by Lauran Paine
“Shut up,” murmured Jud, still leaning down. “How do you know Harris is a gunfighter?”
Abe Smith hung fire, looking left and right a moment before answering. “Well, hell, I know it the same as you boys’d know it if you seen him. They got a special look to’em, don’t they?”
Jud nodded solemn confirmation of this. “Yeah, you old bastard, they got a special look to’em. What kind of a man is Chase, to hire a gunfighter to kill the Cane woman?”
Abe Smith snorted. “Not her, for Chriz’ sake, them. Hell’s bells, a man don’t hire a woman killed, he….”
“Yeah? He what…old bastard?”
Abe Smith’s sudden spurt of indignant denial had been entirely impromptu, so he sat there looking up, cursing himself in silence, because now, finally, he knew exactly who these two strangers were—the very men Chase had hired the gun-fighter to kill. Abe Smith watched Jud straighten up very slowly, and, although this act was not of itself at all menacing, the overall attitude of both the lanky men in the darkness beside his bed definitely was menacing. It was no good, relying upon range-land custom of old men being safe, unless the old men knew with whom they were confronted. Abe Smith did not know, and, furthermore, these two armed strangers shouldn’t even have been able to get over here. They were supposed to be fighting a barn fire and maybe getting shot at by Charley Fenwick and the others.
Abe said: “Do you boys work for Miz Cane?”
Rufe answered. “You answer, you old bastard, you don’t ask. Finish what you were going to say about the gunfighter…Chase hired him to kill…who?”
Abe Smith swallowed, hard. “Well, he hired Harris to get rid of them two range riders workin’ for Elisabeth Cane.”
Jud cocked a skeptical eye. “I thought you said no one confided in you?”
“No one does,” averred the older man. “But that don’t mean, when I’m feedin’em all, I don’t listen a lot. Otherwise, hell, I’d never know nothing. I’d be like one of them monks who folks don’t never talk to.”
Rufe exchanged a look with Jud. It was a disappointment, not being able to find Arlen Chase, but it was also helpful to know who the man Bull Harris was, and why Chase had brought him to Cane’s Mesa.
Rufe said: “Who else is in camp tonight, besides you, old bastard?”
Abe Smith fidgeted a little more furiously this time. “One feller over in the bunkhouse, which is that log house bigger than the main house, but beside it and off a dozen yards. His name’s Pete Ruff, and he’s sort of the straw boss when Mister Chase ain’t on the mesa.”
Rufe gestured. “Get your boots and pants on, and let’s go over and rouse up Pete Ruff.”
Abe Smith swung spindly, saddle-warped legs clad in ancient long Johns over the edge of his bunk, groped for trousers and boots, gruntingly dressed himself, scooped up his shirt, and arose. Standing up evidently made him feel a little more like a two-legged critter, because he looked Rufe squarely in the eye and said: “You are them two from the Cane place, ain’t you?”
Jud tapped the old man’s shoulder and growled: “Shut up, lead the way, and the first mistake you make, old bastard, I’m going to bust your skull like a punky melon.”
The cook clumped out through his cook shack into the warm, heavy late-night atmosphere, did not look back and did not hesitate as he struck out directly for a particular crude log house. This one had a little overhang out front, several crude benches, and a wooden box held empty beer and whiskey bottles.
Rufe reached and halted Abe Smith with a hard grip. “Poke your head inside, yell for him to come out, that the horses are spooked about something, then stand over against the wall and don’t move nor make a sound. You understand?”
The cook nodded, and reached for the door. When he shoved his head inside, Jud’s cold gun muzzle eased into his back above the kidneys and Abe Smith flinched. He growled loudly for the sleeping man to rouse up and come out and help him quiet the damned horses, and he swore a little, which made it sound very authentic. Then he stepped over alongside the wall and flattened exactly as he had been instructed to do.
The man, who came sleepily forth buttoning his britches with a disreputable old hat upon the back of his tousled head and clutching a shirt under one arm, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with a slightly hawkish face. He could have been a half-breed Indian of some kind, but whatever he was, Rufe’s first good glimpse of him encouraged a belief that this member of Chase’s cow camp was trouble.
