Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (21 page)

A
LL WAS IN ruins, the barn gone, the house a sagging, blazing heap. Leaving my horse on the run I dashed around the house. “Ball!” I yelled. “Ball!” And above the crackle of flames, I heard a cry.

He was back in a niche of rock near the spring. How he had lived this long I could not guess. His clothes were charred and it was obvious he had somehow crawled, wounded, from the burning house. He had been fairly riddled with bullets.

His fierce old eyes were pleading. “Don’t let ’em get…get the place. Yours…it’s yours now.” His eyes went to Nick and Zeb. “You’re witnesses…I leave it to him. Never to sell…never to give up!”

“Who was it?” For the first time in my life I really wanted to kill. Although I had known this old man for only a few days I had come to feel affection for him and respect. Now he was dying, shot down and left for dead in a blazing house.

“Pinder!” His voice was hoarse. “Jim an’ Rollie. Rollie, he…he was dressed like you. Never had no chance. Fun-funny thing. I…I thought I saw…Park.”

“Morgan Park?” I was incredulous. “With the Pinders?”

His lips stirred, but he died forming the words. When I got up, there was in me such hatred as I had never believed was possible. “Everyone of them!” I said. “I’ll kill every man of them for this!”

“Amen!” Zeb and Nick spoke as one. “He was a good old man. Pappy liked him.”

“Did you hear him say Morgan Park was with the Pinders?”

“Sounded like it,” Zeb admitted, “but it ain’t reasonable. He’s thick with the Maclarens. Couldn’t have been him.”

Zeb was probably right. The light had been bad, and Ball had been wounded. He could have made a mistake.

The stars came out, and night moved in over the hills and gathered black and rich in the canyons. Standing there in the darkness, we could smell the smoke from the burned house and see occasional sparks and flickers of tiny flames among the charred timbers. A ranch had been given me, but I had lost a friend. The road before me stretched dark and long, a road I must walk alone, gun in hand.

III

For two days we combed the draws and gathered cattle, yet at the end of the second day we had but three hundred head. The herds of the Two Bar had been sadly depleted by the rustling of the big brands. On the morning of the third day we started the herd. Neither of the men had questioned me, but now Zeb wanted to know, “You aim to leave the ranch unguarded? Ain’t you afraid they’ll move in?”

“If they do they can move out or be buried here. That ranch was never to be given up, and believe me, it won’t be!”

The canyon channeled the drive, and the cattle were fat and easy to handle. It took us all day to make the drive, but my side pained me almost none at all, and only that gnawing fury at the killers of the old man remained to disturb me. They had left the wounded man to burn, and for that they would pay.

Jonathan and Jolly Benaras helped me take the herd of young stuff back up the trail. Benaras had given me at least fifty head more than I had asked, but the cattle I had turned over to him were as good as money in the bank, so he lost nothing by his generosity.

When we told him what had happened, he nodded. “Jolly was over to Hattan’s. It was the Pinders, all right. That Apache tracker of theirs along with Bunt Wilson and Corby Kitchen an’ three others. They were with the Pinders.”

“Hear anything about Morgan Park?”

“No. Some say Lyell, that rider of Park’s, was in the crowd.”

That could have been it. Ball might have meant to tell me it was a rider of Park’s. We pushed the young stuff hard to get back, but Jonathan rode across the drag before we arrived. “Folks at your place. Two, three of ’em.”

My face set cold as stone. “Bring the herd. I’ll ride ahead.”

Jonathan’s big adam’s apple bobbed. “Jolly an’ me, we ain’t had much fun lately. Can’t we ride with you?”

An idea hit me. “Where’s their camp?”

“Foot of the hill where the house was. They got a tent.”

“Then we’ll take the herd. Drive ’em right over the tent!”

Jolly had come back to the drag. He chuckled. “Why, sure!” He grinned at Jonathan. “Won’t Nick an’ Zeb be sore? Missin’ all the fun?”

We started the herd. They were young stuff and still full of ginger, ready enough to run. They came out of the canyon not more than four hundred yards from the camp and above the gate. Then we really turned them loose, shooting and shouting; we started that herd on a dead run for the camp. Up ahead we saw men springing to their feet, and one man raced for his rifle. They hadn’t expected me to arrive with cattle, so they were caught completely off guard. Another man made a dive for his horse and the startled animal sprang aside. As he grabbed again, it kicked out with both feet and started to run.

Running full tilt, the herd hit the camp. The man who had lost his horse scrambled atop a large rock, and the others lit out for the cliffs, scattering away from the charging cattle. But the herd went through the camp, tearing up the tent, grinding the food into the earth, smearing the fire, and smashing the camp utensils into broken and useless things under their charging feet.

One of the men who had gotten into the saddle swung his horse and came charging back, his face red with fury. “What goes on here?” he yelled.

T
HE HORSE WAS a Bar M. Maclaren’s men had beaten the CP to it.

Kneeing my horse close to him, I said, “I’m Matt Sabre, owner of the Two Bar, with witnesses to prove it. You’re trespassin’. Now light a shuck!”

