Troublesome Range Read online

  “No. He had to ride up to see the crew.”

  Blaze’s eyes went narrow-lidded a moment. “Then how’ll he know where you’ve gone?” he asked.

  “Am I going somewhere, Blaze?”

  “It’s up to you, ma’am. John Merrill’s worse, a lot worse. Ruth ain’t much help, and the doc sent a message over to our place that I was to send a man across to get you. I come myself to make sure.”

  “I’ll leave Dad a note,” Jean said, and at once turned toward the hallway that led to her bedroom.

  In the following moments, Blaze’s face assumed an unaccustomed gravity even though the fire’s warmth was relieving the bone-deep chill of his two-hour ride. He liked Jean Vanover, and it hurt him to have to lie to her. But he forgot that in the face of the urgency that drove him. Thinking of Joe now, remembering his fright over that labored breathing, and the deep wound channeled in his friend’s head, he doubted that he would ever again see him alive. A stark fear took hold of him, sent him across the room to call down the hallway into which Jean had gone: “I’ll go out and saddle you a horse! We’ll have to make some fast tracks!”

  Blaze not only saddled a horse for Jean at the big corral, but roped a fresh mount for himself, choosing a big-headed animal that had the look of a stayer. He turned his Anchor-branded pony loose, knowing the animal would find its way home. Back at the house, Blaze entered the living room as Jean came out of the hallway. He saw that she wore waist overalls and a sweater and warm jacket under her ankle-length slicker.

  She carried a spare poncho over her arm and gave it to him. “You’ll need this. What happened to yours?”

  “I’m a bum judge of the weather, I reckon.” Blaze grinned ruefully. “Hate to wear the darn’ things. I thought it was through rainin’ when I left our layout.” He thought of something to take her attention from his lame explanation and added hastily: “I missed supper. Mind if I see what I can find in the kitchen?”

  “I should have thought of that,” Jean said contritely. “I’ll wake Harley and have him get you something.”

  “No. Don’t. A cup o’ coffee’ll do.”

  His relief was keen as Jean led him into the kitchen without approaching the door at the far side, which he knew to be that of the cook. There was coffee on the stove and a pan of tamale pie in the warming oven. Blaze sat down to a big plateful of ground beef and browned cornmeal mush, for the first time aware that he was ravenously hungry. But he grudged this waste of time; he had wanted to get into the kitchen alone, to get his hands on food he could take to the cave, but Jean’s endeavor to be helpful had spoiled his chances of that.

  As the girl got him bread and butter and a second cup of coffee, she questioned him about John Merrill. Blaze pretended ignorance of everything but the errand he had been sent upon. Jean wanted to know about the posse, if there was any word yet of their having taken Joe. No, the redhead said, no word yet. He was slightly puzzled by the girl’s obvious relief at his answer.

  As his hope of taking any food up to the cave left him, she said abruptly: “The note. I’d almost forgotten. Help yourself to anything more you want, Blaze. I’ll be back in a minute.” And she went out into the living room.

  Blaze was up out of his chair the instant she was gone. He found half a sack of flour in the bin under the bread board, emptied it quickly, and started looking for things to put in the sack. In the storage cupboard he found canned tomatoes; he took three cans. Next came a coffee can full of flour, the big salt cellar on the stove, an unopened can of baking powder, one half full of coffee, a big slab of bacon from the ice box. He had run his belt through the handle of a small frying pan and was buckling the poncho over it when he heard Jean’s steps crossing the room beyond. He fastened the last buckle barely in time to keep her from seeing what was underneath the poncho as she entered the room.

  Blaze said—“All set.”—and opened the outside door. Jean paused close to him before she went out, taking a last look at the kitchen. Then the darkness swallowed her and he was groping his way over toward the horses, pulling his Stetson low against the slanting rain, breathing a long sigh of relief at not having wakened the cook.

  By the time they came to the yard gate, Blaze had tied the flour sack to the horn of his saddle, knowing it was too dark for Jean to see it.

  “‘You’d better follow me close!” he called, and spurred his horse into the lead. The animal seemed eager to go, and Blaze was relieved to think he’d made a wise choice.

