Trouble at the Redstone (Leisure Western)

by John D. Nesbitt

  He rubbed her hip. “Kitten, I need to go.”

  “What?”

  “I need to go.”

  She turned to him with the familiar smell of whiskey on her breath. He was sure his was the same.

  As their lips drew apart, she said, “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s dark. I need to get back to the ranch.”

  She gave a long sigh. “Don’t go yet.”

  “I have to go pretty soon.”

  She hooked her leg over his and drew him closer. “Pretty soon isn’t right now.”

  He found his way to the stable, and after the fewest possible words with the man there, he led the gray horse into the night. The moon wasn’t up yet, so he figured the time to be around ten or so. He hoped the ride back to the ranch would help clear his head. He took deep breaths and opened his eyes as wide as he could.

  He was wrong. The moon was out. He just hadn’t seen it because of the buildings. Now at the edge of town he could see it, a few days past a full moon, coming up in the dark sky.

  A whistling, swishing sound brushed past his right ear. Something knocked his hat cockeyed, and the loop of a rope tightened around his upper arms. As the horse bolted from under him, his right foot hung up in the stirrup and then twisted free. He landed on his shoulder and hip, and as he sat up, someone leaned over and punched him in the face. The man leaned closer, loosened the rope, and tossed it aside. Then he kicked Will in the shoulder, the ribs, and the hip.

  As the horse’s hoofbeats retreated, Will knew only a few things for sure. The man who had kicked him did not wear spurs and was too big to be Max Aden. The man who roped him was not the man who kicked him. It was going to be a long walk back to the ranch.

  He stood up, found his hat, and felt himself in all the sore spots. Checking his pockets, he found the packet of coins from Mrs. Welles. None of that had been a dream.

  Chapter Nine

  Will jabbed the posthole digger down into the dark hole, pried on the two handles, and hauled up another load of dry dirt. He emptied the digger and plunged it down into the hole again.

  His body hurt in every way he knew of—a headache from the hangover and hot sun, a stomachache from the greasy breakfast after almost a day of nothing but beer and whiskey, soreness where he had been punched and kicked, an ache in his feet from the long walk in boots, and now this pain in his arms and chest from digging in the hard white clay. Sweat poured down his face, spread across the front and back of his shirt, and made his pants stick to his legs.

  He couldn’t help thinking this was Ingram’s idea of being clever, to send him and Calvert out to replace a fence corner at this time of year. It was much easier to dig postholes in the springtime when the ground was moist, and the dirt tamped in better then, too. As nearly as Will could see, there was no urgency to this task; it was just a grueling job for the hottest time of the year.

  Jim Calvert stood tamping the previous post they had put in. “Hard and dry, isn’t it?”

  “You said it.”

  Will’s shirt was soaked and had dirt clinging to it when noontime rolled around. Calvert brought out the flour sack of cold meat and biscuits, and the two men began eating.

  “I guess Earl thought it would be good for me to sweat it out,” Will said,” but it’s going to take more than one day. The pit of my stomach feels like someone poured it full of acid and then gave it a kick.”

  “He just doesn’t have any sympathy for a man who drinks.”

  “I wish it was just the drink. That would be bad enough, but it wouldn’t be half of what I feel.”

  “Well, you had a few people guessing.” Calvert opened his pocketknife.

  “I imagine. What did they say?”

  Calvert cut off a piece of gristle and tossed it away, then cut himself a bit of beef. “Earl said you came back in the early afternoon with drink on your breath and then went off to see a woman. None of us saw you in town, so Max said you must be laid up in a crib somewhere.”

  “Where was he?”

  “He was in the Lucky Diamond. So were we. Brad and I left so we could get back before dark, but Max said he wanted a couple more. He came in after us, and I know it was dark by then.”

  “Before my horse showed up?”

