“We’d better get Iver,” Ruth said hesitantly. “He always knows what to do.”
Ward McQueen shook his head. “If you mean Iver Hoyt, ma’am, I wouldn’t get him. He’s a crook, tryin’ to rustle them cattle hisself.” Ruth stiffened and her eyes flashed.
“You don’t know what you’re saying!” she said sharply. “He’s been a very good friend! My only friend, aside from Kim here. And he wasn’t found riding Dan’s horse!”
“I reckon not,” McQueen replied grimly, “but he—”
The door opened suddenly to interrupt him, and Iver Hoyt stepped in, two men crowding in behind him.
“Ruth!” he said. “Dan’s horse is outside!” His eyes found Ward McQueen and his lips tightened. “Ruth, who is this man?”
“Don’t you remember me?” McQueen said gently. “That Texas rider you hired back at Pilot Creek. The one you told Red Naify to work on the same basis as the others.”
“You’re crazy!” Hoyt snapped. “I never saw you before in my life. As for Red Naify, the man’s an outlaw! A rustler!”
“If I never saw you before,” McQueen said quietly, “how do I know your gun butt’s got the head of a longhorn steer on it? How do I know you ride a bay hoss with three white stockin’s?”
Kim stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “I’ve noticed that steer’s head, Hoyt. And he sure enough has your hoss spotted.”
“He’s a liar!” Hoyt snarled, his hands poised. “I never saw him before!”
“I’ll take care of that liar business in due time,” McQueen said softly. “In the meantime, tell us what happened to Chuck and Stan Jones!” Ruth looked up quickly, staring at Hoyt. Iver Hoyt’s face tightened.
“They went back to Montana!” he snapped.
“They were coming on here, Iver,” Ruth Kermitt said quietly. “You know they’d promised to work for me. They wouldn’t break a promise. Neither of them would.”
Hoyt stiffened and his eyes turned hard. “So? You don’t believe me either? We’ll discuss this in the mornin’!” He turned abruptly and walked from the room, followed by the two men with him.
“Ma’am, I think I better get back to them cattle,” Ward McQueen suggested suddenly. “Hoyt’ll try to steal ’em, and soon. In fact, I think he’ll try it sooner now than he’d planned.”
“I’ll go back with you,” Kim said. “I think you’re smokin’ some skunks out of this tree, podner!”
IT WAS ALMOST daylight when they rode down the slope of the mountain near Secret Pass and cut across the plain toward Snow Water. They were still almost a half mile away when a volley of shots rang out.
McQueen touched spurs to the black and whipped it around some tall sage and started on a dead run for the camp. Then, ahead, there was another shot. Then another and another.
He sighted the wagon and slowed down. Kim Sartain was behind him, and suddenly McQueen glimpsed the moonlight on Baldy’s head. At the same instant he saw the gleam of a lifted rifle.
“Hold it!” he yelled. “It’s me!”
He swung down. “What happened?”
Baldy grinned. “After yuh left, we got to thinkin’, so when it come dark we rolled up some sacks and left them on the ground near the fire. Then we moved back in the sagebrush. A few minutes ago some rannies come up and let go with a volley into those dummies. A half minute later I see one of ’em move closer for a look, and I let him have it.”
Suddenly a voice called out of the darkness. “Hey, Baldy!” It was Red Naify calling. “Put down yore guns. It’s all right. They run off when they saw me and the boss comin’.”
McQueen fell back into the deep shadows under the wagon.
“Get out of sight, Kim,” he whispered. “They didn’t see us come in. Call ’em in, Baldy, but be careful.”
At that moment there was a soft voice from the shadows in the direction Ward and Sartain had come.
“I’m going to wait here. I want to see this, too.”
It was Ruth Kermitt! She had followed them out from town. Well, maybe it was the best way, McQueen thought. “Come on in,” Baldy said, “but come slow.”
Red Naify, his blocky, powerful body looking even bigger in the dancing firelight, came first. After him, only a step behind but to the right, was Iver Hoyt.
“Glad yuh boys ain’t turned in yet,” Red said. “We’re goin’ to move these cows.”
“Tonight?” Baldy objected. “Where to?”
“Up in the Humboldts,” Hoyt said. “I know the place.” He looked around. “Who was shootin’?”
