It was two weeks after our housewarming before I got a chance to go see Dru. She was at the door to meet me and took me in to see her grandfather. He looked mighty frail, lying there in bed.
"It is good to see you, senor," he said, almost whispering. "How is your ranch?"
He listened while I told him about it and nodded his head thoughtfully. We had three thousand acres of graze, and it was well-watered. A small ranch by most accounts.
"It is not enough," he said, at last, "to own property in these days. One must be strong enough to keep it. If one is not strong, then there is no hope."
"You'll be on your feet again in no time," I said.
He smiled at me, and from the way he smiled, he knew I was trying to make him feel good. Fact was, right at that time I wouldn't have bet that he'd live out the month.
Jonathan Pritts, he told me, was demanding a new survey of the Grant, claiming that the boundaries of the Grant were much smaller than the land the don claimed. It was a new way of getting at him and a troublesome one, for those old Grants were bounded by this peak or that ridge or some other peak, and the way they were written up a man could just about pick his own ridges and his own peak. If Pritts could get bis own surveyor appointed they would survey Don Luis right out of his ranch, his home, and everything.
"There is going to be serious trouble," he said at last. "I shall send Drusilla to Mexico to visit until it is over."
Something seemed to go out of me right then. If she went to Mexico she would never come back because the don was not going to win his fight. Jonathan Pritts had no qualms, and would stop at nothing.
I sat there with my hat in my hand wishing I could say something, but what did I have to offer a girl like Drusilla? I was nigh to broke. Right then I was wondering what we could do for operating expenses, and it was no time to talk marriage to a girl, even if she would listen to me, when that girl was used to more than I could ever give her.
At last the don reached for my hand, but his grip was feeble. "Senor, you are like a son to me. We have seen too little of you, Drusilla and I, but I have found much in you to respect, and to love. I am afraid, senor, that I have not long, and I am the last of my family. Only Drusilla is left. If there is anything you can do, senor, to help her ... take care of her, senor."
"Don Luis, I'd like ... I mean ... I don't have any money, Don Luis. Right now I'm broke. I must get money to keep my ranch working."
"There are other things, my son. You have strength, and you have youth, and those are needed now. If I had the strength ..."
Drusilla and I sat at the table together in the large room, and the Indian woman served us. Looking down the table at her my heart went out to her, I wanted her so. Yet what could I do? Always there was something that stood between us.
"Don Luis tells me you are going to Mexico?"
"He wishes it. There is trouble here, Tye."
"What about Juan Torres?"
"He is not the same ... something has happened to him, and I believe he is afraid now."
Chico Cruz ...
"I will miss you."
"I do not want to go, but what my grandfather tells me to do, I must do. I am worried for him, but if I go perhaps he will do what must be done."
"Any way I can help?"
"No!" She said it so quickly and sharply that I knew what she meant. What had to be done we both knew: Chico Cruz must be discharged, fired, sent away. But Dru was not thinking of the necessity, she was thinking of me, and she was afraid for me.
Chico Cruz ...
We knew each other, that one and I, and we each had a feeling about the other.
If this had to be done, then I would do it myself. There was no hope that the Don would recover in time, for we both knew that when we parted tonight we might not meet again. Don Luis did not have the strength, and his recovery would take weeks, or even months.
What was happening here I understood. Torres was afraid of Cruz and the others knew it, so their obedience was half-hearted. There was no leader here, and it was nothing Cruz had done or needed to do. I doubted if he had thought of it ... it was simply the evil in him and his willingness to kill.
Whatever was to be done must be done now, at once, so as we ate and talked I was thinking it out. This was nothing for Orrin, Cap, or anyone but me, and I must do it tonight. I must do it before this went any further. Perhaps then she would stay, for I knew that if she ever left I would never see her again.
At the door I took her hand ... it was the first time I had found courage to do it. "Dru ... do not worry. I will come to see you again." Suddenly, I said what I had been thinking. "Dru ... I love you."
And then I walked swiftly away, my heels clicking on the pavement as I crossed the court. But I did not go to my horse, but to the room of Juan Torres.
It seemed strange that a man could change so in three years since we had met.
Three years? He had changed in months. And I knew that Cruz had done this, not by threats, not by warnings, just by the constant pressure of his being here.
"Juan ... ?"
"Senor?"
"Come with me. We are going to fire Chico Cruz."
He sat very still behind the table and looked at me, and then he got up slowly.
"You think he will go?"
He looked at me, his eyes searching mine. And I told him what I felt. "I do not care whether he goes or stays."
We walked together to the room of Antonio Baca. He was playing cards with Pete Romero and some others.
We paused outside and I said, "We will start here. You tell him."
Juan hesitated only a minute, and then he stepped into the room and I followed.
"Baca, you will saddle your horse and you will leave ... do not come back."
Baca looked at him, and then he looked at me, and I said, "You heard what Torres said. You tried it once in the dark when my back was turned. If you try it now you will not be so lucky."
He put his cards into a neat, compact pile, and for the first time he seemed at a loss. Then he said, "I will talk to Chico."
"We will talk to Chico. You will go." Taking out my watch, I said, "Torres has told you. You have five minutes."
