“Get out … you’ve no right to that ranch. Get out and stay out.”
“Sorry … I’m staying. Don’t let a little power swell your head, Maclaren. You can’t dictate to me. I’m staying … the Two-Bar is mine. I’ll keep it.
Furthermore, I’d rather not have trouble with you. You are the father of the girl I’m going to marry.”
“I’ll see you in hell first!” This was what he had said to me before.
I got to my feet and put a coin on the table to pay for my meal. The shave and haircut, the meal and the rest had made me feel better. But I was still weak, and I tired fast.
Katie O’Hara was watching me, and as I turned toward the door she was smiling. It was good to see a friendly smile. Key Chapin had said nothing, just listened and waited.
Outside the door I looked carefully along the street. By now they would know I was in town. I saw no CP horses, but that meant nothing, so turning, I walked up the street, then went down the alley and to my horse.
There was a man waiting for me, sitting on the back steps of the barber shop. He had a face like an unhappy monkey and his head as bald as a bottle. He looked up at me.
“By the look of you, you’ll be Matt Brennan.”
His shoulders were as wide as those of Morgan Park himself, but he was inches shorter than I. He could not have been much over five feet tall, but he would weigh an easy two hundred pounds, and there was no fat on him. His neck was like a column of oak, his hands and wrists were massive.
“Katie O’Hara was tellin’ me you were needin’ a man at the Two-Bar. Now, I’m a handy sort. Gunsmith by trade, but a blacksmith, carpenter, holster, and a bit of anything you’ll need.”
“There’s a fight on.”
“The short end of a fight always appealed to me.”
“Did Katie O’Hara send you?”
“She did that, and she’d be takin’ it unkindly of me if I showed up without the job.”
“You’re Katie’s man, then?”
His eyes twinkled. “I’m afraid there’s no such. She’s a broth of a woman, that Katie.” He looked up at me. “Is it a job I have?”
“When I get the ranch back.”
“Then let’s be gettin’ it back.”
He led my horse and a mule from the stable. The mule was a zebra dun with a face full of sin and deviltry. He had a tow sack tied before the saddle, another behind. He got into the saddle and sat by while I mounted.
“My name is Brian Mulvaney, call me what you like.”
Two gun butts showed above his boot tops. He touched them, grinning wisely.
“These are the Neal Bootleg pistol, altered to suit my taste. The caliber is .35, and they shoot like the glory of God.”
“Now this,” and he drew from his waistband a gun that needed only wheels to make it an admirable piece of artillery, “this was a Mills .75. Took me two months’ work off and on, but I’ve converted her to a four-shot revolver. A fine gun.”
All of seventeen inches long, it looked fit to break a man’s wrist with recoil, but Mulvaney had the hands and wrists to handle it. Certainly, a man once blasted with such a cannon would never need a doctor.
Mulvaney was the sort of man to have on your side. I’d seen enough of men to know the quality of this one. He was a fighter … and no fool. As we rode, he told me he was a wrestler, Cornish style.
It would be good to have a man at my side, and a man I could leave behind me on the ranch when we did get it back. How that would be managed I did not know, but somehow, it had to be done.
Yet there was a weariness on me. There had been little sleep or rest in the days since first I’d come to Hattan’s Point, except during the sixteen days in the hills, and then I’d been recovering from a wound. And that wound had robbed me of strength I’d need in the days to come.
We scouted the Two-Bar as others had scouted it against me, and there were four horses in the corral. No brands were visible at this distance, and it did not matter. There was a log barricade that looked formidable, and obviously the men had been instructed to lay low and sit tight. They had seen us, and were waiting with their rifles. We saw the reflected light from a moving gun barrel, but we were out of range.
“It’ll be a job.”
Mulvaney put a hand on the sack in front of him. “What do you think I’ve got in the sack, laddie? I, who was a miner also?”
“Powder?”
“In sticks, no less. New-fangled, but good.”
He rode his mule behind some rocks and as we got down he took the sticks from the sack. “Unless it makes your head ache to handle powder, lend me a hand. We’ll cut these sticks in half.”
We cut several, slid a cap into each stick, and tied it to a chunk of rock.
Darkness was near. It was time to move. We had waited under cover, but the men behind the barricade knew we were here, and by now they were wondering what we were doing. Perhaps they had seen the tow sacks, and were puzzling over what they contained.
Carefully, we gathered up our bombs and slid over the rim. We were still a good distance from the edge of the barricade. Suddenly, with a lunge, I was running. I had spotted cover just ahead, but a man sprang up from behind the barrier and he snapped a quick shot just as I slid into shelter behind the rock.
Mulvaney was running too. Another shot sounded, but then I rolled up to my knees and hurled the first bomb.
I’d lit the fuse hurriedly and the flying dynamite charge left a trail of sparks. Somebody let go with a wild yell, and then the bomb hit and exploded almost in the same instant.
Mulvaney’s first and my second followed, both of them in the air at once. Another explosion split the night apart and one man dove over the barricade and started running straight toward me. The others charged the corral. The man coming at me glimpsed me then and slid to a halt. He wheeled as if the devil was after him.
Four riders dashed from the corral and were gone.
Mulvaney got up from behind his rock and we walked to the corral. He was chuckling.
“They’d have stood until hell froze over for guns,” he said, “but that giant powder got ’em.”
Leaving Mulvaney, I returned for my horse and his mule. So again I was on the ranch…
Standing there under the stars, I looked off toward town. They would go there first, or that was my guess. And that meant they would have a few drinks and it would be hours before another attack could be mounted. And Mulvaney had been right, of course. They would have fought it out with guns. The giant powder was frightening and different.
Walking back to the ranch yard, leading the horses, I met Mulvaney gathering wood.
“It’s a fine ranch,” he said thoughtfully, “and you’re a lucky man.”
“If I can hold it.”
“We’ll hold it,” he said quietly.
TEN
We had eaten our noon meal on the following day when we saw a plume of dust. It seemed like one rider, at most not more than two.
Mulvaney got up unhurriedly and moved across to the log barricade and waited beside his rifle. He was not a man who grew greatly excited, and I liked him for that. Fighting is a cool-headed business.
Rolling a smoke, I watched that dust. It could mean anything or nothing.
No man likes to stand against odds, yet sometimes it is the only way. No man likes to face a greater power than himself, and especially when there are always the coattail hangers who will render lip service to anyone who seems to be top dog.
It brings a bitterness to a man, and especially when he is right.
Yet this morning I’d no need for worry. The rider came into view, coming at an easy lope. And it was Moira Maclaren.
We had worked all that morning clearing ground for the new house I was to build. Moira drew up and her eyes went to the cleared space and the rocks we’d hauled on a stone boat for the foundation.
The house would stand on a hill with the long sweep of Cottonwood Wash before it, shaded by several huge cottonwoods and a sycamore or two.