Harlan Striker was fuming when interrupted at breakfast to be told that one of his men had been killed and another wounded. His dark eyes seemed to throw sparks as Mace explained what had happened. “You mean to tell me you surprised three drifters camped on my range and you come limpin’ back here with your tails draggin’ and one less man? And now you’re tellin’ me that the three of them are still alive? What in hell do you think I pay you for?”
“We got bushwhacked,” Mace said in defense. “We didn’t know that one of ’em was hid back in the trees. He had the drop on us. There wasn’t nothin’ we could do.”
“Three damn drifters,” Striker repeated in disgust. “And you ain’t ever seen any of ’em before?”
“Maybe they weren’t just drifters,” Mace said, remembering then. “The big one with the scar on his face said to tell you there wouldn’t be no more cattle rustled on Triple-T range. They knew where they were and they knew the Triple-T. That sounds to me like they’ve hired on some new hands, and there ain’t no doubt that feller with the scar is a paid killer. They were out there keepin’ an eye on the cattle, just waitin’ for us to show up.”
Striker couldn’t deny that possibility, but it still didn’t excuse the report Mace offered on the prior night’s incident. His crew of fifteen men had been hired for their toughness and their know-how with guns. With Triple-T’s crippled manpower situation, he should have had no trouble rolling right over them. Will Murphy wasn’t even in the country, so when Mace put a bullet into Mike Duffy’s chest, there was no one left to lead the Triple-T crew—and more than likely nobody to hire on new hands. And yet they stubbornly held on. “Damn it!” he suddenly swore, and threw his coffee cup against the log wall, causing Mace to take a quick step back. The news was turning his breakfast sour. “I need every man I’ve got.” The ranch house he had planned to have completed before winter was still only partially built, and would now have to wait until spring before the other bedroom and dining room were finished. He wanted a herd of at least two thousand to ship to the markets in the coming summer, and that meant changing a lot of Triple-T brands. “Rena!” he yelled. “Bring me some fresh coffee.”
In a few moments, the seldom-speaking half-breed Crow woman came from the kitchen, carrying the coffeepot. Solidly built and just a shade shorter than Striker, she was accustomed to his angry outbursts, but unperturbed by them, however, because she knew he would have trouble finding a replacement for her. She stood silently there by the table, holding the coffee- pot and staring at the table. “Where’s your cup?” When he pointed to the cup lying on the floor near the wall, she looked at him and frowned. “You throw it down there again, I don’t bring you no more.” She picked up the cup, put it in front of him, and filled it.
“Don’t you sass me,” he warned. “I’ll send your ass back to that stinkin’ reservation.”
“Ha,” she scoffed, “who you gonna get to cook for you?” She fixed Mace with a dull gaze then and asked, “You want coffee?”
“No,” Striker answered for him, “he don’t want no coffee. Now get outta here. We’re talkin’ business.” She shrugged and left the room. Mace stared after her, always amazed at how Striker tolerated the woman’s impudence. Any of the men working for him would have been shot for such back talk. Of course, none of the men came crawling in the old man’s bed when he got cold in the middle of the night, he thought, and would have grinned had he not been faced with Striker’s angry countenance.
“How bad is Bo hurt?” Striker continued.
“Well, I reckon he’ll live, but he ain’t in no shape to ride anytime soon—shot in the hip. We put him in the bunkhouse. Smokey’s lookin’ after him, but there ain’t a helluva lot he can do. It’s pretty much up to Bo if he gets back on a horse or not.”
“He’d better,” Striker said. “He ain’t no use to me if he can’t ride.”
“Yes, sir. There’s one other thing,” Mace said, reluctant to bring it up. “Those fellers took my rifle, Bo’s and Sykes’s, too. I’m gonna need another’n.”
Striker’s scalding look of disgust was enough to make Mace cringe. “Then you’d better see about gettin’ it back,” he snapped, and let him stand there under his fierce gaze for a long moment. “You can take one of the rifles against the wall, but it’s only a loan till you get yours back. If you don’t get it back, I’ll take the cost of that one outta your pay.”
“Yes, sir,” Mace replied, humbly. “I ’preciate it. Ain’t no problem. I’ll damn sure get my rifle back, and I’ll get the son of a bitch who killed Sykes.”
