Walter Van Tilburg Clark

by Les Weil

  The rest of us, in Tetley's outfit, didn't talk much. There was nothing to do but wait, and none of the arguing ones were left with us. Only Mapes tried a little of his cottoning-up, he-man talk on Tetley, but since Tetley didn't want to talk, that stopped too. We weren't a friendly gang anyway; no real friends in the lot. Tetley, I thought, was short with Mapes because he was trying to count in his mind, or some such system, to keep track of the time. Through the trees we watched the fire out by the cabin. Once it began to die down, and then a shadow went across it, and back across, and the fire darkened and flattened completely. At first we thought they had wind of us, but the fire gradually grew up again, brighter than ever. It was just somebody throwing more wood on.

  The snowing relaxed for a spell, then started again with a fresh wind that whirled it around us for a minute or two, even in the woods, and veiled the fire, probably with snow scudding up from the open meadow. Then the wind died off and the snow was steady and slanting again, but thinner. It didn't feel any longer as if it might be a real blizzard. The branches rattled around us when the wind blew. Being in the marshy end of the valley they weren't pines, but aspens, and willow grown up as big as trees. When the horses stirred, the ground squelched under them, and you could see the dark shadow of water soaking up around their hoofs through the snow. In places, though, the slush was already getting icy, and split when it was stepped on.

  Several times we heard the steers sounding off again, hollow in the wind, and sounding more distant than they could have been.

  After a time Tetley led us out to the edge of the aspens to where the wind was directly on us again. We waited there, peering into the snow blowing in the valley, and the dark gulf of the valley itsclf, but unable to see the other riders, of course, or anything but the fire. It felt to me as if it must be one o'clock at 1east, but I learned early that I couldn't tell within four hours on a cloudy night unless I was doing some work I did every night, like riding herd in the same valley.

  Finally Tetley said, as if he had been holding a watch before him all the time, and had predetermined the exact moment to start, "All right, let's go."

  As we started Mapes asked, "Want us to spread out now?"

  "No, we'll ride in on them in a bunch, unless they get wind of us. If the fire goes out, or there's any shooting, then spread and work toward the fire. In that case, you on the wings, don't tangle with Mrs. Grier or Winder."

  So we went out in a group, plowing a wide track through the half-frozen sponginess. Tetley and Farnley and Mapes rode abreast ahead. They didn't any of them want another to get there ahead of him. Young Tetley and I came be­hind them, and there were two other .riders following us. We all watched toward the fire steadily.

  But even when we came much closer there was nothing to see but the fire, beginning to die again, and the little its light revealed of the cabin wall and the trunks of the closest pines on the other side. I got to wondering if they had built the fire up as a blind and had already run out on us, or even were lying up somewhere ready to pick us off. My head came clear again and I didn't even notice my shoulder. Only the snow annoyed me, though it was falling light and far spaced now. It made me feel that my eyes were no good. The four of us in back kept watching out to the sides, feeling that we didn't have our side of the square covered, but the three in front continued abreast and seeming to watch only the fire and the clearing right around it, though I could tell by the way they sat that they were as wide awake as we were.

  When we began to climb the little rise the cabin was on, I could see the three silhouetted clearly against the fire. Mapes reached under his arm pit and got a gun out into his hand. Farnley's carbine moved across his saddle, and I thought I heard the hammer click. Tetley, though, just rode right ahead.

  I reached my gun out too. There was a twinge in the injured shoulder when I raised the right one, and I didn't want to have to make a fast draw and get sick and dizzy as I had riding down the pitch. My head was clear, all right; I thought of every little thing like that. And my senses were up keen too. Without even looking around I could tell how the men behind me were getting set. I was excited, and peculiarly happy. It seemed to me that if the rustlers were concealed I could pick the trees they'd gone behind. Only young Tetley was wrong. I risked a look, and we were so close to the fire I could see his face. He was staring ahead, but blindly, and he wasn't getting any gun out. Now I can see that he was perhaps still having a struggle with himself that he was here at all, but then it just angered me that one of us failed to be alert; then it just seemed to me that he was too scared to know what to do, and I got furious at him for a moment, the way you will when you think another man's carelessness is risking your neck. I pulled over and jogged him, though jogging him wrenched my shoulder so my breath whistled. He turned his head and looked at me, and I could see he wasn't blanked out. He was awake, all right, but he still didn't look any better.

