War on the Cimarron (2 page)

Frank pulled his horse to a stop. “Where's Morg?”

There was a long pause. “Morg who?”

“Morg Wheelon. This is his place.”

“Who's talkin'?” the voice asked.

Frank's voice took on an edge. “Mister, I'm comin' over there, and I'm comin' peaceable. I want to talk.”

He dismounted and walked slowly toward the house. He heard the man on the porch say softly, “Light the lamp, Chet,” and then say to him, “Wait'll there's light, and then come slow, both of you.”

A match flared and then the steady glow of the lamp replaced it, and Frank walked onto the porch and paused in the doorway. Five riders had been interrupted in their game of cards. They stood around a big table that filled the center of a bunk-lined room. The light from the lamp brought out the sharp planes of their suspicious faces, and Frank picked out the biggest man and said, “Where's Morg Wheelon?”

This man shifted his feet gently and rammed both thumbs in the waistband of worn levis. He was a huge man, heavy and tall, with a thin saddle of sandy hair across his nearly bald head, and he had a broad, hard-bitten face that was utterly placid in front of deep-set alert eyes.

“Morg Wheelon?” he murmured. “Don't recollect the name. This is a line camp of the Reservation Cattle Company, though.”

Frank stepped slowly into the room. He might have been an ordinary puncher, for his clothes—checked cotton shirt, faded levis, black silk neckerchief, dust-colored Stetson and scuffed half boots—were common enough for Texas men. But there was something in his big-boned six feet of height and in his slow-moving manner that told of authority. He looked carefully about the room, at the cluttered gear on the dirt floor, at the ten bunks piled with blankets and clothes, at the door that let out to the cook's lean-to.

His gaze finally settled on a group of pictures cut out of magazines that was pasted on the log wall over a single bunk. A hunch prompted him to stroll across the room and examine the pictures. One was a drawing of a pacing horse, tail out, mane streaming and feet daintily lifted.

Frank turned slowly to the five men and then nodded at the pictures. “Who owns them?”

“I do,” the heavy man said.

“Nice picture of a horse. What horse is it?”

“I dunno. I just cut it out.”

Frank said evenly, “You're a liar. That's a picture of a pacer, Lady St Clair, from San Francisco. She made a record for five miles at Frisco in seventy-four, and Morg saw her do it. I've looked at it a hundred times. That's Morg's picture and he pasted it there.” His gray eyes were suddenly sultry, and his glance bored at the big man. “Where's Morg?”

The man in the doorway, gun still trained on Otey's back, said, “Don't talk, boss.”

“I got nothin' to hide,” the heavy man said firmly, his glance fixed on Frank. “Morg Wheelon is dead.”

There was a long, long pause.

“Dead?” Frank echoed blankly.

“That's right. Talk to Major Corning in Fort Reno. The army investigated it. About three weeks ago one of my riders called in here to pass the time of day, and Morg was lyin' in the yard by the horse corral. Somebody had fist-fought him and then let him have it with a load of buckshot.”

After another long pause Frank said, “And you're who?”

“Chet Milabel. I'm foreman for the Reservation Cattle Company.”

“And what are you doin' in Morg's place here?”

Milabel shook his head slowly. “It ain't Morg's place. After he was murdered the company leased this chunk of land from the Cheyennes. We paid good hard money for it too. This shack was on the lease, so we moved in.”

Frank shuttled his glance to Otey, whose face was stiff with dismay, and then he looked back at Milabel.

“There's only one thing wrong with the way that shirt hangs, Milabel. Morg Wheelon had a partner, and I'm that partner.”

Interest quickened in the foreman's eyes. He studied Frank with a careful unhaste and then said, “I'd want proof of that before I believed it, and it wouldn't change things much if I did believe it.”

“You're goin' to believe it. You're goin' to hear Chief Stone Bull tell you—
after
I've moved you out of here.”

A slow smile broke Milabel's heavy face. He shook his head and murmured, “You're green to these Indian politics, I can see.” He gestured to a bunk. “Sit down.”

“No.”

