Play a Lone Hand (10 page)

Welling, already sore from the morning's unaccustomed ride, stifled a sigh as he sat down and reached for his sandwich. The three of them heard the sound of approaching riders at the same time.

Giff rose first, sandwich in hand, and saw the two riders who had come up behind the tent. They were moving through the grouped horses grazing around the seep and the first rider had a rifle across his saddle. Giff glanced briefly at Welling. Fiske was watching him too with a mild accusation so that Welling said sullenly, “I didn't see them.”

One rider, a Mexican, dropped back so that he was between the tent and the survey party's horses. The man with the rifle reined in by the tarp, contriving to pull in his horse so that the rifle, still resting on the pommel, covered the three men afoot.

Welling, sandwich in hand, gestured to the food on the ground and said affably, “'Light and eat.”

Giff was watching the rider and he didn't like what he saw. The man's clothes were almost tatters and he had the hungry half-mean look of an overworked rider whose staggering amount of labor, whose unwavering loyalty and whose life are hired for a dollar a day by the big cattle companies.

“Know where you are?” the man asked.

“Torreon, aren't we?” Welling said.

The rider dipped his head briefly in assent. “This is private land. Get off it.”

Welling's quick smile seemed not to betray any uneasiness, “We're Land Office men on a resurvey.”

“Not here you aren't. You're trespassers.”

Welling's voice held a quiet confidence as he said, “My friend, I can bring the sheriff with me, only it's a long ride to get him. Maybe I had better put it this way. If I'm barred from resurveying this land, I'll recommend all patents granted be canceled and the land will revert to the public domain.”

The rider moved his rifle until it pointed at Welling. “You take that up with the boss. Now take your left hand—left I said—and lift your gun out and throw it over the tent.”

Only then did Welling seem to realize that his authority meant nothing here and now. He glanced at Fiske in rising anger and bafflement and then shuttled his gaze to the rider.

The man said quietly, “I don't fool,” and lifted the rifle slowly to his shoulder.

“All right, all right,” Welling said hastily, and did as he was bid. The rider turned his attention to Fiske then and said, “You do the same.”

“I don't pack one,” Fiske said.

The rider looked at Giff now, “You, too.”

“The hell with you,” Giff said quietly.

The rifle began to rise again. Giff looked up and along the barrel into the rider's eye and a wild stubborness was in him.

“Once more. Throw your gun away.”

Giff didn't move. It was Welling, prodded by fright, who moved over to Giff, yanked the gun from the waistband of his pants and threw it hastily over the tent as if it were red hot.

The rifle slacked back to the pommel and the rider said levelly, “There's a gate southwest about six miles. Your horses will be tied to it. Tomorrow you can pick up this stuff there too.” He gave Giff a hard, lingering stare of almost respectful curiosity before he turned his head and signaled to the Mexican. Pulling his mount around he gave Welling's horse a cut across the rump with his rope and then, half circling the other horses and whistling shrilly, the pair of them pushed the animals up over the rim of the depression and were out of sight.

Fiske and Welling glanced briefly at each other, then both looked at Giff. “I don't know why I didn't let him shoot you;” Welling said angrily.

“I know why. You were scared.” Giff said thinly. “By a bluff.”

The color crept into Welling's loose face and he said sardonically, “That's a second guess you can afford, now he's gone.”

“He was hazing you and you took it.”

Welling glanced at Fiske in appeal. “You think so, Bill?”

Fiske made a wry face and thumbed his derby off his forehead. “I hate to admit it, but I think he was.”

Welling considered this under Giff's hot gaze. Giff said, “Sebree put him up to it. You're afoot with a long hike ahead of you. The boys in Henty's will be laughing about it tonight.”

Welling's eyes held a deep hatred as he looked at Giff. Fiske, sourly regarding the sandwich he still held in his hand, said, “Did he say six miles?”

Giff said, “It's eight.”

“He said six,” Welling countered flatly.

Giff swiveled his head to look at Welling. His face was stiff, and still held the dregs of anger. “I'm talking about the distance to the ranch, not the fence.”

