L'Amour, Louis - SSC 32

by The Collected Short Stories Vol 3

  Tollefson watched nervously, his eyes roving the crowd. He saw neither Tandy Meadows nor Snap. Janet Bates rode in with Johnny Herndon, and they joined her father and Jim Whitten. Fulton sat with Tollefson and Sheriff Lynn, and the last to arrive was Tom Passman. He dismounted but kept free of the crowd. Tollefson noted with relief that he was wearing two guns, something he rarely did.

  When he walked to the edge of the track, people moved away from him. The quarter horse race was announced, and Tollefson touched his lips uneasily with his tongue as he watched Lady Luck walking into place in the line. Three other horses were entered in this race and they all showed up. All but one had been beaten by the Lady in previous races, and Tollefson began to breathe easier. What a fool he had been to take such a chance! Well, it was over now, and he was safe. But where was Meadows?

  Fulton grabbed his arm. “Lookl” he gasped. “Look there!”

  Another horse had moved into line, a sorrel, and beautifully made. The rider on the last horse was Snap, Meadows’s Negro rider. Tollefson’s face flushed, then went white. He started forward, but stopped suddenly. Gene Bates was standing in front of him with a shotgun.

  “Lets let ‘em run,” Bates suggested. “You keep your place!” Tollefson drew back, glancing around desperately. Sheriff Lynn had disappeared, but Rube Hatley loafed nearby. “Do something, man!” Tollefson insisted.

  “For what?” Hatley grinned at him, his eyes hard. “Nobody’s busted any law that I can see. That shotgun’s in the hollow of his arm. Nobody says he can’t carry it there.”

  Now the horses were moving together toward the far end of the course. As in a trance, Art Tollefson watched them go, watched most of all that sorrel with the squat black rider. Suddenly, he felt sick. If that horse won, he was through, through! It was unthinkable. He turned sharply.

  “Tom!” he said. Passman looked around, his eyes level and gray. “When you see him! And there’s a bonus in it for you!” Passman nodded but made no other reply. Fulton felt a constriction in his chest. He had heard Tollefson order men beaten, cattle driven off, homes burned, but this was the first time he had actually heard him order a man killed. Yet nowhere was there any sign of Tandy Meadows.

  Tollefson sat his horse where he could see the race, the full length of the course. His eyes went now to the far end where the horses were lining up now, and his heart began to pound. His fingers on the saddle horn were relaxed and powerless. Suddenly, the full impact of his bet came home to him, and he realized, almost for the first time, what losing would mean. How had he ever been such a fool? Such an utter and complete fool? How had he been trapped into such a situation?

  His thoughts were cut sharply off by the crack of a pistol, and his heart gave a tremendous leap as he saw the horses lunge into a dead run. Lady Luck had seemed almost to squat as the pistol cracked, and then bounded forward and was down the track running like a scared rabbit. Tollefson, his breath coming hoarsely, stood in his stirrups, his agonized stare on the charging horses, and suddenly he realized he was shouting his triumph, for the Lady was well off and running beautifully.

  Then, even as he cheered, a sorrel shot from the group behind the Lady and swooped down upon her! His pulse pounding, his eyes bulging with fear and horror, he saw that rusty streak of horse come up behind the Lady, saw its head draw abreast, then the nose was at the Lady’s shoulder, and the Lady was running like something possessed, as if she knew what great change rode with her.

  Tollefson was shouting madly now, almost in a frenzy, for out there with those running horses was everything he owned, everything he had fought for, burned for, killed for. And now that sorrel with its crouching black rider was neck and neck with the Lady, and then with the finish line only a length away the sorrel seemed to give a great leap and shot over the finish line, winner by half a length!

  Tollefson sagged back in his saddle, staring blindly down the hill. Tricked-tricked and beaten. Lady Luck was beaten. He was beaten. He was through, finished! Then he remembered Tom Passman, and saw him standing down by the finish line, away from him. Passman!

  Tollefson’s eyes suddenly sharpened. He could still win! Passman could kill them! He could kill Meadows, Whitten, Bates! Anyone who fought or resisted him! He would turn his riders loose on the town, he would—

  Then a voice behind him turned him cold and still inside. “Well, you lost, Tollefson. You’ve got until sundown to get out of the country. You can load your personal belongings, no more. You can take a team and a buckboard. Get moving!”

