Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  Cain asked reluctantly, “What do you want me to read, Old Mother?”

  “Psalm Twenty-two.”

  “Well, let’s see if I still know how to find it.”

  “Glory be. A word from the Lord now.”

  Cain coughed. He turned his chair halfway around so the reddish light from the low flame in the saucer would fall on the page. The low light accentuated the ax-cut hollows of his walnut face. He riffled through the pages. He noted old finger spots along the margins, some going back to Gramp’s time. He paged through the loose pages in the Psalm section. He noted the dark page edge which marked the passage describing the Resurrection according to St. John. The Good Book, like some faithful corncob pipe, had endured the abuse of much loving wear.

  Cain found the place at last. He read slowly. He had a fine bass voice. When he rolled off some of the more familiar phrasing, it filled the room and made the chinaware on the mantel murmur.

  “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my roaring? I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest me not. Even in the night season I am not silent….

  “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head, saying, He trusted the Lord….

  “But thou art He that took me out of the womb. Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breast. I was cast upon thee from the womb. Thou art my God from my mother’s belly….

  “Many bulls have compassed me. Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. Like ravening and roaring lions they gaped upon me with their mouths.

  “I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels.

  “My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue cleaveth to my jaws. Thou hast brought me into the dust of death. Dogs compass me about. … I tell my bones. The dogs look and stare upon me. Deliver my darling soul from the power of the dogs. Save me from the lion’s mouth.”

  Finished reading, Cain sat a moment looking at the doublecolumn pages of print.

  Gram murmured, “I tell my bones. Yes.”

  Cain looked up then. “Funny old psalm. I don’t recall as ever having read it before.”

  Rory said from the dark near the high window, her back to the table, “Oh, she’s out of her mind.”

  Gram cried it out then, lifting her head. “Yes, Lord, yes, I’m ready. I’ve been ready, lo, these twenty years now. Yes, Lord, yes. I’ve lived long enough.” Tears ran down her ancient spidery face. “I’ve lived too long, too long. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I tell my bones over and over and still thou dost not take me.”

  Cain and Dale and Joey sat very still. They stared down at their hands.

  Rory came bustling back to the table.“All right, Gram, that’s enough of that now. Off to bed with you.” She shot a red finger at Joey. “And you to bed too. I’ll do the dishes alone tonight.”

  Gram got up and started for bed.

  Cain went over, then, and put a hand on her old shoulder. He leaned down and kissed her. He didn’t mind doing it. She was still his gram and had it coming.

  Gram smiled up at him with a wonderful smile and clutched his hand for a moment. Nodding at him, she shuffled off to the lean-to.

  Eyes winking brightly, Cain looked the other way.

  Joey asked, “Kin I first see Unk unroll his bed, Mom?”

  “No.”

  “Aw, shucks, Mom.”

  “Oh, let the boy,” Cain said, eyes steady again.“I have no secrets to hide.”

  Joey said, “If I’m gonna be a cowboy like Unk I’d better learn how.”

  A look passed between Rory and Dale.

  Cain got his bedroll from the hitching rack outside. He unfolded it on the plank floor behind the black stove. His bedroll was of the usual kind, a tarpaulin seven by eighteen, made of heavy white ducking and thoroughly waterproofed. It was outfitted with rings and snaps so that the sleeper could pull the top flap over his head in wet or stormy weather. Folded neatly inside the tarp were a couple of suggans or quilts, a woolen blanket, and a warbag. The warbag was a personal sack in which Cain kept his extra clothes and such ditties and dofunnies as a supply of makin’s and cigarette papers, pipe, an extra spur, an extra bit and cinch, some whang leather, a carefully wrapped picture of Rory and also one of himself with Harry and Dale as the Three Mustangs, a packet of old tattered letters, a greasy deck of playing cards, a bill of sale for Lonesome, and a bag of silver dollars. Cain often used the warbag for a pillow. Since it was a warm night Cain planned to sleep on top and so did not unfold the bedroll completely.

