An’ you were all too busy blamin’ Black Mesa for all your troubles. Your cattle drifted that way an’ never came back, an’ Foster was gettin’ rich. All he had to do was ride down that draw back of Black Mesa, just beyond the chaparral.
“As for Black Mesa, the reason you thought you saw something movin’ up there was because you did see something. The cows that they originally had on the Rafter H are up there, I imagine.”
“That ain’t possible!” Old Man Karr objected. “Not even a man could climb that tower!”
“There’s a crack on the other side, an undercut that makes a fairly easy trail up. Cattle have been grazin’ up there for years, an’ there’s several square miles of good graze up there.”
Foster got clumsily from the saddle and commenced to struggle with his hand. One of the men got down to help him. Old Man Karr chewed angrily at his mustache, half resenting the exploded fears of the mountain. Dyer hesitated, then looked down at Matt. “Guess we been a passel o’ fools, stranger,” he said. “The drinks are on us.”
Dyer looked down at Foster. “But I reckon it’s a good thing we brought along a rope.”
Foster paled under his deep tan. “Give me
a break, Dyerffwas he pleaded. “I’ll pay
off! I got records! Sure, I done it,
an’ I was a fool, but it was an awful
temptation. I was broke when I started, an’
then—“
“We’ll have an accounting,” Wente said stiffly, “then we’ll decide. If you can take care of our losses, we might make a deal.”
Together, Matt and Sue watched them walk away. “If you didn’t want fifteen or twenty children,” she suggested tentatively, “I know a girl who might be interested.”
Matt grinned. “How about six?”
“I guess that’s not too many.”
He slipped his arm around her waist. “Then
consider your proposal accepted.”
Sunlight bathed the rim of Black Mesa with a sudden halo. A wide-eyed range 125 cow lowed softly to her calf, unaware of mystery. The calf stumbled to its feet, brushing a white, curved fragment, fragile as a leaf.
It was the weathered lip of an ancient baked clay jar.
Gila Crossing
I
There was an old wooden trough in front of the livery barn in Gila Crossing and at one end of the trough a rusty pump. When Jim Sartain rode up the dusty street, four men, unshaven and tired, stood in a knot by the pump, their faces somber with dejection.
Two of the men were tall, but in striking contrast otherwise. Ad Loring was a Pennsylvania man, white-haired but with a face rough-hewn and strong. It was a thoughtful face, but resolute as well. The man beside him was equally tall but much heavier, sullen and black-browed, with surly, contemptuous eyes. His jaw was a chunk of granite above the muscular column of his neck. Roy Strider was the kind of man he looked, domineering and quick to use his muscular strength.
Peabody and Mcationabb were equally contrasting. Mcationabb, as dry and dour as his name suggested, with narrow gray eyes and the expression of a man hard-driven but far from beaten. Peabody carried a shotgun in the hollow of his arm. He was short, and inclined to stoutness. Like the others, he 127 turned to look at the man on the dusty roan when he dismounted and walked to the pump. The roan moved to the trough and sank his muzzle gratefully into the cool water.
Sartain was conscious of their stares, yet he gave no sign. Taking down the gourd dipper, he shook out the few remaining drops and began to pump the protesting handle.
The men studied his dusty gray shirt as if to read his mission from the breadth of his powerful shoulders. Their eyes fell to the walnut-butted guns, long-hung and tied down, to the polished boots now dust-covered, and the Mexican-type spurs. Jim Sartain drank deep of the cold water, a few drops falling down his chin and shirt-front. He emptied two dippers before he stopped drinking.
Even as he drank, his mind was cataloging these men, their dress, their manner, and their weapons. He was also studying the fat man who sat in the huge chair against the wall of the barn, a man unshaven and untidy, with a huge face, flabby lips, and the big eyes of a hungry hound.
This fat man heaved himself from his chair. “Put up your hoss, stranger? I’m the liveryman.” His shirt bulged open in front and the rawhide thong that served as a belt held his stomach in and his pants up. “Name of George Noll.” He added, “Folks around here know me.”
