The Man From Laramie

by T. T. Flynn

Frank hesitated, then shook his head.

  “Might be several hours. And I might not go.” He took her hand, pressing tightly. “You’re lovely this morning.” A restrained huskiness filled Frank’s admission, “Darling, it’s hard to wait.”

  Later, riding out of town, Barbara caught her underlip absently between her teeth as she wondered why Frank’s ardent confession had given her an uneasy sense of detachment and unreality this morning. The guilty feeling persisted as her roan gelding splashed into the ford of Chinaman Creek and dipped its muzzle into the cold, clear current. Then the gelding’s head came up as a man riding bareback on a big mouse-colored mule emerged from the brush on the creek bank.

  Barbara recognized the flaming red hair and beard bristle. He was Lockhart’s man who had watered her horse at the salt lakes—Charley Yuill—and Yuill’s grin behind the mule’s long ears showed that he remembered her, too.

  “Seems we meet at waterin’-places, ma’am.”

  Barbara laughed, while a cautious part of her mind reminded that he was Lockhart’s man. She watched him shove the lop-brimmed black hat back on the startling red hair. He continued to grin while he asked a question.

  “There’s a stone building back in there. No windows in it. No one around. Got an iron door with a big lock, an’ two extra padlocks. What is it?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Barbara chuckled as her horse moved out of the water and halted beside the big placid mule. “That stone building,” she told Charley Yuill, “is a powder house. Darrah’s store in Coronado keeps a stock of powder there, where no damage will be done if the building blows up.”

  “Now whyn’t I guess that?” he wondered.

  “Are you still working for Lockhart?”

  His bright black eyes regarded her with amusement. “What kind of work, ma’am, with him locked up in Roxton jail?”

  “He’s out, and foreman of Half-Moon now.”

  A startled look considered her. “Out? An’ foreman of a ranch?”

  Barbara nodded. His faint grin returned. “Well, now, he might have a job for me. How do I get to this Half-Moon?”

  “I’m going there.”

  He wheeled the mule alongside her gelding. They were riding together before Barbara wondered why he had been back in the brush out of sight when she rode to the ford. “Were you,” she asked casually, “in Roxton when Lockhart was arrested?”

  He seemed to think that over before admitting, “I was.”

  “Did he really kill the man?”

  The snort of denial was immediate. “Couldn’t have. I was walkin’ with Lockhart at the edge of town. The sheriff just wouldn’t believe it.”

  An impulse made Barbara jab, “So you left Lockhart there in jail?”

  “Uh-huh. Before the sheriff locked me up, too.” His glance was quizzical. “How’d Lockhart get out an’ light in a fine ranch job?”

  “Half-Moon’s owner, Miss Canaday, secured his release.”

  Charley Yuill seemed amused. “Might be I’ll like ranchin’, too—if Lockhart’ll hire me.”

  Barbara’s conviction crystallized that Lockhart would hire this man without question, and her vague distrust increased. Were more strangers coming to Half-Moon, to be hired by Lockhart? She glanced furtively at Charley Yuill. An impassive thoughtfulness had dropped on him. He rode now without looking at her. Completely uneasy, Barbara resolved on blunt talk with Kate Canaday about all this. And then with increasing apprehension she wondered what Alec Waggoman’s reaction would be to Lockhart heading the Half-Moon crew.

  At Barb this morning Alec Waggoman paced in slow restlessness through shafts of sunlight inside the east windows of the ranch office. The door stood open to the clean freshness of a new day. Waggoman stepped out on the porch, and the far-flung, blurred world before his failing eyes seemed almost in his grasp. But not quite. All that grandeur, all that beauty to the far horizon was clear and vivid only in memory. In aching memory.

  He could smell the winy tang of the conifer forests on the high slopes back of the ranch headquarters. He could hear mountain jays calling raucously down the ranch road. A woodpecker was drumming on the tall dead tree beyond the horse corrals—

  That much was left him, Waggoman thought with an odd, humble gratitude. His eyes would never see it again. But he could smell it. He could hear it.

