Feud On The Mesa

by Lauran Paine

  Jud did not move for a while, but eventually he un-crossed his arms and scowled. “He can hardly stand up, Rufe. He ain’t a match for a little old lady, right now.” Jud ambled over, cocked his head at Charley Fenwick, then without warning swung savagely from the buckle. Fenwick’s head went violently backward, his legs turned loose, and Fenwick fell.

  Jud did not even turn as he leaned down. “Give me a hand pitching him across one of their horses, and let’s get back to the ranch.”

  VII

  By the time they got back to the barn and unceremoniously dumped unconscious Charley Fen-wick in the dirt, Rufe was well aware that he had been pummeled by a man whose blows had sledge-hammer power.

  Without a word to the chained man propped out front, who watched their arrival with a slack jaw, they yanked loose the rigging from the three Chase horses, turned them into a corral, then prodded the tall youth who had been in possession of the oil-soaked rags up to his feet, and kept prodding until he had crow-hopped the full distance around front— where he saw the dirty, torn, and bloody lump lying a few feet in front of his chained companion. The tall youth sank down beside the other prisoner, round shoulders against the barn’s front wall, staring.

  Jud went after a bucket of water while Rufe rolled a smoke, lit up, flexed his aching hands, and completely ignored the prisoners until Jud returned, and hurled the bucket’s full, cold contents upon Charley Fenwick. He was rewarded with a weak spluttering sound, a small fit of coughing, and that was all, so Jud upended the bucket, sat down upon it, and joined Rufe studying their pair of chained captives.

  After a while Rufe put forth a question. “You boys think it’s funny as hell, charging by here firing into the buildings, don’t you?”

  The lanky youth swallowed hard, and turned to the older rider, but the older man was already wary, so he did not answer, either. The youth looked up at Rufe. “No, sir, it ain’t funny.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “Well…. ”

  Jud snorted in disgust. “I never figured Chase, or his men, any different. Anyone who makes war on a woman alone is plumb gutless.” He looked longest at the older cowboy. “We’re goin’ to may be set you loose, one at a time, give you back your guns, then my partner’n me’ll take turns bucking you…hand-guns only.”

  The cowboy said: “Wait a minute. Personally I never aimed low. I’d shoot high along the walls. And I never really liked this way of doin’ it. If Chase wanted her out, all he had to do was come right on in some night, tie her up, and send her out of here, belly down, on one of the pack animals.”

  “Sure,” agreed Rufe. “Or send you fellers over to burn her out.”

  The cowboy paused, licked his lips, then grudgingly nodded. “Yeah. But, hell, even that’s better’n maybe accidently shooting her, ain’t it?”

  Jud cast a sidelong glance at Fenwick, lying soggily in the darkened, wet dirt. As he glanced back, he said—“I’ll get a rope.”—and arose off the wooden bucket. “We can hang the young feller last…but we can’t hang this horse-killing bastard until he wakes up. That leaves just this other one for now.”

  The youth made a small sound deeply in his throat, then he strained on the chains. The other cowboy looked over, a little sympathetically, and a trifle scornfully “You always run the risk of not succeeding” he mumbled. “I told you that on the ride over.”

  Rufe dropped his smoke and ground it underfoot. He did not look at either of the prisoners until Jud came back out of the barn, lariat in hand, then Rufe faced the tall, thin younger range man.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Twenty.”

  “Where you from?”

  “West Texas…sir…an’ my folks are church-abidin’ folks of the Baptist faith, and I never in my life done nothing like this…. ”

  “Sure not,” growled Jud, looking blackly at the youth. “You know some prayers, Baptist boy? You better start reciting them for you and your big, brave, woman-fightin’ friend here.”

  The older cowboy eyed Jud steadily. “He’s telling you the truth. We picked him up last winter down in town when we needed someone to mind the horses, chop wood, and help haul water for the cocinero. He’s the least feller Chase ever had with the outfit. Hell, he ain’t old enough to have done much, is he? Well, then…figure he’s learned a lesson and let him loose.”

  “So he can ride back to Chase and tell him what happened over here?” growled Jud, shaking out a loop, then snugging it back to begin making the eight-inch wrap for a hangman’s knot.

