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

by Jackson cole

  “Haynes and Pack didn’t ride to the spread with you?”

  “Nope, Haynes had to get back to his camp and Pack elected to stay in town overnight. Figured on gettin’ drunk, the chances are. Said his head was achin’ bad. Notion it’s achin’ worse this mornin’, if he runs true to form.”

  “Maybe it is,” Hatfield agreed noncommittally. His black brows drew together in thought, but he said nothing more.

  “What color hair has Dennis got?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sort of sorrel, I reckon,” Doc replied. “He’s a scrubby sort of jigger. Showed up here with Pack a year or so back. Cranley hired ‘em both for the roundup season, but they turned out to be good hands and he kept ‘em on. Reckon they’re all right, only Pack drinks too much for his own good. Don’t let it interfere with his work though, I understand. Come out into the kitchen and I’ll rustle us some chuck. Then I’ll grab off a mite of shut-eye and then see about gettin’ that busted window put together.”

  After they sat down to breakfast, Hatfield asked if Hawkins had anything to say about the men who shot him.

  “I wouldn’t let him talk much,” Doc returned, “but he did tell me that night before last his wire was cut and some beefs run out of his pasture. Said he was up on the bench tryin’ to track ‘em down when a couple jiggers rode out of a thicket behind him. He said they was wearin’ red handkerchiefs over their faces and he didn’t figure there was any good in ‘em, so he lit out hell-for-leather along the bench, tryin’ to keep in front. Weren’t no use, though, so he took a chance at goin’ over the lip of the bench and tryin’ to make the valley floor. Last thing he rec’lects is his horse goin’ down and pitchin’ him. Must have landed on his head, I reckon, which I figure was lucky for him. Can’t hurt a Kentuckian by larrupin’ him on the head. Luckier you happened along. Those two hellions would have likely made a finish job of him before they left if you hadn’t. Wonder who they could have been?”

  “Hard to tell,” Hatfield replied. “Maybe the jiggers that run off his beefs. Had ‘em holed up somewhere in the brakes and were waitin’ a chance to run ‘em outta the valley when he come along.

  “Maybe that flash of red I got when they turned was the handkerchief,” he added to himself. “That’s what I’d like to know for sure.”

  When the meal was finished, Hatfield rolled a cigarette with the slim fingers of his left hand and sat for some minutes smoking thoughtfully.

  “You say Haynes doesn’t hold it against Flint for coming in and grabbing off the cuttings he would have liked to have had?” he remarked.

  Doc wiped his whiskers with the back of his hand and reached for his pipe.

  “Don’t ‘pear to,” he replied. “Reckon he don’t hanker to buck Flint, for that matter. Haynes ain’t exactly poverty-stricken, but he’d have about as much chance of movin’ that mountain as he would Flint. Haynes ‘pears to be the sort that goes out of his way to get along with folks. Him and the cowmen hit it off first rate. He keeps his hands out of the valley, buys beef and feed from Cranley and the others, and don’t let his men cut up too much in town. Reckon you don’t have to look for no trouble with Haynes; but Flint — ”

  An expressive shrug finished the sentence. Hatfield nodded thoughtfully, pinched out his cigarette and stood up, stretching his long arms until his fingertips almost touched the low ceiling.

  “Goin’ to take a little ride,” he announced. “See you later, Doc.”

  “Okay,” the physician rejoined. “I’m goin’ to pound my ear for a spell. Reckon some other swallerforkin’ hellion will need attention before the day’s over. Take care of yourself, Jim.”

  Hatfield saddled Goldy and headed east by north across the valley mouth. As he had anticipated, the bench flanking the northern cliffs petered out into a rocky slope before reaching the western mouth of the valley. He sent Goldy clambering up the slope and soon reached the bench which was fairly level but brush grown and boulder studded. He rode slowly, now, following the semblance of a trail that wound in and out between the thickets and occasional clumps of chimney rock.

  The valley wall, nearly a mile distant, was of dark stone, almost black, relieved by occasional outcroppings of gray, almost pure white and pinkish shades.

