“That was you shooting, then,” squeaked Cornish. “Heard something that sounded like shots just before they dropped me.”
Steve’s knife sawed through the ropes that bound Cornish’s hands.
“Yeah,” said Steve, “I quit the job. Figured I might as well. Tumbling K boys would be out after my hide for what I done this afternoon.”
Cornish massaged his throat, trying to work out the burn and fever where the rope had been.
“Manage it down to the creek?” asked Steve. “Drink of water would do you good.”
“Got to get down to the Cottonwood,” said Cornish. “Something’s happened down there. Titus said there wasn’t going to be a meeting.”
“Seems you should have had enough for one night,” protested Steve, “without asking for any more.”
“They got me sore,” Cornish explained. “They tried to rough me up and they tried to hang me. Now there’re trying to mess up my wire deal.”
“O.K.,” agreed Steve. “O.K., I’ll let you have my horse to get down there and lend you a gun. And you use that gun—don’t hold back a minute if you get backed into a tight.”
Cornish rose shakily to his feet. “Guess you’re right, Steve. About time to start using a gun.”
He headed for the creek. “I’ll get that drink,” he said.
The bartender’s horse was waiting when he came back to the trail.
“Here’s the gun,” said Steve. “Buckle it around you and keep it handy.”
“Guess I owe you some thanks,” said Cornish.
“Not a one,” protested Steve. “Glad of the fun. Figured I’d better trail along behind you just to sort of check up. Them human rattlers out at the Tumbling K are liable to do most anything. Can’t trust them for a minute.”
Cornish swung into the saddle, headed down the trail. His throat still burned with a throbbing ache and it was a torture to turn his head. His brain still buzzed with a keening pain and his mouth was dry as the bitter dust that lay along the trail.
But within him a rage was growing—a cold and twisted rage against the Tumbling K, against Titus, against the old system of free range that said a man could keep all the land he could seize and hold.
Once wire fenced in the valley of the Cottonwood, the Tumbling K would be barred from the pasture and the water its herds had used for more than twenty years. Used by custom rather than by right, by six-gun power rather than by legal status.
The nesters hadn’t bothered them so much at first, for the punchers still threw the herds down into the valley despite the scattered cabins, bluffing their way in and out with the six-guns they packed. But the wire would make if different. Wire was a definite thing, a deadline, a sign of legal possession—something that marked off one man’s land from another man’s.
The trail broke free of the shaggy hills, came out into the wide valley of the Cottonwood, forked north and south. Cornish took the south fork.
A mile beyond he drew up before the huddled group of buildings that belonged to old Bert Hays. The place was silent and lightless.
A dog came tearing out of the barn, barking savagely. It reached Cornish’s horse and circled it, yapping viciously.
The cabin door slammed open and a man with a rifle stepped out—a man barefooted and clad only in his underwear.
“Hello, Bert,” yelled Cornish to make himself heard above the barking of the dog.
The gun muzzle, trained at his head, never wavered.
“So it’s you,” spat Hays. “Come down to raise some more hell in the valley.”
“Come down to see what happened,” declared Cornish. “Understand the meeting was called off.”
Hays yelled at the dog. “Shut up! Shut up before I take a club to you!”
The dog fell silent, trotted off, tail between its legs, sat down to watch from a safe distance.
Hays spat into the dust. “Yeah, it was called off.”
“Called off by the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.
“Don’t matter who called it off,” the nester bellowed. “None of your damn business who called it off. It’s been called off. We don’t want no wire. That’s all you need to know.”
Cornish leaned forward in his saddle. “They bluffed you out. They threatened you and you folded up. Every last one of you put your tail between your legs and crawled.”
The old man hauled back the hammer of the rifle. “Cornish,” he warned, “I’ve shot men for less than that.”
“You should have started on the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.
“All you care about is selling wire,” yelled Hays. “You don’t care what happens after that. You don’t care how many men get shot across that wire after you have sold it.”
“They sent three men to run me out of town this afternoon,” said Cornish, hotly, “and I ran them out instead. They just tried hanging me and that didn’t work either. You’re not the only one taking the risk in this deal of ours.”
“We’re the ones that got to go on living here,” yelled Hays. “We’re the ones that have to protect that wire after it is up. We decided we’d rather live at peace without no wire.”
“Live at peace!” Cornish shouted. “Man, don’t you know there’ll never be any peace along the Cottonwood until you call the Tumbling K—call them and make it stick. As long as you have the grass and water that they want, wire or no wire, you’ll never have any peace. You’re going to have to fight and you may as well fight over wire as anything else.”
“Get out of here,” screamed Hays. “Get out of here before I put a bullet in you!”
A swift figure stepped from the cabin door, reached out a hand, wrenched the rifle away from Hays with one quick motion.
Cornish lifted his hat. “Good evening, Miss Hays,” he said.
Her face was a white blur in the starlight, but he could tell from the poise of her body, the tilt of her head, that she was angry.
Her words bit like the swift lash of a snarling whip.
“I’m ashamed of you,” she said. “Ashamed of the both of you. Two grown men, standing here, yelling at one another like two alley cats.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” said Cornish.
