High Desert Page 13

  Morgan grabbed a handful of his shirt and jerked him to a stop.

  “Coming here was your idea,” Morgan said. “Now you can answer a question. Why did Broad agree to sell us beef?”

  “I don’t know.” Cole tried to pull free. “I haven’t seen Broad.”

  Morgan shook him. “You paid Royce and Blazer to kill me, didn’t you?”

  Cole struck at Morgan, a fist stinging his cheek. Morgan hit back, a wicked right that slammed Cole against the wall. He wiped a sleeve across his bleeding nose, then his hand dropped to his pocket and he pulled a gun. Morgan jumped at him, gripping Cole’s right wrist with his left hand, twisting until Cole dropped the gun. He kept on twisting, bringing Cole’s body around until he cried out in agony. He kicked at Morgan, tried to hit him with his left.

  “If I didn’t make myself clear, I will now,” Morgan said.

  He hit Cole again, driving him back against the wall. Cursing, Cole lowered his head and drove at him. Made wild by fear and pain, Cole forgot anything he had ever known about fighting. He tried to stamp on Morgan’s toes. Drove a thumb at Morgan’s eye. Lifted a knee to get him in the middle. Nothing worked. Morgan was nowhere and everywhere, letting Cole’s charge wear itself out.

  When the wild fury in Cole had blunted itself on the hard rock of failure, Morgan sledged him on the point of the chin. Cole dropped his hands and shook his head. Then his knees gave and he fell. The door to Gardner’s office had been opened. Clay Dalton and his Nebraska friends stood knotted there.

  “Boot him, Morgan!” Dalton called. “Bust his ribs in.”

  Cole groaned and drove a foot at Morgan’s shin. Pain laced up Morgan’s leg. He caught Cole’s foot and dragged him out of Gardner’s office, the crowd breaking to let him through. He went on, with Cole cursing and twisting and trying to jerk free. His head rapped on a desk, and he cried out in pain again. Morgan took him on through the gate in the railing and out through the front door. He let the foot go then and, pulling Cole to his feet, swung him to the edge of the walk and cracked him on the jaw.

  Cole sprawled into the dust of the street. He sat up, sleeving dirt, blood, and sweat from his bruised face.

  “All right, Morgan,” he said thickly. “I’m licked, but you never made a bigger mistake in your life.”

  “Get out of town,” Morgan said.

  Cole came to his feet, lurching like a drunk, and reached a horse racked in front of the Elite. He tried to get up into his saddle and failed. He stood there a moment, trembling, hanging to the horn, knees weak, oblivious to the curious crowd that watched him. He tried again, and this time succeeded in getting a leg across the leather. Reining around the saloon, he took the north road out of town, slumped forward, reeling uncertainly with each jolting step of the horse.

  “Who was he?” Dalton asked.

  “A gent who thought he was tough,” Morgan answered.

  Dalton laughed. “Never seen a man take a worse beatin’. I’d sure hate to be on the other side from you.”

  “We’re on the same side, Clay.”

  Morgan wiped a hand across his face, a sickness crawling through him. There had been no satisfaction in beating Ed Cole. He pushed through the crowd and tramped back to his office.

  Gardner came in, eyes worried. “That wasn’t good,” he said. “Cole won’t forget it. You’d better stay in town.”

  “I’m soft,” Morgan muttered. “I should have killed him.”

  Gardner nodded sober agreement. “Before this is over, you will, or he’ll kill you....”

  * * * * *

  Overnight the temperament of the camp changed. The day Morgan had his fight with Cole the settlers were optimistic and good-humored. The next morning, they stood in thick knots along the street, scowling, a sullen anger upon them.

  Gardner, taught by long experience to react instantly to a crowd’s mood, felt the change, and started looking for Morgan. He found him having breakfast in the hotel dining room.

  “Trouble’s loose,” Gardner said worriedly. “The settlers are standing around with their lower lips hanging down so far they’ll trip on them.”

  “First time I’ve seen you worried,” Morgan said, reaching for tobacco and paper.

  “First time I have been. You don’t reckon they’d listen to Cole?”

  “He’s not their kind, but they would listen to Royce and Blazer. We’d better get the drawing started.”

