by James Munro
"I'm afraid Miss Simmons is unobtainable, sir," said the butler. "She and Mr. Simmons are in the paddock—if you wouldn't mind going out to join them, sir."
"All right," said Craig, and rose.
"Would you like to leave your umbrella, sir?"
"No," said Craig. "Just the briefcase."
He'd grown very fond of his umbrella.
"Very good, sir. This way, sir," the butler said. His face was quite expressionless, but Craig had the uneasy feeling that deep inside, where no one could reach him, the butler was laughing.
He led Craig into another room, with French windows opening on to a lawn and beyond the lawn a rose garden. Beyond the rose garden, he learned, was the paddock. Craig stepped out on to the lawn, and heard the windows click shut behind him. His feet moved soundlessly on the grass, and then he was enfolded in a great tunnel of roses, hundreds, thousands of them wreathed and entwined seven feet in the air, small and heavily scented, while great bush roses sprang from the ground to meet them, their beauty powerful, even arrogant. It was a set for a film by some clever Frenchman, and Craig detested it. It was like the flowers themselves, too slick, too contrived.
At the end of the garden was a brick wall, pierced by a latched door. Craig opened it and stepped into the paddock, shutting the door behind him. The paddock was L-shaped, and Craig found himself in the shorter arm of the L, his view of what lay around the corner obscured by the garden wall. He walked across the foot-high grass, and realized at once that the umbrella had been a mistake. So, for that matter, had the bowler. They didn't belong. No wonder the butler had been laughing where no one could hear him. Then he heard it. A rhythmic, loping sound, horses on heavy grass held to a hand gallop and cutting across that the sharper, more staccato noise of another heavy beast running. Craig looked for cover and there was none, and behind him only an un-climbable wall. Already he knew what he was going to face, and he had no time to prepare. It shot round the corner of the paddock in a great swerve of concentrated power, cat-footed for all its size. A Hereford bull, half a ton on the hoof and fighting mad, its black hide shining as if it had been rubbed with oil, its horns ivory bright, questing for a target. Craig stood very still. The bull slowed to a walk and sniffed the breeze, the horns slowly turned to hold him in their splayed-vee shape. Then to Craig's astonishment a cowboy cantered around the corner, a cowboy that Remington might have painted, with plains shirt, ten-gallon hat, neckerchief, jeans tucked in Mexican boots, and a Colt .45 in a holster. He was riding a palomino and swinging a rope. As Craig watched the rope's loop spun out, seeking the bull's horns. It missed, and the rope smacked the bull's face. Without warning, with seemingly no instant between the cautious walk and incredible speed, the bull put its head down and went for Craig.
To run was to invite being maimed at least; to stand, unless one had taken lessons from El Cor-dobes, was to die. Craig compromised by scrambling quickly to one side, then lashed out with the weapon of ultimate respectability, the umbrella, as the Hereford thundered past, aiming for the eyes, but the brute hooked with its horns and Craig felt as if he had been holding an umbrella that had been struck by a train. His arm seemed to vibrate in its socket and the umbrella, now V-shaped, spun in the air like a boomerang, then stuck point down in the grass as the bull skidded, swerved neatly, and came in again, and again Craig swerved aside. This time as it charged he snatched the bowler from his head, and the man on the palomino, who had been laughing, suddenly gasped aloud, for at the next charge of the bull Craig ran to meet it, swerved again, and struck with the bowler hat's hard edge. It spun up into the air, then impaled itself in ruin on the bull's right horn. The Hereford bellowed in agony, and the man on the palomino kneed the horse into action, rode up, and threw his rope. He was joined from nowhere by other cowboys, gaudy as butterflies. This time the rope flew accurately, settled round the small wicked horns, and the Hereford, still bellowing, was still. He'd been through it all before.
Craig walked to the angle of the L-shaped paddock, and found himself in what looked to be a film set. Ranch house, hardware store, and smithy, raised boardwalk, hitching rail, the Last Chance Saloon, sheriffs office, livery stable, even a Wells Fargo stage, with four horses poled up and a man riding shotgun. He was in the middle of a TV series, three-dimensional, life-size. Craig began to realize what a multi-millionaire meant when he described his hobbies as various.
