It was a raw, thorny, man-killing country that even the devil wouldn’t have. For two days Wade Massey had worked his way across it, cursing the bare stretches of rock and sand, the tangles of clutching chaparral. Now, his ride almost done, he reined up a moment.
He took off his broad-brimmed hat and wiped his sweaty forehead on a dusty sleeve. He squinted against the glare of the hostile sun and let his gaze sweep again the broad panorama of the desert.
The land was choked up with mesquite and catclaw and ironwood, and worst of all there was the cholla cactus that seemed to reach out and grab at horse and man. No, sir, he told himself, even the devil wouldn’t lay claim to a country like this.
But there were people fool enough to want to, and there were bankers fool enough to lend them money to try it.
Wade looked down at the Rafter T headquarters, huddled around a spring that fed a narrow little stream. The bankers must have been caught on their warm side when Price Stockton and Glenn Henry, brothers-in-law, had talked them into making a loan so they could bring cattle into this country, Wade reflected. But their warm side had gradually taken on a chill when the years started slipping by and the cattlemen hadn’t even been able to pay interest on the loan.
Looking at the country, Wade couldn’t understand why the partners hadn’t given up and turned their cattle back to the bank long ago. Particularly, he couldn’t understand why Price Stockton had kept on going even when his partner died in agony after a smashing accident on the slope of a rocky hill.
But what the hell. He shrugged as he swung back into the saddle and jogged on down toward the huddle of rock buildings and pole corrals. It wasn’t his job to be wondering why. The banking firm of Underwood & Watson had sent him to get their money back or take over the ranch. They didn’t care which.
He stopped again a couple of hundred yards from the ranch buildings. The thought struck him that no wagon could ever get in here. The country was too rough. The rocks for the buildings had been moved by hand, or by pack mule. He glanced over the pole corrals. The rails had been snaked down from the higher timber country, most likely.
A lot of hard labor and pure guts had gone into the building of this place. The thought set a worry to nagging at him again. Underwood & Watson hadn’t sent any word to Stockton. They were going to let Wade break the news.
“There’s no way of knowing how he’s going to take it,” Oliver Underwood had said. “But I can guess.
“That’s why we’re sending you. You know cattle, horses and the ranch business as well as anybody. And you’re young enough and husky enough to take care of yourself in a fight.”
Wade was hot and tired and thirsty when he swung down beside the little shoveled-out stream, a few yards below a fence which kept livestock away from the spring. He loosened the cinch and let his horse lower its head to the cool water. Wade moved a couple of steps closer to the spring, dropped to his belly, and began to drink of the good, running stream.
He didn’t see the woman walk up on the other side of the spring. He didn’t become aware of her until he rose onto one knee and wiped the water off his mouth and looked up.
He saw first that she was young and slenderish and wore a slat bonnet. Then he saw that she held a small hand up to her mouth in surprise and that the color had drained from her oval face. She dropped the wooden bucket she carried.
Awkwardly Wade got to his feet, crushing his hat with one hand and rubbing his stubbled chin with the other. He hadn’t shaved in three days. He probably looked like an outlaw.
“I didn’t go to scare you, ma’am,” he said apologetically.
She swallowed. “You didn’t scare me,” she said weakly. “It was just that you—you looked for a minute like someone else, a fellow who used to ride in and stop at the stream and drink from it the way you just did.”
Wade couldn’t help staring at her. He liked her full, slenderish figure, the way the lacy top of her full-length dress swelled outward as she breathed rapidly. Her face wasn’t beautiful like some he had seen, but it was soft-looking and warm, with fine features. She wasn’t a girl any more. She was a woman.
“This man,” he said cautiously, “is he somebody you’re afraid of?”
She quickly shook her head. “Oh, no,” she replied, “it wasn’t that.” He could see a sign of pain in her blue eyes. “He meant a lot to me. He’s been dead a long time.”
Wade nodded and dropped his head. It was then that he noticed the golden rings on the third finger of her left hand. He swallowed once in disappointment. But, he told himself, he should have known. A rose like this couldn’t bloom on the desert and not be appreciated by some man.
“I came to see Price Stockton, ma’am. He around?”
She smiled then, and the pain left her face. Her lips were like a pale rose. “He’s out riding the east line. He’ll be back for supper. But if you’re looking for a job, I’m afraid it’s been a long ride for nothing.”
Wade still couldn’t keep his eyes away from her. Price Stockton had chosen his wife much better than he had chosen his ranch, he thought.
“I’m not hunting a job,” he said. “I’m here on business, Mrs. Stockton.”
Her eyebrows went up a little, then she smiled again. “Mrs. Stockton is at the house. I’m Bess Henry. Price is my brother.”
Wade took in a sharp breath. Bess Henry. So she was the widow of Stockton’s partner. Oliver Underwood had said Glenn Henry was killed two years ago when he roped a steer and was jerked down the rocky slope of a steep hill. Wade felt sorry for the woman now. But somehow he felt a little relieved, too.
“There’s grain in the barn,” she said. “Unsaddle your horse and come on to the house. We’ve got a pot of coffee on the stove.”
Wade took a straight razor and a bar of soap out of his saddlebags and shaved in the cold water before he went to the house. Bess Henry didn’t mention it, but he could tell by her eyes that she appreciated it. She called Mrs. Stockton into the kitchen.
Stockton’s wife was a jovial, plump woman with hair already beginning to gray. Wade placed her at forty. Stockton must be twelve or fifteen years older than his sister, he thought.
After they had had coffee, he stood in front of the rock house with Bess Henry and watched the sun sink into a splash of brilliant red beyond the bald rim which jutted up high and wide far to the west.
“One thing I can’t understand,” he said, “is why you stayed on here. It looks like too hard a country for a woman. Too hard for a man, I’d say.”
She shook her head. “It’s not an easy life,” she agreed. “Life comes hard here sometimes. But when you have to work and fight for something, you appreciate it all the more. At times it seems like the devil himself is against us. But look at it now.”
She swept her hand out toward the blazing sunset, the rolling mountains, the high, wide, formidable rim. “Have you ever seen anything grander? You look at it this way and you can forget the heat and the rocks and the thorns. That’s why Glenn loved it so much, I guess. That’s why I’ve stayed here even though he’s gone. He’s part of it now. So am I.”
No one could ever explain just how love works. One man can know a woman for years before he finally realizes she is the one he wants. Another can be with a woman only an hour and know even then that he is in love with her.
That’s how it was with Wade Massey. Long before Price Stockton finally came in at dark, Wade knew he had fallen in love with Bess Henry. It took all the strength he could muster to keep from reaching out and grasping her hand, or even pulling her to him and kissing those pale rose lips.
His heart was like a heavy rock inside of him. Before he finished his job for Underwood & Watson, she would probably have to leave this country she loved. And he knew she would leave hating him.
Price Stockton was a strong man, maybe six feet tall, about the same as Wade. His brown, leathery face showed he had spent the better part of his forty years out with the cattle in the hot dry wind, the blazing sun, the biting cold of winter. But the crinkly turkey tracks at the corners of his eyes showed he knew how to grin.
He came in afoot, leading a horse that limped on his left forefoot.
“Stumbled and fell up in the hills,” he told his sister. “The foot is pretty badly twisted.”
Wade noticed that Stockton was skinned up a little, too. But the man never mentioned it.
“I didn’t want to turn him loose up there in the shape he’s in,” Stockton said. “We can rub that ankle with salted grease a few days and maybe it’ll come down.”
Right then Wade knew his job was going to be twice as hard. He liked Price Stockton right off. Maybe Stockton wasn’t the best ranch manager in the country, but he loved stock.
Through supper, Wade forced himself to joke with Price Stockton and miserably felt the warmth of Bess Henry’s smiles. He tried to figure some way he could break the news easily.
He didn’t get the chance. About the time he was finishing his last cup of coffee, the kitchen door opened and a cowboy walked in, spurs jingling.
“Say, Price,” a gruff voice spoke, “Slim says he seen that big brindle bull—”
The voice broke off suddenly. It was a voice that rubbed up Wade’s spine like a wood rasp. He turned quickly around in his chair and almost let go his coffee cup.
The cowboy dropped his hand to his hip as if forgetting he didn’t have on a gun. His brown eyes were panicked. Then he turned and bolted for the outside.
