He drew his own. It had an eight-inch blade and had a nice feel but it was obviously more of a working knife than one that would be chosen to kill a man. “I still have mine,” he said quietly.
That she was disturbed and puzzled was obvious. Evidently this information did not conform with what she had believed.
“We have rifles,” she said.
“All right, I shall carry one.”
For a few minutes they ate in silence. There was an occasional crackle from the fire, and the subdued rattle of knives, forks, and dishes. It was pleasant, that he admitted, and she was a pretty, in fact a very pretty girl. A very pretty girl who now held him captive.
He finished his coffee and pushed back from the table. “You’d better let me pick out a rifle. Those men were running off your cattle today.”
“I’ll tell the sheriff.”
“All right, but I doubt if it will do any good. They won’t have the cattle where they can be seen, or if seen, be tied to them. Let me take care of it.”
“You?”
“I’m slave labor, don’t you remember? I’m the man you blackmailed into working for you.”
She flushed angrily. “Don’t be like that! I needed somebody, I—!”
“And I was handy, is that it? And I didn’t have any way out?” He turned and looked at her. “What about you, ma’am? A woman can use a knife as well as a man. You were in that hotel, too!”
For a moment he thought she would strike him. He waited, but she simply stared at him, her eyes hot with anger. After a minute he said, “Better let me have that rifle, ma’am. And some ammunition…a lot of it.”
“They’d never believe you.”
“What?”
“I mean they’d never believe you saw me in that hotel, and they’d never believe I killed that man.”
“Did you?”
“Of course not! I did not even know there’d been a killing until somebody found the body. I heard them talking of it downtown.”
“And thought of me.”
“Who else?”
He shrugged. “All right. I am a possible suspect and I know I did not do it. You are a possible suspect and you say you did not do it. So what became of the man who did it?”
“Who would that be?”
“A tall, high-shouldered man with black eyes and a lean look about him.”
Carrie got to her feet and picked up the dishes.
“There must be many such men. Anyway, he is probably gone.”
She took the dishes to the sink, then turned on him.
“Do you wish to leave? I won’t report you to the sheriff.”
“No.” He went to the rifle rack. They were good guns. There was one Winchester there of which he liked the feel. He took it in his hands and held it for a moment. Then he replaced it in the rack.
“Take your pick,” she offered. “There are two or three pistols in the drawer at the foot of the rack.”
He opened the drawer. There was a gun-belt and holster there, then two six-shooters, an Army Colt, and a newer Remington.
He took out the holster and belted it on. It felt good around his waist, too good.
“I’ll take the Colt,” he said, his voice cold. He took the Winchester down. “And this rifle. I am sure your father won’t care.”
“Do you really mean to stay? There’ll be trouble, I know.”
“I’ll stay for a little while,” he said. Now, more than ever, he wanted to know what was going on…a part of him had to know. “When will your father be up and around?”
“Three weeks, I think. Three weeks at least.”
“All right. You can count on me until then.”
—
Outside in the darkness he shifted his bed to a hollow among some rocks. No use to advertise the place where he slept. He touched the gun, then drew it. For a moment he stood holding the pistol, then holstered it. “Stan Brodie, you’d be better off a-runnin’. Curiosity is what killed that cat, isn’t it?” he muttered.
The guns he had taken were his own, taken from his room the night Bud Aylmer was killed.
CHAPTER 4
The place he had chosen to sleep was on a small, rock-covered knoll some fifty yards from the ranch house but overlooking the area. There were fifty or sixty boulders scattered across the top of the knoll, ranging in size from the size of a barrel to twice as large. Between them were grassy hollows free of stones. In one of these, where he had merely to turn his head to see the house, he bedded down.
Once he was settled, he kept an eye on the house, but his mind was busy, and there were a lot of questions to which he had no answer. What he should do was cut and run, yet if she called the sheriff there was small chance of him getting out of the country before they caught him. They knew the area far better than he.
How had his rifle and pistol, apparently taken from the room the night Bud was murdered, showed up here?
What had become of Tex?
Carrie had obviously not been aware that the weapons he chose to take were his own. Who had access to that house other than Carrie and her father?
Off across the hills the coyotes began to yap. It was a familiar sound and one he had never found unpleasant. He lay, hands clasped behind his neck, thinking.
The stars overhead were very bright, and the night was cool. He listened, vaguely aware of movement…cattle? He wanted no part of this mess. He wanted to get away, but he suspected the sheriff or some of his posse were already a little suspicious—after all, where had he come from so suddenly? And there were a few people who could place him in town.
He awakened suddenly, having no memory of falling asleep or of even being sleepy. It was morning.
Getting out of bed he gathered his bedding and rolled it carefully, stowing it in the corner of the stable he had taken for his own. Carrying his rifle he went to the house, where smoke was coming from the chimney. As with many such ranch houses there was a basin at the back door and a towel hung on a nail near a small hand mirror fastened on a board.
