Ramrod

by Short, Luke;

  Ben sighed, and said, “Now, what are you sore about?”

  “My whole life,” Connie said flatly.

  “I’m old. You have to be plain.”

  “I will be,” Connie said placidly. “You just keep on asking questions.”

  She went about her packing again, and Ben regarded her worriedly. “Are you hurt about that boy throwin’ you over?” Ben asked.

  Connie straightened up and laughed. It was real laughter, too, and Ben didn’t like it.

  “You have such a thoughtful way of putting it,” Connie said finally. “He didn’t throw me over. He just took a look at you and Frank Ivey and decided he didn’t love me enough to die for me. I can’t really blame him.”

  “Now Connie,” Ben protested, “what kind of talk is that?”

  Connie looked up swiftly. “The truth, Pop. He gave you a wonderful excuse, with that threat to bring in sheep. He was a fool, in a sweet way, and it was all you needed. You drove him out. He couldn’t face you. And now you and Frank are right back where you started, both of you making muscles in front of me, hoping I’ll be impressed enough to marry Frank. I’m not; I’m just clearing out.”

  Ben considered this a moment while he studied his cigar. “All right, all right,” he said placatingly. “So you’re going to run Circle 66. What will you use for grass?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Alone?”

  “I’ve got a foreman, and I’ll get a crew.”

  Ben looked interested. “Who’s your foreman?”

  “Dave Nash.”

  Surprise washed over Ben’s eyes, and Connie, seeing it, smiled. “Like it?”

  “So that’s why he tangled with Red?”

  “I doubt it,” Connie said. “It was for a personal reason. But you won’t run him out without a little trouble.”

  “So,” Ben said slowly, softly, considering. “He’ll get soused the day you need him most. I know his kind.”

  “That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” Connie said placidly. She felt a little smug in saying this; it would do no harm for both her father and Frank Ivey to underestimate Dave Nash. “There’ll be a few risks in this I can’t avoid, and that’s one of them.”

  “Quite a few,” Ben observed dryly. “You think Frank and I will let you steal our grass?”

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to do anything about it,” Connie answered calmly.

  “And why not?”

  “Nobody’s ever stood up to you. You’re both too big, and you have a terrific bark.” There was open malice in her tone, “I wonder if you can bite.”

  Ben looked searchingly at her. He was not surprised at her tongue, since she was his own daughter, but something else troubled him. “Connie,” he said heavily, “you’re getting into a man’s business. There’ll be gunplay, and men will be hurt.”

  “Yours,” Connie said curtly. She went back to her packing again.

  Ben sat on the edge of the bed watching her, and presently he lighted his cigar. Connie came over and shooed him off her dresses, and he moved back toward the head of the bed, leaning on the headboard. She worked swiftly, steadily, and Ben watched her with his shrewd, musing gaze. He had broken too many horses in his day to believe there was only one way to do it, and he considered Connie now. She was headstrong, but she wasn’t a fool. And she was playing a game now that had no rules. That was supposed to be a feminine talent, he’d heard, but he doubted if it applied in this case. If Connie could be licked before she started, she’d quit, since she wasn’t a fool. Ben thought all this, and knew darkly why he was thinking it. He didn’t want to lose Connie. She had fought him every step of the way since she was ten, sometimes stealthily and sometimes openly, but his life would be over if he lost her.

  He cleared his throat then and Connie looked up. He had been silent so long she had almost forgotten him.

  “Connie,” he said slowly, “I’m not going to let you do this.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Ben made a gesture of impatience with his cigar. “I don’t mean that. I’ll not try to stop you—only I think it doesn’t have to happen.”

  Connie paused in her work. “Now what?”

  “What would satisfy you?”

  Connie thought a moment. She folded her arms across her breast and paced once to the door and turned and came back to the bed. “If you and Frank pull back to American Creek.”

  Ben’s jaws clamped down tightly on his cigar and he felt a quick stirring of anger. It passed unnoticed, for he was a good gambler. “That’s a pound and a half of flesh,” he said bitterly.

  “Closer to two,” Connie countered.

