STAN BRODIE
The First Four Chapters of a Western Novel
CHAPTER 1
His eyes opened upon fear. He lay facedown on an ill-smelling bed in a small, bare room with the first edge of daylight showing around the drawn window-blind. Directly before his eyes was a boot…a boot with a leg in it.
He lay perfectly still, his eyes open but his mind empty. Slowly his thoughts gathered focus.
The leg belonged to a man, and the man was dead.
How did he know that? Or was he only surmising? No matter. He did know it. He was sure of it. Close to his face was a fist, his fist, and clutched in the fist was a knife-hilt, the knife gripped for stabbing. For striking down.
He had not moved and he did not move now, yet there was a sudden awareness in him, a realization of danger, a crawling horror of being trapped, of being caught up in something he did not understand.
The man whose leg he saw was dead, the upper part of his body out of sight at the foot of the bed. Without a doubt he had been killed by the knife that Stan Brodie now held, and he was alone in a room with the body.
He knew he had killed nobody, nor had he ever wished to kill anyone, but it was obvious that his good character and good intentions were not known to the people in this town and it would be taken for granted he was the killer.
Murder meant hanging, with or without a trial.
He sat up quickly, the bed creaking. His head ached abominably, his mouth tasted foul, and when he tried to stand his brain spun. He tiptoed to the window and lifted the edge of the blind.
An empty alley, gray in the first vague light of dawn. Western towns were early towns and in a matter of minutes this one would be awake and alive.
He looked quickly around: a small, square room with a bed, a chair, a bureau and washbasin, a white crockery basin, and a pitcher of cold water.
He put down the knife. It was bloody.
The hat on the floor was his. No gun-belt, no rifle. On the bed where he had been lying in a drunken sleep…nothing.
He looked at the dead man. Three narrow slits in the back of the vest where the knife had entered, very little blood.
One side of the man’s face was visible. It was Bud Aylmer.
Bud Aylmer, whom he had met three days ago at a desert water hole, seemingly an easygoing, drifting cowhand who rode in out of nowhere and was going nowhere that he mentioned. Now Bud Aylmer was dead, struck down from behind by the knife that killed him…but why?
He had been killed for the gold. They had robbed a stage and the stage had carried twenty thousand dollars. The robbery was supposed to be a lark, simply to scare the stage driver, after which they’d all ride into town and buy him a drink.
Neither Bud nor Stan had known about the gold. At least he had not known about it and did not believe Bud had either. What of the other man, he who proposed the idea? Stan Brodie thought that over and decided the other man had known and that he had planned to kill the stage driver from the first. He and Bud had been suckers, damned fools.
He had a fire going and Bud was making coffee when the stranger rode up to the water hole. He was a tall, high-shouldered man with a swarthy face and a large beak of a nose. His eyes were intensely black and cold.
He had a bottle of whiskey and Bud was ready enough for a drink. As for Stan Brodie, he was no drinker, but as Bud said, why not one to keep them company? He had that drink, and then another.
There was no time to think of that now. He had to get out and get out quickly. He put on his hat, stepped to the door, and looked around. An empty hall, an open door a dozen steps away, and the gray light of dawn on a dusty street.
Taking one last, quick look about the room, he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He had taken three steps when the door opposite his own opened and a girl was standing there, wide-eyed and frightened. He touched a hand to the edge of his hat to her, and went into the street.
No horses stood at the hitching-rail; the street was dusty and empty. Wind scurried a bit of paper into the corner of a building and somewhere a rooster crowed. Tugging his hat down he turned toward the livery stable.
Why had that girl stared at him like that? Had she heard something during the night? Who was she? What was she doing in that cheap rooming house for drifters?
He had killed nobody, but how could he prove that? How did he even know that? He had known Bud Aylmer but a few hours. He could not prove that, either.
He saddled his horse in the shadowed stable. As he reached the stable door there was a man standing there with his hand out. “Mister,” the man said, “that will be fifty cents.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket, and his hand stopped. The pocket was stuffed with coins. His fingers felt among them for a fifty-cent piece…found it. He handed the half-dollar to the hostler. “There,” he said, “and thanks.”
He started to mount and the hostler said, “Mister?”
Stan Brodie turned, his skin crawling with apprehension. “You dropped this,” the hostler said, and handed him a gold eagle.
He walked his horse outside, ducking his head at the door. Turning his mount he rode down the street at a walk, and his heart pounded when he realized he had turned the wrong way, a way that would take him right down the main street, with all the risk that implied.
Suppose that girl down the hall had opened the door of his room and seen what lay there?
He held the horse to a walk until he cleared the edge of town, then let it canter for a half-mile, then a dead run for a quarter. Seeing where the herd of thirty or forty head of cattle had crossed the road, he turned into their trail and followed it for some distance, heading down into a maze of ravines.
Of Bud Aylmer he knew nothing but his name. He had a fire going when Bud rode up. “Join you?” Bud had asked, and Stan had said, “Light an’ set.”
Bud picketed his horse after stripping its gear, then brought a loaf of bread to the fire. “Ain’t got much,” he said. “This an’ some coffee.”
“Coffee’s on,” Stan said. “I’ve got some bacon.”
The third man had come along a few minutes later, made as though to ride by, then swung his horse over to the fire and joined them. He added a can of beans and a fistful of prunes. Then he produced the bottle.
Stan Brodie was no drinker but he knew good whiskey when he saw and tasted it. This was good. Unaccustomed to drinking, Stan took only a sip, but the big stranger smiled at him. “Don’t worry, friend. Have at it.”
Stan grinned. “Good stuff,” he said, and took a hefty swallow. His stomach was empty and he felt the jolt of the whiskey at once.
The stranger got Bud’s name, the first time Stan had heard it. He turned to Stan. “Call me Tex,” he said.
“Well then, call me Montana,” Stan said.
They ate, then they had another drink. Looking back Stan could see how Tex had guided the conversation.
It was not until they had still another drink that Tex suddenly chuckled. “Got a friend drives stage through here. Rides empty most of the time. I’ve got a notion to give him a scare.”
“How’s that?” Aylmer asked.
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe put a sheet over my head an’ play ghost…only I don’t have me a sheet. Be fun at that. Tom is sure a scary one. On’y thing he’s scared of is ha’nts and holdups, an’ I don’t reckon he’s seen nary one.”
“Knew a feller stuck up a stage one time,” Bud said. “They done it just for the fun of it. For the excitement. You know, they’d been out on the trail pushin’ a herd of steers up Kansas way and they was plumb bored, an’ they seen this stage…”
They ate, drank, and discussed the humor of scares and being scared, each one coming up with a story to tell. Under the influence of the liquor and amused by the idea of a practical joke, they accepted Tex’s suggestion.