Wade knocked over his chair as he jumped up and beat the man to the door. The puncher stopped and stood there, his muddy eyes wide, his quick breath ragged. Wade didn’t reach for his gun. He knew he wouldn’t have to.
“Lodge Agnew!” Wade said, his own breath coming fast. “I’ve hoped for a long time I’d run into you again. But I never really expected to.”
Agnew was trembling. “You’re a long way from New Mexico,” he breathed. “You wouldn’t drag me back, would you, Massey?”
Price Stockton had shoved his chair away from the table. He stepped up beside Agnew. “What’s going on, Lodge? Is this man an officer?”
Agnew shook his head. “The last time I seen him he was working for a bank. He closed out a ranch.”
The cordiality suddenly disappeared from Stockton’s face. The lines in it hardened. “A bank?” He peered keenly into Wade’s face. “You’re working for a bank?”
Wade swallowed. There would be no breaking it easy now. “That’s right, Stockton. I work for Underwood & Watson. I came to take up the loan they gave you and Glenn Henry.”
Stockton’s back stiffened. Wade glanced at Bess Henry. She blanched. Then her eyes turned to ice, and she looked down at the table. Plump Mrs. Stockton was about to burst into tears.
Wade felt little and mean. But it was his job. He had had to do it before. Usually the ranchmen were glad to turn the whole mess over to the bank and let someone else worry about it a while. But occasionally there was a case like this one, and Wade hated to look at himself in the mirror.
Price Stockton’s voice trembled a little. The yellow lamplight made the lines of his face deep and harsh. “If they’d just sent us word—but no, they sent you sneaking in here like a coyote.”
Agnew glanced at his boss, and his muddy eyes were desperate. “He’s just one man, Price. You could run him out of here,” he said hopefully.
A tremor of excitement played through Wade as he could see Stockton mulling over Agnew’s suggestion.
“You could, Stockton,” Wade agreed flatly. “But I’d be back. And I’d bring along a sheriff and maybe a couple of deputies next time.”
Angrily Stockton studied Wade’s face. His eyes looked as if they could strike sparks. But gradually Wade could see the ranchman giving up. Finally Stockton asked, “All right, then, what do you want me to do? Any choice?”
Wade nodded. It was going a little easier now. He slipped a tobacco sack from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette.
“You’ve got a choice. But first I’d just like to know what the trouble is. Why can’t you make the place pay?”
Stockton shrugged. “The country’s good enough. It keeps the cattle in good shape. But we’ve never been able to drive enough of them to the railroad to pay expenses. We can’t get a whole herd through that brush country. But you’ll find out for yourself, soon enough. Now, what’s the choice you were talking about?”
Wade took a long drag on the cigarette and watched Stockton. “You can turn the whole outfit over to the bank, lock, stock and barrel, and wash your hands of it.”
That hit Stockton right between the eyes. The fury rushed back into his face.
“Or,” Wade went on, “we can try to get enough cattle to the railroad to pay what you owe the bank. I’ll ramrod the roundup and the drive. But they’ll be your cattle till they sell.
“The market’s not any too good right now. It might take every hoof on the place to pay off the debt. On the other hand, you may have had enough increase the last few years that you’ll still have some cows left when the debt’s squared. If you have, that’ll give you something to start out new with. But I wouldn’t count on it much.”
He looked again at Bess Henry and miserably accepted her hostility.
“The choice is up to you, Stockton,” he said. “Personally, I’d give up this godforsaken country. I’d be glad to get shed of the whole mess.”
Stockton’s eyes were hard. “I like this country, Massey. It’s wild and it’s rough. But it’s mine, mine and my wife’s and Bess’s. If we’ve got to fight you and the bank every step of the way, we’ll keep it.”
He didn’t try to prevent his hatred from showing. “Now that we got that settled, what’s the first thing we do?”
Wade said, “The first thing is to get a real crew of cowboys in here. If the rest of your bunch is like Lodge, I don’t wonder that you’ve never been able to get your cattle out.”
“And the next?” Stockton asked.
“The next thing is that I’m taking Lodge to jail.”
There was a look in Agnew’s muddy eyes like that of a scared rabbit. He had been a coward back in New Mexico. He still was.
But Stockton didn’t like it. “What’s Lodge done?”
Wade explained. Over in New Mexico a couple of years ago, someone had been stealing a ranchman blind. The stockman had a good cow country, but it was a good rustler country, too. He had fought until he was whipped down.
“He finally threw in his chips and turned it all over to the bank,” Wade said. “I went to liquidate the outfit. Then I found out Lodge and his brother were mainly responsible for the stealing.
“We got them cornered in a canyon with a bunch of stuff they were changing brands on. We wounded Lodge’s brother. Lodge lit out. He abandoned his brother, left him lying there bleeding to death. We never did know how Lodge got away.
“We managed to save his brother’s life. He’s in the pen now, and not claiming Lodge as kin. But he’s going to have company right soon. I’m taking Lodge to town.”
Firmly Stockton stepped in front of Agnew. “Lodge has done nothing wrong while he’s been here. He’s always been a good hand. You’re no officer, Massey. Even if you was, you’d have to get the say-so of the territorial governor to take him back to New Mexico. Lodge is my man. He stays.”
Wade felt anger surge up in him, then let it burn out. He knew Stockton had him there.
Presently Wade said, “I’ll start for town tomorrow, then, and bring out some cowboys. If there’s any chance in the world of getting that herd out for you, we’ll do it.”
A steady hatred kindled in Stockton’s steely eyes. “It’s easy for you to say that. What’ve you got to lose?”
Wade glanced once at Bess Henry, then back at Stockton. “I’ve got plenty to lose.”
Several days later he was back again with a group of hand-picked cowboys. Among them was Snort Shanks, long-legged, long-thinking cowhand from over in the Mogollons; Blackie Hadden, dark, squat puncher who seldom opened his mouth but was always out in the lead when the pinch came; two Mexican vaqueros, Felipe Sanchez and Ernesto Flores, who would chase a runaway steer down the bald face of a cliff just to see which one could rope him first.
There were three other cowpunchers cut from the same cloth. Wade had never worked with them before, but he knew the breed. They’d move cattle off the Rafter T or leave scars that would show for the next fifty years why it hadn’t been done.
He saw Bess Henry standing in the doorway of the rock house, watching them as they rode in to the barn. But when her eyes met his, she stepped back into the house. Bitterness touched him. After all, he was just doing a job he was hired for. But he could understand how she felt.
Price Stockton and his own cowboys were ready to go next morning when Wade’s men saddled up in the predawn darkness. Wade had brought out a string of pack mules. These stood ready in the corral, packed with bedding and food and cooking utensils, and grain for the horses. It would take grain to keep the herd in shape to outrun the wild Rafter T cattle.
Stockton sat his saddle, tight-lipped and aloof. Wade had it on his tongue to say again that he would save Stockton and Bess the ranch if there was any way to do it. But faced with Stockton’s coldness, he swallowed the words and motioned the men to start.
Bess Henry and Mrs. Stockton stood in the doorway, watching them move out in single file. Wade studied the younger woman’s face for some trace of kindness. All he found there was silent hostility.
All right, then, he told himself bitterly, he would take their hatred as a challenge. He’d get those Rafter T cattle to market if he had to do it in spite of Bess Henry and Price Stockton—and Lodge Agnew.
It was past noon when they set up camp alongside a little creek down in the rough country to the south. It was rougher than anything Wade had seen on his ride from town. There seemed to be nothing but steep, rock-scattered hillsides, deep gullies and box canyons. But this was where the cattle were.
Now and then on the trail out, they had seen some of them, but seldom for long. Usually there would be just a quick glimpse before the cattle would clatter down a slope or over a rocky hill with their heads wild and high and their tails arched. There was still lots of old longhorn in them, although most showed the sign of blood from some of the new breeds that were being brought into the country, here and yonder.
The rest of the day the punchers spent throwing a barricade across the front of a small box canyon that had grass and water. They left enough opening for an extra-wide pole gate. Wade and Hadden snaked the pine poles down from the hillsides.
As the men sat down to supper prepared by Chili, Stockton’s hostile-eyed, big-mustached cook, Wade outlined his plan to them all.
“This canyon will be our corral. This is where we’ll bring them until we’ve got enough cattle to try making a drive to the railroad. We’re going to gather in everything. There’s six- and eight-year-old bulls in these mountains that’ve never felt a branding iron or a knife. We’ll catch them if we’ve got to climb up and down the cliffs to do it.”
