New Folks' Home : And Other Stories

Chapter One Fighting Odds—Three to One

Charley Cornish read trouble in the grim faces of the trio as they came slowly towards him. Bracing his back against the bar, he knew the thing he’d fought against had come, the thing he’d run a race with time against had happened. Here was the fate of Anderson out on the Yellowstone and the end of Melvin in the Bighorn foothills—the thing that had whisked those two into an eternity of silence was walking toward him in the tramping boots and the hard, set faces. Steve knew this was the showdown.

And just when he was on the verge of sending in an order that would make old man Jacobs’ eyes pop out of the dried-up skull that was his face.

Cornish’s eyes flicked swiftly to one side, saw the bottle standing on the bar. He knew that he could reach it with one swift motion if need be. But he hoped he wouldn’t be forced to such action.

The three stopped in front of him and stood silently, menacing shapes looming in the saloon’s twilight shadow, and behind him Cornish heard the wheezing breath of Steve, the bartender.

The tall, raw-boned giant in front was Titus, foreman of the Tumbling K.

And the scowling man must be Squint Douglas, who went everywhere with Titus. But the third man, with the flaming mop of red hair writhing from beneath his pushed back hat, was a total stranger.

“You’re Cornish?” asked Titus.

Cornish nodded.

“You sell barb wire?” asked Titus.

Cornish forced a grin upon his lips. “You gents in the market? No better wire to be had anywhere.”

Titus interrupted him. “We don’t like barb wire,” he said.

“Now,” said Cornish, smoothly, “that’s a matter of opinion. Boys over on Cottonwood creek figure it is just the thing.”

“I told you,” snarled Titus, “that we don’t like no kind of wire.”

Cornish sucked in his breath. “Well, gents, that’s just too bad!”

His hand shot out for the bottle as Titus took the first step forward, swung it high above his head as Titus took the second. It whistled in the air as the angular foreman closed in on him, struck as groping fingers touched his shirt, struck and exploded with a dull, thudding sound, spraying broken glass and a spume of whiskey.

Titus slumped against Cornish’s knees, then slid to the floor.

Squint Douglas was coming in, a charging bull, with his face twisted into a mask of mingled anger and surprise. Behind him was the red-haired man, open mouth bawling something that failed to penetrate the roaring thunder of excitement that surged through Cornish’s mind.

Squint’s fist was a black ball aiming at his face and almost unconsciously Cornish swung up with his right hand to fend it off—a hand still clutching the broken whiskey bottle. Squint screamed as the jagged glass scraped across his face. He staggered backward blood streaming down his beard.

Cornish hurled the broken bottle at the red-haired man. The bottle slammed against the wall and smashed like a hundred tinkling bells all ringing at once.

Cornish picked up a chair and waited. Squint was crawling along the floor, whimpering. Blood ran down his beard and ripped onto the sawdust. The red-haired man was fumbling at his belt, fumbling in haste, his eyes smoky with fear and hatred.

“Give it here,” snapped a voice and Cornish flicked his eyes toward the bar.

Steve, the bartender, leaned across it and in his hand he held a heavy six-gun that pointed straight at the red-haired man.

“Toss it to me,” said Steve, “and take it easy when you do it. You hombres can wrestle around all that you’ve a mind to, but it just ain’t fair to be using guns.”

The red-haired man growled at him. “Keep out of this, Steve.”

“The hell I will,” said Steve. “Three to one is bad enough without dragging out your irons.”

Cornish poised the chair, watching the man’s gun slide out, watching the cunning fox look that slid across his face.

Slowly the gun came out, rasping on the leather, inch by inch. Then the man’s arm jerked swiftly and Cornish stepped toward him, with the chair above his head. The gun exploded in a coughing gush of flame and the chair was coming down. It smashed and splintered against the flesh and bone beneath it. One leg came off and spun along the floor, kicking up a spray of sawdust. A rung came loose and clattered to the boards.

Cornish stepped back, with the wreckage of the chair dangling in his hands. The red-haired man reeled to his feet, stood unsteadily, rocking on his heels. Cornish stepped in, swung the chair again. The man dropped like a pole-axed ox.

Cornish stopped, picked up the gun and tossed it across the bar to Steve.

Squint clawed his way erect beside the bar, stood clinging to it with one hand, while he wiped the blood out of his eyes with the other.

“Why the hell,” demanded Steve, “don’t you go ahead and finish off the dirty coyotes? They came in asking for it.”

Cornish shook his head.

“Guess they had enough.”

But even as he spoke, he saw Squint’s hand streaking for the holster, saw the glint of metal flashing in the light.

Cornish flung the battered chair with all his might, then lunged to one side. The gun roared and a window crashed with a muted sound as the bullet smashed the glass.

The chair slammed into Squint and staggered him, sent him reeling back along the bar. Cornish dived, arms looping for the legs of the reeling man. One arm missed, but the other caught and he hugged the legs against his chest, carried the yelling Squint to the floor with him.

Quickly Cornish sprang to his feet. He saw his antagonist rising in front of him. Blued steel flashed in a vicious arc and Cornish ducked, caught the blow of the smashing six-gun on his shoulder, swung his right with the hunched power of a pivoting heel behind it. His fist scraped Squint’s elbow, angled down against the ribs, skidded across them, slammed into the stomach. He heard the whoosh of the breath going out of the man before him.

Cornish leaned against the bar, gasping for breath.

The doorway, he saw, was crowded with watching faces, while others peered through the windows, men pushing one another to get a better look. News of the fight in the Longhorn bar apparently had spread rapidly through the little town of Silver Bow.

Titus had crawled against the bar and propped himself against it. The red-haired man lay still in the center of the room.

Squatted on top of the bar, Steve was talking to Titus.

“Make one move for that gun, Titus, and I’ll put one through your brisket.”

The bartender blew fiercely through his nostrils.

“This fight,” he announced to the crowd, “has been fair so far and I’m plumb set on seeing that it keeps on being fair.”

Cornish pushed himself away from the bar, picked up another chair, spoke to Squint Douglas.

“I don’t just fight for fun,” he said. “Don’t fight often, but when I do, I fight for keeps. What’s your pleasure, Squint?”

Squint stared sourly at him, dabbing at his bloody beard.

He didn’t answer Cornish, spoke to Titus instead. “Let’s get going, Jim.”

Slowly Titus heaved himself erect, stooped to pick up his hat. He socked it on his head and tottered to the door.

“Maybe,” suggested Steve, “some of you gents would get Red out of here. He clutters up the place.”

Two volunteers came in, lifted the unconscious man and carried him out. The others streamed into the saloon.

Steve hopped off the bar, stood back of it.

“Drinks are on the house,” he said.

Slowly, Cornish swung around, walked to a card table in the back of the room, sat down on a chair. Suddenly he felt tired.

The thing that he feared had come and he’d won the first round, but this, he knew, was no more than a mere beginning. After this the Tumbling K would be out for blood. The trio who had walked in the door a while ago had meant to rough him up, to scare him out of town. Next time they would play for keeps.

Maybe Anderson out in the Yellowstone country had won the first round, too. But Anderson had disappeared. Back in Jacobs’ office, there was little doubt as to what had finally happened.

Most of the crowd had drifted away—only a few had gone up to the bar. Even one on the house had been no attraction when staying there and drinking might have been construed as approval of what had happened to the three men from the Tumbling K.

Got the town in the hollow of their hand, thought Cornish bitterly. One big cow outfit rules the whole damn country. Even those nesters out on the Cottonwood had been scared to death. It had taken some fast talking to make them even admit that they wanted barb wire.

One man came slowly from the bar, drink in hand, crossed the room and stood in front of Cornish’s table.

“You don’t scare easy, son,” he said.

“Hell, no,” said Cornish, shortly. “There were only three of them.”

The man turned around and went back to the bar.

One by one they drifted away and the room was empty.

Steve came out from behind the bar and sat down across from Cornish.

“You stuck out your neck,” said Cornish. “You shouldn’t have done that, using the gun on them.”

Steven laughed a little bitterly.

