Ramrod

by Short, Luke;

  She rose and ran to the door, and saw Jim Crew stepping out of the saddle.

  Jim’s hand was on its way to his hat when it paused. He had seen the blood on Connie’s clothes.

  “Connie, what—” Jim ceased talking, and moved swiftly toward her. Connie stepped back into the room, and wordlessly led him over to the bunk where Curley lay.

  Jim Crew looked carefully at Curley, and his face had gone tight and smooth, and then he turned away to face Connie. “Frank?”

  Connie nodded and sank down on the bench. She rose again, not tired, not anything except wildly angry, and glanced at Jim Crew.

  “Two of them held him while Virg Lea beat him. They all watched.”

  Crew said meagerly, “A warrant will only get Virg, Connie.”

  Connie seemed not to hear him. She walked over to the door and stood in it, staring blindly out at the tawny flats. No, a warrant wasn’t the way to beat Frank Ivey. Jim Crew’s words were apologetic enough to tell her of the insufficiency of that way. Lea could be jailed or fined, but Frank would pay Lea’s fine and his wages in jail, and himself go untouched on his arrogant way. This was not the act of Frank Ivey’s that Dave said would force Jim Crew to move against Bell. Suddenly Connie realized that Frank Ivey knew this too. Frank Ivey was afraid of Crew. He would do anything short of provoking Crew, with his iron sense of justice, into action against him. Yet this piece of savagery could not remain unavenged, and Connie’s thoughts turned then to Dave. He would know how to do it, because already he had seen the way to beat Ivey in the end.

  She turned and came back to Crew, who was waiting for her answer. “No, Jim. I’ll take care of this my own way.”

  Crew said in a discouraged voice, “Don’t lose your head, Connie.”

  “Will you saddle a horse for me, Jim? Then will you stay with Curley until Bailey and Tom come back and take him in town? I’m going.”

  8

  The cattle began to come into Relief around midmorning. Bill Schell’s word that Circle 66 was buying had sifted down the far slope to the small outfits on the edge of the reservation. The cattle came in small bunches of a dozen or so, and were driven into the corrals, so that when Dave and Bill Schell arrived at midday they had a small herd to look over.

  Dave was looking for bargains, and he was not particular. The sum Connie had given him, and which now reposed in a shoe box behind George’s bar, had to be stretched as far as it would go. For Dave had stubbornly assumed that he was stocking a large range.

  Furthermore, he was not taking chances with what he bought. As fast as the cattle were bought, he and Bill Schell set to work. The cattle were driven into the smaller corral one at a time, roped, thrown, their old brands vented, and a Circle 66 branded on the left hip with a running iron. If Ivey or Ben Dickason had a notion of raiding the herd as soon as it hit the Bench, this precaution would help.

  As afternoon wore on, they worked doggedly, helped by the small ranchers who had driven the beef up here. The big holding corral got a freehand job of patching under the hot sun, and it began to slowly fill up with bawling cattle.

  In one of the lulls Bill Schell put his horse across the road to get a drink behind the hotel. Dave was resting against the inside of the corral rolling a smoke and talking with one of the Indian police, who had come up from the reservation to check on the brands. His faded shirt was plastered with sweat against his back, and his Stetson, shoved to the back of his head, revealed his sweat-matted black hair.

  Bill Schell returned then and let himself in the corral, and Dave, fumbling in his shirt pocket with a poking finger, saw him and said, “Got a match, Bill?”

  “I got more than that,” Bill murmured, handing him a match. He nodded toward the hotel. “Ed Burma.”

  Dave glanced up across the road to the hotel porch and saw Ed Burma, chair tilted back against the wall, regarding the activity with motionless curiosity.

  Bill murmured idly, “Now he’s packin’ a pistol, I wonder has he got any objections about last night.”

  “Don’t ask him.”

  Bill glanced at Dave, a quiet deviltry in his eyes. “Why not? It’s a fair question.”

  “Settling what?” Dave murmured. “He isn’t Ivey, Bill.”

  “I don’t like him snoopin’,” Bill said irritably. “I don’t like him even if he ain’t snoopin’.”

  “Let it ride,” Dave said flatly.

