Feud On The Mesa

by Lauran Paine

  This second gunshot, though, stirred up a hor-net’s nest. Two pistols and a Winchester cut loose in the same direction as Hartman had fired from. Rufe pushed his six-gun ahead, aimed as best he could at the ground beneath where those three saddled horses were being held, and tugged off a shot.

  The noise was bad enough, but when that slug tore into the gravelly hardpan, causing an eruption of flinty soil and sharp little bits of stone, which flew upwards, striking the nearest horse under the belly, the animal gave a tremendous bound into the air, and snorted like a wild stallion.

  A man swore as the other two held horses also violently reacted, and another man yelled for the horse holder to hang on.

  Rufe fired again in the same way, his bullet exploding hardpan upward beneath those terrified horses, and this time two furiously swearing men fired back as they rushed over to help the horse holder.

  Both those last two bullets also went high above where Rufe was lying. Nevertheless, it would only be a matter of moments before Chase’s riders figured out that Rufe was belly down out there. They would then lower their gun barrels, but right at this moment everyone through the brush was desperately seeking to control the frightened horses.

  Rufe had no intention of allowing the men to get their animals under control, if he could help it. As long as they were fully occupied with their only means of escape, he was relatively safe from their wrath.

  He wriggled away from his big bush and crept still closer. While he was crawling, Jud fired from southward, but high. So high, in fact, that the bullet clipped a dozen small branches from the tops of the bushes. Rufe saw this happen, saw the underbrush rip and tear as Jud’s slug bore through it.

  It occurred to him that Jud was also thinking of Elisabeth’s safety, when he fired that high.

  Rufe found another massive old bush, but when he pushed aside low branches to get into the protection of the trunk at ground level, he met an agitated rattlesnake, coiled in the shade to avoid the full day’s heat. Rufe began carefully reversing himself, began to crawl backward as surely as, moments before, he had crawled forward.

  Evidently the snake was as willing to have Rufe do that as Rufe was because he neither rattled nor raised his flat, ugly-snouted head.

  Hartman fired again, and this time someone through the underbrush swore at the old cowman, then ripped off two very fast pistol shots.

  Jud fired again, still high, and Rufe added another gunshot. This time, the men up ahead did not return Rufe’s fire, and only one man let fly in Jud’s direction, and he fired too far to the east to endanger Jud.

  For a couple of minutes there was absolute silence. Evart Hartman, who had not said a word until now, called forth in a tone of voice that was almost too calm.

  “Hey, you fellers! So far, you’re not in any real bad trouble. At least, so far you ain’t done anything folk-s’ll want to hang you for. But you keep this up, and maybe hit someone, and you’re going to end up out back of the livery barn at the end of a rope. You sure it’s worth it?”

  The silence continued after Hartman had called out. Rufe was hopeful. The long silence encouraged him in this. He reasoned that, if Chase’s crew was really fired up to kill, one or the other of them, at least, would have answered the cowman with gun-shots.

  Finally a voice Rufe knew belonged to Fenwick called out: “We’ll make a trade with you fellers! We’ll leave Miz Cane settin’ here tied up, like she is, and we’ll take the horses and head on out…providin’ you fellers agree not to shoot, and not Tomake an at-tempt to interfere with us getting away. All right?”

  Rufe answered quickly: “Send Miz Cane south-ward on her own first.”

  For a moment there was no answer, then it came, apparently after a heated discussion by the men hiding in the underbrush.

  “We got a better notion. We’ll take her along with us for a mile or two, just to keep you fellers honest, and, if you don’t go and try to interfere with us heading out, we’ll set her loose. And that’s the only terms we’ll talk about, so you either agree or don’t agree.”

  Rufe sighed, waited for Jud or Evart Hartman to speak, and after a minute, when neither of them had made a sound, Rufe called out agreement to the terms.

  XVI

  Those agitated saddle animals were perfectly willing to settle down, once the gunfire ended. Rufe could see men’s legs in among the horses, but that was about all he could see, until two men brought up a third person. He recognized the high-topped dark boots and the riding skirt of Elisabeth Cane, and watched as Chase’s men put her astride one of the horses, then, by pulling back a few yards and peering over the tops of the tallest bushes, he could see her head and shoulders.

