Feud On The Mesa

by Lauran Paine

  “That,” announced Rufe, after thoughtful consideration, “is a pretty big outfit.”

  Jud said: “But the fire isn’t. Maybe they only got one or two riders.”

  Rufe started back for his horse. “In that case, they sure need a couple more, this being marking season.”

  Jud went to his horse more slowly, inhibited by all the days and nights of secrecy and hiding. They understood one another better than brothers. Rufe leaned atop his saddle horn. “Jud, this can’t last for-ever. Anyway, we’re so far off even if those cowmen were still trailing us, their damned clothes’d be out of style by the time they got over this far. And those folks down there probably never even heard of the Gila country.”

  Jud wagged his head and climbed back across leather looking worried, but he offered no objection when Rufe struck out past the final tier of huge old shaggy trees into the dazzling sunlight, heading for the log buildings. They had a considerable distance to cover. That clear air did not delude them, although they had been traveling through it this time of year all their lives, going one place or another. In fact, limitless horizons had from boyhood conditioned them both, and a large army of similar men, to half believe that the traveling was the important thing, that goals, or the arriving at some destination, were for people who had to have goals.

  They were two miles closer when Rufe said: “Things have been better for that outfit.” It was finally possible to note the signs of gentle neglect and decay, the patched corral stringers, the weeds flourishing along the back of the huge old barn, the bare places up above where winter wind had carried away fir shakes in patches, letting rainwater drop straight through to the barn’s interior.

  Jud stood in his stirrups, hat brim pulled low, and said nothing until he eased down, then he sighed. “One man at the branding fire in the corral, Rufe. This time, we’d have done better to stay in the trees.” He turned slightly, movement far out catching his attention. He raised an arm. “Three riders. Maybe they’ve been hunting more cattle to put into the corrals.”

  Rufe looked, saw those three horsemen suddenly haul back to a sliding halt and stare hard down in the direction of Rufe and Jud. “Must not get many strangers up on this mesa,” Rufe said, watching those three distant horsemen, and Jud’s reaction was wary.

  “We shouldn’t have left the damned forest.”

  The three riders came on, more slowly now, in an easy lope, erect in the saddle with an unmistakable, sharp interest. Jud yanked loose the tie-down on his holstered Colt and leaned to loosen his Winchester in its boot.

  Rufe watched, said nothing for a long while, and, when he finally turned in the direction of the log barn and those old log working corrals, he saw a hatted dark head come up over the topmost corral stringer. He also saw sunshine dully along gray steel.

  “Caught between the rockslide and a hard place,” he said quietly. “Look yonder, Jud, at the corral.”

  They had little choice, being completely exposed out on the grasslands, but to keep right on slowly riding toward the buildings. Whatever they had stumbled into, they were certainly not going to be able to shoot their way out of, so the alternative had to be talk.

  Jud said: “Sure a fine day for sighting down a rifle barrel. That feller in the corral doesn’t have a carbine. He’s got a rifle. If he’s any kind of a shot, he could knock my hat off from right where we are now.”

  Rufe, watching the three horsemen, swore quietly. “Damn it all, they’re fanning out. This is like riding into a nest of Apaches.” Rufe kept watching the rid-ers. They fanned out, for a fact, but the closer the pair of strangers got to the buildings, the less those three riders seemed inclined to come closer, and that didn’t make sense to Rufe. If he and Jud had stumbled onto some old mossback’s private domain where trespassers were badly treated, it seemed that his mounted men would cut off all retreat and herd the strangers down that other fellow’s rifle barrel.

  Rufe tipped down his hat, rubbed his jaw, and finally said: “Jud, there’s something wrong here. You know what I think?”

  “Right now,” replied Jud, alternately squinting at the rifle barrel resting atop a corral stringer and those three distant horsemen, “I’m not interested in what you think, unless it’s got to do with us cutting back and making it to those damned trees before we get shot.”

  Rufe was scowling. “I don’t think those horsemen got anything to do with that feller in the corral with the rifle. I think they’re deliberately staying beyond his range.”