  The peckerwoods, he recalled, had come to that same tree for many years. With a faint smile, Waggoman wondered if the busy bird he could hear had been hatched in that tall, dead giant tree, and had come back this year to carry on its inheritance—like Dave would do with Barb—

  Always, these days, his thoughts came back to Dave, Waggoman realized. His smile faded as he stood thinking about Dave. Then the steady beat of a loping horse on the ranch road intruded. Waggoman lifted his head, peering to see who was coming. Defeated, he turned back into the office, gripped by the growing ache of helplessness, of uselessness.

  He heard the horse come directly to the short tie rail outside. He was sitting at the scarred old roll-top desk at the right of the office doorway, a lighted cigar between his fingers, when the rider dismounted. Purposeful steps came up on the porch and entered the office.

  The man’s greeting was serious and blunt. “Glad I caught you in, Mr. Waggoman.”

  Waggoman considered the faintly blurring, lanky figure. His question was mild. “Why, Quigby, are you glad I’m here?”

  “Because that fellow Lockhart is foreman now at Half-Moon.”

  Waggoman sat very still. His first startled reaction was despair and anger. This he had feared. This he had hoped against. Now it had happened.

  “So Kate hired the man?” he said without visible emotion.

  “You hadn’t heard?”

  “Vic Hansbro came from town a couple of days ago and said Lockhart was in trouble at Roxton Springs. That’s all.”

  Quigby dropped on the chair beside the desk without invitation. He was blunt. “Lockhart was being held on suspicion of murder. Miss Canaday got him out. That mean anything to you?”

  “Why should it?”

  With a kind of frustration, Quigby thought that this tall old man with the majestic sweep of white mustaches looked like the hard rock he was. No emotion at all on that bold-nosed, craggy face. No betraying flicker in the blank baffling stare.

  “Lockhart had trouble with Barb. Miss Canaday don’t like you. Looks like trouble now,” Quigby said curtly.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Shooting.”

  “Not from Barb,” said Waggoman in irritating mildness. “Go to Kate Canaday and Lockhart.”

  “I’m going to.” Quigby thought the ghost of a smile touched Waggoman’s mouth, lacking all humor, a little sad. He shook off the thought. Waggoman sad?

  “Quigby, has there been much rustling this year?” came Waggoman’s reflective question.

  “No more than usual.”

  “I’ve been checking on our range tallies. They add up short.”

  “Beef roundup will probably straighten it out,” Quigby hazarded.

  “I doubt it,” Waggoman said dryly. “I allowed for loose tallying. We had no winter drift. Indians haven’t cut into us this year. Leaves rustling, doesn’t it?”

  Quigby’s belligerence was instinctive. “Meaning rustlers have been operating under my nose and I don’t know it?”

  “Meaning nothing. I’ve been away. The small outfits can always use a little increase. You know it. I know it. Our men are out now, tallying down from the highest summer grass. If we find rustling sign, we’ll look into it.”

  It was mild; it lacked threat, and Quigby had the awkward feeling his “Let me know,” sounded equally awkward as he stood up. Yarns of the old days, of the scant mercy this tall old man had showed those who rustled Barb beef, came to Quigby now. He tried to read the old threat in Waggoman’s manner, and failed. Yet Quigby had the annoyed feeling he’d been warned and dismissed.

  In fact, came Quigby’s irritable conviction, he hadn’t
accomplished much here. Alec Waggoman made him feel young and unneeded—made him seem unwanted, unnecessary. The best he could think to say was a grimly stubborn, “I’ll get on over to Half-Moon.”

  “You do that,” was Waggoman’s mild suggestion. He was eyeing the cigar without expression when Quigby walked out, feeling a little foolish.

  Alec Waggoman did not move until the beat of Quigby’s departing horse faded. Then he stood up and walked heavily to the east windows and stared out at the soaring blur of the mountains.

  He was thinking with restless foreboding of Dave again—Dave, riding the high country today with Vic Hansbro and the rest of the crew. And when Waggoman thought of Lockhart, too, close now on Half-Moon, the despair came back in full tide.

  Dave was almost entirely on his own now. And Dave was not ready. What was going to happen to Barb? And to Dave?

  Vic Hansbro’s heavy thoughts were pondering the same thing later in the day when Hansbro’s horse kicked a small stone skittering off the narrow, steeply descending South Peak trail.

  Hansbro’s gaze left Dave’s back just ahead and dipped to watch the small stone gathering speed down some fifty feet of steep slope under the trail edge. A feather of fine dust lingered as the stone arced out into space and fell from sight. It would strike, Hansbro knew, on jagged outcrops and would keep falling. Finally it would smash terribly on the talus rubble far below.

