Savage Range

by Short, Luke;

  The old man had set the lantern on the dirt of the corral lot and was cursing Sleepy and the other horse with blistering invective. But you could tell it was a good-humored swearing, for the old man was smiling. Sleepy and the black had quit fighting, and Sleepy stood there looking foolish, his short ears laid back a little as if he were ashamed. He came over to the old man and had his neck scratched, and after that the old man picked up his lantern and went back to his chair.

  The rest was easy. When everything was quiet, Jim went to the gate and whistled quietly. Sleepy, with not a second’s hesitation, trotted over to him. Jim made up his slight to Sleepy in a few words and an ear scratching, then opened the gate. Sleepy followed him down the alley.

  Jim adjusted the bridle and played Sleepy’s stalling game for a minute, then he mounted bareback, and they headed for the alley that was behind the bank.

  Once there, Jim ground-haltered Sleepy and, from the vantage point of a woodshed, considered the proposition before him. The front and back doors of the bank were impregnable, locked tight and barred. That meant that even the windows were closed. But what about the skylights?

  He sought the tallest woodshed, climbed it, mounted to the roof of a store, and crossed over on the other roofs to the bank.

  There, on the angled roof of the bank, he could see a skylight. The one on the south slope was closed. He mounted the ridge and came down on the north side, and suppressed a grin of pleasure at what he saw. This skylight was open. Cautiously he peeped over the edge.

  The window, on a chain, swung down far enough for him to see, directly below him, a table on which rested a kerosene lamp. A guard was reading a paper by its light, and off at the other end of the table the other two guards were playing double solitaire. The close heat welling out through the skylight was almost stifling.

  Jim considered the setup for some time, then rose and went back to Sleepy. Fifty yards down the alley was the jail, and out of curiosity, Jim strolled toward it, a plan slowly taking shape in his mind.

  The masons had been at work putting in a new back wall to the cell block. A great gaping hole still showed in its middle. Buckets of water, a mortarboard, a pile of stone, and some sacks of mortar were stacked neatly against the wall.

  Jim stood there regarding Cope’s handiwork, and a sudden grin broke his face. Stealthily, then, he crawled into the cell through the hole. Its door was open, so that he tiptoed through it and put his ear to the office door. He could see a pencil of light under the door, but no sound issued from the office. He stayed that way five minutes, listening, then gently twisted the knob of the door.

  Poking his head inside, he saw that the office was empty.

  He entered, crossed to the lamp, which was turned down dim, and blew it out. Then he took off the lamp shade and, handkerchief for padding, removed the chimney. This he took with him as he went out the way he came.

  At one of the buckets of water, he stopped and got a mouthful of muddy water, which he did not swallow. Down the alley by Sleepy, he carefully set the chimney on a woodbox, then, holding the water in his mouth, climbed to the roof again.

  At the open skylight, he knelt again and considered the scene below him. Nothing had changed; one man was reading, and two were playing cards by the light of the single lamp.

  Then he carefully leaned out over the skylight until he could see down the lamp chimney into the clean orange flame. He opened his mouth then, just a little, and let about a teaspoonful of water drop.

  The effect was electric. The tiny bit of water plummeted down and hit the lamp chimney. When it touched, there was a brittle cracking and a jangle of glass as the heavy shade settled down on the lamp base, extinguishing the flame.

  Jim ducked back, hearing a chair crash backward.

  “Holy Mike!” one of the guards said. “That scared me. What happened?”

  “The damn chimbley broke,” the second said.

  “We got another?”

  “Hunh-unh.”

  “I better shag it over to the Emporium and get one.”

  “Nothin’ doin’,” the third guard said. “You stay here. Flag down somebody on the street and tell them to tell Kling to send one over.”

  “Bueno.”

  Jim moved softly up to the false front of the building. He heard the door open, and then waited about a half minute until the tramp of a passer-by’s boots pounded on the boardwalk.

  Then he heard a man say distinctly, “Pardner, do me a favor, hunh? Our lamp chimbley broke. Tell Kling to send one over, will you?”

  “Sure enough. Big size?”

