Sudden: The Law O' the Lariat Read online

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  Oliver Strange ~ Law O’ the Lariat

  (Book 05 in the Sudden Westerns series)

  PROLOGUE:

  “WELL, Forby, yu got anythin’ to say afore we string yu up?”

  The harsh question conveyed the inevitability of death, and the speaker evidently regarded it as a mere formality. A powerfully-built man of little more than thirty, attired in the garb of the cattle ranges, he stood rocking on his heels, both thumbs caught in his gun-belt. His deep-set eyes, hooked nose and outthrust jaw gave him a predatory appearance, and had the thin, cruel lips not been concealed by a drooping black moustache he would have suggested a vulture even more patently. That he possessed both force and passion was evident.

  The man to whom he spoke was of a different type. Older by twenty years, with greying hair and beard, he had the strong patient face of one who plods on, knowing his task in life is well-nigh hopeless, but doing it nevertheless to the best of his ability. He was of those who peopled the great waste spaces of the American continent, fighting against almost impossible odds, and wresting a bare subsistence from the untamed soil. He sat now on a log, hands tied behind his back, chin sunk in his chest, his whole attitude one of despair. At the words, however, he straightened up, and his gaze went instinctively to the rough little log cabin he had built with his own hands, the rude corral, the patch of fenced ground, which was only now beginning to be productive, and the stream with its shady willows and cottonwoods. He had made the place, he loved it, and now he must leave it, perhaps in a shameful way. Somehow it seemed unreal. The sun shone, the birds chirped, the murmur of the stream came like a whisper, and yet the air was pregnant with tragedy.

  His gaze swept the six men who stood round in a half-circle regarding him curiously but implacably. They were cowboys—hired creatures of the man who had spoken, and he knew he had nothing to hope for from them; they would do as they were bid. And then he looked their leader squarely in the face and spoke, his voice low, steady and without rancour.

  “I can on’y repeat what I said afore—I never touched any o’ yore stock, Bartholomew,” he said heavily.

  “Yet we find ‘em in yore pasture, with the brand changed from Bar B to Four B,” retorted the other; adding with a sneer, “Yu chose a mighty convenient brand, didn’t you?”

  “The Four B was my brand years afore I come to these parts, an’ I’m usin’ my own name, too,” the older man pointed out. “If I’d done what yu say, d’yu think I’d be such a fool as to leave ‘em run along with my cattle with the brands unhealed?”

  “Oh, yu dam nesters think yu can get away with anythin’, an’ yu didn’t know we suspected yu,” said Bartholomew. “How d’yu account for ‘em bein’ there anyways? Yore pasture’s fenced an’ cows ain’t got wings.”

  “I dunno how they come there,” said the other dully. “I was in Hope last night, gettin’ supplies. Someone musta driven ‘em in while I was away.”

  “Likely tale that,” said the big man. “Yu done it yoreself an’ went to town to put up an alibi. Mighty smart, but it don’t go.”

  The accused man shook his head dubiously. This was the end. Ever since he had taken up his quarter section he had had to fight. He had been threatened, his cattle stolen, his horses maimed, and once his little crop of hay for winter feed burned, but he had hung on doggedly, hoping that strict attention to his own affairs would overcome the local prejudice against “nesters”. And this might have come about but for the hostility of the man before him.

  “I’ve a right here,” he said, answering his own thought. “It’s State land.”

  “It’s ‘free range’,” Bartholomew said tersely.

  “Yes, free to yu an’ not to me,” flashed the prisoner.

  “I was here first,” the other pointed out; then : “but we’ve had all this out a’ready; nothin’s free to a rustler except a rope.”

  The seated man shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation. “I ain’t a thief, but seein’ yu got me thrown an’ tied, I reckon I gotta pull my freight,” he said. “If it warn’t for my boy I dunno as I’d care; I’m tired o’ buckin’ the odds, but he ain’t got no one else.”

  “Pull yore freight?” gibed the big man, a cruel scorn in his tone. “It’s too late, my fine fella, yu should ‘a’ done that when yu were told to, months back.”