  A horse—a rider—dropping off this high narrow trail would make the same great plunge through space. The two of them were here alone. No one but Vic Hansbro would know exactly what had happened.

  The tempting, sweating knowledge had been in Hansbro’s thoughts since he and Dave had started the short cut off the high grass meadows under South Peak’s bald crown.

  Vic Hansbro’s gaze came back in nagging fascination to the bunching haunch muscles of Dave’s long-backed gray gelding, lifted almost fearfully to Dave himself, braced unsuspectingly in the saddle.

  Dave’s horse was cautiously descending the treacherous footing, keeping over to the vertical rock on the inside of the trail. Dave’s wiry body was braced back against the saddle cantle, feet strongly in the stirrups.

  Vic Hansbro’s half-hypnotized stare reached past Dave’s shoulders and Dave’s wide-brimmed gray hat to the trail’s sharp turn to the right just ahead.

  Below that elbow turn, vast and empty space dropped dizzily away.

  Sweat came in a thin sheen to Hansbro’s forehead and felt chill at the roots of his black, chopped-off beard. One sharp spur rake would drive his startled horse lunging between Dave’s gray gelding and the inner rock of the cliff. Dave’s horse would be shouldered to the trail edge and crowded off—

  The rest of it fled through Hansbro’s brain, vivid as the small stone he had watched fall. One screaming, kicking plunge over the edge; the helpless, scrambling slide—and then the great drop from sight. All over in a few brief seconds. One more accident in the mountains. No blame, no blame at all for Vic Hansbro.

  Slowly, carefully, Hansbro worked his feet more solidly into the stirrups. His big fist tightened mechanically on the reins. Sweat slicked his palms. He glanced down at the hands, thinking they’d never perspired quite like this before. Then, gripping the reins tighter, Hansbro forced his gaze again to Dave’s unsuspecting back.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It seemed to Hansbro that a tremendous effort of muscle and will was needed to spur his horse forward against Dave’s horse. It had seemed easy, this quick, sure way for Vic Hansbro to dominate Barb in the years to come.

  Now some great new unsuspected instinct was intruding with bewildering force. That was Dave’s unsuspecting back which would plunge through dizzying space—That was Dave—

  Then in a frightening way Dave seemed to sense his danger. Over a shoulder, Dave suddenly, sharply ordered, “Hold it, Vic!” Dave’s haul on the reins stopped his horse.

  In Hansbro, exploding reflexes made him savage his own horse to a halt. Then Hansbro sat stiffly while a great weakness seeped into his knees and his brain grappled with the flood of baffling emotion. He had shot men; he had beaten men bloody and helpless and had enjoyed both. But this was Dave, a part of Alec, a part of Barb itself.

  In an oddly fearful way, it came to Vic Hansbro now that Dave was, somehow, a full part of his own life. Through the years he had tried to bind Dave close to Vic Hansbro, so that when Alec was dead, it would be Dave and Vic Hansbro and Barb. A flashing memory came of Dave, the small boy, riding trustfully, eagerly beside him—

  All that, back through the years, seemed to have tied Vic Hansbro to Dave. Hansbro swallowed a bewildered groan and looked down fearfully at the great drop below the trail edge.

  Dave was gazing intently into the valley below. “Hand me the glass,” Dave ordered without looking around.

  Hansbro fumbled for the leather-cased telescope tied behind his saddle. Reining carefully forward, he put the scuffed, powerful glass into Dave’s back-reaching hand. Then, easing his horse clear, Hans-bro sat in a bewildered slump, watching Dave focus the glass.

  Here the upper slopes of South Peak dropped in naked cliffs to the lush green floor of the valley. The far side of the valley was easier, timbered slopes; and through the mottled greenery of the valley floor, Chinaman Creek writhed like a silver snake fleeing the peaks.

  Barb steers down there looked sheep-size. Hans-bro’s question had a thick raspiness beyond his control. “What is it?”

  “Shut up,” said Dave carelessly, not moving the glass from his eye.

