by Nelson Nye
Idaho was carefully putting together a smoke and she could hear Patch unscrambling the pots from his packs, making more noise than the task would seem to warrant. Barney Olds went into the wash hunting firewood; and she got off her horse, seeing Ben come down too and, beyond Ben, the Mexican’s dark gaze watching Grete. And all of this time her sharpened thoughts kept scratching around the ugly edges of something.
She loosened the cinch, pulling off her mount’s bridle, turning him loose that he might forage like the mares. Her glance, coming up, found Farraday’s eyes. “Go ahead,” he growled, “say it.”
She didn’t care for that look and shook her head at him, searching her mind, wondering if it were fear which held her back instead of foolish hope that after all she might be wrong.
Ben had no such dilemma. Suspicion was written all over him, punching up the sharp angles of a face that was bright with anger. There was no room in him for doubt, and the malice which would not let him alone now prodded him beyond the control of past experience. He saw only that here, delivered into his hands, was the man who at every turn had blocked his purpose.
He stepped toward Grete belligerently, his whole mind vengefully wrapped about the prospect of stripping this dog of all pretensions. It set up a heady excitement in him and a pale flickering of this telegraphed its warning through the clench of his fingers and the whites of his eyes. “So —” he cried, “it’s a fight you been figuring on taking us into!” The lips writhed away from his teeth in a sneer. “The gun who was going to keep trouble away from us! Grete Farraday, the big —” That far he got. Grete’s fist, coming out of the middle of nowhere, crashed into his face like a load of brick, shaking him out of his tracks, unbalancing him. His arms flew out and he went staggering back and his legs couldn’t catch his weight. He went down, wildly yelling.
He rolled, caught himself, and came up off his knees spitting teeth and blood. He looked at the blood and then he pulled his head up. “Man — I’m going to kill you!” he shouted, and launched himself at Farraday head-on, at the last instant catching hold of his gun and bringing the weapon up out of its holster. Grete ducked that swing and laid his weight against Hollis and beat the man across the head. Anger was in the tight scowl of his mouth; he jammed the heel of a palm into Ben’s chin and shoved with all his fury. Hollis, stumbling, got tangled in his spurs and again went down, this time sprawling between the legs of Grete’s horse which promptly let fly with both hind feet.
Ben rolled clear, arms hugged about his head. But he was slower getting up. There was shock in his look and he had lost his pistol. His hat was off and sweat darkly laced the disheveled edges of his hair. He touched tongue to broken lips and, lifting a leg, ripped the spur off its boot and came at Grete, rushing in from that bent-over crouch.
Farraday kicked the man in the shin, bringing a shout from him; and now, before Ben could surge out of his crouch, cracked a knee full into the man’s twisted face. Ben’s arms flew out. He drew one agonized breath and came all the way up to full height, wholly open.
It was Farraday’s chance. But with fist drawn back Grete dropped the arm, stepping away from Ben. Mercy had nothing to do with this. It had no tie-up with the rest of the crew nor had it, directly at least, been inspired by the girl although, discovering the expression of distaste around her mouth, he realized her presence might unconsciously have influenced him. His glance squeezed down until only the full swell of her breasts remained in focus below the white blur of her face. He could not help this. She saw what was in him and he could not help that, either.
He dragged his look away from her, observing Idaho’s rigidity, the yellow-gray shine of his unwinking regard. The others — Rip, Frijoles, and Patch — had no conscience in the matter. They would not have interfered this time; they would have let him kill Ben if that had been his intention.
This conviction narrowed his eyes, disturbing and confusing him; and Sary chose just then to loose some nearly imperceptible signal which, destroying the gunfighter’s cocked readiness, worked through him like an acid, reflected in those small changes which touched his raw-red cheeks. Hollis, to the left of him, stood with all his weight heavily settled into spread legs. He dragged a smearing hand across his chin and, feeling the group’s unspoken indifference, looked, almost blankly, around at them, too mentally spent to exhibit resentment.
