The Fifth Western Novel

by Walter A. Tompkins

  Logan found himself surprised at the way his thoughts made full circle and came back to the two completely contrasting women he had met aboard the Sacajawea. The warmth of Opal Waymire’s passionate lips on his was a remembered pleasure in him, stirring his blood even now. But of all the personalities he had encountered during the overnight run of the river boat, he found that it was the demure sister of Owlhorn’s future sky pilot who had made the only truly indelible impression on his mind.

  He found himself anticipating another talk with Alva Ames, over in Owlhorn. For he would ride to the boom town, despite the fact that the choice of trails before him was his to make. Owlhorn was at the end of the trail he was following; the pull of it was that real and that strong in Logan.

  Chapter Six

  Owlhorn Town

  Winegarten was plodding back to his shack, carrying a tin can with the receipts of his cordwood sale to the Sacajawea, when he caught sight of the spurred and booted stranger out by his corrals, sizing up the half-broken stock which Winegarten had choused out of the back-country hills.

  A suspicious man, knowing the risks he ran on this isolated perch between the frowning Horse Heavens and the river’s edge, Winegarten slipped into his cabin without attracting the stranger’s eye, carefully stowed his can of money under a loose slab in the fireplace, and took a double-barreled shotgun from its elkhorn rack over the mantel.

  The woodchopper was carrying the shotgun when Cleve Logan stepped down off the corral rail to meet the rancher’s frankly hostile eye.

  “Missed the boat,” Logan grinned, “looking over these broncs.”

  Grover Winegarten spat tobacco juice into the dust, appraising the bulge of the gun under Logan’s jumper with suspicious alertness.

  “You’re a bronc topper by the warp of yore laigs, stranger,” Winegarten conceded, “but this is a one-man outfit. Best job I can offer ye is ten a week and grub for fallin’ timber an’ buckin’ logs into four-foot lengths.”

  Logan shook his head to this proposition. “I guess not. I want to buy a saddle horse, complete with gear.”

  Winegarten grounded the stock of his gun, a trader’s wily instincts rousing in him.

  “Drifter who sold his saddle, eh? Lost your shirt in one o’ those poker games on Rossiter’s scow?” Getting no reply, the mustanger jerked a thumb toward his corral.

  “These mustangs are fresh off the open range. I bust ’em for the plow or the saddle an’ ferry ’em to the auction yards at The Dalles twice a year. Just what are you lookin’ for?”

  Logan packed and lit his pipe, studying the cavvy of wild stuff with a cowhand’s critical eye.

  “That dun yonder by the trough looks like he’s got a bit of steeldust strain in him. Got a saddle and bridle?”

  Winegarten produced a stock saddle with a Visalia tree and a split-ear halter. He watched Logan rope the dun and snug it down while he cinched the gear on the hurricane deck and let out the stirrup leathers to accommodate his rangy legs.

  After a preliminary run up and down the riverbank beyond Winegarten’s timber patch, Cleve Logan knew he had a horse with plenty of speed and bottom. Making a deal for its sale within the limits of the funds Duke Perris had given him might take some wrangling, if he judged Winegarten right.

  Over Winegarten’s breakfast table they closed the deal, and Logan pocketed his bill of sale—an important document in this primitive country where random riders on unbranded mounts were automatically suspect.

  “It’s tol’able lonesome here, river traffic bein’ off since the Oregon railroad was built,” Winegarten hinted. “If you could spend the summer cuttin’ timber for me—”

  “No dice, my friend. What I need now is some idea of the best way to cross these hills to Owlhorn.”

  The mustanger’s crestfallen grin betrayed his disappointment at Logan’s decision to hit the trail.

  “Goin’ to size up the government land boom, eh?” he said, accompanying Logan out to where the dun waited. “Well, son, you foller that coulee to the crest of this first ridge. Up there you’ll see the ruins o’ Fort Rimrock and the old army road snakin’ northwest. You foller that till you hit a bob wire fence, which is the south line of Jube Buckring’s Ringbone range.”

