Valley Of the Sun (Ss) (1995) (7 page)

"Hey, Baldyffwas It was Red Naify calling. "Put down yore guns. It's all right. They run off when they saw me and the boss comin'."
.

McQueen fell back into the deep shadows under the wagon
.

"Get out of sight, Kim," he whispered. "They didn't see us come in. Call 'em in, Baldy, but be careful."
.

At that moment there was a soft voice from the shadows in the direction Ward and Sartain had come
.

"I'm going to wait here. I want to see this, too."
.

It was Ruth Kermitt! She had followed them out from town. Well, maybe it was the best way, McQueen thought
.

"Come on in," Baldy said, "but come slow."
.

Red Naify, his blocky, powerful body
. l
ooking even bigger in the dancing firelight, came first. After him, only a step behind but to the right, was Iver Hoyt
.

"Glad yuh boys ain't turned in yet," Red said. "We're goin' to move these cows."
.

"Tonight?" Baldy objected. "Where to?"
.

"Up in the Humboldts," Hoyt said. "I
. k
now the place." He looked around. "Who was shootin'?"
.

"That's what we wondered." Bud Fox had his thumbs in his gun belt. His eyes shifted from Naify to Hoyt. "Lucky they didn't get us."
.

Ward, crouching under the wagon, could see what was coming. Naify had casually moved two steps farther to the left. Baldy and Bud were going to be caught in a cross fire. He stepped from under the wagon and straightened, hearing Kim move out also
.

One step took him into the firelight. "Fall back, you two," he said quietly. "I'm takin' over!"
.

"And me," Kim said. "Don't forget
me."
.

"Yuh're an awful fool, Hoyt," Ward McQueen said suddenly. "Why don't yuh ask Naify what he did with the money he took off Dan Kermitt."
.

Hoyt's eyes suddenly blazed up
.

"Naify, did yuh get that fifty thousand?"
.

"Fifty thousand?" Stark incredulity rang
. i
n Red Naify's voice. "Why, I only
. g
ot sixty dollars!" Suddenly his eyes
. g
leamed. "Boss, he's got it! He's got
. i
t right there in his pocket!"
.

Iver Hoyt smiled suddenly. "So, we won't lose after all! Boys, come in!"
.

There was a sound of movement, and four more men stepped into the circle of light. One of them tossed a bundle of brush on the fire, and it blazed up
.

"Think yuh're pretty smart, don't yuh, Hoyt?" McOueen said quietly. "Yuh engineered this whole steal, didn't yuh?"
.

"Of course," Hoyt admitted proudly
.

"We stole old Kermitt blind up in
.

Montana. He was too fresh from the East to know what was happenin' to him. Then he found us that night and I had to kill him."
.

Suddenly a new voice sounded. "You four back up against the wagon and stay out of this. I've got a double-barrel shotgun here, and if there is one move out of you, I'll let you have both barrels!"
.

Ruth Kermitt stood there. Tall, splendid in the firelight, she looked like a portrait of all the pioneer women of any age. The shotgun she held was steady and she waved the four back
.

"I'll second that motion, ma'am," Bud Fox said quietly, "with a six-gun!"
.

Baldy spoke suddenly and his voice drawled
.

"This is goin' to be pretty. Real pretty," he said. "Hoyt, yuh know who this ranny is yuh're talkin' to? This here's Ward McQueen. Think back a ways. Where'd yuh hear that name afore?"
.

Baldy paused, and he saw a frown appear on Iver Hoyt's face
.

"Ward, yuh had a bosom friend in Larry
.

White, didn't yuh?" he said to McQueen
. t
hen. "Well, Iver Hoyt's full name
. i
s Iver Hoyt Harrisffwas
.

"Ike Harris!" Ward McQueen's face suddenly went stone cold. "Kim," he said suddenly, and his voice rang loud, "as a favor, let me have them both! Now!"
.

It was Hoyt who moved first. At the mention of Larry White's name, his face went dead pale, and his hand, twitching nervously, shot down for his gun
.

McQueen's six-guns seemed to leap from their holsters, spewing jagged darts of fire. Hoyt, caught full in the chest by a leaden slug, was smashed back to his heels, and then another slug caught him in the face, and another in the throat
.

Coolly, ignoring Red Naify, he poured fire into the killer of his friend. Then he took one swinging step, bringing himself around to face Naify
.

Red, a leer on his face, was waiting
.

"Yuh dirty coyote!" he snarled
.

Both men's guns belched flame. Red
. s
wayed on his feet, and then Ward McQueen stepped forward, firing as coolly as though on a target range. He stepped again, and each time his foot planted, his guns roared. Smashed back by the heavy slugs Red Naify staggered, then toppled to his knees
.

His face a bloody mess from a bullet that had burned a hole through the right side of his face below the eye, he lifted his gun and fired again. The bullet hit McQueen and he staggered, but bracing himself, he brought one gun down and triggered it again. The dart of fire seemed almost to touch Red's face, and he toppled over on his face in the dust, his gun belching one last grass-cutting shot as his fist closed in agony
.

Ward McQueen staggered a little and then, stooping with great care, picked up his hat
.

"The devil," he said, "only three bullet holes! Wyatt Earp had five after his battle with Curly Bill's gang at the water hole."
.

Ruth Kermitt ran to his side. "You're hurt! Oh, you're hurt!" she exclaimed
.

