Paper Sheriff

by Short, Luke;

  “Cattle and horse prices, grass, just what any cowman would talk about.”

  Reese’s pipe had gone out. He started to reach for a match to relight it and then changed his mind. All he really wanted was to get out of this oven, but he had one more question to ask. “Did he say he’d talked to me?”

  Buddy shook his head in negation. (Was it too quickly?) “Not that I recollect.”

  With his shoulder Reese pushed his chair away from the wall and in the same motion rose. “Got anything besides whisky to drink, Buddy?” he asked, and then, thinking how superior he sounded, he added, “I’d like a crack at that jug, then a long drink of water.”

  Buddy grinned, put a finger in the jug handle and rose, moved over and extended the jug to his brother-in-law. Reese accepted it, took a small drink, put his tongue in the jug mouth and swallowed two more times. After he lowered the jug, he put back the corn cob stob and passed the jug back to Buddy. Then he moved over to the table which held the water pail and drank deeply of the tepid water from the tin dipper. Buddy trailed him to the door and halted there.

  “If Pa’s with Callie when you get there, tell him to bring some of Callie’s bread back with him, Reese.”

  “I’ll do that, Buddy,” Reese said.

  He got his horse, led him over to the scummed water tank by the corral where the two Mexican hands were working, nalled out, “Como le va?” Both men answered, “Bien, Jerife.”

  When his horse had drunk enough, Reese mounted and rode out. The sun had heeled far over by now and Reese rode into it, squinting against its full glare. What had Buddy really told him that mattered? Not much, he conceded sourly to himself. Buddy’s and Orville’s reasons for talking with Reston were reasonable, as was Buddy’s account of what had been said. The only thing he hadn’t asked Buddy to explain was how the Bashears had come up with a couple of wagon-loads of tents, ground sheets and canvas, but then he knew the answer to that without asking. The Bashears traded moonshine to the supply sergeant down at Fort Tipton in exchange for any supplies the sergeant could steal and cover up for. This all happened outside of Sutton County and was no concern of his.

  Now he tried to sum up his observations on the way Buddy acted during their conversation. He could find nothing to flesh out a suspicion. Buddy’s reaction to the news of the discovery of Reston’s horse was a natural one—moderate surprise, then puzzlement, but not concern. Why should he show concern? Reese thought. If what had passed between Orville, Buddy and Reston was as inconsequential as Buddy made out, why should he show concern? Still, Reese had a deep distrust of the Hoads, any Hoad, and he had learned the hard way that they were all consummate actors in their backwoods way.

  Why, after Orville Hoad’s acquittal and the bitter resentment of all the Hoads toward his part in the trial, was Buddy so friendly this afternoon? A surliness, a to-hell-with-you attitude would have been more in character for Buddy. This afternoon he’d been reasonable when Reese least expected him to be.

  This damn family, he thought grimly. They knew he was their enemy and forgiveness was not in their character. Yet Minnie and Buddy had been civil enough, even friendly and that, too, Reese thought, was passing strange.

  He didn’t meet Ty Hoad on his way back home. At the Slash Seven he unsaddled and turned out his horse, noting that neither Ty’s horse nor the crews’ best mounts were here.

  A familiar feeling of depression came over him then as he headed toward the house. Would it be tonight that Callie would mention the Hoad Land & Cattle Company? Each night since she had returned from the Bashears he had waited for her to say something.

  As he approached the house, Reese saw Callie on her knees before a flower bed that flanked the front door. She looked up and Reese called, “Let’s have a drink out here, Callie.”

  “All right.” Her voice held an indifference that was unmistakable.

  Reese went into the kitchen which the stove, holding their cooking supper, made unbearably hot. He hung his hat on the peg, quickly made their two whiskys and water and stepped outside with the drinks. Callie had abandoned her gardening and was now seated in the old rocker under the big cottonwoods. She was wearing a discarded shirt of his and a pair of his castaway pants, the legs rolled up almost to the knees. For some reason Reese was unable to understand, Callie, since her visit to the Bashears had tried to make herself as unattractive as possible. Her ordinary house dresses were drab enough, but they were preferable to his cast-off clothes. He handed her a drink and then seated himself on the semi-circular bench at the base of the cottonwood. As he leaned back against the rough bark, he noticed her face held a faint suspicion and he wondered what had provoked it.

