Rose Canyon Gang

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  The Rose Canyon Gang

  Paul Lederer writing as Owen G. Irons

  ONE

  On the eastern slope of the rugged Yavapai mountains the long canyon carved into their bulk wound its way from the high country to spread out as it reached the grasslands below. Rose Canyon, as it was called, was no different from a hundred other notches in the gray hills except that there was a flowing spring at its head. The water did not run long above ground, but trickled away and vanished after a short half-mile. At the site of the spring the man who had first explored the canyon discovered a wild purple rose growing. How it had gotten there, or where the plant was now was anyone’s guess.

  Rose Canyon sheltered only yucca, patches of nopal cactus, mesquite and a few scattered and broken sycamore trees.

  All in all it was not a hospitable place – too deeply cut into the surrounding landscape for any breeze to reach; hot and dry and isolated, it seemed to shun mankind. Except that now it sheltered a handful of men who preferred its forbidding aspect to being gunned down out on the desert.

  ‘I guess we’re up against it for sure now,’ Toby Leland said. There was an unhappy sincerity in the young cowboy’s words, as if finality had touched his perceptions.

  ‘We are, and so what?’ Sparky – Bill Sparks said, looking up from the small campfire the four men sat circled around. The low flames danced and splashed alternate light and shadow over their faces. Sparky was the youngest of them all, but he was brash, able to deal with their situation more easily than Leland. Or that was the impression he gave, the image Sparky strove for. Red-headed. freckled, he was wiry in build, his hands and muscles always moving not quite in coordination, as if he had somewhere urgent to go but did not know where.

  But then, none of them did.

  Until recently all had been employed by the Madison-McGraw ranch. The MM brand was the outfit they rode for. Now they were drifters in the wild.

  ‘I can understand you not being as upset as Leland,’ Dane Hollister said. He was older, bulkier; darkly handsome despite a receding hairline. He had been to school somewhere; for he was always reading and had a couple of books in his saddle-bags even now, along with his wire-framed spectacles. ‘At least you know why you were fired, Sparky.’

  Sparky flared up briefly. ‘It was nearly dark!’ the redhead said excitedly. ‘I’d been branding for ten straight hours.’

  ‘And branded a Double M calf with a double W?’

  ‘It was getting dark and I was dead tired.’

  The fourth member of their party, Drew Tango, who was reputed to be a former gunfighter, or possibly a lawman gone bad, spoke up. ‘It was more than careless, Sparky. It was dangerous. They could have thought you were doing that on purpose, trying to steal cattle.’

  ‘That’s what Baker did accuse me of,’ Sparky said, referring to the brutish foreman of the Double M.

  ‘What’d you tell him?’ Tango asked, poking at the fire with a stick. ‘That it was so dark that you couldn’t tell which end of the calf was up?’

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ Sparky grumbled, seeing that he was going to get no sympathy from these three.

  ‘It is true,’ Dane Hollister said, ‘that at least you know why you were fired – even if it was only an excuse. The rest of us have no idea why we were cut loose.’

  ‘At round-up time!’ added Toby Leland. ‘And where around here are they going to come up with four riders?’

  ‘Must have already had some men on the way,’ Tango guessed. He shifted his position slightly and dropped the twig he had been playing with into the fire.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Dane Hollister asked thoughtfully. In the glow of the firelight he resembled some stuffy professor quizzing a student with a weak hypothesis. Men had made that mistake, taking Hollister for some sort of bookworm; they had frequently learned a lesson. Dane was a man who didn’t mind brawling, and he usually came out on top.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Tango said and the others paid attention, knowing that whatever side of the law he had been on in the past, Tango knew something about these matters. ‘Not even a crazy man, or one given to rages as Baker is, would fire half of his crew at round-up time. And the way we were let go – there had to be some planning behind it.’

  Hollister nodded agreement. ‘Why’d they tell you they were firing you, Leland?’

  The young man said irritably, ‘Baker told me I missed six cows up in the Carrizo Gorge. Said I probably hadn’t even bothered to go up there to look. That’s not true! I rode that patch of ground for five hours – there weren’t any strays up there.’