  Many a time on the trail he had awakened in the morning with six inches of snow weighting down the tarp, yet inside he’d been as snug as a baby in a whorl of blankets. Next to a horse, a bedroll was a cowpuncher’s best friend. It went with him everywhere. It had been with him up in the mountains while he was getting Rory her bighorn.

  Joey watched Cain’s every move.

  Cain smiled, indulgent. “Think you could make your bed as neat and quick?”

  Joey said, “Then you didn’t take no surprise along for me this time?”

  “What!” Cain’s smile faded. “No, cuss it, I ain’t. I didn’t go nowheres near a town, boy.”

  Dale spoke up from the head of the table where he still sat morose and heavy-eyed. “Never mind now about surprises, you nosy one you. Get to bed. Besides, when Christmas comes in a couple of months you’ll have plenty of presents.”

  In the lean-to behind the kitchen, where Gram had gone to bed, they all heard her suddenly praying in a high leathery rustling voice. “Not my will, O Lord, but thine. I am ready. Let me awaken in the morning with thee in heaven. Let me quit this vale of misery. Let me awaken to the sound of angels playing their silver harps. Let me awaken with my beloved Mayberry greeting me with open arms. O Mabry, Mabry my love, I am coming. Never fear. Not my will, O Lord, but thine. Yet nevertheless hear my plea. I am ready. I have prepared my soul, lo, these many years. Amen.”

  Cain shivered.

  Rory began to rattle the dishware into a pan.

  Dale said, softer, “All right, son, bed now, please.”

  “Aw,” Joey began, eyeing each in turn for some sign of weakening.

  Cain gave him an uncle’s warning look. “Better go.”

  Joey gave way under the look. “Oh, all right. Night, everybody. See you in the morning.” Lip sulky, a little like his father’s, he headed for the lean-to, calluses on his bare feet tussing on the plank floor.

  Cain stepped outside. The danglers on his spurs tinked musically on the hard ground.

  “Where you goin’?” a voice, Dale’s, spoke up behind.

  “See if my hoss is set for the night.”

  “Oh.” Silence. “I thought maybe you was looking for a dog to kick.”

  “Well, that too.”

  The two brothers stood together under the high starlight. Behind the barn the Shaken Grass and the Bitterness joined in confluence with softly clashing waves. Far to the west heat lightning threw occasional sheets of orange over the white peaks of the Old Man and the Throne. A coyote on the alkali hills yipped lone and mournful.

  Cain got out his makin’s. “Rory got herself a considerable eye there, Dale.”

  “She had it comin’.”

  “What was it all about? Not that it’s any of my business.”

  Dale glanced around in the dark; stepped closer. He stood over Cain a good half-foot. “She went on the prod because I didn’t kill Link Keeler the other day.”

  “What!” Cain’s heels almost left the ground. Link Keeler was the young tough who had murdered Gramp Hammett. “Where’d you see him?” Instantly hard, Cain fingered down for his gun in the dark; then remembered he’d left gun and cartridge belt hanging on the deerhorn rack behind the door.

  “T’Antelope. Two days ago. He calls himself Hunt Lawton
now. But he’s Link the killer all right.”

  “Hunt Lawton, eh? What’s he think he’s doin’ in these parts?” Cain finished rolling his cigarette in the dark. He licked it and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. It bobbed as he talked.

  “Took a job with Jesse. Stock inspector. Peace officer. You know what that means.”

  Cain knew what it meant. As stock inspector and peace officer, Link alias Hunt could shoot down the rest of the Hammetts if he felt like it, and do it knowing he’d have the law on his side. Cain said, “Dale, all these years, you figured out yet why Link killed Gramp? He lived with us a half-year quiet and peaceable, and then all t’once he upped and shot Gramp in the back. There must’ve been some reason.”

  “I don’t know. ” Dale let out a deep breath.“I wish I knew myself. It might explain a lot of things.”

  “So Rory gave you the devil then.”

  “The devil is right. Said I should have killed him on sight. Not even give him an ask-and-answer chance. Or even say hello. Just pull the trigger.”

  The coyote on the hill cried long and lone again.

  “But did you have to hit her, Dale? We Hammetts ain’t exactly been known to beat up on our women.”