He turned to look at her, and then suddenly everything faded out
.

When he opened his eyes again it was morning
.

Ruth sat beside him, her eyes heavy with weariness. She put a cool cloth on his forehead and wiped his face off with another
.

"You must lie still," she told him. "You've
. l
ost a lot of blood."
.

"Of course, if yuh say so, ma'am," he assured her. "I'll lay right quiet."
.

Baldy Jackson looked at him and snorted
.

"Look at that, would yuh!" he exploded. "And that's the ranny crawled three miles with seven holes in him after his Galeyville fight! Just goes to show yuh what a woman'll do to a man!"
.

*
.

When a Texan Takes Over
.

When Matt Ryan saw the cattle tracks on Mocking Bird, he swung his horse over under the trees and studied the terrain with a careful eye. For those cattle tracks meant rustlers were raiding the KY range
.

For a generation the big KY spread had been the law in the Slumbering Hill country, but now the old man was dying and the wolves were coming out of the breaks to tear at the body of the ranch
.

And there was nobody to stop them, nobody to step into the big tracks old Tom Hitch had made, nobody to keep law in the hills now that old Tom was dying. He had built an empire of land cattle, but he had also brought law into the outlaw country, brought schools and a post office, and the beginnings of thriving settlement
.

But they had never given up, not Indian Kelly nor Lee Dunn. They'd waited back in the hills, bitter with their own poison, waiting for the old man to die
.

All the people in the Slumbering Hill country knew it, and they had looked to Fred Hitch, the old man's adopted son, to take up the job when the old man put it down. But Fred
was an easygoing young man who liked to drink and gamble. And he spent too much time with Dutch Gerlach, the KY foreman
.
. and who had a good w
ord
for Dutch?
.

"This is the turn, Red," Ryan told his horse. "They know the old man will never ride again, so they have started rustling."
.

It was not just a few head
.
. there must have been forty or more in this bunch, and no attempt to cover the trail
.

In itself that was strange. It seemed they were not even worried about what Gerlach might do
.
. and what would he do? Dutch Gerlach was a tough man. He had shown it more than once. Of course, nobody wanted any part of Lee Dunn, not even Gerlach
.

Matt Ryan rode on, but kept a good background behind him. He had no desire to skyline himself with rustlers around
.

For three months now he had been working his placer claim in Pima Canyon, just over the ridge from Mocking Bird. He had a good show of color and
with persistent work he made better than cowhand's wages. But lately he was doing better. Twice in the past month he had struck pockets that netted him nearly a hundred dollars each. The result was that his last month had brought him in the neighborhood of three hundred in gold
.

Matt Ryan knew the hills and the men who rode them. None of them knew him. Matt had a streak of Indian in his nature if not in his blood, and he knew how to leave no trail and travel without being seen. He was around, but not obvious
.

They knew somebody was there, but who and why or where they did not know, and he liked it that way. Once a month he came out of the hills for supplies, but he never rode to the same places. Only this time he was coming back to Hanna's Stage Station. He told himself it was because it was close, but down inside he knew it was because of Kitty Hanna
.

She was something who stepped out of your dreams, a lovely girl of twenty in a cotton dress
and with
carefully done hair, large, dark eyes, and a mouth that would set a man to being restless.
..

Matt Ryan had stopped by two months before to eat a woman-cooked meal and to buy
supplies, and he had lingered over his coffee
.

He was a tall, wide-shouldered young man with a slim, long-legged body and hands that swung wide of his narrow hips. He had a wedge-shaped face and green eyes, and a way of looking at you with faint humor in his eyes
.

He carried a gun, but he carried it tucked into his waistband, and he carried a Winchester that he never left on his saddle
.

Nobody knew him around the Slumbering Hills, nobody knew him anywhere this side of Texas
.
. they remembered him there. His name was a legend on the Nueces
.

Big Red ambled on down the trail and Matt watched the country and studied the cattle tracks. He would remember those horse tracks, too. Finally the cow tracks turned off into a long valley, and when he sat his horse he could see dust off over there where Thumb Butte lifted against the sky
.

Indian Kelly
.
. not Dunn this time, although Dunn might have given the w
ord
.

Kitty was pouring coffee when he came in and she felt her heart give a tiny leap. It had only been once, but she remembered, for when his eyes touched her that time, it made her feel the woman in her
.
. a quick excitement such as she felt now
.

Why was that? This man whom she knew nothing about?
.

Why should he make her feel this way?
.

He put his hat on a hook and sat down, and she saw that his hair was freshly combed and still damp from the water he had used. That meant he had stopped back there by the creek
.
. it was unlike a drifting cowhand, or had it been for her?
.

When he looked up she knew it had, and she liked the smile he had and the way his eyes could not seem to leave her face. "Eggs," he said, "about four of them, and whatever vegetable you have, and a slab of beef. I'm a hungry man."
.

She filled his cup, standing very close to him, and she saw the red mount under his dark skin, and when she moved away it was slowly, and there was a little something in her walk. Had her father seen it, he would have been angry, but this man would not be angry, and he would know it was for him
.

Dutch Gerlach came in, a big, brawny
. m
an with bold eyes and careless hands. He had a
. w
ide, flat face and a confident, knowing manner that
. s
he hated. Fred Hitch was with him.
.