by Paul Lederer
He unsheathed his Winchester rifle and kneed the big gray horse forward. On the far side of the rise he heard the sound once more and his eyes searched the sundown-colored land intently. Then he saw the thing.
In a grassless hollow below where he sat his pony, he saw it backlighted by the orange sky. It was a dark, ominous form, swinging from the end of a rope looped over the branch of a lone broken cottonwood tree. The thing was not making the sound, for the thing could not. The hanged man was no longer capable of moaning, of movement or thought.
But the sound did shiver across the desert once more, and as Dancer slowly walked Washoe forward, the horse’s hoofs whishing faintly through the inches-deep sand, he saw the other figure. The dead man hung dark and motionless against the sky from the noose fixed around his neck. At his feet knelt a hooded creature.
It was a woman, her hands to her face, her body trembling with sorrow or fear, perhaps a combination of these. She heard the horse’s approaching hoofs and her face, ghostly white, drawn by stark fear, spun toward Dancer. She made to rise, got tangled in her hooded robe and collapsed against the sand, moaning softly.
Dancer swung down from the horse and walked to her, leading Washoe.
‘Just kill me!’ the woman said from her prostrate position. ‘Do whatever you want to do. I have nothing to live for any more!’
‘You’ve got me wrong,’ Dancer said. His twilight shadow was long across her huddled form. ‘I just want to help you if you need help.’
One eye flickered open and the woman peered up at John Dancer. ‘You’re not one of them?’
‘I’m not one of anything,’ Dancer said. ‘Just someone who wandered into your trouble, whatever it is. Who is this man to you?’ he asked, lifting his chin toward the hanging man.
‘My husband … he was. …’ She seemed incapable of further speech.
‘All right. You don’t want to leave him hanging here, I know. What do you want to do?’
Shaking uncontrollably, the woman sat up. She attempted to dust the dirt from her cowled robe with her trembling hands, and answered, keeping her eyes averted from the dangling shadow: ‘I just want to take him home. To bury him properly,’ she said.
‘All right, then. Let’s do that,’ Dancer said, crouching. His broad mouth formed a smile of compassion. ‘Where do you live?’
‘There,’ she said, pointing toward the valley below them where willows and cottonwood trees crowded what appeared to be a stream bank. ‘Our house is just beyond the trees.’
The spot she indicated was no more than a quarter of a mile away. Dancer frowned, peering into the dusk-clad distances, unable to see a structure there. Rising from his crouch, he told the woman:
‘All right, then. Let’s get you home. You can ride my horse. I can shoulder your husband that far.’ The woman eyed Washoe as if the horse were a fearsome beast.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk. I can show you the way.’
Dancer didn’t argue. He nodded, turned Washoe, and as the woman rose from the ground, he removed his skinning-knife from its boot sheath, placed his right boot in the left stirrup and rose to grip the hanging rope, cutting through it in two precise strokes. The dead body fell to the earth with the sound of a sandbag dropping. The young woman turned her head away and placed her hands to her face again.
‘Start on, if you like,’ Dancer told her. ‘I’ll catch up.’
The woman walked away through the purple murk of evening as Dancer braced himself and hefted the dead man. Washoe was unhappy with the task, but held his station as John flopped the dead body across the gray’s neck. The big horse shied slightly, but was calmed by Dancer’s reassuring words and strokes of his neck. Dancer swung easily aboard and, after a deep breath, started Washoe after the lonely desert woman as twilight darkened to bleak, featureless night.
Leaving the trees which lined the night-darkened river, they came to a low-roofed house of sawn lumber. It was neater than Dancer had expected to find out here on the desert. The country around was not all sandy wilderness, for he distinctly smelled grass and livestock, though he could see neither horses nor cattle in the settling darkness. The moon was still only a vague promise below the horizon.
They had water, and some graze here, but whether the ranch was a prosperous one, he could not tell. The house was only a modest indicator of wealth. Dancer had seen ranches of 5,000 acres and more run from such small dwellings. And, even though many in this part of the country owned thousands upon thousand of acres, there was not enough rainfall to provide grass for many animals.