  Ben sighed. “Well, you’ll get the D Bar when I’m dead, so I suppose I might as well give you a third of it while I’m alive. As for Frank”—he shrugged and spread his hands—“he’s been asking you to accept even his name. I don’t think he’ll object.”

  “I do,” Connie said. “I’m counting on it.”

  Ben rose and said casually, “Who’s over at 66?”

  “Nash might be there by now.”

  “Tell you what,” Ben said. “I’ll send a man to bring him over to Frank’s tomorrow. I’ll let Frank know we’re coming, too. We’ll talk it over at Bell and I think we’ll agree.” He smiled faintly. “You can stay one more night, can’t you, Connie?”

  Connie thought a moment, and Ben could almost read her thoughts. She was thinking that he was trying to neutralize her by kindness, and if he knew Connie she would agree to stay, only if to bait him and Frank further and prove she was immune to kindness. Well, that was all right; he only needed one night.

  “I’ll stay tonight,” Connie said.

  “Good,” Ben said. “We’ll ride over together, tomorrow.” When he went out of the room, there was the faintest of smiles playing under his roan mustache.

  5

  Dave reached Circle 66 in midmorning. The rain which had threatened yesterday still held off under a gray sky, and a chill ground wind off the Federals stirred the deep grass as he came across the flats, skirted the Ridge and forded American Creek. Circle 66 lay five miles beyond, and presently its windmill poked above a rise. He climbed it and looked back over his shoulder, and the whole rich tawny floor of the Bench lay before him. He hardly blamed Walt Shipley for his ambition, then; a man could not look at this golden grass without wanting it.

  The house itself lay at the foot of the bald slope of a hill to the North. It had the air of a working ranch—a long log shack built low to the ground, a big log barn, slab sheds and pole corrals. Not a tree graced the place; it was built for utility, and Dave wondered idly how Connie Dickason would change it.

  Pulling into the yard he saw a horse standing hipshot by the veranda, and its rider seated beside it. Bill Schell, apparently, had done his job quickly, if this was one of the newly hired crew.

  Dave rode up to the veranda, and the man rose. At first sight, he seemed merely a boy, with a kind of gangling awkwardness about him. Dave’s glance shuttled to his horse then and he saw the big D Bar branded on the hip.

  He reined up and Link Thoms grinned. “Howdy. You Dave Nash?”

  “That’s right,” Dave said, in a neutral voice.

  “Connie Dickason said you was to come with me,” Link said. He came over and pulled a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It was a note from Connie ordering him to accompany the bearer.

  Dave put it in his pocket and said, “I’m ready,” and the kid mounted.

  The direction he took angling north drew an immediate question from Dave. “Where we bound for?”

  “Bell.”

  Dave looked at him sharply, but young Link Thoms’ face was innocent of guile. The note was in Connie’s handwriting all right, but Dave felt a faint uneasiness. He was remembering Frank Ivey’s warning, and he smiled faintly. Maybe Connie knew what she was doing; but if she didn’t, he wondered what his welcome would be. There was only one way to find out, and he settled back into patience.
/>   They crossed American Creek and afterward moved over the ridge which ran like an upthrust rocky spine from the Federals slantwise with the Bench as far as the creek. From its height, Dave could see the distant tangle of timber far to the east that marked, by a precipitous drop down into the badlands, the edge of the Bench. At the foot of the ridge’s north slope lay one of Bell’s line camps, a big shack built long and narrow, bunkhouse style, a couple of sheds and a big holding corral. In winter, when the snows forced the stock down from the Federals onto the flats, a part of Bell’s crew worked out from here instead of the home ranch.

  They passed it, heading north, deep into Bell’s range. All morning, fat cattle and their Bell-branded calves were seldom out of sight. Link Thoms, with the garrulous innocence of a hand who does not understand his employer’s politics, talked cattle and horses and of the coming roundup two months away.

  They passed a shouldering upthrust of dun-colored rock, and were suddenly in a deep boxed valley that climbed gently straight in through the fringe of foothills toward the Federals.

