They ate breakfast before light, Sarie grumbling that she had to get up so early to feed them. Jack and McShannon were surly, McShannon particularly, because he felt like hell. Every bone in his body felt as if it had been misplaced and his muscles were pure agony where they had stiffened in the night. He looked like something a coyote had rejected as unfit for consumption.
McAllister appeared quite light-hearted and his companions silently cursed his smiling face. McAllister and Jack caught up the horses and Jack offered to saddle McShannon’s bay for him, but the red-haired boy refused. So they had to wait while he fumbled around trying to get his cinches tightened with hands that had been trodden on by high-heeled cowmen’s boots. If McAllister had any sympathy for him, he didn’t show it. Jack Owen, being a soft-hearted man showed it and McShannon resented the fact.
Finally, they were mounted and rode out with Sarie waving to them from the stoop. They crossed the creek at the ford with the water coming up to their stirrup-irons and rose dripping water on the other side. McAllister led the way east at a steady trot that was Indian torture to McShannon. He clenched his teeth and didn’t utter the groans that wanted to come out They rode for maybe two hours and then they knew that they were on land claimed by Markham when they started to see cows bearing his Box M brand. They were good stock crossed between longhorns and shorthorns. They were wild and pretty fast, but they carried a good ration of beef. McAllister turned frequently in the saddle to admire them. He didn’t give any sign that he knew what he was riding into. But both the other men were aware that he knew right enough. McAllister never did anything without his eyes open and with guile or calculated bluff.
McShannon was plain miserable. Besides being in pain, he did not look forward to what was coming. Jack Owen was plain scared. He knew what was coming right enough and he feared it. The only thing he didn’t fear in this world was wild horses. Guns were things that he hated. And, to his mind, where there were men like Markham, there were guns. Markham was a big man, bigger than the law, men said. They also said that he had something like two hundred men working for him in his three outfits. He wasn’t a king, he was an emperor. He had most of the creek sides dotted with land claims made by his men in this neck of the woods and that gave him control of the hinderland of grass, for grass was of no use to cattlemen without water. He owned similar claims in Montana and Colorado and his cows were reckoned at something like sixty thousand. Some said more. Not for him the formation of cattle companies on foreign capital. He owned his range, lock stock and barrel. Sure, he actually owned no more than the small claims along the creeks, but the rest he held by strength. And he looked as if he would go on holding it.
Jack compared what he and his partners owned with that of the emperor and it was less than nothing. Three claims along the creek side, five hundred head of cattle and maybe a hundred horses. And what were three men against an army? He cursed McShannon to himself. He, Jack Owen, was going on this crazy ride just because the fool had decided he wanted to spark a rich man’s daughter. And because McShannon had been beaten and humiliated, McAllister had to act as if it had happened to him. Jack had felt safe since he had teamed up with McAllister and McShannon, there were two guns, ready and willing, standing between him and the rest of this wild western world, but now this. He felt as if he were riding to his own funeral.
McAllister jerked back over his shoulder: “We got company.”
Jack lifted his eyes.
Three riders dotted the next ridge. Fear fluttered through the little rider. He urged his red gelding up alongside the big man.
“What do we do?” he demanded. “You know Markham don’t allow no outsiders on his range.”
“Leave this to me,” McAllister said. “Just sit tight and keep your mouth shut.”
Jack fell back to the rear, watching the three riders ahead loping their horses toward them. McAllister halted and the other two followed suit, Jack sitting tense in the saddle and McShannon drooping there. The three Box M men came up in style, brought their ponies to a running halt and showered tufts of grass and dirt everywhere. McAllister knew one of them slightly and had taken a drink with him once at a saloon in town. His name was Foley. He was a tough, bean-string of a man, pale-eyed and quiet. McAllister had gathered that he worked for Markham as one of his several straw-bosses.
He eyed McAllister and his two companions for a moment in silence, before he said: “McAllister,” in laconic greeting.
“Foley,” McAllister returned.
The thin rider put his eyes on McShannon who glared back belligerently.
“Didn’t you have enough last night, boy?” Foley asked.
“Why you —” McShannon started to say.
