Ray stood up, shoving his chair back, stepped over to the table, and said, “Let her go.”
All four of the men stared up at him in surprise. They saw a thin young man with red hair and blue eyes, no more than twenty years old.
“Hey, Ollie,” one of them piped up. “You better look out. That’s a desperate-looking character.”
The big man kept his hold on the woman for a moment, but she took advantage of the distraction to wrench herself away. He stood up at once and caught her wrist and held her.
“You’re pretty rough on women. Now, turn her loose,” Ray demanded. But that was the last thing that he remembered. He had turned to look at the woman for a moment and noticed that she was staring at him in a peculiar fashion. He opened his mouth to speak again but something that seemed to be traveling with the speed and power of a freight train caught him high on his head. He was conscious of a jolting pain and of flying through the air, but before his limp body stopped rolling, he was swallowed up in the most profound darkness he had ever known.
“I think he’s coming out of it.”
Ray heard the voice and identified it as coming from Denton DeForge. However, the pain in his head was so tremendous he could not concentrate. He coughed suddenly and the shock of moving his head made the pain worse. He felt a hand on his forehead and a coolness, then he slowly opened his eyes. For a moment, everything was blurred, then two faces swam into focus—those of Dent and the woman.
Dent grinned and there was some relief in his voice. “You all right, Ray?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He looked around and saw that he was lying on a bed. A movement caught his eye and he saw another man in the room, an Indian wearing blue jeans and a white shirt. Sitting up quickly, Ray blinked and groaned as the pain took him again. He lifted his hand, touched his temple, and found it damp.
“What hit me?” he said.
“Ollie Bean caught you. I told you he was a pug.”
“I never even saw him move.”
The woman put the cloth that she held in her hand back in the pan, then looked at Ray. “I didn’t ask for any help.” There was antagonism in her voice and she was staring at him unsmilingly.
“That’s no way to talk!” The young man who was standing behind her stepped forward. “My name’s Johnny Dance,” he said. “This is my sister, Winona.” Dance was no more than twenty, and was obviously not a full-blooded Indian. He was six feet tall and lean as a lath. He had dark blue eyes that looked unusual in his copper face.
“I think he’s been seeing too many movies,” Winona said.
Ray was angered suddenly. “Well, I haven’t been seeing the right ones.” Suddenly he grinned up at Dent. “What did you do to keep them from killing me?”
Dent reached into his back pocket and pulled out a .38. “I persuaded him to put it off until you were conscious.”
“It’s a good thing he did,” Johnny Dance nodded. “That Bean’s a bad one. He would have kicked your ribs loose if it hadn’t been for that.” He looked over at Dent and said, “You better watch out. He’ll get at you one way or another. He’s a mean one.”
“Aw, he’ll have to get in line, I reckon,” Dent said cheerfully. He looked at Winona. “I appreciate your help. You’re a pretty good nurse.”
Ray stood to his feet, his head pounding. He looked at the young woman and said, “Sorry to interfere.”
“You make a living protecting Indians?” Winona asked.
Again there was a hard edge to her voice. Ray could not understand her antagonism. “No, I guess not,” he said. He looked over at Dent and said, “I guess we’d better get back. Pete’ll be looking for us.”
At once something changed in the eyes of Johnny Dance. “Pete Stuart?”
“That’s right,” Dent said. “We’re working for Pete now. This is his nephew, Ray Ballard.” He suddenly reached over and shook Dance’s hand. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”
“I’ve heard about Stuart,” Dance murmured. Something moved behind his dark blue eyes and he said, “I heard he got beat up by the Kingman outfit.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Might have been Ollie Bean behind it, for all I know. If I’d thought of that,” Dent said calmly, “I would’ve put a bullet in his drumstick.”
“They’re a big outfit. Nobody has ever bucked ’em and succeeded.”
Winona spoke. “They have been unpleasant to us,” she said. When Ray and Dent looked at her with the question in their eyes, she said, “We have some land. They’ve been putting pressure on Johnny and me to sell the leasing to them, but we won’t do it.”
