“Hello,” he said, smiling at her. “You’ve got water on your chin.”
She sprang to her feet irritably and dashed a quick hand across her mouth and chin. “Suppose I have? What business is it of yours?”
His face was browned from sun and wind, his eyes faintly whimsical. He wore, she noticed suddenly, two guns. He was rolling a cigarette, and now he placed it carefully in the corner of his mouth and struck a match left handed. For some idiotic reason she suddenly wished the wind would blow it out. It didn’t.
His eyes slanted from her to her horse and the brand. “Circle G,” he murmured thoughtfully, “I reckon that’s a Texas outfit.”
“If you were from Texas,” she replied with asperity, “you would know. There wasn’t a better known cattleman in Texas than Tom Gurney!”
“Relative of his?”
“His daughter. And my herd is just a few miles east of here.”
“Yeah,” his voice was suddenly sarcastic, “that’s what comes of a woman ramroddin’ a herd. You got your stock on dry grass with this valley offerin’ shelter, graze, and plenty of water.”
“For your information,” she said coldly, “I’m not ramrodding the herd. My trail boss is. He evidently did not know of this valley.”
“And evidently he didn’t try very hard to find out about it. You got a lousy trail boss, ma’am.”
“I didn’t ask you! Mr. Ives is-“
She was startled by the way his head came up. “Did you say … Ives? You don’t mean Hoey Ives?”
“I do. You … you know him?”
“I should smile. Your dad must be dead, then … for he’d never let an Ives ramrod a trail herd of his, else.”
“Who are you?” she demanded. “You talk like you knew my father?”
He shrugged. “You know this country. Folks pass stories along from camp to camp. A man can know a lot about a country without ever being’ there. I’m just from Wyoming.”
Suddenly, he glanced up. “Cloudin’ up for sure. You’ll never make it back to the herd now before the rain comes. Mount up and we’ll go down to the cabin.”
She looked at him coldly, then cast an apprehensive glance at the sky. “I’ll race the storm to the herd,” she said coolly. “Thanks just the same.”
“No,” he said, “you’d never make it. I know these prairie thunderstorms. There may be hail, and sometimes the stones are big enough to beat your brains out. The cabin is closer.”
Even as he spoke, there was a rumble of thunder and a few spattering drops landed near them. Worriedly, she glanced at the sky. It was dark and lowering. She had been so preoccupied by the tracks and then by the valley that she had not noticed the rising clouds. Now she saw that there was indeed a bad storm coming, and recalling some of the gullies she had traversed she knew that the trail back would be fraught with danger.
She glanced once at the strange rider, hesitated, then said swiftly, “All right, we’ll go.”
“We’d better make a run for it!” he said, swinging into the saddle. “She’ll drop the bottom out of the bucket in a minute!”
Following his lead, she dashed off downstream at breakneck, reckless speed. Yet when they swept around the corner near the cabin his hand went up, and he turned toward her, his face dark and hard. With a gesture, he indicated several horses in the corral, and smoke rising from the ancient chimney. “This could be trouble!” he said grimly. “There was nobody here an hour ago, and nobody rides loose in this country right now who’s honest!”
“Including yourself?” she asked quickly.
His grin was lopsided but not without humor. “Maybe even me,” he agreed, “but you back me in whatever I say. Good or bad men, we need shelter!”
Swiftly they unsaddled their horses and led them to the stable. There was still room for two or three horses, indicating that some of the riders were less than particular about their mounts. Then the strange rider led the way toward the cabin.
Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “Call me Danny!”
He pushed the door open and stepped inside, the girl right behind him. He had known they would be observed and that the men within the cabin would have worked out some sort of plan if they were not honest men, and his first glance told him they were not.
“How’s for some grub?” he asked coolly. “We got caught in the rain!”
A big man standing with his back to the fireplace grinned. “Got caught in good company, I see! Ain’t often a feller gets hisself caught out with a girl in these parts!”
“Especially,” Danny said quietly, “when she’s his boss!”
