Collection 2008 - Big Medicine (v5.0) Page 4

  Barron’s eyes narrowed. “Play rough, don’t they?” He looked at Riddle. “What are you goin to do?”

  “You don’t see me out there runnin’ down the road, do you?” Riddle said. “I’m sittin’ tight!”

  “Wash your face off, then,” Dusty suggested, “an’ we’ll eat!”

  “You go ahead,” Riddle replied. “I’ll be along.” Dusty glanced back over his shoulder as he left and saw Blue Riddle hiking toward the Indian huts that clustered outside of Pie Town.

  When he rode out of town an hour later, Dusty Barron was not feeling overly optimistic. Riddle had stayed behind only at Dusty’s insistence, but now that Dusty was headed toward Lowe’s ranch, he no longer felt so confident. Dick Lowe was not a man to give up easily, nor to yield his ranch or any part of it without a fight. The pistol-whipping of Riddle had been ample evidence of the lengths to which he was prepared to go.

  The range through which Dusty rode was good. This was what he had wanted to see. How they might have bargained in town he was not sure. He doubted if anyone there would interfere if a deal was made by him. It was his own problem to see that Ruth and Billy Grant got a fair deal, and that could not be done unless he knew something, at least, of the ranch and the stock.

  Dusty was quite sure now that Lowe had never expected the consumptive Roger Grant to come West and claim his piece of the ranch. Nor had he planned to give it to him if he had. He knew very well that he himself was riding into the lion’s mouth, but felt he could depend on his own abilities and that Lowe would not go too far after his talk before the bystanders who had been in the saloon. By now Lowe would know that the story would be known to all his enemies in Pie Town.

  Cat McQuill was loafing on the steps when Dusty rode up, and the gunman’s eyes gleamed with triumph at seeing him. “Howdy,” he said affably. “Come on in. The boss is waitin’ for you.”

  Bugle Nose Bender was leaning against the fireplace and Lowe was seated at his desk. “Here he is, boss!” McQuill said as they entered.

  Lowe glanced up sharply. “Where’s the agreement?” he asked, holding out his hand.

  Barron handed it to him, and the rancher opened it, took a quick look, and then glanced up. “This is it, Cat!”

  Too late Dusty heard the slide of gun on leather and whirled to face McQuill, but the pistol barrel crashed down over the side of his head and he hit the floor. Even as he fell, he realized what a fool he had been, yet he had been so sure they would talk a little, at least, that Lowe would try to run a blazer or to buy him off cheap.

  Bender lunged toward him and kicked him in the ribs. Then Lowe reached over and, jerking him to his knees, struck him three times in the face. The pistol barrel descended again and drove him down into a sea of blackness.

  How long they had pounded him, he had no idea. When he opened his eves, he struggled, fighting his way to a realization of where he was. It took him several minutes to understand that he was almost standing on his head in the road, one foot caught in the stallion’s stirrup!

  The steel-dust, true to his training, was standing rigidly in the road, his head turned to look at his master. “Easy boy,” Dusty groaned. “Easy does it.” Twisting his foot in the stirrup, he tried to free it, but to no avail.

  He realized what they had planned. After beating him, they had brought him out here, wedged his foot in the stirrup, struck the horse, and, when he started to move, ridden hastily away before they could be seen. Most horses, frightened by the unfamiliar burden in the stirrup, would have raced away over the desert and dragged him to death. It had happened to more than one unwary cowhand.

  They had reckoned without the steel-dust. The stallion had been reared by Dusty Barron from a tiny colt, and the two had never been long apart. The big horse had known instantly that something was radically wrong and had gone only a little way, and then stopped. His long training told him to stand, and he stood stock-still.

  Dusty twisted his foot again but couldn’t get loose. Nor could he pull himself up and get hold of the stirrup and so into the saddle. He was still trying this when hoof beats sounded on the road.

  He looked around wildly, fearful of Lowe’s return. Then a wave of relief went over him. It was Blue Riddle!

  “Hey!” Blue exclaimed. “What the heck happened?” He swung down from his horse and hastily extricated Dusty from his predicament.

  Barron explained. “They wanted me killed, so it would look like I was dragged to death. Lucky they got away from here in a hurry, afraid they might be seen.”

