. I won’t cut your fences, Mister Borein, but if you don’t build crossings for my cattle and quit chousing them with rocks, I’ll tear down a mile of your damned fence, posts and all, and pile it on your tracks!”
When Carrel finished speaking, there was a long, tense silence. Borein and his companion were looking steadily into the placid blue eyes of Sadler Carrel and the indifferent, casual slant of the rancher’s jaw jutted just a tiny b
it toward them. Borein was angry. Carrel was a newcomer in the country and he was making fight talk right from the start. He frowned and held himself in tightly.
“Mister Carrel, if you touch that fence, or trespass on the sections of railroad land that border the tracks, or run your cattle over there, I’ll swear out a warrant for your arrest.”
Carrel came up off his boot heels and leaned languidly against the corral, his face still calm and placid and his eyes still narrowed against the sunlight and locked with Borein’s. He shrugged.
“All right, Borein. You’re borrowing trouble and I’m here to see that you get it.”
Carrel’s voice hadn’t risen but even so Borein’s companion, a lesser employee of the railroad company, saw something in the build of the two men that was like granite striking flint. They were both ruthless and uncompromising and hard as nails in their own ways, and neither would surrender to the other. He cleared his throat embarrassedly and forced a weak, faint grin.
“Gentlemen, there must be a way we can work this out without acting like school boys.” He noticed that the two men were still glaring at one another as though they hadn’t heard him. He tried another tack. “Suppose we make a deal whereby the ranchers put gates in the fence and use the tracks for crossing only when they know there’ll be no trains along?”
Carrel smiled softly at the speaker. “That’d be all right except for one thing. If the cattle can’t get back and forth, they can’t get to water.”
Borein hunched his massive shoulders. He was a half a head taller than Carrel. “That’s the rancher’s look-out, not the railroad company’s.”
Carrel’s smile slid off his face and the old watchful, lazy, blank look was there again. “Exactly. It’s our look-out that our stock get water, and no damned railroad track’s going to keep us from getting it, either.”
Borein’s anger returned in a rush. He glared at Carrel with a menacing gesture. “Carrel, we can bust you wide open, and, if you persist in fighting us, by God we’ll do it!” Before Carrel could answer, Borein swung toward the livery rig, jerked his head savagely at his companion, and they spun out of the yard like two straight-backed ministers who had just turned up a rock and found the devil squatting there.
Carrel watched them go with a speculative glance. An older cowboy strode up beside him and spoke with a lowered voice.
“Dammit, Kid, we don’t care about their lousy fence. Take it easy. Hell, we come up here to get lost, not get shoved into the limelight.”
Carrel looked at the older man’s worried frown and beyond, where his other riders were milling around out of earshot. He nodded slowly.
“That’s right, Sam, but, dammit, we got to make a go of this place if we’re going to live like respectable folks, and that damned fence could keep us from the very thing we’re after...respectability.”
The graying cowboy nodded his grizzled head dolefully. “Well, maybe. But you be careful. They’s only you an’ me left now, an’ all the cached loot in the world won’t save us if we get into a legal tangle with no railroad company.”
II
Carrel’s tangle with Borein spread like wildfire. Sadler and his foreman, hulking, gaunt Sam Froman, who he’d brought with him to the Garcia holdings when he bought them, were surprised. They hadn’t mentioned it to a soul. Sam asked Lem Evart, the rancher who adjoined them to the north, where he got the story. Lem sat on his wiry gray horse and scratched his ribs with enthusiasm as he answered.
“That’s why I rode over, Sam. If they’s goin’ to be trouble, me an’ Everett Lister want to carry our share. After all, that danged fence is our sore spot, too.”
Sam frowned heavily. “Yeah, that’s fine, Lem, but where did you hear about Sadler’s trouble with Borein?”
Lem Evart lounged in his scuffed old saddle. “I heard it from Everett an’ I believe he told me that Ruth told his girl.”
Sam scratched his head in puzzlement. “Who in hell’s Ruth?”
Lem laughed softly and hooked one leg around the saddle horn and reached for the makings. “Well, sir, you’re still new around here, Sam. Look, Carrel an’ Lister an me are the only land owners on the Estacado, right?”
Sam nodded. He knew that all right. The entire plains belonged to Evart, Lister, and Carrel, except, of course, for the railroad sections.
Lem broke his match with work-blunted fingers and sucked smoke into his lungs. “All right, now then Everett Lister’s got a daughter named Betty an’ she’s a close friend of Borein’s girl, Ruth, an’ so, when Ruth told Betty about what her father told her, then of course Betty told Everett an’ he told me an’ now I’m tellin’ you. That’s simple enough, ain’t it?”
