Six spoke without lifting his hat. “Curiosity’s a healthy sign in a young man. But you ask an awful lot of questions, Rafferty.”
“That’s what I get paid for. Look, maybe there’s a story in this. What are you doing here, Six? Where are you going? These feuding cattle barons down in Concho Basin—have they hired you to kill for them?”
“No. I told you I’m passing through. You’d better turn in, Rafferty. It’ll be a rugged ride tomorrow.”
Rafferty was insistent. “Well, at least you can tell me what you know about the feud down here.”
“I just got here,” Six said patiently. “I know less about it than you do. I heard a few rumors along the trail, that’s all.”
“Sounds to me like more than rumors,” said Rafferty. “I hear they’re getting armed to the teeth, the whole basin. A couple of big cattlemen got in a fight over something and now they say it’s got to the point where they shoot on sight. Singletree and Lance Head—that’s the names of the two ranches. I forget the owners’ names. Seems one of them staked out the whole basin and then a few years later the other one moved in with a big herd and started using some of the same grass. There wasn’t anything the law could do—it’s all free government land. Both sides staked out as much acreage as they could, or that’s the way I get the story—anyhow all the cowhands had to prove up homestead claims and then sell them to their bosses. It got to be kind of a race to see who could prove up the most land. Only one of the ranchers got impatient, and pretty soon any cowhand who staked out a homestead ended up either dead or scared right out of the territory. So the two ranches brought in hired gunmen to settle the homesteads for them. That’s where it stands right now—everybody looking at everybody else over the sights of a gun.”
“Sounds like a good place to stay away from,” Jeremy Six observed. He rolled over on one shoulder, putting his back to Rafferty and indicating plainly that he had had enough talk for the night.
Five
Six snugged the saddle-girth up tight and heaved his blanket-roll up, tying it behind the saddle cantle. Steve Rafferty was buckling the flap over his saddlebag. He had just put his gun away inside. Six observed, “Smart.”
Rafferty looked at the sky—not a cloud disturbed the evenness of the blue cover—and shucked off his coat which he laced down on top of the saddlebags. His green shirt had a big maroon monogram, S J R, stitched on the sleeve. Six pointed to it and said idly, “Don’t you know who you are?”
“I want to make sure the laundry knows,” Rafferty said. “When I spend a week’s salary on a shirt I don’t want some Chinaman sending it back to the wrong customer.”
A fleeting instant’s unfriendliness had crossed Rafferty’s face when Six had spoken, but now the young correspondent was grinning again with his usual youthful self-confidence. He climbed up on his horse with a grimace. “I hired this beast in Aztec Junction. Seemed like a good idea at the time—I’d have had to wait four days for the next stagecoach. But he’s got a backbone like a Green River knife. I feel like I’m split up to my chest bone. And this road—Christ, the whole damned country’s been stood up on its end. I haven’t crossed a flat place in forty-eight hours. We must be two hundred miles from absolutely nowhere.”
“Just about,” Six drawled, and swung up into saddle.
“Listen, do you mind if I ride along with you? We’re both headed the same direction. I wouldn’t mind a little company for a change. This country’s lonely enough to make you want to start climbing cliffs and talking to trees after a while.”
“Suit yourself,” Six told him. He put his sorrel onto the rutted road and headed down through the pass.
After half an hour’s ride, during which Steve Rafferty had contributed all the conversation, the two riders reached a wide strip of road and the reporter gigged his horse up alongside Six. “Jesus,” said Rafferty. “You’re about as talkative as a Goddamn oyster. Don’t you ever say anything?”
“Didn’t seem to be too much that needed saying,” Six replied.
“I’d have been just as well off talking to the damned trees, after all,” Rafferty complained. “Look, at least you might tell me what you’re doing here, or where you’ve come from, or where you’re going. You’re an interesting character, or at least your record’s interesting. People like to read about marshals.”
“I’m not a marshal now,” Six said.
