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  Pagones, his heavy head thrust forward on his thick neck, stared into the fire, somber, brooding. He turned and looked at Satterfield and Crockett.

  “Well,” he said, “it looks bad. Looks like we’re in a fight whether we want it or not. Hardy Bishop hasn’t bothered us none, even after all of Mort Harper’s preaching about him. Now Zapata has killed one of his men.”

  “That Red feller,” Satterfield muttered, half to himself, “he don’t look like no man to have trouble with. Nor Bat, neither.”

  “Where does Rock stand?” Pagones demanded. “That’s what I’m wonderin’.”

  “Said he was ridin’ for Bishop,” Satterfield replied. “That’s plain enough.”

  “If we’d listened to him, this wouldn’t have happened,” Mary said.

  There was no reply to that. The three men stood quietly, listening to Dud Kitchen’s heavy breathing. The rap at the door startled them, and they looked up to see Rock Bannon standing there.

  Sharon drew in her breath, and she watched him, wide-eyed, as he stepped into the room and closed the door after him. Hat in hand, his eyes strayed from them to the wounded man lying in the bed.

  How tall he was! And his shoulders had seemed to fill the door when he entered. He wore buckskin trousers tucked into hand-tooled star boots and a checked shirt with a buckskin jacket, Mexican fashion, over it. On his hips were two big Dragoon Colts in tied-down holsters.

  “He hurt bad?” he asked softly.

  “Yes, but Satterfield says he’s got a chance,” Mary replied.

  Rock Bannon turned to look at them. “Well,” he said, “you saw me ride in here today. You know I’m riding for Bishop. From what’s happened, I reckon you know that war’s been declared. You’ve got to make up your mind whose side you are on. I talked Hardy Bishop into letting you stay on against his better judgment. He was all for running you off pronto, not because he had anything against you, but because he could see settlers getting a toehold in his domain.

  “Now one of our boys has been killed. Even Bishop might have trouble holding the boys back after that. I’ve talked to ’em, and they want the guilty man. They don’t care about nobody else. What happens now is up to you.”

  “Not necessarily,” Pagones objected. “We’ll call a vote on it.”

  “You know how that’ll go,” Bannon objected. “Ten of you came in here with Mort Harper. Then he brought in Kies and Zapata. Now he’s got other men. Supposing you three vote to turn over the guilty man. How many others will vote that way? Cap may think right, but Cap will vote pretty much as Harper says. So will Purcell and Lamport. Any way you look at it, the vote is going to be to fight rather than turn Zapata over.”

  “No way to be sure of that,” Satterfield objected. “Harper may decide to turn him over.”

  Bannon turned, his temper flaring. “Haven’t you learned anything on this trip? Harper’s using you. He brought you down here for his own reasons. He’s out to steal Bishop’s Valley from Hardy … that’s what he wants. You’re just a bunch of dupes!”

  “You got any proof of that?” Crockett demanded.

  “Only my eyes,” Rock admitted, “but that’s enough. He owns every one of you, lock, stock, and barrel. I heard about that matter of you being in debt to Kies. Don’t you suppose he planned all that?”

  The door opened and Mulholland came in. With him was Collins, the blacksmith. Cap’s face flushed when he saw Rock.

  “You’d better light out. If Pete Zapata sees you, he’ll kill you.”

  “That might not be so easy,” Bannon said sharply. “All men don’t die easy. Nor do they knuckle under to the first smooth talker who sells them a bill of goods.”

  Mulholland glared at him. “He promised us places, and we got ’em. Who’s this Bishop to run us off? If it comes to war, then we’ll fight.”

  “And die for Morton Harper? Do you think he’ll let you keep what you have if he gets control of this valley? He’ll run you out of here without a penny. You’re his excuse, that’s all. If the law ever comes into this, he can always say that Bishop used violence to stop free American citizens from settling on the land.”

  “That’s just what he’s doin’,” Cap said. “If he wants war, he can have it!”

  “Then I’d better go,” Rock said. “I came here hoping to make some peace talk. It looks like Zapata declared war for you. Now you’ve got to fight Mort Harper’s war for him.”