“They’ve got to learn that they ain’t gettin’ away with killing any of my men,” Striker told him. “By God, they want a war, I’ll sure as hell give it to them. Take some of the boys and go find those three gunmen. You know what to do when you find ’em.”
“Yes, sir,” Mace said.
Striker watched his foreman take his leave, and stared at the door after it closed behind him, thinking about what had happened the night before. If what he suspected might have happened, he wondered if Mace was the man he needed to take care of it. The Triple-T must have imported some new gun hands to fight against his takeover. That could be more trouble for Mace than he knew how to handle. Mace and his boys would do any foul deed asked of them, but they were little more than back-shooting bushwhackers. And up to this point, that’s all he had needed. Then again, maybe he was worrying too soon. The three riders they ran up on last night might be part of the same crew they’d been fighting all along, whether Mace had seen them before or not. Before I spend any money on some high-priced specialist, I’ll wait to see if anything’s changed on the Triple-T, he thought, but he had invested too much in the takeover to be scared off by some cheap gunslingers. If he had to send for a higher-priced specialist, he would do it, although it was already costing him much more than he had anticipated to get the cattle he wanted. It had taken him over five years as vice president in a San Francisco bank to accumulate his investment money, money he had embezzled, and he was getting impatient to see his ambitions bear fruit.
• • •
Mace and three men rode down to the river where Sykes and Bo had been shot the night before, to find the camp abandoned. “They musta got outta here pretty early,” Mace suggested.
“By the look of this fire, I think they musta left last night,” Lou Suggs speculated. “The ashes ain’t even warm.”
“Right after we got away from here, most likely,” Mace conceded. “They probably headed for the ranch house.” He hesitated for a few moments, not really sure what he should do at this point. Striker had given him specific orders to find the three riders, but if they had gone straight to the Triple-T ranch house, he couldn’t very well follow them there. He wasn’t sure how many men were left on the Triple-T, but he suspected their numbers had dwindled considerably. It seemed that whenever he had spotted any of them, it had been the same few faces. And if that was indeed the case, he didn’t understand why Striker didn’t simply order all thirteen of his men to raid the ranch house and wipe them all out. He shared these thoughts with Lou. “Why don’t we just go on in that place and kill ’em all, and be done with it?”
Lou Suggs was not an especially intelligent man, but he was smart enough to see the reasoning behind Striker’s hesitation to make such a move. “I reckon Striker don’t wanna take the chance of stirrin’ up such a fuss that the law or the army will get wind of it. There’s already talk in Ogallala about trouble between the Triple-T and the Roman-Three. As long as we just keep shavin’ away at their cattle and thinnin’ out their men, Striker probably figures won’t nobody in town get riled up enough to stick their nose in it.”
Mace considered Lou’s comments for a few moments. “Maybe you’re right, but he damn sure told me to take care of those three strangers. So let’s ride on down the river a ways and see if we can pick up some sign of ’em.”
• • •
The party Mace and his men searched for was approaching the charred remains of a line shack on Blue Creek. “Looks to me like this place was burnt down not too long ago,” Dooley said as he stirred some ashes with the toe of his boot.
“Hard to say,” Cord speculated, “but I’d have to agree with you.” He recalled the first time he had seen the log shack. It had been on the first night he worked for Mike Duffy when Lem Jenkins took him around part of the perimeter of the Triple-T. Lem had told him that the shack was built on a spot where a large Lakota village had once stood before being destroyed by the army. This was over twenty years before that night and Lem said he had often found bits of metal and arrowheads half buried in the grassy prairie. Cord was about to pass that history on to his two companions when the first bullet kicked up ashes barely a few inches from his foot. “Get down!” he yelled when he realized what was happening, and another bullet whined as it passed between Dooley and him. All three hit the ground behind the burned timbers of the cabin. Several more shots rang out, thudding into the timbers shielding them. “Can you see where they’re comin’ from?”
“I think so,” Dooley answered. “See that little knoll where the creek bends back to the right? I think they’re layin’ behind it.”
