Troublesome Range Page 4

  “Got a minute, Clark?”

  The low-drawled words coming from beyond the walk startled Clark momentarily. He looked across to the head of the narrow alleyway running between the saloon and the adjoining building, and made out Neal Harper’s indistinct shape. He glanced warily both ways along the walk before he stepped over there.

  “You don’t need to creep up on a man,” he said curtly. “What is it?”

  “Thought you’d like to know Vanover’s lettin’ us go.” Harper’s drawl bore a faint edge of insolence, of demanding an answer.

  Clark was nervous under the implication lying behind those words. When he made no immediate reply, Harper went on: “We ain’t exactly built a stake we could retire on.”

  Here was a reminder of an old promise. Clark was edgy under that reminder and said dryly: “Can I help it if they bury the hatchet?”

  Harper’s shoulders lifted meagerly. “I’m only tellin’ you what happened.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about it. When are you due to pull out?”

  “Vanover didn’t say exactly when.”

  “Then keep in touch with me. Something may come up.”

  “Such as?”

  “How do I know?” Clark said sharply. He nodded back along the passageway. “Get goin’. Someone might spot me standin’ here, and begin to wonder.”

  Harper said—“Yeah.”—and faded soundlessly back into the deeper shadows.

  Back out at the edge of the walk, Clark put the Middle Arizona man from his mind and thought back on the matter that had occupied his attention when Harper interrupted him. It had been Joe and Ruth, his hunch that Ed Merrill had said something to Joe about his sister that had started the fight. This first insistent awareness of envy for Joe stung irritatingly, like the bite of a small insect. Clark tried to ignore it, couldn’t. It was related to another sobering fact, one he had put off facing, and that fact concerned himself in relation to Ruth Merrill. Talking to Ruth this afternoon, he had learned that she was in town primarily to see Joe, as she put it, “to prove to myself how lucky I am in having you, Clark.”

  Ruth’s bland statement now only heightened a growing distrust of her real feeling toward him. He thought he knew Ruth better than most men; he told himself he understood the guileful urgings that had left her unsatisfied with each conquest as a girl and pushed her on to the next. A year ago she had begun to favor him, but lately her interest seemed to be lagging. Clark wanted to believe it was because she had become so used to him that she had dropped the pretense of coquetry and flirtation for the more serious and deeper emotion that should eventually draw them together as man and wife. Yet, wanting to believe these things didn’t rule out the suspicion that, had Joe stayed, Ruth might have switched her favors once again.

  He rolled a smoke and forgot to light it, so somber were his thoughts. Yes, he would marry Ruth regardless of any doubt in his mind. It might turn out to be nothing but a marriage of mutual advantage, one in which there was respect, but no love. But, regardless of what the future held for him and Ruth, being taken into the Merrill family would strengthen his weak hold on the top-most rung of the ladder of this range’s society. That, bluntly, was the thing Clark Dunne was after.

  He had come to Anchor as the lowliest rider in a big crew twelve years ago, a gangling overgrown kid with a strong back and the guts to use it. He could admit now that he had been kept on because he and Joe got along so well together, not because Yace Bonnyman, or Blaze, found him indispensable as a rider. That had been his first toehold, and he had played it for all it was worth, ingratiating himself to old Yace to the point where he was allowed to run his own small herd along with Anchor’s, and thus get his start.

  Clark didn’t like to look back on the first year he was on his own, after he’d cut loose from Anchor to homestead high along the Troublesome in the hills above the mesa. The temptation to comb the hills for strays and work over their brands had been too strong to resist. It had been plain rustling, with not much risk involved. For Mike Saygar had also made his start in this country that same year, and Clark’s petty thievery had been obscured by the outlaw’s, which was on a wholesale scale.

  The sharp rise in Clark’s cattle count had passed unnoticed by everyone but Saygar himself. It hadn’t taken the wily outlaw long to trace the small bunches of Anchor-and Brush-branded beeves he was blamed for stealing, but hadn’t taken. And it was typical of him not to expose Clark. Rather, he had asked a favor in return for his silence.