  “I won’t!” exclaimed the tall youth. “I swear I won’t. I’ll head west, mister. I won’t even look easterly. And I’ll keep on riding. I give you my word. I swear it to you!”

  Jud continued to manufacture his hangman’s knot, acting as though he had not heard a word the youth had said. Then he stepped over close and began peering upwards as though seeking an eave end with enough of a notch or knot to it so that the rope would not pull off.

  It was Rufe who finally spoke to the boy. “The penalty for burning folks out is the same as the penalty for stealing their horses or rustling their cattle. Did you know that when you left Chase’s cow camp tonight?”

  The youth struggled with the truth for a long while. All three older men watched, all three of them mightily curious about how he would answer. Then he said: “Yes, sir, I knew that.”

  Rufe nodded. “But you didn’t really figure to fire the barn, is that it?”

  “No, sir, that ain’t it. I figured to fire it, like Chase said we was to do. I figured…burn her barn, and maybe next time her house…and she’ll leave with-out no one getting hurt very much.”

  Jud asked: “And if you had a mother or a sister living alone, and some range scum came along to burn them out?” Jud did not wait for an answer; he had found his eave, and twisted to flip the rope ex-pertly up and over, and catch the tag end when it came dangling down.

  The older range man watched Jud making the adjustments. After a moment of this he glanced up at Rufe. “Mister, if you’ll fish in my pocket, you’ll find some Kentucky twist, and, if you’d hold it up so’s I could get a chaw, I’d be right obliged.”

  Rufe leaned down to get the man’s chewing tobacco, and, when he was that close, the cowboy said: “Hell, he’s only a kid…scairt two-thirds to death…and he didn’t really do nothing, anyhow.”

  Rufe held out the twist, the cowboy gnawed off a corner, and, when Rufe shoved the plug back, then straightened up, he and the older man looked stonily at one another.

  Rufe stepped away, reached to yank the tall youth to his feet, whirled him roughly against the barn, face forward, then yanked loose the arm chains with Jud standing off a short distance, watching from an expressionless face.

  Rufe spun the youth back to face him and said: “Sit down and take the ankle chains off.”

  The cowboy sank down almost as though his legs could not support his spindly frame. He fumbled with the chains while all three older men eyed him. When he was free at last, Rufe said: “If you go any-where even near Chase’s cow camp, or if you go down to that town on the desert and hang around down there…or if I ever see you again at all, you’re going to get shot all to hell. Get!”

  The youth stared, so Jud repeated it. “Get! Damn it, climb onto your hind legs and commence run-ning westerly. On foot. Mister Chase’ll have the law on you if you make off with one of his horses. Now get!”

  The lanky youth spun and fled around the side of the barn. They could still hear him fleeing, one long stride after another, for some little time.

  Jud hauled down the lariat and coiled it slowly and thoughtfully. He did not look at the remaining prisoner, not until he had the rope ready to be re-slung from a saddle swell, and snapped it against his legs a couple of times. Then he glanced over. “How about you, mister?”

  The cowboy’s answer was quietly offered. “I guess I got to set here. If you ain’t going to lynch me, why then I expect I’m just going to have to set here.�
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  Jud looked over at Rufe, shrugged, and went over to lend a hand at boosting the rider onto his feet and shoving him along into the barn. This one was not a boy, and evidently neither was he a liar. He could have told the same kind of story, but he hadn’t done it. He was a typical range man: loyal.

  He made no secret of it, but by the time he had done this, he had also obviously decided that Rufe and Jud had never intended to hang anyone.

  They shoved him down in a pile of hay and left him there, walked out front, eyed Charley Fenwick, and got the chains they had used on the youth to chain up Fenwick. He was beginning to come around when they boosted him up and hustled him down to the same pile of hay, and let him fall. He even muttered some profanity as he rolled and came to rest beside the other rider. Then he looked around. It was just as dark inside the log barn now as it had been two hours before. Maybe it was even darker, although it was hard to tell when a man’s eyes could absorb just so much darkness.

