Ride the Man Down (4 page)

The cook and Cavanaugh's hand were watching Evarts, who was saying, “What outfits have moved in?” in an uncertain, halting voice. Bide didn't bother to answer.

Will glanced up the slope and saw Ray Cavanaugh and Russ Schultz, Marriner's foreman, break out of the timber. Cavanaugh had the carbine from his saddle scabbered across his pommel; Schultz had a rifle in his free hand.

When they hit the flats behind Bide the wagon screened them from Will's sight, and then he moved. He slipped noiselessly out of the saddle, vaulted the wagon tongue, and, yanking his gun from its holster, he pounded toward the rear of the wagon.

He heard Bide yell: “Watch him!” and then he rounded the end of the wagon, running full tilt and cutting in sharply.

He caught Cavanaugh just dismounted, just turning and swinging his carbine over the saddle, and he rammed into him with the point of his shoulder in a low, savage drive. It caught Cavanaugh in the side and drove him viciously into his horse. He heard John Evarts' sharply excited voice saying, “Stand there, Schultz!” and then Cavanaugh brought down the butt, of his carbine on Will's back. Will rolled away from him against the hind feet of Cavanaugh's horse, and Cavanaugh fell to his knees. Will saw his wry little face contorted with pain, trying to drag the rifle up to his shoulder.

The horse shied away from Will then, letting him fall on his back. Will saw the carbine lifting and he kicked wildly at it and hit it, and it went off. He had time now. He came to his knees just as Cavanaugh, rising, pumped a shell into his carbine. Will lunged and grabbed the barrel and turned full into Cavanaugh, hitting him with his back and yanking savagely on the gun. It wrenched free of Cavanaugh's hand, and Will threw it from him. He grabbed Cavanaugh by the shirt front now and drove three fiat-handed blows into his face, the sound of their slapping as sharp as pistol shots. He flung him aside then with a savage sweep of his hand, and Cavanaugh hit the wheel of the wagon and fell under it, his head rapping sharply on the wheel spokes.

Breathing deeply, angrily, now, Will looked at the others. Evarts' had his gun trained on Schultz, who stood just where he had dismounted, rifle slacking in his hand.

Sam had moved his horse in against the cook, pinning him so solidly against the wagon that he could not raise his rifle. Sam's gun was loosely trained on Bide's hand and on Bide himself.

Sam's careful glance was laid on Will now, and, seeing it, Will said with cold and wild malice, “Tell me again what satisfies Bide.”

Sam wisely held his temper and said nothing. Cavanaugh crawled out from under the wagon. Will's hot, wild glance settled on John Evarts and shuttled from him to Bide, who stood bitterly watching this. Bide's face, however, was impassive; he was a gambler and he'd lost and now he was ready to pay up.

Will reached out and swung Cavanaugh around and shoved him toward Marriner. Cavanaugh tripped and fell, barely missing the fire, and Will did not notice him for watching Bide. “Take him back, Bide,” Will drawled. “You can do better than him.”

“There's always another time.”

“But this is one you'll remember,” Will said implacably. “You boys light out. Throw your guns down. Leave your horses.”

Bide didn't even protest. For one still moment he regarded Will, reading the rage in him, and then he said bitterly, “You damned Injun. I'll remember it. Another time, Will.”

Bide pulled his gun and threw it on the ground, then turned to the others and said, “Let's go.” He looked at John Evarts now. “What about the wagon?”

“Leave it,” Will said flatly.

“I'll remember that too,” Bide said meagerly.

Without another word he started walking toward the near slope. Slowly, cursing, the others threw their guns on the grass and fell in behind him.

Will found his gun and holstered it then and glanced at Sam. “Much obliged,” he said, his voice quieter now.

Sam and Evarts watched him as Will walked around to the tongue of the chuck wagon, lifted it, and shoved until the wheel was cramped.

Then Will got his rope, passed the loop around the hub of a rear wheel, and tossed the coil over the top of the wagon. Not until Will had picked up the free end of the rope and dallied it around the horn of his saddle did Sam's face lose its expression of disapproving curiosity. Then, as Will touched the mare with his spurs and the rope tightened and cut through the canvas, Sam understood. He looked swiftly to John Evarts, anger in his face. Evarts understood, too, and said nothing.