  The bound man looked at him in slow surprise. Hitherto he had believed that he had only to quit the country, but now he saw that Bartholomew was ruthless and meant to have his life. The charge against him was a “frame-up”, probably contrived by the man who had condemned him, but he could not prove his innocence. He studied the faces of the other men, but while one of them, whom he knew as Darby, turned his eyes away, the rest showed nothing but sardonic contempt; to them he was a cattle thief and deserved no mercy.

  “Yu boys stand for this?” he asked hopelessly.

  Darby was the only one who spoke. “Aw, boss, if he clears out o’ the country—” he suggested.

  Bartholomew swore an oath. “No, by God!” he gritted. “Nesters is like Injuns—the on’y good ‘uns are dead ‘uns. He had notice, an’ now we’ve got him with the goods he’s had a fair hearin’. He’s outstayed his welcome, an’ p’raps it’ll be a warnin’ to others that nesters ain’t wanted here. Get yore rope, Penton.”

  The man addressed walked to where the horses were grouped, took his lariat from the saddle-horn and returned with it swinging in his hand.

  “Yu turn my dad loose or I’ll blow yu to hellamile, Bartholomew.”

  The command came in a shrill, childish treble, that trembled with rage or fear, and every eye turned to the speaker. He had stolen up unperceived and now stood only a few yards from the group round the condemned man. A mere lad of about twelve, shabbily dressed in a blue flannel shirt and faded overalls, his ultimatum would have been something for men to laugh at but for the fact that his youthful fingers gripped a heavy rifle, the barrel of which was directed full at Bartholomew’s breast. The boy’s features were distraught with passion.

  “I’m meanin’ it ! ” he cried. “Turn dad loose, or yu’ll get yores, Bartholomew.”

  The threatened man laughed. “All right, kid,” he said, and stepped towards the prisoner, at the same tirne winking significantly to the man with the rope. The boy, watching the leader, did not see Penton’s sudden wrist-flick, and only realised the truth when the noose settled over his shoulders and a sharp jerk flung him from his feet. Nevertheless, even as he fell, he pulled the trigger, but the bullet went wide.

  “Young hell-cat,” snarled the rancher, when the boy had been overcome and bound. “If he was a bit older I’d make a clean job of it. One o’ yu take him into the house an’ keep him there until—after.”

  Darby volunteered for the job, and carried the lad, kicking and mouthing boyish curses, into the building. Bartholomew turned to the others.

  “Put a light to the shack when yu done, an’ fetch the stock along,” he ordered curtly, and, mounting his horse, rode away without another look at the man he had left to die.

  An hour later the boy crept from the brush fringing the stream, and, with a sob as he passed the smouldering ruins, made his way to the big cottonwood in front of what that morning had been his home. A violent fit of trembling seized him when he saw the gruesome limp form hanging from a lower limb, and for a moment he could not move. Then, making an effort, he went on. Beneath the body was a small heap—a worn purse, a tobacco pouch and pipe, a locket, which he knew contained his dead mother’s portrait, a jack-knife and a slip of paper. Scrawled in pencil on the paper were the words :

  “Goodbye, son. I’m goin’ game. Don’t forget me. I know yu’ll do
what’s right. Dad.”

  With blurred eyes, and strangling the sobs that nearly choked him, the boy read the pitiful message.

  “I’ll shore do what’s right, dad, to that hell-hound,” he muttered thickly.

  Then, as he had done many a time before just for amusement, he climbed the tree, and severing the rope, allowed the corpse to slump to the ground. For an instant he clung to the branch, sick and dizzy, and then dropped down to kneel by his father’s body. He kissed the cheek, and the cold contact sent a shiver through him. Presently he got up, and, going to the little garden patch, returned with a spade and began to dig.

  It was a big job for hands so young, and the sun was low in the sky before the hole was large and deep enough. Dragging the body into it the boy covered it with a layer of green boughs, to shield the poor clay from the earth from which it sprang, and, ere the opening was completely filled in, he fetched heavy stones from the stream bed and packed them in that the grave might not be violated by wild creatures.

