The Sixth Western Novel Read online

  “Thanks,” said Dorn again, signed a lot of papers and went on his way. That way led him straight bade to Palm Ranch.

  It was late afternoon, sunset time not far off. Lorna was out in the yard feeding the chickens; he heard her calling, “Coo-coo-coo,” and saw her scattering the wheat. The string of white ducks came waddling up from the creek, and he heard the guinea hens’ lively din of “pa-track, pa-track!” From the barn a fat, smiling Indian woman was coming with two slopping buckets of milk.

  Lorna saw him and pushed back the big floppy straw hat she was wearing, getting the brim out of her eyes to make out who he was.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said.

  Darn the girl, why did she have to be so distractingly pretty? His mind was all set for other matters, not for gray eyes and provocative red mouth and arrant flirts of bronze curls and assorted dimples. She was wearing a little blue dress that caught a man’s eye; he wondered where she had got it. She was twice as lovely in it as in het riding things.

  “I’m here to talk business,” said Dorn tersely. “Or are you set on letting Mike Bundy make a fool of you?”

  “No man is going to make a fool of me,” she retorted. “And I’ll tell you a double-barreled reason why: In the first place I must have been born that way, and in the second, it’s a girl’s job to make a fool of a man. I read it in a book. And I’ll thank you and your horse, Mr. Blind Bull Bill Dorn, not to scare my chickens to death next time I’m feeding them. Come, chicks; come, chicks!”

  “I’m here to make you a clean-cut business proposition. Do you care to listen to it or not?”

  “Why not? Yet why should I?” He looked after Josefa, disappearing around the corner of the house.

  “How much are you paying her?” he demanded.

  The strangest imaginable look swept over the girl’s face; she came dangerously close to staring at him open-mouthed as well as with eyes grown round.

  “Why—Cap’n Jinks brought her over. I—I never thought of her pay!”

  “How about food when your present stock runs out? How about a man to look after the stock? How about paying Jinks for sticking around—or does he take out his reward in smiles? You said that you had come out here without a red cent; is that true?”

  She nodded miserably. He thought that she was about to cry.

  “Mike Bundy offered me five thousand dollars to clear out, whether I’m Lorna Kent or the devil’s grandmother,” she said crisply, and he had never in his life seen a girl farther from tears. “I’m going to take it and get out of a country that I hate!”

  “You’re going to do nothing of the kind,” said Dorn, and came down out of the saddle as though he meant to stay.

  “Hi, Bill!” yipped old Cap’n Jinks, coming out of the barn. “You’re just in time for supper. Me an’ Lorny was talkin’ about you, wonderin’ how long before you’d show up.”

  Bill looked sharply at Lorna. She jerked up her chin, pulled down her floppy hat brim, hurled a last handful of wheat at an old Plymouth Rock hen and went running up the steps and into the house. She didn’t, however, slam the door behind her. Bill Dorn noted that.

  Josefa served a bountiful, piping hot supper, and she and Jinks ate most of it.

  Bill Dorn began sketching on the red and white checkered tablecloth with the handle of his fork.

  “It’s like this,” he said. Josefa was clearing away the dishes; the eyes of Lorna and Cap’n Jinks followed the fork as though fascinated by it. “I’ve been doing considerable riding the last few days; I’ve picked up a few facts and I’ve had time to do a bit of thinking.”

  The fork handle was describing a square a dozen inches or so on each side, and as Dorn went on speaking it moved along the sides over and over again, until they could almost see a three dimensioned wall built up fencing off Dorn’s square.

  “Down here is the border,” he explained. “Way up here is the Villaga Rancho. Here’s Palm Ranch. Here’s the new camp on Silver Creek. Over here’s Antelope Valley, and down in this corner is what used to be known as the Dorn Ranch. Roughly this territory is fifty miles square; that means it contains twenty-five hundred square miles, and that’s one million six hundred thousand acres. A lot of this land is worthless; a lot of it, including the ranches I’ve mentioned and several smaller properties, is valuable; a lot of the worthless land could be made valuable with water put on it. Mike Bundy is by way of controlling this entire tract.”

  “Bundy said so himse’f t’other night,” said Jinks.

  “He’s going to rake in the Villaga Ranch one of these days and make it one of the finest properties in the state. He’ll want a good road from there for a long haul, down to Liberty or Nacional. Which way will his road go?”

