Ute Peak Country

by Lauran Paine

  McCoy paced along turning all the implications behind Jackson Miggs’ words over in his mind. He knew Hyatt Tolman, and he also knew Tolman’s range boss, Fred Brian. As Denver Holt and his son Bert were alike, so also were old man Tolman and his quiet-eyed range boss. There could be trouble brewing here. Frank swung a look at Miggs, saw Jack’s thoughtful expression, and said no more.

  * * * * *

  Beverly was not at camp when they arrived there. In fact she didn’t show up even after Fred Brian had come up with his two riders to offsaddle and lift down their laden alforjas from the pack animals. Not until one of the riders, a youthful, freckled, and snub-nosed man came walking back from the pool, holding a silk scarf in his fingers and looking puzzled, did Jack explain about the girl, and even then he used a minimum of words, for that other thing was deeply on his mind.

  He explained, finally, about the Holt herd as Brian and the others cooked up a midday bait of food. Tolman’s range boss looked displeased, but for a while he said nothing, only considered all that Miggs and McCoy told him, including the shooting of Denver Holt. Eventually, he asked some questions concerning Holt’s men and cattle, and sipped his black coffee in pensive silence.

  When they had finished eating, Brian said across the fire to Miggs: “This is going to make it even tougher, Jackson. Hyatt will raise hell and prop it up with a big stick if, come next calving season, our cows and heifers come up with Durham calves. He’s trying hard to breed out the Durham and breed in the Hereford.”

  “We talked on that,” said Frank McCoy.

  Fred paid Frank no heed. “That’s how come us to fetch along that bunch of purebred white-face bulls, Jackson. Hyatt spent most of last winter getting those bulls. They’re the best money can buy, and they came all the way to Colorado from Kansas.”

  Miggs watched one of the cowboys make a smoke, light it, and exhale a small blue-gray cloud. “We can ride over and talk to Holt,” he suggested, sounding a lot less than enthusiastic about the outcome of any such visit.

  “You said you already told him this was Tolman’s range, Jackson.”

  “That’s right, Fred, but what else can we do?”

  The smoking cowboy made a rough smile and said through exhaled smoke: “Round up their critters … ’specially their danged Durham bulls … and push ’em west a few dozen miles.”

  “You fellers better take a long look at this here Denver Holt and his crew, particularly that mean-looking son, before you try anything like that,” put in Frank McCoy, “because I got a feeling the minute you commence chousing Holt’s beef, you’re going to think the sky fell on you.”

  “Like that, eh,” murmured the freckle-faced, snub-nosed rider, his blue eyes brightening and hardening. “Well, for my part I never did like strangers ridin’ up an’ throwin’ their weight around. What’d you say, Fred? We could likely find all this Holt’s bulls by this time tomorrow if we got right on it.”

  But Brian shook his head, pushed up to his feet, looked out and around, and said to the red-faced rider: “When folks start making war talk, Red, they usually get trouble up to their ears. For now, you and Lex take the horses and packs on up to Jackson’s cabin. The rest of us’ll meet you there this evening.”

  Frank went out to help the cowboys saddle up and toss their diamond hitches on the pack beasts. Miggs remained near the fire with big Fred Brian. He sighted on the sun, guessed the time to be 11:00 a.m. or a little after, wondered idly when Beverly would return from her crevice mining, then had his thoughts intruded upon as Brian said: “Fine kettle of damned fish. I figured, once we got up in here with the cattle, our big troubles would be over.”

  “They may be over,” said Jack. “No point in stewing until we’ve seen the Holts.”

  Brian looked over caustically and murmured: “You don’t believe that, Jackson. Not after what you’ve been telling me about these Holts and their riders.”

  Miggs squinted out at the sun again. “Maybe I don’t, but I’ll tell you one thing, Fred. With you and me and Holt, I think there’ll be a lot less chance of a flare-up than if Hyatt was here. He’s too much like that Denver Holt.”

  “But he’s trespassing, Jackson.”

