The Max Brand Megapack (262 page)

The novelty of the idea began to appeal to them suddenly.

“Why, boys,” said the tall man, Bud, raising his great length and looking hungrily at Ronicky, “if I could get to a real, honest-Injun bed for one night, I figure that it might do me some good, eh?”

“It’d be sort of fun to sing to the doggies, too,” said another reflectively.

“And as he says, we don’t have to stay.”

“But what about keeping him here for a hostage until Christopher is in the clear?”

“Tell that idea to your hat. He ain’t going to blow on Kit. He’s got too much sense. He knows that if he starts anything like that he’ll have the whole mob of us after him, and he sure ain’t lining out any sort of a future like that for himself!”

Ronicky Doone said not a word. He was looking down at his watch. It was still only a little after noon, and there was time if they acted at once!

CHAPTER XXXV

RONICKY’S TRI
UMPH

The greatest day of Al Jenkins’ life had come. He sat his horse on the tallest hill near his house, and he could look across more than the mere ground. What he was seeing was his entire past life reduced to pictures. Just below him was the small house where he had begun his struggle. It was a battered and sadly worn house. Once it had represented almost an ideal to him, because it had been around that house that he had grouped his hopes for a home. He remembered when he had planted the small orchard to the left of the house, and the line of trees which was to fence in the drive out to the main road up the valley.

All of these things he had done in the flush of youth, when both he and young Steve Bennett had been fighting fiercely for the hand of the same girl. Far, far away to his right, buried from sight among the hills, was the old Bennett house. It had gone to rack and ruin long since; it had not been lived in for twenty years, for Bennett married a home as well as a wife. Yonder thin streak of blue against the brown hillside told of the big house. This, also, was falling to pieces in the Bennett regime. They were doomed to be destroyers, so it seemed. But in the old days that big house, of which the rising smoke was telling, had been the show place of the mountains.

It was for the sake of the big house and the big property, as much as for the girl, Al could not help but feel, that Steve Bennett had betrayed him. Had it been for love alone, Al vowed that he could have forgiven his lucky rival for his success, but he had always felt that love for the girl was only one small part of it.

He turned his glance back to the little house in the hollow beneath him. Certainly it had not been her wealth that had been the loadstone to him. It was not the thought of the big ranch and what he could have done with it, that made his heart heavy as lead. It was she who might have made his life a heaven upon earth!

It was with a sharp pang that he stared down on the house. He could remember the planting of every one of those trees, he felt. They would tempt her eye, he had felt at the time. He would make this so smiling a home that she could not but cast a longing glance toward it.

The orchard was withered now. Only a few withered, writhen trunks, here and there, told of the labor that had made it and the hopes that had been planted with it. The paint, too, which he had plastered on the house with such a devout joyousness, was long since peeled and cracked away, and it left the boards a sturdy and weathered brown. It was a symbol of the changes in his whole life, he told himself.

He had started out the gayest and gentlest of men. And now long experience, bitter disappointments, had taught him that no man was to be trusted outside of his interests. He might reproach himself for his lack of faith in his fellow men, but no amount of self-reproaching could change his mental furniture. And it seemed to Al Jenkins that he sat his horse in the midst of a desert. There was no joy in it; there was no joy in his life. At least there was no pleasure other than the pleasure of great power. He was the strongest man in that district, he assured himself. No one could stand up against him. As for Steve Bennett, there was no real war with him now. There was no suspense other than that which he himself had provided by delaying the destruction of the other for a few days. He could have struck as soon as Blondy Loring was shot down. But he had delayed those six days to give poor Bennett a chance to fight against the inevitable. Inevitable the conclusion certainly must be!

There was only the shadowy form of Ronicky Doone, that strange youth who had forwarded his plans an immense step by removing the formidable and active Blondy, only to turn around and swear that he intended to do his best for Bennett. Ronicky Doone, to be sure, had loomed large in his mind’s eye for a few days. But now that the week was almost lapsed, Al Jenkins was beginning to consign Ronicky’s threats and promises to the region of the thin and shadowy spirits. Ronicky had made a few boasts and then ridden off and left Al to digest them the rest of his life.

