by Nelson Nye
But these were recollections of the long ago, those fat years of her birth in a land of plenty. This valley wasn’t that kind of land any more. It would still support a considerable variety of life but overgrazing and exploitation of timber had created much aridity and dried up many of the turbulent streams, and the rains didn’t fall in the way of former years. Ranching was done on a more conservative scale and most of the land was fenced these days with more and more wire going under the Devil Iron.
It had not been so much a kind of natural evolution as the death of Gert’s mother which had heralded the passing of Boxed Y influence. From that night Rod Kavanaugh had been a changed man. No one ever referred to him as Rod any more; he was called “Sug” these days after an anecdote of Lamtrill’s. Reckless spending and drunken hours of carousal had emptied his purse and cut into his holdings. Imagined affronts and unwarranted accusations had driven away his friends and reduced his crew to the handful of misfits whose allegiance was renewed each month at fifty dollars and could not be relied upon for longer than it took them to pack this largess into Dry Bottom’s bars. You might still hear tales of his one-time skill with a .45 pistol but few men gave these credence and “Crazy as Sug Kavanaugh” had come to be a saying which slid easy off the tongue. As easy, Gert thought bitterly, as Lamtrill last spring shoving north from Willcox had preempted forty sections of Boxed Y’s best graze.
“You reckon,” Joe repeated, “he’s likely to do any more now than he done for you the last time?”
“At least I can — ”
“Look,” Clinton sighed. “When you going to get it through your head these sugar coated fables about the triumph of right an’ virtue is just so much hogwash figured to keep the rank an’ file from gettin’ too hard to manage? You ought to know by now there ain’t no justice. Seeb Dawson’s nothing but a slinkin’ cur — ”
“He took an oath — ”
“They all take oaths. A carpetbagger without an oath is ‘bout as much use as a cup without a handle. And what if he did? You can’t expect the dog to bite the hand that feeds him — ”
“The taxpayers feed him.” Gert looked stubborn and belligerent. “They vote his salary and pay it, too. They’ve got a right to expect a little action for — ”
“They’ve got a right,” Joe jeered. “Now you’re quotin’ the storybooks again. The only right they’ve got is to foot the bills. There’s just two things turns the wheels in this county — privilege and penalty. Seeb Dawson wouldn’t even unbutton his pants without Nate Lamtrill — ”
“Then I’ll go over Seeb’s head. I’ll go to the commissioners.”
“That’ll be real practical,” declared Clinton dryly. “Case you don’t know it, the Board of County Supervisors is composed of three men.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “There’s young Jules Acktine who’s studyin’ law with the County Prosecutor — one of Lamtrill’s ‘petrified creatures'; Abe Krantz, whose Kollossal Mercantile owes Lamtrill’s bank every nickel it can take in for the next several years; and Honest Nate himself.”
Clinton wrinkled up his face with a wry kind of smile. “Ain’t none of them boys goin’ to prosecute himself — even for you.”
Gert Kavanaugh’s eyes revealed a smoldering fury. “There must be some way,” she said, “and if there is I’ve got to find it. I’ve got to,” she repeated with an edge to her tone.
There was something very close to desperation in her face.
Clinton looked thoughtful. “What is it you want with Seeb Dawson this time?”
“The Devil Iron’s fenced our southeast thirty.”
Clinton’s brows went up. They climbed all the way to the edge of his hatbrim. “Your Bear Flats range?”
“Including the lake.”
Clinton shook his head. “I always told your Dad he made a big mistake in not buildin’ his ranch house at the edge of that water.” He put the flat of a hand on the counter, drumming softly, and his glance turned inward as he considered the import of what she had told him.
“What’s Sug goin’ to do?”
She studied his face and she was obviously deeply thinking about it and, just as obviously, without much hope. “I expect,” she finally said with no inflection of bitterness, “he’ll do about what he did when Lamtrill stole those forty sections.”
The Orient’s proprietor, less charitable, put his judgment more succinctly. “Pickle himself in forty rod an’ try to forget he ever had that water — ”
“The cows won’t forget it.”
