He broke off, staring at her. “All right,” he said, “it’s a bet!”
“Then let’s put up our money!” Jenny said flatly. “If he runs you out of the country I’ll have a hard time collecting! Here comes Dad and Colmer. We’ll give the money to Dad to hold for us while Colmer is a witness!”
Burr slowly counted out the money, his face dark with anger and resentment. He felt that he had never been so insulted in his life. Secretly, he fancied himself another Billy the Kid, and this talk of running him out! He snorted.
As the hour hand straightened up to three o’clock, four riders came down the hill to the stage station and dismounted. Everyone there knew them-Tom Newton, Jim Webb, Curly Bowne, and Jack Jones. All were top hands, tough riders who had fought Indians and rustlers with the Slash B when Cash Billings was on his feet and ramrodding the spread himself.
Lew Meadows eyed them thoughtfully, then stole a look at Burr. Fulton’s face was a study in doubt and irritation. Bill Hefferman peeled off his shirt and stepped out beyond the hitching rail. “Well, where is he?” he roared.
“Right here!” The reply was a ringing shout, and all heads turned. Dan Regan stood in the stable door. How he had gotten there or how long he had been there, nobody knew. Jenny felt her heart give a great leap. He had come, then! He wasn’t afraid!
Stripped to the waist, he looked a bigger man, and certainly a more rugged one, and powerfully muscled. He walked out and handed his shirt to Meadows. He wore two guns, tied low. He stepped up to the mark Hefferman had drawn with a toe, and grinned at the big man.
“All right,” he said cheerfully, “you asked for it!”
Both hands were carried chest high, rubbing the palms together, and as he spoke he smashed a straight left to Bill’s mustache that staggered the big man and started a thin trickle of blood from his broken lips. Hefferman grunted and looped a roundhouse swing that missed. Dan Regan’s left lanced that mustache three times, flashing like a striking snake. Then a right uppercut jerked the big man’s head back, and the crowd roared.
Hefferman rushed, swinging. Regan parried one swing, ducked another, and caught the third on the chin going away, but went down hard. Bill rushed to get close and Dan rolled over and came to his feet. He stabbed another left to the mouth, took a smashing blow on the chin that rang bells in his head, and then he bored in, ripping wicked, short-arm punches to the body with all the drive of his powerful shoulders. Bill pushed him away and swung with everything he had. The punch caught Regan on the chin, and he went down, turned a complete somersault, and lay stretched out on his face in the dust!
A shout went up from the Fulton men, and they began dancing around, slapping each other on the back.
Then Regan got up. They stared. Hefferman, astonished beyond reason, rushed. He met that same stiff left hand in the teeth, and it stopped him flat-footed. Before he could get untracked, Regan knocked him down with a right. Lunging to his feet, Hefferman charged. The two began slugging like madmen. Bill grabbed Dan by the belt and shirt and heaved him high, but Dan jerked up with his knee and smashed Bill’s nose to crumpled bone and flesh. Hefferman staggered and Regan broke loose.
Dropping to his feet he set himself and threw two powerful swings to Bill’s chin. Like a lightning-shivered oak, the big man staggered and his knees buckled. Dan Regan walked in, threw a left, and then let go with a right to the belly that drove every bit of wind Hefferman had into one explosive grunt. The big man doubled, and Regan brought a right from his knees that lifted him from his feet and dropped him on his back in the dust! He lay perfectly still.
Dan Regan stepped back quickly, working his fingers. His work-hardened hands felt good. Skinned on the knuckles, but still supple and quick. “All right, Fulton!” he said. Burr wheeled. The gunman dropped into a half crouch, his eyes suddenly aware. Triumph lit his eyes, and with a sneer, he dropped his hands.
Then he froze, still clutching the butts. He blinked and swallowed. He was looking into a pair of twin six-guns that had appeared in Dan Regan’s hands as if by magic. “It was a trick!” he roared. “A sneaking trick!”
Dan smiled. “Why, you tinhorn, try it again!” He dropped his guns into his holsters and lifted his hands free. Before Burr Fulton could so much as tighten his grip on his own guns, Regan’s had leaped from his holsters.
