by Nelson Nye
It was obvious something was bothering him. Sometimes her father had worn such a look when cherished plans went astray or when something he’d particularly counted on had turned out to be entirely inadequate. Yet there was strength in this man; she had sensed it this morning, and she wondered what intolerable burden of grief could make him look as he did staring off into visions which were not outside the window.
She stood awhile silently watching him, speculating womanlike, her mind supplying details which excitingly garbed him in the trappings of romance. The quirt, the big hat and those flare-bottomed trousers became the appurtenances of knight errantry, that bitter dejection staring out of his face the mark of a hurt almost too great to bear.
She could not have grown up as she had in this country without being aware of some of the tales in circulation, but now with the man sitting across the room from her she judged their brutalities malicious exaggeration. In her heart she knew better, knew this wasn’t the kind of a man to do such things. The world had maligned him, had been grossly unfair.
She didn’t imagine he was any older than Cordray. You had to make allowances for the harsh life he’d lived, for the privations he had suffered, for the harrowing things he had been forced to look upon. And yet, she thought, for all his reputation, there was something about his stricken face that did not gee with the pictures she’d built up of what an insurgent general must look like. He did not seem quite fierce enough someway.
And then she saw his head come round and she moved forward, breathless and embarrassed, outraged by her lack of propriety, yet determined to say what she had come to say regardless. “Could I speak with you a moment, please?”
His eyes looked at her blankly. He scrubbed a hand across his jowls, seemed about to get up and then sank back again. “Go ahead.”
“It — it’s about myself. I’d like to ask your advice …”
She could not understand the look on his face; it seemed almost to be a look of derision. In sudden desperation she said with the words tripping over each other, “It’s about Broken Spur; the bank threatens to foreclose …”
He was staring at her suspiciously.
“Why come to me?” he growled.
“But that’s just it. That’s what I want to talk with you about. I have no head for business. It just mixes me up. I can’t understand all these law terms, these formalities. Don Luis says it was brought up in probate — ”
“What was brought up?”
“This debt, this note the bank holds.”
“Has the estate been settled?”
“I suppose — I don’t know, really. Anyway, when he came back from town yesterday, Don Luis gave me this letter” — she reached inside her bodice for it, coloring again but rushing breathlessly on: “It’s from the bank at Columbus. They say that if the loan is not repaid before the first, the place will be put up — ”
“What’s the size of this debt?” Reno’s words broke in sourly.
“Twenty-eight hundred dollars. Plus interest.”
Reno looked at her bleakly. His hand groped toward the bottle. “Did you imagine I’ve got any fortune like that? What do you take me for — a walking gold mine?”
She went back as though he had struck her. She could feel the scald of tears against her eyes but she would not let them come. She despised crying females. “I’m not asking you for money; all I want is your frank advice.”
Some of the belligerence went out of his look. His hand quit trying to connect with the bottle and he fell back in his chair with an audible belch.
“Couldn’t I have Don Luis sell some of the cattle?”
“Sure.” He blinked. “That’s the ticket. Go ahead and tell him.”
“But would they let him? Would the law — ”
“I don’t see why not. You tell him to round up enough to — You got enough cattle, haven’t you?”
“Oh, I’m sure we have. Of course I don’t know what they’re worth right now. And we lost a lot during that raid when Dad was killed, but the books show my father had more than six thousand cattle. My father — ”
She broke off in amaze. But it was true. The general was snoring!
• • •
Reno awoke filled with cramps and stiff from too long contact with the ungiving angles of the uncovered chair. He sat up, scowling, and knuckled his eyes. He yawned and shivered. The morning’s session with the owner of Tadpole had knocked a big hole in what had promised to be his future and his bout with the bottle had done nothing to improve the outlook. He had had such awakenings before, many of them but never in the past — at least that he could remember, had he looked forward to such promising prospects or had them more thoroughly knocked in the head. A man might as well face it. He was a prisoner. No doubt about it. He would never get away from here until Cordray got hold of that money.
He felt cold and sick, completely fed up. “If I could only start over,” he moaned in anguish, nostalgic with wistful memories of the days when he’d believed a man was captain of his destiny. “God, what a chump!” he growled hoarsely, hoisting himself with sundry groans from the chair. He stood a moment swaying, then took a weaving turn about the room, his scowl growing blacker as he got the kinks out of his muscles.
He beat a fist against the wall. “What the hell good are you?” he snarled bitterly. “No good to yourself or to anyone else! That girl’s got more spunk in her little finger — ”
He broke off, head canted, intently staring at the wall. But with a shrug, he resumed his pacing. Her spunk wasn’t worth a thin dime against Don Luis. It was apparent enough what that gentleman was up to — figured to snatch her place right out from under her, the thieving blackguard! Wouldn’t surprise Reno a bit to learn Don Luis had been back of those ranch burners. Or even back of that ambush Descardo had run into … By God, there was a thought for you!
But a darker thought overshadowed it; the thought of the dwindling margin of time between himself and those onzas and retribution. This unwanted reminder made him shiver again until it crossed his mind that he had nothing to worry about so long as the gold was on hand when Tano got here.
