Savage Range (7 page)

“That's out.” He paused. “I can get you out.”

Jim hesitated. “Why should you?” he murmured.

“You're too good a bucko to die on a cottonwood limb, for one thing,” Cope said gravely. “Another is, we need you.”

“Who's ‘we'?”

“Do you want out of there bad enough to find out?”

“I want out mighty bad,” Jim said fervently.

“You aim to run when you're out?”

“Not before I nail Bonsell's hide to the wall,” Jim answered quietly.

Cope almost chuckled. “Then you'll stick?”

“Till hell won't have me,” Jim said.

“All right.” With incredible silence, Cope hoisted a huge logging-chain up even with the window. He slipped its big hook between the bars and the screen, then hooked it over the shank of the chain.

“See that freight wagon?” Cope asked.

“Yes.”

“In half an hour, Jody Capper will hook five teams to it and head for the mines at Tres Piedras. Those broncs will be salty and they'll try to break harness the minute they hear his whip. This chain will be hooked to the rear axle of the wagon. When the window goes out you follow it. Cut across behind the hotel, then turn right, and make for behind my saloon. There's stairs on the north side of it. Climb 'em and go into my rooms. I'll be there.”

Jim was silent a long moment. “How do I know this isn't an excuse to avoid a trial by cuttin' down on me the minute I get out?”

“You don't,” Cope said, and vanished from sight.

Jim watched. He saw Cope couple another length of logging-chain to the one at the window, then trail it over to the wagon. A third length he coupled to this, then, crawling under the wagon, he fastened it to the axle.

What he did next fascinated Jim. He moved leaves from the ditch over onto the logging-chain. When he came to the boardwalk, he lifted a section of it out from under the chain and put the walk back on top of it. Then, taking a whiskbroom from his hip pocket, he carefully brushed out his tracks, working especially hard on the indentations his crutch had made. When he was finished, he waved to Jim and vanished into the night.

The wait was interminable, but Jim never left the window. Later, much later, a light appeared in the shack next to the hotel. That would be Jody Capper breakfasting. Presently two men with a lantern emerged and went to the big barn fronting on the road. There was considerable swearing from within the barn and a long wait. Then the doors opened, and a pair of skittish broncs were led out by the man with the lantern. They were harnessed to the wheel place, and immediately another team was brought out. This went on until five teams, restive in the chill morning air, were harnessed to the wagon.

Jim almost choked once when the shortest man walked around behind the wagon and climbed the end gate to examine something inside. But he didn't touch the chain, and Jim breathed more freely again. The other man stood holding the bridle of the lead team, while the first one stood on the wagon bed, holding the reins and cursing the team. They started once, but the two men fought them so that they backed up beyond the former mark.

Then the man in the wagon, Jody Capper, Jim guessed, picked up a whip with his free hand and unleashed it. With a shout to the man holding the horses to clear out, he cracked his whip like a pistol shot.

The five half-broken teams exploded into their collars.

There was a long second when nothing happened, and then the chain sung taut, throwing the boardwalk high into the air.

A clang of screeching iron lifted into the night, and simultaneously, the rear end of the wagon lifted off the ground, and the whole window frame of the cell pulled out in a moil of dust.

Jim lunged through the opening in one jump, noting that the team was still on the run. Jody Capper was looking back, cursing in a wild voice, but it was not Jody Jim was watching. It was the man with the lantern, who had turned and was staring at him.

Jim hit him running, hit him hard enough to knock him sprawling, the lantern sailing through the air to smash in the road.

Scarcely pausing in his stride, he made for the alley behind the hotel. Rounding its rear corner, he heard the first yell from the jail.

When he crossed the street, it was at a walk, soundlessly. They could not see him, but they might hear him. Achieving the alley behind the saloon, he sped down it and found the stairs at the far side of it.

He climbed them slowly, silently, and opened the door facing the top platform. Immediately he stepped into a room burning one lamp and that only dimly.

Cope was mountainous in the middle of the room, his face grave and sweating.

