Fight for Powder Valley! (4 page)

And those surveyors down by the creek! They were not actually guilty of any wrong-doing. In one blinding flash of comprehension, Pat Stevens foresaw the awful and tragic consequences stalking the peaceful valley. How did a man know what was right and what was wrong? Yet, it would be doing the farmers no favor to let them come and take the bitter consequences that inevitably awaited their coming. Anything would be better than that.

He slowly followed John Boyd to the house.

As he neared the back door he heard the rancher speaking harshly inside, “Give it to me, Martha. Hand it over, I say.”'

Pat pushed the door open and stepped inside a screened-in porch opening onto the kitchen and rear bedroom. The bedroom door was open. John Boyd stood in the center of the room, his mustaches bristling, one hand outstretched toward his wife. The aged rancher had a cartridge belt strapped about his waist. It was an old belt, dusty with disuse and cracked with age. The brass cylinders gleamed dully in their leather loops. The fancy holster with a steer's head carved in relief was empty.

Martha Boyd stood back against the bedroom wall. One thin hand clutched the ivory butt of a .45, holding the weapon pressed down against a fold of her skirt. Mrs. Boyd was a little woman with silvery hair and gentle features. She had mothered a brood of hulking sons and sent them out into the world, had lived through more than half a century of the pioneer West when it was young and turbulent.

Now her lips were tightly compressed and she shook her head with stubborn finality. “I'll do nothing of the sort, John Boyd. You climb down off your high horse and tell me what's got into you. Coming in here swaggering and blaspheming, grabbing your old gun like you aimed to go on the warpath against the Apaches. I've seen enough trouble made by guns. I'm sick and tired of it.”

“Mrs. Boyd is right,” Pat said from the doorway. “There must be some other way, John.”

Boyd turned, shaking his head. “I found out long ago that arguments aren't much good unless a man's got somethin' more than words to back up his play. Hand over my gun, Martha.”

“What's this about, Pat Stevens?” Martha Boyd turned on him like an enraged bantam hen. “What do you mean coming over here and getting John all wrought up? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Pat said, “I'm sorry. I agree with you that guns aren't the answer.” Swiftly he sketched for the little old lady the salient facts of the situation confronting them. “I don't blame John for going hog-wild,” he ended quietly. “But killing a surveyor is only going to start worse trouble, John. I've got a better idea.”

“You'd better have,” Martha Boyd snapped. “The very idea. You both are old enough to know better than to start shooting at the drop of a hat. You unbuckle that belt, John, and listen to Pat.”

“What do you figger on doing?” Boyd asked, reluctantly unbuckling the heavy silver clasp.

“We'll ride down and pull up all the stakes they've set along your land. That'll give them something to start thinkin' about. Soon as they find out what they're up against in Powder Valley, they'll more than likely give it up as a bad job and clear out.”

“That's more like it,” Martha Boyd applauded. “Goodness knows, we can't take a thing like that lying down but there's more ways than one of skinning a skunk.”

“Well, all right.” Boyd tossed his gunbelt down, but he glared angrily at his wife. “We'll try that and see what happens, but I'm warnin' you, Martha, if it comes to shootin',
I'm
not going to be on the receiving end of lead.” He strode out to the corral and saddled up a horse, then he and Pat galloped to the south boundary line of the Bar X and began following the section line run by the surveying crew that day.

The surveyor's stakes were square wooden pegs about two feet long that had been driven into the ground about halfway so they were clearly visible above the carpet of fresh green grass.

The two ranchers found they were easily pulled out by dropping the loop of a lariat over them and riding away with the other end of the rope tied to the saddle-horn. The stakes appeared to be set at quarter-mile intervals, and it took them less than half an hour to completely undo the painstaking work that had taken Ross Culver a full day.

They caught up with the surveying crew just before sundown at the boundary line between the Bar X and the Lazy Mare ranches. Culver had his transit set over the last stake a quarter of a mile from the section line, and he was sighting the painted pole in the hands of the man ahead when Pat and Boyd rode up behind him.

