Longhorn Empire (2 page)

Rigid with suspense, the three men on the river bank watched it come. Brant’s gaze flickered toward the rear of the herd. The
cows were two-thirds of the way across, sensing their danger and swimming frantically for safety. Well in the rear was Cole
Dawson. He had slipped from his saddle and was swimming beside his horse, clinging with one hand to the horn. They could see
him roar encouragement to the men in front, but no sound came to them above the tumult of the rushing waters.

Dawson abruptly realized his danger. He twisted his face about to glare upstream. Then he redoubled his efforts. But he was
hundreds of yards from the far bank and safety when the thundering wall of water overtook him. Old John let out a yell of
horror—

“That cottonwood’s got him! He’s under!”

Dawson had vanished in a welter of foam and
tossing branches as the uprooted tree swept him beneath the surface. His horse barely cleared the thrashing branches and diagonalled
toward the shore.

“Look!” roared Kane. “Look! There he comes! He’s wedged in a fork!”

Dawson’s limp body had reappeared, jammed in the V formed by two great branches. The three rolled in the wake of the wave
crest. Dawson vanished once more.

Old John yelled again. “Where you goin’, you loco idiot!” he bellowed at Austin Brant. But even as he spoke, Smoke was racing
downstream toward where the river curved, with an eddy washing back toward the near bank.

Like a scud of blue fog on the wings of a gale, the great moros raced downstream. He reached the bend ahead of the tumbling
wave. The tree that had been Dawson’s undoing was considerably back of the crest now, and by some freak of chance had ceased
to roll. It still hurtled downstream, but Dawson’s flaccid form shone clear of the water.

“It’s liable to start rollin’ again any minute, though,” gulped Webb.

“That feller’s got a head on him,” Kane exclaimed as Brant slid from the saddle and ran to the lip of the high bank overlooking
the bend. “He figgered the eddy will jerk the tree in close to the bank where mebbe he can reach Dawson. Come on, let’s get
down there.”

Together they urged their horses toward the bend. Kane swore excitedly as the tree swung in toward the bank and Austin Brant
crouched on the crumbling edge.

“He’s goin’ to jump to the tree!” Kane yelped. “Hell, what a chance he’s takin’! If that trunk starts rollin’ again when he
lands on it, it’ll be curtains for ’em both. There he goes!”

The tree had swung in to within a few yards of the bank. Before it could eddy out again, Brant launched his long body through
the air in a prodigious spring. The riders gasped in unison as the trunk surged beneath the water under the impact of his
weight.

Brant landed within arm’s reach of Dawson’s helpless body. He teetered precariously for an instant, caught his balance and
edged along the almost submerged trunk. Webb and Kane saw the log begin to slowly turn again as it swerved away from the shore
in the grip of the eddy. Brant clutched Dawson’s collar with both hands, heaved mightily. The crotch held the body firmly and
refused to let go. Kane and Webb saw him shift the grip of one hand, fumble with Dawson’s belt.

“The feller’s gun and holster are caught on a snag!” barked Kane. “He’s got it loose! There they go into the water!” He had
plucked his rope free and was twirling a loop as he spoke. As they raced up to the bend, Dawson and Brant broke surface, the
range boss still gripping Dawson’s collar. He turned sideways and began to swim strongly toward the shore.

“Catch!” roared Kane, sliding to the ground and snaking his loop. He sent the rope hissing through the air. The loop fell
almost over Brant’s extended hand. He seized it and twisted the rope about his arm.

“Give a hand!” Kane barked to Webb. Together they hauled in with all their strength. The eddy
tore at the two forms with gripping fingers, but Brant fought strongly against the watery pull. Kane and Webb whirled about
and walked away from the bank, the taut rope humming over their shoulders. Another moment of mighty struggle and the half
drowned Trail Boss and his helpless burden were dragged onto the steep slope of the bank. Kane leaped down to assist Brant.
Together they levered Dawson’s bulky form up until old John, lying flat and reaching down, could get a grip on Dawson’s collar.
The rest was easy. A moment more and Dawson lay sprawled on the prairie, Austin Brant crawled to safety and lay panting beside
him.

Old John removed his hat and mopped his damp brow. Norman Kane grinned down at the prostrate pair.

“A plumb fine chore,” he told Brant. “Feller, you’ll do for any man to ride the river with!”

Brant grinned back, rather wanly. “Reckon if it wasn’t for quick thinking on your part, we’d both be a long ways down, and
underneath, by now,” he declared.

Cole Dawson was groaning and retching with returning consciousness. He opened his eyes, raised himself on his elbow and for
a minute was frankly sick. Muttering an oath, he sat up and glared at the group.

