Radigan Read online

  Wall hunched his heavy shoulders under his coat. The more he saw of the situation the less he liked it, and from all he could see the ranch looked like a two-man operation, and if it started to snow.…

  “I better start some of the men scouting for grass. If we don’t find some we’ll have to drive out of here.”

  “Are you questioning my judgment?”

  Ross Wall rolled his quid in his big jaws. “You said the grass was here, an’ Miss Foley took your word for it. I hope you’re right.”

  “It’s here.”

  Harvey Thorpe looked around slowly. The open space before the mesa did not look as large now as it had when empty of cattle, and despite himself he was worried. There was other grass back in the hills, but where was it? He had expected to find well-marked trails and he could find no trails at all. From the appearance of things this was all there was to the R-Bar, yet people at San Ysidro and others at Santa Fe had said Radigan ran several hundred head on land that would support several thousand.

  “All right,” Thorpe said finally, “send out a couple of men.” He studied the house. “There’s smoke from the chimney, but it looks like a dying fire.”

  “Well-built house. They would need little fire.”

  It was growing colder. Ross Wall looked at the sky. He was a tough, hardheaded man who rode for the brand; an order from Angelina Foley was all he asked from anyone. He was the perfect feudal henchman, and as he had served her father so he now served her, and she was, he thought with satisfaction, a whole lot smarter than her father. Her father would have stayed in Texas and fought it out when there wasn’t a chance of winning, but Angelina knew when to cut and run, and what to take with her when she did. They had rustled her herds so when she left she simply drove off everything in sight.

  Personally, he thought Radigan correct in his suggestion to sell off the cattle, especially the doctored brands, of which there were too many for comfort. Holding the herd was probably Thorpe’s idea, but a man did not always know where the ideas originated for Angelina had a way of attributing ideas that were actually hers to someone else.

  He poked a stick into the fire. There was not much time. They had to get Radigan out of there, but without a killing if possible. Ross Wall held no objections to killing when every other way had been tried, or when necessity demanded, but killings had a way of stirring things up, and a man like Radigan might have many friends.

  He had not seen the beating Radigan had given Barbeau, but he had seen Barbeau afterwards and from all accounts it had been a thorough and artistic job, and it had left Barbeau a silent, hard-working man with all the bully knocked out of him for the time. Nothing he had seen of Radigan allowed him to believe that moving the man would be a simple task. He did not believe with Coker that one fast, hard-shooting rush would do it—the man inside that house was intelligent and a fighter.

  Wall had been impressed with Radigan’s manner—he did not seem to believe himself outnumbered, nor did he hesitate to handle a fight when it came to him. A hard man and a fighter himself, Wall recognized the same traits in his antagonist and respected them. Nonetheless, he had a job to do and the look of the sky bothered him.

  Born in Vermont he had come west as a child, but there lingered a memory of mornings at home when his father would come in from the barn coated with snow, and when long icicles hung from the eaves. Those winters had been cold, with a deep, penetrating cold, and men had been frozen to death in some of those winters. This was New Mexico, and he had always thought of it as a warm and pleasant place, which it was, but they were high now and the chill in the air worried him.

  Everything either Thorpe or Angelina had was tied up in that herd. Behind there was nothing but enmity and shambles, and the rustled cattle forbade their ever returning to Texas. Their only chance for survival lay right there, digging in fast. Yet he wished they would sell the herd and not gamble.

  He looked down at the thick, hard-knuckled hands he held over the fire. He was forty now, no youngster by Plains standards, and he had worked twenty years for the Foley outfit. The Old Man had been a pirate, but a genial one, and in a period of ranching and free branding he had become rich, but he made enemies along the way, and tried to take in more territory than he’d a right to.