“That’s what we wondered.” Bud Fox had his thumbs in his gun belt. His eyes shifted from Naify to Hoyt. “Lucky they didn’t get us.”
Ward, crouching under the wagon, could see what was coming. Naify had casually moved two steps farther to the left. Baldy and Bud were going to be caught in a cross fire. He stepped from under the wagon and straightened, hearing Kim move out also.
One step took him into the firelight. “Fall back, you two,” he said quietly. “I’m takin’ over!”
“And me,” Kim said. “Don’t forget me.”
“You’re an awful fool, Hoyt,” Ward McQueen said suddenly. “Why don’t you ask Naify what he did with the money he took off Dan Kermitt.”
Hoyt’s eyes suddenly blazed up. “Naify, did you get that fifty thousand?”
“Fifty thousand?” Stark incredulity rang in Red Naify’s voice. “Why, I only got sixty dollars!” Suddenly his eyes gleamed. “Boss, he’s got it! He’s got it right there in his pocket!”
Iver Hoyt smiled suddenly. “So, we won’t lose after all! Boys, come in!”
There was a sound of movement, and four more men stepped into the circle of light. One of them tossed a bundle of brush on the fire, and it blazed up.
“Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, Hoyt?” McQueen said quietly. “Yuh engineered this whole steal, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Hoyt admitted proudly. “We stole old Kermitt blind up in Montana. He was too fresh from the East to know what was happenin’ to him. Then he found us that night and I had to kill him.”
Suddenly a new voice sounded. “You four back up against the wagon and stay out of this. I’ve got a double-barrel shotgun here, and if there is one move out of you, I’ll let you have both barrels!”
RUTH KERMITT STOOD there. Tall, splendid in the firelight, she looked like a portrait of all the pioneer women of any age. The shotgun she held was steady and she waved the four back.
“I’ll second that motion, ma’am,” Bud Fox said quietly, “with a six-gun!”
Baldy spoke suddenly and his voice drawled.
“This is goin’ to be pretty. Real pretty,” he said. “Hoyt, you know who this ranny is you’re talkin’ to? This here’s Ward McQueen. Think back a ways. Where’d you hear that name afore?”
Baldy paused, and he saw a frown appear on Iver Hoyt’s face.
“Ward, you had a bosom friend in Larry White, didn’t you?” he said to McQueen then. “Well, Iver Hoyt’s full name is Iver Hoyt Harris!”
“Ike Harris!” Ward McQueen’s face suddenly went stone cold. “Kim,” he said suddenly, and his voice rang loud, “as a favor, let me have them both! Now!”
It was Hoyt who moved first. At the mention of Larry White’s name, his face went dead pale, and his hand, twitching nervously, shot down for his gun.
McQueen’s six-guns seemed to leap from their holsters, spewing jagged darts of fire. Hoyt, caught full in the chest by a leaden slug, was smashed back to his heels, and then another slug caught him in the face, and another in the throat.
Coolly, ignoring Red Naify, he poured fire into the killer of his friend. Then he took one swinging step, bringing himself around to face Naify.
Red, a leer on his face, was waiting.
“Yuh dirty coyote!” he snarled.
Both men’s guns belched flame. Red swayed on his feet, and then Ward McQueen stepped forward, firing as coolly as though on a target range. He stepped aga
in, and each time his foot planted, his guns roared. Smashed back by the heavy slugs Red Naify staggered, then toppled to his knees.
His face a bloody mess from a bullet that had burned a hole through the right side of his face below the eye, he lifted his gun and fired again. The bullet hit McQueen and he staggered, but bracing himself, he brought one gun down and triggered it again. The dart of fire seemed almost to touch Red’s face, and he toppled over on his face in the dust, his gun belching one last grass-cutting shot as his fist closed in agony.
Ward McQueen staggered a little and then, stooping with great care, picked up his hat.
“The devil,” he said, “only three bullet holes! Wyatt Earp had five after his battle with Curly Bill’s gang at the water hole.”
Ruth Kermitt ran to his side. “You’re hurt! Oh, you’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
He turned to look at her, and then suddenly everything faded out.
When he opened his eyes again it was morning. Ruth sat beside him, her eyes heavy with weariness. She put a cool cloth on his forehead and wiped his face off with another.
