The Second Western Novel
Page 22
Payne went on: “I want to do everything I can to help. I know the reliable men around here. You’re going to need regulators to enforce law and order. I can get up a band of them and report to you.”
Nelson said, “Go ahead. But I’ll look them over before they take any action.”
“Sure,” Payne said, and thrust out his hand.
Nelson shook it and moved away. He did not see Hobe Jarmon cross the street behind him; he did not see him approach the two men.
Jarmon said, “He a friend of yours?”
Payne studied him before he answered. Another big man with slow, stupid eyes, eyes that burned with hatred.
“I wouldn’t say exactly a friend,” he drawled. “He a friend of yours?”
Jarmon drew a deep breath. “I hate the bastard. I’ll kill him someday.”
Payne looked at the bruises on Jarmon’s face. He put the bruises and the hatred together and came up with an answer. He drew Jarmon around the corner. His grin was pleased.
“Well, now. It looks like we can do some serious talking.”
He thought he had his first recruit for the regulators, and just the kind of man he wanted.
Chapter Six
In two weeks the camp swelled to more than a hundred families. Some were families Nelson had contacted in Mississippi and Louisiana, and others had been on their way to join Austin or De Witt. They stopped and talked to Nelson and were convinced. Why travel that additional distance, when they could get the same thing here? But each new family increased the swelling demand “When do we get our land?” The new arrivals taxed the sanitation facilities, and a stink was beginning to hang over the camp.
Nelson shoveled savagely, moving the pile of muck from within the enclosure. Despite orders, this task came up too often. Some people were so shiftless they could sit in their filth and never be bothered.
He finished the job and moved to the shadow of a wagon. He leaned on the shovel and mopped his forehead. He could not find enough hours in a day any more.
He did not know Leah was near until she spoke.
She said, “Don’t you ever stop?”
“I’m stopping now,” he answered, and grinned.
She looked at him with appraising eyes. He was thinner; the cheekbones were more prominent, and the eyes more hollow.
“When was the last time you had a decent meal?”
“I ate this morning.”
“A piece of bread. Or was it dried meat?”
He grinned. She had hit it pretty close.
She laid her fingers on his forearm. “You’re coming with me. It’s all prepared, and don’t give me any argument.”
He liked the feel of her fingers against his flesh. He liked her standing beside him. He said, “I’d be grateful, Leah.”
He followed her to her wagon. An iron pot hung suspended over a low fire. The aroma from the pot wafted to Nelson and started the juices flowing in his mouth. He felt his belly stir and rumble. A man could be hungry without realizing it.
She called, “Father,” and ladled the stew onto tin plates. Nelson leaned forward, suddenly ravenous.
Anson Mills shuffled around the wagon and joined them. He was a thin, bent man with the skin of his throat hanging in scrawny folds. His color was bad, and he coughed frequently. His eyes had a bright shine, not of alertness, but of sickness.
Nelson thought, It’s too late. The Texas air can’t do him any good. He felt a rush of pity for this girl who was so brave.
He was ashamed of the way he ate. Leah reached for his plate again, and he shook his head. “Three helpings are enough for any man.” She had taken a few simple ingredients and made a rich, savory stew. The potatoes were cooked through, and the meat was tender, falling apart under the fork. He broke a piece of bread and mopped up the last of the gravy. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“There’s pie,” she said, smiling.
“I don’t believe it. It’s magic.”
“But of course, if you can’t eat another bite…”
He grabbed for the plate she was holding, and his fingers caught her wrist. He looked into her eyes, and they were deep and laughing. He dropped his hand and said gruffly, “I can always eat pie.”
He shut his eyes and slowly shook his head after the first bite. Dried-apple pie, the crust browned and flaky. It was not possible with the facilities she had, but the proof was in his hand.
“I never ate better,” he said.
