War on the Cimarron (5 page)

Frank shot once at the cook's feet, and with a cry of terror the cook started to run. Frank knew that nobody would shoot him, although they would hurry his flight until he reached the corrals.

Frank took Milabel's guns, threw them out the door, then settled his back against the wall and regarded the foreman, not saying anything. The hammering of the shots from the timber, the answering shots from the corral, beat a steady tattoo in the morning air.

“What are you waitin' for!” Milabel said angrily. “Shoot and get it over with!”

Frank grinned. “It'll come in a minute.”

He heard boots pounding in the kitchen, and then Red Shibe appeared in the doorway. Without looking at him Frank tossed his gun over to Red, and it was caught. Frank took off his Stetson, laid it on the table and spoke softly. “You started somethin' I didn't rightly get time to finish the other night, Milabel.”

Milabel's hands slowly came down to his sides. “So that's it,” he said. “If I lick you, I get a shot in the back.”

“If you lick me,” Frank said dryly, “I'll shoot myself in the back.”

He overturned the table against the wall in one big heave, and there was nothing between him and Milabel except fifteen feet of clear floor space.

“I hate to let you drag back to that board of directors you call a boss with the wrong ideas in your head,” Frank said. “I made a brag the other night. I'll make another one. I'll pull those leather ears off your thick head and stuff them up your nose, Milabel. And I'm comin' over now.”

Milabel wrenched his hat off his head, sailed it into a corner and lunged across at Frank, one arm cocked below his waist for a sledge-hammer blow. It was nice aim, nice timing, and it would have felled an ox. Only it never landed. Frank stepped inside the swing, let it wrap around his neck, shot a hook into Milabel's soft belly; and when Milabel jackknifed Frank raised a shoulder to catch Milabel's chin. His jaw clacked shut and he was straightened up, and then Frank put a flat palm in the man's face and shoved, and Milabel sat down abruptly. The satisfaction in his face had given way to surprise.

Frank drawled, “Hell, stand up. I haven't hit you yet.”

Milabel came to his feet with a growl. Frank stepped back, grinning wolfishly. Milabel had an inch on Frank's even six feet and forty pounds over Frank's one hundred and seventy, and confident that this would tell in the end, he rushed in again, arms flailing. Frank met him, chopping down on Milabel's thick arms, and then his fist drove into Milabel's face like a two-by-four battering-ram. Then both of them forgot what skill they had ever acquired and stood toe to toe, slugging. It was like a fight in some dim jungle, vicious and savage and deadly; and the only sounds were the solid smacking of driven bone on flesh and the grunting gusty breathing.

Frank was aiming for Milabel's face, which the big man did not try to guard, and slowly Frank chopped blow after sickening blow into it, cutting Milabel's lips, flattening his face, tearing an eyebrow until the blood streamed down into his face and blinded him. And then Milabel, dazed and his fury riding every wild swing, was getting sanity pounded into him. He backed up a step, and like a tiger scenting the kill, Frank stepped in, his blows surer, more savage, swifter. He hooked a left into Milabel's midriff, and the big foreman grunted and rocked back on his heels, and Frank lashed out, all his weight behind a blow that struck Milabel on the shelving point of his jaw and skidded alongside it to tear his ear. Milabel's head went back, and he tripped and fell on his back and rolled over. He came to his feet groggily, and now he had a bench in both hands.

Frank said, without looking at Shibe, “Let him go, Red,” and Milabel, cursing through swollen lips, threw the bench. It was too big to dodge, and Frank caught it, and the weight of it sent him sprawling. Milabel lunged for him, his tramp shaking the house. Frank rolled and came up, and with one wicked cutting blow he knocked Milabel down. The foreman came unsteadily to his feet, his guard not yet up, and Frank knocked him down again.

Shaking his head, Milabel shoved himself erect, and Frank hit him again in the face and harder. And when Milabel started to slump again Frank caught him by the shirt front and held him and slugged time and again, until the foreman's head rolled on his neck and he was staring unseeing at the floor. Frank caught his weight and said pantingly to Shibe, “Give me a hand, Red.”

Red, his face tight and a little strained, came up and Frank said, “Throw him through the door.”

