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

by Jackson cole

“What’s burned to the ground?” Hatfield asked mildly, glancing up from his work.

  “The drillin’ rig!” Cranley bawled wrathfully. “The derrick ain’t nothin’ but ashes and the rope’s burned up, too, and the bit is ruined. We didn’t find nothin’ but junk when we rode down there this mornin’ to start the engine goin’. The goddam buzzards! Did it out of pure damn cussedness, couldn’t be any other reason!”

  “Sure a stray coal or a spark from the boiler didn’t set it?” Hatfield suggested.

  Cranley snorted like a steer that had backed into a barbed wire fence.

  “We banked the fire under the boiler good when we knocked off last night,” he growled. “Everything was in good shape when we left. It couldn’t have caught that way. Besides,” he added impressively, “there was a smell of oil there this mornin’. No, it was set, and them damn nesters set it. Flint wants to run us out of the valley, and he’s doin’ everything he can to make trouble.”

  Hatfield slowly rolled a cigarette, eyeing his irate employer steadily.

  “Boss,” he said, “did Flint ever strike you as bein’ a damn fool?”

  Cranley grunted with surprise. “Why, no,” he admitted. “I’ll say the hellion ain’t. He’s smart as they make ‘em, and he don’t miss no tricks.”

  Hatfield nodded. “Well,” he said, “admitting that Flint is smart, does it look reasonable he’d go in for damn foolishness like you say has been going on around here? Look at the thing reasonably. Could Flint, or anybody else, run you and the other cowmen out by widelooping a few steers, burnin’ a haystack or two and a barn now and then, or even by taking an occasional potshot at one of your riders?”

  “Why, no,” Cranley admitted. “Of course he couldn’t.”

  “Would be a damn fool to try, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Hatfield smiled slightly, and rose to his feet, towering over the blocky cattleman.

  “And we sort of agree that Flint is anything but a fool,” he remarked.

  “I reckon you’re right, Hatfield,” Cranley admitted. “Flint ain’t loco enough to try anything like that. But,” he added stubbornly, “he’s to blame for them damn nesters bein’ here, and nesters will do anything. They ain’t got no use for the cowmen, and they’re showin’ it.

  “But I’ll lick ‘em,” he declared, tugging viciously at his bristling sandy moustache. “I’m one jump ahead of ‘em all the time.

  “Figure to stop me from drillin’ for water, eh? Well, they won’t. I didn’t order just one rig when I sent for ‘em. I ordered two. The other one is at the freight station in Vega right now. I’m runnin’ it into the valley tomorrow, and I’m postin’ guards over it day and night as soon as we get it set up. I’ll show ‘em! Goddamn ‘em!”

  “Yeah, I’ve a notion it would be a good thing to post guards,” Hatfield admitted unexpectedly.

  Very shortly the new rig was operating, but the drilling proceeded slowly. At seventy feet, rock was struck which stubbornly resisted the churning bit. Cranley grew pessimistic, but he obstinately refused to admit defeat. He kept guards vigilant by day and a watchman guarding the rig by night. He himself kept a sharp eye open.

  Hatfield also kept an eye on the drilling, but in a somewhat different manner. Several miles above the site of the rig, he discovered a spot where Goldy could negotiate the slope to the bench at the base of the cliffs without too much risk of breaking his neck. Nearly every day he rode to the bench and carefully patrolled it. A week or so after the underground ledge of stone was struck, he was riding along slowly when he caught sight of a horse and rider diagonalling across the bench some distance ahead. Even as he watched, the horseman vanished into a thicket that bristled to the very lip of the bench.

  Hatfield quickened Goldy’s pace until he was almost opposite the spot where the other had disappeared. He pulled Goldy to a halt, slid to the ground and swiftly and silently wormed his way through the growth on foot. As he drew near the lip, he slackened his pace and crept forward soundlessly and with the greatest caution.

  It was gloomy under the interlacing chaparral tops. Peering through the shadows, Hatfield made out faintly a silhouette of a human crouched behind a fringe of growth on the very edge of the bench, intently peering into the valley below. The crouching form held a rifle in its hands.

