the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) (5 page)

I'm driftin'."

"Quittin?" Gore was amazed, and the others looked up too. "What's the matter, Slim?"

"Matter?" Slim stared at him. "Look, John. I'm as tough as the next, but I ain't no fool. I know ^Hopalong Cassidy. I ain't buckin' him for any price. He's a curly gray wolf from the high timber, and anyway, I feel like driftin' south where there's more sun."

"Shucks, it's only spring now. Wait another month or so and you'll get all the sun you want."

"Maybe. But right now I feel mighty cold."

"If you ask me," Con Gore said harshly, "it's your feet get-tin' cold."

Slim turned on him. "That's right, Con. They are. I'd rather be alive with forty bucks in my kick than dead with four hundred. You stay here, and the day will come when you'll wish to heaven you'd drifted with me!"

For three days Hopalong scouted the range. Once he rode west toward the Black Sand Desert, which barred the cattle from further travel that way. But mostly his rides took him toward Haystack Valley and the distant Blue Mountains. As he rode he studied the range and the country. Spring rains had been good, and the cattle were already increasing in weight. The range was well cared for, the ponds cleaned out and shored up, the water holes and springs deepened, the washes dammed to stop the wasting of soil as well as to impound water. Young Bob Ronson was a thoughtful and intelligent man, a rancher who, given peace, would prosper.

The home ranch lay on the western slope of the Antelopes, but a small pass gave easy outlet to the vast range to their east where many of the cattle ran. It was upon this range where the battle with the Gores had opened. Not only were cattle missing, but the Gore brothers were pushing their own cows onto range that had always been used by the Rocking R.

Southward, Rocking R cattle ranged as far as Poker Gap and Cow Creek Canyon, and westward to the Black Sand Desert. Southeastward, as Frenchy Ruyters had told Hopalong, lay the outlaw village of Corn Patch. Sometimes it was deserted, sometimes crowded.

"And now?" Hopalong asked.

"Crowded," Frenchy replied grimly, "like coyotes flockin' to a fresh kill. Those Gores, they worry me more than the regular outlaws. The three of them are tough as mule hide and poison-mean. They take to trouble like a bear to a berry patch, and they are slippier than a mustang on a blue clay side hill!"

"We'll see 'em," Hopalong said easily. "We'll talk to 'em."

"Well, you won't have to wait," Frenchy replied dryly. "Here they come."

Tex Milligan drifted his pony down off the hillside. "Here comes Windy Gore and some of his hands."

The riders were four in number, and they came swiftly. Hopalong was riding Topper and he swung the white gelding to face them and walked him forward a full length toward the oncoming riders.

"Howdy," he said quietly. "I take it you're Windy Gore?"

The tallest of the men, a lean, sour-faced man with a lantern jaw stared at him.

"You take it right. And you're on 3 G range."

Hopalong smiled. "According to my information, this here's the Rocking R. All of it, clear to the Blues. Seems to me this outfit was here a long time before the 3
G outfit. How do you explain that?"

"I don't!" Windy Gore laughed loudly. "Old Cattle Bob rode right over his neighbors while he was alive, but he ain't alive anymore. Now get off and stay off!"

Hopalong sat his saddle. Coolly he let his gaze stray over the Gore riders, fixing first one and then another with his cold blue eyes.

"Windy," he said quietly, "this is Rocking R range. It continues to be Rocking R range. There's plenty of land east of the Blues if you want to run some stock. I'd advise you to get hold of it before somebody else does. If you and your brothers want to live peacefully, we can get along. If you want war, there's no need to wait; you can start it right now."

"Huh?" Windy Gore was startled. Hopalong had spoken so quietly that it was a few seconds before the import of his statement penetrated Windy's consciousness. When it did, rage flooded him, and yet along with the rage was a cold thread of reason.

The odds were not good enough. Cassidy was supposed to be dangerous, and certainly there was no weakness to be expected from Frenchy or Tex. They might not be gun-slick, but they would stand hitched. Windy Gore was not so foolish as to buck a deck stacked the way this one was. Especially as he knew that he himself would be the first target of all three men. It was an uncomfortable thought.

