Brian felt all the blood drain from his face. “They sure as hell didn’t waste any time, did they?”
“Wolffe has the papers in his office, if you want to sign ‘em.” Murphy pulled at his sweat-drenched collar. “I don’t like this any more’n you do, Brian.”
Brian felt his shoulders sag. “I suppose not, Jim.” He turned heavily and walked down to Wolffe’s office. Wolffe sat before the big battered desk in the front room, writing something, and glanced up sharply as Sheridan entered. The dust-filmed windows washed out the strong sunlight till it lit Wolffe’s face with a sallow tint, settling deep shadows in the strongly marked hollows of his heavy-boned face.
“It’s like you to run out on your responsibilities,” he said acidly. “I’ve looked high and low for you, Brian. They’ve got us backed against the wall.”
“I should be mad as hell with you, George,” Sheridan said. “But somehow I can’t.”
Wolffe leaned forward, fixing the disturbing intensity of his burning eyes on Sheridan’s face. “How often did I try to stop that profligate spending of yours? It was you that got us into this hole. When I saw what Tarrant planned, what could I do? You can still save yourself if you’ll play along with Tarrant. He can have Casket’s suit withdrawn. He might even get Troy Hadley to loan you the money to take care of the other creditors that have started clamoring.”
“All I have to do is go back on my word to Gillette,” Brian said thinly.
“You can’t look at it that way—”
“I do.” Brian stared out the dusty window. “It’s funny. I guess I’ve asked help from every friend I had. It’s funny how different they look when you need help. I’m dead-bust, George.”
“You will be if you don’t use your head.”
“It makes a man think. I guess it’s the first time I’ve really thought in all my life. When all your money’s gone, when every friend you had runs out on you—all you have left is your word—”
“Brian—”
“That’s all I have left of what Dad built here, Wolffe. But it’s the greatest thing of them all. I’m not going to lose it too.” He wheeled toward the man. “Murphy said you had some papers to sign. I suppose I might as well get it over with.”
* * * *
After he left Wolffe’s office he seemed too drained to feel anger any more. Or defeat. Or anything. It seemed as if these last two days had used up his capacity for emotion. He was filled with a great apathy. He supposed part of it was a physical letdown after the endless hours of riding. Force of habit made him seek relief in a drink. His Steeldust was still hitched in front of the Mercantile, halfway between Wolffe’s office and the Black Jack. As he turned to go to the saloon, he saw a man at the hitch-rack, untying the reins.
Brian started toward him at a hard walk. “That’s my horse, Latigo.”
“Not any more,” the foreman said. “The receivers are up at your house, checking all the stock. This horse was missing.”
Brian reached him, yanking the reins out of his callused hands. “It’s my personal animal. They can’t take a man’s horse any more than they can take his pants.”
Latigo’s eyes grew heavy-lidded with insolence. “They gave me my orders. They won’t be able to pay off all your debts with what they got. This horse is worth twenty-five hundred dollars. I’ll take the reins.”
“The hell you will!” Brian threw the rawhide lines over the stallion’s head and swung around to toe the stirrup.
Latigo caught his shoulder and swung him back. Brian’s foot was hung up in the stirrup and he knew he was going to fall anyway so he let his momentum pitch his body around into Latigo. It knocked the man back against the hitch-rack. The hip-high bar flipped Latigo helplessly backward onto the sidewalk. And Brian went on his face in the dirt, his foot still caught in the stirrup. The excited stallion reared up. Brian felt his boot tear free. At the same time, Latigo rolled over and gained his feet. His eyes were almost shut with rage. As Brian tried to rise, the foreman jumped right back over the rack at him.
Brian could not roll aside soon enough. He shouted with pain as Latigo’s spike heels stabbed into his back and drove him down into the dirt. Latigo jumped off Brian and swung a kick at his face.
It made a bright explosion of pain in Brian’s consciousness. He rolled away, hugging his arms around his head. He had a dim view of Latigo’s legs churning toward him and knew another kick would finish him. He came to his knees and launched himself bodily at hip-height.
He plunged into Latigo and clamped his arms around the man, driving him backward. The foreman tripped on the curb and went down. Brian sprawled across him, dimly aware of men spilling out of the Black Jack, of a crowd gathering.
