Sudden--Troubleshooter (A Sudden Western) #5 (4 page)

‘
Yu had any trouble with
him?’

‘
Not directly,’ Harris told
him. ‘A few nuisance raids. Wheat field s flattened, steers
stampeded, a couple o’ horses stolen. Nothin’ big. We complained to
the Marshal, o’ course, an’ although it ain’t his responsibility he
went to see Gunnison. The old rascal claimed he knowed nothin’
about it.’

‘
How many men on the
Saber?’ Green wanted to know.

‘
About twenty-five, all
told. Gunnison, his son Randy – a misfit if ever one was born – a
cook, an’ his riders. Last year or so he’s taken on’ a couple o’
jaspers who know more about guns than cows or I miss my guess. I
reckon that’s some o’ Randy’s doin’.’

‘
How far apart are yore
people up here?’ was Green’s next query.

‘
Not far, Jim, not far.
Reb, here, is our nearest neighbor. His brand is the Star an’ Bar’
– he chuckled – ‘Reb’s from Virginia.’

‘
I didn’t reckon that was
an Irish accent,’ grinned the cowboy.

‘
It ain’t that, for shore,’
replied Johnstone.

‘
Reb’s about five miles
east o’ here,’ continued Harris. ‘His land is next to Stan Newley’s
Circle Diamond. South o’ them lies Terry Kitson’s Running K spread.
The other one is Taylor’s Lazy T. He’s to the northwest, about six
miles, not far from the river. Yu saw that, o’ course.’

‘
That’s the one that runs
east o’ town a mite. We crossed a small creek, too, on the way up
here.’

‘
That’s Borracho Creek. Mex
for “drunkard”.’

Green and Philadelphia
looked their interest, and Harris explained, ‘The way she is right
now, yu’d put her down as a little trickle, one o’ them “two yards
wide an’ two inch deep” cricks. But yu noticed the crick
bed?’

Green nodded. ‘She’s a
flash stream?’

^‘
Yo’re right, my boy. One
rainstorm up in the mountains an’ that little crick turns into a
ragin’ monster that’ll take a full-grown tree, root ’er up, an’
toss her fifty yards in five seconds, an’ kill a grown man in half
that time. Yu, boy!’ He pointed at Philadelphia. ‘You stay away
from that crick, yu hear me? If it looks like rain in the hills, yu
get a good fifty yards from there afore yu stop
runnin’.’

‘
I’ll remember, sir,’
Philadelphia promised him.

‘
An’ dang me if I aim to
keep on callin’ yu that stone-breaker of a name. Yu mind if I
shorten yore moniker to Philly?’

The boy shook his head, smiling. At this
moment Susan Harris came out of the house to collect their coffee
mugs and to tell them that supper was ready.

‘
Yu boys’ll want to wash up
afore supper,’ said Harris, rising. ‘We can talk some more
afterwards. I’ll show yu where yu can leave yore gear. Tomorrow we
can take a look at the country, an’ I’ll introduce yu to the rest
of our people up here.’

Green stood, and his youthful partner
followed suit.

His eyes kept straying
constantly to the doorway through which Susan Harris had
disappeared, although he tried hard to conceal his interest from
those nearby.

‘
Smack atween the eyes,’
Green told himself. ‘Pore old Philadelphia. Life won’t be no bed o’
roses for yu, my young friend. I got a hunch that there’s a li’l
lady who’ll let yu chase her plenty afore yo’re caught.’

The look in the kid’s eyes
told him, however, that it was a chase he would gladly
join.

THE
NEXT day Jake Harris saddled up a horse, and the three men
rode across his land to Newley’s Circle Diamond, stopping only to
wave down at Reb Johnstone, who was working in the corral outside
his compact, if somewhat rickety, old frame house. Newley turned
out to be a small, nervous, dark-haired man of perhaps fifty with a
tendency to start sentences which he never finished. He stammered a
welcome to them, and they stayed long enough to drink coffee with
Newley before moving on southward to Kitson’s Running K. Kitson
turned out to be a heavily built man with a thatch of silvering
hair. His smile was broad and friendly, and he was delighted to
hear of Green’s encounter with Dancy.

‘
Been waitin’ for the day
someone would trim that jasper’s hair,’ he chortled. ‘Would’a’ done
it myself afore now, but Jake keeps tellin’ us to stay outa trouble
with the Saber.’

