Collection 1988 - Lonigan (v5.0) (21 page)

Bill Carey walked down to the barn and watered the stock. It was merely a matter of lifting a small board and letting water run into the trough in the corral. He forked hay over to the horses, and then studied the country with a knowing eye.

It was a good place for a ranch. There was plenty of water, and the gentle slope toward the creek was subirrigated by water from the mountain. There would be green grass here most of the year. A man could really make a place like this pay. It was even better than his own ranch, so recently lost.

His eyes were somber as he studied the dim trail that led toward the Hawk's Nest. So this was to be it. The old enmity between Tabat Ryerson and himself was to come to a head here, after all this time.

It was a feeling of long standing, this between him and Tabat. Five times they had fought with their fists, and four times Tabat, who was older and stronger, had whipped him. The fifth time, in Tombstone, he had given Ryerson a beating. Tabat had sworn to kill him if they met again.

Yet Tabat Ryerson knew, even as old Hawk Shafter knew, that Bill Carey was a dangerous man with a six-gun. Had Carey been a vain man there could have been eleven notches on his guns.

Four were for members of a gang which had tried to rustle his cattle. He had cornered them, and in the subsequent fight all four had died in the mountain cabin where they had holed up. Carey, shot three times, had ridden back to town for help.

Three others he killed had been badmen who tried to run a town where he had been marshal. The other four had been gunmen, two of them Hawk Shafter's men, who had tried him out—one in Silver City, two in Sonora, and the last in Santa Fe.

When Bill walked back to the cabin the old man was awake. Jane was working over the fireplace, preparing breakfast.

“How's it, old-timer?” Carey asked, looking down at the grim, white-mustached old man. “Feelin' better?”

“A mite. My heart's bad. Ain't so pert as I used to be.” He looked at Carey shrewdly. “You on the dodge? Janie told me some of it.”

Carey nodded. “Don't worry. After a bit I'll be on my way.”

Conway shook his head. “Ain't that, son. We'd mighty like to have you stay. Place needs a man around, and like I say, I ain't so pert no more.” His face became grave. “Them outlaws is bad, son. Ride across my place every once in a while. Regular trail through here. Wasn't so bad when old Hawk was up and around. This Ryerson's poison mean.”

Bill Carey was drinking coffee when he heard them coming. He was sitting there without a shirt, as Jane had taken his to wash. He got up, a big, brown, powerful man, and walked to the door. He was catlike on his feet, but when he got there, he put his rifle down alongside the door and leaned against the doorjamb, watching the horsemen.

Ryerson could be spotted at a distance. He sat a horse the same as he always had. Carey watched him and the other outlaws with hard, cynical eyes. There was no fear in him, no excitement. This was not a new story, but one he could face without a tremor. He knew he could kill Tabat Ryerson without remorse. The man lived for cruelty and crime. He was nothing but a rattlesnake.

Three men. Carey smiled drily. Tabat must think well of himself. They reined in, and all three dropped to the ground. Bill did not move.

Then Ryerson took two steps, but froze and his face changed. Bill could not be sure whether it was a fear or fury that filled the man he faced as recognition came.

“You, is it?” Ryerson demanded. “What are you butting in here for?”

Carey straightened, and a slow smile came to his hard mouth.

“Maybe because I like these folks,” he drawled. “Maybe because I don't like you.”

“Don't ask for it, Carey,” Ryerson snapped. “Get on your horse and take out, and we'll let you go.”

Bill chuckled and ran his fingers through his thick hair.

“Don't wait for me to leave, Tabby,” he said drily. “I like this place. Looks like the place a man could build to something.”

“You and me can't live in the same country!” Ryerson snarled. “It ain't big enough for the two of us!”

“Uh-huh,” Carey agreed. “You sure hit the nail on the head that time. And I'm staying. So if I was you, Tabat Ryerson, I'd fork that mangy bronc you're riding and take out—pronto!”

