Matagorda
LOUIS L'AMOUR
BANTAM BOOKS NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND
1
 MATAGORDA
Bantam Book I November 1967
New Bantam edition /June 1971
The Louis L'Amour Collection I December 1986
Book design by Renee Gelman
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©1967 by Bantam Books
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 MATAGORDA
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4
 ONE
Major Tappan Duvarney rested his hands on the rail and stared toward the low sandy
shore. It was not what he had expected of Texas, but whatever lay ahead represented
his last chance. He had to make it here or nowhere.
He listened to the rhythmic pound and splash of the paddle wheels and looked bleakly
into the future. Behind him lay the War Between the States and several years of Indian
fighting with the frontier army; before him only the lonely years at some sun-baked,
windswept frontier post, with nothing to look forward to but retirement.
When the war had broken out he was a young man with an assured future. Aside from
the family plantation in Virginia, his father owned a shipping line trading to the
West Indies and Gulf ports-four schooners and a barkentine, and good vessels all.
Tap Duvarney had made two trips before the mast on the barkentine, had taken examinations
for his ticket, and had made two trips as third mate, one aboard a schooner, the
other on the barkentine. His father wanted him to know the sea and its business from
every aspect, and Tap liked the sea. He had taken to the rough and rowdy life in
Caribbean ports as if born to it.
The war changed all that. His sympathies and those of his family were with the Union.
He had gone north and joined up. Benegades had burned the plantation buildings and
run off the stock; one schooner had been lost in a hurricane off this very coast,
two others had been confiscated by the Confederacy and sunk by Union gunboats. The
barkentine had disappeared into that mysterious triangle south of Bermuda and left
nothing behind but the memory. The last schooner, beat and bedraggled, had burned
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alongside the dock when the war came to Charleston. Tap Duvarney returned from the
war saddled with debts, his father dead, his home destroyed.
There seemed only one thing to do, and he did it. He went back to the army and a
series of frontier posts. During the nine years following the war he fought Indians
from the Dakotas to Arizona. He managed to keep his hair, but picked up three scars,
one from a knife, two from bullet wounds.
Finally, his father's estate had been settled and he emerged from the shambles with
a bit more than seven thousand dollars.
It was then he heard from Tom Kittery.
Captain Wilkes stopped beside him now on his way to the pilot house. Duvarney knew
that Wilkes was worried about him, and genuinely wished to help. The captain was
a good man who had served on one of his father's ships.
"You'll find Texas a fast country, Major. Do you have friends here?"
"One ... so far as I know. I met him during the war."
"You haven't seen him since? That's quite a while, Major. Is that the man you've
gone into partnership with?"
Duvarney thought he detected a doubtful note in Wilkes's voice, and he was not surprised.
He was a bit doubtful himself from time to time.
"I know the man, Captain. Whatever else he may be, he's honest . . . and he's got
guts. I go along with that."
"The cattle business is good," Wilkes said. "Indianola has been the biggest cattle-shipping
port in Texas for a good long time, so I've had a good deal to do with it. I may
know your partner."
"Kittery . . . Tom Kittery. Old Texas family."
"Kittery, is it? Yes, he has guts, all right. There isn't a man in Texas would deny
that. And he's honest. But speaking as a friend, I'd never leave the ship, if I were
you. Come on back to New Orleans. You're a good man, and you know the sea. We'll
find something for you there."
"What's wrong with Kittery?"
"With him? Nothing . . . nothing at all." Wilkes glanced at Duvarney. "I take it
you haven't heard about the feud?"
Wilkes paused, then went on. "You're walking right into the middle of a shooting
war . . . the Munson-Kittery feud. It has been going on since 1840 or thereabouts,
and from the moment it
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is discovered that you are associated with Kittery you'll be a prime target."
"I know nothing about any feud."
"You say you knew Kittery during the war? He may have thought the feud was a thing
of the past because it seemed to be over. Until the Kittery boys left for the war
there hadn't been any shooting for several years.
"In the years before the war the Kittery faction numbered some of the toughest, ablest
fighting men in Texas; so the Munsons laid low and played their music soft. And when
the Kittery boys went off to war, the Munsons stayed home.
"Even so, they kept quiet until Ben was killed at Shilo. That started them stirring
around a bit, but it wasn't until Tom was captured-reported dead, in fact-that they
began to cut loose.
"They ran off a bunch of Kittery cattle, then burned a barn. Old Alec, Tom's uncle,
rode out after the Munsons and they ambushed him and killed him. After that they
really cut loose. They killed two Negro hands who had worked for the Kitterys for
years, and burned the old home-one of the oldest houses on the coast.
"Cattle were beginning to be worth money, and the Munsons thought they were rich
on Kittery beef. Only somebody stampeded the biggest herd one night and ran them
into the Big Thicket. Well, you don't know the Thicket, but finding cattle in there
is like hunting ghosts. The Munsons never were much on hard work, and rousting those
steers from the Thicket would be the hardest kind of work. So the steers, and a lot
of other cattle, are still in there."
"Maybe those are the cattle I bought," Duvarney commented ironically. "It's my luck."
"Are you wearing a gun?" Wilkes asked.
"I have one." As a matter of fact, he had two guns. "From what you've said, I should
be wearing one."
'You should." Wilkes straightened up. "I'm going up to take her in, but my advice
to you is: stay on the ship. ... If you do leave her, be ready for trouble. They
laid for Johnny Lubec, and they laid for Tom. They were waiting for him when the
boat docked ... my boat."
"Tom?"
Wilkes smiled grimly. "Tom was no fool. I told him what had happened to Johnny, so
he left the ship as we were going past the island, entering the bay.
The fog was thick that morning, and he lowered himself over
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holster was worn from use, but he belted it on. He hesitated a bit over the second
pistol, then thrust it into his waistband.
Pausing before the mirror, he straightened his cravat, and studied the hang on his
coat to see if the pistol showed a bulge. It did not.
For a moment then, he looked at himself.
What he saw was a lean, spare-built man with a brown, quiet face and hazel eyes.
His shoulders were broad, and the coat fitted admirably. He was, he thought wryly,
what he had heard people say of him: "a handsome man," or "a fine figure of a man."
He was also a man of thirty-three with a wealth of experience, and nothing to show
for it but the scars. When most men of his age were well established in their life
work, he had nothing, was nothing.
He had found it all too easy to slip into the routine of army life, but the peacetime
army offered little chance for advancement, and he had been lucky to make major.
He knew of many older men who had done just as much who were captains, and a few
who were still lieutenants. But his early life had been geared to ambition, and he
felt he must accomplish something, do something, make himself a better man, and his
country a better place. This he had been taught as a child, this he still believed.
He turned from the mirror, gathered up his gear, and swung his sea chest to his shoulder
with practiced ease. Then he picked up the carpetbag and walked out on deck, placing
his things near the gangway.
Several passengers had come out on deck to watch the steamboat's approach to Indianola.
Most of them he knew by sight, and had measured and catalogued them. All except two
fell into familiar categories. One of these was a tall, wiry man in a tailored black
broadcloth suit, a hawk-faced man with a saturnine expression, as if he viewed the
world with wry amusement. The other was a girl.
She was young, and beautiful in the way a ranch girl is beautiful who does not know
the skills or artifices of the city. She was blonde, with blue eyes and a clear,
fresh complexion, but she looked somewhat sullen now, and seemed to be approaching
the Texas coast with no anticipation of pleasure.
Several times Duvarney had caught her eyes upon him, showing curiosity but nothing
more. He lifted his hat. "Ma'am, I presume you are acquainted in Indianola?"
"Yes, I am," she answered. "My home is in Texas."
"A fine state, I've heard. I was wondering if you could tell me where I could locate
Tom Kittery."
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Her eyes were suddenly unfriendly. She looked at him, a hard, measuring glance. "If
you are looking for Tom Kittery you will have to find him yourself. If there is anyone
who knows where he is, I don't know about it."
"I see. Well, no harm done. I expect he will find me soon enough, when he knows I
am here. He has enemies, I believe?"
"He has . . . too many of them."
Then they stood silently together, watching the approaching shore, and Tap found
himself wondering about her. She was dressed neatly but not expensively, in the style
of a ranch girl going to the city, or coming back from a visit. From her attitude,
she was not happy about coming home.
"You enjoyed New Orleans, ma'am?"
She turned quickly. "Oh, I did! It's a wonderful place, so many people, beautiful
clothes ... so many nice places to go-if there was somebody to take you."
"You have friends there?"
"I have an uncle and aunt there. I'm afraid they did not approve of a lot of the
most exciting places."
"Quite properly," Duvarney commented dryly. "The most interesting places in New Orleans
are no place for a young girl.
"As for me," he added, "I look forward to Indianola, and to Texas."
"You're going to stay there?"
"I hope to. As a matter of fact, I have some investments there. An investment, I
should say. In cattle."
She looked at him. "You did not mention your name. Or where you were from."
"Sorry, ma'am. The name is Tappan Duvarney, and I am from Virginia."
"You're Tap Duvarney?"
He was surprised. "You've heard of me, then?"
"I'm Mady Coppinger." She glanced quickly around to be sure no one else was listening.
"Tom Kittery is my . . . he is a friend of mine. He told me about you. As a matter
of fact," she added, somewhat irritably, "he has been talking of very little else
since you decided to come down."
She looked hard at him again. "Tom said you'd lived in Richmond and Charleston."
"A long time ago. For years I've only visited there. I've been in the army . . .
out west."
"I envy you. Any place is better than Texas." The sullen look
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was on her face once more. "I wish I had never come back. I hate it."
"Do you go to New Orleans often?"
"I've never been there before, and it isn't likely I'll get to go again." She looked
suddenly defiant. "Unless somebody takes me."
He avoided the opening, if that was what it was, and watched the shore. He could
see the buildings now. The coast was low and flat, but there seemed to be hills beyond
the town which were vague at that distance. The two long dark fingers of pier thrust
into the bay waters.
"I've never been anywhere before," the girl said. "Only to Indianola or Victoria
. . . and once over to Beeville. My pa owns a ranch."
"Does he live near Tom?"
She shook her head. "Mr. Diuvarney, you must understand something. Tom Kittery is
a hunted man. The Munsons are looking for him and when they find him they'll kill
him. If you want to stay alive, don't you dare mention his name, or they'll be gunning
for you."
"I will have to find Tom."
"Don't you go asking for him. I'd say you'd best hire yourself a rig ... or a horse."
She looked up at him. "Do you ride?"
"I was in the cavalry."
"Then get a horse and ride south. Take your time. Ride south toward Mission River.
If nobody stops you keep on riding, but don't be in a hurry. Tom will find you."
"It doesn't seem a very good time to gather a herd for a cattle drive," Duvarney
commented.
"Tom usually does what he starts out to do," Mady said. "I'll have to say that. Like
the business with the hides."
At his questioning look, she went on. "The Munsons have been branding Rafter K stock.
The Rafter K is the Kittery brand, but the law is a Munson and there wasn't much
Tom could do, or so folks thought. Then one morning they woke up and found fresh
hides tacked up where everybody could see them. They were nailed up with the hair
side against the wall so any western man could see the Rafter K had been changed
into a Munson Circle M."
She smiled, and suddenly her face was changed. "Everybody in the country was laughing
about that, and telling the story, until Jim Hart killed a man over to Beeville.
Since then nobody feels
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much like talking, but the hides are still going up. Tom has nailed up hides in Beeville,
Indianola, and Victoria, and even clean down to Brownsville. The Munsons are mad
enough to eat nails."
Tap chuckled. "No wonder they're mad." He straightened up. "How about you? Do they
know you're a friend of his?"
"They know it. But mister, nobody bothers a woman in Texas. They may not like me,
but they won't do anything or say anything. Even if they weren't afraid of Texas
people, they wouldn't say anything because of Jackson Huddy."
"But I thought he was one of them?"
"He is. Jackson Huddy is probably the quickest man alive with a gun . . . quicker
than Tom, some think. But whatever else he is-and he has the name of being the coldest
killer this country ever saw-he respects a woman. He respects women and the church,
and very little else. You look out for him."
Duvarney tipped his hat and moved away from her. It would never do to invite trouble
for her by staying near her. The possibility that they knew about him was slight,
yet somehow they had known that Johnny Lubec and Tom were coming home, and they had
been waiting for them. Somehow they might also know about him.
He stood by the gangway and watched the lines go out, and then the gangway. Captain
Wilkes came down from the pilot house to bid his passengers good-bye. One by one
he saw them down the gangway and onto the pier.
Several rigs were waiting there, and in turn they drove away with passengers and
their luggage. Only one remained behind.
Warily, Tap Duvarney studied the men on the dock. There was the usual collection
of loafers who gathered to see any boat or train arrive. But there were three who
drew more than his casual attention. He had lived too long on the frontier not to
know troublehunters when he saw them, and two of these seemed to be in that category.
The third man was a tall, high-shouldered man with a clean-shaven, hard-boned face
and small eyes. Once, briefly, his eyes met Duvarney's.
The others on the dock were familiar types. In most towns there are men or boys who
want to try their strength, usually against somebody they feel confident they can
whip. Often the man they choose is a stranger-if a well-dressed stranger, so much
the better. Such men he did not mind, for they started their fights and they took
their medicine, learning their lesson as all must do.
But there was another kind, the real bullies, those with a drive
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to meanness and sadism. These three, he felt sure, were of that sort. He had been
the butt of the joke before, knew the dialogue, and was ready.
Only he had not wanted it to happen here, when he had just arrived in the town where
Tom Kittery had enemies. A fight he would not mind, and might even welcome as a way
to initiate himself into the local scene, but he did not want a bullet in the back
because of it.
When the last of the passengers had gone, he lifted his sea chest to his left shoulder,
then picked up his carpetbag with his right hand, following the last man by a few
steps.
The buckboard with the two paint mustangs was still standing at the end of the pier.
If the driver was around, he was not in sight.
Duvarney walked along to the end of the pier and put down his sea chest and carpetbag
near the buckboard. He glanced around, hearing the boots of the two young men as
they came up behind him. He turned slowly when they were still several feet off.
They had moved apart a little, so he waited, somewhat bored by the familiarity of
the pattern. "You fixin' to ask that man for a ride, mister?" one of them asked.
"I might at that. Is he around?"
"Name of Foster. Got a way of comin' an' goin', Foster has. He might be around, and
he might not. Thing is, have you got any right to be here? Seems to me a man comin'
to a strange town should have some money, and if he has money he should stand up
for the drinks."
"That's fair enough. You boys carry my trunk up to the hotel and I'll buy you each
a drink."
"Carry your- What do you think we are, mister? Beggars?"
"No," he said, "only I figured you could earn money enough for a bath and a shave.
Might seem nice to be clean again . . . after so long a time."
They stared at him, then the taller one took a step nearer. "You tryin' to be smart,
mister? You sayin' we're dirty?"
Duvarney widened his eyes. "I wouldn't think of such a thing. I'm not a man who stresses
the obvious. I just offered you a chance to earn the drink you asked for."
"We never asked for no drink," the tall one argued. "We figured a gent like you,
so dressed up an' all, we just figured you might have money enough to treat the boys
up yonder. Suppose you let us see how much you got."
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"Sorry. If you intend to rob me, you'll have to try it the hard way."
Duvarney stepped back, as the tall one started for him, but as he stepped back he
kicked the carpetbag into the other's path, tripping the young man so that he fell
to hands and knees. As Duvarney kicked the carpetbag, he shifted his feet and met
the lunge of the second man.
He was coming in low, and Tap jerked his knee up hard into the man's face, smashing
nose and lips. Catching him by the hair, he jerked him upright and swung a right
into his belly. The man went down hard as Tap wheeled and caught a wild right on
the shoulder from the first man, now on his feet. Tap looked at him and laughed,
then he feinted and the man's hands flailed wildly. Tap stabbed a left to the mouth,
then three more as fast as he could jab. He feinted again, hitting him in the wind,
and when he bent over gasping, a hammer blow on the kidney stretched him out.
Calmly, Duvarney straightened his coat. Captain Wilkes was standing by the rail of
the steamboat, watching. The tall, lean man who had apparently been with the two
he had just beaten, looked on without emotion, or evidence of more than casual interest.
"That there was mighty neat," he said. "Looks to me like you've fought some with'your
fists."
"A little." ^
The man gestured toward the two on the dock, who were groaning now, and beginning
to stir. "Don't let that set you up none. They never was much account." He started
to turn away toward town, then paused. "If you're huntin' the man who owns that rig,
you'll find him yonder. You can tell any who ask that he just kept the wrong company."
"How does a man choose his company around here?"
The tall man looked at Duvarney with cool, almost uninterested eyes. "He chooses
any company he likes, just so it ain't Kitterys. We don't cotton to Kitterys."
"Afraid of them?"
The man looked at him. "I am Jackson Huddy," he said, and walked away up the street.
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Duvarney watched Jackson Huddy walk slowly away and his eyes went beyond him to the
weather-beaten frame buildings, the signs hanging out over the streets, the hitching
rails. It looked not at all like a port on the Gulf of Mexico, but rather like a
cow town in the Plains country or the Rockies.
The two roughnecks were getting up. One, whose face had had a hard encounter with
Tap's knee, had a badly broken nose, by the look of it; the swelling had already
almost closed his eyes, and his lips were a pulp.
Neither of them had known anything about fistfighting. As for Duvarney, he had served
a harsh apprenticeship when he made those two trips to the West Indies as a deck
hand, to say nothing of two trips as a mate. In those days no man could hold down
a job aft unless he could fight. He was expected to be ready and able to whip any
man in the crew, and any three if necessary.
Duvarney stood watching the two, but as they got up they backed off. He was wary
of a shot in the back, but neither man seemed to remember that he carried a gun.
When they had gone he glanced reluctantly at the stack of cotton bales toward which
Jackson Huddy had gestured.
With another glance up the street, Duvarney walked over to the bales. A man lay behind
the pile, sprawled on his face, and there was blood in the dust where he rested.
Duvarney turned him over. The man had been stabbed twice in the belly, the long blade
striking upward. He was dead, the body not yet cold. On his holster was burned a
Rafter K, the brand of the Kitterys.
Returning to the buckboard, Duvarney made a space in the
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back for the body, then brought it over and laid it out in the back, covering it
with an old tarp that lay there.
In the buckboard was a nose bag for the horse and a sack of oats, as well as two
sacks of groceries. He saw that the mustangs also carried the Rafter K brand.
He stepped up to the seat and turned the buckboard around. He drove up the street,
aware of the eyes that followed him. He drove to a sign that said Hardware, got down,
and went inside. A small group congregated around the buckboard, and more than one
of them lifted the tarp to look at the dead man.
"Is there an undertaker in town?" Duvarney asked.
The gray-haired man behind the counter shook his head. "Nobody will lay out a Kittery
man," he said "and Foster was a Kittery man. And there ain't nobody will dig a grave
for him, either. Nor pray for him."
"It's that kind of town?"
The man shrugged. "We live here, mister. We live here all the time, and that Munson
crowd are here. I'm sorry, right sorry."
"Is there a Kittery lot in the cemetery?"
"Two . . . maybe three of them."
"I'll need a pick and a shovel."
"You'll need more than that, mister. You'll need a rifle."
"All right, hand me down one of those Winchesters, and I'll want about five hundred
rounds of ammunition."
"Five hundred rounds? That would fight a small war."
"You can pass the word for me that I have no part in this feud, and I want no part
in it; but if they ask for any kind of trouble they can have it.
"You can also pass the word around that I am going to bury this man, and that I am
asking for no help. I will read over him myself."
The storekeeper was silent, putting the order together swiftly. When Duvarney paid
him, he said, "Don't think we're unfeeling. This fight has been going on for nearly
forty years now, and a lot of good men have been killed. Nobody wants to get involved
any more. It's their fight, so let them have it."
"All I want to do is bury a man."
"You won't do it. They won't let you."
The crowd moved back for him when he put the pick and shovel into the wagon beside
the body. They stood back even further when he loaded the ammunition and a few items
in the way of
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food. Then he got up on the blackboard and spoke to the team. They started with a
rush.
At the cemetery he drove the buckboard through the gate and closed it after him.
He scouted among the graves until he found the Kittery lot; then he peeled off his
coat, which he put over a tombstone beside him, one of his guns hidden beneath it.
The other he left in its holster. The Winchester he leaned out of sight near the
buckboard. Then he went to work.
He worked swiftly down through the top soil for a good two feet. Then it became slower
work, but he kept on. He was a strong man, in good condition, and used to hard work,
but he realized that he would be lucky to finish before dark. He had the grave less
than half dug when the riders began to come. He slipped the thong from his six-shooter
and continued to dig.
There were three of them. All the horses wore the Circle M brand of the Munsons.
Within ia few minutes there were four more, then others, some of these hanging back,
obviously come to see the fun.
"You diggin' that grave for one or two?"
Duvarney ignored it, managed three more spadefuls of dirt before the question came
again. He straightened up, leaned on his shovel, and looked at them. He was waist-deep
in the hole with a parapet of dirt thrown up in front of him. Three large tombstones
formed almost a wall along his route to the buckboard.
"I asked was you diggin' that for one, or two?"
The speaker was a wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered man with a narrow-brimmed hat.
"For one," Duvarney replied. "You'll have to dig your own, if you want one."
Somebody among the spectators snickered, and the man turned sharply around. The snickering
stopped.
"When you get that grave deep enough, you'll find out who it's for. We aim to bury
you right there."
Jackson Huddy had ridden up, and he was watching and listening. Duvarney leaned on
the shovel. "You boys aren't very smart," he said. "I've got a lot more cover than
you. I figure to get three or four before you get me ... if you ever do."
For a moment that stopped them. He had only to drop to his knees to leave only head
and shoulders in view. There was no cover for them outside the fence, and a man at
that range should do pretty well. Nobody spoke, and Duvarney resumed his digging.
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Suddenly the man with the narrow-brimmed hat started to crawl through the fence.
"Shab," Huddy was saying, "you come back here. That man is buryin' the dead. There'll
be no botherin' him. Anyway, he ain't a Kittery."
"That's a Kittery man he's buryin'!"
"Leave him be. I like a man with nerve."
There was no more talk, but nobody walked away.
Slowly, Duvarney completed his digging; then he wrapped the body in the tarpaulin
and placed it in the bottom of the grave. He filled in the grave, while the men stood
quietly. After that he went to the buckboard for his carpetbag and took out a Bible.
He removed his hat, and began to read, and when he had finished the funeral text
he had chosen, he sang
Rock of Ages.
His voice was fairly good, and he managed to sing it well. Here and there a voice
joined in. When he had finished the hymn he picked up his tools and went back to
the buckboard, then returned for his coat. As he lifted it his right hand gripped
the six-shooter. He brought it up, and walked back to the buckboard and placed the
coat and the pistol on the seat. As he started to get up he lifted the rifle from
where it had been hidden and with an easy motion swung to the seat.
He gathered the reins with his left hand, his right holding the Winchester. He drove
to the gate, and when he reached it he pointed the Winchester at the nearest man,
smiling as he did so. "Friend, I'd be pleased if you'd open the gate for me."
The man hesitated for a moment, then he walked over and opened the gate, standing
back with it until Tap Duvarney had driven through.
"Thank you," Duvarney said. "Thank you very much." He glanced at Huddy, still sitting
his horse, and regarding Duvarney with an enigmatic expression. "And thank you, Mr.
Huddy. It hurts no man to respect the dead."
He spoke to the team and they moved forward down the road, but at the point where
the road to the cemetery reached the main trail he turned sharply and took the trail
south from town.
There was no sound behind him, but he did not turn his head to look back. He had
a straight quarter of a mile before there was any cover, and despite the bouncing
the buckboard was giving him, he could be hit by a good shot. He held the good pace
at which they had started, wanting as much distance as he could get. He had no
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doubt he would be followed, and a buckboard leaves a definite trail.
When he had two miles behind him he drew up, and with a wry grin he loaded the rifle.
"You damn fool," he muttered. "Forgetting a thing like that can get you killed."
The sun was down, the breeze cool off the Gulf, which lay some distance off on his
left, beyond Powderhorn Lake, close by. He had a good memory for maps and charts,
as a result of both his early training at sea and his years in the army. To go south
he must first go inland, find the Green Lake road, and let it take him past the head
of San Antonio Bay. Beyond that there stretched a wide piece of country, but between
here and there he knew of no place to hide.
The twin tracks of the trail were plain enough, even at night, so he pushed on. The
paint mustangs seemed to be glad to be moving and he held them to a good trot, which
seemed to be the pace they liked. From time to time he drew up to listen for sounds
of pursuit.
He was under no delusions about Jackson Huddy. Whatever else he might be, the man
had a code of ethics of his own, and only that had prevented a bloody gun battle
in the cemetery. He was sure that under other circumstances Huddy would never hesitate
to kill him ... if he could.
He had studied the charts in Wilkes's wheelhouse and had a fair understanding of
the country, so after a while he took a chance and left the trail, cutting across
toward Green Lake. By day they would find his tracks, of course, but by then he hoped
to be far away.
Several times he drew up to give the mustangs a brief rest, but they seemed tireless
and impatient to keep going. Give them their heads, he thought, and likely they'll
take me right where I want to
go.
It was well past midnight when he saw the shine of water on his right. That would
be Green Lake. The mustangs were tired now, trotting only when they started down
a slight grade . . . which was rare enough. But they had held the pace well.
The last miles before daylight were weary ones, but he kept the team moving until
they reached the breaks of the Guadalupe.
The sky was gray with morning when he turned off into the trees and found a hollow
screened from the trail. Here he unhitched the team and led them to water, and after
that he picketed them on a patch of good grass not far from the buckboard.
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Then, a gun at hand, he drew a blanket over him and went to sleep.
It was high noon when the sun woke him, shining through the leaves of a cotton wood
tree. For a minute or two he lay perfectly still, listening. Then he sat up.
The horses were not twenty yards off, heads up, ears pricked.
Duvarney came up off the ground like a cat, thrust his six-shooter into his belt,
and reached for his gun belt and his other pistol. As he belted it on, he listened.
The horses were looking back the way he had come.
He got the team and brought them back. Not wanting the jingle of trace chains to
warn anyone of his presence, he tied them to the buckboard. Taking his rifle, he
worked his way through the trees and brush to a place where he could watch the tracks
he must have left.
He recognized the girl before he could make out any of her features. It was Mady
Coppinger.
She was riding in a buckboard driven by a stalwart Negro. Two riders followed close
behind. As they drew nearer he could see that the Negro's features looked more like
those of an Indian. He was a lean, intelligent-looking man with watchful eyes.
He drew up as he neared the place where Duvarney had turned off. "I'm thinkin', ma'am,
that he wouldn't have gone no further than this. That team will be plumb wore out
by now. You want I should find him?"
"No. ..." She hesitated, then turned to one of the riders following. "Harry, do you
think Huddy will follow him?"
"Huddy? No. He won't foller, but Shabbit will. Shabbit and those boys Duvarney whupped
down to the dock. They'll be after his scalp, an' you can bet on it. Huddy won't
do anything until Duvarney declares himself."
"We should find him and warn him."
Tap Duvarney made no move to leave the shelter of the brush. He did not know these
men, and although they seemed to be riders from the Coppinger outfit, he did not
want to chance it. His attention was on the girl. Mady was lovely, no question about
it, and the figure that filled out the dress she wore was something to think about
... or for Tom Kittery to think about. She was his girl.
Besides, Tap had a girl. Or he had one when he left Virginia.
The Negro spoke. "Ma'am, I think it best we leave him alone. I've been watching his
trail, and he's a cautious man. The way I
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see it, going into the brush to hunt for him might prove a chancey thing."
"Caddo's right," Harry agreed.
Caddo spoke to the horses and they moved out. Harry turned slightly in his saddle
and glanced back at the pecan tree under which Duvarney was crouched. Had something
given him away? Some bird, or perhaps a squirrel? Some movement he had not seen or
felt?
When their dust had settled he harnessed the horses and emerged from the copse where
he had been hiding. At the point where he went back on the trail he got down and
wiped out the tracks as best he could, then drove on. An Apache would have read the
sign without slowing his pace, but these men might not be as good at reading sign.
The air was fresh and clean, and the mustangs, rested after their morning grazing
and rest, were prepared to go. They were tough, wild stock, bred to the plains, and
only half-broken. Duvarney drove on with only an occasional backward glance, holding
to the trail followed by Mady Coppinger.
Somewhere to the south he would find Tom Kittery and whatever was left of his seven
thousand dollars. He had already made up his mind about that. He would take whatever
money was left and ride out, writing off the rest of it as a bad investment.
He had no part in the Kittery-Munson feud, and he wanted none. No mention had been
made of it when they had discussed the buying of cattle for a drive north.
Having no knowledge of exactly where Tom Kittery might be, Duvarney decided just
to drift south, scouting the country as he went. He had supplies and ammunition enough,
and the terrain was easy for buckboard travel, being generally level or somewhat
rolling, with good grass and clumps of trees. Along the rivers there were oaks and
pecans, as well as dogwood, willow, and redbud.
