Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 22

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Major Bob was buried at sunset on a knoll just back from the river. And after the subdued moment of farewell, his name was completely erased from the lips of the crew. Nor would they ever again utter it until time had made a tradition of his memory. Grimly the men went about the infinite chores ahead of them; Tom walked into darkness and was not seen again that night by a living soul. For him there would be always the ring of his father's last words, the memory of the promise he had made. Yet, like the rest, he would give no sign of what that crashing moment of disaster had meant to him. This was a land of the living, a land wherein men displayed a firm countenance to the world and kept their emotions locked away in deep vaults. Not that they were unfeeling or unemotional, for, if the truth were told, the members of that outfit possessed beneath their rough exteriors a womanlike sense of delicacy. But to have openly showed it would have been a confession of weakness. And weakness was fatal.

Of all the outfit Lispenard was the only one to transgress the rule of silence. Possessing no sense of loyalty toward the Circle G, the whole affair left him unmoved. In fact it struck him as being grimly grotesque, a parody on a play he had once seen back East. And he utterly missed the significance of the crew's holding aloof from Tom that night. At supper he marked Tom's absence, and it made him suggest that the cook bang the pan a little louder. "Nobody likes cold beans and coffee."

Not a word was said in answer, and presently, irked by the unresponsiveness, he spoke again.

"I used to think a man was batty when he got to the stage of talking to himself. Now I know different. Either I talk to myself or I howl at the moon like a poisoned wolf. Ever hear that story..."

Quagmire flung his emptied tin plate on the ground so hard that it skipped into the fire. "Oh, shut up! Ain't you got a lick of sense?"

Lispenard reared his head, and the sudden access of fury within him made his heavy lips tremble. He would have called Quagmire to account on the spot save that every eye was bent upon him in cold disfavour; it was the same expression he had met with ever since the second day from Dodge. He had no friends in that outfit, and well he understood the fact. If San Saba were only here now...At the thought he called himself to account. The foreman was a murderer and a fugitive. No, that wasn't exactly so, according to Western standards. San Saba had only exercised his privilege of shooting first; the man had gotten good and tired of the oppressive Circle G atmosphere—just as he, Claude Lispenard, was beginning to tire of it. And San Saba had been man enough to give vent to his feelings. The Blond Giant mildly applauded him for the act. Rising, he walked into the shadows. According to the Western code, a man was responsible only to his conscience, and at the thought Lispenard grinned up to the sky. It was a comforting thought, especially to one whose conscience had always chafed a little under restraint. A comforting thought.

"By George," he muttered. "I like this country. Not all the cursed work and grit of a cattle herd, but I like the free-and- easy idea. Some of these days I'll drift away on my own hook. After I get better acquainted with that little spitfire. Wasn't she a beauty, though!"

Dawn and work. Let dead men rest; this land laid down its challenge—struggle or be defeated. And in the subsequent two days Tom Gillette recalled the ominous phrase his father had voiced. "Something tells me you'll have to fight to hold it." So it would be. To begin with, this little corner of Dakota seemed more barren than almost any piece of ground they had traversed. The water holes were few and already dry. The bluffs of the river admitted but two trails down to water level within a space of ten miles. So much for summer; when winter came he prophesied he would lose many cows in the boxlike draws that broke the rugged surface.

"I'll do no more exploring," he murmured. "Here we camped and here we stay."

Lispenard, riding glumly alongside, bent an ironic glance at his companion. "What was that subterranean threat?"

"Nothing."

"Aha! The abysmal silences of a strong man. Volcanic emotions beneath an iron mask. Really, Tom, I'm beginning to falter. A set of building blocks would afford me the thrill of a lifetime."

"You'll come out of it, Blondy."

The Blond Giant swore irritably. "Good Lord, don't talk as if I were a kid to be humoured. I'm twenty-one."

"Then act like it," replied Tom. But he followed this by laying a fraternal arm across the man's shoulder. "Just forget that, Blondy. We all get short tempered now and then. Best way is to keep a tight tongue."

Lispenard drew away from Tom's arm and rode along silently. Tom, sweeping the terrain, saw a dust cloud kicking up to the east, and for the next half hour he watched it trail up and down the ridges, coming nearer. Presently the figure of Lorena Wyatt became visible, riding like an Indian. The Blond Giant's whole attitude instantly changed.

