by Jackson cole
Hatfield led the descent at a reckless pace. But they were still more than half a mile from the trail when they saw the herd flow from the canyon mouth. Hatfield swore under his breath and urged Goldy on.
“Rifles!” he barked to his followers. “Let them have it as soon as they show from the canyon, before they have time to scatter along the herd. It’s our only chance to bag some of them. They’ll spot us as soon as they ride in the clear. Get set, now.”
The panting horses slid and skittered down the slope. The cattle continued to pour from the gorge’s mouth in a steady stream.
“A thousand yards!” Hatfield muttered. “Long range for shooting from a horse’s back. Look out! Here they come!”
The last of the cows emerged from the canyon. Behind them, in close formation, came the raiders. Hatfield counted nine in all. He raised his rifle, his eyes leveled along the sights. His companions followed suit. The hillside rocked to the roar of gunfire. The distant riders whirled in their saddles. They ducked and dodged as lead stormed about them. For an instant they seemed to hesitate, milling in wild confusion. Then they spun their horses about and streaked back the way they had come.
“After them!” thundered Hatfield, slamming his rifle back into the boot.
Whooping and yelling, the Box C riders roared down the slope with reckless abandon, risking broken bones or death at every stride. Without accident they reached the trail and swerved toward the canyon mouth. But they didn’t enter it. The terrified cattle, bawling and milling, had floundered back until they choked the narrow thoroughfare. Try as they would, it was a good half hour before the sweating, swearing cowboys could get the entrance clear.
“Hold it!” Hatfield shouted as the hands headed into the gorge. “Hold it! It’s no good. It’ll be pitch black inside that hole in less than an hour, and even if we caught up with the sidewinders, everything would be in their favor. They’d hear us coming, hole up and blow us out from under out hats. They got a break, this time. Maybe it will be different next time.”
The cursing punchers obeyed. With black looks and brandished fists, they turned their horses and trailed in behind the herd. Point, swing and flank men took up their positions. Soon the cows were again close-herded on the trail and trudging wearily north.
Old Clyde was in an exultant mood, chortling congratulations to Hatfield on the success of his plan. But the Lone Wolf was in a black and bitter mood. He had hoped that they would wipe out the bunch that was causing the trouble in the section. But as he had said, the owlhoots had been lucky. They had escaped without casualty. His frown became blacker as he recalled the two men lying back there in the depths of the canyon.
As the herd swept past the railroad builders, the workers, who had heard the shooting, shouted to them. But the Box C crew rode on silently. Soon they were riding parallel to the shining, newly-laid rails, the smoke of McCarney staining the sky ahead.
Night had fallen when the herd reached McCarney. But men were waiting to tally the cows and shunt them into the pens. In the railroad offices, Cranley was paid his price without question.
Hatfield grinned at the ranch owner as he stowed away the money.
“See how easy it would have been for those jiggers?” he commented.
“You’re right,” Cranley grunted. “But I’d sure like to know who the hell stole my coat.”
“I’d say a gent who seems mighty anxious to tie onto every dollar he can,” Hatfield replied enigmatically.
“Well, he didn’t tie onto any this time, thanks to you,” Cranley said.
CHAPTER IX
PAYDAY!
Although it was but late afternoon the dust of Vingaroon Street was already churned by the hoofs of countless horses. All the waddies of Montuoso Valley were in Vega for a grand blowout. The word of the intentions of Clyde Cranley and the other spread owners had got around. If this was to be the last payday in the valley, it was going to be one to remember.
Shopkeepers stood in their doors. The great mirror-blazing bars in the saloons were polished till they shone. Bartenders in fresh white coats were busy supplying the wants of thirsty customers. The long lunch counters were lined with men who preferred to lay a solid foundation before getting down to the serious business of drinking. Roulette wheels buzzed and clicked. Every seat at the poker tables was occupied. The faro banks were booming. Men crowded around the dice table with plaintive exhortations to Big Dick and Little Joe. The dance floors were thronged and the click of high heels and the clump of cowboy and logger boots mingled with the cheerful clink of bottle neck on glass, the ring and jangle of gold pieces on the “mahogany” and the whirl and babble of conversation.
