West of the Tularosa Read online

  “You’d better go, ma’am,” Krag said. “It ain’t safe here. I’m staying right where I am until Leason shows.”

  She dropped her hands helplessly and turned away from him. In that instant, Bush Leason stepped from the door across the street and jerked his shotgun to his shoulder. As he did so, he yelled.

  Carol Duchin was too close. Krag shoved her hard with his left hand and stepped quickly right, drawing as he stepped and firing as his right foot touched the walk.

  Afterward, men who saw it said there had never been anything like it before. Leason whipped up his shotgun and yelled, and in the incredibly brief instant, as the butt settled against Leason’s shoulder, Krag pushed the girl, stepped away from her, and drew. And he fired as his gun came level.

  It was split-second timing and the fastest draw that anybody had ever seen in Bradshaw; the .45 slug slammed into Bush Leason’s chest just as he squeezed off his shot, and the buckshot whapped through the air, only beginning to scatter at least a foot and a half over Krag Moran’s head. And Krag stood there, flat-footed, and shot Bush again as he stood leaning back against the building. The big man turned sideways and fell into the dust off the edge of the walk.

  As suddenly as that it was done. And then Carol Duchin got to her feet, her face and clothes dusty. She brushed her clothes with quick, impatient hands, and then turned sharply and looked at Krag Moran. “I never want to see you again!” she flared. “Don’t put a foot on my place! Not for any reason whatever!”

  Krag Moran looked after her helplessly, took an involuntary step after her, and then stopped. He glanced once at the body of Bush Leason and the men gathered around it. Then he walked to his horse. Dan Riggs was standing there, his face shadowed with worry. “You’ve played hell,” he said.

  “What about Grimes?”

  “I know, I know. Bush was vicious. He deserved killing, and, if ever I saw murder, it was his killing of Grimes, but that doesn’t change this. He had friends, and all of the nesters will be sore. They’ll never let it alone.”

  “Then they’ll be mighty foolish.” Krag swung into the saddle, staring gloomily at Carol Duchin. “Why did she get mad?”

  He headed out of town. He had no regrets about the killing. Leason was a type of man that Krag had met before, and they kept on killing and making trouble until somebody shot too fast for them. Yet he found himself upset by the worries of Riggs as well as the attitude of Carol Duchin. Why was she so angry? What was the matter with everybody?

  Moran had the usual dislike for nesters possessed by all cattlemen, yet Riggs had interposed an element of doubt, and he studied it as he rode back to the ranch. Maybe the nesters had an argument, at that. This idea was surprising to him, and he shied away from it.

  As the days passed and the tension grew, he found himself more and more turning to thoughts of Carol. The memory of her face when she came across the street toward him and when she pleaded with him, and then her flashing and angry eyes when she got up out of the dust.

  No use thinking about her, Moran decided. Even had she not been angry at him, what could a girl who owned the cattle she owned want with a drifting cowhand like himself? Yet he did think about her. He thought about her too much. And then the whole Bradshaw country exploded with a bang. Chet Lee’s riders, with several hotheads from the Ryerson outfit, hit the nesters and hit them hard. They ran off several head of cattle, burned haystacks and two barns, killed one man, and shot up several houses. One child was cut by flying glass. And the following morning a special edition of The Bradshaw Journal appeared.

  ARMED MURDERERS RAID SLEEPING VALLEY

  Blazing barns, ruined crops, and death remained behind last night after another vicious, criminal raid by the murderers, masquerading as cattlemen, who raided the peaceful, sleeping settlement on Squaw Creek.

  Ephraim Hershman, 52 years old, was shot down in defense of his home by gunmen from the Chet Lee and Ryerson ranches when they raided Squaw Valley last night. Two other men were wounded, while young Billy Hedrow, 3 years old, was severely cut by flying glass when the night riders shot out the windows…

  Dan Riggs was angry and it showed all the way through the news and in the editorial adjoining. In a scathing attack he named names and bitterly assailed the ranchers for their tactics, demanding intervention by the territorial governor.

  Ryerson came stamping out to the bunkhouse, his eyes hard and angry. “Come on!” he yelled. “We’re going in and show that durned printer where he gets off. Come on! Mount up!”

