by Nelson Nye
He’d probably covered ten feet in this wounded dove fashion when he came onto a trough storm waters had dug and, with a desperate hope, rolled into it.
THREE
AT THE Cordray ranch — which, because of its iron, was known as Tadpole — there was no visible evidence that anyone was home. In the trapped heat of the yard the sun’s white glare was like the breath from a furnace and drought had turned the thin fringe of grass along the south fence into the same dead color as the hoof-tracked dust that stretched unbroken between the dead gray walls of the outfit’s buildings. In the breathless quiet there was no slightest movement. The few scattered leaves still clinging precariously to the cottonwoods’ scabrous branches hung limp and yellow; even the horses, drowsing hip-shot in the plank corral, looked more like samples of the taxidermist’s art than they did replacements for a cow spread’s remuda. Yet in this motionless hush there was a curiously alien feel of watchful waiting, of cross currents stirring underneath the slumbering surface. The girl alone in her room at the back of the ranch house sensed it; the man seated across the desk from Lewis Cor dray in his office felt it and moved broad shoulders restively.
‘Bennie’ this one was called for reasons he had never fetched into the open. Short and broad with dark burnt features that were highboned and solid, he slouched with one leg thrown over the chair arm and regarded his owner with a curious mixture of dislike overlaid with a grudging admiration. He was not on the payroll as foreman and no ranch hand had ever sat down in Cor dray’s barbarically elegant office. Bennie had no official status. His work corresponded to the chores of a trouble-shooter and eight years at Tadpole attested to his efficiency.
From time to time he ducked his head in a nod as he listened to the run of Cordray’s voice, and when the man stopped speaking he sat silent for awhile. Then he got up and spat through an open window. Rocking back on spurred heels he flexed his arms and grinned with sly appreciation.
Don Luis, as Cordray preferred to be called, flicked the ash off his cigar and said, “Well, what do you think of it?”
Bennie took off his battered felt and mopped a hand around the sweatband. “Good stunt, if you kin work it. Boost your stock in these parts handsome and make you a tidy profit besides.” He cocked his head, teeth clamped on chaw, and regarded Lewis Cordray across the paper-littered desk. “Only one thing wrong with it.”
“What?” Cordray said.
“The guy you’re doing business with.”
“Sierra?”
“Sierra.”
“That buffoon!”
Bennie’s lips spread away from his teeth in a grimace. “One thing you’re right about. Like you say, when his mozos don’t show up with them rifles he’ll damn well get riled enough to come snortin’ over here.”
“Exactly what we want.”
“You ain’t speakin’ for me. That hombre ain’t no guy to yell boo at!”
“We can handle him.”
It was plain Bennie did not share Cordray’s assurance. “Speakin’ frank,” he said, “I’d a heap rather play with a hydrophoby skunk. What if he brings his whole bunch down on us — you ever think about that?”
Cordray smiled. His father had been hidalgo born, a stormy petrel who had brought peace into this wild country after killing off the Indios and hiring those of the local gunsmoke breed who had managed to survive his counter raids of retribution. The times had been unsettled and he had certainly made the most of them, grabbing for his own more than 80,000 acres of the best growing land in the region. His riders shot trespassers wherever encountered. In his day the elder Cordray had been the only law in all this region. By common repute his ranch had been a thieves’ paradise, an exchange for stolen cattle. His vaqueros had cheated and plundered until his had been the largest ranch north of the Mexican border. Even Bennie felt it would have been the crudest insult to compare a grand gentleman like Don Timoteo to the ordinary run of contemporary barons. When he’d finally passed to his reward he’d been the most respected rancher in ten counties. He could shoot or throw with either hand and his son, Don Luis, whom the old man had raised like a prince of the blood, was trying hard to walk in his footsteps, refusing to admit that times had undergone a change.
The old gent had believed in the right of everything he did; the only side of any question he’d been able to see was his own and, to this extent, at least, Lewis Cordray was just like him. But there was a thing that undermined the son, that prodded him into gambles in which the odds were all against him. Don Luis was a half-breed, the son of a gringo woman the old man had known before he’d taken her to the priest. She had been, it was said, as wild and arrogant as Cordray, but the two bloods hadn’t mixed well and the fruit of their union chafed under the imagined stigma to the point where it warped all his thinking. He seemed always to be having to prove things, and some of those things were crazy — like this scheme he had evolved of capturing Sierra.
Eyeing him uneasily, Bennie heard Lewis Cordray chuckle. He was not a particularly handsome man for he had too gaunt a face and a shape that was built like a fence post — a between-the-posts posts. He was invariably dressed in the height of fashion and at first glance might have been taken for a dude, a damn Yankee of some kind with more cash than sense. But when you looked at him more carefully you saw the hoods that crouched over his eyes and the bright intensity back of their twinkling and urbane good humor.
With a voice as bland as cream Cordray sighed. “Tano wouldn’t have any reason to bring his pelados — his hairy ones — over here. He’s a man of impulse, which is what we are counting on. When the rifles are not forthcoming he’ll fly into a rage and demand an accounting, but it will not occur to his mind of a bull that what we are after is to make of him a present to the Federalistas. He’ll not fetch along more than three or four — ”
“You don’t know what he’ll do,” Bennie growled.
