by Lauran Paine
He scarcely heard Uriah call Pete and Zeke to him. There were other voices around him, muttering, but the old man’s low burning tone was unmistakable in the darkness.
Lee must have slept because the pain in his crossed legs was fearful when he straightened up to look around.
Day had come with a boding sky and ashen mists that hurried before a low and fitful wind. Stiff bodies came up off the ground. Gray faces made evil by beard stubble and pouched eyes, swung left and right. Lee counted them. Including himself there were fourteen sheepmen in the gully.
They ate jerky and washed the salt away at a seepage spring. Uriah sent Pete Amaya creeping through the trees to spy on the Clement Ranch, which lay a long half mile beyond the farthest spit of timber. He and a sheepman named Fawcett sat together in desultory conversation. Between words Fawcett sucked on a pipe with deliberate, bubbling sounds. There were flecks of yellow spittle at the outer corners of Fawcett’s lips. He seemed to be brooding and his impassivity came of natural lack of feeling, but Uriah, just as motionless, was leashed stillness. His hands holding the rifle were as still as stone, his sunken green eyes showed fire points of resolution. But unless you saw his eyes, you would have thought him a dejected fool-hoe man lashed to rawhide toughness by the same adversity that had broken his spirit. Only his eyes showed that this was not so and never would be so.
The others sat huddled against the scudding cold of the keening wind with rye whiskey dead in them, gray-faced, slack-mouthed, and dumb. Like sheep, Lee thought. Exactly like sheep, waiting with immeasurable humility to be led or driven. Doing Uriah’s bidding, never questioning his way, now that he had brought them down to this, just waiting patiently to be driven over a cliff or clubbed down or strung up and shot, but in the end totally mesmerized and completely under the old man’s dominance.
He knew Joseph Fawcett. He also knew George Dobkins and Kant U’Ren, the surly dark half-blood herder from Idaho who went insane when drunk, but who sat there now like a brown, carved harbinger of evil, brawny shoulders hunched forward, staring at the ground like a dumb brute. And farther back wiry Gaspar Pompa, the Basque, a friendly little man as active as a monkey and as simple in the head.
He knew them all, had known them for a year or better. Knew them inside and out. They were as transparent to him as the bright and gleaming water of life itself. When Pete returned and Uriah got up with his rifle, they would also get up with their rifles. Sheep-like, they would follow him through the trees to the attack.
“Boy, don’t look like that.”
He jerked around. Big Zeke dropped down beside him upon the frosted earth and let off a big breath. His breath smelled foul. Zeke had his rifle, held carelessly, and he didn’t look at Lee when he spoke.
“It’s got to be, that’s all. Them or us. You know that.” The big head turned and tilted. Eyes like Uriah’s eyes looked from beneath thick brows. But they were simply calm, green-flecked eyes. They lacked the strangeness, the increasing wildness of Uriah’s look.
“I guess so.”
Zeke wiggled, reached under, and brushed aside a stone, then settled back again. He spat.
“Zeke?”
“Huh?”
“You … uh … seen Emily Potter lately?”
Zeke looked around. “No,” he said. “Why do you ask that?”
“Not since the Fourth of July dance?”
Zeke straightened up a little, propped his body half up with his elbows. His gaze was unblinking. After an interval of silence he said: “You know, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Zeke’s eyes dropped. Color ran under his cheeks and his voice became gruff. “Well, just so long as the old man don’t know …”
“He won’t.”
“You seen her, Lee?”
“No. Not lately. Zeke, I want to know something. Did it mean anything to you?”
“Not with her, no. She’s like her sister. She’d climb into the back seat of anyone’s wagon. So would her sister. Don’t either of ’em have any notion of fidelity. They’re farm-girl chippies, Lee, that’s all. I plumb pity the man who marries either of ’em. They’ll be lying and cheating all their lives. You take the way they dress … ribbons and face rouge and all … it don’t fool men very long.”
Lee’s palms grew slippery; anguish filled him. “I guess a girl who’d do that before she’s married is no good, huh?”