  “You came in across the horse pasture,” Callie said. “Were you at Pa’s?”

  When Reese nodded, Callie said, “Why?”

  “I really wanted to see Orville but he was out, and I stopped by to see Buddy.”

  “What for?” Callie asked, so swiftly that Reese looked at her in mild surprise.

  “You remember me telling you about the trail driver that had his herd stampeded?” he asked.

  “The one I wasn’t supposed to talk about?”

  “That’s the one. Con Fraley found his saddled horse and brought it in today. He’d been nicked by a bullet.”

  Now Callie raised her drink to her lips, and Reese noted that her hand was unsteady and guessed it was because she had been tugging at the weeds in the flower garden. She took a sip and then asked, “What do you make of that?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it.”

  Callie frowned. “Where’s the connection between Uncle Orv, Buddy and this horse?”

  “Orv and Buddy were seen talking to this man Reston in town.”

  “Well, what if they were?” Callie asked sharply.

  “I just wondered why.”

  “Did Buddy tell you?”

  Reese nodded and took a sip from his drink while Callie watched him with hard and searching eyes. Then he said, “Buddy said Orv recognized the brand of the horse Reston was riding. Orv had been down in Reston’s country on a trading trip with the Bashears. He just wanted to ask after some folks he knew down that way.”

  “You sound like you didn’t believe Buddy,” Callie said flatly.

  Reese frowned. “Do I? I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well, you did,” Callie snapped. “You always sound like you don’t believe anything a Hoad says.”

  Reese felt a sudden, unreasoning anger, but he managed to keep it out of his voice as he said, “Come to think of it, I don’t.”

  “How can you say that?” Callie demanded fiercely.

  “Well, we both saw Orv on the witness stand and heard him lie under oath.”

  “That’s a damn lie!” Callie said flatly.

  “It isn’t a lie,” Reese said. “It may be a wrong opinion, but it isn’t a lie.”

  “Why did you have to ask Uncle Orv and Buddy what they talked to Reston about? Why didn’t you ask other people what they talked to him about?”

  “Reston talked to me, asked the bartender for two beers and talked with Buddy and Orv. We’re the only people he talked to.”

  “But what does it matter who talked to him? What business is it of yours anyway?”

  “If a man disappears, we try and find out why,” Reese said flatly. “That is, you do if you’re Sheriff.”

  “You think he’s disappeared,” Callie said jeeringly. “What proof have you?”

  “Just that his saddled horse walked in with a gunshot wound.”

  “Are you trying to lay that on Uncle Orv and Buddy?”

  Reese said angrily, “Goddam it, woman, no!”

  “Don’t you swear at me!”

  “I’m not swearing at you, I’m swearing in front of you,” Reese said shortly. He drained his drink, got up and headed for the kitchen door to make himself another. What had turned Callie from an almost pathetically docile woman into a demanding shrew? The answer to that, he knew, was that he himself had. As
he mixed another drink for himself, he thought that wasn’t entirely true. Callie was getting obsessed with her belief that the Hoads were being persecuted. Perhaps that was natural since if she couldn’t turn to him, she must turn to them. Yet she seemed totally blind to their faults, unable to see that her father was a shiftless fraud, her brother a lazy whore-chaser, her uncle a killer and her cousins illiterate clods, all of them living in a half-drunken state of irresponsibility.

  He took his drink now and moved out again to the bench and sat down. Callie watched him, and when he was seated, she said shortly, “You might have asked me if I wanted another drink.”

  “If you want a second drink, it will be for the first time since we’ve been married,” Reese said dryly. “Do you?”

  “No. I just want to be asked.”

  Reese looked at her closely. “If you want to be asked, I’ll ask you some things.”

  Callie looked both indignant and a little fearful. “What things?”

  “You’re president of the Hoad Land & Cattle Company,” Reese said calmly. “What’s it all about?”

