Troublesome Range Page 3

  He waited until Clark’s and Blaze’s shapes had moved in through the saloon’s batwing doors. He was trying to take in the full significance of Merrill’s coupling of Clark’s name with Ruth’s. But that could wait.

  “So you ran me out, did you, Ed?” he said mildly.

  Now Merrill caught a hint of what was coming, and took a backward step. Even so, he was still sure of himself, and in the taut smile that came to his broad face seemed to be the sureness that two extra inches of height, his added poundage, and the justice of his argument were already balancing the scales in his favor.

  “We ran you out,” he stated.

  Joe leaned back against the long pole of the tie rail, as though about to argue the matter further. His indolent gesture uncocked the other’s wariness, and Merrill decided that what he’d been looking for a moment ago wasn’t coming. Joe’s move had been intended to do exactly that; now he let his weight go back against the springy length of the pole. The next instant he was using that added force to put speed behind his sudden lunge up onto the walk.

  His feint with his left was wasted; Merrill wasn’t ready. Then Joe’s right clipped the rancher below the cheek bone with a force that sent the bigger man staggering backward across the walk and hard against the saloon’s wall. Merrill had but a split second to lift his guard and steady his reeling senses, for Joe pressed in on him. As Merrill’s hands came up, Joe whipped in two blows that drove the wind from the other’s lungs. Merrill struck out wildly, savagely. He missed and was slammed back into the wall again with a bleeding mouth and a stinging ear.

  Joe fought with relentless accuracy, goaded by Merrill’s reminder of his disgrace. Here seemed to be the target of all his hates, the embodiment of his long frustration, and he set about calmly and expertly to whip the man. The taste of blood seemed momentarily to steady Merrill, and for an interval he stood clear of the wall, almost toe to toe with Joe, landing blows, but doing little damage. Then, abruptly, he weakened, and it was as though he had decided that defeat would come when his back was to that wall again, for he swung sideways from it and gave ground along the walk.

  Shortly Joe found himself abreast the darkly curtained window of the Mile High. Its broad sill was knee high. Jeff Olander owned the saloon and one of Joe’s last memories of five years ago was of a group of his friends, or men who had been his friends, turning their backs when he entered the place, and even Olander refusing to drink with him. Now a taut smile came to his face as he thought back on Olander’s indictment, and slowly, slugging, dodging, and weaving, he maneuvered Merrill around so that the man’s back was to the window.

  Suddenly he gave no thought to protecting himself, but only to driving each fist home in Merrill’s face. The brutality of his attack made Merrill give ground. Then the rancher felt the window at his back and tried to side-step. In that precise instant Joe’s updriving right fist caught Merrill on the point of the chin. Pain shot the length of Joe’s forearm as he deeply bruised a knuckle. But he had the satisfaction of seeing Merrill lifted up on toes, then fall backward. The man reached out with both arms as the sill of the window caught the backs of his knees. The window cracked in a dozen places, making a jangling, high-pitched sound. Merrill fell inward in a smother of shattered glass, caught the heavy curtain, and dragged it down from its rod as a bright rectangle of light cut the gloom on the walk. The breath left his lungs in a low groan as he hit the floor inside. His head snapped back hard against the planks, and his high-built frame went loose as consciousness left him.

  Arms cocked at his sides, his breathing labored, Joe stared in through the glassless opening to see his father, Charley Staples, and Slim Workman staring in a paralysis of surprise the length of the room from a back table. Blaze and Clark were at the bar, and it was obvious that the breaking in of the window was the first indication they’d had of what went on outside. Two other customers stood farther back along the rough pine counter, their attitudes clearly indicating the line of flight they had picked to the alley door. Jeff Olander, his round face slack in amazement, had been caught with a dripping glass in one hand, a towel in the other, and stood transfixed in that posture so symbolic of his trade.

  Joe took all this in at a single sweeping glance as he stooped to pick up his Stetson, which had a moment ago fallen to the walk, stepped over the window’s low sill, and sauntered across to join Blaze and Clark. No one else in the room moved. A full shot glass of whiskey sat alongside Blaze’s empty one; Clark, too, had finished his drink. The extra was the one they had ordered for Joe. He took it, emptied it at one toss, and drawled: “Let’s get out where the air’s better.”