  Chet Lee was just arriving in town when the cavalcade from the Ryerson place hit the outskirts of Bradshaw. It was broad daylight, but the streets of the town were empty and deserted.

  Chet Lee was thirty-five, tough as a boot, and with skin like a sun-baked hide. His eyes were cruel, his lips thin and ugly. He shoved Riggs aside and his men went into the print shop, wrecked the hand press, threw the type out into the street, and smashed all the windows out of the shop. Nobody made a move to harm Dan Riggs, who stood pale and quiet at one side. He said nothing to any of them until the end, and then it was to Ryerson.

  “What good do you think this will do?” he asked quietly. “You can’t stop people from thinking. You can’t throttle the truth. In the end it always comes out. Grimes and Leason were shot in fights, but that last night was wanton murder and destruction of property.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Ryerson flared. “You’re getting off lucky.”

  Lee’s little eyes brightened suddenly. “Maybe,” he said, “a rope is what this feller needs!”

  Dan Riggs looked at Lee without shifting an inch. “It would be like you to think of that,” he said, and Lee struck him across the mouth.

  Riggs got slowly to his feet, blood running down his lips. “You’re fools,” he said quietly. “You don’t seem to realize that, if you can destroy the property of others, they can destroy it for you. Or do you realize that when any freedom is destroyed for others, it is destroyed for you, too? You’ve wrecked my shop, ruined my press. Tyrants and bullies have always tried that sort of thing, especially when they are in the wrong.”

  Nobody said anything. Ryerson’s face was white and stiff, and Krag felt suddenly uneasy. Riggs might be a fool but he had courage. It had been a rotten thing for Chet Lee to hit him when he couldn’t fight back.

  “We fought for the right of a free press and free speech back in ’Seventy-Six,” Dan Riggs persisted. “Now you would try to destroy the free press because it prints the truth about you. I tell you now, you’ll not succeed.”

  They left him standing there among the ruins of his printing shop and all he owned in the world, and then they walked to the Palace for a drink. Ryerson waved them to the bar.

  “Drinks are on me!” he said. “Drink up!”

  Krag Moran edged around the crowd and stopped at Ryerson’s elbow. “Got my money, boss?” he asked quietly. “I’ve had enough.”

  Ryerson’s eyes hardened. “What kind of talk is that?”

  Chet Lee had turned his head and was staring hard at Moran. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “I’m not a fool. I’m quitting. I want my money. I’ll have no part in that sort of thing this morning. It was a mean, low trick.”

  “You pointing any part of that remark at me?” Lee turned carefully, his flat, wicked eyes on Krag. “I want to know.”

  “I’m not hunting trouble.” Krag spoke flatly. “I spoke my piece. You owe me forty bucks, Ryerson.”

  Ryerson dug his hand into his pocket and slapped two gold eagles on the bar. “That pays you off. Now get out of the country. I want no part of turncoats. If you’re around here after twenty-four hours, I’ll hunt you down like a dog.”

  Krag had turned away. Now he smiled faintly. “Why, sure. I reckon you would. Well, for your information, Ryerson, I’ll be here.”

  Before they could reply, he strode from the room. Chet Lee stared after him. “I never had no use for that saddle tramp, anyway.”

  Ryerson bit the end off his
cigar. His anger was cooling and he was disturbed. Krag was a solid man. Despite Lee, he knew that. Suddenly he was disturbed—or had it been ever since he saw Dan Riggs’s white, strained face? Gloomily he stared down at his whiskey. What was wrong with him? Was he getting old? He glanced at the harsh face of Chet Lee—why wasn’t he as sure of himself as Lee? Weren’t they here first? Hadn’t they cut hay in the valley for four years? What right had the nesters to move in on them?

  Krag Moran walked outside and shoved his hat back on his head. Slowly he built a smoke. Why, he was a damned fool! He had put himself right in the middle by quitting. Now he would be fair game for Leason’s friends, with nobody to stand beside him. Well, that would not be new. He had stood alone before he came here, and he could again.

  He looked down the street. Dan Riggs was squatted in the street, picking up his type. Slowly Krag drew on his cigarette, then he took it from his lips and snapped it into the gutter. Riggs looked up as his shadow fell across him. His face was still dark with bitterness.

