Durant drew in a ragged breath.

  “Want a little history, Durant?” Moriarty talked on relentlessly. “Several hundred head of beeves have been stolen from the range in the last six months. Four men, who thought they knew who stole them, have disappeared. There was talk of an uprising against the Farrars, but it died with the four disappearances. Men with wives and young kids aren’t ready to make a stand. They sit and suffer their losses.”

  “Not all,” Durant said.

  “All,” Moriarty was adamant. “Every single, damned one of them stoop-backed ranchers. There’s not one man with guts among them.”

  “Maybe you’re misjudging them,” Durant hinted.

  Moriarty swore. “I’ve checked on ’em, Durant. And I’m tellin’ you, they don’t add up to anything worthwhile.”

  “Because they didn’t want your sheep?”

  Moriarty screwed up his mouth. “That, yeah. But it’s more than that. What the hell would you do if somebody stole your cattle, Durant? You sit and board up your windows to keep out the wind with the evidence in it?”

  Durant shrugged. “I’m not in that position, Moriarty. Until I am, leave me be.”

  Moriarty turned the door knob. He pulled the door open and still facing Blake Durant, was ill-prepared for the blast of rifle fire from down the passageway. He jumped back into the room and wheeled in midair, his gun coming into his hand. From outside, Durant heard quick footsteps. Moriarty’s shirt was shredded and blood seeping through the tattered cloth, but he was moving, going through the doorway, blasting away up the passageway. Durant followed him. Cursing luridly, Moriarty broke into a run. He went down the stairs of the rooming house and crossed the foyer. But when Durant, walking quietly, came to the boardwalk, Moriarty was standing in an empty street, seething, his face distorted.

  He wheeled when Durant came out and snapped, “How about that, Durant? You go along with that kind of fight?”

  Blake Durant said nothing.

  “Well you better not, drifter,” Moriarty added bitterly. “You better just watch your back, like Lee Mann didn’t and like four cattlemen didn’t on the range. I was followed to your room, so you got a brand whether you like it or not. You want me later, I’ll be around.”

  With that Jim Moriarty made to go off, but hadn’t taken ten steps when Sheriff Jase Rooney appeared in the dark mouth of an alleyway.

  Rooney, gun drawn, called out, “Far enough, Moriarty. You’ve done your hell-raisin’ in this town.”

  Moriarty turned to face him, his face twisted meanly. “Back off, lawman. This is too big for you.”

  “Drop your gun.”

  “Go fry.”

  Rooney straightened and glanced at Blake Durant. Blake put his hands on his hips looking relaxed. But he was trigger-tense inside.

  “Moriarty didn’t start it,” Durant defended the man he would not call a friend.

  “To hell he didn’t. Buy in if you like, Durant. Thet’ll suit me just fine. I’m sick of you as much as I’m sick of this sheepman’s stink.”

  Durant said curtly, “Don’t try to stand tall by a mistake, Sheriff.”

  “It ain’t no mistake cuttin’ down two stinkin’ sheepmen, Durant,” Jase Rooney said, and with that he opened fire. His first shot took Jim Moriarty in the shoulder and sent him spinning into an overhang post. His second sped for Blake Durant. But Durant turned side-on and drew his gun. His shot at Rooney was high, burning past his ear. It was enough to make Rooney jump back into the alley mouth.

  But Moriarty didn’t mean to leave it at that. He ran forward, gun pushed out and ignoring completely the blood seeping from his shattered shoulder into his shirt. He reached the laneway mouth and threw himself on the ground. Jase Rooney, running frantically, turned and almost lost his balance. He saw Moriarty and fear flooded into his face. Then he ran on, striving to reach the laneway’s end where a back street would afford him all the cover he needed. He didn’t make it.

  Jim Moriarty, rising onto one knee, pushed his gun out and steadied it on his left forearm. His eyes slitted and a sharp whistle came through his teeth.

  Coming up fast behind him, Durant snapped, “Don’t, you fool!”

