“The feller’s gun and holster are caught on a snag!” barked Kane. “He’s got it loose! There they go into the water!” He had plucked his rope free and was twirling a loop as he spoke. As they raced up to the bend, Dawson and Brant broke surface, the range boss still gripping Dawson’s collar. He turned sideways and began to swim strongly toward the shore.
“Catch!” roared Kane, sliding to the ground and snaking his loop. He sent the rope hissing through the air. The loop fell almost over Brant’s extended hand. He seized it and twisted the rope about his arm.
“Give a hand!” Kane barked to Webb. Together they hauled in with all their strength. The eddy tore at the two forms with gripping fingers, but Brant fought strongly against the watery pull. Kane and Webb whirled about and walked away from the bank, the taut rope humming over their shoulders. Another moment of mighty struggle and the half drowned Trail Boss and his helpless burden were dragged onto the steep slope of the bank. Kane leaped down to assist Brant. Together they levered Dawson’s bulky form up until old John, lying flat and reaching down, could get a grip on Dawson’s collar. The rest was easy. A moment more and Dawson lay sprawled on the prairie, Austin Brant crawled to safety and lay panting beside him.
Old John removed his hat and mopped his damp brow. Norman Kane grinned down at the prostrate pair.
“A plumb fine chore,” he told Brant. “Feller, you’ll do for any man to ride the river with!”
Brant grinned back, rather wanly. “Reckon if it wasn’t for quick thinking on your part, we’d both be a long ways down, and underneath, by now,” he declared.
Cole Dawson was groaning and retching with returning consciousness. He opened his eyes, raised himself on his elbow and for a minute was frankly sick. Muttering an oath, he sat up and glared at the group.
“Who drug me out?” he demanded thickly.
“Well, I don’t see but one gent with wet clothes,” rumbled Webb, nodding toward Austin Brant who was rising to his feet.
Dawson glowered up at the Trail Boss. “It would hafta be him!” he growled.
“Why, you ungrateful—” old John began, but Brant snapped, “Hold it!” and Webb closed his lips on the uncompleted sentence. Norman Kane regarded the scene with his enigmatical smile and said nothing.
“Well,” observed Brant, “that river looks pretty bad, but the big run the cloudburst over west set off looks to have passed. Think we can risk it?”
“I believe we can,” Kane replied. “But what about Dawson? His horse is on the other side.”
“Don’t you worry about Dawson,” spat that individual, shaking himself like a great dog. “I can hang on to the Boss’ stirrup and get there as easy as the rest of you. Let’s go.”
“Okay,” agreed Webb, “let’s take it before another loose ocean comes down that infernal crik.”
Before they reached the opposite bank, Austin Brant was of the opinion more than once that their day of death by drowning was at hand. But reach it they did, pretty well exhausted, but suffering no more serious consequences. The giant Dawson, despite a knot the size of a hen’s egg on his head appeared to be in as good shape as anybody else. Without a word to anybody he stamped off to see to the bedding down of the herd.
“If he ain’t the limit!” snorted old John. Austin Brant shrugged his broad shoulders. Norman Kane smiled.
Chapter Two
After a change to dry clothing, Brant felt ready for anything. As he combed his thick black hair, he reflected on the singular character of Cole Dawson. His thoughts shifted to Norman Kane and he shook his head.
“Cool as a dead snake,” he told himself, apropos of the Flying V owner. “ ‘Peared to look on the whole business as a joke. I’ve a notion he looks on most everything as a joke. That is,” he added reflectively, “if the joke doesn’t happen to be on him. If it is, I’ve a notion it isn’t over nice for the joker.”
Brant chose his hands carefully for night guard duty—killpecker, graveyard, dead-hour, wake-up and cocktail. He picked the oldest and steadiest men for the various chores.
“The rest of you can head for the Deadfall, like you’re itching to, as soon as we eat,” he told the others; “but watch your step. We’re trailing out of here come daylight, headaches or no headaches, and I dont want to catch a man in a shape he can’t fork his saddle.”
The cowboys grinned at him, but just the same they knew he meant what he said.