The strumming of guitars, the whine of fiddles and the bawling of song, or what passed for it, boiled from the open windows and was echoed by whoops and yells from the crowded street.
Lithe young cowboys and brawny loggers jostled against one another on the board sidewalks. The dust fogged up from the street as fresh troops of horsemen skalleyhooted into town and jerked their cayuses to a skittering halt before the long hitchracks. Although darkness was still some hours off, Vega was beginning to roar. The roar would become a raucous bellow before the night was over.
A regular hell-raisin’ shippin’ town was showing what it could do when it was really of a mind to.
At a table in the Anytime, Jim Hatfield and old Clyde Cranley sat smoking and talking.
“I told you it was goin’ to be a regular hell-and-blazes bust,” said Cranley. “Sheriff Tays has swore in a herd of dep’ties and he’s grouchier than a bear with a sore head. Doc McChesney was polishin’ up his tools when I dropped in a while ago. Reckon he’ll need ‘em before the night’s over. Now what in blazes has busted loose?”
From the street came a loud and excited yell. Running feet pounded the sidewalk. Questions and answers were bawled back and forth. The turmoil increased.
“Hell, let’s see what’s goin’ on,” exclaimed Cranley.
He and Hatfield shouldered their way through a throng that was jamming the doorway. They reached the street and paused to stare at the slope of the mountain to the north.
From the long sweep of the sag, a vast cloud of yellowish smoke boiled up against the sky.
“It’s a brush fire!” Cranley exclaimed excitedly. “Them cuttin’s up on the sag have caught. Look at that smoke roll! Hatfield, she’ll sweep that mountain all the way up into New Mexico.”
The Ranger stared at the thickening smoke cloud.
“Cranley,” he said, “get hold of the other spread owners. Round up your hands, every one of them. There are two hundred men in town, with horses. Round them up. We’ve got to hightail up there and help Flint hold that fire.”
“To hell with him!” growled Cranley. “Let ‘er burn! We’re not interested in protectin’ Flint’s holdin’s for him.”
Hatfield whirled on him, his green eyes blazing.
“Listen, you loco fool!” he barked. “You’re not protecting Flint’s holdings. You’re protecting your own. Every cent Flint’s got is tied up in that timber tract. If he’s ruined by the fire, who’s goin’ to buy your spread, I’d like to know. Use your head, Cranley.”
The rancher stared at him. His own eyes suddenly blazed.
“By God! Hatfield, you’re right!” he exclaimed. “Audley! Grimes! McLeod!” he bawled. “Come a-runnin’, you spavined fossils. Come a-runnin’! We got a chore to do!”
Scant minutes later, every cowboy in town thundered northward out of Vega. Yelling and whooping, blasting the air with six-shooters they roared up the logging trail.
At the back-fire cutting near the crest of the mountain was a scene of boiling activity. Axes flashed, saws rasped, horses strained at traces as they hauled great limbs and huge tops to the far side of the clearing. All standing timber had been felled to the protective cliffs on the east, but there still remained a long stretch littered with the highly inflammable trimmings. Sweating and bellowing, strong and tireless, the brawny loggers t
ore into the stubborn tangle.
But ever that rolling smoke cloud volcanoed higher and thicker against the darkening sky. Its under surface was bathed in a lurid glow. Its edges were fiery red. Streaks of flame and glittering points banded and spangled it — brands and sparks sucked high into the air by the fierce up-draft from the inferno beneath. Flakes of fire soared to the zenith, borne on the wings of the wind. Weird coilings and interlacings looped and twined and writhed in the hot air. The mountain crest was drenched with a bloody radiance, and to the ear came a rising crackle and roar.
Lish Bixby, the giant foreman, standing beside Justin Flint, shook his shaggy head.
“We’ll never do it, Boss,” he rumbled. “She’s comin’ too fast. We ain’t got enough men. We ain’t got enough horses. We’d be lucky to hold ‘er even if we got the cuttin’ cleared. Them brands will be rainin’ down north of us any minute now. There’ll be smoulders springin’ up in back of us that will have to be stamped out before they spread and we can’t cover all that territory.”