  A year ago, was Hansbro’s bitter thought, Dave wouldn’t have used the careless, contemptuous tone. Nor six months ago. The change in Dave had begun with Alec’s long trips away. Dave’s natural arrogance had fed mightily on the lack of restraint. But the steers sold quietly to Frank Darrah had seemed to put a final contempt in Dave’s manner.

  That connivance with Dave had delivered Vic Hansbro completely into Dave’s hands, Hansbro had realized in angry bitterness. He had hoped it would tie Dave closer, and it had undone all he’d tried to shape in Dave: the feeling that Vic Hans-bro was Dave’s needed friend. Now in gnawing in-decisiveness, Hansbro watched Dave lower the glass and twist around in the saddle.

  A quick, hot anger was thinning Dave’s mouth. “Guess who’s coming into the valley?”

  “Who?”

  “That Lockhart!”

  “He was jailed at Roxton Springs!”

  “Not now.” Dave was smoldering. “He’s heading into the valley, toward those steers. On Barb land again!”

  A sullen caution moved in on Hansbro again. “Alec said to forget him.”

  Dave sneered. “Don’t nursemaid me, Vic. If Lockhart’s rustling, we’ll take him.” Then Dave’s thin grin was taunting. “Maybe Lockhart rustled the steers Alec says are missing. The ones you peddled, Vic.”

  Stung, as Dave intended, Hansbro glowered. “I can show Alec there’s been rustling.”

  “Who did it?” Dave taunted.

  “Half-Moon.”

  “Vic, you fool! Not Half-Moon!”

  “Alec’ll believe it.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind.”

  Dave’s glance narrowed estimatingly. “Then you’re better than I think,” was Dave’s grudging opinion. He leaned far back in the saddle, returning the glass. “Fitz and some of the men will be down the lower trail. We’ll corral Lockhart.”

  Hansbro reminded thickly, “Alec said let him alone. You want Alec to fire me?”

  Dave sneered again. “Who cares? Go back if you’re afraid of Lockhart now.” Dave rode on.

  Hansbro held his horse from following. He watched Dave pass from sight around the sharp bend in the trail, and then Hansbro began to curse helplessly. He’d been a fool, betrayed by some obscure weakness. And for what? Dave would fire him at the first whim of temper after Dave had Barb.

  It wouldn’t happen again, Hansbro promised himself wildly. But that tall old man back at the ranch office had given his final order
about Lockhart, Hansbro knew in the bitterness which gripped him. And Alec was still boss. Hansbro short-reined his horse around on the narrow trail and started back toward the top.

  Will Lockhart had made this day’s ride into the high country while waiting for Charley Yuill to find the written instructions at Roxton Springs and follow to Half-Moon.

  As he rode upward into lofty stands of Douglas fir and red spruce and white spruce, Will could see increasingly the far sweep of the lower country. Bleached sands of dry arroyos and the shadowy run of wide draws gashed patterns across the purpling distance.

  Following the trails higher, Will found Half-Moon cattle increasingly in meadows, small parks, and grassy pockets of these upper slopes. When screaming winter gales piled vast drifts below the peaks, these half-wild steers and suspicious cows would be on the rich, sun-cured graze of the lower range. But Barb cattle would be on the huge Gallegos tract leased away from Half-Moon by Alec Waggoman. No wonder, Will reflected, Kate Canaday was disturbed, worried, belligerent. She would need that winter graze.

  In this high country there were no line fences. Will topped a great saddle of the mountain and found a park-like valley falling away before him, threaded by a sinuous, tumbling little stream. Naked yellow cliffs to the left soared high; the right side of this high, smiling valley was gentler forested slopes.

  Scattered cattle grazed ahead, and Will presently sighted his first Barb steer. He reined over, studying the bold curved brand with its down-slashing barb at the tip. Near by a Half-Moon steer stared warily.

  Along here, Will guessed, the two ranches came together without fence lines. He rode on down the pleasant valley, estimating the brands, for what interest Kate Canaday might have in the commingling with Barb. A little more and he’d turn back.

  Will was wondering what chance there was of Charley Yuill being at Half-Moon when he returned when a snapping rifle shot slashed the valley quiet and bounced slamming echoes off the high cliff face.

  Will’s horse lunged, front legs buckling. Will’s hand slapped instinctively to the saddle horn as he kicked the stirrups away. His instant furious thought was: Barb again! Hansbro, probably! And no witnesses now to a killing!