He glanced at Price Stockton, then back to the men. “From now on till we’re through, I’m the boss. And any man who’s afraid to chase a steer down one of these rocky slopes as hard as his horse can run had better leave now.”
He peered sharply at each of the Stockton men. There was only one who worried him, outside of Lodge Agnew. He was a small, middle-aged puncher named Corey Milholland. Wade could see the nervous twitching of the man’s hands, the dread that crept into his eyes. It seemed to Wade that Milholland was a little fragile for this country.
“How about it, Milholland?” he asked. “You want to leave?”
Price Stockton whirled around from the coffeepot where he had been filling his cup. “You leave Corey alone, Massey,” he warned. “He’s been with me for years. He’s staying.”
Wade bit his lip. “Have it like you want it, Stockton. But I’ll be watching him. He better keep up.”
They headed west from camp next morning. Eight or ten miles away he dropped the riders out in a wide semicircle and started pushing back toward the box-canyon corral.
It didn’t take long for the action to start. Wade jumped a little bunch of mixed cattle in a valley. At the sight of him they lifted their tails and struck out in a high lope for the south. Wade followed behind until he knew they would pass in front of the next rider to him. He reined up on a high point and watched in satisfaction as they bounced off of Snort Shanks and moved on to the next man. They would be run down by the time they reached the outside of the drive. The outside man would bring them in.
Sitting on the point, Wade gazed out across the rocky hills ahead of him. They were rugged and perilous, mean and hard. But there was a majesty to them, he realized, a wild beauty that made a man want to stop and drink in a long look. Maybe if he stayed here long enough he could learn to like the country a little, he admitted to himself.
The drive went on about the way he had expected. Now and again he could hear the loud shouts of a cowboy or two as they raced to head off a bunch of runaway cattle. He had a good many of those races himself. More than once he spurred down a steep hillside after a big steer. It was all a man’s heart could stand to watch his horse’s flying hoofs slipping, sliding, down those treacherous slopes.
It was always a relief to see Snort down there at the bottom, waiting to pick up the steer and push him on. Snort had lucked onto a fairly gentle little bunch of cows and calves. These made it easier for him to catch and hold the waspier cattle.
Along toward the middle of the afternoon, Wade stopped on a hill and took a long look around him, giving his horse a chance to get its wind after chasing two bulls for about a mile.
On another hill half a mile away he could see a rider spurring hell-bent after an animal that had broken in the opposite direction from the roundup. The rider was in easy roping distance of the steer, but he didn’t swing his loop. The steer plunged down off the slope. The cowboy reined up and stood on the rim of the hill, watching the steer get away.
Anger flared through Wade. He recognized the horse as the one Corey Milholland had been riding. Any other puncher in the outfit would have gone down after that steer. Well, there’d be retribution tonight, when the day’s drive was done.
The first day’s gather was a good one, everything considered. The count was close to a hundred head. The cowboys pushed most of them into the box canyon trap, roping and dragging in those that wouldn’t be driven. Wade and Hadden dropped the poles into place in the gateway.
The cook was finishing supper. Wade stopped close to the cooking fire. “Milholland,” he called, “come over here.”
Nervously the bent cowpuncher walked up to him. Price Stockton followed suspiciously.
“I saw you let a steer get away this afternoon, Milholland,” Wade said severely. “He took off down a hill and you didn’t even make a move to stop him. You remember what I told you last night?”
Silently the cowpuncher shook his head.
“All right, then,” Wade spoke, “get your gear together. You’re leaving in the morning.”
Stockton stepped up beside Milholland and stood there angrily, his face dark. “Maybe you need to remember what I told you last night, Massey. Milholland’s my man. If you fire him, you’ve got me to whip first.”
Anger blazed in Wade. He glared at Stockton a moment. “If you want me to save your outfit for you, you’ve got to let me run this roundup.”
He thought he might stare Stockton down. But the ranchman held his ground. “You’re running the roundup, Massey. But you’re not firing my men.”
Wade had to give in. “You’re winning this hand, Milholland. I’m letting you stay against my better judgment. But from now on you’re riding with me. You’ll make a hand if I’ve got to drag you.”
As they rode out the next morning in a different direction, Wade got a chance to move his horse up next to Stockton’s. “Milholland’s out of place here, Stockton,” he said quietly. “Why keep trying to protect him like he was a little boy?”
Stockton gazed straight ahead. “You think he’s yellow. But he’s not. He was with Glenn Henry the day Glenn roped a big steer and got jerked down off a bluff. Glenn wound up on a ledge about forty feet below the trail, tore half to pieces. His horse was dead.
“Corey Milholland crawled down to that ledge and worked Henry back up onto the trail a few inches at a time. It took guts to do it, Massey. If he had slipped he could’ve fallen back down the bluff and been killed along with Glenn.
“He was afraid to leave Glenn alone up there, so he got him onto his own horse. Corey led the horse home, him walking along, holding Glenn in the saddle half the time. It took him nearly six hours to make it. Glenn died anyway, but it wasn’t Corey’s fault. He did his best and risked being killed.”
Stockton took a deep breath, then went on, “So you see why he didn’t go off that hillside after the steer yesterday. He remembers what happened to Glenn. And you see why I’m keeping him, even if I’ve got to whip you to do it…”
The next few days the cowboys spent in drives similar to that of the first day, each time covering new ground and bringing in seventy-five to a hundred or more cattle a day. By the time all the ground had been covered, there were around eight hundred head on grass and water in the canyon.
During the drives Wade kept Corey Milholland close to him. The puncher was a little slow in following when the riding got tough, and occasionally he wouldn’t follow at all. Had it been up to Wade, he would have let the man go.
Lodge Agnew worried him, too. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, but every time Wade turned his back on Agnew, he felt a tingling sensation up and down his spine. He knew that with him around, Agnew could still taste the threat of the penitentiary.
Lodge made no attempt to get along, either with Wade or with Wade’s cowboys. He was especially contemptuous of the two Mexicans. One night he called big Felipe Sanchez a pelado, which in Spanish was like calling a man trash. Felipe jumped to his feet and whipped out a long-bladed knife. Before Wade could grab the vaquero and pull him away, blood dripped from a three-inch gash along Agnew’s cheek and spread into his week’s growth of beard.
Wade took Felipe out away from the campfire, calmed him down a little and gave him a long lecture. But a new dread edged in with all his other troubles. He knew the fiery Felipe wouldn’t be content to let the thing lie as it was now. And he knew Lodge knew it.
But Felipe never got a chance to carry the fight any further. He didn’t show up next afternoon at the end of the drive. When the day’s catch of cattle had been put in the canyon, the cowboys went back to look for him.
They found his riderless horse first, with rope missing from the saddle. A little later they found Felipe at the bottom of a washout. His neck was broken. There were rope burns on his battered and torn body.
“Dabbed a loop on something and then got tangled up in the rope,” Snort Shanks surmised.
They took Felipe back to camp and dug a grave for him at the edge of the canyon. Stockton silently stood beside Wade as the last dirt was being shoveled into the hole.
“Interest on that loan is beginning to run pretty high,” Wade commented quietly.
When the job was done, he called the crew around him. “The cattle have got to get used to being herded if we’re going to have any luck driving them out of here. This is as good a time as any to start. We’ll set up guard shifts now, and we’ll start night-herding them.”
Agnew grunted. The reddish light of the campfire reflected from the bandage on his cheek. “They can’t get away long’s they’re in that canyon. Looks to me like you’re just trying to give us some extra work.”
Wade said, “As long as I’m bossing this outfit, you’ll do what I tell you and you’ll shut up about it.”
Agnew grumbled, “Maybe you won’t be boss very long.”
The cowboys started scouting over the ground they had worked before. There were still a number of outlawed cattle there that would have to be roped and dragged down out of the hills. Wade didn’t want to move camp until the area had been cleaned up.
For three days the cowboys scouted and brought down cattle that had gotten away from them. The going was much slower now, for a cowboy might spend a couple of hours catching just one steer or one tough old bull.
In some cases they would tie a gentler animal to the wild one, slowing the fire-eater down so he could be handled. Some of the outlaws had to be roped and thrown and wooden clogs tied to a foreleg. Then every time the animal tried to run away, the long clog would get tangled with his feet and throw him for a loop.
By the end of the second day they had picked up only about forty cattle. Wade was beginning to think about the long drive to the railroad.
