Dundee was getting impatient. “I’m beginnin’ to think I never will be able to get in a lick,” he complained to Doug Monahan as they sat on the edge of the Wheeler porch, eating supper. “Two miles of fence already strung up and they’re not makin’ a move against it. All I do is wear out my saddle lookin’ at the scenery.”
Doug gulped a big swallow of black coffee. “We ought to take that as a blessing. Or maybe you just like fighting a lot more than I do.”
Dundee shrugged. “I wouldn’t exactly say I like it. It’s only that I seem to thrive on trouble. Always did, even when I was a kid. Others could go fishin’. Me, I always had to go get in a fight. Things got too quiet, I got restless, started looking for something to muddy up the waters a little bit. I generally managed to find it.”
Doug said, “Maybe you were born a few years too late. You ought to’ve been in the army, fighting Indians.”
Dundee shook his head, smiling. “About the time the fightin’ started, I’d’ve been in the guardhouse for hittin’ an officer. I never did cotton to takin’ orders.”
“You’ve taken them from me.”
“If I hadn’t liked ’em, I wouldn’t have took ’em.”
They were the last ones to eat. Since Trudy had taken over the cooking job, the men came up to the house for their meals, filling their plates from food piled high on the kitchen table. They usually sat on the porch outside to eat it, for the house would be uncomfortably cramped with that many men sitting around on the floor.
Stub Bailey was finishing up, rubbing his stomach in satisfaction. He had been back to the table the second time. Watching Stub, Dundee said, “That girl’s cookin’s goin’ to cost you a heap extra, Doug. One thing about Simon Getty, he wouldn’t make a man overstuff himself.” He smiled then. “Of course, I reckon there’s more to it than just the cookin’. Most of ’em go back the second time just to take another look at that girl.”
Dundee’s eyes touched Doug Monahan’s for a moment with a hint of shared secrets. Doug knew Dundee was including him, too. Dundee had a way of standing off and shrewdly sizing people up, and he wasn’t often wrong.
Funny the way it was with Trudy. After all she had said earlier about the fence, she had loosened up and become friendly and easy-mannered to the men of the fencing crew. There wasn’t one of them now who wouldn’t have charged hell with a bucket of water if she had asked him to. Maybe she had belatedly caught some of her father’s enthusiasm about the fence.
Dundee finished first and walked off toward the barn. Doug sat on the porch, eating the last of a big slice of gingerbread. Trudy walked out onto the porch with a large pan in her hands. Leaning over Doug, she dropped another piece of gingerbread into his plate.
“Whoa now,” he said, “I’ve had enough.”
“There’s too much to throw away and not enough to keep,” she told him firmly. “Eat it.” She ran her kitchen in the ironclad manner of a wagon cook, and she made the men like it.
Doug smiled, remembering how wrong his first impression of her had been. That day she had ridden into his fencing camp with her father, he had her figured as a quiet, shy little country girl who would never speak above a whisper. He had missed by about a mile and a half. There was something of steel about Trudy Wheeler. It might be hidden most of the time, but stress would bring it out.
Doug knew he was thinking too much about her. It wasn’t that he wanted to. But whenever she was anywhere in view, he found himself watching her, hoping she didn’t notice.
Doug Monahan had never been in love in his life, and he didn’t want to be in love now. There was too much else to worry about.
He couldn’t tell for sure what was wrong that night. An uneasiness came over him as darkness settled down, a prescience he had felt at other times, one he had learned to respect. He watched the men crawl into their blankets in the barn, but he didn’t go to bed himself.
“What’s the matter, Doug?” Stub Bailey asked.
“I don’t rightly know. Just got a queer feeling.”
“So’ve I, but it was just that third slice of gingerbread. It’ll be all right in the morning.”
Doug went outside and walked restlessly in front of the barn. He smoked half a cigarette, then flipped it away. It didn’t taste right.
It was dark outside, except for the brittle winter starlight. He didn’t like it, and he wished the moon would rise. Then he remembered it was time for the new moon.
Restlessness still needling him, he saddled his horse and rode down the steadily lengthening fenceline. His horse nickered, and another answered from nearby in the darkness. Doug kept his hand on his gun until he assured himself that the other horseman was one of the two guards he had constantly riding the fence.
“Who is it?” a stern voice demanded. Doug heard a hammer click.
“Me, Doug.” He rode up slowly. He had to get close before the man could be sure of him in the darkness. The rider relaxed then and slipped the gun back into its holster.
“Just checking up, Milt,” Doug said. “See or hear anything?”
“Nope, quiet as a church. Just like it’s been every night.”
“How long since you’ve seen Wallace?”
“Passed him ten minutes ago. He was ridin’ along on the other side. He’ll make a vuelta and be back directly. Somethin’ wrong?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a feeling.”
He found the other guard presently and got the same sort of answers. Doug was almost ready to concede that it was too much gingerbread and go back to the barn. But, to satisfy himself, he decided to make a short swing of a mile or so out in the direction of the R Cross headquarters.