“Burr,” Regan said quietly, “I told you you wouldn’t have a chance with me! You’re not a badman, you’re just a wild-haired cowhand who got an idea he was fast! Back up and go to punching cows before you try to draw on the wrong man and get killed! You’re no gunslinger! You couldn’t even carry a gunslinger’s saddle!”
Burr Fulton swallowed. It was hard to take, but he was remembering the speed of those guns, noting the steadiness of them. “Try it again!” he screamed. “And come up shootin! I’d rather be killed than made a fool of!” He was trembling with fury, his face white and strained.
“Burr,” Dan replied patiently, “you’re strictly small-time, and I’m not a scalp hunter. You draw on me and I’ll shoot holes in your ears!”
Burr Fulton froze. Perhaps nothing else would have done it. Holes in his ears! The brand of a coward! Why, he would be ruined! He would …
He stepped back and straightened up. “All right,” he choked. “You win!”
“Now,” Regan said. “I’m ramrodding the Slash B from here on! Anyone caught rustling our stock will be strung up right on the ranch and left hanging until he dries up and blows away! You’ve all got just until daylight to leave the country. Tomorrow my boys start combing the brakes, hunting for strangers. I hope we don’t find any!”
Webb, Newton, Bowne, and Jones suddenly stepped out in a solid rank. All four held double-barreled shotguns which Curly had taken from their horses under cover of the fight.
“All right, boys! Start moving!” Dan said quietly.
They moved. Dan Regan walked up on the porch and looked at Jenny. “Well, I’m back,’ he said, “and there’s another dance at Rock Springs on Saturday. Want to go with your husband?”
“That’s the only way I’ll ever go to another dance there!” she replied tartly. “Anyway, we can buy furniture with the money.”
“What money?” he asked suspiciously.
“The money I won from Burr Fulton, betting on you at five to one!” she said, smiling a little, her eyes very bright.
LONIGAN
Heat lay like the devil’s curse upon the slow-moving herd, and dust clouded above and around them. The eyes of the cattle were glazed, and the grass beneath their feet was brown and without vigor or life-giving nourishment. The sun was lost in a brassy sky, and when Calkins knelt and put his palm to the ground the earth was almost too hot to touch.
He got slowly to his feet, his face unnaturally old with the gray film of dust and the stubble of beard on his jaws. “You ask for the truth.”
His voice was harsher than normal, and Ruth Gurney recognized it at once, and looked at him quickly, for as a child, she had known this man and had loved him like an uncle. “All right, you’ll get the truth. There’s no chance of you making money on this herd. Half your cows will die this side of Dodge. They’ll die of thirst and heat, and the rest won’t be worth the drive. You’re broke, ma’am.”
Her lips tightened and as the truth penetrated she was filled with desperation coupled with a feminine desire for tears. All along she had guessed as much, but one-and-all the hands had avoided telling her. “But what’s the matter, Lon? The Circle G always made its drives before, and always made money. We’ve the same men, and the trail’s the same.”
“No.” He spoke flatly. “Nothin’s the same. The trail’s bad. It’s been a strikin’ dry year, and we got a late start. The other herds got the good grass, and trampled the rest into the dust. She’s hotter’n usual, too. And,” he added grimly, “we ain’t got the same men.”
“But we have, Lon!” Ruth protested.
“No.” He was old and stubborn. “We ain’t. We got one new one too many, and
the one we should have ain’t here.”
Her lips tightened and her chin lifted. “You mean Hoey Ives. You don’t like him.”
“You should spit in the river, I don’t! Nor do the others. He’s plumb bad, ma’am, whether you believe it or not. He’s no-account. I’ll allow, he’s educated and slick talkin’, but he’s still an Ives, and a bigger pack of coyotes never drew breath.”
“And you think this-this Lonigan would make a difference? What can one man do against heat and dust and distance? What could he do to prevent storms and rustler raids?”
“I ain’t for knowing. If’n I did, mebbe this herd would get through in shape. But Lonigan would know, and Lonigan would take her through. Nor would he take any guff from Hoey Ives. I’ll tell you, ma’am, Hoey ain’t along for fun. He comes of a pack of outlaws, and education ain’t changed his breed none.”
“We won’t talk about Mr. Ives any further, Lon. Not one word. I have utmost confidence in him. When the drive is over I … I may marry him.”
