Cornish poised the chair, watching the man’s gun slide out, watching the cunning fox look that slid across his face.
Slowly the gun came out, rasping on the leather, inch by inch. Then the man’s arm jerked swiftly and Cornish stepped toward him, with the chair above his head. The gun exploded in a coughing gush of flame and the chair was coming down. It smashed and splintered against the flesh and bone beneath it. One leg came off and spun along the floor, kicking up a spray of sawdust. A rung came loose and clattered to the boards.
Cornish stepped back, with the wreckage of the chair dangling in his hands. The red-haired man reeled to his feet, stood unsteadily, rocking on his heels. Cornish stepped in, swung the chair again. The man dropped like a pole-axed ox.
Cornish stopped, picked up the gun and tossed it across the bar to Steve.
Squint clawed his way erect beside the bar, stood clinging to it with one hand, while he wiped the blood out of his eyes with the other.
“Why the hell,” demanded Steve, “don’t you go ahead and finish off the dirty coyotes? They came in asking for it.”
Cornish shook his head.
“Guess they had enough.”
But even as he spoke, he saw Squint’s hand streaking for the holster, saw the glint of metal flashing in the light.
Cornish flung the battered chair with all his might, then lunged to one side. The gun roared and a window crashed with a muted sound as the bullet smashed the glass.
The chair slammed into Squint and staggered him, sent him reeling back along the bar. Cornish dived, arms looping for the legs of the reeling man. One arm missed, but the other caught and he hugged the legs against his chest, carried the yelling Squint to the floor with him.
Quickly Cornish sprang to his feet. He saw his antagonist rising in front of him. Blued steel flashed in a vicious arc and Cornish ducked, caught the blow of the smashing six-gun on his shoulder, swung his right with the hunched power of a pivoting heel behind it. His fist scraped Squint’s elbow, angled down against the ribs, skidded across them, slammed into the stomach. He heard the whoosh of the breath going out of the man before him.
Cornish leaned against the bar, gasping for breath.
The doorway, he saw, was crowded with watching faces, while others peered through the windows, men pushing one another to get a better look. News of the fight in the Longhorn bar apparently had spread rapidly through the little town of Silver Bow.
Titus had crawled against the bar and propped himself against it. The red-haired man lay still in the center of the room.
Squatted on top of the bar, Steve was talking to Titus.
“Make one move for that gun, Titus, and I’ll put one through your brisket.”
The bartender blew fiercely through his nostrils.
“This fight,” he announced to the crowd, “has been fair so far and I’m plumb set on seeing that it keeps on being fair.”
Cornish pushed himself away from the bar, picked up another chair, spoke to Squint Douglas.
“I don’t just fight for fun,” he said. “Don’t fight often, but when I do, I fight for keeps. What’s your pleasure, Squint?”
Squint stared sourly at him, dabbing at his bloody beard.
He didn’t answer Cornish, spoke to Titus instead. “Let’s get going, Jim.”
Slowly Titus heaved himself erect, stooped to pick up his hat. He socked it on his head and tottered to the door.
“Maybe,” suggested Steve, “some of you gents would get Red out of here. He clutters up the place.”
Two volunteers came in, lifted the unconscious man and carried him out. The others streamed into the saloon.
Steve hopped off the bar, stood back of it.
“Drinks are on the house,” he said.
Slowly, Cornish swung around, walked to a card table in the back of the room, sat down on a chair. Suddenly he felt tired.
The thing that he feared had come and he’d won the first round, but this, he knew, was no more than a mere beginning. After this the Tumbling K would be out for blood. The trio who had walked in the door a while ago had meant to rough him up, to scare him out of town. Next time they would play for keeps.
Maybe Anderson out in the Yellowstone country had won the first round, too. But Anderson had disappeared. Back in Jacobs’ office, there was little doubt as to what had finally happened.
Most of the crowd had drifted away—only a few had gone up to the bar. Even one on the house had been no attraction when staying there and drinking might have been construed as approval of what had happened to the three men from the Tumbling K.
Got the town in the hollow of their hand, thought Cornish bitterly. One big cow outfit rules the whole damn country. Even those nesters out on the Cottonwood had been scared to death. It had taken some fast talking to make them even admit that they wanted barb wire.
One man came slowly from the bar, drink in hand, crossed the room and stood in front of Cornish’s table.
“You don’t scare easy, son,” he said.
“Hell, no,” said Cornish, shortly. “There were only three of them.”
The man turned around and went back to the bar.
One by one they drifted away and the room was empty.
Steve came out from behind the bar and sat down across from Cornish.
“You stuck out your neck,” said Cornish. “You shouldn’t have done that, using the gun on them.”
Steven laughed a little bitterly.
“I’m sick of the job, anyhow,” he said. “Time to be moving on.”
He drummed his fingers along the table.
“First time anyone stood up to the Tumbling K,” he said. “First time anyone ever pushed them around a little. They won’t like it, Charley. They’ll come loaded for bear next time. You better buckle on a gun.”
Cornish shook his head. “My job is selling wire,” he said. “Not fighting. Besides, I won’t be around long. The nesters are having a meeting tonight at Russell’s.”
