Troublesome Range Read online

  His father’s letter curtly summoning him back to Lodgepole, “to help smoke out a nest of two-legged rattlers,” had lifted from his shoulders the weight of the past five troubled years. He sensed with relief that everything must be all right with the old man, that Yace had forgiven the past and was taking him in again; there could be no other explanation for Yace’s suddenly ending half a decade’s silence. Joe had ridden out the day the letter arrived and sent a wire ahead half an hour before he boarded the train south.

  He was up out of his seat, reaching for war bag and sacked saddle, as the coach rattled past the stock pens at the lower edge of town. Out on the platform with the conductor, the schooled impassiveness of Joe’s lean, weather-burned face relaxed into a smile as he recognized familiar landmarks through the darkness— Sam Thrall’s picket fence and wood shed, Oscar Nelson’s two-story brick house with the storm porch at the back, the lighted rear windows of old Sally Baker’s house.

  “Some dump, eh,” the conductor asked pleasantly enough as he shouldered past Joe, and climbed down to the swaying bottom step with his lantern.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Joe’s tone held an edge of belligerence surprisingly like the elder Bonnyman’s. He didn’t stop to label the reason for that defensive answer, but it was backed by a deep-rooted pride in all he’d once called home.

  The conductor shrugged and Joe forgot him as the cinder ramp unwound past the corner of the coach. He saw his father and Blaze and Clark standing under the ramp lantern, and wanted to yell, then thought better of it. Better go easy, was the way he crowded back the impulse. The old man probably thought he was still a little wild.

  Joe tossed his saddle aground over the conductor’s head while the train was still rolling; his swing down off the steps was one smooth uninterrupted motion, not awkward even for the weight of the heavy war bag. He saw Clark Dunne break into a trot toward him, away from his father and Blaze, and he let go the war bag and stood waiting, the flat planes of his face breaking under a wide grin. He was a medium-tall man whose profile gave him the look of having a light build, but whose full-front outline was made wide and blocky by an inordinately broad span of shoulder. The warm light in his dark-brown eyes made him almost handsome as he watched the approach of his friend.

  Clark stopped abruptly two paces away, and both his smile and Joe’s faded before mock seriousness in the beginning of a ritual Joe hadn’t remembered until now. Suddenly they reached out and clasped hands in a quick stab, both applying instant pressure to their grips. Joe spread his feet widely and dropped his right shoulder a little as his upper arm muscles helped tighten the tendon of his fingers. He saw Clark’s handsome face take on a flush, then a grimace of pain. Clark grunted, made a last, wringing effort to tighten his hold, and at the same time loosen Joe’s. Then he was gasping a quick: “Lay off, dog-gone it! Enough!”

  He jerked his hand free and they were both laughing, each rubbing a numbed hand to bring back the circulation. “Man, you’ve got your growth,” Clark said. He sensed the approach of the other two and stooped to pick up Joe’s war bag, adding a low-voiced warning: “He’s primed for bear. Go easy.”

  Some of the warmth and friendliness left Joe’s eyes, touching them with a surface brightness. It was the look many men over the past five years would have called his natural one, wary, close to distrustful.

  Yace Bonnyman caught that look and found some satisfaction in it. He didn’t offer to shake hands, but stood a moment regarding this son, who lacked half a head of matching him in height and some fifty pounds of meeting his weight.

  “Hello, Yace,” Joe said, and waited.

  The old man let the silence run on another moment without replying, his glance carefully measuring his son. All at once he saw something that deepened his frown. It was an indentation midway the length of Joe’s right pant leg, and Yace knew at once that the mark had been left there by the constant grip of a holster thong. It was what he was looking for, a flaw in the hard surface of this stranger who looked like his son, but whose bearing was disconcertingly cocksure, into which he could insert the sharp edge of his unreasoning scorn.

  “Still the same hellion you were when you drifted out,” he said flatly.

  Joe’s expression softened, became half a smile. He doesn’t want to eat his crow all in one piece, he was thinking, and drawled: “Must be the bloodlines, Yace.”