The afternoon of the third day he almost met a fate similar to Felipe’s. Wade was working his way along a steep mountainside that had a sheer drop off the edge of the trail. Corey Milholland trailed along behind him.
Corey had almost quit trying to make a hand after Felipe’s death. When the chase got perilous, he would hold up and pick his way along. He let many an animal get away.
It didn’t do Wade any good to talk to him. He had about decided to start leaving Milholland in camp, to help the cook.
The first sign he had of danger was the sound of rock striking rock. Jerking his head up, he saw big rocks bouncing down the mountainside.
“Get back, Milholland!” he yelled. He spurred hard, trying to get away from the rocks.
He was almost in the clear when his horse stumbled and went to its knees. Before Wade could move, a rock the size of a washtub slammed into the animal’s shoulder and knocked him off the trail.
Wade choked off a cry of panic as he felt himself falling over the sheer edge. He grabbed at the shale and rocks as he slid. They broke his nails, tore his hands. Big rocks and little ones bounced off of him as he rolled, fell and slid.
But at last he stopped. He wasn’t on any ledge. It was merely a little jut in the steep slope. If he held still, he might hang onto it. If he tried to move, he would probably fall some more.
Fire burned a hundred places on his body. Pain lanced through him, seeming to pin him against the slope. His hat was gone. His shirt was ripped to shreds. Only his leather chaps had kept his legs from being torn as his arms were. Sweat burned into his skinned face as he slowly lifted his head and looked upward toward the trail. He figured he had slid thirty or forty feet.
In a moment the frightened Corey Milholland peered over the edge. Relief swelled over his face as he saw that Wade was still alive.
“Hang on,” he called. “I’ll pitch you my rope.”
But the rope didn’t reach. The end of it dangled a good ten feet above Wade’s head.
Wade tried to inch up toward it, but he slipped and dropped another couple of feet down the slope.
It was all up to Milholland now. Wade wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for his chances in the cowpuncher’s hands. He could see doubt and fear play across the man’s face. Finally Milholland spoke.
“I’ll try to work down there to where the rope will reach you. There’s a big rock I may be able to tie on to.”
Hugging the slope, Wade could feel his heart hammering while Milholland carefully worked down off the trail. He closed his eyes once as the puncher’s foot slipped and a shower of dirt and pebbles came down. He expected to feel Corey’s body slam into his and knock both of them on down the slope.
But somehow Milholland caught himself. In a few moments he had worked down to where a large rock stuck up out of the slope. He tied his end of the rope to it, then pitched the other end of it to Wade.
Reaching out for it, Wade felt himself slip. He grabbed the rope just as he started to slide on down it. Hitting the end of the rope sent new pain tearing through him. But the rope held, and Wade held to it.
Painfully he started working upward, hand over hand. It seemed it took him an hour to get up to the rock. Milholland pulled him up to its temporary safety, then untied the rope.
“I’ll climb back up to the trail and pitch you the rope again,” he said. “In your shape you couldn’t climb that slope any other way.”
Milholland went up, then helped Wade work on back to the trail.
Wade sat there, panting, wincing at the pain and staring down at his dead horse far below.
Finally he looked up at Milholland. “For a week now, Milholland, I’ve been calling you a coward. I hope you’ll let me take it back.”
Wade shoved out his hand. Milholland took it.
Next day Wade was too stiff and sore to go chasing wild cattle with the rest of the crew. He decided it was time to begin hunting for a new trail to the railroad. He loaded a pack mule with enough supplies to last a week, then struck out northward. He took Corey Milholland with him.
There were only two directions the herd could go—west or north. The railroad swung up in a northerly direction when it reached a point about even with the ranch headquarters. To try getting to the road by the east would mean an extra hundred or hundred-fifty miles of driving over country as rough and violent as that in which the cattle ranged. The cowboys were sure to lose the biggest part of the herd in a stampede sooner or later.
To the south lay nothing but more rough country, and, ultimately, the Republic of Mexico. To the north was the desert he had ridden over between the ranch and town.
“We’ve tried that way before, a dozen times,” said Milholland as they sat beside a water hole, resting the horses. “The desert always licks us. They’ll stampede every time. First thing we know, most of the cattle are right back down here where they started from. We’re left with a little handful, just enough to take on in and sell for what things the ranch can’t do without.”
He pointed to a cholla cactus. “It’s them things as much as anything else that causes us trouble. A steer swings his tail, gets it tangled up in one of them chollas and stampedes the whole outfit. The stuff’s like a jungle out yonder in the desert. There’s no way of getting around it when you take the trail north.”
Wade let his gaze range over the land to the west. Over there, long miles away, the great rim stretched as far as the eye could see. Its sheer walls jutted almost straight up from the floor of a valley in which a river moved slowly southward.
“Ever tried taking them over the rim, Corey, and moving them to a loading point farther west?”
Milholland shook his head. “Over that rim? It’d take a mountain climber, and a good one at that, just to get over it afoot in most places. Only way you’d ever get a herd of cattle over it would be to take them out one at a time on a pulley, like drawing water out of a well. There ain’t anybody that foolish.”
Wade couldn’t take his eyes off the rim. “Ever tried it?”
“Never even been over there. You can tell from here it’s impossible.”
Wade still wondered. “How long would it take to move a herd to it from here?”
Milholland’s eyes widened. “Five days. Maybe six. But I’m telling you, there ain’t any use studying about it. It won’t work.”
Wade swung back into the saddle. “Just the same, Corey, we’re riding over to have a look.”
It was after sundown almost a week later when they got back to the roundup camp. Wade caught his breath up short as he saw Bess Henry standing beside the cook. Firelight reflected in her oval face. Her slender figure in full-length riding skirt was silhouetted brilliantly against the darkness.
Wade hoped for a smile from her, a word of greeting. He got only her level stare. Disappointed but not really surprised, he tipped his hat and rode his horse on out to unsaddle him.
As Wade walked back into the firelight, Price Stockton looked up from his supper plate.
“We’d about decided you weren’t coming back, Massey.”
Lodge Agnew stood with hands shoved into his waistband. His turbid brown eyes held something like laughter, but Wade knew there wasn’t any humor in him. The cut on the man’s cheek still showed through his whiskers. “Yeah, we figgered maybe that little avalanche the other day scared you off.”
Wade had all but forgotten about the avalanche while he was busy looking for a new trail. The memory of it came back to him and sent a little chill running up his back.
He stared at Agnew’s dark, stubbled, cowardly face. A sudden suspicion bobbed up for the first time and became almost a certainty with him. It hadn’t been cattle that had started the rock slide.
Agnew. Wade was sure the man wouldn’t shoot him in the back so long as there were other cowhands around. But what if he got another chance to make it look like an accident?
Wade tried to shake off the chill by turning away from Agnew and facing Bess Henry. He touched his hat brim again and felt a thrill running through him.
“You’re a long way from headquarters, Mrs. Henry.”
“They’re half my cattle, Mr. Massey,” she replied flatly. “At least they are till they reach the railroad.”
He felt his cheeks turn warm and hoped the firelight would hide the color he knew flooded his face.
It wouldn’t pay to try to talk to her. She would have a sharp answer every time. He wished that, for once, she would again be like she had been that first day he had seen her. But he knew she wouldn’t. Not anymore.
He turned to Price Stockton. “How’s the gather been since I’ve been gone?”
“Pretty short. Twenty or thirty a day. Couple of times we lost them all.”
Wade rubbed his chin and looked out beyond the firelight. “We ought to have thirteen or fourteen hundred in that canyon. That’s enough for one drive. Tomorrow we’ll cut out what we don’t want to take. The next day we head for the railroad.”
Squatting on his heels, Price Stockton grinned crookedly and sipped at his coffee. “We won’t get across the desert with them. We’ll hit that cholla country and in two days most of them will be right back here where they started from.”
“No they won’t,” Wade said. “We’re not going through the cholla. We’re taking them over the rim.”
Stockton spilled half his coffee as he jumped to his feet. The rest of the camp was suddenly quiet as an Indian graveyard.
“You’re crazy,” Stockton thundered. “Nobody’s ever taken cattle up that rock. Nobody ever will.”
Wade had expected this, but he couldn’t hold down the tremor of excitement that rippled through him. Hands on his hips, he said, “I’m going to, Stockton.”
Stockton pitched the rest of his coffee into the fire and dropped the cup. The coals hissed. The ranchman swung his angry eyes back at Wade.
