by Paul Lederer
‘They tell me you met your husband back East.’
‘Yes. Aaron was on a cattle-buying trip,’ Cassie replied, brightening with the diversion. ‘In Kansas City. Everyone was still running mostly longhorn cattle out here – dreadful, cantankerous beasts! – and he had gone East to purchase shorthorns. Now, as you’ve seen, we run mostly Herefords on Rafter B. All the ranchers do. Aaron is responsible for that; he brought them into Nevada in the first place.’
‘And brought you,’ Dancer said, unable to disguise the hint of fondness in his voice. She seemed to feel his thoughts on some level, for she smiled.
‘Yes, well … here I am.’
‘What did you do before? Before you met Aaron?’
She laughed. ‘Well, I had the idea that I was an actress.’ Cassie shook her head. ‘I suppose I wasn’t any good. I don’t know. Kansas City is not exactly New York, anyway. I was in the wrong place, acting the wrong roles … I don’t know, John, that’s a difficult business.’
Dancer nodded. He knew little about it, but it was his understanding that acting could chew up a man or a young woman searching for success.
‘So,’ Cassie said with a touch of weariness, ‘here I am.’
‘And here we are,’ Dancer said, reining in the red roan.
Below them they could see the two-story white house with a quartet of white columns and its green shutters, surrounded by a flourishing stand of cottonwood trees. Pinetree’s home ranch house. It was quiet down in the glade; of course the Pinetree hands would also be out on their gather, trying to beat Rafter B and its partners to Carson City. The first herd to arrive would, of course, draw the highest prices.
Quizzically Jason Burr approached the surrey on his easy-gaited palomino and waited, hands crossed on his saddle horn, for instructions.
‘What do we do now, Cassie?’ Dancer asked.
‘We’ve come too far to turn back now, haven’t we?’ she replied in a quiet voice. ‘Let’s meet the enemy face to face.’
SEVEN
They hadn’t gotten far before the illusion of a deserted home ranch was broken. Emerging from the cottonwood grove were two men armed with Winchesters. Their faces were grim, their eyes malignant as they read the Rafter B brand on the red roan and recognized Cassie for who she was. Dancer’s muscles tightened reflexively, but there was no point in drawing a gun; he only hoped that Jason Burr recognized their situation as well.
‘What d’you want here, Mrs Blythe?’ the bulkier of the two armed men asked. He was pockmarked, slope-shouldered and wary.
‘To speak with Mr LaFrance or Luke Garner – whoever is here at the moment,’ Cassie said with dignity.
‘They’re both here,’ the big man told her. ‘Whether they’d consider talking to you or not is another matter.’
‘I suggest you find out,’ Cassie answered with a regal touch. Dancer, sitting next to her, could feel her trembling slightly, but she was managing herself well.
The pockmarked man sent his thinner companion off at a run to the house while he continued to glare at the two armed men Cassandra had brought with her. ‘You boys might as well shed those guns right now,’ he suggested. ‘We’ll take them from you before you enter that house, anyway.’
A third man had appeared from the shadows. He now leaned idly against a tree, his hat tugged low, a pistol on either hip. Dancer glanced at Cassie, whose chin dipped slightly in response to his unspoken question. There was really no choice about it anyway, so Dancer unbelted his Colt, rolled the belt around his holster and placed it aside on the black leather seat of the surrey. Burr, smiling with some inner amusement, eased his bay next to the carriage, showed the Pinetree man his unbuckled pistol and tossed it into the surrey, handing his rifle over to Dancer who stored it on the floor.
‘You can all step down now,’ the burly man said, and they did so. They stood together in a row for a long minute, waiting for the messenger to return. No one spoke. The big man kept his steady gaze fixed on them. Dancer and Burr flanked Cassie who was wearing a white dress and white hat with a pheasant feather waving from its band on this morning.
When the runner from the house returned he nodded and reported: ‘The boss’ll see them.’
Without ceremony they were marched toward the front of the big white house, three armed men traipsing behind. Dancer occupied his time studying the lay-out of the ranch and yard for future reference. Burr whistled between his teeth, irrepressible in his good humor. Cassie appeared more impatient to get on with matters than frightened.