“He's had enough, Frank.”

Frank's wicked eyes laid their hot glare on Shibe, and he said thickly, “I'm goin' all the way, Red! Get away if you don't like it!”

Red took hold of Milabel's belt, and together they threw him through the door out into the hard-packed dirt of the yard. He lit with a grunt, skidded a few feet and was utterly motionless. Hands on hips, panting, Frank said, “Call the crew off.”

Shibe stepped to the back window and called to the men to hold their fire, and the shots dribbled off into silence.

Frank stepped out under the porch and called to the corral, “Come and get your boss man, you riders.”

There was a long silence in the corrals, and then the cook, still in shirt sleeves, and another man walked tentatively out of the corral into sight. They kept looking at the timber, but the guns were silent up there. The cook and the puncher tramped across the yard and hauled up beside Milabel, their veiled glances on Frank.

Frank said, “Tote him off the place. Drive your horses off too, and if a Circle R rider shows his face on this lease again, he'll know what kind of a welcome we'll give him.”

The rider, a wedge-faced and dirty Texan, said shortly, “We'll be back.”

He and the cook stooped and caught Milabel under the arms, and because of the big man's weight they dragged him across to the corral, trailing twin furrows in the dust where his boots dug in.

Slowly, then, Frank's crew drifted up to the house, watching the Circle R riders saddle up, gather their remuda and turn it out. Last of all came a team and buckboard driven by the cook, and Milabel's limp body was slacked on its bed. They filed off toward the west, the Circle R men silent and furious under the slacked rifles of Frank's crew.

When they were out of sight Red Shibe stirred faintly and looked at Frank and then at Otey. Otey shook his head soberly, regarding Frank.

“All right,” Frank said. “Bring the wagon in, Joe, and unload. We're home.”

Chapter IV

By next morning the Circle R had not retaliated, and Frank, taking Samse with him to round up the remainder of the horses, had left orders for Red and Otey to stay at the house and for the others to scatter into the timber and up and down the creek to keep watch.

Otey, still suspicious of Red Shibe, had drifted out to the wagonshed after breakfast and was contemplating the black-smithing job necessary on the wagon. His examination was superficial, however, for Otey was thinking of other things. Ten men had left this place yesterday, ten mad men, and they would join another twenty men who would be just as angry when they heard the story of the eviction.

Otey looked uneasily down toward the creek and shook his head and tried to put it out of his mind. He was a little sad, for he had seen what could happen to stubborn men, rash men, and he liked Frank. He brought his attention to bear on the wagon, squatting down to see if the timbers of the frame were sprung. From underneath it he saw, standing in the doorway, a man's boots, and he raised up to find Red Shibe looking at him.

They stared at each other a long moment, Otey's seamed face resentful and suspicious.

Red said, “Old-timer, it's about time you and me made medicine.”

“How come that?” Otey said distantly.

“I'm here to stay,” Red said “I like the boss. So do you, unless I'm wrong.”

“I like him,” Otey said. “I don't much like the company he picks up.”

Red squatted against the doorway and said sparely, “Me too,” and looked squarely at Otey.

Dislike stirred in Otey's eyes, and he said dryly, “But I ain't quittin', mister.”

“Neither am I,” Red said, leaving the argument at deadlock.

Otey spat and came around the wagon to face Red. “I'm an old man,” Otey said grimly. “I know cattle, and I can run 'em. I also know people, and by God I can run them too. Nobody likes the kind of man Frank is goin' to turn into. And I reckon you had somethin' to do with turnin' him into it.”

“No,” Red said.

“He come back from town with sand in his craw,” Otey insisted. “He had some before he went. Not all of it.”

“You want him to run?” Red countered.

“Other outfits live at peace on this range. We kin too.”

“By payin' Scott Corb lease money,” Red said. “That suit you?”

“Sure it does. Hell, we're runnin' cattle, not a day-and-night brawl.”

“Where's the money comin' from to pay Corb?”

“Sell part of the herd. We'll make it up in two years,” Otey said sparely, his voice rising a little. “What the hell's the difference where lease money goes, long's we're let alone to run cattle? More than that, what the hell's it to you?”

“I work for Frank.”