“I’m sick of the job, anyhow,” he said. “Time to be moving on.”

He drummed his fingers along the table.

“First time anyone stood up to the Tumbling K,” he said. “First time anyone ever pushed them around a little. They won’t like it, Charley. They’ll come loaded for bear next time. You better buckle on a gun.”

Cornish shook his head. “My job is selling wire,” he said. “Not fighting. Besides, I won’t be around long. The nesters are having a meeting tonight at Russell’s.”

“To decide whether they’ll buy the wire or not?”

“That’s the idea. And they better buy it, or they won’t be here next year. Without the wire, the Tumbling K will push their stock down into the valley and every nester will be starved out.”

The bartender shook his head. “There’ll be fresh blood on the wire,” he said slowly.

Cornish got up, walked to the bar and came back with a bottle and two glasses.

“Feel like I need that one on the house,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have offered it to them,” Steve declared, moodily. “Look at the ones that turned it down. Spooked of their own shadows, that’s what’s the matter with them. The Tumbling K gang has run this town too long. Every one of them jumps ten feet high whenever Titus snaps the whip.”

“Titus just the foreman, ain’t he?”

“That’s everything he is,” said Steve. “Fellow by the name of Armstrong, Cornelius Armstrong, owns the spread. Ain’t here except a week or two each summer. Lives somewhere in the east.”

“Titus just as good as owns it, then, so far as running it is concerned.”

Steve gulped his drink and nodded. “That’s the way it is, Charley. And he’d cut his own grandma’s throat if it put ten dollars in his pocket.”

Cornish downed his own drink and got up.

“I owe you for one chair,” he said.

“Ah, forget it,” snapped Steve.

He twirled the glass in his hand, considering. “It was worth a chair,” he decided, “to see them three bullies get the hell beat out of them.”

Chapter Two Hanging by Moonlight

The campfire glowed brightly in the dusk, a speck that stood out like a too-low star in the gentle swells of the heaving prairie.

Cornish saw it first when he was a mile or two away, lost it when the trail dipped down into a swale. And he wondered who would be building a campfire out there when town was so close and darkness was just falling.

The dusk was deeper and the fire glowed brighter when he topped the next swell, and riding across the level land, he saw the canted top of the small covered wagon that stood beside the fire—the covered wagon with the canvas gleaming rosy-white in the reflection of the leaping flames, the scraggy shape of two old crowbaits grazing at their picket pins, the hunched, black figure of a man with a tattered hat bending over the frying pan and coffee pot.

The man hailed him as he drew opposite the fire. Cornish swung the horse off the trail, trotted it toward the wagon.

The man straightened up beside the fire and Cornish saw that he was as much a crowbait as the horses. His clothes were little more than rags that hung about his scrawny frame, his hat was something that any other man would have thrown away many years before. The haggardness of his face showed through the ragged, unkempt beard that hung almost to his chest.

“Good evening,” said Cornish.

“The peace of the Lord be on you,” the scarecrow replied.

Startled, Cornish sat in the saddle, staring at the man.

“A preacher?” he asked.

“That’s right, my friend. I carry the Word to strange corners of the earth.”

“Nothing strange about this corner of the earth,” protested Cornish.

“Any place that has not heard the Word is strange,” the old man told him. “This Silver Bow, now, it has no church?”

Cornish shook his head. “I don’t believe it has. Five saloons, but not a single church.”

“And no man of God?”

“That’s right,” said Cornish. “Not a single preacher.”

“Then,” declared the scarecrow, “it is the place for me.”

“What denomination?” asked Cornish.

The old man made a gesture that was almost contempt. “I just heard the call and went. I said to myself, if old Joe Wicks can do anything that will please the Lord, he’ll bust a gut a-trying.”

Loco, thought Cornish. Loco as a pet coon.

“And you, my friend,” the old man asked. “What might be your calling?”

“Me?” said Cornish. “I’m just a barb wire salesman.”

“You’ll be riding back this way?”

Cornish nodded.

“Going to a meeting down in Cottonwood valley. Make me or break me.”

“Wonder would you do something for me,” asked the preacher.

“If I can, I will,” said Cornish.

“Keep an eye peeled for a little bucket, will you? Must of bounced out of the wagon. Looked all over and I can’t find it. Used it to cook my oatmeal in.”

“Sure will.”

“Wouldn’t want to step down and have a cup of coffee?”

“Can’t stop,” said Cornish.

He reined the horse around. Back on the trail, he looked behind him, saw the ragged old man standing outlined against the fire, with one arm raised in farewell.

Cornish kept watch for the bucket that had fallen from the wagon, but his thoughts were on other thing, were running along the trail ahead of him to the meeting down at Russell’s cabin, where the nesters of Cottonwood valley would decide whether or not they would buy the wire to fence in their valley against the ranging herds of the Tumbling K.

Swiftly Cornish ran over in his mind the men he could depend on. Billings and Hobbs and probably Goodman. Russell was for it, but not as enthusiastic as he might be. Old Bert Hays was against it because he said it would only stir up trouble with the Tumbling K. And a lot of the men would listen to what Bert had to say.

Molly might have helped, but she wouldn’t listen to him, Cornish thought. She had a way with Bert. Orneriest man in the whole dang valley, his neighbors said of Bert, but that gal of his’n can twist him around her finger.

Selling wire was tough work—and dangerous, at least out here where the big cattle outfits regarded wire as the devil’s doings, looked upon it as something that barred the way to watering places, cut off pasturage they had called their own by the right of usage. Wire was the thing that would doom free range and the cattlemen weren’t having any of it when they could do anything about it.

Sometimes they did unpleasant things, thought Cornish. Unpleasant things had happened to Anderson and Melvin. And not only them alone, but other barb wire men who had run up against the antagonism of the cattle barons.

The horse trotted down a slope and Cornish heard the sound of trickling water—a little unnamed stream that ran into the Cottonwood five miles or so below.

The trail leveled off and ran beside the stream. Bunches of cottonwoods loomed up, their bushy tops black against the stars. The horse’s hoofs clopped through the trail dust with a muffled, drumming thud. On the hills above a coyote yapped and far off an owl chuckled over some quiet joke.

A dark shape moved beside a cottonwood and Cornish pulled the horse to a halt, half swung across the trail.

“Make a move,” said a voice from the shadow, “and I’ll plug you sure as hell.”

For a moment dark panic swirled inside Cornish’s brain, then smoothed out. No use of running. No use of trying to fight back, for he had no gun. Just wait and see what happened.

Horses moved from beneath the cottonwood and blocked the trail. Metal gleamed in the starlight and the men were black shapes watching him.

“Going to a meeting?” one of them asked and Cornish, remembering the voice back in the saloon, recognizing the angular shadow that sat upon the horse, knew that it was Titus. The other two riders sat silently.

Titus chuckled viciously. “There ain’t going to be no meeting, Cornish.”

“Nice of you,” said Cornish, “to ride out and tell me.”

“You’re too damn smart,” snarled Titus. “We’ll take that out of you.”

“With a rope,” said one of the other men as he moved behind Cornish and forced his hands behind his back.

“Steady,” snapped Titus. “Stay right where you are.”

His gun made a threatening motion.

The ropes bit into Cornish’s wrists, bit and burned with the savage strength of the man who pulled them tight and tied them.

“Titus,” said Cornish, half in a whisper.

“Yes,” said Titus, “but it won’t do you any good to squall. We’re going to haul you up and leave you hanging there. You can crawl all you want to and it won’t help you none.”

Cornish fought for calmness, made his tongue move in a mouth that suddenly was dry as cotton.

“You can hang me,” he said, “and a dozen others like me, Titus, but you won’t stop the wire. It’s coming, sure as God made green apples, it’s coming out into this country to hold your cows where they belong. It’s going to mark the land that’s yours and the land that’s the other fellow’s and when it comes guns won’t be worth a damn against it.”

A harsh, biting loop was flung out of the darkness behind him, brushed his face and settled on his shoulders.

“You talk too much,” rasped Titus savagely.

