by Les Weil
They were in the second now, which called itself a restaurant to attract the family trade and justified this by serving food as a strictly minor sideline to those foolish enough to order it. They sat at a table discovering that even with appetites honed by six days of short hurried rations they were among the foolish. But the liquor was good.
"Smart," suggested Monte. "They get you in here for food then you got to fill up on drink." He studied the leathery slice of beef on his plate. "Why, shucks," he said. "I bet they use this stuff over and over. It don't look like it'd ever wear out."
At another table fifteen feet away, facing Monte, two swarthy men under high-crowned wide-brimmed black hats seemed to be arguing violently in Spanish and were really indulging in an amiable and, to them, interesting conversation. With them but sitting back out of the direct line of verbal gunfire was a dark-eyed dusky-skinned woman in a flowing many-pleated skirt and a tight tempting bodice. There was a bright flower tucked into her dark hair and two dainty turquoise circlets dangled from her ears. She no longer paid any attention to the conversation bouncing past her. It was ridiculous that two presumably robust men should be so interested in the respective supposed speeds of various horses and not in her. And on her one night out for the month. Ridiculous, even if one was a husband of eight years' familiarity. She was well aware that about fifteen feet away a rugged length of Anglo rawhide had been looking at her while pretending not to for the past ten minutes. She permitted her head to turn a bit more toward him and her soft dark glance to focus briefly on him and the trace of a smile to show on her face.
The hook-nosed man saw Monte's eyes brighten, his whole body tense some. The hook-nosed man pretended to reach for something in a pants pocket and while executing this maneuver had to shift sideways on his chair and this gave ample chance for a casual glance backwards. He faced Monte again. "Watch it," he said, low-voiced. "These monkeys around here are mighty touchy about their women. You'll get a knife in the ribs."
"People," said Monte, expansive. "Just people."
The hook-nosed man executed his maneuver again, lingering at it. He faced Monte again. "Ripe," he said. "Can't say I blame you. Don't mind me. You get to be my age you talk discouragin'."
At the other table the woman spoke rather sharply and the two men stopped talking and looked at her. She spoke again and they shrugged shoulders and rose from their chairs. The woman rose too and they moved toward the front door. The woman paused briefly in the doorway, reaching up to fuss with the flower in her hair, and her glance flicked to Monte and again the trace of a smile showed on her face.
The hook-nosed man tried a piece of something from his plate and chewed methodically, watching Monte. "Take it easy," he said. "An' remember we're leavin' first thing in the mornin'."
Monte said nothing. He sat still, tapping with one finger on the table. He counted out a full minute. He stood up, stretching. "Kind of close in here," he said. "I need a little fresh air." He strolled to the doorway and out into the dusk. He rolled a cigarette and lit it. On down the street he could see the three figures moving slowly, the two men again immersed in their conversation. They stopped by a small frame house and one of them, unmistakable in flowing skirt, went into the house and the other two continued on, at a faster pace, arm motions indicating still more talk.
Monte waited, finishing the cigarette. The two men had turned a corner, around a building, out of sight. Darkness was taking the town. He strolled down the street. He stopped by the small frame house and started to roll another cigarette. He was not certain at first that he caught the soft whisper from the window. It came again: "Around back." Monte looked up and down the street. He dropped the unlit cigarette and stepped into the darker shadow along the house side wall and moved to the rear. He stood close against the back wall. A door opened with a tiny squeak and the woman stepped out, vague in the darkness but unmistakable again in flowing skirt. The door closed with another tiny
squeak.
"Over here," whispered Monte.
She moved toward him and looked up at him in the darkness, peering at the lean weathered reckless ruggedness of his face under the brim of his own hat.
"You are a cowboy, yes? I like cowboys."
"We have our points," said Monte.
"But you are not always thinking only of the cows and the horses, no?"
"Shucks," said Monte. "Right now there ain't a cow or a horse anywheres on my mind."
"And you think I am pretty, yes?"
"Shucks," said Monte, reaching to touch one of the tur,juoise circlets. "Right now at this particular moment I think everything pretty there ever was is put together right here in
you."
"You tell the lie," she said, pushing away his hand. She hesitated, peering at him. "But maybe--maybe not for just right now." She moved in closer, tossing her head a little. "You will tell me more of the lies, yes?"
"Shucks, ma'am," said Monte, taking her arm. "As many as you want." He led her back, away from the house, toward a small arbor with thick cloaking of grapevines ...
In the second saloon which called itself a restaurant the hook-nosed man, defeated, abandoned his attack on the substances on his plate. He pushed the plate across the table beside Monte's. He beckoned to the bartender and obtained liquid substitution. He looked up at the clock on the wall. He took an old pack of cards bound by a piece of string from a shirt pocket and untied the string and began playing solitaire ...
In the small arbor behind the small frame house Monte Walsh was temporarily through telling what might or might not be lies at this particular moment to the woman in the flowing skirt. She was in his arms and his head was bent as his lips moved through her hair down past a turquoise circletr to nuzzle her neck and she quivered in gratifying response and his right hand moved down the small of her back, pressing her closer to him. He stopped, hearing, and felt her stiffening in his arms, hearing too. A small sound, seeming to float in the still air back to them. The click of the front door of the small frame house closing.
