Cord Lightner’s voice was happy. “It looks like we’ll have to fight our way through.”
“No!” Boyd Kilpatrick rapped the order harshly. “Hold your fire! Don’t anybody shoot unless they shoot first!” Suddenly he was out of the saddle. “Stewart, if there’s gunplay, get out of here as fast as you can.”
“Boyd — ”
“Goddammit, you heard me!” Then he strode forward, across the street, hand dangling at his side.
“Hello, Jordan,” he said.
Tully Jordan smiled faintly. He displayed neither fear nor excitement, but there was something of the same battle light in his eyes that gleamed in those of the Texans, and Boyd knew that he had made no mistake at that first meeting — Jordan was one of the most dangerous men he had ever met. “Kilpatrick,” he said. “You’re creating a disturbance in town. You and your men had better get out. And leave Ike Gault behind.”
“I’m leaving him behind,” Boyd said. “Here at Watley’s.”
“No. That’s kidnapping an unconscious man. I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t?” Boyd grinned coldly. “Gault’s daughter says he goes to the hospital. That’s good enough for me.”
“But not for me. I’ll take Gault under protection myself until he’s awake and can speak his own mind. Hand him over. Then clear out.”
“Sorry, Jordan. Stand aside and let us through.”
Instead of replying, Jordan said: “Knowles.”
The red-shirted man stepped forward. His weasel’s eyes gleamed; he had given in once, but now, backed by plenty of guns, he was full of courage again. His hands hung close to the butts of the two low-slung Colts. “You heard the man, Texas,” he said in a surprisingly high, almost effeminate voice. “You got about ten seconds to obey. Otherwise, you’re the first to go.”
All right. There it was. The battle was inevitable. Maybe it was as well that it come now. Boyd looked back into the glittering, feral eyes of Knowles. Suddenly the street was very quiet.
Then another voice slashed through the silence. “Don’t nobody move!” it commanded. “I mean no-body!”
The tension broke. Knowles’ gaze slid away in surprise and Boyd, too, turned briefly to look.
Rio Fanning stood a few feet away, in the center of the street. He held a sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun leveled, swinging its barrels back and forth to menace the men before the hospital and the mounted Texans as well.
Jordan stared, too. “Fanning!” he snapped. “What the hell is this? Put that thing away!”
The kid’s voice was even, calm. “Not until this sociable’s broken up. There’s a city ordinance in the book against the gathering of armed mobs.”
Jordan sucked in a deep breath. “Rio, you idiot. The hell with that book. You want to use that gun on these Texans, okay. But — ”
“I’ll use it on anybody that moves.” Fanning came forward a step or two. “This thing throws nine buckshot from each barrel and it’ll take out the whole bunch of you. Jordan, you send your men along. Kilpatrick, you do the same. There’ll be no gunplay here.”
“All right, Rio,” Jordan said heavily. “That damned badge has gone to your head. I didn’t appoint you marshal to threaten me with a gun. Unpin that tin and give it here.”
“Uh-uh. You can’t dismiss me without a hearin’ before the Board of Aldermen. It’s in the book. Until they meet, I’m the law.”
Jordan’s face was red. But there was such quiet authority, such determination, in Rio’s voice that he hesitated. Then he laughed. “All right, Rio. You win. You understand the law real well. I should have asked you if you could read before I appointed you. We’ll break it up. But ... I know those laws, too. There’s nothing in them against two men that have got a quarrel settling it in a fair fight.”
Rio’s brows lifted. “You got a quarrel with Kilpatrick? You want to go up against him?”
“I have no quarrel with him,” Jordan said. “But Knowles here does, don’t you, Tom?”
Knowles looked baffled for a moment; then he comprehended and grinned slowly. He stared at Kilpatrick. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I got a quarrel with him.”
Boyd shook his head. “Knowles — ”
“You’re afraid to take me on in a fair fight, huh? You’ve heard of me, heard of Tom Knowles. You know how I made Bat Masterson eat crow one time in Dodge? You heard how many men I killed? Shrivels your gut to think about that, don’t it, Texas? You ain’t as good with a gun as you are in bed with that whore yonder on the blue roan, are you?”
Boyd let out a long breath. “What is this, Jordan? Your best gunman next to Trask and Fanning?”
“Tom’s as good as Trask ever was. He just never wanted to wear the badge. He gets the badge after I take it off of Fanning.”
“No,” Boyd said. “He ain’t ever going to wear any badge. Because he just said the wrong thing a minute ago, and I’m getting pretty tired, Jordan. You think Knowles is gonna rub me out, solve all your problems? Well, we’ll see. Rio!” His voice crackled. “I’m gonna fight this man.”
