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Show Mm By Ernest haycox & v STOBV SO FAR: As a rancher, , Morsan knows he must flEht rus-C rus-C But he doesn't like the methods cainst them by blR ranchers like Btrendeen. Determined to play a hand rather than a crooked one, l0fPnds the rustler, Olllc Jacks, when l! treed alter his trial for steallns mrenaeen'i catUe. Herendecn prom-to prom-to leave Jacks alone as long as he l!t! try u leave town. Morgan and luolne-vear-old daughter, Janet, eo to Z cemetery where his wife Is burled. lihoush two women, Catherine Grant i Ann McGarrah, are In lovo with " Morgan cannot forcct his wife, who ' rd' hatins him and believing she should married Hcrendcen. On their way back to town they see OUle Jacks ride av So it Is no surprise when Morgan f-arni a little later that Jacks has teen killed. Hcrendeen had kept his jord and no more, jjovr continue with the story. CHAPTER III Clay Morgan ate breakfast by lamplight and was in the saddle before be-fore day crossed the eastern hills. Harry Jump and Cap Vermilye were at roundup in the Haycreek Hills, leaving only Mose, too old for such riding, and the Mexican cook, Pan-cho, Pan-cho, on the ranch. Morgan said to Mose: "I'll probably be back after dark. Put some new crosspieces on the front gate it's coming apart," and set forth southward across his range. At this elevation the night air was sharp enough to bite through his vest and cotton shirt. The big bay horse shot away on a run. Morgan Mor-gan let him have his run. Mogul's rim lay two miles north, f behind him. The ranch house and its corrals and barns sat at the foot ol the rising Mogul Hills, which ran straight south; along the base of these hills, following the ruts of a casual road, Clay Morgan took his way. To his left, a half mile, another an-other string of hills lifted up, so creating the long and narrow valley he followed. This was his range. 3 He sent his deep, blunt call at the shack, "Hey come out here." watched the pale and heatless flame rise. He was across from Clay Morgan; Mor-gan; his eyes searched the crowd. .The edges of his vest fell away from the rounds of his shoulders and the deep stretch of his chest; his bigness big-ness was all in proportion, legs and arms and torso; it was a muscular bigness, a bigness of thick bones. "Lige," he said, "I hear there's a new homesteader come to the spring Jim Spackman used to squat on." "I heard so," said Lige White. "We'll warn him out of there tomorrow," to-morrow," said Herendeen. But when he stopped talking Clay Morgan Mor-gan knew he wasn't finished. Her-endeen's Her-endeen's thoughts were on his face, for everybody to see. "Or maybe we've got some great big soul in this crowd whose heart bleeds for people like that. Seems to be a hell of a lot of charity around here lately." Herendeen pushed his horse oyer the yard, bound away for his ranch. As he followed the net of trails leading upward to the Mogul, Hack Breathitt had no cares and no serious se-rious thoughts. This was a fine, warm day. Ahead of him on the pine-shadowed trail occasional golden gold-en shafts of sunlight slanted through the tree tops. Here and there a swirl of dust showed where an antelope an-telope had been a moment before. The silence was thick and held its rank scent of resin; and at intervals Hack sang incomplete bits of such songs as he knew, the sound of that going out around him in widening waves. Dusk caught him in this rough land, still without any thought of direction; at full dark he turned a bend of the trail and saw firelight pulse against the side of a near-by ravine. The fire, he found, was at the base of a bare rock wall running up the side of Mogul. There wasn't anybody any-body within the range of firelight, but Hack reined in and held his seat, knowing that somebody had stepped into the shadows and was watching him. A moment later Pete Borders came forward. "You make enough racket to raise the dead, Hack. Pull off your saddle if you ain't goin' any place." Hack said, indolently amused: "Now where would I be goin'?" He stepped to the ground and relieved the horse of its gear. He watered it, put it out on picket; he had his own frying pan and coffeepot and presently was crouched at the fire with Borders. Borders said: "Nothin' new?" "A man," reflected Breathitt, "that never goes any place never hears anything." He tossed a fresh stick into the fire, the flare of