by Short, Luke;
Yordy’s angry glance held Danning’s unwaveringly for a full five seconds, and then a kind of startled expression came into his face.
“You’ve stayed too long,” Chris repeated.
“I reckon I have,” Yordy said bitterly, slowly. “But I’m goin’. And you can have Miles, Danning.” He hesitated, almost uncertain, and then blurted out, “And you can have the light story of what I said to Miles, and be damned to his black heart!”
He told them then of his plan to get money and revenge on Danning and the Henhouse by selling Miles the suggestion of the fire. As he talked, angry and abject and defiant by turns, Kate felt a quiet despair. It was like turning over a loose board to expose the white nameless slugs under it to sight and then wanting to turn it back quickly, as instinct prompted. She wished she had not heard this, and she looked over at Danning.
He was listening attentively, his dark face impassive, as Yordy’s story ended and she heard him say, “You better move, Frank, tonight, and keep to cover until you’re out of the country.”
Chris looked over now to Kate, ready to go. She pulled her horse around, not even wanting to look at Yordy again, and they rode off the place.
Kate did not speak for many minutes, and she was humble enough at the end of that time to say, “Well, I was wrong, and I’ll admit it.”
“But I was wrong, too,” Chris replied thoughtfully. “Miles isn’t going to bushwhack me. I misjudged him.”
“Then you don’t believe Yordy? You don’t believe that’s why Miles told that lie, to make Yordy guilty beforehand?”
Chris was quiet a long time, looking out over the flats, and finally he shook his head in negation and glanced over at her.
“You didn’t like that back there, did you?”
“I hated it.”
“You’ll hate this worse. What I think. Do you want to hear it?”
Kate nodded in spite of her reluctance, watching him, and Chris said:
“Miles would have met him at Station, maybe paid him and ridden for the pass with him. But he would have shot him and left his body in the brush for somebody to find a week from now.
“Why do you say that?” Kate asked.
“Two reasons. He can’t trust Yordy not to talk once the grass fire is set, no matter where Yordy is. The other reason is the main one. If Yordy was shot, it would stand to reason I shot him because he was trying to have me killed. With me out of the way in jail, and the grass fire over with, Della would quit.”
Before she could answer, he said quietly, “I’ll prove that, too. And to your father.”
Kate said bitterly, “You’ll have to, and to me too.”
“I’ll be on that porch at the hotel in Station, Sunday night. Let your father have a man—not MacElvey—in Station where he can see it. If Miles comes, can you doubt it?”
“You can doubt his intention to kill Yordy.”
“But not his intention to pay Yordy off and see him out of the country, so he could burn the canyon.”
Kate said softly, reluctantly, “No. I couldn’t doubt that.”
“Then tell him.”
They were at the Coroner Canyon road now and Kate knew Chris would turn off to Box H. She reined up and so did he and raised his bandaged hand to touch his hat.
“You hate Younger Miles, don’t you?” Kate said abruptly.
“Why—don’t you?” Chris replied, surprised.
“But you knew this about him—his hatefulness. You already knew it.”
Chris only touched his hat and said, “Good day,” and rode off, but not before Kate had seen a sorrow mingled with that wild secret anger in his gray eyes.
CHAPTER X
Chris waited until Leach and Andy got up from the big Sunday dinner Della had prepared them and strolled off to their separate chores. Della relaxed in her chair and contemplated the table without much enthusiasm. Chris knew she missed her mother, and that cooking for three men was a lonely and confining job that chafed her spirit. He thought, too, that while she approved of their moving into Thessaly Canyon, she was afraid of what it might bring.
He finished his dinner slowly, eating clumsily with his left hand, his useless right, hand in his lap. The nagging ache of it had never ceased, but he was used to it now and had banished it from his immediate awareness.
Della handed him the cigarette Andy had rolled for him and left in the middle of the table. He lighted it, and presently said, “Della, whose notion was it to hold those two-year-olds over this winter?”
