the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (16 page)

He had made his decision and intended to act quickly.

On the fourth day after the killing of Windy Gore, Ben Lock rode into town and went at once to Katie's for a meal. He did not stop to think that only a short time before he had eaten a big meal at a sheep camp.

Whenever he was in town these days he found himself going again and again to Katie's. i"(f The place was empty when he came in, and almost before he was on his stool a cup of coffee had been placed before him. J*

He looked up from the coffee. "Katie, you're a jewel. It's a lucky man who'll get you. It was like her that she only smiled, then grew serious. "Ben, there's a war on. Windy Gore tackled Kid Newton at the roundup and was killed. The whole country is taking sides for or against the Rocking R.

Ben Lock considered the news. Hopalong Cassidy had tried to save his brother-any final doubt he might have had was now
gone.
Doc Marsh would not have lied.

"Hopalong
's a good man," he suggested.

"He is that," Katie said. "And Ronson
is and Shorty."

"You thi
nk a lot of Shorty, don't you?"

Their eyes met briefly. "I do that. He's pure gold. I do think a lot of him."

For the first time Ben Lock knew jealousy. Montana had hung around here a good deal; he always came to Katie's when he was drunk, and she had always taken care of him.

There had been some gossip, but Ben put the idea aside, although it rankled. He was on his second cup of coffee when Clarry Jacks came in.

Their eyes met and passed, but each man felt a little cold prickling run over him.

"You're Lock, aren't you?" Jacks said.

Ben turned his head and nodded.

"Heard you were huntin' your brother's killer. Luck to you."

"Thanks. I'll find him."

"It may take quite a while."

Lock shrugged. "Looks like I'm good for thirty, forty more years yet. That should be more than enough."

Jacks considered Lock anew. This man was not boasting. He was quite capable of staying with it just that long, and Clarry Jacks felt a faint touch of uneasiness. "Talked to Cassidy?" Jacks paused. "You should, you know. He was the last one to see him alive and might have been told something he's not tellin'."

"Could be."

"He told you nothing new?"

Why, he did not know, but Lock was suddenly alert. Coldly he began to consider the situation. Could Jacks himself be involved? The man was a killer-and he was without doubt a man who kept many of his actions secret.

"Not much that was new." Lock picked up a doughnut. "Looks like he'll have his hands full now."

Jacks's lip curled. "He will that. You better talk to him again -while he's alive."

"He'll be around awhile. He might," Ben added, "win this fight. Suppose he sent for the old Bar 20 outfit?"

Clarry Jacks felt a distinct shock. The point was one he had not considered. When John Gore had come to him with the offer to join him and kill Cassidy, he had been more than pleased. Sure that the Rocking R could not win, he saw a lot of his own plans maturing. The war promised the weakening of both parties. Yet he knew the stories of the far-famed Bar 20 outfit. He had heard from Carp of their coming to Snake Buttes after the wounding of Johnny Nelson, and of the fight they had made there.

"Nothin" to that Bar 20 stuff," Jacks said, rising from the table. "This fight is local and, if you ask me, my guess would be the whole thing will be finished before any help could come to him."

"Maybe, but Hopalong knows what he's about. He gets around, you know. Heard he kilted an outlaw named Frazer at some hideout in the hills. Frazer was one of the men in the outfit that held up the stage when my brother was killed."

Clarry Jacks stood very still. That Frazer was dead, he knew. That Hopalong Cassidy had killed him, he also knew. But how did they know Frazer was one of the stage robbers?

He turned abruptly and crossed the street to the rooms he kept. Taking down a beautifully mounted Winchester, he said quietly, "I think it's time I played my own hand-no tellin' what Cassidy might uncover!" He went out, closing the door softly behind him. I CHAPTER 9

Open Warfare
.

John Gore in action was a coldly efficient man. The ranch house of the Rocking R was open to attack once the riders were on the range, yet two men might make such an attack extremely costly, and it was not in his plans to make one. Irene and Lenny were at the ranch, and not even Seven Pines would countenance an attack that endangered good women.