“What the hell?” Tex said. “Let’s do it! Give him a good scare an’ then ride into town an’ buy him a drink. Be a real lark…like Hallowe’en.”
The trouble was the stage driver was not scared. He grabbed for his six-shooter.
Tex shot him, grabbed the express-box, and they fled. Half-drunk they raced away, sobering quickly in the chilling awareness of what they had done.
When they pulled up, Aylmer said, “Tex, you shot that driver. You killed him.”
“Hell, he was fixin’ to kill us! You seen his gun come up!”
“This was s’posed to be a lark, a game, sort of. We didn’t bargain for anything like this.”
Tex shrugged. “Well, we done it. Might’s well divvy up an’ skip the country.”
“I want no part of it,” Aylmer said.
“Me neither,” Stan agreed. “I’m no thief.”
“You sayin’ I am? I wasn’t alone back there. But what’s done is done.” Tex scowled at him.
“I’m only sayin’ this was a damn-fool notion and we’d better return the money and light out…fast. That man’s dead an’ that could mean a necktie party.”
Tex shrugged. “Well, maybe you’re right. It wouldn’t do for us to get caught with this stuff. I’ll tell you what. We’ll ride into town, leave the stuff, have a drink, then get the hell out of the country.”
It had made a kind of sense at the time and neither of them had a better idea.
Tex indicated a saloon as they rode in. “Let’s have a drink and get the lay of the land,” he suggested. “Then we can decide where to leave the gold.”
Tex seemed friendly with the bartender and they all had a second drink on him. That last drink evidently carried something special because Stan recalled nothing more until he awakened in the rooming house with Aylmer dead on the floor.
Why had Bud Aylmer been killed? Had he awakened and caught Tex leaving with the loot? Or was there some other reason? The fact remained that whatever the reason, Bud was dead.
Looking back it was easy to see that Tex had planned the whole operation. Obviously he had known about the twenty thousand in gold the stage was carrying, and he had simply picked up a couple of gullible drifters and talked them into helping him. He had then killed Bud and stuffed Stan’s pocket with gold, evidence enough to hang him for both the killings.
Stan Brodie turned from the trail where several cows had crossed it and followed their trail along a ridge until he could look over the country. He disliked sky-lining himself but this was not familiar territory and he needed to put some distance between himself and town.
He followed a game trail marked with fresh tracks of a deer. He was no more than five or six miles from town but well away from the usual trails.
Nothing was to be gained by riding without destination, and if he got out of this predicament it would only be by using his head. From time to time he glanced down his back trail and kept aware of the country around while trying to assay his position.
Nobody back there knew him. He had been seen by that girl and by the hostler. No doubt some of those in the saloon the night before had seen him, but how many would remember him he could only guess. Nor did he know how he had gotten into that room where he had found himself.
Tex had not known his name, nor had Bud Aylmer, so he had that much going for him. Yet as soon as Bud’s body was found they would be looking for anyone connected with him.
Obviously Tex had planned for him to be found in the room with the dead man, a knife in his hand and loot from the stage robbery in his pocket. There could have been no other reason for stuffing his pocket with a couple of dozen gold coins.
Thinking of that, he counted the money for the first time. Twenty gold coins of twenty dollars each. Four hundred dollars that would buy him a rope necktie if they were found on him.
He had eighteen dollars of his own money and the hostler had seen him drop a gold coin so he would keep the oldest and most worn piece. He began looking for a place to cache the rest.
Rounding a corner of a bluff he saw a huge rock, tall as a three-story building. Momentarily out of sight of any trail, he dismounted and climbed up to the rock, hiding the money under a pack rat’s nest in one of the wind-worn hollows.
He climbed down, dusted his pants, and turned to his horse.
A rider was sitting there, holding his horse’s reins. He was a tall man with close-set eyes and a coarse face. “What you doin’ up yonder?” he asked.
Stan Brodie took the reins from his hands. “Never could pass up one of those honeycomb cliffs,” he commented. “Always figured there should be something hid in them. Too obvious, I guess.”
“Find anything?” The small eyes probed his.
“Oh, sure! Pack rat’s nests, one hawk’s nest, and a place where there was fresh bobcat sign. I came down fast. I got no wish to tackle a bobcat on a cliff-face.”
He mounted. “One time I did find some pots, and when I told some Eastern dude about them he offered to pay me to show him where they were. He said some folks study them.”
“You mean them ol’ clay pots like the Injuns use?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That makes no sense. They’re just pots for storin’ water, grain, an’ such. Anyway, what did them Injuns know?”
“Maybe, but he give me twenty dollars to guide him. Only a few miles, too. Easiest twenty bucks I ever made.”
They rode on, the stranger lagging, seeming in no hurry. Soon the stranger pulled up. “I been thinkin’. I’ve got no grub for a long trip. You headin’ west?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’d better stock up. See you.”
The stranger swung his horse and started back. Stan stared after him, glad to be free of him yet worried as to what he might say back in town. He might also stop to look over that honeycomb cliff, just for luck.
The morning was hot and still. Heat-waves danced over the bunchgrass levels where the cattle grazed…a few cattle.
A lonely, empty land, and he was unarmed. Tex had taken both his Winchester and his Colt. He needed a gun. He had never killed anyone and did not want to…not even Tex. Gun or no, a man who wanted to kill could always find a way. Defending yourself, however, that was often a last-minute thing and a gun would be good to have.
He had seen too much killing in his time. All he wanted was a quiet place where he could work and save a little.
He rode on into the morning, rode until the sun was high. Sweat trickled down his face and into his eyes. He looked back. Nothing…nothing yet.
Finding a dim trail leading off to the east and north, he followed it. When he had gone a hundred yards he tied his horse to a clump of brush and taking off his boots walked back in his sock feet until he reached his turnoff. The tracks he had left were vague. He took his hat and fanned the dust until the tracks showed almost none at all. Backing up, he did the same thing further along, then returned to his horse, brushed off his tracks, pulled on his boots, and rode away.
Was that a dust-cloud?
He had been a fool to take those drinks. He had no head for liquor and had never cared for it. Tex made it all seem like a joke until suddenly that driver was dead and it wasn’t funny at all. If they caught him they would hang him.
When that stage driver reached for his gun Stan knew it was no lark. That driver hadn’t been amused. Then Tex shot and the driver tumbled into the dust.
Tex had known right where to look for that box and he had gone right to it, paying no mind to the driver he had said was his friend. Of course, that had all been a lie. Bud and him…they were fools. But he had never heard of anybody escaping hanging because he had been a fool.
He slowed his horse. No use killing the poor beast because he was running scared.
Something shadowed the land, far ahead.
Hills? Trees? A ranch? No matter, for there was apt to be water and he was already spitting cotton…or would have been if he could spit. The horse needed water.
