Savage Range

by Short, Luke;

  Scoville heard the door open. There was a short silence, then Lily said coldly, “What do you want?”

  “Hello, Lily,” a thick and drunken voice greeted her. “Just wanted to see you.”

  “I don’t want to see you,” Lily said. “Go away.”

  There was a quick scuffling and then a deep laugh. “I reckon you do, after all.”

  Scoville quietly slipped down the passageway to the door. Will-John Cruver, drunk and filthy, was just inside the room. Lily had backed off against the table, her back to Scoville.

  Scoville said flatly, mildly, “And I reckon she don’t.”

  Cruver squinted over at him, no surprise in his face, only a little irritation. “Who’s that? That damn Ben?”

  Lily said faintly, “A man who rooms and boards here.”

  “Well, get back in your room and board, then, fella. I didn’t come to call on you.”

  Scoville walked around the end of the table and stopped there, his legs spraddled a little. His face was white, tense. “You didn’t come to call on anyone, mister. You got the wrong house on the wrong street in the wrong town. Try and find the right one.”

  Cruver looked over at Lily. “Who is he?”

  “I told you,” Lily said.

  “Someone in ahead of me, huh?” Cruver drawled.

  Scoville walked up to him and hit him in the face. Cruver’s head rapped back against the wall with such force that a picture crashed down off its nail. He shook his head a little, while Scoville opened the door.

  “Get out before I cloud up and rain all over you,” Scoville drawled.

  For one brief instant, amazement flooded into Cruver’s face. Then his hand made a dip for his gun, and Lily cried out, “Watch out, Phil!”

  But Scoville’s two guns whipped up. With his right one, he struck down viciously at Cruver’s wrist. It caught Cruver’s gun half out of its holster, and there was a muffled, sickening sound of grating bone. In the same second, he had swung his left gun in a tight, swiping arc and its barrel connected sharply with Cruver’s temple. Cruver simply sat down, jarring the house, and his head sagged on his chest.

  Scoville looked up at Lily. “He isn’t really a friend of yours, is he?”

  Lily was too frightened to answer. That this frail man, so quiet and unassuming, should have been able to do this, she could not understand. But there was Cruver on the floor, and there was Phil Scoville, his eyes smoldering but a thin smile on his face, regarding her.

  Scoville said, “I think I better do this up right.” He handed one of his guns, butt first to Lily. “Can you use one of these?”

  “Why—yes.”

  “Then if he ever sets foot in this place again, use it.” He smiled more broadly now. “I’ll take care of him. You go back to your work.”

  Lily watched him haul Cruver out the door by the simple means of grabbing his dirty hair and dragging him. He shut the door after him.

  Lily waited until the sound had died, then she slipped out the door. Scoville had rounded the rear corner of the blacksmith shop and was headed for the plaza. When she had gained the vantage point of the hotel corner, she saw Scoville still dragging Cruver across the road toward the sheriff’s office.

  But in front of it he stopped. Suddenly she understood. There was a big, cast-iron watering-trough in front of the sheriff’s office.

  Scoville stooped down, picked up Cruver, and dumped him in the trough. At the sound of the splash, the door to the lighted sheriff’s office opened.

  She heard Scoville drawl, “My landlady don’t like muck like this clutterin’ up her house, Sheriff.”

  There was a pause while Link Haynes came down to regard Cruver, thrashing and coughing in the water.

  “And who is your landlady?” Haynes asked mildly.

  “Miss Lily Beauchamp,” Scoville said. “When that slob gets real awake, you might tell him I’m always willin’ to oblige my landlady.”

  Haynes, a wise man in more ways than one, said quietly, “I’ll do that. I sure will.”

  And Scoville tramped off down the street. Lily returned to the house, her face rather thoughtful and glowing.

  Chapter Eleven: BLOOD-SICK

  Jim Wade ascended Cope’s stairs with dragging steps. He came up softly, as was his custom, but on the platform he paused, his hand on the door. He was a long time opening it, and then he seemed reluctant to do so.

  Cope and Mary were in the kitchen, but Cope’s sharp ears caught the sound of the opening door. Mary was behind him, and she greeted Jim with a smile that should have warmed him. It did not, however.

