Trouble at the Redstone (Leisure Western)

by John D. Nesbitt

  “How about what?”

  “Are you a good hand with a mop stick?”

  Will frowned and looked away, then turned and said, “I wonder if there’s somethin’ eatin’ on you.”

  Aden took a drink of his whiskey and set the glass down with a thump. “I don’t like drifters.”

  “Well, you don’t have to, even if I was one.”

  “Even if you were one.” Aden sneered. “You’ve got it written all over you. Sleep in the stable, shit in the corner and cover it with straw. I know your type.”

  Will’s blood was rising. “You know a lot.”

  “Enough to get by. And enough to take care of myself.”

  Here it comes, Will thought. Look out.

  “Don’t sit there like a dummy. I’m talkin’ to you.”

  Will faced him square. “Look here, fella. I don’t know what’s got into you, or why you think you need to get so cheeky with me. But you’re not gonna get me to go for my gun. Not over something as petty as this.”

  Aden lifted his head and scowled. “Who said anything about that? I can clean your plow with my two hands.”

  Will took a deep breath. “Put your gun on the bar, then, and I’ll do the same. Then we’ll see about it.”

  Aden stood tense, his face reddening, and then his body relaxed as he unbuckled his gun belt and chaps, set them on the bar, and put his jacket and hat on top.

  Will did the same with his own gun and hat, and the two men moved away from the bar and put up their fists.

  Stripped down for fighting, and with a receding hairline more visible, Aden looked smaller than before, but Will knew that men his size could be dangerous—especially if they were out to prove themselves, as this one seemed to be.

  The two men moved back and forth, shifting their feet but not throwing a punch. After a half minute or so, Aden stood still and lowered his guard. Beckoning with his open right hand, he said, “Come on, saddle tramp. Don’t be afraid.”

  Will stepped forward to give him a jab, and the little man came back with a left and a right—good, solid blows to each side of Will’s face. Then the man was out and away.

  Will moved toward him, faking with his left and then crossing with his right. Aden took the punch by turning his head aside, and with a continued motion he lowered his head, moved forward, and came up swinging. Will blocked the left punch but caught the right one full on his jaw.

  Both men backed off to regroup. Aden brought up his guard and moved to his left. Will did the same. Then with a flurry the other man lunged forward, swinging left-right, left-right. The punches stung like huge hailstones, but they didn’t have a great deal of shock.

  Will stepped back, and Aden came at him again. This time Will took advantage of his opponent’s forward motion, as he planted his foot and leaned into a right cross. He connected square on Aden’s cheekbone and rocked him back onto his heels. He kept moving forward, landing a left that glanced off and then a right that sent Aden staggering backward.

  The little man caught his balance and came up into position. Will held up, and the two of them went back into circling.

  Now Aden rushed again, this time getting in close and dropping his shoulder into Will’s abdomen. Will brought his right elbow down on the man’s head, but not before Aden got the toe of his boot onto Will’s spur and pushed him over backward.

  Aden hit the floor as well, then reared back, seething, and smashed a fist into Will’s face. Will bucked to one side, and the two of them went flailing and thrashing. Will found himself wedged up against the brass foot rail of the bar, and then Aden was on his feet, pushing a boot into Will’s chest. The hat and chaps fell off the bar, and Will thought, He’s going for his gun.

  The thought gave him a charge of energy. He grabbed the shank of the boot, put his left hand on the toe, and turned the foot. Aden straightened up, hopped on his left foot, then spilled onto the floor. Will came up on his hands and knees and pushed forward in a lunge.

  Aden was on his feet again, with the chaps in his left hand. He stepped back and brought the leather down with a heavy slap on the back of Will’s head.

  It almost sent him to the floor, but he pushed up and surprised Aden with a solid left punch to the jaw, followed by a right uppercut. Aden dropped the chaps and stepped back, his guard still down. Will moved in and gave him two more, at which the man staggered to the bar and leaned there. His gun belt was within reach, but he didn’t make a move for it.

