by Luke Short
She blew out the lamp and went out. At the corrals Ted Elser, holding the reins of two saddled horses, was talking with Amy. When Carol approached he yanked off his Stetson and said, “Mornin’, Miss Carol.”
Carol gave him a careless greeting. Elser was a man close to thirty, a lean, inarticulate man whom few of the Blockhouse crew knew well. He’d drifted into Massacre Basin a year ago, and Cap Willis signed him on. He knew more about horses than anybody at Blockhouse, and both Cap and Lufton had come to depend on him. He had a pleasant, almost homely face with deep, friendly brown eyes, and he was always soft spoken. He was unutterably and deeply in love with Carol. He said, “I picked Monte for you, Miss Carol.”
“But he’s got such a hard gait, Ted.”
“He’s got speed,” Ted said.
The way he said it made Carol turn her cool green eyes on him. “I’m not out for a gallop.”
“You’re likely to need speed,” Ted said doggedly.
Carol looked at Amy, who was grinning, and then at Ted. “What do you mean by that, Ted?”
“I wish you wouldn’t go, Miss Carol,” Ted blurted. His thin browned face was flushed dark, but his eyes were beseeching.
“Why not?”
“Startin’ this mornin’, there’s goin’ to be trouble in the Basin,” Ted said grimly. “If any stray rider will shoot at Miss Amy, I reckon Tate Riling would like to get a shot at you too. And I can’t ride out with you because I’ve got to stick here.”
Carol’s cheeks turned darker, and she said angrily, “What absolute nonsense! Turn Monte out and get me a horse I can ride! And I can do without advice from you too, Ted!”
“Yes’m,” Ted said docilely.
He led Carol’s horse back into the corral, and Carol waited, furious and unable to say anything. These stupid, stupid cow hands. A man who would fight for his rights against them was both a criminal and a killer of women, according to their thinking. She noticed Amy watching her, brown eyes quizzical and intent.
“You’d think I was six years old,” Carol said resentfully.
“He’s in love with you,” Amy said simply.
“I know he is. That doesn’t excuse his insolence, though.” Carol said it matter-of-factly, with an absence of emotion that puzzled Amy.
Ted returned with a big bay horse, and Amy and Carol mounted and rode off. Ripple Ford lay to the north, a hard three hours’ ride. Somewhere on the way, Amy hoped, they would meet a Blockhouse rider who would give them news of the crossing. Ted Elser, she thought, was right. Trouble would break today. For a month now Blockhouse riders had kept out of Sun Dust except for urgent business. There had been wild talk, and trouble had been averted only by her father’s iron insistence that his men give no provocation. The nesters, led by Tate Riling, had given their warning, however. No more Blockhouse cattle in Massacre Basin. And Agent Pindalest had given his orders too: no Blockhouse cattle on the reservation after the first of November, or the army would impound them. This was the twenty-second, and last night her father had moved. Massacre Basin was fifty miles long. Blockhouse riders had been patrolling the river on the reservation side, just as the nesters had been patrolling it on the Basin side. Somewhere along those fifty miles, at Ripple Ford, her father’s note said, Blockhouse would break through into the Basin. After they succeeded the nesters would fight. Blockhouse would fight back.
They were riding now into broken land that lifted to the Chimney Breaks. The chill of morning had worn off, and Amy was beginning to be worried. The first thing Blockhouse would do after they made the crossing would be to scatter the cattle and send riders ahead. They were close to the ford now, yet there was no sign of Blockhouse cattle or riders. Had her father changed his mind?
Amy glanced at Carol and caught her at an unguarded moment. Carol was worried and, beyond that, frightened. Faced now with the consequences of her smuggled message to Tate, she was afraid. Of course there had been a fight, Carol thought, a fight in which her father might have been hurt. She glanced at Amy and saw her watching her.
“Where are they?” Carol asked.
“Let’s ride on to the ford.”
They were in the clay dunes now that were on a slope toward the Massacre that was so gentle they could see nothing beyond except more dunes and the distant mountains. Amy watched for tracks as they wound in and out among the dunes, and she saw none. That meant Blockhouse had not crossed here.