  Clark, accepted as an up-and-coming young rancher, was on the inside as far as the law was concerned. All Saygar wanted was advance notice from Clark of any moves the sheriff’s office proposed making against him. Thus it was that a posse of forty men, that first spring after Mike Saygar’s coming, found his hill cabin deserted when they thought to surprise him and his wild bunch at dawn one morning. And in these last years of trouble with Middle Arizona, the partnership of rancher and outlaw had profited handsomely, dividing the blame for continued rustling equally between the cattle company and the Mesa Grande outfits. Clark’s Troublesome Creek layout had assumed mushrooming proportions, due, according to Yace Bonnyman’s own statement, to a mighty fine mixture of brains and muscle.

  To all appearances, Clark had worked hard. He’d had a little luck, too, in the form of a publicly proclaimed legacy of some $4,000, left him by an uncle back East. That uncle had in reality been Mike Saygar, who was willing to loan the money when Clark had the chance to buy out a neighbor’s ten sections. Clark had also increased his indebtedness by added borrowing from Middle Arizona’s land company. With the money he had thrown up an earth dam to catch spring flood water, and thereby increased the potential value of his newly acquired land. Lately Saygar had become a little impatient over the repayment of his loan. Clark had no idea how he was going to take care of it.

  This unwanted inspection of his past, prompted by his brief meeting with Joe, now increased Clark’s feeling of uneasiness. He was angry without that anger being directed at any one thing or person, unless possibly he blamed Joe for leaving. His way of life had lately left a bad taste in his mouth, and he had looked for Joe’s return to bring back the carefree feeling of the old days, when he and Joe and Blaze traveled together and horsed around at any deviltry Joe could think up.

  Then, abruptly, Clark saw something he hadn’t taken into account before. Joe’s staying wouldn’t have helped beyond the diversion of erasing a little of the sense of guilt that had lately begun crowding him. They might have had some good times together, but, all in all, his friendship with Joe would have been held against him. Yace’s putting him up to head the land company, along with the ready compliance of the men he had once envied, the big augurs of this country, opened before Clark a vista of influence he hadn’t realized until just now. He had suddenly become an important person. In years to come he might even gain the prominence and influence Yace Bonnyman now held in the affairs of this country. His prospective marriage would see him topping the last long rise that blocked the wide vista of his future. And, come to think about it, friendship with a man who had betrayed his father and his friends would have counted against him in the end. Joe had served him well in the beginning, but that service was no longer important. He was on his way, and he didn’t need Joe.

  Clark felt better immediately after taking this line of reasoning. He dragged in a deep breath of the chill night air that still bore the taint of the freight’s coal smoke, remembering only then the unlighted cigarette between his lips. The flare of the match broke the solemn run of his thoughts as they dwelt briefly on Neal Harper. As he sucked the smoke alight, he abruptly felt good, better than in a long time.

  His downward stare as he flicked the match away showed him something in its waning light, something that lay on the walk almost at his feet. He stooped and picked it up. It was a black-and-white braided horsehair hatband. He studied its woven design in the faint light, admiring it, trying to remember where he’d seen it before.

 
; All at once he knew. This was the hatband that a Texas raw-hider had years ago traded Joe for a cheap clasp knife. It was so long ago that Clark couldn’t remember the Texan’s looks. Joe would miss this, for he had worn it all these years when he could have afforded a better one. Trying to think how Joe could have lost it, Clark remembered his friend bending over to pick up his Stetson after the fight with Merrill, and knew then how it had happened.

  He folded the circle of horsehair and thrust it into a pants pocket. Then, still reluctant to turn, but unable to think of anything better to do, he sauntered over to the hotel and into the lobby. Snores sounded from the clerk’s cubbyhole room under the stairway behind the counter. Clark tiptoed over there, reached down the key to his room from the board over the desk, and climbed the stairs.