  Logan, sitting tall in the saddle and already sizing up the Horse Heaven slopes he had to climb, nodded to indicate that he had heard of Buckring’s spread. Ringbone was the pioneer big-scale cattle ranch in southern Washington Territory, and its name had spread wherever cowmen gathered to swap range gossip.

  “If you git restless an’ cut Buckring’s fence, make sure no Ringbone line rider ketches you doin’ it,” Winegarten went on. “These cattle outfits are gettin’ perty ringy as the time draws nigh for a passle o’ sodbustin’ nesters to move into Owlhorn Valley. Buckring’s been leasin’ that Injun grass for twenty years, an’ Ringbone stands to lose its best graze when Uncle Sam opens the gate to them homesteaders next week. If it’s excitement you’re huntin’, Owlhorn won’t disappoint ye.”

  Again Logan nodded, having heard the grim rumors which were abroad in the sagebrush country regarding Ringbone and the changed order which this Horse Heaven land rush would bring to the cattlemen entrenched in these hills.

  “Keep Mount Adams betweenst yore hoss’s ears,” Winegarten continued, “till you reach a valley cuttin’ through the hills. That’s Satus Pass, connectin’ the inland fiats to the Columbia River. Foller the stage road north an’ you’ll hit Owlhorn, which overlooks the Yakima Injun Reservation. That’s where all hell’s gettin’ set to bust loose, an’ you couldn’t drag me within gunshot range o’ that feud fer all the gold in Californy.”

  As Logan picked up his reins, a thought struck the old mustanger.

  “You tote a gun,” he said cryptically. “If it’s for hire, Jube Buckring’s your man. He’ll need all the guns he can muster up, if’n he makes good his threat to buffalo them nesters out of filin’ claims on land Ringbone figgers is theirs.”

  Logan touched the dun with his rowels. “So long,” he called back, and put his new mount up a game trace which angled up the thousand-foot reach of the south slope of the Columbia’s broad right-of-way through this primitive land.

  An hour later, from the lofty sky line where the roofless blockhouse of old Fort Rimrock dominated the ridge, Logan turned in his saddle to let the dun blow. Winegarten’s landing-dock and woodyard stood like a toy in miniature down by the Columbia’s glittering flow; the ring of Winegarten’s falling ax and the splintering crash of a tree came up to his ears with startling clarity.

  From the site of Fort Rimrock, Logan had an unobstructed vista of hundreds of square miles of surrounding country, stark and primitive as it was during the days of the Indian wars which accounted for the founding of this outpost.

  Mount Adams’s volcanic pile was a truncated stump on the northwestern horizon, the glitter of its glacial ice serving as his lodestar for the ride ahead.

  Farther south, beyond the smoke-blue gap of the Columbia’s gorge into the Cascade uplands, he saw Oregon’s rugged line of pine-blackened mountains lifting to the granite-ribbed, snow-thimbled pile of Hood, remote in the heat haze of this cloudless May day. It reminded him of the Montana Rockies from whence he came, and a strong nostalgic urge went through him.

  Thus oriented, the lone rider turned his dun toward the remote loom of Adams and began his trek along the dim wheel ruts of the old military road into the rolling sage hills, the Horse Heaven country that held in its untamed recesses the key to his own destiny.

  The sun was westering toward its appointed notch in the Cascade divide when Logan was brought up short by a four-strand barbwire fence which stretched off and away to east and west as far as the tiring eye could carry.

  He skirted this southern boundary of the vast Ringbone holdings until he came to a wire gate; he went through it and rode again toward the guidepost of Adams peak unt
il nightfall overtook him in a deep pocket in the hills.

  Logan found a seep of water behind a group of cottonwoods and made his camp there, dividing the rations he had purchased from Winegarten and carried slung behind his cantle in a gunny sack. And next morning’s first light found him five miles farther on his way.

  Half-wild cattle grazing in a lofty meadow ablaze with lupine and Indian paintbrush caught Logan’s eye at midmorning and he veered toward them with a cowman’s natural curiosity to size up their ownership. Each cow trailed a fat calf, the mother wearing a circle brand over her left hipbone, put there with a red-hot iron ring.