  “We can’t. We advertised the First of September, and that’s what it’s got to be.”

  “What’s biting them?”

  “I don’t know. Looks like they’d come in if they had a kick.”

  Morgan sealed his cigarette and slid it into his mouth. “Let’s go talk to them.”

  “We can’t risk a fight. That bunch could turn into a mob in a minute. We’ve got to find somebody we know to tell us what’s wrong.”

  “Let’s get hold of Dalton.”

  They left the hotel, the crowd on the boardwalk making a path for them. Morgan spoke to some he knew. They nodded, saying nothing, faces sullen and resentful, the pressure of their hostility pushing at Morgan.

  “You’re right about these boys,” Morgan muttered. “Wouldn’t take much to turn them into a pack of wolves.”

  XIX

  Gardner and Morgan found Dalton at the bar with his Nebraska friends. Dalton’s face was showing his resentment.

  “You played hob, Morgan,” he said darkly. “Didn’t think you was that short-sighted.”

  “All right, Clay,” Morgan said mildly. “Let’s have it.”

  “I had it for supper,” Dalton growled. “I don’t want no more of it.”

  “Blast it!” Gardner cried in a frenzy. “What are you talking about?”

  Dalton snorted and reached for a bottle. “Don’t give me that pap. I figured you was a straight-shootin’ outfit. Now I’m givin’ you some advice. You run a straight draw or you’ll get a neck stretchin’.”

  Gardner looked at Morgan helplessly. Morgan’s cigarette had gone cold in his mouth. His searching mind could find no clue in what Dalton had said.

  “It’ll be an honest draw, Clay,” he said patiently, “but there’s something we don’t understand. What was it you had for supper?”

  Dalton gave him a look rich with scorn. “Them hogs, you fool. We took one of them critters and cooked some of it. We couldn’t eat it. Nobody else could, neither. The meals in the tent restaurant weren’t no better.”

  Morgan looked blankly at Gardner. “What hogs?”

  “I told you about them,” Gardner said defensively. “I contracted with the Sneed boys to butcher some wild hogs. I saw one of the loads they brought in yesterday. The meat looked all right.”

  “Sure, it looked all right,” Dalton snorted. “You try eating any?”

  “No, but I tell you the meat looked all right.”

  “I said did you eat a hunk of it?” Dalton bellowed. “Tasted like you’d fed them hogs onions.”

  “Royce said they ate wild hogs all the time around here.”

  “So, Royce gave you the idea,” Morgan said thoughtfully. “I don’t know much about the Sneed boys, but they’re north rimmers, too.”

  “I know what Royce is,” Gardner began, “but it seemed like a good....”

  Morgan waved him to silence. “Clay, I don’t know just what’s wrong, but I’ll find out. There’s several hombres around here who don’t want the land sale to come off. This hog business is part of the deal.”

  Doubt struggled through Dalton. “I’d like to believe you, Morgan, but these fellers who came around last night talked mighty straight. They said we was suckers to come out here. Claimed you’d crook us on the draw. Good land would go to the Clancys. It was part of a deal you’d made with ’em last spring. They said you was pushin’ them hogs off on us ’cause it was the cheapest meat you cou
ld get.”

  It made sense now. Fresh meat that nobody could eat after enjoying the anticipation of it. Then some of the valley settlers showing up and fanning a smoldering fire into a blaze.

  “Who were those men?” Morgan asked.

  “Didn’t catch their names, but they live in the valley.”

  “What’d they look like?”

  “One was big. Kind of pig eyes. Other one was smaller. Flat nose. Blue eyes set plumb close together.”

  “Royce and Blazer!” Gardner cried.

  “Those are two of the valley men who want us to fail,” Morgan said.

  “Why?” Dalton asked skeptically.

  “Several reasons. One is that they’ll be dispossessed as soon as somebody draws their location. You boys are playing their game when you believe them. Now I’m going to lay my cards on the table. I need your help. We’ve bought some Clancy beef, but they haven’t got the herd down from the hills yet. I’ll go see Clancy today, but we haven’t got anybody to do the butchering.”

  “We’ll do it for you,” Dalton said.