“Boyd, no!” Stewart cried.
“Hush,” Boyd said. “Rio?”
“It’s your privilege, Kilpatrick. Only according to the law, it’s got to be straight-up, an even break.”
“You see that we both get one.” Boyd looked at Knowles. “You want another notch, eh? All right. Out in the street.”
Knowles grinned. “Sure. This is what I do best.” He edged past Boyd, moved crabwise until he was exactly halfway between the sidewalks.
Watching him, hand away from his gun, Boyd moved in the same fashion to confront him. As he did so, he said: “Cord. If he kills me, that ends it. Take the herd to Dodge.”
“Right, boss. But I ain’t worried.”
“Whichever way it falls, nobody fires another shot,” Boyd said. Then he, too, was in the center of the street, with Knowles facing him thirty feet away.
“I’m watching both crowds with this sawed-off,” Rio said. “It’s up to you two, now. Jordan, any of your bunch tries to interfere, you get blasted. Lightner, that goes for you.”
That was the end of the talking. Now all eyes were on the men in the street.
Boyd stood loosely, in no particular stance or crouch. His gaze never wavered from his opponent as, with the practice born of long experience, he sized up the man. Knowles’ lust for battle; his easy stance, these all bespoke the expert, confident gunman. This was going to be no pushover. Boyd’s lips curled. In his present mood, that suited him fine. Time Jordan saw what he was up against.
A second passed, two. Now Boyd had quit thinking. Time seemed to become elastic, stretch, tauten ... Still, smiling faintly, Knowles did not move. Boyd watched those weasel eyes.
Then they flickered, changed. That was it. The motion of Boyd’s hand was involuntary. Only a fraction of a second passed between the time Knowles’ eyes gave the signal and Boyd was aware of the hard butt of the gun in his own hand, the weapon’s roar, even as Knowles brought up his own gun and fired, a heartbeat too late. Boyd’s bullet caught him in the chest just in time to throw his aim wide; the slug from Knowles’ Colt whined off into space. Boyd fired again, coldly, through the drifting veil of powdersmoke, and Knowles’ body was lifted like a puppet jerked on a string, thrown backwards. As he hit the ground, his convulsing hand triggered off another shot that plowed into the dust. Then his feet kicked wildly, only once, and he was dead.
All that in a second, less; and it had seemed an eternity. As the pungent smoke blew clear, the street was soundless, silent. Then Boyd heard Stewart’s prayerful whisper: “Oh, thank God ...”
Fanning’s voice came hard on it. “Don’t anybody move. Put up that gun, Kilpatrick.”
Boyd holstered the Colt, turned. He saw awe on the face of Jordan now, all confidence and smiling erased from it. And then Boyd wanted to laugh. What was in Jordan’s eyes was fear.
“Now,” Boyd said. “Now, Jordan. Miss Stewart wants her daddy in the hospital. That’s where I’m taking him. Stand aside.”
Under Boyd’s cold eyes, Jordan hesitated. For a moment, Boyd thought he was going for his own gun. Then he moved. “All right, Kilpatrick. Take him in there. But I won’t guarantee that he’ll stay.”
“He’ll stay,” Boyd said. “You see, I’m enrolling six of these men in there with him as patients. He’ll either stay or I’ll come back here and take the town apart and you with it. There may be a law against an armed mob, but there’s no law against six of my men getting sick and having treatment, is there, Rio?”
“No,” Fanning said.
“You hear that, Jordan? I’ve got the law on my side.”
“The law.” Jordan’s laugh was mirthless, a little shaky. “We’ll see about the law. All right, Kilpatrick. You win this round. But it’s not over yet. It’s far from over. Fanning, I’ll deal with you later. Come on, men.”
They backed away from the door. Boyd stood tautly, while Fanning kept the riot gun tracking. Jordan led his men down the sidewalk. Once, he paused, turned; again Boyd thought he’d make a play. But, under the threat of Rio’s shotgun and all those armed Texans, he evidently thought better of it. Then he turned again and strode on down toward the railroad tracks, walking swiftly, his men hurrying along behind him.
~*~
Only when they were gone did the tension snap. Then, slowly, Boyd turned to Fanning. “Rio, thanks.”
“No thanks necessary.” Fanning’s eyes were hostile. “I was carrying out the law.”
“That’s what I’m thanking you for. You haven’t worn that badge long, but it’s changing you. You wanted to be somebody. You are, now — the law in Gunsight. That makes it all different, don’t it?”
“It makes nothing different.” There was still a strange gleam, a glitter, in Rio’s eyes. “Only, I had no idea you were so fast. That’s going to make it even better, a real contest, when we come up against each other.”
