A Century of Great Western Stories Read online

  His brother, Lester Colton, a dirty, red-whiskered man, rode up beside him and said, “Train smoke.”

  The smoke was far away, a smudge blending with gray clay hills.

  Hooks said, “That’s the local freight. Leaves Maverly about seven. Passenger train won’t be ’long till two-fifteen.”

  “Think he’ll really have the guts to come back?”

  “He’s got guts enough. All them Sagers got guts.”

  Hooks was about thirty, so raw-boned and powerful it set him apart from his five brothers, big and hard-muscled though they were. This morning they were especially rough-looking and taciturn, each with a Winchester in his saddle scabbard and a Colt at his hip. Besides Hooks and his five brothers, there was his stepbrother Babe, and a little sharp-faced puncher by the name of Wiley Gray.

  Hooks said, “Yes, I expect he’ll be on it. Unless he knows us Coltons are meeting him.” His lips twisted down when he said that, and he turned to let his eyes rest on Babe. Babe was about seventeen, big as a Colton, but with a broader, more even-featured face. “How about it, Babe? You think Tom Sager will know we’re riding to meet him?”

  Babe had uncontrollable fear of Hooks Colton, and he raised his voice a trifle too much in an effort to hide it, “Why ask me?”

  “You know why. Because you been hanging around Lily Sager.” There was a raw, challenging quality in Hooks’s voice. He was both handsome and predatory, and the voice fit him. Women had always fancied Hooks, and it had cut his pride when first Miss Grahame, the schoolteacher, and then fifteen-year-old Lily Sager had shown a preference for Babe. Hooks knew that Babe was scared of him, and he said, “Listen, kid, you lie to me and I’ll slap it back down your throat. Paw ain’t here for you to hide behind today. We all know you been sneaking over there in the coulee to see Lily Sager.”

  Babe wanted to stand up to him. He wasn’t a coward. He could climb on a bronc that Hooks would be scared to get in the same corral with, yet when he faced Hooks he turned gutless. It had been like that ever since he’d watched Hooks kill that Flying W rep six years ago. The rep had gone for his gun first, but Hooks just reared back, with that big arm coming up, jerking the gun, firing. A single, inescapable second of time. Sometimes in the middle of the night Babe would still wake up and remember that rep, bullet-hit and falling with that awful, shocked expression in his eyes.

  Hooks gave him a contemptuous look and turned his shoulder, and Lester said, “You been seeing her, Babe?”

  “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t.” His heart knocked at his ribs and sweat felt clammy along his hairline. It made his answer come back more violently than he’d intended.

  Lester rubbed his tobacco-spattered whiskers and said, “Don’t let that lip run away with you. I don’t give a damn about the girl. I don’t give a damn if you do beat Hooks’s speed. But if you tipped her off that we’re going down to meet her brother …”

  “I never told her anything. If you don’t trust me, then why’d you tell me anything? Why—”

  “We trust you. You’re here, and you’re alive. That’s proof we trust you.”

  Hooks had turned again, and his predatory eyes were this time fixed on Lester. “What d’you mean, beat my speed? If I really wanted a woman do you think I’d let that apple-cheeked—”

  “All right, let it lie. So you never got turned down by the teacher, and you never called on Lily Sager. We got enough fighting cut out for us today. Let’s drift in there to Maverly and have a look around. You can’t tell about that damned Dad Sager. He get an idea we’re greeting his boy home from the pen he’ll likely have half the rustlers from the breaks backing him.”

  The Coltons had been trying to get hold of the Old Fort fields ever since the big blizzard of ’87. They’d pushed the Sagers to the edge of the badlands by overgrazing the range until it looked like it had been sheeped off. They’d branded Sager calves and the Sagers had branded theirs. Finally, young Tom Sager had gone too far and had taken to slapping his iron on calves from the Flying R and the 88 and had ended up in Deer Lodge with a four-year sentence, which now had been commuted to two. It hadn’t helped the Coltons that he was in jail. Old Rufe wanted to buy, and the meadows were in Tom’s name, and when he wrote, Tom hadn’t answered his letters. But today he was coming home, and old Rufe, his back bent like a Blackfoot bow from kidney stones, had sent his boys in to greet him.

