Scrambling into the rocks, he worked himself higher, striving for a vantage point. They had seen him, though, and a rifle bullet ricocheted off the rocks and whined nastily past his ear. He levered three fast shots from his rifle at the scattering riders. Then the area before him was deserted, the morning warm and still, and the air was empty.
His head throbbed, and when he put a hand to his skull he found that despite his protecting hat, his scalp had been split. Only the fact that the rider had been going away when he fired, and that the felt hat he was wearing was heavy, had saved him from a broken skull.
A sudden move brought a twinge. Looking down, he saw blood on the side of his shirt. pening it, he saw that a bullet—f where he had no idea—had broken the skin along his side.
Hunkered down behind some rocks, he looked around. His position was fairly secure, though they could approach him from in front and on the right. His field of fire to the front was good, but if they ever got on the cliff across the canyon, he was finished.
What lay behind him he did not know, but the path he had taken along a ledge seemed to dwindle out on the cliff face. He had ammunition, but no water, and no food.
Tentatively he edged along, as if to move forward. A rifle shot splashed splinters in his face and he jerked back, stung.
“Boy,” he said to himself, “you’ve played hob!”
Suddenly he saw a man race across the open in front of him and he fired a belated shot that did nothing but hurry the man. Obviously that man was heading for the cliff across the canyon. ohnny Lyle reloaded his Winchester and checked his pistol. With both loaded he was all set, and he looked behind him at the path. Then he crawled back. As he had suspected, the path dwindled out and there was no escape.
The only way out was among the boulders to his right, from where without doubt the outlaws were also approaching. His rifle ready, he crouched, waiting. Then he came up with a lunge and darted for the nearest boulders. A bullet whipped by his ear, another ricocheted from a rock behind him. Then he hit the sand sliding and scrambled at once to a second boulder.
Someone moved ahead of him, and raising himself to his knees, Johnny shucked his pistol and snapped a quick shot.
There was a brief silence, then a sudden yell and a sound of horses. Instantly there was another shout and a sound of running. Warily Johnny looked out. A stream of riders was rushing up the canyon and the outlaws were riding back down the canyon at breakneck speed.
Carefully, he got to his feet. Gar Mullins was first to see him and he yelled. The others slid to a halt. Limping a little on a bruised leg, Johnny walked toward the horsemen.
“Man,” he said, “am I ever glad to see you fellers!”
Ramsey stared at him, sick with relief.
“What got into you?” he demanded gruffly. “Trying to tackle that bunch by your lonesome?”
Johnny Lyle explained his fires and the idea he’d had. “Only trouble was,” he said ruefully, “they rushed me instead of dropping their guns, but it might’ve worked!”
Gar Mullins bit off a chew and glanced at Chuck with twinkling eyes. “Had it been me, it would’ve worked, kid.” He glanced at Bert. uc1“Reckon we should finish it now they’re on the run?”
“We better let well enough alone,” Ramsey said. “If they think there’s a posse down canyon, they’ll hole up and make a scrap of it. We’d have to dig ‘em out one by one.”
“I’d rather wait and get ‘em in the open,” Monty Reagan said honestly. “That Lacey’s no bargain.” He looked with real respect at Lyle. “Johnny, I take my hat off to you. ou got more nerve than me, to tackle that crowd single-handed.”
Bucky McCann came up. “He got one, too,” he said, gloating. “Pete Gabor’s over there with a shot through the head.”
“That was luck,” Johnny said. “They come right at me and I just cut loose.”
“Get any others?”
“Winged one, but it was a ricochet.”
Gar spat. “They count,” he said, chuckling a little. “We better get out of here.”
Considerably chastened, Johnny Lyle fell in alongside of Gar and they started back. everal miles farther along, when they were riding through Sibley Gap, Gar said:
“Old Tom was fit to be tied, kid. You shouldn’t ought to go off like that.”
“Aw,” Johnny protested, “everybody was treating me like a goose-headed tenderfoot! I got tired of it.”
The week moved along slowly. Johnny Lyle’s head stopped aching and his side began to heal. He rode out to the bog camp every day and worked hard. He was, Ramsey admitted, “a hand.” Nothing more was said about his brush with the Lacey gang except for a brief comment by Bucky McCann.
