by Short, Luke;
The stranger said, “Whisky. Pour one for yourself.”
“Thanks,” Hal said. He regarded the stranger briefly, cataloging him in the custom of his profession. He saw only a man of medium size and middle age, stocky, dressed in Levis and jumper. He had ruddy cheeks burned a deep red. Probably a top hand or foreman from one of the spreads over north in the Sevier here on business.
The stranger scrubbed his face with a thick and calloused hand and looked at the wreckage of the table while Hal poured two drinks. They nodded to each other and drank, and Hal poured out two more drinks.
“Ruckus, tonight?” the stranger asked idly.
Hal leaned against the back bar and nodded. “A good one, looks like. I didn’t see it.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Nine X foreman lost a tooth and got beat up.”
“Pres Milo?” The stranger’s eyebrows lifted. “That’d take a pretty good man.”
“He looked like one. Will Danning. New here.”
The stranger scowled. “Will Danning,” he murmured. “Seems like I’ve read that name in the newspapers.”
Hal nodded. “You have. You remember that shootin’ a couple months ago over in the capital? Newspaper editor name of Murray Broome gunned Senator Mason, and then jumped the country.”
“I remember.”
“This here Will Danning was at the inquest to testify, what I read. They was tryin’ to find out where Broome had gone to, and this Danning, he ups and tells them they’re persecutin’ a good man. There was a fight there at the inquest. Danning hit the sheriff after he’d called Broome a murderer and announced a reward on his head.”
“That’s it,” the stranger said. “I remember. And this was Will Danning that hit Milo?”
“Same fella. He’s a hardcase, all right.” He paused, and when the stranger seemed incurious, Hal went on. “He’s bought a place out here by the Sevier Brakes, the Pitchfork. That’s what the row was over.”
The stranger said, “How’s that?”
“It’s an old rustlers’ hangout. Case, he’s the Big Augur around here, figured Danning was goin’ to set himself up as a rustler. He didn’t know whether to leave him take the place or not.”
The stranger asked idly, “What did he decide?”
Hal laughed noiselessly. “I reckon Danning will stay there. He beat up Case’s foreman, but him and Case went out of here friends. I seen it myself.”
The stranger said nothing. He finished his drink, bade Hal good night, and went out. Afterward Hal reflected that the stranger seemed to wait just long enough to learn that Will Danning was going to be allowed to keep his new place, and then he went out. Hal didn’t think anything more about it.
Chapter Two
A BLUFF THAT FAILED
Next morning Will was up early, breakfasted, and was riding out of Yellow Jacket on a livery-stable horse before the breakfast fires were lifting their smoke above the town.
The country he slowly rode through during those early hours jogged something in his memory. He had forgotten what good graze it was, thick, sun-cured grama grass with the new green thrusting up to crowd out the old. It was a rolling country, well watered, the hills sloping down to copses of cottonwood and willows in the valleys, and piñon and cedar capping the crests. It was better than the country he was used to farther south, and a piece of it could have been his if he hadn’t chosen Harkins’s Pitchfork instead.
In midmorning, he judged he was onto Nine X range. Scattered groups of whiteface cattle watched him pass, and long-legged calves hightailed it away from the rutted wagon road.
He topped a rise sometime in early morning and saw ahead of him, where the road forded a stream, a buckboard and team. Only—one horse of the team was grazing off the road; the other, still hitched to the buckboard, was haltered to a tree.
As Will rode up to it, a girl came off the grass from under some willows and regarded him quizzically. Will touched his Stetson and looked at her in silence. She was a tall slim girl, leggy in tight Levis and blue shirt. Her wide friendly mouth was faintly smiling, and when she spoke her voice was low, a little mocking.
“It was too dark to see in that lobby last night, but you must be Will Danning.”
Will grinned.
“Your hair looks familiar. That’s all I saw.”
She appraised him silently for a moment as he swung down, and then said, “I’ve lamed one of my horses, and that other one is too salty for me to tackle bareback.” She laughed a little. “I thought I wanted to get home in a hurry, but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Will said, “If you’re in a hurry, we could swap.”
