by Short, Luke;
Evarts said sleepily, “I think Ike is being spooked. Bide’s roundup boss. He can order the wagon wherever he wants.”
He looked at Will and Will was stubbornly silent, and Evarts crossed his legs with a kind of irritability in the movement.
“You can’t keep a roundup crew off your range,” he went on, almost pleading. “It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”
Will murmured softly, flatly, “He’ll stay there,” and saw the distress mount in John Evart’s eyes. He had seen it there before, when John Evarts had to make a decision and refused to. He would refuse this one, just as he had refused to face each crisis since Phil Evarts’ death. And the long list of these was graven in Will’s memory as irrevocably as epitaphs on gravestones, for Will had pictured them thus—each as a new death for Hatchet.
It had begun with the blizzards in February which piled foot after foot of snow upon the flats until Phil Evarts, helpless and raging, had ridden out to his death in the storm in a vain attempt to cut the drift fences. That nightmare week had wiped out all but a remnant of Hatchet’s cattle, leaving them piled in frozen windrows against the drift fences. Phil’s death had set in motion the chain of events that brought John Evarts to Hatchet as owner. The crises began then and followed each other with the regularity of beads on a string. John Evarts could not swing loans from the bank, and the Hatchet crew, with no loyalty for a man who would not provide for them; broke up and drifted away with their wages owing. So now Hatchet’s vast range that Phil Evarts had plundered from weaker men was empty and stood waiting for a man strong enough to take it. And that man, everyone knew, was Bide Marriner. In the struggle for more range and more water holes for more cattle that made up the life of a big rancher, Phil Evarts had outguessed and outfought Bide Marriner at every turn. But Phil was dead and Bide was alive, the ultimate crisis that John Evarts must face.
Will had known the showdown would come after the snows. Phil Evarts had been a brigand, tougher than, his tough neighbors, but his brother was a reasonable man, which in this country was interpreted as a sign of weakness. So now these outfits, large and small, were closing in on him and forcing his hand, for there was nothing between them and the empty limitless ranges of Hatchet except a timid aging man and an unpaid skeleton crew, of which Will was boss. A dozen times Will had decided to drift, and each time he had stayed, hating himself, helpless, waiting for the inevitable.
And now it was here. Bide had moved onto Hatchet under cover of calf burning, and John Evarts didn’t want to see it. It was in his face and Will watched it, just as Sam and Celia were watching it.
John said reluctantly, then, “Maybe you’re right, Will. But Bide might lease it from us.”
Sam Danfelser said flatly, “That’s not the way to handle Bide, John.”
His heavy positive voice seemed to wipe out John Evarts’ words; it was more than a contradiction, and the older man strangely seemed to welcome it.
Sam put his big hands on the back of the chair in front of him and spoke slowly now to Evarts.
“Bide won’t lease. Phil took Russian Springs away from him, and he figures it’s his. He won’t pay for it.”
“What would satisfy him?” Evarts asked.
Sam said flatly, positively, “Give it to him. He’s leading the pack. Cut the ground from under him and you’ve got them beat. Give it to him.”
Will made no move, said nothing, but he watched Celia. He could see the protest mount in her eyes, and he knew Sam Danfelser saw it, too, and didn’t care.
Celia said challengingly, “If Bide wanted a chunk of D Cross would you give it to him, Sam?”
Sam regarded her coolly, almost impersonally, and nodded. “If I’d stolen it from him and didn’t have a crew to fight for it, yes. I’d give it back before he took it—and a lot more.”
Celia looked to John Evarts now, silently appealing to him. And Sam was watching him, too, just as silently forcing his will upon him. Under the scrutiny of them, Evarts was uncomfortable, but some decision was necessary and he knew it. He sighed and said, “I believe you’re right, Sam. He’ll take it anyway.”
“Give it to him before he takes it,” Sam said. He was pleased with himself, and he could not keep a smugness entirely from his voice.
Celia looked fleetingly at Will, who was rubbing the edge of the boot-scarred desk, watching his hand, completely quiet, out of this. He was not going to help her.
