The years are like a river, flowing slow and deep and clear, or sudden and swift, muddied by storm. On Powder Burns they had left their mark but no sure brand. His face was youthful, but soberness dwelt about his mouth. Bright laughter glinted from blue eyes, but in their depths was the look of wide spaces with the dust of trouble stirring across. The sun hadn’t faded brownish hair, and in his face was strength and challenge, and always a touch of the unpredictable.
He wore the fancy pants of California; the gaudy chaps of a man from open range and sunny skies, rather than the bull-hide needed here in Texas, in the thorn-thick brush. But there was at once a contradiction, for he sat a Texas saddle, and the gun-butt protruding from the holster at his hip was nothing fancy. His hat was neither Texas nor California, but might have been from the plains of Kansas or on north, where the long trail began to unravel.
There was about him a touch of bigness belied again by his physical build, for he came half a head short of six feet and was graceful in his slenderness. The bigness came in the way he carried himself, a whimsical outlook upon life, which seemed to proclaim that here was a man who controlled his own fate.
A dozen pairs of eyes appraised him as he rode, silent calculation in all, since a stranger in these parts was a man of whom to be chary. He gave an equally level look in turn, sizing up the gathered longhorns, the explosive impatience in the herd, the sweat and grime of the men. He’d passed a chuck wagon a mile back, piled heavy with supplies, a big remuda in a meadow. The signs were easy to read. This was no ordinary spring roundup, but a gather for the long trail. So now he voiced the thought aloud, addressing it with sure instinct to the man in charge, who sat his horse and watched the near-by brush with strained intensity.
“I take it that, once your gather’s completed, you’ll be heading north—Wyoming or Montana?”
Laredo Scott’s attention shifted for a moment, and it was characteristic of the man that in that brief instant he gave his full and complete attention to the newcomer. Cataloguing him in a lightning-swift glance of steel-gray eyes, the foreman decided as swiftly that he didn’t like him. It was as though a spark rippled and clashed between the two men, and instant antagonism was born. Laredo was at no pains to keep it from his voice.
“Montana,” he acknowledged briefly, and added tightly, “There’s no room for any more men on the drive. We’re full up!”
“Listen to that now, Blue Devil!” Powder Burns leaned to fondle one of his horse’s ears, while the other cocked attentively for his words. “There’s a smart man, Blue—a plumb mind reader. Answers a question before ever it’s asked, and sure—just as sure about it as if he was God lookin’ down!”
Three or four of the crew, holding the nervous cattle, were close enough to overhear. One of them grinned, but no man laughed. Red made its swift run up Laredo’s throat and chin, between the heavy burnsides which flamed a matching red where touched by the sun. Here was a man who didn’t like to be laughed at.
But instant diversion came from one of the steers. It burst out from the wall of brush, erupting through an opening between the thorns so scant that only a native would have considered it passable. Half a ton of bone and horn, bawling wildly, a rope about his horns, twin devils in his eyes. He’d been doubling back in the brush, about to escape, when the noose had been dropped over his horns. For a few moments he’d fought it savagely, then, with an abrupt change of tactics, turned and plunged madly for the open.
It was a trick well known to these half-wild creatures, one which frequently gained them freedom and as often brought the horsemen to the brink of disaster. That was happening now. The cowboy who held the other end of the rope emerged into the open an instant later, his pony legging it in an effort to keep pace with the mad dash of the steer. His end of the lariat was snubbed about the saddle horn, a quick half-hitch which had somehow tangled in a snarl which couldn’t be loosened.
As always at such a time, it happened fast. Here was tremendous jerking strain, and the cayuse stumbled. The cinch snapped with a tearing pop, and saddle and rider hit the ground in a confused heap.
Quick to sense his advantage, the plunging steer pivoted and swung back. The down man was striving frantically to get to his feet, but tangled in the wreckage of saddle and rope. Instantly the longhorn, bawling hoarsely, charged at him. More than one man, meeting similar misadventure when riding alone, had been found later, a gored and bloody pulp.
