Raw Land

by Short, Luke;

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Mary Norman said stubbornly.

  “What was it?”

  “Do you know where Murray is?”

  Will looked at her levelly, and the lie came easy. “No, I don’t.”

  The girl didn’t believe him; he could see it in her eyes. “Please,” she said. “I won’t tell. Do you think I’d sell out the man I’m going to marry? Do you think I ever believed anything they wrote about him?”

  Will drawled, “You’ve got a bum steer somewhere, miss. Why do you think I know where he is?”

  “Call it a hunch,” the girl said swiftly. “I know you do. You must.”

  Will shook his head. “I wish I could help you. I can’t.”

  “You won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t,” Will repeated.

  There was a long silence. During it, Will heard a muffled movement in the next room. It sounded as if somebody had scuffed a chair in passing. Only a deep silence would have allowed him to hear it. The girl heard it, too, for she said swiftly, “Please, please tell me!”

  And then she made the fatal mistake of looking toward the connecting door.

  Will knew instantly there was someone in the next room, someone listening to this conversation.

  He wheeled and lunged for the door, brushing his chair out of the way. The door opened easily, and he had only the briefest glimpse of a room like the one he had left before something crashed down on his head, and a curtain of blackness wrapped him in oblivion.

  Mary Norman ran to the door and stood looking down at Will’s broad back as he lay on the floor. Then she raised her eyes to regard the stocky, ruddy-cheeked man against the wall who was just holstering his gun.

  “I had to do it. He knows me,” the man said quietly, defensively.

  “Well, are you satisfied now?” Mary Norman asked angrily.

  “No. Not at all.”

  “He said he didn’t know where he was!” Mary Norman said hotly.

  “Why would he tell you?” the man asked. “He doesn’t know you. But you stick around here for a while and give him a chance to see you. If Murray Broome’s around, he’ll find out you’re here. You stick.”

  Mary Norman looked at the man and said passionately, “It’s wrong! It’s a sneaking, cruel thing to do, and you know it!”

  The ruddy-cheeked man grunted. “Well, you can always go to jail, sister, if you don’t like it.”

  “I don’t hate it that much,” Mary Norman said bleakly. “What’s my next move?”

  “I’ll hide in your closet. Get some water and douse his face with it. He’ll be proddy when he comes to. Tell him you don’t know anything about who was in this room. He won’t believe you, but tell him. Or,” he suggested dryly, “you can cry. But he looks too tough to fall for that.”

  Mary Norman said in a low, passionate voice, “I hope you choke, Charlie Sommers! I hope you die in your sleep tonight!”

  Charlie Sommers’s plain face broke into a smile. “I won’t,” he drawled. “When you get to hatin’ yourself too much for tryin’ to trap your old sweetheart, just think how jail looks from inside—for a long time.”

  He went back into Mary’s room, took a hand towel, soaked it in water from the pitcher, and gave it to her. Afterward, saying nothing more, he went back and opened the door to her closet and went inside.

  Mary Norman knelt and laid the towel on Will’s forehead. She worked over him a full minute before he stirred, opened his eyes, looked about him, and then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

  “Are—are you all right?” Mary asked. “What happened?”

  Will shook his head, and then his sultry gray glance settled on her. “Don’t bother,” he murmured.

  “But what happened? I only saw—”

  “Don’t bother, I said,” Will said curtly. “It was a cheap frame-up by a pair of cheap bounty-hunters. But it didn’t work, did it?”

  Mary Norman started to cry then. Will picked up his Stetson and left.

  During his first look at the town Milt Barron made the pleasant discovery that nobody paid any attention to him. Among the scattering of punchers on the street and in the stores, he was inconspicuous. The only hostile glance he received was from a man he thought was one of the Nine X crew. Milt looked at him blankly and didn’t speak.

