Trouble at the Redstone (Leisure Western)

by John D. Nesbitt

  Calvert’s eyes opened. “So that’s why he bought that place.”

  “I think so. He’s just sittin’ on it, waitin’ for the opportunity.”

  “Well, what do you know.” Calvert chuckled. “He’s like that woman who said, ‘I’ve been lookin’ for a pot of gold all my life, and here I find I’ve been sittin’ on it all this time.’ ”

  “She wasn’t a biscuit shooter.”

  “No.”

  Will took a long breath. “And here’s my next thought. If Dunn has known about it all this time, and it’s no secret, just somethin’ that your average cow-puncher or sheepherder doesn’t know much about, then chances are that the boss of the Redstone has been workin’ on a similar idea.”

  Calvert pushed his mouth up into a thoughtful pose. “That could be. Let on that he’s gatherin’ up poor rangeland at hardscrabble prices—nickel, dime, fifteen cents an acre. As long as no one knows the real motive, they might sell out pretty easy.”

  “And even if someone does, like Stegman seems to, he might yield to the pressure anyway.”

  “Whew. Did Dunn tell you all this when Stegman was there?”

  “No, it was earlier. But I got the sense that he knows about it. He and Dunn act as if they have a lot of shared knowledge between ’em.”

  “They likely do.”

  “So I think Stegman’s been pushed pretty hard. He’s bitter about it, but he says he knows when it’s time to go.”

  Calvert shook his head. “Well, that’s an ugly way. It’s one thing to take advantage of an opportunity or of other people’s ignorance, but it’s another thing to chisel and threaten.”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  After a moment of silence, Calvert clucked his tongue. “Sons of bitches. You try to do your job and not know things, and yet you know better all along.” The wrinkles showed at the corners of his eyes as he looked straight at Will and said, “I don’t know about you, pard, but I’ve quit better outfits because I didn’t like some of the company I kept there. Come the end of this season, I think I’ll roll my blankets and look for another range.”

  “Me, too, if I last that long,” said Will, crushing the stub of his cigarette. “I expect to get fired every day.”

  “Ah, they need someone, and Earl’s not going to ride out every day himself.”

  “I believe that.” Will gazed across the empty country again. “I’ll tell you, there’s one other part to this that I haven’t made sense of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What happened to Ben Forrester.”

  Calvert lowered his pipe. “If I thought he was crooked, I wouldn’t give it much thought. I’d figure someone got him for somethin’. But I think Ben was as straight as they come.”

  “And it doesn’t seem like anyone would do it out of jealousy.”

  “Nah. That wouldn’t be strong enough.” Calvert held up his hand with his index finger crooked downward.

  “The only other think I can think of is that he knew somethin’ that someone wanted to keep him quiet about?”

  “Such as?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t think it could be this land scheme, whether it’s for poor grazing land or the oil underneath. Even if not many people around here know about oil, it’s not a secret, and not something to kill someone over.”

  “I’d go along with that. Men will kill for land and property, but as far as I know, Ben didn’t have any. They’ll kill to protect deep, dark secrets, also, but I don’t see one here.”

  Will stared at the landscape. “I don’t, either. But I do know you can have something right under your nose and not see it.” He felt a strong temptation to tell Calvert about the little stone house and who he thought was in it, but he resisted. For one thing, he didn’t want anyone to know that he knew, because as long as he and Calvert and Brad Way seemed not to know, Al Vetch was probably not going anywhere. Donovan would keep him out of sight so that he would never be a suspect for anything that came up. The way Will saw it, he had to come up with a plan for getting some proof, some tangible testimony, that Al Vetch and Blanche were together. That would be the end of his job for the missus, and then he would see if there was a way to connect the hidden man with the death of Ben Forrester. For the time being, it was as if he had Al Vetch on ice, but he knew it wouldn’t last long.

  Calvert spoke. “Isn’t that the truth? It’s like this oil.”

  “It sure is. Dunn said the same thing. That’s probably what made me think of it.”

  Blanche held her head back and to one side as she set the steaming pot on the table.

