The Big Corral, page 13
“Cowan, eh? That’ll do to tell tenderfeet. I’ve heard too much of that red head of yours, McQueen.”
They dragged him inside the wagon, where the wind was shut away. The fear in McQueen was understandable then, knowing who he was. But now he was regaining control of himself.
“They took my store and turned me out,” he whined. “Kicked me out of my own post at gun-point! I tried to find somebody to help me against them, and I couldn’t. Then I remembered that you might be comin’, like they said, and I turned back. I figured you’d help me.”
“Who was it turned you out?” North demanded.
“There was near a dozen busted in on me. Men from Texas. I didn’t know them.”
“But you took their money to sell out, knowing we’d starve to pay for your treachery,” North snarled. He thrust his hand into the pocket of the heavy coat which he had stripped off McQueen, pulled it out with a thick wad of bills clutched tight, and riffled through them.
“Here’s what they paid you—blood money. And now you were figurin’ it was safe to head back and have a look. Where’s that grub cached?”
McQueen shrank back, attempting no denial.
“I—I don’t know,” he gurgled. “They just took it—”
North hit him across the mouth, a blow which brought blood to smashed lips.
“It won’t be far off,” he said shrewdly. “Lead us to it!”
“I tell you I can’t—I don’t know—”
“Doll,” North instructed, “find a couple of stones. We’ll strip him and tie him fast, head and feet. And leave him there.”
McQueen’s eyes dilated.
“I—I’ll show you,” he shrieked. “They’ll kill me—but I’ll show you.”
“Make sure you do,” North warned grimly. “For we’ll sure kill you if you don’t.”
They found the cache, as North had suspected, less than an hour away. Here was an old cabin in the brakes, well hidden; stocked now with the food and supplies which had been at the post, with several wagons which had been used for transport concealed not far away. A quick survey showed that the store had been well stocked.
There were four other men inside the cabin, crouching about a big stove, fuzzed with liquor and inertia. One of them was Karth.
The surprise was complete. So much so that there was no resistance. North looked at them and shrugged.
“Let them go,” he instructed. “They can even have a gun between them if they want—but no horses. And no food. They didn’t aim for us to have any. But if you should live, Karth, keep out of my way. Next time, I’ll finish what I started back in Texas.”
Food. Here was an ample supply now to last them through the rest of the drive, extra wagons, blankets in plenty, warm clothing for men shivering and threadbare. North was silent a long while, looking back, before he gave the order to move ahead again, the next morning. Doll could guess what he was thinking. Pleasant was back there. If they had found this cache a little sooner—
But they were going on, as North had promised. And now, as if relenting, the wind shifted to a new quarter. It was raw, but it held warmth cradled in its chill. By mid-forenoon it was definite. Chinook!
The snow was graying, sinking, beginning to form puddles. Grass began to emerge. The sun shone fitfully, water was running. New life crept back into the cattle. It infected the men like a potent virus.
“We’ll reach Kansas,” North repeated. “When the grass grows green, we’ll be there with it!”
- 22 -
THE PAUNCHY marshal checked in his stride, and his pockmarked face grew dour. A certain habitual jauntiness seemed gone from the walk of the man approaching along the street, but there was no mistaking the man himself. Wherever he might be, he stood out like a roan steer among a herd of red ones. The marshal lifted a hand.
“You back in town!” he growled.
Tripp Devero stopped. He looked at the marshal without really seeing him, his mind elsewhere.
“Yeah, I’m back,” he agreed. “A bad egg can take a lot of settin’ on without hatchin’.”
“We’ve had too many bad eggs in St. Louis,” the marshal said bluntly. “I was hopin’ I’d seen the last of you, last fall.”
Devero’s face showed a momentary gleam of the old devil-may-care impulse.
“Now ain’t that a coincidence!” he drawled. “I was hopin’ just exactly the same thing—about you!”