  After he met Will at the horses and talked with him, he headed idly for the big saloon across the street. Will’s words were still in his mind, and he felt the anger that comes with helplessness. For it wasn’t pleasant to see a friend break himself buying a squalid stone shack and a handful of stony acres so that he could hide a friend there. Milt felt a hot loyalty to Will. Some day, of course, he could and would repay Will tenfold for this help, but that didn’t comfort him now. He looked at the movement on the street with a kind of childlike hunger, thinking of the loneliness of the spread. He reflected, with a touch of irony, that Will had bought a place to hide him that was so much like prison that there was hardly any difference. An angry restlessness was on him as he shouldered through Hal Mohr’s swing doors and tramped up to the bar and ordered a drink.

  He gulped it down and poured another, feeling it warm his belly. He leaned both elbows on the bar and hunched his shoulders and stared in the bar mirror, seeing the image of a man he scarcely recognized. This was what hunger did to a man, he thought. Nature intended him to be a thick-bodied, burly man; and he had starved himself into this slim, work-worn-looking puncher in the mirror. His stomach protested at the liquor, and with a sudden recklessness he wondered how much it would protest at several more drinks. He took the bottle and his glass and tramped over to one of the tables where a dirty pack of cards was scattered. There was a desultory game of poker going on at one of the back tables.

  He had another drink, shuffled the thick cards, and laid out a game of solitaire.

  He was barely into it when he was aware of the bartender calling sharply to someone. He looked up, and standing in front of his table was a small Mexican boy.

  “Get out of here, kid,” the fat bartender called.

  The boy extended a soiled envelope to Milt, and Milt took it. On it, written in pencil, was the name: Milt Barron. Milt gave the boy a coin, and he ran out of the saloon.

  Milt looked at the envelope. The drinks he had taken were working now, and he regarded the envelope with dispassionate curiosity. Only a handful of people here knew his name, and of them he couldn’t think of one who didn’t dislike him. Oh, yes, there was Becky Case. He looked at the writing, and it didn’t seem like a woman’s hand, but you never could tell. He propped the letter against the bottle and went on playing solitaire. He wanted to open it and read it, but his amusements were small enough these days. To prolong his curiosity was a form of enjoyment.

  He played out his game of solitaire, poured himself another drink, and then reached for the letter. He opened it without haste, unfolded it, and read:

  There’s a drift fence a half mile up the wash from your place. You come there alone tonight, Murray Broome, or I may decide to collect your reward. Remember, I said alone. If you tell Danning about this I’ll turn you up tomorrow morning. If you don’t come I will too.

  A sudden paralyzing nausea gripped Milt’s belly, and when it passed he was dead sober. He folded the note, took a deep breath, and came to his feet, fighting down the urge to run. He went over to the bar, paid for the drinks, and looked at the door. Walking through that door was the hardest thing he would ever have to do. He got a grip on himself then, reasoning that whoever sent the note wouldn’t be waiting out there, and wouldn’t have the law there. Whoever sent it wanted to talk to him first—for blackmail, probably.

  He went out, and paused on the boardwalk in front of the saloon and looked up and down the street. Nobody was watching him, yet panic clawed inside him.

  He made himself swing slowly under the tie rail and head for the horses. At that moment Will stepped out of the hotel and headed for the tie rail, too.

  They met at the t
ie rail, and Will looked at him keenly. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “You look sick.”

  Milt remembered the note said not to tell Will. He said in an unsteady voice, “I drank too much booze, Will. Lay off, will you, and let’s get out of here.”

  He looked at Will and laughed shortly. “You don’t look so good yourself.”

  “I’m all right,” Will said. He wasn’t going to tell Murray what happened in the hotel. If Mary Norman really was one of Milt’s old sweethearts, he didn’t want Milt to know she was in town. And he wanted to get Milt out of here right now.

  “Let’s ride,” he agreed.

  Chapter Five

  DOUBLE CROSS FOR A PAL

  Supper that night was a dismal affair. Will was moody and silent, and Milt, for the first time in two months, left part of his food. Afterward, the crew drifted out, and Will and Milt went into the big room and lighted smokes. Will hauled up a stool by the big table and brought out his new tally book, while Milt watched from the door. There was something prophetic about Will’s act; it told Milt that Will had decided irrevocably to buy this place and live here. Milt wanted to stride over, yank the book away from Will, and tell him why they couldn’t stay, why they had to run. But time was slipping, and if he did that it meant that tonight he would have to run. To where? How could he hide? He remembered the long misery of riding the grub line, of hunger, of blistered hands, of long, lonely nights, of fear during the two months he had waited for Will to get this place. No, the place was bad enough, but it was better than being on the dodge.

