Savage Range (2 page)

He turned, then, satisfied, and set out to look for San Jon's biggest saloon.

Chapter Two:
BATTLE IN THE MUD

It wasn't hard to find. Evidently the surly puncher Jim had argued with had been on his way to it, for it lay on the southwest corner of the plaza, and its doors, at the angle formed by the corner, let out clean shafts of light over the swing doors to turn the rain gray and thick and the street a wet wallow.

A scattering of ponies standing before it in the rain made Jim swear a little under his breath. The interior was typical, with a bar immediately to the left, and behind it the gambling-layouts. An ornate and heavy mirror backed the bar and reflected the glitter of row upon row of glasses, and beyond them the rough crowd. There were many men here, some prospectors, a few businessmen, one or two Mexican merchants in black broadcloth, the freighter, drunk as a lord, and the rest punchers and cattlemen.

Smoke was layered heavily under the overhead kerosene lamps at the gaming-tables, and a rough clatter of glasses and tall gave it the comfortable din of a social gathering.

Jim slipped in quietly and went immediately to the near end of the bar. “Where'll I find Max Bonsell?” he asked.

“Sittin' along one of the walls,” the bartender said.

Walking slowly back toward the tables, Jim was aware that men were watching him in the bar mirror, and that there was no friendliness in their glances. Without a head being turned, he knew that word of his coming was traveling ahead of him up the room. He paused by the first table of poker and let his glance rove the room. Against the back wall, alone at a wall bench, Max Bonsell was seated over a drink. His wave attracted Jim's attention, and Jim crossed over to him. Sly and covert glances from the men at the gaming-tables did not escape him. It seemed that they were prepared for him, and it occurred to him that Max Bonsell might have appointed this saloon for a meeting-place so as to acquaint every man in the country with the new Excelsior foreman. It angered him a little, so that when he shook hands with Bonsell his greeting was a curt, “Howdy, Bonsell.”

“Howdy, Jim. This is cutting the time as close as a man could ask for.”

“Ain't it?” Jim murmured, and sat down.

The two of them made a sight that a man would look at twice. To a cowman it was obvious that they were both from Texas. It was in their speech, in their clothes, in their movements, in the shape of their faces. Only there was a difference. Max Bonsell had a length of leg that matched Jim's, only he was a little leaner, and there was something about his face that was inert and impassive and faintly wicked. His bleached eyes were cold and clear as mountain water, but a man couldn't look into them. It was as if a wall of arrogance were built behind them, so they were only surface-deep, guarding some quiet threat that lay in the man's mind. The skin of his face, oak-brown with lines ironed in it by the weather, was plastered close to his skull, and when he spoke tiny muscles flicked and sawed and reminded a man of a coiled spring. Jim's face, with that same long, bony shape, was more relaxed, gaunted only in the way a good race horse is gaunted. His gray eyes were slow and two miles deep, and he had a quick grin that would make a man stop cursing him and a woman feel all warm inside. He carried himself straighter, and if his look right now was be-damned-to-you, you felt it wasn't always that way.

He took the whisky Max Bonsell poured for him and downed it, then scoured his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You didn't tell me at Dodge you were payin' fightin' wages.”

“That's right, I didn't,” Max Bonsell answered.

“Why?”

“Wanted to get you out here first.”

“What if I don't take the job?”

Bonsell smiled meagerly at the room in general. “You got to live, don't you?”

“Not that way.”

“What way?”

“I don't mind a fight when it's for somethin' I want,” Jim murmured. “But other men's fights—no thanks.”

“Somebody must have spooked you,” Bonsell said after a pause.

“First man I talked to had sand in his craw, and the second one told me to pack a gun loose.”

“That scare you?”

Jim's mouth tightened at the corners. “Quit it. I'm not a kid.”

“All right. You got hired because I wanted a man that could handle a crew. I never knowed a Texan yet that didn't figure a scrap now and then was part of handlin' a crew.”

Jim almost smiled. “Let's hear this setup before I promise anything.”

Max Bonsell slipped out a sack of tobacco and rolled a smoke, and Jim packed his pipe and lighted it.

