Ride the Man Down (5 page)

He tramped into the schoolroom, and Lottie Priest, who was sweeping out, looked up as he entered.

Sam dumped the wood by the stove and said, “That's my early training.”

Lottie laughed. “You must have had a better teacher than I am, Sam. How are you?”

She came over to him, and Sam took off his hat and they shook hands. He had known Lottie for years and liked her, although he seldom saw her except at dances.

Lottie sat on one of the desk benches, but Sam, whose thick bulk made this schoolroom seem almost miniature, settled himself gingerly on top of a desk opposite her.

“I dropped your mare off at home,” Sam said. “Will said to thank you.”

“How was calf branding?”

Sam said matter-of-factly, watching her, “Not like old times, when Hatchet ruled the roost.”

Lottie said quickly, “Sam, I heard this morning there'd been trouble between Bide and Will yesterday.”

She's worried, Sam thought, and he nodded. “There's always trouble when Will and Bide meet. This time Will set him afoot.”

Lottie didn't comment, but her face showed distress, and this fact encouraged Sam. Because he was a direct man, Sam came straight to the point now. “I was wondering, Lottie. Has Will ever thought of leaving Hatchet?”

“He wouldn't consider it, Sam.”

Sam said shrewdly, “But you'd like him to?”

Lottie hesitated and then nodded slowly.

“Let me give you some advice,” Sam said. He smiled, to make it seem friendly, which it was. “You didn't ask for it, but I'm giving it to you, anyway. It's time you got him out of there, Lottie.”

Alarm flooded into Lottie's eyes. “What is it, Sam? Has anything happened?”

“Nothing much, maybe. I'll let you judge. This morning Will and John each took a couple of Hatchet hands and split up. Do you know where they rode? To kick off every outfit that's moved onto Hatchet grass.”

“What outfits? When was this?” Lottie asked quickly.

“I forgot to tell you,” Sam murmured. “Bide's got most of the country except me to move in on Hatchet. Will is starting with that bunch from under Indian Ridge. When he's kicked them off he'll move to bigger game. He'll get to Bide.” Lottie half rose and then sank down behind the desk again. With sudden perception Sam sensed that Lottie had betrayed in that one movement her inability to sway Will. He said, “That's a large order, even if he wades through the lot of them to Bide.” He added calmly, “Bide's got Russian Springs now.”

Lottie didn't answer, and Sam shifted his weight a little. His oily slicker peeled away from the desk top, diverting him for an instant.

Then he said, “Lottie, you're not the kind to dodge things. I think you know this anyway.” He paused, isolating this. “There'd be no trouble here if Will would move. Bide would tame.”

“Will says he wouldn't.”

Sam shook his head. “Bide lived to get even with Phil Evarts, and now Will has taken Phil's place. When he hasn't got Will to fight, he's like any other man.”

Lottie stroked the smooth desk with her hand, and she was not looking at Sam. He knew he had said enough, only he could not resist a last telling point.

He came off the desk and said, “You're the schoolteacher, Lottie. You remember that one about it's better to be a live coward than a dead hero.”

“It's just the other way around in the schoolbooks, Sam.”

“No,” Sam said gently. “You don't believe it's the other way around either, do you?”

Lottie held his glance for a few seconds and then said quietly, “No, Sam. I want him alive.”

“Then you'd better be quick about it,” Sam said gently. He nodded to her and went out.

Chapter 4

This camp puzzled Will. He and Ike Adams were bellied down in the mud of a ridge top, a piñon screening them from the camp in the draw below. The rain fell steadily, persistently, and the two men in cracked slickers down there in the scrub cedar were trying, and not very successfully, to rustle wood for their fire. A tarp strung between two of the cedars sheltered their outfit, and their underfed horses—two saddle animals and a pack horse—were foraging dismally and halfheartedly down the draw.

Ike said, “Hell, they ain't even bothered to put out a guard,” and he looked at Will, puzzled. They had seen a scattering of gaunted strange cattle at the mouth of this draw that opened out from the Indian Ridge country and had made a careful circle to pull in above the camp. Will had expected to see more men, and careful men, for stealing range had never been anything but a serious matter. These men seemed concerned about nothing except how to keep warm. It was a curious procedure for an outfit at open war with Hatchet. For it was war now, after what Bide had said yesterday.