Beside him stood the most beautiful woman Jim Wade had ever seen. She was dressed in a suit of dark-blue wool with a full, sweeping skirt. It sheered off at her neck, showing the fine sweep of her head which was crowned with a mass of corn-colored hair. Her face was surprised, so that her full lips were parted a little, and the excitement brought color to her cheeks. It was her eyes, bright with excitement and curiosity that Jim Wade looked at. They were deep-set behind low cheekbones, and dark as night pools.

“This is the man?” she murmured, in a full, low voice.

Cope grinned. “Good boy! Mary, this is Jim Wade. Jim, this is Mary Buckner, the real owner, the heir of the Ulibarri grant.”

Without waiting for Mary to extend her hand, Cope blew out the light and said, “Go into that room.”

Mary went in ahead of him, for Jim could smell her perfume. Cope closed the door on them, and they were in darkness.

Within fifteen seconds, there was a pounding on the stairs, and Jim heard a thundering knock at the door. Someone shouted, “Cope! Cope!”

Jim heard Cope mumble, “Yeah?” then a pause, and then the tap, tap of his crutch as he went to the door.

“He's gone!” a man said excitedly. “He broke jail!”

“Hell!” Cope exploded. “Get out of the way and let me see!”

They left, for the door slammed solidly.

Mary Buckner said quietly in the darkness, “We could go into the other room.”

Chapter Six:
STOLEN RANGE

The lamp was burning just as Cope left it when, supposedly, he was roused from bed.

By its light Jim Wade looked at Mary Buckner, and Mary Buckner looked at him. It was a friendly scrutiny from both of them, and at last Jim Wade grinned.

“This is comin' a little too fast for me. I—I don't know what to say.”

“We might shake hands,” Mary Buckner said gravely. “We're going to be friends, aren't we?”

They shook hands solemnly, and then Mary laughed. “Sit down.”

Jim waited for her to take her chair, and then he sank onto the sofa.

“Cope told me everything that's happened,” she began. “He's a loyal friend.”

Jim smiled. “But I didn't even know he was one. To me, I mean.”

“He's sharp. He can tell a crook a mile off—and he can like a man as quickly, too.”

“But why—” Jim began, and stopped. Where to begin? He started off on another tack. “Did he say your name was Mary Buckner, ma'am?”

She nodded. “You've heard of us, I suppose?”

Jim nodded. “Barely. You are the family the Excelsior bought from?”

“Bought from?” Mary shook her head. “Hardly. I'm the one they stole it from.”

She saw the puzzled expression on Jim's face, and she smiled. “Hadn't we better start from the beginning?”

“If there is one,” Jim said fervently. “I landed in the middle of it. That's all I know.”

She began to talk, and Jim found it hard to concentrate on her words. She was like something shining and clean that a man couldn't stare at enough. But he listened and he heard a strange story.

The Ulibarris, Mary Buckner said, were the original grantees, and the Buckners' claim to it was through one Simon Buckner, a Yankee ship's captain. His ship was wrecked on the west coast of Mexico in the late seventeen-hundreds, after which he made his way to Mexico City. There he courted the only daughter of the Ulibarri house, Principia by name, and later eloped with her, taking her to Salem. When, after the Mexican War, title to this country was transferred to the U.S., it was found one Leonidas Buckner, Boston merchant, was heir to the Ulibarri grant. He had two sons, Harvey and James. Harvey was a scapegrace, James a semi-invalid. On the father's death, the Ulibarri property went to son James, who moved West with his daughter. That was James Buckner, and Mary was his daughter.

Soon after James Buckner moved into the old house, built by the Ulibarris long ago, the cattle business began to thrive. A rough type of cattleman began to encroach on the grant, and Will-John Cruver was one of them. James Buckner didn't mind; he wasn't a cattleman. But when the big estate began to drain away James Buckner's slim resources, he decided to run cattle. That had been the death of him.

“How do you mean, the death of him?” Jim asked.

“He ordered Cruver and the other squatters to leave,” Mary said. “Rather than do it, they came to the house one night and shot him and took his body with them.”

“You saw it?”

Mary only nodded quietly. “I was a little girl, and nobody would believe my story. I was left an orphan by that murder. I was ten years old then.”

“How did you live?”

