the Trail to Seven Pines (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Hopalong 02

  Southward, Rocking R cattle ranged as far as Poker Gap and Cow Creek Canyon, and westward to the Black Sand Desert. Southeastward, as Frenchy Ruyters had told Hopalong, lay the outlaw village of Corn Patch. Sometimes it was deserted, sometimes crowded.

  "And now?" Hopalong asked.

  "Crowded," Frenchy replied grimly, "like coyotes flockin' to a fresh kill. Those Gores, they worry me more than the regular outlaws. The three of them are tough as mule hide and poison-mean. They take to trouble like a bear to a berry patch, and they are slippier than a mustang on a blue clay side hill!"

  "We'll see 'em," Hopalong said easily. "We'll talk to 'em."

  "Well, you won't have to wait," Frenchy replied dryly. "Here they come."

  Tex Milligan drifted his pony down off the hillside. "Here comes Windy Gore and some of his hands."

  The riders were four in number, and they came swiftly. Hopalong was riding Topper and he swung the white gelding to face them and walked him forward a full length toward the oncoming riders.

  "Howdy," he said quietly. "I take it you're Windy Gore?"

  The tallest of the men, a lean, sour-faced man with a lantern jaw stared at him.

  "You take it right. And you're on 3 G range."

  Hopalong smiled. "According to my information, this here's the Rocking R. All of it, clear to the Blues. Seems to me this outfit was here a long time before the 3 G outfit. How do you explain that?"

  "I don't!" Windy Gore laughed loudly. "Old Cattle Bob rode right over his neighbors while he was alive, but he ain't alive anymore. Now get off and stay off!"

  Hopalong sat his saddle. Coolly he let his gaze stray over the Gore riders, fixing first one and then another with his cold blue eyes.

  "Windy," he said quietly, "this is Rocking R range. It continues to be Rocking R range. There's plenty of land east of the Blues if you want to run some stock. I'd advise you to get hold of it before somebody else does. If you and your brothers want to live peacefully, we can get along. If you want war, there's no need to wait; you can start it right now."

  "Huh?" Windy Gore was startled. Hopalong had spoken so quietly that it was a few seconds before the import of his statement penetrated Windy's consciousness. When it did, rage flooded him, and yet along with the rage was a cold thread of reason.

  The odds were not good enough. Cassidy was supposed to be dangerous, and certainly there was no weakness to be expected from Frenchy or Tex. They might not be gun-slick, but they would stand hitched. Windy Gore was not so foolish as to buck a deck stacked the way this one was. Especially as he knew that he himself would be the first target of all three men. It was an uncomfortable thought.

  "You heard me." Hopalong pushed his horse forward until it stood shoulder to shoulder with Gore's. "I said it could be peace or war, any way you want it, and no need to wait. You boys have been makin' war talk. Now make up your minds.

  If you want it, you can have it."

  Behind and to the left of Windy a sullen-faced man sat his horse. Partly bald, he had a brutal jaw and small eyes above heavy cheekbones. "Let me have him, Windy," this man begged. "Just let me have-"

  The sentence was never completed, for Hopalong swung a wicked backhand blow against the man's chin that rocked him in the saddle. His right foot slipped from the stirrup, and swooping, Hopalong grabbed it and jerked high. Caught unexpectedly by the sudden action, the bald-headed man slipped from the saddle and hit the dust with a crash.

  Instantly Hopalong was off his horse, and before the man could even gain his feet, Hoppy grabbed his shirt front with his left hand and jerked him up into a wicked right. Then he dropped the fellow and stepped back.

  Stunned, the bald-headed man shook his head; then with awakening realization he came off the ground with a grunt. He came up fast, and Hopalong swung a sweeping left that split his cheek to the bone and then a right that thudded on his chin, and the man went down on his face in the dust.

  Stepping back, Hopalong saw that Milligan's rifle was over his saddle, covering the others. "There it is, Gore," Cassidy said, breathing easily. 'Tour man asked for it and he got it."

  "You'll not get away with this!" Windy was furious, but wary. The odds had changed still more now, for the man on the ground was not stirring. Even if he were on his feet he would be in no shape to hold up his end in a gun battle.

  "Tell your brothers there's plenty of range here for all of us.

  Just keep your cattle across the Blues and keep your hands off Rocking R cows. We don't want trouble, but we're ready for it."

