Читать книгу Saddle and Ride: Western Classics - Boxed Set - Ernest Haycox - Страница 57

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Within three days Roaring Horse was visibly notified of the changing lines, distinctly warned that control had passed to other hands. The notification came swiftly and almost arrogantly, as if to strike a hard lesson home to those unreformed men who had fought against change. First—and this happened the night following Miz Satterlee's surrender—was William Wells Woolfridge's public avowal of ownership. Roaring Horse woke one morning to find his name emblazoned below the sign of the land office; found it proclaimed on the panels of the Gusher Hotel, on Ellsberg's Mercantile House, above the arch of the livery stable, and as far down the street as the lumber yard.

Woolfridge was shrewd enough to know that this wide-flung display would create resentment and bitterness among the discontented; Roaring Horse was not wholly won to his side. Yet he rode his high horse with a purpose. If it created anger he also believed it would create discouragement. He had established the fact of his ruthless ability to plow ahead; he hoped that the remaining dissenters would lose heart and leave the country.

The town of a sudden came a beehive of activity. Freighters rolled in, heavy laden with lumber for the yard, against the future needs of the settlers. New lodgepole corrals rose behind the stable, and a bronc peeler from Woolfridge's outfit drove in a bunch of half-wild saddle stock and took up the business of gentling them out on the rodeo field. A man slipped off the stage and joined the clerk at the land office. Maps burgeoned forth upon the walls of that office. Small piles of the desert's soil appeared in the window with a written analysis behind each. And there was an artist's picture of what Roaring Horse would look like five years hence—a town of brick buildings surrounded by a country of square, green farms in which great barns and fine houses and tall poplar trees stood in shapely arrangement. A crew of men began to dig out the foundations for some unknown structure beyond the rodeo field.

It all went to create a picture of optimism and growth, yet Roaring Horse looked on, half believing, half disbelieving. Even Woolfridge's flaring ad in the weekly paper failed to convince the skeptics. Roaring Horse had been exclusively a cattle country for some generations. It would remain so, believed these skeptics, after Woolfridge was dead and gone. But when on the fourth day a line of wagons drew into town and stopped abreast the land office the skeptics were silenced and an electric thrill of surprise woke the citizens from their doubt.

It was the vanguard of the homesteaders, the first answer to Woolfridge's broadcast invitation. Gay Thatcher, looking down from the window of her hotel room, saw the wagons, their occupants and contents, and marveled. Somehow the spectacle was so full of pathos that it almost made her cry. On these long and clumsy vehicles was packed the assorted gathering of a lifetime—plows, stoves, kitchen cabinets, barrels of dishes, bedding rolls. The household articles overflowed and hung outward from every possible angle of suspension. The men—she counted five—were middle aged and weather beaten; the women sat silently, bonnets pulled down and hands folded. Children and dogs swarmed to the ground the very instant this queer caravan halted. Presently Woolfridge came out of the land office and shook hands with the arrivals. And the men descended and slouched back with him. These were not the prosperous farmers from which a successful project was made; they were the type who had left one hopeless stretch of land and always were ready to travel on the hint of something better.

"It is criminal!" exclaimed Gay. "Nothing less than criminal! All the money they have will go into this desert and why, those poor women!"

They looked cold and very weary. Probably they were hungry as well. A baby cried somewhere in the clutter; the men returned, all smiling broadly, and swung up to the wagon seats. As the caravan proceeded down the street and turned into the livery stable Gay Thatcher saw that the women were smiling, too. Hope had met them. The girl turned away from the window, passionately angry. "It isn't fair!"

Probably Gay Thatcher would have thought it less fair had she overheard what Woolfridge told the men.

"You are the first to enter the project," said that gentleman, pointing to the counter map. "Therefore, you have unlimited choice. Area One, as you see it here, includes the lands nearest the main canal. Area Two is that part of the project somewhat more removed. I want to impress on you, however, that the soil in Area Two is as good as any. And since you probably are not prepared to invest a great sum of money, you will find exactly what you want there. Run your wagons into the stable, settle your families, and come back. I'll have a man with horses to take you on an inspection trip."

He was in the street later to see the prospective settlers off to the desert with their guide. And he added: "I want you to understand, gentlemen, that a part of my fortune is invested here. All of my fortune is back of it. I expect to make money—plenty of it." Smiling quite genially he returned to his office. Inside, the smile evaporated. He sent one of the clerks down the street and told the other to take a walk. Presently Luis Locklear came in, dour and stiff necked even in front of the man he knew to be his master.

"Have you done what I told you to do, Locklear?"

