Nine
Falcon and Stumpy threw themselves backward to the floor, Greeners in their hands, just as Bonnie pulled iron and fired. They eared back the hammers and let the shotguns roar. Wildcat had ducked under the table in a move that caught the hired guns by surprise, and added his shotgun music to the deadly symphony of buckshot. The low-ceiled room was filled with arid gunsmoke and the roar of gunfire. The wall separating the store from the saloon was splattered with blood when the howling of lead faded away.
The shotguns had put every hired gun on the floor. Three were dead, nearly cut in half by the sawed-off shotguns. Two were wounded, and the others had all the fight ripped from them.
“No more!” one shouted. “We yield. No more shooting.”
Falcon stood up, his eyes burning from the thick gunsmoke and his hands filled with .44s. “Get up!” he commanded. “Leave your guns on the floor and put your hands in the air.”
Those who were unhurt, just scared crapless, crawled to their knees, hands high over their heads.
Bonnie was on the floor, shot in both legs. He was moaning about dying.
“Shut up,” one of his pals told him in a shaky voice. “You ain’t hurt bad.”
“Oh, Christ,” another of those unhurt said. “Look at Manley’s head. It’s blowed ’most clear off!” Then he threw up on the floor.
“Get their guns,” Falcon told the store owner.
The trading post owner gathered up all the guns, being careful to avoid stepping in the gore, then quickly backed away.
“You boys take a message to Miles Gilman,” Falcon told the survivors of the shoot-out. “Tell him we can either live in peace and get along, or we can have the damnedest war he ever saw. It’s all up to him. Now clear out of here. And leave the dead men’s horses.”
Those few left alive helped the wounded to their boots, left the dead behind them, and scrambled for the door, and were in the saddle and gone half a minute later.
“You bury them and you can have their horses and guns and money,” Falcon told the post owner.
“Deal, if you’ll help me drag ’em out of here.”
“Done. You going to get in trouble with Gilman for this?”
The post owner grinned. “Not damn likely. The cavalry leaves patrol remounts here and this is a stage stop. Gilman leaves me the hell alone.”
“Good enough. Let’s get the bodies out of here.”
The hired guns had managed to bang off only four shots, hitting nothing but a side wall of the old trading post.
Falcon bought several bolts of cloth for the ladies, some candy for Jimmy, and the three of them headed back to the ranch.
* * *
Miles Gilman was in a blue funk. The news of someone buying twenty sections of land, north and south of the Rockingchair range, had just reached him, and he had gone into a towering rage. To make matters even worse, he had no idea who had bought it, for it had all been done by a bunch of lawyers in San Francisco and Denver. And now the hired mercenaries sent by Noonan had come staggering in, shot all to pieces at the trading post by Val Mack and two old geezers.
“Jesus Christ!” Miles screamed. “What in the hell is going on around here?”
Whatever it is, Claude his foreman silently and sourly mused, it’s probably gonna get worse.
* * *
Martha and Angie oohed and aahed over the bolts of cloth, Jimmy chomped on the few pieces of candy his mother would let him have, and John, Kip, and Cookie listened to Falcon tell about what had taken place at the old trading place. During the telling, Jimmy sneaked a few more pieces of candy out of the jar and took off for the bunkhouse. The boy loved to listen to the wild tales of the older men.
“He’ll just send ten or twenty or fifty more gunhands, Val,” John said, after Falcon had finished and was drinking his coffee. “Do you and the rest of the boys plan on killin’ them all?”
Falcon secretly smiled. His dad sure wiped out a gang after they attacked his town and killed Falcon’s mother. “I don’t think it will come to that, John.”
“You don’t know Miles Gilman, Val,” John said grimly.
* * *
Puma Parley and Mustang rode in together a few days later and the outfit was complete. No one knew Mustang’s real name and he wasn’t about to give it up.
“That is, if he even remembers what it is,” Big Bob commented.
Average age of the Rockingchair hands: sixty.
“What a crew,” John remarked one morning. “I can truthfully say I don’t think I have ever seen anythin’ like ’em.”
“Nobody else has either,” Falcon replied with a laugh. He had noticed that Big Bob Marsh would occasionally take a long slow look all around him. He finally walked over to the big man and asked what in the world he was looking for.
“That damn beast of Puma’s.”
“He left it back in the cave.”
