The High Graders Read online

  From the crest of the ridge he looked back upon the town’s lights. If he had been a smart man, he thought, he would now own a ranch or a business of some kind, but he had never known any way of doing what had to be done than to bull in and start swinging.

  At the bottom of Brush Canyon he detected a subtle alteration in the manner of his horse, and like any western rider in wild country he had learned to depend on the instincts as well as on the sight and hearing of his horse, to know its moods, to be aware of every change of muscle or movement. Stepping down now from the saddle, Shevlin explored the muddy trail with careful fingers.

  What he found was the indentation of a hoof track so recent as to be easily discernible in spite of the rain. That track had probably been made within the last few minutes.

  Wiping the mud from his hand on the horse’s mane, he walked the horse past the dark bulk of the old mill and dismounted at the stable. Here he led the horse inside, closed the door behind him, and struck a match.

  On each side of the barn there were a dozen stalls, for it was here they had kept the big Clydesdales used to haul logs to the mill, and to haul away the planks. There were four horses in the stable now, and they rolled their eyes around to look at him.

  He led his mount to a vacant stall, touching each horse as he passed. Two were dry, one was slightly damp, and the fourth was as wet as his own. Two riders, then, had been here most of the day, the others arriving since the rain began, and one of them only minutes before.

  Stripping the rig from his black, he wiped the horse down with a dry sack he found hanging over the side of the stall. Come what might, he was through traveling for tonight. Then he checked the other horses.

  The first was a cowhorse, the sort to be found in any remuda, and it wore a Turkeytrack brand, the old Moorman outfit. The fine dapple-gray mare was a Three Sevens.

  Obviously this was a woman’s horse, for few cattlemen would ride anything but a gelding. The two geldings in the stable were both branded Open AV, a brand unfamiliar to Shevlin.

  He struck a match and checked the droppings on the floor. The cowhorse and one of the geldings had been sta4 here since the previous day, but there was no evidence that prior to that a horse had been here in months. So this was a meeting place, and not a permanent setup.

  He stepped outside, moving quietly as was his usual way, and closed the door softly behind him. His attention was immediately riveted on a strange glisten of reflected light outside the mill’s boarded window. With one hand resting on the corner of the barn, he carefully unfastened his slicker with the other.

  What he saw was the shine of light on a rain-wet slicker like his own. Somebody was standing in the darkness near the mill door, waiting.

  Drawing his gun, Shevlin waited for a flash of lightning. Poised as he was, the slight advantage was his when the shadows were suddenly broken by the lightning’s glare. The other man shot too quickly, the bullet tearing the wood at the barn’s corner within inches of Shevlin’s hand.

  Instantly, at the flash of the other man’s gun, Shevlin fired in return.

  The man fell hard against the side of the building, and his pistol splashed in the water; then he straightened with a grunt and ran, staggering, into the woods. A moment later Shevlin heard the pound of hoofs, and after that all was darkness and silence, with only the sound of the falling rain.

  Shevlin walked to where the gun had fallen, and after a minute or two of groping he found it.

  The tiny slit of light that had warned him of the watcher’s presence was gone, but the door was open a crack and a rifle muzzle covered him.

  “Hold it right there, mister,” a voice said, “and holster that gun.”

  Shevlin tucked the .45 behind his belt, trying to place the voice, which seemed familiar. He walked toward the door, saying conversationally, “We had better talk this over in the light, amigo. There was a time when I knew, Turkeytrack mighty well.”

  “Hold up there!”

  No stranger to the tone of a voice behind a gun,

  Mike Shevlin stopped.

  “Who’d you ever know at Turkeytrack?” came the question from the darkness.

  “Rawhide Jenkins was foreman then, and they had a sourdough cook named Lemmon.” Then the remembrance of the voice came to him suddenly, by association. “And they had a cantankerous old devil of a wolfer named Winkler.”

  The door opened wider. “Come on careful, with your hands empty.”

  “That wolf-hunter,” Shevlin continued, “took over as cook one time when Lemmon was laid up. He made the best coffee and the lousiest biscuits a man ever ate.”

