Riders of the Dawn Page 2

  *

  Lying on his back in bed, Matt Sabre stared up into the darkness and listened to the rain on the window and on the roof. It rattled hard, skeleton fingers against the glass, and he turned restlessly in his bed, frowning as he recalled that quick, guarded expression in the eyes of Prince McCarran.

  Who was McCarran, and what did he know? Had Curtin’s request that he help his wife been merely the natural request of a dying man, or had he felt that there was a definite need of help? Was something wrong here?

  He went to sleep vowing to deliver the money and ride away. Yet even as his eyes closed the last time, he knew he would not do it if there was trouble.

  It was still raining, but no longer pouring, when he awakened. He dressed swiftly and checked his guns, his mind taking up his problems where they had been left the previous night.

  Camp Gordon, his face puffy from too much drinking and too sound asleep, staggered down the stairs after him. He grinned woefully at Sabre. “I guess I really hung one on last night,” he said. “What I need is to get out of town.”

  They ate breakfast together, and Gordon’s eyes sharpened suddenly at Matt’s query of directions to the Pivotrock. “You’ll not want to go there, man. Since Curtin ran out, they’ve got their backs to the wall. They are through! Leave it to Galusha Reed for that.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “Reed claims title to the Pivotrock. Bill Curtin’s old man bought it from a Mex who had it from a land grant. Then he made a deal with the Apaches, which seemed to cinch his title. Trouble was, Galusha Reed shows up with a prior claim. He says Fernandez had no grant. That his man Sonoma had a prior one. Old Man Curtin was killed when he fell from his buckboard, and young Billy couldn’t stand the gaff. He blew town after Tony Sikes buffaloed him.”

  “What about his wife?”

  Gordon shook his head, then shrugged. Doubt and worry struggled on his face. “She’s a fine girl, Jenny Curtin is. The salt of the earth. It’s too bad Curtin hadn’t a tenth of her nerve. She’ll stick, and she swears she’ll fight.”

  “Has she any men?”

  “Two. An old man who was with her father-in-law and a half-breed Apache they call Rado. It used to be Silverado.”

  Thinking it over, Sabre decided there was much left to be explained. Where had the $5,000 come from? Had Billy really run out, or had he gone away to get money to put up a battle? And how did he get it?

  “I’m going out.” Sabre got to his feet. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

  “Don’t take a job there. She hasn’t a chance,” Gordon said grimly. “You’d do well to stay away.”

  “I like fights when one side doesn’t have a chance,” Matt replied lightly. “Maybe I will ask for a job. A man’s got to die sometime, and what better time than fighting when the odds are against him?”

  “I like to win,” Gordon said flatly. “I like at least a chance.”

  Matt Sabre leaned over the table, aware that Prince McCarran had moved up behind Gordon, and that a big man with a star was standing near him. “If I decide to go to work for her,” Sabre’s voice was easy, confident, “then you’d better join us. Our side will win.”

  “Look here, you!” The man wearing the star, Sid Trumbull, stepped forward. “You either stay in town or get down the trail! There’s trouble enough in the Mogollons. Stay out of there.”

  Matt looked up. “You’re telling me?” His voice cracked like a whip. “You’re town marshal, Trumbull, not a United States marshal or a sheriff, and, if you were a sheriff, it wouldn’t matter. It is out of this county. Now suppose you back up and don’t step into conversations unless you’re invited.”

  Trumbull’s head lowered, and his face flushed red. Then he stepped around the table, his eyes narrow and mean. “Listen, you!” His voice was thick with fury. “No two-by-twice cowpoke tells me …!”

  “Trumbull,” Sabre spoke evenly, “you’re asking for it. You aren’t acting in line of duty now. You’re picking trouble, and the fact that you’re marshal won’t protect you.”

  “Protect me?” His fury exploded. “Protect me? Why, you …!”

  Trumbull lunged around the table, but Matt sidestepped swiftly and kicked a chair into the marshal’s path. Enraged, Sid Trumbull had no chance to avoid it and fell headlong, bloodying his palms on the slivery floor.

  Kicking the chair away, he lunged to his feet, and Matt stood facing him, smiling. Camp Gordon was grinning, and Hobbs was leaning his forearms on the bar, watching with relish.