His plan was to hit the riders while on the range, to knock them down one or two at a time with a hard-riding bunch of horsemen. With this in mind he calculated where the riders were likely to be and arranged for several bunches of fresh horses to be concealed at various points so his own horsemen could make rapid changes. His plan was to win the war in one swift, hard-riding day. That he himself was only a cog in the wheel of another man's plans, he did not guess.

Dan Dusark, riding with Hartley, saw the smoke signal that called him to Corn Patch.

Knowing at once what it portended, he hesitated as to his course of action. "I'm goin' over, Joe," he said finally. "I'm not goin' to do what they want but may learn somethin' that would help Mr. Cassidy."

"Better stay away," Hartley warned him. "That Harris is a sidewinder, and you know it."

"He'll never guess I've switched sides," Dusark insisted. He scowled. "He isn't the big duck in this pond, either. I wish I knew who it was. Poker gets orders from somebody, and I figure whoever it is knows plenty about the holdups."

Joe Hartley touched his tongue to his cigarette and let his eyes sweep the range before them. "Could be," he said. "But my advice is to stay away from that sinkhole."

Corn Patch was silent when Dusark rode up the street to the saloon. The place was empty as he walked in, and he strode to the bar. Harris gave him a nod of greeting.

"Kind of quiet, isn't it?" Dusark asked. "Where's everybody?"

"Where do you think?" Poker shrugged his huge shoulders. "This here's the chance we been waitin' for, Dan. The war between the 3 G and the Rockin' R will tear this range wide open. Most of the boys have gone over to Gore, and once that Rockin' R bunch is busted, we'll sweep the range of cattle."

"Maybe the 3 G won't win."

"Huh?" Harris stared at his henchman with heavy-lidded eyes. "You crazy? Gore's got his own men, to say nothing of Clarry Jacks, Leeman, Drennan, Hankins, Troy, and a half-dozen more. They'll mop up fast, and do it in one day. We aim to finish that outfit this time, Dan-finish 'em complete. Nobody alive to make a kick or a comeback."

"Where do I fit in?"

The office door opened, and John Gore stepped into the room. Dusark felt himself stiffen slightly, knowing this had been prearranged.

"You spot Cassidy for us." Gore was speaking. "You bring him to us at Poker Gap."

Dusark stared at Gore. For the first time he found himself resenting their certainty of his agreement. He had stolen cattle, he had robbed a few people, but he had never led a brave man into a deathtrap. Suddenly a strange feeling came over him, a feeling that the sands had run out, that he had forked his last bronc. It was a silly feeling to have, but he could not shake off the premonition. He threw away his cigarette and rolled another. "Cassidy," he said then, "makes up his own mind. He ain't a man to be led by me or anybody."

"Try it," Harris insisted. "We'll have it all set up. All you got to do is get him into the Gap."

"Not a chance!" Dusark straightened slowly. His thick-fingered hand was on the bar.

His heavy features hardened. "He isn't that foolish." His eyes turned to Harris.

"Why, he out-slicked you at poker, somethin' nobody ever did, and he's met up with the Gores twice and come off best each time! Believe me, he'll do the same this time.

I couldn't get him into a trap if I wanted to. And I don't want to!"

Satisfaction and triumph flooded him. He saw Gore's face redden with anger, and the features of Poker Harris seemed hewn from stone. "You fools!" Dusark's voice was hoarse now. "You haven't got a chance of winnin'! You're buckin' a man now who is tougher and smarter than Old Cattle Bob ever was!"

When he finished speaking, silence hung heavy in the room. Outside, a cicada sang in the greasewood, and a bluebottle fly buzzed fretfully against the dingy window.

John Gore clamped the cigar between his teeth and looked past it to Harris. "I thought you said this man was reliable. Sounds to me like he's gone over to Cassidy."

"Does sound thataway," Harris agreed. "How about it, Dan? Where do you stand?"

