CHAPTER VIII

 

A DECAPITATED CHICKEN hung from the wall in the cold tackshed. “You steal that?”

“Sure,” said Michaela.

As he reached for the latch on the saloon door, she touched his arm and looked into his eyes. Her expression was enigmatic, guardedly blank. She was almost of a height with him. She said, “I don’t like you any more than you like me, pilgrim. Remember that.”

“Lady,” he drawled softly, “nobody said I didn’t like you. I mean, a little thing like jumping me with a knife—”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “You don’t like half-breeds, do you?”

“Well,” he observed, “I never met one like you.”

He did not add that past experience had made him more distrustful of women as a group than he had ever been about half-breeds. He had learned, through long and sometimes intimate acquaintance with them, that women were seldom to be relied on for more than one night in a row.

Wary of the reception that might await him beyond the closed door, he hitched his holster around where it was more easily accessible; he tipped his hat back, swept the coat away from the gun, lifted the latch by its peg handle, and opened the door.

It was a big room, long and wide. Men stood and sat around it at odd points; there was an air of charged tension in the place and every pair of eyes came around to lie boldly, suspiciously and challengingly against Jim Brand.

The walls were made of massive, stripped logs, built for impression and endurance; that was why it had lasted out the years of weather. The chinking between logs was firm and thick, and none of the storm pried its way inside, except for an occasional downward gust that batted the big fire in the fireplace.

Here was all the ornate but dusty splendor of the days less than a decade ago when Rifle Gap had been at the peak of its bonanza. Crystal chandeliers, some of them partly cracked and broken, hung on great brass chains from the rafters. A long mahogany bar, once polished but now dull and scratched, ran half the length of one wall.

The floor was made of stout, hand-hewn planks; posts around the room helped support the second floor; a great stone fireplace at the far end roared with high red flames, and whale-oil lamps hung all around the walls, a few of them lit now and adding beams of soft yellow to the fire’s red glare. Parts of the floor were still covered by the faded and worn remnants of what had once been a colorful tapestried carpet.

A potbellied stove near Brand’s right hand glared with one evil, scarlet eye out of a square isinglass window, warming this end of the big saloon. Along the wall beyond the end of the bar were stacked high-piled cords of wood, probably laid in for the winter by Michaela’s father or even perhaps by the girl herself—blocks and branches laboriously axed.

The room stood hollow, like a great forgotten monument to its builders, scarred and embattled but still holding firm against the angry lashes of nature’s vindictiveness. The storm was a muffled loud rage that pounded the walls. There were a heavy long table made of split aspen trunks and a scatter of wood-frame armchairs with laced rawhide backs and seats made of dried buckskin leather.

In one corner was haphazardly piled a fitter, like a pack rat’s accumulation, of old saddles and ropes and bridles and hackamores all tangled together, of tin cups and dishes, hung strips of jerked beef and a huge half-empty sack of flour, an ash scuttle by the stove, fire tongs and wooden water bucket, and, arrayed in a proud row on a shelf behind the bar, a good dozen bottles of whiskey, probably the old white mule. There was no still in sight, but the old squaw-man was likely a practiced distiller.

And there were the five men, all facing him with mute stares.

At the far end, warming themselves by the great open maw of the fireplace, faces painted red by the flames and eyes reflecting the yellow glitter of lamplight, were an old shrunken man with a solid wooden stump in place of one leg—Michaela’s father—and a huge bull of a man with steel-gray hair and a square-jawed countenance that seemed hewn from granite. From this man came the pressure of an aura of self-assured authority; he was probably Wayne Lutz, the cattleman.

Closer, near the bar, seated in one of the leather-bottom chairs and letting his silent glare brashly challenge Brand, was a heavy man with round jowls and a belly beginning to sag over the beltline.

His shoulders were beginning to fatten up and he had a growing bald spot. His face was broiled lobster-red and slurred in outline by a weak-old beard stubble of indeterminate hue. That one would be the homesteader, Mitch Andrews. His clothes bespoke his calling: denim overalls, low-heeled farm boots, a heavy woolen shirt, faded and patched.

Of the other two, the most dangerous was easily the Mexican, Armando Elias. The last time Brand had seen him, his name had been Augustin Pesquiera, but no matter; one name was as good as another, and now it was Armando Elias. As Brand recalled, he had a reputation of being a man quick with his knife; he liked crib ladies and money and cigarillos and disliked most other things, and his quality of mercy was always strained.

The Mexican’s partner, Billy McCasford, was not past twenty. There was a daring insolence in his eyes, partly defensive as if he had to challenge every man who looked at the empty sleeve where his left arm should have been.

The whole scene painted itself on the canvas of Jim Brand’s quick perceptive mind in just a split moment, a stretching frozen interval during which no one moved and no one spoke. He distinctly heard the dull thump of the wind and the crackle of the distant fire and the in-and-out apprehensive sawing of the girl’s breath behind him. He stood with his left hand resting on the door latch, holding the door open, his body tilted just a little in that direction. His eyes flashed from face to face.