But this man was not alone, and Laredo was foreman. He had been alertly watchful, and now he dug in his spurs at the moment when the steer reversed his course, sending his cayuse lunging ahead, his rope in his hand and swinging. The longhorns made a good target, one which he hadn’t missed on a similar try in years.
This time he missed. Perhaps it was the plunging speed of the steer, perhaps Laredo’s judgment had been warped by the rage yet burning in him. The loop dropped over one rangy point of horn, missed its mate by inches. It narrowed and slid off the smooth tip, and a gasp of dismay went up from the other watchers, too far away to do anything, and only scant seconds between the fallen man and death.
The blast of the gun was a sustained roar—several shots, all coming so fast that they seemed to blend. The gun was in the stranger’s hand, in a display of speed to rival the mad gyrations of the outlaw steer. One bullet, however vitally placed, couldn’t check such a rush, not in time. Six of them did. The longhorn faltered, lugged sagging head aloft with a supreme effort, took another stride, rage and pain and despair mingling in the last frenzied bellow to tear up from his closing throat. Then he collapsed in a bubble of red foam, almost on top of the cowboy, who got shakily to his feet.
No one spoke. A dozen pairs of eyes had witnessed it all—the foreman’s try and miss, the unexpected speed and skill of the stranger with his gun, which alone had saved a life.
Where Laredo’s judgment had been at fault, his cool sureness had saved the day.
Rage still suffused Laredo’s face. It was as though the life of a man counted less than having his own mistake exposed. His eyes glinted wickedly as they swung to rake the newcomer, his hands trembled as he gathered in his rope.
The man on horseback was coolly blowing the smoke from his gun, punching out the empty shells and inserting fresh cartridges. He bent his attention for a close moment upon the fallen man as he took a tentative step.
“All right, feller?”
Jimmy Dowst nodded, momentary uncertainty vanishing. A thin streak of blood mingled with the sweat and dirt across his cheek, almost hiding the pattern of still boyish freckles where no whiskers sprouted. He managed a grin.
“Right as rain—thanks to you! And I—I’d like to know your name—who I owe me life to?”
“Good enough. As for my name, folks call me Powder—Powder Burns.” Lifting a hand in airy salutation, Powder shoved the gun back in holster and swung his horse away. After a moment, Laredo barked a sharp order at those who watched. “We haven’t got all week! Get on with it!”
There was a thin quirk of amusement to Powder’s lips, offsetting the equally thin line of annoyance between his eyes. It had been in his mind to inquire more particularly about the possibilities of the herd heading north, but of immediate concern was the lowering sun in the west and the emptiness within him. Customarily a rider, any rider, would be asked to stop for supper and the night, and that had been paramount in his mind.
Two days back his turkey had shed its last tailfeather, symbolically speaking. No bacon remained in the thin pack behind his saddle, no flour or coffee. And towns were far between, here on the Concho. He could kill and dine on meat, as he’d done that morning, but he’d done that overmuch of late.
The foreman hadn’t liked him, because he’d succeeded where the swinging rope failed. A man’s life hadn’t counted, and that was revealing. None of which mattered, except that chuckwagon and supper on the way. Otherwise, it was all right, for that swift dislike had been mutual.
“Be too far to trail north with him—a thousand miles too far,” Powder reflected. “There’ll be other outfits.”
The dust of the gather was a dim haze behind, the sun poised like a molten ball on the rim of the world. Powder’s eyes brightened, and his horse, feeling the lighter touch on the reins, broke into a run of its own accord. The roofs and chimneys of a ranch lifted ahead, a mile away. A scattering of tall trees stood sentinel-like, the corrals were big. Like enough this was the home ranch of the same outfit, but the men in the field wouldn’t be back here tonight, as the lateness of their work and the chuck wagon testified. There should be welcome at a ranch.