“Well, you used to be, didn’t you? What’s the difference?”
“Maybe there isn’t any,” Six said. He reined his horse in so quickly that Rafferty had gone half a dozen yards further down the road before he reacted by yanking back the reins.
“Whoa—whoa, damn it. Hey, what did you do that for? I mean, I—”
“Shut up,” Six commanded.
Rafferty’s jaw slackened. Six was frowning, his head lowered and turned to one side, as if he were listening for some subtle sound in the distance. Rafferty’s impatience boosted his tongue: “What’s the matter?”
“Someone behind us,” Six murmured. His arm swept up. “We’d better get off the road. Shut up now and do as you’re told.”
Six put his horse into the trees and circled back through timber, making a wide arc that brought him back near the road at a point some distance behind the place where he had left it. Rafferty let his horse follow its natural inclination to obey the other horse’s lead. They halted within view of the road and Six murmured, “Keep your horse quiet.”
Rafferty followed Six’s example by leaning forward and cupping his hand over the horse’s muzzle. He whispered, “You’ve got damn good ears if you heard anything. I still don’t hear anybody.”
“Quiet.”
Preceded by the clip clop sound of its hooves, a horse presently came down the road, carrying a thin little rider with eyeglasses. Rafferty spoke in a surprised whisper. “I know him. I’ve seen his picture—sure, that’s Nick Story. They just released him from prison in California. What do you figure he’s doing down here?”
“Maybe minding his own business,” said Six. He gigged his horse forward and entered the road, and waited for the ex-convict to ride up. Rafferty caught up and said, “What makes you so damned jumpy? We could have waited for him on the road.”
“I like to know who’s behind me before I show myself,” Six answered. “In this kind of territory that can be healthy.”
“Twenty consecutive words. Is that a record with you?”
The advancing rider, Nick Story, slowed down as he approached. Six made a point of crossing his hands on top of his saddlehorn. Rafferty’s eyes were excited. “What do you know about that, now.”
Nick Story was a stoop-backed little man with a hollow chest, wearing a cheap gray suit. Sunlight glittered in reflection on his glasses. A cigarette dangled from his mouth corner. When he stopped a few yards away, he nodded with distant reserve. “Morning.”
Six dipped his head. Rafferty said, “I’m Steve Rafferty of the Clarion, Mr. Story.”
Story smiled with one side of his mouth. “Can t I ever get far enough to leave you people behind?” Behind his glasses, his eyes flickered across the mountains, touched Jeremy Six for an instant, and swept past; but in that broken interval, Six had a hard-hitting impression of bright, alert silver eyes behind the metal-framed lenses. Story’s skin was pale; his hair was thinning; but there was an arresting flash in his eyes, a sign of vitality and danger.
Rafferty said, “This is a piece of luck, bumping into you. You’re news, Story.”
Nick Story said, “You bastards are all alike. Like dogs. Always got your noses up some other dog’s tail. Look, friend, they gave me seven-to-ten, and I served it, seven years to the day. I’m doing my best to forget California and I’d appreciate it if you damned Californians would do me the same courtesy.”
Story’s language was strong but he did not act in a threatening way; he had a gun but it was thonged down inside his holster and he made no motion toward it. Not easily daunted, Rafferty kept after him: “They usually pa
role a man before his full time’s up. But you served the full sentence.”
“The minimum,” Story reminded him. “I behaved myself. If I’d acted the way you’re acting right now, I’d have spent another three years in there.”
Without a great deal of interest in either of them, Jeremy Six lifted his reins and rode away down the road. He heard Story talking to Rafferty: “Who’s your talky friend?”
“His name’s Jeremy Six.”
“Well, think of that!”
Six was looking ahead, with no particular expression, when Nick Story trotted up, overtook him, and grinned. “So you’re Jeremy Six. Half the men in my cell block had stories to tell about you. You must be a hell of a wild man.”
Rafferty joined up. He said drily, “Cat got your tongue, Marshal?”