The first to speak was the Mexican. He swung one long leg over, uncrossing his legs, and turned in the chair to face Brand more directly. His lips were turned into a cool smile; his teeth glistened; he said in a soft and musical voice, “Tardes, Señor Jim.”

“Elias?”

The Mexican’s strong white teeth showed wider; his glance went momentarily to the girl and came back again. “Ah, yes—yes. Welcome to our little circle, señor.”

A heavy voice, self-important and peremptory and ponderous, came down the length of the room from the thick lips of Wayne Lutz: “You know this gent, Elias?”

“Sure,” the Mexican said, “I know him. He’s Dandy Jim Brand—a gambler with a quick gun, they say. Very quick. Is that right, Señor Jim?” The mock-friendly grin was painted securely across his mouth. He was looking at the exposed butt of Brand’s gun.

“That’s right,” Brand murmured without humor. He released the door and let the girl step inside, then closed the door and stood motionless a moment longer, letting them all size him up.

The one-armed kid, McCasford, said. “You must be pretty well frozen through, friend.”

“I’m all right.” Brand was still meeting the aroused challenge of Elias’ eyes.

Down by the fireplace, old Manning was getting up and balancing himself on the wooden leg. His eyes seemed to swim slowly into focus and he frowned in a puzzled way, then turned angry. “What you doing out in that barn with my daughter, bucko?”

“Why, now,” Brand said, eyes restless and smiling, “that could be quite a question, old man.”

His answer brought a short soft laugh from the Mexican. “Relax,” the musical voice said. “You are cold. Take off your coat and come up to the stove.”

“Facing you,” Brand said gently, “eh, Armando?” Lamp shine danced wickedly against Elias’ black glance; he said nothing and in a moment the easy grin returned. Brand slid out of his mackinaw and dropped it on a stack of cordwood near the stove, and bellied up to the warmth, spreading his hands before it.

Behind him he heard Michaela walk across the room; she settled in a chair watching her father. Old Manning grumbled something that Brand didn’t catch, and sat down again, pivoting on his wooden leg.

While his eyes swept the room slowly, it came to Jim Brand that the atmosphere of the place was charged and deadly. Everyone sat with an air of half-fearful expectancy. Outside, the storm cried in angry frustration and slammed its fists against the building, sending strange echoes pounding down from the second-story roof, curling anxious little fingers in through the fireplace and a few long chinks, making lanterns flicker and fire jump.

They all had their eyes steady on Jim Brand and they all sat with their hands gripping their chair arms, as if they were waiting for some deadly action, waiting for him to challenge them or set them at ease, to smile or to shoot—he was an unknown quantity to them, and now they watched him and suspicion hung strong and thick in the air. Only the girl, her gaze cool and dark and a little mocking, seemed to hide all emotion behind her Indian heritage, careless but guarded.

The stove’s red warmth gradually worked its way through his body and brought a soporific steadiness to him, a calm that soothed his jumpy nerves and took some of the wary bite out of his glance.

Then he realized that not all the room’s apprehensive taut silence was the effect of his sudden presence among them. Some of it had been here before. Thick currents of intrigue plied the air. The intolerant massive glance of the cattleman Lutz shifted from Jim Brand’s face to lie spitefully against Mitch Andrews, and the homesteader glared back with equal open malice.

The Mexican and his youthful uncertain companion watched each other and Jim Brand and the others with equal care, their suspicion and defensiveness evenly distributed. The old man looked at no one, but sat with glazed eyes staring into the fire; once he looked up with brief awareness and displayed a petulant displeasure at this wholesale invasion of his private home. He bit his lips and pounded his wooden leg softly against the floor and stared angrily into the leaping fire, and then his gaze went dead again. Silence was a thickness accented by the steady belting of the storm.

The girl got up and went through a door that evidently led into a kitchen; the door was hung on rusty spring hinges, and squeaked when it flapped shut behind her. There was another door beyond the end of the bar, which probably gave entrance to a corridor behind, and there was the bannister-railed staircase going up the side of the room beyond the fireplace. Brand could hear his own breathing.

He said, “Friendly little gathering, here,” and his words shattered the charged silence.

Wayne Lutz tucked his lips into a thin smile. “Mostly a man knows who his friends are,” he said.

“That’s so,” Brand replied. “I see none here.”

“Harsh judgment,” Lutz murmured. His murmur was deep-chested, almost a growl. “What are you doing here, mister?”

“Same as the rest of you. Waiting out the storm.”

“Cozy,” Lutz said.

“You object, friend? You propose to throw me out in the blizzard? Or maybe you just don’t like the color of my eyes.” Brand put deliberate challenge into his voice. He had faced many men of Wayne Lutz’s stripe over card tables and he knew that to display any weakness at all before them was tantamount to surrender.

“Easy,” the big man muttered in a rumbling bass. He stood up to come forward, and facing him afoot now, Brand was startled by the man’s sheer size. Lutz stood a good six and a half feet tall and probably weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds, none of it easy flesh. A gun hung holstered at a careless angle high on his hip, as if he had little regard for it; it seemed dwarfed by his great girth. His slab like hands, wide trunk and columnar legs might have been cut in great square slabs from a solid hunk of rock.