He clenched his fists, impotently cursing tinder his breath. By rights every nickel of that dough was his. He had found it, gotten it away from the Federals — had come within an ace of paying for it with his life. He shuddered to think how far he must have walked, wandering around through those hills trying to dodge the damned soldiers. And now this insufferable Cordray, this mincing fop of a Spanish hidalgo, proposed to steal this security away from him!
Sweat broke out on the backs of Reno’s hands as the injustice of Cordray’s attitude began to instill his mind with its poisons. He felt the gathering blood pounding into his temples as outrage fed the fires of his wrath. The ranchman became a symbol, personification of greed and rapaciousness.
Reno, gnashing his teeth, commenced a hunt for his bottle, at last discovering it beside the abandoned chair. Finding it empty, he was about to fling it away in a fury when he heard the approach of footsteps overlain with the jingle of spurs. His eyes narrowed blearily. If this turned out to be Cordray …
Still gripping the neck of the bottle, but holding it now like a weapon, the American tiptoed to the left of the door and, flattening against the wall, grimly waited.
• • •
Bennie, who didn’t want any trouble with Descardo, heard the results of Cordray’s recent eloquence with mixed emotions. They were standing by the corral, looking over the colts the wrangler had fetched in off the range for bronc-stomper breaking. “Look at that apron-faced bay,” Corday said. “Jesucristo! See the breadth of chest — look at those quarters. That one that will run like the wind!”
Bennie followed the patron’s pointing finger but did not comment. Don Luis called to his breaker of broncs, “Put a rope on him, Carlos.”
The broad-shouldered narrow-hipped man in scuffed range clothes reached down his rope from a saddle on the pen’s top pole and slipped through the bars,
standing quiet and imperturbably while the excited three-year-olds dashed to the corral’s farthest side. This was not a square corral; it was built in the shape of a bull ring, thus precluding any chance of a horse being crippled in a corner. Carlos stood for a moment, casually smoking his brown-paper cigarette, while the milling horses jammed together, snorting and whickering nervously, their wide rolling eyes watching the man with increasing alarm.
Abruptly Carlos’ wrist twisted back and then forward. The loop he’d shaken out went through the air with the speed of an arrow, dropping neat and snug about the bay’s arching neck.
The frightened animal went into the air with a squeal, its companions breaking and wheeling away to either side as the man dallied his rope around the post in the pen’s center for purchase and, darting left, took up the slack.
The bay horse fought with all the fury of unthinking terror but the man was an expert at this kind of thing. Once the horse hurled himself against the bars and took hide off, squealing shrilly without avail. Its eyes rolled wildly as it tried unsuccessfully to get its legs once again off the ground. Carlos put more weight on the rope and in a matter of moments the half-choked horse found himself within three feet of the post. Glassy eyed, he stood on braced legs breathing wheezily.
Cordray said, “Put a saddle on him.”
Carlos stood like a block of stone, the smoke from his cigarette dribbling into squinted eyes. The horse heaved mightily and abruptly fell down. Spitting out the butt of his cigarette, Carlos eased up on the rope a small fraction and swiftly tied it.
Picking up his hackamore the man slipped it over the bay’s head and tied it short to the post, afterwards flipping off the reata. Quickly now he adjusted the chaps-leather blinding strap across the bronc’s eyes and stepped back to the fence to lift down his gear. The bay struggled up and stood trembling.
Carlos walked around the colt thoughtfully eyeing him. He took a soft cotton rope and,-dropping one end of it over the outstretched neck, knotted it securely well back against the shoulders. Taking hold of the bronc’s left hind foot he used the free end of this rope to tie it up. Next he smoothed his blanket over the trembling back and settled the saddle on top of it. Cinching up, he said, “You want this one ridden?”
Cordray nodded around the smoke of his cigar.
The bronc stomper sleeved sweat off his face and let down the hind foot. Shaking the cotton rope loose he untied the hackamore rope from the snubbing post and with a swift fluid movement got into the saddle. It was beautifully timed so that the horse was still motionless when Carlos shouted: “Throw open the gate — I’m coming out!”
Even as Bennie, running, waved his hat to scare back the rest of them, the bay dropped its head and sent hind hoofs rocketing skyward. When these hit earth again the front of him went up. Bennie dragged the gate open and the bay, given back its sight, plunged through the aperture with ears laid flat.
Twenty yards outside Carlos fetched him up, raking the hide fore and aft with his gut hooks. The horse went up on hind feet and Carlos brought him down with the butt of his quirt. The bay came apart. Bennie winced every time those bunched hoofs hit ground. The man beat the bronc over the head with his hat and the bay swapped ends, kicking viciously sideways. He went to sunfishing then and tried to hurl himself over backwards but the lead weighted butt of the quirt brought him down. Rolling eyes a fishbelly white, he whirled toward the pen, sending Cordray and Bennie flying, trying to scrape the man off against the rough mesquite posts. The bronc stomper laughed and hoisted his leg free of leather.
In the open again the bay went to pitching, kicking sideways as well as skyward and trying to reach the man’s legs with his teeth. There was a world of wild strength and fighting spirit in the animal but none of its tricks were able to dislodge the man and, having failed in all of them, it tried to run away from him. When Carlos fetched it back the horse was black with sweat and ready to go into the rough string, the cowboys’ name for the pool of semiwild stock from which they draw replacements.