He leaned against a hitching rail, and the quar-terhorse tethered to it snorted, being in character. He discovered he was shaking. To a man on a horse, his encounter with the Hereford must have had a Keystone Cops quality; for him, on foot, it had held nothing but terror and, as always, terror had generated rage so that inevitably he had chosen to attack rather than submit, opting for astronomic odds rather than no odds at all, and again it had worked, because his speed and skill were as perfect as a human being's can be. But each time might be the last time, and his body shook with the knowledge of it. He began to breathe consciously, deliberately, in and out, timing his rhythm, so that when he heard the clop-clop of hooves on the dusty main street, he was relaxed, easy, and wary as a cat at Cruft's.
The group coming toward him might have been coming to rob the Dodge City bank. The man on the palomino came first, and near him was a slighter figure in a buffalo coat and white Stetson. Behind them more gaudy cowboys, among them a Mexican vaquero, his high-crowned hat slung back to his shoulders, his clothes and saddle glinting with jangling silver. The cowboy in the buffalo coat kneed the pony into a trot and swung up to him. The pony circled daintily, and Craig leaned back on the rail and looked up.
"Why howdy, Miss Jane," he said.
The girl looked down at him and marveled. All her life she had been told of the advantage of looking down on horseback at the peasantry. It was obvious that Craig had never shared her lessons. He looked as relaxed, as easy, as when he had given her dinner in Keswick. His mahogany-colored hair was unruffled; his shoes still shone; his pale eyes told her nothing at all. He filled her with a terror she still found quite delicious.
"I-I hope you're all right," she said.
"I'm fine," said Craig. "How's the bull?"
The man on the palomino came up in time to hear it, and laughed aloud.
"Daddy," said Jane, "this is Mr. Craig."
Simmons swung down from his horse and ground-tied it to the manner born. He strode over to Craig and held out his hand. Craig took it, and sensed the power in the man. Simmons was tall and lean and deadly, and Craig knew it at once.
"Welcome to the Lazy J," said Simmons. "The bull has a black eye but he'll live."
"That's nice," said Craig.
"I think so," Simmons said. "I paid five thousand pounds for him when he was a calf. Come and have a drink."
They walked down the boardwalk to the Last Chance, the batwing doors swung, and once again Craig found himself completely at home in surroundings that had been familiar since he'd first gone to the movies: the long bar, a barman with a Texan longhorn mustache, nude pictures behind the bar, and above them the mirror that reflected a roomful of rickety tables and chairs, a worn piano, and a tiny stage. At one of the tables a dude gambler dealt himself poker hands to keep in practice; at the piano the perfesser banged out a honky-tonk blues that suggested he had finished his musical education in a whorehouse—Mahogany Hall, New Orleans, say, about 1892.
The cowboys followed him; one of them was a lord known as Charlie, who was very much in love with Jane, the rest were rich and restless and young. Craig saw with no surprise at all that one of them was Arthur Hornsey. The vaquero was an Arab. His costume was the gaudiest of the lot, and he wore it with a lack of self-consciousness as complete as Simmons'.
"What'll it be, gents?" asked the barman.
"Whisky," said Craig, and the barman banged a bottle and two shot glasses in front of Simmons and himself. The others asked for beer, and the foaming glasses skidded down the bar to them. The vaquero and Jane drank sarsaparilla.
Simmons poured, and Cra
ig and he touched glasses, then swallowed their drinks at a gulp. Craig noted with relief that it was Scotch, not redeye. Simmons poured again, and this time saloon etiquette allowed a man to sip.
"I really am sorry about the bull," said Simmons. "That fool of a butler must have misunderstood what I told him. Caesar always goes for men on foot. He should have known that. These foreigners—"
"Ah," said Craig, as if everything had been made clear. "Foreign, is he?"
"Yugoslav. I met his father during the war," said Simmons. "Still—as long as you're all right?"
"I'm fine," said Craig, and turned to Jane. "It was you I came to see."
"Oh?" said Simmons.
"I'm from the Foreign Office," Craig said. "It's about that Chinaman—"
"That'll keep," Simmons said. "I've been waiting for weeks to play cowboys."
"It's urgent," said Craig. "I should get back to London."
