Ward McQueen staggered a little and then, stooping with great care, picked up his hat.
“The devil,” he said, “only three bullet holes! Wyatt Earp had five after his battle with Curly Bill’s gang at the water hole.”
Ruth Kermitt ran to his side. “You’re hurt! Oh, you’re hurt!” she exclaimed.
He turned to look at her, and then suddenly everything faded out.
When he opened his eyes again it was morning.
Ruth sat beside him, her eyes heavy with weariness. She put a cool cloth on his forehead and wiped his face off with another.
“You must lie still,” she told him. “You’ve
lost a lot of blood.” 75
“Of course, if yuh say so, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’ll lay right quiet.”
Baldy Jackson looked at him and snorted.
“Look at that, would yuh!” he exploded. “And that’s the ranny crawled three miles with seven holes in him after his Galeyville fight! Just goes to show yuh what a woman’ll do to a man!”
When a Texan Takes Over
When Matt Ryan saw the cattle tracks on Mocking Bird, he swung his horse over under the trees and studied the terrain with a careful eye. For those cattle tracks meant rustlers were raiding the KY range.
For a generation the big KY spread had been the law in the Slumbering Hill country, but now the old man was dying and the wolves were coming out of the breaks to tear at the body of the ranch.
And there was nobody to stop them, nobody to step into the big tracks old Tom Hitch had made, nobody to keep law in the hills now that old Tom was dying. He had built an empire of land cattle, but he had also brought law into the outlaw country, brought schools and a post office, and the beginnings of thriving settlement.
But they had never given up, not Indian Kelly nor Lee Dunn. They’d waited back in the hills, bitter with their own poison, waiting for the old man to die.
All the people in the Slumbering Hill country knew it, and they had looked to Fred Hitch, the old man’s adopted son, to take up the job when the old man put it down. But Fred 77 was an easygoing young man who liked to drink and gamble. And he spent too much time with Dutch Gerlach, the KY foreman … and who had a good ^w for Dutch?
“This is the turn, Red,” Ryan told his horse. “They know the old man will never ride again, so they have started rustling.”
It was not just a few head … there must have been forty or more in this bunch, and no attempt to cover the trail.
In itself that was strange. It seemed they were not even worried about what Gerlach might do … and what would he do? Dutch Gerlach was a tough man. He had shown it more than once. Of course, nobody wanted any part of Lee Dunn, not even Gerlach.
Matt Ryan rode on, but kept a good background behind him. He had no desire to skyline himself with rustlers around.
For three months now he had been working his placer claim in Pima Canyon, just over the ridge from Mocking Bird. He had a good show of color andwith persistent work he made better than cowhand’s wages. But lately he was doing better. Twice in the past month he had struck pockets that netted him nearly a hundred dollars each. The result was that his last month had brought him in the neighborhood of three hundred in gold.
Matt Ryan knew the hills and the men who rode them. None of them knew him. Matt had a streak of Indian in his nature if not in his blood, and he knew how to leave no trail and travel without being seen. He was around, but not obvious.
They knew somebody was there, but who and why or where they did not know, and he liked it that way. Once a month he came out of the hills for supplies, but he never rode to the same places. Only this time he was coming back to Hanna’s Stage Station. He told himself it was because it was close, but down inside he knew it was because of Kitty Hanna.
She was something who stepped out of your dreams, a lovely girl of twenty in a cotton dress andwith carefully done hair, large, dark eyes, and a mouth that would set a man to being restless. …
Matt Ryan had stopped by two months before to eat a woman-cooked meal and to buy 79 supplies, and he had lingered over his coffee.
He was a tall, wide-shouldered young man with a slim, long-legged body and hands that swung wide of his narrow hips. He had a wedge-shaped face and green eyes, and a way of looking at you with faint humor in his eyes.
He carried a gun, but he carried it tucked into his waistband, and he carried a Winchester that he never left on his saddle.
Nobody knew him around the Slumbering Hills, nobody knew him anywhere this side of Texas … they remembered him there. His name was a legend on the Nueces.
Big Red ambled on down the trail and Matt watched the country and studied the cattle tracks. He would remember those horse tracks, too. Finally the cow tracks turned off into a long valley, and when he sat his horse he could see dust off over there where Thumb Butte lifted against the sky.
Indian Kelly … not Dunn this time, although Dunn might have given the ^w.
Kitty was pouring coffee when he came in and she felt her heart give a tiny leap. It had only been once, but she remembered, for when his eyes touched her that time, it made her feel the woman in her … a quick excitement such as she felt now.
Why was that? This man whom she knew nothing about?
Why should he make her feel this way?
He put his hat on a hook and sat down, and she saw that his hair was freshly combed and still damp from the water he had used. That meant he had stopped back there by the creek … it was unlike a drifting cowhand, or had it been for her?
When he looked up she knew it had, and she liked the smile he had and the way his eyes could not seem to leave her face. “Eggs,” he said, “about four of them, and whatever vegetable you have, and a slab of beef. I’m a hungry man.”
She filled his cup, standing very close to him, and she saw the red mount under his dark skin, and when she moved away it was slowly, and there was a little something in her walk. Had her father seen it, he would have been angry, but this man would not be angry, and he would know it was for him.
Dutch Gerlach came in, a big, brawny
man with bold eyes and careless hands. He had a
wide, flat face and a confident, knowing manner that
she hated. Fred Hitch was with him. 81
They looked at Ryan, then looked again. He was that sort of man, and something about him irritated Gerlach. But the big foreman of the KY said nothing. He was watching Kitty.
Gerlach seated himself and shoved his hat back on his head. When his meal was put before him, he began to eat, his eyes following the girl. Fred seemed preoccupied; he kept scowling a little, and he said something under his breath to Dutch.
Gerlach looked over at Matt Ryan.
“Ain’t seen you around before,” he said.
Ryan merely glanced at him, and continued eating. The eggs tasted good, and the coffee was better than his own.
“Hear what I said?” Gerlach demanded.
Ryan looked up, studying the bigger man
calmly. “Yes,” he said, “and the remark didn’t require an answer.”
Gerlach started to speak, then devoted himself to his food.
“That bay horse yours?” Fred Hitch asked suddenly.
Ryan nodded … they had seen the horse, then? That was one trouble with Big Red, he was a blood bay, and he stood out. It would have been better to have a dun or a buckskin … even a black.
“It’s mine,” he said.
Yet their curiosity and Fred’s uneasiness
puzzled him. Why should Fred be bothered by him?
“Don’t take to strangers around here,” Gerlach said suddenly. “You move on.”
Ryan said nothing, although he felt something inside of him grow poised and waiting. No trouble, Matt, he warned himself, not here …
“Hear me?” Gerlach’s voice rose.
“We’ve missed some cows.”
Kitty had come to the door, and her father was behind her. Hanna was a peace-loving man, but a stern one.
“I heard you,” Ryan replied quietly, “an’ if you’ve missed cows, ride toward Thumb Butte.”