Lon Calkins stared at her. “I’ll kill him first, or die shooting. Your pappy was a friend of mine. I’ll not see a daughter of his marry into that outfit.” Then he added, more calmly, “If’n that’s what you figure, Ruth, you better plan on hirin’ new hands when you get back to Texas.”
“Very well, then, that’s what I’ll do, Lon.” Her voice was even, but inside her words frightened her. “That’s just what I’ll do. I own the Circle G, and I’ll run it my way.”
Calkins said nothing for a long minute, and then he mused. “I wonder sometimes if’n anybody does own a brand. The Circle G, ma’am, ain’t just a brand on some cows. It ain’t just some range in Texas. It’s more … much, much more.
“I ain’t much hand to talkin’ of things like that, but you remember when your pappy and us come west? The Comanches killed O’Brien and Kid Leslie on the Brazos. I reckon both of them were part of the Circle G, ma’am. And Tony, that lousy Italian grub hustler, the one who rolled under a chuck wagon down on the cowhouse. He was part of the Circle G, too.
“A brand ain’t just a sign on a critter, it’s the lives, and guts, and blood of all the men that went to build it, ma’am. You can’t get away from that, no way. The Circle G is your pappy standin’ over your mother when she died givin’ birth to you. The Circle G is all of that.
“Nobody owns a brand, ma’am, like I say; nobody. It’s a thing that hangs in the air over a ranch, over its cows, and over its men. You know why that kid Wilkeson got killed in Uvalde? An hombre there said this was a lousy outfit, and the kid reached for his gun. He died for the brand, ma’am, like a hundred good and bad men done afore this. And you want to wipe it out, destroy it, just because you got your mind set on a no-account coyote. I wish Lonigan was back.”
“Lonigan!” She burst out furiously. “All you talk about is Lonigan! Who is he? What is he? What difference can one man make?”
“Well, “ Calkins said grimly, “your pappy made a sight of difference! If’n he was with this drive now, your fancy Hoey Ives would pack out of here so fast his dust would be bigger’n that raised by the herd! Or if Lonigan was. Fact is,” he added grimly, “there ain’t nary a cowhand down there wouldn’t draw on Hoey tomorrow if’n he figured he had a chance. Hoey’s killed ten men, all better’n him except with a gun.”
“And yet you think Lonigan could beat him?” she asked wryly.
“Mebbe. I ain’t sure, but I am sure of one thing. If Lonigan died you can bet your boots Hoey Ives would die with him! You say,” he continued, “what difference can one man make? Well, he can make a sight of difference. Lonigan doesn’t talk so much; he’s a good worker, but he’s got something in him, something more’n most men. He ain’t so big, rightly he’s not, but he seems big, and he rode for the brand, Lonigan did. He loved the Circle G. Loved it like it was his own.”
“Then where is he now when we need him?” Ruth demanded bitterly. “This … this superman of yours. Where is he now? You say he never missed a trail drive, that he would drift off, but somehow like he knew the day and hour, he would show up and take his place with the herd. Where is he now?”
“Mebbe he’s dead.” Calkins was grim. “Wherever he is, he’s with the Circle G, and we’re with him.”
They looked up at the sound of hoofs, and Lon Calkins’s face tightened grimly. Abruptly, he reined his horse around. “I’ll be ridin,’ he said.
“You meant what you said about quitting?” she asked.
“If he stays,” Calkins insisted, “I go.”
“I’ll be sorry to lose you, Lon. The Circle G won’t be the same without you.”
His old eyes met hers and he stared at her. “Believe me, it won’t. Your father should have had a son.”
He rode away then, and she stared after him, her body feeling empty as an old sack. The approaching hoofs drew nearer and slowed, and her eyes turned with relief toward those of Hoey Ives. He was a big young man with hard black eyes in which she had never seen the cruelty or calculation that lay in their depths. He rode magnificently and was a top hand.
On this trip he had been her mainstay, ramrodding it through, talking to lift her spirits, advising her and helping her in countless ways. It was he who had selected the trail they took, he who had ridden out alone to meet the rustlers that would have stopped them, and who talked them out of trouble.