"Which?" grumbled the sheriff. "Yuh been tellin' me plenty, last couple days."

Woolfridge evidenced an impatient disgust. "You're too slow on your feet. You are, moreover, rather stupid. The combination bores me. I use unimaginative men by preference, but I expect them to act fast and I don't expect them to assume an importance they haven't got. I hope that is plain enough to you."

"Now look here, Woolfridge—"

"'Mr. Woolfridge' if you please, Locklear. I don't care for familiarity. I'm getting a little weary of that. Usually I don't have to warn my men more than once. Now what have you done about those fellows I brought in for you to use a few days back?"

Locklear's scowling, stubborn face was pulled around slantwise. He looked like a balky horse fighting the halter. This man knew very well he was kept and paid for; he knew exactly where he stood. Yet the authority of the star had inflamed his pride; the cantankerous, caviling spirit in him would not be still. He started to protest again. Woolfridge never turned a muscle, but the veil rose above his eyes a moment and Locklear, dull and self-wrapped man that he was, received a sharp, distinct warning to be on his guard. It shocked him—just as it would have shocked him to have looked down some hitherto empty hall and found a gun pointed at his chest. He had always credited Woolfridge with certain powers, but never for what appeared at that moment to lay half awake, half crouched beneath the freckled chubby cheeks.

"I did what you said," grumbled Locklear finally. "Sent all but three away."

"That is good," replied Woolfridge. "We've got no further use for them. Such machinery is best taken apart before it turns to do us damage. Don't catch that, eh? I am sorry I can't use simpler similes. We have no opposition to worry about now. If any develops I can call the boys from the ranch. I've got them weeded out. All remaining are very loyal. When you have nothing better to do, Locklear, ponder on that word—loyalty. It will solve much for you. Now, from this point on you are to play a small part. A humble part. Above all, a silent part."

"I'm sheriff of Roarin' Horse," muttered Locklear.

"Very true. Yet sheriffs are not immortal. Nor perpetual. Keep your mouth shut, Locklear. That's all." Woolfridge saw the vast frame of Theodorik Perrine ambling in the front door, and thus he closed the interview. Locklear scowled and went out. Perrine, in passing, grinned at the official, but Locklear only grunted and kept going. Perrine cruised toward Woolfridge's desk, the grin soon dying.

"No news."

"That is your bad luck, Perrine."

"Like sin it is," rumbled the big man. The reassurance fell away from him. It always did in the presence of Woolfridge. "I ain't through huntin' yet. I'll find him."

Woolfridge tapped his desk. "You had better find him. It's your only chance of salvation, my friend."

"What's that?"

Woolfridge had a certain sparse, tight-lipped smile for situations of this sort. He used it, whereat Perrine shifted his weight; sharp creases sprang along the giant's forehead. "Mack Moran knows; but, by Jupiter, I can't get near him unless I take the bunch an' shoot my way into Melotte's house. Melotte's crew and half o' Stirrup S crew are strung around the place 's if Moran amounted to somethin'."

"Then leave him alone," snapped Woolfridge. "I don't authorize you to carry on a war with Melotte. I only fight when I find it important. You run down Chaffee another way."

"He got a horse at Linderman's. He went t'ord Thirty-four Pass. But that's only a dodge. Don't figger he hit into the pass when it was snowin' so hard. Figger he kep' goin' due north. Yeah—only where could he go north?"

"Don't ask me questions. By the way, have you heard the rumor that Chaffee took tar impressions of the boot prints back of the stable on the night Satterlee was killed?"

Perrine nodded. "I'd shore like to get my fingers on 'em!"

"Worried, I suppose?"

"Me?" was Perrine's defensive grunt. "Why should I be? I didn't kill Satterlee."

"Ah." Woolfridge bent forward, bland as a summer tourist. "And who did kill the old gentleman, Perrine?"

Theodorik took one comprehensive glance at Woolfridge's eyes and hurriedly averted his own. "I dunno. Mebbe shot himself. It ain't none of my business and I dunno. I got plenty trouble with Chaffee as it is."

"You'll have a great many more unless you bag that gentleman," Woolfridge assured him. "Get out on the trail where you properly belong. Don't swagger around town. Keep away from the settlers. Put a seal on your tongue. The day of your swashbuckling around here is done. Next time I see you I will expect better news."

"Mebbe," said Theodorik, cruising out, "he went up Thirty-four Pass, after all. I'll have a look."

Woolfridge took his hat and casually followed Perrine to the street. He was of a mind to go to the bank, but he saw Gay Thatcher leave the hotel and cross to the livery stable. Immediately he followed and met the girl as she rode out; his hat came off, he smiled pleasantly, and took hold of the bridle. "Here you are, away for an afternoon's ride. Here I am, with nothing to do and badly wanting a talk with you. Well?"

