Raw Land (4 page)

He started for Pres then, and Pres, knowing what was in store for him, decided to fight. They stood toe to toe, slugging, for about ten seconds, and then Pres backed up. Will crowded him and knocked him down. Pres scrambled to his feet, and before he was fully erect, Will knocked him down again. They were forty of the two hundred feet to the buckboard.

The fight had settled now into a grim, wordless, grunting battle. Pres knew he was licked; all he wanted was to save his face and not let Will crowd him to the buckboard.

And Will was implacable. He hoped that now, for once and all, Pres Milo could be taught to leave him alone. He wanted to beat the man's spirit, to humiliate him in front of his crew so that Becky could go back to Case with the story.

He fought with a cruel relish. What Pres had over him in weight, Will gained back in height and reach. And slowly, stubbornly, with both crews silently watching, Will took advantage of every inch of this reach and height. When Pres tried to circle him, Will cut him off. When Pres tried to grapple with him, Will kept him at arm's length, rocking him back on his heels. In the hot blaze of afternoon sun, shirts ribboned down around their trousers, the two of them slugged it out. Gagging for breath, stubborn as winter, Will looped long, slogging blows at Pres's face, driving him back foot by foot.

And Pres gave ground. Twice he was knocked down, and twice Will waited for him to rise. The third time, when Pres fell against the barn, he came up slowly. His face was bruised beyond recognition, his nose mashed, and both eyes were slowly closing. He came to his feet, weaving, holding up his guard blindly, and Will knocked him down again. He fell around the corner of the barn and lay senseless at the feet of the buckboard team.

The Nine X crew watched in bleak silence while Will, staggering with weariness, made one last supreme effort. He hauled Pres to his feet, stooped, jackknifed the Nine X foreman over his shoulder, and loaded him like a sack of flour into the buckboard.

Afterward, Will put both hands on the buckboard frame and hung his head, sucking in great gagging breaths of air. Presently he lifted his head to regard the onlookers. His chest and belly held big red bruises, and it hurt him to breathe.

He said meagerly, “Next time, I'll shoot him.” To Pinky, he added, “Go offsaddle those Nine X ponies and load the saddles in here. Put their guns in here, too.”

One of the Nine X men stirred uneasily. “What do you aim to do, Danning?”

“You're goin' to walk home,” Will said quietly. “It's only ten miles. You can start off now. Miss Case will bring your saddles and your tough foreman with her. Your ponies will follow her.”

The Nine X crew looked at each other. One man said bitterly, “I told you we was damn fools to string along with him.”

Then they broke and slowly filed out toward the wash.

Only then did Will see Becky Case. She stood a little way off, Milt at her side. On her face was a look of distaste and distress and a faint anger.

When Will paused in front of her, she said, “Is it necessary to make those men pay for what Pres did?”

Will nodded. “I seem to have a hard time getting across to your crew that I want to be let alone,” he drawled. “Maybe they'll believe me now.”

Becky didn't say anything. She only went over to the buckboard and looked at the still figure Pinky had covered with a tarp.

“I think they'll let you alone,” she said quietly, and added, “I'm sorry this had to happen. I wanted to be neighbors with you.”

“You're always welcome here,” Will said levelly. “So's your father. But if any of these men or Pres set foot on this spread again, there'll be a coroner's inquest in Yellow Jacket. That's a promise.”

Milt helped Becky up to the seat. She smiled her thanks and drove off.

Will tramped wearily over to the horse trough and plunged his head into it. When he looked up, Milt was standing beside him, watching him, a look of curiosity and respect in eyes that were usually mocking.

“Now I know,” he drawled, “why you made such a good foreman for these last two years, Will.”

Will wheeled and looked around him.

“It's all right,” Milt went on. “They've gone up to eat.”

Will and Milt went up to the big room, and while Will pulled a clean shirt out of his war bag, Milt leaned against the table regarding him curiously.

“You haven't told me what this is all about,” Milt said.

Will told him about last night's brush with Pres Milo. He also told Milt what Becky had told him of Pres's desire for this place.

“But why does he want it?” Milt said curiously.