The horse picked them up first. How a horse could unerringly find others of its kind in pitch darkness had always been something of a mystery to Doug. His mount perked up its ears and turned its head a little. Doug stood in the stirrups, looking and listening. He could hear and see nothing. He swung out of the saddle to get away from the constant creak of leather and stood off at the reins’ full length from the horse.
He began to hear it then, the muffled thud of hoofs in the dry grass, a fragile tinkle of spurs and bit-chains in the crisp night air.
They were coming.
He swung back into the saddle and spurred into a long trot, hoping the sound would not carry to the oncoming riders as their own had come to him. The sharp breeze was in his favor. He hurriedly found his two guards.
“Riders on their way,” he said. “Wallace, you ride back to the barn and pick up the rest of the crew. Milt, you and I’ll go down to the end of the fence.”
They struck an easy lope down the fenceline. Doug wished for good moonlight, but he knew there would be little of it. They wouldn’t see their enemy until the men got close. But that worked both ways. The fencing crew wouldn’t be easily seen, either.
He wondered why he hadn’t thought of the new moon before. The R Cross probably had checked the almanac to be sure of coming in the dark of the moon. With a little thought, Monahan would have known they’d come on a night like this, if they were coming at all.
At the end of the fence were stacked the spools of wire and most of the cedar posts which hadn’t been used yet. Down here the R Cross riders could do more damage in ten minutes than they could elsewhere in half the night, laboriously snipping away at the finished fence.
Saddlegun in his lap, Doug sat his horse quietly and waited, the blood pounding in his temples. Maybe Dundee would get his satisfaction tonight.
He heard a faint hum in the fence. Somewhere above, someone had cut a strand and eased the tension of the wire.
Doug’s hand tightened on the gun. All that hard work, and they were setting in to destroy it! Listening hard, hearing the sharp gnash of cutting edge against cutting edge as the steel cutters bit through the wire, he felt growing in him the same anger that he had known the day Paco Sanchez had died.
But this time there was a difference. This time he was not helpless.
The horses were coming down the fence. Doug stepped out of the saddle, squatting low in the brittle grass so he could see the riders against the skyline. The sky was almost as black as the ground, and he could make out only the blurry outlines of the men as they reached the corner posts. He tied the ends of his split reins together and looped them over his arm.
“Here’s the end of it,” a man said in a low voice. “Them spools have got to be here someplace. Fetch up them kerosene cans.” There were three riders, maybe four; it was hard to tell. That others were still busy up-fence, Doug was certain.
He lifted the muzzle of the saddlegun just enough so the slug would clear the men’s heads, and squeezed off the shot.
His horse jerked back, almost throwing Doug to the ground. A couple of the raiders’ horses squealed in panic. The wire stretched and sang as a horse hit the fence. Doug flinched at the sound. He heard the solid clank of a small kerosene can hitting the ground as some rider turned loose of everything and concentrated on staying in the saddle.
Doug moved so the men could not pinpoint him by the flash of the gun. For a moment or so there was confusion among the riders. Their horses danced excitedly, and Doug thought he heard a man hit the ground. Hoofs clattered as a horse broke in terror out across the prairie. One man afoot, Doug thought.
Somebody fired in Doug’s direction, but it was a wild shot, more an angry gesture than an earnest attempt to hit him. The riders backed off.
He could hear men cutting the fence farther up. And there was a louder noise. The top strand of wire sang loudly. Staples sprang out of the posts.
“What’re they doin’ up there?” Milt asked worriedly.
“Tied on with a rope, I think. Trying to jerk down as much wire as they can in a hurry.”
“Shouldn’t we go stop ’em?”
“No,” Doug replied, “we got to guard these stacks till the rest of the bunch gets here.”
He fired again in the direction of the fence cutters. Someone shouted. He knew he was hitting close to home.
Then came the sharp rattle of gunfire farther up the fence. His own crew was coming now. They were shooting wild, trying to scare the raiders back from the fence. The guns moved nearer as the fencing crew strung out. Doug and Milt joined in, firing into the blackness until their gunbarrels were too hot to touch.
“Doug,” a voice shouted, “where you at?” It was Dundee’s.
“Here, at the corner.”
He heard the roll of hoofbeats from across the fence. The raiders were retreating in hasty confusion. The wild, indiscriminate fire from the strong fencing crew was hard to face. There was no cover anywhere along the fenceline, no protection from the bullets that came whining by in the black.
The R Cross men were not gunfighters, and they were not getting gunfighter pay. They were drawing wages as cowboys, twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month, depending on what they were worth for solid cow work, done a-horseback. No frills, no fancy stuff. They might be good men, top cowhands, but most of them probably had never been shot at in their lives, and they found this first time hard to take. So they were leaving.
It was the smart thing to do, Doug conceded. In their place, he would have done it himself.
