Fight for Powder Valley!

by Brett Halliday

  From the road, Pat couldn’t be sure whether they were on Lazy Mare property or across the line on John Boyd’s Bar X spread which joined his ranch on the south.

  He sat easily in the saddle with his Stetson tipped back on his head, a speculative light in his eyes. It couldn’t be boys hunting jack rabbits—and it wasn’t a fencing crew.

  He jiggled the reins and turned his horse off the road to ride down that way and satisfy his curiosity.

  As he rode nearer he saw that the unmounted men were on Bar X property, about a mile back from the creek. He still couldn’t figure out what they were doing there. He now saw there were four of them altogether. One seemed to be going quite a distance ahead, while two others followed him, remaining a certain distance apart and stopping briefly to stoop down at stated intervals. Funniest darned way of acting he ever had seen. And they were grown men, too.

  When he got close enough to see that the man who remained alone in the rear was standing in front of a queer-looking brass instrument mounted on three wooden legs, Pat suddenly realized what the men were, doing. His bronze face relaxed in a chuckle at his own expense. They were surveyors, that’s what. Measuring off a line with a chain made of iron links. He had seen government surveyors running section lines before, and he should have known that’s what it was. But he wondered why government surveyors were bothering to run section lines through John Boyd’s ranch. That wasn’t his property line. Boyd owned all the land right down to the creek.

  The surveyor was leaning forward looking through his brass telescope when Pat rode up. He was waving to a man almost half a mile ahead. The man had a pole painted with red and white stripes, and he moved the pole back and forth as the man at the instrument waved to him.

  Pat cocked one leg over the saddlehorn and rolled a cigarette, watching the proceedings with grave interest. Kind of a funny way to do, he thought indulgently, worrying about a few inches this way or that when there were so dang many miles of open country up and down the creek that it didn’t really matter where a section line went. But that was their business, he reckoned, just like his was cattle raising.

  The surveyor was a young man, under thirty, Pat thought. He wore leather boots laced tightly all the way up to his knees, with fancy riding pants that were like a little boy’s britches. He had on a khaki shirt buttoned up tight at the neck with a black four-in-hand tie, and on his head was a hard-brimmed Stetson like soldiers and Easterners wore.

  He hadn’t been West very long, Pat decided, appraising him as he continued to be finicky about where the man in front put his painted pole. His features were sunburnt and the skin was peeling from his cheeks. The backs of his hands were red and blistered also. That always happened to Easterners when they were first exposed to the deceptively mild Colorado sun.

  The surveyor began frantically waving both hands over his head as though he had suddenly gone mad. He stepped back from his three-legged surveying instrument and nodded to Pat with a pleasant, “Good afternoon.”

  He had a smooth agreeable voice, and a well-knit body that showed strength without bulkiness.

  Pat Stevens said, “Howdy.” Then drawled, “Runnin’ some sections lines, I reckon?”

  The young man smiled and took out a white handkerchief to mop his face. He said, “Yes. That’s what I’m doing right now.”

  “How-come that Boyd is surveying off this creek section? Is he aimin’ to fence it in?” asked Pat curiously.

  The surveyor said, “Boyd?” in a tone of surprise, screwing up his face.

  “Yeh. The fellow you’re workin’ for. This is the Bar X ranch.”

  “Oh. I see who you mean. The rancher who owns the rest of this property.” The surveyor negligently waved his hand westward, away from the creek. “I didn’t know his name.”

  “What do you mean … rest of this property?” Pat demanded. “John’s holdin’s ran all the way to the creek the last I heard.”

  “They don’t now. This is his new property line that I’m surveying.”

  “You mean John’s sold this creek section?”

  The surveyor nodded. “Not only this section but two more south of here.”

  Pat said, “I’ll be doggoned. Who bought ’em from him?”

  “The Colorado Western Land and Development Company owns all this creek land now.”

  Pat Stevens suddenly tensed in the saddle. He lowered his lids, making his gray eyes into slits. “That’s a mighty important-sounding name you just said. What do they aim to do with John’s sections?”

  “Develop it for farming. It’s an irrigation project. It’s not only these three sections but a strip a mile wide on each side of the creek all along the floor of the valley.”

