The riders came on leisurely, knowing they had the upper hand. They didn’t leave behind them a single piece of wire more than twenty feet long.
“We’re in for it,” Bailey muttered. “That’s the old he-coon hisself in the lead yonder, ridin’ the gray horse. Captain Andrew Rinehart. He don’t answer to nobody, not even to God.”
A chill worked down Doug Monahan’s back. He knew that this was going to be nasty. But this was Finch’s land. He ought to have the right to do what he wanted to with it.…
The horsemen crowded in close, forming a semicircle around the small fencing crew. Some of the horses fidgeted, slinging their heads. Gordon Finch held back, sliding behind the chuckbox.
The captain edged forward on his big gray, as fine a horse as a man would ever see. Captain Andrew Rinehart was a man of strong will and fierce pride. He was an aging cowman with a clipped gray beard and piercing eyes that stabbed from under heavy gray brows. Despite the weight of years, his back was rigid. Not a young cowboy with him sat straighter in the saddle.
He was one of those real old patriarchs, Monahan knew, one of the kind who had whipped and carved this state into being. You still found a few like him down in South Texas. Monahan knew the breed, for his father had been one. Most of them were gone now.
Those commanding eyes searched the fencing crew, then lit on Monahan. “You’re in charge here.” It was a statement, rather than a question.
Monahan took a step forward. “It’s my camp. I’m Doug Monahan.”
Rinehart studied him intently, squinting as if to see him better. “Monahan, you’re trespassing.”
Monahan felt the stretch of tension within him. He had heard about Captain Rinehart. This old man controlled the R Cross, which sprawled haphazardly over a big part of Kiowa County, its boundaries ragged and loose—and uncontested. Once a Texas Ranger, and later an officer in the Confederate army, he had been the first man to move into this county and stay. He had pushed the Indians out. In the years that followed, no one had ever seriously challenged him.
Kiowa County, it said on the map. Around here they called it Rinehart County more often than not.
“Well now,” Monahan said. “We have a contract from Gordon Finch to fence his ranch, so I don’t see how we could be trespassing.”
Rinehart’s gaze searched over the men on the ground. “Where is Gordon Finch? Finch, step out here.”
Finch moved hesitantly. He came out from behind the chuckbox and stood beside Monahan. His mouth opened, and in his face was a fleeting intention to speak up to this stern old cowman. Then his eyes fell, and his mouth closed.
Rinehart’s voice was as hard as flint rock. “I never would’ve thought you had the nerve, Finch. Now you’re through around here. Catch up your horse and git.”
Without lifting his eyes to those of the men around him, Gordon Finch walked out to where his horse stood hitched to a stunty mesquite behind the woodpile. He swung into the saddle, shoulders sagging.
“Sell out and leave,” Rinehart said to him. The old man didn’t speak loudly, but his voice carried the crack of a whip. “I don’t want to see you around here again.”
Just like that. Sell out and leave. And Monahan knew Finch would do it.
Finch rode off without a glance at Monahan. His cowboys followed after him, all but one whose name Monahan remembered was Dundee. Dundee held back a moment, his eyes touching Monahan’s and making a silent apology. Dundee’s holster was empty. Some R Cross cowboy had gotten himself a six-shooter mighty cheap.
Rinehart’s gaze cut back to Monahan. “This isn’t Finch’s range. It’s mine. It always was.”
Monahan clenched his rough fist. He ought to have guessed, but he hadn’t. Finch had tried to run a sandy, and he hadn’t had the nerve it took to go through with it.
Monahan said, “He told me it was his, and I had no reason to doubt him.”
Rinehart’s eyes were cold. He thought Monahan was lying. The captain glanced at a man who sat beside him on a black-legged dun. “All right, Archer!”
Men stepped down from the horses and started throwing loose cedar posts up into a pile. They heaved the red spools of wire up atop the posts. Someone took Paco Sanchez’s big coaloil can and started pouring kerosene.
“Rinehart,” Monahan protested, “I tell you I didn’t know! Finch lied to me. Everything I’ve got is tied up here. Finch hasn’t paid me a cent.”
