Guns Of the Timberlands (1955) (2 page)

Jud Devitt seemed sure of himself and he must already have laid plans to log off the Deep Creek country. And he must have moved very swiftly and silently for Bell not to have heard of the venture.

Swinging down at the Tinker House, Bell pushed through the bat-wing doors into the saloon. Other swinging doors divided the saloon from the hotel lobby. He walked to the bar, noting two wool-shirted men with the bottoms of their overalls turned up to a few inches below the knee. The nearest lumberjack turned and glanced toward him. He was a burly man with a wide, not unpleasant face, tough and rough, but good-humored. "You sure come close to gettin' your meat n' house torn down, cowboy! That was Bully Jud Devitt you were talkin' to!"

"Was it?"

He was occupied with his thoughts of the Deep River range. Nothing must go wrong at this stage. He needed that graze to fatten his stock for market, and if trouble forced him to pull them off that rich grass to the parched and arid flats where the grass was even now going dry and stale, he would lose pounds off every head of stock, and could easily lose some of the stock itself. Weight meant dollars, and he needed money. And there would be no rain on the lowlands for another three months, at least.

The lumberjack was not letting it pass. "Jud, he chaws up men like you! I seen him whup three, four in one stack! When it comes to lumber, land, or woman, Jud gets what he wants, and you can bet your bottom dollar if he says he'll log off Deep Creek, he'll do her!"

"He can be stopped."

"Not him!" The big jack moved closer. "My name's Wat Williams, cowboy, an' I've worked for Bully Jud before. He says he's goin' in after that fir, an' he'll do it! And," the big lumberjack grinned insolently, "he'll have fifty of the toughest lumberjacks in the country back of him!"

Bell downed his drink and turned from the bar. Wat Williams grinned at him. There was tough good humor in him and a love for fighting. He had wide shoulders and big hands, and he had just put two stiff drinks behind his belt.

"Bell"--he moved out into the room--"I'd like to take up that offer you made the Boss--right now."

He spoke and he swung. Clay had seen the intent before the blow started, he had seen it in the way the man moved out into the room, and the way his feet were set. As Williams swung, Clay stepped inside and smashed a left and right to the face. The left caught Williams on the eye as he stepped in, but the right landed too far back. Wat was shaken, but he tried to grapple. Bell stepped away, and as Williams moved in, he feinted, then smashed a cracking right to the jaw. It nailed Williams on the button as he was stepping in and he dropped on his face in the sawdust as if hit with an axe.

Bell looked across the fallen man at his companion, but the lumberjack at the bar stared without speaking, as if unwilling to believe his eyes. Turning, Bell went through the swinging doors into the hotel lobby.

Ed Miller looked up from his ledger, observing the skinned knuckles and drawing his own conclusions. He was a taciturn man with no past that anyone knew about. He possessed a faculty for knowing almost everything that happened in Tinkersville without showing any evidence of interest.

He had seen the brief meeting of Devitt and Bell in the street. There were lumberjacks in the bar. Something had fallen hard. Clay Bell had a split knuckle and no evidence of other damage. The conclusion was obvious.

"Has Hardy Tibbott come back yet?"

Miller shook his head. "Not yet, Clay. He's overdue. Nobody has come to town but that lumberman, nobody except the Rileys. Judge James J. and his daughter."

Clay Bell hesitated, his hands on the counter. It was time Hardy was back. Could the delay have anything to do with Devitt? The idea disturbed him, and he stood irresolute, wondering about his best move.

"You should see that Riley girl, Clay!" Miller kept his voice low, "Man, if I was a young sprout like you I'd move in."

"A blonde?"

"Colleen Riley? Not a bit! Dark red hair and eyes full of Irish--that's her comin' down the steps now."

Clay turned casually, curiously. He looked, then looked again. Their glances caught, and for one clear, bell-like instant their eyes held.