  “Then that’s fine. Pass the word along what I’m doing. And, Gardner, ride out to the lake and see what’s wrong with that pork.”

  Grumbling, Gardner followed Morgan outside. “Clancy will kill you if you go up there.”

  “I’ll take Purdy. Get now! Split the breeze.”

  Still grumbling, Gardner turned toward the livery stable. Morgan angled across the street to Purdy’s office, feeling hostile eyes upon him. There was no overt act. Just sullen silence like the moments of sticky stillness before the heavens empty upon an earth made dry by a torrid sun. Morgan had seen mobs form; he knew the signs, and he didn’t like what he saw this morning.

  Purdy was pacing the floor of his office, fingers working restlessly through his short hair. He waved a hand toward the street, and, without greeting, said: “What’s the matter with those men?”

  When Morgan told him about the pork, he smiled thinly. “Nobody can eat a hog that’s been feeding on tule bulbs. It’s like Dalton said. They taste like they’d been eating onions.”

  “But Gardner said the meat looked good, and the Sneeds claimed they butchered wild hogs every year.”

  “Sure, the meat does look good, but the nesters always drive a batch of hogs home and fatten ’em on grain before they butcher. Besides, I’d say the Sneeds were on Cole’s side.”

  It was done. Nothing that Morgan or Gardner could do would change the settlers’ temper except to get Turkey Track beef in today and start Dalton and his friends butchering. It was touch and go, a question whether even good meat could satisfy the contract holders.

  Morgan looked around Purdy’s office. It seemed no different than it had the first day Morgan was here, but it was different, and the difference lay in Abel Purdy himself. Doc Velie had been wrong about the man, and Morgan had been right. A miracle had been performed. Morgan’s confidence had restored the heart to this shell of what had once been a courageous man.

  “Gardner contracted with Broad Clancy for some beef,” Morgan said. “I’m riding out there today.”

  This was Abel Purdy’s test. Rodding a brawling boom town was one thing, but facing Broad Clancy was something else, for Clancy had owned Purdy the same as he had owned the storekeeper and the barber and the stableman and the rest in the town. Like Purdy, they could have said they wanted security, and that security lasted only as long as Broad Clancy did.

  But the metamorphosis was complete. Purdy glanced at his star and slowly brought his eyes to Morgan. “I’ll go along for the ride, Murdo. If you have any relatives who want to hear from you, you’d better take time to write to ’em.”

  “I don’t,” Morgan said. “Let’s ride.”

  They left town fifteen minutes later, skirting the white city of tents and covered wagons, ignoring the sullen stares that followed them out of town. Black clouds were rearing threatening heads along the southwestern sky and a cool damp wind was breaking through the gap between the Sunsets and Clancy Mountain.

  “We’re in for a change of weather,” Purdy said.

  “A storm would play the devil with those hombres,” Morgan grumbled, “with their tempers screwed up like they are now.”

  Purdy turned his pale eyes on Morgan. “The world is a more mixed-up business than most of us realize if we live just for ourselves. Remember me saying that time is a great sea washing around us?” When Morgan nodded, he went on: “I said we’d see how well Broad Clancy had built his walls. Now we know. Not high enough. I saw that before the invasion hit the valley. I knew it the minute you walked into my office after Flint had shot you. We’d been thinking you were dead. When I saw you, I knew you’d take a heap of killing.”

  “My hide isn’t that tough,” Morgan said.

  “You may die this morning, of course. What I meant is that men like you believe in something strong enough to fight for it regardless of the interests that bring changes about and batter down the walls that the Broad Clancys build. This is the same fight that has gone on since the beginning of time, just a skirmish, but the same fight...and we’ll always have it.”

  “Doc Velie said you thought too much,” observed Morgan.

  Purdy smiled meagerly. “Maybe. Funny thing. I’ve wanted to be the kind of man Doc Velie was. He was the only one in the valley before you came who wasn’t afraid of Clancy. When I heard what you and Doc and Jewell had done, I knew Broad was licked and I was going to help. Security for me wasn’t important. The right to get up and howl when I wanted to was.”

  “You shoot mighty straight for a gent who wears glasses.”

