Chapter II · —NESTERS KEEP OFF

About two-thirds of the distance from Cañonville to Mesa City, traveling north toward Mesa City, the road keeps to the higher ground, several miles of it being along the rim of Coyote Cañon. From there it drops to the lower ground, nearly on a level with Black Horse River, and near the bottom of the grade it crosses Antelope Creek, which flows in from the northeast.

Just north of this crossing, on the right-hand side of the road, is an old weather-beaten sign, nailed to a gnarled cottonwood, and it reads:

THIS SIDE OF THE ROAD BELONGS TO THE 6X6. NESTERS KEEP OFF.

That was Peter Morgan’s warning to any one who might entertain any idea of taking up a piece of ground on that side of the road. For a great number of years Peter Morgan and his hard-riding cowboys had enforced that warning. It is true that some had ignored the sign; but not for long. Strangers made haste to move on when the 6X6 outfit proceeded to show them the error of their ways.

Peter Morgan did not own all that range, but he certainly did control it, until one day when Spike Cahill, one of the 6X6 punchers, rode in at the home ranch and announced that a nester family had moved into the old ranch-house between Coyote Cañon and Antelope Creek.

“They’ve got a few head of stock, couple of wagons and the gall of a sidewinder,” declared Spike.

“Did you tell ’em to keep movin’?” demanded Morgan hotly.

“I shore did!”

“What did they say?”

“The old man said f’r me to git to hell away from there before he blowed me back a few ginerations. What is a gineration, Pete?”

“Probably some kind of a gun,” said Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs, the cook of the 6X6, whose opinion usually settled all arguments, as far as Briggs was concerned.

At any rate, Peter Morgan went down to see this nester, whose name happened to be Paul Lane. Morgan was promptly told that the nester fully intended staying just where he was. Paul Lane said that if any pestiferous cowpunchers started trouble with him, he’d make ’em wish they were on a dairy, where they belonged.

In a way it rather amused Peter Morgan, whose word had almost been law in that part of the country. He noticed that this nester had a son and a daughter. The boy was a long, gangling youth, possibly twenty-five, with a devil-may-care air which irritated Peter Morgan. The girl was possibly eighteen years old. She was tall and slender, and Peter Morgan thought she was rather pretty, although he knew more about cattle and horses and cards than he did about women.

But he was there for a purpose and he told Paul Lane in no uncertain terms that nesters were interlopers and very unwelcome in any part of that range.

Paul Lane replied that he aimed to stay, just the same. Yes, he had read that sign at Antelope Creek, and in his opinion the man who put it there had a lot of gall.

“There’s a devil of a lot of land on this side of that road,” he told Morgan. “Fact of the matter is, you could go plumb around the world on it, and I don’t see how any one man has the gall to claim all of it.”

“Then you aim to try and stay here, eh?” queried Morgan.

“I aim to stay here,” corrected Lane, “and you might pass the word around that I’m settled.”

“We don’t pass our troubles along,” said Morgan. “I’ll give you three days to move on.”

“And then what?”

“Wait and see.”

Lane waited. He knew that there was no use appealing to the law until something happened to injure him in some way; and he also knew that a nester would get little consideration in a Mesa City courtroom.

Peter Morgan’s first move, a petty one, was to make a night raid on the nester’s stable, silently removing all of Lane’s horses, and herding them far back on the headwaters of Black Horse River, twenty miles away.

Two days later the horses were all back in Lane’s corral, and Dell Bowen, foreman of the 6X6, found two of the 6X6 saddle horses in the hills, sore-footed, sore-backed, attesting to the fact that Lane and his gangling son had used them to round up their stock.

Young Lane, who had gained the appellation of Long Lane, told Spike Cahill confidentially that he and his father had fixed a trap gun inside the stable door, which would blow hell out of any one who opened it at night. He told this to Spike, just as if Spike had had nothing to do with the raid.

“I dunno if he was tryin’ to be funny, or if he thought we didn’t do it,” Spike told Peter Morgan, who exploded with wrath.