  We were really into the edge of the firelight before Tetley stopped us. I had my mind made up they were laying for us, so what I saw surprised me. Between Tetley and Mapes I could see a man asleep on the ground in a blanket with a big pattern on it. His head was on his saddle and toward the fire, so his face was in the shadow, but when we looked at him he drew an arm up out of his blanket and laid it across his eyes. He had on an orange shirt and the hand and wrist lifted into the light were as dark as an old saddle. Not Indian, either; at least not thick and stubby like the hands of Washoes and Piutes I'd seen, but long and narrow and with prominent knuckles. We were so close that I could see on his middle finger a heavy silver ring with an egg-shaped turquoise, a big one, in it; a Navajo ring. By the bulk of him he was a big man, and heavy.

  There were two other men asleep also, one with his side to the fire and his head away from me, the other on the far side with his feet to the fire. I couldn't make out anything but their shapes and that they had dark bluish-gray blankets with a black stripe near each end, the kind of blankets the Union had used during the rebellion.

  I guess Tetley figured as I did, that they were strangers, at least, if nothing else, because he only waited long enough to be sure they were not playing possum, and then rode into the light, and right up to the feet of the man with the ring. We followed him, spreading around that edge of the fire as he motioned us to. After looking down at the man for a moment he said sharply and loudly, "Get up."

  The other two stirred in their blankets, and began to settle again, but the man with the ring woke immediately and completely, and when he saw us said something short to himself and twisted up out of his blanket in one continuous, smooth movement, trailing one hand into the blanket as he came up.

  "Drop it," Farnley ordered. He was holding the carbine at his thigh, the muzzle pointing at the man. The man had heavy black hair and a small black mustache. He looked like a Mex, though his hair was done up in a club at his neck, like an Indian's, and his face was wide, with high, flat cheeks. He looked to me like a Mex playing Navajo.

  He looked quickly but not nervously around at all of us, sizing us up, but didn't move the hand which had come up behind him.

  "I said drop it," Farnley told him again, and nudged the carbine out toward him, so he wouldn't make any mistake about what was meant.

  The Mex suddenly smiled, as if he had just understood, and dropped a long-barreled, nickel-plated revolver behind him onto the blanket. He was an old hand, and still thinking.

  "Now put 'em up," Farnley told him.

  The smile died off the Mex's face, and he just stared at Farnley and shrugged his shoulders.

  "Put 'em up; reach, you bastard."

  The Mex shrugged his shoulders again. "No sabbey," he said.

  Farnley grinned now. "No?" he asked. "I said reach," he repeated, and jerked the muzzle of the carbine upward two or three times. The Mex got that, and put his hands up slowly. He was studying Farnley's face all the time.

  "That's better," Farnley said, still grinning, "though some ways I'd just as soon you hadn't, you son-of
-a­bitch." He was talking as quietly as Tetley usually did, though not so easily. He seemed to be enjoying calling the man a name he couldn't understand, and doing it in a voice like he was making an ordinary remark.

  "No sabbey," the Mex said again.

  "That's all right, brother," Farnley told him, "you will."

  The other two were coming out of their sleep. I was covering the one on the cabin side, and Mapes the other. Mapes' man just sat up, still in his blanket. He was still fumed with sleep; a thick, wide-faced old-timer with long, tangled gray hair and a long, droopy gray mustache. He had eyebrows so thick they made peaked shadows on his forehead. The way he was staring now he didn't appear to be all there.

  My man rose quickly enough, though tangling a little with his blanket. He started to come toward us, and I saw he'd been sleeping with his gun on and his boots off.

  "Take it easy, friend," I told him. "Stay where you are and put your hands up."