The front door to the big house opened on oiled hinges and a house man, an older, slightly timid gentleman in a frayed-at-the-cuffs suit admitted them. Maybe this employee was another example of the Pinetree trying to maintain some façade of gentility, like the unlikely Luke Garner wearing a town suit and a shirt which chafed his fat neck.
‘This way,’ the white-haired man said, gesturing, and the three were led across a broad, sparsely furnished living room to Pinetree’s inner sanctum. Dancer’s eyes remained active, drawing a mental blueprint of the house. You never knew when you might have to return to the enemy camp.
The house man indicated an open white-painted door and slipped away up the corridor with evident relief. Inside the high-ceilinged room they found Victor LaFrance seated behind a mahogany desk with intricate scrollwork, a few papers spread out on the desk top. He was in shirtsleeves now but still wore the flowered-silk vest he had worn in the saloon upon first meeting Dancer. LaFrance did not rise, manufacture an unfelt greeting, or offer them chairs.
‘Well?’ was all the man with the narrow mustache said.
‘We need to talk,’ Cassandra said, taking three steps ahead of her two men. There was something pleading in her tone, something steely. She seemed frightened, but determined. Victor LaFrance made an indefinite gesture with his ringed hand and Dancer heard the muffled sound of boot leather across the polished floor behind him. He spun to find Luke Garner there, a drawn .36 Remington pistol in his hand.
‘You murdering bastard!’ Garner said to Dancer. ‘Wes Carroll was a friend of mine.’ He stepped nearer, jabbing the muzzle of his pistol against Dancer’s chest. Dancer heard Victor LaFrance say something like ‘… until this is done with,’ but he paid no attention to the words.
Luke Garner was no gunhand and he had made a critical error in his brash challenge of John Dancer. He was far too close to Dancer, near enough so that Dancer was able to clamp his right hand around Gamer’s wrist and simultaneously grip the barrel of the Remington with his left hand, twisting the pistol up and away from his wrist. The sound of the fat man’s forefinger cracking was audible throughout the room.
Garner fell away, holding his broken finger, howling with pain. Dancer paused to see if the man would make another move. When Garner did not attempt one he flung the revolver away into the open mouth of the white-brick fireplace at the side of the room. Jason Burr, who had been temporarily stunned, recovered his constant smile.
‘I’ll have to remember that one,’ he said in a low voice.
Garner continued to complain. There were tears in his eyes. LaFrance looked only vaguely sympathetic as he said, ‘Go get Wally or somebody to throw a splint on that, Luke.’ To Dancer he said, ‘Damn fool should have known he was too close to you.’
‘You favor shooting from a distance, do you?’ Dancer asked, conjuring up angry images of Billy Dent’s needless death. LaFrance either didn’t catch the reference or did not care. Belatedly he told Cassie: ‘Sit down, Mrs Blythe. Tell me why you have honored me with your presence.’
‘This has gone on long enough, Mr LaFrance,’ Cassie said, settling into a mahogany chair with a green velvet seat and back. She smoothed her white skirt, hesitated, and went on: ‘The killing has to stop! There has to be an end to it all – the shootings, the rustling, the threats.’
Thoughtfully LaFrance nodded, taking a cigar that he never lit from a box on his desk. ‘I agree,’ he said at length. ‘But what are we to do about it – so �
�� so long as your men continue to take my steers? So long as you deny me my lawful rights to the water?’ He glanced at John Dancer, ‘So long as you continue to import gunhands.’
‘And what was Wes Carroll!’ Cassandra demanded, temporarily losing her composure.
‘Carroll was a mistake,’ LaFrance said without emphasis. ‘As Luke told you, he and Wes were friends some years ago. My partner recommended him, and,’ he added with a shrug, ‘the way things were eventuating – shifting toward an all-out range war – I offered no serious objections to taking him on.’
‘Was it Carroll who killed my husband!’ Cassie asked, her voice tremulous and low. LaFrance seemed genuinely surprised at the question. He placed his cigar aside and leaned forward, arms resting on his desk.
‘Aaron Blythe was not harmed by anyone from Pinetree.’
‘Then…?’
‘If I were you I would look closer to home. Ask Ben Champion or Weaver on the Double X where their riders were on that day.’
‘Why would they…?’ Cassie asked in confusion.
