At a bend in the road, the beautiful woman looked back and saw the dark stranger heading east. Why hadn’t she at least asked his name? There had been something fascinating about him. The penetrating blue eyes when he stared at her had put a hollow feeling in her stomach. Who was he? She had never seen him before.
She continued on to Santos, aware that her heart was acting strangely. She was Isobel Hartney and owned the Hartney Store in Santos, which had been started by her grandfather. She had been East, attending an academy for young ladies, when news reached her that Jonas Hartney, her father, had died suddenly. It gave her an excuse to cut short her education and hurry back to Texas to run the store.
Witnessing the stranger manhandle Krinkle and Doane had been a delight. Maybe Brad wouldn’t be quite so cocky as he’d become these last months since the passing of the autocratic Sanlee senior. Two weeks ago, or thereabouts, Brad Sanlee had gone riding off without a word to her. He had taken Ad Deverax and Rupe Bolin along. It was rumored that Brad had been in a rage that no one at his Diamond Eight seemed willing to discuss. One morning he had simply gone pounding off to the north with his two hardcases. Only Brad had returned. No one seemed to know what had happened to Deverax and Bolin. . . .
In O’Leary’s Saloon, the identity of the stranger had been no secret to Brad Sanlee. He had recognized him instantly, standing tall and brooding at the far end of the bar. It had brought back memories of an exciting afternoon in Tucson some three years before where he had been on business for his father. He had seen Lassiter stand up to Doc Kelmmer. Kelmmer, with eight notches in his gun, had intended to add Lassiter’s before the day was out. But it hadn’t worked out that way.
And today Lassiter, damn him, had turned down a decent proposition cold, which Sanlee couldn’t understand. After witnessing Lassiter blow two holes in Kelmmer quicker than a man can blink, Sanlee had heard talk from excited onlookers afterward. They had said that Lassiter was a cold-hearted killer who’d spit in the devil’s eye if somebody paid him. Tough enough to stare down a rattlesnake, others had said. Well, today he had refused a fine offer of four thousand dollars—a sum that Sanlee had figured to get back one way or another, once Lassiter was no longer of any use to him. The fact that Lassiter had flung the proposition in his face had been insulting.
Here he’d had all those frustrating days up north trying to pick up the trail of a wayward female, finally locating her and bringing her screeching and clawing all the way home. And then today having had a brilliant idea, which would have made up for all the frustration, when he’d seen Lassiter in the saloon.
Lassiter didn’t know it, but he was in for one hell of a big surprise down the east road. Sanlee grinned at the thought of Shorty using his fists. Lassiter would likely be in such bad shape he’d have to be carried out of Texas in a sack.
Sanlee gave a fierce grin to his three men who had remained in O’Leary’s. “Drink up, you bastards. It’s the last you’ll git till roundup’s over. Three weeks of pure hell in the Texas brush.”
After another drink, he mused aloud, “Kind of a shame in a way. Lassiter was a legend. An’ after today, it’ll be the end of it. . . .”
He broke off. Through the front windows of the saloon, he saw Krinkle and Doane come riding in. Doane was leaning far over, the saddle horn punching his big belly. He was bare-headed and the side of his face was streaked with dried blood.
Krinkle didn’t appear to be in much better shape. When he dismounted at the hitching post, his movements seemed to give him pain. He tried to help Doane out of the saddle, but the big man’s weight was too much. They both sprawled to the boardwalk. Men came at a run.
“Go out an’ give ’em a hand,” Sanlee ordered his three riders. Then he poured himself another drink and stared moodily at his reflection in the mirror in back of the bar.
“Son of a bitch,” he said suddenly. “Damn, if Lassiter ain’t livin’ up to his rep.” Then he began to laugh, pounding the bar with his fist so that plump-and-balding Sid O’Leary looked around in surprise. “One way or another,” Sanlee was saying, still howling with laughter, “I got to have that man in my hip pocket. He’s one I can use, by God!”
A shame-faced and angry Krinkle finally related what had happened, with embellishments in their favor. Sanlee didn’t believe him. Then Sanlee sent them down to Doc Clayburn’s. Doane was still stretched out on the boardwalk and had to be helped.
An hour later, Lassiter was still angry at the attempt of the two Sanlee men to box him in. He thought about Sanlee. It was logical that the man Tevis had named with practically his last breath would come from the area where he had been working.
He could see the Chandler ranch house up ahead, the rain-washed, dun-colored walls shining in the sunlight. It was located on a large rise of ground for defensive purposes and commanded a view of the miles of brush on all sides. Brush had been hacked away near the house but it was a constant battle to keep it from overrunning everything.
Some of Chandler’s vaqueros were by the bunk-house. When Lassiter rode up, they grew quiet. The segundo, Luis Herrera, regarded him gravely. He was chunky with a rope of mustache that looked as if it had been fashioned from black silk. He and his wife, Esperanza, lived in a small house in some cottonwoods. When Lassiter dismounted, the vaqueros drifted away.
“I guess you decide to take the job, no?” Herrera said with a faint grin.
“You a mind reader, Luis?”
“You come back. If you make up your mind not to take it, you keep going.”
“Something bothers me, Luis. You’re already segundo. The next step up is foreman.”
Herrera studied the pointed toe of his boot, which he dug into the mud. “I’m happy where I am.”
“Did the old man ever ask you to take over?”
Herrera thought about it, then looked Lassiter in the eye. “He worries now about roundup. He hears you’re a good man. He wants you to see him through.”
Although Lassiter wasn’t satisfied with the answer, he decided to accept it for the present. When he related the encounter with the pair of Sanlee men, whom he described, Herrera was impressed.
