Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ stood forth. There was no moon and the scattered stars gave no light to the earth. Yet he could see in his mind every outline of that mesa, every trail and gully.

      Maybe, he told himself, with a fresh touch of bitterness, I'd better saddle up and get back where I belong. Blamed little good I'll ever do by staying here now. Well, I got to play the hand out. Gracie, kid, your'e going to have a hard time...

      A foot struck the wagon tongue and a match burst like a bomb directly in front. By the glow of it he saw Beauty Chatto's evil, swarthy face.

      "Thinking it over, Lin?" the man asked in a voice thickened and blurred by whisky. "Coming 'round to my point of view? Better do it."

      "Beauty, I'm not in any humor to be kidded. We threshed this matter out a couple hours ago."

      Chatto had worked himself into a more belligerent frame of mind. "Now, look here, Lin, do you figure to declare war? Like I say, it don't do nothing but stir up trouble when a guy's got to fall back on gunplay, and I'd just as soon live and let live. But me and Nig is tired of your snooping. Gimme an answer now. Peace or trouble?"

      "Going into the mesa tomorrow, Beauty. That's my answer."

      "All right, by God!" Chatto growled. "You made yourself a bed to lie in. I'm serving notice now. Nig and me will shoot on sight."

      Lin was silent for a time. "All right, Beauty," he said finally. "Have it your own way. But you better be well covered when you start the fireworks."

      Suddenly his attention was diverted to the schoolhouse. The music had stopped some time back and a man's voice had taken up the interval. Lin, preoccupied with other matters, had given it little consideration. Now, as the voice stopped, it seemed as if bedlam had broken loose. A tremendous cheering burst out, from both men and women. Somebody rushed from the place and fired a gun. Feet stamped on the floor and the board walls rattled imder pounding fists. Lin and Chatto, moved by a common curiosity, walked back to the door and looked in.

      The crowd was packed loosely toward one end of the hall where James J. Lestrade and the judge were standing on chairs. The judge's face was scarlet with satisfaction, and Lestrade had his fingers hooked in his vest, beaming at everybody. After a while the noise quieted down and he spoke what appeared to be the last words of a speech.

      "And so, as our good friend Judge Henry has said, we're on the road to prosperity at last. Let's set a formal meeting for tomorrow night at this same place and get every last homesteader to come. We'll draw up articles on the spot and then we'll start work. Why, folks, there's a fortune ahead for us all!"

      Lin jumped through the door and up on a bench, shouting at the top of his voice to attract the crowd his way. "Wait a minute—wait a minutel Now, just before you folks all stampede toward this siren's call, I want to ask one question. Just one single question."

      There was a quick switching of interest, a craning of heads. Even then he saw that nothing he might say would ever change their temper or subdue the leaping optimism in their hearts. They had fought so long with so little success; they had nourished the idea so tenaciously that some day water would come to them that now they were in but one state of mind. Judge Hemy was swinging his hands up and down, on the verge of apoplexy. Lestrade had turned to frowning disfavor. In the moment's lull Lin put his question.

      "I want to ask you folks this: Where—is the—money—coming from—for this project?" He spaced the words and emphasized them with a thrust of his finger. A murmur, a kind of breathless rustle went from man to man, and he hurried on. "How much do you think it costs to build an irrigation system? If the United States Government has passed us by, what makes you figure a parcel of green homesteaders can turn the trick?"

      And then he was overwhelmed by such a shouting and booing as he had never before heard. It poured upon his head in ever- increasing force. As it died down, men began to move swiftly upon his vantage point, and he heard one voice and another saying, "What's biting your nose?" "You're no farmer—you're a prospector!" And at last came the words he had feared would come. "Go on back to your cows! Cows! Yeah—what brand do you like best?"

      He saw Gracie Henry's face in that unreasoning multitude. Never before had it been so white and drawn. And right beneath his feet Beauty Chatto stared at him with mouth agape, like a man who has found his well formed opinions suddenly betray him. The foremost rank of men bore down, and Lin felt the bench sway. He was picked up bodily, struck at and badly shaken. Whirled around and shoved and pulled, he went staggering through the door, and then, as darkness protected him, he heai'd Lestrade's voice calling out. The men went inside and left him alone.

      He spent a moment pulling his clothes back into shape. Then, sadly and quietly, he got his horse and turned homeward. Gracie would wonder what had happened—but the judge must take care of that. As for himself, there was but one thing left to do.

      Well, they know how I feel about it, anyway, he thought. And some day those words will bear fruit. God, I'd like to find the man who shouted 'cows' at me! But the eggs are busted now, and maybe some good will come of it.

      He reached his house, fried himself a meal and packed his lead horse. Within an hour he was striking eastward toward the high mesa, taking care now and then to stop and put his ear to the ground. He wanted no one following. What he was about to do had to be done without observation.

      CHAPTER IV

       NIGHT RIDERS

       Table of Contents

      He traveled all that night, pushing the horses along at a steady pace. Beyond daylight he stopped for an hour's rest, ate a can of tomatoes, and continued easterly. The base of the mesa drew nearer and the ground grew more and more barren, seamed with dry creek beds and littered with boulders. It was a country beyond the power of any homesteader to improve, fit only for the poisonous creatures that crawled and burrowed in its sandy soil, and almost too dismal and desolate for the occasional passer-by.

      But it's good for something, Lin reminded himself. The day's not far off when certain folks'll be tramping across it, bent on business.

      Dusk found him camped on the first steep pitches of the mesa. And, as he had done a hundred times before in the same spot, he ate a cold meal in the dark and rolled up in his blankets twenty yards from the duffel, with the rifle close by.

      Nor did he light a blaze in the morning, but journeyed on up the slopes until at last he stood on the mesa's rim and looked across a valley curtained by heat fog to that far-off irregular patch of earth representing Powder. The town did not hold his interest so much as a small trail of dust in the more immethate foreground, which, after a half hour's patient watching, proved to be the wake of a wagon going north on the Snake River Road. Thus satisfied, Lin left the panorama behind him, dipping into the corrugated sand and clay surface of the mesa.

      Beauty Chatto'll probably be ahead of me, he mused. He's got a fresh horse and he always travels fast. Besides, he knew I was coming in right away, and it's natural he'd want to push in first. I'd better watch the front more.

      He pulled the rifle from its boot and laid it across the saddle, studying the hilly contours that rose before him. It was a region admirably fashioned for ambuscade: at no place was there more than three or four hundred yards' level interval between the sudden convolutions of land. Ballou, on reaching some such eminence, had only a partial view of the way ahead before plunging down into the succeeding hollow. Thus he proceeded.

      Toward noon СКАЧАТЬ