by Short, Luke;
Dave put his horse into a walk again, and presently rounded a shoulder of bald rock and approached a shack and corrals beyond.
He found a nameless homesteader out by the pole shed, declined the offer to light, and asked, “Seen Bill Schell?”
“He was by a week ago,” the homesteader said. “Try Swatzel. He’s got a girl Bill cottons to, I hear.”
Deeper into the foothills, at a shack even more dilapidated than the first, Dave talked to a pretty girl who said, “I ain’t seen him and don’t want to,” and went back into the house.
Dave kept on toward the Federals, and now he thought of the strangeness of his errand. This morning he had been ready to ride out of Signal to the east. A few spoken words, a brief violence, and his life was altered. Thinking of those words, he wondered at himself. He did not endow Red Cates’ words with any meaning; the man was a bully, and had taken a bully’s beating. But Frank Ivey’s words were different. They ate at a man, and nagged at his pride, so that if he heeded them he could never rid himself of them. He could have laughed at Ivey’s words and ridden out of Signal, and no man, save perhaps Jim Crew, would have remembered they were spoken. Yet they had touched him at a time when his pride was sore inside him. For he had considered himself a beaten man in these past weeks, and the discovery that he was not beaten, and that there was a new hope in him, was too new for him to accept Ivey’s arrogance. He had acted with the unthinking anger of a man newly discovering freedom, and he was not sorry.
In midafternoon he was in the vaulting black timber of the Federals on a trail he was not familiar with. It would lead, however, as all trails in the Federals eventually led, to Relief. This was a settlement of five buildings buried in a clearing up close to the pass and off the stage road. It had started out as a summer meat camp for the Indians across the Federals, and once a stage load of travelers caught in an early blizzard in the pass had spent a week there and named it. A horse trader had put up a place afterwards and was hanged a year later after both the Indians and the Bench outfits discovered he was stealing from one and selling to the other with equal impartiality. Now it was the clearinghouse for all the business the Bench did not want to transact in the open, a furtive place where a man could buy a meal and a drink and a bed, and, if he was going through, a horse without an accompanying bill of sale. It was the sort of place, Dave knew, that Bill Schell would hit once a month in that restless, fiddlefooted way of his.
He came up on it in late afternoon. The gloom of the tall pines suddenly lessened, and then Dave saw the clearing ahead. A wagon road led past a log shack and a tangle of corrals whose poles were caved in and useless. Beyond it and across the road was a grayed two-story clapboard building that had never been painted, save for the faded letters of the legend Hotel across its false front. There was a log lean-to next to it which was the bar, and then the wagon road passed between a couple of good-sized barns and vanished south into timber again.
As Dave rode past the shack he saw a man who had been sitting on the hotel porch rise and go in.
He dismounted at the hotel and climbed the steps and went inside. The tiny lobby, holding a couple of broken-backed chairs and the desk in the corner under the stairs, was deserted.
Dave saw the door leading into the lean-to bar, and he tramped over to it, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the floor. Poking his head inside, he observed the man who had just stepped in now at the bar reading a newspaper. The room measured about twelve by fourteen, and held only the short bar and a big round table for cards.
The man, who was bald, looked up now from his paper and nodded, and Dave came up to the bar and said, “I’m lookin’ for Bill Schell. Seen him?”
The bartender shook his head, and Dave regarded him carefully. He wore a vest over a collarless striped shirt that was a rich dirty gray at the cuffs and neckband. His face was thin and sallow, and he had a kind of bland gall in his eyes that was a barrier to a man trying to read his thoughts.
He said lazily, “Nope,” in punctuation and went back to his paper.
Dave said mildly, “I’ll have a look around.”
“Go ahead,” the bartender said indifferently, not even glancing up from his paper.
Dave was sure now that the man was lying, for what reason he did not know. He was sure, because the paper he was reading was much-read and soiled. It had probably been here a week, and yet the man seemed engrossed in it.
“Maybe you better come along,” Dave suggested.
