War on the Cimarron (6 page)

“Go ahead.”

“I'll pay you cash for this range, if that's what you want. I suspect you don't give a damn about the money part, though. So here's the proposition. We'll lease a range for you from the Indians, title as good as any title here, exactly as big as this and build a shack exactly like this anywhere on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation.”

Otey had drifted up now, and he said immediately, “Take him up, Frank, and do it damn quick!”

Frank didn't even look at Otey. He said, “No,” flatly.

Puckett frowned. “Why not? That's a fair offer.”

Frank nodded. “It's fair, and if I was sure you didn't kill Morg and if you'd made me the offer when I come in here, I'd have taken you up.”

“Then why not take us up now?”

Frank's eyes glinted. “I'll tell you why, Puckett. I don't like the way you do things. I don't like your crew. I don't like your foreman. I don't like your damn bullyin' ways. I don't like the way Morg died. You may make big tracks, but damned if that scares me. I wouldn't move off this piece now for all the rest of the reservation, not for a half-million dollars. Maybe I can't whip you, but I'm goin' to make you almighty sorry you ever swallowed me! And I'm goin' to find out who killed Morg!”

Puckett threw his cigar away with a savage gesture, the only clue to his anger. “All right, if you want war, you'll get it!”

“I got it,” Frank said grimly.

Puckett strode to the buckboard, stepped up and picked up his reins. Then he turned to Frank. “Christian, you're up against Corb on one side and us on the other. Just remember how a millstone works. Good day.”

He slapped the reins down and the team pulled away. Otey watched him go and then looked balefully at Frank. “Now you done it,” his voice bitter with disgust.

Frank's hot gaze whipped around to him. “Otey, any time you don't like it I'll pay you off.”

Otey said, “You want me to go, Frank?”

“That's not it,” Frank said. “It's whether you want to go.”

Otey studied him with small baleful eyes and then sighed. “I'll stay. I dunno why. I guess someone in this crew has got to have some sense, and it might's well be me.”

His glance shifted to Red and it increased in venom, and then he went into the house. Red Shibe drifted over to the corral and Frank followed him. Halfway there he looked down toward the creek and saw a horse and rider coming up the slope from the creek.

He hauled up, immediately wary. How come Joe Vandermeer had let a man past? And then, as the horse approached, he saw it wasn't a man at all. It was Luvie Barnes, and she was wearing a man's outfit of worn levis, checked cotton shirt open at the neck and a flat-brimmed black Stetson.

She pulled up at the corral, and Frank touched his hat “Mornin.' Won't you light?”

Luvie gave him a civil greeting and said. “Thanks. I'd like a drink.”

They walked up to the house, neither saying much except that it was hot for this early in the year, and Luvie sat down in the shade of the porch while Frank brought her a dipper of water.

Finished, Luvie thanked him, and Frank set the dipper on the porch.

Luvie said, “I guess I came at the wrong time, didn't I?”

“Why?”

“You're mad about something. I can see it in your eyes. Still, you were mad about something yesterday. Are you always that way?”

Frank smiled faintly. “Since I pulled in here I reckon I have been. I had to kick a bunch of squatters off my place, and this mornin' their boss rode around to threaten me.”

“Puckett?”

“That's right.”

Luvie regarded him steadily, then shrugged, and it was more eloquent reproof than words would have been. “Maybe I'd better get my business over, so you can be angry at everything at the same time.”

Frank just looked at her, not speaking.

“Dad isn't an Indian giver usually, but he was yesterday. He can't deliver your corn.”

“That's all right,” Frank said, but he didn't manage to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“It isn't all right,” Luvie said defensively, “but let me explain.”

“You don't have to.”

“But I want to!” Luvie said. “You remember when we stopped you at the river day before yesterday?”

Frank nodded.

“I guess that was unwise. Somebody saw us.”

Frank frowned. “What's that got to do with it?”

“Figure it out for yourself. Yesterday one of Dad's trail herds was stopped about twenty miles south of Reno by a big crowd of Cheyennes. They made a levy on the herd. Thirty beef.”