Sam looked up in bewilderment. “Yeah, that’s plumb simple. The only trouble is, Lem, you lost me on the second curve, about two Ruths an’ a Betty ago.”
When the laughter had subsided, Lem Evart reiterated his intention to contribute, along with Lister and Carrel, whatever was needed to battle the railroad fence. Sam passed this information along to Carrel, when the latter got back from Isabelita.
“That’s good, Sam, because I think things are about to open up.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“The boys and I found one of our imported bulls dead on the right of way.”
Sam’s profanity was loud, lewd, and long. “What killed him?”
“A bullet.”
Sam was off again. After he had subsided a little, he became garrulous. “Damn! We paid a hell of a price for them fancy bulls. If one dies from grass poisonin’, that’s bad enough, but to get one shot, by God, that’s murder!” His small, angry eyes drilled into Carrel. “Who done it, Kid? You got any idea?”
Sadler shrugged. “An idea, Sam, but that’s all.”
Sam nodded vigorously. “That’s good enough for me. You jus’ tell me who you figger done it an I’ll....”
Carrel broke out into laughter that stopped Sam in mid-sentence. “You damned fool, Sam.”
“Huh?”
“Why, hell, it was only a few days ago that you were giving me hell for getting in the limelight, and now here you go, wanting to go off and salivate someone for killing a bull.”
Sam scowled quickly. “Yeah, but this here is different. Our bulls cost a lot of money. They’re better’n any bulls in the country. Hell, they’re....”
Carrel laughed again. “Hell, a man’d think you were related to ’em.”
Sam saw the humor and smiled wryly. “Well, for that matter, dammit, I got kinsmen who ain’t nowhere near as well-bred as them bulls are.”
Carrel smiled. “All right. As long as you and the boys feel that way about it, we’ll hit for Isabelita first thing in the morning and pay Borein a visit.”
“You reckon he done it?”
“No, not him exactly, but I reckon he can reach out and touch the man who did.”
Sam spat into his hands and rubbed them grindingly together. He was nodding grimly when he turned toward the bunkhouse. “All right, Kid. I’ll see you in the mornin’.”
* * * * *
The morning was clear and cool and the fragrance of the sage and dew-laden grass was in the nostrils of the four jogging riders who loped easily toward Isabelita. Sadler Carrel and his lean, capable-looking cowboys were astride after a full night’s sleep and a rich, warm breakfast. The lightness of youth, with its fierceness and foolishness, rode with the men. All except Sam Froman were young men, but that particular day the graying Sam, caught up in the zest and verve of the younger cowboys, was just as reckless as the others.
Sadler reined up on a little bluff overlooking the straggling, wind- and sun-swept town of Isabelita. There was a long, even main street where the railroad men and the ranchers let off steam in the saloons and billiard rooms. There were also several mercantile establishments and two blacksmith shops, but, set apart, a little primly, was a clu
tch of better-class homes that seemed to look down on Isabelita from their slight advantage of a small hummock, with aristocratic contempt and disdain. The musical clamor of a struck anvil floated over the little town and wafted softly, gently up to the men on the bluff. Carrel shook out his reins and the four riders began the descent.
“We’ll go to the depot first. Maybe we’ll find Borein there, somewhere.”
The shimmering twin bands of silver that ran behind the town proper were fronted by a small, yellow and brown building and a jumble of loading chutes off to the left of the depot office. The Carrel cowboys tied up at the corrals and hunkered down as Sam and Carrel walked musically into the depot office.
A railroad clerk, sitting dully beside a clicking little telegraph key, looked up idly. There was boredom and indifference on his hard face. He acknowledged Sadler’s nod with an irritated frown. Sam bristled but Sadler shrugged.
“Who in hell’s that penny-ante character think he is? Why, I’ll....”
“Aw, take it easy, Sam. You’ve seen enough of these railroad men to know they’re all alike.”
Sam grunted and eyed the clerk balefully. “Yeah, but I’ve a way to move ’em out of their tracks.” His face lit up grimly as some recollection flitted through his mind. “Yes, sir. Usually, when I come into one of these here little coops, them railroad fellers fairly jumped up an’ bowed”
Sadler’s eyes wandered casually to Froman’s holstered six-gun. He, too, remembered how differently some trainmen acted when they saw a gun staring owlishly at them over a counter. The clerk finally closed the clicking key and flopped back in his chair. His mildly hostile eyes flicked over the two waiting men.
“Yeah? What ya want?”
Sadler could feel Sam stiffening. He ignored the man’s insulting attitude. “Borein around?”
The little, indifferent eyes squinted in contempt. “I guess you mean Mister Borein, don’t you?”