  Pat’s face grew hard. He struck a match and held it to the tip of his soggy half-smoked cigarette. He drew a puff of smoke into his lungs and let it roll out of his nostrils, then queried quietly, “You mean on beyond north of the Bar X too?”

  The surveyor drew a folded map from his pocket and spread it out on the ground. He squatted down and squinted at the black lines. He nodded. “I go a mile beyond the Bar X line … take in one section from … uh … the Lazy Mare ranch.”

  Pat slid out of the saddle and dropped his reins to the ground. “I’d be obliged for a look at that map,” he said gruffly. “My name’s Pat Stevens.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Stevens. My name is Ross Culver.” The surveyor stood up and extended his hand. Pat took it and received a firm handclasp.

  Culver squatted again, moving aside so Pat could lean over and see the map. “All this shaded area is company property,” the surveyor explained. “See, we own a solid block on both sides of the creek up and down the valley. A mighty fine and promising project,” he went on enthusiastically. “As soon as we get our irrigation system in, we’ll transform all this wasteland into a really productive tract.”

  Pat was staring down at the map with slitted eyes. “Where’s the line between the Bar X and the Lazy Mare?” he demanded.

  Culver promptly put the tip of his finger on the map. “Right there. And about here is where we are now.” He moved his finger down the edge of the shaded area a quarter of an inch.

  “There’s something wrong,” Pat told him quietly. “You’d better check up on your deeds before you do any more surveying.”

  “That’s impossible,” Culver smiled. “I checked the records in the land office at Denver before coming out.”

  “All the same, there’s some mistake. The Lazy Mare is my ranch. I haven’t sold a foot of it to any irrigation company for farmers.”

  Ross Culver continued to smile amiably. “There isn’t any mistake, Mr. Stevens. I don’t make mistakes.”

  Pat settled back on his haunches. His slitted gray eyes bored into the surveyor’s face. “There’s something wrong,” he repeated emphatically. “Do you think I or any of the other ranchers in the valley would be fools enough to sell our creek land to some company to settle farmers on? Why, they’d be putting up fences, blocking our stock off from water, putting a plow to that grass land …”

  “I’m starting a fencing crew tomorrow,” Culver told him quietly. “This is progress, Mr. Stevens. You ranchers can’t impede the westward march of civilization. Why, a hundred families can live off one section where you graze a few head of cattle in the winter.”

  Pat Stevens compressed his lips. “That’s plumb foolish talk. This is range land, not farmin’ country. You can’t raise crops here. Growin’ season is too short. An’ what would a farmer do with crops if he could raise ’em? It’s hundreds of miles to market.”

  Culver shrugged his shoulders and began to roll up his map. “I’m not an agricultural expert,” he confessed. “I’m an engineer and I’ve been employed to do a job in Powder Valley. When we get our dam built at the source of the creek, and the spring floods impounded in a reservoir …”

  Pat interrupted him fiercely. “Dam? Reservoir?” He choked over the words. “By God, no! Not as long as there’s a gun left in Powder V
alley and a man to trigger it.”

  Ross Culver smiled pityingly. “I’m afraid you’re living in the past, Mr. Stevens. Before I came West I heard a lot about the two-gun desperados I was likely to meet, but I notice the ranchers hereabout seem a peaceful law-abiding lot. None of them go armed any more.” He glanced at Pat’s gunless hips significantly.

  “There’s guns aplenty in this valley,” Pat assured him. “As you’ll be findin’ out if you try to put up fences and build dams on our property.”

  “But it isn’t your property any more,” the young surveyor argued. “I’ve seen the recorded deeds to every section I’m surveying.”

  “I don’t know about the others, but I do know I haven’t sold a section of the Lazy Mare …” Pat stopped abruptly. His jaw sagged. He stared at Culver in consternation.

  “I did sell a section last winter. But not to any land company. A man named Biloff … from down on the Pecos River in Texas, he said he was. Wanted a section to experiment with raisin’ hawses. Figgered on breeding Arabians with Morgan stock for cow-hawses, an’ figgered to come up here in the high country to give ’em strong hearts and lung capacity while they were growin’ up. But he only wanted one section. I sold him that … thinkin’ it’d be a fine thing to get a better grade of hawses than we mostly get out here.”

