Four-Card Draw

When a man drew four cards he could expect something like this to happen. Ben Taylor had probably been right when he told him his luck had run out. Despite that, he had a place of his own, and come what may, he was going to keep it.

Nor was there any fault to find with the place. From the moment Allen Ring rode his claybank into the valley he knew he was coming home. This was it; this was the place. Here he would stop. He’d been tumbleweeding all over the West now for ten years, and it was time he stopped if he ever did, and this looked like his fence corner.

Even the cabin looked good, although Taylor told him the place had been empty for three years. It looked solid and fit, and while the grass was waist high all over the valley and up around the house, he could see trails through it, some of them made by unshod ponies, which meant wild horses, and some by deer. Then there were the tracks of a single shod horse, always the same one.

Those tracks always led right up to the door, and they stopped there, yet he could see that somebody with mighty small feet had been walking up to peer into the windows. Why would a person want to look into a window more than once? The window of an empty cabin? He had gone up and looked in himself, and all he saw was a dusty, dark interior with a ray of light from the opposite window, a table, a couple of chairs, and a fine old fireplace that had been built by skilled hands.

“You never built that fireplace, Ben Taylor,” Ring had muttered, “you who never could handle anything but a running iron or a deck of cards. You never built anything in your life as fine and useful as that.”

The cabin sat on a low ledge of grass backed up against the towering cliff of red rock, and the spring was not more than fifty feet away, a stream that came out of the rock and trickled pleasantly into a small basin before spilling out and winding thoughtfully down the valley to join a larger stream, a quarter of a mile away.

There were some tall spruces around the cabin, and a couple of sycamores and a cottonwood near the spring. Some gooseberry bushes, too, and a couple of apple trees. The trees had been pruned.

“And you never did that, either, Ben Taylor!” Allen Ring said soberly. “I wish I knew more about this place.”

Time had fled like a scared antelope, and with the scythe he found in the pole barn he cut off the tall grass around the house, patched up the holes in the cabin where the packrats had got in, and even thinned out the bushes—it had been several years since they had been touched—and repaired the pole barn.

         

The day he picked to clean out the spring was the day Gail Truman rode up to the house. He had been putting the finishing touches on a chair bottom he was making when he heard a horse’s hoof strike stone, and he straightened up to see the girl sitting on the red pony. She was staring openmouthed at the stacked hay from the grass he had cut and the washed windows of the house. He saw her swing down and run up to the window, and dropping his tools he strolled up.

“Huntin’ somebody, ma’am?”

She wheeled and stared at him, her wide blue eyes accusing. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “What do you mean by moving in like this?”

He smiled, but he was puzzled, too. Ben Taylor had said nothing about a girl, especially a girl like this. “Why, I own the place!” he said. “I’m fixin’ it up so’s I can live here.”

“You own it?” Her voice was incredulous, agonized. “You couldn’t own it! You couldn’t. The man who owns this place is gone, and he would never sell it! Never!”

“He didn’t exactly sell it, ma’am,” Ring said gently. “He lost it to me in a poker game. That was down Texas way.”

She was horrified. “In a poker game? Whit Bayly in a poker game? I don’t believe it!”

“The man I won it from was called Ben Taylor, ma’am.” Ring took the deed from his pocket and opened it. “Come to think of it, Ben did say that if anybody asked about Whit Bayly to say that he died down in the Guadalupes—of lead poisoning.”

“Whit Bayly is dead?” The girl looked stunned. “You’re sure? Oh!”

Her face went white and still and something in it seemed to die. She turned with a little gesture of despair and stared out across the valley, and his eyes followed hers. It was strange, Allen Ring told himself, that it was the first time he had looked just that way, and he stood there, caught up by something nameless, some haunting sense of the familiar.

Before him lay the tall grass of the valley, turning slightly now with the brown of autumn, and to his right a dark stand of spruce, standing stiffly, like soldiers on parade, and beyond them the swell of the hill, and farther to the right the hill rolled up and stopped, and beyond lay a wider valley fading away into the vast purple and mauve of distance and here and there spotted with the golden candles of cottonwoods, their leaves bright yellow with nearing cold.

There was no word for this; it was a picture, yet a picture of which a man could only dream and never reproduce.

“It—it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

She turned on him, and for the first time she seemed really to look at him, a tall young man with a shock of rust-brown hair and somber gray eyes, having about him the look of a rider and the look of a lonely man.

“Yes, it is beautiful. Oh, I’ve come here so many times to see it, the cabin, too. I think this is the most lovely place I have ever seen. I used to dream about—” She stopped, suddenly confused. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk so.”

She looked at him soberly. “I’d better go. I guess this is yours now.”