Six’s eyes flickered. “I’d be obliged if you didn’t call me that.”
Nick Story sighed. “Ah. Something wrong here. A sensitive skin doesn’t match up with what I’ve heard about you, Six.” The little ex-convict looked wizened, but he was probably a few years younger than Six—his hands, far from being gnarled or veined, were smooth and young, although they showed work-calluses. His eyes, too, were bright and clear. He was probably not older than thirty, although a casual glance might have suggested his age was fifty or more. There was a remarkable brightness to his silver-hued eyes; even the glasses could not conceal it.
Story’s cigarette had burned down to a nub. He lighted a new cigarette from it and threw the butt in the rocks. He seemed to be in a good humor; he said to Rafferty, “I consider newspapermen the scum of the earth, and I believe that the writing on bathroom walls is a cut above journalism, but I’ve got nothing against you personally, Slattery.”
“Rafferty.”
“Sure. Sorry.”
“In that case,” Rafferty said, “maybe you’ll answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Well, for a start, why didn’t they parole you before your term was up?”
“Because I didn’t cooperate.”
“I thought you said you behaved yourself.”
“I did,” Story said. He grinned at Six, as if he shared a secret with Six that Rafferty was not in on. Six paid very little attention to either of them. Rafferty said, “I don’t get it.”
“Perhaps,” Nick Story intoned, “it was not written down in the book that you should understand, Avery.”
“Rafferty,” Rafferty corrected impatiently. “Look, I don’t mind if you want to make fun of me, but you might tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Why should I? I’ve never in my life been quoted accurately by a newspaperman.”
“I’m not quoting you. I’m just listening.”
“Sure,” Nick Story said in a tone of soft dryness. “All right, Caspery, maybe you can puzzle over this for a little while. I was convicted of armed robbery after twenty-three thousand dollars of government payroll money was stolen from the cashier at Fort Scott.”
“I know—I know. I read the papers.”
“Bully for you,” Story congratulated him. “In that case it may just have come to your attention that the loot was never recovered.”
“So?”
“So, I didn’t cooperate. I didn’t tell the parole board where to pick up the money. They offered to let me out after the first four years if I’d tell them where it was.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Story laughed. “Like all newspapermen, you have the innate intelligence of an angleworm, Satterlee.”
“Fatterly,” the newspaperman said. “I mean, Rafferty.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s R-a-f-f-e-r-t-y.”
“Yes. Stupid of me. I always have trouble remembering names.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell them where the money was?”
“After you’ve put in two years on a rock pile,” Story said, “and two more years in a filthy prison bakery, you get to kind of figure that you earned the money.”
“Even if you had to spend three more years in prison for it? Wasn’t three years of freedom worth your share of that payroll? How many men were in on the robbery—four?”
“That’s what the sheriff said,” Story murmured. His sense of comic amusement seemed unshakeable.
Jeremy Six rode along, slightly out front of the other two, only half-paying attention to their talk. What was on his mind, at the moment, was that in a few hours they would reach Rifle Gap, and he did not particularly warm to the idea of riding into a trigger-spooked town looking like the head of a war party.
Rafferty insisted, “Well, how many were there actually?”
“If you like numbers, four is as good as any,” said Nick Story. “But two of the gang were found dead just outside the fort, right after the robbery.”
“Leaving a two-way split. For something over eleven thousand dollars you were prepared to spend three more years in prison. Is that it? Hardly seems worth it to me.”
Nick Story said, “Bellary, there’s a lot to it you don’t know; and a lot I don’t care to explain.”
“Nobody knows who the fourth gang-member was?”
“Nobody but me,” said Nick Story. Six glanced at him. Story’s pretended laughter did not conceal something else, something as bitter as acid.
The road turned along a ridge, dropped slantwise to the bottom, and followed the winding shaded course of a stream. Rafferty said, “What are your plans now?”
Story said, “I like you, Rasselas. You’re a persistent cuss.”
