Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

Smothering Albie with his weight now, Frank clawed at his slicker with his right hand, trying to open it and get his gun. The stout buddies held, and he moved his hand to the pocket and ripped it savagely. His face was mashed against Albie’s chest, and now Albie, reading Frank’s intent, tightened his hold and rolled Frank over on one side, pinning his free hand under his body. This was too slow, Frank knew, and a wild desperation came to him. He must break, and soon.

  He opened his mouth now and sank his teeth savagely into Albie’s shoulder. Albie howled, and his hug loosened. He heaved over on his other side with a violence that rolled Frank off him and tore his grip from the wet gun in Albie’s right hand.

  But Albie’s very violence wrenched the gun from his own hand too. It fell and skidded in the mud beyond Frank’s head. Frank rolled over, his legs driving in the mud to bring him to his feet, but Albie was already lunging for the gun, and Frank knew they must repeat their struggle. He ignored Albie’s gun and, kneeling now, he ripped at the inside of his slicker pocket with a violence that almost tore out his nails. The oilskin gave, and now his hand drove down for the gun in the waistband of his denims, just as Albie stumbled and fell on the muddy gun and picked it up.

  Frank saw him swing it in a tight arc toward him, struggling with his muddy hand to pull back the slippery hammer. His thumb slipped, and now Frank’s gun came up. Albie had his left hand flat, streaking for the hammer to palm it back, when Frank shot. Albie, kneeling too, was knocked over as if some invisible hand had swept him to the ground, and his left hand, still traveling its course, slapped into the hammer and the gun went off in the air.

  Frank was aware of several things now as he rose. There was a pounding of horses at full run in the meadow. He was still screened from the meadow by the aspens, and he knew he had not been seen. If he could get out of here now—but no, there was Albie. But maybe Albie’s dead, he thought.

  Swiftly, then, Frank searched for and found his hat, looked briefly around the scuffed leaves and mud for anything he had dropped, and then ran for Albie.

  Albie, drenched and muddy, lay on his face. His shot, Frank saw, had caught Albie in the chest, and he was dead already. Frank plunged past him now into the timber, and as he ran he heard a horse crashing through the brush behind him, and a man yelled, “Where are you?”

  Frank lay face down, listening, his heart pumping wildly. The rider moved on then, calling in the deepening dusk to his companions. Frank rose and ran, and when he came to the trail he turned down it. A horse shied away from him in this wet, twilight gloom, and he knew it was Albie’s mount. He ran on a few yards, and came to his own horse.

  Mounting, he heard behind him a shout, and then three quick shots in succession. They had discovered Albie. Frank pulled his horse around and roweled him down the trail. Behind him now, he could hear other horses coming down the trail at a dead run.

  He yanked his pony off the trail then, turning him into the close timber. Lying flat on his pony’s neck, he gave him his head, and rode blindly for several minutes, branches clawing at him as he rode under them. Reining up then in a stand of dripping pine, he turned to listen. He could hear nothing, and he knew it was too dark now for them to track any more.

  He was free, and he speculated on what that meant. Nobody had seen him, so nobody would know who killed Albie. The persistent rain would make identification of his tracks or his horse’s tracks, hopeless. When last seen by any of Rhino’s crew, he was miles back in the crescent meadow on his way to town. He could bluff this through, claiming innocence of any knowledge of Albie’s death. If he ran now, everything was lost—Carrie, Saber, his whole future.

  And then he saw the flaw. Hugh will check on the time I got to town, and I’ll have five hours to account for. He thought of that with a narrow pessimism, reading his defeat in it.

  And then the answer came to him, and he turned it over slowly and carefully in his mind. Normally, leaving Hugh when he did, he would have reached town at six. Rhino would be gone, the lot dosed, with perhaps someone, probably Tess, working in the office.

  Then it was up to Tess. If he could find Tess tonight, get her to write in her own handwriting the items Hugh had given him for Rhino, go to the office and leave this list on Rhino’s desk tonight, so that it would be there first thing in the morning, the plan would work. Provided, of course, that he could get to town without being seen, so that Tess would say he had come in just as she was dosing last night.