  The beaten man was sitting up, shaking his head to clear it of fog. He looked up, his eyes ugly with hatred. "Next time," he snarled, "it will be guns!"

  "Why wait?" Hopalong faced him abruptly. "You've got a gun. If you want to die, reach for it."

  For a long moment the man stared, his fingers twitching with eagerness. Hopalong saw the desire to kill in his eyes, then saw it die slowly. "Not now," the man said.

  "Later."

  "All right, then," Cassidy said coolly. He raised his eyes to Windy's. "Any time I find any rider from the 3 G on this range, either armed or with a running iron 'or rope, he loses his horse and walks home!"

  "What?" Windy bellowed. "Why, you-"

  He gulped his words, seeing the ice in Cassidy's eyes. "Go ahead!" Hopalong invited.

  "Start somethin'. You can ride back over a saddle as easy as astride one!"

  When the four had ridden away, Tex Milligan chuckled. "Man! Did you see Windy's face?

  He was fit to be tied! That's the first time anybody faced up to a Gore, and believe me, it didn't set well!"

  Ruyters grinned, but his eyes were worried. "Served 'em right," he agreed, "but they'll come a-gunnin' now. They've got more hands than we have."

  They started their horses on and Hopalong let his eyes search the range. This was dry country. Even now, in the spring of the year when it was at its best, it offered little. Sagebrush mingled with bunch wheat grass and here and there solid patches of winter fat. Its whitish, almost light-gray color could be discerned at considerable distance, and it was one of the most valuable grazing plants of this sort of range. Yet some hillsides were already badly washed, and the country, despite the winter fat, would support but few cattle in relation to the vast area.

  The wheat grass and sagebrush offered good spring range, and cattle here might be fattened well before the heat of the summer and the scarcity of water hit them.

  Frenchy had been noticing Hopalong's study of the range. "She don't look much," he agreed, as if reading Cassidy's thoughts, "but that winter fat is good range, and there's lots of it. North of the home ranch there's a couple of valleys chock-full of it, and it stands grazing mighty well."

  Frenchy added, "Ronson has an idea that's a good one, I reckon. He figures that in late spring, when it begins to get hot and dry, he'll drive his cattle north across the desert and into the High Rock Canyon country. Lots of good grass and water up there. He's worked out a deal with a rancher up there by the name of Gibson."

  "I know him," Hopalong said. "Drove over the trail the same time that he did. Knew his son-in-law."

  They rode in silence for a while, and then Hopalong asked suddenly, "Any loose riders around that we could hire? Good hands who will fight?"

  Tex Milligan shrugged. "Maybe a couple. Shorty Montana's around town. He's a fightin' son of a gun when he gets unwound. Tough little squirt. He wouldn't work for Young Bob, though. Turned him down twice. Had some sort of a run-in with the old man."

  "Serious?"

  "Naw, just a couple of fire-eaters. Shorty would walk into any kind of trouble with guns a-smokin' if he figured he wanted to or if there was anybody in there he wanted.

  Him and Jesse Lock were pretty thick, but Shorty hits the bottle hard when he's off the job."

  "How about when he's workin?"

  "Never touches it. Kind of quarrelsome ranny. He likes trouble and hunts it, so he doesn't have so much as you'd figure. Never saw such an hombre for fi
ghtin'."

  "Win?"

  "Fifty-fifty. He don't seem to care much. He just likes it. One hombre licked him three times over at Unionville. Every Saturday night Shorty would go back and tackle him again. Hombre finally left the country to get away from him."

  Gently, Hopalong chuckled. It might pay to ride in and have a talk with Shorty Montana.

  "Where does he hang out?"

  "Katie Regan's, mostly. The Nevada Saloon other times."

  A thin trail of smoke invited their attention, and they drifted that way.

  Kid Newton looked up from his fire. His rifle lay close by and he was wearing a gun.

  He was a slim, awkward boy, but his grin was wide. "Howdy!" he said. "Light and sit!

  Got coffee on, and grub comin' up." He glanced at Hopalong. "I saw what happened down yonder. I was close by."

  Cassidy looked him over with new attention. "Close by? Where were you?"

  "Behind a rock about three hundred yards off. Had me a dead bead on Windy Gore."

  Frenchy Ruyters indicated the boy with his head. "The kid's good with a rifle, Hoppy.

