The stream’s current increased. It was dropping fast, and suddenly he found himself about to enter a sheer-walled canyon. Climbing his dun out of the water, he followed along the rim for more than an hour as the canyon grew deeper, until the riders were mere dots.
In a clearing atop the mountain, Johnny took his bearings.
To north, south, and east lay the malpais, spotted with trees and brush that concealed the razorlike edges of broken lava. Suppose there was, far out there where the stream flowed, a grassy valley where stolen cattle were held?
Back at the cabin he made his decision. It was time to talk to Bart Gavin. Switching horses he rode back, arriving long after dark. It would take another day to return, but he must see the rancher. “Nobody home,” the cook told him. “All gone to dance. Only Dan, he here.”
Lasker sat up when Johnny walked into the bunkhouse. “Hey, what’s up?” The sleep was gone from his eyes.
“Needed tobacco,” Johnny lied glibly. He sat down. “A dance in town?”
Lasker relaxed. “So that’s it? Kid, you’ll get Lamson sore. You shouldn’t oughta have come in.”
“Aw, why not? Climb into your duds an’ we’ll ride. I want to see Mary Jane.”
Riding into the outskirts, Lasker said, “That’s a staked claim, kid. Better lay off.” Then he added, “He’s a fighter.”
“So’m I. I grew up in lumber camps.”
As they tied their horses, Lasker said again, “Stay away from Mary Jane. She ain’t for you, kid, an’—“
Johnny turned to face him. “What’s-wrong with her?”
Lasker started to speak, then shrugged. “Your funeral.”
Mary Jane squealed excitedly when she saw him. “Why, Johnny! I thought you were way up in the woods. What brought you back?”
“I had a reason.” He liked being mysterious. “You’ll know soon enough.”
During the second dance she kept insisting. “What reason, Johnny? Why did you come back?”
“Secret,” he said. “You’ll know before long.”
“Tell me. I won’t tell anybody.”
“It’s nothing.” He shrugged it off. “Only I found some rustlers.”
“You found them?” Her eyes were bright. “Why, John—!” A big hand fell on his shoulder and he was spun into a hard fist crashing out of nowhere. He started to fall, but the second blow caught and knocked him sprawling.
Johnny’s head was buzzing but he rolled over and got up swiftly. Smoke Lamson, his face hard and angry, swung wickedly, and Johnny clinched. Lamson hurled him to the floor, and before Johnny could scramble to his feet, Smoke rushed in and swung his leg for a kick. Johnny threw himself at Lamson’s legs and they hit the floor in a heap. Coming up fast they walked into each other, punching with both hands. Johnny had the shorter reach but he got inside. He slammed a right to the ribs and Lamson took an involuntary step back. Then Johnny smashed a left to his face and, crouching, hooked a right to the body.
Around them the crowd was yelling and screaming. In the crowd was Mary Jane, her face excited, and nearby another face. That of the fat, sloppy man from the canyon!
Lamson rushed, but, over his momentary shock from the unexpected punch, Johnny was feeling good. Due to the brutally hard labor of the preceding fall and winter he was in fine shape. He was lithe as a panther and rugged as a Texas steer. He ducked suddenly and tackled Lamson. The big man fell hard and got up slowly. Johnny knocked him down. Lamson got up and Johnny threw him with a rolling hip-lock, and when the bigger man tried to get up again, Johnny knocked him down again.
His face bloody, Lamson stayed down. “Awright, kid. You whupped me.”
Johnny backed off and then walked away. Mary Jane was nowhere in sight. Disappointed, he looked around again. Across the room he saw Gavin and his niece. Betty was looking at him, and she was smiling. He started toward them when something nudged his ribs and a cool voice said, “All right, kid, let’s go outside an’ talk.”
“But I—“
“Right now. An’ don’t get any fancy ideas. You wouldn’t be the first man I killed.” The man with the gun in his back was Hoyt, the gun held so it could not be seen. They walked from the hall, and Betty looked after them, bewildered.
The fat rustler was waiting. He had Johnny’s horse and theirs. Johnny moved toward his horse, remembering the pistol he had thrust into the saddlebag and the rifle in the scabbard. He reached for the pommel and a gun barrel came down over his skull. He started to fall, caught a second glancing blow, and dropped into a swirling darkness.