‘
Yu got a nice place here,’
remarked Green. ‘Yu runnin’ many head?’

‘
I don’t run cattle,’
Kitson told him. ‘My specialty is horses. I got about sixty head.
Sell ’em to the Army.’

‘
Good business,’ commented
Green. ‘D’yu lose many?’

‘
Allus
did lose one or two to the odd war party or long
rider
lookin’ for a change
o’ hoss,’ Kitson told them. ‘Lately it’s got so I lose a couple of
head at a time. Never
enough to get me real
mad; just enough to make me wish Lafe Gunnison would fall down a
hole an’ break his stubborn ol’ neck.’

‘
Yu ever see anyone
actually liftin’ yore stock?’ was Green’s question.

‘
No,’ interposed Harris,
‘they’re too clever for that. We never do more than find the odd
track here an’ there. We’ve tried trailin’ them, an’ allus lose ’em
up in the Mesquites. The pine needles are so thick up there a
‘Pache couldn’t trail an elephant.’

‘
Yu run this place alone,
Mr. Kitson?’ asked Philadelphia.

‘
Not exactly, son,’ was the
reply. ‘I got a hired hand, a big dumb Swede who don’t understand a
word I say. We share the work. He leaves it an’ I do
it.’

They rode off, after inviting Kitson over to
the Harris house for supper that evening. They had already told Reb
Johnstone to bring Stan Newley over. These two, who ran the
smallest spreads and were, in fact, more like farmers than
ranchers, concentrating upon wheat and barley crops rather than
livestock, shared the work on their two places and had no hired
hands.

They reached Taylor’s
spread at noon, and shared the rough lunch that Taylor and his two
men were preparing when they arrived. Taylor was a short, compactly
built man with a noticeable Scots burr in his voice. His riders
were Jack Scott and Fred Peters; both men were tall, burned to the
color of leather on their hands and faces by years in the
saddle.

‘
Jack used to be on the
Saber, years ago,’ Taylor told his visitors. ‘He quit when Randy
Gunnison came back from Santa Fe.’

‘
Yu bet,’
said the slow-talking Scott. ‘That
hombre’d
make a saint
cuss.’

‘
An’ yu ain’t no saint,’
grinned Peters. ‘Yo’re right, though. Randy Gunnison gets my prize
for the least-necessary man I ever met.’

‘
He sure
ain’t got many friends,’ observed Green. ‘I ain’t heard a good word
said about him since I
come
to
this neck o’ the woods.’

‘
Unlikely
ye will, either, laddie,’ Taylor told him. ‘The boy is a complete
wastrel, an’ the despair o’ his fayther’s
life. Old Lafe Gunnison has washed his hands o’
the boy.’

‘
He seems to spend most of
his time gallivantin’ off to Phoenix or Tucson,’ Jake Harris added.
‘Or swillin’ rotgut with some floozy in town.’

‘
Strange, that,’ murmured
Green. ‘From what I’ve heard about old man Gunnison, he don’t sound
like a man who’d put up with that sort of shenanigans.’

‘
I reckon he’s just given
up on Randy, like everyone else in Yavapai,’ Scott put in. ‘His paw
gives him no money, so he’s allus in debt. What money he wins
gamblin’ he blows on women or booze.’

‘
Well, yu gentlemen o’
leisure mayn’t have much to do but I have,’ Alexander Taylor told
them, ‘so oblige me by washin’ yore crocks an’ dryin’ ’em afore ye
leave.’ He stamped out of the house, and in a few moments they
heard the steady chock-chock of his axe biting into the tree he was
felling. Scott and Peters winked at their guests, and followed the
old man out after washing their plates and cups.

‘
He don’t stand much on
ceremony, does he?’ gasped Philadelphia.

‘
Ah, take no notice, lad,’
Harris laughed. ‘That’s Alex’s way of avoiding hearin’ yu thank
him. He can’t stand anyone thankin’ him: just a quirk, I
guess.’

They washed their dishes
and trooped out of the house, mounting and riding across the yard
towards where the three men were working. ‘Watch this,’ chuckled
Jake Harris, and rode over to Taylor’s side. ‘We’ll look for yu
about eight, Alex,’ he said. The Scot nodded, without looking up
from his work. ‘And Alex’ Taylor looked up enquiringly. ‘Thanks
very, very much indeed for the lovely meal … hey!’