McAllister cut in with: “I’m headin’ for the house, Foley.”
Foley said: “No, you ain’t, McAllister.”
“Who says not?”
“Mr. Markham. He says too there ain’t to be no strangers on this range.”
McAllister said: “We’re ridin’ public domain an’ we aim to stay on it. Step aside, Foley.”
One of the men with Foley said: “Don’t start something you can’t finish, McAllister. Back up. Turn around an’ ride out.”
McAllister looked at the young boy who spoke.
“Sonny,” he said, “I never started anything I couldn’t finish in my life. Step aside or get yourself blown outa the saddle.”
Foley blinked, not thinking that it would come to a naked threat as quick as this. McAllister could see him weighing his chances. He knew McAllister’s reputation and knew that there would be at least one maimed or dead man there inside a few short seconds if he didn’t make the right move. Foley was tough right enough. A dozen trail drives from the Nueces in Texas to the Kansas stock yards, a score of brutal fights with boot, spur, gun and knife had proven that. He was a man whom life had taught to have confidence in himself. He rode tall in the saddle and looked trouble straight in the eye. He also knew when he was outclassed. It wasn’t so much that this man McAllister was faster or more accurate with a gun than he was. It was something else. McAllister had a reputation. He never backed down and always came out on top. Foley had the feeling that if he pulled his gun now, he might clear leather first and get off the first shot, but just the same, he would end up dead and McAllister would end up riding on his way to headquarters.
Either way, Foley lost out. He was either out of a job or he was out of this world. He didn’t like the idea of either. The idea of backing down to another man choked him.
“McAllister,” he said, letting none of his doubts show in his tone, but keeping it steady and thrusting, “you’re liable to pile up a heap of grief for yourself and these young fellers along with you, if’n you head on east. Mr. Markham ain’t feelin’ so friendly after what happened last night. He don’t never feel too friendly. Save trouble for us’ns an’ yourself and turn around. I’m askin’ you nice.”
“I appreciate that, Foley,” McAllister told him. “You’ve said your piece. Now step aside.”
In sad tones, Foley said: “You know I can’t do that, McAllister.”
“We’ll see about that,” McShannon said and with one battered hand made the one move that Foley didn’t expect. He had been waiting for the same move from McAllister. McShannon drew his gun. He did it smoothly and with considerable speed. The three Box M men stared at him as if he had committed a breach of etiquette. McShannon cocked the weapon and went on: “I’ve had my bellyful of you old-timers chewin’ the fat. Let’s get on for Gawd’s sake. Turn them crowbait’s around after you’ve shucked them irons an’ let’s move.”
The three men moved their hands cautiously to their gun-butts and with bitter eyes lifted the weapons from leather, dropping them on the ground.
“Jack,” McShannon said, “pick ’em up.”
Jack Owen moved fast to obey him, strung them on a peggin string and slung them from his saddlehorn.
McAllister said: “That was the wrong move, son.”
“Don’t call me son,” McShannon snarled. “An’ it was the move you’d of gotten around to in a coupla hours or so.”
“What’s done’s done. Let’s ride. Move along, Box M.”
The three riders looked their defeat and hatred and turned their horses. They lifted them to a trot and the three friends followed them.
McAllister said without bitterness, but as if he was stating a plain fact: “You made damn sure we ride into real trouble, didn’t you, boy.”
“We’re headed for trouble, any road,” the boy snapped back. “When it comes to Injuns like Markham, there ain’t big an’ little trouble, there’s just trouble. I’m keeping my gun out when I ride in.”
“You ain’t ridin’ in,” McAllister said.
“Who says I ain’t.”
“I do.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I can an’ I will.”
“How?”
“I’m bigger, stronger, faster, older and smarter. You go in there before I’m ready an’ I’ll beat the hide off’n you an’ nail it to the barn door.”
“You tried it once.”
“An’ besides - this is my courtin’. You had your chance last night.”
McShannon sneered, but he kept silent. Jack looked worriedly from one to the other as he did always when they quarreled this way.
