Marauders' Moon (16 page)

Mitch dragged himself to his feet. He was so weak with relief that he could only mumble his thanks. As he was going out, Bannister said, “Better bunk at Mooney's now, Mitch. It's safer.”

When Mitch was gone, Bannister sat back in his chair and cursed softly. Suddenly he said to Hugo, “Who was supposed to get him?”

“Two of the boys. Good men, I thought.”

“Pay them off and tell them to get out of the country!”

“Is that wise?” Hugo asked.

Bannister was about to reply, then he closed his mouth and smiled slightly. “All right. Keep them. I'll have a chance to tend to them.”

Hugo said, “What about Mitch? He'll be asleep over there now.”

“Not now,” Bannister said thoughtfully. “Not around here, either. He's had a scare. Maybe we can still use him.”

“Be careful, Wake.”

“I will. But not now.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

At the Broken Arrow, camp was made the first night under the huge cottonwoods, back of the house. Buck had already talked to Mrs. Partridge, Charley, and the four remaining hands. He had told them that they need not stay with him if they wished to leave, but Buck Tolleston bred a strange loyalty. They all wanted to stay, quarters or no quarters, and were willing to wait for their pay.

While Martha and Mrs. Partridge got a meal together from the food stored in the fruit cellar, Buck looked around. The barns and corrals and wagon sheds and everything in them was burned, of course. The house still stood, but every bit of wood that went into it was burned. The roof was off, the interior gutted, and nothing remained but a solid, blackened shell.

Buck had always considered this place temporary, little more than a camp which he would live in until he had taken his old place—Wake Bannister's Dollar spread—away from him. But now that it was in ruins he realized what deep affection he had held for it. Here was where his girl had grown to womanhood, where he had spent some of the best years of his life.

He returned to camp under the trees and ate supper. There was little need for talk. All were thinking of the task ahead of them. They turned in after supper and slept soundly.

Next morning, Martha did what little could be done around the place before the work of construction began again. Day before yesterday she had ridden out to meet Britt, and he had not appeared. Of course all this stupid and bloody fighting which they both hated could have made it impossible for him to meet her, but she wanted to see him. The chances of their ever being married seemed more hopeless now, in the light of what had happened yesterday and the night before. It was a wall that stood between them, growing ever higher, for Martha could not forgive this cruel and senseless ravaging of the Broken Arrow. Still less could she forgive the mass murder that had taken place in Bull Foot. And, try as she might, she could not forget that the man behind all this was Britt Bannister's father.

All in all, she was bewildered. She wanted someone to talk to, someone with a calm head. Too, she knew that marriage with Britt was out of the question for years now, since her father would need her help. And the thought of Buck Tolleston ever resigning himself to her marriage with a Bannister was fantastic, in the light of what had happened.

Another thing she wanted to ask Britt. How was it that this Webb Cousins, whom Britt had promised to guard and keep, had been in the vanguard of these raiders? Had they turned loose every mad dog in Wintering County? With a little shudder she thought of the two dead men, Lute and Shorty, who still lay in the wagon box over where the barn used to be. This morning their graves were being dug.

She looked at the house, and the sight of it depressed her. Turning away from it, she strolled up the hill. Once on the ridge, she sat down in the shade of a cedar and relaxed. Presently she noticed off to her right an object which she could not identify. Curiosity finally compelled her to rise and go over to it. It was a length of rope, one end of which was sawed raggedly. Beside it was a shard from a broken bottle. They both lay near the tracks of a horse. Picking up the rope, Martha noticed something like dried blood on it.

She dropped it, wondering about it. Looking closer, she could see the tracks of where a man had dismounted from his horse, and where he had gone over to where two other horses stood. Then the tracks turned and headed down the hill. They were far apart, indicating that the man was in a hurry. Curious, Martha followed them. They took her down to the corner of where the wagon shed used to stand, and then they headed for the house. The man had been running then, for only the toes of his boots left tracks and they were deep in the dirt and far apart. She went on. At the corner of the house they paused, and then there were other marks rounding the corner, new marks. It took her several minutes to puzzle this out, but she got the clue. They were hand prints in the dirt. She could see them in several places where they had not been blotted out by the raiders' boot marks.

