Troublesome Range

by Peter Dawson

  Clark Dunne stood up slowly out of a rawhide chair. “Mine,” he said, and had half turned to the door when he suddenly stiffened and faced around again.

  In that brief moment a change had come over Clark’s face, making it handsome no longer, but thin-lipped and ugly. His hard stare settled on Joe and stayed there warily. Somehow he knew that he had stepped into a trap.

  Joe was feeling the strength go out of his knees and his hand began trembling. So it was Clark! It had been Clark all along. The man who, next to Blaze, he counted as his best friend. Clark had tried to kill him. Clark had killed Ed Merrill. Of course, Clark would be the one who would have recognized the horsehair hatband. Slowly, relentlessly the full force of Clark’s guilt struck home to Joe as a crushing weight. A strong nausea hit him and the room wheeled before his eyes, so violent was the upheaval within him. Then, gradually, he got a hold on himself and faced this old friend who he saw now as no longer a friend, but a cold-blooded and merciless killer.

  “So you’re the one, Clark,” he said evenly.

  A light step crossed the planking of the portal and the heavy bolt of the door rattled. Joe’s glance went across there, past Clark, as the door opened and Ruth Merrill came into the room.

  She stopped dead still, her hand on the wrought-iron latch lift, taking in the scene before her. Her tawny, blonde hair was wind-blown and her face rosy with high color. At this moment she made a picture that brought back all the old hunger, the old worshipful feeling to Joe. He was a fraction of a second too late in lifting his gun. Clark’s hand stab had become a smooth, fast uplift as he rocked his .38 into line. Joe pushed sideward and out from the wall and brought his gun around. But Clark’s exploded as he was moving. A heavy blow struck him along the forearm; the heavy .45 fell from his convulsively opening hand.

  He stood there, his numbed arm hanging at his side, staring into the round bore of Clark’s Colt as Ruth Merrill screamed.

  Clark wheeled in behind a chair, his move putting every man in the room well within his line of vision. His ordinarily smooth voice grated now as he rasped: “Reach! Every blasted one of you!”

  As their hands lifted, Ruth Merrill said from the doorway in a breathless, bewildered voice: “Clark! What are you doing?”

  Clark ignored her, taking two backward steps that brought her into view. “Mike, get that gun off the floor,” he said tersely. “Harper, Pecos, grab guns!”

  Saygar came lithely up off the horsehair sofa, stepped across, and picked up Joe’s Colt. Harper wheeled in behind Slim Workman, yanked the man’s gun from holster and pushed him roughly across to stand beside Yace Bonnyman. Pecos lifted Yace’s gun.

  Only then did the hard, wicked set of Clark’s face break into a milder look. His glance going to Joe, he drawled: “Well, Ruth, you can have him. He’s what you’ve been after, isn’t he?” A twisted smile crossed his face. “I wonder if I’ll let you have him. How would you like me to make sure this time, Joe?”

  The arm was beginning to hurt now. Joe reached over with his good hand and took a hold on it, throttling the pain. “You’re through, Clark,” he said. “You can’t get away.”

  “Can’t I?” Clark taunted. “Can we, Mike?”

  “It’s been done before,” Saygar said. “We can do it again.” Clark laughed mirthlessly and softly and his glance ran over Joe to Blaze and Yace. Some thought, as he looked at Yace, made his smile fade. “It’s too bad this couldn’t have come off the way I planned it, Bonnyman. I’d have made you look like a ten-cow man. In the end, I’d either have bought you out or run you out. There was my own spread, then Brush and Singletree. Workman, you’d have sold out to me, wouldn’t you? That fire I set tonight cut you off above the pockets, didn’t it?”

  Slim Workman’s voice was awed. “So you did that, too?” he breathed.

  “You must’ve had it all planned,” Joe said, “as far back as the night you killed Merrill.”

  “You killed Dad?” Ruth’s voice sounded across the room, hushed and lifeless.

  “I meant Ed, Ruth,” Joe said.

  “Both,” Clark corrected him. “Ask Doc Nesbit about it sometime. All I had to do was keep the old man from takin’ his medicine.”

  Yace Bonnyman cursed softly time and time again. It seemed to amuse Clark, whose smile returned. “I’d have had you in less than a year,” he drawled. “Maybe in a month. The basin along with the rest. If it hadn’t been for Joe uncoverin’ Saygar’s men, they’d have deeded their homesteads over to me.”

  At the door, Ruth breathed: “You’re a cur, Clark. No, not that. I have nothing against a dog. You’re . . .” She stopped there, speechless in her anger and humiliation.

  “Go ahead, say it,” Clark taunted. His glance ran between Joe and Ruth. “I wonder if I ought to let you have him.” He seemed intent on deciding that.

  Strangely enough, Joe’s look went to Jean Vanover at this moment. She stood beside her father, across from Clark. Her face was pale. She was looking at Joe and something in her eyes made him say, with near anger: “We’ll decide that for ourselves, Clark.”