  He put his horse into motion now, and rode on in the darkness, and he was remembering Tess’s words of Saturday night. Shrewdly, he knew she would not have spoken those words unless she liked him. Yes, he could count on Tess.

  He rode now with a purpose.

  Chapter 17

  HANNAN LEANED BACK to light his cigar, and over the match flame he saw Doc Breathit’s ruddy face grinning. There was a friendly malice in Doc’s eyes, and he said now, with derision, “She gave it to you. She folded so you wouldn’t cry.”

  “I was ready to,” Hannan agreed. He looked across the table at Tess’s big stack of chips, then raised his glance to her and grinned. She smiled back, but it was a warning smile.

  Newhouse, to his left, riffled the cards impatiently. “Take off that star and see what she does to you, Buck. You’re afraid to.”

  “That’s the way he get votes,” Isaac Maas said gently from around his big calabash pipe. He scratched his thick black hair and said: “Simple. You lose enough pots to people and they feel grateful enough to vote for you. What they think of your brains, I won’t go into.”

  Tess winked at Hannan, and he laughed. She liked these people and she liked these evenings of poker in Mr. Newhouse’s living room on the hotel’s ground floor. There was seldom a courteous word spoken, and the poker was expert and cutthroat.

  Mr. Newhouse was shuffling the cards expertly when a knock came on the corridor door.

  Doc Breathit hit the table with the flat of his hand. “I knew it. Mrs. Jeffries’ baby.”

  “Come in,” Newhouse called.

  The night clerk opened the door and stuck his head inside. “Somebody to see Miss Falette.”

  Isaac Maas looked at her. “So we bring sex into this.”

  Tess laughed and rose, as Breathit remarked dryly, “It’s a woman’s privilege to quit while she’s ahead.”

  Tess made a face at him and walked out the door, closing it behind her.

  Frank Chess was leaning against the wall. He shoved away from it, his slicker dripping water, and she could see that the rain had soaked his curly hair. His face was grim and unsmiling, lean and somehow haunted and beaten-looking.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Tess,” Frank said. “Somewhere alone.”

  Tess said, “Come on,” and walked past him up the corridor into the lobby. A half-dozen loafers were killing a rainy night in the lobby chairs, and Tess went on through to the empty dining room.

  A wall lamp still burned in its bracket under a small table. Tess pulled a chair out and sat down, and Frank sat down across from her. He laid his soaking hat on the floor, and pulled his slicker open; his movements were swift and impatient, Tess noticed.

  “Tess, have you got a key to the office at the lot?” Frank asked. When Tess nodded, Frank said quietly, “I’m in trouble; I need help, Tess.”

  She said nothing. Frank leaned forward and went on in a sober, quiet voice, “When did Rhino leave the lot tonight?” “About five. He was headed for Saber. Didn’t you see him?” “No. I didn’t come on the road. Who locked up, and when?”

  “I did—a little after six.”

  “Were you alone?”

  Tess nodded.

  A wry grin came to Frank’s face and went swiftly. He looked at her a silent, speculative moment, then said: “I was supposed to tell Rhino something at—no, I’ve got to prove I was in town at six tonight, Tess. I wasn’t,” He paused, and Tess said nothing, watching him, feeling a curious distaste for this.

  “I was sent in to tell Rhino some things. If you cou
ld write out those things, I’ll take your key and put the list on Rhino’s desk tonight. Tomorrow, he’ll ask about it, and you can tell him I came in at six, you wrote the message and left it on his desk.”

  He paused now, apparently seeing the reluctance in her face. Now he leaned over and said swiftly, earnestly, “It’s important, Tess. I can’t tell you how, only you’ve got to believe me.”

  Tess leaned back slowly in her chair and looked at him with pity in her eyes. She said, finally, “You can quit being afraid, Frank. He didn’t die.”

  A startled look came into Frank’s face now. He said cautiously, “Who didn’t die?”

  “Pete Faraday. You didn’t kill him. He’s hiding in the McGarritys’ empty stable. I saw him, but too late to stop you signing over Saber.” She leaned forward now and put her hand on his. “Frank,” she said passionately, “get that look out of your eyes, now! Laugh once more! He’s not dead! You’ve signed away half of Saber because you thought you killed him. Now, stand up and fight back at Rhino! It’s over!”

