by Short, Luke;
They came off the bald hill into the shaded yard. A massive cottonwood cast a wide pool of black shadow behind the house, and Della pulled under it and reined in the team. Against the sunny side of the house was a pretty bed of flowers and Chris noted the curtains in the windows. Only this, and the absence of men’s gear in the yard, gave it a touch of the feminine.
There was a long slanting lean-to on the rear of the house, and a woman stepped out the door of it and came out to meet them. Mrs. Harms was a grave-faced woman of fifty, straight, inches shorter than Della, with a kind of stern optimism in her eyes. She wore a gay apron, and Danning saw her hands were rough, capable and work-worn.
“Mother, this is our new foreman, Chris Danning,” Della said.
A faint surprise showed in Mrs. Harms’ face in spite of herself, but her gaze never faltered from Chris’ face.
He stepped out of the saddle and took off his hat, and accepted Mrs. Harms’ warm, hard hand.
“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Danning. We’ve needed you.”
Chris said, “Thank you, Mrs. Harms.”
Della said, “Chris, if you’ll dump that sack of groceries on the porch, I’ll show you where to unhitch. The crew is scattered this morning.”
Chris shouldered the sack of groceries out of the buckboard and tramped over to the lean-to door.
When he was out of earshot, Mrs. Harms looked up at her daughter, and for a moment they regarded each other in silence.
“Since when did we start hiring men of that stripe, Della?” Mrs. Harms asked calmly.
Della answered promptly, without smiling, “Since we acquired Younger Miles for a neighbor, mother.” She paused. “What’s wrong with him?”
Mrs. Harms didn’t have time to answer before Chris returned. Della drove on to the wagon shed, passing the small log bunkhouse on the way. She showed Chris where to put the buckboard and hang the harness, and then told him to come in for dinner when he was finished, and left him.
Chris watched her walk away from him, striding purposefully toward the house, and he guessed she would have much to explain to her mother. For Chris sensed that Della had come to as sudden and reckless a decision this morning as he had, and that it was a momentous one for her.
He unhitched the team and turned them into the corral and noticed, now, the Box H brand on one of the horses. It was a large square with the letter H inside, and with only a little imagination it could seem like a square-fronted shed with the door in the middle. It was plain enough why it had come to be called Henhouse.
He unsaddled his own travel-leaned sorrel gelding and his pack horse, and turned them in the corral and then paused a moment to look at the layout around him.
One thing was answered for him immediately. The crew wasn’t slipshod. The place was in repair, the fences good, the corrals clean, the gear stowed out of the weather and everything under roof that should be. He wondered idly what these three men he would boss were like. He tramped over to his bedroll and hoisted it to his shoulder, and went on toward the bunkhouse.
It was built of small logs, and was the least weathered of the ranch buildings. He stepped into the open door, and then came to a halt and looked about him. Here, he saw in an instant, was his answer to the kind of crew Box H employed.
For the room was neat as a military barracks. Three of the six bunks against the back wall held blankets, and these blankets were made up. Clothes hung neatly from nails in the wall, and the board floor was swept and had lately been scrubbed. The tattered magazines on the big table in the center of the room were stacked in trim piles, and the barrel stove in the front corner was polished blackly. He crossed the room and dumped his bedroll and warbag in one of the top bunks and then went over to the overhead kerosene lamp above the table. He pulled it down and looked, and then hoisted it back in place again. Yes, even the lamp chimney was clean.
He stood motionless a moment, measuring this evidence and not liking it. He hadn’t seen these men yet, but he knew them already, for this bunkhouse, home to three men, was clean, neat, swept up, picked up; it argued that its tenants were settled and satisfied and comfortable—and soft. He could guess their ages at between thirty and fifty-five, three men who had found haven in this quiet job where they were fed and paid well by two women, and where they paid back these kindnesses by painting buggies or building cupboards or transplanting flowers. He thought meagerly, I won’t get help here. I’d better kill him and then get out, and for a moment he stood hesitant.
