Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986)

by L'amour, Louis

  Returning to his quarters, Fitz Moore thrust an extra gun into his pocket and belted on a third. Then he put two shotguns into his wood sack. Nobody would be surprised to see him with the sack, for he always carried firewood in it that he got from the pile in back of Gard’s.

  He saw Jack Thomas sitting in a chair before the livery stable. Barney Gard came from the saloon, glanced at the marshal, and then went back inside.

  Fitz Moore paused, relighting his dead cigar.

  The topic of what would happen here if the Henry gang attempted a raid was not a new one.

  He had heard much speculation. Some men, like Thomas, had brought it up before, trying to feel him out, to discover what he thought, what he would do.

  Jack Thomas turned his big head on his thick neck and glanced toward the marshal. He was a good-natured man, but too inquisitive, too dirty.

  Johnny Haven, sitting on the steps of the saloon porch, looked at the marshal and grinned.

  He was a powerful, aggressive young man.

  “How’s the town clown?” He asked.

  Moore paused, drawing deep on his cigar, permitting himself a glance toward the loft door, almost sixty yards away and across the street.

  Deliberately he had placed himself in line with the best shooting position.

  “Johnny”… He said, “if anything happens to me, I want you to have this job. If nothing does happen to me, I want you for my deputy.”

  Young Haven could not have been more astonished, but he also was deeply moved. He looked up as if he believed the marshal had been suddenly touched by the heat. Aside from the words, the very fact that Marshal Moore had ventured a personal remark was astonishing.

  “You’re twenty-six, Johnny, and it’s time you grew up. You’ve played at being a bad man long enough. I’ve looked the town over, and you’re the man I want.”

  Johnny … tom. He avoided thinking of them together, yet there was a connection. tom once had been a good man, too, but now he was a good man gone. Johnny was a good man, much like tom, though walking the hairline of the law.

  Johnny Haven was profoundly impressed. To say that he admired and respected this tall, composed man was no more than the truth. After his first forcible arrest by Fitz Moore, Johnny had been furious enough to beat him up or kill him, but each time he had come to town he had found to himself neatly boxed and helpless.

  Nor had Fitz Moore ever taken unfair advantage, never striking one blow more than essential and never keeping the young cowhand in jail one hour longer than necessary. And Johnny Haven was honest enough to realize that he never could have handled the situation as well.

  Anger had resolved into reluctant admiration.

  Only his native stubbornness and the pride of youth had prevented him from giving up the struggle. “Why pick on me?” He spoke roughly to cover his emotion. “You won’t be quitting.”

  There was a faint suggestion of movement from the loft. The marshal glanced at his watch.

  Two minutes to ten.

  “Johnny “The sudden change of tone brought Johnny’s head up sharply. “When the shooting starts, there are two shotguns in this sack. Get behind the end of the water trough and use one of them. Shoot from under the trough.

  It’s safer.”

  Two riders walked their mounts into the upper end of the street, almost a half block away. Two men on powerful horses, better horses than would be found on any cow ranch.

  Three more riders came from a space between the buildings, from the direction of Peterson’s Corral. One of them was riding a gray horse.

  They were within twenty yards when Barney Gard came from the saloon carrying two canvas bags. He was headed for the bank when one of the horsemen swung his mount to a route that would cut across Barney’s path.

  “Shotgun in the sack, Gard.”… The Marshal’s voice was conversational.

  Then, as sunlight glinted on a rifle barrel in the loft door, Fitz Moore took one step forward, drawing as he moved, and the thunder of the rifle merged with the bark of his own gun. Then the rifle clattered, falling, and an arm lay loosely in the loft door.

  The marshal had turned instantly. “All right, Henry”… His voice rang like a trumpet call in the narrow street. “You’re asking for it!

  Take it!”

  There was no request for surrender. The rope awaited these men, and death rode their guns and hands.

  As one man they drew, and the marshal sprang into the street, landing flat footed and firing. The instant of surprise had been his. And his first shot, only a dancing second after the bullet that had killed the man in the loft, struck Fred Henry over the belt buckle.