  “Oh, yeah. That horse came in after we went to bed. I heard the hoofbeats, and so did Earl. When you didn’t come in to bed, he said he’d go take a look. He lit a lantern, and I decided to go along. I thought you might be out there in trouble, but all we found was the horse by himself, standing by the water trough.”

  “Was Max still in his bunk?”

  Calvert waited to swallow. “I believe so. Why?”

  “Well, before I even left town, someone roped me and jerked me off my horse. I admit I was a little stewed and didn’t have my wits about me, but it was dark and I didn’t expect a thing.”

  “What would they do that for?”

  “So someone could hit me and kick me while I was on the ground.”

  Calvert frowned. “And you think it might have been Max?”

  “Not the man who pounded on me. He was bigger. But whoever roped me made a good catch.”

  “You think there were two men?”

  “I think so, but like I said, I was pretty woozy.”

  “I believe it. You stumbled around plenty when you finally came in.”

  “I had a hell of a time gettin’ up this mornin’. I was lucky to make it to breakfast. What did they say about me before I got there?”

  “Well, you know how Ingram is. He made it seem like he wasn’t expressin’ an opinion, but he said he thought you had enough to drink for a while. Then Max chipped in and said it was a pity a man had to drink so much that he fell off his horse.”

  Will forced himself to swallow the bite of dry biscuit. “Oh, he’s a smart one. If he wasn’t there, I bet he knows who was. I could feel him smirkin’ at me.”

  “You think he could have been the one that roped you?”

  “It’s possible, as I think about it. They could have caught my horse and held it, given him a good head start, and then let it loose.”

  Calvert held his thumb against a chunk of meat as he brought his blade toward him to cut off a bite. “Well, I hope you got somethin’ out of it to make you feel it was worth it, at least a little bit.”

  “I think I did.”

  “You don’t remember.”

  “Oh, I remember. It’s just that I feel so beat up and dragged out that I don’t know what’s worth it and what isn’t.”

  Calvert laughed. “Well, you know Ingram has no interest in the drinkin’, but I could tell he was a little resentful that you had a woman somewhere. Whether you did, of course, I’m not askin’, but I could tell he was convinced of it, and I don’t think he thought you deserved it.”

  Will smiled. “Maybe I didn’t. But I don’t think I deserved the rest of it, either.” He reflected. “Well, maybe I did.”

  “Be that as it may, I still don’t see the brilliance in pullin’ us off our regular work to come out and do this for a day.”

  “Just to make me sweat as I dig holes. And to let you see it, I guess.”

  Calvert pursed his lips and watched his blade as he brought it through the chunk of cold meat again. “Well, like the old man says, all work is good work.” He smiled wryly. “I guess it is, for either of them, as long as someone else is doin’ it.”

  By mid afternoon, Will’s head began to clear enough that his thoughts didn’t skip around, and he was able to think through his visit with Mrs. Welles. He did not think she had planned out the way things went. She did not seem that calculating, and her method was not that controlled. Had the act been premeditated as a way of keeping him inspired to follow through with his task, she not only would have been more careful with her own drinking, but she also could have saved herself fifty dollars. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that she had planned the money as the incentive. He saw her more venturesome actions as impulsive
, a yielding to temptation, aided by a few drinks and a desire to get even with a man who had run off, as she saw it, with a guttersnipe.

  Will found it puzzling that a man would walk out on a woman like Mrs. Welles, who had her basic decency and intelligence, in order to mingle with a person like Blanche. Yet there was a logic to it, if he followed the reasoning in the right direction. People sought the company of others like themselves, and if Al Vetch had been with or lived with Blanche before, he was closer to her in nature than he was to the woman he exploited. He might be able to act the part in order to take advantage of her and her money, but he would revert to his true nature or level. As the old wisdom had it, what was in a person’s blood would eventually show itself.

  Up until this development, Will had had little more than the man’s name to go on. Now, even though he had but the haziest image of the man’s physical presence, he felt that he knew him better than before. The man with no face was a man with no scruples, crooked as a dog’s leg, compunctious as a snake, comfortable as an alley cat with the blood that flowed in his own veins.