  The quickly gathering fury on his father’s face told him how much in error he’d been in judging Yace’s remark as the blunt preliminary to a peace offering. The old man had been deadly serious. There was nothing to do but stand there and witness the almost visible snapping of the tightly drawn thread of his temper.

  Blaze saw what was building and put in: “Somethin’ to that. You’ll have to admit it, boss.”

  Yace seemed not to have heard. Yet at the last moment, he did curb the impulse to lift his fists and maul this flesh and blood of his. It was because, at this moment, Joe’s alarmed expression reminded him of Caroline’s. He had buried his wife seven years ago, and the one sore spot in his conscience was the memory of how overbearing he had been with her at times. Her eyes had been dark, too, and the look he now saw in his son’s, half fearful, half defiant, was a grim reminder of a part of the past he would have liked to live over and mend. So deeply was he shaken by this reminder of his one weakness, so nerve-shattering was the stemming of the flood of fury in him, that his shoulders sagged, and the breath escaped his lungs in an audible groan. He was abruptly aware of having to make a decision; he mustn’t let them know how uncertain he was. But in trying to get a hold on himself he became even more confused. Blaze, knowing him better than the others, was shocked at the sight of the man aging before his eyes.

  At length, Yace settled on the only line of action that occurred to him. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out his wallet and removed some bills. He held them out to Joe.

  “Here’s a hundred,” he said. “Take it and get out. Go back where you came from.”

  When Joe made no move to take the money, Yace dropped it. Abruptly he turned from them and went out across the wide ramp. As he trudged out of sight around the station’s far corner, Clark Dunne whistled softly.

  “What came over him so sudden?” he breathed.

  Enemies Meet Again

  Joe stood staring into the shadows that had swallowed his parent, letting the shock of his welcome subside. In a moment he said: “Blaze, you ought to get him down to Phoenix and see a good doctor. There’s something wrong with him.”

  Blaze gave a tired shake of the head. “Nothin’ he didn’t have when I first knew him. He’s the meanest old fool I ever come across. I’m quittin’ him, here and now.”

  That statement broke through the core of Joe’s helplessness and put the final cap of irony on what had happened. He laughed softly, a mirthless laugh that brought Clark’s glance sharply around on him.

  “You were ready to quit when I left, Blaze. Still at it?” “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat . . . enough’s enough! I mean it, this time.”

  Because he needed something to steady him, Joe reached for tobacco and papers and built a smoke. He passed the makings to Blaze, and they went from the Anchor man to Clark. The time-tested ritual did something to ease the strain Yace’s hot-headed action had put in all of them.

  As Clark passed the Durham sack back to Joe, he said: “I’ve turned city man. Got a room at the hotel for the night. You can bed down with me till you find a better place.”

  Joe saw the money lying at his feet and stooped to pick it up. He looked at the wadded bills a moment, then handed them to Blaze. “It took more’n the sight of me to touch him off. What else is there?”

  “That’s what makes it so funny,” Clark answered for the redhead. “Yace settled things with Vanover tonight. You’d think he’d have been off the prod.”

  “Vanover?” Joe frowned, trying to place the name.

  “The Middle Arizona man,” Blaze said dryly. “You know.” Joe nodded. Yes, he knew now.
Vanover was the man who had represented the cattle company in the sale five years ago. Thinking back on that, Joe felt a momentary and keen shame. He’d gone out of here with $8,000 in his pocket, money that represented his legacy from a mother who had wisely judged her husband and son too alike ever to agree. She had made her gesture shortly before going to the grave, leaving Joe her thirty-section ranch on Troublesome Creek, wanting to insure his future. Joe had sold the layout to the cattle company after a bitter argument with Yace, knowing no better way to hurt his father. Had he foreseen the repercussions his act was to have, bringing on him the enmity of his neighbors and friends, ranchers who had fought to keep the cattle company from getting a foothold on the mesa, he might have acted differently. But the sale had been an accomplished fact before he became aware of what it represented. He’d drifted shortly after that. And he’d lost the last of the money that night in Casper when he had to leave the poker layout and the dead gambler in too much of a hurry to think about taking his sadly depleted stake.