The rope jerked tight and for a single instant Cornish felt the blind rush of overwhelming fear. His muscles tensed and his feet moved swiftly, but the gun that Titus held jammed itself into his belly and he stopped, stood rigid—rigid with a night-born terror talking in the wind-rustling of the cottonwood above him, in the murmur of the creek that hurried down its stream bed.

He clamped his teeth and felt the muscles of his jaws go stiff. He wouldn’t talk, he wouldn’t beg or whine. That was what these men wanted—a show before they hanged him. A little laughter before they strung him up.

The rope jerked tight again for an instant, eased up for a second and then tightened into a steady pull that was tugging at his body. They had thrown the rope over the lowest limb of the cottonwood, he knew, and were holding it taut.

A voice asked. “Shall we let ‘er rip?”

Titus holstered his gun. “Swing him up,” he said.

The rope tightened with a savage yank and Cornish tried to cry out as a band of fire burned around his throat, as his neck and shoulder muscles screamed with wrenching pain—but his tongue was leaden and there was no breath to yell with and the world was spinning in a giddy dance of stars and tree tops.

His unbound feet danced on empty air and he strained for an instant to tear his hands free of the rope that held them, his body twitching and quivering, mind fighting against the strangling black mist that rolled in from the stars. His lungs burned and his mouth gulped air that could not reach the lungs.

The mists of darkness rolled in wispily and clung to him and seeped into his mind, so that his thoughts were dull and he knew that his body was twirling slowly on the rope that held it off the ground.

The stars blinked out and the wind in the cottonwood was a roaring sound that thundered in his brain—a roaring sound that suddenly was staccato, like a series of explosions.

The ground came up and hit him and the rope loosened about his neck and his starving lungs drew in great gulps of air. Slobbering, whimpering, dazed, he crawled along the ground, hitching himself along like a twisting snake, one thought only in his mind—to get away from the tree that had held the rope.

The moaning of the wind in the cottonwoods came back and his eyes came open. He flopped over on his back and saw the stars burning in the sky, burning with an impish, flickering light that made a glittering dance.

A footstep crunched nearby and he tried to crawl, but he was too tired.

A voice said: “Where are you, Charley? Where the hell have you gone to?”

Cornish sat bolt upright and croaked, his battered throat refusing to form words.

The man moved through the night, scuffing through the grass, his figure looming darkly.

“Steve!” croaked Cornish.

The bartender knelt down, loosened the rope, flung it over Cornish’s head.

“Nicked one of the dirty sons,” he said, “but they got away.”

“That was you shooting, then,” squeaked Cornish. “Heard something that sounded like shots just before they dropped me.”

Steve’s knife sawed through the ropes that bound Cornish’s hands.

“Yeah,” said Steve, “I quit the job. Figured I might as well. Tumbling K boys would be out after my hide for what I done this afternoon.”

Cornish massaged his throat, trying to work out the burn and fever where the rope had been.

“Manage it down to the creek?” asked Steve. “Drink of water would do you good.”

“Got to get down to the Cottonwood,” said Cornish. “Something’s happened down there. Titus said there wasn’t going to be a meeting.”

“Seems you should have had enough for one night,” protested Steve, “without asking for any more.”

“They got me sore,” Cornish explained. “They tried to rough me up and they tried to hang me. Now there’re trying to mess up my wire deal.”

“O.K.,” agreed Steve. “O.K., I’ll let you have my horse to get down there and lend you a gun. And you use that gun—don’t hold back a minute if you get backed into a tight.”

Cornish rose shakily to his feet. “Guess you’re right, Steve. About time to start using a gun.”

He headed for the creek. “I’ll get that drink,” he said.

The bartender’s horse was waiting when he came back to the trail.

“Here’s the gun,” said Steve. “Buckle it around you and keep it handy.”

“Guess I owe you some thanks,” said Cornish.

“Not a one,” protested Steve. “Glad of the fun. Figured I’d better trail along behind you just to sort of check up. Them human rattlers out at the Tumbling K are liable to do most anything. Can’t trust them for a minute.”

Cornish swung into the saddle, headed down the trail. His throat still burned with a throbbing ache and it was a torture to turn his head. His brain still buzzed with a keening pain and his mouth was dry as the bitter dust that lay along the trail.

But within him a rage was growing—a cold and twisted rage against the Tumbling K, against Titus, against the old system of free range that said a man could keep all the land he could seize and hold.

Once wire fenced in the valley of the Cottonwood, the Tumbling K would be barred from the pasture and the water its herds had used for more than twenty years. Used by custom rather than by right, by six-gun power rather than by legal status.

The nesters hadn’t bothered them so much at first, for the punchers still threw the herds down into the valley despite the scattered cabins, bluffing their way in and out with the six-guns they packed. But the wire would make if different. Wire was a definite thing, a deadline, a sign of legal possession—something that marked off one man’s land from another man’s.

The trail broke free of the shaggy hills, came out into the wide valley of the Cottonwood, forked north and south. Cornish took the south fork.

A mile beyond he drew up before the huddled group of buildings that belonged to old Bert Hays. The place was silent and lightless.

A dog came tearing out of the barn, barking savagely. It reached Cornish’s horse and circled it, yapping viciously.

The cabin door slammed open and a man with a rifle stepped out—a man barefooted and clad only in his underwear.

“Hello, Bert,” yelled Cornish to make himself heard above the barking of the dog.

The gun muzzle, trained at his head, never wavered.

“So it’s you,” spat Hays. “Come down to raise some more hell in the valley.”

“Come down to see what happened,” declared Cornish. “Understand the meeting was called off.”

Hays yelled at the dog. “Shut up! Shut up before I take a club to you!”

The dog fell silent, trotted off, tail between its legs, sat down to watch from a safe distance.

Hays spat into the dust. “Yeah, it was called off.”

“Called off by the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.

“Don’t matter who called it off,” the nester bellowed. “None of your damn business who called it off. It’s been called off. We don’t want no wire. That’s all you need to know.”

Cornish leaned forward in his saddle. “They bluffed you out. They threatened you and you folded up. Every last one of you put your tail between your legs and crawled.”

The old man hauled back the hammer of the rifle. “Cornish,” he warned, “I’ve shot men for less than that.”

“You should have started on the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.

“All you care about is selling wire,” yelled Hays. “You don’t care what happens after that. You don’t care how many men get shot across that wire after you have sold it.”

“They sent three men to run me out of town this afternoon,” said Cornish, hotly, “and I ran them out instead. They just tried hanging me and that didn’t work either. You’re not the only one taking the risk in this deal of ours.”

“We’re the ones that got to go on living here,” yelled Hays. “We’re the ones that have to protect that wire after it is up. We decided we’d rather live at peace without no wire.”

“Live at peace!” Cornish shouted. “Man, don’t you know there’ll never be any peace along the Cottonwood until you call the Tumbling K—call them and make it stick. As long as you have the grass and water that they want, wire or no wire, you’ll never have any peace. You’re going to have to fight and you may as well fight over wire as anything else.”

“Get out of here,” screamed Hays. “Get out of here before I put a bullet in you!”

A swift figure stepped from the cabin door, reached out a hand, wrenched the rifle away from Hays with one quick motion.

Cornish lifted his hat. “Good evening, Miss Hays,” he said.

Her face was a white blur in the starlight, but he could tell from the poise of her body, the tilt of her head, that she was angry.

Her words bit like the swift lash of a snarling whip.

“I’m ashamed of you,” she said. “Ashamed of the both of you. Two grown men, standing here, yelling at one another like two alley cats.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” said Cornish.

“By God, I’m not,” Hays bellowed. “He can’t come riding in in the middle of the night and tell me my own business. He can’t make me buy his fence if I don’t want to buy it. He don’t care a hang about what happens after the fence is sold …”

“Father,” yelled Molly Hays. “Father you be still!”

The old man suddenly fell silent. The dog sat watching, ears cocked forward.

“You better go,” Molly said to Cornish. “All the others feel the same way my father does. The only way to keep the peace along the Cottonwood is to get along without your wire.”