Farraday said, “Let’s get those mares moving,” knowing that none of this yet had been settled, that each of these, in his own time if he could, would try to slide out with a few head or try to kill him.
Ben moved first, climbing into his saddle like a man half-asleep. Rip and the Mexican, tightening clinches, also swung up. The kid let go of his armload of wood, started to speak, changed his mind and went along toward the bay he’d left on dropped reins. Patch, swearing now, began to pack up.
All of this Grete saw. He heard Sary coming nearer but did not take his eyes off them even after she stopped until they were gone beyond pistol reach. Then he turned with considerable reluctance. He could not certainly discover her mood and stood stiffly, guard up, waiting.
“Is that true, what Ben said?”
“I told you there’d be trouble.”
“But not that you were inviting it.”
She saw his face tighten up. That unyielding stoniness was back in his look. Her lips, red as wolf’s candle, smiled at him bitterly. “I had you figured right the first time —”
“You made the deal. You had your reasons.”
“And what of that ranch I was supposed to get half of?”
“You’ll get your half when I take it away from him!” He started to wheel, twisted back and said roughly: “You want to call this off?”
She stared, eyes widening, in the stillness of pure astonishment. She took a sudden deep breath and said, “No,” inscrutably.
Farraday searched for tobacco, putting together a smoke, his somber glance making nothing of her expression. His hands grew clumsy and he pitched the thing away. She had a lot of control and this impressed him but his experience with women made him doubt her sincerity. He believed all women to be greatly accomplished at acting out whatever parts seemed most likely to further their desire of the moment. He had expected her to jump at the offer he’d just made.
“A woman,” she said, “can be a realist too. Nothing is ever quite as bad as we think.” After a moment she said, “What did you do to this Crotton?”
Farraday considered that. “Most of what he’s got he took away from other people, a regrettable proportion of it with my help. Of course it’s all public land. All he has is squatter’s rights and so I asked him for a piece of it. When he turned me down I filed on it. When he got around to it he burned me out.”
She studied his face, her own preoccupied, her eyes unfathomably intent, understanding how unlike him it must be to interpret himself to anyone. He was probably unaware of the extent to which his words had unmasked him. He was a forthright man, knowing little of the gentler aspects of living, or had submerged such knowledge in the driving need which he must have for motion. He would view life if he ever took the time to consider it at all, in terms of perpetual struggle; she had seen enough of him to know this, to realize how necessary turmoil had become to him.
She said, “What do you believe?” and saw the puzzled, half-irascible way it pulled his eyes around. “Is it your conviction you have as much right to Swallowfork as Crotton?”
“Not to Swallowfork, maybe, but to a particular piece of it.” He thought about that, abruptly nodding. “Certainly.”
“A brutal philosophy.”
“It’s a brutal land, Sary. You won’t scare off wolves by dropping a handkerchief.”
“If we’ve a right to the land surely the law is bound —”
“This isn’t Texas. Have you any idea how big this county is? It runs from Road Forks, in New Mexico, straight west to the Granite Mountains, hardly a whoop and a holler from the California line. That’s just the width of it — roughiy five
hundred miles. Except for Bisbee, Tombstone, Pierce, Willcox, and Ajo, which have marshals, all that country is policed by a sheriff, and the sheriff stays where the votes are — Tucson. There’s your law.”
“But surely there are deputies…”
“Deputy for these parts is Johnny Behan. Johnny’s best friend around here is Curly Bill. Nobody will cry if we don’t make it.”
She shook her head. “I can’t go along with that. You said most of this Swallowfork range was taken from others. Unless they’ve all quit the country those others have got a stake in this.”
“You just saw a couple of them. Lally and Frobisher. If they had four legs,” Grete said, “they’d rate with coyotes.”
Sary looked a long while at him. “You’re too hard on people. Isn’t there any faith in you?”
“Sure.” With his smile stretched thin and tough Grete slapped a hand against the butt of his pistol. “I’ve got a heap of faith in what this’ll do for me.”