  Tess was expecting anything but what she saw now. An expression of black and bitter despair came into Frank’s face then, and there was a dead hopelessness in his eyes. He only – shook his head.

  “Then that’s not what you are afraid of?”

  Again Frank shook his head in negation. He rose now and walked slowly across the dining room. Halfway across he paused, as if his mind was made up, and he came back to the table and leaned both hands on it and looked at her and said vehemently: “Tess, don’t look at me that way any more! I’m doing what I have to do. Would it do any good if you knew some of it, some of the reasons why I have to do it?” His voice was low, deadly in earnest.

  “If you want me to know,” Tess said quietly.

  “All right, I did a shady job for Rhino, a job that would lose me Carrie if she ever found it out.” He paused, and then went on stubbornly, “She’s the only kind and decent person I’ve known, and I’ve treated her badly. I’ll do anything—anything to keep from losing her. I’ve bought Rhino’s silence with half of Saber. I’ll buy it with all of it if I have to, just so I don’t lose her! Now do you understand why I’m afraid?”

  “No,” Tess said bluntly. She started to rise, but Frank put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down in the chair. They looked in each other’s eyes for ten full seconds, and Tess’s gaze did not falter.

  “Say it,” Frank said slowly.

  “All right, you love Carrie. You want to live with her the rest of your life. But can you live with yourself the rest of that kind of life?”

  Frank frowned. “What do you mean, Tess? Be plain.” “Where’s the end to this blackmail? There isn’t any. Are you going to cringe until you die? Nothing is worth that, Frank. Not even Carrie! Don’t you see that?”

  Frank straightened up, and his hands fell to his sides. His glance had never left her face. “If I tell her the truth, I lose her. I know that.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you won’t lose her. You wouldn’t lose me. You wouldn’t lose any woman that’s really a woman.”

  There was no belief in his face, she saw, and her heart was suddenly sick. She understood him now, understood his desperation and fear, and she pitied him more than she had ever pitied anybody—but she did not intend to let that pity alter her decision. She rose wearily, and this time he let her; she said in a voice, oddly without emotion: “No, Frank. I won’t give you the key. I wouldn’t, even if I knew what’s behind your wanting it. I won’t lie for you, either. If you can’t tell her, you’re already lost, and nothing will do any good.”

  She went past him now, and at the door she looked back at him. He was standing just as she had left him, looking at the table.

  It was the clerk’s footsteps pausing in the dining-room doorway that finally roused him minutes later. He reached down and picked up his hat and put it on, and then moved unseeing past the clerk through the lobby and outside. He paused here under the veranda beside the abandoned barrel chairs and automatically reached in his shirt pocket for his tobacco sack. It was sodden. He threw it into the gutter, and then stared at it, thinking, It’s come. I’ve fought it up to here, and this is the end of the road. He moved out to the edge of the boardwalk and stared out into the wet night. Tess was right in one thing. Where was the end to this blackmail? There wasn’t any end to it; he’d attempted the impossible. He might keep it from Carrie for months or for years, but sooner or later she’d find out. Tess’s words came bade to him: Are you going to cringe until you die? Yes, he’d even do that, if it would do any good. But it wouldn’t, and he saw it now.

  His horse jerked his head impatiently in the rain, and Frank glanced at him. Well, there was his horse, and there was the whole wide world before him. He could ride out quietly tonight and be out of this. Carrie would write him off then. A fiddlefoot, no good. It was a kinder judgment than the other, after all.

  But he knew he wouldn’t ride out. He’d come this far and he would go the rest of the way. She could hate him, but she couldn’t say he’d dodged this. He untied his reins, ducked under the tie-rail, and stepped into the wet saddle.

  The street was a mire of mud, and his horse splashed noisily as he turned him and headed up the street, toward Tavister’s. In a little while now he would be hearing the words that he had been fearing to hear all along. That was as far as he would let himself think ahead.

  He turned into Tavister’s street, a kind of apathy in him. Suppose Tess is right? he thought. Suppose she takes me anyway? No, there was no use hoping; he’d been doping himself on too much of that lately, he thought wryly.