  Despite the dark Cain could see outrage gather on Dale’s gaunt face. “Cain, she called me coward.”

  “Hah.”

  “You blastin’ well right, that’s different.” Dale began to puff. “I told her if she was so hot for a killin’ to go do it herself.”

  Cain looked down at the ground black under their feet. “Maybe this life here in Bad Country is too tough on the women. Making them overhard.” Cain pulled a match out of his hatband and flicked it with a thumbnail. A flame exploded inside his cupped hands.

  “Durn her,” Dale swore, loud on the yard. “Queen in the house, that I give her. But gunfighter, or foreman tellin’ her man how to run his life, no.”

  “Well, there I side with you. As a mother and sister and wife, there a woman is fine. But God save us from bullhead bloomer she-males generally.” Cain remembered Gramp’s notions on how to handle the women. “Me?” Gramp had said. “Listen, when I’ve once told a woman what I’ve got to tell her, she can have as many last words as she wants. She’s told.”

  “Cain, maybe I better tell you all she said.” Dale’s throat worked. “Cain, you know what that fool woman thinks? She thinks Link killed our dads, Gordon and Raymond, that time they was supposed to have drowned in that great Siouxland flood. Besides Gramp.”

  “Hah!” Cain took a deep suck on his cigarette. The cigarette lit up fiery pink and almost set fire to his mustache.

  “That’s what I told her. But she claims she heard it the time Link was around. Said she didn’t mention it then because we was riled up enough already.”

  Cain coughed, and then said slowly, “Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I guess I can say that I heard about it too. The boys was talking about it in a poolhall in Sioux Falls. I looked into it but I couldn’t find him.”

  “Hey, then maybe it was true after all like Rory says.”

  “Could be.” Cain drew deep on his cigarette. “But supposin’ he did, what has he got agin us Hammetts?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Cain’s cigarette became so short it began to singe his mustache again. He threw it on the ground and stepped on it. “Well, if he did kill them, I hate to think of what’s ahead. Besides all the other trouble we already got.”

  “Man, so do I.”

  After a bit Cain said, “Well, now that you’ve spilled your guts, it’s my turn to tell something. Today, coming home, I found our brother Harry hanging from the big cottonwood in my yard there.”

  “No!” Dale backed a step. “At last then.”

  “Yes, and in another minute it would have been no breakfast forever for our poor Harry.” Cain saw where his cigarette still glowed on the ground. He went over and stumped it out with a sharp heel. “I cut him down and revived him.”

  “Great thunder!” Dale gasped. Dale’s eyes rolled in rapid thought. “Great thunder, that couldn’t be Link at work already?”

  “No. It was Jesse. And two men Harry says he never saw before. Hired killers, probably.”

  Dale looked down at the ground a while. At last he said, low, “I suppose next they’ll be after me. They hate sheepmen even worse than they do Red Sash devils.”

  “No, I wouldn’t quite say that.”

  Dale cried it out into the night’s silence then. “Why does Harry do it? Don’t he know enough to play it honest like the rest of us? So them bustards have that much less the hook on us?”

  Cain coughed. “Well, now, Dale, see here. We ain’t been so holy ourselves. After all, in the past who’s been sellin’ his stolen beef to the railroads for him?”

  Dale fell silent.

  “Even if we didn’t ourselves kill any of Lord Peter’s beef, it’s wrong for us to serve as fence for Harry.”

  Dale pawed at the ground with a sharp toe. “But the butchered beef had no brand. I saw the hides myself.”

  “Oh, come now, Dale. You got sheep. How could you be sellin’ beef?”

  Dale swallowed with a loud click. “But the other side ain’t been fair either, makin’ it so that the little man has got to prove his stock is his to sell.” Dale was referring to the fact that the state livestock commission, in the control of the cattle barons, had instructed its inspectors at the various stockyards in the country to hold up all cattle bearing a brand suspected of being a fence for rustlers. This action hit at all the little stockmen, good as well as bad, since every little stockman was looked upon with suspicion by the cattle barons. The little man had to appear before the commission and prove that suspected beef belonged to him and not to rustlers. Dale went on. “It’s agin right to make every man prove he is honest. It’s always been that a man was honest until he was proved guilty.”