  Passman seemed to have heard. He turned slowly, and he was looking at them now from forty yards away. In a daze, Tollefson saw Tandy Meadows step out toward the gunman, holding in his hands nothing but the rawhide riata. Tom Passman crouched a little, his eyes riveted on Meadows, his mind doing a quick study. If he drew and killed an unarmed man, there was a chance not even Tollefson could save him. Yet was Meadows unarmed? At what point might he not suddenly flash a gun from his shirt front or waistband? Meadows took another step, switching the rope in his hands with seeming carelessness.

  Again Passman’s eyes searched Meadows’s clothing for a suspicious bulge, and saw none. Surely, the man would not come down here without a weapon? It was beyond belief.

  “What’s the matter, Tom?” Meadows taunted. “Yellow?”

  As he spoke, his hands flipped, and as Passman’s hands swept down for his guns he saw something leap at him like a streak of light. He threw up a hand, tried to spring aside, but that rawhide riata loop snapped over his shoulders and whipped taut even as his hands started to lift the guns, and he was jerked off balance. He staggered, trying desperately to draw a gun, but his arms were pinned to his sides.

  Meadows took two running steps toward him, throwing another loop of the rope over his shoulders that fell to his ankles. He jerked hard and the gunman fell, hitting hard in the dust. He struggled to get up, and Tandy jerked him from his feet again. Tandy stood off, smiling grimly.

  Then, stepping in quickly, he jerked the guns from Passman’s holsters and tossed them aside. Springing back, he let Passman fight his way free of the noose. As the loop dropped from the gunman, he wheeled on Meadows, and Tandy struck him across the mouth with the back of his hand.

  It was deliberate, infuriating. Passman went blind with rage and rushed. A left smeared his lips and a roundhouse right caught him on the ear. He staggered sideways, his ears ringing. Meadows walked into him then and slugged two wicked underhand punches into the gunman’s body. Passman sagged and went down, landing on his knees. Tandy jerked him erect, struck him again in the stomach, and ignoring the futile punches the man threw, stepped back and smashed him full in the mouth with a right. Passman went down again. Bloody and battered, he lay gasping on the ground. Meadows stood over him.

  “Tom,” he said coldly, “I could have killed you. You never saw the day you were as fast as I am. But I don’t want to kill men, Tom. Not even you. Now get out of the country! If you ever come north of the river again, I’ll hunt you down and kill you! Start moving!”

  Tandy stepped back, coiling his rope. He glanced around. Tollefson was gone, and so was Fulton. Rube Hatley gestured toward Passman. “He means it, Tom,’ he said, “and so do I. I’d have run you out of here months ago if it hadn’t been for Tollefson and Lynn. Take his advice and don’t come back, because I may not be any faster than you, Tom, but if you ever ride this way again, you’ve got me to kill, and I sort of think we’d go together!”

  Hatley glanced at Tandy. “You had me fooled. What happened to your horses?”

  “Janet and Snap figured something would happen, so they drove them back into the hills a mile or so, and then they moved in a bunch of half broke Flying T broomtails down on that meadow. In the dark they never guessed they were drivin’ some of their own remuda!”

  Janet came up to Tandy, smiling gravely, her eyes lighted with something half affection and half humor. “I was glad to help. I thought if you won this race you might settle down.”

&n
bsp; Meadows shrugged, grinning. “I don’t see any way out of it with a ranch to manage and a wife to support.”

  Janet stared suspiciously from Meadows to Clevenger. “Now tell me,” she insisted. “What would you have done if Cholo Baby had lost? How could you have paid up?”

  The banker looked sheepish. “Well, ma’am, I reckon I’d have had to pay off. That was my money backing him.”

  “Yours?” she was incredulous. “Without collateral?”

  “No, ma’am!” Clevenger shook his head decisively. “He had collateral! In the banking business a man’s got to know what’s good security and what isn’t! What he showed me was plumb good enough for any old horseman like myself. It was Cholo Baby’s pedigree!