Chapter
2

Riley saw the man standing at the hotel desk turn and glance up the stairs. Something in the strongly cut face held her attention, then their eyes met and she felt something turn over inside of her. A moment, time for a long breath, and then she continued down the steps.

Her chin lifted, her eyes straight before her, she stopped at the desk beside him. She was sharply aware of the man's hands lying on the register. One knuckle, she observed, was skinned. But the hands were strong and well made.

"Did Mr. Devitt go out?"

"Yes, ma'am." Ed Miller's eyes were without guile. "I believe Mr. Bell here saw him, didn't you, Clay?"

Reluctantly, she faced him. "Could you tell me if he has left yet? Or is he around somewhere?"

"A large--rather forceful gentleman?" Clay's expression was almost too innocent. "With a mustache and an opinion?"

Colleen's lips tightened, but she felt a little ripple of amusement. The description was, she admitted, apt. "I believe that's the man. Did you see where he went?"

"He had a sort of argument. Some ill-bred cowhand, no doubt. Then he got into a buckboard and drove away."

She studied him, sensing the humor but not certain what it might mean. "You'd better tell that cowhand," she said coolly, "that he'd best mind his ways. Mr. Devitt can be very fierce when angry."

"Mr. Devitt is new here," Bell assured her. "Maybe he will learn better."

Colleen Riley had lived much among men and felt no hesitancy at talking to strangers. A composed girl, she had known many of her father's friends, and even her years at an eastern school had not made her reticent.

This tall stranger disturbed her. She felt she should go on, but she disliked to leave what she did not quite understand.

She had seen him first from the head of the stairs, noting the broad shoulders under the sun-faded blue shirt, the lean hips and the boots. The gun he wore was no more obvious than the guns of other men, but it seemed to belong where it was. He would, she decided, look undressed without it. That he was unimpressed by Jud Devitt was evident, a fact that surprised her, for Jud had a way of making his presence felt and men moved around him with respect. Even her father treated him with some diffidence. The fact that this man was not impressed seemed a mute reply to something she had herself felt--yet she had no reason to put to the feeling.

"Don't underrate him," she warned him. "Mr. Devitt is a man who gets things done. He built the railroad through Slide Canyon, if you remember."

"You seem to know him well."

Her eyes met his, cool and almost defiant. "Yes, we're to be married."

Somehow the words sounded false, unreal. Yet why should they? She was going to marry him.

"Are you?"

Again that faint amusement in his voice. Her chin lifted. "Yes. Yes, I am!"

He looked down at her, gravely serious. She was a tall girl, five-seven in fact, but his height made her seem short. "I wish you happiness," he said, then lifted his hat and walked by her to the door.

Colleen Riley turned on Ed Miller. "Who was that?"

"Clay Bell," Miller said, watching her with bright, curious eyes. "He runs cattle on Deep Creek."

She walked out to the boardwalk and looked down the street. He was nowhere in sight. Neither, she realized, was Jud Devitt.

The full significance of Miller's remark reached her then. This was the man who had the cattle Jud was going to move!

She took a step, then paused. Moving those cattle might not be as easy as Jud seemed to believe. There was something about the tall young cattleman that made her feel he was not a man who could be run over with Jud's usual heedless tactics.

Her eyes found Wat Williams then. The big lumberjack was trying without much luck to hide his face behind an awning post, and with reason. One eye was black and swollen and there was a welt on his jaw.

"Wat! You've been fighting again!"

Wat Williams gave up his attempted concealment. "Ma'am, that was the shortest fight on record. I swung at him and missed. He swung at me and didn't!"

"Does Jud know about this?"

"Not yet, but he had him a run-in with the same feller. They had some words about this land Jud's goin' to log, an' Jud, he threatened to pull this feller off his horse and teach him a lesson. The feller told him to have at it."

Wat worked his jaw, touching it tenderly with his fingertips. "Ma'am, this man ain't goin' to be so easy as Jud figures."

She remembered the split knuckle, and the man's casual indifference to Devitt. "This man--was his name Bell? Clay Bell?"

