Plimpton sat stolidly in the chair, face unchanging. His big hands, held across his lap, knitted fingers carefully together.
«That’s too bad,» said Plimpton. «Hits me mighty hard. Had some trouble with McCord, off and on, but we were neighbors just the same. Anything that I can do for them?»
Carter shook his head. «There’s nothing anyone can do for them now. Except, perhaps, to leave them alone.»
«I might ride up,» said Plimpton.
«I wouldn’t if I were you,» said Carter.
Plimpton’s eyes narrowed just a fraction. «Why not?»
«Because they figure it was your riders that shot him,» Carter said.
Plimpton’s hands unfolded, moved to the chair arms, gripped them.
«You came to tell me that?» There was threat in the booming voice.
«I came to tell you,» said Carter, «that I’m getting sick and tired of so many gunshot cases. Scarcely a week goes by that I’m not called out on one.»
Plimpton did not speak, but he gripped the chair arms so hard that Carter was surprised the wood stood up to the pressure.
«You see,» said Carter, speaking slowly so he would pick the right words, «it’s a doctor’s business to eliminate the cause of sickness. First to find it, determine what it is, and then get rid of it. These shootings around here, Plimpton, are assuming the nature of a disease. Almost an epidemic, one might say.»
«You figure,» inquired the rancher, quietly, all too quietly, «there are too many of them.»
Carter nodded. «Far too many. A dozen a year … well, maybe that would be about right. Normal probably for this country. But there are more than that. A lot more than that.»
«And you’re blaming me,» snapped Plimpton. «You’re blaming my outfit.»
«No, I’m not blaming you,» said Carter. «Just telling you. Wondering maybe if there isn’t something you might do to bring down the incidence. Something you could do or say that would fix it so there wouldn’t be quite so many of them. A little bloodshed now and then, Plimpton, is all right. I suppose it’s just one of those things we have to expect when a country’s new and wild, not quite settled yet. It’s something we have to get along with. But the bloodshed should be slacking off a bit by now. But it isn’t. In the last two years or so it’s been getting worse than ever.»
Plimpton leaned forward and tapped Carter on the knee. «Let me tell you a story, doc. A story that maybe you never heard. About how someone staked him out a ranch and had some tough sledding to get started, what with bad snows that sometime wiped out half the herd and Indians popping up every so often to run off whatever they would find. But finally, after long years he got on his feet and was just settling down to take it easy—»
«I’ve heard the story before,» Carter interrupted him. «And just about then the nesters began showing up. They settled on land he felt belonged to him. They took up the spring holes and threw fences around them and they plowed up ground that was never meant for anything but grass and when they wanted meat they just went out and knocked over the first cow they happened to run up against. The usual story.»
«Only,» said Plimpton, «they aren’t satisfied with just knocking over a beef now and then. Not any more, they aren’t. I’ve lost more than a thousand cattle in the last year.»
«You have something on your side, of course,» agreed Carter, «but you can’t settle it with guns.»
«I’m still gunning any rustler I catch out in the open,» snarled Plimpton.
«Jake didn’t rustle any of your cattle,» said Carter.
«And there ain’t anybody saying, leastwise out loud, that I gunned Jake,» warned Plimpton.
Carter disregarded the challenge. «You’ve got to realize,» he told the rancher, «that things have changed. The old days of free range are over. It’s too bad, perhaps, from your point of view, but it’s the truth, and something you must face. Go out and kill all the nesters that are bothering you and there’ll be more six months from now. Wagon wheels are rumbling all through the west and they’re something men like you can’t stop.»
«At least,» said Plimpton, and there was a deadly tone in his voice, «I can stop rustling of my own herd and I don’t have to listen to any mealy-mouthed tenderfoot who doesn’t like the way I run things.»
Carter rose slowly from his chair. «I hoped you’d take this differently,» he said.
«Get out,» snarled Plimpton.
«And the killings keep on?» asked Carter.
«I said get out!»
«Because,» said Carter, «you want to remember what I told you, about how a doctor’s job is to find the root of trouble—»
With a roar, Plimpton heaved from the chair. Carter saw his fist coming, a bone-crushing blow that started from the knee and whistled toward his head.
Carter took one quick step backward, tilted his head, felt the blow go past with killing power.
Another step backward and another and there was Plimpton in front of him, caught off balance by the violence of the punch that missed. The man’s head was twisted at an angle and his body was leaning forward, following through the blow that never landed.
If he had stopped to think, Carter might not have done what he did. In a sober moment, he knew later that he never would. But there was no time to think … and there was that outthrust chin, the turned head.
Carter pivoted on his right toe to bring his whole body into play and his fist smacked with brutal precision on the jaw just back on the chin. A scientific blow, placed with what amounted to detached interest rather than anger.
For a single second dull wonder shone in Plimpton’s eyes, even as his huge body was crashing backward … backward to catch the chair and carry it with him into the corner.
The chair splintered under the weight of the falling man and Plimpton came to rest against its wreckage, half propped against the wall, sprawled like a dirty rag someone had thrown away.
Carter rubbed the knuckles of his right hand, wondering at the smart that was in them.
He stared at Plimpton and was surprised that he felt no regret.
The man stirred and moaned, tried to sit up, groaned and fell back again.
From where he stood, Carter made swift diagnosis. Not badly hurt.
Knocked out. He’d have a sore jaw for a day or two.
Deliberately he turned, strode across the living room to the front door, let himself out. In the rear of the house he heard scurrying feet and someone calling.
The fat dog, tail still waving happily, escorted him sedately to the gate and stood watching as he rode away.
CHAPTER THREE: «LAND AIN’T WORTH DYIN’ FOR!»
By the time he reached Basin City, Carter’s right hand was noticeably swollen and he knew he’d have to do something about it. Ice pack to reduce the swelling, he told himself, and then remembered there was no place one could get ice in all of Basin City.
He was hungry and worn out, tired from the night long vigil, a bit shaken by his experience with Plimpton. He needed a shave and a change of clothes and he decided that would come before breakfast.
He rode past the town’s lone restaurant, hailed the Chinese who professed to run it.
«Plate of ham and eggs in about half an hour, Charlie,» he said.
The Chinese ducked his head in a quick bow that denoted he understood, smiled broadly. «Can do,» he decided.
Carter left the horse at the livery barn, walked through the almost deserted street to his combined office-living quarters above the bank.
In the four years that he had been there, he decided, Basin City had changed but little. Clearly he remembered that day four years ago when he had ridden in with Chet Saunders, the stage driver and livery man, from Antelope Springs, the nearest rail town, forty miles to the south.