The Big Corral, page 2
It was enough. Rawe North sailed through the air for a dozen feet, to crash against a table and overturn it in a smashed welter of bottles and glasses. He hit the floor with a crash which jarred the building, and even as he sprawled there, Hartse was upon him, leaping into the air, both big feet bunched to come down on the sprawled figure beneath.
A gasp went up, for it looked as though nothing could save North. Such a fall would have finished most men. But Rawe North, shaken and badly surprised as he was, was no ordinary man. He managed to roll enough to miss that vicious onslaught, and as he raised up, he was gripping a leg of the smashed table in one hand.
Still lying half sprawled, he smashed out with the clubbed leg, and the snap of it as it broke off short across Hartse’s ankle sounded like the pop of a gun. Hartse howled, a stentorian roar to dwarf his earlier yell, and then he lost his footing and sprawled on the floor. Rawe North rolled and was on top of him, slugging at the gory face beneath.
The saloon keeper reached up and got a handful of hair, and his teeth clicked viciously as he dragged North’s head down and tried to bite his nose. A heave rolled North off him, and then they came to their feet again and circled warily, each mutually respectful of the other.
Tripp Devero was watching with that amused glint still in his eyes, but his face was watchful as he kept his gaze on the roustabouts. Marian’s face showed no more emotion than did his own. Far less than that of the crowd.
They looked to be evenly matched, and it was in Devero’s mind that this would be brutal and bloody before it reached its end. North now was taking the offensive. He rushed and swung, and one fist rocked the saloon keeper, landing where his nose was already a bloody smear. But the second blow missed, and Hartse landed in turn, a fair smash to the jaw which staggered North, rocking his head back. Another to the midriff doubled him up, followed by a punch which had him rocking in agony. In that moment victory was with the keeper of the Wheel.
No sympathy showed on the face of Tripp Devero. Rawe North was his rival, and more than that. If Hartse finished him, in a fair fight he had no complaint. A fair fight in this town included few rules. But Hartse was going berserk as he tasted triumph. He had been raised along the waterfront of sundry wharves from New Orleans to Independence, and he knew one sure way to end all quarrels. With his opponent twisted in torment, blinded and helpless for the moment, he prepared to end it in merciless style.
Another gasp went up from the onlookers as they saw the flash of the knife in Hartse’s huge paw, his arm drawing back for the throw. Old-timers about the place had seen the flashing speed of his hurling, the deadly accuracy of a blade which could halve an apple at twenty feet. Even the calm of Marian’s face dissolved in a scream—or at least her mouth was open, but no one heard the sound.
It was drowned in the sharper blast of a revolver, and Hartse stood for a moment, rocking on the balls of his feet, a stupid look of incomprehension washing across the wreck of his face. The knife clattered at his own feet, and then, knees buckling, he sank down to the floor with a lingering reluctance. Only as he reached it did a fresh red stain begin to show on his shirt front beside the huge diamond.
Straightening, still painfully sucking breath into empty lungs, Rawe North looked incredulously at the fallen man, then to the gun in Devero’s hand. Tripp Devero was smiling, but there was strain behind it. His eyes roved the faces of those about him, and he checked the motion of breaking open the gun to punch out the empty shell.
“Time to get out of here—fast!” he hissed at North. “You too, Marian.”
Her face, for an instant, had gone loose and child-like. Now it cleared and she grabbed North’s arm and urged him toward the door. Devero was at their heels, his gun menacing the room. Even so, one of the men paid for this sort of job lunged behind the shelter of the bar and threw a quick shot. It smashed a hanging lamp in line with Devero’s head, sending glass showering down in a reek of oil. He flung back a warning bullet, just above the heads of the panicky crowd, and ducked through the door behind the others.
Boots thudded loud on the plank sidewalk which here ran on two sides of the Paddle Wheel. The night was dark here in the street, the vagrant moon which had been overhead when Devero had entered the saloon now obscured by clouds. More boots pounded the planks from the other side, and he knew what was happening.