"By gad, there's our prairie flower! Tom, for the Lord's sake introduce me—introduce me! Did you ever see so compact a little beauty?"

She drew up and waited until they had approached, her face maintaining a gravity that her black eyes were forever threatening to dispel. She had but one noncommittal glance for Lispenard's sweeping bow and his broad smile. It was to Tom she paid attention.

"I'd like to see you alone a moment," said she.

"Oh, come now," protested Lispenard, "we're blood brothers. Cross my heart if that's not the literal truth. Am I to be denied the sunlight altogether?"

A swift glance flashed between the girl and Tom. She straightened in the saddle and waited; Lispenard tarried, still smiling. "Formal introductions seem to be de trop out in these broad stretches. Who am I to fret over the fact? My lady, you have one more humble servant. Fact..."

"Have you no manners?" interrupted the girl scornfully.

That stopped the Blond Giant and, for all his sunburnt colour, a flush spread over his cheeks. "Manners? Oh, come. Who is there to judge manners out here? This is no drawing room, is it?"

"Most Easterners make that mistake," said she. At which Tom turned to Lispenard and cut off further parley. "Stay here." He and the girl rode along the prairie a hundred yards or so before she came to a halt.

"I've heard. Oh, I'm sorry!"

"Thank you for that."

She hurried on. "I never knew until we got to the river that the two outfits were racing for the same spot. San Saba—he's crooked, he's a born traitor! If I'd had any idea he was with you I'd have warned you."

He turned that over in his head. "Would you have told me even against your father's will?"

Storm swept out of her small body. "I would! I hate crookedness, I won't stand for it. Dad hired him—I don't know why—some years ago. Kept him even after I wanted to fire the man off the ranch. If I had been a man I'd have used a gun on San Saba. He's a snake. There's been things lately that have made me suspect..."

But her sense of honesty came in conflict with an ingrained loyalty, and she stopped a moment, proceeding wistfully. "When I saw you near Ogallala and gave you just my first name, it wasn't—it wasn't because I was trying to conceal anything. I just wanted to tell you that."

Tom shook his head. "You couldn't be crooked."

"How do you know?" she demanded with that characteristic frank curiosity.

The sunlight made a playground of her face, sparkling against the black eyes, losing itself in the dark hair beneath the hat brim and in the hollow of her throat. Most women he knew, looked out of place in riding habits, no matter how fashionable. But this girl, dressed in the roughest of men's clothes, couldn't hide the rounding freshness of her body or the upthrust of vitality that came with every gesture and word.

"I know it," said he.

She appeared suddenly confused and dropped her eyes, whipping her quirt across the saddle skirts. "A woman can ask some foolish things," said she. "That's why I'd like to be a man. Anyhow, I wasn't trying to rope any information out of you."

"We're going to be good neighbours," drawled Tom.

"Just you know it," she said with a lift of her chin. "It's a darn big country to be fighting in. Or—to be lonesome in." She nodded toward Lispenard, who sat moodily in the distance. "Who's that?"

"An old Eastern friend of mine."

She smiled, a frank, sweet smile that seemed to ask pardon. "Then I'm sorry for having been so abrupt with him. I thought at first he was just—just another specimen. There's plenty of them nowadays. Just tell him, though, that manners are always welcome."

"He's got much to learn."

"Haven't we all?" she asked. And the two of them looked at each other until the girl's horse moved restlessly. She raised her small compact shoulders, gathering in the reins. "If ever I hear of San Saba I'll let you know. So-long."

"So-long."

She fled across the uneven ground and disappeared. Tom returned thoughtfully to his companion, and they cruised homeward. Lispenard held his own counsel as long as he could, which was no great length of time:

"Well, what's it all about? What's the secret?"

"Nothing," drawled Tom.

"Oh, by gad! Tommy, I'm truthful when I say this Western taciturnity galls me like the devil! Have you forgotten all the old fraternal confidences?"

Tom Gillette had not meant to reveal the conviction that had matured in his head over the long northern drive. Nevertheless, it slipped out now. "Blondy, the time for that is all behind us. The time and the place as well. Men change—all things change."

"I have sensed as much," replied Lispenard drily. "A severance of diplomatic relations, as it were?"

"No, not at all," said Tom. "Our past four years were years for talking. From now on it is the time to be doing. God knows there's plenty of that ahead."