“Jim Titus decided that for you,” Cornish told her, bitterly.

Her chin lifted. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Cornish, how we decided it.”

There was, he saw, no more to say, nothing more to do.

He lifted his hat again.

“Good evening,” he said and swung the horse away, riding toward the trail.

Chapter Three You’ve Got to Shoot to Live!

The campfire beside the covered wagon of the traveling preacher was a beacon in the night and Cornish pushed his horse toward it, for the first time realizing that he was ravenously hungry, utterly fagged and filled with a thousand aches and pains.

Pulling up his horse, he wearily got down from the saddle. There were two men sitting in front of the blaze. One of them got up and walked toward him. It was Steve, the bartender.

“How did it go?” asked Steve.

Cornish shook his head. “The whole mess is in the fire. The Tumbling K has the nesters scared silly. They wouldn’t touch any wire with a ten foot pole.”

To his nostrils came the aroma of cooking coffee; he saw the battered, blackened pot keeping warm beside the coals. Joe Wicks was already slicing bacon into a pan.

“We sort of sat up for you,” Steve explained. “We figured you’d be coming back this way.”

“I wondered where you were,” said Cornish.

“Saw the fire when I went past the first time,” said Steve. “So when you took my horse I just hustled back here. Good a place to wait as any.”

Wearily, Cornish sat down before the fire.

“Find my bucket?” asked Joe Wicks.

Cornish shook his head. “Not a sign of it.”

He stared into the fire, felt the cold night wind blowing on his back.

Licked, he thought. Licked before I hardly got a start. Tumbling K just waited to see if I could get the nesters interested and then they gummed up the works. Didn’t want to mess around none unless it seemed I was getting somewhere. But I didn’t have a chance. Not even from the start.

“The only way,” he mumbled, “to sell barb wire in this man’s country is to lick the Tumbling K.”

“You made a good start this afternoon,” said Steve from across the fire.

“Sure, I know,” said Cornish, bitterly. “I licked three of them in a rough and tumble brawl and no one was more surprised than I was. But it’s more than that—a lot more than that.”

“I returned,” declared Joe Wicks solemnly, “and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise …”

“That’s the Bible,” explained Steve. “He spouts it all the time, chapter and verse. Never heard the beat of it.”

The bacon sputtered in the pan and in the darkness one of the horses pawed the ground. The wind fluttered the canvas top of the wagon, making a noise like beating wings.

Cornish nodded, feeling the warmth of the fire in front of him, smelling the bacon in the pan, hearing the rustle of the wind that walked among the grasses.

“Like her crisp or tender?” asked Joe Wicks.

Cornish did not answer. Both men stared at him. His head hung and his arms drooped across his knees.

“Sound asleep,” said Steve.

“Better get him laid out,” said Wicks, “before he pitches head first into the fire.”

Steve got up, stretched and yawned.

“Look, parson, wouldn’t have any drinking liquor around, would you? I left in such a hurry that I didn’t bring none.”

Wicks hesitated. “Carry a bottle of the stuff,” he finally admitted. “Awfully good for snake bites.”

“A snake just bit me,” Steve told him.

Wicks’ beard split with a grin. “Danged if I didn’t forget,” he said. “One bit me just a while back, too.”

Drumming hoofs pounding along the trail jerked Cornish from the blankets. Sitting upright beside the now-cold fire, he saw the rider tearing down toward him, bent low on the horse’s neck, urging the animal along with kicking heels and slapping reins.

He rubbed his eyes astonished at what he saw. For the rider was a woman. Her hair was flying in the wind and the gathered up dress fluttered behind her.

“Molly!” he shouted. “Molly, what’s wrong?”

He threw off the blankets and scrambled to his feet. The horse shied and the girl pulled up.

On the opposite side of the fire, Steve and Joe Wicks were sitting, rubbing their eyes.

“My father!” screamed Molly Hays. “They shot my father!”

She would have started up again, but Cornish strode out into the trail and seized the horse’s bridle.

“Take it easy, Molly,” he said. “Tell me what happened. Who was it that shot your father?”

She had been crying, for her face was tear-streaked, and she was ready to cry again.

“It was the Tumbling K,” she said. “They drove in a herd this morning—a big herd. Right across our wheat field. My father went out to stop them and they … and they …”

She swayed in the saddle and Cornish put out an arm to catch her, but she did not fall.

“Where is your father now?”

“I got him to the house, then I rode to get the doctor. That’s where I’m going now.”

A voice spoke behind Cornish, the cracked voice of Joe Wicks. “Look, miss, you’re in no shape to go riding into town. Why don’t you let one of us do it?”

“We could take you back to the place,” said Steve. “Maybe your father will need you.”

She looked at them for a long minute, then slowly nodded.

“Perhaps that’s best,” she said.

“Cornish will ride into town,” said Steve. “Joe and me will take you back.”

Cornish held out his arms and she slid into them. He let her gently to the ground and for a moment, swaying, she clung to him. Then she straightened.

Cornish seized the reins, vaulted to the saddle, hesitated for a moment.

“That bunch of cattle?” he asked. “Where are they headed?”

She stared at him for a moment, almost uncomprehending, then she spoke.

“Straight up the valley, heading for the other places.”

Cornish’s face stiffened into grim lines.

“It’s the showdown, then,” he said, tersely. “It’s the Tumbling K’s ace card. They’re moving in. That herd will wipe out everything in the entire valley and if the nesters try to stop it, they’ll be wiped out, too!”

He swung on the bartender. “Take Miss Hays back, Steve, quick as you can. Then hustle back to town with the wagon. I got an idea …”

Cornish kicked the horse into motion, went storming down the trail for Silver Bow.

With Doc Moore started on his way toward the Hays place, Cornish rode to the town’s lone hotel.

The street was quiet, almost deserted. A dog sitting in front of the Longhorn bar snapped lazily at flies. The black plume of smoke from a train that had left the station a few minutes before still trailed across the sky.

At the hotel desk a man with a gray hat and expensively cut suit was pounding on the floor with a gold-headed cane.

His voice, high and querulous, rang through the lobby.

“It’s an outrage. No bath. Why don’t you people get up to date out here? I’ve been on a long and dusty train ride and I want a bath. Not an hour from now. Right now!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Armstrong,” whined the clerk. “I’ll have some water heated right away, but it will take a while. Half an hour at least.”

“Don’t people ever bathe out here?” snapped the man.

The clerk didn’t answer and the man went on: “There was no one to meet me at the station. Fine state of affairs. And they knew I was coming, too. Did you see any of them around?”

“Titus and some of the other boys were in yesterday,” the clerk told him, “but I haven’t seen a sign of them today.”

The man turned away from the desk. Cornish stepped forward.

“I’ll carry Mr. Armstrong’s bags,” he offered. “I was going up, anyhow.”

Armstrong turned to face him and Cornish noted the pinched, squeezed face of a New England businessman. Lips thin and colorless, eyes the drab color of gray slate.

“Er—thank you, sir,” Armstrong said.

“Not at all,” said Cornish. “Glad to help you. What room, Jake?”

“Seventeen,” said the desk man, tossing him the key.

Cornish led the way up the flight of stairs, set down the bags and opened the door, then carried the bags inside.

Armstrong fumbled in his pocket. “Perhaps you’d have a drink on me?”

Cornish shook his head.

“Not a drink, Armstrong. Just a talk.”

Armstrong’s eyebrows went up and the colorless lips pulled straighter.

“I can’t imagine …”

“You own the Tumbling K,” said Cornish.

“Yes, I do.”

“Know what’s going on?”

Armstrong’s face tightened, went a shade more chalky.

“Look here, young man. I don’t know what you’re driving at …”

“Murder,” said Cornish, tightly. “Or it will be before the thing is finished. Titus is driving a herd up the Cottonwood. Not across it, or into it, but straight up it.”

“The Cottonwood,” said Armstrong. “Let’s see—that’s where the nesters are.”

“So you knew about the nesters.”

“Naturally. Titus keeps me well informed.”

