Blood on the Moon

by Luke Short

  “Scare her,” Jim said stubbornly, anger at last in his voice in spite of his efforts to keep it out. “A woman’s bullet kills you just as quick as a man’s.”

  “You deserved it, Amy,” Carol said sharply.

  Amy Lufton said hotly, scornfully, “Why has Dad kept a man at the river for a week, if it isn’t to keep riders from crossing?”

  Cap came over to Jim. The other punchers moved in closer, watching Cap for a clue to their behavior.

  “What are you doin’ here?” Cap growled.

  “He delivered a note from Dad,” Carol said.

  Jim said dryly, “That’s what I was goin’ to tell her, but she wouldn’t stop shootin’.”

  Cap was plainly baffled. He looked from one girl to the other. Amy had settled into sullen and smoldering silence. Carol was regarding Jim with quiet interest now, a fresh curiosity. She said lazily to Cap, without looking at him, “At least he’s one person who’ll give Amy as good as she gives.”

  Cap waited, and nobody spoke. He nodded at Jim and tilted his head sideways and said, “Get out of here. Quick.”

  Jim walked over to his horse. Amy turned and strode around to the back of the house, her back ramrod-straight. Jim swung into the saddle, looked at Carol and touched his hat. She smiled at him and watched him ride out.

  Chapter Two

  Sheriff Les Manker put a bony shoulder against the doorjamb and fished aimlessly in his vest pocket for a match. He took careful note of the man riding down the center of Sun Dust’s main street, an unsparing shrewdness in his gray eyes. He noted the condition of the horse, which was jaded, and the brand, which he did not know, and then he looked again at the rider. Sheriff Manker’s opinion of him, which he did not express, was summed up in one word: tough. He watched him pick his way, courteously enough, through the nester wagons and the scattering of hands from the ranches up on the Bench who were crossing and recrossing the road on their way to their sundown drink. At last the rider turned into the archway of Settlemeir’s feed stable and was lost to sight.

  Manker raised a match to his mouth, but before he put it between his thin lips he said, “That him?”

  The man in the office, the man who had been looking through the window at the same rider, said, “That’s him. What do you think?”

  Manker didn’t speak. The setting sun threw long shadows on the street, turning its deep dust to silver. It was a harsh light, unkind to the gray, weathered store fronts, the tangle of corrals and homes and sheds that rose up to abut the base of the rim to the east. The narrow, dug road crawling the four hundred feet to the rim slanted away to the north, and the dust motes of the last riders in still left a fog clinging to the slope.

  Manker said dispiritedly, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe hell!” Milo Sweet said bluntly. “You got to get hit on the head with it? Lufton threatened to get one, didn’t he?”

  “You ain’t sure it’s him.”

  “I cut his sign goin’ into Blockhouse, and I cut it goin’ out. He’s a stranger.”

  “John Lufton’s got a right to hire a range detective.”

  “Not to watch me, he ain’t,” Sweet said flatly. “Range detectives mean framed evidence. Evidence means court. And I seen too many judges bought to let it get that far.”

  Sweet shouldered past Manker and stopped on the boardwalk. He was a two-bit rancher out in Massacre Basin, one of the men John Lufton had first tolerated and was now fighting. A brusque little man, with reddish close-cropped hair and an intense face, he had a wire-edged temper that Manker didn’t like. Manker wished it had been anyone but Sweet who had seen this stranger, and he said, “Let Riling handle it. And no shootin’.”

  “He ain’t here. This man is likely talking to Settlemeir right now about Basin cattle stealing. That’s the way evidence starts.”

  He started to walk away, stopped, came back and faced Manker. “Who the hell elected you? Remember?”

  Manker shifted the match in his mouth and said nothing. Sweet turned and angled across the street, and at that moment Manker felt an odd stirring of tired hatred. He was a nester sheriff, and he knew it and he didn’t like it.

  It was so unnecessary. Ten years back John Lufton had spent three weeks at the capitol, and when he came back there was a new county, Lufton County. Its seat was Sun Dust and its boundary was the rim, so that it excluded all the Bench ranchers to the east. John Lufton had gone that far to insure himself protection against rival ranchers and authority—and then sat back and watched these nesters and small ranchers fill up his county and bully his sheriff. Trouble was, Manker liked John Lufton a lot more than he did most of his other constituents.

