Gunsmoke Masquerade Read online

  “Then how would you last with sheep?”

  “Sheep are different. The profits are bigger. The only danger is in overstocking, overgrazing. I know that danger and can prevent it. If we bring in sheep and use our heads after they’re in, we’re better off than we ever were with cattle. Bishop says no. He’s got his lake up there now and can forget us. He has the guns to back his say. That’s where it stands right now.”

  Streak was building a smoke, seemingly more intent on it than on what Buchwalter was saying. In reality, he had caught and judged every word. He was using this moment to make up his mind, knowing for a certainty now that the thing he had all along suspected was true. Bishop was an autocratic and powerful rancher using a flimsy excuse as his reason for starving out smaller neighbors. What lay behind his tactics, Streak had no way of knowing. Did Bishop want to drive the small ranchers from the west slope and then take it over himself? It seemed a logical guess, particularly in view of Buchwalter’s statement that the lower valley in winter was crowded far beyond the capacity of the upper summer range. If Bishop and the others could get their hands on the small outfits, wouldn’t they then be able to make better use of the government lease? Deliberately Streak was arriving at a decision. A few moments ago a startling idea had come to him. Now he was sobered by the thought that he was probably the one man who could make or break these small outfits, assure them of a prosperous future. But were they in the right? After all, wasn’t he a cattleman? Weren’t they sheepmen? And hadn’t his upbringing taught him to hate the sight, the smell, even the sound of sheep? But, somehow, the matter of sheep didn’t count now. What did was that poor, hard-working men were being slowly ground to a pulp of poverty under the heel of a range hog. Streak liked these men. He even liked Morg Prenn, understanding the bitter hate that adversity had bred in the man. Prenn had had good reason to distrust him, to threaten his life.

  All at once Streak’s mind was made up and his glance came up to travel slowly from one face to the other. Paight he had liked from the first moment of their meeting last night. Buchwalter was no ordinary sheepman; he was level-headed, mild of manner, honesty written in every line of his face. Prenn was hot-headed but sincere. Streak didn’t know Snell. The other three hadn’t spoken a word, but they had the look of men whose lives had been spent close to the soil, the look of hard and honest men driven to the point of using guns to defend their homes, their futures.

  “You can bring your sheep in,” he said almost idly. “Not that band you’re holding beyond the pass but the main one. By tomorrow night you’ll have your sheep inside your fences. Bishop tried to break me out of jail tonight. He still thinks I’m Kincaid. I’ll show up at his layout tonight and tell him it took me that long to shake loose from you. I’ll tell him I overheard your plans before I hightailed. In the morning, his crew and all the others on the east slope will be up in the pass ready to stop your drive. You’ll send a few men across there and fake that drive while the real one comes down this cañon. How does it sound?”

  Prenn’s heavy laugh rang out. It lacked all amusement. “Fine, just fine, brother! For all but one thing. There ain’t a prayer of bringin’ sheep down this cañon. Can’t you get that through your thick head?”

  “Easy, Morg,” Buchwalter said with surprising sharpness. His glance was hard on Streak. “How do we do it?”

  Streak told them.

  Chapter Ten

  The drumming of hoofs sounded in along the trail to bring Frank Bishop up out of his deep leather chair and take him to the door. As he opened it and stepped out into the night, he glanced back over his shoulder to the couch where Cathy sat reading, her legs curled under her. Seeing her that way made her father almost wince, so strongly was he reminded of the woman to whom he had so long ago given his name. Ruth Cosgrave Bishop had been in her grave these past four years.

  He closed the door softly behind him, a feeling of depression settling over him. The two weeks since Cathy’s return had seemed an eternity to him. Nothing he had been able to do or say could stir her from the strange apathy that had taken her since Pete Dallam’s death. In her long silence, in the deep hurt he saw in her eyes whenever they couldn’t avoid meeting his, he found condemnation, almost bitter hate. He knew, although Cathy had never said so to his face, that she blamed him for Pete Dallam’s death. Now, going to the edge of the low wide portal that fronted the big house, Bishop’s glance roved the darkness, seeing what lay beyond his vision as though in the light of day. The yard, the tall cottonwoods, the rock-bordered stream fronting the broad square log house made a pleasing picture, a picture of quiet affluence. The working quarters of Crescent B lay down across the stream and out of sight beyond the willow grove. But there, too, the most critical eye could pass inspection on the big barn, the bunkhouse, the orderly array of lesser buildings and corrals, and approve.