Johnny said suddenly, “That’s probably why Ollie came in. To put a little bit more pressure on us.” He thought for a moment and said, “I’d like to meet Pete Stuart.”
“Come on along. We’ll bring you back,” Dent said.
Then he looked at Winona. “But I guess you have to go back to your job.”
“I can get off,” she said. She turned and walked out of the room and the men followed her.
They climbed into the truck and bounced over the rough road. Ray sat in the back with Winona and the violence of one of the chuckholes threw him against her. “Sorry,” he said.
Winona did not answer. She had been thinking about what had happened in the cafe. Now she turned to him and said, “You know, most men would have done that anyhow.”
“Done what?”
“Tried to get close to me in the back of this truck.”
“Hope you don’t think I did it on purpose.”
Winona’s face was a study. “I don’t trust white men,” she said. “I know them too well. I’ve fought them off since I was twelve years old.”
The truck rolled along, backfiring on occasion, to the cadence of the rattling of the driveshaft. She turned and looked at him, her eyes suddenly large and somehow different. “Thanks for what you tried to do at the cafe. Most white men wouldn’t have bothered.”
Ray was embarrassed. “Didn’t do anything much,” he said, “except get knocked silly.”
Winona smiled, the first time he had seen her do so. It made her very pretty and she said, “But you tried.”
Horace Kingman was tall, thick-bodied, and strong. At sixty-three he was almost as strong as when he had hit the Oklahoma oil fields without a penny to his name. He had fought his way up and now owned land he had once walked across as a beggar. All over the area, wells were pumping, and the money from the oil went directly into his pockets. He had a strong brown face, and when he spoke he seemed to spit his words out. And now he spoke harshly to the men who were gathered in the tent staring down at a chart.
“All right, we’ve fooled around long enough. Why haven’t you got these leases?”
“Some of them are pretty touchy characters, Horace.” Ollie Bean was a sergeant at arms, in effect, for the Kingman empire. A former prizefighter, he was a much shrewder man than his brutal face would seem to indicate. He could whip any of the roughnecks that worked for Kingman, and if this failed, he was not opposed to using a club or whatever came handy. He looked now at Kingman and said, truculently, “You told us to stay out of trouble with the law, and we’ve gone about as far as we can with some of these people.”
Kingman stared at him for a moment. He did not tolerate back talk from most of his employees, but Bean had been with him a long time, and Kingman trusted him as he trusted few other men. Now his eyes skipped over to a tall thin man wearing a white suit and smoking a cheroot. He wore a white hat also and looked like a southern planter, down to the string tie.
“What about this, Todd? Is there some way we can get these things through the court?”
Allison Todd removed the cheroot and shook his head. He had a pale face and the red eyes of a heavy drinker. “It’d cost more to buy up the politicians and the sheriffs and the lawmakers than it’d cost to do it some other way. Just trying to save you money, Mr. Kingman,” he said sardonically.
Kingman studied the lawyer, then his head swiveled suddenly. He looked toward a
young man who was standing back with his hands in his pockets. Kingman studied the young man carefully, for this was no employee, but his only son, Ted. He took in the lean and wiry build, the curly brown hair, and the brown eyes. He looks like his mother, Horace Kingman thought, which was to him a liability. His wife had been a weak woman, at least in his mind. But then, all people were weak who would not use their strength to crush their adversaries. There was impatience in the elder Kingman. He had put this son of his through law school and now expected to see the results of his investment. Harshly he barked, “Well, Ted, what about this?”
Ted Kingman licked his lips nervously. Both Allison Todd and Ollie Bean saw what they already knew, that Horace Kingman had cowed his son. Bean had said once to the lawyer, “The kid won’t never be no good. He’s been ruined by education. He’s got no guts.”
Bean’s words seemed to be true enough, for the younger Kingman cleared his throat and said hesitantly, “Well, Dad—we’ve got plenty of leases already. I don’t see why you’re so insistent on having these.”
“I want ’em all,” Kingman said. His voice was rough and grated like broken glass over his son’s nerves. “If you ever let up, they’ll eat you alive. Haven’t you learned that, Boy? This ain’t a game we’re playing. There’s wolves out there.”
