to Tame a Land (1955) (6 page)

Kipp had stayed the night, and when I went to th e barn for my saddle, he followed along. "I'll go with you,"
h e said. "Three is better than two."

Reading their sign was no problem. I'd been livin g too long like an Indian. The three of us rode fast, knowing as we did that they were going clear out of th e country. We could tell that from the direction they took.

There was nothing that way, nothing at all for miles.

Hetrick had a fine new rifle, and Kipp was well armed..

As for me, I still had the old Joslyn .50, although it wa s pretty nigh worn out now. But I knew that old carbin e and could make it talk.

The thieves took the horses into a stream and followe d it for miles, but that isn't the trick some folks think it is , and it didn't wipe out their trail the way they expected.

A horse makes a deep track in wet sand and sometimes th e tracks don't wash out very soon.

So water or not, we held to their trail until they lef t the stream and took out across a sandy flat. From tha t they reached some prairie, but the dew was wet on th e grass and the horses had knocked the grass down an d you could follow it at a rtrot.

On the fourth day of trailing the thieves had slowe d down. We were coming up fast until we smelled a woo d fire, and then we started walking our horses. We wer e going down a long slope covered with pines when w e saw the branding fire.

We bunched a little as we neared the fire and the y were busy and didn't see us until a horse whinnied. On e man dropped his branding iron and a thin trail of smok e lifted from the grass where the iron fell.

There were four of them, four to our three. They stoo d waiting for us as we walked our horses nearer, four toug h looking men from the rough country. One of them was a lean, hatchet-faced man with hair that curled over hi s shirt collar. He had gray-striped trousers tucked into hi s boot tops.

"Reckon you got the wrong horses," I said.

The big man with the black beard looked nervously a t the one with the hatchet face. I was watching him, too. H
e had a bronco look about him that spelled trouble, an d I could see it plain. He wore his gun tied down and hi s right hand was ready. And they were four to our three.

"You think so?" Hatchet Face was doing the talking.

One of the others was an Indian or a breed, a square.-
j awed man with a wide face and a beaded vest.

"The horses belong to Hetrick, here. I broke them all.

We're taking them back."

"Are you, now?" Hatchet Face smiled and showed som e teeth missing. "You're a long ways from home, boys, an d we've got the number on you. That means we keep th e horses."

Kipp and Hetrick were forgotten. I could feel tha t lonely feeling again, the feeling of trouble coming, and o f being poised and ready for it. It was the something tha t happened to me when something was coming up.

"No," I said, choosing my words careful-like. "Yo u are four to three, but with us it's just one to one."

Hetrick had a wife and daughter, and I knew he wa s no fighting man, although he would be right with m e when the chips were down. I wanted to keep this shor t and quick, and I had an idea that I might do it b y keeping the fight between the two of us. The other s didn't look ambitious about a shoot-out. Black Bear d would back up quick if he had the chance. The man I'
d called was number one and if there was to be a fight, h e would make it.

His face thinned down, seemed to sharpen. He had no t expected that. There was a quick calculation in his eyes.

Old Blue walked forward two steps, then stopped. I w as looking right down the muzzle of his courage.

"Yes," I said it low and straight at him. "You have thi s wrong, Bronco. I'm the man you think you are."

He measured me, not liking it. "What's that mean?"

"It means we take our horses. It means if you reach fo r a gun, I'll kill you."

Never before had I talked like that to any man. No r did I know where the confidence came from, but it wa s there, as it had been when Logan Pollard stopped McGarry that day when he would have quirted me.

Bronco was bothered, but he was still confident. S
o I gave him time. I wanted his sand to run out. Mayb e it would. And there was an even better chance it woul d not, for whoever Bronco was, he had used his gun; I c ould sense it, feel it.

That feeling sharpened all my senses, set me up an d ready for what would come. Yet there was no hangin g back. The horses were ours, and no man would dare wal k away from such a situation and still call himself a man.

Not in the West, not in our day. And we weren't abou t to walk away. Hetrick and Kipp would have got themselves killed, but this time they had the difference, and I w as the difference.

"Mr. Hetrick," I said, "you and Kipp gather up th e horses."

"Like hell!" Bronco flared.

Shorty nervously shifted his feet, and that did it. Mayb e Bronco thought Shorty was starting something. Anyway , his hand swept back and I shot him.

The bullet cut the Bull Durham tag hanging from hi s shirt pocket. The second bullet struck an inch lower an d right.

His gun was half drawn, but he seemed to shove it dow n in his holster and he started to take a step, and then h e was dead.

A crow cawed out in the trees on the slope. A hors e stamped. The other men stood flat-footed, caught tha t way, unmoving, not wanting to move.

And there was no more fight. Even if they had wante d one, it was too late. My gun was out and they were under it, and few men have the stomach to buck that deal.

"I'll get the horses," Kipp said, and he started fo r them.

Hetrick got down from his saddle. "Rye," he said, "we'
d better collect their guns."

"Sure," I said.

Shorty stared at me. "Rye," he
said thoughtfully. "I n ever heard that name. Know who you killed?"

"A horse thief," I said.

"You killed Rice Wheeler," he
said, "the Panhandl e gunman."

"He should have stayed in the Panhandle," I said.

Chapter
6

RETURNING was only a two-day trip. We had no trai l to find, and we could cut across country, which we did.

Nobody had very much to say that first day out.

Late on the second day, when we were walking ou r horses up a long canyon, Kipp said, "That Wheeler, h e killed six or seven men." Nobody said anything to that , and he went on. "Wait until I tell this in town! It'l l make Ollie Burdette turn' green."