Cordray laughed. “Have you ever met him personally?”
Bennie said, “I don’t have to kick a rattlesnake to know what’ll happen if it ever gets its fangs into me!”
“Calm your fears,” Don Luis smiled. “Tano and I have done business before. While admittedly there is a certain unpredictability about him he’ll come to heel all right with a gun in his ribs.”
Bennie went to the window and spat out his cud. He cleared his throat raucously and when he turned around his searching look was still disturbed. “What about the girl?”
Cordray’s eyes lost some of their banter but he said calmly enough, “The girl will come to heel.”
“You’ve had her here three months and I ain’t seen no ring on her finger.”
Don Luis shrugged. “These affairs of the heart take a little time. I could not very well press my suit while all her thoughts were taken up with the death of her father.”
“You can’t stop people’s tongues either and the longer she’s here the more they’ll git to clackin’.”
“People always talk,” Cordray said. “Where else could she go after they burned all her buildings? She has no confidence; she has shut herself in behind a high wall which has to be removed brick by brick with circumspection.” Tilting back his chair Don Luis smiled with quiet charm. “She is beginning to look upon her father’s friend with clearer eyes — ”
“If she ever finds out who was back of that business,” Bennie said, and quit when he caught the hard shine of Cordray’s stare.
A cold stillness closed down, out of which Cordray said, “The day she finds out you will need a fast horse.”
Bennie squirmed in his clothing. “Hell, she won’t learn from me! It’s — it’s just that talk’s goin’ around and I figured you better know it.”
Cordray fell back in his chair, again smiling. “Very probably you are right. Engrossed as I’ve been with this affair of Sierra I have doubtless neglected her more than I should have. We will rectify that. You can arrange for Juarez to demonstrate his talents.”
Bennie looked as though he thought the man
had taken leave of his senses. His cheeks sucked in. His eyes bugged out. “Juarez!” he said. “For Christ’s sake, Luis — ”
Cordray waved an affable hand. “To create an illusion one has to make it convincing.”
“But that damn studhoss — ”
“Never fear. I shall be there in time to step in when it’s called for.” Don Luis grinned with amusement. “And when her land has been joined to mine I will see that you are fittingly rewarded.” Leaning forward he suggested a few details. “She will receive a note asking her to meet with one who can reveal the names and whereabouts of the men responsible for the death of her father. The abandoned line shack nearest Mimbres will do admirably for the rendezvous. Say two nights hence at eight of the clock. That afternoon you can wonder in Juarez’s hearing what she finds to take so many evenings in that direction.”
Bennie stared thoughtfully at the toe of his boot. After some moments he got out his tobacco and bit off a fresh chaw. “Might be smarter to bring in some outsider. She’s maybe seen Juarez around and — ”
• • •
“The point is well taken,” Don Luis said equably, “but if I remember correctly, of those who took part in her late father’s misfortune none but this Juarez is still around to tell of it. Except, of course, yourself.” With a long bright look at the dark man’s features the owner of Tadpole rubbed the ash off his cigar.
The banker’s wife, Minnie Burlingate, in the not far distant town of Columbus, had once described Linda Farrel as ‘mousy’ but the adjective, compounded as it had been of an old woman’s spiteful envy, lacked considerable of being called for. In a more settled country she would never, perhaps, have caused a turning of heads but no one, with justice, could have called Major Farrel’s only daughter an ugly duckling. Her figure was good, her stride free and light, but she habitually stood in such awkward positions because of the self-consciousness induced by a long bout with some kind of spinal affliction that most people, seeing her, took away an impression of gawkiness.
Her hair was brown, parted in the middle and whipped back above her ears in the prevailing Spanish fashion which made her face seem longer than it actually was. She wasn’t pretty or even mildly handsome but there were depths in her most men had overlooked and, because she was not gifted in the art of aimless chit-chat, none of the local eligibles had ever offered to court her. Left pretty much to her own resources during an unexciting adolescence, she had grown away from people in a world of her own while her father applied his energies to building up the second best ranch in the country — the first, of course, being its adjoining neighbor, Tadpole.
The Farrel ranch, Broken Spur, had been without a mistress while Linda was growing up. Her mother had died in childbirth which was reason enough, according to some sources, for Linda’s peculiarities. “Growing up in that place with all them men,” Mrs. Burlingate had remarked more than once to her circle, “it’s no wonder the poor thing’s so queer in the head. I’m surprised she don’t wear pants like the rest of them. Probably would if old Tom would of let her.”
When Linda received the note she reacted about as Lewis Cordray had imagined she would. It was late afternoon and the ranch was deserted except for the cook when she went to the door and found a ragged boy standing there. “Meez Farrel?” he said, hat in hand. And when she nodded he dug it out of a pocket and handed it to her. She had opened it, read it. When she looked up he was back on his horse and riding out of the yard.