Morgan was a big man, his black hair slightly grizzled. He had piercing black eyes like onyx beads, beneath heavy brows. His mouth was wide and thin-lipped, ready to laugh at anybody except himself. Morgan was known as a hard man with whom to deal, but his word was as good as his bond.

The 6X6 was the biggest outfit in the country; and, besides that, Morgan owned the Oasis Saloon and gambling house in Mesa City, which paid him a fine revenue. Morgan had little to do with the management of the Oasis, which was handled by Jack Fairweather.

A mining boom north of Mesa City had been responsible for the growth of the place, but the mines had been nearly worked out at this time. Cañonville was the county seat, a town about the same size as Mesa City.

The 6X6 ranch was located about three miles east of Mesa City, on Antelope Creek. Northwest of town, about two miles away, was the Flying M outfit, owned by Dave Morgan, a cousin of Peter Morgan. Dave had tried to be as big a man in the community as Peter, but too much indulgence in the flowing bowl and the green-covered table had left him a sour-faced cattleman, fighting to keep ahead of a mortgage.

They had little in common, these two Morgans. Peter rather frowned upon Dave’s failures, and Dave sneered at Peter’s successes; although they were always friendly enough, though in a cold way. Dave was younger than Peter, who was past fifty. They were not alike in any way except coloring.

Dave was slender, nervous, quick to take offense. He hired three cowboys—Ed Jones, Cal Dickenson and Red Eller.

Peter Morgan’s outfit consisted of Dell Bowen, foreman, Bert Roddy, Spike Cahill, Ben Leach and Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs. And they were a hard-bitted crew, even to Napoleon Bonaparte Briggs, who was so bowlegged he couldn’t sit in an armchair.

Napoleon defended his position as camp cook by saying—

“I riz from bein’ a common puncher.”

It did not take Peter Morgan long to discover that Paul Lane and his family did not intend to move away. And there was a law against killing nesters, even in the Black Horse range; so Peter instructed his punchers to confine their operations to annoyance, instead of open warfare.

“You’ll never annoy that feller enough to make him move,” declared Spike. “Mebbe we can make him so fightin’ mad that he’ll kill some of us, and then you can have him hung.”

“You watch him,” said Peter. “Him and that fool son of his will likely orejano a few calves, and then we’ll have him where the hair’s short. There’s an orejano law, you know, Spike.”

“What kind of a law?”

“Every orejano belongs to the Cattlemen’s Association.”

“Shucks! And I aimed to go into the cow business myself some day.”

It might be explained that an orejano is an unbranded, weaned calf—always legitimate prey for the first man who found it and put on his brand. In some parts of the country, especially farther north, they were known as mavericks, but in the southwest, where many of the Spanish words were used, they were generally spoken of as orejanos.

The unbranded, motherless calves had often been the nucleus of a big herd, and the practice of claiming them had become so common that industrious cowboys, anxious to build a herd as quickly as possible, made mavericks, or orejanos, by the simple process of separating a calf from its mother by force. This practice became so prevalent that it became necessary to pass laws governing the disposal of all motherless, unbranded calves. This was a law which had been recently passed, and few of the cowboys were aware that such a thing had been done.

Dave Morgan seemed greatly amused at Peter’s failure to remove the Lane family, and his three punchers rubbed it in on the boys from the 6X6 on every occasion. Nan Lane came to Mesa City once in a while, and the cowboys looked upon her with great favor, although none of them had met her.

They did not like her brother. He played a little poker and drank more than a little.

“Talks too much for a single-handed feller,” declared Red Eller. “I wouldn’t talk that much, even with all the Flyin’ M behind me. But that sister of his is a dinger. I wish somebody would git a knockdown to her, so I could meet her. Some day I’m goin’ to ride right up to that nester’s shack and say howdy.”

“Howdy, Saint Peter!” said Ben Leach dryly.

“Hell, they can’t shoot you for sayin’ howdy.”