The last expletive was
occasioned when the Scot, with a broad grin, suddenly threw his
hands up under Harris’s horse’s nose. The animal, startled, tried
to rear and turn in the same moment, and Jake had his work cut out
to remain in the saddle. Taylor grinned at the watching
visitors.

‘
I’ll bet he told ye I
didn’t like bein’ thanked,’ he grinned. ‘Now ye know he was right.
Goodbye.’

And without a word he
returned to his ax-work, while Peters and Scott pounded each other
on the back at the
sight of Jake Harris
struggling to get his mount under
control.

‘
Hey, Jake!’ called Fred
Peters. ‘Don’t mention it!’

‘
Bah!’ snapped Harris, and
wheeled his horse out of the yard and across country towards home,
followed by his two new employees, broad smiles creasing their
faces.

Later that evening all of
the men that the newcomers had met that day were enjoying coffee in
Harris’s sprawling living room. A big hanging lamp cast a warm
light, and a fire crackled in the stone hearth, for the nights were
cooler up in these hills. The room was a pleasant one; on the
scrubbed floor several catamount pelts were scattered, and Susan
Harris’s touch was evident in the neat fringed cushions and the
frilled curtains and the shining brass vases full of mountain
flowers on the mantel above the fireplace.

‘
Boy, this is the life,’
enthused Fred Peters. ‘Any time yu want to come over to the Lazy T
an’ clean ’er up some, yu say the word, Miss Sue.’

‘
If yu wasn’t so dadblasted
lazy yu wouldn’t need to ask,’ put in his taciturn fellow
rider.

‘
If I worked any harder
they’d be nothin’ for yu to do,’ retorted Peters. ‘I never did
figger what yu do all day.’

‘
Mostly what yu oughta be
doin’ stead o’ jawin’,’ Jack Scott told him.

‘
Listen to him,’ grinned
Peters. ‘That’s why Gunnison tossed him off the Saber – couldn’t
get him to work any way at all.’

‘
This
Gunnison
hombre
,’ Green ruminated. ‘I can’t figger why he’s so set on havin’
yore land. After all, he don’t need it. Jake was tellin’ me
Gunnison owns all the land west o’ the river.’

‘
Just greedy, mebbe,’
offered Kitson. ‘Some men ain’t happy if they don’t own ever’thing
in sight.’

‘
Plain stubborn, more
likely,’ Newley said hesitantly. ‘He’s allus been …’ His voice
tailed off.

‘
Dang me,
Stan, if I ever hear yu finish a
sentence I’m
likely to pass out,’
laughed Harris. ‘Still, yo’re probably more’n half right.
Gunnison’s been in this country so long he thinks he’s some kind o’
tin Gawd.’

‘
I see Jim’s point,
though,’ Taylor said. ‘When ye think about it, there has to be some
reason for Gunnison wanting our land. I can’t just put my finger on
it, but it has to be something. He surely don’t need the
grass.’

‘
Tell me when all this
trouble started,’ Green suggested.

‘
About a
year, eighteen months ago, more or
less
,’
Harris
told him. ‘Gunnison roared an’ made a lot o’ noise when we first
filed on this land, but we had no trouble.’

‘
Then these nuisance raids
started?’ prompted Green.

‘
That’s right,’ Kitson told
him. ‘Jake had a couple of men working here, but they soon quit.
Couple of Saber riders roughed them up about a mile from the house.
They never would tell us who, but it had to be Saber.’

‘
We figgered it was
probably Dancy, but couldn’t prove anything,’ added
Harris.

‘
They rode all over my
wheat field one night,’ added Newley.

‘
Flattened a whole year’s
crop an’ I couldn’t—’

‘
Do a thang to stop them,’
finished Reb Johnstone. ‘Stan here, got a shot th’owed at him ev’ah
time he poked his haid outa the do’r.’

‘
Tom Appleby, he’d ride up
here, shake his head. Couldn’t find no trace o’ who done it,’
Kitson said. ‘I lost some horses. We trailed ’em to the edge o’ the
desert, but it was like tryin’ to trail flyin’ fish in the
water.’

‘
Any gold or silver in
these parts?’ was Green’s next query.

‘
Nary a trace, laddie,’
Taylor told him. ‘We get the odd desert rat pokin’ around in the
Yavapais, but nobody’s ever found enough to buy bacon. Yo’re away
off course if yo’re thinkin’ we’re sittin’ on a gol’
mine.’