He glanced at the shadows behind the brush. Almost two hours past noon. The shadow ahead began to take shape and it was all three things he had suspected: low hills, trees, and a ranch.
When he came up to it the house and barn proved to be low buildings made of flat stones taken from a ledge behind the barn. There were a couple of corrals, no horses or cattle, but there was a well.
He rode into the ranch-yard and swung down. There was water in the trough, some green moss in the bottom of it, and there was a pump. He trailed the reins and began pumping. He expected to have to prime the pump but it was not necessary. Clear, cold water gushed into the trough. With a gourd dipper that hung from the pump, he drank, then drank again.
He pumped the trough full, keeping an eye on the house. There was neither sound nor movement. Was it empty?
Stan Brodie pushed his hat back on his head and, holding the dipper for another drink, he looked carefully around. No sign of life, no dogs, no stock, yet the pump had been recently used.
The leaves of the cottonwoods rustled and the sound brought him to realization. He was still not far enough away for safety but his horse had been hard ridden and he knew it needed rest. He led the horse to the stable. There was fresh hay and he forked some into the manger. He stripped off the gear and left the horse free to eat or to roll in the dust of the corral. If anyone did come he wanted to appear unworried and unhurried.
He took a handful of hay and rubbed the horse down, talking to it as he did so. A man had to talk to somebody and most cow-horses received a lot of confidential chatter which they were in no position to repeat. That was one thing about a horse. You could say almost anything to it as long as you treated it decent.
Walking outside he sat down on the bench that circled a huge cottonwood. The soft wind stirred the hair over his damp brow. It was good, good to stop if even for a little while.
Stan Brodie was twenty-two and had been an orphan since he was nine. He had never had anything like a home since his folks passed on, but he knew what a home could be like.
Once when he was eleven a man needed a boy to do some chores around the place, but when Stan arrived the man was not yet home so the maid showed him into the parlor and warned him, “Now just you set, and don’t you touch anything.”
He had seated himself on the very edge of the sofa, holding his cap in his hands. The carpets were deep and soft, and there were pictures on the wall and some glass-doored bookcases holding books in red and gold or black and gold leather. There was a lamp with a fringed lamp-shade and the room was all red plush, so quiet that his breathing worried him.
Finally he tiptoed over to the bookcases and read the names on the books. Scottish Chiefs, by Porter; Lord Halifax, Gentleman, whose author he couldn’t make out; Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan; and The History of the Five Indian Nations, by Cadwallader Colden. He was staring longingly at the books when a man entered.
“What is it, boy? What are you looking for?”
Guiltily, Stan had stepped back quickly. “I…I was just looking at the books, sir.”
The man was pleased. “Well…I haven’t many. About thirty, I’d guess, but I’ve read them. Most of them several times. Can you read, boy?”
“Yes, sir. I can do sums, and I can write. I went to school in the orphan asylum.”
“Orphan? You’ve no parents?”
“No, sir. Not that I know of, sir. My mother died when I was nine and my father was off somewhere and nobody knew where to find him. I ran away from the asylum, sir.”
“Why?”
“I wanted a job, sir. I wasn’t getting anywhere in that school.”
He had worked for Alec Winters for two months, cleaning up the yard, cutting grass, sawing wood, and exercising his horses. Then Mr. Winters got him a job herding cattle.
Not that he was a real cowboy. He had to be sure that no cattle strayed and to bring them into the big corral at nighttime. He stayed with the job all summer and when he left Mr. Winters he had seventy dollars. He put ten dollars in his pocket and hid the rest in his belt at a place where the stitching was broken.
Two men grabbed him as he left town. Peterson was an itinerant laborer of doubtful background, the other man he did not know. One held him with his face in the dirt while the other went through his pockets. They found a little more than seven dollars because he had bought a pair of shoes.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Peterson demanded angrily. “Winters paid you seventy dollars.”
“No, sir,” Stan lied. “There was the deducts. He deducted some for this, some for that. There was no more than ten dollars left when he got through.”
They did not want to believe him, but they did. Deducts were a common experience and more than one workman had found himself broke at the end of a job. There were deductions for time lost, for tools broken, for any excuse an employer could find. Why should Winters have treated this youngster any different?
They argued, slapped him around a little, but he held to his story. Then they let him go, telling him to keep going and that they’d beat the life out of him if he came back and told anyone.
He kept going.
That was in Illinois. In St. Louis he cleaned boots and shined them, in Louisville he was a printer’s devil. In eastern Kansas he helped with the harvest, and in Fort Smith he worked for a printer again, delivered newspapers, and swept out a saloon every morning before opening time. He earned two dollars a month from the printer and fifty cents a month from the saloon-keeper, but he actually found the equivalent of four or five dollars a month in the sawdust on the saloon floor. Or he did until the saloon-keeper found how well he was doing and began sweeping his own floor.
When he was fourteen he joined a cattle drive that had been turned west short of Baxter Springs and drove to Abilene with it. He drifted south when the cattle were sold and joined another drive starting near San Antonio.
He drove an ox team from Westport to Cherry Creek, Colorado, tried placer mining, worked on other men’s mines, swung a sledge driving spikes on a railroad, and then one night he helped a drunken man home.
The man’s wife was a plain-faced, pleasant woman who took her husband and put him to bed. She glanced critically at Stan. “Should I know you?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m Stan Brodie. I’ve been laying track for the Denver and Rio Grande. Your husband got a bit too much and asked if I’d help him home. I never saw him before.”
“You’re a good lad. Will you have a cup of coffee? That’s the least I can do.”
“Yes, ma’am. Your husband was talking to me for some time, ma’am. Said some mighty fine things about you.”
“He’s a good man. He just can’t handle whiskey. He never could. Mostly he stays away from it but when he starts…What worries me is the paper.”
“Paper?”
“We publish the Bugle. He does it all, but without him we’ll have nothing and now we’re apt to lose it all.”
“But he’ll be sober in the morning.”
“Not him. He will be drunk for weeks, if I know Tom. We can’t afford it.”
Stan put down his cup. “Ma’am, I could run your newspaper. I have done it before.”
When morning came he appeared at the newspaper office, which was below the rooms where he had taken Tom Hayward the night before. Mary Hayward opened the door for him. “It isn’t much,” she said, letting him in. “Can you handle a Washington handpress?”
“Yes, ma’am. I used one in Fort Smith.”
“There’s the type. Most of it is there. There isn’t enough of the letter ‘k’ so Tom’s been using ‘q’ in its place. Most of our readers are used to it by now.”
“All right, ma’am. In Fort Smith we didn’t have any ‘f’ and we made do with ‘ph.’ ”
“The paper is due out tomorrow and I am afraid he doesn’t have anything done. There’s a few items he’s set up over there, mostly local news. The patent-medicine ads are set.” She looked worried. “There will be a lot of space to fill, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, ma’am, there nearly always is. Don’t you worry about it.” He held out his hand. “You might give me that key. I’ve got to run down the street for a few minutes.”