Milabel spread his legs a little wider and rocked back on his heels. He talked now with a slow and wicked relish. “There ain't anybody going to help you. All a man has to do to lease graze on this reservation is to hunt up ten Indians, any ten Indians, and give 'em some money. Then he squats on a piece of land and holds it if he can. That's what Morg Wheelon did. He hunted up Stone Bull, an old chief and a good one, and give him some money and then picked this piece. But I can hunt up four other chiefs who'll say they never saw the color of Morg Wheelon's money. And I can hunt up a dozen white men, whisky peddlers to the Indians, who claim to be lease agents for the Indians, and they'll say Morg Wheelon didn't pay them.” He shook his head slowly. “You ain't got any claim on this land, my friend—not unless you got plenty men with guns behind you to back it up. Have you?”

“I don't reckon,” Frank said, studying each man's face, “I don't reckon I'll need that many.”

“I wouldn't try it with less,” Milabel murmured.

“I'll try it.” Frank hitched up his levis. “I'll give you a week to pull off this lease. Move your cattle and your gear. No, I'll give you two days, just forty-eight hours. I don't like your face.”

Milabel's faint smile vanished, and Frank went on in a low, wicked voice, “There's just one thing I want out of you, Milabel. Who killed Morg Wheelon?”

“I know the Reservation Cattle Company didn't, and that's all I care.”

Frank said, “After I kick you off this place I'm goin' to find out if that's so.”

The man in the door swore softly, and at the sound of his voice Milabel stirred himself and tramped slowly across to Frank and hauled up facing him. He said gently, “You talk like a hard case. Are you one?” and suddenly drove his fist into Frank's face. Frank tried to dodge, and the blow skidded along his jaw, but there was force enough in it to send his head back against the wall with a sharp and savage rap that about split his skull.

His knees hinged and he sat down loosely on the floor, and Otey's hand made only the faintest flicker of a movement toward his gun before he felt a gun barrel rammed in his back.

Otey said bitterly, “You'll be sorry for that, Milabel.”

“Tote him out of here and keep him out,” Milabel said.

Otey walked over to Frank and stood him on his feet and then ducked under his arm and half dragged, half walked him out into the night.

When he reached his horse he felt Frank take up some of his slack weight, and Otey put Frank's hands on the saddle horn. For a half minute, perhaps, Otey held him there, and then Frank took his weight and shook his head slowly from side to side.

When he raised it he looked around him and then over his shoulder at the house. He shoved away from the horse, striding toward the light.

Otey grabbed him roughly and swung him around. “Stay out of there, Frank!”

Frank wrenched his hand free and swung up his gun and started again, and then Otey knew he would have to do it. He whipped up his gun and brought it arcing against Frank's head, and then Otey caught him as he was falling on his face.

Afterward Otey loaded him across the saddle and led his horse toward the creek and their camp.

Chapter II

With his self-imposed deadline less than two days away there were a lot of things Frank had to do and do quickly, and when he rode into Fort Reno the next noon there was naked temper in his gray eyes. One of those things was to find out what he could about Morg's death. This morning he had remembered a line in Morg's last letter to him. Morg had said that if everything went right for them during the coming year there was a girl at the agency, Edith Fairing by name, whom he was going to marry. She was the one to see first.

But with a couple of small errands to do first Frank rode into the garrison. Fort Reno was located at the crown of a long grassy slope that lifted from the banks of the north fork of the Canadian River. Across the wide sandy river bed of the Canadian lay Darlington, the agency town of the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation. Garrison and agency were in sight of each other, perhaps a mile apart. Frank was familiar with the garrison, for it was a supply point for trail-herd commissaries as they passed up the Chisholm Trail miles to the east. The garrison buildings lay on the four sides of the long bare rectangle that was the parade grounds, and this year, 1883, the barracks were of stone and there were sidewalks and young trees and even street lamps.

Frank swung into the drive that circled the parade grounds and headed toward the sutler's post, the garrison trading center. On the northeast corner of the parade grounds it reared up in two-story wooden vastness, a huge building that held a big store, a saloon, a restaurant and a barbershop on the first floor, with a hotel on the second floor. It was flanked by a fenced wagon yard, feed stable and blacksmith shop, and the whole building was the center of life at the post.

