This Calder Range (52 page)

Returning the gun to the drawer, he got up quickly to unlock the door. He locked it back when Loman Janes walked through.

“You wanted to see me?” Janes said.

“What in bloody hell did you tell that renegade?” Boston exploded. “Can't you carry out a simple damned order and get it right?”

Janes stiffened at the unwarranted attack, his light gray eyes growing cold. “I told him exactly what you told me to. Why?”

“Why?”
Boston raged. “Because Benteen Calder's son was shot and killed when those Indians tried to run off the herd the other night! That's why!”

“That's hard luck.” Loman shrugged. “But he shouldn't have had the kid along on a roundup. What's it to us, anyway?”

“Us! There is no ‘us'!” Boston flung his hand in the air to dismiss the idea. “I'm the one that gives the orders! And you seem to foul them up!”

“Now, you wait a minute.” A deadly quiet was settling over Loman Janes, an ugliness sweeping into him.

“No, you wait a minute!” Boston slammed his fist on the desk. “I told you I wanted no war with Calder! The orders were to take his cattle and leave him alone! I should have known when that rider of his got shot up, you had messed things up.”

“I don't like being talked to like this,” Janes warned.

“I pay you. I'll talk to you any damn way I please,” Boston hurled angrily. “You don't think Calder is going to let his son die without going after the ones who did it, do you?”

“So? Let him chase the Indians back to Canada.”

“My God, you must think the man is as simpleminded as you are,” he declared with contempt. “What happens if Bull Giles talks? What if he mentions arranging that meeting between you and the renegade?”

“If it's Giles you're worried about, I can shut him up,” Janes said, still glowering under the insults.

“By killing him, I suppose,” Boston snorted. “What if it's already too late?”

“Then I'll get rid of Calder. That's what we should of done in the beginning, then we wouldn't be wonderin' where we're gonna put all them cattle.”

“You can forget about the cattle. I've sent Webster a wire instructing him to unload them and get the best price he can.” He moved to his desk and dabbed the handkerchief to his forehead again.

“You did what?” The gray eyes narrowed to cold slits.

“I told him to sell,” Boston repeated, and began moving papers around on the desk. “We're going to have to pull back, lie low for a while, and hope to hell all this blows over.”

“What about Calder? Ain't you goin' after his range?”

“Forget about Calder. We're leaving him alone.” Boston snapped the order.

“You're scared to take him on face to face, aren't ya? That's why ya hired me to do your dirty work for you. ‘Cause you ain't got the goddamned guts to do it yourself,” Janes spat.

Incensed, Boston struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “That's enough out of you!”

Janes's hand trembled on his gun. “You ever do that to me again and I'll kill you.”

Boston drew back, staring at the faithful dog that had suddenly showed signs of turning on him. He pivoted away. “Go back to the ranch. And try not to foul up anything else,” he added sarcastically.

For a long second Janes wavered with indecision before he went to the door and turned the lock. As he opened the door and breathed in, he smelled the fear in the air. He cast a look at the sweating man by the desk. He felt nothing but contempt for Judd Boston, who talked big and tough until someone threatened him, then cowered like a whining pup with no teeth.

“Better lock the door, Boston. The boogeyman might get ya,” Loman Janes taunted with a snicker. He didn't bother to shut the door when he left.

He heard it close and the key turn, and it deepened his disgust. When he reached the street, he untied his horse from the hitchrack and swung onto the saddle. Instead of riding out to the ranch, Janes angled his horse down the street to the nearest saloon. It didn't matter what he'd been told to do. He'd get to the ranch when he damned well pleased.

There were three other Ten Bar horses tied outside the saloon. Janes put his horse in alongside them. He needed a drink to get the bad taste out of his mouth, and he needed to think. And he wasn't all that good at thinking. He was a man of action and reaction, black and white.

Somebody was banging away on a piano as Janes
entered the saloon. Stepping to one side of the doorway, he paused to look the place over. Raucous laughter came from a back corner. Off to the side, a poker game was in progress. A half-dozen cowboys were standing at the bar. Smoke hung over the room like a haze, mingling with the smell of alcohol.