“No.”
“And I’ll not, either.”
Joe Clinton asked angrily, “What’s the matter with all them high-priced hands he’s been — ”
“They’re not working for us now.”
“You mean he finally woke up and fired ’em?”
Something disturbed her breathing and she said a little stiffly, “We ran out of ready cash and — ”
“So you haven’t any crew at all. Lamtrill’s goin’ to love that. You better stay in town, girl. I’ll give Honest Nate about two more months. After that there won’t be any Boxed Y for you to worry about. He’ll have the whole damn place under wire.”
She looked up at him with angry eyes. “You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“Me,” Gert said with a man’s directness. “I’ve still got a stake in this and I’m not throwing my hand in.”
She meant it, too.
Clinton told her testily, “You keep out of this, girl. Fightin’ off range hogs ain’t no kind of job for a woman — ”
“If Dad’ll go through with a deal I’ve fixed up we can lease that ten around the Oak Ridge line camp and that will give us enough ready cash — ”
“To buy more likker an’ drifters for him?”
“I’m to have the handling of this money myself — ”
“And what’ll you get? A couple thousand, mebbe? You can’t buy Lamtrill off with that.”
“I hadn’t considered buying him off.”
“If you lease Oak Ridge,” Clinton pointed out, “and don’t have that Bear Flats water to fall back on, you won’t have enough graze left to feed your own cattle. Look the facts in the face — ”
“I’m looking them in the face,” Gert threw back at him; and Clinton’s eyes turned a deal more thoughtful when he paused to reflect on how this girl had been raised. She’d been dealing with facts almost all of her life and had seldom had chance to indulge in those pleasures which most girls knew. Thud of hoofs and the bawling of cattle punctuated occasionally by somebody’s sixgun was about all the music she ever had heard. Things ground into a child’s mind that way had a habit of sticking and were bound to cast long shadows before them, inexorably shaping the pattern of whatever events the times were rushing her into.
This girl had practically lived in a saddle ever since she’d been big enough to climb on a horse; and Joe was honest enough with himself to acknowledge that, save for her, Boxed Y would have gone up the spout a long while ago. Making ends meet, though, was one thing. Pitting her will against a man intent on taking over every square inch of ground between the San Pedro and the Pinelenos was a task no girl should be setting her hand to. Joe could see nothing ahead of Gert Kavanaugh but heartbreak.
“I know how you feel,” he told her at last. “I know what that ranch means to you, Gert, but I know Nate Lamtrill for one of the biggest damn skunks that ever stood on two legs. He’s too big now for any man in this basin to get in the way of. You know how many outfits he’s gobbled — Spur and Three Cross an’ Brad an’ Compass. And I happen to know that yesterday forenoon Ben Crispin signed papers that’ll give him the Circle C south of town. There’s a lot better things in life for a girl — ”
“You’re wastin’ breath, Joe. I’m not going to let these crooks tear up Boxed Y.”
Clinton eyed her uneasily. “What can you do? How you figurin’ to stop ’em?”
“I’m going to give Seeb Dawson one more chance. He
didn’t do anything to stop that rustling but if he refuses or fails to move Lamtrill’s crew off that Bear Flats water I’ll see how he likes a dose of his own medicine.”
“You mean you’d go to throwin’ lead?”
“That’s right.”
Dismay bulked large in the look Clinton gave her. “But God’s off ox, girl, you haven’t any crew! You can’t tear down his fence without no backin’ or stand out there with a smokin’ six — ”
“What makes you think I won’t have any backing?”
“Why this country would jump through a hoop if Nate said to. These outfits round here are so damned scared of Lamtrill — ”
“Right now they are, sure. They’re like you, plumb whipped before they ever lift a hand. But maybe I can change that. If I can set them an example that will give them enough hope to get their backs up — ”
“You’re out of your head, girl! That fellow’s a wolf. He wouldn’t worry no more about a chit of a girl than he would about worms in his biscuits.”
