Blind with fury, Nugent wheeled his horse and rode away, spurring the animal madly. By the Almighty! He would get his hands and come back, and …
Something went over him like a dash of ice-cold rain.
How did this stranger know all that? Who was he?
Kettleman rolled his bed swiftly, slung his haversack and blanket roll and, picking up his shotgun and rifle, he started along the ridge. It was still some time until daybreak, but if Nugent did come back he had no desire to be caught sleeping, and the rancher was mad enough to gather his crew and return.
Thomas S. Nugent. He knew the name from the files. Before building the railroad they had made a study of ranchers in the area to gauge the amount of shipping there would be to handle their cattle and what supplies they might require. There was not a ranch in the area about which he was uninformed. Because of the proximity to Flint’s old hideout, he had paid particular attention to the vicinity.
It was faintly gray in the east when he climbed out of the hollow and started across country.
He was heavily loaded for the long walk that lay before him, but his illness seemed to have taken little toll of his strength as yet. He had always been strong, and even in New York he had been active, with regular workouts in the gym, a good bit of walking, and hunting trips to Virginia or over in New Jersey.
He had been walking only a short distance when he found the hunted man.
Chapter 2
Nancy Kerrigan opened her eyes as the train slowed for a stop, and watched the stockyards flip past the windows like the spots on a riffled deck of cards. It was good to be home, despite the trouble she brought with her.
The straw-haired man was on his feet, and when he glanced back along the car she noticed the pockmarks on his cheeks and a tiny white scar above one eyebrow. He was very tall, and the way in which he flipped the gun belt around his hips spoke of long practice.
She had never seen this man before but she had lived too long in the West not to know his kind. Since the Lincoln County war and the Land-Grant fights there had been many of his kind in New Mexico, and now there were rumors of trouble building in the Tonto Basin of Arizona.
Yet this man was not going to the Basin. He was leaving the train at Alamitos.
She became aware that he was looking past her with sudden sharp attention. His eyes flickered over the car again, returning to the seats behind her, and involuntarily she turned to look. The man who had been seated back there was gone.
The train had made no stops, and this was the only passenger car. Yet the man was gone.
Obviously disturbed by something he did not understand, the big gunman’s eyes rested briefly on her, and for an instant he seemed about to speak. The train slowed and steam drifted past the windows. She picked up her bag and walked down the aisle.
Conscious of being stared at, she glanced at a stocky man in a broadcloth suit and derby hat, his florid face and glassy blue eyes directed at her with singularly disagreeable attention. She averted her eyes, yet she had a feeling his interest was not entirely due to the fact that she was a woman.
When she descended to the platform Ed Flynn was waiting for her near the corner of the freight depot.
Nancy Kerrigan was a girl who found her home attractive. She had gone to school in the East, but for her the world revolved around Alamitos, the high plains of her own ranch, her cattle, the men who worked for her, and particularly, the wild, free country.
She had lived at Kaybar most of her life except for her time at school, and a few visits to friends, and for her it had always seemed the ultimate in security. Now that security was menaced in a way she had never believed would be possible. And with it, her whole future was at stake.
Ed Flynn took the bag from her hand and started toward the buckboard. Flynn had come West with her father and uncle, and had helped to found the Kaybar. Since her father’s death he had been foreman. No businessman, he was nevertheless an excellent cattleman, understanding range conditions and the fattening of cattle as few men did.
She drew his attention to the straw-haired gunman. Flynn put her bag in the buckboard and then said quietly, “Whoever is paying the bills is going first class. That’s Buckdun.”
The name was legend. Buck Dunn, shortened by common usage to Buckdun, was known wherever range riders gathered. A professional fighting man, at times a bounty hunter, rarely a town-tamer, he was always a hunter and killer of men.
Nancy Kerrigan was familiar with cow-country gossip. Often enough the fighting in cattle or sheep wars was done by the hands on the job, without importing gunmen, and many a rancher was prepared to handle his own shooting chores. But when men like Buckdun came to town, somebody was preparing for war.
As Flynn helped Nancy into the buckboard she saw him glance across the street, and two Kaybar men sauntered from the walk in front of the store and got into their saddles. They were Pete Gaddis and Johnny Otero.
“Armed escort?”
Ed Flynn nodded grimly. “Two weeks has done a lot to this country.”
“Has there been trouble?”
“Nugent lost fifty head of steers. He trailed them south along the malpais and then they just seemed to drop off the world.”
“Rustlers?” Nancy was incredulous.
“When your father and I came into this country we didn’t have a neighbor within a hundred miles in any direction, leaving out Indians, but this country is changing fast. Yes, there are rustlers working now. For the first time.”
Nancy waved at Gaddis and Otero.
Johnny Otero had grown up on the Kaybar where his father had been one of their first hands. He was New Mexican, his family coming up from Mexico more than a hundred years before. On his mother’s side the family had been living around Santa Fe since before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Now nineteen, Johnny was considered the best rifle shot in the country.
Pete Gaddis had been at the ranch only four years, the newest of their hands with one exception, and he had a reputation for being a tough man, in any kind of a fight. Gaddis had been a shotgun guard on the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage, deputy marshal in a tough cowtown, and a warrior in more than one range war. A short, solidly built man, he was a top hand.
Flynn struck a match with his left hand and cupped it in his left palm to his cigar. “Burris and two strangers filed a homestead on a piece of Nugent’s range, claiming it was government land and open for filing,” he said. “You know Tom Nugent. He flew off the handle and burned them out and there was a shooting. The homesteaders showed fight and shot a Nugent rider out of the saddle. One of the strangers died right there and the last I heard Nugent and his crowd were hunting the other one off east of here.”
“What happened to Burris?”
“He lit out for Alamitos like his tail was afire, and they let him go.”
Nancy Kerrigan started to explain the situation to Flynn, then decided to wait until she had thought it out and decided upon a course. Ed Flynn was good at handling men and cattle, but had little imagination and was hesitant to offer advice. The business side of the ranch she had been handling even before her father died. Besides, the decision must be her own, as Kaybar was her own.
“Do you think,” she asked suddenly, “that Port Baldwin had anything to do with those squatters?”
Flynn was astonished. He flicked the ash from his cigar against the whipstock. “I never gave it any thought,” he said honestly. “You take after the colonel, Nancy, you surely do. That sounds like the colonel himself.”
Alone in her room, Nancy took the pins from her hat and removed it, fluffing her hair a little, and thinking about the results of her trip to Santa Fe.
Outside on a far green slope cattle fed, and just over that low hill the streams all flowed toward the Pacific Ocean, while here, where the ranch was situated, they flowed toward the Atlantic. The low hill out there was the Continental Divide, although it could not be guessed from a casual glance.
Supposedly her trip to Santa Fe had been like all the others, to shop for new clothes or things for the ranch. She had shopped, but her major purpose had been to consult her father’s lawyer.