Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  “No!”

  “A deadhard man I hear, Dale. I’m surprised he didn’t draw on you. Just yestiddy he brought in Old Man Sims from the mountains. You know, where the old coot’s been hiding out after he killed the deputy? Took a lot of sand to bring in Old Man Sims. Alone. But, by golly, he done it.”

  Dale nodded to himself. “So that’s where he went after he murdered Gramp. Marshal in Texas.”

  Homer said, “What was it you called him? ‘Link’?”

  Dale said nothing. He looked down at the rutted street. He shivered.

  He was still shivering when he got home at dawn the next morning.

  The moment he hit the yard, he went for the cabin and burst into the bedroom where Rory was still sleeping. What followed was a case of hair in the butter.

  As Rory listened, tense, half-risen from her pillow, her face slowly turned to stone, white, hard. She said absolutely nothing all the while he talked. Nor did she say anything when she got up to get at the work of the day. In fact, she didn’t say anything all day. Not a word. Just stone, white and hard.

  After that first spilling of it, Dale didn’t say a word either. It was her turn to begin.

  In the evening, after Gram and Joey were asleep and the house was silent, and they were just in bed, she finally opened up. “Don’t touch me. As long as that devil Link is still alive don’t touch me.”

  “What!”

  “How come you didn’t shoot him down on sight?”

  “Holy snakes, woman, is it my fault he wouldn’t draw?”

  “You always wish in one hand and spit in the other.”

  “But, Rory, he wouldn’t draw.”

  “Link ain’t a fool. From what you say, he’d’ve been a fool to draw after you threw down on him.”

  “Now wait. First you say I should’ve shot him on sight. Then you say I didn’t give him a chance to draw. When I really didn’t throw down on him. I just had my hand on my gun. Waiting for him to make his move.”

  “He’s still alive, ain’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  In the moonlight she looked at his long scrawny neck; then turned away from him. “I guess there ain’t much Hammett blood in you after all.”

  “Rory!”

  “And that’s a pity, seein’ that so much Hammett blood’s been lost. Gramp first. And later on our fathers, Gordon and Raymond.”

  Dale reared back. “What? Are you sayin’ Link killed them too?’’

  “I am.”

  “You are! What makes you think that all of a sudden?”

  Rory stirred. “You make me sick. If you didn’t figure that out …”

  “But they was supposed to have drowned.”

  “Supposed to have, yes. When the truth is Link was around town about that time. He knew they were coming across that flood with a boat. He could easily have laid for them behind some willows, and shot them, and let them drift down the Missouri where only God knows where they disappeared to.”

  “Holy snakes, woman, if you knew that, why didn’t you say something about it afore?”

  Rory turned away from him. “Oh, you boys were all riled up at the time, so I didn’t want to add more. Besides, I thought you knew.”

  “Well I’ll be goldurned by an angel from hell. You had this all in your head all this time and you never talked up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great thunder!”

  “There was plenty of talk about him being around in the pool hall.”

  “I never heard it.”

  She lay like a stone next to him.

  “My God, Rory, if I’d a shot him on sight today, with Homer Fox looking on right there, why! I’d be gurgling from the end of a rope right now.”

  Silence. A long silence.

  “If you’re so hot for a killing bee,” he cried, “why don’t you go do it yourself? You’re a Hammett.”

  “Coward.”

  “I don’t believe he dry-gulched our dads.”

  “Coward.”

  He exploded inside. He bounded up, all knees and balled fists. In the vague moonlight in the bedroom he saw her face half-turned away from him. He struck it. It was flesh to hit and he hit it. “Damn you, Rory,” he cried, sobbing, “what do you want? Hah? What do you want?” He bellowed so loud the moss-clay chinking fell out of the wall, pittering bit by bit on the puncheon floor. “What do you want of me, hah?”

  Heavy with child, crude from it even, Rory rolled over, and rose up in her white nightgown, and hit him back. The blow struck him as he sat hunched forward on the edge of the bed, teetering, lost in rage and turmoil. It knocked him off the bed. He hit the floor on the side of his face. “There,” she said.

