Showdown On the Hogback (1991)

by L'amour, Louis

  “Dai,” he said slowly, “I’ll admit that today I’ve been laving doubts of all this. You see, I knew John Gunter after he war, and I took a herd of cattle over the trail for a friend (f his.

  There was trouble that year, the Indians holding up very herd and demanding large numbers of cattle for themselves, the rustlers trying to steal whole herds, and others 3emanding money for passage across land they claimed.

  I took my herd through without paying anything but a few fat beefs for the Indians, who richly deserved them. But not what they demanded-they got what I wanted to give. “Gunter remembered me from that and knew something A my war record, so when he approached me in New Orleans, his proposition sounded good. And this is what he told me.

  “His firm, Burwick, Keith and Gunter, had filed application for the survey and purchase of all or parts of nearly three hundred sections of land. They made oath that this land was swampland or overflowed and came under the General Land Office ruling that it was land too wet for irrigation at seeding time, though later requiring irrigation, and therefore subject to sale as swamp.

  “He went on to say that they had arranged to buy the land, but that a bunch of squatters were on it who refused to leave. He wanted to hire me to lead a force to see the land was cleared, and he said that as most of them were rustlers, outlaws, or renegades of one sort or another, there would be fighting, and force would be necessary.”

  Dai nodded. “Right he was as to the fighting, but renegades, no. Well,” he smiled grimly past his pipe, “I’d not be saying that now, but there’s mighty few. There are bad apples in all barrels, one or two,” he said, “but most of us be good people, with homes built and crops in.

  “An’ did he tell you that their oath was given that the land was unoccupied? Well, given it was! And let me tell you, ninety-four sections have homes on them, some mighty poor, but homes.

  “Shrewd they were with the planning. Six months the notices must be posted, but they posted them in fine print and where few men would read, and three months are before anything is noticed, and by accident only. So now the, come to force us off, to be sure the land is unoccupied an)”’ ready. As for swamp, ‘tis desert now, and always desert Crops can only be grown where the water is, an” little enough of that.”

  Dai shook his head and knocked out his short-stemmed pipe. “Money we’ve none to fight them, no lawyers among us, although one who’s as likely to help. A newspaper man he is. But what good without money to send him to Washing ton?”

  The Welshman’s face was gloomy. “They’ll beat us, that we know. They’ve money to fight us with, and tough men but some of them will die on the ground and pay for it with their red blood. And those among us there are who plan t less-than see “tis not only the hired gunners who die, but the high an mighty.

  You, too, lad, if among them you stay.”

  Kedrick was thoughtful. “Dar, this story is different from the one I’ve had. I’ll have to think about it, and tomorrow we ride out to look the land over and show ourselves.”

  Reid looked up sharply. “Don’t you be one of them, boy We’ve plans made to see no man gets off” alive if we can hell it. his “Look, man!” Kedrick leaned forward.

  “You’ve got to change that! I mean, for now. Tomorrow it’s mainly a show o. force, a threat.

  There will be no shooting, I promise you We’ll ride out, look around, and then ride back. If there’: shooting, your men will start it. Now you go back to them and stop it. Let them hold off; and let me look around.”

  Dai Reid got slowly to his feet. “Ah, lad! “tis good to set you again, but under happier circumstances I wish it were I’d have you to the house for supper and a game, as in the old days! You’d like the wife I have!” “You? Married?” Kedrick was incredulous. “I’d never believe it!” Dai grinned sheepishly. “Married it is, all right, and happy, Tom.” His face darkened. “Happy if I can keep my ground. But one promise I make! If your bloody riders take my ground, my body will be there when they ride past, and it will be not alone, but with dead men around!”

  Long after the Welshman had gone, Tom Kedrick sat silently and studied the street beyond the window. Was this what Consuelo Duane had meant? Whose side was she on? First, he must ride over the land and see it for himself, and hen he must have another talk with Gunter.

  Uneasily, he looked again at the faces of the men in his mind. The cold, wolflike face of Keith, the fat, slobby face of Burwick, under lined with harsh, domineering power, and the face of Gunter, friendlv, affable, but was it not a little … sly?

