the Rider Of Ruby Hills (1986) (10 page)

"That's plain enough." Haney didn't know whether to be pleased or angry. After Pat's attitude in regard to Burt, he had hoped he might be an ally. "But you don't sound like much help."

"That's right. No help at all. I've got my saloon. I'm doin' all right. I was here before Reynolds and Pogue. I'll be here after they are gone."

"And after I'm gone?"

"Maybe that, too." Pat suddenly turned again and rested his big hands on the bar. "You fool around with Pogue all you want. With Reynolds, too. But you lay off of Star Levitt an' his crowd, you hear? They ain't human. They'll kill you. They'll eat you like a cat does a mouse, when they get ready."

"Maybe." Ross struck a match with his left hand. "Who are his crowd?"

Pat looked disgusted. "You've been to the VV. He runs that spread. Don't you be too friendly with that girl, either. She's poison."

Haney let that one ride. Maybe she was poison. Maybe feeling the way he did about her was the thing that would break him. He was a strong man. He had not lived that long under the conditions he knew without knowing his own strength and knowing how it compared with the strength of others. He knew that when he was sure he would push his luck to any degree, but as yet, he was not pushing it; as yet, no one in the valley knew his real intentions.

Pogue believed he had come looking for Chubb. Reynolds and Berdue, despite their hatred for him, believed he was after Pogue. Each was prepared to keep hands off in hopes he would injure the other. Yet the roundup was going to blow the lid off, for the roundup was going to show that he had cattle on the range and had pitched his hat into the ring. Then he would be in the middle of the fight, with every man's hand against him.

Pat's warning was right. Pogue and Reynolds were dangerous, but nothing to Levitt's crowd. Lifting his glass, Ross studied his reflection in the mirror, the reflection of a tall, wide- shouldered young man with blunt, bronzed features and a smile that came easily to eyes that were half cynical, half amused.

He was a tall young man with a flat- brimmed, flat-crowned black hat and a gray shield-chested shirt and a black knotted kerchief, black crossed belts, supporting the worn holsters and walnut-stocked guns.

He was a fool, he decided, to think as he did about Sherry. What could he offer such a girl?

On the other hand, what could Star Levitt offer her?

Regardless, he was here to stay. When he rode the palouse into the street of Soledad he had come to remain. If he had to back it with gunfire, he would do just that. Carefully, he considered the state of his plans. There was no fault to find there. In fact, he had progressed beyond where he had expected in that he had a friend, an ally, a man who would stay with him to the last ditch.

He had Roily Burt.

Camping on the mesa, the wounded man was rapidly knitting. They had talked much, and Burt had told him what to expect of the roundup. He knew the characters and personalities of the people of the Ruby Hills, and he knew something more of Pogue and Reynolds. Over nights beside the campfire they had yarned and argued and talked. Both of them had ridden for Goodnight, both for John Chisum. They knew the same saloons in Tascosa and El Paso. Both had been over the trail to Dodge and to Cheyenne.

Both had been in Uvalde and Laredo, and they talked the nights away of cattle and horses, of rustling and gunfighters, until they knew each other and knew they spoke the same language. Roily had talked much of Mabry. He was a good man. While Mabry liked both Bob and Sherry Vernon, he had confided to Burt that he must leave the VV or be killed.

"Why were the Box N boys gunnin' for you, Roily?"

A frown gathered between Roily Burt's eyes. He looked up at Ross over the fire. His blue eyes were puzzled and disturbed. "You know, I can't figure that. It was a set deal. I saw that right away. They'd been sent to murder me."

"How'd you happen to be in town?"

"Berdue sent me in for a message."

"I see." Ross told him then about the meeting below the mesa, everything but Sherry's part in it. "There's a tie-up there somewhere. I think Berdue sent you in on purpose, an' he had those Box N boys primed to kill you."

"But why?"