  Miggs brought his squinted eyes down, fixed them sardonically upon Brian, and grunted. In his private opinion, everyone who entered the uplands back country except the animals who lived here was trespassing. All he said, though, was: “Like Holt told me, Fred … it’s open range.”

  Brian looked glum, perplexed. “I don’t want trouble,” he said. “If he just didn’t have damned Durham bulls.”

  McCoy strolled back. The two cowboys were heading on up into the north trees with their charges. When they spoke to one another, their voices and words drifted back distinctly for a long time after they’d passed from sight of the three men still at the campsite.

  “Well,” said Frank McCoy, scuffing dirt over the coals underfoot, “when Bev comes on in with her poke of gold, we can head on up for the cabin.”

  Jack unconsciously looked at the sun again. “She must’ve found a good spot. It’s close to high noon right now.”

  “She’ll be along,” said Frank carelessly, finishing with the fire. “Say, Fred, if you’re going on, how about taking some of our stuff ahead to the cabin with you?”

  Brian agreed to this, went for his rigged-out horse, led the animal back, and tied as much of the two men’s effects as he could behind his cantle. He swung up over leather then, nodded, and started along after his cowboys.

  When Brian was gone, McCoy eased down upon some dusty, soft earth, fixed Miggs with a shrewd eye, and said: “I can smell it, Jack.”

  “Smell what?”

  “Trouble. It’s got a smell all its own.”

  Miggs hunkered, looked once more at the overhead sky, and muttered: “I wish she’d come back. I’d like to get back home before dark tonight.”

  “She’ll be along, stop your fretting. I’ve known Bev since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and never known her to get lost yet. She’s got a built-in compass inside her skull. Must’ve got that from her old paw.”

  With Miggs hunkered there, solemn-faced and totally silent for a long enough time, Frank, turning drowsy under that unrelenting overhead sun, said conversationally: “Jack, what’s Hyatt Tolman so dead set against Durham cattle for? I recollect the time when he had more brown cattle than anyone in the country.”

  Miggs shrugged. “He told me last summer these white-faced Herefords are the coming beef cattle. That Durhams go dry faster and don’t shape up so well. But, Frank, I’ve been a trapper and hunter most of my life, and one breed of cattle looks pretty much like any other breed to me … so long as they’re the same color. I can tell you one thing … fat Durhams or these fat white-faces … after a long winter like we just lived through, eating elk and bear and deer, good fried beef sure is an agreeable change.”

  Frank grinned. It was the custom of these two, once the herds entered the uplands country, to practice on a modest scale what the former owners of this same land, the Ute Indians, had also done—they levied on Tolman and other ranchers for one fat steer each time the herds came up the trail. It was a good-natured asking and a good-natured giving, this ritual.

  “I wish she’d hurry along,” said Jack, a little annoyed as the sun began its westerly glide. “Dang it all.”

  Chapter Seven

  By 3:00 p.m. Jack was more bothered by Beverly’s absence than ever. While he associated no particular trouble with her absence, he did grumble to Frank McCoy about not being able to make it home before sundown now.

  Frank was not concerned about the girl’s absence, but he said: “You go along, Jack. I’ll wait here and fetch Bev on home when she comes back from her mining. You ought to be at the clearing when Brian sets his camp up there, but I don’t have to be, so go along with you.”

  Miggs hoisted the balance of their effec
ts, took up his rifle, and went off through the upland forest, northbound. He walked with the short, steady, chopping gait of mountain men. He had two hours to make up if he meant to arrive back at his log house before dark.

  The meadows were hazed over with afternoon sun glaze. Even in the forest’s eternal gloom, the scents and shades were of burgeoning summertime. Where before there had been only dank earth or moldering mulch, now there were flowers of many kinds, colors as vivid, as tumultuous as springtime could make them. And that softly fragrant odor of running sap in the trees was good again, after months of bitter cold and steely days.

  Miggs sensed rather than fully noticed these things. Ordinarily, he looked keenly at each new sign of this life-giving season of the year. But this afternoon, walking swiftly along, trailing his rifle, and lightly packed, he saw but scarcely heeded all that strong beauty around him in its heady profusion.