“Put him in a stall and give him a bait of grain,” Sartain said. “I like him well fed. And be careful, he’s touchy.”
Noll chuckled flatly. “Them hammerheads are all ornery.” His eyes, sad, curious, rolled to Sartain. “Goin’ fer? Or are you here?”
“I’m here.” Sartain’s dark eyes were as unreadable as his face. “Seems to have been some fire around. All the range for miles is burned off.” The men beside him would have suffered from that fire. They would be from the wagons behind the firebreak in the creek bottom. “Noticed a firebreak back yonder. Somebody did some fast work to get that done in time.”
“That was Loring here,” Noll offered. “Had most of it done before the fire. He figured it was coming.”
Sartain glanced at Loring. “You were warned?
Or was it an accident?”
But it was Strider who spoke. 129
“Accident!” The dark-browed man spat the ^w. Then he stared at Sartain, his eyes sullen with suspicion. “You ask a lot of questions for a stranger.”
Sartain turned his black eyes to Strider and looked at him steadily while the seconds passed, a look that brought dark blood to Strider’s face and a hard set to the brutal jaw. “That’s right,” Sartain said at last. “When I want to know something I figure that’s the way to find it out.” His eyes swung back to Loring, ignoring Strider.
“We assume we were burned out by the big ranchers,” Loring replied carefully. “We’ve been warned to leave, but we shall continue to stay. We are not men to be driven from our homes, and the land is open to settlement.
“Three ranchers control approximately a
hundred miles of range. Stephen Bayne,
Holston Walker, and Colonel Avery
Quarterman. We deliberately chose a
location that would interfere as little as possible, moving into the mountainous foothills of Black Mesa, north of the Middle Fork. Despite that, there was trouble.”
“With the men you named?”
“Who else? Bayne accused Peabody of
butchering a B Bar steer, and at Peabody’s denial there would have been shooting except that Mcationabb and I were both there. Then a few days ago Peabody and I rode to Oren Mcationabb’s place, the brother to this gentleman, and found him dead. He had been shot down while unarmed. His stock had been run off, his buildings burned.”
“Then there was a rumpus here at the Crossin’,” Peabody said. “Loring, Strider, an’ me, we jumped Colonel Quarterman on the street. He was mighty stiff, said he knew of no murder and we could get out or take the consequences. Strider here, he came right out an’ accused him of murder, then called him out.”
“He didn’t fight?”
“He’s yeller!” Strider sneered. “Yeller
as saffron! With no riders at his back he’d never raise a hand to no man!”
“Sometimes,” Sartain replied dryly, “it needs more courage to avoid a fight. If this Quarterman is the one I’ve heard of, he has proved his courage more than once. 131 He’s a salty old Injun fighter.”
“So he kills a lone rancher who’s unarmed?” Again Strider sneered. The big man’s dislike for Jim Sartain was evident.
“Had you thought somebody else might have done it? Did you find him there? Or any evidence of him or his riders?”
“Who else would have done it? Or could have done it?”
“You might have.”
“Me?” Strider jerked as if struck and his
face went pale, then ugly with fury.
“Hold your hand, Roy.” George Noll was speaking from the barn door, and there was unexpected authority in his tone, casual as it sounded. “Draw on this hombre an’ you’ll die. He’s the Ranger, Jim Sartain.”
II
Strider’s big hand was spread above his gun butt and it froze there, then slowly eased to his side. “Sorry,” he said resentfully. “I didn’t know you was no Ranger.”
It was not respect for the law that stopped Strider. Nor was it fear; blustering he might be, but not afraid.
“I was saying that you might have done it,” Sartain repeated, “or Loring, or myself. You have no more evidence against the ranchers than they would have against us.”
“That’s what I’ve said, Roy,” Loring interposed. “We can’t go off half-cocked when it will lead to bloodshed. The odds are all against us, anyway. Before we move we must be sure.”