Fight for Powder Valley! Read Free

Creek.
    Powder Valley had not always been a scene of serenity and peace, nor had Pat Stevens always been a respectable and settled land-owner. Both had a turbulent history of bloodshed and violence; both had, in a sense, attained respectability together.
    It had been more than ten years, now, since Pat Stevens had ridden into the valley with his two gun-fighting partners, Sam Sloan and One-Eyed Ezra, to do battle with the West’s most vicious gang of outlaws; a fight to the death that ended by overthrowing the reign of terror that had held the valley in thralldom and making it a place where honest men could once more ride abroad in safety and in peace.
    It had ended, too, the wild free life that Pat Stevens had known before. Sally Stevens had seen to that. Marriage to Sally had been good for Pat. She had given him a son and a sense of responsibility.
    Now it was a mellowed and a mature Pat Stevens who rode away from the Lazy Mare toward the little town of Dutch Springs one afternoon in late spring. Slightly heavier, though still retaining the trim lines given him by a vigorous youth spent in the saddle, with a tinge of premature gray, now, along the edges of his hair; his gray eyes were clear and bright, without that steely hardness that had been characteristic of them when he had worn two guns in open holsters and his gaze had challenged any man to draw against him.
    Always, when Pat rode down into the valley nowadays, he drank in the clear cool air of the high mountain valley and let his gaze roam over the peaceful scene with a queer uneasy sense of foreboding within him. It was crazy, of course. There was no reason for it. Except—well, sometimes he thought it was just too damn’ good to be true. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was standing off by the side and critically surveying himself as he rode. Not a worry in the world. Yet, long ago, he had learned that life has a way of providing irritations just when things are going along the smoothest.
    Somehow, it just didn’t seem as if the Lord intended men to have things too easy. And maybe that was for the best, he ruminated. A man had a way of getting soft inside when things went along too smooth. As he rounded a turn that opened out the long vista of the valley to his gaze, he noted some small objects moving down in the bottoms against the background of green willows that lined the creek banks.
    He pulled up his horse and frowned at the sight, wondering which of his neighboring ranchers was disregarding tradition by grazing the rich feed that was always left for winter forage.
    His frown deepened when he realized the small objects were not grazing cattle or horses, but were human beings. Men on foot. This was a sight so alien to the cattle country that Pat Stevens couldn’t believe his eyes at first.
    But that’s what they were all right. Three or four of them in a group, and another one by himself standing back a few hundred yards from the others.
    From the road, Pat couldn’t be sure whether they were on Lazy Mare property or across the line on John Boyd’s Bar X spread which joined his ranch on the south.
    He sat easily in the saddle with his Stetson tipped back on his head, a speculative light in his eyes. It couldn’t be boys hunting jack rabbits—and it wasn’t a fencing crew.
    He jiggled the reins and turned his horse off the road to ride down that way and satisfy his curiosity.
    As he rode nearer he saw that the unmounted men were on Bar X property, about a mile back from the creek. He still couldn’t figure out what they were doing there. He now saw there were four of them altogether. One seemed to be going quite a distance ahead, while two others followed him, remaining a certain distance apart and stopping briefly to stoop down at stated intervals. Funniest darned way of acting he ever had seen. And they were grown men, too.
    When he got close enough to see that the man who remained alone in the rear was