“By God, I’m not,” Hays bellowed. “He can’t come riding in in the middle of the night and tell me my own business. He can’t make me buy his fence if I don’t want to buy it. He don’t care a hang about what happens after the fence is sold …”
“Father,” yelled Molly Hays. “Father you be still!”
The old man suddenly fell silent. The dog sat watching, ears cocked forward.
“You better go,” Molly said to Cornish. “All the others feel the same way my father does. The only way to keep the peace along the Cottonwood is to get along without your wire.”
“Jim Titus decided that for you,” Cornish told her, bitterly.
Her chin lifted. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Cornish, how we decided it.”
There was, he saw, no more to say, nothing more to do.
He lifted his hat again.
“Good evening,” he said and swung the horse away, riding toward the trail.
Chapter Three
You’ve Got to Shoot to Live!
The campfire beside the covered wagon of the traveling preacher was a beacon in the night and Cornish pushed his horse toward it, for the first time realizing that he was ravenously hungry, utterly fagged and filled with a thousand aches and pains.
Pulling up his horse, he wearily got down from the saddle. There were two men sitting in front of the blaze. One of them got up and walked toward him. It was Steve, the bartender.
“How did it go?” asked Steve.
Cornish shook his head. “The whole mess is in the fire. The Tumbling K has the nesters scared silly. They wouldn’t touch any wire with a ten foot pole.”
To his nostrils came th
e aroma of cooking coffee; he saw the battered, blackened pot keeping warm beside the coals. Joe Wicks was already slicing bacon into a pan.
“We sort of sat up for you,” Steve explained. “We figured you’d be coming back this way.”
“I wondered where you were,” said Cornish.
“Saw the fire when I went past the first time,” said Steve. “So when you took my horse I just hustled back here. Good a place to wait as any.”
Wearily, Cornish sat down before the fire.
“Find my bucket?” asked Joe Wicks.
Cornish shook his head. “Not a sign of it.”
He stared into the fire, felt the cold night wind blowing on his back.
Licked, he thought. Licked before I hardly got a start. Tumbling K just waited to see if I could get the nesters interested and then they gummed up the works. Didn’t want to mess around none unless it seemed I was getting somewhere. But I didn’t have a chance. Not even from the start.
“The only way,” he mumbled, “to sell barb wire in this man’s country is to lick the Tumbling K.”
“You made a good start this afternoon,” said Steve from across the fire.
“Sure, I know,” said Cornish, bitterly. “I licked three of them in a rough and tumble brawl and no one was more surprised than I was. But it’s more than that—a lot more than that.”
“I returned,” declared Joe Wicks solemnly, “and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise …”
“That’s the Bible,” explained Steve. “He spouts it all the time, chapter and verse. Never heard the beat of it.”
The bacon sputtered in the pan and in the darkness one of the horses pawed the ground. The wind fluttered the canvas top of the wagon, making a noise like beating wings.
Cornish nodded, feeling the warmth of the fire in front of him, smelling the bacon in the pan, hearing the rustle of the wind that walked among the grasses.
“Like her crisp or tender?” asked Joe Wicks.
Cornish did not answer. Both men stared at him. His head hung and his arms drooped across his knees.
“Sound asleep,” said Steve.
“Better get him laid out,” said Wicks, “before he pitches head first into the fire.”
Steve got up, stretched and yawned.
“Look, parson, wouldn’t have any drinking liquor around, would you? I left in such a hurry that I didn’t bring none.”
Wicks hesitated. “Carry a bottle of the stuff,” he finally admitted. “Awfully good for snake bites.”
“A snake just bit me,” Steve told him.
Wicks’ beard split with a grin. “Danged if I didn’t forget,” he said. “One bit me just a while back, too.”
Drumming hoofs pounding along the trail jerked Cornish from the blankets. Sitting upright beside the now-cold fire, he saw the rider tearing down toward him, bent low on the horse’s neck, urging the animal along with kicking heels and slapping reins.
He rubbed his eyes astonished at what he saw. For the rider was a woman. Her hair was flying in the wind and the gathered up dress fluttered behind her.
“Molly!” he shouted. “Molly, what’s wrong?”
He threw off the blankets and scrambled to his feet. The horse shied and the girl pulled up.
On the opposite side of the fire, Steve and Joe Wicks were sitting, rubbing their eyes.
“My father!” screamed Molly Hays. “They shot my father!”
She would have started up again, but Cornish strode out into the trail and seized the horse’s bridle.
“Take it easy, Molly,” he said. “Tell me what happened. Who was it that shot your father?”
She had been crying, for her face was tear-streaked, and she was ready to cry again.
“It was the Tumbling K,” she said. “They drove in a herd this morning—a big herd. Right across our wheat field. My father went out to stop them and they … and they …”
She swayed in the saddle and Cornish put out an arm to catch her, but she did not fall.
“Where is your father now?”
“I got him to the house, then I rode to get the doctor. That’s where I’m going now.”
