Ride the Man Down (21 page)

Sam's horse simply collapsed under him, and he was pitched out of the saddle over his horse's head. He landed on his side and turned completely over in the air and came down with an impact that stirred a faint rising of dust.

Will lifted his voice in anger now. “Get back in the shack, Sam!”

Sam Danfelser dragged himself to his knees and hung his head a moment, moving it from side to side as if to clear it. And then he came unsteadily to his feet and looked in Will's direction. Sam's horse lay utterly still before him.

Sam pulled his gun then and, half running, half walking toward Will, he began to shoot.

It was on the heel of his second shot that it came.

There was a dull, vibrating impact on the very air, and the ground itself seemed to shift. And then a raw, sliding rumble followed it, continuing for perhaps ten seconds.

Sam halted and turned toward the Springs, completely oblivious to Will in the timber. He stood rooted there, watching something upvalley.

Will knew by the sound of it that the Young boys had done a job. Russian Springs was buried under tons of rotten limestone. Oddly now, watching Sam, his promise to Celia ribboned through his mind. He was not going to give Sam a chance to kill him yet.

He rose and faded back into the timber, and then he heard Sam's wild yell to the men in the shack.

“Come out and get him!”

Will reached his horse, cinched the saddle tight, and vaulted into it. He put him back into the timber, skirting behind the shack, and kept to its cover for a mile until it petered out at the end of the valley.

He was a good two miles out into the flats, headed for the Salt Hills, when he saw the first horseman boil out of the timber in pursuit, and behind him were five others. That first horseman, Will knew, would be Sam Danfelser.

He settled down now to flight. There were long hours of daylight before him and miles of open country. He would need luck this time. He swung south a little and nursed his advantage carefully. His horse was fresh, and Sam Danfelser was angry. With reasonable luck this meant he would have more than a two-mile advantage when he hit the Salt Hills this afternoon and could reach Boundary unmolested.

Chapter 20

Sam reached Boundary around ten, having riden the heart out of Bide's horse by midafternoon. The others had left him behind, but Sam had no hope of them catching Will.

He put in at the Belle Fourche's tie rail and did not even bother to tie the horse. It was worthless to him, used up, and all he knew or cared was that the horse had first failed him and then brought him here at the slowest of walks.

Sam paused on the plank walk, looking over the few horses at the tie rail. It was too dark to see their brands, and Sam was too impatient to look. He tramped up the steps of the saloon with a heavy, angry impatience. Bide had called to him as he had ridden away from the shack in pursuit of Will that he would see him in town tonight. Only in late afternoon had Sam recalled this, and now there was a vast impatience upon him.

He shouldered into the barroom, a stocky, sullen-faced man whom sustained anger had turned surly and dangerous. He still carried the dust of his fall at the shack on his rough clothes. An elbow of his coat had been torn in the fall; sometime in the afternoon he had ripped off half the sleeve, exposing a forearm of calico shirt.

He came up to the bar, glancing hotly over the room. It was almost empty tonight. He nodded to Lowell Priest in conversation with the bartender and saw Joe Kneen playing solitaire by himself at one of the tables. A quiet poker game was going on at a rear table.

Sam said roughly to the bartender, overriding Priest's talk, “Bide's not in, is he?”

“In the back room,” the bartender said.

Sam started back just as Bide came out of the back room, saw him, and started toward him. Sam wheeled and went back to the bar and waited for Bide to come up to him.

Bide, unlike Sam, was past the point where he could sustain anger. There was a kind of weary, bitter irritability about him that alternated with gloom.

He said, “You missed him.”

“On that damned crowbait horse of yours, yes,” Sam said angrily. Neither of them bothered to lower his voice, since they had accepted long since that nobody else besides themselves counted here. The time to be tactful or persuasive in public was past, and if they had even seen Kneen they did not show it.

Bide said bitterly, “He did a job, all right.” Turning, he said sharply to the bartender, “Whisky, dammit.”

He regarded Sam broodingly. “That rotten limestone broke and sluffed off in a fifty-foot circle. You can't even tell where it was.”

