Knights of the Range, page 24
But soon it dawned upon Holly that no one of them, not even Frayne, nor all of them put together, could be a match for her. She was a woman. Her intuitive powers transcended their cunning. And their vulnerable spot was their devotion to her.
Doane’s death, apparently, was the fore-runner of untoward events out on the range. Holly got an inkling of some fracas that had happened at Gray Hill. Cherokee had been severely wounded out there. But he did not go to bed. Gun-shots were nothing to the Indian. He stayed home, sombre, brooding, silent, an enigma to Holly, except that she sensed he had the savage’s creed of an eye for an eye. Britt seldom ran up to the ranch-house these spring days. He was a troubled, dark-browed man who adopted a cheerful mask the moment he espied her. Brazos drank hard, but at length, at Holly’s earnest importunity, he promised to stop, and kept his promise. It was noticeable that Frayne seldom stayed away over night from the rancho. The cattle, at least thirty thousand head or more, which now constituted two-thirds of the Ripple herd, could be seen in the valley from the hill-top. Brazos and the half-breeds, with Jackson, Flinty and Stinger, rode hard and late, seldom getting back until long after dark, and often staying out all night. But there were no more extended stays away from the ranch. Jim, Gaines, Tennessee, Doane, Rebel, and Frayne patrolled the lower end of the triangle of range that led into the pass. Holly saw them often with her field-glass, riding often, always watching, watching from some height. When she missed Tennessee for several days she had her doubts, but kept them to herself. He never came back. And she discovered for a certainty that Stinger nursed a crippled leg, which, when she inquired, he said had been hurt in a fall. But Holly’s learning eyes detected a bullet-hole in his chaps.
These were alarming signs, and as the spring days warmed into early summer, they increased. Mex Southard returned one day alone, severely wounded. He had almost bled to death. When Holly saw him, two days later, he was recovering. She did not even attempt to make him talk. A day later, when the outfit got back, Flinty was missing from the ranks.
“Am I losing any cattle?” asked Holly once, casually, of Brazos.
“Yu air not,” he drawled, with his old cool smile. “But thet’s aboot all yu’re not losin’.”
“Brazos, you know I prefer to lose my cattle to my cowboys.”
“Aw, what’s a cowboy now an’ then?”
Ann was Holly’s greatest source of information. She was not one of the reticent Western girls; she liked gossip; and would linger at the post or the store, or when the stage came in. Outside news did not concern Holly, or she would have added immeasurably to her burden. The Lincoln County War was on, threatening to involve eastern New Mexico in its turmoil. Chisum was not mixed up in that, but the several bands of desperadoes who were had been stealing his cattle, and he had declared war to the hilt against rustlers. Bandits were operating between Santa Fe and Las Animas.
These items were interesting, but not so thought-provoking as the news of a cattlemen’s organization, headed by Sewall McCoy, to protect themselves against cattle thieves. To Holly, who shared Britt’s opinion of McCoy, this seemed far-fetched and was very probably merely rumor. But the Western girl had a different point of view.
“Dad was in thet move,” she said, “an’ he knowed, along with all the ranchers, there was a nigger in the wood-pile somewhere. There’s bands of rustlers wal known. An’ there must be others—one big outfit anyhow—thet only themselves know. Dad’s suspicion of McCoy cost him his life. He oughtn’t to have spoken out like thet. But Dad was always talkin’, an’ if he had a drink or two he was loco. People say thet McCoy ain’t the man at the head of this secret combine, ’cause if he was he’d not have shot Dad at the drop of a hat. But somebody is. An’ thet’s what makes the hell. All the cattlemen suspect each other an’ are afraid to say so. They’ll take it out on some poor cowboys, Skylark says. An’ they might be in the Ripple outfit.”
“Oh, Ann—impossible!” ejaculated Holly, aghast.
“Wal, Talman an’ Trinidad showed yellow, didn’t they? An’ Dillon before them. No other outfit on the range has thet bad a record. I tell you, Sky is worried. An’ he says Britt doesn’t sleep at nights.”
“But that must be because they are fighting to save my cattle,” protested Holly.
