Gather My Horses

by John D. Nesbitt

  “And what do you plan to do?”

  Selby blinked a couple of times. “We need to hang together, Tom, and be careful. No one sticks his neck out until we know what the deputy finds out.”

  “You can pretty well predict that, can’t you?”

  “I don’t know. If he asks around, maybe someone saw something.”

  “Sure. Like the fellow up in Johnson County.” Fielding did not think he had to tell the rest, as it was well known how a man had seen Frank Canton and heard shots at ten in the morning at the place where Johnnie Tisdale was shot in the back and his two wagon horses and little dog were shot as well. The witness was so scared that he jumbled his testimony at the inquest, and Canton walked free. And that was a case in which there was a known witness. In others, like the case on the Sweetwater, the witnesses disappeared.

  Selby did not answer, so Fielding spoke again. “Are his two horses still standing in the corral?”

  “Oh, no,” Selby answered. “I took them to my place so they’d be taken care of.” He said it with the tone of someone who had performed his expected duty.

  “Saddle, too?”

  “Well, yeah. He had two of ’em. No sense in leavin’ ’em where someone could get his hands on ’em.”

  Fielding decided not to pursue that line any more at the moment. “So they’ve got him in town?”

  “That’s right.” Selby nodded his head in his officious way. “Funeral at ten in the morning, tomorrow. I was afraid you might miss it.”

  The group that gathered at the cemetery consisted of Selby, Roe, Isabel, Leonora, Fielding, and Mullins. The wheat farmer would probably not have shown up except that he had been asked to work in the café for a couple of days while Leonora took some time off.

  After the service, which was short and not very comforting, the group left the coffin next to the open hole and the pile of dirt and went to the parlor of the house where Leonora rented a room. Selby had arranged for cake and cold meats to be brought in from the café, and Mullins tended to the sideboard where the food was laid out.

  A desolate feeling pervaded the room, and no one spoke much. When everyone had eaten and set their plates aside, Mullins poured coffee in china cups. The group sat on upholstered chairs arranged in an oval, and as there were three unoccupied, Mullins poured himself a cup of coffee and sat in respectful silence.

  “He was a good man,” said Selby.

  Fielding started to speak, then cleared his throat and said, “The best.”

  Roe sniffed, rubbed his nose both ways, and said, “He was. Never a cross word to his friends, never owed a man a nickel.”

  “Didn’t complain,” Selby added.

  Leonora, still wearing the black veil she had worn to the cemetery, took a slow breath and sat up straight. She had a tremor in her voice as she said, “He was all that, and more. Generous, kind, intelligent.” She set her cup on its saucer, and it rattled until she stilled it. With her chin raised, she said, “He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  Selby and Roe looked at their own coffee cups, but Isabel’s eyes rose and met Fielding’s.

  “I remember the last time I saw him,” she said. “He played a few songs for us.”

  “Oh, he was fond of music,” Selby put in. “Wrote a few airs himself.”

  “He liked birds,” said Fielding, caught up in the sadness of the moment. “Songbirds.” Then he felt silly for having said what he did.

  “It’s too bad,” Mullins offered. “A man in his prime . . .” Mullins’s sentence trailed off.

  Fielding steadied his voice as he spoke again. “He offered to ride along with me to Cogman’s Hole. I should have let him go. We would have still been up on the flats at that time.”

  Leonora set her cup on the saucer and held the two pieces with both hands. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said in a bitter tone. “The cowards would have gotten him one way or another.”

  Selby and Roe did not look up, and an uncomfortable silence hung in the room until Fielding said, “I think you’re right. The part I left out was that he offered to go along for my sake. He wasn’t worried about himself.”

  “That was Richard,” said Leonora. “More of a man than the ones that came looking for him.”

  Selby drew himself up as if he was about to speak, and Fielding was afraid he was going to say that it looked as if only one man did the job, but then Selby relaxed and said nothing. Leonora did not speak again, either. A few minutes later, Selby stood up and took leave. Roe followed, taking Isabel with him. Leonora withdrew, and Fielding helped Mullins carry the leftover cold food to the café.