  They had bound her arms behind her back, but with a short length of rope hanging loosely enough so that she had a little room to move her wrists, which struck Rufe as a charitable thing to do.

  She sat her horse, looking scornfully around where the men were completing their arrangements to get astride, then she turned, looked over the tops of the bushes—and saw Rufe. He smiled and winked. She winked back, but did not smile, and a moment later she looked dead ahead, southward, as though she had seen nothing.

  She looked regal, up there atop that horse, shoulders squared, head tilted just a little, her firm mouth set in an expression of acceptance without compromise. Rufe thought again that she was an unusually handsome woman, then a dry voice called from the east, but much closer than the same voice had sounded earlier, as Evart Hartman addressed Arlen Chase.

  “As a matter of curiosity, Arlen,” said Hartman. “If you run for Mexico, you’re leavin’ an awful lot behind. If I was in your boots, I’d face it…and at least salvage something.”

  It struck Rufe as good advice. Perhaps it also struck Arlen that way, but he certainly gave no indication of it. He did not respond at all, and moments later Rufe could see them getting astride.

  They acted wary, once they were exposed atop their horses. It was an understandable reaction, only moments earlier they had been shooting at the unseen watchers around them, and those same watchers had been shooting back. Now they were sitting ducks, except that a verbal agreement had been reached. The men had guns in their hands and kept casting glances around, somewhat fearfully, as though they expected to see a gun barrel aimed their way.

  The last man up held a Colt that looked very new. The bluing was not rubbed off in any place that Rufe could see. Rufe watched as this man looked left, then right. While he was facing in Hartman’s direction, he said: “Why are you worrying about what I’m leaving behind, Hartman, if you didn’t have some notion of comin’ up here after I’m gone, like a lousy vulture, and gleaning everything that isn’t tied down?”

  Hartman was an honest man. “I had something like that in mind,” he admitted calmly. “Only I don’t steal, Arlen. I had in mind rounding up the stock I might want, then finding whoever represented you, and buying it from’em.”

  “You can buy it from me,” stated Arlen Chase, and the dry answer he got back indicated just how far old Hartman’s opinion of Chase had sunk this morning.

  “I wouldn’t buy an old trade blanket from you, Arlen.”

  Fenwick urged his horse up beside Chase’s, leaned and growled something. Chase nodded, turned away from Hartman, and gestured for the little band to move out.

  Rufe stepped back, got clear of the brush, then trotted down to where his horse was. When he arrived there, Jud was already snugging up a cinch on the animal he had led up from a more distant hiding place. They were listening to the progress of Chase’s band moving through underbrush when Evart Hart-man came up, panting. He grabbed the reins Jud offered, climbed up across leather without testing the cinch, and hauled his animal around just in time for them to be able to hear the riders to the east of them, moving over in the direction of the stage road, al-though Rufe did not believe Chase would actually go that far east. And he didn’t. When Hartman, Jud, and Rufe angled so as to stay behind the retreating riders, it became clear that Chase wa
s paralleling the road, but was not going Tomake an attempt actually to reach and use it.

  Rufe was speculating aloud with Jud and Evart Hartman what Chase’s course would be when they got down closer to Clearwater, and got his answer in a way neither he nor the men with him expected. Two riders appeared coming upcountry from the direction of town. They had evidently been instructed about where to abandon the roadway and head into the desert, because, although they were heading in the correct direction, they seemed quite unconvinced of it, right up until the moment someone riding with Arlen Chase called out a warning, and Chase reined over close to Elisabeth Cane, then looked all around before spotting the oncoming men.

  Rufe saw no one. Neither did Jud, but old Evart Hartman had picked up a fresh presence from his horse, and was riding along, watching intently over easterly in the direction of the stage road. He did not actually see those two men, but ultimately heard them coming, heard Chase’s man growl, and finally, standing in his stirrups, he saw something that could have been fresh horsemen passing in and out among the southerly undergrowth. When old Hartman settled back down in his saddle and leaned slightly to tell Rufe what was down there, someone fired a pistol.

