by L. P. Holmes
And that, Martell had mused, was the way it had always been and would always be. There was no common ground on which a man of the saddle and a man of the plow could ever meet, it seemed. Always, there were suspicions and hatreds and deep-running enmity.
Even here in Starlight, for all their rush and frenzy, the settlers found time to show how they felt toward any man of the saddle with the look of cow country about him. Several times, as he worked his horse slowly along the street through the crush of wagons and scurrying humans, Martell knew the impact of this ancient and deep-seated animosity. Antagonistic growls and plenty of muttered curses were thrown his way, and once the lash of a long whip cracked, like a pistol shot, only inches from his face.
He had ignored the verbal abuse, realizing it was as useless to try and silence it as it was to still the buzzing of a swarm of bees. But that whistling whiplash was something else again. It had been done with deliberate intent and, had it landed fairly, could have cut his face to the bone. So he twisted abruptly in his saddle, dark anger running all through him, thinning his lips, smoking up his eyes, but he had had no luck in locating the source of the taunting lash, for wagons were jammed all about him, and the whip could have reached for him from any one of a half dozen jeering, mocking drivers. There was nothing to do but work the black out of the crush and think things over.
Bruce Martell was no trouble hunter. He was a tough, capable man, full of quiet, steely pride, but insofar as events would allow, he governed himself and his actions with more than an ordinary amount of prudence and common sense. To him, a trouble hunter or a troublemaker was about as obnoxious a specimen as there was, and he had no patience with one. Only a fool asked for trouble when he could avoid it with dignity and the full retention of his own self-respect.
Yet he knew the limits of his own temper, and he realized that if he continued to ride through this town and any more whiplashes came his way, anything might happen. Prudence suggested that he get out of the saddle and go about his business on foot, where he would be less conspicuous.
There was a big general store directly across the street from the Land Office and—though the hitch rail in front of it was jammed hub to hub with wagons of all sorts and the low, long porch crowded with people—when he reined the black around to the rear of the place, he found himself comfortably free of the rush and turmoil. Here was a sprawling freight corral, holding a number of horses, with a pair of big Merivale freighters standing, high and empty to one side. He tethered the black to a corral rail, then went around on foot to try his luck in the store. Perhaps a question or two here might help.
Again he was doomed to disappointment. While he did manage to get inside the door of the place, the space between him and the counter was jammed with settlers and their women, all clamoring at once for the attention of the two harried, sweating men behind the counter. Martell saw this was neither the time nor place to get what he wanted.
He was turning back to the door when a shift of the close-packed crowd brought someone stumbling against him. The end of a fifty-pound sack of flour jammed into his chest, then thumped to the floor at his feet. A soft cry of feminine dismay sounded.
“Oh … I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to … but it was pretty heavy, and it was a case of drop the flour or fall down myself. Please … I’m really sorry …!”
Martell’s first thought was that her hair was almost the exact shade of rich russet that touched aspen leaves on the high summits after the first frost. Her blue eyes were wide and very clear, and her lips were a crimson curve of consternation. She was slim and supple and strong, but a fifty-pound sack of flour was a full-size tussle for a person like her under the best of circumstances, let alone in this jostling, pushing, heedless crowd.
The sternness of Martell’s lips broke into a faint smile that softened his face amazingly.
“Lady,” he said, “think nothing of it. Anything might happen in a stampede like this.” He caught up the sack of flour, shouldered it. “Now if you’ll show me where to take it …?”
He liked her quick common sense. She wasted no time in empty protest. The curve of her lips became an answering smile. “Thank you. You’re very kind. This way.”
She moved ahead of him through the crowd, out of the hectic doorway. Her shoulders were straight and gracefully square, and the heavy luxury of her hair lay in a thick roll at the nape of her slender neck. There was a spring wagon with its team of shaggy broncos tied at the hitch rail at the far end of the store porch, and here the girl paused.
