The Red Well

by Max Brand

  Ruhlan was not among them, but that was not strange. He often rose late. In fact, hours of labor never troubled Ruhlan. But more importantly young Gannon was not with the others, either. And suddenly she said to a red-headed cowboy who sat near her.

  “Who was shooting in the bunkhouse last night?”

  “You ain’t heard?” asked Red.

  “Not a word.”

  “It was the new boss.”

  She listened, gripping the edge of the table hard. “The new boss?” she echoed.

  He studied her and her surprise. “Ain’t he boss? I’m repeatin’ his own words. And anyway,” concluded Red, “he can boss me.”

  “Do you mean Gannon?”

  “He had it out with Ruhlan. Shot Doc through the right shoulder, and then showed him up as a coward, too. It would’ve made you sick to see how Doc turned out a yaller welcher.”

  And a dark-faced fellow with a liberal streak of Mexican blood in him, seated across the table, added: “Him that we’ve kowtowed to all these months.”

  “Was Gannon hurt?” asked the girl.

  Red glanced at her in surprise. “Him? You couldn’t hurt one like him.” he assured her. “He’d slide himself between a pair of bullets. I never seen such a fighting man, Georgia.”

  “Then why hasn’t he come to breakfast?”

  “Tired, I suppose. We didn’t make much noise when we got up.” Red grinned. “We didn’t want to disturb him.”

  She flashed a glance from the ceiling to the floor. She could hardly keep from crying out. But if she wanted confirmation of all that the other had said, she needed only to look down the table at the sullen gloom of the scar-faced man, and at the obvious depression of some of the others.

  Then Garlan himself came in. He was cheerful, but perfectly matter-of-fact. He spoke to them all. He smiled at Georgia without vainglory, and he obeyed the gesture that invited him to a chair at her side.

  There he sat down to bread, ham, eggs, and coffee.

  “I hear that you’re the new foreman?” she said quietly.

  He answered: “You’d better appoint the best of the lot for that job. I’m simply an extra hand. I don’t want to be a foreman.”

  She took him at his word. “Lew!” she called.

  An iron-gray cowpuncher at the farther end of the table lifted his head. “Well?” he asked.

  “Mister Gannon has something to say to you.”

  Gannon filled in: “Last night I had to call myself the foreman. But I know nothing about cows. You’re to take charge of everything, Lew. I’m under your orders, too . . . except when it comes to a little pinch of trouble about . . .” He paused. But all had listened and all had understood. They took this resignation kindly and turned upon Lew eyes of respect, for he was a known man.

  Breakfast ended. The men gathered outside the dining room door and Lew stood on the steps.

  “I’ve stood by,” he said, “and seen a fine place about to be milked dry. I’ve even helped in the milkin’, and I’m sure ashamed of it. Some more of you boys are ashamed of it, too. And some of the rest don’t care. Them that don’t care had better ride for town. I know you all. I’m not a fightin’ man. Cows is my business, not guns. But the gent that makes trouble with me is makin’ trouble with Gannon. That’s all the speech I’m gonna make. Everyone of you ’punchers that know anything about the game understands that we got a good lay here. And now we gotta bust loose and work like men.”

  He fired rapid orders. The group began to break up.

  “You’ve given me nothing to do,” said Garlan at the finish.

  “You’re the right bower, and the joker, too,” said Lew. “You stay at home to win the last trick for me, and everything is gonna go as slick as can be.”

  They drifted on toward the bunkhouse, but the voice of the girl called Garlan back. He stood before her under the great, cool canopy of a spruce.

  “Danny Tilly was right, it seems,” she said. “And all in a moment, Ruhlan is gone, and Lew is in charge, and there’s more than an even chance of making everything break well?”

  “I don’t know,” said Garlan. “Ruhlan turned out a dog, after all.”

  She controlled a smile. “How long are you to stay here?” she asked.

  “A long time, I hope,” said Garlan. “If I can make myself into a ’puncher, I mean.”

  “Be honest,” she answered him with a touch of impatience. “I know that you’d never be content to be a mere cowpuncher.”