Emptiness marked the corrals, hung like a fog about the buildings. No smoke lifted from the chimneys of bunkhouse, cook shack, or main dwelling. Then he saw a horse, saddled and alone, beside a tree. Rounding the corner of the barn he saw the other two.
They were a man and a woman, standing at the shadowed edge of a big porch. Powder saw the girl first, for the light was in her face, and in it was apprehension, the shadow of fear. It was a face made for laughter, for quick changes of expression, sensitive, full of vibrant beauty. He hardly noticed the darkly brown hair above, nor was there time for more than a quick look at the man.
There was sheer bigness, but it was not a flabby bulk. He was tall as well as broad, and this was muscle, not fat. Something about him told his age as probably in the forties, but it did not show in any grayness about the temples or lack of vigor. Rather it dwelt in his knowledgeableness, the triumph flooding his face. He moved with the pouncing quickness of a striking hawk, his arms closing around the girl like a hoop.
“I always get what I want, Mary Ellen. When you come to Montana, I’ll be waiting to marry you. That’s a promise. And now I’ll have a kiss to seal it!”
She cried out, dismay tightening her face. It was the cry that did it. Powder had heard such a bleat from a doe as a puma pounced upon it, and that time his bullet had been too slow. Swinging off his horse, Powder reached the porch in a rush.
His hand on the big man’s shoulder whirled him around and back so savagely that he staggered.
That was due in part to surprise. This big fellow hadn’t heard him or been prepared. Good sense dictated that he follow up his advantage with a swift attack, for the rage which blazed in the big man’s eyes was proof that he’d started something which might not be so simple to finish.
Instead, Powder checked and smiled, and his bow was mocking. “The lady doesn’t seem to relish your attentions,” he suggested.
The other man had been about to rush, but at the words, he took time to look over this brash stranger, and his eyes gathered contempt as they raked the gaudy outfit.
“And just who are you?” he asked. “I like to know the name of a stranger—so that he can have a fitting burial!”
The girl caught her breath, but neither man looked toward her. Both were watching each other, reading the danger.
“The name is Burns,” Powder murmured. “Powder Burns, from here and there and yonder. Should we lay aside our guns?”
“Why not?” It was a short bark of a laugh, biting with scorn. “I don’t need a gun for what I’m going to do to you, Burns! But you’re smaller than I thought. If you care to apologize—”
“For Heaven’s sake,” Powder thought resignedly, “how did I get into this! What’s it to me if he kisses a girl?” But aloud his tone was cool, unconcerned.
“I’m better at fighting than making apologies,” he said, and unstrapped his belt, laying it on a table. Without shifting his attention, he was aware of the pulsing color in the girl’s cheeks, the quick rise and fall of her breast. But she knew better than to intervene in such a quarrel. The big man bowed to her, smiling.
“My opponent is a trifle small compared with myself, but he appears to be quite a man, so this is an excellent opportunity, Mary Ellen, for me to demonstrate to you that, while I may be old enough to be your father—as you just now told me—I’m still in the prime of life, and the best man in Texas! My father, as it happened, was thirty years my mother’s senior. And at the age of seventy he killed a man with a blow of his fist!”
Powder watched as his opponent laid his own gun and belt on the table. There were two holsters, and the gun-butts which protruded were bone-handled, polished to a hue of ivory. The difference was a vital one, however. Ivory handles could give an uncertain grip when a man needed sureness. The bone was certain.
“And now, if you’re ready, Mr. Burns—this won’t take long!”
There was more than mockery, a sureness which could come only from a long series of victories. Powder nodded, suddenly wary. He side-stepped that devastating swift rush which he had known was coming, lifted the weight of his fist to the exposed corner of the jaw as he ducked under the swing.
His blow was bone-jarring, and he felt it clear past his shoulder. It spun the big man half around, leaving him dazed and uncertain, and Powder followed it up with a one-two to the belly, sinking them deep. They made his opponent grunt, but there was no flabby softness, only a hard layer of muscle which confirmed the boasting. Powder leaped back from the vicious kick of a spurred boot, barely in time.