“To decide whether they’ll buy the wire or not?”
“That’s the idea. And they better buy it, or they won’t be here next year. Without the wire, the Tumbling K will push their stock down into the valley and every nester will be starved out.”
The bartender shook his head. “There’ll be fresh blood on the wire,” he said slowly.
Cornish got up, walked to the bar and came back with a bottle and two glasses.
“Feel like I need that one on the house,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have offered it to them,” Steve declared, moodily. “Look at the ones that turned it down. Spooked of their own shadows, that’s what’s the matter with them. The Tumbling K gang has run this town too long. Every one of them jumps ten feet high whenever Titus snaps the whip.”
“Titus just the foreman, ain’t he?”
“That’s everything he is,” said Steve. “Fellow by the name of Armstrong, Cornelius Armstrong, owns the spread. Ain’t here except a week or two each summer. Lives somewhere in the east.”
“Titus just as good as owns it, then, so far as running it is concerned.”
Steve gulped his drink and nodded. “That’s the way it is, Charley. And he’d cut his own grandma’s throat if it put ten dollars in his pocket.”
Cornish downed his own drink and got up.
“I owe you for one chair,” he said.
“Ah, forget it,” snapped Steve.
He twirled the glass in his hand, considering. “It was worth a chair,” he decided, “to see them three bullies get the hell beat out of them.”
Chapter Two
Hanging by Moonlight
The campfire glowed brightly in the dusk, a speck that stood out like a too-low star in the gentle swells of the heaving prairie.
Cornish saw it first when he was a mile or two away, lost it w
hen the trail dipped down into a swale. And he wondered who would be building a campfire out there when town was so close and darkness was just falling.
The dusk was deeper and the fire glowed brighter when he topped the next swell, and riding across the level land, he saw the canted top of the small covered wagon that stood beside the fire—the covered wagon with the canvas gleaming rosy-white in the reflection of the leaping flames, the scraggy shape of two old crowbaits grazing at their picket pins, the hunched, black figure of a man with a tattered hat bending over the frying pan and coffee pot.
The man hailed him as he drew opposite the fire. Cornish swung the horse off the trail, trotted it toward the wagon.
The man straightened up beside the fire and Cornish saw that he was as much a crowbait as the horses. His clothes were little more than rags that hung about his scrawny frame, his hat was something that any other man would have thrown away many years before. The haggardness of his face showed through the ragged, unkempt beard that hung almost to his chest.
“Good evening,” said Cornish.
“The peace of the Lord be on you,” the scarecrow replied.
Startled, Cornish sat in the saddle, staring at the man.
“A preacher?” he asked.
“That’s right, my friend. I carry the Word to strange corners of the earth.”
“Nothing strange about this corner of the earth,” protested Cornish.
“Any place that has not heard the Word is strange,” the old man told him. “This Silver Bow, now, it has no church?”
Cornish shook his head. “I don’t believe it has. Five saloons, but not a single church.”
“And no man of God?”
“That’s right,” said Cornish. “Not a single preacher.”
“Then,” declared the scarecrow, “it is the place for me.”
“What denomination?” asked Cornish.
The old man made a gesture that was almost contempt. “I just heard the call and went. I said to myself, if old Joe Wicks can do anything that will please the Lord, he’ll bust a gut a-trying.”
Loco, thought Cornish. Loco as a pet coon.
“And you, my friend,” the old man asked. “What might be your calling?”
“Me?” said Cornish. “I’m just a barb wire salesman.”
“You’ll be riding back this way?”
Cornish nodded.
“Going to a meeting down in Cottonwood valley. Make me or break me.”
“Wonder would you do something for me,” asked the preacher.
“If I can, I will,” said Cornish.
“Keep an eye peeled for a little bucket, will you? Must of bounced out of the wagon. Looked all over and I can’t find it. Used it to cook my oatmeal in.”
“Sure will.”
“Wouldn’t want to step down and have a cup of coffee?”
“Can’t stop,” said Cornish.
He reined the horse around. Back on the trail, he looked behind him, saw the ragged old man standing outlined against the fire, with one arm raised in farewell.
Cornish kept watch for the bucket that had fallen from the wagon, but his thoughts were on other thing, were running along the trail ahead of him to the meeting down at Russell’s cabin, where the nesters of Cottonwood valley would decide whether or not they would buy the wire to fence in their valley against the ranging herds of the Tumbling K.
Swiftly Cornish ran over in his mind the men he could depend on. Billings and Hobbs and probably Goodman. Russell was for it, but not as enthusiastic as he might be. Old Bert Hays was against it because he said it would only stir up trouble with the Tumbling K. And a lot of the men would listen to what Bert had to say.
Molly might have helped, but she wouldn’t listen to him, Cornish thought. She had a way with Bert. Orneriest man in the whole dang valley, his neighbors said of Bert, but that gal of his’n can twist him around her finger.
Selling wire was tough work—and dangerous, at least out here where the big cattle outfits regarded wire as the devil’s doings, looked upon it as something that barred the way to watering places, cut off pasturage they had called their own by the right of usage. Wire was the thing that would doom free range and the cattlemen weren’t having any of it when they could do anything about it.
