Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0) (4 page)

“Heard of him.”

“Figured you had. He’s hell on wheels.”

“How about these men to the north? Who’s the big man up there?”

“Ortmann, and he’s a hard man.”

Blaine chuckled suddenly. “Sounds like I’m buckin’ a stacked deck. You still want in?”

“You forget, I’ve known this all the time. Sure, I want in. I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

Chapter 4

M
ARY BLAKE SWUNG down from her mare, stripped off the saddle and bridle, as she turned the horse into the corral. There was no one in sight when she started toward the house and she reflected bitterly that for all her father’s training, she was not showing up so well as owner of a ranch. Not with a foreman like Clell Miller. But how could you fire such a man? She knew he would not go and she had no desire for a showdown until she was ready. Right now she had nothing to back her play. All she could do if he refused to go would be to shoot him from the house, and that went against the grain.

She felt lost, trapped. Two or three of the old hands would stand by her, she knew that. Kelsey and Timm would not fail her, and both were good men. But they were only two against so many, and she was too shrewd to risk them in a pointless struggle. They provided backing she had to keep in reserve until the likely moment came.

As she went up the steps, Miller came around the corner of the house. He was a tall, well-built man and good looking. He had a deep scar, all of three inches long, on one cheekbone. It was his brag that he had killed the man who put it there, and he liked to be asked about the incident.

“Back so soon?” His manner was elaborately polite. “Did Otten offer to send his men over to help?”

“I need no help.”

He looked up at her impudently. “No? Well, maybe not. Looks to me like you’re out on a limb.”

She could see the danger of this sort of talk and swiftly changed the subject. “Joe Neal’s alive.”

Clell Miller had looked away. Now he swung his head back, swift passion flushing his face. “What was that? What did you say?”

“I said Joe Neal is alive.”

“He’s back in town?” Miller was incredulous, but had a lurking suspicion that she was telling the truth. Fury welled up within him. That damned Lud! Couldn’t he do anything right?

“No, he’s not back. He’s in El Paso. He sent a manager down here. A man named Blaine.”

“Blaine!” Miller’s dark features sharpened suddenly and his eyes were those of an animal at bay. “What was his other name? What did they call him?”

Surprised at his excitement, she shrugged it off. “Why, his first name is Michael, I think. Do you know him?”

“Tall man? Broad shoulders? Green eyes?” Miller was tense with excitement.

“Why, yes. that sounds like him. Why, who is he?”

Miller stared at her, all his animosity toward her forgotten with this information. “Who?” he laughed shortly. “He’s Utah Blaine, that’s who he is, that hell-on-wheels gunman from the Nueces, the man who tamed Alta. He’s killed twenty men, maybe thirty. Where did Neal round
him
up?”

Utah Blaine! She had heard her father talk of him so much that his name had been a legend to her. Mary remembered her father had been driving north right ahead of Shanghai Pierce’s big herd when Utah was trail boss. Gid Blake had been stopped by herd cutters and she knew every word of that story from memory, how Blaine had faced them down, killed their fastest gunfighter, and told them to break up and scatter. Her father had gone through without trouble, although at first he was sure he was going to lose cattle. Somehow she had expected Utah Blaine to be an older man. It was strangely exciting to realize that her girlhood hero was here, taking over the 46 Connected.

Clell Miller was excited and for the moment he had forgotten his troubles. Miller had never faced a gunfighter of top skill, but he knew that many rated him right along with them. There were those who said he was faster than Hardin. But he knew nobody was faster than Hardin, not anybody at all. Nevertheless, it would be something to kill Blaine! Something inside him leaped at the thought. To be the man who killed Utah Blaine! He walked off without a further word, bursting with excitement and the desire to talk.

Mary went on up the steps and closed the door carefully behind her before crossing the porch. When she entered the large room decorated with Navajo blankets the first person she saw was Tom Kelsey. He got up quickly and stepped toward her. He was a solid, square-built man, a top hand in any crowd, and he was, she knew, in love with her—not that he expected anything to come from it.

“Ma’am,” he said quickly, “I think Miller’s fixin’ to drive off some cows. He’s got maybe a hundred head bunched in Canyon Creek.”

“Where’s Dan Timm?”