  Will reined in his horse at the northernmost point in his ride. By his estimate, Dunn Station was less than two miles off. He could make it there and back, leave out riding most of his circle this one time, and not keep Jim Calvert waiting for long. With a small pang of guilt and worry, he put his spurs to the bay horse and set off at a lope.

  A nondescript saddle horse was tied in front as Will rode up to the station. The doorway was open, and Dunn appeared in its shadow. He was wearing his dark-stained brown hat, as if he had been outside and had just gone in.

  “What do you know?”

  “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop in.”

  “That’s fine.” Dunn motioned with his stubbled chin. “Go ahead and water him. Then come on inside.”

  Will took the horse around the building to the trough. As he loosened the cinch and let the bay drink, he looked across the back area of Dunn’s property and saw the fenced-in oil seep. Nothing stirred in the hot afternoon, and the sun reflected off the seep in dull black streaks. When he thought the horse had enough to drink, he took the animal around front and tied him.

  Once inside the station, Will found Dunn and another man sitting at the table. They each had a low, wide tumbler with about two fingers of amber liquid in it, and they had an air of having suspended their conversation.

  “Good afternoon,” said Will.

  The other man turned in his chair and nodded. He wore a sweat-stained hat and the clothes of a common ranchman or farmhand, and he looked as if had missed his weekly shave.

  “Sit down,” said Dunn. “I’ll get you somethin’.”

  “Actually,” said Will, looking at the table and not seeing an easy place to get a seat, “I didn’t come for a drink.”

  “Just water.”

  Will assumed he meant the horse. “Well, not exactly that, either, though it’s welcome once we got here.”

  The dark eyes roved over him and let up. “I don’t know what else it would be. Castor oil?”

  “No, I’m pretty well fixed for that, thanks.”

  “You’ve got me, then.”

  Will glanced at the stranger and came back to Dunn. “Maybe some tobacco.”

  “Oh, all right.” Dunn pushed himself up out of his chair and walked, not without labor, to the other end of his establishment. He went behind the store counter and reached toward a shelf. “One or two?”

  “I guess I’ll take two.”

  Dunn set the pair of small white sacks on the counter. “Anything else?”

  “Actually,” said Will, with his voice lowered, “I was wondering if you heard anything about me.”

  Dunn raised his heavy eyebrows and gave a blank stare at the counter. “Nothin’ new. Why?”

  “Well, a little later in the day on Sunday, after I left here, I ended up in town. I had what you might call a business visit, and then someone surprised me in the dark and got in a few good licks on me. Since that was the day before yesterday, I thought you might have heard something by now.”

  Dunn shook his head. “Haven’t heard a thing.” He cast a glance in the direction of the man sitting by himself at the table. “We could ask Al.”

  “Al?”

  “Oh, he’s not any Al you ever heard of. Besides, you ought to meet him.”

  Will paid for his tobacco and followed the proprietor to the table. Dunn cleared his voice and remained standing.

  “Al, this here is Will Dryden. Will, this is Al Stegman.”

  Stegman turned in his chair and nodded, very much as before, and Will saw that they weren’t going to shake hands.

  Dunn sat down and rested his forearms on the table. “Ah, don’t worry, Al,” he said. “He’s all right.” Dunn looked up at Will. “When you first came in, or that is, when you were waterin’ your horse, I told him who you were and who you worked for. He’s got no more love for the old bastard than I do, but I don’t think that’ll bother you any.”

  “Not really.”

  “Just to give you an idea, Al.” Dunn motioned with his thumb. “This fella had a fight with Max Aden the first five minutes he was in town. So he’s not exactly a company man.”

  Stegman made a small shrug.

  The host directed his attention to Will again. “Al here, like I said, doesn’t admire your boss very much.”

  “Oh.”

  “Finds him pooshy.”