The woman waited on the porch as Dancer, the body of the dead man slung over Washoe’s neck, approached and reined up. There was no lamp lit inside the house – where were the ranch hands, if any? Who was the dead man? A convicted killer or a lynched rancher of good standing? Dancer had come to the woman’s aid because she was alone and in need of help, but he had to wonder what situation he might unwarily have blundered into.
Dancer swung down from Washoe and tried to meet the woman’s eyes in the near-darkness. Behind her, ollas containing water hung on heavy cords from the eaves and strings of drying red chilli peppers – common in this part of the country. All seemed usual, ordinary. Except for the dead man draped across Washoe’s withers.
‘I’ll need a shovel, ma’am … if you would show me where he … should be put.’
‘There’s a toolshed around the corner of the house,’ the woman said with a weary wave of her hand. ‘There’s a lone oak tree standing just beyond it. Aaron would have liked it there, I believe.’ Her words rushed on. ‘I’ll be inside the house; I can’t watch. I will start some coffee boiling.’
Dancer frowned. The woman’s mood seemed to change abruptly from moment to moment, but then sudden death can spawn bewilderment. It was best for her, best for him, to take care of the job at hand as soon as possible. Leading a skittish Washoe, Dancer made his way around the corner of the house, found the toolshed and the oak tree, now black against the starry sky, and got to work.
Heat still rose from the sand even at this late hour to linger in the starbright sky until a new morning arrived. Beyond the serried hills the full moon peered cautiously, casting moon shadows beneath the scattered sage and mesquite. Having tucked the pick and shovel he had used away in the tool-shed, Dancer slowly buttoned his shirt and walked back to the front of the white house, leading Washoe.
He had no idea what to say to the woman: there was nothing to be said. She astonished him by appearing in the back-lighted doorway holding a mug of coffee for him. She had removed her cloak and hood, and stood revealed in a light summer dress of white with tiny blue rosebuds stitched into it. She had obviously taken the time to wash her face and brush her long blond hair. If this had been their first meeting he would have taken her for a pleasant, well-groomed, attentive hostess, not a troubled young widow.
Her smile failed to support her façade. It trembled, welcoming without beckoning. Dancer looped his horse’s reins over the sagging hitch rail, and approached her, hat in hand.
‘I can’t thank you enough for. …’ she said in a near whisper.
‘No need to,’ John Dancer answered, accepting the coffee cup she extended to him.
‘Come in for a minute,’ she said, nervously. ‘Sit for a while.’
‘All right. If you don’t mind,’ he replied, crossing the comfortable front room with its braided rug and two identical leather sofas. On the wall above a native-stone fireplace a grizzly bear head’s glass eyes gazed solemnly down. The kitchen was wider than the living room, as befitted a ranch house where a dozen hands might linger around the dinner table. A few poor wild flowers – blue lupines and black-eyed Susans – in a ceramic vase at the center of the table drooped their weary heads.
‘Sit down,’ the woman said. Unusually, she did not offer the wanderer food as was the custom in the Far country, but this had been no usual day for her.
Dancer sat, placing his hat on the table. The woman stood aside, hands fo
lded together. Tentatively she spoke. ‘You were just passing by?’
‘Yes, ma’am. As I told you.’
‘You were headed…?’
‘I don’t know for sure. But it’s round-up time and someone can always use an extra hand or two. I’ve a friend named Ned French down in Alamogordo. He told me that there are plenty of boot-strap ranchers trying to make a go of it a little north of you.’ He shrugged. ‘I figured to try my luck up there.’
‘In that case,’ a low voice from behind Dancer said, ‘I suggest you get on your horse now and trail out of here. I wouldn’t want you to lose a job.’
There were two of them standing in the doorway behind John Dancer. The front door had been left open to the cooling night and they had slipped in quietly as he talked to the widow. Friends, foes, murderers or protectors of the young woman, he did not know and could not guess. The woman took a half-step forward and said:
‘Jared! He helped me.’
‘You won’t be needing his help any longer. We’re back,’ the man called Jared told her.
Dancer still had not turned his head to glance at the men whose presence was only announced by their voices and by the long shadows that crossed the kitchen floor. He kept his hand wrapped around the coffee mug, not wanting to give the wrong impression by any sudden move. These people had their reasons for mistrust. Whatever they were, he had no further interest in their business now that the hanged man had been buried.