“You must lie still,” she told him. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Of course, if you say so, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’ll lay right quiet.”
Baldy Jackson looked at him and snorted.
“Look at that, would you!” he exploded. “And that’s the ranny crawled three miles with seven holes in him after his Galeyville fight! Just goes to show you what a woman’ll do to a man!”
McQueen of the Tumbling K
Ward McQueen reined in the strawberry roan and squinted his eyes against the sun. Salty sweat made his eyes smart, and he dabbed at them with the end of a bandanna. Kim Sartain was hazing a couple of rambunctious steers back into line. Bud Fox was walking his horse up the slope to where Ward waited, watching the drive.
Fox drew up alongside him and said, “Ward, d’you remember that old brindle ladino with the scarred hide? This here is his range but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”
“That’s one old mossyhorn I won’t forget in a hurry. He’s probably hiding back in one of the canyons. Have you cleaned them out yet?”
“Uh-huh, we surely have. Baldy an’ me both worked ’em, and no sign. Makes a body mighty curious.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’ve got a point. It ain’t like him to be away from the action. He’d surely be down there makin’ trouble.” He paused, suddenly thoughtful. “Missed any other stock since I’ve been gone?”
Fox shrugged. “If there’s any missin’ it can’t be but a few head, but you can bet if that old crowbait is gone some others went along. He ramrods a good-sized herd all by himself.”
Baldy Jackson joined them on the slope. He jerked his head to indicate a nearby canyon mouth, “Seen some mighty queer tracks over yonder,” he said, “like a man afoot.”
“We’ll go have a look,” McQueen said. “A man afoot in this country? It isn’t likely.”
He started the roan across the narrow valley, with Baldy and Bud following.
The canyon was narrow and high walled. Parts of it were choked with brush and fallen rock, with only the winding watercourse to offer a trail. In the spreading fan of sand where the wash emptied into the valley, Baldy drew up.
Ward looked down at the tracks Baldy indicated. “Yes, they do look odd,” said Ward. “Fixed him some homemade footgear. Wonder if that’s his blood or some critter?” Leading the roan he followed the tracks up the dry streambed.
After a few minutes, he halted. “He’s been hurt. Look at the tracks headed this way. Fairly long, steady stride. I’d guess he’s a tall man. But see here? Goin’ back the steps are shorter an’ he’s staggerin’. He stopped twice in twenty yards, each time to lean against something.”
“Reckon we’d better follow him?” Baldy looked at the jumble of boulders and crowded brush. “If he doesn’t aim to be ketched he could make us a powerful lot of trouble.”
“We’ll follow him anyway. Baldy, you go back an’ help the boys. Tell Kim an’ Tennessee where we’re at. Bud will stay with me. Maybe we can track him down, an’ he should be grateful. It looks like he’s hurt bad.”
They moved along cautiously for another hundred yards. Bud Fox stopped, mopping his face. “He doesn’t figure on bein’ followed. He’s makin’ a try at losin’ his trail. Even tried to wipe out a spot of blood.”
Ward McQueen paused and looked up the watercourse with keen, probing eyes. There was something wrong about all this. Obviously the man was injured. Just as obviously he was trying, even in his weakened condition, to obliterate his trail. That meant that he expected to be followed and that those who followed were enemies.
Pausing to study the terrain he ran over in his mind the possibilities from among those whom he knew. Who might the injured man be? And whom did he fear?
They moved on, working out the trail in the close, hot air of the canyon. The tracks split suddenly and disappeared on a wide ledge of stone where the canyon divided into two.
“We’re stuck,” Fox said, “he won’t leave tracks with those makeshift shoes of his, and there’s nowhere he can go up the canyons.”
The right-hand branch ended in a steep, rocky slide, impossible to climb without hours of struggle, and the left branch ended against the sheer face of a cliff against whose base lay a heaped-up pile of boulders and rocky debris.
“He may have doubled back or hidden in the brush,” Fox added.
Ward shrugged. “Let’s go back. He doesn’t want to be found, but hurt like he is he’s apt to die out here without care.”
Deliberately, he had spoken loudly. Turning their mounts they rode back down the canyon to rejoin the herd.
RUTH KERMITT was waiting on the steps when they left the grassy bottom and rode up to the bunkhouse. With her was a slender, narrow-faced man in a black frock coat. As Ward drew up, the man’s all-encompassing glance took him in, then slid away.
