by Frank Bonham
“Nate, I got to talk to you,” Saddler said in a low voice.
“If this is about money,” Croft hedged, “I …”
“This is about more money than either of us ever had his fingers on,” Saddler breathed. “Upstairs, Nate. Come on.”
Croft’s room above the saloon smelled like a bunkhouse, the air soaked with liniment, musty blankets, and dust. While Croft lighted a lamp, Saddler took a short-barreled rifle from a rack above the bed. He stood facing the window, as wide as the frame of it, black-haired, rugged.
Seeing him looking down on the village, Croft said: “Wonder where Becket’s at, eh?”
“Lots of roofs down there, Nate. Lots of windows. Bet a smart man could flush him, though.”
“You a smart man?” Croft joshed.
“Smart enough to whip Jim Jackson,” Saddler said, turning. He couldn’t stop grinning. He had control now—had the wild horse locked between his spurs and the bit. He moved about, rubbing the carbine. The bigness of it burned in him. “Nate, with your help I can snub him down tonight. How’d you like to go pardners with me on Anvil?”
Croft’s black eyes pinched. “How many whiskies did you have before I came along?”
“If I’m drunk, a man was never sober. You got a few thousand dollars cash?”
Croft examined him coldly. “That’s no damned business of anybody’s.”
“If you did have, Nate, you’d be rich in a year or two. Because we could buy in with Jackson, run the show ourselves, and make something out of that ranch.”
“Anvil ain’t for sale.”
“Anything’s for sale, Nate, if a man’s in bad trouble. Suppose you were to loan all us Defiance men the money to pay Jackson off on those notes? He couldn’t touch our timber then. He’d starve out in three months.”
“That don’t put us on Anvil.”
“No. But if we gave Jackson a choice between selling us a piece of Anvil, and freezing him out by backing those ranchers, he’d sell. What else? He’s beat for sure if the notes are paid. But if he gives us sixty percent of Anvil, he’s going to think … I’m still floatin’. Maybe I can outfox them yet.”
Croft grunted: “Hmm.” He slipped his thumbs into the armholes of his flowered vest. “Where’s the joker?”
“No joker, Nate. Clear my place … six hundred dollars … give me ten percent of Anvil, and we’ll put that ranch in the black in a year. We’ll foreclose all those mountain ranches. Then we’ll skin the timber out. Woodbury’s bank won’t have room enough for all the money we’re going to make.” He dropped the rifle on Croft’s cot and took him by both shoulders. “Don’t you see it, Nate? We’ll buy up other ranches. We’ll freeze Jackson out in a couple of years. You’ll be wearing gold caps on every tooth and diamonds as big as buggy lamps.”
Croft began to catch fire. But he hung back. “I’m no rancher, Saddler. I went broke once ranching.”
“You won’t have to set foot on Anvil if you don’t feel like it. I got ideas enough for both of us.”
“Well, I’d have to …”
Saddler pulled him back. “That’s it, Nate. There ain’t time to dicker. Once he starts cuttin’ trees, we’ll never get him out of those mountains. We’ve got to slap him with it tonight.”
Croft gazed at him with a faint, resentful grin. “Not bad for you, my friend. I buy into Anvil and you get ten percent and your own place cleared. Just for the idea.”
“Oh, no,” Saddler said. “For the guts to brace Jackson and Cameron’s crowd. Just step up and tell Jackson you’re taking over Anvil if you think you can swing it yourself. I’ll help you collect your teeth.”
Croft lifted a deprecating shoulder. “If I didn’t think you were worth ten percent, Mike, I wouldn’t even talk about it. I was joking.”
“Good,” Saddler said. “Because I might walk out right in the middle of things just to prove it.” Then he peered into Croft’s polished little eyes. “OK, Nate?”
Croft moistened his lips. “Well …”
With the heel of his hand, Saddler buffed his shoulder. “Good! Send somebody for Jackson.”
* * * * *
For a while he was alone in the room. He turned down the lamp and stood at the window. All the south end of town lay beneath him—Front Street, the plaza, the random blocks of small adobe buildings. He could see some men on the walk, and two riders jogged past with their collars turned up and rifles under their arms.