  “Stew,” said Ingram, raising his chin. He took the bowl that Calvert handed him and ladled the mixture of meat, potatoes, and onions into it. “Here you go, Frank.” He set the bowl in front of the boss of the Redstone, who gave his bland smile and a vague nod to anyone who might be looking.

  Blanche returned with two plates of biscuits, set them down, and left.

  “Speakin’ of stew,” said Ingram, “we had an Irishman for a cook, out in Idaho, and he made mutton stew. He’d get a sheep and hang it, especially in the fall, and we’d have mutton stew every day for two weeks. I can still remember the taste of it, and the greasy smell.”

  “This is beef stew,” said Donovan, pausing with his spoon.

  “Of course it is. Now you could eat this every day and not get tired of it.” Ingram served himself a bowlful and turned the handle of the ladle around to Calvert. “Spuds and mutton. That old Irishman was full of stories about how they skinned their sheep and boiled their spuds. Work the hide off with their fist. I saw him do it one time, and he got that grease all the way up to his elbow. And then the spuds. He said they had a big open tank, back in the Old Country, where they boiled potatoes for the hogs—all the bad ones, you know—and there was a widow and her kids used to come and eat out of there.” Ingram held the biscuit plate toward his boss.

  “Poor people,” said Donovan, taking a biscuit.

  “That’s right, and this was before the famine. Watson said it got worse. That was his first name, by the way. Watson. I don’t remember his last name. It might have been O’Connor.”

  “That’s an Irish name. Donovan is, too, but we came over a lot earlier.”

  The ladle came to Will, and he served himself some stew.

  Ingram had not begun to eat and seemed in no hurry. “Sure,” he said, nodding to the boss. “Another story he liked to tell was about racing dogs. You know, in the dog races they use rabbits or hares, but these common people, when they were trainin’ the dogs, used cats. Of course, the cats would run up a tree, so they never got to train ’em for a very long stretch. Anyway, one day a couple of these fellas entered their dogs in a race, and it was a foggy day. As soon as the rabbits took off, the dogs lost ’em in the fog, and instead of followin’ their trail, they ran over to the nearest tree and started barkin’.”

  Donovan gave his little laugh. “Barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

  Brad Way finished serving himself and moved the pot toward Aden, who also seemed inclined to talk.

  “Those would make good coon dogs,” Aden said.

  Ingram half frowned. “Wonder if they have coons there. I know they’ve got foxes.”

  Donovan came back into the conversation. “When I was a boy we had a coon for a pet. Back in Illinois.”

  “They make good pets,” said Ingram. He put his spoon into his stew.

  Aden answered. “They turn on you when they get older. ’Specially an old boar. I heard of one that chewed his own er’s ear half-off. Had to kill it. Could’ve saved himself some trouble and done it a lot sooner.”

  Donovan called toward the kitchen. “Is the coffee ready?”

  Conversation lapsed at the table as the biscuits went around and the men began to eat. Pearl appeared with the coffeepot and waited near Donovan’s elbow. Will had formed the impression on earlier occasions that the boss liked to keep her hovering there, and it seemed to be the case now.

 
“Speakin’ of pets,” said Donovan, without glancing at the girl, “we had a fawn antelope the first year we were on this ranch. Had the prettiest eyes. The men called her Elsie. She stayed all through the summer, and then she was gone.” He turned a coffee cup right-side up and said, “Here.”

  Pearl poured the coffee and set the pot on the table.

  As she did, her eyes met Will’s, and they seemed to say, I am not part of this. Then she stood straight up.

  “Thank you, Pearl,” said the boss. He turned his head to watch her walk away. As he did, Will thought his gray hair looked too perfectly in place.

  After supper, Will went to the bunk house with the other men. He imagined Blanche would be on the lookout to see if anyone tried to talk to Pearl, so he thought he would let her keep watch in vain this evening.

  Brad Way had shaved off all the bark from the stick of chokecherry wood, and now he was trimming the rough patches and smoothing the surface.

