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

"I'll cash my chips, mister. Yuh c'n never tell—what a redhead will do."

He was dead. It seemed altogether ridiculous to Lilly until he looked down and saw his own gun in his hand. Why, he never knew he had drawn, never had felt the recoil of firing! He returned it to his holster and in a moment of thoughtfulness extended his arm to full length. It seemed ice-cold; not a tremor moved his fingers.

"Tom Lilly didn't fire that shot," he murmured. "I guess the Lord shorely is providin' protection."

Jill Breck's voice issued from the cabin, high and electrical. "Red—Red, did he touch you?"

Tom was at the door at one stride. "Lord bless you, no. I'm a fool meant for a different end. Why, what's the matter with you?" Rage jumbled his words together. "Did that swine hurt you?"

Her voice was of a sudden faint. For a moment he saw only an outline in the semi-darkness. "No, Red. I'm all right. All right. But he's kept me tied to this bunk most of the time."

His eyes, becoming accustomed to the shadows, saw that she was half sitting, half lying on the bunk. Her feet were loosely tied to the frame and her hands were bound behind her. She could move two or three feet, no more. Lilly got his knife and cut the rope, his hand beginning to tremble. Her arms went around him and he lifted her up as if she were an invalid. It was then his opportunity came and again his guiding angel helped him to do something that he would never have been able to do otherwise. In short, he kissed her, called her "Jill kid!"

Her body quivered. She was saying over and over again, "I thought you'd never come. I knew you would, but it was so long waiting. It was so long waiting!"

Dusk had settled around the 3Cross. Close harmonies emerged from the bunkhouse, that is to say, harmonies as close as the ensembled voices of the happy H-H crew could manage. It had been a full day and a satisfying one; now they reclined on alien bunks, sustained by 3Cross chuck. In the main house Joe Breedlove was playing a close game of checkers with Lancelot Stubbins, his mild eyes holding no greater care than a concern for the next move. Stubbins seemed to have forgotten his own tangled, troubled affairs. Pipe smoke curled high in the room and the mellow light of the fireplace shimmered over the floor. Remington's bighorn looked down from his high perch with a smug, defiant glance of safety.

"Checkers," observed Joe Breedlove, "is a pastime from which due observations regardin' life might be made. Yuh advance, then yuh stop. Mebbe yuh are taken. But yuh don't go back unless yuh reach the king row. Same in a man's life—only they ain't no king row."

"Mr.," said Lancelot Stubbins. "D'ye know, you're a queer cuss."

"It's been told me before," replied Joe, "only in less elegant terms. Don't I hear hawsses?"

He abandoned his game and went to the door. And when he saw Jill and Tom advancing out of the night he began to smile that rare, sweet smile. He saw them dismount and observed the careful manner in which Lilly lifted down the girl. At that he turned back. "Guess JIB will have good management from now on."

The pair came into the room. Tom Lilly walked straight over to Stubbins. "I'll keep my promise, amigo. Yore free as the air. But I'm yore nex' door neighbor from now on and you'll shoot square with the JIB."

"I guess," said Joe, "us boys won't have much more to do in these parts."

"Oh yes, you will," replied Tom. "Yore goin' to conduct a roundup on 3Cross an' ketch JIB critters. Also I'll be needin' a man to go to Powder an', have the sher'ff come out. He'll find Trono in the line rider's cabin."

"Is that all?" asked Joe.

"No, you son o' Satan, it ain't. Yore hired permanent as foreman o' the JIB. I'd like the boys to stay with us, too. We got to run the present crew off the range. Then we got to make a skookum ranch of it. What'd you do with Mr. Stubbins' men?"

Stubbins slammed down the handful of checkers he carried and rose, exploding a brief word. "Ran them to the county line, by Gad!"

"Fair enough."

"Is that all?" persisted Joe, smiling.

Tom Lilly looked to Jill soberly; she had nothing to say. "Well, you can be best man," he replied.

Joe's arm fell across his partner's shoulder. Nothing was said, but a glance passed between the two of them such as only loyal abiding friends would exchange.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

I. Jim Chaffee Takes a Loss

II. A Secret Meeting

III. A Duel of the Arena

IV. The Storm Breaks

V. Jim Gets a Job

VI. Fences Down

VII. Fang and Perfume

VIII. The Tide Goes Out

IX. Disaster

X. Voice of the Pack

XI. The Attack on the Jail

XII. The Jaws of Roaring Horse

XIII. Surrender

XIV. The Beginning of a Tragedy

XV. Turbulence

XVI. The Shadow of Catastrophe

XVII. Jim Chaffee Rides Back

XVIII. The Gods Stand Aside

Table of Contents

When Jim Chaffee walked out of his homestead for the last time in three long years of struggle, it was with his senses sharpened to the pleasantness of the place he was losing. The cabin sat on the south bank of a small creek that crossed the desert diagonally from the white and hooded peaks of Roaring Horse range to the dark, dismally deep slash of Roaring Horse Canyon. Cottonwoods bunched about the log house, the lodgepole corrals, the pole-and-shake barn. The morning's sun, brilliant but without warmth, streamed through the apertures of the trees; the sparkle of frost was to be seen here and there in the shadowed crevices of the creek bank. Standing so, Jim Chaffee could look up along the course of the creek and through the lane of trees to see the distant bench fold and hoist itself some thousands of feet until it met the sheer and glittering glacial spires of the range. A solitary white cloud floated across the serene blue; the broad, yellowing cottonwood leaves bellied gently down around him, and there was the definite threat of winter in the sharp air, reminding Jim of the nights he had spent beside a glowing stove, listening to the blizzard howl around the stout eaves, dreaming his dreams. He could never step inside the cabin again; those three years had gone for nothing.

Before closing the door he ranged the room with a last wistful glance, a last reluctant appraisal of those household gods with which he had lived for so long a time. Everything was neat and clean on this eventful morning; the dishes were washed and stacked in the cupboard, the floor swept, the fire drawn. Nothing was out of place, nothing removed excepting one small article, a bright blue-patterned mush bowl that he carried under an arm. Even the bed was made up. All this he studied, as well as the pictures tacked to the walls—pictures cut from old magazines—and the odds and ends of furniture that he had so laboriously created. He looked at these things gravely, regretfully, and then closed the door, turned the lock, and dropped the key in his pocket. As the lock clicked his lips pressed together and his face settled; from the moment of discovery Jim Chaffee had liked the location above all others. Within its area he felt contented, somehow controlled by the conviction that he had struck roots into the very soil. Nor had he ever gone away from it without turning restless and wishing soon to be back. Three years of himself was in the place; a part of his heart was there.

His horse stood saddled and waiting. Jim swung up and turned out along the trail. A hundred yards away he stopped to look for the last time. The cabin was half hidden in the creek's depression, a faint wisp of smoke spiraled from the chimney; he had seen this picture a thousand times, yet to-day it affected him strangely. For to-day at noon his notes fell due and he hadn't as much as a solid dollar to pay on them. Real property and chattels belonged after that hour to the bank, and he became what he had been in the beginning, an errant cow-puncher with a horse beneath him and the sky above. Nothing more. Three severe winters and a falling market had wiped him out.