“We been tightenin’ up here,” the minion of the law added, choking down his wrath. “No packin’ of guns allowed in town any more. Hand over that hogleg you’re wearin’. When you get ready to pull your freight, you can tell around and pick it up.”
Devero hesitated, then shrugged. He had other and bigger things on his mind, and what difference did it make? There was no point in quarreling with this pompous man who strutted behind a tin shield.
“Suit yourself,” he agreed, and handed it over. “But take good care of it. I’ll be wantin’ it one of these days.”
“The sooner the better,” the marshal nodded. He started to turn away, swung back on an afterthought.
“You’ll be safer, this way,” he added. “Not gettin’ yourself into trouble. After what you did, last time you was here, Id sure have to run you in, you comin’ back. Only you had better luck ‘n what you deserved.”
“Luck? I could stand to hear about some of that,” Devero said idly.
“You ain’t got Pete Hartse’s blood on yore hands, like we figgered,” the marshal explained. “Sure thought he was dead. . . . But he s’prised folks and got well.”
That was news, and. considering it, Devero hesitated, half minded to request his gun back again. Then he shrugged. The only way to get it, of course, would be to take it away from the marshal, and that would unjug trouble. And at the moment he had no desire for more of that. He turned and went on, climbing the stairs presently to the second floor of a hotel, pausing before the door of a room with southern exposure. Judy opened to his knock, then discreetly withdrew.
Marian was seated in a chair by the window, and she turned with a smile at his entrance—a wan ghost of the look which had once brightened her face. Devero’s grin was wide, but it too seemed to lack something of its old-time quality.
“That streak of sunshine sure makes you look prettier’n a crocus just poppin’ its head above the snow,” he said approvingly. “You feelin’ better today, eh?”
“Hello, Tripp,” she said, and listlessness dragged in the words. “You always say such nice things.”
“That’s because I have such a nice gal to say them to.” He tossed his hat toward a corner, drew up another chair, and his eyes were anxious. “Maybe you ought to get outside, in the real sun. Might do you good.”
“I’d like to,” Marian agreed. “Only I just don’t feel up to it. You’ve been awfully good to me, Tripp. A lot better than I deserve. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. But I just can’t seem to take any interest in—in anything.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You’ve been pretty sick. One of these days we’ll have you singin’ like the old-time Thrush again.”
She smiled but made no answer, her hands white and slender in her lap. Devero looked out the window to conceal his own anxiety. She had recovered, so far as a medico could do anything for her. But not even the return to St. Louis had had any appreciable effect. Only that morning the doctor had confessed his helplessness.
“It’s a queer case,” he had admitted. “A strange fever to begin with, which dragged her down physically. But there’s more than that to it. I suppose you could call it an illness of the mind. Some of my colleagues would say I’m crazy, that there is no such thing. But that’s the way it seems to me. And I don’t know what to do for it. She needs something to rouse her—to get her to take an interest in living again. She could do things if she wanted to—” He lifted his hands in resignation.
Devero blamed himself. She had been the old, flaming Marian when he had entered that cook house on the scarred bank of the Arkansas. All that he had wanted was a kiss, and it had never occurred to him that she could care about Rawe North or anything that he had save his possessions. It looked as if he had been wrong all the way.
The illness which had been descending upon her then had of course been partially responsible for her fainting in his arms and the long unconsciousness which had followed. But what he had done must have made it worse. She had been so excited, had reacted so violently, that the effects still persisted. And now—
He looked out the window. Dirty snow was melting, forming little puddles in the street. The winter was well advanced, and it was a warm day here in town. But St. Louis had had no effect upon her. Nothing seemed to help.
“I heard a piece of news that might interest you,” he volunteered. “Seems I didn’t shoot as straight as I figured, last time I was in town. Anyway, Pete Hartse fooled everybody by getting well.”
She looked up quickly, really interested this time.
“He—he recovered?” she whispered. “Everybody thought he was dead, that night.”
