“What about you?” Her eyes were very large.
“Matt, what about you?”
“Me? I’ll wait here.”
“But they’ll come here! They’ll be looking for
you.”
“Uh-huh … so I show ‘em who’s 99 boss.” He grinned suddenly, boyishly.
“Better rustle some help. They might not believe me.”
When they had left, he waited. The stage station was silent, the throbbing heart gone from it. He poured coffee into a cup, remembering that it was up to him now. … Suppose … suppose he could do it without a gun. … A time had come for change, the old order was gone … but did Lee Dunn know that? And in his heart, Matt Ryan knew he did not. For Lee Dunn was the old order. He was a relic, a leftover, a memory of the days when Tom Hitch had come here, Hitch already past his prime, Dunn not yet to reach his. …
In the silent house the clock ticked loudly. Matt Ryan sipped his coffee and laid his Winchester on the table.
He checked his gun while the clock ticked off the measured seconds.
It was broad day now. … Kitty and her father would be well into the valley. Would the ranchers come? His was a new voice, they did not know him. They had only that slip of paper and the ^ws Take over.
He got up and walked to the window. And then he saw them coming.
He placed his rifle by the door and stepped outside. There were ten of them … ten, and one of him. A fleeting smile touched his lips. Old Tom Hitch had stood off forty Apaches once … alone.
“Tom,” he whispered, “if you can hear me … say a ^w where it matters.”
He stepped to the edge of the porch, a tall man, honed down by sparse living and hard years, his wedge-shaped face unshaven, his eyes cool, waiting. It had been like this on the Nueces … only different.
They drew up, a line of men on horses.
Lee Dunn and Gerlach at the center.
He saw no others, he thought of no others.
These were the ones.
“Hello, Dunn.”
The knifelike man studied him, his hands on
the horn of his saddle.
“Dunn, I’m serving notice. Tom Hitch
sent me a note. His orders were for me to take
over.” 101
“Think you can?”
“I can.”
Lee Dunn waited … why he waited he
could not have said. He had heard from Gerlach that this man was yellow. Looking at him, seeing him, he knew he was not. He knew another thing—th man was a gunfighter.
“Who are you, Ryan? Should I know you?”
“From the Nueces … maybe you heard of the
Kenzie outfit.”
Lee Dunn’s lips thinned down. Of course … he should have known. It had been a feud … and at the last count there were five Kenzies and one Ryan left. And now there was still one Ryan …
“So this is the way it is,” Matt said, making his plea. “The old days are over, Lee. You an’ me, we’re of the past. Old Tom was, too. He was a good man, and his guns kept the peace and made the law. But the old days of living by the gun are gone, Lee. We can admit it, or we can die.”
“Where’s the girl?” Gerlach demanded.
“Gone with her father. They are in the valley now
rounding up all of Old Tom’s supporters from the Slumberin’ Hills.”
His eyes held on them, seeing them both, knowing them both. “What’s it to be, Dunn?”
A voice spoke behind him. “I did not go. … Dad went. I’m here with a shotgun and I’m saying it’s between Matt Ryan and the two, Gerlach and Dunn. I’ll kill any man who lifts a gun other than them.”
“Fair enough.” It was a lean, hatchet-faced hand. “This I wanta see.”
Lee Dunn sat very still, but he was smiling.
“Why, Matt, I reckon mebbe you’re right. But you know, Matt, I’ve heard a sight about you … never figured to meet you … an’ I can’t help wonderin’, Matt–..are you faster than me?”
He spoke and he drew and he died falling. He hit dust and he rolled over and he was dead, but he was trying to get up, and then he rolled over again, but he had his gun out. The gun fired and the bullet plowed a furrow and that was all.
Gerlach had not moved. His face was gray and seemed suddenly thinner. As though hypnotized, he stared at the thin tendril of smoke from the muzzle of Ryan’s .44 Colt.