FIFTEEN
For two interminable hours they slogged through the monstrous heat of Texas Canyon where every view, choked or cluttered, was distorted by an unrelieved glare refracted from the surface of the naked rock. It was more punishing than the roughs they had come through southeast of Bowie. It wasn’t black malpais — which at least had not crucified dust-inflamed eyes — but a kind of buff granite in a weird profusion of crazily strewn boulders that, of infinite variety, ranged from chunks the size of a midget’s head to mighty slabs that were huge as ships, some of these precariously balanced above the trail.
It was like crossing the bottom of some vanished sea. Prickly pear, occasional ocotillo brightly tipped with scarlet bloom, century plants with stalks thrust up like lances, Spanish dagger and yellowing yucca grew sparsely out of this barren soil with here and there among the rocks the incredibly twisted shapes of live oak, some of these hardly six feet tall and older, Grete said, than Balaam’s ass.
The wrinkled air of this trough was like a breath from hell. The ground underfoot was decomposed granite, loose on top and fetlock-deep, abrasive as a rasp against the unshod hoofs of the mares. The drive by now was strung out over nearly half a mile, the limping animals whickering miserably, barely able to drag one bleeding foot after another. And nothing to be done — “unless,” Grete told the protesting girl, “you can find some way of fashioning boots for them. Cloth’s no good and we haven’t got the metal or any way to shape it. It’s going to have to be leather, and when we’ve got all the saddles cut up more than half this bunch will still be barefoot.”
“But isn’t there some other way we could take? You said —”
“Not from here; and it’s not enough better to be worth two more days. We’ll quit this stuff pretty quick. Eight more miles and we’ll know what you’ve bit into.”
“You mean we’ll be at the claim?”
He sucked on a tooth and considered her grimly. “That’s right,” he said — “if Swallowfork let’s us get that far.”
She peered across the jumbled rocks toward the heights, glance darkly haunted, and wiped some of the moisture away from her neck. “Grete, did you kill French?”
Instead of answering, he skreaked around in the saddle to look back over the drive.
She said impulsively, “I don’t believe it. I know you’re hard, but…” Her eyes searched his face. “It was Ben, wasn’t it?”
“Whyever would you think that, Miz’ Hollis?”
“He’s that kind. We might as well face it. He’ll do anything he can to drive you out or get you killed.”
Grete’s mouth squeezed thin. He looked at her carefully. If that was concern tramping through her voice it damn sure wasn’t aroused over him. “Well, thanks,” he said, “for the warning. If you know any prayers you better chouse them toward Idaho. Next time he tries somebody’s liable to get planted.”
On that note he left her, pushing the dun out ahead of the drive, bleakly eyeing the country separating where they were from where he intended to climb out of this canyon. It was all up and down, more than a plenty of it out of his sight, practically all of it suitable to ambush.
With Sary still in his head he wondered somewhat bitterly if any person ever really came to know another. Generally you saw what they put out for you to see; occasionally, with luck, you might scratch a little deeper, or something — usually an emotion — briefly pulled the veil aside. Frequently this was bad although some good might come of it. It was bad because a man was apt to read more into such glimpses than would eventually prove to have been there. Too often you saw what you wanted to see.
This was certainly no time to be having his mind on a woman. It was the place where a man had better take a good look at his hole card. Crotton would know by now that he was back and Crotton wasn’t one to put trust in half-measures. When he struck it would be like an avalanche. He hadn’t forgotten the Lallys and Frobishers or what they would do if he got led up an alley. He knew all about hate. He’d come down on this drive like a clap of thunder.
All of Grete’s thinking heretofore had been filled with his own plans, with what he figured to do and how best to do it. He saw the truth now. Crotton wouldn’t wait.
The man couldn’t afford to. Grete should have seen this, should at least have worked up some alternate plan in the event prospective plans were, like now, no longer feasible. But all of Grete’s figurings had been predicated in terms of Swallowfork’s enemies, on the envy and fury and bitter resentment Crotton had stirred up over the years. Grete unconsciously had been counting — as Stamper had realized — on the whole range being eventually pulled into it. He had visualized success as coming through a carefully integrated series of hit-and-run impacts which must pull Crotton down sure as God made little apples.
