the Strong Shall Live (Ss) (1980)

by L'amour, Louis

"He's dammed both Cottonwood and Spring Valley. He's planted seedling trees around them to hold the banks and help conserve moisture."

  "Well!" Stangle slapped his thigh. "That's it, men! That settles our problem!"

  "What do you mean?" Drake looked up hopefully.

  "He's got water. Why don't we just take down The Fence and drive our cattle in there? That sneakin' Mexican's got no right to all that water when our cattle are dyin'!"

  Casady let his chair legs down hard. "You mean to say you'd have the gall to ask him for water after the way we've treated him?"

  "Ask nothin'!" Stangle said. "Just tear down The Fence and let our cattle in. They'd find the water and grass soon enough."

  "We couldn't do that," Drake protested, "it wouldn't be right."

  "Right?" Stangle's voice was hoarse with bitterness. "Are you so anxious to go broke? You want to watch your cattle die?" -

  "You'd do a thing like that?" Casady demanded, his eyes going from one to the other.

  "I would," Rock Dulin said. "Are you too nice to save your cows?"

  Candy stared at Dulin, appalled. "No, Rock," Casady said quietly, "I'm not too nice. I hope, however, that I know something of fair play. We've bucked that kid and made his lifepure hell. We tried to drive him out and he stuck. We fenced him out of our country and still he stayed. He tried to tell us, and we were too damned hardheaded to listen. Now, you would ruin what he has done. How long will that little grass last if we turn our herds in there? We've got seven or eight thousand head between us."

  "I don't know, and I don't give a damn!" Stangle said. "He's got no place here in the first place. I've got my cattle to save, and I'll save them."

  "He won't stand for it," Hill replied. "He'll fight."

  "I hope he does!" Stangle said. "Him and his highfalutin ways! Handin' gold right over the counter! Throwin' it right in our faces!"

  "What if he does fight?" Drake asked.

  "You fought injuns to get there, didn't you?" Dulin said. "You killed some of Scovey's boys?"

  Candy Drake stared in shocked disbelief. "You could do a thing like that? Joe Stangle, what kind of a man are you? To wreck all he's done! To destroy everything!"

  "It would save our stock, Miss Candy," Benson protested. "We've families to think about. Your pa's in the same fix I am, and I'm head over heels in debt."

  "What would you do if he wasn't there? What if I'd not been so foolish as to tell you?"

  "But he is there," Dulin replied, "and thanks to you, we know what he's got. There may be water enough to keep our stock alive for a month, and by then the rains might come. I'm for it."

  "So am I!" Stangle declared.

  "It isn't right," Drake protested. "If he has water it's due to his own hard work, and the water's his."

  "Well, Tom, if you want to go broke, the choice is yours," Stangle said. "I'll be damned if I let my cattle die. If you had a water hole you'd let me use it, wouldn't you? Why should he be the only one who's fenced in?"

  Casady's dislike was obvious as he stared at Stangle. "And just who built The Fence? Seems to me you had a hand in it, Stangle."

  "That cuts no ice." Stangle waved a hand. "We'll tear it down. We'll run our cattle in there, and then we'll see what happens. I'm not going to let my cattle die because he keeps his water fenced up."

  "I reckon that speaks for me." Hardy Benson spoke reluctantly. "I'm in debt. I'll lose all I have."

  "That says it for me," Vinnie Lake added.

  Cab got to his feet. "How about you, Tom?"

  Drake hesitated, before his eyes the vision of his dying cattle, the size of the bill he owed Mayer.

  "I'll string with the boys," he said.

  For a moment Casady looked around at their faces. "I'd rather my cattle died," he said. "Good night, gentlemen!"

  Dulin started to his feet, his hand reaching for his gun. "I'll kill that--"

  "Better not try," Hill said dryly. "You never saw the day you could match Cab with a gun."

  He looked around at their faces. "I don't know that I like this, myself."

  "It's settled," Stangle declared. "Dulin, Lake, Benson, Drake, and Hill. How about you, McKesson?"

  "Sure, I'll ride along, trail my stock with yours. I never liked that Mex, no way."