The hand which had paid their wages was limp, and no man who had taken Pete Hartse’s pay had held any love for him. But they had drawn that pay and they were impelled now by a sense of loyalty, and if they would hold up their heads among others of their own ilk, they could do no less than kill those in turn who had been responsible for their employer’s fall.
Which meant that they were losing no time. There was a door down at one side, a window on the other. They were using both of them to reach the two streets which flanked the main door, and from those points to converge upon it. The darkness helped, but that was a tenuous advantage at best. More roustabouts would debouch from behind, pocketing them in a three-way squeeze.
Marian Breen knew that as well as either of these men she fled with. They could fight, as had been demonstrated, but fighting against such odds would not be enough. She knew this building as they did not, and she acted swiftly, holding to North’s arm with one hand, reaching with the other to catch at Devero.
“Here,” she urged. “This way, quick!”
It was another door, close beside the main one, though few patrons of the saloon suspected its existence. No mere wood-butcher had hung it in place, but a carpenter who was also an artisan. Outwardly there was no knob on it, no sign to indicate that there was a door or any break in the wall at all. But there was a way to open it, and the secret had long belonged to Marian. Inside was a narrow hallway, leading back to her own dressing room.
Not that this door had been built for the accommodation or convenience of herself or others like her who might work for Pete Hartse. Quite a contrary purpose had been in his mind when he devised it. A notion which she had driven well into the background of his thoughts when she had first been billed here as the Golden-Throated Thrush. For a long while now, secure bolts had closed this door on the inside, just as other bolts had closed the passageway off, where it reached her own dressing room.
But this evening, seeing these two men from the far reaches of the Arkansas out in front, she had acted on sudden impulse before going out to sing, had taken a quick moment to unlock the doors.
Now, inside the passage, she paused to bar the door. It was pitch black in here, and both men stood puzzled, apprehensive, unsure what to do. Then, her hands on their arms, she was guiding them again.
“Here,” she instructed. “Wait a moment.” She opened the door ahead, and they heard another bolt shoot home, then light came as she lit a lamp, adjusted the wick and put the glass chimney on. Only then did they see that it was her dressing room.
“We’re safe enough for the present,” she declared. “Listen!” And they could hear the confusion of the outer night, where those who had sought them searched, baffled, but convinced that somehow they had gotten away. She turned then to look at North, who was himself again.
“You were saying something when Hartse interrupted,” she reminded him coolly.
North eyed her in frank admiration.
“I was sayin’ that I aimed to have the biggest ranch and the best wife in Kansas,” he said. “And I knew you’d see it my way, sweetheart. Ain’t another woman to match you in all this stretch of country. Just as there’s no other man to match me or ranch to match mine. We belong together.”
Devero had been listening with a detached air. Now, coolly, he punched out the empty shells from his gun and inserted fresh ones, closing one eye in a slow wink as he did so.
“Conceited cuss, ain’t he, Marian?” he grinned.
“Conceit?” North whirled on him. “You sided me, in there. Devero, which 1 ain’t forgettin’—”
“We’re both from the same place, both outlanders,” Devero murmured. “Here we stand together against the crowd. That’s all. It don’t make us friends.”
“That’s what I was going to say,” North growled. “I’d side you as quick, under the same circumstances. But it don’t make us friends—ever. We’re both too big, too close neighbors for that—even if it wasn’t for the woman here. Sooner or later, I’ll have to smash you.”
“Or be smashed,” Devero amended, and shoved the gun back in holster.
Marian eyed them curiously.
“In that case,” she said, “I’d have thought you’d have stood aside.”
“I would have, if he’d left the knife out of it,” Devero agreed cheerfully. “But I never could abide knives.”
“Enough of talk,” North said harshly. “You told Hartse tonight that you were through here, Marian. That meant that you’d already decided to go with me.”
“With one of you,” she amended thoughtfully. “You both made big claims. But I’ve told both of you, before, that I’m for sale only to the highest bidder. Just what do you have on that ranch of yours, Rawe?”
