“Go to hell, you midget,” Stumpy said, in the form of a greeting between two old friends.
“Been there. Didn’t like it. Too damn hot.” He waved a fork at his platter of food. “Steaks is good. Sit and eat.”
“I reckon I could eat a mouthful of food,” Stumpy said.
“Considerin’ the size of your mouth, that’s ’bout enough grub to half fill a hungry alligator.”
“I really don’t know why I put up with this half-pint,” Stumpy said, walking over to the table. “He ain’t never got a kind word for anybody.”
“Do too,” Wildcat said. “I like the company you’re ridin’ with. But I’m sure he makes you ride fifty feet behind him, considerin’ the fact that you probably ain’t had a bath in six months.”
Falcon smiled at the insults that were flying between the two old friends and began speaking in low tones to the store owner. The man nodded his head and looked over the sheet of paper Falcon handed him.
The deal settled and a pickup date for the supplies agreed on, Falcon walked over to the table and sat down with the two men, who were still busy insulting one another. A younger woman, a half-breed that Falcon figured was the daughter of the couple who ran the store, brought over a pot of coffee and two mugs. She returned a few minutes later with two plates of food and left without changing expression or speaking a word.
“Woman ain’t half bad to look at,” Wildcat remarked. “But she sure talks a lot, don’t she?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “You ought to see ’bout cuddlin’ up with her, Stumpy. Man of your advanced age needs a good woman to take care of him durin’ his declinin’ years.”
Stumpy spent the next several minutes calling Wildcat every vile name he could think of, then added, “I’ll be ridin’ the high country when it comes time for you to use a ladder to get in your wheelchair, you half-baked buffalo turd.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Wildcat said. “Such language in a public place.”
Falcon shut his mind to their insults, for he knew it would go on for hours, and kept one eye on the door to the saloon while he ate. Wildcat hadn’t been kidding about the steaks being good. They were delicious. The meat was smothered in gravy, the fried potatoes tasty with spices, and the bread hot.
Falcon ate slowly, but steadily, for he knew that when the door to the other side of the store opened, odds were good that there would be trouble.
The owner of the store walked over, glanced toward the saloon, and said in a low tone, “Hired guns. They drifted in about an hour ago. They bought several bottles and told me to get out of the room.”
“They ask anything else?” Wildcat queried.
“The shortest way to the Snake ranch.”
Falcon had looked around and spotted a rack of Greeners on the wall: mean-looking sawed-off shotguns. “How come you have so many shotguns?”
“I ordered them for the stage line that used to run past here. They went out of business before I could get paid for them. You want them? I’ll make you a real good deal.”
“I’ll take three of them now and put the others in with my order when it comes.”
“Comin’ right up.”
“And all the boxes of buckshot you have.”
“That’s three cases!”
“Well, give us a handful each and put the others with the order.”
“I like a shotgun,” Wildcat said. “Buckshot don’t leave no room for doubt.”
“Wonder if the store owner can loan us a hammer and some nails?” Stumpy asked.
Falcon looked at him. “Why?”
“To nail Wildcat’s boots to the floor. If short-stuff has to shoot one of them Greeners, the kick is gonna knock him clear over into the next county.”
The insulting between the two old friends started anew.
When the door to the saloon area finally open, the sawed-offs had been inspected and loaded up and were laying on the table, the noon dishes cleared away. Only a pot of coffee and three mugs remained on the table with the Greeners.
The hired guns took a glance at Falcon and his friends, then grabbed a harder look as they spotted the shotguns on the table. One of them beat it back into the saloon. Soon the mercantile side of the store was filled with men, most of them wearing two guns, some of them even having a third six-shooter tucked down behind their belts.
The hired guns mumbled and whispered among themselves for a moment before one of them stepped forward.
“Damn, he shore ain’t much to look at,” Stumpy muttered.
“What’d you say, grandpa?” the gunny asked in a too-loud voice. “If you was talkin’ ’bout me, speak up, you old fart.”