Slowly, his tongue touched his dry 103 lips, and he swallowed.
“You boys will be ridin’ on,” Ryan said quietly. “That rope you got there should be handy. There’s a tree down the trail … unless you want to ride out with a yella-belly.”
“Ain’t honin’ to,” the hatchet-faced man said. He looked down at Lee. “He made his try, Ryan. Give him a send-off, will you?”
Matt nodded, and Kitty walked out and stood beside him, watching them ride away, gathered around Gerlach, who sat his horse as if stunned. Only now his hands were tied.
Matt Ryan looked down at Kitty, and he took her arm and said, “You know, you’ll do to ride the river with, Kit. You’re a girl to walk beside a man … wherever he goes.”
“Come in,” she said, but her eyes said more than that. “I’ve some coffee on.”
No Man’s Mesa
It dominated the desert and the slim green valleys that lay between the peaks or in the canyon bottoms. It was high—over six hundred feet.
The lower part was a talus slope, steep, but it had been climbed. The last three hundred feet was sheer except upon one corner where the rock was shattered and broken edges protruded. This, it was said, was the remnant of the ancient trail to the flat top of the mesa.
There was, legend said, a flowing spring atop the mesa, there were trees and grass and an ancient crater, but all this was talk, for no living man had seen any of it.
The place fostered curious stories. After the Karr boys tried to climb it, there was no rain in the country for two months. After Rison fell from the remnant of the path, there was no rain again. Cattle seemed to shun the place, and people avoided it. The few horses and cattle who did wander to the mesa were soon seen stumbling, vacant-eyed and lonely, losing flesh, growing shaggy of coat, and finally dying. Their whitened bones added to the stories. “This,” Old Man Karr 105 often said, “wouldn’t be a bad country if it wasn’t for Black Mesa.”
Matt Calou rode up to Wagonstop in a drenching downpour. When his mount was cared for he sloshed through the rain to the saloon.
“Some storm!” Calou glanced at the four men lining the bar. “Unseasonal, ain’t it?”
“Floodin’ our gardens.” The man jerked his head westward. “It’s Black Mesa, that’s what it is.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
They shrugged. “If you lived in this country you
wouldn’t have to ask that question.”
He took off his slicker and slapped rain from his hat. “Never heard of a pile of rock causin’ a rainstorm.”
They disdained his ignorance and stared into their drinks. Thunder rumbled, and an occasional lightning flash lit the gloom. Old Man Karr was there, and Wente, who owned the Spring Canyon place. And two hardcase riders from the Pitchfork outfit, Knauf and Russell. Dyer was behind the bar.
Calou was a tall man with a rider’s lean build. His face was dark and narrow with an old scar on the cheekbone.
“Lived here long?” he asked Dyer.
“Born here.”
“Then you can tell me where the Rafter H
lies.”
All eyes turned. Dyer stared, then shrugged.
“Ain’t been a soul on it in fifteen years. Ain’t nothin’ there but the old stone buildin’s and bones. Not even water.”
Old Man Karr chuckled. “Right under the edge of Black Mesa, thataway, you couldn’t give it to anybody from here. It’s cursed, that’s what it is.”
Matt Calou looked incredulous. “I never put no stock in curses. Anyway, I’m goin’ to live there. I bought the Rafter H.”
“Bought it?” Dyer exploded. “Man, you’ve been taken. Even if it wasn’t near Black Mesa, the place is without water an’ overgrown with loco weed.”
“What happened? Didn’t they used to run cattle there?”
Dyer filled Calou’s glass. “Friend,” he said quietly, “you’d best learn what you’re up against. Twenty-five years ago Art 107 Horan started the Rafter H. Folks warned him about Black Mesa but he laughed. His cattle went loco, his crops died, an’ then his well dried up. Finally, he sold out an’ left.
“Feller name of Litman took over.
Nobody saw him for a few days, an’ then a passin’ rider found him dead in the yard. Not a mark on him.”