Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  There were no takers.

  Timberline started to laugh. “Well, gents—”

  Mitch, quick as a flash, had out his gun. “You laughin’ at my mare?”

  “No. No, I ain’t laughin’ at your mare, Mitch. No. I was just smilin’ about the yarn I was about to spin.” Timberline gave Mitch a most abused look.

  “The yarn you was about to spin … that’ll be something, I bet.“

  Lord Peter, stiff in his canvas chair, blinked and blinked.

  Timberline swallowed; then started in. “Speaking of wild ones—which we wasn’t—I mind me of the time I tamed me a wolf pup. I got him pretty tame, too, for a wolf. He follered me everywhere. He wouldn’t let me pet him, but he’d foller me. Well, one time, I was sitting on a stump by the south line camp there, when a pack of wolves slides by. They spot my pet wolf, and one of the bitches whoos at him. My pet set there a minute, listening, tongue lolly-gagging, and finally he got up and with a sad look at me departs after them. And I thought, yep, there goes my pet. But no, after another minute, he comes lopin’ back. When he got near to my feet the same bitch whoos at him again. And again he run after them. Well sir, the short of it was—that pet of mine run back and forth a dozen times afore he made up his mind whether to stay wild or come tame.”

  “What did he decide?” Harry asked, smiling as if he knew what the answer would be.

  “Why! Stay wild a course.”

  Hambone ambled over from where he had just finished putting away the dishes. There was nothing Hambone liked better than to top Mitch in taletelling. “A stompede I was in once, I had the plumb pleasure of survivin’ too. This was down in the Texas Panhandle. It was a black night, as I remember, and the beef was ready to bolt. The air was so thick with electricity, there was a green ball on every horn in the herd. It looked like we was guarding a bogful of them fiery swamp hants. Every time my hoss moved his ears, back and forth, them green balls moved back and forth too. The air was so charged with it our flesh tingled. Why, you couldn’t run your hand through your hair but what you’d’lectrocute yoreself. The cloud above was so low a man went around duckin’ his head for fear a getting struck by accidental lightning sparks. It was as close and as hot as an oven full a bakin’ mushrooms. The side of a man’s face next to the herd almost blistered, as if it had been struck by a blast from a furnace. Well sir, there was a kid with us. A nice kid too. A couple a times I heard him prayin’ as we crossed by circling the herd. It was that bad. I finally had to tell him that it was no use to pray. The Good Lord just warn’t out on a night like that.”

  Old Hambone was known for his stretchers and everybody set back on his heels for a real one. Smiles passed around the dulling rose fire.

  “Well, we held them crazy critters until just before daybreak. You know, that’s when it’s always the darkest. All t’onct, a puff a wind comes up and tips a tumblingweed. Now mind you, all this time we ain’t even dared spit, let alone swallow or blow. So soft we took it for fear a spookin’’em. But that little bush tipping over did it. I was on a good hoss, a lightning-striker of a hoss, and it was more him than me that pulled us through. With the first jump he was out in the lead, going lickety-cut for nowhere. Every now and then I see a flash in the night which tells me some poor puncher is pooping off his gun to signal where he is. Shootin’ off his Winchester and his Colt all both at the same time. Or tryin’ mabbe to turn a few steer so they’d mill and so maybe stop. Boys, the odor given off by the clashing horns and hoofs was so overpowering I thought we’d ridden smack into a glue factory. Man! Well, before I myself could turn any of them spooked critters, I sees ahead in a flash of lightning how we’re all heading straight for a damnation of a dropoff, the beef, the hoss, and me. Yessir, there she was. Nowhere. Dead ahead.”

  As Hambone worked at embroidering his stretcher, the smiles around the fire slowly faded. Everyone, Mitch and his rannies, Jesse and Hunt, Cain and his waddies, all closed their eyes. Only Lord Peter continued to blink at the orating arm-waving Hambone.

  Hambone saw what the play was. A smile shot wickedly across his leather face; left it as placid as before. He rubbed his old gourd-bald head once, and went on.

  “Well sir, I went over that precipice on my hoss like hell after a preacher. I was dead sure I was headed for my long and happy home at last. I felt like I’d been sent for. Finally. We floated down, down, my hoss and me. After what seemed like a week, at last, we hit bottom. Hard-rock bottom. Well sir, my hoss lit so hard so fierce on that hard rock, on all fours, that she actually bogged down to the knees in it.”

  All heads around the fire slowly fell forward in what looked to be profound sleep. Only Lord Peter had his eyes open.

  Hambone swung his head around from his humped neck bone, looking at all the pretend sleepers. He set his face hard and gently reached over and drew Mitch’s .45 from its holster. Then he barked, “All right, you wise rannies! I’ve had enough insults from you! The first son-of-a-gun that wakes is a dead man! You too, Mitch! This is one hand you ain’t droppin’ out on.” Hambone cocked the gun with a loud click. His eyes flicked back and forth, narrowly watching every face. “And no sweet dreams neither! The first man I see smilin’ in his sleep has got to go too.”

