Winter Range Read online

"Mr. Ragland," he said, "can you use a man?"

  Ragland's eyes quickened. "I don't want no more of these flivver tourists we get for cow hands today. But if you got in mind some good steady

  "I was speaking for myself," said Kentucky Jones.

  "Come off! You're a cattle trader."

  "Times are bad, Mr. Ragland; the more so with Mason dead. I was a brush popper before I was a trader, and I'm a good one yet. And I'd sure like to fill in at it for a while."

  The owner of the Bar Hook rubbed the salt of red stubble on his chin with a gloved knuckle and stared at Kentucky, obviously puzzled. "Of course you realize," he said, "what I want is just a plain cow hand not no advisory board."

  "Plain cow walloping is all I want," Kentucky assured him.

  "Well," said Ragland doubtfully, "if you want a plain riding job for the rest of the winter, at fiftyfive and found, I sure can't refuse you; though I must say, it comes as a kind of surprise."

  "I'm on then," said Kentucky.

  "You'll have to take a horse, the way the roads is. I'll leave an order at the livery barn you're to have a Bar Hook horse."

  HE inquest was over as Kentucky Jones returned to Kerry's Store. Some who had made the journey by horse were already mounting ponies which moved out reluctantly, head down against the plod which many would not finish until long after dark. Kentucky Jones joined one of the big groups which talked it over on the sidewalk.

  "Verdict come out same as expected?"

  "Oh, sure; `Accidental discharge of his own weapon.' The jury didn't hold off more than a minute and a half. Say! The sheriff wants to see you.,,

  "Where is he?"

  "He went along about ten minutes ago."

  "All right."

  Kentucky Jones moved off down the street in unhurried long strides. As he reached the sheriffs little frame office Floyd Hopper was in the act of leaving, having just ejected, with diplomacy, more worried cattlemen than the little structure could comfortably hold. For Kentucky Jones, however, he reopened his door.

  "That you, Kentucky? I thought you headed south to see about some feed contracts, or something?"

  "I did, but I headed back, when I heard."

  "Come in here, Jones." Hopper jerked a ragged window blind downward over the door's glass pane and flung himself into a chair. He produced bottle and glasses. "We run this all the way from below the border," he said without embarrassment.

  "See you got your inquest over."

  The sheriff puffed out his cheeks and blew an exhausted blast "Damnation! Can you beat this? In the whole Wolf Bench country, here was just one man that couldn't be done without one man that as good as held the rimrock cattle in the hollow of his hand and a rabbit jumps, and blooey! He's gone. Great guns, Kentucky! Any other man, any other time"

  Kentucky Jones waited, studying him. There is a certain type of man who seems fated to pursue public office, somehow perversely unfitted for anything else. Hopper was such a man. His straight-clipped grey mustache, his flat loose-skinned jowls and fullfleshed eyes somehow unmistakably advertised the public office holder not incompetent, but definitely limited.

  "Any other man could have been spared better," he raved. "Even John could have been spared any other time. But with Wolf Bench cattle on the ragged edge of bankruptcy, and the lowest beef prices since"

  "Does Clive Pierson-he steps into Mason's shoes, doesn't he? does he know anything about cattle?"

  "A little, and maybe a little about banking. But with Mason dead all confidence has collapsed. Yesterday and this morning there was a crowd in front of the bank to see if it would open its doors! Clive Pierson is scared stiff ready to stampede any direction. Some think already that he'll break half the outfits on Wolf Bench, and the bank too, if he can save the outfits he's got his money in. No man knows where his brand gets off. Nobody trusts his neighbor. Wolf Bench is in a shape where you touch a match to it, it'll go up like a celluloid collar!"

  "Maybe it'll adjust," Kentucky offered.

  The sheriff burst out at him with something very like fury. "Adjust? It'll adjust like a dogie calf to a wolf! This throws the whole damn range out of balance! And you stand there and tell me-" He paused hopelessly, out of words. "There you have it." He lifted his hands and let them fall with a gesture of morose futility. "This is a good sample of the raw edge of temper the whole rimrock is on. I call you up here to ask you a favor, and in two minutes we're jumping down each other's throats."

