The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Vol 3 Part 15

He stared at me. "Well, I'll be durned!" he said. Ruthie was lookin' at me, her eyes all bright and happy.

"Man," I was sayin', "I figgered you fer the bandit, first off. I was figgerin' on gittin' you fer the reward, needin' that money like I was fer a ranch."

"An' I was tryin' to decide if I should take you' in or let you' go!" Sonora shook his head. Ruthie smiled at me and then at him.

"I'm going to try and fix it, Sonora," she said, "so he'll stay here. I think he'd be a good man around a ranch, some place where he could take a personal interest in things!" There was a tint o' color in her skin.

"Just what I think, ma'am." Sonora shoved back his chair. I got up and handed him the money belt. "And Ruthie," he continued, "if I was to ride by, you' reckon it'd be all right to stop in?"

She smiled as she filled my cup. "Of course, Sonora, and we'll be mighty glad to see you!"

SQUATTERS ON THE LONETREE.

Tanner was fastening the tailgate when Wiley Dunn saw him and started across the street. Algosa held its collective breath, for this was the first meeting between the owner of Hat and the nester who had squatted on Lonetree. For fifteen years Wiley Dunn and his hard-bitten Hat riders had ruled unchallenged over two hundred thousand acres of range, growing in wealth and power. Occasionally, ill-advised nesters had moved on Hat range, but the only nesters still there were buried. The others had departed hurriedly for parts as far away as possible.

Tanner was the exception. He had squatted on a small, rugged corner with a lovely green meadow where there was plenty of both timber and water. Dunn was a square, powerful man who walked with quick, knee-jerking strides. That Tanner defied his power nettled him. He could see no sense in the man starting a fight he had no chance of winning.

Tanner straightened as Dunn approached, and Dunn was startled to find his eyes piercingly black, although the nester's hair was a faded rust color. Tanner had a lean body, slightly stooped.

"Howdy, Dunn. Been aimin' to see you. Some of your critters been watering down around Sandy Point and getting caught in quicksand. You ought to have your hands throw up a fence."

"Thanks." Dunn was brusque. "Tanner, you have forty- eight hours to get off my range."

Tanner took a slow drag on his cigarette. "Now, Mr. Dunn, you know better than to tell me that. If I was fixin' to leave at all I'd have been long gone. That place appeals to me, so we're just a-stayin' on."

"Don't be a fool!" Dunn said impatiently. "You haven't a chance! My cattle have been grazing that range for years, and we're not about to give it up to some two-by-twice nester who comes driftin' into the country. I've got forty tough cowhands, and if you persist, I'll-"

"You'll get some of them hurt. Now look here, Mr. Dunn. You've got a sight of range out there, and it's all government land. I'm not takin' much of it, so you just leave me alone."

"Be reasonable!" Dunn was not anxious to fight. He had done his share of fighting. "You can't make a living on that piece of ground."

"I aim to raise some shoats," Tanner said, squinting against the sun. "Put me in a few acres of corn." He indicated the sacks in the wagon. "Got my seed already."

"Hogs? This is beef country!"

"So I figure to raise hogs. Folks like a mite of side meat, time to time."

"You get off that land in forty-eight hours." Dunn was growing impatient. He was used to issuing ultimatums that were instantly obeyed, not to discussing them. He was also aware the whole town was watching.

"Look, Mr. Dunn, my folks and I like that little place. We can be right neighborly, but we can also be a mite mean, if pressed.

"We've got little to lose. You've got plenty. I don't want a fight, but if you start it I won't set and wait. I'll come after you, Mr. Dunn. I'll bring the fight to you."

Enraged, Dunn turned away, yet it was disappointment as much as anger. He had hoped there would be no fight, but if this man stayed, others would move in. None of them would make it and when they started to go hungry they would start killing his cattle. He had seen it happen before. Moreover, the man baffled him. Tanner should have been frightened or worried. He was neither.

"Boss," Ollie Herndon suggested, "let me take him? He's askin' for it."

"No, no!" Dunn protested. "I won t have a man killed with his wife and children looking on."

"That's his wife's brother," Turner said, "they've only been married a couple of years."

"You let me have him," Herndon said. "He s too durned sure of hisself."

"Funny thing," Turner commented, "this is the third time I've seen that wagon in town, but I've yet to see tracks comin' from his place."

"What's that mean?" Dunn demanded.

"You figure it out, Boss. I surely can't."

Despite his determination to rid himself of the nester, Dunn knew the man would be a hard nut to crack, and it would be apt to create quite a stir if there was a killing. And there could he. Tanner had built his house of stone right against the face of a limestone cliff in the sinall valley of the Lonetree, a place approachable only from the front. Tanner was reputed to be a dead shot. Yet there was a way-catch him in an open field.

