Страница 42 из 52
“Miss Kermitt,” McQueen said coldly, “is my boss. She’s also a lady. Don’t get any fu
The redhead chuckled. “Yeah, and the boss is a ladies’ man! He knows how to handle ’em!” Deliberately, he turned his back on Baldy. “Ever been a foreman on a spread like this, Dodson? Mebbe you or me’ll have us a new job.”
For an instant Ward hesitated, then he turned on his heel and walked into the bunkhouse. Bud Fox was loitering by the window. He straightened as McQueen came in. Ward saw that he, too, had been watching the pair.
“Don’t seem like they want to make friends,” Bud suggested, pouring warm water into the wash basin. “Like they might even want to start trouble!”
Ward glanced at the young cowhand thoughtfully. “What would be the idea of that?” he demanded.
Yet curiously he wondered over it. Certainly the attitude of the two wasn’t typical of the West. He glanced toward the house and his lips tightened. Jim Yount was a slick-looking gent. He was a smooth talker, and probably a woman would think him good-looking.
He sat down on his bunk and dug out the “makin’s.” Out there beyond the ranch house was a distant light. That light would be in Gelvin’s store, down to Ma
Supper was a quiet meal except for Ruth and Jim Yount who talked and laughed at the head of the table. Ward, seated opposite Yount, had little to say. Baldy, Bud and Te
Ward left the table early, and paused on the step to light a smoke. Kim moved up beside him.
“What goes on?” he asked softly. “Never seen everybody so quiet.”
Briefly, Ward explained. Then he added, “Yount may be a cattle buyer, but the two hombres with him ain’t ordinary punchers. That Red Lund is a gun slick if I ever saw one, and Dodson looks to me like an owlhooter.” He drew on his cigarette. “I’m ridin’ into town. Keep an eye on things, will yuh?”
“Shore thing!” Kim’s voice was dry, cold. “That Lund, I don’t like him, myself.” Then glancing at Ward. “Nor Yount,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO: The Drygulch
Gelvin’s store was closed, but McQueen knew where to find him. Swinging down from the roan he walked through the swinging doors into the saloon. Abel was polishing glasses behind the bar, and Gelvin was sitting at a table with Dave Cormack, Logan Keane, and a tall, lean-bodied stranger. They were playing poker.
Two stranger riders lounged at the bar. They turned and looked at him as he came in.
“Howdy, Ward!” Abel said. “How’s things at the Tumblin’ K?”
The two men at the bar turned abruptly and looked at him again, a quick searching glance. He had started to speak to Gelvin, and something warned him. Turning on his heel he strode to the bar.
“Purty good,” he said. “Diggin’ some stock out of the brakes today. Tough work. All right for a brushpopper, but me, I like open country!”
He tossed off his drink and watched the two strange riders in the bar mirror.
“They tell me there’s good range over beyond the Newtons, Gelvin,” he said. “Reckon I’ll go over and see if there’s any lyin’ around loose.”
Gelvin looked up sharply. He was a short, square-shouldered man with a keen, intelligent face.
“There’s plenty lyin’ around loose!” he said. “Yuh can have it for the takin’! That country’s goin’ back to desert just as fast as it can! Sand movin’ in, streams dryin’ up! Yuh can ride for a hundred miles and never find a drink . . . Why”—he picked up the cards and began to shuffle them—“old Coyote Be
The two riders had stiffened now, and were glaring, eyes hard, at Gelvin.
“Yeah?” McQueen suggested. “Who was the hombre what got the ranch? Did he say?”
“Shore!” Gelvin said. “Some card shark name of—”
“Yuh talk too much!” The voice was cold and ugly. The larger of the two riders stepped toward Gelvin’s chair. “What do you know about the Newton country?”
Startled, Gelvin turned in his chair. His eyes went from one man to the other, his face slowly turning pale. Ward McQueen had the bottle and was pulling it toward his whisky glass.
“What is this?” Gelvin demanded. “What did I say?”
“Yuh lied!” the big man said coldy. “Yuh lied! That country over there ain’t goin’ back! She’s good as she ever was!”
Gelvin was a stubborn man. “I did not lie,” he said sternly. “I lived in that country for ten years! I came in with the first white men! I know of what I speak!”
“Then yuh mean I’m a liar?” The big man’s hand spread over his gun. “Reach, cuss yuh!”
Ward McQueen turned in one swift movement. His right hand knocked the bottle rolling toward the second rider as he turned, and he kept on swinging until his right hand grabbed the big rider by the belt. With a heave of his shoulders, he swung the big fellow off balance and whirled him, staggering, into the smaller man who had sprung back to avoid the bottle.
The big man hit the floor and came up with a grunt of fury. He came up, and then he froze and his hands moved wide away from his gun butts. Ward McQueen was standing with a gun in his right hand, watching them.
“When a man wants to talk in this town,” Ward said, “he talks, and nobody interferes. Get me?”
“If’n yuh didn’t have the drop on me yuh wouldn’t talk so big!” the bigger man sneered.
Swiftly, Ward flipped his gun back into the holster.
“All right!” he said loudly. “Yuh want it . . . Draw!”
The two men stood facing him, their faces turning white under their beards. Neither of them liked the look of Ward McQueen. Both men knew gun handlers when they saw them, and suddenly they decided this was no time for bravery.
“We ain’t lookin’ for trouble,” the big one said. “Hollier’n me just rode into town for a drink.”
“Then ride out,” Ward said coolly, “and don’t butt into talk where yuh’re not needed.”
The two men walked sheepishly from the room, and Ward watched them go. Then he stepped back to the bar.
“Thanks, Gelvin,” he said. “Yuh told me somethin’ I wanted to know.”
“I don’t understand,” Gelvin said. “What made ’em mad?”
“That card shark?” Ward asked. “His name wasn’t Jim Yount, was it?”
Gelvin’s mouth gaped. “Why, shore! That’s right! How’d yuh know?”
McQueen smiled, but said nothing. The tall stranger playing cards with Gelvin looked up and their eyes met.
“Yuh wouldn’t be the Ward McQueen from down Texas way, would yuh?” the tall man asked.
“That’s right,” McQueen looked at the man. “Why?”
The fellow smiled engagingly. “Just wondered. I been down Texas way. Yuh cut a wide swath down thataway. I heard about that gang yuh run out of Maravillas Canyon. . . .”
Watchfully McQueen took the trail toward the Tumbling K, but he saw nothing of the two riders with whom he’d had trouble. Hollier. That would be the smaller one. Ward nodded thoughtfully. He recalled the name. There had been a Hollier who got away from a lynching party down in Uvalde a few years back. He trailed with an hombre named Packer. And the bigger man had a P burned on his holster with a branding iron.
What was Jim Yount’s game? These two were obviously in with him, as both had seemed anxious his name not be spoken, and had seemed eager to quiet the talk about the range beyond the Newtons.
The facts were simple enough. Yount had won a ranch in a poker game. Gelvin implied the game was crooked. The ranch he had won was going back to desert. He had, in other words, won nothing but trouble. What followed from that?