Cordray waved a hand and set off for the house. Bennie followed, blank of face, but doing a heap of thinking about what Cordray had said of his talk with the general. Bennie cleared his throat. “You’re makin’ a mistake cooping him up like you’re doin’.”
Cordray took the cigar from his mouth, smiling catlike.
Bennie said doggedly, “If it’s the money you’re wantin’ you won’t git your hands on it keepin’ him here.”
Cordray went on a dozen steps, then wheeled to face him, pausing. “Also I won’t lose him,” he said, “and so long as Sierra doesn’t know where he is he will come here.”
“I reckon the reward is better than the price of the rifles but you could just as easy latch onto the whole of it. Why not give him the run of the place? We could make sure he’s watched — ”
“He’s all right where he’s at. You let me do the thinking.”
Bennie strode along behind him, chafing under the bitterness of all these years that he had been Don Luis’ peon, forced to fetch and carry by the knowledge of past misdeeds which Cordray was holding over him. He had already made up his mind to get away from here, wanting no part in Cordray’s planned ensnarement of Sierra, but he was loathe to make his bid for freedom with empty pockets. If he could just get his hands on the money for those rifles …
His thoughts swung back to Sierra’s agent. He had seen Cordray eyeing that chin strap. He could guess what the boss had been thinking because, afterwards, he’d had a hasty look at that strap himself. It didn’t make sense that a man would wear his hat buckled into one hole of its chin strap for years and then let it out two whole notches. When they had picked the general up that night at the shack the strap had been snug around his chin, he’d seen that much. The quirt had fit snug around his left wrist, too — a damned sight too snug for proper comfort.
While Bennie was not quite ready to believe the man an imposter, being unable to think of any sufficiently plausible motive, he was pretty well satisfied that Don Luis himself had reached that conclusion. Cordray was fond of cat-and-mouse games and would treat with the man for as long as it amused him. Or perhaps there was some deeper purpose back of Cordray’s dalliance.
Bennie said, “You could keep him in the house and maybe still get hold of that money.”
“Eh?” Cordray stared. “Are you still worrying that bone?”
“After Sierra gets here you might have no chance to get hold of it.”
Don Luis said, looking around, “What do you suggest?”
“Well,” Bennie said, rasping a cheek with his knuckles, “I ain’t got the head to put no polish on the fine points but if you could use the right prod — and he’s got it hid anywheres near that shack — seems like he might git the girl to dig it up for him. If we laid out to watch her don’t it look mighty likely she would lead us right to it?”
Don Luis stared thoughtfully out across space. He had already done some private hunting. “I don’t think he’s fetched it — ”
“What the hell would he come for then?” Bennie scoffed.
The boss of Tadpole scowled. It was what he had been asking himself all this while. And, not having found any answer, he said, “I’ll think about it, Bennie,” and went into the house.
• • •
Strain put an intolerable burden on Reno as he stood with cocked muscles waiting for the door to open. The labor of his heart was like a locomotive chuffing and he was reminded of the time he’d waited up one night for Santa. Sweat broke out along his cheeks and in his guts a nerve started thumping. Then, suddenly, the door was open and it was the girl’s startled eyes Reno found himself glaring into. With a disgusted grunt he lowered the bottle.
Linda closed the door, smiling nervously. Still silent, she smoothed the skirt around her hips and looked self-conscious and awkward. She found her voice. “It wouldn’t have done much good you know. You couldn’t have got outside the house.”
“I’d have got outside if I’d got hold of
a pistol.” Reno put down the bottle and, turning away, dropped into the chair he’d dragged up to the window.
She said, “I’ve talked with Don Luis.”
Reno paid her no attention. He scowled morosely into the dust of the yard, foreseeing how he would wind up this affair as he had so many other things, taking the path of least resistance, handing over the onzas to Cordray and going back to his job of being chore boy for Tano.
“I showed him the letter from the bank,” she said; and Reno snarled irritably, “All right — now beat it, will you?”
He didn’t want to be listening to someone else’s troubles. He had problems enough of his own to keep track of and preferred to survey them without distraction. How was a man to work up a proper sorrow for the things that might have been while being heckled by a woman!
He seethed with a maudlin resentment, aware that she had not moved, was still standing there watching him, determinedly waiting for that undivided attention every female figured to be her God-given due.
He hunched protective shoulders, settling deeper into his chair.
The silence finally got on his nerves. He twisted his head around, hating her, furious. “Go on — beat it. Stir your stumps. Get rolling, will you?” The look of her eyes was like a kicked dog’s, he thought; and he got up as though he would strike her.
But when she stood her ground he slumped down again, deflated, glaring at the legs thrust grotesquely out before him, overwhelmed by the futility of attempting to do anything. “When you get to be my age,” he scowled, bitterly feeling the weight of his years, “you’ll quit butting your head and take things the way you find them. It’s a sorry damn world and the quicker you realize it the less you’ll be hurt.”
“You don’t really believe that.”