by Jim Thompson
“I’ll get around to it a little later,” he mumbled desperately. “Just as soon as I go back to the bank, and—”
“Huh-uh. Now, Mis-ter McBride,” said Lord, and he laid a firmly restraining hand on the field boss’s arm.
It was strictly the deputy’s game, but McBride had gone too far to throw in. Now, he could only play the last card in what was probably the world’s coldest deck.
He flung off Lord’s hand and attempted to push past him, inadvertently shoving him into a storefront.
It was practically the last move that McBride made of his own volition.
Lord slugged him in the stomach, so hard that the organ almost pressed against his spine. Then, as he doubled, gasping, vomiting the breakfast he had so lately eaten, Lord straightened him with an uppercut. A rabbit punch redoubled him. And then there was a numbing blow to the heart, and another gut-flattening blow to the stomach…
But he couldn’t keep up with them. No more could he defend himself against them. He seemed to be fighting not one man but a dozen. And he could no longer think of face-saving, of honor, but only of escape.
Why, he’s going to kill me, he thought wildly. I meant him no harm. I’ve given willful hurt to no man. I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he’s going to kill me. Beat me to death in front of a hundred people.
Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished. He, McBride, would be cited as in the wrong, and he, Lord, would go scot-free, an officer who had only done his duty, though perhaps too energetically.
McBride staggered into the street, flopped sprawling in the stinging dust. Fear-maddened, fleeing the lengthening shadow of death, he scrambled to his feet again. He couldn’t see; he was long past the point of coherent thinking. Dimly, he heard laughter, hoots of derision, but he could not read the racket properly. He could not grasp that Lord had withdrawn from the fight minutes ago, and that his leaden arms were flailing at nothing but the air.
He hated them too much to understand—the people of this isolated law-unto-itself world that was Lord’s world. This, he was sure, was the way they would act; laughing at a dying man, laughing as a man was beaten to death. And nothing would be done about it. Nothing unless…
Donna! Donna, his young wife, the girl who was both daughter and wife to him. Donna was like he was. She lived by the rules, never compromising, never blinded or diverted by circumstance. And Donna would—
When he regained consciousness he was in Lord’s house, in the office of Doctor Lord, the deputy’s deceased father. Lord had been ministering to him, bathing his face, treating his many cuts and bruises with a variety of medicines.
“Don’t worry,” Lord grinned at him genially as he opened his eyes. “I won’t mess you up none. Never got a degree, but I probably know more medicine than my Dad did.”
McBride tried to get up. Lord pressed his chest gently, holding him on the lounge.
“Right sorry about our little scuffle,” he went on. “Just couldn’t see no way out of it, y’know? Had to show you that if one fella starts misusin’ the law, another’n can do the same thing.”
“So it was strictly a personal matter!” McBride said bitterly. “You didn’t care whether I had a gun permit or not! You—”
“Ain’t everything personal?” Lord asked. “Any way of doin’ somethin’ that isn’t? You pulled this swindle on me, and it’s just business with you. There’s nothing personal in it. But—”
“I negotiated an agreement with you for my company! An entirely legal agreement!”
“Uh-huh. An’ I give you a beating in the interests of this county—an entirely legal beating. But it don’t make you feel no better, does it?” The deputy leaned forward earnestly. “Now, looky, McBride. I didn’t make any deal with your company. I made it with you, and it’s your responsibility to straighten it out—to try to anyways. If you’d just try, it…”
McBride wasn’t listening to him. It would have made no difference if he had. In his struggle upward through the ranks, he had never belonged to a union. Insofar as he had a viewpoint, it was always identical with his employer’s. He was rigidly honest; that is, he had never broken a law. It was no concern of his if, as the instrument of his company, he perverted the law. There was a loser and a winner in every transaction. It was McBride’s job—his creed, his religion—to see that his employers were not the losers.
Now, with Lord in midsentence, he arose determinedly and announced that he was leaving. “Unless you plan on giving me another beating. You’ve proved that you can do it.”