After supper was over, Brant conferred with Webb. “I’m sort of tuckered,” old John admitted. “Swimmin’ that river wasn’t so good, at my age, but there’s nothin’ wrong a good night’s sleep won’t take care of. If you feel up to takin’ charge by yourself, I’ll head for a mite of shuteye.”
“Go to it,” Brant told him. “I’m all set for anything. You start pounding your ear pronto. Nothing to worry about. We lost some cows today, but not too many. We’re all set.”
Outside the wagon where Webb was bedding down, Brant paused to roll a cigarette. The night was pitch black, the sky heavily overcast, except when fitful lightning flashes cast an eerie glow across the prairie. Occasional plumps of rain drummed the wagon canvas. A wailing wind bent the grass heads and echoed occasional low rumbles of thunder.
Brant glanced toward the rambling bulk of the Deadfall. It appeared like a handful of fallen stars because of the light within shining through the chinks between the logs. Through the open windows came the sounds of revelry and mirth, growing louder as the night progressed. Brant shook his head, and his eyes narrowed slightly with concern.
“If there isn’t trouble before this night is over, I’m a heap mistaken,” he predicted gloomily. He pinched out his cigarette, tossed the butt aside and headed for the building.
When Brant stepped inside the big main room of the place, he was blinded by the glare of light within. The numerous hanging and bracket lamps were fed with oil from boiled-down buffalo fat, and that commodity was still plentiful on the Cimarron Trail. His vision quickly cleared, however, and he glanced about with interest.
The room was a singular combination of frontier crudeness and civilized garishness. Homemade tables and chairs vied with plate glass mirrors for attention. The floor was of puncheon boards, the log walls not even whitewashed, but on those walls hung oil paintings. The long bar was constructed of rough planks, while the back-bar, adorned with the out-of-place mirrors, was pyramided with bottles of every color and shape.
Not for a moment did Brant believe that the “luxuries” had all been imported from the east at prodigious expense.
“More than one wagon train has come up short in those parts,” he shrewdly deduced. “This diggin’ was furnished by robbery and it exists chiefly by robbery, or I’m making a big mistake.”
The room was crowded, for several outfits returning from northern drives were stopping off at the crossing. The occupants were chiefly cowhands, but there was a sprinkling of hard-eyed individuals whose hands, Brant felt sure, bore no marks of rope or branding iron.
They were the “camp followers” of the drives, assembled at Doran’s for the purpose of preying on the cowhands in one way or another. Brant spotted more than one occupying places at the poker tables with stacks of gold pieces before them.
“Taking the boys over, all right,” he muttered. “Well, they’d better lay off my bunch if they know what’s good for them.”
Mechanically, he shifted his heavy guns in their carefully cut-out holsters a little higher about his lean waist.
Lounging at the far end of the bar was a big black-bearded man who masked with a bluff manner and an attitude of jovial goodfellowship the temper and disposition of a Gila Monster. Brant knew he called himself Phil Doran and claimed to be the nephew of old Jane who opened the place. Beside him stood a younger and slighter man with a sallow, wedge-shaped faced and redrimmed beady eyes set very close together. It was Pink Hanson, Doran’s partner. The unsavory pair owned the Deadfall.
Seated at a nearby table were Norman Kane and Cole Dawson, engaged in
earnest conversation. Brant’s black brows drew together as he speculated the pair. Kane, without looking up, leaned closer and said somthing in low tones to his companion. A moment later Dawson got to his feet and slouched to the bar.
“Saw me come in and decided to break it up,” Brant told himself. “Now what’s building between those two?”
The two occupants of another table near the wall, upon which rested dishes of food, caught Brant’s attention. One was a lean, grizzled, elderly man with a lined face, a tight mouth and tufted brows. He had the look of a hard man. The other occupant of the table was a big-eyed girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty at the outside. She had short, soft brown hair, inclined to curl, a red mouth and a small but well rounded figure. She appeared to be intensely interested in what went on around her, and rather bewildered.
Brant felt a sense of disapproval that amounted to indignation.
“The devil of a place to bring a nice woman,” he muttered, eyeing the elderly man with decided disapproval.
