Blood on the Moon

by Luke Short

  “Sure,” Jim said.

  “That’s a bad cut on your hand,” Amy observed. “I’ll fix it. Have you eaten?”

  “Yes’m,” Jim lied.

  Amy went out, and Jim was suddenly grateful for the solitude. He’d ridden last night until he had fallen off his horse. When he awoke in the morning he was lying under a scrub piñon somewhere south of the Commissary road. Later that morning he’d stopped to wash at a creek where he’d scrubbed the blood from his face. There was nothing he could do about his shirt or the cut, and he’d come on, not stopping again, wanting to beat Riling back into Massacre Basin. That was important; it was about the only important thing in his life now, and he did not think he was too late.

  Carol returned with Amy. She nodded to him when she came in and stood in the doorway, having no part in this. Amy had a basin and hot water and salve and rags, and she bathed Jim’s hand, afterward wrapping it up. Jim submitted in silence, not watching her. Presently Carol went out. Amy tied the bandage and then put the cap on the salve.

  “Tate Riling?” she asked.

  Jim nodded. “Has it got here already?”

  “I heard just what you heard from the gunman on the sidewalk there in town. I thought that would be it.”

  Jim said nothing, and Amy asked reluctantly, “Is he dead?”

  Jim shook his head. Amy sat down on the bench now, putting an arm on the table. There was a friendliness in her eyes that surprised Jim. “I keep remembering what you said there in Sun Dust. Was this a whim, too—this business with Riling?”

  “It was a pleasure,” Jim said. Amy laughed then, and Jim smiled slowly, raising a hand to his cheekbone and touching it gingerly.

  He heard horses outside now and some low talk. Amy rose, collecting her gear, and was on her way out the door when John Lufton and Cap Willis stepped in. Lufton looked inquiringly at Amy and then at Jim.

  “Hello, Garry,” he said in an utterly neutral voice. “What brings you back?”

  Cap Willis recognized him now, and there was immediate dislike in his face. He said, “Gall, for one thing, John.”

  “No. Let him talk.” To Jim he said, “Been in a scrap, it looks like.”

  Jim nodded. He thought a moment, gauging how much of what he would tell would be believed. All he could do was to tell it and let Lufton take his choice. He was going to tell it all too.

  “I got in a jangle with Riling over at Commissary last night,” he explained. “I’m through. I was through there at Sun Dust when I left you, but he didn’t want it that way.”

  “Well?”

  “Comin’ from a man who hired out blind to Riling for any dirty work he had in mind, you may not want to believe this, Lufton. But I hate a killer, and Riling’s a killer.”

  “I know that since yesterday. I reckon I knew it before, for that matter.” He paused. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “I want to tell you what you’re up against, and then you can do what you have to,” Jim said slowly.

  “I already know that.”

  “Not all of it. You don’t know, for instance, that Pindalest aims to buy your herd, do you?”

  “Buy my herd?” Lufton echoed. “He rejected it.”

  “He won’t reject it when Riling offers it to him.”

  Willis looked at Lufton, baffled, and then Willis said, “Riling hasn’t got the herd.”

  “He will have. That’s something else you didn’t know, did you?”

  Lufton was mute, puzzled. Jim spoke bluntly now. “Hell, Lufton, it goes back farther than you think. Pindalest and Riling planned it. Pindalest rejected your herd and ordered you off the reservation. You didn’t have any grass but in Massacre Basin, and Riling had the nesters primed to keep you out. Do you figure you can round up your stuff and cross it before the deadline with Riling’s outfit sharpshootin’ at you day and night?”

  Lufton looked at him steadily and then he shook his head. “No.”

  “And rather than let the army take it, you’d sell right now and take a loss, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not to Riling.”

  “But to a stranger like me with cash in his pocket?”

  Lufton nodded slowly, and Jim shrugged. “There’s your deal. Riling’s countin’ on it. I was in it. I was supposed to make the offer with Riling’s money.”

  Cap Willis cut in. “He’d still have the deadline to beat.”

  “Oh no,” Jim said. “You’d round up the stuff and you could do it if the nesters let you alone. And they would because all they want is for your cattle to stay out of Massacre Basin.”