  As they were heading down toward Six-Mile Creek, young Delbert Colton dropped back and rode beside Babe. Delbert had a nasal obstruction that made his mouth hang open and had won him the name Fishface. He was Babe’s age, give or take a couple of months, and they’d grown up together since the day old Rufe married Babe’s widowed mother and took her away from her job as waitress in the depot beanery at Miles City. Fishface had always been a sneak, the only one in the Colton family.

  Now Fishface grinned and said, “You better leave Hooks’s girl alone. He might let you chase around with that Grahame woman, but if you try fooling around—”

  “Keep quiet about Miss Grahame.”

  “Look here, now—”

  “I said to keep quiet about Miss Grahame.”

  Andy Colton, who was next younger than Hooks, overheard them and said, “You better look out for him today, Fish. He sounds like he’s drunk cougar milk.”

  The sun, rising higher, became hot and reflected off the whitish gumbo earth into their faces. Sage grew high. It slapped their stirrups and gave off a suffocating, dusty odor. It was close to noon when they rode through the outskirt shacks of Maverly.

  The town was warped and unpainted. It boasted one tree—a box elder in the yard of the railroad sectionhouse. It had been long since the last rain, and Main Street was a strip of dust between platform sidewalks and false-fronted buildings.

  Babe looked over at Andy, who was riding beside him and said, “What if Tom Sager won’t sell?”

  “He will.”

  “But what if he don’t?”

  “Why, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll give him what he really had coming when he started running our brands three years ago.”

  “He served his time.”

  “He served two years in a stone house letting tax money feed him. What a rustler needs is ten minutes on the end of a stiff rope. What’s wrong, Babe? You sound like you might be backin’ Sager’s hand.”

  “It’s just I don’t think it’ll do us any good to gun him down.”

  “Maybe. And it won’t do him any good either.”

  “You can’t just ride up and shoot him.”

  Lester turned and said, “We’ll let him eat first.” Lester was the oldest of the bunch, and he had a slouched, easy-seeming manner that made his underlying cruelty a little worse when he chose to show it. “Why can’t we just ride up and shoot him? Who’s here to stop us? Walt Baker? I’ll lay dollars against buffalo chips he lights out for the deep coulees half an hour after we hit town. Walt didn’t get elected sheriff for any reason except he needed the pay. He’s hell on an Injun kid that steals a five-dollar saddle, but he won’t stand between the Coltons and anybody.”

  A wagon freight outfit was loading up at the railway warehouse, and heavy-booted mule drivers mingled with the cowboys in town. A buckboard with a team of bay broncs was tied to the hitch rack in front of the J-B Mercantile. They wore Sager’s Lazy S horse brand.

  Sager was a widower with only the two children, but he was an early settler with friends in the country, and he stood well with the rustlers and wolfers down in the breaks. The prospect that he might have come with a few guns backing him made the Coltons a trifle wary.

  THE COLTONS PASSED the Sager buckboard silent and set-jawed, pretending not to notice. Hooks said something and swung down at the hitch rack in front of the Lone Cabin saloon.

  The others followed him, limped around on stiffened legs to get the feel of the ground after so many hours in the saddle. Babe stood at the rack with his gaze traveling automatically to the mercantile’s front door. He could see the outline of a girl
just beyond the screen, and he knew it was Lily Sager.

  Fishface noticed him and nudged

  Hooks, saying, “Guess who he seen!” Hooks glanced at the door, and back at Babe. His face was big-boned and hollow in the cheeks. Grayish under his tan. He’d always wanted Lily. He’d wanted her worse than anything else in his existence.

  But Hooks kept control of himself. He turned and stepped to the sidewalk. He hitched his sagging gun belt. His Levi’s were wrinkled, and they stuck to the insides of his stud-horse legs. He shot another glance at the girl and clumped across to the Lone Cabin’s swinging doors.

  Lily Sager had been watching him, and she must have thought he was out of sight, for now she stepped outside. She was a pretty kid, deeply tanned, slim and supple as a boy from riding. She usually wore boots and pants and kept her hair in a knot under her sombrero, but today she had on a dress, slippers, and a mail-order white bonnet. Her hair was combed in curls that fell to her shoulders.