Taking a dim trail, Tap drove down toward Blackjack Point, following the shore of
the peninsula whenever possible. On the third day after seeing Mady Coppinger, he
was camped near some low brush within sight of the sea. He had made a small fire
of driftwood and was brewing coffee when he heard a rustle behind him.
He reached for the coffeepot with his left hand, drew his six-shooter with his right.
Moving the coffee a little nearer the coals, he straightened up, then took a quick
step back to his
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left, which put him into the deep shadow of a pecan tree, gun ready.
There was a chuckle from the brush, and Tom IiKittery stepped out, followed by two
other men, "See? I told you," Kittery said. "Ain't no catchin' him off-guard. I never
knew such a skittish hombre."
Tom Kittery looked good, but he was thin. He was honed down by hiding out, worn by
constant watching, but humor glinted from his eyes as he stepped forward, hand thrust
out in greeting.
21
 THREE
Man, you are a sight to behold! Look at him, boys. This here's the on'y man ever
took me. Captured me alive an' on the hoof, and I'd never believed it could be done!
And then he smuggled me right by some renegades that would have strung me up like
a horse thief for being' a Johnny Reb. And him a Yank!"
"Hello, Tom," Tap said. "It's been a while."
Kittery grinned at him. There was genuine welcome in his eyes, and his hand clasp
was firm and strong. "I've thought of you a good bit, Tap. I surely have."
"Have we got a herd?"
Some of the smile left Kittery's face. "Sort of. I've got to talk to you about that."
He turned. "Tap Duvarney, this here's Johnny Lubec. And that's the Cajun ... a good
man, right out of the Louisiana swamps."
Lubec was a small, wiry man, scarcely more than a boy, but a boy with old eyes, a
boy who had seen trouble. The Cajun was tall, thin, angular, sallow of face, with
dark, lank hair and a gold earring in each ear.
"What about the cattle?" Tap asked. "That was every cent I had in the world, Tom.
I gambled on you."
"And you won't regret it, Tap. I've had troubles-I suppose you've heard about that?"
"I heard about it."
"When we talked I thought the feud was a thing of the past. It was just a matter
of rounding up some of Dad's cattle. I didn't have any money, so with your money,
our cattle and know-how, we could drive to Kansas and make some money. That's what
I
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planned. The trouble was, the cattle had been stolen. Most of them, at least."
"So the drive is off?"
"Not on your tintype! We're rounding up cattle now. Fact is, we've got a good part
of a herd stashed away. But that's a small part of it. Somehow we've got to slip
three thousand head of cattle out of the country without the Munsons gettin' wind
of it."
They walked back and sat down around the fire, and the Cajun disappeared into the
darkness. "He'll keep watch, so don't you worry none. He's one of the very best."
"I met Mady Coppinger on the boat."
Tom Kittery shot him a quick glance. "Came back did she? I wouldn't have bet on it."
"I thought you two had an understanding."
Tom shrugged. "We have, sort of. Mady's fed up with Texas, fed up with dust, cows,
bronc riders, and cookin' for ranch hands. She fell heir to a stack of Godey's Lady's
Books, and since then all she does is pine. I keep tellin' her I ain't no city man,
but she won't listen."
With another glance at Duvarney, he said, "How'd she look?"
"Great. She's a very pretty young woman."
Tom filled two cups with the hot coffee. "Did you see any Munsons? I mean, around
Indianola."
Tap ignored the question. "How did you know I'd arrived? Or did you know?"
"Cap'n Wilkes. He dipped the flag when he passed the point. We'd agreed on the signal."
He paused a moment. "You're drivin' the rig ... where's Foster?"
"They killed him. He was killed just about the time we were coming up to the wharf.
I buried him in your family lot."
"You what?"
"You didn't want him buried there? Didn't seem that I had much choice."
"They let you bury him? Of course, we'd want him in our lot, or anywhere we could
manage, and the best. But Indianola is mostly a Munson town. There's two or three
of the clan live there, and always some of them are circulatin' about."
Over coffee, Tap Duvarney told about the burial and the brief encounter with Shab,
or Shabbit. Of the brief fight on the wharf he said nothing at all.
"Tom," he said abruptly, "let's get the herd together and get out. The feud is none
of my business, and I don't intend to make
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it mine. Every dime I've got in the world is tied up in that venture."
Tom Kittery looked at him, his eyes suddenly hard. "That's right. It isn't none of
your affair, and I'm not expecting you to take a hand in it. Nonetheless, you may
have to before we get those cattle out of the state."
Johnny Lubec got up angrily. "I thought you said he was a friend of yours? He sure
don't sound like it to me!"
Kittery said nothing, but stared into the fire. Tap Duvarney looked at Lubec. "I
consider myself Tom's friend, but that does not involve me in a shooting war that
began God only knows how-and years ago, from all I've heard. If I were a member of
his family, I might feel otherwise, but I am not. Furthermore, Tom and I made an
agreement, and I expect him to live up to it."
"Don't count yourself any friend of mine!" Lubec responded, his tone harsh. "Far
as I'm concerned, them as ain't for us is against us."
Tap turned to Kittery, "Tom, if you don't like the sound of this, just give me back
my money and we'll forget it."
Kittery looked up. "You know damn well I can't give that money back. I spent it.
I bought cattle."
"Then we've got a deal." Tap reached across the fire for the coffeepot. "I'll be
ready to go after those cattle in the morning."
"You got to wait." Lubec spoke with cool triumph. "We're goin' after them as killed
Foster."
Tap Duvarney sipped his coffee, and when Kittery did not speak he said quietly, "I'll
be ready at daybreak, Tom. If necessary, I'll get the cattle out and make this drive
on my own; but if I do, I'll sell the cattle and keep every dollar of the money."
"Like hell you will!" Kittery was suddenly angry. "Half those cattle are mine!"
Tap grinned at him. "Don't be a damn fool, Tom. Our deal was my money and your savvy.
If you aren't in there working and telling us how, what part can you have? I'm here.
My money is in the pot. I made an agreement, and so did you. I understood that in
Texas men lived up to their agreements."
"Are you sayin' I don't?"
"I'm saying nothing of the kind. I am only saying that the Munson feud is your personal
affair, but I can't let it interfere with my business."
"You're right," Tom said glumly. "Damn it, I am sorry. I got no right to expect you
to horn in on my fight."
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Johnny Lubec leaped to his feet. "Tom? You hackin' down for this-this-"
Tap Duvarney looked up. "Johnny, if you finish that sentence it better be polite
or you'd better be reaching for a gun when you say it."
Lubec backed off. "On your feet, damn you! I'll-"
"Johnny!" Kittery's voice rang with authority. "Stop it! Tap would kill you before
you got a gun out. I've seen him work."
Lubec hesitated, still angry but suddenly wary. Tom Kittery was as near to a God
as he could recognize, and if Tom said this stranger was good, he must be good. Abruptly,
he turned his back and walked away into the brush.
Tap finished his coffee and got to his feet. "I'm tired. I'm going to turn in."
"Sorry, Tap. Losin" Foster like that- We're on edge, all of us."
"Forget it."
Tap walked back into the brush and unrolled his bed. He folded his coat neatly, then
pulled off his boots and placed them for a pillow. He put his Winchester beside him,
and also his gun belt. His spare gun he placed under the blanket and near his hand.
The Cajun came in from watch, drank coffee and ate without talking, and disappeared
again. Tom Kittery sat alone by the fire. After a while Lubec returned and crawled
into his blankets.
The fire sank low, and Tap slept.
What made him awaken he did not know, but a dark figure loomed above him. The fire
was only a few red coals, the columns of the trees against the stars were dark and
mysterious. A faint light gleamed on the gun held in the man's hand. The gun was
not aimed, it was simply hanging at arm's length against the man's leg. The man was
Tom.
Tap's own hand held his gun, pointed up at Kittery through the blanket. "Go to sleep,
Tom. You'll feel different in the morning. Besides, this Colt I'm holding on you
would rest mighty heavy on your stomach."
Tom Kittery chuckled. "Damn it, Tap, I never knew anybody like you! Nowhere! All
right, to hell with the feud! We work cattle."
Tap Duvarney's eyes opened on daylight. For a moment he lay still. The fire had been
built up, and he could smell coffee. Lifting
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his head, he saw the Cajun was slicing bacon into a frying pan. Tap slid out of the
blankets and into his boots. Standing up, he slung his gun belt around his lean hips
and settled the holster into place against his leg.
He felt good. The air was fresh and cool off the Gulf, not many miles away to the
east, and he was a man who had lived most of his life in the open.
The War Between the States had been a blood bath, a desperate, bitterly contested
war in which he had been constantly in action, often on secret missions behind the
enemy lines. He had been born in Virginia, and his southern accent was a distinct
advantage on such jobs. But it was the frontier that honed him down, made keen the
edges of his senses, his will to survive. For he had faced the American Indian-a
wily, dangerous adversary, a fighting man of the first rank, and one familiar with
every aspect of wilderness warfare and survival;
The Cajun glanced up as Duvarney approached the fire. Tap gathered a few sticks for
additional fuel and placed them close at hand. It was evidence that he was expecting
nobody to serve him. He was here to pull his own weight, no matter what the circumstances.
The future looked bleak enough to him. Every cent he'd owned was tied up in the cattle;
a feud and the violent hatreds it generated hung over them. When such a fire burned
no man within range was free from it, and the very fact that he was riding with the
Kitterys would make him a target. The Kittery faction, too, was filled with hatred.
The cattle drive, Tap was quite sure, had been put aside because of the feud; and
had he not come along might never have been carried out. They could think of nothing
now but striking back, striking hard.
When the coffee was ready, he filled his cup and squatted on his haunches by the
fire. Tom Kittery was tugging on his boots. Lubec was nowhere to be seen.
"We got our work cut out for us," Kittery said. "If we round up cattle now we'll
be likely to lose 'em. The Munsons will stampede them some night, scatter 'em from
hell to breakfast."
"Then we'll find a place where they can be guarded, and hold them there until we've
completed the gather."
"You got any idea what you're gettin' into?" Kittery asked. "Most of those cattle
are back in the brush. It won't be easy to get them."
"And you're holding some on Matagorda Island? All right, we'll
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just round the others up and push them out to the island. Or hold them on Black Jack
Peninsula."
Tom Kittery looked over his cup at him. "You said you'd never been in this country
before."
"I can read a map," Duvarney answered dryly.
By the time the sun was over the horizon they had pulled out, Duvarney riding the
buckboard with Tom Kittery, whose horse was tied behind. The others rode on ahead,
or scouted off to one side or the other.
"They're hunting us," Tom said matter-of-factly, "and one day they'll find us. All
we've been hoping to do was thin them down a mite before the showdown."
"How many can you muster?"
"Mighty few. Eight or ten at most. We're outnumbered, four or five to one."
"Tough."
They rode on, and from time to time they saw cattle grazing, and several times saw
the tracks of horses.
"Comanches raided clear to the Gulf coast some years back," Tom commented, noticing
some tracks. "We don't see them any more. At least, I haven't. Back around 1840 they
burned Linnville and attacked Victoria. My folks were at Linnville, and nobody expected
any Indians. When they came, everybody who could climbed on a barge and pushed out
on the water. Saved their lives, but lost everything they had but the land."
"Was Indianola a port then?"
"No . . . not until sometime around 1844, I think. It was started by a German prince,
and he called it Carlshafen, after himself, I guess. His name was Prince Carl Zu
Solms-Braunfels. He brought a colony of immigrants into Texas.
"Back in those days they came from everywhere-Germans, French, Swiss ... we still
have a lot of them. Castroville, DHanis, Fredericksburg, all those places were settled
by foreigners. Over by Fredericksburg half the talk a body hears is in German.
"Indianola picked up for a while, then about 1846 the cholera hit the town-nearly
wiped it out. I've heard tell of it. I was too young to remember it."
"Where's Shanghai Pierce's outfit?"
"You've heard of him? I guess ever'body has. He's north of here, up on Tres Palacios
Creek. He's got the biggest outfit around here, unless it's Cap'n King." Tom Kittery
glanced at Tap. "You two should get along, you going to sea, and all. He was a
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steamboat captain before he settled in this country. A mighty good man, too. I met
him a couple of times."
After this neither man spoke for several miles, and there was no sound but the clop-clop
of the horses' hoofs and the jangle of the harness. Johnny Lubec had pulled off and
ridden away into the brush. When he returned an hour or so later, he was leading
a saddled horse, a tough-looking buckskin with a black mane and tail.
"We'll leave the rig," Tom said to Duvarney. "You'll ride the buckskin."
Tap Duvarney looked doubtfully at the horse, which rolled an inquisitive eye at him
as if it had already been informed who its rider was to be, but Tap pulled up and
swung down.
"What about the team?"
"We'll take off the harness and turn 'em loose. The buckboard can stay right here
in the brush until we have reason to pick it up."
Taking the reins, he drove the buckboard into the brush. Tap took his gear from the
wagon, then gestured at the supplies. "I'll need those," he said.
Kittery noticed the ammunition boxes for the first time. "You figure on usin' all
that? What you goin' to do? Fight all the Indians in the Nation?"
Tap shrugged. "They told me you were in a feud. It isn't my fight, but if somebody
starts shooting at me I want to be able to shoot back as long as I'm in the mood."
Lubec merely looked at him, while the Cajun took the boxes from the wagon-bed and
placed them on the ground. He went to the seat, and from under it he took the sack
of oats and dumped what remained on the ground. Then he filled the canvas sack with
the contents of the boxes.
With all the packages and sacks loaded behind their saddles and the mustangs turned
loose to go home, they took off through the scattered brush and trees. Several times
they passed through extensive stretches of prickly pear, and twice they followed
stream courses, keeping under the cotton woods and pecans for concealment.
It was sundown when they rode into a small clearing. For several miles they had been
moving through thick brush and timber, and the clearing came as a surprise. There
was a small fire going, and three men were standing nearby, all with rifles.
"Howdy, Tom!" A stocky, barrel-chested man with a black beard walked toward them.
"Johnny? Howdy, Cajun."
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He smiled as he saw Duvarney. "How are you, Major? I never had the luck to run into
you during the war, but we came nigh it a time or two. I am Joe Breck."
"You're Captain Joseph Breck? I remember your outfit, sir. I am just as glad we missed
our meetings. You had some good men."
Breck smiled. "I've still got a couple of them, and one of yours."
"Mine? Who?"
"Me, Major." A tall, ungainly man with a large Adam's apple stepped from behind a
horse he was grooming. "Corporal Welt Spicer."
Duvarney grinned. "How are you, Spicer? I'm not likely to forget you." He looked
around at Kittery. "Did he tell you? He was in my outfit. We covered a lot of country
together."
Kittery threw a sharp look at Spicer, but made no comment.
The hide-out was a good, if temporary, one. It was on a small knoll in a dense growth
of brush; tunnels through the brush showed their dark openings here and there. Obviously
the thicket was a network of underbrush passageways and trails. A small spring was
nearby, and although the water was brackish, it was potable.
"What's on the program, Tom?" Breck asked.
"We hunt cattle," Kittery replied shortly. "We start at daybreak. We'll make up a
herd and strike out for Kansas."
They looked at him, but nobody offered a comment. A few minutes later, Duvarney caught
Breck studying Kittery with care. Obviously, Tap thought grimly, he had altered their
plans, and they didn't like it.
Tired from the long riding, he rolled up in his blankets. The last he remembered
was seeing the others huddled around the fire, drinking coffee and talking in low
tones.
Well, he reflected, let them talk. Tomorrow they work cattle.
29
 FOUR
For three days they kept at it, daylight to dark, working the cattle out of the brush,
branding them and bunching them at a clearing in the woods that consisted of several
hundred acres of good grass, with a trickle of water running across one corner. A
few of the cattle still wore the Kittery brand, but most were mavericks.
The work was hard, punishing, and hot, yet they made time. Tap Duvarney had never
worked cattle before except on the few occasions when he had hazed a small herd into
an Indian camp that was being fed by the government, or when it was cattle to be
beefed for the army itself. However, he had watched a lot of cowhands work on the
range, and had listened to them warning over campfires. As he could match none of
these men with a rope, he devoted his time to finding the cattle and driving them
from the brush or the grassy hollows. By the end of the fourth day they were holding
four hundred head of mixed stuff, and their horses were played out.
Most of the cattle had been found within a few miles, but they were wild, some of
them being old mossy-horns that had lived back in the brush for years. These made
most of the trouble. At first it was not much more than a matter of riding around
the cattle and slowly bunching them; but the older stock would have none of that.
Time and again some of the mossy-horns would break for the brush, and it was hard
work, and hot work, rousting them out again.
There was no chuck wagon. Every rider carried a small bait of grub in a sack behind
his saddle, and ate his noonday meal out on the range ... if he had time.
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On the evening of the fourth day, Kittery said, "We've got to ride for horses. We'll
need about forty head, and the nighest place is over to Coppinger's."
"Give you a chance to see Mady," Johnny Lubec said, grinning. "Want I should go along
to kind of cool you off after you leave there?"
"I wouldn't trust you. Ever' time we get near the C-Bar, you head for those Mex jackals
down in the wash. I think you've got eyes for that little Cortinas girl."
Lubec made no comment, and Kittery said, "All right. We'll ride out at daybreak.
Johnny, you can come, and I'll take Pete and Roy." Then he glanced over at Duvarney.
"You want to come, Tap?"
"I'll stay here."
After they had gone, Duvarney worked over his guns and equipment, then saddled up
to ride out. "I'm going to scout around," he said to the others. "I may drive a few
cattle if I see them, but I'm going for a reconnaissance."
Welt Spicer got to his feet. "Mind if I trail along?"
"All right with me."
The Cajun watched them with eyes that told nothing, but Joe Breck looked at Duvarney
and said, "You be careful. There's Munsons around, and if they see you they'll shoot
first an' ask questions afterward."
When they'd been a few minutes on the trail, Welt Spicer commented, "We're nigh Copano
Creek. Empties into the bay yonder."
"Mission Bay?"
"Copano. Mission's smaller, and opens into Copano Bay. . . . You ever been in this
country?"
"No, this is my first time east of the Brazos in Texas. But I've seen the maps."
The trail was narrow. Only one rider could follow it at a time, the other trailing
behind. Branches brushed them on either side. It was hot and still. The only sound
except the muffled fall of their horses' hoofs was the hum of insects or the occasional
cry of a bird. Sweat trickled down Duvarney's face and down his body under his shirt.
Sometimes they saw the tracks of cattle. Cow trails branched off from time to time,
but the riders held to the main trail.
They came on Copano Creek unexpectedly. It was a fair-sized stream, with many twists
and turns. Both men dismounted and
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drank upstream from their horses. The water was clear, and not unpleasant.
"Low tide," Spicer said. "At high tide you can't drink it." He squatted on his heels
and took a small Spanish cigar from his pocket. "You got your work cut out for you,
Major."
"Call me Tap."
"That Tom, now. He's a mighty good man, but he's mad. He's Munson-killing mad, and
so are the others. All of 'em want to fight, not run cattle."
"How about you?"
"I'll string along with you. I figure we're a sight better off drivin' cows to Kansas."
Spicer pushed his hat back so he could see Tap's face without tilting his head. "You're
goin' to need men-men you can depend on."
It had been that way in the army. There had always been men he could depend on, the
right sort of men in the right places when they were needed, and they made easier
whatever needed to be done. His had been the responsibility of command, of decision.
There had always been the sergeants, many of them veterans of the War Between the
States as well as of Indian fighting. They were tough, dependable men. Now he was
alone.
Somehow he had to hold the reluctant men to putting the herd together, somehow he
had to get them started on the trail to Kansas. He had to ride rough-shod over their
resentment of him, over their hatreds, their reluctance to leave a fight unfinished.
It had been easy enough when he had tough non-coms to whom he could relay his orders,
and enlisted men whose duty it was to obey. This was different.
He was going to have to get the herd together faster than they had planned, get it
ready to move before they expected it. If he started the herd they must come along,
like it or not.
"Spicer, you're right. I will need some men. You've been around here a while . .
. where can I find them?"
"Fort Brown . . . Brownsville. I happen to know they're breakin' up a cavalry outfit
down there, and there'll be some good men on the loose. As far as that goes, there
are always a few hands around Brownsville or Matamoras, anyway."
"All right, Spicer. You ride down there. Pick maybe ten good men, thirty a month
and found. Tell 'em they may have to fight. But they are hiring out to me-and to
me only. You know the kind of men I want. Men like we had in the old outfit."
"It'll take me a week at least. Ten days, more likely."
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"Take two weeks if need be, but get the men and get them back up here."
After Welt Spicer had gone, Duvarney rode on along the trail, emerging finally on
the lower Copano, and following it along to the bay. He saw cattle from time to time;
most of them were unbranded, a few were wearing the Kittery brand, and there was
a scattering of other brands unfamiliar to him.
The creek ended in a small inlet, and he cut across to the bay itself. Copano Bay
was almost landlocked. From his saddlebag Duvarney took the chart Wilkes had given
him and studied the bay, its opening into Aransas Bay, and the island beyond. All
this country was low, probably less than twenty feet above sea level, and much of
it was certainly less than half of that.
He made a camp on the shore of the bay, made coffee, and chewed on some jerked beef.
He went to sleep listening to the sound of the salt water rippling on the sand, and
smelling it. At daybreak he was up, drank coffee, and rode off toward the northeast
along the coast.
Several times he saw cattle, and as on the previous day he started them drifting
ahead of him, pointing them toward the roundup area. They might not go far, but he
might be able to drift some into the country to be covered for the drive. He swam
his horse across the inlet at the mouth of the creek and made a swing south to check
for cattle tracks on the peninsula that separated Copano from St. Charles Bay. He
found a good many, and worked his way back to camp.
Joe Breck was on his feet, rifle in hand, when Tap rode in. "I wondered what happened
to you. Where's Spicer?"
"Sent him down to Brownsville."
"You sent him where?" Without waiting for an answer, Breck went on, "Torn won't like
that."
"He'll like it." Duvarney spoke shortly. "There are a lot of cattle on the peninsula
east of us. We'll drift some of this lot in there."
"Wait and see what Tom says," Breck objected. "He's got his own ideas."
"And I have mine. We'll start drifting them in the morning."
Breck stared at him, his eyes level, but Tap ignored the stare and went about getting
his bed ready for the night.
"I'll wait and see what Kittery says," Breck said. "He hired me."
"You wait, and then tell him to pay you what you have coming. You won't be working
with us any more."
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"For a new hand," Breck said, "you swing a wide loop."
"Breck," Duvarney replied, "you're a good man, too good a man to get your back up
over nothing. You want to fight the Munsons; but if you do, do it on your own time.
They're no damned business of mine, and I'm going to drive cattle. I've got money
tied up in this drive, and I can't work up any interest in somebody else's fight."
"It may get to be your fight, too."
"Not if it interferes with this cattle drive. Get one thing through your head. These
cattle go to Kansas. If anybody gets in the way, and that means you or the Munsons,
I'll drive right over them."
Breck gave him a hard look, but Duvarney paid no attention to it. He rolled up in
his bed, and slept.
At daybreak the Cajun had a fire going and coffee on. Duvarney joined him. "Don't
you ever sleep?" he asked.
The Cajun grinned; it was tJie first time Tap had seen any expression on his face.
"Time to time," he said. He reached for the pot and filled Tap's cup. "Where do you
think we should start?"
Duvarney drew a rough line in the sand. "Ride southeast, start sweeping the cattle
north, then turn them into the peninsula."
Joe Breck came up to the fire wearing his chaps and spurs. Thirty minutes later they
all rode south to begin working the brush.
It was a wide stretch of country. They rode back and forth, making enough noise to
start the cattle moving out of the brush to get away from them, then pushing them
toward the cattle trails that led to the peninsula. Some of them would move along
those familiar trails easily enough, but a few would be balky. It was little enough
the three men could do; but working in that way, there was the chance they could
move quite a few head.
It was hot and sticky in the brush. Not a breath of air stirred. From time to time
Duvarney found himself pulling up to give his horse a breather, and each time he
did so he turned in the saddle to study the sky. It was clear and blue, with only
a few scattered clouds.
They came together on the banks of a small creek flowing into St. Charles Bay, where
they made coffee, ate, and napped a little. Through the afternoon they worked steadily,
and drifted back into camp at sundown, dead tired.
"We covered some country," Breck commented, "and we moved a lot of beef-more'n I
expected."
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Tap nodded. He was no longer thinking of cattle. His thoughts had turned back to
Virginia, and to the quiet night when he had said good-bye to Jessica Trescott.
Old Judge Trescott, who had known his father-had in fact been his father's attorney-had
offered him a job. There were half a dozen others, too, who came up with offers,
partly because of his father, and partly because he was to marry Judge Trescott's
daughter. He would have none of it. He would take what cash he had, make it his own
way.
Was it a desire for independence that brought him west? Or a love of the country
itself? Everything he had grown up with was back there in the coast country of Virginia
and the Carolinas, His father and his grandfather had operated ships there since
before Revolutionary times. There had been Duvarneys trading to the Indies when George
III denied them the right. In those days they had smuggled their goods. Duvarneys
had been privateers during the Revolution and the War of 1812.
His was an old family on that coast. His service in the War Retween the States had
been distinguished; on the Indian frontier it had been exceptional in many respects.
His position in Virginia was a respected one, and many doors were open to him. Yet
he had left. He pulled his stakes and headed west again, to the country he had come
to know.
Now here he was, struggling to get a herd together, and so deeply involved that he
could not get out of it.
Jessica had rested her hands on his arms that night. "Tappan, if you don't come back
soon I'll come after you. No Trescott ever lost a man to a sandy country, and I'm
not going to be the first."
"It's no country for a woman," he had objected. "You wait. After I've made the drive
and have some cash money, we'll talk."
"You mind what I say, Tappan Duvarney. If you don't come back, I'll come after you!"
He had laughed, kissed her lightly, and left. Perhaps he had been a fool. A man would
never find a girl like that in this country. Not even Mady Coppinger.
Tom Kittery would be seeing Mady about now. He was a lucky man, Tap was thinking,
a very lucky man.
"Somebody coming," the Cajun said, and vanished into the brush with no more sound
than a trail of smoke from the campfire.
Tap listened, and after a moment he heard the faint sounds. One horse, with a rider-a
horse that came on steadily at a fair pace and was surely ridden.
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He got up and moved back from the flames, and the others did the same.
The rider came on, then drew up while still out in the darkness. "Halloo, the fire!
I'm riding friendly, and I'm coming in with my hands empty."
Nobody spoke, and the stranger's horse started to walk. After a moment they could
see the rider. He was a stocky, thick-shouldered man with a wide face. Both hands
were in the air.
He rode into the firelight and stopped, his hands still held shoulder-high. "I'm
hunting Major Duvarney," he said. "Is he here?"
Tap stepped out. "I am Tappan Duvarney."
"And I am Darkly Foster, brother to Lightly Foster, the man you buried at Indianola."
"I know him," Breck said to Duvarney. "He's all right."
'Light, and move up to the fire," Tap said. "There's coffee on."
He watched the man lower his hands, and then step down from the horse. It was a fine
animal, and Darkly Foster himself moved with a quick ease that told of strong muscles
beneath the homespun clothes. "I am sorry about your brother," Tap said.
Darkly turned to him. "No need to be sorry. Lightly lived a full life, and a good
one. Feel sorry for those who did him in."
He took a tin cup from his saddle pack and moved to the fire. When he had filled
his cup and squatted on his heels he said, "I have come to meet the man who buried
my brother. It was a fine thing you did."
Tap filled his own cup. "I never knew him," he said, "but he had the look of a good
man."
"He was that. A solid man, a trusted man, and a man of courage. Not many would have
dared to do what you did, burying him, with Shabbit and the Munsons looking on. Especially
after what happened on the wharf."
"What happened?" Joe Breck asked.
Foster gestured toward Duvarney. "He treated Wheeler and Eggen Munson to a whipping.
They started it-picked him for a tenderfoot, and he whipped the two of them so fast
he never even mussed his hair. The town's talkin' about it."
"You never mentioned that," Breck commented.
"No need. They were feeling their oats and decided to try me on. Neither one of them
could fight."
Joe Breck was silent, and in the silence the fire crackled, and off
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in the brush one of the horses stamped and blew. A nighthawk wheeled and turned in
the sky above.
"Whatever you're planning," Darkly Foster said, "I'll offer a hand. I can use a gun
as good as average, and I can handle horses or cattle."
"We're driving to Kansas . . . nothing more."
"You got yourself a hand," Foster said. "I like the way you travel."
It was long after midnight when Duvarney awakened suddenly. The fire had died to
coals, with one thin tendril of flame winding itself around a dry branch. The only
other man awake was Darkly Foster, who sat across the clearing, back from the fire.
Tap listened for a moment, then sat up and reached for his boots. Riders were coming.