“There’s no reason for us to. I don’t want to fight you.”
“There’s a lot of reason. You don’t understand, Kilpatrick. I have to go up against the best there is. Know I’m better.”
Kilpatrick shook his head. “You’re hopeless. Damn it, you and that gunfighter’s itch. Didn’t you see what it got Trask? Didn’t you see what it got Knowles? You’ve got something else to hang on to, now, Rio — the badge.”
“I aim to hang on to it. But that still doesn’t keep me from looking forward to the time when you step out of line and I have to come after you.” Then Rio lowered the shotgun. “For now, though, there’s no cause. Put your people in there and you get out of town.”
“I aim to. I’ve been away from the herd too long as it is. You won’t be siding with Jordan — ?”
“I won’t be siding with anybody. Except the law.” The boy turned away.
“All right,” Kilpatrick said. “Do that. But watch your back while you’re about it.”
The boy did not answer. He went off down the street, ramrod straight, entered the Marshal’s office, closed the door behind himself. By Kilpatrick, Cord Lightner said quietly, “That kid has purely got hell in his holsters, ain’t he?”
“He don’t know what he wants,” Boyd said. “But maybe if he can hang on to that badge a while longer, he’ll find out. Maybe toting it around will make him grow up.”
“If he lives,” Cord said.
“Yeah,” Boyd said. “If he lives. All right, let’s get Mr. Gault inside.”
Watley helped them. “I watched that through the window, Kilpatrick,” the doctor said. “It was a good job. Knowles has needed that kind of treatment for a long time. Bring Ike in here.” He led the way into the hospital.
It was a long, low room of rough lumber, contained four beds, all vacant. “Put him in that one. It’s made to take a restraining sheet.”
“What’s a restraining sheet?” Boyd asked as Fleming lowered the still snoring Gault to the mattress.
“This.” From a drawer, Watley took a heavy piece of canvas with grommets down both sides. While Stewart removed her father’s shoes, he latched one edge of the canvas to locks along the rail of the bed. Then he pulled it taut over Gault’s body, locked the other side the same way, so that Gault was pinned. “He’s gonna wake up fightin’,” Watley said. “He always does. Then, when he gets dry, he’ll probably have delirium tremens, think all the devils from hell are here to get him.” His eyes went to Stewart. “That might be a bad time for you, girl.”
“It can’t be any worse than some I’ve already had with him.”
“No. Well, maybe it’ll be easier for him if you’re here beside him right along.”
“I intend to be.”
Boyd turned to Cord Lightner and the others. His instructions were terse, explicit. As far as they were concerned, the hospital was a fort. They were to remain within — Watley had plenty of food and water. The whole crew of them on guard around the clock, they were to protect Gault and Stewart with their lives. “This is for the herd,” he finished, knowing that was sufficient. Like himself, they had that philosophy bred in their bones: if you hired on to ride for a brand, you hired on to die for it.
“We’ll keep a good watch. It’ll take a tougher bunch than Jordan’s come up with yet to smoke us out, and we brought plenty of ammo with us. Don’t worry about us; you get on back to the herd. That’s what counts.”
“Yeah,” Boyd said. He turned to Stewart. “Honey ...”
Regardless of the other men, she came into his arms. “Boyd, watch yourself...”
He kissed her. “Will do.” Then he turned to Wilkie Murray and Tep Chance. “All right, you two ride out with me, guns up and ready. You watch my back, I’ll watch yours.” He released Stewart. “I’ll see all of you later.” Then he went out, and, with his riders, mounted up. As they drummed down the street, the lights had come on. Armed men watched them from the sidewalks. But nobody made a hostile move; for the moment, it seemed, even Jordan’s appetite for combat was gone.
And, an hour later, without incident, they reached the campfire.
~*~
“Now let me see if I got this all straight,” Panhandle said, pushing back his hat and scratching his head. “You got to sober up this Gault feller. If you can git him off the booze, he can make arrangements to buy the herd for a better price than you can git anywhere else. And this feller Jordan don’t want you to do that. He wants the herd hisself, without competition, at his own price.”
“He’ll never have it, under any circumstances,” Boyd said, spooning up beans, eating hungrily. “He knows that now. Even if I have to sell it in Dodge or drive it back to Texas and drown ’em all in the Red River. But there’ll be others up behind us later on, and — ”
“And if you’ve broke his lock at the board, he won’t have a chance to clean up on them like he tried to on us.”
“That’s the size of it. On top of which, it’s personal between us now—me and him.”