"You heard me." Hopalong pushed his horse forward until it stood shoulder to shoulder with Gore's. "I said it could be peace or war, any way you want it, and no need to wait. You boys have been makin' war talk. Now make up your minds.

If you want it, you can have it."

Behind and to the left of Windy a sullen-faced man sat his horse. Partly bald, he had a brutal jaw and small eyes above heavy cheekbones. "Let me have him, Windy," this man begged. "Just let me have-"

The sentence was never completed, for Hopalong swung a wicked backhand blow against the man's chin that rocked him in the saddle. His right foot slipped from the stirrup, and swooping, Hopalong grabbed it and jerked high. Caught unexpectedly by the sudden action, the bald-headed man slipped from the saddle and hit the dust with a crash.

Instantly Hopalong was off his horse, and before the man could even gain his feet, Hoppy grabbed his shirt front with his left hand and jerked him up into a wicked right. Then he dropped the fellow and stepped back.

Stunned, the bald-headed man shook his head; then with awakening realization he came off the ground with a grunt. He came up fast, and Hopalong swung a sweeping left that split his cheek to the bone and then a right that thudded on his chin, and the man went down on his face in the dust.

Stepping back, Hopalong saw that Milligan's rifle was over his saddle, covering the others. "There it is, Gore," Cassidy said, breathing easily. 'Tour man asked for it and he got it."

"You'll not get away with this!" Windy was furious, but wary. The odds had changed still more now, for the man on the ground was not stirring. Even if he were on his feet he would be in no shape to hold up his end in a gun battle.

"Tell your brothers there's plenty of range here for all of us.

Just keep your cattle across the Blues and keep your hands off Rocking R cows. We don't want trouble, but we're ready for it."

The beaten man was sitting up, shaking his head to clear it of fog. He looked up, his eyes ugly with hatred. "Next time," he snarled, "it will be guns!"

"Why wait?" Hopalong faced him abruptly. "You've got a gun. If you want to die, reach for it."

For a long moment the man stared, his fingers twitching with eagerness. Hopalong saw the desire to kill in his eyes, then saw it die slowly. "Not now," the man said.

"Later."

"All right, then," Cassidy said coolly. He raised his eyes to Windy's. "Any time I find any rider from the 3 G on this range, either armed or with a running iron 'or rope, he loses his horse and walks home!"

"What?" Windy bellowed. "Why, you-"

He gulped his words, seeing the ice in Cassidy's eyes. "Go ahead!" Hopalong invited.

"Start somethin'. You can ride back over a saddle as easy as astride one!"

When the four had ridden away, Tex Milligan chuckled. "Man! Did you see Windy's face?

He was fit to be tied! That's the first time anybody faced up to a Gore, and believe me, it didn't set well!"

Ruyters grinned, but his eyes were worried. "Served 'em right," he agreed, "but they'll come a-gunnin' now. They've got more hands than we have."

They started their horses on and Hopalong let his eyes search the range. This was dry country. Even now, in the spring of the year when it was at its best, it offered little. Sagebrush mingled with bunch wheat grass and here and there solid patches of winter fat. Its whitish, almost light-gray color could be discerned at considerable distance, and it was one of the most valuable grazing plants of this sort of range. Yet some hillsides were already badly washed, and the country, despite the winter fat, would support but few cattle in relation to the vast area.

The wheat grass and sagebrush offered good spring range, and cattle here might be fattened well before the heat of the summer and the scarcity of water hit them.

Frenchy had been noticing Hopalong's study of the range. "She don't look much," he agreed, as if reading Cassidy's thoughts, "but that winter fat is good range, and there's lots of it. North of the home ranch there's a couple of valleys chock-full of it, and it stands grazing mighty well."

Frenchy added, "Ronson has an idea that's a good one, I reckon. He figures that in late spring, when it begins to get hot and dry, he'll drive his cattle north across the desert and into the High Rock Canyon country. Lots of good grass and water up there. He's worked out a deal with a rancher up there by the name of Gibson."