She turned from him to her uncle, then, spoke with bitter resignation. “Give Russian Springs to Bide, John, and you’ll have every outfit begging on our doorstep.”
Sam said easily, confidently, “Bide’s the only one to worry about. The rest will sing small when he’s satisfied.”
Again Celia looked at Will, and again he was not watching this. She spoke almost with desperation. “You pay Will to run Hatchet, John. Ask him.”
Sam shuttled his glance to Will and spoke immediately, aggressively. “John knows what Will would say. He doesn’t agree with it.”
John Evarts looked relieved at Sam’s words, as if Sam had saved him from saying the same thing. Now he said, “We’ll ride over to Russian Springs early, Will. I’ll talk to Bide myself.”
“All right,” Will said mildly.
Sam turned toward the door then, and John Evarts, saying good night, went past Celia into the other part of the house.
Sam paused by the door, his hand on the knob, and said, “I’ll sleep here, Celia. Coming, Will?”
“I’ve got a little work yet.”
Sam looked at Celia then, and his stubborn face softened a little. “Good night, Celia.”
“Good night, Sam.”
Will toed the rickety swivel chair up to the desk and sat down heavily. He reached down the red-covered talley book from a desk pigeonhole and poked among the papers until he found the stub of a pencil. He knew Celia had not left the room, but he did not look at her.
She came over to the desk then and shoved the papers aside and sat on the desk top beside him. Will glanced up and saw her watching him, and because he knew she wanted to talk and that there was no use trying to hide anything from her, he pitched the pencil back among the papers and tilted back in his chair. His black hair lay awry on his forehead, and he did not brush it back.
Celia murmured with a kind of self-derision, “It’s been a long time since I was spanked and sent to bed this way.”
“Me too,” Will said and grinned. He thought of Schultz and he murmured, “I deserved mine, I reckon.”
They were silent for a while, each lost in the still private labyrinth of thought. Celia said finally, “Sam’s so sure,” in a small, doubting voice and looked questioningly at Will.
He didn’t answer her, because he knew she didn’t want him to. “What will Bide do?” she asked then.
“Take Hatchet. All of it.”
Celia didn’t speak, and Will went on in a low, hard voice, “Bide’s hungry, and all the lickings Phil gave him didn’t cure it. He’ll be hungry until he gets Hatchet.”
“Sam doesn’t think so.”
“No,” Will said quietly, “I know he doesn’t.” He glanced at Celia, and for a long moment they looked in each other’s eyes, and then Celia looked away. Will didn’t have to apologize to her: she knew and she agreed with him.
Again they were silent, and Will felt his weariness settle on him, but oddly he was resigned and at peace. The full sum of John Evarts’ weakness was known to him now, and that knowledge was some comfort. He knew Celia felt it, too, and he reflected idly upon that. There were times, like now, when he could tell what this girl was thinking, and there was no need for speech between them. During these six years he had been with Hatchet he had seen her grow from girlhood into womanhood and pledge herself to marry Sam Danfelser, and yet he was certain he understood her better than Sam ever would. He understood her better than he did Lottie, he reflected, and it was Lottie he would marry someday.
He heard Celia sigh now, the sound of it small, almost inaudible, and h
e stirred restlessly in his chair and murmured, “We’re a couple of mavericks, kid.”
Celia nodded soberly, her eyes grave. “Why have you stuck, Will?” she asked gently.
“I don’t know. Habit, I reckon.” He scowled and looked up at her. “Why have you? Sam wants to take you away from Hatchet.”
“But not until he’s clear of debt,” Celia said. There was a suggestion of resentment in her tone that Will ignored, knowing she was still smarting from Sam’s overbearing advice.
“That’s sound,” he conceded.
Celia was silent a moment, and then she sighed. “Poor Will,” she said softly.
Will looked sharply at her, scowling, and she went on: “You’ve been top dog too long to like this, haven’t you?”
Will stirred restlessly under her gaze, and suddenly his lean face broke into a wry smile. “All right, I have. But those days are gone.”
“Are they, Will?” She was looking at him intently, as if his reply would also answer some deep unsolved question within her.