  This was the famous Ringbone, heraldic emblem of Washington Territory’s most powerful outfit, and of all the brands in the register the most impossible to blotch. The young stuff was not yet branded, telling Logan that Jubal Buckring was behind in his spring calf gather.

  Remembering Winegarten’s hint of a range war due to break next week when the Owlhorn Valley homestead strip was open to nesters, Logan made his guesses as to what had kept Ringbone from finishing its spring roundup sooner. Jube Buckring, reading the writing on the wall, had probably kept his crew close to headquarters, marshaling his strength for the showdown to come.

  Noon’s blistering heat found Logan dipping down into a greener valley where occasional pine trees outposted the vast, unbroken forests which clad the western third of the Territory. The platinum glitter of a river meandered its way toward the Columbia here, and Logan knew he had reached Satus Pass.

  A well-traveled wagon road cut across the Horse Heavens in the pit of this valley, and Cleve Logan knew that along those ruts stages ran, connecting the interior with Klickitat Landing on the Columbia. This road would be the one which Duke Perris and the other passengers from the Sacajawea would be taking to approach Owlhorn from the southwest.

  Because he was in no particular hurry, Logan camped that night at a line camp of the Ringbone outfit, finding it deserted but with a stock of canned goods and a slab of smoked bacon in the pantry locker.

  Next morning he left a silver dollar on the shelf to pay for the grub he had consumed, and headed up to the summit and on down the far slope of Satus Pass before the full heat of the new day struck him.

  At two o’clock he passed a southbound stage dragging its gray boil of volcanic dust for miles behind it; the driver and his shotgun guard were the first human beings Logan had seen in this vast, empty corner of the Territory since leaving Winegarten’s place on the river.

  It was nearing sundown when Logan followed the ribbon of the stage road to the crest of a last hogback ridge and saw before him the roofs of Owlhorn squatting against a background of the broad valley which had once been set aside for the perpetual use of the Yakima tribe.

  This was the country which the government was to throw open a week from now to the great army of land hunters that would convert Owlhorn into the Territory’s latest boom camp.

  Dominating the little settlement below was the weather-grayed spire of a church, its shingled angles showing bald spots and the ravages of woodpeckers around its belfry.

  Sight of that steeple, bristling with corroded lightning rods, drew Logan’s thoughts to the blind pastor who was on his way from Idaho to occupy its pulpit. It would be tough going for Reverend Jebediah Ames; and Alva would share her brother’s hardships.

  That thought gave a vague sense of sadness to Logan as he put the hoof-sore dun along the road leading into Owlhorn, knowing that this somnolent little town was soon to be the focal point of grievous trouble; perhaps the battleground between homestead hunters and the solidly entrenched cattle interests represented by Ringbone and the other ranches which had a history dating back to the middle decades of the century.

  Owlhorn—this town without law, this refuge for a hunted man—consisted of a double row of unpainted buildings, flanking a wide street which paralleled the course of Rawhide Creek.

  The false fronts of half a dozen saloons and mercantile buildings made a battlemented effect on either side of this street, stamping it clearly as a cow town little different from a hundred other cow towns Logan had known in the past.

  For years, Owlhorn had existed solely as the base of supply for Ringbone and the other scattered ranches in the farther hills, a crossroads on the way to Fort Simcoe and the big Yakima Indian agency farther west.

  Before this year was over Owlhorn would have quintupled in size, and would become the trading center of untold hundreds of farm families, flanking the Rawhide bottomland for miles.

  Already the approaching land boom had made itself felt here. As the dun crossed the Rawhide bridge on the outskirts of the settlement, telegraphing Logan’s arrival with a loud booming of planks, the rider saw scores of buildings in various stages of completion, with carpenters’ hammers making their industrious racket into the dusk.

  Dozens of parked wagons, ranging from canvas-hooded Conestoga prairie schooners to ramshackle buckboards and two-wheel carts, were lined along the river-bottom willows. The picketed livestock and winking campfires, the carefree noise of children at play, the blended odors of cooking food and stirred dust and drifting smoke—these things told of the homeseekers converging like locusts on this flank of the Horse Heaven Hills, seeking their fortunes in this raw and untamed land.