“Who drug me out?” he demanded thickly.

“Well, I don’t see but one gent with wet clothes,” rumbled Webb, nodding toward Austin
Brant who was rising to his feet.

Dawson glowered up at the Trail Boss. “It would hafta be him!” he growled.

“Why, you ungrateful—” old John began, but
Brant snapped, “Hold it!” and Webb closed his lips on the uncompleted sentence. Norman Kane regarded the scene with his enigmatical
smile and said nothing.

“Well,” observed Brant, “that river looks pretty bad, but the big run the cloudburst over west set off looks to have passed.
Think we can risk it?”

“I believe we can,” Kane replied. “But what about Dawson? His horse is on the other side.”

“Don’t you worry about Dawson,” spat that individual, shaking himself like a great dog. “I can hang on to the Boss’ stirrup
and get there as easy as the rest of you. Let’s go.”

“Okay,” agreed Webb, “let’s take it before another loose ocean comes down that infernal crik.”

Before they reached the opposite bank, Austin Brant was of the opinion more than once that their day of death by drowning
was at hand. But reach it they did, pretty well exhausted, but suffering no more serious consequences. The giant Dawson, despite
a knot the size of a hen’s egg on his head appeared to be in as good shape as anybody else. Without a word to anybody he stamped
off to see to the bedding down of the herd.

“If he ain’t the limit!” snorted old John. Austin Brant shrugged his broad shoulders. Norman Kane smiled.

After a change to dry clothing, Brant felt ready for anything. As he combed his thick black hair, he reflected on the singular
character of Cole Dawson. His thoughts shifted to Norman Kane and he shook his head.

“Cool as a dead snake,” he told himself, apropos of the Flying V owner. “ ‘Peared to look on the whole business as a joke.
I’ve a notion he looks on most everything as a joke. That is,” he added reflectively, “if the joke doesn’t happen to be on
him. If it is, I’ve a notion it isn’t over nice for the joker.”

Brant chose his hands carefully for night guard duty—killpecker, graveyard, dead-hour, wake-up and cocktail. He picked the
oldest and steadiest men for the various chores.

“The rest of you can head for the Deadfall, like you’re itching to, as soon as we eat,” he told the others; “but watch your
step. We’re trailing out of here come daylight, headaches or no headaches, and I dont want to catch a man in a shape he can’t
fork his saddle.”

The cowboys grinned at him, but just the same they knew he meant what he said.

After supper was over, Brant conferred with Webb. “I’m sort of tuckered,” old John admitted.
“Swimmin’ that river wasn’t so good, at my age, but there’s nothin’ wrong a good night’s sleep won’t take care of. If you
feel up to takin’ charge by yourself, I’ll head for a mite of shuteye.”

“Go to it,” Brant told him. “I’m all set for anything. You start pounding your ear pronto. Nothing to worry about. We lost
some cows today, but not too many. We’re all set.”

Outside the wagon where Webb was bedding down, Brant paused to roll a cigarette. The night was pitch black, the sky heavily
overcast, except when fitful lightning flashes cast an eerie glow across the prairie. Occasional plumps of rain drummed the
wagon canvas. A wailing wind bent the grass heads and echoed occasional low rumbles of thunder.

Brant glanced toward the rambling bulk of the Deadfall. It appeared like a handful of fallen stars because of the light within
shining through the chinks between the logs. Through the open windows came the sounds of revelry and mirth, growing louder
as the night progressed. Brant shook his head, and his eyes narrowed slightly with concern.

“If there isn’t trouble before this night is over, I’m a heap mistaken,” he predicted gloomily. He pinched out his cigarette,
tossed the butt aside and headed for the building.

When Brant stepped inside the big main room of the place, he was blinded by the glare of light within. The numerous hanging
and bracket lamps were fed with oil from boiled-down buffalo fat, and that commodity was still plentiful on the Cimarron Trail.
His vision quickly cleared, however, and he glanced about with interest.

The room was a singular combination of frontier crudeness and civilized garishness. Homemade tables and chairs vied with plate
glass mirrors for attention. The floor was of puncheon boards, the log walls not even whitewashed, but on those walls hung
oil paintings. The long bar was constructed of rough planks, while the back-bar, adorned with the out-of-place mirrors, was
pyramided with bottles of every color and shape.

Not for a moment did Brant believe that the “luxuries” had all been imported from the east at prodigious expense.

“More than one wagon train has come up short in those parts,” he shrewdly deduced. “This diggin’ was furnished by robbery
and it exists chiefly by robbery, or I’m making a big mistake.”

