Captain Rinehart was angrier than Archer Spann had seen him in a long time. He paced the floor of his office, cursing as the captain was seldom heard to do, and through it all he laced the name of Fuller Quinn.
“That fool,” Rinehart thundered, “that pig-headed fool! I’m sorry for the day I ever told him he could stay up there on Wagonrim Creek.”
He turned on Spann and Spann hoped the captain could not see the sweat breaking out in his face.
“You know what they’re saying in town, Archer? They’re saying the R Cross was responsible for it. They’re saying you promoted it.”
“They’re after us now, Captain. They’ll say anything.”
“You were in town that morning. Did you see Quinn?”
“Yes, sir, I saw him. I tried to talk to him, but I found him drunk, and I left.”
“You didn’t say anything to him about Noah Wheeler?”
Spann felt the sweat trickle down his face. A little of it stung his eyes, but he dared not even blink while this fiery old man studied him so closely. “No, sir, I did not.”
A worry was digging at him. He thought he knew Fuller Quinn. He thought Quinn would sull and say nothing. But he could be wrong, Quinn might start talking. What then? What if Quinn said Spann had browbeaten him into going after Wheeler?
Spann cared little what anyone else thought, but he had to keep the captain’s confidence. It would be his word against Quinn’s. He had always managed to make the captain believe him in the past. Could he do it again? For the first time, Spann was really beginning to worry.
Cautiously Spann asked, “What else do you hear, Captain? What’re they doing out at Wheeler’s?”
“They’re going on with the fence.”
Spann sagged a little. He had hoped the beating might stop the fencing project. He decided to take a gamble. “Captain, I’d like to say something. I know how you feel about Noah Wheeler, and I can understand why. But maybe Quinn had the right idea, in a way.”
He knew he was on thin ice by the way the captain’s eyes narrowed. The old man’s eyes seemed to be boring into Spann. “How so?” the captain demanded.
“Monahan won’t scare, we’ve found that out. The only way to stop him will be to cripple or kill him. But if we can stop Wheeler, we don’t have to worry about Monahan.”
“Noah Wheeler doesn’t scare, either. I’ve known that since the war days. I just told you he’s going ahead with his fence.”
“He’d stop quick enough if we hit him the way I’ve said all along. Burn him out. Run off his cattle. You don’t kill a snake by cutting its tail off. One quick, hard thrust, right to the head. That’s how we can stop this fence.”
The captain turned away. He wasn’t even considering it, Spann saw. “Look, Captain, that war was a long time ago. Things are different now. He’s fighting you, and you don’t owe him anything. He’s not your friend anymore, he’s made that as plain as he can. You let him by and you’d just as well take down the sign.”
Captain Rinehart sat down with his brow furrowed. For a while he just sat there with his eyes closed and tugged at his gray beard, the way he always did when he was worrying out a dark problem.
Spann felt the warming of sudden encouragement. Maybe Rinehart was beginning to see it his way. Maybe now he would cut this rope that had kept one of Spann’s hands tied behind his back.
But finally Rinehart shook his head. “Not yet, Archer, not yet. Maybe we’ll have to do it in the end, but…” his face was thin-drawn and brooding “… I want to wait a little longer—see what’s going to happen.”
Impatience prodding him, Spann tromped down to the barn to see how Charley Globe was coming along with his horse. He wasn’t worth much anymore except in shoeing a horse occasionally or in raking the yard. If it were up to Spann, he would have put Charley off the place. No use having an old relic like him hanging around long after his usefulness was done.
Charley was putting the last shoe on Spann’s dun. He could tell somehow that Charley knew he’d had a hard conference with the captain.
“Well,” Charley said, “what’s the captain say? We going to run Noah Wheeler out the country?”
It was none of Charley’s business, but Spann said, “We decided to wait a while.”
Charley snickered. “We did? I’d like to’ve heard that.”
Spann felt color squeezing into his face.
Charley Globe said, “What’d he say about you eggin’ that Fuller Quinn on to beat up a helpless old farmer?”
Spann’s hand shot out and grabbed Globe’s frazzled collar. He jerked Charley so hard that the old man dropped the hammer. “That’s a lie!”
The old cowboy was shaken, but he wasn’t scared. “If I was younger, Spann, I’d’a knocked you in the head with that hammer. But I’m old enough now to have better sense. I know you ain’t worth it. I’ll still be here when you’re gone.”