Hat made its try the following day. Eight riders slipped close under protection of the wil- lows, then charged. Tanner was in plain sight in the open pasture, nothing near him for shelter but a few scattered rock piles, bushes, and trees.

"Got him!" Ollie yelled triumphantly. "Now we'll show him!"

They rushed first to cut him off from the house, then swept down upon him. Only he was no longer there. Tanner had vanished like a puff of smoke, and then a rifle boomed. A horse went down, spilling his rider; another boom, and the hat was knocked from Ollie's head. As the riders swirled past where they had seen Tanner they found nothing, absolutely nothing! It was unbelievable.

The angry riders circled. "Shots came from those rocks," one maintained.

"No, it was from that clump of brush."

A rifle boomed from the house, and one of the horses started pitching wickedly. When the horse ceased bucking, a scattering of shots caused them to scatter in flight. Hastily, they hunted cover.

"It ain't possible!" Ollie protested. "We all seen him! Right out there in plain sight!"

At daybreak the following morning, irritated by the report of the previous day's events, Wiley Dunn was up pacing the floor. He walked around the wide veranda, and something caught his attention. Three large watermelons lay on the edge of the porch, beside them a sack of roasting ears.

Pinned to the sack was a note: Figured these could go well with beef. Better keep your outfit to home. They got kind of carried away with their horses.

Wiley Dunn swore bitterily, glaring at the melons. Sobering a little, he decided that did look mighty tasty. Ollie Herndon's report worrying him. Dropped from sight, Ollie said. Obviously the mountain man had heen concealed in the brush, habit ivlii hadn't they found him. Ollie was no pilgrim. He should have been able to smoke him out.

Three days went by before they attacked again. Ollie led this one, too, and he took seven men. They rode to within a few hundred yards, then concealed their horses and approached on foot. They did not talk, and they heel waited until it was good and dark before they began their approach. They could see the lights in the cabin, and they started across the field through the gra.s.s, walking carefully. They were halfway across when Ollie suddenly tripped, staggered, and fell.

Instantly a gun boomed. Flat on their faces in the gra.s.s, they lay cursing. That shot had been close, and it sounded like a shotgun. Ollie ran his fingers through the gra.s.s. "Wire!" he said with disgust. "A durned trip-wire!"

He glanced up. The lights were gone. Ollie was furious. Tlt;gt; he tricked by a d.a.m.ned nester! He got to his feet and the others arose with him. Red moved closer to Ollie.

"No way to get up there now. That ol' catamount's ready for us."

It was a fact understood by all. There was literally nothing else they could do. The stone house was situated in such a position that one had to cross the meadows to approach it, and the corrals, stock, and hay were all in a box canyon entered from beside the house. To get nearer without being heard was no longer possible, and shooting at the stone house would simply be a waste, as well as dangerous. It was a thousand to one against their scoring a hit, and their gun-flashes would reveal their positions, making them good targets in the open meadow.

Disgusted, they trooped, grumbling, back to their horses and rode hack to the ranch. Wiley Dunn was irritated. The continued resistance of Tanner was not only annoying and disconcerting, but was winning friends for Tanner. Even his own lawyer made a sly comment on it, but to Dunn it was not amusing. He had hoped that Tanner could be pushed off without any real bloodshed, but it appeared that the only way to be rid of him was to kill him.

Ten years ago he would not have hesitated, but the times had changed, and people were looking askance at big outfits running rough-shod over people. He was tempted to turn Ollie Herndon loose, but hesitated. There should be some other way. If he could only catch Tanner on the road and destroy his place while he was gone.

Somehow the story had gotten around that Dunn's hands had failed in an attack on the Lonetree nester and he had repaid them with watermelons. The next time Dunn appeared in town Ed Wallis asked, "How were the melons, Wiley? Didn't upset your stomach, did they?"

Dunn's smile faded. "That nester's askin' for it. He's been warned to get off my place!"

"It ain't like it was, Wiley. Why don't you let him be"

"A man like that might prove to be a good neighbor. He seems a decent sort."

"Look, Ed, if I allowed a farmer to stay on that place my range would he over-run by squatters. Besides, in a bad year I'd need that water."

Wallis shrugged. "It's none of my affair, although folks are saying that with two hundred thousand acres you should let a man have enough to live on. As for water, you'd have plenty of water, and gra.s.s too, if you didn't over-graze. You've got more cattle on that gra.s.s than it can carry."

"You tellin' me my business? I've been in the cow business twenty-five years, and no small potatoes store-keeper is going to tell me how to do it."

Ed Wallis turned abruptly. "Sorry I spoke to you, Dunn. It is none of my business. You handle your own affairs." He returned to his store.

Wiley Dunn stared after him, angry at Wallis but even more angry at himself. What was he getting mad at Ed for? They had been friends for fifteen years. But that talk about carrying too much stock was stupid, although, in a year like this when he was going to be in a tight for feed, it might make sense. It was that d.a.m.ned nester's fault, he decided. If Tanner hadn't moved onto that range he would have been.all right.