“What’s the matter with the old man?” he asked. “What’s he growling about now?”
“Oh, he was talking about the old days on the Circle G,” she said, “and about Lonigan.”
“Lonigan?” Hoey’s gaze sharpened, and for an instant she seemed to read apprehension in his eyes. “He hasn’t heard from him?”
“Nobody has. Yet he always made the drive.”
“He’s dead,” Ives replied. “He must be. I knew he always made the drive, and that was why I waited before offering my services. We never got along, you see.”
“What’s he like?” she asked curiously. “Lonigan?”
Ives hesitated, while his bay stamped its foot restlessly. “He’s a killer. Utterly vicious. “
“But the boys liked him, “ Ruth protested.
“Sure. He was their pride and joy,” Ives said bitterly. “He led the Circle G parade. No man, not even your father, had as much influence with the hands. He was loudmouthed and a braggart, but he appealed to them, and they found excuses for his killings.”
“Yet he must have something … ?”
“Yes,” Hoey Ives nodded reluctantly. “He had that. There was something about him, something that frightened men who didn’t even know him.”
Ives rejoined the herd, and Ruth Gurney rode on, lingering along the hillcrests away from the dust, watching the herd that meant everything to her. The sale of that herd could mean the ranch was out of debt, that it was hers, all hers. Yet she knew that what Calkins had said was true, bitterly true. Not half the herd would live to see Dodge, and she would be broke then, broke and finished.
She turned her horse and put him on up the slope to the very top of the long, low hill that ran beside the trail. On top there might be more breeze. And there was, although but little more. Yet she sat her horse there, looking over the brown, trampled-down grass that stretched on beyond it. There, too, the herds had been. The earlier herds that had started sooner.
The failure of Lonigan to appear had caused most of that delay. All along she had realized why Calkins was waiting, why the hands kept looking toward the trail, why they found excuses to ride into town, why they intercepted every drifting horseman to ask about him, but for the first time he had not appeared.
She pushed on across the ridge, riding due west. The sun was already far down toward the horizon but it was still unbearably hot. Heat waves danced and rippled against the sky along the ridges, and she slowed her horse to a walk and pushed on alone, lost now from the herd, with only the rising dust to mark its presence.
Half asleep, lulled by the heat and the even rhythm of the walking horse, she do
zed in the saddle, and then the horse stopped and coolness touched her face. She was atop another ridge, and far toward the west she seemed to see a thin edge of green, and then her eyes dropped and she saw the tracks of a horse. The horse was shod and the tracks were fresh.
Without doubt the tracks were no more than an hour old, two hours at most. In that time the herd had moved less than three miles, so its dust cloud would have been within sight. Why had the strange rider avoided them? His horse had stopped here on this ridge, and from the tracks he must have watched the dust cloud. It was unusual for a rider to be so close and not to approach the herd. Unless-she frowned and bit her lip-unless he was an outlaw.
She realized instantly that she should ride to the herd and let Calkins know. Rather, let Hoey Ives know. It might be another raid, and rustlers had already hit them for over three hundred head of stock. Nevertheless, her curiosity aroused, she turned her horse and started backtracking the man. From time to time she paused to rise in her stirrups and look carefully around the prairie, yet nowhere could she see anything, not a sign of a rider beyond the tracks she followed.
Aware that it was time to turn back, she pushed on, aware that the terrain was changing and that she was riding into a broken country of exposed ledges and sharp upthrusts of rock. Topping a rise, she drew up, frowning. Before her lay a long green valley, several miles wide and grassy and well watered. This was the green, some of the grass showing from the hilltops, that she had seen from some distance east. What a waste to think their herd was passing over that miserable brown and dusty plain when all this was going to waste! It was too bad Hoey did not know of this.
She pushed on to the bottom of the valley and toward a water hole, the tracks for the moment forgotten. And then at the water hole she saw them again. Here the rider had stopped, a tall man with rundown bootheels and Mexican spurs, judging by the tracks in the sand.
She was lying on her stomach drinking when her eyes lifted in response to the sudden falling of a shadow. She saw shabby boots and the Mexican spurs, dark leather chaps, and then a slim-waisted man wearing a faded red shirt and a black kerchief around his throat. His hat was gray, dusty, and battered.
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