  Sweet hit the boardwalk in time to see the rider leave Settlemeir’s and cut down his way. He lounged against a store front and was suddenly concerned with fashioning a smoke, but he had noted with rising interest that the rider was now wearing a gun and belt which he had probably brought in his war bag.

  The rider passed him and went into the Fair Store, and Sweet pondered that. Fighting down a rising impatience to hurry over to the Bella Union and spread the word, he waited. When the rider came out of the Fair he had a package in his hand. Sweet dropped in behind him, traveled three doors downstreet, and the rider turned in at the barbershop.

  Sweet turned back then, sure of where his man would be, and went upstreet to Settlemeir’s. The sun had fallen behind the Three Braves, and the town was in immediate dusk. A chill wind riding off the Basin lifted through Sun Dust’s streets on its climb to the rim. Lamps were lighted now, the signal for some of the wagons to pull out for home.

  Old man Settlemeir, feeble and deliberate in his movements, was hanging the night lantern in the archway when Sweet approached him.

  “Who was that just put up his horse?”

  Old Settlemeir had been John Lufton’s first blacksmith and he had small use for the way things were shaping up now. But Sweet, while against Lufton, was a cattleman and not a farmer, and Settlemeir was civil.

  “Flying W is the brand. I don’t know it.”

  “He say anything?”

  “Asked where he could find Tate Riling.”

  Sweet stood transfixed with amazement. Then he murmured, “Ah,” wheeled and cut across street for the Bella Union. His suspicion had turned into conviction now, and the thing that colored it was a fierce outrage. The detective had come straight from his boss to see Riling. Sweet shouldered through the door of the Bella Union and tramped on, his hot glance raking the bar. There were two drummers there and an army man on his way to the reservation, talking to a couple of the Bench punchers.

  At a back table were the men he was after—Big Nels Titterton, from out by Chimney Breaks, and Bob Paulsen, the wild nester who let his wife farm while he gambled away the money he got from selling stolen Basin beef over in Commissary. There was Anse Barden, an old Blockhouse man and the best head in the bunch, and his boy Fred. They were playing poker for next to no stakes. Mitch Moten, a thin, taciturn man who grazed a small tramp herd of culls across the Basin all summer and traded them to the Indians who had offended the agency and lost their beef ration, stood watching the game. Against the wall was Chet Avery, with his black hoethickened hands folded on the lap of his bib overalls, the only man in the country who farmed because he liked it and not because he didn’t own cattle. These men were waiting.

  Sweet hauled up beside Barden and ignored the greetings and said, “Lufton’s watcher just drifted in, boys. I saw him leave the Blockhouse.”

  Barden put down his cards. “Cattle detective?”

  “What else? He’s looking for Riling.”

  “Riling!”

  Sweet smiled thinly. “That’s it. Riling. He asked Settlemeir where he could find him.”

  The men looked at each other. Chet Avery said, “You sure he’s an association man?”

  “I cut his sign goin’ into the Blockhouse and comin’ out. No stray rider is goin’ to find his way to the Blockhouse without he follows the wagon road. He di
dn’t. He was sent for.”

  There was a baffled silence as Sweet looked challengingly from one to the other. They’d been expecting this for weeks, since it was one way Lufton had of fighting them. But the rider’s request for Riling was puzzling, and Barden asked, “What do you figure he wants with Tate?”

  “Let’s ask him,” Mitch Moten suggested dryly.

  Sweet looked up at Mitch, stared at him a second, and then his face broke into a smile.

  Chet Avery said cautiously, “We better wait for Riling.”

  “Riling’s here,” Sweet murmured.

  “Where?”

  Sweet pointed to Big Nels. “Right here.”

  The idea met with only Chet Avery’s objection. Sweet said sardonically, “All right, maybe you’d like to send him over to Riling, Chet. Tell him where Tate is. Tell him he’s waiting to knock hell out of the first Blockhouse herd that crosses the river but that he’ll have time to see an association man.”

