To Make It Self-Defense

ET LETARE owned the Tick-Tack-Toe brand ranch down in the Curly Grass Creek basin. He had picked up sixteen sections in the old days, when picking was really good. Now he regarded with satisfaction the fact that he owned a number of squares in a checker-board of Bad Lands. His sections were not all in a block. Instead, his squares touched only here and there at corners because vacant spaces, all government owned, were spread out among his deeded acres. Thus, instead of controlling his mere 10,240 acres, he had all the known water on at least 30,000 acres of grazing country, broken with the gray washes and dome-buttes that characterized the watershed of Curly Grass Creek.

The rancher was a dark, taciturn, bow-legged, barrel-shaped man. He wore his broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, and his fixed stare was like the cold hate of a mink. He rode a horse or killed it—sometimes both. He was a hard employer. His ranch crew were hard men; six to eight of the number who did his bidding wore guns as of old, and sometimes arrived in the night, and departed in the night.

Trails led in all directions from the clump of cottonwoods on a flat thirty feet above the level of the creek, in which stood the rambling, sod-covered ranch-house, which was built of cottonwood logs, and which showed only small windows, with four six-by-nine sheets of wrinkly old glass. A huge stick and mud chimney indicated the position of the fire-place. A tall galvanized pipe was braced with many wires against the constant wind from out of the prairies, and beneath this part of the rambling shack roof was a he cook who roasted beef, or veal, boiled vegetables, baked dough-biscuits some of which were hard and heavy enough to be used as deadly missiles.

Few neighbors came to visit the Tick-Tack-Toe outfit, and then usually in a small bunch to make inquiries about certain cattle believed to have wandered off their natural range. These neighbors knew with whom they had to deal. Times had changed in the recent twenty years, and Letare did not openly resent their visits.

Usually he knew what they sought, and they rode away again having located their cattle. Yet if a dozen cattle strayed away, one was likely to remain permanently missing. This was expected. Jet could hardly be expected to refrain absolutely from the practises which had given him his money to take up, buy up, bull-doze and otherwise overcome the titles to the lands he had acquired.

While the railroad was building over the prairies, forty or fifty miles north of Curly Grass, Jet Letare was scouting down in those same Bad Lands. He had ridden into them from away off toward the south west, judging by his tracks. What was along the back-trail none cared to inquire. Jet was unkempt, unshaven, ragged, riding an old saddle on a wild horse. His boots were out at the ankles and split along the seams, and the heels turned on their nubs when he walked.

The railroad needed meat, or at least the cook-shacks of the contractors did. All that beautiful country was decked and spotted with bunches of cattle. Jet Letare skinned a beef one night, soaked the hair off, and then cut the raw hide into long, wonderfully even strings.

He soaked these strings carefully in rainwater, and then looped them loosely over a long pole. In each loop he hung a weight of ten or fifteen pounds, and let the stretched strings hang until they were dry. He soaked and stretched and dried the thongs four times. Then he braided the strings, once more soaked, into a riata. He worked every cross and weave into a contact that was drawn as tight as his strong hands could do it.

When he had finished, he had a rope nearly forty-four feet long. It was from end to end, very slightly tapered toward the noose, which was beautifully worked and spliced. It was just over three-eighths of an inch at the large end, and a hair’s breadth under that at the noose. When he had dressed the line, he tossed it about to try it, and smiled a satisfied, grim smile.

With that rope he sallied forth to make his fortune, and he made it. He carried one other tool, a knife. From the hour the riata was finished, he hardly knew rest. He rode away east to meet the coming railroad. He was never seen at the camp by day. He lurked on the flanks, north or south, where almost no one ever saw him. He rode nearly always at night, invariably alone.

Others, too, were riding. He might have had a whole company with him, but he wanted no friends, needed no help, save that given by his little ramuda, his several horses which he carefully picked for their carrying qualities and endurance.

When the road was built, Jet Letare was rich. He had many thousands of dollars. When cowboy detectives rode up and down, looking for the lost cattle of the several great ranch outfits that had grazed all those regions, leasing lands from the Indians, but seldom paying for them, there was no trace of the cattle that had vanished on open prairie, and in cut-bank draw, and the bands of cattle killers were broken up, scattered, and some bad-men sent to jail.

Jet Letare shrugged his shoulders, saying—

“The only man that doesn’t squeal on you, in the pinch, is yourself!”

