Brett Larane sank back against the pillow and grinned weakly. “You sure couldn’t!” he said. “You sure couldn’t!”
That Slash Seven Kid
Johnny Lyle rode up to the bog camp at Seep Spring just before noon. Bert Ramsey, foreman of the Slash Seven outfit, glanced up and nodded briefly. Ramsey had troubles enough without having this brash youngster around.
“Say!” Johnny hooked a leg around the saddle horn. “Who’s this Hook Lacey?”
Ramsey stopped walking. “Hook Lacey,” he said, “is just about the toughest hombre around here, that’s all. He’s a rustler and a horse thief, and the fastest hand with a gun in this part of the country since Garrett shot Billy the Kid.”
“Ride alone?”
“Naw. He’s got him a gang nigh as mean
as he is. Nobody wants any part of them.”
“You mean you let ‘em get away with rustling?
We’d never cotton to that back on the
Nueces.”
Ramsey turned away irritably. “This ain’t the Nueces. If you want to be useful why don’t you go help Gar Mullins? The heel flies are driving cows into that quicksand faster’n he can drag ‘em out.”
“Sure.” Johnny Lyle swung his leg back over the saddle. “Only I’d rather go after Lacey and his outfit.”
“What?” Ramsey turned on him. “Are you crazy? Those hombres, any one of ‘em, would eat three like you for breakfa/! If that bunch tackles us, we’ll fight, but we’ll not go huntin’ ‘em!”
“You mean you don’t want me to.”
Ramsey was disgusted. What did this kid think
he was doing, anyway? Like a fool kid, to make a big play in front of the hands, who were listening, to impress them how tough he was. Well, there was a way to stop that!
“Why, no,” he said dryly. “If you want to go after those outlaws after you help Gar get the cattle out of the quicksand, go ahead.”
Sundown was an hour past when Gar Mullins rode up to the corral at the Slash Seven. He stripped the saddle from his bronc, and after a quick splash and a wipe, he went in and dropped on a bench at the table. Old Tom West, the owner, looked up.
“Where’s the kid?” he asked. “Where’s my nephew? Didn’t he come in?”
Gar was surprised. He glanced around the table.
“Shucks, ain’t he here? He left me about
three o’clock or so. Said Bert told him he could get Hook Lacey if he finished in time.”
“What!” Tom West’s voice was a bull bellow. His under jaw shot out. “Bert, did you tell him that?”
Ramsey’s face grew red, then pale.
“Now, look, boss,” he protested, “I figured he was talking to hear hisself make a big noise. I told him when he helped Gar get all them cows out, he could go after Lacey. I never thought he’d be fool enough to do it.”
“Aw!” Chuck Allen grinned. “He’s probably just rode into town! Where would he look for that outfit? And how could he find ‘em when we ain’t been able to?”
“We ain’t looked any too hard,” Mullins said. “I know I ain’t.”
Tom West was silent. At last he spoke. “Nope, could never find ‘em. But if anything happens to that boy, I’d never dare look my sister in the face again.” He glared at Bert Ramsey. “If anything does happen to him you’d better be halfway to the border before I hear it.”
Johnny Lyle was a cheerful, easygoing, free-talking youngster. He was pushing eighteen, almost a man by Western standards, and as old as Billy the Kid when Billy was leading one of the forces in the Lincoln County War.
But Johnny was more than a brash, devil-may-care youngster. He had been born and raised on the Nueces, and had cut his riding teeth in the black chaparral between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. When his father died he had been fourteen, and his mother had moved east. Johnny had continued to hunt and wander in the woods of the Virginia mountains, but he had gone to New York several times each month.
In New York he had spent a lot of time in shooting galleries. In the woods he had hunted, tracked, and enjoyed fistic battles with rugged mountaineers. He had practiced drawing in front of a mirror until he was greased lightning with a gun. The shooting galleries gave him the marksmanship, and in the woods he had learned to become even more of a tracker than he had learned to be in the brush country of his father, to which he returned for his summer vacations.
Moreover, he had been listening as well as talking. Since he had been here on the Slash Seven, Gar Mullins had several times mentioned the rough country of Tierra Blanca Canyon as a likely hangout for the rustlers. It was believed they disposed of many stolen cattle in the mining camps to the north, having a steady market for beef at Victorio and in the vicinity.
Tom West loved his sister and had a deep affection for his friendly, likable nephew, but Johnny was well aware that Tom also considered him a guest, and not a hand. Mullins could have told them the kid was both a roper and a rider, and had a lot of cow savvy, but Mullins rarely talked and never volunteered anything.
Johnny naturally liked to be accepted as an equal of the others, and it irritated him that his uncle treated him like a visiting tenderfoot. And because he was irked, Johnny decided to show them, once andfor all.
Bert Ramsey’s irritable toleration of him angered him.
Once he left Mullins, when the cattle were out of the quicksand, he headed across the country through Sibley Gap. He passed through the gap at sundown and made camp at a spring a few miles beyond. It could be no more than seven or eight miles farther to the canyon of which Mullins had talked, for he was already on the Tierra Blanca.
At daybreak he was riding. On a sudden inspiration, he swung north and cut over into the trail for Victorio.
The mining town had the reputation of being a rugged spot, and intended to keep it. The town was named after the Apache chieftain who had several times taken a bad whipping trying to capture the place. Several thousand miners, gamblers, gunmen, and outlaws made the place a good one to steer clear of. But Johnny Lyle had not forgotten the talk about Slash Seven beefs being sold there by rustlers.
Johnny swung down from his horse in front of the Gold Pan Restaurant and walked back to a corral where he saw several beef hides hanging. The brand was Seven Seventy-seven, but when he turned the hide over he could see it had been changed from a Slash Seven.
“Hey!” A bellow from the door brought his head up. “Git away from those hides!”
The man was big. He had shoulders like the top of an upright piano and a seamed and battered face.
Johnny walked to the next hide and the next while the man watched. Of the five fresh hides, three of them were Slash Sevens. He turned just in time to meet the rushing butcher.
Butch Jensen was big, but he was no mean rough-and-tumble scrapper. This cowhand was going to learn a thing or two.
“I told you to get away!” he shouted angrily, and drew back his fist.
That was his first mistake, for Johnny had learned a little about fighting while in New York. One thing was to hit from where your fist was. Johnny’s fist was rubbing his chin when Jensen drew his fist back, and Johnny punched straight and hard, stepping in with the left.
The punch was short, wicked, and explosive. Jensen’s lips mashed under hard knuckles and his hands came up. As they lifted, Johnny turned on the ball of his left foot and the toe of his right, and whipped a wicked right uppercut into Jensen’s huge stomach.
Butch gasped, and then Johnny hit him with both hands and he went down. Coolly, Johnny waited for him to get up. And he got up, which made his second mistake. He got up and lunged, head down. A straight left took him over the eyebrow, ripping a gash, and a right uppercut broke his nose. And then Johnny Lyle went to work. What followed was short, interesting, and bloody. When it was over Johnny stood back.
“Now,” he said, “get up and pay me sixty dollars for three Slash Seven steers.”
“Sixty!” Butch Jensen spluttered.
“Steers are going for twelve—fifteen
dollars!”
“The steers you butchered are going at twenty dollars,” Johnny replied calmly. “If I ever find another hide around here, the price will be thirty dollars.”
He turned away, but when he had taken three steps, he stopped. There was a good crowd around, and Johnny was young. This chance was too good to miss.