“Boss?” The big man’s eyes sharpened. “Never heard tell of no woman cow boss!”
“You heard of one now.”
There were four men in the room, and two of them Danny recognized at once. Neither Olin Short nor Elmo Shain were names unknown to the law of half a dozen states and territories. The big man he did not know, nor the lean saturnine man with the scarred face.
“This is Ruth Gurney, boss of the Circle G.”
The big man stiffened and peered hard at her, then at Danny. “You don’t look familiar to me,” he said. “I figured I knowed the G riders.”
“Then if you don’t know me,” Danny said quietly, “you ain’t known em long.”
Olin Short, who was neither short nor fat, glanced up.
“Here’s coffee for the lady, “ he said quietly. “You pick up a cup and rinse her under the rainspout … if’n you’re particular.”
Danny took the cup and without hesitation stepped to the door and rinsed the cup. When he stepped back inside his eyes sought Olin’s face. The man was about thirty, not a bad-looking man with blue eyes and a stubble of beard. If there was one among them upon whom he might place some trust, it was Short.
“How far offs the G?” It was the scarred man who spoke.
Danny glanced at him. “Maybe six miles,” he lied, “not over ten.”
“Know where you are?” Danny nodded.
“Why not? Miss Gurney was riding an’ when the storm started they sent me after her. I told ‘em if we couldn’t make it back we’d hole up here.”
“How’d you know about this shack?”
Now it was the big man who spoke, and his voice was suddenly hard. Danny filled his cup before replying.
“I stopped here a week once, last winter,” he said, “helped some boys drive some horses into New Mexico.”
“Horses? Into New Mexico?” Shain laughed. “I thought Billy the Kid and his outfit had that sewed up.”
“It was Billy’s outfit.” Danny spoke quietly and without seeming to notice the sudden shock on their faces. When they spoke again, however, there was new respect on their faces.
“Billy’s outfit, huh? Who was with him?”
“Jesse Evans, Hendry Brown, and a couple of other hombres. They had the horses, and I was drifting toward Cimarron, but joined up with them and drove down to the Ruidoso instead.”
The reply seemed to satisfy the men, for no more questions were asked. Ruth sipped her coffee slowly, soaking up the warmth of the room. She was sufficiently aware of the situation in west Texas to know these were hard, dangerous men. They were outlaws. And this man with her might be another of the same breed.
She had heard of Billy the Kid, the soft-voiced boy of not yet eighteen who already had won a name for deadly gun skill, and of his friend, the man who in time would be on the opposite side, Jesse Evans.
Danny had taken his cup and moved back near the wall. He placed it on the floor and rolled a smoke deftly.
“What happens,” the scar-faced man said suddenly, “if you don’t show up with the lady come daylight?”
“Why, I reckon there’d be eight or ten of the toughest hands in Texas riding thisaway to find out why,” Danny said quietly. Then his eyes lifted, and they seemed to blaze with sudden fire. The quiet was gone from them, and from his voice, which carried an edge that was sharp and clean. “But don’t worry … we’ll ride in
to that camp come mornin’. Nobody,” he said, more quietly, “or nothing, will keep us from it.”
Shain stared at him, sitting up from the wooden bunk where he had been reclining. “You talk plumb salty, stranger. Who are you? Maybe you are the Kid?” he sneered.
Danny smiled, suddenly. “Why, you boys been around here before, I take it,” he said coolly. “If you were, maybe you’ll recall the calling cards I left here. You see, I came back this way after that trip to Lincoln and the Ruidoso … and had occasion to leave some reminders.”
Elmo Shain’s sneer was wiped from his face as if by magic, and he shot a quick, horrified glance toward the big man by the fireplace. For some reason that comment electrified the group in the room. Ruth had the feeling that Short alone was pleased.
Conversation died again in the room, and Danny finished his coffee, then refilled both their cups. “Shain,” he said suddenly, “when the lady finishes her coffee, how’s for lettin’ her have that bunk? She’s some tired.”
