Land Grab: Jim Hatfield takes a hand in a range war! (Prologue Western)

by Jackson cole

  “Internal bleeding,” Hatfield diagnosed. “Slowly bleeding to death, but he might have a chance if I got him to a doctor soon enough.”

  Cradling the limp form in his arms, he managed to fork Goldy and send him down the slope.

  “Scrawny old feller,” he mused, “but looks tough as whipcord. May make it.”

  He shook his head as he rode swiftly down the trail. “This ride isn’t doing him a bit of good,” he told Goldy, “but there’s no help for it. If he isn’t in bed and in a doctor’s hands soon, he’s a goner.”

  After passing through a grove of pinons, he found the landscape had materially changed. Now the wide trail ran between high fences of barbed wire.

  “Must be the beginning of Flint’s holdings,” he ruminated as he saw other strands of wire criss-crossing the valley floor at intervals.

  Cattle grazed beyond the wire, and there were acres of plowed ground. An occasional farmhouse, tightly built and well cared for, came into view.

  “Nothing shiftless about these folks,” the Ranger was forced to admit.

  He had covered perhaps five miles when he saw a little clump of buildings set in a cleared space near the trail. One plainly housed a general store. There were a couple of stables and a house or two. Several men were grouped on the high stoop that fronted the store.

  Hatfield pulled up in front of the store, swung to the ground and mounted the steps, his unconscious burden in his arms. There was a chorus of exclamations, and peering to see the wounded man’s face.

  “Blazes!” somebody exclaimed, “it’s Lem Hawkins!”

  A man in an apron hurried forward as Hatfield entered.

  “A bed?” the Ranger questioned tersely.

  “In — in the back room,” the storekeeper gulped. “This way.”

  A moment later Hatfield deposited the man on a neat bunk built against the wall of the inner room.

  “Got a doctor around here?” he questioned.

  “No,” the white-faced storekeeper replied. “Nearest one is at Vega, the town in the mouth of the valley.”

  “How far?”

  “Nigh onto ten miles, mebbe a mite more.”

  “Get me hot water and a sheet, and some carbolic, if you have it.”

  Both sheet and water were soon forthcoming. Hatfield carefully washed the gash in the man’s head, also the bullet wound, and applied the carbolic solution the storekeeper procured from a shelf. Then he tore the sheet into strips and tightly bandaged the heaving chest.

  “That’s all I can do,” he told the storekeeper. “That had ought to check the bleeding. I’ll hightail to town for the doctor.”

  He hurried out of the store and found himself faced by a ring of lowering faces. The news of the tragedy had evidently spread and more men had hurried to the store.

  Foremost of the group was a bearded giant with a hard mouth and truculent eyes.

  “Where you goin’, cowboy?” he demanded as Hatfield moved toward his horse.

  “Town,” the Ranger replied. “For a doctor.”

  The big man took a step forward. “I don’t figure you will,” he growled. “You’ll stay right here till we get to the bottom of this killin’. Some of us fellers will go for the doctor.”

  “Listen,” Hatfield explained patiently, “that man is badly hurt. Unless the doctor is gotten here in one helluva hurry, he’s going to cash in. I can make it to town before you fellers get ready to start. Any delay is liable to be fatal for that poor jigger.”

  “I reckon we’ll chance it,” the big man replied.

  “I reckon we won’t,” Hatfield quietly told him, and reached for Goldy’s bridle.

  The big man reached, too — reached out an enormous paw and clamped the Ranger’s shoulder.

  “You’ll stay right here,” he stated harshly.

  Things happened. No two men present ever agreed just how it happened, but something like the slim, steely face of a sledgehammer landed on the big man’s jaw with a smack like a butcher’s cleaver on a side of beef. The giant was lifted clean off his feet and landed on his back two yards away. For an instant he lay gasping, then with a roar of rage he bounded to his feet, pawing out a big gun slung in a holster at his hip.

  There was the crash of a shot, a wisp of blue smoke curling up before the Lone Wolf’s bleak face, and the bearded man’s gun spun out of his hand and thudded to the ground, its stock smashed and splintered by the heavy slug from the Ranger’s Colt.