“Mebbe. But not all. What’s a few cattle? They don’t even know how many you got. They can’t count them. You’re runnin’ too many fer these times.”
“That’s true. I’d sell half of my stock, and more, if they could be driven to the railroad. But Britt dare not take riders away from here for the drive. It is a dreadful situation, Ann.”
“Don’t you let it upset you, Holly,” rejoined the Western girl. “We women have just got to stand it. An’ not let the men know how we feel. Skylark says to me, ‘How’n hell can Brazos or Frayne go out an’ meet this killer Rankin, when if either of them was bad hurt it’d aboot kill Holly?’”
Holly’s heart contracted in her breast.
“Who’s Rankin?”
“Jeff Rankin, late of them bad Kansas cattle towns. I seen him the day McCoy shot Dad. A little tan-faced man with eyes like a weasel. You feel queer when he looks at you. I’ll always remember him because he told McCoy to wait an’ give Dad the benefit of a doubt. But McCoy was full of red-eye an’ wild to kill somebody.”
“Horrible!—This Rankin…. Who is he?”
“Just another bad hombre, only worse. They say he has killed a dozen men. No quiet, sober gunman, like the real ones, but a quarrelsome, ugly, blood-huntin’ desperado, quick as lightnin’ on the draw, an’ a dead shot.”
“Why is this Rankin mentioned particularly in connection with Brazos—and Frayne?”
“Wal, they say Rankin an’ Frayne clashed back in Kansas—thet Frayne killed Rankin’s pard. Anyway it’s common talk in town thet Rankin is lookin’ for Frayne.”
“Yes? And where does Brazos come in?” asked Holly, strangely disturbed by a totally unknown hot beat and swell along her veins.
“Sky says it’s none of Brazos’ mix. But Brazos will take up any cowboy’s quarrel. An’ since Laigs Mason is gone he has cottoned to Frayne…. Somethin’ will come of it.”
“Oh dear! … Ann, can’t these—these terrible things be avoided?”
“When I was twelve my mother told me Dad had wronged some man somehow or other. An’ this man dared Dad to come out to fight. Wal, mother wouldn’t let Dad go. An’ do you know, Holly, thet ruined Dad with his friends an’ neighbors, an’ he had to clear out. It was at some fort in Kansas where Dad worked, durin’ the war. We moved farther west an’ since then I’ve seen a heap of frontier where men count for what they are.”
“If one man is called out by another—to fight—whether it’s justifiable or not, he must go or be branded a coward?”
“Thet’s it, Holly. An’ it’s unfair, to my thinkin’. Because a bad man can force a good one to meet him. The moral of it doesn’t seem to be considered. Every man has to defend himself with a gun, an’ if he can’t, he just doesn’t belong to the West. Thet applies to all plain Westerners. But it shore applies more to them who have killed others. It’s a kind of hideous curiosity. On the part of the fighters to see who can draw quickest! On the part of the crowd to see who gets killed first!”
“So I have to live through that?” queried Holly.
“Wal, dear, it won’t be so bad so long as you don’t love one of them,” declared Ann, with a laugh.
“But suppose I did?”
“What?”
“Why—why love one of them?” Holly faltered.
“Well, you’d have to pray awful hard thet your man beat the other to his gun…. There was a girl over here in Roswell who loved both men. They fought over her an’ it ended bad.”
“What happened?”
“They killed each other, an’ she had to go back to an old beau—a no-good cowboy—an’ marry him.”
“How very sad!” murmured Holly, constrainedly, wanting both to scream and laugh. It was evident that this matter-of-fact Ann would never have understood her poignant agony. Would she be compelled to suffer such suspense—to wait—wait—wait! to see if Renn came home. Worse, she might be with him when this ruffian Rankin contrived to bring about a meeting. These men did not think about women, love, home, children, happiness. The West was in the making. Holly had always to come back to her share in this profound epic—to stifle the cries of her soul and fight to be strong like Ann Doane. But she could not do it. And thinking, pondering, brooding she felt a birth in her of anger at the times, at the men who tortured her.
