by John Benteen
“I see,” Clint Wallace answered presently.
Gaylord looked at the moon, disappearing behind a butte. “The main thing is,” he said, “the law. It’s what you follow, like that moon yonder, that says that now it’s time. It don’t matter what they pay you. Nobody can buy you if you won’t be bought. It’s like the moon or stars. You just keep your eye on the law, and you won’t get hurt.”
Clint also squinted at the moon. After a while he said: “That’s about all they don’t control, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association out of Cheyenne. The moon and stars. But they sure have got control of the law. Frank, ain’t it time to go?”
“Yeah,” Gaylord said, relieved, sure that he’d explained things badly. “Like I said, it’s time. There ain’t no back door to the place. I’ll go in first, with the carbide lamp, and you come in later and cover me. Keep to the shadows.”
Together, guns raised, they went on foot down the slope toward the little pine-pole cabin, daubed with mud, by the swift, narrow creek.
Billy Dann and Phil Hoff, who had jointly homesteaded quarter sections, had laid a footbridge across the little stream. Gaylord ran over it, crouched, rifle in his right hand, carbide lamp in his left, Clint just behind. They fetched up beside the blank side wall of the cabin. There Gaylord raised the shield and lit the carbide lamp. When, hissing, it sent out its white light, he dodged around the corner. “Open in the name of the law!” he yelled, and at the same time kicked wide the unlatched door and sprang into the cabin.
The lamp’s glare raked over a pair of rough bunks along the far wall. In the bottom one, a man in long Johns raised his head, opening bleary eyes. In the top, under a worn blanket, a naked man rolled over, propped up on one elbow, and grunted, “Whah?” Then both squinted into the blinding light. Neither was any older than Clint Wallace, despite the long beard Billy Dann, the man in underwear, wore.
Dann blinked and shook his head as Clint Wallace came in the door behind Gaylord. “What the hell?” Dann mumbled.
“Frank Gaylord, Billy. You and Phil stand fast and don’t make a break. I’ve got warrants to serve on both of you. You’re under arrest.”
“Arrest?” Phil Hoff sat up, blanket falling away from his skinny torso. He rubbed his face, blinded by the carbide glare. “Gaylord?” Then: “Clint. Boy, what in fire is this all about?”
“Warrants for rustling, Phil,” Clint said tautly. “You and Billy are being taken in for rustling.”
There was, then, save for the hissing of the lamp, total silence in the cabin as the two awakening men tried to grapple with this news.
After a minute Billy Dann let out a breath and swung out of bed, tousled hair and beard in points. As his dirty feet hit the floor he squinted at Wallace. “Clint, what kind of warrants? Who signed ’em?”
“Chain,” Wallace answered. “Gruber.”
“Ah.” In the bunk above, Phil Hoff breathed an obscenity. “Might have knowed. Clint, this is a pile of crap.”
“I know that, too, Phil,” Clint said wearily. “But we got to take you in. Judge issued these warrants and they’re valid.” His voice was almost pleading. “You know me and Frank. It ain’t our doing. It’s just our job. Now, for God’s sake, come with us quietly.”
Dann stood up and Gaylord watched him narrowly as he drew on old canvas pants, a hole in one knee. “Well, don’t shoot me,” he said. “I got to have some coffee. Lemme stir up the fire. There’s half a pot left from supper.”
“Go ahead, Billy,” Gaylord said. He had inventoried guns now. Their Colts and pistol belts hung on chairs; their rifles were in the corner. “I could use some myself.”
Leaving the carbide lamp burning, he lit the kerosene lantern hanging from a ceiling pole. Hoff, in the upper bunk, began to curse, slowly, steadily. “Rustlin’. Rustlin’, my ass! We ain’t rustled no Chain steers, nobody’s cows.”
“Gruber alleges you branded mavericks outside the regular association roundup.”
Hoff rolled over. “We branded nothin’ but the increase from our own hundred head on our own land! What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s against the law,” Clint Wallace said dully. “All brandin’s done at the association roundup. The maverick law,” he added bitterly.