Foster had disappeared from his seat, but could be vaguely seen, well back in the
darkness. Duvarney stamped into his boots and skirted the clearing toward Foster.
"It could be Tom Kittery," he said. "He's due back."
They waited. Several horses were coming, moving slowly. When they rounded into the
clearing, Tap Duvarney swore bitterly.
Roy Kittery was swaying in his saddle, his face drawn and pale. Pete Remley lay across
his saddle, tied on to keep him from slipping off. Tom Kittery had a bloody shirt;
only Johnny Lubec seemed to have come off without a wound.
"They were laying for us," Tom Kittery said as he slid from the saddle. "They'd been
watching the Coppinger place, and when we left they let us have it. They killed Pete."
Duvarney helped Roy from the saddle. "Get over by the fire, Tom," he said, over his
shoulder. "Let's have a look at those wounds."
He turned to suggest the Cajun keep a lookout, but he was gone.
"Did you get any of them?" Breck asked.
"I doubt it. We never even saw them. They were down in the brush off the road, waiting
until they had us full in the moonlight. We're lucky to have any of us alive."
Neither Tom nor Roy was hit hard, but Roy had lost a lot of blood. Tap bathed and
bandaged the wounds, treating them as well as he could under the circumstances. He'd
had a good deal of rough experience in the handling of gunshot or knife wounds, picked
up while in the Indian-fighting army.
He was beginning to have his doubts. Nothing was said about
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the horses they had supposedly gone to get. It began to look as though the group
had actually ridden off hunting a fight, or at least hoping to run into some of the
Munson party.
Tom Kittery got up and walked to the fire. "It was Huddy," he said bitterly. "Nobody
else could have figured it out. Of course, I figured they'd be watching Mady's place,
so we didn't go there. We went to a spring up back of the place-at least I did. I
left the others a quarter of a mile down the road by a deserted corral. From the
spring a man can see Mady's windows on the second floor, and she can see a fire at
the spring . . . and there's just no place else a fire like that can be seen. I lit
the fire, and Mady came up the slope through the trees about half an hour later and
told me it was safe to come on down to the ranch.
"The Coppingers have taken no part in the feud. Fact is, they won't allow me to marry
Mady until it is settled, somehow. The Munsons want no truck with theim, because
the old man has about thirty tough cowhands, and the Munsons don't want to tangle
with them.
"I spent the evening there, mostly talking to Mady, then I went back up the hill
to the spring, and then back to the corral. The boys had seen nothing and heard nothing.
We mounted up and started down the hill toward the Victoria trail. They were waiting
for us."
Duvarney stared at him in astonishment. "You blame it on Huddy? How could he know
you were there?" He was thinking that Tom Kittery must be naive not to realize that
somebody had sold him out; that he had been set up for a killing.
"He's uncanny," Kittery said. "Yes, there's something uncanny about that man," he
insisted. "He ain't natural."
Nobody else was saying anything, but from their expressions Duvarney decided they
must agree.
"Of course," he said, "I don't know the people on the Coppinger place, but can you
trust them?"
Tom Kittery looked at Duvarney in surprise. "Them? Of course. . . . Hell, I'm goin'
to marry Mady. That's been understood. It's been an agreed-on thing since before
the war."
Duvarney said nothing more. He was an outsider here, knowing nothing of what had
gone before, but to him it seemed likely that someone on the Coppinger ranch was
accountable for this. He had no faith in the uncanny cunning of Jackson Huddy.
Duvarney was feeling that the sooner he could start the herd out of this country
the better. There was too much going on here
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that was no concern of his, too much that might wreck all his plans. And although
he kept trying to force the thought from his mind, he was thinking more and more
of Jessica.
Tom looked up at him. "Sorry, Tap. This will hold things up a mite. I mean our getting
shot up like this. If you'll just stand
by~"
"Stand by, hell! We're going right on with it," Tap said. "When you boys can ride
you can join us. I'm still working cattle."
Tom looked sour. "Well, Breck can help, and Spicer." He looked around, suddenly realizing
that Spicer was not there. "Where is Spicer?" he asked.
Joe Breck answered. "Duvarney sent him to Brownsville."
"He what?" Kittery was angry. "Damn it, Tap, what d'you mean, sending one of my men
off?" He paused. "What did you send him for?"
"Men. I'm hiring more men."
Kittery was silent, his face set in hard lines. "You figure to pay them yourself?
I hope you've got the money."
"You have, Tom. You've got the money I loaned you, or whatever of it was saved to
finance the drive. You certainly didn't spend it all for cattle."
Joe Breck was staring at the ground, jabbing at it angrily with a stick. Johnny Lubec,
hands on his hips, looked equally angry. Duvarney glanced around at the others. He
was alone here, that was obvious.
"I figured that money was mine. You bought yourself a partnership," Tom Kittery said.
"I bought half of a cattle drive, not a gun battle. And we'll need some of that money
to lay in supplies and pay our way north."
"There's money," Tom protested. "I never used it all. I figured-"
"Whatever you planned, Tom, that money is partnership money, not a war chest."
"All right, all right! Forget it! You want to drive cattle, we drive cattle." Tom
looked at Tap. "Damn it, man, I don't want to fight you. If ever a man had a friend,
you've been a friend to me. You saved my bacon a couple of times back yonder, and
I ain't likely to forget it."
Each morning at daybreak, Tap Duvarney was in the saddle. He drifted cattle toward
the peninsula, and several times at low tide he swam his horse across to the island
to check the cattle
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there. Breck or the Cajun worked with him, and when Roy Kittery had regained some
strength he worked as well. Lubec was usually off scouting for enemies, and working
out a trail by which they might move the cattle without being seen.
It was ten days to the day when Welt Spicer rode into camp. With him were eight rough-looking
ex-soldiers, three of them still wearing partial uniform. All of them were armed;
all looked fit and ready for whatever came.
Gallagher, Shannon, and Lahey were New York-born Irishmen, Lawton Bean was a long-geared
Kentuckian, Jule Simms was from Oregon, and wanted to go back. Doc Belden was a lean,
sardonic Texan; and Judson Walker and Lon Porter were Kansans. All had served in
the cavalry against Indians and Mexican bandits, and were veterans of the rough and
ready life of the frontier.
Tom Kittery stood beside Tap Duvarney as the men rode in and unsaddled. "With an
outfit like ithat," he said, "we could run those Munsons clear out of the country."
"Forget it. I hired them to run cattle."
"You've made that plain enough," Tom said dryly. "Come on, let's have a cup of coffee
and hear what Johnny has to say."
Lubec squatted on his heels and, taking a twig from the fire's edge, traced the route
as he talked. "The way I see it, our best chance is to head northwest of Goliad,
cross the San Antonio east of there, and strike due north. We're going to have to
camp away from streams and hold to sheltered country, but there's a couple of places
where we can bed down without being seen unless somebody rides across country."
Lubec paused, and glanced from one to the other. "Unless"-he hesitated-"unless you
decide to drive to Indianola and ship from there."
"Indianola?" Tom Kittery shook his head. "It wouldn't work. We'd never make it."
"Look," Lubec suggested. "Before we get that herd together the Munsons will know
about it. In fact, they already know we're planning a drive. So they'll be expecting
us to try for Kansas. They'd never dream we'd have the nerve to try for Indianola."
"It's a thought," Breck said. "And it just might work."
"Supposing," Lubec went on, "we started our drive like I said, across country to
the San Antonio. Then we drive northeast from there, as if we planned to pass Victoria
on the south. There's a chance we could pull every Munson out of Indianola and have
the
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cattle in the loading pens there before they knew what had happened."
No one spoke. Tap Duvarney stared into the fire, thinking about the suggestion. It
might mean trouble, big trouble; on the other hand, it might mean a quick and adequate
return on his money. The profit would not be as great, but neither would the risks
be as great as those of the long drive to Kansas and the trail towns.
Indianola was only a few miles away. If the cattle could be driven there, sold there
. . .
Then Tom said, "I like it. I think we can do it." He turned to Duvarney. "What about
it, partner?"
"Let's wait. We can decide when the cattle start, but once we start nobody leaves
the herd, not for any reason at all."
"What's the matter?" Lubec demanded. "Don't you trust us?"
"Do you trust me?" he countered. "If nobody leaves the herd, nobody can talk. It
is simple as that."
41
 FIVE
Matagorda was all of seventy miles long, and anywhere from one mile to five miles
wide, depending on the state of the tide and the wind. On the Gulf side there were
dunes, and a fairly even beach. The west, or landward side, was cut by many little
coves or inlets, most of them shallow. There was also a good bit of swampland, with
occasional patches of higher, wooded ground. Down the middle of the island was some
good grassland, enough to feed a lot of cattle.
It was also a land of catclaw, mesquite, and prickly pear, with the usual allowance
of rattlesnakes, jack rabbits, and deer.
Tap Duvarney rode out to the island with Welt Spicer, Jud Walker, and Doc Belden.
There were a lot of cattle, most of them wearing the Rafter K, the Kittery brand.
Among the others, they found a dozen old cows with calves, carrying no brand at all.
"Doc," Tap suggested, "you're carrying a running iron. You start a fire and heat
it up."
By noon they had roped and branded fifteen head-branded them with a Rocking TD.
"Your brand?" Belden asked. "If it ain't registered, you'd best ride to the county
seat and do it. Else somebody will beat you to it. Whoever registers that brand owns
the cattle."
"I'll do just that, Doc, and thanks. We'll ride in tomorrow."
40
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Spicer watched the last of the cows walk away, then looked around at Duvarney. "What's
that for? I thought the Kittery brand was Rafter K?"
"It is ... until we've road-branded; and until we've a road brand for both of us,
I've nothing to show for my investment, so I'm starting my own brand. I'll have something
to build on, something to use as a bargaining point."
Spicer nodded doubtfully. "You got to be careful," he warned. "Tom may not like it."
"He'll like it. Half the cattle in Texas wearing brands got them just that way. And
remember? I bought a piece of this outfit."
They rode on, and finally branded two more cows; then they crossed back to the mainland.
Now there were not only a lot of cattle on the island, but also a lot of cattle on
the peninsulas, and there was no reason why they should not start the drive.
Tom Kittery had thrown up a brush corral, and there were twenty new horses in it
when they returned. They all wore the Coppinger brand. Tap Duvarney studied them
thoughtfully, then looked at the tracks on the ground, the tracks of three horses
that had carried riders. The men were at the fire when he came up.
Tap's own men had drifted in and were gathered around a smaller fire.
Two of the Coppinger riders were Mexicans-tough, salty-looking vaqueros. The third
was a lean, stoop-shouldered man with a perpetual smile that did not quite reach
to his eyes. He wore a tied-down gun and bowie knife.
"Lin Stacker . . . Tap Duvarney, my partner."
"Howdy," Stacker said, sizing him up coolly as Duvarney acknowledged the greeting.
He started to speak, but Duvarney squatted on his heels near the Mexicans.
"That grulla looks like a tough little horse," he commented: then addressing the
shorter Mexican, he asked, "How do you like him?"
"Bueno. That one is my own horse."
"I figured so. I like him." He turned to the other Mexican. "How do you like the
paint?"
The Mexican shrugged. "He runs fast." He grinned. "He pitches a leetle, too."
Duvarney had already decided that Stacker was a troublemaker, and he wanted to have
as little to do with him as possible. The three had brought the horses over from
the Coppinger outfit, which meant they knew where to find Tom Kittery, and also that
a
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drive was in prospect. Tom Kittery did not seem to be as wary as Duvarney remembered
him. Either he had changed or he was inviting attack . . . perhaps inviting attack
because the Munsons could not know of the new men Duvarney had brought in.
Tap found himself growing more and more irritated and more anxious. He had bargained
for no feud. What he had made was a simple business deal, and that was exactly what
he wanted.
"How'd you know Pedro rode the grulla?" Stacker demanded. "Did you see us ride in?"
"He wears Mexican spurs, with big rowels. He left some sign where he tied his horse
and where he dumped his saddle."
Duvarney felt sure that Stacker was not to be trusted. The tall, stoop-shouldered
cowboy did a lot of looking around. Duvarney drifted over to where Tom Kittery sat,
and dropped to the ground beside him.
"I'm taking some of my boys $nd riding into Refugio," he said, "and then we'll swing
around by Victoria. Any business I can do for you?"
Tom Kittery took the makings from his pocket and began to build a smoke. "If you
aren't in this fight," he commented, "you'd better ride careful. There's those who
wouldn't believe it."
"Tom," Duvarney said quietly, "I know you'd like to have me take up this fight of
yours, but I say again that I joined up only for the cattle business. I think this
feud is a foolish thing. You and the Munsons are fighting a fight that should have
died out years ago. I know they burned you out, I know they killed some of your kin,
but you killed some of theirs, too. All I want is to make my drive, and I'd like
you to make it with me.
"If we get these cattle to Kansas or sell them in Indianola, whichever proves out,
we'll have some cash money, enough to start ranching up north ... in Wyoming or Montana."
"I'm a Texas man," Kittery protested.
"Hell," Duvarney said, "I've been up there. Half the cattlemen in Wyoming and Montana
are from Texas ... or England. There's good grass up there, and I know the country.
We could sell our steers, then drive the young stuff and the breeding stock to northern
grass. You could leave this feud behind, own your own outfit, marry Mady Coppinger,
and live happily ever after."
"You make it sound good, Tap. You surely do."
"Which sounds better? That, or to roust around the country hunting for Munsons all
your life? Until they're all dead, or somebody dry-gulches you?"
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"When do you want to pull out?"
"A week from today, with whatever we have. We can try for Indianola if things work
out: if they don't, we can strike north for the Red River, fatten our stock on Indian
grass, and push into Kansas when the market is right."
Refugio was a sleepy-looking cowtown that belied its appearance. The four riders
rode into the dusty street and tied to the hitching rail in front of the courthouse.
Boardwalks ran along both sides of the street, and back of the walks were adobe or
frame buildings with a few galleries hanging over the walks. The courthouse was open,
and Tap strolled across the street and went up the steps. Doc Belden stayed near
the horses; Jud Walker and Welt Spicer had gone into the nearest saloon.
"Rocking TD?" The clerk opened the brand book. "I don't recall that one, so you're
probably all right on it." He registered the brand, studying the name he had written
. . .
Tappan Duvarney.
"I've heard of you," the clerk commented. "Friend of Tom Kittery's, aren't you?"
"Met him during the war," Duvarney replied.
"He come in with you? If he did, you might tell him Mady Coppinger's in town."
Despite himself, Tap felt excitement. Was it because he hadn't seen any woman in
so long? Or-
He shook himself to escape the thought, settled his hat in place, and went out. For
a moment he paused in the doorway, his eyes studying the street. One of the ways
to avoid trouble was to see it before it got to you.
Doc Belden was still standing near the horses, smoking a small cigar. He was looking
down the street toward the saloon, which Tap could not see. Almost without thinking,
Tap reached up and unbuttoned his coat. He carried two guns, one in its holster,
the other in his waistband.
He walked directly to the horses and stood near Doc. "Everything all right?"
Doc gave him a quizzical glance. "Half a dozen riders just pulled in ... lathered
horses . . . like maybe they'd hurried to get here."
"Mount up," Tap said; "we'll ride down and join the boys."
They tied the horses at the rail in front of the saloon, listening
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for voices. There were six horses tied nearby; all had been ridden hard, all bore
the Circle M brand.
"Sit loose in the saddle, Belden. This may be it, but let me open the ball."
They pushed through the swinging doors into the shadowed coolness of the saloon.
Spicer was at the end of the bar, facing the room, and Jud Walker stood close by.
Two of the Circle M riders stood well down the bar from Walker. Two others were seated
at a table behind him but about fifteen feet away. The other two were down the room,
but facing Walker and Spicer, boxing them neatly.
Tap stepped to one side of the door, his eyes taking in the scene at a glance. Doc
Belden had moved easily to the other side of the door.
One of the men at the tables turned his head, squinting his eyes against the outside
glare, to see who had come in. It was Shabbit.
"How are you, boys?" Tap said quietly. "Let's all have a drink, shall we?"
The situation had suddenly reversed itself, and it was now the Munson party who were
boxed. If they faced the two men at the bar they could not face the two at the door.
And shooting against the sunlight was not too easy a thing.
Shabbit hesitated, and the moment passed him by. "To the bar, gentlemen," Tap insisted.
"I'm buying the drinks. Bartender, set them up ...
right there."
He was pointing at the center of the bar, and he was pointing with a gun.
Nobody had seen him draw it ... it was simply there.
One of the Munson men, whom Tap remembered from the graveyard, pushed back his chair
and got up. "Don't mind if I do," he said coolly. "You ridin' with the Kitterys now?"
"I'm in the cattle business with Tom Kittery," Tap replied calmly. "I'm not mixed
up in any feud, and don't intend to be."
As the first man started to the bar a second man got up. Shabbit was the last to
move, muttering under his breath. When all had lined up along the bar and their drinks
were poured, Duvarney motioned Walker and Spicer back to the door. Then he went to
the bar and paid for the drinks.
"Oblige me, gentlemen," he said, "and stay with your drinks. My finger is very touchy
on the trigger, and I'll need at least ten minutes to complete my business here.
I would regret killing a man for merely putting his head out of the door."
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Retreating to their horses, they mounted and walked them slowly down the street.
They left town on the road to Victoria, but soon turned off it and went toward the
San Antonio River. It was after dark when they made camp in the breaks along the
San Antonio, and before daylight they were moving again. By late morning they were
riding into Victoria.
Spicer and Walker stayed with the horses, while Duvarney and Doc Belden walked down
the street. Mady Coppinger was on the boardwalk on the other side. Tap crossed over,
removed his hat, and bowed.
"Miss Coppinger?" he said. "It is good to see you again."
His eyes went up and down the street, scanning the buildings, even the second-story
windows.
"I don't understand you, Major Duvarney. Why would a man like you want to come to
Texas? Tom says you have connections in Virginia, that you've lived all over, know
all sorts of people."
"I like Texas."
"You like it? I find that hard to believe."
"It's a man's country, I will admit, but you would find the cities less attractive
after you had been there a while."
"Anything is better than this," she replied. "I wish ... I wish I could just move
away and never see it again. You men may like the dust, the cattle, the sweating
horses ... I don't. I want to be where there's life . . . excitement."
"You would find it just as dull there after a while," Tap commented. His eyes swept
the street again. "Have you time to eat with me? I see there's a restaurant up the
street, and I'd be pleased if you'd be my guest."
"I'd like that very much," she agreed, "after I get some things I need." While she
went on down the street to do her shopping, Tap Duvarney walked back to the horses.
"We'll be in town for a bit," he said. "I'm going to have dinner with Miss Coppinger."
"You sure do pick 'em, Major," Walker said, grinning. "That's a mighty handsome figure
of a woman."
"She's spoken for," Duvarney replied shortly. "That is the girl Tom Kittery is going
to marry."
"You'd never know it, the way she was lookin' at you," Jud commented. "But that's
none of my affair." He looked around uneasily. "You want us to stay close? I smell
trouble."
"There's a grove of pecans on the edge of town. After you boys do whatever buying
there's to do, meet me there ... in an hour."
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Welt Spicer hesitated. "You sure you don't want us to stay by you? I've heard tell
this here is a Munson town."
"No . . . just be there when I come. I'll be all right."
The restaurant was a small place, with white curtains at the windows and white tablecloths
and napkins. Mady came in a moment after he arrived, moving gracefully. Her eyes
lighted up when she saw him. "You may not believe this," she said, "but I've lived
near Victoria all my life and this is only the second time I have eaten here."
He glanced at her thoughtfully. She was uncommonly pretty, and especially so today.
She was, he thought, one of those girls who love company, who like to be going and
doing. There was little chance of that on a cattle range.
"But you're in town often," he protested. "Where do you eat?"
"We bring our lunch. But sometimes we eat at the home of friends." She looked up,
her blue eyes resentful. "You haven't been here long enough to know, Major Duvarney,
but cash money is hard to come by in Texas these days. My father has more cattle
than most folks around Victoria, but he sees very little cash money. I had to skimp
and save to make that trip to New Orleans. Not that pa isn't well off," she added.
"It's just the way things are in Texas."
She looked unhappy, and it caused him to wonder about her relationship to Tom Kittery.
Tom was the sort of man who would appeal to women. He was tall and well set-up, he
carried himself with a manner, and had an easy, devil-may-care way about him. His
family had standing in East Texas, and but for the feud might have been living in
prosperity ... on a par with her own family.
Obviously, that was not enough for Mady Coppinger. She wanted the life of the city
and its real or fancied excitements. Her one brief visit had only served to whet
her appetite for more, and had been brief enough to bring no disillusionment. Such
a girl was the last person in the world for Tom Kittery, a man committed by birth
and inclination to the wilder West.
"Cities aren't the way you seem to think them," he said, "and most of the people
living there have no part of what is supposed to be the glamour and the excitement.
You probably have a better life and a more interesting life right here."_
They talked on, and in spite of himself he was led to talk of New J York and Washington,
of Bichmond and Charleston. The time went by too quickly, and more than an hour had
passed before he broke away and joined his men, who were growing restive.
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He had learned a little. Mady was in love with Tom, but was torn between her love
for him and her desire to be rid of Texas and all it stood for. She loved him in
her way, but she wanted him away from Texas, and she doubted his ability to win the
feud. The fighting itself disturbed her less than he expected, yet somewhere, somehow,
she had been offered some powerful and fairly consistent arguments to indicate that
Tom had no chance of winning.
He had a feeling that when she talked of this she was not using her own words, but
words she had heard. From her father, perhaps? Or from somebody else? Had Tom any
inkling of her doubts? Or that there might be some who lacked faith, someone close
to Mady or himself?
He had no doubt that somebody had informed the Munsons that he and his men had ridden
to Refugio the day before. Those hard-ridden horses were hard to explain in any other
way.
Somebody had informed the Munsons in time for them to get some fighting men to Refugio.
That they had failed in their mission was largely due to the fact that they had failed
to catch Duvarney and his men together in a single group.
Tap Duvarney had lived too long to trust anyone too much. It was his nature to like
people, but also to understand that many men are weak, and some are strong. In the
rough life of the frontier strengths and weaknesses crop out in most unexpected places,
and there is less chance to conceal defects of character that in a less demanding
world might never become known . . . even to their possessor.
Someone close to Tom Kittery, someone whom he trusted, was betraying him. It would
pay to ride carefully and to study the trail sign before revealing too much to anyone.
Riding back to the hide-out in the brush, Tap Duvarney considered his moves with
care, trying to foresee the moves the enemy would make, and to plan his own accordingly.
They must do the unexpected, always the unexpected.
Tom Kittery got up from the fire and approached as Tap swung down. "We'll drive for
Kansas," Tap said, "and we'll start day after tomorrow."
49
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Over the sullen coals of a me^quite-root fire, Tap Duvarney told his men: "Roll out
at first' light, bunch on Matagorda, and sweep south. Start about here." He drew
a rough map of the island. "Push down and swim them over to here."
He turned to Kittery. "Tom, how about you taking your boys and sweeping kind of east
by north from Copano Creek? Scatter out and gather what you can, but waste no time
chasing the tough old ones.
"Darkly Foster can take Shannon, Lahey, and Gallagher over to the tip of Black Jack
Peninsula and drive north. We'll work fast and we'll miss a lot of stuff, but we
should rendezvous on Horseshoe Lake with a good-sized herd."
Kittery nodded. "Seems likely. How about you?"
"I'll take Doc, Lawton Bean, Spicer, and Jule Simms over to the island. Walker and
Porter can work with you."
"You'll never make it. Not in the time you're givin* us. That's a whole lot of country."
"I know it is, and we can't make a clean sweep. Just start driving and keep moving.
What we get we'll take, and what's left we can get the next time."
"All right, Major," Kittery said ironically, "you're givin' the orders."
Breck and Lubec stared stubbornly at the ground, ignoring Tap. The Cajun showed no
feeling one way or the other. Tap said mildly, "If we all do our part, this should
be quite a drive. We'll slip out of here without a fight."
Lubec laughed contemptuously. "You don't know them Munsons, Major." Lubec emphasized
the title. "They'll wait until you bunch your stock and they'll move. You'll see."
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"I hope you'll be there shooting when they do, Johnny," Tap replied pleasantly. "Now
I'm going to hit the hay. I'm tired."
Slowly, they drifted away to their beds, all but Breck, Lubec, and Kittery.
"They don't like it much, Major," Spicer whispered, "you takin' command like this."
The night was still. The crickets' chirping was the only sound. Tap clasped his hands
behind his head and stared up at the stars, which winked occasionally through the
black mantilla formed by the branches and leaves overhead. He liked the smell of
the earth, the trees, the coolness of a soft wind from off the Gulf.
Despite his outward assurance, he was far from confident. There were too many things
that could happen, too many things to go wrong, and there was too much that was doubtful
about his own relationship with Tom Kittery.
The man was moody and solitary, and when not alone he kept close to those who had
been with him from the beginning. The bitterness of the feud was upon him, the memory
of good men dead, of his burned-out home, of the graves of his family. Nor could
Tap blame him. In Tom's place, he too would have fought. But he was not in Tom's
place.
His future lay in that herd of cattle they were to gather, his future and perhaps
that of Jessica. He wanted to return to her without empty hands, and if he could
not return that way, he made up his mind suddenly, he would not go back at all.
He was too proud to accept a position from her family, or from friends of either
his family or hers. His father and grandfather had walked proudly, had made their
own way, and so would he make his. He could return to the service, but he knew what
it meant- fighting Indians or living out a dull existence on some small post on the
frontier.
With the few men they had, they could not hope to make anything like a clean sweep.
They could only do their best, then move the herd; with luck they would get out without
a fight. He was not at all as hopeful of that as he had sounded at the campfire.
Finally he slept. In the night he stirred restlessly, the sea in his bones responding
to something on the wind, some faint whisper from out over the wastes of the ocean.
Something was happening out there, something he knew by his instincts. Several times
he muttered in his sleep, and when he awakened he was not refreshed.
The Cajun was at the fire. Did the man never sleep at all? He
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looked up at Duvarney and, taking his cup from his hand, filled it from the coffeepot.
Brooding, the Cajun sipped at his coffee. Presently he glanced around at Duvarney.
He nodded to indicate a huge log that lay over against the edge of the clearing.
It was an old log measuring at least four feet through, and was perhaps sixty feet
in length.
"He big tree . . . grow far off."
Tap Duvarney looked at the log. It certainly was larger than anything he had seen
along the Gulf Coast, although there might be something as big in the piney woods
to the north.
"How did it get here?"
The Cajun jerked his head toward the Gulf. "Storm. Big storm bring him on the sea."
Tap looked at the log again. They were at least five miles from the Gulf Coast. To
come here by sea, that log would have to cross Matagorda Island and then be Carried
this far inland.
"Have you seen the sea come this far in?"
"One time I see. My papa see, also. One time there was a ship back there." He turned
and pointed still further inland. "Very old ship. It was there before my grandpa."
The Cajun relapsed into silence over his coffee. There was no light in the sky, but
a glance at his watch showed Duvarney that the hour was four in the morning. When
he had finished his coffee he went out and caught up his horse, then bridled and
saddled him.
Standing beside the horse, he thought over the plans he had made. There was much
about them he did not like, but he could see no alternative that would improve the
situation.
The night coolness had gone. The air was still, and it was growing warmer. He led
his horse back and tied him to a tree not far from the fire.
He accepted a plate of beef and beans from the Cajun, and ate while the others crawled
sleepily from their beds. It was going to be a long, hard day.
There is no creature on the face of the earth more contrary than the common cow.
Not so difficult as a mule, not so mean or vicious as a camel, the cow beast can
nevertheless exhaust the patience of a Job.
Duvarney and his men started on the island, and contrary to his announced intention,
they did not drive south, but north.
It was not until they reached the island that Tap pulled up and hooked a leg around
the saddle-horn. He pushed his hat back and
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got a small cigar from his pocket. "We're going to do a little different from what
I said." He paused to strike a match. "We're going to drive the cattle north, cross
from the tip of the island over to the mainland, at low tide or close to it, and
take our part of the herd right into Indianola."
"Suits me," Spicer commented.
"Me too," Doc said. "We'll get to town that much sooner."
"Somebody," Duvarney went on, "has talked too much, or else somebody has too much
confidence in their friends. So if you should meet anybody, don't let them get the
idea we're driving north."
"That's marshy country," Jule Simms said doubtfully. "We're liable to bog down the
herd."
Tap reached into his saddlebag and brought out a folded chart, now much crumpled.
"Look here," he pointed. "This is an old smugglers' trail. It was an Indian trail
before that. We'll have to watch the herd, but if we keep them on that trail we can
go right through."
They scattered out and began to work back and forth across the island, pointing the
cattle north. Here and there other brands were found, and those they cut out and
turned back. It was slow, painstaking work. The cattle were loath to be driven, stubbornly
resisting, and a few were allowed to go.