These hand prints and the print of a man's knees, followed the line of the house until they came to where the porch had been. She saw, too, where a rock had been moved from its place, but she could not find the rock.

Standing there, she tried to piece all this together.

Three horses had been up on the hill. A piece of bloody rope, cut raggedly. Of course! Cut with the bottle. But cut from where? And then she remembered Webb Cousins, standing in the door of the house talking to the man who was demanding the combination of the safe from her. When Webb had made his threat, holstered his gun, she had noticed his bleeding wrists. “Then he was brought over here tied on his horse!”

She began to wonder why. If he had been tied on his horse, then he would have to wait until those other two were out of sight to free himself. That chance would be supplied when the other two were talking to her. Then it was Webb Cousin's tracks that she had followed. He had run down to the house and crawled from the corner of it to the porch.

Why?

She tried to remember that night. There had been a man standing in the door, training a gun on them while the other man walked across the room. But the man in the door wasn't Cousins. Then how did Cousins get there—and get a gun, for wasn't he a prisoner? Or was he?

She stood there, trying to puzzle it out. Then she walked across the corral lot, hunting for Charley. She saw him and another man digging up near the edge of the timber and set out to walk the distance.

Charley ceased work when she approached. He glanced at the bulk under a tarp off under the trees and came over to her.

“Charley, what happened the night we got burned out? Where did you come in?”

“I was asleep in the bunk house,” Charley said slowly, rubbing his bald head. “I heard the racket of a lot of horses comin'. I knowed it couldn't be Buck comin' back, but I didn't know exactly what it was. I got my guns and headed for the house. I seen the light. Comin' up close to the porch, I stumbled on a man lyin' there. Then I looked up and seen that rider whippin' out a gun and before I could do anything, he'd shot. Then I cut down on him. You know the rest. Them riders came up and you made me give up my gun.”

“I know. But you say you stumbled over a man. Which man?”

Charley jerked his thumb toward the tarp. “One of them.”

“Was he shot?”

Charley shook his head. “I don't reckon. His head was bashed in.”

That would account for the rock, Martha thought. Cousins had used it as a weapon. He had knocked this man in the head, grabbed his weapon, and killed the other man. She thanked Charley and turned away.

Walking back, she tried to remember what Cousins had said that night. When the first man said to give him a hand, Cousins had said the only hand he would get was a filled one. That was a threat to kill him, and he had. But why? So he could loot the safe? For the first time since that night, she began to wonder.

Her thoughts were disturbed by seeing two riders headed up the road to the house. One was a woman. It was probably Mrs. Anders come over to offer help or ask for it. Martha hurried ahead, feeling a deep sympathy for this woman whose husband was dead and whose home had been burned.

It was Mrs. Anders, a gray-haired gentlewoman in a man's rough clothes. Her face was lifeless, and she did not have the usual smile and cheery word she always gave to Martha. She had come over to borrow food, she said, until one of their hands could butcher out a beef. The hands had stayed in town last night to help straighten things up.

Mrs. Partridge went over to get some food and the Seven A Chinese cook went with her to get it.

Mrs. Anders looked at the house and shook her head. “You were lucky, my dear,” she said to Martha. “Our house was log. It was burned level.”

“We were lucky,” Martha said.

Mrs. Anders said nothing for a while, then asked, “Did the whole crowd ride over here?”

“Yes. Wake Bannister and Hugo Meeker and more than twenty riders.”

“And not that young whelp, Britt Bannister?” Mrs. Anders asked.

Martha kept her gaze on the house and did not answer until she had control of herself.

“No, I don't think so. I don't think I know him.”

Mrs. Anders laughed shortly. “If you ever saw him, you would. He's twice the devil his father is.”

Martha asked casually, “Why do you say that? Do you know him?”