He hesitated. “Ma’am,” he said sincerely, “the place is mine, and sure enough, I love it. I wouldn’t swap this place for anything. But that view, that belongs to no man. It belongs to whoever looks at it with eyes to see it, so you come anytime you like, and look all you please.”

Ring grinned. “Fact is,” he said, “I’m aimin’ to fix the place up inside, an’ I’m sure no hand at such things. Maybe you could sort of help me. I’d like it kind of homey-like.” He flushed. “You see, I sort of lived in bunkhouses all my life an’ never had no such place.”

         

She smiled with a quick understanding and sympathy. “Of course! I’d love to, only”—her face sobered—“you won’t be able to stay here. You haven’t seen Ross Bilton yet, have you?”

“Who’s he?” Ring asked curiously. He nodded toward the horsemen he saw approaching. “Is this the one?”

She turned quickly and nodded. “Be careful! He’s the town marshal. The men with him are Ben Hagen and Stan Brule.”

Brule he remembered—but would Brule remember him?

“By the way, my name is Allen Ring,” he said, low voiced.

“I’m Gail Truman. My father owns the Tall T brand.”

Bilton was a big man with a white hat. Ring decided he didn’t like him and that the feeling was going to be mutual. Brule he knew, so the stocky man was Ben Hagen. Brule had changed but little, some thinner, maybe, but his hatchet face as lean and poisonous as always.

“How are you, Gail?” Bilton said briefly. “Is this a friend of yours?”

Allen Ring liked to get his cards on the table. “Yes, a friend of hers, but also the owner of the place.”

“You own Red Rock?” Bilton was incredulous. “That will be very hard to prove, my friend. Also, this place is under the custody of the law.”

“Whose law?” Ring wanted to know. He was aware that Brule was watching him, wary but uncertain as yet.

“Mine. I’m the town marshal. There was a murder committed here, and until that murder is solved and the killer brought to justice this place will not be touched. You have already seen fit to make changes, but perhaps the court will be lenient.”

“You’re the town marshal?” Allen Ring shoved his hat back on his head and reached for his tobacco. “That’s mighty interestin’. Howsoever, let me remind you that you’re out of town right now.”

“That makes no difference!” Bilton’s voice was sharp. Ring could see that he was not accustomed to being told off, that his orders were usually obeyed. “You will get off this place before nightfall!”

“It makes a sight of difference to me,” Allen replied calmly. “I bought this place by stakin’ everything I had against it in a poker game. I drew four cards to win, a nine to match one I had and three aces. It was a fool play that paid off. I registered the deed. She’s mine legal. I know of no law that allows a place to be kept idle because there was a murder committed on it. If after three years it hasn’t been solved, I suggest the town get a new marshal.”

Ross Bilton was angry, but he kept himself under control. “I’ve warned you, and you’ve been told to leave. If you do not leave, I’ll use my authority to move you.”

Ring smiled. “Now listen, Bilton! You might pull that stuff on some folks that don’t like trouble! You might bluff somebody into believin’ you had the authority to do this. You don’t bluff me, an’ I simply don’t scare—do I, Brule?”

He turned on Brule so sharply that the man stiffened in his saddle, his hand poised as though to grab for a gun. The breed’s face stiffened with irritation, and then recognition came to him. “Allen Ring!” he said. “You again!”

“That’s right, Brule. Only this time I’m not takin’ cattle through the Indian Nation. Not pushin’ them by that ratty bunch of rustlers an’ high-binders you rode with.” Ring turned his eyes toward Bilton. “You’re the law? An’ you ride with him? Why, the man’s wanted in ever’ county in Texas for everythin’ from murder to horse thievin’.”

Ross Bilton stared at Ring for a long minute. “You’ve been warned,” he said.

“An’ I’m stayin’,” Ring replied sharply. “And keep your coyotes away if you come again. I don’t like ’em!”

Brule’s fingers spread and his lips stiffened with cold fury. Ring watched him calmly. “You know better than that, Brule. Wait until my back is turned. If you reach for a gun I’ll blow you out of your saddle.”

Stan Brule slowly relaxed his hand, and then, wordless, he turned to follow Bilton and Hagen, who had watched with hard eyes.

Gail Truman was looking at him curiously. “Why, Brule was afraid of you!” she exclaimed. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Nobody, ma’am,” he said simply. “I’m no gunfighter, just an hombre who ain’t got brains enough to scare proper. Brule knows it. He knows he might beat me, but he knows I’d kill him. He was there when I killed a friend of his, Blaze Garden.”

“But—but then you must be a gunman. Blaze Garden was a killer! I’ve heard Dad and the boys talk about him!”

