by Les Weil
Davies looked at me, as if to calculate how much I'd thought about it. I guess he didn't think that was much, because finally he just nodded and said, as though it didn't interest him, "The soul of a nation or a race grows the same way the soul of a man does. And there have always been impure priests."
There was a lot in that, but he didn't give me time to get hold of it.
"Will you do me a favor?" he asked all of a sudden.
"That depends," I said.
"I have to stay here," he said. "I have to stop them if I can, till they know what they're doing. If I can make this regular, that's all I ask."
"Yes?"
"I'm going to send Joyce for Risley and Judge Tyler. I want you to go with him. Will you?"
"You know how Gil and I stand here. We came in at a bad time," I said. I didn't like being put over the fence into the open.
"I know," he said, and waited.
"All right," I said. "But why two?"
"Do you know Mapes?" he asked. "The one they call Butch?"
"That's the one."
"I've seen him."
"Risley's made him deputy for times he's out of town, and we don't want Mapes."
"No," I said. I could see why, and I could see why he didn't want Joyce to have to go alone if there was a question of keeping Mapes out of it, though I still thought that was chiefly sucking me in. Mapes was a powerful man, and a crack shot with a six-gun, but he was a bully, and like most bullies he was a play-the-crowd man. He couldn't be any leader.
"Tyler may not help much," Davies said, as if to himself, "but he ought to be here. Risley's the man we want," he told me.
We got up. Gil was looking at me, and so was Winder. Before we could get out the door, Smith came in. He had on a reefer jacket and a gun belt with two guns, and he had a coil of rope in his hand. When he saw Davies he grinned.
"Well, if it ain't big-business," he said. "It looks like we'd be going after all, big-business."
He held up the rope. "Look," he said. "Moore says I'm head executioner, so I come all primed." He held the end of the rope up next to his ear, and nudged it a couple of times, as if he was tightening the knot, and then suddenly jerked it up and let his head loll over to the other side. He stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes. Then he laughed.
"Don't tell me I don't know the trade," he said.
He pretended to be looking at Davies closely, with a worried look. He shook his head and clucked his tongue against his teeth.
"You don't look well, Mr. Davies," he said. "You don't look at all well. Maybe you'd better stay to home and get rested up for the funeral." He laughed again. "Maybe you could get the flowers," he piled it on. "The boys wouldn't begrudge showin' a few flowers, even for a rustler," he said seriously. "A good dead one." And he laughed again.
Osgood had come in in time to see Smith making the hanging motions. He stood in the door watching the act, white and big-eyed, like it was a real stretch he was seeing. Smith saw me looking at the preacher, I guess, and turned around, and when he saw him laughed again, as if he couldn't stop.
"Oh, Jee-zus," he roared, "look at that. They're all sick. The flower pickers," he bellowed, and then, in a' little thin voice, "Girls, shall we lay out the poor dear rustler wustler?" and roared again.
The place was pretty quiet, most of the men not looking at Smith.
"Never see a dead man, preacher?" Smith asked him. "Should, in your trade. But not the ones that was hung, is that it? Well, better not, better not. They get black in the face, and sometimes . . ."
Gil banged his glass down and hitched up his gun belt. Smith turned at the sound, and when he saw Gil walking right at him, he half put up one arm, and wasn't laughing at all. He backed to the side as Gil came closer. But Gil didn't even turn his head to look at him, but went on out and down the steps. Smith stayed quiet, though. Davies and I went out too, Osgood pattering behind us, making a funny, half-crying noise.
"But to go like that," he cried at Davies, waving an arm back at the door. "To go like that," he kept repeating.
"I know," Davies said.
When he saw Joyce he went over and talked to him for a minute. The boy looked scared, and kept nodding his head in little jerks, as if he had the palsy.
"Where you off to?" Gil was asking me, standing beside me.
