“Not for a while,” interposed Joe softly. “I guess it’s about time to set the ball rollin’. Me and my partner are declarin’ ourselves. Come on, Indigo.”
They circled the sheriff, never letting him out of sight, and dropped beside Dead Card John. “How’s politics in this room?” Joe asked. “It don’t make no difference to me what this gent’s past history is. He’s on the right side of the fence now. Who’s declarin’ for him? He’s upholdin’ the girl, ain’t he? Why not give him a ride, then? If he starts puttin’ anything in his own pockets the county ought to be strong enough to haze him down when said time comes. As between the devil and the deep blue sea, I’ll take to water myself. Nuggins, yore hat hides yore horns!”
Thunder rode Nuggins. “Yuh’ve wrote yore own ticket, friend! I never let a man interfere with my ideas!” He ducked his head around the room. “All right, boys. Come over here and line up.”
The sheriff started to speak, but crowded the words back down his throat. For the tide drifted both ways. Nuggins collected some of the Ox Bow men to him, some of the visiting punchers, and a few of his own men who had managed to cross the bridge. The old-timers to a man stuck to their own group, beside the sheriff. What astonished Joe, and therefore possibly silenced Crowheart Ames, was the support Dead Card John pulled from the assemblage. Six Ox Bow men, the partners, the saloon proprietor from Terese, and a scattering of young bloods, these were with him. And after another moment, three of the old-timers left the neutral bunch with some show of reluctance and added to Dead Card John’s strength. It did not match the strength of Nuggins by half, but it was sufficient to check any immediate rush.
“Every penny of this ranch and every inch of it goes to the girl,” droned Dead Card John. “There’s my word. You know I never go back on that, Nuggins.”
“It may go to the girl,” snapped Nuggins, “but it may come back to you again, John. You’re both the same kind. The two of yuh ribbed old Rube!”
“Be careful, Nuggins!”
“I got yuh over a barrel, Johnny,” cried Nuggins, using the words as he would have used a knife. They slashed through the smoke laden air. “It took me five years to sap yuh. I got yuh licked. This ranch is mine. I said so! I’ll pay a figure out o’ the earnin’s and no man in Terese can say it ain’t legal. Yuh ain’t big enough any more to stand in my way, Johnny!”
“Be careful, Nuggins!”
Crowheart Ames’s little eyes jumped from side to side. He took off his hat and pushed his fingers nervously across his hair, a plain picture of a thoroughly bedeviled man. The scene and the situation ran rapidly beyond control. Turning to the kegs he scooped another dipper of whisky into his bulldog jaws. Those old-timers in the neutral ranks were studying him with an uncomfortable closeness. One of them leaned and whispered in his ear. Crowheart’s whole face lightened. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”
Nuggins launched his challenge to Dead Card John. “Take yore men and get out! I give yuh two minutes to pass the doors. Yo’re trespassin’ on my property.”
“In two minutes,” was Dead Card John’s brief, chill answer, “we will draw guns.”
The sheriff stepped between the parties. “No fight,” he announced. “We’ve got to cool off and do some figurin’. Nuggins, take yore men out to the bunkhouses and wait. Me and these gentlemen”—pointing to the neutral bunch—“will collect at the barn and do some arguin’.”
“I’m not movin’ an inch,” snapped Nuggins.
One of the neutral men challenged this. “No? How far do yuh think that’s goin’ to ride? You be reasonable. We want some time to compare notes. We ain’t against yuh, Nuggins. But we’ll just take control till we decide who’s right.”
Nuggins shook his head. “I’ll share this house with Johnny.”
“Johnny stays,” replied the spokesman of the neutrals. “You go, plenty prompt. Don’t get us sore. We got you outnumbered and if yo’re goin’ to get pig-headed we’re apt to throw in with the other side. Bustle.”
The sheriff was watching Nuggins and his head dropped a faint distance in signal. Nuggins gave in. “All right. At the bunkhouses.” Dead Card John and his followers held steady as Nuggins led his crowd into the rain-swept night. Crowheart Ames and the neutral ranchers followed.
“Close the door—lock it,” said Dead Card John.
Joe stepped over and did it.