Spann let go of Globe’s collar and stepped back. “You better shut up, Charley, or I’ll forget how old you are.”
Charley Globe leaned against Spann’s dun horse. He was angry now. “You know, Spann, I’ve spent a lot of time tryin’ to figure you out, and I reckon I got you pegged. By rights you ought to be a big man. You don’t drink or gamble or waste time with the women, like most men do. You never make a mistake when it comes to cow work. There was a time I thought you ought to be as big a man someday as the captain is. But you never will, Spann, and you know why?
“You got a mean, selfish streak in you a mile wide, Spann. Inside you, you’re rotten. You’re tryin’ to pattern yourself after the captain, but you’ll never fit the cloth. There’s nothin’ big about you. Deep down you’re little and greedy, like when you took that Wheeler boy’s money. No, don’t deny it. I know you done it, and most other people know it, too. You’re little and greedy and mean.”
Archer Spann stood stiffly, wondering why he took this. He could break this old man in two with his bare hands. But what was the use?
Angrily he replied, “You say I’m mean; well, maybe I am. I never had anything in my life I didn’t fight for, even when I was a kid. Maybe you’d be mean too if you had a drunken bum of a father that beat you and made you work, then took what you earned and drank it up and left you with an empty belly. I lived for just one thing, and that was to get big enough to whip him. One night I did it. I beat him with my fists till he went down, and then I took a club to him. I found out later that I hadn’t killed him, but I always wished I had.
“I swore I’d amount to something someday, and by God I will! I learned a long time ago that a man’s got to watch out for himself, that nobody else cares. The captain’s got no son to leave all this to. I’m taking the place of that son, Charley, and some day all this will be mine. It’s a mean world, and you got to be mean to get anything out of it. No dirt farmer like Noah Wheeler and no grubby fence builder like Doug Monahan is ever going to stop me!”
Charley Globe said solemnly, “Then you got some fightin’ to do, Spann. And you know somethin’? I don’t think you’ll make it. I think when the showdown comes and you’re up agin the taw line, you’ll fold. Alongside that meanness, you got a yellow streak in you, Spann. And some day the captain’s goin’ to see it.”
* * *
VERN WHEELER SLAPPED his coiled rope against his leather chaps and yelled hoarsely at the cattle strung out before him. Dust burned his eyes and grated at his throat. Far ahead of him he saw a tough, sun-darkened rider turn in the saddle and wave impatiently at him. He couldn’t hear the words. The bawling of the cattle wiped away all other sound like the roar of springtime thunder. But Vern could see the whisker-fringed mouth, and he knew well enough what the man was shouting.
“Hurry up! Bring up them drags!”
It had been a fast, hard drive, risky as walking the edge of a sharp-hewn cliff, and there was plenty more of it ahead.
Young calves in the bunch had dropped back to the drags. They shambled along with heads down, tongues protruding.
“Hyah, babies!” Vern shouted at them, slapping his chaps. The sharp noise picked some of them up a moment or two, but not for long. They were hopelessly worn out.
The big rider spurred back in a long trot. He was a begrimed, bewhiskered man in a greasy black hat and filthy blue wool coat. “Button,” he shouted in a coarse voice, “how many times I got to tell you? Let them calves drop out if they can’t keep up.”
“They’ll starve back there,” Vern protested.
“It’s none of our lookout,” the man said, and jerked his horse around again. “Keep them cattle moving.”
Vern nodded angrily and pulled around a couple of limping baby calves. He knew what would happen to them without their mothers. They would dogie, and most of them would die. Those few which learned to rustle for themselves on the dry grass would be forever stunted by the ordeal.
Still, Vern knew the dusty, harsh-voiced old cow thief was right. They must keep moving, and moving fast, for these bawling cows bore the R Cross brand on their left hips, the R Cross swallowfork in their right ears. And they were still on R Cross range.
Restlessly Vern’s eyes searched the skyline for sign of riders. He’d had a bad feeling about this thing ever since it had started. Rooster had agreed to help him take and sell enough cattle to make up the three hundred dollars he had coming. Vern had sworn he would buy his little piece of land and put up a fence around it and kill the first man who touched a hand to one strand of the wire.