  “Through here, o’ course,” said Cap.

  “Next, there’s going to be a boom up in the Blue Smokes. There’ll be a town there before we know it. They’ll have to go outside for their supplies. That means another road. What’ll they do? Make a dry haul of sixty miles, or come this way? Don’t you think Bundy has figured all that out? There’s bound to be an important—even an essential—crossroads right here on Palm Ranch. And there’s going to be a lot of travel on this trail. Already there are five hundred men on Silver Creek. There are apt to be five thousand. They’ll be going back and forth; they’ll have to have supplies, building materials, mining equipment—everything. And if Miss Kent closed her gates against this stream flowing both ways, whether she is Miss Kent or isn’t Miss Kent—well, it would be the first blow square in Mike Bundy’s eye!”

  “Could she do such, Bill?” demanded Jinks. “Folks has always come through this way.”

  “Certainly she can. The ranch has been fenced for years, with gates to open and close, with passers-through allowed to take the short cut and to water their stock just as a courtesy from Mrs. Kent. There weren’t forty men going through in a year. Now with thousands pouring along she’d be well within her rights to ask them to make a wide swing around her property. That would lengthen the road by a good ten miles, since the only decent road would be through Pocket Flats; it would give the freighters a seventy mile pull instead of sixty, and a dry haul besides.”

  “That sounds to me,” said Lorna, and screwed up her face distastefully, “like a pretty low-down, mean trick, Bill Dorn.”

  “You don’t fight the devil by throwing flowers in his face,” said Dorn.

  “It’s taking unfair advantage. It’s mere spite work. It would harm many people, not Bundy alone, and would not improve my situation in the least.”

  “You harm no one, except Bundy,” he said without looking up at her, his eyes intent on the fork still tracing boundaries, marking out strategic sites, describing roadways. “You improve your position immeasurably. You are the one who builds the first sixty mile road from Liberty to Silver Creek. You are the one who furnishes what supplies the new camp will want. You are the one who starts a string of freight wagons, hauling both ways. Don’t you see that’s what Bundy has in mind? Don’t you see why he wanted to grab this place? Twenty-five thousand dollars?” He snorted. “You can make it worth ten times that; maybe ten times ten before you’re through with it.”

  Perhaps her logical question would have been: “I? How on earth am I to finance a thing like that?” Instead, regarding him probingly, she demanded:

  “And you want to see this done—just because you so hate Mike Bundy?”

  “I aim out to pull Bundy down. You know that. You know why. And it was you who put the idea into my head to keep the man alive and wring restitution out of him instead of putting a bullet through him. I saw the sense and the value of your suggestion. Now I am putting an idea into your head. Will you see its value or not?”

  Then she did ask the obvious and logical question. “Having carelessly mislaid my purse somewhere,” she said sarcastically, “just where am I to find the few cents to do this simple littl
e thing? Oh, you’re talking nonsense and you know it!”

  “My own affairs are pretty badly messed up,” Dorn conceded frankly, “but I can raise enough money to start operations.”

  “You’d loan it to me? And even yet you don’t know whether I’m Lorna Kent—”

  “Or the devil’s grandmother. I’ll bet any reasonable amount that you are Mrs. Kent’s heiress. I’ll make sure before we get in too deep, though—”

  “Nice of you,” she said sweetly.

  “But I wouldn’t lend you a cent. I’ll buy you out, offering as much as Bundy has offered, and a shade better than that. Say, seventy-five hundred cash to you, and I take over the mortgage. Or—”

  “Yet you say this property ought to be worth ten times twenty-five thousand. Why, that’s two hundred and fifty thousand dollars!”

  “And I said further that in time the thing might grow into a proposition worth ten times ten times its present figure, and that’s a fat two million. Naturally I’ve other plans and naturally I’m not speaking of them if you’re on Bundy’s side instead of mine.”

  “You said you’d buy me out—or! Or what, Mr. Dorn?”

  “We draw up an agreement and go into it together.”

  “Partners!” she gasped. “You and I?”

  “A close corporation; you throw in the ranch, I dig up the cash.” A sudden sharp, dry, cracking sound startled both of them. It was only Cap Jinks cracking the boniest fingers in the Southwest.

  “It’s a deal,” he said as one speaking with authority. “An’ me, Bill, I’m your head man down to Liberty, doin’ the buyin’, startin’ the freighters, pickin’ up your teams, an’ all that!”