  Angelina was smarter than her father, and cooler. When he thought about Angelina, Ross Wall worried. She was too cold, too shrewd, and she used her beauty as some men use a gun. Harvey Thorpe now…Ross had never made up his mind about Harvey. The Old Man married Harvey’s aunt and Harvey had always lived with her, and for a few years Harvey had been the Old Man’s shadow. Then he drifted away, and not much was known about those years, but when he returned he played a smart hand of poker, and he could use a gun, and once, when Ross happened on Harvey when he was changing his shirt, Ross saw bullet scars on his side—but Harvey had said nothing about them.

  The feud broke and the Old Man was killed. Harvey had acted fast. Ross never knew exactly what happened but the man that killed the Old Man was shot to death at close range in his own doorway, and when his son ran around the house, Harvey had killed him, too.

  The fighting had been sporadic for several years, but the men Harvey gathered around him were fighters rather than punchers and the ranch deteriorated while attention was given to fighting a feud they could not win, and along with it came lawless acts perpetrated by some of the men Harvey brought in. There came a time when it had ceased to be a feud with other families and had become a community matter, and word came to the ranch that vigilantes were being organized by the solid people of the community to act if the Rangers failed—and they had been sent for.

  Flight followed, and a wholesale sweep of all the cattle they encountered in moving. Ross liked none of it, but about some of those cattle there was a question of title so he had gone along. And now they were here, and inside that house was a tough man who had to be dislodged and they could not burn him out.

  He drew back his warmed hands and rolled a smoke. All through the Texas trouble he had left the fighting to Thorpe and had worked to preserve the ranch, without hands enough and without money enough. While gunhands loitered about the ranch or swaggered it in saloons, the water holes were trampled into mud, cattle died bogged down in swamps and fences torn down that allowed cattle to stray into the breaks when not actually rustled.

  Of the hands he now had only six or seven were good punchers. The others were fighting men, gunhands like Barbeau and Coker or men he suspected of cold-blooded murder like Leach.

  One thing Radigan said had stuck in his mind. The remark had been passed on to him by one of the hands. By Bitner, in fact. Radigan had said cattle could be handled on this range with few men: if that were so he might get rid of this lot they now had. Huddled near the fire, he considered that, and wondered how far he might go without trouble with Thorpe, for it was he who wanted such men about. He wanted to be rid of Coker, most of all. And after him, that troublemaker Barbeau who had driven two of his best hands to quit.

  Ross Wall got to his feet. “Going to look around,” he said, to no one in particular.

  Thorpe did not even look up as Wall walked away, but in his mind. Wall was thinking of something that had just come to him. He could be rid of Coker, and be rid of him without trouble with Thorpe. The men inside that house were good men with guns, and if Coker happened to get into an exposed position when the shooting started.…

  Angelina Foley came up the canyon at daybreak in the buckboard and left her rig at the foot of the promontory. From there she rode on up the trail on a horse provided by Wall. The cattle were still jammed tight against the door and the chimney trailed a smoke into the still morning sky. Both Wall and Thorpe sat beside her and looked at the bunched cattle. Few of them had been able to reach water or grass and they were bawling and restless.

  She shivered in the early morning air and looked enviously at the trail of smoke coming from the warm, well-built house. Then she turned her eyes from the house and surveyed the area with
puzzled eyes. “Harvey,” she said, “you told me there was grass here, grass for thousands of cattle.”

  “He’s got several hundred head somewhere,” Thorpe replied. “There are valleys around. We’ll find them.”

  “Have you looked?”

  “No luck so far,” Wall told her. “I’ve had two men scouting the country but so far not even a trail has turned up.”

  She looked at the house. “Can’t we get them out of there?”

  “We can,” Wall said reluctantly, “but we’d have to kill Radigan. Might stir up more trouble than we want.”

  “Those cattle need water,” she told them. “Drive them off. I’m going up to the house.”

  From inside the house Radigan watched the riders come down and watched them move the cattle away. When they were gone, Angelina Foley started for the house. Cautiously, Radigan opened the door. “Always nice to have guests,” he said, “get down and come in.”

  As she entered the door Ross Wall and Thorpe started forward, and Radigan put a bullet into the dirt at their horses’ feet. “You stay back,” he said, loud enough for them to hear, “we don’t want to hurt anybody.”