  She said, “Babe!”

  Babe finished tying his bronc and cut across to the mercantile’s high platform walk. He knew all the Coltons were watching him—that everybody along the street was watching him—but he managed to look casual enough and walk with a good jingle of his star-roweled spurs.

  Lily was biting down on her underlip, and he could see the rapid beat of an artery in her throat. She was scared. He never remembered seeing her scared before.

  She said, “Babe, what are you going to do?” Then she changed it, saying, “What are they going to do?”

  “Meet the train.”

  “They came to get Tommy. They came to kill him.”

  “They’re here to get those Old Fort fields. Won’t he sell?”

  “You know how Tommy is. He hates the Coltons. He even hates you. He wouldn’t sell for all the money in Powder River County.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Lily. You know I can’t do anything about those fellows. Not when they’re on the prod. Why don’t you send a telegram to him in Iron City? Tell him to get off—”

  “He wouldn’t leave the train because of the Coltons. You know he wouldn’t.”

  He had his Stetson off, turning it around in his hands. “I don’t know what to say, Lily.”

  “Then they plan on gunning him down?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on … things. Depends on what Tom does. You and your dad come in alone?”

  She hesitated, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something she didn’t want to tell him because he was a Colton. Then she said, “Blackfoot Charley came on horseback. I don’t know where he is.”

  Hooks had gone inside the saloon, but the rest of the Coltons were in a tight, hard-eyed knot at the door, watching him.

  “I got to go,” he said. “You see how it is.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  He left with the warm impression of her hand in his. Her last words stuck with him. She saw. He wondered if she’d seen how yellow-gutted he was when it came to Hooks Colton.

  THE INTERIOR OF the Lone Cabin was dim and damp after the bright heat of outside. It smelled of stale beer. Hooks was at the bar, his heel notched on the rail, and one elbow propped. He kept his eyes on Babe all the way across the room. His thumb was hooked in his pants band, just above his .45. For a sick moment Babe thought maybe he’d force things to a showdown right then. It was unreasonable, but Babe knew he was more scared of Hooks than he was of dying. He had a .45 of his own, practically a twin of the one Hooks carried, and he knew how to draw it and shoot it, but still he was physically incapable of facing the man.

  Lester—lean, unkempt, and four years the eldest of the Colton boys, came up beside Hooks and jolted him with his shoulder, saying, “Have a drink.”

  Hooks pushed away and kept his eyes on Babe. “What were you telling her?”

  Babe’s throat was tight, and his voice had a strange sound to his ears as he answered, “I told her I was in town.”

  Wiley Gray and a couple of the Colton boys laughed.

  Hooks said, “You think you’re a pretty smart button since you learned all that stuff from the books the schoolteacher lent you. You think you’re one step above us Coltons. You think because old Rufe was damned fool enough to sign over a fourth of his property to that biscuit-shootin’ mother of yours you can fall into—”

  “Keep still about Ma!” She’d been dead for three years, but the Coltons never got over hating her. He was still scared of Hooks, and he thought Hooks was going to kill him, but he raised his voice and said, “You mention my mother again—”

  Lester Colton said, “Shut up!” and rammed him so hard he staggered and had to grab the edge of the bar to keep from going down. Hooks moved a step clear of the bar with his right hand hanging down, its back forward, just like that day he shot the flying W rep.

  Babe pulled himself up. He came with a lunge, and Lester hit him. His fist traveled no more than eighteen inches but it struck like a sledge. Babe was down with the slivery floor beneath his hands.

  Lester said, “Live a while, kid. Live a while. Wait till we settle with Sager, then you go ahead and get shot if you want to.”

  BABE STOOD UP. All the Coltons except Hooks were grinning at him. There was a bottle and empty glass on the bar. He poured one and downed it. He remained dizzy for a while, but the liquor helped bring him around He saw Hooks and Lester walking out the door.

  “Maybe you should’ve stayed home,” Fishface said.

  “You go to hell!”

  “You see?” Andy said. “A bust on the jaw don’t stop that one. He’s been drinkin’ cougar’s milk.”

