Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  “How?”

  Cain set his stub legs wide apart.“Where’s Timberline?”

  “Up at the head of the hole. Just inside the Wall. Watching the Derby roundup through my glasses.”

  “Where’s the rest of your boys?”

  Harry tipped back his gray hat and scratched his silver hair. “Guarding what’s left of our herd high in Hidden Country. Where I sent them early this morning.”

  “Hmm. Then we’ll have to do it with just the three of us. You, me, and Timberline.”

  “You crazy? Mitch’s got twenty-five armed men holding that herd.”

  “You got a better plan?”

  “Well, I thought we could maybe run a stompede on’em. Scatter everything all to hell and gone, and then take our time picking out our own.”

  “No. I’m agin that. I want a showdown with them devils. I got my herd fair. And they can treat me accordin’.”

  Harry smiled, again looking at Cain with face held to one side. “What about them two hundred unbranded mavericks we took over the past summer? The ones you found hid high in the Big Stonies and told us about?”

  “Them the ones of yours they’re holdin’ now?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Wal, each man to his own troubles. They got your brand on and that’s good enough for me. If you’d’ve changed brands on’em, that’d be a horse of another color.”

  “But you still think we should take them on with just the three of us?”

  “Less’n we get brother Dale to come too.” Cain wrung his ear. “Dencil is out of the question of course, since Clara’ll have a fit.” Cain gestured, blunt. “Listen. Go down and get Dale. In a tight he’s a good one to ride the river with. Hurry. It’ll take me a bit anyway to get ready and by that time the both of you can be back here. Tell Dale I’ll have Lonesome saddled and ready for him.”

  “Lonesome? That black piece of bad luck? Not Dale too, Cain.”

  “G’wan, get. Lonesome ain’t bad luck. He ain’t brought me any yet. And he won’t bring anybody else any.”

  “Cain, as sure as shootin’, if Dale rides him, he’s sure to land in a mess of trouble like I did.”

  “G’wan, get. Dale hain’t got your kind of conscience. And tell Dale to take both his rifle and .45 along. With plenty of shells.”

  “Four men is still—”

  “You game, Harry?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Get then.”

  Harry galloped off.

  Cain let Bucky down out of the twitch and untied him from the snubbing post. When he reached up to slip on the bridle, Bucky gave a funny little whinny, showed old white around the eyeball, and climbed the air, sunfishing, as if to say, “Hey, bozo, ain’t you forgot something?”

  Cain smiled some. “Sorry, old man, as usual I see you want the saddle on first. The way I first broke y’u, eh?“ He slipped on the saddle with its blanket and cinched it up tight. After that Bucky didn’t mind the bridle, even parted his mouth to help.

  Cain saddled and bridled Lonesome too; dug out an extra rope and bedroll for Dale; filled both saddlebags with greasy shells. He buckled on a set of shiny leather chaps and got out a second pair for Dale.

  The boys, Harry and Dale, didn’t come, so he took some practice shots with his .45, drawing and firing at a few late fall flies clinging to the sunny side of the barn. The shots cracked loud in the low yard, echoing off the bluffs behind the cabin, and then off the further hills toward Crimson Wall.

  “Dummed flies seem to move just as I shoot,” Cain muttered to himself. He kept at it until he felt he had the old rhythm down again.

  Cain had perfected a technique of his own. He drew and fired in one motion. The moment the muzzle was clear of the holster, he snapped the hammer by jerking down the gun with a hard motion and then stopping the jerk at the exact instant of firing. He held the gun high on the grip and always aimed it some six inches below where he wanted to hit.

  He recalled the advice of an old gunman. “When you see you’re about to have trouble with someone, make it a point to get up as close as possible. This’ll make it easy for you to read the other man’s eyes. A man’s eyes will always tip off his next move. It also removes the chance of a miss.”

  The boys still didn’t come, so he decided he might as well take the kinks out of Bucky. Bucky saw him coming and his ears went flat on his head. Cain talked low to him, petted him some, and then stepped across. Before the toe of his right boot could find its way home into the stirrup, Cain was aboard a cyclone of muscle and bone. Bucky went off the ground in a great leap, and then, at the very top of it, broke in two and threw the rear half of his body one way and the front half the other, so that when he came down he landed with two separate jolts. Cain knew this maneuver and tried to set himself for it, but with his right foot still not in the stirrup, he wasn’t locked in properly. The next thing he knew he was sailing through the air, hind legs kicking around like a migrating bullfrog in full flight. He hit the ground on his belly with a loud wumpfing grunt. And lay there.