  “Why, ma’am, that Cholo Baby was sired by old Dan Tucker, one of the finest quarter horse stallions of them all! He was a half brother to Peter McCue, who ran the quarter in twenty-one seconds!

  “Like I say, ma’am, a banker has to know what’s good collateral and what ain’t! Why, a man what knows horses could no more fail to back that strain than he could bet against his own mother!

  “And look,” he said grinning shrewdly. “Was it good collateral, or wasn’t it? Who won?”

  REGAN OF THE SLASH B

  Dan Regan came up to the stage station at sundown and glanced quickly toward the window to see if the girl was there. She was. He stripped the saddle from his horse and rubbed the animal down with a handful of hay.

  Lew Meadows came down from the house and watched him silently. “You don’t often get over this way,” Meadows said, pointedly.

  Dan Regan paused from his work and straightened, resting a hand on the sorrel’s withers. “Not often,” he said. “I keep busy in the hills.”

  Meadows was curious and a little worried. Dan Regan was a lion hunter for the big Slash B outfit, but he was a newcomer to the country, and nothing much was known about him. There were too many men around the country now, too many that were new. Tough men, with hard jaws and careful eyes. He knew the look of them, and did not like what that look implied.

  “Seen any riders up your way?”

  Regan had gone back to working on the sorrel. He accepted the question and thought about it. “Not many,” he said, at last. “A few strangers.”

  “They’ve been coming here, too. There’s a couple of them inside now. Burr Fulton and Bill Hefferman.”

  Dan Regan slapped the sorrel on the hip and wiped his hands. “I’ve heard of them. They used to waste around down to Weaver. “

  “Having a daughter like mine is a bad thing out here,” Meadows told him, the worry plain in his voice. “These men worry me.”

  “She looks fit to hold her own,” Dan commented mildly.

  Meadows looked at him. “You don’t know Fulton. He’s a lawless man; so are they all. They know what’s happening. The word’s gone out.”

  “What word?” Dan asked sharply.

  Meadows shrugged. “Can’t you see? The Slash B runs this country, always has. The Slash B was the law. Before Billings’s time this was outlaw country, wild and rough, and the outlaws did what they wanted. Then Cash Billings came in and made law where there was none. He had an outfit of hardcase riders and when anybody overstepped what Billings thought was proper, the man was shot, or ordered out of the country. They made a few mistakes, but they had order. It was safe.”

  “The country’s building up now. There’s a sheriff.” Meadows spat his disgust. “Bah! Colmer’s afraid of his shadow. Fulton ordered him out of the saloon over at the Crossing the other night and he went like a whipped dog.”

  “What about the Slash B? Has it lost its authority?”

  “You don’t hear much, up there in the hills. The Slash B is through, finished. Cash is a sick man, and that nephew of his is a weakling. The foreman is drunk half the time, and the old crowd is drifting away. That’s why the wolves are coming. They know there’s no bull moose for this herd. They want to start cutting it for their own profit.”

  Meadows nodded toward the house. “Where do Fulton and Hefferman get their money? They spend it free enough, but never do a pat of work. They sell Slash B cows, that’s how. I wish somebody could talk to Cash. He doesn’t know. He lives alone in that big house, and he hears nothing but what they tell him.”

  Meadows walked off toward the house and Dan Regan stood there in the darkening barn and brushed off his clothes. This was not quite new to him. He had known some of it, but not that it had grown so bad. Maybe if he went to Cash Billings … No, that would never do. Cash knew he had a lion hunter, but he didn’t know he was Dan Regan, which was just as well.

  Regan was a lean young man, as accustomed to walking as riding. He understood the woods and trails, knew cattle and lions. He was killing a lot of the latter. He walked on up to the house and into the big dining room where they fed the stage passengers and any chance travelers following the route. The table was empty except for a fat-faced drummer with a wing collar, and the two riders Lew Meadows had mentioned.

  Burr Fulton was a lean whip of a man, as tall as Regan but not so broad. Hefferman was beefy, a heavy-shouldered man with thick-lidded eyes and a wide, almost flat, red face. He looked as tough and brutal as Regan knew him to be. Neither of them looked up to see who had entered. They did not care. They were men riding a good thing, and they knew it.