‘I’ll be reaching for my hat,’ Dancer said softly. ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’
‘Hold it!’ the second man said. By his shadow Dancer saw that he was narrower, taller than Jared. ‘What’s your name, stranger?’
‘John. Some down home call me Jack.’
‘Where’s home?’ the thin man inquired.
Dancer admitted with a thin smile, ‘Alamogordo lately. But mostly where I hang my hat and can sit to a table and have my dinner.’
‘Just a drifter?’ Jared demanded.
‘That about covers it,’ Dancer answered mildly.
Dancer saw the two men’s shadows briefly merge, heard a whispered exchange. Then the two men withdrew, Jared reminding him: ‘Just sit where you are. Don’t make a move. We’ve got you in our sights.’
Dancer had no intention of moving. It is not a feasible course of action when you have two men with guns drawn at your back. He lifted his eyes instead to the young blonde woman across the table. She showed no signs of fear, but her eyes were thinly sheened with moisture.
‘They don’t seem to like me,’ Dancer said lightly, hoping for a smile, but the girl only shook her head.
‘It’s their way,’ she told him.
Dancer could hear the two, now withdrawn into the living room, speaking in low voices, but he could not make out their words. He sipped at his coffee – now cooled – and waited for them to return, still wondering what he had gotten himself into with his generous impulse to help the young lady, for it was certain there was some sort of trouble brewing. Men did not generally draw down on a stranger in their own house as a form of hospitality.
‘We just shoo him out of here,’ Jared Fine was saying. ‘He’s a drifter. Nothing to us.’
‘Let me enlighten you,’ Charley Spikes hissed back at the big man. ‘I know who he is – running him off would be a big mistake.’ Charley dragged his fingers through his unruly dark beard and, goaded by Jared’s inquisitive eyes, finally told him: ‘That’s John Dancer! Didn’t you hear him.’
‘Dancer?’ Jared searched his memory. He shook his head heavily. ‘Don’t know of him.’
‘You would if you’d spent time in New Mexico Territory like I have. Hear him say he was up from Alamogordo? Well, that’s where I saw him, Jared,’ Spikes said, growing more excited. He had his cocked revolver in his hand still, his eyes occasionally darting to the open kitchen door. The narrow, bearded man went on:
‘He’s a well-known gun down that way. I never seen him work, but I know what people were saying.’
Jared scratched his shoulder, frowning. ‘Won’t he know you, then? Know that we’re onto him.’
‘We were never exactly introduced. Besides,’ Charley said, tugging at his chin-whiskers, ‘I didn’t have this brush on my face back then.’
‘I don’t like it much,’ Jared said hesitating.
You’ll like it less if he hooks up with LaFrance and Luke Gamer,’ Charley Spikes advised him. ‘You heard what Dancer said – he’s just looking for work. I say we hire him on.’
‘What makes you think he’ll listen to us?’
‘It’s not us he’ll listen to,’ Charley replied slyly. ‘But he will listen to Cassandra. What man wouldn’t?’
Jared half-turned and his eyes briefly met Cassandra Blythe’s across the distance. Young, pretty, a distraught new widow … yes, Dancer would listen to her. Any man would. They just had to convince her of their reasons. With a sigh, Jared told Charley Spikes, ‘It only makes sense to take on another fighting man.’
Holstering their revolvers they re-entered the kitchen together, this time walking around the table to face Dancer from behind Cassandra. It was Jared who spoke.
‘I’m sorry, John. As you must have noticed, we’ve had some trouble lately. Seeing you, we just sort of flew off the handle, not knowing who you were, or maybe if you’d been bothering Cassie here.’
‘He only helped me,’ Cassandra said, glancing up at Jared.
‘Yeah, well, we see that now,’ Jared Fine said, tilting back his greasy hat. ‘But coming into the house so soon after they lynched Aaron … we were a little jittery, you understand?’
‘I think so,’ Dancer said equably.
‘If you are looking for work,’ Jared went on, ‘we could use another man around the place – especially now. That is if Cassie is agreeable.’