What he had done was drive away the contempt, replacing it with kindling anger. His opponent’s first wrath had subsided, leaving him pleased at the chance to demonstrate his prowess before the girl. That was forgotten now in pain, but he hadn’t been really hurt, only riled.
He leaped, both feet high in the air, hurling his two hundred pounds in a surprise move calculated to catch any man off guard and literally to smother him. It surprised Powder, but he twisted aside and out from under. Where a bigger, less agile man would have gone crashing down, he escaped. But where a clumsy big man would have sprawled helplessly at such a miscalculation, his opponent doubled and lashed with a fist as he landed, and the blow caught Powder in the neck and drove him back like the stroke from a club.
Gasping, he tried a trick of his own, knowing that he’d need everything he had. He launched himself in a leap for his opponent’s legs, hitting with his shoulders below the knees. Both of them went down, but hungry arms reached and encircled. Powder fisted hard, broke loose and came up, to hit again before the big man could quite regain his feet.
It grew savage, a brutal contest in which time had no meaning. The big man was out for a kill, but he was taking punishment as well as giving it. Locked together, they rolled to the edge of the porch and off, falling five feet to the ground. His enemy was underneath, but the jar hardly fazed him. One groping hand encountered a stick, big enough to fell a charging ox, and Powder saw those big fingers wrap around it, lift.
If that landed, it would splatter his brains like breaking an eggshell. Twisting with all his strength, Powder broke free, leaped back, tripped and sprawled headlong. The breath in Powder’s lungs was hot, a trickle of warm blood coursed from his battered nose and smeared his cheek and throat. An obscure thought nagged in the recesses of his mind.
How did I get into this—over a girl I never saw before?
His fingers, clawing for a hold, found a small round stone. Half-lifting, he flung it hard at the leering face above, saw it rock the big man back. A swelling red lump appeared on his forehead, his grip on the club was unsteady. Even so, he was far from out.
Pushing himself up, Powder came to his feet. He grabbed the club and twisted it away, while his opponent roared like an angry bull. The sound seemed to clear his head of the momentary daze, and the club fell to the ground between them, and his big arms closed.
Again they went down, locked together, the big man on top. Desperately Powder grabbed, closing both fists in the hair above. Twisting, he heaved and came uppermost again. While his enemy howled, he lifted and battered his head, up and down, still using the hair for hand-holds.
It was brutal, and it had its effect. The big man went limp, his face a bloody smear in the dust. It was hard to see out of half-shut eyes, but Powder sensed it and desisted. He peered owlishly down, and the girl’s voice came, sounding a long way off.
“I don’t think there’s any more fight left in him!”
Powder twisted his head and squinted at her. For a while he’d completely forgotten her, or what it was about. This had been primitive, for his opponent was like a cave man, and every instinct had been purely savage. Powder tried to push himself up with arms gone suddenly weak. He sprawled across his enemy, and lay so, sucking in breath through his open mouth. Then he managed to stand.
His head was clearing, though there was a drumming in his ears. It resolved itself into three men on horseback, the hoofs of the cayuses making a sharp tattoo on the hard-packed ground as they came up fast and pulled to a sudden stop. One was a man with gray at the temples and a look of anxiety mingled with amazement. A second was Jimmy Dowst, the cowboy who had so nearly died under the gouging horns of the big steer that afternoon—Jimmy, clutching the saddle horn tight with both hands, swaying, his face white and sick.
The third was Laredo Scott, and his glance raked wickedly from the man on the ground to Powder, and back.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Has this man been bothering you, Mary Ellen? If he has—”
“Not him,” Mary Ellen protested, and there was strangeness in her voice, an uncertain quality as of one who has looked on the unbelievable. “It was Queen. He—he tried to kiss me, and this man came along and stopped him.”
