by Short, Luke;
As soon as Dickey began to talk, Traf knew he had talked with Len Stapp, for he told the same story about the old boy crossing the platform the night before that Pemberton had recounted. Dickey finished by saying, “Who else was around?”
“Why’d he do it?”
“I told you maybe he did it, and I said I didn’t know why.”
“What’ve you done to try and find him?”
Dickey said in sardonic anger, “Exactly nothing.”
“Like always,” Traf goaded.
“All right, who do I ask for by name?” Dickey challenged. “That train was a long time past New Hope before I heard about Braden. If the old boy done it, would he stay on that train? No. The first time it slowed down for a grade he likely jumped the train. Or maybe he got off at Kean’s Ferry. Or New Hope. Or maybe he’s still on it. How am I s’posed to know?”
“Or care,” Traf said wearily.
Dickey was silent a moment. “But you care. Why? What was that sissy Englishman to you? He owe you money?”
Traf rose and said in disgust, “You wouldn’t understand, Russ.”
“Go ahead, tell me.”
Traf looked at Clete and then his glance returned to Russ. “All right. That boy was a stranger in a strange country, and he turned out being everybody’s pigeon. He got cheated in every trade he made. Everybody doubled prices on him. Even his whiskey cost him fifty cents a shot while the man next to him got a water glass full for a quarter. Like I said, the whole country lived off his beef. They were all brand-changing on him.” He paused. “So now he’s killed and you don’t give a damn. You’ve stood by and watched him taken. You don’t care enough to try and find out who killed him.” He stopped for a moment to emphasize what he would say next. “Can I make it any plainer, Russ? The law here adds up to one incompetent son of a bitch.”
Dickey came out of his barrel chair with an abruptness that tipped it over and Traf backhanded him a clout on the face that staggered him backwards until he tripped over the chair and fell flat on his back. The violence of his fall kited the gun out of his holster and sent it skidding out of reach.
As he put elbows under him to rise, Traf threw his cigar on the floor, then lifted out his own gun. He didn’t point it, but only said, “Don’t pick yours up, Russ,” and he laid his own gun on the table.
Dickey struggled to his feet, unhurt but wild with anger at this humiliation. Kicking the chair out of the way, he charged Traf; and Traf, welcoming this at last, charged him. They met with such a body-jolting impact that each of them bounced back off the other. Dickey’s Stetson flew off and he put both arms out, his legs driving in for a bear hug. This left his paunchy belly wide open and Traf buried his fist in it. The blow almost jackknifed Dickey and he brought his arms down for protection, but his churning legs drove him into Traf, and Dickey’s head butted Traf savagely in the chest, slamming him back against the table.
Fannin leaped to his feet and backed away, and the men at the bar, seeing a fight, left their drinks and crowded over to watch. Already they were partisan, some yelling encouragements to Dickey, others yelling for Traf to stomp him.
Traf came away from the table, and seeing Dickey’s head still bowed as he fought for breath, he reached out, grabbed a fistful of Dickey’s curly red hair, shoved his head back, and then drove his fist into Dickey’s contorted face. Dickey slewed sideways and caught his balance by grabbing the chair that Clete, with bottle in hand, had just vacated.
Dickey shook his head as if to clear it, and then saw Traf’s gun on the table. Tossing the chair away from him, he lunged for the gun, but Traf, seeing his intent, dived for the table and with a sweep of his arm brushed the gun off into the encircling crowd of men.
Impatient to get at Dickey now, Traf skidded the table aside, and cut off Dickey’s attempt to hide behind it. Patiently, implacably, Traf began to pull the tired Dickey into the corner. The men were shouting now, and two men (nobody knew who later) started swinging at each other. This fight in turn ignited others, and Traf, straining to keep Dickey off balance and backing up, was dimly aware of the change in the voices of the crowd.
When Dickey’s back was jammed into the corner, Traf felt a wild exultation. Here Dickey could get no purchase for his blows, and now Traf went to work. His shoulder pinning Dickey back, he drove blow after blow into Dickey’s fatty midriff and all Dickey could do was flail him with weak blows and try to claw his way past him. His face close to Dickey’s head, Traf could hear the other’s breath explode at each blow.
Dickey’s heavy arms now lay across Traf’s shoulders, and Traf knew the time had come. He backed away a step from Dickey, shrugged Dickey’s arm off his own left shoulder, waited until it fell, and then, propping Dickey up with his right hand, he drove his left fist into the side of Dickey’s heavy jaw. The blow drove Dickey’s head against the wall, and then his body simply melted to the floor, slack as a piece of dropped cloth.
Traf turned and slowly regarded the room, breathing deeply with his mouth open, trying to draw air into his winded lungs. What he saw then was one of the wildest scenes he was ever to remember. There were half a dozen separate fights in the room. Men were fighting to get into a fight, and men were fighting to get out onto the street. None of it made any sense to Traf, and after retrieving his hat and gun from the floor, he moved slowly and carefully toward the door that led to the private card rooms and onto the back alley. He paused once to look back at the milling mass of men.
He supposed that his fight with Dickey had triggered off all the animosities in the Dickey partisans and in the men who held the same judgment of Dickey that he did. From there, it was easy enough to remember the old grudges and jealousies that many outfits held against other outfits—past arguments over open range, suspicions of brand-changing, fights over water claims, favoritisms and prejudices shown by the law. No gun had been fired, and Traf guessed that even the bartenders, who sometimes shot into the ceiling to break up a brawl, were afraid that a single shot might turn this into a wholesale slaughter.
He turned and walked down the corridor to the alley. There some of the saner heads were gathered, and among them were Clete Fannin and Tom Gore. As Traf halted among the group, Fannin observed in his growling voice, “You wanted that fight, didn’t you, Traf?”
“I have for a long time, and for the reasons stated,” Traf said dryly. He tilted his head toward the saloon. “What got into that bunch?”
Fannin shrugged. “Celebrating the end of a roundup, I reckon.”
Traf massaged his throbbing knuckles and then, seemingly apropos of nothing, he said, “Who went along with that last train of beef?”
It was Tom Gore who answered, “It was a mixed bunch, Traf. But Sophie Barrick had the biggest lot, so Benjy Schell got the job.”
“Anybody know where Benjy’s likely to stay in Kansas City?”
“Ask Sophie,” Clete Fannin said.
Traf nodded, turned, and started down the alley for his horse tied at Pemberton’s.
3
Now that Traf was certain that Dickey wouldn’t even make an effort to find Anthony Braden’s killer, he knew what had to be done. Somehow, someone had to track down the so-far-nameless old man who had talked to someone on the depot platform last night. Benjy Schell had traveled with the old man. Tomorrow noon the stock train would reach Kansas City. But the surest way to get in touch with Benjy would be to find out where he was staying or to reach him through the commission house that had bought Sophie Barrick’s Bucksaw beef.
But simply asking Sophie Barrick where he could reach Benjy would be the hardest part of it all, he thought grimly. As he came out of the alley and headed for Grant Street, he recalled with the old bitterness events that he had tried to forget. Especially painful to remember was that night when he had broken off with Sophie and she had returned to him the ring he had given her. That night was the culmination of a continuing quarrel between them that had run on for months.
The sole cause of their quarreling
was Sophie’s dragon of a mother, a domineering and tyrannical snob whom Sophie loved but was also afraid of. The death of Sophie’s father the year before had left Maud Barrick with a prosperous ranch run by a loyal crew. Instead of leaving the crew and its foreman, Benjy Schell, alone, Maud Barrick had tried to boss the outfit. Of that crew, only Benjy Schell remained, and that was out of a hopeless love for Sophie Barrick.
Traf could still remember the day when at Sophie’s insistence he asked Maud Barrick for permission to marry her daughter. When Mrs. Barrick recovered from the first shock of his request, she flatly refused her permission. During the next few days, Sophie cried a river of tears, until Mrs. Barrick, relenting, agreed to give her permission, but there were several conditions attached. Instead of taking his wife to his K Cross where as Mrs. Kinnard she would belong, Traf and Sophie would settle down at Bucksaw and live with her. Mrs. Barrick also said Traf must sign papers giving up all claims on Bucksaw in the event of her death.
It was then, after Sophie implored him to accept these conditions, that Traf knew this would start out as a sour marriage and would grow more so all the time. He flatly refused to be married under these conditions. And then the quarreling began. He came to see that Sophie was utterly dominated by her mother and always would be, and that whoever married Sophie would have to knuckle under too. Together these two women would in effect castrate a man, one knowingly and deliberately, the other passively. Any children of a union with Sophie would also be dominated by Maud Barrick. For Sophie, sensible in other things, was blind to her mother’s cruel faults.
After Traf quit seeing her, they had little reason to meet. Although Traf had kept to himself the reasons for the breakup, other young men sensed the cause. The ones who were willing to tolerate the shadow of Maud Barrick in their relations with Sophie were unacceptable to Maud, and thus to Sophie. Only poor Anthony Braden, tolerant, easy-going, witty, and friendly, seemed acceptable to Maud Barrick, and so he was to Sophie. But young Braden was perceptive enough to keep his relation with Sophie one of teasing, good-natured friendship, for he too must have seen that Sophie was not her own woman but only a handsome product of her mother’s iron will.
When Traf reached his grey gelding in front of Pemberton’s, he stepped into the saddle and put his horse around the corner of the store and headed down the street that in two blocks turned into the road to Maud Barrick’s Bucksaw. These two almost treeless blocks held a scattering of small houses and a couple of churches. Here were the people who serviced the few businesses in Indian Bend.
At the edge of town were a few garden plots, and then the rolling dry prairie began. From here Traf could see the cluster of tall cottonwoods that marked the Barrick’s Bucksaw spread. Where most ranchers wanted and needed elbow room around them, it was typical of Maud Barrick that, while she wouldn’t live in this sorry town, she wouldn’t live far from its stores and their comforts.
When he left the road, he took the lane that led to the severe-looking white New England-type house. He reflected again that this, too, was Maud Barrick’s doing. The sprawling single-story log or adobe ranches that satisfied most of the cattlemen in this country were not for her; she had wanted and had got this prim two-story house unlike any of its neighbors, and had then surrounded it by a neat white painted fence.
Traf dismounted, tied the reins to a ring embedded in a cottonwood, and then went through the gate and up the brick walk that led to the front porch. His knock on the door was answered immediately by Maud Barrick, who he knew had seen him arrive. She said in a polite matter-of-fact voice, “Good afternoon, Trafton,” a greeting that seemed to end in a question, as if she was wondering why he was here.
Traf took off his hat and regarded Sophie’s mother for a moment. She was a small woman whose black hair was streaked with grey. Her handsome dark eyes, in what had once been a severely pretty face, held no friendliness. Her grey, long-sleeved cotton dress was unornamented save for a brooch at her throat.
“Hello, Maud. I came to see Sophie.”
“Odd time to call. Have you been fighting?”
Traf raised a big hand to his cheek and felt the tender spot where Dickey had landed a blow. “Why, yes,” he said. “Hasn’t everybody?”
Mrs. Barrick did not smile. She only said stiffly, “Sophie’s resting. Can’t you stop by later?”
“No.”
The two of them looked at each other without anger. Traf had long since learned that the only way to handle Maud Barrick was with the same hard directness that she used on others.
Now she stepped aside, saying, “Then come in.”
She led him past the parlor whose doors were closed and on into the library. Caswell Barrick had been a bookish man and this room reflected it, for the wall space not taken up by windows and the fireplace or pictures held shelves of books.
“I’ll get her,” Maud Barrick said, and left to climb the stairs they had just passed. Traf sank into one of the deep leather chairs, and when he found himself sitting erect and nervously fiddling with his hat, he swore under his breath in irritation. What was disturbing about meeting a girl he had kissed and fondled a hundred times, a girl he had almost married and who had been willing to marry him?
When he heard the two women come down the stairs he rose and waited until Sophie, wearing a loose maroon wrapper, came through the door. Her freshly washed chestnut hair was fluffy and tousled, and was held by a ribbon at the nape of her neck. But her face was pale and her dark eyes were swollen from crying.
“I look a mess, Traf, but mother said you acted as if you had to see me right away. Sit down.”
“I’m sorry about Tony, Sophie,” Traf said quietly.
Sophie only put her handkerchief to her mouth, nodded, and moved over to the black horsehair tufted sofa and sat down.
Traf, still standing, regarded her more carefully than he had at any time in the last two years, searching for changes in her appearance. She was, of course, not the small girl with the fetching full-bodied, long-legged figure that he had never forgotten and never would. Her face looked thin, suggesting the shape of her mother’s face—which was no misfortune in anybody’s book. The lips of the rather wide mouth were still as full and inviting as they had always been, but they seemed to turn down a little at the corners, as if reflecting some inner discontent. It was nearly the same Sophie, once almost his, but always her mother’s.
Mrs. Barrick had vanished to the back of the house, and now Traf slacked into his chair again.
“Has anybody told you the details, Sophie?”
“Only that some coward knifed him.”
Quietly and unemotionally Traf repeated what little was known about the murder. When he mentioned the old man who had talked to someone on the platform before heading for the caboose, Sophie’s face came alert.
“What I wanted from you, Sophie, is where Benjy will be staying in Kansas City. I’ve got to telegraph him and find out if he knows the name of that old-timer and where the old boy got off the train.”
“The old man was sleeping off a drunk,” Sophie said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was in the caboose of that train, Traf. I saw our stuff counted and loaded, as Dad always said an owner should. By then I was too tired for the ride back. Benjy said to leave my horse with the crew and take the train back instead.”
“You mean you really saw the old man?”
Sophie nodded. “I didn’t talk to him, but I saw him.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Traf asked quickly.
“Why, of course. Benjy and I looked at him two or three times to make sure he was still breathing, because we never saw him move. Yes, I’d recognize him again.”
Traf stood up and slowly began to pace the room. He said softly, almost under his breath, “My God!”
“Traf,” Sophie said reprovingly.
Traf glanced over at her. “You don’t know what you’ve just said, Sophie. We’ve got to find that old
man. Len Stapp saw him talk to someone on the platform just as the train started to pull out. The old man said something, then cut out for the caboose.”
“Maybe Anthony?”
“No, girl. Tony would have headed back to the caboose with the old boy if he’d been alive.”
“Of course.”
“You, Benjy, and Len Stapp are the only three people who could recognize the old-timer. Benjy will be gone a week. Stapp’s got his job to hold down. That leaves you, Sophie.”
“To do what?”
“I’m going to find that old man,” Traf said. “But I want to be sure I have the right man. Only you can tell me that.”
“Well, when you bring him in I can tell in a second.”
“Sophie, listen to me,” Traf said impatiently. “I can’t find him and bring him in if I’ve never seen him before. You’ve got to go with me to find him.”
“Where?”
“Damnit, how do I know?” Traf said shortly. “But wherever I go, you’ve got to go with me.”
Sophie opened her mouth to speak and Traf added derisively, “I know, I know. Mother wouldn’t like it, would she?”
Color came into Sophie’s face, but before she could retort Traf said, “Go get your mother, Sophie.”
Without speaking, Sophie rose, went into the hall, and presently returned with Mrs. Barrick.
When both women were seated, Traf explained to Mrs. Barrick that in the absence of Benjy and Stapp, if the old man was ever to be found only Sophie could identify him.
“Yes, I can see that,” Mrs. Barrick said.
“Has she your permission to go with me?” Traf asked, his voice toneless. Then he added, “Tony Braden was your friend and Sophie’s, and mine too. Do we just forget he was murdered, or do we try and bring the killer to justice?”
“We don’t forget him, but she can’t go alone with you.”
“She’s been alone with me lots of times before.”
“That was different,” Mrs. Barrick said coldly.