it heightening the rusty shine of his hair. He had a dry, smart face; double wrinkles crossed his forehead. His eyes, on the edge of being green, were narrow-bright. He had been watching the livid heart of the flame, but his head rose and his eyes stared into the surrounding darkness. He was a tight, close-listening shape; and presently he rose and stepped into the shadows. Somebody rode along the near-by trail slowly, and stopped. Hack Breathitt held his position, too clear of conscience to move. He poised the cigarette between his fingers, hearing the rider poke up the ravine. The rider said, "Just me just old Parr Gentry lookin' for horses." He came to the fire, this owner of the livery stable in War Pass. He rolled in the saddle, staring down at Hack Breathitt a long moment before be-fore recognizing him. "Why, hello, Hack. Didn't know I'd find you on this side of the Mogul. Thought you Morgan swayed forward to lift a burning sage stem from the fire; its oil-bright glow flickered against his cheeks, against his eyes. This silence held its waiting and its reserve. re-serve. Morgan tossed the sage stem back into the fire, drawing a sharp glance from Charley Hillhouse. Lige White uncomfortably crossed his feet. Gurd Grant crouched by the blaze and revealed nothing on his scrupulously neutral face. Morgan relaxed gently on his shoulder blades and pillowed his head against the saddle. He said nothing but he saw the changing expression on Herendeen' Her-endeen' s cheeks. Herendeen had braced himself for trouble, he had maneuvered this talk around to make a break; but nothing happened hap-pened and he stood a moment, uncertain un-certain and displeased, and afterwards after-wards walked away. Instead of turning west to his own ranch, Herendeen traveled due south toward a low range of hills which separated Running W from Three Pines. An hour's ride brought him within sight of a far-shining light, which was the mark of a homesteader's home-steader's cabin against the hills; but when he came upon the homesteader's homestead-er's cabin, drifting into the heavy shadows at the base of these hills, a dog began to bark and suddenly the light died. He reined in before the cabin, feeling his contempt for the evident fear which had caused the homesteader to kill the light. They were all alike, these homesteaders, little men crawling as near the range as they dared, sticking their plows into the unplowed soil and slowly starving while the sun burnt up their crops and ruined the land ever afterward for graze. He could not tolerate this breed, or their sun-blackened sun-blackened wives, or their tow-headed children. H sent his deep, blunt call at emerging slowly from the ink-gray twilight. When first sunlight burst across the eastern peaks Morgan was six miles down the valley and at the end of his own range. A , I, small ridge lay in front of him; at ' the summit he reined in to have his J look at the round bowl of Government Govern-ment Valley. Ducking in and out of the small ravines of the land he came upon cattle and young stuff occasionally grazing, herding these before him and throwing them back toward the roundup crew. Three men were working this section Charley Hill-house Hill-house and two other Three Pines hands. He drove his small collection collec-tion of beef into the held bunch and started on another circle, Hillhouse accompanying him. Around ten o'clock, having dragged the north end of the range, all of them start-; ed the held bunch back for the main roundup. The sun was a copper-red flare in the middle sky and the dust began to thicken behind the herd. Morgan dropped back to the drag, throwing his neckpiece over his nose. Charley Hillhouse motioned one of the other men to take his place and joined Morgan and made his first speech in two hours. A "I been thinkin' over last night, ' 1 Clay. Hard to figure." ; "Let it slide, Charley." i Charley Hillhouse retorted, "It ; won't slide," and stared before him. I He was a compact, capable man, ; not given to much talk; the type to ', worry a lot of things around in his head, to reach his own answers and I '"Id his own conclusions. I Herendeen and his men cleared the i Haycreek Hills of the last straggling , stock; Gurd Grant cleaned up the ; ed6e of the Potholes and came in. 1, I Kunning W had scoured F-anolango 1 f Pass, and at twilight this day the I job was done, the brands segregat-I segregat-I ed and held