Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) (21 page)

“You are right. Nobody ever wanted to cross them, because sooner or later on one pretext or another, there would be a challenge. Nowadays a lot of us have forgotten how prevalent dueling was in the old days.”

Attmore glanced at me. “What is it you wish me to do?”

“Take the necessary steps so I can inherit,” I said.

He had been glancing through the papers as he talked, and now he shrugged. “Nothing so very difficult here. You may have to actually go there to take possession.”

“Then I shall go.”

“If you do, please remember an attempt was made to poison your father, and at least one attempt to poison you. They will not give up, even after you have inherited, for they will still be next in line.”

Suddenly I glimpsed Billy Jenkins coming across the room, weaving through the crowd of gamblers and sightseers. “Boss,” he said to Blocker, “they’re coming up the street now. There’s four of them, alike as peas in a pod.”

Chapter 17

A
TTMORE GLANCED AT them, then at a nearby table, lifting his hand to his hat as he did so. “Rest easy,” he said to me, “nothing will happen.”

Jenkins had fallen back a few steps from the table, and I saw Carlin Cable come moving up behind the L’Ollonaise men.

They moved up to our table and ranged themselves before it, staring hard at me, then glancing at the other two. “Sit tight, gentlemen.” It was Elias, he with the scar. “We only wish to talk to McRaven here.”

“I doubt if we have anything to talk about,” I replied, “and whatever it might be, you are wasting your time.”

“I think not,” he said, and brushed his coat back. He had a gun in his waistband, a hand resting on it. “If you will come along with us there need be no trouble.”

A quiet voice spoke from behind them. “Gentlemen? I am Tom Speers, the city marshal. Is there something I can do for you?”

It was the man to whom Charlie Attmore had gestured. Beside him were two other men, both tough, competent-looking men. Elias glanced over his shoulder and saw Billy Jenkins and Carlin Cable. Two more men, obviously Texas cowhands, loitered near the door.

Elias let his hand fall. “No, I am afraid not, Marshal. We wanted to talk to Mr. McRaven here, but it can wait.”

“Of course,” Speers replied quietly, “but not in Kansas City. Do you understand?” He gestured about him. “In this room now and before the night is over there will be twenty-five of the most noted gunfighters in the West. All are my friends, all of them avoid trouble in Kansas City, and all of them would be very upset if anything happened here to disturb the situation. They come here to relax when not handling cattle or hunting buffalo. They know how much I enjoy a quiet town.”

He took a gold watch from his pocket. “Nearly eight o’clock, gentlemen. I’ve just had your horses brought up outside. By eight-thirty you should be outside of town and moving away. I might add that if you are not, a posse made up of the men I mentioned will apprehend you, and sometimes it takes eight or nine months to bring such a case to trial. I know,” he said, gesturing with a careless hand, “it isn’t very efficient of us, but that’s the way it is.”

Elias L’Ollonaise shrugged. “Of course. We understand perfectly and would do nothing to disturb the tranquility of your fair city.” He smiled thinly. “Thank you for bringing our horses around. We came in by train and weren’t aware we had any.”

“You have now.” Speers replied cheerfully. “I can’t offer any promises as to their quality or disposition, but they are horses.”

Elias glanced at me. “We’ll be meeting again, I think.”

“Of course,” I replied cheerfully, “but didn’t we meet before? On a train?”

The only visible signs of anger were in a tightening of the lips. “We remember,” he said coolly, “and we won’t forget. When it is something like that, we never forget.”

They were escorted from the room, and Attmore shook his head. “Had me worried there for a minute, but I’d told Tom what might be expected.”

“You’re giving them horses?” I asked, skeptically.

“I am,” Blocker said. “They are four of my remuda on the last drive. They either made trouble or didn’t stand up to the rough work. I’m well rid of them.”

“Saddles?”

Blocker shook his head. “I didn’t go that far. They will ride bareback with rope hackamores.” He smiled. “One of those horses is a bucker, a very mean, deceptive bucker. He will go along quietly until something startles him or he takes a notion.”

Attmore tapped the papers before him. “Lucky Ben caught me when he did. I leave for Charleston tomorrow, and I’ll see what can be done about this. In the event that I need you, you will be here?”

“I’ll be in touch with Mr. Blocker and with Tom Speers as well. One or the other will be able to locate me at any time. I’ll get my mail at the Livestock Exchange.”

“Fair enough.” We shook hands. “One more thing. Do not imagine you have defeated them.”

Nobody needed to tell me how lucky I had been, and how lucky I continued to be. We ate our supper and I talked almost none at all, leaving that to Ben Blocker and Attmore. Sitting there, wrapped in my own thoughts, I thought about all that had transpired since that day when I came down from the mountains to find my father had been killed.

Whatever I might inherit was still a vague dream that did not seem quite real to me. Never until pa died and left the money he won gambling had I had even a penny I had not worked for, and worked hard.

A few things I had learned. A poor man gets little respect from strangers. If he is a good honest workman who does his job well, even if he is poor, he will get respect from those who know him.

I’d never known a thief who was what you would call a poor man. The thieves I’d known, and knocking about as pa and me had, I’d known aplenty, were always folks who had a little and wanted more…without working for it.

They stole because they wanted money to spend on women, gambling, or flashy clothes. They weren’t willing to earn their way into affluence, but wanted to steal from somebody who had earned it.

Using the effort spent in tracking pa and me down, the Yants or L’Ollonaises or whatever they called themselves could have been well-off. Of course, they were a special kettle of fish and there was vindictiveness involved in their pursuit of us.

“About those cattle,” I said to Blocker. “I want to buy a hundred head of steers to sell, and I want to buy a hundred head of young breeding stock to drive to Colorado.”

