Blood on the Moon

by Luke Short

  “Another thing,” he said to Amy. “I don’t want you girls to ride out alone. That’s orders.”

  “All right, Dad. Carol’s out now, you know.”

  Lufton nodded and pushed his plate away, drew out his pipe and packed it thoughtfully. Amy watched the absent-minded, expert way his hands went at it. It was one of those small male rites that, if seen a thousand times, still hold a curiosity for a woman. Her father was still troubled, she knew; she could read it in his saturnine face.

  Lufton grimaced. “What’s this damned country comin’ to? And the men that’ll run it.” He looked darkly at Amy. “There’s that Garry. I can’t shake him from my mind. A nice-seeming man, but snarly.” He clamped his teeth on his pipe and drew smoke deep into his lungs. “In my day there were two kinds of bad men. One was a dirty, tough, drunken killer. You knew it, and he knew it and he bragged it. Then there was the river-boat gambler—pretty as a snake and just as deadly. Point is, you knew them. Nowdays a man acts and looks like a thirty-a-month puncher, but he’s just as apt to brace you and shoot your ears off as not. It was simpler then. I liked it better.”

  “You think Garry is a killer?” Amy asked. She didn’t know why, but it seemed very important to know this. She did know why too. It was because she, like her father, would have been misled at another time by Garry’s looks, just as she’d been misled by Riling’s. Jim Garry, in looks, was like the men she danced with at the schoolhouse, the men she grew up with.

  “I think he will be soon,” Lufton said meagerly. “Only he won’t get the chance.”

  The sound of a horse coming into the yard made him turn his head to listen. The horse stopped, and soon the door opened and Carol stepped inside. Lufton smiled at her, thinking she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and she came over and kissed him.

  Amy got up to get Carol’s food, and she listened to Carol asking her father how things had gone. He told her, and she asked where they had pushed the cattle. They were scattering them in the scrub piñon and cedar hills to the west of Avery’s patch, Lufton said.

  “Avery? He was with Riling, wasn’t he, Amy?” When Amy nodded Carol said, “You know, I went back and watched them this morning after I’d left Amy.”

  Lufton was disapproving but amused. “To see what they’d do? And what did they?”

  “They were heading south toward Avery’s,” Carol said. “I wonder why?”

  “They didn’t split up?”

  “They sent a man upriver and another down, and then they headed south. But before the two men left Riling called them back, and they gave him their rifles.”

  Amy brought Carol her dinner, and they talked about the ride. Carol talked on nervously, speaking to Amy now. She said that the scrub-oak thickets up by the Chimney Breaks, where she pretended to have ridden that morning after she left Amy, were one mass of red foliage. Improving on that, she said the slope looked like a forest fire from a distance. While she talked John Lufton was looking out the window, his eyes musing, speculative. Carol wished she knew what he was thinking.

  Presently he rose. “I’m going into town. I’ll take the buckboard, so there’s room for you girls.”

  “I’ll go, Dad,” Amy said.

  Carol demurred, and Amy went into her room and changed from levis to a dress. It was a ceremony that she had retained from childhood, out of some dim loyalty to her mother’s custom. She remembered how her mother used to corral them, make them wash their ears, rebraid their hair and put on dresses before they went into Sun Dust.

  When she returned to the kitchen she was wearing a blue dress with a white collar, fichu style, that seemed to turn her skin a deep golden tan. John Lufton was slowly pacing the floor when she came in. He stopped and almost glared at her.

  “You didn’t tell me that damned Garry shot at you,” he said accusingly.

  Carol was still at the table, and Amy looked at her reprovingly. “There wasn’t much to tell, Dad. Nothing happened.”

  Lufton started to speak and then checked himself, but he was cursing under his breath as he took his hat and went out. Amy and Carol followed him. At the barns Lufton ordered Elser to hitch up the team, and Amy went over to watch him. She liked to watch Ted Elser work with horses, liked the slow, soothing way he swore at them, as if it were a caress.