“Smells like more spoiled beef to me,” grumbled Indigo. Joe raced across the room in great strides, shattering the globes of the reflecting lamps. A burst of shots smashed the front window panes. “Drop!” shouted Joe, and made a leap for the remaining lamp. They went down to the floor, the room in semi-darkness. The saloon proprietor from Terese groaned. “They took a tuck in my ribs, boys.”
Chapter V: Trump Card
“Roll away from the front of the fire,” ordered Dead Card John. Window glass elsewhere in the house splintered and jangled on the floor.
“How many doors to this shebang?” demanded Joe, plastered in a corner.
“They’re all locked,” answered an Ox Bow man. “I seen to that a long time back. Hell, I thought them old dudes was Rube’s friends. They’s a pack uh flea-bitten dawgs an’ they only got outen the house to save their rotten hides from bein’ perforated.”
One of the three ranch owners who had deserted from the neutral group challenged this with mild anger: “I don’t take that kindly. Those gentlemen are friends o’mine. Keep yore heavy tongue off ’em. Ames is only waitin’ to see which side wins before declarin’ himself. They know it and they ain’t bein’ fooled none. But mebbe you think it’s an easy job to figger this scramble?”
“It looks plain enough to me,” said the Ox Bow man.
“Well, it don’t to them. Don’t you mistake it none, they’ll fight. But they ain’t helpin’ nobody till they’re plumb shore a ketch ain’t involved.”
Joe raised his gun and took aim into the night. A roar and a spattering of lead slugs filled the room. The driving wind found the apertures in the shattered glass and raced against the fireplace, fanning it to a white, tall blaze. A back door splintered and the partners, galloping toward that quarter at the head of six or so others, met Nuggins’s men head-on. The door was off its hinges and the opening filled and spilling over. Some thoughtful defender shot out a light, leaving nothing to the sight save a square rectangle of uneasy blackness where the door had been. Gun flashes made purple-orange dusters there; a long, wild cry beat inward, flesh struck flesh. Impact and recoil. Powder smoke belched back, whipped by the wind. And the gun flashes faded and the sortie was ended, one man’s groan of ebbing mortality marking the effort that had been made.
Dead Card John rallied them back to the main room. “One fellow watch this opening. Rest at the other side o’ the house. I think they’re tryin’ to draw us off guard.”
They assembled in the shadowed corners, waiting. One lone shot drummed along the rain. Boots shuffled across the floor. “Lights comin’ on in the bunkhouses. Guess they got a bellyful. Lights in the barn, too.”
“Waitin’ for daylight,” observed Indigo. “Which is help to them and no good use to us.”
“Why not?” asked Dead Card John, somewhere in the remote shadows.
“A river which goes up can likewise come down,” opined Indigo. “If ever they get the rest of their outfit acrost the water we’re in a bad shape. Not mentionin’ the fact an’ possibility o’ this Ames jasper swingin’ the old ducks his way. Proceedin’ with the inquest I will state we ain’t got enough men to scatter ’round this castle and head off a daylight attack.”
Somebody away back in the room vented his disgust. “You sound like an undertaker. If yuh got chilblains, clear out.”
Joe interceded. He had a great respect for his partner’s sense of strategy. Indigo could not plan ahead, neither was he a very good judge or leader of men. But once a situation hung in front of his nose he had no superior picking the weak and the strong angles. This was bor
n hot of imagination but of long experience. Therefore, Joe came to Indigo’s assistance. “You boys take note. Indigo’s no specimen of beauty, but he’s been in more arguments than the pack of you fellows put together. Right now he’s talkin’ sound.”
“Yeah? Well, what about it?”
“Why wait for ’em to visit us?” proceeded Indigo. “Le’s get four-five boys together and shoot a few holes in their dawg house. When yuh keep a man busy brushin’ lead offen his shoulders he’s plumb apt to get discouraged.”
Silence met his proposal. Some rash individual crouched in front of the fire and proceeded to light a cigarette. “Don’t do that!” snapped Dead Card John.
“What time is it?”
“Goin’ on three in the mornin’. Couple hours till we can see somethin’.”
Indigo emitted a sound half between pain and anger. “Sa-ay, what am I smellin’?”
“Grub, mister. They’s a whole table full of beans yonder.”