  Fielding woke to the sound of birds fluttering and squawking. As he peeked out of the flap of his pyramid tent, he could see the young cotton-woods against the gray sky of morning. A flock of starlings had moved in, and the birds were traveling back and forth across the creek, between the cottonwoods and the box elders. There wasn’t much food for them here, he thought. Even if he had a shotgun, it would not be easy to run off a flock like this one. He would just endure them and not leave out anything for them to drop their deposits on. Before long they would move on, and if they followed the creek they would find a patch of chokecherry bushes, where they would strip all the fruit before it ripened. After that they could go ten or fifteen miles north and plunder a wheat field.

  He tended to his horses and got a fire going, then boiled some coffee to go with his cold biscuits. Nothing tasted good, and he had an irritated, dissatisfied feeling mixed in with the dread and sadness. If there was nothing good about Bracken’s death, there was even less so about Lodge’s, and brooding in camp alone had not improved his state of mind.

  After breakfast, he put his few things away and saddled the bay horse. With his other horses corralled, he left his camp to the starlings and rode off across country. His plan was to visit Selby first and then Roe, and he didn’t want to ride past the junk collector’s on the way.

  When he rode into Selby’s yard, the man came out to meet him. Selby looked ready for the day with his hat on and his gloves in his hip pocket, but he seemed fidgety as he said good morning and gave a smile.

  Fielding returned the greeting and dismounted.

  Selby sounded as if he was making an effort to appear cheerful. “What’s on your mind today,

  Tom?”

  “More of the same, I’d guess. And yourself?”

  “Likewise. Are you goin’ out on another trip before long?”

  “In a couple of days.”

  “Well, that’s good. Keep you busy, get you away so your mind isn’t on all this other stuff.”

  “It seems to follow me.”

  “Oh.” Selby drew his mouth together as he closed off the sound.

  Fielding tried to gauge the man but couldn’t. It seemed as if Selby had reconsidered things and was now avoiding both comment and confrontation. Fielding spoke. “I’ll tell you, Bill, I dropped in to see if we could come up with some idea of how we were going to do things.”

  “Uh-huh.” Selby’s eyes had a blank expression.

  Fielding went on. “You’ve got an idea what I mean.”

  Selby blinked. “Well, no. Actually, I don’t. You’ll have to fill me in.”

  “What I mean is, you’ve been sayin’ all along that we need to stick together, which is even plainer now than before.”

  “It’s true I’ve said that—”

  Fielding narrowed his gaze on the man. “Do you think you’re having second thoughts about it?”

  “Well, no, not exactly.”

  “I’m wonderin’, then, if anyone’s got an idea, or a plan, on what we’re going to do as a group. I don’t have any ideas myself, but I don’t have holdings like the rest of you, so I may not see things the same.”

  Selby shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Fielding went on. “I can’t help thinking that we should have done something rather than just wait. Even Richard—”

  “It’s too late for him,” said Selby. “He wasn’t w
orried about himself, but maybe he should have been.”

  “Seems to me we all should be.”

  “You’d be a fool not to. If a man doesn’t look out for himself, who’s going to?”

  Fielding could almost hear Lodge’s voice. Mark my words. Maintaining his calm, he said, “Then I guess each of us has to have his own plan first.”

  Selby put up a matter-of-fact expression as he said, “I think you’ve got to start there.”

  “I see.” What Fielding actually saw, he didn’t state. Cronin’s men had started by making an example out of Selby, had raised the stakes when they moved on to Fielding, and had raised them even higher when they took care of Lodge. Now Selby did not want them to come back to him, and he wanted to avoid an alliance with Fielding that might bring on more retribution. Fielding looked down and then up again. “Do you have a plan for yourself?” he asked.

  “Not yet. But I might be workin’ on one.”