  “You were one of us once,” Pagones said. “You helped us on the trail. Why can’t you help us now?”

  Rock Bannon looked up. His eyes hesitated on Sharon’s face, and then swept on. “Because you’re on the wrong side,” he said simply.

  Sharon looked up and her eyes flashed.

  “But you were one of us,” she protested. “You should be with us now. Don’t you understand loyalty?”

  “I was never one of you after Mort Harper came,” he said. Sharon flushed under his gaze. “Whatever I might have been, Harper took away from me. I ain’t a smooth-talking man. Guess I never rightly learned to say all I feel, but sometimes them that says little feels a sight more.” He put one hand on the latch. “As for loyalty, my first loyalty’s to Hardy Bishop,” he said.

  “But how could that be?” Sharon protested.

  “He’s my father,” Rock said quietly, and then he stepped quickly and silently out the door.

  “His father!” Pagones stared after him. “Well, I’ll be danged!”

  “That don’t cut any ice with me,” Mulholland said. “Nor his talk. I got the place I want, and I aim to keep it. Harper says there ain’t any way they can drive us off. He says we’ve got guns enough to hold our own, and this cañon ain’t so easy to attack. I’m glad it’s comin’ to a showdown. We might as well get it over.”

  “All I want is to get to work,” Collins said stubbornly. “I got a sight of it ahead, so if that Bishop aims to drive me off, I wish he’d come and get it over with.”

  “All that talk about him using us,” Satterfield said uneasily. “That didn’t make sense.”

  “Of course not!” Cap said hotly. “Bannon was against everything we tried to do, right from the start. He just never had no use for Mort Harper, that was all.”

  “Maybe there is something to what he says,” Sharon interposed.

  Cap glanced around irritably. “Beggin’ your pardon, Sharon. This is man’s talk.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she flashed. “We women came across the plains with you. If we fight, my father may die. That makes it important to me, and if you think I’m going to stand by and let my home be turned into a shambles, you’re wrong.”

  Her father started to speak, but she stepped forward. “Bannon said Harper was using you. Well, maybe he is and maybe he isn’t, but there are a few things I’d like you to think about, because I’ve been thinking about them.

  “Did Mort Harper look for this town site? No, he rode right to it, and to me that means he had planned it before. What affair was it of his which trail we took? Yet he persuaded us, and we came down here. Who got us to stay? It was him. I’ll admit, I wanted to stay … and most of us did … but I’m wondering if he didn’t count on that. And what about those wagons of supplies that turned up just at the right time?”

  “Why, they just follered him on from the fort,” Mulholland protested.

  “Did they?” Sharon asked. “Go up and look at the trail. Mary and I looked at it, and no wagons have come over it since we did. Anyway, would he let those wagons come across that Indian country without more protection than they had? Those wagons were already here, waiting for us. They were back up in a cañon northeast of the trail.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Collins said.

  “Go look for yourselves then,” Sharon said.

  “You sound like you are against us,” Cap said. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “I’m on the side of the wagon train people, and you know it,” she said. “But a lot of this doesn’t look too good to me. The fir
st day we were here I rode down in the valley with Mort, and he said something that had me wondering, something about taking it for himself.”

  “Don’t make sense,” Cap said stubbornly. “Anyway, womenfolk don’t know about things like this.”

  Sharon was angry. In spite of herself, and knowing her anger only made Cap more stubborn, she said: “You didn’t think there were any Indians, either. You took Mort’s word for that. If it hadn’t been for Bannon, we’d have all been killed.”

  She turned quickly and went out of the cabin. Swinging into the saddle, she started across toward her own cabin. It was dark, and she could see the light in the saloon and the lights in Collins’s blacksmith shop, where his wife and little Davy would be waiting for him to return.

  Angry, she paid little attention where she was going until suddenly a horseman loomed in the dark near her. “Howdy,” he said, swinging alongside.

  From his voice and bulk she knew him at once as Hy Miller, a big teamster who sometimes served as relief bartender. He had been drinking and his breath was thick.