  It was an unexpected sound. It not only startled every man; it also made the horses of Rufe and Jud and Evart Hartman throw up their heads. Dead ahead, Rufe heard Fenwick cry out in protest, and then the other one in Chase’s party started to yell, but without warning another gunshot rang out, then a third and fourth gunshot erupted.

  Hartman grunted and hauled his mount around to spur eastward. The same singing lead coming up-country had similarly inspired Rufe and Jud to get clear. They were riding low in the saddle, peering back in the direction of those gunshots, when a powerful sorrel horse suddenly plowed through a stand of brush heading arrow straight right at Rufe and Jud.

  They had about four seconds to adjust to being at-tacked, and fortunately they were already looking in that direction, so the plunging horse did not catch them entirely unaware. The animal was gathering momentum each time it sank its hind hoofs down after bursting through the underbrush. Within another ten or fifteen yards, the horse would be run-ning belly down straight toward the old trail up to the mesa.

  Rufe yelped and Jud swung wide to allow the sorrel to come in between them, its reins flopping wildly from a looped position over the saddle horn. There was no way for the rider, with both arms bound behind her back, to control the running horse, except in a very unreliable way through knee pressure. How she had turned and got free, Rufe did not dwell on as he jumped his horse out to come in running beside the big sorrel. Leather strained, stirrups grated together, and Elisabeth’s face was close enough for Rufe to see the fear in her dark eyes when he leaned far out to grab for the reins under the sorrel’s jaw.

  On the far side, Jud, aware of his partner’s intention, made no attempt to grab reins, but he leaned his own straining mount into the sorrel on Elisabeth’s left side, forcing her horse over against Rufe’s animal. That way, Rufe was able to get a double hold on the reins, and ease back, bringing both horses down to a jarring, slamming halt.

  He looked at Elisabeth. She showed a shaky small smile as Jud moved in with his clasp knife to free her arms. As he reached for the rope, Jud said: “How did you get away?”

  Her answer was a surprise. “I didn’t. One of the men turned my horse and struck it over the rump, when that shooting started. The horse was heading straight for the trail up to my home atop the mesa.” She smiled with more confidence as she brought her arms in front and massaged chapped wrists. “It would have been a rather terrifying ride.”

  Jud pocketed his knife and turned as a man’s gruff voice called. It was Hartman calling to them, but for a moment the voice did not sound exactly right.

  “Rufe…Jud! Come on down here! The whole damned story’s been wrote out and ended! Fetch the lady back with you, and come on down here! See for yourselves!”

  They went carefully and prudently, with Elisabeth remaining slightly to the rear, but their precautions proved unnecessary. Evart Hartman did not even have a gun in his hand where he sat atop his horse, gazing at something out of sight in the underbrush. Charley Fenwick did not have a gun in his hand, nor did the other two men with Charley, the same men Rufe finally remembered now and was able to identify. At least, he could identify their faces, although he had never met either of them, or heard their names. It was the same two men Jud and Rufe had seen walk out of the abstract office down in Clearwater, vigorously talking to Arlen Chase.

  There was one man on foot, and this man had a pistol in his hand. He was the older cowboy Rufe and Jud had left chained in Elisabeth Cane’s barn along with Fenwick. But he simply stood there, staring.

  Rufe did not see Arlen Chase until he and Jud eased around the underbrush to come up beside old Hartman. Chase was dead. It looked as though two bullets had hit him, both of them striking his chest. Impact had knocked him backward from the saddle. He was being held in a grotesque sitting posture by the strong and wiry limbs of the bush he had tumbled into.

  Elisabeth looked once, then turned away. Even tough Jud did not like that look of entreaty, or supplication, or whatever it was that seemed to emanate from the corpse, from the way it was held up like that, in a begging posture. Jud turned away, too, but not entirely from revulsion. He eyed the pair of strangers and said: “Who shot him?”

  One of the newcomers answered. “I did. He shot at us when we started through the underbrush to-ward him. I shot back, then my partner here, also fired back. We nailed him.”

  Jud showed no particular remorse, but he frowned. “Why, stranger, why would he shoot at you?”

