the Strong Shall Live (Ss) (1980) (6 page)

Take your time!The words rang in his mind like a bell. He lifted his bone-handled gun and fired just as Cap let go with his second shot. Something slugged Bostwick in the leg as he realized Cap had missed his first shot!

His eyes were on that toothpick on Cap's watch-chain. He squeezed off a shot even as he fell, then he was getting up, bracing himself for a careful shot.

Cap seemed to be weaving, turning his side to him like a man on a dueling field. Bostwick fired from where his gun was, shooting as a man points a finger. This time there was no mistake. Where the toothpick had hung there was a wideningstain now, and he fired again, then went to his knees, losing his grip on his gun.

Somewhere a door slammed, and he heard running feet. He reached out for his gun, but his hand closed on nothing. He smelled the warm, wet earth on which his face rested, and he felt somebody touch his shoulder.

"I think he's waking up," somebody said, some woman.

He moved then and a bed creaked and when his eyes opened he was looking up at a ceiling and he heard Ruthie saying, "Oh, Katie! He's awake I He's awake!"

"Awake and hungry," he grumbled.

He looked at Ruthie. "How's your grandad?"

"He died . . . only a little while after your fight. He said you were a good man."

"Cap Pennock? Did I--?"

"You hit him four times. He's been buried these two weeks."

"Two weeks?You mean I've been here two weeks?"

"You have. Two weeks and a day, to be exact." She took his hand. "Jim? Kate told me that you planned to file on Squaw Springs yourself."

"Forget it. That will be a good place for you and as for me, I'm just a forty-dollar-a-month cowhand."

"We could do it together."

"Well, you know how folks talk. You being a young girl, and all."

"What if we were married?" she suggested doubtfully.

"Well," he admitted cautiously, "that might do it." He stole a look at her from the corners of his eyes. "Did you ever take a good look at me? Even when I'm shaved--"

"You are shaved, silly!" She laughed at him. "Kate shaved you. She said she always wondered what you looked like under all that brush."

He lifted a hand. It was true. He had been shaved. "You think you could marry a man like me?"

"Well," she said, "just to stop the talk--"

*

Nobody even turned a head to look his way as Barry Merrano entered the store. They knew he was there, and their hatred was almost tangible, he felt it pushing against him as he walked to the counter.

Mayer, who kept the store, was talking to Tom Drake, owner of the TD and considered the wealthiest man in the valley; Jim Hill, acknowledged to be its first settler; and Joe Stangle, from the head of the valley. After a moment Mayer left them and walked over to him.

The storekeeper's lips offered no welcoming smile although Barry thought he detected a faint gleam of sympathy in the man's eyes.

In a low voice, Barry gave his order, and several times the others glanced his way, for they could still overhear a part of what he was saying and he was ordering things they could no longer afford.

"I'll have to ask for cash," Mayer said. "With the drouth and all, money's short."

Barry felt a sudden surge of anger. There was a moment when he thought to bring their world crashing about them by asking how long it had been since the others had paid cash. He knew what it would mean. Suddenly they would be faced with the harsh reality of their situation. The Mirror Valley country was broke... flat broke.

No sooner had the feeling come than it passed. He had no desire for revenge. They hated him, and he knew why they hated him. They hated him because he was the son of Miguel Merrano, the Mexican vaquero who married the most beautiful and sought-after girl in the valley. They hated him because he had the audacity to return after they had driven his father from the area. They hated him because when they built a fence to keep his cattle from water he had found water elsewhere. Worst of all, he himself had kept up the fence they built, building it even stronger.

They hated him because he had the nerve to tell them they were ruining their land, and that drouth would come and their cattle would die.

"That's all right," he told Mayer, "I have the money and I can pay."

He took his order and paid for it with three gold pieces placed carefully on the counter. Joe Stangle looked at the gold, then stared at him, his eyes mean. "I'd like to know," he said; "where a greaser gets that kind of money. Maybe the sheriff should do some looking around!"

Barry gathered his armful of groceries and put them hi a burlap sack. "Maybe he could"--he spoke gently--"and maybe you could, too, Joe. All you'd have to do would be to use your eyes."

He went out, then returned for a second and a third load. "That greaser father of yours knowed what he was doin' when he bought that land," Stangle said.

"The land my father bought was the same sort of land you all have. Once there was good grass everywhere but you overstocked your land and fed it out of existence. Then the brush came in and the underlying roots killed off more grass. When the grass thinned out your stock started eating poison weeds. There's nothing wrong with your land that a few good years won't cure."

"We heard all that preachin' before. No greaser's goin' to come around and tell me how to run my range! Jim Hill an' me were runnin' cattle before you was born I"

Merrano took his last armful of groceries andturned toward the door. White with fury, Joe Stangle stuck out his foot and Barry tripped and sprawled on the floor, spilling his groceries.

Nobody laughed. Tom Drake threw an irritated glance at Stangle, but said nothing.

Barry Merrano got up. His face was very cold and still. "That was a cheap thing to do, Stangle," he said. "There's not much man in you, is there?"

Had he been slapped across the mouth it would have been easier to take. Stangle trembled, and his hand dropped to his gun. Only Jim Hill's grabbing his arm prevented him from shooting Merrano in the back as he walked out the door.

"Yellow!" Stangle sneered. "Yellow, like any greaser!"

"You're wrong, Joe," Hill said quietly, "he's not yellow, nor was his old man."

"He run, didn't he?" Stangle said. "He quit, didn't he?" His voice was hoarse with hatred.

"Yes, he left, but if I recall correctly he backed you down, Joe."

Stangle's face was livid, but Hill turned his back on him and asked Mayer, "I'll have to ask for credit again, Mayer. Can you carry me?"

