She stared, startled, amazed, and then angry. “Well, of all the egotistical—”
“Ah!” My expression was one of relief. “Those are kind words, darling, wonderful words! More true romances have begun with those words than any other! And now, if you’ll excuse me?”
Taking one step back, I turned, vaulted over the hitching rail, and untied my buckskin. Swinging into the saddle, I looked back. She was standing there, staring at me, her eyes wide, and the anger was leaving them. “Good afternoon,” I said, bowing again. “I’ll call upon you later!”
IT WAS TIME to get out and away, but I felt good about it. Had I attempted to advance the acquaintance I should have gotten nowhere, but my quick leaving would arouse her curiosity. There is no trait women possess more fortunate for men than their curiosity.
The livery stable at Hattan’s Point was a huge and rambling structure that sprawled lazily over a corner at the beginning of the town. From a bin I got a scoop of corn, and while the buckskin absorbed this warning against hard days to come, I curried him carefully. A jingle of spurs warned me, and when I looked around, a tall, very thin man was leaning against the stall post watching me.
When I straightened up, I was looking into a pair of piercing dark eyes from under shaggy brows that seemed to overhang the long hatchet face. He was shabby and unkempt, but he wore two guns, the only man in town whom I’d seen wearing two except for the knifelike man in the saloon. “Hear you had a run-in with Rud Maclaren.”
“Run-in? I’d not call it that. He suggested the country was crowded and that I move on. So I told him I liked it here, and if the fight looked good I might choose a side.”
“Good! Then I come right on time! Folks are talkin’ about you. They say Canaval offered you a job on Maclaren’s Bar M. Well, I’m beatin’ him to it. I’m Jim Pinder, ramroddin’ the CP outfit. I’ll pay warrior wages, seventy a month an’ found. All the ammunition you can use.”
My eyes had strayed behind him to the two men lurking in a dark stall. They had, I was sure, come in with Pinder. The idea did not appeal to me. Shoving Pinder aside, I sprang into the middle of the open space between the rows of stalls.
“You two!” My voice rang in the echoing emptiness of the building. “Get out in the open! Start now or start shootin’!”
My hands were wide, fingers spread, and right then it did not matter to me which way they came. There was that old jumping devil in me, and the fury was driving me as it always did when action began to build up. Men who lurked in dark stalls did not appeal to me, nor the men who hired them.
They came out slowly, hands wide. One of them was a big man with black hair and unshaven jowls. He looked surly. The other had a cruel, flat face and looked like an Apache. “Suppose I’d come shootin’?” the black-haired man sneered.
“Then they’d be plantin’ you at sundown.” My eyes held him. “If you don’t believe that, cut loose your wolf right now.”
That stopped him. He didn’t like it, for they didn’t know me and I was too ready. Wise enough to see that I was no half-baked gunfighter, they didn’t know how much of it I could back up and weren’t anxious to find out.
“You move fast.” Pinder was staring at me with small eyes. “Suppose I had cut myself in with Blacky and the Apache?”
My chuckle angered him. “You? I had that pegged, Jim Pinder. When my guns came out you would have died first. You’re faster than either of those two, so you’d take yours first. Then Blacky, and after him”—I nodded toward the Apache—“him. He would be the hardest to kill.”
Pinder didn’t like it, and he didn’t like me. “I made an offer,” he said.
“And you brought these coyotes to give me a rough time if I didn’t take it? Be damned to you, Pinder! You can take your CP outfit and go to blazes!”
His lips thinned down and he stared at me. I’ve seldom seen such hatred in a man’s eyes. “Then get out!” he said. “Get out fast! Join Maclaren, an’ you die!”
“Then why wait? I’m not joining Maclaren so far as I know now, but I’m staying, Pinder. Anytime you want what I’ve got, come shooting. I’ll be ready.”
“You swing a wide loop for a stranger. You started in the wrong country. You won’t live long.”
“No?” I gave it to him flat and face up on the table. “No? Well, I’ve a hunch I’ll handle the shovel that throws dirt on your grave, and maybe trigger the gun that puts you there. I’m not asking for trouble, but I like it, so whenever you’re ready, let me know.”