  Jud leaned a little also to study the range men, and in fact it was at about this time that they hauled to a halt, conferred briefly, then one man stepped down from his saddle, shielded by the other two, so that neither Jud nor Rufe could see what he was doing— until he fired.

  Rufe’s stocky little bay horse, a companion of many a hard trail, as honest as the day was long, gave a huge lunge high into the air, folded all four legs, and dropped, stone dead.

  Rufe barely had time to kick his feet free before he hit the ground, rolling, the wind half knocked out of him, dimly hearing Jud’s roar of rage as his partner rolled from the saddle dragging out his saddle gun, but those distant riders were already turning tail.

  Jud fired three times, elevating his sight each time, and cursing with helplessness because no carbine could reach that far.

  From the corral, that rifle roared. It had a sound like a light cannon, and, because its range was much greater, Jud lowered his weapon to watch. But the horsemen were also beyond rifle range.

  Jud stood up, looked from the dead horse to his partner, who was sitting there blinking and feeling around for the ground in order to push upright, then Jud turned in the direction of the corral and saw that rifle still trained in the direction of those fleeing horsemen. He shook his head in complete bafflement, stepped over, and lent Rufe a hand.

  “You all right?”

  Rufe picked up his hat, said nothing, went over and leaned down to put a hand upon the bay horse’s neck, and after a moment, still saying nothing, he straightened up, gazing far out where the racing range men were still in the easterly sun blaze.

  III

  She was long-legged for a woman, and flat every-where hard work made people flat, but she was also round in all the places Nature made women round. She had thick, absolutely straight, black hair in two braids past her shoulders, very dark blue eyes, and skin the color of new cream. She looked to be maybe twenty or twenty-two, and not even the boots, the faded trousers, the old work shirt, and the streaked old wide-brimmed hat could detract from something else men immediately noticed about Elisabeth Cane. She was beautiful.

  But beauty being a relative term, even Tomen who had not see a beautiful woman—any kind of a woman at all in over a month—that rifle she held as steadily as stone as they stiffly dismounted from riding on in, both upon Jud’s horse, made her beauty less immediate than the bronzed hand on the gun, with one bent finger curled around the trigger.

  Jud was still sulphurous, so he said: “Lady, point that gun some other way.”

  She did not move and neither did the long barrel. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Rufe, glancing back where his horse and outfit lay, spoke slowly when he came back around facing her. “My name is Rufus Miller. His name is Jud Hudson. We were just riding through.”

  “Up through that badlands country from the west?” she said, eyeing them skeptically as her father and brothers had always eyed men coming onto Cane’s Mesa from that improbable direction.

  “Yeah,” said Rufe, looking steadily at her. “Up through those badlands. Is there another way up here?”

  She did not answer that. “What do you want?”

  Jud said: “Well, until about fifteen minutes ago, we didn’t want anything, lady, but that was before some son…that was before a feller shot Rufe’s bay horse.”

  The gun barrel tipped down a fraction, and the hard blue eyes above it studied both men. “I’ll sell you another horse,” she said. “Sound, well broke, and cheap
. Then you had better turn and go back exactly the way you came. There’s an easier way off the mesa, but you’d never make it.”

  Jud’s anger never departed quickly. He looked back harshly at the handsome woman. “Is that a fact, ma’am? Why wouldn’t we ever make it?”

  “A cowman named Arlen Chase has a camp over there. He has four riders. All five of them…. ”

  “Wait a minute,” broke in Rufe. “Is that who those three fellers were…riders for this Arlen Chase?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they own this mesa, ma’am?”

  “No. I own it. But they control it now because…well, there are five of them, and they are men, and, even when I’ve gone down to Clearwater to hire rid-ers, they never show up, or else they get chased off.” The gun barrel tilted a little more toward the ground. She studied Rufe a moment before saying: “The man who shot that bay horse from under you, mister, is named Charley Fenwick. I know them all by sight, from far out.” Elisabeth turned and pointed with the rifle. “Those are bullet holes fired into the barn by Chase’s men. I’ve got them in every building, even over in the house walls. But they come in very fast, just ahead of sunlight, or right after dark, usually when I’m choring.” She grounded the rifle and leaned on it. “I wear a six-gun, but I can’t work with a rifle in one hand, can I?”