The small woman’s eyes flashed with a ferocity Dancer couldn’t have imagined, even stronger than the look she had given him at the site of the lynching. Her teeth barely unclenched as she leveled her gaze at John Dancer. ‘We need men, that’s right,’ she said with fire. ‘We need men who will fight for the brand. If you’re not willing, John, then I don’t want you around. They’ve started a war, and you’ve dropped into the middle of it.’
Dancer turned his cup in his hands and nodded distantly. His own cool blue eyes met Cassandra Blythe’s. He asked her:
‘Where do I bunk down?’
The bunk house was a long, low structure of unbarked logs visible just beyond the willow brush and cottonwood trees that fronted the river. It was full dark as Dancer, having put his horse up in the barn, walked toward the building, carrying only his saddlebags and bedroll.
Stars flourished in the wide, cold sky and the narrow river caught their light and reflected it in its slow passing. An owl dived low at Dancer, perhaps protecting a nearby nest and he waved his hat at it. It sloped away on broad wings, vanishing into the desert night.
There was a low light burning at one end of the log house, but the building remained silent as Dancer approached it, rapped twice on the heavy plank door and entered. Constructed to house a dozen men, all of the bunks were now empty, the ticking-covered mattresses rolled up. At the far end of the building where the lantern burned low, Dancer saw a figure huddled beneath an army blanket.
‘Hey there!’ Dancer called out. Then he walked that way, boot heels clicking against the wooden floor. ‘You!’ he said in a quieter voice. The man beneath the blanket stirred and sat up. His hand was gripped around the butt of a Colt Navy revolver. His eyes were deeply set, his gaunt face bristling with white whiskers.
‘I don’t know you,’ the old man said from his bunk. He swung his bare feet to the floor and turned up the wick on the lantern, keeping his pistol leveled at Dancer.
‘No, you don’t. I’ve just hired on,’ John told him.
‘Who hired you?’
‘Jared Fine, Spikes and the lady,’ Dancer replied. ‘Where do I make my bed?’
‘Anywhere you like,’ the
man in the bunk said, rubbing his head which was frosted with thinning white hair. ‘Sorry about pulling my weapon on you,’ he told Dancer. ‘We’ve had a deal of trouble lately.’
‘I know. I just buried Aaron Blythe.’
‘I knew they’d kill him if they got the chance,’ the old man said sadly.
‘Who are they?’
‘LaFrance, Luke Gamer and them over on Pinetree,’ the man said waving a weary hand. ‘It’s a shame and a pity,’ he added after a moment’s sad reflection. ‘Aaron Blythe was a good man’
Dancer had been busy unrolling his blanket, stuffing his saddlebags and assorted goods under the bunk three spaces down from the old man’s. ‘Range war, is it?’ he asked, seating himself.
‘What else in this part of the country? The only reason we haven’t had an all-out shooting war is LaFrance and them are letting our boys do the work for them, rounding up the strays, gathering the herd before we drive them over to Carson City.’
‘Is that where everybody is?’ Dancer asked indicating the empty blinks. ‘Out on round-up?’
‘Yes,’ the old man said with a tired drawl. ‘There’s three line shacks scattered about in the hills. The boys are up there.’
‘I see.’ Dancer stood to unbuckle his gun and the old cowhand studied him closely. After hanging his belt on the wall, Dancer retrieved oil, a rag and round brass brush from his goods. He shook the cartridges from his revolver and sat cleaning it.
‘Use that pistol much?’ the old man asked narrowly.
‘Not if I can help it, Mr. …’
‘Foley,’ the old-timer provided.
‘I had a long ride,’ John told him, continuing with his task. ‘Bound to have picked up a lot of trail dust.’
Foley said, ‘I appreciate seeing a man take care of his goods. When I was working down in West Texas, I seen a lot of hands, kids really, wearing their guns for nothing but show. In all weather, I mean. Dust, rain and snow. I seen men with pistols that were practically rusted shut. What good is a tool – any tool – that isn’t ready for use when you need it?’
‘I agree,’ Dancer said. Foley seemed to be waiting for him to expand on the subject, but he didn’t. Placing the rag and brush aside, Dancer reloaded his pistol, snapped the cylinder shut and hung it in its holster.