But the obvious explanation of her presence quickly came to him. After all, the Deadfall was the only place near the crossing where anything decent to eat could be obtained.
“And that old jigger with her looks able to take care of himself, and her,” he decided. “Her Dad, I reckon.”
He sauntered to the bar, found a vacant place and ordered a drink. Turning, he swept the room with his glance. He quickly spotted a group of his own hands at a table, glasses beside them, playing poker. As he watched, one shrugged his shoulders, got to his feet and headed for the bar. Instantly a man standing nearby slid into the vacant chair. The other players glanced at him questioningly, but the dealer muttered something and they settled back into their seats.
Austin Brant left the bar and strode across the room. He tapped the man on the shoulder.
“I don’t care to have my hands play with strangers when they’re on a drive,” he said.
The man, a big, beefy individual, snarled up at him like a rat.
“You keep your nose out of my business, high-pockets, if you know what’s good for you,” he spat.
“You heard what I said,” Brant replied. “Get out of that chair.”
The man got out, his eyes glaring, his fists doubled. Brant hit him, left and right, hard. He shot through the air and landed on the floor with a crash. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, blood and curses pouring from his mouth. His hand shot down. Then he froze in a grotesquely strained position. He was looking into the muzzle of two long black guns.
“Don’t—try—it,” Brant advised, spacing the words.
Doran came rushing across the room. The muzzle of Brant’s gun shifted the merest trifle.
“Goes for you, too, Doran,” he said quietly.
Doran, who never forgot a face, recognized the Running W foreman from his previous visit to the Deadfall.
“Why, hello, Brant,” he called jovially. “Just wanted to see what was goin’ on. It’s my business to keep order, you know.”
He turned to the other man.
“You get up to the end of the bar and stay there, Porter,” he directed. “You’re lucky you didn’t get your insides blowed out. This feller is as pizen with a gun as he is with his fists. Get goin’!”
The other started to bawl a protest, but something he saw in Doran’s eyes evidently changed his mind for him. He clamped his bloody lips shut, turned and slouched away. Doran nodded affably to Brant and resumed his place at the lower end of the bar.
Brant holstered his guns, smiled at his grinning hands, and returned to his unfinished drink. As he passed the table occupied by the girl and the old man he glanced in their direction. The girl’s eyes were wider than before, and there was a hint of something like terror in them as they rested upon the Running W foreman. Brant flushed slightly, and turned his back.
“Reckon she’s got me down for one of the killer pack she’s been told about,” he growled under his breath. “Well, what the hell difference does it make to me!”
Chapter Three
The incident between Brant and the ambitious tinhorn seemed to have an exhilarating effect on the gathering in the Deadfall. Voices grew louder and more raucous. The fiddlers back of the dance floor sawed more vigorously. The dancers whirled with a wilder abandon. Even the roulette wheels developed a sharper clirk and whir. Somebody started bawling what was intended for song. Others took it up and the hanging lamps flickered to the din. Brant shook his head as the hectic hours passed.
“Trouble in the making,” he declared to himself. “It’ll bust loose any minute.”
Trouble did bust loose, and Cole Dawson started it. The Running W poker game had fizzled out from lack of competition. The losers borrowed back from the winners and the players joined their companions at the bar. They mingled with the punchers of a returning outfit, the Tree L. Dawson and a lanky Tree L hand got to discussing brands and their altering. The argument grew heated. Suddenly, with a bellow of anger, Dawson knocked the other down. One of the cowboy’s companions hurled Dawson sideways against the bar with a swinging blow. A Running W hand sent Dawson’s attacker off his feet with a hard punch to the mouth. Another Tree L waddie returned the compliment, and there were three men on the floor. Instantly the whole section of the bar was a hitting, wrestling, cursing tangle. The barkeeps howled to stop it. Doran and Pink Hanson uttered soothing yells and tried to pull the battlers apart. Chairs and tables went over splintering and crashing. The dance floor girls screamed. The dealers and floor men bellowed for order, and didn’t get it. Folks who really weren’t concerned in the row got hit by accident and immediately became enthusiastic participants. The whole room boiled and seethed like a giant pot.