Passing the long wooden-awninged porch that crossed the entire front of the building, he was aware of the curious stares of the two dozen loafers, blue-coated troopers and Indians and punchers who congregated there. In the big wagon yard next door to the hotel there were a half-dozen freighting outfits making up for the trip to Caldwell, Kansas, a hundred and fifty miles to the north. And among these massive wagons there was one dainty buggy with bright red wheels, and it was pulled up in front of the office which bore the legend: H
AY AND
F
EED
, L
IVERY
R
IGS FOR
H
IRE
.

Frank dismounted and, squinting against the bright spring sun, stepped into the dark office. Immediately he was aware of a woman's voice saying, “—and six sacks of corn. Dad wants to know if you can get it right away, because they'll deliver to the quartermaster tomorrow. If you can't, they'll bring their remuda here.”

“Sit down, Miss Barnes. Sit down,” a man's voice said. “Jake Humphries ain't workin'. I'll see if he'll freight it out.”

The sun glare washed out of Frank's eyes, and he caught only the briefest glimpse of a girl in a blue print dress walking toward a chair. The clerk, a bald man in shirt sleeves wearing iron-rimmed glasses, stepped toward the door and, seeing Frank, stopped and said, “What'll you have, mister?”

“I want a load of corn freighted out to my place.”

The clerk went back to the desk and picked up a pencil. “What name?”

Frank told him, and the clerk said, “And where to?”

“On Paymaster Creek. Pick up the creek at Turkey Ford and follow it to the first hairpin bend.”

The clerk raised his head abruptly. “Ain't that the Circle R line camp?”

“It was,” Frank said.

“You bought it?”

“It's mine,” Frank said, a hint of temper in his voice. “They're movin'.”

“Will they help you freight it?” the clerk continued.

Frank looked puzzled. “Help? Why should they? I'm buyin' the corn and you're freightin' it.”

The clerk shook his head patiently. “Christian, I ain't freightin' any corn out there unless the Circle R is guardin'. If I tried, it would never get there.”

Frank's deceptively mild gaze studied the clerk for a moment. “Be plain,” he said.

“All right,” said the clerk. “Who'd you lease your range from?”

“The Indians.”

“Sure. Which ones?”

“Stone Bull got the lease money,” Frank said, puzzled.

The clerk shook his head and threw down the pencil. “Understand, this is just an observation of mine,” he said, “but I've noticed that if a man leases Indian land from Scott Corb, he never has trouble with his freightin'. If he don't lease it from Corb, he does. The Circle R didn't lease from Corb, and they have to throw a guard around every wagon that leaves here.” He paused and shrugged. “If I sent a wagon out, it would be wrecked, my teamster beat up and the corn burned.”

“So that's the word,” Frank said.

“That's it. I'm sorry, but you don't get no corn unless you supply the wagon and guards and pay cash for the freight.” He stepped around Frank and walked out into the bustling yard yelling for Jake.

Frank was suddenly aware that the girl was looking at him from her chair in the corner beside the desk. She was a slim girl with a mass of wheat-colored hair pinned in a loose knot at the base of her neck. There was a repose in her face now that was broken by a faint smile on her full lips. Her wide-set blue eyes were curious as they regarded Frank, and then when he looked at her she dropped her gaze.

Frank pulled off his Stetson, revealed a head of thick dark hair that was not carefully combed and walked over to her.

“I couldn't help but hear you,” he began. “Didn't you order corn?”

“Why—yes.”

“And do you lease from this Corb?”

“My father's a beef contractor to the Indians and the army,” she explained in a low voice. “We don't lease from anybody.”

Frank, still puzzled, nodded his head toward the door. “Was that straight, what he told me?”

“I'm afraid it is.”

Frank didn't say anything for a long moment, looking at her. He was remembering what Chet Milabel had told him last night, and then he said meagerly, “This Corb couldn't be a whisky peddler, could he?”

Involuntarily the girl started, and then she said swiftly, “It's never been proven. Corb is the informal lease agent for a good part of the Cheyennes. This freighting business is just—welt a way he has of making cattlemen want to lease from him.”