Open Range

by Lauran Paine

  Charley saw the high-headed horse batting his eyes to clear them of rainwater. The damned fool was going to step straight into that whirlpool, which was bad enough, but if the offside fore-wheel went down into it too the coach would very likely tip over, and Charley was right where this would happen.

  He had a moment to recognize his peril and to realize that he could not turn to flee toward the loafers because swift, frantic movement would send him sprawling in the millrace, where the coach would crush him.

  He moved his invisible feet back around facing the east side of the roadway, prayed the current would not upset him, and when it didn’t he raised both arms from beneath the poncho and lunged for the head of the offside leader, caught leather, and flung all his weight into an effort to force the horse’s head away from him.

  The driver screamed a string of profanity and leaned to brace as the leader forced his harness mate to stagger to the right. Boss had to flounder backward on the far side to avoid having steel tires grind over his feet. He fell backward, swearing and floundering.

  Charley put all his weight and strength into forcing the leaders away from the whirlpool. He stepped into it himself and lost his footing but clung to the big horse and was pulled out of a deep hole to more solid footing.

  The coach missed the whirlpool by about ten inches. Boss was on all fours scrambling back the way he had come to get well clear of the wheels.

  Charley braced, got his feet set, then released the big horse and pushed as the coach passed him. He met a grizzled man’s bulging stare, then the rig was on southward almost to the corralyard gates and Boss was struggling up out of the mud.

  The loafers cheered as Charley reached a hand to Boss and pulled him close so they could continue to the east plankwalk by helping each other.

  The loafers leaned, grabbed both men, and hauled them onto the sidewalk, now under about three inches of water.

  Boss pushed away, moved toward the building, and glared at Charley. “What in the hell were you trying to do?”

  Before Waite could answer, one of the loafers waved his arm in the direction of the sluggish whirlpool. “He pushed that high-headed leader to the other side. You see that damned hole out where the water’s boilin’ round and round?”

  Boss wiped his face, went closer, saw the whirlpool, and blew out a ragged loud breath. He roughly nudged Charley and struck out southward in the direction of the general store.

  Behind them the loafers watched their departure while excitedly talking among themselves. One man said, “He had to do it, or otherwise when a wheel went down in there the damned stage would sure as hell have tipped over on him.” Another man said, “Yeah. All right. And just how many men do you know who’d figure things fast enough to do what he done? An’ I’ll tell you something else: if that coach had tipped over, them passengers would have got hurt. Maybe the leader would have busted his legs too.”

  The former speaker made a proposal. “Let’s go down to the saloon.” The loafers agreed.

  Down at the corralyard the onlookers watched Spearman and Waite enter the general store before turning to enter the corralyard, where a white-faced driver and his badly shaken passengers were hunching against the rain.

  The emporium was empty of customers. There were three ceiling lamps giving off orangey light while the proprietor and a youthful clerk stood side by side at the front window gazing out. They had just finished sandbagging the doorway entrance.

  When Boss and Charley walked in, shiny black in their ponchos, with water still running steadily off the trough of their hat brims, the proprietor turned with a strained smile. He had heard the shouting up toward the north end of town and risked going out front to stand beneath his wooden overhang to watch the episode with the stagecoach.

  He beckoned them deeper into his large old building with its laden shelves and oiled floor, over where a small iron stove was popping. He was a balding, thin man wearing sleeve protectors and a short cloth apron. He fished behind a counter, produced two fat cigars, and handed them over. “Them stage passengers’d likely do better. They sure owe you boys. So does Barry. He’s got the stage franchise. You saved him a busted coach, maybe some horses he’d have had to shoot, and some damned mad travelers. Now then, what can I do for you?”

  Boss and Charley lighted their stogies over the mantle of a counter lamp before answering. The cigars were mellow and delightfully fragrant. While Charley was studying his with interest—although he’d smoked stogies before, he’d never in his life smoked one with this kind of quality—Boss answered the storekeeper’s question.

