Even after the lookout had passed him on into Ford’s sanctuary, Rae rode slowly, thoughtfully, watchfully. He could not count on a red-carpet reception from Ford. Not after the way the man had double-crossed him in the matter of the execution of Clyde Brennan. Ford would be expecting trouble out of Rae on account of that, and until the matter was settled between them, Rae knew it would be well to be on his guard.
But he made it on through to Ford’s main ranch without any difficulty. There were cattle grazing on the flat he had to cross to reach it—cattle that had once been Circle M stock but now bore a Circle Double Diamond brand, with the lower halves of the diamond still raw and unhealed.
They had seen him coming, and when he pulled up in front of the long log building, Ford was standing in the doorway, a couple of men behind him.
“Howdy, Marsh,” the lean rustler said. “What brings you in here?”
“We’ll talk about it in a minute,” Rae said. “What about havin’ somebody grain my horse?”
“Mac,” Ford said, jerking his head, and one of his men took the sorrel’s reins and led it to the corral. Ford’s eyes swept over the animal and then back to Rae. “You been ridin’ hard,” he said.
“Had to,” Rae answered. “I just broke jail in Bent’s Crossing yesterday.”
Ford tensed. “You jest what?”
“You heard me,” Rae said.
Ford stood aside to let him in the house, followed him. Ford and his men weren’t taking their eyes from him.
“Seems,” Rae said slowly, “that after you turned that Circle M man loose the other night, somebody bushwhacked him. Shot him in the back and left his body out on the range to be found. They come and took me in for it. Yesterday they got up a necktie party, but I managed to bust out before they could swing me.”
“You mean somebody shot that feller we turned loose?” Ford tried to put surprise in his voice, but it rang false.
“I said that, didn’t I?” Rae snapped. “And even left him where he could be found. Almost like they wanted to see the murder pinned on me.” He reached behind him for another biscuit. “Because I didn’t know he was dead and there I was, a sittin’ duck, when Anders and the marshal walked in.”
“I see,” Ford said. He walked over to a table and sat down and uncorked a bottle. “Well, come on over and have a drink and we’ll talk about it.”
“Yeah,” Rae said, “I think we ought to.” He sat down across from Ford, but he did not put his feet under the table; he sat slewed around so his back could be to the wall.
He took the drink Ford pushed toward him and gulped it down. He was dog-tired, and it helped him slough off some of his fatigue. But when Ford offered him another, he shook his head.
“All right,” Ford said after a minute. “I had Joe follow that Circle M rider and shut his mouth.” He looked directly at Rae with cold eyes. “If you’d let me handle it the way I wanted to to begin with, there wouldn’t have been any trouble. Nobody would ever have found his body. But Joe didn’t catch up with him until he was back on Circle M land and there wasn’t time to hide him right.”
“I didn’t want him killed at all,” Rae said harshly.
Ford sucked in a long breath, a sort of sigh. “Marsh,” he said, “there’s one thing we ought to git straight. You thought up this deal and set it up, and you done a good job on that. But when it comes to liftin’ cattle, you’re an amateur. I’m a professional. I know my business, and part of my business is to see that nobody lives to spread even a scrap of information about the way I operate. Now, I didn’t want to have to fight with you the other night. I like you, like you fine. But I couldn’t let that waddy go loose to shoot off his mouth. You git chicken-hearted in this business, the next thing you know, you find yourself decorating a limb.”
Rae said nothing.
“Now you’re on th’ dodge,” Ford said. “But if you’d let me handle it right from the first, you wouldn’t be.” He poured himself another drink. “Next time, you’ll trust my judgment.”
“There’s not gonna be any next time,” Rae said.
Ford sat up straight. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Rae said, “we’ve got all we’re gonna take.”
Ford’s brows drew together. “My pipeline ain’t nowhere near full yet. I can handle another two hundred, three hundred head easy.”
“You couldn’t get ’em without fighting for ’em,” Rae said. “Fletcher’s Hole is stirred up like a hornet’s nest. You’d have to pay in blood for every steer you got. Or somebody would.”
Ford was silent for a moment. “So you’re callin’ off your war with Cleve Anders,” he said finally. “He’s got you buffaloed, huh?”
“Listen,” Rae said sharply. “I went into this thing because by rights one third of all Circle M cattle belongs to me. What I was doin’ was hirin’ you to take what was mine anyhow. I don’t call that rustlin’, and I don’t call that wrong. But when it comes to cold-blooded murder, to shootin’ a man in the back or cuttin’ his throat like a hog—”
“Then you go soft,” Ford finished for him.