  Carol stayed with her father, who was now joined by Cap Willis. Her father was scowling darkly. Twice he was about to say something to Willis and twice changed his mind. The third time he spoke, and with decision.

  “Cap, we’re going to cross those other two herds tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Willis echoed blankly.

  Lufton nodded decisively. “Carol here saw Riling and his crew this morning, and they were heading south in a body. It looks to me like they’ll make a try tonight at the herd we crossed if they can find it. All right, let them make it. Nobody will bother ’em. But while they’re trying to round up that herd and push it across we’ll be crossing the other two. How does it sound?”

  “Risky.”

  “Suits me. Now get along and tell the boys.”

  Carol couldn’t think: the fear that had disolved this morning at sight of peaceful Ripple Ford was back again, only stronger. Tate had counted on the Blockhouse crew being pulled away from those two herds. If they weren’t there would be the fight that Carol had been dreading. She’d have to get word to Tate to stop the raid.

  On the way to Sun Dust Amy took over the team while Lufton hunched sleepily in the seat. He noted Amy’s handling of the horses with a quiet pride and approval. Her hands were brown, strong. “She should have been my son,” he thought and then knew that wasn’t right. But she was close to him, like a son. And yet, to him, she was more of a woman than Carol. John Lufton had a high opinion of women, set by his wife who was dead these ten years. Their occasional vanities and featherheadedness amused him when he noticed it, and he did because he had raised two daughters. He looked beyond those things, however, searching for something in them that was in his wife. In Carol he had not found it. It was all surface emotion and weakness with her, and he forgave her, as a man will a beautiful woman, simply because she is beautiful. With Amy, however, it was different. He had watched her and shaped her when he could, giving her a free rein to make her own blunders. But even as a child she judged those blunders, grave and troubled and stubborn, something Carol never did. The things he liked most about her were odd: she put a man’s value on words; they counted, like money, and they were sound as money. She loved work for work’s sake, not for reward. Another man’s trait, he supposed. The streak of humor in her was his own—gay and tolerant and sometimes sardonic. That was the salt. It was his ego, and he knew it, that made him think it would take a rare man, a simple man, to understand her and love her. If he did he would have the world, as John Lufton once had the world. The rest of it, her clean-lined face with its wide, grave mouth, her honest eyes, the sunburned, streaked hair that a man always wanted to touch, the young, slim, quick body—all that was frosting, and nice frosting too.

  Amy felt his scrutiny and glanced obliquely at him and gave him a low smile. “I know. I look like Mother, don’t I?”

  “Did I say so?”

  “I can tell,” Amy said gently. “I hope I do.”

  Lufton grunted. “You can tell too damned much.” He smiled too.

  Sun Dust was in its midafternoon drowse as they drove in. The shadeless street simmered in the overhead sun; a hawk, wings motionless, coasted out over the rim, peering at the town below, and then wheeled north, uninterested.

  John Lufton glanced at the sheriff’s office. The door was open and Les Manker was in, so he could get his business over with. He was going to tell Manker of what he’d done, what he would do, and warn him that if he was against him, then he could expect the same treatment Riling was going to get.

  First, though, he would leave Amy at the hotel, which always kept a room open for him and his family’s use when they were in town. No use to trouble Amy with this busine
ss further.

  “I’m going to get a new hat,” Amy announced. “I feel like one.”

  Lufton said, “I never felt like that, myself,” and idly observed the street. On the hotel porch he saw a man sitting with his feet on the rail.

  Something in the attitude of the man jogged his memory as the team drew abreast of the Basin House. Then he recognized him.

  It was Jim Garry.

  Lufton knew it was time, and he reached over and pulled the reins. He stepped down into the street, saying without turning, “Drive on to Settlemeir’s.”

  His boots scuffed up faint risings of dust as he walked. His attention was narrowly on the man in the chair. When he hit the plank walk he crossed it and came up to the railing by the post and said mildly, “I thought I told you to ride on through.”

