That man, thought Benton. I know him from somewhere.
And then he knew. Madox. Old Bob Madox from the Tumbling A. Almost his next door neighbor.
He pulled the black to a halt and waited, wheeling in close to the buckboard when it stopped.
Madox looked up at him and Benton sensed the power that was in the man. Huge barreled chest and hands like hams and blue eyes that crinkled in the noonday sun.
Benton reached down his hand. “You remember me?” he asked. “Ned Benton.”
“Sure I do,” said Madox. “Sure, boy, I remember you. So you are home again.”
“Last night,” Benton told him.
“You must recall my daughter,” said Madox. “Name of Ellen. Take off that damn sunbonnet, Ellen, so a man can see your face.”
She slipped the sunbonnet off her head and it hung behind her by the ties. Blue eyes laughed at Benton.
“It’s nice,” she said, “to have a neighbor back.”
Benton raised a hand to his hat. “Last time I saw you, Ellen,” he said, “you were just a kid with freckles and your hair in pigtails.”
“Hell,” said old Madox, “she wears it in pigtails mostly now. Just put it up when she comes to town. About drives her mother mad, she does. Dressing up in her brother’s pants and acting like a boy all the blessed time.”
“Father!” said Ellen, sharply.
“Ought to been a boy,” her father said. “Can lick her weight in wildcats.”
“My father,” Ellen told Benton, “is getting old and he has lost his manners.”
“Come out and see us sometime,” said Madox. “Make it downright soon. We got a few things to talk over.”
“Like this foreclosure business?”
Madox spat across the wheel. “Damn right,” he said. “Figure we all got taken in.”
“How do the Lee boys feel?” asked Benton.
“Same as the rest of us,” said Madox.
He squinted at the black. “Riding an Anchor horse,” he said and the tone he used was matter-of-fact.
“Traded,” said Benton.
“Some of the Anchor boys are down at the Lone Star,” said Madox.
“Thanks,” said Benton.
Madox snapped his whip and the team moved on. Ellen waved to Benton and he waved back.
For a moment he sat in the street, watching the buckboard clatter away, then swung the horse around and headed for the Lone Star.
Except for the Anchor men and the bartender the place was empty. The bartender dozed, leaning on the bar. The others were gathered around a table, intent upon their cards.
Benton flicked his eyes from one to another of them. Jim Vest, the foreman, and Indian Joe and Snake McAfee across the table, facing toward him. Frank Hall and Earl Andrews and the one who had looked around. That one had changed, but not so much that Benton didn’t know him. Bill Watson was a younger portrait of his florid father.
As if someone had tapped him on the shoulder, Bill Watson looked around again, staring for a moment, then was rising from his chair, dropping his hand of cards face down upon the table.
“Hello, Bill,” said Benton.
Watson didn’t answer. Around him, back of him, the others were stirring, scraping back their chairs, throwing down their hands.
“I’m riding an Anchor horse,” said Benton. “I trust there’s no one who objects.”
Young Watson wet his lips. “What are you doing with an Anchor horse?”
“Got him off of Rollins.”
Vest, the foreman rose from his chair.
“Rollins didn’t show up last night,” he said.
“You’ll find him on the old cutoff trail straight north of where you live,” said Benton.
Bill Watson took a slow step forward.
“What happened, Ned?” he asked.
“He tried to shoot me in the back.”
“You must have give him cause,” charged Vest.
“Looks to me like someone might have given out the word I wasn’t to get back,” said Benton. “Got the idea that maybe the cutoff trail was watched.”
None of them stirred. There was no sound within the room. Benton ticked off the faces. Watson, scared. Vest, angry but afraid to go for his gun. Indian Joe was a face that one couldn’t read.
“I’ll buy the drinks,” said Watson, finally.
But no one stirred. No one started for the bar.
“I’m not drinking,” Benton told him sharply.
The silence held. The silence and the motionless group that stood around the table.