With that I left them. Up the street, there was a sign:
MOTHER O’SHARA’S COOKING
MEALS FOUR BITS
With my gnawing appetite, that looked as likely a direction as any. It was early for supper, and there were few at table: the young man with white hair and the girl I loved…and a few scattered others who ate sourly and in silence.
When I shoved the door open and stood there with my hat shoved back on my head and a smile on my face, the girl looked up, surprised, but ready for battle. I grinned at her and bowed. “How do you do, the future Mrs. Sabre? The pleasure of seeing you again so soon is unexpected, but real!”
The man with her looked surprised, and the buxom woman of forty-five or so who came in from the kitchen looked quickly from one to the other of us.
The girl ignored me, but the man with the white hair nodded. “You’ve met Miss Maclaren, then?”
So, Maclaren it was? I might have suspected as much. “No, not formally. But we met briefly on the street, and I’ve been dreaming of her for years. It gives me great wonder to find her here, although when I see the food on the table, I don’t doubt why she is so lovely if it is here she eats!”
Mother O’Hara liked that. “Sure, an’ I smell the blarney in that!” she said sharply. “But sit down, if you’d eat!”
My hat came off, and I sat on the bench opposite my girl, who looked at her plate in cold silence.
“My name is Key Chapin.” The white-haired man extended his hand. “Yours, I take it, is Sabre?”
“Matt Sabre,” I said.
A GRIZZLED MAN from the foot of the table looked up. “Matt Sabre from Dodge. Once marshal of Mobeetie, the Mogollon gunfighter.”
They all looked from him to me, and I accepted the cup of coffee Mother O’Hara poured. “The gentleman knows me,” I said quietly. “I’ve been known in those places.”
“You refused Maclaren’s offer?” Chapin asked.
“Yes, and Pinder’s, too.”
“Pinder?” Chapin’s eyes were wary. “Is he in town?”
“Big as life.” I could feel the girl’s eyes on me. “Tell me what this fight is about?”
“What are most range wars about? Water, sheep, or grass. This one is water. There’s a long valley east of here called Cottonwood Wash, and running east out of it is a smaller valley or canyon called the Two Bar. On the Two Bar is a stream of year-round water with volume enough to irrigate land or water thousands of cattle. Maclaren wants that water. The CP wants it.”
“Who’s got it?”
“A man named Ball. He’s no fighter and has no money to hire fighters, but he hates Maclaren and refuses to do business with Pinder. So there they sit with the pot boiling and the lid about to blow off.”
“And our friend Ball is right smack in the middle.”
“Right. Gamblers around town are offering odds he won’t last thirty days, even money that he’ll be dead within ten.”
That was enough for now. My eyes turned to the daughter of Rud Maclaren. “You can be buying your trousseau, then,” I said, “for the time will not be long.”
She looked at me coolly, but behind it there was a touch of impudence. “I’ll not worry about it,” she said calmly. “There’s no weddings in Boot Hill.”
They laughed at that, yet behind it I knew there was the feeling that she was right, and yet the something in me that was me told me no…it was not my time to go. Not by gun or horse or rolling river…not yet.
“Y
ou’ve put your tongue to prophecy, darlin’,” I said, “and I’ll not say that I’ll not end in Boot Hill, where many another good man has gone, but I will say this, and you sleep on it, daughter of Maclaren, for it’s a bit of the truth. Before I sleep in Boot Hill, there’ll be sons and daughters of yours and mine on this ground.
“Yes, and believe me”—I got up to go—“when my time comes I’ll be carried there by six tall sons of ours, and there’ll be daughters of ours who’ll weep at my grave, and you with them, remembering the years we’ve had.”
When the door slapped shut behind me, there was silence inside, and then through the thin walls I heard Mother O’Hara speak. “You’d better be buyin’ that trousseau, Olga Maclaren, for there’s a lad as knows his mind!”
This was the way of it then, and now I had planning to do and my way to make in the world, for though I’d traveled wide and far, in many lands not my own, I’d no money and no home to take her to.