Her first impulse had been to confide in Don Luis. By the time he rode in with the men she’d reconsidered. Lewis Cordray, she was sure, would have advised her to disregard it. She had already, by that time, considered the arguments he would have presented. It might indeed very well be some sort of a hoax — it might even be dangerous to keep such a tryst, but her mind was made up. If there was a chance she might come by the promised information she was of a mind to leave no stone unturned. She and her father had never been particularly close for, in some strange way, he had seemed to regard her as the cause of her mother’s death, but he was still her father and she wanted his killers punished.
She said not a word to anyone. Pleading a headache she had remained in her room until all the rest were at supper. Very quietly then she had slipped around to the stable and quickly saddled the steeldust gelding Don Luis had given her shortly after she had come here.
There was an oddness about his way of giving her that horse. “The animal needs riding,” he had told her one morning after the hands had left for the range. “He is a peculiar horse, a pure strain that was gelded by mistake while I was away. There is a great heritage of fine horses behind him; his father is my proudest stallion, his dam was by the stallion Old Billy who traces to the colonial Quarter stock. My men have no time to understand such a horse. His name is Cuadro — he threw one colt before they took his power away. Permit me, Linda, to give him to you.”
It was the first gift Linda had ever received.
Perceiving her embarrassment Don Luis had said with great charm, “It is nothing. The horse needs riding. And who, in all this country, knows how to ride better than you?”
It had not taken Linda long to discover why no one had wanted the horse. He took the saddle with apparent indifference and was docility itself while she walked him around the yard, but out on the range he’d swiftly shed his bland posture and demonstrated his bag of tricks, the worst of which had been a suicidal impulse to fall over backwards. She had let him know she was a fighter, too — as good a one as he was — and now they were firm friends.
Making sure she was not observed she led him back of the barn and swung into the saddle. She was wearing a divided skirt because she preferred to ride with her legs around his barrel and she left the ranch in the direction of Columbus, not swinging toward Mimbres until she had put a couple of ridges between herself and Tadpole.
She was not at all sure the information would help her if she did find out the names of the men implicated in her father’s killing. The sheriff of Luna County spent the most of his time around Deming and, from all reports, was a pretty frail reed to lean on. For some indefinable reason she felt strangely reluctant to go to Don Luis. For almost three months now she had been living in his house and there was still constraint between them whenever chance conspired to place them alone in each other’s company.
That this constraint was almost wholly of her making she was well aware, nor could she find any plausible reason for it. All her life she had lived with tales of the Cordray saga and she knew it was not awe which made her restive in his presence. He was the soul of tact, a charming host, never presuming upon the situation which had placed her under his roof. He had offered to oversee the rebuilding of Spur headquarters for her and it was certainly not his fault that things were progressing so slowly. Adequate help was hard to come by and those of her father’s crew still alive had apparently fled the country. She had been over there often enough to know he was doing everything he could to speed completion of the new buildings. His own vaqueros were riding Spur range, patrolling it to discourage the inroads of rustlers. In her behalf he had hired carpenteros and adobe makers and when these went off on a drunk he hired others. She knew he’d had men trying to track down the raiders and had only given up when every chance had been exhausted. Yet her disquiet in his presence remained a nagging irritation and she resented her inability to put it down and be as gracious as her debt to him would have her.
The evening wore on and dusk came to subdue the surrounding contours of the hills and gobble up the sun while her thoughts continued to pick at Lewis Cordray and the reactions he awoke in her.
She was an honest girl and he had treated her as one, treated her almost as an equal, despite the differences in their backgrounds and the gap between their ages. He was fourteen years her senior and about all the law there was in the country; and two weeks back he had asked her to marry him and she had fled white-faced to her room like a schoolgirl.
Her cheeks burned painfully at the me
mory. Though he’d said nothing further about it and continued to treat her with every consideration, it was obvious that soon he would expect her to give him an answer.
So here she was with a ranch on her hands and no crew to run it. What could she say? Even she had to admit it would be the most practical arrangement. What other man in this region could do better by her? From every commonsense viewpoint it was the best possible solution of all her problems. She would have security and the envy of every woman in the country. As the wife of Don Luis —
She hit the gelding with her spurs. She didn’t want to be his wife! She saw the line shack through the darkness and pulled up, unaccountably shuddering. The only thing she wanted in all the world was to be loved!
• • •
She tied the gelding to a gnarled juniper and stood beside him, stroking his muzzle, telling herself she was being silly. She went into the shack and struck a match, looking around in distaste at the litter of rubbish. There was a lamp in a bracket and she went across to it and lit it, only then becoming conscious of the man who had come in behind her.
He hulked better than six feet in the cotton drawers and shirt of a peon, the unusual height of him emphasized by a gauntness that seemed little short of starvation. He stood without movement, the deep socketed eyes in that bony face going slowly over her shape with a brightening shine.
“You had something to tell me?”
The apparition smirked.
Linda kept her voice steady. “I got your note. Let’s get on with it.”
When the man neither moved nor altered his expression she repeated the words in Spanish, still without drawing either response or visible reaction. “What’s the matter — are you deaf?”