  From outside came the noise of a tinny piano and a trident female voice, singing. Chips rattled, and there was he constant rustle of movement and of booted feet. Somewhere a spur jingled, and Tom Kedrick got to his feet and slipped into a shirt. When he was dressed again, with his lulls belted oil, he left his room and walked down the hall to he lobby.

  From a room beside his, a man stepped and stared after him. It was Dornie Shaw.

  Chapter 3

  Only the dweller in the deserts can know such mornings, greater-than such silences, drowsy with warmth and the song of the cicacclas. Nowhere but in the desert shall the far miles stand out so clearly, the mesas, towers, and cliffs so boldly outlined. Nowhere will the cloud shadows island themselves upon the Desert, offering their brief respite from the sun.

  Six riders, their saddles creaking, six hard men, each lost in the twisted arroyos of his own thoughts, were emerging upon the broad desert. They were men who rode with guns, men who had used their guns to kill and would use them so again. Some of them were already doomed by the relentless and ruthless tide of events, and to the others their time, too, would come. Each of them was alone, as men who live by the gun are always alone, each man a potential enemy, each shadow a danger. They rode jealously, their gestures marked by restraint, their eves by watchfulness.

  A horse blew through his nostrils, a hoof clicked on a stone, someone shifted in his saddle and sighed. These were the only sounds. Tom Kedrick rode an Appaloosa gelding, fifteen hands even, with iron-gray forequarters and starkly white hindquarters splashed with tear-shaped spots of solid black-a clean-limbed horse, strong and fast, with quick intelligent eyes and interested ears.

  When they bunched to start their ride, Laredo Shad stopper to stare at the horse, walking around it admiringly. “You’re lucky, friend. That’s a horse! Where’d you find him?”

  “Navajo remuda. He’s a Nez Perce war horse, a long ways off his reservation.”

  Kedrick noticed the men as they gathered and how they all sized him up carefully, noting his western garb and especially the low-hung, tied-down guns. They had seen Mir yesterday in the store clothes he had worn from New Orleans, but now they could size him up better, judge him with their own kind.

  He was tall and straight, and of his yesterday’s clothing only the black, flat-crowned hat remained, the hat and the high-heeled rider’s boots.

  He wore a gray wool shirt now and a black silk kerchief around his neck. His jeans were black, and the two guns rode easily in position, ready for the swing of his hand.

  Kedrick saw them bunch, and when they all were there, he said simply, “All right, let’s go!”

  They mounted up. Kedrick noted slender, wiry Dornie Shaw; the great bulk of Si Fessenden; lean, bitter Poinsett; the square, blond Lee Goff; sour-faced Clauson, the oldest of the lot; and the lean Texan, Laredo Shad. Moving out, he glanced at them. Whatever else they might be, they were fighting men. Several times Shaw glanced at his gun.

  “You ain’t wearin” Colts?”

  “No. Forty-four Russians. They are a good gun, one of the most accurate ever built.”

  He indicated the trail ahead with a nod. “You’ve been out this way before?”

  “Yeah. We got quite a ride. We’ll noon at a spring I know just over the North Fork. There’s some deep canyons to cross and then a big peak.

  The Indians an’ Spanish called it the Orphan. All wild country. Right beyond there we’ll begin
strikin’ a few of “em.” He grinned a little, showing his white, even teeth. “They are scattered all over hell’s half acre.”

  “Dornie,” Goff asked suddenly, “you figure on ridin” over to the malpais this trip?”

  Clauson chuckled. “Sure, he will! He should’ve give up long ago, but he’s sure hard to whip! That girl has set her sights higher than any west-country gunslinger.”

  “She’s shapely, at that!” Goff was openly admiring. “Right Shapely, but playin’ no favorites.”

  “Maybe they’re playin’ each other for what they can get,” Poinsett said, wryly. “Maybe that’s where he gets all the news he’s tellin’ Keith.

  He sure seems to know a sight of what’s goin’ around.”