  He lay hunched over on his knees, moaning more from mortification than from hurt. “Woman, woman, woman, what do you want of me, hah? I married ye like ye wanted it, didn’t I?”

  Silence.

  “You got what ye wanted from me, didn’t ye? A willow that’d bend in the least breeze?”

  Silence.

  “Or are ye sorry now ye didn’t marry Cain after all, despite both yer thick necks, the one ye really loved and that we all knew, even if he would’ve made you walk chalk?” He sobbed on the floor. “Walk chalk, that’s right. That’s just what he would have made you do had you married him. That stubhorn is a dozen times tougher’n me any day of the week. Than all of us put together. You. Me. Harry. He’d a put you in place. He’s got gravel and rock in his gizzard.”

  Silence.

  “Rory, Rory, woman, what do you want of me?” On his knees, beating his head on the floor in terrible mind-blinding mortification, he bellowed in the night…

  In the bedroom, and lying lank beside her, with Cain asleep in the other room on his bedroll, and Gram and Joey asleep in the far lean-to, and the single coyote yowling lonesome from the alkali hills, and remembering it all in agonized recall, certain words said by Link suddenly burned across Dale’s brain.

  —You sure no one ever did you a favor?

  If the words meant what he thought Link meant by them, Link had done him a favor killing Gramp Hammett. The old patriarch wasn’t around any more to roar about cousins inbreeding.

  —You sure no one ever did you a favor?

  Fact was fact, hate it as he might. Link had helped him get Rory, had helped him get his son boy Joey, had fixed it so that right now Rory could be lying in bed with him with his own seed planted in her belly once again. No wonder his hand wouldn’t come up with that gun at Great Western.

  Rory stirred beside him. She groaned a little.

  Dale whispered, “What’s the matter, Rory?”

  “Oh, Dale, the last day or so, this baby in me has got so restless. He’s all elbows and knees.”

  “Poor girl.”

  “He’s tearing me so.”

  “My love.”

  “Dale?”

  “Yes?”

  “Give me a backrub, will you? A long and good one.”

  “Yes, my love, yes.”

  She rolled over, partly on her belly, partly on her side. He straddled her, a knee to each side. He reached down and pulled up her nightgown and began working his thumbs into the indentation at the end of her spine.

  She groaned in pleasure.

  He worked up horny vertebrae by horny vertebrae, pressing through the flesh under her skin, deep into the bone, worked his thumbs in and around each one, rubbing, massaging, setting up a motion on the bed so that the hide spring beneath began to creak rhythmically.

  She groaned aloud in delight. “Oh that’s good, Dale. Good.”

  His thumbs climbed, deep up the hollow of her back.

  “You don’t know how good it is, Dale. You don’t know. Oh.”

  His thumbs worked up between her shoulder blades, pressing in and around each one. He volved the shoulder blades themselves around a few times, fingertips slipping around her chest until they touched where her breasts sloped down.

  “Oh, that’s so good, Dale.”

  His thumbs con
tinued up, at last slipped around her full Hammett neck.

  “It’s such a relief, Dale.”

  He worked his thumbs all the way up into the roots of her gold hair. The hide spring continued to squeak under their rolling rhythm.

  “You’re so good to me, Dale.”

  He wondered if Cain could hear them in the other room. The thought of it made him wonder what stubhorn Cain did for beans. A black horse was hardly enough.

  “You’re so good to me.”

  He started over again, beginning at the end of her spine and working up, thumbs screwging around and around, working in, pressing, fingers gathering up her flesh in folds, massaging it.

  Well, he thought, each man to his own luck. Me? I’m set.

  Cain

  Cain could hardly believe his ears.

  He listened again. Yes, it was the hide spring creaking in the other room all right. Great grandad!

  He couldn’t get over it. So far along and yet Dale would bother her. And bother her, with him, his brother Cain, guest in their house. And that too after the black eyes they’d given each other.

  Darkness gathered in his mind.