Brian tried to slam a blow at Latigo. The man blocked it and pitched him off. Brian rolled away, trying to gain his feet. He was reaching for air like a windsucker. When he got his feet under him his legs wobbled like a newborn calf’s. How could he be so weak? He saw Latigo come up and lunge for him. He staggered backward, trying to set himself. The man shifted around before him and threw a blow. Brian put up an arm to block it and came in under, slashing at Latigo’s belly. He heard Latigo grunt. But it did not knock the foreman backward. The man swept Brian’s guard aside, laughing hoarsely.
“That high living sure left you like jelly.”
The blow came on the last words. It knocked all the wind from Brian. He felt himself stagger backward, a retching sound torn from him. He saw Latigo come into him again and tried to wheel away. He felt Latigo’s hands cup over the back of his neck, jerking him down. Then Latigo’s knee smashed into his face.
He seemed to spin away in a blinding spasm of pain. He was on the ground. He heard somebody breathing heavily out in front of him and started crawling toward the sound.
“The fool don’t know when to quit,” somebody in the crowd said. “Kick him again, Latigo. Tear the other ear off—”
The world came down and smashed him on the side of the head and he was spinning again and there was pain and vague sounds all around him and somebody laughing. It took him a long time to realize he was lying on his face against the curb. He tried to lift his head but he couldn’t see anything. He made an effort to rise, but could not. He rolled over on his side, pawing blood and dirt from his eyes. Finally dim vision returned. Knots of men were still clustered along the sidewalk, watching him. He recognized Nacho, with an evil leer on his face, and Jigger, still holding a bar towel. Jess Miller had come out of his Mercantile, but made no move to cross the street. Latigo was up on the prancing stallion. From this height he sent one last look down at Sheridan, and spat. Then he raked the Steeldust into a dead run down the street toward his own horse hitched at another rack.
A woman in a blue dress pushed her way through the loose group of men, stepping off the curb. More a girl than a woman. A girl with honey hair swirled around her shoulders by the breeze. He felt a deep humiliation stain his cheeks. Estelle Gillette dropped to her knees beside him, seeking his handkerchief in his coat, dabbing at his face with it.
“I shouldn’t feel sorry for you,” Estelle said. “But I can’t help it.” She helped him sit up. “We heard talk. Does this mean it’s true?”
He nodded sickly. “I’m wiped out.”
“How could they do it? The Double Bit was the biggest thing in this country.”
“Tarrant set it up. As long as I was with him, the Salt Rivers couldn’t pull his bunch down. But Tarrant must’ve known the day would come when I’d see how they were using me. I guess he thought I’d knuckle under to save the Double Bit.”
“And you didn’t?” A strange new light began to shine in her eyes. Then she shook her head in a puzzled way. “But what about George Wolffe? Surely he knew what was going on.”
“He tried his best to keep me from living so high. I guess he was really looking out for my best interests. When he saw it was too late I
guess he played along with Tarrant to try and pull me out of the hole.”
“Where will you go now?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You never took enough of an interest in cattle to know anything about them. You can’t keep books. You’re too soft for real work.”
He stared dully at the street. “I guess you’re right. I couldn’t get a job anywhere.”
“Especially not in this town. The Salt River bunch hates you too much. The others wouldn’t help you for fear of Tarrant. So you’ll starve to death. Or join the barflies in the Black Jack. Cadging drinks and scavenging in the garbage pails out back.”
He winced under the merciless light of her words. It was an incredible picture she painted, but he realized how close to the truth it was.
“We’re staying at Chino Sandoval’s,” she said. “Why don’t you come out there?”
He looked up at her. “That’s crazy.”
The soft shape of her mouth hardened. “You’d better take the offer. It’s the only place you can go.”
CHAPTER 10
Chino Sandoval had a one-horse outfit up by Mescal Springs, high in the Apaches. It was a land rutted and scarred by the fires of nature till there was little left but bleak buttes and mesas and the eastern backbone of the mountains etching a purple outline against a sun-bleached sky. The springs were but a sink hollowed out of the rocks, dry as bone during the summer days, turned to viscid mud by the water that rose to the surface when night came.