Anson Mills said in his high, dry voice, “Leah could always cook. Learned from her mother.” His eyes had a lost, faraway look in them. “Nothing seemed to go right after her mother was gone.” His pencil-thin fingers pushed away his full plate. “I’ll be glad to get my land and get settled.” His fever-bright eyes rested on Nelson. “When do we get it?”
“You too, Anson?” Nelson groaned.
“Don’t you think I want a home?” Leah asked fiercely. “Ever since we left Maryland, we’ve done nothing but travel. Georgia, then Florida. Mississippi was no good. I’m tired of traveling, of doing with makeshift things. I want to put down roots.” Her lips quivered, and there was a suspicion of moisture in her eyes. She smiled and said with an attempt at brightness, “I always talk too much.”
Nelson saw a great deal in that brief flash of her inner emotion. Her father was a dreamer without the energy so necessary to make dreams come true. A girl would grow weary of being dragged about the country. It was a wonder her gay smile did not break more often than it did.
He said, “It takes time to get started.” He addressed his words to her. “But things are moving now. I’ve had a dozen men building my administration office in town, and it’s almost finished. Stevens went out this morning to begin surveying the land. As fast as he lays out sitios and labores, I’ll release the titles and families can move.” He looked about the camp, seeing it with different eyes. It was suddenly shabby and completely depressing. “This is a poor place for a woman.”
She leaned over and touched his hand. “Nelson, I wasn’t complaining.” She smiled and amended her words. “Well, not too much. I was only putting hopes into words.”
“You’ll get your land, Leah. The first that’s available.” He was rewarded with her smile, and the reward made him reckless. “And I’ll help you build your home—the way you want it.”
A sound reached his ears, and he stood up. “Someone coming fast,” he said.
He saw the rider a good distance from camp, the pluming dust behind the horse, telling of the speed with which the man rode.
He shaded his eyes and said, “It’s Stevens.”
Stevens rode up to the enclosure and was off his horse in a second. He dropped the reins to the ground and stepped over a wagon tongue. His eyes rested on Anson Mills, then moved to Leah. They remained there a long moment before they went to Nelson. They were veiled, showing nothing.
Nelson felt a queer stab of resentment at the man. He asked, “Something wrong?”
Stevens nodded. “I laid out the first sitio, and no sooner were the stakes driven than a man showed up to claim that piece of land.”
“Did he have title?”
“He had a title. It looked good to me.”
“Who was he?”
“One of the town roughnecks.”
“I want to see that title,” Nelson snapped. He took a couple of strides, then said over his shoulder, “Thanks, Leah.” He glanced at Stevens, walking beside him. The man’s face was blank. Nelson said, “I was thanking her for a meal.” His resentment mounted. Why did he feel it necessary to explain to Chauncey Stevens?
The roughneck was still on the staked-out land when they arrived. Before they dismounted, he said in a voice that had a tendency to quiver, “I got a title to this. A legal title. I can’t help it if you staked out my land.”
Nelson swung to the ground and strode toward the man. He recalled seeing him in town, though he could not put a name to him. He looked like a typical inmate of the zone, dirty and ragged.
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p; Nelson snapped, “You never owned anything in your life. Let me see that title.”
The man pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to him.
Nelson looked at the paper and his eyes blazed. “This was supposed to be issued to your grandfather by the Spanish government almost eighty years ago.”
“That’s right.” The words were shrill.
“Eighty years old,” Nelson repeated. “And written on some of the handmade paper I brought from Louisiana. I thought some of it was missing. You damned crooks would steal anything.” His hand snaked out and fastened onto the man’s jacket lapels. He shook him as a terrier would shake a rat.
“I don’t know nothing about that,” the man squalled. His head flew back and forth, garbling his words. “I only know that title’s legal.”
Nelson stopped shaking him. “Because José Sepúlveda signed this forgery? He’s as crooked as the rest of you.”
