Ride the Man Down (6 page)

Evarts regarded it wonderingly, and his mild face, wet and flushed now in the cold rain, reflected a grim pleasure. He wanted to fix this lonely scene in his mind, because it was a milestone in his life. If Bide had been content with claiming Russian Springs instead of overplaying his hand by coming to Ray Cavanaugh's help, things would have gone their worrisome way. For John Evarts wasn't a coward and he knew he wasn't. It was just that up to yesterday he had believed, against Will's quiet contradiction, that Bide had a normal man's hunger for land and power whipped a little raw by Phil Evarts' victories. Now he knew Bide's appetite went beyond that. He wanted Hatchet brought to its knees, so he could take it, and John was going to fight him—now.

John had only a vague idea of where Kennedy's place was and, feeling his way into this rough country, he came across a trail that swung a little west through the scrub timber. He followed its lift for three hours until it let onto a long meadow, at the end of which he could see a shack and outbuildings.

As he approached Evarts looked around the place and grimaced. A brush corral, a pole-and-brush shed, and a crude log shack made up the place, and it was a dozen outfits like this that Marriner had enlisted to help him in his fight against Hatchet.

Coming into the yard, Evarts saw a man step out onto the porch and lean against the post, watching him.

Evarts reined up and said, “How are you, Kennedy?”

“Pretty good, Mr. Evarts,” Kennedy drawled. He had the reputation of being a garrulous young man with a kind of shiftless, cheerful foolishness about him. His vest and shirt were close to tatters, his boots cracked and barely holding together. But in spite of his smile, his air of foolish unconcern, there was an uneasiness about him that Evarts couldn't fathom. This impression was strengthened by the fact that Kennedy didn't ask him to step down, although it was the custom of the country and the day was foul.

Kennedy just watched him uneasily, hands in pockets.

Evarts said, “You're a neighbor to Cavanaugh, aren't you?”

Kennedy nodded cautiously.

“Ever see him?”

“Now and then, Mr. Evarts. Just every once in a while, you might say.”

“Next time you see him give him a message for me, will you?”

Kennedy looked vastly relieved. He grinned uneasily and said, “Sure.”

“Tell him we're holding his cattle at the house. If he wants them he can come and get them.”

Kennedy said quickly, “I'll tell him. Sure thing, Mr. Evarts.”

Evarts nodded and was about to pull his horse around when a man stepped out of the shack behind Kennedy. Kennedy wheeled, as if to stop him, and was shoved roughly aside.

Ray Cavanaugh stood there, a rifle held at his side. In the first brief glimpse of him Evarts thought he was drunk. His tight, tough face was flushed, his hair awry, and he was in his sock feet. Then he coughed. He did not cease watching Evarts with his wild, bloodshot eyes, but his coughing, deep and pulpy, almost doubled him over. He dragged in a couple of deep, almost choking breaths of air, and when he spoke his voice was rough and hoarse.

“Get down off that horse!”

Evarts just watched him in silence. “You're sick.”

“Damn right I am,” Cavanaugh said. “I footed it for five hours in that rain to make it here. You're goin' to do the same.” Evarts had a swift, momentary pity for the man, and then it vanished. A man accepted the consequences of his own acts, and Cavanaugh must accept his. There was a new stubbornness in John Evarts as he shook his head.

“I don't think so.”

Cavanaugh raised his rifle almost to his shoulder. “Have I got to shoot you off that horse?”

“Yes, you do.”

For a moment the two men looked at each other, and then Evarts saw the maniac rage mount in Cavanaugh's eyes. A cold dismay struck him, and he yanked his horse around, seeing the gun lift to Cavanaugh's shoulder as he wheeled.

He never heard the shot. Something smashed his breath out of him. He tasted mud, and that was all.

As Evarts slipped to the ground Kennedy lunged for the rifle and wrenched it out of Cavanaugh's hands. He dropped it, plunging off the porch into the slippery yard. He fell once, rose and raced on, and when he reached Evarts he knelt, pulled him off his back, and turned him over. A thin ribbon of blood licked out from the corner of Evarts' muddy mouth spread fuzzily as the rain touched it, and vanished down behind his jaw.

Kennedy, in panic, shook him, and when Evarts' head rolled loosely he dropped him. Coming to his feet in the rain, the full horror of it held him motionless a moment, and then he turned and looked at Cavanaugh on the porch.