  The roar of Moriarty’s gun almost drowned out Durant’s words. His bullet tore into Rooney’s back hitting him in the base of his spine. With a piercing scream, Rooney pitched forward on his face and slid a few feet along the boot-chopped ground before his head dropped into the dust.

  Blake Durant levelled his gun on Moriarty as the tall sheepman came slowly to his feet. For a long moment the two men stood in the gloom of the alley mouth, staring at each other.

  Then Moriarty said, “He asked for it. It was him or me.”

  “Tell it to the town,” Durant said, and putting up his gun, turned his back on him. But he had just reached the rooming house boardwalk again when a bunch of townsmen came streaming across the street towards him, Durant saw the guns in their hands and the wild anger in their eyes. He’d faced mobs before and knew that talk was useless. So he backed into the darkness as Moriarty broke into a run.

  Moriarty’s call came hard at Durant’s ears.

  “Run, you damn fool, Durant!”

  Blake Durant moved backwards, his mind working feverishly. Then any thought of standing his ground and defending his presence there was abandoned. Guns were blasting at him. Cursing to himself, he hurried further into the depths of the alley, reached a fence and climbed it. He crossed a high-grassed yard, climbed another fence and was dropping down into cover when the storm of men came stampeding by, firing into the night.

  Led by a tall, skinny man in a frock coat, his black beard was caught in the moonlight at the alley’s mouth, they streamed down in pursuit of Jim Moriarty while Durant made his way back to his room and hurriedly packed. When he came down the back stairs into the rooming house yard, meaning to get Sundown and ride out, he heard four men coming from the back street.

  One of them said in the blackness, “What’d Rooney mean sayin’ Durant’s name?”

  The crunch of footsteps did not drown the answer.

  “Damn you, why you stick up for Durant, Mose? So he helped the Mann girl get her horse and ride out after her brother was killed. What else’s he done?”

  There was no answer to this.

  “I’ll tell you what else,” said the same hoarse voice. “He linked up with thet polecat, Moriarty, just as soon as he could. They et together so Tomkins said. Then they was seen talkin’ again on the boardwalk, just before Moriarty rode out. Later, when Durant got the drop on a couple of the boys, he bucked Jase in the jailhouse and Jase told him to saddle and get. Then Moriarty come back and where’d he go but straight to Durant again. I reckon it was to report.”

  “Moriarty’s been lookin’ for backin’,” a man recalled as they moved on. “It didn’t strike me Durant knew him before they met in the saloon, when Durant was askin’ how Lee Mann got killed. For mine—”

  “For yours, you’re a damned fool, Mose,” came a sharp retort. “You backin’ these damned sheep herders?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Then shut down. Durant’s up to the teeth in this and you just now heard Jase croak out Durant’s name as the man who shot him down.”

  “Jase didn’ say that.”

  The footsteps stopped and Blake Durant stood against the yard wall, tension mounting inside him.

  Then again, the hoarse voice of the townsman, “He said his name, didn’t he? You didn’t hear it?”

  “Sure I heard Jase speak the name, but he didn’t sound like a man filled with hate. It was more he called a name of a friend.”

  “Why you damned rye-bloated dimwit!” came an explosion of criticism. “I declare I figured I knowed you, Mose. Seems I ain’t had you right. You clear out while you got the chance or I’m goin’ to forget you made all your money out of cattle and had some rustled like the rest of us. I’ll maybe get to sniffin’ at you mighty hard and maybe find some sheep dung under your shirttail.”

  “To hell you will!”

  The footsteps died in the street. Blake Durant continued on his way to find Will Roper, bleary-eyed from drink, leading Sundown into a far stall of his livery stable.

  Durant said, “I’ll take him, mister.”

  Roper spun on his heels, his face drained of color. He looked uncertainly about him. Durant at once suspected Roper had been instructed to keep the horse out of sight.

  He said, “Unless you’ve got other plans for him, mister?”

