Gunsmoke Justice (13 page)

D
AVE
A
RDEN
awoke with a raging thirst. It took him a little while to realize where he was, and longer to stand on his feet without dizziness overcoming him. He wanted to lie down again, to soak up more sleep, but the thirst was too strong, and he started down the stairs for the bar.

He had nearly reached the bottom when he heard Brad Jordan’s level, cold voice and Quarles’ reply. Arden stopped, drawing back so he would not be seen, and listened. He was still there after Jordan left. He wanted that drink, but he had no desire to run into Quarles. Not right now.

Cursing under his breath, he dragged himself back up the stairs and down the hall. Finally he reached the outside. With an effort he slicked up at the horse pump in the yard and made his way across the street to the restaurant. It was late for suppertime and there were only two men waiting for their meal. With a surly grunt to them, he took his usual seat at the far end of the counter.

Faith came over to him as soon as she had waited on the two men. “Give me some water,” Arden said hoarsely.

Silently she brought him a glass of water. After a moment’s study of him, she went away and returned with a full pitcher. She set it in front of him.

“That’s not necessary!” he said resentfully. He gulped the glass of water and started to pour another. She could not help noticing that his hand shook until the mouth of the pitcher chattered against the edge of the glass.

“It was my joke,” she said, still quietly. “I’m sorry.”

He looked up, caught her expression, and lowered his eyes again. There was nothing in him but fire from the liquor. He was a fool for having come in here.

“Go in the back room and lie down,” she suggested.

“I’m all right. Let me alone,” he said in a low, angry voice.

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” she remarked wonderingly.

“It doesn’t happen often,” he retorted. “Let me alone, can’t you?”

Her patience stretched thin and snapped. “Yes,” she answered shortly, “I can.” She walked away to serve some other men who had come in, leaving Arden to brood before the pitcher of water. He tried to work up a cigarette, but his fingers trembled too much, and he threw the paper savagely to the floor. Without speaking, Faith brought him a meal and went away again.

He ate it because there was nothing else to do unless he left the restaurant, and he lacked the energy for that. But after it was down he felt better; the fire inside him began to go, and with a second cup of coffee he managed to roll a cigarette. He was still there, smoking moodily, when the last of the men cleared out, leaving them alone.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She merely looked coldly at him, and he forced the warm smile to his lips. “Faith, I — ” Be humble, he thought. Be humble as hell. It had worked before, more times than he could count. He depended on it to work again.

“A man is always one way or another,” she said at last. “I’ll have to get used to that.” She brought him another cup of coffee. He touched her hand gently, but she did not smile as she usually did when he touched her. Still, she was no longer cold.

She began to ready the dishes for washing. “Brad Jordan was in today,” she said. She told him about it.

“Our beef back in Pine Canyon,” Arden muttered. His head still felt thick; it was hard to force himself to think. “He’ll draw fire sure!”

“That’s what he wants, isn’t it?” Faith asked.

“It’s too soon,” he protested.

“So we all told him,” she answered. She busied herself with the dishes. So they had, but she was beginning to wonder. At least Brad Jordan had done something. While Dave was getting drunk. She tried to put the thought aside. Her loyalties were strong and it upset her to think so of Dave Arden. But her honesty was stronger, and she faced him now.

“What do you plan to do, Dave?”

“Wait,” he said. “Quarles will make a mistake and then — ”

“Wait? What if he doesn’t make a mistake?”

“He will,” Arden said briefly.

“Maybe that’s what Jordan wants,” Faith said carefully, “to force Quarles into a mistake.”

“If that’s what you think,” he began stiffly, then clamped his lips shut. “Jordan will get himself killed and the Split S burned out,” he said. “What good is that?”

“What good is waiting?” she asked herself, but she did not let him hear.

Their talk ceased and, after a while, he became aware that the silence was strained. “I’d better get back,” he suggested.

“It’s about time,” she agreed, and went on with her work.

Arden went out into darkness. Across the way he noticed the horses tied there and Quarles’ usual big black was not among them. Going around to the rear he saw only his own team and spring wagon. Sure that Quarles was gone, he went inside and up to Keinlan’s office. He found Keinlan having a late drink and a cigar.

“You all right?” Keinlan asked.