“You just think they can’t, Red. Wait’ll you lock horns with old man Lane. He done told me things about my family that I never heard before. He’s what you’d call well read.”

“Fortune teller?” asked Red.

“Fortune hell! Disaster, I’d call it. He told me that my grandpappy was a polecat. Fact.”

“Didja ever see your grandpappy, Ben?”

“No-o-o, I never did.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you can’t hardly dispute him, can you? How soon does Peter Morgan expect to make Lane move out?”

“You better go and ask Peter Morgan.”

Knowing that no one cared to discuss it with Peter Morgan, it was a good way to dismiss the argument.

Lem Sheeley, the sheriff, and Noah Evans, his deputy, riding through Mesa City, heard about the nester on the 6X6 and decided to investigate.

“The nester part of it don’t interest me none, Noah,” explained Lem, “but I’d kinda like to see what this here Lane looks like while he’s alive.”

Lem was almost too fat to be riding a horse. His face was like a full moon, surmounted by an unruly mop of corn-colored hair. He was only thirty years of age and a native of the Black Horse country.

Noah was tall and thin, with a hook nose and watery eyes, which gave him the appearance of having a perpetual cold in his head. He wore shirts that were too small for him and trousers that were too large. As Lem said—

“Noah busts the elbows out of his shirts from grabbin’ at his pants.”

They rode in at the nester ranch, rather curious to see the man who defied the 6X6. Lane’s was not much of a ranch-house, being an old tumbledown affair on the edge of a swale which led down to Coyote Cañon. The fences were badly in need of repair, and the old sway-backed stable threatened at any time to collapse.

Years before this time someone had built the old place and ranged stock for a time, but finally had given it up. It had never been filed as a homestead. Peter Morgan had often threatened to tear it down, burn it down, or otherwise destroy it, but he had neglected to do so.

“We better be a little careful,” advised Noah. “You never stop to think you’re so damn’ fat that the worst shot in the world could hit you at four hundred yards with a .22.”

“Then you’d git my job,” chuckled Lem as they rode up to the ranch-house.

“Don’t want it. Look at you. You’ve been sheriff only three years, and you weighed a hundred and fifty when you took office. Me and my indigestion would look like sin, packin’ two hundred and thirty-five, wouldn’t—”

Noah stopped talking and looked intently at Nan Lane, who came out on the rickety front porch. She was wearing a pale blue dress and a white apron. She was quite the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he was especially partial to pale blue. Lem folded his hands over the horn of his saddle and helped Noah to look at her.

She brushed a hand across her forehead and smiled at them.

“How do you do?” she said pleasantly.

“Nester hell!” snorted Noah under his breath.

“Purty good,” grinned Lem foolishly. “Your pa at home, miss?”

Nan was looking at him closely now. She had seen the flash of his badge in the sunlight, and her demeanor changed perceptibly.

“Why did you want him?” she asked coldly.

“I’m the sheriff, and I—”

“So I noticed.”

“He shore wears it in sight, ma’am,” said Noah quickly. “He got the biggest star they make. Hates t’ go out at night, ’cause it don’t show in the dark. I been tellin’—”

“Shut up!” snorted Lem disgustedly.

“Did Peter Morgan send you over here?” asked Nan.

“He did not, ma’am. We heard about you; so me and Noah thought we’d kinda ride over and have a look at you.”

“Go ahead and look,” she said indifferently.

Noah turned his head and looked at Lem disgustedly.

“Ma’am,” he said solemnly to Nan, “you’ve heard of the hoof-and-mouth disease, haven’t you? Well, that’s what he’s got. Every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it.”

Lem grinned vacantly.

“Ne’ mind him, ma’am,” he said. “He has indigestion somethin’ awful. Nothin’ is funny to him. Eats sody by the pound. That’s why he rides around with his mouth open all the time. If he ever keeps his mouth shut for five minutes at a stretch, he’ll jist natcherally bust.”

“I’d rather have indigestion than fatty degineration,” declared Noah hotly.