“So he says,” Big Bob said with a grimace. “But Puma has been known to tell a lie ever’ now and then. Jenny’s sneaky; sneakiest varmint I ever did see. Just like his old cat was. I’ll bet you a month’s pay she’s around here close.”
“Well, we’ll know for sure if she pulls down a steer.”
Big Bob shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that unless she was desperate. I know it sounds far-fetched, but she was trained to leave cattle alone . . . usually. Some people claim that pumas is the dumbest animals on earth. Well, I reckon some is and some ain’t. Jenny is one of them who ain’t. That’s a damn smart cat.”
Mustang was a man of average height and weight. But like all men of the mountains, he was all wang-leather and rawhide tough. Puma stood just a shade under six feet and was still a very powerful man. Any man who had a cupful of experience under his belt could, or should, be able to take one look at these men and know it would be best to give them a wide berth.
And Cookie found out that first evening they were all together about a mountain man’s appetite: the average mountain man could put a grizzly to shame when it came to eating.
“Good thing you ordered them other wagons of food,” Cookie told Falcon after the evening meal that first day. “You should have told the post owner to fill the same order ever’ month.”
Falcon laughed and said, “I did!”
Falcon spent the next three days prowling the thousands of acres of Rockingchair range, looking for cattle. What he found did not surprise him.
“Somebody’s rustled about half your herd, John,” he reported back to the Rockingchair owner. “No point in rounding them up for a drive. It wouldn’t be worth it.”
John Bailey sat down heavily at the kitchen table and rubbed his face with his callused hands. “Then I’m finished,” he said wearily.
“Not at all,” Falcon contradicted the rancher. “We’ll just get them back for you, or make Miles pay for them. You’ll have to delay the drive until next year, but you’ll have your cattle back.”
John lifted tired eyes to Falcon. “You and six old men are goin’ to do that?”
“Me and six mountain men,” Falcon corrected.
* * *
The next morning, Falcon and six mountain men were up and riding toward Snake range before dawn. They each carried grub enough for two days and their pockets were stuffed with cartridges and their belt loops full.
Within an hour of crossing onto Snake range, they found a small herd of Rockingchair-branded cattle and started them moving back toward their own grass. The next hour they came up on a herd of Snake cattle with a lot of Rockingchair beeves all mixed in, and began cutting out those that did not belong to Miles Gilman. Two Snake punchers soon rode up and stared for a moment.
“What the hell do you people think you’re doin’?” one finally demanded.
“Taking back our cattle,” Falcon told him. “Get used to it. Because before it’s all over, we’ll cover every inch of Snake range.”
“The hell you say!” the other Snake rider blurted.
“That’s right. And when you people get your roundup completed, we’ll be there to check brands.”
“I don’t think so, mister.”
“I do.” Falcon turned his horse to face the puncher. “You want to argue about it right now?”
The puncher thought about that for a few seconds, then shook his head. He was one of the few Snake riders left who was not drawing fighting wages. He rode for the brand, but had no desire to get himself killed. He had heard the stories about this Val Mack.
“I reckon not,” the puncher finally said.
“Good,” Falcon replied. “You and your partner can start these cattle moving toward their own range. That’ll save us some time.”
“You want us to do ... what?” the other Snake hand asked.
“Get these cattle moving. They don’t belong to you and I just might get it in my head to hang you both for rustling.”
Big Bob Marsh and Stumpy started forming hangman nooses.
“Now wait just a damn minute!” one of the Snake punchers hollered. “We didn’t rustle these cattle.”
“Looks pretty bad to me,” Puma said. “I just can’t abide a thief.”
“We ain’t thieves!”
“Well, you work for a murdering thief,” Falcon told him.
“And that’s all we do,” the second puncher said. “We ain’t drawin’ fightin’ wages.”
“You still work for a skunk,” Dan Carson said.
“We got to work, mister.”
“That’s a fact. A man that don’t work is a bum. But I’ll bet there are other ranchers around who need hands.”
Both punchers sighed.
“That’s the truth, Dan,” Falcon said. “I heard Tom Gorman over on the Double Triangle was paying top wages for good hands. Why don’t you boys head over there and tell him I sent you. After you push these cows back onto Rockingchair grass, that is.”
“We do that, and our lives won’t be worth spit,” the other puncher said.
