Flaming Feud

  FLAMING FEUD

  by Tom West

  E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1951

  Scanned and Proofed by Highroller and RyokoWerx

  Chapter 1

  They came up from Texas—shaggy-bearded Patrick Rourke and his three hard-bitten sons, trail-worn men with flaming red hair and apple-horn saddles. A hardshell outfit, tough as their rawhide reatas. They tooled their spring wagon across the Rio Grande, beat westward over the dreary stretches of the Mercilla, worked through the tortuous passes of the Peloncillos, dropped down into the sun-seared basin of the San Simeon. Toiled south, dust-wreathed and gaunted, beetles in a bowl of infinity, with the pinnacles of the Chiracahuas knifing into the blue ahead.

  It was a long trail, a weary trail—across parched plains and over frowning mountains, a trail staked by crude wooden crosses and the bleached bones of those who had gone before.

  So it came that one cloudless day, when the blue-shadowed mountains quivered like mirages through the heated air and distant dust devils swirled like dervishes out of the desert, they crawled across Skeleton Valley and eased their saddles in Adobe, a straggling cowtown sweltering beside Lost River.

  It was sundown when they pulled into Bitter Spring, nestling in the rolling foothills twenty miles west of town.

  Set in a narrow draw, the cool water purled down the hillside between mossy boulders and pooled in a succession of small basins. Patrick Rourke's eyes, reddened from long gazing across burning flats, dwelt with approval upon the verdant green of the chaparral fringing the spring, then upon the floor of the valley, thick carpeted with rich gramma and specked with grazing cows.

  Tim Rourke, the eldest son, stepped down, stretched his long limbs luxuriously and flattened beside the nearest pool. Carefully skimming off the film of dust that lay like gossamer upon the still water, he drank thirstily. "Gosh, paw," he ejaculated, gaining his feet, "Sure don't taste bitter tuh me. Ain't swallowed sweeter water since we crossed the Rio."

  Patrick Rourke dropped down from the seat of the spring wagon, whose greyed canvas soughed between the bows from heaped dust. Again he eyed the murmuring spring, then the grassy plain that bore their wheelmarks. "I reckon," he decided, "This is whar we set."

  Merl, the youngest, who rode the wagon with his father, unhitched the team of mules, while his two brothers stripped the gear off their hock-scarred ponies, slipped hackamores over their heads and led them to water.

  There were no plow handles jutting out of the wagon box, or chickens roosting on the endgate, for this was no hoeman's outfit. Patrick Rourke's legs were bowed. He knew the Chisholm Trail and was not averse to the use of a running iron when chance offered. With the death of his wife he had sold a hard-scrabble spread near San Antonio, buckled the price in gold eagles in a money-belt around his belly and hit west. In truth, he was not sorry to leave, for between the Rangers on one side of the Rio and rurales on the other it was getting to be that a man gambled against long odds when he ran a bunch of wet stock across the river.

  There were those who shed no tears when the wagon pulled out of San Antone. A Rourke, they said, would fight for the fun of it, brush aside the law as casually as he would a fly curtain, and carry a hate like an Indian.

  Rourke was a long-geared, bony faced man. Blue as tempered steel, his eyes were narrowed from long gazing into blazing distance, and the ruddy beard that straggled over his hickory shirt failed to cloak the strong sweep of a stubborn jaw. A Colt Peacemaker, its butt smooth from handling, swung from the gunbelt buckled around his waist. The hair that curled to his ears was crowned by a shabby Stetson, stained with the sweat of a hundred trails. His corduroys were shapeless and stiff with dirt, but his high-heeled boots were Justin's—vamps as slick around the instep as velvet gloves, and tops of finest kid, forty dollars a pair.

  None beyond the twenties, his three tall sons were cast in the same mould except that they overtopped their sire by inches.

  Day greyed into night. A sooted coffeepot bubbled over a glowing bed of cinders, around which the three elder Rourkes hunkered in their customary taciturn silence and chewed brown paper cigarettes. Merl, the youngest, held dough balled on sticks to the heat to make biscuits.

  In the shadows down draw an ironshod hoof clacked faintly upon a loose rock. The hunkered Texans gave no sign that the sound registered save for a quick awareness in their eyes.