“In here,” she said. “Thank heavens! That’s the heavy part of the chore done with. Now to go back into that madhouse and battle for the rest of it.”
Martell dumped the sack of flour into the back of the spring wagon and brushed the worst of its snowy dust from his jumper. “If you need any more help …?” he drawled.
She shook her ruddy head. “I can handle what’s left. Thank you again.”
She turned and hurried away, and Martell watched her until she had worked a way into the store again. Then, with a shrug and another faintly fleeting smile in tribute to the first pleasant interlude this country had afforded him, he turned to renewed consideration of his own problems.
Next door to the store was a saloon, doors winnowing steadily. A sign, angling across the front, named the place as the Frontier. The saloon, Martell knew, would be just as jammed as the rest of the town. But men would be having their drinks and moving on about their affairs, so in all probability he could find a niche at the bar and ask his questions while waiting for his drink. He moved over to the doors and went in.
Here, as he expected, was more of the crowd of pushing restless humans. Men elbowed a way to the bar, yelled and argued for service, and, when they finally got it, drank thirstily and went out again, with more always clamoring to take their places. Only the shadowy gloom of the place gave any suggestion of coolness.
In time Martell reached the bar, threw down a coin, and had a bottle of warm beer thrust at him by one of three perspiring bartenders.
“A moment, friend,” said Martell. “I’m looking for a settler by the name of Clebourne … Jeff Clebourne. Would you by chance have heard the name or have any idea what section of the basin he filed on?”
The bartender paused only to scrub the sweat from his face with the tail of his bedraggled apron. “Mister,” he answered heavily, “I don’t know anybody’s name or where anybody’s filed. If this damn rush don’t slow up pretty quick, I won’t even know my own name. Sorry.” He hurried away, answering the clamoring desires of others along the bar.
Martell drank his beer slowly. All he could say for it was that it was wet and that it cut the dust from his throat. He thought again of the letter he’d received from his younger brother Kip. He wished Kip had been a little more explicit in his directions. Yet, on second thought, the chances were that, at the time, the kid had no idea himself as to just where in Indio Basin Jeff Clebourne would finally stop his wagons and set up his boundary stakes. That he’d eventually come up with the Clebourne layout, Martell was confident. It was just a case of ride and look until finally, somewhere, he’d either get a lead by word of mouth, or stumble across the camp itself. But the chore, with conditions as confused as they were, all across these wide miles, wasn’t looking any the less difficult. Martell tipped his head back, drained the last mouthful from his bottle. At that moment a hard elbow drove into his ribs and a voice grated mockingly.
“Move along, cow wrastler! This ain’t your country anymore. Move along … and make room for a better man!”
Martell turned, putting the broad of his shoulders against the bar. Facing him was a tall, sloppily lank individual with a face that was narrow and bony, with eyes little and evil and deep-set, and a loose mouth. Behind the man stood two others of much the same mold and look. It had been a fairly tough day. The weariness of long miles in the saddle pulled at Martell’s muscles. Plain physical hunger was a liv
ing thing in his vitals. All day long he had met with scarcely a single civil word or gesture of good will. There had been that ruckus back in the foothills of the Lodestones at the scene of the slow-elking, and after that was the surly hostility he’d met in all the scattered settler camps along the trail. Still rankling at the back of his mind was the memory of curses and growls and jeers from men on foot and men on high wagon boxes. Finally there had been the slashing snap of that whiplash, barely missing his face. Now, here was still further affront, deliberate and calculated in its intent, from still another of this damned mob of stamping, cursing, heedless settlers.
The temper that had burned in Martell several times before throughout the day once more surged at the barrier of his self-restraint, sending the fluttering of raw tension across his cheeks, flattening the corners of his lips, darkening his eyes, and bringing him up and poised on his toes. But he fought it back, in part at least. His voice ran low and somewhat toneless. “At another time and place, mister, you’d have bought yourself a chore of proof. About being a better man, I mean.”