A cowboy at the end of the bar accidentally kicked a tarnished cuspidor sitting on the floor and cursed. “Somebody better move this damned thing before I spit in it.” He turned and spat a stream of yellow juice onto the floor.

Janes spotted Trace Reynolds and another Ten Bar cowboy halfway down the bar. He crossed the saloon and shouldered his narrow body in to the bar beside them. “Whiskey,” he told the bartender.

“Didn't know you was comin' to town, Janes,” the Texan Reynolds drawled with mild interest.

“I had to talk to Boston.” Janes didn't say he'd been summoned. “Might be trouble with Calder.” He lifted the glass and threw part of the contents down his throat, then slid a cold gray look at the cowboy with the oiled holster.

“Boston step on his toes again?” Reynolds asked with an easy smile.

“Ya could say that.” Janes finished his drink and ordered another.

The town sat before them, a sprawl of dark shapes with little squares of light spilling from them. Benteen straightened in the saddle and winced from the smarting wound in his side. With the nest of renegades wiped out, that left only the man that hired them. He glanced at his little band of riders—Jessie, Woolie, Bob Vernon, and Bull Giles. The rest he'd sent to the ranch with the wounded.

“Woolie, ride ahead and see if Boston's buggy is behind the bank,” he ordered. “We'll meet up with you in front of the land office.”

With a nod, Woolie swung his horse away from the main road to enter town by one of the back streets. The darkness soon swallowed him up, with only the receding sound of his horse's hooves marking his path into the night.

Benteen nudged the tired grulla forward, letting it settle into a slow walk. The rage had gone out of him. The fight at the river had slaked his thirst for revenge. Now it was just a job to be finished. He was hardcaught in a pattern that didn't leave him any alternative. It was the way of things until time changed them, if it ever did.

Lorna had been on the porch that ran the length of the two-story house, conferring with the crew foreman of the finish carpenters when she'd seen the straggling band of cowboys ride into the ranch, some of them slumped in their saddles. She had murmured a quick excuse and hurried down the knoll to meet them. Their numbers were fewer than those that had left. Alarm had rushed through her when she failed to see Benteen among them.

Rusty and Shorty were already on hand to help the wounded from their horses when Lorna reached them. Shorty had kept muttering, “I shoulda been there.”

Cornering Barnie, she demanded, “Where's Benteen? Where's the rest of them?”

“Nothing to worry about. He's all right,” Barnie had assured her. “They went into town after Boston.”

Webb had caught at her hand, troubled by the sight of all his injured friends. “What happened, Mom? How did they get hurt?”

“They were in a fight.” At that point it had become impossible to wait patiently at the ranch until Benteen returned—if he returned. She had to be there when it was over. “I'm going into town.” Her announcement hadn't come as any surprise to Rusty. “Can you manage?”

“I can manage, but you ain't goin' in alone. Benteen would have our hides for that. Barnie will hitch up the wagon and ride into town with you.”

“Can I go, too?” Webb had pleaded.

“No.” She had lost one son in a shooting fray. She would not now risk the life of her only child.

Loman Janes threw the money on the bar for his drinks and pushed away from the rail. His pointed glance prompted the other three members of the Ten Bar outfit to follow suit. “Reckon it's late.”

There was a reluctant shuffling of boots and rattling spurs as they trailed after him to leave the saloon. Janes paused on the board sidewalk outside to instinctively take in the activity on the street. As he was hitching up his gunbelt to a more comfortable position on his narrow hips, he saw the four riders coming down the street slow and easy-like. There was no mistaking Bull Giles's broad hulk or the tall, loose-riding form of Benteen Calder.

Janes stepped out of the light spilling from the saloon and into the shadows close by the wall, hissing to his men to come away from the door. The sight of the two men together seemed to confirm Boston's fearful suspicions, Janes realized. With Boston running scared, it was time to take matters into his own hands. Calder had come into town hunting trouble, but what he didn't know—Janes smiled coldly to himself—was that trouble had found him first.