Gebhardt was sitting over his breakfast in the Stockman’s Restaurant where Stan had known he would be. He dropped into a seat opposite him.
“Gep, do you still have that St. Louis paper I saw you with?”
“It’s over in the wagon. Mighty handy out on the road to have a paper around. Why? D’you want it?”
“I need it. That paper isn’t more than a week old, is it?”
“Week? Why, that paper is just two days old! Got it from a Pony Express rider.”
“Can I have it?”
“Sure enough. You’ll find it down on the left side of the seat.”
Stan picked up the newspaper and glanced over it on the way back to the office.
Inside, he sat down and read through the last few copies of the Bugle, capturing the essence of the style used by Tom Hayward. Then he set up the type for a story on the candidacy of Ulysses S. Grant for president lifted from the St. Louis paper.
He found another story on a speech by Schuyler Colfax, who was to be Grant’s running mate, on payment of the national debt in gold.
He also included a brief item to the effect that an organization calling themselves the Jolly Corks had formed a new organization to be called the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He also reported the robbery of a train at Marshfield, Indiana, by a gang reported to be the Reno brothers.
Stan remembered that day and those that followed. Most editing was done with scissors and a paste-pot, newspapers borrowing liberally from each other but careful to give credit. Where additional space had to be filled, he added bits and pieces from memory, a poem by Lord Byron, and an historical question about the name of the great-grandson of Cleopatra who became emperor of Rome.
He chuckled, remembering that. Nearly every subscriber had written in wanting to know who the emperor had been and how it happened. “Caligula” had been the answer and historical or sporting questions had become a regular feature of the paper from that day on.
He was startled from his reverie by the sound of horses’ hooves…a lot of horses. He started up, then suddenly realizing he could not run, he removed his coat quickly, folded it, rolled up his sleeves, grabbed a bucket, and started toward the house.
They rode in and drew up sharply, dust swirling about them. “Howdy!” The man wore a star, as did one of the others. “Mind if we have a drink? We’re huntin’ a killer.”
“You don’t say?”
“Held up the stage an’ murdered his partner, but we’ll get him. He ain’t gone far.”
“I’ve seen nobody.” He gestured toward the well. “There’s water, and I’ve just pumped the trough full. Help yourselves.”
“He didn’t come this way,” one of the posse volunteered.
“This was the closest water so we circled around.” He looked at Stan again. “Do I know you?”
“I haven’t been around long,” Stan said. “Just came in to help out a little.”
“Well, they can use it. Carrie’s all right but she’s not up to all she has to do. I hope you can help her, son. I hope you can.”
He heard the buckboard coming as they led their horses to the trough. He felt his mouth go dry.
Several of the men had remained in the saddle. His own horse was unsaddled and in the stable. He was trapped, his stomach gone hollow, his heart beating with slow, heavy throbs.
The buckboard came up in a clatter and a rattle and swung into the yard. A pair of matched grays driven by a girl. A girl with red hair and freckles.
The girl from the hotel.
CHAPTER 2
The red-haired girl’s eyes were upon him. Her surprise obvious.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he heard himself saying, “I haven’t done much yet. But I’ll get to it.”
“I guess we interrupted, Carrie,” the man with the badge said, “comin’ up the way we did. But I’m glad you’ve got some help until things get straightened out. If there’s anything we can do…”
“No, Mr. Blake,” she replied, “Stan will take care of things. I have an idea he will prove to be the best hand we ever had. If he doesn’t,” she added, smiling, “you will be the first to know.”
“ ’Day, ma’am. We’ll be ridin’ on.”
“I think you must be, Sheriff. There’s been a hanging.”
Stan felt a chill finger run along his spine. He stood very still. “They caught a man in town, and he’d been spending that new gold…like that stolen from the stage. When they searched him they found a lot of it and, well…I believe they were kind of hasty.”
Blake’s face showed angry impatience. “Damn it, I—!” Then he looked to her. “Sorry, ma’am, but they should have held him for trial. This here lynching has got to stop.”
He swung his horse and rode out, followed by his posse.
For a moment Carrie and Stan simply stared at each other, then she said, “Put up the horses. Then come into the house. I think we should have a talk.”
She got down from the buckboard before he could move to help. She looked straight into his eyes, a cool, searching glance.
She was pretty, he realized suddenly, very pretty. The few freckles only made her more attractive. He had always liked girls with freckles, anyway.
He took the team into the shadowed recesses of the stable and stripped off the harness, hanging it on hooks left for the purpose. He took his time, trying to think it out.
Where did she stand in all this? Why hadn’t she given him away? How had she gotten his name? Was this her ranch? What had she meant when she added that comment to the sheriff that if he did not pan out he would be the first to know?
He could saddle up and run, but his direction was the way the posse had been searching, and if he left here now there would be questions, too many questions.
He dried his hands on his pants, wiped the sweatband of his hat, and started for the house.
Coffee was on and it smelled good. When he removed his hat and stepped into the house there were two cups and saucers on the table along with bread and butter and some cold slices of meat.
“Sit right down,” she said, “I’ll be only a minute.”
He sat down carefully, holding his hat in his hand. It was a cool, pleasant room with window curtains, rag rugs on the floor, and a couple of oval, tinted pictures on the wall. One was of a man with a round head and a collar that was a size too large, the other a dignified-looking woman with her hair done up on top of her head except for three curls on each side of her face. They looked like all the other pictures of people he had ever seen.
There was a Bible on the table, a big, square old-fashioned Bible with heavy leather covers. There was a coal-oil lamp and in the corner some shelves with books, about twenty of them, and some stacks of Godey’s Lady’s Book. The room was neat, clean, and quiet.
In a moment she came in, poured coffee, and sat down. She looked across the table at him. A pretty girl, he thought again, but a stubborn one.
She smoothed her skirt over her lap, then she lifted her cup. “The first thing you must understand,” she said, “is that you are my prisoner.”
“What?” He was not sure he had heard right. “What did you say?”
“One word from me and you would be arrested, perhaps hung. I shall not give that word unless I must. If you do your work properly and conduct yourself correctly I shall not give it.”
“I have done nothing,” he said, which was a small lie. He had participated in a holdup, even if it had been done without criminal intent.
“That is no concern of mine,” she said primly. “That would be for the courts to decide…if it ever got so far. My concern is this ranch. My father has been injured. It will be weeks before he is able to work, and it may be months. In the meantime, I have you.”
He did not believe it. He stared at her, shocked. “Now see here,” he began, “I—”
“You see here! As you noticed, the sheriff is a friend. So is every man on that posse. So are many of the people around here. If you leave before I permit you to leave, or if anything happens to me, you will be caught and hung…hanged.”
