Open Range

by Lauran Paine

  Boss jarred him from a reverie by saying, “If there’s lightning and thunder this time, it’ll most likely do what Baxter tried to do—stampede our damned cattle to kingdom come.”

  Charley was watching a solitary horseman riding a short distance north of them, heading back in the direction they had come from. He began to have a feeling of enemies closing in, but the rider threw them a high, casual wave and loped on his way.

  Harmonville, like the entire countryside as far, and much farther, than a man could see, was beneath that white overhead mass that had obscured the sun. The town looked a little dingy without sunshine.

  They entered from the north, part of a variety of rigs heading in or heading out, including several ranch buck-boards, a couple of light wagons, even a fringe-topped surrey and a big old scarred freight wagon being drawn along by twelve Mexican mules.

  They were saved the delay of asking around for the doctor. His cottage was just south of Harmon-ville’s Methodist church, one of the few painted-white structures along Main Street. His sign was nailed to the front of a picket fence.

  As they warped in close to the plankwalk where a stud ring was embedded in an unkempt big old tree, Boss said, “He ain’t a married man,” and looped the lines around the brake handle as he started down.

  Charley paused on the opposite side. “Why isn’t he married?”

  Boss was moving out of sight on the wagon’s far side to let down the tailgate and help Button out when he replied. “Don’t see any flowers, do you?”

  Some other time Charley would have laughed. Now he met Boss behind the wagon. Between them they got Button over the tailgate. He was sweating profusely even though it was not hot today. In fact, it was beginning to get a little cool.

  Their arrival had been noted inside the house. As they steered Button through the little gate and up the walk to the porch, a woman opened the door, drying both hands on an apron. She had chestnut-sorrel hair and brown eyes with flecks of gold in them. She looked to be in her twenties. Neither of the men holding the youth between them paid that much attention to her until they halted on the porch and Boss asked if the doctor was in.

  The handsome woman was studying Button when she replied. “No. He had to go set the arm of a boy who fell out of an apple tree, but he’ll be back directly. Bring him right on in. What . . . was he kicked by a horse?”

  They followed her through a parlor to a severely furnished room where everything had been painted white and which smelled of carbolic acid. Neither of them answered her question until they had helped Button sit on the edge of a hard metal table. He helped as much as he could, but fever was rapidly draining his strength.

  The woman approached, looked into one eye, then the other, and said, “Put him flat down, please.”

  They stood back watching her arrange reflectors and then lean to peer into his ears. Boss said, “Lady, it’s not his hearing. He hears real well.”

  She straightened up and slowly turned. “You are his father?”

  “No, ma’am. My name is Spearman. This here is Charley Waite. The kid’s name is Button. He rides with us. We got cattle a day’s ride from here to the west.”

  The gold-flecked eyes were fixed on Boss. “Mister Spearman, whatever happened to him could have fractured his skull. I was looking for a sign of blood in his ears.”

  Boss reddened, removed his hat, and nodded as though he understood perfectly.

  She asked a question. “Was it a horse kick?”

  “No, ma’am, he got clubbed up alongside the head.”

  The woman looked from one of them to the other, then turned back toward Button as she said, “How did it happen?”

  They told her, and during the recitation the doctor walked into the examination room, nodded all around, put aside a small satchel, and frowned at the youth lying on his table.

  The handsome woman stepped away to make room for the doctor. As he was examining Button she repeated what she had been told about his injury, in a voice as flat and inflectionless as though she were without human feelings.

  The doctor was a rumpled-looking man, beginning to gray at the temples but with an otherwise youthful bearing and appearance. He eyed Boss and Charley in thought before saying, “By any chance, is there another man working for you, a large, powerful man named Mose something-or-other?”

  Boss nodded woodenly. “There was. Someone shot him in the head night before last an’ we buried him out yonder yesterday morning.” Boss jutted his chin toward Button. “That happened the same time someone tried to brain the kid.”

  For a long moment the only sound in the room was of roadway traffic. The doctor shot a fleeting look in the direction of the woman with the gold-flecked eyes. “You have any idea who did this, Mister—?”

