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  LYING IN WAIT

  The gun of Tankerton was poised as he entered—he needed only to let the muzzle drop down upon the mark, and into the breast of the other he sent a .45-caliber bullet. It was as though an invisible finger pushed through the shirt of the other from left to right, but he did not fall. And then the wink of steel that had appeared in the hand of Dunmore—plucked out of the air, as it were—exploded. A stifling breath struck the face of Tankerton, like the breath of a great beast of prey, with hot prickles of fire stinging his eyes blind.

  Into the red-speckled darkness he fired blindly. The gun was wrenched from his hand and he himself embraced with such a might as he never had dreamed of. He reached for his second gun—it already was gone—and a cold muzzle was clapped under his chin.

  At the same time the voice of Dunmore said loudly: “Well, Tankerton, it’s a draw. Are we going to murder each other, or do we stop here?”

  Other Leisure books by Max Brand®:

  JOKERS EXTRA WILD

  CRUSADER

  SMOKING GUNS

  THE LONE RIDER

  THE UNTAMED WEST (Anthology)

  THE TYRANT

  THE WELDING QUIRT

  THE BRIGHT FACE OF DANGER

  DON DIABLO

  THE OUTLAW REDEEMER

  THE GOLD TRAIL

  THE PERIL TREK

  THE MASTERMAN

  TIMBER LINE

  THE OVERLAND KID

  THE HOUSE OF GOLD

  THE GERALDI TRAIL

  GUNMAN’S GOAL

  CHINOOK

  IN THE HILLS OF MONTEREY

  THE LOST VALLEY

  THE FUGITIVE’S MISSION

  THE SURVIVAL OF JUAN ORO

  THE GAUNTLET

  STOLEN GOLD

  THE WOLF STRAIN

  MEN BEYOND THE LAW

  BEYOND THE OUTPOSTS

  THE STONE THAT SHINES

  THE OATH OF OFFICE

  DUST ACROSS THE RANGE/THE CROSS BRAND

  THE ROCK OF KIEVER

  SOFT METAL

  THUNDER MOON AND THE SKY PEOPLE

  RED WIND AND THUNDER MOON

  THE LEGEND OF THUNDER MOON

  THE QUEST OF LEE GARRISON

  SAFETY McTEE

  TWO SIXES

  SIXTEEN IN NOME

  MAX

  BRAND®

  BLUE KINGDOM

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by special arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency.

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2003 by Jane Faust Easton and Adriana Faust Bianchi

  “Strength of the Hills” first appeared as a six-part serial under the George Owen Baxter byline in Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine (5/25/29-6/29/29). Copyright © 1929 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1957 by Dorothy Faust. Copyright © 2003 by Jane Faust Easton and Adriana Faust Bianchi for restored material. Acknowledgment is made to Condé Nast Publications, Inc., for their cooperation.

  The name Max Brand ® is a registered trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and cannot be used for any purpose without express written permission.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1818-6

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-1819-3

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: September 2005

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  Contents

  LYING IN WAIT

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BLUE KINGDOM

  ONE

  Undoubtedly Colonel Clisson was angry. All through the first day of the rodeo his anger grew, and on the second day it waxed mightily. He represented the whole of Texas and all of Texas ways, and it cut him to the very heart when he saw dally men from California and Nevada come into his territory and at his own pet rodeo, where he himself offered most of the prizes, carry away the glory and the hard cash.

  The invaders had won at the shooting contest on the morning of the first day, distinguishing themselves with both rifle and revolver; on foot, kneeling, prone, or in the saddle on a moving horse, they had excelled the tie men in every respect.

  Some said that this half dozen of center-fire riders were professionals, and not real cowpunchers at all. That is to say, they were a group who went from rodeo to rodeo throughout the country, splitting between them the prizes that they won. Such men, with none of the full and aimless hours on the range to burden them, were able to devote all their attention to the points that were most likely to count in a contest. They could bulldog, for instance, for a month at a time, and work up their skill close to perfection. Some of these men went into circuses, in the end, and traveled East and amazed the thousands.

  But, professionals or not, Colonel Clisson was enraged by the successes of the invaders. After their victory in the shooting, they had been victorious in bulldogging, in riding wild steers, in roping, fancy and for time, in all the contests, and, when it came to the riding of the horses, which was the concluding portion of the entertainment, they stood well together at the top.

  “They are professionals,” said the colonel’s foreman. “In that there grama country, they don’t learn to scratch their hosses none when they’re pitchin’ around. But look at that buckaroo now . . . look how tight he’s settin’ and swingin’ his spurs mighty fine. I wouldn’t hate to lay my bet that he ain’t drawed a paycheck off a ranch inside of five year. Look at the color of him. He’s as pale as a dude gambler.”