Lem flopped his arms dismally.

“I s’pose. Anyway, I don’t think this lady is a bit interested in our symptoms.”

“Not a great deal,” choked Nan. “Did you want to see my father?”

“I was thinkin’ about it,” said Lem solemnly, “but your temperature went so danged low that I froze my ears, and now I dunno jist why I wanted to see him.”

“He didn’t,” declared Noah. “Somebody told him there was a mighty pretty girl over here. Lem would ride miles to investigate a rumor like that. Why, I’ve knowed him to ride a sore footed horse plumb over to Gila County, and when—”

“Whoa!” snorted Lem. “That’ll be about all, Noah. Jist kinda calm down until your vocal cords stop vibratin’, and you’ll feel all right again. You excuse him, ma’am. He’s one of them queer folks who dreams things and tells ’em for pers’nal recollections.”

Noah subsided, grinning widely, while Nan leaned against a porch post and wiped the tears from her eyes. It was the first time she had felt like screaming with laughter since she had moved into the Black Horse range.

A man was riding toward the Lane ranch-house from the direction of Mesa City, and Nan and the officers watched him approach. From the way he swayed in his saddle there was little doubt of his being either drunk or sick. He rode up to the stable, dismounted heavily and removed his saddle, turning the horse into a corral.

It was Walter Lane, Nan’s brother, whose long, gangling frame had caused him to be known locally as Long. He came up to the men and they noticed that his face was bruised and swollen, one eye having assumed a purplish cast. There was dried blood on his chin, on the front of his shirt, one sleeve of which had been almost torn off at the shoulder.

He eyed the sheriff owlishly.

“Whazzamatter round here?” he demanded.

“Not a dern thing,” grinned Lem.

“Yea-a-ah?” He looked at Nan inquiringly. “Nothin’s matter, eh?”

He rocked on his heels, trying to roll a cigaret.

“You ought to go and clean up,” said Nan wearily.

“Thasso? Huh! Shay—” he grinned crookedly at the sheriff—“I’ll betcha there’s one of that damn’ 6X6 outfit that won’t nav’gate f’r a while. Whooee! I shore fixed him.”

“Walter, you haven’t been fighting, have you?” asked Nan anxiously.

“Have I?” He winked at Lem drunkenly. “Lemme tell you somethin’. Lemme tell you—”

He shifted his feet and frowned at the sheriff.

“What do you want here?” he demanded.

“We just dropped in,” smiled Lem.

“Is that so? Well, as far as I’m concerned, you can jist drop out ag’in. You’re a friend of Pete Morgan, ain’t you? Oh, yeah, you are. He swings all the votes in this end of the county, and if you wasn’t his friend you wouldn’t be sheriff. And no friend of—”

“Walter, will you stop that?” demanded Nan nervously. “These gentlemen merely stopped—”

“Don’t let ’em fool you, kid,” sneered the young man.

“Hang on to yourself,” advised Noah coldly. “You’re too drunk to sabe what you’re sayin’. We’re not interested in your troubles with Peter Morgan, unless it comes down to reg’lar trouble.”

“And then what chance has a nester?”

“Depends on what the nester has done,” said Lem.

“If he protected his own?” suggested the boy.

“Lotsa ways of lookin’ at it,” sighed Lem.

He was more interested in talking with Nan than in arguing with her drunken brother.

“There’s just one way you’d look at it,” said the boy. He spat dryly and had to move quickly to keep his balance.

“You better wash your face and go to bed,” advised Lem.

“A-a-aw right.”

He hitched up his belt and went up the steps past Nan, but stopped at the doorway and looked back.

“Any old time they monkey with me, they git what’s comin’ to ’em,” he said warningly, and went into the house.

Nan shook her head wearily and looked at Lem.

“He will drink,” she said sadly.

“Shore,” nodded Lem.

“And he’s just the finest kind of a boy, when he is sober.”

“Shore,” agreed Lem. “Hadn’t ort to drink.”

