“Thanks, Doc,” Kane said, his voice thick with emotion.
Strickland said with reluctance in his voice, “I reckon I’d better get the prisoner back down to the jail. It looks like all the fightin’s over.”
“I think Kane can be released into your custody for a while longer,” Frank told him. “At least until Annie here is out of the woods.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Kane vowed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Frank clapped him on the shoulder. “Good work out there. With Harlan dead and everybody knowing what a crook he was, I’d say there’s a good chance all the charges against you might just wind up being dismissed, Kane.”
The young cowboy nodded and said, “Thanks to you, Mr. Morgan.”
Frank waved that off and started toward the door. “I’m heading down to the jail for a minute. I’ll tell the sheriff where he can find you if he wants you. I expect he’ll still be pretty busy for a while, though.”
Wilmott was busy, all right, supervising as his deputies locked up the ranchers who had ridden into town to bust the jail wide open. “You got what you wanted, Morgan,” the sheriff snapped when he saw Frank. “None of those hotheads are dead. Some of ’em are shot up a mite, but I reckon they’ll live to stand trial.”
“It might go a long way toward establishing peace in the county if you saw to it that they don’t go to prison, Sheriff,” Frank suggested.
“Not go to prison!” Wilmott yelped. “They put bullet holes in my jail!”
“The judge might see his way clear to fining them for disturbing the peace and unlawfully discharging their guns. They never would have done such a thing if they hadn’t been pushed into it by McKelvey and Harlan and Coburn.”
“Oh, yeah, those bastards. What happened to them?”
“McKelvey and Harlan are both dead.” Frank told the sheriff where he could find the bodies. “I don’t know about Coburn. I didn’t even see him during the fighting.”
“I did,” Wilmott declared. “He was around right at first, but he took off mighty fast when he saw that things weren’t goin’ his way. Headed southeast, the last I saw.”
“Toward Zephyr,” Frank said grimly. This raid had been only one part of a two-pronged attack. He had to find Stormy and light a shuck for the cattle pens at the railhead.
He hoped Beaumont had gotten there in time to warn Duggan and the others.
* * *
The riders swept out of the hills southwest of Zephyr, firing and yelling as they came. Some of the cowboys from the big ranch crews leaped into their saddles and raced out to meet the raiders head-on, while others rode around the pens so they would be ready in case any of the cattle broke through the fences and stampeded.
Beaumont found himself riding with Duggan, MacDonald, Carey, and the rest of the Slash D punchers as they started returning the raiders’ fire. Callie Stratton came with them, ignoring Beaumont’s shouted command for her to stay back. He knew she wanted to find her brother and let him know that he had been duped by McKelvey, Harlan, and Coburn, in hopes that Rawlings would call off the attack.
It was too late for that, Beaumont thought. Nothing was going to stop this fight.
The area near the cattle pens was a madhouse of riders swirling around each other, smoke and dust clogging the air, spurts of muzzle flame, the whine of bullets, the cries of wounded men. Beaumont knew all the men from Rawlings’s bunch, and whenever he saw one of them, he fired to wound and disarm rather than to kill. They didn’t have such compunctions where he was concerned, though, and by the time a few minutes of battle had passed, he had several nicks and bullet burns.
Suddenly, Al Rawlings loomed up out of the dust and smoke, drawing a bead on Beaumont from only a few feet away. Before he could fire, Callie appeared beside him and rammed her horse into his. With a shrill whinny, both animals went down, throwing Rawlings and Callie.
Beaumont left the saddle in a dive that landed him on top of Rawlings. He backhanded the gun out of Rawlings’s hand and then smashed a punch into his face. While Rawlings was stunned, Beaumont grabbed his shoulders and shook him.
“Rawlings! Listen to me!” Beaumont practically shouted in his face, trying to get through to him. “Rawlings, you were set up! Coburn’s an outlaw! He and his gang are going to double-cross you!”
Rawlings blinked fuzzily as he tried to comprehend what the young Ranger was saying.
“It’s a trap!” Beaumont went on. “A trap for all of us, for both sides!”