Dan Dusark had taken a lot of orders in his time, from good men and bad. Suddenly he realized that, any way you looked at it, his life had been a pretty shabby, second-rate thing. He could wiggle out of this. He knew that. He could apologize for popping off, fall in with their plans, then get away and carry the news to Cassidy. Or he could face them both here and now.

If these two men were dead, the war might end. If these two men were out of it, if it did not end, certainly it would be much easier. Well, why not?

He looked up. He was a big man, almost as big as Harris, and he was unshaven and untidy, yet in that moment he felt good. He felt better than he had ever felt.

"Why, I'll take my stand with Cassidy," he said calmly, "with the Rockin' R.

"It's been a long time," he added, "since I've had a chance to ride with men like that over there, and I sort of find that I like it. I like it a lot. You always were a king-sized rat, Harris, and as for Gore here, he's a penny-ante wolf who lets coyotes do his killin' for him. I don't think either of you got a streak of decent blood in you."

He expected them to draw, and they did not. He expected anger, and none came. They sat very still for a long minute, and then Gore got to his feet. "Reckon that settles that, Poker. Let me know what you decide to do." He turned abruptly toward the office door, and for a fleeting instant Dusark thought the man would leave. His eyes followed him and then with a shock of realization, swung back to Harris. He was just in time to see both barrels of Harris's shotgun blossom with crimson, to feel t

>>He was drawing as he fell, and he fired rapidly three times. ,|

They were not aimed shots. They could not be aimed shots. The| first broke a bottle on the shelf behind Harris. The second| grooved the edge of the bar, and the third caught the big man in the throat, smashed against his spinal column, and carried most of it away.

John Gore, his lips white and compressed, beads of sweat|| on his forehead, stared at the two men. Harris had fallen full length behind the bar, and that he was dead was instantly obvious. Dusark lay sprawled on his back on the sawdusted floor, his body a vast reddening stain.

Stepping over him, Gore went down the steps. Tough as he
was, he was badly shaken now, for he had never seen two men die so suddenly or so violently. He swung into the saddle and started down the
trail.

Dusark was not dead, but dying. Slowly, painfully, he dragged himself to the near end of the bar, and with a stool broke the glass on Harris's rifle rack. His hand found the Sharps .50, and he jerked it from the rack. Then he turned himself
around to where he could look down the trail toward the desert. Gore was in plain sight, walking his horse.

The desert waved mysteriously over the sight as Dusark tried to steady the gun. It waved, danced, then steadied, and Dusark pulled the trigger.

The buffalo gun roared and leaped in his hands, kicking viciously against the shoulder where it had been weakly held. Three hundred yards away, John Gore felt his horse stiffen, then fall. He sprang clear and ran for the rocks.

In the saloon Dan Dusark collapsed, the rifle falling from hands he could no longer feel.

Back at the Rocking R, Lenny Ronson was waiting for Hopalong while he saddled his horse. Her face was pale and she looked as if she had passed a sleepless night. "Hoppy," she said suddenly, "what's going to happen?"

He looked at her seriously. "I don't rightly know, Lenny. It looks like war, but something might happen to stop it."

"The Gores won't stop now. Not unless you give the Kid to them, and they might not stop even then."

"They wouldn't and we wouldn't."

"Hoppy, why don't you hire Clarry Jacks? You could, you know. Bob would listen to you, and he's a good man."

Cassidy tightened the cinch. "Clarry already has a job, Lenny. He's workin' for John Gore."

"I don't believe it!"

"It's true. Leeman and he have both joined up and, so far as we can find out, all that outfit from Corn Patch. It's the Rockin' R against the country, Lenny."

Lenny Ronson watched Hopalong complete the saddling of his horse. Then as he mounted she caught his hand. "He's actually joined them?"

"I'm afraid he has."

Her lips tightened, and she felt sick and empty. Yet always she had expected this.

She admitted it now, although she would never have admitted it before. As much as she had been attracted to Jacks, she had always been a little afraid of him. It had been her brother's attitude as much as anything that had driven her to Clarry Jacks. And he was handsome, dashing, and the best dancer around.