  “But they got the agreement!” Riddle protested.

  “Uhn-uh.” Barron grinned, and then gasped as his bruised face twinged with pain. “That was a copy. I put the agreement down an’ traced over it. He took a quick look and thought it was the real thing. Now we got to get to town before he realizes what happened.”

  Despite his battered and bruised body and the throbbing of his face, Dusty crawled into the saddle and they raced up the road to Pie Town.

  Two men were standing on the hotel porch as they rode up. One of them glanced at Dusty Barron. “Howdy. Young woman inside wants to see you.”

  Dusty rushed into the lobby and stopped in surprise. Facing him was Ruth Grant, holding Billy by the hand, but her smile fled when she saw his face. “Oh!” she cried. “What’s happened to you?”

  Briefly he explained. Then he demanded: “How’d you get here?”

  “After you left,” Ruth told him, “I was worried. After Father’s death and the trouble we had before you came, there was no time to think of anything, and I had to always be thinking of where we would go and what we would do. Then I remembered a comment Father made once. You see, Mister Lowe left a trunk with us to bring West or send to him later. It wasn’t quite full, so Father opened it to pack some other things in it. He found something there that worried him a great deal, and he told me several times that he was afraid he might have trouble when we got out here. From all he said I had an idea what he found, so after you were gone, we searched through the trunk and found some letters and a handbill offering a five-thousand-dollar reward for Lowe. Why he kept them I can’t imagine, but the sheriff says some criminals are very vain and often keep such things about themselves.”

  “And then you rode on here?”

  She nodded. “We met two men who were trailing you, and, as they had extra horses with them so they could travel fast, we joined them.”

  Dusty’s face tightened. “Men looking for me?” Riddle interrupted. “Dick Lowe’s ridin’ into town now!”

  Dusty Barron turned, loosening his guns. He started for the door.

  “I’m in on this, too!” Riddle said, trailing him. They walked out on the porch and stepped down into the street, spreading apart. Dick Lowe and his two henchmen had dismounted and were starting into the saloon when something made them glance up the street.

  “Lowe!” Dusty yelled. “You tried to kill me, an’ I’m comin’ for you!”

  Dick Lowe’s hard face twisted with fury as he wheeled, stepping down into the dust.

  He stopped in the street, and Cat McQuill and Bender moved out to either side.

  Dusty Barron walked steadily down the street, his eyes on Dick Lowe. All three men were dangerous, but Lowe was the man he wanted, and Lowe was the man he intended to get first.

  “This man’s an outlaw!” he said, speaking to Bender and McQuill. “He’s wanted for murder in Saint Louis! If you want out, get out now!”

  “You’re lying!” Bender snarled.

  Dusty Barron walked on. The sun was bright in the street, and little puffs of dust arose at every step. There were five horses tied to the hitch rail behind the three men. He found himself hoping none of them would be hit by a stray shot. To his right was Blue Riddle, walking even with him, his big hands hovering over his guns.

  His eyes clung to Dick Lowe, riveted there as though he alone lived in the world. He could see the man drop into a half crouch, noticed the bulge of the tobacco sack in his breast pocket
, the buttons down the two sides of his shirt. Under the brim of the hat he could see the straight bar of the man’s eyebrows and the hard gleam of the eyes beneath, and then suddenly the whole tableau dissolved into flaming, shattering action.

  Lowe’s hand flashed for his gun and Dusty’s beat him by a hair’s breadth, but Dusty held his fire, lifting the gun slowly. Lowe’s quick shot flamed by his ear, and he winced inwardly at the proximity of death. Then the gunman fired again and the bullet tugged impatiently at his vest. He drew a long breath and squeezed off a shot, then another.

  Lowe rose on tiptoes, opened his mouth widely as if to gasp for breath, seemed to hold himself there for a long moment, and then pitched over into the street.

  Dusty’s gun swung with his eyes and he saw Bender was down on his knees, and so he opened up on McQuill. The cat man jerked convulsively, and then began to back away, his mouth working and his gun hammering. The man’s gun stopped firing, and he stared at it, pulled the trigger again, and then reached for a cartridge from his belt.

