Feud On The Mesa (24 page)

“I told you and Pete Ruff, consarn it, Charley. I been tellin’ you pair of idiots for the past three, four months, he was gettin’ us all in deeper and deeper.”

Jud pointed to the corpse and gave an order to the man who had just mounted his horse. “Get down, mister, fling Chase over his horse, lash him to it, and lead him on down to town.” Jud’s uncompromising look inspired the cowboy to obey.

Watching the cowboy work and looking as un-compromising as ever, Jud added a little more to what he had already said: “That lousy jailhouse down in Clearwater’s going to be full to the rafters.” He looked at Evart Hartman. “You reckon there’s
enough honest folks down there to set up some kind of law court?”

Evart’s answer was cryptic. “You can bet new money on it.”

Jud looked at Rufe, eyebrows raised. Rufe looked at Elisabeth. “Ought to be getting’ back to the ranch,” he told her, and she, too, looked at Evart Hartman. This time, the old cowman did not wait to be ad-dressed. He smiled at the handsome woman.

“Looks Tome like we sort of owe you something, Miz Cane. I’ll send word out that we’ll need maybe ten, fifteen good range riders to help scour the desert and fetch back to your mesa all the Lance-and-Shield livestock we can find. All right, ma’am?”

Elisabeth avoided watching Arlen Chase being lashed limply, belly down, across his saddle when she replied to Hartman. “All right, Mister Hartman. But I don’t need charity.”

The old cowman squinted a moment, then glanced at Rufe, slightly raising and lowering his shoulders as though to say:
What the hell can you do with a female like this?

I
t was in Rufe’s thoughts that they should have ridden back to Clearwater Tomake certain justice was done. It was also in his mind that Evart Hart-man, now that he was convinced that Arlen Chase had been everything honest livestock men disapproved of—horse thief, cattle rustler, land thief— would grimly make a particular point of seeing that justice was done.

Jud may have been thinking along these lines, too, because, as he and Rufe and Elisabeth Cane reached the trail leading upward to the mesa top, Jud said: “Folks just naturally shy clear of unpleasantness, and maybe that’s how fellers like Chase manage to succeed. Seems Tome, we’d ought to hang around, down there in Clearwater, and make blessed sure things come out right.”

Elisabeth, who had been riding in silence most of the way, smiled at Jud. “It’s a big country. There aren’t many people in it, but once they know for a fact someone is stealing and lying, you can depend upon them to do whatever has to be done to put an end to it.”

Rufe listened, and said nothing. As far as he was concerned, the case against Arlen Chase did not need any more proving, and with Chase dead, and
his gunfighter dead, also, and his cowboys like Fen-wick and that older rider willing to tell what they knew, there would be justice. Belated justice, for a fact—Matt Reilly, Constable Bradshaw, and another rider, the one who had taken his money from the stolen horses and gone back to Texas with it—had seriously crippled Elisabeth’s cow outfit, but even that was not beyond repair.

He eyed Elisabeth thoughtfully. “Did Chase have pretty fair quality cattle, ma’am?”

“Yes. He had scrubs, like everyone else, but his grade stock was fair quality. Why?”

Rufe glanced up the trail they were riding as he said: “Well, a funny thing crossed my mind just now. Arlen Chase’s mark was AC. And seems Tome someone said your pappy’s name was Amos Cane, and that figures out AC, too.”

Elisabeth’s dark eyes widened on Rufe. He knew exactly what she was thinking, but he hadn’t mentioned any of this with any thought in mind of stealing AC cattle, so he explained. “Suppose you could borrow some money, maybe from local stockmen like old Hartman, or maybe from some bank, if there is one in the country. Why, then, you could buy Chase’s iron…the AC…and that way you’d acquire his livestock, and, if you’d care to reregister his iron in your pappy’s name, why then we wouldn’t have all that re-branding to do. You’d have two irons, AC and your Lance-and-Shield brand.”