We turned and went down the row of rooms and stopped before one that was in the dark. Torres struck a light and lit a lantern. He held the light up to the window and I stepped into the door.
Chico Cruz had been sitting there in the darkness. Torres said, "We don't need you any longer, Chico, you can go ... now."
He looked at Torres from his dark, steady eyes and then at me.
"There is trouble here," I said, "and you do not make it easier."
"You are to make me go?" His eyes studied me carefully.
"It will not be necessary. You will go."
His left hand and arm were on the table, toying with a .44 cartridge. His right hand was in his lap.
"I said one day that we would meet."
"That's fool talk. Juan has said you are through. There is no job for you here, and the quarters are needed."
"I like it here."
"You will like it elsewhere." Torres spoke sharply. His courage was returning.
"You will go now ... tonight."
Cruz ignored him. His dark, steady eyes were on me. "I think I shall kill you, senor."
"That's fool talk," I said casually and swung my boot up in a swift, hard kick at the near edge of the table. It flipped up and he sprang back to avoid it and tripped, falling back to the floor. Before he could grasp a gun I kicked his hand away, then grabbed him quickly by the shirt and jerked him up from the floor, taking his gun and dropping him in one swift moment.
He knew I was a man who used a gun and he expected that, but I did not want to shoot him. He clung to his wrist and stared at me, his eyes unblinking like those of a rattler.
"I told you, Cruz."
Torres walked to the bunk and began stuffing Chico's clothes into his saddlebags, and rolling his bedroll. Chico still clung to his wrist.
<
br /> "If I go they will attack the hacienda," Cruz said, "is that what you want?"
"It is not. But we will risk it. We cannot risk you being here, Chico. There is an evil that comes with you."
"And not with you?" He stared at me.
"Perhaps ... anyway, I shall not be here."
We heard the sound of a horse outside, and glanced out to see Pete Romero leading Chico's horse.
Chico walked to the door and he looked at me. "What of my gun?" he said, and swung into the saddle.
"You may need it," I said, "and I would not want you without it."
So I handed him the gun, nor did I take the shells from it. He opened the loading gate and flipped the cylinder curiously, and then he looked at me and held the gun in his palm, his face expressionless.
For several seconds we remained like that, and I don't know what he was thinking. He had reason to hate me, reason to kill me, but he held the gun in his hand and looked down at me, and my own gun remained in its holster.
He turned his horse. "I think we will never meet," he said, "I like you, senor."
Juan Torres and I stood there until we could hear the gallop of his horse no longer.
Chapter XIII
Jonathan Pritts had brought with him an instrument more dangerous than any gun.
He brought a printing press.
In a country hungry for news and with a scarcity of reading material, the newspaper was going to be read, and people believe whatever they read must be true--or it would not be in print.
Most folks don't stop to think that the writer of a book or the publisher of a newspaper may have his own axe to grind, or he may be influenced by others, or may not be in possession of all the information on the subject of which he writes.
Don Luis had known about Pritts' printing press before anybody else, and that was one reason he wanted his granddaughter out of the country, for a paper can be used to stir people up. And things were not like they had been.
Don Luis sent for me again, and made a deal to sell me four thousand acres of his range that joined to mine. The idea was his, and he sold it to me on my note.
"It is enough, senor. You are a man of your word, and you can use the range." He was sitting up that day. He smiled at me. "Moreover, senor, it will be a piece of land they cannot take from me, and they will not try to take it from you."
At the same time, I bought, also on my note, three hundred head of young stuff.
In both cases the notes were made payable to Drusilla. The don was worried, and he was also smart. It was plain that he could expect nothing but trouble. Defeat had angered Jonathan Pritts, and he would never quit until he had destroyed the don or been destroyed himself.
His Settlement crowd had shifted their base to Las Vegas although some of them were around Elizabethtown and Cimarron, and causing trouble in both places. But the don was playing it smart ... land and cattle sold to me they would not try to take, and he felt sure I'd make good, and so Drusilla would have that much at least coming to her.
These days I saw mighty little of Orrin. Altogether we had a thousand or so head on the place now, mostly young stuff that would grow into money. The way I figured, I wasn't going to sell anything for another three years, and by that time I would be in a position to make some money.
Orrin, the boys, and me, we talked it over. We had no idea of running the big herds some men were handling, or trying to hold big pieces of land. All the land I used I wanted title to, and I figured it would be best to run only a few cattle, keep from overgrazing the grass, and sell fat cattle. We had already found out we could get premium prices for cattle that were in good shape.
Drusilla was gone.
The don was a little better, but there was more trouble. Squatters had moved into a valley on the east side of his property and there was trouble. Pritts jumped in with his newspaper and made a lot more of the trouble than there had been.
Then Orrin was made sheriff of the county, and he asked Tom to become a deputy.
Now we had a going ranch and everything was in hand. We needed money, and if I ever expected to make anything of myself it was time I had at it. There was nothing to do about the ranch that the boys could not do, but I had notes to Don Luis to pay and it was time I started raising some money.
Cap Rountree rode out to the ranch. He got down from his horse and sat down on the step beside me. "Cap," I said, "you ever been to Montana?"