The man looked up swiftly, a bright anger passing in his eyes. “Maybe I better not, too.”
Dave stood there undecided. Suddenly, the faint sound of shouted laughter came to him from deep in the hotel somewhere, and he smiled. That could only be Bill Schell. He turned back into the lobby, and heard a movement behind him as the bartender ducked out from behind the bar.
Dave, heading for the rear of the building, passed through the dining room and opened the door into the kitchen. He saw a big laughing Indian woman stoking the stove. Across the room, sitting in a chair back-tilted against the wall, was Bill Schell, hat shoved far back on his head, and he was grinning.
When he saw Dave the grin faded and for a moment he stared at him, his eyes startled. Then his chair came solidly to the floor, and he grinned again swiftly.
“Old Teetotal Nash,” he drawled, brushing his hat back. “How are you, kid?”
He came out of the chair with a lazy grace and delightedly shook hands with Dave. His levis were patched and faded and he was wearing a blue wash-bleached shirt whose left arm was a faded khaki color. Some ranch woman had taken pity on his raggedness, using the only materials she had at hand to fix his sleeve. He was a slim young man, not tall, with a gay, handsome face burned a near black by the sun. His dark eyes looked past Dave now, and suddenly he burst into laughter. Dave turned to see the bartender, a shotgun slacked in his left hand, standing just outside the door.
“Georgie, this is a friend of mine, Dave Nash. He’s all right.”
George gave a taciturn nod and faded back into the dining room. Bill regarded Dave closely, memory of the week they had spent in Signal bringing a grin to his face, and he said, “You’re off the reservation, kid.”
Dave said, “Let’s go outside,” nodding toward the back door. A sudden interest flickered in Bill’s dark eyes and he led the way out onto the sagging back porch. Dave sat down on the top step and Bill stood beside him, looking down at him. There was an openness about Bill Schell that few people could resist. Now, for instance, his eyes showed a real affection for Dave and he did not trouble to hide his feelings.
He said, “You son of a gun, what did you want to go to work for? I’ve missed you.”
He sat down now alongside Dave, who took out his sack of tobacco and proffered it to Bill, who accepted it.
Bill rolled a smoke and gave the sack back, and Dave took out a paper. He said, “You on the dodge, Bill?” and looking at him, added, “I’ve got to know.”
Bill laughed again. “George? No. It’s nothin’ much. I kissed a fellow’s girl is all, and George thought you might be him.”
Bill lighted both their cigarettes and then Dave asked quietly, “How’d you like a job, Bill?”
Bill’s cheerfulness faded from his face, and he groaned. “You come up here for that? I still got some money. What do I want to work for?”
“There’s a fight in it.”
Bill’s interest quickened. “Yeah?”
“Connie Dickason,” Dave said mildly, “is out to beat Ben—and Frank Ivey.”
Bill’s expression was one of puzzlement, and Dave told him what had happened in Signal. He told of Walt Shipley’s ignominious flight, and Connie’s bitter decision to seek revenge.
Bill listened with a rapt attention, and when Dave was finished, he looked off across the yard at the stack of wood by a far shed. “What else?” he said.
“That’s all.”
“You ain’t fightin’ for pay,” Bill said calmly. “Me, I’d do it if I had
the notion, but not you.”
“No,” Dave agreed, and he told of the fight with Red Cates in the saloon, and of Frank Ivey’s calm warning. When he had finished he glanced over at Bill and found him grinning.
Bill said dryly, “You got a notion Ivey can’t run you out, and you’re stickin’. Is that it?”
Dave nodded and Bill was silent, turning this over in his mind. Dave had said all he was going to say, and yet he wanted Bill Schell, for he knew the man’s breed. He was shiftless and unreliable and cheerful, and more than half Indian in his thinking and his ways, but he was not afraid of God or man. His loyalty, Dave knew, couldn’t be bought with money; but if something fired his imagination he would be as faithful as a dog. He knew the country like he knew his name, and beyond that he knew its politics and its shabby secrets. He was a born rebel with a hatred of towns and houses and men with too much power, a throwback to a freer time before money was everything.
