Radigan (1958) (7 page)

Looking across the stage he gazed toward the distant mountains, and then a girl got out of the stage and the easy banter stopped as if cut with a knife. Whatever Tom Radigan had expected it was not this.

Under a perky little bonnet her eyes were guileless and blue, her face was that of an innocent child but her body was such that no clothing could conceal the lines of her figure. He caught his breath, half-hypnotized as she came up the steps. He was aware that everyone on the walk was staring, and aware she was thoroughly enjoying it.

She turned to Downey and said, "I am looking for Mr. Child or Mr. Radigan, of the R-Bar."

Downey started to speak but his lips found no words. In this land of few women there was nothing in his experience that prepared him to cope with this emergency. He stared and his lips parted and then he dumbly indicated Radigan.

She turned to him and surveyed him gravely out of large blue eyes. "You're not my father," she said, "so you must be Mr. Radigan."

Her eyes went past him to Gelina Foley. "Is this your wife?" Radigan chuckled. "No, ma'am, this is my enemy, Miss Gelina Foley."

She looked at Gelina with a thoughtful expression. "I think she's my enemy," she said. "She likes you."

Hastily, Radigan said, "Gretchen-that is your name isn't it?-can you ride?"

"I can ride anything that wears hair," she said, "but I'll have to change my dress."

She glanced quickly at Gelina. "Do you like her?" she whispered audibly.

Gelina's face flushed and deliberately she gathered her skirt and descended to her buckboard where Bitner was waiting to help her in. Without a backward glance, they drove away. Inwardly she was fuming. Why! That ... that baggage!

Angrily, Gelina flounced in her seat. The very idea! Why, that girl was no more than a child! And with a body like that! Accustomed to the attention of men, she realized jealously that from the moment that girl had gotten out of the stage nobody had so much as looked at her.

Her anger, she realized, was unreasonable. She sat back in the buckboard and began to plan. They must move at once, and she would run them out of the country. They would not wait any longer. After all, there were but two men there, and they could not be on watch all the time and still do the things that had to be done.

Her brows gathered. He had spoken of snow. Involuntarily she glanced at the dull sky. But that was nonsense. It never grew very cold here, this was New Mexico. Nonetheless the leaden sky depressed her, and without knowing why she was increasingly worried.

Remembering what Radigan had said, she began to wonder just what it was Harvey Thorpe had in mind-it was he who had insisted they come here. But leaving Texas was imperative, and this was the only property to which they had claim. And it should take only a few days to be rid of Radigan.

Yet even as she thought that she remembered the cool, masterful, almost easy way in which he had beaten Barbeau. She had rarely seen a man whipped more thoroughly.

And Vin Cable was dead-there had been four bullet holes in his body.

It was not going to be as easy as Harvey believed. Suddenly, she was glad Ross was along.

Gretchen Child returned from Downey's home where she had met Mrs. Downey, a buxom, motherly Irish woman, and where she changed her clothes. She now' wore a neat gray riding habit and whatever the dress had left to imagination the habit revealed. Uncomfortably, Radigan was aware that she would be unlikely to find anything that would make her look less exciting than she was.

As if, he reflected grimly, the Thorpe-Foley trouble was not enough!

He helped her into the saddle but she really needed no help. He saw at a glance that whatever else she might be she was at home in a saddle.

"You'll not be able to stay at the ranch," he warned. "It won't be safe."

"I trust you," she said.

Hastily, he explained. "I didn't mean that. We've a range war on with those people back there. A shooting war, I think." "I saw your knuckles. Has the war started?"

She looked at him seriously. "I'm strong. I can work, and I can use a gun. I'm really strong."

She held out her arm, doubled to make a muscle. "Just feel of that."

Chapter
Three.

The cattle came first. They came up the canyon on the third day after Radigan's return with Gretchen Child, and they came in a solid mass, hurried on by a dozen cowhands.
Obviously they had been driven up the canyon earlier and held at the cienaga during the night.

The cattle came first and they came fast. Radigan was putting a little feed in the makeshift corral hidden among the fallen rocks from the weathering of the mesa when he heard Child yell.

He heard him yell, heard a shot, and he dropped the pitch fork and came running.

He shot the first steer into the yard, but a glance told him there was no stemming that tide of beef and he ducked into the house after John and slammed the door, dropping the bar into place. Almost before he could reach the window the yard was crowded with cattle.

Child rested the muzzle of his Winchester on the sill of the window beyond the door and glanced over at Radigan. "Smart," he said, "mighty smart. We're not supposed to get out."

A big steer was pressed tight against the door, and others were so close to the windows that Radigan could have reached out and scratched their backs. The ranch yard was jammed full of steers pressed in a compact mass. Beyond them, to left and right, the herd was spreading out in loose formation, but those in the yard were held tight by a circle of cowhands and tight drawn ropes. The cowhands were out of sight behind the barn or in other concealment.

"Hi, the house!" The voice was the booming one of Ross Wall. "You want to get out, toss your guns out the window!" Child glanced at Radigan but he motioned for silence.

Several minutes passed.
After the first few minutes of realization Gretchen had calmly returned to her housework, putting a meal on the table as though there was no enemy within miles. Yet Radigan noted she wore riding boots and a rough skirt she was ready to go.

Wall did not know about the tunnel, and that was what would save them. Nobody knew about that but John Child, and obviously somebody in town had told Wall or Thorpe or both of the fact that the ranch house had but one entrance.