“You're telling me?” Ryerson's fury was a thing to behold. “Why, you—”

A
LL THREE OUTLAWS went for their guns. Carey's six-shooter bellowed from the doorway, but the thin, tiger-like man on the right had flashed a fast gun, and his shot burned past Carey's stomach. Tabat Ryerson's quick, responsive jerk saved his life. Carey's second shot knocked the tiger man reeling, and a third pinned him to the ground.

Ryerson had leaped to one side, triggering his pistol. He shot wildly, and splinters splattered in Bill's face.

He whipped back inside the door, snapped a quick shot at Tabat, then went through the house with a lunge and slid through the back window just as the other man came around the corner. Bill's feet hit the ground at the instant they saw each other, and both fired.

Bill shot low, and his bullet hit the big man above the belt-buckle and knocked him to the ground. The outlaw was game and rolled over, trying to get his feet under him. The second shot was through his lungs and the fellow went down, bloody froth mounting to his lips.

Carey slid to the corner and, crouching, looked around it. A shot split the edge of the log over his head; then he heard a sudden rattle of horse's hoofs and rounded the corner to see Tabat Ryerson racing into the junipers.

He swore softly, knowing it had been only a beginning. Tabat knew who he was now. He would come back loaded for bear. Bill Carey walked toward the man on the ground, his gun ready.

The thin, wiry fellow who had spoiled his first shot was dead.

Carey walked back to the man behind the house. He also was dead. Bill scowled. Two gone, but they were two men who had been killed uselessly. Had it been Ryerson, these two might have lived.

Janie was beside him suddenly, her eyes wide and frightened.

“Are you all right?” she said anxiously.

Her wide gray eyes, frightened for him, stirred him strangely.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “They didn't shoot too straight. Neither did I,” he added bitterly. “I missed Tabat!”

“You think he'll come back?”

“Sure he'll come back—with help!”

She poured him fresh coffee and he studied the red crease across his stomach. Scarcely a drop of blood showed. The merest graze of the skin. But when she saw it, her face paled.

“You and the old man better get up in the pines,” he said. “I'll hold it here.”

“No.” She shook her head with finality. “This is our home. Besides, Dad can't be moved.”

“You're stubborn,” he said. “A man could like a girl like you.”

She smiled faintly. “Are you making love to me, Bill Carey?”

He flushed, then grinned. “Maybe. If I knew how, I reckon I would. I ain't so much, though. Just a would-be rancher who got gypped out of his ranch and robbed a bank.”

“I think you're a good man at heart, Bill.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I was raised right. Reckon I've come a long way since then.”

He glanced at the hills. He was worried. Sheriff Buck Walters wasn't the man to give up. He had been close behind Bill yesterday. What had happened?

His eyes drifted down across the swell of the grassland toward the cottonwood-lined stream far below. The mist still lay in thin, emaciated streamers along the edge of the trees. A man could love this country. He narrowed his eyes, seeing white-faced cattle feeding over that broad, beautiful range. Yes, a man could do a lot here.

Regret stirred within him. That bank. Why did a man have to be such a hotheaded fool? He had been gypped, he knew. He had been tricked into asking for that loan, and he suspected there had been some rustling of his cattle. Well, that didn't matter now. No matter who had been in the right before, robbing the bank had put him in the wrong. He was over the line now, the thin line that divided so many men of the early west into the law-abiding and the lawless.

Reason told him he was one with Tabat Ryerson and the Shafter Hills gang now, but everything within him rebelled against it.

Thinking of old Hawk Shafter, he wondered. The old man was an outlaw, but he had also been a square shooter. Maybe, if—

Carey pushed away the thought. Getting into the Hawk's Nest would be almost impossible.

S
HERIFF WALTERS KEPT returning to his mind. The grim, hard-bitten old lawman would never leave a hot trail. Remembering the sheriff made Bill remember the gold and his saddle. Glancing down the empty trail, he turned and started up the mountain. His left arm was stiff, although he could use it. The bullet had gone through the muscle atop his shoulder. His head wound had been only a graze.

When he reached the junipers, he went into the thick tangle where he had hidden his saddle. The saddle was there, but the saddlebags were flat and empty!

Tabat Ryerson!