“And you knew what Titus planned to do?”

“Scarcely what he planned to do. I intimated to him that he could feel free to take whatever action he thought prudent.”

“I suppose it’s prudent to destroy the crops of all those people who are trying to make homes in the valley. Destroy their crops and kill any of them that try to make a fight.”

Armstrong flicked a dust spot from his sleeve.

“Frankly, I would say we’d be doing them a favor. This isn’t farming land, it’s range land. Farmers would starve to death. A good year now and then, maybe, but not often enough to make both ends meet. They’ve been brought here by the false idea that they can make a living. It’s the government that’s to blame, really, for opening up the land.”

His eyes narrowed until they were gray slits. “I can’t imagine, young man, why you should be so interested. Are you one of these—er—nesters?”

Cornish laughed shortly. “No. I sell barb wire.”

Armstrong stiffened. “Barb wire!”

“I see you’ve heard about me, too,” said Cornish. “Did you advise Titus to proceed prudently with me?”

Armstrong pounded the floor angrily with his cane.

“I’ve never seen much impudence!” he shouted.

“Mister,” said Cornish, “you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you figure you’re coming out here to ramrod this war …”

“I don’t know anything about a war,” Armstrong shouted at him. “I always come out here every summer, for at least a week or two.”

“O.K,” snapped Cornish. “O.K., if that’s the way you want it, but let me tell you something. Your men are messing up a deal of mine. I’ve spent a lot of time selling wire to those nesters out there and I’m not letting you and your Tumbling K ruin all the work I’ve done …”

A step sounded in the corridor outside and Cornish spun around to face the door.

Squint Douglas stood just inside the room, feet spread, hand poised above his gun.

“So,” he said, and the drawn out word was a challenge and a shout of triumph.

Cornish jerked back his hand until his fingers touched the grip of the Colt that Steve had loaned him.

For a long moment the two men stood facing one another, each unmoving, eyes narrowed against the light, waiting for the slightest move to send them into action.

“All right, Squint,” said Cornish. “Go ahead and make your play.”

Squint stood as if rooted to the floor, like a man suddenly stricken into stone.

“You’re just a yellow rat,” Cornish snarled. “Yellow to the core. You’d hang me when I didn’t have a chance. You’d tackle me when you had a couple of men to help you. But you won’t shoot it out when the breaks are even.”

The twisted grin that twitched at Squint’s ugly face warned Cornish even before he heard the step behind him and he instinctively jerked his body to one side. The whizzing cane missed his head by a fraction of an inch, slammed into his shoulder so hard that he buckled at the knees.

Through pain-dazed eyes, Cornish saw Squint’s gun coming out of leather, saw the leer of triumph that spread across his face. Knocked off balance by the blow from Armstrong’s cane, Cornish clawed desperately for the Colt hanging at his hip, found it even as the blast from Squint’s gun filled the room to bursting with a monstrous clap of thunder.

The bullet brushed Cornish’s cheek, slammed into a bedpost behind him, breaking out a shower of splinters.

Squint’s gun crashed again and Cornish felt the sting of lead slash across his ribs, heard the bullet smash into the mirror that hung upon the wall.

Then his own gun was tilting in his hand and his finger was closing on the trigger. The run roared and slammed against his wrist and Cornish knew he would not have to shoot again.

In the doorway, Squint stood with a blue hole in his forehead, stood for an instant before he toppled forward, dead.

Cornish straightened from his crouch, stood looking at Armstrong through the stinging powder smoke that befogged the room.

Armstrong’s pale lips moved thinly. “You killed him!”

Cornish snarled back, motioned with his gun toward Squint’s lifeless body on the floor.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you, Armstrong. That is what I meant. The Tumbling K had better not try to stop me selling wire.”

Cornish moved toward the door, gun dangling in his hand. He stepped across Squint, but turned before he left.

“Next time,” he told Armstrong, “when two men shoot it out don’t go mixing in with that cane of yours.”

A crowd had gathered in the lobby downstairs and Cornish halted on the stairs, looking at the faces that stared up at him. Blank faces—some of them the faces of the men who had refused to drink at the Longhorn bar when Steve had set them up.

“I just killed Squint,” said Cornish, almost conversationally. “Anyone know of anything they’d like to do about it?”

None of them did, apparently. They parted and made a lane for him and he walked out onto the porch, crossed the sidewalk, vaulted to the saddle, went pounding down the street.

The wagon stood in front of the Hays’ place at the south end of Cottonwood valley and Steve was lounging against one wheel when Cornish rode up.

“You look all out of breath,” said Steve.

Cornish didn’t answer, jerked his thumb toward the house.

“How about it?”

“Doc says we got to take old Bert to town where he can keep a close watch on him. We’ll fix up a bed inside the wagon and have to travel slow.”

“Look,” said Cornish, “I got into a brush with Squint, had to shoot him.”

“Dead, I hope,” said Steve.

Cornish nodded. “The fat’s really in the fire, Steve. Do you want to stick with me?”

“Ain’t got another blessed thing to do,” said Steve. “Look at that there wheat field. Cows plumb spoiled it. Makes you hot inside just to think of it.”

“Soon as you get to town,” said Cornish, “get the barb wire I got stored in the railroad warehouse. I got enough to throw across the valley and stop those cows. Then come back as fast as you can. Head for the Narrows. Know where they are?”

Steve nodded. “East place to string a fence. Not more’n half a mile and trees you can use for posts.”

“That’s the idea. And another thing. Can I keep your gun awhile? Had to leave so quick I couldn’t get my own.”

“Sure,” said Steve. “Joe’s got lots of them. Damnest preacher ever I see. Got a bottle cached out and an arsenal of guns. Always figured preachers were downright peaceable.”

Cornish swung his horse around, headed for the valley.

Looking back, he saw Molly Hays standing in the doorway, watching after him.

Chapter Four Stop Titus!

Cornish squatted on his heels in the shade of a tree and rolled himself a smoke. Far below lay the valley of the Cottonwood, a burnished strip of green that ran between ochre-yellow hills. And spread across the valley, in a straggling line, thin in some places, bunched and fat in others, was the Tumbling K herd.

Cornish struck the match against his thumbnail and lighted the smoke.

Smart, he told himself. Smart as wolves. Letting the cattle move up the valley slowly, not pushing things too hard, not forcing a quick decision. Giving the nesters plenty of time to think it over, time to figure out what a range war meant. Let one family pile its possessions on a wagon and start moving out and the whole valley would follow, one by one, realizing that a divided force could not stand against the ranchers’ march.

Smart and cold-blooded.

Smoking quietly, he considered. The cattle would not reach the Narrows before dark, moving at the rate they were. That gave him time to string the wire under the cover of darkness, to talk the nesters over to the possibility of defending those thin strands of steel—a chance to make them see that wire gave them a chance to make a stand, to break the Tumbling K.

Carefully he crushed out the cigarette, remounted the horse and moved along the hills.

The sun had started down the western slope of the sky when he reached the Narrows, where the valley narrowed to a half mile throat between hundred foot bluffs cut by deep ravines gashing down to the valley floor. Sparse clumps of trees ran across the valley and for a moment, sitting his horse, he mapped out the fence line mentally, sketching it from tree to tree.

He clucked to the horse and started down one of the gullies that led into the valley.

A mile above the Narrows lay the Russell place and as he rode toward it, Cornish saw that at least a dozen horses stood slack hipped in front of the cabin, while men sat about on the doorstep and other perched on the corral fence.

They watched him silently as he rode up, none of them offering greeting.

“Howdy, men,” he said.

They stared back stolidly, almost angrily.

John Russell rose slowly from the doorstep, advanced a few paces toward him.

“Cornish,” he said, gruffly, “you’re not wanted here.”

“Still scared?” asked Cornish, softly.

Russell bristled. “Not scared. Just sensible. What’s the use of fighting when the Tumbling K will buy us out.”

“Buy you out?”

“Sure, we talked with Titus. He made us an offer.”