And without the tunnel they would have been helpless, for there was no escape from the house except by the tunnel, for driving the beef into the yard had imprisoned them just as surely as if walled with stone. They could kill the beef, but if they did they would then be killed themselves and no one would say they were killed without cause.

"If you want to eat," Gretchen said, "it's ready."

"Go ahead, John. You sit down. I'll take mine here at the window. "

"Hello, the house!" It was Wall again. "Radigan, I know you're in there, and you haven't a prayer! Throw us your guns and we'll let you out!"

They would get the house, but at this time of year hoping to move in themselves, they would not burn it. Living in the hills would be rough but they could stand it for a short time, at least.
Keeping well back away from the window, Radigan considered the situation.

Long ago he had planned for just such an emergency, but he had expected the trouble from the Utes. He had built for defense, but had planned for abandoning the place if it became necessary. Here, as at the barn, there was another way out, but the way out of the house was through a tunnel that opened in thick brush at the foot of the mesa near where the horses were picketed. It was not far behind the house, and it was unlikely anyone would examine the talus slope at the mesa's foot. To the casual eye it looked like a thousand other such slopes at the base of a thousand such mesas.

There was no way they could get at the house from the rear so it was unlikely anyone would find reason for checking that slope.

He could hear the murmur of voices from beyond the cattle. Obviously, the fact that no reply came from the house was disturbing to them, for there is no bargaining with a man who won't talk.

Gretchen brought coffee to the window, keeping well out of line. Radigan smiled at her. "You walked right into trouble. I'm sorry."

"Will we have to leave here?" "Yes. "

"We will need blankets and warm clothes," she said. "I'll get them ready."

He watched her as she walked away, amazed anew at the calm with which she accepted the situation. He glanced out the window again ... they had to stall until after dark, for the chance of escape in daylight was less ... all was quiet. The cattle were jammed tight and held there, pressing against the door.

Ross Wall hunkered down beside the fire, spreading his cold hands to the flames.

"He's there, all right. No way he could get out. I talked to a man down to San Ysidro, man helped build this place and he swears there was only one door. Small house like that, there's no need for another."

Thorpe squatted beside the fire and rolled a cigarette. "We've got to get him out of there. If he's got grub he could spend the winter there. "

Wall looked around gloomily. "He sure didn't tell no lies about grass. If this is all there is we can't hold the herd on it for a week."

"There's more."

Wall hunched his heavy shoulders under his coat. The more he saw of the situation the less he liked it, and from all he could see the' ranch looked like a two-man operation, and if it started to snow ...

"I better start some of the men scouting for grass. If we don't find some we'll have to drive out of here."

"Are you questioning my judgment?"

Ross Wall rolled his quid in his big jaws. "You said the grass was here, an' Miss Foley took your word for it. I hope you're right."

"It's here. "

Harvey Thorpe looked around slowly. The open space before the mesa did not look as large now as it had when empty of cattle, and despite himself he was worried. There was other grass back in the hills, but where was it? He had expected to find well-marked trails and he could find no trails at all. From the appearance of things this was all there was to the R-Bar, yet people at San Ysidro and others at Santa Fe had said Radigan ran several hundred head on land that would support several thousand.

"All right," Thorpe said finally, "send out a couple of men." He studied the house.

"There's smoke from the chimney, but it looks like a dying fire. "

"Well-built house. They would need little fire."

It was growing colder. Ross Wall looked at the sky. He was a tough, hardheaded man who rode for the brand; an order from Angelina Foley was all he asked from anyone.

He was the perfect feudal henchman, and as he had served her father so he now served her, and she was, he thought with satisfaction, a whole lot smarter than her father.

Her father would have stayed in Texas and fought it out when there wasn't a chance of winning, but Angelina knew when to cut and run, and what to take with her when she did. They had rustled her herds so when she left she simply drove off everything in sight.

Personally, he thought Radigan correct in his suggestion to sell off the cattle, especially the doctored brands, of which there were too many for comfort.
Holding the herd was probably Thorpe's idea, but a man did not always know where the ideas originated, for Angelina had a way of attributing ideas that were actually hers to someone else.

He poked a stick into the fire. There was not much time. They had to get Radigan out of there, but without a killing if possible. Ross Wall held no objections to killing when every other way had been tried, or when necessity demanded, but killings had a way of stirring things up, and a man like Radigan might have many friends.

He had not seen the beating Radigan had given Barbeau, but he had seen Barbeau afterwards and from all accounts it had been a thorough and artistic job, and it had left Barbeau a silent, hard-working man with all the bully knocked out of him for the time. Nothing he had seen of Radigan allowed him to believe that moving the man would be a simple task. He did not believe with Coker that one fast, hard-shooting rush would do it-the man inside the house was intelligent and a fighter.

Wall had been impressed with Radigan's manner-he did not seem to believe himself outnumbered, nor did he hesitate to handle a fight when it came to him.
A hard man and a fighter himself, Wall recognized the same traits in his antagonist and respected them.
Nonetheless, he had a job to do and the look of the sky bothered him.

Born in Vermont he had come west as a child, but there lingered a memory of mornings at home when his father would come in from the barn coated with snow, and when long icicles hung from the eaves. Those winters had been cold, with a deep, penetrating cold, and men had been frozen to death in some of those winters. This was New Mexico, and he had always thought of it as a warm and pleasant place, which it was, but they were high now and the chill in the air worried him.

Everything either Thorpe or Angelina had was tied up in that herd. Behind there was nothing but enmity and shambles, and the rustled cattle forbade their ever returning to Texas. Their only chance for survival lay right there, digging in fast. Yet he wished they would sell the herd and not gamble.