  Trumbull stared at his torn palms, then lifted his eyes to Sabre’s. Then he started forward, and suddenly, in mid-stride, his hand swept for his gun.

  Sabre palmed his Colt, and the gun barked even as it lifted. Stunned, Sid Trumbull stared at his numbed hand. His gun had been knocked spinning, and the .44 slug, hitting the trigger guard, had gone by to rip off the end of Sid’s little finger. Dumbly he stared at the slow drip of blood.

  Prince McCarran and Gordon were only two of those who stared, not at the marshal, but at Matt Sabre.

  “You throw that gun mighty fast, stranger,” McCarran said. “Who are you, anyway? There aren’t a half dozen men in the country who can throw a gun that fast. I know most of them by sight.”

  Sabre’s eyes glinted coldly. “No? Well, you know another one now. Call it seven men.” He spun on his heel and strode from the room. All eyes followed him.

  II

  Matt Sabre’s roan headed up Shirt Tail Creek, crossed Bloody Basin and Skeleton Ridge, and made the Verde in the vicinity of the hot springs. He bedded down that night in a corner of a cliff near Hardscrabble Creek. It was late when he turned in, and he had lit no fire.

  He had chosen his position well, for behind him the cliff towered, and on his left there was a steep hillside that sloped away toward Hardscrabble Creek. He was almost at the foot of Hardscrabble Mesa, with the rising ground of Deadman Mesa before him. The ground in front sloped away to the creek, and there was plenty of dry wood. The overhang of the cliff protected it from the rain.

  Matt Sabre came suddenly awake. For an instant, he lay very still. The sky had cleared, and, as he lay on his side, he could see the stars. He judged that it was past midnight. Why he had awakened he could not guess, but he saw that the roan was nearer, and the big gelding had his head up and ears pricked.

  “Careful, boy,” Sabre warned.

  Sliding out of his bedroll, he drew on his boots and got to his feet. Feeling out in the darkness, he drew his Winchester near.

  He was sitting in absolute blackness due to the cliff’s overhang. He knew the boulders and the clumps of cedar were added concealment. The roan would be lost against the blackness of the cliff, but from where he sat, he could see some thirty yards of the creek bank and some open ground.

  There was subdued movement below and whispering voices. Then silence. Leaving his rifle, Sabre belted on his guns and slid quietly out of the overhang and into the cedars.

  After a moment, he heard the sound of movement, and then a low voice saying, “He can’t be far. They said he came this way, and he left the main trail after Fossil Creek.”

  There were two of them. He waited, standing there among the cedars, his eyes hard and his muscles poised and ready. They were fools. Did they think he was that easy?

  He had fought Apaches and Kiowas, and he had fought the Tauregs in the Sahara and the Riffs in the Atlas Mountains. He saw them then, saw their dark figures moving up the hill, outlined against the pale gravel of the slope.

  That hard, bitter thing inside him broke loose, and he could not stand still. He could not wait. They would find the roan, and then they would not leave until they had him. It was now or never. He stepped out quickly, silently.

  “Looking for somebody?”

  They wheeled, and he saw the starlight on a pistol barrel and heard the flat, husky cough of his own gun. One went down, gasping. The other staggered, then turned and started off in a stumbling run, moaning half in fright, half in pain. He
stood there, trying to follow the man, but he lost him in the brush.

  He turned back to the fellow on the ground but did not go near him. He circled widely instead, returning to his horse. He quieted his roan, then lay down. In a few minutes, he was dozing.

  *

  Daybreak found him standing over the body. The roan was already saddled for the trail. It was one of the two he had seen in Silver City, a lean, dark-faced man with deep lines in his cheeks and a few gray hairs at the temples. There was an old scar, deep and red, over his eye.

  Sabre knelt and went through his pockets, taking a few letters and some papers. He stuffed them into his own pockets, then mounted. Riding warily, he started up the creek. He rode with his Winchester across his saddle, ready for whatever came. Nothing did.

  The morning drew on, the air warm and still after the rain. A fly buzzed around his ears, and he whipped it away with his hat. The roan had a long-striding, space-eating walk. It moved out swiftly and surely toward the far purple ranges, dipping down through grassy meadows lined with pines and aspens, with here and there the whispering leaves of a tall cottonwood.

