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  Right hand upon his gun, Fletch Bannock loosened his horn string with his left hand and began to shake down his rope. He edged his horse a little closer to the ashen-faced Owen.

  “Put your hands behind you, Owen, and take it like a man.”

  The thief slowly stepped backward until he was helpless against the pole fence. “It ain’t right,” he blurted. “A man’s got to have a trial.”

  In desperation he dived for his gun. That was what Fletch Bannock had waited for. His own gun leaped into his hand and he fired. Owen slumped back against the fence and sagged down in a heap.

  A helpless rage swelled in Tillman’s throat. He turned to Clive Bannock and saw the satisfaction in the big man’s face. “You had no call to do that, Bannock.”

  “Matter of opinion. Has working for a woman these last few years made a woman out of you, Tillman?

  “Now what about this button here? He’s old enough to know better than help Owen steal cattle. We might just as well take care of him, too, and show them small-time outfits that our association means business.”

  Trembling in anger, Tillman stepped down and stood in front of the quaking boy. “You won’t lay a hand on him, Bannock. I’m mad enough to shoot you if you make one move toward him.”

  He thought he had seen the boy before, swamping out a High Land saloon. A drifting, homeless kid, likely. He was at an age where he might still become either an outlaw or a preacher, depending on which way he was shoved.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  Stammering, the boy finally managed to say Chet Golightly.

  “Now listen to me, Chet. You’re mighty lucky to be getting out of this alive. If you were a little older, you’d likely be lying there with Owen.”

  He paused for emphasis. “Now, you catch your horse and head back east. Don’t stop to tell anybody goodbye. Just get on that horse and go!”

  Swallowing, the boy nodded. His freckles stood out darkly on his white-drained face.

  His cowboys backing him up, Scott Tillman watched Bannock’s men to be sure no one interfered with the boy. As the kid swung into his old broken-tree saddle, Tillman stepped up beside his horse.

  “One more thing, son. Was there anybody else with you and Owen?”

  The boy shook his head, “No, sir. Nobody but the woman.”

  Tillman swallowed. “Woman? What woman?”

  “I don’t know. I came out here only yesterday. She’s back yonder in Owen’s shack.”

  He pointed vaguely up the canyon. Then he hauled his horse around and, bare-heeled, kicked into a lope.

  Scott Tillman leveled an angry glance at big Clive Bannock. There would have to be a woman!

  “Let’s put Owen’s body across his horse and then go find that shack,” he said darkly to his own cowboys.

  As they rode out, he pulled in beside Clive Bannock. His jaw set, he nodded toward Bannock’s son. The boy already was carving a new notch into his gun, extracting his full measure of grim pride.

  “You’re raising that boy into a man-killer, Bannock,” Tillman said. “The day’ll come when you’ll wish to God you could start him over again.”

  Bannock shook his head. “No, Tillman. I want him tough. A man’s got to be tough to carve himself a place in this country. He’ll be as tough a man as I am. Tougher.

  “You see, Tillman, my old man was a coward. Everything he ever got hold of somebody took it away from him. He was a great one for turning the other cheek. I hated the way we lived, and I got so I hated my old man. Soon as I was old enough to shift for myself, I ran off. I’ve never turned a cheek to any man. What I want, I get. And what I get, I keep.”

  It was a good canyon for a cowman. The curing grama grass stretched like a golden carpet from one side to the other, its flag tops bending under the constant wind of the high Texas plains. A meandering stream of cool, clear water split it down the middle. Gray jackrabbits leaped out of the grass at the approach of the riders and skittered away to pause again at a distance and listen, their black-tipped ears moving back and forth. Scattered up and down the canyon were a couple of hundred longhorn cattle, carrying good flesh. They raised their horned heads at the sight of the riders and eased away.

  “By George,” Bannock boomed, “I’m going to have this canyon. We’ll split up the cattle. Like as not, they were stolen from us anyhow. Then I’m moving some of my stuff up here.”

  A hardness coiled in him, Tillman turned in the saddle. “Try it, and we’ll run you out, Bannock. Owen’s widow has still got first claim on this land. Any cattle we can’t prove were stolen will belong to her.”

  The big ranchman savagely jerked his horse to a stop. “You haven’t got any right to talk to me like that, Tillman. I own the Slash B. You’re nothing but a foreman, a hired hand.”