“Here comes somebody,” said Noah, twisting around in his saddle.

Four men were riding toward them, traveling rather slowly, and as they drew nearer the sheriff recognized Peter Morgan, Spike Cahill of the 6X6, Ed Jones of the Flying M and Joe Cave, one of the stage drivers.

They recognized the sheriff and deputy and increased their speed.

“What in hell has gone wrong now?” growled Noah.

Joe Cave swung away from the rest and stopped his horse near the corral, while the three other men came up to the porch.

“Hyah, Mr. Morgan,” said Lem.

“Hello, Lem.”

Peter Morgan looked closely at the sheriff and at Nan Lane.

“Where’s Long Lane?” asked Morgan. “You know who I mean,” he said, when no one answered him. “He’s here. That’s his horse in the corral.”

“What do you want him for, Peter Morgan?” asked Nan anxiously.

Morgan merely glanced sharply at her, but directed his answer to Lem Sheeley.

“Young Lane killed Ben Leach less than half an hour ago, Sheriff. If your judgment is good, you’ll ride back the way you came—and forget what I told you.”

Nan was standing on the top step, leaning forward, her eyes wide, as she listened to what the sheriff said. But now she turned and ran to the doorway.

“Stop that girl!” snapped Peter Morgan. “Get to the back of the house, Spike!”

Spike Cahill spurred around to the back door while Peter Morgan dismounted, drawing his gun. But before he could reach the steps, Lem Sheeley had dismounted and stopped him.

“Just a minute, Morgan,” said Lem coldly. “This is my job—not yours. And I’m not takin’ your advice. If that drunken kid killed Ben Leach, it’s my job to take care of him.”

Morgan stepped back, scowling at the sheriff.

“Well, go ahead and do it; we’ll argue later.”

Lem walked up the steps. Nan was still standing at the doorway.

“Oh, he didn’t do it,” she whispered. “Don’t you see, they are trying to ruin us. It’s part of their game, Mr. Sheeley.”

Lem stopped and looked her straight in the eyes. It was probably the first time he had ever looked any woman straight in the eyes, and for a moment he forgot that inside of the house there was a murderer.

“Do you think so?” he asked softly.

“I—I think so. They didn’t want you to interfere.”

“Mm-m-m-m—”

Lem moved past her and into the living room. She did not leave the door, but watched Peter Morgan standing at the bottom of the steps. Noah Evans still sat on his horse.

Slowly Lem moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Through the window he could see Spike Cahill on his horse, gun in hand. Farther to the left and down by the corral sat Joe Cave.

But there was no sign of Long Lane. Lem moved slowly back to the living room. There was another door, which led to a bedroom. It was not locked. Slowly Lem opened it and stepped inside. It was a small room, poorly furnished. On the floor was an empty box that had contained rifle cartridges and near the open window was a loaded .30-30 cartridge, evidently dropped by someone who was in a hurry.

There had been no one guarding that side of the house, and within fifty feet of the window was a thick fringe of brush, which led to a deep arroyo. Lem peered through the window, but could see no one. He lowered the window softly. There was an old nail, hanging on a string, which had been used to block the lower half of the window. He inserted the nail in the little hole over the top of the sash and went slowly back to the living room, kicking the empty cartridge box under the bed and putting the loaded cartridge in his pocket.

There was a bed in the living room, which he judged to be the one used by Paul Lane and his son; and the room he had just left was the one used by Nan. She was still standing at the doorway, and she looked curiously at Lem.

Morgan came up to the doorway, halting just outside.

“Is there any more rooms besides this room, the kitchen and that bedroom?” asked Lem.

Nan shook her head. Lem turned to Morgan.

“He must have went straight through here, Morgan,” he said. “I can’t find anybody.”

“That’s damn’ funny!” snorted Morgan.

He surged into the house and went through to the kitchen, where he flung the back door open.

“See anybody, Spike?” he asked.

“Not a soul.”