At the use of his name, Shain had glanced up sharply. For a slow minute he said nothing, and then he nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “all right.”
Danny finished his smoke and rubbed it out. His message had ruined whatever plans they had made, or had at least made them doubt their use. Now they knew either who he was or that he was somebody to be reckoned with. He would have small cause for worry until two of them excused themselves and went outside to talk things over. When they returned he would have to be even more watchful.
Although reluctant to lie down, Ruth suddenly found herself so exhausted that she began to doze almost as soon as she touched the bunk. Danny drew a blanket over her and squatted at the foot of the bunk, his back against the wall.
A slow hour paraded past. The scarred man got up and muttering something about wood for the fire, went out. Shain was asleep, sitting against the wall. The big man followed the scarred man after the wood, and Olin Short threw the last stick on the fire and leaning close to Danny, said quietly, “Watch yourself. The big hombre is Casselman. The mean one is the devil of the lot … he’s Papago Brown.”
“Where do you stand?”
Short’s face hardened. “Only to help that girl. I’ll see no woman wronged. Least of all, any girl of Gurney’s.”
“Good.”
The door opened and the two men came in and dropped two armfuls of wood near the fireplace. Casselman looked down at her. “Looks mighty purty, lyin’ there.”
Danny got slowly to his feet. A new cigarette was in the corner of his mouth. “Stay away from her,” he said.
Casselman’s big head turned to look over his shoulder. He chuckled, a slow, sneering chuckle. “You’d stop me?”
Papago was still near the door. Danny nodded coolly, “I sure would, Casselman. You make a move toward her, and I’ll kill you. I’ll shoot low down, Casselman, and I couldn’t miss.
“As for Papago,” he added coolly, “if he doesn’t get his hand off that gun butt, I’ll kill him now.”
Casselman laughed and Brown stared at Danny, smiling. “That stuff about those three skeletons didn’t faze us,” Papago said. “We’re goin’ to call your bluff.”
“All right, “ Danny said, “but did you ever hear of Lonigan missing?”
“Lonigan?”
At the name, Ruth Gurney was suddenly wide awake. Who had said it? To whom?
Papago Brown’s face was white and Casselman moved slowly away from the fire.
“Can’t be!” Shain was awake. “We heard-“
“Shut up!” Casselman turned on him in a fury.
“I know what you heard, “ Danny said quietly. “You heard I wouldn’t be with them this trip. Ever figure you might be double-crossed? That your partner might figure on warning the G of you to put himself in solid?”
Nobody said anything, and after a minute Casselman picked up a couple of sticks and tossed them on the fire. Shain stared at him, then at Papago Brown.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said, and added significantly, “and I mean sleep!”
“I reckon,” Short said quietly, “that’s a good idea. For all of us.” Nobody said anything for several minutes, while the girl lay breathless, feeling the tension in the room. The fire crackled and a stick fell, sending up a thin column of sparks. A wrong move could turn this room into red-laced hell from which none of them might emerge alive. Both Brown and Casselman knew that, for it would be point-blank shooting here.
Casselman sat down abruptly and began to pull off his boots. “I reckon, “ he said, “rest is the first thing.”
Twice during the night Danny dozed lightly, but he was back in the shadows, and a watcher could not have told whether he dozed or whether the eyes were watchful from under his hat’s low brim. It was scarcely gray in the east when he touched her boot. Like a wraith he moved beside the bunk.
“Come!” he whispered, and she followed him. After the stuffy air of the tightly closed room the morning was like wine in her lungs. The rain had broken, and there were scattered clouds with fire along their edges in the east. Swiftly, he saddled their horses and they took the trail.
Several times she glanced at him. “Did somebody speak of Lonigan last night? I thought I heard the name.”
“Could be,” he said, with the flush of the rising sun on his face. “I’ve heard the name, and I reckon, “ he smiled a little, “they had heard it too!”
The drum of hoofs on the turf warned them and they looked up to see Calkins and Laredo Lee riding toward them. They drew up sharply when they saw she was not alone, and she had the feeling that Danny made some sharp signal from behind her back.