“Yeah. He looked it, all right. The marshal was just tellin’ me about him, though, so I guess it’s straight.”
“I’m—glad,” Marian said softly. “Glad that you didn’t kill him, I mean, Tripp.”
Devero rubbed at his chin.
“Things sure get mixed up, don’t they?” he commented. “If I hadn’t drilled him, he’d have finished North about half a second later. And then you wouldn’t have traveled the way you did, and maybe you wouldn’t have got sick at all. And the way it is—”
He shook his head, allowing the words to trail off to silence. Marian had already lapsed into her usual apathy, her brief flash of interest gone. That was what worried him, as it did the doctor. She’d ought to be able to get up and do things, go out in the sunshine on a day like this. But she was almost as helpless as a baby. She had walked from her bed in the next room to this chair, but leaning heavily on the arm of Judy. It was beyond him.
Reports coming in from the west were disturbing. It was a hard winter, out on the Kansas prairies, one of the worst in many years. One storm after another, bitter cold. Big Ben was a good man, of course, and he’d do all that was humanly possible to look after the ranch and the herds. But Devero knew that he ought to be there himself. He’d been away, most of the time now, for going on half a year.
Yet how could he go away and leave Marian here, in such shape? He felt responsible for her, and he had to look after her. At least, he was doing all that he could, the best he knew. If only it would do some good!
She had said that she liked to have him sit with her. But beyond that she seemed to take little interest. He had tried to talk to her about a variety of subjects, hoping to find something which would rouse her to interest. But beyond an occasional brief flash, nothing seemed able to penetrate the lethargy that had taken possession of her. Even that news about Pete Hartse—
Speak of the devil! The door was opening behind them, with a sort of stealthy lack of sound, and he turned to see Hartse bulking huge in the doorway.
Sickness had had little effect upon the saloon keeper. While it had played havoc with his possessions, causing the closing of the Paddle Wheel, the scattering abroad of those who had contributed to his wealth, it had not made much difference physically. Once he had started to recover, his tremendous vitality had put him back on his feet as it would have with the grizzly bear he so much resembled. If he had lost any weight, he had regained it in the interval.
His eyes, small and reddish again like those of the bear, roved from one to the other as he stepped inside and closed the door. Devero came to his feet, watchful, but with sudden hope growing in him. Maybe this would rouse Marian!
Marian was looking at Hartse, quick-breathing, her eyes widening. But after a darting look at her, Hartse centered his attention on Devero.
“So you’re back in town!” he growled. “The marshal was just tellin’ me he’d seen you!”
And that’s why you’ve got nerve enough to come here! Devero thought. That shadow of the law barks at your signal—and he’s told you he took my gun!
Aloud he said, his voice indifferent:
“Old home week, ain’t it? Did you want somethin’ Hartse?”
“There’s two things I come for.” Having satisfied himself that the marshal had informed him correctly, Hartse allowed his gaze to shift to Marian, his eyes boldly appraising. “One thing, now that you’re back in town, girl, you can come back to your old job. I’m openin’ up again.”
A faint pulse of color flowed in Marian’s pale cheeks. A hand fluttered toward her throat.
“That’s nice of you, Pete. Only I—I couldn’t. I’ve been sick. I—I couldn’t sing—”
“You need me to look after you—which I’m aimin’ to do,” Hartse growled. “I’ll soon have you perky as ever.” He swung his regard back to Devero.
“That’s one thing I come here for. The other’s to settle with you—you damned interferin’ cow nurse!”
Belatedly Devero understood what he had in mind, the cold ruthlessness of the man which had made him a power along the riverfront—a power successfully challenged only the one time, and then by him. Hartse was neither the man to forget nor forgive.
It might be the new rule in this town that men were not to pack guns. A good rule to enforce against outlanders. From the moment that Hartse had entered the room Devero had observed, without surprise, that it did not apply to him. He bossed the man who pretended to administer the law, and a forty-five swung openly in his holster. And now, with the cold deliberateness of a crouching puma preparing to pounce, Hartse was dragging at his iron.