  He didn't understand, but stared at me, and then at Tetley, and then back at me. He didn't reach for his gun, didn't even twitch for it, and his face looked scared.

  "Put your hands up," I told him again. He did, looking as if he wanted to cry.

  "And keep them there."

  The old man was out of his blanket now too, and standing with his hands raised.

  "Gerald, collect their guns," Tetley said.

  "What are you trying to do? What do you want? We haven't got anything." It was my man babbling, half out of breath. He was a tall, thin, dark young fellow, with thick black hair, but no Indian or Mex.

  "Shut up," Mapes instructed him. "We'll tell you when we want you to talk."

  "This is no stickup, brother," I explained to him. "This is a posse, if that means anything to you."

  "But we haven't done anything," he protested. "What have we done?" He wasn't over his first fright yet.

  "Shut up," Mapes said, with more emphasis.

  Young Tetley was sitting in his saddle, staring at the three men.

  "Gerry," Tetley said, in that pistol-shot voice he'd used to wake the men.

  The boy dismounted dreamily and picked up the Mex's gun from the blanket. Then, like a sleepwalker, he came over to my man.

  "Behind him," said Tetley sharply.

  The boy stopped and looked around. "What?" he asked.

  "Wake up," Tetley ordered. "I said go behind him. Don't get between him and Croft."

  "Yes," Gerald said, and did what he was told. He fumbled around a long time before he found the old man's gun, which was under his saddle.

  "Give the guns to Mark," Tetley ordered, jerking his head at one of the two riders I didn't know. Gerald did that, handing them up in a bunch, belts, holsters and all.

  It made me ashamed the way Tetley was bossing the kid's every move, like a mother making a three-year-old do something over that he'd messed up the first try.

  "Now," he said, "go over them all, from the rear. Then shake out the blankets."

  Gerald did as he was told, but he seemed to be waking a little now. His jaw was tight. He found another gun on the Mex, a little pistol like the gamblers carry. It was in an arm-sling under his vest. There was a carbine under the young fellow's blanket. He shrank from patting the men over, the way he was told to, and when he passed me to give Mark the carbine and pistol, I could hear him breathing hard.

  Tetley watched Gerald, but spoke to my prisoner while he was working.

  "Are there any more of you?"

  The young fellow was steadier. He looked angry now, and started to let his arms down, asking, "May I inquire what business . . ."

  "Shut up," Mapes said, "and keep them up."

  "It's all right now, Mapes," Tetley said. "You can put your hands down now," he said to the young man. "I asked you, are there any others with you?"

  "No," the kid said.

  I didn't think the kid was lying. Tetley looked at him hard, but I guess he thought it was all right too. He turned his head toward Mark and the other rider I didn't know.

  "Tie their hands," he ordered.

  "The young fellow started to come forward again. Stay where you are," Tetley told him quietly, and he stopped. He had a wide, thick-lipped mouth that was nonetheless as sensitive as young Tetley's thin one, and now it was tight down in the corners. Even so you would have said that mouth was beautiful on some women, Rose Mapen for instance, the fiery or promising kind. And his eyes were big and dark in his thin face, like a girl's too. His hands were long and bony and nervous, but hung on big, square wrists.

  He spoke in a husky voice. "I trust that at least you'll condescend to tell us what we're being held for."

  Mapes was still busy being an authority. "Save your talk till it's asked for," he advised.

  Tetley, though, studied the young man all during the time the two punchers were tying the prisoners on one lass rope and pushing them over to the side of the fire away from the cabin. He looked at them still when they were standing there, shoulder to shoulder, the Mex in the middle, their faces to the fire and their backs to the woods and the little snow that was still falling. It was as if he believed he could solve the whole question of their guilt or innocence by just looking at them and thinking his own thoughts; the occupation pleased him. The Mex was stolid now, the old man remained blank, but the kid was humiliated and angry at being tied. He repeated his question in a manner that didn't go well with the spot he was in.

  Then Tetley told him, "I'd rather you told us," and smiled that way.

