War on the Cimarron (7 page)

When it burned him he dropped it on the table, and it still flamed. The player next to Corb slapped it out and looked up at Corb and then swiveled his head to see Frank. The others saw him, one by one, and each turned to look at the doorway, and the talking from these five men died.

“Keep your hands on the table,” Frank said gently. “All right, Red. Take their guns.”

Corb's wicked little eyes marked Red as he stepped past Frank. Then he looked at Frank until Red had taken every gun and methodically thrown it through the window into the yard outside.

Corb said then, in a curious impatient voice, “I don't get it.”

“I'm after my corn, Corb.”

“Corn?”

“I tried in Reno, but I reckon I leased my land from the wrong man,” Frank said gently. “Barnes offered me some, but he changed his mind. So I thought I'd borrow from a neighbor. You run horses. You have some.”

Corb's riders quit looking at Frank and turned to regard Corb. He said to Frank, “Take it.”

“I aim to,” Frank murmured. “But I'm no hand at freightin'. Neither is Shibe.”

Corb's attention narrowed. “Rob,” he said, “go harness a team and take the spring wagon.”

One of Corb's riders shoved his chair back and was rising.

Frank said sharply, “Sit down!” and the man sank down in his chair.

Frank went on, watching Corb. “You peddle the corn in this country, Corb. Maybe you better freight it for us too.”

As his words died he heard a door slam somewhere in the rear of the house, and he looked at Red. “Get down,” he said, and he backed against the wall to one side of the door. Red squatted on the floor, hidden from the door by the table.

Every man in the room was watching Frank, waiting to see if this was the time to break. Their faces were hard and angry and wickedly calculating.

The footsteps swung into the hall, and the man called Rob shoved his chair back imperceptibly, gathering his feet under him. Frank smiled derisively then and moved his gun to point directly at him, and the man subsided, his lips moving. The steps were coming down the hall now and were almost at the doorway, and now they were at the doorway when Corb yelled, “Watch out, Steve!”

Almost in the same second the man in the hall must have realized by the attitude of the others that there was someone in the room. He lunged for the hall door to the yard, and at the same moment Red dove headfirst through the window. He landed with a great grunt of expelled breath and immediately shot, and now the men at the table all lunged to their feet and were held there by Frank's gun. Almost into the corner now, Frank listened.

He heard the man dodge back into the hall after Red's shot, and then there was a whisper of cloth scraping plaster. Frank, gun still trained on the players, moved swiftly toward the door along the wall.

The rider lunged into the room, already shooting toward Frank's corner before he was fully into the room. Frank raised his gun and lashed out at the man's head and hit him, and that was the signal for the whole room to explode. The rider nearest Frank leaped for him, but Frank stepped in behind the falling rider, the other man's hands ripping his shirt sleeve. Corb lunged for the side door, and Frank flipped a shot toward him that chipped the doorframe by Corb's head. But Corb went on through, and then Frank wheeled back into the hall doorway and pulled his gun close to his belly. He said in a wild voice, over the racket of the room, “Sit down!” and slashed a man full in the face who was coming toward him. The man went back on his heels, lost his balance, crashed into the flimsy table and took it with him to the floor, and Frank shot once into the ceiling.

Then a kind of uneasy silence settled on the room as these men froze at the sound of the shot. And above the noise Frank heard a savage thrashing in the other room that Corb had gone into. In a moment Corb hurtled through the door, tripped on an overturned chair and sat down abruptly against the wall. His mouth ribboned a faint stream of blood.

Red Shibe loomed in the doorway, licking his knuckles, a gun in his other hand. He had anticipated Corb's move and had gone around to the back door.

The sight of him broke their fight. The downed man came up off the floor, cursing, as Frank took his foot off the man's hand that had been tyring to grab the loose gun. Frank shoved him away, picked up the gun and said to Corb, “Stand up, Corb.”

Corb's black eyes were burning with hatred as he came slowly to his feet. “I'll run you out of the country, Christian,” he said. “I'll burn you out and I'll run you out and then I'll kill you!”

“Step over here,” Frank said.

Corb shuffled over to face him. Frank said, “Tie up the rest, Red, all except one.”

