Free Novel 1954 - Utah Blaine (As Jim Mayo) (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour

You’ll get yours. You ain’t so salty.”
    “Want to freshen me up?” Coker invited. “I think we ought to shorten the odds right here.”
    The man would say no more, but a tall, lean man in long underwear looked at Blaine. “Don’t I get to put on no pants?” his voice was plaintive.
    “You look better that way. I said you ride the way you are. If you hate to lose your gear, blame it on double-crossin’ your brand.”
    The men trooped out, taking the dead drunk with them. One after another they rounded up their horses, mounted and rode off. There were no parting yells, nothing.
    Mary Blake was standing in the doorway. Timm got up from where he had been crouched by the window with his Winchester.
    “Utah! You’re back! I was so worried!” she cried.
    “Seen Tom?” Timm asked quickly.
    Blaine hesitated, feeling how well these men had known each other. “Tom won’t be back,” he said quietly. “Clell Miller killed him on Mocking Bird.”
    Timm swore softly. “I was afraid of that. He was a good man, Tom was.” He rubbed a fumbling hand over his chin. “Rode together eight years, the two of us. I wish,” he added, “I was a gunslinger.”
    “Don’t worry,” Coker promised, “I’ll stake out that hide myself.”
    Blaine walked restlessly across the room. He had never liked being cooped up when a fight was coming. It was his nature to attack. Nor did he like the presence of the women. Bluntly, he explained the situation to Mary. “The stage for hesitation is over now,” he said quietly, “and all the chips are down. You’d better go.”
    “And leave you to fight them alone?” she protested. “I’ll not go.”
    “It would be better if you did,” he told her. “We may have to leave here, fight somewhere else.”
    Coker took his rifle and went outside, moving off into the night, and heading away from the house. Timm walked out on the porch and stood there, lighting his pipe. He felt lost without Kelsey. It seemed impossible that Tom could be dead.
    “Mary,” Utah said it quietly, “I wish you would go. Red Creek if you like, or over east of here, to that Mormon settlement. You might be safer there. All hell’s breakin’ loose now.”
    She looked at him, her eyes serious. “What will you do? What can you do now? Against them all, I mean? And without the backing of Joe Neal’s authority?”
    He had been thinking of that. The murder of Neal cut the ground from beneath his feet. Neal had no heirs and so the range would go by default. He might, of course, claim it himself. Had he the fighting men to enforce such a claim, he might even make it stick. But he had no such men nor the money to pay them.
    Nor could they hope to hold out long against the forces to be thrown against them. “We’ve got to get out.” He said it reluctantly but positively. “We’ve got to move. We’d be foolish to try to hold them off for long, but I will try. If we fail, then we’ll run.”
    Coker had come back to the door. “Riders headed this way. What do we do?”
    Utah turned to the door. “Better ride out, Mary. This isn’t going to be nice.”
    “Are you quitting?”
    He laughed without humor. “You’re the second to ask me that question in the last few hours. No, I’m not quitting. A man killed Joe Neal. Another man ordered it. I’ve a job to do.”
    Rip Coker was leaning against the corner of the house. He looked around as Blaine walked over to him. “Quite a bunch. Timm’s bedded down by that stone well.”
    “All right. Hold your fire unless they open the ball. If they do, don’t miss any shots.”
    “Who’s goin’ to miss?”
    Utah Blaine walked slowly down the trail. The moon was up and the night was bright. As the riders neared they slowed their pace. Blaine moved forward. “All right, hold it up!”
    They drew up, a solid rank of at least twenty men. “That you, Blaine?”
    “Sure. Who’d you expect? You murdered Joe Neal.”
    There was a short, pregnant silence. Nevers replied,