Gunsmoke Masquerade Read online

  The rider blurted out a frenzied rush of gasped words: “They’re comin’ in! Thousands of the damned things! Down off . . . off the Arrowheads! All the water’s out of the right fork of the Squaw and they’re . . .”

  “Get your breath and start at the beginning, Ralph,” Frank Bishop cut in.

  When the Jensen man resumed his talk, he was more coherent. He had been sent in to Ledge before dawn to tell Fred Kelso what was happening at the pass. The sheriff couldn’t be found in town. Various guesses were made on where he could be. In the light of last night’s jail break, it seemed a good bet that he was either at Crescent B or Fencerail, since the whole town knew by now that it was those two outfits that had fought on the hill by the jail and that one of them had broken Kincaid out. Knowing that Kelso wasn’t at Crescent B, Jensen’s rider decided to head for Fencerail to try to find him. He’d been warned by a rifle shot to keep his distance as he rode in on Dallam’s barn lot. He’d had enough nerve to keep from running and had shouted his queries to the hidden marksman. No, Kelso hadn’t been there, and to hell with him, had been the answer. So Ralph had cut straight across the upper valley, riding point for the pass. That had been all of two hours ago.

  “It was pretty rough goin’ through them hills and I stopped to give my nag time to catch his wind,” Ralph went on. “Sittin’ there, I thought I heard sheep bawlin’. I thinks . . . ‘What the hell, did the boys let ’em over the pass after all?’ Then I knew that couldn’t be, because the blattin’ come from over east, from up toward the peaks. I listened again and couldn’t hear nothin’. But it was so late I knew I wouldn’t be doin’ no good here, so I figured I’d take me a ride, just to see what in blazes was goin’ on. I cut over and headed up that right fork of the Squaw just above Prenn’s layout. It was dry as a bone! That tipped me off that somethin’ was up. I was up six, seven miles when I began hearin’ that blasted sound again. It was a lot louder. Then pretty soon I saw ’em above. The bed of that cut was packed wall to wall with sheep. So I hightailed back down before anyone seen me. That’s all. Except, dammit, how’d they get there?”

  As he finished, not a man had a word to say, so mute were they held by bafflement and rage. Finally it was Jensen’s deep voice that boomed out: “Kincaid! It was him! Strung us along with that story he give you, Frank! Tolled us up here out o’ the way! The mangy double-crossin’ son-of-a-bitch!” With further invective, he added to his indictment of Streak.

  “And I could’ve put a slug in him when him and Buchwalter come ridin’ into that meadow at sunup,” Sid Riggs cut in ruefully.

  Frank Bishop listened with a feeling of constriction tightening his chest. He had become the leader in this fight against Fencerail. These men had trusted in his judgment, looked to him to furnish the brain work to save their range for cattle. Now, with stunning swiftness and cunning, Fencerail had in one brief morning accomplished something these men had supposed could never happen. Sheep were on the west slope, “thousands of the damned things” as Jensen’s rider had put it. And here, helpless and their strength bunched, were the men who had sworn to defend the last square foot of the valley with their lives, if need be, to keep sheep out.

  All at once the tension drained out of Bishop and he was calm, almost offhand as he said: “We’d better go on home. When we find Kelso, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Home, hell!” his foreman exploded. “We can go across there and put the torch to every layout on the slope, burn ’em out, cut their fences, set fire to their feed stacks!”

  “No, Riggs,” Bishop said before anyone else could approve the suggestion. “We’ve stayed with the law in this so far. We stick with it now.”

  “What law?” growled Jensen. “Where is it?”

  “Maybe we ought to be thinking of exactly that,” Bishop said. “I have the feeling that Fred Kelso may be in trouble.” He saw several of the men frown, led away from the main subject by his suggestion. He went on with it, hoping in this way to sway the rest from violence: “He wasn’t at Fencerail. He wasn’t in town. We know he hasn’t been near any of our places. Then where is he?”

  “If I ain’t mistaken, we’re about to find out.”

