“Well,” Tallin said as they tightened cinches to go on, “does everybody know what he has to do?”
“Boss,” Jolly said, “you don’t have to give another order.”
“Good.”
They all swung up into the saddle, very much feeling as one. They were Bar Twenty and together. That way, they felt strong enough to challenge anything the West could throw at them.
As they lifted their lines, Tallin gave them the last reminder: “No shooting if we can help it. No killing unless it’s necessary.”
One of them said: “Keno.”
They walked their horses through the trees and lifted them to a trot. It was safe to do so, for they were not yet within earshot of the cabin. Tallin now took the lead. They rode for a half-hour before he held up his hand. He signed to them to keep silence. Every man stepped down from the saddle. One by one they led their mounts to the boy and handed him a single line. They pulled their carbines from the saddleboots and started on foot the rest of the way.
Each man now found a small seed of excitement starting to grow within him. Sure enough, they were going up against only one man, but this excitement came each time they looked forward to violence. It got to a man in the end and after a while he longed for it. It was as if it made him feel that he was living a little more. A light breeze had started down the valley by the time they reached the creek and waded through it. It had been a foot or more higher during the recent spring rains, but now it was down to manageable size. They hardly got a drop of water in their boots.
Every man there knew the layout of the place in detail. Two of the men, twenty feet apart, at once lay down on the ground with their rifles ready. From there they could not miss a man coming out of the door or appearing at the single window.
The other men knew exactly what they had to do. While two went into the scrub to the south of the cabin to cut brush, another pair carried two cans of oil each and deposited two one end of the cabin and two at the other. They scarcely made a sound. Tallin walked into the brush to test it with his fingers. He found it dry enough. It would burn nicely. The two men returned from the cabin and started also to cut brush. Tallin watched the sky, judging the time. Everything was going nicely according to schedule. He took a little time out to think about Helena. Maybe when he went into town to tell the owner what had transpired up here in Black Horse Valley, he would get a chance to speak to her. They were staying at the Grand Union Hotel. Whenever Edward C. Larned came to inspect the ranch, he stayed at the Grand Union. Naturally, he took a whole floor. There was himself, his wife, daughter and a secretary or two. Next year he hoped to complete his new house on Lake Larned. It would be a showpiece, a mansion in true Western style—which meant it covered a lot of ground, it was pretentious and not built in the best of all possible styles. It would look, in fact, rather like a cross between a Baptist missionary church and the Doge’s palace in Venice. It was the culmination of Larned’s dreams.
Yes, Tallin was thinking, he would be real smooth with her. He’d have all the sophisticated talk he could handle ready for her and would dazzle the inexperienced young girl with his suave worldliness.
Jolly had come up to him and was saying in a low voice that enough brush had been cut.
“Tote it to the cabin,” Tallin ordered. “Not a sound, mind.”
He watched the men gathering up their armfuls of brush and going quietly forward. He filled his own arms and followed them. He had to admit that as he neared the little building he felt a slight anxiety when he thought how easy it would be for a man at the window to shoot him. He laid his brush as quiet as he could below that very window and went tippy-toe back the way he had come. He lay down near the two riflemen and watched the men emptying the cans of coal-oil on to the brush and the walls of the cabin. Tallin admitted to himself that he never really liked to burn a man’s house down. He was a great believer in the sanctity of labor. A man’s hands had built this home. The word home conjured up all sorts of warm memories of childhood. He worried less about the possibility of a man being burned to death inside it. If men did not want to be burned in their cabins they should not pre-empt free range. Edward C. Lamed had been here first and everybody knew the rule of finder’s keepers.
He had almost nodded off when he realized that fight was seeping in on the scene now. He could make out the shape of the logs. McAllister had neatly filled the chinks with clay from the creek bed. He inspected the barn which lay to the left of the cabin. He had not troubled to make preparations for that to burn. He knew from experience that once the cabin and the man were settled, a single match in the tinder-dry straw or hay would effectively burn the whole structure to the ground. A pity to destroy the whole kit and caboodle really — the Bar Twenty could have used it as a fine camp.