“But Dad—”
“Never mind that.” Kingman slammed his blunt finger down on the map. “This one, right here! Get Pete Stuart’s place and get it quick! You hear me?”
“They seem like good people,” Ted shrugged.
Horace stared at him. “You’re soft,” he muttered. “Soft like your ma.”
Ted Kingman knew a moment’s flaring, flashing anger. He lifted his head and opened his mouth, and for one moment Horace Kingman was filled with hope that his son would challenge him, take him on head-to-head, man-to-man. That’s what he longed to see. To him, Ted was not a man, but a girl wearing trousers. But Kingman saw the revolt die and grunted harshly, “See that it gets done! You know what to do, Ollie.” He turned and left the tent.
Bean turned his massive bulk to face the younger man. There was a taunt in the voice that said, “Well, that means rough stuff. You want to take care of it, Mr. Kingman?” He always called Ted “Mr. Kingman” in a mocking tone—whereas he called his father “Horace”—the only one of the hundreds of employees of Kingman Oil Company to take that liberty.
Once again anger touched Ted Kingman. He had not been brought up on the oil fields but in a private school, then he’d gone to Yale and then to MIT. He knew the oil business from the scientific side but felt completely out of it in a situation like this. For a moment, he stood with his fists clenching nervously. He knew the brutality of Ollie Bean, had heard of it all his life. But only since coming to work and seeing the actual savagery of the oil fields had he come to dread the sight of the man. “What’re you going to do, Bean?” he demanded.
Bean’s neck, thick as a fire hydrant, was merely a post for his heavy head, which he turned now. His shirt bulged with fat, but underneath was solid muscle. He held up his fist and said, “This is all guys like Stuart understand. I’m gonna bust ’im.”
“Be careful,” Allison Todd spoke up. “If you kill him you might get in trouble.”
Might get in trouble, Ted thought angrily. He stared at the two men, then turned and walked out.
“The kid ain’t got no backbone,” Bean shrugged his thick shoulders. “He ain’t gonna make it in this business. I don’t know why Horace keeps him around.”
Todd did know. “That’s his only son. He wants to pass the Kingman Oil empire on to a Kingman and Ted there is the only son he’ll ever have, I suppose. His only chance for a grandson, for an empire, a dynasty.”
Bean stared at the lawyer. “He ain’t gonna get no empire out of Ted,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of the tent, leaving the lawyer alone.
You’re probably right about that, Ollie, Todd thought. Ted won’t cut the mustard.
The attack came so suddenly that it caught Dent off guard. He and Bailey were working on the rig at twilight. They had been called to supper but had kept working doggedly. Bailey’s massive strength was a handy thing to have. He lifted blocks and pulled cables as Dent directed him, and Dent had just said, “I think this might do it, Bailey,” when it happened.
A cable suddenly parted before Dent’s eyes and he couldn’t understand it—then the sound of the shot followed immediately. Another shot followed, kicking up dust at his feet. “Get down, Bailey!” he yelled, shoving the huge man, who fell obediently to the dirt. Whipping out the .38 he carried in his hip pocket, Dent ran along the length of the derrick. Another shot kicked up dust at his feet, and when he got to the Ford truck, he ducked behind it. Throwing himself underneath, he clawed himself past the driveshaft. From his position he could see a strange truck parked a hundred yards away, and a man on the back holding a rifle.
“Too far for a pistol shot,” he said with disappointment. Nevertheless, he lifted the .38 and aimed high over the head of the man with the rifle, who was laying down a steady fire. He held still and pulled the trigger and saw the rifleman hesitate. Dent continued to fire, emptying the .38. He thought he saw glass fly, and he heard a slight yell. Then the truck engine started, and the man jumped to the ground and leaped into the cab. Leaving a cloud of dust, the truck tore off, careening wildly.
Dent came out from under the Ford, and at once the door of the shack opened. Pete came out, struggling with his crutches, followed by Maury and Violet.
They came to stand by him. “Who was it?”
“Too far to see,” Dent said. He looked over and said, “You can get up now, Bailey.”