  All of this Frank Bishop had wrested from the valley wilderness in his own lifetime. He had been the first rancher in this country, the first man to build a home and bring in cattle. Up until two years ago he had taken pride in his accomplishment. Then there had come trouble, nothing much that was definite except his feeling that Cathy had found herself a man who wasn’t quite worthy of her. Now that trouble had assumed gigantic proportions and he was no longer proud except outwardly. It seemed that his world was crumbling under him. Tonight he was a bitter, nearly broken old man hiding behind a hard shell of aloofness and austerity he hated as much as others hated it in him. Pete Dallam was responsible for all this, and, realizing what destruction the man had wrought on his own well-being, Frank Bishop hated even the memory of him. Looking back on his own part in the break with Dallam, he saw where he had made his mistakes and, humble now, would have given anything to correct them and bring happiness to Cathy. But because his mistakes hadn’t been the chief reason for the way things had turned out, he was hurt more by the turn of circumstance than contrite over any wrongdoing. It was true that he hadn’t approved of Pete Dallam, for the man had been too cocky, too reliant on good looks and a nimble wit to meet Bishop’s severe standards. Still, he had never mentioned his dislike to Cathy. When Dallam had broken away from the Association and taken his west-slope neighbors with him, Bishop had seen bad trouble in the making. Then, nearly a year ago, when Elbow Lake dam was being built, he had sent Cathy East to visit her Philadelphia relatives, hoping he’d be able to set things right before her return. He had failed miserably. Dallam had never been one to listen to reason, and Bishop’s dislike for the man had turned him stubborn and unbending. As a last desperate chance, Bishop had sent for Cathy, hoping that through her he could meet Dallam on something like decent terms. He’d never had that last chance, for Mike Sternes had killed Dallam. He still blamed himself for sending Mike down to meet Cathy instead of going himself. Had he been there with Dallam, the man would be alive today. Perhaps they could have patched things up.

  The hoof rattle of ponies crossing the creek bridge at the foot of the yard cut in on Bishop’s thoughts, and he came down off the broad step and walked down the slope of the house knoll to meet Riggs and the others.

  Riggs was the first to ride in on him, and in the faint first light of the moon that was edging up over the low pass of the eastward hills, the cattleman caught the hard cast of Riggs’s face and knew that the man’s errand had been futile. Then he saw the limp form slung across the saddle of one of the horses behind Riggs and shock rode through him.

  “Fencerail got there before us and busted Kincaid out,” Crescent B’s new foreman said simply. “Johnson stopped one of their slugs. Cashed in.”

  Bishop was aware that the house door above had opened a moment before Riggs had spoken, that it must be Cathy and that she had heard what was said. Knowing that this would furnish her one more brick in the wall of condemnation she was building against him, he was at a loss for words.

  Riggs thought Bishop hadn’t heard and began to repeat himself: “We had trouble, boss. Ran into . . .”

  “Take Johnson down t
o the barn,” Bishop cut in, wondering why he had to address the man so curtly. “I’ll be along directly.”

  He watched them turn back down to the bridge and waited until most of them were across it before he could summon the courage to face the house again. As he had suspected, Cathy’s slim figure stood outlined in the wash of lamplight in the door. He climbed the knoll and stood before her.

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then Bishop said: “Better turn in, Cathy. It’s time you were asleep.”

  Her glance met his and he saw dull anger, something close to loathing in her eyes as he came onto the portal. He felt it necessary to explain. “Kincaid’s the man that brought you in off the street this morning. Kelso’s been holding him on some trumped-up charge. I thought I could use him and sent the crew in after him. It seems Fencerail had the same idea.”