“I’m giving you coyotes a chance to shoot it out,” said Benton.
Watson stood so still that the rest of his face was stony when his lips moved to make the words he spoke.
“We ain’t got no call to go gunning for you, Benton.”
“If you feel a call to later on,” said Benton, “don’t blame me for anything that happens.”
For a long moment he stood there, just inside the door, and watched them. No one moved. The cards lay on the table, the men stood where they were.
Deliberately, Benton swung around, took a swift step toward the swinging door, shoulders crawling against the bullet that he knew might come.
Then he was on the street again, standing in the wash of sunlight. And there had been no bullet. The Anchor had backed down.
He untied the black, walked slowly up the street, leading the animal. In front of the bank he tied the horse again and went inside.
There were no customers and Coleman Gray was at his desk beyond the teller’s wicket.
The man looked up and saw him, slow recognition coming across his face.
“Young Benton,” he exclaimed. “Glad to see you, Ned. Didn’t know you were back.”
“I came to talk,” he said.
“Come on in,” said Gray. “Come in and have a chair.”
“What I have to say,” Benton told him, “I’ll say standing up.”
“If it’s about your father’s ranch,” said Gray, smoothly, “I’m afraid you don’t understand.”
“You and the Watsons engineered it.”
“Now don’t get your back up at the Watsons, son,” Gray advised. “Maybe it seems hard, but it was all pure business. After all, the Crazy H wasn’t the only one. There was the Madox place and the Lees. They lost their ranches, too.”
“Seems downright queer,” said Benton, “that all of this should happen just when beef began to amount to something besides hides and tallow.”
Gray blustered: “You’re accusing me of …”
“I’m accusing you of going broke,” snapped Benton, “and ruining a lot of folks, then starting up again.”
“It’s easily explained,” protested Gray, “once you understand the circumstances. We had so many loans out that we couldn’t meet our obligations. So we had to call them in and that gave us new capital.”
“So you’re standing pat,” he said.
Gray nodded. “If that’s what you want to call it,” he said, “I am standing pat.”
Benton’s hand snaked across the railing, caught the banker’s shirt and vest, twisting the fabric tightly around Gray’s chest, pulling him toward him.
“You stole those ranches, Gray,” he rasped, “and I’m getting them back. I’m serving notice on you now. I’m getting them back.”
Words bubbled from the banker’s lips, but fright turned them into gibberish.
With a snort of disgust, Benton hurled the banker backward, sent him crashing and tripping over a waste paper basket to smash against the wall.
Benton turned on his heel, headed for the door.
In front of the Lone Star the Anchor riders were swinging out into the street, heading out of town. Benton stood watching them.
“Ned,” said a quiet vo
ice, almost at his elbow.
Benton spun around.
Sheriff Johnny Pike lounged against the bank front, nickel-plated star shining in the sun.
“Hello, Johnny,” said Benton.
“Ned,” said the sheriff, “you been raising too much hell.”
“Not half as much as I’m going to raise,” said Benton. “I come back from the war and I find a bunch of buzzards have euchered the old man out of the ranch. I’m getting that ranch…”
The sheriff interrupted. “Sorry about the ranch, Ned, but that ain’t no reason to raise all the ruckus that you have. I was looking through the window and I saw you heave that banker heels over teakettle.”
“He was damn lucky,” snarled Benton, “that I didn’t break his neck.”
“Then there was that business,” said the sheriff, patiently, “of busting up the card game down at the Lone Star. You ain’t got no call to walk in and do a thing like that. You hombres come back from the war and you figure you can run things. You figure that all the rest of us citizens have to knuckle down to you. You figure just because you’re heroes that we got to…”
Benton took a quick step forward. “What are you going to do about it, Johnny?”
The sheriff scrubbed his mustache. “Guess I got to haul you in and put you under a peace bond. Only thing I can do.”
Footsteps shambled down the sidewalk and cracked voice yelled at Benton:
“Got some trouble, kid?”
