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  He knew very well that one purpose of the oncoming range war was the avowed intention of the two big outfits to possess themselves of Davis’s ranch.

  Davis’s range was the best piece of grass from the Rio Grande to the Red … at least, in the minds of local ranchers.

  The cowhand finished his coffee, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and got to his feet.

  “Be careful,” Hohner warned.

  CHAPTER 2

  FOR THOSE WHO opposed the stringing of wire on the range of Texas, the hour was late. Already, in a vacant lot in Botalla … and there were many such lots, for the town was very new … lay great reels of wire—gleaming spools of it ready for the stringing.

  Reports had it that there was soon to be a railroad in Texas, and fat beef, good beef, was soon to be in great demand. If this should prove to be the case, then the long drive to Kansas and the railroad there would no longer be necessary, for the shipments could be made right from Texas.

  The cattle would fatten on local grass, and the possession of good, well-watered range would mean wealth—almost immediate wealth, with the demand what it was.

  Suddenly every rancher in the area began looking at his range with thoughtful eyes. And looking at that of his neighbor as well …

  In the saloon of the Trail House in Botalla, rancher Webb Steele smashed a ham-like fist on the bar. “We’re puttin’ it up!” he declared, and Webb spoke always as if addressing a public meeting. “Hoss-high, pig-tight and bull-strong! If there’s some as don’t like it, and want war, it’s war they want and it’s war they’ll get!”

  “Who fences Lost Creek Valley?” Only a hardened soul could dare ask such a question. “You or Chet Lord?”

  “I’m fencin’ it!” Steele glared at once around the room as if he had expected a challenge. “If necessary, my riders will ride the fence with Winchesters!”

  There was a murmur of subdued talk in the room, for such a statement was tantamount to a declaration of war, and everybody from the Neuces to the Rio Grande knew that when Webb Steele said he would fight, he meant it. They also knew that Chet Lord had never surrendered anything to anybody.

  Nobody in his right mind made war talk in the Neuces Strip country unless he meant it. Those who ranched there were hard, tough men, accustomed to fierce fights with over-the-border bandits—many of them Anglos who took refuge in Mexico to avoid the law. Nobody wore a gun for show. There had once been a few of those but they had been buried long since, and those naive souls who might have ventured into the Strip were usually warned in time and rode away to more tolerant climes.

  The rangy yellow horse with the black mane and tail—as well as three black ankles—sloped down the street toward the trail house, unaware and unconcerned. At the Trail House, the rider pulled up and swung down. He glanced at the lights from the windows, then tied his horse and loosened the cinch.

  He stood for a moment, looking along the street. Then he hitched up his gunbelts and slipped the thongs from both guns.

  He was a quiet man of rangy build, broad in the shoulders, slim in waist and flank, with a lean, brown face and green eyes. Leaving his dusty coat tied behind the saddle, he stepped up on the boardwalk and stood one moment longer. He wore a worn buckskin vest, black shirt and trousers, and a black, flat-brimmed hat. He was dusty and tired and, for just a moment before he stepped inside, he closed his eyes to clear away some of the tiredness in order to leave his vision clear.

  He knew that the men along the walk—most of them seated at benches against the wall—had seen him. They knew him for a stranger. Their eyes had lingered a little longer than customary on the two tied-down guns. Two guns were only occasional, and tied-down guns were rare, for it was a method not much used and only of limited value.

  He pushed through the doors into the saloon and paused just briefly to let his eyes adjust to the change of light. Webb Steele, brawny and huge, strode past him with the air of one who commanded the earth and all that was on it.

  The stranger swept the room with a brief, comprehensive glance. It told him he knew no one there, and it was unlikely anyone knew him.

  He walked to the end of the bar, away from the others. “I’ll have a whiskey,” he said.

  Several men lounged against the bar, the nearest a young man who had moved into the place left by Webb Steele, a slim, wiry man better dressed than most cowhands, with black polished boots and large-roweled Mexican spurs.