He had seen the outlaw come this way. Somehow, in hunting a hiding place from gunfire, the outlaw had found these bags, and had removed the gold.

Carey picked up the bags, and a white piece of paper dropped out. On it was written:

Thanks. You won't need this here where you're going.

Tabat.

Grimly Bill Carey swung his saddle to his right shoulder and clumped down the mountain, staggering over the rocks. Might as well saddle that big black and be ready. When Walters came, he wouldn't have much time.

Walters! Ryerson! Carey grinned. If the two came at once, that would be something. He chuckled, and the thought kept stirring in his mind.

Walters could have lost his trail the other side of the mountain. Probably even now he was striking around for it. Carey recalled that he had ridden over a long rock ledge back there, and his trail might have been even better hidden than he believed.

If Buck Walters had seen him, he would have come right over here. And Tabat—

Carey dropped the saddle on the hard ground and, picking up his hair rope, shook out a loop. When he had roped the black and led the mount out of the corral, he turned to see Janie standing in the doorway watching him gravely. Their eyes met briefly; then she turned and walked back into the house, her face grave and serious.

He flushed suddenly. She thought he was leaving. She thought he was running away. Stubbornly he saddled the black, then swung into the saddle. The outlaw bunch might get here before he could find the sheriff. It was a chance he would have to take. His eyes strayed to the door again, and he turned the horse that way.

Janie stepped into the doorway.

“You got a rifle?” he demanded. His voice was harsh without his wanting it so.

She nodded, without speaking.

“Then hand me mine,” he said. “If they come, be durned sure it's Ryerson's gang, then use that rifle. Be sure, because it might be a posse.”

He held his rifle in his hand and, turning the black, rode off up the mountain down which he had come the night before. Three times he looked back. Each time the trail was empty of dust, and each time he could see the slim, erect figure of the girl in the doorway.

When he had been riding for no more than a half hour, he saw the posse—a tight little knot of some fifteen men, led by a tall, white-haired old man on a sorrel horse. Buck Walters. Beside the white-haired man was a thin, dried-out wisp of a half-breed. Antonio Deer! With that tracker on his trail, it was a wonder they hadn't closed in already.

He looked downhill, then grinned and lifted his rifle. He aimed and fired almost in the same instant, shooting at a tree a dozen feet away from the sheriff. The sorrel reared suddenly; then he saw the posse scatter out, hesitate only an instant, and then, with a whoop, start for him.

He was several hundred yards away and knew the country now. He wheeled his horse and took off through the brush at right angles to the trail, then cut back as though to swing toward the direction from which they had come. Whipping the black around a clump of juniper, he straightened out on the trail for home.

They would be cautious in the trees, he knew. That would delay them a little, at least.

When he came out on the mountainside above the Conway cabin, his heart gave a leap. Down the trail was a cloud of dust, and the horsemen were already within a quarter of a mile of the cabin!

T
OUCHING SPURS TO the black he started downhill at breakneck speed, hoping against hope they wouldn't see him. Yet he had gone no more than a hundred yards when he heard a distant yell and saw several men cut away from the main body and start for him.

A rifle spoke.

The lead horse stumbled and went down, and Bill Carey saw a tiny puff of smoke lift from a cabin window.

The horsemen broke, scattering wide, but advancing on the house. The black was in a dead run now, and Bill lifted his rifle and took a snapshot at the approaching horsemen who were coming on undaunted by the girl's shot.

At that distance and from a running horse, he didn't expect a hit, nor did he make one, but the shot slowed the horsemen up, as he had hoped. Then he was nearing the cabin, and he saw two more horsemen break from the woods and start for him. They were close up, and he blasted a shot with the rifle held across his chest, and saw one man throw up his hands and plunge to the ground.

The other wheeled his horse, and Bill Carey fired three times as swiftly as he could chamber the shells. He saw the horse go down, throwing the man headlong into the mesquite.

Then the black was charging into the yard, and Bill Carey hit the ground running and made the cabin. The door slammed open as if it had been timed for his arrival, and he lunged inside.

Janie looked up at him, her eyes flashing; then as he crossed to the window, she dropped the bar in place.