Norris was behind his desk wearing a gray summer seersucker suit. Even though it was fall, it was ninety degrees outside and not a hell of a lot cooler in the building. I pulled up a chair, and Norris obliged me by looking up from his work and giving me his attention. I said, “I’m taking twenty-five thousand dollars out of the bank. Out of the horse account if it’ll stand it. The money is coming out after banking hours on Friday. I’m taking it out in cash.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Why?”
“Norris, I didn’t come up here to explain but to let you know for your book work.”
“Is it for those Thoroughbred studs that Ben wants?”
“No.”
We looked at each other.
“I see,” he said. Then he made a half smile. “No, I guess I don’t see. You’re taking money but you don’t want to tell me what it’s for.”
“Can’t tell you.”
“You mean you won’t. Justa, you know as well as I do I’ve got to record this money some way. Don’t you agree it’s a little too large of a sum to account for as coming out of petty cash?”
I sighed. I’d seen this coming when Howard had first laid out the situation. I said, “It’s personal. How’s that?”
“In other words you are making a loan from the company for twenty-five thousand dollars?”
I pulled a face. Now Howard was going to owe me some money. I wondered if he’d take thirty years paying me back as he had Charlie Stevens. I said, “Yes, I guess you could say I’m borrowing it from the company.”
We were a company, the Half-Moon Land and Cattle Company. I was the president, Howard was the chairman of the board, Ben was the vice president, and Norris was the secretary and treasurer. We paid ourselves salaries. I got two hundred a month, Ben a hundred and fifty, and Norris a hundred and seventy-five. Howard didn’t get anything. Of course we all got a bonus at the end of the year that Norris carefully figured out, depending on profits. All told, not counting the actual land of the Half-Moon ranch, which was willed personally and separately in whole to us boys, the Half-Moon Land and Cattle Company was worth about two and a half million dollars. Of course that included the hotel and the bank and various parcels of land and different securities and stocks.
And of course, it was Norris’s business to keep up with all that, but it still kind of irritated me, him asking me so close what I wanted the money for and pressing me like he had. Hell, it wasn’t as if we were broke.
He said, “So you want me to treat this like a personal loan from the company? What account do you want me to charge it to?”
It made me angry. “Charge it to the same account for the money we spent when me and Ben and Lew Vara had to come down and get you out of jail in Monterrey all because you was too damn stubborn to pay a Mexican official a hundred-dollar bribe. I believe that bribe cost the company around five thousand dollars. How’d you chalk that one up? What heading did you put that one under, muleheadedness?”
He picked up a pen and fiddled with it for a second. Then he said, “No call to bring that up, Justa. I’m simply trying to keep the books straight. Tell me, will this benefit the company in any way?”
I got up. I was tired of the conversation. Norris was my brother, but his accountant’s ways could make me mad as hell. I said, “Yes, I expect it will benefit the company. I know damn well it ain’t going to benefit me.”
He said, “Fine. I’ll enter it under General Maintenance.”
“You can enter it under General Custer for all I care.” I turned and walked out the door. But just before I started down the stairs I stopped and turned back. I was going to have to find a way, somehow, to get along better with Norris. I went back to his door and stuck my head inside. I said, “Norris, I’m going to cut out all the crossbred steers over four. I figure to get around eleven hundred head. So you can figure whatever they bring to buy those Treasury bills or whatever it was you wanted to do.”
“When you starting the cut?”
“Harley should be bunching them right now.” I hesitated. “I can’t be here for the work, but it ought not to take more than ten days, two weeks to get them to market.”
“You going somewhere?”
“Yeah. I’ll have to be gone about two or three weeks.”
“Any of my business where?”
I hesitated and gave Howard a good cussing in my mind. He was always wanting me to make a better effort to get along with Norris. And then he puts me in a position where I’ve got to hold out on my own brother. I said, “It’s that personal matter.”
“That’s going to benefit the company?”
I gave a little half smile. “Yeah. Let’s hope so.”