"Uh-huh. Good country, lots of grass, lots of mountains, lots of Indians, mighty few folks. Except around Virginia City. They've got a gold strike up there."
"That happened some years back."
"Still working." He gave me a shrewd look out of those old eyes. "You gettin' the itch, too?"
"Need money. We're in debt, Cap, and I never liked being beholden to anybody.
Seems to me we might strike out north and see what we can find. You want to come along?"
"Might's well. I'm gettin' the fidgets here."
So we rode over to see Tom Sunday. Tom was drinking more than a man should. He had bought a ranch for himself about ten miles from us. He had him some good grass, a fair house, but it was a rawhide outfit, generally speaking, and not at all like Tom was who was a first-rate cattleman.
"I'll stay here," he told me finally. "Orrin offered me a job as deputy sheriff, but I'm not taking it. I think I'll run for sheriff myself, next election."
"Orrin would like to have you," I said. "It's hard to get good men."
"Hell," Tom said harshly, "he should be working for me. By rights that should be my job."
"Maybe. You had a chance at it."
He sat down at the table and stared moodily out the window.
Cap got to his feet. "Might's well come along," he said, "if you don't find any gold you'll still see some fine country."
"Thanks," he said, "I'll stay here."
We mounted up and Tom put a hand on my saddle. "Tye," he said, "I've got nothing against you. You're a good man."
"So's Orrin, Tom, and he likes you."
He ignored it. "Have a good time. If you get in trouble, write me and I'll come up and pull you out of it."
"Thanks. And if you get in trouble, you send for us."
He was still standing there on the steps when we rode away, and I looked back when I could barely make him out, but he was still standing there.
"Long as I've known him, Cap," I said, "that was the first time I ever saw Tom Sunday without a shave."
Cap glanced at me out of those cold, still eyes. "He'd cleaned his gun," he said. "He didn't forget that."
The aspen were like clusters of golden candles on the green hills, and we rode north into a changing world. "Within two weeks we'll be freezin' our ears off,"
Cap commented.
Nonetheless, his eyes were keen and sharp and Cap sniffed the breeze each morning like a buffalo-hunting wolf. He was a new man, and so was I. Maybe this was what I was bred for, roaming the wild country, living off it, and moving on.
In Durango we hired out and worked two weeks on a roundup crew, gathering cattle, roping and branding calves. Then we drifted west into the Abajo Mountains, sometimes called the Blues. It was a mighty big country, two-thirds of it standing on edge, seemed like. We rode through country that looked like hell with the fires out, and we camped at night among the cool pines.
Our tiny fire was the only light in a vast world of darkness, for any way we looked there was nothing but night and the stars. The smell of coffee was good, and the smell of fresh wood burning. We hadn't seen a rider for three days when we camped among the pines up there in the Blues, and we hadn't seen a track in almost as long. Excepting deer tracks, cat or bear tracks.
Out of Pioche I got a job riding shotgun for a stage line with Cap Rountree handling the ribbons. We stayed with it two months.
Only one holdup was attempted while I rode shotgun because it seemed I was a talked-about man. That one holdup didn't pan out for them became I dropped off the stage and shot the gun out of
one of the outlaw's hands--it was an accident, as my foot slipped on a rock and spoiled my aim--and put two holes in the other one.
We took them back into town, and the shot one lived. He lived but he didn't learn ... six months later they caught him stealing a horse and hung him to the frame over the nearest ranch gate.
At South Pass City we holed up to wait out a storm and I read in a newspaper how Orrin was running for the state legislature, and well spoken of. Orrin was young but it was a time for young men, and he was as old as Alexander Hamilton in 1776, and older than William Pitt when he was chancellor in England. As old as Napoleon when he completed his Italian campaign.
I'd come across a book by Jomini on Napoleon, and another by Vegetius on the tactics of the Roman legions. Most of the time I read penny dreadfuls as they were all a body could find, except once in a while those paper-bound classics given away by the Bull Durham company for coupons they enclosed. A man could find those all over the west, and many a cowhand had read all three hundred and sixty of them.
We camped along mountain streams, we fished, we hunted, we survived. Here and yonder we had a brush with Indians. One time we outran a bunch of Blackfeet, another time had a set-to with some Sioux. I got a nicked ear out of that one and Cap lost a horse, so we came into Laramie astride Montana horse, the both of us riding him.
Spring was coming and we rode north with the changing weather and staked a claim on a creek in Idaho, but nothing contented me any more. We had made our living, but little more than that. We'd taken a bunch of furs and sold out well, and I'd made a payment to Don Luis and sent some money home.
There was a two-by-four town near where we staked our claim. I mean, there was no town but a cluster of shacks and a saloon called the Rose-Marie. A big man with a square red face, sandy-red hair and small blue eyes ran the place. He laid his thick hands on the bar and you saw the scars of old fist fights there, and those little eyes studied you cruel ... like he was figuring how much you'd be worth to him.
"What'll you have, gents? Something to cut the dust?"
"Out of that bottle in the cabinet," I said, as I'd seen him take a drink out of it himself. "We'll have a shot of that bourbon."
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