The gun in front of him was a red eye winking in the haze and he felt the stir of buzzing lead snarling past his face.
His own gun was bucking in his hand, but he knew the shots were wild. His knees buckled and he took a slow step forward to regain his balance, watching the snarl on the misty face behind the winking gun of his antagonist.
Then the man’s face froze and his body stiffened. From across the gully came the crashing snarl of the heavy rifle. The man sagged in the middle, jack-knifing like a rusty and reluctant hinge. The gun slid from nerveless fingers and the knees gave way and the man was down, a huddled figure in the wind-whipped grass.
Awkwardly, Cornish holstered his gun, tried to wipe away the mist that clung against his face, saw the fluttering blue of the gingham dress running down the opposite slope.
“Molly!” he croaked.
He went down the hill to meet her on unsteady legs, his bullet-smashed shoulder a roaring pain that filled half his brain with the howl of monstrous winds.
Near the bottom of the slope, she caught him, a reeling robot of a man. He leaned against her, amazed at the strength that held him up, that guided him to a place upon the ground.
“Titus!” he croaked.
“Titus got away.”
“Molly.”
“Hold still,” she snapped at him. “I’ve got to get this blood stopped.”
“Molly, you got to warn the nesters. Titus will wipe them out. He won’t wait for nothing now that he knows about the wire.”
“Soon as I get you fixed up,” she said.
“Steve?”
“Stringing wire,” she said. “I made them do it. I’m no good at building fence, but I can use a gun.”
“You stayed back to keep those two pinned down?”
“That’s right,” she said, “but I didn’t do so good. Titus got away.”
Chapter Five
More Blood for the Wire
The match snicked against the stone and Cornish held it cupped in his one good hand. Squatting in the gully, he held the tiny flame close above the ground, moved it slowly to find the narrow-tired track of the wagon that had gone before him.
There it was, a deep rut in the earth, with the ragged edges of it still crumbling. Slowly he moved the match and saw the other marks, the skidding hoof-marks of horses fighting against the neckyoke to hold the dead weight of the load on the downhill grade.
Cornish tossed the match away and got to his feet, staring out into the vast bowl of darkness that was Cottonwood valley.
The wagon had come this way and somewhere down there in the darkness, working their way slowly across the Narrows, were Joe Wicks and Steve, stringing out the wire. Two men who had no interest in barb wire or nesters, laboring in the night to work out the valley’s destiny.
And was there any use, Cornish wondered—any use at all of stringing out that wire now that Titus had carried back the word?
Cornish shook his head, blundered down the trail, careful in the dark, left arm and shoulder swaddled in the white petticoat bandage that Molly Hays had fashioned. A target in the dark that the Tumbling K could aim at.
Stones rolled beneath his boots and he fought to keep his balance. Once his bandaged shoulder scraped against a tree and he doubled up with the pain lancing through his body.
Here, beneath the trees, the night was dark as pitch, although the valley ahead was faintly lighted by the shine of stars in the cloudless sky.
At the foot of the gully, he found the beginning of the fence, three strands of wire wrapped and stapled around a scrub white oak. One hand upon the strand, he followed it across the undulating terrain of the valley, a deep pride quickening in him at the feel of stretching steel. For although some of the intervals between the trees were long, the strands were taut and sang an excited song when he tapped his gun against them.
Up ahead, he knew, Steve and Joe were stringing the three strands simultaneously, using the wagon as a stringer and a stretcher. His feet hit something in the dark and he stumbled over it. Desperately he threw himself to land on his good shoulder, save the shattered left. Wind knocked out of him, he struggled to his feet, sought the thing that tripped him. It was the abandoned core of one of the spools of wire.
At the fence again, he found the splice in the wire and wondered. One of the men stringing that wire up ahead was a man who knew barb wire and it couldn’t be Steve. Steve had spent his life behind the bars throughout the West. It must be Wicks.
Standing beside the fence, he listened, and there was no sound of hammering, no buzzing in the wire as there would have been if it were being worked with at the other end.
Terror welled up in him and he hurried along the fence, crossing the swells, stumbling down into a thicket.
Out of the trees a dark figure rose and words came through the night.
“Stand right where you are and h’ist up your paws.”
Cornish skidded to a stop, raised his right hand high.
The man came warily toward him. “What’s the matter with the other hand?” he asked.
“Shot,” said Cornish, flatly.
“Cornish!” the other man whispered fiercely. “Damn my eyes if it ain’t the boy hisself.”
He moved forward and the starlight fell across the silvered beard, the slouchy, battered hat.
“Joe Wicks!”
“Hush yourself,” Wicks cautioned. “We are lying low. One of them damned Tumbling K riders just scouted through.”
“More than likely looking to see if there was any fence,” said Cornish. “Titus got away and told them about the wire.”
“He’d better not come messin’ around,” Wicks said fiercely, “or we’ll blow his bloody guts out.”
Cornish stared at him. “You don’t sound like a preacher, Joe.”
Joe spat and to Cornish came the smell of whiskey breath.
“Ain’t no preacher,” Wicks declared. “Never was no preacher. All of that was just a disguise. Me, I’m working for the same outfit you are.”
