by Short, Luke;
He padded out the door in the back wall at the end of the bar and Chris poured his drink and downed it.
He heard the door behind him swing open, and looked over his shoulder, and there was Kate Hardison. The glass was still in his hand. He put it down and walked over to her and said, “Why did they bring you up here?”
“I came by myself,” Kate said.
“Your father sent you?”
“Who else was there to send?”
Kate’s question held him silent. Whom had he expected? One of the commissioners who was either a friend of Miles or business partner, and who could not be trusted not to tip off Miles beforehand? Or a townsman awed by Miles’ power and money?
Kate said then, “Walt said I’d seen part of it, even started part of it. It was up to me to see it through.”
A woman! Chris thought grimly, and then immediately, Why not? He looked beyond her into the bare parlor and said, “You’ll have to stay in there, with the lamp out.”
“I’ve got a room upstairs. I can see the road and hear him too. I’ll go up there.”
Chris nodded assent. She was to be trusted, and that’s all he really cared about. There was one more thing he wanted to make sure of, and he asked, “What about the fat man?”
“Bije? He’s his own man.”
Kate was wearing a dark riding habit with divided skirt, which made her look even slighter than usual. A momentary curiosity stirred in Chris now. She didn’t like this, didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to be here, and yet she had come. Some of the friendliness he felt for her at that moment must have been communicated to Kate, for she smiled faintly and said, “I can give you some advice if you’re going to sit on the veranda and wait for him. Cover your bandage. He can see it in the dark.”
She turned then and left him, and Chris tramped thoughtfully to the porch and got his jumper that was tied behind his saddle. That was good advice, but why did she care?
He came back to the porch and pulled the chair away from the door, placing it in deep black shadow, and sat down. Leaning his carbine against the wall beside him, he relaxed in his chair, first wrapping the jumper about his bandage.
It was full dark now and the lamp threw an oblong of light down the steps and into the dust. Across the way in the corral a pair of horses quarreled and squealed and were silent again, and the silence of the night settled. Chris turned his head away from the lamplight so that his eyes would adjust themselves to the darkness. He was ready, and Hardison’s witness was ready. Chris anticipated this with a slow and wicked relish, for up to now he had been patient, placing Della’s welfare ahead of his own business, as he had promised. This now was his own personal affair; his obligations had been served.
The fat man, Bije, rattled the stove somewhere deep in the house, and on the heel of this noise Chris heard the first faint dust-muffled footfalls of a horse approaching from down the road. He reached for his carbine and laid it across the arms of his chair, the butt to the left side, for it would be from the left side he must shoot if trouble came.
A rider presently loomed indistinctly in the darkness, black against the gray of the road. He came on a ways and reined up, as if surveying the building, and Chris thought, He’s looking to see if Yordy’s set to go, and he came out of his chair and stepped back against the wall as the rider put his horse in motion again. The rider came boldly on and then, some thirty feet from the veranda, he reined up and his voice came quietly, “That you, Frank?”
It was Younger Miles speaking.
Chris said softly, “Frank couldn’t come,” and watched Miles’ body stiffen to attention in the saddle.
“Who’s that? Speak up!” Miles said sharply.
“Yordy’s run out on you, Miles,” Chris said. “Anything you’d like to take up with me about Falls Canyon?” He moved slowly to one side as he finished.
The swiftness of the shot surprised him. He heard the slug smash into the chair, and as he raised his carbine he thought: He had his gun in his hand waiting for Yordy to answer.
He shot too soon, clumsily, getting no real sight from his left shoulder, and already Miles had shot again. Chris’ shot hit; he heard it, and then Miles’ horse screamed. Miles’ third shot boomed into the veranda roof and then Chris heard the heavy earth-shaking sound of Miles’ horse going down, while he was trying savagely and clumsily to lever a shell into his carbine with his left hand. He could not, and the sense of urgency was wild within him. He looked up and saw Miles come to his knees in the oblong of lamp-lit dust where his horse had pitched him as it went down. Miles crawled on his knees now, frantically beating the dust for the gun he had dropped.