  Something in her father’s quiet words made Cathy check the embittered outburst that was on her lips. She said finally—“You don’t have to tell me these things.”—and turned back into the room, crossing it to the door of her bedroom at the far end.

  She undressed quickly and got into bed, hoping that sleep would soon blot out the futile turmoil of her thinking. The ambush on the street this morning had frightened her badly, made her uncertain of the stand she was taking against her father. Afterward, she had looked upon the fight Fencerail was making against the Crescent B in a new light, seeing herself as the direct cause of it. Pete Dallam’s death had hit her hard, had taken out of her that gaiety and the hope that this trouble would be righted in the end. Since then she had been living a waking nightmare, hardly knowing or caring what turn the feud was taking. But that gun on the street this morning had been real, deadly, and had driven home the seriousness of this thing in her mind until she looked beyond the point of her own personal loss. Out there in the yard a few minutes ago Cathy had had a strange feeling of pity for her father. He hadn’t seemed the cool heartless man of the past two weeks but one uncertain and almost humble. It was as though he felt keenly the responsibility for Johnson’s death. And this morning she had openly accused him of being a murderer.

  She no longer knew her own mind, torn as it was between bitterness over the loss of a man she loved and this stubborn sense of loyalty toward her parent. She was ashamed now of what she had said there on the street in Ledge. Thinking back on it, she fervently hoped that Fred Kelso and this stranger, Kincaid, had been the only ones to hear her. She could trust Kelso to keep the incident strictly to himself. As for Kincaid—well, she couldn’t know about him. Several times today she had thought of the stranger with strong curiosity, wondering what sort of man he could be. She could still feel the powerful sweep of his arms as he had lifted and carried her from the street. The deep concern that had been in his blue-gray eyes as they stood there in the store doorway was as clear to her now as when she had first seen it. Those blue-gray eyes had been gentle even in the hardness of anger. Her father had just said that this man, Kincaid, was being held by Kelso on a trumped-up charge. Didn’t that mean then that her father had sent the crew in to break him out of jail? Once again anger against her father and his calculatedly superior manner grated against the girl’s nerves. She remembered once more that he was, indirectly at least, responsible for Pete Dallam’s death, for all this trouble that was now flaring into sustained violence. Then, mercifully, sleep ended the ceaseless whirl of her thoughts.

  * * * * *

  She wakened to the muted sound of voices coming from the living room. She had no idea of the time, or of how long she had slept, as she lay there drowsily listening. Her father’s voice she recognized. The other she didn’t, not for several minutes. But when it suddenly came to her that the quiet drawl blending with her father’s voice belonged to the stranger, Kincaid, she was instantly and fully awake, and at once she asked herself how he came to be here.

  The impulse that took her out of the bed to pull on her robe was at first only one of curiosity to see this man again. She went out into the hall. The door there stood slitted open. She moved it wider, carefully, and could see them standing to one side of the big stone fireplace in the big room, the stranger a full head taller than her father. He stood, tall and straight, his face shadowed in firm lines by the lamplight.

  Then, as she was soundlessly closing the door, beginning again to wonder why Kincaid was here, Cathy heard her father say: “Buchwalter knows we’ve got the pass guarded. How does he think he’ll make this stick?”

  “They’re moving in just as it gets light. He’s got better than twenty men to back him. He figures you’ll be too late getting enough men there to handle that big a crew or that you’ll back down from an open fight. I’m supposed to bluff you if things get too bad.”

  Cathy tensed, knowing at once that she had overheard something important. The next moment her father was saying: “How did you get across here to tell me this without their knowing? And why?”

  “How?” Streak smiled thinly. “Last night when Kelso jailed me, he took away my watch and money. I told Buchwalter and Paight I was riding into town to get my stuff out of the desk in Kelso’s office. I’m to show at their camp across the pass an hour before sunup. As to why I’m tipping you off on this, I don’t rightly know. Maybe it’s because I hate the stink of sheep in a cattle country.”