  He saw Bill look at him speculatively, faintly resentful of the order, and then Bill shrugged. “Hell, you never let a man have any fun,” Bill protested, and again he looked longingly at Burma.

  A new bunch of cattle broke out of the timber and scattered, and Bill stepped into the saddle and put his horse across the road to head them off. Dave watched him, a faint uneasiness within him. Sooner or later he and Bill would clash, he supposed. Bill was in this to wreck Bell, fight its whole crew, and kill Frank Ivey if he could do it without hanging. His impulsiveness and his recklessness, valuable in an open fight, was a solid risk in this waiting game they were playing now. Bill didn’t understand the necessity for waiting, didn’t even want to, and Dave knew a showdown was inevitable.

  He looked up at Burma and discovered a resentment in himself at the man’s presence. Bell’s watchdog, Dave thought, noting everybody’s business with a bland gall that no other outfit could match. Then he forgot it, and went to work on the new bunch.

  The big holding corral filled up during the afternoon, and Dave and Bill had no time to think of Bell’s foreman. A small crowd of ranchers alternated now between helping with the branding and visits to the bar.

  It was in late afternoon when Dave, having loosed the last cow of the most recent bunch, stepped into the saddle and pulled his horse aside to avoid the cow’s angry lunge. The gate was swung open and Dave hazed the cow in with the others and then pulled his feet from the stirrup, sitting slackly in the saddle, and looked about him.

  His glance caught a movement at the north edge of the timber, and held it, and then he saw Connie Dickason ride out into the clearing.

  Dave said, “Bill,” and nodded toward Connie and put his horse toward her. They met at the hotel steps, and Dave stepped out of the saddle and took the bridle of Connie’s horse. The dried blood on Connie’s dress would have told him something was wrong, even if he had not seen it on her face. A cold fury lighted in her green eyes, and Bill Schell handed her down from the saddle wordlessly.

  “Have you got a room here, Dave?”

  Dave saw she did not want to talk here under the curious gaze of half a dozen men on the porch, among them Ed Burma. He led the way into the lobby, took a key from the board behind the desk, and the three of them mounted the stairs.

  Dave went to his room, a front one, opened the door and stepped aside, and Connie went in, Bill behind her. Dave closed the door behind him, and then said questioningly, “That’s blood on your dress, Connie.”

  “Curley Fanstock’s blood,” Connie said levelly. “Two of them held him while a third beat him to a pulp.”

  The whole story came tumbling from her lips then, and as Dave listened to it his face turned bleak and still. Connie told it all—how Virg Lea would not stop until he himself was almost exhausted—and when she finished, neither man spoke. Bill Schell lifted his glance to Dave then, and it was searching and hot and wicked.

  Connie went over to the bed and sat on it, and she, too, was watching Dave. She said suddenly, “I want you to pay Frank for that, Dave. I don’t care what you do, either.” There was plain and arrogant outrage in her voice, and Dave said nothing for a moment, watching Connie’s hands at her side, bunching the blanket.

  Then he said meagerly, “If you think a minute, you’ll care,” and turned slowly toward the window. He went over to it and halted, both hands fisted in his hip pockets, and looked blindly out at the corrals below. His own anger was steady now, something that would never leave him until this was avenged. He saw Ivey’s strategy behind Curley’s beating. Ivey wasn’t reckless; he hadn’t
made the mistake of trying to drive them off the land already filed on. His strategy was terror. Beat a man, scare him, make it so he never liked to ride alone, put the fear of Frank Ivey into him until he couldn’t stand it and rode away. And beyond that, of course, was Ivey’s hope that 66, infuriated by Curley’s beating, would retaliate in a way that would bring Crew’s wrath down on them. A slow rage burned in him; and he ran his flat palm hard and slowly across his face. The small hurt of it seemed to sober him, and he turned his head toward Connie and found her watching him, the anger in her eyes unabated.

  Bill Schell spoke two words then, very softly. “Ed Burma.” He started for the door.

  Dave said, just as softly, “You go out that door, Bill, and I ride out of here. How about it, Connie?”

  “Wait, Bill,” Connie said.