Chris forgot his carbine then. He put his hand out on the rail to vault it and only when his weight was in motion did he realize he had used his injured hand to support himself. The savage racking pain of it shocked up his shoulder and he tried to take the weight from his hand and his body crashed into the rail. A tearing sound of wood accompanied his fall as the rail gave way. He landed heavily on his side in the road, his carbine still in his hand. Coming to his knees, trying desperately, awkwardly to lever in the shell, he saw Miles rise, in the shaft of light from the saloon lamp. His hands were empty. He looked once, his face twisted with fury, in Chris’ direction and heard the shell in Chris’ carbine finally slip home. He ran, then, out into the night. Chris lifted his gun, sighting through the shaft of light, and he could see nothing, and rose to his feet, running, too, and crossed the lamp-lit oblong of ground.
The touch of light had destroyed his vision too. Cursing, he halted and raised his gun. He had to rest the gun on the back of his right wrist, and even as he shot at the sound of Miles’ running rather than at his dim, blurred figure, he knew it was useless. He ran on, now, and he heard Kate’s sharp cry. “Chris! Chris!” from the porch and paid it no attention, concentrating now on the fumbling way he was levering in another cartridge as he ran.
Rounding the corner of a shed, he halted, listening. Off in the timber now, he heard the crashing of brush, and behind that sound the swift pounding of Kate running toward him. He raised his gun again and lowered it, and a great sigh of disappointment came from him.
Kate reached him now and grabbed his arm and swung him around with the slight weight of her.
“Chris, don’t follow him!” Kate begged.
The wild voice of Miles came from the timber then. “Next time I’ll hold onto my gun, Danning!”
Chris half started for him, and then hauled up and looked bleakly at the carbine in his hand. He heard Kate say from beside him, “Are you hit?”
“No. Neither is he,” Chris said bitterly. He looked at her now, and she let go his arm. “Are you sure of it now?” he asked in the same bitter voice. “He had the gun in his hand, waiting for Yordy to sing out.”
“I know, I know,” Kate said gently. “I believe you.”
They regarded each other in the darkness for a moment, and then Chris turned back, and Kate fell in beside him.
The rage was still in him, but it was a rage at himself. He had let Miles surprise him, and that was stupid. He should have trusted his ability to handle his six-gun lefthanded. If his one lucky shot hadn’t hit Miles’ horse and pitched both him and his gun into the dust, he would have been cornered. His hand throbbed with every beat of his heart and he lifted it against his chest, the pain of it driving all else from his mind.
Kate halted in the oblong of lamplight. It was not an unfilled oblong now, for Bije Fulton stood framed in the doorway behind.
“Who’s shootin’?” he demanded.
“Put a light on this dead horse out here and you’ll know,” Kate answered tartly.
When she turned to look up at Chris the fear and the worry in her face had not yet vanished. “I think we both ought to see Walt now. Are you coming with me?”
Chris thought of that, and he knew, fool or not, he’d proved his point tonight. He said, “Yes,” and looked longingly back at the timber.
Younge
r stood at the edge of the timber until Kate and Danning had ridden out, and still he stood there, in the grip of angry indecision. He had made one serious mistake tonight, and he did not want to make another one by moving too soon.
Yordy, of course, had sold him out, and in discovering it he had lost his head and shot at Danning. The whole set-up was plain to him now. Kate Hardison had been placed where she could hear him and see him, and she would carry her tale of how he had planned to kill Yordy back to town and use it against him. That much was certain; that much was serious, because if she hadn’t had the whole story from Yordy, she wouldn’t have been here.
He saw Bije come out of the barroom carrying a lantern, and walk over to the downed horse. Bije would identify it and corroborate Kate’s story. It can’t be helped, he thought grimly, and left the timber, walking slowly toward the hotel.