He spun the man and grabbed him by the collar and the seat of the pants. He ran a few steps, the man’s toes digging in, trying to stop his forward momentum. Nelson shoved him, and the man fell on his face. He pushed himself to hands and knees, and Nelson kicked him in the buttocks. The man sprawled again, his cheek sliding against the dirt.
He crawled a dozen feet before he attempted to rise again, looking fearfully over his shoulder. He put his feet under him and straightened. One side of his face was earth-smeared.
“I ain’t taking this,” he yelled. “You ain’t heard the last of this.”
Nelson took several strides, and the man turned and ran. Nelson came back to Stevens and saw a faint smile playing on his lips.
“He was right about one thing,” Nelson said. “We haven’t heard the last of these attempts to steal land. I don’t think Sepúlveda has enough intelligence to think of this. Who’s behind it?”
Stevens’ shrug said he had no idea. “Shall I go on surveying?”
Nelson stared at him. “Yes,” he said shortly. “As fast as they claim land the way that one did, I’ll throw them off. Jennings filed the first application. I’ll move him and his family here.”
He strode to his horse and mounted. He looked back, and Stevens was watching him. He wondered what was running through Stevens’ mind. He slammed the spurs home, and the horse bunched in protest, then flattened out in a dead run. Nelson kept it under pressure the entire three miles back to camp.
* * * *
Payne said softly, “So he threw you off, huh, Sull?”
Sull rubbed at his cheek. Some of the dirt was still on it. “He knocked me down and said my title was no good.”
Payne hit the table in sudden anger. A bottle jumped, and a glass fell off and broke. “He’s getting right handy at knocking people down. You hear that, José? O’Shaughnessy says you ain’t the law around here.”
He grinned at the worry in Sepúlveda’s eyes. Sepúlveda looked as though he wished he were not the law right now.
Payne looked at Jarmon and said, “You been wanting to do something. O’Shaughnessy will move a family onto that land. Indians are right bad around here. Wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t have some Indian trouble. Trouble that would make the rest of them afraid to move away from the camp.”
The sullenness in Jarmon’s face did not lighten. “That don’t get me the woman,” he said.
Payne cocked his head and squinted at him. “O’Shaughnessy’s woman?” he asked softly. He suspected that the bruises on Jarmon’s face had been the result of a fight over a woman. Now the man’s manner and words confirmed it.
“I don’t give a damn whether she is or not,” Jarmon yelled. “I want her.”
Payne did not care what happened to any woman, but at the moment O’Shaughnessy had strength. Payne wanted to whittle away at it slowly, without arousing him. Tampering with a woman was the quickest way to set a man wild.
He said, “You’ll do what I tell you.” He snorted with disgust. “You think you can ride into that camp and take her? You be reasonable, and you’ll get her. Pick out about a dozen of the boys and be ready whenever anybody moves onto that land.”
He laughed, and Jarmon stared at him.
Payne said, “I was just thinking you make about the wildest-looking Indian I ever saw.”
* * * *
Two dozen willing pairs of hands helped the Jennings family throw up their one-room shack. This was a welcome break in the monotony of the camp routine, the beginning of homes for all of them, and their eagerness completed the crude cabin by nightfall.
Nelson was tired as he rode back to camp, but a warm, rich feeling swelled within him. The dream was on its way to accomplishment.
Leah waited for him just inside the enclosure, and he thought there was reproach in her eyes.
He said, “Leah, that piece of ground was too far away. I’ve been worried about you and your father being alone.” That was not altogether true. Jennings and his wife were alone. Their two children were not old enough to count. Nelson defended himself with the thought: Jennings is capable of work, and Anson is a sick man. His mind shied away from the true reason: He wanted her nearer camp; he would miss that smile when it was gone.
He said, “Stevens is staking out a piece of ground just a little way off. You and your father can have that.”
Her eyes were very direct. “Thank you, Nelson.”
He half hoped she would ask him to supper. She did not, and he said lamely, “I’ve got a thousand things to do.” He looked back over his shoulder. In the poor light he was not certain she smiled.
