Winter Range

by Alan Lemay

  "All right, Joe. Was that all you saw?"

  "Good God, Miss Ragland, wasn't that enough?"

  Jean Ragland drew a deep unsteady breath. "Yes I expect it was. You'd better keep this to yourself, Joe, if you know what's good for you." She added, "Both of you." She sent Kentucky Jones a glance that might have been an appeal; then suddenly turned and let herself out the door. Ken tucky Jones hesitated and opened his mouth to ask Joe St, Marie a question; then, changing his mind, he followed her.

  At the sound of the door Jean turned and waited; he fell in beside her and walked with her to the house.

  "Miss Ragland," he said, "who, besides yourself, knows what Joe St. Marie saw tonight?"

  She turned on him quickly. "Do you?"

  "No; it was just a question."

  "Listen," she said. "Listen. I've got to tell you this: When I-when I gave you that bullet - I swear I didn't know you had been here the day the day Mason was killed. If I'd thought there was the least chance of your getting bogged down in this thing"

  "Am I bogged down?"

  "Can't you see what Floyd Hopper means to do? Right or wrong-he'll see somebody roped. And that means more than just the sheriff against the man he picks. All Wolf Bench will rise up to back the sheriffs play, without justice, without mercy

  "We won't worry about that, just yet."

  "But I tell you, Kentucky, if I'd only known Is it true that he can show you had a reason to kill Mason?"

  He considered. "Yes," he said.

  "What can I say?" Her whisper came to him brokenly. "What can I say?"

  "How did you first know that Mason was murdered?" he asked.

  She said in a smothered voice, "I can't tell you now."

  "Did you know that Zack Sanders was dead?"

  "No! I didn't know! I never guessed"

  "Then"

  "Don't! Don't ask me any more. I can't-I can't"

  "Child," he said gently, "you don't need to tell me anything you don't feel like telling me, now or any other time."

  She said in a half-choked voice, "It's my fault that you're here."

  "If there's anything I can do to make things go any easier for you, I want to do it. And I don't blame you for wishing I was out of this. But"

  "No," she said in a small voice, "no, I want you to stay here."

  He said to himself, "Good Lord, she means to use me yet!" Aloud he said, "Then that's all right"

  She spoke with difficulty. "This this is the meanest thing I ever did in my life."

  "What is?"

  She did not answer him; but instead she unex pectedly crooked an elbow around his neck, pulled down his head, and kissed his mouth.

  When she was gone he stood for a moment or two in the snow, considering. Far off somewhere a timber wolf howled, the first he had heard in half a dozen years.

  AD it stood alone, the shooting of Zack Sanders, a crippled ranch cook, might have passed with little notice, and the inquest it occasioned might have been a routine and almost perfunctory performance. But the obvious and at the same time extremely elusive-connection between the killing of Sanders and the death of John Mason stirred new war talk throughout the length of the rimrock.

  Caught between a falling beef market and the heavy death losses of three years' drought, the rimrock cattlemen were in no shape to face the injury to their credit system resulting from the death of Mason. Even while it was generally supposed that Mason had died by the accidental discharge of his own gun, the temper of the rimrock cattlemen had been stormy and insecure. Now suddenly they were asked to accept the news that Mason's death had been no accident; that the redoubtable Old Ironsides had been murdered by parties unknown.

  Twenty-four hours after Lee Bishop discovered the body of Zack Sanders under the snow, the whole rimrock knew both the discovery and its meaning. Fully as many people swarmed into Waterman for the inquest upon the shooting of Zack Sanders as had gathered for the Mason inquest. But this time the people showed a different mood. The death of Mason had left the cattle people irritable, but dazed and uncertain. The proof of murder turned them ugly. Sheriff Hopper had expected this revelation to arouse a certain amount of criticism and dispute; but he had under-estimated the difficulty of his position at least seventy-five per cent

  And while the cattlemen were making it hot for Sheriff Hopper in Waterman, there had sprung up among the cattlemen themselves an even more uncertain situation. The circumstances of Mason's murder had already made the Bar Hook the focal point of the general disaster. The incredibly prompt and bold decisions of Bob Elliot's threatened 88 now promised to make the Bar Hook the focal point of the sequel. Whatever could be said against Bob Elliot, he was proving now that he could make a decision that popped like a blacksnake whip. The 88's first drive of cattle was already spread all over the middle of the Bar Hook range, cutting heavily into the feed that the Bar Hook Herefords would need long before the spring.

