Читать книгу Rim of the Desert - Ernest Haycox - Страница 7

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DURING the middle of the afternoon Grat DePard came down to the Black Bluff ford, twelve miles east of Aurora Brant's place, with four hundred steers intended for the railroad stock pens in Prairie. Red John and a crew of five did the moving, but DePard went along to be sure they were not pushing the beef too fast, thereby reducing the marketable poundage. For Grat DePard was an owner who ran his outfit with a hard fist and permitted no variation from his instructions.

In those hills he was the largest owner and the greatest power. Rough and illiterate as he was, some bitter brand of ambition drove him through alternate tempers; he could be cunning and soft, he could rise to a tremendous rage. In every respect he was the desert autocrat insisting upon his rights and his authority, suspicious always, a grasper of pennies and a watcher of potato parings in his kitchen, a schemer of great schemes, a respecter of one thing only—power. He was a sagebrush Prussian general on his horse, planning his own distant ends.

Jesse Morspeare, riding down the Silver Bow, found him here and gave him the news.

"Money?" said DePard. "What for?"

"She wants to set up a store in Garret's old cabin," said Jesse Morspeare, and held himself respectfully still, anxiously wanting to be important in Grat DePard's eyes.

DePard rode to the ford, talked a moment with the crew, and came back with Red John. He said: "We'll go see that woman," and turned his horse. The three rode westward along the rim of the river.

Morspeare said: "Think I'll win, Grat?"

"I'll take care of that."

"Lot of homesteaders against us."

Grat DePard looked at Morespeare. "Be a good idea if you'd keep your damned dumb hands off those people until the election's over."

"You mean Spackman?" asked Morspeare anxiously. "I was only tryin' to show the ranch boys I was on their side."

"They knew that already. You go back to town and keep your feet where they won't hurt anybody."

Morespeare obediently swung away. Red John grinned. "You'd do just as well to run an ape for sheriff. Jesse ain't bright."

"I'll furnish the thinking."

Short of sundown they splashed across the shallow ford and came upon the yard of the Garratt cabin. Aurora had arrived home a few minutes before and was inside; when she came out and thus unexpectedly faced them she had an instant of shock which brought her to a sudden halt at the doorway. Immediately she thought of the rifle she had bought in town. It lay unloaded on the table behind her.

Red John first compelled her attention by the attack of an unmistakably acquisitive glance which went along her body with a complete interest. He was a full-blooded man, thoroughly sure of himself and never doubtful of his mastery. She saw the bright hunting glint flare in his eyes and at once turned her face to Grat DePard.

DePard spoke in a way that was like the personal pronouncement of law. He was so certain that he didn't even bother to threaten her. "You'll get no money and you'll start no store, neither on this side of the river nor on the other. As for homesteading. You're plainly not able to do it. Even if you were able. I wouldn't permit you to break this sod. This is my graze. You knew that when you moved over. Maybe you believed I'd let you stay, you being a woman. I'm a businessman first and a gentleman second. You move back where you came from. Better if you left the country altogether."

"Is this your land, Mr. DePard?"

"My land."

From the corner of her eyes she noticed Jim Keene coming across the valley at a steady run. "You are mistaken," she said. "This is government land. You know that."

DePard waved it aside. "Let's not talk about it. You've been in this country long enough to know law is one thing and possession another. I've got possession. Law or no law, I won't let homesteaders break up my graze. If I did I'd be out of business. You're a practical woman. You fight for your rights. So do I. If you were in my place you'd be doing the same thing I'm doing. I admire your courage, but you ain't staying."

Keene came into the yard. He stopped his pony and leaned back on the saddle and she noticed the same expression on his face she had seen in Prairie the previous night—the alert interest breaking through idle composure. His arrival produced a change in the yard at once. Grat DePard threw a swift glance at him and afterwards ignored him. Bui Red John was no longer self-contented; he swung his horse to face Keene and he placed a close watch on him, his own muscles obviously tightened for anything that might come. His assurance, Aurora thought, seemed to have been jarred, and for some reason he hated Keene at once.

She spoke to DePard. "Would you shoot a woman, Mr. DePard—as you did Garratt?"