“Yordy’s, I guess,” Della replied. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re shipping them this fall,” Chris said. “Miles could try that, but you can’t risk it. You’ll pour feed into them this winter, and they’ll run off every pound of tallow you’ve bought them on the shipping drive. You’re too far from a shipping point. Didn’t Yordy know that?”
“But I’ve already borrowed money for feed and contracted for most of it,” Della protested.
“Take what feed you have to, cancel what you can. Ship them this fall and pay back your money. Buy all the cows you can, because we’ll have the grass. But leave the feeding to other people.”
He could see the protest in Della’s eyes.
“Do you know what prime three-year-olds will bring?” Della demanded, almost angrily.
Chris nodded. “Those are the three-year-olds you take half the summer to push sixty miles to a railroad. Over prairie in belly high grass. We’ve got a hundred and forty miles over a mountain range and two dry drives to a railroad.” He shoved back his chair, but before he rose he said, “I know, and you don’t, Della, but it’s your money. Which’ll it be?”
Della’s face had the sullen look of a scolded child’s. “I’m not foolish enough to go against my foreman. We’ll ship.” She hesitated, and then added resentfully, “It’s just the way you say things, Chris. You make a person want to say ‘black’ if you say ‘white.’”
Chris rose and said indifferently, “I’m sorry, but that’s my way.”
“I know. But why is it?” Della said defiantly.
Chris regarded her closely, and then, asked, “Sorry for your bargain, Della?”
“What makes you—” Della began defiantly, and then ceased talking and looked sullenly at Chris. “All right, I am, a little. This is no life, Chris. Mother’s in town, and there are only three of you men and me against Miles. You’ve hurt his foreman, but he’s got fifteen men left. What’ll he do to us? We’ve moved in Thessaly. How will we hold it? What’s going to happen?”
“Want to quit?”
“No, damn you, I don’t!” Della flared, and then she flushed deeply, and presently she said with contrition in her tone, “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m not tired of my bargain, either. I suppose I’m just used to giving orders, not taking them.” She looked at him and smiled faintly. “So are you.”
Chris didn’t answer and Della sighed, and then stood up. Chris went out, then; he was puzzled and did not like this.
It was another cloudless day, with a hot ground wind stirring, and as he headed for the corral his rendezvous at Station tonight was already in his mind, Della out of it. It was of her cattle up there in Falls Canyon which was a ready fashioned weapon for Younger Miles. Younger wouldn’t move until he was sure Yordy was safely out of the way, he thought, but he did not like to take the chance.
He caught his sorrel and spent long and laborious minutes left-handedly saddling him, and, as he worked, he came to his decision. The safest thing to do, even though Miles wouldn’t move now, was to shove the beef out of the canyon today. But if he did that, some fiddle-footed Rainbow rider might see them or chance on the sign and report it to Miles who, knowing Yordy’s plan was useless, would not bother to meet Yordy tonight. And Chris wanted Miles there tonight, had to have him. For he could then prove to Hardison’s man and to all these people beyond any reasonable doubt that Miles wasn’t simply a land-hungry man with a pretty wife and a solid place in the community, but a man who was a lawless
killer. No, the cattle must stay there, then, but he could minimize the risk.
He led his sorrel over to the bunkhouse and stepped inside. Leach Conover was seated at the big table, mending bridle; he had the scraps already piled neatly, as if he wished to make as little mess as possible.
“Where’s Andy?” Chris asked.
“Town,” Leach said curtly. Since Chris’ ultimatum, Leach hadn’t bothered to hide his dislike of Chris. He did competently and slowly what he was ordered to do, and kept his counsel, even avoiding Andy when he could. It was as if Andy, by his decisive action at the shack that morning, had automatically stepped out of Leach’s world of safe and friendly things, never to be readmitted.
Chris stood hesitant for a moment. He wanted Andy, because he knew Andy now, and he didn’t know Leach. He silently berated himself for not having spoken to Andy before, but the harm was done.
