by Jim Thompson
“I hear you’ve got a deputy opening,” he said simply. “I’d like to have the job.”
Bradley seemed both stunned and embarrassed by the announcement. He pointed out that he liked to have a man perm’nent, whereas Tom would soon be heading back to school.
“I won’t be. Even if I had the money, it would be out of the question. I’ve been out too long. I’d practically have to begin all over.”
“But a deppity job…” Bradley protested. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with it, of course. Takes a man t’hold it, and the pay’s pretty good for these parts. But—but…”
“I see. You’re thinking I wouldn’t fit in with your other men. I’d act in a way they’d resent.”
“Well”—Bradley squirmed—“you wouldn’t mean to, of course. Know it ain’t like you to be uppity. But—”
“Now, looky, Sheriff Dave,” Tom drawled, “gimme a chance, huh? You just gimme a chance, an’ there won’t be no kicks. Those men o’ your’n’ll cotton to me like burrs to a dog fox.”
“Like I was sayin’,” the sheriff continued. “You wouldn’t”—He broke off, his eyes popping in a wide double take. “What’d you say, boy?”
“I mean it,” Tom grinned. “I’ll fit in, an’ that’s a fact. Won’t stand out no more’n a fly turd in a box of pepper.”
He got the job, and he kept it. It was easy, frighteningly easy. Descent always is. It had taken centuries of fine breeding, plus a small fortune, to make him what he was. It took less than a year to completely unmake him, to put him on the level with half-literate “courthouse cowboys,” men who made a boast of ignorance and were warily suspicious of its opposite.
Superficially, that is, the change took no longer than that. Actually, the transformation never took place. For behind—inside—the drawling, doltish Tom Lord, there was another, the real man. The Lord of the conquistadores, the Lord who could not live the role he was cast in and was unmercifully denied the right to die.
He, the real man, became smaller and smaller as the years went by, and the outer shell became thicker. But he was there, all right. A little of him was constantly poking through to the surface, showing up in exaggerated Westernisms and savagely sly gibes—blindly, bitterly striking back at the world he could not change.
Shrewd old Dave Bradley noticed, and spoke to him about it. Was he feelin’ kind of mean, huh? Was he kind of sore at folks gen’rally, windin’ up to give ’em a boot the first time he caught ’em squatting?
Tom seemed baffled by the question. Just couldn’t cipher out what Sheriff Dave was diggin’ at. “Why, what have I got t’be riled about? Looks to me like I got just about everything a man could ask for. The county takin’ care of me, an’ a swell bunch of fellas to work with—always funnin’ and grab-assin’—and nothin’ at all to fret my mind. Nothin’ that calls for any thinkin’. No real work, you might say, just keepin’ myself handy and lookin’ pretty, like I wouldn’t pee if my pants was on fire.”
Bradley chuckled unwillingly. “Now, boy. I—”
“You think I’m jokin’?” Lord said. “Why, looky, Dave. Here I am only thirty-three years old, an’ I’m deppity sheriff in a county of danged near nineteen hundred population. No tellin’ how far I’ll go in the next ten years!”
“You might,” said Bradley, “go further than you think.”
“Says which?”
The sheriff explained. The oil fields were edging toward Pardee County. Already more people were drifting in. “I ain’t too active no more, Tom. I could use a chief deputy. It’d be quite a bit better’n you got now, an’ when I step out you’d have the job cinched.”
“Me? Me sheriff of the whole county!” Tom was obviously stunned by the glorious prospect. “Why, I’m plumb tongue-tied, Dave! Just don’t hardly know what to say.”
“You got plenty of time to think of somethin’,” the sheriff pointed out drily. “Might be you won’t need to think of nothin’ at all.”
He was hurt. Lord was quickly contrite. “I’m sorry, Dave; it’s just a habit I’ve slipped into. I’m not man enough to fill your boots, and I’d never have the heart to try. But I’d surely like to be your chief deputy.”