  A few strides from the door to his room he stopped at sight of a sliver of light shining through at the sill. He frowned, and the automatic gesture of hand to gun was as swift as the change of expression on his face. He approached the door and opened it. As it swung wide, he looked across to where Mike Saygar sat tilted back in a chair, boots cocked on the foot of the bed, and smudging its clean, gray-blanketed surface.

  Clark took his hand away from holster, but something tightened in him as he stepped in, closed the door, and said flatly: “I thought we didn’t know each other, Mike.”

  “We don’t.” Saygar’s full round face tilted up and he regarded Clark directly, his squat frame relaxing from the cocked attitude it had assumed at sound of the door latch clicking. His expression was his habitual one, a faint meaningless smile, as he added: “Don’t worry. I come in the back way.”

  Clark tossed his Stetson toward the row of pegs on the back of the door. The hat missed and fell to the floor. He ignored it. “Well?”

  “Can’t a man drop by to offer congratulations?”

  “For what?”

  “Your new job. Brother, you’re in.”

  Clark was irritated at what he made out as a certain note of disdain in Saygar’s voice. He was about to speak, when Saygar added: “And I’m out.”

  The puzzled frown that crossed Clark’s face was intended to mask his foreknowledge of what was coming. “How come?” Saygar shrugged his thick sloping shoulders and deliberately lowered his boots to the floor. He carefully dusted a peppering of dried mud from the blanket, and only then said: “Sort o’ dried up our well, didn’t it? This scrap bein’ settled so lady-like.”

  “Did it?” Clark queried cautiously.

  “That’s the way I figure it. They been layin’ off me lately and I’ve kind o’ got used to it. Now all that’ll change.”

  “You can work something out, you and Harper together.” “Sure. But it’ll be penny-ante stuff. No one to blame it on now. Maybe I ought to be pullin’ out.”

  Here it is, Clark was thinking, and said aloud: “You’ll travel plenty far to beat this set-up.”

  Saygar shook his head, his look mock sober. He came up out of the chair with surprising ease, a slight forward motion of his thick torso giving him all the momentum needed. Erect, he was a brute of a man, barrel-chested, long-armed.

  “Nope,” he drawled, “I’m about washed up here. The boys won’t stick if the goin’ gets hot again.”

  The suspense was grating on Clark’s nerves. Before he realized it, he had worded his worry. “Then you’ll be wantin’ the four thousand?”

  Saygar’s two big hands made an outspread gesture of helplessness. “I reckon there ain’t no choice.”

  Clark paced the width of the room to the window, turned there, and said querulously: “You’ll have to give me time.”

  “How much?” Now that the formalities were over, Saygar wasn’t wasting words.

  “That’s something I can’t tell. A month, maybe longer. The crew finishes gatherin’ week after next. It takes a week to ship and collect my money. What happens in between depends on the weather and how our luck holds. This means I’ll have to comb my range pretty clean.”

  “It’ll sure clean it out, brother. What if your friends wise up?”

  “It’s none o’ their blasted business!” Clark flared.

  “But it’d be nice if you didn’t have to ship all that stuff.” Clark eyed the outlaw coldly, reading something behind the remark without quite knowing what it was. “Meanin’ what?” he asked tonelessly.

  “Meanin’ there are other ways of layin’ hands on money. After all, you’re president of a bank, or somethin’ awful close to one.” “They wouldn’t carry me to the tune of another four thousand. You know I already carry a loan with them.”

  “Did I mention askin’ for it?”

  The shock of Saygar’s words had a visible effect on Clark. The belligerency that had been gathering on his face faded before a look of studied calculation. He appeared to be about to say something, then changed his mind. Saygar sauntered to the door, his hand reaching out for the knob.

  “Say a week from now, in Hoelseker’s cabin above the basin, Clark,” he said.

  When Clark appeared not to have heard him, Saygar let himself quietly out into the hall, glancing both ways along it before he closed the door and made for the back stairs.

  The Man at the Safe

  Bill Lyans had been pulling on his coat as he came out the door of his house and followed Ernie Baker, the Mile High swamper, down off the porch and out onto the dark street.

  “How’d it happen?” he asked.