Cord looked in the direction indicated. “I think you’re right.” He looked behind him to see if Birdie was all right. She was scrunched up against his back. “Well, we can’t stay here,” he decided. “Stay low and lead the horses back into the creek. We can get a little better cover below the bank. Use the horses for cover till we get there.” He didn’t have to encourage them further, for the bullets were beginning to land closer to them as the shooters found the range. Clambering to the creek on a dead run, they ran the few yards from the shack to the water, all three jumping down the bank, leading the horses behind them.
Once they were safely settled, Cord led them a dozen yards downstream to a group of trees that offered a little less exposure. “Well, our luck’s holdin’ out,” Dooley said. “They ain’t hit none of us or the horses, either. We can hold ’em off from here.”
“That may be,” Cord said, “but we ain’t goin’ anywhere as long as they’ve got that high ground. They can keep us pinned down in this creek for as long as they want to.” In order to prove what he said, he put his hat on the barrel of his rifle and held it up over the edge of the bank. In less than a second, the hat was knocked off his rifle. “Well, I reckon they’ve got their rifles right on the distance now.”
Afraid they’d shoot the horses if they tried to run, Dooley said, “I reckon we ain’t got no choice but wait till dark and sneak outta here then.”
“It’s a long time till dark,” Cord replied, “and I don’t cotton much to bein’ holed up in this creek all day.” He didn’t express it, but he was fighting to control his anger over the thought of being shot at when he was well on Triple-T range. He edged up behind a tree trunk to look at the knoll that protected the shooters. There were no targets presented for him and Dooley to return fire. He followed the creek with his eye then and figured it was worth a try. “I’m gonna work my way down the creek to where it turns back toward those buttes,” he told Dooley. “I just might be able to sneak outta there at the closest point to that knoll and get up behind ’em.”
“And get yourself killed.” Birdie offered an opinion.
“Not if I’m careful,” Cord replied.
“Damn, Cord,” Dooley complained, “I was countin’ on you to help me get started makin’ an honest livin’ with your friends on the Triple-T. You go gettin’ yourself shot and that leaves me in a tight spot. Hell, they ain’t gonna hire me without your say-so.”
Cord almost laughed. “I’m touched by your concern for my life,” he said. “You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. Just remember to tell ’em you’re the president.” He didn’t wait to hear Dooley’s response, but immediately started down the creek, running hunched over in an effort to keep his profile below the creek bank.
“Damn it!” Birdie called after him. “Be careful!” She had placed her faith in the tall young man to see her safely to Ogallala. Without him, she was not that confident in Dooley’s commitment to her welfare.
As if aware of what she was thinking, Dooley tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry. He won’t take no crazy chances. If anythin’ happens to him, I won’t leave you on your own.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled, still not comfortable with the idea. She turned to look after Cord, who was already close to fifty yards away, running in a crouch, and expected to see him knocked over by a bullet at any second.
After a long few minutes, with no shots fired in Cord’s general direction of flight, Dooley stated, “I don’t think they saw him.”
Running until he was almost staggering from his hunched-over posture, Cord reached the point where Blue Creek turned abruptly toward a couple of buttes to the south. He paused to rest there and took a look at the situation. At the bottom of the back side of the knoll, three horses were tied to some mesquite bushes. When his eyes followed the slope of the hill, they came to rest on three forms lying near the top of the knoll. Flat on their bellies, all three were aiming at the creek bank some two hundred yards distant. Figuring that he should make his way about halfway up the slope to give himself the best chance of getting at least two of the three men before they had time to react, he left the creek and sprinted toward the horses.
The bushwhackers were too engrossed in their efforts to keep their adversaries pinned down in the ditch to notice the man coming up behind them. Even the inquisitive whinnies of the horses went unnoticed. Kneeling next to a clump of sagebrush, Cord brought the Winchester up to his shoulder and took careful aim at the man on the right. Suddenly he hesitated, unsure. Then instead of squeezing the trigger, he pulled the rifle down and yelled at them, “Hold your fire!” As if someone had thrown scalding water on them, all three jumped to defend themselves from a rear attack, causing Cord to have to yell at them again. “Stony! It’s me, Cord Malone! Don’t shoot, damn it!”
“Cord!” Stony Watts replied, hardly believing his eyes. “Where the hell did you come from?” He paused to explain the obvious to Blackie. “It’s Cord!”