"Something you know, probably. The way I have it figured is that Syd Berdue is in some kind of a double-cross that he don't want Chalk to know about. Maybe he figured he'd tipped his hand somehow, and you knew too much. Voyle is in the deal with him, and I figured from the way he acted the other night in front of Pogue that he's double-crossing Walt. And I think Star Levitt is the man behind the whole thing!"

"You mean a deal between Berdue and Levitt? But they are supposed to be on the outs."

"Sure, and what better coverup? You keep an eye on the springs. They may meet again."

"Say!" Burt glanced up. "Something I've been meaning to ask you. Several times I've heard a funny kind of rumbling, sounds like it comes out of the rock under me. You heard it?"

"Uh-huh. Don't reckon it amounts to much, but some day we'll do some prowling. Kind of gives an hombre the shivers."

Standing now at the Bit and Bridle bar, Ross Haney went over that conversation. Yes, he was ahead of his plans in having such an ally as Roily Burt.

He leaned his forearms on the hardwood and turned his head to glance out into the street. The rose of the setting sun had tinted the dusty, unpainted boards of the old building opposite with a dull glow, and beyond it, in the space between the buildings, a deep shadow had already gathered. At the rail, Rio stamped his feet against a vagrant fly and blew contentedly.

It was a quiet evening. Suddenly, he felt a vague nostalgia, a longing for a home he had never known, the deep, inner desire for peace, his children about him, the quiet evening rest on a wide porch after a hard day on the range, and the sound of a voice inside, a voice singing.

Yet when he straightened and filled his glass again, the guns felt heavy against his legs.

Someday, with luck, things would be different.

Then the half doors pushed open, and Star Levitt stood there, tall and handsome against the fading light. He looked for an instant at Ross and then came on into the room.

He wore the same splendid white hat, a white buckskin vest, and perfectly creased gray trousers tucked into polished boots.

As always, the worn guns struck the only incongruous note. His voice was easy, confident.

"Thanks. I've got one." In the mirror his eyes caught the difference between them, his battered shabbiness against the cool magnificence of Levitt.

Levitt's smile was pleasant, his voice ordinary and casual. "Planning to leave soon?"

"No." Haney's voice was flat. "I'm never going to leave."

"That's what the country needs, they tell me. Permanent settlers, somebody to build on. It's a nice thought, if you can stick it."

"That's right. How about you, Levitt? Do - you think you'll be able to stick it when Reynolds and Pogue get to checking brands?"

He heard a glass rattle in Pat's suddenly nervous fingers. He knew he had taken the play away from Levitt with that remark, and he followed it up. "I've been over the range lately, and there's a lot of steers out there with VV's made over into Three Diamonds, an' Box N's to Triple Box A's, an' I understand that brand happens to be yours, too."

Levitt had straightened and was looking at him, all the smile gone from his face. "You understand too much, Haney! You're geting into water that's too deep for you, or for any drifting cowhand!"

"Am I? Let me judge. I've waded through some bad water a few times, an' where I couldn't wade, I could swim."

Star Levitt's eyes had widened, and the bones seemed to stretch the skin of his face taut and hard. He was not a man used to being talked back to, and he wasn't used to being thwarted. He was shrewd, a planner, but in that instant, Ross learned something else of him.

He had a temper, and when pushed, he got angry. Such a man was apt to be hasty. All right, Ross told himself, let's see.

"Another thing: you spoke the other day about a staked claim. I'm curious to see how deep your stakes are driven, so I'm going to find out for myself, Levitt. I don't think that claim is very secure. I think a little bit of bad weather an' all your stakes would shake loose. You're a big boy, Levitt, but you're not cutting the wide swath you think you are. Now you know where I stand, so don't try running any bluffs on me. I won't take a pushing around!"

"Stand aside, Star, an' let me have him!" The voice rang in an almost empty room, and Haney's hair prickled along his scalp as he saw Emmett Chubb standing just inside the door. "I want him, anyway, Star!"

Ross Haney stood, his feet wide apart, facing them, and he knew he was in the tightest spot of his life. Two of the deadliest gunmen in the country were facing him, and he was alone. Cold and still he waited, and the air was so tense he could hear the hoarse breathing of the bartender beside him and across the bar.