“Well, now,” Bradley said as he cleared his throat noisily, “can’t think of a man I’d rather have, when it comes to that. But, Tom—Tom, boy”—over his glasses, he shot Lord a steel-blue glance—“watch yourself, huh? You got something eatin’ you. Drag it out in the open. Don’t let it take over with you.”
“I’ll watch it. I won’t let it take over,” Lord promised.
“You do that. Because there ain’t nothing uglier than a law man turned mean. He’s back behind his badge, and the common folks’re out in front of him. Kinda got the world by the tail, y’ know. Just pinchin’ it a little to begin with, then swingin’ it. An’ then taking a try at poppin’ its neck.”
The other deputies also noticed Lord’s clownish gibing, but they could not see it as that—without regarding themselves as ridiculous—nor did they interpret it for what it was. Tom was just tryin’ to be friendly, that was all. Just tryin’ to be one of the boys. And if he maybe worked a little too hard at it, you couldn’t fault a man for that. Why old Tom was one of the finest fellas you’d want to meet: always ready for a pint or a poker game, and plen-ty man besides. Don’t let the way he looks fool you, mister. There’s a fella that c’d hunt bears with a switch.
Far from being envious, they were pleased and proud of his eventual appointment as chief deputy. Ol’ Tom had it coming to him, if anyone did, and it was best all around that he should have it. If you’d picked one of them, now, one of the old-line deputies, the others would have been sore. But with Tom having a little somethin’ extra, it was all right. Made things pretty nice, any way you looked at it. Tom never hit you in the face with his learnin’—just talked an’ acted like anyone else—but don’t think he didn’t have it! Prob’ly the smartest man this side of the Pecos. And having a fella like that for chief deputy, well, it was plumb nice. Sort of made everything classier, like Pardee County was really comin’ up in the world.
So everyone was happy about Tom Lord’s new job. Everyone was content with his tenancy of it.
Everyone, that is, but the tenant himself.
He knew, by now, that far-west Texas must be his home forever. He had spent too much of his life here, become too much a part of the land and its people, to adapt to another place. And that was all right. He liked it here. He only disliked his existence here—the insistent necessity to be what he was not. Perhaps, if he was allowed to choose, if he had a free choice of being what he was or being something else, then the status quo would be tolerable. He might even decide to continue it.
But to have no choice, to be force-fed with a way of life, to have to sneak and crawl inside a tightening shell.…
It was not too late to break out of it. The desire to do so was still in him. Only one thing was needed: money. And where a fellow like him was going to lay his hands on any real money.…
Out of the dead and buried past, a voice whispered to him, whispered that the money could be had. It had been almost three decades since he had last heard that voice, almost thirty years since its owner had walked out of his life, with an impenetrable wall rising up behind her. But now she spoke to him again; hazily, he relived the brief moments of their long-ago parting:
The perfume…the moonlight drifting through the window…the cottonwood trees rustling in the wind…and a tiny gloved hand gently urging him to wakefulness:
And he, peevishly, “What you want, Mama? What you all dressed up for?”
“Ssh, darling. I want you to take this. Take very good care of it. It’s a-all—all I have to give you, and—Here: I’ll put it in your chest for you, right under your Tarzan books.”
“What is it, Mama? Where you goin’?”
“Never mind. You’ll understand when you’re older. Just take good care of it, and don’t tell a soul about it.”
“I can tell Papa, can’t I?”
&n
bsp; “No! He’d just laugh—call it a lot of nonsense. Anything I do or say, he’d…You mustn’t tell him, anyway. You’ll understand that later, too.”
“Mama, where you—?”
“You go back to sleep now. Hurry like a good boy, and I’ll stay here with you.”
And, he, brightening. “Yes’um. G’night, Mama.”
And she, very softly, her voice blurring into this slumber, “Good-bye, my darling…”
It was all still where she had put it, the thin parchment package wrapped in endless layers of rotting silk.
Tom exhumed it, and took it to a lawyer. Then, feeling pretty silly about the whole thing, telling himself that of course there was nothing to it, he sat back to await the verdict.
The lawyer was in his dotage, and he had never been much good to begin with. There had been no practice here to make him so, and being one of the people, as Tom was, he could exist comfortably in mediocrity.