“You killed him.”

Cavanaugh stepped down and came across to him, his bare feet leaving big splayed tracks in the mud. Both men stood there staring at Evarts, and then Cavanaugh whispered, “O Jesus.” Kennedy didn't even hear him.

Cavanaugh wasn't mad any more. The memory of the bitter humiliation, of Will Ballard's contemptuous beating, of his wild rage at anything Hatchet was gone, and only fear remained. His sick mind raced ahead now, picturing the chain of frightening events this shooting would put in movement, and he shivered uncontrollably.

“You saw him,” he said fiercely to Kennedy. “He was pullin' his gun on me! I had to do it!”

Kennedy looked at him and said without spirit, “He wasn't goin' for his gun.”

“Listen,” Cavanaugh pled hoarsely. “He was goin' for his gun. I saw him!”

Kennedy just looked at him, the honor still in his eyes.

Cavanaugh fought for a grip on himself. Like a small snake creeping experimentally, from under a stone, an idea, furtive and guileful, was coming to life in his sick brain. The rain beat down through his sandy hair, cooling the fever in him.

“Listen, Wes,” he said. His voice had lost its panic and now had an ugliness to it. “You're in this too.”

Kennedy raised both hands and took a step backward. “Oh no,” he said quickly. “Not me. I never shot him. I never had a gun. I never even saw it.”

“I'll tell Ballard you did.”

Kennedy just stared at him. Then he turned and raced for the porch. Scooping up the rifle, he trained it on Cavanaugh and came slowly and uncertainly toward him in the steady rain. “You ain't dragging me into this, Ray. No sir.”

Cavanaugh said tauntingly, “Go ahead and shoot.”

Kennedy licked his lips and regarded Cavanaugh with helpless horror in which there was no anger even.

“Lever a shell in. You forgot that,” Cavanaugh taunted.

Kennedy's gun slacked off then, and he almost wailed. “What'll we do, Ray? What'll we do?”

Cavanaugh knew he had his man now. Wes Kennedy was a trifling man without the courage to protect himself. “Get out of the rain first,” Cavanaugh said.

“But—”

“He's dead, ain't he?” Cavanaugh snarled.

He shouldered past Kennedy and went up to the porch and into the shack. He wrenched a dirty blanket from the bunk and threw it around him and came out onto the porch. Kennedy was standing there, his gaze intent and afraid and somehow begging.

Cavanaugh smothered his shivering and said, “How they goin' to know he's dead if they can't find him?”

Kennedy shook his head, didn't answer.

“We got to bury him up in the timber,” Cavanaugh said. “This rain'll hide the hole. It'll hide his tracks comin' up here.”

Kennedy licked his lips and said, “No, Ray. No. Not on my place. Ballard'll kill me if he finds out.”

“How's he goin' to find out?” Cavanaugh snarled. He coughed then, gagging on the violence of it. Afterward, he steadied himself against the wall and said to Kennedy, with a confidence he did not feel himself, “Get a shovel.”

Kennedy didn't move. Cavanaugh, afraid and desperate now, walked up to him and cuffed him across the face with the flat of his palm.

Then he reached out and grasped the lapels of Kennedy's vest and shook him violently. The blanket fell off Cavanaugh's shoulders.

“You damn jughead, we're in this together, don't you see that! You're goin' to bury him up there and I'm goin' to watch you. Then I'm goin' home. And you ain't goin' to light out from here; you can't! Will Ballard will hunt you to China!”

He paused and let go Kennedy's lapels, and Kennedy just looked at him with naked fear.

“Bluff it out!” Cavanaugh snarled. “Nobody can prove anythin'. Now get a shovel!”

Chapter 5

Sam left D cross early and dropped down through the timbered foothills toward Alkali Flats. The ground mist was so thick on the flats after the rain that it seemed a pearl-gray sea. Sam rode briskly, for he had ground to cover this morning.

Around nine o'clock Sam crossed Bandoleer Creek and was presently off his own grass and onto Hatchet range, which adjoined it to the west. This was a waterless stretch, dry in the summer months, and it marked the boundary beyond which his cattle could not graze. This dry range stretched from Indian Ridge south and marked the west boundary of Bide's range, his own, Ladder, next to him, and Six X, next to Ladder. The only water on it was Russian Springs, which Bide had seized, and a few dug wells farther south, which would not water a dozen head of cattle. Bide had seized the single bridge through which he could move deeper into Hatchet. The dug wells he had not bothered with, and it was the range around these wells that Sam was curious about this morning.

