by T. T. Flynn
In the Navajo-Ute country, old Ira Bell had said that Matt Kilgore owned a run-down ranch that Kilgore would probably soon lose. Ira Bell, Clay thought with alerting interest, should see this. New structures had been built. New corrals were visible, some not finished. Too many horses and men in sight for a working cattle ranch. One more man’s arrival seemed to be ignored as the black gelding quickened toward a log watering trough in the ranch yard.
While the horse drank, Clay looked around. The house was low and wide, of thick-walled adobe, yellow-brown like the earth from which it had been built. Front and side portals had screening morning glories and trumpet vines studded with bright flowers. The weathered earthen walls had the look of having been lived in a long time. Patricia Kilgore, Clay supposed, was inside the house. He put off meeting her and walked the black slowly back into the large yard, trying to guess which man was Travis.
A blacksmith’s hammer and anvil clanged loudly in an open-front shed. On back, in a new breaking corral, a big dun stallion was fighting snub rope and post. Half a dozen men watched, grinning, through the corral bars, some calling advice. A high-sided freight wagon was being unloaded at a new storehouse. Great piles of newly cut fence posts lifted back of the yard. Rough-sawed lumber was stacked near the posts. Beyond were empty wagons. Old wagons. New wagons. His money, Clay guessed, had paid for all this. And when he thought of it, a black and destructive mood moved in.
Several men at the breaking corral gazed in mild curiosity as the black gelding walked near. A small, wiry man called: “Lookin’ for someone?”
Inside the corral the dun stallion’s hoofs were stamping, trampling the hard ground. Lather flecked the big horse, nostrils flared red through the lifting dust, and the stallion’s eyes rolled in a wild fury of protest. The same mood worked behind Clay’s calm face as he put hands on the saddle horn and eyed the wiry man.
“Travis,” Clay said. “Where’s Roger Travis?”
“Been in the house all mornin’,” was the idle reply.
A blocky-looking man called roughly over a shoulder as he watched the stallion’s lunges: “I been waitin’ two hours fer Travis.”
An older man passed the freight wagon and headed toward Clay with a look of authority. His vigorous shock of gray hair and seamed face cut with lines of force and humor had a resemblance to Dick Kilgore. Clay put his horse toward the man and swung off.
“Matt Kilgore?” Because of Dick, warmth broke through despite Clay’s mood.
“I’m Kilgore.” The man was not big, but he seemed big in the way of a man who was big inside. And, close now, Clay noted shadings of sadness on the man’s weathered face.
“I’m Clay Mara.” Watchfully Clay wondered what would happen. Nothing happened.
“Howdy,” said Matt Kilgore heartily. His brown vest open over heavy gun belt, a thumb hooked behind the buckle of the belt, Kilgore stepped to the black. A square, rope-scarred hand shoved under the mane and flipped up the coarse black hairs, uncovering the neck brand. “How’d you get a saddle on one of my horses?” Kilgore asked calmly.
Clay’s reply was laconic. “My horse now. Got a bill of sale for him.” And, when Kilgore dropped the mane and turned back, Clay added: “From your daughter.”
Matt Kilgore stared at him. “When’d Patricia start sellin’ off horses?”
“Ask her and learn what’s happening on your ranch.”
“Wringy, ain’t you?” said Kilgore after a moment. His head was cocked slightly and the shock of gray hair gave a youthful edge to the gusty force and drive that filled the man. The level regard had sharpened, cooled, as if Kilgore sensed the black currents in this stranger. “Patricia ain’t here right now.”
“Get Travis then.”
“Roger’s in the house, talkin’ with his lawyer, so’s the fellow can start back to Socorro.” Clay was the taller man. But Matt Kilgore, with the look of bigness and force, rocked on worn boot heels and ran a glance over the rangy hardness of the man before him. Kilgore’s faint smile was approving. “Travis hire you in town yesterday an’ fix you up with a horse?”
“Travis tried to see me.”
Kilgore nodded. “Got use for a wringy one like you. If you an’ Travis didn’t settle it in town, we’ll fix it now. Hire you myself.”
Dark humor stirred in Clay at the idea of working alongside Travis, and the man unsuspecting, if Travis were unsuspecting. Slowly Clay pulled pipe and tobacco from his jacket pocket. “What kind of work?”
“What you’re told to do.”
Clay glanced about the yard. In the breaking corral, the stallion paused, wind whistling through flaring nostrils. The men were drifting away. The big fellow who had called irritably over a shoulder was turning a gray horse away from the corral. That gray horse prodded vaguely at Clay’s memory as he answered Kilgore coolly.
“You aren’t hiring to work cattle. You’re hiring for trouble.”
Kilgore was unruffled. “Been trouble before. Goes with the job.”
Clay thumbed tobacco into the pipe, remembering what he’d heard in town. “Trouble with Gid Markham?” He watched a flinty look fill Kilgore’s stare and harden, flatten in Kilgore’s voice.
“I’ll do all the guessin’. You hire here, you take what comes. I give orders.”
Evenly Clay asked: “Who’s got the money? Who pays me?”
It cut into Matt Kilgore’s challenge, jerking a muscle at the corner of his mouth and holding him quiet while something like pain and sadness from deep memories clouded his look. Slowly Kilgore said: “Strangers pick up talk. Your tongue is sharp for it. I’ll still hire you. But first I’ll straighten you out. Travis is half owner and marryin’ my girl in a few days. But thirty years I been boss here. I’m still boss. That settle you?”
“Something to think about.”
The slow steps of a horse coming up behind Clay hardly registered. He heard the nasal voice that had called over a shoulder at the breaking corral speak roughly behind him: “Kilgore, I done cooled heels too long. Tell Travis next time he leaves word for Grady Doyle to come in quick, he can be ready. Before I leave, I got to have some shells for my raafle.”
Clay stood motionlessly while memories of the howling sandstorm and thirsty horse herd hit him. He saw again the frantic try of the pinto horse for water, and the callous gunshot that had dropped the pinto. Raafle.
Clay shoved the pipe into his jacket pocket and asked Matt Kilgore: “He your man?”
“Sounds so, don’t he?”
Clay wheeled to the face he had seen masked by a bandanna through the sand clouds driving across the Red Rock ledges. It was a broad face with a meaty look, recently cleaned by a razor. Eyebrows were a dark mat, and Clay recognized the gray horse now. It had been in Ira Bell’s herd.
“So the name is Grady Doyle?” Clay said. “I carried the canteens at the Red Rocks.” And he thought: Horse thieves. I came for Travis and find this.
In startled shock, Doyle was reaching to the tied-down holster on his leg and memories of what this man had done drove Clay into a silent leap, grabbing for Doyle’s thick gun wrist. His other hand slapped high into the blue bandanna folds around the muscular neck.
Doyle dropped the reins and struck wildly. The blow rocked Clay’s head and flipped off his hat. The startled gray horse was whirling. Clay hung to the gun wrist and gouged fingers deeply into the man’s cording neck muscles. Bracing against the furious kick of Doyle’s foot in the stirrup, Clay manhandled the man over and out of the saddle. Someone yelled joyously—“Fight startin’!”—as Clay wrestled the burly body half under him.
They slammed with shock to the ground between the horses. The half-drawn gun jolted out of the holster as they thrashed in the dirt. Clay forced Doyle’s straining hand away from the gun. His thumb drove deeply into Doyle’s windpipe. Doyle beat wildly at Clay’s face. Livid, as his wind was cut off, Doyle frantically twisted over against a leg of the gray horse. Clay let go and lunged up to his feet, sucking deep breaths. His kick drove Do
yle’s gun skittering out of reach.
Matt Kilgore’s bawled order lifted. “Git that gray hoss outta the way!” Kilgore was wheeling the black gelding away.
Clay sighted a blur of men running in. He could have used a gun as Doyle scrambled up almost under the gray horse’s belly. And Doyle’s friends would finish Clay Mara—and Travis would have the years ahead. The thought loosed all the wildness Clay had kept locked in. As Doyle came upright, hatless and gasping, Clay jumped in silence again.
Doyle tried to dodge. Clay’s looping fist smashed Doyle’s mouth, spinning the man floundering around to hands and knees again.
Matt Kilgore shouted: “Let ’em finish, long as a gun ain’t pulled!”
At the moment, Doyle seemed the only one who knew what the trouble was about. Silence him, and there was a chance, then, to break out of the circle of armed men. Doyle’s lips were torn and bleeding as he bounced up and circled away. He spat red and his eyes watched the holstered gun under Clay’s jacket.
Clay pitched his revolver away before Doyle could grab for it, and Doyle ran at him, ducking, striking furiously. Clay jumped aside. His jolting blow gouged across Doyle’s cheek. Doyle wheeled fast, diving at him and reaching out. Clay dodged too slowly and Doyle’s big hand caught the front of his canvas jacket and pulled him close.
A hard uppercut struck Doyle’s solid jaw. Doyle threw his other arm around Clay’s neck and let go of the jacket. His fist punched shocking blows to Clay’s ribs. The man’s burly power was now evident. His gasping breaths snorted and blew against Clay’s neck.
Dimly Clay heard a spectator whoop: “This gets him!”
Clay threw himself back, dragging Doyle. He twisted inside the clamping arm, kicked behind Doyle’s foot, and tripped the man. And got hands down and broke his own fall. A tremendous twist, a roll, and Clay wrenched his head out of the viselike arm, rolled again, and drove up away from Doyle’s grabbing hand. Half-sick from one great blow to the middle, Clay heard the jeer of his own thoughts: Travis wins.
Doyle was scrambling up after him, mouth smeared red and swelling, eyes glaring. The thought of Travis filled Clay, corrosive and compelling. He met Doyle with a great blow to the mouth. Doyle stopped short, shuddering, shaking his head, blowing out mashed lips. Clay jumped in and struck terribly under the ribs. Doyle’s hands came down, and Clay belted the heavy jaw.
Doyle’s hands came up in a shocked, instinctive gesture, and Clay rolled wide shoulders and grunted as he drove a fist in above Doyle’s belt, sinking it deep. Doyle backed away, bending helplessly, gulping for breath that would not come, and Clay followed him. The long fury was driving him now to beat this burly stranger down, and get at Travis and the Kilgores. Rolling his shoulders, crouching a little, Clay drove fists into Doyle’s face. As Doyle went back, uncertainty bloomed muddy and dull in Doyle’s eyes. He was sensing a new ferocity as Clay leaped on top of him.
Silence had dropped on the watching men. Only harsh, sucking breaths and the sodden sounds of Clay’s fists were audible. Doyle’s head rocked and bobbed. His burly frame shuddered as slashing knuckles tore his face into a travesty, and his confidence visibly drained away. Clay thought of Howie Quist. Doyle’s face swelling and smeared would stir Howie’s humor. Clay grinned at the thought. And his humor at a time like this shocked Doyle. It was visible.
Clay’s arms were weary. His lungs felt on fire. But the thought of Howie’s satisfaction kept the humor on his face as he reached out to Doyle’s coat and dragged the big man close, and struck the great blob of a face with measured calculation. That almost leisurely blow of complete ferocity, with humor visible behind it, crumpled Doyle inside. He quit; it was in his eyes and the sudden slackness of face and body.
Clay held him by the coat and heard, far away it seemed, a harsh question. “Who’s that fellow beating Doyle?”
Sounding far away through their sobbing breaths, Kilgore’s reply was audible: “Name’s Clay Mara. I thought you knowed him, Roger.” Then Kilgore’s irritated protest: “Let ’em alone!”
A vicious blow above Clay’s ear drove him into Doyle and they fell together.
XV
When Patricia Kilgore rode fast into the big ranch yard behind the house, she saw the crew bunched together in excitement. The men parted for her blowing horse, and Patricia saw a revolver in Roger Travis’s hand, and two inert figures on the ground.
Matt called to her: “Wait in the house, Patricia! This ain’t for you!”
Patricia reached for a lifted hand and dropped off the side-saddle, and tightly asked: “Did you have to kill him?”
The stranger named Clay Mara sprawled on the ground, his cheek in the dirt. Roger’s reply held anger that Patricia had never heard from him. “I clubbed the fellow off of Doyle!”
Patricia swallowed as she looked at the man who must be Doyle. He was trying to get up. Braced on big, splayed hands and knees, Doyle swayed dazedly. Like a helpless bear, Patricia thought, appalled. A big, battered bear of a man covered with dust and dirt. His head sagged and wobbled. One eye was swelling shut. His battered, puffy face peered blindly around as Matt’s brusque voice corrected Roger.
“They was settlin’ something and Roger butted in. I told him to keep out.”