I rolled a cigarette and took my time to answer. When I'd had a drag I told him. He didn't take it the way I'd thought he would, but looked at me with a lot of questions in his eyes that he didn't ask, the way Canby had looked at both of us in the door. I was getting too many of those looks.
"Davies is right," I said. "Want to come along?"
"Thanks," he said, "but somebody's got to keep this company in good ree-pute." He said it quiet. I guess Smith's act had made him wonder again, in spite of Winder.
The sky was really changing now, fast; it was coming on to storm, or I didn't know signs. Before it had been mostly sunlight, with only a few cloud shadows moving across fast in a wind that didn't get to the ground, and looking like burnt patches on the eastern hills where there was little snow. Now it was mostly shadow, with just beams of sunlight breaking through and shining for a moment on all the men and horses in the street, making the guns and metal parts of the harness wink and lighting up the big sign on Davies' store and the sagging white veranda of the inn. And the wind was down to earth and continual, flapping the men's garments and blowing out the horses' tails like plumes. The smoke from houses where supper had been started was lining straight out to the east and flowing down, not up. It was a heavy wind with a damp, chill feel to it, like comes before snow, and strong enough so it wuthered under the arcade and sometimes whistled, the kind of wind that even now makes me think of Nevada quicker than anything else I know. Out at the end of the street, where it merged into the road to the pass, the look of the mountains had changed too. Before they had been big and shining, so you didn't notice the clouds much. Now they were dark and crouched down, looking heavier but not nearly so high, and it was the clouds that did matter, coming up so thick and high you had to look at them instead of the mountains. And they weren't firm, spring clouds, with shapes, or the deep, blue-black kind that mean a quick, hard rain, but thick, shapeless and gray-white like dense steam, shifting so rapidly and with so little outline that you more felt than
saw them changing.
Probably partly because of this sky-change and partly because a lot of them were newcomers who hadn't heard that there were any doubts about this lynching, the temper of the men in the street had changed too. They weren't fired up the way some of them had been after Bartlett's harangue, but they weren't talking much, or joking, and they were all staying on their horses except those that had been in Canby's. Most of them had on reefers or stiff cowhide coats, and some even had scarves tied down around their heads under their hats, like you wear on winter range. They all had gun belts, and had ropes tied to their saddles, and a good many had carbines, generally carried across the saddle, but a few in long holsters by their legs, the shoulder curved, metal heeled, slender stocks showing out at the top. Their roughened faces, strong-fleshy or fine with the hard shape of the bones, good to look at, like the faces of all outdoor, hard-working men, were set, and their eyes were narrowed, partly against the wind, but partly not. I couldn't help thinking about what Davies had said on getting angry enough not to be scared when you knew you were wrong. That's what they were doing, all right. Every new rider that came in, they'd just glance at him out of those narrow
eyes, like they hated his guts and figured things were getting too public. And there were new men coming in all the time; about twenty there already. Every minute it was getting harder for Davies to crack. They were going to find it easy to forget any doubts that had been mentioned. It just seemed funny now to think I'd been listening to an argument about what the soul of the law was. Right here and now was all that was going to count. I felt less than ever like going on my missions for Davies.
When Joyce came over
for me, I took a look at Davies, and he was feeling it too. When he looked at the men in the street he had a little of the Osgood expression. It was hard for him to shift from the precious idea in which he had just been submerged, to what he really had to handle. Osgood was standing near him, at the edge of the walk, his baggy suit fluttering and his hands making arguing motions in front of him. They made a pair.
But Davies was still going to try. When he saw me looking at him, and Joyce just standing there waiting for me, the muscles came out at the back jaw again, and he made a fierce little motion at us to get going. I started.
"Take it easy, law-and-order," Gil said to me. "This ain't our picnic."
