Showdown at Yellow Butte (1983) Read Free Page B

hip he packed a gun. In his hand he held a narrow-brimmed hard hat.
    Kedrick leaped to his feet. 'Dail" The name was an explosion of sound. "Dal Reid! What are you doing in this country?"
    "Ah? So it's that you ask, is it? Well, it's trouble there is, much of trouble! An' you that's by way of bringin' it!"
    "Me?" Kedrick waved to a chair. "Tell me what you mean."
    The Welshman searched his face, then seated himself, his huge palms resting on his knees. His legs were thick muscled and bowed. "It's the man Bur-wick you're with? An' you've the job taken to run us off the land? There is changed you are, Tom, an' for the worse!"
    "You're one of them? You're on the land Burwick, Keith and Guiter claim?"
    "I am that. And a sight of work I've done on it, too. An' now the rascals would be put-tin' me off. Well, they'll have a fight to move me an' you, too, Tom Kedrick, if you're to stay one of them."
    Kedrick studied the Welshman thoughtfully. All his doubts had come to a head now . . . for this man, he knew. His own father had been Welsh, his mother Irish, and Dai Reid had been friend to them both. Dai had come from the old country with his father, had worked beside him when he courted his mother, and although much younger than Gwilym Kedrick, he had come West with him, too.
    "Dai," he said slowly, "I'll admit that today I've been having doubts of all this. You see, I knew John Gunter after the war, and I took a herd of cattle over the trail for a friend of his. There was trouble that year, the Indians holding up every herd and demanding large numbers of cattle for themselves, the rustlers trying to steal whole herds, and others demanding money for passage across land they claimed. I took my herd through without paying anything but a few fat beefs for the Indians, who richly deserved them. But not what they demanded they got what I wanted to give.
    "Gunter remembered me from that, and knew something of my war record, so when he approached me in New Orleans, his proposition sounded good. And this is what he told me.
    "His firm, Burwick, Keith and Gunter, had filed application for the survey and purchase of all or parts of nearly three hundred sections of land. They made oath that this land was swampland, or overflowed and came under the General Land Office ruling that it was 'land too wet for irrigation at seeding time, though later requiring irrigation, and therefore subject to sale as swamp.'
    "He went on to say that they had arranged to buy the land, but that a bunch of squatters were on it who refused to leave. He wanted to hire me to lead a force to see the land was cleared, and he said that most of them were rustlers, outlaws or renegades of one sort or another. There would be fighting and force would be necessary."
    Dai nodded. "Right he was as to the fighting, but renegades, no. Well," he smiled grimly past his pipe. "I'd not be saying that now, but there's mighty few. There are bad apples in all barrels, one or two," he said. "But most of us be good people, with homes built and crops in.
    "An' did he tell you that their oath was given that the land was unoccupied? Well, it was! An d let me tell you. Ninety-four sections have homes on them, some mighty poor, but homes.
    'Shrewd they were with the planning. Six months the notices must be posted, but they posted them in fine print and where few men would read, and three months are by before anything is noticed, and by accident only. So now they come to force us off, to be sure the land is unoccupied and ready. As for swamp, desert now, and always desert. Crops can only be grown where the water is, an' little enough of tha t Dai shook his head and knocked out his short-stemmed pipe. 'Money we've none to fight them, no lawyers among us, although one who's as likely to help, a newspaper man, he is. But what good without money to send him to Washington?"
    The Welshman's face was gloomy. 'They'll beat us, that we know. They've money to fight us with, and tough men. But some of them