The weather was hot and sultry. Not a breath of air circulated among the low-growing
brush, or moved in from the sullen sea. Tap mopped his face again and again, fighting
the flies, but he kept driving the cattle out. By noon they had a good-sized herd
moving up the island ahead of them.
Jule Simms had gone back for fresh horses, and they took a long nooning by a brackish
waterhole near Panther Point. Kittery was to have started horses to them, and with
luck Simms would meet them halfway.
Lawton Bean held his cup in his gnarled, work-hardened fingers. "You figure this'll
turn into a scrap?" he asked.
"Not if I can help it," Duvarney said. And then he added, "But Id say the odds were
against us making it all the way without a fight."
"You figure to drive the other herd thisaway?"
Duvarney shook his head. "No . . . and this isn't to be talked about. We'll drive
this bunch in and sell them right in Indianola. If things work the way I figure,
they already know we've a drive
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under way over on the Copano; and unless I'm mistaken, that will pull all the Munson
crowd out of Indianola."
The grass was good, and the cattle, fortunately, showed no inclination to go back.
When Duvarney had put out the fire and they had saddled up again, they merely nudged
the cattle along. On the landward side of the island there were inlets and coves,
and small scattered lakes, and the cattle took shelter from the flies in some of
the thick brush there. But Duvarney led the way, working the reluctant cattle out
of the brush and starting them north.
Welt Spicer met him at the end of one of the narrow necks of land that lay between
the ponds and lakes. He mopped his face and swore. "Hotter'n hell," he said. "Cyclone
weather, if I ever did see it."
"Jule should be along," Duvarney said. He stood in his stirrups, but it offered him
no advantage. He could see nothing but the tops of willows. "My horse is played out,"
he added.
"So's mine. How far to the end of the island?" Spicer asked.
"Twenty miles."
"We ain't goin' to make it today. Maybe not tomorrow."
"Tomorrow. We should cross over to the mainland before noon. The brush thins out
further along, and the island narrows down. I'm going to send you and one of the
other boys ahead to keep the cattle to the Gulf side of the island."
Their horses started reluctantly. A big red steer lifted his head and stared at them
defiantly. His horns would spread an easy seven feet; he would weigh fifteen hundred
pounds if an ounce, and all of it ready for trouble. Both men started for him and
he lowered his head a little, then thought better of it and turned away.
Spicer started a cow and a calf from the brush, the cow wearing the Rafter K brand,
as the steer had. "We'll get that brindle calf in the roundup," Spicer said.
They had moved no more than two miles from their nooning when Simms caught up with
them, bringing ten head of horses.
Tap Duvarney stripped his saddle from his own weary horse and saddled one of the
new ones-a strawberry roan with three white stockings. It was a mustang, but there
had been some good blood in it somewhere, for the horse had fine lines. It looked
strong and tough.
Jule Simms sat his horse, studying Duvarney. "I heard some talk," he said at last.
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"I'll listen."
"They're goin' to kill you-Breck an' them."
Tap rested his hands on the saddle and looked across the horse at Simms. "Do they
know you heard this?"
"I was saddling a horse-they didn't even know I was around. They want you out of
the picture. With you gone, they figure to fight the Munsons."
"Does Tom know this?"
"Not from the way they talked. Of course, I couldn't say for sure. Breck hates you
for being' a Yankee-lover, and Lubec thinks you rate yourself too high. Mostly they
think you're ridin' roughshod over Tom and keepin' them from killin' Munsons."
"Do you know just what they're planning?"
"I didn't hear that part, only it's supposed to come soon. Maybe at Horseshoe Lake,
maybe somewhere else."
"Thanks, Jule," Duvarney said. "Thanks."
"The boys and me, we figure you're our boss. We're riding for you. If you want us
to, you say the word and we'll ride down there and talk it over some."
"I appreciate that. I surely do." Tap stepped into the saddle. "Let's get on with
the drive."
Several times he came within sight of the Gulf. The sea looked sullen and heavy.
The water scarcely rustled on the sandy beach. He drew up, smelling the air and looking
seaward. There was a sort of swell to the sea, scarcely discernible.
The island had narrowed, and the cattle could be moved faster. He threw himself into
the work.
Lawton Bean rode in, hazing a mixed lot of stuff, mostly young, with a couple of
old mossy-horns. He had been working among the tide-water ponds and stringers of
land that ran out among the maze of inlets and channels along the inland shore of
Matagorda. His faded blue shirt was dark with sweat, and the dust on his face was
streaked with it.
"I swear that Tom Kittery must've branded everything that wore hair!" he said. "A
couple of times back in the brush I'm sure I seen a cougar wearin' his brand."
"There was a cowhand over on the Nueces one time roped and branded a razor-back hog,"
Simms commented.
"Now, that ain't a-tall likely," Bean objected. "You ever try to dab a rope on a
hog? He holds his head down too low. I'd say a man ropin' one of them razor-backs
had his work cut out for him."
"There was a hand rode for King Fisher down around Uvalde
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would dab his rope on anything he could get his loop over. He roped a buzzard one
time. It had got so full of meat off a dead crittur it couldn't get off the ground."
"How many head we got up there?" Simms asked. "We must have half the stock in East
Texas."
"There's a few hundred head," Duvarney said, cautiously.
"You countin' deer?" Bean asked. "We got four, five head of deer in among them cows."
Welt Spicer drifted in, pushing a few head, among them a huge red steer that stood
all of seventeen hands high and carried a magnificent head of horns. He rolled his
eyes and bobbed his head at them, but went on by.
"Any you boys want some exercise, you might try ropin' Big Red there. He don't take
to it," Spicer said.
"Knew a cowhand one time over in the brush country," Lawton Bean said, starting to
build a smbke. "He was a reliable man. You sent him out to do something, he done
it, no matter what. Well, one time the boss told him to clean up all the stock south
of the ridge, and when he came in that night he had a hundred and twenty-seven head
of cattle, thirty sheep, three mountain goats, seven torn turkeys, a bobcat and two
bears . . . and what was more, he'd branded ever' last one of them."
"I don't believe that part about the sheep," Jule Simms said mildly. "Seems unlikely
a man would run sheep with cows."
Tap Duvarney looked around, and found a sheltered spot near some dunes, with the
Gulf waters within view. There was driftwood about, and some brush. "We'll camp right
here," he said, "and make a small fire. We'll take turns on guard tonight."
"You goin' on in tomorrow?" Spicer wanted to know.
"Uh-huh . . . right in. We'll hold the herd a few miles out and I'll go on in and
make a deal." He looked around at them as they stripped their gear from the horses.
"From here on in, you boys act like you're expecting Comanches. You'll earn your
wages before we leave Indianola, unless I'm mistaken."
"How about the cattle? Will that water be shallow enough?"
"For them?" Welt Spicer grinned at the speaker. "Mister, those cattle don't know
whether they'd rather graze on the prairie or the ocean bottom. They swim like fish.
Shanghai Pierce calls his sea lions. You'll see why."
Jule Simms took over the cooking. Earlier in the day he had shot a deer, and they
ate venison and the remains of the tortillas
they had brought along, and drank coffee. Doc Belden strolled
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down to the edge of the water and for some time they could see his dark figure against
the steel gray of the Gulf. When he came back, he said, "Let me have first watch.
I'm not tired."
The fire died down, the men rolled up in their blankets, tired out with the day's
work. Tap walked to the brackish pond and washed his face and hands. When he went
back to the fire all the men were asleep but Doc, who was up on the side of a dune
with his Winchester.
"What's the 'Doc' stand for?" Tap asked him.
"Courtesy title. I had a notion back when I was a youngster that I wanted to take
up medicine. I read for it, worked four years with a doctor ... a damned good one,
too."
"What happened?"
Doc Belden glanced at him. "I was a kid. The girl I thought I was in love with married
somebody else, so I pulled my freight. Away down deep I think that was what I wanted
anyway. I wasn't cut out for a home guard. The army was recruiting, so I joined up.
I did a year at Fort Brown, and then they transferred a few of us west. I was at
Fort Phil Kearney when Carrington was in command."
After that they sat silent for a time, staring out to sea. The night was cool, the
sea calm except for that slight persistent swell.
Tap indicated the Gulf. "I don't like the look of it ... too quiet."
"I know nothing about the sea."
"That's where I started."
Tap continued to stare seaward. It was a lovely night, with a young moon high in
the sky. "There's something going on out where that swell comes from."
He got to his feet. "If there's trouble, I'll be sleeping yonder, and I'm a light
sleeper."
He went down the dune, checked the coffeepot, and added a little water and a little
coffee for the guards to come. The cattle had wandered off toward the north, and
only a few were in sight. There was grass up where they had bedded down, and he doubted
if any would start back before daybreak.
He checked his gun, then peeled off his coat and sat down, tugging at his boots.
How many times had he slept out as he was sleeping now? And how many times would
he do so in the future? Belden was one of those who did not fit ... he was a square
peg, and content to be so. Was he, Tap Duvarney, a square peg? If so, he was not
content. He wanted a home . . . and he wanted Jessica.
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How long he had been asleep he did not know, but when a hand touched his shoulder
gently, he opened his eyes at once, his fingers already closing on the butt of his
gun.
It was Lawton Bean, who was to stand the third watch. Tap's mind put that together,
and he noticed the position of the stars ... it was within an hour of daybreak.
"Major," Bean said in a low tone, just loud enough for Duvarney's ears. "There's
somebody out there . . . somebody on a horse."
58
 SEVEN
Tap Duvarney threw back his blanket and got to his feet. For a moment he listened,
hearing nothing. He glanced toward the fire, now a bed of red coals. The scattered
sleepers were all hidden from sight in the deeper shadows. He sat down again and
tugged on his boots, then thrust his gun down into his belt, and picked up his gun
belt and holster.
"South?"
"Yes . . . close by."
They walked away from camp, keeping to the brush shadows. To the south there was
an open space of about three acres, all grass well eaten down. Farther to their right,
which was the inland side, there were tall reeds along what was called Pringle Lake,
which was actually an almost landlocked cove.
The approach from the south was difficult, which was one reason for Duvarney's choice
of the position. The night was clear and the stars were out, but the moon was now
low in the sky and not of much help. However, the sea and the sand reflected enough
light to make anyone hesitant about attempting an approach.
The two men stood there together, waiting. After a moment or two they heard a sound,
the same sound Bean had heard before. It was the whisper of brush over coarse denim
. . . and then the slightest jingle of a spur. A rider was coming up from the south,
walking his horse.
Lawton Bean watched the shadow take shape. "It ain't the same one, Major, I'll take
an oath."
"I believe you." He hesitated. He had a pretty good idea who it was now; he even
believed he could see the horse. "You go back on watch, Bean," he said. "Keep a good
lookout."
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Tap waited, standing there alone, watching the rider come nearer. When the horse
was still a little distance off he spoke. "Come on in, Tom, with your hands empty."
Tom Kittery rode on up, reining his horse in as he neared Duvarney. "Hey, you mean
it!"
"Yes, I mean it, Tom. Some of your boys are after my scalp."
"My boys? You're crazy!"
"They want to fight, Tom. They want to push that feud. They also want me out of the
way, because they think I'm blocking them."
Tom Kittery chuckled. "Well, ain't you?" He pushed his hat back, curled a leg around
the saddle-horn, and started to build a smoke. "You can't blame them, Tap. They've
lost people to the Munsons, same as I have. They figure you're an outsider."
"You tell them to lay off. Tell that to Lubec and Breck, and whoever. I haven't got
time to light, but if they push me, they can get it."
"You surely ain't changed," Kittery said. "You always was a right smart fightin'
man, Tap. They got that to learn."
He glanced around. "You're pushing north?"
"Uh-huh . . . I'm going to sell cattle in Indianola while they're watching you at
Horseshoe Lake, or about there."
"Canny . . . you always was a canny one. How many head you got?">;S
"Eight, nine hundred. Mixed stuff."'It
Tom drew on his cigarette, and the end glowed in the darkness, 'n "Sorry to say this,
boy, but you got to go back. There's no trail ^ across the swamps."I?
"There's a trail. Just don't you say anything about this when you fi get back to
camp."f
At Tom's odd look, Duvarney added, "You've got a spy in camp. Or somebody who comes
to camp now and again. They almost had ,: us in Refugio, and they knew we were coming.";'
"One of my boys?" Kittery shook his head. "I won't take stock in that, Tap. I know
my outfit. They've been with me for years."
"They haven't been with me, and I don't
know them. No matter. . . . Those riders had to run their horses half to death to
get to Refugio in time to meet us."
Tom Kittery said nothing, but Tap knew he was irritated. Tom trusted his friends,
and he wanted to hear nothing against them.
Tap changed the subject. "How does it happen you ride in here at night? Is something
wrong over yonder?"
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"Mady's lit out. Her pa came into camp just a-foamin' and a-frettin'. Figured she'd
come to me, but she sure enough hadn't, so I came over here."
"Here?"
Tom rested his left hand, holding the cigarette on his knee, which was still around
the saddle-horn.
"Heard you was with her in Victoria," he said mildly. "I figured maybe you two had
somethin' goin'."
"Don't be a damn fool, Tom, and don't try snapping that cigarette in my eyes when
you go for your gun, because it won't work."
Tom gave another chuckle. "Canny . . . that's what I said. She ain't here, then?"
"She wouldn't come here, Tom. We talked a little, that was all. I'm an engaged man,
Tom, and I take it seriously. I wouldn't start anything with the girl of a friend,
anyway."
"All right. You say that, but what about Mady? She's forever talkin' of city folks
and their ways . . . and you especially, ever since you came."
"Well, she's not here, Tom. Forget it, and let's go have some coffee."
They went into camp together and took their cups to the fire. The coffee was black
and strong.
Hunching down by the fire, Duvarney studied Tom Kittery carefully. The man looked
thinner, harder. He looked like a man with an edge to him, a man ready to strike
out suddenly, violently. And Tom Kittery, at any time, was a dangerous man.
"Let's get some sleep." Tap drained his cup and threw the dregs into the fire. "You
can use Bean's bed."
"I got one." Tom got up slowly. "If you ain't seen her I just don't know where to
look."
Tap sat down and started to tug off his boots. Then suddenly he went cold and clammy.
That other sound-the one Lawton Bean said he had heard before . . .
Tom Kittery would never believe Tap had told the truth if Mady Coppinger rode into
camp. Or if he awakened to find her there in the morning.
Tap sat there, feeling the damp chill, holding a boot in his hand. Across the camp
he could see Tom Kittery unrolling his blanket and tarp.
Behind him, Tap heard something stir in the sand.
Inwardly he cursed, suddenly, bitterly. Leave it to a woman to
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get a man killed. What had she run away for, anyway? Some fool notion about going
to the city, as if that was the answer for everything. In a city, without family
or connections or money, there was only one way for a girl to go.
He was tired, dead tired, but he'd be damned if ... Behind him he heard a faint whisper.
Or had he imagined it?
Deliberately, he got up and crossed to the fire, filling his cup at the pot. The
coffee was strong enough to stiffen the hair on a man's neck, and hot enough to scald.
He tasted it, then put the cup down.
He had no intention of being killed or of killing anyone over Mady Coppinger. If
that had been her back there . . . but suppose it was somebody else? Some wounded
man, trying to reach him? He shook off the idea, and picked up the coffee cup. He
needed sleep. He was desperate for it.
He sat quietly and now sippdd the coffee. At last he put the cup down and, after
rinsing it, he walked back to his blankets and crawled into them, boots and all.
Almost instantly, he was asleep.
When he awoke it was broad daylight and the camp was still. He sat up, blinking and
looking around. His horse was saddled and tied nearby, the coals were smoldering,
and the coffeepot was still on the fire. Everyone was gone.
He got up, shook out his blanket, and rolled it in his tarp. Under a stone beside
the fire there was a note, hurriedly written.
Figgered to let you sleep. Else you ketch up, we will hold this side of Bayucos.
K still around.'if
Spicer*
-jjA
Getting some jerked beef and hardtack from the saddle-bag, he $~ squatted on his
heels and chewed the beef, ate the hardtack, and f, swallowed the coffee which was
bitter as lye. But it was hot, and £, he enjoyed it.1
Finally he took the pot off the coals and covered the fire with sand. While the pot
cooled off, Duvarney looked about the place where his bed had been. He could not
be sure, but it looked .} suspiciously as if somebody had come up behind him in the
soft sand.
He packed the coffeepot, then swung into the saddle and started north. The sand was
so chewed up by cattle tracks that there was no possibility of reading sign.
He took his time. The occasional glimpses he had of the sea
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worried him. The swell had grown larger rather than diminishing, and the water still
had that same glassy appearance. The sky was vague, the horizon indistinct.
The western side of the island grew more and more boggy, and the line of cattle slimmed
down until at places it was moving almost in single file. Twice he saw places where
animals had been dragged from the swamp. Where they had held closer to the Gulf side
of the island, they had moved steadily along.
They were nooning and had a fire going when he rode up to them. "By Jimminy," Simms
said, "there's our coffeepot!"
"Thanks, boys. I enjoyed the coffee."
"I crossed up yonder," Lawton Bean said. "It ain't bad a-tall. There's a few young
uns we may have to pack over on our saddles, but otherwise it's a cinch."
"You boys go ahead. I'm going to scout trail."
He rode on, leaving them around the fire, and pushed through the cattle and crossed
to the mainland. At this hour there was only one place where his horse had to swim,
and the water was lower than his chart had told him. He was riding up on the shingle
when he saw the tracks.
A horse had come this way not long after daybreak, to judge by the tracks-a freshly
shod horse with a smaller, neater hoof than Bean's horse.
There were some wind-blown trees back from the crossing place, and he headed for
them, wanting to take a sight over the route that lay ahead. After all, his chart
was not new, and swampland could change. He had gambled on that trail.
Suddenly he glimpsed a horse and rider among the trees ahead. He turned his mount
to weave around some small brush, and when his gun hand was on the side away from
the trees he slipped the thong. He planned to use the gun he carried behind his belt,
but a man never knew.
His horse scrambled up the sandy slope and into the trees, and he saw that the rider
was Mady Coppinger.
"Tap," she said at once, "you've got to help me."
He pulled up six or seven feet away, his eyes scanning the brush behind and all around
her. "What can I do," he asked, "that Tom Kittery can't do?"
"You can help me get out of here. I want to go to New Orleans."
"It's no place for a girl without family or friends," he said. "How could you make
a living?"
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"Oh . . . oh, I'll find a way!" She was impatient. "Tap, I just can't stand it any
longer! I can't stand everybody going to bed when the sun's scarcely out of the sky.
I want to go somewhere where there are lights and music, and something is happening.
I'll just die here!"
"Have you talked to Tom about it? He's figuring on getting married. He wants to live
in this country; and besides, it's the only life he knows."
"I don't care about Tom." Her chin went up. "I'm finished, Tap. Do you hear? Finished!"
She swung her horse nearer. "Tap, if you'll take me to New Orleans I can go. I'll
. . . I'll do anything you want."
"You've got a good man," he said roughly, "and no town is like you seem to think
it is. They're all the same unless you have money; and going the way you are talking
of, you simply wouldn't have any.'
"Anyway, what makes you think you'd see any of the life you're thinking about if
some man took you to New Orleans; or anywhere else? He might rent a house and just
leave you there to visit when he pleased. He might not take you anywhere."
"I'd leave him!"
"For somebody else like him? Mady, you're too smart a girl to do anything so foolish.
You've got something here-a good man who wants you, a recognized position, with family
and friends around. You'd be throwing it all over . . . for what? To live in a city
where all the doors that mattered would be closed to you. Stop being a damn fool
and go home."
i
u
She stared at him, her face white with anger. Her lips curled. "I thought you were
really something! I thought you were the man I wanted, you with your city ways and
your style! You talk like a preacher!" Her tone was thick with contempt. "I've had
too much
\
of that at home. I wouldn't go with you now if you begged me!"
He reined his horse around. "I haven't begged you, Mady. I haven't even asked you."
Ten minutes later, he came to the spot marked on the chart for the trail's beginning.
It was overgrown with grass, but it showed evidences of recent use, more than likely
by Indians going to the shore for the fishing, for there had surely been little other
travel this way.
He tied his handkerchief to a bush to mark the opening, then rode out along the trail,
scouting the way. At this time of year the swamp did not look bad, and it was possible
there might be
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several routes that would take them through. Nonetheless, he held to the trail, emerging
from it several miles further along, near the head of Powderhorn Lake.
He found a place among the willows near the lake and made a concealed camp there,
starting a small fire. This spot could be no more than five miles from Indianola,
and it would be easy travel from here into the port. Yet he felt worried and restless.
So far all had gone well, and his ruse might have taken the Munson men out of the
port city, but there was no certainty of that.
Tap Duvarney knew what remained. He must ride into town with at least one man who
would know the Munsons when he saw them. That man would be Spicer. He might take
one other. He would try to make a quick deal, then when they got their cash the lot
of them would move out to join Tom Kittery and the main herd.
The cattle started to come, and he rode out to intercept the leaders and turn them.
The grass was good at the head of Powderhorn, so the cattle settled down to grazing.
Lawton Bean was the first man to appear. Together they held the cattle while the
rest of the herd streamed in from the narrow trail. There had been no trouble. It
was all too easy; and to Tap Duvarney, to whom few things had come easy, it only
served to worry him still more. Something had to be wrong, or to go wrong. Things
simply didn't happen this way.
"I was glad to get off that island," Doc Belden commented as he drew abreast. "You
should see the way the sea is breaking out there. Smooth as glass, but great big
swells . . . biggest I ever saw."
"Doc," Tap said, "I'm going to leave you in charge of the herd. They'll be uneasy,
with the weather changing, so you'll have to hold them close. I'll take Welt Spicer
and Lawton Bean."
Doc Belden tamped his pipe thoughtfully. "Spicer should know the Munsons. He's been
around long enough, but you be careful."
"I'm going to turn a fast deal if I can. It may not be the best one, but it will
be fast and it will give us some more working capital.
"Doc," he added, "Mady Coppinger is around. She's Tom's girl, but she's got some
fool notion about running off to New Orleans. Tom's hunting her, and she's ready
to jump at any chance to get away from here. Be careful . . . it's a killing matter
if she's found with anybody.
"I told him I hadn't seen her, and I hadn't then, but now she's
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been close to camp and I've talked with her. She's mad enough to bite nails."
"Leave it to a woman to cause trouble," Doc Belden said. "All right, Tap, you go
on in when the boys get here. We'll watch things here. Only don't be gone too long.
I don't like the looks of the weather out there."
It was a short ride to Indianola.
ft
,f!
M
66
 EIGHT
Jackson Huddy did not leave Indianola when the others did. Deliberately, he remained
behind, disliking to trust his safety to such a group, with its accompanying noise,
idle talk, and carelessness. He preferred to depend on his own sense, his own instincts.
His were the feelings of a prowling carnivore. He preferred to travel alone, to hunt
alone. In the presence of others he was stiff, stilted, and cold, but out alone in
the night, in the wilderness, he was strictly a killer.
A solitary man by disposition, he had much in his nature to make others uncomfortable.
Faultlessly neat, he wore the plainest of clothes, always carefully brushed. His
thin hair was combed close to his scalp; his jaws were never unshaven. He had never
been seen to tip back in a chair, lean against a wall or a post, or to make any careless
gesture.
None of the Munson riders were at all unhappy he chose to remain behind and follow
along later. His presence put a damper on idle talk, and it was well known that he
disliked profane or obscene language. His standards and morals were largely those
of the hardshell Baptist family in which he had grown up, and had he discarded his
guns there was nothing in his conduct to which they could have objected. He was a
man with a single, deadly vice.
The usual conceptions of fair play were foreign to him. He killed his enemies when
and where he found them, and at his own convenience. He wasted no efforts, and wasted
no lead. He disliked gun battles in streets or saloons, avoided any display of temper
on the part of others, and showed no emotions of his own.
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His peculiar walk and his high-shouldered, erect bearing drew attention; otherwise
he was colorless.
His mother had been a Munson, an Alabama cousin of the Texas family. The Texas family
had, several generations back, migrated from Germany to Mexico, and had moved to
Texas some years later. Jackson Huddy heard of the Munson-Kittery feud in Missouri,
and rode south to help his family. The first Kittery he killed was a pleasant young
man, Al Kittery, who rode in from El Paso to visit his kin. He commented, in a saloon,
that it looked as if the family might need his help.
When Al Kittery left the saloon and went into the street, Jackson Huddy followed.
Al Kittery, it had been said, was quite a hand with a gun, but he had not killed
anyone. Loafers in the saloon heard two shots that sounded almost as one, and going
out, they found Al Kittery's hand on his half-drawn gun anjd two bullet holes in
his heart. Jackson Huddy was gone.
Now, standing on the street in Indianola, Huddy watched the stage arrive. He was
waiting for Every Munson, the only one of the family to whom he was in any way close.
Ev Munson was as completely opposite in appearance to Huddy as a man could be-young,
handsome, reckless of bearing, inclined to the flamboyant in dress and manner. Only
in one thing were they alike, for when it came to killing, Ev was as cool and efficient
as Huddy himself.
Every Munson would not be on the stage, but he would be riding up that same street
within minutes, if he was on time, and he usually was. This was another reason Jackson
Huddy had let the others ride on ahead ... he wanted to see Ev without the others.
The stage rolled in and came to a stop; the dust cloud that trailed behind it caught
up and settled over and around the stage. The first man out was a fat drummer, his
vest buttons spread so wide over his stomach that glimpses of white shirt showed
between them.
The second person to get down was a young woman, and when the drummer turned and
held out his hand to help her, she took it and stepped lightly into the street, and
all Indianola stopped in its stride.
Jessica Trescott, of the Virginia and New York Trescotts, stepped down onto dusty
Main Street of Indianola and looked about her, in no way disturbed by the shabby
little western town. She had
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dignity as well as elegance and charm, and no amount of heat, dust, or travel could
wilt any of it.
There were a dozen women along the street, and each paused, some of them peeking
around parasols, some frankly staring, for Jessica's clothes had come from Paris.
Not Paris of last year or two years ago, but the Paris of today, almost of tomorrow.
She wore an all-beige dress with black pleated ruching at the hem, on the caught-up
apron part, and the tight-waisted jacket. The straw hat was worn well back on the
coiffure, which was done with a chignon. There was an embroidered veil and a small
velvet bow on the hat.
That was the moment when Mady Coppinger rode up to the hitching rail and swung down.
She turned, and found herself facing the vision of all she had ever wished to be,
and she stared, resentfully admiring.
Jessica Trescott smiled. "How do you do? I am Jessica Trescott. That hotel over there
... is it a good place? I mean a
clean place, and a respectable one?"
"Yes, it is," Mady answered. Then she added in a tone that sounded sullen, "I am
Mady Coppinger."
"Mady-! But of course! You are Mr. Kittery's fiancee. Then maybe you can tell me
where I can find Tappan Duvarney?"
Mady Coppinger's interest in the question did not seem very marked. "He's coming
up the trail now," she said. "He should be in town before sunset."
"Do you know Tappan? I mean, if you know him-"
"I know him, and you can have him."
Jessica smiled again. "That's the general idea, Mady. Why else would I come here?"
"I can't imagine," Mady said, "why anybody would come here who could be anywhere
else."
The porter from the hotel had crossed to pick up Jessica's carpetbag and small trunk.
The men from the stage office were handing down still another trunk, and then a third.
"Are those all yours?" Mady asked.
"All mine. After all, you can't expect a girl to come unarmed and defenseless into
a country like this, can you?" She turned to follow the porter. "Mady, I'm going
to freshen up, and then I wish you'd join me-I am going to have tea, or something.
Frankly, I'm famished!"
Then she was gone, leaving a faint scent of perfume behind her, and Mady looked after
her enviously. Turning toward the board
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walk, she stopped abruptly. Ev Munson was standing there, grinning at her, his dark
eyes dancing with amusement.
"That's quite a woman, Mady," he said; "quite a woman."
Mady replied sharply. "She's Tap Duvarney's girl, if you want to know. They're to
be married."
He still grinned at her. "Young to be a widow," he said, "and she's goin' to be one
before she's ever a wife!"
Mady stepped up on the boardwalk. "You got anything to tell me, Mady?" Ev Munson
asked.,C
She hesitated, her eyes straying after Jessica, who had paused \k
in the doorway to glance back. She made a move as if to draw ,f*" away from Ev, then
stopped. After all, Jessica had no idea who Ev
'£was . . . what could it matter?||
She stayed there, still looking across the street, standing near ;-
|S. Ev but not seeming to be talking to him. "Duvarney's coming into jf town tonight,"
she said, ". . . w&th a herd."S-
"A
herd?" Ev Munson was incredulous. "They're makin' their I-gather down to Horseshoe
Lake. We already seen them. Our boys S are on their way down."rf
"Have it your way, but you be around tonight and you'll see the ^ herd come in. This
is just a part of it that Duvarney brought over '/{,
from Matagorda Island."
*-,
"How many's with him?"t"
"Three or four, I think. They're all strangers except Welt Spicer."