  He glanced at John Child who moved to the window with his Winchester.

  She stopped inside the doorway and glanced around, surprised at the neatness of the small but compact house, the shining copper kettles, the swept floor, and the inside pump, a rarity anywhere in the West of the period. It was a warm, friendly, comfortable house, and for an instant her eyes met those of Gretchen.

  This was the girl she had seen arrive on the stage, the one who had so angered her. She looked like a lovely young girl now in her simple cotton dress, standing beside the wide fireplace.

  “Will you sit down?” Gretchen suggested. “The coffee is hot.”

  Radigan seated her with all the formality of a gentleman at a fashionable dinner, and Gretchen brought a steaming cup of coffee to the table and a plate of doughnuts.

  “You live well here,” she said to Radigan. “I’m sorry you have to move.”

  “We like it here,” he commented, ignoring her remark, “and we’ve learned how to live with the country.”

  “I don’t see much grass,” she said. “I confess I believed it to be range country.”

  “You’ll find much that you don’t expect,” he assured her. “I’ve seen snow to the eaves of this house. Sometimes in the winter we have to open a tunnel to the barn so we can feed the stock.”

  She was frankly incredulous, but he continued. “It makes me wonder who could convince you that you wanted to live here, or that you could ranch here. I think there is more behind this than appears on the surface.”

  “The land is mine,” she said, “and that is the only reason we came.”

  “About that,” he tried his coffee and put it down hurriedly. It was much too hot. “Your claim is based on an Armijo grant, and he had no authority to grant land to anyone, nor did he ever have title to this land. This was part of an original grant by the King of Spain, ratified later by the government of Mexico, and still later by the government of the United States.

  “It was for years considered useless land, too far from anything and of no immediate use, so I moved in, looked it over, and bought out the original grant. You could have learned in Santa Fe that I have legal title to thirty-six sections in this area. Your grant is not and never was worth anything at all, and whatever your father gave for it it has been lost. I am sorry, but those are the facts. In court you would never have a chance.”

  She was coldly furious but her expression did not change, yet within her there was a sudden emptiness. Had her father never managed one successful thing? And why had Harvey not discovered this? Why had he not known about the scarcity of grazing land? Yet there was no turning back. There was no way back at all. She could sell her herd—yes. But the cattle were a strong argument in her favor, and an outfit moving into a country with a herd automatically garnered some degree of respect. There was no turning back.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “I wish we could settle this peacefully, Mr. Radigan, but you may be sure the case will never go to court. It will be settled right here—now.”

  She had finished her coffee. Abruptly, he got to his feet. “If that is the case, we’re wasting time,” he replied brusquely. “We’ve nothing further to discuss. I am giving you one hour to get your cattle and outfit off my land.”

  Angelina did not move. She lifted her cup and smiled at him, a radiant smile. “I am sorry we are enemies,” she said. “I’d hoped we could be friends.”

  “We can still be friends,” Gretchen suggested. “Move your cattle away and find a ranch of your own and then come back and see us.”

  “‘Us?’” she quoted. “Well!” Angelina got to her feet. “I was not aware that you had become a partner in Mr. Radigan’s ranch. Or,” she glanced meaningly from one to the other, “have you already established a claim?”

  Gretchen’s face grew pale, then flooded with color. “I have no claim,” she replied, “only my father is loyal to Tom Radigan and I hope I shall be.”

  Angelina walked to the door. “You will be,” she said. “I have no doubt of it.”

  She went outside into the cold air and for a minute she stood still, fuming inwardly. That—that little! Then she swung into the saddle. All right then, Harvey knew how to do it. Yet even as her decision was made she kept seeing the way Radigan’s dark hair curled around his ears, and the grave thoughtful expression of his eyes.

  And soon he would be dead…killed.

  No matter. He had had his chance. And there was no other way. She kept telling herself that.