  “You’re hungry, aren’t you, Jim?” Mary asked.

  Jim smiled crookedly. “I can’t remember when I ate last, Mary.”

  Cope looked shrewdly at Jim and knew that something was wrong, but he did not speak of it. While Mary fixed supper, Jim smoked morosely in the tiny kitchen, and Cope, quick to step in the breach left by Jim’s taciturn mood, gossiped in his gruff and rumbling voice.

  But the food did not seem to raise Jim’s spirits. His gray eyes were clouded, his face so haggard that Cope knew it was not entirely from saddle weariness.

  Finished, Jim shoved his chair back from the table and packed his pipe.

  Cope said with broad meaning, “Don’t you reckon it’s time you went, Mary, and let Jim get some sleep? He’s wore out.”

  Before Mary could answer Jim looked up at Cope and said, “Let her stay, Cope. She might as well hear this now. Because it’s finished.”

  Mary looked from Cope to Jim, and Cope avoided her eyes. “What’s finished?”

  It was Jim who answered her. “We had a fine plan, Mary. We couldn’t tell you about it because”—he looked at Cope—“it was a little too rough.”

  “A plan? For what?”

  Cope said gruffly, “How did you think Jim was movin’ against Bonsell, Mary?”

  “I—I didn’t think he was,” Mary said in a small voice. “From what I’ve heard, Bonsell’s men and Cruver’s are fighting each other. I thought we were waiting for Uncle Harvey’s coming.”

  “They are fightin’ each other,” Jim said carefully, “because I set ’em at each other.” He still looked at Cope. “But I’m finished with that. I can’t do it, Cope.”

  Cope said nothing, and Jim presently told Mary what had happened so far, sparing himself no blame. His scaring of Bonsell at the Excelsior had been a little too expert. With Cruver’s surprise raid it had infuriated Bonsell to the point where he was burning and plundering the squatters’ range like a man gone mad. Withholding nothing, Jim told her in blunt words of the beef drive which, in one savage and lightning move, had practically destroyed the squatters.

  “As close as I can figure it,” Jim said tonelessly, “Bonsell left those four men to die in the house while he escaped. And that’s what he did when he was free.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Cope asked slowly.

  Jim nodded. “But not any more, Cope.” He stroked the bowl of his pipe with his thumb, his eyes lowered, talking in a level, dead voice. “You see, I know the whole story now. I was there when those squatters—there were a dozen of ’em—rode up there to the rim of the Mimbres and saw what had happened. I saw them talk. I saw that sight kill them, Cope. There was half a lifetime’s sweat and blood for them piled in rotting flesh on the bottom of that canyon.” He raised his glance to Cope, and it was tortured, pleading for understanding.

  Cope avoided his glance. “War is never pleasant, Jim. You know that.”

  “I thought I did,” Jim murmured gravely. “But it takes a stronger stomach than mine.”

  This was something new to Mary. She heard his story with expressionless face, inwardly appalled at what Jim was telling. Intuitively, she understood that it had been a desperate move on Jim’s and Cope’s part, the only move whereby they could conquer against these odds. And now she was watching Jim Wade’s conscience work, reaching blindly for a justice that was not in the cards. The fight at the Excelsior had no
t been of Jim Wade’s making, but it might have been, and Jim Wade understood that. And being the man he was, he shrank from more of it, a just man turning from an infamy that he could not bear.

  But Jim was talking now to Cope. “I even followed them up to that sorry camp they made in the hills, Jack. They built a big fire and huddled around it like kids, numb from what they had seen. If any of Bonsell’s men had happened to ride past there then, he could have killed the lot of them before they could have made themselves move.”

  “They killed Mary’s father,” Cope said doggedly.

  “I thought of that, watching them.” He paused, and then burst out, “But they’re so helpless, Cope! They don’t know what they’re fightin’! They don’t even know how to go about it!”

  He leaned across the table, talking earnestly, desperately now. “I sat there at first, watching them, thinking, ‘All I’ve got to do now is drop word to Max Bonsell where to find them. Then it’ll be over.’ And when I thought that, I was sick.”

  “They killed Mary’s father,” Cope repeated stubbornly.