  Milt paced the floor in slow restlessness and finally stopped beside Will.

  “I’m goin’ out for air, Will. I shouldn’t have drunk that stuff today.”

  “Walk it off,” Will murmured, not even glancing up from his tally book.

  Milt went into the bunkhouse, which was empty now, took down his gun, rammed it in his waistband, and stepped out into the night.

  He went down to the arroyo, cut up the canyon, and was soon lost in its gloom. Who had written the note he’d got today? Nobody knew him here, and he knew with utter certainty that any of his old friends couldn’t recognize him. Had Will let it slip to someone? He rejected that, knowing wild horses couldn’t drag his identity from Will.

  Whoever it was, though, man or woman, would have to be killed. Milt faced that fact calmly. It didn’t occur to him that whoever was waiting for him at the drift fence might have this same thought and might be prepared for him. In his mind, Milt knew that if he was to live, this person must die.

  He came to the drift fence sooner than he expected. A dark tangle of brush on the other side of the fence sagged it, and he stopped and examined it in the deep gloom of the canyon. The walls sloped away here, so that the sides were not steep.

  Nothing moved, and he could hear nothing. He rolled a smoke and lighted it. As the match flare died, a voice said from somewhere above him, “Throw that gun up here.”

  Milt started a little at the sound of the voice and peered through the darkness. “It’s Pres Milo, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Throw that gun up here.”

  “I haven’t got one.”

  “Throw it up here,” Pres requested, “or I’ll ride off and head for town.”

  For a moment, Milt didn’t move. Milo hadn’t seen the gun, he was sure. He simply knew he’d brought one. Why hadn’t he brought two, so that he could have thrown one gun away and then, when Milo came down, used the other?

  “Well?”

  Silently, Milt took the gun out of his waistband and tossed it in the direction from which Milo’s voice came. Milt heard a sound of cascading gravel, and then the dark bulk of Pres Milo stopped, some feet away from him.

  “Stay right there,” Milo said. “I can see pretty good, and I’ve got a gun in my hand.”

  Milt was silent a moment, gauging his chances. They weren’t good. Pres might miss the first shot, he wouldn’t the second or third.

  Pres murmured, “Don’t look so good, does it?”

  “No.”

  “Sit down in the sand. You and me are goin’ to parley.”

  Milt sat down. Pres, ten feet away, hunkered down on his heels, and the two of them peered through the darkness at each other.

  “So I was right,” Pres murmured.

  “I’m here,” Milt said dryly. “How did you find out my name?”

  “I searched your shack yesterday. I found that pitcher of your mother and father.”

  “I thought I could hide that,” Milt reflected. “How’d you get it open? I thought it was jammed shut.”

  “Dropped it and it come open,” Pres said.

  “Then let’s get down to business,” Milt said meagerly. “I suppose you’re here to blackmail me. You’re out of luck, my friend. I’m broke.”

  Pres Milo laughed shortly. “I don’t give a damn about that. I don’t give a damn about the five thousand on your head.”

  “A public servant,” Milt sneered. “You just want to turn me up because you’re a law-abiding citizen.”

  “Did I say I’d turn you up?” Pres murmured.

  “Then get to it, man!” Milt said harshly.

  “I need you,” Pres said frankly, “to make some money.”

  Milt said nothing.

  Pres shifted his position and said in a low voice, “Tell me some things first I need to know. You ain’t got any money?”

  “No. I was sued for libel, and the judgment went against me. It cleaned me out. You know that.”

  “Will Danning bought this place with his money?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He bought it so’s he could hide you, didn’t he?”

  “Why else would he? It’s no good for cattle.”

  There was a long pause, and Pres asked, “But has he bought it? The deed ain’t recorded.”

