by Peter Dawson
The following day Pete had been sober enough to see other possibilities, chief of which was the bringing in of the sheep. When he arranged with Buchwalter to take over Fencerail, to bring in the girl to pose as his sister, he hadn’t known exactly how he was to accomplish all this. Luck had been with him in the coming of this stranger. Mathiot had miraculously figured a way to bring in the sheep. Dallam had himself stood well beyond the light of the fire at the camp below the needle that night and heard Mathiot tell Buchwalter and the rest how to bring in the sheep. In that moment, after the failure of his attempted bushwhack of Bishop during the preceding morning, he had again suddenly seen himself as a growing power on this range.
He wondered now if he’d made a major error as far as Mathiot was concerned. No, he decided finally, he hadn’t. Mathiot seemed to have played his hand alone. He doubted that Mathiot had told anyone else of the hide-out up the cañon, for Mathiot was looking for the stranger who lay in Dallam’s grave down at Agua. He would naturally think the stranger had been the man at the hide-out. Dallam sensed that Mathiot had been no man to ask help in hunting down the stranger. He would keep quiet about the hide-out. Buchwalter’s visit to the hide-out this morning had put Dallam in a seething rage. The loss of a large portion of the sheep band wasn’t so important as his belief that he had Bishop to thank for the stampede. Believing that, he had started out on this vengeful errand that had halfway been Buchwalter’s brain child. Tom had wanted him to go over and burn out Bishop, and Dallam had improved on that original idea himself. Luck had been with him in discovering that Mathiot was on his trail.
For nearly forty minutes there it had looked as though Mathiot would uncover his secret, that Mathiot might even kill him. But he had seen the man in time, his first shot there below the rim had been phenomenally lucky, and the chances of his secret coming to light had died along with Mathiot back there in the burning timber.
For the last hour an awesome realization had sobered Dallam. The complete and wholesale ruin of the east-slope outfits was now certain. Tomorrow those solid bulwarks of this country’s affluence and respectability would lie crumbled in the ashes of a holocaust, their power and their money gone. Fencerail would be the valley’s biggest outfit. Buchwalter would operate the spread, in theory for the girl who posed as Laura Dallam. There would be enough money to increase the outfit’s holdings. And all the while Dallam would he managing things from the obscurity of his pretended grave. He would assume another name, live elsewhere. He would have money, lots of it, wealth, and untold power.
This picture of his future would have been completely satisfying but for one thing. Of all the things he had ever wished for, Cathy Bishop was the ultimate, the prize without which all the rest would be as nothing. Dallam had known many women, but of them all Cathy was the only one for whom he had ever held any real depth of feeling. He loved her. And now he knew that his long fight to accomplish these material gains had been waged only so that he could say to her: I’m a big man, Cathy! I’m rich! I can give you anything you want! Will you have me?
In these last few days Buchwalter had told him much about Cathy, chief of which had been her continuing and stubborn defiance of her father. She had even gone so far as to condemn him publicly there in Ledge on the morning of the ambush. Last night Dallam had lain awake in his blankets at the hide-out thinking of that, wondering what advantage he could take of Cathy’s loyalty to him. He’d thought out a plan last night. Then, this morning, he’d cast it aside in his mad desire to revenge himself on Frank Bishop.
Sight of the rim, the memory of the many meetings there with Cathy, sobered Dallam out of his vengeful mood to the point where his thinking once more followed the groove it had traveled last night. Cathy undoubtedly loved him; her defiance of her father, her blaming Bishop for the Agua shoot-out, were proof of that. Once more convinced of this, Dallam became at once almost happy. The moment he realized again that Cathy still cared for him, a pressing urgency was in him. What he had last night planned he would have to do at once. There could be no waiting.
He spoke to the grulla as he used his sharp-rowelled spurs cruelly. “Move along, big boy! We’re goin’ places!”