  Jim Garry came slowly out of his chair. His face had been relaxed, somber; now wariness came to it, now the eyes grew oddly chill.

  “So you did,” he murmured.

  “Your time’s up,” Lufton said. “Get your horse.”

  “I reckon I’ll stay.”

  John Lufton was aware of two things at once. One was that a man about to walk past him suddenly stopped, sized up what was happening, turned and retreated. The other was that Amy had left the team in the street and was coming up behind him.

  He said without turning, and he said it sharply, “Get out of here, Amy!”

  “No.”

  Jim Garry had seen Amy leave the buckboard. Beyond her, beyond the stopped team, he saw Riordan and Shotten come to sudden attention. Then they moved, Shotten upstreet, Riordan down, both heading for the middle of the street.

  He heard Lufton say angrily, “Amy, leave us. Go into the hotel!”

  “I won’t do it.”

  Shotten had crossed the road now at a long lope and was on the plank walk upstreet. Riordan had stopped in the middle of the road. Jim Garry knew with rising panic that this was wild luck for these two, that this was the chance they had dreamed of and that they assumed he was in on it. He knew with cold and terrible certainty that Lufton was a dead man if he turned.

  Jim said quietly to Lufton, “Don’t move, Lufton, or you’ll never move again.”

  He took the one step to the porch break, putting himself in the open, and he looked at Shotten. “You drift,” he said.

  Shotten was standing in the middle of the walk, hands at his side, ready. A look of puzzlement fled across his face, and he said thinly, “Get that girl out of there.”

  Jim stepped down to the walk and headed toward him slowly, putting himself between Shotten and Lufton. “I said drift,” he repeated.

  “What are we waitin’ for?” Shotten asked hotly. “There he is!”

  Jim was closer now, and Shotten backed up a step. He couldn’t size it up with that slow brain of his, and now he protested wildly.

  “But Riling wants it! He said so!”

  Jim was six feet from Shotten now, and he lunged. He slashed savagely at Shotten’s face and missed and followed through with his elbow that caught Shotten in the mouth. The man staggered back, and now Jim drove a smashing blow in his face that knocked him sprawling on his back. He leaped on him as Shotten clawed blindly for his gun. Jim landed on his chest with his knees, driving the wind from him in one coughing grunt. Jim grabbed his vest lapels and twisted them in his big hands and came off Shotten, dragging him to his feet. And when Shotten’s knees took the weight a little Jim hit him again in the face. He hit him with a long, looping overhand smash that caught Shotten on the shelf of the jaw and turned his head abruptly and tore him out of Jim’s grasp. The tie rail caught Shotten across the small of the back. He arched his back, and then the tie rail split with a sound like a gunshot, and Shotten fell through to the dust of the road. He lay senseless, not moving.

  Jim looked up at Riordan, wondering why he had waited, Riordan stood in the middle of the road, small and wicked and cocked to move. From the corner of his eye Jim saw that the girl had backed away from Lufton, putting herself between her father and Riordan, and there she stood, facing Riordan.

  Jim said, “Riordan, that’s your horse in front of the saloon. Get on him.”

  He started to walk now. He came through the break in the tie rail toward the middle of the street, and when he was beyond the prone Shotten he paused, facing Riordan across fifty feet of dusty street.

  He said, “Crawl to him, Riordan. In the dust.”

  The sick man’s face was shadowed now. He’d been puzzled up to this point, held motionless by what Garry had done.

  And now, like the sudden change of the wind, it was on him. He was faced with it and he knew it, and a quick and dismal flash of temper mounted to his eyes. It had gone wrong, and Garry had braced him.

  He had his moment of judgment, which was what Jim wanted and which he allowed him in the silent street.

  Then he said, “Make up your mind, Riordan.”

  “I never crawled for any man,” Riordan said softly.

  “Any time you want it, start it,” Jim said gently.

  Time stopped. Riordan heard the sick blood pounding in his ears. He kept remembering that last shot in the door at Big Nels’s place, and then his decision froze. He could haul it up to that point, but not past it. For one wild and reckless part of a second he thought he had it. Then he knew he was beaten. Nothing was left but the rage and the fear, and the fear was stronger.