  The colonel snorted. “There was a time,” he said, “when this country of mine was filled with ’punchers who would climb up the side of anything that called itself a hoss. But that time is gone, and I’m glad, sir, yes, I’m glad to see strangers come in and put our people in their place. Not one man
, Pete, has dared to so much as ask to have a look at my mare, here.”

  Pete Logan, the foreman, felt that there was a cut intended in this speech, and he scratched his chin for an instant and with thoughtful eyes watched the contest progressing between the center-fire buckaroo and the wrong-headed roan. It was a prize bucking horse, that roan. It fought like a pair of wildcats thrown over the shoulder of Old Nick. But, nevertheless, the stranger was flapping his hat and working his cruel, scraping spurs and taking the heart out of the roan rapidly and surely.

  Pete turned his head and looked at the mare in the pen. The walls of that pen were nine feet high, because it was said that over a smaller barrier she would either leap or scramble, and up and down behind the bars she swung back and forth, like a panther walking at its cage screen. She was a fury, a thorough and educated bad one. When she felt the eye of the foreman resting upon her, she paused in her pacing to and fro and looked back at him, flattening her ears.

  Pete Logan was upset and turned his head hastily away from her. He knew horses from beginning to end, but this was a very different matter. To enter a contest with her would be like entering the cage of a tiger. Even her beauty made her more terrible. For she was clad in chestnut silk, dappled over with leopard-like markings of shadow, and the gloss of her flank was as bright as burnished metal. She had had five years of glorious freedom on the range. Three times she had been stolen by roving horse thieves whose eyes were taken by her glory.

  The first one had left a small scar on her back and a confirmed hatred of the human race in Excuse Me’s proud heart. The second had been pitched into a dreadful nest of Spanish bayonet, where even Excuse Me would not follow, and where he would have died like a tortured wildcat, with the mare prowling on guard about him, had not a range rider found him the next day and cut him free, and carried him off to the ranch house to wait for a doctor, and jail. The third would-be horse thief must have been a magnificent rider, for he had stuck to Excuse Me until his spurs had deeply scored her sides. But his fate had been the worst of all, for they had found him where he fell and where the demoniac mare had pounced on him. He was battered to a rag, literally beyond recognition.

  When the colonel heard of that, he went out with a rifle to shoot her. But when he looked down the sights, and the round of them held the perfect beauty of her head, he relented. Instead, he ordered her to be caught up and gentled with the utmost care.

  She was accordingly brought in. They said that she fought like a beast of prey, rather than a horse, rushing at the ’punchers instead of away from them, and biting at the ropes that restrained her. Then, for six months, the colonel himself supervised her training. There was nothing in the shape of a horse that could not be gentled and trained, he said, and he knew how to do it. But at the end of six months he was wearing a plaster on his right temple, and he walked with a limp. She was like fluid fire, said the colonel, and no precautions could make the handling of her safe. So he brought her to his rodeo to be given to the man who rode her.

  That man never would come over the horizon, he was sure, but, nevertheless, it would be a beautiful and terrible thing to see Excuse Me perform.

  However, he had brought her in vain. The ’punchers, when they asked for horses in the contest, paused only for one glance through the bars at lovely Excuse Me. Then they went hastily on, some with a visible shudder. For, in fact, as has been said, her beauty made her only grimmer to behold.

  “Not even asked to try a saddle on her?” exclaimed the colonel with increasing savagery. “They ain’t a man of ’em that wouldn’t rather get on top of a tank of nitroglycerine.”

  “Why, sir,” said Pete, with a rather lopsided grin, “I feel the same way about it.”

  “You do? And ain’t you got no shame, Pete, to stand here, a strappin’ young feller like you, and confess that to my face?”

  “The fact is,” said Pete, “that the nitroglycerine might not go off, but Excuse Me you damn’ well know would bust every time.”

  The colonel snorted, which was his habit when he was cornered past the rescue of words. “Young man, young man,” he said, “I’ve seen the day that no hoss in this country would go unchallenged. I’ve seen men that have walked fifty mile’, for the sake of tryin’ their hands at a man-killin’ hoss. What you got that fool smile on your face for?”

  “I was recollectin’ of the day,” said Pete Logan, “when we ties the sack of crushed barley onto the back of Excuse Me and turns her loose. Maybe you disremember that day, sir?”

  “Bah!” said the colonel.

  “I was smilin’,” said Pete Logan, “to think that she bucked so hard that she split open the side of that sack and sent the barley squirtin’ out like water.”

  “I remember,” said the colonel dreamily, “that on that day she then spent a long time smashin’ that good barley into the mud of her corral.”

  “Yeah,” drawled Pete, “she’s a lamb, I reckon.” He raised his hat. “How d’ye, Miss Furneaux?”

  The colonel hastily followed the example of his foreman and removed his hat to a woman of middle age who now rode up to them. She had a handsome, sun-browned face, lean and clean-looking, and the most honest gray eyes in the world. She smiled at them both.