He suddenly stood up. “Justa, I want to ask you something and I want a straight answer.”
I looked at him. He was being firm. I said, “If I can.”
“Is this some dangerous project that you are shutting me out of because you don’t think I can handle myself? The way you always do?”
I wanted to laugh, but I knew better. “No, no, it isn’t. And I have never felt like you couldn’t handle yourself. And I have never held you out of a dangerous situation for that reason. The few times . . . the very few times I’ve sent you home when there was threat of gunfire was because you are the only one can do your job. Ben and I can be replaced. You can’t.”
He was not mollified. Mainly because what he’d said was true. I didn’t want Norris around in a gunfight because he’d be someone else I’d have to watch out for. He said, “Is Ben going? On this trip?”
“No,” I said. Then I decided to hell with it. I’d tell Norris just enough to salvage his feelings and let Howard do the lying. I said, “This trip is for Howard. It’s one of his last pieces of business. Probably the last he’ll ever handle. I’m just the errand boy. But I’m breaking a confidence by telling you this. Anything else you want to know you go and ask him, but that will hurt him because he told me flat out that he didn’t want another soul to know about it until it was over.”
He looked down at his desk for a second. Then he looked back up. “I’m sorry, Justa. I shouldn’t have asked so damn many questions.”
“It’s your job,” I said. “Just keep in mind I told you this in confidence. Howard would hold me responsible if he knew I’d told anyone else.”
“I understand,” he said. “What are you going to tell Nora?”
“Oh,” I said, lying, “some kind of cattle trip. Looking at a ranch. It doesn’t make much difference. She never believes me anyway.”
He said, “Thanks for moving so quick on the steers. We’ll make some nice short-term money on these bonds.”
I started to leave again, and then stopped. “Oh, in case the mercantile delivers something up here you think ain’t supposed to come to your office, don’t think anything about it. Just have them set it out of the way. In a corner or something.”
His eyes narrowed. “What would the mercantile be delivering up here that I wouldn’t think belonged up here?”
“Kegs of nails,” I said.
“Kegs of . . .” Then he stopped. “I’m asking too many questions again. I guess I can’t help it.”
I guessed he couldn’t either. Just as he couldn’t help himself about every little detail he had to know about. He was worse about details than a drunk about how many drinks were left in the bottle. But I was trying to get along with him. He’d asked if I was taking Ben because he knew I always took Ben if I was going into a serious situation. I didn’t tell him I would have been taking Ben if Howard would have let me. Me taking Ray Hays wouldn’t tell him anything because I used Ray for all sorts of errands. I said, “You still be here late Friday?”
“If you want me to.”
“I’ll let you know.”
I gave him a little salute, and then walked down the stairs, out of the bank, and over to the general mercantile store that was owned by Nora’s daddy, Lonnie Parker.
It was cool and dim inside, just as it was always cool and
dim inside every mercantile I’d ever been in in my life. Lonnie was standing by the front counter, by the cash register, where he could nearly always be found. I figured his motto was “Stay close to the money and then you’ll never have to wonder where it is.”
He give me a big hello just like he always did. I wasn’t just his son-in-law; as the head of the Half-Moon I was his biggest customer. I didn’t know which cut more ice with Lonnie. Folks said that Lonnie had been known to close up before midnight and on days other than Christmas and Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t honestly say I’d ever seen it happen. No, that was a lie. He’d closed half a day when Nora and I had gotten married.
He said, “Well, son, just in town for a bit?”
“Had some banking business to do.”
“Just stop by to visit or was there something you was needing?”
“Two kegs of nails.”
He took out the little stub of pencil he had behind his ear and crouched over his order book. “What weight?”
“Tenpenny will be fine,” I said.
I watched as he laboriously wrote out the order. When he was through he said, “What else?”
“That’s all. Except I want you to deliver those kegs over to Norris’s office. You know, on the second floor of the bank building. Just shove them over in a corner of his office.”