  Two riders loomed in the gloom, Boxed H punchers homeward bound from hunting strays in the malpais that lay towards the Dragoons. With a careless greeting they pulled up to a pool. Their ponies sucked the water noisily. Then they reined back, swung down, ground-hitched their mounts and sauntered over to the fire.

  The first jerked his sack of makin's out of a shirt pocket, spilled tobacco into a paper, tossed the sack to his companion. With no expression upon his bronzed features, he regarded the four trail-stained Texans, turned his attention to the wagon and the four mules tethered beside it.

  "Heading west, gents?" he inquired amicably.

  The red-bearded Rourke, on the far side of the fire, raised his head. "Settin' right here!" There was no challenge in his voice, just flat finality.

  "Boxed H claims this water."

  "And what would the Boxed H be?" inquired Rourke softly.

  "Rock Hansen's outfit, he ranges from Lost River tuh the malpais."

  For seconds Rourke sucked his cigarette in silence, while his sons sat still as graven images. "A hell of a slab of range—free range," he murmured, at length.

  "The Boxed H is a hell of a big outfit," came back the rider, and his words held an unspoken threat.

  "I reckon," the red-bearded Texan's gaze again dropped to the fire, "It's due to be whittled down."

  "You ain't the first gent who got thet notion," retorted the puncher, with faint humor. He crushed his cigarette and turned towards his mount.

  The two stepped into their saddles and clip-clopped down the draw. When the sound of their ponies' hooves had died on the night, Rourke spoke again, "Before sunup," he decreed, "we roll rocks and build a wall across the draw."

  The rising sun threw white arrows that struck fire from the rugged peaks of the Dragoons, but night still lingered in Skeleton Valley when seven cow ponies crossed the flats at the easy jog trot of the plains. At the mouth of the draw, their riders drew rein, staring at four rifle barrels—dimly seen—aligned across a knee-high rock wall fifty paces ahead. At a brusque word from the leader they kneed their ponies, pulling apart until five sat wide-spaced, in line, while two rode forward.

  Midway towards the barricade of boulders, the pair checked. The light was strengthening as the sun crept higher. Vagrant rays glinted upon the leveled gun barrels, revealed the features of the two riders. Two old tarantulas these. The square features of "Rock" Hansen, as dark and seamed as old cowhide, were as rugged as the rock around him. Broad-shouldered and thick-necked, he sat massive as a bull. From beneath greying eyebrows, his eyes regarded the intruders with a cold, frowning stare.

  Men claimed it would take two of desert-eroded Dave Winters, his foreman, to make a shadow, but his was a whipcord thinness. Winters' pale blue eyes were deceptively mild and his patient drawl held a tired weariness belied by a flaming reputation and a gunspeed that an awed rustler once claimed had lightning shaded.

  "Roll yore tails, nesters!" boomed Hansen.

  "And who might you be to give the Rourkes the rough of your tongue?" came back the red-beard's deep voice, as he sprawled behind the barricade, squinting between two boulders.

  "Hansen of the Boxed H."

  "And by what law do yuh hold this water, Mister Hansen?" drawled the Texan, with soft-voiced derision.

  "Gun law!" grated the cowman, curbing his black as it tossed its head, curvetting restlessly.

  "Easy, Rock, st
all awhile!" murmured Winters, who sat slack in the saddle, smiling benignantly at the threatening guns, now brightly bathed by sunlight. The elongated shadows of the two riders stretched over and beyond the barricade. The nesters were staring straight into the rising sun, he noted with satisfaction, and it was gaining strength every minute.

  "Easy, hell!" snapped Hansen. His voice rose, "Beat it, or we'll blast yuh out!"

  By accident or design, the gods alone knew, a rifle spat from the barricade. The slug took the tossing black through the neck, deflected, gouged the cowman's cheek like a red-hot branding iron and moaned away into space. Horse and rider went down in a threshing dust flurry.

  Before the flame died in the gun muzzle, Winters exploded into action. His grey leapt forward at the savage goad of the spur. Grouched low, six-gun bellowing and bucking, he hurled at and over the barricade. Behind him pounded the five Boxed H punchers. Hansen, right leg trapped beneath the dead black's barrel, jerked and cursed in ineffectual fury.