“Then I draw the line,” Rae said evenly. “So we’re goin’ to stop now. Before anybody else gits killed.”
“My boys ain’t scared,” Ford said.
“We’ve been lucky so far,” Rae went on. “Three hundred cattle, and even at hot prices, that’s three thousand dollars, and nobody’s got hurt except Brennan, and that wasn’t my doin’. I wanted to git some money to carry this fight into court and git clear title; once I had that, nobody could do anything about me taking my own stock. But you’ve ruined that for me now, Ford. You brought murder into it, and now I’m on the dodge and I can’t even show my face, much less get into court. So what good is liftin’ any more cattle gonna do me now? The rest of the operation’s off, and that’s that.”
Ford looked at him for a long moment. Then the rustler shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel about it. What do you aim to do now?”
Rae relaxed a little; he had not expected Ford to agree so readily. But probably Ford, who balanced everything off in profit and loss, agreed with Rae’s estimate of the situation—that he could not take any more cattle without having to fight for every head.
“What am I gonna do?” Rae repeated. “I’m not sure yet.”
“You can throw in with us if you want to,” Ford said. “There’s another basin south of here I’ve been aimin’ to work. This might be the right time.”
“No,” Rae said. “No, thanks.” His lip curled bitterly. “Like you said. I’m an amateur. I reckon I’ll stay one.”
“Then what? You gonna hightail it out, let Anders have your piece of the spread?”
Rae stood up. “No,” he said, “I’m not gonna do that, either.” His voice was harsh, bitter. “I’m not through fightin’ Anders. I owe him too much to call off my own personal war now. I may never get my piece of Circle M, but before I pull out of this range, I’m going to pay Anders back as much as I can for what he’s put me through.”
“By yourself?” Ford’s brows arched.
“By myself,” Rae said, and there was determination in his tone.
There were things he had needed, and he got them from Ford. Grub. Spare cartridges for his six-gun. A carbine and scabbard and shells. Blankets. The rustler seemed to go out of his way to be helpful. “Like I said,” he told Rae, “I’m a businessman. When your share of the money’s on hand, I’ll leave word for you in the usual place.” That was a hollow tree Rae and Ford had used as a post office, in the hills behind Circle M range. “And if you need any other supplies in the meantime, let me know.”
“I appreciate it,” Rae said. But he was glad to be clear of Ford and his outfit. Contact with them had left him feeling smeared and dirty. Or, he thought, maybe it was the entire situation that made him feel that way. Every aspect of it was rotten. Sometimes when he thought of what might have been, of the way things could have been if John Marsh had just lived a few days longer or if he had just reached Circle M a few days earlier, the grief and bitterness of it racked him. It could all have been so simple, so easy, with no need for this fighting, moonlight raiding, and killing, if only—
If only time had not betrayed him. If only he had come home while John Marsh had still lived.
But he had not, and gradually his plans were taking shape. He had half of the money coming from the three hundred head he had helped Ford rustle. It would be awhile before it came in, because it would take awhile for the blotted brands to heal. He had no compunction about taking that money —rightfully it belonged to him anyway; it was only a fraction of what should truly been his. And it would not be enough to buy any spread in New Mexico. But he would wait here for it—two weeks, a month, however long it took. He would wait here, and in the meantime, he would do his best to make Cleve Anders’ life hell on earth.
And afterwards . . . after he had the money . . .
Well, then he would drift. Maybe he would use the money to go to South America, get a clean start there. Or someplace where he was not known. But, he thought bitterly, he would have to go alone. He had dreamed of taking Crystal with him when he left Fletcher’s Hole. But that dream was shattered now. Even if she would come, he had no right to ask her, no right even to tell her that he loved her —and he knew now that he did. Because he was an outlaw, and Anders would see that he remained an outlaw.
All these things he thought about as he holed up in a small dirt cave in the cleft of a dry streambed back in the hills. He had plenty of time to think; as he had expected, Anders had all the able-bodied men he could lay hands on out beating the countryside for him. Well, he would give them time to give up, become discouraged, decide he had left the Hole. Then, when things had died down, he would strike.
A week passed, and a careful reconnaissance showed him that the manhunt had died away.
It was time to begin war against Anders again.
His first move was comparatively innocuous. He watched a Circle M line-camp until its two occupants, who had been put out there to keep watch against rustlers, were out on patrol. Then he rode down, took what he needed from it, and poured the contents of the coal-oil can on the floor. A flicked match set the log shack to burning like tinder.