Will's mare leaned sturdily to the job. It took her two tries. On the second try, the wagon came up on the near wheels, balanced a moment, and then crashed over on top of the fire. Dismounting, Will saw that Bide and the others had paused halfway up the slope, watching this. He freed his rope and coiled it, and only after the wagon had caught fire did Bide turn and go on.

Will tramped around the wagon now and saw John Evarts regarding him grimly. “You can still fire me,” he said truculently. “Go ahead,” Evarts said.

Sam said calmly, “That's a mistake.”

“Who made the first one?” Will said quickly, challengingly. Sam's temper didn't alter, and when Will was sure of it he walked over to his mare. He was about, to mount when Sam's insistent voice came to him again. “Bide won't forget that, Will. I'm his neighbor. I know.”

Will's eyes were suddenly brash now as he looked across the saddle at Sam. “Why, damn you, Sam, he isn't supposed to. I don't want him to.”

Sam's squat face flushed a deep red now, and he and Will regarded each other for long seconds in utter silence. It was Will's farewell to caution, a warning both to Sam and John Evarts that he didn't want them to misunderstand.

Sam turned this over in his mind before he accepted it, afterward looking at Evarts. He said, “John, I'd fire him.”

“He stays,” Evarts said grimly. “I've had enough.”

Chapter 3

The weather had broken, settling into a drizzle so cold that Sam Danfelser, paused in the doorway of the bank in Boundary, wished he had another coat to wear under his slicker for the ride out to D Cross. The water already pooled the fresh ruts, and about him was the small din of gutters emptying onto the wood awnings overhead and cascading into the street. There was the smell of wood smoke in the air and the town was alive again after calf branding; Sam should have felt exhilarated, and yet he felt oddly gloomy.

He stepped out into the slow afternoon rain and headed downstreet, wondering why his conference with old Kamerer at the bank had been so disappointing. In other years this simple ceremony—the cigar, the talk of prospects, the writing of the check in payment for his note—had been pleasant and solid. But this year it was different. Old Kamerer was worried. He had asked questions about Hatchet and tried, without making it too obvious, to find how Sam stood on the question of Hatchet. If Sam read the signs correctly the bank had decided, with that subtle instinct of self-preservation peculiar to banks, that Hatchet was done for. That whole belt of land from the Salt Hills to the Indigos would be broken up among new outfits who would require loans to stock it, and Kamerer was scheming.

Sam paused to look at the old Spanish saddle in the window of Doreen's saddle shop. He had examined it a dozen times and it held no further interest for him, but he stopped anyway, his thinking uninterrupted.

He should, he knew, be mightily concerned about the breakup of Hatchet, for John Evarts was aging, and when he died Celia would inherit it. If there was anything to inherit, that is.

And there wouldn't be. Up to yesterday John Evarts had played the poor hand dealt him with caution and wisdom, in spite of Will Ballard. But yesterday at the seep he had gone off the track, and that act would cost him Hatchet. Sam supposed darkly that there was a buried wild streak in all the Evarts, but that was all right. What wasn't right was that it took Will Ballard to bring it out, as he had brought it out in Phil, in Celia, and now in John. When Sam thought of Will he felt an angry bafflement that he couldn't name.

Sam turned away from the window and walked out to the edge of the plank walk, troubled and restless.

The Belle Fourche on the corner reminded him of a warming drink. He ducked under the tie rail and slogged across the muddy street, his burly torso almost splitting the slicker at each movement. Inside the saloon he stamped the mud from his boots, yanked off his Stetson, and swung it sharply to rid it of raindrops.

Only afterward did he look up, heading for the bar, to see Bide Marriner standing against it. Russ Schultz was with him, but they were not talking.

Sam saw Bide watching him in the back-bar mirror, his dark face sardonic and watchful. Sam came up beside him and said, “A hell of a day to have to ride anywhere.”

Bide said, “Especially after horses,” and looked directly at him. Bide hadn't shaved yet; he looked sleepy and irritable and keyed up, and Sam knew that Bide wasn't sure about the part he had played at the seep yesterday.

Sam said, “Whisky,” to the bartender, and then half turned to Bide. “That wasn't my idea, Bide.”

“You crowded George against the wagon, or he'd have stopped Will right there. You put a gun on me.”

Sam nodded, his ruddy face holding a faint truculence. “I'll stop gunplay any time I get a chance. With you or anybody else, Bide.”