  Presently they came in sight of Bell, nestled snugly at the head of the valley, timber rising straight behind it to the swift vault of the mountains.

  As they approached the house Dave observed it carefully with a faint twinge of memory. His mind traveled back to the spot he and Ruth had built in; a box canyon like this, green as a park, not so big as this and not so fine. There was probably grass on the roof of his shack now, and neighbors had helped themselves to the windows, for Dave had left it after Ruth’s death. It had been easier, after that, to work with a lot of men, exchanging his independence for their company, because the heartbreaking labor of making something for himself alone had not been worth the struggle. It was better to be a steady top hand saddled with responsibilities, with his sole privilege a ride into town on a Sunday to see the boy and play with him.

  Dave moved restlessly in the saddle and put these thoughts away. Bell, he saw with a practical eye, was a well-run outfit. Its low log house, sprawled in an L among some straggling pines, was the kind of a womanless place that a man would build for men. Bunkhouse and cookshack made up the biggest part of the building; the main house was only the base of the L, and it contained the office, in front of which three horses were tethered now. The barns were big, the corrals solid, and someone, as if furthering the impression of efficiency, was clanging at an anvil down in the blacksmith shop.

  Dave rode up to the other horses, and Link, saying, “So long, Nash,” drifted down to the corrals.

  Dave tied his horse with the others at the rail nailed between two pines, and Connie came out of the office. She was wearing a riding habit of a gray color, and the full skirt made her seem almost diminutive.

  “Any luck?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Bill said he’d get them,” Dave answered.

  Connie gave him a swift smile of thanks and turned into the office again, and Dave followed her.

  Ben Dickason, sitting in a worn leather chair, nodded and said, “Hello, Nash,” in a completely neutral tone. Frank Ivey, his back planted solidly against the back wall, said nothing.

  Connie sank into the wired barrel chair in front of the littered roll-top desk and crossed her legs.

  “Let’s hear it,” she said to her father.

  Dave put his shoulder against the wall beside the door and tried to get the feel of this. He felt Frank Ivey’s bold, searching gaze on him, and he shifted his own glance to meet it. There was something tough and unforgiving in Frank Ivey; he leaned against the wall, blocky in his waist overalls and sweat-stained calico shirt, his big arms folded across his chest. His curly dark hair, close fitting as a cap, reminded Dave oddly of the curly hair on the forehead of a whiteface bull. Dave felt instinctively that Ivey and Ben Dickason were making a last play to hold Connie.

  “Frank,” Dickason said. “Connie’s got hungry all of a sudden. She wants an outfit, and she’s got one.”

  Ivey looked at Connie, and when he did his face softened subtly. The man was in love with her, and Dave would have known it instantly even if Connie hadn’t told him.

  “She can have mine any time she wants it,” Frank said stolidly. It was like the man to declare his love simply and bluntly in front of anyone who cared to listen; and Dave felt a stirring of admiration for him.

  “Not with your strings, Frank,” Connie said coldly. “Your strings are ropes.”

  “Now Connie, let me talk,” Ben said mildly, and he looked up at Frank. “Shipley left her 66. She’s taken out her mother’s money and she’s hiring a crew and buying stock, Frank.”

  He’s heard this already, Dave thought, watching Frank Ivey’s face.

  Ben went on, his tone faintly sardonic now, “She claims with this crew she can take grass away from us, Frank.”

  The faintest of smiles played at the corners of Ivey’s mouth, and he didn’t comment.

  “I told her,” Ben went on, “that there’d be men hurt and hell raised generally, but she don’t seem to care.”

  “You can leave the ‘seem’ out. I don’t care,” Connie said.

  “We get down to cases now,” Ben said, leaning forward. He lifted his glance idly to Dave and then dropped it again. “Connie says she won’t cut loose her dogs if we meet her proposition, Frank. I’m willin’, and I come to ask you if you are.”

  “Go ahead and ask,” Frank drawled.

  “She wants all the grass on her side of American Creek.”