  “Biggest he’s got.”

  Jim went back to the skylight. They had lighted the chimneyless lamp below, but it was just a guttering flame, no bigger than a candle flame.

  He left the roof and retrieved his lamp chimney, then cut in between the bank and its neighboring building. After he judged enough time had passed, he put his hat under his coat and walked the ten steps to the bank door, where he rapped sharply on the glass. It was dark here, so that a man could not recognize his face.

  The door opened a crack, and Jim said, “Here’s the chimney you sent for.”

  “Good.” A hand reached out to accept it. Jim dropped the chimney, grabbed the man’s wrist, kneed the door open, and slipped in behind him, all in one motion. The second motion was to ram a gun in the man’s back. The third was to close the door, shutting out the public.

  “Quiet!” Jim whispered savagely. “Walk ahead.”

  Only one of the guards seemed attracted by the scuffling. He was closest to the lamp, on the other side of it, so that he could not see clearly.

  “What’s the trouble, Dave?” he asked, stepping out to see better.

  Jim prodded the man in the back.

  “Nothin’,” Dave quavered. “I dropped the chimbley.”

  And by that time, Jim was among them. He did not speak. He merely stepped aside, Dave’s gun and his own in his two hands, and then held the guns leveled at the others.

  He watched the surprise wash over the faces of the other two. Slowly, the man who had been sitting came erect. He started to speak and found he had nothing to say, so swallowed instead.

  “One yeep out of the three of you,” Jim murmured, “and it’ll make sixteen murders for me instead of thirteen.”

  He let that sink in. One of the guards stammered, “You—you’re Jim Wade.”

  Jim nodded. “Put your irons on the table, boys. Dave, you take ’em.”

  Dave did as he was bid. When the three of them were disarmed, Jim called, “Ben!”

  There was a sleepy mumble, and then, as if you could see recognition take hold in Ben’s mind, booted feet crashed to the floor, and Ben Beauchamp, a grin a yard long on his face, rushed to the bars.

  “Jim!”

  “Hi, kid,” Jim said. To Dave he said, “Rustle up the key, Dave. Be quick about it.”

  Dave did. The key was on a nail in the wall, and Jim instructed Dave to open the door. When Ben stepped out, Jim said, “Now you three step in.”

  When one of them hotly demurred, Jim cocked his gun, nothing more. The three of them went in, and Jim swung the barred door shut and locked it.

  “Now the key to the back door,” Jim demanded.

  It was given him. “I’m goin’ to shut this steel door so your yappin’ won’t be heard,” he told them. “I’ll give warnin’, though, and they’ll be after you in ten minutes.”

  With that, he slammed the vault door and spun the dial. Immediately, the trio inside began to yell, but it was only the faintest of murmurs on this side of the door.

  Jim looked over at Ben and grinned.

  “I knew you’d be after me,” Ben said, smiling broadly. “I dunno how I knew it, but I did.”

  Jim’s face sobered. “Kid, this may mean the dark trails for you. They’ll have reward dodgers out for you, like they’ll have for me.”

  “Let ’em!” Ben said hotly. “They’ll never catch me!”

  “Where you
goin’?” Jim asked.

  “Wherever you go.”

  “But I’m stayin’.”

  “Then so am I.”

  Jim considered for a half minute. If he could watch over this kid, guide him, then the chances were in the end the kid would be free. But if the kid high-tailed it, dodging the law, it might be the making of a tough young outlaw. Either choice was bad, but when Jim thought of Lily, he knew he had to help the kid. Besides, he wanted to. He smiled and said, “Know a hide-out close?”

  “Sure.” The kid told him, and Jim approved.

  Afterward, they slipped out the back door. Sleepy wasn’t very enthusiastic about the kid, but when Jim spoke to him and hoisted Ben up on his bare back, Sleepy was docile.

  Jim saw Ben ride off down the alley, turn past the jail at a walk, and slowly ride out of town.

  Afterward, Jim hunted around for a brick. He found it, went back into the bank, blew out the light, and threw the brick through the front window. It collapsed in a jangle of glass. That was all the advertisement the three guards needed.