"Strangers?" There was disappointment in Ev's tone. "Are you >' sure?"f
"Ev"-Mady looked around at him for the first time-"I want 'f my money now."\
"Money?" Ev said. "Now look, honey, you know damn well-"
"I want my money, Ev. You promised. You promised me two hundred dollars if I'd tell
you where they all were and what they were doing. You promised me that two months
ago."
"Sure, honey. Now you just wait-"
"I'm not waiting, Ev. I want my money, and I'm going to have it. I'm going to New
Orleans."
He gave her a wicked smile. "Suppose you don't get it? You goin' to tell Tom on me?
Or that Duvarney fella?"
"No, Ev." Her eyes sparked. "I'll tell Jackson Huddy!"
The taunting smile vanished. "You'll do nothin' of the kind, damn you! You'll-"
"I want my money, Ev," she repeated. "I want it tomorrow. No," she said with sudden
anger, "I want it tonight, and I want
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every last cent of it. What I've been doing is a pretty mean thing, but I need that
money, and if I don't get it I'll go straight to Jackson Huddy and tell him. You
know how he is about breaking your word; and above all, how he is about women. He'd
kill you, Ev."
"Like hell!" Ev's eyes slanted up the street. "I think I could beat him, anyway.
I'm faster than he is."
"Want me to tell him that too? Anyway, it doesn't matter how fast you are, he would
kill you. He would kill you whenever he was of a mind to and you'd never know he'd
done it."
Ev swore under his breath. "All right, I'll get your money. You just wait. I'll bring
it by the hotel tonight."
She walked away, and Ev stood there staring along the street, eaten by anger and
hatred. He had been top man among the Munsons, top man with a gun at least, until
Jackson Huddy came along. Since then he had taken second place, and he did not like
it. At the same time, Jackson Huddy was all that kept them going, for a good half
of the Munsons wanted no part of the Kitterys. It was only the fact that Huddy would
do most of the killing and take most of the risks that held them together.
Tom Kittery was supposed to be fast, but it was not Kittery who worried Ev Munson,
it was Jackson Huddy. Huddy gave no man a fair chance, but Ev did not dare try to
kill him, for without Huddy the Munsons would have to back up and sit down and shut
up. Jackson Huddy's reputation and the fear that ringed around him gave them all
a sort of courage.
Once in her room, Jessica did not take time to change. She freshened up a bit, brushed
her hair, and replaced her hat. But she did take time to open her trunks and hang
out some of her dresses to get the wrinkles out of them. She would have to see if
she could hire somebody to do some pressing for her, and some laundry. If not, she
would do it herself. She never had, but she could.
Thoughtfully, she considered Mady Coppinger. Why had she turned away so guiltily
when Jessica saw her with that man? Because Jessica knew she was spoken for by Tom
Kittery? Or was it something else?
She thought of how the man looked-dark, handsome in a tough, daring sort of way,
but dirty, actually unclean. He had passed near her and she had seen the collar of
his shirt was shiny
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with dirt. She shuddered. Her father had warned her that the world she was coming
into was like nothing she had ever known. She had tried to learn about it, going
more than once to the blacksmith down at the Corners, who had lived in Texas, and
knew all about it. He came from Goliad, which was not far from this town. He had
even known about the Kitterys and the Munsons. I It was, he said, a bitterly fought
feud.3
Well, she would go to the dining room and eat . . . she had I never been so hungry.
After that she would return here and keep * a watch out for Tap. She had forgotten
to ask where he was coming from, but there were only two possible choices, unless
he ,/ was planning to swim the cattle in. She smiled at that, for Tappan -C Duvarney
was just the sort of man who might.'J
She thought again of the man Mady had spoken to ... it was y-
almost as if she did not want to be seen talking to him. Still, in | such a country
as this she must'know all sorts of people. As far as ,j
;
-that went, Jessica herself had known all kinds. The Judge, her f father, had not
exactly sheltered his only daughter. Since her
^
mother died they had been very close, and she had often ridden f. into the country
with him when he was buying stock or was riding */ to some other town to hold court.4
She picked up her purse and left the room, and found her way '',, to the dining room.
She had been there only a few minutes when i Mady Coppinger came in and joined her.
\
Mady looked across the table at her, enviously. "You look so ... so right. I wish
I could look like that."
"It isn't that difficult," Jessica said. "And why look as I do? You're beautiful
enough as you are. Mr. Kittery must think so.">
"Oh . . . Tom. Tom's all right-he's a grand fellow, but he doesn't have any ambition.
He doesn't want to go anywhere."
"Go?"
"I mean he wants to stay here. In the West, that is. All he can think about is cattle.
Sometimes I think that's all he knows."
"Maybe it is, but if he's a good man and he loves you ..." Jessica paused. "And if
you love him. You do, don't you?"
"I think so. I don't know. I just wish he'd take me away from here. I don't want
to spend my life on a cattle ranch in Texas. Maybe . . . maybe if he loses out here
he will go away. I mean if this deal falls through."
Jessica lifted her eyes slowly. "You mean his deal with Tappan? Do you think that
will fail?"
"I don't know. It's just that it is such an awful gamble, driving
72
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cattle all that way. And if they do sell for a good price they will only buy more
and do it all over again."
Jessica was thoughtful. She ordered a small meal, but most of all, she listened.
She had heard discontented women before this, but never one who seemed quite so desperate.
What it was Mady wanted from life Jessica could not decide; but whatever it was she
did not expect to find it here. To her the "city"-a vague, rather unreal conception
of the actual thing-was where she wished to be ... and if Tom did not take her there
she would go anyway . . . anyhow.
"How could he make a living there?" Jessica asked in a mild tone.
"Tom? Oh . . . oh, he'd find something. Men always do."
"It isn't that easy, I'm afraid. I mean without some special ability."
Mady refused to accept that. "He could find something. He just won't try."
"Why should he? He has a place here, people know him, respect him. He owns cattle.
He owns land. If I were you I'd grab him quick. He sounds like a catch."
"Tom?" Mady was astonished. "He'll never be anything but a cattleman."
Jessica changed the subject then, talking lightly of other things-of the East and,
although she disliked to mention such matters, of how much things cost in the cities.
Mady's discontent was obvious, so what Jessica hoped to do was to indicate that the
grass on the other side of the fence was no greener.
Finally, when Mady left her, Jessica relaxed and ordered coffee, genuinely relieved
that the other girl had gone. From where she sat she could look out on the street,
see the horses along the rail, and watch the people come and go along the boardwalk.
One of the men she saw was the man who had been talking earlier with Mady, and he
was with a tall, austere-looking man. Once the latter caught her eyes upon him and
he lifted his hat. The other man noticed and made some remark, at which his companion
turned to look at her again with curious, penetrating attention.
"More coffee?" The waitress was at her side.
"Please. Most of the men out there . . . are they cattlemen?"
"Them? Loafers, most of them. There's some cattlemen, buyers, and a few shipping
men. But mostly they're trash."
"The dark one with the red-topped boots-is he a cattleman?"
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 72Louis l'amour
"You could call him that. He's one of that Munson outfit. You know, the ones that
have the feud. They do run cattle, but they're usually too busy hunting Tom Kittery
or boozing it up, to do any
'£ work."!-t
"Munson? I've heard the name.",f
"That's Ev . . . he's ringleader since the old man was killed. Him and Jackson Huddy."
Jessica sat up a little straighter. What was Mady Coppinger, Tom Kittery's girl,
doing talking to Ev Munson, a leader of the opposition? Jessica was young, but her
years had been lived closer to the business and the courts of the land, so she was
acquainted, at least by second-hand, with the perfidy of the world. If one thought
of Mady's feverish desire to escape from Texas and the cattle range, and you coupled
that with her whispering to Ev Munson ...
Surely she was imagining things. Nevertheless, she was worried, and she remained
by the window until the supper crowd started to gather. Then she went to her room,
put on a black cloak, and went back down the stairs.
"Ma'am?" The clerk was a kindly, elderly man. "I'd not go out on that street if I
were you. We've got good folks hereabouts, but there's riffraff too."
"Just for a breath of air. I won't leave the boardwalk."
She stepped outside. The wind off the Gulf was light and cool. The night was very
still. Only a few stars were out, and a vague light lingered in the western sky.
At first she thought there was nobody on the street but herself, and then, not sixty
feet away, she saw a tall, slender figure. It was that man with the odd, high-shouldered
appearance, and he was coming toward her.
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He stopped in front of her, not quite blocking her way, and when he spoke it was
in an odd, almost hesitant way.
"Ma'am?" He cleared his throat. "I would not be out on the street if I were you.
There . . . there is often trouble . . . rough men ..." His voice trailed off, then
seemed to gather power as he added, "Sometimes even shooting."
"Thank you. It was very close inside," she said quietly, and "I wanted a breath of
air."
"Yes, it must be stuffy inside. I think there's ..." He hesitated again. "I think
there's a storm . . . change in the weather." He lifted his hat. "I am Jackson Huddy,
ma'am. You take your walk, and if you are bothered ... if anyone stops you, tell
them I am near."
"Thank you, Mr. Huddy."
He bowed and stepped aside, and she walked on. He had seemed embarrassed, almost
frightened by her, and her curiosity was aroused. She remembered hearing the waitress
mention Jackson Huddy as a man who was a leader among the Munsons.
Jackson Huddy and Ev Munson were in Indianola, and the herd was due to arrive tonight,
she was thinking. Tappan Duvarney might be coming up that road at any time.
She walked on to the end of the street, then crossed over, holding her skirts up
a little to keep them from the dust. Far down the street she could see Jackson Huddy,
and she was about to start back when she heard the muffled footfalls of a horse walking
in the dust.
She stood very still listening. There was more than one horse, and they were coming
up an alleyway between the buildings.
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When they appeared at the edge of the line of buildings they drew rein, and she could
see their heads thrust out to peer down the street.
Then one of them spoke. "Too quiet. I don't like it, Major."
"Where's the hotel where Brunswick will be staying?" It was Tappan's voice.
She stepped forward and said quietly, just loud enough for them to hear, "He is at
my hotel, Tappan."
The heads jerked around, and Tap Duvarney said, "Jessica! Is that you, or am I going
crazy?"
She walked toward them. "Yes, Tappan, I am here. ... Be careful, Tappan. Huddy and
Ev Munson are still in town, and they know you're bringing in some cattle."
"Now, how the dev-?" Tap began, then went on, "How did you know that?"
"I met Mady Coppinger, andishe told me. I think she also told them. She was on the
street, standing very close to Ev Munson, and I think she was whispering to him."
"How long have you been in town, Jessica?"
"Several hours," she said.
"And you know all that? And you know who Ev Munson is?"
She smiled brightly. "I also know who Jackson Huddy is, and if I don't keep moving
he will be up here to see what's wrong. He told me that if anybody bothered me, to
mention that he was near."
"Jackson Huddy?" Tap was incredulous.
"He's like that about womenfolks," Spicer said. "He's almighty respectful to them,
and I think a mite scared of them."
"Do you want to see Mr. Brunswick?" Jessica asked. "I heard him named at the hotel,
and if you want me to, I could speak to him and arrange it. When I came out he was
reading a newspaper in the lobby."
"Could you do that? We'll be at the corral. No," Duvarney said, changing his mind.
"Ask him to go to his room. I'll see him there. Welt, you and Bean stay off the streets."
"We'll wait in the barn, yonder. You watch your step, Major. That Jackson Huddy is
pure poison, and Ev Munson is hell on wheels with a six-gun. He's killed eight or
nine men I know of."
"Jessica," Tap warned, "you be careful."
"You too. I can't wait to have a talk with you. Later, at the hotel?"
"If I can. This is touch and go."
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She walked away, taking her time, and when she passed Jackson Huddy he looked at
her, then looked away quickly.
"Good night, Mr. Huddy," she said. "And thank you."
"Yes-yes, ma'am." He spoke so quickly he almost stuttered.
When Jessica got back to the hotel, Bob Brunswick was no longer in the lobby. She
stopped at the desk to get her key, and as the clerk was not around, she glanced
at the register. Brunswick was only three rooms down the hall from her own. She went
up the stairs, opened the door of her room, and put down her key. Then she walked
down the hall and tapped lightly on Brunswick's door. He opened it slightly, then
wider.
He was a large, portly man with a black walrus mustache. He was in his shirtsleeves;
a heavy gold watchchain with an elk's tooth was draped across his stomach. His expression
now was startled.
"Mr. Brunswick? I am Jessica Trescott, and I would like to speak to you." She smiled
slightly. "I am a lady, Mr. Brunswick."
He flushed. "I can see that, ma'am. The lobby, then?"
"No, it must be here . . . now . . . and quickly."
He stepped back, and when she had entered he closed the door. Taking his coat from
the back of a chair, he put it on. "Sorry, ma'am, for the cigar smoke. I wasn't expecting
a lady."
"Mr. Brunswick, you are a cattle buyer. My fiance, Mr. Tappan Duvarney, is right
down the street. He is bringing in a herd, and they will arrive very soon, I believe.
Jackson Huddy and Ev Munson are on the street too, and Tappan does not want trouble.
He wanted me to ask you to stay in your room and wait for him."
"Whose cattle are they?"
"He is in partnership with Tom Kittery, who is, I believe, holding another herd somewhere
south of here."
"All right, I'll wait." He took up his cigar, started to smoke, then rubbed it out.
"Ma'am . . . Miss Trescott, if I were you and I loved that man I'd get him out of
here-fast."
She smiled. "Mr. Brunswick, you would do no such a thing . . . not if you were me.
Tappan is a man, doing a man's work. It is the work he chose to do, and I would never
interfere. As for danger, I suspect there are many men in danger right now, in a
lot of ways. I might tell you something about Tappan, Mr. Brunswick.
"He is not a man I could persuade to leave here; and if I could, I wouldn't want
him. Nor is he a man to be intimidated. Major Tappan Duvarney," she said, lifting
her chin a little, "is a veteran soldier, sir. He has been in campaigns against the
Kiowas, the
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Apaches, the Sioux, the Cheyennes and the Modocs. Also, there was a western town,
Mr. Brunswick, with a very bad reputation, which was near Tappan's post, and he was
deputized to clean it up. He did so, Mr. Brunswick, in just three days. I believe
there were several altercations."
Brunswick smiled warmly. "Ma'am, whoever he is, he must be quite a man to deserve
you. I'll wait for him, right here." He opened the door. "And you know something?
I'm not going to worry about him-not a bit."
Jessica went back to her room and removed her hat. She sat down in the rocker, but
she could not remain still. Tappan was out there in the night . . . and he was in
danger.
She should, she decided, be frightened. Yet she was not. Always when traveling with
her father she had a feeling of being a bystander, of observing the courts in action,
of witnessing violence after the fact. She had always ihad more confidence than other
girls, always was more assured. Now, instead of being depressed by the impending
danger, she felt exhilarated. She was frightened, yes, and she was worried. Part
of her mind admitted this, but the other part was enjoying the sense of being part
of things.
She knew exactly why she had come to Texas. She had faced her father with it several
times in the weeks before she left. Tappan Duvarney was, she said, the only man she
had ever wanted to marry; but Tappan was fiercely proud, fiercely independent. It
would be just like him not to come back if things did not go well for him, and she
had no idea of taking that risk.
"I'm going after him, Father, I'm going to Texas," she had said.
Some fathers would have been furious, some would have refused to permit any such
thing. Hers was amused, and interested.
Judge Trescott had enjoyed the company of his daughter for longer than he had expected,
and he had watched her grow and develop in personality and character. She was much
like her mother, even more like himself, and she was somewhat like her grandmother
on his side. But most of all, she was somebody new; she was herself.
He had not done as much for her as he would have liked, but he had tried to offer
a guiding hand, and friendly advice. Youngsters invariably began by thinking their
parents were "old-fashioned," "out of date," or "back numbers," and they usually
ended by admitting how right the parents had been, in most cases.
Jessica had traveled with him, had taken care of him, scolded him, admired him, and
had been not only his daughter but his
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friend. But until Major Tappan Duvarney came along he had seen no one he thought
worthy of her. He had admitted none of this to her, merely watching from the sidelines.
He knew that a lot of the old ladies, both male and female, had deplored his taking
his growing daughter around the country with him, and had been shocked at his permitting
her to sit in the courtroom while he tried his cases. Many of these were civil cases,
but many were criminal, so that Jessica at nineteen had few illusions about the kind
of people there were in the world, and about the situations with which she might
be faced.
He had listened to her talk of Tappan Duvarney and he was pleased with his daughter.
He agreed that Tap was just the sort to remain away if he did not at first succeed.
"All right," he said, "if you love Tap, go get him." He smiled at her.
Then, just as she was packing he had come into her room carrying a pistol. It was
a Colt five-shot, .41 caliber House Pistol. "Put this in your things," he said, and
with it he gave her a small sack. "There are fifty rounds there. If you need more,"
he said with a smile, "you'd better get a bigger gun."
Her eyes met his. "Do you think I'll need that, Father?"
"I doubt it, but let's say it is insurance. Texas is a country where they respect
women, but I can't promise that you'll always find it so."
She went to her carpetbag now and removed the pistol, which was loaded. The barrel
was short; the pistol would fit into her handbag. Heavy, yes, but reassuring in its
weight.
The dining room was open until ten o'clock. In a few minutes she would go down, eat
a leisurely supper, and listen to what was happening. She tried to read . . . but
a part of her mind was alert to the outside sounds. She knew what she listened for,
what she expected and feared-pistol shots.
Tappan Duvarney stood at the opening between the buildings and surveyed the street.
Far down, he could see the tall, dark figure of a man. Other men were walking along
the street, and occasionally one disappeared into or emerged from a saloon. There
were lights along the street; a few horses were tied to the hitching rails, with
here and there a buckboard. At this hour no wagons were in sight.
Tap stepped out and walked down to the hotel and entered.
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The clerk looked up and Duvarney asked for Brunswick's room, and disappeared up the
steps. The clerk looked up after him, then glanced nervously at the door. He did
not know Tappan Duvarney by sight, but he had heard him described, and this stranger
looked like the description.
Tap knocked lightly on the door, and Brunswick opened it, glanced at him, and stepped
back. "Come in," he said. "You have cattle to sell? How many?"
"At a rough count, I'd say eight hundred and thirty head."
"What kind of shape are they in?"
"You've seen island cattle. This is a mixed lot, mostly big stuff, and they're in
good shape. I'd say about half of them are steers upwards of five years old."
Brunswick chewed his cigar. "Those cattle on the island are usually in good shape-lots
of feed, and they don't have to go far to water; but beef prices aren'tiat their
best now."
"I want a fast deal," Tap said quietly, "and I've heard you're a fair man."
Brunswick rolled his cigar in his lips. "I've got to ship to New Orleans. There'll
be some loss at sea." He took a good look at Tap, and said, "I'll give you twelve
dollars a head, right across the board."
"Twelve dollars? Brunswick, there's some steers in that lot who'll weigh fifteen
hundred pounds."
"Sure there are. And there's probably forty, fifty head in there won't weigh more
than a hundred pounds. That's mixed stuff."
"Make it sixteen?"
Bob Brunswick shrugged. "Fourteen; and I'll be lucky not to take a loss."
"All right, I'll go along. You make the check for eight hundred head. If there's
less, I'll make it up, and if there's more-and there is-you can have them."
Brunswick sat down at the table and wrote the check and handed it to Duvarney. "There
you are, Tap, and my regards to the little lady. She's got sand, that girl."
"Thanks." Duvarney hesitated. "Brunswick, you've been fair, so I'll give you a piece
of advice. Either get those cattle loaded and out to sea, or drive them inland-ten
miles inland."
Brunswick took the cigar from his mouth. "What are you telling me?"
"That's hurricane weather out there. I can smell it."
"All right." He paused. "Duvarney, your boys are moving those
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cattle. What do you say if you keep right on moving them? Start them toward Victoria,
and hold them somewhere along Placedo Creek."
Tap considered. He had hoped to get his men right out of town to avoid trouble, yet
he could scarcely leave Brunswick in the lurch, and finding cowhands at this hour
of the night, or even tomorrow, would be difficult. Yet this might be the very best
way ... or it might be the worst.
"I could hold them here," Brunswick said. "If I get them penned up they can't stampede."
"Have you ever seen a hurricane, Brunswick? I was a seaman in the West Indies and
along the Atlantic coast for several years. This storm started some place far south
of Cuba, maybe off the coast of Brazil, and she's been moving north. Those winds
will be blowing hard enough to flatten anything around here, but the whole storm
won't move more than fifteen miles an hour."
"That doesn't make sense."
"The winds blow in a big circle, ten or twenty miles across. I don't know that anybody
ever measured one, but I'd guess a couple I ran into were that big."
Tap paused. "I'd move them," he said again. "Somewhere back on the prairie, this
side of Victoria."
"They'd have to go right through town. Have you ever seen cattle go through a town?"
"They're tired. I think they'd handle easy. You want to try it?"
"Well . . . you've got my money. You made your deal. You've no reason to stay on
unless you want to."
"I've already agreed. You pay the boys what you think the job is worth." He pocketed
the check. "Let's go, then."
"You'd better see that little lady before you go. She's worried."
Tap opened the door and glanced up and down the hall, then he stepped out. Almost
at once, Jessica's door opened.
"Tap . . . oh, Tap!" He went to her, caught her hands.
"You shouldn't have come here," he said. "But now that you have come, you should
get out. There's going to be a storm."
"You go on. I'll be all right."
She listened while he explained about moving the cattle. "If the storm looks bad,
I'll come back for you, but don't wait here for me. If it starts to blow up, go to
the courthouse. It's on a knoll in the center of town, and the building is solid.
If anything in town comes through all right, the courthouse will."
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"Don't worry," she said. "I'll be all right."
He went down the stairs and walked across the lighted lobby. Stepping out onto the
walk, he came face to face with a tall, lean man.
It was Jackson Huddy.
A
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In western towns where the work begins at daybreak or earlier, supper is eaten early,
and most good citizens are in bed before ten o'clock. It is only along the main streets
where the saloons and the honky-tonks are that people drink and gamble far into the
night.
Indianola was in bed or preparing for it. The night was still and the air seemed
close; there was something in the atmosphere that made animals restless and men irritable.
There lay over the town and the flatlands beyond a breathless hush that seemed like
a warning.
The truth of the matter was that Indianola had not long to live. Here, within the
space of a few hours, a town was to be destroyed, a way of living wiped out. And
nobody was aware of it.
Down along the two piers that thrust their long fingers into the bay waters, the
masters of the few ships in port were nervously running out additional lines. The
swell breaking on Matagorda Island had already become so great that getting through
the channel would be a doubtful matter . . . nobody wanted to try it. And few seaports
anywhere seemed more sheltered than Indianola.
When Tappan Duvarney stepped out on the street and came face to face with Jackson
Huddy there was a moment when neither man moved nor spoke. Then Jackson Huddy said,
"You are driving Rafter K cattle."
"Some are Rafter K, some wear my own brand, but I am a businessman, Mr. Huddy, doing
business in cattle. I have no interest in the Munson-Kittery feud, as I have said
before this."
"How long before you'll be drawn in?" Huddy asked.
"That depends on the Munsons. If they move against me or my
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men, they must accept the consequences. If they do not move against us, they have
nothing to fear.":
"We do not fear, Major Duvarney."
"Do not disregard fear, Mr. Huddy. A little fear inspires caution. I have learned
there is a little fear and a little caution in every victory. And from what I have
heard of you, I had suspected you to be a cautious man."
"And what have you heard of me?" The small blue eyes were probing, curious, yet somehow
they were strangely empty.
"That you take no unnecessary chances; that to you victory is the result to be desired,
and the method is less important."
"You do not like that?"
Duvarney smiled. "Mr. Huddy, I cut my eyeteeth on the Apaches, the greatest guerilla
fighters the world has ever seen, and I have had some dealings with the Sioux and
the Cheyennes too. I found their methods very useful to me, and easily understood.
As in all things, Mr. Huddy, the number of possibilities of attack is limited. One
considers those that are manifestly impossible. They are eliminated, and the others
prepared for. We killed or captured a lot of Apaches."
"Is that a threat?"
Duvarney did not answer the question, but said, "Mr. Huddy, you have a certain reputation.
Why risk it against a man who is not your enemy?"
Deliberately, he walked past him and on down the street, moving easily, stepping
lightly, ready to throw himself to right or left if the need arose, and picking one
vantage point after another as he walked along. He had no idea that what he had said
would matter in the long run, for Jackson Huddy would move as the situation seemed
to dictate; yet he had to say what he could in an effort to prevent a gun battle
that could kill good men and serve no one.
Doc Belden had reached the rendezvous point. The cattle were still moving, however.
Tap rode out to swing alongside of him, riding point.
"I've sold the cattle," he said to Belden, "and we're going inland, away from the
storm. We're taking them right down the main street."
"You're taking a chance. If they stampede in town they could bust up a lot of stuff."
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"They're tired," Tap said. "Also, I think they're ready to turn away from the sea.
There's a storm coming."
He paused, then added, "Pass the word along. Every man is to ride with the thong
off his pistol. He must be ready to fight, if need be."
In the southeast the stars were gone, and the night sky showed a bulging, billowing
mass of cloud that seemed to heave itself higher and higher against the sky as the
moments passed. The cattle broke into a half-trot, settled back into a walk, and
then began to trot again. Belden and Tap swung the point into the street.
At the muffled thunder of hoofs, lights suddenly blazed and doors opened. A murmur,
then a growl ran along the street, but though the cattle were tired, they were intent
on moving, and they went silently, except for the beat of their hoofs in the dust,
and the rustle of their sides against one another. Here and there horns clacked against
each other; a cowboy, moving up on some recalcitrant steer, called "Ho!" They moved
steadily on, keeping to the street.
The people, watching, became silent. A few came out on the boardwalk to look at the
sky when there was a far-off rumble of thunder.
A gust of wind blew along the street, creaking signs, rattling shutters. A brief
spatter of rain fell, then subsided. The night was perfectly still.
The last of the cattle passed, and they vanished up the street.
Jessica, standing in the dark by her window watching the street below, breathed softly
in relief, scarcely believing it had been done. Then a door nearby opened and a tall
man came out on the street, and she saw that it was Jackson Huddy. He was followed
by another, a man with a slouching, lazily affected walk, who leaned against a post
by the boardwalk and stood there with thumbs behind his belt. Out of the night two
other men came up the street and joined them.
Her light was out, her curtain unmoving, but Jackson Huddy twice turned his head
to look up as if he felt the impact of her eyes. No matter what they planned, there
was nothing she could do now-she could only wait.
And then the wind came.
It began with a wall-shuddering blast, and a quick spatter of rain. Jessica opened
her window and pulled the shutters together and fastened them. She could hear others
doing the same, and
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through a crack in the shutters she could see men on the street in their nightshirts
or in hastily donned Levis putting up shutters, and in some cases nailing them down.
She had not undressed, and suddenly she decided she would not.
The old building creaked under the weight of the wind, and somewhere something slammed
against a building and fell heavily against the boardwalk-probably one of the street
signs. Looking through the cracks in the shutters, she could no longer see any lights,
and suddenly she realized it was because of fear of fire.
Outside, lightning now flashed almost continuously, lighting the sky weirdly. The
bulging clouds were lower than she had ever seen clouds before. She was frightened,
and she admitted that to herself. But she remained calm,'considering the situation.
Nothing can be done about a storm. One takes what precautions one can, and then waits.
Now Jessica lighted her lamp and placed it, turned low, on the floor, so that it
could not be knocked from the table. Propping her pillows against the base of the
bed, she got out a book of poetry and sat down to read, but after a minute she gave
up. The roar of the wind was now terrific.
Suddenly someone banged on her door and she went over to it, hesitating only a moment,
to be sure she had the gun. Holding it in the folds of her skirt, she opened the
door.
Mady Coppinger stood there, soaked to the skin, gasping for breath, and wild with
fear.
"Please! Let me come in!"
Jessica stepped back, and when Mady was inside, she closed the door and stood with
her back against it.
"Oh, I hope you'll forgive me, but I had no place else to go!" Mady's voice shook.
"It's awful out there-awful!"
"You must get out of those clothes," Jessica said practically. "I have some dry things
you can wear."
Mady sat down, trembling. Her shoes and ankles were muddy, and she herself was literally
drenched. Her hair had come undone and hung about her face and shoulders.
Jessica asked no questions, offered no comment. She gave Mady towels, and when it
did not appear that those she had would be adequate, she went across the hall to
an empty room and took the towels she found there.
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Slowly Mady began to calm down. "It's awful out there," she repeated, almost to herself.
"I've never seen anything like this."
"You'd better change. We may have to leave the hotel. Tappan said we should go to
the courthouse."
"It's on higher ground," Mady said. "Yes, I think we'd better."
She dressed hurriedly, but as she did so she was admiring the clothes she was putting
on.