  The young man’s cool gray eyes swept the stranger with a sharp glance. “Don’t I know you?” he demanded.

  The green eyes were expressionless. The stranger shrugged. “You might.”

  “Ridin’ through?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Want a job?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Aren’t you a cowhand?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We’ll pay well … very well.”

  “What outfit are you with?”

  “I am not with any outfit,” the young man’s tone was sharp. “I am the Tumbling R.”

  “Bully for you.”

  The young man’s mouth tightened, and a queer kind of excitement came into his eyes.

  “I don’t like the way you said that!” His tone was aggressive, eager.

  The man with green eyes looked at him, then looked away. He offered no comment, but the look was enough.

  “In fact, I don’t like you!” The young man insisted.

  “Does it matter?” drawled the stranger.

  There was an instant when the young rancher stared as if he could not quite believe what he had heard. Then he felt rather than saw the men hurriedly backing away from him, getting out of the line of any gunfire.

  Something turned over inside the young man, and he realized with a sudden, sickening awareness that he was facing trouble, possibly a gun battle, out in the open and all alone.

  With a shock he realized that he was frightened, that he had pushed himself into this situation of his own will. He felt an icy chill go down his spine. Always before, when he had talked loud and free or swaggered a bit too much, men had backed off because they knew he was Chet Lord’s son. Men knew his hardbitten old father all too well.

  The case of Bonner and Swindell had helped, too. They had affronted young Lord and both had been found dead on the trail, their guns in their hands.

  Yet nothing his father might do later could help him now. He must fight. He stiffened, trying to seem unafraid, his mind scrambling like a frightened rat seeking a hole. Somebody would stop it, surely. Somebody must.

  “Yeah, it matters, and I’ll make it matter!” His voice shrilled a little, but his hand hovered over his gun.

  The onlookers stared, tense, holding their breaths as one man. The tall stranger looked easily into Steve Lord’s eyes, and then suddenly he smiled. There was humor in his eyes, not taunting or something worse, just plain good humor.

  “Well.” He spoke slowly, gently, “Don’t kill me now. I’d hate to get shot on an empty stomach.”

  Deliberately, he turned his back and spoke to the bartender. “One more, and then I’m getting something to eat. Seems to me I ate half the dust in Texas for breakfast.”

  Everyone began talking suddenly, and Steve Lord, astonished at his good luck, turned to the bar himself. Something had happened, and he was not altogether sure what it was, but he suddenly knew he had narrowly escaped a shoot-out and with a man to whom such things were not new.

  He faced the bar, thankful that the men on either side were strangers. He was trembling, if not outwardly. He was definitely trembling inside and could not trust his voice. He was going to have to watch himself. Since he was a child he had tried to adopt his father’s hard, thrusting ways—but without what it took to back them up. He had always believed himself to be a tough, dangerous man and then, suddenly, in the first real showdown he had ever had with a stranger, all the sand had gone out of him.

  Yet … why had the stranger turned away? He had heard his father speak of such
men—men so sure of themselves that they could step casually aside. Yet a moment before, there had been death in the man’s eyes, cold, ugly death.

  Preoccupied with his own feelings and the shock that remained with him, he did not see what was happening. Only the stranger saw it, lifting his eyes from the just-poured drink to see a lean-bodied, thin-faced man slide quickly from his chair and go out a side door.

  No one seemed to see him go but the stranger, who was the kind of a man who had learned to notice such things, to live with awareness, to recognize an enemy where others would see nothing but another human being. Too long he had walked the ragged edges of death, going quietly in where others shrank back. Only he had noted the hostility in the man’s gaze, and the furtiveness he had been unable to disguise.

  The stranger swallowed his drink, then turned quietly and went outside, unnoticed. For such minor altercations were not unusual, and there had been no shooting. Some would say that the stranger had backed down, others would realize that he had merely sidestepped a killing. But in any event it was over and nothing amiss had happened.