“That’s what folks say,” said Zeke. “I don’t rightly know. This I do know … a girl who sneaks out after she’s married is lower’n the meanest man alive. When a woman can’t be true to her man, she’s the rottenest thing on this earth.” Zeke looked up suddenly to study his brother’s face, and the words on his lips died. He drew upright on the ground, crossing his legs. “Boy, who were you with today?” he sharply demanded.
“Not me, Zeke. I went …”
“You’re lying, Lee. It’s written all over your face.”
Lee’s voice sank to a corn-husk whisper. “It was different than the way you’re talking, though.”
“How different? Married woman or single?”
“Single.”
“Do I know her?”
“Yes.”
Zeke looked around them and lowered his voice. “Who?”
“Ann Foster.”
Zeke looked surprised. “Ann?”
“Yesterday, Zeke, on the way to town. I met her along the creek below their place.”
The older man’s shoulders slumped. He rocked forth and back a moment before he spoke again. “I didn’t know she was like that.”
“She isn’t. This was different.”
Zeke continued to rock. After a while he said: “That’s why you were so late.”
“Yes.”
“Paw’ll skin you alive if he finds out.”
“He won’t.”
“No? What if she comes up calvy? Her paw’ll know, then the old man’ll know … then everyone’ll know.”
“I hope she does, Zeke,” the younger man said in a hard, fierce whisper.
Zeke bent a long stare on his brother. “You got it bad, haven’t you?” He picked up his rifle and gazed at it unseeingly. “Hubs of hell,” he muttered under his breath, then louder: “How long you been seeing her?”
“Well, never before like this.” Lee picked up a crumbly rock and broke it between his fingers. “I’d never hardly talked to her before. At dances, sure, and when we go for rock salt, but that’s about all.” He let the stone fall away. “Yesterday …”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t explain it, Zeke. I got her inside me … in my head. I just can’t think about anything else.” He made a tight motion with one hand. “Even this … what we’re waiting to do … don’t seem real to me.”
Zeke stopped rocking. His bushy brows were drawn down hard in a thunderous look. He said no more until a slight stir among the other waiting men snagged his attention. Then he shook his head like a bull at fly time and twisted to look behind him. Pete Amaya was cat-footing it through the misty raw light of dawn. Uriah was getting up stiffly. Zeke gathered up his gun and rolled to his feet. “Come on,” he said gruffly, without looking at Lee. “It’s time to go.”
Uriah led them after one flaming look and one spoken admonition: “Go quiet, men … no talking and keep your guns up and ready.”
He stalked ahead northward through the trees. Behind him came the ghostly company, like murk in the gray mist of early morn. At a churning creek with a rind of frost along its banks Uriah waited. Then he plunged in unmindful of the freezing shock and waded across. Pete Amaya, stalking along beside the Basque, smiled broadly when Pompa gasped and swore in a shrill whisper. The water was like ice.
The timber began to thin out. They came to the dead end of a stone fence. Beyond was a big clearing—a grain field not yet sown and with last summer’s stubble standing stiffl
y dead and upright in it. They followed Uriah across this clearing trying to be quiet but hearing doubly loud the swish of stubble against their legs.
Uriah kept the stone fence on his right—between them and the ranch buildings that began to come up toward them out of the mist. When each building was in plain sight he stopped, finally, and crouched a little, staring ahead. Both his hands were spread wide atop the rock fence. There was a light showing in the main house and a brighter one glowed at the bunkhouse, but the yard was empty. Uriah drew up to his full height. His teeth were bared in satisfaction.
“Come around,” he said softly. “Closer. There now. They’ll be coming out to do the chores in a bit. We’ll squat here behind the fence. When the first man shows … shoot.”
Zeke scowled. “The others’ll stay inside, Paw.”
“Let ’em. That’ll be fine. We’ll torch the place. Cook ’em inside or drive ’em out.” Uriah put his pink-scarred right hand on Pete Amaya’s scrawny shoulder. “Slip around behind the bunkhouse, and, when the shootings going on, fire it. You understand?”