  “I’ve been honest. I’ve told you what I mean,” said Garlan.

  “What do you expect out of such a life?” she asked him.

  He replied with perfect calm and conviction: “A chance to live straight, to make honest money.”

  She judged him curiously, frowning a little. “Jerry,” she said, “what do you want in return for the thing you’ve done for me and the ranch?”

  He answered simply: “Money.”

  She flushed, and Garlan grew crimson in turn.

  “I don’t mean in reward for running out Ruhlan, but as an advance of salary.”

  “How much money do you want?” asked the girl.

  “I need a thousand dollars . . . I need it terribly,” said Garlan.

  She flushed still more crimson. “Of course you shall have it,” she said.

  They had become stiff and formal. He took off his hat as he thanked her.

  “I’m sending in for the mail every morning. I’ll have the money brought out with the letters,” she said. “Will that be soon enough?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Or perhaps you’d rather go in with me, and you can cash the check at once and use it?”

  He turned an even brighter red. “Yes,” he confessed. “I’d like that better still, if I may.”

  “I’m starting in a half hour,” she told him.

  It was very plain to Garlan that this request for money had lowered him in her eyes, and yet the need he had for it made him straighten his shoulders and compress his lips. He went out to the barn and there found the scar-faced cowpuncher starting away for town. He gave Garlan an unpleasant glance in passing, but Garlan thought nothing of that.

  He saddled his horse slowly, and then he rode back to the ranch house and waited.

  It was not so impressive by day as it had been by night. Stone could not give the effect of soft lines that comes from adobe bricks. It seemed to Garlan that years were needed to cover these raw walls with vines, but perhaps he felt this because of the stark gloom that was in his heart.

  Georgia Dixon came out on her horse, at last, and with a careless nod to him, she set the pace down the valley road. Not a word passed between them all the way in, and they made such time that they were in the town an hour before the bank opened.

  “I have a good many things to do,” said Georgia Dixon. “After I’ve cashed the check, where shall I find you?”

  “At the post office, say?”

  “At the post office,” she repeated, and left him with a slight gesture of farewell.

  He had sunk very low indeed, in her estimation. But he went on doggedly to the post office and there sent off a telegram—a long and wordy message that he penciled with care. When it was dispatched and paid for with almost the last penny in his pocket, he sat down on the porch before the little building to wait.

  Time went on slowly. The sun rose high and was very hot. The wind was dead, except for random puffs that whirled up the street, carrying tall clouds of dust in their arms. And Garlan let his thoughts wander through his past, and desolately into his future.

  Noon was drawing near, and it was strange that he had not heard from Georgia. But then she might have other business to transact beside his.

  A sort of stupor came upon Garlan, caused by the heat, and the white flare of light that beat upward from the street. Through that stupor, a voice sounded. He looked up and found that Tom Quail was standing before him.

  “Hello, kid,” said Quail. “Sit tight. I don’t want to bother yo
u none.”

  He took the chair next to Garlan. “And here we are again,” said Tom Quail. “And now you and me can finish off the little talk that we started off there in the woods . . . that day when I got sore and rode away from you. I apologize for that. I didn’t see, then, what a deep sort of a gent you are. And dog-gone me if I still could understand until I heard the news this morning.”

  “What news?” asked Garlan dreamily.

  “What news? I suppose that I gotta tell you. The news that you was makin’ a play for Georgia and the whole Dixon place. And what’s ten thousand cash, compared with a chance like that, I’d ask any man?”

  XIV

  Garlan listened with the vague air of one whose brain is clogged with fever. At last he said: “I’m making a play for the Dixon place? Is that what you say?”

  “Nothin’ but, son,” said Tom Quail. “Now, that’s what I call a young feller gettin’ on in the world. That’s what I call a right sensible and smart young gent. I would never ask for no better chance than this here. Young girl. Pretty as a picture. Straight as a tight rope. Brain inside of her head, too, and all the courage in the world. And her hands just literally drippin’ with coin and cows!” He stopped and laughed softly to himself, as though the relish of the picture were being repeated in his mind.