  “As good as bought it,” Milt said idly. “Chap Hale bought it for him. The title hasn’t been transferred yet.”

  “Ah, hah!” Pres exclaimed delightedly, softly. “So it ain’t his yet?”

  “What are you gettin’ at?” Milt said sharply.

  Pres ignored him. “Do you think you could talk him into selling it?”

  “No.”

  “Not even,” Pres suggested slyly, “if I was to turn you up if you couldn’t make him sell in a week?”

  Milt remembered that Pres had already said he needed him. He realized suddenly that Pres Milo was a dull-witted man, that he had already tipped his hand. Milt seized on this shrewdly and he said immediately, “No.”

  “Why not?” Pres asked, surprised.

  “Maybe I don’t want to,” Milt drawled. Pres was too surprised to answer, and Milt went on. “You want this place. I want to know why.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to,” Pres said in a hard voice.

  Milt came slowly to his feet. “Okay, you can go to hell.”

  Pres stood up, too. “Feelin’ salty, eh? Maybe I’ll just ride into town and see Phipps tonight and take you with me.”

  Milt laughed. It was a brash, arrogant laugh that Pres had never heard before, and didn’t like. “You will like hell,” Milt drawled. “I won’t do you any good in jail. And I can do you some good outside of jail. You just said so.”

  Pres’s slow understanding took that in, and he realized bitterly that he had tipped his hand too soon. He needed Barron’s help, and Barron knew it. For a bleak three seconds, Pres contemplated shooting him, but plain, hard-headed sense cautioned him against it. Once already this lean-faced young man had led him into trouble with Will Danning. He should have been warned.

  He considered Milt’s spare dark figure standing there, hands on hips, and he felt a grudging admiration for him. It occurred to him with slow conviction that if this Milt Barron was that quick in his thinking, it would be better to have him on his side, instead of fighting him. Afterward, when it was done, he could turn him up and have him safely in prison. All this ribboned through Pres’s mind, and then he lowered his g
un.

  “I’ll make a bargain with you,” he said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “You help me get Danning’s place, and I’ll forget what I know about you.”

  “The trouble with saddle tramps like you,” Milt drawled, “is that you never forget. I still want to know why you want Danning’s place.”

  Pres laughed. “I’ll tell you. And you’ll help me to get it. And like you said, I won’t forget. I don’t see no reason why you shouldn’t know.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Milt jeered.

  “Sit down. This’ll take some time.”

  Milt sat in the still-warm sand again, and again Pres hunkered down.

  “This here Pitchfork spread, including a big chunk of the Sevier Brakes, used to be owned by the Gold Seal Land and Development Company. It was bought from the railroad. This here was an eastern company, and they had a crooked manager. He bought the land from the railroad for fifteen cents an acre, told the company he bought it for a dollar an acre, and then kept the difference and jumped the country. Soon’s the company found out nobody’d buy the land, they sent a man out here and he seen it was just a gravel pile. They was stuck for a big piece of money. Harkins is the only man that ever leased an acre of it. Well, I know these brakes pretty good—”

  “You’ve probably run enough stolen cattle through them, haven’t you?” Milt said dryly.

  “That’s right,” Pres said, unperturbed. “I know ’em pretty good, every trail, every canyon, every water hole. About six years back I come across somethin’ in one of those deep cuts over toward Sevier Creek. That ground was green, kind of like.”

  Milt said sharply, “What does that mean?”

  “This one meant a copper deposit,” Pres said quietly. “I got a prospector in here from Butte to make sure. He disappeared.”

  He paused, and Milt shivered a little in the night. He knew what Pres meant, but he said nothing.

  When Milt didn’t comment, Pres went on. “As soon as I was sure, I tried to get the money to buy that piece. But the company wouldn’t sell an acre unless I bought enough to cost ten thousand dollars. I tried to talk ’em out of it. That got them wonderin’. They hired a mining engineer and sent him to Yellow Jacket. He was lookin’ for somebody to guide him around in them brakes. I sent a couple of men to him, and they guided him. But they steered clear of that canyon. The day this engineer was goin’ to look over that canyon, I caught him the night before and beat him up.”