Not now, though. He not only had both hands occupied, but he was unarmed when Jud stepped up and shoved the cold gun barrel into the man’s side. Ruff turned in swift astonishment and stared. Jud was a complete stranger to him. He seemed unwilling or unable to speak for a moment, but only that long, because when Jud said—“Turn around and go back inside, mister, and keep both your hands up high.”—the cow-camp range boss recovered and glared at Jud.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he snarled.
Rufe answered, from behind the man. “Go in-side!”
The range boss had not been able Tomake any kind of a worthwhile assessment until now. He turned his head and craned around, saw Rufe, and decided he was, indeed, outmatched. Then he curled a furious lip in the direction of old Abe Smith, but whatever he might have said was cut short when Jud jammed him hard with the gun barrel, making the range boss gasp as he turned to reënter the bunkhouse.
They turned up the lamp inside. Ruff shrugged into his shirt, staring quizzically at his captors. Abe Smith confirmed the range boss’s dawning suspicions.
“They’re the pair Elisabeth Cane hired on couple days back.”
Pete Ruff looked at Rufe. “What you doin’ over here?”
“Looking for Arlen Chase.”
“He ain’t here. He ain’t nowhere on the mesa,” snapped Ruff.
“Yeah,” retorted Rufe, “we know. He’s down in Clearwater with his gunfighter. Well, directly now we’re going to ride down there and look him up, but first off we’ve got Tomake blessed certain no one’s behind us, skulking along for a chance to back-shoot us.”
“How you figure to do that?” asked Pete Ruff.
Rufe shrugged. “Kill the pair of you, like we did those other three, the ones you sent over to burn the lady’s barn.”
Old Abe Smith acted as though he were going to faint, and even the hard-eyed, tough half-breed range boss turned suddenly much less hard and abrasive.
“It wasn’t my doings,” said the half-breed. “Mister Chase come up with it, lock, stock, and barrel. I never even picked the fellers to ride over there.” He turned toward the cook. “Is that the truth, or not, Abe?”
Smith’s voice was reedy when he replied: “Don’t you ask me nothing. I’m just the…. ”
Jud growled and Abe’s lips snapped closed as Rufe offered them a way out. “You can ride down to Clear-water with us, tell the law down there what Chase has been trying to do up here…steal her horses and cattle, burn her out, shoot up her place…or you can get buried right here.”
Abe Smith hardly allowed the last echo to fade. “I’ll go with you, by Gawd. I’ll go, because I never approved of actin’ like that toward no woman. I’ll…. ”
The range boss spoke up gruffly. “All right. Let’s get the hell down there.”
IX
They went first to rig out animals for the two fresh captives, then all four of them walked back out where Rufe and Jud had left their animals, and it was there, while they were getting ahorseback, that the range boss, looking skeptically at Rufe, said: “You scairt the whey out of old Abe about the fellers who went over to burn the barn…now tell me what really happened over there? You fellers never killed nobody”
Jud said: “Didn’t we, then?”
Ruff shook his head. “Mister, on a night like this, no farther off than the Cane place is, if there’d been much gunfire, the sound would have carried.”
Jud smiled. “From inside a barn?” He gestured. “Line out your horse and shut up.”
They crossed back through the yard of Chase’s unkempt cow camp and picked up the wide trail southeastward. There was no talk now, not that Rufe or Jud would have objected, but since they held all the initiative, and they were silent, neither the range boss nor the camp cook spoke up.
Finally they arrived at the pass leading down off the mesa. It became clear why Elisabeth had said no one could come up, or go down, without being intercepted. The trail led straight through Chase’s camp, which had clearly been no accident.
The trail was wide and well marked. In fact, it would only take a little work in some fallen-in places Tomake it fit for wagons again. But since the passing of Elisabeth’s parents, no one had maintained the road, so now it was simply a wide, very good saddle-back trail.