  Garlan waited to see what the next development would be. It was not long in coming.

  “It shows what a fool a man can be,” went on Tom Quail. “There I was, meetin’ you out yonder in the woods, and hankerin’ after a split on that ten thousand, and all the time there was you aimin’ careful at bigger birds that I never even thought of, hardly. Why, I take my hat right off to you, Mister Garlan. Dog-gone me if I don’t.”

  “You had better put that name in your pocket, Quail,” said Garlan.

  “A good name, though,” said Tom Quail, more highly pleased than ever. He went on: “A plumb simple name, and easy to remember. Garlan! They callin’ you Gannon out there at the ranch, I heard tell. Gannon is close enough to be almost sort of confusin’, ain’t it? But you take a young gent, he feels sort of queer about changin’ his name altogether. And I’ve known all kind of crooks that would change their names as fast as you please, but always they had to carry on with the same exact initials. Like they was afraid that if they changed everything complete, not even their own fathers would know ’em.”

  He chuckled again. It would have been impossible to improve upon the high good humor of Quail.

  “But as for what you done on the ranch, that didn’t surprise me,” said Tom Quail. “Me, speakin’ personal, I wouldn’t bother you none except on a place like this . . . open street . . . plenty of witnesses . . . because I’d figure that, otherwise, I’d be apt to get salted down with lead. But I wasn’t surprised at what I heard of you and Ruhlan. Ruhlan, he’s a big fellow and he’s had a pretty hard name, but I gotta say that if the boys up yonder in the bunkhouse had only knowed what you done to a gent like Genniver, they wouldn’t’ve expected nothing else, and Ruhlan himself would sooner’ve touched dynamite than laid a hand on you. I guess that’s a fact, all right.” He confirmed this thought by a heavy wag of his head.

  “Will you tell me,” asked Garlan, “how all this really is of interest to you?”

  “I’ll tell you free and easy,” said the other. “I’d like for you to know the inside of the case right away quick. Well, son, I live not by my own labor, but by the labor of other gents. I live by the brain, which Nature made extra tough and large and give to me. Wouldn’t I be abusin’ that gift, pretty near, if I started to use my hands for what I could get with my head? So, livin’ by my wits, it seems to me that there ain’t any better way of driftin’ along through the rest of my life than by fastenin’ onto you. Is that straight and right?”

  Garlan turned a little in the chair. “I understand you at last,” he said. “What you want to do is to see me settled in the estate of Dixon, and then to sponge on me for the rest of your life?”

  “You got it stated exactly.”

  “Well,” said Garlan, “there’s one great trouble with that. I’m not going to be settled in the Dixon estate.”

  “You ain’t?”

  “I’m not.”

  The criminal settled himself back in the chair and laughed indulgently. “You wouldn’t marry for money, would you? Dog-gone you if you ain’t above any such thing. No, sir, the thing that you’d do would be to chuck the money right away. ‘Me pure and perfect soul wouldn’t be stained by havin’ no cash transactions.’ That’s your style, ain’t it? And I dunno that there’s any better style for makin’ a fool out of a girl, only that in this here case I gotta warn you that she’s a clever one. She knows where she steps, and she was raised by a brainy man. She ain’t any soft head. I give you that warning right away, kid, and you take it for what it’s worth.”

  “Thank you,” Garlan said.

  “You’ll be pretty comfortable, up there,” said Tom Quail. “I’ve looked into things pretty careful. The old man leaves everything to the girl, don’t he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No”—Quail sneered—“that kind of a detail, it wouldn’t bother you none at all. But just the same, it’s a fact, and you know it. But maybe you don’t know how much the old boy is leaving?”

  “I don’t. And I don’t care, Quail.”

  “Sure you don’t. The lady herself is your object. You don’t want nothin’ more. I appreciate all of that. You and George Washington is sort of off by yourselves. But, anyway, I’m gonna buzz in your ear that the old boy had pretty near a million in his bank and out on loan. And he’s got another half million in that ranch. And the interest on that . . . I put it down small . . . would be about seventy-five thousand bucks a year, with anybody’s pencil figurin’ it. Is that right?”