  Dan Regan had seen this thing happen before. He had seen big outfits lose their power. He had seen the wolves cut in and rip the herds to bits, taunting the impotent outfit that had once wielded power, and rustling its herds without retaliation. It was always the big herds, the strong outfits, that went down the hardest.

  He seated himself on the bench some distance away from the others, and after a minute Jenny Meadows came in and brought his dinner. He glanced up and their eyes met quickly, and Jenny looked hastily away, a little color coming into her cheeks. It had been a month since she had seen this man, but she hadn’t forgotten a thing about him, remembering the lean strength of his face, the way his dark hair curled behind his ears, and the way his broad shoulders swelled the flannel of his shirt. She put his food down, then hesitated. “Coffee?”

  “Milk, if you’ve got it. I never get any up in the mountains.”

  Hefferman heard the word and glanced over at him. “Milk,” he said to Fulton. “He drinks milk.”

  Burr laughed. “He’s from the Slash B. I think they all drink milk these days!”

  Regan felt his ears burning and some dark, uneasy warmth stirring in his chest. He did not look up, but continued to eat. Meadows was standing in the door and overheard Fulton’s comment. Now he sat down across the table from Regan and poured a cup of coffee.

  “Meadows,” Fulton said, looking up, “do you use Slash B beef? Best around here, and I hear it can be had cheap.”

  “I have my own cows,” Meadows replied stiffly. He was a somber man, gray haired and thin. Never a fighter, he had a stern, unyielding sense of justice and a willingness to battle if pushed. He had lived safely here, in the shadow of the Slash B.

  “Might as well buy some of their beef,” Hefferman boomed. “Everybody else is!”

  Jenny returned and put a glass of milk in front of Regan. Her own face was burning, for the remarks had been audible in the kitchen, and she knew they were deliberately trying to make trouble. It irritated her that Regan took no offense and she was ashamed for him. Moreover, she was sure that Dan Regan had come to the stage station to see her.

  Remembering the impression he had made the first time, she also remembered his eyes on her, and how they had made her feel. He was, she knew, the first man who had awakened within her the sense of being female, of being a woman. It was a new sensation, and an exciting one. The supplies he had bought on his last trip were enough for another month at least, yet he had come back now. Knowing he came to see her, and remembering the excitement he had roused in her on his last trip, she regarded him somewhat as her own. It displeased her to see him sit quietly before the taunts of the two badlan
ds riders.

  Meadows was thinking similar thoughts. Jenny worried him. It was bad enough to have a daughter to rear on the frontier, worse when she had no mother. He hated to think of her leaving him, yet he knew when she married it would be a distinct relief. His ideas on women were strict, dogmatic, and old-fashioned, yet he was aware that nature takes little note of the rules of men.

  Still, the malpais country offered little in the way of eligible males. He was aware of the dark good looks of Burr Fulton, and that such a man might appear dashing and exciting to a girl like Jenny.

  Dan Regan’s first visit to the stage station had arrested his notice as it had Jenny’s, for here was a tall, fine-looking man with a steady way about him and a good job, even if it was with the declining Slash B. Meadows wanted no trouble around his place, and yet, like Jenny, he was irritated that Regan took no offense at the ragging Fulton and Hefferman were giving him.

  Burr looked up suddenly at Jenny. “Dance over to Rock Springs next week. Want to ride over with me?”

  “No,” Jenny replied, “I don’t want to ride anywhere with a man who makes a living by stealing other men’s beef!”

  Fulton’s face flushed with angry blood and he half rose to his feet. “If you were a man,” he said, “I’d kill you for that!” He remained hard. “Might as well come,” he said. “You’ll at least be going with a man who could protect you. I don’t drink milk!”

  “It might be better if you did!” she retorted. After a few minutes, with a few more sarcastic remarks, the two got up and went outside, mounted, and rode away. After they were gone the silence was thick in the room. Dan Regan stared gloomily at his milk, aware of Meadows’s irritation and Jenny’s obvious displeasure.

  He looked up, finally. “That was what I came down for, Jenny. I want to take you to that dance.”

  She turned on him, and her face was stiff. Her chin lifted. “I’d not want to go with you,” she said bitterly. “You’d be afraid to stand up for a girl! You won’t even stand up for your own rights! I thought you were a manl”