The Max Brand Megapack

by Max Brand

  He tried to count all heads, and numbered sixteen, besides those who might be out of sight around the wagons, or who perhaps were otherwise concealed from him.

  How they had come in was plainly to be seen. The tracks of the wagons stretched away toward the south, on the eastern side of the creek. No doubt they had worked the heavily laden wagons, up through the high hills to a place of advantage, and when they were ready, they had simply driven down in the middle of the night. Now they were busy in pushing ahead their lines of battle, for a battle certainly would be fought for the possession of those streaks of barbed wire.

  Grinding his teeth, he calculated chances.

  He had under him a number of good men on that ranch. They could ride like fiends, and when it came to shooting, they were more than average. He could rake together as many fighting men as were present in the hollow, there, beneath him. He could recruit still other hands in the neighborhood.

  But even if he had forty of fifty men to throw against the strangers, what would that accomplish?

  Men who were willing to jump claims knew beforehand the resistance they were likely to encounter, and they were sure to come well prepared. If they were not great in numbers, they would be great in ability. Not a soul among the crowd down there, as Spot Gregory shrewdly guessed, but was a thorough ruffian, a man-killer, or ambitious to kill men. Every one of them had proved his desperate character, or he would not now be present. They were hand-picked villains who probably had lived by the guns for years, hunting down their fellow men as more respectable hunters might chase bears or wolves.

  So Gregory felt a rising sense of helplessness.

  He was on the verge of swinging his horse about and rushing for the ranch house, to let his employer know the disaster which had befallen them. The water claim of the Milman ranch had been jumped, and that would be tidings to make Milman turn green with passion.

  However, Milman was too much the honorable man to meet murder with murder. Bare-handed aggression he had plenty of courage to meet, but if there was the ghost of a legal form lined up against him, he would be certain to wait for the law to show him the way.

  The law!

  How could the law act in time to save the thousands of the Milman cattle from death by water famine?

  In the meantime, it was better to go down and look this trouble in the face. So he cantered the nervous mustang down the easy slope toward the men who, on this side of the river, were toiling to run the fence line. There were four of them so employed, two cutting post holes, stamping out the earth with cutters, or drilling it with augers. The second pair set up the posts and tamped them in place, or stretched the wire.

  The posts were poor, twisted ones, and the wire was but loosely strung—two meager strands of it. Plainly the boundary was not to be strong, unless gunpowder could strengthen it enough!

  In the background, there was a fifth man, who rode slowly back and forth, keeping an eye on the fence builders, and again on those hands who warded back the thirsting cows as they descended from the hills. To this fellow of apparent authority, Spot Gregory advanced, with a wave of his hand, which the other came forward willingly to meet.

  They met one another close to the fence makers, and the latter stopped work gladly to watch the interview.

  As for the rider, Gregory found him to be the true Western type, spare in flesh, but looking tough as whip leather. A magnificent forehead rose above the lean, brown face.

  “Hello!” said Spot Gregory. “You’re Champ Dixon, ain’t you?”

  “That’s me,” said Dixon, pleasantly. “I’ve met you, somewheres. Gregory. Is that your name?”

  “Yeah. That’s my name. What in hell-fire are you up to here, Dixon?”

  “Oh, just picking up a right smart little piece of ground for me and my partner.”

  “Who’s your partner?”

  “Billy Shay.”

  “Shay!” exclaimed Spot angrily. “That—”

  The other raised his gloved hand.

  “Easy, Gregory!” he warned.

  And Spot Gregory set his teeth with a stifled groan.

  He had expected the worst, and yet this was a little too bad even for his expectations. The snakelike cunning of Shay and the deadly hand of Dixon to back him up made the combination hard to defeat.

  For his own part, he was a mere child before such a practiced assassin as Champ Dixon.

  “Dixon,” said he. “How’re you gonna hack this up in the law courts? Or is it only a way to blackmail poor Milman out of money to water his cattle, for a few days?”