“He’s watchin’ ’em, Ma’am. We figured I’d best come back an’ tell you.”

“Thanks, Tom, but there’s nothing we can do. Not right now, anyway. We’ll have to let it ride. We can’t risk a showdown.”

Tom Kelsey twisted his hat in his fingers. This he knew perfectly well, but it griped him. He wanted to do something. But while a fair hand with a gun, he was not in Clell Miller’s class and knew it. Nevertheless, to let him get away without a fight went against the grain.

“We may have a chance now, Tom. I want you to do something for me. Ride back and get Timm. Send him to me. I want one of you to stay in this house from now on. I don’t trust Clell or any of that crowd. But after you have started Timm back, I want you to ride on over to the 46. Utah Blaine is there.”

“Are you sure? What’s he want there?”

She explained, her eyes watching the bunkhouse through the window. “I want you to tell him I want to see him. And talk to him alone.”

When he had gone she walked into her own room and began to comb her hair. She was a slim, boyish girl with beautiful eyes and lips. Her figure, while only beginning to take on the shape another year or two would give her, was still very good. She looked at herself in the mirror, her not too thin lips, good shoulders and nice throat and chin.

For the first time since her father’s murder she thought she saw a way out. She had Timm and Kelsey. If they could get together with Blaine, they would have the beginning of a fighting outfit. Not enough, but such a man as Blaine was a man to build around.

As Mary Blake pondered the problem of concerted action against those who would split up the range of the two large outfits, Lud Fuller was whipping a foam-flecked horse down the trail to the Big N outfit of Russ Nevers.

Within him burned a dull rage that defied all reason. Joe Neal, whom he had hated during all the time he worked for him, was alive! He did not stop to think how he was alive, or what had happened—all he could think of was that fact. Not even the appearance of Blaine had hit him as hard.

His hatred for Neal was not born of any wrong Neal had done him, for Neal had always been strictly fair with his men, his foreman included. That hatred was something that had grown from deep within the fiber of the man himself, some deeply hidden store of bile born of envy, jealousy, and a hatred for all that seemed above him.

To any other man but Lud the grievances would have been trivial things but during long hours in the saddle or lying on his bunk, Lud’s slow mind mulled over them and they grew into festering hatred and resentment.

Nevers looked up as Lud rode into the ranch yard. “Neal’s alive!” Fuller burst out, his eyes bulging. “He ain’t dead! He sent a man—”

“Shut up, you fool!” Nevers stepped toward him, his voice cracking and harsh. “Shut that big mouth! I know all about it! What I want to know is what you’re doin’ here? Roust out your damned vigilantes now and hang him!”

“Neal?” Fuller asked stupidly.

“No, you fool! Blaine.” Angrily he stared at the big foreman. “Don’t stand there like a fool! Get busy! Let him alone for a few days and he’ll get set. Hang him! Hang him now! His rep is bad enough so there’ll be an excuse! Get busy!”

Lud Fuller was half way back to the ranch before he began to get angry at Nevers.

Chapter 5

A
LL THE HANDS were at table when Utah Blaine walked in and seated himself. He felt like hell and didn’t care who knew. He hated checking over books and that was what he had been doing for half the night. The first thing, of course, was to find out just what it was he was managing, and he discovered it was plenty.

Thirty thousand head, Joe Neal had said. Well, the ranch would carry more, and some of those were ready to sell. It was time the ranch was worked over but good. There was water and there was grass. He considered that with a cold, clear brain and liked what he decided. It was time some new elements were injected into this game.

Coker had stated it clearly the night before, and he decided he liked Coker. Also, there had been that talk with Tom Kelsey. Mary Blake wanted to talk to him, but she had little to offer. Kelsey had said she had two loyal hands. Still, that made four of them if they worked together, and Kelsey, while not as salty as Rip Coker, was a solid man. The sort that would have staying power. He would talk to Mary Blake.

Lud Fuller was there, his big jaw swinging up and down as he chomped his food. “Lud,” Blaine said, “there’s a lot to be done on this outfit. Take four men and head for Squaw Peak. There will be some of our stuff up there. I want everything wearing our brand thrown back across the river.”