All those years of string saving, Saddler swept them from his mind like trash. Now the ideas, the ability, the energy he had stored so long would be spent rapidly.
Something was going on in the row of Mexican stores at the east end of the plaza. A man was holding a hurricane lamp. A fight seemed to be in progress before a cantina. After a while some men went inside. Then he saw two men walk from the gap in the wall and come down Front Street. By his bulk, he knew one of them was Jim Jackson. He saw a man approach him on the walk—one of Croft’s barkeepers. Then Jackson stared up at the window where Saddler stood.
He heard Croft coming back. Saddler turned up the lamp as Croft slipped inside. “He’s comin’, Mike. Are you sure …?”
“Cigar, Nate.” Saddler put out his hand and Croft put a cigar in it. Saddler lit it over the lamp. He picked up Croft’s rifle and opened the breech. It was loaded. Croft made a nervous sound in his throat.
Big Jim Jackson’s heavy boots made the stairs creak. Saddler set the gun against the wall at the end of the cot. He sat on the cot and cocked one leg across his knee. The knob turned and a man banged the door open. Jim Jackson, frowning, moved into the entrance. His big, square face with its cavalryman’s mustache was harsh and a small cut showed over his eye. So Saddler knew he had been involved in the ruckus in the plaza.
Saddler said: “Spend a lot of your time scrappin’ these days, Jackson. Beatin’ up greasers, now?”
“I had an idea Ramon Corral knew something about Becket. Maybe you’d be interested in what I told him. Anybody we find shielding Becket will get the same thing Becket gets.”
Saddler puffed on the cigar. “Come on in.”
Contempt burned in Jackson’s eyes. “Don’t reckon I could stomach the two of you in the same room. What’ve you got to sell this time?” He stopped and blinked. “Wait a minute!” he said abruptly. “You sellin’ Becket?”
Saddler shook his head. “No. We’re buying something. A share of Anvil.”
He saw Jackson fill his lungs, took note of the square shoulders filling the corduroy coat, the thick brown pillar of his neck. “This,” Jackson said, glancing suspiciously at Nate, “smells like something hatched in a saloon. I don’t know who thought this would be funny, but I’m going to lick him with one hand.”
Saddler rose. “Nate’s thinking of buying up all those Defiance Mountains notes. If he does, that’ll leave you on the short end of the rope. Because you won’t have any timber to sell, or money to pay the bank.”
Saddler saw him falter, saw him going sick inside, like a snakebit man settling down to watch his leg blacken.
“But like I told Nate,” he went on, “there’s a better way to do this. Save Jackson’s hide and save mine. Instead of putting that money into the notes, let’s give it to Jackson … for sixty percent of Anvil.”
Downstairs, a piano tinkled. Jackson started across the room, his face thunderous. Saddler put his cigar in his mouth and picked up the rifle. Jackson stopped, his hands hanging.
“Don’t even look like you were coming at me again,” Saddler said. “Big Jim! Nothing big about you but the size of your blunders. You thought you had me cornered, didn’t you? But now I’m talking and you’re listening.”
Jackson said nothing. A corroding hatred brimmed in his eyes.
“We’re leaving you forty percent. That means I’ll be making sixty percent of the noise around Anvil. I’m going to show you ho
w to make money with that ranch, Jackson.”
Jackson said sardonically: “You can’t make money without range. Even a boy wonder like you.”
“We’ll have the range. We’re foreclosing those notes and taking over the Defiances. We’ll cut timber, and a lot of those starved-out pastures like Becket’s are going to grow some grass at last. But you’re going to set still and listen. You can do all your talking in the saloons … if anybody will listen to you.”
The corners of Jackson’s mouth began to quirk. Uneasiness touched Saddler. “Well?” he said.
“Can I talk for a minute?” Jackson asked. “You see, I don’t own those notes. So I can’t sell them.”
“Don’t give me that, when you’ve just been threatening foreclosure. Stiles sold you the notes with the store.”
“But I put the notes in Serena’s name, so she’d have something left if I went under.”