“Maverick law!” Billy Dann turned, blue enamel coffeepot in hand. “A law the big dogs rammed through so they can take all the unbranded cattle on the range, save them that walks beside their mamas! What kind of law is it says every maverick in this district has to be put into a pool and sold to the highest bidder for the benefit of the Stock Growers Association in Cheyenne? And a man’s got to post a three-thousand-dollar bond before he can even bid! It’s nothin’ but a dodge to take our own cattle away from us, like the law that says nobody can hold a roundup except under association authority.” He spat on the dirt floor of the cabin. “Everybody knows it’s unconstitutional. Ain’t worth a damn, except for the rich to rob the poor.”
“Billy, we can’t help that,” Clint said. “We got to enforce it.”
“Oh, sure, sure.” Hoff had grabbed the bottom of a pair of long Johns and pulled them on. He dropped from the top bunk and sat on the lower one, running a hand through tousled hair. “Anyhow, it ain’t the mavericks, and you know it. That ain’t why Gruber sent you after us.”
“I think there’s been enough palaver,” Gaylord said. “Phil, git some clothes on.” He picked up the pistol belts and tossed them into the far corner.
Hoff’s face contorted. “Maybe you can lay the law on us, but you can’t shut our mouths. It’s because we’re tryin’ to get the cowboys on this range to strike. They been crapped on too long by these English spreads. Worked for bottom wages when they’re needed, turned loose to starve in the winter, not even welcome ridin’ the grubline through the off season anymore. You come onto one of them big ranches now, and they give you one meal and roust you. And time was when any man was welcome to stay two weeks, maybe longer, at any spread … And if you complain or cause any trouble, the association blacklists you all over Wyomin’ so you can’t work anywhere in the territory … They figure they got us all by the short hair and they can treat us any way they want to … especially Gruber. He’s worse than an English lord himself, and he’s American!”
“I said get your clothes on,” Gaylord snapped. “You can have your say in court.”
“Court.” Billy Dann set down the coffeepot and clipped off the single word so that it rang like iron. It was as if the full realization had just struck home. “We got to go to court, stand trial, lawyers and all that?”
“Yes,” Gaylord said. Wanting a cigarette, he knew better than to relax. They were coming fully awake now. “Yeah, that’s the way it is, Billy.”
“And if we’re convicted what do we get?” Phil Hoff asked, still sitting on the bunk’s edge.
“Two to five years in Rawlins, likely,” Clint said with a profound bitterness.
“Two to five—” Billy Dann’s voice broke. He stared at Clint, then turned to Gaylord. “Frank, for God’s sake. You know us better than that. I swear we never branded no stock but our own. You wouldn’t take us in and put us behind the walls for that long, would you?”
Gaylord shook his head. He had a knack, which he used now. Keep your eye on the law, he’d told Clint. Watch it like the moon, the stars. Mentally, emotionally, he did that, blanking out all human response to the pleading in Dann’s voice. “I got no option.”
“You got one. You got a good one. You came after us and we wasn’t here. We’d done hauled freight; you never seen us. Frank, Clint, for cryin’ out loud … five years in the pen? Listen, we’ll ride out as fast as we can get dressed and saddled. Clear the district, and that ought to satisfy Ross Gruber.”
“Frank,” Clint Wallace said softly, “I kind of think that’s the way it was. The birds had done flown the cage … ”
Gaylord sucked in a long breath. “No, it won’t work. We got to take ’em in.”
“Frank—”
“Clint
, you know better than that. These are legal warrants and we got to serve ’em.”
Wallace looked from Hoff to Dann to Gaylord. “Well—” he said sickly.
Dann spat again. “So that’s it, huh, Clint? I knowed Gaylord had sold out to Gruber. Everybody knows it. But you too, huh? How many head is Gruber runnin’ free for you?”
“Billy—” Clint’s face twisted.
“It’s one way to git rich quick, I reckon.” Dann turned back to the stove, then knocked over the coffeepot. It fell, spilling brown liquid. “Hell—”
Instinctively Gaylord’s head jerked around. At that instant Dann yelled, “Phil!” He threw himself sideways, and simultaneously Hoff’s hand slid under the pine-needle pillow on the bottom bunk and came up with a short-nosed Colt, lined on Gaylord.
“Frank!” Clint Wallace bawled, and Gaylord jumped aside as the revolver went off. Hard on its deep cough came the short, flat bark of Wallace’s rifle. Both sounds were terrific in the little cabin, seeming to jar the walls. Even as guns thundered, Gaylord swung his Winchester, clubbing Billy Dann hard across the temple before the man’s hand could close on a poker.
