by Lauran Paine
“Who?” asked Lex Murphy, and old Frank made a face.
“How the hell do I know who? But we’ll fix up a little welcoming committee for him, whoever he is. You two get over toward the meadow and behind separate trees. Don’t do anything at all until I turkey gobble at you. Understand? Now go on.”
Frank could no longer make out Jackson Miggs at all. He didn’t make any great effort to do this, either, for that spurless cowman was getting closer now, and he seemed to be no novice at slipping quietly through a forest. His biggest mistake, in McCoy’s view, was to bring along a shiny carbine. But it was not to be expected that this man would attempt to flank Frank and the others armed only with a six-gun.
Still, McCoy faintly and disapprovingly shook his head. Even the greenest buck Indian knew enough to wrap his gun in cloth or underbrush to keep sunlight from reflecting off it. Frank’s respect for the oncoming enemy dropped steadily; it did no good to be quiet as an Indian if you also carried a mirror, which was about what this shiny carbine amounted to.
Morton and Murphy had faded out northward. Frank looked for them, satisfied they were both out of sight, and turned to consider ways of intercepting the oncoming man without shooting. As long as Jack Miggs was ahead somewhere, it would be best not to arouse Holt’s men, if this possibly could be done.
The cowboy, while gliding from one tree to another, crossed a shaft of golden light. He turned his head, and Frank recognized him as the hotheaded younger cowboy he’d met once before under unpleasant circumstances. Frank carefully leaned his rifle against a tree, got down flat, and wiggled into the thick, soft, and fragrant layers of underfoot pine needles. He remained like that, blending perfectly into the gloomy shadows, until that cowboy came up, passing along northward, and eased silently on by. Frank lifted his six-gun, waited for the rider to move again, and when the rider did, Frank did not say a thing—he simply cocked that six-gun.
The rider froze. He was between two trees, thoroughly exposed. That little metallic sound did its work precisely as Frank had expected it to. Holt’s man was neither foolish enough to try outrunning a bullet, nor to whipping around and risking a snap shot, for, no matter how fast he was with a gun, he couldn’t hope to draw and fire before McCoy dropped him.
Frank got up, slapped needles and crumbly earth off his clothing, walked over, and disarmed the cowboy. He didn’t have to call for Morton and Murphy; they had seen the capture made and now slipped up to examine McCoy’s red-faced and wrathful prisoner.
McCoy put up his gun, stepped around in front of the cowboy, and said: “What’s your name, sonny?”
“Clark Forrester, you damned old …”
“Easy now, sonny, don’t start abusing folks, or you might get your skull busted like a ripe pumpkin.”
“Not by you,” snarled the cowboy. “Or anyone like you, you damned old reprobate.”
Red Morton said not a word. He reached out, tapped the cowboy, and, when Clark Forrester turned, surprised to find that he and McCoy were not the only ones out here, Red swung. Forrester took that blow flush upon the point of the jaw and collapsed in a limp heap. Red blew on his knuckles and muttered something about bony-jawed men.
Frank looked down, looked up, and said dispassionately: “I expect one of us had to do that.” He had scarcely finished speaking when a gun exploded on ahead. Without bothering to know anything more, all three of them dropped flat beside their unconscious prisoner.
There was no answering shot.
Frank looked at Murphy, then at Morton. “It’d be a shame,” he said, “if Jack was to get shot trying to catch us a live one, when we’ve already got Mr. Forrester here. I’ll tell you, boys, you both stay and keep Mr. Forrester here from waking up and letting out a yell, and I’ll go fetch Jack back.”
McCoy didn’t wait but slipped off among the trees and disappeared almost at once from the sight of Red Morton and Lex Murphy.
He went steadily ahead toward the spot where he’d last seen Miggs. When he arrived in the vicinity of the place, he stood for a long time while keening the air, testing it as an old hunting dog might have done. There was no sign of Miggs, but that meant nothing.
On ahead through the trees, Frank heard men’s voices in blurred, careful conversation. He got down low, passed still closer, and, when he stopped this time to peer out, a twig brushed lightly over his shin bone. He didn’t jump, he simply turned his lowered head, met Jack Miggs’ indignant stare, and jerked his head for Miggs to go back.