But Rooster had brought three hardened old cow thieves along with him. And instead of taking a small bunch, they cut deep and greedily took out several hundred head. Now they were driving fast for the nearest boundary of the R Cross range, driving for the brush country that would swallow up this herd in a maze of mesquite and catclaw and whitebrush. Vern had wanted to pull out of it, but it had been too late.
The one called Bronc had drawn his six-shooter and leveled it carelessly at Vern’s heart. “It’s gonna take all five of us to push these cattle outa here. Don’t you git any idees ’bout quittin’ us, boy.”
Rooster Preech was helping Vern bring up the drags. He worked his horse over beside Vern’s. Dust lay like powder on his face. “Don’t you pay much mind to Bronc. He talks mean, but he’s a pretty good old boy.”
Vern scowled. He knew better than that. The time he’d spent with Rooster’s three outlaws had convinced him of one thing: there was mighty little good about any of them. They were greedy and dirty and coarse and mean. Not one of them had any inclination to try to make an honest living. Vern was convinced that any one of them, and Bronc especially, would shoot his own brother if there was a good profit in it.
Vern had known at the outset that he was making a mistake. He didn’t belong here. It had looked like a good idea at first, but he wished now he had never hunted up Rooster, that he had never heard of Bronc and these other two.
Rooster said, “You’re sure makin’ a bust, Vern, not takin’ but three hundred dollars. Your share of this bunch oughta be worth two or three times that much.”
Stubbornly Vern shook his head. “The R Cross owes me three hundred dollars. That’s all I set out to get, and it’s all I’m going to take.”
Rooster shrugged. “Suit yourself, it’s just that much more for the rest of us. Sure beats diggin’ postholes, don’t it?”
Vern glanced sharply at Rooster. They’d been friends for years, but Vern could see that Rooster was getting to be just like these three cow thieves who rode swing and point. Though still a brash kid, he was talking like them, acting like them. He was picking up their cautious habits, their free and easy way of looking at the law and at the rights of other people. When the three old rustlers bragged of slick thefts and fast deals they had pulled in the past, Rooster had one or two of his own to tell about. Granted that they were mostly lies, there was enough of truth in them to prove one thing. Rooster belonged to the back-trail bunch now.
Vern could see now that it had been in the cards all the time. He hadn’t recognized the signs because they had been boyhood friends, and he hadn’t realized things would ever change. Rooster’s mother was dead, and his father paid little attention to him.
Rooster had swept out saloons sometimes to get something to eat. A time or two he was caught taking money out of the drawer behind the bar, and the barkeep had peeled the hide off of him. Later, it was bigger things. Luke McKelvie had tried to talk to him, but by the time it came to that, Rooster had little use for anyone who wore a badge.
He had been left to his own devices. When at last he came to that big fork in the road, lacking any sound guidance, he took the wrong one. It was as simple as that. Watching him now, Vern doubted that there would ever be any turning back for Rooster. He had already gone too far down that road.
Now Vern Wheeler was on the same road, and he wondered what he would do if he found himself trapped on it, unable to turn back.
He was going to try hard not to be. When they finished this drive, he was going to take his three hundred dollars and run like a scared rabbit. Never again in his life would he lay a hand on an animal that didn’t belong to him, not even if, as he had told himself over and over, he was only taking that which was due him anyway.
Once more Bronc came riding back. “You two think we got a tea party here? Spread out and drive these cattle, or I’ll take and pistol-whip the both of you when we git where we’re goin’.”
Rooster jerked his horse away and started yelling at the cattle. Vern let a couple more tired calves drop out. He wondered how many had fallen back since they had started. Thirty or forty. That many calves left to die or go dogied.
An old cow kept turning, bawling for one of the calves that had stayed behind. The calf tried hard to follow, but his tired, spindly legs barely carried him anymore. Twice Vern choused the cow back into the bunch. The third time she tried to break out, he made sure Bronc wasn’t watching, and let her go.
One calf saved, anyway.
He looked back with a glow of self-satisfaction to see the cow smelling the calf in the worried way that only a cow can, and the tired calf butting his head against her bag, getting the milk that meant life to him.
Then it was that he saw the riders. Two of them broke out over a rise and hauled up, watching the cattle. Vern jerked his horse to a stop and sat frozen. They were so close to him that he could have hit them with a rock. He recognized them both. They were R Cross men he had worked with. And he knew they recognized him.