  Callie eyed him levelly and a flush came over her face, whether from embarrassment or anger Reese didn’t know. “That’s my business,” she said coldly.

  “I know. But what land, what cattle?”

  “I guess us Hoads own a lot of land, don’t we? Maybe it isn’t the best, but if we can sell it for a profit, why shouldn’t we?”

  “Who’s us Hoads?” Reese demanded.

  “All of us!” Callie said angrily. “Pa and Uncle Orv, the Bashears, the Plunkets, the Maceys—you know who as well as I do.”

  “Where do the cattle come from?” Reese asked.

  “We’re going to buy them or trade for them, fatten them up and sell them. It’s just like a big ranch operation with all us thrown in together.”

  Reese asked almost idly then, “Bought any cows yet?”

  Callie hesitated and Reese caught the hesitation. Then she said, almost too quickly, “No, we’ve only started.”

  “Where you going to run these cows you’ll buy?”

  “I told you,” Callie said irritably. “Between us we’ve got grass for a lot more cattle than we’re running.” Now she stood up and said shortly, “I’ve got to get supper.” She turned and Reese watched her as she moved toward the house, a kind of nameless dread coming over him. Callie was lying and evading, intuition told him. Between them, all the Hoads couldn’t raise the price of two dozen cows. No bank would loan them money on their generally worthless range, trifling equipment or their cull cattle. No one in his right mind would go on a Hoad note, and the fact that neither Callie nor any other Hoad had suggested that he go on their notes was evidence in itself that this wasn’t a serious and open business operation.

  Where then would they get their money to buy stock or get stock? They’d steal it, he thought bleakly. Had they stolen it already, starting their venture with R-Cross cattle?

  Now Reese leaned his head back against the tree and closed his eyes, fighting a sickness that seemed to reach into his very being. This can’t be, he told himself, but then he knew it very well could be. The Hoads were capable of it—capable too of playing on Callie’s insane family loyalty to drag her into it. Her own hatred of him would have influenced her too.

  What in God’s name was he to do? he wondered.

  He finished his drink and gently set the glass down on the bench. Looking at this coldly now he knew that he had no proof of his suspicions, nor was there any way to get proof without tipping them off that the lot of them were suspect. If they thought he was investigating them, the result was predictable. With twenty odd Hoads just waiting for the right opportunity, he could expect a gunfight against wild odds or even ambush. His marriage to a Hoad wouldn’t save him for he, reluctantly accepted by them, would have turned against them. They would remember that he tried to hang Orville and was now trying to destroy them all. Well, he could face that when the time came, but that time wasn’t now.

  “Your supper’s ready,” Callie called from the kitchen door. Reese rose, empty glass in hand, and crossed the yard to the kitchen. Moving toward the table in the stifling room, he halted abruptly, then looked at Callie by the stove.

  “There’s only one place set. Aren’t you eating?”

  “No. I’m going to ride over to Pa’s.”

  “To tell him what we’ve talked about?”

  Callie shrugged. “What’s there to tell? I just want to see him.”

  “You saw him this afternoon.”

  “How d’you know that?” Callie flared.

  “Buddy told me he was here.”

  “He was and he went into town to talk with Martin Farmer about some papers I’ll have to sign.”

  “Let him bring them over here.” There was an anger in Reese’s voice that he could not disguise.

  “No, I’ll go over there and sign them.” Callie’s voice was adamant if sweetly patient. “Then I’ll cook up something for Buddy and Pa. They never eat unless I make them.”

  Reese knew she was lying about having to sign papers. Something said in their conversation had alarmed Callie and she wanted to alert her father and the others. He could forbid her to go but what would that accomplish? Minutes after he rode out tomorrow morning she would be headed for her father. Now he shrugged and said idly, “Suit yourself.”

  “That’s just what I’m doing from now on,” Callie said. She spoke quietly too.

  She went out and Reese stood motionless, appalled at the events of this day and their implications.

  Callie arrived at Hatchet just at dusk. A lamp was already lighted in the bunkhouse, but her father’s house was dark. When she dismounted at the corral she saw another horse tied there and recognized it as her Uncle Orville’s. That was good, she thought grimly. There were a few things to be settled tonight.