“I will like hell!” His face was dark with fury. “I got my orders, an’ I—”

My fist smashed into his teeth and he left the saddle, hitting the ground with a thud. Blazing with fury, I lit astride him, jerking him to his feet. My left hooked hard to his jaw and my right smashed him in the wind. He went down, but he got up fast and came in swinging. He was a husky man, mad clear through, and for about two minutes we stood toe to toe and swapped it out. Then he started to back up and I caught him with a sweeping right that knocked him to the dust. He started to get up then thought the better of it. “I’ll kill you for this!”

“When you’re ready!” I said and then turned around. Jonathan and Jolly had rounded up two of the men, and they stood waiting for me. One was a slim, hard-faced youngster who looked like the devil was riding him. The other was a stocky redhead with a scar on his jaw. The redhead stared at me, hatred in his eyes. “You ruined my outfit. What kind of a deal is this?”

“If you ride for a fighting brand you take the good with the bad,” I told him. “What did you expect when you came up here, a tea party? You go back and tell Maclaren not to send boys to do a man’s job and that the next trespasser will be shot.”

The younger one looked at me, sneering. “What if he sends me?” Contempt twisted his lips. “If I’d not lost my gun in the scramble I’d make you eat that.”

“Jolly! Lend me your gun!”

Without a word, Jolly Benaras handed it to me.

The youngster’s eyes were cold and calculating, but wary now. He suspected a trick, but could not guess what it might be.

Taking the gun by the barrel, I walked toward him. “You get your chance,” I said. “I’m giving you this gun, and you can use it any way you like. Try a border roll or shoot through that open-tip holster. Anyway you try it, I’m going to kill you.”

H
E STARED AT me and then at the gun.

His tongue touched his lips. He wanted that gun more than anything else in the world. He had guts, that youngster did, guts and the streak of viciousness it takes to make a killer, but suddenly he was face to face with it at close range and he didn’t like it. He would learn if he lived long enough, but right now he didn’t like any part of it. Yet he wore the killer’s brand and we both knew it.

“It’s a trick,” he said. “You ain’t that much of a fool!”

“Fool?”
That brought my own fury surging to the top. “Why, you cheap, phony, would-be badman! I’d give you two guns and beat you any day you like! I’ll face you right now. You shove your gun in my belly and I’ll shove mine in yours! If you want to die, that makes it easy! Come on, gunslick! What do you say?”

Crazy? Right then I didn’t care. His face turned whiter but his eyes were vicious. He was trembling with eagerness to grab that gun. But face to face? Guns shoved against the body? We would both die. We couldn’t miss. He shook his head, his lips dry.

My fingers held the gun by the barrel. Tossing it up suddenly I caught it by the butt, and without stopping the motion, I slashed the barrel down over his skull. He hit the dirt at my feet. Turning my back on them I returned the pistol to Jolly.

“You!” I said then to the redhead. “Take off your boots!”

“Huh?” He was startled.

“Take ’em off! Then take his off! When he comes out of it, start walking!”

“Walkin’?”
Red’s face blanched. “Look, man, I’ll—”

“You’ll walk. All the way back to Hattan or the BarM. You’ll start learnin’ what it means to try stealin’ a man’s ranch.”

“It was orders,” he protested.

“You could quit, couldn’t you?”

His face was sullen. “Wait until Maclaren hears of this! You won’t last long! Far as that goes”—he motioned at the still figure on the ground—“he’ll be huntin’ you now. That’s Bodie Miller!”

The name was familiar. Bodie Miller had killed five or six men. He was utterly vicious, and although lacking seasoning, he had it in him to be one of the worst of the badmen.

We watched them start, three men in their sock feet with twenty miles of desert and mountains before them. Now they knew what they had tackled. They would know what war meant.

The cattle were no cause for worry. They would drift into canyons where there was plenty of grass and water, more than on the B Bar B. “Sure you won’t need help?” Jolly asked hopefully. “We’d like to side you.”

“Not now. This is my scrap.”

They chuckled. “Well,” Jolly grinned, “they can’t never say you didn’t walk in swingin’. You’ve jumped nearly the whole durned country!”

N
OBODY KNEW THAT better than I, so when they were gone I took my buckskin and rode back up the narrow Two Bar Canyon. It narrowed down and seemed to end. Unless one knew, a glance up the canyon made it appear to be boxed in, but actually there was a turn and a narrower canyon leading into a maze of canyons and broken lava flows. There was an ancient cliff house back there, and in it Ball and I had stored supplies for a last-ditch stand. There was an old kiva with one side broken and room enough to stable the buckskin.

At daybreak I left the canyon behind me, riding watchfully, knowing I rode among enemies. No more than two miles from the canyon toward which I was heading, I rounded a bend and saw a dozen riders coming toward me at a canter. Sighting me, they yelled in chorus, and a shot rang out. Wheeling the buckskin I slapped the spurs to him and went up the wash at a dead run. A bullet whined past my ear, but I dodged into a branch canyon and raced up a trail that led to the top of the plateau. Behind me I heard the riders race past the canyon’s mouth. Then there was a shout as a rider glimpsed me, and the wheeling of horses as they turned. By the time they entered the canyon mouth I was atop the mesa.