  “That’s right, Bannock. But Mrs. Dixon’ll back me up. If there ever comes a time she doesn’t, I’ll leave. Till then, I speak for the Lazy D. And I’m telling you, leave this canyon alone.”

  Bannock’s hatred flared alive in his broad face. It had been like this between them ever since the first time they had met on the rolling plains, three years before. Just up from the lower country, Bannock had tried to bluff Wilma Dixon into giving up one of the big natural lakes she needed badly for summer water. She had been a widow less than a year then, a very young widow, and Bannock had thought the bluff would be easy to pull.

  But Scott Tillman had stampeded Bannock’s herd before it ever got to the water. In the run, Bannock’s horse had fallen on him. The big ranchman still favored the leg that had snapped under the smashing weight of the horse.

  Scott watched in relief as Clive and Fletch Bannock rode away, their men trailing out behind them. It wouldn’t be easy, explaining to Owen’s woman. But maybe it would be a little less difficult with the Bannocks gone.

  Jess Owen had built his shack of pickets, border style, and chinked it with mud. He had put it up toward the head of the canyon, where a spring bubbled forth the cool water that gave life to the plains and started the stream on its crooked course down toward the Canadian.

  She came out of the shack’s door and stood on the rock step, waiting for them. Tillman’s mouth dropped open. He had expected to see a graying woman about Owen’s age. Instead he found facing him a girl of eighteen or twenty, with a slender figure, smooth features, and long brown hair that drifted out over her shoulder in the easy plains wind. Tillman stepped down and took off his broad-brimmed hat.

  Not yet seeing the body on the horse, she spoke first. “If you’re Curly Kirkendall, Uncle Jess says tell you to unsaddle and wait. He’s down the canyon. He’ll be back directly.”

  Uncle Jess. Then she wasn’t Owen’s wife, after all. And if she didn’t know Curly Kirkendall, she couldn’t have been in this country long. Kirkendall had stolen cows from every ranchman in the high country, and not a one could prove it.

  Crushing the hat clumsily in his work-roughened hands, Scott said hesitantly, “I’m not Curly Kirkendall, miss. And Jess Owen won’t be coming back. He’s dead.”

  She lifted a small hand over her mouth, and her terrified eyes saw Owen’s body slacked across the saddle.

  “Sorry, miss,” Tillman spoke. “He was stealing cattle.”

  Tears worked slowly down her cheeks, but her brown eyes managed to shoot angry sparks. Tillman sensed that they were eyes unaccustomed to tears.

  “And you killed him!”

  “Fletch Bannock killed him, miss.” He lowered his head. “But we were there.”

  She whirled around, her back to him, and covered her face with her hands. Tillman moved to place a hand on her thin shoulder, then drew it back. Gravely he glanced up at one of the cowboys and nodded toward Owen’s body.

  “Better find a shovel, Chuck.”

  When the grave was dug, Tillman went inside the shack where the girl had fled. His hat again was in his hands.

  “We can go down to Peace Valley and get a preacher for him, if you want us to. Otherwise, I reckon we’re r
eady to bury him, if you are.”

  There were no longer any tears in her eyes, but defiance burned there. “I’m ready, I guess. I’ll fetch a preacher up later.”

  Dick Coleridge was a quiet-mannered cowboy who never took off for town after payday for a round of women, cards, and whisky. Scott had him say a few words before the cowboys shoveled the dirt back into the grave.

  Scott followed the girl down toward the rude picket shack.

  “You can’t stay out here by yourself, miss. You better come on along with us. Wilma Dixon owns the Lazy D. She’ll be glad to have you stay at the ranch till you make some kind of arrangements.”

  Bitterly the girl shook her head. “Take favors from the people who killed Uncle Jess? I reckon there are women in High Land I can stay with.”

  “Women like Prairie Kate and Wild Mary Donovan? You don’t look to me like you belong in that kind of company. We’ve got a lot to make up to you for. Why don’t you come on along with us?”

  Finally she shrugged her shoulders. “All right. But you’re not doing me any favors. I’ll pay for my keep. Is that understood?”

  Helping her gather up a few of her clothes, he noted that Owen had turned over the shack to the girl. Owen’s own bedding and clothes were in a small dugout shed down by the creek.

