Born Savage Read online

  Sonny watched him go, grinning. They’d taken an awful drubbing back there a few weeks ago when, under Ethan’s orders, they’d tried to take the herd. One man killed and horses shot from under Red and two others.

  Then, to their and Ethan’s laughter, this Randolph dude had hunted them up and hired them to do the same job!

  FOUR

  At the rear of the house, Vernell left the grulla ground-tied. If the stubborn animal had enough “hoss pride” that it could be caught only by the use of a lasso, then it certainly wouldn’t move as long as the reins lay on the ground.

  She re-entered the kitchen. Her aunt had just turned from the shelf over the sink, with a framed photo of three boys in her hands. “Why, Aunt Mary, what on earth,” the girl exclaimed. “Surely you don’t believe—”

  “The maimer in which Eric is recovering the same number of cattle stolen by Ethan Ordway frightens me, Vernell. Now we’ve made a second enemy more terrible than the first.”

  “You really believe he’ll try to burn us out?”

  “He doesn’t strike me as a man of idle boasts. And when he learns that Kathy Perry believed him dead and married Sheriff Eaton during his absence I shudder to think what may happen.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” sighed the girl. “Even that could hurt an unregenerate brute. At least there is something that can hurt him!”

  She strode determinedly back into the great living room. Ordway now stood easily as though there wasn’t an enemy within miles instead of exactly one dozen of them within a hundred and fifty yards. He was speaking sardonically to the deflated sheriff as Vernell came in.

  “So you took the money off me and went ahead and bought a herd with it anyhow, huh? Didn’t have nerve to come back loaded with cash and try to lie to Ethan. He’d have taken the hide off you.”

  Step remained silent.

  “You took fifteen thousand off me, bought a Mexican herd at ten dollars a head, and came home,” Ordway pressed relentlessly. “What happened to it?”

  “Fattened on Pronghorn grass and sold in Cheyenne by your uncle,” Vernell interrupted. “And now, your unbathed Excellency, your horse awaits.”

  “Any trouble?” He had to grin despite Step’s presence. This girl had spunk!

  “You overestimated my ability with a lasso,” she replied icily. “Red Waldo saddled the horse for me, and asked questions … you fool!”

  “Thank you for the warning.” He spoke a final grim word to the sheriff: “Step, I’ll find out why Tobe Whitehouse had to die, why Koonce is still wearing a badge under you. And when we meet again, you will be paid three bullets in front for two through my back.”

  Eaton started to speak. But his eyes widened, looking past Ordway, and Channon spun toward the front doors. One had opened noiselessly. In the opening stood Red Waldo with a big pistol in his right hand. His red-rimmed eyes, many years lashless, from Harridan disease, were flat, dead.

  “My brother Jude Waldo tried an even break and got killed. I had to wait for this. Here goes fer him and a good hoss you shot out from under me at six hundred yards.”

  Vernell never saw Ordway’s hand make the draw. In less than a second, she heard the ear-ringing thunder of the .44, and then again. Red Waldo staggered backward through the doorway to the porch edge. His shoulders struck the gallery support to which the shiny black mare was tied.

  The high-strung animal shrilled, reared. Broken reins gave a snapping sound. She fled away with head held high, looking back in fright.

  Dying, Waldo reflexed a bullet through Ordways sombrero brim, and then that was all; the end of a life of theft, murder, rape and brutality.

  Without emotion, the man robbed of his herd shot Waldo again.

  Red Waldo’s body fell slackly in an ugly heap like a sack of grain thrown on its side and bent slightly at the thick, tight-pressed middle. The black mare stopped running, one hundred yards away, and now stood facing the ranch, blowing loudly, trembling, broken reins dangling.

  Vernell saw it all through horrified eyes riveted mainly upon a pair of worn boots with run down heels, hanging by the sharp toes from the edge of the porch. The rest of the man’s toad-shaped body, slain lightning fast, lay in the dirt, with a stream of bright crimson flowing from flabby lips slacking around a cruel mouth.

  When Channon Ordway turned, black eyes brittle, she knew even before he spoke to Eric almost what his words would be. “The only reason that didn’t happen to you when we met, Randolph, was because I figured you for an outlandish greenhorn who just didn’t know any better. Otherwise, I’d have dropped you.”