  He walked up the ramp and into the darkness of a room that had once been the main part of the sawmill. A fire glowed redly on a hearth across the room, and the firelight gleamed from the blade of the saw.

  Shevlin paused just inside the door, his senses alert and waiting, his hands gripping lightly the edges of his slicker.

  “Light it, Eve.”

  A match flared, revealing the face of a girl,

  strangely lovely in the soft light. She touched the flame to the wick of a coal-oil lantern, then lowered the globe and hung the lantern so the light fell upon Shevlin’s face.

  He knew what they saw: a big man with wide shoulders and a lean body that bulked even larger now with the wet slicker and the black leather chaps. A man over six feet tall who did not look the two hundred pounds he weighed, a man with a wedge-shaped face turned to leather by wind and sun.

  Using his left hand, Shevlin tilted his hat back so they could see his face, wondering if the years had left enough for Winkler to recognize.

  “Shevlin!” the man exclaimed. “Mike Shevlin! Well, I’ll be dogged! Heard you was killed down on the Nueces.”

  “It was a close thing.”

  Winkler did not lower the rifle, and Shevlin held his peace, knowing why it covered him.

  “What happened out there just now?”

  “You had an eavesdropper. He tried a shot at me.”

  The huge room was almost empty. Here where the great saw blade had screamed through logs, cutting out planks to build the town, all was silent but for the subdued crackle of the fire and the rain on the walls and windows. The firelight and the lantern shed their glow even to the corners; he saw only the girl and the old wolfer, yet there had been four horses out there.

  There were no chairs and no table, but there was a sixteen-foot pine log from which the top had been cut for planks, leaving a flat surface that was at once a bench and a table. Near the fireplace there was a stack of wood, and at the fire’s edge an ancient, smoke-blackened coffeepot.

  The girl was young, not much over twenty, but her manner was cool and carried authority. She regarded him with direct attention. “Do you always shoot that quick?”

  “I take notions.”

  Winkler was still suspicious. “What did you come back for? Who sent for you?”

  Removing his slicker, Shevlin walked to the fire and stretched his hands toward the coals. What was going on here? He had returned, it seemed, to a town crawling with suspicion and fear. How could mining do that to a town? Or was it the mining?

  “What did you come back for?” Winkler repeated.

  “Eli’s dead.”

  “Eli?”

  “Eli Patterson.”

  “That’s been a while. Anyway, what’s that to do with you, I never heard of you going out of your way for anybody. What did you have to do with that old coot?”

  “I liked him.” Shevlin rubbed his hands above the coals. “I’ve been down Sonora way. Only heard a few weeks ago that he was dead.”

  “So you came runnin’, hey? Take my advice and light a shuck out of here. Everything’s changed, and we’ve trouble enough without you.”

  “I want to know what happened to Eli.”

  Winkler snorted. “As I recall, he wasn’t the man to do business with a cow thief.”

  Mike Shevlin had expected that, sooner or later. “Maybe he didn’t think of me
that way,” he said mildly.

  The girl spoke up. “Who sent you to this mill?” she asked.

  “It seemed like a good place to sleep. Never dreamed anybody would be holed up here.”

  She must be Three Sevens. What did he know of the Three Sevens outfit?

  “You had friends here,” Winkler said. “Why not go to them? Or stop in the hotel?”

  “I never had any friends in this country. Only Eli Patterson.”

  “You trailed with Gentry and them. What about him? What about Ben Stowe?”

  Rain drummed on the roof, but Shevlin was sure he heard a faint stirring in the loft above. So that was where they were, then.

  “I think,” Eve said, “that this man is a spy.”

  “You think whatever you’re of a mind to. I’m going to get me some sleep here.” Then he added, “Eli gave me a job when I was a youngster.”

  “He never owned no cattle,” Winkler said.

  “He hired me to unload a wagon for him, then he spoke to Moorman about me. That’s how come I hired on at Turkeytrack.”

  “You ran with Gentry and that crowd,” Eve said. “I know all about you.”