Red shoved a man over beside Corb, and then he sat all the others in chairs, back to back, and with the two ropes tied them all together in their seats.

Then Frank prodded Corb and the other man into the kitchen and picked up the lantern, and they tramped out to the barn. Red took a lantern and the other man and left for the corral. By the lantern light Corb, his spare movements swift and savage, tugged and heaved at the spring wagon until it was near the cornbin in the barn. And under Frank's gun, as Frank leaned against the stall, Corb loaded sacked corn into the wagon.

Presently the other rider, prodded by Red, brought the team into the barn and it was harnessed to the wagon, and then Red and Frank climbed onto the high-piled sacks in the wagon bed and Corb and his rider climbed into the seat.

“Did you drive off their horses?” Frank asked, and when Red nodded Frank gave the word to start. When they were past the house and beyond rifleshot Red kicked the rider off the seat, and Frank moved down beside Corb while Red ducked off into the night for their horses.

Corb was still breathing hard from his exertion, and he did not speak. Frank said pleasantly, “That's the way I like to see a man work,” and still Corb didn't talk.

Presently Red caught up with them, and Frank took his horse, and they sided the wagon through the long night on the trip back to the shack.

It was breaking daylight when they pulled into the shack, and Frank ordered Corb to unload the corn by the corral.

The crew was awake and breakfasted, and they filed out to silently watch Corb's labor. Nobody offered to give a hand. They ringed the wagon, watching Corb's lean spare body sweating away at wrestling the feed sacks. Otey looked once at Frank, and his eyes were somber.

Beach Freeman said presently, “He's done this before. You can tell.”

Corb looked balefully at him, memorizing the face, and Red grinned. “You're dead,” he said to Beach.

Corb's face flushed under the taunt, but he went on with his unloading, working hard and steadily. When the wagon was empty Frank stepped up and said, “How much is it, Corb?”

Corb's eyes were hot with hatred. He said, “It's a favor. I'll expect one from you someday.”

Frank counted out some money and tendered it to Corb, and Corb just looked at him. Frank threw it in the wagon, and Corb regarded him with a level glance.

“Nobody's told you, Christian, but you can't get away with this.”

“You told us last night,” Red drawled. “We did, didn't we?”

Corb stooped to pick up the reins and stood wearily in the wagon bed. He spat contemptuously over the side and then glanced at Frank again. “You made one mistake tonight, Christian.”

“What's that?”

“You should have shot me. Someday you'll be almighty sorry you didn't.”

He cut the team viciously across the rumps with the reins' ends, and they jerked the wagon into motion. Beach Freeman leaped out of the way, cursing, and Corb didn't bother to look at him. He turned the wagon in the yard and headed north again, and there was something magnificent about his anger.

Afterward Otey looked at Frank and then at the corn. He touched a sack with his boot toe. “What you want done with this?” he asked.

“Leave it there,” Frank said. “Before we can feed a sack of it they'll be back for it, and us too.”

Otey regarded him with wry disapproval. “You knew that, Frank. What in hell's got into you?”

“Easy, Otey,” Frank warned.

Otey walked off, and the crew scattered, all except Red. He was leaning against the corral fence, rolling a smoke, not looking at Frank. Frank walked over and squatted beside the corral and waited for Red to say something, and Red didn't.

Frank said quietly, “All right, Red. Go ahead and say it.”

“All right. If I'd known what you aimed to do, I wouldn't have gone with you.”

Frank's lean face colored deeply, and he and Red looked at each other.

“Don't get me wrong,” Red said. “I meant I would have been too damn scared to do it.”

Frank's face relaxed until it almost smiled. He studied the distant creek, his eyes musing, the anger gone. Presently he said, “That was a fool trick.”

“Sure it was,” Red agreed.

“He'll burn us out by sunset.”

“You knew that,” Red said. He wiped a match alight on his levis and drew in a lungful of smoke, and then he said softly, “I know what it does to you, kid. I'm for you, all down the line. Only don't look back. Just stay mad.” He walked away toward the house, and Frank was satisfied. In an obscure way this was the reply to Luvie Barnes.