  Bishop was silent a long moment, his glance fully on Streak, judging the man, weighing the truth of his story. Then: “I appreciate this, Kincaid. The sheep won’t come in. That crew will back down when they see how many men are ready to stop them.”

  Streak shrugged. “It’s your look-out what you do. But you know what’s coming now.”

  Cathy closed the door softly. She hadn’t realized until now how rigidly she had been standing, how afraid she had been even to take a good deep breath. So this stranger was an informer! That one fact remained uppermost in her mind as she hastily went back to her room and put on her riding clothes, denims, cotton shirt, and jumper. She had been inclined to like the stranger until a minute ago. Now he became the target of her rebellious anger. She placed him along with her father as the betrayer of Pete Dallam, or better of Laura Dallam, the one who was to gain or lose by this momentous decision of Fencerail to make an attempt at bringing in the sheep. Gone now was her earlier, more tolerant mood. All she could think of was the injustice of her father dictating to a smaller outfit. But for her having overheard the stranger’s talk, Fencerail might in the morning have walked into a deadly ambush.

  Cathy didn’t pull on her boots until she had climbed from her bedroom window and was a good fifty yards from the house. She went on tiptoe down the sloping knoll on which the house sat and across the narrow footbridge leading to the outbuildings and corrals. Her black, white-stockinged mare was in the big corral and came at her whistle. Putting a halter on the mare, she led the horse to the harness shack, where she got her saddle from the pole.

  Less than a quarter hour after the closing door had shut out all but the mutter of Kincaid’s and her father’s voices, Cathy Bishop was in the saddle and riding out the trail that led to the upper valley. And less than a mile out on that trail, where it was flanked on both sides by steep climbing banks, a rider came down out of the near darkness to block her way.

  Cathy gasped, so sudden was the rider’s appearance. Then, as the mare came to a sudden nervous halt, Streak’s even-toned—“We might as well go along together, ma’am.”—cut the momentary stillness.

  Cathy couldn’t believe her hearing. Neither could she summon the strength to put spurs to the mare’s flanks, so great had been her fright at the appearance of that shape looming so close ahead.

  He put the gray nearer to her, close alongside, and went on: “Next time you listen at a door, keep your face out of the light.”

  Fury hit her then, a hot blind rage at the man’s sureness. She lifted the long trailing ends of her reins and swung them, trying to cut him across the face. His easy laugh sounded as he lifted a hand and caught the leather ribbons. She raked the ma
re’s flanks with her blunt-rowelled spurs. But all that happened was that he pulled the mare down out of her lunge, and then held the animal by the bit chain.

  “Why get so riled?” he drawled. “We’re both doing the same thing, aren’t we, selling out your old man?”

  “You’re loathsome! You’re a . . . !” When she became lost for words, his low laugh sounded again. “Sidewinder, polecat, coyote,” he suggested. “Any one of the three would do. Or did you mean to choose a prettier word?”

  Calmness took her as abruptly as that first violent emotion. “Let go that bit,” she said quietly. “She’s got a tender mouth.”

  “And have you light out on me? Uhn-uh.”

  “I’ll promise not to try to get away.”

  “That’s better.” Streak let go the bit chain and reined the gray around so that both animals faced the same way. “I like company on these night rides.”

  “I’m not going your way,” she said, giving the first excuse that came to her. “I’m going over to . . . over to Jensen’s. Their baby’s been sick.”

  “You don’t say. That’s funny. I had it figured you were headed for the sheep camp to tell Buchwalter how I’ve sold him out.” Before she could voice a protest, he went on, his voice more serious now: “You can save yourself the worry, ma’am. I’m with Fencerail, really with ’em. That story I gave your old man will just about wind this up, if he bites on it.”

  Cathy saw that the levity had gone out of his words. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It’s a long story. But it amounts to this. About five thousand sheep are coming in over the Arrowheads tomorrow while your father has every man on this side of the valley gathered to stop that small band in the pass. They’re only a come-on.”