Austin Brant streamed across the room, dived into the mess and got Cole Dawson by the collar. He jerked him back out of the shindig. Dawson writhed around in Brant’s grasp, roared a string of cuss words and swung a blow at the foreman. Before it had travelled six inches it was blocked. Brant whirled Dawson about and levered his arm behind his back and up between his shoulder blades. He ran Dawson on tiptoe through the door.
“I’ll bust your arm for you, Cole, if you don’t behave,” he warned. “What’s the matter with you, anyhow? You know we got work to do. The Old Man would hand you your time if I told him about this. Now head for camp and sober up. You can raise all the hell you want when we get to Dodge and turn over the herd. Now get going.”
Rather to Brant’s surprise, Dawson obeyed orders. When Brant released his arm, he lurched off through the darkness, mumbling and muttering.
Brant returned to the saloon. Doran and Hanson and the floor men had managed to restore order. There were some bloody noses and discoloring eyes, but no serious damage had been done. Brant saw Norman Kane still sitting at his table, smiling his thin, cynical smile. He glanced toward where the girl and the old man sat. The girl was hunched back in her chair, her red lips slightly parted, her face rather white. The oldster was unconcernedly stuffing black tobacco into a blacker pipe. Brant walked over to the table.
“Not exactly the place for a lady, suh,” he remarked pointedly.
The old man nodded. “Reckon you’re right, son,” he agreed without rancor. “Sort of new and rambunctious for my little niece here—she’s from back East—but I don’t pay it no mind. I’ve seen the elephant before.”
“How come you to be in this section?” Brant asked curiously.
“We’re just passin’ through,” the other replied. “We’re headin’ for the Texas Panhandle country. Our wagons are over east of the ford.”
“What part of the Panhandle?” Brant asked with interest.
“South Canadian River country,” the other said. “Town near where I got title to a spread is call Tascosa. The spread, the Bar O, is about twenty miles to the northwest.”
“I remember it. Used to belong to old Clifton Taylor,” Brant remarked.
“That’s right. Taylor came back to Oklahoma, where he was brought up. I made a deal with him.
Traded my holdings in Oklahoma and some hard money for his Texas outfit.”
“You’ll sort of be neighbors to the Running W, the outfit I work for,” Brant observed. “We range to the south and west of the Bar O.”
“That’s nice,” said the oldster. “Be glad to know somebody in a new section. My name’s Loring, Nate Loring. My niece’s name is Verna Loring. Her Dad was my younger brother. Went East and died there last year.”
Brant uspplied his own name and they shook hands. Verna glanced up rather timidly through the silken veil of her long lashes, but gave him a slim little hand. Apparently some of her fear was evaporating.
Old Nate stood up. “Well,” he said, “reckon we’ll be moseyin’ along. Want to get an early start in the mornin’, if that dadblamed river behaves. Hope to see you down in Texas, son.”
“You will,” Brant promised emphatically. “We’ll be glad to have you for neighbors and we’ll send over some of the boys to help you get located as soon as we get back from the drive. Yes, I’ll be seeing you.”
Old Nate nodded, and headed for the door, Verna swaying gracefully beside him. At the door she glanced back for an instant, her blue eyes met Brant’s gray ones, held. She turned quickly and vanished into the night.
Austin Brant drew a deep breath. He glanced around at a sound and saw Norman Kane at his elbow. Kane was staring toward the door, the glitter in his black eyes intensified.
“You see interesting things in this hangout,” he remarked.
“Uh-huh,” Brant agreed absently, “you do.”
The first beams of the rising sun found the Running W trail herd streaming north. Some distance ahead was a dust cloud that marked Norman Kane’s Flying V critters, which had gotten under way first. Still farther ahead another cloud denoted a herd that came from north of the Cimarron to hit the Dodge City trail.
To the west and south a third cloud spotted still another outfit rolling in behind the Running W. The longhorns were on the march, as they had been for nearly ten years, as they would be for close to another de cade, in the course of which they would change the face of the land, the habits of the people, and the aims and history of the West.
Longhorn Empire Page 2