“They will be if you stay out of town,” Falcon corrected. “Just think, come the fall you boys can have about a hundred and fifty dollars saved up. Then you can do what you want to do. And boys, this situation around here will all be cleared up come the fall. You can bet on that.”
The two cowboys exchanged glances, one asking, “How about our gear back at the bunkhouse?”
“What’d you have there?”
“Britches, shirts, socks, bedrolls, winter coats, gloves.”
Falcon took a notepad out of his saddlebags and scribbled a short note, signing it Val Mack. He handed the note to the punchers. “You take this over to the old trading post and get outfitted new what you left behind. It’s on me.”
“Say now!” one of the punchers said. “That shines, mister. Thanks. Tom Gorman just got himself some hands.”
“You’ll sleep a lot better now that you’re away from Miles Gilman.”
Both cowboys smiled. “You’re probably right about that.”
“Any others over at the Snake who might be persuaded to leave?”
“Three that I can think of. We’ll probably run into them ’fore long.”
“Same deal for them.”
“We’ll tell them. Whether they take your deal or not is up to them. We’ll get these cows back to the Rockingchair.”
One of the punchers hesitated and said, “Val, you watch out for Lars Gilman. He’s lookin’ to make a name for himself. And he’s fast, real fast.”
“And about half nuts,” his partner added.
“Thanks for the word. I won’t forget it.”
“See you boys around,” Mustang said cheerfully.
“Nice fellers,” Big Bob said.
“They are now,” Wildcat added.
The men spend the rest of the day on Snake range and by the middle of the afternoon, had found about seventy-five more Rockingchair cows. They decided to call it quits for the day and push the small herd back to home range. They had seen no more Snake riders.
“We was lucky this day,” Big Bob said. “But you can bet that from now on, this range will be swarming with Snake riders.”
Falcon smiled. “So tomorrow, we’ll work the far north sections for a couple of days. Then move to the extreme southern part of Snake range. There is no way we’ll ever recover all of John’s cattle, but if we can get several hundred, I’ll be happy.”
“I haven’t spotted no altered brands,” Stumpy said. “I think the Rockingchair brand is damn near impossible to cover.”
“It would be difficult,” Falcon agreed.
John and Kip were waiting at the corral when the riders returned. John smiled at Falcon and said, “I had an interestin’ visit from a couple of, uh, former Snake riders this day.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes. They brought back about thirty head of cattle. They were on their way to work for Tom Gorman.”
“We talked to them boys for a few minutes and they had a change of heart ’bout workin’ for Miles Gilman,” Bob said. “We could tell right off they was troubled ’bout it.”
“Do tell?” Kip said.
“Yep,” Stumpy replied. “They seemed real happy ’bout leavin’ Gilman.”
“I just bet they were. ”You boys decided not to spend the night on Snake range, hey?“
“We couldn’t find no comfortable spot to bed down,” Bob told him with a straight face. “ ’Sides, we miss Cookie’s grub.”
“I see,” John said.
“Anything exciting happen here while we were gone?” Falcon asked.
“Quiet as a church,” the rancher replied. “Well, I been doin’ some thinkin’. I probably don’t have to remind you, but the weekend is comin’ up.”
“Do tell?” Stumpy said.
John smiled. “You boys wouldn’t be thinkin’ ’bout headin’ into town to blow off a little steam, would you?”
“The town of Gilman is really jumpin’ on a Saturday night, hey?” Puma asked.
“It can get right crowded when it fills up with Snake riders,” Kip said.
“Tell the truth,” Dan Carson said, standing with the other men, “I have been lookin’ forward to a bottle and a friendly card game. We been on the move since we heard from, uh, Val, here and we just ain’t had much time for relaxation. A night on the town would be sorta nice.”
Both John and Kip noticed the slight hesitation when mentioning Val’s name, but neither man said anything about it.
“I thought you boys might want to slick up and go in,” John said.
“How about you and your family, Boss?” Big Bob asked.
John smiled and shook his head. “Can’t risk it. Gilman’s tried to burn us out twice. But with five good shots here, he won’t dare attack the house.”
“You want us all to stay?” Falcon asked. “After what happened this day, Gilman might throw caution to the wind and attack.”
“No. You boys head on in and whoop it up. But you know, of course, that you’re going to run into Snake riders.”
Puma Parley smiled. “Countin’ on that, Boss. Countin’ on it.”