“Damned if it ain’t,” Blackie replied. “Watch yourself you don’t catch a bullet. We’ve got three rustlers pinned down in the creek.”
“And they ain’t stuck so much as a finger outta there,” Stony said. “I’m afraid if we don’t run ’em outta there, they’ll hole up till dark and slip out when we can’t see ’em.”
Cord climbed on up to join them. “I swear, Stony, you’ve already run one of ’em out, you damn fool.”
“We have? How do you know?”
“Me, damn it,” Cord replied. “I was in that creek. Now I’ll show you how to get the other two out.” He stood up at the top of the knoll and yelled out toward the creek, “Dooley! It’s all right. You can come outta there now. The shootin’s over.”
Totally confused for a moment, and still slow on understanding, Stony stared at Cord in disbelief. It took Blackie to state the obvious. “You mean that was you down there we was shootin’ at?”
Cord nodded slowly. “You’ve got a strange way of treatin’ folks who come to help you. That’s for damn sure.” He watched the creek until Dooley and Birdie appeared on the edge of the bank, leading the horses up.
“I swear,” Link said, “it’s a good thing ain’t none of us a better shot, ain’t it? We thought you were the bastards that burnt the line shack down.”
“I reckon,” Cord replied. “And it’s a good thing I recognized Stony’s big butt just before I pulled the trigger because I thought you three were rustlers.”
“Well, if that ain’t somethin’,” Stony crowed, finding the incident humorous now that no one had been shot. “I didn’t think we’d ever see you again. Who’s that you got with you?”
“That’s Bill Dooley,” Cord said. “He’s a good hand with a rifle. He came along to see if he could lend a hand. The other one’s Birdie.”
Blackie turned serious for a moment. “You heard about Mike?” he asked.
“Yeah. I ran into Slick up at Rawhide Buttes in Wyomin’ Territory. He told me, and that’s why I came back—figured you’d need some help.”
“That yellow dog,” Stony slurred. “He didn’t waste much time hightailin’ it outta here when the shootin’ started.” His scowl turned immediately back to a smile then. “Boy, I’m mighty glad to see you, though, and that’s a fact. This bastard Harlan Striker just showed up with a few head of cattle, figurin’ he was gonna take himself a herd offa the Triple-T. He brought in a bunch of hired guns to rustle our cattle and change the brands. Calls hisself the Roman-Three, and it don’t take a genius to figure out where that name came from.” When Cord didn’t appear to understand, Stony showed him. Using a stick as a pencil, he drew on the ground. “Here’s our brand, the Triple-T.” He drew the brand, TTT. Then he drew one horizontal bar across the bottom. “Burn one bar across the bottom and you’ve got III, a Roman three. That’s his brand.”
“It don’t get much simpler than that, does it?” Cord remarked. “How are Muriel and Eileen gettin’ along—you know—with Mike’s death? Are they all right?”
“As well as anybody could be after their husband and daddy is shot down by a gang of murderers,” Stony said, bristling with the thought. “And Striker’s got us outnumbered pretty bad. Ain’t but five of us, not countin’ Slop, and Striker’s got fifteen men, and all of ’em handy with a gun.”
“I reckon he ain’t got but thirteen now,” Cord said. “Some of his men jumped our camp last night.” Stony grinned when he heard it. “And with me and Dooley, you’ve got two more.”
“I’m likin’ it better all the time,” Blackie said. “Maybe we’ve got a better chance of holding on to Mr. Murphy’s cattle. He’s over there in Ireland and don’t even know somebody’s trying to run him outta business.”
“This feller, Striker, knows what he’s doin’,” Stony said. “Mr. Murphy hadn’t been gone but about a week when Striker showed up on our north range. First thing he did was to go after Mike. We figure he thought if he rubbed out our boss, all the hands would just take off and leave him to take over the cattle. When we didn’t run, he just tried to pick us off one or two at a time till we all got too scared to stay. They got ol’ Art Hundley when he was ridin’ night herd, but Slick is the only one that run off scared.”
Cord looked back toward the creek where Dooley and Birdie were standing, holding the horses. Turning back to Stony, he said, “Get your horses, and come on down to the creek. I need to tell Dooley and Birdie what’s goin’ on.”