“If he don’t watch his mouth, he ain’t gonna have time to get much uglier, either,” Wildcat opined in low tones.
“Now the dwarf is whisperin’, Bonnie,” one of the gunnies said, then took a slug of whiskey straight from the bottle.
“Bonnie?” Wildcat said, then laughed. “Your name is Bonnie? Does your mommy know you’re runnin’ with such a rough crowd, my dear?”
Falcon could not contain his laughter at that.
“Now the big ugly one thinks it’s funny,” another hired gun said.
“Are you makin’ fun of my name, you old goat?” the man named Bonnie shouted.
Wildcat smiled at him.
“Let’s put it this way,” Stumpy said, “anybody who would hire on with Miles Gilman and his bunch is low enough to crawl under a rattler’s belly.”
The hired guns were standing shoulder to shoulder, all crowded up in one part of the large room, and Falcon could tell several of the older gunnies realized they were in a lousy position to start any gunplay. They started spreading out.
“Stand still,” Falcon said. “Or I’m going to think you boys are about to start something that’s going to get a lot of you hurt.”
One of the older hands told Falcon to go commit an impossible act upon a certain part of his anatomy.
“My goodness!” Wildcat said, staring at the gunhand. “I’m deeply offended by your vulgar language.”
“Yeah, me too,” Stumpy said.
Several of the newly hired mercenaries had confused expressions on their faces. They couldn’t figure what the three men at the table were up to. All three of them were sitting there making jokes.
“You boys don’t really want to sign on with the Snake, do you?” Falcon asked.
“Why not?” a man asked.
“It might be real bad for your health, that’s why.”
“Yeah, it’s plumb unhealthy over on the Snake range,” Stumpy said.
“How’s that?”
“Folks keep getting shot,” Falcon told him.
“The Snake didn’t hire us,” another hired gun blurted. “We was hired by the Double N.”
Wildcat cut his eyes to Falcon.
“Noonan and his people,” Falcon explained, for Wildcat did not yet know the entire story. Falcon had only touched on the high points when he could get a word in during the insults being hurled back and forth between the two men.
“Ah,” Wildcat said. “The plot thickens.”
“Do what?” Stumpy asked.
“I heard that in a play oncet. I liked the sound of it.” He glared at Stumpy. “You uneducated heathen,” he added.
“Who the hell is Plot?” Stumpy asked. “Is he part of the cattlemen’s alliance?”
“I’ll explain later,” Falcon told him.
“Don’t you call me no heathen, you popcorn fart,” Stumpy told Wildcat. “I read books.”
“Hey!” Bonnie shouted. “You want to talk to us?”
“Not really,” Stumpy said, momentarily returning his gaze to the gunmen.
The store owner, his wife, and his daughter were behind the counter, ready to hit the floor when the shooting started.
“You wouldn’t know what a book was if one fell off the shelf and hit you on the head,” Wildcat told his friend.
“Them three ain’t got good sense,” one of the older hired gu
ns said. “I think they’re loco in the head.” He moved sideways toward the door, keeping his hands away from his guns. “I’m outta here.”
“I’m with you,” another said.
Ten left in the room, facing the three men at the table. Several of the ten looked as though they wanted to let the whole matter drop. But the younger guns weren’t having any of that.
“Have to be Rockingchair hands,” Bonnie said.
“Well, I’ll just be go to hell,” Stumpy said. “The kid figured it out.”
“Took him long enough,” Wildcat said. “I was beginnin’ to wonder if Miss Bonnie was touched in the head.”
“Miss Bonnie!” the gunhand yelled, his hands hovering over the pearl-handled butts of his pistols.
Two of the men hired on at the Snake for fighting wages began backing away, both of them holding their hands in front of them, signaling that they were out of it. They were old hands at hiring out their guns, and they realized there was something wrong with this picture. The three men at the table were too calm. That meant, to any experienced hand, the three of them had been down this road before . . . and lived to tell about it.