The clang of the dinner iron moved him at last. He washed at the bench and bucket outside the door and tramped across to the lean-to, entered, and seated himself at the big table there. After the custom of the country, he turned over his plate, helped himself to the food and began eating. The clean, flowered oilcloth and the matched china plates and cups he noted, and he felt an indefinable irritation at sight of them.
Presently Mrs. Harms came out, took the seat next him nearest the kitchen and Della sat down across from him. He ate steadily and silently, taking no part in their conversation, not even hearing it, and when he was finished he excused himself, about to rise, when Mrs. Harms said, “Smoke here, Chris. All the boys do.”
Chris patiently rolled and lighted a slim cigarette, knowing Mrs. Harms wanted to quiz him and knowing, too, that this was the price he must pay for a kind of security. He could tell that Della was worried about her mother approving him, but that it wasn’t going to change her plans.
Mrs. Harms started it by saying, “Have you worked around this country, Chris?”
He moved his dark head in negation. “No, Ma’m. I put in six years as trail boss for a drovers’ outfit in Texas. Three years at Hashknife—Texas, too. I worked around before that, mostly in dry country.”
“Have you ever run an outfit before as big as this?”
“If you run more than three thousand head, I haven’t, Ma’m.”
A faint smile touched Della’s lips, but she did not look up.
Mrs. Harms persisted. “I’d think with your experience, you’d own your own place.”
A wicked flicker of anger mounted in Chris’ eyes and died, and he did not answer.
Della looked at him pleadingly, as if trying to tell him to have patience, as Mrs. Harms moved her plate aside and put both elbows on the table.
She said now, “I suppose Della’s told you why we hired you.”
Della put down her fork and, looking at Chris, said, “He’s here to fight Younger Miles, mother. He understands that.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Della,” Mrs. Harms said quietly. “It’s just that—Well, it never hurts to carry a big stick.”
“Chris is here, mother, to keep what we’ve got and get back what’s ours. Let’s not pretend,” Della said firmly.
Mrs. Harms shook her head. “You make it sound as if we’ve gone out of our way to hunt trouble.”
Chris said quietly, “You have, Mrs. Harms. If Della hasn’t told you that, she should. I’m trouble. And she asked me to come. I didn’t ask her.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and his gray gaze didn’t falter. It was Mrs. Harms who looked away first, and there was a quiet despair in her eyes. She rose and went into the house and Della, watching her, half started out of her chair and then settled back. There was a stubbornness in her face now as she went on eating, and Chris thought grimly, She won’t like any of it, Della.
A pair of riders passed under the big cottonwood and Della looked out and saw them and called, “Mother, Leach and Andy are in.”
There was no answer. Chris excused himself the second time, and now Della rose with him. “Come out and meet them,” she said.
As they stepped out of the lean-to into the sun and headed for the corral, Della’s face was somber, and Chris knew she was thinking of her mother and of the decision her mother couldn’t face.
Presently she said gently, “Chris, there’s just one thing you’ve got to promise in all this. I’ll take your word for it.”
&nbs
p; Chris waited, wondering what this new condition would be.
“That you’ll finish this with Rainbow. I don’t know why you hate Younger Miles, and I don’t care. And I don’t care what it costs us, but, in the end, you’ve got to leave us safe.”
Chris was silent a few steps, pondering this, and then he said, “I’ll promise that,” and made his condition. “If you move your mother to town, Della, I’ll promise it.”
Della looked swiftly up at him, something like fright in her eyes, and did not answer.
The two riders had turned their horses into the corral and were coming toward the house. The smaller man was the older, and Chris didn’t even look at him but watched the tall man with the big hands. As they came closer, Chris’ hopes suddenly died. The big man was in his middle thirties and wore clean, wash-faded levis and calico shirt. He had an open, simple face, and nothing showed in it except the placidity of a drudge. Chris had seen his kind, the hired man of the Kansas homesteads who plows another man’s fields for thirty years in order to get a field of his own where he dies, questioning nothing.
The other man was different, and when they halted before Della, it was this man she introduced first.