Becky Case flushed a little. “No, I’m not really in a hurry. I—just don’t like town.” She looked almost shyly at Will and continued. “I woke up before daylight and decided to hit out for home. I’ve been in town two days, and that’s too long for me.”
Will said mockingly, “I thought all women wanted to stay in town.”
“Here’s one that doesn’t,” Becky said, and she laughed.
Will considered her a long moment, wondering if her father had told her of last night’s quarrel. If he had, she didn’t seem concerned about it. And this was his chance to prove to Angus Case that he would be a good neighbor.
He said, “If you really aren’t in a hurry, Miss Case—”
“Becky, please. We’re neighbors, aren’t we?”
Will nodded and went on. “If you aren’t in a hurry, I’ll hitch up my horse, and we’ll drive on to my place. There used to be a short cut through the brakes that came out close to the Nine X.”
“You’re anxious to see your place, aren’t you?” Becky asked.
Will nodded.
“I’m in no hurry,” she went on. “I’d like to see the old place myself.”
Will offsaddled and hitched his livery horse to the buckboard. The lame horse was turned loose; Becky climbed up on the buckboard seat beside Will, and they were off.
The girl was silent a long while, and Will was aware that she was covertly studying him. When he had given her a good look at him, he said, “I reckon you heard about the ruckus I had with your foreman last night, Miss Becky.”
“I’m glad you had it,” Becky Case said quietly. Will looked at her in surprise, and she laughed shortly. “What’s the use of pretending? I don’t like Pres Milo and I never did.” She hesitated and then said in a low voice, “Sometimes I think he knows something about Dad that makes Dad afraid to fire him. He obeys orders when he wants to, and when he doesn’t, Dad won’t do anything.”
Will remembered Angus Case trying to stop the fight last night. Certainly Pres Milo had disregarded orders then. Will said, “Do you really reckon he has somethin’ on your dad?”
“Dad wouldn’t have let him try to kill you last night if he didn’t, would he?”
Will saw the truth in that, yet something else was puzzling him.
“Why do you reckon Pres got so redheaded about my buyin’ the Pitchfork if he don’t pay any attention to your father, Miss Becky? If your dad won’t fire him, then why should he care if Nine X beef is stole or not?”
Becky looked thoughtfully at him, as if she wasn’t sure if she should talk further. “That’s easy to see. Pres wants the Pitchfork. He always has.”
Will looked puzzled.
“He’s tried to buy it?” he asked.
“Many a time. You know Harkins only leased it, and it went back to some land company when he was killed. For the last six years Pres has been trying to get money enough to buy it. Several times he’s almost had enough, and then he gambles to make up the rest and he loses his whole stake.”
“What does he want it for?”
“I don’t know. He’s tried to get Dad to loan him the money, and Dad won’t do it. He’s afraid Pres will start rustling Nine X beef if he does.”
“Then whatever Pres has got on your dad, it can’t be very bad, or else your dad would loan him the money.”
“That’s the
only thing that comforts me,” Becky said in a low voice. “Still, it’s all queer.” She looked curiously at Will. “Did you know that some men lived on the Pitchfork for a while three years ago?”
“Rustlers?”
“I don’t think so. At least we didn’t miss any beef. But Pres was friendly with two of them. He saw them all the time and talked with them. But he hated the third man. He beat him up so badly the man almost died. Dad’s friendship with Sheriff Phipps was the only thing that saved Pres. Then the three of them went away.”
Will scowled.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I wish I knew,” Becky said. “I’m only telling you. And warning you, too. Because Dad can’t stop Pres. And Pres hates you.”
“Thanks,” Will said.
The conversation was switched to other things, and Will listened carefully for further light on what had been said. But Becky Case wouldn’t talk about it any more. It was as if she had only wanted to tell him everything she knew, so he might be warned.
