The Cowpuncher (16 page)

Dazed as he was from fatigue, it took several minutes for that statement to penetrate Huck’s brain. He stared stupidly at Ah Sing, wondering if he had really heard right. Then he realized the full significance of the Chinaman’s words.

Still staring at the cook, he recalled the carefully worded agreement deposited in the Esmeralda bank—an agreement based on mutual confidence and a knowledge of the hazards of their occupation.

By the terms of that agreement, Old Tom, believing his two partners to be dead, could sell the mine and the sale would be binding. The agreement had been drawn to prevent extended and expensive litigation in just such a case as the present. Huck gravely doubted if the subsequent “resurrection” of him and Lank would void the sale, especially when Cale Coleman’s wealth and influence were taken into consideration.

Face bleak, he stood up, half-reeling for a moment.

“A hot bath, and then let me sleep four hours,” he told the cook. “Have Smoke saddled and bridled when you wake me up. You were right when you brought him up here from Texas, feller. I’m going to need him mighty bad!”

It seemed to Huck that his head had scarcely touched the pillow before old Ah Sing was shaking him; but after downing more food and steaming coffee, he began feeling something like his old self. His body, with the elasticity of youth, was swiftly throwing off the effects of his exhausting experience in the mine. He was still stiff and sore, but that would quickly wear off once he was in the saddle.

The big blue horse snorted gayly as Huck gave him his head. Down the canyon he thundered, onto the mesa and veered sharply into the wide Apishapa Valley. Slugging his big head above the bit, he seemed to literally pour his long body over the uneven ground. Huck Brannon, swaying lithely in the saddle, sensitive to his mount’s every mood and movement, guided and encouraged, watching the stars pale in the brightening sky and counting the hours he had in which to reach Esmeralda, fifty miles away.

They drummed the dawn up out of the east, fronted the rising sun and crashed onward until Esmeralda sprawled before them on its mountain bench, uncouth and ugly in the flood of mellow light. Huck glanced anxiously at the sun, now high in the sky, and urged the straining horse to a last mighty effort.

Old Tom Gaylord’s little office in Esmeralda was well filled. Two of the Lost Padre foremen were there, glowering and sullen. There were also representatives of the Coleman mines. Seated at the table across from Old Tom was Jeff Eades, vicious of mouth, uncertain of eye. Beside him was Cale
Coleman, his hard face alight with satisfaction and vindictive triumph.

Gaylord was slowly scrawling his signature to the agreement of sale.

“You’re drivin’ a mighty hard bargain, Coleman,” he complained, pausing to dip his pen in the ink as a clatter of hoofs sounded in the street outside.

“Take it or leave it,” Coleman replied sarcastically.

“Oh, I’m takin’ it,” grunted Old Tom, bending over the sheet again. “With both my partners daid and the damn mine all busted up and flooded from floor to ceilin’, there ain’t nothin’ I can do but take it.”

“Wrong!” said a voice in the doorway.

Old Tom whirled with glad, unbelieving eyes. “Huck!” he yelled, starting to his feet. “You ain’t daid then!”

Huck Brannon shook his head, his smoky eyes never leaving Cale Coleman’s livid face. The mine owner’s jaw was hanging slackly, his eyes had a dazed, incredulous look. Jeff Eades was white as paper, his hands were beneath the table.

Huck took a long step forward, ripped the paper from under Old Tom’s pen and tore it across. He cast the fragments to the floor.

Eades and Coleman were both on their feet. “Hey, you blankety-blank-blank—” the latter howled.

Huck Brannon’s cold voice cut through his yammer.

“Coleman,” he said, clipping the words between his teeth. “Coleman, fifteen men died this week
because of you. Suppose you try and make it sixteen! Fill your hands, you skunks!”

For a numb instant there was silence. Then the little room rocked and roared to the thunder of six-shooters.

Shot through the chest, Jeff Eades went down, coughing and retching. Cale Coleman, a wondering expression on his face, stared straight at Huck Brannon. His gun fell from his nerveless hand and the expression changed to one of horror. With a choking groan that ended in an ominous rattle in his throat he pitched forward on his face, writhed and was still.

Holstering his smoking guns, Huck Brannon swabbed the blood from his gashed cheek. Old Tom Gaylord, yammering and incoherent, but nevertheless efficient, began expertly bandaging the cowboy’s streaming left wrist.