Frank looked puzzled. “They used to shake me down when I was drivin' too, but I paid. I figured it was just grass rent for passin' through the Nations.”

“Would you have paid thirty beef?” Luvie countered.

Frank shook his head. “I don't reckon. But I don't see what it means.”

“Dad talked to you there at the river. That evening he ordered more corn freighted out to our horse camp. That night one of our men started for this place with the corn. He was turned back by strange riders. And the next day the Cheyennes demanded beef from our trail herd. It's the first time it's ever happened to us. Dad, being a beef contractor for the Indians and the army, has always been allowed to pass his herds through without paying beef.” She leaned back. “Now do you see? It was a warning, a pretty plain one.”

“Corb?” Frank asked.

Luvie nodded.

Frank was about to say something, and then he checked himself. He stood up. “Well, that's that. You'll stay and eat, won't you?”

Luvie said quietly, “You think Dad's a coward, don't you, Frank?”

“I never said so.”

“But you look like you did,” Luvie said resentfully. “It's easy for a stranger, an ignorant stranger, to condemn us. But we've got our own way of living.”

“Sure you have,” Frank said, not wanting to argue.

“Then don't look that way!” Luvie said.

Frank stared at her. “What way?”

“The way you looked when I talked to you in the feed office yesterday! The way you looked at me when you talked to Dad! The way you're looking now! I don't like being sneered at!”

“I didn't sneer,” Frank said. “But maybe you're lookin' for sneers because way inside you might think you deserve 'em.”

Luvie came to her feet, eyes flashing. “For what?”

Frank shrugged. “I dunno. You're the one that thinks I'm sneering.”

“You are,” Luvie said. “You think Dad's a coward, don't you?”

An anger which had never been far from the surface these last few days again bobbed up, and Frank said just as recklessly. “Now you pin me down, I'll tell you. I wouldn't call him a coward. He just likes to take things lyin' down. I don't.”

“You're a grateful person,” Luvie said scornfully.

“Grateful for what?” Frank said. “A promise? Thanks, and thanks again, if that's what you want. It was a nice promise, that load of corn. I almost believed it!”

Luvie's hands were fisted at her sides. She took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I hope you do get run off here, Frank Christian! And you will! My dad has a good business and he's at peace with everyone. But in a foolish moment he went against his better judgment and—”

“Your better judgment, wasn't it?”

Luvie stamped her foot. “Let me finish! He did a foolish thing, and now you think he's a coward because he won't risk his whole business to help you. Well, you'll find nobody likes to help a fool! Most of us here on this reservation can't talk as fool brave as you can. We don't even try to, because we know we can't back it up! And neither can you!”

She brushed past Frank, and he watched her walk to her horse. Her back was as straight as a gun barrel and somehow conveyed the outrage she felt. She mounted and rode off the place. Frank looked at the house. Otey was standing in the doorway, his glance accusing.

So he talked brave but he couldn't back it up, she thought. In other words, he was a Texas loudmouth, the kind of man he hated more than any kind alive. Luvie Barnes couldn't tell the difference between a braggart and a man who meant what he said.

Frank saw Red in the wagon shed. The chuck wagon was up on blocks and had two wheels off.

Still smarting under the memory of Luvie's words, Frank walked over to Red.

“Red, you know where Scott Corb hangs out?”

Red looked up, mild surprise on his face. “Sure. Why?”

“You don't want to pay a call there with me tonight, do you?”

“Why don't I?”

Frank looked down the slope. Luvie was almost at the creek.

“Nobody likes to help a fool,” Frank murmured, repeating Luvie's words. “I just wondered.”

“Try me.”

Chapter V

After supper Frank and Red went out to the corral and in the fading light saddled their horses. Before they were half finished Otey drifted out to the corral and watched them. Presently, when their horses were saddled, Otey said to Red, “You drift. I want to talk to Frank.”

At a nod from Frank, Red went out, and Otey came over to Frank. “You're out to make trouble, Frank, ain't you?”