Jessica listened to the wind. She went to the closet and took out her warmest coats,
a mackintosh and an ulster. The mackintosh was rain-proof, or close to it; the ulster
was heavier, and warm. She was trying to decide, even as she took down the coats,
what was the best thing to do. Tappan's advice was clear in her mind, but wouldn't
they say she was just a silly woman? And suppose the courthouse was closed?
It was raining now, if one could call it that: a tremendous sheet of water was smashing
down the narrow street, and she could feel the weight of it against the wall of the
building. Even as she put on the mackintosh and prepared to leave the room, one part
of her mind was wondering where Mady Coppinger had been and what she had been doing
on such a night. . . . And had her terror been only the terror of the storm?
They went down the stairs, feeling the straining of the building, and into the lobby.
They found themselves in a tight group of people. A few were whimpering in fear,
but most were silent, listening to the terrible sound outside, hearing the thunder
of the storm.
Jessica pushed her way through them and they gave way, staring at her blankly.
Near the door she saw the clerk standing with Mr. Brunswick and two other men, both
of whom were solid-seeming men, those who are among the leaders in any community.
"Mr. Brunswick?" He turned impatiently, then removed his hat. "Mr. Brunswick, can
you let us out?" Jessica said.
"In this? Ma'am, I wouldn't let anybody out in a storm like this. There's water almost
knee-deep in the streets right now."
"Tappan . . . Major Duvarney . . . advised me to take shelter in the courthouse if
the storm got worse. I believe we should go while we can."
"What's Duvarney know about storms?" The speaker was an austere-looking man with
a permanently disagreeable expression.
"Major Duvarney was a seafaring man before he went into the
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army," Jessica replied stiffly. "He was an officer on ships in the West Indian trade.
He knows the sea, and he knows hurricanes."
Worriedly, the gray-haired man beside Brunswick asked, "Did he think this was going
to be a hurricane?"
"He told me there had been great swells breaking on Matagorda Island for several
days, and such swells come only from a great storm at sea." While she answered him
her eyes looked at the street.
Through the front windows, where some of the shutters had been blown away, she could
see outside. The water was surging out there, and it was deep. Signs were down, and
there was a scattering of debris lying across the walks. Even as she looked, some
flying shingles whipped past the window.
"I've never seen it this bad," Mady said.
The thirty or more people gathered in the lobby were staring at the storm. Only a
few of them were dreissed for what must lie ahead.
"All right," Brunswick said, "we'll try it. We'll have to stay close to the buildings
where we can, and hang onto each other."
Suddenly there was a tremendous blast of wind that ripped the few remaining signs
from the buildings along the street, and sailed them before it. At the same moment
a great rush of water tore by, ripping up a part of the boardwalk and filling the
street with a deeper rushing torrent.
Now all lights were out. The town stood in darkness, all sound drowned out by the
whistling roar of the hurricane. Somewhere a sound did break through, a sound of
splintering wood; and then the wall of a building hurtled past. The corner hit the
door of the hotel and smashed a panel before the force of the water tore it free
and sent it on.
"We'll never make it now," the gray-haired man said solemnly.
"We can make it, Grain," Brunswick replied. "Let's wait until this spell is over."
"If it ever is," Mady said.
Jessica was silent, thinking about Tappan. He was out there somewhere in that roaring
world of wind and water. He was out there moving cattle in all this ... or he was
dead.
It was ten o'clock at night when the storm first came to Indianola, and by the time
the full force of the wind was beginning to smash the town Tap Duvarney had his cattle
several miles west of the town and was driving them hard.
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To the east, out over the Gulf, lightning flashed intermittently, showing great masses
of wind-torn clouds.
From out of the night, violence and the storm, and the vast thunder that rolled on
and on, each enormous crash followed by another. From out of the night a moving wall
of slashing rain, a wall of steel. The roof of clouds seemed only a few feet above
the heads of the frightened cattle and the straining riders.
Tap Duvarney had turned to look back, and was appalled. He could see the storm coming
upon them. At the bottom it was a ragged cloud and the steel mesh of the rain; above,
the massed black clouds were laced with lightning.
"Look, Doc," he said. "Look at that and you can tell them you've seen hell with the
doors open."
Belden's face was pale. "What do we do?" he asked.
"Try to hold them in a bunch. That's all we can do. It can't last forever."
Lawton Bean pulled up alongside them, his face strangely yellowish in the odd light.
"I wonder what's happening back there in town," he said. "One time when I was a kid
I lived on Matagorda. I seen the sea break clean over the island. Dad and me, we
made a run for it."
"You made it, looks like," Belden said.
"I did ... pa didn't."
Hunched in their slickers, they watched the backs of the cattle as seen in the flashes
of lightning. The rain hammered on the animals until they were almost numb from the
beating.
"We've got to get shelter," Tap called out. "Keep your eyes out for a good bank that
will keep us out of the wind!"
They had been moving steadily with the cattle at a trot a good part of the time.
Tap thought for a moment of Lavaca Bay, which lay somewhere to the east . . . but
that would be too close to the path of the storm. He yelled at Belden and Bean, then
started along the flank of the herd. At the point, with steady pressure, yells, and
lashes with coiled lariats, they edged the herd to the west.
The cattle needed no urging, seeming to realize that the storm was behind them, and
that safety, if there was any, would lie somewhere in the darkness ahead.
Slowly, the riders bunched. Welt Spicer came around the drag to join them, followed
by Jule Simms.
"You seen Lon Porter?" Simms asked.
"Lon? He's over with Foster," Belden replied. "Or should be."
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"Well, he ain't. He come up to me just as we were headin' into town. Had a message
for the Major."
"I didn't see him." Tap Duvarney edged over toward Simms. "Did he say what he wanted?"
"He was huntin' you. Seems they had no trouble with the cattle . . . most of them
were already moving off the peninsula . . . just like they knew this storm was headin'
in. Lon told us that, then took off for town, a-huntin' you."
They were bunched now in the doubtful lee of a cluster of cottonwoods, and for a
moment there seemed a lull in the storm.
"The feelin' I got," Simms said, "was there'd been trouble below . . . some shootin',
more'n likely."
Why hadn't Lon Porter found him, Tap wondered. He had been in the hotel or on the
street much of the time, and it would not have been difficult to locate him.
They rode on after the cattle, closing in around them, keeping them bunched, until
in the gray light of a rain-lashed dawn they circled them at last on a small piece
of prairie shielded by brush, mostly curly mesquite and tall-growing clusters of
prickly pear. Here and there were a few small clumps of stunted post oak or hickory.
The exhausted cattle seemed to have no desire to go further, and they scattered out,
some seeking shelter in the brush, but most of them simply dropping in their tracks.
A few tried aimless bites at the coarse bunch grass, ignoring the sheets of rain
and the wind. One clump of the mesquite and post oak had made a cove of shelter against
the wind, and the riders rode in and dismounted.
Under the thickest of the brush they found a few leaves that were still dry, and
they gathered some dead mesquite. After a brief struggle they had a fire going, half
protected by a ground sheet stretched above it.
Jule Simms came up with a coffeepot, and soon there was water boiling. Lawton Bean,
a limp cigarette trailing from his lips, hunched close to the small fire, nursing
it with sticks. It gave off only a little heat, but it was comforting to see. The
riders sat about, hunched in their slickers, staring dismally into the fire.
"How far did we come?" one of the men asked.
"Maybe twenty miles," Belden said. "We've been moving seven or eight hours, and faster
than any trail herd ought to travel under ordinary conditions."
Tap got up and rustled around in the brush, where he found an old mesquite stump
that he worried from the muddy ground, then
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some dead mesquite branches and a fallen oak limb. He brought them back to the fire
and started breaking them up.
"Lon was a good man," Lawton Bean said suddenly. "He was a mighty good man. I crossed
the Rio Grande with him a couple of times, chasin' cow thieves."
"You think he's dead?" Tap asked.
"Well . . . look at it. You surely weren't hard to find in that piddlin' town, but
he never showed up. He didn't have much of a ride to where you were, and he was hale
an' hearty when he left us. I figure somebody killed him."
"If anybody killed Lon," Simms said quietly, "he's got me to answer to."
Lon might simply have got tired of the rain and taken shelter in a saloon. Yet he
had a message so important he had ridden some miles to deliver it. To give up was
not like Porter, and he was too recently from the army not to pay attention to duty.
"What do we do now?" Doc asked.
"You hole up and wait out the storm," Tap answered. "It's no use trying to push on
in this. We've come to higher ground-"
"Not much higher," Bean interrupted.
"Probably thirty or forty feet higher," Tap said, "and we've come inland a good piece.
We'll hold them here and keep a sharp lookout for Munsons. We're not out of the woods
yet."
"You think they killed Lon?"
"Who knows? I agree that he could have found me easily enough. The way I see it,
he would ride to the stockyards, and if he didn't find me there he'd come on up the
street. I'm going to look around the yards for him first."
They stared at him then. "You goin' back?" Spicer said. "You're foolin'!"
"Lon was riding for me. I want to find him, or find out what happened to him. I want
no part of this Munson feud, but if they've killed a man of mine, that's something
I'll take care of."
"I'll go along with that." Doc Belden got up. "All right, if you're going, let's
go."
"I'll go alone."
"Now, that's foolhardy," Spicer said. "If anybody goes it should be me. I know them
boys, every last one of them."
Tap did not move, but stared at the fire, considering the situation. "If Lon came
running for me in this weather," he said after a moment, "there was trouble, real
trouble. So you better keep a sharp lookout."
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"You think the Munsons would move with it blowing like this?"
"Most of them wouldn't. They'd be more likely to sit it out in comfort, but that
isn't Jackson Huddy's way. It would be like him to use this storm to end the feud
once and for all. You see, because of the drive he's got all the Kittery outfit bunched
up where he wants them."
Still Tap lingered. He was no more anxious than any other man to leave even the small
comfort of that fire for the storm outside. He looked around at the campsite. It
was almost surrounded by the wall of mesquite, prickly pear, and post oak, but on
one side it opened on the small parklike area where the cattle slept. Seeking shelter
from the storm, they had also found a position that could be defended if necessary.
It was a dawn of rain and dark clouds, so low they seemed scarcely higher than the
brush, and above all was the sound of the roaring wind. There was no question of
escaping the rain; one could only hope to avoid the worst of it. The wind drove through
the brush, bending the stiff branches, bending even the stunted trees until it seemed
they must break or be uprooted.
They huddled together a minute or two longer. "You watch yourself, Major," Belden
said quietly. "This here is one helluva storm. I never saw its like."
Tap wiped the water from the horse's back, then saddled it once more. Welt Spicer
came up, a small bit of rawhide tied over the muzzle of his rifle.
There was a minute or two when the horses fought against facing the wind; then reluctantly
they started, bending their heads low, pushing against it, moving forward with straining
muscles.
92
 ELEVEN
Dawn came to Indianola with a weird yellow light, revealing the gray faces of the
rain-hammered buildings, the dark, swirling water, ugly with foam and debris, rushing
through the street. A lone steer, moss trailing from one great horn, came plunging
and swimming along, a straggler from the herd, following blindly.
Somewhere up the street there was a crash as a wall gave way . . . more wreckage
went by.
Jessica had risen from her seat in the old leather arm chair. "Mr. Brunswick," she
said, "we've got to chance it. I think everything is going to go."
Reluctantly, he agreed. "All right." He looked around at the stunned, frightened
people in the room. "We've got to get what blankets we can, and whatever food there
is. There's no telling how long we'll be caught there."
"Major Duvarney will return," Jessica said. "He knows I am here."
"If he can," Brunswick responded grimly.
"Oh, no!" The words came from Mady in a low, tortured cry. Jessica looked out at
the water. Something else was swirling there, hanging for a moment against the smashed
boards of the walk. It was a body, the body of a man, and it needed only a glimpse
to see that no flood waters had killed this man. He had been shot. . . shot in the
back of the head, and one side of his head was blown away.
For an instant nobody moved, then Brunswick and Grain lunged for the door, catching
the body before it could be washed away, and getting it onto the solid part of the
walk. Huddled over the body, they searched it for clues, and then stumbled back inside,
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Brunswick holding a small handful of money, some water-soaked papers, and a gun belt.
"His family might need this money," Brunswick said. He straightened the papers. One
was an envelope addressed to Lon Porter, in care of a hotel at Brownsville, Texas.
"Don't know him," he muttered.
"That man was murdered," Grain said sternly. "He was shot in the back of the head,
at close range."
"There's twenty-six dollars here," Brunswick said. "Ma'am, will you see that this
gets to whoever should have it? This letter here-I think you can make it out . .
. that might help some."
"Yes." She took the money and the letter. She was thinking that this might be one
of the men Tappan had hired. Brownsville . . . Fort Brown . . . yes, she was sure
of it.
Something else occurred to her.
Mady . . . Mady had come to Her room drenched to the skin and frightened, and there
had been mud on her shoes. That was easy enough to get, even by crossing the street,
but it had looked like the dirt from a stable or a corral. And Mady's sudden exclamation
just now . . . was it only at seeing a man's dead body? Or was it because it was
this particular man?
Jessica turned to look, but Mady had withdrawn and was working her way toward the
back of the group, as if to avoid the accusing face of the dead man.
Jessica suddenly remembered their critical situation. "Mr. Brunswick," she said,
"we've got to go. We've got to move right away."
Grain suddenly spoke up. "My God! We have prisoners locked in the jail!"
"Bill Taylor's in there," somebody said.
Just then two riders turned into the street, their horses almost belly-deep in the
rolling water. Both men were bundled in slickers, and both had their hats tied under
their chins, but she recognized Tappan at once.
She stepped to the door and Brunswick tried to restrain her. "Wait! We'll join hands!
We can make a human chain, and the first ones who get to the courthouse can help
the others."
"We'll have help," Jessica said. "There's Tappan Duvarney."
He rode up, facing his horse into the current. He saw her, started to speak, and
then he saw the body of Lon Porter.
Instantly he swung to the hotel porch, which tilted badly under his weight, water
sloshing over it. He bent over the body, turning
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the injured head gently with his fingers. Then he looked up. "Did anybody see this
happen? Who shot him?"
Nobody answered, but involuntarily Jessica looked at Mady, whose face was taut and
pale. Mady's stare was defiant, but she said nothing.
"His body floated down here," Brunswick said. "He must have been shot somewhere east
of town."
"He was looking for me," Duvarney responded. "Somebody did not want him to see me,
or else killed him because he was herding Rafter K cattle."
"We were going to make a try for the courthouse," Grain said. "I've got to go to
the jail. If you could-"
Tap stepped back into the saddle and took down his rope. He shook it out. "Grab hold,"
he said, "and hang on."
People rushed to catch the rope, but Welt Spicer was doing the same thing. Just then
four riders turned into the upper end of the street.
"Look out, Major!" Spicer spoke quickly in a low tone. "Those are Munsons."
"Let's go!" Duvarney shouted to the crowd. "Let's go and keep moving!"
Grain, also mounted, was riding toward the jail. Tap caught a glimpse of him, and
then could pay no more attention, for he needed every bit of his awareness. His horse
started well, but the footing was bad; once the horse slipped, going almost to his
knees, and it was only Tap's strength on the reins that pulled him up.
Half the people clinging to the rope were elderly. The wisest ones had managed to
take a turn of the rope around their arms, for even if it was pulled taut and caused
pain, it would at least hold them.
Only two persons were still at the hotel when Tap looked back. One was Bob Brunswick,
and the other was Jessica. He almost pulled up when he saw her there, but she waved
him on, and he lifted a hand and then spoke to his horse. "Steady, boy," he said.
"Steady now."
A barn door went swinging by, narrowly missing the horse's legs. Tap squinted his
eyes against the rain and stared ahead. At the corner, where two currents met, there
was a swirling whirlpool. Somewhere along here the street was lower than further
back . . . but where?
The four riders were coming nearer. He reached back and
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under the guise of straightening the rope, slid the thong from his pistol butt.
He felt the drive of the rain, and knew the sea was rising, rising with the wind.
He looked back along the black swirling river of the street, and saw the collapsed
buildings, the gutted stores, all torn and spoiled by sea and wind. His hat brim
flapped against his brow; the wind tugged at the drawstring that held his hat in
place, and flapped his slicker against the flanks of the horse.
"Steady, boy. Take it easy now."
The rocks that had washed from the makeshift foundations were slippery, mud coated,
and mud was deep in the street. He held to the side of the street for doubtful shelter
from the wind. Always his eyes looked ahead, watching the wreckage as it hit the
whirlpool at the corner, studying the currents, to move with them when crossing.
Actually, he was only supposed to fee guiding the people, giving them something to
cling to, but in effect he was hauling them along through the water, for many were
too weak to do more than struggle feebly. Water had soaked their heaving clothing
and weighted them down.
A cry rang out behind him . . . somebody was down. He drew up, giving his horse a
chance to breathe. A woman had lost hold of her valise and her cry was one of anguish.
No doubt the valise contained those keepsakes that a woman holds of most value, and
she let go her hold on the rope and grasped frantically for it.
Instantly the swirling waters swept her from her feet. She struggled, came partly
erect once more, then was knocked down by a piece of wreckage.
A tall, fine-looking man, roughly dressed and unshaved, broke from his shelter near
the side of a house and caught her sleeve, helping her up. Looking past her, he saw
the valise had brought up against a step, and he struggled across the street, almost
breast high in the center, retrieved the valise, and brought it back. With one arm
around the white-haired woman, he helped her on toward the courthouse, holding the
handle of the valise in the other hand.
"That's Bill Taylor," somebody said. "Grain must have let them out of jail."
Duvarney headed his horse for the courthouse steps. Turning in the saddle, he glanced
at the Munson riders. Two of them he knew, the two on the wharf at Indianola on that
first day. They were looking at him, and the grin on their faces was not pleasant.
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"Go ahead, Majuh," one of them said. "You get free of what you're doin'. We can wait."
Four of them . . . and there was just Welt Spicer and himself.
It was to be a fight this time, storm or no storm. Duvarney watched them sitting
there in their saddles, water washing their stirrups, making no effort to help. Taylor
had been a feudist, too, imprisoned for the killing of Sutton and Slaughter on a
steamboat alongside the dock in Indianola; but Taylor was a gentleman and a Texan.
The Munson crowd were a rabble; few of them now were even of the family, most were
just a gang gathered together, fighting for whatever they could win.
"Better get inside," Duvarney said to a man who stopped at his stirrup to thank him.
"I've got to go back after Brunswick and that girl."
"She gave up her place," the man said. "She stepped aside."
"She would," Duvarney said; "she's got the backbone to do it." And to follow him
here, to leave a comfortable and beautiful home . . . she had come here to this and,
knowing her, he knew that she would have no regrets.
He turned his horse as Welt closed in beside him. "Well, here it is, Major. We've
got our fight, whether we want it or not."
"If they killed Lon Porter," Tap said, "I want it."
He swung his horse and rode toward them. Out of the corner of his eye he could see
Jessica standing with Brunswick on the end of the boardwalk. He wanted to go to them,
but if he did he would expose himself to the fire from the Munsons . . . and he knew
they would wait no longer.
He rode right at them, his horse buck-jumping through the water. Welt had kept a
little behind and on the right, working toward their flank, and they didn't like
it.
"Which of you killed Lon Porter?" Tap spoke mildly.
"That gent over back of the corral who was huntin' you?" one of them asked. It was
one of the men from the wharf who spoke. "I missed out on that. Didn't git there
soon enough. Know what he was fixin' to tell you? We hit of' Tom Kitt'ry t'other
day an' knocked him for a loop . . . scattered his cows, shot up all those folks
he had with him. Of' Tom's either dead or hidin' in a swamp somewheres. Maybe he's
drowned by now."
"We come after you," the other one said. "We heard tell of' Jackson had staked you
out for hisself, but that ain't fair. We figured to owe you somethin' for that mix-up
down to the dock."
"Now, look, boys." Tap's voice was still mild.
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He went for his gun.
Both Munsons had been holding guns under their slickers, drawn and ready, but they
were talkers, and they wanted to tell him what they had done, and what they planned
to do.
Duvarney's gun came up fast, the hammer coming back as the gun barrel swung up; then
the hammer dropped and he was thumbing it in a steady roll of sound. The tallest
Munson grabbed his stomach, swinging his pistol to bring it to bear, but the gun
would not fire. Evidently Tap's bullet had hit the hammer or the trigger of the gun
as Munson held it across his stomach under the slicker, and the gun was jammed.
The bullet had glanced upward, inflicting a wound . . . Tap could see the blood,
bright crimson before the rain hit it, even as he fired his second and third shots.
His second shot caught Munson in the chest; the third was directed at the second
Munson. He heaild guns hammering, knew Spicer and the others were fighting. He saw
the tallest Munson drop, heard the
whiff
of a bullet by his face, and saw the second weaving in his saddle. Even as he shot,
he saw that these men were not fighters, they were killers, an altogether different
thing. It is one thing to shoot a man from ambush, or when outnumbering the enemy;
it is quite another thing to stand up face to face with a man who also holds a gun,
and will shoot.
Tap turned toward Spicer, but Welt had been smarter than he, for Welt had stayed
off some thirty yards and used his Winchester. In the driving rain, at thirty yards
he was not a good target for hasty six-gun shooting. He had shot his first man, cold-turkey,
and had his Winchester .44-40 on the other when the man threw down his gun and lifted
his hands.
"You all right, Welt?" Tap asked.
"Sure. You?"
"Hold that man, Welt. I want to talk to him." He walked his horse slowly through
the water, keeping to the side where it was not more than stirrup-deep, and rode
to where Jessica stood. Her face was very pale, her eyes unnaturally large.
"You came to a rough country, Jessica," he said.
She looked up at him, holding up her skirt in one hand. "My man was here," she said
simply.
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He bent over, offering his hand, and, gathering her skirt a little more, she stepped
a toe into his stirrup, and he seated her before him.
"Tappan . . . those men . . . the ones you shot? Did you kill them?"
"They fell into four feet of water, Jessica, and I am not wasting time looking for
them. When I got off the ship, two of them were on the dock and picked a fight with
me simply because I was a well-dressed stranger. Now they've brought me into a feud
I wanted no part of. What happened to them ceases to be my concern."
They had reached the steps of the courthouse, and he let her down gently, water swirling
only inches from the step. "Better stay inside," he said. "I think we haven't seen
the worst of it."
"Where are you going?"
He smiled at her. "First, I'm going to get Brunswick over here. Then Welt Spicer
and me will ride back to our cattle. Will you be all right?"
"Of course, Tappan. Don't worry your head about me."
He bent over and kissed her lightly. "I'll be back," he said.
Welt Spicer took the lead. The rain had eased a little, and there seemed to be a
lessening of the wind. Duvarney was sure what they had seen was only an outer edge
of the storm, and the worst was yet to come. This was not the eye of the storm, but
one of those curious gaps in the wind, an island of calm in the midst of fury ...
or relative calm, for rain still fell, and the wind still blew. He also knew there
was little time to do what must be done.
There was no better place to stay than the courthouse. It was a
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strongly built structure on higher ground, and so was above the rising water, and
it seemed able to withstand the wind.
Welt dropped back beside him. "Major, you'd better start considering Jackson Huddy.
You'll have him to contend with."
"I know."
He had been thinking a lot about Huddy, and knew what he must do, if he could. He
must find Huddy and force him into a fight. If given time, the man would surely plan
an ambush and kill him in his own time, on his chosen ground. The only way to fight
such a man was in the way he did not want to be fought-in the open and man to man.
To do that, he must stay on Huddy's trail, find him, and either push the fight, or
stay with him until Huddy had no choice.
It was easy enough to consider such a plan, but it was something else to bring it
to a conclusion. It was like serving a bear steak. First you had to catch a bear)
"Hey!" Welt exclaimed. "Look over there!"
On a low ridge off to their left was a dark mass of cattle and horses. At least twenty
acres of the long ridge and its flanks were above water, and they could see several
riders around a fire.
Duvarney turned his mount toward them. "If they're friendly, maybe we can get some
fresh horses."
They could see that there were three men and a spindling boy of fourteen or so. One
of the men stood up, waiting for them.
"Hell of a storm," Duvarney said, "and there's more on the way."
"You think so? We'd about come to the notion it was over."
"Don't you believe it. Hold your stock right here. You'll see all hell break loose
within the next few hours. Worse than it has been."
"Light and set," the man suggested. "You boys look played out."
They swung down and edged up to the fire, where a cowhand with a square, tough face
gestured at the pot. "Help yourself," he said. "It's hot and black."
It was, hotter and blacker than the sins of the devil himself. But it tasted right.
Duvarney glanced over at the man who had spoken first, the oldest of the lot. "You
want to sell some horses? Or swap? We're going to need some horses that can stand
the gaff."
"You runnin' from something?" The old man eyed them sternly.
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"RunnirT at it," Spicer said. "There's been some shootin', and there's like to be
more."
"You ain't Taylors?"
"No, but we saw Bill Taylor in town. They freed him from jail, and he risked his
neck helpin' womenfolks to the courthouse." Spicer looked at them over the brim of
his cup. "I'm thinkin' you've seen the last of Indianola."
They stared at him. "Half of it's floatin' in the street now," Spicer went on.
The boy was interested. "You said there'd been shootin'?"
"This here's Major Tappan Duvarney," Spicer said; "he's partnered with Tom Kittery.
We were taking no part in the feud, but they murdered one of our boys, and when we
were helping womenfolks to get to the courthouse they came up on us. Four of 'em."
"Four?" The short puncher looked doubtful.
"The Major here, he taken two of the Munsons, shot 'em right out of the saddle. I
taken one of them with my Winchester, and the other was of no mind to fight."
Welt turned suddenly. "Major, we done forgot all about him. He must've slipped off."
Spicer swore. "Major, that was my fault. I was s'posed to watch him."
"Forget it. I don't know what we'd have done with him anyhow."
"You can have the horses," the stockman said. "You want two?"
"Six," Tap said, "if you can spare them."
Over coffee and corn pone with sow belly they worked out a deal. Welt Spicer roamed
restlessly, his eyes on the country around. Much of it was above water, but was a
sea of mud. Water swirled in all the low places, dark brown under the somber sky.
When the bargain had been made, and Tap had paid the money, the rancher filled his
cup again. "Major," he said, "ain't you the man who is driving north with a trail
herd?"
Duvarney explained about the herd he had sold, and where it was, then added that
Kittery's cattle had been scattered by the Munsons ... or so he had heard.
"My name is Webster, Major, and I'm holding about two hundred head here, and I've
got about thirty head of saddle stock. How about me throwing in with you for that
drive?"
Tap considered. Undoubtedly, if the Munsons had told the truth, his herd was scattered,
yet some might still be together, and despite the conditions he was in no mood to
quit. The check he had in his pocket represented a part of his investment, but only
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a part. If he could round up some of the cattle-and those alive would surely be bunched
on high ground and easy to find-he could start a drive anyway.
"Fine!" he said. "I'll tell you what, Webster. When the water is down enough to move,
you start for Victoria. Camp on the first big bend of the Guadalupe above the town,
or as near there as practical, and we'll join you there. I've an idea I'll be driving
Brunswick's cattle too."
The day was nearly gone when they moved out again, holding to high ground and scouting
for cattle. Here and there they found a few Rafter K steers, and several bearing
Duvarney's own brand. Moving them on, he was driving about thirty head of steers
when he drew rein about a mile from camp. Against the dark clouds he could see a
thread of pale smoke mounting . . . the camp was there.
Welt rode up beside him and begafn to build a smoke. The hills were dark with evening,
the low-hanging clouds turning all the shadowed hills and hollows into black and
gray. The cattle were concealed in the brush and so could not be seen; the brush
itself was all a uniform blackness.
"You know, Welt, take a man like Jackson Huddy, now. He'd be apt to scout around
hunting us out. He could find that herd now, couldn't he?"
"I reckon so."
"And being the kind of man he is, what would he be likely to do? Figuring you were
him, with his make-up, what would you do?"
Welt Spicer's cigarette glowed in the dark. After a moment, he answered. "Why, I'd
locate the cattle and leave them be. In this sort of weather, they ain't goin' no
place I couldn't find 'em. So I'd move out somewhere and hole up and wait for you.
After all, you're one of the men I'd want to kill."
"That's what I was thinking," Duvarney said. He studied the terrain ahead of them.
"Being that kind of man, where would you lie up to wait?"
In the light that remained, they studied the layout of the country around. The low
ground between the ridges and knolls was flooded, the small lakes like sheets of
polished steel in the gray light. Trees and brush merged together into the darkness
of the land.
The camp could be anywhere out there-not in the flooded lowlands, but on the slopes.
Suddenly he made up his mind.
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"We aren't going in, Welt. We'll bed down and wait right here."
"It ain't far," Welt said. "I had my mind set on hot coffee and a meal."
"I picked up some grub from Webster back there," Tap said. "We'll stay here. My theory
is, never walk into an opponent when he's set. It's better to circle around and get
him out of position. In this case he can come to us if he wants to."
