Marauders' Moon (6 page)

The grass of the small prairie he was crossing was lush, and he could hear the swish of its dew-laden richness against his horse's legs. He was not sure of his trail, since he had made this trip at night only five times in twice that many months, but once he felt his horse slope steeply down the side of the swale he looked around him at the starshot blackness, almost certain. And when his horse crossed a stream he was sure, and he turned down it, at ease. If his guess was right, this was Copperstone Creek, and he had only to follow its rather direct course to arrive at Wake Bannister's home ranch. Ever since he crossed the county line he had been riding on Bannister's Dollar range, and if he were to ride till the next sunset in the same direction, he would still be on it. Mitch gave little thought to this, however; better men than himself had accepted the name of Bannister as meaning bigness and power and wealth.

It was one of these big Bannister men that Mitch was thinking of, and trying not to. By the time the first faint shafts of the sun cut straight across the earth, bringing every blade of grass into momentary relief, Mitch knew what he was going to say. He lifted his gaze across the vast hollow ahead of and below him, and he saw that the sun had not yet touched the Dollar spread. But even in this muted light he could see its size, and he marveled quietly.

Like many a western ranch, it lay on the banks of a creek. But this was not a ranch in the accepted sense of the word; it was almost a town. The big main house, which dominated the rest of the place through the simple fact that it had appropriated all the largest trees, was still a little strange to Mitch. He had never seen a tenth of its rooms, and he knew he never would. Being a dry-country man, used to adobe and stone and maybe a log shack in the high line camps, Mitch never got over his initial awe of seeing a whole vast two-story building made of thick, unspliced logs. So were its wings, and so were their wings. The whole affair angled and turned, doubled back until it seemed to Mitch that all the forests in all the mountains must have been cut to supply material.

The barns and sheds, a good way from the house, were of stone, more familiar, and the huge and rambling combination bunk house and cook shack was of adobe that matched the huddle of houses behind it, in which the Mexican field hands lived. All of this, with the exception of the corrals, contrived to sprawl around a bare plaza, where the ranch store thrust up its tin roof behind its false front.

By full sun-up, when the place came alive, Mitch had put up his horse in the small corral behind the store, as he had been ordered to do, and made his way to the main house. At a door in one of the wings close to the blacksmith shop he paused. There was a tangle of scrap iron and wheel rims to the side of the door, and Mitch surveyed it with the mild disapproval of an orderly man.

He looked up to behold the blacksmith in his undershirt sleeves watching him from the wide door of the shop.

“Morning,” the blacksmith said.

“Morning,” Mitch replied, and said no more. He had been ordered not to. He let himself into the room which was Wake Bannister's office and the nerve center of the Dollar spread. It was big, bare of furniture except for a rickety desk and a half dozen sorry-looking chairs. Mitch sat in one of them and rolled a smoke, and let the hot, stale air of the room take the chill off him.

He was almost drowsing when the door opened to admit first a tuneful whistle and then a man. Mitch was on his feet when the man entered.

Wake Bannister had been called many things in his fifty years, but he had never been called ineffectual. To begin with, his presence was awesome. Six foot six—massive-shouldered, white-haired, lazy as a cat, there was something almost electric in his being. Men felt it when they talked to him, felt it almost as much as they felt the sharp, piercing blue of his eyes. His face, while weather-burned and sun-wrinkled, had never mellowed, never softened. It combined the aggressive jaw with the thinker's broad forehead, a contradiction which was the key to the man. His nose was thin, and the whitest part of his face was where the skin drew tight over its high bridge.

Right now he caught sight of the waiting Mitch, and he paused in his stride, his whistle dying.

“I thought I told you not to come here unless you had something to say,” he said mildly. He had a fine voice, too, soft and low and penetrant, but maybe this was because men stopped talking when he opened his mouth.

Mitch shifted to his other foot. “I have.”

“About that bank hold-up? I've known it for hours.”

“But not all of it,” Mitch said.

Bannister regarded him a moment, frowning, then said, “Pull up a chair. I haven't smoked yet.” He sat down at the desk and offered Mitch a cigar, which was declined, then lighted one himself.

