by M. K. Wren
The red alarm of the word “Urgent” drew and held his eye. You know Pa, and Alvin Drinkwater is just as stubborn and cantankerous as he is. Pa. The form of address was typical, and he did know Aaron McFall. He’d met him formally only once, at George and Laura’s wedding, which took place at the Black Stallion, inevitably. But he knew him in another sense. His own father had been of the same mold: men accurately described as cattle barons. The allusion to hereditary title was apt, yet Aaron McFall considered himself a pillar of democracy. His wife had borne him three sons, and they were named by the lord of the demesne George Washington McFall, Abraham Lincoln McFall, and Theodore Roosevelt McFall. The third birth had cost Carlotta McFall her life.
Conan had never met Alvin Drinkwater, but if he was in fact as stubborn and cantankerous as Aaron, he could understand the frayed and anxious tone of George’s letter.
Finally, he rose and surveyed the stacks of mail.
“Miss Dobie, I can’t contend with all this now. Any crises here will have to wait until morning.”
She smiled tolerantly. “There’s nothing imminent. Oh, I called Mrs. Early this morning and told her you were on your way. She said she’d get the house aired out and warmed up for you.”
He went out into the shop, savoring the musty, attic flavor of it, and turned at the entrance with a parting smile.
“Miss Dobie, you’re a rare gem. Thanks for taking such good care of the shop. And me.”
CHAPTER 2
The housekeeper par excellence, Conan thought as he peered into the refrigerator. Not only was the house shining clean and comfortably warm, but Mrs. Early was ever solicitous of his stomach. On the counter was a loaf of homemade bread and an apple pie—Gravensteins, no doubt—and in the refrigerator a platter of fried chicken done to a crisp turn.
He smiled at this offering but didn’t partake of it; his internal clock was still at odds with the one on the wall. He went into the living room and tossed his coat onto the couch, then irritably crossed to the windows that made up the west wall. Mrs. Early did have one shortcoming. She was continually lowering shades and closing curtains.
It was a soft, mist-blue light that filled the room as he opened the drapes. The autumn equinox inevitably brought rain, a preview of winter. The ocean was gray and running high, breakers spilling in masses of foam. The sound seeped into his consciousness, a balm he never realized he missed so desperately until he returned to it.
But in his mind’s eye, another vista was taking shape. Arid hills clothed in the velvet of sagebrush, an open sky overwhelming in its grandeur, dry air that stretched distance and dwarfed sensibility. He started to take George’s letter out of his shirt pocket, then with a vague feeling of rebellion, thrust it back. He hadn’t even been home long enough for his body and mind to adjust to his spatial location.
The rebellion persisted while he went to the bar to mix a bourbon and water, then returned with it to the windows to watch the light fade from the breakers. But by the time he reached the halfway mark on his glass, he was perched on a bar stool, the letter open in front of him, trying to convince a telephone operator of the existence of Harney County and G. W. McFall. The Black Stallion, at least, seemed to make some sense to her, and finally the electronic link was established.
“George, this is Conan. I just got home a—”
“Oh, thank God. I’ve been chewin’ nails for…but I can’t—look, just sit tight a minute. I’ll call you back. Okay?” Conan didn’t have a chance to answer before he was cut off with a sharp click.
George’s reason for returning the call was no mystery—he wanted to go to a more private phone—but the raw tension in his tone was unnerving. Conan lit a cigarette, taking three spaced, slow puffs before the phone rang.
“Sorry for the delay, Conan.” George was a little more relaxed now, but his laugh was strained. “Figured I better put this on my bill since I asked you to call; it might be a long talk.”
“If you’re going to explain what prompted this letter, it probably will be long.”
“Afraid so. Well, it’s this…this feud. Hell, what else do you call it? Sounds like it’s straight out of Hollywood, only there’s no ridin’ into the sunset with this; it just keeps gettin’ worse.”
Conan was looking down at the letter, finding a parallel between the erratic, crabbed lines and George’s tense voice. Not even the rural accent took the edge off that.
“Maybe you’d better start at the beginning, George.”