“No, I’m no gunman. Blaze beat me to the draw. In fact, he got off his first shot before my gun cleared the holster, only he shot too quick and missed. His second and third shots hit me while I was walkin’ into him. The third shot wasn’t so bad because I was holdin’ my fire and gettin’ close. He got scared an’ stepped back, and the fourth shot was too high. Then I shot and I was close up to him then. One was enough. One is always enough if you place it right.”

He gestured at the place. “What’s this all about? Mind tellin’ me?”

“It’s very simple, really. Nothing out here is very involved when you come to that. It seems that there’s something out here that brings men to using guns much faster than in other places, and one thing stems from another.

“Whit Bayly owned this place. He was a fixing man, always tinkering and fixing things up. He was a tall, handsome man whom all the girls loved—”

“You, too?” he asked quizzically.

She flushed. “Yes, I guess so, only I’m only eighteen now, and that was three, almost four years ago. I wasn’t very pretty or very noticeable and much too young.

“Sam Hazlitt was one of the richest men in the country around here, and Whit had a run-in with him over a horse. There had been a lot of stealing going on around, and Hazlitt traced some stock of his to this ranch, or so he claimed. Anyway, he accused Bayly of it, and Whit told him not to talk foolish. Furthermore, he told Hazlitt to stay off of his ranch. Well, folks were divided over who was in the right, but Whit had a lot of friends and Hazlitt had four brothers, clannish as all get-out.

“Not long after, some riders from Buck Hazlitt’s ranch came by that way and saw a body lying in the yard, right over near the spring. When they came down to have a look, thinking Whit was hurt, they found Sam Hazlitt, and he’d been shot dead—in the back.

“They headed right for town, hunting Whit, and they found him. He denied it, and they were goin’ to hang him, had a rope around his neck, and then I—I—well, I swore he wasn’t anywhere near his ranch all day.”

“It wasn’t true?” Ring asked keenly, his eyes searching the girl’s face. She avoided his eyes, flushing even more.

“Not—not exactly. But I knew he wasn’t guilty! I just knew he wouldn’t shoot a man in the back! I told them he was over to our place, talking with me, and he hadn’t time to get back there and kill Sam.

“Folks didn’t like it much. Some of them still believed he killed Sam, and some didn’t like it because despite the way I said it, they figured he was sparking a girl too young for him. I always said it wasn’t that. As a matter of fact, I did see Whit over our way, but the rest of it was lies. Anyway, after a few weeks Whit up and left the country.”

“I see—and nobody knows yet who killed Sam Hazlitt?”

“Nobody. One thing that was never understood was what became of Sam’s account book—sort of a tally book, but more than that. It was a sort of record he kept of a lot of things, and it was gone out of his pocket. Nobody ever found it, but they did find the pencil Sam used on the sand nearby. Dad always figured Sam lived long enough to write something, but that the killer stole the book and destroyed it.”

“How about the hands? Could they have picked it up? Did Bilton question them about that?”

“Oh, Bilton wasn’t marshal then! In fact, he was riding for Buck Hazlitt then! He was one of the hands who found Sam’s body!”

         

After the girl had gone Allen Ring walked back to the house and thought the matter over. He had no intention of leaving. This was just the ranch he wanted, and he intended to live right here, yet the problem fascinated him.

Living in the house and looking around the place had taught him a good deal about Whit Bayly. He was, as Gail had said, “a fixin’ man,” for there were many marks of his handiwork aside from the beautifully made fireplace and the pruned apple trees. He was, Ring was willing to gamble, no murderer.

Taylor had said he died of lead poisoning. Who had killed Bayly? Why? Was it a casual shooting over some rangeland argument, or had he been followed from here by someone bent on vengeance? Or someone who thought he might know too much?

“You’ll like the place,” Taylor had said—that was an angle he hadn’t considered before. Ben Taylor had actually seen this place himself! The more sign he read, the more tricky the trail became, and Allen walked outside and sat down against the cabin wall when his supper was finished, and lighted a smoke.

Stock had been followed to the ranch by Sam Hazlitt. If Whit was not the thief, then who was? Where had the stock been driven? He turned his eyes almost automatically toward the Mogollons, the logical place. His eyes narrowed, and he recalled that one night while playing cards they had been talking of springs and waterholes, and Ben Taylor had talked about Fossil Springs, a huge spring that roared thousands of gallons of water out of the earth.

“Place a man could run plenty of stock,” he had said and winked, “and nobody the wiser!”

Those words had been spoken far away and long ago, and the Red Rock ranch had not yet been put on the table; that was months later. There was, he recalled, a Fossil Creek somewhere north of here. And Fossil Creek might flow from Fossil Springs—perhaps Ben Taylor had talked more to effect than he knew. That had been Texas, and this was Arizona, and a casual bunkhouse conversation probably seemed harmless enough.