  “Who ever knows all about anybody? As to the Gentry crowd, I’ll own to having been my share of a fool.”

  Come to think of it, he had never been much of anything else. He was a drifter, a man who fought for wages, mainly because he knew how to do it better than most, even in this country. Yet what did that mean? It meant when he was through they paid him off, and were glad to be rid of him. And in the end? In the end he would die up a canyon some place when his ammunition gave out. Or at the end of a rope.

  Weariness swept over him, and he felt empty, exhausted both mentally and physically. He was tired of being wary, tired of running, tired of being alert for trouble. But he could not have picked a worse time to feel that way, for he had come back to a country that was obviously on the brink of a shooting war.

  Yet he had no idea what was going on. He only knew that the town was cold, wet, and unfrly, just as it had been seventeen years ago.

  Chapter 2

  HE HAD come to Rafter a gaunt youngster of thirteen astride a buckskin that showed every rib, thin as a bed slat himself, and wearing all he owned.

  He carried a single-shot Sharps .50 buffalo gun, one ragged blanket, and a Navy Colt. The saddle he bestrode was a cast-off McClellan, left behind by the Army.

  Eli Patterson had been alone in the store when the boy entered, wet to the skin, but carrying all the fine, stiff pride of a boy alone and seeking a man’s job. A boy who was ragged and wet, and who knew he was nothing much to begin with.

  “Know where a man can find work?” He was shaking with chill, but he fought the tremble from his voice.

  “Need help myself,” Patterson had lied. “Cold makes me stiff. There’s a wagonload of stuff out back that needs unloading.”

  “I’m hunting a riding job,” the boy said proudly, holding himself tall.

  Patterson shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”

  Pride fought with hunger, and lost. “I’ll take it,” the boy said, “but if anybody asks you, I’m a rider, not no day hand.”

  Patterson nodded, and taking a silver dollar from his pocket, he said, “Dinnertime. You eat up and come back.”

  The half-starved youngster had looked at the old man with cold eyes. “I ain’t earned it. I’ll eat after.”

  Later in the day Jack Moorman walked into the store, tough, hearty old Jack. Eli nodded to indicate the boy. “Friend of mine, Jack, just rode in. I don’t reckon he’s really rustling work, but if you need a hand, he’s a rider.”

  Moorman turned his head to look, taking in the story at a glance. He was a bluff, kindly man. “Can you ride bog, boy?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. And I can rope an’ tie, and I’ve got the best cuttin’ horse in this here country.” He gestured toward the sorry-looking buckskin at the hitch rack.

  “That crow-bait?” Moorman scoffed. “Why, I wouldn’t have that rack of bones on the place!”

  “Keep your job then,” Mike Shevlin replied brusquely. “I’ll not work for a man who judges a horse by the meat on him.”

  Surprised, Jack Moorman glanced around at Eli as if to say, “Hey, what is this?” Then he said, “Sorry, son, no offense intended. You just come on out and bring your horse. I surmise all he needs is a bait or two of oats and some grama.”

  Following that meeting with Jack Moorman, Mike Shevlin had worked two years for Turkeytrack, filling out and growing taller. And no man in the outfit had shouldered extra work because he was a boy, nor had Mike backed away from trouble. Not even on the day when he rode up to a rustler with a tied-down Turkeytrack calf and a brand half altered.

  Old Jack came out to the horse camp to hear Mike’s account of the shooting, for the rustler had been brought to headquarters draped over a saddle. Moorman saw the burn on the boy’s arm from a bullet that just missed.

  “He told me to take out runnin’ and to keep my trap shut about things that didn’t concern me. Said I’d live a lot longer. I told him I rode for the brand, and rustlin’ Turkeytrack stock concerned me a-plenty.

  “He grabbed for his gun, only I taken my time and he didn’t. He got off the first shot, and he missed.”

  “Boy”—Moorman shifted his big body in the saddle—“y wore that gun when I first saw you, and I figured you were young for it, but you’ve worked two years for me and this is the first time you’ve ever dragged iron. You’re old enough to wear a gun, all right.”

