The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

must've stepped on yore foot, Mister Steers."

      "Be that as it may, I feel like steppin' on somebody else's foot. Al, you drinkin' with me? I despise drinkin' alone."

      "Sure," said Niland. "But I thought you was temperamentally opposed to liquor."

      "Ha!" snorted Steve and took his jot without a quiver. "That's the trouble with me. I ain't got a mind of my own any more. I can't do nothin' without lookin' on the chart to see if it's proper. Debbie issues orders. Her old lady tells me where to head in. The old gent bites me off short. Even the eleven-year-old mutt of a Lunt kid roots me on the shins. I'd like to haul off four feet behind my breeches and spank him into next leap year. But no. I'm just the swivel-eyed ape which hangs around the Lunt house and gets pushed outa the road. Ha! Grogan, bring me a glass that ain't half plugged up with scum. I want a drink."

      "I don't know if I better leave you alone," reflected Niland. "You'll foam any minute now."

      "Hear anything new?" demanded Steers, drawing the bottle to him.

      "No. Don't even see any of the vigilantes in town."

      Steers turned to face the room. "Vigilantes? Ain't that somethin' to make yuh die laughin'? Hey, is there any of you vigilantes in these premises? I'd shore like to see what great big scrappin' hellions yuh are!"

      There was no answer. Without question he was on the warpath. One of the Nightingale riders, seeing the foreman of the outfit hell-bent for trouble, slipped quickly from the hall. Steers raked the assembled citizens with a bright eye. "None present, uh? Well, I reckon they must all be home in bed, nursin' their busted arches. If I'd run as fast as they did to get away from Lou Redmain I'd have busted arches, too. And what is more, I wouldn't have nerve enough to come back to Sundown!"

      Niland thoughtfully called Steve's attention to the empty glass. "After a large statement like that you must be dry. There was heat in the remarks. Presuming on the perquisites of friendship I would suggest you have covered a scope of ground somewhat wider than the spread of your elbows. Think it over."

      "Think? All I been doin' lately is thinkin'—about my duty, about my responsibilities, about bein' a gentleman. What's it brought me? Nothin' but grief. I wasn't made to think. I was made to bust forth and do the first thing that came in my head. What're all you dudes sittin' around for? Somebody run out and see if they's news of Denver. You—over there. Git goin'."

      "Pretty soon you're going to need an armored battleship to get out of this town whole," prophesied Niland.

      "Oh, no," said Steve, dripping in sarcasm. "Ev'body's all tuckered out from runnin'. Tie that, will yuh? Runnin' from Lou Redmain, the kinky little belly-slashin' rat! Runnin' away from him and leavin' a man in the lurch which none of 'em is good enough to lick his shoes!"

      Niland let out a small sigh of relief. Nightingale men were slipping unobtrusively into the saloon. Steve had his bodyguard, though he failed to realize it. He lowered his voice to Niland.

      "She said she'd turn me off like a crummy shirt if I ever got drunk, Al. Yeah, Debbie said that. Now you just watch me. She's a thousand times too good for a shif'less egg like me. I'm unregenerate. She thinks she can straighten a crooked nail. Dammit, I don't want to be improved. Just stay around and drink now and then with me while I get drunk. Grogan, trot out another bottle of that doctored dishwater."

      "I've got no more time to drink, Steve. Something on tap."

      "Any time's time to drink," said Steve, falling upon Cal Steele's well remembered phrase. The two men stared at each other as if the ghost of their friend stood lazy and smiling between them. Steve's face was suddenly lined and heavy. "I know. You go on. You're in no position to wallow in the mud with me. I'll get somebody." He shoved himself away from the bar and concentrated on the room. His finger stabbed out, and it may have been wholly by accident that it fairly tagged two rather willing characters—Meems and Wango. Possibly it was accident, though the gentlemen in question seldom missed a free meal and never had been known to refuse a drink.

      "Come here!" bellowed Steers. "You two! Stand right beside me. When I drink, you match me. See?"

      "It ain't as hard as it sounds," said Buck Meems. "Mebbe you'd better let us get evened up afore we start off."

      Steers seemed to recognize them for the first time. "Huh—the human sponges. Well it's all right. I'll know I'm drunk when I see you road runners start wabblin'. Al—Al. When you hear anything come right back and let me know."

      Niland nodded, spoke quietly to one of the Nightingale punchers, and walked out. What he said was, "Don't any of you fellows cramp his style. He could just about lick the contents of the saloon alone in his present state. Don't encourage him by interfering."

      Niland paused to scan the street for new arrivals and found none. He crossed to Doc Williamson's office, but it was empty. Lola Monterey came quickly from the New York grocery and wheeled in front of him, whereat he lifted his hat and answered her question before she asked it. "Not a word, Lola."

      He saw her fists double up around a package. It made him offer the old and well-worn assurance. "No news is good news. There never was the hole Dave couldn't wiggle through."

      "If you knew Lou Redmain as I do—" said she, and never finished the sentence. He watched her walk away, and an odd flash of thought came to him about the Biblical Mary and Martha. The opera house doors were closed, and a puncher guarded them; on impulse he used his right as an Association member and went in. Fear Langdell slouched in a stage chair. A small rancher held the floor, talking in a half-hearted sort of way.

      "...I want you-all to realize we've got no militia to call on, no rangers to drag in. Here we are, the biggest, roughest county in the state, cut off from down country. We always have had to fight our own battles, and we will now. Some of you smoke eaters forget that these hills make perfect shelter for the wild bunch. Just try and run 'em all down. If we'd gone about this with a less heavy hand and a hell of a lot of less advertisement we wouldn't of pushed the bad ones into a single herd where they can do us the most damage. We are lookin' right square into no-law country. Lou Redmain's got nothin' less than another Hole-in-the- Wall bunch. And if you had lived in Wyoming like me you'd flinch every time you thought about it. I figured Leverage would anyhow keep things quiet by a show of force. But I had hopes Denver would smash 'em once he made up his mind. There ain't anybody else that could. If he's gone, I just don't know how I can face the prospect of livin' on my place with the wife and kids. I just don't..."

      Niland left the hall in need of air. "So they're singin' Dave's swan song. Well, they don't know the man!" But, going along the courthouse corridor and back to his office he remembered an odd thing Denver once had told him. It was about how fast bad news swept over Yellow Hill County. Denver had pointed to the sky and said, "It's one of those things I don't try to explain. Call it the invisible telegraph, if you want. But it comes through the air. I know it. I've felt it. The Indians knew it too. The news of Custer's being wiped out traveled to tribes three hundred miles south before a messenger could even ride thirty miles. It's just another part of the mystery of this country. Whispering Range—there never was a truer name. Some days there's a pressure all around me that's like a smotherin' blanket. I know better than to take chances on those days. Somewhere there's an old medicine drum beating, and the echo of it passes along."

      Niland closed his office door, locked it, and threw the dark reveries from his head with conscious effort. Impatiently he lit his pipe, unlocked a drawer, and took therefrom a long leather folder. Out of it he drew a broken sheet of paper, smoothed it on the table, and bent his slim, rebellious face in scrutiny, as he had done a dozen times in the last eight hours.

      He had found it in an odd corner of Cal Steele's desk which he had inspected after being appointed executor of the dead man's estate. He would have set it aside as of no importance except that in the back of his mind was the question Dave Denver had planted there. He had been musing ever since over the figures penned upon it. On the left margin apparently Steele had indicated dates. In the center the figures obviously stood for sums of money, and each one following its date. Niland had concluded that these represented proceeds from cattle sales. But what defied his logic was that to the right of each sum had