«You’re sure, Mary, that it was the Plimptons?»
«Who else would it be?» she asked him. «They came in the dark, when Dad was coming in from the barn. They shot him and when Clyde ran at their horses one of them hit him with a whip.»
Carter strode across the room to a small bed standing in the corner, looked down at the boy who lay there. His head and face were swathed in bandages, but he was asleep. Carter, looking at him, felt dull anger stir within him as he remembered the savage cuts that criss-crossed the face of Clyde McCord. A loaded whip could have been the only thing that could have inflicted punishment like that. A loaded whip and a brutal, pitiless arm.
His eyes traced the pitifully small outline of the body that lay huddled beneath the quilt. A tiny fellow. Small even for his age. Ten, perhaps.
Maybe a bit more. Not more than twelve, at most.
He had not told the family, but he knew that Clyde McCord would bear facial scars for life, the savage mark of something that had happened short hours ago. A drum of hoofs across the barnyard, the snarling crash of a six-gun, the whistle of a striking whip.
He turned from the bed and walked back to the stove. Mary still stood there, head still up, as if she were gazing at the growing light that came from the window.
«I’m leaving salve for Clyde,» he said. «Keep plenty of it on and keep the wounds clean. Change the bandages before they start to get dirty. I’ll be around to see him again as soon as I can get away. Tonight, perhaps.»
«We won’t leave,» said Mary. «They can’t drive us out. Dad said, when we settled here, that we’d been driven far enough. Here we stay, he said, and there ain’t guns enough in all the west to make us pull up stakes.»
Walker McCord came into the kitchen.
«I left Ma in there with him,» he said. «She said she just wanted to sit there alone for a little while.»
The lad’s face was haggard, and there were tear marks down his cheeks and his voice was a little shaky.
«See that she gets some sleep before the day is over,» Carter told him.
Walker nodded. «Want me to get your horse?»
«Don’t bother,» Carter declared. «I’ll get him myself. You put him in the barn?»
«Fed him, too,» said Walker.
«You go and get him, Walker,» said the girl. «I’ll pour the doctor a cup of coffee and cook him up some eggs. Our hens are laying now.»
«Just some coffee,» said Carter. «If you have it ready.»
He wanted to get away, but he could not seem to rush away. There were so many hard moments at a time like this. Like walking away and leaving a place. A place where one had failed and through one’s failure left sorrow.
Already the cabin held a sense of desolation, the queer and empty feeling that always comes on the heels of death.
«I don’t know how we’ll ever pay you,» Mary said.
«Don’t think about that now,» Carter told her. «Don’t think about it ever unless you feel that you’re more than able to.»
He drank the coffee standing and then Walker was at the door to say the horse was ready.
Outside he stood for a moment with the youth before getting into the saddle.
«Perhaps you’ll want me to do something in town for you,» he suggested.
Walker gulped. «Sure, doctor, if you will. You might tell Preacher Slocum to come up.»
Carter nodded. «I’ll see the sheriff, too.»
«There ain’t no need of that,» said Walker. «No need at all. There ain’t a blessed thing that can be done, lawful-like. I can’t nohow prove who done it, but I know. And I sure aim to go on the warpath as soon as the funeral’s over.»
Carter gripped the boy’s shoulder. «Don’t do anything foolish, Walker. You can’t match guns with Plimpton’s riders. You’ll only go out and get yourself killed, too. Just when your mother needs you most. You’re the head man now, Walker, and you can’t go off getting yourself killed.»
The doctor swung into the saddle.
«They burned our hay,» said Walker, fiercely. «And they shot our dog and run off our cattle. We stood it all. We didn’t even try to fight back. But now they killed my Dad and they’re going to pay for that. They’re going to pay for everything they done.»
«Wait for just a while,» the doctor counseled. «Something’s bound to happen. Things like this have got to stop somewhere. They can’t go on forever. After all, there’s such a thing as law and order and someday soon this country is going to get a taste of it.»
He wheeled his horse and headed down the trail.
The sun was not up yet, although the east was swiftly brightening with its coming. Before him, as he rode, the valley land of the Tumbling K spread like a great green carpet, cupped between the mountain spurs that ran out like spreading fingers.
The air was sharp with the lingering chill of night and heavy with the smell of pine. Birds whistled from the grass that grew beside the trail and others sang from the thickets and patches of forest that clung to the rolling hills.
The brown blotch at the far end of the green valley marked the ranch buildings of Bob Plimpton’s Tumbling K and as Carter watched them he saw the pale plumes of smoke that rose from the distant chimneys.
«It’s about time,» he told himself, «that I dropped in on Plimpton.»
CHAPTER TWO: MEALY-MOUTHED TENDERFOOT
The Tumbling K had a look of sleek prosperity about it. The buildings were in good repair and the ranch house, unlike most others, was surrounded by a fenced yard that enclosed a lawn and a few beds of flowers which later in the year would bloom in colorful profusion.
Riding up to the hitching post before the yard gate, Carter took note of this, saw the corral with its shining horses, the neat stacks of hay that stood between two stables, heard the laughter that came from the cookhouse and the screech that the windmill made in the rising wind.
A fat dog came out leisurely to greet him, tail wagging, as he opened the gate and went up the steps of the wide front porch.
The door opened before he reached it and Bob Plimpton stood there, hand outstretched.
«Just in time for breakfast, doc,» said Plimpton. «We’ve eaten, but there’s plenty left. I’ll have the cook—»
Carter shook his head. «Have to hurry back to town. Just stopped in for a word or two.»
«Somebody sick out this way?» asked Plimpton, holding open the door so that Carter could step in.
Carter nodded. «Been up to the McCords.»
«You’re sure about that breakfast?» asked Plimpton. «No trouble at all to hustle you a bite.»
«Yes, I’m sure. Just wanted to tell you something.»
Plimpton led the way to the cubby off the living room that he used for an office, shoved out a chair for his visitor and sat down in the battered armed affair that stood before a littered rolltop desk.
The rancher stroked his drooping mustaches and looked hard at Carter.
«Got something on your mind, doc?»
Plimpton, Carter reflected, was a man that you could like. A man one couldn’t very well help liking. He was just beginning to grizzle at the temples, but his face still held the hint of youth. A broad shouldered man, he sat foursquare in the chair, filling it with his massiveness.
«Jake McCord died this morning,» Carter told him flatly.
Plimpton’s face twisted a little. «I’m sorry to hear that, doc. Jake was a right good neighbor.»
«Someone shot him,» Carter said. «Jake was coming in from the barn where he’d been doing chores. The little fellow was with him. Clyde, his name is. Two men rode up to them and without saying a word one of them shot Jake. Then, when Clyde ran at them, yelling, the other one cut him across the face with his whip.»