  The one danger, Blaze knew, lay in their getting lost, for the pitch blackness of the night was unrelieved. It was also necessary that, for a mile or two, he keep up the pretense of heading for Brush.

  When he did swing off the trail, the girl called from close behind: “You’re too far to the right, Blaze!”

  His answer was inspired, coming to him quickly. “Short cut,” was all he said.

  For close to half an hour his explanation seemed to satisfy Jean, for she stayed close, even though he rode hard. But at the end of that interval, when he finally swung up into the timber that backed the mesa, she called out again: “Blaze! Let’s stop. I think we’re lost.”

  He reined in and let her come alongside, a ready answer again occurring to him. “I was supposed to sleep with the crew tonight. Thought I’d swing up Porcupine and tell ’em I couldn’t be in until mornin’. It isn’t much out of the way.”

  The girl was close enough so that he could distinguish faintly the outline of her face. He imagined that she was smiling. When she spoke, he knew it wasn’t his imagination.

  “Blaze,” she said softly, “where are you really taking me?”

  He was at first astonished, then angry as he realized that his ruse had failed. The girl was suspicious. He groped a moment for an explanation, and in the end knew there was none. Just as surely he knew that he couldn’t carry out the idea that had sent him down to the Diamond. He couldn’t lay a hand on this girl, force her to come with him; no matter how badly he needed her the innate sense of decency in him rebelled at that.

  “There’s a man bad hurt up in the hills,” he told her simply. “I wanted someone to help me look after him. I reckon you can go back now.”

  “It’s Joe Bonnyman, isn’t it?” Jean said.

  Blaze nodded wearily, not surprised that she should have guessed to whom he referred.

  “You didn’t think I’d have come if I’d known he was the one, did you?” Without waiting for his reply, the girl went on, her voice edged with gravity. “Is he badly hurt, Blaze? How did it happen?”

  “Someone shot him and left him lyin’ by the creek at the upper edge of the basin. Thought he was dead, I reckon. The slug hit him alongside the head, knocked him out. I’ve got him in a cave up there. His breathin’ didn’t sound any too good.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She was angry now. “We could have brought iodine and bandages. Now we’ll have to get along with what we have. What’s in that sack, Blaze?”

  “Grub,” he said sheepishly. So she had known all along of the sack tied to the horn of his saddle.

  “We can at least be thankful for that.” Jean paused a moment, then: “Well, we’re wasting time. Show me the way.”

  “You mean you’ll help?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t let a man die, could I?”

  “And you won’t give it away where he is?”

  “Blaze, I’m terribly poor at telling directions. For all I know, we’re on our way to Lodgepole.”

  As he touched his pony with spurs and went on, Blaze let his breath out in a long sigh of keen relief. You could never tell about women. Jean Vanover was no more lost than he was.

  Homesteaders with Guns

  Mike Saygar drew rein at the edge of the timber, within 100 yards of the spot where Joe Bonnyman’s horse had thrown his rider at dusk yesterday evening. He let the others come up with him before he said, his voice lifted against the roar of the swollen Troublesome: “You got it straight what you’re to do?” Whitey and Pecos nod
ded, but Chuck Reibel’s look was sullen as he said: “The devil with this sleepin’ on the ground. It stiffens me up too much, Mike.”

  “You can travel any time you don’t like the way you’re treated, mister,” came Saygar’s smooth drawl. Ignoring Reibel, then, he lifted a hand, indicating the snow-patched reach of the basin baking under the hot early sun. “Run your lines each side of the creek. If you have trouble gettin’ wire, forget your fences. Whitey, watch your temper in town. We don’t want the law on us. Remember, you’ve come in here peaceable and all you want is to be let alone. Now go ahead and make it look right.”

  So saying, Saygar turned back into the trees. The others sat watching him go, until Pecos drawled: “Well, let’s get goin’.”

  On the ride down out of the hills, they talked chiefly about the weather, and the way the sun had risen into a cloudless sky at dawn, two hours ago, to start the rapid melt that would see every creek on this side of the peaks over its banks by noon.

  “There’ll be hell to pay for what we’re doin’ tonight,” Pecos commented once.