  Slowly the Lone Wolf stole up behind the peering figure. He could see through the straggle of brush to the valley floor, now. Riding across the valley, drawing nearer every instant, was a man who lounged easily and confidently in his saddle.

  Hatfield saw the shadowy figure by the bush stiffen, rise slightly. He glided forward another pace and stretched out his slim, powerful hands. At the same instant he trod on a dry branch that crackled sharply under his foot.

  The crouching figure whirled. Hatfield’s right fist whipped over, shoulder high, with all his two hundred pounds of muscular weight behind it.

  And then, with an amazing exhibition of strength, he stayed the blow in mid-air, his iron-hard fist scant inches from the other’s face.

  There was a gasping cry, and a convulsive movement. Hatfield gripped the rifle just in time and wrested it away. Then he stood staring into a white, frightened, little face, framed in red-gold curls — the face of a young girl.

  CHAPTER V

  JIM HATFIELD FELT sweat break out on his temples as he stared at the slender trembling girl and realized how near his crushing blow had come to reaching its mark.

  “Ma’am,” he said, his voice a trifle unsteady, “that was almighty close. You see, I didn’t know you were a woman.”

  But his face hardened as the girl started to speak.

  “What’s the notion, ma’am, of sneakin’ up here in the brush and watchin’ the valley down there with a rifle in your hands?”

  “I — I was waiting for — for somebody,” the girl quavered.

  “Waiting for somebody? But why the rifle?”

  “Ra — he told me to carry it,” she replied, her voice a trifle steadier. “He said it was dangerous for me to ride here.”

  “He — whoever he is — came mighty nigh to being plumb right,” the Ranger agreed grimly. He gazed over the girl’s shoulder at the approaching horseman who had now drawn near the base of the slope. There was something about the set of the shoulders and the way he forked his big bay that was reminiscent of Clyde Cranley, but the rider was too slender and too youthful of posture to be the old ranch owner.

  Hatfield’s eyes narrowed slightly. He gestured toward the horseman.

  “That who you’re waiting for, ma’am?” he asked.

  The girl stared fearfully into his bleak face.

  “Y-yes,” she faltered.

  “And just why are you up here waiting for Rance Cranley?” Hatfield queried. “Just who are you, anyhow, ma’am?”

  The girl’s round, white little chin tilted proudly as she answered the second question:

  “I’m Verna Flint.”

  Hatfield stared at her. “Justin Flint’s daughter?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Now I’m beginning to understand,” the Ranger added, “why Rance Cranley was up on the mountain that day.”

  The girl was gazing at him with wide eyes, her red lips parted.

  “Why,” she exclaimed, “you must be Jim Hatfield! Rance told me how you saved him from those awful men.”

  Hatfield chuckled, and abruptly his green eyes were sunny as summer seas.

  “And you rode down here to meet him because you figured it was too dangerous for him to come up there?”

  “Yes,” Verna Flint replied. “That’s what I told him. He didn’t like it, but I wouldn’t hear of anything else. I don’t consider there is any danger down here.”

  “Maybe not,” Hatfield responded, “but I’m not plumb sure of that.”

  He chuckled again, however. “I’m beginning to see how this trouble spot may be cleared up, after all,” he said. “Okay, ma’am, I see young Rance is climbing the slope. I’ll just mosey o
n. Reckon you’re safe enough in his hands.”

  The red-haired girl smiled for the first time and colored prettily.

  “I hope so,” she replied demurely.

  “Reckon you can take a chance on it,” Hatfield smiled back at her. “Adios.”

  He made his way back to Goldy, mounted and rode upward toward the base of the cliffs. But a short distance from the bench trail, he halted the sorrel, hooked one leg comfortably over the saddle horn and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

  “Just the same, little lady, I’m keeping an eye on you till you’re clear of this darn bench,” he remarked aloud. “Somebody else might be in the notion of taking a ride along this way.”

  Some time later Verna Flint reappeared, mounted and rode swiftly westward. Hatfield, at a discreet distance in the rear, threaded his way through the brush higher up, keeping under cover himself, but always having the girl in sight. They were perhaps two miles from the west end of the bench when Hatfield saw a horseman hove into view, riding eastward. He quickened Goldy’s pace and loosened his Winchester in the saddle boot.