“They’re still our herd, Massey. I’m not letting you lose a thousand head of cattle for us.”
Wade noted the way Stockton’s right hand inched down toward his gun butt. A cold shiver passed through him as he moved his own hand into place.
“I’m taking those cattle over the rim,” he repeated. “With you or without you.”
He could see in Stockton’s face the debate that went on behind the man’s eyes. A hot mixture of hatred, distrust and fear. But finally the ranchman dropped his hand away from the gun. Wade could hear sharp breaths sucked in by half a dozen men. His own heart had picked up its beat.
“It’s your hand this time, Massey,” Stockton breathed. “But I’m warning you now. If you lose that herd for us, I’ll kill you.”
In his own heart Wade could feel the desperation that must be gripping Stockton as the man turned and walked out away from the firelight to hold solitary council. He couldn’t help sympathizing with him.
He turned and found Bess Henry’s level eyes boring into him. “Tell me, Massey. Just what are you getting out of this?”
He bit his lip hard, then answered, “Two hundred dollars a month.”
That took her by surprise. But the doubt quickly returned to her face. “I don’t believe you ever intend for these cattle to reach the bank, Massey. I just wish I knew what you’ve got up your sleeve.”
So that was it! It wasn’t just that he was going to take most of their cattle—maybe all of them—to pay a loan. They had a suspicion that somehow he meant to take the herd for himself, and leave them just as deeply in debt as they had been before.
“You’re wrong, Mrs. Henry,” he said quietly. “These cattle are going to reach market, and they’re going to apply against your debt. I promise you.”
She stared at him a long moment. He thought he could see her eyes soften a little, and he knew it must be his imagination. But even the thought made his heart pump faster.
“I wish I could believe you,” she said. She turned away from him and walked out toward her brother.
They bunched the cattle in the back side of the canyon. Wade and Price Stockton rode into the herd and started cutting the cattle that weren’t to make the trip—cows with calves and the best of the young cows. These, and others like them in bunches to be rounded up later, might form the nucleus of a new herd for the Rafter T. Might, if enough other cattle could be taken out to liquidate the debt.
But if there were heavy losses on the trail—and Wade feared there would be—these cattle would probably have to be rounded up again and taken to market anyway. Then there would be no nucleus, there would be only a violent country of rock and cactus, jagged cliffs and rimrocks—and some broken dreams.
Wade knew these thoughts were eating at Stockton, too. He could feel the ranchman’s silent hostility whenever the two of them chanced to come close together in the herd.
By midafternoon about two hundred and fifty cattle had been cut out to stay a while longer. The rest, older cows, steers and outlawed bulls, were kept in a bunch. A thousand head, more or less. Not a big herd, as trail herds went. But with them would go the fate of the Rafter T.
As the little bunch of cows and calves was being pushed out of the canyon to scatter back into the hills, Wade managed to ride up beside Bess Henry.
“It’s a pretty long ride back to headquarters, Mrs. Henry. Don’t you think you better get started? It’s liable to be dark before you get home.”
She looked directly into his face. He could see a firmness in her eyes, but there was no longer any sign of hatred.
“I’m not going home. I’m staying with my cattle.”
A dozen protests immediately rose up in him, but he choked them off.
“It’s going to be a long, hard drive. It’s liable to be dangerous, too,” he spoke quietly. She kept looking into his eyes, to his discomfort. “They’re still my cattle.”
The crew was up long before daylight. As the first streaks of light began to play above the broken mountains to the east, cowboy yells rose in the sharp morning air, and the herd began moving uncertainly.
By the time the sun had risen to throw its light down across the canyon rims, a long, thin line of cattle was stringing through the rocky, broken hills. The point was moving westward. And it was moving fast.
“Keep crowding them,” Wade ordered the crew. “We’ve got too much wild stock in here to trail-break them easy. The first couple or three days have got to be hard and fast.”
It was a fearsome land to take cattle through. There were sheer canyon rims to skirt, steep washouts to cross. Always wherever the terrain was the roughest, some of the mossyhorns would make their break.
A few got away. Most of them came back at the end of a rope, bracing their legs vainly against the power of the horses that dragged them in. It was fearsome, sure. But it wasn’t impossible.
Wade wore down one horse after another, the way he kept riding back and forth, up and down the herd, keeping the cowboys pushing, helping drag back runaways, going out in front of the point men to find the best way through.
Occasionally he would pass Bess Henry, riding at one side of the herd, about halfway back from the point. She worked as hard as any of her cowboys.
Once he brought back a steer that bolted out from behind her, and she smiled at him. It was the first time she’d smiled at him since that day he had ridden into headquarters. She caught herself, and the smile faded quickly. But at least there had been one for a moment. Maybe later there would be others.
Toward nightfall Wade found a small box canyon. There was a good chance they would stampede tonight, if anything happened to set them off. In a box canyon, though, the chance of stopping them was much better. They wouldn’t run far up a steep canyon slope.
But the herd was thirsty. It had watered only once, shortly before noon. Now cattle’s tongues lolled out, and they walked with heads low.
Wade found water at the foot of a canyon. The walls were steep, but not too steep to climb. It was no trouble getting the cattle down to the water. But it took until dark to fight them up the other side after they had drunk their fill.
Finally the herd was bunched in the box canyon and the cook started unpacking his mules. The cattle started bedding down fairly easily. They were tired.
Lodge Agnew flopped down on the ground and sighed heavily. “I’m going to lay right here till daylight. There ain’t nobody going to get me up.”
Wearily Wade walked up beside Agnew. “I will, Lodge. We’re standing a double guard tonight.”
Wade felt the eyes of the crew swinging around to him.
Agnew raised up onto one shoulder. “Hell, Massey, this bunch is wore out. We got to have rest.”
Wade knew. He was having a little trouble staying on his feet. “I’ll be right out there with you. That herd’s still not trail-broke, Lodge. I’d give you odds it stampedes. We’ve got to be ready to stop it.”
Agnew’s dust-reddened eyes smoldered. “You’re not getting me out for no double guard, Massey. You better not try.”
Wade looked at the regular Stockton hands. From their faces he could tell they felt the same way. He listened a moment to the quiet stir of the cattle. He wasn’t going to lose that herd now because men wanted to sleep.
“You’ll stand your guard, Lodge,” he declared, “if I’ve got to tie a rope around your feet and drag you out there. That goes for everybody else.”
He could feel the hostility of the Stockton men, even where he couldn’t see their faces. But every man rolled out and stood his guard duty that night. Even Lodge Agnew. And the herd didn’t run.
It was a sleepy group of cowboys who huddled around the cook fire for a silent breakfast the next morning. Everyone had stood guard but the cook and Bess Henry. By tradition the cook was exempt from that job. And by tradition Bess Henry should not have been with the herd in the first place.
Wade helped her mount her horse. He noticed how stiffly she swung up onto her sidesaddle. She was as tired as the rest, maybe more.
“It’s still just a short day’s ride back to headquarters when you haven’t got any cattle to slow you up,” he said. “Why don’t you go home?”
She shook her head. “I’m beginning to think you’re going to make it to market after all, Massey,” she answered quietly. There was no longer any hostility in her eyes. “I want to stay and see.”
Again the herd snaked out toward the west. There wasn’t any trail. Wade had to make one—Wade and the point men. As in the day before, he worked back and forth down the line, pushing men and pushing cattle.
They were tired, but they would have to get a lot tireder. He was going to walk the legs off this herd if he had to, to keep them from stampeding and getting away at night.
Today fewer cattle tried to break out. Of those that tried, all but one were brought back.
There wasn’t any box canyon that night. The cattle were bunched in a valley along a dry creek bed, where they could run either of two ways. But they were tired. Wade had hopes they wouldn’t stampede.
The sun sank below the bald rim. Wade found the rim holding his gaze more and more now. It looked a lot closer than it had back yonder at the roundup ground. But it appeared even more formidable.
Wade saw Stockton looking at it, too. In the ranchman’s eyes were doubt and dread. And as he turned to glance briefly toward Wade, the younger man could see something else there, too, the same grim warning Stockton had voiced before the drive began.
A full moon came up that night. In its gray light the rocky hills softened and took on beauty. There was something in them now he hadn’t felt before. A grandeur, and even a peace.