It was a fifteen-mile drive from Apache Wells. Brian was sore and beaten by the ride as well as the fight long before they reached the cut-off that wound up onto the mesa commanding the springs. Here, in the feeble shade of scrawny cottonwoods, were the adobe buildings, the ratty fences of ocotillo corrals. A dozen children scampered out of the compound like scared chickens, hiding behind mud walls and in dark doorways, peering owlishly at the wagon as it pulled up before the house. Then the men began to drift in from the corrals. Pa Gillette and Asa were first in sight, stalking toward the wagon. Surprised anger dug great hollows in Pa’s gaunt cheeks.
“What call you got to bring that snake up here, Estelle?”
“It’s the only place he could come,” Estelle said defiantly. “They’ve pulled everything out from under him. The Double Bit’s wiped out. We’ve got to give him a chance, Pa.”
“Like the chance he give us?” Pa said. Asa wheeled off toward the house, and Pa glanced after him. “Asa, where you going?”
“To get my gun,” Asa said.
“You stay out here,” Sandoval called, coming up from behind them. “You promise no trouble there be.”
Asa paused, reluctantly, looking back at him. Sandoval was a small wiry man with all fat melted off his bones by the sun and grinding hardships of this arid country. His eyes were a startling blue in an almost negroid face. One of the dozen children peering around the corner of the house had blond hair. It lent a dubious credence to Sandoval’s claim that he was pure Yaqui Mayo, descended from the shipwrecked Norsemen who were supposed to have landed at the mouth of the Mayo River hundreds of years before the Spaniards came.
Estelle dropped to the ground, voice intense. “You’ve got Brian wrong, Pa. He didn’t order anybody to foreclose on us. Just a few days after the fight in town he came out to tell us we didn’t have to move, and we shot at him.”
“Shot at him!”
“Maybe you didn’t know about it,” Brian said, looking at Asa. “It was up at Skeleton Canyon.”
“Asa was with me all that day,” Pa stormed. “So was Cameron. We was moving down here. Chino can vouch for that.”
“Es verdad,” the Yaqui said. “It is the truth.”
A pair of Mexican hands had moved up behind Sandoval. Cameron Gillette was coming heavily in after them. Sheridan looked around the circle of their hostile faces.
“Somebody bushwacked me in the canyon,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have been out to tell you to stay on your land.”
“It was all some deal of Tarrant’s,” Estelle said. “He knew the Salt River bunch would be lost without you, Pa. The very fact that they’ve ruined Brian should be proof enough of where he stands.”
The anger still moved turgidly through Pa’s face. Asa spat disgustedly and said, “It’s some trick. I say fill him full of buckshot if he ain’t off here in two minutes.”
“Why should man his size stoop to trick?” Sandoval asked. “I knew his father. The Sheridans are no like that.”
Estelle turned toward the Yaqui. “You helped us when we needed it, Chino. Now help him. He needs it worse than we do.”
From the pouch at his belt, Sandoval pulled a bundle of hojas. He fingered one of these pieces of Indian corn husk, tapping into it a small quantity of tobacco from a small tube also contained in the pouch.
“I never thought I see the day a Sheridan to me would come for help,” he murmured. He put the hojas back into the pouch, rolling the cigarette. “Can cattle you work?”
“He’ll learn,” Estelle said.
From the pouch, Sandoval now pulled flint and steel and a red cord of tinder. He struck a spark from the flint with the steel eslabon, and it lodged in the tinder. He blew it into flame and lit his cigarette.
“At his hands look. Like lilies. Can a man so soft learn about work in one lifetime?”
“Just give him a chance,” Estelle said.
“You’ll have to work like hell. Everybody out here they have to work like hell. The land she’s like that.”
“I’ll try to pay for my keep, Chino.”
Sandoval grinned suddenly. “Then w’at you sit there for?”
Brian got stiffly out of the wagon. Over the sweaty rumps of the team, he saw Pa still staring at him. There was truculent hatred in the man’s eyes, and Sheridan realized this was far from settled.
* * * *
Brian slept that night in a bear-grass hut down by the springs with the Gillettes and the two Mexican hands. He got little sleep, tossing restlessly on the hard corn-shuck pallet, listening to the stertorous snores of the tall, thin hand called Juan. It was still dark when Sandoval came in and shook him by the shoulder.