  Krag nodded at it. “Can you make that thing work again? The press, I mean.”

  Riggs stared at the wrecked machine. “I doubt it,” he said quietly. “It was all I had, too. They think nothing of wrecking a man’s life.”

  Krag squatted beside him and picked up a piece of the type and carefully wiped off the sand. “You made a mistake,” he said quietly. “You should have had a gun on your desk.”

  “Would that have stopped them?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m glad I didn’t have it. Although”—there was a flicker of ironic humor in his eyes—“sometimes I don’t feel peaceful. There was a time this afternoon when if I’d had a gun…”

  Krag chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “I see what you mean. Now let’s get this stuff picked up. If we can get that press started, we’ll do a better job…and this time I’ll be standing beside you.”

  Two days later the paper hit the street, and copies of it swiftly covered the country.

  BIG RANCHERS WRECK JOURNAL PRESS Efforts of the big ranchers of the Squaw Creek Valley range to stifle the free press have proved futile.…

  There followed the complete story of the wrecking of the press and the threats to Dan Riggs. Following that was a rehash of the two raids on the nesters, the accounts of the killings of Grimes and Leason, and the warning to the state at large that a full-scale cattle war was in the making unless steps were taken to prevent it.

  Krag Moran walked across the street to the saloon, and the bartender shook his head at him. “You’ve played hob,” he said. “They’ll lynch both of you now.”

  “No, they wont. Make mine rye.”

  The bartender shook his head. “No deal. The boss says no selling to you or Riggs.”

  Krag Moran’s smile was not pleasant. “Don’t make any mistakes, Pat,” he said quietly. “Riggs might take that. I won’t. You set that bottle out here on the bar or I’m going back after it. And don’t reach for that shotgun. If you do, I’ll part your hair with a bullet.”

  The bartender hesitated, and then reached carefully for the bottle. “It ain’t me, Krag,” he objected. “It’s the boss.”

  “Then you tell the boss to tell me.” Krag poured a drink, tossed it off, and walked from the saloon.

  When Moran crossed the street, there was a sorrel mare tied in front of the shop. He glanced at the brand and felt his mouth go dry. He pushed open the door and saw her standing there in the half shadow—and Dan Riggs was gone.

  “He needed coffee,” Carol said quietly. “I told him I’d stay until you came back.”

  He looked at her and felt something moving deep within him, an old feeling that he had known only in the lonesome hours when he had found himself wanting someone, something—and this was it.

  “I’m back.” She still stood there. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  She started to speak, and then they heard the rattle of hoofs in the street and suddenly he turned and watched the sweeping band of riders come up the street and stop before the shop. Chet Lee was there, and he had a rope.

  Krag Moran glanced at Carol. “Better get out of here,” he said. “This will be rough.” And then he stepped outside.

  They were surprised and looked it. Krag stood there with his thumbs hooked in his belt, his eyes running over them. “Hi,” he said easily. “You boys figure on using that rope?”

  “We figure on hanging an editor,” Ryerson said harshly.

  Krag’s eyes rested on the old man for an instant. “Ryerson,” he said evenly, “you keep out of this. I have an idea, if Chet wasn’t egging you on, you’d not be in this. I’ve also an idea that all this trouble centers around one man, and that man is Chet Lee.”

  Lee sat his horse with his eyes studying Krag carefully. “And what of it?” he asked.

  Riggs came back across the street. In his hand he held a borrowed rifle, and his very manner of holding it proved he knew nothing about handling it. As he stepped out in front of the cattlemen, Carol Duchin stepped from the print shop. “As long as you’re picking on unarmed men and helpless children,” she said clearly, “you might as well fight a woman, too.”

  Lee was shocked. “Carol! What are you doin’ here? You’re cattle!”

  “That’s right, Chet. I run some cows. I’m also a woman. I know what a home means to a woman. I know what it meant to Missus Hershman to lose her husband. I’m standing beside Riggs and Moran in this…all the way.”

  “Carol!” Lee protested angrily. “Get out of there! This is man’s work! I won’t have it!”

  “She does what she wants to, Chet,” Krag said, “but you’re going to fight me.”