  “He’s down there!” Bill flared, his voice wild and hot. “By God, let’s send him back to Bell in a basket!”

  Connie looked at Dave and said, “They did it to Curley. Why not?”

  Dave said meagerly, “Who you fightin’, Connie? Burma or Ivey?”

  “Ivey.”

  “Then fight him, not Burma. What’s Burma done? Get some sense in that thick little head of yours.”

  Connie’s head jerked up and the color flooded into her face, and he stared coldly at her, the expression on his lean, hard face not breaking.

  Connie said defiantly, angrily, “You won’t defend your own crew?”

  “My way,” Dave said flatly. “It’ll be my way, or I ride out of here.”

  They looked at each other steadily and it was Connie’s gaze that fell first. She said then, meaning it, “I’m sorry, Dave. I deserved that.”

  Dave turned to regard Bill then, and he said levelly, “Next time, Bill, I won’t go to teacher. You take my orders or get out!”

  A wild protest mounted in Bill Schell’s face and he murmured, “Careful, Dave.”

  “Take my orders or get out,” Dave repeated flatly, recklessly. “I want to hear you say what it’ll be.”

  A warning, wicked anger danced in Bill’s eyes, and Dave stood motionless, waiting for it to break.

  Bill said thinly, “You’re too tough, friend.”

  “Just tough enough.”

  Bill watched him a still moment, and then his grin, never far from the surface, broke. “All right. Quit ridin’ me. I’ll take your orders.”

  Dave turned back to Connie then. “How bad is Curley hurt?”

  “I don’t know. Badly, I think.”

  Dave picked up his hat off the bed and went over to the door. He paused there before he opened it, and spoke to Bill Schell. “I back up my men, Bill, but I do it in my own way. Leave Ed Burma alone. I’ll settle for Curley.”

  Bill said nothing, and Dave stepped out. Both Bill and Connie stared at the closed door for a long moment, and then Connie said dully, “Where’s he going, Bill?”

  “I only work for him,” Bill said bitterly. “I don’t know.”

  He went out too, then, and Connie rose from the bed and went to the window. Presently, she saw Dave ride out into view from under the porch roof, and he clung to the road that went north out of the clearing toward Signal. She speculated on Dave’s intention a long moment, and then gave up and came back to the bed and sat down.

  She found she was still smarting under the lash of Dave’s words, and she felt both humble and angry. She had made a second mistake, she knew. The first had been in pulling Dave away from 66 and leaving it to be taken. The second was in telling Dave what he should do.

  The first time he had been patient, but this time he had struck back, and it hurt. She had been, she saw now, wrong in siding with Bill’s suggestion to beat up Ed Burma. Dave was right in saying Burma had done nothing, should not be punished for something he had no hand in. Still, it was equally wrong to let Ivey’s action go unpunished, and when you punished a man’s crew, you punished him, no matter what Dave said.

  She took a deep breath and looked about the room, and again her thought returned to Dave and what he had said to her. He had been rough and disrespectful and not wholly right, and she had taken it meekly. The realization of this troubled her a little. Frank Ivey had spoken to her just as roughly a hundred times, and it only made her mad and stubborn and hating—and yet she took it from Dave with a schoolgirl’s meekness. It puzzled her.

  Down in the corrals, Bill Schell was working over a new bunch of cattle in silence. A steady anger was eating at him as he went through the motions of his work. Dave’s reprimand still smarted, but when he thought of Curley he cursed silently and bitterly. His liking and his respect for Dave was something deep and unshakable, but he knew Dave did not know how he felt about Curley, because he was new here. But Curley had been his friend, even when he worked for Bell. They had ridden together and got drunk together and hated Frank Ivey together, and now Bill had to stand by, helpless and silent. And he wasn’t made that way. He could pull out, of course; nothing was making him work for Dave Nash. Yet Bill knew that wasn’t the answer, and it galled him to know it. He’d seen enough of Dave Nash to know that Curley’s beating would be paid back double, to know that if he stuck with Dave he would see Frank Ivey brought to his knees. It was that prospect that had made him join Dave in the first place, and it was worth holding his temper to witness. Only, there was Curley now. His mind made the full circle, and he got no satisfaction out of his brooding as he worked on in dogged silence through the afternoon.