The two men walked out the door and mounted up and rode away. Both of them were breathing easier as they put distance between the old trading post and themselves. There would be another day, maybe. And just maybe the two men would forget the fighting wages and just punch cows. Let somebody else get shot full of bloody holes.
“Well,” Falcon said, after drinking the last of his coffee. “I think the time for talking is over.”
“Yep,” Stumpy agreed. “We done listened to the band, now it’s time to pay up or leave the dance hall.”
“The only way you three is leavin’ is for somebody to carry you out,” Bonnie made his brag.
“Then go for your iron, boy,” Wildcat slapped him with a verbal glove, “or shut your damn mouth.”
Bonnie reached for his guns.
Nine
Falcon and Stumpy threw themselves backward to the floor, Greeners in their hands, just as Bonnie pulled iron and fired. They eared back the hammers and let the shotguns roar. Wildcat had ducked under the table in a move that caught the hired guns by surprise, and added his shotgun music to the deadly symphony of buckshot. The low-ceiled room was filled with arid gunsmoke and the roar of gunfire. The wall separating the store from the saloon was splattered with blood when the howling of lead faded away.
The shotguns had put every hired gun on the floor. Three were dead, nearly cut in half by the sawed-off shotguns. Two were wounded, and the others had all the fight ripped from them.
“No more!” one shouted. “We yield. No more shooting.”
Falcon stood up, his eyes burning from the thick gunsmoke and his hands filled with .44s. “Get up!” he commanded. “Leave your guns on the floor and put your hands in the air.”
Those who were unhurt, just scared crapless, crawled to their knees, hands high over their heads.
Bonnie was on the floor, shot in both legs. He was moaning about dying.
“Shut up,” one of his pals told him in a shaky voice. “You ain’t hurt bad.”
“Oh, Christ,” another of those unhurt said. “Look at Manley’s head. It’s blowed ’most clear off!” Then he threw up on the floor.
“Get their guns,” Falcon told the store owner.
The trading post owner gathered up all the guns, being careful to avoid stepping in the gore, then quickly backed away.
“You boys take a message to Miles Gilman,” Falcon told the survivors of the shoot-out. “Tell him we can either live in peace and get along, or we can have the damnedest war he ever saw. It’s all up to him. Now clear out of here. And leave the dead men’s horses.”
Those few left alive helped the wounded to their boots, left the dead behind them, and scrambled for the door, and were in the saddle and gone half a minute later.
“You bury them and you can have their horses and guns and money,” Falcon told the post owner.
“Deal, if you’ll help me drag ’em out of here.”
“Done. You going to get in trouble with Gilman for this?”
The post owner grinned. “Not damn likely. The cavalry leaves patrol remounts here and this is a stage stop. Gilman leaves me the hell alone.”
“Good enough. Let’s get the bodies out of here.”
The hired guns had managed to bang off only four shots, hitting nothing but a side wall of the old trading post.
Falcon bought several bolts of cloth for the ladies, some candy for Jimmy, and the three of them headed back to the ranch.
* * *
Miles Gilman was in a blue funk. The news of someone buying twenty sections of land, north and south of the Rockingchair range, had just reached him, and he had gone into a towering rage. To make matters even worse, he had no idea who had bought it, for it had all been done by a bunch of lawyers in San Francisco and Denver. And now the hired mercenaries sent by Noonan had come staggering in, shot all to pieces at the trading post by Val Mack and two old geezers.
“Jesus Christ!” Miles screamed. “What in the hell is going on around here?”
Whatever it is, Claude his foreman silently and sourly mused, it’s probably gonna get worse.
* * *
Martha and Angie oohed and aahed over the bolts of cloth, Jimmy chomped on the few pieces of candy his mother would let him have, and John, Kip, and Cookie listened to Falcon tell about what had taken place at the old trading place. During the telling, Jimmy sneaked a few more pieces of candy out of the jar and took off for the bunkhouse. The boy loved to listen to the wild tales of the older men.