  “So that ruckus is still on,” he said.

  “Was, not is,” Clark told him. “We had it out with Vanover and his lawyer tonight. Every man from the upcountry was in town. It finally wound up with Vanover’s crowd pullin’ in their horns. I came out of it with a job, president of a land company. You might say Yace rammed it down their throats.” He gave Joe a sideward glance, trying to judge his friend’s mood. “Who’s thirsty besides me?”

  “I am.” Blaze spoke with ominous intensity. “And I aim to do something about it.”

  “Careful, Yace might not like that,” Clark said in mock show of seriousness. He and Joe were both well acquainted with the red-headed cowpuncher’s one failing, and the look he gave Joe was intended to convey that understanding.

  But Joe was thinking of something else. “You . . . warmin’ a chair in an office? What land company?”

  “We’ll get you caught up on things over a drink,” Blaze said, and headed down the ramp after Joe’s saddle.

  As they passed the freight platform, Joe told them—“I’ll come back after this stuff later.”—and hefted his war bag up onto the planks indicating that Blaze should do the same with the saddle. There was a freight due shortly after eleven, Joe remembered, unless train schedules had been changed in his absence.

  Joe had definitely decided to leave Lodgepole. He wasn’t going back to the Tetons. No, he was through with all that. Somewhere south of here he’d find a riding job. There’d be no more gambling, he wouldn’t wear a gun, and he’d begin saving his money. Now that the break with home was clean, now that nothing remained here to hold him, he tried to convince himself he was making a new beginning. Turning down the street along the dark aisle of cottonwoods, seeing the store lights up ahead, he had his moment of sharp regret, the rising up of a long-forgotten nostalgia for all this country held for him. But that feeling was brief. His father’s open scorn had drained him of the last drop of sentiment.

  He put all his bitterness into words as he sensed the full futility of his return. “Yace needed someone to make his fight for him, eh? Now that it’s over, he can get along alone.”

  “It ain’t quite that,” Blaze said, wanting to explain exactly what had possessed Yace back there. In him was a stubborn streak of loyalty toward Anchor’s owner. He felt personally responsible for the outcome of that meeting between father and son. But try as be would, he couldn’t discover the real reason for this violent and final break; he could add nothing to his denial of Joe’s claim.

  They sensed that further words on the subject were futile. Joe changed it as quickly as he could, nodding across the street toward a new white-fronted building whose sign bore a familiar name. “Jensen’s comin’ up in the world.”

  As he spoke, Clark’s stride slowed so abruptly that the other two looked around. They surprised the quick change of expression on his face. When he spoke, it was nervously: “Joe, there’s someone you’ll want to see.” He tilted his head toward the broad verandah of The Antlers, beyond Jensen’s saddle shop. “She made the trip in today on purpose to get a look at you. Don’t disappoint her.”

  Across there, a girl’s slim outline showed before the hotel’s lamplit lobby entrance. Joe felt the turmoil within him subside quickly before a new feeling, one of mixed hesitation and expectation. Many times in these past harried years the image of Ruth Merrill had struck across his consciousness with freshness and clarity. Yet always in his thoughts of her was a blend of hot shame at having thrown himself so blindly at the one girl who had ever strongly attracted him; he’d offered himself and been held off, treated as her final choice only if she could make no better. Now the sting of that old defeat was in him again. But outweighing his instinctive rebellion at humbling himself once more was a live curiosity, the urge to experience again that old deep stir of feeling.

  “Disappoint Ruth?” he said mildly. “Not me.” He started obliquely over the wide span of the street.

  The girl must have seen him coming, for she crossed the broad porch and paused halfway down the steps. They met there, he with hat in hand, she looking down at him. For a moment neither spoke. And Joe was grateful for that interval that let him ease the long hunger of his imagining.

