Ride the Man Down (14 page)

Courteen said mildly, “That's a hard thing Ballard did to Garretson over those cattle.”

“Yes,” Priest said.

“Your cattle, too, weren't they?”

Priest hesitated, and Red said in a friendly voice, “Hell, I'm just tellin' you what Garretson told me. He was on the prod the other night.”

Still Priest didn't say anything, and Red decided to get down to business. “How you goin' to get 'em back, Priest? Does Ballard aim to treat you different on account of Lottie?”

Priest said firmly, “That's no business of yours.”

“You mean he won't make an exception.” Red smiled faintly and murmured, “Not Will Ballard, if I know him.” He looked sharply at Priest now. “He can't hold 'em under the law. You know that.”

Priest relented a little and nodded.

“How bad you want 'em back?” Red drawled.

Priest studied him a moment and then murmured dryly, “Personally, I never take an order unless I can deliver the goods. It's a good rule to follow.”

Red smiled; he was understood. “I can deliver.”

“How?”

“Take 'em away from him.”

Priest looked skeptical, but he said, “And what's your share for doing the job?”

Red laughed now. “Not one damn penny, friend.”

Priest scowled. He put his thin hands on his hips and spread his legs a little and studied Courteen closely and finally said, “That's hard for me to understand.”

“Not if you saw what happened in Ten Mile the other night.” A faint angry flush came to his face as he thought of it, and he said grimly, “Will Ballard wrecked my place. Just for the hell of it.”

“And you'd like to return the call?”

“I'd like to have an excuse to,” Red corrected softly. He rose and spoke to Priest in a low, earnest voice. “Look, Priest. I can't ride into Hatchet and brace Ballard. You know that. Kneen doesn't like anythin' about me and Ten Mile, and that's the excuse he'd need to close me out. But if I go to Hatchet and demand my own cattle that Ballard's holdin' illegally and he tries to stop me I'm within my rights.”

“Your cattle?” Priest said suspiciously.

“Make me out a bill of sale for those cattle,” Red said impatiently. “Date it yesterday. I'll write you out one and date it today, and you can hold it. I tell you, I don't want anythin' out of this except an excuse to get into Hatchet.”

Priest said slowly, “What if there's trouble?”

“Why do you think I've got my crew outside?” Red murmured. “Well, what about it?”

Priest clasped his hands behind him under his coattails and walked to the door. There was a set of scales by the door, and some ingrained love of order prompted Priest to shove the scale weight along the sliding bar until it reached zero. Then he stood there, nervously slapping the back of one hand in the palm of the other behind him.

He turned suddenly and came back and said, “What does Garretson say?”

“Whatever you say.”

Red watched him, knowing exactly what was in Priest's mind. His love of a dollar was battling with his reluctance to do business with a man suspected of whisky peddling and cattle stealing. But the thing that weighted the scales in his favor, Red knew, was that Priest believed himself within his rights. Ballard couldn't hold those cattle, according to law.

Priest made a wry face and shook his head. “I don't like this.”

Red said dryly, “I'm a black sheep, maybe, but the color don't rub off, Priest.”

Priest flushed. He hesitated a moment longer and then said curtly, “Come along. We'll sign the bills of sale,” and started for the door.

A profound pleasure was on Red's tough face as he followed him.

Joe Kneen slept late this morning. He lived alone in a single room at the Stockman's House, and waking up this morning had not been a pleasure. As he dressed he would pause now and then and stare at the drab paper on the wall, his thoughts raveling off at some remembered phrase of Bide's last night.

He went on into the hotel dining room. It was empty, and he took a table at a window that looked out onto the side street.

His breakfast, always the same, was brought him. He pushed the steak and potatoes around on the plate a few times and then shoved the plate away from him. He was not hungry and, from the way he felt, he didn't think he'd ever be hungry again. He drank his coffee, mulling over his conversation with Bide last night. The irony of his position was, in the last analysis, what discouraged him. He had believed a month ago with all his heart that Hatchet was breaking up and its dissolution should be hurried. For Joe Kneen had been one of the fifteen men who hit Boundary the day Phil Evarts did, and that night they had slept next to each other on the floor of the trading post for the Indians, the lone building in this country.