“We’ll see, Ben!” Ring muttered grimly. “We’ll see!”

Ross Bilton had been one of the Hazlitt hands at the time of the killing, one of the first on the scene. Now he was town marshal but interested in keeping the ranch unoccupied—why?

None of it made sense, yet actually it was no business of his. Allen Ring thought that over and decided it was his business in a sense. He now owned the place and lived on it. If an old murder was to interfere with his living there, it behooved him to know the facts. It was a slight excuse for his curiosity.

Morning came and the day drew on toward noon, and there was no sign of Bilton or Brule. Ring had loaded his rifle and kept it close to hand, and he was wearing two guns, thinking he might need a loaded spare, although he rarely wore more than one. Also, inside the cabin door he had his double-barreled shotgun.

The spring drew his attention. At the moment he did not wish to leave the vicinity of the cabin, and that meant it was a good time to clean out the spring. Not that it needed it, but there were loose stones in the bottom of the basin and some moss. With this removed he would have more water and clearer water. With a wary eye toward the canyon mouth, he began his work.

         

The sound of an approaching horse drew him erect. His rifle stood against the rocks at hand, and his guns were ready, yet as the rider came into sight, he saw there was only one man, a stranger.

He rode a fine bay gelding and he was not a young man, but thick and heavy with drooping mustache and kind blue eyes. He drew up.

“Howdy!” he said affably, yet taking a quick glance around before looking again at Ring. “I’m Rolly Truman, Gail’s father.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Ring said, wiping his wet hands on a red bandanna. “Nice to know the neighbors.” He nodded at the spring. “I picked me a job. That hole’s deeper than it looks!”

“Good flow of water,” Truman agreed. He chewed his mustache thoughtfully. “I like to see a young man with get-up about him, startin’ his own spread, willin’ to work.”

Allen Ring waited. The man was building up to something; what, he knew not. It came then, carefully at first, yet shaping a loop as it drew near.

“Not much range here, of course,” Truman added. “You should have more graze. Ever been over in Cedar Basin? Or up along the East Verde bottom? Wonderful land up there, still some wild, but a country where a man could really do something with a few whiteface cattle.”

“No, I haven’t seen it,” Ring replied, “but I’m satisfied. I’m not land hungry. All I want is a small piece, an’ this suits me fine.”

Truman shifted in his saddle and looked uncomfortable. “Fact is, son, you’re upsettin’ a lot of folks by bein’ here. What you should do is to move.”

“I’m sorry,” Ring said flatly. “I don’t want to make enemies, but I won this place on a four-card draw. Maybe I’m a fatalist, but somehow or other, I think I should stick here. No man’s got a right to think he can draw four cards and win anythin’, but I did, an’ in a plenty rough game. I had everythin’ I owned in that pot. Now I got the place.”

The rancher sat his horse uneasily, and then he shook his head. “Son, you’ve sure got to move! There’s no trouble here now, and if you stay she’s liable to open old sores, start more trouble than any of us can stop. Besides, how did Ben Taylor get title to this place? Bayly had no love for him. I doubt if your title will stand up in court.”

“As to that I don’t know,” Ring persisted stubbornly. “I have a deed that’s legal enough, and I’ve registered that deed an’ my brand along with it. I did find out that Bayly had no heirs. So I reckon I’ll sit tight until somebody comes along with a better legal claim than mine.”

Truman ran his hand over his brow. “Well, I guess I don’t blame you much, son. Maybe I shouldn’t have come over, but I know Ross Bilton and his crowd, and I reckon I wanted to save myself some trouble as well as you. Gail, she thinks you’re a fine young man. In fact, you’re the first man she’s ever showed interest in since Whit left, and she was a youngster then. It was a sort of hero worship she had for him. I don’t want trouble.”

Allen Ring leaned on the shovel and looked up at the older man. “Truman,” he said, “are you sure you aren’t buyin’ trouble by tryin’ to avoid it? Just what’s your stake in this?”

The rancher sat very still, his face drawn and pale. Then he got down from his horse and sat on a rock. Removing his hat, he mopped his brow.

“Son,” he said slowly, “I reckon I got to trust you. You’ve heard of the Hazlitts. They are a hard, clannish bunch, men who lived by the gun most of their lives. Sam was murdered. Folks all know that when they find out who murdered him and why, there’s goin’ to be plenty of trouble around here. Plenty.”

“Did you kill him?”

Truman jerked his head up. “No! No, you mustn’t get that idea, but—well, you know how small ranchers are. There was a sight of rustlin’ them days, and the Hazlitts were the big outfit. They lost cows.”

“And some of them got your brand?” Ring asked shrewdly.