  Rufe sighed and slowly turned to look more closely at the buildings. Jud fished out a tobacco sack and went slowly to work making a cigarette, his bronzed features locked down in a clear expression of anger. As he was lighting up, Rufe said: “What’s your name, lady?”

  “Elisabeth Cane. This is Cane’s Mesa. My father settled it. He’s buried yonder, inside that little iron fence. So is my mother.”

  Rufe glanced at the corral behind Elisabeth where about fifteen old cows with rough-looking, under-nourished runty little calves waited uneasily. The smoke was still rising from a stone ring where three branding irons were heating.

  “You do all this yourself?” asked Rufe.

  Elisabeth’s answer was almost curt: “Do all what? Brand about a dozen sickly calves, all that’s left of my bunch?”

  Rufe accepted the rebuke. “Yeah, I guess you could do it.” He looked at Jud, who looked darkly back, then Rufe said: “Miz Cane, I can’t go far on foot, and Jud’s animal is tired, and we’re both in need of work, so….”

  “I don’t want you on the ranch,” Elisabeth said firmly “There’s not enough room inside the fence for two more graves.”

  “Now, lady,” stated Jud, “I don’t figure to try and squeeze inside that little fence, but for folks to go around shooting other folks’ horses out from under them…you can hire us on, or we’ll set us up a camp around here somewhere in among the trees, but either way someone’s going to settle up for my part-ner’s horse.” Jud jutted his square jaw. “Is that the bunkhouse?”

  Elisabeth did not turn in the direction Jud was looking. She simply said: “They will either run you off, or kill you.”

  Jud’s answer was direct: “They haven’t run you off nor killed you, lady.”

  Elisabeth had no answer, apparently, because she offered none as Jud stepped back to scoop up the reins of his horse and turn in the direction of the barn’s big rear opening. To Rufe, who still stood there, she said: “You see those cattle? That’s all I have left, and they shot my bull a week back, which means that next year even those old cows won’t be coming in with calves at their sides…I can no longer pay riders, Mister Miller. There’s just no money.”

  Rufe said: “Shot your bull?”

  Elisabeth pointed. “Up there, about four miles to-ward the mountains, there is a deep arroyo. He’s down in there, shot between the eyes.”

  Rufe stood a while gazing out and around, then he finally said: “Well, I might as well go back and fetch in my outfit. And if you’ve got some tools, I’d like to bury my horse. He sure was a good friend Tome, ma’am.”

  She took him to the barn where Jud had already off-saddled and was standing up front, leaning in the opening, smoking thoughtfully and gazing out over the great sweep of grass country. Jud strolled back to watch Elisabeth take down two shovels and hand one to Rufe. Jud watched her standing there, holding the other shovel, eyes widening.

  He said: “You figure to go help Rufe bury his horse?”

  She turned on Jud. “I figured to, because I didn’t figure you would.”

  Jud stepped on his smoke and ground it out, then raised his eyes to her handsome face, and held out a hand, trying to smile. “I guess I did something wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t want you for an enemy. By the way, where did you leave that old buffalo rifle?”

  She handed him the shovel without giving any indication that she knew she was being subtly teased. “Put your nose where it shouldn’t be, Mister Hudson, and you’ll find where I leave that buffalo gun…I’ll feed the critters, go make something for us to eat, and afterward we can work those calves. But you’re wasting your time. I have no money, and Arlen Chase will either hire you away or run you out of the country.” She turned and walked out of the barn toward the golden-lit yard, leaving two stalwart, faded men looking after her.

  They went out and began digging. Rufe’s little bay horse had been pigeon-toed, and mule-nosed, and slanty-eyed, and as dependable as springtime grass, but he also weighed just a shade over 1,000 pounds and was built like a stone wall, and, if the ground hadn’t been warmly moldy, digging his grave would have been impossible without a stout team, a good set of chain harness, and a Fresno scraper. In fact, they did not finish it until that night, because they had to go eat when Elisabeth rang the bell, and, after eating, they had to rope and snub and overhaul those little shaggy calves.