  Harvey Thorpe hunched his shoulders against the cold, and glanced irritably at the gray sky. “You’re sure there isn’t another door?”

  “I looked. There was only the one.”

  “What do you think, Ross?”

  Wall shifted his weight in the saddle. “We can do it, but we’re going to lose men. No use trying it from behind. A man coming off that rock slope would get himself shot to doll rags.”

  Thorpe looked at the house. They could move into the barn and shoot into the house through the windows, but it wasn’t going to be easy. Radigan was apparently set for a siege. “We’ve got it to do,” he said.

  “Coker’s a good man with a gun,” Wall suggested. “If we could get Coker and Barbeau where they could cover the windows, we might make it too hot for them to stay in there.”

  “All right,” Thorpe swung his horse, “let’s take it.”

  Ross Wall moved swiftly. The cattle were driven into the bottoms and held in a loose herd by four men, and the others climbed into position where they could fire upon the house. Three men occupied the barn and two moved into the corrals, and there was no firing. Coker he placed among the trees to the right of the house, Barbeau to the left.

  Angelina rode back down the hill and dismounted near the fire. She extended her hands toward the flames, watching Bitner, who had remained by the fire for the time being. “You’ve seen him. What do you think about him?” she asked.

  Bitner glanced at her out of his tough, cynical eyes. “You never seen a cattle war, ma’am,” he said. “This here shapes up like a first-rate one. Man never knows when one starts as to how it will end, or where. Yes, I’ve seen him close up, and he ain’t no bargain. That there Radigan is a grizzly bear from way back in the up hills. He’ll take some killin’ an’ when he dies he won’t go by himself. I hired on for fightin’ wages. Ma’am, I reckon we’ll earn ’em.”

  “There’s only two men.”

  “Two. Ain’t many, is it? But they’re forted up, an’ they know how to fight.” He stirred the fire and piled on some dried wood. “Two men can make a fight of it, and that Radigan’s a fighter from who flung the chunk.”

  A rifle shot came to them. It was Coker who had fired, and they could see the smoke from his position, although they could not see the house. “Coker,” Bitner said. “He’s quick on the shoot.”
/>
  There was no other sound for several minutes and Angelina listened the echo away, thinking of what it might mean. Men might die—but men had died before. A dozen had died in the feud from which they had just come, and several more disappeared or wounded.

  The shot fired by Coker struck the window sill and ripped a gash. It was a wooden sill laid on the rock of the house. Radigan glanced at it and waited. He was in no hurry. There was no sense shooting until somebody gave him something to shoot at.

  Gretchen, under his orders, was making up three packs of food. Blankets had already been cached, but each would take one along and a ground sheet. No telling where all they would camp.

  A bullet shattered glass and imbedded itself in the ceiling. John Child shifted a little, then fired suddenly. Barbeau jerked back, swearing. There was a burn across his shoulder that stung like fire and he felt a trickle of blood down his back. It was only a break in the skin, but he felt a sudden chill. These men could shoot.

  All afternoon there was sporadic fire with no harm on either side. Harvey Thorpe, nested down among some boulders, studied the house irritably. Not more than four shots had come from the house…either they had little ammunition or they were careful. Barbeau had been scratched, and Coker had a boot heel shot off. Twice shots had come dangerously close to Wall.

  The packs were completed and placed near the tunnel door. Child had been out through the tunnel and had fed corn to the hidden horses. He was worried, and stayed with them for some time. Sooner or later somebody was going to try circling behind the house and if they did they would be sure to find the horses. There was little concealment back there, and on much of the talus slope a man would be exposed to fire from below with no cover at all.

  When darkness came Radigan slipped outside and waited against the wall of the house with a six-gun. He was sure an attempt would be made to creep under the windows and lie against the wall for quick shots through the windows. He wanted to be ready. Seated with his back against the wall, Radigan waited.

  The air was cool, not as cold as it had been, and the dryness seemed gone from the night. A faint wind stirred the pines and out in the stable a horse stomped.