If Rinehart heard him, he gave no sign of it. He just sat there stiffly on the big gray horse, watching.
“Burn it,” he said, looking at the rider he had called Archer.
This was a tall, angular man of about thirty-five, a stiff-backed man who might have been the captain’s son, he was so much like him. He had the same aristocratic bearing, the same strong face, the same driving will. He struck a match on the sole of his boot and flipped it onto the posts near the bottom of the pile. The flames licked upward, spreading hungrily, seeking out the kerosene.
Monahan took an angry step forward, then stopped as he felt a gunbarrel poke him in the back. Rinehart’s men pitched his crew’s bedding and camp gear into the flames.
The one called Archer stood watching the fire, his face grimly silent. It was then that Monahan noticed the man’s eyes.
They were black, compelling eyes, framed in heavy, dark brows and long black lashes, eyes that burned with a ruthlessness that seemed even greater than the captain’s.
Monahan remembered then. He had heard of this man, too. Archer Spann, his name was. Foreman of the R Cross, and the captain all over again except younger. The captain had never had a son, they said, but he had found Archer Spann, and Spann was as much like him as a son could ever be.
Spann picked up the kerosene can and climbed up into the chuckwagon. He poured the rest of the contents out over the chuckbox and into the wagonbed. Paco Sanchez had held still through all that had happened. Suddenly now he broke loose as he realized that the old Bar M chuckwagon was about to be destroyed.
“No, no,” he cried, “don’t you burn my wagon!”
He grabbed at Spann’s long legs, trying to pull him down. Spann lifted the heavy can and swung it at Paco’s head. Stunned, Paco went down on hands and knees.
Spann pitched a match into the kerosene. As the flames spread, he dropped down from the wagon.
Near Paco’s hands the water basin had fallen to the ground. He grabbed it, scooped up sand and threw it on the flames. Spann jerked the pan from his twisted hands. It went spinning away. One of the horses, nervous already because of the fire, broke into pitching. In a moment of wild confusion, the riders pulled one way and another, trying to stop the bucking horse.
Raging now at the destruction of his wagon, Paco found his fallen pothook.
“No, Paco!” Monahan shouted and jumped to stop him.
Spann stepped back in sudden alarm as the pothook swung at him. It missed, and Paco never had a chance to swing it again. Spann’s gun came up. It roared. Paco jerked under the impact, falling against the burning wagon.
“Paco!” Monahan rushed to the old Mexican, grabbing him and dragging him back from the flames. In desperation he ripped away the cook’s heavy black shirt. The old man caught a sharp, sobbing breath. For a moment he struggled to speak, but no words came. His tough old fingers closed on Monahan’s hand, telling in their own way what Paco wanted to say. Then they relaxed, and the scarred, twisted hand fell away.
Monahan was on his knees, stunned, just holding Paco’s body and not knowing what to do. Then, gently, he eased him down to earth and stood up, trembling in fury.
Spann was watching him, his own face taut. He held the smoking gun, its barrel leveled at Monahan.
Captain Rinehart said, “Put the gun away, Archer.”
Monahan leaped at the man. He saw the gunbarrel tilt upward. He grabbed Spann’s wrist, forced the gun aside as it roared again. He reached for Spann’s throat.
Spann wrenched loose. There was a quick swish, and the gunbarrel struck Monahan behind the ear. He fell solidly, the ground smashing against his face. He lay there tasting sand. He pushed onto his knees, trying to clear his head and find Spann again, but the horsemen seemed to swirl around him. He was conscious of the flames, the crackling heat, the stench of smoke. But he could not see. There was sand in his eyes, and a blinding pain-flash of red.
Rinehart’s riders held their nervous horses as still as they could, gripped in sudden shock by the quick explosion of violence, the death of the old Mexican. It had not been part of the plan. Rinehart’s riders waited uncertainly, and Monahan waited, too, half expecting the gun to roar again.
“I said put it up,” Rinehart spoke in a quiet but commanding voice.
Spann dropped the six-shooter back into its holster.
