The Law of the Trigger (3 page)

Slowly the doubts began working in Owen's mind. Maybe McKeever wasn't bluffing, after all. It was a discomfort-1 ing thought, but even if it was true, it would not affect his promise to Elizabeth. Of that he was sure.

As if reading his thoughts, Deland said, “Ben can make it tough on you, Owen.”

Toller nodded. “He's already started.” The deputy did not seem surprised. He grinned quietly, and then punched Owen lightly on the shoulder. “Don't let it worry you; you've got plenty of friends in Reunion. You'll have to ride it out, for Elizabeth's sake.” As though embarrassed by this slight show of affection, Deland turned and gazed at the wagons and animals in the street. “There's a chance,” he said, “that Ben won't be the only one to apply pressure. People are getting worked up about the Brunners; they want something done.” He shot one quick glance at Owen's face. “Don't let them sway you. You've got a wife and family to think about.” With an abrupt nod, the old deputy walked away.

It was long after dark when Owen got back to the farm with the supplies. As he unhitched and stripped the team, Elizabeth came to the barn with a lighted lantern. He saw the worry in her eyes and said, “Sorry I'm late. I got to talking with Arch Deland and forgot the time.”

“Did you see McKeever while you were in town?”

“Why, yes,” Owen said with forced heartiness. “As a matter of fact, I did.” He put his lean, hard arms about his wife and held her against him. “If you're thinking of the Brunners,” he said, “just forget it. Ben didn't even mention them.”

The rider's name was Dunc Lester, and he had come a long way. He had been as far south as the Canadian, had glimpsed the Arkansas border on the east, had spread the word as far north as the Verdigris. A lanky, big-boned boy in his late teens, he wore the clothing of the hill country: big overalls, flannel shirt, and heavy, thick-soled shoes. An ancient Colt's .44, converted to use modern brass-cased ammunition, was strapped around his waist. A twelve-gauge shotgun was slung in a makeshift boot by his left knee.

Indian-like, Dunc rode with blithe disregard for his mount, putting the lathered animal up the hard incline at full gallop. Suddenly, from the great emptiness of the hills, a rifle barked sharply. The slug screamed over Dunc's head and he hauled hard on the reins, bringing the bay to a rearing stop. Quickly he cupped one hand to his mouth and sounded the mournful, sobbing bark of a coyote. Then he kicked the faltering bay and moved on, carefully.

Far above Dunc a man appeared on a limestone outcropping near the crest of the hill. He cradled a repeating Winchester in the crook of his arm and grinned as the rider came toward him.

“Goddamn it, Gabe!” Dunc Lester cried. “What're you tryin' to do, kill me?”

Gabe Tanis, a dish-faced, round-shouldered man in his early forties, shrugged off the boy's anger. “You know what Ike said. Nobody gets through this pass without he gives the signal.”

Dunc appeared disgusted. His family and the Tanises had farmed side by side almost as long as he could remember, and Gabe knew him like a brother. “Damn it, Gabe, have your eyes give out on you? Couldn't you see it was me?”

“Sure,” Tanis said mildly.

“Then why,” Dunc demanded, “did you try to burn the hair off my head with that rifle? You mad at me or somethin'?”

“Nope,” Gabe drawled. “But you know when Ike or Cal says something...”

“All right!” Dunc groaned. A man who rode with the Brunners accepted the brothers' word as absolute law, and Dunc knew that he should have given the signal.

Gabe bit off a piece of twist tobacco and chewed thoughtfully. “You get over toward Talequah?” he asked finally.

Dunc began to cool off. He figured he might as well rest a minute and let the horse blow. “Not all the way,” he said. “But I've been to a hell of a bunch of places. I don't reckon the Brunners've changed their minds about robbin' the freight company, have they?”

“They ain't said nothing about it if they have.”

“Well,” Dunc said, “I guess they know what they're doin'. Spring of the year seems like a bad time to get the gang together, though. Johnson grass will take the crops before the boys can get back to the fields.”

Gabe shrugged. He didn't care much whether Johnson grass got the crops or not. He seemed to ponder something for a moment. “Did you go past the home place?” he asked finally.

“Came past there yesterday,” Dunc said. “Everybody's fine. Your wife was down with the croup last week, but she's up now.”

“Sarah Sue's tough,” Gabe said with faint pride. “Always was. How many of the boys you expect will be in on the freight-company raid?”

“Plenty.” Dunc decided that he was ready to travel again. Ike and Cal would be waiting to hear from him. He nodded to Gabe and kicked the bay back on the trace. As he was pulling out, he called over his shoulder. “And try not to kill anybody, will you? In case somebody forgets the signal!”