  “Well, I won’t ask about it.”

  “Oh, it’s not a secret,” said Selby right away. “Just not very definite.” After a short pause, he added, “I’m thinkin’ I might pull up my stakes here.”

  “Sell out?”

  Selby tipped his head. “I might sell what I can, take what I can. But like I said, none of that’s definite yet.”

  Empty homesteads. Just what Cronin wanted. “By the way,” said Fielding, “do you have an idea of what’s going to become of Lodge’s place?”

  “The Magpie? I heard yesterday evenin’ that a crazy man was camped out there.”

  “Dunvil, the anarchist?”

  “I believe that’s him. I haven’t met him myself, but Richard mentioned him. Sounds crazy as a loon.”

  “He might be.” Fielding was about to ask Selby where he heard it, but he held his question. He did not think he had that level of confidence with Selby anymore.

  The knowledge that Dunvil was camped out at the Magpie caused Fielding to reconsider the sequence of his visits. By the time he had ridden half a mile from Selby’s place, he had decided to go visit the wild man and find out if he knew anything. Turning his horse to the south, he set off across country.

  He came onto the homestead acreage a little to the east of where he usually did. From his position he could see three of the four conical rock piles that marked the corners of the property, while the house and stable and corral lay uphill on his right. At first he saw no signs of occupation, and then he noticed the mule picketed on the grass out beyond the stable. With a light movement of the reins he put the bay horse in the direction of the house and yard.

  As he rode up the hillside and came into the yard, he had a feeling of emptiness from knowing that Lodge would never tend to his place again. The two little cedar trees stood in an area of sparse grass and hard earth, and the heap of stones by the front step looked purposeless. The door of the house was closed, as were the corral gate and the stable door. Fielding wondered how long it would be until weeds began to take over.

  He called out, “Anybody here?”

  He waited amidst the silence of inert stones and weathered lumber. Not a breeze stirred. He called again.

  The squeak of hinges and the scrape of wood sounded from the stable. The door moved outward, and Dunvil stood in the shadowy opening.

  Fielding swung down from his horse and led it forward. Dunvil did not step out of the doorway. His eyes looked like small beads.

  “Mornin’,” said Fielding.

  “Same to you.”

  “Heard you were here.”

  Dunvil scratched his beard but said nothing.

  Fielding spoke again. “Bad thing that happened.”

  “They happen too often.”

  “Lodge was a good friend of mine.”

  “I know.” Dunvil’s hand rose as if he was going to lean against the doorjamb, and then it lowered.

  Fielding, in no hurry, took a couple of seconds before going on. “Another friend, named Selby, was the one who found him. Said the deputy’s been out here.”

  “Might have been.”

  “Said the deputy is askin’ around whether anyone knows anything or saw anything.”

  “Might be.”

  Fielding paused. Dunvil was being more reserved than he expected, and he did not move from the doorframe. Fielding decided to go ahead. “You didn’t happen to see anyone out this way on the day of the shooting, did you?”

  “I keep to myself.”

  “Sometimes those are the people who see things.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” The beady eyes held steady.

  Fielding thought of another approach. “Have you been in the house?”

  “Not my place.” The beard made a strange movement as Dunvil wrinkled his nose. Then he went on. “Maybe you think none of it is. But don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not trying to take it.”

  “I wouldn’t think you were.”

  “Call me the guardian of the dispossessed if you want.”

  The wording gave Fielding pause. “I’m not questioning your motives,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you would, but make no mistake. This is bigger than the case at hand.”

  Fielding was not sure how to take the last statement, but he thought it was the anarchist’s idea of making an example out of an isolated incident. Hoping to bring the conversation into comprehensible terms, he said, “This outfit called the Argyle seems determined to push out the smaller stockmen, and they don’t seem to be holding back now.”

  Dunvil wagged his head. “Let the overlords come. If they get near me, they’ll wish they’d thought twice.”

  Fielding nodded.