Cold reason returned to Monahan then. He blinked hard, shaking his head, trying to clear his sight. He couldn’t fight them now. But he wouldn’t forget. He’d bide his time and take whatever else they dealt him, for there would be another day.…
The bed of the blazing wagon broke. Camp goods spilled through the charring bottom. The heavy chuckbox lurched sideways, hung a moment in the balance, then slid to the ground with a crash of tin plates and cups and cutlery and a shower of hot sparks.
Horses danced excitedly away from the flames. Captain Rinehart held his big gray with a strong, steady hand.
“We didn’t come to kill anybody, Monahan,” he said evenly. “I didn’t mean it to happen. But it doesn’t change anything. This is open range. It was that way when I came here, and it will remain so. Now move out, Monahan. Don’t stop for anything. Move out, and don’t come back!”
He turned his gray horse about then, and pulled away without a backward glance. His cowboys drew aside to let him pass. Then they fell in behind him. Some of them looked back at the blazing ruin of the camp, but Captain Rinehart never did.
Doug Monahan dragged himself to the old Mexican. He gripped the corded brown hand, closing his eyes against the sudden rush of hot tears. Stub Bailey came and laid his hand on Monahan’s shoulder.
Monahan said tightly, “I can’t remember a time when Paco Sanchez wasn’t somewhere around. As far back as I can remember, he’s been with me.”
Paco had taught him, had guided him, had occasionally used the double of a rope on him when Doug’s own father wasn’t there and the job needed doing.
“Time has a way of going on, Doug,” Stub said quietly. “It takes away the old things we been used to. We can’t hold them forever.”
Bailey and the others of the fencing crew threw sand on the fires, snuffing them out. Doug couldn’t stand up to it, and right now he didn’t care.
Presently he looked up to find the fires out. Bailey was digging around under a flat rock just outside of camp. He came back carrying a bottle, wiping the dirt off onto his shirt. He held the bottle out to Doug.
“Take a good stiff one. You need it.”
Monahan managed two long swallows and choked. It was cheap, raw whisky. Bailey took the bottle and turned it up for himself.
“One thing they didn’t burn up,” he commented, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, his blue eyes watering from the sting. “Bet you didn’t even know I had this.”
“I knew you had it,” Monahan replied. “I just didn’t know where.”
Bad as the whisky was, it made Monahan feel better. Stub knelt uncomfortably beside him, looking at Paco. One of the men dragged a half-burned blanket out of the fire and covered the body with it.
“We saved some of the stuff,” Bailey said. “Cedar ain’t easy burned, so most of the posts are still good. Them wooden spools burned quick, though, and the wire’s tangled up into an awful mess. Lost the temper, too, I expect. I don’t reckon it’ll be to where we can salvage much of it.”
Monahan stood up painfully to look over the shambles. “Thanks, Stub.”
Bailey said, “You better let me fix that place where they hit you. It don’t look good.”
“It’ll be all right.” Doug’s voice was hollow.
Bailey shrugged. The boss was old enough to take care of himself. “What do we do now?”
“First thing, we better see if we can find a shovel that isn’t burned up.”
They had to bury Paco without so much as the Scripture, for the only Bible had been in the chuckbox. It hadn’t been used much. Sometime, Monahan thought, he would try to find a priest and bring him out here. Right now, a short prayer had to do.
They had just finished filling the grave when Noah Wheeler and his daughter came back, driving three plodding Durham cows. The cows warily skirted the camp, but the two riders came straight in. Their eyes were grim as they read the meaning in the burned-out camp, the cut fence, the new mound of earth where a fire-blackened piece of the chuckbox lid stood as a temporary headboard.
The old farmer solemnly looked over the faces of the men in camp, mentally tallying up. He glanced at the grave and said, “The cook?”
Monahan nodded stiffly. Wheeler slowly climbed out of the saddle. The girl also got down. Her soft voice was tight. “Who did it?”
“Rinehart,” Monahan said bitterly.
“The captain?” Noah Wheeler shook his head incredulously. “He’s a hard man on occasion, but he’s never killed without the need for it.”
Monahan said, “Archer Spann did the shooting.”
The old farmer nodded grimly. “Cold as ice. He’s the man they say will own the R Cross someday.” With sorrow, Wheeler said, “I reckon it’s my fault. I should have told you it was Rinehart’s range, but I figured it was none of my business.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Monahan replied. “It was already too late.”