He studied her for a minute. “You know,” he said, “you’re not a very nice girl.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair, but her chin lifted. “My character is not under discussion. Each day until you understand the situation here I shall lay out your work. Each day I shall expect a report that the work has been completed.
“The weather is good. You will sleep under that farthest cottonwood. When you are on the home ranch you will have your meals here with me. You will attend strictly to business. From time to time there will be visitors. Talk to them as little as possible and perhaps I can keep you alive.”
“What about wages?”
“You—? You speak to me of wages?”
“Yes, ma’am. I will want wages. Slavery has been outlawed in this country. I shall want thirty dollars a month and found, payable at the end of the month. If you don’t want it that way, turn me in.”
She stared at him, uncertain whether he was bluffing or not. His features were bland, unreadable. Suddenly uncertain herself, she wavered. Then she said, “I see no harm in that. If you were not here I should have to pay someone else.
“Also,” she continued, “I shall want your gun. You will not need one here.”
“I have no gun. I have no firearm. Neither rifle nor pistol. They were taken by the man who murdered Bud Aylmer.”
Obviously, she did not believe him, but before she could speak he said, “Please think back. You saw me in the hotel. If I had been carrying a weapon you would have seen it.”
He finished his coffee and stood up. “If you have no further need of me, I’ll be going. In the meantime you might list the things that need to be done.”
He went outside and stopped in the morning sunshine. He should get out of here, get as far away as he could, yet he was certain she would do just as she threatened and Stan had no doubts about that sheriff—he was a tough man.
Her name was Carrie…Carrie what?
What kind of a spot had he gotten into, anyway? How long did she expect to hold him here? Until her father returned? And what if he never got well?
Stan Brodie, he told himself, play it cool, play it smart, and when the chance comes…run!
He had never been given to idleness, and the presence of work was the occasion for work. He started by repairing the corral gate, which needed fixing. Then he forked hay to the horses. The hay started him wondering. It was good meadow hay, and the meadows spoke of low ground, possibly water. He had seen little water coming here and most of the range closer to town was indifferent, at best.
He led out his horse and saddled up. As he tightened the cinch he looked across the saddle at the house, and she was standing in the door with a rifle in her hands.
“You wouldn’t be thinking of leaving?” she suggested.
“Just thought I might ride out and see where that hay came from. If I am to be of any help I’d better get acquainted with your range.”
He rested his hands on the saddle. “You know, if you’re going to keep an eye on me you’d better ride along. I might just decide to take out of here.”
“There’s the sheriff,” she replied, “and that posse. Then there’s that rough crowd in town who might want another hanging. I am not worried about your leaving.”
She lowered the rifle. “Ride north two miles. That point of rock with the white streak of quartz in it marks our corner. Then ride east for six miles or just about that. You will see a hole in the rock, high up. That’s the Keyhole. Everybody around here knows it. Ride south four miles to Two Cabin Creek and about a quarter of a mile further on you will come to our line fence. Then come back here.”
“Sounds like quite a layout.”
“It could be. If you see any riders over toward Two Cabin, stay clear of them. They won’t be friendly.”
“May I ask why?”
“They want the water in Two Cabin. They settled over beyond there knowing they couldn’t make it without our water and knowing it belonged to us.”
Stan Brodie considered that. “What happened to your father?”
“His horse fell with him.”
“Where’s the horse?”
“We had to destroy him. He broke his leg.”
This was a wide and empty land where the short-grass plains ran up to the mountains and lost themselves in the open mouths of the canyons. Yet it was a deceptive land, for viewed from afar it seemed only one vast plain of gently rolling hills with here and there a butte or mesa standing stark against the sky. Riding over it one found that the plains and rolling hills were cut by shallow canyons and the dry streambeds that ran only in the hours following heavy rain.
Stan Brodie had punched cows in just such terrain, and rode warily. Without a gun he felt naked and exposed. He had climbed somewhat and the grass seemed greener, due no doubt to some pattern of prevailing winds and rainfall. Miles away he could see what he was sure was the Keyhole, the rock Carrie had mentioned.
There were a few longhorns mingled with some of the whiteface cattle they were beginning to bring into the country. Dipping into a grassy hollow near an arroyo he came upon the ruins of an adobe house, gutted by fire. A lean-to barn some distance away was also burned…Indians probably.
Suddenly a buzzard flew up, then another. He rounded a turn in the arroyo and before him lay the remains of a dead horse. Two more buzzards flew up and he drew near. This must be Carrie’s father’s horse.
Buzzards had been at work on the carcass, but the forepart was little damaged. He glanced at the broken leg. It had been a bad break, offering no chance to save the horse. He was about to ride on when something else caught his attention. Swinging from the saddle, he walked back.
Across the front of the horse’s leg right above the break the skin was broken, a straight-across gash that had cut to the bone. The animal must have run full tilt into something, maybe the bottom wire of a fence, tripping the horse and throwing the rider.
He returned to his horse and mounted, but he did not ride away. That horse had ridden into something, a taut wire it looked like, yet such a wire in a canyon like this was unlikely. He looked around, studying the rocks and the ground.
Whatever tripped that horse had to be close by. No horse was going far with a leg like that.
He wished he had a gun.
He walked his mustang down the canyon, then pulled up. A lot of hoof tracks…This must be where the horse had fallen, then it stumbled up and hobbled around.
The horse would have been killed when they found Carrie’s father.
What had that horse tripped over? Had Carrie guessed that the horse tripped?
No wire.
The canyon widened a little and there was a cove on each side. He walked his horse over and checked one cove. Nothing. In the other he found the tracks of two horses and the stubs of cigarettes smoked by men who waited here. One of them smoked his cigarettes tight and small.
But were those tracks and cigarette stubs left before or after the accident?
He glanced back toward the dead horse, out of sight now. Walking his horse, he studied the rocks on both sides of the small canyon.
Turning, he strolled back down the canyon, keeping his horse beside him. One wall of the rocks was honeycombed and pitted, and suddenly he saw what he had been expecting: a place on the edge of one of the holes where something had chafed the rock.
Squatting on his heels, he glanced into the shallow hole. It joined another hole not over a foot away. A wire had been run into one hole and out the other, then tied to itself outside the holes.
He stood up and glanced directly across. A juniper, squat and gnarled, stood just opposite. Walking over he could see where something had scratched the bark.
He walked back, brushing out any tracks he might have made, then mounted. Someone had stretched a wire across the canyon at that point, then somehow, by a shot or some other means, had startled Carrie’s father or the horse into a run. Hitting the wire he had spilled over, breaking the horse’s leg and injuring himself.