Even Jud, after some thought about this, smiled a little. He winked at Elisabeth, then spoke to his part-ner. “Every once in a while you do come up with something that could pass for a smart idea. Not often, but every now and then.”

They reached the top out, passed silently through
the abandoned cow camp of the defunct Arlen Chase, and hardly a word more passed among the three of them until, with the sun angling away westerly, they had the rooftop of the old log barn in sight, and this reminded Jud of something.

“Ma’am, how come you to unchain those fellers we left in your barn?”

“I was going to take them down to Clearwater and sign a warrant against them at the jailhouse.” She looked sharply at Jud, when he sighed loudly over this statement, then waggled his head. “What’s wrong with that, Jud?”

“Nothing much, ma’am, except that one of the fellers who was involved in stealing and selling your livestock was the town marshal of Clearwater.”

Elisabeth looked at Rufe, who gravely nodded his head, then she said: “I didn’t have any idea Homer Bradshaw was involved. No idea at all.”

Jud was able to be charitable in the face of her ignorance, because he was more interested in something else. “He was, and that’s a plumb fact. Now tell me, ma’am, how did those fellers manage to turn on you?”

“We were going down the trail. It didn’t seem de-cent Tome Tomake them ride chained like that. They couldn’t control their horses, or even.…”

“So you took off the chains,” muttered Jud, and rolled up his eyes. “I reckon it’s true, what we heard about handsome females, Rufe. If they got looks, they don’t have much in the way of brains.”

Elisabeth reddened and her eyes sparked, but she simply rode along, watching Jud roll a smoke, and kept all her quick, biting comments in check.

Rufe leaned, touched her hand atop the saddle horn, and said: “That was a compliment.”

If this ameliorated Elisabeth’s annoyance, it did not show until they reached the barn and off-saddled out front, then, as she turned to head for the main house to prepare supper, she smiled very sweetly at Jud.

“There is something I’ve always heard, too, Jud…that, if a cowboy is worth his salt, he’ll never quit, once he’s hired on, just because an outfit is in trouble. When will you be riding on?”

They both leaned on the tie rack, watching her walk toward the house. Jud removed his hat, scratched his head, replaced the hat with indifferent aim, and screwed up his face toward Rufe. “What in hell did she mean by that? It sounded like she figured me to be one of those rolling stones, or some-thing.”

Rufe side-stepped a direct answer as he led his horse and Elisabeth’s sorrel over to a corral and put them inside. Jud came along later, and did the same thing, then the pair of them met inside where they forked some hay to the horses, and Jud was still puzzled.

“She don’t like me,” he told Rufe. “She don’t want me around. I think that’s what she meant.”

Rufe said: “Naw, she was just answering back for what you said about beautiful women being dumb, in the way womenfolk get back at men.”

Jud still did not understand, but he eventually gave up even trying when they caught the smell of cooking food in the evening air. Jud stood in the barn doorway, looking in the direction of the house, faintly scowling. “Well, hell,” he said plaintively, “no woman that handsome has to have brains, too, does she?”

Rufe agreed. “She sure don’t.” He looked out
across the night-shadowed mesa. “We’d ought to stay up here, Jud. Get the ranch back on its feet, anyway.”

Jud put a wryly wise look upon his partner. “Sure. And that’s the only reason you’d want to stay here for a few years. Couldn’t have anything to do with the look in her eyes when she smiles at you, or that sick-calf look you get when you smile back.” Jud snorted and hauled up. “I got to go wash at the creek and slick down my hair. Don’t seem decent, a friend of yours lookin’ like the backend of a bear when he’s set-tin’ at the same supper table with you and her…whilst you’re exchanging those calf-eyed looks.”

Jud struck out in the direction of the creek, leaving Rufe where he was, in front of the barn, softly gazing in the direction of the lighted main house windows.

For a fact she was a beautiful woman. A man could ride two-thirds of his entire lifetime and never see another woman that handsome. And this mesa was one hell of a long way from the Gila Valley, too.