  “Money for watering his cows?” said the other genially. “Well, old son, the fact is that we wouldn’t plunge like this except for a big thing. We’ve looked into Milman’s title to his whole ranch, and it ain’t worth a whoop! So we’ve took over the piece that we want!”

  CHAPTER 16

  Storm Clouds

  When discretion and judgment were considered; Spot Gregory seemed to possess both. He looked Dixon in the eye. He even allowed himself time to glance to the side, and to observe the broad grins upon the faces of the four men who were looking on, leaning on the posts of the fence.

  “Well,” said he, “if you was to hunt around to pick out a piece of ground that would do you less good, and more harm to Milman. I dunno that you could of picked better than this.”

  “No, sir,” said Champ Dixon, “I dunno that we could I looked over this here layout personal, a while back, and that’s what I figgered myself.”

  “Tell me, Dixon,” said the foreman of the ranch, “what made you boys have it in for Milman? What’s he ever done agin’ you, or any of you?”

  Champ Dixon, at this unimpassioned appeal, was forced to scratch his head with such earnestness that he pushed his hat far back.

  “What’s he done agin’ us?” he echoed, while he gathered his thoughts.

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m askin’.”

  “Well,” said Champ, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’ll tell you about that. Out here in the Far West, where they’s still a frontier, as the hooks put it, and out here where the hair grows long, they ain’t much law nor not much respect for the other feller’s rights, is they?”

  “Well, in a way I reckon that there ain’t,” said Spot Gregory.

  “And I reckon that worryin’ about how the law goes through pretty nigh bites you folks to the bone!”

  Champ Dixon permitted himself a broad grin.

  “Well,” said he, “maybe that’s a way of puttin’ it. The way that it seems to me, a whole lot of gents, they step into this here country, out here, and they says to themselves that the country’s so big that they got a right to pick out the parts of it that they want for themselves. So they sashays in and they picks out what they want and they don’t pay nothin’ much for it, and they settles down onto it, and they says that because they’re here, there ain’t any reason why they should ever have to budge. Now, sir, some of us, we take a look around and we say that the pigs that is the fattest might be the pigs that is the most profitable to drive to market, if you foller what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I sort of foller your drift,” answered Spot Gregory. “And so you want to budge the old landholders?”

  “You might say that!” remarked Champ Dixon. “What I mean is that here is the Milmans set down on the land and gettin’ hog-fat, and how? What title they got to this land, I ask you?”

  “Why, I dunno that anybody has asked that question for a long time,” said Gregory. “Everybody that I know has took it for granted that the Milmans own the Milman land.”

  “Yeah,” said Dixon. “They’s a lot of incurious folks in this neck of the woods. But supposin’ that I ask you, how did the Milmans get this here land. D’you know?”

  “Why, they bought it from the Injuns.”

  “And who sold it to them?”

  “I dunno that I know that.”

  “I’ll tell you. It was Little Crow, was his name. He was a tolerable sizeable man, in his day, and a bi
g war chief. And he had a pile of scalps to his credit. He’s got a war suit all trimmed up with scalp locks. He’s got more than one suit. If he goes on a Comanche trail, he can put on a suit dressed up with Comanche hair. And if he tackles a white war party, he’s got a suit tricked up with white folks’ hair. Some tolerable long and golden hair, in the lot. And he’s a great fighter, this here Little Crow. When it comes to the finish, it takes booze and three whites to take the scalp of that infant, what I mean to tell you.

  “Well, sir, along comes old Daddy Milman, before this here boy of his ever see the light, and he reckons that he’ll take up land here. And he picks up the spot that’ll suit him the best.

  “And then he finds out that it’s Injun land. And he says, what Injun shall he buy it from, him wantin’ to be all straight and honorable. And so he picks on the big war chief and grand scalp-getter, Little Crow, that had counted so many coups that he gets the arm ache every time that there come along a grand feast and lyin’ party among the tribe.

  “So he goes to Little Crow and he says, what do you want? And whatcha think that Little Crow wants?”

  “I dunno,” said Spot Gregory, “that I ever heard.”