But the peace didn’t last long. Even though the herd was tired, it didn’t bed down the way it should have. Many of the cattle stayed on their feet, milling around aimlessly. There wasn’t anything Wade could put his finger on, but there was a tension in the herd, like a metal wagon spring bent back almost to the breaking point.
He never knew what started it. Maybe a steer stumbled and fell. Maybe one bull hooked at another and boogered the rest of the herd. Whatever it was, it made the cattle jump to their feet and take out in one hard, mad clatter of hooves.
Three or four cowboys yelled at once. Wade spurred his horse into a hard run. He heard a voice shouting at the cattle and realized with a start that it was his own.
They headed north down the dry creek bed. It was a wild run, a combination of panic and plain outlawry.
Wade spurred hard to get up to the lead, but he couldn’t make it. There wouldn’t be any turning them back now, not until they had run themselves down. They might go two or three miles. But they were tired. They couldn’t keep it up too long.
Spurring along beside the stampede, he could feel his horse gradually slowing up. He could tell the cattle were slowing up, too, and stringing out farther and farther behind him. Near-panic edged through him as he watched the rough, tricky ground fly by under his horse’s hooves. He realized it was bad business to look at the ground.
He didn’t know how long it took before the cattle up front finally began to falter. He spurred a little harder and passed them. Gradually he slowed them down until he was able to turn them back and get them to milling.
Soon another cowboy joined him. It was one of Stockton’s men. The puncher looked at him a moment before he finally grinned. “I thought I was doing some tall riding. But here I find you were ahead of me all the time. You’re a real hand, Massey.”
Wade enjoyed the warmth that went through him. It was the first time in days any Stockton hand except Milholland had tried to be friendly to him.
They started pushing the cattle back. Run down now, the cattle handled fairly well. Gradually as they moved back down the creek bed, the herd grew larger. Now and then a cowboy would join the bunch, bringing along some cattle he had managed to keep hold of.
It was hard to tell, even in the bright moonlight, but Wade thought he had most of the herd back already. In the morning they would scout and get the major part of the rest. Tired and sore, Wade couldn’t help feeling pretty good about the situation.
But then Lodge Agnew joined the bunch, not far above the original bed grounds. He brought no cattle with him. A sudden suspicion grew in Wade, so strong he couldn’t keep from voicing it.
“You didn’t try to help us stop them, Lodge,” he accused. “The hard run threw a booger into you, and you dropped out where nobody could see you. If we didn’t need every man we’ve got, I’d run you right out of camp.”
Agnew bristled. “You’ve been throwing it into me every chance you get, Massey. I’m warning you, one of these days you’ll get a bullet put through you.”
Wade wanted to knock Agnew right out of the saddle, but he gripped his saddle horn to keep from doing it. “If you do the shooting, Lodge, that bullet’ll be in my back.”
It took another hour to account for all the men. After sunup the cowboys started scouting up and down along the creek bed for scattered cattle. By noon the count was only about fifty head short.
“They’ll be halfway back to their old stomping grounds by now,” he told Snort Shanks. “They’ll be around when we round up the second batch. Let’s head out.”
Shanks scratched his chin as he looked across the wide expanse of desert ahead, this side of the rim. “You told me it’s still a three-day drive. You sure there’s water?”
Wade nodded. “Milholland and I found one water hole when we came to look this country over. But there’ll be some thirsty cattle before we get to it.”
Shanks and one of the Stockton hands took the point again, and the herd strung out. There was still some devil in part of the cattle. Wade could only hope he could walk it out of them. He issued the same orders he had given out the first day of the drive. Push them hard. Wear them down.
It was a question, though, who wore down more—the cattle or the cowboys. As the afternoon dragged on and the sun began dipping low over the rim, Wade knew the fatigue that worked through the men. He could see it in their tired, dusty faces, their sun and wind-cracked lips, their reddened eyes. He could feel it right through to the marrow of his own bones. But they kept pushing until the moon rose.
When at last the herd was bunched and most of the cowboys pulled into camp, they unsaddled their horses and flopped wearily down on the ground. Some never even ate supper. They slept like the hard, immovable rocks of the rim.
Next morning they got up still tired and irritable. Words were short as the men saddled fresh horses and went back to the cattle. One puncher sleepily let his horse bump another rider’s leg, and Wade thought he would have to drag the two men apart.
The cattle were getting thirsty, thirsty enough to set men to worrying. Wade thought about the water hole and hoped they wouldn’t be many hours in reaching it.
But they didn’t reach it. Before noon he struck out far ahead of the herd and tried to locate the place. But one canyon looked like another. One stretch of rock and sand and cactus was no different from a dozen others.
Wade rode his horse down, but he couldn’t find water. Returning to the herd, he picked up a fresh horse and got Milholland to come along with him. All afternoon they searched. But the hole could not be found.
“Like I told you,” Milholland explained apologetically, “I never had gotten over this far west before, and I didn’t know the country. There ain’t any landmarks hardly that a man can go by.
“The hole’s out there someplace. We know that. But we could walk the cattle to death, trying to find it.”
So they rode back to the herd.
Biting his dry, cracking lips, Wade reined up beside Snort Shanks. “Keep leading them, Snort, straight on for the rim. There won’t be any water tonight.”
Shanks’s mouth dropped open. For the first time Wade could see silent disapproval in the cowhand’s eyes.
“No water? But the whole outfit’s dried up. How long have we got to go till we do get water?”
Wade lowered his head. “Till we get over the rim.”
The lanky cowboy stared incredulously at him. He blinked his dust-bitten eyes and rubbed a big hand across his parched lips.
“All right. There ain’t much we can do except try it. But if you know any prayers, you better dust them off.”
When the word passed on down the line, it brought near-rebellion. Far behind him, Wade could see Lodge Agnew talking and gesturing bitterly with Price Stockton. Wade knew what he was up to. He was working on Stockton’s anger and distrust.
Finally Stockton rode up toward Wade. Lodge followed a full length behind him. Bess Henry came along a little behind Agnew.
Stockton’s eyes were blazing. “You can’t do it, Massey. No telling what another couple of days without water might do to this herd, or to the men, for that matter.”
Wade tried to stare him down. “What had you rather do?”
“Anything besides keep going this way, without water.”
Wade rested his hand on his saddle horn and noticed it trembled a little. He was mad. “Maybe you’d like to turn back and call the whole thing a failure. Maybe you’d like to turn your whole herd over to the bank and let them worry about getting their money out of it. Maybe you’d like to leave this country and admit it whipped you.”
He knew instantly that he had hit a soft spot there. Price Stockton might not be the best manager in the world, but he wasn’t a quitter. And he wouldn’t let anything make him out as one.
“I can last as long as you can, Massey. Longer. Keep driving, then, and be damned. But just remember what I told you. If this herd doesn’t reach the railroad, you’ll never get there either!”
Stockton jerked his horse around and headed back toward the men in a long trot. Agnew followed him. Wade knew Lodge was still talking to him, firing him up.
Bess Henry stayed. Wade sat his horse as she rode on up to him. Dust streaked her face, and her long hair strung out windblown beneath her wide hat brim. Her clothes were dusty and grimy, and ripped in places. But she was still pretty. She still stirred his blood just as she had the day he first rode up to the Rafter T.
“It looks like you need a friend, Massey.”
He nodded and forced a thin smile. “I haven’t got many around here right now.”
She smiled back at him. “You have at least one. Me.”
Wade’s heart drummed. “You’ve changed a lot, then. You weren’t having much to do with me.”
Her smile faded, but there was earnestness in her blue eyes.
“You’ve worked hard these last few days. You’ve ridden hard and you’ve worried yourself sick. I’m getting more convinced all the time that you’re not doing it for the bank. You’re doing it for us. Price still thinks you’re trying to beat us out of our cattle. But I think he’s wrong. I’m betting on it.”
Wade’s eyes were on her face. Even with the dust, it was lovely to him. He wanted to reach out and touch her. He felt his own face coloring, and he swallowed hard.
“Thanks,” he managed. “I’ll try to see that you win your bet.”
They bunched the cattle by moonlight, but they never did get them bedded down. The cattle were restless and irritable, hooking at each other and bawling. By the end of the first guard shift Wade knew there was no use trying to make them rest.
“They’re all up and walking anyway. They might just as well be walking on toward the rim,” he told Snort Shanks. “We’ll get the men up and head them out again. The more we move, the sooner this outfit reaches water.”
He thought he would have to whip half of the crew to get them up and into their saddles. Even the cook, who hadn’t been saying much, acted as if he wanted to take the bottom of a skillet to Wade’s head.