“I’m not even sure where that is.” He paused for a deep, audible sigh. “Well, it goes way back. Part of it, anyhow. Pa and Alvin Drinkwater never did get along; sort of a tradition in both families. There was a time, fifty years back, when the Double D and Runnin’ S were about neck and neck in land and stock.”
“But the Running S took the lead?” The use of the brand in lieu of the ranch name came naturally; in the cattle business they were virtually, and sometimes actually, synonymous. “That sort of competition doesn’t usually involve cutting fences or burning stackyards.”
“No, and it never did until lately. I don’t know, Conan, it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, Pa and Alvin threw talk off and on since they were kids, and I guess they got into a big jackpot over Emily Drinkwater before she married Alvin, but that was over thirty years ago. Since then, if they had any real squabbles, they always talked it out face to face, even if it wasn’t exactly peaceful. Like that Spring Crick rezzavoy. Alvin wanted to put in a dam; he needed a rezzavoy for his winter pastures, but the crick runs over our land, too, and Pa set his heels over losin’ most of the stream flow. Well, they chewed around on it for a few years, then finally got together with the county watermaster and set up an agreement so we get enough water for our irrigation ditches. You see what I mean? Water’s your life’s blood out here, and they had some hard words over it, but that’s all. It was never anything like this.”
“You’d better tell me more about what it’s like, then.” He frowned as George prefaced his reply with another weary and atypical sigh.
“Well, it’s been goin’ on for about a year. It started off so easy, nobody paid much attention. Just damn fool stunts like leavin’ gates open, or takin’ off the wire hooks so you couldn’t shut ’em. Maybe half a dozen times somebody opened the horse corrals in the night, and the whole cavvy spread out to hell and gone. Then we started findin’ our irrigation ditches clogged up with junk; weeds and rocks, or even garbage. At first we figured it was just hunters or those damn ORV nuts. Even when the fence cuttin’ started, we weren’t sure. That was last fall, and huntin’ season was on. But last spring somebody broke some of the ditch walls and flooded the fields. Then they shot holes in our waterin’ troughs up in the high pastures. This summer we had cattle turned into the alfalfa fields before harvest, and lately the fences on some of the stackyards were cut. Hell, one herd went through five hundred ton of hay before we saw the fence was down. We’ve had so many fences cut and gates left open, we’ll never separate the strays, and when they get mixed with Double D cows, you need a U.N. negotiator along to sort ’em out.” He paused, his tone an uncertain mix of bewilderment and resentment. “Then it got really dirty, Conan. A month ago we lost thirty head of cattle because somebody shot a salt block full of cyanide, and I guess you heard about the grand finale.”
“The arson?”
“Yes. Thank God it was only the one stackyard, and we had a good harvest this year; we’ll have enough hay for the winter. If somebody doesn’t get to the rest of it.”
“George, you keep talking about ‘somebody.’ Do you mean Drinkwater?”
The answer was long in coming.
“Yes, I guess so.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t really know. That’s what’s got me so rattled. The trouble is, if you talked to Alvin, he’d give you a list of damages as long as ours. Cut fences, broken ditches, cattle poisoned—the whole shittaree. Maybe we’ve got him topped off with the arson, but that’s about all.”
Cona
n’s hand stopped in midair as he reached for the cigarette burning itself out in the ashtray.
“An eye for an eye?”
George said dully, “That’s how it looks, doesn’t it? On both sides.”
Conan picked up the cigarette and took a puff.
“At first glance, yes. Is that how it is?”
“I can only tell you how it is on one side. Nobody at the Runnin’ S has authorized any forays on Drinkwater property, and I’m in a position to know.”
As business manager of the Black Stallion, he was justified in that assertion, but Conan was remembering Aaron McFall, whom George himself characterized as stubborn and cantankerous.
He asked cautiously, “What about your father?”
“You think he’d carry on this little war behind my back?”
“I’m just asking.”
“No. Not Pa,” he said stiffly. “Anyhow, he’d have a hard time keepin’ me from gettin’ wind of it. I don’t spend all my time in this damn office. I still get out and work the cattle when we’re short-handed, or just to keep up the calluses on my butt. I know what’s goin’ on around here.”