  They put their backs to the room, Blaze and Clark taking on a measure of the disdain with which Joe scorned to look in the direction of the prostrate Merrill. It was a gesture that held Olander and the rest, even Yace Bonnyman, speechless. Joe, flanked by his two friends, pushed the batwings wide, and they stepped through and out of sight onto the walk.

  The doors had long stopped rocking on their double hinges before Olander found his voice. His beady glance went to Yace Bonnyman and his voice intoned: “Someone’s got to square with me for that window.”

  Yace was still eying the doors. He nodded soberly, as though the saloon owner had interrupted a portentous and awesome thought. “Put it on my bill, Jeff,” he said, and there was bewilderment but no anger in his voice.

  Vanover Closes Up

  Fred Vanover was tired, strangely so, for he was a rugged man, and what he had accomplished tonight should have put new strength in him. It hadn’t. Not until it was over had he come to the full realization of what might have happened if the meeting had resulted in a deadlock. The half hundred men who had just left town so peaceably had come here ready to turn their guns on each other. That he had been even partly responsible for a situation that might have cost many lives still filled Vanover with awe and misgivings. Middle Arizona had placed too much power in his hands. It wasn’t right that he should be so able to control men’s destinies. He wasn’t deceiving himself. Luck had been with him tonight, just plain fool luck. And that same brand of luck had been with him in his talk with Neal Harper afterward. He’d bluntly told the Texan how things stood, that Middle Arizona no longer needed gunfighters. His surprise at Harper’s ready agreement overshadowed even the earlier one of the meeting’s outcome. He had been expecting trouble with Harper and none came.

  “We’re goin’ stale anyway,” Harper had said. “Nothin’ ever happens here.”

  No, nothing had happened, fortunately. Vanover’s feeling of relief was now so acute that he felt weak, hollow inside, as he looked across the office at the chestnut-haired girl working over the ledger at the side table. Sight of her brought a flash of tenderness that drove the severity out of his lined face.

  “Time to quit, Jean,” he said, and emphasized his words by pulling down the shutter on his roll-top desk. “We move out in the morning. Glad?”

  “As glad as you are.” Jean Vanover laid her pen aside, closed the heavy account book, and reached up with her arms to stretch in a very unwoman-like way. When she turned and looked across at her father, her face was lighted by a smile backed by the understanding of his long struggle, now ended. Fred Vanover had tried so hard to keep this office from becoming what it was intended to be, a loan bank set up for the sole purpose of impoverishing the ranchers of the country. He had even turned over the management of the ranch to another man and moved to town to be close to things. Tonight he had won his long battle.

  “One day they’ll know what you did for them, Dad,” she said, coming across and leaning down to kiss his high forehead.

  “I doubt it.” It didn’t matter to Fred Vanover whether anyone knew or not. The only thing that did was his conscience, and that was now at ease.

  Jean set about the routine of closing the office, pulling down the blind at the front plate-glass window, blowing out the big bracket lamp, turning down the smaller one, seeing that the alley door was locked, and finally that
the big safe was closed. Fred Vanover purposely didn’t help her in these tasks, preferring instead to tilt back in his chair and use the brief moment of leisure in watching her.

  It wasn’t often he had the chance really to look at her, or thought to. He was inordinately proud of this girl, of the easy grace with which she moved, of that boyish look that made her shoulders more prominent than her slim hips. Years ago he’d had his moments of wishing she had been a boy, but that feeling was long gone. He noticed now the way she carried her head at a tilt that was almost proud. It was the one thing in her that reminded him of her mother. Aside from that, she might have been another woman’s daughter. Martha hadn’t been pretty and Jean was definitely so. Jean’s hair was a deep rich chestnut; her mother’s had been blonde. Jean’s eyes were his own, hazel, and had a direct way of looking at a person that met with his approval. There was no guile, not even shyness in Jean Vanover. He had to admit that she was a powerfully appealing woman. “To me, at least,” he said half aloud.

  “What’s that, Dad?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Talking to myself.” Vanover rose from the chair and took his narrow-brimmed Stetson from the peg on the wall by the desk. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” she said, and went through the street door ahead of him.