  She tried to push on, but he reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t be in no such hurry,” he said, leering at her in the dimness. “I want to have a bit of palaver with you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to talk to you!” she said angrily. She tried to jerk her wrist away, but he only tightened his grip. Then he pulled her to him and slid his other arm around her waist. She struggled, and her mare side-stepped, pulling her from the saddle.

  Miller dropped her, and then slid from his own horse and grabbed her before she could escape. “I’ll learn you a thing or two!” he said hoarsely. “It’s about time you settlers were learnin’ who’s runnin’ this shebang.”

  What happened next, Sharon scarcely knew. She was suddenly wrenched from Miller’s arms. She heard the crack of a blow, and Miller went down into the grass underfoot.

  “Run for the house!” It was Bannon’s voice. “Quick!”

  Miller came up with an oath, and she saw him charge. Bannon smashed his left into the big teamster’s mouth and staggered him, but the man leaped in, swinging with both hands. There was no chance for science or skill. In the dimness the two men fought like animals, tooth and nail, yet Bannon kept slamming his right to the bigger man’s stomach. The teamster coughed and gasped, and then Rock swung a right to his chin that staggered him, and followed it up with a right and a left. Miller went down, and Bannon stooped and grasped his shirt collar in his left hand.

  Holding the man at arm’s length in a throttling grip, Bannon smashed him in the face again and again. Then he struck him in the body, and hurled him to the ground.

  Sharon, wide-eyed and panting, still stood there. “Get to your house,” Bannon snapped. “Tell your father to go armed, always. This is only the beginning.”

  As she fled, swiftly mounting her horse, somebody said: “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?”

  Behind her, there was a pound of horse’s hoofs, and she knew Rock was gone. Swiftly, when she reached the house, she stripped the saddle from the mare and turned her in the corral. Then she went into the house and lighted the lamp. A few minutes later, her father came in. She told him all that had happened.

  He stood there, resting his fists on the table. Then he straightened.

  “Honey,” he said, “I’m afraid I did wrong to stop here. I wish now I’d gone on with Bob Sprague and the others. They’d be ’most to California by now. I’m afraid … I’m afraid!”

  Chapter Five

  Rock Bannon stopped that night in a line cabin six miles west of Poplar and across the valley. When morning came, he was just saddling up when Bat Chavez rode in. With him were Johnny Stark and Lew Murray. All three were armed.

  Bat grinned at him. Then his eyes fell on the skinned knuckles, and he chuckled.

  “Looks like you had some action.”

  “A little,” Rock said, and then explained briefly. “You watch yourselves,” he said, “and stick together. That outfit’s out for trouble.”

  “All I want’s a shot at Zapata,” Bat said harshly. “I’ll kill him if I get it.”

  Rock mounted and rode north toward the ranch house. No act of his could avert trouble now. He had hoped to convince the settlers who came with the wagon train that they should break away from Mort Harper.

  That would draw the lines plainly—the ranch against the land-grabbers. That Mulholland was an honest if stupid man, he knew. The others of the train, to a man, were honest, but some of them, such as Purcell and Lamport, were firm adherents of Harper’s and believed in him. This belief they combined with a dislike of Rock Bannon.

  It had been a hard task to persuade Hardy Bishop to let them stay. The old man was a fire-eater, and he knew what it would mean to let settlers get a toehold in his rich valley. Once in, they would encroach more and more on his best range until he was crowded back to nothing. Only his affection for Rock had convinced him, and the fact that he had gleaned from Rock’s talk that among the settlers was a girl.

  Rock Bannon knew what the old man was thinking. Lonely, hard-bitten, and tough, Bishop was as affectionate as many big bearlike men are. His heart was as big and warm as himself, and from the day he had taken Rock Bannon in when the boy had been orphaned at six, when Kaw Indians had killed his parents, Bishop had lived as much for Bannon as for his ranch. Now, more than anything, he wanted Rock settled, married, and living on the broad acres of Bishop’s Valley.

  It had been that as much as anything that had brought him around to Rock’s way of thinking when Rock had planned to go east to Council Bluffs. Secretly he had hoped the boy would come back with a wife; certainly, there were no women around Bishop’s Valley but an occasional squaw. He had never seen this girl with the wagon train, but he had gleaned more than a little from Rock’s casual comments, and what he heard pleased him.