  ‘What about you, Dane?’ Tango asked.

  ‘Me?’ Dane Hollister leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows. ‘Baker said that the boss lady – Roberta Madison – claimed that I was annoying her in an ungentlemanly manner.’

  ‘Did she?’ That didn’t sound like the young woman who was a partner in the Double M.

  ‘I don’t know! How could she have said such a thing? I spoke to her seldom, and when I did, I can assure you it was in a respectful manner. I have many faults, I suppose, but I was raised to be a gentleman.’

  ‘Did Baker let you confront her?’

  ‘Of course not. He said something to the effect that it would only disturb Roberta.’

  Sparky asked Tango: ‘And you, Tango? Why’d they fire you?’

  ‘One of the boys, Gomez, told me it was because Baker thought I was a dangerous man to have around, that I was probably an outlaw anyway.’ Tango’s eyes briefly drifted away. Sparky had heard stories about Tango, many of them, and he thought that there might have been a kernel of truth in them. But the tall man had made no trouble since he had arrived on the MM last winter.

  ‘Baker said nothing to you?’

  ‘No,’ Tango said with a thin smile. ‘But when I rode into the home ranch on Tuesday, I found my good saddle and my bedroll on the porch of the bunkhouse. I didn’t need an invitation to leave.’ Tango shrugged, ‘I just figured the hell with it, switched saddles and rode off.’

  ‘So here we are,’ Leland said, as miserable as ever. ‘What a fix! Any of you have an idea what to do next?’

  ‘Some of the big ranches near Tucson would probably take on a man for the duration of the round-up,’ Sparky thought.

  ‘That job wouldn’t last long,’ Leland said. ‘Double M is already putting a trail herd together. Most of the big ranches will be doing the same thing. You’d probably get paid off at the end of the drive, and that would be that.’

  ‘At least I’d eat a while longer,’ Sparky answered. ‘If you’ve a better idea, I’ll listen.’

  ‘That’s the thing – I don’t.’ It was Toby Leland’s first time away from home; and he had no experience with ‘dragging the line’ – looking for work or handouts until the next opportunity for employment presented itself. Leland had tried to make a life for himself, a man among men, and now figured that he had failed in that endeavor.

  ‘What are you thinking, Professor?’ Sparky asked Dane Hollister. For a moment the big man’s eyes darkened despite the glow of the fire.

  ‘I told you never to call me that,’ Dane replied, speaking softly. There was obvious menace in his voice. Sparky rapidly apologized. There was a reason for Hollister hating that nickname, but whatever it was, he kept it private. Dane shook off his irritation and answered the question:

  ‘It’s obvious to me that Baker was looking for a pretext to fire us. His reason for discharging me was absurd, as he could have discovered if he had bothered to ask Roberta Madison. The reasons for firing Leland and Sparky are equally flimsy. Even if both criticisms were true, a man would usually be let off with a warning, not fired out of hand.

  ‘As for Tango here … I think that what Gomez told him is the absolute truth – Tango might prove to be a dangerous man to have around.’

  Tango started to argue, saw Hollister’s point and shut his mouth. ‘So you think Baker is up to something? I do too, Dane.’

  ‘What?’ Sparky asked. ‘Taking the cattle, stealing the land?’

  ‘Those aren’t unknown occurrences,’ Hollister said. ‘I don’t know for sure, but he’s up to something.’

  With the old man, Kent Madison, laid up in bed and McGraw now dead, Roberta virtually held title to the Double M Ranch. And Roberta, unfortunately, had not been raised to manage such a responsibility. Her father had wished her to have an easy life, a happy childhood. While a son might have been urged to learn the cattle business, the art of ranch management, Roberta had been encouraged to buy new dresses down in Dos Picas, to ride her horse early in the mornings, to cultivate the arts, to be a hostess and a future wife. That was the way things were then, certainly the way Kent Madison wished them to be.

