The Boxed M riders hesitated, not liking it, but they had been taken from behind and there was little chance to even make a fight of it if trouble started.
Carefully, the nearest riders eased back. The situation was now at a stalemate and I could talk. But it was Moira I most wanted to convince, and how my words were affecting her I had no idea. Her face was shadowed with sadness, nothing more.
“There are other men who wanted Maclaren out of the way. What had I to fear from him? I had already showed I could hold the ranch … I wanted peace.”
Then more horses came up the trail and I recognized the redhead with whom I’d had trouble before. With him was Bodie Miller.
FIFTEEN
Bodie Miller pushed his house into the inner circle, and I could see that the devil was riding him again. His narrow, feral features seemed even sharper today; his eyes showed almost white under the brim of his tipped down, narrow-brimmed hat.
Bodie had never shaved, and the white hair lay along his jaws mingled with a few darker ones. These last, at the corners of his mouth, lent a peculiarly vicious expression to his face.
He was an ugly young man, thin and narrow-shouldered, and the long, bony fingers seemed never still. He looked up at me, disregarding the body of Maclaren as if it was not there. I could respect the feeling of Tom Fox, for his eagerness to destroy me was but a reflection of his feudal loyalty for Maclaren. There was none of that in Miller. He just wanted to kill.
“You, is it? I’ll kill you, one day.”
“Keep out of this, Bodie!” Canaval ordered, stepping his horse forward. “This isn’t your play!”
Miller’s hatred was naked in his eyes. In his arrogance he had never liked taking orders from Canaval, and that fact revealed itself now.
“Maclaren’s dead,” he said brutally. “Maybe you won’t be the boss any more. Maybe she’ll want a younger man for boss!”
The leer that accompanied the words gave no doubt as to his meaning, and suddenly I wanted to kill, suddenly I was going to. In the next instant I would have made my move, but it was Canaval’s cool, dispassionate voice that stopped me.
“That will be for Miss Moira to decide.” He turned to her. “Do you wish me to continue as foreman?”
Moira Maclaren’s head came up. Never had I been so proud of anyone.
“Naturally.” Her voice was level and cold. “And your first job as my foreman will be to fire Bodie Miller.”
Miller’s face went livid with fury, his lips bared back from his big, uneven teeth, but before he could speak I interfered.
“Don’t say it, Bodie. Don’t say it.”
So there I stood in the still, cool morning under the low gray clouds, with armed men around me in a circle, and I looked across the body of Rud Maclaren and stood ready to draw. Within me I knew that I must kill this man or be killed, and at that instant I did not want to wait for the decision. I wanted it now … here.
The malignancy of his expression was unbelievable. “You an’ me are goin’ to meet,” he said, staring at me.
“When you’re ready, Bodie.”
Deliberately, I turned my back on him.
Standing beside the spring, I rolled a smoke and watched them load the body of Maclaren into the buckboard. Moira was avoiding me, and I made no move to go to her.
Chapin and Canaval had stood to one side talking in low voices, and now they turned and walked over to me.
“We don’t think you’re guilty, Brennan. But have you any ideas?”
“Only that he was killed elsewhere and carried here to throw suspicion on me. And I don’t believe it was Finder. He would not shoot Rud Maclaren in the back. Rud was no gunman, was he?”
“No … definitely no.”
“And Jim Finder is … so why shoot him in the back? The same thing goes for me.”
“You think Park did it?”
Again I repeated the little I had learned from Lyell, and those few words in Booker’s office.
The Slades were to kill Canaval—and why, except that Canaval was Maclaren’s strong right hand? And it was Park who was hiring them.
This information they accepted, as I could see, with reservations. For Morgan Park had no motive that anyone could see. When I mentioned the assay report, they turned it off by saying simply that there was no mineral in this area, and there had been nothing to connect the report with Park. Nor did Morgan Park have anything to fear from Maclaren otherwise, for Maclaren had looked favorably upon Park’s visits, had welcomed him, even treated him as a son-in-law to be. Maclaren had several times asked Moira, Canaval said, why she did not marry Park. All I had was suspicion and a few words from a dying man … no more.
Smoking my cigarette, I watched them start off with the buckboard. The Boxed M riders bunched around it, a silent guard of honor. Only then did I start toward Moira.
Whether she saw me coming, I did not know. Only she chose that moment to start her horse and ride quietly away, and I stayed behind, surrounded by my little guard, Mulvaney and the Benaras boys.
Bob Benaras had stayed behind to protect the ranch, and he was waiting for me when we rode into the yard.
“We’ll be heading home,” he said, “but Jonathan an’ Jolly, they can stay with you. I ain’t got work enough to keep ’em out of mischief.”
He was not fooling me in the least, but I needed the help, as he knew.
And then for a time, nothing happened.
With four men to work, the walls of the house mounted swiftly. All of us were strong, and Mulvaney was a builder. He was the shaper of the house, the planner of all our work. Forgetting everything, we worked steadily for two weeks. My side lost its stiffness and my muscles worked with their old-time smoothness. I felt better, and I was toughening up again.
There was an inquest over the body of Rud Maclaren, but no new evidence turned up. Despite the reports by the sheriff who rode out to investigate two days after the killing, many people still believed me guilty. To all appearances, there was not even another suspect. Jim Finder had not even been in the county, and had a solid alibi, for on that night he had been in a minor shooting over a card game at Hite.
There had been no will, so the ranch went to Moira. Yet nothing was settled. Only, the Boxed M withdrew all claims upon the Two-Bar and any Two-Bar range or waterholes.
Jim Finder remained on the CP and was not seen at Hattan’s Point.
Of Bodie Miller we heard much. He killed a man at Hattan’s in a saloon quarrel. Shot him down even before he could get a gun drawn. Bodie and Red were reported to be running with a lot of riffraff from Hite, many of them men from Robber’s Roost. The Boxed M was missing cattle, and Bodie was reported to be laughing at the reports. He pistol-whipped a man in Silver Reef and was rapidly winning a name as a badman.
And during all this time I continued to think about Moira. Once I rode over to the ranch, and Canaval met me in the yard. Moira would not see me.
Oddly enough, I thought there was real regret in Canaval’s voice when he told me.
He was a quiet man, stern, yet not unfriendly. His hair was prematurely gray, and he had an easy way about him that drew friendships that he rarely developed. He was a lone wolf, never mingling with the men of the ranch, usually riding alone.
He said nothing about the Slades, nor did I ask him. I knew that he was closer to Moira than ever before. She relied on his judgment, although she knew more than a little of how to handle a cow ranch.
Maclaren had wanted more land. She began within two weeks after his death to make the most of what they had. For the first time in Boxed M history, hay was cut and stacked, and grain was planted for feed for the horses.
A fence without a gate was run along the line between the Boxed M and the Two-Bar.
The day they finished it, I was rifling over that way. Tom Fox was in charge.
He rode out to meet me as I came near. His animosity had died, and we sat our horses, watching the fencing.
“No gate?” I asked.
“No … no gate.”
She was shutting me out, cutting me off. Whatever might have been, had Rud Maclaren lived, his death seemed to have ended it, once and for all.