Arden was startled and a little pleased at this, the first solicitude he had received. “All right,” he said.

“You took on quite a load,” Keinlan said conversationally.

Arden remembered it vaguely. As he waited, more and more of the day began to come back to him. “I said plenty, too,” he blurted out.

“You did.”

So he had told Keinlan his idea to outsmart Quarles. Until now he had not been sure. “What will you do?” he asked hesitantly.

“Nothing,” Keinlan answered. He looked pained. “We made a partnership deal, didn’t we?” His eyes were shrewd on Arden. He had been waiting for his return, and had sent a man to watch the spring wagon. If Arden hadn’t come in, he would have sent for him. There was something to be done soon, and he planned on Arden’s doing it.

“Quarles was in,” Keinlan told him. His smile was unpleasant. “He’ll take care of Jordan for you.”

“And make it so it looks like I did it?”

Keinlan smiled. “You can beat him to that draw.” He saw the interest he had waited for, and he said, “By getting Parker.”

Arden shook his head, his disappointment plain. “Quarles won’t fool with Parker now for a while. He wants Jordan.”

“So he does, and everyone knows it. But if you were to get Parker and make it look like Quarles rode against him, and then get Jordan, too — ” He left it unfinished. Left it for Arden’s mind to shape.

“I could get Jordan and they’d think he did it,” Arden said slowly, softly. Nodding, more to himself than Keinlan, he got up and walked out.

Arden drove home slowly. Whatever Keinlan’s idea was, he had no feeling for it tonight. He was still sick from liquor. There was time enough ahead. If Quarles got Jordan tonight that would make it so much the better. If not, he could wait for his own chance.

By morning he felt like himself again, and he worked on the hay machinery steadily. The way he saw it now, Quarles was about forced into moving. It was still too soon, but if Quarles did make his play and take over Split S, then Arden wanted the land in good shape for himself.

June Grant was nervous all day, he noticed. She sent Andy to town about dinnertime on a pretext of getting some flour. Andy Toll was the ranch gossip, and this way she would get what news there was about Jordan.

But at the early supper Andy had nothing to tell her. There was no news from town except that some people seemed worried. McFee was edgy, he told them. Everyone had the idea Jordan was causing a lot of trouble.

After supper Arden saddled his horse and rode to town to mend his fences with Faith. He was slow and careful with her, and when he left to go to the One-Shot for a drink to ease his way home, he thought he had made some progress. He stayed awhile at the One-Shot, watching Jim Parker playing a game of poker. Parker appeared as unconcerned as ever, and that brought to Arden’s mind Keinlan’s idea. While he sipped his beer he mulled it over.

He was still thinking about it when a shout went up from outside. Jube, the blacksmith’s boy, pushed his head in through the batwing doors. “Water!” he bawled. “The river’s runnin’ with water!”

O
LAF WAKENED
B
RAD
at the first sign of daylight. “Nobody’s come,” he said. And lay down to catch a nap while Brad built a cautious fire and fixed breakfast.

They were at work early. During the night Brad had crystallized a plan in his mind. He had come here partly to take up this land and partly to draw Quarles’ force from the Split S. But Quarles seemed a hard man to drew out, if his silence of the night before was any indication. Brad saw that he would have to hit Quarles harder than he had been hit before, and around this he shaped his plan.

From the supplies they had brought in the wagon, Brad now got the blasting powder and fuse. He set two small charges — one in the cut where the meadow drained out, and one at the lower end where the trail came in. Leaving the powder with waiting fuses, he and Olaf set to work cutting a new ditch.

Brad wiped the sweat off his face after grueling hours of pushing a shovel into the mucky sod and lifting up the dirt. “We don’t have to go deep,” he pointed out to Olaf. “If we can trap the water in here by plugging the two outlets, the natural slope will help us.”

Yah,” Olaf answered uncomprehendingly.

Brad pushed his shovel into the dirt. “Let’s eat dinner,” he said.

While they ate a cold meal, he explained his idea to Olaf. “We can work the water out through this side into the old dry creek bed that goes through your land. My guess is that the water ran down it and back into the Sawhorse before Quarles ditched the meadow.” His smile was tight. “All we’ll do is put things back the way they were.”