  Yet, now, of all times in his career, Campo Ragland chose this to go into what appeared to be a black and hopeless funk.

  The boss of the Bar Hook was habitually redeyed now, and the curve of his forehead was no longer a bland majestic sweep. He looked as if he might at any moment spit red hot pebbles. Four times in two days Lee Bishop had urged his boss to turn his riders loose upon the encroaching herds of the 88 and as a reward for this had been the victim of as many surly explosions. Campo's unaccountable vacillation was breaking the morale of them all.

  The day after the inquest Kentucky Jones got back from the morning's work before the rest. He found Jean in the kitchen, up to her elbows in flour and dough. The cook that Campo Ragland had hired in Waterman had failed to show; and Campo Ragland, more and more inclined to let things drift from day to day, had not yet succeeded in the monumental task of getting another one out.

  Jean's eye quickened instantly as Kentucky Jones came in. "Are the others back?"

  "Not yet."

  "Come here," she commanded. "I have to talk to you."

  "Just a second." He went to the phone and belled the gunsmith at Waterman.

  Old Mark Ferris, Wolf Bench gunsmith for more than twenty years, knew most of the guns in the Waterman rimrock; and Kentucky had talked to him the day before in an effort to trace the ownership of the gun found in Zack Sanders' hand. It had seemed to him odd that Zack, who owned no gun belt, should have been carrying a gun; and he had been led to wonder if Zack could have been forewarned, and had perhaps borrowed the weapon. If this were true, he wanted to know whose gun Zack had borrowed. Therefore he had set Ferris searching through his records for the serial number of the questioned gun, in the hope that the old gunsmith could recall to whom the gun had been sold.

  Presently Mark Ferris' voice came over the wire, querulous and faint "I can't find any record of that gun," he said. "I don't believe I ever sold that gun, Kentuck."

  "You must have sold it," Kentucky insisted. "Look here, Ferris-this is no joke! Look again, will you?"

  "All right."

  Kentucky hung up and went to sit opposite Jean at the table where she was at work, and began the making of a cigarette.

  "I suppose by this time," she began, "you have no end of theories about what happened here."

  "No," he said.

  "That's funny; everyone else has."

  "I used to know an old lion hunter, name of Old Man Coffee," Kentucky told her. "Whenever a killing or something had everybody else balled up, they used to send for Old Man Coffee. He didn't always unravel the trail; but he seemed to see through a lot of things that fooled other folks. And once I asked him how he did it."

  "And he told you?"

  "He said he made things easy for himself by never having a theory he just kept hunting up facts, and when he had enough to give him the answer, there wasn't any theory about it he knew."

  "And that was his theory," said Jean.

  "Maybe. But me, I think Old Man Coffee's way was a good way."

  She stopped work and studied him. "I can't make you out,"
she said at last. "You mean you have no idea of your own who killed Mason or Zack Sanders or why?"

  "Miss Ragland-Jean," he said slowly, "I think you don't want me to know those answers."

  She said quickly, "Why do you say that?"

  "Child," he said, "how long is it going to be before you tell somebody-anybody-what you know?"

  She looked at him suddenly as she answered; and he knew that she lied to him, bravely, and with open eyes. "I haven't the least idea what you mean," she said.

  "All right. But I ought to tell you this if I stay here much longer, I'll know who killed Mason and why."

  "You-you're sure of that?"

  "The facts I have are very few," he said. "I don't know where they lead. But already I know they lead a clear straight trail."