"On Friday?" said Simmons. "The F.O.'ll be empty now. You must stay till Monday, my dear chap. I insist. Anyway, it'll give you more time to talk to Jane."
"Please stay," said Jane. "It's the least we can do after—"
Craig looked at the gambler clicking cards as the blues chords pounded their sorrow. This was the dream world the orphanage had shown him at strictly rationed intervals, the world where the cowboy climbed his horse and rode off to where there were no more problems. The world, it was obvious, that Jane loved to live in, and so he had no choice. He must live in it, too.
"It's awfully good of you," said Craig, talking Foreign Office.
"Glad to have you," said Simmons. "I'll lend you some kit."
So Craig too faced the world in a blue gingham shirt and denims, cowboy boots, and a black plains hat with a silver band, Simmons found him a gunbelt, too, a wide strip of leather polished black, with a cutaway holster and a pigging string to tie it to his thigh. Then he found him a gun in the sheriffs office, which was an armory of racked shotguns, Winchesters, and one enormous and terrifying Sharps buffalo rifle. The gun he chose was a rimfire Colt .45, picked, it seemed, at random from a collection that swung by their trigger guards from nails driven into the wall. Craig broke it, spun the magazine, snapped it together, and sighted along its six-inch barrel.
"Are we going to fire these things?" he asked, and Simmons nodded.
"Then I'd rather have that one," said Craig.
He picked out a Smith and Wesson .38, slimmer, more compact than the huge Colt .45, but far more accurate, with all the stopping power that anyone could need; the great-grandfather of the weapon Craig still used, longer in the barrel, heavier in the butt, yet still familiar. Simmons watched him check it, try its sight and weight, then thrust it into the holster.
"My men'll think you're a sissy," he said. Craig pushed back his hat and stared at him gently.
"I hope not," he said, and his voice was so exactly the voice of the tall Texan who's a stranger in town that again Simmons laughed aloud.
"Come on," he said. "There's a lot to do before dark."
It never occurred to anyone to ask whether he could ride, but Craig took care to choose the oldest cow pony he could find in the remuda, and clung on grimly while the others galloped and swerved, threw and hog-tied bull calves, and roped a frantic longhorn that had cost Simmons a fortune in freightage. Then they rounded off the afternoon by holding up the Wells Fargo stage, killed the man riding shotgun with blank cartridges, then formed a posse (Simmons acting as sheriff) and arrested themselves. And throughout the whole crazy business, the Arab vaquero rode with a deadly skill that riveted Craig's attention: he was the most superb horseman he had ever seen, and Simmons was frantically trying to conceal his jealousy. To be good at what he undertook would never do for Simmons; he had to be superb. In his dealings with his daughter, for example, it wasn't enough that she should love him, she had to adore him. For the same reason he chased after Hamid Medani, time after time, and finished second. To Craig his good-natured laughter was as false as a whore's promise, but it wasn't his business, and he plugged on in the rear and left all the decisions to the horse, who was grateful for it.
At the end of the day, while the light still lasted,
they rode over to a walled area with a safety barrier that was a shooting range. The targets were the classic ones, tin cans, and by the time Craig arrived the others were blasting away, the .45's booming like cannon. Their kick was tremendous, and their impact, when they hit anything, reminded Craig of battering rams, but their lack of accuracy was appalling. Medani didn't hit a can once. Then it was Simmons's turn, and he was very good indeed, hitting the can four times out of five. (No one in his right mind leaves a shell in the chamber the hammer rests on.)
Simmons grinned, slapped Medani on the shoulder, and looked up at Craig.
"You and your sissy gun. Beat that, John," he said.
Craig went up to the barrier and wondered whether he should do as Simmons said. If he failed, Simmons would like him and that might be useful: if he beat him, Simmons might get angry, and an angry man can be very vulnerable indeed. Craig took the Smith and Wesson slowly, carefully from its holster, and the young men tittered, then stopped, ashamed. Rich, restless young men don't titter at those less fortunate then themselves. Craig ignored them, taking his time, settling his balance, the gun barrel pointed like a prosecutor's finger. The Smith and Wesson had a sharper bark than the Colt's smothered boom, and it cracked out five times in a steady rhythm of fire. The first shot cut low into the can, sending it spinning in the air; the other four kept it there, bouncing like a ball from shot to shot. When it fell, there were five holes clean through it. Behind Craig a young man whistled, and Medani touched his arm.