He knew well this lower stretch of timber and made good time riding it. A glance at the sun, now shining brassily in a cloud-hazed sky, showed him that it was late morning, close to 11:00. Sight of the darker bank of clouds building before the wind in the south brought a smug smile to his face. There would be rain tonight, he judged. Only it would then be too late to save the timber on the east slope. The rain would only increase the misery and discomfort of men who had worked all day to save their stock and their homes.
He passed Schoonover’s layout, which lay north of the creek, keeping to the timber as he rode by. It would be another hour or so before that man knew of the ranch’s certain destruction. The Lazy S would be the first layout to go, for it was closest to the fires.
Three miles above the Lazy S, Dallam crossed the creek and traveled a southward-flung spur of timber for a mile, and passed one more cluster of buildings set in a pocket of the timber. This was Borden’s. He felt a faint regret at what he was doing to Chuck Borden, for Chuck had long been his friend and hadn’t sided with the rest of the Association members in voting him out. But, he decided, this was no time for sentiment and he put Chuck’s approaching ruin from his mind as the layout dropped from sight through the trees.
Twenty more minutes brought Dallam into sight of the Crescent B, sprawled across the creek in the downward distance. He had circled far to the south. It was a ticklish job to approach the Bishop headquarters without being seen, for the buildings sat in what would have been an immense meadow but for scattered clumps of trees, jack pine, aspen, and a sprinkling of spruce. By carefully screening himself from sight of the buildings behind the intervening tree clumps, he managed to cross the open grassy stretches without too long exposing himself. Presently he was out of the saddle, the grulla tied well back in the trees, and looking down across the creek to the barn lot less than two hundred yards away.
He was at once struck by the deserted look of the outbuildings. The bunkhouse door was in plain sight, yet in ten minutes of watching he saw no sign of life there. No smoke came from Pinto Sanders’s kitchen chimney at the house on this near side of the stream. The corrals were empty, the pole gates down. Something he had no knowledge of had drawn the crew away this morning. Perhaps they weren’t back yet from the raid of last night.
The first impulse that struck him was that now was the time to make sure of his revenge on the man he hated most of all his enemies. Bishop wouldn’t be here to see the fire sweep across the upper eastern slope and work its way down to this layout; in fact, with luck the Crescent B might be saved. That possibility occurring to him, Dallam saw where it would be easy now to go down there and touch off the buildings, even the house, as Buchwalter had suggested this morning. But seeing Cathy was much more important than the other. What he had to say to her would be made a mocking untruth if she even suspected that he’d had a hand in what was happening to the north of here right now. Firing the buildings down there would be a foolhardy act unless he failed in seeing her. So he contented himself by waiting.
Presently it occurred to him that Cathy might be in the house, alone. Hardly had that thought come than he was walking off through the trees in the direction of the house. He knew the approach well, had often used it in his clandestine meetings with Cathy after her father had forbidden him to set foot on the layout. He followed the thicker stand of trees down as far as he could, worked his way in farther through the wide-spaced spruces growing behind the house, and finally across to the ice house set close to the oldest end of the building. From here it was less than forty feet to the window of Cathy’s room, which stood halfway open.
Listening there for a full minute, being careful not to expose himself, Dallam’s feeling that the house was deserted became stronger. His mood had become a reckless one in which he dismissed the possibility of his
being seen, of the mask of his supposed death being ripped away. That recklessness prompted him to whistle loudly the three-note call that had in days past been his furtive summons to Cathy. If she was anywhere about the house and heard it, she would come.
He moved out so that he could see her window and leaned carelessly against the corner of the ice house. Minute upon minute passed and still nothing happened. His restlessness mounted. Then, rashly, he decided he would go into the house.
Cathy’s bedroom window lifted noiselessly and within fifteen seconds of the time the idea came to him, Dallam was inside. He had never been here before and now his bold glance took in the intimate details of Cathy’s recent presence—the turned-down covers of the bed, the nightgown embroidered at the neck that lay over the bed’s footboard, the silver brush and comb on the big-mirrored dresser, and the bottles and jars there. The window was curtained with a fine mesh lace and at the doorway to the closet hung printed chintz. Everything about the room was so utterly feminine that Dallam experienced a feeling of intrusion. He took off his Stetson, then, angry at himself for the impulse, clamped it on his head again.