“Yes,” Amaya said, and slipped away in a hunched-over trot.
“You, Fawcett … watch the back of the house. They’ll likely try escaping to the trees. Take someone with you.”
“All right.”
Uriah got down on one knee and put his rifle atop the fence. “The rest of us’ll stay here.” He looked around at them. “Pick your spot, boys. This is for Evans and Buell. Remember that. For Evans and Buell and Cardoza … and every other sheepman they’ve butchered in his blankets.”
Lee went back along the fence behind Zeke. When they were hunkered down, waiting, he said: “Zeke, Missus Clement’s in there.”
“She won’t get hurt.”
“They’ve got little kids, too.”
“We’re only after Pax and his goddamned bushwhacking riders.”
At the growl in his brother’s tone Lee looked around. Zeke was bent low over his rifle. Its long barrel was bearing straight toward the ranch house. Bushy brows and one flaming green eye showed above its stock. Zeke had never looked so like Uriah before. Even the grating sound of his voice was like Uriah’s. Lee touched his own weapon and its coldness startled him. He faced around.
Along the fence were other guns; other heads were bent forward. There was an odd hush over everything. Someone spat tobacco juice close by and it sounded as loud as a pistol shot. Uriah’s rumbling whisper passed along the line.
“No noise, now. We don’t want to spoil anything.”
Kant U’Ren, the half-breed from Idaho, spoke suddenly; the first words he’d said in hours. “You better pick up your spent shells,” he said, without amplifying it.
They understood. They would pick up their spent casings; no lawman was going to trace them by brass dummies. Lee looked along the line for the half-breed. U’Ren was not as low behind the stones as the others and he had one boot toe dug in behind him and one shoulder braced slightly forward around his gunstock. This was nothing new to U’Ren. He had done this before, very obviously.
“It’s going to rain,” Zeke said, around his rifle stock. He said it so casually that Lee felt some of the tenseness leave him.
The waiting got to all of them but Uriah and, perhaps, Kant U’Ren. They fidgeted, shifted their weapons along the stones, making scraping sounds. The mist was thickening and the wind was gone. It felt a little warmer than it had back in the gully.
“Zeke?”
“Yeah.”
“This isn’t right. You aren’t supposed to kill folks like they were sage hens.”
“Folks aren’t supposed to kill sheepmen like they were sage hens, either.”
“This’ll be plain murder, Zeke. The first man to walk out in that yard’ll never know what hit him. He won’t have any chance at all.”
“Neither’d Lester or Carter Buell, Lee. You’d better quit thinking and just keep watch. They’ll be coming out any second now.”
Lee bent over his rifle. “I don’t feel right about this,” he mumbled.
Zeke’s head lifted briefly. The green stare fastened on Lee. “You aren’t the first one to say that, boy.”
“What’d you mean?”
“Last night … when you didn’t come back … Paw said it. Said you had no guts for fighting. Said maybe you’d shed the bodies and just kept on going.”
Lee made no answer and Zeke hunched forward again. The minutes continued to pass on leaden feet. A fat drop of water struck the stones near Lee’s gun. Another came down, and another. Zeke was right; it was going to rain. Looking at the drops Lee remembered Ann’s tears. Then Uriah’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“There … watch now, boys. Someone’s coming from the bunkhouse.”
Lee squinted his eyes the better to see, but it was moments before he caught the thin sliver of light where a door had opened.
Guns raked softly along the fence top on his left, making a terrible sound. Hammers clicked back. Lee’s sloshing heart filled his head with its sturdy pounding. He closed his eyes tightly, then opened them wide. Visibility was improved; he saw the door swinging open wider.
“To the hilt,” Uriah said suddenly in a loud voice. “Give ’em steel to the hilt!”
Chapter Four
The man who came out of the bunkhouse held a kitten in his hands. He bent over to put it down. Behind him a loud voice said: “That’ll learn you to leave it in here all night.”