Truman nodded. “I reckon. Not so many, though. And not only me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not beggin’ off the blame. Part of it is mine, all right, but I didn’t get many. Eight or ten of us hereabouts slapped brands on Hazlitt stock—and at least five of us have the biggest brands around here now, some as big almost as the Hazlitts.”

         

Allen Ring studied the skyline thoughtfully. It was an old story and one often repeated in the West. When the War Between the States ended, men came home to Texas and the Southwest to find cattle running in thousands, unbranded and unowned. The first man to slap on a brand was the owner, with no way he could be contested.

Many men grew rich with nothing more than a wide loop and a running iron. Then the unbranded cattle were gone, the ranches had settled into going concerns, and the great days of casual branding had ended, yet there was still free range, and a man with that same loop and running iron could still build a herd fast.

More than one of the biggest ranchers had begun that way, and many of them continued to brand loose stock wherever found. No doubt that had been true here, and these men like Rolly Truman, good, able men who had fought Indians and built their homes to last, had begun just that way. Now the range was mostly fenced, and ranches had narrowed somewhat, but Ring could see what it might mean to open an old sore.

Sam Hazlitt had been trailing rustlers—he had found out who they were and where the herds were taken, and he had been shot down from behind. The catch was that the tally book, with his records, was still missing. That tally book might contain evidence as to the rustling done by men who were now pillars of the community and open them to the vengeance of the Hazlitt outfit.

Often western men threw a blanket over a situation. If a rustler had killed Sam, then all the rustlers involved would be equally guilty. Anyone who lived on this ranch might stumble on that tally book and throw the range into a bloody gun war in which many men now beyond the errors of their youth, with homes, families, and different customs, would die.

It could serve no purpose to blow the lid off the trouble now, yet Allen Ring had a hunch. In their fear of trouble for themselves they might be concealing an even greater crime, aiding a murderer in his escape. There were lines of care in the face of Rolly Truman that a settled, established rancher should not have.

“Sorry,” Ring said, “I’m stayin’. I like this place.”

         

All through the noon hour the tension was building. The air was warm and sultry, and there was a thickening haze over the mountains. There was that hot thickness in the air that presaged a storm. When he left his coffee to return to work, Ring saw three horsemen coming into the canyon mouth at a running walk. He stopped in the door and touched his lips with his tongue.

They reined up at the door, three hard-bitten, hard-eyed men with rifles across their saddlebows. Men with guns in their holsters and men of a kind that would never turn from trouble. These were men with the bark on, lean fanatics with lips thinned with old bitterness.

The older man spoke first. “Ring, I’ve heard about you. I’m Buck Hazlitt. These are my brothers, Joe and Dolph. There’s talk around that you aim to stay on this place. There’s been talk for years that Sam hid his tally book here. We figure the killer got that book and burned it. Maybe he did, and again, maybe not. We want that book. If you want to stay on this place, you stay. But if you find that book, you bring it to us.”

Ring looked from one to the other, and he could see the picture clearly. With men like these, hard and unforgiving, it was no wonder Rolly Truman and the other ranchers were worried. The years and prosperity had eased Rolly and his like into comfort and softness, but not these. The Hazlitts were of feudal blood and background.

“Hazlitt,” Ring said, “I know how you feel. You lost a brother, and that means somethin’, but if that book is still around, which I doubt, and I find it, I’ll decide what to do with it all by myself. I don’t aim to start a range war. Maybe there’s some things best forgotten. The man who murdered Sam Hazlitt ought to pay.”

“We’ll handle that,” Dolph put in grimly. “You find that book, you bring it to us. If you don’t—” His eyes hardened. “Well, we’d have to class you with the crooks.”

Ring’s eyes shifted to Dolph. “Class if you want,” he flared. “I’ll do what seems best to me with that book. But all of you folks are plumb proddy over that tally book. Chances are nine out of ten the killer found it and destroyed it.”

“I don’t reckon he did,” Buck said coldly, “because we know he’s been back here, a-huntin’ it. Him an’ his girl.”

Ring stiffened. “You mean—?”

“What we mean is our figger, not yours.” Buck Hazlitt reined his horse around. “You been told. You bring that book to us. You try to buck the Hazlitts and you won’t stay in this country.”

Ring had his back up. Despite himself he felt cold anger mounting within him. “Put this in your pipe, friend,” he said harshly. “I came here to stay. No Hazlitt will change that. I ain’t huntin’ trouble, but if you bring trouble to me, I’ll handle it. I can bury a Hazlitt as easy as any other man!”

Not one of them condescended to notice the remark. Turning their horses they walked them down the canyon and out of it into the sultry afternoon. Allen Ring mopped the sweat from his face and listened to the deep rumbling of far-off thunder, growling among the canyons like a grizzly with a toothache. It was going to rain. Sure as shootin’, it was going to rain—a regular gully washer.