"I think you have done this before," he said. "Eh Christopher?"
"You surprised me," said Simmons. "The Foreign Office has hidden talents."
"I used to shoot for the navy," said Craig, and it was true in a way. He had shot for the navy—all sorts of people.
Simmons said: "Let's change now. It'll be chow time soon."
Craig, Medani, and the rest of the young men changed in the bunkhouse. Simmons and his daughter went to the ranch house. The bunkhouse had showers and electric razors, and the broadcloth pants, white shirts, and string ties that cowboys wear on their night off. Craig stripped and changed with the others, then sat apart and began to clean the Smith and Wesson. Hornsey came up to him, watched the deft fingers busy with oil and rags.
"Nice to see you again, Mr. Craig," he said.
"Yes, indeed," said Craig. "How's Lancaster University?"
"I'm on leave of absence," Hornsey said. "I'm doing research into abnormal behavior patterns and their impact on conventional morality."
"You picked a good spot for it," said Craig.
"Here?" The idea delighted Hornsey. "I couldn't do it here. Jane invited me." He paused. "You're an awfully good shot."
"Thank you."
"Better than Jane's father." The idea seemed to amaze Hornsey. "I cheated," said Craig. "I used a better gun."
His hands moved again, deft as a surgeon's, and the gun was assembled and back in its holster. The young lord known as Charlie came over.
"I'm Airlie," he said. "My friends call me Charlie." Craig nodded. "You were right to choose the Smith and Wesson. That Colt's a brute. You shoot a lot?"
"Not any more," said Craig. Not unless he had to.
"Pity," said Charlie. "You're bloody good at it." He looked round the bunkhouse. "Weird setup this place, isn't it?"
"It is," said Craig.
"I mean there's Hornsey, he's a don, and you're from the Foreign Office, and Ino there—he's a banker—and Richard's at the Bar, and Hamid— What the devil do you do, Hamid?"
"I'm a gentleman," Medani said. "I exist. Beautifully."
"Yes, well, and then there's me."
"And what do you do?" asked Craig.
"I'm a lieutenant in the Honourable Artillery Company," Charlie said.
"He's a lord, too," said Hornsey. "Seventh Ea
rl of. Also he's a suitor." Craig looked puzzled. "For the hand of Jane," Hornsey explained. "He's 6 to 4 favorite. Comes of being an earl."
"It's not just that," said Charlie. "I'm rich, too, remember."
Hornsey threw a boot at him, and they wrestled together. Craig thought he was getting old. Medani came up to him, slim, graceful, very arrogant, and Craig thought of the Siamese cats rich women own, how pampered they are, and how pitiless.
"I wouldn't do that," Medani said, and smiled. "That is not existing beautifully."
"You do that best on a horse," said Craig, and Medani smiled like a lost angel. His skin was a very pale gold color, his eyes hazel, and his nose straight. In this he was Berber rather than Arab. Only the thick, glossy black hair suggested Arab blood—that and his pride. Craig decided to take a chance.
"What part of Morocco do you come from?" he asked in Arabic.
"Talouet," Medani said at once. Then he paused. "I see you are clever with people as well as guns, Mr. Craig. How did you know?"
Craig said: "The F.O. sent me on a mission to Morocco once, because I spoke Arabic." This was a lie. Craig's only mission to Morocco had been to work for himself, as a smuggler. He'd done well at it too, before Morocco became united, and respectable. "I met a lot of people who looked like you," he said. "Chiefs and the sons of chiefs."
That at least was true; only the ones he'd met had all been possessed by the same passion, for contemporary firearms in good working order. They'd trade anything for a Schmeisser machine gun or a Remington repeater: dates, olives, horses, girls, boys, even money, when they discovered that Craig would take nothing else. And the firearms were for use: against the French when things went right, against each other when the uneasy alliance between liberation movement and tribes broke down.
"My family used to own Talouet," Medani said. "We still do quite well there."
/ bet you do, Craig thought. In the old days, before liberation, Morocco was as feudal as thirteenth-century England, and when a man said he owned a town he meant precisely that. He owned it—buildings, animals, and people.