  It was a land to dream about, a land perfect for the grazing of either cattle or sheep, a land for a man to live in. Ahead and on his left he could see the towering Mogollon Rim, and it was beyond this rim, up on the plateau, that he would find the Pivotrock. He skirted a grove of rustling aspen and looked down a long valley.

  For the first time, he saw cattle—fat, contented cattle, fat from the rich grass of these bottom lands. Once, far off, he glimpsed a rider, but he made no effort to draw near, wanting only to find the trail to the Pivotrock.

  A wide-mouthed cañon opened from the northeast, and he turned the roan and started up the creek that ran down it. Now he was climbing, and from the look of the country, he would climb nearly three thousand feet to reach the rim. Yet he had been told there was a trail ahead, and he pushed on.

  The final 800 feet to the rim was by a switchback trail that had him climbing steadily, yet the air on the plateau atop the rim was amazingly fresh and clear. He pushed on, seeing a few scattered cattle, and then he saw a crude wooden sign by the narrow trail. It read: PIVOTROCK 1 MILE.

  *

  The house was low and sprawling, lying on a flat-topped knoll with the long barns and sheds built on three sides of a square. The open side faced the rim and the trail up which he was riding. There were cottonwood, pine, and fir backing up the buildings. He could see the late afternoon sunlight glistening on the coats of the saddle stock in the corral.

  An old man stepped from the stable with a carbine in his hands. “All right, stranger. You stop where you are. What you want here?”

  Matt Sabre grinned. Lifting his hand carefully, he pushed back his flat-brimmed hat. “Huntin’ Missus Jenny Curtin,” he said. “I’ve got news.” He hesitated. “Of her husband.”

  The carbine muzzle lowered. “Of him? What news would there be of him?”

  “Not good news,” Sabre told him. “He’s dead.”

  Surprisingly the old man seemed relieved. “Light,” he said briefly. “I reckon we figured he was dead. How’d it happen?”

  Sabre hesitated. “He picked a fight in a saloon in El Paso, then drew too slow.”

  “He was never fast.” The old man studied him. “My name’s Tom Judson. Now, you sure didn’t come all the way here from El Paso to tell us Billy was dead. What did you come for?”

  “I’ll tell Missus Curtin that. However, they tell me down the road you’ve been with her a long time, so you might as well know. I brought her some money. Bill Curtin gave it to me on his deathbed, asked me to bring it to her. It’s five thousand dollars.”

  “Five thousand?” Judson stared. “Reckon Bill must have set some store by you to trust you with it. Know him long?”

  Sabre shook his head. “Only a few minutes. A dying man hasn’t much choice.”

  A door slammed up at the house, and they both turned. A slender girl was walking toward them, and the sunlight caught the red in her hair. She wore a simple cotton dress, but her figure was trim and neat. Ahead of her dashed a boy who might have been five or six. He lunged at Sabre, then slid to a stop, and stared up at him, then at his guns.

  “Howdy, old-timer!” Sabre said, smiling. “Where’s your spurs?”

  The boy was startled and shy. He drew back, surprised at the question. “I … I’ve got no spurs!”

  “What? A cowhand without spurs? We’ll have to fix that.” He looked up. “How are you, Missus Curtin? I’m Mathurin Sabre, Matt for short. I’m afraid I’ve some bad news for you.”

  Her face paled a little, but her chin lifted. “Will you come to the house, Mister … Sabre? Tom, put his horse in the corral, will you?”

  The living room of the ranch house was spacious and cool. There were Navajo rugs upon the floor, and the chairs and the divan were beautifully tanned cowhide. He glanced around appreciatively, enjoying the coolness after his hot ride in the Arizona sun, like the naturalness of this girl, standing in the home she had created.

  She faced him abruptly. “Perhaps you’d better tell me now. There’s no use pretending or putting a bold face on it when I have to be told.”

  As quickly and quietly as possible, he explained. When he was finished, her face was white and still. “I … I was afraid of this. When he rode away, I knew he would never come back. You see, he thought … he believed he had failed me, failed his father.”