  Behind and to the marshal’s right a shotgun’s deep roar blasted the sunlit morning. The man on the gray horse died falling, his gun throwing a useless shot into the hot, still air.

  Horses reared, and a cloud of dust and gunpowder arose, stabbed through with crimson flame and the hoarse bark of guns.

  A rider leaped his horse at the marshal, but Fitz Moore stood his ground and fired. The rider’s face seemed to disintegrate under the impact of the bullet.

  And then there was silence. The roaring was gone and only the faint smells lingered the acrid tang of gunpowder, of blood in the dust, of the brighter crimson scent of blood on a saddle.

  Johnny Haven got up slowly from behind the horse trough. Barney Gard stared around as if he had just awakened, his hands gripping a shotgun.

  There was a babble of sound then, of people running into the street. And a girl with gray eyes was watching. Those eyes seemed to reach across the street and into the heart of the marshal.

  “Only one shot”… Barney Gard exclaimed. “I got off only one shot and missed that one!”

  “The Henry gang wiped out”… Yelled an excited citizen. “Wait’ll Thomas hears of this!”

  “He won’t be listenin””… Somebody else said.

  “They got him.”

  Fitz Moore turned like a duelist. “I got him,” he said flatly. “He was their man. Tried all morning to find out what I’d do if they showed up his An hour later Johnny Haven followed the marshal into the street. Four men were dead and two were in jail.

  “How did you know. Marshal?”

  “You learn, Johnny. You learn or you die.

  That’s your lesson for today. Learn to be in the right place at the right time and keep your own counsel. You’ll be getting my job.”… His cigar was gone. He bit the end from a fresh one and went on, “Jack Thomas was the only man the rider of the gray horse I told you I saw could have reached without crossing the street. He wouldn’t have left the horse he’d need for a quick getaway on the wrong side of the street. Besides, I’d been doubtful of Thomas. He was prying too much.”

  When he entered the Eating House, Julia Heath was at the table again. She was white and shaken. He spoke to her.

  “I’m sorry, Julia, but now you see how little time there is for a man when guns are drawn.

  These men would have taken the money honest men worked to get, and they would have killed as they have killed before. Such men know only the law of the gun.”… He placed his hands on the table. “I should have known you at once, but I never thought after what happened that you would come, even to settle the estate. He was proud of you, Julia, and he was my best friend.”

  “But you killed him.”

  Marshal Moore gestured toward the street. “It was like that. Guns exploding, a man dying under my gun, and then running feet behind me in a town where I had no friends. I thought tom was on his ranch in Colorado. I killed the man who was firing at me, turned, and fired toward the running feet. And killed my friend, your brother.”

  She knew then how it must have been for this man and she was silent.

  “And now?” She murmured.

  “My job will go to Johnny Haven, but I’m going to stay here and help this town grow, help it become a community of homes, use some of the things I know that have nothing to do with guns. This” he gestured toward the street
“should end it for a while. In the breathing space we can mature, settle down, change the houses into homes, and bring some beauty into this makeshift.”

  She was silent again, looking down at the table.

  At last she spoke, her voice barely audible.

  “It it’s worth doing.”

  “It will be.”… He looked at his unlighted cigar.

  “You’ll be going to settle Tom’s property.

  When you come back, if you want to, you might stop off again. If you do, I’ll be waiting to see you.”

  She looked at him, seeing beyond the coldness, seeing the man her brother must have known. “I think I shall. I think I’ll stop when I come back.”

  Out in the street a man was raking dust over the blood. Back of the old barn a hen cackled, and somewhere a pump started to complain rustily, drawing clear water from a deep, cold well.

  *

  Author’s Note”

  THE TURKEYFEATHER RIDERS

  James B. Gillett was a Texas Ranger from to 1881.

  In his book Six Years With the Texas Rangers he says that a ranger could “keep a constant stream of fire pouring from his carbine when his horse is going at top speed and hit his mark nine times out of ten.”