The sun had broken through now to drive off the ground mist, but it was not warm yet, and the wet smell of cold spring earth remained. As Sam approached the range around the dug well he saw his first cattle and rode over to get a closer look. He saw the Ladder branded on their steaming coats. It was as he expected. Allan, at Ladder, had no especial quarrel with Hatchet, but he was, nevertheless, not going to let Bide Marriner gobble all of Hatchet graze. If Bide moved farther Allan would move too. Sam had a moment of sullen anger then as he thought of his position in this business. He could not gracefully take any Hatchet range, but if it turned out that Hatchet couldn't push the others off he stood to lose a lot of free grass by his hesitancy. His hands were tied.

Cutting north now, Sam made for Russian Springs, but before he reached it he had an answer to his question. Bide's cattle had moved in all right. Moreover, Bide had line riders out, for Sam had had to pull back into timber to escape being seen by a rider leisurely skirting the hills.

Afterward Sam turned west toward Hatchet, a restlessness upon him now. Bide had moved, and Ladder, not to be outdone, had pushed in too. Farther south Six X had undoubtedly done the same, since Ladder had set the example. Those, with his own brand, accounted for the outfits in the Salt Hills flanking Hatchet. The rabble under Indian Ridge had undoubtedly moved in, and if they had, it argued that the small outfits in the Indigos, in spite of their truce with Hatchet, would push their boundaries down to include a chunk of Hatchet. Now was the time to act, Sam knew. And he had the proof for John and Celia that it was necessary, for Sam still thought he could sway John.

He rode into Hatchet after noon, and when he saw the cattle grazing in the horse pasture he grimaced. They were Cavanaugh's, mixed with a few from other outfits, he noticed, and he rode up to the house and dismounted. In spite of his hurry this morning, Sam had taken time out to shave, and his face, flushed with the ride, was even more high-colored than usual. He tramped down the veranda, stopped at the kitchen window and peered in, and then stepped inside.

The smell of baking struck him like a soft, delicious pillow as he stepped in. Celia, kneeling by the oven door, looked up and smiled and said, “Isn't that just like me? I bake the day all the wood's wet.”

Sam threw his hat in a chair and came over to the table where cookies were laid out on an old newspaper. He picked one up and took a bite out of it, watching Celia.

Her cheeks were flushed with the heat from the stove, and her black hair was awry. She shoved the cookies in the oven and stood up and took a deep breath.

“These are good,” Sam said.

“They're awful, and you know it,” Celia said, almost tartly. She looked at Sam now.

Sam said, “What's eating you?”

“John's gone,” Celia said calmly. “I had to do something to keep from thinking about it.”

Sam's hand, clutching a second cookie, was arrested in mid-air. He said blankly, “Gone?”

“He didn't come home last night,” Celia said. She sank into a chair and brushed a wisp of black hair from her cheek and regarded Sam levelly. “He left the men yesterday afternoon. Said he was going to Kennedy's. He isn't home yet, and Will's ridden over there this morning.”

“Why Kennedy's?”

“I don't know,” Celia said wearily. She leaned back in her chair and stared at the opposite window, her gray eyes troubled. Sam put the cooky in his mouth, and when he had swallowed it he said easily, “He was probably wet and cold enough to stay the night.”

“Do you think so?” Celia asked dryly.

Sam frowned. Celia was sharp this morning, and that meant she was worried. He debated whether to bring up his business, now that John wasn't here, and decided abruptly that he would. Now that Celia and John agreed, maybe John would listen to her. And right now she could transfer some of her absurd concern over John to something that really needed it.

He came over and put a foot on the chair beside her and folded his arms on his knees.

“Celia, what are those cattle doing in the horse pasture?”

“They're the ones we've seized on Hatchet grass.”

Sam grunted. “You can't keep 'em. Will knows that.”

“He doesn't want to. But he can make it mighty uncomfortable for the men who come to claim them.”

Sam smiled grimly. “He's got a job ahead of him if he goes through with it.” When Celia didn't say anything he said heavily, “Or didn't you know your whole east range is being taken over by Bide and Ladder and Six X?” He didn't have proof that Case at Six X had moved in, but he was sure he had.