Violet ran over to Bailey saying, “Are you hurt?”
Bailey looked at her in surprise. “No, I’m okay.” She patted his arm and he smiled. “They shot at us, I think.”
Pete whispered, “Had to be Kingman. Since you had that row with Ollie, I been expecting it.”
Ray had come out to stand beside Pete. He touched the bruised side of his head and a fiery light of anger came into his mild eyes. “Looks like Johnny and Winona were right. They’re gonna try everything.” Dance and his sister had met with Pete and warned him that Kingman would stop at nothing.
Pete’s shoulders slumped. He looked around at his wife and children and said, “If I just hadn’t busted this leg, I’d fight ’em.”
“You can shoot with a broken leg.” Dent’s words were strangely cheerful. He said, “I think I’d better make a trip in the morning. Saw a pawn shop in the next town. Had some pretty good-lookin’ guns in it.”
Leslie came to Pete. She put her arm around him and looked up at him, worry in her eyes. “You don’t mean to fight ’em with guns?”
“Well, it wouldn’t do much good to use cream puffs,” Denton DeForge said. He seemed careless, but there was something in his dark eyes that was ominous. Violet had seen him like this before. She spoke aloud her thoughts, “I don’t see how a Christian can be a gunfighter.”
Dent looked down at her and said, “A man’s first job is to protect his family. God’s pretty plain about that.” He looked around and winked at Maury. “Didn’t we decide I could kinda be a Stuart, Miss Maury?”
Maury went over and gave him a hug. “We sure did, Dent.” She kissed him on the cheek and said, “Get me a gun while you’re there, too.”
Dent laughed in delight. “Too bad we can’t get one of those machine guns like Al Capone’s boys have. But shotguns’ll do for out here I guess. I’ll sure get you a nice one.”
His words were light and broke the tension. The next morning, however, he did exactly as he said. By ten o’clock he was back with an arsenal. When Stephen came to Pete and said, “Pa, you gonna let me shoot one of them old Kingman men?” Pete put his hand out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “I guess it’s your job right now to take care of your mama, Son.” When he saw the disappointment he said, “I’m glad you’re willing to fight, and I hope you’ll always fight for
what’s right.”
Maury had come to stand beside Dent. He handed her a double-barreled shotgun and a sack. “It breaks down like this,” he said. He broke the shotgun open, fished out two shells from the sack and stuck them into the gun, then snapped it back into position. “Pull these hammers back and aim at anything that bothers you.”
“I don’t think I’d be a very good shot.”
“Aw, I’ll give you some lessons,” he said. He winked at Violet, who was staring at him unhappily. “And you too, Violet. As for being a good shot,” he looked at the shotgun and said, “if you get up close enough that doesn’t matter much. Just pull the trigger and whatever’s in front will sort of disappear.” He walked away happily and Maury smiled at Violet. “Has he always been like that? I never saw anybody like him.”
“He was wild when he was young, but he got saved,” Violet said.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t married,” Maury said thoughtfully. “He’s so good-looking.”
Violet stared at the woman and said shortly, “Yes, he is,” then turned and walked away, her back stiff and her head held high.
BONNIE MEETS A STAR
I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, Carl. After all, she’s not an actress.”
Carl Thomas was sitting across the table from Lylah, staring into a glass of buttermilk. He made a face, lifted the glass, then drank it down with a shudder. Slamming the glass down on the table, he wiped his lips vigorously with his silk handkerchief, then finally scowled at her. “I hate buttermilk, but it’s the only thing that’ll make my stomach quit hurting. Why couldn’t it be something like champagne?” Tucking the handkerchief back in his breast pocket, he made a dapper figure as he sat straight up in his chair. “I know Cara’s not an actress,” he said, “but she’s got ‘it,’ like Clara Bow.”
“I hate to ask you, but what is ‘it’ we keep hearing about?” This of course referred to the meteoric career of Clara Bow, a sultry movie star who was thoroughly detested by Lylah. “She can’t act, any more than Bingo can.” Bingo was the huge dog that Jesse had brought with him when he and Lylah first met
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