Red's glance moved at her. His eyes widened, he stirred his shoulders.

"I can skin cats in a lot of ways," said DePard. "Think about that."

"Would you have your men shoot me?" she insisted.

Irritation came to DePard's voice. "Never mind the questions. There'll be no shooting, but you'll go."

She wondered at Keene's continuing silence. He sat on the horse and seemed to be lost in pleasant memories. Smoke curled around his eyes and his hands were folded on the saddlehorn. She turned into the house and got the Winchester and came to the doorway again.

Red John said, "Now, now," and liked the sudden turn of the scene not at all. He wheeled his horse to face Aurora and threw a questioning look at DePard. The situation had gotten out of control for Red John; he was up against the unknown factor of a woman with a gun. DePard straightened, immediately pulling his muscles tight.

"Have you ever had a woman shoot at you, Mr. DePard?" asked Aurora.

DePard shrugged his shoulders. "I thought you were a practical girl. Maybe I better point out you can't stand in that door with a gun twenty-four hours a day."

"You're accustomed to having other men do your dirty chores," she observed. "But if they touch me or anything that is mine I'll know that you ordered it. You've taught me a trick. You ride through this country a good deal—through the hills at night. You can't always be watching the brush, can you?"

"Don't talk like that to me, girl," said DePard, wounded to the pith of his vanity. "Try that and I'll put you in jail. There's law to cover that."

"What law?" she asked him, so gently. "We are practical people. That is what you said. The law will do you no good if you're shot from ambush."

DePard said nothing more. Wrenching his horse around he beckoned at Red and raced away with the foreman behind him.

Keene said: "Fine—fine."

She was weak, her courage was gone.

"They'll leave me alone, Jim." she murmured and desperately tried to believe it.

He said: "Can you shoot?"

"Yes."

"You've made your bluff. Never back up on it. If I'm not around and a Broken Bit man passes within fifty feet of this cabin throw a bullet at him. I never saw a man yet who liked that." He had kept his eyes on the departing pair and now saw them stop a short distance down the valley. Presently Red John came back, made a wide sweep of the house and crossed the ford to the Silver Bow flats. Grat DePard continued up the valley. Keene turned his horse and moved out on the heels of the Broken Bit owner.

Grat DePard had said to Red John: "Go back to the flats. You tell those homesteaders if they give that girl any help of any kind they'll suffer for it. Tell them I don't want to catch any of them on this side of the river at any time."

Red John went away. Grat DePard moved up the valley, his temper simmering in him, his mind quick and crafty. He didn't look back but he knew Keene was following him. He had deliberately ignored Keene during the talk with Aurora Brant. Recognizing Keene's type at first glance, he had not quite been able to gauge his possibilities, and therefore had let him alone; for DePard, autocratic as he was, never quarreled with a man until he knew the strength of the man and never picked a fight until he had chosen his own ground. When he reached the beginnings of Keene's dugout and realized that Keene was still coming, he turned his horse and waited.

When Keene came up the first thing DePard said was:

"This yours?"

"Mine. Any comments?"

DePard permitted himself no hard words then for he saw he faced a bad moment. Keene gave him a glance that startled him to the bottom of his belly, it was so openly in search of trouble. This wasn't the same man at all. DePard said guardedly:

"What are you hot about, friend?"

Keene said: "You damned mongrel—you're yellow."

DePard spoke through his close lips. "In that, friend, you are mistaken." His left hand held the reins above the horn, never moving; his right hand was carefully on the pommel; and thus he held himself together, riding out this terrible moment. He knew his own ability as a fighter but he could only guess about this other man's skill; and his guess, when he made it, bothered him considerably. Keene's readiness came right at his teeth; the man wanted to fight. So, unsure of his chances, DePard made his own silent play for survival.

Keene circled his pony completely around DePard. DePard remained rigid, not venturing to look back. The sun was down and grayness ran in sheets across the flats, and in this grayness DePard's face was strained and dark. Keene faced him again. Keene said: "You've got that girl worried. Don't bother her again." DePard made no move until Keene gave him a nod; and then he rode northward, sitting rigid on the saddle and making no extra motion with his hands until the back of his neck loosened. Then he reached for a cigar and looked at his fingers when he lighted the match. He was sweating but his hands were steady. He drew a great breath of smoke into his lungs, relishing the bite of that smoke; and he had his moment of triumph in realizing that his ability to be humble had saved him from disaster.