‘Because Aaron Blythe had much, Mrs Blythe, and they have nothing. No one in the territory believed you would stay on and try to run the Rafter B with your husband dead. Then, if you left, that would leave the country wide open, wouldn’t it? The vultures were gathering.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Cassie said, looking at her lap where her upturned hands rested.
‘Then don’t!’ LaFrance said, his words showing heat for the first time. ‘All I know is that someone is trying to ruin you. Someone is trying to ruin Pinetree. Think about it, think carefully, Mrs Blythe. You have come accusing the wrong men. I will still fight for the claim I hold on your land, I will still pursue a legal judgment for the water rights which I believe I am justified in seeking …’ He rose sharply, his chair scraping the polished oak floor, ‘But I am not a scoundrel, a bushwhacker, an oppressor of widows.
‘Pinetree will fight if it is provoked – take my word for that – but you are looking in the wrong place for your villains. I am willing to let the courts decide our disputes. I have no need to drive off your herd or resort to midnight raids on your ranch. Good day,’ he concluded in dismissal and walked past them into the hallway of the house, disappearing into its depths.
Outside again, Dancer asked Cassie: ‘Well? What do you think? Was he telling the truth or protesting too much?’
She smiled faintly at his allusion. ‘I think,’ she answered, tying the wide blue ribbons that held her bonnet into a bow, ‘that it was a fine performance by Victor LaFrance.’ Burr glanced at her, not understanding. Dancer explained:
‘Mrs Blythe was once an actress.’
‘I see,’ Jason said quietly. ‘I think I see – you both believe that he’s a lying.…’
Cassie’s carriage had been drawn up in front of the stately house, the bay horse and Burr’s palomino hitched behind. There were still two riflemen standing nearby in the shade of the cottonwood trees. Dancer retrieved his gun from the bench seat of the surrey. He opened the loading gate, spun the cylinder of his Colt to assure himself that it hadn’t been tampered with and belted it on.
There were three new horses at the hitch rail when they left; somehow word must have gotten out that Pinetree might need re-inforcements. Dancer guided the red roan past the shadowed eyes of the guards, only releasing his breath when they were past the cottonwood grove and once again out onto open prairie. Then he drew the surrey up and asked Cassie:
‘Will you take the reins now? I’d feel better if I were free to ride the bay and keep an eye out for trouble.’
‘All right,’ Cassandra said. There was a slightly tremulous tone to her voice as she nodded in reply. Dancer couldn’t blame her. Nothing had been accomplished at Pinetree. In fact Luke Garner could only have had his hatred of Rafter B deepened. As he sat nursing his broken finger, he would be sure – eventually – to ponder means of retaliation, if not against Rafter B, certainly against Dancer himself.
Cassandra started the surrey homeward at an even pace, the red roan picking its way nimbly over the broken ground. Jason Burr had drifted his palomino pony near to Dancer and he watched the carriage roll on for a minute before gesturing to John Dancer. Dancer guided the bay horse nearer to the young man questioningly.
‘What is it, Jason?’ he asked as they rode side by side across the rugged land where still small silver pools of rainwater lay.
‘I’ve got to tell you something, John,’ Jason said with his habitual smile in place. There was concern in his dark eyes, however. Both men looked briefly skyward as a red-tailed hawk wheeled past, complaining shrilly.
‘Go ahead, Jason.’
‘I don’t know much about what is going on around here,’ Burr said. ‘I only got here this morning, as you know.…’
Dancer prodded the hesitant cowboy. ‘What is it, then?’
‘About all I know is what you’ve told me and what I heard in that guy’s office,’ he said, tilting his head in the general direction of the Pinetree ranch. ‘But you saw those new horses as we were riding out, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ Dancer answered, guiding his pony around a thicket of paddle-bladed nopal cactus.
‘Did you notice the brand on that tall Appaloosa?’
‘No, I didn’t pick that up.’
‘It was Snake Eye. A dot in a square, right? I just thought you’d want to know. Me, I’m wondering why a Snake Eye horse would be on Pinetree range.’
Dancer nodded his thanks and they separated by mutual consent, Jason Burr riding a little way off to the north, Dancer to the south to keep an eye out for any incoming riders. It was curious, that was for sure. Why would one of Ben Champion’s Snake Eye riders be in cahoots with Pinetree? Or was the tall Appaloosa Champion’s own horse? He would have to ask Jared Fine or Foley what sort of horse the Snake Eye owner rode.
