Gun Smoke on the Mesa by Brett Halliday

Author:Brett Halliday
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781504025386
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter Eleven

It was early dusk when Stormy returned to the ranch. The Dixie hands were in from their day’s work in the open and were grouped about the wash basins at the bunkhouse. There were half a dozen of them including Phil. Men with lean wiry bodies and weather-beaten faces.

They greeted Stormy with casual friendliness as he walked up, making room for him at one of the benches and asking no questions.

Stormy knew that Phil had been talking about him, and that the Dixie riders were accepting him for what he was with true western taciturnity.

Matching their silence with his own, Stormy washed and dried his face and hands, then trooped with the others to the cookshack and sat with them at a long table loaded with pans of sourdough biscuits and steaming bowls of frijoles cooked with fat chunks of sow belly, flanked by two platters piled high with steaks that had been rolled in flour and fried in deep fat.

There was little talk at the table, and Stormy joined in it not at all. He had eaten nothing since early that morning when he had munched cold biscuits and drunk coffee at a tiny campfire not far from the mesa, and he discovered he was ravenously hungry.

The others, too, had wolfish appetites after a long day in the open, and they kept their mouths so full that there was little time for conversation.

Phil fell into step with Stormy as they left the cookhouse with full bellies. “Are you gonna stick around?” he asked anxiously. “Lorna was mighty worried that you wouldn’t come back when you rode off this afternoon.”

“I’m staying,” Stormy told him, “a little time anyhow.” He paused, then asked abruptly, “Can you get all the fellows together in the bunkhouse right away?”

“You bet.” Phil hurried away importantly to gather up the Dixie riders and get them into the bunkhouse to hear what Stormy had to say.

When they were all gathered, sitting around on bunks and boxes with a kerosene lamp lighting their intent faces, Stormy got up and stood in front of them.

“I reckon Phil’s told you how I ran into trouble with Tay Borton in Fort Davis yesterday. Then I ran into Cleve Carson by chance last night and we disagreed. This evening a couple of Black Ace punchers jumped me without a how-de-do, and I was lucky enough to kill one of them and run the other one off; all of which I’m relating to show you I got personal reasons to settle the Black Ace hash.”

He paused, looking around the circle of intent faces, then went on harshly, “I had a talk with your boss this afternoon and got the lowdown on a lot of things. The colonel’s in a bad jam, and killing Carson an’ Borton will only make it worse. Now I got me a plan, but I need help.”

He paused again, his gray eyes challenging the men, who listened inscrutably.

“None of you know me from Adam’s off ox,” he said, “but I’m asking you to trust me with whatever cash any of you have got.

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