“You’re wrong,” Cornish declared. “They aren’t buying you out, they’re buying you off. Paying you nuisance money to get rid of you without too much trouble.”

“We’re taking it,” snapped Russell. “We’re selling out!”

“So you’re moving on,” said Cornish. “You’re licked and moving on. You’ll look for a place as good as this and you may never find it. You’ll live out of a wagon and you’ll be without a home. You’ll go back to being wagon men again.”

A great black-bearded man stepped up alongside Russell, face sullen and angry.

“What would you have us do?” he asked and a threat ran through his words.

“I’m offering you a way to stop the Tumbling K,” said Cornish. “I’m bringing out a load of wire. String it across the Narrows and stand back of it with guns. Serve notice on the Tumbling K that any man or critter that touches that wire is fair game.”

“And you’ll grab a gun and stand there with us?” asked Russell, almost sarcastically.

“Damn right I will!” Cornish snapped out.

The black-bearded man slowly shook his head.

“Ain’t no good,” he said.

“Billings,” demanded Cornish, “can you think of a better way?”

Russell’s hand dipped down deliberately, hauled out the six-gun that he wore.

“Get going, Cornish,” he said, “before I let you have it. We don’t want to see any more of you or your damned barb wire. If it hadn’t been for your barb wire talk we’d kept on peaceable. It was you that go the mess stirred up.”

Cornish flicked his eyes from face to face, read the same answer in all of them. Slowly, he wheeled the horse about and rode away, back toward the Narrows.

So this is the end of it, he thought. What was the use of trying to fight when the men you fought for didn’t want to fight—when all they wanted to do was run off with their tails between their legs.

He could well understand their not wanting to fight, not wanting to subject their families to the terrors of range war—the burning cabin and the gutted buildings, the flaming haystacks and the swift shot in the dark, the man coming home draped across the saddle.

But there had to be a time when men would fight. There had to be something that was worth fighting for. And the valley of the Cottonwood, he told himself, must be one of those things, one of those principles, one of those rights for which men always had been willing to haul out their guns.

The horse climbed slowly up the gully that led to the heights above the Narrows. Cornish, slumped in the saddle, thinking, rocked with the horse’s careful pace along the rocky slope.

At first the sound meant nothing—a sharp, short pinging sound that was dimmed by distance—just another sound with the shrill singing of the insects in cliff-side bushes, the chatter of a squirrel down among the cedars.

Then it came again and he jerked erect.

A shot!

The sound came again, the sharp, spiteful spitting of a high power rifle—and on its heels the crash of whipping six-guns.

Cornish yelled at the horse and the animal plunged up the trail, sending a shower of pebbles rattling down the gully.

The guns were an empty rattle in the wind as Cornish topped the bluffs and the horse lengthened out into a racing gallop.

A mile beyond, as they topped a ridge, Cornish saw the wagon, saw the riders who raced beside it with their smoking six-guns.

Joe Wicks stood in the wagon’s front, beard flying in the wind, whip lashing at the crowbait team. The tattered canvas looked like shredded sails, jerking on the bows set in the wagon’s bed and the team was running like scared rabbits.

The wheels hit a hidden rock and the wagon lurched, sailed for a good six feet with all four wheels off the ground, struck the ground and bounced soggily. The team kept on running as Joe Wicks yelled and shrieked.

Crouched beside Wicks, smoking rifle leveled, squatted Steve. Beside Steve was another figure—gingham and golden hair, and as Cornish watched in frozen wonder the girl raised a gun and fired.

The horse was plunging down the slope and Cornish yelled—a savage yell jerked from the bottom of his lungs.

Ahead of him the six-guns yammered as the riders rushed the wagon and the two rifles talked back huskily. One of the bows holding up the canvas buckled, hit and splintered by a bullet.

Cornish stiffened himself in the saddle, brought up his gun and fired.

Splinters flew from the wagon box and a bullet, glancing off a tire, whined its way into the sky.

The rifles crashed with a steady tempo and powder-smoke swirled like a crazy cloud above the bouncing wagon.

Out ahead of him, Cornish saw a horse going down, its rider flying above its head. The man struck the ground and rolled like a rubber ball, then he was on his feet again, clutching for his second gun. A rifle hammered and the man went over, as if a mighty fist had struck him and slammed him back into the earth.

Suddenly the two remaining horsemen wheeled about, frightened horses fighting at the bits. Cornish gritted his teeth, fired his last shot. One of the horses reared, feet pawing empty air, then tumbled screaming to the ground as its hind legs gave way beneath it.

The wagon thundered past, screeching and groaning, while Steve and Molly Hays crouched with silent guns.

Fumbling, swearing to himself, Cornish spilled cartridges with clumsy fingers reloading on the run.

The man whose horse had fallen was up and running for a cedar brake. The other rider had wheeled about, was waiting with lifted gun, his horse dancing sidewise with mincing steps. A great, tall man, angular and powerful, who sat the saddle with an easy grace.

Titus! He was waiting there on his mincing horse and with his gun all ready. For fists had failed and a rope had failed—and now it was the gun.

Rage steeled Cornish as he raised his gun, tried to hold it true against the motion of his horse. And even as he raised it, Titus’ arm came down in a slow, smooth sweep and his gun spat fire.

The bullet whistled past Cornish’s head with a dull and wicked hum and the gun winked again. Cornish’s horse jumped, stung by the lead that raked along its withers and slammed with a drilling whistle into the stirrup leather, flicking Cornish’s boot.

Close, now, thought Cornish. Almost too close to miss. Titus’ gun flamed anew and Cornish worked the trigger. The blasts came almost as one and as the sound exploded in his ears, Cornish felt himself flying from the saddle of the racing horse.

Dully he felt the impact of his body striking ground, he felt himself descending into a roaring pit that was filled with flame that seemed to have no heat, but was a howling maelstrom of red, then winked into black ash.

Out of the silence came a sharp whiplash of sound. Cornish stirred, felt the life running back into his body, smelled the grass and earth, knew the warmth of the westering sun shining on his back.

The sound came again, the rasping crack of a distant rifle. Then another sound, nearer at hand, the rolling chortle of a churning six-gun.

Cornish was lying on his face and now he tried to roll over. The pain, which before that had been a dull, throbbing ache he scarcely noticed, mounted to a screaming thing. Cornish gasped and fell back on his face again, lay quivering to the pounding agony that thundered in his left shoulder.

For the first time he became conscious of the gun still clutched in his right hand—his grip must have frozen to it when Titus had shot him. He twisted his head to one side and moved his right hand up into the range of vision. He tilted his wrist to see that the muzzle was clear and not clogged by earth.

The rifle spanged and down the hillside Cornish saw the instinctive, nervous crouch of a man squatting behind a clump of cedars.

The man was not Titus. He was dumpy and broad, whereas Titus was gaunt and angular. It must be, he reasoned, the man whose horse he’d shot. The fellow, he remembered, had run for the cedar brake.

The rifle talked again and Cornish saw the cedars jerk and shake to the passage of the bullet that thudded into the hillside above the man in a shower of torn-up sod. The rifleman, whoever it was, knew where the man was hiding, probably was deliberately shooting to cover every angle of the hideout.

The man huddled tighter against the ground and again the cedars jerked as another bullet tore its way through the shield of green.

There was no sign of Titus. Yet Titus had to be there. Perhaps crouching behind some bush, hidden in some hollow, waiting for a chance at the hidden rifleman who had to be one of the three who had been riding in the barb wire-laden wagon.

Carefully, Cornish twisted his body about to bring his gun arm into play. Grimly he lined his sights on the man behind the cedars.

But he did not pull the trigger, although his finger tightened. It was almost as if something that walked the earth had stopped for a moment and told him not to shoot. Something that would not let him shoot a man with his back toward him. Then, too, there was Titus to consider. As long as Titus thought that he was dead, Titus wouldn’t shoot.

Out by the cedars, the man was crawling, inching his way along, crawling up the hill. Then, suddenly, he exploded from the ground and was upright, running, head down, long legs working like driving pistons, angling up the hill, ducking and dodging to confuse the hidden rifle.