  “There was a fight in here a week or so ago. Some rangemen jumped a big feller with scars on his face.”

  The storekeeper’s smile faded. Though caution showed in his gaze now, he did not fidget. He leaned on his counter, nodding. “Yes. What about it?”

  “There was a feller got an arm broken.”

  The storekeeper nodded again. “Yes. What about him?”

  “What is his name?”

  Charley stared at the storekeeper. So did Boss. The man would have had to be simpleminded not to suspect that the pair of wet, muddy, beard-stubbled, thoroughly disreputable looking men gazing at him had a reason for asking their question.

  He straightened up off the counter, shot a glance up front where his youthful clerk was watching water rising up the sandbags, sighed, and said, “Ed Butler. What about him?”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes. He’s been around since last autumn. Rides for Mister Baxter, who ranches up—”

  “Is he Mister Baxter’s range boss, maybe?”

  “Oh no. That’d be Vince Ballester. He’s a bigger and heavier man than Butler. No, I’d say that maybe Butler’s a troubleshooter for Mister Baxter. He’s usually got one or two like that on his payroll. He’s had trouble with free . . .”

  “Go on, friend. With freegrazers?”

  The storekeeper smiled and offered a little apologetic palms-up gesture with both hands. “No offense, gents.”

  Boss smiled back. “Sure not, friend.”

  The storekeeper considered them cautiously. “I’d like to ask a question . . . .”

  “Go right ahead,” replied Boss, plugging the expensive stogie back into his mouth.

  “Well, that big feller who drubbed hell out of those three. He got hit over the head pretty hard when Marshal Poole slipped up behind him. Is he all right?”

  Boss removed the stogie to look at it as he replied, “He’s dead, mister. A few nights back someone snuck up in the darkness and shot him in the head.”

  The storekeeper’s eyes widened on Boss, then went off to one side to watch the clerk up front trying to keep water out. Boss said, “We’re much obliged for the cigars. They’re the best I ever smoked.”

  He and Charley were turning away when the storekeeper called them back. “Wait a minute. Here, have two more.”

  They accepted the cigars and stored them very carefully in shirt pockets where they would be protected and dry, as the storekeeper leaned on the counter to say, “Gents, I’d take it kindly if you’d never mention bein’ in here and us talkin’.”

  Boss was agreeable. “Not a word about you, mister.”

  They had to step over sandbags to reach the roadway. By now it was impossible to tell where the road ended and the board sidewalks began. The storekeeper was not the only one employing sandbags. Up and down Main Street on both sides men were creating barriers to keep water from their business establishments.

  Charley looked over in the direction of the jail-house. Although the distance was not great, it was like looking through a heavy fog. There was a faint light showing in the window. He smoked his stogie and followed Boss northward. When they fetched up outside of the saloon where about a dozen loafers were leaning against the building protected by an old wooden overhang awning that leaked everywhere men were not standing, Boss said, “What’re you holding your hat like that for?”

  “Because I don’t want water on m
y cigar.”

  When they entered expecting to find the saloon at least partially full, since there was damned little that men could do in this kind of weather but drink and swap lies, they were surprised to find only three townsmen along the bar and the proprietor with his titty-pink ruffled sleeve garters reading a newspaper with the help of a counter lamp. He looked up at them, stared a moment or two, folded his newspaper, pushed it under the bartop, and went to meet them. He had the expression of someone who knows exactly who is standing across from him.

  Charley said, “Whiskey.”

  As the barman turned away, Charley shrugged at Boss. “Do freegrazers smell different?”

  Boss did not answer because the barman was back with a bottle and two glasses. He said, “On the house, gents.” They stared at him, so he explained. “I saw you keep that dumb horse from steppin’ into the hole a while back. I’m not sure I’d have tried it.” He nodded toward the bottle. “As much as you want,” he told them and went back down where the little lamp was and fished around for his newspaper.