“Nothin' to tell except what I told you,” Bonsell murmured. “My outfit, the Excelsior, has bought out this grant—the old Ulibarri grant. They picked it up for a lot of back taxes, and the title's clear. It's been fifteen years since an Ulibarri lived on it, and in that time a whole damn countryful of seven-cow outfits has moved in on its free grass. They got no right on it and they've never paid lease money. They treat it like open range. The first job Excelsior faces is runnin' them off. We warn them first, then push their beef off, and if it comes to trouble we fight for our property.” He looked over lazily at Jim. “That sound like I lied to you?”

“Not much.”

“Not any. I told you we was takin' over a Spanish grant. You've seen enough of that stuff to know what to expect.”

“That's right,” Jim agreed.

“I named a good wage—not a fightin' wage, exactly—because I figured you were a good man. You wouldn't run from a bluff and you wouldn't hunt trouble. And you knew cattle. If I'm wrong, tell me different.”

Jim drawled, “And yet you got the whole country fightin' me to start with.”

“That bother you? I've been sittin' here all evenin'.”

“Had a drink with anybody?” Jim asked dryly, and he saw the flush creep into Bonsell's face.

Bonsell said, “No. They've got no love for Excelsior. But they're scared.”

“They can get over that.”

Bonsell shrugged and smoked, his eyes watchful and hard. He had had his say, Jim knew. If he wanted to shake hands with Bonsell now and walk out of here, get his horse, and ride off, there was nothing to stop him. But there was a kind of indirect flattery in what Max Bonsell said that made Jim hesitate. Max Bonsell needed a good man, one not wholly a fighter and one not wholly a cowman. The combination, outside of Texas, was hard to find, and Bonsell thought Jim Wade was the man. Again, with about three silver dollars to rattle in his pocket, what kind of a fool would he be to turn down this reasonable proposition? He'd fought to get his little spread down in Texas and he'd fought rustlers to keep it. He'd fought a crooked sheriff and a crooked county board. He'd fought trail rustlers and he'd fought other drovers on the Chisholm, and when he got to Dodge and Oglalla he'd fought Yankee marshals and Texas hardcases. He was sick of it, but that was no reason why a man had to hunt a hole, like a rabbit, and hide in it. The facts were plain enough and always had been; you fought your whole life long if you wanted to live.

He said briefly, “I'll take it. How many men—”

A commotion at one of the crowded faro tables beside him silenced him. A chair crashed over backward, and there was a sudden scuffling of feet. The hard, strident voice of the dealer rose over the clatter of the room, and it was cursing in bitter, spaced violence.

A man swung out from behind the bar, a man Jim had not noticed before. He was a mountain of a man, his bones smothered in great folds of flesh that caricatured every line of him. He lunged out into the clear, and Jim saw that his right leg was gone, the empty trouser leg pinned up. A thick oak crutch was propped under his arm, and he strangely contrived to move with an agility which was as swift as it was ponderous. He shouldered a loafer out of his way, sending him spinning, and then he plowed into the handful of men who had crowded around the quarrel. They parted for him, and he stopped under the lamp, his shaven head round and set stubbornly on his shoulders and beaded with a fine sweat.

He reached out and yanked a thick-bodied, bearded puncher up from the table and spun him against the wall. A slim, gangling young man whose back had been pinned on the table top rolled off and stumbled to his feet. A smear of red crossed his mouth, and he was breathing deeply.

“Keep out of this, Cope!” the puncher against the wall said mildly.

The heavy man swung ponderously on his crutch. “You take that row outside,” he replied just as mildly.

The kid, hardly more than eighteen, scoured his bleeding mouth with the back of his hand and glared beyond Cope at the puncher. It was this man the room watched, as if expecting him to give the cue. He was almost middle-aged, heavy in a way that was overmuscled, brutal. There was a kind of cheerful cruelty in his face that played in his eyes, his twisted, amused mouth behind his beard, and in his manner which held an exuberant arrogance. He rubbed the flat of his square palm across his beard and laughed. Then he hit Cope on the side of the head. It made a dull, solid, smacking noise. Cope's head did not move. He shook it a little, then lifted his crutch and brought it down at the stocky man, who dodged and missed it. Cope put the crutch under his arm again.