“He’ll savvy hot lead.” Gert smiled at him grimly. “If Dawson doesn’t get him off our water I’m going to use that lease money to hire a bunch of warriors — ”
“Gunfighters!” With widening eyes Clinton staggered back. “You don’t know what you’re saying — ”
“I think I do.” She spoke quietly, as a man might — a man who had been around and knew what the score was. “A warrior crew working out of Boxed Y could make Nate Lamtrill an awful pile of misery. For every outfit he’s jumped we could crack two of his; the way he’s spread out he can’t watch everything. For every steer his crowd have rustled we could short his count by twenty. Every lousy trick he’s pulled in this country can be thrown right back in his teeth with interest.”
For a second Clinton’s eyes showed a leaping brightness but its flame swiftly faded. “Not a chance,” he said. “It sounds good but you couldn’t make it work. To get anywhere at all you’d have to find yourself a gun boss guys like that would follow — ”
“I’ve got one. Myself. I can hold that bunch in line.”
She was serious, too — dead serious.
The Orient’s proprietor rasped grizzled jowls. “You figure,” he demanded incredulously, “that you — one girl with a gun in her fist — can bust up the power of Nate Lamtrill’s bank?”
“We’ll find out,” Gert said, and Joe Clinton snorted.
“Even granted such a stunt had any chance to succeed, what gun throwin’ bravo with any thimbleful of sense would be crazy enough — ”
“To go up against Lamtrill?”
“To risk backin’ a busted outfit run by a girl an’ a drunk old fool nobody’s got any use for against the kind of crew Devil Iron’ll be throwin’ at you. It won’t wash, Gert. You won’t more than get started — ”
“There are plenty of owlhooters back in the hills who would welcome the chance to get their hooks in — ”
“You wouldn’t get no farther with that cut-an'-run kind than Sug got with his fifty-dollar drifters. This is a wolf’s game — ”
“I intend to hire wolves.” Gert smiled at him bleakly. “Men like Kid Badger, Sam Hackberry, Flash Dringo — ”
“God almighty!” Joe Clinton stared at her, white and shaken. “You can’t do that! You would better turn wild Indians loose than bring that kind into Sunset Valley….”
His words trailed off. In the stretched-thin silence he seemed to be hearing the muffled hoofbeats of night riders. Whatever he saw it was a frightening picture. But it was too fantastic. He took a deep breath and shook his head, relaxing. “You couldn’t do it, Gert. You couldn’t get men like that — ”
“I can and will,". Gert said grimly. “We’ll cut his herds, we’ll fire his buildings, we’ll bust his bank wide open. And when his credit fails, when what’s left of his crews start digging for the tules and he’s just one man left alone with a pistol — ”
“You’ve gone out of your mind …” Clinton whispered.
“But I’ll do it,” Gert nodded. “If Dawson doesn’t get Devil Iron off my water I’ll do it if this whole damned range goes up in smoke.”
10. GERT KAVANAUGH
REIFEL HEARD old whiskers telling the girl he was too far gone to be worth tinkering with, that the law was probably camped on his trail and that they had more trouble than they could handle now. But the girl got to work on him anyway.
The first two weeks he never got out of bed except when he had to on acctount of nature, and if the girl’d had her way he wouldn’t have got out at all. He didn’t mind right at first having a woman fussing over him because most of the time he was a heap too groggy to care about anything. But after the fever went out of him and he got enough better that he was able to take in the groceries she spooned him it got rightdown embarrassing to be having her washing him and rolling him around in that bed like she did. She was strong and hard as a white oak post and considerable set in her ways, he discovered, but when she started to skin him out of his underwear he drew the line.
“Don’t be an idiot!” She glared at him, furious. “You think it matters to me what you look like?”
“Well, it matters to me!” he flung back at her.
“You expect to wear them damn things forever? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you they ought to be washed?”
“Go ahead and wash them if it’ll make you feel better, but I’ll take care of getting out of ’em. When you ain’t around,” he added, pointedly. And that was the end of that conversation.