Benton swung around, saw the scarecrow of a man hobbling toward him, bowed legs twinkling down the walk, white mustaches dropping almost to his chin, hat pushed back to display the worried wrinkle that twisted his face.
“Jingo!” yelled Benton. “Jingo, Pa said you left the place.”
“Your Pa is batty as a bedbug,” Jingo Charley told him. “Couldn’t run me off the place. Just come into town to get liquored up.”
He squinted at the sheriff.
“This tin star talking law to you?”
“Says he’s got to put me under a peace bond,” Benton told him.
Jingo Charley spat at the sheriff’s feet.
“Ah, hell, don’t pay no attention to him. He’s just a Watson hand that rides range in town. Come on, we’re going home.”
The sheriff stepped forward, hands dropping to his guns.
“Now, just a minute, you two…”
Jingo Charlie moved swiftly, one bowed leg lashing out. His toe caught the sheriff’s heel and heaved. The sheriff’s feet went out from under him and the sheriff came crashing down, flat upon the sidewalk.
Jingo Charley stooped swiftly, snatching at the sheriff’s belt.
“Danged nice guns,” he said, straightening. “Engraved and everything. Wonder if they shoot.”
“Give them back,” the sheriff roared. “Give them back or…”
Deliberately Jingo Charley tossed them, one after the other, into the mudhole that lay in the street. They splashed and disappeared.
“Guess that’ll hold the old goat for a little while,” said Jingo Charley.
He shook his head, sadly. “Shame to muddy up them pretty guns. Engraved and everything.”
III
The tangle of the Greasewood hills lay across the trail, soaring heights that shimmered in the heat of afternoon and short abrupt canyons that were black slashes of shadow upon a sunlit land.
Jingo Charley jogged his horse abreast of Benton. “Want to keep an eye peeled, kid,” he warned.
Benton nodded. “I was thinking that, myself.”
“Just because them Anchor hombres folded up back in that saloon,” said Jingo, “ain’t no sign they won’t get brave as hell with a tree to hide behind.”
“Can’t figure out that backing down,” said Benton. “Went in figuring on a shootout.”
“The Watson bunch will do anything to duck trouble now,” the old man told him. “Getting together a bunch of cattle to drive north. Some of their own cattle, I suppose. But likewise a lot of other stuff.”
“They’ll be starting soon?” asked Benton.
Jingo spat. “Few days. That is, unless something happens.”
“Like what?”
“Like if them cows got spooked and hightailed it back into the brush.”
“Someone’s up there,” said Benton quietly. “Someone riding hard.”
They pulled their horses to a halt, watched the horse and rider plunging down the tangled hill. The rider sat the horse straight as an Indian and the sun caught the flash of calico fluttering in the wind.
“It’s that gal,” yelled Jingo. “Old Madox’s daughter.”
Benton whirled his horse off the trail, touched spurs and tore up the hill. She saw him coming and raised an arm in a swift gesture.
She rode without a saddle, with her dress tucked beneath her, legs flashing in the sun. She had lost her sunbonnet and as she came opposite Benton, he saw the red welts across her cheeks where whipping brush had raked her face.
Benton leaned down and grasped the bridle of the blowing horse, pulled it close, asked sharply: “What’s the matter, Ellen?”
“They’re waiting for you at the Forks,” she gasped.
“Watson?”
She nodded, went on breathlessly. “They passed up on the road and Dad spotted them when we were driving through. But we made out as if we didn’t see them. Then when we got out of sight, we pulled up and unhitched.”
“You took a big chance,” Benton told her, solemnly.
She shook her head. “One of us had to ride back and warn you. And Dad can’t ride worth shucks without a saddle. Getting too fat. Me, I can ride any way at all.”
Benton scowled. “Sure they didn’t see you riding back?”
“No, they couldn’t have. I came a roundabout way. Through the hills.”
Jingo Charley looked at the heaving horse. “You must have done some riding.”