The bartender put the bottle of whisky by Bide. Sam reached out, appropriated the single glass, poured himself a shot of liquor and drank it. The bartender gave Bide a glass, and he poured himself a drink. He looked at it sourly a moment, then pushed it away from him.

“I've had some time to think,” he said in a dour voice, and he looked sharply at Sam. “I wonder, by Harry, if you have.”

Sam didn't answer him.

“In another month, maybe less, we move off that range. These potholes will be dry and our stuff will have to leg it back to Bandoleer for water.”

Sam said grimly, “None of my stuff will leg it back.”

Bide shook his head. “Without the Springs, those wells won't water a tenth of your stuff.”

“Hatchet will,” Sam said flatly.

Bide looked sharply at him.

Sam poured himself another drink and raised it to his lips. He didn't drink, however; he put down his glass and said flatly to Bide, “Will figured if he blew the Springs, come dry weather we'd have to fall back on our range, didn't he?”

“Won't we?”

“Not me. I don't move back. When I move off that dry strip I move toward Hatchet.” He drank his whisky and slapped his glass sharply on the bar.

Bide considered this a moment, and then his glance shifted past Priest, who had heard all this, to Kneen. He said loudly, “Hear that, Joe?”

Kneen didn't even look up from his game. “I heard.”

Bide said, “I'm movin', too, and I'm not waitin' for dry weather, even if Sam is. I'm takin' what Hatchet range I want.” The poker game in the rear ceased now as these men watched Kneen. He gathered his cards, stacked them nicely, and rose.

“I don't think you are, Bide. I don't think either of you are. You got too much sense, in the long run.”

Bide laughed shortly, jeeringly.

Sam didn't even bother to turn and look at Kneen, who moved his chair slowly out of the way and came around the table and up to them at the bar. Bide's black eyes were contemptuous.

Kneen said placidly, “You've both forgot something that Will didn't, and I don't think you'll like to remember it.”

Bide watched him closely, Sam with unshakable contempt. “All this stretch around Russian Springs and south is open range. If a man claimed it and could hold it, it was his,” Kneen began.

“We'll hold it,” Bide said grimly.

“But not west of that stretch, you won't. Because all the water west of Russian Springs on Hatchet is on patented land.” He paused, watching Bide's face, and the expression of contempt there altered faintly.”

Kneen went on with mild implacability. “That shack west of the seep was Phil's original homestead. South of his was Hempstead's and south of his was Tevis'. There was eleven of 'em altogether. They all sold out to Phil and moved out. That was when he was buyin' range, instead of takin' it.”

Bide said dryly, “That so? What does it mean?”

“It means you don't move onto, it,” Keen said gently.

“You'll stop us?” Bide baited him.

“Oh no,” Kneen said. “That's when I call in a U.S. marshal.”

He waited a moment for that information to take hold, then nodded and stepped past Bide. Bide stood motionless as he passed and then whirled, grabbing Kneen's arm and abruptly hauling him around.

“No marshal's comin' in here, Joe!” Bide said harshly.

“Not while you're all janglin' over open range, he ain't,” Kneen said mildly. “When you move onto patented land that's a case for the law. I admit I'm helpless—so I call in the government.”

Gently he disengaged Bide's hand and said dryly, slowly, “When you move it had better be back on your own range, gentlemen.”

He nodded and started toward the door. Halfway to it Sam Danfelser's flat, surly voice hauled him up.

“Oh, Kneen.”

The sheriff turned, and Sam said with massive sarcasm, “I'm so scared of you I'm going to hunt up a crew tonight and move my cattle tomorrow—onto Hatchet.”

Kneen watched him narrowly a, moment and then murmured, “Your privilege,” and walked to the swing doors. There he paused and slowly turned to look back at the bar. Sam had turned his back to him, but Bide was still watching him. Kneen said, “If you still think that way by nine tomorrow morning I send for the marshal.”

Sam didn't let on that he had heard him, and Kneen went out.

There was silence then. Priest pushed away from the bar and went out, his thin, precise steps tapping sharply on the floor and then the steps and then the boardwalk.