Now as he thought about it, he realized all of that was out. Crotton had been way ahead of him.
The man’s only defense — and surely Crotton would have seen this — lay in hitting Grete fast with everything he had. To keep the rest of them off, to frighten them back into their subservient neutrality, he was bound to use Grete for a horrible example. He had to do this or all his past didos would rise up to engulf him.
Grete cursed his own blindness.
“Looks like that biscuit you’re chompin’ is plumb full of weevils,” Idaho remarked, bending his horse in beside Grete. “You tryin’ to kill these damn mares?”
Farraday scowled. He should have handled Frobisher different. He’d had the means within his grasp and had let whipped pride and arrogance bang the door on any aid he might have got from those King Crotton had humbled. A combine could have stood Crotton off, pecking away at the man, whittling his resources down chunk by chunk until, finally at bay, he was backed into a corner where their teeth could get at him. Now it was Grete who was bound for that corner and it was Stamper’s talk which had turned him so proud.
“You better wake up,” the gunfighter grumbled. “This stock’s in bad shape. Been a dozen foals dropped in the last fifteen minutes. Right now,” he said, whacking a boot with his rein ends, “the tail end of this drive is drug out for a mile.”
Grete hardly heard him. All Grete’s faculties were engaged in the frantic search to find some means of getting out of this trap he had dragged them all into.
Stroat — Felix Stroat, he remembered, was the fellow Crotton had lifted into that ramrod’s job. Stroat was an old hand, utterly loyal. Small, whip-thin, intolerant of anything which stood against the brand, he had been in line for that top-pay job when Crotton had put Grete over him.
The man had taken Grete’s orders but he had never quite managed to hide his resentment; Grete had sensed more than once the fury festering within. Multiplied by years it had become an ugliness, distorted — and here was Grete’s risk; but there might still be one thin chance. The possibility stemmed from Stroat’s character, from the compulsions which made Stroat do what he did… traits which might prove stronger than Stroat’s unreasoning bitterness could manage.
The Cro
tton ramrod was a man who could not bear to destroy anything which, in Crotton’s ownership, could be an asset to Swallowfork. Grete recalled how the man had once kidnapped a herd of cattle he’d been told to run over a cliff. This had worked out well for Crotton and should have fetched Stroat more than a straw boss’s job but Crotton, picking Grete for foreman, had wanted a man who would carry out orders and ride roughshod over everything. Stroat must have taken a particular delight in burning Grete out. Still corroded with hate, Stroat would boss whatever Crotton did now.
If the man realized his weakness and stood against it they were licked. Grete had to gamble that Stroat would not, that his pride in possessions would in the last ditch prove stronger than any other need which might sway him.
This was where Grete was in his thinking when Idaho, graveled by his inattention, irascibly caught at Grete’s reins, bringing both horses to a stop. “I say we’ve gone far enough — these mares has got to rest!”
“Get that paw off my reins.”
The gunfighter finally took the hand away. His yellow-flecked eyes never left Grete’s face. “I told you how it was going to be. You let that girl down —”
“She knows what the deal is.”
“She don’t know Crotton and that sonofabitch Stroat.”
“I gave her a chance to pull out —”
“That girl thinks you’re the right hand of God!” All the bleak frustration of the man’s balked passion was in those words he flung so bitterly at Grete. “You’re not foolin’ me! You’re out to make Crotton eat crow an’ you got about as much chance as a fiddler in hell.”
“You all through now?”
“You’ll know when I’m through!”
“Then get on with it. That Swallowfork bunch —”
Idaho used every unsavory epithet he could lay a foul tongue to and Grete took it, hearing not the obscenity but the tortured cry of a soul on the rack. It might have been his past self to which Grete was listening, understanding at last how negligible had been the difference between them, discovering how many of the same wrong turns he’d known as intimately as Idaho. Proximity to Sary had worked its change in each of them. The gunfighter knew that it had come, for him, too late.