That was on the north side of Circle M. He spent all the next day riding a half-circle through the hills. Nightfall found him on the south side. This part was used for a hay ranch. Circle M’s winter fodder had been cut and dried and piled. That night it all went up in flame and smoke, along with all the deserted hay ranch buildings.
Cowman that he was, Rae both hated to do that and took grim satisfaction in it. It hurt to see the good hay burning, but it did not hurt to think about the bind it would put Anders in, having to buy an entire winter’s feed. Rae knew the burning of the hay would be a body blow to Anders; Circle M would feel it.
Circle M felt it, all right. Again its range swarmed with armed riders.
But they were no match for one man working alone, one man who moved under cover of darkness, prepared to take desperate chances. A man who could cut miles of wire in a night, a man who could burn one line camp after another, a man who could ease into the home ranch itself, infiltrating Anders’ carefully placed guards, set fire to the hay and grain stored there and even to the cook shack, fire a volley of harassing shots without intent to kill, and still escape while Circle M men swarmed toward the flames like excited moths.
Because what Rae Marsh had set out to do was burn Circle M bit by bit. He could not burn the cattle, and he could not burn the land itself, but all the rest was vulnerable. Buildings would burn. Dry range would burn. And scarcely a night passed now that the darkness did not suddenly blossom into orange somewhere on Circle M. . . .
He could measure the effectiveness of the job he was doing, the havoc he wreaked, by the number of riders combing the hills. Anders had kept on the gunslingers he had hired at the height of the rustling, and now he drove them in ceaseless man hunting. In itself, their hire and keep was another drain on Circle M’s resources, and Rae smiled grimly to himself at the thought of the size of Anders’ payroll.
There were a few close shaves. Once he carelessly skylined himself against the flare of a burning line camp; a rifle barked unexpectedly from the darkness and the bullet sliced the wing of his left chaps leg. Another time, the sorrel’s nicker woke him from sleep in a brushy covert just in time to spot two riders hard on him. There was a hot chase before he lost them, and the sorrel took a bullet-burn across a ham; a fraction of an inch deeper and he would have been on foot; they would have had him cold.
But he escaped them. And sooner or later, he always made it back to his cave in the dry streambed, a sanctuary that none of them had come close to, yet.
It was a dismal, exhausting life he led, the life of a hunted killer animal, but he was sustained through it by hatred, and by the determination to burn his share of Circle M rather than let Cleve Anders gloat over it.
Meanwhile, he was glad to see that Tom Ford had kept his promise; he and his rustlers had stayed away from Circle M. Rae had worried about that.
He slept restlessly as a wolf one afternoon in the dirt cave in the bank of the streambed, his carbine cradled in his arm. Last night had been a frustrating one. Anders’ men had been out in full force, and Rae had already hit all the easy targets. He had been unable to penetrate that screen of gunmen without having to fight his way through; and so, at last, he had given up and retreated to his cave.
Now something—he didn’t know what— brought him wake, upright and instantly alert, lifting the carbine before he knew whether there was anything to aim it at.
For a moment there was no sound, nothing he could hear except the thudding of his own heart, the pulse of blood in his own ears. He was about to lay the carbine aside when it came again, from down the streambed: the click of iron shod hoofs on rock.
Rae bit his lip and jacked a round into the carbine. If this was Anders’ men and they found him, he was trapped good, boxed in like a steer in a branding chute. There would be nothing to do but fight his way out or be slaughtered.
He bellied to the edge of the cave, cautiously peered out. All he could see was the crown of a hat bobbing in and out of the brush that choked the vanished creek’s empty seam. One hat—but there might be more riders coming.
The sorrel was picketed not far away, but there was no saddle on it. He usually tried to keep it saddled, but constant pressure from a sweaty blanket produced galls, and its back had to air for awhile each day. By the time he could slither down, get to the horse, yank the picket-pin and mount bareback, the strange rider would be upon him. No, he would have to wait, and, if necessary, fight.
The hat came closer. Rae estimated where it would emerge from the wall of brush into a stretch where a rock bottom had kept the streambed clear. He raised the carbine and trained it on that spot, and his finger lapped around the trigger.
The hat moved exactly toward the spot he had a bead on, and now he could see the color of a brush jacket, get an occasional glimpse of the hide of the claybank horse the intruder rode. Two seconds more, one, and the man would be in the clear. . . .
Then the rider came out of the brush.