Stan glanced around quickly. He had better get away from here, and fast. Quickly he turned his horse into some deep sand in the bottom of the arroyo where no defined hoofprints would be left, then he climbed out of the arroyo and lost himself along a hillside covered with juniper. It was scattered, but in places it was quite heavy. He was barely under cover when he glimpsed three riders. Reining in, he waited in a clump of five thick juniper trees, watching the riders.
He had never been one to decorate bridle or saddle with flashy ornaments and he was glad for that now, for they picked up the sunlight and could be seen for miles. The three riders came along up the hill on a line that would take them within fifty yards of where he sat.
There was no escape. The best thing he could do would be to sit still and hope they did not see him.
Stan Brodie was without illusions. Nothing in his twenty-two years had given them fertile ground for breeding. Still, he had his own dreams and aspirations, and none of them included being killed. He had no enmity for any man but trusted few of them.
If these riders did not ride for Carrie they had no business being where they were, and if they had no business there it was likely they would not wish to be seen.
He had no loyalty to Carrie. She had taken advantage of his seeming guilt to use him for her own purposes, and he had no choice but to go along until he could choose a time for escape.
What he wished to avoid was getting in deeper while he waited.
He was positive an attempt had been made to kill her father, and if it had not succeeded it was not for lack of trying. The attempt was sufficient to convince him they would stop at nothing…and here he was, unarmed, and within easy rifle-shot of them.
He spoke softly to his horse, whose ears were pricked toward the oncoming riders.
That these men were among those who were trying to get Carrie’s water he had no doubt, and they would assume he was a spy.
He had made a fool of himself once and he did not intend to do so again. Every time he had gotten into trouble it was from keeping bad company…but how was he to know about Tex? Yet, he admitted, he had known. He had not trusted him from the first. It was the whiskey that mellowed his doubt of the man.
The man they hung in town? Could that have been Tex? Possible, but unlikely. It was more likely that stranger he met on the trail had gone back, looked, and found the stolen gold Stan had hidden under the pack rat’s nest.
Yet Tex could still be around. Certainly, he had known that bartender.
The riders turned sharply away from him and began to spread out. Then for the first time he saw that several head of whiteface cattle had come into the open below him. The three riders rode toward them and hazed them off toward the west. That they were Carrie’s cattle he could not doubt, but he was unarmed and men who had killed once would not hesitate to do so again.
With the cattle drifting west the three turned back and rode up the hill toward him. Suddenly one of them pulled up sharply and called out.
Stan swore bitterly. They had found his tracks. One glanced up the hill toward the clump of trees, then scanned the side of the hill to right and left.
Abruptly they turned and rode down the hill. Stan mopped his brow. Of course, they did not know if he was still up here, nor would they guess he was unarmed.
And that gave him an idea.
CHAPTER 3
When he rode into the ranch-yard Carrie came to the door. “Supper’s ready.”
A thought came to him that was disturbing. “When you drove up in the buckboard you called me by name. How did you know it?”
“I heard somebody call you that in town.”
Now a gentleman did not call a lady a liar, but that simply was not true. Nobody in town knew his name. Tex and Bud had only known him as Montana, a name he had given himself on the spur of the moment. So how could she have known?
“I saw three riders,” he commented at supper.
“On our ranch?”
“Yep.”
“Did you order them off?”
He gave her a wry smile. “Three armed and unpleasant men? And me without a gun?”
She was irritated. “Well, perhaps I was foolish. You’d better wear a gun. Get yours out and carry it.”
“I don’t have one.”
She started to reply angrily, then stopped. “But if you don’t have a gun, then how—?”
She was wondering how he could have held up the stage, and he saw no harm in letting her wonder. “I don’t have a weapon of any kind,” he said, “but this knife.” He put his hand on the haft.
“That man…the one they found in the hotel…he had been killed with a knife. They found it.”
He drew his own. It had an eight-inch blade and had a nice feel but it was obviously more of a working knife than one that would be chosen to kill a man. “I still have mine,” he said quietly.
That she was disturbed and puzzled was obvious. Evidently this information did not conform with what she had believed.
“We have rifles,” she said.
“All right, I shall carry one.”
For a few minutes they ate in silence. There was an occasional crackle from the fire, and the subdued rattle of knives, forks, and dishes. It was pleasant, that he admitted, and she was a pretty, in fact a very pretty girl. A very pretty girl who now held him captive.
He finished his coffee and pushed back from the table. “You’d better let me pick out a rifle. Those men were running off your cattle today.”
“I’ll tell the sheriff.”
“All right, but I doubt if it will do any good. They won’t have the cattle where they can be seen, or if seen, be tied to them. Let me take care of it.”
“You?”
“I’m slave labor, don’t you remember? I’m the man you blackmailed into working for you.”
She flushed angrily. “Don’t be like that! I needed somebody, I—!”
“And I was handy, is that it? And I didn’t have any way out?” He turned and looked at her. “What about you, ma’am? A woman can use a knife as well as a man. You were in that hotel, too!”
For a moment he thought she would strike him. He waited, but she simply stared at him, her eyes hot with anger. After a minute he said, “Better let me have that rifle, ma’am. And some ammunition…a lot of it.”
“They’d never believe you.”
“What?”
“I mean they’d never believe you saw me in that hotel, and they’d never believe I killed that man.”
“Did you?”
“Of course not! I did not even know there’d been a killing until somebody found the body. I heard them talking of it downtown.”
“And thought of me.”
“Who else?”
He shrugged. “All right. I am a possible suspect and I know I did not do it. You are a possible suspect and you say you did not do it. So what became of the man who did it?”
“Who would that be?”
“A tall, high-shouldered man with black eyes and a lean look about him.”
Carrie got to her feet and picked up the dishes.
“There must be many such men. Anyway, he is probably gone.”
She took the dishes to the sink, then turned on him.
“Do you wish to leave? I won’t report you to the sheriff.”
“No.” He went to the rifle rack. They were good guns. There was one Winchester there of which he liked the feel. He took it in his hands and held it for a moment. Then he replaced it in the rack.
“Take your pick,” she offered. “There are two or three pistols in the drawer at the foot of the rack.”
He opened the drawer. There was a gun-belt and holster there, then two six-shooters, an Army Colt, and a newer Remington.
He took out the holster and belted it on. It felt good around his waist, too good.
“I’ll take the Colt,” he said, his voice cold. He took the Winchester down. “And this rifle. I am sure your father won’t care.”
“Do you really mean to stay? There’ll be trouble, I know.”
“I’ll stay for a little while,” he said. Now, more than ever, he wanted to know what was going on…a part of him had to know. “When will your father be up and around?”
“Three weeks, I think. Three weeks at least.”
“All right. You can count on me until then.”