Will said, “We'll walk down and brace 'em.”

“I dunno,” Ike said cautiously. He had ridden with Hatchet when it really knew trouble and had learned caution the hard way. He was a middle-aged man, taciturn to surliness, except where work was concerned. He had a fierce unthinking loyalty for Hatchet which, for him, meant Will. He shook his head. “This don't look right.”

He pushed himself to his knees and said, “I'll drop down-canyon a ways and walk up to their horses. You drift down behind 'em.”

Will nodded, and Ike set off, his boots balling up with the greasy mud before he had taken ten steps.

Will waited, watching the pair by the fire. He could place neither them nor the Star 22 brand on their horses, which was not the brand the strange cattle had carried. But he was certain of what he would do with them, and John Evarts had agreed.

He shuttled his glance down the canyon where the horses were grazing. Now he saw Ike come down off the slope and, once in the open, walk up slowly to the pack horse that stood watching him alertly.

The two men at the fire had seen Ike now, and one of them yelled, “Hey!”

Ike paid no attention, walking up to the horse as if he had not heard. The two men looked at each other, and then the nearest man dropped the dead branch he had just picked up and started toward Ike. The second, squatted by the fire, rose and hurried to join him.

They walked below Will, and when they were past he rose, rifle in hand, and started silently down the slippery slope. He hit the canyon floor behind them, and then they halted in front of Ike.

Will heard one of them say, “What're you lookin' for?”

Ike had reached the pack horse now, and he scratched its nose, and Will heard him answer, “What you got under those slickers, boys?”

Will came on, walking quietly, and again Ike spoke. “Just leave 'em buttoned and take a look behind you.”

One of the men turned and saw Will, who was holding his cocked rifle hip-high. The other one turned a moment later, and they watched Will approach.

Will saw they were brothers; they had the same long faces and bleach eyes, and in both their faces was an instant, sober alertness. They were a young and hungry-looking pair, but they eyed him levelly, with more respect than fear.

Will murmured dryly, “Go ahead. Tell me you don't know where you are.”

The older one shook his head slowly. “I know too damn well where we are, mister.”

The honest reply puzzled Will momentarily, and he did not speak.

The younger one, with a kind of wry humor, said to his brother without looking at him, “He the one they said would be so busy he couldn't get to all of us?”

The older one smiled embarrassedly but did not answer. He watched Will carefully, alertly.

Will said, “Where was this?”

The older one tilted his head toward the mountains. “Back in Ten Mile.”

“Who said it?”

“Redheaded fellow in the saloon there.”

Will seemed to ponder this while Ike watched him with a deepening alarm. Will said then, “You're not from around here.”

The older brother shook his head. “We come up with one of them Indian trail herds. They paid off on the reservation, and we took our wages in cull stuff. Figured to drive across the mountains and find us some grass, and back there in Ten Mile we heard about this outfit.”

Ike spoke with a surly truculence. “Heard what?”

The older one looked at his brother and shrugged. “This outfit was s'posed to be bustin' up. They said there was all the grass a man wanted, just for the takin'.”

Ike said grimly, “There is, if you can take it.” He came up to the younger one, ripped open his slicker, and lifted out a gun. The second man held his arms away and let Ike do the same to him. They both kept watching Will, however, for a clue to what would happen to them.

Will's face was impassive, but a slow anger smoldered in his eyes. It did not touch these men, for in their places he would have done the same. His anger was at Bide and his sly, tireless schemings. Ten Mile was up in the Indigos at the end of a logging road. There was a rickety hotel there, the old logging-camp bunkhouse, along with a saloon and a store. It was Red Courteen's town, out of which he and his men peddled whisky to the Indians and smuggled the beef they received in payment out of the country. A furtive trade in stolen horses and cattle was carried on there, and a few small outfits under Indian Ridge who were more than a day's ride from Boundary traded there. Red Courteen had always been too wise to provoke Hatchet, but now that was changed too. Bide had persuaded him, and Red, in turn, had sent on these two ragged punchers who only wanted grass to give them a start. They had risked the gamble and lost.