Holly was haunted by this thing. She vacillated between despair and a dawning strength. She would never wholly conquer her sensitive, poignant emotions, and she could conceive of a West too hard, too unendurable for her if it robbed her of love. But this growing shadow only increased her love—only added fuel to the fire—only brought out her infinite capacity for tenderness and passion. The life of the range out there struck at her heart. Holly awaited something, a trial, the very suggestion of which blanched her cheeks and sent the blood curdling back from her cold skin.
Holly awoke under a strange boding spell. It was not depression, nor the after effect of a dreadful dream. She had not before borne the weight of such an inexplicable consciousness, though she had often labored under what her cowboys called “hunches.” This was a strong apprehension of an untoward fatality and she could not drive it away.
May with its wind and dust, in melting snows, had passed into June. The golden light that filtered through the foliage over her windows proclaimed the approach of summer. Holly got up and into her riding garb. She had not been on a horse for days, and the reason was because Britt would not allow her to ride out upon the range. But she concluded it would be better to ride up and down the lane rather than not at all. Her Mexican servants were as cheerful and complaisant as usual. Roseta had been down to the village the night before, and prattled of the commonplace happenings. After breakfast, as was her habit, Holly went out on the porch with her field-glass to survey the range. This habit had become fraught with uncertainty and suspense, almost as painful as had been her daily watch for the return of her cowboys from Las Animas. She dreaded to search the wide expanse of grass-land for her riders, for there was no telling what they might be engaged in these days.
Far out along the Cottonwood Trail she espied a string of riders coming. That would be Brazos and the outfit with which Britt had been combing the range of late. Not so many riders as usual! They were driving a number of unsaddled stock ahead, probably the remuda. She caught a gleam of bobbing packs. The dust clouds rather disputed a leisurely return. These days the cowboys were always in a hurry.
Britt had expected Brazos back and had not been able to hide his concern from Holly. In fact Britt had not been up to see her in the last forty-eight hours, an omission that seemed far from reassuring. Frayne had become more elusive than ever.
Holly reflected on these matters while she slowly moved the glass from the incoming riders along the widening strip of range between the hills and the creek. Cattle blackened the range in spots, and speckled it in others. The cottonwoods were in full foliage, green and beautiful against the gray background. She searched the range beyond the stream as far as San Marcos, shining brightly in the June sunlight, without finding any more riders. Frayne and the cowboys on duty near the rancho could usually be picked up of a morning. But the purple and gray levels out there did not reward Holly’s anxious survey. A film of dust, however, hazed her clear vision, and this made her aware that there was movement of cattle or riders closer in to the ranch.
All at once the circle of Holly’s glass was filled by a compact group of horsemen. They were on the San Marcos road scarcely a mile from the corrals. Holly looked again, suddenly struck by surprise and dread. These were not cowboys. They did not have that free, easy, graceful look so characteristic of her riders.
“I wonder who they are,” she soliloquized, and thought of the bands of rustlers known to ride often in the open. Holly had seen more than one group of that kind. These horsemen gave her the impression of being ranchers and cattlemen on some business-like errand to the trading-post or the village, possibly her ranch. She left the glass on the porch and faced down the hill in search of Britt, revolving in mind disturbing contingencies.
On the way down the brush and trees obscured view of the range, and when she reached the open she was on a level. In the immediate foreground stood the long bunk-house, with its adjoining mess-hall and kitchen, Skylark’s cabin and several adobe shacks, beyond which Holly could not see.
“Britt,” she called anxiously, as she mounted the porch. He did not answer. Holly knocked at the open door. The bunk-house was empty. She went through to the kitchen, expecting surely to find Jose, but he was gone also.
Holly hurried along the lane toward Skylark’s cabin. Ann was never anywhere but home. To Holly’s amaze, however, she found the door open, Ann’s apron lying upon the threshold, where she had evidently hurriedly flung it. Immediately then Holly connected Britt’s absence, and Ann’s as well, with that visiting band of horsemen. The road, which was the Old Trail, led between the pastures and the ranch-barns.