The girl studied him soberly. "I think you would find me distinctly uninteresting this day."

"Never," Woolfridge assured her, and managed to put a quantity of bold gallantry into the statement. "Not if I talked with you all the rest of my days. That, by the way, is a pleasure I may beg for rather soon."

"You are a very certain man, Mr. Woolfridge. Beginning another campaign already?"

"I believe in going forward," said he "I surely believe in trying my luck."

"And finding other people's prices," she reminded him. "What do you think my price would be, Mr. Woolfridge?"

The humor left him; he became imperceptibly agitated. "Isn't that unkind, Miss Thatcher? I think I have always acted the proper part toward you, have always observed the punctilios. You have distinctly changed. You sound unfriendly to me. Am I to infer that you are warning me there is no chance of my winning?"

"Supposing I did tell you that?"

He stood straight beside the horse, a suave and well-groomed gentleman with the hint of sleeked-down physical comfort about him. Yet for all his efforts to maintain the even and urbane courtesy, he could not suppress the hardening of his freckled jowls nor the metal edge of his reply. "I would not accept the answer as definite," said he. The words were quite flat; they had a peculiar snap to them.

The girl watched the blending of emotions on his face with a somber interest. "Why not, Mr. Woolfridge? Don't you credit me with knowing my own mind?"

He shook his head. "Not that. But you don't see me yet quite as you should. When you do, perhaps you will change your opinion. I am sure of it."

"In other words," she answered him, "I do have a price, after all, and you are going to be very patient—and very relentless—until you find it. I have watched your business methods. You have a set type of finesse which seems to be very successful. But in applying the same methods to a woman I think you are in error. Oh, very much so. I gave you credit for being a little more versatile."

"What have you against me?" he demanded with an abrupt, rising impatience.

"I would hate to offend your pride," said she, "but perhaps it is not so much a definite objection as a plain lack of interest."

He did change color at that. And he was stung far more than she realized he could be. "No, Miss Thatcher. I flatter myself that either I make a friend or an enemy. I am not so colorless as to be merely endured. You have real reasons. You have heard things. I should like to know what they are—and to correct the error of them."

"Remember, Mr. Woolfridge, it is a woman's privilege not to be cross-examined."

He hardly bothered to conceal the irritation. "You are pleased to be mysterious again. And elusive. I once opened to you the doors of myself. Does that not imply the return courtesy? Miss Thatcher, you must give me some opportunity. I have that right. Really, I have."

"I doubt it. I never asked for your confidences. As for myself, I have never yet found the man in whom I cared to place my confessions. It is getting late—and I have a trip to make down to Melotte's."

It was somehow an omen to the girl that Woolfridge, through all the interview, held a tight grip to the bridle. He was that sure of his own strength and his own right. He had not begged her to stop; he had simply checked her from going by the grip he had of the bridle. Nor did he immediately withdraw it; rather he took his time, studying the girl's clear dark eyes at some length. He did not carry himself with the same arrogant command that he used toward his subordinates, but the self-contained confidence had quite the same effect on her.

"You have better access to Melotte's than I have, evidently," said he. "I wish you luck. Perhaps you may find the answer to a question that greatly interests me—the whereabouts of Jim Chaffee."

She betrayed herself then; all of a sudden her eyes were flashing and anger was in her throat. "If I find out, Mr. Woolfridge, you can be sure I will never tell you."

He released his grip on the bridle and stepped back a pace, once more in full command of himself; he smiled—a smile that outraged her. "I understand quite completely," said he, bowing his head. "Now I have something to argue against. When you return I want to show you my side of the case. I am sure I will convince you."

She galloped down the street, not replying. Yet he caught the state of mind she was in—angry at herself and at him, a little confused and much disturbed, and perhaps touched by a minute fear. He watched her go until the pony carried her around the curve of the trail. Then he closed both hands, snapping them like the blades of a jackknife, and walked back to the land office. "She will find I am not a man to be disregarded, nor lightly placed aside. She must listen to me. She must see all that I am, and all that I will be. I can convince her. Why not? I have made myself a power. Is a woman any more stubborn than a county full of men? What I have deliberately started and deliberately carried on I have never yet failed in. I won't with her. It may take time, but she will accept me by and by."

In the office he wrote a brief note to his man at the capital—that man in whom he had placed the business of getting out the advertisements.