He frowned. “Justa, if you need ’em before yore regular Friday delivery, why, I could send them out special. Wouldn’t be no extra charge.”
I shook my head. “No, no, that’s not necessary. Just taking them over to Norris’s office before Friday will work fine.”
The whole idea worried him. Lonnie was a tall, skinny drink of water who was fast losing all his top hair. For the life of me I never could figure how he stayed so skinny when his wife was the best cook in Matagorda County. Worked it off counting his money, I figured. But then, I didn’t want to be making fun of Lonnie’s ways. He was a merchant and that was the way merchants were. Besides, if it hadn’t of been for him I wouldn’t have Nora. He said, “Justa, them kegs are pretty heavy. Weigh close to fifty pound apiece.”
Yes, I thought, and they were going to maybe weigh a good deal more than that when I got through with them. I said, “Don’t matter. But listen, Lonnie, make sure your delivery man takes his mallet and loosens the tops on both kegs. They are hell to get off if you ain’t got the right tool.”
“Oh, so you’re going to be doing some work right there in the bank?”
I said, “I’ve got to get going, Lonnie.” I was trying to get away before he could think of anything else to ask me, like what were we going to do with two kegs of big nails inside a bank. It appeared that when a party set out to take $25,000 in gold to Oklahoma it called for questions from all sides. And I hadn’t even told Ray Hays yet about the trip. The way he was, with more curiosity than a pet raccoon, he’d likely nail me to the ground with questions. And of course, I wouldn’t be able to answer them, not and keep to Howard’s wishes. But it was going to seem damn strange, even to one of Hays’s turn of mind, that we were carrying two kegs of tenpenny nails to Oklahoma.
Lonnie said, “Here! Don’t run off. It’s just now going on for ten o’clock. Couple more hours it’ll be lunchtime. Always room for another plate.”
“That’s tempting, Lonnie. But I got to see the sheriff and then I need to get home. We’re gathering cattle.”
I went on out, turned right, and walked down the boardwalk to Lew Vara’s office. The sheriff was in, sitting behind his desk with his boots up on a corner, his arms folded, and a cigarillo in his mouth. I said, “Don’t you worry about them voters, Lou. They can see you’re on the job even if you ain’t got your spurs on.”
“I’m thinkin’,” he said. “Job requires a certain amount of that.”
I sat down in a wooden chair across from him. “Well, you’d want to take it careful on such a practice. Man could hurt hisself.”
He brought his boots down to the floor with a thump. “What the hell you doing in town?”
Lew and I went back a lot of years to a time when we were both about nineteen and had done our level best to kill each other in the worst fistfight I’d ever had. He’d left the country after that, and had almost gotten on the other side of the law. He’d gone up into the Oklahoma Territory, where I was headed, and fallen in with bad company. Of course, there wasn’t no shortage of that commodity up there then, or now as far as that went. But he’d come to his senses and come back home before he’d gone too far. As a favor for some well-appreciated help he’d given me and my family, we’d backed him for sheriff some seven or eight years back, and had had no cause to ever be sorry.
But just looking at him you’d be more likely to take him for a bandit than a sheriff. You looked at him from one direction he looked like a Mexican. From another side he looked like an Indian. And in some ways, he didn’t look like either. He was about two inches shorter than I was, but about the same weight. Most of that weight was packed in his upper body, his shoulders and his arms and his big hands and neck. Lou was not anybody to take lightly. He wasn’t particularly good with a handgun, but then he didn’t have to be. He had a presence about him that could usually stop trouble before it got started.
I said, “Oh, getting some business set up I’ve got to tend to.”
“I help?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Friday afternoon I’ll be coming out of the bank with twenty-five thousand dollars in gold hidden in two nail kegs. Be me and Ray Hays. We’ll leave town riding north. I’m trying to keep this as quiet as I can, but I wish you’d back-trail me for about three or four miles. Make sure nobody in town has got wind of it and is looking to make a payday. Hang back about a mile, mile and a half.”