  The burial finished, he was about to depart, when a sudden thought came to him. Opening his father’s jack-knife, he set to work. When at length he turned to leave, the tree trunk bore, in letters a foot long and deeply cut, his father’s brand. There, in the gathering twilight, the white letters stood out, marking the last resting place of another victim of Judge Lynch. In the corral the boy found one pony and his own worn saddle. For these he knew he must thank the man Darby, who, on senting him free when the house was fired, had promised to leave them.

  “I can’t do nothin’, son, but they shan’t set yu afoot,” he had said.

  Everything else was gone; and, having saddled and mounted the pony, the boy, with a last look and a tightened throat, turned his face to the wilderness.

  “I’m comin’ back, Bartholomew,” he said aloud. “An’ when I do I’ll be—shootin’.”

  Chapter I

  THE little town of Hope Again lay dormant under the blistering heat of the midday sun, a heat which made exertion a curse and any sort of shade a blessing. The origin of the somewhat quaint name was a mystery, but it is conceivable that the place was christened by some luckless pioneer who, having survived the maddening monotony and deadly menace of the desert which stretched to the south, was moved to inspiration by the sight once more of water, trees and the distant hills.

  Hope—as the dwellers therein usually called it—little warranted so encouraging a name. A far-flung frontier settlement, it differed in no way from a hundred others of its kind. Two straggling, irregular lines of apologies for buildings, constructed of timber, ‘dobe or both, formed some sort of a street, and the spaces between them, littered with tin cans and other refuse, added to the unlovely picture. Only two of these erections aspired to the dignity of a second story, the “hotel” and the largest of the saloons—Muger’s—which bore the inviting title “Come Again”, and to which a dance hall was attached. The rest of the town comprised a bank, solidly built of ‘dobe bricks, a blacksmith’s, two general stores, one of which was also the post office, several smaller saloons, shacks and dugouts, which sheltered the permanent population. Board sidewalks made progress for pedestrians possible, and at one end of the dusty, rutted road a rude timber bridge spanned the little river which, after a tortuous journey from the Mesa Mountains in the north, supplied the town with water and went on to lose itself in the sands of the desert less than a mile away. And over everything an almost impalpable dust cast a grey-white mantle.

  The town appeared to be deserted save for two men standing in the doorway of one of the lesser saloons. One was the owner of the place, Bent, a short, squat fellow, with a craggy face in which the eyes twinkled good-humouredly. The other was a stranger, and the saloon-keeper—as is the way of his kind—was curious about him, but not unduly so, for in the West curiosity, like dynamite, must be handled carefully.

  He was a tall man, apparently nearing thirty, with the wide shoulders and narrow hips of the athlete. His clean-shaven, deeply-tanned face, with its steady grey-blue eyes and firm jaw, had the gravity of an Indian’s, but there was a quirk of humour in the little lines at the corners of the mouth. His cowboy rig was plain but neat, and had evidently seen service; and the same appeared to be the case with the two guns which hung low on his hips, the ends of the holsters tied down to facilitate the draw. A furtive examination of his horse in the corral behind the saloon had told Bent nothing. He did not know the brand.

  Bent, covertly regarding the lithe, lounging figure, continued his inward speculation. Was he an out-of-work puncher, a gun-man, or both, and what had brought him to Hope, which was on the direct route to nowhere? His meditations were interrupted in a curious manner. From up the street came a crack like a pistol-shot, a yelp of animal pain and a volley of oaths. Then from the door of the “Come Again” saloon a dog hurtled forth as though forcibly propelled. There was a rope round its neck, and holding the other end came a cowboy wielding a wicked quirt and a still more wicked tongue. The dog, having recovered from its ungainly sprawl in the dust, set off down the street, the man following, tugging on the rope and flicking the animal with the whip.

  “I’ll larn yu to fly at me, yu mongrel whelp o’ the devil, if I have to lift the hide off’n yu an inch at a lick,” he yelled. “Take that, yu—”

  With the savage words the whip cracked again, and a fresh bleeding spon on the dog’s back showed when the cruel end of the lash had bitten, removing hair and skin. The yelp of the tortured beast and the laugh of its persecutor rang out together. The apparent report of a firearm peopled the place as if by magic. From doors and windows heads protruded, while a few men, more curious or more venturesome than their fellows, came out on the sidewalk, but cautiously, for lead might be flying about, and a bullet is no respecter of persons. When they saw what was happening several of them smiled. “Mad” Martin was at his tricks again.