“Still, you can’t keep track of all the hands all the time.”
“No, but we’ve only got ten full-time employees on the payroll now, and I have a pretty good idea what any one of ’em is up to at any given time. And only five of ’em—well, six, countin’ our foreman—are buckaroos. This little war’s taken some hard ridin’.”
Buckaroos. Conan smiled reminiscently at the term. In other regions, they might be called cowboys or cowpunchers, but it had been left to the cattlemen of the Northwest to bastardize the Spanish vaquero into buckaroo.
“Only six? It sounds like you’re shorthanded now.”
George laughed. “Times have changed since you took off for the woods. We’re mechanized these days. We just put in a new branding corral. Sixty head in an hour, Conan; branding, dehorning, castration, vaccination, and dipping. Give us another ten years and we’ll be automated.”
“When you get a computer willing to ride fence in the middle of a blizzard—well, don’t tell me about it. Leave me my romantic delusions.”
“It’s the dude ridin’ fence who’s deluded. Or nuts.” The spark of life in his voice faded as he seemed to recall himself to the subject under discussion. “Anyhow, we’re not shorthanded. Linc and Ted do their share of buckarooin’, and Pa hasn’t retired from the saddle yet. And we’re not exactly out of touch with what’s goin’ on around here.”
“All right. What about Alvin Drinkwater? Is he cantankerous enough to wage a war like this personally?”
“Conan, two years ago I’d have sworn on a Bible he wasn’t, but now I’m just not sure. I’m not sure of anything.”
“Has all this been kept between the warring camps, or has anyone called in the law?”
George gave a short, caustic laugh.
“Joe Tate’s spent enough time up at this end of the county to stake a homestead claim, but he—”
“Joe Tate?”
“Oh—sorry. He’s the county sheriff, and I’ve never had any reason to think he was dealin’ off the bottom.”
“But he’s come up with nothing to help you?”
“Not a damn thing. I think right now he’s sorry he ever won the election. He spends half his time between the Runnin’ S and the Double D, with Pa and Alvin both hollerin’ at him to lock the other up.”
Conan didn’t envy Joe Tate, and he had the uneasy feeling he was being drawn into a similarly uncomfortable position.
“I suppose you’ve considered the possibility that neither of them is guilty?”
“You mean some outsider’s playin’ both ends against the middle? Sure, but who’d have the opportunity or enough of a grudge against both Pa and Alvin? Still, there might be something to it; something to explain part of it, at least. I think…well, there may be some rustlin’ goin’ on. I guess that sounds like it’s out of Hollywood, too.”
“Times haven’t changed that much, George. You don’t need to convince me of the existence of cattle rustlers.”
“No, I suppose not. Well, most of it’s penny ante. Dudes cadgin’ a side of beef to help out on the food budget, and a lot of hunters go home with white-faced deer all dressed out in the field. But some of it’s big business with organization and equipment behind it. Joe Tate says there’s an outfit workin’ out of a packin’ plant in Winnemucca. Both the Oregon and Nevada law been after ’em for years and never laid a hand on ’em.”
“You think they might be involved in the feud? How? As a diversionary tactic?”
“Maybe.” He hesitated, then went on more confidently, “With all the trouble here, and Pa and Alvin ready to hold a neck-tie party for each other—well, it makes a damn good diversion. Trouble is, we’re just bringin’ the herds down from the summer pastures, so we don’t have a full head count yet. Right now, it looks like it’s runnin’ low, but we’ve got eight hundred square miles to cover, and God knows how many strays are still left up in the hills.” Then he added bitterly, “Or how many carcasses we’ll find if somebody put out more of those cyanide salt blocks.”
“What makes you think you’ve lost cattle to rustlers? Just the low head count?”
“No. Something Bert Kimmons saw. He ran the K-Bar to the south of us. He was an old friend of both Pa’s and Alvin’s, and it really hurt him seein’ them lock horns like this. Anyhow, one night—let’s see, it was a couple of months ago—Bert was drivin’ back to his place late. There’s a county road runs along the line between his property and ours. Well, he come up to a cattle truck headed east. It had a Nevada plate, and it was a big rig—big enough for twenty-five or thirty head—and he says it was loaded.”