They stopped their horses and waited grimly until he gave the okay signal over his head. He stepped away from the tripod and cupped his hands to shout to his men, “All right. Set that stake and we'll knock off for the night.”

“Goin' on across the Lazy Mare tomorrow, I reckon?” Pat asked from behind him.

Ross Culver turned and faced him levelly. “Those are my intentions.”

Pat was idly coiling up his trailing lariat. He jerked his head toward his companion. “This here's John Boyd.”

Before Culver could reply, Boyd demanded angrily, “What right have you got to set that dingus of yours on my land?”

Culver shrugged and glanced at his three-legged instrument leveled over the line stake. “There's only one leg of it touching your property, Mr. Boyd. That stake is the dividing line.”

“Well, get that one leg off,” bellowed Boyd.

Pat was idly making a small loop, puckering his lips into a tuneless whistle. Culver hesitated a moment and a flush reddened his sunburnt face, then he lifted the instrument and set it aside, saying icily, “All right. This is company property on this side of the stake.”

“Is it?” Pat asked with interest. He tossed his loop over the protruding stake and spurred his horse. The animal lunged forward and the rope snatched the stake from the ground. Pat galloped on toward the group of men ahead. He had another small loop spread out when he reached them. They scattered from around the stake like a covey of quail scattering in front of a coyote.

Without slacking speed, he roped the last stake and galloped back to Culver with it bouncing along at the end of his rope. He reined up beside Boyd and grinned, drawling, “It's a heap easier for us to pull 'em out than it is for you to set them.”

The color receded from the surveyor's face. “Do you know what you've done?” he demanded. “Pulling up those two stakes means that I'll have to go back a quarter of a mile in the morning and do this work all over.”

“You'll have to go back more'n a quarter of a mile to find a stake to start from,” chortled Boyd. “We just finished pulling up every damn one you set on my ranch.”

Culver's eyes blazed. His voice was low and unsteady as he expostulated, “That's a full day's work for four men ruined.”

“Not only that,” said John Boyd cheerfully, “but I figger on pullin' 'em up hereafter as fast as you set 'em in the ground.”

Culver took a step forward with clenched fists. “If you weren't old enough to be my father,” he said furiously, “I'd pull you off that horse and beat you to a pulp.”

“I ain't old enough to be your father,” said Pat Stevens. “No, John,” to Boyd who had exploded with a burst of profanity and started to swing out of the saddle, “let me handle this.” He leaped to the ground and strode toward Culver, inviting him in a mild tone, “Let's see just how tough you are.”

They were about of a height as they faced each Other, with Culver's few years advantage in youth counterbalanced by Pat's greater width of shoulders and ten or fifteen pounds in weight.

“Wait,” Culver panted through clenched teeth. “Fighting never helped anything. I don't want …”

“You asked for it,” Pat told him grimly. He took an awkward fighter's stance with both fists out in front of him, drove a furious right at the young man's jaw.

Ross Culver's jaw wasn't there when Pat's fist arrived. He weaved aside, backing away alertly in a curious sort of shuffle that kept his left foot always in advance of his right with his weight scientifically balanced on the ball of his right foot.

Pat would have been warned if he had known anything about the science of boxing that he faced an opponent who knew at least the elements of ring strategy. But all Pat knew about boxing was to wade in with both fists and try to knock his antagonist's head off. Every time he swung he'd throw himself half off balance and leave himself wide open for a flicking left fist which darted in like a striking snake.

It was annoying at first. The flicking lefts did little real damage. Pat could scarcely feel them as they struck. But his breath was getting shorter and shorter as he followed Culver about swinging wildly, and soon he realized that he was wincing each time a left landed. And his face was wet, too. He thought it was sweat until he saw the blood on Culver's fists. He was being neatly cut to ribbons without landing a single blow of his own.

From behind him he could dimly hear John Boyd hoarsely shouting encouragement to him, and he was dimly conscious that the other members of the surveying crew had come running up to form a loose circle, but he was becoming weaker and weaker, and for the first time in his life Pat knew he was up against something he could not whip.