It was almost noon when the shape of the country began to change. Clay dunes and long ugly limestone outcrops began to appear along the road, and the trees were stunted and discouraged-looking. This was the first hint of the Sevier Brakes, that wide, bleak wasteland of myriad canyons, of fantastic wind erosions, of sparse grass, and of mysterious trails that few men knew. It was hot here, shut off from the breezes of the bench, and the faint wagon road twisted and turned into rougher country. Will recalled Chap’s description of it last night. “It’s worn out, dead, evil,” and thought how right he was.
And then, almost at high noon, the team climbed a steep grade that put them on a short and bare mesa, and from its farther edge they could see Will’s place, the Pitchfork brand.
It lay on the bare floor of a bleak valley backed up against a red-clay ridge, a black cut of a canyon to the west. The house itself was stone, with slab wings and a slab roof that had taken on the color of the red clay of the canyon floor. It was ugly, with no vegetation except an occasional mesquite bush around it. It lay there raw and naked under the high sun—the house, a root cellar dug into the slope of the ridge, a wagon shed, a windmill, and the rickety barns and corrals bleached a bone-white and tinted also with the dust of the red clay.
Becky Case studied it in silence and looked obliquely at Will.
“I can’t see what Pres would want with that. I can’t see what you’d want with it, either.”
Will only shrugged, keeping his attention on the narrow and worn wagon road that snaked down to the valley floor. They crossed a dry wash that came out of the dark canyon; they pulled up beside the corral in the shade of the barn.
Three punchers and one fat little Mexican came out of the house. Will advanced to meet them, Becky following a little way behind, and sight of the man approaching first brought a wide and friendly smile to Will’s face.
“Howdy, Milt,” Will said, and gripped the man’s hand.
Milt was a little shorter than Will, lean, and his flashing smile was affectionate. His blue eyes were bold, almost arrogant. His lean face was burned a deep brown and he was clean-shaven. He wore his worn Levis and faded checked shirt with a certain elegance, and he gripped Will’s hand with both hands. Then his eyes shifted to Becky, appraised her briefly, and then he said, “Will, you didn’t tell me you were bringing a bride with you.”
Becky Case flushed, and Will, too, was embarrassed. “Becky, this is Milt Barron, my foreman. This is Miss Case, our neighbor and not my wife.”
Becky shook hands with Milt, and Will turned to greet the other three men. Pinky Sharp, little and bowlegged and ugly, got his name from his bright-red hair. Ollie Gargan was a sour-faced, rawhide-lean man with a ruff of stiff gray hair. The third man, in a singlet, was Pablo, a grinning Mexican, fat and merry-looking and dark as an Indian. Becky met them all, and then Will led the way to the house. Milt was beside Becky. The others drifted off toward the corrals.
The main room of the house in the stone part of it looked as if it had never known a woman’s touch. There were no rugs, no curtains, and solid, heavy tables and stump chairs. Bridles, guns, odd pieces of leather, and old magazines littered the big room, and in one corner four saddles were stacked.
Milt cleared a chair for Becky, and then Will looked around. One wing of the house was the mess shack and cookshack. The other wing was the bunkhouse. Will looked through the dark and ugly rooms, remembering it all from ten years back. Only then it had been new and exciting—his first job. He’d been fifteen then, and old man Harkins had been a good boss. Now—well, it was different.
He turned back down the passage between the big room and bunkhouse wing, and paused in the doorway, looking at Milt and Becky. They were laughing over something, and Will frowned a little. Milt’s dark hair was too neat, his smile too quick, and his speech too facile. Will knew a little fear then, but quickly dismissed it as he tramped into the room.
At that moment Pablo appeared in the doorway.
“Somebody, she’s come, Will.”
Will looked out the door. There, cutting across the wash were four riders. Milt rose and came over beside him, his dark inquiring eyes on Will.
“Go see, Milt,” Will said quietly.
He had already recognized the man in the lead as Pres Milo. His squat and burly body, erect in the saddle, looked as if it were carved out of stone.
Becky, from beside him, suddenly whispered, “That’s Pres, Will.”
Will put out his hand. “Stay here, Becky. I want to see what he does.”
Two riders dropped off by the barn, on the sunny side of it, so the buckboard and team were hidden from them. Pres and the other rider came toward the porch.