Hunnewell:

Find out all that you can about the past life and history of Gay Thatcher. She comes from your city. Find out also what her connections are and why she is down here. This is to be your first and immediate business. Get at it and secure the facts. —W. W. WOOLFRIDGE

A man in love with a woman would never have written such an amazing order, never would have allowed it in his head for a moment. But William Wells Woolfridge, tremendously drawn to Gay Thatcher by her clear eyes and the fine carriage of her body as well as by the maturity of her mind, was not in love with her. He was in love with an obsession—the obsession of personal conquest, the exhilaration of scaling forbidding peaks and knocking over open resistance. Gay Thatcher, whatever else she meant to him, meant more than anything a beautiful acquisition to his gallery of rare objects at Wolf's Head.

Gay Thatcher rode rapidly toward Melotte's on the broad trail bearing the imprint of the recent stirring events. And as she traveled she grew more and more angry at having shown weakness before Woolfridge. For it was weakness to defy him. He was the kind of a man who seized upon such lapses of judgment and made weapons of them. She had given him a point of attack, just as others by some small slip of tongue or some still smaller act had played into his hands. It seemed to her he had the skill the patience of an Oriental, to which was added the Oriental's disposition to finally end some long drawn situation by a single stroke of the blade. It was incredible that so strong a man as Dad Satterlee could have crumbled overnight when faced against Woolfridge; and it was equally incredible that at the turn of an hour a whole county should somehow pass into the man's control. It amounted to that. Gay, rehearsing all that she had learned, felt the warning of fear. She could not dismiss Woolfridge. He wouldn't be dismissed.

So thinking, she came to Melotte's and rode down the yard—a yard resembling an armed camp by the number of Flying M and ex-Stirrup S men loitering about. Going into the house she went to the room where Mack Moran lay. Mack had been in pretty bad shape from a bullet through the shoulder, it had pulled the solid flesh off him and whitened his naturally ruddy cheeks. But he was past danger now and he smiled cheerfully up to the girl as she sat down beside the bed.

"Able to sit up and take nourishment yet?" she asked him, smiling back.

"This family will shore make a hawg out o' me, ma'am. Imagine chicken with dumplin's—corn bread with pear preserves. Gosh, I wish I'd been shot a couple years ago. They certainly is somethin' crooked about a universe which lays a man flat on his back before he discovers the institution of home cookin'."

"If you were married that is the way you'd eat every day," she said. "Something good has to be saved for the fellow who throws away his freedom, you know."

"Yeah," agreed Mack, and pondered over the matter with a scandalously matter-of-fact air. "All three of Melotte's girls are shore fine. One brings breakfast', one spells out with dinner, and the third sits in for supper. How's a man to decide which he ought to propose to? I'm plumb willin', but I can't nowise seem to decide."

"Possibly they may decide among themselves for you," she replied, trying to keep a straight face.

To Mack Moran that had all the earmarks of a splendid idea. "Now there's the whole thing boiled down. Wouldn't that be simple? Gosh, I even get chocolate to drink before I fall off to sleep. The oldest one—the one with the pritty hair—always fixes that for me. Chocolate—can yuh tie that, now?"

"Perhaps it has already been decided," said she, and then hoped he hadn't understood.

He muttered "yeah," staring out of the window. His mind was on other things. "Jussasame, I'd like to be on a horse. Ain't had a letter from Jim yet, and he said he'd drop a line right off."

"Mack," said she, the words tumbling headlong out of her mouth, "which way did he go, was he hurt, did—did he tell you anything I might like to know?"

Mack reached for his tobacco and answered the last question first. "He ain't a man to spread himself out loud, ma'am. Not even to me, which is his best friend. Way back—shore seems like ten years—when he saw yuh a-passin' on the street he said to me, 'Mack, I've got to meet that girl.' I reckon yuh'd like to know it. An' when Jim said that he meant a whole lot."

"Thank you," murmured Gay, and looked down to her lap. "I—I am glad to hear that."

"As for bein' hurt—you bet. Lee put some buckshot in his shoulder. That's been a-worryin' me ever since. And he was awful tired. Dunno as I ever saw him look more tired. Goin' down the canyon is a year's work piled up into a few blamed excitin' minutes. I ain't anxious to try again. Not me. But we shore made history. And he hated to leave. Felt like he was runnin' away. I had the daggondest time arguin' with him. The fool woulda rammed his head plumb into a loop. But I ain't had a letter—"

"Where did he go?"

"He aimed for the pass. Meant to cross over and into Bannock City. It's snowin' heavy up thataway. I can see it from the winda here. When it's white clear down to Sawyer Rock it means the pass is fifteen feet deep in drifts. Daggone."