  Roper shook his head fearfully. “Hell, no, it’s your horse and you paid up for his stabling. Why should I stop you takin’ what’s yours?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Durant said, and threw the saddle across Sundown’s back. The big black tossed his head a couple of times and stomped the ground, clearly eager to hit a trail. Durant fixed the saddle and swung up and Roper, while he turned the horse and set it for the back street, moved off quickly in the night. By the time Durant had Sundown walking, Roper was running towards the front street.

  Tightening his mouth, Blake Durant hit Sundown into a run and the big black was soon covering ground easily and willingly.

  Chapter Five –Land for the Taking

  ON HIS RIDE out of town, Jim Moriarty stopped at a creek and camped for the night. He had a lot of hard thinking to do. For one, his sheep would be coming on the freight train in three days’ time. They’d be off-loaded into the town cattle pens and from there, everything going right, he would drive them to their allotted destinations. Then the war would begin in earnest, and it was a war he meant to win, even if it meant hiring a bunch of desperadoes to take care of the opposition.

  He had planned the assault on the cattlemen’s kingdom to the last detail. His only regret was that Durant, who had impressed him on first sight, had not thrown in with him. Durant would have been a perfect dupe whose murder, the way Moriarty had it planned, would set the cattlemen back on their heels. It would also give him a perfect right to go after Durant’s killers, which he had no doubt would be Carver Farrar and his sons, and cut them down. With them out of the way, Moriarty felt he could overcome all other opposition to his grand plan. In a year he’d have the whole range surrounding the Crossing teeming with sheep and would be able to fill the contracts he already had in his bulging briefcase.

  Relaxing back, unworried about having killed Jase Rooney, he thought of the Mann girl. God, she was a looker, he conceded. With luck, when his fortunes changed, he might be able to win her hand. Then he’d really have it made. And, if it meant a lot of bloodshed, what the hell? This was desperado country and the devil had to look after his own.

  Kill Chris Farrar! This thought kept running through his mind. He had no doubt at all that Farrar had molested, or tried to molest Sally Mann. When the story got out that Moriarty had killed Farrar for that reason only, wouldn’t the whole town get behind him, sheepman or not? And wouldn’t Sally be eternally grateful?

  He grinned into the night and was about to drop off to sleep when he heard a horse walking on the high trail above him. Shifting to his side, he winced as pain shot through his left shoulder. His back hurt too and he feared the first stage of blood poisoning had set in. But if he got to Sally Mann by morning, she could fix him up properly. So his main worry was not his own worsening condition, but the identity of the trail burner above him.

  The hoofbeats died in the night and Moriarty crouched, sweating, listening. If it was Carver Farrar and his boys, he’d have a hell of a fight on his hands. He had no doubt they would come looking for him after the trouble on the Mann place. If it was a friend of Sheriff Jase Rooney, it wouldn’t matter as much. Rooney was scum. Who else could it be?

  “Put the gun down, Moriarty,” Blake Durant told the sheepman from behind.

  Moriarty spun on his legs, bringing his gun with him.

  Durant said, “Don’t make me kill you, mister. There’s others too ready to do that.”

  Moriarty looked into the intense, grave stare of the big drifter and was deeply worried. Durant had not drawn his gun. Yet he had the feeling, that even with his own gun drawn, he might not be a match for Durant. The man’s coolness unsettled him.

  “What now, Durant?” he asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions, mister,” Durant said. “Why did you kill Rooney?”

  “He’da killed me. You heard him.”

  “He could do no more than arrest you and later have you railroaded from town, tar and feathered.”

  “That wasn’t what I saw in his face.”

  It wasn’t what Blake Durant had seen either.

  But he said, “You’ve implicated me, mister. I don’t like that.”

  “My fault?” Moriarty asked and rose slowly to his feet. “You blamin’ me, damn you?”

  “I’m saying you’ve dogged my footsteps for two days. You’ve given a lot of people the wrong impression about me. I think you’ve done that on purpose and I don’t like it.”