  A nod from Clark sent Harper to the door. The gunman pushed Ruth aside roughly. So concentrated was the girl’s attention on Clark that she didn’t seem to notice the gunman.

  “Mike, cover my back,” Clark said, and turned toward the door.

  At that instant Joe let his knees buckle and his body fall backward. As his weight left his legs, he straightened them. He fell back out through the window in a twisting fall. Saygar’s gun ripped away the silence inside, his bullet flicking loose a splinter from the window’s sill at the exact moment Joe struck the ground, heavily, on his good shoulder.

  He rolled out of line with the window, one turning boot knocking the rifle there aground. His groping hand snatched it up as he come onto his knees, wheeling to face the window.

  He levered a shell into the gun and shot with it at hip level as Saygar’s sloping-shouldered frame blocked the opening. The outlaw gave a pulpy cough and an expression of utter surprise crossed his face. Then, as though too tired to stand, he fell out and across the window’s wide sill, hanging there with his gun hand straight down along the outside wall.

  Joe saw this as he was coming erect and turning from the window. He snatched the outlaw’s Colt from the hand’s death grip and ran for the near corner of the house. Losing his footing, he fell headlong into the prickly thicket of barberry. He rolled clear of the bushes, a lancing pain coursing up along his right forearm. The rifle forgotten, he got up and kept on.

  Clark Dunne’s vague, high shape was in the saddle of the gray, turning out from the shadows down by the corral. Joe halted, stood straddle-legged to steady his aim, and laid his sights on the gray’s chest. He squeezed the trigger. The horse, beginning a lunging stride under spur, went down as his forelegs buckled. Joe saw the beginning of Clark’s fall and started to run across there.

  Over by the house a shot rang out and a man’s hoarse scream sounded briefly before a second explosion cut it off.

  Joe ran past the cook shanty and was close to the bunkhouse when a stab of flame from the corral showed him Clark’s position in the rank of horses. Joe didn’t hear the sound of that shot, but felt the air whip of the bullet along the side of his face. He stopped short of the rectangle of light issuing from the bunk-house door, then wheeled back, and ran into the shadow along the side wall.

  He put three strides between him and the back wall before be ventured beyond it. The corral lay a trifle more than 100 feet away now. Joe saw a horse rear and paw the air and heard Clark speak a sharp oath in the moment he stood watching. Then, recklessly, he ran in toward the corral.

  Now he could make out a few details in the blackness. He saw Clark plainly, jerking loose the reins of the animal that had reared. He called—“No use, Clark!”—coming in on the side of the empty corral opposite that where Clark stood.

  His voice made Clark Dunne turn quickly about. Clark couldn’t see Joe yet. He leaned down, stepped in between th
e second and third poles, and was in the corral.

  “Across here, Clark!” Joe called tauntingly, as he went into a crouch.

  Clark’s .38 exploded twice. A bullet sounded thwunk! into one of the pine poles a foot over Joe’s head.

  Lifting his Colt, Joe targeted the flame stab of Clark’s gun there, his own gun only chest-high. He saw Clark pushed backward a step and come erect once more. He saw Clark’s hand lift, and drove another shot at the man.

  Clark folded at the waist, slowly, as a man would in favoring an aching stomach. His gun exploded once as he fell, wheeling sideward, but the orange wash of powder flame was pointing toward the ground.

  Joe walked across to the corral, straddled the poles, and then stood looking down at the man he had once called his friend. Clark’s face was upturned. He was smiling, his expression serene except for the sightless, staring eyes.

  Joe said—“So long.”—softly, and tossed his gun away.

  He didn’t know the others were coming toward him until Ruth Merrill came in beside him. Putting her arm on his, she said: “Joe, we can forget all this and make a new start. Can’t we?”

  She drew back at the look Joe gave her. It was cold, furious, not intended for her, but showing the aftereffects of what had just happened. She took her hand away and anger destroyed a measure of her prettiness.

  “I don’t have to do this, you know,” she breathed.

  “I know,” he answered, hardly aware that she had spoken and not understanding her words. He turned from her then, wanting nothing so much as to be alone.

  The others, witnessing the scene, let him walk on away. Blaze had hung back just beyond the wide portal with Jean and Fred Vanover. As Joe approached, he told them: “He’s takin’ it hard. Did you see the way he shook her off? Stay out of his way when he’s like this.”

  Vanover and Jean stepped back into the shadows. As Joe came up, he saw Blaze and some of his sanity returned. He saw the Vanovers beyond Blaze and called: “That you, Jean?”

  “Yes, Joe,” she answered. “What is it?”

  He hadn’t known until now what it was. But now that he did know, he walked over to her. Oblivious of Vanover, he took her by the arms and looked down into her face. A torrents of doubts assailed him, but he spoke anyway, the core of him yielding a knowledge of something he hadn’t been aware of until he had left Ruth near the corral.

  “Jean, I’m on my way out. I’m bein’ fool enough to ask you to come with me. I’m no good and you wouldn’t be gettin’ much. But I’ve got to know.”