  He was conscious of a heightening expectancy as he took in the shadowed, near-perfect outline of her features. The prettiness he remembered was there, all of it and more, her ash-blonde hair adding a final striking touch to sheer beauty. He sensed something else, too, something womanly and assured in the way she accepted the flattery of his glance. It was as though she put it aside and looked deeply into him, wanting to know, as he wanted to know of her, the changes the years had brought. Here was no girl relying on beauty alone for her attraction. Ruth Merrill had taken on the bloom of maturity. He was sobered by the thought of how much she could mean to a man.

  “You’re not the same, Ruth,” he heard himself saying.

  “Nor you, Joe. It’s been a long time.” Her voice was richer, more vibrant than he remembered it. Something in her tones, warm and low, seemed to hold a promise for him.

  “I’d forgotten all this,” he said awkwardly. “It’s going to be hard to leave it.”

  “Leave? Again?” Interest was in her. But it was neither quick nor intense, and Joe knew he had misread the depth of her feeling as she first spoke. “Why, Joe?”

  “Yace is on his high horse. His trouble’s over and he doesn’t need me.”

  “So you’re going to a better place. Is there something so wrong with us that you . . . ?”

  He was never to know the completion of her thought, for she paused without finishing it, and her glance ran coolly beyond him and across the street. A moment ago someone had called from over there; Joe was only now aware of it. Ruth smiled briefly, a smile neither warm nor distant, and said: “It’s nice to have seen you. Don’t let Ed make trouble.” Then she was turning from him up the steps toward the lobby door. He didn’t realize until she was gone that this was her good bye, that she was taking this parting casually.

  “Bonnyman!”

  Joe faced about slowly at the snappish quality in Ed Merrill’s voice, hailing him a second time from across the street. He saw the man standing at the edge of the walk in front of the Mile High.

  Until now, Joe had forgotten Ed and the old feud that lay between them, the culmination of which had come in his courting Ed’s sister. The origin of their aversion to each other lay back beyond the reach of either’s memory, in one of their first days at the country school. It had been fed by Joe’s instinctive skill at all games, his love of a fight, his inability to harbor a grudge. Ed Merrill had always been best at a thing “next after that Bonnyman kid” even well into manhood. Joe’s betrayal of the ranchers to the cattle company had only fed the fire of Ed’s resentment; it had, in fact, elevated Ruth’s brother to a station above Joe for the first time in his life and he had been one of Joe’s chief tormentors five years ago.

  This reminder of that old rivalry, the strident summons in Ed
’s call, whetted in Joe the edge of sharp anger. He couldn’t define that anger, the feeling of recklessness that was suddenly in him, beyond knowing that Ruth Merrill’s welcome had lacked warmth. He started across the street, feeling a strong impulse to settle once and for all any difference between him and Ed. It was that thought that put a tough and rakish look on his face as he ducked under the saloon tie rail and regarded Merrill. In his pale-blue eyes was a danger signal, if only Merrill had read it.

  Ed Merrill had lately become a power on this range, and Joe sensed a new confidence in the man without knowing the reason for it. Old John Merrill, bedridden by something the doctor vaguely called “pulmonary constriction,” had let his son gradually assume all the responsibilities of managing Brush Ranch. Ed was a big man, lord of a big spread, and well aware of it.

  There was a surly arrogance in his glance as he looked down at Joe. “You never would take a hint, would you, Bonnyman?” he drawled.

  “Hadn’t it ought to be Mister Bonnyman?”

  Merrill ignored the gibe. “You’ll not hound Ruth any longer. Clark’ll have something to say to this, along with me.”

  “Clark!”

  Merrill seemed not to notice Joe’s surprised exclamation, and went on: “I warned you away from her before we ran you out of the country. Or maybe you forget.”

  From the cobalt shadows farther along under the walk awning, Blaze Coyle’s voice called solemnly: “All right, Joe?”

  “All right.” Joe’s toneless drawl wasn’t loud, but it carried well. “Go on in, Blaze. Order me a drink. Bourbon.”