The room was crowded, for several outfits returning from northern drives were stopping off at the crossing. The occupants were
chiefly cowhands, but there was a sprinkling of hard-eyed individuals whose hands, Brant felt sure, bore no marks of rope or
branding iron.

They were the “camp followers” of the drives, assembled at Doran’s for the purpose of preying on the cowhands in one way or
another. Brant spotted more than one occupying places at the poker tables with stacks of gold pieces before them.

“Taking the boys over, all right,” he muttered. “Well, they’d better lay off my bunch if they know what’s good for them.”

Mechanically, he shifted his heavy guns in their carefully cut-out holsters a little higher about his lean waist.

Lounging at the far end of the bar was a big black-bearded man who masked with a bluff manner and an attitude of jovial goodfellowship
the temper and disposition of a Gila Monster. Brant knew he called himself Phil Doran and claimed to be the nephew of old
Jane who opened the place. Beside him stood a younger and slighter man with a sallow, wedge-shaped faced and redrimmed beady
eyes set very close together. It was Pink Hanson, Doran’s partner. The unsavory pair owned the Deadfall.

Seated at a nearby table were Norman Kane and Cole Dawson, engaged in earnest conversation. Brant’s black brows drew together
as he speculated the pair. Kane, without looking up, leaned closer and said somthing in low tones to his companion. A moment
later Dawson got to his feet and slouched to the bar.

“Saw me come in and decided to break it up,” Brant told himself. “Now what’s building between those two?”

The two occupants of another table near the wall, upon which rested dishes of food, caught Brant’s attention. One was a lean,
grizzled, elderly man with a lined face, a tight mouth and tufted brows. He had the look of a hard man. The other occupant
of the table was a big-eyed girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty at the outside. She had short, soft brown hair, inclined
to curl, a red mouth and a small but well rounded figure. She appeared to be intensely interested in what went on around her,
and rather bewildered.

Brant felt a sense of disapproval that amounted to indignation.

“The devil of a place to bring a nice woman,” he muttered, eyeing the elderly man with decided disapproval.

But the obvious explanation of her presence quickly came to him. After all, the Deadfall was the only place near the crossing
where anything decent to eat could be obtained.

“And that old jigger with her looks able to take care of himself, and her,” he decided. “Her Dad, I reckon.”

He sauntered to the bar, found a vacant place and ordered a drink. Turning, he swept the room with his glance. He quickly
spotted a group of his own hands at a table, glasses beside them, playing poker. As he watched, one shrugged his shoulders,
got to his feet and headed for the bar. Instantly a man standing nearby slid into the vacant chair. The other players glanced
at him questioningly, but the dealer muttered something and they settled back into their seats.

Austin Brant left the bar and strode across the room. He tapped the man on the shoulder.

“I don’t care to have my hands play with strangers when they’re on a drive,” he said.

The man, a big, beefy individual, snarled up at him like a rat.

“You keep your nose out of my business, high-pockets, if you know what’s good for you,” he spat.

“You heard what I said,” Brant replied. “Get out of that chair.”

The man got out, his eyes glaring, his fists doubled. Brant hit him, left and right, hard. He shot through the air and landed
on the floor with a
crash. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, blood and curses pouring from his mouth. His hand shot down. Then he froze
in a grotesquely strained position. He was looking into the muzzle of two long black guns.

“Don’t—try—it,” Brant advised, spacing the words.

Doran came rushing across the room. The muzzle of Brant’s gun shifted the merest trifle.

“Goes for you, too, Doran,” he said quietly.

Doran, who never forgot a face, recognized the Running W foreman from his previous
visit to the Deadfall.

“Why, hello, Brant,” he called jovially. “Just wanted to see what was goin’ on. It’s my business to keep order, you know.”

He turned to the other man.

“You get up to the end of the bar and stay there, Porter,” he directed. “You’re lucky you didn’t get your insides blowed out.
This feller is as pizen with a gun as he is with his fists. Get goin’!”

The other started to bawl a protest, but something he saw in Doran’s eyes evidently changed his mind for him. He clamped his
bloody lips shut, turned and slouched away. Doran nodded affably to Brant and resumed his place at the lower end of the bar.

Brant holstered his guns, smiled at his grinning hands, and returned to his unfinished drink. As he passed the table occupied
by the girl and the old man he glanced in their direction. The girl’s eyes were wider than before, and there was a hint of
something like terror in them as they rested upon the Running W foreman. Brant flushed slightly, and turned his back.

“Reckon she’s got me down for one of the killer pack she’s been told about,” he growled under his breath. “Well, what the
hell difference does it make to me!”