Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0) Read Free

across from the livery stable. Beyond the stable was the blacksmith shop, facing a general store across the street. There was a scattering of other buildings and behind them, rows of residences, some of the yards fenced, most of them bare and untended.
    Blaine stabled his horse and came to the door of the building to smoke. Two men sat on a bench at the door of the stable facing the water trough. They were talking idly and neither glanced his way although he knew they were conscious of his presence.
    “…be fighting for months,” one of them was saying, “an’ we all know it. Nobody around here could buck Lud Fuller, an’ I don’t reckon anybody will try.”
    “I ain’t so sure about that,” the other man objected. “The 46 Connected is the best range around here. Better than the B-Bar or any of them. I wouldn’t mind gettin’ a chunk of it myself.”
    Utah Blaine stood there in the doorway, a tall, broad-in-the-shoulder man with narrow hips and a dark face, strong but brooding. He wore a black flat-brimmed flat-crowned hat and a gray wool shirt under a black coat. His only gun was shoved into his waistband.
    He stepped to the door and glanced briefly at the men. “If you hear talk about the 46 bein’ open range,” he said briefly, “don’t put any faith in it. Joe Neal isn’t goin’ to drop an acre of it.”
    Without waiting to see the effect of his remarks he started diagonally across the street toward the bank. Even the dust under his feet was hot. Up the street a hen cackled and a buckboard rounded a building and came down the street at a spanking trot. A girl was driving and she handled the horses beautifully.
    Blaine threw his cigarette into the dust. Stepping into the coolness of the bank building, he walked across toward a stocky built man with sandy hair who sat behind a fence at one side of the room. On the desk there was a small sign that read: Ben Otten.
    “Mr. Otten? I’m Blaine, manager of the 46 Connected. Here’s my papers.”
    Otten jerked as if slapped. “You’re what?”
    His voice was so sharp that it turned the head of the teller and the two customers.
    Blaine placed the packet of papers before Otten. “Those will tell you. Mr. Neal is taking a vacation. I’m taking over the ranch.”
    Ben Otten stared up into the cool green eyes. He was knocked completely off balance. For days now little had been talked about other than the strange disappearance of Joe Neal and its probable effect on Red Creek. There wasn’t a man around who didn’t look at the rich miles of range with acquisitive eyes. Ben Otten was not the least of these. Neal, it had been decided, was dead.
    No body had been found, but somehow word had gotten around that the vigilantes had accounted for him as they had for Gid Blake. Not that it was discussed in public, for nobody knew who the vigilantes were and it was not considered healthy to make comments of any kind about their activities.
    At first, two gamblers had been taken out and lynched. Others had been invited to leave town. That, it was generally agreed, had been a good thing—a move needed for a long time. However, the attempted lynching and eventual killing of Gid Blake had created a shock that shook the ranching community to its very roots. Still, Blake
might
have been involved in the rustling. Then Joe Neal vanished, and the one man who had questioned the right of his disappearance had been mysteriously shot.
    Another man, a loyal Neal cowhand, had likewise been killed. Nobody mentioned the reasons for these later killings but the idea got around. It was not a wise thing to talk in adverse terms of the vigilantes.
    Despite this, Ben Otten had been giving a lot of thought to the vast 46 range and the thirty thousand head of cattle it carried. After all, somebody was going to get it.
    Otten was aware that Lud Fuller imagined himself to be first in line, and Nevers, while saying little, was squaring around for trouble. Information had come to Otten that