There was yet time to finish the job on the spring, so he picked up his shovel and started back for the job. The rock basin was nearly cleaned and he finished removing the few rocks and the moss that had gathered. Then he opened the escape channel a little more to insure a more rapid emptying and filling process in the basin into which the trickle of water fell.

The water emerged from a crack in the rocks and trickled into the basin, and finishing his job, Ring glanced thoughtfully to see if anything remained undone. There was still some moss on the rocks from which the water flowed and, kneeling down, he leaned over to scrape it away, and pulling away the last shreds, he noticed a space from which a rock had recently fallen. Pulling more moss away, he dislodged another rock, and there, pushed into a niche, was a small black book!

Sam Hazlitt, dying, had evidently managed to shove it back in this crack in the rocks, hoping it would be found by someone not the killer.

Sitting back on his haunches, Ring opened the faded, canvas-bound book. A flap crossed over the page ends, and the book had been closed by a small tongue that slid into a loop of the canvas cover. Opening the book, he saw the pages were stained, but still legible.

The next instant he was struck by lightning. At least, that was what seemed to happen. Thunder crashed, and something struck him on the skull and he tried to rise and something struck again. He felt a drop of rain on his face and his eyes opened wide and then another blow caught him and he faded out into darkness, his fingers clawing at the grass to keep from slipping down into that velvety, smothering blackness.

         

He was wet. He turned a little, lying there, thinking he must have left a window open and the rain was—his eyes opened and he felt rain pounding on his face and he stared, not at a boot with a California spur, but at dead brown grass, soaked with rain now, and the glistening smoothness of waterworn stones. He was soaked to the hide.

Struggling to his knees, he looked around, his head heavy, his lips and tongue thick. He blinked at a gray, rain-slanted world and at low gray clouds and a distant rumble of thunder following a streak of lightning along the mountaintops.

Lurching to his feet, he stumbled toward the cabin and pitched over the doorsill to the floor. Struggling again to his feet he got the door closed, and in a vague, misty half world of consciousness he struggled out of his clothes and got his hands on a rough towel and fumblingly dried himself.

He did not think. He was acting purely from vague instinctive realization of what he must do. He dressed again, in dry clothes, and dropped at the table. After a while he sat up and it was dark, and he knew he had blacked out again. He lighted a light and nearly dropped it to the floor. Then he stumbled to the washbasin and splashed his face with cold water. Then he bathed his scalp, feeling tenderly of the lacerations there.

A boot with a California spur.

That was all he had seen. The tally book was gone, and a man wearing a new boot with a California-type spur, a large rowel, had taken it. He got coffee on, and while he waited for it he took his guns out and dried them painstakingly, wiping off each shell, and then replacing them in his belt with other shells from a box on a shelf.

He reloaded the guns, and then slipping into his slicker he went outside for his rifle. Between sips of coffee, he worked over his rifle until he was satisfied. Then he threw a small pack together and stuffed his slicker pockets with shotgun shells.

The shotgun was an express gun and short barreled. He slung it from a loop under the slicker. Then he took a lantern and went to the stable and saddled the claybank. Leading the horse outside into the driving rain, he swung into the saddle and turned along the road toward Basin.

There was no letup in the rain. It fell steadily and heavily, yet the claybank slogged along, alternating between a shambling trot and a fast walk. Allen Ring, his chin sunk in the upturned collar of his slicker, watched the drops fall from the brim of his Stetson and felt the bump of the shotgun under his coat.

He had seen little of the tally book, but sufficient to know that it would blow the lid off the very range war they were fearing. Knowing the Hazlitts, he knew they would bring fire and gunplay to every home even remotely connected with the death of their brother.

         

The horse slid down a steep bank and shambled across the wide wash. Suddenly, the distant roar that had been in his ears for some time sprang into consciousness and he jerked his head up. His horse snorted in alarm, and Ring stared, openmouthed, at the wall of water, towering all of ten feet high, that was rolling down the wash toward him.

With a shrill rebel yell he slapped the spurs to the claybank, and the startled horse turned loose with an astounded leap and hit the ground in a dead run. There was no time to slow for the bank of the wash, and the horse went up, slipped at the very brink, and started to fall back.

Ring hit the ground with both boots and scrambled over the brink, and even as the flood roared down upon them, he heaved on the bridle and the horse cleared the edge and stood trembling. Swearing softly, Ring kicked the mud from his boots and mounted again. Leaving the raging torrent behind him, he rode on.

Thick blackness of night and heavy clouds lay upon the town when he loped down the main street and headed the horse toward the barn. He swung down and handed the bridle to the handyman.