When the two of them were a hundred feet away and before Miggs could remonstrate with McCoy for coming up, Frank explained about Clark Forrester. Miggs was more surprised that the cowboy had gotten around behind him than he was at the actual capture of Forrester.
He stood for a moment in quiet thought, then whispered: “All right. Get out of sight, Frank. I’m going to hail Holt and offer him Forrester for Fred Brian.”
McCoy stepped behind a big tree. Miggs, moving over beside another large pine but staying out in sight, let off a bull-bass call. “Holt! Denver Holt!”
For a moment only the echoes of that outcry came back, then a voice equally as deep and powerful replied.
“What do you want?”
“This is Jackson Miggs, Holt. I’ve got a trade for you.”
“What’re you talkin’ about, Miggs?”
“You’ve got Fred Brian, haven’t you?”
There was another pause, then Holt yelled back: “We’ve got him … what about it?”
“We’ve got Clark Forrester. You turn Fred loose, and we’ll send Forrester back to you.”
Holt did not reply at once to this. Miggs stepped back around his tree, looked over, saw Frank watching him, and looked back eastward again. It was no longer possible to hear voices over where Holt’s men were, but it was not hard to figure out that a discussion was under way over there. After what seemed an agonizingly long period of time, Denver Holt’s roar came back.
“All right, Miggs! Send Forrester back, and we’ll turn Brian loose.”
Jack jerked his head around at Frank. “Go back,” he said, “and fetch that cowboy up here.”
McCoy left in a rearward trot. Miggs called out, stating that he’d sent back for Forrester.
Holt accepted this, then called out again: “Miggs, you keep out of my way! I owe you something for wingin’ me. This is no warnin’, Miggs, this is a promise!”
Jack’s face hardened against the arrogance and the bullying tone of that big voice. He called back, saying: “Sure, Holt, I’ll stay out of your path … the second you hand over to me the man who hit Beverly Shafter over the head and rode off with her! When you do that, I’ll be content to stay well clear of a skunk like you, for I never did like the smell of your kind.”
Holt roared out, calling Miggs a fighting name. “You want the man who mistook that damned girl for a young squaw Indian,” he said defiantly, “you come and get him. He didn’t know that blamed girl was white. She was dressed like a squaw.”
“What’s that got to do with it, Holt? Red or white, she was still a girl. The feller who hit her, then dumped her because he thought he’d hit her too hard, isn’t fit to live, whether she’s Indian or white, and I want him.”
“You do, do you? Well, damn your Indian-lovin’ hide, you just try and get him, Miggs. I’ll blow you in two on sight and roast your damned gizzard over my cookin’ fire.”
Frank came up at this point and shoved groggy Clark Forrester roughly forward. “Go on,” McCoy said to the cowboy. “And next time when you’re figuring to sneak up and bushwhack somebody, don’t try it on grown men, or you just might lose your curly topknot.”
Forrester saw Miggs and glared, but his face was pale. Obviously, Clark Forrester had a headache; the point of his jaw was badly swelling and turning purple.
Miggs jerked his head peremptorily. Forrester started off through the trees. Miggs ca
lled out again.
“Forrester’s coming, Holt! Turn Brian loose!”
There was no acknowledgment of this. For a moment Jack and Frank thought Holt had decided not to free Brian. In fact, McCoy was just opening up with some blistering invective when Fred Brian came up none too steadily toward them through the trees. His hat was gone, his hip holster was empty, and his shirt was torn, exposing a bloody upper arm and left shoulder.
They took him back where Morton and Murphy waited. Frank and Red went after their horses while Red and Jack Miggs sat down with Brian.
“It was a foolish thing to try, I reckon,” mumbled Hyatt Tolman’s range boss. “But after I saw Beverly … After we walked out in the moonlight last night, I couldn’t rest for thinking about the man who did that to her.”