  The man let out a howl of pain and clawed frantically at his bullet-seared fingers. The group by the store surged forward, then froze in grotesque, strained attitudes.

  Jim Hatfield had a gun in each hand, now, and the black muzzles yawned hungrily toward the closing circle.

  “Just stay put like you are, gents,” he quietly told them. “I don’t want to hurt anybody — if I don’t have to.”

  But the Ranger knew that the situation was packed with dynamite. These men were of fighting stock, and the majority of them were armed. Tense, alert, they were calculating their chances.

  The bearded giant was wringing his bleeding fingers and mouthing curses.

  “Shoot the son of a gun, some of you!” he bawled. “There’s ten of you and one of him, what the hell you waitin’ for?”

  His bellowing rage was infectious. Faces were hardening, eyes gleaming with purpose. Any instant and the accumulating static force would explode in blazing action. Something had to be done.

  Hatfield did not want to reveal his Ranger connections — yet; but it looked like he would have to. His lips were opening to speak the words pregnant with authority, before which the most reckless would pause —

  In the name of the State of Texas!

  But at that moment a diversion occurred. Around the westward bend in the trail trotted a magnificent black horse. Settled solidly in the saddle was a blocky, white-haired man with hard, watchful eyes and a tightly clamped mouth. It was Justin Flint.

  Flint stared at the tableau before him. Then he jerked his horse to a halt and swung to the ground. He strode fearlessly in front of the Ranger’s guns.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded indignantly.

  A babble of words arose, but Hatfield’s voice cut through them like a steel blade through clabber. In terse sentences he told Flint what had happened.

  The lumberman looked him up and down from the high crown of his dimpled “J.B.” to the toes of his riding boots. Then he whirled to face the tense group. His gaze centered on the bearded giant, who under his cold glare subsided to incoherent mumblings.

  “Bixby,” Flint barked, “you’re always going off half-cocked. Why the hell didn’t you find out what had happened before getting your back up? And what’s the matter with the rest of you fellers? Have you clean lost your senses? Would this cowboy shoot Hawkins in the back and then bring him here to be looked after? Use your brains, if you got any. Get back to your places now, and let’s not have any more of this damn foolishness. I’ll go bail for this feller. I’ll do more — I’ll ride to town with him to fetch the doctor. I reckon he’ll be around when he’s needed for questioning.”

  He turned to Hatfield. “Come on, son,” he ordered, “from what you say I reckon there isn’t any time to lose.”

  He swung back into the saddle with the lithe grace of a man twenty years younger, and gathered up his reins. Hatfield mounted Goldy and together they headed west along the trail, the muttering group in front of the store staring after them.

  When they had rounded the trail and were out of sight, Hatfield turned to Flint.

  “Much obliged, sir,” he said. “I’ll wait for you in town. Reckon you’ll meet the doctor on his way out before you get there. Trail, Goldy!”

  “What the hell!” sputtered Flint. “You trying to tell me that horse can — ”

  The sentence ended in an amazed oath as Goldy shot forward like a loosened arrow. Sputtering profanity, Flint drove the spurs home and thundered in pursuit.

  The black horse was
a splendid animal, long of limb, mighty of shoulder and barrel, but the flying sorrel drew away from him as if he were standing still. Flint swore some more, and set himself to ride as he had never before ridden as Goldy vanished into a pinon grove hundreds of yards ahead.

  “Well, feller, looks like we dropped plumb into the middle of a boiling kettle of hell first off,” Hatfield told the sorrel. “And it looks like things are going on here that’ll stand a mite of investigating. Yeah, I’ve a notion we got a chore to do.”

  Goldy snorted agreement and settled to the business at hand. Little more than half an hour had elapsed when he flashed around a final bend and into the outskirts of a straggling cattle town.

  “Doctor’s office?” Hatfield shouted to the first man he met.

  “Two streets ahead and around the corner to the right,” the other shouted in reply. A moment later Hatfield hauled Goldy to a skittering halt in front of a small building where the doctor’s shingle was hung. He swung to the ground while Goldy was still in motion, bounded up the steps and flung open the door.