“Plenty,” North said confidently. “It’s the biggest ranch in Kansas—bigger than you can ride over in three days. And it’ll be bigger. I’ve fifteen thousand head of cattle runnin’ on my range now, and I’ll double that number. I’ve built the finest house in Kansas—that’s what I’ve been doing since I met you here a year ago, girl. I doubt if there’s a house in St. Louis, even, to match it.”
Her eyes widened slightly, shifted to Devero, seated now on the edge of the dressing table. He was swinging one booted foot and whistling softly between his teeth.
“That’s right, Marian,” he agreed. “About the house. I’ve seen it. Makes my soddie look plumb like a gopher hole.”
“Which is what it will be, when my herds run over it,’’ North added harshly. “I’ve a third more range and twice as many cattle as Tripp, and he’s my biggest rival in Kansas. I’ve worked at more than buildin’ a house this last year. I’ve doubled my graze, drove three trail herds up from Texas. Nobody is going to top my bid!”
Again she looked from one to the other, momentarily seeming a little uncertain of herself. Outside, the confusion had quieted. Devero still swung his spurred boot and whistled and smiled to himself as though amused by it all.
“We’ll be married in the morning and start back right away,” North added. “I’ve got a big wagon fitted up for your accommodation, and a wench to look after your wants along the way.”
Marian nodded, but she shook her head as well.
“Not here, Rawe,” she denied. “Not where I’m known. We’ll be married after we reach your ranch.”
North chuckled in high good humor.
“Aimin’ to look it over first and make sure Tripp can’t top my bid, eh?” he said. “Which suits me fine. You’re the kind of a woman for a man like me to team with. We’ll have such a wedding as Kansas has never seen!”
- 3 -
ST. LOUIS by day was a town which Tripp Devero liked better by night. The dark at least hid some of its rough squalor, around such establishments as the Paddle Wheel, of which there were far too many for his taste. Maybe it was because he was accustomed to the wide reaching spaces of Kansas, of Texas and the lands in between. Country where a man had room in which to breathe. But in any case there had been only one attraction in St. Louis for him, and she was leaving it empty today.
He was saddling his own horse at a livery stable when the marshal came in. A tall man, past his years of flat leanness and unswerving sureness of mind and arm. His height now was muted by the bulge of a paunch, a flabbiness which extended to sagging jowls and mottled cheeks and shone out of reddened watery eyes. Here the law was past the hard incisiveness of the frontier, like the town itself. Unsure, and so inclined to bluster.
“You’re Tripp Devero,” the marshal accused. “From off on the Arkansas.”
Devero nodded, pulling the cinch tight. He unhooked the stirrup from saddle horn and dropped it in place.
“You’ve got me tagged right,” he conceded. “Fame sure travels a long way! Think of me bein’ known here in the city!”
This levity did nothing to dissipate the marshal’s sourness.
“I been lookin’ for you,” he said. “You shot Pete Hartse last night.”
“I should of done it sooner, maybe,” Devero sighed. “Only he didn’t raw me too much the first time I saw him, and then I was out of town quite a spell till last night.”
The marshal stared. Red flowed under his skin, making the mottled effect more toad-like.
“You braggin’ about killin’ a man?” he demanded.
Devero shook his head in shocked surprise.
“Course not,” he said. “But I figgered you was here to express your thanks for me takin’ the chore off your hands. Your town’ll be that much a better place to lI’ve in now.”
The marshal did not argue the point. But he persisted glumly.
“Why’d you have to kill him? I know how he was going to knife yore friend—but killin’s pretty drastic.”
“Whoa up there,” Devero protested. “Rawe North’s no friend of mine. On the other hand, I’d warned I’d see fair play. I don’t often draw a gun, Marshal.” He shook his head, added gravely, “But when I do, it’s for keeps.”
The marshal looked rather helplessly at him as he swung into the saddle, then stood uncertainly aside. Devero gave him an airy salute and rode out into the street. He pulled up, five minutes later, beside a covered wagon which waited with its team of heavy cayuses tied to a hitch-rail. They were true cayuse stock, he observed, but a couple of hundred pounds heavier per animal than the average cow pony. They’d snake that wagon across the prairie a third faster than an Eastern team could manage.