"What would happen—what possibly might happen to him, Mack?" asked the girl, anxiety showing through.

"Nothin', as long as he's got two feet an' two hands. That boy can take care uh himself. But some o' that gang might 'a' winged him. And that buckshot could cause an awful lot of trouble. Son- of-a-gun, I wish I was able to ride a horse!"

She got up and went around the bed to look out of the window. "Yes, it's snowing hard up there. But it packs down in the pass, Mack. It always does. He'd have a good firm underfooting. And there's the cabin in case of trouble."

Moran was surprised. "How come you know all about those things? That's old-timer's talk."

She was apparently so engrossed in her own thoughts that she didn't hear Mack's question. "And he was supposed to have written you? Four days ago, from Bannock City? No, two days ago, leaving time for him to cross. Well, if he crossed he would certainly go to Bannock City—no other town in the valley. And the letter, if he wrote one on arriving, ought to be here now. Do you think he might delay writing, Mack?"

"No siree bob. He knows I'm on pins an' needles. He'd drop a line right off. He's punctual thataway."

She turned from the window with a strange and abrupt lift of her sturdy little shoulders. Mack, watching her, got the impression she had made up her mind about something at that instant. "I'm going back to town. Do you mind if I ask for your mail at the post office? If he has written a letter I'll bring it—to-night. If not—"

"Yeah, then what?"

She smiled at him and touched his sunburned fist. "Be good, cowboy. Eat all the chicken and pear preserves you can hold. If I don't see you again, Mack, say a prayer for me once." She was light hearted about it, but a small kink of wistfulness lay around her lips.

"Ma'am, who'm I to be sayin' prayers for you? If an old dawg like me got to mentionin' yore name to the Lord it shore wouldn't he'p yore reputation none in heaven."

"Reputation?" murmured the girl. The smile slowly left her. "I have heard the word before, always unpleasantly. Mack, do you know what I'd do if I were you? I believe I'd propose to the Melotte girl—the one who always brings you chocolate at night. So long." She was gone from the room, leaving Moran somehow dissatisfied with her departure. The touch of her hand had been cool, reassuring, with a brisk friendliness to it. Mack had never known a woman, who without trying to play the part of a good fellow among men, was as little self-conscious of her sex. She made a brave, contained figure; with always a reserve in her eyes that held others away. Only once had that reserve dropped to give another some sight of the wistful and lonely hunger of her heart.

She returned to town and stopped a moment at the stable. A little later she came out of the hotel with her traveling bag and stepped into a waiting rig. The driver whipped away through the graying afternoon. Fifteen miles to the south she got off at a lonely flag stop surrounded by the immensity of the desert night and spoke to the agent drowsing over his keys. Perhaps an hour later the agent built a bonfire of paper in the middle of the track and stopped an east-bound train. The girl got aboard and sat very quietly in one end of a day coach while the wheels made their swift tat-a-tat-tat rhythm along the rails. Presently they were climbing through a gorge with the trucks howling to the curves; and around midnight or a little later she left the train at another junction point, beyond the lowering outline of the Roaring Horse range. A six-horse stage waited beside the tracks with some long-faced gilded lettering hinting at the name of a hostelry. She was the only passenger, and the driver, peering through the gloom, saw nothing but the blur of her face.

"It's Gay Thatcher, John," said she, closing the coach door.

"Howdy, ma'am! Lordamighty, glad to see yuh again! Say, it's cold. You better take my laprobe."

"No, thanks."

The coach rolled off, team stretching to an even gait. She drowsed and woke, and drowsed again while the clumsy vehicle pitched along the uneven road. And always there was in her mind the memory of something fine and pleasant; once she repeated a name very softly to herself. "Jim Chaffee." And added: "Gentleman." Before dawn the coach brought her down the main street of Bannock City. She ate breakfast by the smoky kerosene lamp of an all-night restaurant and went directly to the stable. It was a misty daylight before she left town, bundled up in another rig. In the interval she talked to the clerk of the hotel and to the night marshal, asking only one question of each. And then she was away, leaving behind her the news of her passage. The men who had seen her said nothing at all. But there was one woman in the hotel—the wife of the clerk—who had risen early and who had caught a moment's glimpse of the girl. And this woman spoke with a bitter acid in her words.

"So that Thatcher girl is back again. But she ain't got courage enough to wait until folks can see her brazen face by plain day."

The clerk was sleepy and therefore he made a tactical error. "Oh, she's all right."

"You hush! She always could pull the wool over the eyes of menfolk. Don't start that argument again. It's been dead five years. It's better left that way. She ought to have the decency to keep wide of this valley."