“You all right?” Calkins demanded abruptly. “We was some worried.”
“All right,” she said. “This is Danny. He knows the Circle G.”
“Yeah, I remember him,” Calkins said. “Laredo, you ride on ahead with the boss. I want to make talk with Danny.”
When they were well ahead, Calkins turned on him. “You son of a gun! Where you been? We need you the worst way.”
“Not so bad as you will,” Danny replied, and then went on to tell of the riders in the cabin. “And there’d been others there before them. When we came up I saw the tracks of maybe six or eight riders.”
“She know who you are?”
Danny shook his head. “Doubt it. My name was mentioned last night, but I don’t believe she quite got it. Not that it matters. Hoey will know me.”
“He might not. You’ve changed, Lonigan. Changed a sight since he saw you. He was gone east, you know, an’ you filled out a good bit, and you are some taller, too. Then … well, there’s a different look about you. He might not be sure.”
The herd came in sight and they drew up on the brow of the hill, looking down at them. “Reckon he knowed about that grass and water?” Calkins asked.
“He knew. He scouted it a couple of days ago. I spotted the herd quite a ways back, and when I saw what trail they were takin’ I hung back, curious. Then I saw the old man wasn’t with you and a girl was. So I waited, sizing up the layout.”
“You figure he aims to steal the herd?”
“No … to buy it cheap. To get her scared of goin’ broke, then making her an offer. He won’t steal it unless all else fails. But chances are he’d steal the money back if he did buy it. He’s deliberately kept this herd on the used-up trails to wear ‘em down and scare her into a quick sale.”
The herd pushed on into the brightening day, and Lonigan kept always on the far side of the herd from Hoey Ives. Calkins, riding near Ruth, warned her to say nothing of the new rider to Hoey. She glanced at him, and her chin lifted resentfully. Then she pulled on ahead.
Still, she was worried. What had the strange riders been doing in that cabin? Wasn’t what she had heard true? That riders loitering in this area without herds were suspect? And that bunch! She was well aware that only the presence of the mysterious Danny had prevented trouble, and some curious understanding there was between Danny and those men. Could t
hey be working together? Could all of that have been an elaborate pretense to get him with the herd?
Hoey cantered his horse up to her and glanced at her sharply. “You all right? I was off looking in the other direction and just got back. We were all worried.”
“I’m all right. Hoey,” she asked suddenly, “why are we following this route? Why don’t we go west to that valley? There’s grass there.”
He seemed astonished. “Grass? There is? I can’t believe it! The last time I came over this trail it was a canyon of dust.”
He paused, then said, “If there’s grass, of course we’ll go. I’ll turn the herd.”
“Wait.” She hesitated, then shook away her doubts. “Hoey, we’ve a new rider.”
“What?” He drew up, his face stiff. “Where’d you get him?”
“I met him last night. There were some men in the cabin where we took shelter. He seemed to know them. A man named Casselman and one called Papago Brown.”
“This rider knew them?” He seemed relieved, and Ruth “watched him, puzzled and doubtful. “He’s probably a good hand. I’ll talk to him later. We can use the help.”
The clouds did not leave, but hung low, bulging, and ominous. Yet it was not cool, but sultry with heat. Ruth kept again to the crests, yet was glad when the first of the herd spilled over into the canyon and headed for the thin trickle of the stream. They waded into it, scattering along the stream for three quarters of a mile, drinking, then moving out to crop the green grass.
Calkins rode up to her. “Why not bed down here?” he asked. “Let em get their fill? They’ll drive easier tomorrow.”
She moved back toward the chuck wagon and saw Laredo Lee already there, watching the cook make coffee. He looked up at her, a thin, sandy man with large freckles and cool blue eyes. He had been riding for the Circle G for three years and made the last drive with her father.
“I hear you aim to make Ives foreman,” he said, glancing at her. “If you do, why figure to hire a man to take my place.”
“I’d be sorry to lose you, Laredo,” she said sincerely.
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