Price Stockton rode along stolidly with Lodge Agnew beside him. Even in the moonlight, where he couldn’t see Stockton’s face, Wade could feel the hatred that seethed through the ranchman. Wade could almost reach out and touch it.
Sunrise found the herd plodding along a good four or five miles from the bed ground. The cattle’s heads bent low. Saliva dripped from their muzzles and trailed along the ground and in the short, dusty bunch grass. All up and down the line, proddy cattle hooked at one another, kept each other at a distance.
The hours dragged numbly on and on. Heat and thirst had settled over his weary body so long ago that Wade was hardly conscious of them anymore. He was hardly conscious of anything.
The horizon bobbed up and down as a vague, wavy, unreal picture he had seen in restless dreams. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t have spoken if he had wanted to. Occasionally he snapped himself out of the trance long enough to see the other riders were going through the same thing.
It was a nightmare come true, a fiendish dream born of misery, a devilish ride he would never be able to remember clearly because his senses had dulled to a blunt edge. He was hardly conscious of the long, aching miles that dragged by, or of the fact that the sun had reached its peak and had started down again.
Suddenly there it was, right ahead of them. The enemy they had seen and dreaded so long. The rim!
Wade snapped himself out of his trance. He looked at the rim—tall, forbidding. His burning eyes eagerly scanned the bottom of it. Sure enough, there was the pile of rocks and the scattering of stunted desert brush that marked the trail he and Milholland had found.
They had missed the water hole. But they had come to the right place on the rim.
Wade motioned for the men to bunch the herd right below the rim. While the cattle were being pushed together, the cook rode up with his string of pack mules.
“How about it, Chili? Got enough water left to give every man a good long drink of it?”
The cook nodded. “That’s just about all I got left. But what’ll I fix supper with?”
Wade pointed his chin upward. “There’s water a little piece over the rim.”
The cook took a long look at the rim, Adam’s apple bobbing as he stared, cut his eyes back to Wade, and they held a look that said the trail boss was crazy.
Punchers rode in one by one and watered out. Wade watched Bess Henry. She tried to sip the water in a ladylike manner. But she was too thirsty. She gulped it down like the men. Watching her, he enjoyed the easiness that gradually came back into her dusty, burned face.
He waited until every man in the outfit had had water before he dismounted, picked up the last canteen, and drank as much as he felt was safe. The thought came to him that water never got all the credit it was due. Right now he wouldn’t trade a cupful of it for the stocks of every saloon in town.
He became conscious of Price Stockton standing in front of him, afoot. Lodge Agnew stood behind the man, and a little off to the left. He could feel the storm brewing up in Stockton.
“All right, Massey,” the ranchman said acidly, “you’ve got them this far and almost killed them. What’re you going to do now?”
Wade motioned toward the rim. “We’re taking them on up.”
Stockton scowled. “How? You going to fly?”
“There’s a trail,” Wade answered curtly. “Milholland and I found it, and rode up on it. It’s rough. It’s got some dangerous spots. But we can do it.”
Lodge Agnew spoke up, and Wade began to see what he was up to. “It can’t be done, Price. He brought your herd all the way out here to see it die, just the way I told you. Then you won’t have a chance of squaring your debt. The bank’ll take over. And our friend Massey will make himself a bankful of money—on your cattle.”
Stockton’s face was flushed dark. Wade could see that the heat and the thirst and the misery had gotten to him. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was hardly thinking at all. He was taking Lodge’s words and accepting them for truth.
“Lodge’s right, Massey,” Stockton breathed. His hand dropped down to the butt of his gun. “You’ve got us here where we can’t help ourselves. We can’t fly our cattle up the rim. We can’t take them back. This herd is as good as dead. You’ve killed it. But you’ll never live to make a nickel off of us!”
Stockton started to pull his gun. Wade dropped his own hand to his gun butt.
“I can beat you, Stockton,” he said quickly. “Don’t pull that gun. I don’t want to kill you.”
Stockton hesitated, but Wade knew from the wild look in his steely eyes that he wouldn’t hesitate long. Wade took a step toward him, another, and another, talking all the while.
“It’d do you no good to kill me, Stockton. The bank’d send another man, and it’d send a sheriff, too. You’d lose your ranch and cattle, Stockton. They’d haul you in for murder.”
The ranchman was still paused, the gun half out of his holster. Wade kept moving toward him. Three more steps. Two.
“They’d hang you, Stockton, hang you!”
With a wild curse the ranchman jerked the gun free. Wade jumped in and grabbed it with both hands. For a moment the two men wrestled, twisting and jerking at the pistol. It thundered suddenly. The sound hammered painfully in Wade’s ears. The gunsmoke pinched his nostrils. But the bullet had gone wild.
He wrenched the gun from Stockton and pitched it away. He glimpsed Blackie Hadden picking it up. Then Stockton stepped in wildly, his big fists flailing.
Wade’s anger, the misery and worry he had been through, cut loose in him then. It was no longer of importance that Stockton was Bess Henry’s brother. It mattered only that Stockton had hated him, had made a tough job tougher every chance he had, had taken Wade’s help and offered nothing but hostility in return.
Wade more than matched the ranchman’s blows, giving two for every one he took. He was doing it automatically now, without thought, swinging savagely and without remorse.
Then the anger and bitterness was drained out of him, and Stockton lay on the ground, beaten.
Shame crept back into Wade as Bess Henry stepped up quickly and knelt beside her brother. She had a canteen in her hand. She poured water over a handkerchief and began touching it to Stockton’s face.
“I’m sorry, Bess—Mrs. Henry,” Wade said quietly. “I lost my head.”
She looked up at him without any anger in her eyes. “You could’ve beaten him to the draw. Most any other man would’ve killed him. You kept your head long enough that you didn’t do that. I’m grateful to you, Wade.”
Lodge Agnew’s voice cut into him like the sharp teeth of a saw. “You haven’t heard the last of this, Massey. He’ll get you yet.”
Wade whirled on the man. The anger came roaring back to him.
“You caused this, Lodge. You’ve been digging at him, working him up to it, hoping he’d kill me so you wouldn’t have to. You knew that when this job was done I’d take you back to New Mexico or kill you trying. You tried to kill me by rolling rocks down the slope of that hill and knocking me off the trail.
“And I don’t think Felipe Sanchez died by any accident, either. I’d bet ten years of my life that you waylaid him, roped him out of the saddle and drug him to death. Then you tumbled him down that bank and made it look like he had got himself in a jackpot. I never would be able to prove it, Lodge. But I know!”
He paused, all the fury welling inside of him. “I wouldn’t draw on Stockton awhile ago. But I’m itching to draw on you. Go on, you back-shooting coward. Pull that gun!
Agnew’s face was almost purple with rage. His hands trembled as he started to reach for his gun. But he caught himself.
“Go on, Lodge,” Wade shouted, his voice raw. “Draw it.”
Agnew swallowed hard. He lifted his hands level with his chest. “I ain’t drawing against you, Massey. I ain’t no fool.”
Rage seethed through Wade. He wished Agnew would try to draw. He wanted to beat him and pump slugs into the coward’s body until his gun was empty and then stand over him and watch him die as Felipe had died.
But disappointment seeped into him. He knew Lodge wouldn’t draw. He would kill if he could, but not this way. Not when the other man had an equal chance.
“All right, then,” Wade breathed bitterly, “roll up what gear you got and move out. It doesn’t matter where you go. When this job is done I’ll come looking for you, Lodge. And I’m going to kill you.”
Almost the entire crew was there, watching. Wade turned on them angrily. “We haven’t got time to be standing around. We’ve got to get those cattle up over the rim and on to water tonight.”
Even the foot of the trail looked tough. Wade was a little bit glad the cowboys couldn’t see all of it. There were places ahead that would scare an eagle. It was an old Indian trail, ten to twenty feet wide in places, two feet wide in others.
“From the looks of it,” he told Snort Shanks, “I’d say the Apaches used it for years before General Crook finally rounded them up. I’ll bet white men have never found it.”
Shanks eyed it like one fistfighter eyeing another. “Well, if the Apaches could take horses up it, we’ll take cattle.”
Snort’s confidence put Wade back in the best humor he had been in since yesterday. “I hoped you’d see it that way. I’m letting you lead the first bunch up. I’ll follow them with Ernesto.”
