The Strong Land Read online

  The hands crowded around him, crowing and happy, slapping him on the back and grinning. Sandy Kane gripped his hand.

  “Thanks, pardner,” he said grimly, “I don’t feel so bad now.”

  Rock smiled weakly, but inside he was sick. It was going to look bad, but he was pulling out. He said nothing, but after supper he got his own horse, threw the saddle aboard, and then rustled his gear. When he was all packed, he drew a deep breath and walked toward the ranch house.

  Stockman was sitting on the wide verandah with Bell and Sue. She got up when he drew near, her eyes bright. He avoided her glance, suddenly aware of how much her praise and happiness meant to him. In his weeks on the Three Spoke, while he had never talked to her before today, his eyes had followed her every move.

  “How are you, son?” Stockman said jovially. “You’ve made this a red-letter day on the Three Spoke. Come up an’ sit down. Bell was just talking here. He says he needs a segundo, an’ I reckon he’s right. How’d you like the job? Eighty a month?”

  He swallowed. “Sorry, boss. I got to be movin’. I want my time.”

  “You what?” Bell took his pipe from his mouth and stared.

  “I got to roll my hoop,” he said stiffly. “I don’t want trouble.”

  Frank Stockman came quickly to his feet. “But listen, man,” he protested. “You’ve just whipped the best man around this country. You’ve made a place for yourself here. The boys think you’re great. So do I. So does Tom. As for Sue here, all she’s done is talk about how wonderful you are. Why, son, you came in here a drifter, an’ now you’ve made a place for yourself. Stick around. We need men like you.”

  Despite himself, Casady was wavering. This was what he had always wanted, and wanted now, since the bleak months of his lonely riding, more than ever. A place where he was at home, men who liked him, and a girl …

  “Stay on,” Stockman said more quietly. “You can handle any trouble that comes, and I promise you, the Three Spoke will back any play you make. Why, with you to head ’em, we can run Pete Vorys and that slick partner of his, that Ben Kerr, clean out of the country.”

  Casady’s face blanched. “Who? Did you say, Ben Kerr?”

  “Why, sure.” Stockman stared at him curiously, aware of the shocked expression on Rock’s face. “Ben Kerr’s the hombre who come in here to side Vorys. He’s the smart one who’s puttin’ all those fancy ideas in Pete’s head. He’s a brother-in-law of Vorys’s or something.”

  Ben Kerr—here! That settled it. He could not stay now. There was no time to stay. His mind leaped ahead. Vorys would tell his story, of course. His name would be mentioned, or, if not his name, his description. Kerr would know, and he wouldn’t waste time. Why, even now …

  “Give me my money,” Casady said sharply. “I’m movin’ out right now. Thanks for all you’ve offered, but I’m riding. I want no trouble.”

  Stockman’s face stiffened. “Why, sure,” he said, “if you feel that way about it.” He took a roll of bills from his pocket and coolly paid over the money, then abruptly he turned his back and walked inside.

  Casady wheeled, his heart sick within him, and started for the corral. He heard running steps behind him, and then a light touch on his arm. He looked down, his eyes miserable, into Sue’s face.

  “Don’t go, Rock,” she pleaded gently. “Please don’t go. We all want you to stay.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t, Sue. I can’t stay. I want no gun trouble.”

  There—it was out.

  She stepped back, and slowly her face changed. Girl that she was, she still had grown up in the tradition of the West. A man fought his battles with gun or fist; he did not run away.

  “Oh?” Her amazed contempt cut him like a whip. “So that’s it? You’re afraid to face a gun? Afraid for your life?” She stared at him. “Why, Rock Casady,” her voice lifted as realization broke over her, “you’re yellow!”

  Hours later, far back in the darkness of night in the mountains, her words rang in his ears. She had called him yellow! She had called him a coward!

  Rock Casady, sick at heart, rode slowly into the darkness. At first he rode with no thought but to escape, and then, as his awareness began to return, he studied the situation. Lee’s Ferry was northeast, and to the south he was bottled by the Colorado Cañon. North it was mostly Vorys’s range, and west lay Three Lakes and the trails leading to it. East, the cañons fenced him off, also, but east lay a lonely, little-known country, ridden only by Cat McLeod in his wanderings after varmints that preyed upon Three Spoke cattle. In that wilderness he might find some place to hole up. Cat still had plenty of supplies, and he could borrow some from him. Suddenly he remembered the cañon Cat had mentioned, the Pleasant Valley Outlet.