  He got to his feet slowly. “That dummed wild hyena.” He collected his hat and dusted it off. He dusted off his faded black shirt and vest and chaps. He felt over his body for broken bones. With a grim smile he recalled Gramp’s advice on how to stick to an outlaw horse. “If you’ll just keep the eye of your one-spot glued onto the center of a hoss’s spine, you’ll never get throwed.”

  He went for Bucky again. Bucky’s ears were still mean down. Cain got hold of the reins, firmly; put his foot in the near stirrup, easy; then bellowed a hoarse and roaring “Whoa!” and stepped across.

  Up went Bucky, chinning the moon, swapping ends in midair, swallowing his head as he came down, thumping the ground with four rocking jolts as each hoof hit separately. This time Cain rode him up and rode him down. He’d got his foot in the far stirrup and he and the horse were one.

  Cain bellowed another hoarse “Whoa!” and this time he let the heat of his risen bulb of hate get into it. It ripped out of his throat.

  Bucky boiled over yet once more—and then had enough. His ears came up and he trotted over to the hitching rack and ranged beside Lonesome. A smile wrinkled back his Roman nose.

  Yet still Harry and Dale didn’t come.

  It got to be twelve noon. Then one. Then two.

  Cain cussed. “I knew it. That Rory’s went on the peck again.

  Dummed Dale, lettin’ her get her head like that. Interferin’ with man’s work.”

  When it got to be almost three, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He was hungry. ‘My stomach’s so shrunk now it’ll hardly chamber a headache pill.” He fried himself some potatoes and steak; opened a can of tomatoes; finished off with some dried apples. It wasn’t much of a meal, a simple buck-nun’s, but it stuck to the ribs.

  It was four when a drumming of hooves sounded behind the barn along the Shaken Grass.

  Cain greeted the boys from the low doorway Of his log cabin. “What held you up?“

  Dale’s lean gobbler face split all the way back to his ears. He sat behind Harry, behind the cantle. “Had us a false alarm.”

  “Oh.” That stubbed Cain. The warm bulb in the back of his head lay down some. “Wal! I was awonderin’.” He came down the stoop. “How’s Rory now?”

  “Fine. She forgot the same thing happened this far along with Joey.”

  “She didn’t kick on your cornin’ along then?“

  “Nary a word.”

  “She knows?”

  “She’s all for it. Even a killing bee if it’s needed.”

  Cain considered some more. “Harry, when did her false alarm come? After you told her about this deal coming up?”

  Dale answered, sharpish. “Before. If you must know.”

  Cain nodded. “All right. Good. And now let’s roll our tails. We’re probably too late already for today.”

  Cain led the way, riding Bucky. Next came Harry on his bay, Star. Dale tailed after on Lonesome. Lonesome snorted now and then at D
ale’s smell, but Cain settled him with a stern word. They loped briskly up the trail alongside the Shaken Grass. They packed their guns loose, both the six-gun and the rifle. All three watched the skyline above the rim of the canyon.

  Fall colors flashed to all sides in the narrow bottom: groves of golden quaking-aspen, patches of scarlet thornbushes, clusters of crimson rose briars, webs of Whiteball clematis braided through fronds of ponderosa pine. Sagebrush showed the rust of a first frost. Buckbrush rattled dry wisp leaves.

  The wind of their going bruised in their ears. Far ahead, through the gap of Crimson Wall, reared up the Old Man and the Throne. The snow on them had spread down their sides some. A very thin veil of cirrus clouds worked off the two peaks, spreading out over the wide Bitterness valley like a smoke from a great fire.

  The sun fell very slowly toward the range of stickleback peaks to the west. Clusters of tiny dots spread on a far slope like lice across a tawny fur coat. It was where Mitch Slaughter had the last of his boys out on circle.

