“They daren’t bother me,” Mayer said. “Without me they can’t eat.”
Candy was last to go, and Barry rode along with her. At the gate she turned to say good-bye, and he shook his head. “I must talk to your father,” he said.
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Maybe not, but he’s got a chance to save some of his cattle, if he will listen.”
Drake did not look up when they entered. He was seated in his old hide-bound chair, head hanging.
“Father? Here’s someone to see you.”
He looked up, raising his head like a cornered bear. “Howdy, Merrano. You’re lookin’ at an old fool.”
“Drake” — Barry squatted against the wall — “if you will work to save your herd you can still do it”
“It would have to be soon, boy. They’re dyin’ like flies.”
“Have you been up in the White Hills lately?”
“The White Hills? Not in five or six years. Nothin’ up there but piñon an’ juniper.”
“I think there’s water up there,” Barry said. “One time down in Texas I saw them bring in an artesian well in country just like that. If you drilled a well just below that old trapper’s cabin I think you’d strike water.”
“Never heard of any wells drilled in this country,” he said doubtfully.
“I’ve drilled four,” Merrano replied, “all with water.”
Drake struck a match and held it to his pipe. “Well, it’s high time I owned up to thinkin’ I was too smart. We old dogs figured we knew all the tricks.”
He puffed on his pipe. “Mind if I ride over and have a look at your place? Candy’s told me about it.”
“You come at any time. As for well-drilling, I’ve got an outfit I hauled hi two years ago from Aragon.”
He rode warily on his homeward way. Despite the peaceful discussion with Drake he knew that Stangle and Dulin were still his enemies. The two had ridden off together, and Curt McKesson had ridden with them.
When Tom Drake rode to the basin the next morning, Jim Hill, Vinnie Lake, and Hardy Benson rode with him. They greeted Barry with no more than a nod, and he mounted the steeldust and led them across the basin. Drake pulled in suddenly, pointing to a mound of earth running diagonally across a shallow place on the hill.
“What’s the object of that?” he asked.
“Water was starting to make a wash right there,” Barry explained, “so I put in that little spreader dam. Causes the water to divide and spread over the hillside and so reaches the roots of more grass.
“Down below where there was a natural hollow, I dug it out a little more with a scraper. Now I’ve got a pool although it is drying up now.”
“More water in that pool right now than I’ve got on my whole place!” Hill said.
Barry led them from place to place, showing them the lakes he had dammed in the draws, and the various pools. The first of the wells, where he had a windmill pumping, showed a good flow of water. The second, some distance away, was artesian.
The basin looked green and lovely, and he gestured with a wave of the hand. “That’s mostly black grama and curly mesquite grass. I let the cattle run there a few weeks, then move them to another pasture and let this grow back. I only run about a third of the stock you have on the same number of acres, that way my stock is always fat.”
“My place is all growed up to cholla cactus now,” Drake said.
“Burn that field,” Barry advised, “the ashes will help the field and the fire will burn the dry needles off the cholla leaving the green pulp behind. That green pulp is fairly good feed. The Navajos taught me that”
“Then I’ve got enough cholla on my place to feed all the stock in Christendom,” Hill said.
“Son,” Drake said, “you’ve done a job! We should have listened to you a long time back.”
The days passed swiftly and Barry worked hard, but he was lonely, and even the work failed to help. Each time he returned to the house he kept looking for Candy as he remembered her, making coffee in his kitchen during the fight. At night, alone by the fire, he seemed to see her there. Then one day he rode his horse up the draw and stopped, astonished.
The Fence was gone! Rooted out, wire and posts gone, and the post holes filled in. There might never have been a fence there at all. He pushed his hat back on his head, and shook his head.
“Mom,” he said aloud, “you’d have liked to see this!”
Candy Drake, riding her pinto, decided to head for the basin. She knew all about The Fence being down. The burning of the cholla had worked and would be the means of saving at least some of the cattle. Now, if the rains came in time or the drillers struck water, they had a fighting chance.
Yet trouble was mounting. Lou Barrow, filled with fury at Rock Dulin’s killing of Price Taylor, had gone to town. Barrow had made a remark about killers, and Dulin had gone for his gun. Barrow was a tough cowhand but no gunman, and Dulin put three bullets into him. Miraculously, Barrow lived.
Rock Dulin swaggered about town, his ranch forgotten, his stock dying. Joe Stangle and Curt McKesson were usually with him.
Candy decided it was time the women took a hand. Alice Benson agreed, and so did the three Lake girls. They organized a big dance and celebration for the purpose of getting everybody together again and wiping out old scores. Candy had taken it upon herself to ride to the basin and invite Barry Merrano.
In other parts of the valley, events were moving in their own way. McKesson had ridden over to Stangle’s, and the two sat in the untidy living room over a bottle of whiskey. With nothing on which to feed, Joe Stangle’s hatred had turned inward. For days he had been brooding over the thought of Barry Merrano, now the talk of the valley. Joe Stangle’s hatred was of long standing, for he had wanted Molly O’Brien and then she had married Miguel Merrano. The fact that Molly had never even noticed his existence made no difference. Deliberately, he provoked trouble with Miguel, confident the Mexican would back down.
The trouble was, he did no such thing. The darkly handsome young Mexican had simply stepped back and told him to go for his gun whenever he was ready.
Suddenly Joe discovered he was not at all ready. It was one thing to tackle what you thought was a puppy dog, quite another when you found yourself facing a wolf with fangs bared. Stangle looked across eight feet of floor and discovered that courage knows no race or creed.
He had backed down, and although it was not mentioned, he knew he was despised for it. His hatred for Miguel Merrano flowered with the coming of his son.
Now, both men were drunk or nearly so. Hulking Curt McKesson reached for the bottle and so did Stangle. Joe got his hand on it as did Curt. In a sudden burst of fury, Stangle jerked the bottle from McKesson’s hand.
McKesson’s sullen anger, never far from the surface, exploded into rage and he struck with the back of his hand, the blow knocking Stangle sprawling. McKesson was not wearing a gun, having put it aside in the other room.
Joe Stangle, blind with fury, saw nothing but the great hulking figure. All his bottled-up rage found sudden release in this, and his gun slid into his hand, thumbing the trigger again and again.
The thunderous roar of the six-gun filled the room, and with it the acrid smell of gunsmoke. Then the sound died the smoke slowly cleared, and Joe Stangle lurched to his feet.
One glance at Curt McKesson was enough. The big man was literally riddled with bullets. Averting his eyes, Joe Stangle picked up the bottle and drained off the last of the whiskey. Without a backward glance, he walked out the door.
Drunk as he was his natural cunning warned him he had no chance of getting away with what had been the killing of an unarmed man. Steps were being taken to elect a sheriff and once that was done neither he nor Rock Dulin would long remain at large. Mounting his horse he started down the valley, filled with a sullen feeling that somehow it was all Barry Merrano’s fault.
The trail he was riding, drunk, and filled with sullen rage, intersected that of Candy Drake.
Unknown to either of them, Barry Merrano had ridden out of a draw and glimpsed the pinto at a distance. A deep canyon lay between them although they were less than a mile apart, but with luck he could overtake her at Willow Springs.