  “Tell me what you were doing out here in the first place,” Scott said.

  “Jess Owen was my dad’s brother. I reckon if I were honest about it I’d have to admit that they were both about the same caliber. My mother ran off from us when I was a little girl.

  “We just kind of bummed around over the country. Dad did whatever he had to do to make us a living, and even then he generally gambled half of it away. Six months ago he was shot in a saloon. Uncle Jess had come up here. When he heard, he sent for me.”

  Defiance stood strong in her voice and in her brown eyes. “Maybe they weren’t all they ought to’ve been. But they were kind to me; that’s what counted. There haven’t been many people that were ever kind to me.”

  Scott Tillman swallowed, and he dropped his gaze to the boot-packed dirt floor. There was a sudden stirring in him.

  “You’ll find other people can be kind, too, Miss Owen. I promise you.”

  Riding out of the canyon, they met another group of horsemen coming in. Scott counted six. And riding in the lead was Curly Kirkendall.

  Surprise lifted Kirkendall’s face as he reined up. Then the face settled into the easy grin it almost always held. “Howdy, Scott,” he said. “Kind of off your range, ain’t you?”

  Scott nodded. “Maybe. But a cowboy’s got to go where his cattle are. And lately a lot of ours’ve been getting off their range. I reckon you know as much about that as we do.”

  His tone was gentle, almost good-humored.

  Kirkendall threw back his handsome head and laughed loudly and heartily.

  Scott couldn’t help smiling with him. They were on opposite sides of the fence now. There couldn’t be any denying that. But there had been a time once, before Scott had realized he was riding up a blind canyon. And Scott never forgot that except for the wisdom of one man, he might be in Kirkendall’s place.

  “If you’re going to Jess Owen’s, Curly,” he said, “you can save your time. You won’t find him.”

  Curly’s smile faded as the meaning soaked in. His gaze finally touched the girl. He took off his hat, revealing the curly mop of flaming red hair that had given him his nickname. “This is Owen’s niece, I take it?”

  Scott nodded “I’m taking her to Wilma Dixon, Curly. Mrs. Dixon will make a home for her till Miss Owen decides what she wants to do.”

  For a long moment Curly Kirkendall looked at the girl, his eyes soft. Then the outlaw said, “You go with him, miss. You can trust Scott Tillman, and Mrs. Dixon, too.”

  He donned his hat and rode on, his five men abreast of him.

  John Dixon had built his ranch headquarters at a Comanche spring which swelled out of the grassy ground at the head of a long canyon. It was much like the location Jess Owen had chosen, except that it was far larger. The canyon walls helped shield it from some of the fury of the howling winter northers that burst down from the open plains above.

  Even so, the plains wind always searched the place out, for the wind was a constant thing here on the Llano Estacado. It was a vibrant part of life, just as much as the endless, rolling land, the springs, and the snaky Canadian. Cool and pleasant, the wind brought the range to green awakening in the spring. With help of the hot sun, the toasting summer wind cured out the short grass that would be so desperately needed in the winter, when the same wind would come howling down with its dread chill, its ice and snow.

  Riding by the rock barn, Scott motioned for his cowboys to pull in and unsaddle. With Nell Owen following him, he rode up the grass-covered slope to the main house. Like the barn, it was built of rock. John and Wilma Dixon had spent their first winter here in a dugout. That was the winter she had lost her baby. When spring came, Dixon and his cowboys built her the big house. But Dixon didn’t get to live in it long. A horse dragged him down the side of a canyon, and Wilma Dixon was left to manage her ranch alone.

  She wasn’t really alone. Scott Tillman had owed John Dixon a debt that money couldn’t pay. He stayed and took charge for Wilma. Instead of going under, as people had predicted it would when John Dixon died, the Lazy D grew into a bigger place than ever, second only to Clive Bannock’s gun-won Slash B, which sprawled between its ragged boundaries down most of the way to the Caprock.

  A bay horse was hitched to the fence on the shady side of the house. Scott knew it belonged to Doug McKinney.

  “You can sit out here on the gallery,” Scott said to Nell Owen. “I better talk to Mrs. Dixon first.”

  He helped her down from her horse and walked with her up to the porch. He pushed through the front door, with its oval-shaped, etched glass and the dust-catcher carving that framed it.