  “Our boys are not having much luck,” she said.

  “I would rather have us represented by the women, Elizabeth,” said the colonel. “I would rather have the girls of this country represent us than the spineless, weak-hearted, chicken-livered rascals who are out there now, lettin’ themselves be bucked off like so many sacks of wheat . . . half-filled sacks, at that.” He ended by pointing with a stiff arm. “Look!” he said.

  At that moment, aptly to illustrate what the colonel had been saying, one of the Texas contenders was seen to leave the bowed back of his pony and fly upward without wings from his saddle, then drop like a plummet to the ground. The impact was audible.

  “I hope he’s broken his neck,” said the colonel.

  Miss Furneaux looked at Clisson without a smile, but also without malice, for she understood thoroughly the bigness of his heart.

  “Why, that’s Archie Hunter,” she said.

  “Archie Hunter?” repeated the colonel. “Why, then, I must say that he sticks in my mind, in some way connected with your name, Elizabeth. What is it?”

  “He was the dearest friend of Rod,” she answered.

  “Ah?” said the colonel. He began to add other words, but checked himself, seemed half choking, and turned a violent crimson.

  Elizabeth Furneaux looked at him with the same faint smile of understanding. “You meant to ask me what the latest news is about Rod, I suppose?” she said.

  “Why, Elizabeth, my dear child,” said the colonel, putting out a hand toward her, “I never want you to speak a word that will hurt you. I never want that.”

  “I don’t mind telling you,” she said. “I had a letter from him not long ago, but, as usual, he says nothing about what he’s really doing. Except that he’s found a girl in the mountains. Something too exquisite to be human, I gather. Also . . . you probably know that they’ve attributed another shooting scrape to Rod?”

  “The man near Denver, do you mean?”

  “Yes. The man is dead. I’ve just heard. That’s all the recent news. Good-bye, Colonel. I’ll see you again before the rodeo breaks up.”

  She rode off, and the colonel looked at his foreman with bared teeth, and Pete Logan looked back at him in the same fashion.

  “I wish,” said the colonel, after a moment of sustaining this vicious grimace, “I wish that Rodman Furneaux were thrown in the pen with Excuse Me. Confound him, I wish no better than that.”

  “They might get on fine,” said Pete Logan. “They’d be birds of a feather, after all.”

  TWO

  The colonel said: “Everything lost . . . everything ruined . . . everything gone to a lot of single-cinch. . . .”

  The rest of his language defied reproduction.

  “Here’s Sam Parker,”
said Logan. “I been wonderin’ where Sam was. There’s a he-man when it comes to ridin’ a hoss.”

  “Bah!” snorted the colonel. “That Parker is drunk. He can’t keep in the saddle hardly. You, Sam Parker, come here, sir.”

  Sam Parker came. He was a brown-faced youth with not much forehead and a vast smile over a lantern jaw. He looked at the colonel with the indistinctness of crossed eyes and a clouded brain.

  “Sam,” said the colonel, “are you gonna ride?”

  “I reckon I am, sir.”

  “Are you gonna stick on like a man?”

  “I reckon I ain’t, sir.”

  “Sam, you’re drunk.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sam. “I been collectin’ and collectin’ and collectin’ this here bun for three days, and now I guess I’m pretty well ripe. This here is about the best I ever been . . . I had an ol’ master to help to put on the finishin’ touches.”

  “Some of those center-fire sneaks have got Sam drunk,” suggested the colonel. “Otherwise. . . .”

  “Who you been with?” asked Pete Logan.

  “I jus’ lef’ ol’ Carrie Dunmore over to Chaffey’s crossroads place. We been lettin’ the red-eye percolate until it’s got into our bones and made ’em jus’ so sof’ that fallin’ off a hoss wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Hold on!” exclaimed the colonel. “Did you say Carrie Dunmore? The Carrie Dunmore?”

  “Yes, sir, ol’ single-shot Carrie. He’s over there. He’s jus’ warmin’ up strong.”

  “Why didn’t the underbred coyote come on to the rodeo?” asked the colonel savagely.

  “Because he said that the sun was shinin’ warmer and the sittin’ was softer and easier there in Chaffey’s place.”

  “The lazy scoundrel!” cried the colonel.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Sam with a vaster smile than ever. “I’ve heard of the gent that was so lazy he starved to death because he wouldn’t go to the smokehouse to get him a side of bacon. But I reckon that Carrie Dunmore is the most outlazyingest gent in the whole world.”

  “That’s an honorable distinction,” said the colonel. “Is the fellow as drunk as you are, Sam?”

  “Him, sir?” asked Sam Parker. “Is you referrin’ by any chance to my frien’ Carrie Dunmore? I gotta tell you, sir, that they ain’t enough liquor and time in the world to percolate into the insides of Carrie. He jus’ gets the outside a little pickled, but inside . . . he’s fine as could be.”