Collection 1990 - Grub Line Rider (v5.0) Page 8

  After all, where did he and Cool stand? Sherman owed him $10,000 for dirty work done, for cattle run off, for forcing men to leave, for a couple of shootings. Tom Cool was in the same position. Now, with Hallam out of the way and the nesters gone, he would no longer need either Cool or himself.

  Suddenly Morgan Clyde remembered Sherman’s broken teeth, his sly smile, his insinuating manner when he spoke of Hallam’s wife. Oddly, for the first time, he began to see himself in a clear light. A hired gun for a man with the instincts of a rat. It wasn’t a nice thought. He shook himself angrily, forcing himself to concentrate on the business at hand.

  Vic Hallam was young, and he was green. He was, they said, a fine shot with a rifle, and a fair man with a gun when he got it out, but by Western standards he was pitifully slow. He was about twenty-six, his wife a mere girl of nineteen, and pretty. Despite his youth, Hallam was outspoken. He had led the resistance against Sherman, and had sworn to stay in Red Basin as long as he wished. He had every legal right to the land, and Sherman had none.

  But Morgan Clyde had long ago shelved any regard for the law. The man with the fastest gun was the law along the frontier, and so far he had been fastest. If Sherman wanted the Red Basin, he’d get it. If it was over Hallam’s dead body, then that’s how it would be.

  He had never backed out on a job yet, and never would. Hallam would be taken care of.

  III

  Morgan rode at a rapid trot, knowing very well what he had to do. Hallam was a man of a fiery temper, and it would be easy to goad him into grabbing for a gun.

  Clyde shook his head, striving to clear it of upsetting thoughts. With the $10,000 he had coming, he could go away. He could find a new country, buy a ranch, and live quietly somewhere beyond the reach of his reputation. Yet even as he told himself that, he knew it was not true. A few years ago he might have done just that, but now it was too late. Wherever he went, there would be smoking guns, split seconds of blasting fire, and the thunder of shooting. And wherever he went, he would be pointed out as a killer.

  The heat waves danced along the valley floor, and he reined in his horse, moving at a walk. In his mind he seemed to be back again in the house he had built with Diana, and he remembered how they had talked of having the clock.

  Then he was riding around the cluster of rocks and into the ranch yard at Red Basin. Sitting warily, with his hands loose and ready, he rode toward the house. A young woman came to the door and threw out some water. When she looked up, she saw him.

  He was close enough then, and her face went deathly pale. Her eyes widened a little. Something inside of him shrank. He knew she recognized him.

  “What…what do you want?” she asked.

  He looked down at her wide eyes. She was pretty, he decided.

  “I want to see Mister Hallam, ma’am.”

  She hesitated. “Won’t you get down and sit on the porch? He’s gone out now, but he’ll be back soon. He…he saw some antelope over by the Rim Rocks.”

  Antelope. Morgan Clyde stiffened a little, then relaxed. He had hard work to make believe this was real. The girl—why, she was almost the size of Diana and almost, he admitted, as pretty. And the house—there was the wash bench, the homemade furniture, just like their own place. And now Hallam was after antelope.

  It was all the same, even the rifle in the corner.…Something in him leaped. The rifle. Amo-ment ago it had stood in the corner, and now it was gone. Instinctively he threw himself from his chair—a split second before the shot blasted past his head.

  Catlike, he came to his feet. He twisted the rifle from the girl’s hands before she could shoot again. Coolly he ejected the shells from the rifle and dropped them on the table. He looked at the girl, smiling with an odd light of respect in his eyes. He noted there wasn’t a sign of fright or tears in hers.

  “Nice try,” he said quietly.

  “You came here to kill my husband,” she said.

  It wasn’t an accusation; it was a flat statement.

  “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe so.”

  “Why do you want to kill him?” she demanded fiercely. “What did he ever do to you?”

  Morgan Clyde looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Nothing, of course. But this land is needed by someone else. Perhaps you should move off.”

  “We like it here!” she retorted.

  He looked around. “It’s nice. I like it, too.” He pointed to the corner across the room. “There should be a clock over there, a grandfather’s clock.”