  As he entered a grizzle-whiskered old fellow looked up from a table with a startled exclamation.

  “What the hell?” he demanded. “Where — what — ”

  “Hello, Doc McChesney!” Hatfield cut in. “What you doing here? Never mind — no time for talk. Forget everything — see you later. Got a hustle-chore for you.”

  Quickly he acquainted the old frontier doctor with what had happened. Before he had finished, McChesney was reaching for his instrument case. He jammed a battered slouch hat on his white head and started for the door.

  “Got a good horse in the stable back of this shack,” he said. “I’ll be riding in three shakes of a sheep’s tail. Be here when I get back, Jim?”

  “Right,” Hatfield told him.

  Less than five minutes later he leaned against a corner of the building and watched old Doc skalleyhoot out of town, his long black coat flapping grotesquely, his whiskers fanning out on either side of his face like smoke in the wind of his going.

  Another five minutes had passed before Justin Flint stormed into town atop his foam-flecked, reeking black. He pulled his mount to a blowing halt and swung to the ground. His glance fixed on Goldy, who regarded him with inquiring eyes.

  Without preamble, Flint jerked his thumb toward the sorrel.

  “How much?” he demanded.

  Jim Hatfield smiled down at him from his great height.

  “Reckon you haven’t got that much, sir,” he drawled in complete good nature.

  Flint shook his head regretfully. “Reckon I haven’t,” he admitted unexpectedly; “but I’d sure like to have him. That’s a horse!”

  “He is,” Hatfield agreed. “Did you meet the doctor on his way in?”

  “Sure did,” Flint replied. “He was fogging it up the trail like the devil beating tanbark. If anybody can pull Hawkins out of it, it is that old feller. He’s a mighty good doctor. By the way, son, did you get a look at those two scoundrels who shot Lem?”

  “Not a very good one,” Hatfield admitted. “They were way up top the brush and in the shadow. When they turned their horses, the sun glinted on the hair of one of them. It looked sort of red, but that isn’t much to go on.”

  “Nope, it isn’t,” Flint returned grimly. “There are lots of red-headed cowhands in this section.”

  “You figure it was cowhands that did it?” Hatfield asked curiously.

  “I do,” Flint replied. He did not amplify the statement. Instead, he voiced a friendly word of warning.

  “That feller you knocked down — Lish Bixby — he’s a tough character and isn’t used to being manhandled that way. He’s likely to make trouble for you if he gets a chance. He’s my foreman in charge of the settlement back there, and a cousin of Lem Hawkins, who is one of the farmers. A good worker and a man of ability, but he has a nasty temper and he holds grudges. Keep an eye out for him, son.”

  Hatfield nodded, but refrained from further comment.

  “By the way,” he asked, “is there a place around here where a feller can put on the nosebag? I haven’t eaten for so long my stomach figures my throat’s been cut.”

  “The Anytime Saloon, over on the main street, the one you come into town by — Vingaroon Street, they call it — is as good as any. Sell good whiskey there, too. You can’t miss it. Just walk west after you turn the corner. Well, I’ll have to get back up to my lumber camp, son, but I’d like to have a talk with you if you calc’late to stick around this section for a while. Drop up to the camp and see me, if I don’t see you in town first. Follow this street north and keep right on the trail it runs into. You can’t miss the camp — trail runs right to it. Ask anybody you meet there for Justin Flint. They’ll tell you where to find me.”

  “I’ll do that,” the Lone Wolf agreed. “Hatfield’s the name; first handle sort of whittled down to Jim during the past thirty years. Glad to know you, Mr. Flint.”

  With a nod, Flint forked his black horse and rode away. Hatfield thoughtfully watched him depart.

  “Salty old jigger, all right,” he mused, “but doesn’t seem such a bad sort on talking with him. If it wasn’t for the way he’s torn that mountainside to pieces back there, I’d kind of cotton to him. Sure is on the prod against the cattlemen though. Yes, there’s the making of big trouble in this section. Captain Bill had the right notion.”