He would have turned away with that, but he wasn’t to get off so easily. This lank brute in front of him had sought this thing deliberately, recognizing a lone saddle man in hostile company. The jamming numbers of his own kind about him filled the fellow with confidence. “You move too slow, cow wrastler,” he leered. “Get goin’!”
He reached out, gave Martell a violent shove. Martell’s temper turned to cold rage and spilled over. Reckless of consequence, he twisted the empty beer bottle and smashed it fully into the narrow, jeering face. It was a wicked blow, wickedly meant. The bottle crashed to fragments, and the man went down.
There were many in this close-packed room who neither saw nor heard any part of the start of this thing, so close was the crush, so steady and raucous the din of men’s voices. But from those immediately around Martell, a concerted growl arose, along with a swift-building physical pressure as they began closing in on him. Instantly Martell realized that he was in for something that could be very bad. Conceivably, he might be lucky to get out of this thing alive.
Chapter Three
The two who had stood behind the man Martell clubbed down gave back slightly at the blow. Then they came lunging in together, and in the whipping hand of one of them gleamed the bared steel of a knife.
Martell had no chance to go for his gun; they were too close to him. He threw up his left arm as a barrier against that driving knife and felt the slide of steel across the heavy muscles just below the point of his shoulder, and the keen edge of the weapon burned like a white-hot iron. The fellow behind the knife, carried forward by the violence of his deadly lunge, was wide open to the blow Martell smashed at his body. Martell put everything he had into the punch, for he knew he could not risk another drive from that knife.
He felt the fellow’s belly muscles cave under his knuckles, heard the eruptive gasp of agony. The knife wielder sagged to his knees, retching and sick. Martell kicked him in the face, then went right over him, after the third of this trouble-hunting trio.
They met chest to chest, and the settler was like some mad, crazy animal. He clawed, stamped, gouged, tried to jam Martell back against the bar and corner him there. Keeping his hands low, Martell took two mauling blows in the face before he could smash his man twice in the midriff. This gained him room enough to straighten and hammer a solid one home to the snarling face. The fellow went back, floundering, and Martell seized on this respite to break away from the bar and drive into the crowd toward the door.
It was heavy going. They came at him from all sides, aiming wild, clubbing blows, trying to beat him down. But the very weight of their own numbers partially defeated this purpose, for in the mad crush none could get a clear smash at him. It became a struggling, no-quarter, cursing bedlam, a whirlpool of savage humanity, with Bruce Martell in the vortex.
Martell took blows. He was bound to, what with the number being thrown at him. Fists bounced off his head and face, bloodied his mouth. They hurt him and shook him up, but they were not too damaging. He did not make the mistake of trying to answer too many of them. Instead, throwing the full weight of his shoulders and all the driving strength in his back and legs into the effort, he bulled his way doggedly along.
A chair was trampled underfoot, splintered. A poker table skidded back and forth before the whirling drive of bodies. A hulking settler, cursing it as an obstruction, grabbed the edge of the table and upset it, and it immediately became something for men to become entangled with and to fall over.
Martell stumbled over one leg of it himself, but managed to keep his feet. A settler, who had just nailed Martell with the hardest blow he’d yet felt, tangled with the same obstruction and reeled off balance, arms waving wildly. Martell paid him back, hitting him with the full roll of his shoulders behind the punch, and the settler went headlong.
That upturned table became an ally of Martell’s. He was past it now, but those after him tripped and staggered, went down, dragging others with them. And now Martell reached the far wall, beside the door. He put the flat of his shoulders against this secure barrier and, for the moment, found things slightly clear before him. He jammed his right hand down, found his gun still in the holster, drew it, and drove one booming shot into the floor.
“Give way!” he panted hoarsely. “Get back! I’ll kill the next man who tries to lay a hand on me. Back up, damn you—back up!” They gave way. The lusting fury of the mob was not enough to blind them to the potent threat of that big black gun. And they saw—in the dark storm in Martell’s eyes, in the hard, bloodied line of his mouth—a bitter determination to do exactly as he threatened. So they crowded back and widened the cleared space before him.