  Buddy, her father and Uncle Orville were where she expected to find them, seated on the old bed back of the shack. As she rounded the corner their conversation stopped. Ty seemed too surprised to even greet her, but Orville said, “Why, Callie, girl,” by way of greeting. Callie only nodded and moved over to the empty rocking chair. She didn’t sit down, however, but moved in behind it and leaned on its back. She remembered enough of school to know that the teacher who stood always had the advantage over the pupil who sat. She was not aware of how she looked until Buddy said, “Something eatin’ you, Sis?”

  “You should talk,” Callie said derisively, angrily. She looked from Buddy to Orville. “Uncle Orv, you never told me Reston’s horse got loose that day.”

  “Well, you never asked, Callie. I reckon I just plumb forgot it.”

  Callie looked at Buddy now. “You hid it on purpose, didn’t you, Buddy?”

  Buddy smiled faintly. “I reckon. We couldn’t catch him or shoot him and that’s a fact. What good would it be to have you frettin’ about it and hackin’ at us for missin’ him?”

  “It would have saved me from hearing it from Reese and damn near fainting!” Callie said angrily.

  “Now, now,” Orville said soothingly.

  “I don’t care!” Callie raged on. “What if I had fainted? I almost did. If I hadn’t had a drink in my hand to swallow, I would have.”

  “Did Reese notice? Ty asked.

  “I don’t know. We had a fight. He knows about the company.”

  “I figured he would. We even wanted him to. You know that,” Orville said and then asked, “What did he say?”

  Now Callie came around the chair and sank into it. “He asked me where we were going to get the land and the cattle.” Now, her anger subsiding, she told of Reese’s sceptical questioning. “I shut him off as quick as I could, but he’ll be back at it,” she finished.

  “He’s got us tied in with the R-Cross beef?” Buddy asked.

  “You should know that better than I do. Did he mention it?”

  “No, I did,” Buddy said with pride in his voice. “I told him Reston was looking for strays from a stampede
and that’s how come he was in Bale.”

  “Buddy did good,” Orville said quietly. “We got together on that story just in case Reese got nosy.”

  “By damn, why don’t you tell me these things!” Callie asked hotly, angered afresh. “I’ve got to live with him! I’ve got to answer the questions! How can I when you won’t tell me what to answer?”

  “You ain’t ever around when we think of them, Callie, and we don’t none of us like to go to your place, except Ty. He’s your Pa and I don’t reckon Reese would throw him off like he would us.”

  “No, you make me come to you instead, like now! Reese knows I’m here and he doesn’t like it any. I lied about some papers Pa had for me and he knew I lied.”

  “Hell, Sis, be sensible,” Buddy said. “I couldn’t cut over to tell you about the horse when Reese was headed for home too.”

  “Yeah. You come all the way over here to scold us for that?” Orville asked.

  “Partly, but mostly something else.” She paused to emphasize what she was about to say. “We’ve got to get that herd out of Copper Canyon, Uncle Orv.”

  “Oh, do we,” Orville said softly.

  It was getting too dark to see his face but Callie knew what it would reflect—mockery, defiance and contrariness. She was a little afraid of what that expression portended, and now she tried to control her anger. “Look, Uncle Orv, this isn’t a foolish woman talking. I’ve lived with Reese, and I know how he thinks. Will you believe that?”

  “Why, I have to.”

  “And here’s what I think he’ll do,” Callie said. “Reese believed Buddy’s story today about your talk with Reston, but if Reston doesn’t show up in a couple of days, Reese is going to believe that Reston was right. There is rustling here. He’s going to think that Reston maybe tangled with the rustlers because of his shot horse. Then he’s going to start looking for the rustled cattle. If we leave them where they are, he’ll find them, sure as my name’s Callie Hoad.”

  “But your name ain’t Callie Hoad,” Buddy pointed out and laughed.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it is. Everything I’m telling you is the God’s truth.”

  They were all quiet, impressed by the conviction with which Callie had spoken. Finally Orville said, “Callie, it’s too soon after that stampede to sell those cows. They’re fresh branded.”