“You don’t want me to go further?”
That was Lou. Tell him you’re riding out of town with $25,000 in gold in two nail kegs, and he don’t even raise an eyebrow, much less ask any questions.
I said, “Naw, we’re going a pretty good ways. I don’t think the voters could spare you as long as I’ll be gone.”
He raised his arms and stretched. “I’m sorry to hear that. I won’t have anybody to drink with. At least anybody that pays their share.”
I got out a cigarillo and lit it. “You still remember the geography around Oklahoma, don’t you?”
“Palm of my hand. That where you’re headed?”
“Yeah. Anadarko. Any idea where that is?”
He leaned his elbows on the desk. “Smack dab in the middle of the Indian Nation. My people, Cherokee.”
I said, “I wish you’d get it straight. One day you ain’t got no Indian blood, next day you do.”
“Hell, I’ve always thought you had more Injun in you than I do. I swear there’s a war chief somewhere in your background.”
“Never mind about that,” I said. “How far you figure it is up there?”
He gave me a look. “You don’t mean by horseback?”
I nodded. I didn’t know what there was to say.
He said, “A hell of a long ways. You make fifty miles a day, and that’s pushing it over some parts of the country between here and there, and you’ll be on the trail ten days at least.”
I winced. God, ten days going. Then God only knows how long it would take me to find Charlie Stevens and get my business over with with him. And then the trip home. At least that could be by train. Still, it was a hell of a long time away from home. I said, “If you were to go and try and locate somebody up there how would you start?”
He let out a breath and thought. After a moment he said, “Well, if they was Indian, I’d go to the Tribal Council right there in Chickasha. They got records on everybody. An’ even if he ain’t Indian, they know more about what goes on in the whole state than the governor. Naw, I’d check in with the Tribal Council before I did anything. Of course you’re not telling me you’re going horseback all the way to Oklahoma to see somebody you don’t know where is. You wouldn’t do that, not even you.”
I got up.
“You’re right. Even I wouldn’t do that.”
“You got time to go down to Crook’s, get a beer?”
I shook my head and said I’d better get on back to the ranch. I started to turn for the door, but on a thought came back to Lew. I told him what Norris had said about Shay Jordan coming to his office and advising him there was more than one way to settle a land dispute outside of a lawsuit. I said, “Lew, I wish you’d keep an eye and an ear on this business. I’ve warned Ben to stay clear unless somebody actually starts shooting, but it worries me, me going off like this.”
“Aw, hell, that Shay is just a smart-aleck kid.”
“He ain’t no kid. And that gun he’s always packing is full growed.”
“You want me to ride out there and talk to Rex Jordan? Tell him to hobble the boy?”
I thought about it a minute. I finally said, “Naw, it’s liable to cause more trouble than help. They’re liable to think we’re picking on them, running to the sheriff. Let’s just let it lie. Maybe nothing else will happen. Get the damn matter in a courtroom and get it settled.”
Lew just shook his head. “Them Jordans must be damn fools. Hell, yore daddy has occupied that piece of land for thirty years. That’s a proven fact. Do they really think they can come along now and make a real claim?”
I shrugged. “I think they’re just shaking the money tree. Hoping some will fall off. They know they can’t win, but they’re hoping we’ll give them something just to get rid of them. Of course if we did that, then everybody and his brother would be trying the same game.”
“Well, don’t let it plague you. I’ll keep a close eye on the situation, and if any of them Jordans so much as spit on the sidewalk I’ll find a place for them to have a good long think on the matter.”
I told Lew I’d see him Friday, and then went out the door and down to the bank, where my horse was. I was still riding the sorrel gelding and liking him better every day. He was a good traveling horse, and I had pretty much made up my mind to use him for the Oklahoma trip. He was a long three-year-old, nearly a four, and he had a gait that just ate up the ground. I got on him and turned him east, toward the gulf and toward home. If I hurried I could get there in time for lunch with Nora.
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