“Chris, this is Leach Conover. And Andy West. Boys, this is Chris Danning, our new foreman.”
Leach put out his hand, but it was done reluctantly, and an immediate hostility crept into his eyes. His browned face under his high-crowned Stetson was old with the lines of defeat and forgotten bitterness. A tired old dog lying in the sun, Chris thought without pity, for he knew Leach liked his life and himself the way they were, comfortable and forgotten.
Andy West said, as he shook hands, “You’re workin’ for a wonderful boss, Mr. Danning.”
“Yes,” Chris said.
Leach was eyeing Della almost with accusation but she did not see it.
She said to Chris, “I’ll help mother, and then we’ll talk, Chris.”
They left him, and he cut slowly over to the bunkhouse. The Henhouse, he thought quietly. It was a good name, perhaps, with Della the reluctant mother hen. Yet somewhere here there must be some iron in somebody besides Della. The two men he’d met would shun responsibility instinctively and, if given it, would drift. There was a third man, then. Perhaps he would be what Chris wanted and had to have, but Chris expected nothing.
Inside the bunkhouse, he looked about him again and chose his bunk, the top one closest the door. He dumped out the contents of his warbag on the floor and hung his few clothes on a vacant nail, and then unlashed his bedroll.
As he worked, he heard a rider pass, and supposed it was Leach or Andy. He was picking up a pair of boots from the remaining-gear on the floor when he heard a man enter the room behind him and, boots in hand, he turned.
The man hauled up at sight of him, and they looked at each other a long moment. Recognition came to them both at the same time.
“You stopped me this mornin’,” the man said. “There at Melaven’s, you told me about Mrs. Miles.”
“That’s right,” Chris said. This, then, was the third man of the Box H crew. A kind of sardonic amusement rose in Chris then as he remembered his hopes, and he silently chucked his boots in the bunk.
The third Box H hand, Frank Yordy, had a bluff, self-important manner about him that could never, Chris thought bitterly, deceive even’ a child. He was heavy, but with soft flesh hanging on his bones, and he had the ruddy complexion, the challenging eye and the bold voice of a man who has discovered he can live by his mouth and nothing much else. He was the sort who knew all the saloon gossip and was full of vast schemes and hard luck stories, and who charmed women of all ages with his calculated gallantries.
Yordy, standing just inside the door now, watched him as he picked up a worn jumper and fumbled in its pockets.
“What’re you doin’ in this place?” Yordy demanded then.
“I work here.”
For a full ten seconds Yordy was silent. Chris finally looked up and surprised the expression of amazement just fading from Yordy’s florid face.
“Not after this morning, you ain’t,” Yordy announced.
Chris didn’t say anything. He went on sorting out his gear.
Yordy came into the room, put a hand against the wall and crossed his feet. He shook his head pityingly and said, “You don’t have the sense God gave you, fella, after what you did this morning. If you had, you’d be clean over the Blackbows right now. We don’t take your kind of talk in this country.”
Still Chris didn’t say anything, and Yordy came erect. “You’ll be out of here in ten minutes, soon’s Mrs. Harms knows about this morning.”
He turned and went out and, unsmilingly, Chris watched him go. Here was the Box H crew, the men Della promised would back him up. A clumsy, slow-witted hand fit only to break horses, a burnt-out and bitter old man who wanted only to sit by the stove each night, and a blustering fool. Two were useless, the third dangerous, and he was expected to beat Rainbow with them.
He went to the door and watched Yordy swagger importantly toward the house, and he thought with a gray disgust, He’ll have to go. He’d made a bad bargain, and he’d worsened it by promising Della to finish it with Rainbow, so Box H would be safe. Yordy, though, was too much. I’ll drift, he thought suddenly. Miles won’t do anything more to her now, if I leave, than if I hadn’t been here.
About to turn, a movement atop the low, bald hill where the road came down caught his eye. He waited, then, until he made out two horsemen, and curiosity held him still in the doorway until he recognized Sheriff O’Hea and the red-headed man in Miles’ store as they reined up under the cottonwood.