  Avery’s broad face flushed, but he kept silent. Sweet said, “What about it, Nels?”

  “Sure,” Nels said slowly. “Sure. Better warn Barney.”

  Jim Garry, his new shirt stiff against his skin, came out of the barbershop into Sun Dust’s night and paused on the edge of the plank walk. The hot bath had soaked the stiffness out of him; in his nose was still the pleasant reek of the bay rum from his shave. He watched the traffic of the main street, heard the cheerful talk shouted from boardwalk to boardwalk and eyed the restless ponies racked in front of the two saloons. A housewife, a sack of sugar under her arm, left the Fair, gathered her skirts and ran past him in her hurry home to a late supper.

  It was all homely, all familiar. He fashioned a cigarette and reached in his shirt pocket for a match. He had none, but the memory of this afternoon, when his similar gesture had been interrupted by the gunshot, was conjured up, vivid and alive. He wondered idly if Amy Lufton would have shot him if he had elected to cross the Massacre instead of retreat. This thought would not leave him alone; it, and the memory of her fury there at the Blockhouse, had nagged him all afternoon. Nor could he forget the expression on Cap Willis’ face when he admitted shooting at Amy.

  He was suddenly restless and dissatisfied and put these thoughts from his mind and turned downstreet. Presently he remembered his unlighted cigarette and threw it away. There was Tate Riling to find yet, a fact he faced with a lack of enthusiasm that puzzled him. It wasn’t because John Lufton had warned him out of the Basin and Sun Dust, either.

  A slight, wiry puncher, about to pass him, hauled up and said, “Got a match, mister?”

  “I haven’t,” Jim replied.

  The puncher said in an altered voice, “Looking for Riling?”

  Jim peered at him in the half-light of the street, suddenly suspicious, trying to place him as one of the three men at the Blockhouse this afternoon. He couldn’t and yet he wasn’t satisfied.

  “Riling?” he murmured. “I’m not looking for anybody.”

  The puncher seemed puzzled. He hesitated and then said, “He’s over at the Bella Union,” and walked away.

  Jim watched him until he was out of sight, and then he peered across the street, his attention narrowed. He remembered asking the stable hostler for Riling’s whereabouts. He thought, “News travels fast here,” and wondered if this was a Blockhouse attempt to trap him into admitting he was here.

  He swung under the tie rail and passed behind the ponies racked in front of Ben’s Gem, reading their brands. Then he swung across the street and by the light thrown from Bella Union’s big windows read the brands of the horses tied there. Blockhouse was not among them.

  He came up on the plank walk in front of the Bella Union and for a moment considered what to do. As always, his leaning was toward the bold move—and then he smiled to himself. Why suspect anything? He’d asked for Tate, and the puncher told him where he could find him.

  He shouldered through the doors of the Bella Union and walked up to the bar, immediately aware of the number and location of the men here. He watched the army man in the back-bar mirror, and when the bartender approached Jim asked, “Where can I find Riling?”

  “Back table.”

  Jim shoved away from the bar and tramped past it and hauled up at a table where a poker game was in progress. Riling wasn’t there, and yet this was the only occupied table. He’d walked into something and he had a choice to make, he knew immediately.

  The bartender had lied, so he was against him, and the army man and drummer didn’t count. Without turning Jim knew the small puncher was already posted at the door behind him.

  “Looking for someone?” It was one of the players, a gray-haired man, who asked.

  “Play it out,” Jim thought, and he drawled, “Tate Riling.”

  The gray-haired man nodded toward the man on his right—a big blond moose of a man who wasn’t Riling.

  “Riling?”

  “That’s me.”

  Jim studied him a brief moment, feeling something gathering inside him. He wondered if these were Blockhouse men and he really didn’t care. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “These are my friends.”

  The man had no intention of moving, which was wise. They had Jim whipsawed, and it showed on the face of the youngest Barden. Jim shifted his feet a little, moving closer to old Barden and bringing the door into sight. Sweet was there. Jim said, “I’m after a riding job.”

  “Who said I was hiring riders?” Big Nels said meagerly.

  “I heard it.”