When he crossed soundlessly to the hallway door, he drew his low-slung .38 from its holster. The hinges of the door squealed faintly in protest as he swung the panel open. He had a bad moment in which he stood frozen in complete wariness, the gun held pointing toward the hall at waist level, his breathing shallow. But for that feeble sound of the door opening, an utter stillness lay through the house.
Finally he moved on into the hallway and across to the half open door of Bishop’s room. He stepped into the room far enough to make sure it was empty, then went on down the corridor to the living room entrance. The cold ashes of a recent fire lay on the broad hearth. Across the room, the dining table was littered with the remains of a breakfast set for two places. Convinced now that he was alone here, Dallam stepped boldly to the center of the room, his glance for a moment enviously taking in the glass-fronted gun cabinet in the room’s far back corner between two ranks of filled bookshelves. He had heard about Bishop’s fine hunting guns and was tempted to go over there and look at them. But first he would have his look at the kitchen.
There he saw evidence of Pinto Sanders’s desertion. For he knew that he would have found more than a small unwashed frying pan and a quart-sized coffee pot on the stove had Pinto cooked a breakfast for the crew. The fact of Pinto’s not having been here this morning intrigued him far more than the absence of Bishop and Cathy. What was going on here? Where was the crew? For a moment a strong panic was in him at his first guess—that the crew might even now be burning Fencerail and the other west-slope layouts to the ground. Then he remembered that Buchwalter had left guards at Fencerail and felt easier. Still, the emptiness of the house gave him a feeling of uneasiness.
He pushed open the kitchen door, stepped back into the living room, and started over toward the gun case. He was halfway there when a light quick step sounded on the portal beyond the big front door. As he wheeled, the door opened.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cathy had begun that hard, punishing ride from the rim trail to the ranch feeling heartsick and without hope. She ended it with the certain conviction that somehow Streak’s plan would save the lower slope. She became aware of something else as this new hope strengthened. Streak had come to mean a lot to her, more than Pete Dallam ever had. It meant a great deal that Streak was alive. She hardly knew the man, yet she saw in him the casual but real embodiment of all those qualities she had so wrongly imagined Pete possessed. It didn’t enter her head that she might love this comparative stranger, for there was no time to weigh her emotions. All she knew was that the big rangy man could stir her deeply, that she had faith in him, and that even now she was eagerly looking forward to being with him again.
From across the pasture she saw the horses that had been in the corral earlier but were now out on grass. That meant her father had gone to see Jensen. She would have to go to the barn for a moral and some oats to catch up a horse for Streak. But first she would go to the house for bandages and salve and the can of tea in Pinto’s kitchen. Tea, she remembered, was good for burns.
When she opened the front door and saw Pete across the room, sheer surprise wrung from her a startled cry. Then sudden paralyzing fear hit her.
Pete was smiling. “It’s really me, Cathy,” he drawled. “Not my ghost.”
Through her whirling senses struck a warning note, a knowledge that she had a part to play here against this madman. Whether or not she was equal to it, she didn’t know. After that first moment of panic, a strange calmness settled through her. She heard herself breathing: “Pete! You’re alive!”
She must have put exactly the right note of pathos and tenderness in her voice, for he crossed the room quickly to her. All at once he gathered her in his arms. At the last moment she dropped her head away from his kiss and felt the pressure of his lips on her hair. She shuddered, revulsion in her, and for a moment doubted that she could stand this physical contact. But again came that utter calmness in the face of her terror. If she could deceive him long enough to get away, she would never again be alone so that he could be near her.
Shortly she pushed against the pressure of his arms and moved back away from him. The violence of her emotions, the fear that was in her, must have showed, she felt. There must have been tears in her eyes, for Dallam let go his hold on her and took the handkerchief from the pocket of his denim jumper. He held it out, laughing easily as he said: “Now’s no time to cry, girl. Here, dry your eyes. Then we can talk things over.”