Gaylord felt the shock up through his wrists. Dann pitched forward, landing hard. Gaylord whirled.
Phil Hoff lay slumped back on the bunk, eyes wide open, staring, naked breast spouting red. He opened his mouth and blood trickled out. “Clint,” he said, a gurgling sound. “Clint, Jesus.” Then he died, eyes still open, body unmoving; and suddenly it was over.
Clint Wallace lowered the Winchester, a wisp of smoke still curling from its barrel. In the carbide glare, his face was white as paper.
“Well,” he whispered. “Well.” He stared at Gaylord strangely and his mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. His eyes shuttled to Billy Dann, lying face down on the hard-packed floor. Then Clint lurched to the door, leaned out, and vomited into the cool, clean night.
Gaylord started toward him, then halted. Instead, he busied himself putting handcuffs on the unconscious Billy Dann. As he straightened up, Clint pulled back inside the cabin, wiping his mouth. His eyes were wide, wild, as he looked at Gaylord. His hand shook as it went to the star pinned on his jacket. He ripped off the badge and hurled it across the room. It hit the stove with a tiny clink and bounced away.
“All right, Frank,” Clint whispered, and there was fury in the sound. “There it is. I’m through. Pick up your stinking badge and carry it to Gruber like a dog with a bone in its mouth.” He hit the doorjamb brutally with one bare fist and then almost ran out into the darkness.
The room stank of powder smoke, blood, and the dead man’s involuntary excretions. Gaylord stood motionless, and he neither tried to stop Clint nor call to him.
Curiously, when he turned back to Dann, who was beginning to groan and stir, all he felt was a profound relief.
Chapter Two
“It was a mistake,” said Gaylord. “I shoulda taken another deputy, not Clint. If he hadn’t counted on Clint’s friendship, Phil Hoff would never have dared make that break.” He poured himself another drink.
“That’s three,” Carla Doane said, an edge to her usually soft, husky voice. “And it’s not even dinnertime yet. You never used to drink in the morning, Frank.”
He looked at her, the tall, handsome, dark-haired woman in her thirties, at whose kitchen table he now sat. For privacy, the blinds were drawn; but both of them knew that it was an open secret in the town that they had been lovers for the past year. A fine woman, he thought, the most woman he had ever met or known in his whole life—but she did have a knack of putting her finger on your sore spots sometimes. A touch defensively he said, “It’s not mornin’ for me. Don’t forget I’ve been up all night. Besides”—he sipped the whiskey—“when your chief deputy’s had to kill a man in an arrest, and then he throws the badge square in your teeth, it shakes you up.”
Carla nodded, not without sympathy. “I suppose.”
“I tried to talk to him,” Gaylord said. “He was down in the creek bottom, in that little house that dance-hall girl lives in.”
“You mean Joey Moore.” Taking a coffee cup from the shelf, Carla went to the stove. Full-bosomed, slender-waisted, and long of leg, she moved with a thoroughbred’s easy grace, Gaylord thought admiringly.
“Yeah, that’s her. I knocked and she let me in. Then she went in the other room, so we could talk. Only”—he sighed—“there wasn’t much talkin’ I could do. I tried to tell him not to take it so hard, just take time off, a leave of absence, somethin’. Maybe go back to Nebraska to see his folks a spell. Then, when he come back, his badge would be here waitin’ for him. But he just looked at me and laughed. And”—he drank—“it ain’t the kind of laugh I ever want to hear again.”
“I’m sorry.” Carla, with her coffee, sat down across the table from him.
“No more badge for him,” Gaylord continued tautly. “He’d already figured it out, on the way back here to Warshield. He was through with lawin’—forever. He’d already asked that dance-hall girl to marry him, and she’d said yes. And now he’s got it figured that he’s gonna take up a homestead right next to Billy Dann’s. Maybe buy Billy’s, too, if they put him away in Rawlins.”
“Which they will likely do,” said Carla bitterly.
Gaylord did not answer that. He drained the glass and, avoiding Carla’s eyes, reached for the bottle one more time. “In a way, when I heard that, I’m kind of glad it worked out like that. To tell the truth, it ain’t a good idea for a sheriff to like one of his deputies much as I like Clint. When a lawman’s in a tight spot, he can’t let worryin’ about one of his men gittin’ hurt slow him down. But I’d started doin’ that with Clint—hesitatin’, freezin’ up just a little in a clinch, takin’ a risk of botchin’ things for his sake. That could get us both killed someday. Anyhow, that little girl will make him a good wife, no matter that she’s come up a rough way, and he can go to ranchin’ and live to a ripe old age.”