Presently, two miles beyond, the dunes broke away, and in the V of the break she could see the flats by the river. There were no cattle there.
And then Amy saw the tracks coming out of a gut to the north and heading toward the V. She pulled up her horse and studied them. Horsemen, and many of them. As she lifted her gaze to Carol’s face she saw a look of quiet panic there.
Amy pulled her horse around and put him into a trot. She saw a sudden and imperceptible movement on the north hummock of the V, and it puzzled her. She lifted her pony into a lope.
The trail wound through the last of the dunes and took off across the flats. Amy, however, swerved sharply around to the north of the dune, Carol behind her.
A hundred feet away, against the last dune, were a dozen men, all dismounted, their horses bunched behind them.
Amy hauled up sharply and let Carol pull up beside her. There was Tate Riling, still hunkered down on his haunches and half turned to them, an amused expression on his big face, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of an explanation. Amy knew the others, too, the whole crew of nesters and small cattlemen banded to fight her father.
And then she saw Jim Garry. He was standing aloof from the others behind Big Nels, who was also squatting. His face was taciturn and unsmiling and calmly watchful.
Amy walked her horse closer, and Riling rose to his feet. “Looking for someone, Miss Lufton?”
Amy didn’t answer immediately. She was looking at Jim Garry, her first bafflement giving way to a slow understanding. She said to him, “So you’re one of them?”
Garry didn’t say anything, just looked at her. Now it came to Amy with a sudden rush of certainty—the knowledge of why these men should be here at a place where her father had planned to attempt the secret crossing of the Massacre.
She swung out of the saddle and came up to Tate Riling. Carol, behind her, dismounted, too, remaining by her horse.
Amy said, “Get out of the way, Riling. I want to talk to your new gunman.”
Tate looked quizzically at Jim and stepped aside. Big Nels drifted away, leaving Amy facing Jim. He had been fiddling idly with the reins of his horse, his feet planted wide, Stetson shoved back off his forehead. His hands stopped moving now; otherwise he didn’t move.
There was malicious triumph in Amy’s brown eyes now as she regarded him. “I guess Dad wasn’t so wrong about you after all, was he, Garry?”
“Wrong?”
“I haven’t talked to him; I don’t have to. He had you spotted for one of Riling’s saddle-tramp gunmen the moment he saw you.”
Riling laughed softly, and Amy wheeled to face him. Her smile was wicked. “It’s funny, isn’t it, Riling?—but not to you. Right now Dad’s across the Massacre, while you wait here with your crew to throw him back.”
“Is that why we’re here?” Tate drawled in mock innocence.
“Isn’t it? Simply because Dad was smart enough to give Garry a note to us that Garry was sure to read. That note told us Dad was crossing at Ripple Ford. He knew this saddle tramp would tell you and decoy you over here.”
She looked around at the uneasy men, and her gaze settled on Anse Barden. He’d been in Blockhouse when she was a little girl, and they’d been friends ever since. There was something in Anse’s rugged face that belied dishonesty, and it hurt Amy to see him and his boy here. She said jeeringly, “And how do you like it now, Anse? Why, you aren’t even being led by a smart crook.”
Anse shifted his feet, and then his glance fell away. Sweet was looking hotly at Riling, and Amy saw him.
“How
do you like it, Milo?” she taunted.
Sweet said thinly, “This is only the first move, Miss Amy.”
Riling, meanwhile, had turned his head and was studying Carol. His face was unreadable to anyone watching, and yet Carol knew what he was thinking, and her eyes were pleading. She had idly been drawing circles in the dust with the toe of her boot. Now she looked down at her feet and up at him and down again. Riling was briefly puzzled, and then he nodded imperceptibly.
But Amy wasn’t finished. The irony of the situation was broad enough to be obvious to them all, and she used it unmercifully. She picked out one of the strange punchers, a tough, slant-faced man named Riordan, and said with a maddening politeness, “I don’t believe I’ve seen you around here. Are you fighting for your own graze too?”
“No’m,” Riordan said uneasily.
“And you?” she asked another. She didn’t wait for his answer but shuttled her glance to Anse Barden. “I thought you were all old-timers fighting for land you’d settled on, Anse.”