  Chet Lee’s eyes came back to Krag Moran. Suddenly he saw it there, plain as day. This man had done what he had failed to do; he had won. It all boiled down to Moran. If he was out of the way…

  “Boss”—it was one of Ryerson’s men—“look out.”

  Ryerson turned his head. Three men from the nester outfit stood ranged at even spaces across the street. Two of them held shotguns, one a Spencer rifle. “There’s six more of us on the roofs!” Hedrow called down. “Anytime you want to start your play, Krag, just open the ball.”

  Ryerson shifted in his saddle. He was suddenly sweating, and Krag Moran could see it. Nevertheless, Moran’s attention centered itself on Chet Lee. The younger man’s face showed his irritation and his rage at the futility of his position. Stopped by the presence of Carol, he was now trapped by the presence of the nesters.

  “There’ll be another day!” He was coldly furious. “This isn’t the end!”

  Krag Moran looked at him carefully. He knew all he needed to know about the man he faced. Chet Lee was a man driven by a passion for power. Now it was the nesters, later it would be Ryerson, and then, unless she married him, Carol Duchin. He could not be one among many; he could not be one of two. He had to stand alone.

  “You’re mistaken, Chet,” Moran said. “It ends here.”

  Chet Lee’s eyes swung back to Krag. For the first time he seemed to see him clearly. A slow minute passed before he spoke. “So that’s the way it is?” he said softly.

  “That’s the way it is. Right now you can offer your holdings to Ryerson. I know he has the money to buy them. Or you can sell out to Carol, if she’s interested. But you sell out, Chet. You’re the troublemaker here. With you gone, I think Ryerson and Hedrow could talk out a sensible deal.”

  “I’ll talk,” Hedrow said quietly, “and I’ll listen.”

  Ryerson nodded. “That’s good for me. And I’ll buy, Chet. Name a price.”

  Chet Lee sat perfectly still. “So that’s the way it is?” he repeated. “And if I don’t figure to sell?”

  “Then we take your gun and start you out of town,” Krag said quietly.

  Lee nodded. “Yeah, I see. You and Ryerson must have had this all figured out. A nice way to do me out of my ranch. And your quitting was all a fake.”

  “There was no plan,” Moran said calmly
. “You’ve heard what we have to say. Make your price. You’ve got ten minutes to close a deal or ride out without a dime.”

  Chet Lee’s face did not alter its expression. “I see,” he said. “But suppose something happens to you, Krag? Then what? Who here could make me toe the line? Or gamble I’d not come back?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Krag spoke quietly. “You see, Chet, I know your kind.”

  “Well”—Chet shrugged, glancing around—“I guess you’ve got me.” He looked at Ryerson. “Fifty thousand?”

  “There’s not that much in town. I’ll give you twelve, and that’s just ten thousand more than you hit town with.”

  “Guess I’ve no choice,” Chet said. “I’ll take it.” He looked at Krag. “All right if we go to the bank?”

  “All right.”

  Chet swung his horse to the right, but, as he swung the horse, he suddenly slammed his right spur into the gelding’s ribs. The bay sprang sharply left, smashing into Riggs and knocking him down. Only Krag’s quick leap backwards against the print shop saved him from going down, too. As he slammed home his spur, Chet grabbed for his gun. It came up fast and he threw a quick shot that splashed Krag Moran’s face with splinters, then he swung his horse and shot, almost point-blank, into Krag’s face.

  But Moran was moving as the horse swung, and, as the horse swung left, Moran moved away. The second shot blasted past his face and then his own guns came up and he fired two quick shots. So close was Chet Lee that Krag heard the slap of the bullets as they thudded into his ribs below the heart.

  Lee lost hold of his gun and slid from the saddle, and the horse, springing away, narrowly missed stepping on his face.

  Krag Moran stood over him, looking down. Riggs was climbing shakily to his feet, and Chet was alive yet, staring at Krag.

  “I told you I knew your kind, Chet,” Krag said quietly. “You shouldn’t have tried it.”

  Carol Duchin was in the café when Krag Moran crossed the street. He had two drinks under his belt and he was feeling them, which was rare for him. Yet he hadn’t eaten and he could not remember when he had.