  Sudden Bill Dorn grinned at him; for the first time since arriving the rigidity of his face softened and Lorna saw again that highly interesting phenomenon, rare good-humor breaking like sunshine across a visage that had been as bleak and harsh as a desert stretch.

  “Do you suppose I’d think for a minute of anybody else for that job, Cap?” he said heartily, and clapped a hard hand down on the lean old shoulder. To Lorna he said, explaining: “Cap ran the first line of freighters between Canon City and the border, and that must have been thirty, forty years ago. He made history, he made money—and he’s the man for the job.”

  The old fellow’s eyes were shining.

  “An’ I got a mite o’ that same money lef’, Bill,” said he. “I ain’t askin’ for any share in the partnership, I’ll take mine out in wages. But I c’n len’ you a few dollars an’ glad to, takin’ a lien on your rollin’ stock.”

  Bill Dorn nodded. Without looking at the girl across the table he went back to work with his fork, retracing lines, a frown of deep concentration returning to his brows. Lorna once more watched the slowly traveling fork; more than ever it fascinated her.

  She jerked her head up and found that at last Bill Dorn’s fork was still and that he was staring curiously at her. She exclaimed: “But—can’t you see?—there’ll grow up a town here, too! There’ll have to be one, half way—”

  “Of course.”

  Lorna looked again at the red and white tablecloth. Later on she thought of it as the swaddling cloth of the new desert town of Half Way.

  “Bill!” said old Jinks, all eagerness like a boy of ten, teetering on his toes. “You c’n stay here tonight, cain’t you, to guard, protec’ an’ look after Miss Lorny. Me, I’m on my way an’ in a hurry!”

  “Of course not, you darned old fool,” said Bill emphatically.

  “Hell, why cain’t you? Oh, you mean account folks talkin’? Shucks, that ain’t nothin’. Let ’em talk. Besides,” he added brightly, inspired, “here’s Josefa! Chappyrone, ain’t she? Now you let me go!”

  “Nothing doing, Cap. What’s on your mind anyhow?”

  “This freightin’ scheme of your’n, it’s soun’, sure an’ sensible, Bill. Likewise it’s so durned nat’ral that a man would see it a mile off without spectacles; it don’t take no genius to figger that sort of a play. So Bundy’s got it already in his eye, ain’t he? The likely place to freight from is Liberty, ain’t it? There’ll be just so much supplies, jus’ so many wagons an’ decent horses to be had. Who’ll grab ’em, me or Mike Bundy?”

  “You’re right, Cap.” Dorn nodded at him approvingly. He turned to Lorna. “Is it a go?”

  “Yes!” she cried excitedly.

  “You sell out to me? Or we go in partnership?”

  “I won’t sell! Partners!” Then she remembered, and eyed him as from a vast distance. She said, as cool about it as a winter wind off the ice fields, “A business partnership, Mr. Dorn.”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Dorn, and went for his hat. “I’m off to Liberty again. You stay here tonight, Jinks. Tomorrow you can streak down to Liberty and run things.”

  “So long, Bill,” said Jinks sourly. “I hope you split your-se’f from crotch to chin with all your ridin’.”

  “I hope so too,” said Lorna, and made a face at Bill Dorn’s departing back.

  CHAPTER X

  A small band of horsemen, seven in number, pulled up short at a big sign on the northeast gate of Palm Ranch. The notice was printed, all in capitals, on a sheet of butcher paper nailed to a plank. It read:

  GENTS!

  KEEP OUT!

  THIS HERE IS PRIVVITT PROPPITTY THINK IT OVER BEFORE YOU ALL GET MAD THEYS A GOOD ENUF ROAD AROUND THE RANCH OUTSIDE THE FENCE WITH HUNDERDS OF FELLERS AND MABEY THOUSANDS RIDING BACK & FOURTH ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT ITS AGIN THE BEST INTERRUSTS OF PALM RANCH INC TO HAVE A PUBLIC RODE GOUGED RIGHT SPANG THREW ITS MIDDEL SUCH A GANG COME WHOOPIN THREW HERE YESTIDDY THAT OLD BOSSY THE COW GOT SO SCAIRT SHE WOULD NOT LET HER MILK DOWN & OUR HIGH BRED BANTUM ROOSTER (NAME OF M BUNDY) HAD A FIT & CHOAICED CLEAN TO DEATH SO YOU RIDE AROUND IF YOU WANT WATER TO DRINK YOU CAN FIND IT NICE & COLD & FREE FOR MAN & SADDLE HORSE DOWN BY THE TURN AT THE CORNER FOR FREIGHT TEAMS THEYS A SMALL NORMAL CHARGE OF TEN DOLLERS PER HEAD FOR STOCK & THEY CAN DRINK TIL THEY BUST.