  “Did you say his name was Biloff?”

  “That’s right. Jud Biloff. Paid me a hundred dollars for the section. I let him have it cheap because he’d put most of his cash money into thoroughbred studs and couldn’t afford to pay more.”

  Ross Culver whistled shrilly. “Six hundred and forty acres for a hundred dollars? You practically gave it to him. I happen to know the company is pricing small tracts at ten dollars an acre … and that’s before the irrigation system is in. Once we get it under cultivation, it’ll be worth fifty dollars an acre easily.”

  Pat waved his hand with a savage gesture of indifference. “I’m not worrying about that now. I’m wonderin’ if Biloff double-crossed me and sold my section to your company.”

  “I imagine that’s what happened,” Culver said indifferently. “As a matter of fact, the president of our company is named Biloff. A tall man with black hair and a mustache …”

  “That’s him,” Pat said excitedly. He gripped the surveyor’s shoulder. “He must have lied to me. All the time he must have been figgering on sellin’ it to farmers instead of raisin’ hawses. But he knew I wouldn’t sell it if he told me the truth … so he straight out lied.”

  Culver shrugged. “Rather smart business.”

  “Smart, is it?” snarled Pat. His fingers gnawed into the flesh of Culver’s shoulder. “I’m bettin’ he bought all the rest of this bottom land the same crooked way. Told each one of the ranchers he just wanted their one or two or three sections, without letting on he was buying the rest of it … or what he was buyin’ it for … and ended up with deeds to this whole strip up and down the creek. It’s the heart of Powder Valley, that creek is. If we let it get fenced-off … good God, boy, don’t you see what that’ll mean to all the ranches that depend on the creek for waterin’ their stock.”

  Culver shrugged from under Pat’s tightly gripping fingers and stepped back. He seemed to grow in stature, and his voice was firm and strong:

  “None of these things concern me in the slightest degree. I’ve been hired to do a job … and I intend to see it through.”

  “Doesn’t it matter to you that all this property was bought by trickery?”

  Culver shook his head. “Business ethics aren’t any concern of mine. In fact, I can’t blame Mr. Biloff much under the circumstances. A selfish few ranchers should not be allowed to stand in the way of progress.”

  Pat Stevens folded his arms and listened with stony calm until the engineer had finished. Then he said quietly, “There’ll be shootin’ if you try to run your line past that Bax X fence yonder.”

  Culver laughed indulgently. “I’ll take a chance on that.”

  He bent to pick up his map and stuffed it in his pocket, then folded up his tripod and shouldered it, strode briskly away.

  Pat watched him until he reached the group of men gathered about the painted pole. Then he mounted and spurred his horse toward the Bar X ranch in search of John Boyd.

  3

  John Boyd was a tall, stringy man with drooping gray mustaches and piercing black eyes. His sixty-five years on the Western range had left him a little stooped and gnarled, but with a rawhide toughness of fiber that disputed the encroachment of advancing years.

  Pat Stevens found him at the stables back of the Bar X ranch house wearing a leather blacksmith’s apron and sulphurously fitting a shoe on the left hind foot of a blazed-face bay, one of Boyd’s favorite saddle horses.

  He glanced up at Pat and jerked out a “Howdy, neighbor,” then went on blankety-blanking the struggling horse while he firmly nailed the shoe into place.

  Pat dismounted and squatted on the ground, rolling a cigarette and waiting until the rancher was through. It took Boyd only a few minutes, then he stepped back and let the bay get all four feet on the ground again, muttering profanely, “Le’s see you throw that shoe, you blank son of a blank blank.” He pulled out a red bandanna and mopped his sweaty face, brushed his mustaches up with the back of his hand and spit a long stream of tobacco juice to the ground, then strolled around to squat beside Pat companionably. “Things’re lookin’ mighty good for this time of year,” he offered.

  “Mighty good,” Pat agreed absently. “I believe my yearlings are carrying twenty pounds more on the average than I ever saw this time before.”