  From obliquely down the wide aisle of buildings came sounds of a scuffle, the scraping of boots, the grunting intake of breath of a man being hit. Jean heard it and, a moment later, her father.

  “Sounds like someone’s workin’ off some steam across there,” he remarked as he reached around to close the door.

  Vanover was inserting the key in the lock when the Mile High’s window shattered under the weight of Ed Merrill’s body. He wheeled around and was in time to see the curtain pulled down, the man falling through the window, the one on the walk. And he watched as Joe Bonnyman picked up his hat, stepped in through the shattered opening, and out of sight.

  Vanover whistled softly. “Did pack a wallop,” he drawled.

  “Who could it be?”

  It came to him then, recognition of that wide shape. “Joe Bonnyman,” he answered. “I forgot to tell you . . . he came in on the train tonight.”

  “Who was he fighting?”

  “Couldn’t tell.” Vanover took Jean’s arm and gently drew her to his side as he started down the walk in the direction opposite the hotel, toward the small frame house they had rented since Vanover had left the ranch to work in the land company office.

  Jean’s glance was still on the saloon and the broken window. “Is he really as bad as they make him out to be?” she queried, matching her father’s stride.

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly what I’d have done . . . to sell out on my father.”

  “That old . . .” Jean couldn’t find the word to express her feeling for Yace Bonnyman. “I’d have done the same.”

  “You probably would,” her father agreed, chuckling over her rejoinder. “But would you also knock a man through a saloon window and . . . ?” His words ended abruptly as three men emerged from the Mile High’s doors. He recognized them and added dryly: “At least he’s in good company now.”

  “Do you call Clark Dunne good company?” asked Jean.

  “Yes,” he said, surprised by her vehemence. “Don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Something in her tone made him query sharply: “Hasn’t he been a gentleman with you, Jean?”

  Her easy laugh, striking into the stillness and sending back a small echo from across the street, reassured him. “Quite,” she said. “But I don’t like him to keep on seeing me when he’s practically engaged to Ruth Merrill. It makes me sort of . . . sort of playing second fiddle. Not that it matters. But there are things about him I don’t understand. I’m not sure I like him very much.”

  “Then don’t see him anymore.” Vanover hadn’t thought of the matter in this light before, but now that it was called to his attention, it did seem a little queer that Clark Dunne should be seeing his daughter so often when he was chiefly interested in Ruth Merrill.

  “I don’t believe I will, Dad,” Jean said, pressing his arm affectionately. “Thanks for helping me make up my mind.”

  Mike Saygar

  The sound of a woman’s laughter striking across the quiet street took Joe Bonnyman’s glance across there. He saw a man and a woman pass before the night-lighted window of a store almost opposite, and in a moment recognized Fred Vanover.

  “Vanover married again?” he asked curiously.

  “That’s his daughter,” Blaze said, immediately thinking of something else and adding truculently: “You’ve made a fine start at healin’ up the old sore, friend.”

  “His daughter?” Joe still peered across the wide street. “You mean the kid that used to run around in short skirts and pigtails?”

  Alongside, Clark Dunne’s voice had an edge to it: “What’s so strange about a girl growing up?”

  “Nothing, only . . .” Joe didn’t finish what he’d started to say, which in essence was that Jean Vanover’s voice had sounded exceedingly pleasant and womanly.

  “How you goin’ to make it up to Merrill?” Blaze was insistent on getting an answer to his worry. “He’s growed up, too. Casts a mighty wide shadow lately.”

  “It won’t need makin’ up,” Joe told him. He decided not to mention Merrill’s coupling of Clark’s and Ruth’s names. Anyway, it didn’t matter. “I’m headed out.”

  “Out? Away from here?” Blaze was incredulous and added a ripe oath.

  Joe nodded. “In an hour, unless they’ve stopped runnin’ that late freight.”

  “But you can’t drift again,” Blaze insisted. “Take it from a man crowdin’ middle age, mister. You’ll never lick anything by runnin’ from it.”

  Clark saw the angry turn of Joe’s head and knew at once that Blaze’s remark had touched on a sore spot. “Joe’s not runnin’,” he said quickly. “But there’s something to what you say. Joe, I’ve got an idea.”