  Rufe took Jud out back where they lit up and relaxed in the warm, pleasant night. Those overhead clouds had surreptitiously been broadening, deepening, and thickening ever since sundown, until now, an hour after midnight, they had most of the sky blocked out. And they were low clouds, the kind that normally were rain-swollen.

  But the air did not smell exactly right, yet, which Jud commented on casually as he stood, smoking and gazing upward and around as though this was the only thing on his mind.

  Rufe flexed his right hand several times, listening to his partner’s comments upon the possibility of rain, then he raised a skeptical pair of eyes and said: “When you get it all sorted out about whether it’s going to rain or not…let’s ride.”

  Jud turned. “Where?”

  Rufe looked sardonic even in that dismal, ghostly darkness. “Chase’s cow camp. It won’t be the dice table at Tucson, but it’s a hell of a lot closer.”

  “What about those fellers in the barn?”

  “They’re not going anywhere,” said Rufe, still working his knuckles to loosen them, and keep them loose. “And if you’re worrying about Miz Cane comin’ out to gather eggs in the morning and finding them there…well, they’ll be worse off after that meeting than she’ll be.”

  Jud sighed. “All right. But…oh, nothing. Let’s get to riding.”

  They went back inside for their horses, and, al-though the chained prisoners could make out most of what they were doing during the process of saddling up, neither side spoke to the other side.

  When Jud walked his horse out front, then swung astraddle, that lowering sky was seemingly frozen in place. It did not appear to have increased its rain cloud encroachment at all over the past hour.

  In the direction of the main house there was still hushed darkness. This time, as Rufe and Jud left the yard, they did not bother being shadowy about it. In fact, Jud lit a cigarette behind his hat before they had quite cleared the far environs of the yard, and settled back in the saddle looking ahead and off to his left, completely assured that things at the ranch were as they should be.

  Rufe, seeking some approximation of the time, searched for a moon glimmer through those fishbelly clouds, and had no success whatsoever. He surmised, though, that it had to be perhaps about two o’clock in the morning.

  The only reason that time might be relevant was because he and Jud wanted to hit Arlen Chase’s camp at the quietest time of the night, for even though anyone who might be sitting up over there, listening and waiting, might think oncoming horse-men would be the arsonists returning and would therefore be unlikely to ambush Jud and Rufe, it was Rufe’s opinion that under these circumstances a man needed all the help he could get from a dark night, from a mistaken listener, and of course from a benign fate—if there were such a thing.

  It was a good thing they had been able to get a good night’s rest the previous night, Jud said, as they rode along, because, sure as hell, they weren’t going to get any sleep tonight. He also said he had a feeling that if they could keep on hitting Arlen Chase as they had been doing, they just might accomplish something.

  “He’s likely lyin’ in his bedroll sleeping like a baby, confident his boys came over, fired the barn, and rode off clean. Instead, we got the three of them. With some luck, we’ll get him while he’s sleepin’ too.” Jud smiled through the darkness. “Hit him hard and of-ten, Rufe. Never let him get his feet square under him. How’s that sound for strategy?”

  Rufe laughed. “Great. Tell me something. Smart as you are, how’s it come you didn’t become a general in the Army?”

  Jud made a gesture. “I figured a little on it, you see, but blue ain’t my color. Always made me look like I got dark bags under my eyes, so I chose range ridin’ instead.”

  Rufe snorted in derision, and Jud leaned over his saddle horn, laughing.

  VIII

  They had to retrace their earlier route and be-yond for several miles, and, while they had every reason not to expect another encounter as they’d had earlier, they were within a mile or so of the mesa’s eastward rim when they distinctly heard horses again.

  This time, though, it turned out to be animals in a large corral. In fact, when they finally got up close enough Tomake the animals out, it appeared that the corral was almost a small pasture. It looked as though its post-and-rider fence encompassed three or four acres of land.

  The cow camp would be somewhere beyond this enclosure, so they left their horses tied in a clump of second-growth jack pines and reconnoitered forward, fanning out a little, but doing this in a manner that allowed them to sight each other all the while they were moving stealthily forward.

  There were no lights. If someone was awaiting the return of Arlen Chase’s night riders, he was doing it in darkness.