They came in sight of the Box M headquarters. None of them had ever seen it before and they were impressed. They couldn’t help it. Money had gone into the building of this place. It’s corrals were all neat and in good repair and they looked as extensive as their own range. They could see a large rambling house of some charm and solid building. Shady stoops and galleries seemed to run clear around the place. Scattered everywhere there seemed to be tight barns and bunkhouses for the men. This was the headquarters of an empire all right.
To reach the yard, they had to cross a bridge over the wide creek. The hoofs of six horses made thunder on the timber.
McAllister said to Jack Owen: “Jack, this side is clear of men. Get up in that barn yonder and cover the yard. Put your rifle on Markham and keep it there. He makes a move against me, drop him.”
Jack gave him a scared look, but he obeyed, swinging his horse away from the others in a wild dash for the barn in question.
“Kiowa,” McAllister said to McShannon, “take your bruises over to the corner of that corral there and do likewise. Also cover my back.” McShannon looked as if he would protest but McAllister gritted at him: :“Get do it, Goddam you.”
McShannon swung his horse to the left, swung down at the corner of the corral and ripped his Henry repeater from the saddleboot on the horse. McAllister continued on his way to the house.
In the yard, McAllister called for the men in front of him to halt.
“I reckon you’d best get back to work, fellers,” he told them. “We’ll leave your guns where we took ’em. Move now.”
Foley rode his horse alongside McAllister’s.
“You’ll never live to leave ’em there,” he said.
McAllister smiled.
“Buy you a drink in town some time,” he said. “No hard feelin’s.”
McAllister ran his eyes over the place. This was a working day and there weren’t many men around. He didn’t expect there would be. The blacksmith came out of his shop and stared at him, hammer in hand. A man limped to the door of the bunkhouse and stared in the same way. He looked like a rider who had injured himself. A curtain fluttered at an open window and McAllister knew that he was being observed by a woman.
A man walked out onto the stoop.
McAllister had seen him before in town, but did not know until now that this was Markham. And even now, it was only the air of the man that told him.
A brutal bull-frog of a man dressed like a thirty and found range-hand. His small, pale, red-rimmed eyes fixed themselves on McAllister. He was a man who dominated his world, who demanded and had his demands satisfied at the snap of his fingers,
McAllister swung down from the saddle,
“Markham?”
“Who’re you?”
Even the voice was like a bull-frog’s croak.
“McAllister. Remington McAllister.”
McAllister smiled disarmingly as if he were greeting a normal human being.
“Who asked you dismount?”
McAllister laughed.
“Whoever heard of a man courtin’ from the saddle.”
That stopped Markham the same as a four foot thick adobe wall. He pulled up short and his frog mouth came open.
“What?”
“You maybe think I’m past the courtin’ age an’ that’s where you’d be plumb wrong, Markham. A man’s as old as he feels, as the sayin’ goes. An’ I feel real skittish. So like any other stud, I come where the fillies is at.”
For a moment, Markham was speechless. He pointed at McAllister and his hand shook. The shaking reached down through his frame and he trembled with rage from head to foot.
“See here - ” he managed to whisper hoarsely. “See here, you … by Gawd, I never … A feller came like you to this very house last night. I taught him good. He won’t be courtin’ no respectable man’s daughter for a long time, I reckon.”
“I saw him,” McAllister said, his manner sobering. “But he came at night when your men’re here. An’ he came without a gun. Your men ain’t here, Markham, an’ I have a gun.”
“My daughter - ”
“Who said anythin’ about your daughter, man. I come a-courtin’ of your sister, Miss Carlotta.”
“My sister!” Markham’s rage seemed to burst, it flooded him, he drowned in it, speechless.
“Ain’t she the fine upstandin’ gal with hair like a raven’s wing and figure to put shame to angels? Ain’t she the gal with the eyes that could blind a man to all other women? Ain’t she the- ”
Sound burst from Markham. It came out in a roar of words that blurred one into the other.
“Get outa here … Get outa here, you Goddam no-good saddle-tramp, you pulin’ Yankee trash.”
McAllister leaned forward and prodded him in his massive chest with a long, hard brown forefinger.