“Ward, this is Jim Yount. He’s buying cattle and wants to look at the herd you just brought in.”
“Howdy,” Ward said, agreeably. He glanced at Yount’s horse and then at the tied-down gun.
Two more men sat on the steps of the bunkhouse, a big man in a checkered shirt and a slim redhead with a rifle across his knees.
“We’re looking to buy five hundred to a thousand head,” Yount commented. “We heard you had good stock.”
“Beef?”
“No, breeding, mostly. We’re stockin’ a ranch. I’m locatin’ the other side of Newton’s place.”
Ward commented, “We have some cattle. Or rather, Miss Kermitt has. I’m just the foreman.”
“Oh?” Yount looked around at Ruth with a quick, flashing smile. “Miss, is it? Or are you a widow?”
“Miss. My brother and I came here together, but he was killed.”
“Hard for a young woman to run a ranch alone, isn’t it?” His smile was sympathetic.
“Miss Kermitt does very well,” Ward replied coolly, “and she isn’t exactly alone.”
“Oh?” Yount glanced at McQueen, one eyebrow lifted. “No,” he said after a minute, “I don’t expect you could say she was alone as long as she had cattle on the place, and cowhands.”
Ruth got up quickly, not liking the look on Ward’s face. “Mr. Yount? Wouldn’t you like some coffee? Then we can talk business.”
When they had gone inside Ward McQueen turned on his heel and walked to the bunkhouse, leading his horse. He was mad and he didn’t care who knew it. The thin-faced redhead looked at him as he drew near.
“What’s the matter, friend? Somebody steal your girl?”
Ward McQueen halted and turned slowly. Baldy Jackson got up quickly and moved out of line. The move put him at the corner of the bunkhouse, leaving Yount’s riders at the apex of a triangle of which McQueen and himself formed the two corners.
“Miss Kermitt,” McQueen’s tone was cold, “is my boss. She is also a lady. Don’t get any funny notions.”
; The redhead chuckled. “Yeah, and our boss is a ladies’ man! He knows how to handle ’em.” Deliberately, he turned his back on Baldy. “Ever been foreman on a place like this, Dodson? Maybe you or me will have a new job.”
Ward walked into the bunkhouse. Bud Fox was loitering beside the window. He, too, had been watching the pair.
“Don’t seem the friendly type,” Bud commented, pouring warm water into the tin washbasin. “Almost like they wanted trouble!”
“What would be the idea of that?” Ward inquired.
Bud was splashing in the basin and made no reply, but Ward wondered. Certainly their attitude was not typical. He glanced toward the house, and his lips tightened. Jim Yount was a slick-talking sort and probably a woman would think him good-looking.
Out beyond the ranch house was a distant light, which would be Gelvin’s store in Mannerhouse. Gelvin had ranched the country beyond Newton’s. Suddenly, McQueen made up his mind. After chow he would ride into Mannerhouse and have a little talk with Gelvin.
Supper was served in the ranch house as always and was a quiet meal but for Ruth and Jim Yount, who laughed and talked at the head of the table.
Ward, seated opposite Yount, had little to say. Baldy, Bud, and Tennessee sat in strict silence. Only Red Lund, seated beside Pete Dodson, occasionally ventured a remark. At the foot of the table, lean, wiry Kim Sartain let his eyes rove from face to face.
When supper was over, Ward moved outside into the moonlight and Kim followed. “What goes on?” Kim whispered. “I never did see anybody so quiet.”
Ward explained, adding, “Yount may be a cattle buyer, but the two riders with him are no average cow-punchers. Red Lund is a gunhand if I ever saw one, and Dodson’s right off the Outlaw Trail or I miss my guess.” He hitched his belt. “I’m ridin’ into town. Keep an eye on things, will you?”
“I’ll do that.” He lowered his tone. “That Lund now? I don’t cotton to him. Nor Yount,” he added.
Gelvin’s store was closed but McQueen knew where to find him. Swinging down from the saddle, he tied his horse and pushed through the batwing doors. Abel was polishing glasses behind the bar, and Gelvin was at a table with Dave Cormack, Logan Keane, and a tall, lean-bodied stranger. They were playing poker.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Page 41