  Cain said, “Well, Dale, I don’t want to argue with you about it. As for me, I told Harry today that even if he is my brother I’m through bein’ his fence. Done.”

  Dale scuffed the ground. “Well, with Link in the country as inspector, maybe I better tell him the same.”

  Dale

  Dale slid in beside Rory in the dark bedroom. The hide spring made a sound as if wincing under the added weight. Dale had on only his summer drawers and his gaunt knees touched the back of her firm legs. She had on a cotton nightgown. Her back was turned to him and he thought he could sense her trying to be distant. Could she be afraid he might ask her to suffer him a moment’s pleasure? Holy cow!

  He thought about the talk he’d just had with Cain out on the yard. So brother Harry had almost died hanging. It was terrible to think of it. Awful. And that Cain, telling about it so quiet. In a tight Cain always did have more guts than a man could hang on a fence.

  Jesse’s hard-riding quick-shooting cowpunchers would be after him next then. In his mind Dale could see them coming onto the yard. He could see himself suddenly surrounded by hard grim mouths and dark flashing six-guns. He could almost feel the harsh pricky rope around his neck, with the horse about to leap out from under him.

  What was it really like when the brain blackened over?

  And Rory, what of her afterwards? Would brother Cain at last have his turn with her? As both Cain and Rory secretly wanted?

  Well, in any case he’d had Rory first, when she was pretty and a virgin. Also, he’d had a boy by her. With another coming. Having her first was something Cain could never have.

  He groaned softly to himself. The truth was that Rory really belonged to Cain, not him. Cecil Guth had never been in it. Everybody knew Cecil Guth had been just a cover-up.

  Cain and Rory. Yes. Otherwise why would Rory urge Cain to go up under the Old Man and get her a bighorn? And Cain agree to get it? There was that treat too, that Jello fluff-duff, she’d saved for Cain.

  He groaned softly to himself again. He ran a hand over his long body, down from his lean neck to his hollow belly
to his stony kneecap.

  His mind turned to the trip he’d made to town two days before. And got stuck there. No matter how he tried to think of something else, something absorbing, something dramatic, his mind would not let go of it.

  His mind agonized over it. Searingly. Curse it as he might, his mind burned to make the trip over again, to see it once more and rectify it.

  …Rory said she needed provisions: salt, sugar, rice, dried fruit, spices, canned milk, canned tomatoes, another rooster if he could get it. He himself needed a pair of boots, some pants, fence nippers, some sheep dip.

  Early in the morning, in a light four-wheel spring wagon, its wheels going irregularly round and round, he left for Antelope some fifty miles to the north. Driving his spanking pair of matched bay trotters, Bill and Doc, hard when it was cool in the morning, pacing them during the heat of the day, and then driving them briskly again in the cool of the evening, he got to town just after dark. After he’d put up his horses at Dad Finfrock’s livery barn, he got a room for himself at Ma Deming’s. Rory preferred that he stay at the Turnbull Hotel, since Rory believed Ma Deming ran a whorehouse, not a boardinghouse. But he couldn’t resist staying at Ma’rs anyway. He and grass widow Ma got along. She always seemed pleased to see him, always asked with close interest about Rory and Joey and all.

  Before he turned in for the night, he had himself a jolly talk with Ma in her roomy kitchen. It was the middle of the week and business was slow, and Ma had all kinds of time on her hands and was anxious for some chin music. Ma had blond hair which she wore brushed up into a bun, with some gray beginning to show.

  Dale had a habit of taking a chew when not around Rory.

  Ma was sitting across the table from him and she pulled a face. “I didn’t know you indulged.”

  “Well, it’s better than smoking. Less, chance of startin’ a grass fire.”

  Ma’s brown eyes snapped disgust. Her round slightly fuzzed-over face wrinkled up some more. “It’s a filthy dirty habit. Who likes to kiss a mouth stained all over with brown like that?”