Savage Range (14 page)

He stood above the man, a high, flat figure in that chill morning air, and a wry smile played over his face. The man was asleep. Jim knelt by him and took the rifle from his side and then slipped his six-gun from its holster, afterward shaking him gently.

The guard roused with a start. “What is it?” he asked swiftly, peering up into Jim's face.

“Let's go back to camp,” Jim suggested mildly. “I want to talk with your boys.”

“Who are you?”

“Jim Wade.”

The guard made a lunge for his rifle, and Jim gently placed the barrel of his gun in the man's chest.

“Not a move,” he said, still mildly. “I only want to talk. Only I don't want you blowin' off your mouth before I get the chance. I'll have to hit you if you do.”

The young puncher swore darkly and climbed to his feet. The east was gray now, so that a man could make out the shape of a tree.

“Let's hurry,” Jim suggested.

Walking a step behind the puncher, Jim followed him up the canyon bed until, rounding a shoulder of rock, they were in the camp. It nestled at the very base of the box canyon's rear wall. A more perfect death trap to defend could not have been chosen.

In the coming dawn, Jim could see a man stooped over a small fire, nursing it with sticks.

He was Mitch Boyd, and, still bleary-eyed from sleep, he growled a good morning to the guard without looking at him.

Jim walked over and scattered the fire with a kick, his booted foot missing Boyd by inches only.

Boyd jumped backward, an oath on his lips, and then he saw Jim holding a gun on him, and his curse died.

“Nothin' like tellin' Bonsell where to find you, is there?” Jim drawled. “On this mornin' you could see camp smoke for ten miles.”

Boyd's mouth dropped in amazement.

Jim gestured with his gun. “You two stand right here.” The others were scattered in a loose circle about the fire in their blankets. Jim passed between them, lifting a gun where he saw it and feeling gently under blankets when he did not see one where it should be.

Finished, he stepped off to one side of the camp and said, “Better roll 'em out.”

Boyd called, and the men tumbled out of their blankets. It was a full minute before the first man noticed Boyd's and the guard's unnatural attitude. The fire wasn't going, either. He looked over in the direction they were facing, and then, after staring at Jim a full ten seconds, announced, “Well, I'm damned!”

The others looked where he looked. Slowly they came to attention. One or two made covert attempts to look for their guns, and Jim let them look.

Boyd said suddenly, “If this is another bushwhack, Wade, let's have it.”

Jim only smiled. It was almost full light now, so that he could see every man. “Pull your boots on,” he suggested. “I'll be here for some while.”

He moved over to face them, picking Donaldson out from the others.

“I caught your guard asleep,” he announced quietly. Mako looked over at the young puncher, his eyes gently reproving.

“I took a look at Bonsell's camp last night,” Jim went on. “It's empty. Like to know where his crew is?” Without waiting for an answer, he told them. They were impressed, even the young men, one of whom apparently thought so little of their danger that he had slept on guard.

“Want to know where your man Cruver is?” Jim continued. “He's drunk at the Freighter's Pleasure. He went in town to bully a girl last night and got beat up for his pains.”

He fell silent. Mitch Boyd cursed Cruver in measured disgust. The others just looked helpless.

“You're a sorry lot,” Jim murmured. “Led by a sorry man on a sorry job. I spotted your campfire night before last two miles away. The only reason you're alive now is because Bonsell gives you credit for bein' a heap smarter than you are.” He pointed to the rim. “What's to stop Bonsell from plantin' a dozen men up there and killin' you all in your sleep?” His voice was sharp, disgusted, and it cut like a whip.

Old man Reed said, “What's to prevent your doin' it yourself, now, Wade?”

Jim was not taking time to make an appeal. He didn't care what these men thought of him, just so they listened to him; and he went straight to the brutal point. “Why should I shoot you? Didn't Bonsell turn me over to Haynes to take the blame for that first raid? What do I owe Bonsell, only a slug in the back?”

“What do you owe us?” Mako Donaldson asked gently.

“Nothin',” Jim said bluntly. “But Bonsell wants you dead. And if I can fox Bonsell and keep you alive, I can make it harder for him. That's the kind of talk you want, isn't it?”