Bide considered this a moment, watching Sam with hot, dark eyes. But Sam had lived on terms of moderate friendliness next to Bide in the Salt Hills for some years, and they had never quarreled. He counted on that, although Schultz's heavy, sullen face was unforgiving.

“All right,” Bide said presently. “I think you would. Forget it. I'll buy you a drink.”

“Bring it over to a table,” Sam said. He shucked out of his slicker and tramped over to one of the tables near the front of the saloon. Bide spoke to Schultz and then followed Sam over to the table. After the bartender brought bottles and glasses Sam sat down and pulled out a worn brier whose bit was almost chewed through and packed it with tobacco from a buckskin sack he took from his hip pocket.

Seating himself, Marriner watched his deliberate movement with impatient, sardonic eyes, and finally blurted out, “I'm through with talk, Sam. I warn you.” He toed over a chair and put his feet on the seat and regarded Sam suspiciously.

“You're not through yet,” Sam contradicted him calmly. “Not if I can stop what might happen.”

“You can't.”

Sam didn't look at him. He lighted a match, puffed his pipe alight, and then carefully shook out the match. Then he regarded Marriner.

“I've never denied your rights, Bide. All I'd like to know is how much you want.”

“So you can tell Phil's girl?” Bide asked quickly.

“She thinks you want all of it. I don't.”

Bide was quiet, almost brooding, as he fingered his whisky glass. He sighed then and looked at Sam. “I don't know myself. I never thought of it.” His feet came off the chair and he hunched forward, a fierce vehemence in his eyes, his voice. “I used to want to run cattle. But for five years all I been thinking about is getting even with Phil Evarts and Will Ballard. That's all I want.”

Sam nodded slowly. “I can understand that.”

Bide leaned back and said in the wry, bitter tones of anger, “Nobody can do that to me. Nobody.”

“Suppose Will was counted out of it,” Sam suggested.

Bide looked quickly at him, scowling. “Count him out. Go ahead and try it,” he jeered.

“But suppose he was,” Sam insisted. “I'm not saying he will be. I don't even know how he could be. But just suppose he was.”

Bide thought a moment and then murmured, “Maybe that would be different.”

“You've talked every ten-cow outfit under Indian Ridge into moving onto Hatchet grass. You think you could pull them back?”

Bide said sharply, “Are you talking a deal?”

Sam shook his head slowly, patiently. “I'm just talking. There's a way out of this. There doesn't have to be any trouble.” He paused. “Could you pull them back?”

Bide said slowly, “Not all the way. They don't want much, though.”

Sam had his answer. It was oblique and not a promise, but to a man who understood Bide Marriner it was a great deal. And Sam was not a man to overplay his hand. He merely said, “It might be a good thing, Bide. You see,” he added quietly, “someday I'll marry Celia Evarts. I wouldn't want to have to take on all of Indian Ridge and you too.”

Bide watched him thoughtfully as he filled their glasses and shoved Bide's toward him. Bide took his and said mildly, “I'll talk about that when Will Ballard's licked.”

“Sure, sure,” Sam said. He lifted his glass and they drank, and afterward Sam stood up and put on his slicker. Bide drifted back to the bar and Sam went out.

It was still raining, but as Sam walked down to the livery stable and saddled his horse he felt strangely relieved. He was right about knowing Bide; a man could live at peace with him if he only understood the conditions.

Sam rode down the main street, reins looped over his saddle horn, and he buttoned his slicker collar. He looked at the western sky and saw a break in the gray over the Indigos and thought maybe it would clear off tonight.

At the edge of town he passed a pair of kids on a plodding old roan mare, the lard buckets in which they carried lunch to school suspended from the saddle horn and banging at each slogging step the old mare took.

Ahead of him Bill Donovan's two kids from out on Alkali Flat rode out of the schoolyard headed for home.

Sam looked idly at the frame schoolhouse where the usually hard-packed yard, now a soupy mud, was scarred with the tracks of the children and their horses. And then the thought came to him so abruptly that he reined up in the middle of the street.

Presently he kneed his horse over to the schoolyard and sought the shed out by the fence. Dismounting in its shelter beside another horse, he started back for the schoolhouse, paused, and went back to gather up art armload of cut wood stacked in the shed.