BEHIND ME WERE wars and struggles, hunger, thirst, and cold, and the deep, splendid bitterness of fighting for a cause I scarcely understood, because there was in me the undying love of a lost cause and a world to win. And now I’d my own to win, and a threshold to find to carry her over.
And then, as a slow night wind moved upon my cheek and stirred the hair above my brow, I found an answer. I knew what I would do, and the very challenge of it sent my blood leaping, and the laughter came from my lips as I stepped into the street and started across.
Then I stopped, for there was a man before me.
He was a big man, towering above my six feet and two inches, broader and thicker than my two hundred pounds. He was a big-boned man and full of raw power, unbroken and brutal. He stood there, wide-legged before me, his face wide as my two hands, his big head topped by a mat of tight curls, his hat missing somewhere.
“You’re Sabre?” he said.
“Why, yes,” I said, and he hit me.
Never did I see the blow start. Never even did I see the balled fist of him, but it bludgeoned my jaw like an ax butt, and something seemed to slam me behind the knees, and I felt myself going. He caught me again before I could fall and then dropped astride of me and began to swing short, brutal blows to my head with both big fists. All of two hundred and sixty pounds he must have weighed, and none of it wasted by fat. He was naked, raw, unbridled power.
Groggy, bloody, beaten, I fought to get up, but he was astride me, and my arms were pinned to my sides by his great knees. His fists were slugging me with casual brutality. Then suddenly, he got up and stepped back and kicked me in the ribs. “If you’re conscious,” he said, “hear me. I’m Morgan Park, and I’m the man who marries Olga Maclaren!”
My lips were swollen and bloody. “You lie!” I said, and he kicked me again. Then he stepped over me and walked away, whistling.
Somehow I got my arms under me. Somehow I dragged myself against the stage station wall, and then I lay there, my head throbbing like a great drum, the blood slowly drying on my split lips and broken face. It had been a beating I’d taken, and the marvel of it was with me. I’d not been licked since I was a lad, and never in all my days have I felt such blows as these. His fists were like knots of oak, and the arms behind them like the limbs of a tree.
I had a broken rib, I thought, but one thing I knew. It was time for me to travel. Never would I have the daughter of Maclaren see me like this!
MY HANDS FOUND the building corner, and I pulled myself to my feet. Staggering behind the buildings, I got to the corner of the livery stable. Entering, I got to my horse, and somehow I got the saddle on him and led him out of the door. And then I stepped for an instant, in the light.
Across the way, on the stoop of Mother O’Hara’s, was Olga Maclaren!
The light was on my face, swollen, bloody and broken. She stepped down off the porch and came over to me, looking up, her eyes wide with wonder. “So it’s you. He found you, then. He always hears, and this always happens. You see, it is not so simple a thing to marry Olga Maclaren!” There seemed almost regret in her voice. “And now you’re leaving!”
“Leaving? That I am, but I’ll be back!” The words fumbled through my swollen lips. “Have your trousseau ready, daughter of Maclaren! I mean what I say! Wait for me. I’ll be coming again, darlin’, and when I do it will be first to tear down Morgan Park’s great hulk, to rip him with my fists!”
There was coolness in her voice, shaded with contempt. “You boast! All you have done is talk—and take a beating!”
That made me grin, and the effort made me wince, but I looked down at her. “It’s a bad beginning, at that, isn’t it? But wait for me, darlin’, I’ll be coming back!”
I could feel her watching me ride down the street.
II
Throughout the night I rode into wilder and wilder country, always with the thought of what faced me. At daybreak I bedded down in a canyon tall with pines, resting there while my side began to mend. My thoughts returned again and again to the shocking power of those punches I had taken. It was true the man had slugged me unexpectedly, and once pinned down I’d had no chance against his great weight. Nonetheless I’d been whipped soundly. Within me there was a gnawing eagerness to go back—and not with guns. This man I must whip with my hands.
The Two Bar was the key to the situation. Could it be had with a gun and some blarney? The beating I’d taken rankled, and the contempt of Olga Maclaren, and with it the memory of the hatred of Jim Pinder and the coldness of Rud Maclaren. On the morning of the third day I mounted the buckskin and turned him toward the Two Bar.