  I've seen him drop an antelope at three hundred yards with the antelope runnin' full tilt. Shoots 'em right in the head."

  "Aw, that ain't anythin'!" Newton was embarrassed. "I've been shootin' all my life."

  Milligan poured coffee into a tin cup and handed it to Hopalong. "Go easy on that," he said. "We panned some of it out once and found after the water was poured off that she assayed forty percent coffee, forty percent alkali, ten percent assorted minerals, and ten percent gold.

  "Fellers," he said seriously, "always panned their coffee before they drunk it. Many a cowhand in this here country's made him a stake thataway."

  Frenchy snorted. "You pay too much attention to Tex," he said, "and his stories'll make your head hurt."

  Milligan snorted. "Me? Tell stories? Why, Hoppy," he exclaimed, "this hombre won't even believe what I tell him about that hundred-mile bob-wire fence on the XIT. I know it's there! I helped stretch her myself!

  "They unrolled three strands of wire for a hundred miles. Unbroken stretch of it.

  Then we hitched an ox team to each end of it, and stretched her tight. We worked by smoke signals, and we stretched that wire so tight that it wasn't until four years after that we had to put the posts up!

  "Fact is," he continued, "I don't think we needed 'em then, but the boss figured it would look better to have more than the two anchor posts at each end."

  "Drink your coffee," Ruyters said disgustedly, "and shut up!"

  Hopalong grinned and tried his own coffee. He wrinkled his nose at the flavor. Whether there was gold in it he did not know, but it tasted strongly of alkali. He grinned.

  If he had all the sand and dust that he had drunk in camp coffee stretched out in one layer, he would have had enough for a ranch of his own.

  Ruyters turned to Cassidy. "Hoppy," he said, "I've worked with this cap-rock turkey for a couple of years now. Can't you let me work with the kid or somebody else? Those stories of his would drive a man to drink."

  "Say," Newton said suddenly, glancing up from the fire, "I hear that feller Jacks has staked him a claim over on Ghost Mountain east of Corn Patch!"

  "Jacks?" Ruyters puckered his brow. "Didn't know he was a miner."

  "Ghost Mountain?" Hopalong asked, looking over at Kid Newton. "Why the ghost part?"

  "Supposed to be haunted. Used to be a minin' town over there by the name of Star City. She died out about 1868, but there were a couple of fellers who fell into a shaft up there on the mountain and starved to death before they were found. Folks say their ghosts have been seen. Me, I figure it's just a story some of that Corn Patch outfit put out."

  "I hear that's a tough place," Cassidy said.

  Frenchy Ruyters nodded agreement. "It is at any time. Poker Harris runs a sort of store, saloon, and gamblin' joint there. Hangout for outlaws. He's poison-mean himself and he carries a sawed-off shotgun most of the time. Plays a good hand of draw, they say.

  "Four, five outlaws hang out there all the time, but right now there's better than twenty. Tough galoots, too."

  "Lefty Hale's down there," Milligan offered. "From the Big Bend country."

  "I know him," Hoppy said. "He was one of that outfit from Talley Mountain."

  Tex Milligan's eyes brightened. "You know that country? I was born below Shafter, at a place called Burnt Camp."

  "I know the place," Hopalong said, smiling. "It's near Fresno Canyon."

  "That's right." Milligan grinned. "Well, what do you know?"

  Hopalong rinsed out his cup and got to his feet. "We'd better slope it. You patrollin' this line, Kid?"

  "Yeah." The boy's eyes went to the other hands, who were busy tightening girths and some distance away. "Hoppy," he said suddenly, "I maybe shouldn't tell this, but I figure I ought to. I thought about tellin' the boss, but I was afraid I'd start trouble. Miss Lenny has been meetin' an hombre in Majuba Canyon."

  "Well," Hopalong suggested, "I reckon that's her business. We only ride herd on the cows, Kid."

  "Yeah." The boy's face flushed. "But this here hombrewell, he's plumb bad, if you ask me. It's that gunman, Clarry Jacks!"

  Hopalong Cassidy remembered the handsome, dashing young man from Katie Regan's and understood how Kid Newton must feel. Clarry Jacks might be all right, but all of Hopalong's instincts warned him that he was not.

  "I-I heard some talk over to the ranch," Newton volunteered. "The boss don't want her seem' him atall. He said so, some time back. He ordered Jacks off the place.