So still was the air in the room that Bill Mabry's voice, low as it was, could be heard by all.

"If they want it, Haney, I'll take Star for you. He's right here under my gun."

Levitt's eyes did not waver. Haney saw the quick calculation in the big man's eyes and then saw decision. Levitt was sharp, and this situation offered nothing for anybody. It was two and two, and Mabry's position at the window from which he spoke, commanded the situation perfectly, as he was just slightly behind both Levitt and Chubb.

It was Pat who broke the stalemate. "Nobody does any shootin' here unless it's me!" he said flatly. "Mabry, you stand where you are. Chubb, you take your hand away from that gun an' get out of that door, face first. Star, you foller him.

I ain't aimin' to put clean sawdust on this here floor again today. Now git!"

He enforced his command with the twin barrels of a shotgun over the edge of the bar, and nobody had any argument with a shotgun at close quarters. A six-gun warrants a gamble, but there is no gamble with a sawed-off scatter- gun.

Chubb turned on his heel and strode from the room, and Star smiled suddenly, but his eyes were cold as they turned to Haney. "You talk a good fight," he said. "We'll have to see what you're holding!"

"All right," Ross replied shortly. "I'll help you check brands at the roundup!"

Levitt walked out, and then Bill Mabry put a foot through the open window and stepped into the bar. He grinned.

"That job open?"

Haney laughed.

"Friend, you've been working for me for the last three minutes!" he declared warmly.

"You two finish your drinks and pull out," Pat said dryly. "Powder smoke gives me a headache!"

Chapter
XI

Sinister Signs

Gathered over the fire in the hollow atop the mesa crouched three men, not daring to use the partly constructed house, as the glow of the fire might attract attention. Here, in a more sheltered position far back from the rim, they could talk in quiet and without fear of the fire attracting attention.

Burt, whose leg was much better, was cooking. "It ain't all clear, Ross, but I think you've got the right idea. It looks like Levitt is engineerin' some kind of a steal if Voyle, Dahl, an' Berdue are in it with him. I do know this: there's been a passel of hard cases comin' into the valley here lately. They ain't all tied in with the Box N or the RR by any means."

"Sure, look at Streeter an' Hanson. They are with Pogue, but how far can he count on 'em? I think Streeter an' Hanson will stay out of things if Levitt says to. I think he's cut the ground from under the feet of both men."

"Those brands I've looked at aren't intended to fool anybody, it seems to me," Haney commented. "I think Levitt plans to start trouble. It's my opinion that he'll blow the lid off things just when the rest of them are standin' by for the roundup. How many reliable hands has Vernon got?"

"Three or four. Dahl and his partner ran several off. A man sure don't feel comfortable workin' around a ranch with two hombres on the prod like that."

"What goes on around there?" Haney asked Mabry. "You've lived on that spread an' should know."

Mabry shrugged. "I sure don't know," he said honestly. "Seems to be a lot of mo vin' around at night on that spread, but Dahl or his partner are usually by the door, an' they go out to see what it's all about. Several times at night riders have showed up there, leavin' hard- ridden horses behind when they take off. No familiar brands but one. That I think I've seen down Mexico way."

Ross took the plate he was handed and dished up some frijoles and then accepted the coffee Burt poured for him. There seemed to be but one answer. He would have to do some night riding and look around a little. Maybe he could figure it out. After all, there couldn't be many possibilities.

"Well," Burt suggested at last, "the roundup starts tomorrow. Before it has gone very far, we'll know a lot of things."

From the rim of the mesa they watched all the following morning. Reynolds' hands were rounding up cattle, driving them out of the timber and down into the flat. Some of the Box N riders were part of the group.

The weather was hot and dry, and dust arose in clouds. The cattle moved from the shade and ample water of the springs with reluctance. As always, it gave Ross a thrill to watch the cattle gathered and to see a big herd moving. He kept back and out of sight but took turns with Mabry at watching the work.