  Jim Hatfield, before the murder of his father sent him into the Rangers, had had three years in a famous college of engineering. He had kept up his studies in the years that followed, and had never lost his interest in the subject; and although he was not a qualified engineer, he knew more about it than many a man who could write a degree after his name. Now he studied the forbidding cliffs with the eye of a geologist.

  “Limestone,” he mused, “largely impregnated with bituminous and organic matter, with some indications of iron oxide and magnesium carbonate. Interesting. Particularly when this bench shows marked characteristics of shale.”

  His gaze shifted to the valley floor with its singular dome-shaped hills starting up in so unexpected a manner. His eyes grew thoughtful.

  The beetling cliffs, their bases shrouded by bristling chaparral growth, were scored with clefts and washes. More than once Hatfield noted dark openings that were doubtless the mouths of caves.

  The valley wall was difficult to approach because of the tangle of growth and the talus which littered the bench where there had evidently been numerous falls from the lofty overhang of the cliffs.

  “Regular hole-in-the-wall section,” the Ranger mused. “Some of those clefts and holes might go clean through to the other side and nobody would know it unless they combed those brakes foot by foot, and that’d be some chore. Running beefs out of this valley would be a heap sight easier than it would seem at first sight. All kinds of places to hole up a herd. Move ‘em by easy stages at night, tuck ‘em away in the daytime and get all set to shove ‘em out the mouth during a storm or on a particularly dark night. Let’s see, now, I’d oughta to be sort of close to where that poor devil Hawkins went over the bench lip yesterday. Not much chance of picking up a trail over these rocks, though.”

  He continued to ride slowly, studying the forbidding terrain, with scant results. His attention was abruptly returned to his immediate surroundings by a crackling of brush at no great distance ahead.

  Straightening in the saddle he became intensely alert, the thumb of his right hand hooked over his cartridge belt, the sinewy palm close to the black butt of the heavy gun tapping his thigh.

  The sound ahead grew louder. Suddenly a mounted man brushed through a final tangle of thicket and reined in sharply as his eyes fell on the approaching Ranger. His startled glance quickly changed to one of recognition and he relaxed. At the same instant Hatfield recognized Clyde Cranley.

  “Hello!” Cranley called in cordial tones. “You give me a start at first. Didn’t I see you last night in the Anytime?”

  “Reckon you did,” Hatfield admitted, reining in and fishing in a pocket for the makin’s.

  Cranley looked the Ranger over appraisingly, and was apparently satisfied with what he saw.

  “Guess you’re the feller, Hatfield, Doc McChesney left that note for last night,” he remarked. “He was tellin’ me how you picked up one of them nesters what got plugged. Reckon them hellions had a fallin’ out among themselves. Well, that usually happens, sooner or later, among thieves! Can’t help but wonder if the jiggers what shot him were the same two that gunned a coupla my hands yesterday.”

  He shot a shrewd glance at the Ranger.

  “Happen to be up here tryin’ to pick up their trail?” he queried.

  “Something like that,” Hatfield admitted.

  “All you need to do is amble back to that damn settlement at the mouth of the valley and pick the hellions out of that crowd, if you can spot ‘em,” Cranley growled.

  He eyed the Lone Wolf for a moment.

  “Ridin’ the chuck line?” he asked casually.

  “Sort of,” Hatfield agreed.

  “Aimin’ to stick around for a spell?”

  Hatfield was noncomm
ittal.

  “‘Pears to be a int’resting section,” he equivocated.

  “Yeah, too damn int’restin’ of late — ever since them damn nesters coiled their twine here,” Cranley grunted. “My name’s Cranley — Clyde Cranley,” he offered. “I own the Box C spread — down at this end of the valley. My holdin’s butt up against that infernal wire they strung when they squatted here. And ever since I been havin’ trouble. Right now I’m tryin’ to locate where they run my steers out of the valley. ‘Bout like tryin’ to pick a particular flea off a sheep’s back, though. The hull section hereabouts is a mess of draws and holes and canyons. They’re all covered up by brush and hid by rocks. You could ride right past the place and never know it was there, and tracks don’t show worth a damn on this infernal bench.”