  “Stay with him, boy. Ride him,” one shouted.

  “I’ll ride him to hell an’ back,” yelled the cowboy, as, dragged by the nearly demented dog, he jerked by, his dug-in heels sending up clouds of dust. Opposite Benn’s saloon he swung his quirt for another blow.

  “Drop that whip! ” came a curt command.

  The stranger had suddenly come alive; one stride took him to the edge of the sidewalk, and it was he who had spoken. Martin stared at him, a savage surprise in his beady eyes. Leaning back, he checked his progress for a moment.

  “Yu can go plumb to hell,” he retorted.

  “Drop it, yu skunk,” came the further order, and this time there was a cold menace in the tone.

  Martin recognised it and knew that he must either obey or fight. He elected to do both. Dropping the quirt he snatched at his gun. The other man appeared to make no move until the weapon was clear of the holster, and then came a spurt of smoke from his right hip, and Martin toppled sideways into the dust, letting fall his own gun and the rope as he did so. The stranger stepped into the street and stood over the prostrate man. “That dawg belong to yu?” he asked.

  “Yes, an’ what the hell business is it o’ yores, anyways?” spat out the other, his baleful eyes glaring murder.

  “I’ve made it my business, an’ I’m buyin’ yore dawg,” replied the stranger coolly, as he took a roll of bills from his pocket peeled off one and flung it down. “That’s five times the dawg’s value an’ fifty times yores,” he added contemptuously.

  “This don’t finish here—I’ll get yu,” Martin gritted.

  “Better get—yoreself,” the stranger warned sardonically.

  The wounded man staggered to his feet and floundered back up the street, clutching his hurt arm, from the fingers of which the blood dripped redly. The victor watched him for a few moments and then stepped to the sidewalk again, whistling to the dog, which had paused uncertainly a few dozen yards away. Apparently recognising a friend, the animal, little more than a pup, of a mixed breed in which the wolfhound predominated, obeyed the call, alternately cringing and wagging its tail. The rescuer sto
oped and scratched its head.

  “Yu shore have had a raw deal, old fella,” he said. “An’ by the look o’ yore ribs meal times ain’t been any too regular. We’ll have to find somethin’ to fill out them dimples.”

  “You coward ! “

  The voice was low and should have been sweet, but now it was charged with anger and scorn. In startled amazement the dog petter looked up to find that the words had been spoken by a girl, who had apparently emerged from the neighbouring store. Despite her evident temper, he had to admit she made a pretty picture. Of medium height, her slim, rounded figure showed to advantage in the short riding skirt, high-laced boots and shirtwaist, with a gay handkerchief knotted round her throat cowboy fashion. Her soft slouched hat did not entirely conceal a profusion of brown hair, to which the sun added a gleam of new bronze.

  “You might have killed him,” she went on vehemently.

  Instinctively the stranger removed his hat. He knew, of course, that she was referring to the dog’s late owner, and there was a spark of devilment in his eyes.

  “Shore I might—if I’d wanted to,” he said gravely. “But I on’y winged him—just put him out of action; he’ll be as good as new in two-three weeks. I take it yu don’t like dawgs, ma’am?”

  “Yu take it wrong—I’m very fond of them,” the girl retorted. “But I don’t place them on the same level as human beings.”

  The stranger’s eyes twinkled. “Yo’re dead right, ma’am,” he agreed. “Sometimes that wouldn’t be fair to the dawg.”

  The girl bit her lip. “You provoked that man into drawing his gun knowing you could shoot first,” she accused.

  “An’ me not havin’ seen the fella afore,” the unknown reproved gently. “He got his gun out too, an’ he shore meant business.”

  “An even break—the old excuse of the professional killer,” she sneered. “That is what you are, I suppose, and all you cared about was adding another notch to your gun. Why, you laughed when you fired! “