Rae let out a rasping sigh and dropped the gun barrel. Suddenly he was trembling. Only the final crook of a trigger finger had stood between him and driving a .30-30 slug through his own half brother.
“Damn,” he muttered. “Damn, Will, why did it have to be you?”
Will came on up the defile, eyes sweeping its banks. He had a carbine cradled across his saddle horn. He still wore his crossed gun belts, the two Colts tied low. He was only a boy, true enough, but with all that artillery he looked dangerous.
But maybe, Rae thought hopefully, Will would miss his sign. The mouth of the cave was lightly screened by brush, and it was up high with a jut out of rock and earth beneath it; maybe Will would ride on by, unseeing.
But that was not to be. From nearby, the picketed sorrel whinnied a shrill welcome to Will’s mount.
Instantly Rae’s half brother reined in, raising the carbine. His eyes moved carefully over the terrain. They came to rest on the mouth of the cave; and Rae saw Will stiffen.
Then, in a quick motion, Will was off his horse, using it for a shield. All Rae could see of him was hat and the muzzle of the carbine across the saddle.
Will’s voice rang through the silence. “All right, Rae! Come down outa there! Or I’ll come up after you!”
Rae picked up the carbine. Will fired; the roar of the rifle was thunderous; Rae heard the bullet spang off rock far below the cave and knew it was not a shot intended to kill.
Biting his lip, Rae lay frozen for a moment. Then he got to his knees.
“All right! Hold your fire! I’m comin’ down!”
If Will had wanted to kill him then, he could have done it. For the moment that he was squeezing through the narrow mouth of the cave, Rae was off-balance and helpless, a perfect target. But the rifle Will held across the saddle did not bark again. In a shower of dirt, rocks, and clods, Rae skittered down the hill. He brought up panting in the bed of the stream.
Will ducked under the horse’s neck and straightened up, and then the two half-brothers were facing each other, each with a saddle gun in one hand, each with his other hanging loose near a six-gun.
“You damn’ fool,” Rae said tensely, after a second’s silence. “What made you so blame sure I wouldn’t gun you down? I had a bead on you from the minute you come through that brush.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Will said. He was as tense as Rae, his face white, his lips taut. He had sweated all the way through his brush jacket. “How’d you know I wouldn’t plug you when you came out through that cave?”
“Wouldn’t have been much sense in that,” Rae said. “After all, you’re the one helped me break jail.”
“Maybe that’s why I figured you wouldn’t plug me,” Will said.
They were silent for a moment more, each looking at the other. To look into Will’s eyes, Rae thought, was like looking into a mirror. It was uncanny.
Then Rae said, “You’re alone.” It was a statement, not a question.
“That’s right,” Will said. “I’m alone. The others hunt in pairs—at least in pairs. But if I found you, I didn’t want anybody else along to hear what I got to say.”
Rae nodded. “What have you got to say?”
Will looked at him steadily.
“Get off this range,” he said. “Or the next time I have a chance, I’m not gonna throw off my shot.”
Something cold touched Rae’s spine; but there was no doubt from the look in Will’s eyes that he meant it.
“I gave you that gun in jail,” Will said, “’cause I didn’t want to see you murdered without a fair trial. But I asked you then, dammit, to clear out. And you didn’t do it.”
“No,” Rae said. “I didn’t.”
“Instead, you’re burnin’ Circle M up. This is almost worse than the rustling.” Will’s voice was sharp. “You’ve forgot one thing. Regardless of what your claim is on the spread, and regardless of how right it might be—and I ain’t sayin’ it is or ain’t—Circle M belongs to me, too. I was born on it and I grew up on it. And I ain’t going to stand by and see it destroyed by nobody, half brother or not.”
Rae said nothing. But he could see now that he had done more damage than he had intended. Not to Circle M, but to himself. Before, his half brother had been undecided. But Rae’s depredations had driven him firmly onto Cleve Anders’ side of the fence.
So he had cost himself his most important ally.
“Look,” he said desperately, “I’m not making war on you.”
“When you make war on Circle M,” Will said, “you’re making war on me. And that means I got to make war on you.” He paused, then went on. “Anyhow, you ain’t got a chance. I mean that. Cleve’s not gonna give up until he runs you down. And he’s put enough of a reward on your head so that you don’t dare to show your face to anybody in Fletcher’s Hole.”
“If Cleve would listen to sense,” Rae said, “you coulda bought my share, you and Cleve, for less than this war’s cost you so far.”