  She looked at him, surprised. “We…we’re going to have one. Someday.”

  He got up and walked over to the newly made shelves and looked at the china. It had blue figures running around the edges, Dutch boys and girls and mills.

  He turned toward the window. “I should think you’d have it open on such a nice morning,” he said. “More air. And I like to see a curtain stir in a light wind. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, but the window sticks. Vic was going to fix it, but he’s been so busy.”

  Morgan Clyde picked up the hammer and drew the strips of molding from around the window, then lifted it out. Resting one corner on the table, he slipped his knife from his pocket and carefully shaved the edges. He tried the window twice before it moved easily. Then he replaced it, and nailed the molding back in position. He tried it again, sliding up the window. A light breeze stirred the curtain, and the girl laughed. He turned, smiling gravely.

  The sunlight fell across the rough-hewn floor, and, when he raised his eyes, he could see a man riding down the trail.

  Morgan Clyde turned slowly, and looked at the girl. Her eyes widened.

  “No!” she gasped. “Please! Not that!”

  Morgan Clyde didn’t look back. He walked out to the porch and swung into the saddle. He reined the black around and started toward the approaching homesteader.

  Before Hallam could speak, Clyde said: “Bad way to carry your rifle. Never can tell when you might need it.”

  “Clyde!” Hallamexclaimedsharply. “What…?”

  “Good morning, Mister Hallam,” Morgan Clyde said, smiling a little. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

  He touched his heels to the black and rode away at a canter. Behind him, the man stared, f rowning.…

  It wasn’t until Clyde was riding down the street of the town that he thought of what was coming. This is it, he said to himself. He had known there would have to be an end to this sort of thing, and this was it.

  The Earle brothers were still in the bar. They looked up at him as he passed, their eyes hard. He stepped to the door of the office and opened it. Sherman was seated at the desk, and Tom Cool was tilted back on his chair against the wall. Nothing, apparently, had changed except himself.

  “I’m quitting, Sherman,” he said quietly. “You owe me ten thousand dollars. I want it now.”

  Sherman’s eyes narrowed. “Hallam? What about him?” he demanded.

  Morgan Clyde smiled thinly with amusement in his eyes. “He’s taken care of. Very nicely, I think.”

  “What’s this nonsense about quitting?” Sherman demanded.

  “That’s it. I’m quitting.”

  “You don’t quit until I’m ready,” Sherman snapped harshly. “I want to know what happened out there.”

  Clyde stepped carelessly to one side so that he could face Tom Cool, too. “Nothing happened,” he said quietly. “They have a nice place there. A nice couple. I envied them, so I decided to let them stay.”

  “You decided?”

  He’s faster than I am, Clyde’s brain told him, even as he moved. He’ll shoot first, anyway, so …

  Morgan Clyde’s gun roared, and the shot caught Tom Cool in the chest, even as the gunman’s weapon started to swing up to shoot him. Clyde felt a bullet fan past his own face, but he shot Cool again before he turned. Something struck him hard in the body, and then in one leg. He went down, then staggered up, and emptied his gun into Sherman.

  Sherman’s body sagged, and a s
low trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth.

  Turning, Clyde got to the office door, walking very straight. His brain felt light, even a little giddy. He opened the door precisely and stepped out into the barroom. Across the room, the Earles, staring wide-eyed, jerked out their guns.

  Through the door behind him they could see Sherman’s body sagging in death. They moved as one man. Gritting his teeth, Morgan Clyde triggered his gun. He shot them both.

  Morgan Clyde almost made it to his horse before he fell, sprawling his length in the dust. Vaguely he heard a roar of horse’s hoofs, and then he felt himself turned over onto his back. Vic Hallam was staring at him.

  Morgan Clyde’s breath came hoarsely. He looked up, remembering. “My place,” he muttered thickly through the blood that frothed his lips.

  “There’s a clock. Put…put it…in the corner.”

  There was sympathy and a deep understanding in Hallam’s face. “Sure, that’d be fine. When you get well, we’ll move it over together…on condition that you’ll go partners on the homestead.…But why didn’t you wait, man? I’d have come with you.”