The wagon itself was new, the paint still gleaming, untouched by dust. A Peter Schutter wagon, built in Chicago, made with pioneer travel in mind. These things Devero noted mechanically, but his real attention was for Marian Breen, on the seat of the wagon. A changed Marian from the Thrush of the Paddle Wheel. Gone was her finery of turkey red, replaced by a simple, serviceable traveling dress. But where she should have appeared more drab she shone instead. An inner glow, joyous, anticipatory. She was like a bird released from a cage, ready at long last to try its wings.
The wench, Judy, her face glistening with sweat, was tugging trunks and bags into new orderliness behind the seat. For the moment there was no sign of Rawe North.
Devero swept off his hat, his ready grin that of a carefree boy. He lounged in the saddle, appraising with eyes which, the girl felt, missed no details of what went on. His appearance of light-hearted ease, of careless indifference, was apt to be deceptive.
“I’m sure tickled to see that you’re gettin’ ready to head out for the big lands, Honeycake,” he said. “Just ain’t no place like the edge of things, with plenty of room beyond. How you could stand it cooped up here this long is hard to figure.”
“A woman sometimes sees such things different than a man,” Marian retorted. “But I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Tripp. You say that you’re pleased—when you know that I’m going out there to marry Rawe.”
Devero’s grin lost none of its amusement.
“That’s what you think you’re going out there for,” he said. “Could be you’re wrong. A calf’s still a maverick till it gets a brand on its side and a slit in its ear. How many times a rider casts a loop its way don’t count none till then.”
She studied him, her dark eyes speculative, still puzzled.
“No, I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Tripp,” she repeated. “You’re a strange man. . . . But when I give my word, I stick to it.”
“And I sure wouldn’t love you the way I do if you didn’t,” Devero retorted. “I’ll dance at your wedding, don’t worry. Right now, and though it breaks my heart, I’ll have to be going on ahead of you. Got things to do, back at the Arkansas. Important ones. I just stopped to kiss you good-bye— for this time.”
Before she suspected his intention, he had kneed his horse alongside the wagon, leaned suddenly across and kissed her on the mouth. For a moment sheer surprise held her frozen; her lips were firm but with a yielding softness, sweet like wild strawberries.
Then red flamed across her face like the setting sun breaking through a cloud-bank. Her hand lashed out stingingly across his cheek, so that for a moment the finger-marks showed white and distinct, before flooding dark in their turn. But her voice was curiously breathless.
“You—you—what did you do that for?”
“Wanted to,” Devero said matter-of-factly. “Liked it even better’n I thought I would, too.”
He had been about to say more, blandly disregardful of her fury, but now Rawe North came up, the clatter of his horse’s hoofs like pistol shots on the hard-packed street. His own face was red, and it was apparent that he had seen the whole thing. His voice was raw as his name.
“Damn you, Devero,” he choked. “You go too far!”
“All the way to the Arkansas,” Devero agreed blandly. “Be ridin’ well ahead of you folks. Just stopped to kiss the bride. You don’t know your luck, Rawe.”
“You don’t know yours,” North returned coldly. “If it wasn’t for last night, I’d kill you for what you did just now.”
Devero had already swung his horse about, and it was tossing its head in a vast impatience to be gone. Now he pulled it back again, and there was no levity in his face or voice.
“I told you I was kissin’ the bride,” he reminded. “And, when I feel like it, I’ll do it again!”
Brittleness was in the air, as though it could shatter at a touch, breaking those who breathed it. Devero caught a glimpse of Marian’s face, of the appeal in her eyes, and abruptly his own softened to that old, challenging grin. He lifted his hand in easy salute, cantered down the street and out of sight.
Rawe North swung in the saddle to stare after him, and his face was bleak and uncompromising as he watched.
“One of these days,” he said, “I’ll have to kill him.”