  “What you worryin’ about?” was Reibel’s acid retort. “It ain’t you they’ll skin for it.”

  They rode into Lodgepole shortly after ten, going straight to the Land Office. The clerk there was only mildly interested when they asked to look over the plat maps in his big file case. Busy with his work, he left them alone.

  But in half an hour, when Reibel politely asked for three sets of homestead papers, the clerk’s curiosity came alive. He got the papers from his desk, handed them to Reibel, and queried: “Settlin’ down here, are you?”

  Reibel gave him little satisfaction beyond a nod before he returned to the office’s side counter, where Whitey and Pecos were closely inspecting one of the maps. For the next twenty minutes, while the three strangers filled in their papers, the clerk had to control his curiosity. But at the end of that interval all three came over to his desk and laid their papers on it. The clerk picked up the first, Reibel’s, and glanced at it.

  He suddenly straightened in his chair at something he saw on the printed form. Hastily picking up the other two, he examined them. His jaw sagged open a moment. Then he laughed.

  “You’re out of luck, boys,” he said. “That’s closed country.”

  Reibel’s brows lifted. “Closed? How come? There’s a notice over in the post office at Junction that that land is open to lease or homestead. We looked it over and like it. Were movin’ in.”

  “But you can’t.” was the clerk’s smug rejoinder. “You’d have half a dozen of the biggest outfits in the country ganged up on you inside of a day.”

  “It’s legal, ain’t it?” Whitey drawled.

  “Legal? Sure. But that basin’s summer range for the Mesa Grande outfits, Anchor, Brush, Yoke, and a few others.”

  “Never heard of them brands,” Pecos offered.

  The clerk’s eyes widened. “You haven’t? Well, brother, you’ll hear plenty if you stay around here. Where you from?” “Colorado.”

  The clerk shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint you, gents. But it’s no go.

  “You mean we can’t file on that creek up there?” queried Reibel.

  “You can. But it won’t do you any good. You’ll be run out.” “That’s our worry, ain’t it?” Reibel drawled. He nodded down to the papers. “Go ahead and register those. We’re movin’ in.”

  The clerk argued, reasoned, and finally lost his temper. But in the end he wrote the names of Henry Jordan, Cyrus Smith, and Edward Tolley in his recorder’s book, their titles to their quarter-sections being subject to their proving up on their basin homesteads in the next three years.

  When Reibel, Pecos, and Whitey left the office, the clerk ducked out the back way and told the first man he met about the three strangers who were homesteading Aspen Basin. If Saygar’s men hadn’t stopped in at the Mile High for a drink before they went to the hardware store, they might have had better luck with Whitlow, the store owner. As it was, Whitlow knew who they were when they came back to his office and wanted to buy a wagonload of barbed wire.

  The storekeeper’s expression was sympathetic as he shook his head. “Sold my last spool yesterday, gents,” he told them. “And that fool son-in-law of mine forgot to order any last week. So you’ll have to wait.”

  “How long’ll it be?” asked Reibel.

  Whitlow shrugged. “Two weeks, maybe three. I’m sure sorry about this. Where you plannin’ on puttin’ up your fence?” “Aspen Basin,” Reibel answered.

  Whitlow lifted his brows and said merely: “That’s nice country up there. Closes in a little early in the winter, though. Thought about that?”

  “We’ve thought about it,” Reibel assured him. “Then we’ll see you when the wire gets here.” He led the others out of the store.

  Bill Lyans was waiting for them on the walk out front. The deputy had had only four hours’ sleep the night before, and his voice showed it as he stepped in front of them, asking brusquely: “You the three gents that’re homesteadin’ the basin?”

  “That’s us,” Reibel said.

  The deputy’s stony glance appraised each one for a longer than polite moment. “You know what you’re lettin’ yourselves in for?” he asked sharply, finished with his inspection.

  “Just what the devil is this?” Whitey drawled, and his voice wasn’t pleasant. “We see a notice posted that good land’s open to homestead. We look it over. We decide to file on it. Now every jasper we talk to warns us off. This is a free country, ain’t it?”

  “All of it’s free but the basin,” Lyans said.

  “And why isn’t it free?”