“Rub him down,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

He started for the doors and then stopped, staring at the three horses in neighboring stalls. The liveryman noticed his glance and looked at him.

“The Hazlitts. They come in about an hour ago, ugly as sin.”

Allen Ring stood wide legged, staring grimly out the door. There was a coolness inside him now that he recognized. He dried his hands carefully.

“Bilton in town?” he asked.

“Sure is. Playin’ cards over to the Mazatzal Saloon.”

“He wear Mex spurs? Big rowels?”

The man rubbed his jaw. “I don’t remember. I don’t know at all. You watch out,” he warned. “Folks are on the prod.”

Ring stepped out into the street and slogged through the mud to the edge of the boardwalk before the darkened general store. He kicked the mud from his boots and dried his hands again, after carefully unbuttoning his slicker.

Nobody would have a second chance after this. He knew well enough that his walking into the Mazatzal would precipitate an explosion. Only, he wanted to light the fuse himself, in his own way.

He stood there in the darkness alone, thinking it over. They would all be there. It would be like tossing a match into a lot of fused dynamite. He wished then that he was a better man with a gun than he was or that he had someone to side him in this, but he had always acted alone and would scarcely know how to act with anyone else.

He walked along the boardwalk with long strides, his boots making hard sounds under the steady roar of the rain. He couldn’t place that spur, that boot. Yet he had to. He had to get his hands on that book.

Four horses stood, heads down in the rain, saddles covered with slickers. He looked at them and saw they were of three different brands. The window of the Mazatzal was rain wet, yet standing at one side he glanced within.

The long room was crowded and smoky. Men lined the bar, feet on the brass rail. A dozen tables were crowded with cardplayers. Everyone seemed to have taken refuge here from the rain. Picking out the Hazlitt boys, Allen saw them gathered together at the back end of the room. Then he got Ross Bilton pegged. He was at a table playing cards, facing the door. Stan Brule was at this end of the bar, and Hagen was at a table against the wall, the three of them making three points of a flat triangle whose base was the door.

         

It was no accident. Bilton, then, expected trouble, and he was not looking toward the Hazlitts. Yet, on reflection, Ring could see the triangle could center fire from three directions on the Hazlitts as well. There was a man with his back to the door who sat in the game with Bilton. And not far from Hagen, Rolly Truman was at the bar.

Truman was toying with his drink, just killing time. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something.

Could it be him they waited upon? No, that was scarcely to be considered. They could not know he had found the book, although it was certain at least one man in the room knew, and possibly others. Maybe it was just the tension, the building up of feeling over his taking over of the place at Red Rock. Allen Ring carefully turned down the collar of his slicker and wiped his hands dry again.

He felt jumpy and could feel that dryness in his mouth that always came on him at times like this. He touched his gun butts and then stepped over and opened the door.

Everyone looked up or around at once. Ross Bilton held a card aloft, and his hand froze at the act of dealing, holding still for a full ten seconds while Ring closed the door. He surveyed the room again and saw Ross play the card and say something in an undertone to the man opposite him. The man turned his head slightly and it was Ben Taylor!

The gambler looked around, his face coldly curious, and for an instant their eyes met across the room, and then Allen Ring started toward him.

There was no other sound in the room, although they could all hear the unceasing roar of the rain on the roof. Ring saw something leap up in Taylor’s eyes, and his own took on a sardonic glint.

“That was a good hand you dealt me down Texas way,” Ring said. “A good hand!”

“You’d better draw more cards,” Taylor said. “You’re holdin’ a small pair!”

Ring’s eyes shifted as the man turned slightly. It was the jingle of his spurs that drew his eyes, and there they were, the large-roweled California-style spurs, not common here. He stopped beside Taylor so the man had to tilt his head back to look up. Ring was acutely conscious that he was now centered between the fire of Brule and Hagen. The Hazlitts looked on curiously, uncertain as to what was happening.

“Give it to me, Taylor,” Ring said quietly. “Give it to me now.”

There was ice in his voice, and Taylor, aware of the awkwardness of his position, got to his feet, inches away from Ring.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he flared.

“No?”

Ring was standing with his feet apart a little, and his hands were breast high, one of them clutching the edge of his raincoat. He hooked with his left from that position, and the blow was too short, too sudden, and too fast for Ben Taylor.

The crack of it on the angle of his jaw was audible, and then Ring’s right came up in the gambler’s solar plexus and the man’s knees sagged. Spinning him around, Ring ripped open his coat with a jerk that scattered buttons across the room. Then from an inside pocket he jerked the tally book.

He saw the Hazlitts start at the same instant that Bilton sprang back from the chair, upsetting it.