They cut out about fifty head of the thirsty cattle, choosing mostly cows that weren’t apt to give much trouble.
“You ready, Snort?” Wade asked. His heart was beginning to pound.
The cowboy looked up at the rim, swallowed, then glanced back at Wade with a nervous grin. “Nope, but I won’t be ready at this time tomorrow, either. Let’s go.”
Corey Milholland reined in beside Wade. “Massey,” he said quickly, “how about letting me ride along with you on that first bunch?”
Wade was puzzled. “Well, it’s all right with me. But it’s liable to be dangerous, going up with the first bunch. What do you want to do it for?”
Milholland’s face was earnest. “You thought I was a coward, Massey. Well, I was. Maybe I still am. Pulling you back off that steep slope was something I had to do. There wasn’t any way around it. But I want to see what I can do when I don’t really have to. I want to see if I’m still a coward, or not.”
Wade put his hand on the old cowboy’s shoulder. “You’re no coward, Corey. But if you want to prove it, come along.”
He signaled Ernesto Flores to stay behind. The vaquero grinned. He didn’t mind that order.
Snort Shanks started up the tortuous, twisting trail as point man. Wade and Corey Milholland began pushing the thirsty, fighting cattle. The proddy ones didn’t want to start the climb. Wade and Milholland had to whip them along with ropes to crowd them onto the trail. Once the cattle had started up, the two kept close behind them.
“Don’t push too hard,” Wade cautioned. “Let them pick their own pace.”
It was a scary trail, every bit as boogery as he had thought it would be. In spots it wasn’t a trail at all—just a place that cattle and horses could pick their way across in single file.
Up and up they toiled, barely inching along. Many times Wade’s heart bobbed up into his throat as cattle lost their footing. They always got it back, though. All but one old cow. She didn’t stop falling, bouncing and sliding until she was a hundred and fifty feet below. The life was gone from her long before she came to rest.
But there could be no turning back. Wade and Milholland kept pushing just hard enough that the cattle wouldn’t stop.
Then they came to a place where rushing rainwater had gouged out a part of the trail. It had left a steep furrow that the cattle had to cross. One slip would carry them down the mountainside like timber in a log chute.
Snort Shanks paused only a moment. He stepped down and led his horse across, then he remounted while the cattle began picking their way over. Wade realized that he had hardly taken a breath from the time Snort had started until the last cow had made it.
He turned back to Milholland. “You ready to try it, Corey?” Milholland’s face showed fear, but he managed a sick grin. “I made it before, when you and I came up here by ourselves.” He swung down and walked across, leading his horse. Wade felt pride welling up in him.
At last they reached the top. Wearily Wade took the first deep breath he had taken since he had left the bottom of the rim. He turned and looked back down. He almost wished he hadn’t.
The cattle lifted their heads, sniffed the air, then struck out in a long trot. Wade felt the faint breeze fan his face. Water! The cattle could smell it ahead.
“Let them go, Snort,” he called. They followed the half mile or so to the water hole.
After Wade and Snort Shanks had watered their horses, they left Milholland to hold the first bunch of cattle and help hold up those that would come later. The look in Milholland’s face as the two punchers left him filled Wade’s heart with warmth. The old cowboy had made peace with the world.
There was joy on almost every face when Wade and Snort reached bottom.
“There’s water at the top, plenty of water,” Wade told them. “But get ready for a hard climb before you get to it.”
They cut off another small bunch of cattle. Again Snort Shanks led out. At intervals of a few minutes, Wade would start a cowhand or two up with another bunch. So long as the cattle could see others of their kind ahead of them, they went up fairly well.
So it went, one little bunch after another, winding upward in single and double file like a string of red ants on the desert. He could hear cowboys above him, shouting and whistling, moving the starved cattle on.
At last the big herd had been whittled down to one little bunch. There was no one left but Wade, the cook, Price Stockton, Bess Henry, and the wrangler with the remuda of horses.
Stockton had regained his senses but was still shaky. Bess and the cook had helped him into his saddle. He leaned heavily over the saddle horn. Wade looked worriedly at him, then at the woman.
“Ready, Bess?”
She nodded. He started the last bunch of cattle up the trail. Bess followed, leading her brother’s horse. The cook came next, his string of pack mules following along behind him. Last would be the remuda.
When they finally reached the washout, Wade turned to Bess Henry.
“Pretty dangerous here. You want me to lead Stockton’s horse?”
Her face paled beneath the dust, but she shook her head. “I’ll make it.”
Wade felt proud of her spunk and went on, watching over his shoulder and holding his breath. She made it all right.
Far below, Wade could see the bodies of three or four cattle that hadn’t made it. Bess Henry had not looked down. Wade was glad she hadn’t.
When finally they reached the top, Bess rubbed her arm across her face and murmured, “Thank God.”
Wade reached out and touched her hand. “It was tough. But it’s not so bad the second time.”
She smiled at him and gripped his hand. Warmth flooded him. She must have felt it, too. Her lips parted. Wade almost leaned forward and kissed her. He caught himself and leaned back in the saddle. He thought he could see a trace of disappointment in her eyes. Slowly she relaxed her hand.
But the beating of Wade’s heart did not relax. He had to look away from her to slow his racing pulse. He had been in love with her for weeks now, but there had been a time he might have left, and, eventually, possibly forgotten her. That time was gone. He knew he would never forget her now. He might leave, but nothing would ever be the same.
Cattle were strung out for half a mile or more, running, bawling, madly heading for water. The cowboys were not trying to hold them. It was a sight to make a man glad he had been to hell and back, seeing the way the cattle and horses enjoyed that water.
Cows, steers and old bulls waded out to where they stood up to their bellies in water before they even stopped to drink. The unridden saddle horses drank their fill, and many of them laid down in the cool water, rolling and splashing.
The sight of it brought joy to Bess Henry’s eyes. She seemed to shrug off much of the weariness. Watching her, Wade was glad.
He glanced at Price Stockton. The ranchman had stepped weakly down from his horse and loosened the cinch so the mount could drink in comfort. Now he stood watching the cattle and horses. The heavy lines in his face seemed to soften. The anger and hatred drained from his eyes. A silent peace began taking their place.
Wade looked a little way up and down the river. There was grass here, grass enough to hold the cattle for weeks. Lord knew they needed a rest. The cowboys needed it, too.
“We’ll set up camp here, Chili,” he told the cook. “Looks like we’ve found the promised land.”
Next morning Wade found Bess Henry sitting her horse on the bank of the river, contentedly watching the herd scattered loosely out over a quarter-mile square of grass. A few hundred yards away sat Price Stockton, watching the same scene.
“How is he, Bess?” Wade asked. “How does he feel now that we’ve got the trip whipped?”
She smiled. “He’s feeling all right, Wade.” She reached out and touched his hand.
She continued, “He knows now that you were trying to help us. He’s wanting to make some kind of amends. He’ll tell you himself, Wade, when he’s found the words he wants to say.”
She looked warmly into Wade’s face. Her eyes were soft and beautiful. “I owe you a lot too, Wade. I want to make it up, some way.”
Wade gripped her hand, gripped it tight. “This is all the payment I’ll ever need, Bess.”
He reached for her, pulled her close to him. He kissed her and found her lips eager. He kept holding her tightly while she leaned her head against his shoulder. She murmured his name, so softly he could barely hear it.
Later he told her, “It’s a good day’s ride on in to town, when you don’t have a lot of cattle to slow you up. I’m going in today. I want to check on the market and send a wire to Underwood & Watson.
“I’ll try to locate a grass lease, too. These cattle ought to have a month or two of grazing before they’re shipped. And we’ll need to have grass waiting for the next bunch we bring up.”
She held his hands and looked worriedly into his eyes. “Be careful, Wade. One of the boys told me that while he was on guard last night, he saw Lodge Agnew come by. He was heading for town, too. He won’t give you an equal chance.”
The morning of the third day, Wade started back from town. He was feeling good. He had found a fine grass lease with plenty of water. The market wasn’t the best he had ever seen, but it was better than he had expected.
Best of all, he had a message in his pocket, and it held the Underwood & Watson signature. He had wired Oliver Underwood that he was bringing out the first bunch of Rafter T cattle. At present market prices, he had said, they should pay well over half of the interest due. Another herd like it would finish up the interest and pay off some of the principal.
Moreover, he had found a new trail to market and believed that from now on the Rafter T would be a good financial risk.