  The campfires were strung along the Rawhide’s meandering course for two miles or more; Logan estimated that these future homesteaders already numbered past a thousand, families from Oregon and the Dakotas and the Middle West, drawn to this far-off country by the promise of government largesse.

  Hitchracks along the main streets were lined with cow ponies standing three-footed and hipshot in the dust. Logan saw that most of these saddlers wore Buckring’s iron.

  He dismounted in front of the Pioneer House, a sprawling two-story frame structure with upper and lower galleries facing Main Street and this side road he had followed out of the Pass.

  Entering the hotel’s lobby with the weariness of a man who had been long in saddle that day, Cleve Logan went to the clerk’s counter beneath the angle of the main staircase and informed the squint-eyed oldster on duty that he wanted to book a week’s lodgings.

  The clerk shoved a pencil and dog-eared ledger across the counter and turned to consult his key rack, remarking shortly, “Guests without baggage pay in advance. Dollar night, six bucks a week.”

  Logan scribbled on the register, spread a stack of silver dollars across the page, and accepted his key.

  “Room 5, upstairs on yore left, fourth door down,” grunted the clerk. “Bathhouse on this floor, bath two bits extry.”

  After Logan had made his weary ascent of the stairs the clerk reversed the ledger and scanned the new signature there.

  Cleveland D. Logan, Kalispel, Mont. Terr.

  The hotel clerk’s mouth puckered in a soundless whistle as he bent down for a second look at the register.

  Then, a subtle excitement rushing through him, the old man grabbed his hat from its peg, tucked the book under his arm, and left the hotel.

  He went directly across Main Street to the brick jail-house. Inside the front office he found Sheriff Vick Farnick dealing himself a game of solitaire.

  “He’s come, like you told me to tell you, Vicki,” the hotel clerk wheezed excitedly, opening the hotel register and thrusting it before the sheriff. “That’s his gray nag hitched to the rack out front.”

  Farnick ran his glance down the row of signatures and pushed the book back to the clerk.

  “Good work, Van. Just keep this under your hat.” When the clerk had left the jailhouse Sheriff Farnick hauled open a drawer of his ancient roll top desk and drew out writing-paper and envelopes.

  Wetting a stub of pencil between his lips, the Owlhorn sheriff scribbled an address on an envelope with his halting, arthritic hand.

  Marshal John Stagman, Post Office Box 2844 Pasco, Wash. Terr.

 
; Chapter Seven

  Sheriff’s Rule

  Morning’s first golden burst touched the river of silver dust which was Owlhorn’s Main Street. The outlines of the town’s ugly buildings were diffused by the haze drifting from a multitude of campfires along the Rawhide.

  From the roofed gallery of the Pioneer House, Cleve Logan smoked his before-breakfast pipe and had his detailed look at the cow town before full daybreak brought this street alive.

  Directly opposite was the county jail, a low brick structure with iron-latticed windows and the date 1872 inscribed in the granite lintel over its doorway.

  Farther west a false-fronted deadfall caught Logan’s eye because of the contrast between its sagging rooftree and its fresh coat of garish yellow paint. Ornate red letters along the gingerbreaded facade of the building informed the public:

  PALACE CASINO & SALOON

  Billiards—Dancing

  Open May 25

  Under Management of Opal Waymire

  Queen of Songbirds

  Lately of Lewiston, Ida.

  By a freak of perspective, the rear of this gambling establishment appeared to have a church steeple pointing a finger toward heaven, and Logan realized that in one view he was seeing the pitfall of sin where Opal Waymire would hold forth in tinsel glory during Owlhorn’s wicked nights, while immediately behind it and up the ridge was the run-down temple of religion where Jebediah and Alva Ames would shortly seek to bring a more civilized environment to Owlhorn’s citizenry.

  It was paradoxical that these two facets of frontier life should thus be contrasted in such close juxtaposition; a contrast no less acute than the personalities of the two men and the two women who would occupy the saloon and the church upon their arrival in Owlhorn this very day.

  Immediately adjoining the Palace was a smaller building, its new lumber showing its orange contrast to the weather-grayed drabness of Owlhorn’s original buildings. Its sign held a special significance for Logan’s roving eye: