The Second Western Novel

by Matt Rand

  “You said you were going to Texas. Remember?”

  “Forget Texas.”

  “Our place isn’t very big,” Millie went on. “At least, it isn’t as big as some of the other ranches in the county. So, as you can understand, we wouldn’t be able to pay very much, and that’s important, you know.”

  “Y’mean you don’t wanna take a chance on me. Is that it?”

  “No!” Millie flung back at him. “I don’t mean that at all, and you know it!”

  “Well, do I get the job, or don’t I?”

  “I don’t know,” Millie answered loftily. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  Dave laughed lightly. “You’re a woman, all right,” he said. “Can’t say yes or no right off. Gotta think about it first. But why d’you hafta think about this? No foolin’ now. Huh?”

  “Because,” Millie said, her head high and her uptilted nose seeking to climb even higher. “How do I know you won’t take the job one minute and quit it the next? You’re willing to forget about Texas now, but will you still be willing to forget about it tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that?”

  “I dunno,” Dave replied. “That’s a chance you’ll hafta take.”

  “Why should I take that chance?”

  “Because I’ll be takin’ a chance on you, too.”

  “Taking a chance on me?” Millie repeated. She looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Suppose I should fall in love with you?” Dave asked calmly.

  “Well, of all the—!”

  “It’s happened before, y’know,” Dave continued. “I wouldn’t be the first man who fell in love with the woman he was workin’ for. Heck, no! I’ve heard o’ that happening a lot o’ times.”

  “Mister Moore, may I assure you—”

  “Suppose that was to happen to me? Lookit the fix I’d be in.”

  “Mister Moore, if you don’t mind—”

  “Please. You don’t wanna interrupt when I’m talking. Now where was I? Oh, yeah! Suppose I wanted to hit the trail again? Oh, it wouldn’t have to be Texas. There are other places. California, f’r instance, an’ lots o’ other places, too, but could I just up and hightail it just like that? Nope, I couldn’t. I couldn’t pull anything as low as that. So I’d stay on and on, never letting on to you what was on my mind, and prob’bly after a while we’d get married. That happens all the time, y’know. I mean, people gettin’ married. I’d probably live to be a hundred, and I’d always dream of where I might’ve gone an’ of the things I might’ve done if I hadn’t met up with you. So you see, Millie, that’s the chance I’ll have to take if I work for you, but I’m willing to take that chance. So how about it?”

  Millie didn’t answer. She had turned her back and had moved as far away from Dave as the saddle horn permitted. Her head was bowed, too.

  Dave suddenly realized that they were standing still, and that the horse had stopped. “Hey!” he said protestingly. “What’s the idea, huh?” He jerked the reins, and the animal snorted and plodded away. When Dave dug his heels into the horse’s sides, the pace was quickened, the trot supplanting the plodding walk.

  “Hey, Millie,” Dave said, his voice softening to a whisper. “You aren’t crying, are you?”

  There was no response from the girl, and Dave put his hand on her shoulder. “Millie,” Dave said again.

  She did not answer.

  “Hey,” Dave said, but in a gentler tone he added: “Millie.”

  “Don’t talk to me!” Millie flung at him. She twisted away from him and freed herself from under his hand.

  “Aw, please, Millie!” Dave pleaded. “I was only foolin’. Honest I was. I was just foolin’ with you, tryin’ to get your mind offa things.”

  Dave pulled up, and the horse turned his head and looked at him obliquely. Dave swung himself out of the saddle, stepped up close to Millie, so close that his face was but inches from hers. “Millie.”

  “W-what?”

  “You don’t have to look at me,” Dave told her. “Just listen to me. All right?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m sorry, Millie, honest. I shouldn’t’ve fooled with you. I won’t do it again, and if you don’t want to give me a job, it’s all right. I’m not worth taking a chance on. I know it. An’ I know I’m not worth crying over, either.”

  Millie raised her head a bit and sniffled. “I’m cold,” she said in a little girl’s voice. “I was warmer before.”

  Dave climbed up behind Millie and settled himself in the saddle. The horse gave him another wondering look.

  “I haven’t got a handkerchief,” she said.

  Dave dug in his pocket and produced a folded bandana. “Here,” he said. “You c’n use this. It’s clean.”

  Millie took it from him over her round shoulder. She sniffled a couple of times, dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose, then handed the bandana back. She settled back again, too, squirming about till she was comfortable.

  “All right now?” Dave asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Wish I had something you could put on,” Dave said.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Y’got enough room for yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “You c’n move back a little more if you want to.”

  “Will you have enough room then?”

  “Oh, sure, plenty! Come on.”

  She squirmed back another inch.

  “How’s that?” Dave asked.

  “Much better.”

  Dave nudged the horse with his knees. They went on again, trotting across the far-flung, darkened range. Millie sighed and seemed to relax her body even more than before, and he leaned forward just the barest bit to give her support when she sagged against him. After a while, her head came down again. He looked at the tousled head below the level of his eyes, and he knew that his drifter days were over. He had found a girl, and because of her he had found a home range.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was just before dawn, when the lifting darkness had already begun to thin out and dissolve. The sky was still empty and drab when Millie Cox and Dave Moore rode up to the McKeon ranch house and pulled up at the back door. Moore looked about him mechanically, then, rifle in hand, he dismounted stiffly and stamped about for a moment or two, till he felt the blood begin to surge through his cramped legs. He propped the rifle against the house and came trudging back. He held up his arms to Millie, and she leaned toward him. He lifted her out of the saddle, swung her clear of it and put her down on the dewy ground. She gave him a fleeting and wordless smile of thanks.

  Millie went to the door and knocked on it rather briskly. Dave glanced at the horse as he turned away. The winded animal was standing with his head bowed. Dave stopped a foot behind Millie. She looked at him and shrugged. He caught up the rifle and thumped on the door with the butt.

  “That oughta do it,” Dave said, and he stepped back again.

  There was a brief wait, then chancing to raise his gaze to one of the windows that flanked the door Dave saw lamplight flare inside the house. “That did it, all right,” he told Millie in a low voice. “Somebody’s coming.”

  “Yes, please?” a voice called from the other side of the door. “This is the McKeon house. Who do you want?”

  “Sing!” Millie answered instantly. “This is Millie Cox.”

  “Oh, Miss Cox!”

  There was some fumbling with the lock, and in a half minute they heard a bolt scrape back. The door was opened and a Chinese man, sleepy-eyed and bare-footed, gave Millie a broad smile. “Come in, please, Miss Millie,” he said warmly.

  “Thank you, Sing.”

  The door was opened wide. Dave followed Millie into the house. He turned his head when he heard the door close. Sing moved around him, giving him an appraising look at the same time, then addressing himself to Millie, he said: “Please sit down, Miss Millie,” and he waved his hand toward the table and the chairs drawn up around it “I w
ill tell Miss Janey you here.”

  The man did not wait for an answer. Obviously, he expected none for he padded away silently and swiftly.

  “Sing’s the McKeon’s cook,” Millie informed Moore. “He’s been here so long, he’s practically a member of the family.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Millie and Dave did not hear Sing go up the stairs, but after a moment they heard a knock somewhere above them. A door opened in response to the knock, and they heard Sing’s voice and the murmur of another one. The door closed shortly, and then there was a brief span of silence. Sing returned to the kitchen. He came about halfway into the room and stopped, smiled warmly at Millie and looked questioningly again at Moore. “Miss Janey,” he announced, “will come downstairs soon.”

  “We shouldn’t have let you wake her, Sing,” Millie told him. “We should have waited.”

  There was a quick step on the stairs, and Janey McKeon came swiftly into the room. “Millie!” Janey said delightedly.

  Millie Cox rushed across the room to meet her friend, and they clasped each other in a fond embrace. Sing was beaming as he watched, evidence that both Janey and Millie ranked high in his esteem and affection.

  Then Janey held Millie off at arms’ length and searched her friend’s face with anxious eyes. “Are-you all right?”

  “Yes, of course, Janey,” Millie replied, “but I might not have been if it hadn’t been for Dave here.”

  Janey’s gaze shifted past Millie and focused on Moore. “Janey, this is Dave Moore,” Millie said, turning and nodding in Dave’s direction. “Dave, this is Janey Fowler.”

  “Hello, Dave,” Janey said graciously. “Thanks for taking such good care of our Millie.”

  Janey extended her hand to Dave. He shook it and promptly released it, flushed and looked embarrassed. Then, to cover his embarrassment, he thrust his hat under his arm and raised his hands to his head and brushed back his hair. A door opened and closed on the upper floor, and a man’s heavy stride was heard overhead. The stairs seemed to creak a little under the step and weight of the man who was coming down. Presently he came into the kitchen, tucking his nightshirt into his pants.

  “What’n thunder is goin’ on around here?” the man grumbled. “Half past five in the mornin’, an’ you’d think it was the middle o’ the day.”

  Old John McKeon stopped in his tracks when he saw Millie Cox. A big smile broke out over his face, and he held out his arms to her. She came to him with a tiny cry, and he hugged her to him, so tightly that when he finally released her, she was breathless and teary-eyed. McKeon gave Dave a searching look, then he turned to Sing who was standing close by. “Sing!” McKeon roared. “What are you standin’ there for, huh? Get busy. Get the coffee goin’!”

  Sing hurried away. McKeon didn’t finish tucking in his nightshirt. He reached for a chair, spun it around and pushed it under Millie who gave him a smile as she sat down in it.

  “You sit down, too, young feller,” McKeon commanded Dave.

  Dave nodded his thanks, walked around the table to the far side and seated himself. He put his hat on the floor close to his chair. He looked down at it, eyed it a little doubtfully, bent down and propped it against the chair leg, then he sat back again.

  Janey was standing next to Millie. She put her arm around Millie’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Millie reached up for Janey’s hand, found it and squeezed it.

  McKeon gave Dave another look, then he turned his full gaze on Millie. “Janey tell you we were plannin’ to go up to your place this mornin’ after breakfast?” McKeon asked.

  There was no response from Millie.

  “Where’s Tom?” McKeon asked. “Why didn’t he come with you?”

  Millie averted her eyes, and McKeon, frowning a little, shot a look at Dave who shook his head and framed the word ‘dead’ with his lips.

  McKeon’s frown deepened. “What happened?” old John wanted to know.

  “The Fowlers,” Dave answered simply.

  “Oh! How in—?”

  “They got him,” Dave added. “They got this fella Jed, too.”

  “I see,” McKeon said with a strange heaviness in his voice. “I’ll be right back.” He wheeled and went stamping out the back way.

  Inside the girls and Dave heard McKeon’s heavy step on the gravel path that ran alongside the house, heard it briefly as he strode down the path, but after a minute his crunching step faded out. There was a heavy silence in the room. Sing brought cups and saucers to the table, spoons and a mountainous platter of heated buns.

  McKeon soon came tramping up the path again and returned to the house. Everyone looked up at him expectantly. “I’m sendin’ Dobie Cantwell an’ a dozen men up your way,” McKeon announced, addressing himself to Millie, although he took in Janey and Moore as well in his first glance. “I hope the Fowlers are still around when Dobie gets there. They’ll wish they’da stayed where they belong, believe me! My boys don’t like the Fowlers any more’n I do, so they’ll handle th’m the way they should be handled. Doggone it, Sing, what’s the matter with that coffee? Ain’t it ready yet?”

  “Ready now, Mister McKeon,” Sing answered. He brought the sugar bowl to the table, then a pitcher of milk. “Miss Janey, you have coffee, please?”

  “No, thank you, Sing.”

  “Miss Millie, you have?”

  “’Course she’ll have some coffee!” McKeon answered for the girl. “Do her good. Give it to her good an’ hot.”