Indigo’s boots echoed across the room and into the adjoining one like the clatter of a cavalry troop. And they heard him murmuring, “Sometimes I shore do pass up a bet.”
Dead Card John took command of the conversation. “About that idea of goin’ out after them. It’s a good one. Any volunteers?”
“How about yoreself?” queried some slightly suspicious individual.
“Never ask a man to do anything I wouldn’t try first,” was Dead Card John’s ice-cold reply. “And I will kindly beg you to remember you are not fighting for me but for the girl.” His voice rose to a higher, incredibly bitter note. “I would see you all in hell before I’d ask a favor on my own account! Who’s got nerve enough to tackle the bunkhouse?”
That touched them. Out of the screening darkness they cursed him; they were rising up to the challenge. But Joe Breedlove had another idea and another purpose. “Wait a second. Before you get started on this bust, I want to crawl over to the barn and see what that collection of whiskers has got figured out.”
“Another good idea.”
Joe aimed for the door Nuggins’s outfit had battered down. “Back in a little while. If I ain’t, draw yore own conclusions.”
“Hey,” shouted Indigo, sounding strangled. “Wait till I find the bottom o’ this bean crock.”
“No, you stay put,” decided Joe, and bent his head through the whirling gusts of rain.
He cleared the door at one long jump, landed on his haunches and crouched there, waiting. Nothing happened. Rising, he turned directly toward the lights glimmering out of the barn apertures. Against the lee shelter of its walls, he waited again, one ear tight against the boards. But the wind and the rain, still slanting furiously from the sky drowned all other sound and he turned a corner and bore down upon the front entrance. The great sliding door was closed, the lesser door cut within it rattled to the pressure of his shoulder. He lifted the latch and crowded through, lantern light springing upon him. The neutrals were slouched in the straw; Crowheart Ames sat cross-legged behind the lantern’s golden glow, heavy lids squinting up and across the bowl of radiance. “Who’s that?”
“One o’ the strangers.”
The sheriff sprang to his feet. “I’ll take care of him right now!”
Joe came forward and squatted within the circle, conscious that this group watched him with the same curious closeness that a hunting pack would bestow upon a treed coon. The sheriff started to cross the center of the group and was stopped by an admonitory hand. “Sit down, Crowheart. It ain’t yore party, is it?”
Joe made note of the speaker. He had seen the man talking confidentially to Mamerock earlier in the evening. He had heard a name—something like Bristow—attached to him by Mamerock. And this Bristow at present seemed a leader of the gathering; a chap with coal black whiskers and coal black eyes. He flashed them on Joe Breedlove. “What’s on yore mind, brother?”
Breedlove eased himself nearer the light, relaxing; and he smiled that frank, disarming smile that never yet had failed to win him friends and followers. His palms turned up, Indian fashion; he looked around the circle and back into the tiers of men half hidden outside the ring of light, glance returning to meet Bristow’s straight, blunt regard.
“Wondered if you fellows had reached a decision yet?”
“Dead Card John send you?”
“It’s my own curiosity,” replied Joe. “But I’d say the other boys are some interested.”
Bristow shot a quick question at him, reminding Joe of a prosecuting attorney he once had faced long ago. “What profit do you get haulin’ Dead Card John’s chestnuts out of the fire, stranger?”
Joe smiled once more. “I’m a hell of a fellow to mind my own business, till somethin’ stings me.” The smile vanished. “My partner and I saw Sam Trago dead up in his folks’ house. We overheard a lot of things since. We got a ticket to Rube Mamerock’s fandango. I might ask you the same question, friend. Why should you pull Nuggins’s chestnuts out o’ the fire?”
“Who says we are?”
“Write yore own ticket. Here you boys augur, while said gent plants a bunch of lead into the house. Looks to me as if you wanted Nuggins to steal the girl’s right.”
“Don’t get so precious about it,” grunted Bristow. He leaned back, frowning into the straw. “Maybe you think we ain’t been debatin’ it a little. Seems to me that for a mature, shrewd-lookin’ man you take a lot o’ stock in Dead Card John. Don’t you know a crook when you see one?”
“Which likewise applies to Nuggins,” countered Joe mildly.