  They finally made out a structure. It was crude and lowroofed, the walls made of rough logs that had not been fitted very well, and between were liberal coatings of mud plaster.

  They came together and considered this building. It looked like either a large storage house, or perhaps a bunkhouse. They split off, each man coming around toward the front of it from one rough side. When they met out front, they had their answer. It was a storehouse. If it had been Chase’s bunkhouse, it would not have had that huge iron hasp and lock on the outside of the door.

  There were several other buildings, and one in particular held Rufe’s attention. It was longer than the others, and a mudwattle chimney arose above the east wall. Rufe tapped his partner’s arm. “Cook shack,” he whispered.

  Jud agreed, and offered a suggestion. “Yeah. By rights Chase’s old dough belly ought to be sleeping in there. Want to look?”

  They went carefully around the building in utter silence and starless gloom, found a door ajar whose leather hinges were on the verge of wearing through, and without a sound walked inside.

  The table was long and an iron stove stood against that distant east wall with its stovepipe shoved up the mudwattle chimney. They divided the room between themselves, with the long gang table in the center, and went step by step along until they came to the cook stove and, beside it, the big kindling box. Here, wooden pegs in the log wall held every size of cooking pan and cow-camp utensil, suspended downward. Here, too, they found a wall bunk behind a flour sack partition with a lumpy, bedraggled-looking shape in it, peacefully sleeping. Jud remained beside the bunk while Rufe went on along to complete their examination of the cook shack. He stood longest beside a window that overlooked the main yard.

  What puzzled him was that no one at Chase’s cow camp seemed to be awaiting the return of the night riders. Of course, there could be many reasons for this, including the basic one which suggested that no one had to wait up for men sent out to do a job no one thought would amount to anything more than riding up, sneaking in, setting the fire, then loping for home.

  Rufe turned back, and, when he stepped behind the flour-sack partition, he saw an awry-haired older man sitting straight up in bed, wide awake, his long John underwear pale in the darkness to match his bea
rd-stubbled face, and Jud standing above the old man, smiling wolfishly downward. When Rufe stepped from behind the flour sacks, the man in the bed jumped his astonished stare to Rufe. He was obviously nonplussed. Since he had never seen either of the armed men standing at his bedside like a pair of wraiths, he had reason to be nonplussed. Also, his conscience might have had something to do with it; those two lanky men eyeing him in the silent night did not look as though they had arrived to commend him for his dumplings or his crab-apple pies, and, like most older range men, this one, whose name was Abe Smith and who was Chase’s camp cook, had not dedicated his total lifetime to altruistic pursuits.

  Rufe said—“Where’s your gun?”—and the old man did not so much as hesitate. He pointed to a pair of pack boxes that doubled as his chest of drawers.

  Jud leaned, shoved a hand under the pillow, and withdrew it, empty.

  The old man said: “The only gun I got is yonder in them boxes.” He looked from Jud to Rufe as though he had in mind asking a question, but he said nothing.

  “Where’s Mister Chase?” Rufe asked quietly, and got an unexpected answer.

  “Him and Mister Harris done rode out for town just ahead of sunset.”

  Jud leaned down. “You’re lying.”

  The cook vehemently shook his head. “I ain’t lying, mister. Him and Mister Harris left for town just ahead of supper. They figured to spend the night down there.”

  Jud continued to lean close, staring at the cook. “Maybe you’re not lying, you old bastard. Maybe they sent Fenwick and his friends over to fire the Cane barn, then lit out for town so’s folks would see them down there when the barn burned down.” Jud smiled again coldly. “Does that sound reasonable, you old bastard?”

  The cook fidgeted. He was over the astonishment now, and it seemed rather clear that normally he was an irascible man, quick-tempered and sharp-tongued. But whether he liked the deliberate way Jud referred to him as an aged illegitimate or not, fidgeting seemed right at the moment to be about as far as he had ought to go in registering a protest. He said: “I don’t know why Mister Chase and that gun-fighter went down to Clearwater. I’m only the cook here. Folks never confide in cooks. They bellyache to high heaven if the grub ain’t served up hot and on time, and fit for a king, mind you, but otherwise a cow-camp cook might just as well be a…. ”