Miggs picked up a pine needle, popped it into his mouth, and quietly masticated. After a while he said, quietly and softly: “To tell you the truth, Fred, I had something about like that in the back of my mind, too. Only you beat me to it.” He spat out the pine needle. “Tell me, how’d you happen to get captured?”
“The old man’s son was standing guard in the trees. They’d been expecting trouble. It was dark, Jackson. I didn’t even see him until he’d thrown down on me.”
“And how’d you get loose?”
“They tied my hands. I had all night to worry that rope until it stretched. The hell of it was, every man jack of ’em sleeps with his guns. Otherwise, if I could’ve gotten my hands on a weapon, I’d have killed Bert when he trailed me.”
Miggs turned to look squarely into Brian’s eyes. “Why Bert?” he gently asked, already knowing the answer to his own question.
“Because Bert was the one who got Bev. That’s why!”
Chapter Fourteen
On the way back to Miggs’ meadow by a careful and circuitous route, Fred Brian told them that Denver Holt had ordered the roundup they’d witnessed the night before, after his son had captured Brian. He also told them that Holt had given that order after Fred had explained to the men of Holt’s camp why he was stalking them.
“Up to that time,” Brian went on, “Bert hadn’t told his paw about trying to steal Beverly. But after I explained to him that that was what had brought me over there, old Denver sat across the campfire, glaring at his son. They had words, I’m sure of that, but not while I was around. I think the old man took Bert off away from the others to give him hell.”
“That makes me dislike Denver Holt a little less,” spoke up Frank McCoy. “At least he wasn’t favorable to what his boy had tried to do to Beverly.”
Brian shook his head at this, his expression grim and unrelenting. “You’re wrong, Frank. The old man didn’t care about Beverly or what Bert tried to do. He said so while we were all at the fire. What angered him was the probability that you and Jack … all of us … would come a-gunning. He said it was bad enough to get run off the Laramie Plains for some killing Bert was involved in, but it was worse causing trouble up in here, because they couldn’t go on driving their herd from one place to another indefinitely.”
“But they’re going to pull out,” said Red Morton. “Otherwise, why did they make their gather?”
Fred shrugged. “No one said. All I know is that Denver ordered the cattle rounded up.”
Miggs, watching Brian’s tanned, handsome face, said: “You don’t think they’re pulling out, do you, Fred?”
Brian shook his head. “Denver Holt said we were a bunch of scum … that they had nothing to worry about from us. No, I’ve got no idea what he ordered that gather for, Jackson, but I don’t think they’re leaving the Ute Peak country.”
For a while the five of them rode along. Frank McCoy stuffed his little pipe, lit it, and thoughtfully puffed before saying: “Fred, a man’s got to be some kind of a fool to attempt what you tried to do.”
McCoy puffed on, watching Brian’s expression closely. When Brian’s answer to this came back, Frank heeded it, kept on puffing, and got an almost serene look on his face.
“I reckon I was a fool, Frank. I won’t deny that. But I had a good reason.”
* * * * *
They got back to the meadow, cared for their horses, and broke up—part of them heading for the cow camp, Miggs and McCoy walking tiredly along toward the cabin. It was early evening, balmy, fragrant, and velvet – shadowed.
“You heard what he said about why he tried that!” exclaimed McCoy to Miggs. “Now I’d say a man who’d be that blamed stupid’s just got to surefire admire the girl he did that for.”
Miggs said nothing, neither did he look around. He walked almost to the cabin door before halting. “A hell of a lot of good he’d be to her dead, Frank, and that’s what he almost was.”
McCoy removed his pipe, knocked it empty, carefully pocketed it before he said scoffingly: “Pshaw, now you’re talking like a man who doesn’t want anything to happen to Brian. Last night out here, you didn’t talk that way at all.”
Miggs darkly scowled. Most other men would have felt the yeasty disapproval of that black look, but not Frank McCoy.
In the same careless way, Frank said: “It’s all right, Jack. Hell’s bells, I’m on your side. I want what’s best for her, too. But I think maybe your being a brand-new father and all … sort of … you might be just a wee bit overprotective.”