Chapter VI

Frank had made his rash move, and now he had to cover up as best he could. The remuda got a feed of corn during the morning, while Otey and Red, not speaking to each other, repaired the wagon and loaded it with the rest of the grub. It was impossible to defend the shack now against an attack from either the Circle R or Corb, as they must certainly do within another twenty-four hours. Seven men, trapped in a burning shack, were useless. But seven men able to move, fluid in their attack, elusive in their defense, could fight a long time, and Frank was long since reconciled to that way.

Frank was leaving the house, an armload of abandoned Circle R rifles in his arms, when he looked across the creek. On the downgrade of the opposite slope a line of riders was heading his way. He paused, puzzled at the similarity of most of the riders, and then he knew that this was a platoon of army cavalry troopers in uniform.

He went out to the wagon and had the rifles stowed away when he heard Red say, “We got company.”

They waited by the wagon as the troopers, under a lieutenant, received the order to halt in the yard. With the soldiers was a lone Cheyenne Indian, wearing only a breechclout shirt, and a member of the Indian police, unmistakable in his blue coat with the five-pointed nickel star on the breast of it.

The policeman, a half-breed, dismounted first; and then the lieutenant, who was a pleasant-faced young man in blue uniform with the broad-brimmed black hat of the cavalry, followed.

Frank strolled out toward them, Otey and Red trailing behind.

“Lookin' for feed?” Frank said.

The young lieutenant colored a little. “Are you Frank Christian?” he asked.

Frank nodded and came to a halt some six feet from them.

“Then I'm afraid you're under arrest,” the lieutenant said firmly.

Frank frowned, looking over the faces of the bored troopers who had dismounted at an order, and then regarded the lieutenant.

“Arrest?” Frank echoed blankly. “What for?”

“Whisky peddling,” the half-breed policeman supplied.

The lieutenant removed his gauntlet gloves, tucked them in his belt and shoved his black hat back off his perspiring forehead, avoiding Frank's eye.

“I haven't got a drop of whisky on the place,” Frank said slowly. “How could I peddle it?”

The lieutenant turned to the Cheyenne, who was standing silently by, and beckoned him over.

“Is this the man?” he asked the Indian, indicating Frank.

The Cheyenne nodded and began to speak. The lieutenant looked to the half-breed to translate. Presently the Indian policeman said, “He says that's the man that sold it to him. Yesterday noon, he says. He brought five bottles back to Reno and got drunk on that same whisky.”

Frank said quickly, “He's a liar!”

The lieutenant looked troubled and said to the half-breed, “Where did he buy the whisky?”

More Indian talk.

“Off in the timber, he says. He says big cache back there.”

The lieutenant looked at Frank. “You heard him. Is that right?”

“I didn't sell him any whisky and there's no cache,” Frank said, an edge creeping into his voice.

The lieutenant sighed. “Well, he was sure drunk last night. He shot up a store in Darlington and he had a couple of other bucks drunk with him. We damn near killed them tryin' to get them corralled. Then this Indian told us where he bought it.” He paused. “That's a pretty serious offense, you know.”

“He's lyin',” Frank said.

“We'll look for the cache, if you don't mind,” the lieutenant said firmly. “At least we'll make him prove that part of the story.”

The half-breed said something to the Indian, and the Indian nodded and went back to his horse. The lieutenant said, “Better get a horse, Christian.”

Frank called for Beach Freeman's horse and mounted, and while half the platoon stayed at the shack the other half fell in behind Frank and the lieutenant. The policeman and the Indian were ahead.

Something was queer here, Frank thought narrowly. If the Cheyenne hadn't been so positive in his identification, a man could think that perhaps one of the Circle R hands had been swelling his thirty-a-month wages by a little whisky peddling on the side. But the Cheyenne seemed to think he had his man. Frank waited, wondering.

They went into the live oaks, turned east, traveled a half mile, still in the timber, and where the ground gave way to a little swale holding a tangle of berry thicket the Indian stopped and pointed.

The lieutenant dismounted and gave orders to the troopers to beat the thicket. The first trooper there discovered that the thicket was dead stuff piled there to cover some freshly turned earth. In lieu of a shovel the troopers used their hands to scoop out the dirt, and presently they lifted out a sack half full of whisky bottles. The lieutenant grunted, and when his men pulled up three more full sacks he turned to Frank.