  Even after the reddening sun dropped away behind aloof Ute Peak, he did not entirely appreciate the long, quiet afterward hour when there was no sound anywhere, when the earth yielded up its cooling scents, and the overhead sky turned milky with pink streamers flowing down it from east to west.

  The problem of just how to handle Denver Holt vexed Miggs. If he hadn’t shot at that blue cow elk, he thought, things might in prospect be different. He wasn’t at all sure about that, though; Denver Holt didn’t look like a man who would give way to importunities.

  But he had shot the cow elk, and he had winged Denver Holt.

  He stepped out into the little glade where his log house sat upon the northwesterly end and moved swingingly along toward a guttering campfire whose backdrop was the dark and bulky front of his own cabin.

  Lex and Red Morton had the cow camp established next to Miggs’ creek but downstream from the house. Brian was not at once in sight but all their horses were, and the heavy packs, plus saddle rigs, carbines in scarred leather saddle boots, and other accouterments peculiar to range men riding a long trail.

  The moon lifted. It soared high, casting a silvery sheen down the concave southern rampart of naked Ute Peak. It limned the stiff-topped pines and molded faint shadows upon the grass as Miggs went along toward his cabin first, and later, after shucking his pack and rifle, on over to the cow camp a hundred yards beyond the cabin.

  Brian was there when Miggs came up and dropped down, cross-legged, with a tired grunt. He had walked right along. Since most of that south-to-north trail had been uphill, and he had hurried, there was a good tired kind of weariness on him now.

  The snub-nosed rider handed over a tin cup of steaming coffee. His friend, Lex Murphy, offered Miggs his tobacco sack and papers. Jack passed up the smoke but sipped that cow-camp coffee with relish. It put an edge to his hunger.

  Fred Brian strolled over, cup in hand, looked down, and said: “You reckon it’s too late to ride over and see this Holt feller this evening, Jack?”

  It wasn’t really late. The moon was up, the stars twinkled, but the sky was still powder blue. “By the time we got over where his camp is, Fred, it’d be right onto eleven clock. He’s settled in over at the old Ute village grounds.”

  Brian puckered his brows, made a rough estimate, and said: “Three miles, Jack?”

  Miggs kept watching the taller, younger man. Finally, he put aside the tin cup, stood up, and said: “Come on. It’s going to make you fit and toss all night worrying about Holt’s Durham bulls, so we might as well ride over right now and have it out, even if we have to roust them out of their bedrolls.”

  Miggs rode one of Brian’s horses. The pair of them rode off with a handful of cooked meat from Red Morton’s supper fire, passed on around the cabin bearing westerly until they came to the forest, then cut northward a little so as to strike a faint old trail Miggs knew that led directly to the old Indian campsite.

  They didn’t say much for the first mile, but, when they were well along into the second mile, Fred Brian suddenly spoke up.

  “And if Holt won’t move on westward,” he asked. “What then, Jackson?”

  Miggs looked over and looked back. The question had mildly surprised him. Always in the past, Brian and Tolman had made their own decisions up here. He thought now he was being drawn into Hyatt Tolman’s affairs deeper than he wished. He thought, too, of that letter in his pocket, and also of his assurance to Fred Brian that he would do what he could for Tolman’s men and animals while they were in the uplands.

  There seemed no honorable way out now, and to a man who had been a loner all his life, the prospect of being accountable to others was displeasing. Because he felt this way, his answer to Fred was a little sharp, a little brusque.

  “If he won’t move westward, Fred, then I reckon either you’ll have to move, your men’ll have an awful lot of patrolling to do to keep his Durham bulls away from Tolman’s grade Hereford cows, or we just live with it.”

  “That’s no solution, Jackson. If he has more than four bulls, my riders and I won’t be able to keep track of ’em, and even if we tried to, it’d never work.”

  Miggs said no more. His irritation increased as they rode along. Until today his biggest problem had been Jed Shafter’s daughter. He’d had his doubts about how that other matter should be handled, but he’d been confident of ultimate success there. This, though, was very different. Aside from being placed squarely in between two bullishly stubborn cow outfits, his time, which had always been his own, now no longer was. He was obliged to aid Tolman’s cattle and Tolman’s range boss. It aggravated a loner no end to have claims made upon him against his will.