  He would not go near Cat. There was game enough, and he had packed away a few things in the grub line when he had rolled his soogan. He found an intermittent stream that trailed down a ravine toward Kane Cañon, and followed it. Pleasant Valley Outlet was not far south of Kane. It would be a good hideout. After a few weeks, when the excitement was over, he could slip out of the country.

  In a lonely cañon that opened from the south wall into Pleasant Valley Cañon, he found a green and lovely spot. There was plenty of driftwood and a cave hollowed from the Kaibab sandstone by wind and water. There he settled clown. Days passed into weeks, and he lived on wild game, berries, and fish. Yet his mind kept turning northwestward toward the Three Spoke, and his thoughts gave him no rest.

  On an evening almost three weeks after his escape from the Three Spoke, he was putting his coffee on when he heard a slight sound. Looking up, he saw old Cat McLeod grinning at him.

  “Howdy, son.” He chuckled. “When you head for the tall timber, you sure do a job of it. My land, I thought I’d never find you. No more trailin’ trout swimmin’ upstream.”

  Rock arose stiffly. “Howdy, Cat. Just put the coffee on.” He averted his eyes and went about the business of preparing a meal.

  Cat seated himself, seemingly unhurried and undisturbed by his scant welcome. He got out his pipe and stuffed it full of tobacco. He talked calmly and quietly about game and fish and the mountain trails.

  “Old Mormon crossin’ not far from here,” he said. “I could show you where it is.”

  After they had eaten, McLeod leaned back against a rock. “Lots of trouble back at the Three Spoke. I reckon you was the smart one, pullin’ out when you did.”

  Casady made no response, so McLeod continued. “Pete Vorys was some beat up. Two busted ribs, busted nose, some teeth gone. Feller name of Ben Kerr came out to the Three Spoke, huntin’ you. Said you was a yella dog an’ he knowed you of old. He laughed when he said that, an’ said the whole Three Spoke outfit was yella. Stockman, he wouldn’t take that, so he went for his gun. Kerr shot him.”

  Rock’s head came up with a jerk. “Shot Stockman? He killed him?” There was horror in his voice. This was his fault—his!

  “No, he ain’t dead. He’s sure bad off, though. Kerr added injury to insult by runnin’ off a couple of hundred head of Three Spoke stock. Shot one hand doin’ it.”

  A long silence followed in which the two men smoked moodily. Finally Cat looked across the fire at Rock.

  “Son, there’s more’n one kind of courage, I say. I seen many a dog stand up to a grizzly that would hightail it from a skunk. Back yonder they say you’re yella. Me, I don’t figure it so.”

  “Thanks, Cat,” Rock replied simply, miserably. “Thanks a lot, but you’re wrong. I am yellow.”

  “Reckon it takes pretty much of a man to say that, son. But from what I hear, you sure didn’t act it against Pete an’ his riders. You walloped the tar out of them.”

  “With my hands it’s different. It’s … it’s … guns.”

  McLeod was silent. He poked a twig into the fire and relit his pipe.

  “Ever kill a man, son?” Hi
s eyes probed Rock’s, and he saw the young rider’s head nod slowly. “Who was it? How’d it happen?”

  “It was …” He looked up, his face drawn and pale. “I killed my brother, Cat.”

  McLeod was shocked. His old eyes went wide. “You killed your brother? Your own brother?”

  Rock Casady nodded. “Yeah,” he said bitterly, “my own brother. The one person in this world that really mattered to me.”

  Cat stared, and then slowly his brow puckered. “Son,” he said, “why don’t you tell me about it? Get it out of your system, like.”

  For a long while Rock was silent. Then he started to speak.

  “It was down in Texas. We had a little spread down there, Jack and me. He was only a shade older, but always protecting me, although I sure didn’t need it. The finest man who ever walked, he was. Well, we had us a mite of trouble, and this here Ben Kerr was the ringleader. I had trouble with Ben, and he swore to shoot me on sight. I was a hand with a gun, like you know, and I was ready enough to fight, them days. One of the hands told me, and without a word to Jack I lit into the saddle and headed for town.