“I’ve a man in Beeville who is buying stock for me. You write me a draft on your Wells Fargo account, and he will do the buying for you as well.”

He turned to the lawyer. “Attmore, this young man has been herding cattle in Colorado and Wyoming. He knows the country. He says the grass cures on the stem and cattle will fatten on the range there. I think we should pool our resources and locate a ranch—”

“Two ranches,” I said, “one at a lower elevation to which we can drive in bad winters. I know some good locations if nobody has moved in since I left.”

“We would need somebody to handle the ranching operation,” Attmore said.

“I could do that,” I said, thinking of Laurie. “I’ve been thinking of locating out there, somewhere on the western slope of the Rockies.”

We talked for an hour or more, discussing all aspects of the problem, and I surprised myself. Never before had I had to come up with answers, but my hard work on the range with cattle and horses, and in some cases sheep, had taught me more than I’d realized. At the time I had not been thinking of going into the cattle business but only doing the job at hand, yet in the process I had learned a lot. For the first time I began to think of settling down, ranching, and the problems involved. “We’d need more than my hundred head of young stuff,” I said. “We should start with five or six hundred at least.”

“We will start with two thousand,” Blocker said. “Attmore and I will provide the stock, other than your hundred head, and we will provide the working capital. You will handle the project on the ground itself. You will get one-third—”

“Fifty percent,” I said.

“What?” Blocker stared at me.

“I get fifty percent, each of you get twenty-five percent. You will provide the capital, but I will be working every day of the year to see that our investment pays off. I will have to check range conditions and water, handle any rustlers, deal with Indians, and either do or take charge of all the work involved. Furthermore,” I said, “I will have to scout the country for a suitable ranch site, which will take a good deal of doing in itself, and then hold it against others who might fancy my location.”

Blocker glanced over at Attmore. “He’s got a point, Charlie.”

“Yes,” Attmore agreed reluctantly, “so he has. Neither of us could afford either the time or the energy to explore that country, while he probably knows right where to go.”

“Each of us has to sell what he has,” I said, feeling a little smug, for it was the first actual business deal I had ever made for myself.

“It’s agreed then?” Blocker said. “And as soon as you’ve finished this business in Carolina, you’ll go west?”

“I will.”

We talked on for another hour and then, growing tired, I stood up, suddenly realizing I had no place to sleep and my bedroll was undoubtedly locked in the Wells Fargo office.

“No problem,” Blocker said, when I explained. “Right down the street there’s a hotel…a good one, too. At this time of night Sam Dean will be on the desk. You just tell him Ben Blocker sent you.”

Tired as I was, I was glad it would be no further. On the street I stopped for a minute, looking around. Several men stood on the curb, talking and chewing tobacco, and further down the street was another saloon and a crowd of men stood before it. Beyond it I could see a hotel sign. It must be the one Blocker mentioned.

Turning, I started going along the street. Suddenly a voice spoke almost at my elbow. “Sir?”

She was small, seemed scarcely more than a girl, and sedately dressed, but well dressed. She had big dark eyes and a lovely clear complexion. “Sir? Would you walk me past those men? It is very late, and I—”

She took my arm. “Please! My father would die if he knew I was on the street at this hour, but Amy had so much to tell me and we hadn’t seen each other in so long and the time just
flew!
”

As we spoke, we were walking along. She did not look like the sort of girl who would accost a man on the street, and I was going that way anyhow.

“It isn’t far. Just around the corner. Oh, I am so glad you came along! I didn’t know what to do, and some of those men looked so
rough!
”

“Is this your home?”

“Oh, dear, no! My home is in Virginia, but papa had to come out here to buy
cattle.
And he is selling some horses, too. We
raise
horses, you know, and papa said these cattlemen are getting so they want fine stock and not just those grubby Mexican horses…mustangs, they call them.”

I was accutely conscious of the fact that I was still wearing a shirt I’d had on for three days and that my suit was needing a good brushing. With my free hand I straightened my tie.

Suddenly we were passing my hotel. I glanced inside and glimpsed a man behind the desk wearing a green eyeshade and sleeve garters. “This is my hotel,” I said. I was dead tired, and pretty or not, I needed sleep. In another few minutes I’d be flat on my face.

“Please? It’s just around the corner.”

“All right,” I said, “but I’m just about all in. I—”

We turned the corner and suddenly her hands gripped hard on my right sleeve. “All right, here he is,
kill him!
”

Chapter 18

H
AD THERE BEEN time to think, I would have blessed my father. “Someday,” he told me when I was very young, “you may not have the use of your right hand, if only for a few days, so learn to use your left.”

Boxing, where a left is of first importance, helped a lot, but I had deliberately used it for many things, becoming able to use it with saw or hammer as well as my right. Of course, I learned to use a pistol as well.

My left hand drew the pistol without even thinking, and I fired. They were close together and coming at me, and I must have hit something. Jerking my right arm free, I sent her staggering toward them, fired again, and dodged around the corner.

Thrusting the gun into my waistband, I stepped into the hotel. The night clerk was on his feet, spectacles in his hand. “What’s going on out there?” he asked.

“Damned if I know,” I replied. “Ben Blocker told me to come to you and you’d fix me up with a room. I was almost to the door when the shooting started. I ran.”

“Wise,” he said. He pushed the register toward me. “Sign right there. It will be number twelve, upstairs on the right.”

People were running in the street outside, and there were shouts. “Crazy!” I commented. “A man’s a fool to go where there’s shooting. It’s a good way to get killed.”

“You’re right,” he said, “but the world is full of rubbernecks. They want to see everything.”