  “That’s enough,” said the bartender, who stood with a single-barreled shotgun leveled across the bar.

  Will studied the man. As long as Aden was holding his own or better, the bartender had let the fight go on. Then when the tide turned, he brought out his scattergun.

  “Mister,” he said, without pointing the weapon at Will, “we don’t like trouble in here.”

  Will took a second to answer. “Neither do I, but he started ridin’ me from the minute he saw me. If this is the only fight he ever picked in here, I’d be surprised.”

  “Max just doesn’t take much guff. I suppose you know that by now.”

  “He gives out plenty to begin with.”

  “Look here, mister. Don’t try startin’ things all over again.”

  Will looked at Aden and then back at the bartender. “Farthest thing from my mind. I’ve had enough, and I’d guess he has, too.”

  Aden had pulled himself together enough to muster up a full look of resentment. “I’d say you should have enough. But I’ll tell you this. Next time you want to get thumped, look me up. I’m not hard to find.”

  Will glanced at the chaps on the floor. “Sure. We’ll have a fair fight. Just you and anything you can get your hands on.”

  Aden stood with his fists clenched at his side. “You can find out what I can do with my two hands.”

  “Don’t count on it. You can find someone else to prove yourself with.” Will moved to the bar, picked up his gun and holster with his left hand, and pushed the silver dollar toward the bartender. Then he put on his hat and walked to the door.

  Outside, he saw there was still enough daylight to find the Redstone Ranch and ask about a job. Even if they didn’t need anyone, he would be welcome to spend the night. That would be better than another night on the hard ground.

  As he gathered his reins and led the horse into the street, he said, half to himself and half to his horse, “Next time I want to get thumped. To hell with that fella. All I want is to do what I set out to do.” He put his foot in the stirrup, swung aboard, and put the Lucky Diamond behind him.

  Chapter Three

  Will found the Redstone without any trouble after asking two separate people in town. He rode into the ranch yard just as the sun was slipping behind the hills—a few minutes before nine in the evening, according to his pocket watch.

  The headquarters were laid out in a familiar pattern. A barn of unpainted lumber sat on his left as he rode in, and attached to the east side of it ran a stable with a lower roof. Behind lay a set of corrals, with a pasture stretching away to the south on the far side of the corrals. Straight ahead of him sat the main building, which he took to be the ranch house. It was a two-story building made of quarried stone, with a set of stone steps leading up to the front porch. Off to the left of the house, near the back corner, sat a smaller structure of matching stone. Will supposed it was a spring house. On the right flank of the ranch yard Will observed two wooden buildings. The smaller one might be either the cookshack or the foreman’s house, while the other, longer one was no doubt a bunkhouse.

  The ranch yard itself was dry and hard-packed now in midsummer, and the hooves of Will’s horse gave out a tlock-tlock, tlock-tlock sound that carried on the cool evening air. A man appeared at the bunk house door and stepped outside. He was wearing typical ranch clothes, including a hat and a vest, and he was picking his teeth with a toothpick.

  Will turned his horse toward the bunk house and came to a stop at the hitching rail. As he dismounted and stepped into view,
the man came forward and spoke out.

  “Good evening.”

  “Good evening to you.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  “I was hopin’ to find the foreman.”

  The man gave a faint smile, and his mustache lifted. “Well, you’ve done that.”

  “That’s good.” Will paused for a couple of seconds and said, “I was wonderin’ if you were lookin’ to put on any more help.”

  The foreman poked the toothpick into the corner of his mouth. “Might could.” He looked Will over. “You a regular hand?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Well, we finished roundup just a few days ago, so we’ll be doin’ the usual range work. Ride out from here most of the time, sometimes pack an outfit and set out for a couple of days. Dependin’.”

  “Sure.”

  “Pay’s a dollar a day and found.”

  “Sounds fine.”

  The foreman motioned with his head toward the other building. “That’s the cookshack. Supper’s long over, but there might be somethin’ left.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Good enough.” The man glanced at Will’s outfit. “You can leave your saddle in the barn, you’ll find a rack, and put your horse in the pasture out back. You’ll be ridin’ company horses. Then when you get that done, you can bring your gear into the bunk house.”

