The 8th Western Novel

by Dean Owen

  “Smells like somethin’ in the line of new bread to me,” he said. “Bread or—it ain’t biscuits, Molly?”

  “Sure is.” Molly came in with a plate piled high with biscuits that were evidently the present pride of her heart. “Made a-plenty,” she announced. “Had to wrastle Pedro away from the stove an’ I ain’t quite on to that oven yet, but they look good, don’t they?”

  “They sure do,” said Sandy, taking one to break and butter it. The eagerness with which his jaws clamped down upon it died into a meditative chewing as of a cow uncertain about the quality of her cud. He swallowed, took a deep swig of coffee and deliberately went on with his biscuit. Mormon and Sam solemnly followed his example while Molly beamed at them.

  “You don’t say they’re good?” she said.

  “Too busy eating,” said Sandy. And winked at Sam.

  Molly caught the wink, took a biscuit, buttered it, bit into it.

  Camp-bread and biscuits, eaten in the open, garnished with the wilderness sauce that creates appetite, eaten piping hot, are mighty palatable though the dough is mixed with water and shortening is lacking. As a camp cook, Molly was a success. Confused with Pedro’s offer of lard and a stove that was complicated compared to her Dutch kettle, the result was a bitter failure that she acknowledged as soon as her teeth met through the deceptive crust.

  Molly was slow to tears and quick to wrath. She picked up the plate of biscuits and marched out with them, her back very straight. In the kitchen the three partners heard first the smash of crockery, then the bang of a pan, a staccato volley of words. She came in again, empty-handed, eyes blazing.

  “There’s no bread. Pedro’s makin’ hot cakes.” Then, as they looked at her solemnly: “You think you’re damned smart, don’t you, tryin’ to fool me, purtendin’ they was good when they’d pizen the chickens? I hate folks who act lies, same as them that speaks ’em.”

  “I’ve tasted worse,” said Mormon. “Honest I have, Molly. My first wife put too much saleratus an’ salt in at first but, after a bit, she was a wonder—as a cook.”

  Molly, as always, melted to his grin.

  “I ain’t got no mo’ manners than a chuckawaller,” she said penitently. “Sandy, would you bring me a cook-book in from town?”

  “Got one somewheres around.”

  “No we ain’t. Mormon used the leaves for shavin’,” said Sam. “Last winter. W’udn’t use his derned ol’ catalogue.”

  “I’ll git one,” said Sandy. “Here’s the hot cakes.”

  They devoured the savory stacks, spread with butter and sage-honey, in comparative silence. There came the noise of the riders going off for the day’s duties laid out by Sam, acting foreman for the month. Sandy got up and went to the window, turning in mock dismay.

  “Here comes that Bailey female,” he announced. “Young Ed Bailey drivin’ the flivver. Sure stahted bright an’ early. Wonder what she’s nosin’ afteh now? Mormon—an’ you, Sam,” he added sharply, “you’ll stick around till she goes. Sabe? I don’t aim to be talked to death an’ then pickled by her vinegar, like I was las’ time she come oveh.”

  A tinny machine, in need of paint, short of oil, braked squeakingly as a horn squawked and the auto halted by the porch steps. Young Ed Bailey slung one leg over another disproportionate limb, glanced at the windows, rolled a cigarette and lit it. His aunt, tall, gaunt, clad in starched dress and starched sunbonnet, with a rigidity of spine and feature that helped the fancy that these also had been starched, descended, strode across the porch and entered the living-room, her bright eyes darting all about, needling Molly, taking in every detail.

  “Out lookin’ fo’ a stray,” she announced. “Red-an’-white heifer we had up to the house for milkin’. Got rambuncterous an’ loped off. Had one horn crumpled. Rawhide halter, ef she ain’t got rid of it. You ain’t seen her, hev you?”

  “No m’m, we ain’t. No strange heifer round the Three Star that answers that description.” Sam winked at Molly, who was flushing under the inspection of Miranda Bailey, maiden sister of the neighbor owner of the Double-Dumbbell Ranch. He fancied the missing milker an excuse if not an actual invention to furnish opportunity for a visit to the Three Star, an inspection of Molly Casey and subsequent gossip. “You-all air up to date,” he said, “ridin’ herd in a flivver.”