“A wonder Krinkle didn’t shoot out your liver an’ Doane bust your back in three places. Them’s tough hombres.” Then Herrera laughed. “You also a tough hombre, amigo.”
Lassiter went up to the house to see Chandler. The rancher was sitting in his parlor, his splinted leg resting on a stool. His eyes, faded from years of squinting into the Texas sun, studied Lassiter as he whipped around a chair to straddle.
“Lassiter, you make up your mind yet?”
“Like Herrera said, if I decided not to take the job, I wouldn’t have come back.”
Chandler’s seamed face broke into a smile. “That’s damn good news, Lassiter.” For a middle-aged rancher, incapacitated with a broken leg, he seemed unusually happy.
“Tell me something, Mr. Chandler . . .”
“Call me Rep. The only ones around here call me mister are my vaqueros.”
“How about Herrera?”
“Well, he’s a little different.”
“How come you didn’t make him foreman when Tevis left?”
Chandler studied a patch of cobweb on the ceiling. “Texas brush country is the toughest place on God’s earth to hold a roundup. I wanted a man with experience.”
“I’m sure Herrera has experience. . . .”
“You tryin’ to talk yourself outta the job?” Chandler chuckled. “Let’s have us a drink. Hurts me to move, so how about you fetchin’ the bottle an’ glasses?” He waved a long-fingered hand at a sideboard. “I tell you right off,” Chandler said as they were drinking. “I’m thinkin’ of askin’ you to stay on full time after roundup.”
“Well, now, I don’t know. . . .”
“I heard somethin’ today that kinda changes my plans.” Chandler seemed elated about whatever it was he had heard.
“That so?” It was all Lassiter could think to say.
“Yep. Might be fixin’ to get myself married.”
“Congratulations.” Lassiter took a swallow of the good whiskey. Across the room was a big stone fireplace and above it a pair of horns from a Chihuahua steer with the widest spread Lassiter had ever seen.
“I’ll want me an’ the new wife to do some pokin’ around this ol’ world. I done real well since the war an’ I figure to spend some of the money I made pushin’ cows up to Kansas.”
“The lucky lady a local girl?”
Chandler, still smiling, looked mysterious. “Best I don’t talk no more about it till I do some dickerin’.”
Lassiter finished his drink, wondering if Chandler’s reference to dickering meant the dowry of his bride-to-be.
He switched the subject to his encounter with Brad Sanlee and later with his two men. Then he mentioned the three names on Sanlee’s list that he wanted eliminated.
When Lassiter finished, Chandler sat staring down at a bead of whiskey that remained in the bottom of his glass. Then he drained it and said, “Brad was just joshin’ with you. Hell, they’re all good neighbors of mine an’ his. All good friends we are, mighty good.”
Lassiter got to his feet and put the empty glass on a table that bore a daguerreotype of a round-faced woman in a high-lace collar. “Sanlee offered me three thousand for the job at first. Then he raised it another thousand.”
“Brad’s mighty close with a dollar. Learned it from his pa who’d beat the bejeezus outta him if he spent more’n he should. Brad was just havin’ fun with you today.”
But Lassiter knew otherwise and sensed Chandler did also.
Then Chandler said with forced joviality, “Brad’ll be some put out that you busted up his two men. But it’ll make him understand you’re nobody to fool with.”
But Sanlee already knew that, Lassiter reflected, having witnessed him gun down a no-good braggart named Doc Kelmmer, a man wanted by half the sheriffs of the West.
Chandler’s pale eyes narrowed. “You come here lookin’ for somebody named Sam Lee, so you told me. Well, I figured you meant Sanlee, but I couldn’t figure out why you was so interested. Mind tellin’ me about it?”
“I heard the name is all.” This was more or less the truth. “But I got it all wrong.” He decided to say no more, not even about the girl’s part in it. He’d let everything unfold in natural order.
Chandler insisted on them having another drink, then talked about the cattle business.
“Reckon I’ll get Herrera to show me where we’ll be holding roundup,” Lassiter said.
“Seems like every year one or the other of the outfits loses a man or two. If it ain’t a man gettin’ his throat tore out with thorns or a steer horn in the belly, he’s liable to get kicked to death by a wild ladino. But you know all that anyhow. . . .”
“I worked roundup for Major Mitchell over east of here.”
“I recollect you sayin’ so, yes.” Chandler rubbed his splints. “An’ here I am laid low with this damn leg an’ with roundup comin’ on. An’ me likely takin’ a new wife.” He waved toward the daguerreotype on the table. “That there’s Bertha—been gone three years now. You reckon that’s long enough to wait before takin’ another wife?”
“Sure it is,” Lassiter said. The big house smelled of dust and cobwebs and field mice. Chandler’s new wife would have a cleaning job on her hands.
“Me takin’ this certain gal as my bride will make things some different in this part of the country,” Chandler mused.
Lassiter wondered in what way things would be different. But Chandler failed to explain. All Lassiter intended to do was to finally make Sanlee pay for his part in the murder of Vince Tevis and earn some money as Chandler’s ramrod at the same time. Chandler had set his pay at a hundred a month, plus 10 percent of the gross from a cattle sale. No one could fault those terms. Chandler had done well in the cattle business and evidently didn’t mind sharing it.
But why not share the good fortune with Luis Herrera? Lassiter wondered again. But he decided not to bring it up—at least for the present. He had a ranch to run which was trouble enough without mixing in sidelines, such as the segundo, or who Chandler might be taking as his bride. Some local widow, still personable and with a little money of her own, Lassiter assumed.
After going to the quarters assigned to him, Lassiter cleaned his .44 revolver and Henry rifle, to be ready for any eventuality. He was thinking of the hard-nosed bearded owner of Diamond Eight, Brad Sanlee.