  “Partners,” Morgan Clyde said, and it seemed good to be able to smile. “That’d be fine. Just fine.”

  Ride, You Tonto Raiders

  I

  The rain, which had been falling steadily for three days, had turned the trail into a sloppy river of mud. Peering through the slanting downpour, Mathurin Sabre cursed himself for the quixotic notion that impelled him to take this special trail to the home of the man that he had gunned down.

  Nothing good could come of it, he reflected, yet the thought that the young widow and child might need the money he was carrying had started him upon the long ride from El Paso to the Mogollons. Certainly neither the bartender nor the hangers-on in the saloon could have been entrusted with that money, and nobody was taking that dangerous ride to the Tonto Basin for fun.

  Matt Sabre was no trouble hunter. At various times, he had been many things, most of them associated with violence. By birth and inclination, he was a Western man, although much of his adult life had been lived far from his native country. He had been a buffalo hunter, a prospector, and for a short time a two-gun marshal of a tough cattle town. It was his stubborn refusal either to back up or back down that kept him in constant hot water.

  Yet some of his trouble derived from something more than that. It stemmed from a dark and bitter drive toward violence—a drive that lay deeply within him. He was aware of this drive and held it in restraint, but at times it welled up, and he went smashing into trouble—a big, rugged, and dangerous man who fought like a Viking gone berserk, except that he fought coldly and shrewdly.

  He was a tall man, heavier than he appeared, and his lean, dark face had a slightly patrician look with high cheekbones and green eyes. His eyes were usually quiet and reserved. He had a natural affinity for horses and weapons. He understood them, and they understood him. It had been love of a good horse that brought him to his first act of violence.

  He had been buffalo hunting with his uncle and had interfered with another hunter who was beating his horse. At sixteen, a buffalo hunter was a man and expected to stand as one. Matt Sabre stood his ground and shot it out, killing his first man. Had it rested there, all would have been well, but two of the dead man’s friends had come hunting Sabre. Failing to find him, they had beaten his ailing uncle and stolen the horses. Matt Sabre trailed them to Mobeetie and killed them both in the street, taking his horses home.

  Then he left the country, to prospect in Mexico, fight a revolution in Central America, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco, from which he deserted after two years. Returning to Texas, he drove a trail herd up to Dodge, then took a job as marshal of a town. Six months later, in El Paso, he had become engaged in an altercation with Billy Curtin, and Curtin had called him a liar and gone for his gun.

  With that incredible speed that was so much a part of him, Matt drew his gun and fired. Curtin hit the floor. An hour later, he was summoned to the dying man’s hotel room.

  Billy Curtin, his dark, tumbled hair against a folded blanket, his face drawn and deathly white, was dying. They told him outside the door that Curtin might live an hour or even two. He could not live longer.

  Tall, straight, and quiet, Sabre walked into the room and stood by the dying man’s bed. Curtin held a packet wrapped in oilskin. “Five thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Take it to my wife…to Jenny, on the Pivotrock, in the Mogollons. She’s in…in…trouble.”

  It was a curious thing that this dying man should place a trust in the hands of the man who had killed him. Sabre stared down at him, frowning a little.

  “Why me?” he asked. “You trust me with this? And why should I do it?”

  “You…you’re a gentleman. I trust you to help her. Will you? I…I was a hotheaded fool. Worried…impatient. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The reckless light was gone from the blue eyes, and the light that remained was fading.

  “I’ll do it, Curtin. You’ve my word…you’ve got the word of Matt Sabre.”

  For an instant, then, the blue eyes blazed widely and sharply with knowledge. “You’re…Sabre?”

  Matt nodded, but the light had faded, and Billy Curtin had bunched his herd.

  It had been a rough and bitter trip, but there was little farther to go. West of El Paso there had been a brush with marauding Apaches. In Silver City, two strangely familiar riders had followed him into a saloon and started a brawl. Yet Matt was too wise in the ways of thieves to be caught by so obvious a trick, and he had slipped away in the darkness after shooting out the light.

  The roan slipped now on the muddy trail, scrambled up, and moved on through the trees.