The lurching of the horse over the stones of the creek brought him to consciousness. The feel under his leg told him the rifle was gone. His ankles were tied, and his wrists. Was the pistol still in the saddlebag?
Pain racked his skull, and some time later he passed out again, coming out of it only when they took him off his horse and shoved him against the cabin wall. He was in a long grassy valley, ringed with malpais, but a valley of thousands of acres.
A third man came from the cabin. Johnny remembered him as cook for one of the roundup outfits, named Freck. “Grub’s on,” Freck said, nodding briefly at Johnny.
They ate in silence. Hoyt watched Johnny without making a point of it. Freck and the fat man ate noisily. “You tell anybody about this place?” Hoyt demanded.
“Maybe,” Johnny said. “I might have. ‘
“Horse comin’,” Hoyt said suddenly. “See wKo it is, Calkins.”
Johnny stiffened. Calkins … Mary Jane’s father. Something died within him. He stared at his food, appetite gone. It had been Mary Jane, then, who told the rustlers he had found the cattle and the hideout. No wonder she had been curious. No wonder they had rushed him out before he could talk to Gavin.
Calkins stood in the door with a Winchester. Turning his head, he said, “It’s the boss.”
A hard, familiar voice called, then footsteps. Johnny saw Dan Lasker step into the door. Lasker’s smile was bleak. “Hello, Johnny. It ain’t good to see you.”
“Never figured you for a rustler.”
“Man can’t get rich at forty a month, Johnny.” He squatted on his heels against the wall. “We need another man.” Lasker lit a smoke. He seemed worried. “You’re here, kid.”
It was a way out and there would be no other. And Lasker wanted him to take it. Actually speaking, there was no choice.
“Are you jokin’?” Johnny’s voice was sarcastic. “Only thing I can’t figure is why you didn’t let me in on it from the start.”
And he lied quietly: “I was figurin’ to moonlight a few cows myself, only I couldn’t find a way out of the country. “
Lasker was pleased. “Good boy, Johnny. As for a way out, we’ve got it.”
Hoyt shoved back from the table. “All I can say is, one wrong move outa this kid, an’ I’ll handle it my own way!”
“All right, Hoyt.” Lasker measured him coolly. “But be double-damned sure you’re right.”
They had over four hundred stolen cattle and were ready for a drive. But they did not return Johnny’s guns. Nor did he make as much as a move toward his saddlebags.
Calkins came in midway of the following afternoon. He was puffing and excited. “Rider comin’. An’ it’s that young niece of Gavin’s!”
Hoyt got up swiftly. “Dan, I don’t like it!”
Freck walked to the door and waited there, watching her come. “What difference does it make? She’s here, an’ she ain’t goin’ back. Nobody ever found this place, and it’s not likely they have now.”
“What I want to know,” Hoyt said bitterly, “is how she found it.”
“Probably followed the kid. “ Lasker was uneasy and showed it. “She’s sweet on him.”
Betty Gavin was riding a black mare and she cantered up, smiling. “Hello, Johnny! Hello, Dan! Gee, I’m glad I found you! I thought I was lost.”
“How’d you happen to get here?” Lasker inquired. He was puzzled. She seemed entirely unaware that anything was wrong.
But being an eastern girl, how could she know? On the other hand, how could an eastern girl have go$ here?
“Uncle Bart was at the old place on Pocketpoint, so I decided I’d ride over and surprise Johnny. I lost my way, and then I saw some horse tracks, so I followed them. When I got in that canyon I was scared, but there was no way to get out, so I kept coming.”
She looked around. “So this is what Eagle’s Nest is like?”
Johnny Garrett was appalled. Calkins was frowning. Hoyt was frankly puzzled, as was Lasker. Yet Lasker looked relieved. He was not a murderer nor a man who would harm a woman, and this offered a way out. If Betty did not know the difference—
She came right up to Johnny, smiling. “My, but you’re a mess!” she said. “Straighten your handkerchief.” She reached up and pulled it around and he felt something sharp against the skin of his neck under the collar. It was a fold of paper. “Are you going to take me back to Pocketpoint?”
“Can’t,” he said. “But maybe Dan will. I’m busy here.” He scratched his neck, palmed the paper, and when an opportunity offered, he got a glimpse of it. The paper was the brown wrapping paper upon which he had worked out his first map of the streams and the probable route into this valley, with his notes.