Milo Sweet said hotly, “Your Blockhouse hands are bein’ paid to fight!”
“And you’re paying these men to fight,” Amy countered. “At least it’s in the open now—gunmen against working punchers.”
And now her gaze settled on Jim Garry. His indifference was a goad to her, for among all these men she held him in the most contempt. And he didn’t care.
Amy said, “Even an Indian wouldn’t betray a trust, Garry. Think it over.”
“I have,” Jim murmured.
“And it doesn’t bother you?”
“Nothin’ much does, except talk.”
He was baiting her, Amy knew, and she resolved not to lose her temper. But she had a wild desire to corner him, to make him confess. “You did read the note, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re a poor liar,” Amy said quietly.
“Yes’m.”
Amy wanted to argue, but she knew she’d said enough. A look at Tate Riling told her that; the muscles along his jaw line were corded with the effort to control himself. More talk might spoil it, but she couldn’t resist a last gibe.
She said to Riling, “Better luck next time—old-timer.”
She swung on her horse and waited for Carol to mount. Not until they’d walked their horses around the dune did Riling’s crew cease looking at them.
Then the men looked at each other. Amy Lufton’s gibes had hit the mark with the Bardens, Sweet, Big Nels and the other Basin men. Since Riling had bought Fales’s old place and stocked it with his handful of cattle a month ago, he had been their leader. He had voiced their fears, organized them, made their threats and brought in his own friends, the last of them Jim Garry. It had taken Amy Lufton’s tongue-lashing to show them how far they had come from a group of unimportant local men who feared to lose the little they had, how they depended on a man who had been a stranger to them a month past.
Tate Riling saw it, and for a moment his anger flared. “Damn her,” he muttered. “Damn her tongue too.”
Barden said dryly, “Well, Lufton’s across the Massacre.” He looked bleakly and pointedly at Jim. “Lufton’s not a fool, mister.”
Tate said, “Garry didn’t bring that note.”
“Where’d it come from?” Milo Sweet asked abruptly.
Riling looked at him, speculation in his cunning eyes. Sweet was the rebel, the maverick. If trouble came it would come from him, Riling knew. Sooner or later would come a showdown with Sweet, and Tate didn’t care when. Now was not the time for it though, but on the other hand, he couldn’t show weakness. He had too much at stake to be gentle.
He said quietly, “None of your damned business, Sweet.”
Sweet’s rash temper fled across his eyes, and Riling didn’t give him time to speak but went on boldly, bluntly.
“I got a wrong tip. I won’t get another. If it sticks in your craw, Sweet, ride out.”
Riling understood the way to crowd a man; too, he understood that this was too trivial for Sweet to make an issue of. He saw Sweet’s rashness judge it slowly and put it away and then subside. Sweet said sullenly,
“All right, only Lufton’s across the Massacre with that herd.”
Riling had won. He turned away and said agreeably, “Sure, sure. But steers have got legs, and they can be driven back.” He looked at Barden. “The thing to do is spot his herds—the one that crossed, the two that are still on the reservation. After that we can move.”
The men agreed and soon settled how they were to split up and what they must do. Tate pointed out that if they could find and stampede the held Blockhouse herds across the river, Lufton would have to draw most of his crew back to the reservation to gather them up again in time for the deadline. Once that was done it would be easy to drive the shorthanded Basin herd back across the Massacre.
The crew agreed, broke and went for their horses. Riling spoke for Jim, Riordan and Joe Shotten to side him, for he was wise enough to know that from now on he must keep them out of the nesters’ way. As Riling went for his horse he detoured to where Carol’s pony had been standing. He glanced at the ground, not pausing in his stride, and then got his horse.
With the memory of last night still fresh in his mind, Jim had watched Carol, and he had seen the same thing Riling saw. He stepped into the saddle and rode his horse over that same piece of ground. Drawn in the dust was a broken arrow. Jim filed that away in his memory as he joined Riling.
Tate’s face was set in a scowl, and he eyed Jim sardonically.
“My first slip,” he said. “We’ll have to hit him hard.”