  Suddenly, in the rain-darkened dusk, there was one light, then another.

  “Yellow Jacket,” Matt said with a sigh of relief. “That means a good bed for us, boy. A good bed and a good feed.”

  Yellow Jacket was a jumping-off place. It was a stage station and a saloon, a livery stable and a ramshackle hotel. It was a cluster of adobe residences and some false-fronted stores. It bunched its buildings in a corner of Copper Creek.

  It was Galusha Reed’s town, and Reed owned the Yellow Jacket Saloon and the Rincon Mine. Sid Trumbull was town marshal, and he ran the place for Reed. Wherever Reed rode, Tony Sikes was close by, and there were some who said that Reed in turn was owned by Prince McCarran, who owned the big PM brand in the Tonto Basin country.

  Matt Sabre stabled his horse and turned to the slope-shouldered liveryman. “Give him a bait of corn. Another in the morning.”

  “Corn?” Simpson shook his head. “We’ve no corn.”

  “You have corn for the freighters’ stock and corn for the stage horses. Give my horse corn.”

  Sabre had a sharp ring of authority in his voice, and, before he realized it, Simpson was giving the big roan his corn. He thought about it and stared after Sabre. The tall rider was walking away, a light, long step, easy and free, on the balls of his feet. And he carried two guns, low-hung and tied-down.

  Simpson stared, then shrugged. “A bad one,” he muttered. “Wish he’d kill Sid Trumbull.”

  Matt Sabre pushed into the door of the Yellow Jacket and dropped his saddlebags to the floor. Then he strode to the bar. “What have you got, man? Anything but rye?”

  “What’s the matter? Ain’t rye good enough for you?” The bartender, a man named Hobbs, was sore himself. No man should work so many hours on feet like his.

  “Have you brandy? Or some Irish whiskey?”

  Hobbs stared. “Mister, where do you think you are? New York?”

  “That’s all right, Hobbs. I like a man who knows what he likes. Give him some of my cognac.”

  Matt Sabre turned and glanced at the speaker. He was a tall man, immaculate in black broadcloth, with blond hair slightly wavy and a rosy complexion. He might have been thirty or older. He wore a pistol on his left side, high up.

  “Thanks,” Sabre
said briefly. “There’s nothing better than cognac on a wet night.”

  “My name is McCarran. I run the PM outfit, east of here. Northeast, to be exact.”

  Sabre nodded. “My name is Sabre. I run no outfit, but I’m looking for one. Where’s the Piv-otrock?”

  He was a good poker player, men said. His eyes were fast from using guns, and so he saw the sudden glint and the quick caution in Prince McCarran’s eyes.

  “The Pivotrock? Why, that’s a stream over in the Mogollons. There’s an outfit over there, all right. A one-horse affair. Why do you ask?”

  Sabre cut him off short. “Business with them.”

  “I see. Well, you’ll find it a lonely ride. There’s trouble up that way now, some sort of a cattle war.”

  Matt Sabre tasted his drink. It was good cognac. In fact, it was the best, and he had found none west of New Orleans.

  McCarran, his name was. He knew something, too. Curtin had asked him to help his widow. Was the Pivotrock outfit in the war? He decided against asking McCarran, and they talked quietly of the rain and of cattle, then of cognac. “You never acquired a taste for cognac in the West. May I ask where?”

  “Paris,” Sabre replied, “Marseilles, Fez, and Marrakesh.”

  “You’ve been around, then. Well, that’s not uncommon.” The blond man pointed toward a heavy-shouldered young man who slept with his head on his arms. “See that chap? Calls himself Camp Gordon. He’s a Cambridge man, quotes the classics when he’s drunk…which is over half the time…and is one of the best cowhands in the country when he’s sober. Keys over there, playing the piano, studied in Weimar. He knew Strauss, in Vienna, before he wrote ‘The Blue Danube.’ There’s all sorts of men in the West, from belted earls and remittance men to vagabond scum from all corners of the world. They are here a few weeks, and they talk the lingo like veterans. Some of the biggest ranches in the West are owned by Englishmen.”