There was talk of a large band of Mexican bandits raiding over the border.
“Shucks,” Bucky said carelessly, “nothing to worry about! If they get too rambunctious we’ll sic Johnny at ‘em! That’ll learn ‘em!”
But Johnny Lyle was no longer merely the boss’s nephew. He was a hand, and he was treated with respect, and given rough friendship.
Nothing more was heard of Lacey. The story had gone around, losing nothing in the telling. The hands of the Slash Seven cow crowd found the story too good to keep. A kid from the Slash Seven, they said, had run Lacey all over the rocks, Lacey and all of his outfit.
Hook Lacey heard the story and flushed with anger. When he thought of the flight of his gang up the canyon from a lot of untended fires, and then their meeting with the Lyle kid, who single-handed not only had stood them off but had killed one man and wounded another, his face burned. If there was one thing he vowed to do, it was to get Johnny Lyle.
Nobody had any actual evidence on Lacey. He was a known rustler, but it had not been proved. Consequently, Lacey showed up around Victorio whenever he was in the mood. And he seemed to be in the mood a great deal after the scrap in Tierra Blanca Canyon. The payoff came suddenly and unexpectedly.
Gar Mullins had orders to ride to Victorio and check to see if a shipment of ammunition and equipment intended for the Slash Seven had arrived. Monty Reagan was to go along, but Monty didn’t return from the bog camp in time, so Lyle asked his uncle if he could go.
Reluctantly, Tom West told him to go ahead. “But don’t you go asking for trouble!” he said irritably. But in his voice was an underlying note of pride, too. After all, he admitted, the kid came of fighting stock. “If anybody braces you, that’s different!”
Victorio was basking in a warm morning sun when the two cowhands rode into the street. Tying up at the Gold Pan, Johnny left Gar to check on the supplies while he went to get a piece of apple pie. Not that he was fooling Gar, or even himself. It was that blonde behind the counter that he wanted to see.
Hook Lacey was drinking coffee when Johnny entered. Lacey looked up, then set his cup down hard, almost spilling the coffee.
Mary smiled quickly at Johnny, then threw a frightened look at Lacey.
“Hello, Johnny,” she said, her voice almost failing her. “I—I didn’t expect you.”
Johnny was wary. He had recognized Lacey at once, but his uncle had said he wasn’t to look for trouble.
“Got any apple pie?” he asked.
She placed a thick piece before him, then filled a cup with coffee. Johnny grinned at her and began to eat. “Mmm!” he said, liking the pie. “You make this?”
“No, my mother did.”
“She sure makes good pie!” Johnny was enthusiastic. “I’ve got to get over here more often!”
“Surprised they let you get away from home,” Lacey said, “but I see you brought a nursemaid with you.”
Now, Tom West had advised Johnny to keep out of trouble, and Johnny, an engaging and easygoing fellow, intended to do just that, up to a point. This was the point.
“I didn’t need a nursemaid over on the Tierra Blanca,” he said cheerfully. “From the way you hightailed over them rocks, I figured it was you needed one!”
Lacey’s face flamed. He came off the bench, h
is face dark with anger. “Why, you—“
Johnny looked around at him. “Better not start anything,” he said. “You ain’t got a gang with you.”
Lacey was in a quandary. Obviously the girl was more friendly to Johnny than to him. That meant that he could expect no help from her should she be called on to give testimony following a killing. If he drew first he was a gone gosling, for he knew enough about old Tom West to know the Slash Seven outfit would never stop hunting if this kid was killed in anything but a fair fight. And the kid wasn’t even on his feet.
“Listen!” he said harshly. “You get out of town! If you’re in this town one hour from now, I’ll kill you!”
Slamming down a coin on the counter, he strode from the restaurant.
“Oh, Johnny!” Mary’s face was white and frightened. “Don’t stay here! Go now! I’ll tell Gar where you are. Please go!”
“Go?” Johnny was feeling a fluttering in his stomach, but it angered him that Mary should feel he had to leave. “I will not go! I’ll run him out of town!”
Despite her pleading, he turned to the door and walked outside. Gar Mullins was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lacey. But a tall, stooped man with his arm in a sling stood across the street, and Johnny Lyle guessed at once that he was a lookout, that here was the man he had winged in the canyon fight. And winged though the man was, it was his left arm, and his gun hung under his right hand.