Will said almost harshly, “John Evarts says so. I work for him.”
Celia slid off the desk now, and she was still watching him gravely. “I don’t believe you,” she said simply. “You don’t believe it yourself, either. Good night, Will.”
Chapter 2
Will came awake next morning with the instant realization that he had overslept. It was a gray day, and one of the bunkhouse windows was banging noisily in the wind. Still half drugged with sleep, he rose and saw that Sam Danfelser’s blankets were empty.
He shut the window and pulled on his boots. Washing hurriedly, he stepped out of the bunkhouse and glanced toward the house. It was a single-story affair of stone with timber wings and had a high veranda running its length under cottonwoods that were barely leafed now. There were no horses at the tie rail between the two trees in front of the veranda, and he wheeled and poked his head into the cookshack adjoining the bunkhouse. Of the five places set at one of the long plank tables, three were empty.
He stood for a moment, his mind slow to accept this. Evarts and Sam and Ike had breakfasted early and ridden out, Ike doubtless on ranch business. But Sam and John had set out for Russian Springs without him. Moreover, they must have warned the cook and Ike against waking him.
He tramped back into the bunkhouse, gathered up his jumper and hat and shell belt, and headed for the corral. Lottie’s mare had been turned out to pasture with the other horses, but she was gentle and he caught her easily. Will’s anger was edging him now, for it was a universal rule that the horses were never turned out until everyone had a mount. Evarts had left plenty of evidence that he didn’t want him along, and this realization touched a stubborn streak in Will.
Once mounted, he cut east from the ranch, letting Lottie’s mare run off her spirits until she settled down to an alternate walk and lope. Evarts and Sam had clung to the old wagon road which was level riding to Russian Springs. Will kept a little north, heading across country, and was soon in the bare hills behind Hatchet.
From this mild elevation the greening new grass lay stretched before him on all sides, broken now and then by the darker patches of timber and small growth along the watercourses. As far as he could see now, this range was empty, and Will was reminded again of the terrible winter past. Where he was riding now there had been four feet of snow. Off to the west, behind him, the pine-clad Indigos shouldering blackly into the gray sky and dividing this Basin from the Indian reservation to the west, had not proved a barrier for those storms. They had come in over Indian Ridge to the north, so that Will, even now, regarded the Ridge with a deep malevolence. It lay in sight of these hills here, a high, bleak, timber-and-canyon-snarled badlands whose deep reaches stretched from the Indigos to the lower Salt Hills to the distant east. A footless lot of small ranchers fought for a bare living there where Phil Evarts had pushed them. Indian Ridge joined the Indigos and the Salt Hills, like the bar in the letter H, and it was below this bar that Hatchet cattle had died by the hundreds, so that Will this morning was rarely out of sight of a bleaching skeleton.
He kept east and a little north, and after midday dropped down a bald slope past one of Hatcher’s line shacks and later picked up the road. This shack, Will knew, was Phil Evarts’ first home in this country, his original homestead. He had been settled here only months before he started reaching out to the west. To the east was a waterless stretch, relieved only by Russian Springs, and Phil had not bothered with that until later. Then he had seized it from Bide Marriner, and now Bide had it back—given to him by John Evarts. Will thought of that darkly, impatience edging him now.
An hour later Will saw two horsemen ahead of him, and he lifted his horse into a long lope. As he approached they pulled up, and, coming closer, Will saw the look of annoyance behind the welcome in Evarts’ face. Sam’s face was bland and ruddy and stolid, touched with a faint embarrassment, and Will came to a swift decision.
He pulled up beside John Evarts and folded his arms and leaned on the horn. “John,” he murmured, “I’m an easy man to fire, but I like to hear it spoken.”
John Evarts’ mild face showed a faint distress, but he was too shrewd to pretend he didn’t understand. He said quietly, “You’ll hear it spoken when I do, Will. We didn’t want you along.”
Will’s glance shuttled to Sam, who regarded him steadily.
Evarts said, “You’re no man to face Bide. That’s all, Will.”