  Dornie Shaw turned in his saddle, and his thin features had sharpened. “Shut up!” he said coldly.

  The older man tightened, and his eyes blazed back with genuine hate. Yet he held his peace.

  It was educational to see how quickly he quieted down; for Poinsett, a hard, vicious man with no love for anybody or anything, obviously wanted no part of what Shaw could give him.

  As the day drew on, Kedrick studied the men and noticed they all avoided giving offense to Shaw, even the burly Fessenden, who had killed twenty men, and was the only one of the group Kedrick had ever seen before. He wondered if Fessenden remembered him and decided he would know before the day was out.

  Around the noon camp, there was less friendly banter than in a cow camp. These men were surly and touchy.

  Only Shad seemed to relax much, but everything came easily for him. Clauson seemed to take over the cooking job by tacit consent, and the reason was soon obvious. He was really an excellent cook.

  As he ate, Tom Kedrick studied his situation with care. He had taken this job in New Orleans, for at the time he had needed money badly.

  Gunter had put up the cash to get him out here, and if he did back out, he would have to find a way to repay him. Yet the more he looked over this group, the more he believed that he was into something that he wanted out of, but fast.

  He had fought as a soldier of fortune in several wars. War had been his profession, and he had been a skilled fighting man almost from the beginning. His father, a onetime soldier, had a love for tactics, and Tom had grown up with an interest in things military. His education had mostly come from his father and from a newspaper man who lived with them for a winter and helped to teach the boy what he could.

  Kedrick had grown up with his interest in tactics and had entered the Army and fought through the war between the states. The fighting had given him a practical background to accompany his study and theory, but with all his fighting and the killing it had entailed, he had not become callous.

  To run a bunch of renegades off the land seemed simple enough, and it promised action and excitement.

  It was a job he could do. Now he was no longer sure it was a job he wanted to do, for his talk with Dai Reid, as well as the attitude of so many of the people in Mustang, had convinced him that all was not as simple as it had first appeared. Now, before taking a final step, he wanted to survey the situation and see just whom he would be fighting, and where.

  At the same time he knew the men who rode with him were going to ask few questions. They would do their killing, collect their money, and ride on.

  Of them all, only Shad might think as he did, and Kedrick made a mental note to talk with the Texan before the day was over, to find out where he stood and what he knew. He was inclined to agree with Shaw’s original judgment, that Shad was one of the best of the lot with a gun. The man’s easy way was not only natural to him. He was simply confident with that hard confidence that comes only from having measured his ability and knowing what he could do when the chips were down.

  After Kedrick finished his coffee he got to his feet and strolled over to the spring, had a drink, and then arose and walked to his horse, tightening the cinch he had loosened when they stopped. The air was clear, and despite their lowered voices, he could catch most of what was said.

  The first question he missed, but Fessenden’s reply he heard. “Don’t you fret about him. He’s a scrapper from way back, Dornie. I found that out. This here ain’t our first meetin’.”

  Even at this distance and with his horse between him and the circle of men, Kedrick could sense their attention.

  “Tried to finagle him out of that Patterson herd, up in Injun territory. He didn’t finagle worth a durn.”

  “What happened?” Goff demanded. “Any shootin’?”

  “Some. I was ridin’ partners with Chuck Gibbons, the Llano gunman, an’ Chuck was always on the prod, sort of. One, two times I figured I might have to shoot it out with him my own self, but wasn’t exactly honin’ for trouble. We had too good a thing there to bust it up quarrelin’. But Chuck, he was plumb salty, an’ when Kedrick faced him an’ wouldn’t back down or deliver the cattle, Chuck called him.”

  Fessenden sipped his coffee while they waited impatiently. When they could stand the suspense no longer, Goff demanded, “Well, what happened?”

  The big man shrugged. “Kedrick’s here, ain’t he?”

  “I mean-what was the story?”

  “Gibbons never cleared leather. None of us even seen Kedrick draw, but you could have put a half dollar over the two holes in Chuck’s left shirt pocket.”