  Purdy flushed with the praise. “I see all right.” He squinted at the spreading gloom of the clouds. “Let’s set a faster pace, Murdo.”

  * * * * *

  They held their direction south across the slowly lifting sage flat. Then they were among the buttes, where the junipers were bigger and more thickly spaced than in the valley. Morgan, staring thoughtfully at the sharp point of Clancy Mountain, wondered if old Broad intended to keep his word. If he didn’t, and the cattle were still in the marsh behind Clancy Mountain, there would be no fresh meat for the settlers today or any day.

  They circled a butte and, breaking over a ridge, looked down upon a large Turkey Track herd. The cattle were being held in a pocket carpeted by bunchgrass, with a creek cutting through the center. Rimrock around three sides made a natural corral so that only a few riders were necessary to hold them. All but two of the cowpunchers were idling around a fire directly below Morgan.

  “We won’t need that many,” Morgan said musingly. “Wonder why he fetched that big a herd?”

  “That isn’t the question,” Purdy said. “I’m wondering why he brought any.”

  “He’s down there.” Morgan pointed to a rider angling toward the fire from the grazing cattle. “We’ll ask him.”

  They dropped down the slope toward the fire, causing a stirring among the buckaroos when they were seen. One called to Broad Clancy who looked up, saw Morgan and Purdy, and brought his horse to a gallop. By the time Morgan and Purdy gained the flat, Clancy had reached the others and dismounted. As Morgan rode up to the fire, he had a feeling that this was what Clancy had expected and planned.

  “Howdy,” Morgan said civilly as he reined up.

  Clancy did not return the greeting. He stood between the fire and Morgan, his spindly legs spread wide. Short John and the rest of the crew were behind him and on the opposite side of the fire. Clancy did not ask Morgan and Purdy to step down. He stood in cold silence, a sober, bitter man, with his eyes smoldering emeralds under bushy brows.

  There were five men behind Broad Clancy, Short John on the end. Good men for their job, salty, loyal, and ready to fight, but Morgan didn’t think it would come to that. A deeper game was being played, and Morgan could guess the reason. Like Ed Cole, old Broad didn’t w
ant killing laid to his door if trouble brought an outside lawman to the valley. It meant, then, that Broad had a better idea for achieving the same end.

  “Broad,” Purdy said sharply, “if you’re planning on burning powder, you’d better get both of us because I’ll take you in if you kill Morgan.”

  Clancy didn’t laugh as he would have two months before. He had forgotten how to laugh, and Morgan, staring at him, realized only then how much Broad Clancy had changed. Rip’s death had done it, but Morgan could not judge the depth of the change.

  “Why haven’t you fetched the cows Gardner bought?” Morgan asked.

  Still Clancy said nothing. His green eyes stabbed Morgan, probing for something he didn’t know. He seemed older and frailer than when Morgan had seen him in the Silver Spur that first day he was in the valley, so frail that it looked as if his bow legs would crumple under the weight of the heavy gun on his hip.

  “Did you kill Rip, Morgan?” Clancy asked suddenly.

  “No.” Morgan understood it now. Clancy hadn’t been sure. Perhaps that was the reason he had called off the hunt when Morgan was wounded. “Tom Carrick did.”

  “That was what Jewell said,” Clancy muttered. “I never knew her to lie, and I don’t reckon Josh Morgan’s son would lie.”

  “We want some beef,” Purdy cut in.

  “Shut up, you double-crossin’ weasel!” Clancy was suddenly angry, terribly angry as his stare cut Purdy. He brought his gaze again to Morgan. “What’ll happen if you don’t get any beef?”

  “I’ll have trouble,” Morgan said frankly. “But you promised Gardner.”

  “Yeah,” Clancy breathed, “and I keep my word. I’ll have ’em within a mile of town tomorrow night.”

  “The boys are on the prod,” said Morgan. “I’ve got to have some today.”

  “They’ve got to rest up,” Clancy said. “Good grass here.”

  “Then have your boys cut out twenty head and me and Purdy’ll haze them to town. You can bring the rest tomorrow.”

  Clancy rubbed his narrow chin as if weighing a decision. The men behind him relaxed. Even Short John, who had always looked scared whenever Morgan had seen him, now appeared relieved.