He sidled along the wall, shoulders brushing it. His knife-cut left arm was outstretched, fingers feeling the wall as he moved, but his eyes never left that bleakly hating group in front of him, nor did his ready gun waver in the slightest. Now his exploring left hand located the doorpost and the giving swing of the portal beyond. A quick lunge drove it open, and then he was through and into the street beyond. Clamoring like bloodhounds, the settler mob poured out after him. Martell darted into the wagon-cluttered street, barely escaped being trampled by one rearing team, then dodged to momentary safety beyond a lumbering, two-wagon freight outfit.
There ahead of him, just spinning into the clear from the hitch rail before the store, was a spring wagon behind a pair of shaggy broncos. At the reins was a slim figure with hair the color of autumn-dressed aspen leaves. She saw him on the instant, and he saw her eyes go wide and startled.
There was a quick mind under that crown of shining hair. She seemed to see and understand all that was behind his bloodied mouth and the bleak desperation in his eyes, for she locked the brake of her wagon and set the broncos up rearing.
“Quick!” she cried. “In here!”
Martell shook his head. “Not your affair. And there could be shooting!”
A settler, faster of foot than his fellows, broke past the freight outfit, came charging. Martell dodged, cuffed him with the barrel of his gun, knocked him sprawling.
The girl’s voice was a high, urgent peal. “Don’t be an idiot! Quick—up here with me!”
With the words she reached past Martell with her whiplash, cutting across the face still-another settler who had dodged past the wagon tangle. The fellow stumbled back, hands pawing his face, cursing crazily.
“Quick!” she cried once more. “It’s your only chance!”
Martell grabbed at the iron seat rail, swung himself up beside her. The girl’s whip came down again, this time across the bunched haunches of her team. The broncos hit their collars in a wild lunge. The wagon shot ahead.
For a hundred yards it was a wild ride. How they got through, Bruce Martell never knew. The girl’s slim forearms were rigid, as, half risen from the wagon seat, she guided the plunging broncos through the tangle.
The spring wagon skidded almost half around a creaking Conestoga, seemed certain about to crash into the side of it, straightened clear at the last split second. It almost miraculously dodged a ponderous freighter, took a wheel clear off a flimsy cart—letting that conveyance and its driver down in a cloud of dust and a fading howl of outraged, sulfurous cursing. They seemed inevitably trapped between two more heavy freighters, but at the last moment shot through an opening so narrow Martell distinctly heard the click of iron-rimmed wheel hubs kissing as they passed.
Beyond was reasonable space, and now the broncos really flattened to their chore. Behind, the street was all a-rumble with seething, bawling anger, but this faded swiftly with distance. In a few more tense, dust-clogged moments they were beyond the limits of town and whirling away into the wide prairie ahead.
Martell twisted in the seat and looked back. He could see no sign of further pursuit forming, and he doubted there would be any. This whole crazy business had been too wild and confused and spontaneous to carry much follow-through. It was like a flash fire in a thicket of dry brush—a quick, hot, towering flame, and then cooling ashes.
The temper of the settler mob wasn’t deep enough to last long. It had been a rough, wicked brawl, but no one had been killed. As long as the settler mob had something immediately in front of it to hate and take a swing at, it was dangerous and lusting. But the mob wasn’t up to gathering means of pursuit and leaving town, and the drive of their own affairs, on what could now be an empty chase. The big hate had brewed in the saloon, and there most of it would remain.
“You can slow ’em down, now,” Martell told the girl. “It’s all over.”
She pulled the broncos to a jog, to a walk, and then to complete halt.
“I don’t know why I did it,” she said, her voice strained and muffled. “I heard a gunshot just before you broke into the street. You killed somebody back there.”
Martell shook his head. “No. I just shot into the floor to make ’em back away from me.”
