Feud On The Mesa

make it that far along by seven years.”

Abe Smith lacked Pete Ruff’s iron obviously. He shot Jud a frantic look. “I didn’t do a blessed thing. They never confided in me, and they never asked me for no help.”

The range boss, who was riding on Rufe’s left side, leaned to speak, and Rufe’s arm shot out to jolt him into silence. They exchanged a look, and the range boss eased back in the saddle, furious but silent. Rufe did not know what his partner was leading up to, and he was interested enough not to want any digressions.

Then it became clear what was on Jud’s mind. “A man who feeds folks three times a day for a fact hears a lot. Like you told us, old bastard.” Jud grinned at Abe Smith. “You’ve heard’em talking about running off the lady’s horses and cattle, eh?”

Abe squirmed in the saddle, stared flintily dead ahead, out over the dark desert, then he swung helplessly to glance back. But Pete Ruff was like a hawkish, mahogany statue back there and offered not a sound.

Jud leaned and rapped the old man’s leg. “No-body lives forever, do they…old bastard?”

“Men talk,” blurted out the anguished old man. “They always got to be talking about something. It don’t usually mean much, but.…”

Jud lifted out the gun and rested it in his lap, gazing across at the cocinero, and finally Pete Ruff came to old Smith’s aid.

“Hell, tell’em,” he growled.

Whatever Ruff’s reason, it was all the encouragement old Smith needed. He said: “Yeah, I’ve heard all the talk, only nobody done stole her livestock, mister. They run’em down off the mesa out over the desert. They was all branded. Chase wouldn’t take that kind of a chance, so they just got scattered out all over the desert.”

Rufe looked at the range boss and got a bleak nod of confirmation. “That’s true. Maybe they got stole down there. I’ve got no way of knowing because none of us ever went back down looking for’em. But we sure as hell never stole them. The idea was to clean her out.”

“It didn’t work,” stated Rufe.

The range boss shrugged thick, compact shoulders. “So…she was to get burned out,” he explained, then looked bleakly over at Rufe. “Me, I’d have burned her out first, long ago.” He did not look even slightly conscience- stricken as he made this announcement. “It’d be doin’ her a favor. It don’t make one lick of sense for a single woman owning all that good land up there, trying to run a ranch by herself. The best thing that could have happened would have been for her to get forced off the mesa and into a house down in town, where single womenfolk had ought to be.”

Rufe did not argue, did not speak at all when the range boss had finished his challenging statement. His was a very commonplace range-country conviction, and even Rufe did not entirely disagree with it. A place like Cane’s Mesa was not settled, fenced, orderly cow country. It was not a place where a lone woman could have managed, but, hell, it wasn’t up Tomen like Chase and his range boss to decide for Elisabeth Cane. It was her decision.

They reached the flat country, and it was vastly different from the mesa. The ground was flinty, rain-lashed, covered with an endless variety of spindly, wiry underbrush, most of it bearing sharp thorns, and, if this had been broad daylight instead of small hours of late night—or very early morning—it would also have been hot, riding across the desert.

They had no difficulty keeping to the trail. Down here, it was scored by overgrown but clearly discernible wagon ruts, additional reminders that old Amos Cane had pioneered this country, and, as the trail angled through the brush clumps, a sliver of moonlight arrived unexpectedly, which aroused Jud’s interest.

Overhead, those massive, water-laden shapes were breaking up. It could still rain, but apparently a high, savage wind above the clouds was shredding them, forcing them out of their threatening formations, scattering them from the center outward.

It had never smelled like rain to Rufe, but he had refrained from mentioning this to Jud earlier be-cause it was not important. If it had rained, they would have got soaked, and that was about the size of it, but if it did not rain, they would remain dry, which was about the size of that, too.

The hawk-faced half-breed range boss rolled and lit a cigarette, then blew smoke and looked calmly over at Rufe. “You figure to go up against Bull Harris?” he asked with a dry, clinical interest.