  The foreman’s eyes came back to Will. “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Will Dryden.”

  “Good to know you. I’m Earl Ingram.” The two men shook.

  With only one lamp glowing in the bunk house, Will did not see everything at once as he stepped inside. He paused with his duffel bag in one hand and his bedroll in the other.

  Ingram, no longer wearing a hat, rose from his chair. “There’s a couple of empty bunks,” he said. “You can have your pick.”

  Will noticed the man’s full head of sandy brown hair, his blue eyes, full mustache, and solid facial features. He was probably close to forty, but he held his age well, and he carried an air of easy authority.

  “Thanks.” Will looked around to see another man, about the same age as the foreman and also hatless, sitting at a square table. He was smoking a curved-stem pipe and fiddling with a deck of cards.

  The man took the pipe out of his mouth and said, “Evenin’. I’m Jim.”

  “Howdy. I’m Will.”

  Jim smiled. “Pleased to meet you. Let me know if I can help.”

  “Thanks.” Will looked off to the right and saw a younger, dark-haired man sitting on the edge of his bunk.

  “There’s Brad,” said Jim.

  The young puncher and Will exchanged greetings.

  “And over there’s Max.” Jim pointed with his pipe to the next cot beyond Brad’s.

  At the edge of the dim light, a man in a red shirt lay with his back to the rest of the men. On the wall near his bunk hung a pair of chaps.

  The man rolled over and sat up, and Will had no doubt as to who he was. The sullen, deep-set eyes belonged to Max Aden.

  “We met earlier,” he said, not looking at Will. “He’s the bum from the Lucky Diamond.”

  Jim took a puff on his pipe. “He seems to have gotten back on his feet pretty quickly.”

  “Well, I’ll knock him down the first time he gives me any talk.”

  The foreman’s voice came up. “Now look here, Max. You know damn well there’s not goin’ to be any fightin’ here. If there is, you’ll both go packin’.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But mark my words. He’s trouble.”

  Jim spoke again. “No need to stand there all night with your gear, fella. Let’s get you a bunk. You can have the one next to Max, or you can have the one on the other side of mine. It was Ben’s, the fella who’s not with us anymore. We can move those things that are on it.”

  Will let out his breath. “That would be just as well.”

  Jim rose from his seat, laid his pipe on the table, and walked to the bunk in question. He picked up the most prominent item, a black hat with a round peak and curled brim, and set it on his head. Then he gathered up the four corners of the gray wool blanket, reached under the bunk to draw out a canvas bag, and transferred all the belongings to the bunk next to Aden’s.

  “Go ahead,” he called over his shoulder.

  Will set his bag and bedroll on the bare tick mattress, then took off his hat and hung it on a nail above the head of his bed. He looked around the room to get a fuller view of it.

  There were a dozen bunks in all, two rows of six each, and only the first three in each row were in current use. Along the back wall, the cot closest to the table belonged to the young man named Brad. Then came Aden’s, followed by the bunk that now held the belongings of the departed puncher. Along this wall, Will’s was the farthest from the door, then Jim’s, and then a bed that had all the signs of occupancy and must be the foreman’s.

  On the other side of the entry area where he had come in, a cast-iron stove sat quiet and dusty. To the left of it, in the corner, a small stack of firewood lay next to a heap of shavings. In the other corner stood a broom and an ax. A few feet from the corner, behind the table where Jim was sitting again, a door gave access to the area in back, where Will imagined he would find the out house, the woodpile, and the rubbish heap. An unlit lantern hung from a nail next to the doorway.

  Will recalled the foreman saying that the next building over was the cookshack. That went along with what he saw here in the bunkhouse—no cook-stove or eating area. He wondered what sort of a person ran the cookshack. Probably a quarrelsome old man who lived in his boar’s nest and ran his domain like a tyrant.