  “I see a piece in the paper the other day,” she said, “about men playin’ a game with autos ’stead of hawsses—polo it was called—an’ another piece about cowboys cuttin’ out an’ ropin’ from autos. Hawsses is passin’. Science is replacin’ of ’em.”

  “Reckon they’ll last my time,” drawled Sandy. “I hear they aim to roll food up in pills an’ do us cattlemen out of a livin’. But I ain’t worryin’. Me, I prefers steaks—somethin’ I can set my teeth in. I reckon there’s mo’ like me. Let me make you ’quainted with Miss Bailey, Molly. This is Molly Casey, whose dad is dead. Molly, if you-all want to skip out an’ tend to them chickens, hop to it.”

  Molly caught the suggestion that was more than a hint and started for the door. The woman checked her with a question.

  “How old air you, Molly Casey?”

  The girl turned, her eyes blank, her manner charged with indifference that unbent to be polite.

  “Fifteen.” And she went out.

  “H’m,” said Miranda Bailey, “fifteen. Worse’n I imagined.”

  Sandy’s eyebrows went up. The breath that carried his words might have come from a refrigerator.

  “You goin’ back in the flivver?” he asked, “or was you aimin’ to keep a-lookin’ fo’ that red-an’-white heifer?”

  Miranda sniffed.

  “I’m goin’, soon’s as I’ve said somethin’ in the way of a word of advice an’ warnin’, seein’ as how I happened this way. It’s a woman’s matter or I wouldn’t meddle. But, what with talk goin’ round Hereford in settin’-rooms, in restyrongs, in kitchens, as well as in dance-halls an’ gamblin’ hells where they sell moonshine, it’s time it was carried to you which is most concerned, I take it, for the good of the child, not to mention yore own repitashuns.”

  “Where was it you heard it, ma’am?” asked Sam politely.

  “Where you never would, Mister Soda-Water Sam-u-el Manning,” she flashed. “In the parlor of the Baptis’ Church. I ain’t much time an’ I ain’t goin’ to waste it to mince matters. Here’s a gel, a’most a woman, livin’ with you three bachelor men.”

  “I’ve been married,” ventured Mormon.

  “So I understand. Where’s yore wife?”

  “One of ’em’s dead, one of ’em’s divorced an’ I don’t rightly sabe where the third is, nor I ain’t losin’ weight concernin’ that neither.”

  “More shame to you. You’re one of these women-haters, I s’pose?”

  “No m’m, I ain’t. That’s been my trouble. I admire the sex but I’ve been a bad picker. I’m jest a woman-dodger.”

  Miranda’s sniff turned into a snort.

  “I ain’t heard nothin’ much ag’in’ you men, I’ll say that,” she conceded. “I reckon you-all think I’ve jest come hornin’ in on what ain’t my affair. Mebbe that’s so. If you’ve figgered this out same way I have, tell me an’ I’ll admit I’m jest an extry an’ beg yore pardons.”

  “Miss Bailey,” said Sandy, his manner changed to courtesy, “I believe you’ve come here to do us a service—an’ Molly likewise. So fur’s I sabe there’s been some remahks passed concernin’ her stayin’ here ’thout a chaperon, so to speak. Any one that ’ud staht that sort of talk is a blood relation to a centipede an’ mebbe I can give a guess as to who it is. I reckon I can persuade him to quit.”

  “Mebbe, but you can’t stop what’s started any more’n a horn-toad can stop a landslide, Sandy Bourke. You can’t kill scandal with gunplay. The gel’s too young, in one way, an’ not young enough in another, to be stayin’ on at the Three Star.
You oughter have sense enough to know that. Ef one of you was married, or had a wife that ’ud stay with you, it ’ud be different. Or if there was a woman housekeeper to the outfit.”

  “That ain’t possible,” put in Mormon. “I told you I’m a woman-dodger. Sandy here is woman-shy. Sam is wedded to his mouth-organ.”

  The flivver horn squawked outside. Miranda pointed her finger at Sandy.

  “There’s chores waitin’ fo’ me. I didn’t come off at daylight jest to be spyin’, whatever you men may think. You either got to git a grown woman here or send the gel away, fo’ her own good, ’fore the talk gits so it’ll shadder her life. I ain’t married. I don’t expect to be, but I aimed to be, once, ’cept for a dirty bit of gossip that started in my home town ’thout a word of truth in it. Now, I’ve said my say, you-all talk it over.”

  Sandy went to the door with her, helped her into the machine. It shudderingly gathered itself together and wheezed off; he came back with his face serious.