  Everyone looked at Jensen, wondering at his strange words. They saw him looking up the slope through the trees. Following his glance, they took in Kelso, his cane slung from a thong on the saddle cantle, riding down toward them. Close behind him came Cathy Bishop on her white-stockinged black.

  Frank Bishop was the least surprised of them all at his daughter being here. The past two weeks since her return had hardened him to the unexpected where she was concerned. But as the others stood wordlessly in their amazement at the appearance of the sheriff, Bishop had his moment of deep regret, of near humiliation at knowing how far apart he and Cathy had drifted.

  Kelso drew rein close by. After a moment in which no one spoke, he growled: “Well, ain’t any of you goin’ to ask where we been?”

  It was Riggs who finally said: “I hope it ain’t like it looks. You weren’t in on this double-cross, too, were you, Sheriff?”

  Kelso gave the man a withering look before his glance settled on Bishop. “You’re licked, Frank,” he intoned. “Licked good and proper. There’s enough sheep comin’ down the Squaw to take over the whole west slope. Furthermore, they’ve done it legally. You can’t go to court with it. The only slip-up they made was corrallin’ me and Cathy and holdin’ us up here while they did it. Kincaid’s the man responsible for that. So Fencerail’s in the clear.” As he spoke, he had been filling his pipe. Now he scratched a match on the seat of his denims and, having got the pipe going, flicked the match away.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Bishop asked.

  “Just so you’ll know how you stand,” was Kelso’s level rejoinder. “Mind, I ain’t sayin’ I like the way it’s turned out. But I’m danged good and fed up over the hell that’s busted loose here! ¿Sabe? From now on things quiet down or I fill me out some warrants and get to work. It won’t be so good if one of them warrants has your name on . . .”

  Sid Riggs let out a yell and ran in toward the sheriff. Kelso at first misunderstood his move and started to reach for his gun. Then he saw Riggs swing aside and begin tramping on the bed of pine needles close to where his horse stood. A blue pencil of smoke was lifting from the spot, and Kelso saw that his match, carelessly thrown away, had ignited the tinder-dry matting that blanketed the ground under the nearest tree.

  Having stomped out the fire, Riggs scowled up at the lawman. “This is all we need to wind things up,” he drawled. “A good blaze. The whole valley’d be gone then instead of just the west half.”

  “I forgot how dry it was,” Kelso said simply. He glanced again at Bishop. “Just to keep things straight, I’ll tell you right now that I’m splittin’ the reward on Kincaid with any man who brings him in. You ain’t goin’ to say later I played any favors.”

  Bishop gave a slow nod, seeming scarcely to have heard the lawman in the intentness of the regard he put on his daughter. “And you, Cathy?” he queried. “Where have you been?”

  “With me,” Kelso was quick to put in, trying to save the girl. “Now don’t ask how she got there. This ain’t any time to bring up family squabbles. The whole lot of you better get on home and thank your lucky stars you didn’t lose eight or ten men by hellin’ across there to the Squaw to stop that drive.”

  “Who says we still ain’t goin’ over there?” Riggs bridled.

  “I do!” exploded Kelso. “I wasn’t just talkin’ through my hat about fillin’ in some warrants! The first east-slope man that sets foot on the other side of the valley will be liable to arrest for trespassin’. And the lockup’s big enough to hold a lot of you.”

  It was strange and awesome for these men to see the turn things were taking. Fred Kelso was a cattleman, turned sheriff because of a leg lost in a fall from a horse. It had never occurred to the cattle owners that he would one day be siding against them. Most of them thought he was doing e
xactly that now. The truth, however, was that Kelso was using the only means that occurred to him of preventing further bloodshed. Bishop could see that. So could Jensen, and this ordinarily hard-headed man was sobered now by the realization that things had reached a deadly serious stage when Kelso would risk losing this many friends to keep the peace.

  “I reckon we needed this, Fred,” Jensen admitted quietly. “Thanks for haulin’ us up short before we stuck our necks out too far.” He caught Kelso’s grateful glance, then let his own run the circle of faces, singling out his men. “We go back down,” he told them. “As soon as we cool off a little, we can begin figurin’ what we’re to do.”