“My daddy,” he said, “fought at San Jacinto with Sam Houston and my mother was either a Cheyenne princess or a Mexican lady, depends on which way my daddy told the tale. But I ain’t no Yankee. Now, you look like you’re goin’ to take your mad out on my hide so let me tell you, fat man, I have a Spencer in the barn and a Henry over by the corral yonder and they’re both lookin’ kinda belligerent at your ahirtbuttons. So you raise a finger an’ you’re daid.”
Markham started. His small eyes darted from the barn to the corner of the corral. He saw the glint of rifle-barrels in the sun. The sight seemed to have a steadying effect on him. He sobered suddenly as if he had switched off his range with the turn of a knob.
“What kind of a fool are you, McAllister,” he said, “to think that you can get away with a thing like this?”
“I ain’t any kind of a fool,” McAllister said. “It was a young fool who came here last night and you had nearly beat to death. I got it worked out all along the line. This is war. You laid a hand on a friend of mine, so you laid a hand on me. I’ll pay you, Markham, every way I know how. But that’s in the future. Right now, I’ll pay my respects to Miss Carlotta. You get her down here real fast. Love’s mighty impatient.”
Markham changed his tone again.
“What kind of a man are you?” he asked. “You can’t drag a respectable woman into this kind of thing. My sister has been raised gentle.”
“I ain’t draggin’ her into nothin’,” McAllister said, “except a bit of real old-time courtin’. All open and above-board in front of lovin’ brother. Call her.”
Markham sneered.
“You’re pretty brave with two rifles over yonder and a gun on your hip.”
McAllister smiled.
“You’ll find me pretty brave in my birthday suit,” he said modestly. He turned and shouted: “Hold your fire, boys, me an’ the cattle king’re goin’ to embrace.”
He took out his Remington pistol and laid it on the stoop.
“Now,” he said.
“You still have your knife.”
McAllister drew his knife and with a flick of his wrist sent it spinning to stick in the plank at Markham’s feet. The rancher moved with a speed incredible for his size. His hand grasped the hilt of the knife. The toe of McAllister’s boot caught the massive hand and sent the knife spinning. Markham came erect, his face dark with blood. He wasn’t a bullfrog now - he was a bull. He launched himself from the stoop onto McAllister with a roar,
McAllister’s movement now was a thing of pure beauty. He fell back under the rancher’s hurtling weight, landed on his shoulders, kicked with his feet, somersaulted, came onto his feet and turned all in one movement. Markham hit the dust of the yard on his back and the wind went out of him with the sound of the bass notes of the organ. He climbed slowly to his feet and showed that he was a shaken man.
Dust adhered to his face where he sweated. His small eyes snapped.
“I’m goin’ to kill you,” he whispered. “I’m goin’ to take you apart with my bare hands.”
“Save your breath, fat man,” McAllister told him.
McAllister hit him in the belly just above the belt-line and on his nose. The last seemed to break and a lot of blood came out of it. Markham grunted, but was undaunted. McAllister knew that he had opposed himself to a lot of man and that he had had a lot of luck. He grew wary. This man wasn’t beaten yet.
Markham charged, pulled up short and drove a bootheel at McAllister’s crotch. McAllister curved away from the foot, caught it and flung the rancher away from him. Markham came to his feet quickly and advanced with a show of caution. They measured each other and Markham flashed a fast right. It caught McAllister high on the head and staggered him. It was like being kicked by a large and powerful mule. He didn’t like it. He managed to parry the left that followed it and countered with a right to the belly. Markham ignored the blow and used his knee.
It was like a giant hammer blow in McAllister’s groin. He gasped from the pain of it and went down, doubled up, hugging himself. Markham swung a kick into his ribs and raised a spurred foot for the tromping. McAllister rolled and came to one knee, his face contorted. Markham jumped in with both feet, caught him on the chest and smashed him to the ground. The rancher also lost his footing and went down, but got quickly to his feet and rushed in for the kill.
McAllister rolled over as if with great weariness and lifted his head. As Markham aimed another deadly kick, this time for the head, McAllister caught his ankle in a two handed grip. Rearing himself slowly to his feet, he put Markham on his back with a thud. Slowly, Markham climbed to his feet. Both men were slowed now, both badly punished.