  The approaching horseman pulled up when he saw the girl, swept his hat from his head and bowed. The girl similarly pulled up. They spoke together for a moment, then the newcomer turned his horse and together they rode westward.

  Hatfield halted Goldy and gave a low whistle. For when the horseman removed his hat, the sun flashed on his crisply golden hair. Hatfield recognized Nelson Haynes.

  For some minutes, Hatfield sat staring after the pair.

  “I’ve a notion, after all, there’s still considerable bubblin’ due in this hell kettle,” he growled as he turned Goldy’s head and rode back the way he had come.

  • • •

  Two days later, Hatfield and Clyde Cranley rode to Vega together. They rode in a drenching rain that had begun just before dawn. Old Clyde chuckled as he drew his streaming slicker closer about him and flicked the water from his bedraggled moustache.

  “This is just what I’ve been hopin’ for,” he declared to his foreman. “If it keeps up like this for a couple days, we won’t have to worry about water, I’ve a notion. The springs will be flowin’ again like they used to, I’m willin’ to bet. A big hard rain is what we needed.”

  Hatfield said nothing. Instead, he turned in the saddle and gazed earnestly at the vast denuded slope of the mountain north of the valley wall, dimly seen through the drifting rain mists.

  It was still raining, harder than ever, when they reached Vega, and it was coming down in sheets when Cranley finished the business that had brought him to Vega, which had to do with a herd of beefs Nelson Haynes needed for his lumber camp on the mountain.

  “No sense in ridin’ back to the spread under this waterfall,” the ranch owner told Hatfield. “We’ll just put up in town for the night. Notion we can find a little game over at the Anytime. I feel sort of in the mood for a few hands of sociable poker.”

  All night it rained, and it was raining the following morning. Toward noon, however, the clouds cleared and the sun came out.

  “I reckon we got enough, though,” said Clyde Cranley, rubbing his hands complacently. “Say, what’s all that hell-raisin’ over to the railroad yards?”

  A whistle was wailing staccato blasts.

  “Sounds like there might have been a wreck somewhere,” Hatfield hazarded as the whistle continued to blow.

  “Let’s drop over and see,” Cranley suggested.

  They found a wreck train making up in the yards, and a scene of considerable activity.

  “What’s up, Sam?” Cranley asked of a man who appeared to be directing operations.

  “Loggin’ train spilled all over the ground ten miles to the east,” the railroad man replied. “Blasted washout. Want to come along, Mr. Cranley?”

  Cranley glanced at Hatfield.

  “Wouldn’t be a bad notion,” the Ranger said. “Might be interesting.”

  “Okay,” agreed Cranley.

  “Climb into the caboose,” said the railroader. “We’ll be pullin’ out in a minute, now.”

  The wreck proved to be a bad one. Logs and overturned cars were scattered on the ground. The track was torn up for hundreds of feet. A disgusted Maintenance-of-Way superintendent was directing the operations of a large gang of track workers.

  “That’s what’s to blame for it,” he told Cranley, jerking a thumb toward a wide and deep wash brimful of swirling water that flowed parallel to the right-of-way and less than a hundred yards distant. “Day before yesterday it was dry as a bone, and now look at it! And look at the water comin’ down that damn mountainside.”

  Following his pointing finger, Hatfield saw that the gullies and dry washes that scored the mountainside were raging torrents of muddy water which constantly gnawed them to greater depth and width.

  “That crik overflowed last night and washed the ground out from under the tracks,” the superintendent continued. “Along came Seventy-five from Vega and rolled over what looked to be good solid iron. The rails spread and put her on the ground. Before they get her stopped, she ripped the steel loose for a train’s length.

  “It wasn’t like this when the road was first built,” he added in injured tones. “Cuttin’ that timber off the mountain was what did it. The trees used to hold the water. Now it comes down the slope, cuttin’ gullies and gettin’ worse all the time. We’ll never have any peace until we build a retaining wall all the length of that slope. To hell with them damn lumbermen! I’ve a notion the road’s losin’ more money makin’ repairs than it gets from them in revenue.”