Welling didn't answer for a moment. “What are you going to do? Complain to Sebree?” he asked with heavy irony.

“In my own way,” Giff agreed quietly. “If you aim to stay in this country even another week, you'll come too.”

Welling didn't answer him. He turned and walked around the tent and behind it, and Giff heard him pick up the guns. Giff surprised Fiske watching him and he said truculently, “Well?”

“Not my department,” Fiske said.

With the two guns in his fist, Welling returned to Giff and handed him Cass's battered Colt. Avoiding the questioning look in Giff's eyes, Welling glanced down at the gun he was holstering and said, “I think we can settle this another way. When Edwards …”

Giff didn't wait for any more. He turned and headed south, climbing up and out of the depression. He had walked perhaps fifty yards when Welling called, “Hold on! I'll come with you.”

Giff waited. When Welling caught up with him, he started out again without speaking. He knew Welling had no heart for this, and that Fiske's tacit approval of Giff's move had pushed him to his reluctant decision. Giff's instinct now was to send him back, even though he had taunted him into coming. But he would not do it, he knew; for he had spoken the truth when he told Welling the whole countryside would know before night that the Land Office Special Agent was a sorry man who could be pushed and crowded and eventually neutralized. Oddly, Giff cared about that, and he knew what he was about to do had to be done if Welling's investigation were not to collapse.

Since they were both wearing cowman's half boots, Giff anticipated complaints from Welling during the long afternoon. But the fitful wind pressing at their backs, pushing down the grass ahead of them in uneven rhythm across the limitless plains, made talk difficult and Welling held stubbornly to silence. By unspoken agreement they gave occasional bands of cattle a wide detour, since a man afoot was considered legitimate game by these half wild beeves. Once in late afternoon they saw far ahead of them a pair of riders heading in the direction of Torreon. At Giff's command, Welling flattened out alongside him in the grass until the riders were out of sight.

They saw the first trees of Torreon far distant in the early evening. As they drew closer, Giff saw that Torreon headquarters was built in the shallow timbered valley of a wide stream. The house itself was set in a park of rolling lawn and isolated tremendous cottonwoods. It was built of huge timbers, the main part, three stories high, flanked by long wings of stone construction. The carriage house and stables separated the big house from the working part of the ranch.

Beyond them was a long single-story adobe which Giff decided was the combination cookshack and bunkhouse. It was set in a grassless area of scuffed and hard-packed ground that stretched to the tangle of barns, sheds and pole corrals to the east. The first lamps, lighted against the twilight, were burning in the big house. As Giff listened, he could hear the cook's triangle summoning the ranch hands to supper, and at this distance, he could make out men moving from the barns and corrals toward the isolated cookshack.

He saw Welling was watching him with an expression of helplessness and distaste on his face. In order to reach the cookshack without alarming the main house, they would have to make a wide half-circle and Giff picked out his point of approach before he started out. A half hour later, they halted at the corner of a big wagon shed after crossing the horse pasture to the east of the ranch buildings. Giff was waiting for a ranch dog to pick them up in the twilight, but it seemed their coming had gone unnoticed except by a scattering of incurious horses in the pasture.

Ahead of him and across a wide expanse of barn lot, he could see the cookshack, its door open. Lamps were lighted inside and he could even see one rider, his back to the door, industriously attacking his supper. He sensed Welling's aching uneasiness, but he ignored him as he set out for the cookshack.

Welling caught up with him and said hurriedly in a low voice, “I don't like this. They'll all be in there. What do you want me to do?”

“You've got a gun. Stand them off,” Giff said. As an afterthought, he drew his own gun and wordlessly passed it over to Welling. He did not want to look at the man, and he had a dismal conviction that Welling wouldn't back up his play.

This was gone from his mind when he took the one step up to the cookshack door, moved across the sill and halted. There were perhaps fifteen men at the big table which was not nearly full, and only a few of them faced the door; the majority had their backs to the door and were seated near the kitchen end of the table.

