She looked at me, and some of the fear seemed to leave her. Then she shook her head. “But you can’t go back now. Jim Pinder has the Two Bar.”
“Then he’ll move,” I promised her.
Olga had swung down from her horse and lifted my canteen. “You’ve water!” she exclaimed. “They all said no man could survive out there in that waste, even if he was not wounded.”
“You believed them?”
“No.” She hesitated. “I knew you’d be alive somewhere.”
“You know your man, then, Olga Maclaren. Does it mean that you love me, too?”
She hesitated and her eyes searched mine, but when I would have moved toward her she drew back, half frightened. Her lips parting a little, her breast lifting suddenly as she caught her breath. “It isn’t time for that now—please!”
It stopped me, knowing what she said was true. “You are sure you weren’t trailed?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been careful. Every day.”
“This isn’t the first day you looked for me?”
“Oh, no.” She looked at me, her eyes shadowed with worry. “I was afraid you were lying somewhere bloody and suffering.” Her eyes studied me, noting the torn shirt, the pallor of my face. “And you have been.”
“Rollie was good. He was very good.”
“Then it was you who killed him?”
“Who else?”
“Canaval and Bodie Miller found him after they realized you were gone from the mesa where you had pinned them down. Canaval was sure it had been you, but some of them thought it was the mountain boys.”
“They’ve done no fighting for me, although they wanted to. You’d best start back. I’ve work to do.”
“But you’re in no shape! You’re sick!” She stared at me.
“I can still fight,” I said. “Tell your father you’ve seen me. Tell him the Two Bar was given me in the presence of witnesses. Tell him his stock is to be off that range—at once!”
“You forget that I am my father’s daughter!”
“And my future wife!”
“I’ve promised no such thing!” she flared. “You know I’d never marry you! I’ll admit you’re attractive, and you’re a devil. But marry you? I’d die first!”
Her breast heaved and her eyes flashed and I laughed at her. “Tell your father, though, and ask him to withdraw from this fight before it’s too late.” Swinging into the saddle, I added, “It’s already too late for you. You love me and you know it. Tell Morgan Park that, and tell him I’m coming back to break him with my hands!”
CHAPTER V
Riding into Hattan’s Point, I was a man well known. Rollie Pinder was dead, and they knew whose gun had downed him. Maclaren’s riders had been held off and made a laughingstock, and I had taken up Ball’s fight to hold his ranch. Some men hated me for this, some admired me, and many thought me a fool.
All I knew was the horse between my knees, the guns on my thighs and the blood of me pounding. My buckskin lifted his head high and moved down the dusty street like a dancer, for riding into this town was a challenge to them all. They knew it and I knew it. Leaving my horse behind Mother O’Hara’s, I walked to the saloon and went in.
By then I’d taken time to shave, and though the pallor of sickness was on my face, there was none in my eyes or heart. It did me good to see their eyes widen and to hear my spurs jingle as I walked to the bar. “Rye,” I said. “The best you’ve got.”
Key Chapin was there, and sitting with him, Morgan Park. The big man’s eyes were cold as they stared at me. “I’m buying, gentlemen,” I said, “and that includes you, Morgan Park, although you slug a man when his hands are down.”
Park blinked. It had been a long time since anyone had told him off to his face. “And you, Key Chapin. It has always been my inclination to encourage freedom of the press and to keep my public relations on a good basis. And today I might even offer you a news item, something to read like this: Matt Sabre, of the Two Bar, was in town Friday afternoon. Matt is recovering from a bullet wound incurred during a minor dispute with Rollie Pinder, but is returning to the Two Bar to take up where he left off.”
Chapin smiled. “That will be news to Jim Pinder. He didn’t expect you back.”
“He should have,” I assured him. “I’m back to punish every murdering skunk who killed old man Ball.”
All eyes were on me now, and Park was staring, not knowing what to make of me. “Do you know who they are?” Chapin asked curiously.