Justin Flint’s face was haggard, his eyes sunk deep into his head, but his big jaw was thrust forward grimly and his mouth was clamped tight.
“We’ll do our best — that’s all anybody can do,” he declared. “If the wind just lets down with evening, maybe we can hold it. Thank God the boys hadn’t headed for town yet when it started. We’d have been sunk for fair.”
Bixby scowled in the direction of Vega.
“Reckon them hellions down there are havin’ the time of their lives watchin’ it,” he growled. “Nothin’ could suit them better.”
“I don’t know,” Flint replied. “Maybe they won’t feelgood God, what’s that?”
Around a bend in the clearing thundered full two hundred yelling cowboys, spurring their foaming horses, Jim Hatfield and Clyde Cranley in the lead.
The Ranger’s voice rang out like a golden bugle call, slashing through the amazed yells and curses of the loggers, who had paused from their labors to stare wide-eyed at the close-packed cavalcade racing down upon them.
“Up and at it, boys!” Hatfield roared. “Show these three thumpers how to really do a chore!”
High-pitched yippings and deep-throated bellows answered him. Ropes hissed through the air. Horses trained to the bone-wracking jar of two thousand pounds of steer brought up short in mid-flight, surged forward with tremendous strength. Spreading tops and ponderous branches were snaked over the ground to the far side of the cutting and dragged into the clear. The yelling punchers flipped loose their lassoes and raced back for more.
On the mountain crest above, a line of intense fire broke out suddenly. A blazing streak shot upward and ended in a skyrocket burst of flame and sparks as the powdery top of a great tree dissolved in a seething welter. The sky flamed scarlet from horizon to zenith, and the hurricane up-draft howled and screamed.
Almost instantly the whole upper slope of the mountain was a tossing, blinding tempest of fire. East and west it spread with incredible rapidity. It went surging up ridges, dipped into hollows, burst into view again, rising higher, roaring more fiercely. The sag was webbed as with a tangled network of red lava streams. The soaring tree trunks were pillars of scarlet. The sky above was a reflected hell.
Jim Hatfield rode among his toiling hands. His voice rang out above the turmoil.
“Fifty men!” he shouted. “Fifty men to do patrol work. Take spades and axes. Ride the line of the cutting. Smother those fires that are starting in the brush. Sift sand, you work dodgers!”
Yelling and whooping, blazing away with their six-shooters in a delirium of excitement, the patrol raced through the growth. Soon some of the fires dimmed. But others broke out as flaming coals continued to shower down. And ever the raging wall of the inferno roared nearer the still uncleared line of the cutting.
Goldy, tied fast to a mighty top, thrust backward on legs like steel rods. His irons sank deep into the earth. He blew and snorted. Hatfield strained at the rope beside him.
Inch by inch Goldy pulled the top across the cutting. Upon reaching the far edge of the clearing, Hatfield shook loose his lasso, and the big tree top crashed into the growth. Then rider and horse raced back for another.
The heat was terrific now, and the air was thick with smoke. Men coughed and strangled as they toiled. Horses whinnied nervously with fear. A great tree on the very edge of the cutting thundered down in a kaleidescope of flame and sparks, and was smothered before the fire could spread.
“It’s travelling slower than it did, though,” Justin Flint bawled hoarsely to Hatfield. “The wind can’t get at it down here like it did up above.”
Faster and faster flew the axes. Harder and harder strained the gasping horses. The air was aquiver with the hiss of ropes above the bellow of the flames. Faces blackened, clothes powdered with white ash, the cowboys toiled beside the almost exhausted loggers.
A final welter of branches dissolved like sugar in a rainstorm before the determined attack. Jim Hatfield raced Goldy to the very edge of the fire and roped a last huge top that was burning fiercely. He yanked it out to where the loggers could fall upon it with axe and spade, watched its spouting flames die to a flicker, straightened up, wiped his blackened face with his sleeve and glanced about.
The line of fire had reached the south edge of the cutting, where it roared and crackled in impotent rage. Swiftly it burned down to a flame-splotched swath of gray ash. Some sparks continued to soar aloft from isolated, blazing trees; but the sky was darkening once again, the stars peering through the thinning smoke cloud.
Hatfield filled his lungs with smoky air.