Quietly he gathered in the Bad Land acres that he now loved, whose possibilities were wonderful as he well knew. He bought out anxious and disappointed homesteaders; he took up abandoned claims, paying a little ready cash for each section, while a first class lands’ attorney saw to it that there was no missing link in Letare's claims to the Bad Lands which he was taking on.

Years went on, one after another. Any uneasiness Letare might have had about the past flattened away, and vanished with the old days. No bad dreams rose to haunt him. His possession weathered investigations. There was no need of his worrying now. No crime could hold against him, with the passing of each statute of limitations. He was all clear, living honestly.

His own white-faced Herefords wandered up and down where twenty years before white-faced bulls had been introduced among the lank, rangy cattle to improve their weight, improve their beef, and tone them up to higher market value. Letare smiled as he watched his own pure-breds. They were beeves to be proud of. When he shipped, it was to have his stock corn-fed, stall-fed, because people were willing to pay extra prices for that kind, and he received that cent or two a pound on the hoof, which proved it was cheaper to raise good cattle than scrubs, a lesson many a rancher and farmer had yet to learn.

Years of complaisance, however, did not cause Jet Letare to relax in his vigilance. He was himself peaceable; he committed no overt acts; he lived clean, even when there was temptation on the one hand to share the illicit profits of modern raiding methods, or on the other, to ride with men who came inviting him to “a little fun.”

Away off yonder, the Milk River boys were always up to some devilment. A number of them paid Jet occasional visits, sure of welcome, sure of pleasant talks about old times when the Wild Bunch were on the romp, but unable to persuade Jet to cut loose again.

In his own little domain, however, he had a wild gang of cowboys to control. They were bad. He liked them because they were bad. They came to his place, finding it a convenient, far-back, out-of-the-way shelter. They must work, however. There were occasional disputes.

Jet Letare, more than once, in the cause of injustice set men afoot with their saddles, and the thirty or forty mile walk along any of the devious trails did not at all appease the angry feelings of the men dismounted. Rumors around that there were killings on Curly Grass Creek were not confirmed by court action. Letare had lost nothing in his ancient gun-draw skill, and he never rode without his revolvers.

INTO Letare’s domain, not three miles from his ranch-house, came Bob Alvorn. No one at Letare’s knew Bob had arrived, till Bob had homesteaded the 640 acres which Letare had used for years as his horse pasture. It was government land, arid on the maps, and subject to the claim of any man who was fool enough, or brave enough, to take it.

There, on a low knoll, Bob built a sod house, with double-thick walls, and a command of view extending three hundred yards in any direction. Right, beside the sod-house, Bob sank a well, and, at thirty feet, struck an underground river, which squirted a four-inch stream six feet high, not thirty feet from the sod house. His wife, a comely woman, rejoiced.

Bob had money enough to buy a few head of cattle, which he promptly fenced in. He plowed up a hundred acres with a little tractor. He pushed an old prairie schooner trail into the old North-and-South Pike, bought a little flivver, and minded his own business.

Jet Letare rode over to Corbeau, the county seat, and visited around for a week. His lawyer reported to him that Bob’s claim couldn’t be touched, for it had been declared arid, and luck had favored the homesteader. The water, the 640 acres, the choice bit of grazing land was the claimant’s, to have if he could hold it.

Jet was very careful in his approaches at the county court. He heard there one thing that bade him pause.

“Jet,” the prosecuting attorney said, “if you kill that man, you’ll hang. If any of your men kill him, the sheriff and a posse, sure as living, will come and break you to pieces. Those old days are gone. I know what you are thinking, and it is premeditated murder. It won’t do. You can’t get away with it. Buy him out, or let him stay.”

“There’s no way. That’s my country! That underground river flows right across my land”

“And if you take it from him, blast it, or blow it, or tap it, he’s a valid claim against you—for ten thousand dollars damages. Besides, he’ll get the water, too, in addition.”

“He won’t sell!”

“Why the should he?”

“And there’s no way?”

Jet pressed the question.

“Well—” and the prosecutor grinned—“if he pulls his gun on you, and you kill him, that’s self-defense. But it’s got to be a cinch. You’ll have to prove to the jury that it’s self-defense—and they’ll be mostly homesteaders, who haven’t much sympathy for old-time ranchers, for there are lots of them starving to death on lands that ought never to have been taken from ranching and grazing, for homesteading. You know that. They think the cattlemen were to blame.”