  The three watched the skyline. Horse hooves clopped in rhythmic throws. White dust stived up out of the hard gray trail. The two walls of the Shaken Grass canyon slowly raised, slowly turned pink, then crimson, then blood-crust red. Cottonwoods slowly gave way to red cedars. The three watched the skyline.

  Then they were through the gap and inside the Crimson Wall. They wheeled to the right. Red dust rose from the trail under them.

  High on a projecting ledge a figure moved. The figure had red hair and beard, a red sash, and dusty red clothes. He blended perfectly into the background of red sandstone. Eyeglasses, catching the late sun, burned down on them briefly. The figure waved at them with a hat, around and around.

  Cain drew up. So did the others, coming abreast.

  Harry said, “Timberline. On the watch where I put him.“

  “Wave him on down here.”

  Harry waved his hat around once, in a big sweep, and down.

  Timberline waved again, this time straight up and across, once, emphatic, and started down.

  Cain watched Timberline climb down, off one ledge to another, past pink strata, then a layer of yellow clay, then blood-crust red. The blood-crust layers were always the thickest and they gave the great cliff its color. Cain watched Timberline hit the bottom of the cliff; watched him get his horse, a sorrel, from where he had hidden it behind a monster slab of fallen sandstone; watched him clamber aboard and come beating toward them.

  Dale couldn’t help but make a sliding remark. “Throw a leg of his on each side of a horse and his mind in the middle, and there he’ll ride for the rest of the day.”

  “He ain’t so dumb,” Harry defended with a flash of eyes.

  Timberline’s sorrel ran with a paddling gait, front feet winging out on each gallop. Under Timberline the sorrel looked like a runt burro. Timberline’s feet almost dragged on the ground and in the dips it sometimes looked like he was holding up the horse between his legs.

  Timberline came beating on until he was almost on top of them. Then his red beard parted; a pink-edged hole showed; a large “Whoa!” boomed; and on the instant the sorrel set down on all fours. A cloud of dust stove up all around them.

  Close up, Timberline was overwhelming. He was so huge the Red Sash boys swore that, with his red beard, he was a cinch to win first prize at a bull show. No one had ever found out just how tall he was, but he was so much over six feet that everyone claimed at least seven for him. “He’s so tall,” Harry once said, “he don’t even know when his feet is cold.”

  Timberline dressed rough mostly because store clothes wouldn’t fit. He had to make his own pants and shirt from the best parts of discarded clothes of others. His pants might be of as many colors as it took pieces to make them. Luckily he’d once been a shoemaker, so his boots, huge ones, always fit perfect. In fact, his boots were so well made they fit with the elegance and snugness of a lord’s, “so fine,” as Harry once put it, “a man could almost see the wrinkles in his socks.” The grip of his .45 was makeshift—the old butt had been replaced with a plow handle. His hat, to fit, had to be sprung until it was misshapen. Hence he usually hung onto a hat until it was as dark with hand grease as an old family Bible, was as heavy as a pail of lard, and could be smelled all the way across a livery stable. The only store-bought items he could wear ready-made were his belt and vest, though he wore the belt in the last hole and the vest never quite covered the small of his back.

  Harry had once tried civilizing Timberline a little. He took him into Antelope to clean him up with a haircut and a bath. “You’ve been gophering in them hills so long, Tim, you’re liable to find yourself without a soul come Judgment Day.” They never got to the bathtub. Because the mistake was first made in the barbershop. Long red hairs grew out of Timberline’s nose, hairs as long and as stiff as barley beards. The hairs caught the eye of the barber, a finicky Frenchy, and he began work on them first, trimming them away with quick neat snips. It took Timberline, his little red pig eyes rolling, some twenty seconds to catch up with what was happening to him, and then he reacted volcanically, hugely, under the white apron. He rose in terrible rage, and beat the barber to within an inch of his life. He might have killed him with his hairy fists if Harry and the crowd in the shop hadn’t pulled him off. “By Grab,” Timberline roared, “by Grab, the Good Lord intended them hairs there for a reason! To strain out the wild salt and the flies! Just like He growed a tail off a cow’s hindquarters to switch the flies with!” Timberline was so wild after that the boys had to tie him up when it came time to change his underwear each spring.