Heat rose up from down below. The farther down they rode, the more noticeable this was. Apparently summer was already over the desert country.
Jud turned to the cook, who was riding on his left side by Jud’s order, and said: “How old are you?”
Smith replied with a succinct answer: “Sixty-six.”
Jud gazed placidly at him as he made a vocal judgment. “Hell, you’ve lived long enough. My pappy didn’t make it that far along by seven years.”
Abe Smith lacked Pete Ruff’s iron obviously. He shot Jud a frantic look. “I didn’t do a blessed thing. They never confided in me, and they never asked me for no help.”
The range boss, who was riding on Rufe’s left side, leaned to speak, and Rufe’s arm shot out to jolt him into silence. They exchanged a look, and the range boss eased back in the saddle, furious but silent. Rufe did not know what his partner was leading up to, and he was interested enough not to want any digressions.
Then it became clear what was on Jud’s mind. “A man who feeds folks three times a day for a fact hears a lot. Like you told us, old bastard.” Jud grinned at Abe Smith. “You’ve heard’em talking about running off the lady’s horses and cattle, eh?”
Abe squirmed in the saddle, stared flintily dead ahead, out over the dark desert, then he swung helplessly to glance back. But Pete Ruff was like a hawkish, mahogany statue back there and offered not a sound.
Jud leaned and rapped the old man’s leg. “No-body lives forever, do they…old bastard?”
“Men talk,” blurted out the anguished old man. “They always got to be talking about something. It don’t usually mean much, but.…”
Jud lifted out the gun and rested it in his lap, gazing across at the cocinero, and finally Pete Ruff came to old Smith’s aid.
“Hell, tell’em,” he growled.
Whatever Ruff’s reason, it was all the encouragement old Smith needed. He said: “Yeah, I’ve heard all the talk, only nobody done stole her livestock, mister. They run’em down off the mesa out over the desert. They was all branded. Chase wouldn’t take that kind of a chance, so they just got scattered out all over the desert.”
Rufe looked at the range boss and got a bleak nod of confirmation. “That’s true. Maybe they got stole down there. I’ve got no way of knowing because none of us ever went back down looking for’em. But we sure as hell never stole them. The idea was to clean her out.”
“It didn’t work,” stated Rufe.
The range boss shrugged thick, compact shoulders. “So…she was to get burned out,” he explained, then looked bleakly over at Rufe. “Me, I’d have burned her out first, long ago.” He did not look even slightly conscience-stricken as he made this announcement. “It’d be doin’ her a favor. It don’t make one lick of sense for a single woman owning all that good land up there, trying to run a ranch by herself. The best thing that could have happened would have been for her to get forced off the mesa and into a house down in town, where single womenfolk had ought to be.”
Rufe did not argue, did not speak at all when the range boss had finished his challenging statement. His was a very commonplace range-country conviction, and even Rufe did not entirely disagree with it. A place like Cane’s Mesa was not settled, fenced, orderly cow country. It was not a place where a lone woman could have managed, but, hell, it wasn’t up Tomen like Chase and his range boss to decide for Elisabeth Cane. It was her decision.
They reached the flat country, and it was vastly different from the mesa. The ground was flinty, rain-lashed, covered with an endless variety of spindly, wiry underbrush, most of it bearing sharp thorns, and, if this had been broad daylight instead of small hours of late night—or very early morning—it would also have been hot, riding across the desert.
They had no difficulty keeping to the trail. Down here, it was scored by overgrown but clearly discernible wagon ruts, additional reminders that old Amos Cane had pioneered this country, and, as the trail angled through the brush clumps, a sliver of moonlight arrived unexpectedly, which aroused Jud’s interest.
Overhead, those massive, water-laden shapes were breaking up. It could still rain, but apparently a high, savage wind above the clouds was shredding them, forcing them out of their threatening formations, scattering them from the center outward.
It had never smelled like rain to Rufe, but he had refrained from mentioning this to Jud earlier be-cause it was not important. If it had rained, they would have got soaked, and that was about the size of it, but if it did not rain, they would remain dry, which was about the size of that, too.