"I know him," Hopalong said. "Drove over the trail the same time that he did. Knew his son-in-law."

They rode in silence for a while, and then Hopalong asked suddenly, "Any loose riders around that we could hire? Good hands who will fight?"

Tex Milligan shrugged. "Maybe a couple. Shorty Montana's around town. He's a fightin' son of a gun when he gets unwound. Tough little squirt. He wouldn't work for Young Bob, though. Turned him down twice. Had some sort of a run-in with the old man."

"Serious?"

"Naw, just a couple of fire-eaters. Shorty would walk into any kind of trouble with guns a-smokin' if he figured he wanted to or if there was anybody in there he wanted.

Him and Jesse Lock were pretty thick, but Shorty hits the bottle hard when he's off the job."

"How about when he's workin?"

"Never touches it. Kind of quarrelsome ranny. He likes trouble and hunts it, so he doesn't have so much as you'd figure. Never saw such an hombre for fightin'."

"Win?"

"Fifty-fifty. He don't seem to care much. He just likes it. One hombre licked him three times over at Unionville. Every Saturday night Shorty would go back and tackle him again. Hombre finally left the country to get away from him."

Gently, Hopalong chuckled. It might pay to ride in and have a talk with Shorty Montana.

"Where does he hang out?"

"Katie Regan's, mostly. The Nevada Saloon other times."

A thin trail of smoke invited their attention, and they drifted that way.

Kid Newton looked up from his fire. His rifle lay close by and he was wearing a gun.

He was a slim, awkward boy, but his grin was wide. "Howdy!" he said. "Light and sit!

Got coffee on, and grub comin' up." He glanced at Hopalong. "I saw what happened down yonder. I was close by."

Cassidy looked him over with new attention. "Close by? Where were you?"

"Behind a rock about three hundred yards off. Had me a dead bead on Windy Gore."

Frenchy Ruyters indicated the boy with his head. "The kid's good with a rifle, Hoppy.

I've seen him drop an antelope at three hundred yards with the antelope runnin' full tilt. Shoots 'em right in the head."

"Aw, that ain't anythin'!" Newton was embarrassed. "I've been shootin' all my life."

Milligan poured coffee into a tin cup and handed it to Hopalong. "Go easy on that," he said. "We panned some of it out once and found after the water was poured off that she assayed forty percent coffee, forty percent alkali, ten percent assorted minerals, and ten percent gold.

"Fellers," he said seriously, "always panned their coffee before they drunk it. Many a cowhand in this here country's made him a stake thataway."

Frenchy snorted. "You pay too much attention to Tex," he said, "and his stories'll make your head hurt."

Milligan snorted. "Me? Tell stories? Why, Hoppy," he exclaimed, "this hombre won't even believe what I tell him about that hundred-mile bob-wire fence on the XIT. I know it's there! I helped stretch her myself!

"They unrolled three strands of wire for a hundred miles. Unbroken stretch of it.

Then we hitched an ox team to each end of it, and stretched her tight. We worked by smoke signals, and we stretched that wire so tight that it wasn't until four years after that we had to put the posts up!

"Fact is," he continued, "I don't think we needed 'em then, but the boss figured it would look better to have more than the two anchor posts at each end."

"Drink your coffee," Ruyters said disgustedly, "and shut up!"

Hopalong grinned and tried his own coffee. He wrinkled his nose at the flavor. Whether there was gold in it he did not know, but it tasted strongly of alkali. He grinned.

If he had all the sand and dust that he had drunk in camp coffee stretched out in one layer, he would have had enough for a ranch of his own.

Ruyters turned to Cassidy. "Hoppy," he said, "I've worked with this cap-rock turkey for a couple of years now. Can't you let me work with the kid or somebody else? Those stories of his would drive a man to drink."

"Say," Newton said suddenly, glancing up from the fire, "I hear that feller Jacks has staked him a claim over on Ghost Mountain east of Corn Patch!"