She nodded. “I had to. There wasn’t much time. I didn’t know how soon you’d be leaving town.”
Thinking of it, Benton felt shivers walking on his spine. There at the Forks the trail split three ways, the left hand one going to the Anchor spread, the right hand to Lathrop’s Heart ranch, the center one to the Crazy H and Tumbling A. The trail went steeply up a gorge to the high plateau where the trail divided. He and Jingo would have been walking their horses up the gorge, taking it easy. They would have been picked off like sitting birds by the hidden gunmen.
“They’ve got their horses down in the mouth of Cow Canyon,” Ellen was telling them. “One man guarding them. I saw them when I went past.”
Jingo Charley grinned wickedly. “Plumb shame,” he said, “to set them boys afoot.”
Benton said gravely: “Maybe you’d ought to go back, Ellen. The way you came. That way you’d be in the clear before anything could happen.”
“I thought maybe you would want to go with me,” said Ellen. “There isn’t any reason why you have to tangle with them.”
“Can’t pass up a chance like this,” Jingo Charley declared, with finality.
Benton considered. “We can’t duck out on a thing like this,” he said. “We got to fight them sooner or later and it might as well be now. There’s only two things to do. Fight or run.”
Jingo spat viciously. “I ain’t worth a damn at running,” he declared.
“Neither am I,” said Benton.
The girl slowly gathered up the reins.
“Be careful,” cautioned Benton. “Don’t let them see you. We’ll wait a while so that you can get through.”
She wheeled her horse.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Ellen,” Benton said.
“We have to stick together,” Ellen told him, simply.
Then she was pounding away, back up the tangled hill.
Jingo Charley stared a
fter. “Saved our hair, that’s what she did,” he said. “Lots of spunk for a gal.”
They waited, watching the heights above them. Nothing stirred. The day droned on in sun and sound of insects.
Finally they moved on, skirting the trail, heading for the mouth of Cow Canyon.
Jingo Charley hissed at Benton. “Almost there, kid. Take it easy.”
“What’s that?” Benton suddenly demanded. Something had gleamed on the heights above them, something dancing like a sunbeam all at once gone crazy. And even as he asked it, he knew what it was.
“Look out!” he shouted at Jingo Charley. With tightened rein and raking spur, he plunged his horse around.
A rifle cracked where the sunbeam danced and smoke plumed on the hillside. Another gun belched at them from just below the first.
Benton spurred his horse and the animal, leaping in fright, went tearing through a clump of whipping brush, skidded over a cutbank, went clattering up a rise.
Ahead of him, Benton saw the old cowhand, urging his horse into a dead run; behind him he heard the thunder of galloping horses, the hacking cough of handguns.
Bullets whispered through the brush around him, some of them so close he heard the whining whisper in the air.
Jingo Charley lurched in the saddle, swayed for a moment and then was riding on. Benton saw a bright red stain spring out upon his sleeve, just above the elbow.
Benton snaked a quick look behind him. Riders with smoking guns were spread out in the brush. A branch caught him across the face with stinging force as he clawed one gun out of the holster.
The horse stumbled, caught itself and then went on. A bullet droned like a lazy bumblebee above Benton’s head.
Twisting in his saddle, he pumped his gun, feeling the jerking jumpiness of it in his hand. The leading Anchor man sailed out of his saddle, flying over the horse’s head, a whirling tangle of flying arms and legs. The horse whirled swiftly, frightened by the sight of a man in mid-air in front of him, crashed into the second rider, upsetting the plunging horse to send it rolling down the hill.
A yell of triumph was wrenched out of Benton’s lungs. The other Anchor riders shied off and Benton’s horse reached the ridge top, was plunging down the slope, stiffened forefeet plowing great furrows in the ground.
Jingo Charley was far ahead, almost at the bottom of the slope, swinging his horse to head for a canyon mouth. Benton hauled at the reins, brought the black around to angle down the hill in an effort to catch up with Jingo.