  Here and there a face blanched slightly; became taut.

  At that point Lord Peter suddenly spoke up. He turned to Jesse. “Oh, I say, would you have your man bring in a warming pan and warm my sheets? I am about to retire.”

  “Warming pan!” Hambone exploded.

  “Yes. I must have my sheets warm,” Lord Peter said emphatically.

  Hambone gave Lord Peter a look of outraged astonishment. He tried to stare His Lordship down; couldn’t quite make it. “Oh, hells bells,” Hambone said at last, and he threw the gun down at Mitch’s feet. “All right, you range bums, wake up and stay awake all night for all of me. But after this, Jesse, I want two weeks’ notice before you come out with one of them foreign bullships again. That’s so I can be in the next county by the time you arrive.“

  At that, Jesse quick stood up, holding his sore leg. “All right, that’s enough! It’s time we all turn in.”

  After a silence, a long silence, Stalker growled, “Well, yeh, I guess at that we’ve been up long enough. Mitch our boss here is one of them fellers who never needs sleep he gets up so early. It makes him mad to see someone else that does.”

  “Yeh,” Hog said, “guess I’ve had enough for today too. I’m so sleepy I ain’t got enough gumption left to lick my upper lip. When it still has a taste or two of pie left up there. I know, because I can smell it.”

  Harry

  Harry lay coiled in his warm woolen suggans, chin almost into his paired knees. He could smell his own Hammett smell mingled in with the sweat of his horse Star’s. There was also the smell of his own breathing, of used air. Faintly, not quite as distinct, was the smell of crushed wild sage. There were also two other smells, stronger than all the others, but those he was used to: fresh horse buns as gassy as old mildewed hay and new cow plotches as rotten rich as soured pudding. Slowly he slid up a hand to make sure the tarp was tight over his head to keep out the chill wind sliding down from the mountains. A man had to make sure it was a cold draft and not a rattler that had crawled in.

  A bump in the ground pressed dull but hard through the suggans. It worked into his thigh. He couldn’t make out if it was a stone or a clump of bunch grass. He shifted slightly. He felt it through the bedclothes with a cautious slow hand. It was a round stone. He’d overlooked it when he laid out his bedroll.

  He lay still, listening absently. Through the ground he could hear the nearby night horses step about as they grazed such grass as was within reach. Further away, duller but still quite plain, was the slow turmoil of horse hooves in the saddle band. He fancied he could even catch the great herd of cattle breathing and chewing cud as it lay on the high bed ground behind camp. Occasionally a coyote sounded off his tarnal lonesome call. He could barely make out on the air a cowhand on guard si
nging a song, low, hoarse, to keep the mothers and calves and steers soothed for the night. The songs were pitched so low they made him feel drowsy too. Two of them he’d often sung himself: “We go North in the spring but will return in the fall” and “We are bound to follow the Lone Star trail.” And underneath it all, like an endless organ tremolo, ran the murmuring of the mountain stream.

  He envied the cowhand on guard not a whit. Many a night he too had ridden watch when sleep kept hitting him in the back of the neck like a blow from a boxer. It was only by rubbing the edges of his eyes with tobacco juice, making them smart, that he’d managed to stay awake at all.

  Cain coughed near him. The sound of the cough traveled distinct and clear through the ground. Cain awake? Something up? On watch to make sure no Mitch or Hunt would prowl over and, despite cow-camp code, knife them in their sleep?

  How did Cain do it? His older brother had a lion inside and yet in a tight was always in complete control of it. When things was easy, yes, then he was apt to explode over some little thing. But let the going get tough, then he was like General Washington himself, cool under fire, thinking galleywest fast. A man of iron nerves. They were in enemy camp and alive right this moment only because every hand in it knew that if it came to a shooting bee Cain would take at least a half-dozen toughs down with him.

  A man had to be born that way. Not made. Take this Harry Hammett fellow now, the one talking. To win a point he was more apt to slide around a corner than hit it head-on. To him there was more fun in outslickering a man than in outfighting him. It took too much out of a man to hold up tough day after day like Cain did.

  Cain was born a black walnut; Harry was born a silver willow. Both were trees, yes. But who was to say which was the best in God’s great forest?

  One thing this fellow Harry had better be careful of. And that was not to talk in his sleep. Because if his older brother Cain ever found out, there’d be all hell to pay.

  This fellow Harry had some kind of devil in him to wish Cain dead. Why else would he have considered that deal Jesse offered? Which he didn’t go through with? No, Cain must never know how close one of his brothers had come to turning traitor. He must never know that that was why Jesse and his boys near-hung Harry Hammett from that cottonwood in Cain’s yard. And why a few minutes later they let Cain go because at the time they thought they already had their man.