“Drag your navel, you lazy cucurachas. Is time to roll out if we be at Canyon Moro by sunup.”
They rolled out cursing and grumbling. Estelle was with the women up by the house, serving coffee and beef and beans. Still sore and stiff from his beating, Brian almost gagged on the greasy food. With a clatter of tinware the men tossed empty plates and cups into the wreck-pan and drifted toward the corrals. When Brian reached the corral, Pancho came over with a rawhide jumper and a pair of Mexican chapareros slung over one arm.
“Here’s clothes, senor. Better get extra pair of pants from somebody too. Those thorns out on the malpais they stab like the dirk. Chino he tell me to help with your horses. That one with the lobo stripe down his back has lots of bottom.”
Brian struggled into the jumper and chaps. The man thrust a maguey rope into his hands and they moved into the mill of animals lifting a curtain of dust over the corral. Juan and Sandoval and the three Gillettes were all roping their animals out, shouting and cursing. Brian got kicked down trying to dab an awkward loop on the lobo-striped dun. Pancho finally heeled the animal and put a blind on him while he was down. Then he got a Mexican-tree saddle off the top bar of the corral and slung it on. With fumbling hands, Brian cinched it up. He was drenched with sweat and caked with dust by the time he was through. Pancho helped him rope out two more horses for his string. Then Brian stepped aboard his dun. It started pitching before he got his right leg swung over the saddle, and he went off like an empty sack. He heard Cameron laugh derisively from somewhere in the dust. Sandoval came riding up on a nervous buckskin.
“These horse got little more vinegar than ones you’re used to, no, amigo?”
Brian tried again and this time stayed on. After the bronc got rid of its morning orneriness cat-backing around the corral it settled down. And they rode.
He had no measure of time. Or of the distance they covered. When it was light enough to see, they had reached a spot where a half-dozen brush-filled canyons opened out into a sink with a cow trail leading down every wash to the water. Sandoval said they would round the cattle up while they were drinking and run them down to the flats where they’d have swing room for their ropes.
The men sat sourly in their saddles, half asleep. With the first touch of sun the cattle came, spooky, wild creatures, testing the air with their lifted snouts, shambling down to the water. Brian peered through the milky dawn at their gaunt silhouettes.
“How can you make any money off that beef?” he whispered.
“We don’t,” Sandoval said. “That’s why small we remain while big you get. Cattle don’t put on any lard in the badlands. But jack rabbits they won’t take in Alta, amigo. We do the best we can.”
Juan came threading in through a coulee from the higher land, whispering hoarsely, “That is all, señores. We can jump them now.”
With a whoop, they rushed down on the herd. The cattle jumped like scared jacks and headed at a dead run down the canyon. His nimble-footed horse took Brian in a wild scrambling run down the steep pitch of the canyon, driving the frenzied cattle into the flats. The Gillettes were waiting by the branding fires and they surrounded the cattle and put them into a mill. While they held them, the cutting and branding began.
“Cut me out that brindle with the gotch horn,” Pa shouted.
Brian put his bronc into the herd. A cow took a swipe at him and he almost got gored. He wheeled his bronc and got pinched between two milling heifers. He tore one leg off his chaps getting out of that, and by the time he pulled free the brindle was out of sight.
“Cut me out a dogie, if you can’t do any better than that,” Pa roared. “That pied one right in front of you.”
Brian saw the motherless calf ahead of him and touched his excited horse with a heel. The animal drove in behind the dogie, forcing it out into the open. The little calf tried to wheel back at the fringe of the herd and Brian cut in between it and the other cows, turning it back. The air was so thick with dust he could no longer see Pa, but he pushed the dogie hard toward the spot the man had been in. Too late, he saw the rope ahead of him. It was stretched taut from Asa’s buckskin to a downed steer. Asa had dallied his end of the line around the saddle horn and was just swinging off. The dogie hit the stretched rope first, tripping on it and going down. Brian saw Asa’s horse jerk. One foot out of the stirrup, Asa threw himself back into the saddle to keep from being pitched. Brian tried to wheel his horse away but he was going too fast. He ran into the line a second after the dogie hit.
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