in it?”
“Uh, well, not exactly. I’m not a cattleman. I’m an old friend of Jack Britt’s though. He and I used to scout for the Army together.”
Sally’s taffy hair waved when she nodded. “If Jack gets into it, you will, too, because he’s your
“Well, sort of. Y’see___”
Sally straightened with an exasperated look on her face. “You men! You’re like little children. This is no concern of yours, Caleb Doom. Besides, if there’s trouble, you might get hurt.” Sally caught herself and blushed wildly.
Caleb looked up, a spoonful of chili beans poised in his hand. At that precise moment, the door slammed gently and Sally’s flustered face raised and her eyes went quickly over the tall, recklessly smiling two-gun man who was drinking in her freshness with languid, bold eyes. The newcomer frowned a little and his small, dark eyes read Sally’s embarrassment and his Lauran Paine gaze dropped abruptly to Caleb’s broad back. “This here squawman botherin’ you, ma’am?”
Caleb felt the sting of the insinuation. Many new-comers to the northern country thought every white man who wore fringed buckskin was a squawman. Most, however, were very careful with the term. Graveyards all over the West were populated by men who had insulted others by calling them squawmen. The stranger saw the horror in Sally’s eyes and didn’t wait for her answer. With two large steps, he was be-side Caleb and a talon-like hand grabbed for the scout’s shoulder. “In Texas, we don’t tolerate no insultin’ o’ women, squawman!”
Caleb was out from under the reaching fingers of steel, on his feet, facing the man. Texan was stamped all over him. He was obviously one of the drovers with the Texas herd. Caleb noted the two tied-down guns, too. Texas gunfighter. He shook his head slowly and his eyes were frosty. “This young lady happens to be a friend of mine, an’, if I were you, Texan, I’d go easy on that squawman term up here.”
There was a sneer on the tall man’s face. “Y’would, would ya? Well down in Texas….”
“You’re not down in Texas now.”
The man’s face darkened. He looked contemptuously at the smaller man for a second, then one long, wiry fist shot out. Caleb rolled with it and the blow glanced off his shoulder. The Texan was making a very common and fatal error. He was over confidently underestimating the man in front of him. Caleb had fought the best brawlers on the frontier, Indian and white, and he was respected by both. He moved forward on the balls of his feet with the speed of light, and a massively muscled arm shot out. The Texan looked surprised when it smashed into his stomach. He went over a little to take some of the shock out of the blow.
Sally Tate, ashen-faced and horrified, was rigid be-hind the counter as the tall Texan swore violently and lunged at Caleb. The scout wasn’t there when the stranger’s ham-like fist, a bludgeon of bone and sinew, whipped into the hot atmosphere. Caleb stepped clear of the furiously charging gunman, ducked under the long arms, and bore in. He shot a rock-like fist into the Texan’s stomach that stopped the larger man. Before the gunman could recover, another bone and muscle piston crashed into his chest, and the third, as the Texan was rocking back on his high boot heels, slammed into his jaw like the kick of a mule. There was a loud popping sound, sharp and clear in the charged atmosphere, and the Texan went down half in, half out of the cafe, his head and shoulders lying through the half-opened door.
Caleb turned and looked at Sally. Her large eyes were glassy. “Sit down, Sally. Get a hold of yourself. I’m awfully sorry. It shouldn’t have happened in here.”
A rush of color came back into the girl’s cheeks as she turned to Caleb. “Is he dead?” Caleb looked down at the stunned Texan and shook his head. Sally let a long, pent-up gust of air out of her lungs. “Caleb Doom”—the violet eyes were snapping angrily with released tension and relief—“you’ve hurt that man badly. You ought to be ashamed, Caleb. You had no right…. ”
Caleb was halfway up the plank sidewalk toward his room at the Lincoln House, before the voice finally died away behind him. He was amused at Sally’s reaction and irritated at the overbearing arrogance of the Texan, and, when his mind reviewed the happenings of the day, he felt foreboding over what the future held. If all the drovers with the Texas herd were of the same stripe, there would be no way to avoid trouble. The hotel was dark when Caleb went up to his room. The bed felt good, and, until he sank down into it with a comfortable sigh, he had had no idea how tired he was.
When Caleb awoke, it was to find a pair of worried, squinted blue eyes, faded and anxious, bending over him. “Come on. Hell, ya can’t sleep all day.”
“No? Jack, you don’t know me, once I’m in one of these manmade beds.” He swung his feet out of the bed and reached for his boots and britches with a prodigious yawn. “You get run off the ranch this morning? Hell, it’s twenty miles from your place on the Verde to Lodgepole. You must’ve gotten astride before sunup.”
Britt rolled a lumpy cigarette while he waited for Caleb to finish his toilet. His voice drowned out the splashing of the scout at the commode set on the marble-topped dresser. “Well, dammit all, I didn’t allow I’d have to come to town till later, but some of the Box J boys come by last night, pretty late, an’ tol’ me that some firebrand laid out the foreman of the Texans in Sally Tate’s cafe.” He popped the cigarette into his mouth having lit it with an angry gesture. Through a cloud of grayish smoke, his voice was edgy and harsh. “As if trouble ain’t comin’ fast enough, some damned fool has to beat hell outen the ramrod of that trail herd, makin’ trouble a certainty now. Oh, Lord, sometimes I wished I’d never seen this burned-out corner of hell.”
Caleb cocked his head a little as he held up the worn towel to dry his face. “Ain’t that rain, Jack?”
“Sure it’s rain. Been rainin’ off an’ on all night. Well”—the hard lines softened a little—“that’s one blessing, anyway. Now the grass’ll come back.”
Doom rubbed himself musingly. “Jack, that Texas gunman came into Sally’s lookin’ for trouble. I’m the one that downed him.”
Britt looked up incredulously. “You?”
“Yep. He didn’t leave me any choice.”
Britt groaned and took a deep draw on the quirly in his hand. “Well, I know you ain’t a troublemaker, so he more’n likely got just what he was after. But it sure clinches things.”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Did you say he was a gunman?”
“I reckon. Anyway, he had two tied-down guns an’ that look about him, if you know what I mean.”
Britt nodded curtly. “I know what you mean, all right. Well, let’s go down an’ get some breakfast.”
Sally glared at Caleb when she set the thick plates of fried eggs and side meat down in front of them. “Bad enough to knock him unconscious, but why did you have to leave him here for me to take care of?”
Caleb shrugged and smiled. “The way you were eatin’ into me, I figured I’d be safer with a nest of mountain lions, so I left. Did he say much after he come around?”
Sally smiled lopsidedly “Well, nothing complimentary, I can assure you. He wanted to know who you were and I told him. Also, he said he’d be back today with his crew and they were going to take over Lodgepole, as well as all the grass land they needed to run their cattle on, until their boss figured out what they were going to do about the Crows’ refusal to let them go on north.”
Jack Britt finished his breakfast, paid Sally, and got up. “Sally, I wish you’d get married.”
The girl was startled and looked up quickly. “Why, Jack?”
“Because you’re the only one I’ve every known who could make this
Caleb was smiling dourly at his old friend. He nodded at Sally with a wink. “Sure must be some-thin’ in what he says, Sally. That’s the longest speech I ever heard him make. Scouts turned cowmen sure get windy, don’t they?”
Jack growled under his breath. “Come on, Caleb. Let’s go see this here imported town marshal Lodge-pole hired a few months back. They tell me he’s a ripsnorter from down in New Mexico Territory.”