  Riggs, however, could see only what lay on the surface, Kelso’s seeming betrayal. “To the devil with that,” he said. “The least we can do is . . .”

  “Riggs,” Bishop said sharply, “Jensen’s right. We go back down.” He nodded to his daughter. “Coming?” he asked.

  In that moment, Cathy Bishop felt the stir of an old, near-dead feeling. Forgotten now was the bitter animosity that had been in her of late. She knew that her father would ask no questions, make no condemnation of her. All at once she wanted to go to him, to explain everything, to ask his help and in turn try to help him in this ordeal. Now that the thing she had hoped for had been accomplished, now that her father was humbled and could no longer dictate the affairs of this range, she felt sorry for him, wanting a return of that lost companionship and love. Somehow she felt she wasn’t worthy of his love any more. Only time would heal the wound of their differences, if anything could. But from now on she was going to try to make up for the things she had taken from him. She said—“Yes, Dad, I’m coming.”—and rode across to him with a smile that put mute wonder and gratitude in his eyes. Her heart was almost too full to take in the welcome he gave her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sid Riggs slammed the door as he left Crescent B’s living room. Clamping on his Stetson with a vicious pull, he came off the portal’s one step and started down across the yard to the bridge, his stride choppy and quick. Clouds banking the sky obscured even a hint of starlight, and twice he stumbled as the unevenness of the ground tricked him. Both times he cursed savagely; the last half hour with Frank Bishop had been a strain on his unstable temper and Riggs was mad clear through.

  He crossed the bridge and swung left, toward the bunkhouse light. Suddenly the nervous stomp of a standing horse struck against the stillness. Immediately wary, Riggs halted and turned to face the sound. Hardly was he set when a gun’s rosy flame stab patterned the darkness a bare thirty feet away. The explosion racketed back from the nearby outbuildings in a double thunderclap. Riggs clawed at his gun as a gray blob of shadow came at him out of the obscurity. It was a horse, and, as the thud of the animal’s quick-striking hoofs warned him to step aside, he made out the sound of another pony heading out of the trail at a hard run. The gray came so close to running him down that Riggs reached out defensively and caught a hold on one of the animal’s horn-looped reins. Gun in hand, he jerked the animal’s head around until he was at a stand. Then he saw the low, shadowed bulk in the saddle. Reaching out, he felt gingerly there, identifying a man’s shoulders, arms, and head. Down the trail, the fleeing rider had gone nearly out of sound reach.

  Riggs lit a match, concealing its flare in his cupped hand, and permitted himself a very brief inspection of the body roped to the horse’s saddle. Immediately he recognized who it was from the band of gray hair streaking the man’s dark head, and breathed: “Kincaid!” A moment later he sensed that the house door had opened, and looked off there as Frank Bishop called down: “Riggs! What was that?”

  A streak of deviltry was in Riggs tonight, that and the hard words just passed between him and his employer made him answer quickly: “Thought I spotted a coyote prowlin’ around the chicken pen down here. Missed him.”

  He didn’t take a full breath until the door had closed on Bishop. Then, excitement strong in him, he started for the bunkhouse, leading the gray. He smiled tightly when he saw that the light there had been put out. The shot was responsible for that.

  As he came in on the well cupola, between bunkhouse and cook shack, a curt voice called from behind it: “Sing out, you!”

  It was Luke Black who called. Well knowing the man’s impulsiveness and his skill with a gun, Riggs replied hastily: “It’s me, Luke. Give me a hand here, will you?”

  The cowpuncher came over. “Who fogged out the road there a minute ago?” he demanded. Then, close enough to see the gray’s burden, he let out an explosive imprecation.

  “You bring him in, Luke,” Riggs ordered. “Give me a little time to get things set. Who’s here?”

  Black, who was one of Crescent B’s most recent recruits, knew immediately what was in Riggs’s mind. “Baker and Matt hit for town while you were at the house,” he answered. “Phil’s here. So’s Shorty.” Thus briefly, he informed Riggs of the whereabouts of the only four old hands who had approved of Bishop’s action today in backing out of the fight.

