Raw Land (7 page)

He went out, and paused on the boardwalk in front of the saloon and looked up and down the street. Nobody was watching him, yet panic clawed inside him.

He made himself swing slowly under the tie rail and head for the horses. At that moment Will stepped out of the hotel and headed for the tie rail, too.

They met at the tie rail, and Will looked at him keenly. “What's the matter with you?” he asked. “You look sick.”

Milt remembered the note said not to tell Will. He said in an unsteady voice, “I drank too much booze, Will. Lay off, will you, and let's get out of here.”

He looked at Will and laughed shortly. “You don't look so good yourself.”

“I'm all right,” Will said. He wasn't going to tell Murray what happened in the hotel. If Mary Norman really was one of Milt's old sweethearts, he didn't want Milt to know she was in town. And he wanted to get Milt out of here right now.

“Let's ride,” he agreed.

Chapter Five

D
OUBLE
C
ROSS FOR A
P
AL

Supper that night was a dismal affair. Will was moody and silent, and Milt, for the first time in two months, left part of his food. Afterward, the crew drifted out, and Will and Milt went into the big room and lighted smokes. Will hauled up a stool by the big table and brought out his new tally book, while Milt watched from the door. There was something prophetic about Will's act; it told Milt that Will had decided irrevocably to buy this place and live here. Milt wanted to stride over, yank the book away from Will, and tell him why they couldn't stay, why they had to run. But time was slipping, and if he did that it meant that tonight he would have to run. To where? How could he hide? He remembered the long misery of riding the grub line, of hunger, of blistered hands, of long, lonely nights, of fear during the two months he had waited for Will to get this place. No, the place was bad enough, but it was better than being on the dodge.

Milt paced the floor in slow restlessness and finally stopped beside Will.

“I'm goin' out for air, Will. I shouldn't have drunk that stuff today.”

“Walk it off,” Will murmured, not even glancing up from his tally book.

Milt went into the bunkhouse, which was empty now, took down his gun, rammed it in his waistband, and stepped out into the night.

He went down to the arroyo, cut up the canyon, and was soon lost in its gloom. Who had written the note he'd got today? Nobody knew him here, and he knew with utter certainty that any of his old friends couldn't recognize him. Had Will let it slip to someone? He rejected that, knowing wild horses couldn't drag his identity from Will.

Whoever it was, though, man or woman, would have to be killed. Milt faced that fact calmly. It didn't occur to him that whoever was waiting for him at the drift fence might have this same thought and might be prepared for him. In his mind, Milt knew that if he was to live, this person must die.

He came to the drift fence sooner than he expected. A dark tangle of brush on the other side of the fence sagged it, and he stopped and examined it in the deep gloom of the canyon. The walls sloped away here, so that the sides were not steep.

Nothing moved, and he could hear nothing. He rolled a smoke and lighted it. As the match flare died, a voice said from somewhere above him, “Throw that gun up here.”

Milt started a little at the sound of the voice and peered through the darkness. “It's Pres Milo, isn't it?”

“That's right. Throw that gun up here.”

“I haven't got one.”

“Throw it up here,” Pres requested, “or I'll ride off and head for town.”

For a moment, Milt didn't move. Milo hadn't seen the gun, he was sure. He simply knew he'd brought one. Why hadn't he brought two, so that he could have thrown one gun away and then, when Milo came down, used the other?

“Well?”

Silently, Milt took the gun out of his waistband and tossed it in the direction from which Milo's voice came. Milt heard a sound of cascading gravel, and then the dark bulk of Pres Milo stopped, some feet away from him.

“Stay right there,” Milo said. “I can see pretty good, and I've got a gun in my hand.”

Milt was silent a moment, gauging his chances. They weren't good. Pres might miss the first shot, he wouldn't the second or third.

Pres murmured, “Don't look so good, does it?”

“No.”

“Sit down in the sand. You and me are goin' to parley.”

Milt sat down. Pres, ten feet away, hunkered down on his heels, and the two of them peered through the darkness at each other.

“So I was right,” Pres murmured.