Heavy-footed, the rancher paced toward McAllister and swung a right that sent a message ahead of it. McAllister blocked it with a wrist and smashed his left into the other’s already injured face. Markham made a sobbing sound and fell back a pace. McAllister went after him like a man in a dream, pounding home blows slowly and mercilessly. Markham went before him until his heels touched the bottom step to the stoop and shook the whole house.
He tried to rise, but McAllister fell on him, took an ear in either hand and pounded his head several times on the planks beneath. Markham’s eyes glazed over and he lay still.
For a moment, McAllister lay where he was on the vanquished man, gasping for breath, then, recovered a little, he staggered to his feet. He wiped his face on his bandanna and started to walk on weak legs toward the old well in the center of the yard.
A man called: “Hold it right there.”
He stopped and looked around. The blacksmith was still outside his shop and now there was a gun in his hand.
McShannon fired one shot from the corral corner where he lay hidden and the lead threw up a spout of dust at the blacksmith’s feet.
“Drop it and back up,” McShannon shouted.
The blacksmith looked surprised, dropped his gun and walked back several paces till he was near the door of his shop. McAllister continued to the well, let down the bucket and drew it up full. When he had taken a long drink and bathed his sore face, he carried the water over to Markham and emptied it into his face.
The bull-frog made vain efforts to escape the deluge, moving his head heavily this way and that. Finally, the cold water revived him enough for him to open his eyes. Very slowly and groaning a lot, he sat up.
“You bastard,” he said in a dead voice, “I’ll kill you for this.”
McAllister wandered around till he found his hat. He knocked the dust from it and put it on his aching head.
“Call your sister,” he said. “Or I start all over.”
“No call to,” a cool voice said, “she’s here.”
McAllister lifted his eyes and saw her. The sight of her stopped him. He had only glimpsed her in town at a distance. Seeing her here in the sunlight was another thing altogether.
He hadn’t lied. She was perfection - the black shining hair, tied at the nape of her neck with a ribbon; the lightly tanned skin, the perfect nose with its light dusting of freckles; the dark eyes with their long curving lashes; the full breasts and hips swelling delightfully from a slender waist; the hands that moved like gentle poems. Here was beauty and character all wrapped up in one parcel.
For a moment, he stumbled over his words like a schoolboy.
Markham got to his feet shakily.
“Get in the house,” he said.
“Bob,” she said, “I don’t think you’re in command of this situation at the moment. I think Mr. McAllister is. So perhaps we should do as he says.”
Markham slaughtered McAllister with his eyes and said: “I’ve spent my life keeping saddle-bums like this away from you, Charlie.”
She smiled.
“And made my life much duller for it. I don’t think that I should come to much harm with a man of this kind. What do you think, Mr. McAllister?”
“Er - ma’am? Why, like your brother here says I maybe am a little on the rough side, ma’am, Miss Carlotta. But I have my manners an’ I ain’t never struck a lady - except when I was drunk, or real mad, or she deserved it.” Their eyes met and hers twinkled as if to confirm that there was a small conspiracy between them against her brother. “But I reckon there comes a time to every man when he has to reform. Maybe with the help of a good woman - ”
“But how, Mr. McAllister, do you know I’m a good woman?”
“Ma’am, with a brother like yourn you don’t have no choice.”
Her lips twitched in a smile.
“So you came here to pay court to me, knowing what kind of a reception you’d get?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I have two riflemen posted out yonder to make sure I don’t come to no harm.”
She laughed outright and Markham went purple with rage.
“You seem to have come to a little harm.”
“Not as much as the other fellow.”
Markham shouted: “Will you get the hell outa here?”
As if the other hadn’t spoken, McAllister asked: “So I’m formally askin’ for your permission, ma’am, to pay court to you-all.”
“Over my dead body,” Markham bellowed.
“I hope it don’t come to that,” McAllister said.
“I shall have to think about it,” the lady said. “Perhaps we could continue this conversation some other time.”
