“Who was Sam Trago?” grumbled Indigo, repeating the question for the third time in the last six hours. “Yeah, I know what we’ve picked up, but it don’t make much sense to me.”
“He’s through,” said Joe and waved his hand with a flip of finality. “But the rest of it ain’t hardly started. We’re in on this, Indigo.”
“I see a sign ten foot high which reads—Keep out,” countered Indigo, his unlovely face overladen with a dyspeptic pessimism. “You know me, Joe. I ain’t usually a fella to keep outen trouble. I wades in it some often. But this is shore swift water. It’s over my head—and I ain’t able to swim a lick.”
A weary waitress dropped platters and cups before them, spilling coffee on the counter. And her only apology was a sharp demand for money. “Two bits each, in advance. We don’t feed boomers free.”
Both of Indigo’s hands were busy with his provender. Joe slid a half-dollar toward the girl. His gray eyes touched the girl and he smiled, the rare and mellow sympathy and humor of the man crinkling in the sun-etched furrows around his temples. The girl lowered her chin. Twin spots of color spread over her cheeks. And she smiled back at him wanly. “I get tired sometimes, Whitey. Forget it. When you empty that coffee cup I’ll bring more.”
She retreated to the kitchen. Joe tackled his meat. “Nevertheless, it’s our party, Indigo.”
Indigo waggled his head in astonishment. “Sometimes yo’re a mystified puzzle to me. What was that remark about peace bein’ yore pet horse?”
Joe turned to his partner, all the bland pleasantry gone. A grim, tremendous anger blazed in its place. The transformation was so startling that even Indigo, who had before seen the destructive power of this tall and even-tempered man, was set back. “Indigo, it sticks in my throat! That old gent sittin’ on the shanty porch. That lady cryin’ in the shadows with an apron over her head. By God, I’ll kill somebody for that! It ain’t right to strike folks like them so hard that they’re cut clean to the bone. Sam Trago’s dead. A bullet don’t hurt when it drills straight. But the old folks is on the rack. It’ll kill ’em by degrees. That’s what gets me. Somebody’s goin’ to satisfy me for doin’ that!”
Indigo swashed the coffee around the rim of his cup and downed it. He had finished, and there was nothing but wreckage to mark the course of his swift and devastating hunger. Sated, he relaxed, rolled a cigarette and filled his chest with smoke. “Hope I never git that hollow again. I feel more like m’self. Well, if yuh feel thataway about it I’ll play a hand. But when we ram into grief and have to run out hell bent for election, I don’t want no sassy remarks about my ungoverned temper. There’s my insurance. Now which?”
“Better sleep on it, I guess,” said Joe.
They went out. The rain had strengthened, pouring out of a dead black sky in heavy sheets. The shimmering lights fell across a street half awash. Roofs boomed, thunder rolled in from the distance. All other sounds in Terese town were muted. Men ran clumsily for shelter. The partners hugged the building walls in their progress toward the hotel. A phrase of Spanish and a stale smell of whisky and tobacco lifted against their faces; Joe’s arm extended to warn Indigo. They stopped in the thick shadow of a porch.
Ten feet onward a door opened into a dim-lit Mexican saloon and cafe. A familiar face crossed the threshold and was lost in the street. Directly afterward they heard Snipe feebly protesting. He, too, was nearing that entrance; boots ripped the insecure planking of the walk and then the partners saw his shrunken, swaying body pilloried in the doorway’s yellow square. There was a man holding him upright but they couldn’t see who Snipe struggled.
“Hey, Al, cut it out. Lay loose yore doggone’ paws or I’ll belt yuh. I ain’t had a drink all night an’ yo’re—whup—keepin’ me from ser’ous business. Lemme go.”
“Want you should meet a particular friend o’ mine,” said Al, voice rising against the swashing echo of the rain. “Best friend I got, outside o’ you, Snipe. It’s sorter hurt him he didn’t get no invite.”
“Who’s it?” plaintively demanded Snipe. “Keep y’paws offen me. Git away from my pockets. Tell yuh, I’ll give yore friend a invite. Keep yore paws offen me! Where’s this dude?”
“Meet my friend. Give him an invite like a good fella.”
All the partners saw of this third man was a long arm that extended out of the dark, reached into the lighted area of the door and took Snipe’s veering arm. After that Snipe was shut from view. A flurry of words went up to the sky. Thunder roared. Al and Snipe had vanished; they were coming toward the partners, arguing. Joe and Indigo flattened themselves against the building wall to let them pass on. They were swallowed up. Joe’s grip on Indigo’s arm constricted. “There’s friend Al’s mos’ particular friend. They argued that little play very well.” Praygood Nuggins’s gaunt frame slid into the Mexican joint. The door closed.
“Why hold a meetin’ out in this wet?” grumbled Indigo. “Was the gent afraid to show his face to that warped little Snipe runt?”
“I reckon Nuggins wanted an invite pretty bad,” observed Joe, “and couldn’t get it any other way. Nuggins staged all this. Guess he’s not popular around Ox Bow. Even so, what’s the idea of practically stealin’ an invite when he ain’t welcome on Rube Mamerock’s premises? It ain’t quite clear. Indigo, tuck this fellow Al’s face in yore vest pocket. Nuggins owns his shirt.”
“Not in my vest pocket,” muttered Indigo. “I got a forty-dollar watch I don’t want stopped.”
* * * *
They left the shelter and plunged across the street to the hotel, signed for a room and went up the stairs and down a dismal hall. The room faced the street and was a cheerless cubicle with flimsy, unpainted walls. Water dripped from a spot in the ceiling, windows rattled. They lit the lamp and set it in a far corner where the passing spurts of air disturbed it least. Indigo sprawled on the bed while Joe settled in a chair, rocking it back and forth to assemble and digest the strange, mysterious things he had seen and heard this long afternoon. Indigo closed his green orbs and addressed the ceiling.
“I figger this much. Rube Mamerock’s got a nice lush outfit. He’s about to blow out the candle an’ ascend to them sweet realms where they’s music an’ rest. He ain’t got no heirs. It’s hinted his ridin’ boss, Sam Trago, is the lucky man. But they’s orders in the county which hone to steal, control or assume said ranch. So, Sam Trago dies. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” drawled Joe. “Now proceed to the interestin’ part.”
Indigo threw up his hands and rolled face down on the bed. “Hell, it’s got me exhausted to git that far. The rest is all gummed in mystery. Mystery’s yore dish, not mine. You do the guessin’. Tell me how these other gents fit in.”
Joe swayed in the rocker, staring through the wet panes. “Nuggins,” said he, drowsily, “is a proud man. That girl loved Sam Trago, which is certain. They say Rube Mamerock’s word ruled Terese. If he owns more’n half o’ the real estate in it, why shouldn’t he have the say-so? Well, wolves allus travel after a steer in packs. In packs, not single, Indigo. And a prize like this Ox Heart is shore to draw the greedy an’ the overweenin’. Crowheart Ames—now there’s a man I wouldn’t trust. I don’t like that whisky smile. Did yuh observe how narrow his eyes were set, Indigo? As for Dead Card John, it looked this afternoon they was plenty of riders in Terese scared of him. I wouldn’t be surprised none. Two gents the county’s scared of—” He bent forward, nose against the window pane. “Two that we know about—Dead Card John and this Praygood Nuggins.” His body went out of the rocker as if shot by a catapult, his big brown hand whipped across the lamp globe’s top and plunged the room in darkness. Indigo reared from the bed to find his partner’s shoulders outlined dimly against the blurred window.
“Doggonit,” protested Indigo, “I’m beginnin’ to get goose pimples. What’s out there in the rain yo’re so excited about?”
“Crowheart Ames jus’ slid into that Mex joint,” muttered Joe.
“Which proves he
ain’t got much taste,” said Indigo. “I quit drinkin’ raw alcohol some time back.”
“Nuggins is in there, remember that?”
“No law against it, is they? Light the lamp, Joe, before I get separated from my status quo. Now who’s cookin’ up trouble?”
Joe fumbled with the lamp. The wick glowed against his bronzed and handsome face. Excitement flickered in his eyes. Indigo groaned, for he knew the signs; Joe was slow to rouse, yet when his imagination and his temper were alike fired by chance events he became volcanic, he moved with a tremendous impatience and was as crafty as an Apache on the war trail. Indigo exploded very easily and was as quick to cool. Not Joe. There were no lengths to which he would not go, no distances he would not cover, hardly any risk he would not take in order to satisfy the awakened warrior in him. “Once,” he murmured, “when I was in Abilene—”
Indigo punched a pillow and began to protest. “Now listen, Joe, let’s get some sleep. My mature judgment says I should get out o’ Terese prompt. I’m stayin’ because I ain’t got no sense. But I shore need sleep before I start follerin’ you from hell to supper. Le’s—”
He interrupted himself, turning his waspish face toward the door. The stairway creaked, steps drummed irregularly down the hall and a door squealed. Someone entered the adjoining room; and through the paper-thin partition came the choked, terribly intense sound of a woman laboring with tragedy. Joe’s face drew tight and bleak. He had heard women cry before; crying from temper, from broken dreams, from those unfathomable impulses that neither Joe nor any other man could comprehend. Here, for the second time this eventful day, he was witness to a woman’s heart being torn apart. And the sound tortured him until the room grew too small and the outrage smoldered like a forge fire. It rose and fell, weird and muffled. It died to the smallest suspiration and rose again to a pitch of frenzy. Joe paced the room and threw a haunted glance at Indigo. “By God, Indigo, Terese is a hard county! What’s that poor soul troubled with?”
Indigo reached for his cigarette papers, frowning heavily. “The more I see o’ these parts the better I’d like to be on the trail. Where yuh goin’?”
Joe had reached the end of his rope. He strode to the door. “I got to see if I can’t help a mite. Hell, Indigo, nobody’s got a right to stand back an’ listen to that!” He ducked into the gloom-ridden hall and went to the adjoining door. He thought he saw the shadows shifting strangely near the stair landing but he was so preoccupied that he violated a lifelong rule of look-and-see. He stood a moment by the woman’s door, scarcely knowing what to do. He shook his head, raised his hand and drummed the panel lightly.
There was no answer. He knew there wouldn’t be. A woman crying like that wouldn’t hear anything. So, dropping his hand to the knob, he violated another rule of his life, as well as breaking an unwritten commandment of the land, and pushed the door before him. A deep-rooted sense of propriety caused him to tarry on the threshold. But when he saw the girl of the dancehall, Ray Chasteen, lying on the bed, her clothes rumpled and wet, he closed the door behind and broke the unendurable silence.
“I’m beggin’ yore pardon, ma’am. I ain’t got a right in here. But—but I’m almost old enough to be yore dad. And it hurts me to hear you cry like that.”
She turned on the bed and rose. In the dim, fluttering lamplight all her features were softened and blurred. There was a golden radiance around her disheveled hair. She was dead white and the color of her eyes was quite lost in the upheaval of spirit. But to Joe she was a figure of beauty, wistful and crumpled beauty. His presence didn’t frighten her, but it stopped her crying, it hardened her and brought a sullen resentment to her face. She threw back her head.
“I didn’t ask you to come in. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to see any man! You’re all a pack of coyotes, you’re all yellow and afraid of your lives. You slink around the strongest beast and do what he tells you to do! What right have you got to be proud of yourself! Oh, if I were a man tonight I’d kill!”
Joe dropped his head. “Yes, ma’am. I reckon you would. But you’re not a man an’ so you can’t. I guess I’m intrudin’. But I wanted to say that maybe I can help. Also wanted to say that I will personally account for the man who killed Sam Trago. I will personally see to it. Just wanted to say that, ma’am.”
It only roused her fury. “Go back to Praygood Nuggins or to Dead Card John and tell whichever of them you take orders from that you came up here to torment me! Tell them you found me crying. Crying! That will please them! But they will suffer. If there’s no power on earth to make them pay, then there will be in the place they go. Get out. I don’t trust you!”
Joe shook his head slowly. He straightened, a fine, soldierly figure. The dim light accentuated the silvering crust around his temples; shadows sank into the lines of his face and lay heavily against his eyes, making him appear weary. Yet nothing could obscure the kindly mellowed sympathy on that face. There was a quality about Joe Breedlove that, once known, was never forgotten. And because of it a thousand friends along his long trail had regretted his passing. It seemed to be that Joe, old in no sense of the word, appeared to people as a gallant figure against the sunset; a rugged and straightforward man, swept clean of youthful egotism and youthful intolerance. Life had sweetened him and the full savor of his serene, robust temper radiated outward and drew others to him swiftly and surely.