“I don’t suppose he could see any brands.”
“No. Maybe some trucker was just takin’ a shortcut on that road, but I’m damned if I can figure where to, and those cows weren’t bought from any spread within fifty miles of here.”
Conan was frowning, but his tone was ironically light as he said, “Well, that would make a person wonder.”
“It sure made Bert wonder. He decided to talk to Pa and Alvin about it. I guess he thought it might be one way to get them together, and then he felt obliged to tell them they might be furnishin’ free steaks for somebody.”
“Did he get them together?”
“No. Damn it, sometimes I think this whole thing—it’s like Fate. There’s not a damn thing anybody can do to…”
Conan felt a tautening thread of alarm as the words choked off; the desperation was so naked in his voice, the following silence so long.
“George?”
“I—I’m sorry. I guess my nerves are kind of raveled out. Well, to finish the story, the day after Bert saw that truck, he went over to the Double D to talk to Alvin. What he wanted was for the three of them—Bert and Alvin and Pa—to compare notes and see if they had any other evidence of rustlin’, then they’d all go to Sheriff Tate. Well, he finally got Alvin to agree to that.”
“Did Alvin have any evidence to offer?”
“I don’t know. It never got that far. Bert spent most of the afternoon with Alvin, then he drove on out here to the house to talk to Pa.”
“Were you in on that conversation?”
“We all were. I mean, the family and Gil Potts, our foreman. Bert had supper with us, and we hashed it out at the table. That’s the way this place is run most of the time.”
“Did Aaron agree to this summit meeting?”
“Yes, finally. I was so relieved I could’ve kissed ol’ Bert. I didn’t give a damn about losin’ a few cows if Pa and Alvin would at least talk about it. About anything.”
“And what happened?”
“Bert…well, he died.”
The words were so mumbled, Conan wasn’t sure he understood them correctly.
“He died?”
“Yes. Right here at the ranch. He had a bad heart. Doc Maxwell said he’d been runnin’ on borrowed time
for years. When we finished talkin’, it was late. We could see Bert was worn out, and it’s a long drive to his place, so we asked him to stay the night. I guess we didn’t realize…anyhow, he died durin’ the night. Heart failure, Doc said.”
“I’m sorry, George. Was Kimmons a close friend?”
After a moment he answered dully, “Yes. Bert was sort of like an uncle to Linc and Ted and me. It just seemed to take the wind out of everybody, especially Pa. He’s at the age where all his friends seem to be droppin’ around him, and I don’t think it did much for him, knowin’ he has the same kind of heart condition.”
“Is it serious?”
“Pa’s? No. Nothing like Bert’s. A couple of years ago he had a mild attack and spent two weeks in the Burns hospital. Doc gave him some pills and a diet and told him to take it easy, all of which he ignored.”
Conan was reminded, again, of his own father, whose distrust of orthodox medicine was atavistically abiding.
“Did anyone talk to Sheriff Tate about that cattle truck?”
“I did, but there wasn’t anything he could get his teeth into.” Another long, weary sigh. “If there is some rustlin’, it might explain part of what’s goin’ on here. But not all of it, Conan. Not by a hell of a long shot.”
“And you want me to explain the rest of it?” He put out his cigarette with impatient thrusts, well aware that the task he was considering was possibly hopeless and probably thankless. “I’m not sure I can explain anything.”
“I’m not askin’ for miracles, but I have to do something. I don’t hold it against him, but Tate can’t handle it. I guess I could find plenty of private investigators in any city phonebook, but they wouldn’t know their hind end from the fore around here. You grew up in this business.” He tried a brief laugh. “At least you know how to stay on top of a horse if you have to do any ridin’. Unless you’ve forgotten how, after sittin’ on that pile of books all these years.”
“That would be like forgetting how to walk.” Conan took a swallow of his drink as if he needed it to firm his resolve. Curiosity shaped his decision as much as George’s desperation. Someone was invoking lex talionis on Drinkwater even if no one at the Running S had authorized it. He wondered what Drinkwater’s side of the story would be.