  Cain believed the little man could win honest if he’d just fight fair. Well, Cain was wrong. The little man would never win fighting fair. Never. The big augers always made the first move and then it was up to the little man to fight back and recover what he’d lost. A man could not match fire with fire if the big nabobs used the big fire first. Nor would backfiring help much either. Because not only would a man clean himself out close around but he would get cleaned out all around. No, when you were the little man you had to use your noodle and outfox’em. That’s what the Red Sash boys believed.

  “Cain, man, let me ask you something. In your sleep there, settled down now like low smoke on a swamp, who do you think you are to yourself? Really? A man? A coward? A success? A failure? Good? Bad? What?

  “Cain, man, let me ask you something else while I’m at it. With Rory lost, is life worth living?

  “Well, it ain’t for me.

  “Yes, you and Dale thought you two was the only ones in the running for our cousin Rosemary. Let me tell you something. You wasn’t. I had a chance there too. And I would have won my chance if I could have kept the fool in me in hand. Not my wild one, but my fool one. You know me. Anything for a good legpull. I’d crack one off even if it meant Gram Hammett’s shame. Yes I would.

  “I asked Rory, I asked her if she’d like to jump into double harness and trot through life with me. Of course saying it that way made her mad. And I don’t blame her. Man, she was so mad she hit me with everything in the kitchen on the old place. Everything that wasn’t screwed to the floor. And I left with one eye in a sling. Yes, that’s the story here, Cain. That was why, when she saw later what you was like inside—granite along with a boiling heart—she had eyes only for you. Because compared to me you was all heart from the belt up.

  “Cain, man, when I saw her kiss you I was sick. I wanted to kill someone. I wanted someone to kill me. That’s why I went into rustling—to get either one done quick.

  “Cain, man, for a little while I hated you something awful. Awful. I burned at nights with it. So I couldn’t sleep. I’ve got over it now. But for a little while there I could’ve as easy killed you as not.

  “Dale I laughed at. I always have. He’s a mutt face. Rory’s got him whipbroke. She’s out for sheriff. That’s why I have no regrets that Rory really don’t know for sure if Joey is his boy or my boy.

  “What? That surprise you? Why should it? Don’t you know a married woman will always step out once? Once? Don’t ask me why. Rory ain’t the only one I know about. Personal. You know that most of the women hereabouts was once either schoolmarms or out-and-out whores off the U.P. Most men picked the hard-boiled hookers for their sociability. You know that. They’re easy.

  “Wait, wait. I’m not sayin’ Rory is a whore. Far from it. Like them schoolmarms from Boston, she’s high-class. But let me tell you something. Even them high-class ones will step out once on their men. Once. Just to be doin’ it maybe. I don’t know. Or just out of curiosity like a cat. Or to be one up on the husband. Or to make sure she’s even with him in case he should happen to step out on her when she don’t know about it. Or to be shoppin’ around to make sure she got a bargain in the first place. I don’t know. But anyway, once.

  “And that once for Rory was once with me. That time Dale went to Cheyenne for a sheepmen’s convention.

  “Yes, Rory finally got two out of the three of us brothers. And if what I hear is right, she’ll soon have all three of us. You, Cain.

  “No, so far as Dale is concerned, I have no regrets. But you now. That’s a horse of another color. Because I really took her from you; not Dale. Dale and me has stole your life from you. We’re thieves.

  “Cain, man, you don’t know. Oh, you don’t know how I sometimes hate you something awful. Just last month this ranny turned down Jesse’s offer to get rid of you.“

  … Harry went to visit Queenie. He was in a mood to be a king for a night.

  When he walked into the Hog Ranch, instead of Queenie in green velvet at the end of the bar, there was Jesse packing a gun. Beside Jesse ranged Mitch, Stalker, Hog, and Ringbone. While behind the bar, bulb-eyed Avery nodded solemnly over his purple goiter.

  Harry swallowed and bellied up to the bar anyway. For once he was of a mind to be daring. A wee drop of the critter sometimes gave him that. Or a sudden change of weather off the mountains. Or memory of that week with Rosemary.

  In the low kerosene light, from his end of the bar, deliberately and tauntingly retying the knot in his red sash, Harry said, “Why, Jesse, I didn’t know you went in for calf love too.’’

  At that, Jesse got as hot as a wolf. His dark face blackened. He hoisted up his high belly and chest and leaned on the bar. “Yeh, and what brings you here, you range bum? Last time I saw you, you was hanging to a tree.”

  Harry laughed a silver laugh. He lifted his Stetson and brushed back fair silver hair. “Yeh, and I bet you’re still wondering if I’m hant or real.” He reached for the bottle Avery had set out for him and helped himself to a big snort.

  Jesse blazed white eyes at him. So did Mitch and Stalker. Hog and Ringbone looked down.