I was getting touchy, and for a second I thought he was still trying to talk me out of lining up with the party that wasn't going to be any too popular, win or lose. I looked around at him a bit hot, I guess, but he just grinned at me, a soft, one-sided grin not like his usual one, and shook his head once, not to say no, but to say it was a tough spot. Then I knew he wasn't thinking of sides right then, but just of me and him, the way it was when we were best. I shook my head at him the same way, and had to grin the same way too. I felt lot better.
Joyce and I crossed the street, picking our way among the riders, which made us step a bit because the horses were restless, not only the way they always are in wind bringing a storm, but because the excitement had got mto them too. Any horse but an outlaw will feel with its rider. They were wheeling and backing under the brridles, and tossing their heads so you could hear the tinking of the bits along with the muffled, uneasy thuding. Now and then a rider would turn his horse down me street and let him go a bit away from the gathering, and then turn him back in, like racers waiting for a start. Joyce was horse-shy, and dodged more than he had to, and then went into a little weak-kneed run, like an old man's, to catch up with me again. I knew the men were watching us, and I felt queer myself, walking instead of riding, but Joyce had said it wasn't far, and he didn't have a horse, and I'd have felt still queerer doubling up with him. I didn't look at anybody. I could feel myself tighten up when I passed in front of Farnley's horse, but he held him, and didn't say anything. Just when we got to the other side of the street I heard Winder calling me by my last name. That can make you mad when it's done right, and I checked, but then had sense enough to keep going.
"Croft," he yelled again, and when I still kept going yelled louder and angrily, "Croft, tell the Judge he'll have to step pronto if he wants to see us start."
Joyce was breathing in little short whistles, and not from dodging either. I knew how he felt. That yell had marked us all right. I thought quickly, in the middle of what I was really thinking, that now I didn't know any of those men; they were strangers and enemies, except GiL and yet I did know most of them, at least by their aces and outfits, and to talk to, and liked them: quiet, gentle men, and the most independent in the world too, you'd have said, not likely, man for man, to be talked into anything. But now, stirred up or feeling they ought to be, one little yelp about Judge Tyler and I might as well have raped all their sisters, or even their mothers. And the queerest part of it was that there weren't more than two or three, those from Drew's outfit, who really knew Kinkaid; he wasn't easy to know. And the chances were ten to one that a lot more than that among them had, one time or another, done a little quiet brand changing themselves. It wasn't near as uncommon as you'd think; the range was all still pretty well open then, and those riders came from all ends of cow country from the Rio to the Tetons. It wouldn't have been held too much against them either, as long as it wasn't done on a big scale so somebody took a real loss. More than one going outfit had started that way, with a little easy picking up here and there.
"Don't mind that big-mouth," I told Joyce.
I'd underrated the kid. He was scared in the flesh, all right, but that wasn't what he was going to think about.
"Do you think he can hold them?" he asked.
He meant Davies. When Joyce spoke about Davies he said "he" as if it had a capital H.
"Sure he can," I said.
"Risley hang out at the Judge's too?" I asked him.
"When he's here," Joyce said, not looking at me. "We've got to get him, though. We've got to get him, anyway."
"Sure," I pacified, "we'll get him."
He led me onto the cross street and we walked faster. There was no boardwalk here, and the street wasn't used so much, so my bootheels sank into the mud a little. There were only a few people standing in front of their houses or on the edge of the street, looking toward the crossing, men in their shirtsleeves, hunched against the wind, but more women, wearing aprons and holding shawls over their hair. They looked at us, not knowing whether to be frightened or to ask us their questions. One man, standing on his doorstep, with a pipe in his hand, joked to try us.
"What's going on, a roundup?"
"That's it," I gave him back. "Yessir, a roundup."
Joyce got red, but didn't say anything, or look at me yet. I woke up, and saw the kid was scared of me too. I was just one of those riders to him, and a strange one at that.
"They'll wait," I picked up. "They don't know what they're going to do."
Joyce thought he ought to say something. "Mr. Davies didn't think they'd go. Not if somebody stood up against them."