“Yes, but”

“No buts about it, Letare. If you shoot Bob Alvorn, you’ll hang, if I’m prosecutor. Don’t forget that. We aren’t going to have this country all shot up by a lot of murdering old-timers. We can’t afford it. Why, nobody is going to come out here, to settle down, if you can go in and shoot anybody that takes land legally, when you’re holding it, grazing it, and grabbing it. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know—but if I kill him in self-defense?”

“You’ll prove it! If it isn’t on Bison street, with a crowd looking on, every one seeing you in danger of your life, you’ll hang. That’s all. The circumstantial evidence that you’ve killed him will grow stronger, the further back you do it. Understand?”

“But on Bison street—he draws first, he starts to kill me?”

“Oh, then the grand jury, over my demand, will likely enough exonerate you!”

Prosecutor Habrey laughed.

Jet Letare rode away in his big automobile. A little smile flickered on his lips. He felt that he needed a little excitement. In his day, he had ridden alone; he could do it again; he knew the Bad Lands as they feel when a scouter listens beside a bit of a chip fire, when the coyotes howl in the hills, their voices making echoes among the sliding faces of the buttes.

A week later he rode away to the train, a score of people seeing him take his departure. A week later, the sheriff and three deputies were at his ranch, and talked half the night with the cowboys. They were all in the big bunk room. In the morning, eleven of Bob Alvorn’s cattle were lying in their pasture, their throats cut, their hides cut to ribbons, and their meat slashed beyond use.

Alvern was hit a body blow by that trick. The sheriff and deputies rode over to see what had been done. There were witnesses that not one of Letare’s men had been abroad that night. Letare was registered in a hotel in St. Louis. He returned a week later. When he stopped in Corbeau, the prosecuting attorney looked him in the eye and said—

“You son of a gun!”

Letare began to entertain sportsmen, hunters from down east who enjoyed killing prairie chickens and shooting wild fowl in the sloughs, of which there were a few in the Bad Lands bottoms in old stream beds. Five of these perfectly reputable people were ready to swear that it was impossible for any of the Letare outfit to have blown up the west end of Alvorn’s sod-house. Dynamite did it—but by a freak, left one small room of the four the homesteader had put into the building.

Ten pounds of nails in the old prairie school trail up the basin of Curly Grass was only a little thing, but it ruined four tires on the flivver that Bob Alvorn drove. He picked up a hundred of the wire stubs, and drove to Corbeau to show Attorney Habrey what had happened.

“You know what I’m getting,” Alvorn said. “Eleven head killed, my house dynamited, and now this trick.”

“I’ve heard about it,” Habrey admitted. “Want to swear out a warrant?”

“I have no evidence. I came here to tell you I want protection. You call the sheriff!”

Habrey hesitated. Then, without a word he called Sheriff Darnell, who came right over from the jail. To him Alvorn recited his list of misfortunes.

“Sheriff,” Alvorn said, “I want protection. I am peaceable. My house was blown up when I was with my wife here in town.”

“I’ll arrest any man in the world, if there’s a warrant out for him,” the sheriff declared, virtuously.

“But you won’t protect a homesteader who’s being blown, butchered, and nagged out of house and—and homestead?” Alvorn asked.

“What can I do?”

“You are the sheriff, and this man is the prosecuting attorney,” Alvorn said slowly. “You were elected to protect people in this county from rascals. I’m square. I never stole a head of cattle to sell to a railroad contractor, never killed a man to get his lands, never sucked around the politicians to find protection—if I did meanness. I’ve brought here a written request, stating the facts to you two men. It’s up to you to give me protection.”

“What if we don’t—I mean can’t?” the attorney demanded quickly.

“I think you’d better—or resign, and give somebody else a chance,” Alvorn said, as he walked away.

The two gazed after him. Their faces were flushed. The prosecuting attorney clicked his teeth:

“That Letare’s hog-tied everything with his alibis, but he’s going too far. Go tell him, Darnell, he’s rushing things too fast!”

The sheriff exclaimed—

“Go tell him yourself!”

“I don’t have to—but you do!”

IT WAS six months before anything else happened. Then one night as Alvorn rode across the timber-bridge over the Stone-wall fork of the main highway, the whole thing collapsed. The automobile was smashed. Alvorn broke his leg. Mrs. Alvorn escaped without injury. Timbers had been sawed.

While Alvorn was lying in his new sod house, waiting for the injuries to heal, and the bone to knit, Mrs. Alvorn worked the tractor, and cared for the stock. She carried two steers in the truck Alvorn had bought, and sold them to a cattle buyer at the railroad. On her way home in the dark, she was held up, the money taken away, the truck crippled by breaking the spark plugs.