Sometimes they did unpleasant things, thought Cornish. Unpleasant things had happened to Anderson and Melvin. And not only them alone, but other barb wire men who had run up against the antagonism of the cattle barons.
The horse trotted down a slope and Cornish heard the sound of trickling water—a little unnamed stream that ran into the Cottonwood five miles or so below.
The trail leveled off and ran beside the stream. Bunches of cottonwoods loomed up, their bushy tops black against the stars. The horse’s hoofs clopped through the trail dust with a muffled, drumming thud. On the hills above a coyote yapped and far off an owl chuckled over some quiet joke.
A dark shape moved beside a cottonwood and Cornish pulled the horse to a halt, half swung across the trail.
“Make a move,” said a voice from the shadow, “and I’ll plug you sure as hell.”
For a moment dark panic swirled inside Cornish’s brain, then smoothed out. No use of running. No use of trying to fight back, for he had no gun. Just wait and see what happened.
Horses moved from beneath the cottonwood and blocked the trail. Metal gleamed in the starlight and the men were black shapes watching him.
“Going to a meeting?” one of them asked and Cornish, remembering the voice back in the saloon, recognizing the angular shadow that sat upon the horse, knew that it was Titus. The other two riders sat silently.
Titus chuckled viciously. “There ain’t going to be no meeting, Cornish.”
“Nice of you,” said Cornish, “to ride out and tell me.”
“You’re too damn smart,” snarled Titus. “We’ll take that out of you.”
“With a rope,” said one of the other men as he moved behind Cornish and forced his hands behind his back.
“Steady,” snapped Titus. “Stay right where you are.”
His gun made a threatening motion.
The ropes bit into Cornish’s wrists, bit and burned with the savage strength of the man who pulled them tight and tied them.
“Titus,” said Cornish, half in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Titus, “but it won’t do you any good to squall. We’re going to haul you up and leave you hanging there. You can crawl all you want to and it won’t help you none.”
Cornish fought for calmness, made his tongue move in a mouth that suddenly was dry as cotton.
“You can hang me,” he said, “and a dozen others like me, Titus, but you won’t stop the wire. It’s coming, sure as God made green apples, it’s coming out into this country to hold your cows where they belong. It’s going to mark the land that’s yours and the land that’s the other fellow’s and when it comes guns won’t be worth a damn against it.”
A harsh, biting loop was flung out of the darkness behind him, brushed his face and settled on his shoulders.
“You talk too much,” rasped Titus savagely.
The rope jerked tight and for a single instant Cornish felt the blind rush of overwhelming fear. His muscles tensed and his feet moved swiftly, but the gun that Titus held jammed itself into his belly and he stopped, stood rigid—rigid with a night-born terror talking in the wind-rustling of the cottonwood above him, in the murmur of the creek that hurried down its stream bed.
He clamped his teeth and felt the muscles of his jaws go stiff. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t beg or whine. That was what these men wanted—a show before they hanged him. A little laughter before they strung him up.
The rope jerked tight again for an instant, eased up for a second and then tightened into a steady pull that was tugging at his body. They had thrown the rop
e over the lowest limb of the cottonwood, he knew, and were holding it taut.
A voice asked. “Shall we let ‘er rip?”
Titus holstered his gun. “Swing him up,” he said.
The rope tightened with a savage yank and Cornish tried to cry out as a band of fire burned around his throat, as his neck and shoulder muscles screamed with wrenching pain—but his tongue was leaden and there was no breath to yell with and the world was spinning in a giddy dance of stars and tree tops.
His unbound feet danced on empty air and he strained for an instant to tear his hands free of the rope that held them, his body twitching and quivering, mind fighting against the strangling black mist that rolled in from the stars. His lungs burned and his mouth gulped air that could not reach the lungs.
The mists of darkness rolled in wispily and clung to him and seeped into his mind, so that his thoughts were dull and he knew that his body was twirling slowly on the rope that held it off the ground.
The stars blinked out and the wind in the cottonwood was a roaring sound that thundered in his brain—a roaring sound that suddenly was staccato, like a series of explosions.
The ground came up and hit him and the rope loosened about his neck and his starving lungs drew in great gulps of air. Slobbering, whimpering, dazed, he crawled along the ground, hitching himself along like a twisting snake, one thought only in his mind—to get away from the tree that had held the rope.
The moaning of the wind in the cottonwoods came back and his eyes came open. He flopped over on his back and saw the stars burning in the sky, burning with an impish, flickering light that made a glittering dance.
A footstep crunched nearby and he tried to crawl, but he was too tired.
A voice said: “Where are you, Charley? Where the hell have you gone to?”
Cornish sat bolt upright and croaked, his battered throat refusing to form words.
The man moved through the night, scuffing through the grass, his figure looming darkly.
“Steve!” croaked Cornish.
The bartender knelt down, loosened the rope, flung it over Cornish’s head.
“Nicked one of the dirty sons,” he said, “but they got away.”