Besides, what could one man do to stop him?

Al Jenkins turned his head. Beside him and behind him there were three stalwarts, chosen men of war in case of need. And yonder, scattered at different points through the mountains on the Bennett ranch, there were twenty more picked men, ready for any sort of trouble. These were the ones who were about to close in upon the rancher and scoop his ranges clean of cattle. How could one man block schemes as widely extended as these?

And there was more, much more to be said. For behind him stood arrayed a solid body of public opinion which would back him against any odds and against all foes. Truly he was well fortified. He looked back of him to the very crest of the hill. At that highest point there was a great pile of wood. It was a truly imposing mass, which had been collected for weeks and months, no one being able to understand its purpose. And now it had been recently finished off, to the complete wonder of Al’s men, with a thick crown of green wood and foliage.

They could not understand, but a torch applied to that heap of wood would send a vast smoke column standing stiffly into the air, and the sight of that smoke column would warn every one of the score of men scattered among the hills, that the time to begin the drive had come; and they would set to work just as in the old days that same Steve Bennett had launched a brutal host against him and swept his smaller ranch clean.

No wonder that Al Jenkins delayed in applying the torch. For he was in the position of Jove. At his nod the lightning flew. But it would only fly once; and he lingered, delaying the stroke for the joy of balancing the destruction in the palm of his hand.

But at last he made up his mind that the time had come past delay. His men must be safely in their appointed places for the beginning of the round-up. The cowardly crew of cow-punchers who had been working for Bennett before, had been seen to leave the ranch long ago, warned of the impending blow. All the stage was set for the catastrophe. In the meantime the sun had reached the late afternoon, and already its light was beginning to turn yellow and give a less biting brilliance, a less withering blast of heat.

He turned to give the signal which would sweep Steve Bennett into pauperism, and then he delayed the signal for yet another moment. For his eye had caught an advancing group of horsemen who had just wound into view on the valley road. He lowered the hand which he was about to wave, as he called to “Freckles” to light the match that would start the fire. For there was something in the manner of riding in that group and in the group itself, that arrested his attention.

In the first place there were eight men, which was a larger number than generally gathered together going to and from a ranch. In the second place they rode well bunched together and went along at a steady gait as though they were in a businesslike mood and had a distinct destination just before them.

And above all, as they drew nearer, a rather small bay horse, which even in the distance showed the utmost delicacy and beauty of line, flashed into the lead and then turned suddenly into the very driveway which led to Al Jenkins’ house!

Jenkins forgot all about the high-built bonfire behind him. He uttered an exclamation of the keenest wonder and interest.

“It’s Ronicky Doone!” he cried. “It’s Ronicky Doone, boys, and if I ain’t mistaken, he’s here to raise trouble with me!”

The announcement caused a burst of consternation. The defeat of Blondy Loring in the center of Twin Springs had been spectacular enough to impress even the dullest minds and the least apprehensive spirits. But the sight of such a man, riding at the head of seven followers who, so far as was known, might be men of his own caliber, was a thunderbolt to their plans and their confidence. They packed in close around the rancher and waited eagerly for his decision.

Immediately they grew nervous when he did not give a command for them to turn the heads of their horses and start traveling in the opposite direction. Especially now that the advancing party swarmed around the house, apparently found at once that there was no one in it, and then straightened out for the place where Jenkins and his smaller party waited.

Freckles voiced the opinion of the others.

“If Ronicky Doone is working for Bennett,” he said, “and if he’s got us, eight to four, don’t it seem sort of nacheral and wise for us to vamoose, chief?”

But Al Jenkins waved the thought aside.

“If Blondy Loring on his little bunch of gray lightning couldn’t ride away from that bay mare, what chance do you think we’d have with our hosses? No, if he wants to talk to us, let him come up here and talk. I’m going to stay right here, but the rest of you can do what you want to do.”