  Boss filled both shot glasses with a steady hand, but made no move to hoist his until he’d put a sardonic smile on his companion. “Strange how a man comes up a hero when all he’s tryin’ to do is keep from being squashed, ain’t it?”

  Charley lifted the little glass. “I’m gettin’ a taste for it, Boss. Shall we light up those other two stogies to go with the whiskey?”

  “Naw. Too soon. We ought to treasure them. Maybe smoke them when the storm lets up.”

  “They might get soggy by then.”

  Boss tipped his head, raised the glass and dropped the whiskey straight down, then he braced. But nothing happened; no water filled his eyes, his throat did not burn, his stomach did not squinch up.

  He lowered his head, watching Charley licking his lips, and reached to twist the bottle until he could see the label.

  “Charley?”

  “What.”

  “Read the label.”

  Charley read it. “Imported Irish Whiskey.” He tilted the bottle very carefully to refill his glass.

  Chapter Eleven

  Another Crossing

  They ate supper in an atmosphere of damp clothing, smelly roadway mud, and the same monotonous racket made by the undiminished downpour they’d been living with since the storm had arrived.

  There was almost no conversation among the other diners. Charley got the feeling that the storm was wearing thin a lot of nerves in Harmonville. Personally, he was philosophical about it. When it was time, it would stop. Until it was time, it would not. He leaned toward Boss and said, “We got to cross that damned roadway again.”

  Spearman answered around a cheekful of food. “I been wonderin’ where the marshal an’ his vigilantes are. When he left the doctor’s porch he looked mad enough to chew nails and spit rust.” Boss swallowed with the aid of a mouthful of coffee, then said, “I’ll tell you something, Charley. If it wasn’t for this storm we’d have had Baxter an’ the marshal down our throats by now, an’ we wouldn’t have learned as much as we have.”

  The cafeman came to refill their cups and go among his other diners to repeat the process. He neither smiled nor spoke. Charley watched him retreat back behind the big flowered curtain that separated his counter from the cooking area, and he wondered if the cafeman wasn’t also getting cabin fever from being cooped up by the storm.

  Boss jarred him by saying, “Why don’t someone string a rope across the roadway? If this keeps up won’t anybody be able to cross over without one by tomorrow.”

  A gaunt man wearing a waterproof coat looked at Boss. “That’s a good idea,” he said, and shoved out a bony hand. “I’m Ed Garnet the harness maker.”

  Boss gripped the harness maker’s hand and released it. “I’m Boss Spearman. This here is Charley Waite.”

  Ed Garnet’s eyes narrowed perceptibly, which Boss noticed and said, “Freegrazers, Mister Garnet. Want to take that handshake back?”

  The harness maker arose, put some silver beside his empty plate, nodded without speaking, and left the cafe. Boss shrugged and went back to his meal. “These folks could be six feet under water with us holdin’ out a rope to ’em and they wouldn’t take it.”

  They were the last diners to leave the cafe. Behind them the cafeman closed and locked his door and went after more towels to push against the bottom of the door from the inside.

  They were solemnly considering the roadway, which had a slight crest to the dark water toward the center, when an old man passed by, guessed their intention, and said, “Ain’t safe, boys. You can still make it down to the roominghouse though.” He waited for a response, which was not forthcoming, and also said, “Back in ’sixty-nine it was almost this bad. Damned rain didn’t let up for a week. Folks was diggin’ out until Christmastime.”

  Boss gripped an overhang post and tested the water for depth. Close to the sidewalk the force was less than it was farther out. He swore with feeling and groped with his other boot.

  What added to the danger was increasing darkness. They had to lean against the current and move inches at a time. Without raising his eyes from the water he yelled back over his shoulder. “I’m goin’ to leave this damned country as soon as Button can travel and we can find the cattle, and don’t ever want to hear about it again as long as I live.”

  Charley saw him abruptly disappear to his waist about five feet ahead. He stopped dead still, leaning northward. Boss flailed with both arms beneath the poncho, which was no longer able to perform its designated function, and hadn’t been able to since the last time Boss had fallen. He looked like a large black bird with shiny black wings as he beat the air and bawled curses at the top of his voice.