A heck of a thing to fight about! Powder thought to himself.
The older man swung down from the saddle, pausing only for a brief glance at the man on the ground. There was no sympathy in his eyes. “Looks like he stopped him, all right,” he agreed and, turning to Dowst, aided him to the ground.
“Jimmy’s hurt,” he explained. “He was thrown this afternoon-—would have been gored but for Laredo. He seemed all right at first, but maybe something’s busted inside. So we brought him home. Help me get him to the bunkhouse, Laredo.”
Laredo obeyed. Between them they half-carried the boy across and inside. Mary Ellen followed, concern in her eyes.
Powder had his breath back, and the rubbery feeling was leaving his legs. He’d be stiff and sore in the morning, but little the worse, though it was the most desperate fight he’d ever been in. He followed to the bunkhouse, where they were pulling Dowst’s boots off.
“We ought to have a doctor,” Mary Ellen said, and despair underlay the words. The reason was manifest in Laredo’s pettish answer.
“You know that’s out of the question. A day or so of rest will fix him up.”
“What do you think, Pa?” Mary Ellen appealed to her father. “It could be serious.”
“We’ll just have to hope it ain’t,” he sighed. “You know there’s no medico within a hundred miles. If we only knew what to do—”
“Let me have a look,” Powder suggested, and came to where Dowst was stretched on the bunk. Laredo scowled, but they watched in silence as he made an examination. Jimmy appeared to have fallen asleep, but he did not move as Powder felt him over and listened at the chest. He was unconscious.
“You a sawbones?” Laredo rapped impatiently.
“No,” Powder contradicted. He was about to add more but, seeing the antagonism in the foreman’s face, closed his lips on the words.
“We’d better get him to bed,” he added. “Nature will do a lot, given a chance.”
“What do you think is wrong?” It was the older man who asked.
“Could be that something’s busted inside,” Powder conceded. “I can’t find anything—but he’s hurt, that’s sure.”
“He seemed to be all right for a while,” Laredo protested. “He got up and walked, good as ever.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen a man with a broken leg do that, while he was still excited from the accident and ’fore he knew how bad hurt he was. Then he spent a month flat on his back.”
Laredo shrugged, darkly impatient. “He’ll be ridin’, good as ever, in a couple of days. He better. This is no time for shirking ”
“Jimmy’s never been a shirker,” Mary Ellen cried in protest, and her father looked uncertain. They turned as the big man loomed in the doorway behind. He had recovered his gun-belt and strapped it about his waist, the twin butts of the bone-handled weapons gleaming whitely above the leather, which was stained more than usually dark by use, grime and sweat.
The lump on his forehead showed red and ugly, and blood still smeared his face. For all that, there was a certain jauntiness about him still, and his voice was casual, strained of all anger.
“What’s the trouble?”
“What the devil are you doing here, Boake?” Laredo countered. “Mary Ellen said—”
“That I was trying to kiss her,” Boake Queen agreed. “Quite true. I told her I was going to marry her when we get to Montana. I keep my promises, as everyone knows.” He looked, half-challengingly, from one man to the other, and Powder gave a grudging admiration. He’d heard of Boake Queen, owner of the Sword Ranch—the toughest man in Texas, according to report.
“Mary Ellen will marry who she pleases—and it won’t be you,” the foreman snapped. “You aren’t wanted here, Queen.”
“I go and come as I please,” Queen retorted. “But I do have to be getting along, for we’re starting our herd north in the morning. Be seeing you, Mary Ellen. And you, McGill.” Laredo he ignored, but he swung for a moment to look at Powder, and in the look was grudging respect.
“You’re quite a man, mister,” he acknowledged. “If our paths cross again, let’s hope we don’t have to kill each other.”
With that he turned and was gone, leaving them gazing after him in bewilderment. Laredo looked at Mary Ellen, made as if to ask a question, and his gaze ranged on to Powder in hostile silence.