He stepped to the entrance to the arbor and stood, still, listening. The silence from the house was somehow alive, ominous. Then another sound. The tiny squeak of the back door opening.
He flicked a glance into the darkness of the arbor behind him. The woman had stepped out of her shoes and slipped through the back entrance and away, into, or around behind, clumped bushes to one side. He stared into the baffling black of the darker shadow along the rear of the house. Nothing. Apparently nothing. Only the slight tingling of the sensing of something there and perhaps elsewhere too.
"Luck and me," he murmured. He stepped out into the open of the yard and moved, cautious, alert, range-trained muscles tensed, poised, aiming toward the rear of the next building. Out of the corner of vision, from the left, he saw the one man rushing, knife in hand, and he whirled and stepped to meet the onrush and his left hand leaped to take the man's wrist and wrenched and his right knee surged up into the man's groin and in the instant of action he was aware of the other man, from the right and behind now, and he felt the tearing shock of the other knife slicing in and grating on a rib and he flung back around with his right arm flailed like a club and the weight of his body turning with it and the arm struck the other man across the neck and knocked him away and down.
He felt the blood running beneath his clothes, down around his belt, and he staggered ahead and around the corner of the building and leaned against the wall and only then did he think of his gun and he pulled it, waiting, and no one came. He backed along, holding to the wall, aware of the weakness taking him, and he was at the front by the open of the street. He dropped the gun in its holster and moved up the street, staggering, weaving from side to side. "Like a goddamned drunk," he muttered. He made it to the corner of the second saloon building and inched along, clutching at the front wall, and fell forward in through the doorway and as he fell he saw the hook-nosed man rising and the table going over and cards spilling to the floor. "You sure called it," he said
and in the saying blacked out ...
* * *
Sunlight through a neat clean window with neat clean fluffy side-curtains filled the small room with a warm morning glow. Monte Walsh was gradually aware that he was awake and likely had been for a while and that he lay on a soft bed with a neat clean sheet over him and was staring at that remarkable window. Such as clean and curtained were somewhat outside his usual experience. He rolled his head a bit to look around the room. A framed lithograph of some flowers on one wall, another of a mountain scene on another wall. A hanging mirror with a dresser under and a scarf laid over this. Two straight-back chairs and a small table with pitcher and basin. A thunder mug on the floor between the able legs. His boots standing in a corner. His gunbelt hanging on a hook above them. He started to sit up and understood immediately that was not a good notion. With cautious fingers he explored what he could of the bandage encircling his upper body under the armpits. A tight and thorough job. He lay still. He rolled his head a bit to look out the window. A short stretch of bare dirt yard ending abruptly in what seemed to be part of a barn. Two posts with a rope strung between them.
From somewhere outside the window frame a woman appeared. A plump well-rounded brisk-moving woman who carried her weight with a swish of hips as she walked. She held a basket in one hand. She set the basket down and began to hang damp clothes on the line between the posts. A man's shirt with a rip showing in it. A pair of pants. Short-length underwear with another rip showing. A pair of socks. With a slight feeling of indignation Monte recognised his shirt and pants and underwear and socks.
The woman picked up her basket and came straight to the window and peered in. Suddenly aware that Monte was awake and looking at her, she jumped back and swept out of sight beyond the window frame again.
Monte lay still. "What d'you know," he murmured.
He rolled his head. The door to the room was opening inward, being pushed all the way back, and the woman was in the doorway. "Wonderful," she said. "Doctors are just wonderful. He said you'd be waking up this morning and be weak and all that but you might even be chipper and certainly hungry. He said you're about the toughest piece of masculine meat he ever worked on. He talks like that and all, the doctor. Masculine meat and all that. Like he was a butcher and not a doctor. But he doesn't mean it. He's really a doctor you know." She was moving briskly about the room, straightening the scarf on the dresser, pulling the curtains back to let in more sunlight.
"Please, ma'am," said Monte, "who-"
"Your things out there," said the woman. "I just washed them out. Goodness but they were bloody. You have to wash blood out right away or it stains. Let it dry in hard and it
stains. But your socks! Goodness, don't you men ever think to change them?"
"Please, ma'am," said Monte, "who-"
"And those rips in them," said the woman. "Just you set your mind at rest about those. Soon as they're dry I'll be mending them soon as I get the chance. Goodness knows
there should be time enough. He said, that's the doctor, you'll likely be trying to get up before you should and I'd better keep your things out of reach for a few days."
"Please, ma'am," said Monte. "Who took my clothes off me?"
The woman looked at him, startled, and a strong flush spread up her full good-natured face. She looked away. "Why your friend did. Of course I had to help him and all. We had to do something before the doctor got here. You would keep bleeding. We'd think we had it stopped and you'd start again." She looked at Monte, a trifle defiant. "And if you're worrying about anything like that I want you to know I'm a married woman. Married women know things. I have a very good husband even if he is older than me. He doesn't go getting himself cut up with knives and likely over a woman too."