He began to laugh. Saddler glanced at Croft. Croft looked absolutely stricken.
“Then get them back from her,” Saddler said. “You’d have had to do that to foreclose us.”
“I tried,” the rancher said. “She wouldn’t sell. So I figured to move you out first and foreclose after.”
“She’ll turn them over if she knows you’re licked,” Saddler insisted.
Jackson shrugged. “Maybe. Talk to her. Maybe you can make her believe she’s not geared for poverty. I couldn’t.”
Saddler juggled the carbine in his hands.
“And when you get that fence jumped,” Jackson continued, “jump another. How are we going to keep Red Roth if he don’t get Becket?”
Saddler scratched his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe I could find Gil. We could get him to jail before Roth strung him up, maybe. But we won’t get any place with Cameron in the way.”
Jackson measured him speculatively. For the first time he really seemed interested. “If you can deliver Becket, I can handle Cameron.”
“How?”
“Let me worry about that. It comes to this. Get the notes from Serena, give me Gil Becket, and we’re in business.”
“Sixty-forty,” his brother-in-law said.
“Sixty-forty.”
Croft found paper and pen and made three copies of a brief document. They signed the papers, each took his own copy, and Saddler, with exhilaration burning in him, abruptly offered his hand, grinning. He pulled it back the instant he saw the expression in Jackson’s eyes.
“If friendship’s in the contract, too,” Jackson drawled, “I’m backing out right now.”
When the rancher reached the door, Saddler said quickly: “What about Cameron?”
“Do you know where he is?” Jackson asked.
“Him and the rest went over to Bill and Em’s a while ago.”
“Find him,” Jackson told Nate. “Tell him I want a powwow.”
“Here?”
“Hell, no.” Jackson settled his hat. “In the plaza. At the corner of the church. Don’t bother Serena tonight,” he added to Saddler. “After tonight she’ll be easier handled.”
XVII
Troy was pulling on his coat when Croft came in. They had eaten, some of the men had drifted back to the saloon, and now the colonel was telling about wild horse trapping in the Big Bend country. “ … Slapped my iron on forty-six mustangs in three weeks! Just me and a couple of Mexicans.”
Troy had been thinking about Gil Becket. Terriers like Gil should not try to run with timber wolves like Saddler. They got hurt every time. The wolf killed the calves and the terrier got shot for it.
He thought about Gil’s sister. Considering everything, she was holding together very well. He remembered the thrill of kissing her.
At that moment Croft came in, chafing his hands together. Croft was wearing a high black derby that gave him stature, and a black short coat with a velvet collar. Croft’s eyes darted nervously at Troy. Troy nodded to him and went out. In a moment Croft followed him.
“Say, Troy, I’ve got a message for you,” Croft said. “Jim came in a few minutes ago. He wants to see you.”
“If it’s about Becket, he’s not for sale,” Troy said curtly.
“I don’t think it is. I trust Jim just about as far as I can see him, it’s true. But he’s worried, and I reckon he’s playing it straight this time.”
“What’s he want to see me about?”
“He didn’t say … not exactly. He took a couple of drinks with me and began to open up. He said … ‘Nate, this town’s going to blow up if I don’t do something about it pretty soon. Where’s Cameron?’ he asked me. I said I’d get you. It sounds like he’s ready to make you an offer.”
Troy considered as they walked on. “Maybe he’s coming to the snubbing post at that. You know, I never saw him as ornery as he’s been acting lately.”
“Well, I won’t argue with you,” Croft grunted. “But I said I’d get you. He said he couldn’t talk to you where he’d be seen, though. Roth might draw some wrong conclusions. He said he’d talk to you in the plaza. Over near the church.”
Troy eyed him narrowly. Something in Croft’s tone aroused his suspicions. Still, Croft and his brother-in-law were hardly to be thought of as conspirators. “When?” he asked.
“He’s waiting now.”
They reached the Pima Bar. Croft shivered inside his short coat. “Cold,” he murmured. “Got to get those winter doors up.” He went inside.
He’s in a hell of a hurry, Troy thought.