“What's up?” he asked finally.

Mitch, more at ease now, told Bannister of Tolleston's conviction that Webb was implicated in the bank stick-up, along with McWilliams.

“The damn fool,” Bannister said quietly. “Go on.”

“This Cousins is Tolleston's prisoner now. He has him over at the Broken Arrow. Tolleston aims to hold him until he gets proof that Cousins was in on the hold-up.”

Bannister was on the track of something. Mitch knew he could skip whole sentences now and Bannister would still follow his meaning.

“That's why I'm here. Tolleston told me to head for Bull Foot and stay there until I got some kind of proof that the five robbers were hired by this county. That would tie up McWilliams with them, and Cousins, too.”

“You didn't come here to tell me Buck is trying to frame a saddle bum.” Bannister said instantly.

“No. Here it is: If Tolleston gets proof that Wintering County was behind the hold-up, he aims to use it as a pry. With that pry he'll raise all the ranchers in San Patricio County out of their seats fightin' mad, and when he has 'em fightin' mad he aims to raid Bull Foot. Burn it down, plunder the county. He's been waitin' for this, dreamin' of it—”

“I know,” Bannister cut in quietly. He smoked in silence, Mitch watching him.

“Had breakfast?” Bannister asked finally.

“No.”

“Go get it and come back.”

Mitch rose, Bannister with him. As Mitch was going out, Bannister said, “I take back what I first said to you. You've got judgment, boy.”

Mitch flushed with pleasure. “Anyone could've seen you'd want to know that.”

“Why?” Bannister asked curiously.

Mitch was tripped up. His answer would sound pretty obvious, but it was the only one he could think of. “Why, so you'll be ready to meet him.”

Bannister murmured, “Oh, hell,” and turned away. “Come back after you've eaten. Maybe your head'll be clearer.”

After Mitch had gone, Bannister cocked his booted feet up on the desk and smoked. The blacksmith across the way had started work, and the ring of his sledge, bell clear, true, rhythmical, gave Bannister a feeling of real pleasure. He liked to hear it around him hour after hour.

Whenever he had a spare moment, Bannister would go over to old Symonds's shop and watch him. Sometimes he would help Symonds, and these times he would be ordered around like any fumble-fingered apprentice. He took his cursings, always deserved, and sweated away, trying to recover his mistakes. He and Symonds never talked, but Bannister respected him more than any man he knew. He listened now to the
slam, tap-tap; slam, tap-tap
, and could almost picture the iron's white glow and Symonds tentative blows before the heavy sledging once started. He wanted to go over and watch, but he fought the impulse. Instead, he walked to the door and stood in it, observing Symonds.

When the blacksmith looked up, Bannister said gravely, “Mornin', Symonds.”

“Mornin',” Symonds answered.

“Hit the gong,” Bannister said, and went inside. The clash of a heavy triangle boomed out over the morning air. It was Bannister's way of calling his foreman.

Hugo Meeker was ten minutes in coming. He did not apologize for his lateness; it was understood by them both that some jobs could not be left. Meeker had come from Texas with Bannister, but his appearance had not changed in the last twenty-five years. His wedgelike jaw, bleak eyes, his languorous movements, his rare smile, his hard, driving speech, were the same now as always. His body was leaner, perhaps, saddle gaunt, and he smoked more, but they were the only differences.

Sitting down in the chair Mitch had just vacated, Hugo waited until Bannister quit looking out the window and dropped his cigar butt on the floor.

“You were late last night,” Bannister observed.

“Sure,” Hugo drawled. “I had a little business that almost got by me.”

He reached in his hip pocket and took out an already opened letter. It was addressed to Wake Bannister.

“That come in the mail last night for you. I had a hunch and opened it.”

Bannister looked at the letterhead on the envelope, which read
Southwestern Railroad
. Taking out the letter, he unfolded and read it, and his eyes glinted with a kind of simmering excitement.

“So they're building on through to Wagon Mound,” he said softly, looking at Hugo. “Advance agents comin' in a month. Well?”