Trudy Wheeler carefully touched the wound on Monahan’s head. “That looks bad.”
“It’ll heal.”
Noah Wheeler frowned. “You-all better come with us for tonight. We got plenty of room at home, and plenty to eat.”
Monahan shook his head. “The captain’s down on us. You take us in, he’s liable to bear down on you, too.”
“No,” said Wheeler, “we’ve never had any trouble with the captain.” He smiled then, but behind the smile was a dead seriousness. “I’m just an old dirt farmer. Nobody bothers me. Now you come along with us and get some rest.”
Trudy Wheeler reached far into the overturned water barrel on the ground beside the blackened wagon, and found a little water there. She soaked a handkerchief in it and returned to Monahan. “We’re going to clean that wound.”
She paid no attention to his objections. Her fingers were quick and sure and gentle. Watching her closely, keenly aware of the nearness of her, Monahan realized that Trudy Wheeler was less a girl than she was a woman, that there was much of beauty and maturity about her that a man might miss the first time he looked.
“Too bad we have nothing to put on this,” she said as she finished. A bottle of iodoform had been smashed when the chuckbox fell.
Bailey brought out his bottle again, gazed regretfully at the little bit still in the bottom of it, and handed it to her. “Here.”
It burned worse outside than it had inside.
“You-all catch up your horses,” Trudy Wheeler said. “You’re going over to our place.”
Monahan was a little surprised at the firmness of her voice. He had first reckoned her as quiet and meek. Now he had a feeling that there was nothing meek about her.
He gave in because the men had to sleep somewhere, and there was nothing left of the camp. “Just for tonight, then. Tomorrow we’ll leave.”
* * *
DOUG MONAHAN HALF expected to see the usual next-to-starvation look he had found in so many dugout and brush-corral nester outfits, including some of the farms over on Oak Creek. He was surprised. Hard work and careful planning had gone into Noah Wheeler’s place, and it showed.
“Got four sections here,” Wheeler said proudly. “That is, I’m sort of partners with a bank in Fort Worth, you might say. Most of it’s still grazing land. I’ve got sixty or seventy acres broken out, about all I can farm by myself.”
Four sections. If you went by deeded land, that probably made Noah Wheeler about as big an actual landowner as there was in this part of the country right now. That was more than twenty-five hundred acres, if you figured land that way. This wasn’t the high-rainfall land of East Texas. Here it took more land to produce as much, and most people figured it in sections instead of by acres.
Monahan wondered if Captain Rinehart owned title to as much as four sections. He probably did; most of the cowmen hereabouts had bought the land where they built their headquarters, and where they could, they bought that around their best water. Control of the water gave control of the land, even though the most of it still belonged to the state, or to schools, or to the railroads which had received it as a grant in earlier times. The ranchers ran their cattle on this land without let because so far there had been little other claim on it. They might own only one section in fee, yet control twenty.
There were some who owned no land at all but simply let their cattle run loose on the open range. By unwritten rule, such land could be used by the first man who claimed it, and any other man who tried to usurp it had better throw a mighty big shadow. Gordon Finch had tried, and he hadn’t made it. This unwritten title was so well established by custom that a man might sell his ranch to another without actually owning the land.
Fifteen or twenty good Durham cows were grazing in a green winter oat patch. Monahan noted that there was no fence around it. Wheeler proudly waved his hand toward the cattle.
“That’s going to be the end of the Longhorn. I’m building me a nice little herd of Durhams. You won’t find any better in a hundred miles. I’ve already got a few cowmen buying bulls from me, and I’ll sell a lot more as my herd grows. A few years from now, they’ll have the Longhorn blood pretty well bred out of the country.”
The three cows the Wheelers had brought back trotted out into the field toward the others, pausing here and there to grab a bite of green oats.
Monahan frowned. “This is wide-open country. How can you hold your strain pure if you can’t keep the native bulls out of here?”
Wheeler said, “That’s the biggest trouble we got. We just have to ride our country good every day or two and run the Longhorns out. It’s the best we can do. A Longhorn calf shows up from one of our cows, we just have to figure on making beef of it. We can’t keep it in the herd.”