Callie pulled herself over to them, and Beaumont saw that she had been hurt when she was thrown from her horse. He didn’t have time to check on how badly she might be injured. She leaned over her brother and said urgently, “It’s true, Al! You’ve been tricked! We’ve all been tricked!”
“Coburn . . .” Rawlings muttered. “He went to Brownwood with the others. . . .”
“To rob the banks there, not to get Chris Kane out of jail.” Beaumont thought he was getting through to Rawlings at last. “Duggan and the Slash D aren’t your enemies. Coburn and his bunch are!”
“Lemme up! Lemme up, damn it!” Rawlings surged to his feet along with Beaumont. “Hold your fire!” Rawlings bellowed. “Hold your fire!”
Earl Duggan rode up at that moment and swung down swiftly from his saddle. As he landed on his feet, he raised his gun and lined it on Rawlings. Beaumont stepped between them.
“Stop it, Duggan!” Beaumont said. “It’s over. Rawlings knows now he was tricked into fighting you.”
“The hell you say!” Duggan exploded. “Coburn and the others couldn’t have used him and his bunch if they hadn’t already hated us!”
“You fenced us in!” Rawlings shouted over Beaumont’s shoulder. “You tried to squeeze us off range that was legally ours!”
Callie pulled herself painfully to her feet. “Will both of you bullheaded bastards just stop it! You can hash it all out later. For now, you’ve got outlaws to deal with!”
With that, she gasped and crumpled as one of her legs went out from under her. Rawlings sprang to her side and kept her from falling all the way. “Callie!”
“I’m all right,” she told him. “I just twisted my leg when I got knocked off my horse trying to keep you from killing a Ranger, you big idiot! Now you and Duggan go deal with those owlhoots!”
Beaumont looked back and forth between the leaders of the two factions. “What do you say?”
Duggan lowered his gun at last. “All right,” he growled. “Let’s go get ’em, Rawlings.”
“I’m with you,” Rawlings said as he picked up the gun he had dropped.
They plunged back into the fighting, which had swirled past them. The initial charge of the outlaws had carried them all the way to the cattle pens. Men blazed away at each other over the backs of the wildly milling beasts. Some fought from horseback while others were on foot.
Rawlings raced here and there, shouting for his men to stop fighting with the big ranch crews and turn their guns on Coburn’s hired killers. The tide of battle shifted as more and more of the men understood what was really going on. But the outcome was still very much up in the air.
Beaumont had helped Callie to one of the chuck wagons. She slumped to the ground next to a wagon wheel and said, “Give me a gun, Tye. I seem to have lost mine.”
“I don’t have an extra,” Beaumont told her as he flashed a grin at her. “Looks like you’re out of the fight, Callie.”
She reached up and unhooked a skillet that was hanging on the side of the wagon. “Run some of ’em this way,” she said as she shook the skillet. “I’ll make their heads hurt!”
Beaumont laughed as he thumbed fresh cartridges into his Colt. Blood was dripping in his eyes from a cut on his forehead. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and plunged back into the melee.
He had gone only a few feet when a rider loomed out of the smoke and dust beside him. Beaumont twisted toward the man only to recognize Flint Coburn’s lean, hate-filled face. The gun in C
oburn’s hand exploded, sending a bullet smashing through Beaumont’s thigh. Beaumont cried out in pain as the impact of the slug twisted him around. As he fell, Coburn’s horse reared above him, and the killer tried to bring his gun down for another shot that would finish Beaumont off.
* * *
Frank had hoped to catch up to Coburn before the gunman could reach Zephyr. If any horse in the world could do that, Stormy could. But even the magnificent Appaloosa had his limits, and Coburn had too big a lead. Frank didn’t catch sight of Coburn until after he heard the gunshots and saw the clouds of dust and powder smoke hanging over the cattle pens where the battle was taking place.
Surging ahead, Frank spotted Coburn, saw the killer nearly ride down a man on foot. Coburn fired, knocking down the man, and as Frank drew nearer, he felt horror and fury go through him as he recognized Tyler Beaumont. The young Ranger was wounded in the leg and couldn’t move. Coburn brought his gun down to fire again.