“I had another hunch,” Hugo drawled. He reached in his shirt pocket this time and took out a letter addressed to Sheriff William Wardecker, Wagon Mound. It bore the same letterhead. Bannister opened it and read. It contained the brief news that the railroad was building through to Wagon Mound, and that their advance agents would be in San Patricio County within a month to arrange for the purchase of right of way.

“Well?” Bannister asked again.

“The Wagon Mound stage was just loading at the depot. As soon as I read your letter I figured there'd be another like it in the Wagon Mound mail. So I hightailed it to the ford and got the letter.”

“Held up the stage, you mean?”

Hugo nodded. “I was quiet as a kitten. I took the sacks, waved the stage on, built a fire, found the letter I wanted, and then took the cut over the mesa, held up the stage again and give them back their mail.” He was laughing silently. “They'll have a hard time figurin' that one out.”

Bannister smiled fondly at the drawling, insolent indifference of the man. Years ago Wake Bannister had learned this man by heart, or enough of him to know that he thought ahead of ninety men out of a hundred, and could outtalk, fist-whip, or gunfight, and beat the other ten. That was why Hugo Meeker could open Bannister's mail on occasions and never be given the hint of reprimand.

“But we can't keep it quiet long,” Hugo drawled. “I've already greased Kean at the telegraph office, so he'll hand over anything sent to Wardecker. But when the railroad don't get an answer, they're liable to write to Tolleston or Patton or even—”

“He's dead.”

“Well, any big auger over there.”

Bannister nodded absently and picked up the railroad's letter addressed to him and read it again while Meeker rolled a smoke.

“About these horses they want for grading teams,” Bannister said. “How soon can we have enough broke out?”

“In a week, if we have to.”

“We don't. I'll write and tell them that my boys are out on a drive now, and that it'll take at least a month and a half to break out that many. That won't hurry up things any.”

“How much time have we got?”

Bannister looked at his letter. “A little over three weeks, accordin' to this.”

“That time enough?”

Meeker settled down in his chair and inhaled deeply on his cigarette. He did not take it out of his mouth when he exhaled, so that a cloud of blue enveloped his face.

“That's cuttin' it close, Wake.”

“I don't think so,” Bannister said. “Mitch Budrow dropped in this morning.”

“I saw his horse back of Mooney's.”

“Tolleston suspects we were behind the hold-up. So we're saved the trouble of puttin' the suspicion in their minds over there.”

Meeker said softly, “The hell he does? What did those boys do—ride Dollar-branded horses?”

Bannister laughed and said, “No. It seems that McWilliams, who was bringing a prisoner back, had lost so much sleep that he couldn't make Bull Foot, so he pulled into Wagon Mound and was going to ask to borrow their jail. He walked right info the hold-up. Tolleston, who is always ready to blame Wintering for anything, claimed McWilliams and his prisoner were part of the gang.”

“Who was the prisoner?” Meeker asked.

“A saddle bum name of Webb Cousins. Wanted for that train stick-up last year.”

“So what does Tolleston do now?”

Bannister smiled faintly. “He sent Mitch down to see if these bank robbers were hanging around Bull Foot. If they are, Tolleston aims to work up the San Patricio outfits with some fightin' talk against us. Then he'll raid Bull Foot.”

Meeker was listening carefully. Into his eyes crept a look of sultry devilment and considerable amusement. Then he laughed silently again.

“Buck never changes,” he said quietly. “Set a trap and he walks into it.”

Bannister tapped the desk with his fingers and a slow frown creased his forehead. “There's only one thing I didn't like about that hold-up, Hugo.”

“Patton?”

“Yes. That wasn't necessary.”

Hugo shrugged. “I told them not to shoot, but they claimed they couldn't help it. Besides, Patton would have got his in the end, anyway.”

“I know. But it's clumsy.” And, as if this was utterly dismissed from his mind, he said, “When you go out, send Mitch back.”

Meeker rose and started to leave. Bannister said, “Where are those five Montana hardcases?”

“Over in the old bunk house, drunk.”

“Watch them till they sober up. They understand their orders, do they?”

“Plenty. They've never had so much money before.”