in separate herds. Aft-? Aft-? n supper Morgan started Harry I Jump back to the Mogul range with the Long Seven beef, and the Crow-42 Crow-42 foot and Running W cuts went away, " lumbering shadows in the moon- light, the scrape of feet and the I click of those long horns and the Plaintive "Baw" of the last calf rid-, rid-, ing back through the night-still air. A Dust and heat were gone and the )' campflre's flame, so still was this , tapered upward to blue-yellow, almost stationary point. Charley Hillhouse, who was wagon boss, said: "We'll move over and work fie Antelope Plains tomorrow." The cook swore around the shad-f shad-f harnessing his team. After-j After-j wards the mess wagon went bump-I bump-I g away on its four-hour ride, to ' M ready on the Antelope Plains by daybreak. Lying on his blanket, "cad athwart the seat of his saddle, Uajr Morgan listened to the dry Poaning of the wagon wheels faded 'Mo this enormous night. He rolled a cigarette and savored its keen scll. Stars crowded the sky; they washed . that limitless sweep of Mack with a diamond-glitter, all wn to the black horizon's edge, "pUl they seemed to fall below the f'ra of flat world. Here and there tS k P'ne summits coyotes began 1. up their mourning plaint. "'' house and Clay Morgan and Lige , wte sat by the fire, their cheeks i an ' tacilurnly graved by light ketVi ows: and men lay blan- '' rfl J" background, weary and ! th nu and cradled by their inward w"1.!.' Herenieen walked forward J bov. ,tShad0ws t0 stand hiS" ton.. sprawled group. He a i 8age ,tem intn flre anrj I the shack. "Hey come out here." They were talking, inside. A boy's voice said, "Pa, don't go." A woman was talking, quickly and with suppressed sup-pressed excitement. The door squealed open and somebody stood in its black square, speechless. "What you doing here?" demanded demand-ed Herendeen. "This place is on Lige White's range. We drove Jim Spackman away from it last year." "You Lige White?" said a man in a dim, drawn tone. , "What the hell is that to you? My name's Herendeen and I asked you a question." "Oh," said the man. "I'm Jack Gale. ' I bought Jim Spackman's rights to this place." "He never had any rights to sell. "He built the house, Mr. Herendeen Heren-deen " Then the man added, quietly quiet-ly "It's free land, ain't it? I understood under-stood it was. I also understood Mr. White wouldn't mind." Herendeen was nettled by the argument ar-gument "You damned nesters are all alike, trying to stand on this free-land free-land business. You stick your plow into it and ruin it, and starve to death and steal cattle to keep your kids alive, and move away. We're not in the game of providin' meat to nesters." . Gale's wife called from the interior in-terior of the house. "Jack, come in here Come in." Herendeen heard her run over the floor. She caught hold of her husband and these two were gently wrestling around the doorway with Gale saying Now Allie. stop it-stop it." But she nulled him inside and slammed the i door. A child, very young began to cry thln- slartled rhy liked the other side best." "Any side's all right," drawled Breathitt. Parr Gentry shifted his weight again, a little heavy to find comfort in his saddle. His face, by firelight, was round and solid-fleshed and darkly dull. His eyes rummaged this little clearing and saw Pete Borders' Bor-ders' saddle and blanket on the far edge of the fire and the two horses picketed near the spring. Breathitt realized Gentry knew Borders' horse. He held his silence, he took a long drag on the cigarette. "Late for you, ain't it, Parr?" "Been draggin' this section all day lookin' for horses. You seen a band around here?" "Wild ones? They'd be clear to the top of Mogul in this weather." "Lookin' for tracks," murmured Gentry. "Thought they might come down for water. Well, I'll be goin'. Long way to War Pass." He wheeled about, groaning softly as he went away. Pete Borders stepped into the light His face showed its smart disbelief. "He's ben chasin' horses long enough to know they ain't down here. And he wasn't pointed for War Pass when he left, either." Afterwards Aft-erwards he added: "Didn't want to show myself. Won't do you any good to be seen campin' with me. old boy." "He saw your horse." Borders shook his head. He settled set-tled in his blanket, just beyond the light; the fire died away and a small breeze rolled down the face of Mogul. (TO BE CONTINUED) |