  He strode back to where she stood, pushed her aside. He bent swiftly to a thick, dusty volume of the bottom shelf, right on the carpeting where her ankles had been.

  He straightened with the book in one hand, and spoke dismissively to the girl. “Your legs, Miss Randolph? I’ve seen prettier. Kathy Perry’s, for instance. I was looking at a bullet hole in the back of this book.”

  He opened a large volume, leather bound. Plato. In the center pages, like a snug, rain-colored cocoon, buried against a barricade of tom, smashed, accordion-shaped folds of philosophy written centuries before, lay a big bullet Charm on Ordway handed her the opened book.

  “It probably was fired by a man sitting at the front porch astride his horse. It passed through your father’s body as he stood in the doorway. Slanted down and lodged into this book.”

  He faced Eric Randolph, his eyes turning scathingly angry. “You’re supposed to be an intelligent man, not to mention a gun expert. Weigh that bullet. I own the only five-hundred-grain Sharps in this country. I inherited it from my father. Most of his outlaw friends preferred repeaters: Henrys, Spencers, Winchester Seventy-threes.”

  He moved toward the kitchen, turned for one savage thrust at them. “If I’d have wanted to kill the Hermit, I’d have done it long ago: after the day I rode over here with a note from Ethan to buy out this place and he peppered me in the back with that shotgun you’re so handy with, Miss Randolph. I was twelve years old and my mother had just died.”

  In the kitchen he saw Mrs. Randolph with the picture of her sons still in her hands. Running footsteps were converging toward the front. He said, “I’m sorry they’ll have no place to come to, Mrs. Randolph.”

  “There was death in this house before you came, Mr. Ordway. The death of a man’s disintegrating soul after he absconded with much of the Randolph family fortune. Go, now. Hurry. I feel in my heart that we’ve wronged you.”

  He plunged through the kitchen door and down the two steps, and was up fast into the Mexican saddle. Several men, led by Sonny, were running toward the front. One of them spotted Ordway and foolishly clawed out his pistol, giving a yell of warning.

  The .45-70 in Ordway’s hands snapped up to his shoulder. The vicious kick came with the’ lethal buffalo killer’s throaty roar. Seventy grains of black powder-drove five hundred grains of lead slug into a man, and killed him.

  The grulla exploded into pumping movement and slammed northward up the length of the valley toward the north end; the north promontory where the old outlaws in an unnamed settlement used to watch for the coming of the lawmen.

  The chunky grulla did a magnificent job of eating up the six miles, galloping and trotting by turns. There was no pursuit; not in the face of a rifle that reached a long way out and struck with the weight of a sledgehammer. Ordway would have bet that the black mare ridden by Step had had enough for today.

  His nerve was gone. What he would need would be a few big drinks, preferably undiluted. He’d wait, and likely ride in with Sonny.

  Ordway came to the upper end of the valley with the strange name, and began a slow ascent of the road leading up to the promontory and the town there. Once upon a time Eric Randolph, comparatively new in the valley, had asked Ethan Ordway the reason why Bitter Squaw had been so named.

  “And do you know,” he later confided to Mike Adkins in Mike’s bank, “I thought the scoundrel was going to draw his revolver an
d strike at my head.”

  Ordway reached the top. The grulla gave a satisfied heave of its barrel and latigo leather ceased to creak. Ahead of them was a line of log structures built in the days when the fathers of Channon Ordway, Step Eaton, Sonny Shackleford, Robert Koonce, the deputy sheriff, and Kathy Perry had to watch for both the law and the warlike Ute Indians.

  Thoughts of Kathy sent a warm feeling through Ordway as he rode toward the low, broad structure built by Hansen, another of the old bunch.

  He knew the whole town must be aware of his coming. Step would have told it over a few drinks before departing south to the Rocking R to “bring in” his prisoner. Half the town had likely viewed Ordway’s progress up the valley.

  Now he was here, back from the dead after fifteen months, and somewhere along the line there were questions to be answered. Somewhere along the line more men were going to die.

  It was typical that nobody was on Hansen’s porch when Channon Ordway arrived. Too many were from the old days. They’d be inside, studiously careful and trying to act surprised when he entered.