  SINGED: CAPT ASHBURRY JINKS, GENERAL MANAGER, PALM RANCH FREIGHT CO INC.

  “I’ll be damned,” commented Stock Morgan mildly.

  “Me, too,” agreed Bud Williams. The others—John Sharp, Ken Fairchild, old man Middleton, Duke Jones and Curly O’Connor—concurred silently. Stock Morgan leaned down from the saddle and opened the forbidden gate. The seven of them swooped through, the gate was closed behind them, and they clattered to Palm Ranch headquarters.

  In the late afternoon Palm Ranch was steeped in peace and golden sunshine under skies as serene and fathomlessly blue as the eyes of Andalusia’s fairest La Güera. A hen cackled from a haystack; on the back porch of the ranch house a buxom Indian woman churned languidly and sang La Paloma; squatting on his high heels beside the barn door a ranch hand mended a tug chain with wire; out in the upper field a young fellow, all tall boots and big gray Stetson and checked shirt, was sweating and swearing over post-hole digging.

  Stock Morgan yelled at the man by the barn, “Hey! Is Bill Dorn here?” and got for answer a curt, “Nope he ain’t.”

  “Where’n hell is he?” demanded Morgan.

  “Dunno.”

  “When’ll he be back?”

  “Dunno.”

  Ken Fairchild at his elbow said in an undertone, “There’s the girl, Morg.”

  She was coming toward them through the palms down by the creek, wearing her riding rig and big floppy hat, a pencil and pad of paper in her hand. Seven soiled and battered hats came off as she raised a pair of pretty gray eyes to the hats’ owners.

  “We’re lookin’ for Bill Dorn, Miss,” said Morgan. And he added, as her eyes grew speculative: “We’re friends of his. Me, I’m Morgan. These boys are Ken Fairchild an’ Johnnie Sharp an’—an’ the rest.”

  “Oh,” said Lorna, and smiled at them. “Won’t you light down? Mr. Dorn ought to be along any minut
e now.”

  Duke Jones got a good look at the Indian woman and called: “Hello, Josefa. Love me like you used to? You used to give me all the buttermilk a man could drink.”

  “Come along, muchachos,” grinned Josefa. “Plenty butt’ milk, col’ like Chreesmus.”

  They drank buttermilk and lounged about waiting for Dorn. Lorna, with so many eyes upon her, went into the house. From a shaded window she saw Bill Dorn come riding up. Thereafter she watched eight men out in the yard squat on their heels and pull out their Durham bags to roll cigarettes, or extract big-bladed pocket knives from capacious pockets and set to work whittling sticks which they threw away only to grope around for other sticks to whittle and discard. Some chewed tobacco and spat at marks with varying degrees of accuracy.

  Bill Dorn talked to them steadily, soberly, without once raising his voice. They were like stolid old Indians—or like little boys playing Indian, just as you pleased. At the end Dorn snapped his knife shut and pushed his hat brim back and stood up and said: “And there you are, gents. You can come in on the play any way you want, or you can stay out. I’d like to see you chip in with some mazuma, because I know I’m going to run short of the stuff it takes to buy things with. If you’re busted, or if you want to hold on to what you’ve got, do so. In that case, throw in with me, grab a job on my payroll, and if the time comes that we’ve got to fight it out with Mike Bundy, then throw lead on my side.”

  “When are you startin’ your freight teams, Bill?” asked Bud Williams who had been a Dorn Ranch cowboy almost since he could remember.

  “The first pulls out of Liberty at daybreak. I’m still short a couple of teamsters.”

  Bud Williams stood up and threw his cigarette away. That was careless of him; he stepped over to it and swiped it out with his boot.

  “You’re short only one,” said Bud. “I’m on my way to Liberty now. I’m used mos’ly to steerin’ only one cayuse at the time, but I reckon I can han’le the leathers on six of ’em.” He grew hesitant; then he blurted out, “Hell, Bill, it’s like ol’ times, huh, workin’ for you ag’in?”