Roger had never talked to Matt as he did now, angry and coldly ironic: “When did you start feeling sorry for Gid Markham’s roughnecks, Matt?”
“I never did!”
“You’re looking at one! That stranger, Mara!”
Matt’s startled glance sought Patricia.
“That right?” Matt’s hardening voice demanded, and when Patricia nodded, Matt’s harshness drove at her. “How come he got a horse from you?”
Patricia looked at the listening men. “I’ll explain, Dad.”
“You sure will! Right here, quick!”
“In the house.”
“All I want . . . is he a Markham man you had truck with?”
Patricia felt her swift flush. “In the house, Dad!” she repeated.
Matt snapped to the nearest men—“Lug him to the house!”—and stalked away.
Roger caught Doyle’s arm and dragged the burly man to his feet. Patricia had an uncertain thought that she could almost be afraid of Roger when he looked like this.
Four men hoisted the stranger by legs and arms and carried his sagging body toward the house. Mechanically Patricia picked up his trampled old gray hat and the revolver near it. Behind her, Jim Rapburn said: “Anything I can do?”
Rapburn’s expensive gray suit, white linen, polished shoes, and the hat politely in his hand belonged to the towns, not this empty, wild country that was her life and Matt’s life, and into which Roger had fitted easily. Even the stranger, Clay Mara, was like the booted, armed crew and the violence that had erupted here. But not this young lawyer with his sensitive face flushed now with excitement.
“It’s finished,” said Patricia as calmly as she could. And she knew it wasn’t finished. Clay Mara was a threatening beginning. Doyle was a part of it. And, in the background, was Gid Markham now. All her life the Markhams had been in the background.
Rapburn’s comment held admiration: “Travis is quite a man, isn’t he?”
Patricia watched Roger Travis propel the stumbling Doyle back in the yard.
“Roger,” she said absently, “did what he thought best, I suppose.” Roger had struck Clay Mara down from behind. Mara would not forget. Patricia’s smile at the lawyer was forced as she left him there and walked toward the house and found herself thinking of the padre’s quiet voice explaining the age-old meanings of Amos, Gideon, and Matthew.
Amos Markham was dead. But, suddenly now, Amos Markham was very real again, that dour, cold man who had known his Bible—Amos, “bearer of a burden.” And the son he had named Gideon, “the hewer-down”—the destroyer—was alive and ominous. And Gid Markham’s gunman—this man Clay Mara—was in the house now, possessing knowledge that would drive Gid Markham into fierce retaliation against the Kilgores. Patricia
carried that shaken thought into the house.
Grady Doyle mumbled dazed threats as Travis guided his lurching steps toward the back of the yard.
“Shut up!” Travis said. He shoved the arm he gripped and Doyle staggered. The anger Travis was restraining because curious eyes were watching drew his words into thin bitterness. “This man, Mara, walked in, bringing a wounded man and that sorrel horse I turned over to you. What was the trouble?” And, when Doyle remained silent, Travis spoke with full viciousness: “I’ll finish what he started and get the story from you anyway.”
Doyle groaned. “How’d he know me? He never seen my face!”
They reached the empty wagons beyond the piles of new fence posts and lumber. A final shove sent Doyle stumbling against a wagon wheel. “Now tell it,” ordered Travis coldly.
Doyle clutched the wheel rim. His left eye was swelling shut, so that he peered with a lopsided squint from the other eye. “A drifter come through Soledad,” Doyle mumbled sullenly. “He’d talked to an old man in the Navajo country who was tradin’ for hosses and fixin’ to come south by the Red Rocks.”
“I see,” said Travis almost gently. “A little horse stealing on the side. Well, go on.”
Doyle’s story came out in disjointed, sullen bits.
“Markham horses,” Travis said so softly and violently that Doyle flinched. “Six of you holed up, waiting, with the horse herd sighted through glasses before the sandstorm hit. And you let all three Markham men get away to tell it.”
“Sand was blowin’ fearful,” Doyle muttered.
Travis walked slowly to the front of the wagon. He had known trouble was breaking when he had emerged from the house and found Grady Doyle being mauled by the stranger named Mara. He had ignored Matt Kilgore’s order to let the two men alone. Questioning Doyle quickly had been more important. But he would not have believed it could be as bad as this. He stood for some moments trying to guess what would happen now, and shifting his own plans to meet it.