Behind them the cabin door opened, Beverly stepped out, saw those two shadows, and went quietly over to look first into McCoy’s face, then into Jackson Miggs’ face.
“Where did all of you disappear to?” she asked of Miggs. “When I got up this morning to start breakfast, there wasn’t a soul anywhere around.”
Miggs’ brows smoothed out. He made a crooked little smile and said: “Well, how about supper … have you got that ready?”
Beverly’s white teeth flashed in the dusk. “I can have it ready in a jiffy.” She started to turn, stopped, looked over at McCoy, and said: “Uncle Frank, where did you go?”
Frank told her. He felt Miggs’ disapproving stare on him, but, as Frank had once said, Beverly Shafter was now a big girl. In Frank McCoy’s philosophy of life, you looked the bitter as squarely in the face as you also looked at the pleasant. He didn’t believe in glossing over harshness, for life was seldom easy, and those who hesitated in a crisis or who shrank from meeting violence with violence, usually went down into the ground before they’d had much chance to cast a shadow among the living.
When he finished, Beverly’s liquid eyes were large and shades darker than usual. “Was he hurt?” she asked, speaking of Fred Brian. “Uncle Frank … was he hurt?”
“Roughed up a mite is all, and, if you ask me, I’ll tell you he had that coming to him, riding off all alone like that, and for such a silly reason.”
Beverly stiffened her full length.
Miggs saw the flare of abrupt anger in her eyes, and it surprised him. He had never before seen her temper and in fact would have scoffed if anyone had told him anyone as sweet and pretty and tiny as she was could possess a temper.
“A silly reason! Uncle Frank, what Fred did actually was …”
“Yes, what was it, Bev?”
“It was noble, that’s what it was. And you have no right to say he had that coming, whatever it was those men did to him.”
“Your arm and head must be a lot better tonight,” drawled McCoy, letting this wrathful blast break over him without heeding it. “And say, isn’t that the dress we bought just before we left Laramie? I thought you said you only figured to wear it on very special …”
“He might be hurt internally for all you know. For all you care.” Bev paused. She was breathing hard. Her flashing gaze swung to include Jackson Miggs. Just for a moment, it looked as though she might apportion Miggs some of her anger, too, but in the end she did not, she simply whirled away from those two men and went running southward down toward the cow camp.
For
a while Miggs and McCoy stood there gazing out where the little cooking fire of Tolman’s riders danced and writhed against the purple night.
“You did that on purpose,” Miggs said to McCoy, without looking at Frank. “You deliberately made her mad.”
“Yup,” agreed McCoy cheerily. “Jack, I could talk to you about how the wind’s blowin’ between Bev and Fred Brian until I was plumb black in the face, and you’d doubt me all the way.”
Miggs nodded slowly, gravely. “I understand,” he murmured, shook himself out of his reverie, and went over, pushed back the cabin door, and, looking back, said: “Frank, you’re the most devious, calculating old reprobate I’ve ever known. The only thing that’s in your favor is that you don’t use your slyness to hurt folks.”
The pair of them went on inside. McCoy glumly surveyed the cold stove, the hanging pots, and growled: “Well, I sure don’t benefit myself sometimes at all. Now I reckon she won’t be back for a couple of hours, and here we stand with our bellies flap empty.”
Miggs closed the front door, went over to the stove, and began working up their nighttime meal. He had nothing to say until he’d set the table, spooned elk stew into two tin plates, poured the coffee, and motioned McCoy forward to eat.
Then he said: “Frank, why did Holt gather those cussed Durhams of his if, as Fred says, he isn’t aiming on leaving the country?”
McCoy ate ravenously, slurped down hot black coffee, and shrugged. “That’s Holt’s worry, not ours, so eat up, Jack. Eat up.”
“It’s a riddle. He’s not the kind of a cowman to push his critters around a lot, unless he’s got a plumb good reason.”
McCoy raised a saturnine face. “Forget it. I’ll give you something better to worry about, if you just plain got to worry. I wouldn’t bet a plugged dollar Brian doesn’t try riding over there again, only this time with Red and Lex.”