He came to a stand not far from Jim Brand and said, “We’re all a little spooky, and it shouldn’t be hard for you to figure out why.” His suggestive glance whipped from the Mexican to Billy McCasford, who stared back at him with bland innocence. “You come prowling around in the middle of the worst storm of the past five years and it’s no wonder we might be a little curious.”

“That’s just fine,” Brand said. “While you’re at it, you might satisfy a curiosity of mine.”

“Such as?”

“Out in the barn you’ll find a dead man—deputy from down in the valley. I packed him up here from the flats. You might want to wonder who bushwhacked him.”

Lutz’s thick black nests of brow lifted. “In the barn?”

Without saying more, he bulled past Brand and flung the door open, tramping into the tackshed with the lantern Brand had brought.

Brand looked around the room. The girl’s half-amused eyes met his. The old man was picking at a sliver on his wooden leg, intent on it; the young one-armed man stared vacantly at Brand. Room full of cripples, Brand thought, and not all the crippling shows. The Mexican watched him with a slight smile and the half-bald homesteader was pressing his paunch against the mahogany bar, trying to reach over it to the racked whiskey bottles on the shelf.

Unsuccessful, he said something shortly and walked around the end of the bar, coming back to the shelf and taking down a bottle. Then he stood in the trough behind the bar while he uncocked the bottle with his teeth, spit out the cork, put the bottle to his mouth and lifted it high to drink.

“You folks show a lot of concern,” Brand observed. Elias showed his teeth. “Por nada. Every man tastes death, amigo. We’ll take your word about the deputy’s.” His voice sounded smooth and lazy.

Lutz came back, filling the doorway, a massive block against the darkness of the tackshed behind him. “How do we know you didn’t kill him, Brand?”

“And then packed him all the way up here through the blizzard?”

The Mexican’s breezy laugh touched the air. Brand said, “A big bore slug killed the deputy. Not out of my gun.”

“Maybe,” Lutz said.

“And one more thing. Some joker used me for target practice down the trail.”

“You look all right to me,” Lutz said pointedly. “He must have been a pretty rotten shot.”

“Long range,” Brand said. He indicated the kerchief-wrapped bullet burn on his arm. “He singed me once. I had cover. But that’s not the point.”

“What is the point then?”

“I want to know which one of you gents sports a piece of artillery big enough to make that hole in the deputy.”

Lutz shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Don’t ask me,” he said, and slammed the door. “Better think about burying the fellow before he stinks up the stable enough to spook the horses,” he said, and tramped down the room to his chair by the fire’s warmth.

“I’m impressed,” Brand said, sarcasm edging his tones, “with the amount of concern you people show.”

“Relax,” Elias said again. “You cannot bury him in frozen ground.”

Brand held the man in a corner of his vision; his face was darkening. “If I have to, I’ll search this place top to bottom for that buffalo gun. Who owns it?”

No one offered to save him the trouble. Lutz merely glared. The old man was whittling on his leg; the homesteader was busy drinking. Neither met Jim Brand’s eyes. The girl came back from the kitchen with a heavy black coffeepot steaming at the spout; her look was enigmatic and faraway, aimed into nowhere as if perhaps she was seeing the shadows of her life.

Young McCasford watched Brand uncertainly and Elias merely produced a toothpick and began concentratedly to work it around in the corner of his mouth. His ironic glance followed Brand but his lips said nothing; he sat sprawled comfortably in the chair with his long legs stretched out. The rowels of his spurs were big but blunt. “In that case,” Brand said, “I’ll have a look around.”

“Hold it,” Lutz said. “Who made you responsible for finding Kirby’s killer?”

“I don’t much care about Kirby. It’s the man who ambushed me that I want. Maybe he’s got me branded as a witness.”

“Are you?”

Lutz’s question was followed by a stretch of silence. Brand could make no significance in anyone’s expression. He made no answer to Lutz’s question; he said, “The same gun shot at me that killed Kirby. I’ll find it sometime. It would save us time if the gent in question would face me now.”

Mitch Andrews stopped with the bottle half-lifted to his lips and sent a sideward glance at Brand, who did not miss that little movement; but the homesteader continued to drink, and the room was soon again filled with the soft musical chuckle that came mildly out of Elias’ throat.

“Somehow you don’t fit the picture of a lawman too good, Brand.”

“It’ll do till something better comes along. You got anything to tell me, Armando?”

The Mexican’s index finger traced the scar along his face. “I don’t know nothing about any deputies or any buffalo guns.”

“Maybe the deputy was chasing after you and your friend, hey?”

“Maybe,” Elias said amiably. “Maybe he was. But you’d have a hell of a time proving it, now, wouldn’t you?” The toothpick jutted defiantly upward from his mouth corner.

The barn was as likely a place as any to begin. Brand turned to the tackshed door. A final glance over his shoulder showed him the level, drily biting glance of the girl Michaela resting thoughtfully on him. Outside, the wind howled angrily, demanding to be let in.