They skirted past the oatfield. Next to it, lying fallow through the winter, was Wheeler’s hay land, plowed clean and neat, the furrows arrow-straight. This field was circled by two strands of slick wire put up on crooked mesquite posts.
“Will that fence turn a cow back?” Monahan asked.
Wheeler shook his head. “Not if she wants in very bad. And when the field is green, they want in.”
A Durham bull and two cows came plodding back from water.
“There’s my bull,” Wheeler said. “He’s got a pedigree and a name as long as your arm, but I just call him Sancho because he’s such a pet.”
He was a big roan bull, not so leggy as the Longhorns but deeper-bodied, with flanks coming down farther and a wide, full rump that would carve out a lot of beef.
“The only trouble with him,” Wheeler commented, “he can’t outfight these native bulls. I almost had to shoot one of Fuller Quinn’s the other day to keep him from killing Sancho. But one way of looking at it, old Sancho will win out in the long run. His progeny’ll still be around when the Longhorns are gone.”
Pride glowed in Wheeler’s voice. “It’s nice to be able to count your cattle in the thousands like Captain Rinehart, but I’ll settle for having better quality.”
A scattering of chickens scratched all about the place. Ducks swam leisurely in a large earthen tank. A few hogs rooted around in damp ground in a pen back a healthy distance east of the house.
Noah Wheeler’s solid frame house stood near a spring that bubbled a strong, clear stream of water, the beginnings of a small creek which wound down past the fields and out across the grazing land. Both the house and the barn behind it were painted a bright red. Red barn paint was cheap and not hard to get.
“Built that house myself,” said Wheeler. “Hauled the lumber down from the railroad right after they built into Stringtown.”
It was a good house, a pleasant-looking house, though not a big one. Monahan wondered where the old stockfarmer intended to bed them down.
“There’s a lean-to out in the barn,” Wheeler said. “Built it for my son, Vern. If we can’t find enough bedding for you fellers, we got plenty of hay out there to help stretch it.”
“What about your son?” Monahan asked. “Won’t we be crowding him?”
Wheeler shook his head. “Farming got too slow for Vern. He’s over at the R Cross, working for the captain.” His voice held a touch of regret. “Vern’s not cut out for a plow, I guess. There’s work aplenty here for both of us, but he’d rather cowboy and be on his own. We don’t see him much anymore.”
Trudy Wheeler smiled. “There’s a girl in town, and he’s saving every dime he can. He’s afraid if he gets off of that ranch he’ll spend some money.”
Noah Wheeler rode past the barn and stood up in the stirrups, looking over into a corral. “Wonder if old Roany’s had her calf yet?”
Monahan saw a fine Durham cow that was springing heavy, and had made a bag. It was easy to see that the calf was due any day now.
“Roany’s my pet,” Wheeler said. “Best cow I ever owned, or ever saw, for that matter. She’s fixing to have a calf by Sancho, and it’ll be the best one in the country when it gets here, I’d bet my boots on that.”
Trudy Wheeler smiled. “Dad’s been like a kid at Christmas, waiting for that calf.”
Noah Wheeler dismounted and opened a corral gate. “Bring your horses on in. We got plenty of feed for them. While you get unsaddled, Trudy and the missus will rustle you up something to eat.”
Doug found Mrs. Wheeler a strong, clear-eyed farm woman who talked with her husband’s warm enthusiasm for their place and for the country in general. She ran the house in a quiet fashion but with a firm hand. Doug thought he could see where Trudy Wheeler had gotten her deceptively shy manner.
Suddenly Monahan was glad he had come. Sitting here in the front room of their little house, enjoying the company of these good people, he had forgotten his own trouble for a time.
Noah Wheeler said, “You haven’t got any business moving out till you get yourself rested a little. Why don’t you stay with us a day or two?”
“Just tonight. We’ll leave in the morning.”
“What do you figure on doing?”
Monahan’s face darkened. “I’m not real sure what I’ll do later. But first thing, I’ve got a bill to collect from Gordon Finch.”