  Ingram, who seemed more talkative than usual this evening, said, “What do you plan to do with that stick, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” said Brad. “Just somethin’ to fool around with.”

  Ingram shifted the toothpick beneath his full mustache. “At first I thought you were just tryin’ to see how long you could get the strips you were shavin’ off.”

  “Mostly I’m interested in seein’ what kind of wood it is.”

  “Not very good, really. Kinda soft. Not much good for firewood. People use it to make an ax handle or a shovel handle, but it bends on you when you use it, and a good part of the time it splits when it dries.”

  Aden spoke up. “Short piece like that, you could use it for clubbin’ animals in a trap.”

  “Your better ax and shovel handles,” Ingram went on, “are made of ash or hickory. Something harder. None of that grows around here, of course, so if someone’s in a tight or just downright broke he’ll use chokecherry. He’ll have to look around to find one big enough or straight enough. Isn’t that right, Jim?”

  Calvert did not look up from the game of solitaire he was studying. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Most of the wood in this country is soft. Cotton-wood, pine.”

  “Cedar’s tough,” said Calvert.

  “That’s true, but it’s not good for ax handles. And it takes a hundred years for one to grow big enough to be a fence post.”

  Max Aden, restless as always, got up from his bunk and went to stand by the front door as he finished smoking his cigarette. The top of his head with its receding hairline showed pale from the last light of the evening, and his deep-set eyes seemed to be searching the ranch yard for something he could disapprove of. He pinched the tiny stub of his cigarette and threw it outside.

  Calvert spoke up. “Not bad firewood, though.”

  “What’s that?” said Ingram.

  “Cedar.”

  “Oh. Uh-huh.”

  Silence grew in the bunk house for the next few minutes. Ingram cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. Aden rolled another cigarette, lit it, and tossed the dead match outside. Calvert gathered up the cards and began shuffling them.

  Finally Brad Way spoke up in the general tone of making conversation. “I wonder who’s looking after Dunn’s place.”

  Will could feel the dead silence.

  “Why’s that?” asked Calvert as he cut the deck.

  Brad looked at Ingram and then Aden. “Well, because of what happened.”

  Calvert paused in his shuffling and glanced around. “What happened?”

  Brad hesitated until Ingram gestured for him to go ahead. “Well, old Dunn got killed earlier this afternoon.”

  “The hell,” said Calvert, sitting straight up and frowning. “How did you know about it?”

  Brad looked at Ingram and Aden again and said, “Earl told us when we came in.”

  Calvert moved his gaze from Will to the foreman. “We didn’t hear anything about it.”

  Ingram’s blue eyes held steady as he shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think of it. I probably thought it would just come out in conversation, and you can see it did.”

  Will’s face tensed. So that was what the talk about mutton stew and race dogs was all about, just to keep this other topic at a distance.

  Calvert turned to Brad Way. “Earlier this afternoon, you say.”

  “That’s right. Earl can tell you.”

  Ingram shook his head. “Nah, you’re doin’ fine. You know as much as I do, anyway. I told you everything I heard from the sheriff’s man.”

  Brad’s eyes shifted around, and Will could tell he didn’t like being put in the position he was in.

  “Well,” said Calvert, “is there an idea who did it? Any witnesses?”

  “I don’t know. That fella Al Stegman found him. He got questioned.”

  “They don’t think he did it, do they?”

  “Probably not. He said he was friends with Dunn.”

  “Good chance of that. What else did he say?”

  Brad looked even more uncomfortable than before. “He said he could prove it.”

  “Oh.”

  “He said Will Dryden had just been there at Dunn’s place on Monday, and he, Will, could testify that Stegman and Dunn were friends.”

  Calvert and Will exchanged a glance, and then they both turned to the two company men. Ingram had taken out his knife and was cleaning his fingernails, while Aden was holding a cigarette to his lips and staring out into the dusk.

  Chapter Eleven

  Will studied the land to the west of him as the sun warmed his back. The news of Dunn’s death was still sinking in, as was his awareness that Ingram had let him and Calvert find out on their own. Meanwhile, the daily routine went on as before, as if nothing had happened. After breakfast, Ingram had sent the riders out on their usual rounds and had made no further comments about Dunn.