  “She’s right,” he said.

  “Mormon,” said Sam, “it’s up to you. Advertise fo’ Number Three to come back—all is forgiven—or git you a divo’ce, it’s plumb easy oveh in the nex’ state—an’ pick a good one this time.”

  “We got to send her away,” said Sandy. “Me, I’m goin’ into Herefo’d tonight. I aim to git a cook-book, interview Jim Plimsoll an’ then bu’st his bank. One of you come erlong. Match fo’ it.”

  “Bu’st the bank what with?” asked Sam.

  Sandy produced the ten-dollar luck-piece and held it up.

  “This. Mormon, choose yore side.”

  “Heads.”

  Sandy flipped the coin. It fell with a golden ring on the floor. “Tails,” said Sandy inspecting it. “You come, Sam. Staht afteh noon. Oil up yore gun.”

  “I knowed I’d lose,” said Mormon dolefully. “Dang my luck anyway.”

  It was a little after seven o’clock when Sandy and Sam walked out of the Cactus Restaurant, leaving their ponies hitched to the rail in front. They strolled down the main street of Hereford across the railroad tracks to where the “Brisket,” as the cowboys styled the little town’s tenderloin, huddled its collection of shacks, with their false fronts faced to the dusty street and their rear entrances, still cumbered with cases of empty bottles and idle kegs, turned to the almost dry bed of the creek. The signs of ante-prohibition days, blistered and faded, were still in place. Light showed in windows where fly-specked useless licenses were displayed. Back of the bars a melancholy array of soda-water advertised lack of interest in soft drinks. The front rooms held no loungers, but the click of chips and murmurs of talk came from behind closed doors.

  Sandy stopped outside the place labeled “Good Luck Pool Parlors. J. Plimsoll, Prop.” The line “Best Liquor and Cigars” was half smeared out. He patted gently the butts of the two Colts in the holsters, whose ends were tied down to the fringe ornaments of his chaps. Sam stroked his ropey mustache and eased the gun at his hip. Sandy pushed open the door and went in. A man was playing Canfield at a table in the deserted bar. As the pair entered he looked up with a “Howdy, gents?” shoving back a rickety table and chair noisily on the uneven floor. The inner door swung silently as at a signal and Jim Plimsoll came out. He stiffened a little at the sight of the Three Star men and then grinned at Sam.

  “How was the last bottle, Soda-Water?” he asked. “You didn’t have to change your name with Prohibition, did you? Nor your habits.”

  “Main thing that’s changed is the quality of yore booze—an’ the price, neither fo’ the better,” said Sam carelessly.

  “We ain’t drinkin’ ter-night, Jim,” said Sandy. “Dropped in to hev a li’l’ talk with you an’ then take a buck at the tiger.”

  Plimsoll’s eyes glittered.

  “Said talk bein’ private,” continued Sandy.

  Plimsoll threw a glance at the man who had been posted for lookout and he left with a curious gaze that took in Sandy’s guns.

  “Sorry I was away from the ranch, time you called,” said Sandy, sitting with one leg thrown over the corner of the table. “Hope to be there nex’ time. I hear you-all claim to have an interest in Pat Casey’s minin’ locations, his interest now bein’ his daughter’s?”

  “That any of your business?”

  “I aim to make it my business,” replied Sandy.

  For a moment the two men fought a pitched battle with their eyes. It was a warfare that Sandy Bourke was an expert in. The steel of his glance often saved him the lead in his cartridges. Jim Plimsoll was no fool to wage uneven contest. He fancied he would have the advantage over Sandy later, if the pair really meant to play faro—in his place.

  “I grubstaked him for the Hopeful-Dynamite discovery,” he said.

  “Got any papeh showin’ that? Witnessed.”

  “You know as well as I do that papers ain’t often drawn on grubstaking contracts. A man’s word is considered good.”

  “Pat Casey’s would have been, I reckon,” said Sandy.

  “I’ve got witnesses.”

  “Well, we’ll let that matteh slide till the mines make a showin’. Meantime, there’s talk goin’ on in this town concernin’ the gel an’ her livin’ at Three Star. I look to you to contradict that so’t of gossip, Plimsoll, from now on.”

  Plimsoll flushed angrily.

  “Who in hell do you think you are?” he demanded. “Who appointed you censor to any man’s speech?”