He started along the street to the post office, and was just turning in at the door when Tanner and his wife came out. Tanner was no more than thirty at best, his wife a good ten years younger, a quietly pretty girl whose eyes widened when she saw him. That she was frightened angered Dunn even more. What kind of a person was he supposed to be, that a young woman should he afraid of him? What had Tanner been telling her?

"Tanner," he said abruptly, "have you moved yet?"

Tanner smiled. "Why, howdy, Mr. Dunn! No, we haven't moved and we don't plan to. That's government land, Mr. Tanner, and you've no rightful claim to it. On the other hand, I've filed on it for a homestead. All we want is to make a livin', so leave us alone, Mr. Dunn."

People were listening, and Wiley Diinn was aware of it. There was such a thing as prestige, and by simply telling the Tanners they might stay on undisturbed he could have established a reputation of another kind; on the other hand, he had lived so long with the psychology of the feudal baron it was not in him to change quickly. This Tanner had to be put in his place.

"Now you see here, Tanner. I am not going to fool around any longer. You're on my water and I want you off. You get off now, or you'll answer to me. I'll send my men around to take care of you."

"What's the matter, Mr. Dunn" Tanner's voice was suddenly soft, but something in it brought Wiley Dunn up short. "Can't you fight your own battles? Have you been hidin' behind Ollie Herndon so long you don't remember what it means to get a little dirty?"

Wiley Dunn stared at Tanner. Not for years had anyone dared challenge him. Not for years had he had a fight of any kind. He was a fairly chunky man who had won many a rough-and-tumble fight in years gone by, but there was something about Tanner that warned Dunn he would he hard to handle. Yet Dunn had harl the reputation of being a fighter, and he had won it the hard way.

"I don't mix in dirty brawls, Tanner. It won't be a matter of fists if I come after you."

Tanner, was not listening. "Mr. Dunn, I have never hunted trouble with any man, although here and there trouble has come to me. I've never hunted trouble with you, but your boys have attacked me twice.

"Now, Mr. Dunn, I've always thought I'd never have to kill another man, but if it is guns you want it is guns you can have. Right now, right here, this minute, if you want it that way. I'm carrying a gun, Mr. Dunn. Are you?"

Wiley Dunn felt b.u.t.terflies in his stomach. Maybe he was getting old. "No," he said honestly, "I am not carrying a gun, but-"

Sheriff Collins had been watching and then he stepped in. "All right, break it up! There will be no talk of guns while I'm sheriff of this county." Collins looked at Tanner, his expression harsh. The sheriff was a cattleman himself. "Do you hear that, Tanner?"

"I hear it," Tanner replied calmly, "but while you're at it, you tell Dunn to keep his men away from my place. They've attacked me twice, with guns."

"I know nothing about that," Collins replied stiffly. "If you want to file a complaint, I will act upon it."

"I've always fought my own battles, Sheriff, but I would like to call your attention to something. You were standing here listening when he threatened me and ordered me off land on which I have legally filed. If there is a court case I'll certainly have you called as a witness."

He turned to his wife. "Sorry, honey, I didn't mean to keep you waitin'."

Slowly the crowd dispersed. Only Collins and Dunn remained. For a few moments nothing was said, then Dunn spoke. "I wish the d.a.m.ned fool would move off that place! I don't want trouble, Jim, but I need that water."

"You've got water elsewhere. You've a lot of land, Wiley. Maybe you should pull in your horns."

"And let him whip me?"

"Can't you see, Wiley, Tanner ain't tryin' to whip you. He wants to stay. Why don't you slap him on the back and tell him if he gives you a piece of side meat from time to time he can stay."

There was good sense in what Collins advised, and Collins was a good man. "But I can't let him get away with this, Jim. He called me to my face. n.o.body has done that since the Powell boys."

Wiley Dunn had killed the Powell boys, all three of them. He had been fourteen years younger then, but he was still, he told himself, a tough man.

"You're asking for it, Wiley, but let me give you a word of advice from a friend. Don't get the idea that Tanner is easy. He ain't."

On his way back to the ranch, Wiley Dunn mulled that over, and he had to admit his impression was the same. There was something in Tanner's manner that warned Dunn that the man was no pilgrim. And what was that Tanner had said? That he did not want to kill another man?

Suddenly he remembered what Rowdy or somebody had said about there being no tracks leaving Tanner's place. What could that mean? His curiosity aroused, Dunn turned the bay off the trail to the ranch and cut across the hill to the county road. It took him only a few minutes to find the tracks of Tanner's returning buckh.o.a.rd, his saddle horse tied behind. For three miles he followed the tracks and then, suddenly, they were gone.