A scream tore in Marian’s throat, but she was too far away, even had she been able to do anything. Hartse had come here to kill a man, and he was going about it as he had always done with such chores, without hesitation or squeam-ishness. It could be that his sickness had slowed his speed a little, but not much. And in this case he had no great need for haste.
Or so he figured it. Therein lay Devero’s only chance. He had given up his holstered gun at the marshal’s demand, but he was too old a hand to go around gun-naked. He carried a hide-out weapon, and now, late though it was, he tried to get it out. Knowing even as he did so that he would be too slow, against the cold treachery aimed against him.
Marian was screaming, or it might have been the echo of her first wild cry. Devero was not sure. For gun-blasting was loud above it, and he staggered to the shock of a heavy bullet, poised a desperate moment and was twisted down as by a giant hand. Even then, the smoking muzzle of Hartse’s gun was turning to center on him again, the face behind it as coldly malignant as that of a rattlesnake.
With a supreme effort of faltering muscles. Devero had his own gun clear. He did not bother to raise it, merely tipped the muzzle up and squeezed the trigger. He saw the sudden splinter in the floor where Hartse’s second bullet struck, just in front of his face, and then, as his own gun grew too heavy to hold, he noticed that Hartse, wobbling upon his feet, was going down with a crash to shake the floor. Always he seemed to fall that way. fighting back even in death.
Shrieks were still tearing in her throat—gasping cries which almost choked her. But now Marian was upon her feet and running across the room, then to drop down and pillow the head of Tripp Devero in her lap, while his blood stained her dress.
- 23 -
THE CIMARRON had been in flood. Melting snows, hurried on by another chinook wind which blew across the plains and wiped the land clean again. A thousand tributaries poured their offering to the river, and the flood ran strong. Two men died and two hundred head of cattle were swept away in the crossing, but what was either one or the other? Nothing of consequence, so far as North was concerned, once they were on the far shore.
For now the snow was gone, and there was no other stream of consequence lying between them and their destination. It had been an epic fray, this of men and cattle against the winter. No man of them all but had suffered, with pinched cheeks and frost-bitten ears and nose, frozen fingers and toes. North’s own ears had swollen as though like a moose he was sprouting antlers out from his head, and they had been tender to the touch for weeks, peeling away in chunks.
But his indomitable will had driven them on—men and cattle alike. Of the seven thousand head with which he had left Texas, sixty-six hundred were coming to the grass along the Arkansas, and their increase would far more than make up the loss. A handful of men had died, or disappeared—no one had ever seen anything of the trio whom he had dispatched after Karth, with orders to bring him back or not return themselves. They had not returned.
Now at last spring was greening the land again, a faint flush of color which ran up the slopes and dipped in darker color in the draws. Sprinkled with the advance host of flowers which lifted prodigal heads to the warming sun. Grass to set the gaunted herd half mad with its taste, but interspersed with plenty of old grass from the year before to put meat back on their ribs.
Plenty of men had said it couldn’t be done. That every one of them, on four feet or two, would die before the winter gave way reluctantly to spring. Plenty among his own crew. Well, he’d shown them! He was Rawe North, and this herd, this drive back to the Rail Road Track, was only a small part of his plan. The biggest part still lay ahead, and because of that nothing had stopped him, or was going to.
There was a settlement to be made—here on the banks of the flood-fed Arkansas! A settlement, and the winter had hardened his mood for the making of it.
Here was deeper green—rich and succulent now, where the fire had swept. A fair land in the warming sun, for as far as the eye could reach, and his—all his! And what was not his already he would take!
“Let the herd go,” North instructed. “They can drift as they please for a while—it won’t be far, on clear grass such as this.”
That was true enough. Here, where the fire had cleaned out the old, was all Rail Road range. They would stay on its unmixed freshness of their own accord.