  “Kerr was a gunslick, but I wasn’t worried. I knew that I didn’t have scarcely a friend in town and that his whole outfit would be there. It was me against them, and I went into town with two guns and sure enough on the prod.

  “It was getting late when I hit town. A man I knew told me Ben was around with his outfit and that nobody was going to back me one bit, them all being scared of Ben’s boys. He told me, too, that Ben Kerr would shoot me in the back as soon as not, him being that kind.

  “I went hunting him. Kid-like, and never in a gunfight before, I was jumpy, mighty jumpy. The light was bad. All of a sudden, I saw one of Ben’s boys step out of a door ahead of me. He called out … ‘Here he is, Ben! Take him!’ Then I heard running feet behind me, heard ’em slide to a halt, and I wheeled, drawing as I turned, and fired.” His voice sank to a whisper.

  Cat, leaning forward, said: “You shot? An’ then …?”

  “It was Jack. It was my own brother. He’d heard I was in town alone, and he come running to back me up. I drilled him dead center.”

  Cat McLeod stared up at the young man, utterly appalled. In his kindly old heart he could only guess at the horror that must have filled Casady, then scarcely more than a boy, when he had looked down into that still, dead face and seen his brother.

  “Gosh, son.” He shook his head in amazed sympathy. “It ain’t no wonder you hate gunfights. It sure ain’t. But …?” He scowled. “I still don’t see …” His voice trailed away.

  Rock drew a deep breath. “I sold out then and left the country. Went to riding for an outfit near El Paso. One night I come into town with the other hands, and who do I run into but Ben Kerr? He thought I’d run because I was afraid of him, and he got tough. He called me … right in front of the outfit. I was going to draw, but all I could see there in front of me was Jack, with that blue hole between his eyes. I turned and ran.”

  Cat McLeod stared at Rock, and then into the fire. It was no wonder, he reflected. He probably would have run, too. If Rock had drawn, he would have been firing on the image of the brother. It would have been like killing him over again.

  “Son,” he said slowly, “I know how you feel, but stop a minute an’ think about Jack, this brother of yours. He always protected you, you say. He always stood up for you. Now don’t you suppose he’d understand? You thought you was all alone in that town. You’d every right in the world to think that was Ben Kerr behind you. I would have thought so, an’ I wouldn’t have wasted no time shootin’, neither.

  “You can’t run away from yourself. You can’t run no farther. Someday you got to stand an’ face it, an’ it might as well be now. Look at it like this. Would your brother want you livin’ like this? Hunted an’ scared? He sure wouldn’t. Son, ever’ man has to pay his own debt an’ live his own life. Nobody can do it for you, but, if I was you, I’d sort of figure my brother was dead because of Ben Kerr, an’ I’d stop runnin’!”

  Rock looked up slowly. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I see that plain. But what if when I stepped out to meet him, I look up an’ see Jack’s face again?”

  His eyes dark with horror, Rock Casady turned and plunged downstream, stumbling, swearing in his fear and loneliness and sorrow.

  * * * * *

  At daylight, old Cat McLeod opened his eyes. For an instant, he lay still. Then he realized where he was and what he had come for, and he turned his head. Rock Casady, his gear and horse, were gone. Stumbling to his feet, McLeod slipped on his boots and walked out in his red flannels to look at the trail.

  It headed south, away from Three Lakes, and away from Ben Kerr. Rock Casady was running again.

  The trail south to the cañon was rough and rugged. The Appaloosa was sure-footed and had a liking for the mountains, yet seemed undecided, as though the feeling persisted that he was going the wrong way. Casady stared bleakly ahead, but he saw little of the orange and red of the sandstone cliffs. He was seeing again Frank Stockman’s strong, kindly face and remembering his welcome at the Three Spoke. He was remembering Sue’s hand on his sleeve and her quick smile, and old Tom Bell, gnarled and worn with handling cattle and men. He drew up suddenly and turned the horse on the narrow trail. He was going back.