“I'm here,” Milt said dryly. “How did you find out my name?”

“I searched your shack yesterday. I found that pitcher of your mother and father.”

“I thought I could hide that,” Milt reflected. “How'd you get it open? I thought it was jammed shut.”

“Dropped it and it come open,” Pres said.

“Then let's get down to business,” Milt said meagerly. “I suppose you're here to blackmail me. You're out of luck, my friend. I'm broke.”

Pres Milo laughed shortly. “I don't give a damn about that. I don't give a damn about the five thousand on your head.”

“A public servant,” Milt sneered. “You just want to turn me up because you're a law-abiding citizen.”

“Did I say I'd turn you up?” Pres murmured.

“Then get to it, man!” Milt said harshly.

“I need you,” Pres said frankly, “to make some money.”

Milt said nothing.

Pres shifted his position and said in a low voice, “Tell me some things first I need to know. You ain't got any money?”

“No. I was sued for libel, and the judgment went against me. It cleaned me out. You know that.”

“Will Danning bought this place with his money?”

“That's right.”

“He bought it so's he could hide you, didn't he?”

“Why else would he? It's no good for cattle.”

There was a long pause, and Pres asked, “But has he bought it? The deed ain't recorded.”

“As good as bought it,” Milt said idly. “Chap Hale bought it for him. The title hasn't been transferred yet.”

“Ah, hah!” Pres exclaimed delightedly, softly. “So it ain't his yet?”

“What are you gettin' at?” Milt said sharply.

Pres ignored him. “Do you think you could talk him into selling it?”

“No.”

“Not even,” Pres suggested slyly, “if I was to turn you up if you couldn't make him sell in a week?”

Milt remembered that Pres had already said he needed him. He realized suddenly that Pres Milo was a dull-witted man, that he had already tipped his hand. Milt seized on this shrewdly and he said immediately, “No.”

“Why not?” Pres asked, surprised.

“Maybe I don't want to,” Milt drawled. Pres was too surprised to answer, and Milt went on. “You want this place. I want to know why.”

“You ain't goin' to,” Pres said in a hard voice.

Milt came slowly to his feet. “Okay, you can go to hell.”

Pres stood up, too. “Feelin' salty, eh? Maybe I'll just ride into town and see Phipps tonight and take you with me.”

Milt laughed. It was a brash, arrogant laugh that Pres had never heard before, and didn't like. “You will like hell,” Milt drawled. “I won't do you any good in jail. And I can do you some good outside of jail. You just said so.”

Pres's slow understanding took that in, and he realized bitterly that he had tipped his hand too soon. He needed Barron's help, and Barron knew it. For a bleak three seconds, Pres contemplated shooting him, but plain, hard-headed sense cautioned him against it. Once already this lean-faced young man had led him into trouble with Will Danning. He should have been warned.

He considered Milt's spare dark figure standing there, hands on hips, and he felt a grudging admiration for him. It occurred to him with slow conviction that if this Milt Barron was that quick in his thinking, it would be better to have him on his side, instead of fighting him. Afterward, when it was done, he could turn him up and have him safely in prison. All this ribboned through Pres's mind, and then he lowered his gun.

“I'll make a bargain with you,” he said.

“Let's hear it.”

“You help me get Danning's place, and I'll forget what I know about you.”

“The trouble with saddle tramps like you,” Milt drawled, “is that you never forget. I still want to know why you want Danning's place.”

Pres laughed. “I'll tell you. And you'll help me to get it. And like you said, I won't forget. I don't see no reason why you shouldn't know.”

“That's what I'm telling you,” Milt jeered.

“Sit down. This'll take some time.”

Milt sat in the still-warm sand again, and again Pres hunkered down.

“This here Pitchfork spread, including a big chunk of the Sevier Brakes, used to be owned by the Gold Seal Land and Development Company. It was bought from the railroad. This here was an eastern company, and they had a crooked manager. He bought the land from the railroad for fifteen cents an acre, told the company he bought it for a dollar an acre, and then kept the difference and jumped the country. Soon's the company found out nobody'd buy the land, they sent a man out here and he seen it was just a gravel pile. They was stuck for a big piece of money. Harkins is the only man that ever leased an acre of it. Well, I know these brakes pretty good—”

“You've probably run enough stolen cattle through them, haven't you?” Milt said dryly.