  “Spearman. Boss Spearman. Yes, we got an idea who done it. The same men who ganged up on Mose here in town a few days back. . . . I guess you’ll be the doctor who bandaged his head.”

  The man nodded slowly. “Yes. I’m Doctor Barlow.” He turned, glanced once more at the handsome woman, then leaned over Button again as the woman herded Boss and Charley out to the parlor, and left them to return to the examination room.

  Chapter Eight

  A Not Exactly Unexpected Event

  It was a long half hour before Doctor Barlow came to the parlor, looking grave. He sat down and pushed his legs out before saying, “It’s not a fracture, although I don’t know why it isn’t because that was quite a blow. It’s not an infection either, as close as I can tell now.” He eyed Boss and Charley. “My sister has a notion it’s something emotional.” Doctor Barlow smiled a little apologetically. “Women get odd ideas sometimes.”

  Boss was scowling. “What are you talkin’ about, the fever?”

  Doctor Barlow’s smile faded. “Yes, the fever. I should have said that first, shouldn’t I?”

  Boss’s perplexed scowl did not leave. “I don’t know but what your sister might be right,” he said. “The kid’s had a hard life an’ he was close to Mose. I know Mose’s killin’ bothered him because he don’t seem to have thought of anything else. Of course, it only happened day before yesterday but even so . . . And he got hit alongside the head too. So maybe your sister is right.”

  Doctor Barlow eyed Spearman through a moment of silence, then slapped his upper legs and shot up to his feet as he said, “He ought to stay here for a few days, Mister Spearman, so we can watch him.”

  Boss nodded as he was getting to his feet, holding his hat to one side. “That’d be fine with us, doctor. You do whatever’s best for him.”

  “Mister Spearman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Early this morning I had two patients. One with a broken hip, the other with internal injuries to his back and two broken ribs from being hit by someone swinging a Winchester like a maul.”

  Neither Boss nor Charley said anything. They returned the doctor’s gaze without blinking as they put on their hats as though to depart.

  Walt Barlow wasn’t finished. “According to the man they work for, his two riders were beaten night before last, which would be the same time your man was killed and the boy was injured. . . . Mister Spearman, what I’d like to get settled in my own mind is—which happened first, the beatings or the killing?”

  Boss looked at Charley, who answered the doctor. “They must have happened at about the same time. Maybe the attack on our wagoncamp was a little earlier, but I wouldn’t want to swear to that. Boss an’ I went up north to catch Baxter’s riders comin’ down to stampede our cattle. We caught them.”

  Doctor Barlow nodded slowly. “Yes, I’d say you caught them, from the stories they told me this morning.”

  Charley ignored the interruption. “Then Boss and I headed for the wagon. By the time we got down there, it was all over. Mose was dead and Button—we thought he was dead too. Doctor, I think maybe those other Baxter riders ambushed Mose and Button before we had a run at those other sons of bitches. Otherwise I think we’d have heard the shot that
killed Mose. We’d have heard it if we hadn’t been way to hell and gone up north out of hearin’ distance waitin’ to pull off our ambush.”

  Doctor Barlow seemed to be balancing all that he had heard from Spearman and Waite against what he had heard from others about these matters. He went out onto the porch with them and asked where they would be if he had to contact them about the boy.

  Boss was looking thoughtfully out at the wagon when he replied. He did not have to look up to know a storm was coming. The smell of it was in the air. Also, there was electricity in the manes and tails of his horses out yonder under the big old shaggy tree. If this one was like the last one and they drove the wagon back out where they’d buried Mose, they would be unable to drive to Harmonville and no one from there would be able to ride out to their camp until the ground firmed up again.

  He said, “I think we’ll go down to the lower end of town, out behind the public corrals maybe, and set up camp down there.”

  Doctor Barlow nodded and watched them go down to the wagon and head southward down Main Street. His sister came out to stand nearby, watching the battered old wagon as she said, “Why are they going south if their camp is northwest?”

  “Because they’re going to set up down at the lower end of town to be near the lad.”

  The handsome woman looked at her brother. “Did you tell them what Denton Baxter said?”

  “No.”