  In the street, he paused. The thin-faced man was talking to three men who stood across the street in front of the Spur Saloon. He caught their eyes as they looked and sized him up, but he knew none of them. The trouble was, he was sure the thin-faced man had known him … or suspected him of being someone he should know.

  He ought to leave town, and leave now, yet there were things he needed to know, and this was the best place to discover them. The stranger would wait a little longer.

  Although he had not known the three men across the street, he had recognized their type. All three were cowhands, but the kind who relied more on what they could do with guns than what they could do with ropes or branding irons.

  Idling in front of the stage station a few minutes later, he saw Steve Lord coming toward him. He knew him, as he had known Webb Steele from descriptions given him before he arrived in Texas. He was lighting a cigarette when Steve Lord stopped before him.

  “You’re a gunfighter,” Lord said. “You could have killed me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you? I made a fool of myself. I was talking when I should have been listening.”

  The stranger smiled. “Why? Any man can make a mistake. You may be Chet Lord’s son, but I think you can make your own tracks.”

  “Thanks. That’s the first time anybody said that to me.”

  “Maybe they should have. Knowing you can act the man makes it easier to do it. And knowing it is expected of you helps. Many a man is brave just because people expect it of him.”

  “Who are you?” Steve Lord asked.

  “Sometimes they call me Lance. Is that enough for you?”

  “It’s enough. And about that job. If you want it, we’d like to have you. I may not be so good with a gun but I know when another man is. And we want you on our side.”

  “I wasn’t planning on going to work right now,” Lance said. “I’ve got a few dollars and I’m figuring on taking it easy for awhile.”

  “Look, we’ll pay well, and I’d rather have you on our side than the other.”

  “Maybe I won’t ride for either side. This sounds like a shooting war you’re talking about, and I’ve had enough of that for a long, long time.”

  “You’ve got to go one way or the other … or leave the country. I’m giving it to you straight. If you don’t sign on with either side, one or the other will shoot you on sight, just suspecting you’re riding for the others.”

  Lance shrugged. “Well … I don’t know. What kind of a fight is this, anyway?”

  “It’s a three-cornered fight, not just two. Webb Steele has about forty riders … that’s twice what he needs for the stock he runs. We’ve about the same number, and we don’t need them all either, except as warriors.

  “Between us, we split the Live Oak country. That’s kind of a loose name for a big spread of country that runs from the Rio Grande to way north of the Neuces. Some folks name another section of country the Live Oak, but for us, this is it.

  “It’s always been a rough country, what with the border bandits on both sides stirring trouble, and Indians raiding into the area. Once this fight warmed up, a bunch of the boys began to choose sides, and some of them don’t care who wins as long as they draw fighting wages.”

  “You said it was a three-cornered war? Where’s the other corner?”

  “He doesn’t matter so much, no matter how you look at it. He’s a squatter named Mort Davis. He came in here about three or four years ago and settled on a water hole near what they call Lost Creek. We cut his wire and he cut ours.… Or somebody did.

  “He doesn’t stand a chance, caught between two big outfits like he is. He’ll be wiped out.”

  “You squatted on your land, he squatted on his. What’s the difference?”

  Steve Lord stared at him. “You don’t seem to understand Steele and Lord own this country. They came in here first, and they settled on it.”

  “And he came along later and settled on another piece. Strikes me that he’s got as much right as you people have.”

  “Look, if we let every squatter who comes along settle on our land we soon wouldn’t have enough left to graze a steer.”

  “But you didn’t claim that land?”

  “We did an’ we didn’t. That is, we claimed it but so did Webb Steele. Neither side had moved in there, both hoping to avoid a shooting war. Then Davis moved in. And then he brought in cattle from Mexico. That’s a tough country to deal with down there, and he’s a tough man.”