  “Yes,” Jim murmured. “Those poor blind fools and the sons they’ve raised. Fifteen years ago, drunk with their own desperation, they murdered a man. They killed Mary’s father. And for fifteen years, it’s haunted them. But they’ve married wives and raised children, Cope. They’ve built places, even if those places were on the land they murdered a man to get! They’ve sweated and ridden in rain and snow and gone hungry and watched their herds die in drouth! They’ve buried their wives on that land! They’ve saved and sacrificed to buy ten more cows next spring!” He paused, regarding Cope’s implacable face. “Cope,” he said softly, “you know those men. You know them by name. You’ve lived with them, sold them liquor to cheer them up in those black times that every cowman knows. Would you put a gun to the head of a one of them and pull the trigger if you had the chance?”

  “Only Cruver,” Cope murmured.

  “And he’s only one. There’s others. There’s one old man that has the face of a saint. He’s suffered. To look at him, you know the murder of Jim Buckner has never been far from his mind these fifteen years.”

  “Aye. Mako Donaldson.”

  “Does he deserve a dirty bushwhacking at the hands of Bonsell?” Jim asked passionately. “He’s paid his debt a thousand times over!”

  “No,” Cope answered. “He doesn’t.”

  Jim leaned back and raised his glance to Mary. She wanted to help him, to cry out that he was right, but Jim Wade was blind to her tonight. He lighted his pipe in that stillness and began to talk again.

  “Today I rode over to see where Bonsell was,” he said softly. “I found his camp. It was deserted. I began to think then. I trailed a pair of his riders, Cope. From a break in the timber above Mule Springs, I saw enough to know what’s happening. I saw two men forted up in the rocks, one sleepin’, the other on watch. They were waitin’ for someone. To make sure, I traveled over to the old stage road that leads to the west slope. I saw two more men. Waitin’.” He smiled meagerly. “They’ve got this country bottled up, Cope. And when they see that this bunch of broken squatters are not goin’ to run, they’ll hunt ’em down. In two more nights, Cope, an Excelsior rider will spot that fire. And what will be the end?”

  Cope’s tough old face was sweating, his eyes sad and wise and touched with disillusion.

  “But they’ve got to go, Jim,” he said patiently. “Pity or no pity, they’ve got to go. Men build rules for a game and they name those rules law. And the man that breaks that law has got to pay.”

  “But not that way!” Jim said swiftly. “Not hunkered down over a can of coffee, lost as a damn sheep in a blizzard, when a slug takes him in the back! Not that way, Cope!”

  “No, not that way. But what way?”

  Jim only shook his head and smoked in silence, his face shaped by a sadness that made Mary’s heart ache.

  “When a man’s young,” Jim murmured, “he’s got an answer for everything. A thing has got to be right or wrong, it can’t be half-and-half.” He looked over at Cope. “I’m not old, Cope, but I know this. Nothing is wholly right. Nothing is wholly wrong.” He looked at his hands. “I’ve got to take those men out of the country,” he said softly.

  Cope’s head jerked up. “You have got to!” he repeated. “Why?”

  “Because they can’t get out by themselves.”

  “How do you know they want to go?”

  “They’ve got to go,” Jim said.

  Cope smiled wryly. “Does it look like they want to go? Scoville pistol-whipped Cruver tonight for breakin’ into Lily Beauchamp’s house. He’s down in my saloon, drinkin’ up the guts to hunt Scoville down. Does that look like they wanted to leave? When they’ll follow a man like Cruver?”

  Jim’s head jerked up. “Cruver’s downstairs?”

  Cope nodded. “And he’ll be down there till he gets so drunk I throw him out.”

  Jim stared at the wall in front of him, something like hope flooding his face. Then he came to his feet, alert and smiling narrowly.

  “Don’t you,” he drawled. “You keep him here, Cope. Can you do it?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Jim reached for his hat, which he had put on the floor beside the table.

  “Because that’s all I need. With Cruver out of the way, I can swing it. I can take them out of here.”

  “They’ll cut you to doll rags when they see you!” Cope growled. “They think you were in that first set of killin’s, Jim.” He stood up, steadying his massive body by grasping the back of the chair, too agitated to grope for his crutch.