She had lied then. She had come from Eagle’s Nest following his own map, and she knew exactly where she was! He looked at her in astonishment. How could she be so dool? So utterly innocent?
He began to roll a smoke, thinking this out. Lasker might take her out of here. He could be trusted with a woman, and the others could not. Out of the corners of his eyes, he measured the distance to the saddlebag. No good. They’d kill him before he got it open. Unless … He hesitated. Unless he was very careful about it—
Lasker, Calkins, and Hoyt had moved off to one side and were talking. Betty glanced at Johnny. “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you,” she said, low-voiced.
Freck could hear them, but there were two meanings here.
“Won’t Bart be worried? “
“Yes, he probably will. I”—she looked right at him—“left a note at the cabin.” A note at the line cabin! Then there was a chance!
Suddenly, Freck was speaking. “Hoyt,” he said, “we better look at our hole card. That gal’s got red mud on her boot. Ain’t no place got red mud but around the cabin at Eagle’s Nest.”
Johnny felt his mouth go dry. He saw Betty’s face change color, and he said quietly, “You don’t know what you’re sayin’, Freck. There’s red mud behind the cabin at Pocketpoint.”
Hoyt looked at Calkins. “Is there? You been there?”
“I been there. Dogged if I can recall!”
Hoyt’s eyes were suddenly hard. He turned a little so his lank body was toward Lasker. Almost instinctively, Calkins drew back, but Freck’s loyalty to Hoyt was obvious.
“Got a present for you, Betty.” Johnny spoke into the sudden silence. His voice seemed unusually loud. “Aimed to bring it down first chance I got. One of those agates I was tellin’ you about.”
He walked to his saddlebag, and behind him he heard Hoyt say, “We can’t let that girl leave here, Dan.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Lasker’s anger was plain. “You can steal cattle and get away with it. Harm a girl like this and the West isn’t big enough to hide us!’
“I’ll gamble. But if she goes out, we’re finished. Our work done for nothin. “
“Keep her,” Freck said. “She’d be company.” He winked at Lasker.
All eyes were watching Hoyt. It was there the trouble would start. Johnny ran his hand down into the saddlebag and came up with the .44 Colt. He turned, the gun concealed by his body.
“She goes,” Lasker said, “cattle or no cattle.”
“Over my dead body!” Hoyt snapped, and his hand dropped for his gun.
Freck grabbed iron, too, and Johnny yelled. The cook swung his head and Johnny’s pistol came up. Johnny shot and swung his gun. Calkins backed away, hands high and his head shaking.
Guns were barking, and Johnny turned. Lasker was down and Hoyt was weaving on his feet. Hoyt stared at Lasker. “We had him, Freck an’ me, just like we figured! Had him boxed, in a crossfire! Then you—!” His gun came up and Johnny fired, then fired again. Hoyt went down and rolled over.
Johnny wheeled on Calkins. “Drop your belt!” His voice was hard. “Now get in there an’ get some hot water!”
He moved swiftly to Betty. “Are you all right?” Her face was pale, her eyes wide and shocked. “All right,” she whispered. “I’ll be all right.”
Johnny ran to Lasker. The cowhand lay sprawled on the ground and he had been shot twice. Once through the chest, once through the side. But he was still alive… .
Bart Gavin and four hands rode in an hour later. Gavin stopped abruptly when he saw the bodies, then came on in. Betty ran to him.
Johnny came to the door. “Me an’ Dan,” he said, “we had us a run-in with some rustlers. In the shootout Dan was wounded. With luck, he’ll make it.”
Bart Gavin had one arm around his niece. “Betty saw Hoyt take you out, but we thought she .was imagining things, so when she couldn’t make us believe, she took off on her own. Naturally, we trailed her … and found her note and your map, traced out.”
Gavin saw Calkins. His face grew stern. “What’s he doin’ here?”
Johnny said quietly, “He stayed out of it. He was rustlin’, but when it came to Betty, he stayed out. I told him we’d let him go.”
Inside the cabin they stood over Lasker. He was conscious, and he looked up at them. “That was white, mighty white of you.”
“Need you,” Johnny said quietly. “Gavin just told me he fired Lamson. He said he’d been watchin’ my work, an’ I’m the new foreman. You’re workin’ for me now.”
“For us,” Betty said. “As long as he wants.”
Lasker grinned faintly. “Remember what I said, kid? That some of the high-toned gals were thoroughbreds?”
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