Читать книгу Jim the Conqueror - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 9

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DON JAIME rode his horse along the side of the valley, gradually climbing to the summit of the hilly range on its southern boundary. Here he paused and looked off to the rolling lands below. They were dotted with sheep, standing in long rows a dozen deep, head to head, cropping the dry feed to the grass roots and trampling the roots with their sharp small hoofs. The complaining bleat of the lambs created a continuous diapason of discord.

It was true that the lands whereon the Antrim sheep grazed were not the property of Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes. They were state lands (for Texas never surrendered her public lands to the Federal government) and, undoubtedly, Antrim had as legal a right to graze his sheep there as Don Jaime had to graze his cattle. Nevertheless, by custom and usage, it had come to be known as the Higuenes range. Don Jaime’s grandfather had purchased with cheap land scrip the acreage along the watercourses and around the springs, and by this control of the water the Higuenes dynasty had for generations exercised nominal control over the public lands adjacent thereto. And, since this was a common practice, regarded as an adroit business move but never as a wanton usurpation of the public domain, cattlemen and most sheepmen had respected the Higuenes control.

For the grass on this controlled range the Higuenes family paid nothing. There was an unending dispute between them and the surveyor-general, who sought from their use of the land some revenue to the state. To the state’s feeble charge of trespass by the Higuenes cattle, the reigning Higuenes had always replied with a polite offer to bear half of the expense of fencing the lands it held in fee contiguous to the state lands and thus prevent trespass. Since this constituted a fair and reasonable, nay, legal, method of adjusting trespass disputes between individuals, the reigning Higuenes had always held that the state should also accept his proposition. The state, considering this, discovered that the expense of fifty miles of fence would not be warranted on the hypothesis that any revenue would subsequently accrue by reason of the sale of grazing permits on the fenced lands of the state, since, with the Higuenes family controlling all the waterways and water-holes, no man would be foolish enough to seek a grazing permit! Pending the adjustment of this ancient dispute therefore, the matter slumbered officially at Austin, the state capital, and Don Miguel Jaime Higuenes neglected to fence his fee lands contiguous to the water; also he neglected to supply herders to confine his cattle to his fee lands, wherefore they wandered over the state lands at will!

Of this situation wily old Tom Antrim had decided to take advantage. In ordinary years he would not have risked the adventure, since nobody knew better than he that a dispute over water and grass in that country is always tantamount to an adventure. But his own range had been grazed over; it had been a dry year in his part of the county, he had the sheep on his hands, they were not ready for market, nor was he ready to accept the market price for unmarketable sheep. He had to maintain them, and in his dilemma he turned quite naturally to one of the earliest laws of human nature, to wit, that a desperate man is justified in taking desperate measures.

He was familiar with the law of trespass. If the owner of fee lands did not fence them he could not prosecute successfully the owner of loose live stock that wandered thereon! And Don Jaime Higuenes could not afford to fence the small acreage around springs and water-holes and the narrow forty-acre strips along watercourses, some of which went dry in the summer. If he did his own live stock could not get in for water! Of course, as Antrim knew, Don Jaime might have counterattacked by scattering quantities of saltpeter on the grass of his fee lands. They were his lands and he could put saltpeter on them if he desired. Saltpeter will not hurt cattle, but it kills sheep. However, when Antrim figured the area upon which his antagonist would have to scatter sufficient saltpeter to be a menace, he knew Don Jaime would never resort to this expedient. It would require too much saltpeter and too great a labor bill to scatter it and maintain it in sufficient quantities to do its work.

Therefore, Antrim reasoned, he ran but one risk, and that was a battle to keep his sheep, not from trespassing on unfenced lands, but from drinking Don Jaime’s water. However, there were many water-holes and many watercourses to guard, and perhaps Don Jaime would not guard them all; perhaps if Antrim appeared with a strong armed guard of herders Don Jaime would not force the issue. Under the circumstances Tom Antrim decided to accept the risks, because the stakes, if he won, were high. He was an arrogant man and because of Don Jaime’s Castilian blood (Antrim referred to it as Mexican blood, which predicates a mixture of Indian) he had a contempt for the fighting qualities of the Higuenes family. He had declared, often in public, that Don Jaime was too yellow to buck a white man. Like most Americans of his ilk he chose, having no other virtues to speak of, to assume that of a superior blood, a superior color.