  “Got any proof it’s the settlers who are widelooping your cattle?” Hatfield asked.

  “No, I ain’t — none that would stand up in court,” Cranley growled. “But it’s damn funny that we’d go along for years without any trouble hereabouts, and then have it bust loose right after them hellions got sot.”

  “I was told the settlers have been havin’ trouble, too,” Hatfield commented. “That feller Hawkins told Doc McChesney he was tryin’ to locate some beefs he had lost when he was shot.”

  “He would!” spat Cranley.

  Hatfield smothered a grin. The remark was identical with the one Justin Flint had shot at Captain McDowell when the latter told him the cattlemen had been making complaints.

  Cranley glanced at the sun which had passed the zenith and was slanting down the western sky.

  “Oh, hell!” he growled. “Reckon I’m just wastin’ my time amblin’ around up here, and I’m getting hungry. Think I’ll be headin’ back to the spread. Come along with me and sample a surroundin’,” he invited. “I got a good cook. Would sort of like to have a gab with you, if you got the time to spare.”

  “Reckon it wouldn’t be a bad notion,” Hatfield returned. “I’m feeling a mite lank myself.”

  “There’s a place a couple miles back where we can make it down the sag without bustin’ a neck,” Cranley said, turning his horse.

  Together they rode the bench until Cranley indicated a practicable descent. They negotiated it without mishap and followed the trail that wound up the valley parallel to the slope.

  “We turn south about a mile further on,” Cranley explained. Abruptly he gestured to a dry watercourse that crossed the trail, its bed littered with stones, rounded by the action of water over an extended period of time.

  “There’s another one of my troubles,” he said gloomily. “Last year there was a fine spring feedin’ a crik that run in that draw. This year the spring don’t give a drop of water, and there are others that have plumb dried up for no reason at all, so far as anybody can see. Nearly every spring in this end of the valley is runnin’ a heap less water than it did a year back. I plumb can’t understand it. There was about the average fall of snow on the hills durin’ the Winter, and it hasn’t been an over-dry Spring. But just the same, the water supply ain’t anythin’ like up to par. If this keeps up we’re due for real trouble in this section. The range here is plumb dependent on them springs that flow from under the slope.”

  Hatfield’s brows drew together as he eyed the dusty watercourse. An experienced cattleman, he realized that such a range as the valley represented would be absolutely useless for grazing purposes without an adequate water supply. Irrigation was out of the question, there being no stream that could be tapped for that purpose.

  “Been doing anything about it?” he asked casually.

  “I’m startin’ to,” Cranley replied. “I’ve got drillin’ machinery on the way right now — should be here ‘most any day. I aim to drill a few holes on my spread and see if I can’t tap an artesian well. I figure what’s happened here is this: the bottom has dropped out of some underground reservoir that underlies the valley. It’s a limestone and sandstone section and full of faults and crevices. The water has dropped down to a lower level, maybe, but if it has, it should still be here. Just a case of drillin’ deep enough and we’ll tap it again.”

  “Could be,” Hatfield admitted. “Worth trying, anyhow. You say their springs all have their source from this slope?”

  “Most of ‘em,” Cranley replied, “and every one of ‘em runs from north to south before turnin’ west down the valley.”

  Hatfield nodded, eyeing the slope and the bench with interest. He raised his gaze to the marred slope of the great ridge north of the valley. The tall stumps that fanged the mountainside jutted up like snagly teeth in a splintered jawbone. As far as his eye could reach, the scene of desolation was the same. Only at the crest of the ridge and for a mile or so down the slope the great trees remained in their virgin beauty. His lips twisted as if there was a bitter taste in his mouth, and his glance dropped once more to the boulder-strewn slope and the bristle of growth fringing the lip of the bench, which was at this point only a few hundred yards above the trail.

  Suddenly his gaze centered on a tangle of thicket extending some way down the slope. Above the thicket a bluejay was darting and wheeling. Its querulous squawks and cries could faintly be heard.