Bronc saw them, too. He came riding back fast, leaning down to pull a saddlegun out of its scabbard. The R Cross cowboys saw him coming. One of them started to pull away, but the other held his ground. Pulling out his six-shooter, he fired a long shot that kicked up dust thirty feet from Bronc. The cowboy swung the gun back on Vern. Vern sat stiffly, paralyzed with horror as he realized the cowboy was going to shoot him.
He saw the flame, and he felt the sudden jar that struck his shoulder with the weight of a sledge. It carried him halfway around and lifted him far out of the saddle. For a second or two he tried desperately to regain his balance. Then he saw the ground coming up. He hit it hard and tasted dirt.
He was only half conscious of his horse plunging in terror, his hoofs barely missing him, and he realized dully that he had somehow held onto the reins. He let go. The horse jerked free and ran.
In sudden terror the cattle in the drag turned back and ran, too. The clatter of their hoofs broke past Vern. He lay helpless, waiting to be trampled, and somehow he cared little if it happened. The wounded shoulder had him twisting in agony.
But he wasn’t trampled. In a moment Rooster rode up, bringing Vern’s horse. He jumped down and knelt beside Vern.
Somewhere over the rise, the shooting continued.
“You all right, boy?” Rooster asked. “Think you can ride?”
Clenching his teeth against the pain, Vern said, “I don’t know.…”
“You got to, boy. The fat’s really in the fire now.”
Rooster helped Vern to sit up. Vern’s head reeled. He brought his right hand up to the left shoulder and felt the wound warm and sticky to the touch. The very bone seemed to be afire.
Vern fell over on his face and was sick. Rooster stuck by him, holding him. Presently Bronc and the other two outlaws came back over the rise.
“They got away,” Bronc declared, cursing. “Hell of a help you two was.” He jerked his head angrily toward the scattering cattle. “Git out there and git them cattle throwed together. We really got to push ’em now.”
Rooster hesitated. “Vern’s hit. He can’t take no fast pace.”
“Then he’ll hafta stay here. He oughtn’t to’ve got hisself shot.”
When Rooster still held back, Bronc drew his gun. “I said move.”
Rooster glanced apologetically at Vern. “Sorry, boy,” he said, and mounted his horse.
For a while Vern sat there unable to move. The other riders drifted away from him and he was alone, sitting in a patch of brittle grass miles and miles from help. He looked up at his horse, which stood calmly now. If he could only get on him … But he knew he lacked the strength. He felt the blood still flowing slowly out between his fingers. Holding his handkerchief over the wound, he had gotten the blood clotted and stopped most of the flow. But a little of it still trickled, slowly draining the life and the hope from him.
He didn’t know how long it was before Rooster came. His friend rode up in an easy lope, slowing down before he got there so he wouldn’t cause Vern’s horse to jerk away. Rooster jumped to the ground and looked back over his shoulder.
“Whether you think you can do it or not, boy, you got to get on that horse. Old Bronc’ll be along lookin’ for us directly, and we better not be here.”
With Rooster’s help, Vern managed to get into the saddle. He would have fallen off again if Rooster hadn’t been there to hold him on.
Rooster said, “Bronc’ll be back huntin’ me soon’s he finds out I slipped away. But there’s a crick down yonder a ways, and plenty of brush. Maybe we can hide in there. He can’t spend much time lookin’.”
Rooster holding him, they rode to the creek. Rooster took time to dip up water in his hat and let Vern gulp it down. Then they made their way into a thick tangle of mesquite and catclaw. Vern stayed in the saddle, slumped low over the horn. Rooster stepped to the ground and kept watch. Presently he saw Bronc top out over the hill. Rooster drew the horses deeper into the brush and stood holding his hands over their noses so they wouldn’t nicker to Bronc’s horse. For a little while they could hear Bronc riding up and down the creek, cursing and calling Rooster’s name. Bronc knew they were in there somewhere. Then, because of the urgency of moving the cattle, he gave up and disappeared out over the hill.
Rooster led the horses into the open. He took another look at Vern’s wound. “You’re fixin’ to get in a bad way, boy, if we don’t get you some help. Hang on, I’m takin’ you home.”
Painfully Vern shook his head. “No, not home, Rooster. I don’t want to bring the R Cross down on them.”
“You’ve probably done that anyhow. But have it the way you want it. I think I know another place we can go.”
Vern nodded dully. “Let’s get started, then.”