Bill said suddenly, “Connie send you after me?”
“No.”
Bill looked at him thoughtfully. “Then you’re a shrewd man, friend Dave.”
Dave, puzzled, said nothing and Bill smiled thinly. “Frank don’t like me. I worry him. I have too much fun. I don’t like him either. He makes too big tracks.”
“Maybe he does,” Dave agreed.
“Let’s take him apart and see,” Bill said, just as quietly.
“At my own time and under my orders, Bill,” Dave said. “That’s the way it’s got to be. If it isn’t, don’t take the job.”
Bill grinned and said, “That’s the way it’ll be, kid,” and Dave knew this was Bill’s promise. They smoked in silence for a moment, and then Dave said, “We’ll need a couple more hands, Bill.”
Bill laughed. “Hell, I know fifty men who’d work for nothin’ just for a crack at Ivey.”
“That’s the kind I want. But they’ll have to pass with Jim Crew.”
Bill looked searchingly at him. “What’s Crew got to do with it?”
“Crew,” Dave said slowly, “is our blue chip. And we won’t buy him with cheap gun hands siding us.”
“But you want ’em tough?”
“Just so they get past Crew,” Dave repeated.
Bill thought a moment and said, “How soon?”
“As soon as you can get them. And spread the word we’ll be buyin’ cows here at Relief in two days.”
Bill nodded and rose and said, “I’ll see you, kid,” and vanished around the corner of the hotel. Dave got up and walked to the corner and saw Bill heading toward the corral, his thin whistle cheerful in the deepening dusk.
He had just made, Dave knew, the first move in a sequence whose end he could not see. The pattern was old, and he did not like it. You hired a hardcase crew because you were fighting a hardcase crew, and if you could channel that violence with an iron will, you won in the end.
He watched until Bill rode off in the dusk, and he knew now it was too late to turn back.
4
Connie drove into D Bar in midafternoon, and her buggy team, clattering across the bridge that spanned the creek running behind the house, brought young Link Thoms to the corner of the stone bunkhouse. Seeing Connie with the Mexican woman she had hired sitting beside her, Link cut across to the wagon shed and was waiting for them when Connie pulled up.
“Link, put Josefa’s trunk in the buckboard,” she ordered. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s around somewhere,” Link said. He was still in his teens, a slim, pleasant-faced young man who was D Bar’s horse wrangler and who worshiped Connie with a blind and unreasoning loyalty. He helped Connie down and glanced curiously at the Mexican woman.
“Have a fresh team and the buckboard ready in an hour, will you, Link?” Connie said.
She didn’t wait for Link’s answer, but motioned for the Mexican woman to come with her, and started off toward the house.
The big house was a pleasant place, made so by Connie’s mother, whom she barely remembered. It was of stone and log, and a gallery ran across the face of the stone two-story center section. Big cottonwoods overspread it. Connie’s mother had left her mark on D Bar in two ways; she had made Ben Dickason put the bunkhouse and corrals and barns a comfortable distance from the house, and she had planted an orchard behind it that stretched down to the creek.
Connie went in the front door and straight up the stairs to her room, which looked out on the corrals and barns. It was a big room filled with big dark furniture and Connie waited until the Mexican woman came into the room, puffing from her climb up the stairs.
Connie pointed to a door in the far wall. “There’s a big trunk in there. Get it out. You’ll find my clothes in that wardrobe, and start packing them.”
“Si señorita,” Josefa said.
“You might just as well start calling me Connie,” Connie said briskly. “Not Miss Connie, just plain Connie.”
“Sí señorita,” Josefa said and then, remembering, “Connie.”
