Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox
liquor from his mouth and wiped his eyes. His flat chest rose and fell with an excess of outraged feeling, but in the end he spoke quite mildly. "Seems to me you be tryin' to pick trouble. I want these fellers to know I ain't startin' no trouble. It's a free country."
"Free fer anything but bugs," broke in Trono, working himself to a rage. "Y' know what we do with bugs, mister? We bash 'em! Better take warnin' an' clear out."
"No, I don't guess I'll give up," said the nester. Tom Lilly inwardly applauded the man's courage. It took nerve to stand in the midst of a crowd of cowpunchers and declare himself. Even more nerve to say what he went on to say. "Pilgrim Valley wa'n't created jes' purposely fer the Octopus an' his JIB ranch, though you seem to think so. I'm holdin' my land by gov'ment consent. Mean to prove it an' farm it."
"Oh, you do?" muttered Trono, bearing down on the final word.
The nester hastened to take the sting from his pronouncement. "Ain't no reason fer you folks to git sore. They's aplenty land left to run cows on. Shucks, I'm only holdin' a half section outen three-four hundred thousand acres."
"Bugs breed," replied Trono. "Leave one alone an' he hatches a hundred more. No, that ain't no argument. Hey, where you goin'?"
The nester had started to back off. Trono's right hand dropped half way to his gun and the nester's whole body stiffened; he, too, made a gesture toward his coat pocket, only to throw both arms free of his body as if to show he meant no trouble. It was a cruel ordeal and the mark of it appeared on his lean face in deep furrows and fine beads of sweat. Tom Lilly sighed to relieve the pressure of his accumulating anger. First and foremost he was a cowman, with most of the prejudices of that class. But he fought fair, always, and now his sympathies were entirely with the nester who was being badgered. It bore hard on him to stand back and watch this quarrel being trumped up by Trono; for there could be only one end to it. It was obvious that Trono meant there should be but one end.
"I'm goin' about my business," muttered the nester, rubbing his lips with a trembling hand. "I know you, Mister Trono. You figger to cause trouble. You've allus tried to haze me off my claim. Well, if I was a younger feller I might stand up to you. All I ask is to be let alone. It's a free country and they's plenty o' room fer all o' us in it. I'm gettin' along in years an' there's nobody to take care o' me when I break down, so I want to make a little stake afore I die. Now you leave me be."
Lilly checked an impulse to step forward between the men. His sharp eyes caught the stiffening muscles beneath Trono's coat and the sudden flare of fire in Trono's eyes. The killer instinct was there; he had seen such a light before. But, on the verge of acting, he took hold of himself. It was not his quarrel and nobody had asked him to interfere. The strictest kind of unwritten rules guarded such an affair and held him in his place. Even so, as he watched Trono gather himself, he had come to a decision. Trono's voice droned throughout the room.
"Callin' me a trouble maker, you damn fool? Come back here an' drink!"
What passed in the succeeding moments was something that only swift eyes might see. Trono's arm dropped and seemed to waver. It was only a gesture, yet it might have been the first move to draw his gun. The nester, badgered until his nerves were torturing him, saw that gesture and copied it. But where Trono had been clever, he was only clumsy. He could not feint. One paw started downward and could not stop. After that it was murder. Trono's gun gleamed in the light; the room rocked and roared and someone cried out a warning. That was Tom Lilly's voice, though he never knew it. His eyes, passing from side to side, saw the nester struggle with his weapon and stand a moment; then like a man crushed by a burden, he buckled at the knees and fell forward. The life was out of him before he struck the floor. His lean, bewildered face stared dumbly through the trailing gun smoke. Not a soul in that room moved, not a word was spoken until Trono's harsh voice broke the spell.
"You boys saw it. You saw he went for his gun. I'd 'a' been plugged cold if I'd waited. Plain self-defense, understand? Such actions is about all you can expect from a nester." And he swept the crowd with a hard, cold glance. For one instant his attention was fixed on Tom Lilly; then he walked from the place. Lilly rubbed his hands along his coat edge and tried to clear the unreasoning, white-hot rage from his head. A kind of whistling sigh passed ever the onlookers and the bartender's carefully indifferent words reached him.
"Some o' you gents lug him into the side room. I don't want my floors all bloodied up."
Lilly turned away from the sight and built himself a cigarette with unusually awkward fingers. One of the men at the near table shuffled a deck and spoke philosophically. "Well, that's another chalked up to Theed Trono in behalf o' the JIB. God-darnit, why didn't the fool stay clear o' Trono?"
Lilly bent forward, speaking with a sharp rise o| voice. "Does this Trono hombre run this JIB rancho?"
The group at the table turned toward him and spent some time in a carefull inspection. He was rewarded finally by a brief word. "Not exactly, stranger. Though I'd say he had a-plenty to say about it. Fact is, he's old Jim Breck's foreman. Who is Jim Breck? You shorely must be from distant parts. Jim Breck is chief factotum o' Pilgrim Valley."
"And where might that be?"
"South thirty miles or so. It's behind the string o' Buttes you might see from here of a day. Though if yore lookin' fer a job you won't have to ride that far."
"I'm han'somely obliged, but I mistrust my ability to work under that Trono gent," said Lilly. "I take it this here nester occupied unhealthy soil."
"Well, you can read the picture an' title fer yourself," answered his informant somewhat briefly, and turned away. Lilly understood the meaning of this perfectly. Trono, he decided, in a wave of disgust, had Powder buffaloed. He said as much in an audible phrase that was addressed at nobody in particular. It was meant to provoke attention and it succeeded admirably. The group turned on him with sharpened interest and the spokesman put a direct question. "Who the hell are you, amigo, to tell us what the trouble is? You a candidate for the unpopularity contest?"
"I'm just a simple creature," murmured Lilly, "that never learned the a-b-c's from any book. But I was always taught murder was a crime."
"Mebbe you'd like to try yore luck with Theed Trono."
Lilly ground the cigarette beneath his boot heel and stared at a group with a cold directness. Ice edged his words. "You can bet your last chip, fellow, that if I ever do, there'll be more'n one bullet fired. That's information for general publication." He swung and left the saloon, knowing that every soul within the room had heard his last statement. Knowing, too, that in time the challenge would reach Theed Trono. He had meant it as a deliberate challenge; etiquette had kept him out of a poor nester's trouble, but there was nothing in the books that forbade a man starting an entirely new quarrel if he was so minded. As he walked somberly down the dark street he had a clear picture of Trono's savage, bullying face. Why, the man had committed the coldest kind of murder and these fellows stayed glued to their seats! It was enough to rouse the spirit of an Eskimo, for a fact. What sort of a fool was this Trono and what kind of an outfit was the JIB to allow such free-handed killing?
He paused in front of the livery stable, sympathies more and more engaged in the affairs of the dead nester. There was a volcanic upheaval inside him and he stared narrowly through the dark, recalling the sage words of Joe Breedlove. "I nev yit did know a redheaded gent that wa'n't burnin' to right the wrongs of this yere unjust world." Well, that wasn't exactly so. He, Tom Lilly, wasn't going around with a chip on his shoulder, but there certainly was such a thing as fair play in the world.
The stable roustabout ambled out of the doorway and murmured. "Ain't the flesh pots lured yuh yet?"
Tom Lilly built another cigarette and began delving for information. "Once upon a time there was a nester—"
"Yeah. I heard that shot in the saloon. The ways o' man are plumb mortal."
"Where might that nester have had his claim, anyhow?"
"Jes' inside Pilgrim Valley, offen the road to the JIB about four miles. They's a nice cold spring on the place, which shore has been poison bait fer many a foolish feller."
"In other words,"