Outside in the darkness he shifted his bed to a hollow among some rocks. No use to advertise the place where he slept. He touched the gun, then drew it. For a moment he stood holding the pistol, then holstered it. “Stan Brodie, you’d be better off a-runnin’. Curiosity is what killed that cat, isn’t it?” he muttered.
The guns he had taken were his own, taken from his room the night Bud Aylmer was killed.
CHAPTER 4
The place he had chosen to sleep was on a small, rock-covered knoll some fifty yards from the ranch house but overlooking the area. There were fifty or sixty boulders scattered across the top of the knoll, ranging in size from the size of a barrel to twice as large. Between them were grassy hollows free of stones. In one of these, where he had merely to turn his head to see the house, he bedded down.
Once he was settled, he kept an eye on the house, but his mind was busy, and there were a lot of questions to which he had no answer. What he should do was cut and run, yet if she called the sheriff there was small chance of him getting out of the country before they caught him. They knew the area far better than he.
How had his rifle and pistol, apparently taken from the room the night Bud was murdered, showed up here?
What had become of Tex?
Carrie had obviously not been aware that the weapons he chose to take were his own. Who had access to that house other than Carrie and her father?
Off across the hills the coyotes began to yap. It was a familiar sound and one he had never found unpleasant. He lay, hands clasped behind his neck, thinking.
The stars overhead were very bright, and the night was cool. He listened, vaguely aware of movement…cattle? He wanted no part of this mess. He wanted to get away, but he suspected the sheriff or some of his posse were already a little suspicious—after all, where had he come from so suddenly? And there were a few people who could place him in town.
He awakened suddenly, having no memory of falling asleep or of even being sleepy. It was morning.
Getting out of bed he gathered his bedding and rolled it carefully, stowing it in the corner of the stable he had taken for his own. Carrying his rifle he went to the house, where smoke was coming from the chimney. As with many such ranch houses there was a basin at the back door and a towel hung on a nail near a small hand mirror fastened on a board.
He shaved in cold water, turning occasionally to look over the hills around the ranch. If he was going to be in the saddle so much he would need more horses, which brought another thought. If this was a working ranch, where was the saddle-stock?
He wiped his feet at the door and went inside. His breakfast was on the table, obviously just put there for it was hot, although there was no sign of Carrie.
Drawing back a chair, he seated himself, then feeling something under his foot, he glanced down.
Mud…soft mud…several crumbs of it and one good-sized piece that might have fallen from the edge of a boot.
Somebody either was here or had been here, somebody who had recently stepped in mud that had not had time to dry. He ate his bacon and beans, a couple of slices of home-baked bread, and then finished his coffee. The only place he remembered seeing any mud was near the horse trough. There might be a track.
He got up from the table, pushing his chair back and purposely making some noise, but Carrie did not appear. Was the visitor still here? Or had Carrie been outside herself?
He went out, closed the door behind him, and dumped a little water in the basin to rinse off his fingers. In the mirror he studied what he could see behind him, shifting position for a better view.
Nothing…
He went to the stable and saddled his horse, leading it outside. As he walked up to the trough he glanced in the mud. Somebody had deliberately scuffed a foot across the mud, smearing any track that might have been left.
Stan Brodie swore softly. What was going on here, anyway? Her father was in the hospital…so who had been here? A lover? Despite himself he was suddenly jealous. Then he laughed for being so foolish.
What was she to him? A girl he knew and worked for. What was he to her? A drifting, probably no-good cowhand.
He shoved his rifle into the boot and stepped into the saddle. He was not going to let them see him scouting for sign, but he intended to do just that. He meant to find out what was going on.
In the meantime there was work to do. He found a few steers and drifted them back away from the Two Cabin area. All morning long he rode, stock was scarce and he wondered how many had already been stolen.
Several times he saw tracks of small bunches of cattle, usually driven by two or three riders. Those he found he turned back. The range was in tolerable shape and that in the area around the Keyhole was the best. Beyond it was wild country.
The sun was straight up by the time he reached the Keyhole so he rode into as much shadow as there was near the rocks, picketed his horse on a patch of good grass, and climbed up the rocks. He had neglected to fix himself any kind of a lunch and Carrie hadn’t fixed one for him, so he was hungry, but he had often been in that fix. Settled down with his back to the rocks, he studied the country.
Stan Brodie was not a big man, being a shade under six feet and rarely weighing over one-sixty, carrying most of it in his chest and shoulders, which was partly a result of driving spikes on the railroad and work with a pick and shovel.
In the orphan asylum one of the men who supervised them had liked to see them fight so he would tie gloves on the youngsters and let them go to it. Stan was often whipped, until he realized that the boy who just kept coming usually won. So he began to simply pile in swinging, throwing punches until the other boy began to back up. After that Stan usually won. Here and there in the years that followed he had picked up a little more know-how as to fighting and survival.
The other day they had found his tracks and lost them, but they had been curious, maybe a little worried. A guilty man can find a lot to worry him in something he does not understand. Well, that was something he could do. He could worry them.
From his position he could see over quite a lot of country, and it could save him miles of riding. He spotted several groups of cattle feeding on slopes or draws over toward Two Cabin. These he would drift back away from the borders of the ranch as he had done the others.
Coming down off the rocks he mounted and rode back to the south and west, pushing cattle ahead of him. Once, in the distance, he glimpsed a rider, but he could not make him out, and disappearing into a draw the man vanished from view.
When he came within sight of the ranch he swung around it in a wide circle. He could see no horses at the hitching-rail nor at the corral. He picked up the old tracks of the posse coming and leaving, and almost a mile further along, the tracks of another horse that had gone to and returned from the ranch. He glanced at the sun. Almost an hour before sundown. Turning his mount he walked him along the trail of the lone rider. He followed the trail into the low hills until he came to a small spring with a trickle of water that sub-irrigated a meadow below it. Here he found where another rider had waited, smoking many cigarettes, until the visitor to the ranch returned. They rode off together.
He studied the hoof tracks so he would know them if he saw them again.
Carrie was setting the table when he came up to the door to wash his hands. “Who are those fellows over at Two Cabin?” he asked.
“I don’t know them all. There’s the Tutler brothers, Brockey and Red Fitz Tutler. There’s Shang Hight, and a man named Trainor. They are a bad lot, and I doubt if any of them is using the name he was born with.” She paused. “Stan, be careful. If they killed Pa, they would kill you. Of course, they did not kill Pa, but they tried, and they would have.”
He offered no reply, but seated himself at the table. She filled his cup. “Where did you come from, Stan?”
“I’m a drifter,” he replied, “just a loose-footed saddle tramp.”
“I don’t believe that. You sound like an educated man, sometimes.”
“You’d be mistaken. Most of my education I got in an orphan asylum or a newspaper office.”
She brought food to the table, and sat down opposite him.