“Okay,” he bellowed. “That’s done it. Time to knock off. The loggers can take care of the mopping up.”
Shouting punchers passed the word along. With triumphant whoops the Montuoso Valley cowboys wheeled their horses and hurried back down the mountain to their belated payday celebration.
Old Clyde Cranley, leading his weary horse, stumped across to where Hatfield stood with Justin Flint.
“Yeah, I reckon that’s done it,” he repeated the Ranger’s words.
Flint stepped forward.
“Cranley,” he said, “I want to thank you for what you did.”
Old Clyde snorted. “Don’t want no thanks,” he growled. “If you got to thank anybody, thank Hatfield. He talked us into doin’ it. That seven-foot hellion could talk a jackrabbit into makin’ up to a coyote, and then talk the coyote into goin’ to bed hungry without his supper!”
Mounting his horse, Cranley rode away stiffly without looking back. Justin Flint stared after him, but Hatfield chuckled, his green eyes sunny.
“Snorty old shorthorn,” he observed, using the very words Captain Bill McDowell had once applied to Flint, “but he’ll snort out of the other side of his mouth before everything’s finished, I’ll bet a hatful of pesos. I know what it takes to cool salty oldtimers down, as you’re likely to learn yourself before long, Flint.”
“What in hell you talking about?” demanded the bewildered Flint.
Hatfield chuckled again, swung lithely to Goldy’s hull. He grinned down at the lumberman.
“Grandpappys!” he said, gathering up his reins and riding in the wake of Cranley, leaving Justin Flint to stare after him with the expression of a man who has just talked to a lunatic.
Hatfield did not ride to town with Cranley. Instead, he took good care not to catch up with him. Upon reaching the main lumber camp, he turned aside and mounted the hill on which Flint’s residence was built.
As he expected, the house was lighted. Verna Flint herself answered the door. Her hand flew to her lips, the whitened knuckles pressed hard against them as she recognized her visitor.
“Is — is — everything all right?” she faltered.
Hatfield smiled down at her from his great height.
“Sure he’s all right,” he replied heartily. “Was a mite black and smoky when he headed for town, but nothing wrong a little soap and water won’t fix up. Your d
ad is all right, too, for that matter, and feeling sort of pert, now that the fire is out and his timber safe.”
He entered the living room of the house and accepted the chair she offered him.
“Ma’am,” he said, running his slim fingers through his crisp, black hair, “you’re of age and your own boss, aren’t you?”
“Why, yes,” the girl replied wonderingly. “I’m past twenty-one, if that’s what you mean.”
Hatfield nodded with satisfaction.
“Seeing which, I want to ask you to do something, ma’am?”
“What is it?”
“I want you to ride to town early tomorrow morning and go to Doc McChesney’s office. Tell him I told you to come, and wait there until I show up. Will you do it?”
“Why — why, yes, if you want me to,” she replied. “But why?”
Hatfield chuckled. “Because,” he replied, “I aim to stop the rowing in this section for good and all, and I need your help to do it. You’ll trust me, won’t you, ma’am?”
The red-haired girl regarded him gravely.
“Yes,” she said. “I think any woman in the world would trust you, under any circumstances. And,” she added thoughtfully, “be glad of the chance.”
• • •
Early the following morning, Jim Hatfield and a very sleepy and somewhat disgruntled Rance Cranley rode away from the Box C ranch house.
“What’s this all about, anyhow?” young Cranley demanded querulously. “What’s the notion of rousin’ me up and draggin’ me out of bed? Why won’t you tell me what’s in your mind, Hatfield? You know I’ll do anything you say and not argue, but why keep me so darn curious?”
“You’ll see, son,” was all the answer he could get out of the smiling Ranger.
But all his irritation vanished when, in Hatfield’s company, he entered Doc McChesney’s little office and saw who was awaiting him there.
“Doc,” said Hatfield before McChesney could start bawling questions, “do you know where to find a preacher?”
“A preacher!” gulped the astounded doctor. “What in blazes do you want with a preacher? Not that you don’t need one bad,” he hastened to add. “Yeah, there’s one over to Hale, the county seat of the next county, twenty miles west of here.”