• • •
“What in the hell did you do,” Dooley asked when Cord came striding down from the knoll, “talk ’em into surrenderin’?” When Cord didn’t answer right away, Dooley questioned, “You didn’t tell ’em we surrendered, did you?”
“They’ll be along in a minute,” Cord said, “soon as they get their horses. Then you can meet your new partners, President . . .” He glanced at Birdie. “Who’d you say?”
“Hayes,” she supplied, “Rutherford Hayes.”
“Yeah, him,” Cord said. Serious then, he told them how close he had come to shooting Stony in the back. “Maybe, if we quit tryin’ to kill each other off, we’ll have enough guns left to keep this fellow, Striker, from stealin’ all Will Murphy’s cattle.” He turned to see Stony and the other two ride up and dismount.
“I reckon we didn’t give you much of a welcome to the Triple-T, did we?” Stony greeted Dooley and Birdie.
“At least it was a warm welcome,” Blackie added.
“Well, the only harm done was a lot of cartridges wasted,” Dooley replied, grinning, “most of ’em yours.”
“No matter,” Stony said. “We’re damn glad to get your help.” He stepped forward and offered his hand. Dooley grasped it and pumped it up and down vigorously. When he let go, Stony turned and offered it to Birdie. He couldn’t help wondering at the fragile complexion and soft hands of the boy. It caused him to look more closely into the frank open face staring back at him. “Dang, you’re a girl. . . .” His voice trailed off. “I swear, I thought you were a boy.” Remembering his manners then, he quickly tried to back out of the hole he was in the process of digging. “Excuse me, miss. I just wasn’t payin’ close attention.”
“That’ll be the first time Stony ain’t paid close attention to a lady,” Blackie commented. “My name’s Blackie, and this other feller’s Link. We’re mighty glad to see you folks, and I’m sorry we tried to kill you, but things has been kinda touchy around here lately.”
“That’s right,” Stony added. “Ever since Mike was shot, we’ve pretty much pulled the trigger first and asked questions later.” He fixed his gaze on Cord then and motioned toward Birdie with his eyes. It took several times before Cord caught on and quickly shook his head. Stony nodded understanding, looked back at Birdie, and smiled. He was brought back to the problem at hand by Cord’s next question.
“How are you handlin’ the situation with the five of you against Striker’s gang of outlaws?”
“The best we’ve been able to do is to have three of us watchin’ the cattle as best we can durin’ the day. We figured we’d better leave at least two men at the ranch in case Striker’s men make a run at Mr. Murphy’s or Mike’s house. Lem Jenkins and Billy Atkins are stayin’ there today. Of course, Slop’s always there, so the three of ’em take care of the chores with Muriel and Eileen doin’ a lot of the work.”
Cord thought about that for a few moments, getting the picture in his mind, so he could decide how he could be most effective. It seemed obvious to him that the first concentration should be toward reducing the odds. “When are they doin’ most of the rustlin’, at night?”
“That’s right,” Stony answered. “So they don’t make as good a target, I reckon, but they ain’t shy about workin’ in broad daylight, either. When they work in daylight, they keep riders out pretty far for lookouts—makes it pretty hard to sneak up on ’em to try to get a shot at ’em.” He shrugged and chuckled. “We thought we’d caught some of ’em without their lookouts this mornin’ when we saw you.”
“I kinda got an idea that they keep a lookout on the ranch,” Blackie commented, “see where we’re goin’ in the mornin’. Then they go to some other part of our range and work on our cattle without havin’ to worry about us showin’ up.”
“Yeah,” Link piped up. “And if we all split up to try to cover more of our range, it’d be one man against however many they had in that place.”
Armed now with a pretty complete picture of how the attempted takeover had progressed since Mike Duffy’s murder, Cord would have to think about how best he could be effective in the range war. The first thing to be done, however, was to take Dooley and Birdie to the ranch to get Birdie settled in with the other two women, and make Dooley familiar with the men he was to work with. Since the Triple-T was losing stock every day, Stony decided they couldn’t afford to leave the section around the upper end of Blue Creek unguarded, so he suggested that Cord should go on to the ranch and get settled in while he, Blackie, and Link continued on.