Johnny Lyle hesitated. Cool common sense told him that it would be better to leave. Actually, Uncle Tom and the boys all knew he had nerve enough, and it was no cowardice to dodge a shoot-out with a killer like Hook Lacey. The boys had agreed they wouldn’t want to tangle with him.
Just the same, Johnny doubted that any one of them would dodge a scrap if it came to that. And all his Texas blood and training rebelled against the idea of being run out of town. Besides, there was Mary. It would look like he was a pure D coward to run out now.
Yet what was the alternative? Within an hour, Hook Lacey would come hunting him. Hook would choose the ground, place, and time of meeting. And Hook was no fool. He knew all the tricks.
What, then, to do?
The only thing, Johnny Lyle decided, was to meet Lacey first. To hunt the outlaw down and force him into a fight before he was ready. There was nothing wrong with using strategy, with using a trick. Many gunfighters had done it. Billy the Kid had done it against the would-be killer, Joe Grant. Wes Hardin had used many a device.
Yet what to do? And where? Johnny Lyle turned toward the corral with a sudden idea in mind. Suppose he could appear to have left town? ouldn’t that lookout go to Hook with the news? Then he could come back, ease up to Lacey suddenly, and call him, then draw.
Gar Mullins saw Johnny walking toward the corral, then he spotted the lookout. Mullins intercepted Johnny just as he stepped into saddle.
“What’s up, kid? You in trouble?”
Briefly Johnny explained. Gar listened and, much to Johnny’s relief, registered no protest. “All right, kid. You got it to do if you stay in this country, and your idea’s a good one. You ever been in a shoot-out before?”
“No, I sure haven’t.”
“Now, look. You draw natural, see? Don’t pay no mind to being faster’n he is. hances are you ain’t anywheres close to that. You figure on getting that first shot right where it matters, you hear? Shoot him in the body, right in the middle. No matter what happens, hit him with the first shot, you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
Johnny felt sick at his stomach and his mouth was dry, his heart pounding.
“I’ll handle that lookout, so don’t pay him no mind.” Gar looked up. “You a good shot, Johnny?”
“On a target I can put five shots in a playing card.”
“That’s all right, but this card’ll be shooting back. But don’t you worry. You choose your own spot for it.”
“Wait!” Johnny had an idea. “Listen, you have somebody get ^w to him that Butch Jensen wants to see him. I’ll be across the street at the wagon yard. When he comes up, I’ll step out.”
He rode swiftly out of town. Glancing back, he saw the lookout watching. Gar Mullins put a pack behind his own saddle and apparently readied his horse for the trail. Then he walked back down the street.
He was just opposite the wagon yard when he saw the lookout stop on a street corner, looking at him. At the same instant, Hook Lacey stepped from behind a wagon. Across the street was Webb Foster, another of the Lacey crowd. There was no mistaking their purpose, and they had him boxed!
Gar Mullins was thirty-eight, accounted an old man on the frontier, and he had seen and taken part in some wicked gun battles. Yet now he saw his position clearly. This was it, and he wasn’t going to get out of this one. If Johnny had been with him—but Johnny wouldn’t be in position for another ten minutes.
Hook Lacey was smiling. “You were in the canyon the other day, Gar,” he said triumphantly. “Now you’ll see what it’s like. e’re going to kill you, Gar. Then we’ll follow that kid and get him. You ain’t got a chance, Gar.”
Mullins knew it, yet with a little time, even a minute, he might have.
“Plannin’ on wiping out the Slash Seven, Hook?” he drawled. “That’s what you’ll have to do if you kill that kid. He’s the old man’s nephew.”
“Ain’t you worried about yourself, Gar?” Lacey sneered. “Or are you just wet-nursing that kid?”
Gar’s seamed and hard face was set. His eyes flickered to the lookout, whose hand hovered only an inch above his gun. And to Webb, with his thumb hooked in his belt. There was no use waiting. It would be minutes before the kid would be set.
And then the kid’s voice sounded, sharp and clear.
“I’ll take Lacey, Gar! Get that lookout!”
