Slaughter's way (7 page)

Even as he reached his decision. Trace saw a flicker of something red show through the crack betw^een two of the bam side's sun-warped planks. Only for an instant was the color there, it moved from left to right across the two-inch-wide gap and the bam's door stood to the light of the space.

While he did not set himself up as one of the world's great thinkers, Washita Trace figiued he could add one and one to bring up the right answer. Point one being that the color in the bam had been a bright red, was not a quick-growing flower, but part of a man's shirt. Adding point one to point two, which was that Zeke Taggert—

who had been wearing a bright red shirt when they saw him earlier—did not stand alongside his brothers. Trace made the answer come up to a count of three and a deduction that he had located Zeke's presence.

"We ain't in the mood for funning. Slaughter," Scar warned, speaking while Trace made his study of the situation.

"Nor am I,'' Slaughter replied, "when somebody steals from me."

"Are you calling me a thief?" Scar snarled, wishing he had arranged a signal for Zeke to give when he reached the door of the bam and was ready to cut in.

"That's just what I'm saying—^"

"The bam, John!" Trace yelled. "Down!"

On the last word, both pitched sideways from their saddles. Slaughter did not go over on the side away from the bam, which he might have been expected to do. Instead he left his saddle and fell so he faced the barn's door and as he fell, he drew his Colt.

Springing from the bam, Zeke lined his rifle at where he had seen the two men as he passed the sim-warped planks which betrayed his presence to Trace. Only he aimed in the expectation of shooting a man seated on a horse. Even as he tried to correct his mistake, he saw flame rip from the barrel of Slaughter's Colt and felt the sledgehammer blow of a bullet tearing into him. The gangling thief went backwards into the side of the bam. Even hit badly, he tried to line his rifle at the man who shot him. Slaughter had been a lawman, and he acted as such. A second shot thundered from his Colt, this time he aimed it at Zeke's head. The Winchester cracked an instant after Slaughter fired, but a dead hand squeezed its trigger and its bullet flew harmlessly off into the scrub. Ready to shoot again if his man kept his feet and retained his hold on die gun. Slaughter saw Zeke let the rifle fall and shde down the wall. Only then did the rancher take time out to help deal with the other brothers.

Scar and Bill both grabbed at their guns an instant after Trace's yell started the J.S. men moving. The brothers were taken by surprise by the speed with which

Slaughter and Trace reacted, and delayed too long in starting to make their moves.

For all his bulk and slow wits, Bill could move with surprising speed at such times, and he acted fast enough to make him the more dangerous of the remaining brothers. Yet he was too slow. Even as Bill clawed out his gun, Washita Trace's long-barreled Colt bellowed. Trace shot to kill and for an instant kill, the only way he dared shoot imder the drcumstances. His Colt's bullet struck under Bill's outthrust jaw, ripped up through the roof of the mouth, and shattered out of the top of the head in a spray of grayish brains, blood and splinters of bone.

Before Slaughter could roll over and face Scar after dealing with Zeke, or Trace foimd himself free to divert his attention from Bill, Scar was backing away. Bill's body jerked imder the impact of lead and went down in the boned-out manner of a head-shot man, crumpling between Scar and Trace, but the small man hardly gave it a glance. He aimed to try to reach the house where possibly he could hold oflE the two men until dark and make his escape during the night.

''Hold it, Taggertl" Slaughter snapped, Imiging up from the ground.

With a snarl that was part fear and part rage. Scar began to shoot. He held his Colt in his right hand, while the left came across in short, chopping motions which drove back and released the hammer. He gave no thought to his brother, only to his own escape, for his plan had failed and his catalogue of mistakes grown longer with each move he made. A man did not stay alive for long in the cattle-stealing business if he made too many mistakes and Scar Taggert's quota began to run out. Wildly fanning off his shots proved to be the mistake where the gods of chance called time on Taggert's career. Only a few, a very few, men could perform accurate shooting when fanning a gun, and then only at close ranges, and Taggert did not belong to that magic-handed few. Fanning was the fastest possible metiiod of emptying a single-action gun in the general

direction of a target, but it was mosdy pure luck if any of the bullets should happen to connect.