Mary's face softened a little. “I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for rough Jack Cope. His wife was alive then, and they adopted me. Later, when I was school age, Uncle Jack sent me to school in the East. When I was out of school, I was aching to come back to the West. I did come back—but to Wyoming as a schoolteacher.”

“But your land,” Jim said. “It's still yours?”

Mary shook her head. “It would take money to prove that in court, years of litigation. And I was poor.”

“So you tried to save money for the court fight?”

Mary nodded. “That's just what I did.” She leaned forward toward Jim. “You see, there were thousands of dollars in back taxes that I couldn't meet, so what was the sense of trying to win title? But I had one thing that gave me confidence.”

“Jack Cope?”

Mary smiled and nodded. “Two things, then. Jack Cope was one. The other was the original charter from the King of Spain, given to Don Justino Perez y Santiago y Mudarra y Ulibarri. I had it in the bottom of my trunk.” She laughed. “That was my war chest.”

“You still have it, then?”

Mary shook her head slightly and leaned back in her chair. “It was stolen.”

“Who did that?”

“My uncle, Harvey Buckner, I believe.”

She told Jim then what he most wanted to know, explaining Max Bonsell's presence here. Harvey Buckner, so Jack Cope had told Mary, sent a man to San Jon after his brother's death. This man asked a lot of questions and drank a lot of whisky.

And his questions all pointed toward one thing. Had anybody seen James Buckner dead? Nobody had, except his girl, Mary, and she was gone somewhere these ten years back. Were they sure James Buckner was dead? No, nobody was, except the murderers—if he was murdered. And they doubted that. Months later the charter was stolen from Mary's trunk where she was staying in a little Wyoming cow town.

“But what does it get him?” Jim asked quickly.

“It makes him James Buckner,” Mary answered simply. “For eight years he has lived in Santa Fe under the name of James Buckner. He looks enough like Dad that any witness would be hard put to tell the difference. He has established that name in this country far more strongly than Dad did. He has the original charter from the Spanish king. Under James Buckner's name, he has paid enough on the taxes of the old grant that it can't be sold for taxes. And now, in partnership with Max Bonsell, he is taking over.”

Jim whistled in exclamation. “And the only men who can prove him a liar are the men who murdered your father? And to do it, they would have to admit his murder.”

Mary nodded.

“What about you?” Jim went on. “Can't you prove who you are?”

Mary shook her head. “I was born when my parents were in Europe, so there's no record of my birth in this country. No one can identify me, because I was away from Boston and from here during my growing years.”

“But these people will testify James Buckner had a girl, won't they?”

“He's taken care of that,” Mary replied. “He admits to having adopted a girl. But she went bad on him, he says.” She smiled a little. “I'm that girl. And by way of payment for his kindness to me, I'm turning against him and trying to get the Ulibarri grant, so he says.”

Jim sat there in silence, his lean face scowling. Anger showed in his eyes, but there was a look of bafflement, too. He drew out his pipe and looked at it and put it back in his pocket, then settled back in his chain and regarded Mary Buckner, who was watching him carefully.

“Now what?” Jim murmured. “You want my help, Cope said. You've got it, Miss Buckner—only hanged if I see what kind of help.”

“Jack Cope has money,” Mary said.

“Enough to prove Harvey Buckner isn't James Buckner?”

“No. Just enough to pay the back taxes on the Ulibarri grant.”

Jim frowned. “But you've still got to prove you're James Buckner's child to get the grant.”

Mary was silent a long moment and then she said quietly, “Years ago Uncle Jack told me that there would come a time we were waiting for and a man we were waiting for. Uncle Jack said he would have to ride a little higher and a little wider and a little handsomer than any man he'd ever seen. He said he'd have to have a savage hatred for injustice. He'd have to be a fighter. He'd have to know how to use a gun. He wouldn't care about money, Uncle Jack said, and he'd have to have treatment at Harvey Buckner's hands that would make him fighting mad.”

She paused, and Jim regarded her attentively. “Uncle Jack wasn't sure at first, when he saw you join up with Max Bonsell. But when he heard your story to those men in the sheriff's office tonight, he was sure.” She paused again. “You're the man, Jim Wade.”