I wasn't so sure of that. Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you're scared. If rarity is worth, then moral courage is a lot higher quality than physical courage; but, excepting diamonds and hard cash, there aren't many who take to anything because of its rarity. Just the other way. Davies was resisting something that had immediacy and a strong animal grip, with something remote and mistrusted. He'd have to make his argument look common sense and hardy, or else humorous, and I wasn't sure he could do either. If he couldn't he was going to find that it was the small but present "we," not the big, misty "we," that shaped men's needs, no matter what shaped their explanations.
"Maybe," I said.
"He says they have to get a leader; somebody they can blame."
"Scapegoat," I said.
"That's what he calls it too," Joyce said. "He says that's what anything has to have, good or bad, before it can get started, somebody they can blame."
"Sometimes it's just that they can't get anywhere without a boss."
"It's the same thing," he argued. "Only one's when it's dangerous."
We kept moving. Joyce had to trot a little to catch up with me. Finally I said, "Mr. Davies doesn't think we've got a leader, then?"
"No," Joyce said. "That's why he thought they'd wait."
I gave that a turn, and knew he was right. That was half what ailed us; we were waiting for somebody, but didn't know who. Bartlett had done the talking, but talk won't hold. Moore was the only man who could take us, and Moore wouldn't.
"He's not far wrong," I said.
"If we can get Risley," he said, "before they pick somebody . . ."
We passed a house with a white picket fence, and then another with four purple lilac trees in the yard. Their sweetness was kind of strange, as if we should have been thinking about something else.
"You know," I said, teasing, "I'm not so sure Davies wants those rustlers brought in at all. You sure he doesn't think even the law's a mite rough and tumble?"
He really looked at me then, and I saw why Davies might talk to him. He was pimply and narrow and gawky, but his eyes weren't boy's eyes.
"Maybe he does," he said, "and maybe he's right. Maybe it would be better if they got away."
"Just because he's gentle," he flared.
"Sure," I said, "it's a good thing to be gentle."
"But he wouldn't let them get away," Joyce said sharply. "Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't let them get away, if he thought they'd get any kind of a show."
"Sure," I said. And then asked hi
m, "How about you? Going, if we form the posse?"
He looked where he was walking again, and swallowed hard.
"If he wants me to go, I'll go," he said. "I don't want to," he told me suddenly, "but it might be my duty."
"Sure," I said again, just to say something.
"That's the place," Joyce said, pointing across the street. I flicked my cigarette away.
Judge Tyler's house was one of the brick ones, with a Mansard roof and patterns in the shingles. There were dormer windows. It was three stories high, with a doubledecker veranda, and with white painted stonework around all the windows, which were high and narrow. The whole house looked too high and narrow, and there were a lot of steps up to the front door. There was a lawn, and lilac bushes, and out back a long, white carriage house and stable. It was a new place, and the brick looked very pink and the veranda and stonework very white. It looked more than ever high and narrow because there weren't any big trees around it yet, but only some sapling Lombardies, about twice as high as a man, along the drive. The place looked as if it was meant to be crammed in between two others on a city street, going up because it didn't have room to spread. That made it appear even sillier than that kind of a house naturally does, being in a village where hardly anything was more than one story high, and they all had plenty of room around them.
The Judge, having settled on the edge of the village, had the whole valley for a yard, if he'd wanted it. You could see the southwest spread of it, and the snow mountains beween his little poplars.
I couldn't help wondering where the Judge got the money for that house. Brick doesn't come for nothing, that far out. But then, of course, the Judge had business in other parts too, and now and then a big stake did come out of some of the mining or water litigation.
On the inside wall of the veranda, where you could see it plain from the road, was the Judge's shingle, a big thick one with gold letters. There was a fancy, metalknobbed pull bell beside the front door.
"Scrape your boots, put your hat on your arm, and straighten your wig," I told Joyce as we went up onto the porch. He grinned like it hurt.