Mako Donaldson didn't answer, only regarded him thoughtfully. Jim looked around at these faces, all of them suspicious and resentful and a little angry. “What do you aim to do now?” Jim asked.

Mitch Boyd spoke up. “Wipe Bonsell out.”

“How?”

“Find his crew and fight.”

“You couldn't find his crew with a posse,” Jim said mildly. “I tell you, they're scattered all over this country.” He looked over at Mako. “What are you goin' to do, Mako? Ram around this country like a bunch of Ute squaws, leavin' a trail a kid could read, makin' camps like this camp tonight?” He paused. “You've seen a little in your time, Mako. How long do you think you'll last if you do that?”

“Not long,” Mako admitted.

Jim shifted his attack. “What kind of a man do you think Bonsell is?” he inquired mildly. “What would you do if I told you that Max Bonsell was in the Excelsior house the other night when you surrounded it?”

“Then he's dead,” one of the younger men said.

“He's as alive as you are,” Jim said. “Hell, you can't even lick a man when you have him down. When Bonsell saw he was surrounded, he left that house. He went right through your lines. He shot a man of yours. He cut the cinches on your saddles so you couldn't ride for a half day. And then he piled all your beef up in Mimbres Canyon while you were braggin' to each other how tough you were.”

“How do you know that?” Reed asked.

“I sat there not twenty yards from Cruver and watched the whole thing,” Jim answered calmly. He saw the disbelief in their faces turn to sheepishness.

“I'm cold,” a young puncher said. “Let's build a fire if we want to parley.”

“There you got it,” Jim jeered. “You're cold, so you'll build a fire, and your smoke will be spotted. In a half day, you'll have Bonsell's men swarmin' down on you.” He looked contemptuously at the lot of them. “The trouble with you is, you've lived in this back lot all your lives, playin' poker together and talkin' mighty soft, on account of the whole bunch of you murdered Jim Buckner a few years back. You all know it. You all hold it over your neighbors' heads. You've never had a real fight. You can't use guns. Turn you loose in a tough Texas county and the lot of you would be swampin' out saloons because you weren't smart or tough enough to run cattle.”

His voice was savage with scorn. “What kind of slick-eared dude do you take this Bonsell for? Do you know he's payin' out over two thousand dollars a month for that fightin' crew of his? I know what they are because I've seen them—a killin', cutthroat crew that could brag of a hundred murders between 'em. He didn't hire 'em for protection; he hired 'em to clean this range for him. And they're a bunch of curly wolves that can do it. They've partly done it already. And they're only waitin' for one more dumb move of yours to finish it.”

Boyd blustered, “I'll fight any man in his crew and lick him.”

“Nobody is questionin' your guts,” Jim said quietly. “I'm questionin' your brains. I had to wake up your guard out here this mornin' so you wouldn't die of fright when you saw me in camp. You, Boyd, you were buildin' a fire. You didn't have a gun on you, did you? I could have knocked you over like a sage hen. With another man, I could have killed the lot of you in your blankets. I'm holdin' the whole lot of you now with one damn gun!”

Boyd started to protest when Mako Donaldson said curtly, “Keep quiet, Boyd!” He turned to Jim now. “What you say is true, Wade. We aren't a match for Texas fightin' men. We're small ranchers, and when we got into trouble, we turned to Cruver.”

“And he's drunk now. He doesn't give a hoot for the whole lot of you.”

Mako nodded. “That's right. Now we're right where we started. What should we do?”

“What do you want to do?”

“Lick Bonsell, of course.”

“But you can't do it. You admit that.”

Mako answered carefully, resignedly, “No, it don't look like we could.”

“And you haven't got fifty head of beef between you. You haven't got houses, barns, tools, wagons, not even food. You haven't got money. You don't own the land you're on. Even if you did you couldn't hold it against Bonsell's crew. What have you got, Donaldson?”

Mako was silent.

Jim said, “What's holdin' the lot of you here? You, Mako, you've got a son. Are you goin' to stay here and let him be hunted down and killed? You, Boyd. You got two boys. Would you stack them up against an
hombre
like Ball or Pardee or MaCumber in a gun fight? You can't give 'em land when you die, nor cattle, nor a house. What can you give 'em?”