  Moriarty laughed shortly. “Then you are blaming me, Durant. That’s hardly fair.”

  “With you fairness is something that don’t fit, mister,” Durant accused.

  Moriarty’s face tightened. His grip on his gun bulged the muscles of his right forearm.

  “You’re taking chances, Durant. I don’t need you.”

  “This territory doesn’t need you, mister. The cattlemen don’t need you. The town doesn’t need you. I too think that in time sheep will come to this territory, but the time’s not right yet, just as it’s not the right time for farmers to cut up the country into small plots. All that is future and, if you tackle me, yours’ll end sooner than you want it to.”

  Moriarty smirked. “I can kill you now,” he said.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t given up on the idea. Why did you follow me?”

  “To tell you to run and keep running. Leave the Mann girl alone. She’s got troubles enough of her own.”

  “They’re going to run her off, Durant. That bother you?”

  “They won’t run her off.”

  “No?”

  Blake Durant shook his head. He stepped forward into the ring of moonlight which came through the trees. Moriarty, despite his air of unconcern moved back warily. Durant plucked a small stick from the ground and broke it between his fingers.

  “The town believes I killed Rooney, Moriarty. I’ve got you to thank for that too. I could take you back and make you explain, but I’ve got a feeling you’d lie to save your own neck. So it would all be for nothing. So I’ll give you some advice which you best heed. Leave Miss Mann alone and leave the other cattlemen to raise their cattle. Just get.”

  Durant walked past him. Anger suddenly boiled inside Moriarty. He spun on his heel and thumbed back the hammer of his gun. But Blake Durant had been ready for such a move. His hand swung and his iron knuckles smashed into Moriarty’s swollen and splintered shoulder. The gun flew from Moriarty’s fingers and when it hit the ground, Durant kicked it away. Then he pulled a sweating and groaning Moriarty to him and said heavily:

  “I said for you to move on, mister. Do it.”

  He thrust Moriarty away and walked back to the trail where Sundown waited for him. As he rose into the saddle, Moriarty called out, “My sheep are coming, Durant, and you or nobody else will stop them. Try and I’ll kill you. You hear me?”

  Durant heard, but paid no heed. He kicked the horse into a run and the powerful black stepped out eagerly. Together they thundered across the high country until the Mann ranch house was just below them. No lights showed inside the building and there was no sound but the whine of the wind. Durant carefully rode down, remembering the desolation of the place as he had seen it in daylight. Even under the softer color of moonlight it showed little to prompt a man to want to stay. He hitched up at the rail, gave Sundown a reassuring rub on the nose then walked to the front door.

  The blast of a rifle burned past his ear when he was ten feet from it. He stopped dead in his tracks and lifted his hands above his head.

  Then he said, “It’s Blake Durant, Miss Mann.”

  It was two minutes before the door creaked open and the head of the girl showed in the opening.

  “Mr. Durant? What are you doing here this time of night?”

  “I’m running from a town of fools,” he told her calmly.

  Sally lowered the rifle. “Running? What did you do?”

  “I did nothing. They think I did.”

  Sally elbowed the door open and kept the rifle levelled on the ground just in front of Blake’s boots.

  “And you have no place to go? Is that it. So you come to bother me. If what you did for me in town makes you think—”

  “No, our meeting has nothing to do with this. I only want to talk to you.”

  “What about? What could we possibly have to talk about?”

  “You ... you remind me of somebody I once knew,” Durant said. “For her I’d do anything in my power.”

  Sally regarded him dubiously for a long moment. Then she lifted her head arrogantly and said, “Well, I don’t want anybody doing me any favors, Mr. Durant. I just want to be left alone.”

  “They won’t leave you alone,” he said.

  Sally frowned heavily. “What do you mean? What is this anyway? Who exactly are you?”

  “Just a man a town thinks killed off their sheriff, a man a jasper named Moriarty figures to become a partner with, a man on the drift who is going nowhere until he leaves a clean smell behind me. Can I come in and talk?”

 

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