  “When Riling’s got the herd,” Cap Willis said, “then what?”

  “Pindalest buys it. He’s already got the money from the government to meet your bid. But Riling will sell the herd to Pindalest for two thirds of what it’s worth. Riling has paid you a dime for them; he sells them to Pindalest for sixty cents, and Pindalest keeps the forty cents of the dollar the government gave him. Multiply that by forty-five on twenty-five hundred head of cattle and you’ve got a piece of money for Riling and Pindalest.”

  There was a long pause, and Cap Willis finally said, “I don’t believe it.”

  Jim smiled thinly. “Then you’d have a hard time believin’ the rest of it. Because Pindalest is loanin’ Riling the government’s money for him to buy the herd.”

  Lufton sank down on the bench, put elbows on knees, folded his hands together and touched his lips with thumbs. Willis only looked baffled, watching Lufton’s face.

  “It’s true,” Lufton said in a dry and beaten voice. “He can’t fail unless I refuse to sell. And I’d be a fool not to.”

  Jim rose then and said, “Well, I’ll drift. I just wanted you to know.”

  Amy Lufton spoke from the door then. She hadn’t left the room during the talk. She said, “Wait a minute, Jim. Sit down again.”

  She came straight to her father. “Think a minute, Dad,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “You aren’t going to let him go, are you?”

  Lufton was puzzled. He glanced at Jim and then at Amy and said, “Why, yes—with my thanks.”

  “But, Dad,” Amy said swiftly, “there’s something more. He didn’t come here to tell you only this. You don’t go tell a dead man he’s dead.” She turned to Jim then, who was standing beside Willis. “Jim, what is it? You came here for something else, too, didn’t you?”

  Jim’s face flushed darkly. She had gone to the heart of it with an unerring sharpness. She had asked what he had hoped Lufton would have sense enough to ask, because the answer was something he couldn’t volunteer.

  “Yes, I had a kind of idea,” Jim said quietly. “Maybe it’s not what you like.”

  “Let me hear it,” Lufton said eagerly.

  The three of them—Willis and Lufton and Amy—were watching him searchingly, and Jim was aware of their hope and he was appalled. It was the risk of the thing that he was afraid of.

  He said now, speaking to Lufton, “Sure Riling’s got you. But he wouldn’t have you if that deadline was lifted.”

  “But Pindalest set it!” Lufton said irritably.

  “Then he can lift it,” Jim said softly.

  He saw a new hard awareness come into Cap Willis’ eyes and then die out. But that encouraged him.

  Jim put a leg on the bench and gestured clumsily with his bandaged hand. “Listen to me, Lufton. Pindalest has got to have that beef, or those Utes starve this winter. He’s so sure of getting it that he’s lost his chance to get more. It’s too late for a drive from the Nations now.”

  “Of course, of course,” Lufton said impatiently.

  “Then what if the deadline is set ahead two weeks? You can round up your herds. You can hire punchers from the Bench outfits and you can cross your herds and scatter them in every damned canyon and wash in Massacre Basin. Nobody can round them up and shove them back with your men ridin’ line.”

  “That’s true!” Amy said.

  Lufton looked sharply at her. “Of course it’s true. But
the deadline isn’t lifted.”

  “It can be,” Jim said gently.

  “How can it? Pindalest would laugh at me when I ask him.”

  “He won’t laugh at me and he won’t laugh at my gun,” Jim murmured.

  Again he saw the light come into Willis’ eye.

  And then Lufton spoke angrily, flatly: “No! I’m not hiring gunmen, Garry, to save my money or anything else.”

  Jim Garry’s face went pale with swift, blind rage. He wheeled and tramped out the door to his horse. Amy Lufton ran after him, and before he reached his horse she put a hand on his arm.

  “Jim, Jim! He didn’t mean it! You can’t go!”

  Jim didn’t even look at her. He shook off her arm and stepped into his saddle.

  Amy grabbed his horse’s bridle and said pleadingly, “But, Jim, he didn’t understand what you were saying! Please don’t leave until he does!”