“Then you think we should pull out?” Mako said.

“If you can get out.”

Boyd said, “Whaddaya mean, if we can get out?”

Patiently, Jim reiterated what he had said. Boyd might be sure that every road, old and new, every trail, even the cattle trails, would be patrolled once a day by Bonsell's riders. If they spotted the tracks of a dozen riders on any of these, Bonsell's men would follow. And when a man least expected it, he would strike.

“Then how can we get out?”

“Split up in pairs and keep to the rough country,” Jim said quickly. “Don't build fires and don't stop ridin' for a week. Sift out of the country. Don't stop to fight, just run.”

It was brutal advice, but as Jim gave it, he looked at the faces of these men and knew he had won. They were heartsick and broken already, held together by Cruver's jeering arrogance. Without the driving temper of him, they saw their predicament in a colder and clearer light. They were defeated, and Mako Donaldson was the first to acknowledge it.

“I'll vote that way,” he said quietly. “This is a hell of a country, haunted for every last man of us. I've fought it half a lifetime, and it's brought me to this. I know when I'm licked.”

Jim holstered his gun and then said nothing, but the gesture gave an impetus to the others. Boyd was the stubborn one, but he was arguing for the sake of argument, Jim knew. Mako took up the cudgels for Jim, and Jim squatted there, almost forgotten, as these beaten men gathered in a loose circle around Mako and Boyd and listened to the heat of their arguments.

The sun laid its flat light on the land now, framing long shadows that still held the night's chill. Jim rose and moved over into the sun, letting it warm him. He was standing that way, back to the sun, when—

Crash!

The sharp flat explosion of a rifle blasted the morning stillness.

Jim whirled around, took a step backward, caught himself, and drawled quietly, “You built one too many fires, boys. This is it.”

Chapter Twelve:
POCKET OF HELL

The squatters looked at Jim for a long second, giving a second man on the rimrock time for a clean shot. It caught Boyd in the back and drove him to his knees and then to his face.

Jim yelled, “Your guns, dammit, your guns! Get into the brush!”

Suiting words to actions, he rolled behind a thick piñon at the edge of the camp. Mako Donaldson, swearing softly, made the tree behind him just as three more rifles joined the shooting. Jim felt his arm, and his hand came away sticky. But it was a poor shot and a clean wound. The slug had driven through the fleshy part of his upper left arm. Bandaging it swiftly with his handkerchief, he took stock of the situation. A neater death trap than this could not have been found. Sooner or later, these riflemen up on the rim would flush out down the canyon, and only a miracle would bring a man through that gantlet of fire. And Jim was not fooling himself; he was the man they wanted. He was the man they had shot at first.

The squatters were beginning to return the fire, but there was nothing to shoot at. The Excelsior slugs were searching out the trees now. Soon it would be too hot to remain here.

Bellied down, Jim peered out from under the tree at the canyon rim. It was not steep, salted with boulders which would afford some protection. A rush up it would be suicide, but not as quick suicide as a run down the canyon. Four riflemen were stationed up there, and they were doing their shooting with vicious accuracy.

Jim turned to Mako, whose seamed face held a fatalism that he could not hide.

“Where are your horses?” Jim asked.

“The very back of the canyon. In a cave there.”

“Send a man up here to me, a good man.”

Mako called back through the brush. Presently, a young puncher came crawling on his belly to Jim. He was in his early twenties, a sober-faced leaned-down man whose eyes held a wild excitement.

“The rest of us have got to get out of here,” Jim said, “but you're going to stay. Now listen to what I say. I've picked out four rifles up there, and there must be more, because four men wouldn't attack this crowd. They're tryin' to stampede us down the canyon, and the rest of that crew will be strung along it, waitin' to pick us off. Our one chance is to rush that rim and fort up on the ridge beyond it.”

“You'll never make it,” the puncher said quietly.

“Maybe not. There's a little cover here between here and the horses. We'll dash for them. Mako says there's shelter where they are. Is there?”