What puzzled him was Keene's quick change of temper. In the store yard Keene had rested silent on his saddle; during the next few minutes he had changed to a fellow plainly ready to kill. Remembering that recent scene, DePard felt the backlash of its possibilities. For a fact, something very close to death had jumped straight out of the twilight at him.

"Mighty proud," reflected DePard. "And mighty foolish unless he had a scheme in his bonnet. What'd he do it for?"

The memory of his own part in the scene, strangely, did not humiliate him. For DePard was a man who, despising the human race in general, held an enormous respect for courage when he saw it. To DePard a man was top dog or he wasn't; the top dog showed his teeth and the bottom dog ran away. Whatever was good belonged to the top dog if he could take it. It occurred to him now that he had met a man pretty much like himself, a fellow who knew his own strength and had no scruples about using it. That kind was pretty rare; also that kind, in competition with his own ambitions, made the valley too small. "He's here for something," thought DePard, "and I'll find out. Two of us is too many unless we're on the same side of the fence. Now there's a thought." Riding up Cloud Valley, Grat DePard made his plans.

Red John rode into the Spackman yard. "Spackman," he called, "come here," and enjoyed the cracking tear he saw on Spackman's face when the latter came to the door. It was growing into dark at the moment and Spackman made a fine silhouette against the house light. Red John said: "Keep away from that girl and give her no help. And don't cross that river. You don't want trouble, do you?" He left the yard without listening to Spackman's answer.

Seeing Spackman's bravery waver amused Red John, who had no liking for homesteaders. He dropped his message at Cobb's and at Lacey's, at Cannon's. Cannon and Cannon's wife and children were in the soft dusk of the yard, and Jennie came to the kitchen doorway. For the first time this night Red John put on a friendly air; he dropped his hint in a neighborly fashion—as though it were a favor he asked. Jennie's face showed him a smothered excitement and he let his glance cling to her, passing a message over the distance. When he left the yard he thought he had seen an answer. All women liked to be hunted and differed only in the way they wished to be caught. This was a girl that liked mystery; that was the way she wanted to be caught, Red John guessed. Swinging down the prairie he paused at Hoeffer's shanty and completed his errand at the Connie place. Heading back to the ford he followed the river bluff, this bringing him near the Cannon place again. Dusk had changed to night and presently he saw the shape of Jennie Cannon in the silver shadows. She had caught his message and she had answered. He got down from the horse.

Her face was white and vague in the darkness: she remained still, waiting for him to break the silence. He knew she had deliberately put herself where he might find her.

He said: "You see, Jennie, I don't have horns."

"I guess you've known a lot of women. I heard that." She was just a homestead girl but she wanted to try her luck on a man who knew women. She wanted to see if she had the pull other women had; she wanted to sharpen her skill on him. Most women were like that.

"I like pretty girls," he said. "You're the prettiest."

"You're just saying that," she retorted. But the compliment did something to her voice. Red John, who had experience at this, touched her carefully on the shoulder and waited to see if she drew back. She didn't draw back and that was enough for him to know. He pulled her forward and kissed her. She gave him no encouragement, but she didn't fight him; she was experimenting with him and with herself—half cold and half warm. Red John stepped away. He had started this with an amused confidence; but she had gotten into him and had set him afire. His voice revealed the rough, hot agitation he felt. "Listen, Jennie, you're sweet."

She laughed at him. She was cooler than he; she was surer. "Is that how you say it to the others?" she murmured. He reached for her again, unsatisfied with half a capture, outraged by her laughter and her assurance. She faded from him, running toward the house, her amusement softly drifting back.

Red John stepped to the saddle, liking this episode not at all. Somehow, she had beaten him at the game, and she had gotten under his skin. She knew it, he thought irritably; her laughter said so. He broke into a steady run, tantalized by the door she had left half open and thinking already of the next meeting. He'd come back. She knew that too. A girl like Jennie liked to play with fire, but pretty soon she got burned. Every dealing he had had with women told him so.