Will shrugged and buttoned his shirt. “I don't know. Let's forget it. What about you?”

“Your crew figures me for a remittance man from the East,” Milt said. “They're good men.”

“While I think of it,” Will said, “you've got to rough yourself up, Murray.”

“Milt,” Murray Broome corrected him.

“Your hair's too neat, your talk's too good. You're too friendly.”

“With that girl?” Milt suggested mockingly. “I won't steal her from you, Will.”

Will felt his face getting hot, and he didn't know why. He said brusquely, “I didn't mean that. But you've taken off close to ninety pounds, fella. You've—”

“I've been hungry for two months,” Milt said bitterly.

“You've shaved your mustache, you've dyed your hair. You've lost your white office skin. Nobody in the world would spot you for a white-faced, blond-mustached, overweight newspaper editor. But if you keep talkin' like a newspaper reads, if you keep dressin' like a dude—”

Milt cut in. “But I've got to keep shaved, Will. If I don't my beard grows out blond.”

“All right, keep shaved,” Will said. “Only act like a puncher, Milt. Shy or surly or dirty—anything, just so you can drift in with the rest of the boys and nobody will pick you out.”

Milt nodded wearily. “All right.” He straightened up. “Did anybody ask you questions about me in town?”

“No,” Will said grimly. “They all want to know why I'm here. I tell 'em because I want to be let alone. And I reckon they'll believe me, after today.”

Milt put out his hand and squeezed Will's arm. “You'll do to ride the river with, Will,” he said quietly. “If I get impatient or tough with you, keep me in line. Because if you don't hide me, I'll hang.”

Will looked at him briefly and then smiled. “Let's eat.”

Chapter Three

V
ALUABLE
K
NOWLEDGE

The Nine X outfit was so different from the hardscrabble spread Will Danning had bought that it was hard to concede they existed for the same purpose. The Nine X buildings nestled against one of the rolling hills to the west and north of the Sevier Brakes. Its house was a big frame affair built of lumber that was shipped in the second month after the railroad was completed to Yellow Jacket. It was painted white and looked like a big house in a town. Coming on it, a casual rider was first surprised and then admiring and then, if he reflected awhile, amused. For Angus Case had built a pleasant house, a banker's house, out in a lonesome country where only an occasional cattle buyer or a rider on the grub line could admire it. The outbuildings off to the north against the shoulder of the hill were more in character with the country. They did not have big cottonwoods screening them, and they were of logs. The barn was big, and the corrals were spacious, and the bunkhouse and cookshack, midway between house and barn, were built of stone.

Becky drove into the place after dark, left the buckboard by the bunkhouse with orders for a couple of the riders to see to Pres, and then went on into the house.

Pres had come to soon after he left Danning's place. With a bleak realization that Will Danning had made good his brag, he lay there under the tarp, too sore and beaten to care about it. Later, his shame would not allow him to rise and sit beside Becky, so he endured the jolting trip home under the sweltering tarp.

When he heard Becky give the orders to carry him into his bunk he lay there until he heard her go. One of the crew pulled the tarp off, and Pres sat up.

“You want some help, Pres?” one of the men asked.

“Get the hell away from me!” Pres snarled.

The two men disappeared in the bunkhouse, and Pres staggered over to the wash bucket on the cookshack bench. He stripped off his tattered shirt and washed the dried blood off his face and body. His face felt soft, mashed, beaten, and he could barely see. Afterward, he went into the office at the end of the bunkhouse. It held a big roll-top desk, a small iron safe, and two chairs. In the rear was his cot, above it a row of nails on which hung his clothes.

He fumbled the lamp alight, then dried himself off and looked at his image in the mirror. It was hard for him to recognize himself. He looked as if he'd run full tilt into the butt end of a big blue spruce. He swore savagely and turned away from the mirror, searching for a shirt. If he'd only read those tracks right today, he'd never have been tolled into Danning's place. But how did he know that it was Becky's buckboard or that she'd already made friends with Danning? But he'd gone, and he'd got beat up for his pains. He wasn't afraid of what the Nine X crew thought of him. He could handle them. If they spoke to him about it, he'd beat them up and fire them, and they knew it.