Lead sang through the air around Slaughter a5 he sprang away from the horses, trying to draw Taggert's fire away from them. Burned black powder smoke laid whirling eddies before Taggert, hiding him from view almost. Almost, but not quite. Slaughter fired at the vaguely defined shape behind the smoke, while Trace sighted on where he reckoned, from the position of Scar's feet, Taggert's body ought to be. Two aimed guns added their roars to the crashing of Scar Taggert's Colt The small man seemed to lift from the ground and fly back as two heavy bullets struck him. Spinning aroimd, he fanned one last shot into the ground, and followed the bullet down an instant later.

Silence fell like a pall on the range. John Slaughter and Washita Trace glanced at each other as the foreman rose to his feet. Neither relaxed and they both held their guns ready for use. Too many men had died because they failed to take such a precaution and relaxed after seeing a man go down, only to take his lead before they realized he was faking.

Moving forward. Slaughter glanced down at Bill's body, one quick look being all necessary to show there was no danger from that source. Nor from Scar, for the two bullets could have been covered by the width of a small palm, where in the left side of the chest and either on its own would have been fatal. On crossing to the barn. Trace checked on Zeke, looked down at him, then turned to face Slaughter.

"He's cashed, too," he said.

"Go round up their horses, Wash," Slaughter replied. "We'll take their bodies into town and hand them over to the sheriff."

There were some folks, armchair moralists, or intellectual thinkers, who might claim that Slaughter had no right to take the law into his own hands in such a manner. To the moralist or the intellectual every criminal wore a mantle of self-righteous glorification and was the ill-used, misunderstood victim of the rich minority's

grasping greed; a product of a heartless, iincarmg society; or the praiseworthy dupe of the circumstances who had been driven to a life of crime through no fault of his own, yet was prevented from tiuning honest again by the mean-minded, puritanical hypocrisy of the non-morahst and nonintellectual people of the world.

The Taggert brothers became thieves because they were too idle to work and thought stealing offered them the easiest way of gaining the comforts of life. Which, although no intellectual would believe it, was the reason most criminals took up a life of crime.

For all Slaughter had cared, the Taggerts might have lived out their lives in peace as his neighbors. While he knew of their pasts, he would not have let the knowledge affect his treatment of them—as long as they mended their ways, stayed honest and respected his rights and property. Slaughter had no desire to buy their land and had not imposed such restrictions on their freedom that they were compelled to turn to a life of crime to stay alive. AU he had ever asked was that they lived as good neighbors. He would have helped tiiem get the spread on its feet again if they had asked him, or left them in peace if they wanted it that way.

Only the Taggerts had not wanted it that way. They chose to steal from him and Slaughter hated thieves. A man who had given his sweat and blood to build up a ranch and gather a herd did not take kindly to having his property stolen by a bimch who were too idle to work. However, having recovered his cattle without any bloodshed. Slaughter would have been willing to warn the brothers off and given them a reasonable time to clear out of Blantyre County. Nor would he have been tearing them from their family's old home. If it came to a point, the bank was due to foreclose on its note in the next few days.

When the brothers elected to make a fight of it. Slaughter and his foreman reacted with deadly speed. They believed that a man had a right to protect his own life even to the extent of killing an aggressor, and under

the circumstances they had been given little or no chance but to do so.

Loading the three bodies face down across the horses' backs. Slaughter and Trace climbed into their saddles and headed for Blantyre City with their loads. Slaughter had warned the Taggerts to mend their ways. When they failed to do so, he attended to the mending himself. For that was Slaughter s way.

CHAPTER SIX

He^s Cominif Witk Twenty Men

Bess Slaughter looked at the clock on the srmNG-room wall. Its fingers showed the time to be nine o'clock and her husband had not yet returned from riding out that morning.

For a few minutes she sat trying to concentrate on the darning of a sock, but somehow the needle did not seem to be going in the right place and she found she had botched it up. With an angry sniflF, she lowered the sock and needle. It was no use; she felt worried and promised to give her husband hell when he came home for not warning her how long he would be gone. Bess tried not to think that Texas John might be hurt, or even dead, and she wished that he had taken more men with him when he went to visit the Taggerts.

