Savage Range (4 page)

Color crept into the sheriff's face, and he opened his mouth to speak, then shut it in a grim line. He glared at Jim's perfectly innocent face.

“I've heard about you,” he announced. “They tell me you got a reputation in Dodge and the other trail towns for bein' the gent that always leads the hardcases in treein' the town. That right?”

Jim looked shyly at the sheriff and made a coy half circle with his boot sole in the dust. “I was young then, sir,” he said modestly.

The yellow in the sheriff's face was flushed out by the red. He was about to get really angry.

“Let me tell you somethin', Wade,” he said angrily. “This was a good country up till now. It'll be a damn sight better when you're out of it. And I aim to run you out.”

Jim's tone changed immediately. “Do you, now?” he drawled.

“I do. First time you step over the line in any way, the first time I have a complaint agin you, you better ride. North or south, it don't matter which.”

“Or you'll be chasin' me?” Jim murmured.

“I will.”

Jim said quietly, “I heard you. Now you want a little advice?”

“No.”

“You'll get some, anyway,” Jim went on. “In the first place, my old pappy told me never to make a brag unless I could make it stick. You've made a brag that won't stick, Sheriff, because you or your ten twins couldn't run me out of this county. You couldn't run me out of anything, not even tobacco.”

The sheriff just stared.

“In the second place,” Jim went on, “I don't like the way you do business. Why, you're the very gent that brought me here.”

“That's a lie!” Sheriff Haynes said.

“Think,” Jim reminded him. “If you'd been any kind of a lawman at all, you'd know a few elementary laws you got to enforce. One of 'em is protection of private property. The Ulibarri grant is private property, but it's bein' trespassed on. The owners don't like it. If you was a decent sheriff with any sand in your craw, you'd run the squatters off. Instead of that, you try to run the owners off. Is that right?”

“They got here first!”

“Did they ever pay any lease money?”

“Nobody ever paid any lease money,” Sheriff Haynes said emphatically. “Why, even when Mr. Buckner—he was the last of the Ulibarri blood that lived here—was here nobody paid any lease money. He never ranched, but he never gave a hang if other people did. This was open range then, and I aim to keep it so.”

“It don't matter to you that it's been bought by this outfit?”

Link Haynes sneered. “Nobody but a renegade cowman likes a company outfit. They make a livin' by hoggin' range from honest men who need it!”

“And you'll help these—honest men?”

“As far as I can,” Haynes said sturdily.

Jim nodded quietly. “It better not be very far, Sheriff. Because I sent notice of eviction to every man on this lease this mornin'.”

“Servin' it with your gunmen, eh?”

Jim flushed a little this time. “Who I hire don't concern you, Haynes. I'm responsible for my crew, and they can be a bunch of Comanches for all you care.”

“You're responsible, you say?”

“I said it, didn't I?”

Sheriff Haynes nodded wisely. “All right. That's one thing settled. That'll give me a handle to run you out of this county twice as fast as I would have anyway.”

“You try it,” Jim invited.

“I'll do that,” Sheriff Haynes promised, and strode over to his horse.

Jim and Max Bonsell watched him ride off, not without a certain dignity, and then Jim turned to Max.

“Nice fair sheriff,” he murmured. “Where'd they find him? Under a loose board?”

Max Bonsell only grinned. “Begin to see my reason for hirin' a hardcase crew?”

“Yeah,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Maybe you're right, at that.”

When Jim got his map, he went down to the corral for Sleepy. The sight of him, standing sleek and big and clean-limbed in that cool sunshine cheered Jim up a little. He whistled to him, and the big gelding came over. He spooked away from the bridle a couple of times, and Jim swore affectionately at him. This was a game they played daily, one which neither of them took seriously, but one which Jim considered was Sleepy's right as a loyal and dependable friend. Once the bridle was on, Sleepy looked around him in a haughty, questioning way that made Jim sympathize with him. He felt that way himself, just a little. This was a queer outfit, one that gave you no confidence and no pride in your work. But it was too late to back out now. To begin with, he'd given Bonsell his word, and he regretted it now. And then there was that matter of the sheriff. He had a way that went against a man's grain, and the stubborn streak in Jim was aroused at his boasting. Out of the pure contrariness which often guides a man in his decision, Jim had decided that he would stay here just to see if Sheriff Haynes could run him out.