Frank snapped a shot off first. The bullet burned across the rump of Coburn’s horse and sent it leaping wildly in the air. Coburn started to slip out of the saddle and grabbed for the horn. He missed, so all he could do was kick his feet free of the stirrups so he wouldn’t be dragged.
Frank swung down from Stormy’s back while the Appaloosa was still moving. He covered Coburn as he ran over to Beaumont. “Tyler!” he called.
Beaumont pushed himself into a sitting position. If he was surprised to see Frank turn up just in the nick of time, he didn’t show it. “I’m all right!” he called. “Get Coburn!”
That was just what Frank intended to do, but as he swung toward the man again, a cloud of dust rolled between them, making him lose sight of the killer. When the dust cleared, Coburn was gone.
A second later, Frank spotted him ducking around the corner of one of the cattle pens. The shooting was dying away now as the crews from the big ranches and the men from the smaller spreads fought side by side for a change against the outlaws. The air was still full of a terrible racket, though, from the bawling of the cattle and the clashing of their horns. Frank ran after Coburn, stopping at the corner of the pen and glancing around it.
A shot rang out and a bullet chipped splinters from the pole next to Frank’s head. A couple of the splinters stung his cheek as he pulled back for a second. Then he triggered a quick shot around the corner and followed it with a sprint that took him toward Coburn’s position. A slug sang past Frank’s ear. He went down in a rolling dive and came up triggering. The bullets drove Coburn back against the rails of the pen behind him. He hung there for a second, grimacing in pain as blood welled from the holes in his chest.
Then the terror-stricken steers behind him surged against the fence again, and it gave way at last, collapsing under the weight of tons of beef. Coburn was already dying and he knew it, but he screamed anyway as he went down beneath that awful weight. The stampede rushed over him, thousands of hooves chopping and pounding him into the dirt until he didn’t even resemble anything human.
Frank leaped over to another pen and pulled himself up on the fence, perching on the top rail and holding on for dear life as it shook underneath him. The stampeding cattle rolled on past him. Already whooping cowboys were dashing up on horseback, trying to contain them.
When the last of the runaway cattle had gone past him, Frank dropped to the ground again and hurried to find Beaumont. Pitch Carey rode up and said, “The Ranger’s over there, if you’re lookin’ for him, Morgan.”
“Much obliged,” Frank nodded. He hurried over to the Slash D chuck wagon where Carey was pointing.
Beaumont was sitting on the tailgate with Callie Stratton. Rawlings was there, too, along with Duggan and the rest of the Slash D riders. Wing was winding a bandage around Beaumont’s wounded leg.
“Frank!” the young Ranger exclaimed. “Did you get Coburn?”
“He’s dead,” Frank replied with a nod. “That stampede finished him off.”
“Serves him right,” Duggan growled. “Don’t know what he hoped to accomplish.”
“What he planned to do was play both sides against each other and then wipe out anybody who was left,” Frank explained. “The same thing was going on in Brownwood. The ultimate goal was for Ace McKelvey to take over Brown County, I reckon.”
“McKelvey!”
Frank nodded. “I’m thinking he was the mastermind behind the whole thing. But Coburn was in on it with him, and so was Skeet Harlan.”
Ed MacDonald said, “I can believe it of Harlan. He was always a vicious little polecat.”
Duggan said to Rawlings, “And you were a damned fool to let them use you that way.”
“Me a damned fool?” Rawlings shot back. “What about you? You caused as much trouble as I did. Hell, you blew up Vern Gladwell, as fine a man as I ever knew!”
Duggan frowned. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’ll take more than sorry. There’ll always be bad blood between you and me, Duggan. There’ll always be trouble between you range hogs and the fellas who just want to make an honest living and have their own spreads.”
“No, there won’t,” Beaumont said flatly. “It’s over. You fellas will work this out, or the Rangers will work it out for you.”
“Well . . .” Duggan rubbed his grizzled jaw. “I don’t reckon it’d hurt anything to put up some gates in those fences and let you drive across our range when you need to. As long as you keep your cows on your range the rest of the time.”