A rider crossed before him, bound toward the Cannon house, and in the shadows Red John made out young Joe Spackman, who was Jennie's steady man. Red John thought in sour amusement: "That's one kiss he won't get."

The valley was a dull bed of silver under the night: out of it came the soft ruffle of wind-stirred grasses. In the sky from rim to rim stars made their cloudy glitter. Keene stood in the yard, hearing a rider splash across the ford and make a wide circle of the cabin; he heard the rider go northward at a steady, dying run. That, he guessed, would be Red John returning to Broken Bit. And because every move in this game was familiar to him, Keene knew what Red John had been doing across the river.

Aurora Brant came to the doorway of the cabin, framed against the light. She had already explained her trip to Prairie City to him—and now added: "I stopped by Spackman's on the way home this afternoon. He's agreed to freight the store stock from Argonaut."

"You're pretty against the light. Pretty—but a target."

She stepped from the doorway and put her shoulders to the cabin wall. "You know so many things like that. It is the sort of an education that should have made you very hard. But you aren't." Then she turned the subject, "I'll never understand what was in Sullivan's mind when he offered me that money. It was a kindness I never expected."

"He saw you walking on the street. Next thing he knew the idea came to him—and he did it. That's the way it happens to a man."

"He had no reason for it."

"Reason means nothing. It is just what comes to a man. When it comes, he's got to do it."

She said: "You haven't said much about my store, Jim. I think you feel I'm not wise."

"You want to do it, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then that's excuse enough. You don't have to figure if you're wise. It makes no difference."

"No, Jim. I need to know where I'm going—and why."

He said gently: "Look up at the stars. Where are they going?"

The ford's gravel telegraphed the passage of another rider. Keene's cigarette dropped to the ground and struck with a bright bombing of sparks: he was wholly still, seizing every sound and making the story. It was a heavy horse, a homesteader's plow horse. He thought of Red John and this girl's pilgrimage to town, which was common news by now, and he built his guess on the pattern of that. "It will be Spackman," he said, "telling you he can't haul your freight."

It was Spackman. The big Hollander drifted into the yard and swayed on the broad back of his horse. He said: "Aurora, the wife says I don't go. DePard sent that Red John around with threats. If we help you it is to be trouble. I gave you my promise and I'll keep it if you want. But maybe—"

"No, Fritz," said Aurora, "I don't want you to get in trouble."

"I have stood against DePard," said Spackman slowly. "I will stand again. But the old woman—"

"Fritz," said Keene, "would you lend me your team and wagon?"

"That is not too much," said Spackman at once. "That I would do."

"I'll be past your place in half an hour."

"So," said Spackman and went away.

Aurora said: "How did you know he would come and tell me that?"

When he stepped forward she saw the old silent laughter in him, the quick flare of pleased humor. Challenge had come out of the night and he had seized it. This one thing she knew about him—he never passed a challenge by. "Nothing," he said, "ever changes much. I know this game. I guess it is all I do know. I'll pick up Spackman's team and go on to Argonaut. Be back the third day."

She went into the house and came out with Sullivan's money, never thinking that she had met this man only the night before. It was thoroughly natural for her to give him the money. "The wholesale house in Argonaut," she said, "will know what I ought to have." But even then she was thinking, not of the store, but of him. "Why are you doing it, Jim? It would be so much better if you just kept on riding."

"Same as Sullivan. One of those things."

She said: "I watched you stop DePard. I think you must have said terrible things to him. He stood perfectly still when you rode around him. Why quarrel with him when he has so much brutal power?"

"The first thing to know," he told her, "is what kind of a man you've got against you—if he bluffs, if he comes straight at you or slides around the back side, if he's got a weak spot. That's what I wanted to know."

"Be careful, won't you?"

"So long."

"So long, Jim," she murmured, and watched him step to his pony and swing out of the yard. She listened to him cross the ford, she heard the last sound die. Not until then did she realize how completely she had come to depend on him. For now the silence around her was think and strange and full of menace. She went into the cabin, barring the door.