  "That's all right," said Kentucky. "If disorderly conduct was my field, I expect I might be feeling somewhat ants-in-the-undershirt myself."

  "Disorderly conduct is right," the sheriff said. "Man, you'll see plenty now! Half the range is sore at the other half already. Take the Circle Five and the Lazy Deuce. Or the Three Bar and the Running M; today them two owners met face to face and never spoke. Or take"

  "Take Bob Elliot's 88 and Campo Ragland's Bar Hook," Kentucky prompted.

  "There you are maybe the worst case of all. Those outfits have always jangled. And now look at it! Elliot don't own a fifth of his range. The rest is leased Indian land. Now Elliot's lease is out. Them leases have to be bid for and everybody knows that there's more than one big outfit will never let that lease go cheap. Elliot depended on Mason to let him take the money for his bid. Now it's all over the range already that the bank won't back him. Elliot can't get any quick price for all that landless stock; he's through."

  "He laid himself wide open for this," said Kentucky. "He's blown the 88 up to three times its natural size like a balloon."

  "What if he did? Now that he busts, is he supposed to like it?"

  "And what about Ragland?"

  "Ragland's Bar Hook could probably stand through the storm, if it wasn't for the misfortune to Elliot. But Ragland's open range is the open range nearest to Elliot. What if Elliot turns and floods his cattle onto the Bar Hook graze?"

  Jones already knew that the Bar Hook was at least half on public domain. By the cowman's code Campo was entitled to the use of that range because he had developed water upon it; but he had no legal hold upon the unfenced. *

  "Are you convinced in your own mind," Kentucky asked him, "that Elliot will dare shove his herds onto the Bar Hook range?"

  "I know this," said Floyd Hopper, heavily, somberly. "Elliot don't need more than four or five riders to take care of his winter work. Yet he's laying on extra hands. He's hired on at least six more men just in the last couple of days, since the death of Mason. You know how it looks to me? Like he's not waiting for the day he'll have to move. Like he's not even going to wait the winter out before he starts filtering into the Bar Hook range."

  "In that case," said Kentucky, "Bob Elliot is sure a man who enjoys to grab a bear by the tail and go round and round. Campo Ragland will fight like a whangdoodle in defense of its first born."

  "Sure, they'll fight. They'll fight to a standstill.

  I'll have a full fledged cattle war on my hands within the month! And what can I do about it? Nothing, by God! Off in the hills somewhere three or four cowboys meet three or four others, and start trading private opinions. Then-wham! The guns come out, and one, or two, or three go down. No one bears witness, no one lodges a complaint there's just those good boys dead, and that's all."

  The sheriff was glaring as if he were already looking through gun smoke. "Suppose I make a guess who forced the fight, and slap somebody in the calaboose? Before night half the range is raising hell to get him out. The preliminary hearing throws out the case and I've lost five hundred votes. And two days later there's another killing somewhere else!"

  "I know," said Kentucky. "Hell afloat and no blotters."

  The sheriff grunted. Suddenly a new grievance seemed to occur to him, and the explosiveness came back into his voice again. "I'd give a hundred dollars to lay hands on the son of a gun who swiped that bullet out of the inquest. Right out from under my damn nose, by God!"

  "Well," said Kentucky, "lead's cheap; it wasn't worth much."

  Sherif
f Hopper savagely pulled off his hat and slammed it on the edge of his desk; it fell unnoticed to the floor. "It'll do 'em no good," he declared. "It isn't as if we didn't have the-" He stopped.

  "The other bullet?" Kentucky asked.

  The sheriff seemed to go relaxed and cold, all of an instant. He studied Kentucky with a questioning eye. "Why did you say that?" he said at last.

  "Well," Kentucky apologized, "you were just remarking you had something on hand that would take the missing bullet's place."

  The sheriff's steady stare did not drift from Kentucky's face. "We took a mold," he said at last. "We took a mold of this bullet, that's gone."

  "That was a smart thing to do," said Kentucky.

  "I expect," said the sheriff. He dropped his eyes, and his hands fidgeted with the miscellany on his desk. "Just the same," he said, returning his eyes to Kentucky's face in a cold and smoky gaze, "that was a very strange question, Mister, for you to ask. I had a hound dog once, that got in trouble that way."