Bide was watching Sam intently, chewing a corner of his lip. His eyes were bright and excited and probing, and he watched every movement of Sam's with peculiar intentness. He was aware now that the poker game had ceased, its players watching them. The bartender was watching, too, and Bide had an uncomfortable feeling of urgency. Sam poured himself another drink and cupped the glass in his hand, staring at his own image in the bar mirror.

Bide's patience finally broke. He asked almost pleadingly, “What about this, Sam?”

“Bluff,” Sam said contemptuously. He drank his whisky and pushed away from the bar. Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out a coin and slapped it on the bar in a gesture of finality that seemed to sum up his complete indifference.

“You really think so?” Bide asked anxiously.

Sam looked at him, a withering scorn in his arrogant face. “I meant what I told Kneen, Bide. I'm going to round up a crew and move my stuff onto Hatchet tomorrow.”

He tramped out of the barroom, and Bide watched him go. For the first time he could remember, Bide wasn't sure of himself. He was pathetically in need of Sam's assurance—but he didn't know; he just didn't know.

Priest hurried downstreet, cutting across the road to have a last look into his dark store before he slept. The scene in the Belle Fourche had scared him a little, but he had gleaned one piece of information from it that made him forget his fright. An excitement stirred within him when he thought of it, for it was a passport to profit. Kneen had said that he didn't care how many fought over open range; it was only when they encroached on patented land that he would interfere. And Priest knew that Phil Evarts, in latter years, had not bought land but had taken it. And almost the last he had taken was that range abutting Garretson's.

It was clear to Priest now that if he and Red Courteen could hold their new range against Hatchet they had a comfortable and profitable start in the cattle business, with nothing to fear from the law.

Priest thought of this and congratulated himself. Courteen was taking the risks while he put up the money. And Courteen had proven himself a tough enough customer to handle Will Ballard.

Priest turned in at the gate of his house and was almost on the porch when he felt somebody beside him. He whirled in fright, and a voice spoke quietly. “It's time we had a talk, Priest. Go on in.”

It was Will Ballard. A faint residue of fear tugged at Priest then, but he conquered it. Will Ballard wouldn't hurt the father of Lottie Priest.

He opened the door and struck a match, and Will said quietly, “The kitchen.”

Priest went on through the house and lighted the lamp in the kitchen. The places were set for breakfast on the table, and that meant Lottie was in, he noted with some relief. He gestured to a chair and said genially, “Sit down, Will.”

When Will made no move to accept his invitation Priest looked at him. In some unaccountable way Will's appearance had changed, Priest noted uneasily. His face seemed thinner, his eyes deeper set, and the dark wash of beard stubble on his cheeks gave him a tough, raffish look. To Priest he seemed even bigger than usual, but he dismissed this as nonsense.

“Those are all your cattle that Courteen's grazing just below Garretson's, aren't they?” Will asked.

Priest nodded. “Red's and mine. We got a bargain from Garretson and the Ridge ranchers. Why shouldn't we buy them?”

“That's the mixed herd Red took from Hatchet, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to be sure,” Will murmured. “How bad do you want to keep them, Priest?”

At this moment both of them heard a movement behind Will, and they looked around. Lottie, a blue wrapper around her and her hair braided loosely down her back, was standing in the doorway. Priest felt an odd comfort in her presence here, and he smiled and explained dryly, “A business talk, I think, Lottie.”

Will and Lottie regarded each other quietly, and in Lottie's face a small hope seemed to fade. She looked searchingly at Will and saw in his face only a weariness and a polite stubbornness, nothing else.

“I'll go then,” Lottie said, and she was turning when her father said, “No, stay a minute, Lottie.”

Will looked quickly at him. Lottie hesitated in the door way and Will said, “Why not? It'll save you telling her, Priest.”

“Save telling me what?” Lottie asked. She was surprised at the coldness and suspicion in her own voice.

Will said slowly, “I was just telling your father to move his cattle off Hatchet grass.”

Priest said gently, “I don't think we'll do that, Will. You see, Phil Evarts stole that range, like he stole everything else. We've got as much right to it as Hatchet.”