He crossed Front Street, but then, instead of turning down to the main gate of the old town hall, he took the side street that followed the west wall of the plaza. About half a block down there was a small gate through which Mexican goatherds brought their milch goats every morning. Troy stood here and scanned the plaza—the line of Mexican shops against the far wall, the corrals for bull teams in the middle, and off to the right, the belfry of Stiles’ little church rising, low and thick, against the sky. A softly plucked guitar sang in a cantina. Troy settled his hat, but could not lose the feeling he had. Near the church, under a gaunt desert cedar, a horse was rubbing against the bark. Troy started across the plaza.
The pony looked around as he came near. It was not one of Jackson’s big horses. It was a smaller animal, and the night sparkled on bits of silver in its bridle. He walked very slowly toward the church. He was coming at it from the west now instead of the north—as anyone waiting here would have expected. He could not see the man waiting around the corner. He skirted the steps of the church. He put his hand on his Colt. But if it were actually Jim Jackson, he could not go in with a gun in his hand. He let the gun remain in its holster.
As he moved on, he kept his eyes on the eroded adobe corner of a building. He did not see the stone until his boot came down on it and he stumbled. At once he caught his balance. But a man had stepped from behind the church, his hand on his gun.
“Who is it?” Tom Doyle’s voice snapped.
In the shadows, he had not made Troy out yet. Troy eased his gun from the holster. “It’s me, Doyle. Did we have a date?”
Doyle’s body turned sidewise. He had the reflexes of an animal. He was as fast as Troy had heard. Troy aimed at his thigh and fired. The gun flash showed Doyle with an unlighted cigarette in his lips, his gun lining out, his Stetson on the side of his head. The roar was tremendous. Troy’s hand kicked high with the recoil as he stepped away.
Doyle’s gun went off and instantly Troy was blind and deaf. He stood there very still, his gun cocked. He heard Doyle go down, heard him swear sobbingly, and cock his gun again. Over the strings of that Mexican guitar a hand had fallen. Voices called from the cantinas, and in the street beyond the plaza men shouted and a horse ran hard.
Then he could see Doyle dimly. The gunman had dropped his Colt and was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth and holding his leg.
Troy stepped
in and kicked the gun away. He remembered Gil. He hoped Gil would keep his mouth shut and not give himself away.
“Who sent you?” he asked Doyle.
Doyle’s savage eyes turned up. “Nobody … sent me,” he groaned.
“Jackson sent Croft to toll me over here. Where is he now?”
“No damned business creeping up on a man,” Doyle panted. “I was … waiting for Jackson.”
“Did you have a date with him, too?”
Doyle slumped over, moaning deep in his throat. He did not answer. Troy took his gun from the ground. “I’ll send a doctor,” he said, “and have them fix up a bed for you at the hotel. There’ll be a lock on the door, and you’ll stay there until you can be moved to the jail.”
He heard them coming across the plaza. Probably Roth and Owen McCard and the rest. He strode to Doyle’s horse, untied it, and toed the stirrup. It bolted as he swung up. He swerved it toward the west wall and left the plaza. He felt half sick, churning with the excitement and fear that hit a man after such action.
Then he remembered Jim Jackson.
Unless this deal had been between Nate Croft and Doyle—Croft’s favor to a valued customer—Jackson had turned a bend in his trail. Murder was one of the cards he held now. A man like that could only be stopped one way. Troy had tried to avoid anything like that; he had preached to his friends a go-slow doctrine. And all he had done was to prove, once again, that direct action was often the safest and the fairest method, even though it might involve brutality.
* * * * *
In the morning it was as if a wind had scoured the country for days, and then had passed. The silence seemed unnatural. During the night Nate Croft had put up his winter doors with their leaded-glass panes, and had padlocked them. He did not unlock them now. The stores were open but there was no traffic. Troy and some other ranchers who had passed the night in Mundy’s hay barn breakfasted at Bill and Emma’s. No one had seen Mike Saddler. As Troy left the restaurant, Colonel Ike Edwards came down the walk from Front Street, his long black coat buttoned tightly. The colonel caught Troy’s arm, his old hawk’s face tense.