A slow suspicion held him motionless as he watched them dismount and meet Della, who came out of the lean-to. Moments later, Yordy came out, too, then West and Conover and finally Mrs. Harms. Presently, he saw Della turn to look at the bunkhouse, and Yordy gestured sweepingly toward it.
A kind of cross-grained pride held Chris there while Della fell in beside O’Hea and walked with him toward the bunk-house. The others, all save Mrs. Harms, dropped in behind them.
Chris stood full in the doorway, hands at his sides, as Della and O’Hea halted before him.
Della had a piece of folded paper in her hand. She said in quiet distress, “Chris, Sheriff O’Hea wants to talk to you.”
Chris looked at O’Hea.
“Have you ever been in Jackson County, Wyoming?” O’Hea asked.
Chris looked from him to MacElvey, whose expression was one of sardonic watchfulness.
“I have,” Chris said.
“Then I guess that settles it, son,” O’Hea went on, a kind of thin and forced authority in his voice. “They want you there, and I’ll have to send you back.”
“He means you’re under arrest, Chris,” Della said. She looked at O’Hea. “Don’t you tell him what for?”
“Brand changing,” O’Hea said.
“He’s a horse thief,” Yordy said bluntly. “No drifter ever bought a horse like he turned into the corral, not on chuckline handouts.”
“You don’t know that, Frank!” Della said sharply. She turned to Chris and held out the paper, which Chris now saw was a dodger. “Do you want to read it?”
Chris only shook his head in negation. “Do you believe it?” he asked her.
“I—” she looked searchingly at him. “I would hate to.”
“And you still want me for a foreman?”
“Yes, if this isn’t true.”
Chris lifted his gaze directly to MacElvey, watched him a moment and then said quietly to him alone, “Don’t get in this.” His gaze now shifted to Yordy, standing next O’Hea.
“You,” he said flatly to Yordy, “saddle up and clear out of here. We’ll leave your stuff at the hotel. Only get out of here. Now.”
An expression of blank and furious amazement crept into Yordy’s heavy face. He glanced quickly at Della, who was not looking at him, and then at O’Hea, who was watching Chris, and only afterwards did he l
ook at Chris. He had calculated the risk and accepted it, and said flatly, “Not when any horse thief tells me, foreman or not.”
Chris stepped out of the bunkhouse, not fast, took the three steps to Yordy and with his left hand fisted a wad of Yordy’s shirt for purchase. He pulled Yordy toward him and slapped him once across the mouth with the flat of his hand. His blow carried his hand past Yordy’s head, and he brought it back, slapping Yordy again with the back of his hand. He slapped him a third time, then, deliberately, and let his hands fall to his sides, waiting.
Yordy hesitated long past the surprise of it, and then, crowded by pride and fear, hit him. The rest of it was violent, utterly silent, so brief there was no time for those watching it to move. Chris hit him in the belly, and when Yordy jack-knifed, Chris’ shoulder, low and lifting, caught him under the chin. As Yordy straightened, head back, Chris chopped in a blow from the side that almost swiveled Yordy’s head on his neck. Yordy went down, not on his back, but like a man dropped, without volition and without struggle. He lay against Chris’ shins for a moment, and then pushed himself to his knees. On-all fours, he shook his head slowly three times, and then lurched to his feet, and without looking at them, he walked uncertainly in the direction of the corral.
Chris half turned now and looked at O’Hea, and his face was still hard with stirring anger.
“If you want to take me out of here, sheriff, try it,” he invited.
The transition was too sudden for O’Hea; he was still looking at Yordy, so that when he caught the sound of Chris’ voice and shifted his glance to him, the astonishment was still in his tired face.
In the long moment of silence that followed, with them all looking at him, O’Hea’s expression changed slowly to a fleeting anger which was now only the dregs of an old courage, and then the tired defeat was there again. He seemed to gather up his pride and all his authority as he said, without moving, “Put a gun on him, Mac.”