“Cleve ain’t listenin’ to anything,” Will said. “When he gits a hate on, it stays on. I know Cleve from away back. And he hates you worse’n I’ve ever seen him hate anybody. You’ve hurt us, Rae, hurt us bad. Range burned up, winter feed burned up ... we can’t hold over the winter. We’re havin’ to make a special gather right now and sell off five hundred head when the market’s down, but if we don’t do that, they’ll starve or break us buyin’ feed. Cleve ain’t happy about that. Neither am I. Now, I’m gonna ask you one more time. Ride out. Let this rustlin’ and burnin’ stop. Then maybe I can do somethin’ in your behalf. But if it don’t stop . . . well, then, I’m comin’ after you right along with the rest of Circle M.”
Rae stared at him for a moment. Then he let out a long breath. He laid down the carbine and sat down on a rock, and took out his makings and rolled a cigarette.
“The rustlin’s stopped,” he said. “There won’t be any more of that. I can promise you. But don’t forget, it was my own cattle I stole.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Will said coldly.
“I took ’em,” Rae went on, “so I could get enough money to fight this in court. But then Cleve came after me and tried to lynch me and—”
“Don’t forget, Clyde Brennan’s dead. I never had no love for Clyde; he was always too much Cleve’s pet dog, to come when Cleve whistled, and I wouldn’t have trusted him no farther than I can spit. But he was a Circle M man and you got him killed.”
“I did everything I could to save him,” Rae said. “They promised me they were turning him loose. Hell, I was ready to fight ’em if they didn’t. But after I thought he’d gone free, they sent a man and bushwhacked him. That was when I told ’em the deal was off. I didn’t want anybody else gittin’ killed.” He lit the cigarette. “You haven’t lost any beef since then, have you? Far as I know, they’ve left you alone.”
“We haven’t lost any more beef,” Will said. “But we’ve sure as hell lost a lot else—all burned up. And that’s got to stop too.”
“And if it don’t, you’ll be comin’ after me?”
“That’s right,” Will said, and something gleamed in his eyes, and suddenly Rae realized that even though the boy hated the idea, he was fascinated by it, too; fascinated by the thought of using those guns he had lugged around for so long and dreamed so many wild dreams about. . . .
Yes, Will would come after him, all right.
Rae took another drag on the cigarette and dropped it into the dirt. He ground it out with the toe of his boot.
“Okay,” he said. ‘The war’s over.”
Will tensed. “You mean that?”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Rae said, gettin to his feet. “I’ve already called off the rustlers; I’m callin’ myself off, too. That don’t mean I don’t hate Anders’ guts, and that don’t mean that someday I’m gonna figure out how to get my share of what’s comin’ to me. My father wanted me to have it, and maybe that means more to me than you can understand. But you brought me that gun in jail because we had the same blood. All right; that’s why I’m callin’ off my war. Because if you came after me, I’d have to kill you, and I don’t want that.”
“I don’t think you could take me,” Will said quickly, defiantly.
“We’ll never know,” Rae said, filled with a great weariness, a tiredness that seemed to strike to his very bones. “Because I ain’t about to try to find out.” He raised his head and his voice crackled. “Okay, you can turn and ride now. Go make your beef gather or whatever you got to do.”
“What about you?”
“It’s a big country,” Rae said. “A big world. I’ll find someplace.”
Will looked at him for a moment. “I wish, dammit—” he began and then left the sentence unfinished. Suddenly he ducked back under the horse’s neck and in one smooth motion he was in the saddle. He held the horse close-reined for a moment, looking down at Rae. “Good luck,” he said.
“Same to you,” Rae said.
Will wheeled his mount, spurred it, and rode back into the brush. Rae watched him go. Then he turned, wearily, and climbed back up to the cave to pack his gear.
Yes, he thought, the war was over. And he had lost it. He had been defeated by the one thing he could not fight—his father’s blood in Will Marsh. He had, for all his efforts, won nothing at all—not the chance to see his father alive, not his father’s inheritance to him. And, he thought bitterly, not Crystal, which was the sorest loss of all. But even if she really did feel anything for him, which she had vehemently denied all along, she would not, now. Not after he told her that he planned to turn tail and run, like a whipped dog. Before she had the vengeance for her husband’s death that she had linked up with him to seek.
No, he was leaving Crystal in the lurch, too, with no change in Fletcher’s Hole except that Cleve Anders would have a free hand now to make things as rough for Crystal as he could—and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
But he would keep his word to Will; he would be riding soon. There was only one thing left to do. He could not just pull out without seeing Crystal again. Somehow, under cover of night, he would have to get into Bent’s Crossing.