He looked towards the creek and caught Larkin’s eye. He raised his hand in a signal and saw the tall man lurch to his feet and disappear into the gully behind him. A few moments later, he saw Larkin appear from the brush to the east of the house to approach it on its blind side. The tall man walked casually forward, scratching a lucifer on a finger-nail as he went. As soon as he reached the brush, he tossed the lighted match into it.
It went off with a gentle whoosh of sound.
The sudden heat was so great that Larkin started back in brief alarm. Then he strolled back into the brush. Tallin grew a little worried when the flames rapidly started to die down. That damn fool Larkin should have gone around the cabin lighting the remainder of the brush. If you wanted a thing done properly, do it yourself. But, suddenly, the oil on the walls of the cabin caught and steadily raced around the whole front of the little building. The oiled paper covering the window shriveled abruptly to nothing, showing how great the heat was. The sod on the roof caught around the edges. The door was alight. The man in there must become aware of the threat against him in a moment.
If there was anybody inside.
Larkin came strolling up, indifferent to the fact that he would be in full view of anybody in the cabin.
Tallin said: “I don’t think he can be in there, Slim.”
Larkin looked surprised. “Did you expect him to be? With his horses gone?” Tallin swore to himself. My God, he must be slipping. He lived in a world of horses and he didn’t think of that. The first thing to check always was the horses. Horses could tell you just about everything of the men associated with them.
Tallin said in a casual and confident voice: “We don’t need McAllister too much at this stage of the game. Burning this place is enough.”
“Sure,” Larkin said, but his eyes were cynical.
“Start on the barn,” Tallin ordered and stood up. The others near him followed suit. Larkin strolled into the barn and found an axe. With it, he crossed the yard to the corral and started to knock it down. Men headed for the barn and within minutes the whole interior was a brilliant blaze, so bright that it put the early daylight to shame.
As the men walked back to him from the bam, he said to Jolly: “Go tell the kid to bring up the horses, will you, Fred?”
Jolly didn’t like to walk much, but he agreed and set off, trailing his rifle.
At this point, there came the thin crack of a rifle shot from where, nobody was quite sure.
One of the hands standing about ten paces to the right of Tallin, a man named Luke Divers, cried out in surprise and pain. He dropped his rifle and fell beside it.
They all turned to look at him. At first they could not see where he was hit, but when they looked closer they saw that there was a neat hole through the lower part of his left chap.
Luke Divers said: “Jesus Christ” with a fierce emphasis. He gripped his leg with both hands and looked up at them rather piteously. “The bastard shot me.”
Tallin shouted: “Where is he?”
Halfway to the creek, Jolly had stopped in his tracks. He held his rifle ready for a shot and his eyes searched everywhere.
Tallin asked again with a kind of desperate fury: “Where the hell is he?
”
One of the men started running for the gully. There came another of those thin reports of sound and the fellow had his right leg knocked out from under him. He fell awkwardly into the thick brush growing on the edge of the gully. His wail of shock and distress filled the morning.
“Take cover,” Tallin was yelling, as if anybody needed telling. They all raced for the gully. Jolly joined them.
“I thought I told you to go fetch up the horses,” Tallin said.
Jolly’s face expressed surprise and annoyance.
“Just for the record,” he said coolly, “I don’t have a notion to have my ass shot off any more’n the next man.”
Tallin said pettishly: “If we all obeyed only the orders that suited us, the whole goddam outfit would fall apart.” Somebody said: “Language.” Tallin did not know who it was.
“The gully’ll give you cover. Get going.”