  He stamped off to give orders to his men.

  Jim Hatfield turned from the torrential mountainside and stared long and earnestly across the hollow to the distant slopes that buttressed the cliffs walling Montuoso Valley. His eyes were dark with thought, and on his face was the expression of a man who has weighed the facts and made a decision.

  Cranley and Hatfield spent another night in Vega, riding back to the spread the following morning.

  “Come tomorrow and you can run that herd up to Haynes’ camp on the mountain,” Cranley told his foreman. “Take any of the boys along you feel you’ll need. I’m goin’ to make a check of the springs. They ought to be runnin’ good water by tomorrow or next day.”

  The trail herd had already gotten together. Hatfield and five hands of his choosing ran the beefs through Vega the following day and turned them west where the logging road branched. The road followed the hollow for several miles and then slanted up the mountain slope.

  Hatfield eyed the road with admiration.

  “She’s sure a fine piece of work,” he told Goldy. “Takes the easiest grades all the time, properly embanked and surfaced and drained. Yes, it’s the kind of a road you don’t often come across in this section.”

  But his eyes were far from approving as he surveyed the desolation of tops and cuttings that littered the mountainside up which the road wound.

  “Flint was right,” he mused. “It’s a mighty bad fire hazard. Let a blaze get started in that stuff and it’ll swarm all over the mountain. Flint will be mighty lucky if his backfire cutting stops it. If a high wind happens to be blowing out of the south, he won’t have a chance. There sure ought to be something done about this.”

  The Haynes main camp near the mountain crest also proved to be admirably laid out — even more so, Hatfield was forced to admit, than Flint’s on the other side of the mountain.

  Mort Quimby, Haynes’ cold-eyed superintendent, received the herd and seemed glad to get it.

  “If you don’t keep these tree bustin’ hellions well supplied with meat they ain’t worth a damn,” he told Hatfield. “Beef and whiskey — that’s what it takes to get trees down.”

  Hatfield noted that the camp was protected from chance fires by a wide and well-cleared cutting — a sign that Haynes, despite his statement to the contrary, did not wholly rely on his fire patrol.

  “You got a nice layout here,” he complimented Quimby.
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br />   “Uh-huh, it is,” the saturnine-appearing superintendent agreed, a note of pride in his voice. “Mr. Haynes laid it out himself. He’s good at this sort of thing. Did you have any trouble gettin’ your herd up the mountain?”

  “Not over that logging road,” Hatfield replied. “It’s okay.”

  “Mr. Haynes laid it out, too,” Quimby said. “It’s a good road, all right.”

  It was late the next afternoon when Hatfield contacted Clyde Cranley. The cattleman was morose and worried.

  “The water in the criks ain’t rose an inch,” he told his foreman. “The springs are no better than they were before the rain. In fact, some more have gone dry. Nope, the rain didn’t help a mite. I sure don’t understand it.”

  Hatfield nodded, apparently not surprised at the news.

  And then, two days later, at a depth of two hundred and seventy feet, the drilling crew struck water.

  Hatfield and Cranley were present at the time. Without warning, the drill rope surged downward. Then it slacked, rose from the hole and coiled back on itself. There was a distant hissing that grew to a swelling murmur. A moment later a frothy flood gushed out of the hole, boiling high about the loosened rope.

  Old Clyde let out an exultant whoop.

  “We did it!” he bellowed. “I knowed we would. Look at her bile out. There’s water, plenty of it. A few more like this and we won’t have a thing to worry about. What do you think now, Hatfield?”

  The Ranger was staring at the froth of milky water with interested eyes. His gaze dropped to the widening stream flowing from under the derrick.

  “Taste it,” he suggested to Cranley.

  The rancher stared at him in puzzled fashion, stooped and scooped a handful, which he raised to his lips.

  Instantly he spewed the water out, his nose wrinkling with distaste.

  “Why — why the damn stuff is salt!” he sputtered.

  Hatfield nodded. “Figured it would be,” he said.

  Cranley looked at him with dismay.

  “Salt water ain’t no good,” he rumbled. “Now if this don’t beat all. Of all the goddamned luck! We would have to tap a salt spring.”