  Riggs approached the bunkhouse. “Shorty! Phil!” he called. “Shake a leg. Don’t show a light.”

  Shortly half a dozen men stood grouped around him before the darkened bunkhouse doorway. They had come up out of the shadows from all directions. Riggs’s glance singled out the two questionable hands and he told them: “I spooked a jasper hidin’ in the willows over there below the bridge. He beat it when I called to him. Phil, saddle up and make a swing out around the pasture. Shorty, work out the trail a ways and keep your eyes open. Stay out there till I send word for you to come in.”

  “What good’ll that do on a night like this?” Phil Harris said querulously. “It’s black as the inside of my hat out there.”

  “You want to stick here and have ’em pick us off like a bunch of sittin’ birds?” Riggs asked curtly. “Suppose they’re set to make a try at us tonight?”

  “They got enough to do without botherin’ about us,” Harris grumbled.

  “Then who was that hidin’ down there by the bridge?”

  This reminder evidently carried its intended weight, for Harris and Shorty walked off toward the big corral beyond the barn.

  As soon as they were out of hearing, Riggs said, low-voiced, to one of the others: “Sam, get over and help Luke. The rest of you inside.” The way he spoke made them move quickly.

  In less than a minute, they were all in the bunkhouse, and Riggs was closing the door. Luke and Sam had stretched Streak out on one of the bunks lining the end wall. As he bolted the door, Riggs asked: “Is he alive?”

  “He’s breathin’,” Sam answered.

  “Good. A couple of you hang blankets over the windows before we strike a light.”

  As the sound of men moving around the pitch-dark room began, someone asked: “What’s comin’ off here, Sid?”

  “Plenty,” Riggs told him. “You’ll hear it as soon as we have a light.”

  When the wall-hung lamp finally shed its orange glow over the big room, Riggs was standing with his back to the door. He blinked against the glare a moment, then glanced to the bunk in which Streak lay. The rest looked over there, one or two going bug-eyed in wonder as they saw who it was.

  “We’ve got Kincaid and he’s alive,” Riggs told them. “That gives us a chance. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. First, see what you think about this. We’re through here, through tonight. Me along with the rest of you. Bishop laid down his law and I wouldn’t take it.” He drew a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s a note to Adams at the bank. He’s to pay us off tonight. I told Bishop we didn’t want any more of his grub or his lousy beds. He said we could stay on if we got the chips off our shoulders and let Fencerail alone. Anyone with a hankerin’ for that better speak out now.” He paused.

  “Hell with that,” Black said. “I get me my pay and leave this blasted country.”

  “Me, too,” said another.

  “Same here.”

  When the comment had subsided, Rig
gs went on: “Someone was waitin’ there by the bridge with Kincaid. He was the one that threw the shot, just to make sure Kincaid’s horse was spotted. Which means Buchwalter’s finished with Kincaid and is throwin’ him to the wolves. He likely thought we could save him some trouble by puttin’ a bullet through this owlhooter ourselves. Instead, we’re goin’ to use Kincaid.”

  “How?” Black asked.

  “First, Kelso said he’d split the reward with anyone that brought Kincaid in, didn’t he? So there’s five hundred we divide among us. But that ain’t what I’m gettin’ at. How bad do you boys want to tie into Fencerail before we hightail?”

  Charley Riling, who seldom spoke unless spoken to, drawled: “So bad I can taste it, Sid. It wasn’t Paight’s fault he didn’t bust my jaw the other night.”

  Riggs thought of something. “Luke, run on up to the house and get Pinto down here. He hated Dallam like poison. He’d never forgive us if he wasn’t in on this.”

  When Black had gone after Pinto Sanders, the cook, Riggs went on: “We ride to town, turn Kincaid in, and get our pay. Then we head for the west slope to see if we can stir up some trouble.”

  “Them sheep buzzards’ll be lookin’ for a play like that tonight,” Sam reminded.

  Riggs nodded. “They will. Only we’ll go around ’em. They can’t be everywhere at once. And we’re goin’ to make Kincaid tell us what trails they’re watchin’.” He started toward the bunk where Streak lay, adding: “Get a bucket of water, somebody.”