  Speaking later of the Horrell faction, who figured in the Horrell-Higgins feud, he says: “having grown up with firearms in their hands, they were quick as lighting with either Winchester or pistol.”

  Later, speaking of the ranger company of which he was a member, with Lieutenant Reynold in command, he says: “Nearly every member of the company had more or less experience as an officer and all were exceedingly fine marksmen.”

  In the years 1889-90, the Texas Rangers, according to Gillette, arrested 579 persons, among them 76 murderers.

  Gillette’s book is one of the best on the Texas Rangers, not a history of the force but a good account of his service with them.

  *

  The Turkey feather Riders.

  Jim Sandifer swung down from his buckskin and stood for a long minute staring across the saddle toward the dark bulk of Bearwallow Mountain.

  His was the grave, careful look of a man accustomed to his own company under the sun and in the face of the wind. For three years he had been riding for the B Bar, and for two of those years he had been ranch foreman. What he was about to do would bring an end to that, an end to the job, to the life here, to his chance to win the girl he loved.

  Voices sounded inside, the low rumble of Gray Bowen’s bass and the quick, light voice of his daughter, Elaine. The sound of her voice sent a quick spasm of pain across Sandifer’s face. Tying the buckskin to the hitch rail, he ducked under it and walked up the steps, his boots sounding loud on the planed boards, his spurs tinkling lightly.

  The sound of his steps brought instant stillness to the group inside and then the quick tattoo of Elaine’s feet as she hurried to meet him.

  It was a sound he would never tire of hearing, a sound that had brought gladness to him such as he had never known before. Yet when her eyes met his at the door her flashing smile faded.

  “Jim! What’s wrong?” Then she noticed the blood on his shoulder and the tear where the bullet had ripped his shirt, and her face went white to the lips. “You’re hurt!”

  “No only a scratch.”… He put aside her detaining hand. “Wait. I’ll talk to your dad first.”

  His hands dropped to hers, and as she looked up, startled at his touch, he said gravely and sincerely, “No matter what happens now, I want you to know that I’ve loved you since the day we met. I’ve thought of little else, believe that.”… He dropped her hands then and stepped past her into the huge room where Gray Bowen waited, his big body relaxed in a homemade chair of cowhide.

  Rose Martin was there, too, and her tall, handsome son, Lee. Jim’s eyes avoided them for he knew what their faces were like; he knew the quiet serenity of Rose Martin’s face, masking a cunning as cold and calculating as her son’s flaming temper. It was these two who were destroying the B Bar, they who had brought the big ranch to the verge of a deadly range war by their conniving. A war that could have begun this morning, but for him.

  Even as he began to speak he knew his words would put him right where they wanted him, that when he had finished, he would be through here, and Gray Bowen and his daughter would be left unguarded to the machinations of this woman and her son. Yet he could no longer refrain from speaking. The lives of men depended on it.

  Bowen’s lips thinned when he saw the blood.

  “You’ve seen Katrishen? Had a run-in with him?”

  “No”… Sandifer’s eyes blazed. “There’s no harm in Katrishen if he’s left alone.

  No trouble unless we make it. I ask you to recall. Gray, that for two years we’ve lived at peace with the Katrishens. We have had no trouble until the last three months.”… He paused, hoping the idea would soak in that trouble had begun with the coming of the Martins. “He won’t give us any trouble if we leave him alone!”

  “Leave him alone to steal our range”… Lee Martin flared.

  Sandifer’s eyes swung.

  “Our range? Are you now a partner in the B Bar?”

  Lee smiled, covering his slip. “Naturally, as I am a friend of Mr. Bowen’s, I think of his interests as mine.”

  Bowen waved an impatient hand. “That’s no matter! What happened?”

  Here it was, then. The end of all his dreaming, his planning, his hoping. “It wasn’t Katrishen.

  It was Klee Mont.”

  “Who?”

  Bowen came out of his chair with a lunge, veins swelling. “Mont shot you?