A single driving thought snapped into Cornish’s mind, brought him to his feet in a blur of stumbling pain.

The man must not get away. If he did, the Tumbling K would know the story of the barb wire. And if the Tumbling K knew about the wire, its riders would sweep the valley clean in one swift stroke.

The hidden rifle chugged and a tiny fountain of dirt and grass gushed into the air wide of the running man.

The man ducked swiftly, ran like a startled rabbit, then jerked to a halt, straightened with a snarl upon his face, gun snapping up to point at Cornish.

Gritting his teeth, Cornish fought to keep his feet, fought to stand on the hill that was buckling and rolling. The man before him went around in circles and the scene was hazy.

Cornish tried to lift his gun and the gun was heavy in his grasp. And even as he tried to lift it, he knew that it was no go, that he couldn’t shoot it out, not with the way the ground crawled beneath his feet and the way his eyes refused to focus.

The gun in front of him was a red eye winking in the haze and he felt the stir of buzzing lead snarling past his face.

His own gun was bucking in his hand, but he knew the shots were wild. His knees buckled and he took a slow step forward to regain his balance, watching the snarl on the misty face behind the winking gun of his antagonist.

Then the man’s face froze and his body stiffened. From across the gully came the crashing snarl of the heavy rifle. The man sagged in the middle, jack-knifing like a rusty and reluctant hinge. The gun slid from nerveless fingers and the knees gave way and the man was down, a huddled figure in the wind-whipped grass.

Awkwardly, Cornish holstered his gun, tried to wipe away the mist that clung against his face, saw the fluttering blue of the gingham dress running down the opposite slope.

“Molly!” he croaked.

He went down the hill to meet her on unsteady legs, his bullet-smashed shoulder a roaring pain that filled half his brain with the howl of monstrous winds.

Near the bottom of the slope, she caught him, a reeling robot of a man. He leaned against her, amazed at the strength that held him up, that guided him to a place upon the ground.

“Titus!” he croaked.

“Titus got away.”

“Molly.”

“Hold still,” she snapped at him. “I’ve got to get this blood stopped.”

“Molly, you got to warn the nesters. Titus will wipe them out. He won’t wait for nothing now that he knows about the wire.”

“Soon as I get you fixed up,” she said.

“Steve?”

“Stringing wire,” she said. “I made them do it. I’m no good at building fence, but I can use a gun.”

“You stayed back to keep those two pinned down?”

“That’s right,” she said, “but I didn’t do so good. Titus got away.”

Chapter Five More Blood for the Wire

The match snicked against the stone and Cornish held it cupped in his one good hand. Squatting in the gully, he held the tiny flame close above the ground, moved it slowly to find the narrow-tired track of the wagon that had gone before him.

There it was, a deep rut in the earth, with the ragged edges of it still crumbling. Slowly he moved the match and saw the other marks, the skidding hoof-marks of horses fighting against the neckyoke to hold the dead weight of the load on the downhill grade.

Cornish tossed the match away and got to his feet, staring out into the vast bowl of darkness that was Cottonwood valley.

The wagon had come this way and somewhere down there in the darkness, working their way slowly across the Narrows, were Joe Wicks and Steve, stringing out the wire. Two men who had no interest in barb wire or nesters, laboring in the night to work out the valley’s destiny.

And was there any use, Cornish wondered—any use at all of stringing out that wire now that Titus had carried back the word?

Cornish shook his head, blundered down the trail, careful in the dark, left arm and shoulder swaddled in the white petticoat bandage that Molly Hays had fashioned. A target in the dark that the Tumbling K could aim at.

Stones rolled beneath his boots and he fought to keep his balance. Once his bandaged shoulder scraped against a tree and he doubled up with the pain lancing through his body.

Here, beneath the trees, the night was dark as pitch, although the valley ahead was faintly lighted by the shine of stars in the cloudless sky.

At the foot of the gully, he found the beginning of the fence, three strands of wire wrapped and stapled around a scrub white oak. One hand upon the strand, he followed it across the undulating terrain of the valley, a deep pride quickening in him at the feel of stretching steel. For although some of the intervals between the trees were long, the strands were taut and sang an excited song when he tapped his gun against them.

Up ahead, he knew, Steve and Joe were stringing the three strands simultaneously, using the wagon as a stringer and a stretcher. His feet hit something in the dark and he stumbled over it. Desperately he threw himself to land on his good shoulder, save the shattered left. Wind knocked out of him, he struggled to his feet, sought the thing that tripped him. It was the abandoned core of one of the spools of wire.

At the fence again, he found the splice in the wire and wondered. One of the men stringing that wire up ahead was a man who knew barb wire and it couldn’t be Steve. Steve had spent his life behind the bars throughout the West. It must be Wicks.

Standing beside the fence, he listened, and there was no sound of hammering, no buzzing in the wire as there would have been if it were being worked with at the other end.

Terror welled up in him and he hurried along the fence, crossing the swells, stumbling down into a thicket.

Out of the trees a dark figure rose and words came through the night.

“Stand right where you are and h’ist up your paws.”

Cornish skidded to a stop, raised his right hand high.

The man came warily toward him. “What’s the matter with the other hand?” he asked.

“Shot,” said Cornish, flatly.

“Cornish!” the other man whispered fiercely. “Damn my eyes if it ain’t the boy hisself.”

He moved forward and the starlight fell across the silvered beard, the slouchy, battered hat.

“Joe Wicks!”

“Hush yourself,” Wicks cautioned. “We are lying low. One of them damned Tumbling K riders just scouted through.”

“More than likely looking to see if there was any fence,” said Cornish. “Titus got away and told them about the wire.”

“He’d better not come messin’ around,” Wicks said fiercely, “or we’ll blow his bloody guts out.”

Cornish stared at him. “You don’t sound like a preacher, Joe.”

Joe spat and to Cornish came the smell of whiskey breath.

“Ain’t no preacher,” Wicks declared. “Never was no preacher. All of that was just a disguise. Me, I’m working for the same outfit you are.”

“Ajax!”

“Exactly,” said Wicks. “Seems there were too many accidents a-happening to the fellers selling wire, too many of them dropping out of sight and turning up missing. So they sent me out here to keep an eye on you. And when I got here I found hell starting in full swing, so I did the best I could.”

He spat again. “Reckon we got a chance to stop them?”

“If the nesters will back us up,” said Cornish. “Molly went down to warn them.”

“Great gal,” declared Wicks. “Got a lot of guts. Left her old man in the doctor’s care and came along with us. Said if outsiders, meaning us and you, could stand up to the Tumbling K, it was the least that she could do.”

Another figure came stealing through the trees. “The rider just went back,” he said. “We’d better start with that wire again, pronto.”

Steve came through the darkness, peered at Cornish.

“Figured you was dead,” he said. “Titus knocked you out of the saddle slick and clean.”

Wicks chuckled thinly. “Takes more than a little lead to stop an Ajax man.”

They stood together in the darkness, listening to the high, thin whine of the wind moving in the trees and walking through the grass. From the bluffs to the west an owl laughed irrationally. The stars were a glittering net strung across the sky.

“Hey, Joe,” whispered Steve. “Haul out that bottle. When a man’s come back from the dead, we gotta drink to it.”

Wicks shuffled his feet, dug into his back pocket. The hiss of glass sliding on denim came softly through the night.

“Quiet!” snapped Cornish. “Listen!”

They stood like frozen men in an attitude of attention. Faintly at first it came, then louder … the thunder of horses’ hoofs sweeping up the valley.

Steve’s voice almost sobbed. “It’s them! And we ain’t got the wire strung!”

Cornish, listening, felt the cold weight of defeat dropping down upon him. Those hoofbeats were too far to the east … they would miss the fence entirely, would go on up the valley to catch the hesitating nesters before they had a chance to fight.

“We have to turn them,” he yelled and started to run. Steve clumped after him.

“What are you doing?” he shrieked at Cornish. “Come back, you fool! They will run you down.”

“We got to turn them,” gasped Cornish. “We have to get east of them and open up on them.”