  Nobody spoke after that. Tom Kedrick took his time over the cinch, and then with his horse between them, he walked away further and circled, scouting the terrain thoughtfully.

  He was too experienced a man to fail to appreciate how important is knowledge of terrain.

  All this country from Mustang to the territory line would become a battleground in the near future, and a man’s life might depend on what he knew, so he wasted no opportunity to study the country or ask questions.

  He had handled tough groups before, and he was not disturbed over the problem they presented, although in this case he knew the situation was serious. In a group they would be easier to handle than separately, for these men were individualists all and without any group loyalty. They had faith in only two things in the last analysis, six-gun skill and money. By these they lived and by these they would die.

  That Fessenden had talked was pleasing, for it would settle the doubts of some of them, at least. Knowing him for a gunhand, they would more willingly accept orders from him, not because of fear, but rather because they knew him for one of their own and not some stranger brought in for command.

  When they moved out, taking their time, the heat had increased. Not a thing stirred on the wide, shallow face of the desert but a far and lonely buzzard that floated high and alone over a far-off mesa. Tom Kedrick’s eves roamed the country ceaselessly, and yet from time to time his thoughts kept reverting to the girl on the veranda. Connie Duane was a beautiful girl-Gunter’s niece, but apparently not approving all he did.

  Why was she here? What was her connection with Keith?

  Kedrick sensed the animosity of Keith and welcomed it. A quiet man, Keith was slow to anger, but tough, and when pushed, a deep-seated anger arose within him in a black tide that made him a driving fury. Knowing this rage that lay dormant within him, he rode carefully, talked carefully, and held his temper and his hand.

  Dornie Shaw drew up suddenly. “This here is Canyon Largo,” he said, waving his hand down the rift before them. “That peak ahead an’ on your right is the Orphan. Injuns won’t let no white roan up there, but they say there’s a spring with a good flow of water on top.

  “Yonder begins the country in the Burwick, Keith and Gunter buy. They don’t have the land solid to the Arizona border, but they’ve got a big chunk of it. The center of the squatters is a town called Yellow Butte. There’s maybe ten, twelve buildin’s there, among “em a store, a stable, corrals, a saloon, an” a bank.”

  Kedrick nodded thoughtfully. The country before him was high desert country and could under no circumstances be called swamp. In the area where he stood there was little g
rowth, a few patches of curly mesquite grass of black grama, with prickly pear, soapweed, creosote bush, and catclaw scattered through it. In some of the washes he saw the deeper green of pinion and juniper.

  They pushed on, entered the canyon, and emerged from it, heading due west. He rode warily, and once, far off on his left, he glimpsed a horseman.

  Later, seeing the same rider, nearer than before, he deduced they were under observation and hoped there would be no attack.

  “The country where most of the squatters are is right smack dab in the middle of the range the company is after. The hombre most likely to head “em is Bob McLennon. He’s got him two right-hand men name of Pete Slagle an” Pit Laine. Now, you asked me the other day if they would fight. Them three are shinnery oak. Slagle’s an oldish feller, but McLennon’s in his forties an’ was once a cow-town marshal. Laine, well, he’s a tough one to figure, but he packs two guns an’ cuts him a wide swath over there. I hear tell he had him some gun trouble up Durango way an’ he didn’t need no help to handle it.”

  From behind him Kedrick heard a low voice mutter, “Most as hard to figure as his sister!”

  Dornie’s mouth tightened. He gave no other evidence that he had heard, but the comment added a little to Kedrick’s information. Obviously, Dornie Shaw had a friend in the enemy’s camp, and the information with which he had been supplying Keith must come from that source. Was the girl betraying her own brother and her friends? It could be, but could Shaw come and go among them without danger? Or did he worry himself about it?

  There had been no mention of Dai Reid, yet the powerful little Welshman was sure to be a figure wherever he stood, and he was definitely a man to be reckoned with.

  Suddenly, a rider appeared from an arroyo not thirty yards off and walked her horse toward them.

  Dornie Shaw swore softly and drew up. As one man, they all stopped.