  At fifteen Mike Shevlin was as tall as he ever would be, and was stronger than most men. He had never known a day of anything but hard work, and was proud that he could work beside men and hold their respect.

  From ten to thirteen he had worked beside his uncle on a mining claim, taking his regular turn with single-jack or double-jack. Swinging the heavy sledges had put power in his shoulders and had taught him to hit with his weight behind it.

  As a result, when Turkeytrack rode over to the dances at Rock Springs schoolhouse, or over to Horse Hollow, Mike Shevlin won six fist fights before losing one. And he whipped that man the following Saturday night.

  When he rode away from the Moorman outfit and started running with Gib Gentry and Ben Stowe, Eli Patterson warned him against it. “They’re a bad crowd, Mike. They’re not your kind.”

  Now, listening to the rain outside the old mill, he knew again, as he had realized long before, that Eli Patterson had been right. Gentry and Stowe had always run with the wrong crowd; a man is judged by the company he keeps, and so had Mike Shevlin been judged.

  “That old man should never have been buried on Boot Hill,” he said. “To him, that would seem the final disgrace. I intend to find out what happened.”

  “Ask your friend Gentry,” Eve said.

  “You take my advice,” Winkler said, “and you’ll light out as soon as the rain lets up. You take out while you’re able.”

  Shevlin turned his eyes to the girl. “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Eve Bancroft. I own the Three Sevens.”

  But Winkler was not to be sidetracked. “You get out,” he said. “I remember you, Shevlin, and that crowd you trailed with, and I’ve heard of you since, and none of it any good. You leave out of here or we’ll bury you here.”

  Ignoring the old man, Shevlin rinsed a cup and filled it with coffee. His own cup was among the gear of his saddle.

  These were cattle people. But the buildings in town were all mining—assay offices, miners’ supplies, even the saloons now had names reflecting the mining business. So why were these people from the cattle ranches meeting here in secret?

  Mike Shevlin’s life had been lived in an atmosphere of range feuds and cattle wars, and this meeting had all the earmarks of a preliminary to such trouble. Why else would a pretty young woman like Eve Bancroft, a ranch owner, be meeting here with an old hard-case like Winkler, and whoever it was that was hiding upstairs?

  He gulped the
hot, strong coffee. “I’ll bunk in the loft,” he said, “and stay out of your way.”

  He finished the coffee and set down the cup; then he walked over to the ladder. Putting his hand on the rung to start climbing, he felt the dampness of wet mud under his fingers. Somebody was up there, all right, and waiting for him.

  Eve started to speak, but hesitated; Winkler just watched him, his hard old eyes revealing nothing.

  Shevlin climbed the ladder and lifted the trap with his left hand. Light shone suddenly in his eyes, but he spoke casually. “You pull that trigger, Ray, and you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  He pushed the loose trap door aside, then went up through the hole and kicked the trap shut without taking his eyes from the two men who waited there for him.

  Ray Hollister looked older than he should have, and thinner than Shevlin remembered him. There was bitterness and frustration in the lines around his eyes and mouth, lines that Shevlin did not remember. Ray Hollister had found himself to be a smaller man than he wished to believe, and he hated it.

  The other man, Babcock, was a thin, patient man of few loyalties, but they were loyalties grimly held. He believed in Ray Hollister and he believed in cattle; and of the two men, Shevlin was sure Babcock was the more dangerous—an impression that would have both surprised and infuriated Ray Hollister.

  “Who told you I was here?” Hollister demanded. “Was it Eve?”

  “They were expecting you in town, so when I saw four horses in the stable and realized somebody was hiding here, I knew it simply had to be you.”

  “I’m not hiding! I’ll be damned if I am!”

  “Who’d you shoot at?” Babcock asked.

  “The man who followed him.” Shevlin nodded to indicate Hollister, whose boots were still muddy. “Whoever it was thought I’d caught him, and he took a blast at me.”

  “Nobody followed me!” Hollister exclaimed sharply. “They don’t even know I’m in this part of the country!”

  “Gentry knew,” Babcock reminded him.

  “Gib’s all right. He’s cattle.”