With a mighty effort he struggled to his kmees, staring. A few riderless horses drifted here and there, aimlessly, reins dragging.
Of all the men who rode into the valley only he, Jesse Kenton, remained alive. He staggered to his feet and walked erratically toward a horse, his mind recoiling from this utter defeat. He remembered Sam Harden's warning:
You tackle John Cooney and not many of your men will come back.
He looked at the bodies, still in death. The powder smell lingered in the dry air. Cooney's men had killed and run. He realized now the riddle of the small herd. Cooney had deliberately set a trap for him. He caught the dangling reins of a horse and as he started to mount he heard a weak cry.
He took his foot out of the stirrup and turned. Cannonball Buford struggled up on one elbow. Blood streaked his face from a head wound and a large round spot of crimson showed above his belt buckle. He said in a plaintive voice, "They suckered us, boss, jus' like we was a bunch o' dudes."
The words triggered Kenton's blind rage. He grabbed the saddle horn and swung to the back of the horse, yanking it around and setting his spurs.
"Wait, boss, wait!" Buford called weakly, trying to get to his feet. He kmew he was dying and didn't want to be left alone.
Kenton never faltered. He spurred and whipped the horse in 'frenzied rage. He'd planned but not well enough. Every way he turned there was Sam Harden, big, hard, and competent, barring his way. The man didn't seem to be half-trying when he struck aside everything Kenton tried to do. True, Kenton had signed reciprocal agreements with Reno Milser and George Balfont that gave the surviving members of the trio possession of quit-claim deeds to the other's land rights; but he'd never been able to even bring the subject up with Sam Harden. Now, in an unreasoning engulfing blanket of hate he blamed Harden for everything. No matter that Sam had tried to warn him. If anything, that made matters worse.
He had one blazing goal in his head: to find Sam Harden and kill him.
XVI
AFTER THE
first wild assault was beaten off the citizens of Crossroad Corners barricaded themselves in the hotel. Men crouched at all the upstairs windows while refugee women and children waited in the inside rooms in agonizing fear.
The Crow 'followed a different pattern. Instead of filling the street with horsemen they came spaced in ragged single file. They broke off and circled the main business section killing everything that moved in their path, including Mrs. Wheeler's beagle. Then they retired, separating to take cover in a gully, a dry creek bed, and the town's outhouses. There they kept up a shower of arrows, some of them tipped with fire, firing their weapons with an abandon that indicated they had plenty of powder and lead.
Sam knelt before a window, holding his saddle gun ready, watching the twist in the creek bed where part of them were concealed. Dub Porter squatted beside Sam, a tremendous double-barreled shotgun lying across the sill. It was a muzzle-loader with each bore an inch in diameter.
Sam, wooden-faced, gave no hint of the tension knotting his guts. Porter, as nattily-attired as when he dealt cards, seemed serene and unruffled. The sound of the other men, low-voiced and tense, reached them from time to time. Porter said, "I'm sorry about George Balfont. I tried to kill him. I found out later he wasn't the man."
"Who told you?" Sam asked without taking his eyes off the creek bed, hoping for a shot.
"Your brother's wife, Cherry. She knew Liz a little better than I did." His voice was touched with bitterness.
"George would like to know that."
"George is dead."
Sam looked at him then, questioning disbelief in his eyes. "Dead?" he echoed.
Porter nodded. "I kept looking for him. I wanted to kill him. Then I found his body. He was in the timber above the ranch, shot in the back."
Sam hit the window sill with his clenched fist.
"I don't know who did it," Porter continued. "But it must have happened the same night I made my play. Or early next morning." He looked searchingly at Sam. "I kept close to town after that, looking, listening, waiting. Sure enough, when the circuit judge come to town and swore Clay in as sheriff, there was Jesse Kenton with a piece of paper."
"Papers?"
"A quit-claim deed signed by Reno giving Kenton any claim he had to land he used to run cattle on. He got everything that belonged to Reno, Sam."
The enormity of Jesse Kenton's malfeasance burst on Sam all at once. The man had lied and cheated and stolen; more than that, he'd betrayed a woman, Dub Porter's daughter, Liz, even as he'd betrayed his own friends and neighbors by damming the Squaw and inciting the Indian uprising.
"Maybe that's the reason George is dead," Sam said flatly.
"Don't forget Reno. Oh, I know the farmers hung him. And you were there, you tried to stop it. But the big guy McWharter, I guess you know him, too."
Sam nodded.
"He was Kenton's man. He stirred the farmers up just like Breed Catlow worked on the Indians. McWharter got the farmers killing mad. He didn't let up for a minute, not until that mob was on its way to Reno's."
An Indian ran across the street and Porter fired the fowling piece, raising a cloud of smoke, shaking the room with the explosion. The Indian pitched headlong into the dust and lay still.
At the end of the street flame and smoke erupted from Dunnigan's Dry Good Store.
"There goes Terry Dunnigan's," Porter said in a dry voice.
"We're going to have to root them out, Dub, or they'll burn the town," Sam said.
"Not enough of us."
"I have an idea." Sam stopped speaking and cradled the butt of his carbine against his shoulder at a flash of color in an alley. He got the Crow warrior in his sights and followed the darting figure across the street, squeezing the trigger after getting a slight lead. The carbine bucked and his shot blasted the stillness. The warrior whirled away with his death yell cut short.
He was levering his rifle for the next shot when three Indians burst from the alley astride war-painted ponies. Everyone on that side of the hotel began shooting but the three ponies with their riders made it across the street.
"What kind of game they up to?" Dub asked in a fretful voice.
An instant later a scream came from the hotel corral.
"They're after the horses," Sam said and rose and walked through the hotel to the back windows that looked out on the barn and corral.
The horses were all bunched at one end of the corral and he saw nothing moving. He heard McGee shouting spine-where below and Molly's voice, pleading.
"They're takin' Charlie," McGee shouted and a door banged somewhere. Sam stopped in midstride, wheeling back to the window. He leaned out and saw McGee's legs pumping away as he headed for the corral.
Sam shouted, "Come back, Fill!" but the man kept going. An arrow flitted from the barn, grazing McGee's shoulder. He ran heedlessly on.
Sam, continuing to watch the barn, saw two warriors appear in the wide doorway, their bows drawn. He fired twice before they loosed their arrows, driving them into each other, their bows discharging as they fell in a tangle.
McGee was at the corral gate now, fumbling with the chain that held it. Sam yelled at him again without results.
He heard a sound and turned. Molly stood there with the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, her eyes wide with terror. "He's—he's out there," she said in a strangled voice.
"I'm going to the grove for help," Sam said. "I'll get him back in here before I go."
She stared, her eyes darkening. "You—you're going out there?"
Sam studied the barn door where the two Crow lay. "Yes. We might have slowed them down a little while."
"Sam, Sam, please be careful."