  Jacks laughed at him, then went."

  Hopalong nodded. "All right, Kid. Keep it under your hat. I'll think it over." Yet as he rode away he remembered that it was none of his business, not any of his business at all. Newton, he imagined, was more than a little infatuated with Lenny Ronson, and it was easy to understand, as was Lenny's interest in Clarry Jacks.

  Frenchy and Tex were already in their saddles, and Hopalong swung up. They were two miles along the trail before he spoke. "What about Jacks? Know anything about him?"

  "He's bad," Ruyters said quietly. "He killed a man over to Unionville last year .

  . . deliberately picked the fight. He's killed three other men I know of and a couple I suspect. That partner of his, Dud Leeman, he's just about as mean himself."

  The roundup was still several days away, and there was much work to do before they could begin. It was work that had to be done, by all of them. There might be trouble at the roundup itself, but Hopalong looked for little until it was over. Besides, the losses to Rocking R cattle and the gain by other herds would show up strongly then and bring the whole affair into the open. It might well be that something would occur during the roundup that would start trouble and start it fast.

  It would be well to be ready for that, and it looked as if a ride to town and a talk to Shorty Montana were in order. From all he had heard, Montana was a fighter, and that was the sort of man they needed right now. Every fighting man they added to the Rocking R outfit meant that much less danger of trouble. Everybody on this range knew that Montana would take no water from anyone, and that in itself would help.

  Frenchy and Milligan were good men. How good the others were remained to be seen.

  Moreover, the battle had been opened by his facing of Windy Gore and his beating of Gore's rider. At least they now knew that the Rocking R was not a fat sheep in high oats, to be taken when they wanted it. This would not stop the hardiest ones but might cause the rustling to ease off until after the roundup, when it would be less easy than now.

  Where Clarry Jacks fitted into the picture, Cassidy could not guess, and he was not the man to interfere in something that was none of his business.

  His thoughts returned to the stage holdup, the murder of Jesse Lock, and the killing of Thacker.

  Thacker had been a dangerous gunman, he had learned. Where had the man been going?

  Who had killed him? A man fearless eno
ugh to give Thacker his chance with a gun would be a man among few, a man who could be found without too much trouble, for not many would have dared. It could only be a man supremely confident and supremely arrogant.

  And a man supremely cold-blooded, for it was probable the same man had murdered Jesse Lock.

  As they approached the ranch headquarters the others rode on ahead. Cassidy drew up on a rise and rolled a smoke, considering the whole situation. There were too many angles. The Gores and their 3 G outfit, the rustlers of Corn Patch, Clarry Jacks and whatever he was, and the holdup and killing of Jesse Lock.

  Did they tie up anywhere at all? That was a question, but it was doubtful. Many western towns had hangers-on like Jacks. Men who lived on little, put up a big front, and lazed around, playing poker and keeping out of work. Sometimes they were on the rustle.

  And Jacks was supposed to be a gunfighter. He was cold-blooded. Had it been Jacks who killed Thacker and Lock?

  "It must be serious to have you thinking so much."

  Hopalong turned to face a tall, stately-looking girl who was beautiful, with quiet dignity and charm.

  "It is, I reckon," Cassidy said frankly. "You must be Irene Ronson."

  "Yes. You were thinking about the ranch? I often come up here to look at it, and I know I'll miss it when I go."

  "You're leaving?"

  "Only for town. I'm to marry Dr. Marsh in Seven Pines."

  "He's a lucky man."

  "I sometimes feel like a traitor." She looked off at the surrounding hills. "With all this trouble I'm afraid of what may happen to the ranch."

  "We'll save it," Hopalong said quietly. 'Tour brother's a good man."

  Then he told her about the happenings of the afternoon, leaving out only what Kid Newton had told him about Lenny and Clarry Jacks. She listened attentively and nodded from time to time.

  "We've all known there would be< trouble with the Gores," she said. "Lenny wanted to send Clarry over there, and he volunteered to go. But Bob wouldn't stand for it.

  And he wouldn't hire Clarry."

  Hopalong secretly thought him wise but said nothing. Irene turned on him suddenly.

  "You've one enemy now," she said quietly. "I hate to say this, but you've an enemy in my sister. Lenny was furious at Bob for hiring you. She's a wonderful girl and I love her very much, but she's headstrong and she has always believed the man to run the ranch was Clarry Jacks."