  Barron stood, spraddle-legged, in the street and saw Cat’s hand fumble at his belt. The fingers came out with a cartridge and moved toward the gun, and then his eyes glazed and he dropped his iron. Turning, as though the whole affair had slipped his mind, he started for the saloon. He made three steps, and then lifted his foot, seemed to feel for the saloon step, and fell like a log across the rough board porch.

  Blue Riddle was on his knees, blood staining a trouser leg. Bender was sprawled out in the dust, a darkening pool forming beneath him.

  Suddenly the street was filled with people. Ruth ran up to Dusty and he slid his arm around her. With a shock, he remembered. “You said two men were looking for me. Who?”

  “Only us.”

  He turned, staring. Two big men were facing him, grinning. “Buck and Ben! How in tarnation did you two find me?”

  Buck Barron grinned. “We was wonderin’ what happened to you. We come to town and had a mite of a ruckus with the Hickmans. What was left of them headed for El Paso in a mighty hurry…both of ’em. Then an Injun kid come ridin’ up on a beat-up hoss and said you-all was in a sight of trouble, so we figgered we’d come along and see how you made out.”

  “An Injun?” Dusty was puzzled.

  “Yeah,” Riddle told him, “that was my doin’. I figgered you was headed for trouble, so I sent an Injun kid off after your brothers. Heck, if I’d knowed what you was like with a six-gun, I’d never have sent for ’em!”

  Ben Barron grinned and rubbed at the stubble of whis kers. “An’ if we’d knowed there was on’y three, we’d never have come!” He looked from Dusty to Ruth. “Don’t look like you’ll be comin’ home right soon with that place at Gallo Gap an’ what you’ve got your arm around. But what’ll we tell Allie?”

  “Allie?” Ruth drew away from him, eyes wide. “Who’s Allie? You didn’t tell me you had a girl!”

  Dusty winked at his brothers. “Allie? She’s war chief of the Barron tribe. Allie’s my ma.” He turned to Riddle. “Blue, how’s about you sort of keepin’ an eye on that gap place for me for a week or so? I reckon I’d better take Ruth home for a spell. Allie, she sure sets a sight of store by weddin’s.”

  Ruth’s answering pressure on his arm was all the answer he needed.

  McQueen of the Tumbling K

  Ward McQueen reined in the strawberry roan and squinted his eyes against the sun. Salty sweat made his eyes smart, and he dabbed at them with the end of a bandanna. Kim Sartain was hazing a couple of rambunctious steers back into line. Bud Fox was walking his horse up the slope to where Ward waited, watching the drive.

  Fox drew up alongside him and said: “Ward, d’you remember that old brindle ladino with the scarred hide? This here is his range, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

  “That’s one old mossyhorn I won’t forget in a hurry. He’s probably hiding back in one of the cañons. Have you cleaned them out yet?”

  “Uhn-huh, we surely have. Baldy an’ me both worked ’em, and no sign of him. Makes a body mighty curious.”

  “Yeah, I suppose you’ve got a point. It ain’t like him to be away from the action. He’d surely be down there makin’ trouble.” He paused, suddenly thoughtful. “Missed any other stock since I’ve been gone?”

  Fox shrugged. “If there’s any missin’, it can’t be more than a few head, but you can bet if that old crowbait is gone, some others went with him. He ramrods a good-sized herd all by himself.”

  Baldy Jackson joined them on the slope. He jerked his head to indicate a nearby cañon mouth. “Seen some mighty queer tracks over yonder,” he said, “like a man afoot.”

  “We’ll go have a look,” McQueen said. “A man afoot in this country? It isn’t likely.”

  He started the roan across the narrow valley, with Baldy and Bud following.

  The cañon was narrow and high walled. Parts of it were choked with brush and fallen rock, with only the winding watercourse to offer a trail. In the spreading fan of sand where the wash emptied into the valley, Baldy drew up.

  Ward looked down at the tracks Baldy indicated. “Yes, they do look odd,” said Ward. “Fixed him some homemade footgear. Wonder if that’s his blood or some critter?” Leading the roan, he followed the tracks up the dry streambed.