  “A man’s speech don’t have to be censored, Plimsoll. An’ I reckon you know who I am.”

  “You come here looking for trouble, with me?”

  “I never hunt trouble, Jim. If I can’t help buttin’ into it, like a man might ride into a rattlesnake in the mesquite, I aim to handle it. Ef I ever got into real trouble, an’ it resembled you, I’d make you climb so fast, Plimsoll, you’d wish you had horns on yore knees an’ eyebrows.”

  Plimsoll forced a laugh. “Fair warning, Sandy. I never raise a fuss with a two-gun man. It ain’t healthy. You’ve got me wrong in this matter.”

  “Glad to hear it. Then there won’t be no argyment. Game open?”

  “Wide. An’ a little hundred-proof stuff to take the alkali out of your throats. How about it?”

  “I don’t drink when I’m playin’. I aim to break the bank ter-night. I’m feelin’ lucky. Brought my mascot erlong.”

  “Meaning Sam here?”

  All three laughed for a mutual clearance of the situation. Sandy had said what he wanted and knew that Plimsoll interpreted it correctly. They went into the back room amicably after Plimsoll had recalled his lookout.

  There was little to indicate the passing of the Volstead Act in the Good Luck Pool Room, where the tables had long ago been taken out, though the cue racks still stood in place. The place was foul with smoke and reeked with the fumes of expensive but indifferently distilled liquor. Hereford—the “brisket” end of it—had never been fussy about mixed drinks. Redeye was, and continued to be, the favorite. A faro and a roulette game, with a craps table, made up the equipment, outside of half a dozen small tables given over to stud and draw poker.

  Some fifty men were present, most of them playing. Many of them nodded at Sandy and Sam as they walked over to the faro layout and stood looking on. Plimsoll left them and went back to a table near the door, where his chair was turned down at a game of draw. He started talking in a low tone to the man seated next to him. The first interest of their entrance soon died out. The dealer at faro went on imperturbably sliding card after card out of the case, the case-keeper fingered the buttons on the wires of his abacus and the players shifted their chips about the layout or nervously shuffled them between the fingers of one hand.

  Sandy knew the dealer for Sim Hahn, a man whose livelihood lay in the dexterity of his slim well-kept fingers and his ability to reckon the bets; swiftly to drag in or pay out losings an
d winnings without an error. His face was without a wrinkle, clean-shaven, every slick black hair in place, the flesh wax-like. He held a record—whispered, not attested—of having more than once beaten a protesting gambler to the draw and then subscribing to the funeral. As he came to the last turn, with three cards left in the box, he paused, waiting for bets to be made. His eyes met Sandy’s and he nodded. Three men named the order of the last three cards. None of them guessed the right one of the six ways in which they might have appeared. Hahn took in, paid out, shuffled the cards for a new deal. Sam nudged Sandy, speaking out of the corner of his mouth words that no one else could catch.

  “The hombre Plimsoll’s talkin’ to is ‘Butch’ Parsons. He’s the killer Brady hired over to the M-Bar-M to chase off the nesters.”

  Sandy said nothing, did not move. As the play began he turned and looked at the “killer” who had been named “Butch,” after he had shot two heads of families that had preempted land on the range that Brady claimed as part of his holding. Whatever the justice of that claim, it was generally understood that Butch had killed in cold blood, Brady’s political pull smothering prosecution and inquiry. Butch had a hawkish nose and an outcurving chin. He was practically bald. Reddish eyebrows straggled sparsely above pale blue eyes, the color of cheap graniteware. His lips were thin and pallid, making a hard line of his mouth. He packed a gun, well back of him, as he sat at the game. Meeting Sandy’s lightly passing gaze, Butch sent out a puff of smoke from his half-finished cigar. The pale eyes pointed the action, it might have been a challenge, even a covert insult. Sandy ignored it, devoting his attention to the case-keeper.

  The jacks came out early, three of them losing, showing second on the turn. A dozen bets went down on the fourth jack to win. Sandy placed the luck-piece on the card, reached for a “copper” marker, and played it to lose.

  “That’s a luck-piece, Hahn,” he said. “If it loses, I’ll take it up.” Hahn gave him an eye-flick of acknowledgment. He was used to mascots. Sandy watched the play until at last the jack slid off to rest by the side of the case, leaving the winning card, a nine, exposed. Sandy alone had won. The luck-piece had proved its merit.