  As Ordway dismounted a man came backing out of the doorway, shoved by a bigger mans hand. Lon Perry, Kathy’s father, was a bit unsteady on his feet. He was followed by the gaunt, towering, black browed figure of scowling Ethan Ordway.

  Lon made a pitiable effort to regain lost dignity. He said, “Ethan, there was a time in the old days when you would have needed a gun to do this. Sure, I’m a boozed-out shell now, but…”

  “Get on back to the livery where you’re paid to work,” growled Ethan. ‘I’m tired of you loafing and bumming drinks.”

  He looked at Channon. There was no surprise or welcome, and certainly no affection in his mien. He always had been a dark, brooding man. He now divided his time between the ranch in Pronghorn Basin, a short distance east, and living quarters in town, near the livery he owned.

  It might have been ten minutes instead of more than a year, from the manner in which he greeted his nephew, without handshake. “I heard you were coming back with a herd. Pronghorn’s empty.”

  “Thanks,” Ordway replied dryly. “Some other people seem to have heard, too. I’m just wondering if you knew that also.”

  He turned to Lon Perry and extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Lon.”

  They shook. The older man wore a haggard look beyond the ravages of whiskey-raw nerves. His eyes were pleading with Channon about something.

  Ordway said, “I’m expecting some trouble with the sheriff and likely some new ‘deputies’ comprising Sonny’s outfit, Lon. Take the grulla over and saddle me the best horse Ethan has. Leave him in front of the courthouse.”

  “You got to leave again? You maybe wing Step—”

  “No”

  “I wish to God you’d killed him!” Perry burst out “Chann, there’s something I got to tell you—”

  “I don’t discuss Kathy in the street in front of a saloon, Lon,” Ordway said almost curtly. “Later. Just bring the horse.”

  Perry mumbled a shamefaced apology and, with a bit of difficulty, mounted the grulla and rode west along the curve of the old fort to the sprawling livery over there in an open space all to itself. Ordway walked past his uncle and went inside. In the days when Channon’s reformed outlaw father and his gentle-bred mother lived in the Basin, and Ethan, as pardner, shared table and house, he’d shown no interest in a boy he couldn’t dominate. At least nothing visible. He’d been almost covert at times.

  He showed a little more now, however. He followed his nephew, and his black, Ordway eyes were a little harder, a little more speculative than usual.

  Twice now, Step had bungled. He’d failed to make the kill in Mexico but had been somewhat forgiven when word came that Ordway was not dead at all but on the way home with a bigger herd.

  But today he’d done it again. He was supposed to have the Rocking R with his prisoner and made certain Channon never reached Tulac alive. But… Where was that damned bottle-slugging fool now?

  Ordway shook hands with Hansen. As an outlaw Hanse had built his first cabin over two tree stumps, nailed a hand sawed board between them, and started business with a five gallon keg of Indian trader whiskey.

  “Glad to see you back,” he rumbled, and returned to business.

  Mike Adkins, prematurely white-haired, was a medium built man whose flair for letting money stick to his fingers in the old outlaw days had landed him in his own bank. It was he who had loaned Channon and Ethan the money used on a cattle buying trip which had left Channon for dead.

  Ordway said, “Mike, come in the back room with Ethan and me. I want to ask a few questions.”

  Mike shot an uneasy glance at Ethan before he caught himself. He’d known Channon since the day Doc Cartwright had planned to deliver him, except that Doc had been caught in a snowstorm and couldn’t get there.

  Mike shook his head. “Plenty of time, Chann. Family stuff first Business later.”

  “All right, Mike, but this happens to be business.”

  He turned to the towering man above the bar, who was taller by an inch or so than even Ethan. “Hanse, give me a bottle and glasses. If Step comes in—he shot me in the back in Mexico and robbed me—tell him where I am.”

  “You didn’t kill him? I’m glad”

  “Why?”

  “He’s been loaded with money since he came home with a herd and that yarn about you getting his in a revolution. But he lost it on high living and a black racing mare. He owes me money.”

  “If he gets his nerve back you won’t collect,” Ordway said grimly.