Spike dismounted and came inside. It did not take the men long to satisfy themselves that Long Lane was not in the house.

“We forgot about the winders on this side of the house,” said Spike. “He could ’a’ gone out that one, Morgan.”

“And fastened it behind himself,” sneered Morgan. “Guess ag’in. No, he made you folks think he was goin’ to stop, but kept on goin’. Probably went through the house, circled around to the stable and saddled a fresh horse. But we’ll get him, if he stays in this country.”

“Of course, I’m only the sheriff,” said Lem slowly, “but I’d shore like to find out what this killin’ was about.”

“It started in Mesa City,” said Morgan. “Young Lane had been drinkin’, and they met in the Oasis. Mebbe Ben had a few drinks. I dunno exactly what it was about, Lem; but the boys said Ben called Lane a nester. One word led to another and they started a fight. I reckon it was a good fight, until Ben kinda got the best of it, and then Lane hit him with a chair.”

“He knocked Ben down with it,” declared Spike, “and before we could stop him he started to put the boots to Ben. But he didn’t hurt Ben much, before we stopped him, and then Lane started for home. Ben woke up and—and—”

“And he took out after Lane, eh?” queried the sheriff.

“Yeah. Ben was crazy mad. He fought fair, Ben did.”

“And Lane killed him, eh?”

“We took out after Ben right away,” said Spike. “If it was goin’ to mean another fight, we intended to see that it was a fair one. We found Ben about a mile and a half from town, layin’ beside the road with a bullet through his head. He’s there yet.”

“Lane bushwhacked him,” declared Morgan hotly.

“A-a-a-aw, hell!” said Noah Evans disgustedly. “And you call that murder! Ben Leach got what he was a-lookin’ for.”

“He got bushwhacked by a damn’ nester!” snapped Spike.

“And all this time he’s gettin’ further and further away,” complained Joe Cave.

“The question is this,” said the sheriff thoughtfully. “Did Ben Leach do any shootin’?”

He remembered what Lane had said about fixing one of the 6X6, so they wouldn’t navigate for a while.

“I don’t know about that,” said Morgan. “We didn’t stop to investigate.”

“Hang ’em first, and investigate afterwards, eh?” said Noah.

Morgan scowled at Noah, but said nothing. There would be an election next year, and Morgan controlled a lot of votes.

“What do you intend doin’?” asked Morgan. “All this talk don’t do any good. Are you goin’ after that killer, or do we have to do it ourselves?”

“Go where?” asked Lem coldly. “Run the legs off our horses before we know which way to go? I reckon we’ll go back and take a squint at the dead man.”

He turned and held out his hand to Nan.

“I’m pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said pleasantly.

Morgan growled under his breath and walked outside, followed by the rest of the men. Nan shook hands with Lem.

“I—I heard you put down that window,” she whispered softly, her voice filled with gratitude.

“I hate a draught,” he whispered seriously. “I catch cold awful danged easy. So long.”

The crowd of men mounted and rode back along the dusty highway. Morgan and his men had nothing to say on the way back to the spot where they found Leach’s body. It was lying beside the road, and the sheriff needed little examination to find that Leach had been shot through the head.

“You moved him, didn’t you?” he asked Morgan.

“Took him off the road. He was layin’ on his face.”

“Where’s his gun?”

The holster was empty and there was no gun in sight.

“Where’s his horse?” wondered Spike Cahill. “I didn’t see it when we came past here.”

None of them had. The road was rocky along there and on the right hand side was a scattering of broken rock which had been removed from the road at the time of construction.

“Looks to me as though Lane took his gun and horse,” said Morgan. “Probably cached the horse for a getaway.”

“Well, there’s one sure thing,” said Lem sadly. “Ben Leach is too dead to tell us about what happened, so we might as well put him on a horse and take him to town.”

“And there’s another sure thing,” declared Morgan. “If the law won’t hang Lane for this murder, somebody will.”

“If there’s goin’ to be any hangin’ done in this county it better be done by the law,” replied Lem meaningly.