“I’ve got a job for you, Leach,” Chris said then. “Take your blankets and ride up to Falls Canyon this afternoon. I want you to camp there tonight, right at the brush fence. Don’t make a fire, and sleep light. If anybody drifts up there, run ’em off.”
Leach put down his punch. “Now that’s the first time I ever heard Rainbow called cattle thieves, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t. Just do what I said.”
Leach picked up his punch and went to work again and Chris waited a moment for his assent, and when it did not come he said sharply, “Hear me, Leach?”
“I ain’t deaf,” Leach said sullenly.
Chris after a moment decided to let it go at that, and he went over to his bunk. His carbine in its scabbard hung on a nail in the wall, and he took it down and went out. He tied the scabbard to his saddle and mounted and rode out, and presently picked up the trail he and Andy had taken to the Bench. A kind of grim hopelessness touched him for a moment. Della’s flare-up troubled him, and he knew that at last the reaction had set in. She had hired him on the whim of the moment, and when things had got rough and were on the verge of getting rougher, she hadn’t much stomach for it. There was, Chris knew, little faith in her and little resolution, and he was glad she did not know of what Miles was planning for the Falls Canyon steers.
Once on the Bench, he took the trail pointed out to him yesterday by Andy which led through the climbing timber past a series of open parks to Falls Canyon and beyond. Once there, he surveyed the canyon briefly. Yordy had been right. The pine boughs of the temporary brush fence, itself only some forty yards in length across the narrow mouth of the box canyon, were brown from a summer’s sun and tinder dry. The small stream which flowed under them trickled out of the deep sun-cured grass of the canyon which was mostly meadow and held only an occasional jackpine. A half dozen fat steers eating their way up the canyon stopped to watch him and then returned to grazing. Where they had trampled the grass, it was a thick brown mat; where they hadn’t, their heads were lost to sight as they grazed it. The red sandstone walls of the canyon were deep and straight, making it the perfect trap Yordy had described.
Chris left the trail and cut west through the timber, and in late afternoon he came to the approaches to Thessaly Canyon. He was going to pay Tip Henry the call he had promised him.
He wondered what move Miles had made upon discovering Box H beef in the canyon. Coming out of the thinning timber, he found himself on the east rim close to the mouth. He pulled his horse close to the rim rock and looked about him, trying to locate himself.
The shack lay almost directly across the canyon from him, and the chuck wagon was gone, he saw. There were two saddled horses grazing, bridles slipped, in the grass on this side of the stream. A man and a woman were sitting on a log in the only spot of sun left in the clearing, and the man was not Tip Henry.
Chris recognized MacElvey immediately; his hat was off and his fiery hair was plain to see. It took him a little longer to recognize Abbie Miles, and when he did, he pondered this strange meeting here. It interested him only a moment, and then he put his horse along the rim and presently took a trail down into the canyon, speculating at the absence of Henry and the chuck wagon.
He rode aimlessly now, and when he was satisfied that the Box H beef was here and undisturbed, he turned back and followed the stream. Approaching the shack now, he saw only one horse grazing. Abbie Miles was sitting alone on the same log, her hat dangling idly by its chin strap from her fingers. She did not see him until her horse whickered.
Chris was close to her then, and he wanted the wagon road at the far edge of the clearing. He put his horse across the stream, and then touched his hat and said, “Afternoon, Mrs. Miles.”
Abbie looked curiously at him and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Danning. It is Mr. Danning, isn’t it?”
Chris reined up and nodded, and said in a neutral voice, “It’s a pleasant spot, isn’t it?”
Abbie said dryly, with the faintest of smiles, “Ernie Coombs doesn’t think so.”
“He’s a hard man to please,” Chris murmured.
Abbie smiled openly then. “Are you going to finish the shack?”
“This is homesteaded land, and I am not the homesteader.”
“Then you haven’t heard,” Abbie said, and laughed softly.
Chris watched her, curious now.
“Tip has quit. He’s afraid of you, Mr. Danning, so he asked for his time and rode out.”
The import of this news came to Chris only a moment later, and he said gravely, “That won’t please your husband, Mrs. Miles. Neither would your telling me about it.”