  Charley told him to stop moving. He waited until Boss’s arms were still, then eased ahead until he could reach the older man’s collar. “When I yell, you jump,” Charlie called. He got his boots firmly against rock and threw all his weight backward as Boss jumped.

  He came up out of the hidden hole on his back, floundering and cursing until Charley could hoist him to his feet and hold him until Boss got his footing. Charley yelled in his ear. “Don’t talk so damned much. Just concentrate on where you’re going.”

  The hardest part was out in the center of the roadway where cresting water was well above their knees, with enough force to make it possible for them to get past toward the opposite storefronts only by using their combined strength. Charley was feeling for the plankwalk with one foot when he thought that even if the storm stopped right now, within the next ten minutes, by morning it was not going to be possible to cross the roadway without something to hold to, like the rope Boss had mentioned back at the cafe.

  They were soaked, their boots were half full of silt, and they were cold to the bone. When they found a bench bolted to the wall of a store, they sat on it looking back where they had just crossed, panting like a pair of dogs who’d been treeing cats.

  Charley was tired. He reached under his poncho; the cigar was an unraveled, soggy mess. He lifted it out, looked mournfully at it, and tossed it out where raging water carried it from sight within seconds.

  A man was walking toward them from the lower end of town, widening his stride between overhangs and shortening it while beneath them. He saw the pair of shiny black-caped figures on the bench and veered toward them. He was as gray as a badger with a startlingly droopy black dragoon moustache. In the gloom of the overhang it was impossible to tell much about him except that he was a cowman. He halted, showed worn teeth in a thin smile, and shook his head. “I watched you cross over here. A man could drown out there.”

  Charley looked up. “Right now,” he said, “I’m havin’ a real hard time agreeing with what I once heard a preacher say back in Sioux Falls: That the Lord don’t send anything to us that isn’t to our benefit an’ salvation.”

  The cowman laughed, moved away from a leak in the overhang, and considered them. They looked ragged, unkempt, and demoralized. He offered a suggestion. “You can
put up at the jail-house if you can’t afford the roominghouse, which is full anyway with two an’ three men to a bed. They got empty cells up there and the roof don’t leak.”

  Boss leaned to arise as he replied dryly. “The trouble with that, mister, is that gettin’ out of that jailhouse would be a hell of a lot harder than gettin’ into it.” He stood up and nudged Charley.

  The cowman watched them go trudging northward in the direction of Walt Barlow’s place without even glancing at the warm lampglow on their left as they passed the jailhouse.

  When they reached Barlow’s gate, Charley spoke his thoughts. “We know who one of them was that attacked the camp, an’ we know Baxter’s going to be after us the minute the ground firms up enough to hold horses, and that leaves me wondering. With the law against us in Harmonville, with us being unable to leave, maybe we’d ought to do what an old soldier told me one time: Don’t wait for trouble, because if you do you’ll be too busy defending yourself to take charge of things, an’ if you can’t take charge you’re going to lose.”

  Boss scowled with water coursing down his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “The town marshal. Lock him up in his own jail until we can hitch up and get the hell away from here.”

  “You got water on the brain, Charley. He’s got friends. You heard what he said about possemen here in town.”

  “Boss, while we’ve been doin’ other things that son of a bitch has been sittin’ down there in his jailhouse organizing folks against us, sure as hell. If we don’t strike first he’s going to nail our hides to his jailhouse wall.”

  This time Boss did not argue, but simply turned up toward the house, reached the porch with Charley a few paces behind, shed his poncho, and knocked on the door as he beat water from his hat.

  Doctor Barlow appeared in the opening, backgrounded by warm lamplight. He looked them up and down, waved them inside, and looked them up and down again. They looked as if they’d been swimming in a mudhole. He said, “Come on out to the kitchen,” and led the way. He tactfully ignored the tracks of mud they left.