“Definitely!” I snapped the word. “Every man of them”—I shifted my eyes to Park—“is known—with one exception. When Ball was dying he named a man to me. Only I am not sure.”
“Who?” demanded Chapin.
“Morgan Park,” I said.
The big man came to his feet with a lunge. His brown face was ugly with hatred. “That’s a lie!” he roared.
My shoulders lifted. “Probably a misunderstanding. I’ll not take offense at your language, Mr. Park, because it is a dead man you are calling a liar, and not I. Ball might have meant that one of your riders, a man named Lyell, was there. He died before he could be questioned. If it is true, I’ll kill you after I whip you.”
“Whip me?” Park’s bellow was amazed. “Whip me? Why, you—”
“Unfortunately, I’m not sufficiently recovered from my wounds to do it today, but don’t be impatient. You’ll get your bellyful of it when the time comes.” Turning my back on him, I lifted my glass. “Gentlemen, your health!” And then I walked out of the place.
THERE WAS THE good rich smell of cooked food and coffee when I opened the door of Mother O’Hara’s. “Ah? It’s you, then! And still alive! Things ain’t what they used to be around here! Warned off by Maclaren, threatened by Jim Pinder, beaten by Morgan Park, and you’re still here!”
“Still here an’ stayin’, Katie O’Hara,” I said, grinning at her, “and I’ve just said that and more to Morgan Park.”
“There’s been men die, and you’ve had the killin’ of some.”
“That’s the truth, Katie. I’d rather it never happened, but it’s a hard country and a small chance for a man who hesitates to shoot when the time comes. All the same, it’s a good country, this. A country where I plan to stay and grow my children, Katie. I’ll go back to the Two Bar, and build my home there.”
“You think they’ll let you? You think you can keep it?”
“They’ll have no choice.”
Behind me a door closed and the voice of Rud Maclaren was saying, “We’ll have a choice. Get out of the country while you’re alive!”
The arrogance in his voice angered me, so I turned and faced him. Canaval and Morgan Park had come with him. “The Two Bar is my ranch,” I said, “and I’ll be staying there. Do you think yourself a king that you can dictate terms to a citizen of a free country? You’ve let a small power swell your head, Maclaren. You think you have power when all you have is money. If you weren’t the father of the girl I’m to marry, Maclaren, I’d break you just to show you this is a free country and we want no barons here.”
His face mottled and grew hard. “Marry my daughter? You? I’ll see you in hell first!”
“If you see me in hell, Maclaren,” I said lightly, “you’ll be seeing a married man, because I’m marrying Olga and you can like it or light a shuck! I expect you were a good man once, but there’s some that cannot stand the taste of power, and you’re one.”
My eyes shifted to Morgan Park. “And there’s another beside you. He has let his beef get him by too long. He uses force where you use money, but his time is running out, too. He couldn’t break me when he had the chance, and when my time comes, I’ll break him.”
More than one face in the room was approving, even if they glared at me, these two. “The trouble is obvious,” I continued. “You’ve never covered enough country. You think you’re sitting in the center of the world, whereas you’re just a couple of two-bit operators in a forgotten corner.”
Turning
my back on them I helped myself to the Irish stew. Maclaren went out, but Park came around the table and sat down, and he was smiling. The urge climbed up in me to bat the big face off him and down him in the dirt as, he had me. He was wider than me by inches, and taller. The size of his wrists and hands was amazing, yet he was not all beef, for he had brains and there was trouble in him, trouble for me.
WHEN I RETURNED to my horse, there was a man sitting there. He looked up and I was astonished at him. His face was like that of an unhappy monkey, and he was without a hair to the top of his head. Near as broad in the shoulders as Morgan Park, he was shorter than me by inches. “By the look of you,” he said, “you’ll be Matt Sabre.”
“You’re right, man. What is it about?”