Will let his rifle swing to his side. “Let 'em go, Ike.”

The outrage in Ike's face was immediate, and he only stared at Will.

Will asked curtly, “What's your name?”

The older one said, “Mel Young. Brother's name's Jim.” Only now that Will had let them go did he seem ashamed and somehow eager to please.

Will wiped a muddy hand on his slicker, framing his orders to them, and he was aware that Ike was watching with fierce disapproval. He looked at the younger brother, who grinned faintly, his sole gesture of thanks for letting them go.

A sudden thought struck Will. “Those your cattle down-canyon?”

Jim Young nodded. Will wheeled and looked back at their outfit, which was small enough that a pack horse could carry it. When he faced them again his mind was made up. “What do you do now?”

“Get off your range,” Mel said soberly.

“Want grass for your stuff?”

The two brothers looked at each other, and Jim Young said cautiously, “Sure.”

“Want it bad enough to work for nothing? I'll feed you and put you up, but there's no pay in it. You can run your stuff along with ours.”

Mel said immediately, “Hell, yes, we'll take it.”

“We're having trouble, you understand.”

“We'll take that too,” Jim Young said.

While Ike held his surly silence Will gave them directions to Hatchet. After their guns had been returned he and Ike left them and climbed the slope in the still-falling rain and sought their horses. Ike paused as he was about to mount and looked at Will. “Know what a rawhider is, Will?”

Will shook his head in negation.

“They travel in wagons, whole famblies of 'em,” Ike said wryly. They'll clean a country, quicker'n locusts. Steal you blind and deef. All their sorry gear they patch with rawhide.”

Will frowned, and Ike spat and said mildly, “Notice that youngest kid's gun handle was tied with rawhide?”

“No.”

Ike said gloomily, “You're goin' to be sorry you didn't run 'em out of the country. I'd sooner trust Red Courteen than them two.”

Will said mildly, patiently, “We need a crew if we're going to fight, Ike. That's one way to get one.”

When John Evarts saw the first scattering of cattle in the dripping timber, he grunted with satisfaction. Bide had been right yesterday when he said Ray had moved his stuff down onto Hatchet grass.

A Hatchet hand who had ridden over for a confirming look pulled up beside Evarts and the other Hatchet hand. “They're Cavanaugh's, all right.”

“Gather 'em up,” Evarts ordered.

For two hours he combed the surrounding country with his men in the steady rain, and when they met they had seventy head of cattle bunched on the wet flats.

Evarts said, “Take them back to the corrals, and we'll wait for, Cavanaugh to show up.”

He and Will had agreed last night that it was impossible for Hatchet, undermanned and weak, to push every outfit off Hatchet grass. An easier way, and just as effective, would be to gather up all strange cattle, hold them at the ranch pasture, and face the men who came to redeem them.

Of one of the men now he asked, “Who has that place over there in the hills closest—Kennedy?”

“Back yonder,” the puncher said, nodding toward Indian Ridge.

“He's all right, isn't he?”

“Wes?” The puncher grinned. “He's too tired to steal, I reckon.”

“You boys get along,” Evarts said. “I'll catch up with you.”

He turned his pony north toward the hills as his men got the bedraggled cattle moving toward home.

A change had come over John Evarts since yesterday, and he scarcely knew what to make of it himself. He knew one thing however: for the first time since coming to Hatchet he had broken through Will Ballard's reserve. He knew what had done it, too, knew the second it took place. It was when he had given his unspoken consent yesterday for Will to go ahead with the disarming of Bide and his men and the wrecking of the chuck wagon. Up to that moment he had been headed in one direction; at that moment, he swerved, and immediately Will Ballard was with him. It was that simple really.

He shifted in the wet saddle and wondered why he did not find it uncomfortable. Presently he dropped down into the valley where the argument had taken place yesterday.

He reined up and looked at it curiously. There was the chuck wagon on its side, its canvas vanished, its bed gutted, but its frame and two wheels holding together to mark the time the rain started and doused the fire. Pots, pans, and canned goods littered the ground.