  “Heard something about that,” Lance suggested mildly. “I heard Mort Davis bought the land from the Mexican who inherited it, that he paid cash for both the land and the cattle. It seems to me that if you attack a man under those circumstances, you’re breaking the law.”

  Steve Lord shrugged. “What law?”

  “Suppose he moved against you? I doubt if either you or Steele have filed on any land or have any legal claim whatsoever except squatter’s rights.”

  “He only bought his from a Mexican!”

  Lance smiled. “There are Mexicans who live in Texas, too, who have been citizens of the state from the beginning. There were Mexicans defending the Alamo as well as attacking it.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Check on it and you’ll see I’m right. Steve, if I were you I’d leave Mort Davis alone. You boys don’t have a leg to stand on.”

  As he talked he was watching the street. Something was happening down there, something that smelled like trouble. The three men who had been watching him had been moving. One had remained about where he was, but the others had come closer, each taking a different side of the street.

  “Steve,” he spoke quietly, “you’d better get on down the street. I have a feeling I’m in trouble.”

  Steve turned quickly, puzzled, and glanced along the street.

  “I’m not afraid.” Surprisingly, he discovered that what he said was true. “I’ll stay.”

  “Get out, Steve. Get out now. Thanks, but I don’t want you here. Those men mean to kill me, and they might even be your father’s men.”

  Startled, Steve Lord stared down the street, trying to make them out. Then suddenly he turned and ducked past an empty building.

  The stranger who called himself Lance stood alone, waiting.

  But then, had it not always been this way?

  CHAPTER 3

  HE STARTED ACROSS the street toward the Spur. His only intention was to put them out of position, since they had obviously evolved some strategy. It was his way: never allow an enemy to fight in a situation of his own choosing: use whatever tactics necessary to throw them off balance.

  He was halfway across the street when there was a sudden rattle of wheels and the pounding of racing hoofs behind him. He leaped aside just in time to escape being run down by a madly careening buckboard.

  The driver—a girl—stood up, sawed the plunging broncos to
a halt, then wheeled the buckboard in the middle of the road only to come racing back up the street. She jerked them to a halt alongside of Lance, and her eyes were blazing with anger.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Just standing in the middle of the street?”

  She had come between him and at least two of the gunmen, and for a moment she had brought to a halt whatever plans they had.

  Her red-gold hair blew in the wind, and her eyes were an amazing deep blue. She was beautiful, not merely pretty, but there was in her eyes the haughty disdain of a queen reprimanding a clumsy subject.

  “Pretty,” he spoke in a slow drawl, “but spoiled. Could be quite a lady, too.” There was a tone of regret in his voice.

  Then he smiled and removed his hat in an obsequious manner. “Sorry, ma’am. If you’ll just let folks know when you plan to use the street for a racetrack I’ll do my best to keep all the peasants out of your way.”

  Then he bowed again and turned to go.

  “Wait!”

  She took a couple of quick turns with the lines around the whip-stock, jumped to the street, and marched up to him. Her eyes were arrogant, her nostrils tight with anger.

  “Did you mean to insinuate that I wasn’t a lady?”

  As she had leaped down from the seat, she had picked up a quirt, the type used when riding on horseback. It had by some odd chance been lying on the seat beside her.

  He smiled again, but his eyes were serious. “I did,” he replied quietly. “You see, ma’am, it takes more than beauty and a little money to make a lady. A lady is considerate of other people. A lady doesn’t go racing around in a buckboard on a busy street. And when she almost runs somebody down, she apologizes.”

  As he talked, her eyes grew dark with anger, and the heat of her anger changed to the coldness of fury.

  “You!” she said contemptuously. “A common cowpuncher trying to tell me how to be a lady!”

  “Somebody should,” he said gently.

  She drew back the quirt suddenly and struck viciously at his face, but Lance was expecting it and he lifted his forearm, almost negligently, and blocked the blow. Then he dropped his hand over and jerked the whip from her hand.