There were two more outposts between Gabe's position and Ulster's Cave. Dunc was careful to stop each time and give the signal. Now he was moving into the wildest section of the hills, where there wasn't even an Indian trace to follow. This was a country of tall pine and spruce, of dangerous limestone overhangs and rocky peaks, of old deer trails that twisted crazily through the woods and led nowhere. In these woods a man could get lost before he knew what had happened; in this forest every tree looked like the next one, every hill had an identical twin. Horses became confused, and even Indians lost their way.

But Dunc Lester had lived most of his life in this hill country of eastern Oklahoma and he knew it well. His folks had moved here when it had been Cherokee country, and they hadn't asked the Cherokees about it, either. He had never learned to read, and he couldn't even sign his name, but he knew better than to let a deer trail throw him off in these hills.

Once his pa had taken him to Talequah, but Dunc couldn't say that he cared much for town life. He remembered vaguely that Talequah had been the capital of the old Cherokee Nation, and he had heard that over to the west somewhere there was a place called Tulsa, and south of that another place called Oklahoma City. He neither wanted nor expected ever to see those places. He had heard that a town called Reunion was the county seat for this part of the country, but about all he knew about Reunion was the bunch of county law dogs they'd chased out of the hills three weeks ago.

Thinking of that episode, Dunc grinned widely. Townspeople were soft. He guessed he'd never forget the way that bunch of deputies had stuck their tails between their legs and lit out for the bottomland. He guessed they wouldn't be bothered any more with the law dogs.

After giving the third and last signal, Dunc was almost within sight of Ulster's Cave. You had to get pretty close before you could see it at all, for it was more of a wide overhanging shelf than a cave. Sort of like one big room that you could drive a dozen or more wagons into, with a roof of stone and three walls of red clay dirt. The way it was grown up in brush and scrub spruce, it was just about impossible to see it at all.

The last sentry, a short, potbellied little man named Dove Wakeley, waved to him. “You have a good trip, Dunc?”

“Good enough, I guess,” Dunc called. “Passed your home place yesterday. The folks are doin' fine.”

Dove nodded and grinned, and Dunc rode on out of sight along the narrow hill trail. Now he could see the cave, and the big iron wash kettle simmering with venison stew near the entrance, and the half-dozen horses grazing along the steep slope. Four men drifted out of the cave's dark interior, exchanged greetings with Dunc, and received news of their families.

The few men at the cave were Brunner regulars. Most of them had got in trouble with lowland law-mostly over property rights with the Indians-and the cave was a handy place to hide out in. A good many of these men had lost the land they had settled when the Nation had been cut up into personal allotments. These were the bitter men, and it was no good explaining to them that the land had never been theirs legally; all they knew was that they had been robbed of land that they had cleared and worked and claimed as their own.

As Dunc swung down from the saddle, Ike Brunner and his younger brother, Cal, came out of the cave.

“How was it down south?” Ike asked.

“All right,” Dunc said. “Abel Westrum cut his foot with an ax last week and can't ride. Bus Finnley is down with the slow fever. All the others'll be here this time tomorrow.”

“Wes Longstreet got in yesterday, from the north,” Cal Brunner said. He looked at his brother. “Maybe we better make out a list of the ones we can count on.”

Dunc and the two brothers hunkered down by the cave's entrance. Ike took up a stick, smoothed a place on the ground, and scratched the names down as Dunc called them out.

Ike, the older of the two Brunners, was a tall, long-faced man in his late thirties. If he had ever smiled, Dunc Lester had not seen it. Dunc guessed that Ike Brunner was the smartest man he'd ever seen, and without Ike the gang would be nothing. Still, not many of the boys liked him. He was unfeeling, cold, and deadly.

Cal Brunner was several years younger than his brother. Where Ike was feared, Cal was liked. A brash, good-looking kid, Cal Brunner was as quick to laugh as he was to fight; he loved corn liquor and country dances and girls. But he took orders from his brother like everybody else.

To some, Dunc guessed, this would seem like a pretty strange situation: thirty to fifty fiercely independent hill boys taking orders from a man they didn't like. That was because outsiders could not understand what debts these people owed Ike Brunner. Dunc thought of Dove Wakeley. When Dove's woman was down with scarlet fever and seemed sure to die, Ike Brunner hauled a doctor all the way from Talequah, kicking and yelling blue murder. And Ike put his pistol to the doctor's head and told him by God if he let the woman die he'd blow his brains right through the roof.