She started toward the door. "You men. Gabbling so you keep a woman talking so she can't get things done. I'm forgetting what's on the stove." She disappeared.
Monte lay still. She reappeared with a bowl of hot soup on a plate in one hand, a pillow in the other. She set the soup on the dresser and came over and slipped an arm under Monte's neck and raised his head and shoulders and put the pillow under, on the one already there. She brought one of the chairs and put it by the bed. She brought the soup and began to spoon it into his mouth.
"I don't usually give meals," she said. "Just rooms. This is a rooming house. But I want you to know I don't have to do that. Just for something to do. My husband makes good money. He's with the railroad. He's a fireman. But what's a woman to do with no children? Just sit around all day? I'm not the kind to sit around. I have to have things to do. Well, you certainly took that soup like you liked it. If I do say so, I make good soup and all. How do you feel?"
"Hungry," said Monte.
"You men," she said, rising and starting toward the door. "But I know you. Oh, how I know you. You can't run a rooming house without getting to know. I've got some stew
warming on the stove. From yesterday. Stew's always better and easier to chew when warmed over." She disappeared.
Monte lay still. He could feel the warmth from the soup beginning to spread through him.
She reappeared with another bowl on another plate and sat down again on the chair by the bed. "Do I have to keep feeding you?"
"Shucks, ma'am," said Monte. "I kind of like it."
"All right," she said. "Open your mouth. I don't mind. It's something to do. I cleaned the whole house yesterday and put out clean sheets you'd think just as if I knew something would happen so I haven't much to do today. You're the first cowboy I've had. But I think that's a silly word because you certainly aren't a boy. It was old Mr. Wentworth who had this room. He's railroad too. Only retired. I made him move upstairs last night. Oh, he grumbled and he grumbled about all those trips up and down taking his things and all but I thought you'd be best in here. Downstairs. Close to the kitchen . . ."
She talked on and Monte realized there was no need to pay particular attention and he chewed slowly on the stew which was a fine far jump from the food at the second saloon and he noticed that she was not as heavy as she had first seemed out the window and that the arm reaching out to him was soft and round with smooth tempting skin.
The bowl was empty and the woman rose and set it on the dresser and put the chair back in its place by the wall. She stooped over the bed again and slid one of the soft round arms under Monte's shoulders and raised him to fluff the pillows higher. For an instant her full bosom brushed against his cheek and looking up he saw a curl from the brown hair held up on her head with celluloid hairpins drop down over her forehead. He pursed his lips and blew softly and the curl bounced and the woman straightened up quickly and looked down at him, surprisingly, for the moment, silent.
She turned away, brisk, and took the bowl on its plate and moved to the doorway. "Rest," she said. "That's what you need now. This house isn't so big so that if you need anything you can't just call. My husband has the day run west from here. One day going then he stays over and comes back the next day. I don't know why I'm telling you that except because maybe you'd be wondering why sometimes he isn't here. Well, that's why." She disappeared.
Monte lay still. He lay still thinking of the jaunty swish of well-rounded hips. He lay still thinking and was asleep ...
He was aware again that he was awake, staring this time at the doorway. The hook-nosed man stood there, regarding him gravely.
"I've got to be going," said the hook-nosed man. "Got to get back to the place. But I've took care of everything. Your hoss is at the stable. Paid up for a month. Same for this room and board. It took a little more'n what you had coming but what the hell. You been doin' two-three men's work. Paid up for a month. You'll be up and around by then."
"A month," said Monte. "Lovely. Just lovely."
The hook-nosed man stared at him. "Cracked," he said. "You get carved up an' talk like that. Well, anyways, I've found me another man. Got to have him. Wish it was you but it's take what's available. Maybe you'll come around next year."
"Hate to leave you like this but you know how it is. Not so bad. A clean room and good food."
"Why sure," said Monte. He looked out the window into the yard where with jaunty swish of hips the woman was taking down his shirt and pants and underwear and socks. "Don't you worry none about me," he said. "It ain't going to be bad at all."
* * *
They had swept one of the last stretches of open range rising toward the Mogollons, the men of three outfits, some of them regulars, some of them seasonal, most of them young. They had the cattle bunched, nine hundred head and more, and four men rode circle while the others were gathered by the two chuck wagons absorbing a midday meal. They would be cutting the herd by brands soon and driving these to their respective ranges and in a few days fence crews would be at work putting in permanent divisions.
A deep-chested leggy dun ambled into view out of somewhere and the man in the saddle looked out over the scene and his face brightened and he rode toward the wagons. He dismounted and dropped reins and the dun stood, patient, ground-reined, and he walked to the first wagon.
The younger men studied him in silence. "How ya, Monte," said one of the older men. "Ain't seen you in a long while."
"I been moving around," said Monte Walsh. "Found out something. Scenery doesn't change much from here to there." He reached out. The cook by the fire had heaped a plate and was handing it to him.
"Fill up," said this one. "You're just in time. I was about ready to clear away."