“Yeah, we know that better’n you do,” muttered Bristow.
Crowheart Ames leaned into the light, florid and threatening. “Yuh talk too damn’ much for a stranger! Dead Card John ribbed old Mamerock some way. It’s as plain as the nose on yore face. Mamerock spent most of his life cussin’ folks like Johnny. It don’t stand to reason he’d change in a minute.”
Joe looked at Bristow. The latter nodded, confirming that idea. “It’s the way we look at it, stranger.”
Joe got out his cigarette papers, and talked casually, half to himself. “So Terese lets the girl fight her own battles. Well, I’ve heard o’ people like that—”
“Hell’s pit!” exploded Bristow. “Who said we aimed to let her lose her right? But we ain’t playin’ Dead Card John’s cards for him, either.”
“Then you play Nuggins’s,” said Joe with unmistakable definiteness.
“Nuggins can be hazed into line,” argued Bristow, “if he tries anything funny.”
“Why argue with this jasper?” stormed the sheriff. “We don’t owe him no apologies. Great Moses, yuh gents aggravate me! He’d ought to be in jail or rid out on a rail. I’m goin’ to see it done before this is through.”
Joe went serenely on with the business of manufacturing his cigarette. Nothing disturbed the even set of his face, yet his mind raced down long alleys of thought. He felt the uncertainty of these neutrals. They were between two fires, reluctant to throw in with a notorious character, yet desiring to see the will of an ancient friend carried out. Another thing he knew; these men had a trace of fear when it came to Nuggins. The latter was a power, a sinister influence, while Dead Card John’s star was setting. And it was because of all this that Bristow, mirroring the thought of the crowd, unconsciously put himself on the defensive to a complete stranger. Joe crimped his cigarette and lit it. “I’ve always found it never pays to be scared of any man. Always found said man could be knocked over somehow. It only takes one bullet to kill Nuggins’s kind.”
The shot was shrewdly aimed. He heard the rumbling rise of protest all around him. It had touched them on a sore spot. Bristow’s intensely black eyes filled with a hot, personal anger. “I don’t take that kindly, stranger. Who are you to tell folks they’re yellow?”
“Ain’t I told yuh it’s time to knock him over?” cried Crowheart Ames, weaving forward.
But this crowd was not to be swayed by the sheriff. Somebody to the rear of Joe cursed Ames and told hi
m to hold his peace, Crowheart’s unlovely face dropped; he sat on his haunches, perplexed and uneasy.
“If,” drawled Joe, never raising his voice, “you boys knew this Dead Card John meant what he said about protectin’ the girl’s rights would it help any?”
He heard a note of encouragement in the rumbling comment. Bristow’s black beard bobbed in acknowledgment. “That’d be the end of talk, then and there,” said he. “But nobody believes what he says. It ain’t in the cards. The man’s played Terese for his own gains a long time, stranger. And I told you once we ain’t helpin’ his hand none.”
“What was the girl’s name?” asked Joe, seeming to wander off in his mind.
“Chasteen.”
Joe drew a deep breath of smoke. He knew well that if what he was about to say was to carry conviction he must first convince them of his own honesty. And he could only do that by keeping his mouth shut and letting them look at him. All his credentials were on his face; no word would help. So he straightened, a tall, soldierly and sinewy outline with the yellow light stamping the fine, rugged features. He was in the full vigor of his maturity, he had seen the West inside and out down along the far trail of his roaming. And because Joe had been hurt badly, because he had fought bravely, he could stand before this crowd now and impress them with the gentle, honest tolerance that was so great a part of his character. He had swayed men before, he did it now. And the very lifting of his cigarette brought a deeper silence to the barn.
“I guess I’ve been a driftin’ fool all my life,” he drawled. “When a man sleeps under the stars enough times a house won’t do. And when he follows the trail so many miles, a steady job can’t hold him. I’m the sort of a man you gents hire for a season and never see again. West is full of ’em. I never knew my folks. Started on the spur when I was fourteen. A long time ago. Once in Abilene—”
The great barn door surged to the wind, the lantern guttered. Bristow put a vast hand around the globe top. Crowheart Ames watched Joe out of the shadows. Somebody smothered a cough.
The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories Page 46