  “Because for twenty years the basin’s been summer range for the mesa outfits.”

  “Meanin’ there ain’t room for us?” Reibel queried.

  “Meanin’ Yace Bonnyman and Workman and a few others will swarm over you like a pack o’ dogs on three crippled rabbits. You’re playin’ against a pat hand, gents. My advice is to forget the basin.”

  Reibel’s glance narrowed. “These range hogs hire you, do they?”

  “The county pays me.” Lyans’s face darkened under the insult.

  “Then it’s up to you to enforce the law,” Reibel said easily. “Which means you arrest anyone that takes a notion to run us out. Correct?”

  Lyons was on the spot and knew it. He didn’t like the looks of two of these three; the third appeared to be a harmless enough cowpuncher. He was trying to find the patience to explain exactly how he stood in the matter when someone hailed him from out on the street.

  Looking that way, Lyans saw Fred Vanover reining a sweat-lathered horse in toward him. Because he couldn’t think of anything to say to the three strangers, he purposely ignored them and stepped out under the tie rail as Vanover came up.

  The look on the Middle Arizona man’s face warned the deputy that something more serious than the trouble he had just postponed was in store for him. Vanover looked tired and worn as he stared bleakly down at the deputy and said: “Lyans, something’s happened to Jean. She’s been kidnapped.”

  Before the deputy could say anything due to his surprise, Vanover was going on: “She left a note last night, saying she was going across to Merrill’s, that the old man was worse, and the doctor had sent for her. I got home late and didn’t think much about it. This morning I went across to Brush and found she hadn’t been there, and hadn’t been sent for. The rain last night washed out all the sign there was in the yard. I don’t have a thing to go on.”

  “Come up to the office, Fred,” Lyans said wearily. “Either the devil’s got a hand in this or I’ve been on a straight diet o’ locoweed.”

  Clark Dunne knew something was wrong several minutes after he got to town and stopped at the jail, where he saw Bill Lyans. That something was that there was no word of Joe’s body having been discovered.

  Two hours ago Clark had followed the Troublesome into the upper end of the basin and seen that Joe no longer lay where he had last night. A
bout an hour before that a Brush rider had brought him and Bill Murdock the news of Jean Vanover’s disappearance, along with orders from Lyans that one man was to stay on duty above Klingmeier’s station in the pass, while the other came down to Lodgepole to join the hunt for the girl. On the ride down here, Clark had swung over to Diamond, Middle Arizona’s layout, and had had the luck to talk briefly with Neal Harper.

  Now, a little after five in the afternoon, as Clark relaxed in a barber chair and let Sid Ordway begin work on his three-day beard, he had time to think things out—or thought he did. The net result of his thinking was only a heightening of his uneasiness.

  Joe’s body had been moved—that much Clark had seen with his own eyes. Yet no word of this had reached Lyans. Someone, for some obscure reason, was hiding the fact that Joe was already dead.

  The more he thought about it, the more puzzled Clark became. Added to this puzzlement was irritation at Sid Ordway’s insistent talk. Ordinarily the barber was a quiet man. But too much had happened today for Ordway to maintain his usual reserve, and he told about being on the street when Fred Vanover rode in to talk to Lyans. He became eloquent. “There was Bill, madder’n a pup with a new-docked tail, talkin’ to these three strangers that say they’re movin’ into the basin. Then along comes Vanover with fresh trouble. You should’ve seen Bill. Fit to be . . .”

  “What about the strangers?” Clark interrupted.

  “Ain’t you heard?” asked the barber. “There’s three of ’em. Goin’ to homestead along the Troublesome in the basin.”

  “You don’t say!” Clark suppressed a smile with an effort.

  He had momentarily forgotten his plan for Mike Saygar and his men, forgotten the arrangements he had made with the outlaw while talking with him at Hoelseker’s cabin yesterday, before Chuck Reibel brought him into the cabin with a rifle at his back. He should have known. Saygar and his men had come down to the basin early this morning. Of course. They were the ones who had found Joe’s body. Because of what was to happen tonight, Saygar would naturally want to keep the posse at work, keep as many men as possible away from the thinned roundup crews working the country in back of the mesa.