  What for?

  Why, in heavens’ name?”

  “Mont was over there with the Mello boys and Art Dunn. He had gone over to run the Katrishens off their Iron Creek holdings. If they had tried that, they would have started a firstclass range war with no holds barred. I stopped them.”

  Rose Martin flopped her knitting in her lap and glanced up at him, smiling smugly. Lee began to roll a smoke, one eyebrow lifted. This was what they had wanted, for he alone had blocked them here. The others the Martins could influence, but not Jim Sandifer.

  Bowen’s eyes glittered with his anger. He was a choleric man, given to sudden bursts of fury, a man who hated being thwarted and who was impatient of all restraint.

  “You stopped them? Did they tell you whose orders took them over there? Did they?”

  “They did. I told them to hold off until I could talk with you, but Mont refused to listen. He said his orders had been given him and he would follow them to the letter.”

  “He did right”… Bowen’s voice boomed in the big room. “Exactly right! And you stopped them?

  You countermanded my orders?”

  “I did.”… Sandifer laid it flatly on the line.

  “I told them there would be no burning or killing while I was foreman. I told them they weren’t going to run us into a range war for nothing.”

  Gray Bowen balled his big hands into fists.

  “You’ve got a gall, Jim! You know better than to countermand an order of mine! And you’ll leave me to decide what range I need! Katrishen’s got no business on Iron Creek, an’ I told him so! I told him to get off an’ get out! As for this range war talk, that’s foolishness! He won’t fight!”

  “Putting them off would be a very simple matter”… Lee Martin interposed quietly. “If you hadn’t interfered, Sandifer, they would be off now and the whole matter settled.”

  “Settled nothin’”… Jim exploded. “Where did you get this idea that Bill Katrishen could be pushed around? The man was an officer in the Army during the war, an’ he’s fought Indians on the plains.”

  “You must be a great friend of his”… Rose Martin said gently. “You know so much about him.”

  The suggestion was there, and Gray Bowen got it. He stopped in his pacing, and his face was like a rock. “You been talkin’ with Katrishen?

  You sidin’ that outfit?”

  “T
his is my outfit. I ride for the brand,”

  Sandifer replied. “I know Katrishen, of course.

  I’ve talked to him.”

  “And to his daughter?” Lee suggested, his eyes bright with malice. “With his pretty daughter?”

  Out of the tail of his eye Jim saw Elaine’s head come up quickly, but he ignored Lee’s comment.

  “Stop and think”… He said to Bowen. “When did this trouble start? When Mrs. Martin and her son came here! You got along fine with Katrishen until then! They’ve been putting you up to this!”

  Bowen’s eyes narrowed. “That will be enough of that”… He said sharply. He was really furious now, not the flaring, hot fury that Jim knew so well, but a cold, hard anger that nothing could touch. For the first time Jim realized how futile any argument was going to be.

  Rose Martin and her son had insinuated themselves too much and too well into the picture of Gray Bowen’s life.

  “You wanted my report”… Sandifer said quietly.

  “Mont wouldn’t listen to my arguments for time.

  He said he had his orders and would take none from me. I told him then that if he rode forward it was against my gun. He laughed at me, then reached for his gun. I shot him.”

  Gray Bowen’s widened eyes expressed his amazement.

  “You shot Mont?

  You beat him to the draw?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t want to kill him, but I shot the gun out of his hand and held my gun on him for a minute to let him know what it meant to be close to death. Then I started them back here.”

  Bowen’s anger was momentarily swallowed by his astonishment. He recalled suddenly that in the three years Sandifer had worked for him there had been no occasion for him to draw a gun in anger. There had been a few brushes with Apaches and one with rustlers, but all rifle work.

  Klee Mont was a killer with seven known killings on his record and had been reputed to be the fastest gunhand west of the Rio Grande.

  “It seems peculiar”… Mrs. Martin said composedly, “for you to turn your gun on men who ride for Mr. Bowen, taking sides against him. No doubt you meant well, but it does seem strange.”