“I’ll have to be getting back,” he said to McGill. “You’ll be staying here, I suppose?”
“Overnight, I guess,” McGill acknowledged, and watched his foreman ride away, a small, worried crease between his eyes.
Mary Ellen turned to Powder. “I haven’t thanked you,” she said. “But I want to.”
“That’s all right,” Powder said, and found McGill’s eyes upon him.
“You licked Boake Queen?” he asked in amazement.
“I guess I was lucky,” Powder explained. “He’s a pretty tough hombre.”
“He makes his brag that he’s the toughest in Texas—and up to now, nobody’s been man enough to dispute him,” McGill said. “How did you happen to come along?”
“I was just riding past.”
“Looking for a job?”
Powder thought that over. There were angles here, and some of them intrigued him. Laredo Scott had made it plain that he wouldn’t hire him. Then Laredo had lied to his employer regarding Jimmy Dowst, taking all the credit for saving him from the steer. Apparently, since McGill hadn’t been there to see, he hadn’t even mentioned Powder or his part.
These were small things, of no great matter. There were other factors, and some of them concerned Mary Ellen. It wasn’t simple.
“You’re rounding up your herd to drive north?” he asked.
“Yes,” McGill said. “To Montana.” He hesitated, spread his hands in an encompassing, half-despairing gesture. “We’re leaving Texas—for good. No money down here, since the war. Just carpetbaggers and too many people swarming in, crowding you off the land. I want to go where there’s plenty of open range, where a man can make a fresh start. I’ve got the cattle. There’s range in Montana. We figure to pull out in about a week.”
That was a fair explanation, but it left unsaid a lot of important points. It could be that McGill didn’t realize how vital some of them were. He looked frustrated, like a man grown tired, discouraged, uncertain of himself and of life.
“You been there, to find a piece of range?”
“No. I’ve never been north of Dodge. But they say there’s plenty of land.”
That, too, was a revealing answer. It told a great deal more than McGill realized or intended. It left unsaid a lot of things that he probably didn’t even guess. Such as the fact that settlers were encroaching not alone here on Texas land, but across all the states along which the big drives had been rolling for more than a decade. Settlers who were building barbed-wire fences, banding together with increasing angry determination against the herds which trespassed on range now claimed as private land.
McGill’s trouble was that he was years too late. And the pity was that he didn’t know it.
“Queen said something about takin’ a herd north, too.”
“Yeah. He’s leavin’ in the morning, with four thousand head. For Montana.”
“You aim to be neighbors, maybe?”
McGill’s face twisted. “He’s been a hundred miles away, here, and that was too close. I was hoping, up there—” He spread his hands again. “But what can a man do? The range is open.”
Powder didn’t correct him. The range had been open. Men like McGill, or Queen, had run their herds on open range for years. They’d looked upon it as their own land. But the pinch was that it was government owned, and now the government was parceling it out to homesteaders. You could scare off a few stray nesters, but you couldn’t buck a score or a hundred, particularly when they were backed by the law. That left small choice for a man.
He saw Mary Ellen, bathing Jimmy Dowst’s face with a wet cloth. There was an appealing wistfulness to her face, and never had he seen a more beautiful woman. It would be a long, hard trail to Montana, more difficult in some respects than those first drives, years before, along the Chisholm. It had been an unmapped wilderness then, with Indians adding their hazard. The red men and the old dangers were mostly tamed. But by choice, Powder knew, he’d risk the trail as it had been in the raw new days rather than now.
There would be Laredo on this trip, and Laredo hated him. Also he was foreman, which could spell hell for a man. Laredo was a driving man, stronger than his employer. And somewhere along the way, or at least when Montana was reached, there would be Boake Queen again. Queen had made his promise, and Queen too had no cause to love him. There were a lot of angles, and Powder grinned through cracked and swollen lips.
“I guess I’m looking for a job,” he acknowledged.