  "Trouble, sheriff?"

  "By sight running."

  They looked at each other, two men who had said more than rested upon the surface of their words- one of them unwillingly. Kentucky Jones began rolling a leisurely cigarette; and he grinned, the slow infectious grin that could make a dog follow him, or a woman remember him, or could make a man forget why he had meant to paste him a couple.

  Sheriff Hopper stirred restively, and dropped his eyes. "I was just thinking of something," the sheriff said.

  "What was that?"

  "You're a sight runner," said the sheriff again; "but I don't know but what you're a good one. Sometimes there's a use for a feller like that. And that was what I wanted to see you for. That was a good job of scouting you did for the Cattle Association last year; and I"

  "Who told you I ever did any `scouting,' as you call it, for the Cattlemen's Association?"

  "Old Man Coffee told me, up-country in the Frying Pan."

  "Sometimes Old Man Coffee gets too damn eloquent," said Kentucky Jones, exasperated.

  "Well, anyway," said the sheriff, "I was hoping I'd find you kind of at loose ends around here; like as if you might be able to take and do something different from what you'd figured to do."

  "As for instance?"

  The sheriff fidgeted. "There's an end hanging loose in this Mason case," he admitted finally.

  "So? I thought it was all decided that Mason committed suicide by mistake?"

  Hopper made an annoyed gesture. "The case is closed. John Mason died of the accidental discharge of his own gun that's established. But it just happens that there's a man has come in with a perjury."

  He paused "Yes?" said Kentucky Jones after a moment. "To what effect?"

  "Well-we questioned him about Mason's death; and later I found out he wasn't where he said he was."

  "You sure you want to tell me this?"

  "I'm not telling you anything that ties you to anything-yet. Now, this feller maybe he was in sight when Mason got killed. Or maybe in earshot. Anyway, he lied about where he was tried to make a fool of us, by God! And I mean to hook him for it."

  "Hardly seems important," Kentucky said speculatively, "if there's no question about how Mason died."

  "It isn't that," said the sheriff gloomily. "There's some awful bad times ahead of us here, Kentuck; and we got to show that the law has teeth in it while we still can. Now, if you don't mind taking the time, there's a thing you could do for me that would be an almighty favor."

  "Come to cases," said Kentucky.

  "This man I'm telling you about is out at the Bar Hook. Now I realize you're a cattle trader; but oftentimes a feller like you will take a riding job to fill in with, over the winter, or something-especially in times like this. Now if you'll go to Campo Ragland and get a job, you can find out about this feller for me in a way that I couldn't myself, nor the deputies neither."

  "You want me to hire on at the Bar Hook and root this feller out for you is that it?"

  "That's the idea."

  Kentucky Jones was looking out the window, down the snowy street. Half a block down, in front of the hotel, Jean Ragland's pony stood. Her father's horse was elsewhere down at the livery barn most likely, for Campo Ragland would be sitting about on oat bins, hashing over the inquest with cattlemen of his own particular faction. It would be Jean, and not her father, whose initiative would get the Bar Hook horses started on the homeward trail. Now, watching from the sheriff's window, he saw her come out of the hotel, untie, and mount.

  He had seen this girl but half a dozen times in his life; yet she had singled him out today to aid her in a thing which he did not yet fully understand. She had been surrounded by friends, by men she had known all her life; even her own father had been there. Yet, for some obscure reason she had turned to him. He watched her now as she brought the little black pony up the street at a running walk.

  Jean Ragland sat her pony with the easy lax grace of young muscles raised in the saddle. Now that she was in her own element again she no longer looked frail and small, as she had in the crush of the inquest, but competent and at home on her horse, as he had known her before. As she passed she looked straight at the window where he stood, and Kentucky believed that she saw him there; but she gave no sign. He turned back to the sheriff.

  Floyd Hopper smoked morosely in the shadows brought by the closing of the early dusk. "If you want to go out to the Bar Hook for me, I can make it worth your while. What we got to do is"

  "I wouldn't touch it," said Kentucky, "with a ten foot pole."