“I very seldom please my husband,” Abbie replied calmly, “or even try to.”
Chris said then, “I have been meaning to ask you something, Mrs. Miles, but I haven’t seen you. I wanted to ask your pardon for my discourtesy to you.”
Abbie studied him in silence. He could tell she knew he was referring to what he had said of her to Yordy there at Melaven’s, and she seemed grateful that he had been no more specific. She nodded and said softly, “You are pardoned, although it was your right.”
“That is no one’s right,” Chris said, and lifted his reins.
“You knew Younger before, didn’t you?” Abbie said suddenly, and she was watching carefully for a sign of assent in his face.
“No, ma’m.”
“I thought that might explain some things,” Abbie said. “Good day, Mr. Danning.”
As he touched his hat, Chris noticed for the first time the pair of saddlebags that lay at her feet. A flap of one was partly open; the necks of two bottles of whisky, grass stuffed between them, protruded.
Abbie saw his glance and looked down and fastened the flap, and then she said quietly, “It’s still your right, you see, Mr. Danning.”
“Good day,” Chris said, and he rode on through the clearing to the wagon road.
So MacElvey was her source of whisky, Chris reflected; that accounted for the meeting he had witnessed earlier, and he thought closely of this. MacElvey’s motive for supplying Abbie Miles with liquor baffled him, and he pondered it as he left the road and took the trail up the far side of the canyon.
In another hour he had put it out of his mind. It was twilight in the timber now and he rode steadily. He had been idling this afternoon, moving slowly in the direction of Station; now his pace was steady as he worked west. He chose each trail that would carry him into higher reaches of the Blackbows, and just before full dark he came out on the wagon road that led over the pass. He turned down it, knowing he was too high, and there was still light in the sky when he rode into Station.
A big two-story log house, its narrow veranda flush with the road, stood in a clearing across the road from a half dozen sagging barns and sheds. This was the old stage station antedating Triumph. The bar which was advertised by the weathered sign across the veranda reading HOTEL AND BAR, was patronized by almost every traveler too many miles from the next drink, and as Chris dismounted, the lamp in the bar was lighted.
The hotel, Chris guessed, was probably used only whe
n the snow of the pass blocked travel. In the dusk, it had the color and appearance of an old and worn-out place quietly rotting away in the weather.
Taking his carbine from its boot, he speculated a moment as to whether he should hide his sorrel. Miles had told Yordy to have his stuff ready waiting. Miles, if there were no horse visible, might become suspicious and shy off, so that Hardison’s man could not identify him.
Chris left the sorrel haltered to the veranda railing and climbed the sagging steps. He wondered if Hardison’s man were here yet. The boards of the porch creaked as he crossed them, and before going into the bar he leaned his carbine against a weather-grayed chair by the door.
The bar across the rear wall was deserted, and the lamp on the bar top was smoking. The door that opened into the adjoining room was open, and Chris heard the sounds of a lamp being taken down and lighted.
He crossed to the bar and turned down the lampwick, and as he did so he heard the soft murmured “Thank you” of a woman’s voice from the next room. The voice was oddly hushed, somehow familiar to him, but since this was unlikely, he dismissed it and leaned both elbows on the bar and scrubbed his cheek idly with the palm of his hand.
A man came into the room behind him, then, nudging the door half closed, and said, “Be right with you, son.”
Bije Fulton was a fat and cheerless man who appeared as if he had been surprised halfway through dressing himself. His feet slapped softly in the pair of congress gaiters he wore, and his suspenders were trailing down behind his wide stern. He was too fat to wear a belt and his suspenders probably chafed his shoulders, Chris thought. He wore a collarless shirt of alternate red and white striped material, and his round and heavy face, needing a shave, had the fretful expression of a man who is too slow and knows it. He came around the bar and placed the lamp in its wall bracket and looked at Chris.
“Whisky,” Chris said.
Bije put a bottle and glass in front of Chris and said, “Count your own drinks, two bits apiece. I got to eat.”