  Matt drew the oilskin packet from his pocket. “He sent you this. He said it was five thousand dollars. He said to give it to you.”

  She took it, staring at the package, and tears welled into her eyes. “Yes.” Her voice was so low that Matt scarcely heard it. “He would do this. He probably felt it was all he could do for me, for us. You see,” Jenny Curtin’s eyes lifted, “we’re in a fight, and a bad one. This is war money. I … guess Billy thought … well, he was no fighter himself, and this might help, might compensate. You’re probably wondering about all this.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. And maybe I’d better go out with the boys now. You’ll want to be alone.”

  “Wait!” Her fingers caught his sleeve. “I want you to know, since you were with him when he died, and you have come all this way to help us. There was no trouble with Billy and me. It was … well, he thought he was a coward. He thought he had failed me. We’ve had trouble with Galusha Reed in Yellow Jacket. Tony Sikes picked a fight with Billy. He wanted to kill him, and Billy wouldn’t fight. He … he backed down. Everybody said he was a coward, and he ran. He went … away.”

  Matt Sabre frowned thoughtfully, staring at the floor. The boy who picked a fight with him, who dared him, who went for his gun, was no coward. Trying to prove something to himself? Maybe. But no coward.

  “Ma’am,” he said abruptly, “you’re his widow. The mother of his child. There’s something you should know. Whatever else he was, I don’t know. I never knew him long enough. But that man was no coward. Not even a little bit. You see …” Matt hesitated, feeling the falseness of his position, not wanting to tell this girl that he had killed her husband, yet not wanting her to think him a coward, “I saw his eyes when he went for his gun. I was there, ma’am, and saw it all. Bill Curtin was no coward.”

  Hours later, lying in his bunk, he thought of it, and the $5,000 was still a mystery. Where had it come from? How had Curtin come by it?

  He turned over and after a few minutes went to sleep. The next day, he would be riding.

  *

  The sunlight was bright the next morning when he finally rolled out of bed. He bathed and shaved, taking his time, enjoying the sun on his back, and feeling glad he was footloose again. He was in the bunkhouse, belting on his guns, when he heard the horses. He stepped to the door and glanced out.

  Neither the dark-faced Rado nor Judson was about, and there were three riders in the yard. One of them he recognized as a man from Yellow Jacket, and the tallest of the riders was Galusha Reed. He was a big man, broa
d and thick in the body without being fat. His jaw was brutal.

  Jenny Curtin came out on the steps.

  “Ma’am,” Reed said abruptly, “we’re movin’ you off this land. We’re goin’ to give you ten minutes to pack, an’ one of my boys’ll hitch the buckboard for you. This here trouble’s gone on long enough, an’ mine’s the prior claim to this land. You’re gettin’ off.”

  Jenny’s eyes turned quickly toward the stable, but Reed shook his head. “You needn’t look for Judson or the ’breed. We watched until we seen them away from here, an’ some of my boys are coverin’ the trail. We’re tryin’ to get you off here without any trouble.”

  “You can turn around and leave, Mister Reed. I’m not going!”

  “I reckon you are,” Reed said patiently. “We know that your man’s dead. We just can’t put up with you squattin’ on our range.”

  “This happens to be my range, and I’m staying.”

  Reed chuckled. “Don’t make us put you off, ma’am. Don’t make us get rough. Up here,” he waved a casual hand, “we can do anything we want, and nobody the wiser. You’re leavin’, as of now.”

  Matt Sabre stepped out of the bunkhouse and took three quick steps toward the riders. He was cool and sure of himself, but he could feel the jumping invitation to trouble surging up inside him. He fought it down and held himself still for an instant. Then he spoke.

  “Reed, you’re a fat-headed fool and a bully. You ride up here to take advantage of a woman because you think she’s helpless. Well, she’s not. Now you three turn your horses … turn ’em mighty careful … and start down the trail. And don’t you ever set foot on this place again.”

  Reed’s face went white, then dark with anger. He leaned forward a little. “So you’re still here? Well, we’ll give you a chance to run. Get goin’!”

  Matt Sabre walked forward another step. He could feel the eagerness pushing up inside him, and his eyes held the three men, and he saw the eyes of one widen with apprehension.

  “Watch it, boss! Watch it!”