Hook Lacey whipped around, drawing as he turned. Johnny Lyle, who had left his horse and hurried right back, grabbed for his gun. He saw the big, hard-faced man before him, saw him clear and sharp. Saw his hand flashing down, saw the broken button on his shirtfront, saw the Bull Durham tag from his pocket, saw the big gun come up. But his own gun was rising, too.
The sudden voice, the turn, all conspired to throw Lacey off, yet he had drawn fast and it was with shock that he saw the kid’s gun was only a breath slower. It was that which got him, for he saw that gun rising and he shot too quick. The bullet tugged at Johnny’s shirt collar, and then Johnny, with that broken button before his eyes, fired.
Two shots, with a tiny but definite space between them, and then Johnny looked past Lacey at the gun exploding in Webb Foster’s hands. He fired just as Gar Mullins swung his gun to Webb. Foster’s shot glanced off the iron rim of a wagon wheel just as Gar’s bullet crossed Johnny’s in Webb Foster’s body.
The outlaw crumpled slowly, grabbed at the porch awning, then fell off into the street.
Johnny stood very still. His eyes went to the lookout, who was on his hands and knees on the ground, blood dripping in great splashes from his body. Then they went to Hook Lacey. The broken button was gone, and there was an edge cut from the tobacco tag. Hook Lacey was through, his chips all cashed. He had stolen his last horse.
Gar Mullins looked at Johnny Lyle and grinned weakly. “Kid,” he said softly, walking toward him, hand outstretched, “we make a team. Here on out, it’s saddle partners, hey?”
“Sure, Gar.” Johnny did not look again at Lacey. He looked into the once bleak blue eyes of Mullins. “I ride better with a partner. You got that stuff for the ranch?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if you’ll pick up my horse in the willows, yonder, I’ll say good-bye to Mary. e’d best be getting back. Uncle Tom’ll be worried.”
Gar Mullins chuckled, walking across the street, arm in arm with Johnny. “Well, he needn’t be,” Gar said. “He needn’t be.”
Home in the Valley
Steve Mehan placed the folded newspaper beside his plate and watched the waiter pour his coffee. He was filled with that warm, expansive glow that comes only from a
job well done, and he felt he had just cause to feel it.
Jake Hitson, the moneylending rancher from down at the end of Pahute Valley, had sneered when he heard of the attempt, and the ranchers had shaken their heads doubtfully when Steve first told them of his plan. They had agreed only because there was no alternative. He had proposed to drive a herd of cattle from the Nevada range to California in the dead of winter! To the north the passes were blocked with snow, and to the south lay miles of trackless and almost waterless desert.
Yet they had been obligated to repay the money Hitson had loaned them by the first day of March or lose their ranches to him. It had been a pitifully small amount when all was considered, yet Hitson had held their notes, and he had intended to have their range.
Months before, returning to Nevada, Steve Mehan had scouted the route. The gold rush was in full swing, people were crowding into California, and there was a demand for beef. As a boy he had packed and freighted over most of the trails and knew them well, so finally the ranchers had given in.
The drive had been a success. With surprisingly few losses he had driven the herd into central California and had sold out, a few head here and a few there, and the prices had been good. The five ranchers of Pahute Valley who had trusted their cattle to him were safe. Twenty thousand dollars in fifty-dollar gold slugs had been placed on deposit in Dake and Company’s bank here in Sacramento City.
With a smile, he lifted his coffee cup. Then, as a shadow darkened his table, he glanced up to see Jake Hitson. The man dropped into a chair opposite him, and there was a triumphant light in his eyes that made Steve suddenly wary. Yet with the gold in the bank there was nothing to make him apprehensive.
“Well, yuh think yuh’ve done it, don’t yuh?” Hitson’s voice was malicious. “Yuh think yuh’ve stopped me? Yuh’ve played the hero in front of Betty Bruce, and the ranchers will welcome yuh back with open arms. Yuh think when everything was lost you stepped in and saved the day?”
Mehan shrugged. “We’ve got the money to pay yuh, Jake. The five brands of the Pahute will go on. This year looks like a good one, and we can drive more cattle over the route I took this time, so they’ll make it now. And that in spite of all the bad years and the rustlin’ of yore friends.”
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