  They finished the grave by moonlight, rolled the bay horse in, and bleakly went to work putting all that earth back into the hole. They were almost finished when Elisabeth came out with two huge old crockery cups of black coffee, and, when they leaned on their shovels to express gratitude and drink, the coffee turned out to be laced strongly with whiskey.

  Jud smiled for the first time all day, but he kept his thoughts to himself. So did Rufe. He thanked her, and considered her in the ghostly moonlight and star shine as something a man might conjure up in a dream sometime, as a sort of ideal woman, but he said nothing until she looked down at their work, and said: “My father told me one time that a man who would shoot an honest horse was not one bit better than a murderer.”

  Jud finished the coffee, passed back the cup, wiped his mouth on the back of a soiled shirt sleeve, and turned back to work. “Your father was absolutely right, ma’am. What did you say that man’s name was?”

  “The one who shot the horse? Charley Fenwick. He rode for me last year, for about three weeks, then he disappeared, and the next I knew, he was riding for Arlen Chase.”

  “And shooting folks’ horses,” added Jud, leaning into his work. “Tell us about this Mister Chase, ma’am.”

  She told them all she knew, which actually was not very much, because excepting that first time Chase had ridden into the yard to announce that he was moving in, and she had drawn on him, they had not met again face to face more than three or four times, and those other times he had taunted her but had not lingered after doing it. She told them how her cattle had dwindled from 300 head down to what was in the corral, and how the best of her horses had just simply disappeared. She said: “I mentioned this to a pair of cowmen down near Clearwater…older men who had known my father, and they said likely some Indians passing through up along the north-ward mountains had taken the horses. It’s possible. One thing I know, Chase’s men don’t ride Arrowhead horses, and I brand foals as soon as I can catch their mothers.”

  “That’s probably why they don’t ride them,” Jud suggested very dryly. “Awfully hard on a man’s neck, getting caught riding a horse he doesn’t have a bill of sale for.”

  She looked cynically at Jud. “Not on Cane’s Mesa, it isn’t, Mister Hudson. Who would hang them?”

  Rufe grinned down
at her. “You, more’n likely. You can rope pretty well, shoot pretty well. I figure you could also lynch pretty well.”

  She watched them, and never smiled, and after a while she turned and went back to the big old log house. They finished mounding the earth, hauled Rufe’s outfit as well as the shovels back to the barn, then headed for the creek that ran from north to south on the east side of the yard, out a quarter mile or so, and got deeply into the willow thicket before they stripped down. Every now and then Jud would part the willows and look back at the lighted window in the log house. Finally, when Rufe stepped into the water and gasped, Jud said: “All right, you go first and I’ll keep watch.” He was standing back there naked as a jaybird except for his hat, swatting at mosquitoes. Rufe took another step, shivered all over, then gasped back an answer.

  “You don’t have to keep watch, for hell’s sake. She’s in the house, and, anyway, she don’t even know we’re out here.”

  Jud would not accept this. “Like hell I don’t,” he hissed. “She came up onto us over where we buried your horse, didn’t she, and this is a sight worse.”

  Rufe did not argue. For one thing that innocent-looking water must have come straight down off some Colorado mountaintop that had ice on it all year around. For another thing, the mosquitoes, accustomed to having to feed off animals with thick coats of hair, were coming to the bathing hole in clouds, and, until Rufe finally got deep down into the water, they bit him mercilessly. Up in the willows Jud finally used his hat, and his sizzling profanity, to fight them off, and the hat worked fairly well, while the cursing did not help one bit.

  Ordinarily they creek-bathed at the hottest time of day, then lay under a blazing sun to dry off. To-night, they dressed while still dripping wet, then hightailed it for the bunkhouse, closing and barring the door after them as though those ravenous little flying creatures had the strength to open the door.