  Defiance spurted red from the rifles of the Texans bellied behind the rock barrier. A puncher's pony, mortally hit, crashed down, catapulting its rider. He balled, rolled over twice, came up upon his feet and plunged ahead. Before the riders crashed across the barricade, another puncher was blasted out of the saddle and lay in a twisted heap, his skull smashed.

  Then the yelling, racing punchers were atop of the Texans. Ponies whirled, guns thundered and lances of fire licked out of the thickening powder haze, as cursing, panting men triggered and dodged amid choking dust.

  The brief, bitter melee was over in seconds. Dave Winters plugged the empties out of his smoking six, reloaded and dropped the hot gun into his holster. Rock Hansen's angry bellow brought him back across the barricade. Blood beaded upon the cowman's leathery cheek, red-seared by the bullet that had touched off the fracas. The foreman slid his boss's Winchester out of its boot and levered up the black's flabby bulk until Hansen could wrench his leg free. Limping, neck dull red with rage, the cowman strode heavily through the settling dust. Four men with blazing red hair lay sprawled amid the rocks. A puncher was wrapping his bandanna around a lacerated forearm, while another sat smoking stoically while a pard plugged a hole in his leg.

  "Beef any of our boys?" grunted Hansen, stony eyes on the Texans' bloodied forms.

  The foreman smiled gently and nodded towards a grey-shirted form lying out in the rank grass, "They pegged Pecos, that's all. The sun warn't right for good shooting."

  "And three ponies!" grunted Hansen. "Burn the wagon and loose the mules!"

  Smoke coiled up into the clear air, blackening as the Texans' ragged bedrolls were heaped atop the blazing wagon. The mules drifted down draw. Screened by the chaparral, the Texans' two saddle ponies idly switched at the flies.

  They roped the dead puncher across his saddle. Then the dark shadow of a floating buzzard reminded Winters of the dead Texans. "Want we should roll rocks over them hombres?" he inquired.

  "Leave 'em for the buzzards!" growled the cowman, with brittle impatience. The bullet crease across his cheek burned like fire and the dead black was his favorite saddle horse.

  Two ponies carrying double loads, the Boxed H contingent jogged away from the spring. Winters swung around in the saddle and eyed the smoking wagon, the hair glinting like new copper upon the heads of the dead Texans, the buzzards, circling sluggishly upon ragged pinions, "Bitter Spring," he muttered, "Bloody Spring!"

  Talk was loud in the Boxed H bunkhouse that night and the fracas was fought time and again for the benefit of a score of envious riders who'd seen no more than the distant smoke of the burning wagon.

  "You shoulda heard Rock cussing," chuckled one participant. "Thar he was, pinned down like a hog-tied calf, with the blue whistlers asinging like canaries."

  "Aw, Rock's a hard man," cut in another. " 'Leave 'em for the buzzards,' he sez. They ain't Injuns!"

  Dave Winters, hunkered below his bunk, saying little but missing nothing, removed his pipe stem from between his teeth. When he spoke, the clamor was quieted as if smothered by a blanket. "Look at it thisaway, Cherokee," he said mildly. "Bad luck's kinda soured Rock. When him and me first drove a herd into this valley, Adobe was a trading post. We fought Chiracahua Apaches, rustlers and renegades f'r ten years afore we had a spread. Then what? Rock kills two hawses packing his first-born to a sawbones at Tucson, after a hydrophobia skunk bites the little shaver. The kid dies! Next the black pox cleans out his wife and daughter, leaving one button tuh carry on his name. Danged ef the yonker don't skeedaddle when he's turning fourteen, and the pox gits him in Mexico. Now Rock ain't got no one. Wouldn't thet sour yore cream?"

  "Didn't the little maverick carry plenty quirt marks across his back when he hightailed?" challenged Cherokee.

  "Yep," agreed the foreman placidly, as he stuffed the bowl of his pipe, "Rock never did have a mite of patience, with man or beast."

  At Bitter Springs the smoke pall dissolved, blue jays scolded around the remnants of the wagon and the buzzards gathered for the feast. The scavengers rose in a fluttering cloud as one of the limp forms stirred, levered up upon his hands and stared stupidly around. Blood from the wound where a slug had gashed his scalp and hammered him into insensibility, had trickled down and dried brown upon his face and forehead. He tried to stand erect, swayed and dropped. Laboriously, he crawled to a rocky-rimmed pool, and gratefully lapped.