  Then he heard a different sound. Ear tight on the warbag on the puncheon floor, he thought he could make out the rhythmic beat of a horse galloping up. He raised off the floor; listened. The coyote was silent. It was galloping hooves all right Almost without thinking he groped in the dark with his left hand for his .45 where he kept it near his head. The butt of the gun fell easy into his palm.

  He remembered Gramp’s instruction. “If you must shoot, Cain boy, do it easy. Let your muscles take their own time. You’ll be surprised how quick they can be. And see to it that your grip is firm and your snapdown dead sure.”

  He listened, head up in the dark, lone predator on the wait. The galloping was still there, though now the sound of it seemed to have faded somewhat. Who could be passing by this late in the night and this far down the Shaken Grass? Link? Or some other of Jesse’s men?

  This was what a man got for a dark past, for having killed Cecil Guth, for having helped Jesse catch mavericks. The least sound in the night and a guilty man’s head raised off his pillow. Yes, and let a waddy like brother Harry mutter in his sleep and the guilty one popped open an ear to hear what he might say. And let a buddy like brother Dale make some joking remark and the guilty one brooded on it for days afterward. Yes, no matter how a man tried to clean up his life after a bad deed had been done, he never came to a time when he could sleep all night long.

  The galloping continued to fade off. In its place the hide spring creaking in the other room became louder.

  Cain lay back on his warbag pillow. The crazy fools. Had Dale lost all sense? Great grandad.

  He covered his head with his forearm, hoping to shut out the sound. But it still came through. He pressed his arm down until his ears roared from pressure. Yet still the sound came through.

  He remembered how beautiful Rosemary had been before she got married. At seventeen she’d had a full neck and bosom, a slim firm waist, sturdy legs with the inside line as straight as a string with a weight at the end of it, and oh God in that high wide face of hers such dark blue eyes they were almost black. He’d been crazy-wild about the dark dreamy fury he’d seen waiting in her eyes. Oh, with Gramp’s edict against inbreeding hanging over them it had been a tremulous time.

  Well, Dale had her now. And what had once been a laughing buddy girl riding the range with him, going along with him on some mad youthful lark, was now just another mother almost thirty years old, fatting up, and as pregnant as a female could get. A regular crab of a wife. Mean even, if what he’d seen at the table was any sign.

  That fool Dale had let her get out of hand. Hadn’t laid down the law hard enough. Hadn’t told her the rules of the trail.

  He remembered the way she’d housebroke Joey. Or the way she hadn’t. The way to train a boy was to watch for his times, and then, a minute or so before, set him on the pot. Nature worked like a clock, if given half a chance. Like the seasons. Or heat times. Catch what her times was and a man had her tamed. Joey could easy have been housebroke a half-year earlier if she’d taken the time and trouble. She was a good cook, sure. She could ride the range with a puncher, sure. And she was generally kind to the boy, sure. But when it came to training for the rough trail of manhood ahead, there she was a busted cinch. In fact, there she was mean, since like Gramp always said, strict training was true kindness.

  He lifted his arm off his ear; listened some more. Hell’s fire and little fishes! That blasted hide spring was still creaking.

  Of a sudden it came to him what the galloping was. Like a squeaky step in a hotel staircase, the floor under Rory and Dale was giving to the roll of their bed.

  Once more he clapped an arm hard over his head; pressed until his ears buzzed. But, like before, the sound of it was still there. And if anything it seemed clearer than when his ear was uncovered.

  He rolled back and forth on .his hard bedroll. The thought of what they were doing as well as the sound of it was maddening. Burn their horny hearts. Had they lost all good sense and she so far along?

  Finally he had enough, and he decided to get out of there. Feeling around in the dark, he first put on his hat, then his vest, and last his pants and gun. From old habit he kept his hindquarters covered in the suggans until the last second.

  In one sweep he rolled up his bedroll and threw it over a shoulder. He tiptoed out, timing the touch of his toe to the creak in the other room. He closed the door softly behind him.

  It was very quiet out. No coyote call. The leaves in the cottonwoods overhead hung strangely still. Darkness was very deep under the trees. Looking to the west, he saw that the moon was almost down. It rested a full ball of dull gold on a ridge near the Old Man. The Big Stonies loomed up under the old moon like the great hoary hump of a buffalo bull.