He was plenty aware that if it hadn’t been for her he would have cashed in his chips. He supposed he owed her something for that. He had plenty of time to think about it and the more he thought the more he was inclined to wish by God he hadn’t ever come near here. For it was plain as plowed ground she meant to collect. He remembered the old man’s crack about trouble and, by all the signs and signal smokes, that scrinch-eyed old crock hadn’t been talking just to hear his head rattle.
It was the damndest spread he had ever put up at. He never heard anyone laugh around the place and more than half the time the crew sat around playing cards and whittling — what time, that is, they weren’t fiddling with their guns. He could see the bunkhouse any time he wanted to peer through the cheesecloth covering the window that was right beside his bed, and if that bunch ever did any saddle slicking it was a cinch it wasn’t being done in the daytime.
The whole setup was enough to worry any man who had an itch to reform. Near as he could figure there were only six hands yet that outsized bunkhouse could have stowed away thirty without crowding anyone. The crew looked more like guys who were riding the grubline than they did the forty-a-month kind who punched cattle. Except for one thing — range bums mostly never bothered with guns. These birds were weighted down plenty.
A lot of gents, Reifel figured, would consider this layout had all the earmarks of a spread on the rustle. He hadn’t made up his own mind yet but he’d no doubt whatever it was headed for gunsmoke. There was that kind of tightness hanging in the air.
Towards the end of the second week it began to get on his nerves. Especially the girl. She never said very much but time and again he had caught her watching him. He could almost hear the wheels going round. She was wondering if it was time yet to fetch up his indebtedness.
And there was another funny thing. The old man spent most of his time on the porch. Probably with a bottle. Swigging his guts away in that creaking rocker. He never did a lick of work. He never swapped any talk with that bunch at the bunkhouse. He never spoke to the girl that he wasn’t complaining. She didn’t pay much attention. He paid none at all to her.
Her name was Gert Kavanaugh. She wasn’t hard on the eyes. She had taffy-colored hair. Her voice was all right; though it was deep and kind of husky it didn’t hurt your ears. Her red lips could quicken in a mighty fetching smile and he liked the way her firm young breasts poked out the fronts of the shirts she wore. He often wondered how she’d look in a dress and sometimes, during his more ungu
arded moments, he would even get to wondering how she’d be in a bed. But she was pretty weak tea if a man was minded to compare her to that black-haired filly who had been on the stage.
It was during the late afternoon of his tenth day at Boxed Y, that Reifel’s curiosity finally prodded him to action. There was nobody around — nor hadn’t been since noon — except the old man interminably creaking his goddam rocker.
Reifel got himself up and, slipping out of the bed, went catfooting over to the chair where his clothes were. He stood listening a moment. Satisfied that whiskers was going to keep on rocking he picked up his belt and got the gun from his holster. He broke open the weapon and extracted the paper from the barrel where he had hidden it.
Marta May Lamtrill.
Even her name had the ring of class.
That was one thing about the genuine article — you could tell it every time. He remembered the blue eyes behind the black lashes. The red lips. The regal gestures and the just-so way she had of carrying herself. Everything about her — even to his untutored eyes — proclaimed the earmarks of a Lady.
Marta May Lamtrill.
It made him wonder, by God, if he dared look so high. First he’d have to find her and that might take a deal of doing. A lot harder than that would be the making of her acquaintance. He reckoned that would take a heap of maneuvering because a girl like her with all that refinement wasn’t going to take up with every guy that took a shine to her. Half the multimillionaires in the East were probably dogging her; but it was the thought of her old man that really got Ben down. By the tell of that drummer he was powerful big stuff and it was dollars to doughnuts he’d be more than damn particular who came calling on his daughter. He might even want their rating in one of them Wall Street journals.
Reifel looked at her name again and sighed. Turning over a new leaf began to look like it might take considerable more effort than he’d figured.
He had just about come to this reluctant conclusion when, chancing to glance through the open window — the one by his bed which was covered with cheesecloth — he caught sight of a horsebacker entering the yard. The rider was still half hidden by a stand of live oak but he could tell by her taffy hair it was Gert. And by her seat in the saddle he could tell she was mad.