The lane appeared long and dusty, and empty. Corral after corral lined the range side, all opening into the big stock-yard. On Holly’s left towered a dusty green hedge-fence. Inside the irrigation ditch babbled and gurgled on its way like a brook, to pour presently into the high-banked, willow-bordered pool. Ducks and geese swam and squawked in the amber sunlight; blackbirds shone black against the green foliage. The bray of burros, whistle and trample of colts, the bawling of calves, added further to the sense of pastoral ranch life.
Holly reached the last corral on the lane. She heard harsh voices of men, but could not distinguish words. The huge barn loomed above the fence. Holly halted with her hand pressed to her breast. This did not seem a procedure to alarm her prodigiously, yet it did. What if that band of horsemen had not gone on to the post? But where were her riders? What had become of Frayne? And the answer to both was that they were here.
She peeped around the corner of the corral, into the wide court. A score of saddle horses! Holly saw several she thought she recognized. Riders in the road! Men in a circle on the long slant that led up to the wide door! Dark forms outlined against the sunlght beyond the wide floor-space between the walls! She saw women, too.
Holly turned back to run into the open gate of the corral. She followed the fence of peeled poles along toward the barn, past the horses, beyond the groups of riders, as far as she could go. There in the corner she gazed between the fence-poles. Her position was parallel to the line of riders on the runway up to the barn. The great doors had been rolled back on each side.
Britt, bare-headed, his face troubled and dark, paced the entrance to the barn. Frayne occupied the center place. Havoc lined his pale stern features. His eyes appeared to be gray blanks, peering over Britt’s head, up at the ranch-house. Back of Frayne to the left stood grim cattlemen Holly recognized with augmenting fear. But when she swept her gaze to the opposite side and saw Sewall McCoy, heavy-jowled, lowering of face, standing before some cowboys, panic gripped her with petrific power.
“—— —— ootrage!” Britt cursed fiercely. “I’m tellin’ you, Clements. You’ve been fooled by this slick hombre.”
“Thet remains to be seen,” declared Clements, a grizzled cattleman, rugged of feature. “We’re all gettin’ fooled by somebody, thet’s shore. Hayward hyar disliked this job as much as me. But we had to organize. McCoy has proof thet three of your riders was crooked. Dillon, Talman an’ a cowboy called Trinidad. You don’t deny thet, Britt.”
“Helno! I cain’t ’cause it was true,” retorted Britt, spitting as if he had hot ashes in his mouth. “They’re daid, aren’t they? Wal, who visited thet crime on their haids? My men! An’ they were the last of crooked cowboys in my ootfit.”
“Thet’s what you think, Britt,” spoke up Hayward, a tall, sallow, sharp-eyed rancher. “But you was fooled three times, an’ you can be again. McCoy swears he’ll prove it.”
“We’ll show proofs, soon as Slaughter gets here,” declared McCoy, loud-voiced and aggressively important. “He an’ his outfit ought to be here now.”
“By Gawd, he’ll have to prove it!” hissed Britt. “Listen, Hayward, an’ you Spencer, an’ you Clements. Cain’t you see this means a range war?”
“No, I can’t,” protested Hayward, testily. “We’re not goin’ to be drawn into thet Lincoln County mess.”
“You’ll make a mess of our own, right heah.”
“Britt, for an old Texas Ranger you’re not showin’ much sense,” declared Spencer, a short, thickset, bearded man. “Didn’t Ripple want you to collect the toughest outfit of cowboys in this hyar whole country?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Wal, haven’t you got it?”
“You bet yore life I hev,” flashed Britt. “An’ thet’s why I tell you McCoy is skatin’ on the thinnest kind of ice. An’ if you back him up in this ootrageous deal you’ll all be ——”
“—— —— it, Britt, this man is an outlaw!” interrupted Hayward, angrily.
“He was, yes. But not heah. Not in New Mexico. He’s as honest as I am—an’ a damn sight squarer an’ finer than any one of you.”
“Britt, is it an insult or a threat you’re givin’ us?” demanded Hayward.
“Both!”
Clements and Spencer shifted uneasily. Britt’s passion had told upon them. Hayward appeared to dominate the trio.
“Men,” interposed McCoy, insolently, “you’re wastin’ a lot of breath. This deal is up to Frayne.”