  “Turn your chair around,” McKeon said to Millie, motioning as he spoke.

  “Excuse me, please,” Janey said.

  “Where you goin’?” her father wanted to know.

  “Upstairs,” she replied. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  McKeon grunted and moved in closer to the table as Janey went out of the room.

  “G’wan, Millie, help yourself,” McKeon said. “You, too, young feller. Stuff’s put on the table to be eaten, so eat it.” McKeon reached for a bun, broke it in two and munched one piece and washed it down with a swallow of coffee. He looked at Dave. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Dave Moore.”

  “Where d’you come from?”

  “Colorado.”

  “What’d you do there?”

  “Worked on a ranch.”

  “Yeah? Which one?”

  “The Three-Bar outfit.”

  “The Three-Bar, huh?” McKeon sat back in his chair. “Who’d you work f’r there?”

  “For the feller who owned it. Sim Tyler.”

  “What kind of a feller is this Tyler?”

  “All right. Lots better’n most, I guess.”

  “What were you doin’ in the saloon when that shootin’ took place?”

  “Standing at the bar, having a glass of beer.”

  “Saw everything that happened, huh?”

  “Nope. Saw very little. It happened too fast for me. Maybe I wasn’t payin enough attention to anything ’cept the bartender. We happened to be talkin’ at the moment.”

  “What’s your idea of how Bill got killed?”

  “Haven’t any idea,” Moore answered. “I was just as much surprised at what happened as anyone else in the place.” Millie had lifted her cup to her lips. She sipped the coffee. But when McKeon began to question Dave, she stopped, put down the cup and listened attentively, shuttling her gaze from one to the other, looking at McKeon when he asked his question, then at Dave when he answered.

  “How’d the Fowlers come to get Tom?” McKeon asked.

  “They got him when they attacked the house.”

  “What made them do that?”

  “Accordin’ to Tom,” Dave said patiently, “they attacked the house so’s they could get me.”

  “An’ they got Tom instead,” McKeon said dryly.

  “That’s right,” Dave said quietly. “And they got Jed, too. Got him before they got Tom.”

  “How’d you happen to be in the house in the first place?”

  “
Tom an’ Jed broke into the sheriff’s office an’ got me outta there an’ out to their place.”

  “Why? Just to save you from failin’ into the Fowler’s hands?”

  “Nope,” Dave answered evenly. “Tom wanted to get to me before the Fowlers did because he thought I could tell him who it was that killed Bill.”

  “Why’d the Fowlers want to get you?”

  “Tom said they thought I might’ve seen the killer, an’ that they decided they’d have to kill me so’s I wouldn’t be able to identify ’im.”

  “Then they didn’t know you didn’t see anything?”

  “No, I guess they didn’t.”

  “Then till they do find out, they’ll still be lookin’ for you. An’ when they go lookin’ for somebody, they don’t just wanna see him. They go lookin’ with a gun, an’ they’re out to kill. They’ll never know for sure if you saw anything, or if you didn’t. They won’t want to take any chances so they’ll kill you as soon as they look at you. I’m givin’ it to you straight fr’m the shoulder, Moore. I think you oughta know what you’re up against. I think you oughta get up on that horse o’ yours and ride him till his legs fall off. You won’t be safe till you’re too far away for the Fowlers to get to you. That’s my advice to you.”

  “Thanks,” Dave said. “I appreciate it.”

  “That’s a polite way o’ saying you ain’t gonna follow it.”

  “That’s right. I’m stayin’ put.”

  “You’re kinda o’ young to be tired o’ living.”

  “Maybe. I’ve never hightailed it from anything before, Mr. McKeon, and I don’t aim to begin now.”

  McKeon’s broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Awright,” he said. “Your folks back in Colorado?”

  “No. I haven’t any folks anywhere.”

  “Nobody at all?” McKeon asked, and he sounded a little surprised.

  “Nobody.”

  “Then, by God, somebody oughta try an’ beat some sense into that head o’ yours!”

  Dave grinned fleetingly.

  “Look, young feller—