“Jest a scratch,” he said, “be all right in a week.”

Men were coming off the floor and from beneath the table. Other men, shouting questions, were crowding in at the door. The corpulent town marshal shouldered his way through. He glared at Huck.

“There’s been too damn many killin’s hereabouts of late,” he declared, “and cashin’ in the town’s most prom’nent citizen is too damn much. Young feller, it’ll take a lot of haulin’ to get you outa this mess!”

“Never mind about that, marshal,” said a cold voice from the doorway. “I’ll furnish all the power necessary to do the hauling. Brannon just did a job that’s been needing doing for quite a spell.”

“Why shore, Mr. Dunn, if
you
say so,” replied the marshal apologetically, ducking his head to the rugged and frosty-eyed old figure that blocked the door. He whirled to the men in the room and jerked his thumb toward the moaning Eades.

“Haul that hellion up to the hospital,” he ordered. “He ain’t hurt half as bad as he thinks he is. Reckon
he’ll
be able to tell us the straight of this when he starts talkin’.”

But Jeff Eades was already talking, and telling
plenty!

The office cleared and Huck told Jaggers Dunn the story of what had happened. The empirebuilder listened with absorbed interest, nodding his big head from time to time.

“Of course it was Coleman who got the mountain Indians on the prod, sending his halfbreeds headed by Estaban among them. He was just a little bit too smart, though, when he had Indian drums beat every time something was going to happen. Of course the idea was to throw suspicion on the Indians, but I never knew the Indians to do so much advertising before, and it set me to thinking. But I never could get enough proof to pin anything on Coleman until now.”

“You did a good job,” congratulated Dunn. “Well, now everything’s straightened out, I suppose you’re anxious to get back to your mining?”

Huck grinned. “To tell the truth, sir, I’m about fed up on mining,” he said. “With things shaped up the way they are, Lank and Tom can run the mine. Me, I been noticing that that Apishapa River Valley is mighty fine rangeland. I’m going to take
my share of the money coming in and buy me a nice herd of dogies and have them run inter that valley. Going to get back into the cattle business, where I belong. Hoss flesh and saddle leather in my blood, I reckon, sir.”

And Jaggers Dunn understood, and there was a wistful gleam in his frosty eyes as he watched the tall cowboy swinging lithely across the street to his big horse. For, long before he dreamed of an empire of finance and railroads, Jaggers Dunn had himself been a rider of the purple sage.

The dawn-cracking sun was pulling itself up by its bootstraps in an effort to scale the chain of mountains that ringed the Apishapa River Valley, and chase the gray shadow that lay clustered beneath the mesquite clumps and the cottonwood groves, when two riders entered the slash that ran through the north gap.

For a moment they stood their horses, then they smiled at each other, picked up the reins and started moving down the trail that led to the heart of the valley.

Their sure-footed ponies, at times snorting and squealing when they would slide stiff-legged down a rocky pass in the trail, brought them safely down to the floor where the river ran. The horses picked their way leisurely along the banks of the silver stream, sometimes fording it for better footing. At times the trail that led through the valley joined them and they rode it together.

The sun in the meantime had heaved itself above the mountain tops and had touched off a burst of gorgeous yellow color that seemed to leap like a living flame on all sides of the riders.

Presently, they came to a large open and even rolling clearing that stretched away from them for miles. Tall grass and smooth river flowed through
this immense clearing. The riders stopped beneath a shady, wide-spreading elm, from whose branches came the full-throated song of a thrush, bursting with gaiety and verve. They listened attentively for a moment. Finally one spoke.

“Our ranch will stand there, Sue,” he said, flinging an arm up in the direction of the clearing. “Plumb in the center.” He grinned down at his companion.

“Near the river, Huck,” she said. “And it will have a flower garden, with trellis—” She smiled up at Huck.

And he found the smile so irresistible that he kissed her.

LONGHORN EMPIRE

PANHANDLE PIONEER

TEXAS RANGER

TERROR STALKS THE BORDER

A LEISURE BOOK
^®

August 2009

Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

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Copyright © 1942 by Bradford Scott.
Copyright © renewed 1970 by Bradford Scott.

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