  “I won’t wait,” Jim prodded gently. He stood there in the middle of the sunny street, tall and still and barely patient now.

  Riordan cursed wildly. Then he fell to his hands and knees and crawled on all fours through the thick, hot dust toward his horse. He reached the tie rail and almost decided to make his stand there in the shelter of his horse. But his nerve was gone, drowned in anger. He yanked the reins loose and vaulted to the saddle and roweled his horse savagely. He lay flat against his horse’s neck for a half block and then sat erect and quirted the horse with full-armed slashes.

  Afterward Jim walked over to where Lufton was standing and watching him.

  He said, “You won’t be that lucky next time, Lufton.”

  John Lufton’s face was drained of blood, and his eyes were blacker than night. “I don’t get it, Garry,” he said slowly. “I don’t get it at all. Why did you do it?”

  “A man can change his mind, can’t he?” Jim asked mildly. His glance shuttled to Amy, who had been watching him with un unblinking, breathless concentration. He touched his hat then and wheeled and went across to Settlemeir’s, skirting Shotten on the way.

  When he rode out through the long gangway ten minutes later Amy Lufton was standing by the arch on the plank walk, and he reined up beside her. She regarded him a silent moment and with a child’s grave and troubled expression.

  “You’re riding on, aren’t you?”

  Jim nodded.

  “I’m glad,” Amy said. “Not for us, but for you. I want to thank you for this, and I want to apologize, too, for what I said to you.”

  “No,” Jim said bleakly. “You were right. Don’t let a man’s whim fool you.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Jim looked at her sharply, feeling the blood crawl up into his face. Then his glance fell away, and he touched his hat again and rode out, turning upstreet toward the dug road and the rim.

  Both Amy and her father watched him until he was out of sight, and they did not know what to say.

  Chapter Five

  After her father and Amy drove out Carol went back to the house, but it was only for appearance’s sake. From her bedroom window she watched the corrals until she saw Cap Willis finish saddling up and ride out, and then she went out to the corrals again.

  Ted Elser was closing the door of the wagon shed, and he came over to her.

  Carol tried to make her voice sound indifferent. “I think I’ll take Monte out, Ted. Maybe he’s not as bad as I think he is.”

  Ted nodded slowly and took his rope off the corral post. He roped the big black and saddle
d him there in the corral, but he did not lead him out. Finished with Monte, he turned his head toward the horses remaining in the corral. They had finished their milling and were bunched to one side, watching him with a wary suspicion.

  Ted whistled, and a big long-legged grulla horse laid back his ears and slowly broke away from the bunch. He followed Ted over to where Ted’s saddle and bridle were on the rail and waited docilely while he was saddled.

  Carol, watching Ted, had a sudden suspicion, and she asked, “Are you riding, Ted?”

  He looked up at her, mild surprise in his plain face. “With you, Miss Carol.”

  “I’m afraid I’d rather ride alone,” Carol said.

  Ted shook his head. “It’s orders, Miss Carol, straight from the boss.”

  Carol was panicked. She must, must get word to Tate someway to call off the night raid. But she couldn’t do it if Ted Elser was with her. She looked at his browned, honest face, and for a moment she hated him. A choking anger was in her, and she said viciously, “I don’t care what your orders are, Ted. I’m riding out of here alone!”

  “No ma’am,” Ted said gently, doggedly. “I’m ridin’ with you.”

  It was the same even-tempered, stubborn, ironwilled way he spoke to the horses, Carol thought, and she hated him passionately. But behind her anger she knew this wasn’t getting her job done. If she couldn’t make him obey her—and she couldn’t because John Lufton was the Blockhouse boss—then she must win him over.

  She smiled. It was a warm, sweet smile that Ted Elser had never seen before. “Ted, just between us, let’s forget this. I won’t tell Dad. Cap’s gone, and only the cook’s around. Nobody will know.”