  “He understood,” Jim said dismally. “Now step back.”

  Amy let go and stepped back and said, “I’ll follow you.”

  Jim didn’t even answer.

  Chapter Eight

  Amy watched him for some seconds, and then she looked around her. There by the door was Ted Elser’s saddled horse. Amy ran to him, untied the reins and swung up on him, adjusting her full skirt as she pulled him around and took out after Jim.

  He was beyond the corrals, headed in the direction of the Massacre, when she came up beside him and reined her horse into a walk.

  “I told you I’d follow you,” she said.

  Jim glanced at her, his eyes without humor. “You’ve got a long ride,” he said. “I’m headed for Texas.”

  “All right,” Amy said.

  They didn’t speak, and yet within ten minutes both of them knew that this was a battle of wills between two stubborn people. It was late afternoon now; the sun heeled far over the Three Braves, and a chill was creeping into the air. Jim ignored Amy, and she ignored him. Not once in the four miles to the river, where they arrived at dusk, did she speak.

  Jim put his horse down into the bottom lands and picked out a camp among the trees close to the river. He took his horse down and watered him, and Amy took hers. He staked out his horse below camp in a patch of coarse bunch grass; Amy followed him and staked out Elser’s horse.

  Jim lugged both their saddles back to camp and began to collect wood, and Amy went out in the opposite direction and did likewise. Jim built a fire and then unlashed his bedroll from behind his saddle. He had a small coffeepot and a sack of coffee and a can of tomatoes there. Amy quietly took the coffeepot and went down to the river and filled it and came back and put it on the fire. It was full dark now.

  Jim noticed when she came back to the fire that she stood close to it, hugging her arms against her breasts. He took his coat from his saddle roll and held it out to her.

  “Wait,” she said. She went over to Elser’s saddle and unlashed the saddle roll. There, rolled up in a slicker, was Elser’s coat. She rolled up six inches of the sleeves and shrugged into it, smiling a little at the picture she made.

  Jim squatted by the fire, watching the coffee. He appreciated the absurdity of this scene and understood that Amy’s point was strengthened the longer it continued. But a stubborn pride in him would not allow him to speak first.

  He lifted out his sack of tobacco and papers and was fingering the mouth of the sack open when he remembered and put the tobacco back in his shirt pocket. Amy saw it and came over and held out her hand. “I can roll one for you, Jim.”

  Jim gave her the tobacco, and she rolled the cigarette he’d been longing for all this day, and he thanked her politely. His fingers were so swollen and raw and stiff that he had been unable to build anything he could smoke.

  Amy watched him light up and drag the smoke deep into his lungs. She was sitting a little ways from him, her face pensive, watching the fire.

  Jim said, “What about blankets?”

  Amy raised her head and smiled faintly. “I’ve slept without them before.”

  The coffee water boiled now, and Amy deftly hauled the pot off the fire and put in the coffee. Jim’s clasp knife served to open the can of tomatoes, after which he handed her the knife.

  “We’ll take turns,” she said. “I’ll eat a tomato and you drink your coffee out of the pot.”

  They ate that way, using Jim’s knife as a fork and drinking from opposite sides of the coffeepot, straining the grounds through their teeth. It was the crudest kind of way to satisfy hunger, Jim knew, but he made no apology, and Amy made no complaint.

  Afterward she rolled another cigarette for him and they watched the fire, both silent. The strain of it was wearing off now, and Jim was quietly amused and a little angry too. There was a tough streak in this girl, a stubbornness that matched his own. The whole thing was farcical now, but Jim had no intention of giving in.

  He watched her covertly as she stared at the fire. There was a fleeting sadness in her face, and Jim studied it. Amy was staring at the fire, content with that small hypnosis that warm food eaten in front of a blazing fire at night brings to everyone. She had the finest eyes he’d ever seen, Jim thought suddenly; the eyebrows were sunburned lighter than her skin, and they had a high arch that gave her eyes a strange sadness. Her face was in utter repose, serene. Jim discovered that during the times he’d seen her the word serene was what he had thought of. But that didn’t make sense, he knew, because he had never seen her unless she was angry or frightened. Except when he parted from her in Sun Dust. It was that image of her standing by the arch of Settlemeir’s stable that had come to his mind last night in the dark on the porch of Commissary’s hotel. And now he pondered the strangeness of this, that he should have been leaving a country and thinking of a girl who held him in contempt. He knew truly that this girl was why he had returned.