  Floyd Hopper stared at him irritably. "Just because you're gone on Campo Ragland's girl doesn't have anything to do with this job. This is for the protection of the Bar Hook people, as much as anything else."

  "Protection or no protection," Kentucky Jones said shortly, "I won't touch it. As far as Campo Ragland's girl is concerned, I'll tell you straight and plain that if Mason hadn't been killed within fifty yards of her door, I wouldn't be here now."

  "I guessed that," said the sheriff drily.

  "You guessed it, and now you know it; and beyond that to hell with you!"

  Floyd Hopper made a disgusted gesture. "All right. I don't blame you much. It's pretty near too much to ask a man, to step square into the makings of a range war that's none of your own. I guess you're smart to stay out of it, all right. I only wish I was"

  "I'm not out of it," said Kentucky Jones.

  The other looked up at him, startled.

  "I've already talked to Campo Ragland," said Kentucky. "He's given me a riding job. I'm going out and ride for the Bar Hook until this thing clears up.

  The sheriff said with annoyance, "You just now said you"

  "Hopper," said Kentucky Jones, "how long have you known that John Mason was murdered?"

  It took a moment or two for the sheriff to convince himself that he had correctly heard; but when it had soaked in he came to his feet with a jerk. His eyes flared narrowly, but his face was grim and tight. "You accusing me of lying at the inquest?"

  "Yes," Kentucky Jones said.

  Floyd Hopper's leathery face turned a deep maroon, and in the shadows his eyes seemed like points of light. "Then," he said, "it's because you know a whole hell of a lot that I don't."

  Kentucky Jones grinned faintly, re-lit his cigarette, and shook his head.

  The sheriff's voice was heavy and intent. "Come out with it, Jones! What's your play here?"

  "I'm going to try to get me the man that killed Mason."

  They stared at each other. "Jones," said the sheriff, "let's get this straight here. Are you working with me or not?"

  "Not," Kentucky answered

  The dark color of the sheriffs face, which had faded slightly, now deepened again. "You look here, Jones! If the time ever comes when it can be shown that Mason was murdered and the man who murdered him can be turned up"

  "Maybe that time," said Kentucky, "is coming quicker than you think."

  "When it does come, I'll make my p
lay, and I'll make it stick. In the meantime think twice, you, before you buck me! You can make plenty trouble if you want; I've got no doubt of that. But it's you that'll burn if you do!"

  "Reassure yourself," Kentucky told him. "If I can't make a finish play, I'll make no play at all."

  "I don't know," said the sheriff, "but what you'll go a little farther than that if you know what's good for you."

  "You mean?"

  The sheriff's voice was low, but his words had more force than if he had thundered. "I mean you'll sit out of this altogether."

  "I told you what I'm going to do," Kentucky said shortly. He was in a hurry now to be on his way; he wanted to hit the Bar Hook road before the final closing of the dark.

  The sheriff shouted at him, "You infernal"

  The door came open, shuddering as it broke clear from the ice that had formed at the sill.

  HE man who now stamped the snow off his boots upon the threshold was straight-backed and lean-shouldered; his age was indeterminate-he might have been forty, or he might have been much more. He had a clean-cut, knife-carved face, set with blue eyes as clear and penetrating as sharp bits of ice. And he radiated a driving, thrusting energy, so definite as to convey an almost physical sense of impact.

  Floyd Hopper said without warmth, "Hello, Elliot"; and Kentucky Jones said, "Howdy, Bob."

  Kentucky Jones had always been on good terms with Bob Elliot before; but now Elliot looked over the other with a coolly noncommittal eye. "I heard," Bob Elliot said, "you got yourself a job today?"

  "That's so."

  "Bar Hook?"

  "Yes."

  The boss of the 88 looked Kentucky over again slowly, with a certain bleak irony. Then abruptly he turned away, breaking into the painful-sounding cachinnations which passed with him for laughter. You might not have recognized that laughter as such, at first, even if you had known Bob Elliot for some time, for he was not known for any outstanding hilarity. It consisted of a shaking of the shoulders and a series of coughing sounds, accompanied by a general pained, cracked-up look, but no expression of enjoyment. While this went on he always turned away from his companions as if the unaccustomed onslaught in truth seized him against his will.