“Surely, ma’am. It is kinda crowded here.”
McAllister picked up his gun and his knife and sheathed them both. When he straightened up, he saw that Carlotta had been joined by two other girls. One he recognised as Alvina, the light of McShannon’s life. The other, he guessed was Lucy, Markham’s younger daughter. Alvina was a honey blonde, all blue-eyed, sweet and southern; Lucy, was a redhead, all dimples and blushes. It only needed Jack Owen to fall for that one and the three happy bachelors were all sunk.
Markham roared: “You girls get in the house this minute.”
Alvina said: “We only came out to see what all the ruckus was about, papa.”
“Get back in, hear?”
Lucy said: ‘Papa, you look awful hurt. We only came to see if you wanted any help.”
McAllister heard a whinnying noise from the direction of the barn and, turning his head, saw Jack Owen standing there like a moon-struck calf, staring at Lucy. McAllister groaned inwardly. That made every damned one of the trio struck on a Markham woman. It was time they rode out and thought about what they were getting themselves into.
A sound like a moan came from his other side. He looked that way and saw McShannon standing all battered and war-struck with a silly grin on his face, his eyes fixed on Alvina. A whole lot of use the pair of them would be if real trouble started now.
“What’re you doin’ here?” McAllister demanded. “I told you to stay at your posts.”
McShannon, not taking his eyes from Alvina, said: “Same as you, Mack. Courtin’.”
Markham, beside himself, pointed his again quavering finger at McShannon.
“That was the no-good saddle tramp I give his comeuppance last night. I said then if he ever come back here again I’d hang him.”
“Papa, how can you talk that way?” Alvina said. “Why, you mean this nice young man came here last night and you were rough with him.”
“He wasn’t rough enough to keep me from callin’ on you-all, Miss Alvina. No, sir, ma’am,” McShannon said gallantly. He looked at Markham and gave him a lopsided grin, “You surely don’t shape up too well on your lonesome, Markham. Though you do pretty well with a dozen or so fellers to help you.”
Lucy asked: “And who is this gentleman?” She looked at Jack and Jack looked at her.
McAllister said: “That’s Jack Owen, ma’am. After you’ve known him maybe a year or two he’ll search around some an’ find some words to speak to you.”
“I got words,” Jack said indignantly, “but I just don’t throw ’em around regardless. Proud to know you, ma’am, Miss Lucy.”
Markham looked as if he would burst a blood vessel while these pleasantries were being exchanged.
Finally, he managed to grate out through his clenched teeth: “Get off my land an’ stay off. From now on if’n any rider of mine catches you on my land they use their guns.”
McAllister, making himself a spokesman for his party, said: “I hope you ladies don’t share those sentiments.”
“Oh, no,” they all chorused together.
“Then we’ll bid you good day, ladies. Maybe you wouldn’t have no objections if’n we visited again pretty soon.”
“Come an’ welcome,” Carlotta said, her soft dark eyes on McAllister.
“Pleased to see you any time,” Alvina said, her blue eyes on McShannon.
“Make it soon,” offered Lucy dimpling delightfully at poor Jack Owen who was kicking the dust this way and that in his embarrassment.
“Sure will,” said the trio. They lifted their hats gallantly and McAllister said: “Mount up, boys, while I keep a sharp eye on daddy here. I suspicion he don’t take as kindly to us as the ladies.”
McShannon and Owen smirked partingly to the ladies of their choice and strode manfully away to their horses. McAllister watched the raging Markham with a hand resting lightly on the butt of his Remington. When the two were mounted, McShannon called out and McAllister, with one last appreciative glance at the smiling Carlotta, walked to his horse and stepped into the saddle. He turned it and walked it across the yard. As he passed the nearest bunkhouse and he found Foley and the other two men standing near the door.
“See you in town for that drink, Foley,” he said.
Foley looked at him out of dead eyes.
“It won’t be a drink you’ll have in your hand,” Foley promised, “it’ll be a gun.”
McAllister touched spurs to his horse and joined the other two. Together, they trotted away. They looked back to wave to the girls. Markham was dancing on his hat.