  “You hear what I’m hirin’ them for too?”

  “I heard that too,” Jim murmured.

  Big Nels looked at the others with triumph in his eyes and put both hands on the table edge, ready to rise. “Why, yes,” he said, and that was as far as he got.

  Jim whipped an arm around the neck of Barden and hauled him roughly backward out of his chair and toward the back of the room. In the same motion he un-holstered his gun and then confronted the players, Barden sagging in front of him and kicking wildly against Jim’s armlock.

  Sweet pounded through the front door, headed, Jim guessed, for the rear alley. Jim said, “A dumb play, boys.”

  They were standing, caught flat-footed. The drummer hurried out, leaving the bartender facing the army man. Jim called, “You stay set, army,” and then moved toward the front door, Barden still in front of him. He saw the big blond man calculating the chances of cutting him off, and they were bad. Any gunplay would get Barden, who had ceased struggling now against Jim’s hold. He had both hands on Jim’s arm, pulling it away from his throat.

  Jim backed toward the door, caroming into a table and knocking a chair over in the thin silence. When he got abreast the bar he said to the army man, “When I get to the door you walk out.”

  The army man started to protest and then was under Jim’s gun. Jim hauled up beside the door. The four men moved slowly out from behind the table into the center of the room. Barden had ceased to struggle, waiting for the break. Jim rammed his gun in Barden’s back, released his hold and then lifted Barden’s gun from its holster.

  He said to the army man, “Get out of here,” and the lieutenant stepped gingerly out the door. Jim put his foot in the middle of Barden’s back and shoved him crashing into a near-by table.

  Then he dodged out the door.

  From across the street behind a spring wagon Milo Sweet opened up. The first slug boomed against the dry boards of the doorjamb, and Jim cursed softly. Sweet had outsmarted him, and now he was caught between Sweet and the rest of the crew in the saloon. It would be impossible to get on a horse under Sweet’s fire.

  Jim drove two shots toward Sweet, and then, stooping low so as not to silhouette himself against the saloon window, he ran downstreet. Sweet’s fire searched him out, and ahead of him a store window collapsed in a jangle of glass at his very feet. And now Sweet’s shooting was echoed by the first shots of the crew in the saloon. A slug boomed into the plank walk and caromed up past him in a
long whine.

  He found protection two doors down—an opening between two buildings. He turned down it and heard Sweet shout, “The back alley!” Somebody was pounding down the boardwalk toward the opening. Jim lunged noisily through the litter of cans and weeds and bottles cluttering the open area. Once he turned and threw a shot back through the opening, and then he burst out into the alley.

  It was pitch black, save for the square of light on a shed thrown by the rear window of the saloon. He turned down the alley, his boots pounding on the cinders. Suddenly from ahead of him came the sound of a running horse. It was on him, riding him down, and he lunged to one side, sprawling in the cinders.

  He rolled to his knees, cursing, and looked back. For a brief instant the rider was in the light of the saloon’s high window, and in that time Jim saw the rider hurl something through the window, shattering the glass. He also identified the rider by the thick auburn hair glinting in the light. It was Carol Lufton.

  He started down the alley again, the dim cross street far ahead. Before he had reached it two men rounded the corner of the building and started to shoot down the alley. He flattened against a shed and looked back in the other direction. The back door of the Bella Union suddenly yanked open, flooding the alley with light. Two more men, the phony Riling and the boy, piled out into the alley, and a man from the street end yelled, “He’s between us.”

  Jim faded around the corner of the shed, searching for shelter. He found a door, opened it and stepped inside. The gloom here was profound, smelling of dust and fresh resin. He judged he was in somebody’s woodshed. He worked toward the rear of it and was finally against the alley wall. The shouted talk now was muffled somewhat, but he heard enough to know they were arguing hotly, shouting directions. Calling for lanterns, probably, he thought. None of them wanted to close that dark gap of alley that they were sure held him.

  Jim’s breath slowed down and he listened. His mind was searching for some way out of this, yet everything that occurred to him was soon discarded. If their search was thorough he was cornered. He wondered objectively what they would do with him when they found him and debated on the wisdom of fighting.