  Hardy Bishop was a big man, weighing nearly three hundred pounds now that he was heavy around the middle. Yet in the days of his raw youth he had tipped the beam at no less than two hundred and fifty pounds. On his hip even the big Dragoon Colts looked insignificant, and he was scarcely less fast than Rock.

  Seated deep in a cowhide-covered chair, he looked up when Rock came in, and grinned. He was just filling his pipe. There was a skinned place on Bannon’s cheek bone, and his knuckles were raw.

  “Trouble, you’ve had,” Bishop said, his deep voice filling the room. “Been over to look at them settlers again? Think they killed Wes?”

  “Not the settlers,” Rock said. “One of the men with them.”

  He sat down on the butt of a log and quietly outlined the whole situation, explaining about Harper, Zapata, and the teamsters.

  “They had that stuff cached in the hills,” Rock went on. “Red Lunney spotted it some time back. There were about a dozen men holed up back there with a lot of supplies, too many for themselves. He kept an eye on them, but they didn’t wander around and made no trouble, so he left them alone.

  “Evidently Mort Harper had them planted there. The wagon train, as near as I can figure, he planned to use as a blind in case the government got into this. He could always say they were honest settlers looking for homes, and the government would be inclined to favor them. What he really wants is Bishop’s Valley.”

  “He’ll have a time gettin’ it,” Bishop said grimly. “I’ll bank on that. I fought Indians all over these hills, but this here valley I bought fair and square from old War Cloud. We never had no Indian trouble until lately, when the wagon trains started comin’ through. Those Mormons, they had the right idea. Treat Indians good, pay for what you get, and no shootin’ Indians for the fun of it, like some folks do. Why, Rock, I trapped all over these here mountains. Lived with Indians, trapped with them, hunted with them, slept in their teepees. I never had trouble with them. I was through this country with Wilson Price Hunt’s Astorians when I was no more’n sixteen, but a man growed. I was with John Day in this country after that, and he saw more of it than any other man.

>   “Took me two years to drive these cattle in here. First ever seen in this country. I drove them up from Santa Fe in six or seven of the roughest drives any man ever saw, with Indians doin’ most of my drivin’ for me. They said I was crazy then, but now my cattle run these hills and they eat this valley grass until their sides are fit to bust. One of these days you’ll start drivin’ these cattle east. Mark my words, there’ll come a day they’ll make you rich. And then some whippersnapper like this Harper … why!” He rubbed his jaw irritably, and then looked up at Rock. “You see that girl? That Crockett girl?”

  “Uhn-huh,” Rock admitted. “I did.”

  “Why not stop this here cayusin’ around and bring her home, Son? Time you took a wife. Ain’t no sense in a man runnin’ loose too long. I did, and then hadn’t my wife very long before she died. Fine girl, too.”

  “Hardy,” Rock said suddenly, calling him by his first name as he had since Bishop first took him in hand as a child, “I don’t want war with those people. They are asking for it, and that Mulholland is simple enough to be led by the nose by Harper. Why don’t you let me go get Zapata? I’ll take him on myself. In fact,” he added grimly, “I’d like to. Then we can take some of the boys, get Harper and his teamsters, and start them out of here.”

  “Separate the sheep from the goats, eh?” Bishop looked at him quizzically. “All right, Son. I’ve gone along with you this long. You take the boys, you get that Harper out of there, and start him back for Laramie.

  “As for Zapata, do what you like. I’ve seen some men with guns, and you’re the fastest thing I ever did see, and the best shot. But don’t leave him alive. If I had my way, we’d string every one of ’em to a poplar tree, and right quick.”

  The old man grinned briefly at Bannon, leaned back, and lighted his pipe. So far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

  *

  Bat Chavez was a man who made his own plans and went his own way. Loyal to the greatest degree, he obeyed Rock Bannon and Hardy Bishop without question. They were his bosses, and he liked and respected them both. However, he had another loyalty, and that was to the memory of Wes Freeman.