  “Most folks ain’t. But it’s been our business to find out. What he wants is six rifles, all in prime shape, and a hundred rounds of ammunition for each of ’em, and two dozen hosses—because that’s about as high as he can count—and one whole keg of thirty-six gallons of fire water.”

  “That’s what he wanted for this ranch?”

  “Aye,” said Champ Dixon, “and he thought that he was gettin’ a whale of a big bargain, and that he could step in and run out the whites with the guns that he had got from them whenever he had a mind. So he makes the bargain, and old Milman, he counts out the goods, and he goes better than his bargain, and he makes that set of rifles the finest that can be got, and he chucks in an extra lot of ammunition, and he makes them hosses an even thirty, and the best that money can get or ropes steal off the range. And that fire water he makes, it’s the pure stuff, because he don’t make it alcohol, prune juice, and water, but he makes it straight alcohol, and on the night of that sale, and payment, they is three braves that plumb die of joy, and a couple of squaws they change husbands, and they is five sets of hair lifted inside of the next week or so, because the whole bunch goes on the warpath. But anyway, the Injuns is happy, and Milman is happy. He’s got a coupla million dollars’ worth of land, and the Injuns, they has got one grand jag.

  “After a while, they start in tryin’ to get paid over again.”

  “Blackmail?” said Spot Gregory.

  “You can call it that,” admitted the other. “Anyway, they try to collect some more of that thousand proof fire water, but they find that in behind old Milman there has sneaked another man, by name of Uncle Sam, and when the Injuns climb onto their war ponies, old Uncle Sam, he hits out of the dark, and pops ’em in the nose and knocks ’em off again. You foller that?”

  “I foller all of that,” said Spot Gregory, looking with the corner of his eye at a tangle of fifty thirsting cows who were trying to rush to the water, but in vain.

  “Now along comes Billy Shay and me,” continued the narrator, “and we get to lookin’ over the lay of the land, and we get to seein’ how much law and order they is around here, and how good a claim a lot of these cattle kings has got to their land, and the first thing that we find out is that most of them ain’t got none at all. And that old Milman, he sure made a grand mistake, and I’ll tell you why.

  “Little Crow, he was a great chief, and all that, and he had cut off enough hair to plant a forty-acre field, but the trouble was that he wasn’t the main chief of that tribe, and that he had no more right to sell off a part of the land than I have to sell Broadway and Beekman Street. No, sir, he didn’t have no right at all. And before there was a sale, there should of been a grand palaver, and all the chiefs there, and specially New Monday, which was really the head of the tribe, though he hadn’t taken a scalp for thirty years he was that old.

  “When we heard that, we went around and we found out that the Injuns still had a right to this land, if the sale by Little Crow was wrong and we find out that the real head of the tribe today is Happy Monday—he’s a descendant of New Monday. So we go to see Happy Monday, and he’s sick in one eye and can’t see very good out of the other, and we get Happy Monday to sell us this here bit of land for three hosses and three hogsheads of alcohol, which is dirt cheap. But it’s hard to educate redskins up to high prices. And we get that sale made, and we come down here and move onto the land that’s rightfully ours. And if Milman, he don’t believe that we got the right, he can go to the law and get licked—or he can try gunpowder—and get licked.”

  Spot Gregory bit his lip.

  “That’s a mighty movin’ story,” said he. “Maybe you’ll tell me what you’d sell out this bit of land for?”

  Champ Dixon looked around him with an obvious complacency.

  “They’s a thing that you might of noted,” said he. “That we got the water rights of this here ranch in our pants pockets.”

  “I’ve noted that the cows is stickin’ out their tongues and bawlin’ for somethin’ more than air,” said he.

  “Well, sir,” said Champ Dixon, licking his lips, “it occurs to me and Billy Shay that it would be a dog-gone outright shame to sell this here crop of water, that never needs to be planted and that comes to hundreds of millions of tons a year—it would be a dog-gone shame to sell it for less’n a coupla hundred dollars.”

  Spot Gregory looked blandly around him at the flowing thousand stream and at the running water.