  Dusk saw the job done. Bill took a last look at the big corral jammed with bawling cattle and then rode his horse over to the horse corral by the barn and turned him in. What he needed was a drink. Maybe that would take the taste of Curley out of his mind. But first, though, there was the tally book to tote up against what cash remained in the cigar box under George’s bar. He thought of the bar pleasantly crowded with his friends, and he knew he couldn’t work there, so he got the lantern and lighted it and sat atop the feed box and drew out the tally book.

  If he was working for Dave Nash he might as well prove to him that he had hired a steady hand who could take a tongue-lashing and still do his work. Bill wasn’t much good with figures and he was finding it hard to keep his mind on this business when George came out to feed his horses.

  Bill bummed a cigar from him and fired it up, and while George forked some hay out into the corral, Bill labored silently at his figures. A breed from over on the reservation wandered in and began to talk with George in a low voice as George worked.

  Disturbed, Bill looked up and said irritably, “Dammit, George, shut up.”

  George looked over and grinned. “Pokey is tryin’ to get me to sell him some liquor.”

  Pokey was mostly Indian, and George wasn’t supposed to sell liquor to Indians, and Bill growled, “Sell him some, then, but shut up.”

  He went back to his figuring, now the talk was stopped. And then, behind his laborious concentration, he heard another distracting sound. Someone else had come up and paused within the barn. Bill tried again to figure, but finally, in annoyance, he turned to see who was watching him.

  It was Ed Burma. He had his shoulder against the stall partition and was watching Bill with a quiet dislike. Bill felt that instant hatred of anything Bell rise within him, and added to it now was the knowledge of what had happened to Curley. Burma’s very presence here was somehow a challenge.

  He said, then, “I don’t aim to forget last night, Bill.”

  “You ain’t supposed to,” Bill drawled. “What do you want to do about it?”

  “Nothing, now,” Burma said.

  Bill grinned wickedly and said, “Or ever, friend.”

  Burma straightened up and came over and said, pleasantly enough, “How many you buyin’?”

  “Why?” Bill asked.

  Burma grinned faintly, missing the edge in Bill’s voice. “We’ll be buyin’ ’em from you when 66 breaks up. I just wondered.”

  The bland gall of it touched Bill Schell’s nerves like a whip, and his fa
ce, under its deep tan, whitened with anger. He rolled his cigar in his fingers and said thinly, “If your nose was an inch longer, Ed, I’d tie it to your belt.”

  The amusement in Ed Burma’s eyes vanished abruptly. As foreman of Bell, he was used to a certain deference, but even from a Circle 66 hand this talk was a little rough. He looked carefully at Bill who had risen now, and saw the measure of his temper and was surprised at it.

  He asked reasonably, “What’s got into you, Bill?”

  “You smell,” Bill said flatly, wholly reckless now. “Get away from me. I don’t like it.”

  Burma heard a movement back in the barn and he turned, and saw George and Pokey watching this. He saw George, who never carried a gun, reach over slowly and lift Pokey’s gun from its holster and hold it hanging at his side.

  He knew then he was about to be braced, and he made his decision swiftly.

  He said, “All right, I’ll get out,” with a tolerant smile, and took a step toward the door.

  Bill moved in front of him then, and said in a hard and wicked voice, “You ain’t got two men to hold me, Ed, like they held Curley. You won’t take the chance without them, will you?”

  Ed looked levelly at him, a faint flush of anger in his face. He didn’t know what Bill was talking about, only he recognized the insult. He said quietly, “If I’m a mind to fight, Bill, nobody has to hold for me.”

  “What would it take to get you a mind to?” Bill drawled thinly.

  A cold caution was on Ed Burma now. The cause of this was unknown to him, but he recognized Bill’s intent, and he read the finish of this trouble accurately. It was no time for pride. He said mildly, “An awful lot, Bill.”

  Bill cuffed him with the flat of his palm across the face. The blow shoved him off balance, and he braced himself against the feedbox that held the lantern. His hand on the box, he looked carefully at Bill, and then at George, then back at Bill.