“Ajax!”
“Exactly,” said Wicks. “Seems there were too many accidents a-happening to the fellers selling wire, too many of them dropping out of sight and turning up missing. So they sent me out here to keep an eye on you. And when I got here I found hell starting in full swing, so I did the best I could.”
He spat again. “Reckon we got a chance to stop them?”
“If the nesters will back us up,” said Cornish. “Molly went down to warn them.”
“Great gal,” declared Wicks. “Got a lot of guts. Left her old man in the doctor’s care and came along with us. Said if outsiders, meaning us and you, could stand up to the Tumbling K, it was the least that she could do.”
Another figure came stealing through the trees. “The rider just went back,” he said. “We’d better start with that wire again, pronto.”
Steve came through the darkness, peered at Cornish.
“Figured you was dead,” he said. “Titus knocked you out of the saddle slick and clean.”
Wicks chuckled thinly. “Takes more than a little lead to stop an Ajax man.”
They stood together in the darkness, listening to the high, thin whine of the wind moving in the trees and walking through the grass. From the bluffs to the west an owl laughed irrationally. The stars were a glittering net strung across the sky.
“Hey, Joe,” whispered Steve. “Haul out that bottle. When a man’s come back from the dead, we gotta drink to it.”
Wicks shuffled his feet, dug into his back pocket. The hiss of glass sliding on denim came softly through the night.
“Quiet!” snapped Cornish. “Listen!”
They stood like frozen men in an attitude of attention. Faintly at first it came, then louder … the thunder of horses’ hoofs sweeping up the valley.
Steve’s voice a
lmost sobbed. “It’s them! And we ain’t got the wire strung!”
Cornish, listening, felt the cold weight of defeat dropping down upon him. Those hoofbeats were too far to the east … they would miss the fence entirely, would go on up the valley to catch the hesitating nesters before they had a chance to fight.
“We have to turn them,” he yelled and started to run. Steve clumped after him.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked at Cornish. “Come back, you fool! They will run you down.”
“We got to turn them,” gasped Cornish. “We have to get east of them and open up on them.”
He was out of the trees and running in the open, teeth clenched against the pain that lanced through his shoulder with every jarring step. Running a race with hoofbeats that thundered through the night, running a race with the sound of fury that was storming up the valley.
Behind him he heard the thumping of Steve’s feet and the quick, short breaths of the racing Wicks.
The ground opened beneath his feet and he was skidding down the banks of the Cottonwood, down into the water, wading across the stream, the water reaching to his waist, the suck of treacherous sands clutching at his feet.
He reached the opposite bank and clambered up in a shower of mud and crumbling clay, flopped face down in the grass and listened—and knew that they had won. The horses were west of the stream and they had outflanked them.
Slowly, confidently, his hand went back to the holster, pulled out the six-gun.
“Start shooting soon as you can see them,” he whispered. “Drive them into the fence.”
Steel gleamed in the starlight as Steve lifted out his gun and Joe Wicks, settling his body prone in the grass, was chuckling as he pushed his rifle forward.
Shadows suddenly were moving on the opposite bank, shadows that were silent except for the drum of hoofs, shadows highlighted by the gleam of stars on glittering rifle barrels.
Shouts rang out across the stream and the drum of hoofs was broken, became a threshing sound of snarled and frightened horses, like the writhing struggles of a wounded beast of prey.
Above the sound of hoofs came another sound, the thump and rumble of swiftly rolling wheels, the clank and jangle of a bouncing wagon bed. Out of the darkness loomed a whiteness like a dancing ghost, a blooming whiteness that jigged and tapped a rigadoon. Straight for the creek it came, then swerved and lumbered along the bank.
“It’s them damn crowbaits of mine,” yelled Wicks. “Running away, by jingo! I would of swore they didn’t have it in them.”
Six-guns crashed wickedly across the creek and bullets chugged angrily into the ground and whistled through the grass where the three men crouched. But above the crash of guns, above the stamp and scream of frightened horses, above the thump of the running wagon, came another sound—a threadlike sound that wove its way between the other noises—the high-pitched singing of unwinding stands of wire.
“We just put on some new spools when we had to quit,” said Steve. “That there team is unraveling them at a right smart clip.”
The wagon swept past on the opposite bank, the two crowbaits humping like animals gone crazy, the spools spinning on the upright stringer improvised on the wagon box.
Crouched low, gun held between his knees, Cornish worked with his one good hand, clicking cartridges into the cylinder. To his left Wicks’ rifle churned with a steady rhythm, while down the creek, Steve slung a stream of lead into the swirling shadows.
Tumbling K guns answered back, spitting muzzles flickering like dancing fireflies in the star-lit night. Bullets ripped past with an angry sound, questing death winging through the dark, hissing in the grass.
Suddenly Wicks screamed and staggered upward, a bear-like figure fumbling on wilting knees. The gun dropped from his hand and rattled down the creek bank and Wicks, doubling over, plunged after it, hit the stream with a splash and lay there, a sprawled and misty figure against the starry gleam of water.