  "How can you why do you know that?"

  "The facts are too distinct and clear to be pointing more than one way. Those two men killed at the same time, but by two different calibers of guns; this house being searched; the fact that the two were killed at almost the same time, but were found lying nearly sixty yards apart-each thing stands out sharp as the slot of a deer in the snow. When those facts are finally fitted together nobody will ever be able to blur them so that there's any doubt."

  "If you're going to turn yourself into a spy-" Jean began hotly. She stopped, checked by the steadiness of his regard.

  Kentucky Jones said gently, "Who are you shielding, Jean?"

  She straightened and stood looking out through the clear space in the middle of the frosted pane. She was bleak-eyed, and her face was passive, but her head was up with a fine proud carriage, and her hair was smoky flame. "I'm glad it's over with," she said at last. "Sooner or later you were bound to ask that, of course."

  "Of course," he repeated. He could not see that there was any sign of faltering in this girl. It was as if she could expect her whole world to come down around her in a rattling avalanche if ever she lost her grip.

  "You hardly expected any answer, I suppose?"

  "No," he admitted.

  She turned her eyes to look at him slowly, curiously. "I suppose the answer to that is another thing that you are sure to know, if you stay."

  "Of course," he said again.

  She drew a deep unsteady breath. "I - I was trying to talk to you about something else."

  "I'm sorry, Jean."

  She looked at him hard. "It's nearly noon," she said. "In a few minutes the riders will be coming in. Tell me this, Kentucky: if you were boss of the Bar Hook, could you save the brand?"

  "I only know one way. It's a way that most men would hesitate to take."

  "And what is that?"

  "To feed Elliot his own medicine. It would mean more riders; all of them tough, trouble-hunting men. It would be their job to run those 88 brand cattle back where they came from; and run them again next week, and the week after, and every time they come-run them till their bones rattle, and half of them are muzzle-down in the snow. But if a man thinks he might be squeamish about seeing empty saddles come in then he might better hesitate some, before he takes that way."

  "Would you?" she asked him. "Would you hesitate?"

  "If it was my brand no."

  "Listen," She leaned toward him, her hands on the table. "My father isn't going to fight."

  "Not now, you mean?"

  "Not now, nor later, nor ever."

  "Jean," said Kentucky, "is it you that's keeping him from making his fight?"

  She hesitated, as if she truly did not know how to answer. "Yes," she said uncertainly at last. Then after a moment she changed it. "No," she said. "I kept Campo out of a fight once; maybe it was a fight that he should have made. But it's out of my hands now, Kentuck."

  "You sure don't give me much to go on," Kentucky said. "But I'll say this: if ever he's going to make his fight, now is the time; every day that he puts it off makes it harder in every way. If he puts it off long enough Elliot will have every chance to win."

  A look of forlorn desperation came into her face. "If the Bar Hook was in your hands do you think you could make a fight that would stand Elliot off?"

  "Are you trying to sell me the Bar Hook?"

  "What good would that do? There isn't a cattleman in the world who would be fool enough to buy the outfit now. But even if we could sell it, that would be almost as bad as to lose it altogether. Campo is rooted too deep in Wolf Bench cattle. If he loses the Bar Hook he'll never amount to anything again. You can't understand that, for you've never taken root. But Campo I'd almost as soon see him dead."

  "Then?"

  "Listen," she said intensely. She dropped her elbows to the table, bringing her face nearer his; and her words came tumbling out in an intense whisper. "I own a fifth share of the Bar Hook, in my own name. There's no question of selling the brand. But I could sell you my fifth share. Take it in the form of so many hundred grade steers- you to make the cut; or in any form you want Would you take it?"

  He stalled for time, puzzled. "How much are you asking?" he said.

  "One dollar," Jean answered.

  He stared at her. "And a string to it?"

  "This: delivery will not be until next spring; and the cut will be based upon the valuation of the cattle on the range at that time."