“He’ll just send ten or twenty or fifty more gunhands, Val,” John said, after Falcon had finished and was drinking his coffee. “Do you and the rest of the boys plan on killin’ them all?”
Falcon secretly smiled. His dad sure wiped out a gang after they attacked his town and killed Falcon’s mother. “I don’t think it will come to that, John.”
“You don’t know Miles Gilman, Val,” John said grimly.
* * *
Puma Parley and Mustang rode in together a few days later and the outfit was complete. No one knew Mustang’s real name and he wasn’t about to give it up.
“That is, if he even remembers what it is,” Big Bob commented.
Average age of the Rockingchair hands: sixty.
“What a crew,” John remarked one morning. “I can truthfully say I don’t think I have ever seen anythin’ like ’em.”
“Nobody else has either,” Falcon replied with a laugh. He had noticed that Big Bob Marsh would occasionally take a long slow look all around him. He finally walked over to the big man and asked what in the world he was looking for.
“That damn beast of Puma’s.”
“He left it back in the cave.”
“So he says,” Big Bob said with a grimace. “But Puma has been known to tell a lie ever’ now and then. Jenny’s sneaky; sneakiest varmint I ever did see. Just like his old cat was. I’ll bet you a month’s pay she’s around here close.”
“Well, we’ll know for sure if she pulls down a steer.”
Big Bob shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that unless she was desperate. I know it sounds far-fetched, but she was trained to leave cattle alone . . . usually. Some people claim that pumas is the dumbest animals on earth. Well, I reckon some is and some ain’t. Jenny is one of them who ain’t. That’s a damn smart cat.”
Mustang was a man of average height and weight. But like all men of the mountains, he was all wang-leather and rawhide tough. Puma stood just a shade under six feet and was still a very powerful man. Any man who had a cupful of experience under his belt could, or should, be able to take one look at these men and know it would be best to give them a wide berth.
And Cookie found out that first evening they were all together about a mountain man’s appetite: the average mountain man could put a grizzly to shame when it came to eating.
“Good thing you orde
red them other wagons of food,” Cookie told Falcon after the evening meal that first day. “You should have told the post owner to fill the same order ever’ month.”
Falcon laughed and said, “I did!”
Falcon spent the next three days prowling the thousands of acres of Rockingchair range, looking for cattle. What he found did not surprise him.
“Somebody’s rustled about half your herd, John,” he reported back to the Rockingchair owner. “No point in rounding them up for a drive. It wouldn’t be worth it.”
John Bailey sat down heavily at the kitchen table and rubbed his face with his callused hands. “Then I’m finished,” he said wearily.
“Not at all,” Falcon contradicted the rancher. “We’ll just get them back for you, or make Miles pay for them. You’ll have to delay the drive until next year, but you’ll have your cattle back.”
John lifted tired eyes to Falcon. “You and six old men are goin’ to do that?”
“Me and six mountain men,” Falcon corrected.
* * *
The next morning, Falcon and six mountain men were up and riding toward Snake range before dawn. They each carried grub enough for two days and their pockets were stuffed with cartridges and their belt loops full.
Within an hour of crossing onto Snake range, they found a small herd of Rockingchair-branded cattle and started them moving back toward their own grass. The next hour they came up on a herd of Snake cattle with a lot of Rockingchair beeves all mixed in, and began cutting out those that did not belong to Miles Gilman. Two Snake punchers soon rode up and stared for a moment.
“What the hell do you people think you’re doin’?” one finally demanded.
“Taking back our cattle,” Falcon told him. “Get used to it. Because before it’s all over, we’ll cover every inch of Snake range.”
“The hell you say!” the other Snake rider blurted.
“That’s right. And when you people get your roundup completed, we’ll be there to check brands.”
“I don’t think so, mister.”
“I do.” Falcon turned his horse to face the puncher. “You want to argue about it right now?”
The puncher thought about that for a few seconds, then shook his head. He was one of the few Snake riders left who was not drawing fighting wages. He rode for the brand, but had no desire to get himself killed. He had heard the stories about this Val Mack.
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