"Don't tell him!" Hetrick said angrily. "Don't say a word about it. I got back my horses and let's let it lay."

"But why not? It isn't every day a man kills a Ric e Wheeler!"

"You don't know gunmen," Hetrick said testily. "I t will start Burdette hunting the boy all the more."

Reluctantly Kipp agreed, but only after I said, "I d on't want that kind of talk about me, I'm not makin g any reputation."

All the way home I was thinking it out. I had kille d another 'man. This was two. That Mexican . . . My sho t might have killed him, but it was Pollard's shot that di d kill him. No doubt about that. And I didn't want to clai m any more than I had to.

Liza ran out to meet us as we came up. "You got th e horses!" She was excited. "Did you catch the thieves?

Where are they?"

Later, I guess she was told, or she heard about it, because for several days she was very big-eyed around me.

But she didn't say anything to me about it, or to anyon e else. And it wasn't even mentioned for a long time.

Sometimes at night we would sit over the table an d talk, and I'd tell them stories about living in the mountains alone, and of some of the places I'd seen. And onc e when we were talking I went to my saddlebags and go t out Ma's picture and showed it to them.

She was a pretty woman. Only twenty when the pictur e was taken.

Mrs. Hetrick looked at it for a long time, then at me.

"Do you know anything about her family?"

"No, ma'am. Pap told me that when they were marrie d her family sort of got shut of her. I mean . . . well th e way I heard it, they didn't think Pap had money enough.

But Pap and Ma, they were happy."

Mrs. Hetrick put the picture down thoughtfully. "Tha t dress she had on . . . that was expensive."

I knew nothing about women's clothes. It looked jus t like any dress to me. Women, I guess they know abou t things like that. One time, a few days later, I heard he r telling Hetrick, "Real lace. I never saw a prettier collar.

It's a pity the boy doesn't know her family."

Sometimes of an evening Liza and I would walk dow n to the spring and talk, or out by the corral. Always i n plain sight of the house. She was a mighty pretty youngster, but just a youngster. Me, I was eighteen, headin' o n for nineteen.

We'd talk long talks there by that corral, leaning o n the bars close to Old Blue. We'd talk boy-girl talk, eve n though she was younger than me. About what we wante d to do, the dreams we had, and where we wanted to go.

We both wanted to be rich, but I guess that wasn't ver y important to us, either. It was just that we both wante d more things, and to see more.

Liza would listen, all wide-eyed and excited when I t alked about the mountains up in Wyoming. Or the Blue s over in Oregon, or those wild, empty canyons that cu t down through the southwest corner of Utah.

Twice I went to town, but only once did I see Burdette.

The other time he was out of town chasing down som e outlaw. He brought back his home with an empty saddle.

The time I did see him I was coming out of the stor e with some supplies to load into the buckboard. He cam e down to the walk to watch me load up.

"Breaking homes for Hetrick, I hear."

"That's right. Nice stock."

"Hear you lost some."

"Found 'em again."

"Any trouble?"

His eyes were searching mine. It gave me the feeling h e might have heard something, but either wasn't sur e or didn't believe what he had heard.

"Nothing to speak of."

"Lucky. I heard Rice Wheeler was working these hills."

By that time I was up on the seat, turning the team.

Liza was there beside me and she looked up at Burdette.

"He isn't any more," she said, and before he coul d question that, I got the team started out of town.

"You shouldn't have said that," I told her. "Now h e won't rest until he digs out the story."

"I don't care," she said pertly. "I don't like him."

It was nice driving along over the trail, talking t o Liza. We always had something to say to each other an d it was halrl to realize she was growing up, too.

And my time to leave was not far off. Hetrick ha d much to do yet to make his place pay. He would hav e a fine bunch of horses to sell, and he had some good breeding stock. So he had a good chance of building somethin g really worth while. It made me see what a man coul d do. When all the rest of them were hunting gold or silver , running saloons or gambling houses, he was quietly building a ranch and a horse herd. It was something stable , something that could last.

But once the horses were broken he would need me n o longer, and it was time I started to find a place for myself in the world. And a ranch was what I wanted, too.

My own ranch, somewhere back in some of those gree n valleys I'd seen during my wandering.

When I had broken the last horse, a sorrel with thre e stockings, I went to Hetrick.

"Finished," I said.

He opened a drawer in his desk and took out some money. He paid me what he owed me. Not counting what I ha d drawn on my wages, I had seventy dollars coming to me.

And I'd still not touched the forty dollars Pap left me.

I still had that, sewed into my gun belt.

"Wish I could keep you on, son. There just isn't wor k enough."

"I know."

"Come around whenever you like, Rye. We enjoy having you." He pushed his desk drawer shut. "Got an y plans?"

"Yes, sir. I. thought. . . well, I heard tell of som e placer diggings down on Willow. I figured to try that.

Maybe . . . well, I don't aim to ride aimless all my lif e long. I had an idea that if I could get a stake I'd star t ranching."

"That's wise." Hetrick hesitated, then he said, "Son , be careful around town. Kipp got drunk the other nigh t and Burdette got the story out of him. He knows yo u killed Rice Wheeler."

"I'm sorry."

"So am I. But Liza told us she had said somethin g to him about it."

"It was nothing. I don't blame her."

"It started him asking questions. You'll have to b e careful." He took out his pipe and filled it. "Rye, yo u watch him. He's killed three men at the Crossing. He'
s .. . well, he's tricky."

"All right, sir. But I don't expect to be around there."