They made no reply, but, reigning their horses back, they prepared to wait for the attack.

It came with a rush and a swirl. Up the hill dashed the eight in a scattered line, but what Al Jenkins looked at was not the row of horses, stretching in a hard gallop up the slope, but the riders who spurred them on. He thought that he had never seen seven such formidable characters. There was a wide-shouldered man in a red shirt riding right behind Ronicky Doone, an ugly man, the ugliest that Al Jenkins could remember encountering. And he had a purposeful manner about him that suggested great readiness with weapons. At one end of the line there was a man famine-thin and very tall. And his lean face had the ferocious eagerness of a shark. And all the other men in between were hardly less impressive. If it came to a show-down, “God pity my men,” thought the rancher.

In the meantime he summoned a cheerful smile and rode out a pace or two in the front. Ronicky brought the bay mare to a halt immediately before him.

He had expected a triumphant defiance in the manner of the fighting youth. He was agreeably surprised when Ronicky came to him with a smile and an outstretched hand. They shook hands to the mutual bewilderment of the opposing parties, both of which were glowering darkly at one another.

“I’m mighty glad to see you again,” said Ronicky. “We’re lined up on the wrong sides in this party, it looks like, but I’m aiming to play clean and fair, Mr. Jenkins!”

Al Jenkins was so relieved that he broke into laughter and smote Ronicky a tremendous blow on the shoulder.

“I’ve never yet worked crooked,” he said, “and I ain’t going to begin. But what you driving at, Ronicky?”

The explanation of Ronicky was brief and wholly to the point.

“I’ve come down with some partners of mine,” he said, “to give things a look around these parts. We aim to be friends of Steve Bennett, all of us. And being friends of his, we thought maybe you might like to know that we was around in this neighborhood.”

“Sure.” said Al Jenkins, falling at once into the spirit of this talk. “I’m a public-spirited man, son, and I’m always interested in the folks that call on my neighbors. You’re going to stay with Steve Bennett for a while?”

“Sure! We’re his new hands. Me and the boys figured that maybe he’d be losing some of his hands before long, and that he’d want to take on a few more.”

“Right.” replied Al Jenkins. “His whole gang quit just this morning. But I didn’t know that he ever used a crowd as big as eight, outside of a rush season?”

“But this,” said Ronicky,
“is
a rush season with Bennett, though I suppose that you’d never guess it.”

The innuendoes were hugely to the taste of the cow-punchers on both sides, and they grinned at each other with a mutual understanding. Now Ronicky and Al Jenkins drew to one side.

“It means that your game is called off, Jenkins,” said Ronicky. “These boys of mine may not be as many as the ones that you’ve got working for you. But they got something better than numbers—they got good steady hands and quick trigger fingers. Look ’em over, Jenkins. And, besides, they’re better than they look!”

“In one sense I suppose that they are,” said Jenkins gloomily. His good humor was rapidly vanishing, as he saw the chance for action on this day removed. Then he added with a touch of malice: “I’d like to have the history of every one of that gang. I think it might be interesting to people—particularly to the sheriff!”

“Sure it would be,” said Ronicky. “It would be mighty interesting. But it would be awful hard on the gent that started out to collect the news. And he’d waste a pile of hossflesh doing it. I hope you ain’t aiming at that right away?”

Jenkins sighed.

“Right now,” he said, “it looks like I got to postpone the deal. You know what I mean. But sooner or later, it don’t make no difference, Bennett has got to go down. You won’t have your friends with you all the time! You won’t even be here all the time yourself, Ronicky!”

Ronicky nodded.

“I’m only asking a fighting chance for the girl,” he said.

“So’s her father can gamble it away?” asked Jenkins.

“I’ll tend to him,” said Ronicky. “Don’t you be worrying about that. And in the meantime, Jenkins, I know that I’ve got the upper hand. You can beat Bennett and me together next month; but this month him and me have the upper hand. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” admitted Jenkins through his teeth. “Son, does it come into your head that one of these days I may make you sweat for interfering?”