The Strong Land Read online

  A little after noon the train came in. By that time everyone was at the corral, waiting for the fight to start, and only Silva saw the men get off the train. There were nine of them who got out of the two passenger coaches. Four were cattlemen, one was a huge, bearded man with blue anchors tatooed on his hands, and the other four were nondescripts in caps and jerseys.

  The Wyoming Slasher was first in the ring. He came down, vaulted the ropes, and stood, looking around. His hair was cropped short and he wore a black John L. Sullivan mustache. His eyes were blue and hard, and his face looked like stained oak.

  Harrington and another man were in his corner. The sheriff had been selected as the referee.

  Barney Shaw came from the hotel, walking across the street wearing an old slicker. As he stepped through the ropes, a stocky man in a checked suit and a black jersey stepped up behind him and put a professional hand on his shoulder.

  They got into the ring and walked to the center. The Slasher was half a head taller than Shaw and heavier. His wide cheek bones and beetling brows made him look fierce. The back of his head slid down into a thick neck.

  Shaw’s hair had been cut, and it was black and curly. He looked brown, and, when he turned and walked to his corner, there was an unexpected lightness in his step.

  The Wyoming Slasher dropped his robe, and there was a gasp from the crowd who looked at the rolling muscles of his mighty shoulders and arms. He was built like a wrestler, but his weight was in his gigantic shoulders and deep chest.

  He strode to the scratch, skin-tight gloves pulled on. The sheriff motioned, the slicker slid from Barney’s shoulders, and he turned and came to scratch. His broad shoulders were powerful and tapered to narrow hips and slim, powerful legs. The Slasher put up his hands and Barney hit him, a quick left that tapped the blood at his thin lips. The Slasher lunged, and Barney slid away, rapping a quick right to the body.

  The Slasher strode in, and Barney tried a left to the head that missed, and the Slasher grabbed him by the waist and hurled him to the ground. Shaw lit in a pile of dust, and the sheriff sprang in. “Round!” he shouted.

  Shaw walked to his corner.

  “He’s strong,” he said. He waved away the water bottle.

  “Them new Queensbury rules would be better for you,” his second said out of the corner of his mouth. “London Prize Ring rules was never no good. You hurt a man, and, if he goes down, the round is over.”

  They started again at the call of time, and Barney walked out quickly. The Slasher rushed, and Barney lanced the fellow’s lips with another left, and then stepped around and jabbed with the left again. There was a mix-up. Then Barney stepped away, and the Slasher hit him.

  It was a hard right, and it shook Shaw to his heels, but he stepped away. He was skillfully, carefully feeling the bigger man out. Instinctively he knew it would be a hard fight. The other man was like iron, big and very, very strong. It would take time to down him. Barney was trying each punch, trying to find out what the big man would do.

  All fighters develop habits. Certain ways of blocking lefts, ducking or countering. By trying each punch a few times Barney Shaw was learning the pattern of the Slasher’s fighting, getting a blueprint in his mind.

  When the second round had gone four minutes, he took a glancing left to the head and went down, ending the round.

  When the minute was up, he went out with a rush. The Slasher put up his hands, and, without even stopping his rush, Barney dropped low and thrust out his left. It caught the Slasher in the midriff and set him back on his heels.

  Instantly Barney was upon him. Hitting fast, he struck the Slasher five times in the face with a volley of blows before the bigger man was brought up by the ropes. Then setting himself, he whipped a hard right to the Slasher’s ribs.

  The crowd was yelling wildly, and the Slasher came off the ropes and swung. Barney went under it and whipped a right to the heart. Then the Slasher’s left took him and he rolled over on the ground.

  He was badly shaken. In his corner Turkey Tom Ryan, his second, grinned.

  “Watch it,” he said. “He can hit, the beggar!”

  They had wiped the blood from the Slasher’s face, and the big man looked hard. Near the Slasher’s corner Barney could see George Clyde.

  Barney Shaw went up to scratch, and, as the Wyoming Slasher rushed, he stabbed a left to the mouth, parried a left himself, and hit hard to the body. Inside, he hammered away with both hands. He took a clubbing right to the head that cut his forehead and showered him with blood. But suddenly he knew that his time had come, and, instead of backing away, he set himself and began slugging with everything he had.

  The Slasher was caught off balance. He tried to get set, but he was too heavy. He struck several ponderous blows, but Barney was knifing his face with those skin-tight gloves. Jabbing a left, he turned his fist as it struck and ripped the Slasher’s face. Then he stepped in and threw a wicked uppercut to the body. Then another, and still another. The Slasher started to fall, but Shaw caught him under the chin with the heel of his glove and shoved him erect against the ropes. Stepping back, he smashed both hands to the chin.

  With the crowd roaring, Shaw leaped away and the Wyoming Slasher rolled off the ropes and fell flat on his face.

  Instantly his seconds were over the ropes and swarming over him. Harrington rushed across the ring and seized one of Barney Shaw’s hands, shouting something about his fists being loaded.

  Turkey Tom shoved him away, and Shaw took off the glove and showed him his bare fist. Harrington snarled something, and Shaw slugged him in the ribs. As the big man started to fall, one of his friends stepped up, and instantly the ring was a bedlam of shouting, fighting men.