His pride and the driving anger inside him would not let him quit, and he floundered on after his elusive opponent, swinging more and more wildly, until he suddenly tripped over his spurs and went down flat on his face.

He instinctively covered his head as he lay there, because the rough and tumble rules of barroom fighting such as Pat knew ordained that when a man went down he got the boots from his opponent.

Nothing like that happened, and finally from a great distance Pat heard a cold voice saying, “Have you had enough, or are you going to get up and give me the pleasure of beating you to more of a pulp than you are already?”

Pat found strength to roll over, and he lay there gasping for breath. Through blood-misted eyes he saw John Boyd futilely struggling with two of the crew to come to his assistance, and the air was sulphurous with the old man's curses.

Slowly, Pat staggered to his feet. He stood spread-legged, swaying, his face dripping blood from a dozen cuts inflicted by Culver's knuckles.

He managed, somehow, to stretch his lips into a painful grin. “I got enough … for this time,” he said thickly. “But there'll be another time, Culver. This is only … the beginnin'.”

4

Deep twilight lay upon powder Valley when John Boyd reached the Lazy Mare ranch leading Pat's horse. Pat's eyes were swollen to tiny blood-crusted slits, rendering him practically blind, and helpless to do anything except sit in the saddle and be guided home.

Sally Stevens came to the front door of the comfortable ranch house as the two men rode into the yard. Backlighted against the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, Sally looked trim and youthful after ten years of marriage and nine years of motherhood. There was still light enough for her to recognize the figure of their Bar X neighbor, though not enough for her to realize her husband's condition. She called out gaily:

“You're just in time for supper, Mr. Boyd. Sage hen and dumplings.”

“Sounds mighty good, Sally.” Boyd tried to make his voice sound hearty and cheerful, but the effort was a miserable failure. He stopped the horses ten feet from the door and swung out of the saddle.

Sally's heart gave a great leap and began to pound as though it would tear itself out of her breast when she saw that Pat sat laxly, swaying in the saddle with both hands gripping the horn. She ran down the steps and a little breathless cry of hurt and horror escaped her lips when she was close enough to see his face.

“Now, now, Sally,” John Boyd said hastily, catching her arm and drawing her back. “Don't you take on over Pat. I'll have him inside in a jiffy. You get some hot water.”

Sally pulled herself away from him and flung her body against Pat's horse, crying piteously, “Pat! What's happened to you?”

Pat tried to smile but his blood-smeared features didn't react very well. He loosened one hand from the horn and awkwardly groped downward until it encountered her soft curling hair. He muttered, “I'm all in one piece, honey. It's just this blood. When you get it washed off …”

“That's right,” Boyd soothed her. He drew her aside gently, reached up a gnarled hand to take hold of Pat's. “Step down, fella,” he directed cheerfully. “And,” to Sally, “better get that hot water.”

True to her frontier training, Sally wasted no more time in idle questions. She flew inside and back to the kitchen, hurried into the living room with a basin of steaming water and soft cloths as Boyd came in, supporting and guiding Pat.

“Here. In this deep chair by the fireplace. He can rest his head back …”

“You'll get the floor all bloody and wet,” Pat protested in a mumble through cracked lips. “Better …”

“Sit him down in that chair, John,” Sally directed with crisp competence. “Blood and water will wash up. Here, lay his head back like this …” She knelt beside the reclining chair and sopped a cloth in the hot water, wrung it out and tested it anxiously against her own cheek, then with forced calm began cleansing the dried blood from Pat's terribly cut and swollen face.

John Boyd stepped back, looking uncomfortable and worried, undecided whether he should stay or go. You never could tell about women, he reflected. Sally was calm enough now, while she had a definite job for her hands to do, but as soon as she got Pat fixed up she was going to be demanding an explanation—and that wasn't going to be easy because Boyd blamed himself for the whole thing. The incident had occurred on his land. It had been his fight, not Pat's.
He
was the one who should be beat up instead of Pat. Yet, here he was without a scratch on him. He wouldn't blame Sally, he thought dolefully, if she turned on him after learning the truth and scratched his eyes out.