Rufe considered his answer a long while before giving it. “Depends on Harris, I expect, and maybe it also depends upon your boss.”

Pete Ruff made a little snorting sound. “Arlen won’t take you on. He don’t have to, mister. Fellers like Arlen Chase hire that kind of work done.”

Rufe studied Pete Ruff. He knew the type, had worked for them in a dozen different territories. They were top-notch range stockmen, beyond that other considerations such as encroachment, crowding others off a range, expanding their grasslands, and orga-nizing the crews and the cow camps were incidental. They did those things, when it fell to them to become so occupied, with an almost offhand pragmatism. Their first and foremost interest was their herds and enough grass for their herds. They were not entirely unprincipled men; they were products of an environment that was never mild, and they became exactly the same way.

Even Ruff’s dispassionate interest in what might occur in Clearwater was consistent with the kind of man he was. Rufe thought privately that it was too bad Elisabeth hadn’t got hold of this range boss before Arlen Chase had hired him on. There was no unyielding antagonism between them. They were too much alike for that. What was different was that they happened to be on opposite sides of the fence.

Up ahead, Jud and Abe Smith were quietly talking about the prospects of the law’s involvement when they got down to Clearwater. Abe was worried half sick, but Abe was an old man, and that probably made him more susceptible to worry But Jud did nothing to mitigate the old cook’s anxiety for an obvious reason; he wanted Abe Smith to talk his head off in front of the law in Clearwater.

Rufe and Pete Ruff slouched along a few yards back, listening, reading their own interpretations into what Jud and Abe were talking about, and said nothing.

Finally, though, when they came out of the desert and walked their horses up onto an arrow-straight north- south hardpan stage road, the range boss said: “You fellers been lucky up to now. That’s all. Chase never figured you’d be as clever as you turned out to be. But you’re still a hell of a long way from getting him, and gettin’ me’n’ Abe into the Clearwater jailhouse don’t amount to much. You boys ain’t even begun to face trouble yet.”

Rufe was half inclined to agree with this, but he would never have conceded as much to Chase’s range boss. All he said in reply was: “Luck sure helps, for a fact, but there’s something else just as valuable.”

“What?” challenged the range boss.

“Surprise,” retorted Rufe, and stood in his stirrups trying to see rooftops downcountry “Chase don’t know us from Adam’s off ox.” He settled back down. “And neither you, nor old bastard up ahead there, are going to be able to help him.”

Ruff said—“The constable’ll tell him.”—and that brought Jud twisting around to stare bleakly at the range boss. Ruff shrugged. “It’s a fact. Arlen Chase is a big pumpkin hereabouts. This is cowman country.”

Jud swung forward without saying a word. They continued down the stage road for slightly more than a mile before Rufe wrinkled his nose at the faint fragrance of wood smoke. It was too early for most folks to be firing up their cook stoves for breakfast, so this aroma had to be left over, in the heavy, motionless night air, from the previous evening’s supper fires.

Nevertheless, they still did not catch sight of the town for some time afterward, a thin little shaft of moonlight not with standing.

A low, warm wind came along from the north, ruffling dust in the roadway and making under-brush sway a little. It smelled dry as old bones to Rufe. He was more confident than ever that it would not rain.

Jud raised an arm. “Town ahead.”

Neither of Chase’s men commented, and all Rufe did was sit straighter in the saddle to see the rooftops and some dark-etched treetops against the faintly iridescent, paling belly of the roiled heavens.

Ruff smashed out his cigarette atop his saddle horn, black eyes sardonically fixed dead ahead upon Clearwater. He did not have to say what he was thinking; his expression did that for him. He did not believe this was the end of anything; he believed it was the beginning. He also believed that two faded-looking top hands who had been purely lucky up until now were shortly going to learn a lesson about bucking a real scheming cowman.

Jud raised his rein hand and growled for Abe to follow, then veered from the roadway while they were still a