Someone fired. Lee, watching the cowboy in fascination, did not see who did it. The kitten exploded into a puff of red-stained fur and the cowboy, still bent forward, twisted his head toward the stone fence with a shocked expression. In that second more rifles sounded and at the same time the loud voice from within the bunkhouse rose in a sharp cry of startled alarm. The cowboy pitched forward off the bunkhouse stoop, slid forward on his face, and lay still.
A second man, shirtless and barefoot, sprang through the doorway. His face was twisted ugly and a pistol rode high in one hand. Along the fence row a second volley rang out. The cowboy was hurled against the bunkhouse wall. His pistol exploded, plowing a long furrow at his feet. His knees sprung outward and he fell.
Within the bunkhouse Clement’s third rider snuffed out the lamp and slammed the door. As far away as Lee was, he heard the bar drop into place behind it.
He wasn’t conscious of standing fully upright until Zeke said: “Get down, you fool! There’s still one in there!”
Uriah roared it, too. “Down! Down, boys! Wait for the flames!”
Silence did not come into the yard right away. There was the echo, the reverberations, and, before they died away, a man’s keening voice in sharp surprise from the main house, then silence. A long hollow hush broken only by the grating of booted feet behind the rock fence, the sniffling of a few men, the raking of their guns along the topmost rocks.
“You never fired,” Zeke said as Lee looked around at him. “You stood there with your mouth hanging open.”
Lee didn’t answer. He drew down lower, looking out where the mist swirled and soft raindrops fell.
“Smoke,” someone said. “Yonder by the bunkhouse.”
Uriah’s unmistakable voice came next. “Watch sharp now, boys. He’ll be coming out soon.”
Clement’s bunkhouse was old and tinder dry. It burned well. The heat quivered outward as far as the fence. It felt good against those tight faces there. Smoke eddied out where mud chinking had crumbled. The man inside could not stand it much longer.
Pete Amaya came back to them in the same low-crouching run he’d used to go light the fire. His teeth shone and his dark eyes flashed with cruel pleasure. Lee had only a glimpse of him as he darted past, heading down where Uriah was.
“There!” Zeke said, and fired.
Lee swung forward in time to see the cowboy make his attempt. He was already past the door, beyond t
he porch, over the two bodies, and zigzagging toward the main house. Uriah’s explosive shout came loud and ringing.
“To the hilt, boys! To the hilt!”
Guns flamed. Gray dust jerked to life around the sprinting figure. The cowboy staggered, sagged, then took two more steps and crumpled low. As soon as he was down Uriah hurdled the fence and brandished his rifle.
“Come on, boys … at ’em! To the house!”
Lee had a glimpse of his wide-open mouth. He caught the flush of dark color in his father’s face and the burning ferocity in his eyes, then Zeke was yelling something at him. They all followed Uriah over the fence in a wild run toward the house. Smoke and flames both spiraled upward from the ravished bunkhouse. Red shadows danced across the front of Paxton Clement’s home as the sheepmen swarmed up under the low overhang close upon Uriah’s heels. When they stopped, Kant U’Ren was panting beside Lee. He turned his head heavily and made a mirthless, silent smile.
Uriah stood a moment listening, then he rapped twice on the log wall, hard, with the butt of his rifle. The sound rang hollow in the stillness, and a quiet followed. Again he rapped and this time there was answering sound, the sliding of steel over wood. They knew that noise and scattered hastily, several making little cries of warning. Someone inside was pushing a rifle through a loophole.
The strain was intense. Somewhere a long way off a dog was frenziedly barking. Until that moment Lee had forgotten that Paxton Clement had a dog. Evidently the first firing had frightened the animal off.
“Is that you, Gorman?” a thick voice demanded through the log wall.
“It’s me, Clement. Come out of there.”
“You come and get me … you damned murderer.”
Where they were flattened along the wall, Lee’s companions were holding their breath, listening. Only Uriah stood away from the mud wattle a short distance, holding his rifle in both hands, his head thrown back, and his face red-stained by exertion and firelight. In that moment he looked more than ever like one of the old-time prophets with his hair tumbled and his beard awry, and sealed judgment immutable in the expression of his face.