  There were lamps lit in Tavister’s house. He dismounted at the tie-rail, which was sheltered by the big pines in the yard, tied his horse and went up the walk and knocked on the door.

  Carrie answered. When she saw who it was, she exclaimed, “You idiot, Frank! What are you doing out in this flood?”

  “Waiting to be asked in.”

  Carrie pulled him inside and shut the door. She took one look at him and said, “The kitchen for you, son, with that slicker.”

  She headed for the kitchen and Frank fell in behind her. The dress she was wearing was one of his favorites—a long-sleeved maroon dress of flowered silk.

  In the kitchen he shucked out of his slicker, tossed it into the sink, and then turned to look at Carrie. She was staring at him, and he looked down at his clothes. They were muddy and wet; one leg of his pants was torn from the scuffle with Albie.

  Carrie said, “Well, a woman’s work is never done on the day of a rain. Come on in and dirty up the parlor.”

  She waited until he came up to her, and she kissed him, and then she went on ahead. Frank followed her silently into the parlor. For the first time, it seemed, he was seeing the richness and the quiet elegance of this house. The rug was deep, the furniture black and polished. The overflow of books from the Judge’s study lined a back wall. Carrie had been sitting in a big chair by the fire, mending. The log in the fireplace softly caved into the ashes now, and the flames stirred brightly.

  Carrie went over to her chair and picked up one of the Judge’s shirts. Frank thought, This is my last look. He went over to Carrie and took the mending from her hand and laid it in the sewing basket.

  Carrie laughed, then, and put her head back against the chair. “Lord, I’m an old maid. I mend even when you’re around.”

  Frank toed a footstool around in front of her chair and sat down facing her. He looked into the fire, and presently Carrie said, “You look tired, son.”

  He glanced at her and his smile died. Now was the time, but how was he to begin? He plunged. “Carrie, you were pretty proud of me taking in Rhino, weren’t you?”

  “I think he’ll do you good.”

  “Want to know how I happened to take him in?”

  Carrie nodded. Frank folded his hands between his knees and looked at them and began to talk.

  “After that last row
with Rob when I left Saber, I got work with Rhino. Know what I did for him?”

  “Bought horses, didn’t you?”

  Frank still looked at his hands. “No. There were four of us— Hugh Nunnally, Pete Faraday and Albie Beecham and myself. Rhino had stolen an Army uniform somewhere. It fits me. It was the uniform of the cavalry, with the bars of a second lieutenant on it.”

  He looked up. She was listening, and his glance fell to his hands again. “I wore the uniform. I posed as Lieutenant Harding from Fort Garland. I was traveling through the country looking for cavalry mounts. You know, don’t you, that the Army pays a hundred and twenty-five dollars for any horse that meets its standards?”

  “That’s good money for a horse, isn’t it?” Carrie asked.

  “Yes,” Frank answered. He looked at her expectantly, waiting for the first sign of protest. There was none; she was listening carefully.

  “I would go into a town alone, as Lieutenant Harding, and ask to see horses. The ranchers and the farmers would bring them in for me to see. Hugh Nunnally was always in the crowd that watched me look at horses. But I never bought any. I always rejected every horse showed me, but I had a code word when I rejected them. If I said the word ‘sound’ when I rejected the horse, Hugh always knew the horse was a good horse, that the Army would take it.”

  He looked up again. Carrie was watching him intently; she was understanding now.

  He went on: “I disappointed a lot of ranchers and farmers. Sometimes they were pretty bitter when I rejected their horses. I was nice about it, but stubborn. I’d move on out of town. Hugh Nunnally would go up to the men who owned the horses I had rejected with the code word. He’d admire the horse, and start bargaining for it. He’d offer the standard price for a sound horse. That was forty dollars. Since the ranchers had just lost the chance to sell to the Army for a hundred and twenty-five dollars, they usually accepted Hugh’s money.”

  Now he looked up again. He could see nothing but interest in Carrie’s small face. What had he forgotten? He cast back, and he thought he’d said everything, but he went on doggedly: “Albie and Pete Faraday held the horses in one bunch in some safe canyon. When we had a bunch of them, we brought them back and Rhino sold them to the Army for a hundred and twenty-five dollars.”