  He slipped out the back way and took to the alleys again. He had negotiated two of them when he heard the alarm rouse the town. There were shouts, and dimly he heard men running.

  Swinging into the alley, he was whistling softly. Its darkness and desertion assured him that the way to Cope’s was clear.

  He was thinking about Mary now, glad he was about to see her, when out of the night a voice spoke.

  “Don’t put a gun on me, Jim.”

  Jim’s reaction was automatic. He whirled into the shelter of a shed, streaking up his gun, peering into that thick darkness. He could not see ten feet, and he remained deathly silent.

  “Jim. Jim Wade!” the voice said again. It came from beside another shed.

  “Light a match,” Jim ordered.

  There was a second’s fumbling, and then a match flared. By its light, Jim saw the thin, bearded features of Scoville, one of the Excelsior gun hands. He cursed under his breath. “What do you want?” he asked coldly.

  “To talk to you.”

  “Throw away your guns. Light another match and do it.”

  When this was accomplished, Jim walked over to him. He distrusted and hated the Excelsior crew. They were not well enough known to him to stand out as individuals. In the mass, they were killers. But on the other hand, Scoville had been with him that night at the Star 88. He had obeyed orders and had not fought Jim. He deserved a hearing.

  “What is it?” Jim said coldly, seeing his small, slim shape in the dark.

  Scoville answered quietly. “It’s hard to say it, Wade. For a Mexican dollar you’d cut down on me.”

  “I would.”

  “Don’t do it yet. I know where your hide-out is. I’ve waited for you. I think I deserve a hearin’.” The man’s speech was mild, diffident, anything but the rough and surly speech of the average Excelsior hand.

  “How did you find out where I was?” Jim asked.

  “When I drifted into this country Cope fed me and found me a place to sleep until I got work. He’s the only white man in the town. I figured as soon as you were broken out of jail, it was Cope that done it. So I watched his place and saw you come out tonight.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To join you,” Scoville said simply.

  “Join me in what?”

  “Whatever you aim to do.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not a killer, Wade. I’m on the dodge for a mistake I made when I was a kid. Bonsell’s kind of jobs are the only kind left for me. But I don’t want ’em. I didn’t know any more about that frame-up of Bonsell’s than you did. It was only the crew Bonsell himself brought into the country that knew about it. The rest of us didn’t.”

  “What have you got against Bonsell?” Jim inquired coldly.

  “Just that frame-up,” Scoville answered quietly, bitterly. “Does a man need any more?”

  There was a long silence, during which Jim weighed the risk of this. Finally he said, “What do you figure I’m aimin’ to do, Scoville?”

  “Get even with Bonsell.”

  “You willin’ to risk your neck to do it?”

  “Day or night,” Scoville answered simply. He waited a moment and said, “If it’s too big a risk, Wade, I’ll light a shuck. Nobody but me knows where your hide-out is, and they won’t. I’ll slip out of this country tonight if you can’t use me. But if you can, I’d like to stay.”

  Jim almost smiled. He tried to remember what Scoville looked like, the face of the man, which would give him a clue to the man’s character. But he was just another Excelsior hand in Jim’s memory. Yet there was something about the man’s voice, unafraid, sincere. It was the voice of a man who has worked with horses, gentle and patient and stubborn. And God knows he needed men, all he could get.

  The nose of Jim’s gun sank.

  “I think I do need you,” he said quietly. “Come along.”

  Chapter Eight: WHEN KILLERS FIGHT

  The Bib K was the smallest of the four remaining ranches on the Ulibarri grant. It was on the southern edge, as if Mako Donaldson, its owner, had not had the boldness to really trespass. The reason its two-room shack had been chosen for the meeting of the surviving squatters was a purely utilitarian one. It stood in the middle of a sagebrush flat whose growth was so thick that it advertised the coming of even a jack rabbit.

  Will-John Cruver had called the meeting, and old Mako Donaldson and his boy had nothing to say about it. There were six others besides these three, four old men and two young. The windows were hung with tow-sack, and the door was closed. Two other young men stood guard out in the night.