All these things Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes considered as he gazed over the country that, by hook and crook, had been sacred to four generations of his people. He had but one real advantage, one legal right. His fee lands were unfenced and hence a suit for trespass could not lie, but he did have the right to drive trespassing live stock off his fee lands before they should have an opportunity to drink. If held off long enough they would perish of thirst, and if while driving them off he and his men were attacked by the owners of the trespassing live stock they would be clearly within their legal rights if they defended themselves.

Don Jaime smiled. “Thrice doubly armed is he whose cause is just,” he soliloquized. “Well, Señor Antrim has the surprise of his life coming to him this evening. He’s staked everything on a lone ace—and I’m going to take the trick with a trump deuce.”

He decided to bear off to the right and give the sheep and their herders a wide berth, for he had no intention of coming to grips with the enemy anywhere except on his own lands and in defense of his inalienable rights. So he rode along the hogback at a walk for half a mile and then turned down a long draw to the valley below, through which the white road to Los Algodones wound off into the haze. At the mouth of the draw he paused and dismounted, for the long trip downhill had revealed the fact that his saddle cinch was loose; it had slipped out over the horse’s withers.

Don Jaime removed saddle and blanket, saw that there were no wrinkles in the blanket, and adjusted it again to the horse’s back. He was in the act of swinging the heavy stock saddle up onto the animal when something ripped across his breast. He felt a gentle plucking of his shirt, experienced a feeling that he had been burned. Then the crashing sound of a rifle echoed through the draw.

The thought flashed through Don Jaime’s agile brain, “Tom Antrim had another trump. He’s playing it.”

With a savage wrench he jerked Ken Hobart’s rifle clear of the boot, dropped the saddle and leaped for the brush with the alacrity of a frightened rabbit. A fusillade of bullets followed him; before he could gain the shelter of the reverse slope of the left of the two spurs which formed the draw, he had been hit three times, the last wound dropping him headlong on his face.

The paralysis was but momentary, however. He rolled a couple of times, half rose, lurched forward and rolled again. When he reached “dead” ground, he rested a few seconds, then on his hands and knees crawled around the toe of the spur; presently he got to his feet and limped slowly and painfully up the hill fifty yards, got down on his hands and knees, and with his body as close to the earth as possible crawled back through the low sage over the spur toward the draw! When he could look down into the draw again he stretched out and brought his rifle to the ready. He waited.

Presently, up the hillside across the draw he saw a bush move slightly. There was not a breath of wind, so Don Jaime concentrated his attention on that bush. It moved again, but Don Jaime could see nothing. So, deciding to feel for what was there while yet sufficient strength remained to him, he sighted carefully on the center of that bush and fired. Something threshed in the brush, so Don Jaime continued to shoot until the threshing ceased.

With the feeling that he had better be sure than sorry he had put twenty bullets into the heart of that bush.

Presently, from far up the draw toward the summit a voice floated faintly:

“Don Jaime! It’s Ken Hobart!”

“Come down, but be careful,” Don Jaime shouted back with all his lungs.

Ken Hobart came down that long draw at a mad gallop and when the thud of hoofs indicated his near presence, Don Jaime managed to stand erect and hail him. The ranger rode into the brush to Don Jaime, who leaned against his horse and clung to the saddle.

“Hurt, my friend?”

“Shot all to hell but not fatally,” Don Jaime informed him with a wry smile. “Top of the left shoulder, left biceps and calf of the right hind leg. Also a brand across my chest.”

“Where’s the other man?”

Don Jaime indicated the spot and then sat down to wait while the ranger rode up to investigate. The ranger’s face was gravely humorous when he returned.

“There’s a man up there lying on top of a rifle. An oldish man. Looks like Tom Antrim—that is, dressed like him, but you’ve shot his head practically away and he’s unrecognizable. Features quite obliterated.”

“While waiting for something or somebody to turn up I didn’t have anything else to do, so I practiced shooting,” Don Jaime protested virtuously. “My horse still there?”

“Yes, standing where you left him.”

“Good old Border horse. Shooting never flusters him. Well, Ken, you’d better undress me and take an inventory; then get me on my horse and hold me there. It’s ten miles back to the ranch but I can make it if I don’t bleed to death.”

Hobart carried him out to the clean grass in the draw, undressed him and examined his wounds with the skill of one to whom wounds are no mystery. “Top shoulder muscle ripped and possibly a piece drilled out of the scapula. Hole through the left biceps but the humerus is untouched. Leg wound nothing to write home about. All flesh wounds; blood just welling slowly. It will probably coagulate and quit in a little while,” he announced casually.