  The horseman gazed around from face to face, be-fore answering Jud, and even then his answer was not very satisfactory. “It’s a long tale, friend. We’ll be glad to explain it fully, back in Clearwater, to the proper authorities.”

  Rufe frowned a little. “Mister, for now, you can just sort of pretend we’re the proper authorities.”

  Both the strangers looked entirely able to care for themselves. Neither one of them quailed the least bit under Rufe’s mildly unpleasant stare, but one of them, the man who took the blame—or credit—for downing Arlen Chase, looked back at the dead man, evidently completely unimpressed by the corpse’s posture, and said: “That man, gents, sold my brother and me six thousand acres atop a mesa in this here country, when we met him a couple of months back over in Nogales, while we were looking around for some grazing land. Then we came up here to look over what we’d bought, and the old feller at the abstract office told us, just this damned morning, that the title and deed to that land atop this here mesa was legally vested in a woman named Elisabeth Cane. We told Mister Chase we wanted our money back…or the deed to the mesa, free and clear, and he told us in the saloon, back there in town, he’d get it for us by to-morrow. That he’d deliver the deed as heir to Cane’s Mesa. And after that, when all hell busted loose down in town, and he lit out, we figured we’d best light out, too, in order kind of to protect our investment. Some fellers around the livery barn told us how to reach the mesa. We was heading up there, when this happened.” The stranger gestured toward the corpse in the bushes. “The damned fool shot at us when he saw us passing through the underbrush.” The stranger stopped speaking and gazed around.

  It was Chase’s man, Charley Fenwick, who threw up his arms. “Gawd damn it,” he cried in exasperation. “First it was just her horses, then just her cattle, then it was burn her out…now this.” Fenwick looked at the man with the pistol hanging at his side, the other man Rufe and Jud had left chained in the barn. The cowboy looked back at Fenwick, and slowly leathered his weapon, turned just as slowly to mount his horse, and finally he spoke.

  “I told you and Pete Ruff, consarn it, Charley. I been tellin’ you pair of idiots for the past three, four months, he was gettin’ us all in deeper and deeper.”

  Jud pointed to the corpse and gave an order to the man who had just mounted his horse. “Get down
, mister, fling Chase over his horse, lash him to it, and lead him on down to town.” Jud’s uncompromising look inspired the cowboy to obey.

  Watching the cowboy work and looking as un-compromising as ever, Jud added a little more to what he had already said: “That lousy jailhouse down in Clearwater’s going to be full to the rafters.” He looked at Evart Hartman. “You reckon there’s enough honest folks down there to set up some kind of law court?”

  Evart’s answer was cryptic. “You can bet new money on it.”

  Jud looked at Rufe, eyebrows raised. Rufe looked at Elisabeth. “Ought to be getting’ back to the ranch,” he told her, and she, too, looked at Evart Hartman. This time, the old cowman did not wait to be ad-dressed. He smiled at the handsome woman.

  “Looks Tome like we sort of owe you something, Miz Cane. I’ll send word out that we’ll need maybe ten, fifteen good range riders to help scour the desert and fetch back to your mesa all the Lance-and-Shield livestock we can find. All right, ma’am?”

  Elisabeth avoided watching Arlen Chase being lashed limply, belly down, across his saddle when she replied to Hartman. “All right, Mister Hartman. But I don’t need charity.”

  The old cowman squinted a moment, then glanced at Rufe, slightly raising and lowering his shoulders as though to say: What the hell can you do with a female like this?

  XVII

  It was in Rufe’s thoughts that they should have ridden back to Clearwater Tomake certain justice was done. It was also in his mind that Evart Hart-man, now that he was convinced that Arlen Chase had been everything honest livestock men disapproved of—horse thief, cattle rustler, land thief— would grimly make a particular point of seeing that justice was done.

  Jud may have been thinking along these lines, too, because, as he and Rufe and Elisabeth Cane reached the trail leading upward to the mesa top, Jud said: “Folks just naturally shy clear of unpleasantness, and maybe that’s how fellers like Chase manage to succeed. Seems Tome, we’d ought to hang around, down there in Clearwater, and make blessed sure things come out right.”