“I wish, ma’am, you’d look at me. Yeah, I know you’re lookin’ already. But you’re not seein’ me as I am, but as you figure I must be.”
“Why should I trust you?” she asked, the anger slightly thinning.
“Well, men have trusted me, I reckon.”
“Men? Why should I follow after fools?”
Joe drew a breath. His words made a resonant, musical echo in the room, beating against the slashing, battering note at the storm. “I’ll ask you, then, to trust me as some women have trusted me.”
Thunder crashed upon the town, shaking this frame structure like a rag. He saw the anger die, he saw her lips part but he couldn’t hear what she whispered. And then her despairing cry filled the room. “They killed Sam because—because he was a good man!” Joe stepped forward, his arm raised. The girl’s will gave out and she fell against him, the hot tears scalding his hand. And Joe held her up, murmuring the same small comforting words he would have used for a child; saying them over and over again until the very monotony seemed to soothe her.
“The boy is dead. But there’ll be a man to pay me for that in the next forty-eight hours.”
She drew back, drained of emotion, and she spoke with a weariness and a finality that Joe was to remember all the rest of the days of his life. “That won’t bring Sam back to me.”
“God bless you, ma’am. Now yo’re talkin’ like a woman, and I’m only sayin’ what any fool man would say. Still, the ledger’s got to be balanced. And there’ll be red ink in the book before tomorrow night’s through. There’s more killin’s to come out of this. Terese is set for a struggle. Ma’am, there are jus’ two things good for a sore troubled spirit. One is sleep, which I’ve tried myself. And the other is prayer. I bid you good night.” He turned his back to her abruptly, dreading to meet her eyes again; and he closed the door softly and groped back to his own room. Indigo still sat on the bed, with a litter of cigarette butts around his feet. He looked to Joe out of red and sleepy and dubious orbs. “Well?”
Joe only shook his head.
Indigo started to fashion another smoke. Joe walked to the window and stared into the rain-lashed night, thoroughly buried with his thoughts. The door latch clicked, Indigo sprang from the bed with a warning grunt and reached for his gun. Joe swung. The door was wide and Dead Card John stood framed in the opening, seeming thinner and taller than before. Out of the turbulent, stormy night he had emerged without a crease or a spot on his black broadcloth suit; the marble pallor of his cheeks appeared more pronounced, a severe set expression—only such a fixity of features that a man of one particular pr
ofession could assume so well—was on them. And he looked directly at Joe, disregarding Indigo’s poised arm.
“You were a dead man,” said he, “when you opened that girl’s door.”
Joe’s head dropped and rose. “I reckon you had a right to shoot me then. It was steppin’ over a tall fence—which ain’t always a fault o’ mine. Lay back, Indigo. The gentleman carries his gun under his shoulder.” Indigo relaxed; these two tall characters, so dissimilar in every outward respect, matched glances across the room. Joe went on, dropping into the lazy and musical drawl that, at times like these, hid the fermentation inside of him. “Thought I noticed somethin’ down that hall. Well, havin’ heard what conversation passed, what’s yore opinion now?”
“I regard you as a friend,” replied Dead Card John in the same level, frigid voice. “Don’t let it worry you. I never ask a man’s good opinion.”
Joe nodded. “After our first meetin’ I would say you wasn’t in the business o’ answerin’ questions. Still, I reckon I’ll ask if Sam Trago was a friend o’ yores.”
“I never ask a man’s good opinion,” repeated Dead Card John with emphasis. “Trago shared the county’s opinion of me, friend. I let Trago alone—I let his folks put a fence around a few acres of hard scrabble.”
“And it’s yore territory up that way,” mused Joe. “Which is to say that others may own it but yore word goes.”
Dead Card John said nothing.
Joe shifted the subject. “Ray Chasteen. It’s a pretty name. I was wonderin’ if they wasn’t somebody near to her. Where’s the girl’s folks?”
For the first time Dead Card John permitted a trace of animation to escape through his eyes. “Ray Chasteen’s mother, friend, is sleepin’ out yonder on a hill. Once she was the greatest singer in the West.”
“What about the dad?” asked Joe, his head moving imperceptibly forward. Dead Card John stood like a post. “She ain’t known a dad since she was four.”
The Western Megapack - 25 Classic Western Stories Page 42