Страница 46 из 52
Hazily he lifted his left hand. He lifted it waist high, staring at Yount. He rarely shot a gun with his left hand and was praying as he squeezed off the shot.
Jim Yount contracted himself suddenly in an agonized jerk and his face twisted more. McQueen squeezed the trigger again and Yount rolled over on his back. Both shots had hit him in the left side.
McQueen remembered Abel rushing from the saloon, and then Gelvin from his store. Ruth was ru
When he could see again, Ruth was bending over him, his head cradled in her arms. Kim Sartain was standing by the porch, the red horse behind him.
McQueen tried to sit up. “What—happened?” he gasped.
Kim shrugged. “Clean sweep, looks like.” He started building a smoke. “Charlie Quayle got to us, and we headed for the ranch. That Hollier hombre was there, and we smoked him out. He got Charlie. First shot. Then Bud Fox got him. I rode on into town while they were shakin’ the place down to see if there was any more there. When I come in, yuh had the job about done, only for Pete Dodson. Gelvin shot at him from behind the store, and that helped keep him busy. He missed one shot at you as I come up, and I rode up on him, got a couple of bullets into this before I rode him down. He’s dead.”
“Red Lund?”
“Got four bullets in him. Ready for Boot Hill. Yount’s alive and cussin’, but he won’t be long. He got two bullets into Rip, and Rip hit him once. You got him twice in the side, and burned him once. Packer’s dead.” Kim lighted his smoke. “Ward,” he said, “I been thinkin’ about the south range. Mebbe we should round up some cows and put ’em north of the creek for a while. Save that south grass.”
“Good idea,” Ward said. “If I’m still foreman.” He looked up at Ruth.
“You always were,” she said. “They told me you’d packed up and quit me. Then Yount made me fire Kim and the boys.”
Rip hobbled toward them, leaning on Gelvin’s shoulder.
“My name’s Coker, Ward. I was trailin’ Lund. Couldn’t figger no way to bust up Yount’s show unless I could get the straight of it from Miss Kermitt, so I faked that package to get ’em into town. I didn’t figger them to gang up on me like they done.”
Baldy Jackson and Bud Fox were loping toward them. When they reined in, Bud glanced at Ruth, then at Ward.
“Yuh know that old mossy horn, Ward? Found him while ridin’ in this mornin’! He’s got about thirty head wit him, back in the purtiest little valley yuh ever saw! Reckon he’s holed up there to stay!”
Ward looked up at Ruth, then gri
“I reckon I am, too!” he said. “I reckon he’s like me. So used to this range he wouldn’t be noways happy any place else!”
“Why even think of anywhere else?” Ruth asked softly. “I want you to stay, Ward. Always! I think,” she added, “you’d better take full charge after this!”
“Of everything?”
“Everything!” she said.
THE TURKEYFEATHER RIDERS
CHAPTER ONE: Trouble on the Range
Jim Sandifer swung down from his buckskin and stood for a long minute staring across the saddle toward the dark bulk of Bearwallow Mountain. His was the grave, careful look of a man accustomed to his own company under the sun and in the face of the wind. For three years he had been riding for the B Bar and for two of those years he had been ranch foreman. What he was about to do would bring an end to that, an end to the job, to the life here, to his chance to win the girl he loved.
Voices sounded inside, the low rumble of Gray Bowen’s bass, and the quick, light voice of his daughter, Elaine. The sound of her voice sent a quick spasm of pain across Sandifer’s face. Tying the buckskin to the hitchrail, he ducked under it and walked up the steps, his boots sounding loud on the planed boards, his spurs tinkling lightly.
The sound of his steps brought instant stillness to the group inside, and then the quick tatoo of Elaine’s feet as she hurried to meet him. It was a sound he would never tire of hearing, a sound that had brought gladness to him such as he had never known before. Yet when her eyes met his at the door her flashing smile faded.
“Jim! What’s wrong?” Then she noticed the blood on his shoulder and the tear where the bullet had ripped his shirt, and her face went white to the lips. “You’re hurt!”
“No—only a scratch.” He put aside her detaining hand. “Wait. I’ll talk to your Dad first.” His hands dropped to hers and as she looked up, startled at his touch, he said gravely and sincerely, “No matter what happens now, I want you to know that I’ve loved you since the day we met. I’ve thought of little else, believe that.” He dropped her hands then and stepped past her into the huge room where Gray Bowen waited, his big body relaxed in a homemade chair of cowhide.
Rose Martin was there, too, and her tall, handsome son, Lee. Jim’s eyes avoided them for he knew what their faces were like, he knew the quiet serenity of Rose Martin’s face, masking a cu
Even as he began to speak he knew his words would put him right where they wanted him, that when he had finished, he would be through here, and Gray Bowen and his daughter would be left unguarded to the machinations of this woman and her son. Yet he could no longer refrain from speaking. The lives of men depended on it.
Bowen’s lips thi
“No!” Sandifer’s eyes blazed. “There’s no harm in Katrishen if he’s left alone. No trouble unless we make it. I ask you to recall, Gray, that for two years we’ve lived at peace with the Katrishens. We have had no trouble until the last three months.” He paused, hoping the idea would soak in that trouble had begun with the coming of the Martins. “He won’t give us any trouble if we leave him alone!”
“Leave him alone to steal our range!” Lee Martin flared.
Sandifer’s eyes swung. “Our range? Are you now a partner in the B Bar?”
Lee smiled, covering his slip. “Naturally, as I am a friend of Mr. Bowen’s, I think of his interests as mine.”
Bowen waved an impatient hand. “That’s no matter! What happened?”
Here it was, then. The end of all his dreaming, his pla
“Who?” Bowen came out of his chair with a lunge, veins swelling. “Mont shot you? What for? Why, in Heavens’ name?”
“Mont was over there with the Mello boys and Art Du
Rose Martin flopped her knitting in her lap and glanced up at him, smiling smugly. Lee began to roll a smoke, one eyebrow lifted. This was what they had wanted, for he alone had blocked them here. The others they could influence, but not Jim Sandifer.
Bowen’s eyes glittered with his anger. He was a choleric man, given to sudden bursts of fury, a man who hated being thwarted and who was impatient of all restraint.
“You stopped them? Did they tell you whose orders took them over there? Did they?”
“They did. I told them to hold off until I could talk with you, but Mont refused to listen. He said his orders had been given him and he would follow them to the letter.”
“He did right!” Bowen’s voice boomed in the big room. “Exactly right! And you stopped them? You countermanded my orders?”
“I did.” Sandifer laid it flatly on the line. “I told them there would be no burning or killing while I was foreman. I told them they weren’t going to run us into a range war for nothing.”