  Dave glanced swiftly at Connie, who did not move. She was watching Frank Ivey, and there was a faint flush to her cheeks. A sudden admiration for Connie’s courage came to Dave then; she wouldn’t fail for lack of boldness. The range on their side of American Creek, if added to what she already held, would make her Circle 66 rank just a little smaller than D Bar and Bell.

  “Does she?” Frank murmured. “And what if we don’t give it to her?”

  “I’ll take it,” Connie said, with a superb arrogance.

  Frank Ivey smiled, but he was angry too. The very gall of it rankled him, as it would have rankled any man. He shuttled his glance to Dave. “What are you gettin’ out of this?”

  “Wages.”

  “And booze?”

  “All I can drink,” Dave murmured.

  Frank’s gaze again settled on Connie. “I don’t get it, Connie,” he said slowly. “First you hook up with a big-mouth sheepman, and now with a drunk. Usin’ land that we let him take and he gave to you, you aim to fight us. Why? Why?”

  “I don’t like bullies,” Connie said calmly. “What’s your answer, Frank?”

  “I just think you’re crazy,” Ivey murmured.

  Connie stood up then and said, “And you, Dad?”

  “I’ve backed Frank up so long it’s a habit,” Ben said. “I can’t change at my age.”

  “All right,” Connie said briskly. “Free grass is for the outfit that can take it and hold it. I’m going to make my try.” She glanced at Dave and said, “We’re through,” and stepped outside. Dave was half turned when Ben Dickason’s voice, quiet and imperative, said, “Nash.”

  Dave halted in the doorway, his big frame almost filling it.

  Ben said, “You don’t look like a fool to me. Didn’t Frank tell you you’re through here?”

  “Somethin’ like that,” Dave agreed.

  Ben eyed him shrewdly. “If you think Connie’s big enough—or will be big enough—to keep you here, you’re wrong. Shipley went, Leach and Harvey went. You better go.”

  Dave smiled faintly. “I’ve seen Ivey’s tracks and your tracks, Ben. They don’t look big enough to scare me.”

  Ben, however, was too confident to be baited. He nodded politely, and asked curiously, “What’s your game here?”

  Dave’s glance shuttled to Ivey, who was watching him with a quiet arrogance, and he said, “Why, somethin’ Shipley said got me curious.”

  “What was that?” Ben murmured.

  “He said Ivey wasn’t God. Ivey says he is
. I want to see who’s right.” He laid a level, insolent glance upon Ivey for a brief moment and saw the slow stirring of anger in the man, and then he tramped out.

  Untying his horse, he stepped into the saddle and pulled up alongside Connie. When they were out of earshot of the house, Connie glanced over at him and smiled wryly.

  “It was worth trying, wasn’t it?”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  Something in his voice made the smile fade from Connie’s face. “That we talk with Frank? Dad’s. Why?”

  Dave thought a moment before he answered: “Ivey knew your proposition before your father told him. How’d he know?”

  Connie, still watching him, said: “Dad could have sent him word last night. I told him yesterday.”

  “That’s it,” Dave said. “They’ve pulled us both off 66.” He reined up, looked briefly at Connie’s horse, and said sharply, “Get down, Connie, and trade horses with me,” and slipped out of the saddle.

  Connie didn’t hesitate a moment. She dismounted and uncinched her side-saddle, and by that time Dave had the saddle off his own horse. He put it on Connie’s horse, which was far fresher than his own, while Connie stood watching him, mute dismay in her face. “What do you think they’ve done, Dave?”

  “Nothing, if Bill’s there. If he isn’t, anything.”

  Connie shook her head. “I’ll learn,” she said in a low hard voice. “That’s Lesson One. Don’t trust anybody, not even your father.”

  Dave said quietly, “Lesson One, Connie, is don’t make a brag unless you can back it up.” He stepped into the saddle and touched spurs to Connie’s horse and headed out of the canyon. The first distant drum of thunder from up in the Federals came to him now, and he thought of Frank Ivey and Ben Dickason, who had doubtless watched the exchange of horses and smiled over it.

  Connie had made her first mistake, and he wondered how serious it was. He knew now that the burden of this fight, its planning and its execution, would lie with him. Connie had the will to fight, but the way of it was foreign to her.