Puzzled, he reined the bay around and rode hack. Crushed gra.s.s told him where Tanner had turned off, and he followed the tracks over a low hill and alongside a dry wash. He was now not more than five miles from Tanner's cabin, but separated from it by the bulk of Wildhorse Mesa, a huge block of basaltic rock some four hundred feet high by eight miles long, and at least two miles wide. If this was the route Tanner took to his home, it was far out of the way.

Turning back, Dunn reached the trail and started for the ranch. Frowning, he considered what he had learned. It seemed stupid for a man to go so far out of his way to avoid trouble on the trail, yet going over the mesa was an impossibility. It was true, he had never skirted the mesa on the north, but he had been within a quarter of a mile many times on the south side, and the steep talus slides ended in an abrupt cliff, at least a hundred feet of sheer rock.

Maybe he was being a d.a.m.ned fool. After all, Lonetree lay far from the home ranch and they had rarely watered there, holding it rather for emergencies than otherwise. He could let it go and never miss it. Irritably, he shook off the thought. The land was his, and he was going to keep it.

Had he persisted in trailing Tanner he would have had a further surprise. In such broken, rugged country, even a man who has lived and ridden there for years sometimes misses things. Had he been skirting the mesa on foot, something no cowhand would dream of doing, he would have discovered it was not, as it seemed, a continuous wall.

A few days after Tanner had completed the building of the stone house in Lonetree Canyon, he had taken his rifle and ridden out to hunt for a deer. Picketing his horse on a patch of gra.s.s, he had taken his rifle and walked up a tiny creek toward its beginning at the mesa's base. He drank from the spring, then straightened up and turned west. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he realized he was looking at a break in the wall of the mesa. Moreover, there was a dim game trail leading from the spring back into the notch. The trail entering the opening went in parallel with the mesa's wall, which was fractured, leaving one point of rock extended along the face of the mesa so that from a short distance away it appeared to be one unbroken wall.

Following the dim trail through talus and broken rock, and pus.h.i.+ng through brush, he found that it turned sharply south, and he was standing in a gap where the mesa was actually separated into two. Lying before him was a meadow at least a hundred yards wide. Following it, he discovered that at one place it became almost a half-mile wide, then narrowed again as it neared the north side. At the lowest point there was a small lake, almost an acre in extent.

The opening on the far side emerged in a thick stand of aspen, and in the distance he could see the smoke from Algosa. Not only had he discovered a private trail out of his ranch, but added grazing and a much shorter route to town.

From the Bar 7, a ranch several miles to the west, he bought twenty young heifers, and turned them into the gra.s.sy basin. Then he prepared a gate and fence at the far end, and another at his own end of the opening. Each time he used the route through the mesa he took care to cover his tracks, wiping them out near a shelf of rock so the tracks seemed to vanish on the rock itself.

Over the way into the aspen he placed a dead tree, still attached to its base by a few shreds of bark. This he could swing back and forth, making the route seem impa.s.sable to a buckboard.

When Morgan Tanner returned to the stone house, he helped Ann from the buckboard. For a moment she stood close to him. "Will they ever leave us alone, Morgan?"

"I believe they will. There will be trouble first, I think. Ollie Herndon is hunting trouble, with or without orders from Dunn. We've got to be careful."

During subsequent days he explored the rift in the mesa, finding several ice caves, and in one of them a stone hammer. He prowled the canyon, often alone, but sometimes with either Johnny Ryan or Ann. He did a lot of thinking about what he had discovered. Algosa was no longer just a cowtown Mines were being opened in the back country, although not very rich they had large ore bodies and gave evidence they might last, turning Algosa into a market town.

Morgan Tanner had come from mountain country where cattle were more valued for milk, b.u.t.ter, and cheese than for beef, but so far as he was aware the only milk cow in Algosa was owned by the postmaster.

What Dunn might he planning he could not guess, but the raids ceased. Tanner rarely went to town, and the palace was never empty. When he did go into town he met people, and he asked a few questions, listened a lot. Johnny Ryan, his wife's brother, was a hardworking youngster of thirteen. With Johnny helping, Morgan Tanner handled the cattle and strove to improve the place. When he did go to town he wore a gun, but avoided places where there might be trouble.

Several people made a point of telling him what Dunn had done to the Powell boys, and he knew they all expected a showdown between Dunn and himself. Yet none of the Dunn riders appeared, and as long as he was left alone, Tanner was satisfied.

The sun came out hotter each day, and the sky was cloudless. Wiley Dunn rode his sorrel out on the range beside his worried foreman. "What do you think, Ollie? Is the range all as bad as this?"

"There's places that are better. Back up in the breaks and in the deepest canyons. The water holes haven't slacked off too much yet, except that one down to Spur. That's gone dry."

There was silence, and Herndon asked cautiously, "Boss? D' you reckon we might sell a few head? Ease up on the gra.s.s a mite?"