“Know him?” Mrs. Anders echoed bitterly. “I should think so. I had all our provisions down in the adobe well house. He ordered his men to go and haul them up and dump them in the fire. Every bit of food we had on the place. He even wanted to throw the saddles on the corral poles into the barn fire, but Hugo Meeker wouldn't let him.”

Martha's spine grew cold. She could not trust herself to talk immediately. Then she thought that Mrs. Anders must be mistaken, that she was thinking of someone else.

Martha said slowly then, “I'd heard Bannister's boy—is Britt his name?—didn't share his father's views. I heard he kept out of this quarrel.”

“He's a Bannister,” Mrs. Anders said grimly. “He was there. I heard him named, time and again. I heard him call Wake Bannister ‘dad.' Even if I hadn't, I could've told. He has the same face, the same manner about him.”

Martha said no more. When Mrs. Partridge returned with the food, Mrs. Anders and her cook rode off. Still Martha sat there, her face pale. Britt was one of these raiders—Britt, who had laughed at this feud, who shared her hatred for it, and for useless bloodshed and killing. No, there was a mistake somewhere. Either Mrs. Anders was wrong or else Britt had changed, and Martha could not believe that of Britt. Still, something kept telling her, he had not come to meet her since he took Cousins away.

Martha caught a horse and rode out that afternoon. She waited at their meeting place until dusk, her mind in turmoil. Something inside her ached. When she returned that night, Buck was not home yet. As soon as Martha had pretended to eat her supper, she said she was going to ride.

Once in the saddle, she headed for the Talbots' shack over east on the edge of the Roan Creek bottom lands. The Talbots were squatters, tolerated by her father because Talbot had a large family and few cattle and rode line for the Broken Arrow three days a week.

There, in the dimly lighted shack, she was greeted by Talbot himself. She explained she had to write a letter, and that since all their stuff had been burned out, she had neither pencil nor paper nor envelope. Could she borrow?

She was invited in and set at the mean table, with tablet paper and pencil and a tattered envelope placed before her. She wrote to Britt, asking him to meet her the day after next. Then she borrowed another envelope, put Britt's sealed letter inside it, and in desperation addressed this to the postmaster at Bull Foot.

Talbot volunteered the information that he was going to Wagon Mound tomorrow, and Martha gave him the letter to mail.

Riding back home, she felt as if she were going to cry.

But, after all
, she reflected,
I don't know for sure
.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Martha wrote her letter on Sunday night. Talbot rode in with it Monday. It was delivered in Bull Foot that night, and the postmaster opened it early Tuesday morning. He saw it was simply an enclosure, but he did not open it. He had lived in Bull Foot long enough to know what happened to people who earned the displeasure of the Bannisters. Instead, he sent a rider out to the Dollar spread with the letter, a note with it explaining how he had come by it.

So Britt had the letter early Tuesday morning. He read it, savagely tore it to shreds, and went out to the corrals. He did not want to ride; he wanted to think. The fact that a daughter of Buck Tolleston had ordered him to see her filled him with fury. If he could hurt her right now, he would be glad to. Even the thought that he had talked to her, been with her, offered to marry her, made him angry. A Bannister crawling in front of a Tolleston. He wished savagely that he could avenge all these humiliations, and avenge them in some way that would agonize her. Always in his mind was the picture of that mother he hardly remembered, who had been killed—starved and overworked and beaten—by Buck Tolleston.

And thinking that, Britt had an idea. It was so sudden, so startling, that for a moment he was afraid to think of it. But the more he thought, the more he liked it. Everything was in his hands with which to do it.

He strode over to his father's office. Bannister was out, but Britt knew where the keys to the jail were. He got them, went over to the blacksmith shop where he hung his guns on a peg. Then he asked Symonds to come with him. Crossing to the jail, Britt unlocked the door and told Symonds to lock him in.

Webb and the three Montana hardcases were lounging on their bunks, their breakfast dishes on the bench in the middle of the room. They gave him no greeting, and he expected none.

“Stay in your bunk, Cousins,” Britt said. “You others come over here in the corner.”