Jolly shrugged and started to crawl along the gully. He stayed under cover until he reached a spot near to the little ford across the creek. He raised his head, took a quick look around and scrambled up the side of the gully. They all watched him with curiosity. He had a dash of twenty yards or so across flat and open ground. He had nearly reached the top of the creek bank when another shot came. Jolly’s legs seemed to buckle under him as if they had no more strength than wet paper. He rolled forward and pitched headlong out of sight down into the creek. They heard the splash as he hit the water.
“My God,” Tallin exclaimed. “One of you go to him.”
A man beside Tallin said: “Hell, can’t you see this bastard McAllister is doin’ what he goddam well wants with us?” Tallin bit down on his retort. Suddenly, unbelievably, the authority he had built up over the years had evaporated.
The man who had fallen into the brush was crawling through it. Every time he moved, he groaned. He alternately cursed and prayed. When he appeared at the brink of the gully, they helped him down into it. He had been hit in the back of the calf.
Larkin said: “I’ll go get Jolly. He’s like to bleed to death.” He laid down his rifle and unbuckled his gunbelt. Then he strolled along the gully with his hands held high above his head.
Tallin called after him: “We ain’t surrendering, Larkin.”
The man walked on. He climbed out of the gully on the creek side and yelled: “I haven’t got a gun. Hold your fire, McAllister.” When no shot came, Larkin turned around and bellowed: “It’s no fight, McAllister. Pull out while you’re ahead.”
These words enraged Tallin. He clenched his fists and said: “He don’t have no authority to talk that way.”
Larkin climbed down to the creek. Five minutes later, he was back. He stood squarely in front of Tallin and he said: “Tallin, each of those men has been shot in the lower leg. That’s some shootin’. Don’t that give you some kind of a message?”
Tallin didn’t answer but one of the other men did. He said: “He could have killed those men.”
“Top marks,” said Larkin. “That’s it on the nose. We burned this man’s house and he’s showed us.”
“What?” said Tallin, curling his lip a little.
“If you can’t see it,” said Larkin with sad superiority, “words is wasted.”
After that, the whole affair petered out, as you might say. It continued on through the day, but there were no more casualties because there was no more shooting. That did not mean to say that the day was a dull or empty one. Larkin walked back to fetch the horses. He did not get to where they had left them with the boy. But he met the boy halfway. The kid was just about in tears. A big man had come on a roan horse and he had taken the kid’s gun and the horses. He’d scattered the horses over hell’s own half acre. Larkin and the boy walked back to Tallin and the crew.
When Tallin heard the news he was fit to be tied, as range parlance had it. There was quite a time when he was literally speechless. When you come to think of it, who would not be under the same circumstances? It was the general opinion that the horses would find their own way home. They looked at each other. It was a long walk back to headquarters and they had wounded men on their hands. Somebody suggested obtaining horses from one of the small outfits in the hills, but that was rejected as not a good idea at all. Tallin vetoed it. Nobody must know of the defeat they had suffered here today. Besides, he could not see any of the little cattlemen helping them out in any way. Larkin said if somebody would side him, he would walk to headquarters. He would try and get a wagon in here to carry out the wounded. That was the least they could do.
Tallin said: “And fix for doc to be at headquarters when we get in there.”
The short of what happened after that is it took them about two days to get everybody back to headquarters. The wounded were in a pretty bad state by the time the doctor got to them. The whole crew was in a pretty bad state for that matter. Morale was just about rock-bottom. The thing that had most demoralized them was the matter of the saddles. Each man found his saddle lying on the trail. Everyone had been hacked almost to pieces. This shocked them to the core. Saddles cost the earth and were hard for a cowboy to come by. Everybody’s heard of the ten-dollar horse with the fifty-dollar saddle on it. And no cowhand finds fifty dollars with any ease. When one young hand complained bitterly about McAllister’s disgusting behavior to Slim Larkin, the lank rider said: “You burned the man’s home down. What do you expect him to do, kiss you?”
To himself, Larkin thought: It's all right to hate the man, but, hell, you can't blame him.