A noontime sun was darkening my buckskin with sweat when I turned up Cottonwood Wash. There was green grass here, and trees, and the water that trickled down was clear and pure. The walls of the wash were high and the trees towered to equal them, and the occasional cattle looked fat and lazy, far better than elsewhere on this range. The path ended abruptly at a gate bearing a large sign in white letters against a black background.
TWO BAR GATE
RANGED FOR A SPENCER .56
SHOOTING GOING ON HERE
Ball evidently had his own ideas. No trespasser who got a bullet could say he hadn’t been warned. Beyond this gate a man took his own chances. Taking off my hat, I rose in my stirrups and waved it toward the house.
A gun boomed, and I heard the sharp whap of a bullet whipping past. It was a warning shot, so I merely waved once more. That time the bullet was close, so I grabbed my chest with both hands and slid from the saddle to the ground. Speaking to the buckskin, I rolled over behind a boulder. Leaving my hat on the ground in plain sight, I removed a boot and placed it to be seen from the gate. Then I crawled into the brush, from where I could cover the gate.
Several minutes later, Ball appeared. Without coming through the gate, he couldn’t see the boot was empty.
He was a tall old man with a white handlebar mustache and shrewd eyes. No fool, he studied the layout carefully, but to all appearances his aim had miscalculated and he had scored a hit. He glanced at the strange brand on the buckskin and at the California bridle and bit. Finally, he opened the gate and came out, and as he moved toward my horse his back turned toward me. “Freeze, Ball! You’re dead in my sights!”
He stood still. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What you want with me?”
“No trouble. I came to talk business.”
“I got no business with anybody.”
“You’ve business with me. I’m Matt Sabre. I’ve had a run-in with Jim Pinder and told off Maclaren when he told me to leave. I’ve taken a beating from Morgan Park.”
Ball chuckled. “You say you want no trouble with me, but from what you say, you’ve had it with everybody else!”
He turned at my word, and I holstered my gun. He stepped back far enough to see the boot, and then he grinned. “Good trick. I’ll not bite on that one again. What you want?”
PULLING ON MY boot and retrieving my hat, I told him. “I’ve no money. I’m a fighting man and a sucker
for the tough side of any scrap. When I rode into Hattan’s I figured on trouble, but when I saw Olga Maclaren I decided to stay and marry her. I’ve told her so.
“No wonder Park beat you. He’s run off the local lads.” He studied me curiously. “What did she say?”
“Very little, and when I told her I was coming back to face Park again, she thought I was loudmouthed.”
“Aim to try him again?”
“I’m going to whip him. But that’s not all. I plan to stay in this country, and there’s only one ranch in this country I want or would have.”
Ball’s lips thinned. “This one?”
“It’s the best, and anybody who owns it stands in the middle of trouble. I’d be mighty uncomfortable anywhere else.”
“What you aim to do about me? This here’s my ranch.”
“Let’s walk up to your place and talk it over.”
“We’ll talk here.” Ball’s hands were on his hips, and I had no doubt he’d go for a gun if I made a wrong move. “Speak your piece.”
“All right, here it is. You’re buckin’ a stacked deck. Gamblers are offerin’ thirty to one you won’t last thirty days. Both Maclaren and Pinder are out to get you. What I want is a fighting, working partnership. Or you sell out and I’ll pay you when I can. I’ll take over the fight.”
He nodded toward the house. “Come on up. We’ll talk this over.”
Two hours later the deal was ironed out. He could not stay awake every night. He could not work and guard his stock. He could not go to town for supplies. Together we could do all of it.
“You’ll be lucky if you last a week,” he told me. “When they find out, they’ll be fit to be tied.”
“They won’t find out right away. First I’ll buy supplies and ammunition and get back here.”
“Good idea. But leave Morgan Park alone. He’s as handy with a gun as with his fists.”
THE TWO BAR controlled most of Cottonwood Wash and on its eastern side opened into the desert wilderness with only occasional patches of grass and much desert growth. Maclaren’s Bar M and Pinder’s CP bordered the ranch on the west, with Maclaren’s range extending to the desert land in one portion, but largely west of the Two Bar.
Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) Page 16