Lispenard relapsed into one of his sullen spells; his big lips were splayed in a kind of a pout and his whole face mirrored dissatisfaction. At the chuck wagon he abruptly left Tom and had nothing more to do with him all the day. As for Tom, he regretted speaking out as he had done, and he would have made amends—save that he couldn't make headway against the conviction that his one-time friend was in the process of a mighty transformation; that the man's impulses for good and bad—always hitherto more or less evenly matched—were being forged by some kind of internal fire. The dominant traits would triumph, the lesser ones would crumble. Tom was afraid of the result; he had more than once wished Lispenard were back East where the restraints of a more complex social order would take hold.

Quite promptly more important affairs put the man from his mind. Foremost was the matter of getting some legal claim to water rights along the river. Next was to get trace of San Saba. Then cabins and pens were yet to be built against fall and winter. Leaving Quagmire in charge of this last chore, Tom struck out for town, thirty miles north, early next morning. The route led him down the river until he was within Wyatt's new range, then across a ford and over the undulating prairie. By eleven he was at Nelson, seeking out a surveyor.

Nelson was a cattle town on the boom. Along the solitary street ranged a double row of buildings not yet old enough to have lost the sweet, aromatic pine smell, and at the same time old enough to have received a baptism of bullet holes through the battlemented fronts. But one structure boasted paint; and naturally enough this was the saloon. At the end of the street three or four tents were up; beyond marched the prairie. Railroad tracks skirted one side, and a depot squatted a hundred yards distant, a little removed from which were rows of cattle-loading pens. Considering the size of the place, it seemed crowded this day as Tom Gillette laid his reins over a rack and cruised slowly through the street; crowded with every taciturn and picturesque type of the frontier. Cow hands, nesters, trappers, and Indians strayed from the adjoining reservations, each man wearing whatever suited his taste, from buckskins to four-point Hudson Bay blanket capotes.

Tom finally found a surveyor and described his location along the river. "What I want is the section, township, and range lines, so that I can find them on the land-office plats. After that I want you to come over to my place and lay off the corners."

The surveyor, whose skin was like a piece of yellow cloth long faded in the sun, explored his maps. "That ford you say is in front of your place must be Sixty Mile Crossing. And sure it is. Well, then"—writing a set of figures on the back of an envelope—"there will be your claim. 'Tis the fourth man you are who has come to me this week on the same business along that river. The country is settlin' up, make no mistake. You understand, of course, that this land all lies along the river. Back from it the country is open and unsurveyed. You've got only squatter's right there."

"That's all that's necessary just so I get legal claim to my water right. The rest is safe enough on squatter's right."

"To be sure—to be sure," relpied the surveyor. There was a lingering note of doubt in his words, and Tom tried to pin him down.

"Well, where's the catch?"

"Ah," replied the surveyor, winking. "And where is the catch? I'd like to know it as well. I'm sayin' nothin', mind me. Uncle Sammy is a grand uncle, but it happens sometimes he's short- sighted. Some o' his nephews an' adopted sons ain't above cheatin' him. Never mind. You want me to come out, then? All right—I'm all-fired busy, but I'll make it tomorrow."

"Good enough," said Tom, rising. But the surveyor gave him a sly glance, murmuring:

"D'you happen to know who might be your neighbour on the north side o' the river?"

"Directly across from me, you mean?"

"Directly across? I can see you ain't long in the country. Not only directly across from you, but in every direction your eye might happen to extend. Up and down the north side a good hundred miles. Mebbe fifty miles in depth. Dunno, eh? I will be tellin' you."

His mouth closed like a rusty trap. Tom fancied he could even hear the surveyor's jaw muscles squeak with the sudden action. Through the open door of the surveyor's office walked a compactly built fellow wearing Eastern clothes and a stiff-brimmed hat. His was a pleasant face—or one upon which pleasantness had been forcibly imprinted. There was nothing much about him to catch the eye, no singularities of habit or gesture. He looked at the pair with a faint smile, raising his arm.

"Hope I'm not intruding."

The surveyor's left eyelid, turned away from the newcomer, fluttered at Tom. "Now, it's the same old politeness, Mister Grist. I was just tellin' this man he'd be havin' you for a neighbour. Might as well be gettin' acquainted. Mister Gillette—another Texan—will be facin' you at Sixty Mile Ford from now on until..."

"Until what, you mysterious Irishman?" asked the newcomer, still amiable.