“I wouldn’t want my cows eatin’ your grass,” Rawlings snapped. “It’d probably gaunt ’em right up.”
Duggan snorted. “I’ve got better grass than you’ll ever have on that greasy-sack outfit of yours.”
“Oh, shut up,” Callie said. “Both of you. I’m tired of the fighting. There’s been a lot of wrong and a lot of hurt on both sides, but like Tye says, it’s over. You’ve got to learn to get along now, or else.”
“Or else what?” her brother challenged stubbornly.
Callie lifted a hand and waved it at the carnage around them. “Or else you’ll have a lot of killing to do all over again. And I don’t think anybody wants that.”
For a moment no one said anything, but then Rawlings nodded. “No, I don’t want that. There’s been enough killing.” He looked at Duggan and declared, “We’ll work it out. But I won’t shake your hand.”
“Don’t want you to,” Duggan growled. But he returned Rawlings’s nod.
Frank and Beaumont looked at each other, and weary smiles creased their gun-smoke-grimed faces.
On this violent Sunday, the fence-cutting war had finally come to a close.
38
Frank Morgan and Callie Stratton walked along the street in Brownwood, moving slowly because Callie’s injured leg was still sore and she had to use a cane. A week had passed since the battles at Brownwood and Zephyr, and things were pretty much back to normal. A lot had happened in that week: The charges against Chris Kane had been dismissed, Rawlings and his friends had been levied fines and suspended jail sentences for their part in the trouble, and a new town marshal had been appointed to replace Sean Keever, who had been found dead in his office along with one of the townsmen. Nobody was quite sure what had happened, but Frank was convinced that Skeet Harlan had murdered the two men. There had been a couple of loud, angry meetings in the town hall between the big ranchers and the owners of the smaller outfits, but no gunplay had been involved. They were making real progress, Frank thought.
He and Callie had attended services at the First Baptist Church this morning, and now they were on their way to the livery stable, where Frank would pick up Stormy and Dog. “Have you heard anything from Ranger Beaumont?” Callie asked as they walked along the street.
“He’s doing fine,” Frank replied. “He’s back in Weatherford with his wife. I reckon he’ll be a mite gimpy for a while, but he’s got a good woman to take care of him.” A mighty good woman, he added to himself. “He’ll be Rangering again before you know it.”
/> They passed the Palace Saloon. Rusty had taken it over. Nobody knew where McKelvey had come from or whether he had any heirs, so Rusty would run the place for the time being, and maybe permanently.
Annie wouldn’t be working there any longer, though. Chris Kane had taken her out to his ranch where she could recuperate from her wound with him looking after her. Frank had a feeling that was where she would stay from now on.
“What about you, Frank?” Callie asked. “What will you do now?”
“I’m not sure. Some folks call me the Drifter, you know, and there’s a reason for that. I guess I’m just too fiddle-footed to stay in one place for too long.”
“You could stay here,” Callie said softly. “You’ve made friends here, and . . . you’d be welcome.”
He paused and looked at her, reading the meaning of her words in her green eyes. And while the prospect was tempting, he knew he couldn’t do it.
She knew it, too. With a wistful sigh and a smile, she said, “Ah, well, it was worth a try.”
They walked on to the livery, where Stormy was saddled and waiting. Dog sat patiently beside the big Appaloosa. Callie petted the shaggy cur for a moment and then turned to Frank.
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will,” he promised. He took the hand that she held out to him, leaned forward, and brushed a kiss across her cheek.
Then, with a smile, he turned to the horse, put his foot in the stirrup, stepped up, and swung his leg over Stormy’s back. As he settled down in the saddle and lifted the reins, he said, “I’ll be back one of these days.”
“Don’t expect me to wait for you,” Callie told him crisply. “A no-account gunfighter like you . . . you may never get back.”
“Well,” Frank admitted, “maybe not.”
With that, he turned the Appaloosa and heeled the big horse into a trot. Dog fell in behind him. Hipping around in the saddle, Frank lifted a hand in farewell.
Callie leaned on her cane with one hand and returned the wave with the other. “Don’t expect me to wait for you, gunfighter,” she whispered.
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