“Don't get me mad, Will-John,” Cope said gently. “Take it outside like I said.”

Will-John smiled lazily and looked over at the kid. “Sure,” he murmured. “That kid had snaked six sleepers off me tonight. I'll put up with five. Not more, though.”

He walked over to the kid and grabbed his shirt in his fist. The kid bit him in the face, and he laughed. The kid tried to stand his ground, but he couldn't. He was pushed down the barway by Will-John's lazy strength and then out the door into the rain. The curious crowd followed. Cope loafed down the room behind them and took his low seat behind the bar.

Jim murmured, “This Cope isn't a man to ask for help, is he?”

Bonsell smiled faintly and rose. “Come and meet him. If he likes a man, he's a friend.”

Cope, still seated behind the bar, looked up at their approach and Bonsell said, “Cope, this is Jim Wade, the new boss at the Excelsior.”

Cope's veiled eyes regarded Jim closely, and he put out a big hand which was not flabby. “Howdy,” he said. He nodded toward the door. “Don't let that bother you, Wade. My tables are square, and I serve all comers. But I won't allow a fight here and I won't take a side.” He pulled up a bottle. “Have a drink.”

Jim and Bonsell accepted the drink. It was strangely silent here in the saloon now, so that the silence outside was even more pronounced. Threading through it, barely audible, was the sound of muffled sobbing, nothing more.

Jim, curious, looked at Cope, a question in his eyes.

Cope said, “This Will-John can be pretty rough sometimes.”

Jim set down his glass and strolled to the door. He shouldered through it and paused on the single step. The crowd, unmindful of the rain, lined the walk of the street that led to the plaza. The lamp in the lobby of the hotel across the street laid a dim light out on the shining mud of the street.

The kid was down in that mud, crawling. When he would fight to his knees, Will-John would stomp him down again. It was patient bullying; Will-John was absorbed by it.

He would stomp the kid into the mud and then he would raise his head to look across the street at someone in the shadow of the hotel.

“Here he is,” Will-John called, his voice almost quiet in the silent rain. “I'll help him over. But he's got to crawl.”

There was no answer from across the street, and Jim watched the kid drag himself to his knees, only to be stomped down by Will-John.

“He's a tinhorn, but he don't ring,” Will-John observed, looking across the street again.

Jim felt that old feeling gathering inside him that might have been a warning if it didn't always come too late. He shouldered through the crowd, ducked under the tie rail, and walked through the sticky mud to Will-John.

“He's had enough,” Jim said quietly.

Will-John did not turn at the sound of Jim's voice; he didn't even look at him. He simply wheeled and hit out. Jim, almost surprised, chopped down on the blow, so that it hit him in the chest and sent him skidding back against the tie rail.

Will-John said, “I don't take Excelsior pay, mister, and I don't take Excelsior lip,” and turned and stepped toward the kid.

Jim said quietly, “Turn around.” Will-John lifted his leg to tromp the kid again. Jim's kick got in ahead of it. It sent Will-John ahead to trip over the kid and sprawl in the soupy mud.

He rolled over easily and rose and came toward Jim, fists at his side. “You got warned,” he murmured, laughing a little. “Don't ever say you didn't.”

His rush was swift, seemingly propelled by flailing arms. Jim hit out, beating down, so that his left arm hooked into Will-John's right and tangled, and then he rolled to the side, driving in his right arm and straightening it. He felt and heard the blow, which missed the shelving jaw and hit the neck. Almost gracefully, Will-John wheeled to the side, his head up now. Jim hit him in the face on the way down. Will-John sat there a moment, hands in the gummy adobe, and then he rose.

There was no speech this time. He set himself firmly in the mud, then leaned off balance forward, arms raised, and dug in his heels in a heavy, driving charge. Jim met it with his shoulder turned, and with his right hand he reached out and grabbed Will-John's hair and yanked his head back. With his left, he smashed down on Will-John's face three times before he released his grip and let him fall. This time he did not wait for Will-John to rise. He stood over him and, by balling up his shirt front and heaving, he lifted him to his knees. He knocked him down again and then stood there, breathing deeply, wet and furious.