  “Yep. Price is good, too. I’ve been thinkin’ about getting a couple more bulls, Pat …”

  “Did you ever think about farming your creek sections?” Pat asked harshly.

  “Farming?” John Boyd snorted his aversion. “Here in Powder Valley? Have you gone plumb crazy, Pat? Why would any man farm good grass land? Hell! there’s plenty of land out east of here on the flats if a man’s got a yen to follow the tail-end of a team hooked to a plow.”

  “That is what I always thought,” said Pat. He paused a moment, sucking on his cigarette. “If you think that way, why’d you sell your bottom sections to an outfit that plans on bringin’ in farmers an’ cuttin’ it up into little tracts for nesters-like?”

  “You’re crazy!” Boyd ejaculated. He pushed back a floppy gray hat and stared at his neighbor in amazement. “I’d as soon see a gang of rustlers move into Powder Valley as a passel of plowmen.”

  “I just came from down along the creek where there’s a surveyor runnin’ a fence-line along your bottom sections.”

  Boyd frowned, then suddenly he slapped his lean thigh and began to laugh. “Don’ know where you got that idee about farming. I did sell them three bottom sections to a hawse-raiser from Texas last winter. Feller by the name of Biloff. He’s got an idee for crossin’ Arabian studs with pure-bred Morgan mares for a heavier an’ faster stock hawse. Sounded good to me, so I let him have them three sections cheap to get started on.”

  “Hundred dollars a section?”

  “Well, I didn’t get that much. He claimed he was short of cash an’ I figgered it was sort of a public dooty, maybe, to set up a place like that in Powder Valley. I sold him the three sections for two hundred dollars. He was a mighty slick talker, that man,” Boyd concluded reminiscently.

  “Nineteen hundred and twenty acres for two hundred dollars,” Pat mused savagely. “At ten dollars an acre, that’s nineteen thousand an’ two hundred dollars if my figurin’ is right. A clear profit of nineteen thousand for Mr. Biloff.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about? Ten dollars an acre … nineteen thousand …” sputtered Boyd. “He promised me my pick of the first year’s colt crop …”

  “Sure,” said Pat sardonically. “He promised me that, too. For sellin’ him my creek section.”

  “Yours? You mean to say he bought more’n my three sections?”

  “Not only mine,” Pat exp
lained harshly, “but everybody’s up an’ down the creek on both sides. Gave each of us the same song an’ dance, I reckon. Told each of us he only wanted our one or two or three sections facing the creek … I tell you, John, Biloff owns every foot of land on both sides of the creek all the way up an’ down Powder Valley.”

  “Good God’l’mighty!” exclaimed Boyd, not impiously. “He must be figgerin’ on raisin’ a heap of hawses.”

  “Hawses hell!” snorted Pat. “We’ve been slickered. We held pat hands an’ we threw ’em away in front of a pair of deuces. He lied straight out when he bought that land. Biloff ain’t a hawse-raiser from Texas. He’s the president of a big company that’s fixing to dam up Powder Creek an’ dig irrigation canals and sell off that land in little parcels to farmers from the East.”

  “Do tell?” Boyd looked interested but not particularly worried. He shook his head and spit a neat stream of tobacco juice from between his mustaches. “He’s crazy if he thinks that’ll work. This is cow-country. No good for farmin’. Too high in the mountains. Early frost will catch any crop they try to plant.”

  “That ain’t the point,” Pat pounded at him. “The farmers that pay ten dollars an acre for that land don’t know it’s worthless. They’ll flock in here and settle all over the bottoms. Every foot of that creek will be fenced off from our ranches so our stock can’t get to water. With a dam at the upper end, there won’t be any runnin’ water except what the company wants to turn loose.”

  Boyd shook his head in dazed incomprehension. “I tell you it won’t never work,” he remonstrated feebly. “Farmers will starve out in a year or two when their crops get froze out.”

  “He don’t care whether they raise crops or not. Biloff will clean up a million dollars and leave the farmers holding the bag. While they’re starving out, what’ll we be doing? Our ranches will be ruined.”

  “By gum, Pat, you reckon any man could be that mean?” John Boyd asked wonderingly. “Mean enough to get pore devils out here with their families to starve just to make a heap of money off ’em?”