All that was certain was that another storm was gathering over the range. A different sort of storm, a more menacing one which, if not throttled through force of arms, was certain to sweep Cassie Blythe from her land as the wolves moved in.
Thinking it over, Dancer could only come to one conclusion. LaFrance and Garner were already challenging Rafter B’s rights to the land and the water supply which fed it. Champion and Weaver of the Double X had only scraggly, dry country herds, worth little even in beef-starved Carson City. If, however, Pinetree was able to win the water rights and in an agreement with Snake Eye and Double X offer to share water and, say, ten to twenty per cent of the Rutter B’s property for each – when and if Cassie was driven away and the land could be divided among them – all three would prosper.
There was so much Dancer did not know, could not be expected to know after only a few days in this country. For example he did not know the sort of men Weaver and Champion were, although Billy Dent had told him that he did not think Ben Champion was the sort of man to go in for rustling.
All right then, what about Champion’s foreman or someone else with his own plan for obtaining land and water? It was all dizzying to think of. Like trying to solve a complicated puzzle when first seen. There was certainly a pattern to it if looked at properly, but Dancer could not fathom it; he wandered mentally through his suspicions, finding no satisfactory solution.
Marshal Bingham was waiting for them in the yard of the Rafter B home ranch when they trailed in. The beefy, florid man was tilted back in a wooden chair on the bunkhouse porch, his silver star glinting in the sunlight. He rose heavily to his feet as he espied the incoming riders.
Cassie drew her carriage up on seeing the marshal. Dancer and Jason Burr exchanged an uneasy glance. Dancer whispered:
‘Have you got any warrants out on you, Jason?’ The young man shook his head with a wide grin.
‘Not no more, John. I’ve paid for all of them.’
‘It must be me he wants, then,’ Dancer said tightly.
‘You?’ Burr said in surprise. ‘What for?’
‘There’s a little matter
of a murder that might not have been cleared up yet.’
Burr studied Dancer soberly for a moment, shaking his head. ‘There’s a few things you haven’t told me yet.’
Dancer nodded, ‘A few.’ Then he swung down from the bay pony to walk toward Marshal Bingham who waited for him, his thumb hooked into his gunbelt.
‘Don’t try anything, John,’ he warned.
‘I’ve no intention of it,’ Dancer said honestly. ‘Someone posted a warrant on me, is that it?’
‘That’s it,’ the heavy-set marshal answered phlegmatically. ‘Now shed your gun – carefully – for me.’
Slowly Dancer complied. ‘There’s half a dozen people who can tell you how the shooting happened – Calvin Hardwick among them. He’s right here on the ranch. They all know that Wes Carroll drew first.’ Dancer spread his hands. ‘You’re just wasting your time, Marshal.’
Bingham frowned and shook his head heavily. From an inner pocket he removed a warrant and straightened its triple fold. ‘I’m not here to talk about Wes Carroll,’ the big man said. ‘You’re wanted for the murder of Tyrone Terrell.’
‘Who?’
‘You ought to know him. He worked for Rafter B. You bushwhacked him up along Paiute Gulch. He was found shot and dragged to death by his horse.’
‘Terrell!’ Dancer exploded. ‘Then he’s the man who killed Billy Dent up there. I was only fighting back when I picked him off.’
‘A witness tells it differently,’ Bingham said with authority.
‘A witness…!’ Dancer was beside himself. Cassie Blythe had come nearer to hear the exchange. Jason Burr, judiciously, had backed off from the confrontation, knowing nothing about the event in question. ‘The last time I saw Terrell,’ Dancer insisted, ‘he was riding out with Jared Fine to catch up with the herd at Tortuga Flats. Jared could tell you that I didn’t gun down Terrell.’
‘I told you that we had a witness,’ the marshal said evenly, his eyes meeting Dancer’s. ‘The witness is Jared Fine.’
Dancer found himself trembling with anger. At the same moment Fine himself emerged from the bunkhouse, rifle in his hands, his heavy jowls dragged down with fierce emotion. Cassandra Blythe had rushed to Dancer, her hat flying free. Now her slender arms went around him and with her face against his chest she pleaded:
