AN HOUR before dawn a cry aroused Montana. He pulled on his boots and stepped out. Brent Crockett was riding into the yard. The boy sat stiffly erect, his eyes stained with tragedy.
Two others were with him. They were talking, and their voices were charged with a grim determination.
“You couldn’t do no good a-goin’ back for him,” Montana heard one of them say. The boy was addressing Brent. “Reckon we got to be men about this.”
“Damn ’em,” the other muttered. “They’ll pay for it; we ain’t done yit.”
Dan held up his lantern, his hand shaking. The snatch of conversation that had come to them permitted but one conclusion.
“Jim—he’s come back without Gene!” There was a sob in Crockett’s throat.
“Yeah—” Montana answered tonelessly. “The fools,” he added to himself.
It was only a moment or two before the three boys pulled up their mounts in front of the two men.
“Where’s Gene? What’s happened to him?” Dan demanded before Brent could slip out of his saddle. Anxiety was written in every line of his weather-beaten face.
Jim saw a dry sob rack Brent. He hung his head and couldn’t answer. The others seemed strangely reluctant to speak.
“Come on,” Dan urged sharply, his voice thin and strained. “What is it, Brent?” The old man was suddenly a pathetic figure. Sight of him seemed completely to unnerve Brent. He broke down and began to cry.
“Pap—they got him,” he sobbed. “I—I reckon Gene’s dead.” He couldn’t go on for a moment or two. “Why couldn’t it hev been me?” he moaned over and over.
The news shook his father. For seconds he stared dumbly at the boy and said nothing. Tragedy had been no stranger to him. He had schooled himself to its sudden blows, but now he trembled like a gnarled, timberline cedar that at last finds the blast too strong. His lips began to move, but he was only mumbling incoherently to himself.
Montana put a hand on his bowed shoulders.
“Come on, Dan,” he murmured hopefully, “maybe the boy’s only wounded. No use thinking otherwise until we know to the contrary.”
He paused to glance at Brent. The boy refused to meet his eyes, now that his folly had ended so disastrously.
“I wanted to go back and git him,” Brent muttered miserably. “The boys wouldn’t let me do it.”
“That’s right,” one of them spoke up. “Brent wanted to go bustin’ back acrost the creek when he found Gene wa’n’t with us. We had to cuff him around a little before he’d listen to reason. Wa’n’t no sense in both of ’em gittin’ it.”
Montana turned to Brent.
“Brent—do you mind telling me just what happened?”
The boy raised his head reluctantly. Even now, crushed as he was, he could not face Montana without hostility. It surprised him not to find Jim’s eyes accusing.
“We got acrost the creek, all right,” he got out, breathing hard. “We set the grass afire right off, but it was dry and it flamed up ‘fore we could git away.” He shook his head at the memory. “Reckon they wuz aixpectin’ us. They began to blaze away at us. Four or five of them cut Gene off. We heard ’em calling on him to throw up his hands. But Gene begin shootin’ back. They got him directly. We seen him go down—”
“Then what happened?” Montana prompted. “If the grass was burning fast you must have been able to see a long way.”
“They could see, too,” Brent replied. “We had to git to cover or they’d have picked us all off. So we got back acrost the creek and waited—hoping he might show up. When he didn’t come, I said I was agoin’ back fer him. And I’d gone, too, if they hadn’t piled into me that-a-way.”
Montana had the picture.
“I guess it’s just as well you didn’t go,” he said. “Who was running things?”
Brent misunderstood his thought.
“Ain’t no use your blamin’ Quantrell for this,” he grumbled. “He didn’t hev nuthin’ to do with it.”
“How come?”
“Why—his horse went lame,” Brent explained. “Twisted an ankle or somethin’ ’fore we first reached the creek. It slowed him up.”
“Reckon it did.” Montana’s tone was bitter. “Pressed for time like that, I suppose he told you to go on.”
“We couldn’t wait for him,” one of the other boys cut in. “We had to be back before daylight.”
“Of course.” Montana’s tone was mocking. “I reckon Quantrell didn’t arrive in time to go across with you at all.”
“Why—no,” Brent muttered unhappily, beginning to sense what was running through Jim’s mind.
Montana’s jaws clicked together ominously. He thought, “A Bar S bullet may have got Gene, but Quantrell is the real murderer.” Aloud he said, “You know it’s awfully easy to lame a horse, Brent—awfully convenient sometimes.”
The three boys understood him, but they had no reply to make. Montana turned to Dan Crockett.
“Dan, I’m going up there,” he said. “I can make it before daylight. “Just keep on hoping for the best until I get back.”
Crockett nodded glumly. Hope was dead in his heart.
“It’ll be dangerous, Jim—”
“Don’t think about that. Somebody’s got to go.” He spoke to Brent again, asking him where they had crossed the North Fork.
“At the monument rock. Guess you know where I mean.” Jim nodded. “There’s a big flat just above it. That’s where all the shootin’ wuz . . . If you’re goin’, Montana, I’ll go with you.”
“No, I’ll go alone,” Jim declared. He asked Dan to walk down to the corral with him. “Better keep your eye on Brent. Tell him to stay away from the house until I get back. For the present, Dan, I wouldn’t say anything to the wife,” he advised. “It may not be as bad as we think.”
“I reckon it’ll be bad enough,” Dan muttered hopelessly. “I seen this comin’, Jim. I felt it all evenin’ . . . Poor, foolish boy.”
He helped Jim to saddle up.
“Don’t seem that you should be the one to go,” he said. “They’ll mow you down quicker than any of us.”
“Don’t worry, Dan; I’ll be all right.”
He left without another word. It was his intention to be across the North Fork before dawn, and he did not spare his horse.
A breeze had sprung up. It was cool against his cheek. It helped him to think. Long before he reached the creek, he had decided on his course of action. In line with it, he crossed the North Fork a mile below the monument and headed for the hills so as to come out above the big flat where the fighting had occurred.
The rising wind alone would have told him that dawn was not far away. By the time he reached the head of the flat, the shadows were beginning to lighten to the east. Below him it still was night.
From where he stood it was possibly three-quarters of a mile to the creek.
“No use to go ahead on foot,” he thought. “If I find him, I’ve got to get out in a hurry. I’ll need a horse right quick.”
The fire the boys had lighted had been put out, but the smell of burned grass filled his nostrils. It was very still. As he stopped every few feet, he could hear distinctly the purling of the creek.
The rolling plain was without cover of any sort. If Reb and his men were watching—and he had every reason to believe they were—they would locate him quickly enough as soon as it grew light.
“Maybe they don’t know Gene is here,” he mused. That would be in his favor. On the other hand, if they had found the boy, and he was not dead, they hardly would have left him there. Jim refused to believe Reb would be that heartless.
Minutes fled as he continued his search. The sky was already pink and yellow beyond the Malheurs.
He thought, “I’ll have to be on my way in a minute or two.”
He urged his horse ahead. They had gone only a few yards when the animal stopped. Montana peered through the purple mists and saw only what he took to be a low rock outcropping. He kneed his horse, but got no response.
“What is it, Paint?” he murmured. The horse’s ears were stiff and erect. Jim slid to the ground. Three or four steps and he saw that the brown patch was a tarpaulin, not a rock. He lifted one end of it. Gene lay there. He was dead.
“Poor old Mother Crockett,” Jim thought. “It’s going to be awfully hard on her. He was her baby.”
It took him several minutes to place the body across his saddle bow. He knew beyond doubt that the Bar S had someone watching the fiat.
“Reb knows that come sunup we’d make some effort to find the boy,” he told himself. “Ten to one I’ll draw lead before I get across the creek.”
The rock, known locally as the monument—it was a shaft of granite ten feet in diameter and at least forty feet high—loomed out of the shadows. to his right. Montana moved toward it, leading his horse.
He reached it safely. The creek bottom was only ten to twelve feet below him.
“Better get across right away,” he thought, “and take a chance on making it.”
He edged around the rock and was about to pick his way down to the bottom when he found four men stretched out on their rifles at his feet.
They were even more surprised than he. Two of them he recognized: Johnny Lefleur and Ike Sweet. Before they could throw their guns into position, he had them covered.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Johnny Lefleur exclaimed. “Where in all hell did you come from?”
“Just back away from your guns and start picking stars,” Montana ordered. “You boys have got awfully careless since I used to know you.”
He kicked their rifles off the ledge. A fifth gun rested against the rock. Five thirty-thirty’s and only four men! He knew the fifth man could not be far away.
“Now you got anything else on you?” he asked. Johnny had a forty-five in his holster. Jim tossed it after the rifles. He was about to speak when a movement behind him warned him, too late, that he had lost the play.
“I guess it’s your turn to elevate,” a voice rasped. Montana didn’t have to turn to identify the other. It was Reb. He was almost as incensed at his own men as at Montana.
“Fine bunch,” he sneered. “You’ll live to a ripe old age, bein’ careful that-a-way!”
“Aw, we heard him comin’,” Johnny Lefleur protested. “We thought it would be you.”
“Yeah?” Reb taunted. “You believe in Santa Claus, too, don’t you?” The red-haired one took a step forward. Jim could feel something boring into his back. “You can drop that gun,” Reb advised.
Montana obliged by flinging it into the creek bottom.
“I said to drop it!” Reb thundered. “What’s the idea?” He told Johnny to slip down and recover their rifles.
His perturbation tended to confirm what Montana was thinking. His eyes were inscrutable in the cold light of dawn. Seemingly without purpose he shifted around on his feet so that he could catch Reb’s reflection on the big silver concho that adorned the skirt of his saddle. It was like gazing into a convex mirror.
What he saw there made his blood run warm. Reb was not armed! He had stuck him up with nothing more formidable than his finger.
Montana repressed his start of satisfaction and stood with hands raised.
“The crowd you’re trailin’ with took an awful chance in sending you over here,” Reb went on. “But I reckon men who’ll send kids out to do their fightin’ will stoop to most any thin’.”
“If that was true, I’d feel as you do about it,” Jim replied. “But I tried to stop those boys last night. So did that lad’s father. They wouldn’t have it that way. It takes a pretty raw deal to steam boys up so they’ll ride out in the night willing to get killed to help their folks.” Jim shook his head sadly as his eyes strayed to Gene’s lifeless body. “But only seventeen, Reb—and wiped out like that!”
“Don’t get teary about it!” Reb muttered. “I got two men on the way to Wild Horse with slugs in ’em. It’s a long, rocky road, and the fact that a bunch of boys did the trick won’t make it any easier for them. Now you can take that kid back where you found him. If they want him—let the bunch that came over here last night come and get him. I said stay out—and I meant stay out. Get gain’, Montana!”
Jim did not offer to move. Johnny would be back with their rifles in a minute. He was not thinking of him. His eyes were fastened on the butt of a six-gun peeping out of Gene Crockett’s holster. He knew he could draw it quickly enough. But what if it were empty?
He felt he had to take that chance. His manner did not betray the thoughts racing through his mind.
“I was taking him back to his folks,” he murmured evenly. “I—I reckon I’m not changing my mind!”
His hand flashed out and closed over Gene’s gun as he whirled on them.
“It’s still my play,” he droned. “Get over there with Ike—and move fast, Reb!”
Reb knew his man—and he stepped aside. In another minute Montana was in the saddle and riding across the flat, away from the rock. He heard Reb call to Johnny Lefleur. If Johnny had recovered his rifle he could pick him off at that distance.
Strangely enough, Montana crossed the creek, five hundred yards away, without a shot being fired.
Back at the rock, Reb was furious.
“Why didn’t you pick him off?” he roared. “You had all the chance in the world!”
Johnny scratched his head reflectively.
“No,” he muttered, “if a gent’s got guts enough to ride in here and force a showdown like that on us, I ain’t gonna send a slug into him just to ease my feelio’s.”