Frank said, “I can't tell yet,” and stroked his horse's nose.

“That girl was right, Frank. She told you the truth. And it made you mad. You're listenin' to that redhead, and he's makin' fight talk. He's got nothin' to lose, and you have. You goin' to do it?”

“You want to quit, Otey?”

“Not me,” Otey said. “I give you your first pony, and you aren't chasin' me out. I'll just stick around until they carry you home in a basket, and then you'll have some sense.” He grunted and turned away. “Providin' that redhead don't get you killed off first.”

Frank didn't say anything. He rode out and joined Red, and he was thinking of Otey. Discounting a natural jealousy between Otey and Red, Otey's words still made sense. Luvie Barnes's nagging had made him see red, and Red Shibe was just reckless enough to join in with him in anything he wanted to do.

Red, sensing what Otey must have said, murmured, “Maybe we better go back, Frank.”

“Hell with it,” Frank said flatly, stubbornly. “Go back if you want, or come along with me. I got a bellyful of bein' pushed around.”

Red gave the general direction of Corb's place, and during the three-hour ride he explained Corb's layout. Corb had come into the Nations to run cattle. He had traded with the Indians before that and had been in the Nations long enough to build himself a frame house and acquire a reputation for easy bachelor living. But long since Corb had given up the idea of running cattle for money. His whisky peddling was more lucrative. He had a slick method of selling it, caching it in a dozen secret and remote places where it could not be found. He never sold the whisky himself; his men were the agents. The army and the agency both knew Corb peddled it, but proof was impossible to get. Any Indian, drunk or sober, who hinted at the source of his liquor was found beaten up, his tepee burned and his possessions taken. Corb had a way with Indians, especially the malcontents, and his position was so strong with them that the army could not move against him without provoking rebellion. Corb was the power in the Nations, and gradually he had drifted into the lease business, the most important of all. Only the Reservation Cattle Company, with its thirty riders, was powerful enough to defy him. All the rest paid tribute to Corb.

Frank listened, and he was sobered by what he heard. He was afraid to tell Red now what he had planned for tonight, for fear Red would try to stop him. And right now Frank didn't want to be stopped.

Frank asked one question. “Does Corb run a lot of horses, Red?”

“That's right,” Red said and looked over toward Frank. But Frank said no more. They rode north until Red picked up a certain creek, and then they turned west. Presently a pin point of light showed ahead, and Red said, “We better go careful now.”

They stopped under the black shade of two cottonwoods some seventy yards from the house, and Frank studied the layout in silence. The house was a two-story affair with a light in only the ground-floor corner room. Beyond the house the dark shape of a barn and sheds bulked large and black against the lighter horizon, for there were no trees close to the house. A man came to the door, a dipper in his hand, spat out a mouthful of water into the night and called over his shoulder, “Don't you believe the damn liar, Scott,” and laughed and disappeared from sight. There was utter silence then.

Frank stirred and said, “Bring your rope, Red,” and started for the house, Red behind him. Ten yards from it Frank paused again. The ground-floor windows were uncurtained, and through them they could see a segment of a table and two men, both with cards in their hands. Corb was one, and he had his face to the hallway door.

Frank moved on ahead and stepped noiselessly through the open doorway into the bare hallway. A rectangle of naked plaster was lighted by the glare of the unshaded lamp in the next room, and now the talk was audible. It was careless, murmurous talk of idle card playing and it droned on uninterrupted.

Frank slipped his Colt .45 out his waistband and, once it was leveled, stepped into the room doorway, squinting against the sudden glare of light. He said nothing, waiting, noting another door in the side wall and the two windows.

The talk ribboned on above the muffled slap of cards being dealt. It was fifteen seconds before Corb reached into a pocket of his unbuttoned vest for a match and lighted his short stub of cigar. The cigar was so short that he tilted his head back, and then he saw Frank.

His match, almost touching the cigar, remained motionless, and his black baleful eyes studied Frank curiously, and they were unafraid. The talk welled up around him, and still Corb held the match.