Almost immediately Giff spotted the tough hungry-looking rider who had set them afoot; he was seated two places from the kitchen door and had his head inches above his plate, wolfing his food. Giff's brief sidelong glance at Welling revealed him standing, both guns leveled, in the doorway with a kind of scared determination in his posture.

Then one of the riders glanced up and saw them. He half rose as Giff said in an iron voice, “Sit down!”

His sudden command, startling in the silence, turned the heads of every crew member toward him. The hungry-looking rider looked up, fork raised halfway to his mouth. Giff took two running steps toward the table, put a foot on the bench, and dived across the table at him. The man already had one leg over the bench and was rising when Giff crashed into him. The rider went over on his side, Giff on top of him, his legs dragging the tin plate of bread off the table. Its clank followed the crash of the two bodies on the floor by seconds.

The men facing Welling scrambled off the bench, out of the way, as Giff and the rider came erect at the same moment.

The rider backed up a step to get set, but Giff was on him. With the tactics of a standard barroom brawler, the man lowered his head, his arms windmilling, and tried to charge. Giff's hook to his face was so swift and vicious that, still moving forward, the man was half turned by the blow and his upper body sprawled on the table.

The rider's hand closed on a heavy stoneware platter and he came off the table with it in his hand in a back-handed sweeping side swipe. Giff saw it too late to evade it; he raised his elbow and ducked his head against it as the platter hit his forearm and caromed off it into the wall. He could hear the shouts of the crew now. Since he was still fighting only one man, he supposed that Welling was successfully standing off the others. How long he could continue to do so, Giff didn't know, and he thought,
Make it quick
.

Now that the rider had named his own kind of fight, Giff moved in against him, lifting his knee into the rider's belly. The man's grunt could be heard above every sound in the room. He wrapped both arms around Giff's midriff, clinging desperately to him while he fought for breath. Giff stepped back, braced himself, and with a savage wrench of his upper body, broke the man's grip. Then he heaved the rider away from him upright, and swung. The blow straightened the rider totally erect. Giff got one brief glance at the man's tortured face before he smashed his fist into it. The rider back-pedaled, fighting for balance, through the door leading into the kitchen. He grabbed wildly at the door frame but his momentum tore his hold loose.

Dimly, Giff heard the roar of the crew, followed by the crash of a gun shot and Welling's voice in a wild yell, “Stand away from him!”

On the heel of Welling's yell, the rider crashed to the floor. Giff lunged at him, doubling his knees under him, and landed heavily on the rider's chest. He heard the wind driven from his lungs in a great tortured sigh. Giff had rolled off the rider and was on his knees. Now he crawled back to him, balled up the man's shirt in his fist and rose, yanking the rider erect. Balancing him, he swung with all his might at the man's face. He saw him teeter backward, hit the corner of the big stove, spin around drunkenly, and fall face first into the wall which held a rack of iron skillets. The force of his body crashing into the wall jarred the skillets off their hooks and they rained down on his unconscious form as it slumped to the floor.

Giff stumbled to the nearest wall and leaned against it, dragging great gusts of air into his heaving lungs. He was aware that his back was exposed and he wheeled as fast as he could, expecting the crew to ignore Welling and rush him. Instead, he saw that Welling had moved around the table and into the kitchen doorway and, back to him, was still holding them off. Unsteadily, Giff shouldered past Welling and confronted the Torreon crew. He reached out and took one of Welling's guns and pointed it at the nearest Torreon hand. “You come out with me and saddle up three horses,” Giff said. “The rest of you stay set.”

The rider looked first at the gun, then at Giff's hard face, then turned to go out. The crew broke for him. Gun leveled at the man's back, Giff followed. Suddenly, the man halted so abruptly that Giff bumped into him; he was looking across the room and Giff looked too. In the bunkhouse doorway stood a woman.

She was perhaps forty, Giff judged, although her thin autocratic face held a pain-ravaged sternness that made her seem older. Under her right arm was a crutch on which she leaned, her upper body half twisted into it. Her dress was a dead black color and long-sleeved. Her hair, of an auburn color, was so thick as to be almost unruly and she wore it off her neck, coiled carelessly on top of her head. “Who was shooting?” she demanded coldly.