“Before he hits you,” Jim murmured.
Riling looked at him closely. “How’s that?”
“He must be tough,” Jim mused. “He’s got a tough daughter. He was smart enough to spot me.”
Riling grunted, “Not only you. He spotted Riordan and Joe Shotten in town before I knew they were here.”
“A couple of beauties,” Jim murmured. “Who are they?”
Riling smiled faintly. “It don’t matter who they are, Jim. When this thing shakes down to a tight, Barden and his friends will get scared. These boys don’t scare.”
“It’s pretty crude,” Jim observed.
“Not so crude,” Riling contradicted, grinning. “I’ve made everybody like it but Lufton, and I’ll make him too.”
Jim didn’t say anything, and Riling went on easily: “I want you and Riordan and Joe to drift into town now. Keep out of this from now on until trouble breaks. That damned girl saw the setup, and she’s got Sweet and the boys to thinking. Give me time to cool ’em off and make them think they’re doin’ the work.”
Jim said softly, “Me and Riordan and Shotten, hired gunmen.”
Riling looked at him intently, hearing both the irony and the protest in Jim’s statement. He said, “What did I write you?”
“That you needed a man you could trust and that—”
“That’s far enough,” Riling said calmly. “I meant it too. And the difference between you and the other two boys is that they’re paid in gold eagles. You’ll be paid in thousands, Jim. Any kick?”
“No kick,” Jim said mildly.
Riling rode over to Shotten and Riordan and spoke to them. Most of the others had gone in groups of two and three. Sweet was with the two Bardens, and when he reached the end of the long slope to the river he turned in his saddle and looked back. Riling, Jim, Riordan and Joe Shotten were angling south along the river, heading for the cottonwood motte that lined the river for miles to the south.
Sweet watched them out of sight and then spoke to Anse. “Notice how them four stick together?”
“Why not?” Barden murmured. “Riordan and Joe work for him. Garry’s a friend, come in to help.”
“I can buy that kind of a friend for seventy-five a month and no questions asked,” Sweet said sardonically.
Barden knew what he meant, and he said gloomily, “Maybe we’ll need ’em, Milo.”
“But
how did Riling know that a month ago? Tell me that.”
Barden couldn’t answer him.
When they had ridden a mile or so Riling said, “All right, cut for town, boys, and stay out of trouble.”
He watched them go up over the ridge, Jim Garry riding in the rear. Then he drew out his sack of tobacco and rolled and lighted a smoke, afterward pulling his horse deeper into the cottonwoods. He didn’t dismount there but quietly sat his horse, waiting for everyone to ride out of sight. The midmorning sun slanting through the cottonwoods touched the yellow leaves scattered beneath the trees in a bright harlequin pattern that would have pleased him at any other time. But not this morning.
Lufton had tricked him smartly, and the thought of it both galled him and pleased him. He was pleased because he saw that Lufton underestimated his intelligence. If, as Lufton probably thought, Jim Garry had read the note and told him, Riling would have seen through it. But coming from Carol, he hadn’t doubted it. His slow, thorough mind considered Carol now. He had read that look in her eyes back there as pleading for understanding; in another hour she would be telling him why she’d failed, although he knew. He must be careful with her if she was to be of any use to him. Today she’d been afraid of what she’d find there at Ripple Ford and thankful that the plans had misfired. He’d have to win her back again, give her the courage she lacked, reassure her.
Presently he put his horse out of the cottonwoods, back-tracking to the V and going into the dunes. He was a solid man on a horse, carrying his arrogance even to the saddle. He rode with one big hand on his thigh, elbow a little outthrust, back straight. His face was thoughtful during that hour that he crossed the dunes and dropped down on the other side of them onto a long reach of alkali flats that lifted in dun steps to the base of the distant Bench. Carol remained in his mind, put there by the happening this morning. Again the choice confronted him, as it had all this past month since he’d known her. He couldn’t remember when it first came to him that she could be his to use. It must have been after that dance at the Roan Creek schoolhouse the week he’d bought his place. He’d been a stranger then, a big, smiling man who was sure of himself, friendly, new to the country, eager to meet people.
