Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox - Ultimate Collection - Western Classics & Historical Novels

Lilly turned toward the door. "Consider me as bein' entered, then. I'm here to stay." He walked out, going cautiously down the stairway. There was a matter of supplies to take care of, but these could wait until later in the evening. Right at present he felt inclined to return to Jake Miner's place; he had laid an egg there that by now ought to have hatched something. Poised in the doorway he heard voices floating through the darkness and by and by Theed Trono came into the small reflection of the hotel light. There was another man with him—the tall, horsey-faced type familiar throughout the cattle country. England was stamped all over the long, out-thrust chin and the prominent nose. Only for a moment were they suspended in this yellow beam. Lilly tarried thoughtfully, mind revolving around several pieces of information he had gathered. What he now proposed to do was enter Pilgrim Valley and challenge Theed Trono's attention; Theed Trono, who was a killer foreman walking under the protection of the JIB, and its owner. Men seemed to be reluctant to speak of the owner of this ranch. The roustabout had mentioned his name—it was Jim Breck—casually and with no desire to go on. And the nester had called him an octopus. Fitting title.

"Well, if Breck instigated the shootin' the devil will shorely pay him for it."

With this reflection he advanced on the saloon and pushed through the door and into trouble. Trono was at the bar, his eyes quite hard and bright; when he saw Lilly advancing he put his whisky glass carefully on the bar and thrust his bullet head forward as if wishing a closer view of this new specimen. Once again Lilly was aware of the pervading silence of the expectancy half-veiled in men's eyes. The Englishman, he noticed, had not entered the saloon.

"Amigo, I been hearin' things about yuh."

It was Trono's voice, unpleasant and blunt. Lilly inclined his head, eyes pinned on the burly one. "Always been my policy to declare myself," he admitted. "Whatever you heard about me goes."

"Uhuh. Pass some remark about more'n one bullet flyin?"

"That's correct."

"Ain't you a little previous with them rash words?" growled Trono. He closed the fingers of one hand as if to show Lilly the power that was in his arm. "Usually a gent don't go huntin' fer trouble."

"Fatal error of my education," admitted Lilly.

"It's apt to be fatal, shore enough," said Trono, displeasure growing. "I think I got an apology comin' from you. Gettin' pretty bad when a man can't perform his chores 'thout bein' libelled. I'm listenin'."

"You'll listen a long, long while, hombre," replied Lilly. He had a hard struggle with the flame of outraged anger that blazed up. "To shorten this palaver I will add that I don't like yore methods or yore manners. I hear you don't allow nesters in Pilgrim Valley. Tomorrow mornin' I'll be on my way up there. You'll find me squattin'. Better change yore style, mister, before you try to run me off."

Fighting talk. A cooler head would not have invited trouble in such a way. But Tom Lilly's sympathies were in control and he was willing to force the issue. He saw quite clearly that sooner or later he would clash with this Trono and he was willing that the fight should come and be done with. Trono seemed plunged in deep thought, studying Lilly with a long, deliberate glance. Evidently the swart foreman saw something in his adversary that bade him move carefully. Lilly was no half-broken nester. That gun butt was placed in the careful manner of a man who had experience.

"Well," he muttered, "if yore lookin' fer trouble, they's folks that'll oblige yuh. Personally I'm a peaceable man—" He seemed to feel that he was losing ground, so he finished with a huge roar. "But I'll give yuh twenty-four hours to pull freightl After that I'm shootin' at sight!"

"A large and clear statement," observed Lilly and turned squared around. It was fifteen feet to the door and at each step he expected to hear a warning shout. None came. He reached the street with mingled regret and relief. "I shore played my cards to the limit that time. Joe Breedlove wouldn't scarcely care for such sword-swallowin'."

There was another question in his mind and he re-traced his steps to ask it of the roustabout. "Say, tell me somethin' more about this Jim Breck."

The answer rolled solemnly out of the doorway. "Sooner or later, amigo, he'll cross yore path. An' you won't never fergit it. That's the old Octopus."

The meeting of Lancelot Stubbins and Theed Trono had been very brief and very private. Only by a moment of carelessness had Stubbins permitted himself to be drawn into the patch of light near the hotel. It was here that Lilly had seen the man's English features, and in turn Stubbins had caught a glimpse of the newcomer. The next moment he had pulled Trono into the helter of the shadows, grumbling at his own negligence. "That was foolish. Well, I'll turn into this alley. Trono, I wish you could hustle things a bit."

"Tomorrow night is plenty soon, ain't it?"

"How's Breck now?"

"Seems like he's losin' his grip faster ner usual. He don't get around like he used to a month back."

"His kind goes down all in a pile," observed Stubbins. "I don't believe it'll be long now. Then you and I can do what we want to."

Trono was dubious. "You got to consider the girl, Stubbins. She's a fighter like her daddy."

Stubbins laughed. "Trono, I've got a way with women. Don't let that worry you. It's only old Jim Breck I'm afraid of. He's stung me too many times when I thought he was licked. We can afford to wait. Tomorrow night, then, at the usual place."

"Uhuh," said Trono, started toward the saloon. Stubbins looked back toward the hotel and saw Tom Lilly advancing also upon the saloon. But the stranger made no particular impression on Stubbins, whose mind was filled with other things, and thus preoccupied he slipped between buildings and rode from town.

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"This bein' a bad man is shorely a tough job, fer sooner er later they's bound to come a leetle bit badder man who's honin' to shoot off the tie."—Joe Breedlove.

At false dawn Tom Lilly was away from Powder, heading south toward the Buttes. By sunrise he had crossed the railroad tracks and penetrated a land that boasted neither house nor windmill nor fence. It was strictly cattle country and for the greater part of the morning he traveled across it, marching directly upon the high bluffs and then paralleling them until the road swung sharply upward and passed through a gap into a kind of elevated valley. This, Lilly had discovered from the maps, was Jim's Pass and the only entrance to Pilgrim Valley from the west. He turned his horse up the side of the gap and stopped on a commanding point What he saw caused him to whistle softly and build a cigarette in deep meditation.

The valley, ringed on three sides by the Buttes and merging into a pine forest far to the south, was a self-contained, almost inaccessible land. No such thing as a fence was needed and since it was a great deal higher than the country outside and below the Buttes it drew more moisture and was visited with a cooler air. The buffalo grass, just turning yellow, covered the valley in a solid mat as far as his eyes could reach. It was an astonishing contrast to the dead area stretching west and north. No wonder Jim Breck, the octopus, wanted to keep out interlopers. The sight of it explained a great many things to Tom Lilly and as his eyes wandered out upon the plain below him he recalled stray gossip he had pumped from the reticent roustabout.

That road, for instance, which drifted away before it reached Jim's Pass and vanished into the desert. He had learned that it led to the 3Cross, an outfit owned by an Englishman called Stubbins. Stubbins, the roustabout had cautiously implied, ruled the country outside of Pilgrim Valley and had even tried to penetrate the JIB domain. But old Jim Breck had fought him to a standstill, using the heavy-handed methods common to the country. Ever since they had dwelt side by side in an uneasy attitude of peace; just two gents, the roustabout had indicated, trying to cut each other's throat and alike only in the manner they hazed unwelcome newcomers out of the country.