  “Jack,” he said suddenly aloud, “stick with me, boy. I’m sure going to need you now!”

  * * * * *

  Sandy Kane, grim-lipped and white of face, dismounted behind the store. Beside him was Sue Landon.

  “Miss Sue,” he said, “you get that buyin’ done fast. Don’t let none of that Vorys crowd see you. They’ve sure taken this town over since they shot the boss.”

  “All right, Sandy.” She looked at him bravely and then squeezed the older man’s hand. “We’ll make it, all right.” Her blue eyes darkened. “I wish I’d been a man, Sandy. Then the boys would come in and clean up this outfit.”

  “Miss Sue,” he said gently, “don’t fret none. Our boys are just honest cowhands. We don’t have a gunfighter in the lot, nobody who could stand up to Kerr or Vorys. No man minds a scrap, but it would be plain suicide.”

  The girl started to enter the store, but then caught the cowhand’s hand.

  “Sandy,” she said faintly, “look.”

  A tall man with broad shoulders had swung down before the store. He tied his horse with a slipknot and hitched his guns into place. Rock Casady, his hard young face bleak and desperate, stared carefully along the street.

  It was only three blocks long, this street. It was dusty and warm with the noonday sun. The gray-fronted buildings looked upon the dusty canal that separated them, and a few saddled horses stamped lazily, flicking their tails at casual flies. It was like that other street, so long ago.

  Casady pulled the flat brim of his black hat a little lower over his eyes. Inside, he felt sick and faint. His mouth was dry. His tongue trembled when it touched his lips. Up the street a man saw him and got slowly to his feet, staring as if hypnotized. The man backed away, and then dove into the Hackamore Saloon.

  Rock Casady took a deep breath, drew his shoulders back, and started slowly down the walk. He seemed in a trance where only the sun was warm and the air was still. Voices murmured. He heard a gasp of astonishment, for these people remembered that he had whipped Pete Vorys, and they knew what he had come for.

  He wore two guns now, having dug the other gun and belt from his saddlebags to join the one he had only worn in the mountains. A door slammed somewhere.

  Ben Kerr stared at the face of the man in the door of the saloon.

  “Ben, here comes that yellow-backed Casady! And he’s wearin’ a gun!”

  “He is, is he?” Kerr tossed off his drink. “Fill that up, Jim! I’ll be right back. This will only take a minute!”

  He stepped out into the street. “Come to get it this time?” he s
houted tauntingly. “Or are you runnin’ again?”

  Rock Casady made no reply. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the boardwalk, and he strode slowly, finishing his walk at the intersecting alley, stepping into the dust and then up on the walk again.

  Ben Kerr’s eyes narrowed slightly. Some sixth sense warned him that the man who faced him had subtly changed. He lifted his head a little and stared. Then he shrugged off the feeling and stepped out from the building.

  “All right, yella belly! If you want it!” His hand swept down in a flashing arc and his gun came up.

  Rock Casady stared down the street at the face of Ben Kerr, and it was only the face of Kerr. In his ear was Jack’s voice: Go ahead, kid! Have at it!

  Kerr’s gun roared and he felt the hot breath of it bite at his face. And then suddenly, Rock Casady laughed. Within him all was light and easy, and it was almost carelessly that he stepped forward. Suddenly the .44 began to roar and buck in his hand, leaping like a live thing within his grasp. Kerr’s gun flew high in the air, his knees buckled, and he fell forward on his face in the dust.

  Rock Casady turned quickly toward the Hackamore. Pete Vorys stood in the door, shocked to stillness.

  “All right, Pete! Do you want it or are you leavin’ town?”

  Vorys stared from Kerr’s riddled body to the man holding the gun.

  “Why, I’m leavin’ town,” Vorys said. “That’s my roan, right there. I’ll just …” As though stunned, he started to mount, and Rock’s voice arrested him.

  “No, Pete. You walk. You hoof it. And start now!” The bully of Three Lakes wet his lips and stared. Then his eyes shifted to the body in the street.

  “Sure, Rock,” he said, taking a step back. “I’ll hoof it.” Turning, stumbling a little, he started to walk. As he moved, his walk grew swifter and swifter as though something followed in his tracks.