“Katie O’Hara was a-tellin’ me it was a man you needed at the Two Bar. Now I’m a handy all-around man. Mr. Sabre, a rough sort of gunsmith, hostler, blacksmith, an’ carpenter, good with an ax. An’ I shoot a bit, know Cornish-style wrestlin’, an’ am afraid of no man when I’ve my two hands before me. I’m not so handy with a short gun, but I’ve a couple of guns of my own that I handle nice.”
He got to his feet, and he could have been nothing over five feet four but weighed all of two hundred pounds, and his shirt at the neck showed a massive chest covered with black hair and a neck like a column of oak. “The fact that you’ve the small end of a fight appeals to me.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Katie has said I’m to go to work for you, an’ she’d not take it kindly if I did not.”
“You’re Katie’s man, then?”
His eyes twinkled amazingly. “Katie’s man? I’m afraid there’s no such. She’s a broth of a woman, that one.” He grinned up at me. “Is it a job I have?”
“When I’ve the ranch back,” I agreed, “you’ve a job.”
“Then let’s be gettin’ it back. Will you wait for me? I’ve a mule to get.”
The mule was a dun with a face that showed all the wisdom, meanness, and contrariness that have been the traits of the mule since time began. With a tow sack behind the saddle and another before him, we started out of town. “My name is Brian Mulvaney,” he said. “Call me what you like.”
HE GRINNED WIDELY when he saw me staring at the butts of the two guns that projected from his boot tops. “These,” he said, “are the Neal Bootleg pistol, altered by me to suit my taste. The caliber is thirty-five, but good. Now this”—from his waistband he drew a gun that lacked only wheels to make an admirable artillery piece—“this was a Mills seventy-five caliber. Took me two months of work off and on, but I’ve converted her to a four-shot revolver. A fine gun,” he added.
All of seventeen inches long, it looked fit to break a man’s wrists, but Mulvaney had powerful hands and arms. No man ever hit by a chunk of lead from that gun would need a doctor.
Four horses were in the corral at the Two Bar, and the men were strongly situated behind a long barricade. Mulvaney grinned at me. “What’d you suppose I’ve in this sack, laddie?” he demanded, his eyes twinkling. “I, who was a miner also?”
“Powder?”
“Exactly! In those new-fangled sticks. Now unless it makes your head ache too much, help me cut a few o’ these sticks in half.” When that was done he cut the fuses very short and slid caps into the sticks of powder. “Come now, me boy, an’ we’ll slip down close under the cover of darkness, an’ you’ll see them takin’ off like you never dreamed!”
Crawling as close as we dared, each of us lit a fuse and hurled a stick of powder. My own stick must have landed closer to them than I planned, for we heard a startled exclamation followed by a yell. Then a terrific explosion blasted the night apart. Mulvaney’s followed, and then we hastily hurled a third and a fourth.
One man lunged over the barricade and started straight for us. The others had charged the corral. The man headed our way suddenly saw us, and wheeling, he fled as if the devil was after him. Four riders gripping only mane holds dashed from the corral, and then there was silence. Mulvaney got to his feet chuckling. “For guns they’d have stood until hell froze over, but the powder and the flyin’ rocks an’ dust scared ’em good. An’ you’ve your ranch back.”
WE HAD EATEN our midday meal the next day, when I saw a rider approaching. It was Olga Maclaren. “Nice to see you,” I said, aware of the sudden tension her presence always inspired.
She was looking toward the foundation we had laid for the new house. It was on a hill with the long sweep of Cottonwood Wash before it. “You should be more careful,” she said. “You had a visitor last night.”
“We just took over last night,” I objected. “Who do you mean?”
“Morgan. He was out here shortly after our boys got home. They met the bunch you stampeded from here.”
“He’s been puzzling me,” I admitted. “Who is he? Did he come from around here?”
“I don’t know. He’s not talkative, but I’ve heard him mention places back east. I know he’s been in Philadelphia and New York, but nothing else about him except that he goes to Salt Lake and San Francisco occasionally.”
“Not back east?”
“Never since we’ve known him.”
“You like him?”
She looked up at me. “Yes, Morgan can be very wonderful. He knows a lot about women and the things that please them.” There was a flicker of laughter in her eyes. “He probably doesn’t know as much about them as you.”