“But—but wait a minute,” Lord frowned. “We can’t just leave things like this.”
“That depends on you. I’ll never show my face in Big Sands again; I couldn’t after today. I’ll keep out of your way, you keep out of mine. Because if you don’t, Lord, if you ever stick your nose into my business without proper authority…”
“Yeah? If I ever stick my nose into your business?”
“I’ll blow it for you. Right through the back of your head.”
Lord laughed softly. “Now, maybe I’ll give you a crack at doin’ that,” he said. “Yes, sir, I just may do that.”
McBride did not appear in Big Sands again, going instead to another town that was twenty miles farther away. As far as his job was concerned, he was never able to completely reassert his authority. He fired a dozen men. He whipped as many others. But something had died inside of him, and he could not revive it. He went nowhere unless he had to. He talked to no one unless he had to. He withdrew deeper and deeper into himself. And he brooded.
He brooded.
Joyce Lakewood looked up from her compact as the convertible swung bumpily to the right. They were turning into the prairie, multitracked at this point by the treads of tractors, trucks, and other vehicles. Ahead of them, perhaps a mile, were the derrick and outbuildings of the drilling well. Here at roadside was a sign.
To the uninitiated, it might have seemed ludicrously prolix. But in oil country it was commonplace, differing only in its details and their arrangement from innumerable thousands of such signs.
It read:
T. DeM. Lord Survey
Pardee Co., Elsin Township
So. 160, N.E. Sect., Lots 16–30
Test No. 1
HIGHLANDS OIL & GAS COMPANY
Aaron McBride, Supt.
2
Joyce’s eyes widened. White-faced, she grabbed Lord’s arm. “Tom stop! You can’t go up there!”
“You say you saw a bear?” Lord cupped a hand on his ear interestedly. “I don’t hear so good, honey.”
“You heard me, damn you!” Joyce yelled. “Aah, please, Tom. Don’t—”
“It ain’t perlite to stare? Spring is in the air?” Lord persisted; and then, seeing that she was on the verge of tears, he patted her reassuringly on the knee. “Now, what you in such a sweat about? Highlands runnin’ a flock of rigs. No reason why McBride’d be at this one.”
Joyce angrily asked who he thought he was kidding. This was a test well, a very special job. The chances were better than even that the field boss would be here.
“And you know it! Why—why, I’ll bet you broke that spring deliberately! Just to give yourself an excuse to start something!”
“Aw, naw!” Lord protested. “You don’t really think I’d do a thing like that?”
“All right,” Joyce said tiredly, “I give up. If you insist on getting your head shot off, I can’t—” She broke off, pointing, her face brightening with relief. “Well, maybe McBride won’t be here after all. It looks like the well’s shut down.”
Lord agreed that she was right, praising her perceptiveness, adding that he would never have observed the fact himself if he had been stone blind, deaf, or more than five miles away. From this she gathered correctly that he had noticed the lack of activity and noise minutes ago, perhaps at the time the car spring was bro
ken.
“But there’s someone here,” she said quickly. “Those men coming out of the bunkhouse. Isn’t one of them—?”
“Naw. Them’s Red Norton an’ Curly Shaw. Couple of friends o’ mine.”
Joyce supposed that they probably were friends if he could call them by name—and he could do the same with hundreds of men. People sort of kept their distance around Lord, or rather they were kept at a distance. But they liked him, and he exuded a feeling of liking them.
“But please, Tom,” she urged, “don’t stall around here. Just get the spring fixed, if we can get it fixed, and clear out fast.”
“Why sure. Sure, I will,” Lord said. “Won’t linger no more than a weasel in a henhouse.”
He stopped the car, got out, then teetered forward as the two men advanced to meet him. They met about fifteen feet from the convertible. They shook hands, inquired into the state of one another’s health, and made elaborately detailed comments about the weather.