  “Perhaps it is.”

  “And there you are all clear and your sail set and your course laid out, and the girl about to come to hand.”

  “Quail, I’ve heard enough,” said the boy.

  “Have you?” Quail grinned. “Why, maybe you ain’t completely sure, yet. You ain’t said anything. A smart young kid like you wouldn’t rush anything at all. You’d take your time and let the plant grow. No use pickin’ a bud that ain’t ready to open. But how could she help fallin’ in love with a handsome young gent, when her heart is plumb empty and achin’ for the death of her father, and when you’re the dog-gone’ hero that’s cleaned out the bunkhouse and straightened up the mess at the ranch? How could she help it, I ask you?”

  “Quail,” began the younger man in a harsher voice, “if you will . . .”

  “Easy, Jerry,” interrupted the other. “You think that I’m gonna bleed you to death. That ain’t my system. I know that everybody has got expenses. Everybody has gotta have a chance to turn around. Maybe it’ll be a couple of years before you get everything completely into your hands. Well, in the meantime, what’re we gonna do about it? I gotta have something . . . it don’t have to be much. I’m modest. I hate work more’n I love cash. I can live plumb simple. Say on two thousand a year. Two thousand a year, old son, and I don’t open my mouth about what I know.”

  “And otherwise?” asked Garlan quietly.

  “Why otherwise . . . I don’t like to think about that, any more than you’d want to start me talkin’ about it.”

  “Otherwise?” insisted Garlan.

  “Otherwise, I’d sort of feel that I got a duty to the law and a duty to that poor girl. It seems that she’s all heated up still about getting the second crook that was in on the murder of her father.”

  “You know that I had nothing to do with that,” said Garlan.

  “Sure I do. But I know that you were there. And that’ll be enough for her, I take it. She’d feel that she was about to marry the murderer of her pa.” He chuckled as he said this. “And there’s a smart girl. Smart and up-to-date. But right down in her heart, you’ll always find that every woman has a blind spot or two where everything is plumb foolish.”<
br />
  “Perhaps you’re right,” Garlan smiled. “Now, will you listen to me?”

  “Greatest pleasure in the world, son.”

  “And you’ll remember?”

  “Every word.”

  “In the first place, Miss Dixon’s at the bank now. I think she is, at least.”

  “That’s good. A good place for a rich girl to be.”

  “You could find her there.”

  “What do I want her for? You gonna send her a message?”

  “All right, Tom. Listen to me. You are going to her, and you’re going to tell her everything that you know about me. Is that clear?”

  Quail stared.

  “And afterward, you’re going to keep clear of me. Because I’m beginning to be in an ugly humor, you eavesdropping bloodsucker! And if I come across you day or night, in a house or under the sky, I’m going to kill you, Quail, as sure as you hear me promise you this.” He delivered this speech in the most ordinary of voices, unless it were that his tones heightened a mere trifle toward the conclusion.

  Tom Quail leaned forward, and then gaped open-mouthed at the other. “D’you mean it, Jerry?” he gasped.

  “I mean it all.”

  “You’re gonna chuck everything to dodge a measly two thousand a year? But I ain’t grasping. I’d cut that down to a hundred and fifty a month. I’d go even lower. Make it a hundred a month, boy. Don’t throw this chance away.”

  “Tom,” said the youngster, “I’ve warned you before. Now get out of my sight in ten seconds. That’s the limit.”

  Tom Quail was a bold and brave man, in his way, but he also was a man of discretion, and in half the specified time he had skipped lightly around the corner of the post office, just as the telegraph clerk came out to Garlan with a message in his hand.

  XV

  That message so occupied the mind of Garlan that his head was bowed over it when, at length, Georgia Dixon came, with her horse at a canter to the post office. She did not dismount. Instead, she rode straight up to the verge of the porch where Garlan sat. It was a high porch.