  When Mitch Boyd, alone, rode up to the shack, answered the challenge with a curse, left his pony tied to the poles of the corral, and entered the house, Will-John Cruver put his knife away and threw the piece of wood he was whittling into the fire. There were ten men present, twelve counting the sentries, thirteen altogether counting Custer, who was watching the Excelsior.

  The cuts about Cruver’s eyes had healed well, but there was still a tinge of green about them that gave him a purely baleful look. The mud that he had picked up in the fight with Jim Wade was not wholly combed out of his whiskers, and clotted the thick tangle of them. His hair was uncombed; but despite his slovenly appearance, his filthy clothes, he gave an impression of untold power. Sometimes gentle old Mako Donaldson suspected that Will-John was a throwback to primordial mankind. He was rawhide-tough, snarly as a beast, cunning as a hunting fox, and neither defeat nor victory seemed to change him. A good man to lead others.

  Will-John Cruver thought so, too. When squat Mitch Boyd removed the water bucket from the bench and sat down on it as the only seat left, Cruver rose and spit in the fire.

  “You’re a fine damn collection of brush rabbits,” he observed with hefty sarcasm, regarding each face as he spoke. “I can’t see how you worked up the guts to leave your holes and come here tonight.”

  “You know damn well why we did,” Mitch Boyd said.

  Cruver grinned, and his beard did not part enough to show his teeth. “I do. All I got to do is rattle that old skeleton and you all step into line.”

  “What do you want of us?” Mako Donaldson asked, his gentle eyes resigned.

  “To fight,” Cruver replied bluntly.

  “With what?” Boyd asked dryly.

  “With a little more guts than you’re showin’ now,” Cruver retorted. He walked over to the deal table and sat on it. It sagged under his muscled weight.

  He said bluntly, “How many of us are there here tonight that killed Jim Buckner?”

  It was intentionally brutal, for Cruver could not be otherwise. He enjoyed the winces of the older men, Donaldson, Boyd, Slocum, Harmony, and Reed. The younger ones were impassive; this was too old a secret to impress them, but it was one that cemented them together, old and young.

  Mako Donaldson said bitterly, “Cruver, you’re goin’ to wave that flag once too often. You’ll get a slug in the back.
”

  “Not from you yellowbellies,” Cruver said.

  Mitch Boyd said, “Get to the point, Cruver. I ain’t got a man at my place. Bonsell could burn it down and I wouldn’t know it for a day.”

  “There you got it,” Cruver said. “You pack of Nellies sit home at a window with your cattle bawling out in the corrals for feed. You got a shotgun beside you, a rifle on your knees, a week’s grub on the table, and, if you’re lucky, a few sticks of dynamite on the floor. You’re too damn scared to sleep, even.”

  “I built my place,” Boyd snarled, his broad Irish face flushing. “I’m damned if I’ll let that bunch burn me out without a fight.”

  “What fight?” Cruver retorted. “You haven’t fought yet. You just hope you won’t have to.”

  Mako Donaldson put in dryly, “Just because they’ve wiped you out, Cruver, let the rest of us do it our way. If we don’t guard our places, they’ll burn ’em.”

  “And what if they do? There’s more logs in the mountains, ain’t there? There’s more cattle to steal!” He swore tauntingly at them. “Bonsell’s got maybe fifteen men. There’s thirteen of us left. That’s fairly even, ain’t it?”

  When they didn’t answer, he went on, his voice hard and sneering. “What you jugheads don’t savvy is that if we’re to stay here, we got to carry the fight to Bonsell. What does it matter if he cleans our range and burns us out, as long as we down him? Because if we don’t down him we’re leavin’ this country—if we got enough life in us to walk. He aims to kill so many of us that the rest of us will high-tail it. He’s come near to doin’ it now.”

  “But I spent ten years gettin’ that place of mine and my herds!” Boyd snarled.

  “All right. You might’s well face the fact you’ve got to do it again,” Cruver retorted. “Here or somewhere else. Would you rather start farther south in a country you don’t know, or would you rather start here in a country you do know?”