Feud On The Mesa

menacing. It was no good, relying upon range-land custom of old men being safe, unless the old men knew with whom they were confronted. Abe Smith did not know, and, furthermore, these two armed strangers shouldn’t even have been able to get over here. They were supposed to be fighting a barn fire and maybe getting shot at by Charley Fenwick and the others.

Abe said: “Do you boys work for Miz Cane?”

Rufe answered. “You answer, you old bastard, you don’t ask. Finish what you were going to say about the gunfighter…Chase hired him to kill…who?”

Abe Smith swallowed, hard. “Well, he hired Harris to get rid of them two range riders workin’ for Elisabeth Cane.”

Jud cocked a skeptical eye. “I thought you said no one confided in you?”

“No one does,” averred the older man. “But that don’t mean, when I’m feedin’em all, I don’t listen a lot. Otherwise, hell, I’d never know nothing. I’d be like one of them monks who folks don’t never talk to.”

Rufe exchanged a look with Jud. It was a disappointment, not being able to find Arlen Chase, but it was also helpful to know who the man Bull Harris was, and why Chase had brought him to Cane’s Mesa.

Rufe said: “Who else is in camp tonight, besides you, old bastard?”

Abe Smith fidgeted a little more furiously this time. “One feller over in the bunkhouse, which is that log house bigger than the main house, but beside it and off a dozen yards. His name’s Pete Ruff, and he’s sort of the straw boss when Mister Chase ain’t on the mesa.”

Rufe gestured. “Get your boots and pants on, and let’s go over and rouse up Pete Ruff.”

Abe Smith swung spindly, saddle-warped legs clad in ancient long Johns over the edge of his bunk, groped for trousers and boots, gruntingly dressed himself, scooped up his shirt, and arose. Standing up evidently made him feel a little more like a two-legged critter, because he looked Rufe squarely in the eye and said: “You are them two from the Cane place, ain’t you?”

Jud tapped the old man’s shoulder and growled: “Shut up, lead the way, and the first mistake you make, old bastard, I’m going to bust your skull like a punky melon.”

The cook clumped out through his cook shack into the warm, heavy late-night atmosphere, did not look back and did not hesitate as he struck out directly for a particular crude log house. This one had a little overhang out front, several crude benches, and a wooden box held empty beer and whiskey bottles.

Rufe reached and halted Abe Smith with a hard grip. “Poke your head inside, yell for him to come out, that the horses are spooked about something, then stand over against the wall and don’t move nor make a sound. You understand?”

The cook nodded, and reached for the door. When he shoved his head inside, Jud’s cold gun muzzle eased into his back above the kidneys and Abe Smith flinched. He growled loudly for the sleeping man to rouse up and come out and help him quiet the damned horses, and he swore a little, which made it sound very authentic. Then he stepped over alongside the wall and flattened exactly as he had been instructed to do.

The man, who came sleepily forth buttoning his britches with a disreputable old hat upon the back of his tousled head and clutching a shirt under one arm, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with a slightly hawkish face. He could have been a half-breed Indian of some kind, but whatever he was, Rufe’s first good glimpse of him encouraged a belief that this member of Chase’s cow camp was trouble.

Not now, though. He not only had both hands occupied, but he was unarmed when Jud stepped up and shoved the cold gun barrel into the man’s side. Ruff turned in swift astonishment and stared. Jud was a complete stranger to him. He seemed unwilling or unable to speak for a moment, but only that long, because when Jud said —“Turn around and go back inside, mister, and keep both your hands up high.”—the cow-camp range boss recovered and glared at Jud.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled.

Rufe answered, from behind the man. “Go in-side!”

The range boss had not been able Tomake any kind of a worthwhile assessment until now. He turned his head and craned around, saw Rufe, and decided he was, indeed, outmatched. Then he curled a furious lip in the direction of old Abe Smith, but whatever he might have said was cut short when Jud jammed him hard with the gun barrel, making the range boss gasp as he turned to reenter the bunkhouse.

They turned up the lamp inside. Ruff shrugged into his shirt, staring quizzically at his captors. Abe Smith confirmed the range boss’s dawning suspicions.

“They’re the pair Elisabeth Cane hired on couple days back.”

Pete Ruff looked at Rufe. “What you doin’ over here?”

“Looking for Arlen Chase.”

“He ain’t here. He ain’t nowhere on the mesa,” snapped Ruff.

“Yeah,” retorted Rufe, “we know. He’s down in Clearwater with his gunfighter. Well, directly now we’re going to ride down there and look him up, but first off we’ve got Tomake blessed certain no one’s behind us, skulking along for a chance to back-shoot us.”

“How you figure to do that?” asked Pete Ruff.

Rufe shrugged. “Kill the pair of you, like we did those other three, the ones you sent over to burn the lady’s barn.”

Old Abe Smith acted as though he were going to faint, and even the hard-eyed, tough half-breed range boss turned suddenly much less hard and abrasive.

“It wasn’t my doings,” said the half-breed. “Mister Chase come up with it, lock, stock, and barrel. I never even picked the fellers to ride over there.” He turned toward the cook. “Is that the truth, or not, Abe?”

Smith’s voice was reedy when he replied: “Don’t you ask me nothing. I’m just the…. ”

Jud growled and Abe’s lips snapped closed as Rufe offered them a way out. “You can ride down to Clear- water with us, tell the law down there what Chase has been trying to do up here…steal her horses and cattle, burn her out, shoot up her place…or you can get buried right here.”

Abe Smith hardly allowed the last echo to fade. “I’ll go with you, by Gawd. I’ll go, because I never approved of actin’ like that toward no woman. I’ll…. ”

The range boss spoke up gruffly. “All right. Let’s get the hell down there.”

IX

They went first to rig out animals for the two fresh captives, then all four of them walked back out where Rufe and Jud had left their animals, and it was there, while they were getting ahorseback, that the range boss, looking skeptically at Rufe, said: “You scairt the whey out of old Abe about the fellers who went over to burn the barn…now tell me what really happened over there? You fellers never killed nobody”

Jud said: “Didn’t we, then?”

Ruff shook his head. “Mister, on a night like this, no farther off than the Cane place is, if there’d been much gunfire, the sound would have carried.”

Jud smiled. “From inside a barn?” He gestured. “Line out your horse and shut up.”

They crossed back through the yard of Chase’s unkempt cow camp and picked up the wide trail southeastward. There was no talk now, not that Rufe or Jud would have objected, but since they held all the initiative, and they were silent, neither the range boss nor the camp cook spoke up.

Finally they arrived at the pass leading down off the mesa. It became clear why Elisabeth had said no one could come up, or go down, without being intercepted. The trail led straight through Chase’s camp, which had clearly been no accident.

The trail was wide and well marked. In fact, it would only take a little work in some fallen-in places Tomake it fit for wagons again. But since the passing of Elisabeth’s parents, no one had maintained the road, so now it was simply a wide, very good saddle-back trail.

Heat rose up from down below. The farther down they rode, the more noticeable this was. Apparently summer was already over the desert country.

Jud turned to the cook, who was riding on his left side by Jud’s order, and said: “How old are you?”

Smith replied with a succinct answer: “Sixty-six.”

Jud gazed placidly at him as he made a vocal judgment. “Hell, you’ve lived long enough. My pappy didn’t