  Tom Drake glanced at him thoughtfully. Curt McKesson was a new man in the valley, a big, somber man with a brooding, sullen face. Drake had seen him angry but once, but that had revealed him to have a vicious, murderous temper. He had beaten a horse to death before anyone could interfere. He disliked the man, and it disturbed him to see how McKesson's eyes followed Candy every move she made. The light in them was not good to see.

  Joe Stangle got up, satisfaction showing in his eyes and voice. "We can meet at Willow SpringsMonday morning. Once The Fence is down and the cattle started for water there will be no stop-pin' them."

  Candy watched, feeling sick and empty. She wanted to protest but knew they would not listen. Their own desperation coupled with Stangle's hatred and Dulin's sullen brutality had led them into something most of them would live to regret. Now they were only thinking about delaying their bad times. One by one they filed out and when they had gone she turned on her father.

  "Dad, you've got to stop them I You can't let them destroy all that poor boy's work!"

  "Poor boy, is it? He's got no right to all that water when our cattle are dying!"

  "Who dammed those draws? What have you done to try to save your cattle? All you've done is sit here with the rest of them and sneer at what he thought and what he did!"

  "Be quiet!" Drake's voice boomed, his guilt making him even more angry. "I won't have you takin' up for that Mexican. Nor is it your place to question my actions."

  "Dad"--Candy's tone was cold--"You'd better understand this. Barry Merrano will fight. If he fights, somebody will get killed. If I were you I'd do a lot of thinking before you start anything. It isn't like it was when you drove out those rustlers. The country has changed."

  Despite himself, he knew what she said was the truth. He shook his head irritably. "Nonsense! He's yellow! He won't fight."

  He hesitated, thinking. Then he said, "He won't fight. Joe Stangle made a fool of him and he did nothing, nothing at all!"

  "Then you'd better go out to the bunkhouse and take a look at Price Taylor. Price thought he wouldn't fight, too."

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "Barry rode home with me tonight and was leaving me at the gate. He had been a gentleman, no more. Price jumped him, and Barry gave him a beating."

  "He whupped Price? Girl, you're crazy!" "Go look at him. Ask Price if he's yellow. Also, I seem to remember you tried to frighten him away before, and he didn't run. He had only an idea to fight for then. Now he's got a place worth having!"

  She paused. "Remember this, Dad. He'll fight, and somebody will get killed."

  "Bah!" Drake said, but he was disturbed. She knew her father well enough to know that he bad not liked the action taken tonight, yet these were the men he knew, men he had worked beside, men with whom he had shared trouble. He had gone along because it offered a way out of bankruptcy and failure, and because there seemed no alternative.

  Tom Drake had fought Indians, outlaws, and rustlers, and now he would fight to hold the place, but he knew in his heart that if he were Merrano, he would fight. He did not approve of killing and he believed Merrano would run, yet now, listening to his daughter, he was no longer so sure.

  "Dad?" Candy spoke quietly. "I want you to understand. If you go through with this I'll go and fight beside Barry Merrano. I will take a rifle and stand beside him and what happens to him will happen to me."

  "What!"He stared at his daughter, consternation in his eyes. In that instant he looked not only into his daughter's eyes but into those of his wife, and something more, he saw a reflection of himself, thirty years before.

  Without another word, Candy turned and left the room. The big old man behind her stared after her, hurt, confusion, and doubt st
ruggling in his mind. He sat down suddenly in the big hide chair. Suddenly he felt old and tired, staring into the fire, trying to think things out and seeing only his dying cattle and the failure of all he had done.

  The cracked mud in the dried-up water holes, the leafless trees, all his years, all his struggle, all his work and his plans gone.

  That was Friday night. Early Saturday morning a buckboard left Mirror Valley and bounced over the stones and through the thick gray dust toward Willow Springs and the turnoff to Merrano's tunnel. Clyde Mayer had made a decision, and he was following through. He knew nothing of the action taken by the ranchers at the TD ranch. He was threatened by foreclosure by the wholesalers, and in this emergency he was turning to the one man in the valley who seemed to have money.

  The tunnel was unguarded, and he turned in hesitantly. When he emerged into the bright sunlight Barry Merrano was standing in the door of his house. The sound of hoofs in the tunnel was plainly audible within the house at any time.