In the morning he picked the best piece of land nearby. It was well drained and watered by a small creek. It lay less than a mile from camp, cut off from sight of it by a swell in the prairie. He told Stevens to lay out a labor for the Millses, and Stevens gave him a long, searching look.
It was an effort for Nelson to hold back the hot words. He turned away before he said something he might later regret.
His day was full. He checked the titles of three false claimants, and his wrath mounted with each encounter. His knuckles were bloody after the third one.
He watched the man stagger to his horse and ride away. He said, “They must think I’m a fool if they expect me to believe such obvious fakes.”
Stevens stared at the ground, and Nelson wanted to yell at him, What’s on your mind?
“Shall I go on surveying?” Stevens finally asked.
“Go ahead,” Nelson said gruffly. “They’ll get tired of this game long before I will.”
He rode back to camp with a frown on his face. He knew the reason he felt guilty whenever Stevens gave him that veiled look. Melissa. Her name slipped into his mind before he could stop it. He had made a conscious effort the past few weeks to keep it out. She preferred Natchez and her fine house. What had been between them was finished.
He found Leah and Anson Mills and said, “Your piece of land is ready. I’ll show it to you.” He was not wrong about his reward. The smile was there, with its flashing dimple. The glow in her eyes was even more warm.
He tied his horse to the tail gate of their wagon and drove them to the site.
She said, “Nelson,” as she saw it.
He needed nothing else. She put all her approval and her gratitude into the one word.
He grinned and said, “Thought you’d like it. That spot near the clump of live oaks would make a nice spot for a house.”
Anson Mills examined the dirt, crumbling it in his hand and letting it trickle between his fingers. “Good dirt,” he said.
Nelson drove the wagon to the clump of trees and handed the reins to her. “Tomorrow we’ll start your house.” He listened to the soft murmur of the nearby creek. He realized he was staring at her and said in a rough tone, “You’re close enough to camp to reach me if you want me.”
He untied his horse, mounted, and rode away without looking back. He was restless and irritable, and there was no reason for it. No reason but loneliness, he thought.
He cooked the evening m
eal, and Stevens rode up as it was done.
“No more trouble?” Nelson asked.
Stevens shook his head without reply.
Nelson grunted deep in his throat. Another one of those evenings.
He sat beside Stevens, watching the night shadows darken the prairie. Stevens plucked blade after blade of dried grass and threw them from him, controlled anger in the gesture.
He said, “Nelson.” His head was turned away.
Nelson said, “Yes?” in an equally flat voice. Something was coming out, and he was afraid he knew what it was.
“Do you ever think of Melissa?”
Nelson’s hands closed until the knuckles stood out white. “Yes,” he admitted.
“I wondered.”
“What are you trying to say, Chauncey?”
The break was there, and Stevens’ words tumbled out. “Life is a funny thing. What one man doesn’t want, another would give everything for.”
“That’s not true,” Nelson said with heat. “Melissa made her choice. She preferred Natchez.”
“And now you find it easier to forget her every day.”
Nelson choked back the hot words, not wanting the break to become final. But Stevens was prying where he had no right to pry. Not so, a silent voice said. He loves the same woman. Perhaps more than you do.
Nelson was troubledly examining the thought when he saw the pinkish glow on the horizon.
He stood up and pointed. “What’s that?”
Stevens peered at the glow. “No campfire would make that much light.”
Fear scraped Nelson with cruel talons. Jennings’ new house lay in that direction. “Hurry!” he snapped, and ran toward his horse.
He did not wait to arouse more men. If the glow was what he feared, he was already too late. He spurred the horse hard, and Stevens pounded along beside him.
The glow increased in intensity and turned to an ominous red. They swept up a rise of ground, and the burning house flamed before them.
Nelson cried, “Oh, Jesus!” and it was prayer and oath combined.