  As for suspicion, the visible men at the Redstone were all in the clear. Will and Calvert had been out riding together and could easily vouch for one another. The same went for Max Aden and Brad Way. Donovan had come back to the ranch before noon dinner, and Will remembered that the boss had showed up at the cookshack as the four riders were leaving. He and Ingram, according to Brad, had sat at the table for two or three hours, discussing the business of the ranch. Not long after that, a sheriff’s man had come by with the news and had left with a satisfactory account of where the hired men had been working.

  What the sheriff or his man would not think to ask about, of course, would be a person they did not know existed. It seemed like a bold maneuver, but Will could imagine Al Vetch going out in the clear light of day, when everyone was occupied and out of the way. It would have been a quick job to take care of Ben Forrester and a little more time-consuming to go to Dunn Station, but a man could do it. The question of why still remained, and Will knew he was not going to find an answer in the surface of the landscape before him.

  Just before splitting up with Calvert, Will had said he might take a wider circle than usual. Calvert did not ask any questions or make any comments. He nodded in his discreet way and rode off on his own. Now as Will surveyed the sweep of land to the west, he calculated how long it would take him to find the homestead west of Popper Spring, ask a few questions, and get back to his pattern. He figured an hour or a little more.

  Will checked the cinch on the gray horse, swung aboard, and set off on a lope to the west. Popper Spring would lie a little to the north of where he was riding at the moment. As it was within the area that Calvert would cover, Will held to the west for a good mile and then started angling a few degrees to the north. When he estimated that he had reached a point beyond the spring, he straightened out again and headed west.

  The country was not looking any more hospitable. If anything, it looked more austere—the grass dry and brittle, the cactus low and curled, the sagebrush thin and twisted. The soil showed through between the clumps of sparse vegetation, and the ground was littered with rocks—not the smooth, shiny pebbles where w
ater once ran but crusted, mud-colored stones. Will found it curious that a homesteader would want to take up a claim in an area like this.

  He rode for another mile until, topping a rise, he saw an unexpected sight. Just ahead lay a protected little valley, surrounded on three sides by ridges, including the one he had just climbed. Down the center ran a thread of water. Will imagined that the valley drifted in with snow during the winter, and the accumulation no doubt helped keep the grass in good condition and helped nourish the cedar trees that grew along the slopes.

  Off to his left as the valley ran southward sat a homesteader’s cabin and a small set of stock pens. Out from the house, two horses grazed on picket ropes. Farther down the valley to his left, a flock of about eighty sheep grazed. A man with a walking stick moved from the far side of the herd toward the house, and a medium-sized, dark-haired dog trotted beside him.

  Will took the gray horse down the slope at a careful walk. By the time the ground leveled out, he was close enough to pick out the unkempt clothes, stained hat, and downer features of Al Stegman. The man stopped, spoke to his dog, and waited for the visitor to cover the rest of the ground between them.

  Will rode up to within ten yards of the homesteader and dismounted, so as not to be looming over and talking down to him.

  “How do you do? I’m Will Dryden. We met the other day.”

  Stegman gave a curt nod.

  “I was sorry to hear about what happened to Dunn.”

  “Bein’ sorry doesn’t do any good.”

  Will recalled the last time he had been taken to task for saying he was sorry. “I know. But he was a decent man with me, and I thought I’d ride over and see you.”

  “I don’t know what for.” Stegman’s face had an empty expression, as if he had no desire for any kind of an exchange.

  “Well, for one thing, I understand you gave my name as someone who could vouch for you being friends with Dunn.”

  Stegman gave a small shrug. “You don’t have to admit to it.”

  “No reason I shouldn’t.” Will thought the man might have taken some pleasure in letting it be known that one of Donovan’s men had been sociable with him and Dunn, but Will didn’t see much to be gained by mentioning it. “I just thought that if we were on those terms, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for me to drop by.”