"That's him. Tall feller, steps mighty easy on his feet, and," he added grimly, "hits hard!"

Wind stirred the street's hot dust. A fly buzzed lazily against a windowpane and sleepy horses stood hipshot at the rails.

There was nothing to see in Tinkersville. It was just a sprawling small town with some ancient buildings of gray stone, and a few of red brick; the rest of the stores and houses were gray, wind-worried clapboard buildings, sun-dried and unpainted. Out on the plains dust-devils danced and the heat waves shimmered like clear liquid.

Colleen Riley walked down the boardwalk to the end of the street. In the distance the mountains looked cool and attractive. She stood staring out over the vast expanse of plain and desert, listening to the desultory talk of western men. A horse stamped to free his hocks of flies, and distantly, from across town, a hammer rang on an anvil.

Tinkersville--heat-baked, nondescript, cut off, what was there in such a place to hold the lives of men? Why would anyone choose such a place when there were New York, London, and Paris?

A deeper blue in the far mountain range indicated a canyon . . . where did it lead to? A meadow? A lake? Some forest vastness where no man had been?

She turned away and looked again at the town. The man at the hotel had told her of Indian wars and cattle trouble, of gun battles and struggles to live, yet the town showed no obvious scars.

Some of those early men had gone on, but others had stayed. That big old man who founded the town--Sam Tinker. She must talk to him.

Tall men stayed . . . short men . . . but strong men. Men with skin like saddle leather and clear eyes that saw beyond today.

These men who stayed had not been wealthy men, but they had been steadfast men, confident men, strong with an inner strength that knows not defeat. Such men had built this town, had kept it alive, and would make it grow. Jud was such a man, building and shaping a new world--or was he?

Was it old Sam Tinker who had said, "Two kinds of men here, Judge Riley. Them that come to build, and them that come to get rich and get out."

Walking back toward the hotel, she glanced through a space between the buildings. Far off, against the blue of distance, a feather of dust lifted, marking the trail of a rider.

Clay Bell? Or was it some other horseman returning to the quiet hills?

Men talked and she listened to the even cadences of their voices. A name caught at her attention and her steps slowed. "Clay? Knowed him since he was a boy, 'cept for the time he was in the war. He was man-growed at fourteen, skinnin' mules with a freight outfit on the Santa Fe Trail.

"Out o' Tennessee by way o' Texas. He rode with Nelson Story on the first cattle drive to Montana."

The other man muttered something, and the older man replied. "Mebbe. He rode with the Rangers, down Texas way. With McNelly. Men with the bark on, them Rangers."

She wanted to listen, but walked on. Shadows were gathering along the faraway hills, and she remembered the music in what the old man said: "Out o' Tennessee by way o' Texas. Man-growed at fourteen, skinnin' mules on the Santa Fe Trail."

What memories came to such a man? What women had he known? Dark-eyed girls in Taos and Santa Fe? Indian girls?

She brought up sharply, her hand on the hotel door. He might be married! He might have children . . . he might be . . . But what difference could it make to her? Only, she would hate to see him lose his home if there were children. That, she told herself, was the only reason the thought disturbed her. There could be no other reason.

Out of Tennessee, by way of Texas.

Chapter
3

Jud Devitt got down from the buckboard at the station. Bob Tripp, his foreman, was standing on the platform checking the unloading of some heavy machinery from flatcars. Jud watched for several minutes while he chewed his black cigar and thought. Then he motioned Tripp to one side.

"Bob, I've had words with a cattleman named Bell. He runs stock on that range we're going to log. We may have trouble, so have the boys primed for it. If that cowboy thinks he can keep me out of the stand of timber he's mistaken!"

Tripp nodded. He had worked a dozen jobs with Jud Devitt and enjoyed a good fight. He was an older man, and a tough one who knew how to handle men and get results.

"The boys need it. They got bees in their britches." He glanced at Devitt. "How about the land? That's government property, isn't it?"