He was buttoning his shirt over his hairy barrel chest when he heard somebody approaching. That would be Angus, and Pres tried to smile. His face was redder than ever, the lips of his loose mouth swollen so that they hurt when his mouth curved into an unaccustomed grin.

There was a knock on the door, and then Angus Case stepped inside. Pres didn't even speak as the older man closed the door and came over to the desk.

Angus Case looked at him and said dryly, “Well, you're a beauty.”

Pres said nothing. He tucked his shirttail in and ran puffed and sore hands over his sandy hair to comb it.

“Becky told me all about it,” Angus said.

“And how do you like it?” Pres asked.

“I'm waiting for you to explain why you went over there in the first place.”

“To burn him out,” Pres said bluntly. “Didn't she tell you that?”

Case's square, stubborn jaw clamped shut, and his eyes had tiny pin points of anger in them. “She told me, yes.”

Pres laughed. “You're scared of Will Danning. You're scared he'll steal you blind, but you ain't got the guts to do anything about it.”

“I did everything I could do legally,” Case said angrily.

“Like hell you did,” Pres sneered. “Chap Hale's your best friend. Why'd you let him get the place for Danning?”

“I couldn't stop him.”

“Well, I aim to stop Danning,” Pres went on. “How do you like that?”

Case didn't answer for a long moment, and then he said, “Pres, you're about washed up here.”

Pres stared at him, and then laughed again. He picked up a sack of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. “Sure,” he said mildly. “I'll leave tomorrow.”

“I wish to God you would!” Case said bitterly.

“I'll pack up and ride into town,” Pres drawled. “I'll have to say good-by to Sheriff Phipps, though.” He looked up at Case. “We'll get to talkin' about things, rememberin' things, and then I'll tell him about why you killed Harkins.” He paused. “I was pretty young then, a squirt of a Nine X horse wrangler, but I remember about it.”

He was looking at Case now, and suddenly the older man's gaze faltered.

“I'll tell him how this was a company ranch then and you was just a manager trying to get money to buy it by rustlin' company stock. I'll tell him the truth because I saw you steal the cattle and change the upside-down T brand to your own damn Nine X. I'll tell him how the company crowded you into the corner and you had to get a goat for your stealin' and you accused Harkins. I'll tell him how you was afraid for Harkins to be tried for rustlin' because he was innocent so you had him killed. I'll tell him how you bought out the company with money you got from stealin' their cattle. I'll tell him—or do you reckon that's enough?”

Angus Case's eyes looked haunted. He settled into a chair and rolled a cigarette with trembling fingers.

“You still want to fire me?” Pres jeered.

“I want to kill you, Pres,” Case said quietly. “And some day I will.”

Pres laughed. “You ain't got the guts, Case,” he jeered. “You ain't got guts enough to kill a man. You had Harkins killed, and it's been hauntin' you for ten years. You'd shoot yourself before you'd shoot another man, and I know it!”

Case only glared at him. In his eyes was a bitterness and a hatred and a fear that was not pleasant to see.

Pres lounged on the desk and looked down at Case. “Go on with your speech.”

Case straightened up and said crisply, “All right, I'll go at it this way. I can't stop you from doin' a damn thing you want around here, Pres. But Will Danning is going to kill you if you don't leave him alone.”

“If I don't kill him first,” Pres said easily.

“But why do you aim to bother him? Why do you hate him?” Pres said nothing. Case nodded. “It's the old reason, isn't it, Pres? You want to buy the Pitchfork.”

Pres nodded. “If you'd given me the money a long time ago, I'd have it.”

“And have you steal me blind, and me not able to fight you? Oh, no. I can be pushed so far, Pres. But when a man steals my cattle, even you, I'll fight. And damn Harkins's killin'!”

“You'd be rid of me if you'd bought it.”

“I'll never be rid of you,” Case said bitterly.

Pres yawned. “That all you want to tell me?”

Case nodded bleakly and came to his feet. His shoulders under his black suit coat seemed bowed and shrunken. “That's all,” he said quietly. “I can't stop you from rawhidin' Danning. But I can tell you, if you don't stop, he'll kill you.”