Joe remembered the first month here, how Phil Evarts left the saddle just long enough to rock up the monuments that were to mark his homestead. The rest of the time Phil rode, camping with other newcomers, listening to their talk, sharing their food, and all the time he was observing and scheming. He didn't come back to his homestead until he had chosen the range and set the boundaries of Hatchet, and it didn't matter at all to him in his fabulous arrogance that these boundaries blanketed the claims of dozens of other settlers. Phil was that way, and all the years Joe had known him he had ridden roughshod over other men, fighting, bribing, threatening, and taking, until everything between those original boundaries was his.

So Joe saw no wrong in breaking up Hatchet after Phil's death, saw no shame in siding in with Bide Marriner, who would do the breaking.

But now where was he? He wiped his mustache and rose and went outside, pausing at the desk to buy a cigar. Stepping down from the porch to the plank walk, it came to him that he must make up his mind about this today. Now. Either he must be honest enough to admit that Will Ballard's steadfast opinion that Bide Marriner was a greedier man than Phil had ever been was right, or he must side in with Bide. Joe Kneen, in his cautious way, held little brief for Will Ballard's wild ways, but they were preferable to Bide's. If he threw in with Will he could at least look a man squarely in the eyes, and that was his choice.

He crossed the street and nodded to the men lounging around the front of the Belle Fourche. There ahead of Kneen, his shoulder laid against the corner of the saloon, was a man he couldn't place instantly. And then it came to him that this was one of Will Ballard's new hands; he had ridden in the posse with them yesterday. His name, Joe remembered now, was Young, and when he came up to him Young nodded civilly and drawled, “You ready to ride, Mister Kneen?” Joe removed the cigar from his mouth and asked quietly, “Heard about Cavanaugh?”

Jim Young grinned disarmingly. “That's what I was tryin' to ask you.”

Joe knew a hard moment of doubt, and then he plunged headlong. It was the hardest decision he had ever made, and he didn't know he had made it until after he spoke.

“I'm going out to get him at Bib M today,” he said softly. “I'll bring him back alone late tonight. Can you tell Will that?”

Jim Young looked looked steadily at him, his eyes at once cautious and alert and skeptical. He didn't answer for a long moment, turning this over in his mind, and when he was sure it added up to what he thought it did he said, “I'll tell him.”

“Be sure and tell him,” Kneen said wearily, and he went on.

Jim Young watched Kneen's back for a long minute, still wondering if he had heard rightly. Then the overwhelming importance of getting this word to Will occurred to him, and he moved toward his horse.

He paused to let a man pass in front of him and heard a familiar voice say, “Where you been, kid?”

He looked up and saw Red Courteen standing there, grinning.

“Around some,” Jim Young said carefully. He hadn't seen Courteen since the night in Ten Mile when he and Mel were persuaded to move onto Hatchet.

“You and your brother have any trouble gettin' range?” Red asked.

Jim smiled. “Easiest thing I ever done,” he murmured. He dodged under the hitch rail and untied his horse, and Courteen, mildly curious, put his hands on the rail and said, “What happened with Ballard?”

Jim stepped into the saddle and said gravely, “I pulled his arm off and beat him over the head with it until he made me a partner.”

He pulled his horse around sideways to Courteen and pointed solemnly at the Hatchet brand on the horse's left hip. Courteen's angry glance fell on it, and he stared.

Jim Young winked gravely and moved out into the traffic of the street, and already he was casting about for the place to find Will Ballard.

Chapter 12

For the second time within a week Will rode the trails under Indian Ridge, and this time he did not care if he was seen. He rode boldly into the small hill ranches where men answered him sullenly until they learned his business. Then they invited him to see for himself, for none of them wanted to be accused of hiding the man who murdered John Evarts. Will spread the word and gave the warning, and the fact that he rode alone with the marks of his fight still on him impressed them. Hatchet finally was on the warpath, and they did not have Bide Marriner to stiffen their backs.