  Baker shrugged. “No one knew a thing until Merrill come backward through the window. There ain’t a mule alive could have kicked him any harder.”

  “He’s still out?”

  “Cold. They carried him across to a room at The Antlers.”

  Lyans’s smile passed unnoticed in the darkness. By rights he should have been angry about being dragged out of a hot midweek bath to officiate at the outcome of a brawl. He wasn’t. Half an hour ago he had hurried home to give his wife the news of the settlement made at the Middle Arizona ranchers’ meeting.

  Her relief had been as keen as his, for the past few weeks had been a waking nightmare to both of them, with the threatened violence between the cattle company and the Mesa Grande outfits a constant worry. As deputy sheriff, responsible for law enforcement in this remote corner of the county, Bill Lyans considered himself a lucky man at the way things had turned out. Now he could concentrate on his job at Olson’s feed mill, meanwhile dealing with such petty duties as arose, like this trouble between Merrill and young Bonnyman.

  “He’ll probably hop that late freight,” Baker said as they came abreast of the first darkened stores.

  Lyans had been thinking of something else. “Who?” he asked, half absently.

  “Joe Bonnyman.”

  “Here’s hopin’.” Lyans breathed the words prayerfully, knowing Joe Bonnyman’s capacity for making trouble. He considered his natural liking for Yace Bonnyman’s wild son as something alien in his make-up, like his taste for whiskey, and now conscientiously tried to bridle his regret at not having seen Joe or had a drink with him during his brief return to Lodgepole. He was sure that Baker’s hunch on Joe’s leaving was correct.

  Ed Merrill was lying on the bed of an upstairs room, head and shoulders propped on pillows. Doc Nesbit was offering him a bottle of smelling salts, which he pushed roughly aside as Baker and the lawman entered. Ruth Merrill was there, holding a lamp Nesbit had needed in applying antiseptic to the cuts and bruises on her brother’s face. When Lyans stepped in, she returned the lamp to the table and moved quietly into the background, anticipating an immediate outburst from Ed.

  That outburst didn’t come. Ed’s look turned sullen at sight of the deputy. He seemed about to say something, then evidently changed his mind.

  Seeing that Merrill wasn’t going to speak, Lyans queried: “Everything all right, Doc?”

  “He needs rest. No bones broken.” The medico came up off the bed and began packing his black kit bag.

  Lyans looked at Merrill and waited, giving the man a second opportunit
y to speak. But again Merrill chose to retire behind the shell of his sullenness.

  “Goin’ to bring charges?” Lyans asked at length.

  Merrill shook his head.

  The deputy lifted his shoulders in a meager gesture of dismissal. Then, seeing the doctor heading for the door and Baker already gone, he felt that his presence here was unwanted, and said: “I’ll walk along with you, Doc.”

  The steps of the two men had receded down the corridor toward the stair head before Ed said querulously: “A sawbones and the law! Where’s the coroner? They act like I’d been murdered.” The perfect oval of Ruth Merrill’s face took on a smile. “You nearly were,” she said, a dry edge to her voice. Abruptly her look changed, robbing her of some of her composure. “What did you say to Joe?”

  Ed glowered up at her a moment before answering. “Told him to stay away from you.”

  She nodded. “And what else?”

  “Did there have to be anything else?”

  “Yes. If you remember, staying away from me is an old story to Joe. You must have said something else.”

  Merrill swore softly, adding the weight of a mocking laugh to his words. “Dog-gone it, you’re a little flirt! First you wouldn’t have anything to do with Joe because he wanted you. Now you’ve . . .”

  The girl’s face flamed hotly in anger. All at once she stepped up to the bed, drew back her hand, and slapped her brother hard across his cut and swollen mouth. There was no pity in her as he groaned in pain. She stepped quickly out of the way as his hand snatched out, trying for a hold on her skirt. At the door, turning to give him a last loathing look, she said scathingly: “You’re still the same spoiled brat that rubbed burrs in that tame little Shetland’s saddle blanket to make him buck. I wish I could hope Joe was staying to finish what he started.”