He was aware, suddenly, that he was being watched, and he turned slowly to regard Lily Beauchamp's brother watching him from the top pole of the corral. Ben Beauchamp had a good face to begin with, fine-lined and clean-looking, but he wore an insufferable expression on it that irritated a man. Even the tow hair and the lithe, slim build of him couldn't change that.

Jim, remembering the quiet desperation of the girl, resolved to check his impulse. He said, “Mornin'.”

“That ain't a bad horse,” Ben Beauchamp observed, “but I've seen better.”

“Where?”

Beauchamp was a little astonished at the bluntness of Jim's retort. “Right here,” he said, holding up the reins in his hand. Jim walked over and looked at the big, Roman-nosed blue that Ben Beauchamp was riding.

“Can he run?” he asked mildly.

“Faster'n that chestnut.”

“Want to bet?”

The kid looked appraisingly at the chestnut again. “Sure.”

“My horse against yours.”

“All right. Where do we race?”

Jim glanced over toward the creek. There was a flat, level stretch that paralleled it for six hundred yards or so to the timber gate toward the south. He said, “From even with the corral down to that far gate. It's open. First man through wins.”

“Any dog holes there?”

“I'll see,” Jim said. He mounted and rode out toward the creek. The inspection, which served to limber up Sleepy, revealed no prairie-dog holes, and Jim came back to the starting-line. Ben Beauchamp's face had fallen a little when he saw Sleepy canter, but he put back the sneer on his face when Jim approached.

“I dunno what I'll do with him when I win him,” he announced to Jim.

Jim grinned secretly and said, “You give the word.”

They lined up even, and at Ben Beauchamp's shout they started off. Sleepy, sensing a race but not quite sure of it, watched the blue shoot off like a skyrocket. Then he got it into his head what it was all about and stretched out. At the halfway mark, he pulled abreast of the blue, and it was then that Jim touched his heels to him. Sleepy was sure then. He settled lower, stretched longer, and was gone, and when they came to the gate he was leading by an easy thirty yards.

Jim pulled up and waited for Ben to come through the gate. He did, scowling. “Hit a dog hole,” he growled. “Lucky I didn't break my neck.”

“You don't think it was a fair race?”

“Oh, I'll stick by my word,” Ben said.

“Give me that lane and we'll race back,” Jim suggested.

Ben agreed and they changed sides. The race back was more uneven than the first. Sleepy was in one of his rare competitive moods, and then apparently decided to run just for the hell of it. He beat the blue by fifty yards this time.

When Ben rode up alongside Jim, he nodded and said, “He's better, all right.” He paused, and Jim could see the reluctance in his manner. “Well, that leaves me afoot, don't it?”

“I reckon,” Jim said.

“Loan me a horse, will you?”

“What for?”

“I'm headin' back for San Jon.”

“Don't want the job?”

Ben looked around the place with a deliberate manner. “I don't like the outfit so much.”

“Well, so long,” Jim said, reaching out for the blue's bridle.

Ben whipped around to regard Jim with surprise. He said, after a pause, “But I got to have a horse. Will you loan me one?”

“No.”

Ben stared at him. “Why not?”

“Need 'em. Besides, you should have thought before you bet.”

Anger flooded the kid's face, but he was shrewd, too. All his life he had been the kind of a kid who yelled names at the bigger kids then ducked in the house. It was still his instinct, and he carried it into barrooms or wherever he went. But the look on the face of this tall, gray-eyed Texan halted him. The memory of last night's beating was a little too fresh.

He said cautiously, “Suppose I take the job. Will you mount me?”

Jim nodded.

“All right. When do I start, then?”

Jim stifled a smile. “Right now. You're ridin' with me. We're makin' a five-day ride with ten pounds of jerky for grub.” He pointed. “We head that way, toward the Star 88.”

This was Ben Beauchamp's introduction to Jim Wade, and, if Jim was any judge, there would be something on that kid's face beside a sneer when they got home again.

To make doubly certain of this, he added, “And I'll take a bill of sale for that blue, too.”