Through the long afternoon he felt the pressure mounting. Double Q men should have showed before now, if only to answer the challenge he had flung at Quarles the day before. But there was nothing — no sound but the noise of their own work and the soft gurgling of the water.

By the middle of the afternoon he was ready to set off the powder. Olaf stopped to fill his rank pipe. “Will this put water back in the river?”

“Some,” Brad admitted. He stretched muscles unaccustomed to this kind of work. The hard, angry light of remembrance flickered in his gray eyes. “But not fast enough. We owe Quarles something, Olaf. Let’s get started giving it to him.”

Uncomprehending, but willing, Olaf followed Brad. They took the remaining powder and fuse and on horseback rode above the meadow, dropping down the west side. Brad paused above the point where the water drained into Quarles’ reservoir.

There was no sign of anyone. Brad could see some distance through the heat haze dancing down in the valley, but he could make out no movement. Satisfied, he pointed down to the storage lake Quarles had created.

“There’s something else that nature didn’t do,” he told Olaf. “That lucky shale slide of Quarles’ just don’t look right blocking off all this water. My guess is there’d be a good grass-bottomed draw under there.” He paused, and the tight smile settled on his lips again. “I’d even guess it was on my homestead, wouldn’t you, Olaf?”

Understanding came to Olaf, and a grin stretched his broad face. “Yah,” he agreed. “Too much water.”

“Too much of everything for one man,” Brad said, and rode ahead down a narrow trail until he came to the base of the shale slide. It towered above him, a great mass of rock and trees that had been swept from a now barren hillside to the east. Nature had provided a narrow bottle-necked draw and a rocky hill ideal for blasting. But she had not provided the providence of a slide to block the draw. Quarles had done that, and Brad felt a thin amusement at reversing the process.

Stationing Olaf on guard, he studied the slide and placed his powder. He decided on two blasts, the first to break the dam, the second to come seconds later and free the rubble that would result. Carefully measuring his fuses, he laid them to a fair distance. Then he drew out a match.

With a troubled glance about him, Brad hesitated. This, he knew, was more than just releasing water the Split S and Jim Parker could use. It was more than just hitting Quarles to draw him into the open. It was more than just vengeance on his own part. He was troubled because he saw the implcations of what might come of this. Quarles had the most men and so the most power. If Brad’s gamble failed and the apathy of the other ranchers in the valley was not destroyed, Quarles could gain control with little effort on his part.

Then, Brad reflected, his action would be destroying instead of saving. He would bring war, not the peace he sought.

Momentarily he stayed with the match in his hand, squatted on his bootheels, the decision tugging at his mind. With a sudden, quick motion, he lit the match and touched it to the fuses.

Brad had calculated well. He and Olaf were back on the rimrock above the water when the first blast shook the ground beneath them and a great spume of rock and dust rose in the air. The second blast was an instant later, thundering out before the echoes of the first had got well started.

They sat their horses, looking down and waiting. The dust and the roar went on, seeming to stretch interminably. For a moment, Brad thought he had failed. There was nothing on the surface of the water but ripples caused by raining rock. And then, with a jarring suddenness, he heard the rumbling push as the last of the dam gave and the ever-pressing water sought the level below.

The rumble became a roar as the force of the water worked through the narrow gap the blast had made. Great rocks that had barely stirred beneath the powder began to move, grinding and grumbling, giving way reluctantly. Then, with a sound that shattered the dustladen air, the last of the barrier gave, and the water gushed out to drop to the bed of the river below.

“Yah!” Olaf cried. “Water back in the river!”

Brad squinted toward the slanting sun. It was almost down behind the western ridges, and he reined the palomino back toward the meadow. Once there he hurriedly set the two charges he had placed that morning.

They were as nothing compared to the great blast down below, but they did what he wanted, settling rock and rubble across the opening and damming up the meadow water until, inevitably, it would flow back into its old channel.

• • •

The first darkness was settling in when Brad squatted before their small fire fixing supper. “That water’s had about time to reach town,” he told Olaf. “See to your guns.”

It came sooner than he had expected. The sound of water working its way across the meadow dulled the noise until it was almost on them. The sounds of hoofs clicking on rock came first from the ridge directly behind them, and Brad knew their camp had been sighted.