  The buzzards settled down again, blackening the rocks around, watching with black, beady eyes.

  After awhile, Tim Rourke dragged himself into the shade of the chaparral, from long habit fumbled for the makin's. His head felt as though it had been battered with a sharp axe. But recollection slowly seeped back—the challenge, the fight. Bleak-eyed, he dwelt upon the stiffening bodies of his kin, the burnt wagon, the perking, preening buzzards.

  Head heavy with pain, he rose uncertainly, moved out into the sunlight upon rubbery legs. One by one, he laboriously dragged the bodies together, unbuckled the money-belt from around his father's slack form. Often he staggered, sometimes fell, as he packed boulders from the barricade, piled them upon the slain. The setting sun bathed the distant Dragoons with scarlet before his task was done.

  He slipped the hackamore off one pony, set his saddle upon the other, hauled his sagging body into leather and headed out onto the shadowed plain.

  The Rourkes were hard men to kill and they held their hate like Indians.

  Chapter 2

  Sprawled across the Border, Nogales simmered in the torrid heat of noon. Beneath the canopy that slanted down from the vigas of the cantina La Paloma, a yellowed adobe with a reputation that made no harmony with its name, hunkered a rider, a young man, scarcely in his twenties, on the wrong side of the line.

  From the cantina behind him flowed the drone of liquid Spanish voices, the musical tinkle of glasses, the sweet, lingering harmony of a guitar. The music, soft and melancholy, was attuned to the rider's mood as he gazed across the flat roofs at the hills that rolled in even waves, sun-soaked and patched with desert grass, down to the slab shanties and squat 'dobes of the town. As far as he was concerned, those hills might have been a thousand miles away. One step across the invisible line that divided the Border town was a step through the penitentiary doors. He had always been a mite too fast on the trigger, he mused, considering the reward dodger that was decorated by his features. It was plain hell to be a pariah, always on the lam, just because he had let daylight into a tinhorn gambler, with a holdup tucked into his sleeve.

  He called himself Fiddlefoot. The desert sun had scorched his features to a coppery hue and hard riding had slimmed his blocky frame down to bone and sinew. He was garbed in stained corduroys, high-heeled riding boots and a plaid shirt. Shoved back from his forehead was a Stetson that had once been a light grey. There was a whimsical quirk to his broad mouth, from which drooped a brown paper cigarette, and a lurking humor mingled with the recklessness in his sleepy eyes. Collectively, he gave the impression of being as tough as a hickor
y switch, an impression that was strengthened by a battered holster, thonged and flared for a quick draw, from which protruded the walnut butt of a Colt .45.

  Right now, as he eyed the hills of home, as a thirsty desert traveller might eye the mirage of a pleasant, flowing stream, with just about as much hope of ever reaching it, he would have been free to confess that he felt as low as a snake's belly. Not only was he lonely, but flat broke. The previous evening, Jack Small, a Cattlemen's Protective Association detective endeavoring to trace a passel of rustled two-year old steers, together with a tough old cattle buyer, had cleaned him at stud. Not only had he lost his own stake, but the proceeds from the sale of the steers.

  Dust fogged as a bunch of vaqueros, gay in scarlet sashes and brass-buttoned jackets, cantered down the crooked street and piled off their gouged and whip-marked ponies in front of the brooding rider. Greasers, he considered moodily, were always hell on horseflesh.

  Smouldering dark eyes regarded the forlorn rider with no friendliness as the vaqueros jingled into the cantina. Gringos were not popular south of the Border, and these wild riders from some distant hacienda took no pains to veil their dislike.

  The fugitive grinned with faint derision and rolled another smoke…a shot slammed out in the cantina and a scream of mortal agony cut through the brooding heat like a jagged knife. In a flash, Fiddlefoot was on his feet, gun gripped in his fist, charging for the curtained door. Head on, he collided with a flood of panicky vaqueros, spouting from the cantina like a torrent of fear-crazed steers stampeding through a chute. A press of bodies engulfed him. Fighting free, he tripped, went down. A sharp-toed riding boot took him beside the jaw. Another made its impress upon his ribs, a third kicked the gun out of his hand.

  When he regained his feet, a trifle shaky, fingering his damaged jaw, the vaqueros were streaking out of sight behind a boiling dust curtain, urging their wild-eyed ponies as though El Diablo were at their heels.