His attitude, as he began to read the parchment, was anything but encouraging.
Another one of these things, huh? Yeah, he’d seen plenty of ’em in his time; used to be about as common as buried-treasure maps. See some Mex sheepherder, and you could just about bet beans to biscuits that he had one of the things in his bindle.
He frowned suddenly, squinted. He took off his glasses and polished them, then bent so close to the document that his beak nose brushed against it.
“Well, I’ll be danged,” he breathed. “Yes, sir, I will be danged!”
“Yes, sir?” Tom prompted.
“Hesh up, can’t you? You’re in such an all-fired hurry you c’n go somewheres else.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom meekly.
The lawyer fingered the parchment with almost loving delicacy. Taking a large magnifying glass from his desk, he scanned its faded, spidery lettering.
At last he leaned back in his chair and shook his head wonderingly.
“You got yourself somethin’ there, son. Looks like you’re about the biggest landowner in the county.”
“Honest?” Tom’s face cracked into a grin. “You really mean it?”
“Somethin’ wrong with your ears? I said so, didn’t I?” The lawyer eyed him sternly before continuing. “ ’Course it’s the worst land in the county, which makes it just about the most no-account in the world. Grasshopper couldn’t cross it unless he carried his lunch with him. But the mineral rights, now—if the oil boom should swing your way…”
“Holy God,” Tom murmured reverently. “Hot jumpin’ Hannah! I—You’re sure about it, sir? I’m not doubting your word, but—”
“Sounds t’me like you are! Sounds like you think I don’t know my business. Prob’ly make yourself a million dollars an’ give me the go-by for some young smart-aleck lawyer.”
“Now, I wouldn’t do that, sir,” Tom said quietly. “Any business I have, you can handle it for me. And I’d be right hurt if you didn’t take it.”
The lawyer was mollified, even moved to a senile tear or two. He assured Tom that he would have plen-ty of business—if there was oil on his holdings.
“This here’s a Royal Spanish Land Grant, son. Highest courts in the country have upheld ’em. That land’s yours just as if old Ferdinand and Isabella had give it to you theirselves. Which,” he cackled shrilly, pointing to the signatures on the parchment, “is just what they went and done!”
In due time, the oil boom crept into Pardee County. The oil fields swung toward Tom Lord’s land. Not all of it, but large sections of it; enough to assure him that his fortune was made, and that his only concern need be the amount of it.
An uninterrupted procession of lease hounds, scouts, executives, and independent entrepreneurs called on him. Their offers ranged from fair to foolish, from middling bad to excellent-plus. Tom Lord, in concert with his lawyer, gave them all the same short shrift.
“Ain’t gonna let a client of mine get cheated,” the lawyer declared. “How do we know what’s under the ground, hah? All we know is it’s our’n and we’re entitled to it, minus a fair share for gettin’ it to the surface.”
That sounded reasonable and right to Tom Lord, but he was getting a little nervous. After all, there are no underground surveyor’s stakes, and no oil field, however rich, is inexhaustible. His land could still be drained dry, even though there were no wells on it. The wells on surrounding property would siphon it off.
Lord’s nervousness was getting hard to live with when he was offered exactly the kind of deal his lawyer demanded. The man who made it to him was Aaron McBride.
He liked McBride instantly, liked his direct speech and economy with words. He liked the simple contract that McBride tendered him, a document that was almost terse in its simplicity, and completely devoid of irritating legalisms.
For a flat twenty-five per cent of Tom’s holdings, McBride’s employers—Highlands Oil & Gas—would undertake all production costs. This twenty-five per cent would cover the drilling of wells, the laying of pipelines, the setting up of storage tanks—everything that needed to be done to market the oil. Tom would have no expenses whatsoever, and seventy-five per cent of the oil would be his. Or, more accurately, one hundred per cent of the oil would be his on the seventy-five per cent of the land remaining to him.
It sounded good to Lord. It sounded equally good or better to his lawyer.
Still, even as the lawyer pressed a pen into his hand and pointed to the dotted line, he found himself drawing back. So very much depended on this. Not mere money, but the very life of a man.