Joyce sighed and rolled her eyes. What was the matter with him, she thought. What was the matter with everyone out here? They couldn’t even go to the toilet without making a ceremony out of it.
She listened nervously to their laconic talk, wondering why the hell Tom didn’t get down to business. Point out the broken spring to them, and ask for help in repairing it. Instead of that he was gabbing on about everything under the sun—just stalling on death’s doorstep, with McBride apt to show up at any minute!
In the viewpoint of the three men, of course, their conduct was exactly as it should be. It was obvious that the car had a broken spring. Why insult a man’s intelligence by pointing it out, or reflect on his courtesy by asking for help? Help would be given—since there was no place else to get it—as soon as it could be; as soon as certain concomitant problems had been worked out in the giver’s mind. Meanwhile, here were three friends come together, and there were obligations to be observed on such an occasion.
In this sparsely settled area, a man might go months without seeing a friend or even another man. And, naturally, when there was a gap in the long loneliness, it would not be closed in haste. Indeed, it could not be. For how could a man live if he took no interest in others, or others in him? What reason did he have to live?
Lord passed the cigars, and held a match for his friends. When theirs were lit, he fired his own with another match, pinched the flame out with his fingers, and flicked it idly toward the drilling rig.
“Little trouble?” he asked.
“Quite a little,” said Curly Shaw; and Red Norton explained that a string of tools had been lost down the hole.
“Like to take a look, Tom?”
“Well—” Lord hesitated, then realized that the invitation was a suggestion. This, apparently, was something that concerned him. “Why, yeah,” he said, rising from his hunkers. “Might be something to see.”
It was a cable-tool rig, a kind of drilling machine as old as the industry itself. It “made hole” by lifting and dropping a heavy drill bit. In the last decade or so, it had lost much of its popularity to the rotary rig, which drills by whirling its bit and is considerably faster. But in an unexplored and extremely isolated area such as this—where no more than one well might be drilled—it had seemed unwise to haul in and set up so much complex and expensive machinery.
Standing on the ground near the derrick floor, Tom Lord looked up into the rig. The drill tools—the “string” composed of stem, jars, and bit—were missing. About forty feet up, the bare cable dangled lazily in the wind.
Red Norton explained what had happened. “Around nine hundred feet down at this point. Set our twelve-inch pipe yesterday noon at eight-fifty, and went on drilling until about four. Then the structure got awful soft on us, began havin’ a hell of a time pulling out. McBride figured we’d better under-ream…”
Lord nodded. In very soft structure, an under-reamer replaces the drill bit. By working inside the pipe—which follows it down into the ground, instead of remaining stationary—it makes hole without the danger of cave-ins and the costly delays and fishing jobs incident to them.
“So?” the deputy prompted.
“So all our other rigs is rotary, and we couldn’t get an under-reamer trucked in before tomorrow. McBride figured we’d better wait for it; he don’t take no chances, you know. So he fires us all, and the other tower [crew] took off. Me and Curly figured we’d better stick—give us a place to sleep anyway.”
Lord looked dismayed. “He fired you—just because you wasn’t needed for a day or so?”
“Why not?” Curly said grimly. “Plenty of cable-tool men out of work. Pick ’em up any time.”
“Well, anyways,” Norton went on. “We come out this morning, and that”—he pointed with his cigar—“that’s what we found. Cable cut. About six thousand pounds of tools jammed down there in the guck.”
Lord said, “Do tell,” adding by way of good measure, a “tsk, tsk.” Then as the subsequent silence deepened: “You sure the cable was cut? Couldn’t have happened no other way?”
Norton shrugged. “I reckon. It don’t seem likely, though, and McBride don’t think it was.”
“Uh-huh,” Lord said, “and I bet he thinks he knows who done it. Some fella close enough for you to spit on.”
“Look, Tom,” Curly said. “Why don’t you take me’n Red’s car and leave yours here? We ain’t going nowheres.”