But the surveyor shook his head. "I'd better be mindin' my own business. Sure. Mister Gillette, this gentleman's name is Barron Grist. He's resident agent—ain't it a fancy name for a foreman?—of the P.R.N. Land Company. It's the P.R.N. your eyes will get weary with lookin' at on the north side of the Little Mizzoo."

Tom shook hands with Grist, the man offering him a limp grip. "You Texans certainly are swarming north this season, Here we were, a wild set in a wild land. And all of a sudden here comes the great migration. Oh, well, we couldn't expect to have it to ourselves forever. Who led you Texans out of Israel?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you," said Tom. "Our Southern prophets have none to sing their songs."

"Singin', ha!" grunted the surveyor. "Little good singin' will do a livin' soul in this country."

Grist laughed. "Don't let this purveyor of scandal influence you too much, Mr. Gillette. I bear a bad name in this country, and he'll tell you many things. But as a neighbour I wish you luck. If at any time I can help you..." Without finishing the sentence he nodded and backed out. The surveyor winked portentously.

"Mark him well," said he. "Whether you want it or not, you'll have business with him. Oh, yes."

"I didn't know land was valuable enough to speculate in," offered Tom.

The surveyor passed him another knowing glance. "Land? Well, it ain't land the P.R.N. profits by. It's cattle. Eastern money back of it. They've got a beef contract with the gov'ment. Deliverin' all their stuff to the Indian agencies. The redskins have got to be fed now that we've licked 'em and corralled 'em on reservations."

"Sounds profitable," mused Tom.

"It's rotten with profit," broke in the surveyor with a trace of energy. "Now, you'll be thinkin' to try that scheme, eh? Forget it. Takes a pull to land a beef contract. No, it's cattle—not land. But they're hell on wheels to get all the range they can. I'm tellin' you. Beg, borrow, and steal. How they get title to all this unsurveyed stuff is beyon' me. But they do. An' moreover, they put dummy homesteaders on every piece they can north o' the river. See?"

"But not south of the river in my country?"

The surveyor shook his head. "Guess it's a policy o' theirs not to bother with that country. Not now at least. But the way they're spreadin' it looks as if they mean to corral half of Dakota."

"I'm obliged," said Tom, starting for the door. "I'll see you on the ranch tomorrow, then."

"So you will." And as a last word, the surveyor added a warning. "Don't tell the land-office fella any more o' your business than's necessary. See?"

Tom grinned and turned into the street. Every section had its gossip, and quite evidently the surveyor fulfilled that function here. He discounted the man's warning fifty per cent by the time he had gone a block and an additional twenty-five per cent when he reached the land office. But after he had seen the official therein and had wrangled twenty minutes over a host of minor regulations he dropped the last discount. Petty rulers have a way of standing on their book of instructions and exercising their little quota of authority; the land-office agent at Nelson was inclined to ruffle Tom's fur the wrong way. Later, in the street again, he swore mildly to relieve his anger, mailed a pocketful of eastbound letters, and came squarely against his next piece of business.

It was a grim business, this canvassing of saloon keepers and merchants. Each time he put the question to them he understood he sowed another seed of trouble. It would be public knowledge within the hour that he sought San Saba, and thus a public feud was developed and nurtured. Nevertheless, he pursued the search until the train whistled across the desert and the town abandoned its chores and went out to the depot. At that point he gave up, got on his horse, and left Nelson. The engine dragged its string of cars to the depot and stopped, panting like a dog after a long chase. Smoke billowed from its funnelling stack. A scattering of gunshots announced the civic greeting, and a bell clanged through the sultry air.

From a distance Tom watched the train disgorge its travellers, then went on. And not until he was halfway home did it strike him he had avoided putting the question to the likeliest of all people—the United States Marshal. Why not? According to Eastern standards it should have been his first move. Weren't the law and the officers of the law for the purpose of maintaining justice? Theirs was the right to seek and—and perhaps to kill—San Saba. It wasn't his right.

Oh, yes, he knew the argument from end to end. And throughout four or five years it had become a part of his belief. Yet how swiftly the West had reclaimed him—how strong was the grip of the frontier code! A man must take care of his own quarrels, never delegate them. To shirk this was to confess weakness. And that weakness would follow him like an accusing finger wherever he went. He was the son of his father, a citizen of the land. For good or bad he had to live according to Western ethics. For good or bad.