He was out of the trees and running in the open, teeth clenched against the pain that lanced through his shoulder with every jarring step. Running a race with hoofbeats that thundered through the night, running a race with the sound of fury that was storming up the valley.

Behind him he heard the thumping of Steve’s feet and the quick, short breaths of the racing Wicks.

The ground opened beneath his feet and he was skidding down the banks of the Cottonwood, down into the water, wading across the stream, the water reaching to his waist, the suck of treacherous sands clutching at his feet.

He reached the opposite bank and clambered up in a shower of mud and crumbling clay, flopped face down in the grass and listened—and knew that they had won. The horses were west of the stream and they had outflanked them.

Slowly, confidently, his hand went back to the holster, pulled out the six-gun.

“Start shooting soon as you can see them,” he whispered. “Drive them into the fence.”

Steel gleamed in the starlight as Steve lifted out his gun and Joe Wicks, settling his body prone in the grass, was chuckling as he pushed his rifle forward.

Shadows suddenly were moving on the opposite bank, shadows that were silent except for the drum of hoofs, shadows highlighted by the gleam of stars on glittering rifle barrels.

Shouts rang out across the stream and the drum of hoofs was broken, became a threshing sound of snarled and frightened horses, like the writhing struggles of a wounded beast of prey.

Above the sound of hoofs came another sound, the thump and rumble of swiftly rolling wheels, the clank and jangle of a bouncing wagon bed. Out of the darkness loomed a whiteness like a dancing ghost, a blooming whiteness that jigged and tapped a rigadoon. Straight for the creek it came, then swerved and lumbered along the bank.

“It’s them damn crowbaits of mine,” yelled Wicks. “Running away, by jingo! I would of swore they didn’t have it in them.”

Six-guns crashed wickedly across the creek and bullets chugged angrily into the ground and whistled through the grass where the three men crouched. But above the crash of guns, above the stamp and scream of frightened horses, above the thump of the running wagon, came another sound—a threadlike sound that wove its way between the other noises—the high-pitched singing of unwinding stands of wire.

“We just put on some new spools when we had to quit,” said Steve. “That there team is unraveling them at a right smart clip.”

The wagon swept past on the opposite bank, the two crowbaits humping like animals gone crazy, the spools spinning on the upright stringer improvised on the wagon box.

Crouched low, gun held between his knees, Cornish worked with his one good hand, clicking cartridges into the cylinder. To his left Wicks’ rifle churned with a steady rhythm, while down the creek, Steve slung a stream of lead into the swirling shadows.

Tumbling K guns answered back, spitting muzzles flickering like dancing fireflies in the star-lit night. Bullets ripped past with an angry sound, questing death winging through the dark, hissing in the grass.

Suddenly Wicks screamed and staggered upward, a bear-like figure fumbling on wilting knees. The gun dropped from his hand and rattled down the creek bank and Wicks, doubling over, plunged after it, hit the stream with a splash and lay there, a sprawled and misty figure against the starry gleam of water.

Cornish staggered down the creek bank, bent above Wicks’ huddled figure. Even as his good hand reached out to clutch him, Cornish knew that Wicks was dead, that there was no life in that limp-sack body. Sobbing in his throat, he hauled Wicks from the water, laid him on his back, straightened a knee that was bent beneath him. The man looked up at him out of vacant eyes that held the gleam of stars.

Steve came striding down the bank.

“They hit the wire,” he said. “Ran into it full tilt. That will hold them for a while.”

Cornish nodded dumbly. “I heard them hit,” he said.

He straightened up and saw that Steve was staring at the limp body sprawled on the sand.

“It’s Wicks,” said Cornish. “They got him just before they went into the fence.”

He passed a hand before his eyes. “Remember, Steve, you said there’d be blood upon the wire?”

A running horse came toward the creek, galloping wildly, then sheered off and went down the valley. Listening, the two in the stream bed could hear the empty slap-slap of flapping stirrups and they knew that the saddle of the running horse was empty.

A single rifle bellowed through the dark. An angry yell went up and a six-gun barked. The rifle answered back and another one joined in. Six-guns rattled and a man screamed, a racking scream that shuddered through the sky and ended in a gurgle.

“The nesters!” yelled Steve.

“It’s about time,” Cornish said, bitterly, “that they were buying in.”

Steve looked at him searchingly. “It means we’ve won,” he reminded Cornish.

Cornish nodded. Yes, it meant he’d won. It meant that the order would go back to Illinois and the eyes would pop out of the dried-up skull that was Jacobs’ face. It meant that wire would ring the valley and cut up the fields and pastures. It meant that the Tumbling K would have to settle down and be content with what it had instead of running wild on the lands of other men.

For with nester rifles backing up the fence, the Tumbling K was through. It had made its play and lost. Its hole card had been too low.

But curiously it didn’t matter, now. For Wicks was dead and blood was on the wire. Wire cost too much, he thought. All over the west it’s costing more than it may be worth. For every rod of fence is paid for in blood and lives. For fence is revolution and revolutions don’t come without someone getting hurt.

He heard the splashing in the water and turned, saw Steve wading out and climbing the opposite bank. He opened his mouth to call to him but the man was gone.

To the west, along the fence, the rifles growled and snarled and six-guns hammered with sudden hateful chatter.

Cornish turned slowly, walking away from Wicks, following Steve across the stream. Halfway across the creek he heard the running feet on the bank above him. Then the man was hurtling over the edge and plunging down the bank to hit the water with a soggy splash.

Sputtering and spitting water he struggled to his feet, stood knee-deep in the stream, staring straight at Cornish. Tall, angular—a giant looming in the night.

Cornish stared back, frozen.

“So it’s you!” rasped Titus.

His hand was pistoning for his belt as Cornish drove forward, forcing his body through the resisting water with a strength he did not know he had. Diving for the legs of the man before him.

Starlight flashed on the weapon as it cleared the holster and at that moment, Cornish hit—his good right shoulder ramming into Titus’ knees, arm wrapping around the boots and clamping tight with a vicious wrench.

The gun flamed in a crash of thunder as Titus went over, slamming against the bank.

Cornish flung himself forward, a snarl rising in his throat. Titus’ foot came up and back, then shot forward in a vicious jab. Cornish tried to duck, but he was too late. The driving boot caught him in the chest and set him reeling back, feet sliding.

Titus was crouching, hand groping blindly for the gun that had fallen from his grasp, making whining noises of haste and exasperation in his throat.

Cornish swept his own hand back to the waiting holster … and the gun was gone! The holster flapped empty at his side.

Cornish walked slowly forward, cautiously, fist ready.

Suddenly Titus’ body straightened.

Cornish brought his fist up fast, felt the jolt of it hitting flesh and bone, sensed the shiver that went through Titus’ body as the big man staggered back.

Cornish swung again and yet again, blows that started from his boot-tops and landed with an impact that made his arm a dead thing from the elbow down—blows that staggered Titus and kept him off his balance and drove him, step by step, ruthlessly and relentlessly, back toward the water.

It was not anger that drove Cornish—nor fear—nor confidence—but a plain and simple logic that it was his only chance, that he had to finish Titus fast or himself be finished.

Feet in the water, Titus tottered, hands clawing at the air in front of him, groggy with the blows that had battered at his body. Deliberately, mercilessly, Cornish aimed at his chin.

The blow smacked hollowly and Titus sank into the water with a splash.

Cornish let his arm fall to his side, felt the stinging of the cuts along his knuckles, felt the dull, dead ache that ran through the punished muscles.

“More blood for the wire,” thought Cornish, dully.

Slowly, painfully, he turned his back upon the stream and clambered up the bank.

Far to the west came the dull beat of hoofs, but otherwise than that the valley was silent. The guns were quiet and the men had gone. Tumbling K was beaten.

Cornish stumbled forward.

“Cornish!”

“Here I am,” he answered weakly.

He saw Molly coming through the gloom and stopped and waited for her.

From the look on her face and her outstretched arms, Cornish knew his fight had not been in vain.