  “If they have time to think about it,” Dunvil added.

  Seeing that he had gotten as much knowledge as he was likely to, Fielding said, “Well, I suppose I’ll move along.”

  “I might, too,” said Dunvil. “But not quite so soon.”

  Fielding mounted up and rode away without looking back. For his own interest, he would have liked to see what Dunvil had inside the stable door, but he was pretty sure it had a stock and a barrel, maybe two.

  Fielding rode around and came into the Roe yard from his usual direction. A mélange of noises came from the backyard, and a horse was grazing between two piles of salvage in front. Roe himself was leaning with both forearms against the side of his wagon, which was standing empty beyond the front step of the house. With slow movement, the man stood up from his leaning position and faced his visitor.

  He was dressed in his usual fashion, with his worn hat, loose clothes, and cloth vest. Two or three days had passed since his last shave, and the knotted kerchief hung limp at his neck. With thumb and forefinger he lifted the stub of a cigarette to his lips.

  Fielding dismounted and held the reins.

  Roe’s eyes wandered over Fielding and the horse as he lowered the cigarette and said, “How’d’ya do?”

  “All right, and yourself?”

  “A day older than yesterday, and still a dollar short.”

  “Isn’t that it?” said Fielding.

  Roe twisted his mouth and did not offer another comment.

  Fielding picked up the conversation. “Things go on. I was over and saw Selby earlier. Just talkin’ about things in general. I’ve got another trip to go on in a couple of days, and I thought I’d check with you others before I take off.”

  Roe rubbed his face and said, “Not much goin’ on right now. I think everyone’s sittin’ tight after what’s happened.”

  “Seems like. You know, when I talked to Selby a couple of days ago, he was all for stickin’ together, but now it looks like he’s hunkerin’ down.”

  “Suppose so.” Roe lifted the cigarette and smoked it down to the last pinch.

  “It’s all right with me. I just like to know how things stand.”

  “Hard to know.” The old hat lowered as Roe dropped the cigarette butt and stepped on it. He had his tongue between his lips as he looked up.

  Fielding felt as if he was still
missing a piece. “Has something else happened, or has this thing with Lodge got everyone down?”

  Roe moved his mouth and then spoke. “Maybe either or both.”

  “Something new, then?”

  The pale brown eyes held on him for a few seconds. “That kid Mahoney died yesterday. You know he got shot.”

  “I heard that, but I also heard no one was sayin’ how or where.”

  “All the same, you don’t know whether it’s goin’ to give them reason to do something more.”

  Fielding saw it all in a moment. Not only did Selby and Roe not want anything to come back on them, but if they sat tight enough, it might come only to the man who was assumed to have fired the shots at Mahoney. Selby and Roe were all for sticking together when they needed Fielding’s help, but now when it looked as if he might be marked, he was on his own. Not only was Lodge’s prediction true, but so was another comment that Fielding had not forgotten. Susan Buchanan herself had told him in her polite way that it was not worth it to stick up for people who probably wouldn’t do the same for him. And that was the way things stood now.

  “Maybe they will try something,” Fielding said. “At least I know more than I did before.”

  “I thought Bill might have told you.”

  “No, we didn’t get around to that.”

  “Well, I didn’t like the little snot myself. The way he started that fight.”

  “It wasn’t the only one. But I guess he’s done now.”

  “A lot of good it did him.” Roe twisted his head in an odd kind of exercise, and then with a quickened tone he said, “Oh, here’s Bel.”

  Fielding turned to see Isabel. She was wearing a dark blue dress and dark shoes, and her hair hung loose as it often did. Her eyes sparkled and her clean teeth showed as she spoke.

  “Hello, Tom. I thought I heard voices.”

  “We were just talkin’,” said her father.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Nothin’ to it.”

  “That’s right,” said Fielding. “And I think we were just about done, weren’t we?”

  “I guess,” said Roe. He had taken out his pocketknife and opened it, and now he clicked it shut and put it away.