Connie smiled and walked over to the window. She had been almost sharp with Josefa, and it was a true gauge of her impatience to be out of here. Since last night, after Walt had shoved the note under her door, when in the still hours she lay awake thinking of the future, she had known she was going to do this. She had thought it would take great courage, but she found it took very little. It was as if she had somehow shrugged put of her own skin, and found that she was new, with none of the old ties and the old worries and the old fears. Even the loss of Walt did not mean much to her, except as a symbol of the point at which she had revolted. She was grateful to Walt, but she had not loved him, she knew now; she had promised to marry him because he would take her out of here, would give her surcease from the unending pressure that her father and Frank Ivey brought to bear on her. It had been a fool’s escape, too, because Walt was a weakling, but Connie was wise enough to know that she was not the first woman who had grabbed a man in desperation without knowing him. The difference in her case was that she had found out soon enough, and, in finding out, had found herself. She could look at that deep-grained antagonism that lay between her and her father almost with humor now. He had beat her in one way, but in doing it he had unlocked her prison.
She cleaned the wardrobe of her clothes, piling them on the bed; and she hummed to herself, something she had not done in months. A quiet knowledge of strength made her want to sing.
At the dresser, she pulled out the drawers and began emptying them. Glancing out the window, she suddenly halted and watched. Off by the bunkhouse, she saw Red Cates’ dun horse. There were three hands grouped around the bunkhouse door, and she wondered if her father was inside with Red. Red’s beating would startle him, she knew, as it had startled her back in Signal. Dave Nash had not told her; it had been left to Jim Crew to inform her laconically that D Bar’s foreman had taken an expert, wicked beating at Dave Nash’s hands. She guessed then why Dave Nash had so suddenly changed his mind, so suddenly understood, without having to be told, what kind of crew she wanted, what kind of wages she was going to pay, and what for. It gave her a small glow of malice when she thought of it. She was deep in the packing of her things when, a half hour later, she heard the abrupt knock on her door and straightened up over the trunk.
“Come in, Pop.”
Ben Dickason stalked into the room, a cold cigar in his mouth. At sight of the Mexican woman and the room in turmoil he halted and slowly took the cigar from his mouth. “What’s this?” he asked blankly.
Connie was her father’s daughter, for Ben was small, gone a little stout now, and he had an unconscious aggressiveness about his every movement. He had a roan mustache that he never bothered to trim, so that it was worn too full and gave him a faintly comic air that went not at all with his sharp blue eyes. His hair, of an indeterminate chestnut color, cropped close to his head, was combed once a day; ten minutes afterward, in his nervous energy, he contrived to muss it so thoroughly that it stood up like burr. His clothes carried out his general appearance;
they were untidy and black and expensive, and half the time he wore a collar without a tie. He was wearing Congress gaiters, which constituted his riding boots too. Altogether, now, he had the appearance of a grizzled terrier who was seeing something he didn’t understand, as he looked about the room.
“Going somewhere?”
“I’m moving out on you, Pop,” Connie said quietly, and she went about her packing.
Ben Dickason moved over to the bed, felt of the goods in one of her dresses, and then said mildly, “Where?”
“Circle 66. I’m its mistress now.”
Ben looked swiftly at her. “You mean you married him?”
“Oh, no,” Connie said gently. “He couldn’t stick it out. He’d made over the place to me when I promised to marry him. He just left it to me.”
Ben started to say something and saw the Mexican woman. “You, Fatty, get out,” he said curtly, nodding toward the door.
Connie said, “Go down to the kitchen and ask Anna for my laundry, Josefa,” to the woman, who silently left the room.
Ben sat down on the bed then and said, “Now what is this?”
“Just what I said.”
“You want a house of your own, is that it?”
“I want a ranch of my own—and I’ve got it.”
“A ranch,” Ben said blankly. “What do you call this?”
“Good old Pop,” Connie said dryly. “If you want to get hit on the head with it, all right. I’m leaving you. I’m going to run the Circle 66. I’m taking the money Mother left me—I saw Bartholomew today about it, and he said you couldn’t keep it from me, and I’m stocking Circle 66, and then I’m moving in on Bench grass, all of it I can hold.”