When Will finished the circuit he dropped back to Cavanaugh's place. There was a small chance that Cavanaugh still did not know Will was hunting him and had returned to his shack. Will didn't believe this, but it was a way of shoring up his patience. Sooner or later, if he was patient enough, somebody's careless word or glance, a track, a warm campfire would put him on Cavanaugh's trail. Until then he must wait and watch.

He dropped down into the valley where Cavanaugh's shack lay sometime during the night and came up on it as he had done before. This time, too, when he struck his match inside the shack he found it empty. He looked about him, noting the wreckage was not as he had left it. The table was propped upright against the wall, and the lamp was on it. He went over and lighted the lamp and saw the blood smeared on its base, and he knew Sam had placed it there. The wrecked bunk had been leveled out on the dirt floor, and its blankets were straightened out. Will took the lamp and stood over the bunk, and he saw the blood and the soot smears at the head of the blankets. He knew Sam had dragged himself to it and slept off his beating. He wondered idly about Sam, knowing his pride was as stubborn as his anger. He judged Sam would sulk for a time before he faced Celia and Hatchet again.

Will waited out the night in these blankets, and by daylight he was in the saddle again, headed for Kennedy's place.

It was here that Jim Young found him in midafternoon. To explain Kneen's message, Jim Young first had to tell him of the story current in Boundary—of how Cavanaugh had been forced in self-protection to shoot John, so had shot him in the back and fled to Bide to give himself up. The bald arrogance of the lie was still in Will's, mind when Young gave him Kneen's message. They were sitting on the porch, and Jim watched Will's face as he told him.

There was unbelief in it, and Will asked him to repeat the message, and he did. When he was finished Will stared off at the distant timber for several minutes, and when he returned his gaze to Jim there was a strange somberness in his eyes. “How did Kneen look?”

“Tired, I reckon. Fed up. Mad. I couldn't rightly tell.”

Will thought he knew, now. Kneen had gagged at the job ahead of him. When Will and Celia had talked to him he had shown plainly that he knew what might happen if Cavanaugh was caught and did not like it. Faced with it at last, Kneen had revolted, and Will knew that he had gravely misjudged Kneen and was sorry for it. And now Will knew what he must do and he did not like it either, knowing, nevertheless, he was going through with it.

He walked over to his horse and said, “You go back to Hatchet, Jim.”

“Sure you don't want me to side you?” Jim Young asked.

Will shook his head in negation and rode out.

He traveled steadily through the waning afternoon and dusk and into the early evening, and a short time after complete dark he came to the spot he had decided upon.

It was where the road from Bib M to town skirted a thick stand of pine timber. Across the road the land sloped gently down onto bare flats. The timber afforded a hiding place, while any rider passing him would be silhouetted against the open grassland that was gray in the dark night.

He sat beside his horse back in the timber, listening to the night sounds, his ears straining to catch the sound of approaching riders. He tried to think of other things, but his mind came back always to what was before him, and his thoughts were gray and bleak.

It was sometime around midnight when he picked up the sound of horses coming down the road from Bib M. He stepped into the saddle and moved over the deep, soft humus of pine needles to the edge of the timber above the road. His horse snorted softly, and he did not reprimand him.

And then the indistinct bulk of two riders slowly took shape on the road below him, and he put his horse down to the road too. The pair of horsemen stopped, and Will approached them slowly and said, “Joe?”

He heard Cavanaugh's quick, excited voice. “That's Will Ballard!”

Will reined up and said, “Give him your gun, Joe.”

There was a thud as something landed in the road, and Kneen's weary voice said, “I threw it in the road.” To Cavanaugh he said, “Pick it up, Ray,” and pulled his horse off the road.

For perhaps ten seconds there was utter silence, and then Cavanaugh yelled: “Joe! Joe! You can't do this! I've surrendered! Joe!”

He ceased talking, and Will said gently, “Pick it up, Ray. Only hurry.”

Cavanaugh's shrill voice again lifted into the night. “No! No! I won't take it. I've surrendered!” He pulled his horse over toward Kneen until Will saw their two horses merge into one dark bulk.