  Jeef Colton looked at his watch. “Train due at two-fifteen?” he asked the bartender.

  “Two o’clock sharp. They changed it.”

  “We got an hour and a half. Let’s put the nose bag on.”

  Babe went with Clint, Jeef, and Wiley Gray to a Chinese café. They never had fresh pork and eggs except when they came to town, so that’s what they ordered. When they went outside forty-five minutes later, a saloon tramp named Dod Price got hold of Jeef’s shirt and said, “Guess who pulled out? The sheriff. Walt Baker.”

  “Left town?”

  “Sure. Said he had a hurry-up call in Johnnytown. Somebody shot. I’ll lay dollars he ain’t headed toward a shootin’, but away from one.”

  Jeef laughed and gave him four bits for a drink. Jeef was twenty and proud of being one of the tough Coltons.

  Andy saw them a few minutes later and came from a saloon. “Walt Baker just lit out,” he said.

  “I know,” Clint said. “You better lay off tanglefoot till we’re through with Sager, or Hooks will get mean again.”

  “To hell with Hooks.” Andy looked at Babe. “Ain’t that what you say? To hell with him.” His lips twisted down in a nasty smile. “What do you want to take all that for? Show him you’re not scared of him. You ain’t, are you?”

  “No, I’m not scared of him!”

  “I’ll tell him you said so.” They were all grinning now. “Won’t we, boys? We’ll tell him he said so.”

  The buckboard was no longer in front of the mercantile. Jeef asked if the Sagers had pulled out, and Andy said no, they’d driven to the Climax stable.

  Babe looked at his dollar watch when it was 1:22; and again when it was 1:35.

  They went back to the Lone Cabin. A freight wagon with a six-mule team was tied to the hitch rack, and some drivers were inside, drinking and talking loud. They quieted when the Coltons came in. Babe had the feeling that the whole town was keyed like a set trap, waiting for the train to arrive.

  He looked at his watch again, but less than three minutes had passed. Lester Colton walked in.

  “Where’s Hooks?” Andy asked.

  “Up at the depot,” Lester said, and poured himself a drink. “Saw Dad Sager. Talked to him.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing. Just stood there, looking mean and stubborn. I told him we weren’t wanting to get rough. Told him we w
anted to buy. Would pay five thousand. He said he didn’t own the Old Fort fields. Said Tommy did. I said, ‘Will Tommy sell?’ He said, ‘Wait and talk to him,’ and I said, ‘We damned well intend to.’ ”

  “Who’ll talk to him—Hooks?”

  “Me.” Lester finished his drink, hitched his Colt and said, “All right, let’s drift. It’s about time.”

  TRAIN SMOKE MADE a dark smudge in the west. They turned a corner at the brick-fronted bank and caught sight of the depot. Lily was there, her dress looking very bright in the afternoon sun. Dad Sager was with her. He’d married when he was past forty, and now he looked more like he should be her grandfather. Dad wasn’t very big, and he had a brace of .45s strapped on. It looked funny to see him weighted down like that. Babe knew he intended to give one of the guns to Tom as soon as he got off the train. The buckboard wasn’t there. Dad didn’t intend to leave immediately. He’d been a big rancher when the Coltons were still living in a dugout shanty, and it wouldn’t be his style to let them run him out of town.

  A moment later he saw Hooks. He was at the far end of the platform, slouched with an elbow on the rail.

  Lester spat tobacco juice and said, “There won’t be trouble, but spread out, just in case. Andy, you keep the boys down here. I’ll get over by the freight shed door. That’s where the passengers will get off.”

  The train appeared, distorted by a heat wave until it looked a hundred feet high. At a quarter-mile it shrank to perspective, and rolled in, came to a rumbling stop. Nervous from apprehension though he was, Babe still thought of when he was little, and his mother hashed in the depot beanery at Miles. Always met the trains.

  Lily Sager ran along the still-moving coaches and was these to meet her brother when he climbed down with a cheap black suitcase in his hand. He was about twenty-two, taller than his dad. A hardness had replaced some of the hell-and-be-damned good looks that had made him the darling of half the women in the houses across the tracks at the time he was taken away.