“Coming,” he said briefly to Olaf. He rose from where he sat and threw dirt, piled for the purpose, over the coals of their fire. “Watch west,” he warned. “They might snipe from the ridge over there.”

“Yah,” Olaf agreed softly, from his crouched position behind a stack of supplies.

Brad slipped through the near darkness along the ledge that led to the narrow cut they had brought the supplies through. He was thankful the horses were tethered some distance up, in a grassy clearing, instead of here where they might get hurt. He clambered silently over rock, moving like a shadow behind the barren boulders that marked the cut.

In the last of the light he could make them out dimly, and he counted six picking their way across the jumble of rock from the southeast.

“Far enough,” he called out.

The lead man spoke. Brad recognized the voice as Clip’s. “Ride out, Jordan,” he ordered. “Quarles said to give you a chance to go.”

“Even after today?” Brad asked mockingly.

“Yes.”

Brad waited a moment. The men had stopped and were watching him. “No,” he said finally. “I like it here. I’ll stay.”

Clip gave an order, unintelligible to Brad, and the men spread, sifting off into the quickening dark. Clip lifted his gun and fired twice into the air. Brad sent a chance shot at the place where the gunflashes had showed, but Clip’s answering shot came from some distance to the left.

Very soon Brad realized the significance of the shots. From across the meadow bullets picked their way toward Olaf. Brad could hear them whining off rock, and then he heard the sharp retort from Olaf’s gun.

From ahead Clip’s men sent a volley at the rock and Brad picked a likely flash to answer. There was a startled curse and he knew he had made his hit. They tried rushing him then, coming in fast, hoping for protection in the darkness. Brad let the carbine drop and used his  .44. Behind rock as he was, they could not get to him unless they circled — and it was this he watched for.

He saw a shape loom to the left, sliding up rocks not ten feet away, and his shot brought the man first to his feet and then crashing over backward to tumble limply down.

Clip’s sharp order sent another volley at Brad and, laughing softly, he answered rapidly twice. One man shouted something, and Clip’s reply rose in a vicious curse.

“Run then, damn you! He ain’t but one man.”

“The hell he ain’t,” the voice answered. “That last shot came from the south.”

Another man yelled, and now Brad could hear the careful sniping from the south. There was a surge of hoofbeats as men mounted their horses and ran, leaving Clip to curse them, take a last shot, and follow. For an instant he was outlined against the sky and Brad fired. He saw Clip rise in the saddle and then grab as if for the horn. He hung on as the horse charged out of sight over the rough rocks.

Brad waited until the sounds had faded and then he slipped back cautiously to the overhang. The sniping from the far side of the meadow continued; once a bullet struck a case of canned milk, and some trickled sluggishly through the hole in the wooden crate. But now it was growing very dark and with sharp suddenness the gun across the way stopped.

Olaf was not in sight, and Brad was puzzled until he decided he was still south. But it was more than an hour before a wary voice brought Brad alert.

“Here!”

Olaf came slipping in, holding his carbine under his arm. He crouched in the dimness and raked together sticks for a fire. “Coffee,” he said.

“And bring their fire on us?”

“Two across the meadow,” Olaf said. “No more now.”

So that was where he had been. Brad said then, “Make it small.”

“Yah,” Olaf said, striking a match. The light brought his face into view and Brad noticed that the bitterness that had come to the big sailor so recently was still on his features. From a peaceful man intent on minding his own business, Olaf had changed to fit the pattern of the country. That was the thing men like Quarles did with their bullying power and, at the thought, the anger rose hotly in Brad.

“You got two,” Olaf said suddenly. He set the coffeepot over the flames. “And hurt Clip?”

Olaf had been other places besides the far ridge, Brad realized. “They packed them all off, then?”

“Yah,” Olaf said. He pushed the coffeepot impatiently into the hotter flame.

“Next time Quarles will send a bigger crew,” Brad said.

Olaf got up, getting cups and a can of milk. “He’ll wait to hear from them?” When Brad nodded, he smiled a little, reminiscently. “Won’t hear tonight,” he added, putting a stick on the fire.

Brad feltr a little sick, dreading this sign of brutality in a man so naturally gentle. “You got them all, Olaf?”

“One,” Olaf said. “Tied Clip and two others in the old cabin.” He pointed toward his homestead. Then he reached for the pot and poured two cups of coffee.