  He did not, however, blame Fred Brian altogether. His judgment of Denver Holt after one meeting left him considering Holt and his men as something less than desirable neighbors. In fact, by the time they were within a half mile of the old Ute campground, a good deal of his private antagonism was directed against Holt just for coming into the uplands, instead of grazing his herds wherever he’d been grazing them the past years.

  “I smell smoke,” said Brian, sniffing the still night air.

  Miggs nodded. He’d caught that scent farther back. He’d been watching through the trees for firelight. They were not very far, now, from the big grassy meadow with its bisecting white-water creek, which had once been the site of a large Ute village.

  Through the forest’s nighttime dark haze could be faintly seen a large, silvery meadow out beyond, where moonlight slanted downward, brightening everything. There was an occasional orange wisp of flame from a cooling campfire out there, and, just as they came to the last wooded tier of pines, loose horses became visible, meandering over the meadow, grazing.

  Miggs drew up, dropped his reins, and sat a moment in formless shadows, studying that yonder cow camp. He had a feeling—he couldn’t tell, though, whether this was a premonition of some kind or simply the tag end of his earlier disgruntlement. Still, being a man whose life had hinged upon nothing more substantial than these little flashes at nerves’ end many times before, he sat there sniffing the atmosphere, looking roundabout, trying to catch some inkling of what there was in this night that seemed roiled and unnatural.

  Brian’s face was a white blur as he watched Miggs and waited. Brian did not seem to catch any warning in the night at all. In fact, Brian seemed impatient to ride out into the clearing.

  Jack stepped down, handed Brian his reins, and without a word went gliding to the last tree. There, he paused to look out, to rummage the meadow with his slitted eyes for some clue about that inner feeling he had.

  He found it, too. A man with a carbine cradled in his arms standing guard southward a short distance, half in among the first fringe of trees, half out where moonlight limned him.

  Miggs stepped back, fading out in the gloom. The Indians had been gone from these mountains for fifteen years. There were no animals up in here that would attack a man unless provoked. Then why the armed guard out so far from the main camp?

&nb
sp; Perhaps, he thought, because Holt felt it was the wise thing to do in a strange country. No, Miggs told himself, Denver Holt was a range man … he knew, after one sortie through a country, whether there could be any danger or not. No, that wasn’t it.

  Miggs swung southward, passing wraithlike among trees until he was close enough to that unsuspecting cowboy almost to reach forth and touch him, which was his intention, but, in concentrating his entire attention upon that man, he’d neglected to sight another man coming through the trees, and this rider, having removed his spurs, made no sound at all over the pine-needle carpet.

  The second cowboy saw Miggs, jumped behind a big tree, and let out a bellow of warning that galvanized the man he’d evidently come to relieve. Miggs reacted instinctively to that shouted alarm; he dropped flat.

  Both those cowmen fired. Their bullets went whistling past Miggs. Over the echoes of those gunshot explosions, other men’s raised cries came on from the roused cow camp.

  Miggs scuttled clear, whirled upright, dashed back where Fred Brian was standing beside their animals with his Winchester up and cocked, snarled for Brian to get back on his horse, and sprang upon his own mount.

  They spun out, heading back the way they had come. Behind them crimson muzzle blasts erupted as Holt’s entire force ran up and recklessly threw lead into the forest.

  For a full mile, Miggs and Brian sped along, narrowly missing being knocked off their animals a dozen times by low limbs and the irregular spacing of trees.

  Jackson was in the lead; he knew this forest best. He halted after a while, calmed his agitated saddle animal, and swung his head as Fred came up. The pair of them exchanged a long look.

  “That was my fault,” growled Jackson Miggs. “I was watching the first one so close, I missed seeing the second one altogether.”

  But Brian brushed this aside. “That’s not the point,” he said angrily. “Why the devil didn’t they sing out and give us a chance to identify ourselves? Hell, Jackson, if we hadn’t lit out of there, they’d have killed us sure without even knowing who we were.”