  It was Harry who’d given him his nickname: Timberline. Timberline was hairy from his toes to his ears, and from there on was as bald as the top of Old Man mountain. Harry had seen the resemblance the first time he met him and had branded him on the spot. No one knew Timberline’s real name—he’d been known as Big Red until then—not even his summer name. Nor did anyone know where he’d come from. Harry had once heard a rumor in Butcherknife Bain’s saloon that back East somewhere Timberline had caught his shoemaker partner in bed with his wife, that he’d tied them together and whipped them unmercifully, then had skipped the country. But Harry had never dared ask him about it.

  The top of Timberline’s head was the subject of much speculation, though never in his presence. Since he never washed higher than his wrists and only his lips and the point of his nose, a crust of red dust had slowly formed over his bald dome. Harry claimed, he’d once seen a wasp sting it with not even an eyeflick from Timberline. Harry was positive that if it could be pried up it would prove to be at least as thick as a U. P. restaurant pancake. Harry claimed that the Good Lord had run out of the same breed of hair when he came to finish Timberline off at the top. Another time Harry argued that the bald dome was probably the scar where the Lord had poured in Timberline’s brains. “Except that He poured them in with a syrup spoon and somebody bumped His arm.”

  Still and all, Timberline was probably as clean and as healthy as any wild bull on the prairie. Like them, he was washed by the rains, scoured by the snows, combed and dried by the winds, and toughened by his own accidental vaccinations.

  Cain smiled through the dust that Timberline’s sorrel kicked up. He tipped back his black hat by the point. “Howdy, Tim. What’s new?”

  “Nothin’s movin’ now, Cain. Mitch’s hands have about finished ridin’ circle for the day.”

  Cain looked across the width of the red country; then looked it up and down. “Not even a magpie scoldin’.”

  “That’s a gut, “ Timberline grunted. Timberline leaning forward on the horn of his saddle was still almost a head taller than any of the others.

  “Where’s Dencil’s horses?”

  Harry spoke up. “I told Red Jackson and the boys to push them back into Hidden Country until the trouble was over.”

  Cain lifted a brow. It crinkled the side of his face. “Oh? Did Dencil agree to that?”

  Harry said, “No. Nor did Clara. She got a
s mad as a she-bear with a sore tail when we told her.”

  “She would.”

  Harry said, “But we decided to help them anyway. For their own good.”

  Cain observed that Harry’s eyes didn’t quite hold up to him when he talked. Something uneasy, something unsaid, lay behind Harry’s words. Cain decided to set up a watch in his head. “Poor Dencil. But I guess you probably did right at that. Save him a lot of trouble maybe.”

  Harry said, “You still plannin’ to bull in and cut out what you can?”

  “No, not that exactly. I think we’ll just ride in easylike and I’ll first have my say. After that, the next move will be up to Mitch.”

  Harry held his face to one side, gray eyes glimmering at Cain in the primrose dusk. “What about your wild one?”

  “Try me. The time to let your wild one out is when you know it’ll do some good.”

  “But then it ain’t a wild one.”

  “Mine is.”

  “All right. I agree. If you got a tight line on it.”

  “You’ve got a right to talk, you country jake you.” Cain looked at both Harry’s and Timberline’s red sashes. “I suggest you two take off them eye-catchers. Yeh, them red sashes. Wearin’ them in front of men already as touchy as teased snakes will only make them wilder. Like waving a red flag before a bull deliberate.”

  A dangerous gleam suddenly appeared in Harry’s eyes. “Ain’t this a free country out here?”

  “It’s a free country after we get our beef back. So off with’em, boys, or Dale and me’ll go in alone.”

  “What’ll we use for belts to hold up our pants?”

  “Use your piggin’ strings.”

  Both Harry and Timberline removed their red sashes with a show of reluctance.

  “Stuff ’em in your pokes. Out of sight.” When they finished, Cain looked over his little army. “Good. Now. Nobody open his yap or make a move for his gun until I give the word.”

  A red sun struck the south slope of the Old Man, just at the edge of the snowline. The red sun bounced; burned a deep hole for itself into the rock line; then melted into it. Instantly a vast light-black shadow raced by overhead, climbed up and over the Crimson Wall, then rushed far across all the Bitterness valley beyond. With it came a slowly spreading violet silence.