Trail Smoke (Musaicum Vintage Western) - Ernest Haycox

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pointed on Surratt, as bitter and dangerous as the muzzles of a double-barreled shotgun. He whipped out his thin question. "What do you know about it?"

      "You got an interest in the matter?" inquired Surratt.

      Perrigo pressed his mouth together. His dry features betrayed a faint fear. Surratt saw that and marked it in his mind and spoke again, somewhat more agreeable. "I'd suggest we get along, for I'm staying on with Torveen awhile. But if we're not going to get along I want to know that, Nick. When a man declares open season on me I've got my own remedies. Two can play this tune."

      "You smell like a Head rider to me," stated Perrigo.

      "You're dead wrong. I braced him the other day, didn't I?"

      "Men don't brace Bill Head like that," countered Perrigo. "They don't get away with it—not unless it's a faked scene."

      "Do we get along or don't we?"

      Perrigo blazed up. "The hell with you! You battered Chunk Osbrook's face out of joint and you laid your tongue on the kid. I'm warning you never to try that on me! I'm running that ranch for Torveen. I tolerate no man on the place that rides in front of me. I want that understood. If you stay, you take my orders. You get that?"

      "No," said Surratt.

      A quick reflex of temper sent Perrigo's arm forward with the muzzle of the gun. But he checked the impulse. Whiteness showed on his cheeks and made the blackness of his eyes more unreasoning. Violence shook him. "Then watch out for yourself!"

      "I wanted it clear," Surratt murmured.

      "You got it clear," cried Perrigo.

      He climbed from the bowl, and Surratt watched him go up to a thick swirl of pine seedlings and pull out a horse standing there. The little man trotted to the trail and galloped away. Surratt went thoughtfully back to his own horse, following the slope down. He came upon the meadow and crossed it to the ranch house. The crew had gone, but Torveen sat in his office room, sprawled out in a chair, somehow deeply engaged with his thoughts and ruffled by them.

      He said, with perceptible relief: "So you're back."

      "Was there some doubt in your mind, Sam?"

      Torveen shrugged his shoulders. "I couldn't blame you if you kept right on going away from here."

      Surratt sought his pipe and packed it. "I am to tell you that Bill Head's called a meeting of ranchers at his place tonight."

      "So you met Judith." Torveen shifted his back against the chair; he seemed at once irritable. "You get around, friend Buck. You sure do get around."

      "Any objections?" asked Surratt dryly.

      Torveen lifted his green and slantwise glance. He didn't like it. He showed his restless resentment. But then he got abruptly up. "Oh hell, Buck, let it ride. I'm nervous as a cat. I've no intention to rag a man like you."

      Surratt smiled. "When did you have a good drink last?"

      "If that helped any, I'd be drunk as a lord. So Bill's called a meeting?"

      "You going?"

      Something in the question reached Torveen's sense of humor. He grinned. "That wasn't why Judith sent the news along, Buck. No, we won't be there. We'll be somewhere else, tonight." He drew a long breath; he turned sober again. "I guess you'll have the chance soon enough to find out what my hole card is. Stick with me, Buck. This is going to be tough."

      BUSINESS AT NIGHT

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      This was night again and the crew was in the yard, waiting to go. A quick, cold wind flowed off the peaks; there was no moon. Torveen stood in the doorway of his office room, yellow light strongly shining against his roan cheeks. Posted at the foot of the porch, Surratt could make out the man's driving nervousness; there wasn't any fun in Torveen now and all his motions were swift and short. He drew a last long breath of smoke from his cigarette; he threw it out into the dust. His voice flattened.

      "You got any questions, Buck?"

      "That's all right," remarked Surratt very quietly.

      "It may be—it may not be. But, God, you're cool about it! Well, let's go." Torveen jumped down from the porch and traveled over to his horse, Surratt following. The group whirled out of the yard, across the plank bridge and into the timber. At the main road Torveen turned eastward and led his men up the stiffening slope of the hills. They ran between the solid pines and through a covering blackness, with only a dim steel-blue strip of sky above. They crossed a covered bridge, booming deep echoes out into the night. They seemed to pass along the edge of a canyon, for Surratt could hear the rush of water down there, even above the steady flogging rhythm of pony hoofs. His horse was drawing for wind, but the pace kept on that way without break during the best part of half an hour; after that they walked a little way, surrounded by a dense blackness still—and presently broke into the long canter, again covering the miles.

      They whirled suddenly out of the trees and pounded through a narrow gap. A steady, down-scouring wind met them in the face, with the chill of a higher elevation in it. There were a few short and stubby second-growth pines vaguely standing along this way, but these soon faded and they were riding across the face of a rocky slope, the black and abrupt bulk of one of the Gray Bull peaks running spirelike into the sky above them. Even without a moon the bare talus fields of this area reflected a tawny radium glow through the gloom. They plunged into a cold and damp mist cloud and rode sightlessly through its muffling substance. But somewhere along this stretch of road Surratt felt the grade level off and tip downward. He knew then they had crossed the pass.

      Without warning, they were beyond the mist. Torveen spoke a slow order. Surratt piled into the rider ahead of him and reined up abruptly. The crew had stopped behind Torveen, whose body turned in the saddle, right and left. There was no talk, but the labored breathing of the horses reached out and disturbed the chilly dark. An opaque, triangular pattern just ahead seemed to mark the presence of a defile.

      A voice came stolidly from the near-by rocks: "Torveen?"

      "Yeah."

      "Go ahead."

      They passed into the defile and paced through it and emerged upon what seemed to be a meadow. Alert to all this, Surratt pulled up his chin and keened the night. And then he was relaxed and amused, and puzzled. His nostrils told him the mystery; and his ears told him. Another man walked vaguely into view, to challenge as the first man had done. A white, moving mass stirred along the earth, bleating up a confused, unmistakable sound. Here were sheep, the smell of them strong in the wind.

      Torveen's voice came back, pitched to a high and driving restlessness. "You take the front, Nick. Rest of us scatter along the edges of this band. Stay on the road all the way back until we reach the turnoff to the upper meadow. Move along. Keep these woollies from straying. Push 'em, but not too fast. Come on."

      Surratt went into the meadow, sheering off from the edge of the band. The sheep were already in motion, pressing through the defile into the road. Torveen had disappeared and the others had disappeared. Surratt turned and drifted. When he reached the road he flanked the sheep and sat loosely in his saddle. Torveen's voice came up from the rear. "Faster, Nick." Surratt saw the blurred white stream bulge and break from the road, just ahead; and he trotted that way and pressed the sheep back into the straggling column. His horse didn't like the work and shied away, but he squelched that with a few quick prods of his spur and went idle again, amused to the point of silent laughter. At twenty- five he had turned sheepherder, a job that all his cattle training had taught him to despise. There was humor in this situation for him, a kind of sardonic byplay on the swift turnings of his own life. Yet his quick mind reached beyond the humor of it and saw a reality that contained no reason for laughter. He knew then why Sam Torveen had wanted help and why Torveen had kept his silence until now.

      Those pointed feet slicing into the pastures of cattle land meant somebody's blood. It had

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