  “They’ll listen,” Jim said softly, “because they’ve got to listen.”

  “Jim,” Mary said.

  He looked over at her, almost as if she were a stranger. His face softened a little at sight of her.

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Give it up! Jim, I didn’t know what I was doing when I asked you to help me! I didn’t know it would be this! I’ll go away, Jim.” She came close to him, and her eyes were wide with pleading. “Do you think my land, any piece of land, is worth all this blood? I’d rather be poor all my life than have the grant at this cost. You can’t go, Jim! You can’t!”

  Jim shook his head and said gently, “It’s too late, Mary. None of us—you nor Cope nor I foresaw it. But if I don’t go tonight, it’ll be worse.”

  He looked over at Cope for one brief instant, then wheeled and tramped through the room and left.

  Mary stood immobile, watching him go, and then something died in her eyes. She stood there until Cope put his arm around her shoulder. It only needed that friendly touch for her tears to come. She turned and buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing until Cope thought her heart was broken.

  “It’s my fault,” she said bitterly. “Oh, Uncle Jack, why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?”

  “I didn’t know, child,” Cope murmured.

  “But they’ll kill him! He’ll go to them with kindness, and they’ll kill him!”

  “That they won’t,” Cope said softly. “He walks with a proud walk, girl.” He stroked her soft hair, soothing her. “There’s men and men, Mary. There’s the kind that’s born to die by the gun, and they’re well dead. But there’s a kind that’s born to live by the gun, and out of all their violence there comes somethin’ a man can build on. Jim’s that kind. Men don’t shoot at him, Mary. They listen to him.”

  Mary’s sobs had ceased, and Cope knew she was listening to him. He wished he could wholly believe what he had told her, but that old hope was almost dead in him. But he could make it live for her.

  “I—I hope you’re right, Uncle Jack,” Mary stammered.

  “Of course I am,” Cope said gruffly. “Now dry your eyes, girl. We’ve got to clean up this table.”

  Jim rode hard to reach the squatters’ hide-out before sunup. False dawn was just laying its gray touch on the land when he ground-haltered his horse beyond the canyon mouth. There would be a guard posted
halfway down this box canyon. This death trap these men had chosen as their fortress.

  He moved slowly, picking up a landmark soon, a big boulder which the guard had chosen for his station. Jim had seen him last night. He circled the boulder, clinging to the soft dirt slope of the canyon side, and coming down behind it.

  From there on he faced the rock and walked boldly toward it, not troubling to smother his footfalls. When he reached the rock, he saw the blurred shape of a man prone at the base of it.

  He stood above the man, a high, flat figure in that chill morning air, and a wry smile played over his face. The man was asleep. Jim knelt by him and took the rifle from his side and then slipped his six-gun from its holster, afterward shaking him gently.

  The guard roused with a start. “What is it?” he asked swiftly, peering up into Jim’s face.

  “Let’s go back to camp,” Jim suggested mildly. “I want to talk with your boys.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Jim Wade.”

  The guard made a lunge for his rifle, and Jim gently placed the barrel of his gun in the man’s chest.

  “Not a move,” he said, still mildly. “I only want to talk. Only I don’t want you blowin’ off your mouth before I get the chance. I’ll have to hit you if you do.”

  The young puncher swore darkly and climbed to his feet. The east was gray now, so that a man could make out the shape of a tree.

  “Let’s hurry,” Jim suggested.

  Walking a step behind the puncher, Jim followed him up the canyon bed until, rounding a shoulder of rock, they were in the camp. It nestled at the very base of the box canyon’s rear wall. A more perfect death trap to defend could not have been chosen.

  In the coming dawn, Jim could see a man stooped over a small fire, nursing it with sticks.

  He was Mitch Boyd, and, still bleary-eyed from sleep, he growled a good morning to the guard without looking at him.

  Jim walked over and scattered the fire with a kick, his booted foot missing Boyd by inches only.

  Boyd jumped backward, an oath on his lips, and then he saw Jim holding a gun on him, and his curse died.

  “Nothin’ like tellin’ Bonsell where to find you, is there?” Jim drawled. “On this mornin’ you could see camp smoke for ten miles.”