Dundee came loping up. The fencing crew was strung out behind him. “We got ’em on the run,” he shouted. “We could maybe catch up and give ’em somethin’ to really remember us by.”
“No,” Doug said, “it’s too dark. They’ll remember us, all right.”
Dundee was shaking with the excitement of a high-strung Thoroughbred horse which has just finished its race and still wants to run. For a moment he acted as if he’d go along anyway “I say we ought to go after ’em!”
“No,” Doug replied firmly, “if we push it any farther, somebody’s liable to get killed. We ran them off, that’s all I aimed to do.”
Dundee accepted the decision with reluctance and shoved his gun back into the holster. “They’ve done us some damage. We oughtn’t to just let it go like that. They get the idea we’re an easy mark, they’ll be slippin’ back in here every night, cuttin’ wire and makin’ a nuisance.”
“We’re not just letting it go by,” Doug told him, although he wasn’t sure yet just what he was going to do about it.
Then Foley Blessingame brought him his answer. “Lookee here what me and the kids found,” he said jubilantly. He pushed in close enough so Doug could see a man afoot at the end of a rope. “Feller lost his horse out yonder,” Foley explained.
The cowboy gave him a go-to-hell look.
Young Vern Wheeler came to see who it was. “Howdy, Shorty,” he said. The R Cross man softened a little at the sight of Vern. “Howdy, Vern.”
Vern said, “He’s Shorty Willis. We worked together some while I was on the R Cross. Let’s go easy on him. He’s a pretty good feller.”
“We don’t aim to hurt him, Vern,” Doug promised, “unless he gives us a reason to. Right now I’d just like to get a little information out of him.”
“I got nothin’ to tell you,” Shorty said.
Doug glanced quizzically at Foley Blessingame. “Reckon he’d change his mind if you dunked him in that icy creek?”
Foley grinned. “You mean like we done that grouchy cook? I expect it’d loosen up his tongue a little. It sure made the cook talk.”
The cowboy looked pleadingly at Vern Wheeler. Vern said, “You better tell ’em what they want to know, Shorty. They’ll make you talk sooner or later. You’d just as well do it now and save yourself a soaking. That’s mighty cold water.”
Shorty Willis shrugged. “I ain’t paid to do no swimmin’. What do you want to know?”
“Who-all was on the raid, and how many?” Doug asked.
“Big part of the R Cross cowboys, all that Archer Spann could round up without havin’ to drag ’em in from the line camps. He got some of Fuller Quinn’s bunch in on it, too. Quinn’s been itchin’ to do somethin’ about this fence, only he ain’t had the nerve to try it by hisself.”
“Were Quinn and Spann both out here?”
“Yep. Spann was giving’ the orders, though. He allus does. It’s a funny thing to me, Quinn bein’ a ranch owner and all. When Spann’s around, Quinn lets him give all the orders, and Spann don’t even own a good horse, much less a ranch. Somethin’ about him that naturally makes a man sit up and take notice, I reckon.”
“What was his plan?”
“He figured on cuttin’ and rippin’ out all the wire you’d strung. We was goin’ to burn all the posts and wire you had stacked up out here. Cripple you good, he said, and you’d quit.”
Doug said, “It didn’t get very far, though, did it?”
Willis shook his head. “The dark had us boogered some to begin with. Spann said there’d be nothin’ to it, that you’d fold up like a wet rag. But it’s a creepy feelin’, movin’ into somethin’ like this and not bein’ able to see what’s ahead. You-all could’ve been settin’ up an ambush for all we knew. And when the guns opened up and them slugs started whinin’ around, it was too much. A few of the boys started pullin’ back, and then all of us was scatterin’ like a bunch of quail. Archer Spann was fit to tie, but he couldn’t stop it.”
The cowboy rubbed his hip. It evidently was sore. “One of them wild bullets got my horse. Spilled him right on top of me. I hollered for somebody to pick me up, but everybody was so excited I guess they didn’t hear me. Nobody except”—he nodded his head at the Blessingames—”them big oxes there.”
Foley Blessingame grinned. “I always taughts my boys to give a man his money’s worth.”
Doug asked Willis, “Were you going to meet again somewhere after the job was through?”
Willis nodded. “Spann didn’t seem to have any doubt we’d do the job up right. He said if we got scattered to meet at the Lodd line camp. He left some whisky there and said when we got back ever’-body could celebrate.” Willis grimaced. “Some celebration!”
Vern said, “I thought it was against R Cross rules to have whisky on the place.”
“What the old man don’t find out about won’t hurt him any.” Willis shook his head. “Funny about Spann. Never touches a drop hisself. He’s as straitlaced as the old man. But he’ll buy it for somebody else if it suits his purpose, and that’s somethin’ the captain never would do.”
It would be a different kind of a whisky party than Spann had anticipated, Doug figured. They’d be drinking to quiet their nerves and drown the ignominy of the rout.
“Let’s mount up,” Doug told the men. “We’re going to drop over to that line camp and join the party.”