He shaved in cold water, turning occasionally to look over the hills around the ranch. If he was going to be in the saddle so much he would need more horses, which brought another thought. If this was a working ranch, where was the saddle-stock?
He wiped his feet at the door and went inside. His breakfast was on the table, obviously just put there for it was hot, although there was no sign of Carrie.
Drawing back a chair, he seated himself, then feeling something under his foot, he glanced down.
Mud…soft mud…several crumbs of it and one good-sized piece that might have fallen from the edge of a boot.
Somebody either was here or had been here, somebody who had recently stepped in mud that had not had time to dry. He ate his bacon and beans, a couple of slices of home-baked bread, and then finished his coffee. The only place he remembered seeing any mud was near the horse trough. There might be a track.
He got up from the table, pushing his chair back and purposely making some noise, but Carrie did not appear. Was the visitor still here? Or had Carrie been outside herself?
He went out, closed the door behind him, and dumped a little water in the basin to rinse off his fingers. In the mirror he studied what he could see behind him, shifting position for a better view.
Nothing…
He went to the stable and saddled his horse, leading it outside. As he walked up to the trough he glanced in the mud. Somebody had deliberately scuffed a foot across the mud, smearing any track that might have been left.
Stan Brodie swore softly. What was going on here, anyway? Her father was in the hospital…so who had been here? A lover? Despite himself he was suddenly jealous. Then he laughed for being so foolish.
What was she to him? A girl he knew and worked for. What was he to her? A drifting, probably no-good cowhand.
He shoved his rifle into the boot and stepped into the saddle. He was not going to let them see him scouting for sign, but he intended to do just that. He meant to find
out what was going on.
In the meantime there was work to do. He found a few steers and drifted them back away from the Two Cabin area. All morning long he rode, stock was scarce and he wondered how many had already been stolen.
Several times he saw tracks of small bunches of cattle, usually driven by two or three riders. Those he found he turned back. The range was in tolerable shape and that in the area around the Keyhole was the best. Beyond it was wild country.
The sun was straight up by the time he reached the Keyhole so he rode into as much shadow as there was near the rocks, picketed his horse on a patch of good grass, and climbed up the rocks. He had neglected to fix himself any kind of a lunch and Carrie hadn’t fixed one for him, so he was hungry, but he had often been in that fix. Settled down with his back to the rocks, he studied the country.
Stan Brodie was not a big man, being a shade under six feet and rarely weighing over one-sixty, carrying most of it in his chest and shoulders, which was partly a result of driving spikes on the railroad and work with a pick and shovel.
In the orphan asylum one of the men who supervised them had liked to see them fight so he would tie gloves on the youngsters and let them go to it. Stan was often whipped, until he realized that the boy who just kept coming usually won. So he began to simply pile in swinging, throwing punches until the other boy began to back up. After that Stan usually won. Here and there in the years that followed he had picked up a little more know-how as to fighting and survival.
The other day they had found his tracks and lost them, but they had been curious, maybe a little worried. A guilty man can find a lot to worry him in something he does not understand. Well, that was something he could do. He could worry them.
From his position he could see over quite a lot of country, and it could save him miles of riding. He spotted several groups of cattle feeding on slopes or draws over toward Two Cabin. These he would drift back away from the borders of the ranch as he had done the others.
Coming down off the rocks he mounted and rode back to the south and west, pushing cattle ahead of him. Once, in the distance, he glimpsed a rider, but he could not make him out, and disappearing into a draw the man vanished from view.
When he came within sight of the ranch he swung around it in a wide circle. He could see no horses at the hitching-rail nor at the corral. He picked up the old tracks of the posse coming and leaving, and almost a mile further along, the tracks of another horse that had gone to and returned from the ranch. He glanced at the sun. Almost an hour before sundown. Turning his mount he walked him along the trail of the lone rider. He followed the trail into the low hills until he came to a small spring with a trickle of water that sub-irrigated a meadow below it. Here he found where another rider had waited, smoking many cigarettes, until the visitor to the ranch returned. They rode off together.
He studied the hoof tracks so he would know them if he saw them again.
Carrie was setting the table when he came up to the door to wash his hands. “Who are those fellows over at Two Cabin?” he asked.
“I don’t know them all. There’s the Tutler brothers, Brockey and Red Fitz Tutler. There’s Shang Hight, and a man named Trainor. They are a bad lot, and I doubt if any of them is using the name he was born with.” She paused. “Stan, be careful. If they killed Pa, they would kill you. Of course, they did not kill Pa, but they tried, and they would have.”
He offered no reply, but seated himself at the table. She filled his cup. “Where did you come from, Stan?”
“I’m a drifter,” he replied, “just a loose-footed saddle tramp.”
“I don’t believe that. You sound like an educated man, sometimes.”
“You’d be mistaken. Most of my education I got in an orphan asylum or a newspaper office.”
She brought food to the table, and sat down opposite him.
“If I were you,” he said suddenly, “I’d be very careful, and be sure your father is well guarded.”
“Guarded? He’s in the hospital, such as it is.”