“Yeah,” Panhandle said, and he grinned. “The boys told me that was a mighty pretty young lady you was with. It’s easy for things to get personal when there’s a girl that looks like that mixed up in it.” He turned, stared thoughtfully outside the circle of firelight toward the bed ground. “All the same, it looks tricky to me. Plumb tricky. Six riders in town guardin’ Gault, that leaves us powerful shorthanded out here. What if we was to have a run? Fourteen men, if you count me in, ain’t much to stop four thousand longhorns when they git their tails in the air and hell in their necks.”
“We’d better not have a run.” Boyd cleaned his plate, got up, put it in the wreck pan at the tailgate of the wagon. “Every man’s gonna have to work a double shift to make sure we don’t.” He went to his saddled night horse, a short-coupled, sure-footed blue dun. “I’m going out and take my turn now.”
Panhandle made a sound of protest. “Boss, you’ve had a hell of a day.”
“I can rest after we sell the herd.” Boyd swung up. “Keep the coffee hot, Panhandle.” Then he rode into the darkness.
The vast mass of sleeping cattle made a huge blot on the prairie. With a cowman’s experienced eye, Boyd appraised them. They were fat, which meant they were lazy and calm. There was little restlessness, hardly the clack of a horn or a calf’s blat; that silence was reassuring. The weather was good, too, the sky cloudless, the wind soft, no hint of any storm that might rouse them. Under normal circumstances, the possibility of a stampede was remote.
These were not normal circumstances. The silhouette of a rider loomed up before Boyd; the man had halted to light a cigarette. Boyd recognized the outline of the tall hat, the youthful profile. “Tep?”
Tep Chance turned. “Hi, Boss.”
“Everything quiet?”
“Like a grave.”
“Keep a sharp watch. You’ve seen that crowd we’re up against in town. Just make believe we’re in Indian country. Right now, it’s just as dangerous.”
Tep unhooked his leg from the saddle horn, around which he had been resting it. He loosened his Winchester in its saddle scabbard. “I’m keeping my ears up and sniffin’ the wind,” he said; he lifted rein, and rode on, singing in a low voice to warn the cattle he was coming, reassure them that riders were there.
Boyd completed his circuit of the herd, found all his men in place, some of them heavy-lidded and exhausted. In shifts, he sent them into the fire to tank up on black coffee. By the time midnight was past, he was beginning to feel the strain of the day himself. It was all he could do to stay alert, scan the darkness of the flats beyond the herd. But he dared not relax; not with Jordan undoubtedly planning a new move.
He tried to think what he would do if he were in Jordan’s place. Jordan wanted Gault. With only six Texans guarding the hospital, he could, if he chose to, take him eventually, and at the cost of many men. But with another fourteen trail hands ready to come to the rescue, it would be a risky move to tackle Watley’s place. Gunfire could be heard from town — that much of it, anyhow; and, at the sound of such a battle, Boyd Kilpatrick would bring in reinforcements, hit Jordan from behind.
Unless the rest of the Two Rail riders could be tied up, drawn off by a diversion ... Then Jordan would have a free hand with Gault, could eliminate him, wipe out the threat of competition. But there was one way, and one way only in which Jordan could accomplish that — stampede the herd. The herd came first. If it ran, Boyd and his riders would have to go with it, abandon the men in town — and Gault — to their fate.
Boyd cursed softly, stubbed his cigarette out against his boot toe. Jordan had the edge, all right. Given a choice between men and cattle, a trail boss had to choose the cattle every time, and Jordan would know that as well as anybody. Yes, damn it, he had the whip hand — and it was only a matter of when he would strike.
Everything within Boyd cried out that he must beat Jordan to the punch. Attack first, have a showdown with the man. Then he shook his head violently. No, he must be getting groggy with lack of sleep. Tough as his Texans were, there were not enough of them. He would have to leave half of his remaining men with the cattle; the six at Watley’s would be tied down; he could not take on the whole District of Gunsight with seven riders. Jordan would be on guard against such an attack and it wouldn’t have a chance.
Boyd rode to the fire. There he poured coffee, ate biscuits. The hot, strong Arbuckle had, when a man was tired, a better bite than any whiskey. Suddenly his head cleared; suddenly he knew exactly what he was going to do.
He stood up, grinning. If, please God, Jordan didn’t hit the herd tonight, if he gave Boyd just one hour of daylight tomorrow — why, then, Tully Jordan was in for a surprise.
Boyd Kilpatrick got his bedroll out of the wagon, spread it. Fully clad, he rolled up in his blankets, pillowed his head on his warbag. Then, like a baby, he slept for exactly two hours and, refreshed, arose again to inspect the herd.