FEUD ON THE MESA
Lauran Paine
LONG SHOT
Rufe eased the double-barrels around into sight. Someone saw them, squawked like a wounded eagle, and men scattered every which way except for a grizzled, hard-looking old cattleman, and all he did was lean down upon the tie rack flintily staring back. He hardly more than raised his voice when he said: “What the hell you figure to do with that silly thing, cowboy? It don’t have a range of over a hunnert and fifty feet.” He spat, then said: “You better come out of there. So far, you ain’t done nothing that maybe should have been done long ago. You shoot anyone else, and that’s going Tomake a heap of difference, so you’d better just walk out of there.”
Rufe listened, and pondered, then called back: “I got a better idea, mister,
The old stockman chewed, spat, looked left and right where the wary crowd was beginning to creep up again, then he said: “All right, I’ll come inside. But I got to warn you…”
Renegades Beat the War Drum
I
The words were thick with fury and scorn: “Injun lover! Squawman!”
Caleb Doom only shrugged with a saturnine, dour smile on his face. “Not by a damned sight,
The freighter, whiskey-red eyes aglow with anger, sneered at the buckskin-clad frontiersman in front of him. “I reckoned you’d feel thataway Look at you.” The bitter, muddy eyes swept over the lean, hard man before him. “Beaded moccasins, buckskin huntin’ shirt, and fringed britches Tomatch, like a redskin.” A thick, grimy finger pointed accusingly at the sky-blue, beaded knife sheath with its inlaid beaded triangles in blue and white, and the heavy deer-horn handle.
He reached over and flipped the little twig at the bottom of the sheath, twisted into a circle and with a small, tightly stretched wisp of scalp hair dangling from it. “What kind of o’ hair is that, Squawman? Injun or white? Ha, more’n likely it’s white hair offen some woman or kid.”
The man had worked himself into a killing frenzy and Doom saw it. He didn’t want to fight the man, especially since he was a stranger in Denton. The small bunch of other whiskey-flushed faces in the rude mud-wattle saloon were cold-eyed and menacing, too. He shrugged again. “That’s Apache hair, pardner. The same kind of hair you’re cussin’ about right now.”
“Y’damned liar!” The man was poised like a big, wobbly stag.
Doom’s face went bleak and his lips flattened over his teeth. “Keep back, freighter.”
The words had a sobering effect on some of the spectators, but the belligerent freighter only sneered at them. He licked his lips and hunched forward a little.
Doom saw it coming and raised himself slightly on the balls of his moccasin-clad feet. When the big man came in with a furious, obscene oath, he side-stepped quickly and lashed out with all the power of a whipcord, bone-and-sinew body. The freighter half turned, blundered up against the bar with a room-shaking jar, shook his head foggily, and straightened up.
“Forget it, mister.”
It was a useless warning. The freighter came in again, more wobbly than ever, his breath whistling through his tobacco-stained teeth like the fetid wind from a stagnant marsh. He lashed out with a massive, oak-like arm. Doom dropped to one knee, rolled his shoulder, and the blow tore into the man’s unprotected midriff like a battering ram. The freighter went down with a gasping sob.
Doom was coming back to his feet, his hand dropping instinctively to his .44. He was ready for the others that he knew, from a lifetime spent on the frontier, would be rushing him, when a deep, edgy voice broke in. “None o’ that, damn ya. Your friend got just what he come a-lookin’ fer.”
Doom looked back and saw the short, massive bartender, a worn and shiny wagon spoke in one brawny hand, standing, spraddle-legged, behind the mob of snarling freighters, drovers, and scouts who were edging in on Doom.
“One at a time, boys.” The words were silky soft, and the hard-eyed men hesitated, hung back, then slowly straightened up and moved back toward the bar, grumbling to themselves and throwing venomous glances at the man in buckskin.
The ugly, pockmarked bartender, a sprinkling of pale gray through the jet-black, coarse hair of his bullet- shaped head, glared at his customers and resumed where he had left off mopping up the puncheon bar top with a sticky, damp rag.
“I know how you feel. Ain’t a wagon or a cow been able to move outen Denton since the ’Paches took up the knife. Wal”—he wagged his head slowly, somberly—“they’s a lot o’ truth in what this here stranger says. The whites is mad because they can’t do no business what with Injuns keepin’ the town cut off. Sure, it hurts my trade, too. Hell, most o’ you boys been bottled up here for a month, an’ your business with me’s been mostly credit business. I don’t like that no more than you do. But when this here