Fuller started to object angrily. Squaw Peak? Why, that was away north! There would be no chance for him to organize any vigilante meeting up there! He started to object, but the logic of the move appealed to him. Those nesters were always cutting out 46 stock and butchering it.

“You givin’ up that range?” he looked up from his plate.

“I’m givin’ up nothing. From what I hear Ortmann an’ his boys up there are makin’ mighty free with our stock. Well, we’ll throw our beef back across the river until we get a chance to clean them out of there.”

All eyes were on him. “We’ll clean them out,” he said, “or make believers of them.”

“That’s a sizeable job,” the speaker was a long-geared man with sparse red hair. “They’ll fight.”

“I’ve tackled sizeable jobs before,” Blaine said shortly, “and they fought.”

There was no answer to that for they all knew the story of the mining town of Alta where three marshals had lasted a day each, and then Utah Blaine rode in and took the job. Four men had died the first week he was on the job. The leader of the bad ones going first, on the first night. Twenty-two men had been jailed that night, and two had gone to the one-room hospital with cracked skulls.

Alta, where there had been a killing every night, and where sixty-two men had been buried in Boot Hill before one townsman died of natural causes. The town where there were seven thousand belted men headed straight for the doors of Hell, and every one of them packing a gun. Two thousand miners and five thousand to rob them—and Blaine had tamed the town. It was there they started calling him Utah.

“Like I said,” he continued, “take your men and move up there. Work well back up in all the draws. No stock but our own, but start it for the river. Nobody works alone, work two or three together and hit both heads of Chasm Creek. Check the head of Gap mighty careful because I’ve an idea when they take our beef it goes over from Gap into Chalktank. Then work south. It will be slow, but throw the beef back over the river.”

“You aim to talk to Ortmann?” Red asked.

“When I’m ready.”

The other hands waited expectantly. “Coker, there’s a busted stall in the barn and that corral needs work. That’s for you.” He looked beyond the hatchet-faced warrior. “The rest of you work south along the edge of the mesa to Skeleton Ridge. You do the same thing. Throw the cattle back across the river!”

He finished eating and took a final swallow of coffee. Abruptly, he got to his feet. As he picked up his hat, he let his eyes go over the crowd. “I’m new here. New to you and you’re new to me. If any of you ever have any kick coming, you come and make it. But get this between your ears. I’m runnin’ the 46 and I’m goin’ to run it smooth. If it gets rough, then I’ll smooth her out. You boys won’t have any trouble as long as you do your jobs.”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him. Coker stuffed his mouth with a chunk of beef to keep from laughing. Fuller was flabbergasted. Obviously, he didn’t know what to do. As poor a foreman as he was, he knew sensible orders when he heard them. Throwing the cattle back across the river would undoubtedly save a good many head from rustlers. From the ranch house a man with a glass could watch the river, and see the whole length of it as it crossed the range. Nobody could possibly drive off cattle which were to the ranch side of the river.

Coker could see the idea penetrating Fuller’s thick skull and could see Fuller’s grudging appreciation of the tactics it implied. Coker could also see that Blaine’s promise to face Ortmann had aroused the men’s admiration. Moreover, what Blaine had done most successfully was to take the play away from them. Fuller had to obey orders or be fired. Once off the range Fuller was useless to the others and they would cut him out of the gang that expected to split the spoils of the ranch. Fuller was shrewd enough to appreciate all this.

While Coker disliked the work around the ranch, he also appreciated that Blaine was keeping the one man he could trust close at hand.

A
S SOON AS Fuller had left him, Nevers saddled up and rode for the B-Bar. He met Clell Miller when he was halfway there. Clell pulled up his sweating horse.

“Lud played hell!” Nevers burst out. “Neal’s alive, and now when this Blaine shows up he runs to me instead of doin’ somethin’ about it.”

Miller curled his leg around the saddle-horn. “What you aim to do, Nevers?”

“I ain’t goin’ to see no outsider jump that range!”

“You think Neal is dead?”

“How should I know? If he ain’t, he’s gonna be, believe you me!”

Miller looked at Nevers thoughtfully. “That’s an idea,” he said, “a good idea.”

“Look,” Nevers came closer, “Neal may or may not be alive. If he’s dead, we’ve got to know it. If he’s alive, he’s got to be killed. I ain’t gonna be cheated at this stage of the game.”