“Get him!” Bilton roared. “Get him!”

Ring shoved Taylor hard into the table, upsetting it and causing Bilton to spring back to keep his balance, and at the same instant, Ring dropped to a half crouch and turning left he drew with a flash of speed and saw Brule’s gun come up at almost the same instant, and then he fired!

         

Stan Brule was caught with his gun just level, and the bullet smashed him on the jaw. The tall man staggered, his face a mask of hatred and astonishment mingled, and then Ring fired again, doing a quick spring around with his knees bent, turning completely around in one leap, and firing as his feet hit the floor. He felt Hagen’s bullet smash into him, and he tottered. Then he fired coolly, and swinging as he fired, he caught Bilton right over the belt buckle.

It was fast action, snapping, quick, yet deliberate. The four fired shots had taken less than three seconds.

Stepping back, he scooped the tally book from the floor where it had dropped and then pocketed it. Bilton was on the floor, coughing blood. Hagen had a broken right arm and was swearing in a thick, stunned voice.

Stan Brule had drawn his last gun. He had been dead before he hit the floor. The Hazlitts started forward with a lunge, and Allen Ring took another step backward, dropping his pistol and swinging the shotgun, still hanging from his shoulder, into firing position.

“Get back!” he said thickly. “Get back or I’ll kill the three of you! Back—back to where you stood!”

Their faces wolfish, the three stood lean and dangerous, yet the shotgun brooked no refusal, and slowly, bitterly and reluctantly, the three moved back, step by step.

Ring motioned with the shotgun. “All of you—along the wall!”

The men rose and moved back, their eyes on him, uncertain, wary, some of them frightened.

Allen Ring watched them go, feeling curiously light-headed and uncertain. He tried to frown away the pain from his throbbing skull, yet there was a pervading weakness from somewhere else.

“My gosh!” Rolly Truman said. “The man’s been shot! He’s bleeding!”

“Get back!” Ring said thickly.

His eyes shifted to the glowing potbellied stove, and he moved forward, the shotgun waist high, his eyes on the men who stared at him, awed.

The sling held the gun level, his hand partly supporting it, a finger on the trigger. With his left hand he opened the stove and then fumbled in his pocket.

Buck Hazlitt’s eyes bulged. “No!” he roared. “No you don’t!”

He lunged forward, and Ring tipped the shotgun and fired a blast into the floor, inches ahead of Hazlitt’s feet. The rancher stopped so suddenly he almost fell, and the shotgun tipped to cover him.

“Back!” Ring said. He swayed on his feet. “Back!” He fished out the tally book and threw it into the flames.

Something like a sigh went through the crowd. They stared, awed as the flames seized hungrily at the opened book, curling around the leaves with hot fingers, turning them brown and then black and to ashes.

Half hypnotized the crowd watched. Then Ring’s eyes swung to Hazlitt. “It was Ben Taylor killed him,” he muttered. “Taylor, an’ Bilton was with him. He—he seen it.”

“We take your word for it?” Buck Hazlitt demanded furiously.

Allen Ring’s eyes widened and he seemed to gather himself. “You want to question it? You want to call me a liar?”

Hazlitt looked at him, touching his tongue to his lips. “No,” he said. “I figured it was them.”

“I told you true,” Ring said, and then his legs seemed to fold up under him and he went to the floor.

The crowd surged forward and Rolly Truman stared at Buck as Hazlitt neared the stove. The big man stared into the flames for a minute. Then he closed the door.

“Good!” he said. “Good thing! It’s been a torment, that book, like a cloud hangin’ over us all!”

The sun was shining through the window when Gail Truman came to see him. He was sitting up in bed and feeling better. It would be good to be back on the place again, for there was much to do. She came in, slapping her boots with her quirt and smiling.

“Feel better?” she asked brightly. “You certainly look better. You’ve shaved.”

He grinned and rubbed his jaw. “I needed it. Almost two weeks in this bed. I must have been hit bad.”

“You lost a lot of blood. It’s lucky you’ve a strong heart.”

“It ain’t—isn’t so strong anymore,” he said, “I think it’s grown mighty shaky here lately.”

Gail blushed. “Oh? It has? Your nurse, I suppose?”

“She is pretty, isn’t she?”

Gail looked up, alarmed. “You mean, you—”

“No, honey,” he said, “you!”

“Oh.” She looked at him and then looked down. “Well, I guess—”

“All right?”

She smiled then, suddenly and warmly. “All right.”

“I had to ask you,” he said. “We had to marry.”

“Had to? Why?”

“People would talk, a young, lovely girl like you over at my place all the time—would they think you were looking at the view?”

“If they did,” she replied quickly, “they’d be wrong!”

“You’re telling me?” he asked.