  Mayer pulled up in the ranch yard and tied the lines to the whipstock. He got down carefully, for he was not as agile as he had once been.

  "Howdy, son!" He peered at Barry over his glasses. "Reckon this visit's a surprise."

  "Come in," Barry invited. "I'm just back from patching a hole in a dam. A badger dug into it, and the water started to drain out."

  "My, my!" Mayer looked around slowly. "Your mother would be right proud, young man! Right proud! She was a fine woman, your mother was!"

  "Thanks. That's always good to hear from somebody else. She was a good mother to me."

  When they were seated over coffee, Mayer said, "Son, I've come to you for help. The wholesalers have shut off my credit, and they are demanding money. I am low on stock, and the ranchers will be coming in for supplies."

  "How much do you need?"

  "An awful lot, son. I'd need five thousand dollars. I'd sell you a half interest in my business for it. I know I've been foolish to extend credit, but these are good men, son, and basically they meanwell. Every one of them will pay off if it is the last thing they do, but that won't help me now ... nor them."

  "If you don't get the money, you go broke?"

  "That's right."

  "Then what happens to the ranchers?"

  "They'd starve or get out. The drouth's hit this country so bad there isn't a head of cattle fit to sell. It will take two really good years to get them out of the hole they're in. They'd never be able to stick it out. They have no food, no feed, no water."

  Merrano stared into his cup, his brown, wind-tanned face thoughtful. After a moment he said, "All right. I'll buy a half interest in your store on one condition. I don't want anybody to know about it."

  Mayer hesitated. "What about credit for fee ranchers? They are my friends, and I'd hate to turn them down."

  "Don't. Give them what they need. Somebody has to have faith in this country. Maybe after this they will learn their lesson and handle their stock sensibly."

  Mayer stood up, his relief obvious. "I don't mind telling you, son, I was scared. I hadn't anywhere to turn."

  He started for his buckboard and paused before getting into it. "Son, you be careful. That Joe Stangle is a mighty mean man, and so is Dulin,"

  "Thanks. I'll keep my eyes open."

  After Mayer had gone Barry returned to the house and got his Winchester. Then he slipped on his gunbelt. It was time to begin moving the cattle off the Long Valley range and back into the basin. No use to let them feed there too long. In a few weeks he would take thirty head over to Aragon for sale. It would save on feed and water and give him a little more working cash.

  He had saddled up and was about to mountwhen he heard a rattle of horse's hooves. It was Candy Drake.

  At her expression he caught her hand. "Candy? What's happened?"

  Swiftly, the words tumbling into one another, she told him of the meeting and its result. "Please, Barry! Don't think too hard of Father! All he can see now is his cattle dying!"

  "I know," he agreed. "The trouble is that the little water I have wouldn't help much. With that mass of cattle coming in, my smaller pools would be trampled into mud within hours and the bigger pools behind the dams would last no time at all. It would simply add my ruin to the rest of them. Believe me, Candy, I'd like to help.

  "There is a way, if they will work. There's water in the White Horse Hills. It would take a lot of work, but they could get at it."

  "They wouldn't listen, Barry. Not now."

  "There's only one thing I can do now, Candy. They broke my mother's heart on this ground, and they turned Father from a laughter-loving young vaquero into a morose and lonely man.

  "There's only one thing I can do, and that's what your father would do or any of the men with him. I am going to fight."

  He waved a hand. "There's four years of blood, sweat, and busters in this. Days and nights when I was so bitterly lonely I thought I'd go insane. I built those dams with my own hands. I gathered the stones for this house, cut and shaped the planks for the floors. I made the chairs. These things are mine, and I'll fight to keep them.

  "If a single cow crosses The Fence, that cow will cross over my dead body, but believe me, it won't be lying there alone. Candy, if you can talk to your father, tell him that. Blood won't save his cattle, but if it is blood he wants, that's what he will get."

  "They'll kill you, Barry. There are too many of them."

  "I won't be alone. This may sound silly, but my mother and father will be with me. This land was theirs before it was mine. The ghosts of a thousand other men who fought for their homes will be there, too!"