“So have a lot of saddle bums, but he's always told them! They ain't told him!”

Red Shibe's face flushed a deep red, and his freckles stood out blackly. He came to his feet, drawling. “The trouble with you runts is you never grow up to the size of your mouth.”

Otey said, “The trouble with you redheads is you all think you got to look for fights, just on account of the color of your hair.”

They glared at each other a long moment, and Red finally growled, “I don't know whether to step on you or just put you in my hip pocket and forget you.”

“Let's see you try to do either one,” Otey said truculently.

The quarrel was interrupted by the sound of a horse approaching. It was Beach Freeman. He pulled up in front of the wagon shed and said, “Somebody's comin'.”

Red didn't say anything, although Beach spoke to him. Otey was foreman, and this was his business.

“Just one?” Otey asked.

“Yeah. He's in the Circle R buckboard. Gent in a nice shiny black suit, and he come from the west.”

Otey said, “All right. Git back to your post.”

Red Shibe started for the house and Otey, minding Frank's advice, followed him. They were sitting ten feet apart on the porch, not speaking, when the buckboard rounded the corner of the building and pulled up in front of the steps. Beach Freeman had named the suit, all right, Otey thought. The man wearing it wasn't a working cowman, as his pale face testified. He had a gray close-clipped mustache that went well with his steel-trap jaws and pale cold eyes. He pulled up, looked briefly at Otey and Red and said, “Where's Christian?”

“Ridin',” Otey said.

“When'll he be back?”

“Soon.”

“I'll wait,” the man said. He got out of the buckboard, only not on the porch side. Once he was on the ground he lighted a cigar, shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled down toward the creek, ignoring Red and Otey. Red grinned secretly, for he knew about Abe Puckett, the Reservation Cattle Company's general manager. He settled back against the wall and rolled a thin cigarette and lighted it, waiting to see the fun.

Within twenty minutes Samse and Frank crossed the creek, driving a dozen horses before them. Red went out to the corral, opened the gate, and the horses, skillfully hazed by Samse and Frank, thundered through the gate and the corral and out into the horse pasture.

Red, closing the gate, saw Frank looking at the buckboard, and he said, “Gent wants to see you.”

Frank dismounted and turned his horse into the corral and afterward said to Red, “Come along.”

Frank's jaw was set at a stubborn angle this morning. He had an angry-colored bruise on the angle of his jaw under his ear that was swollen, and his knuckles under his gloves were so raw they hurt at every movement. The beard stubble on his face, combined with that look of suppressed wildness in his gray eyes, and his worn levis and scuffed half boots made him look just a little tougher than any man in his crew.

Puckett had come back up the slope now, and he and Frank and Red, with Otey watching, met by the buckboard. Puckett said briskly, “Christian? I'm Puckett, General Manager of the Reservation Cattle Company.”

Frank barely nodded, waiting.

“I understand you had some sort of ruckus here yesterday with my men.”

“That wasn't a ruckus,” Frank drawled. “That was what the army calls a retreat.”

The corners of Puckett's mouth lifted imperceptibly. “Well, you've got the place now. Do you think you can hold it against my crew?”

“Why not?”

“What's to prevent them from doing exactly what you did?”

“My crew isn't sleepin' in the shack. Puckett. We're out in timber, and it's goin' to take some work to surprise us.”

“And your cattle. I suppose they're safe too?”

“Safe enough,” Frank drawled. “They're scattered so far you'll have to hold a roundup to collect 'em, and I can stop that.”

Puckett looked down at his cigar and then raised his chill blue eyes to regard Frank. “That may be true. But you can't raise cattle and still fight us, can you?”

“Tell me why I can't,” Frank said stubbornly.

Puckett made a gesture of annoyance. “You're a hard man to talk to, Christian. You won't even concede me a point to bargain with.” He smiled faintly. “I know I've got one, though.” He paused. “I want to buy you out. Now wait! Let me talk. You know our position. We were about to lease this piece of range to join our east range when Morg Wheelon got in ahead of us. We need this strip. Otherwise our crew is split and scattered, and it makes it too easy for others to annoy us. I'm being fair and putting my cards on the table. And I've got a good offer to make you.”