“You think so?” Carla’s mouth twisted. “What makes you think he’ll be that lucky? Dann, Hoff, every other small rancher who’s tried to get a start near Chain—one way or the other, Ross Gruber’s found a way to destroy all of them. What’s to stop Clint from being next?”
“Me,” said Gaylord.
“You?”
“I’ll talk to Gruber. I’ll tell him to keep his hands off Clint. I’ll make sure the boy gets a fair chance.”
“I see.” She looked down at her coffee. “So that’s the way it works, eh? If the sheriff’s on your side, you’re okay. Otherwise, you may die in your bunk at two in the morning, like poor Phil Hoff.”
Something tightened in Gaylord’s chest. He scraped back his chair and rose. “Woman, what’s got into you?”
“I think you know.” Carla stood up, dark eyes huge in a face gone pale. “I’m scared, Frank. Afraid for you.”
“That’s craziness.”
“Is it? I hope so. But … those two hundred head Gruber gave you. The free meals and room at Garrison’s Hotel, the whiskey on the house and—they say—a little rake-off from the games at Clanton’s gambling house—”
Gaylord sucked in breath. “That amounts to nothin’, absolutely nothin’. Sure, Garrison puts me up free; Clanton buys my drinks. And, yeah, if I’m off duty he pays me for spending time there, keepin’ order … ”
“You’re never off duty and the county pays you for keeping order, Frank. Like Gruber’s cattle … they’re bribes, Frank; nothing else.”
“No—” Gaylord began, but she cut him off.
“Maybe you can’t see it, but everybody else can. Look, Garrison’s speculating in town lots and cutting corners doing it. Clanton’s games, they say, are none too straight. And everybody knows about Gruber. Now, if the time comes and citizens complain, will you move against those people the way you moved against Phil Hoff and Billy Dann? Or will you draw back a little—”
“I’ll move against anybody who breaks the law,” said Gaylord harshly.
&
nbsp; She looked at him for a moment, long and hard. “Yes,” she said at last. “I guess you mean that … now. But I can’t help remembering what happened to Lin.” She paused; her voice was soft when she went on: “When we were married, he was the most respected lawyer in Denver, absolutely honest, and I was proud to be his wife. Then the association hired him and brought us to Cheyenne, and he fell under the influence of men like Gruber. And I saw it happen—the fat fees, the power, the political future they dangled in front of him. It got into his system just like poison. Oh, he didn’t think he was selling out, not at first. But he did, bit by bit, one little piece of his soul at a time. And then he had nothing else left to sell. He suddenly realized that when the big ranchers rigged a case against a man they wanted hanged—and demanded that Lin be special prosecutor. Then he had to make a choice. Either break with them, or push it through, knowing the whole thing was a frame-up. Well, he won his case; and they were proud of him. And two hours after the man was hanged, he shot himself.”
“I’m not Linwood Doane,” said Gaylord thickly.
“No. And I don’t want to take the chance of your becoming a Linwood Doane.” She came to him then, hands on his arms, looking up at him, pleading. “Frank, listen. Don’t run for reelection this fall! Let’s leave Colter County, leave Wyoming. Get a job somewhere else, where you don’t have all these dirty pressures. I don’t care where, I’ll go anywhere with you! But give Gruber and the others their badge back! It’s just not worth it.”
Gaylord looked down at her, fighting his own emotions. There was almost nothing he would not do for her, but she was asking the impossible. “No,” he said.
She stepped back. “Why not?”
Carefully Frank Gaylord sought his words. “First place, I’m a lawman, nothing else; and lawman’s jobs are hard to find these days. The country’s taming down; there ain’t the call there used to be for men to walk into a tough place and jerk a knot in its tail. Oh, I might get on as a town marshal somewhere, or on the police in Denver, but I couldn’t break into a new county and run for sheriff and expect to get elected. It takes a long time to build up the rep and connections a man’s got to have for that. But I’ve got all that set here in Colter County, and I’m a cinch for reelection.”