“Me?” I was astonished. “What gave you that idea?”
“Your approach that first day. You knew it would excite my curiosity, a man less sure of himself would never have dared. If you knew no more about women than most western men you would have hung back, wishing you could meet me, or you would have got drunk to work up your courage.”
“I meant what I said that day. You’re going to marry me.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. You’ve no idea what you are saying or what it would mean.”
“Because of your father?” I looked at her. “Or Morgan Park?”
“You take him too lightly, Matt. I think he is utterly without scruple. I believe he would stop at nothing.”
There was more to come, and I was interested.
“There was a young man here from the East,” she continued, “and I liked him. Knowing Morgan, I never mentioned him in Morgan’s presence. Then one day he asked me about him. He added that it would be better for all concerned if the man did not come around anymore. Inadvertently I mentioned the young man’s name, Arnold D’Arcy.
“When he heard that name he became very disturbed. Who was he? Why had he come here? Had he asked any questions about anybody? Or described anybody he might be looking for? He asked me all those questions, but at the same time I thought little about it. Afterwards I began to believe that he was not merely jealous. Right then I decided to tell Arnold about it when he returned.”
“And did you?”
There was a shadow of worry on her face. “No. He never came again.” She looked quickly at me. “I’ve often thought of it. Morgan never mentioned him again, but somehow Arnold hadn’t seemed like a man who would frighten easily.”
Later, when she was mounting to leave, I asked her, “Where was D’Arcy from? Do you remember?”
“Virginia, I believe. He had served in the Army and before coming west had been working in Washington.”
Watching her go, I thought again of Morgan Park. He might have frightened D’Arcy away, but I could not shake off the idea that something vastly more sinister lay behind it. And Park had been close to us during the night. If he had wanted to kill me, it could have been done, but apparently he wanted me alive. Why?
“Mulvaney,” I suggested, “if you can hold this place, I’ll ride to Silver Reef and get off a couple of messages.”
He stretched his huge arms and grinned at me. “Do you doubt it? I’ll handle it or them. Go, and have yourself a time.”
And in the morning I was in the saddle again.
VI
High
noon, and a mountain shaped like flame. Beyond the mountain and around it was a wide land with no horizons, but only the shimmering heat waves that softened all lines to vagueness and left the desert an enchanted land without beginning and without end.
As I rode, my mind studied the problem created by the situation around Cottonwood Wash. There were at least three and possibly four sides to the question. Rud Maclaren with his Bar M, Jim Pinder with his CP, and myself with the Two Bar. The fourth possibility was Morgan Park.
Olga’s account of Arnold D’Arcy’s disappearance had struck a chord of memory. During ten years of my life I had been fighting in foreign wars, and there had been a military observer named D’Arcy, a Major Leo D’Arcy, who had been in China during the fighting there. It stuck in my mind that he had a brother named Arnold.
It was a remote chance, yet a possibility. Why did the name upset Park? What had become of Arnold? Where did Park come from? Pinder could be faced with violence and handled with violence. Maclaren might be circumvented.
Morgan Park worried me.
SILVER REEF LAY sprawled in haphazard comfort along a main street and a few cross streets. There were the usual frontier saloons, stores, churches, and homes. The sign on the Elk Horn Saloon caught my attention. Crossing to it I pushed through the door into the dim interior. While the bartender served me, I glanced around, liking the feel of the place.
“Rye?” The smooth-pated bartender squinted at me.
“Uh-huh. How’s things in the mines?”
“So-so. But you ain’t no miner.” He glanced at my cowhand’s garb and then at the guns in their tied-down holsters. “This here’s a quiet town. We don’t see many gun handlers around here. The place for them is over east of here.”
“Hattan’s?”
“Yeah. I hear the Bar M an’ CP both are hirin’ hands. Couple of hombres from there rode into town a few days ago. One of ’em was the biggest man I ever did see.”
Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) Page 19