The place they found was ideal. It was on an open slope under a brow of sand. Sixty
feet out from the bank they built their fire. The sand ridge had been scoured by
wind until the overhang seemed ready to collapse at any moment, but the site they
chose was just beyond the limits of where the sand would come if it did fall. Certainly
nobody could approach the edge of that bluff without sending the sand, and himself,
tumbling down the bank, and that insured them of safety from behind.
Before them the slope fell away, covered with sparse grass for the hungry horses
and cattle. Most of the night they would be moving about on the slope between the
fire and any approach from below, effectively blocking any attack from that side.
The fire they built was small, and was partly shielded by a mound of wet sand they
built up for the purpose. There they made coffee and fried bacon. They had little
enough, but they were hungry, and when they had eaten the bacon they wiped up the
grease with chunks of bread that Webster had given them.
"You sleep, Spicer," Duvarney advised. "I'll call you after a bit."
Welt hesitated. Tap had seen that Spicer was half dead from fatigue, so he blocked
any protest by adding, "I'm not tired yet, Spicer, and I've got to do some thinking.
You get some sleep."
When Spicer was asleep, Tap added a few sticks to the fire and moved back from it
to a spot partly sheltered by a hummock of sand and brush. The truth of the matter
was he was half dead from weariness himself, but he did have thinking to do.
His plans had been shot to pieces by feud and storm. If he hoped to save anything
from the wreckage, he must have another plan. Brunswick could no longer make a shipping
from Indianola, and the chances were that all the Gulf ports had suffered. The thing
to do, he knew, was to make a drive to Kansas, as originally planned.
The only way he could do that, even with Brunswick's help, was to strike south quickly,
round up all the cattle he could find that
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wore his brand or that of Kittery, and then start north at once. This country would
be weeks if not months recovering from the disaster, and if he moved swiftly he might
even get away before any more serious fighting developed.
But, whether he liked it or not, he had to get Jackson Huddy before the killer got
him. For one thing was certain: Huddy would try. Duvarney was no longer an outsider,
for now he had killed Munsons.
He carefully considered every move, and then when the skies were thickening again,
he shook Spicer awake.
"Can you spell me? I've about had it," he said.
Welt Spicer rolled out and slipped on his slicker. He took his rifle and slung it,
muzzle down, from his shoulder. Duvarney rolled into a half-wet blanket under a tarp,
and was almost instantly asleep.
Awakening suddenly, feeling the tapj-tap of rain-fingers on the tarp, he lifted the
edge ever so little, inhaling deeply of the fresh, rain-cooled air, and listening.
He could hear the hiss and crackle of the small fire, but unless he moved he could
see only the light cast by the flames, not the fire itself. He felt a curious reluctance
to move, as if some subconscious warning had come to him in his sleep, awakening
him.
He slid his pistol from its holster under the tarp and hooked his thumb over the
hammer, easing the gun up, chest-high and ready for firing.
His ears captured no sound, his eyes could see nothing but the firelight. The wind,
which had almost died away, suddenly guttered the fire, and rustled among the leaves
of the brush. Ever so slightly, he tilted back his head and opened the tarp a little
more. A cold drop of rain fell from the edge to his arm and trickled from his wrist
toward his elbow.
Welt Spicer was seated at the fire, just far enough back to be out of its light,
and his head was hanging down. Even as Duvarney saw him, Spicer's head came up. He
shook it, trying to clear it of sleep, and stared all around him, holding his eyes
unnaturally wide as a man does in trying to ward off sleep. He eased his position,
and soon his head lowered again.
At that moment, and for no apparent reason, Duvarney glanced up toward the rim of
sand that hung above their camp. His bed was made so that his feet pointed toward
the bluff, and now, as he looked, he saw something round and white rising above the
rim. A gleam of light appeared and vanished ... a rifle barrel?
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The spot of white lifted, and now he could make it out better. There was just enough
light from the fire to reflect from the face of the man who was some yards off on
the rim of sand.
For a man was there, rising up to his knees to aim his rifle into the camp. But his
position was not quite what he wanted, and he hitched one knee forward. The movement
was his undoing.
He was already on the very lip of the sand, and the move put his knee down on the
overhang. Instantly the sand gave way and the man came tumbling down, accompanied
by a great mass of sand. He hit bottom floundering, and as he struggled to his feet,
Duvarney lifted himself on one elbow and shot him.
The fall of sand made only a heavy whush in the night, but the shot startled the
animals to their feet and brought Welt Spicer up standing.
"Watch yourself, Welt. There may be more of them."
Where Welt had stood, there was emptiness, then his quiet voice came. "Sorry, Major,
I must have fallen asleep."
"You were dozing. It's all right, I was awake."
"Who was it?"
Duvarney pointed. "He was drawing a bead on you from the rim, but he changed position
a mite, and it toppled with him. I took his action as unfriendly, so I put the brand
on him."
Duvarney remained where he was, but after a moment he ejected the empty shell from
his gun and reloaded.
"I figure this man was scouting and saw his chance. Now, they heard that shot but
they don't know whose it was-he might have shot one of us, or we might have shot
him."
"They'll think he got one of us," Welt said. "They might not even know there was
two of us here." Welt was close by now, only a few feet from Duvarney. "They'll be
expectin' him back, you know."
Tap considered that. It would give a man a chance to walk right up on their camp.
He could work near to it in the darkness, then just stand up and walk in. If he came
right up to their fire they would be sure it was their own man, returning from whatever
he had set out to do.
"I'm going down there," Tap said, "and see if Huddy is around."
"You want comp'ny?"
"They'll be expecting one man. You sit tight . . . and take care."
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Duvarney took his rifle and went down the slope. When he found their fire he saw
that there were five men seated by it, or lying around, talking. They seemed unworried
about the possibilities of attack, which meant they had hit Tom Kittery hard.
He went on down, making no pretence of being quiet. At the edge of the fire he saw
seven saddled horses.
They looked up as he came near, and one man started to speak; then he saw Duvarney.
"Sit tight, boys," Duvarney said. "I don't want to kill anybody unless I have to."
One of them was the man who had escaped from them in Indianola. "Do what he says,"
this man said. "This is Duvarney . . . the one I was tellin' you about."
Suddenly Tap's mind registered the significant fact that there were five men here.
He had killed one up at his camp, and yet there were seven saddled horses . . .
where was the other man?
"Where's Jackson Huddy?" he askejd.
One of the men grinned. "Don't try to find him. He'll find you.'
"I hear he's something of a man hunter," Tap responded, "but as near as I can find
out he never met anybody in a fair, standup shooting match. Anybody can run up a
score hiding out in the brush."
It was a deliberate taunt. He wanted Jackson Huddy to hear it. He wanted to anger
him, to jar him out of his usual pattern. He wanted that slow, meticulous, careful
man to be jolted into acting quickly.
"Man, you're askin' for trouble!"
"I shouldn't really ask, I expect," Duvarney said carelessly. "From all I hear, he's
so used to crawling on his belly in the grass that he wouldn't know how to stand
up and fight."
"Jackson Huddy never went after a man yet that he didn't get," one of the men said.
"You'll be the next, mister."
"Well, you just tell him I was around. And don't forget the name. I wouldn't want
him to miss seeing me. . . . And you tell him that if he doesn't want to meet me
face to face I'll do a little stalking myself."
He backed off into the darkness, still holding the rifle easy in his hands.
Returning to his own fire, he told Spicer briefly what he had done, and doused water
over the coals.
"I want to get him out of the brush if I can, but I'm not going to
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wait. I'm going after him . . . now. He'll be over there somewhere near our camp,
but let's scatter those other boys, anyway."
They rounded up the small bunch of cattle they had. He let out a whoop and fired
his pistol. It needed only that to start them running, and he headed them toward
his other camp, right across the slope where the Munson fire was.
They heard the cattle coming, and in the dim light Duvarney saw them scattering,
horses and men. Only one shot was fired, and then the cattle went storming through
the camp, churning the fire into the ground, and men and horses fled.
One man had caught up his rifle, and now he tried to swing it around to bear on Duvarney,
but Spicer rode down on him. Too late, the man tried to wheel to fire at Spicer,
and then the charging horse hit him and knocked him rolling in the mud.
They went up the slope on the run, and Duvarney's riders came rushing out, ready
for a fight.
"Mount up," he said, "and keep moving." Crouching low in his saddle, he skirted the
dark brush, hunting in the gray light for tracks where a man might have gone in.
If the seventh man was Huddy, as Tap suspected, he had to be hidden somewhere in
the brush where he could wait for a shot at Duvarney. It would be natural for Duvarney
to return to his campfire and his men, and a man might by searching find a good spot
from which to shoot at his target.
A moving target would be something of a problem, for any hiding place that Huddy
might crawl into that would allow him to get in sight of the camp would be in dense
brush where swinging a rifle would be difficult, and finding a clear field of fire
in more than one direction would be impossible.
Twice Tap stopped on the windward side of the brush and, digging beneath the surface
of the leaves, sought for some dry enough to burn. He did not hope for a real fire,
wet as it was, but for a good smoke, a smoke that might drive him out.
"He's afoot, anyway," Lawton Bean commented. "The way you scattered their horses,
that whole outfit is afoot."
The fire smoked and, blazing a little, ate away at the edges of the leaves, fighting
against the dampness. The smoke drifted through the brush, as he had hoped it would.
Duvarney considered the situation, and liked none of it. The rain would undoubtedly
put out the feeble fires he had started, probably before they had developed sufficient
smoke to drive Huddy, if it was Huddy, from concealment. The smoke might
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cause him some discomfort, but nothing more. In the meanwhile, it might be a long
wait, and Huddy might find a place where he could get a good shot at them. And all
this time Tom Kittery was in trouble to the south, and that was where the cattle
would be.
From the very beginning, he was thinking, nothing had gone well. He had hoped to
land in Texas, find a gathered herd ready to move, and start at once for Kansas.
Instead, he had found his partner involved in a killing feud to the point where all
business had been neglected; and to be on the safe side Tap had had to recruit his
own men. They had gathered cattle, only to be interrupted by the storm, yet he had
sold cattle and had the check in his pocket.
Now, like it or not, he was involved in the feud. One of his men had been killed;
he himself had been attacked, and he had killed in return. Yet he wanted nothing
more than to be on the trail to Kansas.
The cattle would be, he surmised, on high ground. Bunched by the storm, they would
be ready for a drive. He was torn between the need to find Kittery, to round up a
herd, and to locate Huddy and force him into a showdown.
He made up his mind. He would have to chance Huddy. First things must come first;
and he must find Tom Kittery, and get a herd on the trail to Kansas.
But even as he turned away, he was haunted by fear. Jackson Huddy was no man to be
trifled with, and Jackson Huddy would be hunting him like a wolf trailing for a kill.
From now on, no moment, waking or sleeping, would be without fear.
108
 THIRTEEN
Bunching the cattle, they started them westward. Driving them down off the ridge,
they waded them and swam them until they had put a good mile behind them. Then they
found the ground above water, but soggy and miserable.
The cattle moved sullenly. The rain had ceased, but the sky remained dark and heavily
overcast, and they could hear thunder in the distance. The wind was rising.
During the incessant blowing of the past two days the wind had become almost a part
of their lives, and the time before that was wiped out, almost as if it had never
been. To Tap Duvarney it seemed as if he could not remember a time when he had not
been wet and cold, and harried by wind.
Leaving Belden in charge, he took Spicer and Lawton Bean and they headed south.
"In this weather," Bean said, "we ain't got a chance of findin' them. They'll be
holed up somewhere, if they're alive." Every word had to be shouted to be heard above
the rising wind.
"We've got to try," Tap yelled, and they kept on.
The earth was black beneath, the sheets of water like steel under the heavy sky,
and the dark slim trunks of the few trees were like prison bars.
At noon they came to a cabin where there was a corral, and a lean-to stable half
hidden in the brush. A thin line of smoke was rising from the cabin, and with rifles
ready, they hailed the door.
It opened a slit, and a thin, mustached face peered out, saw the rifles, and started
to close the door, but Duvarney rode forward. "Hold it, there! We're ridin' the grub
line-how about some coffee?"
The door opened wider. "All right, put your horses up and
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come on in, but come peaceful. I'm holdin' a Colt revolvin' shotgun."
The cabin was snug, overly warm, and dry. The squatter had not lied ... he had the
shotgun right at hand, and he was wearing a six-shooter.
"Never turned away a hungry man yet," he said, "but you boys rode up holdin' a lot
of shootin' power."
"We're hunting some friends," Duvarney told him. "Hear anything of a fight down this
way?"
"I heard it ... seen some of it. That was eight, maybe nine miles southeast of here.
I'd been down to Refugio after grub . . . had a couple of pack mules. I was nigh
to Horseshoe Lake when somebody busted loose with a war right close by. I pulled
off into the brush and kept quiet. It was quite a scrap, by the sound of it."
He was a talkative man, as men who live alone are inclined to be when company shows
up. He moved about, dishing up beans from a big crock, getting out some homemade
bread, and putting on the frying pan. "You boys just set still an' don't go to pullin'
leather. I'll roust you up some grub."
He squinted at them with inquisitive blue eyes. "You boys don't have the Munson look.
Must be kin of the Kitt'ry's."
"I am Tappan Duvarney, Tom Kittery's partner."
"Figured you was kin or somethin'. Well, you won't find much left . . . cattle scattered
hell to breakfast . . . Roy Kitt'ry's dead . . . Joe Breck is dead."
"How about Tom? How about Lubec and the Cajun?"
"Hid out, more'n likely. Looks like them sorry Munsons got the upper hand. Ain't
been a Munson killed in quite a spell."
As they ate the old man told them of several small herds of Rafter K cattle and where
they could be found.
"How are you fixed for horses?" Duvarney asked. "We could use some."
"Fix you up, all right." He gestured toward the corral. "Go have a look."
Duvarney got up slowly, surreptitiously watching his host, who was busy over the
fire . . . too busy. Tap stretched, yawned, and glanced out the window at the corral.
It was close to the brush on one side, where some post oak provided shade for the
stock. He could see several horses in the corral, and he glanced around at Spicer.
Welt was smiling, and he had a Colt in his hand. "You go have that look, Major, and
if I hear a shot, I'll kill the cook."
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The old man stiffened up, turning, half ready to reach for his shotgun, but Lawton
Bean had it, and he was smiling, too. "How about it, old man? You still want the
Major to look at your horses? It's all right with us-on'y at the first shot we're
goin' to cut you in two."
"What else could I do?" the old man said. "If I warned you, they'd shoot me. An'
that there Huddy, he'd come after me. And like I said, you boys are losin' the fight."
"Don't be too sure," Bean drawled. "The Major here, he taken two Munsons just yesterday.
He killed Eggen an' Wheeler Munson. Welt Spicer here, he nailed another one of that
outfit. And last night one of 'em tried to dry-gulch us an' he cashed in his chips
mighty fast."
The old man looked from one to the other. "I ain't no coward, and I don't like Munsons,
but what can I do? I'm alone out here, an' with that Huddy around ..."
"He won't be around long," Spicer said.
"What's out there?" Duvarney asked quietly.
"Three of 'em. They stopped by to get out of the storm but when they saw you comin'
they headed for the brush, figurin' to lay out an' pick you off, easy like."
Duvarney stood well back inside, but he was looking out the window, studying the
environment with care.
"One of them is Pinto Hart," the old man offered, "an' he ain't no schoolboy."
"They call him Pinto because of a scar on his face," Spicer said. "He's a brother
to Jim Hart, and they're two of the top men in the Munson crowd."
Tap went from window to window, looking at the surroundings. When he had found what
he was looking for, he turned back to the room. He gestured toward the moccasins
the old man wore. "Have you got another pair of those?"
"I might have."
"I'm buying them," Tap said; "get them out."
The old man opened a chest and removed several pairs of trousers, some shirts, and
then the moccasins. "I traded 'em off a squaw. They're new . . . never worn."
Duvarney dropped a silver dollar on the table. "You probably didn't give her half
that," he said. Then he sat down and slipped off his boots and put on the moccasins.
They were a surprisingly good fit.
"You boys sit tight," he said to the others. "Keep an eye on that
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bunch out there, and if Dad here gives you any trouble, tie him up."
"Now what kinda talk is that?" the old man complained. "I'm no Munson, and I'm not
huntin' trouble." He paused, watching Duvarney hitch his bowie knife around, ready
to hand. "Did you hear me right? There's three of them out there ... an' Pinto's
worth two or three all by himself."
Tap ignored him; then, like a ghost, he slipped from the door. Outside, the wind
was blowing and a light rain was falling. He went around the cabin to get it between
himself and the hidden men, and dropping to a crouch, moved behind a bush, hesitated
a moment, and slipped beyond to a tree.
He had fought too many Indians and stalked too much wild game not to know how it
was done. The moccasins could feel of the earth beneath, avoiding any stick that
might break. . . . He moved deeper into the brush. He carried no rifle, preferring
to depend on his two pistols and the knife.
He scouted wide, moving with the wind to cover any sound, his eyes watchful. The
trees bent under the wind, and a spattering of huge drops fell on the leaves, and
on his head and shoulders.
It was a game of death he was playing, but a game he had played before. These men,
so far as he knew, were cowhands, men who rode horseback. They were not woodsmen
in the sense he had been. Now, if the Cajun were out there. . . . He had a feeling
about the Cajun . . . there
was a dangerous man.
There was a weird, yellowish light in the trees. This was a fairly large patch of
ground, covering fifteen to twenty acres, part of it running down to a stream bed.
He took his time, knowing that death awaited a careless hunter, but he moved in closer.
Suddenly he stopped. Not far ahead he could see the light beyond the trees, and knew
that he must be somewhere within a hundred yards of the men he hunted-very likely
much less than that.
He had paused behind a bush, with two trees in line behind him, and another one only
inches to the left. No one looking in his direction would guess that a man stood
there. He studied the leaves and the brush about him with care.
His eyes scanned the woods ahead of him, looking across a leaf-filled hollow where
the slow drops fell from arching branches above, when he saw them. They were bunched
as he had hoped they would be, and were seated where they could watch the cabin and
anyone who approached the corral.
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They were closer than he had thought-only about twenty-five yards away. The gun he
carried in his holster was a Smith & Wesson Russian .44, the straightest-shooting
gun in the West at the time. At that distance he had often scored high at target
shooting. This was not so easy, for the background made it difficult, the men and
their clothing merging well with the trees and brush.
He moved a step forward, putting his foot down with the utmost care, and letting
it sink into the wet leaves. Then he took another step. As he moved, his mind was
telling him that at that distance he would probably do better than they could, for
though they were used to guns, they were not likely to have had as thorough a training
as he had had, nor the experience in the cavalry.
He took a third step-each step was a short one. They would turn soon, and that was
the way he wanted it. He did not want to surprise them into shooting. If possible,
he would take them without any shooting, and without killing.
He stood now beneath a huge pecan tree and looked at the three men across the small
hollow. They were talking quietly, and smoking. He smiled at that. An Apache would
have smelled that smoke-as he had-long before he saw them.
One of the men knocked out his pipe against his heel, a sound that would carry too
far ... these men were not the sort he was used to dealing with. The man started
to put his pipe in his pocket, and he turned just a little as his hand reached back
for his coat pocket. With that motion his head turned slightly to the right, as it
often will with such a movement, and he saw Duvarney.
He froze with the movement half completed, staring hard, obviously unwilling to believe
what he saw, or unsure of it. The position in which Duvarney was standing would be
even worse for them to see clearly than was their position for Tap.
"Pinto," he said. "Pinto . . . look."
When Pinto turned his head Tap saw the scar ... a bad powder burn, he would guess,
although it was impossible to tell at that distance.
"You boys waiting for me?" Duvarney asked in a conversational tone. "There doesn't
have to be a shooting, you know. You can just shuck your guns and back off. I'm down
here on business-I'm not trying to run up a score."
They looked at him, unwilling to believe that he was actually
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there, that he had moved up behind them without their knowing it. It offended their
pride . . . after all, they were fighting men.
He held the Smith & Wesson in his hand, the muzzle down slightly, but ready.
"You'd better do that," he added. "Just loosen your gun belts and let them fall."
Pinto Hart was getting slowly to his feet-slowly and carefully. Tap watched them
all without any partiality, and he could catch any move. When Pinto was on his feet,
he said, "I'll be damned if I will."
"You boys better talk to him. I shoot pretty straight, but at this distance I might
nail any one of you. I'll surely get him, but one of you might get hurt."
One of the two men sitting there had a rifle across his knees, but he would have
to swing ninety degrees to bring it to bear . . . it would take too long, and the
man knew it. The other man was the one who put the pipe in his pocket, and his hand
was still there, clutching the pipe. Nobody wants to die, and this man knew he had
a good chance of not living out the next two minutes, and he was sweating.
"Talk to him, boys," Tap said again, "or pull him down. He'll only get you killed."
"Pinto?" The man with the rifle was speaking. "I think-"
Pinto took a step back and went for his gun. Tap hesitated a fraction of a second
to see what the others would do, and then shot Pinto Hart through the lower right
corner of his breast pocket. He fired only once, then held his fire.
"How about it, boys? What's in it for you that will weigh as heavy as a bullet in
the head?"
Very carefully the man with the rifle pitched it from him, and unbuckled his belt.
The other man moved gingerly to do the same.
"Why don't you boys just head for Refugio and take the stage on west? Arizona's a
good country. So's New Mexico."
They turned with great care and, stiff-backed, walked away as Duvarney followed them.
He glanced once at the body of Pinto Hart. A tough, reckless man, and a game one.
It was a pity, but he had thought of himself as a good man with a gun, and that kind
of belief can get a man killed. A reputation for being tough can give a man some
standing with his fellows, but there always comes a time when he has to back it up
... and the same men who
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praised your skill will sneer at it by comparison with the man who shoots you.
"We got to get our horses," one of the men said.
"Walk," Duvarney said. "A good walk in the rain and the wind will give you time to
consider your ways. And boys-be sure you take that stage. If I saw you around I might
just think you were waiting for me, and I'd have to shoot on sight, I wouldn't want
to do that."
He watched them go, and then he walked back to the cabin and went in the door.
The old man was tipped back in his chair, and he let the chair legs down hard when
Duvarney came in. Welt Spicer merely gave Tap a satisfied look, and Lawton Bean stretched.
"Two of them are walking to Refugio," Duvarney said. "It will cool them off a bit."
"Pinto?" the old man asked quickly.
"Pinto's out there. Will you take care of him, amigo?
We'll take those horses, too," he added. "I think we're going to need them, the way
the weather is."
"You killed Pinto Hart?" The old man could not find it in himself to believe it could
happen that way.
"He killed himself," Duvarney said. "He made an error in judgment."
They rode to the south and then east, and within a few miles they began to see Rafter
K cattle.
115
 FOURTEEN
Jessica Trescott huddled in her mackintosh, half asleep. The wind filled the day
with a dreadful roaring, like nothing she had ever heard. Outwardly, Jessica was
calm; inwardly, she trembled. It was a trembling down deep inside her, the trembling
of a fear such as she had never known.
The others were gathered about her, together yet alone; for in a terrible storm each
person is alone within their minds, cowering with their own private fears, their
uncertainties. There is no isolation like that brought on by storm, for the voice
cannot rise above the wind, nor can it reach that private place within the head where
man hovers in the midst of all that he is and has been.
Jessica's hands were thrust deep in her pockets, her shoulders were hunched, as much
to shut out the sound as to bring warmth.
The courthouse was of concrete, and it was strongly built. The rise of ground on
which it sat lifted it somewhat above the waters.
And now, for the first time, the great waves began to break over the island.
Up to now the wind had driven the waters of the bay upon the shore, had driven great
volumes of water through the passages between the islands, and the swells had pounded
the outer islands, but only now had the sea begun to roll its swells clear across
the island and up on the low shores.
It began in the town with a mighty wave that sent a rolling wall of water up the
street. This was almost immediately followed by another. The outer buildings of the
town, battered by the gigantic winds, now crashed before the onrushing sea.
"Ma'am?"
Jessica looked up to see Bill Taylor standing beside her, hat in
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hand. "Ma'am," he repeated, "you got to see this. Maybe you'll never see the like
again."
With Mady and Bob Brunswick, she followed him up the stairs to the second floor.
Up there she was conscious only of the mighty sound of the wind. The building seemed
to give before the weight of it pressing against the walls. It even seemed to suck
the breath from her lungs, causing her to gasp for each breath. When he led her to
a window with a broken shutter, she looked out over Indianola and was appalled.
As far as her eyes could see, in the intervals between the gusts of wind and rain,
there was only water. The rushing waves were smashing the buildings now, floating
the less securely anchored, sending them crashing one against another with tremendous,
splintering force.
There was no longer a harbor, no longer any piers to be seen, or any land at all.
Here and there a tree, rooted more deeply than the others, still held its place,
almost drowned by the rising water.
The boardwalk where she had stood not long ago was gone, and the hotel itself canted
over weirdly. For a moment she thought of her clothing there ... of the pictures
of her father and mother, her diary ... all would be gone, carried away by the flood.
Mady was thinking of those dresses, too. "All those beautiful gowns!" she wailed.
Jessica glanced at her, and said wryly, "I don't believe those clothes have much
to do with what is really worthwhile, and I doubt if Tappan will even realize they
are gone."
"I wish I had them."
"The only things I regret are a few personal keepsakes and my books, and I haven't
really lost them, I suppose. Once you have read a book you care about, some part
of it is always with you."
She looked out at the frightful havoc of the storm. A town was dying out there, being
wiped from the earth, but guiltily she realized that all she could think about was
Tappan. Where was he? Was he safe?
The worst of it was, there was nothing she could do. Those who could reach the courthouse
were there. Bill Taylor and a few others had performed amazingly, rescuing men, women,
and children, and getting them all inside. Taylor, awaiting trial for his part in
a shooting, had worked harder than anyone in getting people to safety.
She went back and sat down. The water was over the steps now,
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and the town was simply caving in under the combined attack of sea and wind.
Here and there clusters of men bunched together. Once Taylor came over and squatted
near by. He knew Mady, of course, but it was to Jessica he talked. "Stories are going
around," he said, "that there's been more shooting south of here. But don't you worry;
that man of yours is a good hand. I watched him out there against Eggen and Wheeler.
He'll take care of himself."
He did not look at Mady or speak to her. Once she started to address him and he pointedly
looked away. She flushed.
"Tom Kitt'ry," Taylor said, "ran into a bunch of trouble. Seems they knew right where
to find him, and they did. Feller rode into town . . . he's downstairs right now
... he heard Pete Remley and Joe Breck were dead . . . Roy Kitt'ry too. Tom's hurt,
an' he's hid out. Somebody wished him no good," Taylor added insinuatingly, "and
folks know it. If therd ever was a talker, it was that show-off, Ev Munson."
From the corners of her eyes, Jessica looked at Mady. Her face was shockingly white
and pinched. She seemed shrunken, somehow, and she stared straight ahead in a kind
of stark shame.
"Tom's goin' to win now. That man of yours, Duvarney-he makes the difrence. Those
men he's got, they're good ones, but it's Duvarney . . . he's outguessed them every
turn."
After a while, Taylor moved away, and the two girls sat silent. Finally, Jessica
could restrain herself no longer. "Mady . . . why did you do it?"
"Oh . . . you!
You think you know so much! How do you know how it is to live in a place like this,
year after year? I wanted Tom to leave. I wanted him to get out. And I knew he never
would as long as that crazy feud was going on! Anyway, I had nothing to do with what
happened."
"I saw you talking to Every Munson, Mady."
"What if you did? I've known Ev Munson all my life. I never cared about their silly
feud. All I wanted was for Tom to take me away."
"Away from all he knew? Did that seem wise, Mady? This is Tom's life. He knows cattle.
He knows the range, the people. In the city he would be just another man struggling
for a living among men who had grown up in a life he had never known."
"Tom would do all right," Mady said defiantly.
"And so you betrayed him?"
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Mady turned on Jessica, her eyes hot with anger. "I did no such thing!"
"I think you did, Mady. 1 also think you were there when Lon Porter was killed."
Mady was silent. After a moment she said, "I did see that, but I had nothing to do
with it. When I got to the corral Lon Porter was tying up his horse and asking for
Major Duvarney. He said he had a message from Tom. . . . Well, he talked too loud
and Jackson Huddy heard him."
"Did Jackson Huddy kill him?"
"Yes, he did. He shot him through the back of the head, and I saw it. Oh, he didn't
see me, and I was so scared I couldn't move if I'd wanted to! Jackson Huddy wasn't
more than thirty feet from him, and Lon Porter never knew anybody else was around,
and you can just bet that hostler isn't going to tell of it."
The wind was rising, and talk was becoming impossible. Sheets of rain battered the
walls, seeping through around window casings and falling in huge drops from the ceilings.
Outside, almost nothing could be seen, and nobody wanted to risk standing near enough
to a window even to try.
All of those on the ground floor had now climbed the stairs, for water was coming
through under the doors, and one of the windows had been smashed by the wind. The
wild banshee howling of the storm was maddening, and Jessica crouched on a bench,
her legs drawn up under her, her head sunk behind the collar of her mackintosh, and
her hands over her ears.