  “Sorry if you’ve had any trouble,” Will offered, but Stegman did not respond.

  Dunn continued. “The boss of the Redstone is tryin’ to persuade him to sell out.”

  “Where’s your place?”

  Stegman half turned and said, “Out west of Popper Spring. A good ways from here, actually.”

  Dunn wagged his head. “Al comes here because there’s someone who shares his point of view. And walls don’t talk.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “By the way, Al, have you heard about anything that happened in town on Sunday?”

  Stegman shook his head. “Nope. Haven’t even been there for damn near two weeks.”

  “Well, you don’t have to go there to hear some-thin’.” Dunn swirled his glass.

  “I haven’t anyway.”

  Silence fell for a few seconds until Will spoke. “How long have you lived out there by Popper Spring?”

  “Three years. Long enough to prove up.”

  “And now he’s tryin’ to buy you out?”

  Stegman’s jaw lengthened. “Looks like he’s doin’ it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear of it. A man works hard, and—”

  “Mister, don’t feel sorry for me, or even say you do. I know the kind of men he has workin’ for him, and I know when it’s time to go.”

  Dunn spoke again. “This fella’s not that kind, Al.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take your word for it, but it doesn’t make any difference.”

  Will did not feel comfortable keeping anything from Jim Calvert, but he decided not to tell him right away about his visit at Dunn Station. For one thing, he was shirking his work, and for another, his partner might well wonder if he had been sneaking off for a drink. There would be time to tell Calvert later if it seemed to matter enough.

  Supper that evening was quiet. Donovan did not show up, and no one said a word about where he had gone. Will was used to the others not saying anything about the most obvious occurrences, and he made it a point not to ask questions around In-gram or Aden anyway, so he ate his supper without speaking. Afterward he went outside to smoke by himself.

  He had it in his mind that sooner or later, if he loitered outside, Pearl would come to the front door of the cookshack. He did not know what gave him that notion, and he knew that it might be just a fancy, but he held on to the idea. He also knew that she would not come to the door while the other men were still inside, but he thought he should establish the pattern of going out and smoking by himself in the evening.

&nb
sp; Supper went on without Donovan again the next night. The workdays and meals had taken on a quality of sameness, a quiet and uneventful continuum. As Ingram took out his watch to wind it, Will got up from the table, put his utensils in the pan, and went outside. He went across to the barn, where he rolled and smoked a cigarette.

  Night fell, and the other men drifted out of the cookshack and into the bunk house. Will sat inside the open doorway of the barn, not lighting another cigarette because he did not want the glowing tip to show where he was. The door of the cookshack lay open, but he did not have a plan of what he would do if Pearl appeared. He thought that for the first time, if and when she did show up, he would not make his presence known.

  He waited for a long time—somewhere between a half hour and an hour, by his estimate. Then a form approached the door. It was a silhouette because of the bright lantern light inside, but from the breadth of the shape he could tell it was Blanche.

  She paused for a few seconds at the door and then stepped out. It looked as if she was carrying a lard pail in one hand and a gallon jug in the other. As she passed from the soft glow of light that poured from the doorway, Will could make out only the indistinct pale form moving away in the darkness.

  He thought she was headed to the ranch house, which had no light showing in any of the windows. Glad he had left his spurs in the bunk house, he rose from his seat and moved with quiet steps along the front of the barn. The form was still moving diagonally across the yard, in the direction of the little stone structure he had taken to be a spring house. No light appeared there, either.

  He moved along the outside of the corral, some fifty or sixty yards behind Blanche. He thought she came to a stop, so he stopped. He heard a muffled rapping sound, a voice, the click of a latch, and then the scrape of a door opening. A ray of light spilled out for a moment and then closed off.

  He was sure he had seen a couple of windows in the little stone house during the daytime, and now he supposed they were blocked out. But there was sure enough someone in there. Will let out a long breath. He could kick himself. Here he had been at this ranch for ten days, looking for a man who was right under his nose.