“That's right,” Pres said, unperturbed. “I know 'em pretty good, every trail, every canyon, every water hole. About six years back I come across somethin' in one of those deep cuts over toward Sevier Creek. That ground was green, kind of like.”

Milt said sharply, “What does that mean?”

“This one meant a copper deposit,” Pres said quietly. “I got a prospector in here from Butte to make sure. He disappeared.”

He paused, and Milt shivered a little in the night. He knew what Pres meant, but he said nothing.

When Milt didn't comment, Pres went on. “As soon as I was sure, I tried to get the money to buy that piece. But the company wouldn't sell an acre unless I bought enough to cost ten thousand dollars. I tried to talk 'em out of it. That got them wonderin'. They hired a mining engineer and sent him to Yellow Jacket. He was lookin' for somebody to guide him around in them brakes. I sent a couple of men to him, and they guided him. But they steered clear of that canyon. The day this engineer was goin' to look over that canyon, I caught him the night before and beat him up.”

“So I heard,” Milt said. “He left, didn't he?”

“Where'd you hear?”

“Miss Case.”

Pres said, “So she told you, huh? Well, she don't know why I beat him. That's why. Because he was gettin' close. And he never come back. So for the last five years I been tryin' to get hold of the money to buy the place from the company. I almost had it once, but I lost in a poker game. And then Will Danning comes along.”

“And buys it out from under you.”

“That's right. And he's goin' to sell it back to me. And you're goin' to talk him into it.”

Milt said dryly, “I haven't heard you mention my cut.”

“You'll git a cut, soon's I see if you can swing the deal.”

Milt was quiet a long moment, considering what Pres had told him. He felt a vague excitement stirring within him as a man will when his ability is challenged. Pres Milo was onto something big, just how big even he didn't realize. Yet Milt couldn't tell Will of it, or else Pres would turn him over to the law. But why would Will ever have to know? It wouldn't be hurting Will if the place was sold and Will got his money back. Once that was done, Pres could buy the place and go ahead with the mining end of it. And he would have to kick through with Milt's share of the cut, or else Milt could start a search for the prospector's body. Pres blackmailed him, he blackmailed Pres. Yes, he could do business with Pres if he was driven to it—but not before he'd tried something else.

Milt rose and said softly, “
Bueno
. You're sure there's a big deposit?”

“Dead sure. The prospector said there was hundreds of thousands of tons.”

Milt came slowly toward Pres, holding out his hand. “It's a deal. We're partners, eh, Pres?”

“You mean you'll swing it?”

“That's what I mean.”

Pres put out his big paw, and they shook hands.

Milt said, “Now put that gun away. You won't need it any more. Where's your horse?”

“Up over the ridge.”

Milt took Pres's arm and gently turned him toward the bank and started to talk of his chances with Will. While he talked, he steered Pres, who was listening carefully, in the direction in which he had thrown his gun. When they came to the bank, he stepped behind and Pres clambered up the steep slope, Milt at his heels.

Milt felt in the loose gravel as he walked, searching frantically for the gun. Pres was talking now, ahead of him, but Milt paid no attention.

And then his fingers touched the cool metal of the six-gun which had been buried under an inch of earthslide.

His fingers wrapped around it, and at that moment Pres ceased talking and turned around, wondering at Milt's silence. He saw Milt straighten up, something in his hand, and Pres's intuition told him what it was.

He lunged frantically for the top of the ridge and heard the gun cock. He dived wildly over the crest as the gun hammered out behind him. He felt something nudge him in the shoulder, and then he was rolling down the other side. He drew his own gun and, softly swearing, started back up the slope.

And then he realized that he couldn't kill Milt. He needed Milt, and Milt didn't need him; in fact, Milt wanted him dead.