  It was ten minutes before the ring was cleared, and then the Slasher was able to get to the scratch. He rushed immediately, and Shaw ducked, but, as he ducked, he slipped, and the Slasher hit him and knocked him to his knees. He started to get up, and the Slasher rushed and struck him another ponderous blow. He went down hard. And the round ended.

  He was barely on his second’s knee when the call of time came again, and, groggy, he went to scratch. The Wyoming Slasher charged. Shaw ducked, went into a clinch, and threw the Slasher with a rolling hip lock. The Slasher went down with a thud.

  Still groggy, he came to scratch again, but as they came together, he feinted suddenly. As the Slasher swung, Shaw threw his right, high and hard. It caught the Slasher coming in and knocked him to the ropes. As he rebounded, Shaw hit him with a one-two, so fast the two blows landed with almost the same sound.

  The Slasher hit the ground all in one piece and rolled over. After ten minutes he was still unable to stand.

  As he shoved to his feet and held there, Harrington suddenly shouted. As one man, his thugs charged the ring and began tearing down the posts.

  But even as they charged, the four cattlemen leaped into the ring, as did the man with the blue anchors on his hands. In a breath there was a cordon of men with guns drawn around Barney, around the two stakeholders, and around the shouting Turkey Tom.

  Harrington’s thugs broke against the flying wedge formed by the cattlemen and Shaw’s friends, and the wedge moved on to the hotel.

  Tess met them at the door, her eyes wild with anxiety. “You’re all right? Oh, I was so afraid. I was sure you’d be hurt.”

  “You should see the Slasher, ma’am,” Turkey Tom said, grinning to show his five gold teeth. “He don’t look so good.”

  “We’ve got the money to pay off now,” Barney told her, smiling. His lips were puffed and there was a blue welt alongside his ear. “We can pay off and start over.”

  “Yes, and that ain’t all!” One of the cattlemen, a big man wearing a black hat, stepped in. “When you wired about the water, I was in Zeb’s office. We went to the governor and we got it all fixed up. So I decided it might be a right good idea for me to come up here an
d get you to feed about five hundred whiteface cows for me … on shares.”

  “She can’t,” snarled a voice behind them.

  As one man they turned. George Clyde stood in the doorway, his lips thinned and his face white.

  “She can’t, because there’s mineral on that place, and I’ve filed a mining claim that takes in the spring and water source.”

  His eyes were hard and malicious. Harrington, his face still bloody, loomed behind him. The big man with the anchors on his hands stepped forward and stared hard at Clyde.

  “That’s him, Sheriff,” he said. “The man who killed Rex Tilden.”

  George Clyde’s face stiffened and went white.

  “What do you mean?” he shouted. “I was here that night.”

  “You were in Santos that night. You met Rex Tilden on the road outside of town and shot him. I was up on the hill when it happened and I saw you. You shot him with that Krag Jorgenson rifle. I found one of the shells.”

  “He’s got one of them Krags,” the sheriff said abruptly. “I’ve seen it. He won it from some Danish feller last year in a game of faro. I’ve never seen another like it.”

  Barney Shaw had pulled on his trousers over his fighting trunks and slipped on his shirt. He felt the sag of the heavy pistol in his coat pocket and put on the coat. Half turning, he slid the pistol into his waistband.

  “That means,” he said coolly, “that his mineral claim won’t be any use to him. I know he hasn’t done any assessment work, and without that he can’t hold the claim.”

  Clyde’s eyes narrowed. “You!” he snarled. “If you’d stayed out of this, I’d have made it work. You’ll never see me die. And you will never see me arrested!”

  Suddenly his hand dropped for his gun, but, even as his hand swept down, Barney Shaw stepped through the crowd, drew, and fired.

  Clyde staggered, half turned, and pitched over on his face. Harrington had started to reach, but suddenly he jerked his hand away from his gun as though it were afire.

  “I had nothin’ to do with no killin’,” he said, whining. “I never done nothin’!”

  When the sheriff had taken Harrington away, Barney Shaw took Tess by the arm.

  “Tess,” he asked hesitantly, “does the fifty-fifty deal still go?”

  She looked up, her eyes misty and suddenly tender. “Yes, Barney, for as long as you want it.”

  “Then,” he said quietly, “it will be for always.”

  the end

  About the Editor

  Jon Tuska is the author of numerous books about the American West as well as editor of several short story collections, Billy the Kid: His Life and Legend (Greenwood Press, 1994) and The Western Story: A Chronological Treasury (University of Nebraska Press, 1995) among them. Together with his wife Vicki Piekarski, Tuska cofounded Golden West Literary Agency that primarily represents authors of Western fiction and Western Americana. They edit and copublish twenty-six titles a year in two prestigious series of new hardcover Western novels and story collections, the Five Star Westerns and the Circle V Westerns. They also coedited the Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction (McGraw-Hill, 1983), The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1996), The Morrow Anthology of Great Western Short Stories (Morrow, 1997), and The First Five Star Western Corral (Five Star Westerns, 2000). Tuska has also edited a series of short novel collections, Stories of the Golden West, of which there have been seven volumes.