  “Maybe a rattlesnake too close to his nest,” the Ranger mused, his keen eyes searching the thicket. “Maybe — ” Without finishing the conjecture he burst into explosive action.

  Cranley gave a startled yelp as Hatfield’s long arm swept him violently from the saddle. A yelp that ended in an explosive grunt as he measured his length on the ground and lay gasping for breath.

  Almost before he landed, Hatfield was beside him, the Winchester he had slid from the saddle boot cradled in his arms.

  Something yelled over the horses’ backs with a crackling screech. The cliffs flung back the report of a rifle in volleying echoes. Cranley sputtered profanity as he managed to get some air into his lungs. The bluejay rocketed high into the air, squawking and tumbling.

  “Keep down,” Hatfield warned Cranley. “He can’t see us in this long grass and I don’t figure he’ll chance giving his position away with a potshot. Keep down, and watch the brush.”

  His own eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the thicket over which the jay sheared the air with quick wing strokes.

  For some minutes the Ranger lay without moving a muscle. Then, slowly and cautiously, he slid his hat from his head and perched it on the muzzle end of his rifle barrel. Still more slowly he tipped the muzzle of the rifle up, holding the gun at arm’s length to the right.

  The dimpled crown of the J.B. nosed above the grass tops, as if somebody was cautiously raising his head to peer over them. Hatfield inched the hat a little higher, held it motionless.

  From the thicket far up the slope spurted a trickle of bluish smoke. Again the cliffs volleyed echoes. The hat spun crazily from the gun barrel and landed some yards distant.

  Instantly Hatfield cuddled the rifle stock against his cheek. His eyes, icily gray, glanced along the sights. Smoke wisped from the black muzzle.

  Shot after shot he fired, raking the thicket with slugs. The ejecting lever was a misty blur of movement — had a cartridge jammed, it would have snapped like matchwood.

  After the fourth shot, a bush at the edge of the thicket over which the bluejay wheeled was violently agitated. Something black tumbled from it, rolled down the slope a little ways, thrashed spasmodically for a moment and was still.

  “Got him!” the Ranger exulted. “Keep down,” he warned Cranley. “There might be two of the sidewinders.”

  He lay motionless, the rifle stock against his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the darting jay that had flown higher, its cry redoubled. After a few more minutes of whirling and darting, however, it soared lower, hovered over the thicket for an instant, then dropped out of sight, not to reappear.

  Hatfield relaxed, and lowered his rifle.

  “Reckon he was by himself,” he said, “otherwise old fuss-and-feathers up there would still be raising hell. Come on,
let’s have a look at the hellion.”

  Together they scrambled up the slope, slipping and sliding on the loose stones.

  “How in hell did you know he was there?” Cranley demanded.

  “Thought the way that jay was acting up was funny,” Hatfield replied. “Then I caught a gleam of reflected sunlight as he shifted his gun to line sights with us. I’ve seen that before, and didn’t take any chances.”

  “Damn lucky for one or both of us you didn’t,” grunted Cranley. “One of the hellions must have followed you along the bench and then hightailed on ahead of us and holed up till we came along.”

  “Maybe,” Hatfield nodded, “but it’s funny he didn’t throw down on us while we were riding the slope. We would have been caught settin’ for fair then.”

  “Must have been too far behind,” Cranley pointed out. “Well, it’s sure lucky you don’t miss anything that goes on. Otherwise, I reckon neither one of us would have done any talkin’ about it. The hydrophobia skunk wouldn’t have left any witnesses alive after downin’ you. Much obliged for knockin’ the wind out of me, feller. That was mighty quick thinkin’, and mighty fine of you to take the chance of gettin’ plugged to get me in the clear. I won’t forget it.”

  Guns ready, they approached the fallen drygulcher. But their caution was needless. The gun-wielder was dead, the front of his dirty shirt drenched with blood, a ragged hole in it just over the heart.

  It was a dark, saturnine face contorted in death that Hatfield gazed down into — a face with prominent cheek bones and a cruel gash of a mouth. It was framed in lank black hair and the glazing eyes were like two black beads.