A voice spoke behind Cornish, the cracked voice of Joe Wicks. “Look, miss, you’re in no shape to go riding into town. Why don’t you let one of us do it?”
“We could take you back to the place,” said Steve. “Maybe your father will need you.”
She looked at them for a long minute, then slowly nodded.
“Perhaps that’s best,” she said.
“Cornish will ride into town,” said Steve. “Joe and me will take you back.”
Cornish held out his arms and she slid into them. He let her gently to the ground and for a moment, swaying, she clung to him. Then she straightened.
Cornish seized the reins, vaulted to the saddle, hesitated for a moment.
“That bunch of cattle?” he asked. “Where are they headed?”
She stared at him for a moment, almost uncomprehending, then she spoke.
“Straight up the valley, heading for the other places.”
Cornish’s face stiffened into grim lines.
“It’s the showdown, then,” he said, tersely. “It’s the Tumbling K’s ace card. They’re moving in. That herd will wipe out everything in the entire valley and if the nesters try to stop it, they’ll be wiped out, too!”
He swung on the bartender. “Take Miss Hays back, Steve, quick as you can. Then hustle back to town with the wagon. I got an idea …”
Cornish kicked the horse into motion, went storming down the trail for Silver Bow.
With Doc Moore started on his way toward the Hays place, Cornish rode to the town’s lone hotel.
The street was quiet, almost deserted. A dog sitting in front of the Longhorn bar snapped lazily at flies. The black plume of smoke from a train that had left the station a few minutes before still trailed across the sky.
At the hotel desk a man with a gray hat and expensively cut suit was pounding on the floor with a gold-headed cane.
His voice, high and querulous, rang through the lobby.
“It’s an outrage. No bath. Why don’t you people get up to date out here? I’ve been on a long and dusty train ride and I want a bath. Not an hour from now. Right now!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Armstrong,” whined the clerk. “I’ll have some water heated right away, but it will take a while. Half an hour at least.”
“Don’t people ever bathe out here?” snapped the man.
The clerk didn’t answer and the man went on: “There was no one to meet me at the station. Fine state of affairs. And they knew I was coming, too. Did you see any of them around?”
“Titus and some of the other boys were in yesterday,” the clerk told him, “but I haven’t seen a sign of them today.”
The man turned away from the desk. Cornish stepped forward.
“I’ll carry Mr. Armstrong’s bags,” he offered. “I was going up, anyhow.”
Armstrong turned to face him and Cornish noted the pinched, squeezed face of a New England businessman. Lips thin and colorless, eyes the drab color of gray slate.
“Er—thank you, sir,” Armstrong said.
“Not at all,” said Cornish. “Glad to help you. What room, Jake?”
“Seventeen,” said the desk man, tossing him the key.
Cornish led the way up the flight of stairs, set down the bags and opened the door, then carried the bags inside.
Armstrong fumbled in his pocket. “Perhaps you’d have a drink on me?”
Cornish shook his head.
“Not a drink, Armstrong. Just a talk.”
Armstrong’s eyebrows went up and the colorless lips pulled straighter.
“I can’t imagine …”
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“You own the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.
“Yes, I do.”
“Know what’s going on?”
Armstrong’s face tightened, went a shade more chalky.
“Look here, young man. I don’t know what you’re driving at …”
“Murder,” said Cornish, tightly. “Or it will be before the thing is finished. Titus is driving a herd up the Cottonwood. Not across it, or into it, but straight up it.”
“The Cottonwood,” said Armstrong. “Let’s see—that’s where the nesters are.”
“So you knew about the nesters.”
“Naturally. Titus keeps me well informed.”
“And you knew what Titus planned to do?”
“Scarcely what he planned to do. I intimated to him that he could feel free to take whatever action he thought prudent.”
“I suppose it’s prudent to destroy the crops of all those people who are trying to make homes in the valley. Destroy their crops and kill any of them that try to make a fight.”
Armstrong flicked a dust spot from his sleeve.
“Frankly, I would say we’d be doing them a favor. This isn’t farming land, it’s range land. Farmers would starve to death. A good year now and then, maybe, but not often enough to make both ends meet. They’ve been brought here by the false idea that they can make a living. It’s the government that’s to blame, really, for opening up the land.”
His eyes narrowed until they were gray slits. “I can’t imagine, young man, why you should be so interested. Are you one of these—er—nesters?”
Cornish laughed shortly. “No. I sell barb wire.”
Armstrong stiffened. “Barb wire!”
“I see you’ve heard about me, too,” said Cornish. “Did you advise Titus to proceed prudently with me?”
Armstrong pounded the floor angrily with his cane.
“I’ve never seen much impudence!” he shouted.
“Mister,” said Cornish, “you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you figure you’re coming out here to ramrod this war …”
“I don’t know anything about a war,” Armstrong shouted at him. “I always come out here every summer, for at least a week or two.”
“O.K,” snapped Cornish. “O.K., if that’s the way you want it, but let me tell you something. Your men are messing up a deal of mine. I’ve spent a lot of time selling wire to those nesters out there and I’m not letting you and your Tumbling K ruin all the work I’ve done …”