A knock sounded at the front door and the hinges creaked as the door opened. The big blue-tick hound lying by her chair did not move or raise its head, but its tail beat on the floor a couple of times, showing it knew whoever came in to be a friend.

"Fellers asked me to come across, Miz Bess," Coon-sldn said, entering the sitting room with his hat iq his hand. "They wants to know eflPen you-all reckons they should take out and look for Mr. John."

For a moment Bess did not reply and she gave thou^t to tlie suggestion. She had been raised on a ranch and knew enough about the cattle business to be aware of how tired the crew must be after a day's hard work cutting cattle from the petalta. Yet the hands, hke Bess, were worried about the nonarrival of Texas John and Washita Trace. It said much for the respect the cowhands felt for Bess that they thought of sending to

her for advice and orders on such an important matter as their boss's welfare.

While she felt concerned about her husband's absence, Bess did not want to do the wrong thing. She knew how important the Army contract was to Texas John and how he wanted to make sure of delivering his herd inside the allotted time. If he was all right, he would not want the crew sending out riding the range all night and having them so tired they would be unfit for work the following day.

Even as Bess thought of the matter, and before she reached any decision, the blue-tick lurched to its feet and walked across the room. Halting by the part-opened window, it reared up to rest its forepaws on the ledge and looked out into the night, its tail wagging from side to side.

An expression of relief came to both Bess and Coon-skin's faces as they watched the dog.

'That's John coming now," Bess said, although she still could not hear the sound which attracted the hound's attention.

*'Yes'm," agreed Coonskin vidth a grin. "That fool ole Blue dawg there ain't hkely to get hisself all excited for anything 'cepting a cougar, b'ar, or 'cause Mr. John's coming."

Hearing its name, the big blue-tick dropped onto all fours and padded past the cook to Bess's side. She dropped a hand to die dog's head and patted it gently, then went to the window and looked out. The dog followed on her heels, a hundred pounds of sleek-muscled fighting fury, yet gentle enough with its master, mistress and the Negro cook, although it merely tolerated the rest of the ranch hands and ignored strangers who, if they showed good sense, left Blue strictly alone.

"I can t see anything yet," Bess said, raising the window sash. "But I can hear horses."

'Two of 'em, Miz Bess," Coonskin confirmed and eyed the dog as his voice took on a mock fierce tone. "Dang fool critter. You-all come roimd my kitchen bothering Mr. Earp agaiu and danged if I don't take ole Betsy Two-Eyes to your hide and fill you full of rock salt."

"I don't think Blue would be fool enough to tangle with Mr. Earp," Bess remarked, smiling at the cook and knowing that Betsy Two-Eyes was the name he gave to his andent, percussion-fired, muzzle-loading eight-gauge shotgim.

'These here blue-ticks don't have no sense at all, Miz Bess. Now eflFen he was a black and tan— '*

Bess laughed and headed for the sitting-room door. One thing she had learned real early in her marriage was never to become involved in a discussion on the relative merits of various breeds of hound dogs with the cook. She knew there was no danger of Blue tangling with Ck)onskin's pet, even though the blue-tick outweighed Mr. Earp by maybe eighty pounds and had tangled with both bear and cougar in his day.

'Will you be taking Mr. Earp along on the drive?'' she asked as Coonskin opened the front door for her.

'"Ye'm. Shuckens, I know you-all'd take good care of him, but he's Idnda delicate and needs my especial care."

The subject of Mr. Earp was dropped as Bess and Coonskin stood on the porch of the ranch house and looked across the range. By that time the two riders were in sight and Bess felt rehef drifting over her as she saw her husband did not appear to be hurt in any way, nor did Washita Trace.

Even as Bess ran toward her husband, the ranch crew, led by Tex Biuton, came swarming out of the bunkhouse and converged on their boss and foreman.

"Did you-all see the Taggerts, John?" Burton asked.

'We saw them."

Slaughter left it at that and nobody thought of asking him any more questions on the subject, even though the rancher's reply left a whole lot unexplained. Maybe Washita Trace would go further into the matter when he joined the other hands in the bunkhouse. Or maybe he would not. Most likely he would add nothing to what his boss had already told the others about the visit to the Taggerts' place, for John Slaughter's foreman had never been noted for long-distance chatter.