  No hurry for that, Will thought. In the meanwhile he’d get settled into his place and try to get a night’s sleep. He didn’t like being just across the aisle and one bunk over from Aden, but he figured Ingram’s authority accounted for something.

  Will set his bag beneath the bunk and rolled out his bed. Then he pulled off his boots and stretched out on the bunk. One step at a time, he told himself. As he got the lay of the land and a sense of which men he could trust, he could ask about Al Vetch. Remembering his original purpose, he amused himself by imagining what Mrs. Welles might be doing. He pictured her sitting by a lamp and reading newspapers to see if her husband had made the news by getting himself arrested or killed.

  As Will dozed off, he had a dream in which the pleasant Mrs. Welles, smiling, approached him and offered him a derringer. Then he awoke at the sound of a chair scraping against the wood floor.

  Jim was standing up and stretching. The foreman must have gone out back, as he was not around. The young dark-haired fellow named Brad had tucked himself into his bedroll, while Aden sat on the edge of his own bunk, pulling a sock between his big toe and the next one.

  “About time to turn in,” said Jim. “We’ll hit it tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

  “I don’t think so.” Will reviewed the question and his answer. He could think of things he’d like to have, but as far as needing anything, not a single image came to mind.

  The cookshack was a bright place to walk into from the dark of early morning. Two lanterns hung above the mess table, and more light poured out of the kitchen area. Aden, wearing a plain drab work shirt and his denim jacket, sat at the table smoking a cigarette. His hat brim shaded his eyes, and as Will took a seat across the table and down a ways, Aden turned his head aside in an apparent snub.

  Will poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot sitting on the table. He could hear clattering from the kitchen, and the smell of fried food—bacon, he thought—came drifting on the air.

  Ingram took a place at the table, followed by Jim and then Brad. The young man sat on the other side, near Aden, who was the only one wearing a hat. The foreman poured coffee for the other two who came in behind him.

  A form appeared in the kitchen doorway, and Will looked up to see a woman in a light-colored smock carrying two platters of food. One had a stack of bacon, and the other
had a heap of fried potatoes. As she set the platters on the table, Will got a look at her.

  She had a flushed, swollen complexion that might have come from hovering over a steaming kettle or from furtive nips on a bottle. Set into her face was a pair of pale blue eyes, and between them a thin nose protruded. Wrinkles were starting to show around her mouth, which she held in a pursed position, and below that her face ended in a soft chin. Her hair fell back across her ears on each side—straight, thin hair the color of last year’s grass when a fellow turned over a plank. The skin below her jawline and on her throat had begun to sag, but overall she had the hardened look of a woman who had known how to attract men and how to brush them off. Will guessed her age at about thirty-five, and he imagined her dugs had begun to wrinkle. Then, catching again the pursed form of her mouth, he wondered if she had used her fair share of alum.

  “Thanks, Blanche,” said the foreman.

  The woman made a sound like “Yuh” and went back to the kitchen.

  During this whole fleeting moment, Will was conscious of hearing continued sounds in the kitchen. He figured there must be a second person working there. From time to time over the next several minutes as he ate his breakfast, he glanced at the doorway. He saw Blanche’s form move back and forth, but he could not catch a glimpse of the second person.

  When the food had disappeared and the men were drinking their second cup of coffee, Ingram took out a silver watch and wound it. As he put it away, he began to speak.

  “Dryden, we ride out in pairs. You’ll go with Calvert—that’s Jim—and he’ll tell you the routine. I think you know the general rules, and for God’s sake don’t swing a loop at any animal that’s got someone else’s brand on it. You want to haze it away, fine, or slap it on the ass, but don’t rope it.”

  “Sure.”

  Ingram brought out a toothpick now. “There’s a couple of other outfits that are jealous, and they’ve got nothin’ better to do than put a man out on a high spot with a pair of high-powered binoculars.”

  Will nodded.

  The foreman looked across the table at the other two riders. “Max, you and Brad go out as always.” In-gram took a last sip of coffee. “Well, I’ve got things to look into. I’ll see you all back here at dinner.”