“Look, why don’t you just call me Steve?”
Story was musing: “They pay you five cents a day for prison labor. No pay on Sundays and holidays. In seven years that comes to one hundred seven dollars and forty-five cents. You spend a little on shoes and a little on soap and a little on cigarettes, and after seven years you don’t have a whole lot left.” Story turned his bright pale eyes on Rafferty.
“I guess you don’t,” said Rafferty.
“Seguro que si,” Nick Story muttered in Spanish. “You can just bet on that, Battery.”
Jeremy Six rode off the trail and watered his horse at the stream. Birds chattered in the treetops; branches laid a lacing of shadows across the ground. A small froth of white foam crested the swift stream. The other two men had followed him and now watered their mounts; Nick Story got down to fill his canteen. “How far from here to Rifle Gap?”
Six said, “Two hours, maybe a little more.”
Story made no reply; he capped his canteen and got mounted. Six rode back to the trail, paying no notice to the reporter and the ex-convict, but they kept up with him as if taking it for granted that he accepted their company. Their verbose conversation continued:
“I guess,” said Rafferty, “a lot of things have changed since you went in.”
“Some have,” Story acknowledged.
“How about you, Nick? Have you changed?”
“I’m older by twenty-five hundred and fifty-five days.”
“That all?”
Story shrugged. “You grow older. Nothing stays the same. Nothing but a man’s love and a man’s hate. Love and hate, they stick with a man.”
“Can’t they change?”
“Maybe,” said Nick Story. “Maybe the love can die. But hate—I’ll tell you something, Glossary. Take a little hate and put it inside a man and let it fester there for a good long time.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t go away. It just settles like coffee grounds. And it’s just as sour-tasting and just as impossible to get rid of.”
Rafferty said softly, “Who do you hate, Nick? The prosecutor? The judge?”
“Do I look that idiotic?” Story broke off, long enough to light a new cigarette. He appeared to be a chain-smoker. “They had nothing personal against me. You don’t hate men like that. Maybe you hate what they did to you, for a little while. But it’s not the same thing.”
“Your partner, then. The other member of the gang. Did he get away with all the money?”
“Did he?” Story echoed.
“If that’s it, why didn’t you turn state’s evidence against him? Turn him in?”
Nick Story grinned at him. “I’ll tell you this much, Tatterfee. Nothing’s near as simple as your orderly little journalistic mind would like to make it.” He waved his cigarette around. “For instance, take these two cattle ranchers who’re toe-to-toe down in the Concho Basin. You probably figure it’s just a damnfool vengeance feud over some property rights. But if that’s how you’d see it, then you’d be just as wrong as the rest of them.”
“Tell me about it, then.”
Story tapped him amiably on the arm. “A word of advice, Rafferty.”
Rafferty opened his mouth. “It’s Raf—oh, okay.”
“A word of advice. When you see two big mobs of men squaring off to fight each other, the way it’s shaping up in the Concho Basin, just remember this. There’s always room for a smart man to step into a fight like that and reap a profit from both sides.”
Nick Story gave him a friendly grin and poked the cigarette up at a jaunty angle in his mouth. His head turned. “What do you think about that, Marshal?”
Six didn’t bother to answer. He rode around a bend and traveled a stretch of straight road that passed between boulder-studded slopes. The reporter and the ex-convict were talking again, riding abreast, a length behind Six. He caught, in a corner of his vision, a glitter of reflected sunlight; he tensed his throat to call a warning, but it was too late: a rifle shot crashed down out of the rocks.
Six
It had the deep-throated roar of a heavy-caliber buffalo rifle. Whipping his head around, Six had a glimpse of Rafferty throwing up his green-sleeved arms and pitching out of the saddle. Nick Story was reining his rearing horse toward cover on the far side of the road. Taking a calculated chance, Six rammed spurs into the horse’s flanks and charged straight up the hillside toward the hidden rifle.
Marshal Jeremy Six #3 Page 3