  Gladness was in Jean Vanover’s face. Her eyes shone with tears she tried to hold back. She said in a barely audible whisper—“I’d go anywhere with you, Joe.”—and didn’t wait for him to kiss her.

  Peace for Mesa Grande

  It was the same room of three nights ago, the lamplight blue with tobacco smoke, the street below filled with men as on that other night. And it was Yace Bonnyman, as before, who did most of the talking. Only this time Yace wasn’t arguing. He was doing the thing he liked best, blustering, driving home to these others the force of his will. And this time there was no question of right and wrong.

  “Then it’s settled,” he said. “Acme stays open. You run it, Vanover. You’re goin’ to make Workman and Staples low-interest loans so they can get on their feet again. But your outfit’s through when it comes to cattle. Either let go of Diamond or we’ll run you out. We’ll burn the layout to the ground if we have to. Your gun hands are in jail now. We can do these things I say, and you won’t stop us.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Fred Vanover replied. “Diamond’s changing hands. Were only handling the mortgage on it.”

  For the first time since the meeting had started, Yace’s look went cloudy with anger. “No tricks,” he flared. “Come out in the open with the details. We’ll let the sale go through on only one condition . . . that the owner is agreeable to us. Who is he?”

  “Your son and his wife are moving in tomorrow, after the wedding,” Vanover stated quietly.

  “Weddin!” Yace was stunned into silence for a moment. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

  Blaze, at the far end of the table, said dryly: “No one thought you’d be interested.”

  “Well, damn it, I am! Where’s Joe now?”

  “He and Jean were down in the street in my rig when I left them,” Vanover said. “Unless they’ve decided to drive out where it isn’t so crowded, you’ll still find them there.”

  Without another word, Yace got his hat and left the room, his solid boot tread thundering down the covered stairway outside.

  Vanover’s shiny new buggy was at the rail in front of The Antlers. Only the night light shone from the hotel windows, so that walk and street were dark. The white sling of Joe’s bad arm was all Yace could distinguish as he stooped under the tie rail and approached the rig.

  “That you, Joe?” he asked needlessly.

  “It’s me.” His son’s voice was flattened.

  Yace could make out the girl now and he tipped his hat to her. “I . . . I got somethin’ to tell you, Joe,” he said haltingly.

  “Same here,” Joe replied. “I only heard about it tonight. Thanks for savin’ me a bullet in the back. I understand it was you that knocked Harper over. Blaze said he was goin’ to have a try at him, but that you grabbed your gun from Pecos, wouldn’t trust Blaze to do it. That right?”

  Yace nodded, his face coloring in his embarrassment. “Blaze never did have a good eye for a shot in the dark. Pecos just gave up after Saygar got it. I took my gun back, ran out, and nailed Harper.” He scuffed his boots in the dust, looking down at them. Finally he burst out: “I got a lot to live down, Son. All I can say is I been pretty thick-headed. We’re glad to have you stayin’. And if you’ll let an old fool say it, you’re a fine judge of women.”

  Before he quite knew what was happening, Jean Vanover had leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.

  He wanted to get away quickly, but couldn’t. There was something else he had to say. “Son,” it came out finally, “there’s no use in you gettin’ in over your head with a bank on this thing. I’ve got so much money I don’t know what to do with it. Why don’t you use some of it before I’m dead and buried.”

  “We’ll make out all right,” was Joe’s reply.

  “Have it your way.” Yace turned back onto the walk, the old anger against his son’s stubbornness in him. Then he checked himself.

  Going back up the walk to the stable for his horse, Yace pondered this fact he had never understood before, humble before the feeling of wanting to make it up to his son.

  It was on the ride home that he thought of way to make Joe take that money. He had as good a right as the next man to give a wedding present. It was bad luck, so he understood, to turn one down.

  The End

  About the Author

  Peter Dawson is the nom de plume used by Jonathan Hurff Glidden. He was born in Kewanee, Illinois, and was graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in English literature. In his career as a Western writer he published sixteen Western novels and wrote over 120 Western short novels and short stories for the magazine market. From the beginning he was a dedicated craftsman who revised and polished his fiction until it shone as a fine gem. His Peter Dawson novels are noted for their adept plotting, interesting and well-developed characters, their authentically researched historical backgrounds, and his stylistic flair. During the Second World War, Glidden served with the U.S. Strategic and Tactical Air Force in the United Kingdom. Later in 1950 he served for a time as Assistant to Chief of Station in Germany. After the war, his novels were frequently serialized in The Saturday Evening Post. Peter Dawson titles such as Royal Gorge and Ruler of the Range are generally conceded to be among his best titles, although he was an extremely consistent writer, and virtually all his fiction has retained its classic stature among readers of all generations. One of Jon Glidden’s finest techniques was his ability, after the fashion of Dickens
and Tolstoy, to tell his stories via a series of dramatic vignettes which focus on a wide assortment of different characters, all tending to develop their own lives, situations, and predicaments, while at the same time propelling the general plot of the story toward a suspenseful conclusion. He was no less gifted as a master of the short novel and short story.