Fiction spectacular, p.56
Fiction Spectacular, page 56
“You know me, I think,” Burdick said to him.
“You were here before; I remember you from that,” the other replied. There was no expression whatever on his flat face, above the beard. But the beard itself seemed to express, by its jutting solidity, a hard displeasure with Burdick and the other ranchers.
“When I was here the other time,” Burdick continued, “I told you this was private land. That it ain’t free range, and it ain’t open for homesteadin’.”
“That is what you told us,” the Elder agreed. His eyes never wavered from Burdick’s.
“All right,” Burdick said. He turned in his saddle, looking across the meadow at the wagons, and the silent tents. He turned back to the Elder, saddle leather creaking under him. “Your wagons ain’t been reloaded, and your tents are still up.” He motioned toward the uncompleted log building, and the lumber and tools scattered near it. “And you been workin’ some more on this.”
“We do not intend to leave here,” the Elder stated flatly.
The two of them locked eyes in a long look of mutual enmity and unyielding determination. Then the silence behind him brought a whiff of worry to Burdick’s mind. He threw an involuntary glance back over his shoulder, and saw that the faces of his companions were set as rock-hard as he felt his own to be. Reassured, he turned back to the Elder.
“It won’t do,” he said. “If we have to force you off, we will.”
The Elder’s thick shoulders moved in a slight shrug.
“We are forbidden to resist you with weapons,” he told Burdick. “Nevertheless, we stay where we are.”
“Do you, now?” Burdick snapped. Moving deliberately, he pulled his carbine from its scabbard. Leather creaked behind him and he smiled grimly down at the Elder. “Do you, now?” he repeated.
There was an uncomfortable stirring in the group of squatters, but the Elder remained unmoved.
“We are forbidden to resist,” he repeated strongly. Burdick sensed that it was more a reminder to the rest of the homesteading men than anything else.
“Have it your own way,” he shrugged. His fingers moved suggestively over the breech of his carbine. He looked beyond the silent, stubborn men, to where a draft-ox grazed, a hundred yards away. In one motion, the carbine came up, was fired, and the spent cartridge was levered out to lie smoking in the grass. The ox bellowed, and swung its head wildly, before collapsing.
Two of the homesteaders broke away from the group and ran uselessly to where the ox had fallen. The rest milled like stampeded cattle—some backed fearfully away from the ranch men, some pressed forward angrily.
“Hold!” the Elder shouted above their gabble. His men quieted, and he faced Burdick, eyes burning. “Our animals have done nothing to injure you,” he said fiercely. “There is no call to destroy God’s innocent beasts—”
“Why, hell-fire, man,” Burdick laughed, “we can have us a real fine turkey-shoot! What you keep in those tents, brother—chickens?”
He swung the carbine over to bear on the nearest tent. A yell went up from the squatters. One of them, a young, beardless man, scooped up an axe that leaned against the wall of the log building. He charged toward the ranch men, brandishing his weapon, then he tripped, thrown off balance by a slug from Burdick’s rifle. He dropped the axe, fell to his knees, clutching his shattered stomach.
A long female scream lifted from one of the tents. A woman broke into the open, running to the place where the youth crouched over his hurt.
Burdick’s horse stepped daintily back from the sudden smell of blood. Burdick himself levered a third cartridge into place, then glanced around to see what his companions were doing.
For the most part, they were calmly observing the action before them. Young Potter looked a little sick . . .
Not one of them had drawn a gun. Not even Sam Turney.
Suddenly confused, Burdick looked back at the squatters, clustered around the wounded boy. The Elder emerged from the press of men after a moment, and stood, dazed and white-faced, staring up at Burdick. Burdick stared back at him, until he felt someone pulling at his arm.
“Come on,” Sam Turney was saying.
“What?”
“Let’s go,” Turney said, with a sideways movement of his head. Burdick looked in the direction indicated, in time to see Johnny Baines, Massenger and Potter and his boy riding back through the cottonwoods, the way they had come.
“Let’s go,” Turney repeated. Dumbly obedient, Burdick followed him.
JUST AS they reached the trees, he heard another scream from the woman. But this one ended in a sobbing, final wail. Burdick looked back once, to see the men in their black, flat-brimmed hats, turning away from the dead boy to watch him go.
For a solid minute, they rode in silence, trotting their horses to catch up with the other four riders.
“What the hell happened?” Burdick demanded at length. “What happened? You were supposed to back me up!”
Turney didn’t look at him. “Didn’t seem like you needed any help,” he replied.
Nothing more was said for the moment. They overtook the other four riders, and continued along in silence. Burdick found that he was riding one of the flanks, now. They were traveling stirrup to stirrup as before, but this time Johnny Baines held the center of the line.
“What you think, Johnny?” Abel Potter inquired. “Think it’ll do for ’em? Think they’ll go?”
“Not right off,” Baines answered. “Not for awhile. But there’s plenty o’ time . . .”
“All the time in the world,” Burdick heard himself say. He wondered immediately why he had said it. The others looked at him strangely. No one asked his opinion of what the squatters might do now. Finally he couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Why the hell didn’t you follow my play? Like we said before?”
Massenger chuckled nervously.
“You play too rough, Case,” he said. Potter and his son chortled without humor. Baines and Sam Turney didn’t even crack a smile.
Burdick tried to shake off a growing feeling of desperation.
“Well, it’s done; anyhow,” he said. “Drinks are on me, eh? At my place.”
“Sorry, Case,” Massenger apologized. “Lots to do tonight . . .”
“Me, too,” Abel Potter said. “Another time, eh, Case?”
Johnny Baines didn’t even bother to excuse himself. Burdick told himself it didn’t mean anything.
They climbed out of the cool, river air into the thick heat of the grazing land. After a time, Massenger rode off in the direction of the twin buttes. Later, Potter and his boy turned in at the Crooked-horn, and not long after that, Johnny Baines rode off, stiff-backed and silent, toward the Double U.
Burdick and Turney rode the last miles to Burdick’s ranch.
“I guess it was too rough for ’em,” Burdick said at length. Turney had been lost in thoughts of his own. He looked at Burdick questioningly.
“You were right, Sam,” Burdick went on. “They were too old for it—except young Ed, and he was too much the other way.”
“Oh,” Turney said. “Sure.”
Burdick thought he detected something alien in his foreman’s voice. He looked at Turney, frowning in the late afternoon sunlight. Turney met his gaze and smiled a smile that Burdick didn’t like.
“I was right, and you was right,” Turney said.
“What’s that mean?”
“You said they were afraid of you—Baines, Potter, Massenger—well, they were. And now they ain’t.”
“Now?”
“Now that you’ve killed a man,” Turner explained.
“That squatter?” Burdick said. “Hell, that was just—”
“That was murder, Case,” Turney cut in. “Murder, plain and simple.”
“You’re crazy,” Burdick argued hotly. “They were with me, they backed me—” His words quit abruptly. Almost to himself, he said, “If it ever came to that, they’d testify it was self-defense . . .”
His foreman looked at him pityingly.
“Testify? For you?” He shook his head. “They weren’t near as scared of the squatters as they was of you, Case. Why go after gophers when you can kill off the top-coyote of the range?”
Burdick rode silent for perhaps a mile. His voice, when he spoke again, was hardly recognizable.
“But you’d testify for me—you would, wouldn’t you, Sam?”
Sam Turney glanced away quickly, his eyes seeking a far horizon.
“Why, sure, Case,” he said absently. “Sure.”
William L. Hamling, Fiction Spectacular