  He rolled a cigarette, considering. "See if I get this straight," he said. "You're offering me your share of the Bar Hook to make the fight that your father won't make or can't make. Is that it?"

  "Yes," she said. She was very pale. "Lee Bishop can't do anything he's just a hired foreman and can only carry out Campo's orders. But if you own part of the cattle, with winter grazing rights on the Bar Hook range-then you're justified in protecting your own interests, even though Campo doesn't defend his. I don't think Bob Elliot will fight; I think he'll let his cattle drift back to their home range. But first he has to know he's up against a man that will fight him clear into the ground."

  Kentucky sat studying the slow blue tendrils of smoke from his cigarette.

  "The deal won't be questioned," Jean said. "You're known to have enough money to buy into a brand if you want to. And nobody can look at you without knowing that whatever you set your hand to you'll fight through some way-maybe just for the love of fighting, for all I know."

  Kentucky Jones grinned, but the grin was very faint. He was pitying this girl as he had never pitied anyone in his life. There was a forlorn desperation about her scheme which told him, better than anything else could have done, how heavily events had pressed down upon this girl. In effect, Jean Ragland was offering him all the tangible assets which she controlled to serve as a gunfighter, and a leader of gunfighters. Yet to the best of his belief she was justified. There was nothing imaginary about the encroachment of Elliot; and if Campo persisted in his unaccountable state of paralysis the Bar Hook brand was done.

  "What's Campo going to say to this?" he asked her.

  "I'll take care of Campo."

  He looked up at her. Her eyes were sober and quiet, the blue of distant foothills at dusk. He thought that she was trying to keep from them any suggestion of personal appeal but that she did not quite succeed.

  Kentucky Jones found himself deeply stirred. Yet he would have thought himself a fool if he had accepted such a proposition only to please Jean. One consideration alone urged him to agree. He was anxious to talk to Bob Elliot; and he felt that the basis she suggested would give him every advantage in this.

  "I'm not going to turn you down," he said at last. "But I can accept only on certain conditions. First, that too strenuous an objection is not made by your father."

  "I hope to be able to handle that."

  "Another condition is that if Campo Ragland later decides to make his own fight; or if for any other reason I'm no longer needed, then I can withdraw, and the deal is off."

  "I accept that," she said.

  "Another condition is that the price of one dollar be changed to read: `One dollar and such other consideration as the buyer shall consider proper, according
to the state of the market upon delivery.'"

  She objected vigorously to that; but since at worst it conceded him what profit he might consider justified, she at length gave in.

  "One thing more," he said. "If I'm going to make this fight, then I want you to join your mother in California."

  She looked at him squarely. "That," she said, "I will not do."

  She stood fast, and he was compelled to give in. When she had won this point she offered him her hand, closing a bargain which placed him in the most curious position he ever had occupied in his life.

  "Jean," he said. "If this thing goes through, I'm headed into the middle of something I don't understand-can't understand from what I know. I'm going to ask you one question, and I want you to answer it. Do you know who killed John Mason?"

  "No," she said instantly. "Kentucky, I swear that I don't know that! I thought I knew, until Zack Sanders was found; but now I'm just as sure that I was wrong."

  "I won't try to get you to tell me," he said, "what you evidently don't want me to know. But, Jean, I tell you this: the time may come when I'll need your help and need it bad. When that time comes, I want you to remember that perhaps I wouldn't be in this if you hadn't asked me in."

  "I won't forget."

  He got up and jerked on his coat. "I'm going to see Bob Elliot," he told her.

  The back of her hand flew to her mouth. "Now?" she said faintly.

  "It's as good a time as any, isn't it?"

  Jean Ragland turned white. "Then go on. You I guess you know I wish you luck."

  "I might need it," he admitted.

  As he reached the door she suddenly called his name, and he turned back. She was staring after him, white-faced. "Are will you be armed?"

  "I don't know. We'll see."

  He was wondering, as he saddled a fresh pony, if she had commissioned him to kill Bob Elliot.