“If I were you,” he said suddenly, “I’d be very careful, and be sure your father is well guarded.”
“Guarded? He’s in the hospital, such as it is.”
“His fall was no accident, you know.”
“Of course it was. His horse fell with him, that was all.”
“Your father’s horse,” he said, “was tripped by a wire stretched across the canyon.”
“What? I don’t believe it.”
“Anybody who took the trouble to look could see where the wire cut the skin on the horse’s leg. I found where the wire was tied. Somebody came down out of the rocks and took up the wire while your father lay there on the ground. He just let him lie, thinking he was dead or dying.”
“You mean somebody tried to kill him?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to leave.”
“Then you’d better get ready for a fight. I doubt if they will wait until your father is up and around…if it is the place they want.”
“Do you doubt it?”
He shrugged. “I’m just a passing stranger, ma’am. I don’t know anything about you or your father. But somebody tried to kill him and I think they will try again.”
“Can you stop them?”
“Seven or eight men, maybe? That’s asking a lot from a man you only got to stop by using blackmail.”
She flushed. “I was all alone, and I needed help. Maybe it wasn’t nice of me but—”
“You’ve got other friends,” he replied quietly. “Get them to help you.”
“Other friends? Why, I don’t—” She paused. “What do you mean by that? What friends?”
Stan did not reply. For a moment there was silence and then she said in a somewhat lower voice, “I don’t know what you mean.”
He stood up. “If you will excuse me? I am quite tired.”
She looked up at him, wide-eyed and embarrassed. Then she stood. “Oh, by the way. You spoke of reading. We have a few books if you’d like to read them.”
“I would, indeed. However, I doubt if a campfire that would provide enough light to read by would be good for my health. Not if you have as many enemies about as I believe.”
“You could come in here. I wouldn’t mind.”
“All right, but not tonight. I believe I should be outside. I had the distinct impression,” he added, “that someone was around last night.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him, then moved along the wall to the corner before stepping into the shade of the big tree. He remained there for a moment, listening.
Every instinct he possessed warned him that something here was radically wrong. Unless the ranch had had a lot more cattle until recently but they’d been stolen, it had too few to be a worthwhile operation. To make ranching pay they’d need to run at least six hundred head, and if they had half that they were lucky. The herd was a mixture of Hereford and longhorns but the latter predominated…and where were their horses?
Was the operation simply a cover for something else? But if so, why have him around?
The answer to that seemed obvious and unpleasant, for the only reason he could imagine was simply to have him here as a suspect in case anything went wrong.
The place he chose for his bed that night proved a bad one. He slept restlessly and awoke irritated with himself and his situation. He was getting nowhere here, and it was time for him to get away, to move on. He had lost enough time in drifting and it was the moment to make a decision as to where he was going and just what he intended to make of himself.
He shook out his boots, knocking a centipede four inches long from one of them. He swore and tugged the boots on, then got up and looked around. The prairie was a uniform mixed green and brown, the hills rolling, the sky somewhat overcast.
Taking his rifle he walked down to the house and washed his hands and face. Carrie put her head out of the door as he threw the water from the washbasin into the yard. “Come on in. It’s ready.”
First good thing he’d heard all morning. At least, he told himself, the cooking was good. He started to turn away toward the door when he looked again at the small mirror. It was held to the log wall by bent-over nails. He turned two of them aside and, taking down the mirror, dropped it into his pocket.
This morning it was pancakes and eggs. Where she had gotten the eggs he could not guess but obviously there was somebody around the town who had chickens. He ate them with pleasure.
Sitting back, he looked across at her. “You set a good table,” he admitted.
“My father likes to eat, so I had to become a good cook.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s still unconscious.” He glimpsed the worry in her eyes. “He must have fallen very hard.”
“Or was slugged on the head before he could get up.”
She stared at him. “You don’t believe that?”
“I believe it’s likely.” He hesitated, then said, “Where’s the riding stock around here? I need a fresh horse now and again.”
“Oh! I didn’t think! I’ve been so worried, I…Stan, there’s a place about a mile west of the Keyhole. It’s a small valley there and there’s some water in it and we’ve fenced the ends. The walls are steep enough so that’s all we have to do to make a corral that has about sixty acres. We have a dozen head of horses in there.
“Catch up the gray or the Appaloosa. There’s a dun there who’s the best horse of the lot but nobody can ride him since my brother—” She broke off, then added, “Ride him if you can, but he’s mean.”
Finding the valley was easy enough, and they had a nice place for holding stock. A small, isolated valley kind of tucked into a corner of low hills, and the grass was good. I roped the gray and saddled it, meanwhile keeping an eye out for trouble.
An idea had been working itself around in my mind for some time but whether it would work or not would depend on how many of the cattle gathered by the Tutler brothers and their friends were longhorns.
Now a longhorn is no ordinary cow-beast. A longhorn is a wild animal, as much so as any elk, buffalo, or deer. Even though occasionally rounded up and herded by men, they remained wild, very skittish, and likely to stampede on the slightest provocation. A sudden whiff of a wolf-hide, the drop of a tin pan, a shot…many things might cause a stampede.
A Hereford, or whiteface, was less likely to stampede, but if one started the rest would go along with the crowd. There was no way I could tackle that bunch of land-grabbers head-on, but there were several ways I might give them trouble. The first thing I had to do was to worry those longhorns. They were probably nervous enough but I’d leave nothing to chance.
So far as I’d been able to see they had altered no brands. They had simply drifted cattle over to range they claimed, and as cattle often strayed far afield nobody could then move in and brand whatever cattle there were.
Until now they had been doing all the scaring and the threatening. If all went well we would see how they liked it when somebody put a saddle on their own horse.
Mounted on the gray I scouted their camp. There were
COMMENTS: Yes, that is exactly how this story ends! Its beginning has something in common with the “suddenly out of place” situation found in Louis’s novel The Man Called Noon and it also harkens back to a few of his noir or crime thrillers from the days when he was writing for the pulp magazines.
Like “Borden Chantry” and several of Louis’s other stories, this looks like it is headed toward being a melding of the mystery and Western genres. I can never quite figure out how they did it, but Louis wasn’t the only writer who tried to create and solve mysteries in just one draft. I had a couple of conversations with novelist Tony Hillerman about how to pull this off, and it’s not easy. However, as in quite a few of the works in this book, I think Louis finally got to a point where he needed to do some more figuring before he continued. Here are a few lines out of his notes on this story:
Somebody seems to have visited the ranch during the night.
What was CARRIE doing in that cheap hotel where Bud Aylmer was killed?
Where are CARRIE’S cattle? Where are the horses? Why are the horses kept some distance from the ranch house?
Some of these questions may simply have been things that Dad figured he’d better clarify, but others may have been intended to be part of the mystery. Your guess as to which is which is as good as mine.