He brought iodine, bandages and adhesive tape from his saddle-bags, for like all of his profession he had frequent need of such things and was not a half-bad backwoods surgeon. When he had the wounds dressed and the arm in a sling Don Jaime stood erect and gingerly rested his weight on his wounded leg. “Not any worse than a badly sprained ankle,” he rejoiced, “and I’ve walked miles on one of them.... Well, let’s have a look at the sassy old sheep-herder.”

With Hobart’s assistance he mounted his horse, and together they rode up the opposite slope and gazed down at the dead man. “I could see a small glint of something white,” Don Jaime explained, “after I fired the first time. I figured it might be his face, so I pecked away at it.”

“I never knew a man with Spanish blood in his veins who wasn’t ferocious,” the ranger declared.

“I’m not ferocious. I’m practical, Ken. I wanted to keep on shooting to show any other bushwhackers who might be in on the job that I was armed and dangerous. And I thought, too, a lot of shooting might bring some of those herders from over yonder and I’d get enough for a mess. And why waste my shots?”

“Well, your extravagance with ammunition is what brought me direct to the scene. I’d ridden about half a mile from where we parted when it occurred to me that Antrim and his camp cook could easily have heard you directing me to have one of the boys come into Los Algodones with the auto and the trailer to bring your horse home. Remember? You shouted. So he’d know you were traveling across country alone and unarmed—for of course he could not know that as a mere matter of precaution you had borrowed my rifle. I just got a hunch it would be like the old scoundrel to follow and bushwhack you. He could be reasonably certain there would be no witnesses.”

Don Jaime gazed down at the grisly thing in the bushes. “Looks like Antrim—all but the face,” he agreed. “Frisk him, Ken, in your capacity as a peace officer, and see what luck we have.”

So the ranger turned the dead man’s pockets inside out and in the coat pocket he found a black seal-leather wallet bearing on the outside the words in gold letters: “Thomas Antrim, Christmas, 1925.”

“Somebody, strange as it may seem, actually thought enough of this man to give him a Christmas present,” the ranger murmured. “Here’s a photo post-card addressed to Thomas Antrim, Jolon, Las Cruces County, Texas. Picture of a girl taken at Atlantic City. Now, where have I seen that face before?”

He handed the card up to Don Jaime, who studied it briefly and handed it back.

“Miss Roberta Antrim, of Hillcrest, Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York,” he announced grimly. “So she was a relative of his, after all.” He sighed. “What else, old-timer?”

“A letter in an envelop.”

“As a peace officer you have a right to read it.”

The ranger complied with Don Jaime’s suggestion. “Brief letter from Roberta Antrim, addressed to ‘Dear Uncle Tom,’ and thanking him for sending her a check for five dollars for the Babies’ Hospital.”

“He gave up all of one lamb, didn’t he? Generous man!”

“Here’s a card that says: ‘In case of death or accident please notify my next of kin, Miss Roberta Antrim,’ etc. Well, it sort of looks like old Tom’s made a mess of things. He was too old to have attempted to do this job himself. His eyes probably weren’t as good as they used to be, and when a fellow takes to bushwhacking he ought to be reasonably fast and accurate with a rifle. When you borrowed my rifle you sort of spilled old Tom’s beans, Don Jaime.”

“His sheep we still have with us, also his foreman and sheep-herders,” Don Jaime announced thoughtfully. “I suppose his sheep are now the property of his next of kin, and God forbid that I should wage war on a woman. Ken, my friend, I think we’ll defer the war of the water-holes. The sensible thing to do now is to wire Miss Roberta Antrim to get down here on the job and look after the assets of her late Uncle Tom. She’s a lady. She’ll probably listen to reason and we’ll get rid of these stinking sheep without additional bloodshed. They’ll ruin a lot of the range in the interim, of course— Oh, hell, let ’em drink! If we shoo them off now they’ll die and that would be putting a crimp in the lady’s bankroll.”

“Whatever else we may be, let us, at least, try to be gentlemen,” the ranger agreed humorously. “Well, now, the next business before the meeting is to find old Tom’s horse, drape Thomas across the saddle, take him into Los Algodones and deliver him to the local undertaker. My report of this affair will close the investigation. And you should get to a doctor. It’s ten miles to your ranch and ten miles to Los Algodones. I’m in command! All aboard for Los Algodones, amigo mío.”