"I always have." Mayer tried to smile. He had carried them all, but how much longer he could afford to do it he did not know. Only the cash Barry Merrano had spent with him enabled him to meet his own bills, but scarcely that.

Barry Merrano's buckboard rattled out of town, hitting the long, dry road to Willow Springs. It was almost sundown but heat lay over Mirror Valley like a sodden thing, dust hanging heavy in the air. It was always here now, that dust. A few years back, his mother told him, this valley had been a green and lovely place. There had been fat cattle around then, and it was here she had met his father, that pleasant-faced, friendly Mexican--slim, wiry, and elegant--and it was here they had courted and here they were married.

"I'm glad she didn't live to see it," Barry muttered, "it would have broken her heart."

In the rush to get rich from beef cattle the grass . had been overgrazed, and the creosote, cat-claw, and tarweed had started to move in. The grass had grown thinner. It had been eaten down, and worn down, wind had whipped the dust from around the roots and rains had washed out the clumps of grass. The water holes, once plentiful, never seemed to fill up or remain full anymore.

"Climate's changing," Drake had suggested to Hill, and the latter nodded his agreement.

"Don't ever recall it being so dry," Hill added.

They watched with sullen impatience when Barry Merrano returned to occupy his father's ranch. And they turned away in contempt when he told them the climate was not changing, but they were simply running more cattle than the range would support.

Willow Springs loomed before him, and Barry kept his eyes averted. It was at Willow Springs where his father and mother first met. It had been green and lovely then, and the pool had been wide and deep. Now most of the willows were dead and where the pool had been, the earth was cracked and gray. There had been no water since early summer.

Turning right at Willow Springs his road became a climb. It was only a trail, two winding ruts across the parched plain. Ahead of him he saw The Fence.

All over the country it was known by no other name. It was simply The Fence, only nowadays it was mentioned rarely.

Seven ranchers had built The Fence, and they had built it when Barry refused to leave.

That was four years ago but to Barry it seemed longer. He had returned, knowing every detail of the hatred Mirror Valley people had felt for his father. He was determined to face it down and win a place for himself; and the land his father left him was all he had. He turned up the draw toward the house Miguel Merrano had built in the basin under the shoulder of Table Mountain,

Three days after his arrival a dozen horsemen had ridden up the draw to tell him he was not wanted. They wanted no Mexicans in Mirror Valley.

He had waited in the door, listening. And then he smiled, looking much more like his Irish mother at that moment. "I'm sorry you've had your ride for nothing," he said. "I'm staying."

"Get out or we'll run you out!" Stangle had shouted.

"Then why waste time talking?" Merrano suggested. "Why don't you start your running?"

With an oath, Stangle had reached for his gun, but his hand got no farther than the butt, then very, very carefully he moved his hand away. Not one of them saw where Merrano had held the shotgun, but suddenly it was there, in Merrano's hands.

"Sorry, gentlemen, but I don't like being shot at I am not a man of violence, but I've several thousand rounds of ammunition and I hit what I shoot at

"I've noticed that a shotgun has a depressing effect on violent men, as nobody can tell just who is going to get himself ripped open. Now, gentlemen, I've a lot of work to do. Do you go cheerfully or do I have to start a graveyard?"

They went, and Joe Stangle was not the last to leave.

Three days later they built The Fence. They built it across the draw that led from Merrano's adobe in the basin to town. They built it horse-high, hog-tight, and bull-strong. Then six men waited with rifles for somebody to try cutting The Fence.

Barry Merrano came down the draw in his buck-board, and they picked up their rifles for a killing. Before he came to The Fence, Barry pulled up and tumbled a roll of barbed wire from the back of thebuckboard. Then, as they watched, suddenly feeling very foolish, Barry Merrano built his own fence, higher, stronger, and tighter. In place of their nine strands of wire he put up fourteen. In the forty feet of width across the draw he put up nine posts to their five. Then he got into his buck-board and drove away.

Cab Casady, forty-five, and accounted one of the toughest men in the valley, laughed. Just as suddenly as he began laughing, he stopped. "We're a pack of fools I" he said with disgust. "And for one, I'm ashamed of myself! I'm going home!"

Avoiding each other's eyes the others went to their horses, mounted up and rode away. The Fence was a topic no longer mentioned in conversation.

Yet all wondered what Merrano would do, for there was no way out of the basin unless one walked. For three weeks they waited, and then one day Barry Merrano drove into town for supplies. When they rode out to see, The Fence was still intact.

Jim Hill, although he would not admit it, was relieved. Yet like the others, he was curious. He mounted up and scouted around the country. It was almost a month after that he rode into town. He had a drink in the Faro House and said, "Do you know what that Mex did? He's bored him a hole through the Neck!"

Anybody but Jim Hill they would have called a liar. The Neck was a wall of rock that joined the bulk of Table Mountain to the rest of the range, yet when they rode out to see it, there was a black hole in that red wall of rock.

How could it have been done? It was impossible, yet it had been done.

Nobody mentioned fencing the tunnel mouth.

A few days later when he passed Willow Springs, Barry Merrano saw a rider emerge from the shabby little grove and start across the trail. When she saw him, she pulled up.

It was Candy Drake.

He stopped the buckskins when he drew close. "How are you, ma'am?" He touched his hat. He started to comment on the heat and the drouth but thought the better of it. Instead he indicated the pinto's leg. "I see that leg is coming along all right."

"Yes, it got well just like you said it would."

He wanted to talk, yet wanted to avoid anything that might give offense. Candy Drake was the prettiest girl in Mirror Valley. He had talked to no one in almost three months, and he admitted to himself that he had been in love with Candy Drake for three years.