  ‘What are you thinking … Dane?’ Sparky asked, stumbling over his tongue at the last word. He had almost said ‘professor’ again.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Dane Hollister said, eyeing the other experienced man, Tango, ‘that we ought to try to find out why we were really fired. Why the four of us. Not Gomez, Allison, Kramer or Sully.’

  ‘So far as we know,’ Tango said.

  ‘So far as we know, but Roberta Madison would have certainly noticed if her entire crew had been dismissed, and demanded to know the reason why. She might trust Baker to run the ranch as her fa
ther did, but firing everyone would have been a little much, even with new men coming in. I think Tango is correct on that point. I have to believe that Baker had already hired men to replace us. And they will be tough men, wouldn’t you think, Tango?’

  ‘You’d have to believe so.’

  ‘Then,’ Sparky said, ‘they just got us out of the way to bring in some men that Baker wanted working there.’

  ‘Maybe. But it must go deeper than that.’ Dane Hollister encouraged them: ‘Think, boys! What makes us different? Is it something we’ve seen, something that’s a threat to Baker? There must be something behind all of this.’

  ‘Meantime, we don’t eat,’ Leland complained.

  ‘Oh, we’ll eat,’ Dane promised. ‘Maybe not what you’re used to or what you like, but a man with a rifle will only go hungry if he’s an idiot.’ Dane lowered his voice. The young man was still obviously frightened by his prospects. ‘Leland, if you don’t want to stick with us, we understand. Same goes for you, Sparky – if you want to try to hook up with one of those big Tucson ranches, that’s your decision.’

  ‘What is it you are planning?’ Sparky wanted to know, The fire was burning low now. His face was shadowed, deeply concerned. Dane Hollister answered him:

  ‘I’m going to find out what’s wrong on the Double M. Kent Madison took me on when I had no place else to go, He was kind and generous to me. When I had … when I had nothing, he trusted me. He’s old and sick now. I won’t abandon him.’ Hollister was silent for long minutes. No one else spoke up. At last, staring across the low glow of the dying campfire, Dane Hollister asked:

  ‘What do you think, Tango? Will you ride with me?’

  Tango stretched his arms lazily and reached for his blanket. ‘I’ve nothing else to do,’ Tango said, then he rolled up in his blanket to fall off to sleep. There were only embers in the fire pit now, low and golden. Above, the silver stars shone across a blue-velvet sky.

  ‘I’ll stick,’ Toby Leland said from out of the darkness. ‘I’m like Tango – I’ve got no place else to go, nothing else important to do.’

  Sparky had his blanket over his face, but his muffled voice reached them. ‘If everyone else is willing to gamble, I’m staying too.’

  The four men slept long if not well, and when the glare of the white sun found the depths of the canyon it was well into mid-morning. Tango was the first awake and up. He considered starting a fire, but the cold he was feeling was in his bones from the chill of the desert night, not from the dry air in the canyon. Leaving the others he walked to the head of the gorge where the artesian spring bubbled up out of black basalt stone and bathed as well as he could.

  On returning to camp he found the other three awake, if sleepy-eyed. ‘What do you figure we need to do first?’ Tango asked Dane Hollister. Leland spoke up in a somewhat childish voice.

  ‘We need to eat first.’

  Sparky and Tango both smiled. As they knew, Leland had not yet suffered a man’s deprivations. Life in the wilds, on the desert, could lead to days of going without food. Although Leland did not know it, he was a pup among wolves. He considered himself a tough customer now, after having worked on the range for almost four months. Still, he had hardly ever been deprived. The Double M set a good table for its ranch hands.

  ‘I’ve got some salt biscuits I snatched from Cooky,’ Sparky volunteered. ‘And, if I’m not mistaken, half a ham somehow found its way into my poke as well.’

  ‘Set it out,’ Dane Hollister said encouragingly. ‘We’ll eat first, then we’d better make sure all of our canteens are full.’

  ‘And then?’ Tango asked, crouching down beside the cold fire pit.

  ‘We need to think things through first, Tango. As I asked last night, why were we four the only ones run off the ranch?’

  ‘We already discussed that,’ Toby Leland said, accepting two biscuits from Sparky who was slicing the ham he had laid out on a square of oilskin.