They had proceeded but a short distance along the narrow, rutty road to Los Algodones when they were overtaken by a man driving an old automobile that had been converted into a truck. Hearing it rattling along behind them, the ranger rode his horse into the middle of the road and held up his hand. The vehicle stopped.

The ranger looked the driver over. “I know you,” he announced. “Aren’t you Tom Antrim’s camp cook? Seems to me I saw you at his camp this noon.”

The man glanced from the ranger to Antrim’s horse, with Antrim’s limp body hanging across the saddle; his dark face paled as he saw the dead man’s head bundled up in his canvas coat.

“What’s happened?” he cried. “That dead man’s my boss, ain’t he?”

“He used to be. He rode out of his camp in a devil of a hurry shortly after I was there, you may remember. Well, his mission was to circle around Señor Higuenes, waylay and murder him. He tried very hard to succeed, as you may judge by a casual inspection of Señor Higuenes, but somehow his proposition back-fired and now he’s on his way to the undertaker. I suppose you’re bound for Los Algodones for supplies?”

The man nodded, his eyes still on all that was mortal of the man who had paid him well for doing very indifferent cooking.

“Well, suppose we dispose Antrim’s body on your truck. He keeps shifting in the saddle and making as great a nuisance of himself in death as he did in life. I’m afraid he’ll fall off. Don Jaime will ride on the seat beside you and I’ll sit on back with the corpse and lead these two horses. You got a gun on you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give it to me. You might be tempted to use it on Don Jaime. Hop out now and pay the last sad tribute of love to your late boss.”

“I don’t think I’ll go to Los Algodones after all, ranger. The boys ought to be notified of this killing—”

“You’ll go. I desire it, my friend. I don’t feel like having your friends organize a reprisal raid on the Rancho Valle Verde until I’m there to receive them.” Hobart flashed his ranger’s shield on the man who, without further ado, assisted him to place Antrim’s body in the box of the car. Hobart then lifted Don Jaime down from his horse and deposited him beside the driver, after which he seated himself in the rear of the car and with his long legs hanging out the tailgate held the leading ropes of the three horses. At a speed of seven or eight miles an hour they proceeded to Los Algodones, where Hobart turned Antrim’s body over to the coroner and made his report to the sheriff, having first seen Don Jaime in bed at the hotel with a doctor in charge of him.

About an hour later a coroner’s jury trooped into Don Jaime’s room and listened to his story of the killing. The ranger added his testimony, and the foreman of the jury looked humorously at his fellow jurors.

“Don’t seem to be anything mysterious about this case, boys,” he announced. “All those in favor of rendering a verdict of suicide hold up their right hands. All up? We, the jury, find that the deceased came to his death at the hands of Don Jaime Miguel Higuenes and that the said Higuenes acted in self-defense and cannot be charged with any crime worse than justifiable homicide.”

“I thank you, señores,” said Don Jaime. “Ken, take the jury down to the hotel bar and set up the drinks. Champagne if they have it. They usually do—for me! Los Algodones is too close to the Border to be a dry town. Don’t stop at one round, Ken. Now that you are the assistant general manager of the Rancho Valle Verde it’s up to you to maintain our traditions of hospitality. Go ’way, you chaps. I’m not in sufficient pain to groan, but I’d like to cuss freely for a while.”

The jury retired in an atmosphere of profound geniality, and when Ken Hobart had sufficiently upheld the traditions of Valle Verde he returned to his employer.

“Well, I’ve wired my resignation. It ought to reach the governor before the office closes, and his wire of acceptance will come to me in your care. I’ve hired an automobile—at your expense, Don Jaime—and am on my way to the ranch. I’ll send the trailer in after our horses in the morning. They’re at ranger headquarters. That cook of Antrim’s is bound to have taken the news out to his people.... I’d better be at the ranch in the event of hostilities. The wildest sheep-herder will generally listen to reason from a ranger—and I’ll be a ranger until my resignation is accepted and I have turned in my shield.”

Don Jaime held out a telegram to him. “Please file that as you go out, Ken. The doctor has sent to El Paso for a trained nurse, and as soon as she arrives I’ll go out to the ranch and recuperate. All I require is an expert to dress these punctures and keep an eye out for possible infection. As for those sheeps—I mean sheep—tell Antrim’s foreman to restrict them to the country south of the Arroyo San Dieguito. The feed there isn’t so attractive to my cattle anyhow, but sheep can make a living there. Adiós, mí buen compañero.”