The whole way of his life here would be changed now, he thought soberly, and his recklessness tonight was responsible. He thought narrowly then of what it would mean to him materially, and he decided it would not mean much. If he got the Sulinam mines contract tomorrow, he could buy out the town. Even if he didn’t, Truscott was involved with the bank’s money and his own money in so many affairs with Miles that he couldn’t afford to lift a finger against him. No, his money and investments were safe. It was the intangible things, though, the slow accretion of respect from people, the chance of a lawful acquisition of power that he had lost forever tonight, and, thinking of this, he hated Danning with a murderous passion. He thought again now, What does he want? Who is he?
Bije, lantern held high over his head, was still regarding the horse. He heard Miles’ approach and lowered the lantern and looked in Miles’ direction.
When he recognized him, Bije grunted. He gestured helplessly to the horse, and said, “He’s dead. What do you want done with him?”
“Anything you damn please,” Younger said flatly. “I want a horse, Bije. I’ll send him back tomorrow.”
“All right,” Bije said. “Only, look. If you and him was fightin’ over her, she don’t come here any more. You tell her I run a decent place.”
Younger swore at him then, and Bije, not much surprised, put the lantern down and said, “Get your own damn horse, you sorehead,” and tramped slowly into the barroom.
Younger got his saddle off his dead black, picked up the lantern, and went over to the corral. There was a bay and a chestnut inside, and he caught and saddled the bay, afterwards blowing out Bije’s lamp and hanging it on the corral pole.
Stepping into the saddle, he still did not spur his horse, but sat there motionless. Again he speculated on the probable effect of tonight’s happenings when news of it got out, and again he could not see how he could come out of it with his reputation unhurt. Oddly, now, he remembered Danning’s words to O’Hea that Mac had repeated: “Tell him to work it rough and in the open. He knows how.”
He touched spurs to his horse now, heading down the canyon for Rainbow. Yes, he knew how, and he would work it rough. And soon.
CHAPTER XI
Yordy’s fright was pretty well gone by the time he was deep in timber. He’d spent most of Saturday night drinking with Joe Briggs and giving mysterious reasons for his sudden exodus, meanwhile haggling interminably over the sale of his string of horses and his effects, which were still at the hotel and which Joe had never seen and did not really want to buy.
They came to an agreement a couple hours before dawn and Yordy took Joe’s one hundred and forty-three dollars and rode out, swaying in the saddle, a propertyless man.
He reached the foothills east of Box H at midmorning, Sunday. Following the old logging road which was Box H’s east boundary, noon found him in the foothills, sober, half sick and in need of sleep. He pulled off the road and slept for a couple of hours, and in midafternoon began his journey again and presently reached timber.
The urgency of his departure, now that he was sober, seemed exaggerated, and he was acutely aware that in some indefinable way he had been swindled. A few days ago he had had a job, a steady salary, four good horses and the clutter of stuff, some of it valuable, that any man collects. A few days after that, he had all this and the promise of five hundred dollars, too. And now, at the moment, he had his horse, and the clothes on his back, the few in his bedroll, his gun, and one hundred and forty dollars. It was a sorry showing for five years of sweat and toil, he concluded.
When night came, he made his lonely camp off the logging road, and to demonstrate to himself his contempt for danger, and his desperation, he boldly built a big fire and cooked his grub. Afterwards, over a bitter cigar that must have been dry the day it was made, he gave himself over to self-pity and recrimination. With any luck at all, he might now be sitting on the porch at Station waiting for Miles to hand him his five hundred dollars.
Between cursing himself for his cowardice and justifying it to himself, he finally concluded that the two Harms women at Henhouse were basically responsible for his position now. Danning was directly responsible, he supposed, but Della had thrown over her foreman of five years for this tough stranger.
He threw away his cigar and lay down, wishing savagely that Miles might have paid him the money, fired the canyon, and then been caught. It would have paid Miles off in the coin he deserved, and it would have paid the Harms women off, too. He was idly studying the gloomy pattern the pines made against the star glitter when the thought hit him.