Once, Taylor caught her shoulder and pointed. A window had smashed and water was
pouring in, blown by the howling wind. A momentary lull gave them a glimpse of the
town . . . only there was no town, only a torn and ravaged sea, littered with wreckage
and the hull of a bottom-up ship. Then the streaming rain and blown spray shut out
the sight again.
Cowering on her bench, Jessica could only clutch herself and wait.
Tappan Duvarney and his men were scattered widely when the wind came. Duvarney himself
had found some thirty head of cattle on a slope and started moving them inland. Soon
he had come upon a dozen more, all steers in this lot, bedded down on a long ridge.
He had driven them no more than a mile when Lawton Bean
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appeared, driving thirty-odd head of mixed stuff. Some distance off they could see
a long ridge running roughly north and south, and they started for it, picking up
a few head from the country between.
Welt Spicer came up driving a small herd, and they bunched them on the ridge, somewhat
in the lee of the rocky crest that was tufted with stunted trees and low brush. There,
under a deep hollowed-out space in the rock, they found where men had occasionally
taken shelter. A crude wall of piled-up stone had been built to offer even more shelter,
and when the wind came they brought their horses under the overhang.
Thunder was now an almost continuous sound, and lightning flared again and again,
lighting up the deep shadows under the overhang. The darkness was like late twilight.
The rain roared down, slashing at the skin like cutting knives whenever one got within
its range.I
Spicer sat in the farthest corner of the cavelike space and stared out at the storm.
All the men, for fear of lightning, had placed their guns some distance away from
them. Suddenly Bean looked around at Tap. "I thought I heard a yell!" he shouted.
"Listen!"
Duvarney went close to the mouth of the cave and waited, but for several minutes
he heard nothing; then faint and far off, he heard what sounded like a shout.
"Somebody is out there needing help," he said. "You sit tight, and I'll have a look."
"Don't be loco," Spicer objected. "A feller often hears such sounds in a storm."
Drawing the string under his chin a little tighter, and turning up his collar again,
Duvarney hesitated only briefly, then plunged into the wall of water outside. His
heels skidded on the muddy surface, and he almost fell, then he turned and started
to clamber up the slope toward the crest of the ridge, clinging to the brush to help
him climb.
He could see that on the top of the ridge the trees were bent at an impossible angle,
their roots still holding but the trunks almost parallel with the ground beneath.
He clung to some brush, half crouching, and looked at the top of the ridge.
No man could stand erect there. The wind would blow him right off. He turned and
looked all around. He could see nothing but the driving rain. Below the ridge all
was a swirling mass of water from the swollen creeks. The cattle were huddled just
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under the crest of the long ridge, taking what shelter they could from the onslaught
of the storm.
A feeble shout made him turn his head again, and he saw them. Past the point of the
ridge where the slope fell away to the creek bottom a man was struggling with a mired
horse, a horse that carried a dark, humped bundle on its back.
Duvarney fought his way along the ridge through the brush. One look and he could
see that the man was staggering with weariness. Once he fell to his knees and could
barely struggle up. Duvarney yelled and ran to him, stumbling and falling himself,
skidding on his knees. He got up, reaching the man just as he was about to fall into
the water.
It was Tom Kittery.
Tap led him back to the slope, where he made him sit down, and then he caught up
the reins on the horse. "Come on, boy!" he called. "Let's get you out of here!"
The horse needed little help, only a little more than Tom Kittery was able to give
in his exhausted condition. He struggled, forefeet clambering at the bank, but with
Duvarney's help he struggled free. It was only then that Duvarney looked to see who
was on his back. Two men ... or bodies . . . wrapped in their slickers so as to shelter
their heads, and tied to the horse's back.
Grabbing Tom by the arm, Duvarney pulled him erect. Just then he saw Lawton Bean
and Spicer coming toward him in a tumbling run.
"Wondered what was keepin' you!" Spicer yelled.
With Bean supporting Kittery, and Spicer walking alongside, they got back to the
shelter of the overhang. Once they were out of the immediate roar and rush of the
storm, it was like a reprieve from some ghastly hell, or from a wind-tortured world
where one gasped for every breath, struggled to make every step.
Duvarney untied the men on the horse, and saw that they were the Cajun and Lubec.
Both were wounded. The Cajun was stretched out on his slicker, and Lubec helped himself
to a corner and leaned back, breathing hoarsely. One of Lubec's arms was clumsily
bandaged and in a crude splint.
"What happened to that?" Spicer asked.
"Horse fell on me," Lubec grumbled. "Slipped on a bank." He indicated the Cajun.
"That one's been shot. Caught two slugs."
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A long time later, with the wounded men cared for and Tom in an exhausted sleep,
Tap Duvarney slept, too.
Outside the storm still raged, thunder crashed and reverberated against the hills,
but he slept.
122
 FIFTEEN
When the morning came, the storm was gone. A few scattered clouds, ragged with a
memory of yesterday's winds, still remained in the sky. Only a small wind blew, and
there was no rain.
Tappan Duvarney stood at the opening of the overhang and looked out across the rain-soaked
landscape. Everywhere were evidences of the hurricane's passing. Trees were down,
streams still rushed bank-full, and great pools of water were everywhere over the
land.
He went outside and looked along the ridge. The cattle were up, beginning to move
around, seeking out the sparse grass. Half a mile away he could see another slope,
also dark with cattle.
Welt Spicer came out, hitching his gun belt into place. "What's up, Major?"
"We're going to move cattle," Duvarney said grimly. "When we get some chow we're
going to check out that bunch yonder. If there's any Rafter K stuff there, we'll
drift it north along with what we have."
"What about them?" Spicer motioned behind them.
"The Cajun's got to have treatment. If we can find that buckboard-"
"I know where it is. Come across it t'other day. Do you want I should ride up there
and get it?"
Duvarney checked his watch. It was not yet five o'clock in the morning. There were
several hundred head of cattle on this ridge, and nearly as many on the other. He
went to his saddlebags for his field glasses and climbed to the top of the ridge.
From there, studying the terrain, he saw that, as he had suspected, there were
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cattle and occasionally horses on every rise within sight. Some of those must be
from the scattered herds or ungathered cattle wearing the Rafter K brand.
Spicer had coffee boiling when he came back. The Cajun was lying on his back, half
reclining against the wall.
"A man would think you'd been hurt," Tap said, grinning. "You mean it only took two
slugs to put you down?"
"Maybe I'm gettin' weak in my old age." The Cajun's eyes searched his. "You find
many cow, yes?"
"Plenty. Can you sit it out here while we round them up? Then we'll get the buckboard
and you can ride in that when we drive them."
"I be all right. You go along."
Tom Kittery was on his feet. "I'm ready to ride if you are, Tap," he said quietly.
"I'm beginning to think you're right. We should be in the cattle business."|
"How about you?" Duvarney looked over at Lubec.
Johnny Lubec had changed none at all. "I'll handle as many cows as any of you, busted
arm and all, but I'd rather stay and fight."
"Welt, you ride south with Johnny. Start all the Rafter K stock north and west. If
you see trouble coming, come on back this way and we'll meet it together. But if
you see Jackson Huddy, come running for me, fast."
They looked at him.
"I've staked him out," Tap said quietly. "When he killed Lon he killed a man of mine;
and besides, he's the one who's out to stop us. When we get this drive started I'm
going to cut out and go after him."
"Who's huntin' trouble now?" Lubec said.
"It's a safety precaution. If there was any other way I'd leave him until later.
But I'm going to hunt the hunter."
"He'll kill you," Lubec said.
"Well," Tom said, "Huddy ain't never got me, and Tap here took me alive . . . although,"
he added, grinning, "I don't believe he could do it again."
Bean worked east, and Tom Kittery with Duvarney himself rode north. By noon they
had brought the cattle down off the high ground, and had then waded them and swum
them until they could get them to still higher ground west and north of Horseshoe
Lake.
Lawton Bean was the last man to come along. None of the cattle
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was in a mood to cause trouble. After the fury of the storm, they seemed to welcome
the presence of men and drifted ahead of them as if they realized they were driving
them to safety.
It was almost sundown before Bean came in. He was riding with his rifle across his
saddle.
"Picked up some sign back yonder," he said to Tap. "I think we're goin' to have comp'ny."
"How many?"
"One man . . . it's Huddy, all right, and he's ridin' his killin' horse."
When Duvarney looked his question, Bean added, "Folks down here tell me when Jackson
Huddy goes huntin' he rides a blaze-face roan. Good, steady horse . . . hard one
to see . . . lots of bottom, and quiet."
"That's a good horse," Kittery agreed. "I know him."
"I picked up some hairs off a tree where he'd been scratching himself." Bean looked
at Duvarney. "Since the rain stopped."
"You didn't see him?"
When Bean shook his head, Kittery said, "I'll lay five to one he saw you. And that
means he trailed you back here."
"Tom," Duvarney said, "I've got Belden and some of the boys holding a herd on the
Guadalupe just west of Victoria. Most of them are cattle I sold to Bob Brunswick,
just before the storm." He touched his shirt pocket. "I've got the check right here."
"You moved fast."
"We had to, with the storm coming, and then I moved the cattle for Brunswick. What
I'm suggesting now is that you push this herd on to join those cattle."
"What about you?"
"I'm heading for Indianola. My girl's there. Also," he went on, "I want Jackson Huddy
to follow me."
He had been thinking as he talked. Riding with a herd would not only make him a sitting
duck, but would endanger the others. What he must do was lead Huddy down the trail,
and it was a trail that Duvarney now knew pretty well himself . . . and somewhere
along that trail there might be a showdown.
He already had part of his route planned. He would ride right out in plain sight,
but where there was no cover for Huddy, and then when he got to where there was cover,
he would ride right into it.
"You're buckin' a stacked deck," Tom said. "I think we'd best stick together."
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"No, I want him to come for me."
"Don't worry," Lubec said, "he will!"
Duvarney left the herd on a bare hill with no cover for several hundred yards in
either direction. He decided that he could take it for granted that Huddy was a good
shot with a rifle, but he would also remember that Huddy, now at least, was not a
gambler. Huddy would study his victim, stay with him until he got within easy range,
then shoot him down. From all he had heard, Huddy was a one-shot killer ... it was
even a matter of pride with him.
That meant Duvarney must not give him that one shot until he was ready to do so.
He rode north, scouting the land and the possible routes that Huddy might take, and
then he began a bit of mental warfare. Huddy would be looking for a pattern, and
for a time he must not find one. Duvarney felt that first he rrfust shake Huddy's
overweening confidence in himself. He must worry him into acting as he had not planned.
For two miles he kept to open country that offered no concealment. Dropping behind
a screening ridge, he wheeled his horse and raced back a quarter of a mile in the
direction from which he had come, then rode down into a sandy wash. He followed it
for half a mile and, climbing out of it, went to a thicket of mesquite, prickly pear,
and oak. Doubling back, he scouted his earlier trail with care, finally emerging
upon it.
Sure enough, another horse had been along here. He rode on across his trail without
a stop, went over a low saddle, and headed back in the original direction, paralleling
his old trail. Finding a long, shallow pool of muddy water, he rode into it and followed
it along for a few hundred yards, then deliberately he cut across it.
A pursued man will usually emerge from a stream on the same side on which he entered;
knowing this, he did the opposite. Mounting a low hill, he crossed over it and left
his horse tied to a small shrub while he crept back to the crest of a ridge where
there were a few scattered stones and some low brush. Lying there, he settled down
to wait.
He had his back to the sun, and so could use his glasses without fear of being seen.
He was lying there watching when he saw, far off, a rider approach the place where
the trails crossed. He smiled, but he continued to watch, knowing he must understand
this man and his thinking if he expected to remain alive.
Jackson Huddy seemed to be a man of little imagination-hard,
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dangerous, and tenacious, and above all a man of enormous ego, completely confident
of his own ability. But always before Huddy had been the hunter, never the hunted.
By now he realized that Duvarney had circled around, and knew he was being followed.
Jackson Huddy sat his horse for some time, then followed the trail. When he reached
the pond he rode along the edge, then circled it until he discovered where Duvarney
had emerged. When Huddy finally saw where Duvarney had left the water, he was scarcely
three hundred yards off, and Duvarney took up his rifle and drew a careful bead on
the dirt right in front of Huddy's horse . . . and fired.
It was muddy, and when the bullet struck it splattered mud, and Huddy's horse leaped
wildly, and pitched hard until Huddy got him quieted down. Then Duvarney shot twice
more; both were shots calculated to start Huddy moving.
Tap knew he should kill the man, yet it went against the grain to shoot from ambush,
even though that was the policy of his enemy; moreover, he took a wicked satisfaction
in putting the man in the place of his victims.
Huddy, out in the open with no cover, slapped the spurs to his mount and went away
from there as if somebody had set fire to his coattails.
Tap mounted up and rode at a canter, heading back toward Indianola. Huddy, shaken,
would be wary about picking up the trail, and that would give Duvarney time.
As he rode, he studied the country, and an hour later he found what he wanted-a small
hollow in the hills, ideal for a nooning, which could be looked into from only one
direction. On the crest of a low rise there was a small clump of brush and trees.
Taking a branch of one of the trees, he bent it down in such a way that if one wanted
to look down into the hollow, the branch must be moved. Then he cut a branch, took
a piggin string from his belt, and bending the branch, made a small, crude bow of
it. He sharpened a stick for an arrow and set the bow in position, the arrow drawn
back and ready.
If the branch was moved, the arrow would be released and might hit the hunter.
It was a crude, hastily contrived trap that Duvarney did not expect to cause any
damage. All he hoped to do was to shake Huddy's confidence, to make him feel he could
trust himself nowhere.
Going down into the hollow, Duvarney built a small fire; then
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back at the edge he gathered enough brush to make a large armful and tied another
piggin string around it. Looked at from above, it would create a shadow, and might
give the appearance of a man in hiding. At least Huddy would want to take time to
study it.
Time was running short now, and Huddy might appear at any moment, so Tap rode away
swiftly, but watched the hills around, careful to avoid any place that might offer
Huddy a good field of fire.
Hours later he crossed Black Bayou and made camp in a clump of trees and brush northeast
of Green Lake.
Before daylight he was up, and for half an hour he studied the country around. Then
he left his camp and went back for half a mile in the direction from which he had
come, circling wide around before riding for Indianola. He saw nobody, found no tracks
leading toward Indianola.
He rode on, seeing on every side fhe havoc created by the storm-trees uprooted, buildings
smashed flat, the earth a sea of mud, with water standing in the low places. Here
and there he saw the bodies of dead cattle or horses.
When at last he rode up to Indianola he knew it only by the courthouse.
Where the town had stood there was now mud and sand, with scattered debris brought
in by the sea, smashed boats, and the foundations of the buildings.
The town was gone . . . wiped out.
People were moving around, searching for bodies or prowling among the wreckage of
the saloons for unbroken bottles or whatever might be found.
Smoke was rising from the chimney of the courthouse, and when he walked inside he
walked right into Bob Brunswick. "She's in there," Brunswick pointed. "We're trying
to feed everybody, at least."
Duvarney explained about the cattle. "We've got a bunch together, and we're going
to drive to Kansas. I figured you'd want your stock to go along. A man named Webster
is throwing in with us, and we'll have a strong party and about fifteen hundred head,
or more."
"Take them along. You going to Dodge?"
"Yes. I'll meet you there, or leave word if we've gone elsewhere. It doesn't look
as if you'll be buying stock in Indianola for a long time."
Suddenly Jessica appeared in the door. She ran to him, caught
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him by the arms. "Tappan! Oh, Tappan!" was all that she could say.
"We're leaving," he said. "We're getting out of here right now. Jackson Huddy will
be along, and I don't want a showdown here."
She wasted no time, but when she came back Mady Coppinger was with her. "Can Mady
come?" Jessica asked.
"Sure." And then he added, "Tom's with the herd."
"I've got some saddle stock out of town," Bob said, "and you'll need horses going
up the trail. Leave the bay gelding with the three white stockings for me, and take
the rest along."
He stepped closer and said to Tap, "Be careful. Every Munson is somewhere around."
Then he went on, "You hear about Bill Taylor? He and some other fellow who was locked
in the same jail, they stole the sheriffs horse and lit out. I don't think anybody
minded too much, not even the sheriff. Bill proved himself pretty much of a man in
this shindig."
By the time Tap had managed to get a couple of saddles and mounted the girls on the
horses, it was well into the afternoon. He was growing more and more worried. Curiosity
might take Huddy on into Indianola, but he would be on their trail soon, and he might
be lying in wait for them somewhere to the west.
Tap wasted no time. He rode with his rifle across his saddle bows and he held to
a good pace. They were leading six extra horses. All of them seemed glad to go, to
be anywhere but around the storm area.
Nobody talked. Tap grew increasingly jumpy, and was ready at every sound. He changed
direction again and again, trying to establish no pattern with his changes.
Around Chocolate Bay the scene was desolate. There had been a few cabins there, and
some fishing boats. All these were gone. The shore was littered with debris.
At last, long after dark, he led them into camp in a corner of the Chocolate Bayou.
It was on a bench above the stream, and taking a chance, he built a small fire. They
made coffee and ate a little, and he prepared a place for the girls to sleep. As
for himself, he drew back into the trees and bedded down in thick brush. He slept
little.
At daybreak they were in the saddle once more.
129
 SIXTEEN
Victoria was picking up after the storm. Tappan Duvarney had no wish to ride into
the town, but tley needed food, and both of the girls needed clothing.
By now Jackson Huddy would have decided where he was going, and would undoubtedly
be on his trail, or perhaps be in town waiting for him.
They had seen few travelers, and most of these were going in the same direction.
Everybody who could move seemed to be leaving the coast.
Not even the havoc created by the storm could rob Victoria of its quaint, Old World
beauty. They came into the square, Tappan Duvarney riding warily. It was a lovely
place, with roses everywhere-a charming town, but it might be a deadly one for him.
He dismounted, keeping his horse between himself and the street, which he studied
with careful eyes, paying attention to the roofs, the windows, the people along the
street.
"You'd best go to your folks," he said to Mady, "or else get what you want and meet
Jessica and we'll take you to Tom."
She hesitated a moment, obviously not liking the alternatives. "All right," she said.
When Mady had moved away, he spoke softly to Jessica. "I'm going to move the horses
soon. They will be over in back of that building at the end of the street. Don't
mention it to Mady, but if she's coming with us, you can meet me there in an hour."
When he left her he paused at the corner of a building, again studying the street.
Then he went to a store, bought new clothes, and going out of the back door, took
them to his horses, and led
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the horses off the street. He bought groceries and other supplies, always moving
with caution.
He had gone into the restaurant when suddenly he saw Harry and Caddo, the two men
he had seen with Mady in the buckboard that day beside the trail. He crossed to them.
"Hello, Harry," he said.
The man turned and looked at him with careful eyes. "You have the advantage of me,"
Harry said.
"I am Tappan Duvarney. I know your name because you were with Miss Coppinger one
day. I was close by, just off the trail."
Caddo grinned. "Now, I figured that. I really figured it," he said.
Harry held out his hand. "Heard about you," he said.
"Mady's in town. She's with my fiancee, Jessica Trescott. She may be riding out with
us to join Tom-I'm not sure."
He heard someone coming up behind him and he turned slightly. It was Lin Stacker,
who also rode for the Coppinger outfit. Duvarney remembered him with no liking.
"Jackson Huddy's huntin' you," Stacker said, with a hint of malice in his tone. "Looks
like you won't be with us long."
"No. I'm going out with a trail drive."
"I didn't mean that, I meant-"
"Shut up, Stacker," Harry said shortly. "He knows what you mean ... so do I."
Abruptly, Stacker turned and strode from the room, but when he was at the door Duvarney
called after him. "Don't forget to tell them where I am, Stacker. Just don't be with
them when they come hunting me."
Stacker started to speak, but he stopped, and went out.
"Most of our boys favor Tom," Harry said, "and our money is ridin' on you."
Caddo spoke suddenly, quietly. "You want help, White Man? I can use a gun."
"No . . . thanks. This is my fight."
Out of the corner of his eye he had seen Stocker start diagonally across the street.
He went to the window and, standing well back, watched him cross the street and go
into a saloon. In a moment he came out and started on up the street.
"If you boys will excuse me?" Tap said, and stepped out of the door.
He watched Stocker until he disappeared into another saloon further up the street,
and then he came back inside the restau-
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rant. Harry and Caddo had gone, but he found a table in a corner where he could watch
the street, and ordered a meal.
It was only a few minutes later that he saw Caddo ride swiftly out of town.
"Do you mind if I join you?"
He had been so intent on watching the street that he had not noticed Jessica approaching
his table.
"Mady will be along soon." She sat down in the chair he held for her, and when he
was seated she asked, "Is there going to be trouble?"
"Yes."
"You would rather I was out of the way, wouldn't you?"
"Of course, but they'll wait until I come out on the street. They know where I am
sitting by now, and ;
 there is no way they can come in here without exposing themselves. And you're here.
So they will wait until I come outside, and I'm going to let them wait."
She searched his face. "You aren't afraid?"
He shrugged. "I expect I am, a little. Fear sets a man up sometimes for what he has
to face. A little fear does no harm, just so it doesn't put a man on the run."
A man was walking across the square, a big, narrow-shouldered man with wide hips.
It was Shabbit, and he was carrying a slicker wrapped around something . . . probably
a rifle or a shotgun. Considering the man, it was probably the latter. He stopped
on a corner just across the street that left the square alongside the restaurant.
From there he could cover the door easily.
Up the street another man with the Munson look about him was leaning on a wagon wheel,
smoking a cigarette.
Following his eyes, Jessica said, "You could go out the back door."
"They will have men out there, too," he said lightly.
They ate, talking only a little. He enjoyed sitting there, making them wait in the
hot sun.
Suddenly the door opened and Ev Munson came in. Shabbit was with him, and another
man. It was Lin Stacker.
"You comin' out?" Ev asked him. "I'm gettin' kinda tired waitin'."
"You ... or that army it's going to take to help you?"
Ev's features flushed with anger. "I don't need no help. I never saw the day I couldn't
take you, an' three like you."
Duvarney looked up at him, smiling a little. "All right, Munson, let's just talk
about me. Do you want to take me? Out in the street
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right now?" He glanced at the others. "I mean without this carrion to help."
Stacker started to step forward, but Ev waved him back. "Sure," he taunted, "if you
can get out from behind those skirts, I'll meet you outside, right now!"
Tap Duvarney got up. "Will you excuse me, Jessica?" Deliberately he raised his voice
so that the three men striding to the door could hear him. "This won't take long."
Under his breath he added, "Get back in the office, out of range."
He loosened his gun in its holster. He had not really thought much about a fast draw
since the time he cleaned up that tough town out west, when he was sent by the army
to do it, as the marshal's deputy.
He walked to the door, keeping to one side. Every Munson was out there, waiting.
He had an idea Ev would hold the others off so he could make the kill himself. At
the same time he knew that if he killed Every Munson they would shoot him down where
he stood . . . unless he moved very quickly indeed.
Tap reached over with his left hand and turned the knob, releasing the bolt, but
leaving the door almost closed. He took a short step forward, put his left hand on
the door, slamming it open suddenly.
He knew what would happen. At the sudden slamming of the door Ev Munson's hair-trigger
nerves would react and he would draw, and that was just what happened.
The startling slam of the opening door triggered Ev Munson's gun hand and it swept
down for the six-shooter. Tap took one long step through the door and drew at the
same instant. His gun muzzle came up, he saw the reckless, black-clad young man with
the wolfish smile, and he fired.
The wolfish smile vanished in a sudden blotching of blood, and Tap shot again, holding
the gun lower, and saw Ev Munson stagger one hesitating step forward and go on his
face.
At the same instant, he switched his gun and shot at Lin Stocker, who was a few yards
to the right. He shot too fast, and the bullet hit Stocker in the knee and he pitched
over, losing his grip on his gun.
Tap quickly stepped back inside, jerking the door to, and wheeling, he raced up the
steps. In his mind he had rehearsed every move that was to follow, and he performed
them smoothly now. As he reached the top of the steps he took three long strides
down
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the hall, grasping a chair as he left the landing, and putting it down under the
trap door that led to the roof.
He stepped up on the chair, jumped, and grabbed the edge of the opening. Holding
himself with one hand, he pushed back the trap, then hoisted himself through.
He took a quick step, and was under the trap to the roof itself. He released the
latch, pushed open the door, and after a quick look pulled himself through to the
slanting roof, where he was hidden from the street by the false front of the building.
He ran along the roof, jumped to the flat roof of the next building, and went quickly
to the front of it.
The man at the wagon whom he had seen earlier was standing there holding a pistol;
a few feet away, Shabbit held a shotgun. Both were waiting for him to show himself.
He took a careful sight along the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and shot the man by
the wagon through the shoulder. He dropped the rifle and whipped sharply around.
Running to the rear of the building, Tap leaped to the roof below, then dropped into
the space between the buildings. There was a door there, and he ducked through it
just as a bullet smashed into the door jamb, inches from his head, stinging his face
with splinters.
Instead of going out the front door, he ran across, seeing a window open, and leaped
through it into the alley beyond.
At that moment there was a sudden burst of firing in the street, and he paused, gasping
for breath, and puzzled. Suddenly he saw Shabbit running, and he ducked into the
same narrow alley in which Duvarney stood. There was blood on Shabbit's shoulder
and his face was white and frightened. He started to run, then brought up short.
His shotgun started to lift, and Tap Duvarney shot him through the second button
of his shirt, shot twice.
Surprised at the shooting from the street, he started back that way, picking up the
shotgun as he stepped around Shabbit. At the opening into the square, he paused,
looking out.
The shooting ceased.
On the far side of the square a tall man was sitting quietly in his saddle; nearer
by he saw another. Other riders were coming along both sides of the square, their
guns ready. Doc Belden . . . Lawton Bean . . . Welt Spicer . . . they were all there.
He stepped out, and half a dozen guns swung to cover him until they saw who he was.
"You know somethin', Major?" Lawton Bean said, grinning at
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him. "Those boys weren't much on the fight. I was some surprised. Figured they'd
hold up better. Why, this here shindig hardly got started until they all taken out
runnin' ... all that was able."
Doc rode up. "Are you all right?" he asked.
Tom Kittery came walking across the square. "You tryin' to hog all the fun? I almost
missed out on the endin' of my own feud!"
Tappan Duvarney looked around carefully. "All right, boys," he said. "We've got some
cattle waiting. Shall we get back to them?"
In his room on the second floor of the hotel Jackson Huddy held his rifle easily
in his hands and looked down into the square. He could see Duvarney's shoulder .
. . just a
little more now, and . . .
"Mr. Huddy?"
He turned sharply. Jessica Trescott was standing within ten feet of him and she was
holding a very steady Colt House Pistol aimed at his stomach. "Mr. Huddy, I would
take it kindly if you would just put that rifle down, then unbuckle your gun belt,
very carefully."
"I never shot a woman," Huddy said. "I never would."
"The reverse is not true, Mr. Huddy. This woman has never shot a man, but believe
me, she certainly would. Also, I am somewhat nervous, and if I start shooting it
is likely I will empty this gun into you.
"You see, Mr. Huddy, I came west to marry Mr. Duvarney. I came out here because I
love him and I want to bear children for him and to live out my life with him, so
if you think I am going to let a man like you come between us with a bullet, you
are wrong. I will kill you, Mr. Huddy, if you do not come away from that window,
get on your horse, and ride right out of our lives.
"Mady Coppinger told me you came from Alabama, Mr. Huddy. The only city in Alabama
that I know is Mobile. It is very lovely at this time of year. Would you go now .
. . please?"
He looked at her, and then he looked at the gun. The hand that moved was only to
lift his hat. "Your pleasure, ma'am," he said, and walked from the room and down
the back hall.
She followed and stood by the door, watching him ride away, sitting very straight
in the saddle.
Tom Kittery stood with Tappan when she reached the street. "Mady is here," she said.
"I saw her," Tom said. "I ... I borrowed money and loaned it
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to her. She's gone off to N'Orleans. I reckon I'll find somebody else, somewhere
on up the trail."
"You will, Tom. I'm sure of it." Jessica turned to look up at Tap. "Come on, Tappan.
Those cattle are waiting."
"And we'd better find a sky pilot," Tap commented. "We might as well make it legal
while we're at it."
"Yes, that, too," she said.
"You're forgettin' somethin', Major," Spicer said. "What about Jackson Huddy?"
"Oh, don't worry about him," Jessica said. "We had a talk and he decided to go back
to Alabama. If you doubt it, look in the room up over the door. You'll find his rifle
and pistol there."
Tappan Duvarney looked at her quizzically. "You know, Jessica, that's a story I would
really like to hear,"
"111 tell you . . . sometime." She reached in her purse and took out the Colt. "Tappan,
would you carrf this for me? It is getting very heavy."
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