  Several men shot him strange looks which Ordway did not understand, and even Hanse looked queer. What the devil was wrong with them anyhow?

  In the rear room Ordway placed bottle and glasses and pitcher on the green-topped poker table. He removed his sombrero and sat down. Ethan’s dark eyes were sneeringly sardonic as he looked over his long absent nephew’s raiment and followed suit.

  “Step said you’d gone native down there,” he remarked and unstoppered the bottle by working his thumb against the top. “Looks like he was right.”

  “Gringos make too good a target in the midst of several hundred men in a horseback fight. And 'No sabe’ saved much bother on the drive here.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “Find some answers,” Ordway answered bluntly.

  A green fly, harbinger of spring, buzzed against a rear window where a year before there had been nothing but privies, empty bottles and years of trash accumulation. Buckskin clad mountain-trappers first had wintered here in shelters of brush and skins, keeping wary eyes out for Utes.

  Later came the outlaws, one by one, good men and bad, who discovered that the location was ideal to spot the approach of lawmen coming up the valley from the south or through the huge basin to the east.

  Now there was a graded square around a flat topped little courthouse. Tulac was growing civilized.

  The fly buzzed again and with a grunt of annoyance, Ethan got up and killed it with a newspaper. “Never could stand the damned things inside a house,” he explained.

  No, Ordway thought, nor did you ever bother to explain your actions to any man, least of all a nephew you’ve hated all your life. Ethan sat down again and drank.

  “So you want some answers. Suppose you tell me first what happened down in Mexico.”

  Ordway, thinking of Sonny’s outfit coming up the valley, talked swiftly.

  He told the cadaverous-faced man across the table how Step had shot him in the back one day and fled with the money Channon and Ethan had borrowed from Mike Adkins. He told of some outlawed vaqueros who found him almost dead from loss of blood; how after months of convalescence he joined their revolutionary movement.

  “It’s a good way to die quick if you lose or take your pay in loot and become rich if you win. We won, at least long enough that I got out with two thousand head of cattle.”

  “How come you brought them back here to give me a half share
?”

  Channon Ordway was almost taken aback. He nearly stared at his uncle. His voice hardened. “You probably won’t believe it, Ethan, but I felt that I’d let Mike down. I wanted to make certain he got paid, that we didn’t lose Pronghorn should Mike have got too far out on a limb and had to foreclose.”

  “He didn’t,” Ethan said grimly.

  “I know,” Channon Ordway nodded. “Step drove back a herd for you and then accepted a few morsels such as money and a racing mare you tossed from the table. After you sold our cattle in Cheyenne.”

  “He got a little more than that,” Ethan grinned with something evil and unclean in it “He got Kathy Perry, who thought you were dead.”

  “He married Kathy?” Ordway asked incredulously. He couldn’t believe this. Then he remembered what Lon Perry had tried to tell him a few moments ago, the looks on the faces of the men at the bar when he spoke of killing Step. They had known. Maybe they had pitied him a little.

  Channon Ordway rose to his feet. “This was all your doing, Ethan,” he said coldly. “The Hermit dead, Tobe Whitehouse dead and Step wearing his badge. Since Step was a kid here in town he never went to the privy without first asking you!”

  An abrupt knock came at the door. It opened. Hanse’s huge white head and fiercely upswept Prussian mustaches appeared. “Visitors, Chann,” he announced.

  “How far down the valley, Hanse?”

  “Not far enough for you. And my long-glass says only Step and Sonny are in front. Not a sign of Red Waldo.”

  “You getting old—butting in on something?” Ethan demanded harshly.

  Hanse said to Ordway: “Red’s an awful sneaky man with a rifle, Chann.” He ignored Ethan’s scowling threat “Not anymore,” Ordway answered grimly. “Waldo is dead. I killed him down at the Randolph Ranch, on about the spot in the doorway where somebody killed the Hermit the day I left for Mexico.”

  “Good,” Hansen grunted in satisfaction.

  He pulled back and the door closed once more.

  Ordway turned his attention back to his wary uncle. “And Randolph’s Rocking R cattle, Ethan? You stole them all, didn’t you? The whole country must surely know that. Yet not a man will speak up because they’re afraid of you. Even Mike wouldn’t come in and talk.”