  He stalled Goldy in old Doc McChesney’s stable and saw to it that all his wants were provided for. Then he headed for the Anytime Saloon Flint had mentioned.

  He found the place without difficulty, its name spread across its ornate false-front in huge red letters. Pushing through the swinging doors, he entered.

  Although it still wanted an hour of sundown, the big room was fairly well-occupied. Several poker games were going strong, a roulette wheel was spinning busily, and there was a sprinkling of men at the long bar. Hatfield quickly observed that these men were sharply divided into groups. A number were undoubtedly cattlemen. Others, in red or blue woolen shirts, corduroy trousers and laced boots, he deduced, were loggers from the lumber camps north of town.

  The cowmen were typical of the open range country — lean, sinewy, quiet-spoken, alert. All of them, Hatfield noted, were armed, and they had the look of men who did not wear hardware as ornaments.

  The loggers were brawny, hard-bitten men — loud-spoken, truculent, downing their drinks with dispatch. They had a healthy outdoor swagger and an arrogant bearing. Most of them also wore guns, but usually in a different fashion from the cowhands and owners. Knives thrust into boot tops were also in evidence. They looked like they would be able to give good accounts of themselves in a shindig.

  “Wonder if it’s this way all over town?” the Ranger mused as he ordered a drink before eating.

  He swept the room with his keen glance while the barkeep was procuring glass and bottle. There was a cleared space for dancing, with a raised platform to accommodate the orchestra who had not yet put in an appearance. A lunch counter spanned the far side of the room, and there were tables for patrons who preferred to surround their chuck in greater comfort.

  Seated at one of these tables were two men who attracted the Ranger’s attention. One was red-faced and heavy-shouldered, with a bristling tawny moustache. He had cattleman written all over him, and Hatfield decided from his dress and other incidentals that he was doubtless a prosperous spread owner. He had a rumbling voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid. He gestured with huge red hands thickly covered with hair as he spoke.

  His table companion was tall, broad of shoulder, deep of chest. The leanness of his waist was well set-off by the tight satin vest, delicately worked with a flowered pattern in raised silk, and by the long coat he wore. His entire garb was funeral black relieved only by the snow of his ruffled shirt front, and Hatfield thought the somber hue became him well, contrasting as it did with the lightness of his complexion, and his golden hair which swept crisply back from his broad and very whi
te forehead. His eyes were so deeply blue as to seem almost black when the light struck them at certain angles. They were of a strange brilliance, like light-filled jewels set deep under finely-traced black brows. His mouth was grim almost to tightness and seemed to move not at all when he spoke in a soft and cultured voice.

  The big cattleman was booted and spurred, bristling with revolver and knife, but the other was apparently unarmed. But when he dropped his arm on the table top, there was a solid thud that caused the Lone Wolf’s eyes to narrow thoughtfully.

  The bartender who was pouring his drink noticed the direction of Hatfield’s gaze.

  “That big feller over there is Clyde Cranley, who owns the Box C, the biggest and best spread in the valley,” said the barkeep. He’s sort of big skookum he-wolf hereabouts, one of the real oldtimers who growed up with the section. Not a bad feller, Clyde, but holds his comb almighty high.”

  “Other feller an oldtimer, too?” Hatfield asked.

  “Nope,” replied the barkeep who was evidently a sociable soul and not averse to conversation. He ain’t been here overlong — couple, three years, I reckon. He’s Nelson Haynes. He’s in the lumber business. Owns lots of timber north of here. Not as much as Justin Flint, who’s holdin’s run clean up into New Mexico, but what he owns is prime, and there’s plenty of it. He got here before Flint and sort of grabbed off the best pickin’s, I reckon. Figure he would have glommed onto more if he’d been able, but when Flint horned in, he dropped a loop on most everything of that kind that wasn’t nailed down. Flint’s mighty well heeled with dinero, I take it. There’s been ruckuses here since the lumber people moved in, but it sure has been prime for business. Just wait till you see this pueblo on a pay night!”

  “Seems to me,” Hatfield commented as he sipped his drink, “that I heard tell that the cowmen and the lumbermen didn’t get along in this section? Those two at the table look chummy enough.”