Dove's woman got well. Some people said it was an act of God, but Wakeley figured Ike Brunner had had a hand in it too, and he had been one of the regulars ever since. And there was Gabe Tanis. Gabe's cabin and sheds had burned to the ground one night. Everything he owned went up in fire and smoke. Of course the neighbors pitched in and helped rebuild, but only Ike Brunner would have thought of bringing him a new team of work mules. Where the mules had come from Gabe didn't know, and he cared less; he just knew that he had the best team in the hills, thanks to Ike Brunner.

Dunc himself was deeply in debt to Ike. During the big dry-up two years ago, the home place hadn't grown enough to half feed the big Lester family. Ike had brought shelled corn and flour to see them through the winter and early spring. When Dunc heard later that the Brunners were in trouble with the lowland law, he was among the first to help out.

Ike was a tough one to figure, Dunc decided. A lot of hill families would have gone without food during that dry-up if it hadn't been for the Brunner wagon-train raids. A lot of the womenfolks would still be wearing feed-sack dresses if it weren't for the bolt goods that Ike and Cal took off the mule skinners. And without Brunner money gifts, many of the hill farms would have been lost.

It was a funny thing. How could a man be so open-handed and big-hearted one day and turn killer the next?

Ponderously, Dunc moved the thought around in his mind. Not that it bothered him particularly. The raid on the freight company would bring in all kinds of things that the hill families needed: food, clothing, maybe even some shoes. Once there had been a wagon load of illegal whisky, and again a shipment of farm implements. Through some curious mental process Dunc had stopped thinking of these raids as stealing. Ike claimed that they were doing the fair thing, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. And Ike was always right.

Now Ike Brunner was staring thoughtfully at the ground, studying the list that he had scratched down in the dirt.

“Fifteen from the south,” he said. “Ten at least from the north. That ought to give us thirty men to hit the freight depot with.”

“Hell, we could take Reunion with that many men!” Cal Brunner said.

Ike fixed his cool gray eyes on his brother. “Reunion might be easier to take than that depot. Don't think they haven't heard of us down there, and don't think they won't have the place guarded.”

Then Ike turned his expressionless gaze on Dunc. “You better fill up on grub and get some rest,” he said. “Tomorrow you won't get much of either.”

The two brothers watched Dunc strip the bay and put the animal out to graze. Then they stood up and walked casually away from the cave. Cal shook his head, grinning. “I've got to hand it to you, Ike. The Doolins would still be operating if they had a gang like ours.”

“The Doolins were stupid,” Ike said flatly. “They tried to hold their gang together by dividing equally. These farmers wouldn't know an equal division if they got one; it would just make them hungry for more.”

Cal laughed. “So you don't give them anything!”

“Sure I give them something,” Ike said, looking hurt. “A bolt of cloth, some pots and pans, a plow. Maybe a bottle of whisky now and then. More important, I nurse their babies, get doctors for their wives, steal work mules for their farms. Those are the things that make them loyal to me, not money.”

Well away from the cave, they passed under a tall pine, and Cal's face was suddenly serious. “The trick, is to
keep
them loyal, Ike. I get closer to the men than you do, I get to know what they're thinkin'. They don't like the way you've been usin' your pistol.”

Ike's long face grew hard. “Who said it?” he asked.

“I don't know. Maybe nobody; but they're thinkin' it.”

“You're gettin' to be an old woman, Cal. Just let me do the thinkin'.”

Cal shrugged. “Don't say I didn't warn you.”

He started to walk back toward the cave, but Ike called to him. “Just a minute, Cal. Where did you go last night?”

“Why, nowhere, Ike. I was right there at the cave.”

“That's a lie,” Ike said coldly. “I saw you get up and sneak out, and I heard your horse beat tracks to the south. Couldn't be you was sniffin' around Mort Stringer's girl again, could it?”

Cal was visibly shaken by his brother's anger. He started backing off as Ike came toward him, then Ike's hand shot out and grabbed his young brother's arm in a grip of iron. “I warned you to stay away from that girl,” Ike said between his teeth. “You know how Mort Stringer feels about his daughter.”

They stood there for one long moment, Cal's face pale, his brother's face red with anger. Gradually Ike released his hold on his brother's arm. “I've made too many plans, Cal,” he said tightly, “to have them kicked over by the likes of you. These hill people may not like me, but they respect me. And that's the way I'm goin' to keep it. So you fool around with somebody else's girl, but not Mort Stringer's. Understand?”