“Hank, get across that street into the side alley by the land office. Young, get to a window upstairs.” Janes began dispersing his men with whispers. “Reynolds, you take that next doorway. It's Giles and Calder we want. Concentrate on them.”

It was cut and dried to Loman Janes. When you wanted a man dead, you killed him. Only a gunslick looking for a reputation walked out on the street and challenged a man. Most gunfights came two ways—
either with pistols drawn in the heat of an argument or with a planned attack on your enemy.

Benteen's gaze, always restless, traveled over both sides of the street. A cowboy entered a saloon ahead of them on the right. At the end of the block, a man crossed the street. Figures moved in the shadows outside the saloon, but all the activity seemed normal. Benteen was thinking ahead—to the bank and Judd Boston, if that's where he was. There was no sign of Woolie yet.

The curly-haired blond cowboy turned his horse up the side alley that would bring him onto the street by the land office. The buggy had been parked behind the bank, and a light had been burning in a rear window.

Woolie noticed the cowboy leaning against the corner of the building at the head of the alley. He didn't think much of it at first. The cowboy could have stepped into the alley to take a leak before riding home, but his stance was all wrong and he seemed to be watching the street. The ground was soft under his horse's feet, so it made little sound. A furrow of unease ran across Woolie's forehead. What was the man hanging around for if he wasn't taking a leak or havin' a smoke? As he came closer, he saw the glint of a gun barrel and had enough of a look at the man's face to recognize him for a Ten Bar rider.

With a yelled warning, Woolie drove his spurs into the horse's flanks and charged straight for the cowboy. He saw the man jerk his head around in surprise, then try to turn and bring his gun around, but Woolie's horse was shouldering into him and knocking him against the building. Woolie fired his gun at the man as the horse raced past him, and cursed when he missed.

When the yell came from the alley, Benteen yanked on the reins. A coldness went through him in quick, successive waves. Suddenly all the sounds were loud, all the smells were strong, and all the images on the street became sharp. In the split second of reaction
time, he was swinging his horse out of the center of the street just as a shot cracked the air. Then all hell broke loose.

On horseback, they made high-placed targets for the men in the shadows. Lead was whining all around him as Woolie broke into the street with his gun blazing to answer the fire from sidewalk areas outside the saloon. Benteen's horse staggered as he peeled from the saddle. A bullet slammed into his left shoulder, spinning him into the shadows of a building's front. He scrambled behind a wooden barrel, his left arm hanging limp.

His pulse was striking hard in his neck, his breath coming short and fast as Benteen scanned the opposite side of the street and tried to locate his own men. There was a lull in the firing, no more shooting blindly. Riderless horses cantered down the street to escape the noisy fracas. His left arm was useless, so he tucked his hand inside the waistband of his pants.

Jessie was sprawled flat on the ground between a horse trough and the raised board sidewalk. There was the scrape of a boot behind him. Benteen sent a short look to the sound. Bull Giles was dragging a leg as he tried to sit up in a recessed doorway. He couldn't see Woolie or Bob Vernon, but there weren't any bodies in the street.

If Woolie hadn't warned them, they would have been caught flat-footed. Chances are they'd all be lying in the street now. Benteen's gaze returned to the buildings on the opposite side of the street, searching for shapes in the night. He noticed a strange thing. All the windows in the second story of the saloon had lights in them—all but one. It was dark, and the window was open. Benteen could see the curtain blowing out. He fired three rounds into it and saw a man slump over the sill, a gun falling from his hand.

But he'd also given away his own position. Bullets whacked into the barrel and sprayed the building just above his head, pinning him down. Then Bull opened
fire along with Jessie, aiming for those bursts of flame across the street. Benteen made a break for the alley, crouching low against the building. There'd been a man waiting there to ambush them, so he came around the corner, expecting to be met. The cowboy was slumped forward on his knees, a hand holding the back of his bare head as he groaned and made an uncoordinated attempt to rise.

“My head …” he moaned, “I feel funny,” and slithered to the ground, unconscious.

There was the rattle of a buggy coming down the street. Benteen flattened himself against the alley wall. Confusion traveled through him when he recognized the man in the bowler hat and business suit driving the buggy. Judd Boston.