  “You want two hundred thousand?” said he.

  “That’s the price, old son.”

  “And how much you charge for all of the fine sunshine and the air that the cows will be breathin’?”

  “Billy and me is downright generous,” said the other, “and we throw that in as a kind of bounty to sweeten the deal.”

  “Yeah, it sweetens it, all right,” said Spot Gregory. “Now, just supposin’ that we wanted a time to think this deal over—that Milman wanted time, I mean?”

  “Take all the time that you want,” said the other. “Only I hope that your cows won’t be dyin’ like flies in the meantime.”

  “And suppose that we wanted to water ’em while we was thinkin’?”

  “I never heard of a cow needin’ water to think on,” said Dixon grimly. “And you can tell Milman that for me, too.”

  “I’ll tell him,” agreed the other. “Now, then, suppose that we wanted to water them cows, how much would you charge a head?”

  “We’re reasonable,” said Champ Dixon. “It sure does grieve us a lot to think of cows goin’ thirsty. So we’re willin’ to let you water them cows for two dollars a head.”

  “Two dollars?” shouted the foreman. “We might as well haul beer up here and water ’em with that!”

  “Well,” said the other thoughtfully, “I never figgered on that. But maybe it would do as good!”

  “Gregory hastily pulled out his plug of tobacco and bit off a liberal corner.

  “Is that a go?” said he.

  “‘Yeah, that’s a go.”

  “No changin’?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me, Champ—ain’t that Two-gun Porter, and Missouri Slim, and the Haley brothers, over yonder?”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “And the rest of your bunch match up? Well,” said Gregory, “I got an idea that more’n money is gonna be paid for this land. And the color of it is gonna be red.”

  He did not pause to say adieu, but turned the head of his horse and rode away.

  CHAPTER 17

  Bad News

  When the foreman was over the ridge, he turned loose that stubborn broncho, and made him run for his life, with a jab of the spurs or a cut of the quirt every fifty yards or so.

  He made that poor mustang hold to the one gait until it had reached the ranch house,
and then Spot Gregory threw the reins and jumped from a horse that did not need to be tied. It stood like a lamb, while Spot ran on into the house.

  It was just such a house as a thousand other ranchers in the West had built before Milman, and would build after him. It was a long strung-out place in the midst of what had once been a flourishing grove, but the nearest trees had been cut away for firewood, regardless of shady comfort in the middle of the summer. All the ground around the house was stamped bare by the horses which were often tied up in great lines to the hitching racks. Through the naked dust, a dozen or so of chickens scratched and went about thrusting their heads before them at every step.

  A heavy wind of a few years before had threatened to knock down the kitchen wing like a stack of cards, and this had been secured with a great pair of plough chains, taken up taut with a tourniquet. This chain was the only ornament that appeared on that unpainted barn of a house. It leaned all askew. It was plainly no more than a shelter, with little pretension of being a comfortable house. Yet the Milman hospitality was famous for two hundred miles.

  Into this house ran Spot, entering through the kitchen door, which he kicked open in the face of the Chinese cook. The latter sat down violently upon the floor and the armful of baking tins which he was carrying went clattering to the farthest corners. He looked surprised, but not offended. He was prepared for anything up to murder from these wild white men.

  “Where’s the boss?” shouted Spot.

  “No savvy,” said the cook, blinking.

  “I’m in here, Spot,” said Milman from the dining room.

  Gregory strode to the door. He was too excited and angry to remember to take off his hat. He stood there towering in the doorway, scowling as though it was Milman whom he hated.

  It was still fairly early in the morning, though late for a ranch breakfast, but Milman had adopted easier ways of living, since his fortune had become so secure in the past few years. The ranch was a gold mine, and the vein of it promised to last forever.

  Opposite the rancher sat his daughter, and Mrs. Milman who looked small and frail at the end of the table. She was one of those delicate and thin-faced women who seem to be half with the angels all the time; as a matter of fact, she always knew the price of beef on the hoof to an eighth of a cent.