  He carried the bedroll out to the hitching rack and tied it on behind the cantle of his saddle. From one of his saddlebags he dug out a stick of red-stripe peppermint candy. He stepped softly across the dusty yard, his danglers chinking gently. When he got to the corral gate he whistled low. He listened. No sound. He whistled low again, setting his tongue thin against his upper lip, letting the breath out part hiss and part tune.

  Out of the dark black Lonesome hove up over him, head above him like the shadow of a great bird.

  “There you are. How about ridin’ me home now, huh, boy?”

  Lonesome lipped him; searched his clothes.

  “You been a good horse, huh?”

  Lonesome found the hand with the candy and with soft rubbery lips worked open the fingers and very delicately nibbled up the candy into his mouth. In a second there was a loud crack, and then the sound of crunching as horse teeth ground around and around on the sweet.

  One hand under his muzzle and the other over his poll, Cain led Lonesome through the gate and then over to the hitching rack. He threw on the saddle and bedroll in a flowing sweep. This time Lonesome was too busy licking his lips to balloon out his belly against the cinch straps. Cain slipped on the bridle, one hand dividing the wet lips and the teeth and the other pulling down the rubbery ears, each in turn.

  Cain stepped across and, reins tight in hand, eased Lonesome off the yard. Lonesome’s ears worked back and forth, sometimes singly, sometimes together. When they got beyond the first turn in the trail beside the Shaken Grass, Cain let him out some.

  Soon bits of foam from the horse’s mouth sprinkled up into his face. For the first time in a long while, Cain rode heavy in the saddle. Not once had Rory given a sign that she’d noticed his new black clothes.

  Cain

  It was late when he awoke. And he awoke with a cracking headache.

  The headache seemed to be all over his brain, not just behind his eyes as he so often had it when looking at the sun-white land too long. He scratched harsh stub nails into black tousled hair as if to dig it up. It burned. It felt thick enough to explode.

/>   For a full minute he had trouble rousing himself to face both the day and the headache. What if he did work up a good-sized spread and became fairly well-to-do? What for? Just to have the money? Who for? Rory? So far as he could see there’d be just more endless unrolling of mornings waking up empty-hearted on a smelly old hide while watching spiders catching flies overhead. It looked very much like his old cabin would remain a boar’s nest to the end.

  The headache got worse. It spat in his head like a frying pan full of boiling-hot lard. Though he couldn’t remember a time when his belly had backed up on game, he decided it must’ve been the bighorn he ate at Rory’s.

  There came to him the soft faint sound of water moiling over stones. He licked his dry lips. Fresh mountain water in the Shaken Grass. That would help clear the prickling thickness in the head. It’d be a lot better than a cigarette.

  Taking down his old work clothes from a peg—all of them a faded black with weathered gray edges—he once again went through the ritual of dressing in bed: first the skypiece, then the vest over the shirt, then the pants, and finally boots and gun.

  To ease his cracking head, he walked as lightly as he could to the front door and then out on the stoop. The sun was halfway up the sky, a good nine o’clock at least. Picking up a pail, boot heels stobbing into the gray dust on the yard, he went straight for the ford by the bridge. He knelt down on a large flat red rock, laid aside his hat, and though the top of his head seemed to burn worse for a second, he stuck his nose and mouth and forehead under the pink water. He drank, gulping, all the while letting the water stream against his face. He could taste, even smell, the exact scent of certain springs high up under the Old Man. The cool water seemed to douse the hot frying in his head somewhat.

  He stood up. Water dripped from the end of his nose and the tips of his mustache. He blinked, clearing water out of his eyes. He filled his lungs with a cool breath, drawing it all the way down to where he thought he could feel the cold water in his belly.

  He looked around up at the owling brilliant sun again. “I sure slept me a hole in the day all right.” He ran a hand over his hollow face. His day-old beard rasped like a rough whisper. As he rubbed his chin, he became conscious of hunger, even ferocious hunger.