The struggle was so strong in him that he stopped the horse and turned about, facing Nelson again, wistfully eyeing the horizon; all very well was this complicated reasoning in a complicated society. Back there they were sheltered by that thing they chose to call the law. Out here it was the other way around—the law's mantle never quite reached far enough. Beyond its fringes each man rode as a judge and a jury.

"No," he muttered, "I can't do it. It's my quarrel. I've got to settle it with San Saba myself. Now or twenty years from now."

And he went on toward his ranch, well knowing he had at that point thrown overboard most of what the East had give him. Somehow he felt the better for it. Life became less difficult; the face of the wide prairie seemed to be fairer, seemed to say, "you are mine." The guideposts of his life were few, but they were distinct, immovable: never to go back on his word; to give all humans the right to live the way they wished to live in return for that same right to himself; to uphold this right with the last breath of his body.

The train from the East brought Nelson's mail. And among other letters was a long set of directions for Barron Grist. He got these things weekly from the Eastern owners of the P.R.N., and usually they were but reminders of old instructions or slight additions. Going to the hotel with his ranch boss, who had ridden in a little before, he settled into a chair for a half hour's hard reading.

"Soon as I get this digested I'll go out with you," he told the ranch boss. "Wonder they wouldn't quit this nonsense. I know every syllable before I break the seal."

But he found, from the very first paragraph, that the P.R.N. had arrived at a new fork in the road and were ordering him to go out and accomplish certain chores. As he ran into the carefully detailed pages his smile vanished. Once he glanced up to the ranch boss with genuine amazement, murmuring, "My God!" Upon finishing, he sat in a study and, not satisfied, reread the whole letter. Suddenly he jammed it in his pocket and rose. "Come on, let's get away from this mess." Together, the pair rode west from town, following the same path Gillette had taken for a good distance. The ranch boss kept his peace a good two miles before asking, "Well, what's the excitement now? More cows, more contracts?"

Grist answered indirectly. "Sometimes I think those fellows back East are stark, staring crazy."

The ranch boss, who himself never had owned anything more valuable than a sixty-dollar saddle, felt he understood capitalists better than that. "Crazy? Well, I guess not. Not more'n ten per cent crazy, which is the rate of interest they risk their dollars on."

Grist shook his head. "The P.R.N. has got to make it twenty per cent, or consider business very poor. Now, do you know what they calmly tell me to go and do? Not satisfied with the land they own or control on the north of the Little Missouri, they've decided to take in the south side of the river. In other words, I've got to squat on both banks."

"Just like that," mused the ranch boss. "Just reach out an' embrace it atween both arms. Don't they know they're about three months too late to buy or scare the existin' occupants?"

"As to that," replied Grist, "I've got full authority to deal with the Texans. To purchase or to threaten."

"Do they say 'threaten'?" inquired the ranch boss.

"Of course not. You never heard an illegal sound issue from that bunch. But I'm supposed to read between lines. That's what I draw my pay for. Why didn't they spring this a couple of months earlier? Now I've got to argue and bargain—and Lord knows what else."

"That what else part of yore speech is correct," asseverated the ranch boss, rolling a cigarette. "Lessee—they's six outfits south o' the river now. Eapley, Diggerts, Love, O'Morrell, Wyatt, and Gillette. You'll pay high, Grist."

"Oh, I don't worry about spending money," was Grist's irritable answer. "It's their money, and they don't mind spending it on land. But it's the definite way they tell me to get it. No ifs or buts about the matter. Just go and get it. That bunch is up to something. By Joe, I feel sometimes like pulling out and letting the other fellow do all this drudgery—"

The ranch boss chuckled. "You'll think twice on that. Grist. The pay is plumb too good." He squinted at the sun. "It sure gets me. Now supposin' they pay the top price for every man's squatter right. Top prices for every man's herd, to boot. How do they expect to net a profit? I don't see it. Even sellin' rotten beef to the gov'ment won't pull 'em out of the red.

"It's not beef," said Grist.

"Then what is it?" demanded the ranch boss. "Gold? Shucks, no. What else is val'able?"

But Grist had no answer for the question. They had come to a lower ford of the river, and here he parted from his ranch boss. "I don't know the answer. All I know is that I've got to get it, one way or the other. If they won't sell..."

The foreman was very matter of fact about it. "Well, we've done it afore and we can do it again. Ain't we gettin' good wages?"

Grist nodded and turned into the ford. "Here goes. Might as well start early."