“Talk what over, Pete?” she asked as she touched the handkerchief to her eyes. That gesture gave her a better grip on herself. So far, it seemed, he hadn’t guessed her real feelings. This knowledge gave her even more courage and she added: “I can’t believe it, Pete. I . . . I’ve . . .”
“Of course you can’t,” he said easily. Then with stunning abruptness: “Cathy, you’re coming away with me. Right now. We’re going to ride clear of this hellish thing. You and I, together, Cathy.” Never sensing that added fear had turned her mute, he went on: “There’s lots I have to tell you. But you must believe in me, Cathy. I’ve been hunted like a wolf, living like an Indian in fear of my life. Cathy, I’m through here. You’ve got to come away with me.”
Because of the revelation the morning had brought, she sensed the lies that were coming. Even though she still feared him with all her being, she felt the urge to know just what kind of a story he’d invented. It took her a moment to think of something to draw him out. She used that utterly feminine trick of burying her face in her hands in the hope that her voice would sound as though choked with a sob, saying: “But you were dead, Pete. We saw you buried. It couldn’t have been anyone but you.”
“Cathy, listen.” He tilted her head up and looked into her eyes. “I can explain it all. But not now. We’ve got to hurry.”
“I want to hear it . . . now,” Cathy breathed. “No one will find us here. Dad’s gone. So are the men, even Pinto. Tell me, Pete. Who was it they buried in your place?”
“A stranger,” he replied without hesitation. “A stranger with hair the color of mine, built a lot like me. Maybe you remember him, Cathy. He came in on the stage with you that night.”
She nodded. “I remember. But . . . then you killed him?”
He laughed softly, a brittle edge to his voice. “I did.” His face went bleak, hard. “But not the way you think. That night, while I waited for you, he came onto the porch of the hotel where I was waiting. Told me he had some information to sell but that I’d have to meet him out beyond town before he’d talk. Don’t know why I didn’t suspect him from the first. But I agreed to meet him and rode out about five minutes after he left.”
Cathy was beginning to understand and cut in with: “Then he tried to kill you?”
He nodded at once. “Him and Mike Sternes. I was lucky. They must have made a mistake in the way they planned it. Sternes bungled the job
by opening up on me too soon. Naturally I went for my gun. Sternes went down at my first shot. It was so dark the stranger couldn’t tell which of us had fallen. He called out to Mike and let me know where he was hiding. So I circled and told him to throw up his hands. He opened up and I cut him down, hit him in the head.” He gave Cathy a direct look that seemed to go beneath the surface of her defenses. “Wouldn’t you have done the same if two men tried to kill you?”
“Of course, Pete. Then this stranger was working with Mike?”
“That’s the only thing it could’ve been.”
“You mean . . . you mean he was hired to kill you? By . . . Dad?” Cathy was genuinely horrified at the callousness of the indictment against her father she knew was coming.
“Either Bishop or Sternes hired him,” Pete said, misreading the look on her face. Then he blurted out the reason that backed his being here. “Tom Buchwalter’s told me what a hard time you’ve had since you came home, Cathy. Frank Bishop is a cold-blooded devil if ever there was one. But you know that. He’s had men out hunting me since I made my getaway from Agua. It’s been hell for me, Cathy. I thought I could stick it out. But today Prenn and Buchwalter lost their heads. Last night your father’s crew stampeded a bunch of cattle into that sheep band. This morning Buchwalter and Prenn decided to burn the east slope and get even with him. Maybe you saw the fires on your way in here.”
Cathy gasped, seeing now more than at any time in these last minutes the satanical cunning of this man. And once again Dallam misread her response, thinking she was horrified by the seeming truth of his lies. He said, speaking softly, almost meekly: “So here I am, Cathy, asking you to come away with me and forget all this. You’re all I have left. Together, we can make a new start.”