  ‘Discussed it and come to the conclusion that all of the reasons given us were sham ones,’ Dane said. He nodded his thanks as Sparky served him two salt biscuits and a wedge of ham. The sun was bright in Dane’s eyes as it peered over the upper reaches of the canyon. He shielded his vision with one hand as he fed himself with the other. ‘Where’s my hat?’ he demanded after some moments. Sparky sailed it to him. Dane tugged the brim low and continued:

  ‘Where have we been, what might we have seen – together?’ Dane asked.

  ‘You still think that Baker’s up to something crooked?’ Sparky asked.

  ‘I think that Frank Baker has been up to something since he shed his swaddling clothes,’ Dane replied sourly. He drank from his canteen to wash down the dry biscuit and ham.

  ‘There was one time.…’ Sparky began, but then he shook his head, declining to continue.

  ‘Come on, Sparky. If you’ve got any kind of notion, spit it out,’ Dane encouraged the redhead.

  Sparky stood there, chewing on his own roughly made sandwich; the persistent probing of Dane Hollister’s eyes prompted him to continue.

  ‘Do you all recall,’ Sparky asked, ‘the day that the summer storm with all the close thunder and lightning scattered the beeves up along the north pasture and they took to the forest up along Mammoth Point before they tired themselves out running and lost themselves among the pines?’

  ‘I remember,’ Toby Leland said. ‘Do you have another slice of ham to spare?’

  ‘I recall it, too,’ Tango said. ‘There was just the four of us up there to circle around through the woods and drive the steers back on to their graze.’

  ‘That was the day …’ Dane Hollister now looked as thoughtful as any professor, ‘the day we came upon Baker and those two citified gents talking along the ridge. Remember, Tango, two town men riding in a buggy?’

  ‘I recall. Baker asked what we were doing out that far and we told him. But he didn’t say a word about what he was doing up along the Mammoth with those two strangers.’

  ‘No, and he didn’t look all that happy about seeing us there,’ Sparky remembered. ‘He tried to smile, but it was like a buffalo trying to smile. He was angry inside.’

  ‘He was seething,’ Dane agreed. ‘But why? What could he have been up to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tango said, ‘but it’s too strong a coincidence for me, seeing that we were the four hands cut loose. And it’s about the only time I can ever remember us riding together.’

  ‘That was only because of the stampede,’ Dane remembered. ‘We were the only hands available around the bunkhouse that day. As a rule, none of us partnered up. Certainly not the four of us.’

  Dane Hollister fell into a studied gloom as the others finished their scant meal. Tango rose and saddled his lean sorrel pony. The animal was not a cutting horse, although it performed well enough. The long-legged, gleaming animal with the white blaze on its nose was a running horse, the sort that only rich men and outlaws could afford. Rich men for their pride, outlaws as a matter of necessity when outrunning the men with the badges. Tango took pride in his pony: but men were reluctant to ask how he had come by such a horse.

  After tightening the double cinches on his Texas-rigged saddle, Tango returned to stand near Dane Hollister who was still deep in thought. Tango stood with one leg slightly hooked, his well-worn holster with its blue Colt .44 riding low on his hip. Sparky watched the secretive man with a sort of admiration, Toby Leland with something approaching envy. Wherever Tango went, men would know that he was a force to be reckoned with. Never loud, never the sort to strut, a man knew with just a casual glance that no good could come of having Tango for an enemy.

  ‘What do you say, then, Dane?’ Tango asked.

  The serious-minded Hollister lifted his eyes. ‘I believe that there are at least three things we have to do. First, we have to find a way to talk to Kent Madison.’

  ‘The man is dying, they say. No one’s going to let us go up to see him.’

  ‘Dying or not – and we don’t know if he is – the Double M is Kent Madison’s ranch. He should be the one making decisions, Perhaps he doesn’t even know that Baker has fired us all.’

  ‘I don’t see how we can get in to see him. Even one of us,’ Leland said.

  ‘Through Roberta,’ Sparky said with a grin that offended Hollister. It seemed to imply that Dane’s only interest was with Roberta Madison.