“His fall was no accident, you know.”
“Of course it was. His horse fell with him, that was all.”
“Your father’s horse,” he said, “was tripped by a wire stretched across the canyon.”
“What? I don’t believe it.”
“Anybody who took the trouble to look could see where the wire cut the skin on the horse’s leg. I found where the wire was tied. Somebody came down out of the rocks and took up the wire while your father lay there on the ground. He just let him lie, thinking he was dead or dying.”
“You mean somebody tried to kill him?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to leave.”
“Then you’d better get ready for a fight. I doubt if they will wait until your father is up and around…if it is the place they want.”
“Do you doubt it?”
He shrugged. “I’m just a passing stranger, ma’am. I don’t know anything about you or your father. But somebody tried to kill him and I think they will try again.”
“Can you stop them?”
“Seven or eight men, maybe? That’s asking a lot from a man you only got to stop by using blackmail.”
She flushed. “I was all alone, and I needed help. Maybe it wasn’t nice of me but—”
“You’ve got other friends,” he replied quietly. “Get them to help you.”
“Other friends? Why, I don’t—” She paused. “What do you mean by that? What friends?”
Stan did not reply. For a moment there was silence and then she said in a somewhat lower voice, “I don’t know what you mean.”
He stood up. “If you will excuse me? I am quite tired.”
She looked up at him, wide-eyed and embarrassed. Then she stood. “Oh, by the way. You spoke of reading. We have a few books if you’d like to read them.”
“I would, indeed. However, I doubt if a campfire that would provide enough light to read by would be good for my health. Not if you have as many enemies about as I believe.”
“You could come in here. I wouldn’t mind.”
“All right, but not tonight. I believe I should be outside. I had the distinct impression,” he added, “that someone was around last night.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him, then moved along the wall to the corner before stepping into the shade of the big tree. He remained there for a moment, listening.
Every instinct he possessed warned him that something here was radically wrong. Unless the ranch had had a lot more cattle until recently but they’d been stolen, it had too few to be a worthwhile operation. To make ranching pay they’d need to run at least six hundred head, and if they had half that they were lucky. The herd was a mixture of Hereford and longhorns but the latter predominated…and where were their horses?
Was the operation simply a cover for something else? But if so, why have him around?
The answer to that seemed obvious and unpleasant, for the only reason he could imagine was simply to have him here as a suspect in case anything went wrong.
The place he chose for his bed that night proved a bad one. He slept restlessly and awoke irritated with himself and his situation. He was getting nowhere here, and it was time for him to get away, to move on. He had lost enough time in drifting and it was the moment to make a decision as to where he was going and just what he intended to make of himself.
—
He shook out his boots, knocking a centipede four inches long from one of them. He swore and tugged the boots on, then got up and looked around. The prairie was a uniform mixed green and brown, the hills rolling, the sky somewhat overcast.
Taking his rifle he walked down to the house and washed his hands and face. Carrie put her head out of the door as he threw the water from the washbasin into the yard. “Come on in. It’s ready.”
First good thing he’d heard all morning. At least, he told himself, the cooking was good. He started to turn away toward
the door when he looked again at the small mirror. It was held to the log wall by bent-over nails. He turned two of them aside and, taking down the mirror, dropped it into his pocket.
This morning it was pancakes and eggs. Where she had gotten the eggs he could not guess but obviously there was somebody around the town who had chickens. He ate them with pleasure.
Sitting back, he looked across at her. “You set a good table,” he admitted.
“My father likes to eat, so I had to become a good cook.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s still unconscious.” He glimpsed the worry in her eyes. “He must have fallen very hard.”
“Or was slugged on the head before he could get up.”
She stared at him. “You don’t believe that?”
“I believe it’s likely.” He hesitated, then said, “Where’s the riding stock around here? I need a fresh horse now and again.”
“Oh! I didn’t think! I’ve been so worried, I…Stan, there’s a place about a mile west of the Keyhole. It’s a small valley there and there’s some water in it and we’ve fenced the ends. The walls are steep enough so that’s all we have to do to make a corral that has about sixty acres. We have a dozen head of horses in there.
“Catch up the gray or the Appaloosa. There’s a dun there who’s the best horse of the lot but nobody can ride him since my brother—” She broke off, then added, “Ride him if you can, but he’s mean.”
—
Finding the valley was easy enough, and they had a nice place for holding stock. A small, isolated valley kind of tucked into a corner of low hills, and the grass was good. I roped the gray and saddled it, meanwhile keeping an eye out for trouble.
An idea had been working itself around in my mind for some time but whether it would work or not would depend on how many of the cattle gathered by the Tutler brothers and their friends were longhorns.
Now a longhorn is no ordinary cow-beast. A longhorn is a wild animal, as much so as any elk, buffalo, or deer. Even though occasionally rounded up and herded by men, they remained wild, very skittish, and likely to stampede on the slightest provocation. A sudden whiff of a wolf-hide, the drop of a tin pan, a shot…many things might cause a stampede.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 34