He sat bolt upright, and for long minutes he calculated the risks. Hell, there weren’t any—or if there were, he’d soon know, and in time to run.
Swiftly now, he set about breaking camp. He lashed up his bedroll, caught and saddled his horse which was close on picket, and stamped out his fire. Mounting, he backtracked a ways and found the trail that took him west into the heart of Box H range. The stars said it was close to ten o’clock when he looked at them now.
Leach was watching those same stars, and he had been doing so for a sleepless hour. The cold biscuits and steaks he had eaten tonight in deference to Danning’s request not to build a fire sat like a handful of river pebbles in his stomach. When it came time to make up his bed tonight, he had discovered that all the pine trees handy had had their lower branches lopped off months ago to build the brush fence beside him. He had no ax and it was dark, so he could not cut pine boughs for his bed, and he had rolled up in his blanket in the grass.
Each small hump gouged his old bones, and Leach lay sleepless, imagining endless tomorrows of stiffness and perhaps rheumatism. He was too old for this kind of thing—under the kind of foreman the Harms women now had. A troublemaker and a driver, Danning was, suspecting trouble where it didn’t exist. Did anyone who knew this country and its people think for a moment that Younger Miles or any Rainbow hand was going to steal these cattle? Where would he hide them, after he’d left a trail for a blind man to read?
Sleep would not come. The thought of the bunkhouse, with a level bunk and a soft hay-filled mattress, tormented him for minutes on end. A smoke might help, he thought, and he was already sitting up reaching for the sack of dust in his shirt pocket when he remembered Danning’s injunction: No fire. He cursed bitterly and lay back on his saddle, which, covered with his jumper, made his unsatisfactory pillow. A simmering, crochety resentment came over him now. It was a fact: when you got old, you were discarded—unless you stuck up for your rights.
Leach fanned his anger by naming those rights over in his mind, and in the midst of naming them, he felt the thing run over his blankets. He jumped out of his blankets, fighting blindly to get away from whatever it was. Then he calmed down and swore bitterly.
Probably only a mouse. But dammit, if he’d been allowed to build a fire, which would have kept things away from him, and been allowed to get some sleep so he wouldn’t know if they ran over his blanket or not, he wouldn’t be this jumpy.
That does it! he thought savagely. He stood there, mad, fed up, mutinous. The thought of the long ride back to the bunkhouse wasn’t inv
iting. And then he thought of the line shack back in the Salt Meadow a quarter mile below. The shack had a bunk and a roof and a stove, and he could hear the bawling of any cattle that anybody tried to run out of Falls Canyon tonight in time to do something about it.
He scrambled around in the dark for his gear, his decision reinforced by the new difficulty of finding his stuff in the dark. Finally, he rolled his blankets and lugged his saddle down to his horse, mounted, and rode off. He was mad at himself now for not having thought of the shack sooner.
Yordy approached the canyon by the upper trail around the rim. He rode without any special caution, since he could explain his presence here to anybody except Miles, and Miles was sitting on the porch at Station waiting for him, he hoped. Coming down the steep trail that let out onto the flat at the mouth of the canyon, he turned toward the brush fence.
When he came to where the fence should be, he dismounted and walked over and felt the dry brush of it crackle under foot. He moved toward the creek and clear across the canyon, and then returned, satisfied the brush fence was still unbroken. If the cattle had been moved, the fence wouldn’t have been replaced.
He paused a moment now, tasting the perfection of his plan. Danning would swear Miles did it and Miles would deny it. If they were both so anxious to fight, there was the opportunity. And the Harms women could work out that loan from the bank for as long as they cared to. It would still be there years from now.
He lighted his match and touched it to the dry brush. The flame guttered indecisively only a moment and then caught, and the dry needles burned with almost explosive force.
Yordy was so surprised at the violence of the fire that he was panicked for a moment, and moved to his horse. He mounted and watched the fire move swiftly along the piled brush, its flames a good ten feet high. Before it all caught, the grass of the canyon behind it started to burn with a sharp dry crackle, shooting sparks into the night.