  He moved his shoulders as if unconsciously trying to shrug off the thought. A resentment welled up in him, and he flipped the cigarette into the fire. This must end, and now.

  He said quietly, “Maybe we better quit this.”

  Amy roused and glanced at him. “You’ll come back with me and give Dad a chance to apologize?”

  “No. But you’d better go. They’ll be looking for you, and when they find you I’ll be in trouble again.”

  Amy shook her head. “I won’t go until you go with me.”

  Jim stared speculatively at her and said, “I think you will.”

  He came to his feet, and Amy rose too. There was a faint threat in his tone that made her uneasy.

  “I’ll give you one more chance,” Jim said quietly.

  “No.”

  He stepped over to her and took her in his arms and kissed her roughly. She submitted without moving a hand in protest. Jim felt the sweet warmth of her lips, smelled her hair, and then he stepped away from her. He felt a strange excitement in himself, a kind of shock. For one moment the truth was naked in his eyes, a kind of bewilderment.

  Then he said harshly, with more brutality than he had intended, “You’ll go now unless you want more of that.”

  Amy said placidly, “I don’t want more of it, Jim. But I won’t go.”

  Jim stood there, a high, flat figure in the bright firelight, and there was bafflement on his face. His glance held hers for three seconds, and then he turned away. He sat down again, arms folded on his knees, and scowled at the fire. Occasionally he looked up at her and each time found her watching him.

  Presently he said without looking at her, “You meant it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough to let a man do that,” Jim murmured. “Yes, you meant it. I’m sorry about that—that kiss.”

  Amy was smiling gently, though Jim didn’t see her. She came over and sat beside him.

  “You’re a proud man, aren’t you, Jim?” She spoke in a low voice, and Jim could hear no trace of irony in it. “I think I understand you better than you know.”

  Jim stared doggedly at the fire, but his heart was oddly
hammering.

  “You’ve been in hard luck and you’ve made mistakes. Your pride has made you hate those mistakes, but it’s kept you from admitting them, except to yourself. That day at the river when we met, when you shot at me. I had no right to do it, and you had no right to shoot back. Both of us were wrong, weren’t we?”

  Jim nodded.

  Amy went on. “This mess with Riling. I don’t know what went before, Jim, and I don’t care. But you didn’t like it. You’ve never liked your part in it. That afternoon in Sun Dust with those two killers, you made your choice, and it wasn’t Riling’s way. I saw it on your face when Dad was talking to you. I saw the decision forced and I saw what you chose, and you acted on it.”

  She picked up a handful of leaves and idly felt them, and Jim was quiet, almost holding his breath.

  “This afternoon you did the thing you had to do, the thing that would wipe out all the past that’s been hurting you. And Dad threw it back in your face. He thought you were proposing to kill Pindalest.”

  Still Jim didn’t speak.

  “I didn’t think so, Jim,” Amy said. “I knew, you see. I knew you did it because you felt it would wipe out all the rest—the part that’s gone before and that you don’t like. Is—am I right, Jim?”

  Jim nodded mutely, staring somberly into the fire.

  “You’re a proud man, Jim—but this is the wrong kind of pride now. If you ride on back to Texas you’re lost. Forever.”

  She was silent, and Jim didn’t move. Presently Amy rose, and Jim looked up at her.

  “Shall we go?” Amy said.

  “Yes,” Jim said. He rose and went out into the darkness for the horses, and in Amy’s eyes were unashamed tears.

  Jim rose long before daylight. Taking his boots and blanket and coat, he went outside the bunkhouse. The morning was cold, and he slipped into his coat, keening the air and almost smelling winter coming. When he sat down to pull on his boots every muscle creaked with stiffness, but he knew that would go. He heard a movement behind him and murmured, “Who’s that?”

  “Elser. Thought I’d give you a hand.”