  "Barry, I told Father that if he came I'd fight with you."

  Surprised, he looked up at her. "You said that?"

  "I did, and I meant it."

  Speechless, he hesitated, then shook his head. "No, as much as I'd like it, I can't let you fight against your father. This is my fight. I am obliged for the warning, but you'd better ride on now. But no matter what happens, I'll not forget this."

  "All right, I'll go, but Barry, be careful! Joe Stangle hates you! And that other man, Curt McKesson ... he frightens me!"

  For a long time after she was gone, Barry sat staring down the valley, thinking. He would leave the cattle where they were.

  Accustomed to working and planning alone he now turned all his thoughts to defense. It was a problem he had considered since his first day, and his position was excellent. Table Mountain and the Neck barred access to Mirror Valley, and only the tunnel and The Fence offered ingress. In the other direction lay the canyon that opened into Long Valley, and he had no worries about that direction. It was a seventy-mile ride, much of it through the reservation lands, to get to that approach, and the Indians would resent any armed band crossing their lands.

  Despite the selfishness of those who would destroy all he had built to save their own cattle, he could feel sympathy for them. He understood what it meant to a cattleman to see his stock dying, yet the water he had would save them for a few days only.

  They were clutching at straws, egged on by the hatred of Joe Stangle and by Dulin. Behind it was the leftover hatred for the young Mexican who hadmarried pretty Molly O'Brien, the girl they all wanted.

  With cool calculation he began to study his problem.

  By noon on Saturday he began work, using a double-jack and a drill. These holes he loaded with powder, determined to blast it shut if need be. It was late afternoon before he completed the work.

  From the top of Table Mountain he studied the Mirror Valley country with a field glass his father had given him. He could see the dust clouds that told of moving cattle. No cattle had yet reached Willow Springs, which Candy had told him would be the rendezvous point. Yet by Sunday night he knew the cattle would be massed at the opening of the draw.

  Returning to the house he lowered a heavy log gate across the tunnel mouth. Mounting his horse and leading a packhorse, he headed for The Fence.

  Once there he studied the terrai
n with care. The Fence was strong, and his inner fence was stronger. Tearing it out would be no simple job. Climbing the mountain he dug two rifle pits, one forward, the other some distance further back, which he could reach by a hidden route. In each he left ammunition.

  No weight of cattle could press down The Fence. It must be torn down or blasted out. Using a crowbar from the packhorse he pried loose a number of boulders and tumbled them down the steep sides of the draw to a place behind The Fence to widen and deepen the barrier.

  Further back, where the draw opened into the basin he dug another rifle pit and tumbled down more stones, but there they were more widely spaced and less of an obstruction. Not until darkness had fallen and he could see the dark mass of advancing cattle did he cease work.

  Despite the fact that he feared to leave the barricade, he went back to the house and prepareda meal. He was sitting down to eat when he heard a call from the tunnel.

  "Merrano?" The shout reached him clearly. "This is Cab Casady! I want to talk!"

  Picking up his rifle, his gun belts still hanging from his hips, he walked to the log gate. "What's the problem?" he asked.

  The big man grasped the logs. "Merrano, damn it, I'm no talker! I do claim some sense of what's right, and I ain't havin' no part of what they're tryin' to do. I got a rifle here and plenty of shells. I came to lend you a hand!"

  "You mean that?" He recalled what Candy had said of this man.

  "I sure do, boy! You've got sand, and by the Lord Harry I want to show these bullheads that at least one of us won't be stampeded by no hate-filled coyote like Joe Stangle!"

  Barry put down his rifle and unlatched the gate. "Come in, Cab! I won't tell you how good it is to see you I"

  The two men walked up to the cabin. Over coffee and side meat Barry explained his defenses. Casady chuckled. "I'll like seein' the expression on Joe Stangle's face when he gets to The Fence I" he said.

  They took turns guarding the draw but not until daylight did the cattlemen start to ride up. Barry was at the cabin and he had welcomed another visitor . .. two of them, in fact.

  Clyde Mayer, driving his old buckboard, a rifle between his knees, drove up the hill when the gate was opened. Beside him on the seat was Candy Drake. She set her lips stubbornly when she saw Barry.