He slowly looked up from the contract, and into McBride’s eyes.
“Should I sign this or not, Mr. McBride?” he asked. “You tell me I should, that it’s a good contract, and I’ll sign it.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” McBride said.
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“But, man”—McBride began a protest—“you’re asking me to—to—” He broke off, reached into his pocket, and took out a certified check for twenty thousand dollars. He shoved it cross the desk and leaned back. “There,” he said, “I wasn’t supposed to give you that if you’d sign without it. But—well, now, I feel better.”
“And so do I,” said Tom warmly. “Always thought you were on the level. Now, I know it.”
And he signed the contract.
He bought his convertible with a fraction of the money. The rest was promptly absorbed by attorney’s fees and his old debts.
Wisely, he held onto his job. For the twenty thousand dollars was the only money he ever received.
When his first suspicions arose, he was ashamed of them. He chided himself with impatience, told himself that McBride was a very busy man and that any seeming wrong would be righted as soon as McBride could get around to it.
McBride had proved his honesty, hadn’t he? And he certainly was busy, wasn’t he? Tom had hailed him a time or two, approached him with the intent to talk over his situation if the opportunity presented. But he could never get past a polite feeler or so before McBride was forced to rush away.
A very busy man, the field boss. Still, Tom thought, this was business, the matter that he wished to discuss. It was very big business, and he was entitled to a few minutes of McBride’s time.
The few minutes were not easy to obtain. He only got it, after three days of pursuit, by pulling his car in front of McBride’s.
The field boss scowled as Lord came tramping back to his vehicle. He said, as Lord climbed into the seat with him, that he didn’t think he liked this. He didn’t like it at all, and he didn’t have to put up with it.
“Sure, you don’t,” Tom agreed. “But I figured maybe you’d want to. You got a choice of doin’ this or something else, and I got a notion you’d be happier doing this.”
McBride hesitated, seeking some means of equivocation and finding none. At last, he said curtly, “All right. We signed our agreement approximately a year ago. Now, you’re wondering when we’re going to drill on the seventy-five per cent of the lease land own
ed by you.”
Lord nodded. “Can’t blame me for that, can you? seein’ that you’ve sunk more than fifty wells on your twenty-five per cent.”
“The answer is that I don’t know.”
“No idea, huh? You’re the field boss. You’ve got to plan a long ways ahead, keep all your rigs and men working with no lost motion. But you got no notion of when you’ll drill on my property.”
McBride’s mouth tightened doggedly. He said nothing.
“The fact is,” Lord said, “you won’t be puttin’ down no wells at all on my seventy-five per cent. That’s about the size of things, ain’t it? There won’t be nothin’ but offset wells, taking all the oil for Highlands and givin’ me nothing.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you know it’s true. You knew it right in the beginning. Now, I’m asking you to make it square with me.”
“I—How do you mean?”
“Go before a judge with me. Just tell what you know—what you got to know. That the contract was made in bad faith with intent to defraud.”
“But I—” McBride hesitated, swallowed heavily. Then, he continued in flat, dull tones, seeming to recite from some carefully memorized lesson in a distasteful subject. “You had a lawyer,” he said. “The contract was entirely legal. It was not my job to interpret its contents.”
Lord gave him a long, thoughtful look. Slowly he took out a cigar and lighted it. “This legal stuff,” he said. “I always felt it was meant to protect people. Might go astray now and then; ain’t perfect no more than the people that use it. But if it did, you could pick it up again an’ pry things back on the track. That’s what I was askin’ you to do…”
He waited, taking another puff from the cigar. McBride was silent, his hands clutching the steering wheel tightly, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Been a lot of people like you around,” Lord went on, “right from the beginning of history. Burnin’ and torturin’ and killing—slappin’ other people into the gas ovens. And it’s always done legal, y’know. They always got a law to back ’em up. If there ain’t one on the books, someone’ll think one up in a hurry. Anyways, they’re just followin’ orders, ain’t they? It’s no skin off their nose if—”