FEUD ON THE MESA
Lauran Paine
LONG SHOT
Rufe eased the double-barrels around into sight. Someone saw them, squawked like a wounded eagle, and men scattered every which way except for a grizzled, hard-looking old cattleman, and all he did was lean down upon the tie rack flintily staring back. He hardly more than raised his voice when he said: “What the hell you figure to do with that silly thing, cowboy? It don’t have a range of over a hunnert and fifty feet.” He spat, then said: “You better come out of there. So far, you ain’t done nothing that maybe should have been done long ago. You shoot anyone else, and that’s going Tomake a heap of difference, so you’d better just walk out of there.”
Rufe listened, and pondered, then called back: “I got a better idea, mister, you come inside!”
The old stockman chewed, spat, looked left and right where the wary crowd was beginning to creep up again, then he said: “All right, I’ll come inside. But I got to warn you…”
Renegades Beat the War Drum
I
The words were thick with fury and scorn: “Injun lover! Squawman!”
Caleb Doom only shrugged with a saturnine, dour smile on his face. “Not by a damned sight, hombre. I think you’ve laid the blame where it don’t fit.”
The freighter, whiskey-red eyes aglow with anger, sneered at the buckskin-clad frontiersman in front of him. “I reckoned you’d feel thataway Look at you.” The bitter, muddy eyes swept over the lean, hard man before him. “Beaded moccasins, buckskin huntin’ shirt, and fringed britches Tomatch, like a redskin.” A thick, grimy finger pointed accusingly at the sky-blue, beaded knife sheath with its inlaid beaded triangles in blue and white, and the heavy deer-horn handle.
He reached over and flipped the little twig at the bottom of the sheath, twisted into a circle and with a small, tightly stretched wisp of scalp hair dangling from it. “What kind of o’ hair is that, Squawman? Injun or white? Ha, more’n likely it’s white hair offen some woman or kid.”
The man had worked himself into a killing frenzy and Doom saw it. He didn’t want to fight the man, especially since he was a stranger in Dentón. The small bunch of other whiskey-flushed faces in the rude mud-wattle saloon were cold-eyed and menacing, too. He shrugged again. “That’s Apache hair, pardner. The same kind of hair you’re cussin’ about right now.”
“Y’damned liar!” The man was poised like a big, wobbly stag.
Doom’s face went bleak and his lips flattened over his teeth. “Keep back, freighter.”
The words had a sobering effect on some of the spectators, but the belligerent freighter only sneered at them. He licked his lips and hunched forward a little.
Doom saw it coming and raised himself slightly on the balls of his moccasin-clad feet. When the big man came in with a furious, obscene oath, he side-stepped quickly and lashed out with all the power of a whipcord, bone-and-sinew body. The freighter half turned, blundered up against the bar with a room-shaking jar, shook his head foggily, and straightened up.
“Forget it, mister.”
It was a useless warning. The freighter came in again, more wobbly than ever, his breath whistling through his tobacco-stained teeth like the fetid wind from a stagnant marsh. He lashed out with a massive, oak-like arm. Doom dropped to one knee, rolled his shoulder, and the blow tore into the man’s unprotected midriff like a battering ram. The freighter went down with a gasping sob.
Doom was coming back to his feet, his hand dropping instinctively to his .44. He was ready for the others that he knew, from a lifetime spent on the frontier, would be rushing him, when a deep, edgy voice broke in. “None o’ that, damn ya. Your friend got just what he come a-lookin’ fer.”
Doom looked back and saw the short, massive bartender, a worn and shiny wagon spoke in one brawny hand, standing, spraddle-legged, behind the mob of snarling freighters, drovers, and scouts who were edging in on Doom.
“One at a time, boys.” The words were silky soft, and the hard-eyed men hesitated, hung back, then slowly straightened up and moved back toward the bar, grumbling to themselves and throwing venomous glances at the man in buckskin.
The ugly, pockmarked bartender, a sprinkling of pale gray through the jet-black, coarse hair of his bullet-shaped head, glared at his customers and resumed where he had left off mopping up the puncheon bar top with a sticky, damp rag.
“I know how you feel. Ain’t a wagon or a cow been able to move outen Dentón since the ’Paches took up the knife. Wal”—he wagged his head slowly, somberly—“they’s a lot o’ truth in what this here stranger says. The whites is mad because they can’t do no business what with Injuns keepin’ the town cut off. Sure, it hurts my trade, too. Hell, most o’ you boys been bottled up here for a month, an’ your business with me’s been mostly credit business. I don’t like that no more than you do. But when this here hombre says the whites are makin’ heroes out of themselves by puttin’ out a fire they started themselves, he’s plumb right.” Again the big head bobbed up and down convincingly. “We come in here an’ shoved the redskins out. That’s what we call progress. I ain’t sayin’ we shouldn’t’ve done it. Dammit, we had to. But then when the Injuns fight back, an’ we gotta beat’em off…well, dammit all, just like this feller says, we’re only puttin’ out a fire we started ourselves. That’s plumb right, too, an’ ain’t no one got no call to try an’ gang up on a man’cause he speaks out after thinkin’ things over. Not here in Jock Leclerc’s saloon, the Southern Cross, no siree. Not by a damned sight.”
One of the cattle drovers, a tall, lean, thin-faced man with pensive, sad eyes, cleared his throat. “I allow there’s somethin’ to what you say at that.” He tossed his head a little under the hard, stiff brim of his low-crowned hat. “I’m sorry, stranger, reckon it’s the eternal waitin’ an’ knowin’ that a bunch of cattle are eatin’ ya into bankruptcy, while them troops are supposed to be comin’ up to clear the redskins offen the desert so’s a man can move on again.”
Doom flashed a rare, shy grin at the big man and nodded. “My fault, too, I reckon. Shouldn’t’ve said anythin’.”
The freighter began to moan and the bartender went around and poured half a water glass full of green whiskey down his throat. The man jerked up to a sitting position with a strangled oath and sprayed the acid-like liquor half across the room. Someone laughed, and others took it up. The tension was bro-ken. The freighter got unsteadily to his feet, white-faced and beaded with nauseous sweat. He held onto the bar next to Doom, gagged eloquently a couple of times, raised his head, looked straight into Doom’s eyes, blanched a little, and forced up a very ill-looking, lopsided grin. “Gawd, hombre, what’d you hit me with?”
The laughter was explosive and the bartender, even, white teeth flashing sympathetically, released his hold on the wagon spoke under the bar. Doom ordered another drink for the man and the episode was closed, but Caleb had learned one thing. Dentón was nerve-raw and red-eyed after a month of being cut off from the rest of the frontier by the Apache cordon. It was better to say nothing than to argue.