She walked five miles to the nearest house, borrowed an automobile and rode to Corbeau. There she told the sheriff, who rode out to the scene, taking an automobile mechanic and spare parts to the crippled machine. One man had held the woman up and robbed her. Darnell went on to Letare’s ranch and found all hands there.

“Letare,” Darnell said, “I didn’t suppose there was a bandit or holdup west of the Missouri who would attack a woman.”

“Nor I,” Letare replied. “What’s happened?”

Sheriff Darnell told him. Letare listened, then summoned all his cowboys and they rode all day long looking for the lone miscreant. Darnell, riding with them, seeing the cowmen drag the washes, ransack the Bad Lands, and make their search could not doubt the evidence of his eyes. Yet when he left Letare that night, he said:

“You’re a fool, Letare! Nobody is being fooled!”

“Yes, they are, sheriff,” he replied. “What have you these suspicions against me for?”

Darnell looked at him, and then rode away. He knew the rancher was grinning. He told the prosecuting attorney about it. Habrey cursed.

“A man don’t get away with molesting women out here,” the lawyer said. “Letare’s a fool!”

“Except you can’t catch him,” Darnell grumbled. “What’s his game, anyhow?”

Habrey looked at him for a minute, and then said:

“Self-defense. He aims to nag Alvorn till the homesteader makes a break.”

“He can’t get away with it!”

“He can if he waits till Alvorn draws his gun first.”

“But Alvorn will bush-whack him!”

“That’s the worst of it. Alvorn’s clean. He came from the Ozark mountains where they never shoot a man from the brush, but spring all clear before they draw their guns.”

“Can he shoot?”

“I don’t know. Probably not—at least not with Letare. Letare bought five thousand forty-five caliber revolver cartridges three months ago. Yesterday he came in and bought five thousand more. He’s practising every day.”

“The son of a gun!” Darnell exclaimed.

“There’s not a chance against him. You know that.”

“Yes—and you can’t prove anything. There isn’t even decent circumstantial evidence!”

Two days later, Jet Letare rode into town. He went to the hardware store and bought five thousand more forty-five caliber revolver cartridges. It was all the place had in stock.

“What’s the matter, Jet?” Sheriff Darnell asked, happening in.

“Doing a little practising.”

“Must be getting ready for a little war out there! You took five thousand shoots on Tuesday.”

“A devil of a note—the box slipped out the back of the truck, and we didn’t miss it till we reached the ranch. Went back after it, but couldn’t find—um-m.”

Sheriff Darnell turned. Mrs. Alvorn had entered the store, to buy a flap-jack grid. She smiled a bright recognition to all the men but one. She gave Letare a cold, expressionless look different from any she would have directed at a mere stranger.

A whisper had begun to run around. Jet Letare was nagging Bob Alvorn. The homesteader was a stranger in those parts, after a fashion. He was a hard worker, steady and ambitious. Luck had been with him, finding that fine water, and his wheat had brought him a little fortune. He was out of the worst of his agriculture difficulties, having broken the sod, and his possession was assured, if he could live to take out his final papers.

Three times in the next four weeks, Letare rolled into Corbeau while Mrs. Alvorn was in town. Shortly after she took her departure, he followed her.

People could think what they pleased! Bob was nursing his broken leg at home. The road winding away from the railroad, across the prairies, and into the Bad Lands was a long, lonely trail. Great hills rose to flat-topped buttes. There were great valleys that were miles wide. At one place, where the road dipped into the Yellow River bottoms, the Bad Lands extended for a hundred miles toward the south.

A few had homesteaded on the road to the Yellow River, but beyond this stream there were only two little ranches, besides that of Letare and the homestead of Bob Alvorn. For a score of miles or more, the road was under no one’s eyes, and people wondered if the rancher and the homesteader’s wife ever met to talk out there in the wide spaces?

Letare was well satisfied. He had succeeded in his enterprise. His men listening around, heard the gossip, which was inevitable. The rancher knew when Alvorn began to move around on crutches; he knew when Alvorn discarded one of the crutches; he knew when Alvorn merely eased his game leg by carrying a cane; he thought he knew all there was to know about Bob Alvorn.