Four
When a man’s in trouble, he looks around for help. When he finds the possibility of some, he questions if his pride will allow him to ask it.
McAllister camped in the hills above the break where he had put his horses. He knew that he could not keep them there much longer. One, they must have nearly eaten all the grass there by now; two, any time Bar Twenty riders could come this way looking for him. If they found the horses, that would be the end of his breeding stock. He did not doubt for one minute that men who could have it in them to burn his place would not hesitate to lift his horses.
He risked a small hot fire for coffee and bacon, then he extinguished it. The weather still held, as he thought it would. Sleeping out under the stars was no hardship. He was so constituted that he could have slept on a bed of nails. He was also capable, without discomfort, of waking and sleeping throughout the night, grateful that he could catch any sleep at all. He slept sitting up, his back against a rock, his poncho around him and his tarp over his legs.
During the night he decided on Greg Talbot. He would have preferred Hank Dyson, who was an old friend, but Hank was married with a family. McAllister did not fancy the idea of women and kids being at risk for him.
So it was Greg Talbot.
He was a bachelor. A life-long bachelor most likely. Surely no woman would be crazy enough to marry him. He was short-tempered, long-haired and not too clean in his habits. The shed in which he kept his one horse and his gear looked cleaner and tidier than his shack. He was close, suspicious and, at times, dangerous. Drunk or sober (and it was difficult to tell which he was) he looked upon life with a jaundiced eye. The Bar Twenty would not get much change out of old Greg.
The most conspicuous fact of his life was that he owned about twenty cows and, though he never had more, he also never had less. It was as though the number twenty gave him the right to call himself a cattleman. Added to which, one should add, he was never without fresh beef. His neighbors, that is, folks who lived within ten miles of him, did not wonder about the possibility of his being a cow-thief— they knew damned well he was. One day, maybe, somebody would outsmart him and hang him, but he was as slippery as an eel to catch. To prove it he had been a range thief from the age of fourteen and he was now around fifty. He looked like nothing on earth, slow of wit and slow of limb, but the truth of it was that he was as tough as rawhide, he had spunk enough for an army and he could move as fast as a pronghorn when speed was necessary for survival. He could pick of
f a quail at a distance when most men could not see it and he could speak three Indian languages. A deceptive man, Greg Talbot.
His tottering shack was tucked away in a cozy rincon in the mountains, sheltered from the weather and hidden from the eyes of men. He had chosen the spot with guile and wisdom. He ran his twenty cows in country so rough that no man would wish to take it from him. His house was in a place which was very difficult to reach. It would have been a good hideout for outlaws. Nobody could get within five hundred yards of it without showing himself. Greg could have stopped an army, if he had been so minded.
There was a certain place on the narrow trail which led to his shack which brought any approaching rider to within pistol shot. To reach the place, a man had to ride another quarter of a mile.
He must have seen McAllister a mile off. He always kept a wary eye on the country from old habit. He halted McAllister from across the deep gulch that dropped a couple of hundred feet below his shack and between the building and the trail. There was not much more to be seen of the man than one eye and a rifle barrel.
“For God’s sake, Greg,” McAllister complained, “it’s me. You goddam well know it’s me. Why the hell all this play actin’?”
Talbot rose to his feet, revealing that he stood about five-five tall with a narrow chest and a belly that hung over the top of his pants. He did not make a lovely sight. McAllister dreaded getting downwind of him.
Talbot said: “All very well for you to talk. I can’t be too careful. I have enemies.”
McAllister said: “Do we talk here or do I ride around?”
Talbot thought about that and finally decided: “Come on around.”
McAllister rode on, climbing the steep and dangerous trail, letting the sure-footed gelding make its own pace. As finally the shack came into view, he met a sight which though familiar to him would have astonished a stranger. The open ground in front of the apparently collapsing house was a flower garden, a wild and undisciplined riot of flowers, most of them wild, but all of them contributing to an impressive display of natural beauty.
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