  After a few minutes, he halted. “He’s been hurt. Look at the tracks headed this way. Fairly long, steady stride. I’d guess he’s a tall man. But see here? Goin’ back, the steps are shorter an’ he’s staggerin’. He stopped twice in twenty yards, each time to lean against something.”

  “Reckon we’d better follow him?” Baldy looked at the jumble of boulders and crowded brush. “If he doesn’t aim to be ketched, he could make us a powerful lot of trouble.”

  “We’ll follow him anyway. Baldy, you go back an’ help the boys. Tell Kim an’ Tennessee where we’re at. Bud will stay with me. Maybe we can track him down, an’ he should be grateful. It looks like he’s hurt bad.”

  They moved along cautiously for another 100 yards. Bud Fox stopped, mopping his face. “He doesn’t figure on bein’ followed. He’s makin’ a try at losin’ his trail. Even tried to wipe out a spot of blood.”

  Ward McQueen paused and looked up the watercourse with keen, probing eyes. There was something wrong about all this. He had been riding this range for months now and believed he knew it well, yet he remembered no such man as this must be, and had seen no such tracks. Obviously the man was injured. Just as obviously he was trying, even in his weakened condition, to obliterate his trail. That meant that he expected to be followed and that those who followed were enemies.

  Pausing to study the terrain, he ran over in his mind the possibilities from among those who he knew. Who might the injured man be? And who did he fear?

  They moved on, working out the trail in the close, hot air of the cañon. The tracks split suddenly and disappeared on a wide ledge of stone where the cañon divided into two.

  “We’re stuck,” Fox said. “He won’t leave tracks with those makeshift shoes of his, and there’s nowhere he can go up the cañons.”

  The right-hand branch ended in a steep, rocky slide, impossible to climb without hours of struggle, and the left branch ended against the sheer face of a cliff against whose base lay a heaped-up pile of boulders and rocky debris.

  “He may have doubled back or hidden in the brush,” Fox added.

  Ward shrugged. “Let’s go back. He doesn’t want to be found, but hurt like he is, he’s apt to die out here without care.”

  Deliberately he had spoken loudly. Turning their mounts, they rode back down the cañon to rejoin the herd.

  Ruth Kermitt was waiting on the steps when they left the grassy bottom and rode up to the bunk -house. With her was a slender, narrow-faced man in a black frock coat. As Ward drew up, the man’s all-encompassing glance took him in, then slid away.

  “Ward, this is Jim Yount. He’s buying cattle and wants to look at the herd you just brought in.”

  “Howdy,
” Ward said agreeably. He glanced at Yount’s horse, and then at the tied-down gun.

  Two more men sat on the steps of the bunk -house. A big man in a checkered shirt and a slim redhead with a rifle across his knees.

  “We’re looking to buy five hundred to a thousand head,” Yount commented. “We heard you had good stock.”

  “Beef?”

  “No, breeding stock, mostly. We’re stockin’ a ranch. I’m locatin’ the other side of Newton’s place.”

  Ward commented: “We have some cattle. Or rather, Miss Kermitt has. I’m just the foreman.”

  “Oh?” Yount looked around at Ruth with a quick, flashing smile. “Miss, is it? Or are you a widow?”

  “Miss. My brother and I came here together, but he was killed.”

  “Hard for a young woman to run a ranch alone, isn’t it?” His smile was sympathetic.

  “Miss Kermitt does very well,” Ward replied coolly, “and she isn’t exactly alone.”

  “Oh?” Yount glanced at McQueen, one eyebrow lifted. “No,” he said after a minute, “I don’t expect you could say she was alone as long as she had cattle on the place, and cowhands.”

  Ruth got up quickly, not liking the look on Ward’s face. “Mister Yount? Wouldn’t you like some coffee? Then we can talk business.”

  When they had gone inside, Ward McQueen turned on his heel and walked to the bunk house, leading his horse. He was mad and he didn’t care who knew it. The thin-faced redhead looked at him as he drew near.

  “What’s the matter, friend? Somebody steal your girl?”

  Ward McQueen halted and turned slowly. Baldy Jackson got up quickly and moved out of line. The move put him at the corner of the bunk house, leaving Yount’s riders at the apex of a triangle of which McQueen and himself formed the two corners.