To Sam, Will said, “You figured that out yourself, Sam?”
“I did,” Sam said calmly.
Will shuttled his gaze to Evarts then. “Either I’m in this all the way or I’m out of it, John. Which will it be?”
“You’re in it, Will.”
“And either Sam runs D Cross or he runs Hatchet. Which?”
Evarts glanced uneasily at Sam, and Sam said calmly, “I’ll run D Gross, Will.”
“Then it’s done,” Will said mildly, straightening up.
Evarts wanted to say more, but the expression in Will’s face suggested that the incident was closed. Evarts pulled his horse around, and they rode on down the faintly marked road.
A mile or so farther on they crossed a dim trail heading off to the north.
It was Will who noticed it first, and he reined up, peering at the ground. Evarts and Sam reined up, too, and saw the wagon tracks. They came from east and turned north on the trail, and there were four riders beside the wagon.
Sam said presently, “You can’t get a wagon through to Indian Ridge this way, can you?”
Will said, “No. You go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“We’ll all go,” Evarts said abruptly, and he pulled his horse around.
Will was puzzled. This trail, he knew, led to a seep a mile or so through these hills. Beyond that was a rough, almost worthless country that lifted into the sorry range of Ray Cavanaugh’s outfit below Indian Ridge.
He said nothing, however, as he fell in beside Evarts. They crossed a wooded rise, dropped down into a narrow tongue of alkali flats to the west, and then climbed a slope that held thick timber at its summit.
They topped the ridge, passing through its timber, and then reined in abruptly. Below them, and ahead, in a shallow bowl between ridges, there was a chuck wagon. The seep had kept the grass on the valley floor a deep green, and the chuck-wagon team and another pair of horses were loosely picketed on it.
Smoke spiraled up from the fire by the wagon, and three men were standing around it. The muffled sound of an ax regularly biting into wood came from among the trees of the opposite slope.
Will recognized the wagon immediately, and he glanced at Sam, who was looking at him.
Sam’s startled glance shuttled to Evarts. “That’s Bide’s wagon off roundup.”
Evarts’ reply was unperturbed. “Save us a ride,” he said and put his horse down the slope.
Will fell in behind Sam, who had let Evarts go ahead. One thing puzzled him; whoever was cutting wood up there was not cutting firewo
od. He was cutting green wood.
As they leveled off into the valley the three men beside the wagon parted, and Will saw that Bide, even as they approached, was talking quietly to the cook.
Evarts dismounted by the fire and said, “Morning, Bide,” and Marriner nodded curtly. He was slighter than John Evarts, and had a kind of wiry toughness about him that, had nothing to do with age. His black hair was streaked with gray at the temples, and he wore an old and torn Mackinaw minus its buttons. He was just off roundup, dusty and in need of a shave, but his dark eyes were bright, quick with an inborn insolence, and his glance first settled on Will, who was still mounted. This was the man who never had been afraid to fight Phil Evarts, and that first speculative glance at Will was a kind of tribute. It was Will’s temper he was gauging and, finding it apparently placid, he looked at Evarts.
John squatted beside the fire, warming his hands, and asked, “Much of anything at Russian Springs, Bide?”
Bide said carefully, “Didn’t look,” and waited.
Will’s glance traveled to the others. The cook stood with his back to the wagon, and against its wheel leaned a rifle within easy reach. The third man was a hand of Bide’s. He noticed Sam studying Bide’s man in his shrewd, inscrutable way. The chopping up the slope, Will noticed idly, had ceased.
“We were headed for there,” Evarts said mildly.
“What for?” Bide didn’t trouble to hide the contempt in his voice.
“I figured you might want that grass this winter. Hatchet can’t use it. Take it if you want it.”
“I did,” Bide said. Again he glanced at Will; again Will’s expression was neutral.
Bide said with quiet scorn, “Hatchet’s beginnin’ to sing pretty small all of a sudden. How come?”
Evarts said reasonably, “No use hogging range you can’t fill.”
“Nor range you can.” Bide stared scornfully at Evarts and spoke with open contempt now. “What else you givin’ away, Evarts?”