Milt paused just beyond the porch and said civilly, “Howdy.”
Pres reined up and looked around him, his hard blue eyes calculating and cold. Then his gaze rested on Milt, and he folded his thick arms and leaned on the saddle horn. Cuffing his Stetson back off his forehead, he said, “Got anything in that house you want?”
Milt regarded him carefully. The two riders he had dropped at the barn were talking with Pinky and Ollie Gargan.
Milt said cautiously, “A lot of things. Why?”
Pres turned his beet-red face aside and spat, then turned clear around and called, “All right, boys.”
Milt saw the two men by the barn whip up six-guns and cover Ollie and Pinky. At the same time he heard footsteps behind him and looked. Around the side of the house two more riders, guns in hand, appeared. Pablo came to the cookshack door then. One of the riders hauled Pablo out into the open and rammed a gun in his back.
“Because,” Pres Milo said curtly, “I’m goin’ to fire the place. Make a nice present for your boss when he comes.”
Milt had no gun. He looked quietly at Pres, and then said, “There’s nothin’ much I can do, is there? I’d like a saddle out of that big room.”
“I’ll watch you get it,” Pres said. He swung down from his horse.
Will drew Becky into the corridor then, picked up a rifle that leaned against the table, and faded against the front wall of the room. He looked at Becky and raised a finger to his lips. She nodded and disappeared.
Milt walked in the door and, without looking around him, tramped toward the far corner where the saddles were stacked. Pres Milo followed him in, six-gun hanging at his side.
Inside the room, Pres looked around him. His eyes traveled the side wall, and then something attracted his attention to the front wall.
Will stood there, his rifle pointing at Pres’s belly.
For three long seconds, nobody spoke. Pres, swollen lips parted a little in surprise, stared. There was a welt on his right cheek that remained from last night, and it gave his face a lopsided look.
Will said quietly, “Drop that iron, and drop it now!”
The gun clattered to the floor. Pres licked his lips, and a kind of cold fear crept into his pale eyes. Milt was grinning behind him.
Will s
aid, “Step up to the door and call your crew of gunnies to the porch.”
Pres, eyeing Will’s rifle, moved toward the door. Will stayed away from it. Pres stopped in the door and called out, “Bring ’em up here!”
Will waited two long minutes until he heard the sound of scuffling boots. He came up behind Pres, looked over his shoulder, saw the others assembled outside. Then he placed his foot in the middle of Pres’s back and shoved.
Pres flew out the door, off balance, tripped, and sprawled on his face in the dirt beyond the porch.
At the same time Will, rifle to shoulder, appeared in the door and said, “I’ve got nine shots in here. Anybody want to take a chance?”
At that moment Milt stepped out of the kitchen door behind them, six-gun in hand, and drawled, “Go ahead and try it!”
The Nine X crew was caught. They dropped their guns, and at that moment Becky brushed past Will. Pres had struggled to his feet, and now he saw Becky. Some of the color flushed out of his face as he saw her.
Becky looked at him, her lip curled in contempt, and then she shifted her gaze to the rest of the crew.
“Tip, maybe you can tell me what this means. Or you, Wallie. Or you, Fred!”
“It was orders,” one of the punchers growled.
Becky turned on Pres, her eyes blazing with wrath. “From you, I suppose, Pres?”
Pres sneered at her. “That’s right. You think I’m goin’ to let that coyote get away with clubbin’ me with a chair when my back was turned like he did last night?” He looked balefully at Will and then back at Becky.
Will saw that Becky was so furious she couldn’t speak. He drawled mildly, “That means you think you could take me in a fair fight, don’t it, Pres?”
“Any time,” Pres sneered. “After I burned your place, I was goin’ to wait for you and prove it.”
Will stepped past Becky and nodded to Pinky and held out his rifle to him. “You keep the customers in hand, Pinky.” Then he peeled off his coat, dropped it on the porch, and laid his hat carefully alongside.
“I never disappoint anybody,” Will drawled gently as he stepped off the porch. “Least of all would I disappoint you, Pres.”