Cornish staggered down the creek bank, bent above Wicks’ huddled figure. Even as his good hand reached out to clutch him, Cornish knew that Wicks was dead, that there was no life in that limp-sack body. Sobbing in his throat, he hauled Wicks from the water, laid him on his back, straightened a knee that was bent beneath him. The man looked up at him out of vacant eyes that held the gleam of stars.
Steve came striding down the bank.
“They hit the wire,” he said. “Ran into it full tilt. That will hold them for a while.”
Cornish nodded dumbly. “I heard them hit,” he said.
He straightened up and saw that Steve was staring at the limp body sprawled on the sand.
“It’s Wicks,” said Cornish. “They got him just before they went into the fence.”
He passed a hand before his eyes. “Remember, Steve, you said there’d be blood upon the wire?”
A running horse came toward the creek, galloping wildly, then sheered off and went down the valley. Listening, the two in the stream bed could hear the empty slap-slap of flapping stirrups and they knew that the saddle of the running horse was empty.
A single rifle bellowed through the dark. An angry yell went up and a six-gun barked. The rifle answered back and another one joined in. Six-guns rattled and a man screamed, a racking scream that shuddered through the sky and ended in a gurgle.
“The nesters!” yelled Steve.
“It’s about time,” Cornish said, bitterly, “that they were buying in.”
Steve looked at him searchingly. “It means we’ve won,” he reminded Cornish.
Cornish nodded. Yes, it meant he’d won. It meant that the order would go back to Illinois and the eyes would pop out of the dried-up skull that was Jacobs’ face. It meant that wire would ring the valley and cut up the fields and pastures. It meant that the Tumbling K would have to settle down and be content with what it had instead of running wild on the lands of other men.
For with nester rifles backing up the fence, the Tumbling K was through. It had made its play and lost. Its hole card had been too low.
But curiously it didn’t matter, now. For Wicks was dead and blood was on the wire. Wire cost too much, he thought. All over the west it’s costing more than it may be worth. For every rod of fence is paid for in blood and lives. For fence is revolution and revolutions don’t come without someone getting hurt.
He heard the splashing in the water and turned, saw Steve wading out and climbing the opposite bank. He opened his mouth to call to him but the man was gone.
To the west, along the fence, the rifles growled and snarled and six-guns hammered with sudden hateful chatter.
Cornish turned slowly, walking away from Wicks, following Steve across the stream. Halfway across the creek he heard the running feet on the bank above him. Then the man was hurtling over the edge and plunging down the bank to hit the water with a soggy splash.
Sputtering and spitting water he struggled to his feet, stood knee-deep in the stream, staring straight at Cornish. Tall, angular—a giant looming in the night.
Cornish stared back, frozen.
“So it’s you!” rasped Titus.
His hand was pistoning for his belt as Cornish drove forward, forcing his body through the resisting water with a strength he did not know he had. Diving for the legs of the man before him.
Starlight flashed on the weapon as it cleared the holster and at that moment, Cornish hit—his good right shoulder ramming into Titus’ knees, arm wrapping around the boots and clamping tight with a vicious wrench.
The gun flamed in a crash of thunder as Titus went over, slamming against the bank.
Cornish flung himself forward, a snarl rising in his throat. Titus’ foot came up and back, then shot forward in a vicious jab. Cornish tried to duck, but he was too late. The driving boot caught him in the chest and set him reeling back, feet sliding.
Titus was crouching
, hand groping blindly for the gun that had fallen from his grasp, making whining noises of haste and exasperation in his throat.
Cornish swept his own hand back to the waiting holster … and the gun was gone! The holster flapped empty at his side.
Cornish walked slowly forward, cautiously, fist ready.
Suddenly Titus’ body straightened.
Cornish brought his fist up fast, felt the jolt of it hitting flesh and bone, sensed the shiver that went through Titus’ body as the big man staggered back.
Cornish swung again and yet again, blows that started from his boot-tops and landed with an impact that made his arm a dead thing from the elbow down—blows that staggered Titus and kept him off his balance and drove him, step by step, ruthlessly and relentlessly, back toward the water.
It was not anger that drove Cornish—nor fear—nor confidence—but a plain and simple logic that it was his only chance, that he had to finish Titus fast or himself be finished.
Feet in the water, Titus tottered, hands clawing at the air in front of him, groggy with the blows that had battered at his body. Deliberately, mercilessly, Cornish aimed at his chin.
The blow smacked hollowly and Titus sank into the water with a splash.
Cornish let his arm fall to his side, felt the stinging of the cuts along his knuckles, felt the dull, dead ache that ran through the punished muscles.
“More blood for the wire,” thought Cornish, dully.
Slowly, painfully, he turned his back upon the stream and clambered up the bank.
Far to the west came the dull beat of hoofs, but otherwise than that the valley was silent. The guns were quiet and the men had gone. Tumbling K was beaten.
Cornish stumbled forward.
“Cornish!”
“Here I am,” he answered weakly.
He saw Molly coming through the gloom and stopped and waited for her.
From the look on her face and her outstretched arms, Cornish knew his fight had not been in vain.