Bob rode with his wife in to Corbeau in their truck. They carried a ton of wheat with them, which was sucked up into the Grangers’ Elevator. Bob went down to the hardware store, to buy some hay-bale wire, for he had some alfalfa to pack. The store-keeper was alone at the moment. Having made sure of this fact, the gray little man leaned over the counter and said:

“Bob, Jet Letare’s been following your wife out and in— They say he ’lows to get you!”

“He ’lows to get me?”

“That’s so! He dasn’t to bush-whack you, account of that being murder. He ’lows to git to nag yo’ to pull your gun fustest, an’ then— You see?”

“I see—now! Wants to plead self-defense.”

“Jes’ so! He’s bought a sight of shoots from me, but he’s no friend of mine. Eighteen years ago, he killed my brother, who was scouting down on his ranch. It was cold blood. I never said a word. You’re a good man, and I’ve given you fair warning—which few of his dead men ever had.”

“And he wants me to pull first, eh?” Bob asked, eagerly.

“Just so—sh-h! No ’fense, suh—but yo’ wife— He’s talking”

“It’s all right—about my wife. Never doubt it,” Bob whispered, as he gathered up the fifty weight of hay-bale wire.

Bob put the wire into his truck, and tied it fast. Then he went over to the sheriff’s office, to sit down.

“Have a cigar, sheriff?” Bob asked.

“Sure thing, Bob!”

“I came to tell you, sheriff, that two of my horses died yesterday. I cut them open and found they’d been fed glass and oat meal.”

“That’s a shame, Bob!” Darnell exclaimed, angrily.

“You didn’t find the men who sawed off those bridge beams, when I was to be the last man through the trail that night?”

“Bob, so help me I searched”

“All right, sheriff. I know you did. I don’t bear any hard feelings against any man in the world. Don’t forget that. I am peaceable. If I could prove who is after me, trying to drive me out of the country, I’d do it. As long as I can’t, why that’s my fault. A man has to protect himself, up to a certain point, and I suppose I’m the one who’s to blame. Keep watch, will you?”

“I surely shall!” the sheriff promised, and Bob rose to take his departure. He limped a little as he walked out ahead of the sheriff. Darnell followed him. As they cleared the doorway and stood on the jail office porch, Bob stopped short.

Across the street, about a hundred feet distant, was Jet Letare. Down the street was the automobile he had just driven in to town. He was walking to meet Mrs. Alvorn, who was carrying some packages in her arms toward the Alvorn truck.

Letare stopped in front of her, as she tried to avoid him. But the rancher was looking across the street at the jail, as well he might. Thus he covered himself, and all the spectators could swear that his insult to Mrs. Alvorn was accidental. Two packages fell from her hands as she sprang back, angrily, leaving him all clear.

“I didn’t think you’d—here!” he said, in his sharp, shrill voice, throwing his head back so that the brim of his hat stood up, giving his eyes clear view, which he needed. He had given his open challenge at last.

Bob Alvorn dropped back one step, to Sheriff Darnell’s side, and snatched the officer’s forty-five caliber, seven-and-a-half-inch barreled revolver from its right hand holster. Then, after the manner of the Ozark Mountain Bald Knobbers, he sprang clear of the shade, across the sidewalk into the dust of the street. He took long chances, making that honest jump. His leg was still weak, and it might break again.

He landed square in mid-sunshine, which was out of the west, fair for each of the two men. Alvorn had a drawn revolver, but he held the muzzle. pointed straight down. Letare hesitated. It was the making sure that his plea of self-defense would hold good.

Then Letare snatched his own revolvers from his hips. He had two. As they cleared the holsters, Alvorn with incredible swiftness shot the right one from the rancher’s hand, smashing the wrist that supported it. Then Alvorn shot the other arm of Letare, pulverizing the elbow joint.

Letare, when his two revolvers fell to the ground, threw both arms into the air, and screamed for his life as the broken ends lopped down.

Attorney Habrey came running. He watched the two men, victor and vanquished, hesitating exactly what to do, which side to take in this affair. He compromised, turning to Alvorn, demanding—

“Why the didn’t you finish this job?”

“I have done my part. Now you do yours! And you, too, sheriff!” Alvorn said, deliberately. “For years you’ve watched that scoundrel hound me, and let him do it. Go to it, sheriff! Go arrest him”

“Look here—Habrey interrupted.

“Or I’ll go telegraph the governor a demand for your removal!”

Habrey turned white. Sheriff Darnell turned blue lipped.

“Go get him!” Habrey shuddered. “Arrest him, sheriff— You know—we all got to be witnesses. The charge is attempted murder!”