The hawk-faced half-breed range boss rolled and lit a cigarette, then blew smoke and looked calmly over at Rufe. “You figure to go up against Bull Harris?” he asked with a dry, clinical interest.
Rufe considered his answer a long while before giving it. “Depends on Harris, I expect, and maybe it also depends upon your boss.”
Pete Ruff made a little snorting sound. “Arlen won’t take you on. He don’t have to, mister. Fellers like Arlen Chase hire that kind of work done.”
Rufe studied Pete Ruff. He knew the type, had worked for them in a dozen different territories. They were top-notch range stockmen, beyond that other considerations such as encroachment, crowding others off a range, expanding their grasslands, and orga-nizing the crews and the cow camps were incidental. They did those things, when it fell to them to become so occupied, with an almost offhand pragmatism. Their first and foremost interest was their herds and enough grass for their herds. They were not entirely unprincipled men; they were products of an environment that was never mild, and they became exactly the same way.
Even Ruff’s dispassionate interest in what might occur in Clearwater was consistent with the kind of man he was. Rufe thought privately that it was too bad Elisabeth hadn’t got hold of this range boss before Arlen Chase had hired him on. There was no unyielding antagonism between them. They were too much alike for that. What was different was that they happened to be on opposite sides of the fence.
Up ahead, Jud and Abe Smith were quietly talking about the prospects of the law’s involvement when they got down to Clearwater. Abe was worried half sick, but Abe was an old man, and that probably made him more susceptible to worry But Jud did nothing to mitigate the old cook’s anxiety for an obvious reason; he wanted Abe Smith to talk his head off in front of the law in Clearwater.
Rufe and Pete Ruff slouched along a few yards back, listening, reading their own interpretations into what Jud and Abe were talking about, and said nothing.
Finally, though, when they came out of the desert and walked their horses up onto an arrow-straight north-south hardpan stage road, the range boss said: “You fellers been lucky up to now. That’s all. Chase never figured you’d be as clever as you turned out to be. But you’re still a hell of a long way from getting him, and gettin’ me’n’ Abe into the Clearwater jailhouse don’t amount to much. You boys ain’t even begun to face trouble yet.”
Rufe was half inclined to agree with this, but he would never have conceded as much to Chase’s range boss. All he said in reply was: “Luck sure helps, for a fact, but there’s something else just as valuable.”
“What?” challenged the range boss.
“Surprise,” retorted Rufe,
and stood in his stirrups trying to see rooftops downcountry “Chase don’t know us from Adam’s off ox.” He settled back down. “And neither you, nor old bastard up ahead there, are going to be able to help him.”
Ruff said—“The constable’ll tell him.”—and that brought Jud twisting around to stare bleakly at the range boss. Ruff shrugged. “It’s a fact. Arlen Chase is a big pumpkin hereabouts. This is cowman country.”
Jud swung forward without saying a word. They continued down the stage road for slightly more than a mile before Rufe wrinkled his nose at the faint fragrance of wood smoke. It was too early for most folks to be firing up their cook stoves for breakfast, so this aroma had to be left over, in the heavy, motionless night air, from the previous evening’s supper fires.
Nevertheless, they still did not catch sight of the town for some time afterward, a thin little shaft of moonlight not with standing.
A low, warm wind came along from the north, ruffling dust in the roadway and making under-brush sway a little. It smelled dry as old bones to Rufe. He was more confident than ever that it would not rain.
Jud raised an arm. “Town ahead.”
Neither of Chase’s men commented, and all Rufe did was sit straighter in the saddle to see the rooftops and some dark-etched treetops against the faintly iridescent, paling belly of the roiled heavens.
Ruff smashed out his cigarette atop his saddle horn, black eyes sardonically fixed dead ahead upon Clearwater. He did not have to say what he was thinking; his expression did that for him. He did not believe this was the end of anything; he believed it was the beginning. He also believed that two faded-looking top hands who had been purely lucky up until now were shortly going to learn a lesson about bucking a real scheming cowman.