  Wilma Dixon was still a young woman, in her midtwenties. Hard luck and grief had matured her, but they had not cost her any of the beauty that had won cattleman John Dixon six or seven years ago. Now she owned thousands of cattle and controlled hundreds of sections of preempted land. But always in her deep blue eyes Scott saw a vague unhappiness, a deep loneliness and yearning. Scott always had been able to solve any problem that the ranch might give. But for her greatest need, he had had no answer.

  Doug McKinney stood on the far side of the parlor, a cup of coffee in his hand. He was a hardworking man who owned a small ranch down the canyon, its borders touching the Lazy D on one side, Bannock’s Slash B on the other.

  He nodded at Scott Tillman, but there was reserve in his gray eyes. He never had really liked the Lazy D foreman. “Wilma tells me you thought you had the trail of some stolen cattle, Scott.”

  Tillman chewed his lip and looked at Wilma Dixon. “We did. We trailed them to Jess Owen’s canyon outfit.”

  Distastefully, he told them about running into Clive Bannock, and Bannock’s persistence in going along. He described the death of Jess Owen.

  “We found out later that there was a girl at his shack. She’s his niece. We brought her along, Mrs. Dixon. I told her she would have a home here till something else could be worked out. I hope that’s all right.”

  There was sympathy in Wilma Dixon’s voice. Tillman liked her for it. She had had grief enough of her own to be always ready to help someone else in need. “Please, Scott, bring her in.”

  Doug McKinney took a quick step forward. “Just a minute, Scott, before you do. There’s something I want to ask you. You know Clive Bannock. You know what he is. Why do you keep working with him?”

  Frowning, Scott said, “Because working together is the only way we’ll ever clear this country of crooks and thieves. It’s the only way we’ll ever make it a decent place. You’re right about Bannock. I don’t like him, either. But it takes iron to fight iron.”

  McKinney made little attempt to hide his hostility. “I don’t know that Jess
Owen was a thief. I can only take your word for it. We’ve known for a long time that Clive Bannock has wanted to get rid of us small outfits. I’ve got a suspicion you’d like it too, Tillman. Is that why you and Bannock and four or five other big outfits armed your association, so you could squeeze us little men out? So you could call us cow thieves and run us off?”

  Color flared in Scott’s face, but he said nothing. This wasn’t the first time.

  Wilma Dixon sprang to his defense. “Doug, that’s not fair, and you know it.

  “The Lazy D has always been a friend to you. Why, you and I have known each other since I was a little girl. You threw your cattle in with John’s, and we all came up here together. You don’t think I’d turn against you now, do you?”

  McKinney shook his head. There already were streaks of iron-gray in his hair, streaks that shouldn’t be showing up for years yet.

  “You wouldn’t, Wilma. But Scott Tillman might.” He reached out and took Wilma Dixon’s hand. When McKinney looked at her, there could be no doubt how he felt about her, or why he had stuck with a hopeless ranch in the face of heavy odds, just to be near her.

  “I’ve enjoyed the visit, Wilma. I’ll come back when I can.”

  He paused at the door for a last word to Scott. “There are a good many of us small men, Scott. We can look mighty big in a fight. Remember that before you and your association undertake any high-handed murder.”

  When McKinney had gone, Wilma touched Scott’s arm with her hand. “Scott, don’t hold this against Doug. He’s taken a lot of crowding from Clive Bannock. You can’t blame him for being hard to get along with.”

  Scott shook his head. “No, you can’t blame him.”

  He knew there was another reason for McKinney’s not liking him, but it wouldn’t do to tell Wilma Dixon. Maybe she sensed it herself—that she was the cause.

  She still had hold of his arm, and the touch of her hand made him a little uneasy. “The girl is still waiting outside, Mrs. Dixon,” he reminded her.

  “Yes,” she answered quietly. “Please bring her in.”

  There was a strong pride in Nell Owen. She stuck to her declaration that she would accept no favors, that she would expect to pay for her keep. Wilma Dixon finally gave up arguing with her about it and let her have it her own way. Inwardly Scott smiled. There was something he liked about this girl. He wasn’t much surprised when, after only a couple of days of uncomfortable sitting around the house, Nell Owen decided to go back to her canyon. He knew by the determined set of her jaw that there wouldn’t be any talking her out of it. But he tried.