  After that he signaled to the parties in the dark in the woods and behind the cabin, dismounted, giving the bridle to his son, and walked over to the fire, where he stood with his legs apart and held out his hands to warm them, rubbing them together. He might have been in front of his own fireplace. Without looking around he ordered more wood put on the fire. All the time he continued to look across the fire at the three men in a row, and continued to smile.

  We were all on foot now, walking stiff-legged from sitting the saddle so long in the cold. I got myself a place to sit near the fire, and watched the Mex. He had his chin down on his chest, like he was both guilty and licked, but he was watching everything from under his eyebrows. He looked smart and hard. I'd have guessed he was about thirty, though it was hard to tell, the way it is with an Indian. The lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead were deep and exact, as if they were cut in dark wood with a knife. His skin shone in the firelight. There was no expression on his face, but I knew he was still thinking how to get out. Then all at once his face changed, though you couldn't have said what the change was in any part of it. I guess in spite of his watchfulness he'd missed Tetley's signal, and now he saw Ma and her gang coming up behind us. He looked around quickly, and when he saw the other gangs coming in too he turned back and stared at the ground in front of him. He was changed all over then, the fire gone out of him; he was empty, all done.

  The old man stood and stared, as he had from his first awakening. He didn't seem to have an idea, or even a distinct emotion, merely a vague dread. He'd look at one of us and then another with the same expression, pop-eyed and stupid, his mouth never quite closed, and the gray stubble sticking out all over his jaws.

  When the young fellow saw the crowd he said to Tetley, "It appears we're either important personages or very dangerous. What is this, a vigilance committee?" He shivered before he spoke though. I thought the Mex elbowed him gently.

  Tetley kept looking at him and smiling, but didn't reply. It was hard on their nerve. Ma Grier had ridden up right behind us, and said, before she got down, "No, it ain't that you're so difficult, son. It's just that most of the boys has never seen a real triple hangin'."

  There wasn't much laughter.

  Everybody was in now except the Bartlett boys. Some stayed on their horses, not expecting the business to take much time, and maybe just as glad there were others willing to be more active. Some dismounted and came over to the fire with coils of rope; there was enough rope to han
g twenty men with a liberal allowance to each.

  As if it had taken all that time for the idea to get through, the young fellow said, "Hanging?"

  "That's right," Farnley said.

  "But why?" asked the kid, beginning to chatter. "What have we done? We haven't done anything. I told you already we haven't done anything."

  Then he got hold of himself and said to Tetley, more slowly, "Aren't you even going to tell us what we're accused of?"

  "Of course," Tetley said. "This isn't a mob. We'll make sure first."

  He half turned his head toward Mapes. "Sheriff," he said, "tell him."

  "Rustling," said Mapes.

  "Rustling?" the kid echoed.

  "Yup. Ever heard of it?"

  "And murder," said Farnley, "maybe he'll have heard of that."

  "Murder?" the kid repeated foolishly. I thought he was going to fold, but he didn't. He took a brace and just ran his tongue back and forth along his lips a couple of times, as if his throat and mouth were all dried out. He looked around, and it wasn't encouraging. There was a solid ring of faces, and they were serious.

  The old man made a long, low moan like a dog that's going to howl but changes its mind. Then he said, his voice trembling badly, "You wouldn't kill us. No, no, you wouldn't do that, would you?"

  Nobody replied. The old man's speech was thick, and he spoke very slowly, as if the words were heavy, and he was considering them with great concentration. They didn't mean anything, but you couldn't get them out of your head when he'd said them. He looked at us so I thought he was going to cry. "Mr. Martin," he said, "what do we do?" He was begging, and seemed to believe he would get a real answer.

  The young man tried to make his voice cheerful, but it was hollow. "It's all right, Dad. There's some mistake."

  "No mistake, I guess." It was old Bartlett speaking. He was standing beside Tetley, looking at the Mex and idly dusting the snow off his flat sombrero. The wind was blowing his wispy hair up like smoke. When he spoke the Mex looked up for a second. He looked down again quickly, but Bartlett grinned. He had a good many teeth out, and his grin wasn't pretty.