“All right,” he said finally, “you’ve stopped me. But I’ll log off Deep Creek if it has to be over your dead body!”
He turned his horse but Bell’s voice arrested his movement. “Devitt?”
“What?”
“What about your dead body?”
Devitt stared at Bell and suddenly within him there was that cold realization, something that had never really occurred to him before—he might be killed himself! It was preposterous, and yet. . .
“Colleen? Are you riding with us?”
She swung into her saddle and rode to the gate which Bell held open. “Be careful,” she whispered. “I know him. He’ll stop at nothing!”
At the foot of the grade Jud Devitt stopped beside the wagons. “Hold the wagons,” he told Williams. “We’ll go up to the plateau later.”
“Better send us a chuckwagon. We’ve only a little grub.”
“You won’t camp here!” Clay Bell sat the saddle of the appalousa. “This is still my land, Devitt. I’ll allow no camping. I’ll give you no legal ground at all. Now get rolling! Get back of that white boulder. That’s my property line.”
Devitt’s face was white. “I’ll be damned if I—!”
“Move back.” There was no comfort in Bell’s expression. “Start now or I’ll shoot every head of stock on my land. Get started.”
Devitt waved a hand at his men. His face was stiff with fury. “Roll ’em back! Let him have his fun!” He turned on Bell. “You’re piling up trouble for yourself!” he said. “I’ll see—”
“Move!” Bell repeated. He pushed his horse forward, shouldering his appalousa against Devitt’s horse.
Devitt hesitated, his face ugly and mottled; then, never taking his eyes from those of Bell, he backed up until across the line marked by the white boulder.
Promptly, and without a backward glance, Clay Bell swung his horse and cantered up the trail to the ranch house. Jud Devitt stared after him, swore bitterly, then turned his horse toward town. He did not speak to Colleen as they rode along.
He had come off the loser in his first meeting with Bell, but there would be another time . . . another time. . .
“Jud?”
“Oh . . . sorry, Colleen, I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking. This mess irritates me.”
“Why don’t you leave it, Jud? Get the timber another place.”
He smiled at her to cover his irritation. “You leave that to me, Colleen. It’s my problem.”
She rode beside him in silence. She could see he was determined. He was too stubborn to leave now.
“Jud—he’ll fight.”
“Of course.”
“Men will be killed. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“It matters, of course it matters. But one man can’t stand in the way of progress. That railroad must go through!”
“You could get the ties elsewhere.”
“At greater expense. At greater loss of time. They are here, I mean to have them.”
He was scarcely aware of her protests. Already his mind was leaping ahead, trying to find some way to get around this trouble. There might be another route to the Deep Creek range, to both the valley and the plateau. He must talk to Wheeler.
Colleen maintained her silence. The air was cooler now, as they neared town. Dipping down to where the trail ran along the creek, she felt the breeze off the stream, and from the desert willows. She slowed her pace, remembering Clay.
His features were clear-cut, brown from sun and wind. There was something, too, in the way he walked . . . and she had noticed what had impressed Jud Devitt. Clay Bell had not been worried at the thought of trouble. He had wasted no words, indulged in no violent talk. Yet he had won—he had forced Jud Devitt to back up.
And Jud Devitt would never forgive him.
Chapter 6
Jud Devttt found Noble Wheeler in the dining room of the Tinker House. He drew back a chair and dropped into it, coldly furious. “Noble, why didn’t you tell me that Clay Bell owned Emigrant Gap?”
Noble Wheeler gripped his fork tightly in one hand, his knife in the other, both big fists resting on the table-top, his big jaws chomping his food like a restless horse over a cold bit. There was no denying the astonishment in his eyes. “What? Did you say owned?”
He put a chunk of beef in his mouth, staring blankly at his plate. Bell owned Emigrant Gap! But that. . .
“He claims he has title to it. Refuses me right-of-way.”
“Never guessed he’d be that smart.” Wheeler was thinking now. This could change everything, ruin his carefully laid plans. “Changes a lot of things.”
“Is there another way up?”
“Through The Notch. T’other side of the plateau.”
“Does he own that?” Devitt was sarcastic.
“Maybe. We’ll find out.”
Devitt pushed back his chair and waved the waitress away. “I’m wiring Chase. If we get our grant on that timber we can force him to give us right-of-way.”
“And if you don’t?”
Devitt’s lips thinned and his eyes looked their dislike at Wheeler. “I’ll go in, anyway. No damned cowhand will stop me!”
He did not, Devitt decided, like Wheeler. But he did not have to like him. The banker was tough and shrewd; he had something cooking in his mind that Devitt had not been told. He watched the fat man chomp his food. He was a noisy eater, a glutton. Devitt got up, distaste suddenly sharp within him. Without a word he walked away from the table and went outside. Suppose he did not get the grant? Then he would have no legal ground under him at all. Yet Bell’s cattle would have to be worked, and he could not keep all his men on guard all the time. There might be still a third way into the Deep Creek area. His thoughts reverted to the grant. He could not back out now, he would not. Grant or no grant, he would have that timber. With Bell busy, there would be a way to get at him. Once they had the timber it wouldn’t matter.
He lit a cigar and considered the situation. Cripple Bell. Stop him cold. That was the first thing. It was to be an all-out fight then.
Wheeler’s astonishment at the discovery of Bell’s ownership had been genuine. Yet there had been something more. Devitt rolled his cigar in his jaws. What did the banker have up his sleeve? Something . . . but what? Jud Devitt had a feeling he was being used as a cat’s-paw, and it was a feeling he did not like.
Bob Tripp came up the street, pausing briefly in the door of a saloon across the street. Jud stepped to the edge of the walk.
“Bob! Oh, Bob!”
Tripp turned, trying to locate the voice. Devitt called again.
“Come over! Got something for you!”
Tripp crossed the street and stepped up on the walk. “Looks like a fight, Mr. Devitt,” he said. “The boys ain’t happy out there, either.”
“How many of them are in town? There must be thirty or more.”
“About that. What’s on your mind?”
“Some of those B-Bar riders will be in town. If a few fights start and some of those boys get hurt, I wouldn’t mind at all.”
Tripp touched a match to his pipe. “In other words, you want the boys to bust them up? All right, our boys are set for trouble, anyway. What if some of our men are hurt?”
“Pay all the time while recovering. A bonus if Bell gets laid up himself.”
Tripp listened, drawing on his pipe. Sometimes he did not like Jud Devitt, but he could find no better job, and no better pay. Besides, there was always action, and he liked action. And one thing you could say for Jud—he never shied at a fight himself.
“Seen Stag Harvey or Jack Kilburn?”
“Who are they?”
“Gunmen—paid warriors. They’re not doing anything right now.”
Jud Devitt looked at the end of his cigar. Killers, then. Yes, that might come. It was to be avoided if possible, but the treatment from Bell rankled, and that the man would shoot he did not doubt. All right then, if they wanted it that way . . . He was going to have that timber.
‘Tell them to stick around town, but don’t make any promises.” He took a couple of gold pieces from his vest pocket. “Give this to them. With my compliments, but don’t make any promises.”
A couple of weary riders came up the street. The two men slumped in their saddles, dusty and tired. Both rode gray horses, both had B-Bar brands.
“There’s a pair of Bell’s boys now. I want him short-handed, Bob.”
Tripp took the pipe from his mouth and knocked it out on the awning post. “All right,” he said, and stepped off the porch and started across the street.
This was a job for Frenchy Duval and Pious Pete Simmons. They would like this. Both men were big, tough, and known as rough and dirty fighters. Devitt kept them on the pay roll for jobs like this.