“Well—” Lord considered the offer and refused it with thanks. “McBride finds my car here an’ yours gone, you’d be in a bad way with him. Wouldn’t want no one around that liked me that well. Now, if you’ll just give me the lend of a couple spring leaves—”
“We can’t, Tom. McBride’s got everything locked up, even to the cookhouse.” Curly spat scornfully. “Got a lot of faith in folks, you know. Prob’ly trust his mother with her own milk.”
He repeated the proffer of the car, and was again refused. Lord asked when the field boss was due back.
“Can’t be a whole lot longer,” Curly said. “We ain’t had nothing to eat since breakfast, and he’s going to tick us for a little grub. Actually lettin’ us have something to eat until we’re back on the payroll again.”
Lord deliberated, and came to a decision. He explained it to his two friends, and they agreed to it. They had to, according to their code. They would have felt bound to, even if Lord had been a stranger.
He hallooed to Joyce, gestured, and pointed. Starting the car, she drove slowly toward them. Meanwhile, as she approached the toolshed platform, Lord pried open the shed door.
“Now, this is all on my head,” he reiterated, as he rolled the chain hoist out on its track, “an’ I’ll be plumb sore if you fellas shoulder any blame for it. I broke the door open. I took the stuff I needed. All you did was take the money I’ll leave with you, and I’ll leave plenty to cover the damages. You-all didn’t have anything to do with it, and there wasn’t nothin’ you could do about it.”
They went to work quickly, hooking under the front of the car and hoisting it upward. Then, while Joyce squatted on a timber a few feet away, anxiously watching their progress, all three hustled out the broken spring leaves and forced the new ones into place.
There was a great deal of clamor, banging and scraping, and cursing (the last subdued because of a “lady’s” nearness). Due to the tip-tilted position of the car, they could not see beyond it.
Thus, they did not hear McBride’s approach. And he was only a few feet away when they saw him.
He held a gun in his hand. He gestured with it, motioning Curly and Red to one side. Then, he took aim at Tom Lord.
3
It was in the spring of Lord’s second year in medical school that he was forced to drop out. His father’s serious illness, and the consequent shortage of funds, forced his return home. The hiatus, he was confident, would be brief. He would be back in school by fall, at the latest, working doubly hard to make up for the time he had lost.
He just about had to, you see. It
was impossible to contemplate any other course.
Unfortunately, the elder Lord did not recover as expected. It was equally unfortunate—though Tom, of course, did not consider it so—the old gentleman did not die. He simply lingered on year after year, needing more and more attention, requiring more and more money to maintain the life that was no longer worth living.
The house was mortgaged, then the furniture. Hard-pressed debtors scrimped and scraped to pay the doctor his overdue due. Others—self-proclaimed debtors—hurried to pay their fictitious bills. The bank could not lend more money, but the bank president himself did. Local merchants extended unlimited credit, and slashed their bills in half.
None of this munificence was considered charity. Everyone knew that Tom Lord knew what was happening, and would eventually settle his debts in full. For the Lords were people as distinguished from mere people. They would prove it, when the tide turned, just as the other people of the county were proving it now.
A job? Some way for Tom Lord to earn his keep, and climb out of the hole where fate had thrust him? Well, sure. You name a job that they could give him, and Tom Lord could have it. But just what was there to give? What was there for a young man of old family—but without means—to do out here in this hundred-million-acre pasture?
Couldn’t have him playing ribbon clerk. Couldn’t expect him to punch cows for forty and found. Such jobs just wouldn’t have been fitting, and they were rarely available, anyway. Yet when you’d named them, you’d practically named them all.
Back in the beginning, when the message seemed only of academic interest, Tom had seen the handwriting on the wall. There was nothing here for such as he; not without a profession or business. He had known then that he must finish his schooling, or else. And now, at last, he was forced to face the else.
Seven years after he had dropped out of college his father died. When Sheriff Dave Bradley called to pay his respects, Tom took him apart from the other mourners.