  “The answer’s no,” Joe drawled.

  He was abruptly sobered by the thought that these two old friends, really the only two he cared anything about, would now urge him to stay on. Their attitude was natural; what sobered him was knowing that from now on he’d be living among strangers, not among men like this pair with whom he could forget the ingrained wariness and suspicion that were the unwanted fruits of his absence.

  “Wait’ll you hear what I have to say,” Clark insisted. “I’m in this land company now and I need help. Vanover’s to be trusted, but, after all, he works for Middle Arizona. So long as I’m goin’ at this thing at all, it’ll be whole hog. I’ll need a man to help me with the saddle work. Shippin’ time is close, and we could divide the county, you workin’ the south half, me the north, keepin’ check on the gather. That way we could . . .”

  “I said no, Clark.”

  “But listen, man. You get, say, twice the wages you can draw on a ridin’ job. You’re fifty miles from your old man, sixty from Merrill. What . . . ?”

  “I told you I was leavin’!” Joe said sharply.

  Clark thought he saw then how to carry his point. He wanted Joe to stay, wanted him badly enough to run the risk of his anger. “Then what are your reasons?” he asked bluntly, not denying the inference Joe had put to his mention of Ed Merrill. “Name me a good one.”

  “I’m fed up with the whole mess. If Merrill doesn’t try and knock the chip off my shoulder, someone else will.”

  “Don’t put one there to get knocked off,” advised Blaze. “Stick it out here and make these jaspers admit you ain’t the sidewinder they’ve pegged you for.”

  “No.” Joe’s refusal was as positive as it had been the first time.

  And so it was an hour later, when Joe tossed war bag and saddle up onto the caboose platform of the freight. He gave his two friends a look that showed them none of his regret, no emotion whatsoever, as he drawled: “Give Yace my apologies for bein’ in too much of a hurry to say good bye.”<
br />
  “Yeah, he’ll be touched.” Blaze’s blocky face was cracked by a set smile that didn’t quite hide his disappointment.

  “No use tryin’ to argue you out of it?” Clark was serious, sober.

  “No use.”

  Far up beyond the station, by the water tank, the locomotive’s whistle gave two sharp blasts to call in the brakeman. The waiting interval it took his lantern to crawl in along the tracks to the caboose was awkward for all three. But finally Joe was stepping up onto the platform after the brakeman and the conductor’s lantern was arching the highball to the engineer. The long line of cars shuddered as slack went out of the couplings. The caboose finally lurched into motion. It was twenty yards down the track when Joe, lifting a hand in a gesture of farewell, turned and the orange-lighted caboose door swallowed his wide shape.

  “Devil of a note,” Blaze growled.

  Clark Dunne didn’t speak until the two lights of the caboose had almost gone out of sight in the darkness. Then he gave a gusty sigh. “Too bad,” he said.

  They were silent as they went back up the street as far as the Mile High, where Blaze’s horse was tied, each too engrossed in his thinking to bother with talk. As Blaze jerked the knot of his reins, Clark said: “Sure you won’t stay over? I can put you up.”

  Blaze shook his head, stepping into the saddle. A bleak look touched his eyes as he glanced toward the saloon’s window, now covered with a tarpaulin nailed to the outside facing.

  “He sure was a wild man, eh?”

  “You talk like we weren’t going to see him again.”

  “I got that feelin’, friend.”

  Clark could think of no argument to use against this reasoning, and, when he remained silent, Blaze lifted his reins and turned the Anchor-branded gelding out into the street with a—“Be seein’ you.”

  Clark watched him ride out of sight, feeling a strange and restless sense of unfulfillment. He was at a loose end, half angry without knowing why. The hour was late, yet he wasn’t sleepy. His look went the way Blaze’s had a moment ago, toward the Mile High’s doors, and he regretfully ruled out the idea of going in there for a nightcap in the knowledge that Olander and his late customers would be talking about the fight and wanting his views on it. It occurred to him only then that neither he nor Blaze had asked Joe for any particulars on his argument with Ed Merrill. He wondered what had led to the fight. He had a hunch it had started over Ruth, over Ed’s seeing Joe talking with her.