Chapter Four:
CALL ME MASTER

A man can see a lot of country in five days, and the Ulibarri grant took in a lot of country. Roughly, it was eighty miles long, sixty miles wide, a grant dispensed by a Spanish king who had never seen it, but who hoped the gift of it would serve to keep one of his most bothersome courtiers across the sea.

By traveling fast and keeping to the ridges, Jim Wade and Ben Beauchamp saw a lot of it. It was an upended country rising to mountains in the north, but if there were rocky mesas, gaunt and boulder-strewn and serving only to make a man ride around them, there were also long sweeps of grassy valleys that ended in timber. It had taken its character from the weather, as all country does, so it was one of violent colors washed by driving rains, hard snows, and pushing winds. Nights, even in late spring, were cold, and it was no pleasure to stop just before dusk plunged into sheer dark, eat a dozen mouthfuls of jerky, and roll into cold blankets.

But Jim Wade was a thorough man, a general studying his battlefield. He came to understand why these squatters were reluctant to go. There were nine ranches on the lease, all of them a comfortable size, nestled snugly in some sheltered valley that cradled a hay field and full barns. It was well stocked with fat longhorns as wild and tough as the country.

The Star 88, closest to the mountains and farthest from San Jon, was the one he studied in particular. He saw it at sunrise, when the first thin streamer of smoke was lifting from the chimney of the log house. It was prosperous-looking, a working cattle ranch with nothing beautiful about it save the fat longhorns that grazed near it and the overstuffed barns and the sleek-looking horses in the corral.

The buildings themselves were backed into a tight rincon which, on three sides, scarcely left thirty yards of level ground before the sheer bulk of the mesa lifted up. It was Will-John Cruver's place, a large enough one to have a cookshack and bunkhouse. Of the five places Jim had seen, this was the biggest and most businesslike.

Jim's only distraction was Ben Beauchamp, and for the first two days it took all his patience to tolerate this kid. He was sulky, given to fits of talking and then long silences. But when he talked, he boasted, and when he boasted Jim only grinned and called him a piker. But he never got openly angry with the kid, and slowly it dawned upon Ben Beauchamp that this was a man who didn't care to hear of his deeds, good or bad, because he had done them all himself, and better. Ben began to take an interest in what they were doing about the fourth day. Then his weariness conquered, and he asked to go back to the Excelsior. Jim forbade, and further pointed out that if Ben left, he was technically riding a stolen horse, for which crime Jim would gladly prosecute him. To add to Ben's misery, they rode in rain all the last day, so that when they reached the Excelsior after dark Sunday night, he was wet and exhausted and famished and too weary to be surly.

Monday morning, Jim went first to Max Bonsell. No squatter had come in to acknowledge his error, so eviction was the next move.

After breakfast, Jim called the crew together. They were a shaky-looking lot, having spent most of their week in San Jon, drunk. Standing on the porch beside Max Bonsell, he wondered if all the ranchers had been warned. He had only the word of Miles, Ball, and Pardee. Ball, the most trustworthy, he was certain had done his task; but the other two he was doubtful of. However, Ball's ride had included the Star 88, which was what he wanted.

He counted off MaCumber, Ball, Miles, Ben Beauchamp, and a slim, quiet, bearded man named Scoville, and then said, “Saddle up.”

“Where to?” MaCumber asked.

“Star 88. They won't move, so we move 'em.”

The satisfaction in the faces of these men was plain, all except Ben Beauchamp. Resentment showed in his. The rest of the crew, Jim ordered, was to wait his return.

They were on the trail in twenty minutes but it was not the open-country riding that Excelsior riders wished for. They traveled across country, riding hard, clinging to the secret canyons and the brush and taking advantage of all the natural shelter.

When, after midday, Ball asked, “When do we noon, Wade?” Jim answered, “We don't.”

Darkness caught them five miles or so from the Star 88, and under its protection, they traveled down in the valley. Jim seemed to know his way better than the others. When they came to the canyon in which lay the valley where the Star 88 was located, Jim took the first offshoot canyon to the west. They rode for another two hours, following its devious course until it had narrowed down to an arroyo scarcely wide enough for a horse.