  “Walt! Why didn’t you?”

  Doctor Barlow answered with spirit. “Because about half the time Dent Baxter is full of bull. Also, because when we’d done what we could for his men he took them back to the ranch with him.” Barlow pointed upward. “If those clouds open up, Sue, Baxter won’t be able to get back to Harmonville for a week. By then I hope we have the lad able to travel with his friends.” He paused. “Sue?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you hear what they said about the one called Mose that I patched up a few days back?”

  “I heard them say he was dead.”

  “Shot in the head on a dark night by a bushwhacker out a ways from their camp. Murder, Sue, pure and simple murder, if what Mister Spearman said is true.”

  Sue Barlow turned from watching the old wagon at the same moment several very fat raindrops struck the steps just beyond the porch overhang. Out in the roadway when large raindrops landed, dust blew upward in miniature clouds.

  She entered the house ahead of her brother and went straight on through to the kitchen to fire up the stove. She did not have a single doubt that they were in for another summertime gully washer. As she got the fire started she thought of those two beard-stubbled, weathered men in their runover boots and faded trousers parking their wagon at the lower end of town before the storm arrived.

  When she returned to the front of the house the raindrops were beginning to make a cacophony of sound on the roof with long intervals between raindrops. But the intervals grew shorter until, when she lighted a lamp to take into the examination room for her brother, the downpour was making a steady drumroll sound that filled the house, driving people out of the roadway seeking shelter anywhere they could, and within fifteen minutes had turned Main Street into a chocolatey millrace.

  A half hour after the first raindrops, Harmon-ville’s plank-walks were deserted. Even tethered horses had been led to shelter. Several stores had lighted lamps in their windows. It would have been possible to fire a cannon from the north end of town through the lower end and not hit a living soul. Also, as the force of the storm increased, it was probable that anyone listening at the lower end of town would not have been able to hear the cannon being fired.

  Charley Waite made the dash in a sliding run from the livery barn runway to the wagon after arranging for the care of their team horses. Inside, Boss was eyeing a place where waterproofed canvas rubbing against an ash bow was leaking drops of water. He ignored Charley’s swift entrance to put a pan where the drops were falling on their bedrolls.

  When he turned and yelled above the noise to ask if Charley had seen the forked lightning, Charley yelled back that he’d been inside the livery barn and hadn’t seen anything but water.

  Boss gestured northwesterly. “About thirty, forty miles out yonder.”

  Charley shook his head in understanding without trying to comment above the roar of the rainfall. Thirty, forty miles northwest would be just about where the cattle were. Sometimes thunder by itself did not do it, but lightning never failed to do it—stampede cattle that were half wild anyway.

  He sank down amid the boxes and bedding to roll a smoke. He did not speculate on the fact that everything seemed to be coming unraveled, because the few times in his life when things didn’t seem that way were very shortly overcome by things that did seem that way. To Charley Waite, Boss Spearman, and most other men and women who lived against the ground, there was Christmastime followed by eleven months when it wasn’t Christmastime. They spent those eleven months wearing tin beaks and getting down to scratch to stay alive with the chickens.

  Boss came over and dropped down on a rolled set of bedding covered on the outside by a stained, dirty canvas ground cloth. He held out his hands to examine them as he yelled above the noise. “We’re going to be stuck here, Charley. I hadn’t figured on that. It’s not a friendly town toward us.”

  Charley leaned to tip ash out past the little hole in the tailgate canvas where the covering had been snugged taut by its pucker string. His hand was thoroughly wet when he drew it back, but he’d protected the rice-paper cigarette in his palm. He examined it to be certain it was still lighted when he replied. “Friendly or not, Boss, like you said, we’re stuck here.” Charley took down a final drag off his smoke and pitched it out into the millrace of the alleyway. “Until this lets up, folks aren’t goin’ to be thinkin’ of much else.”

  Boss looked at the drip pan. It was not even half full yet. Dampness and a slight chill were inside the wagon with them. He went forward to pull the pucker string, where an occasional little wind was forcing rain over the driving seat up front. Until now there had been no wind, just water coming straight down.

  They could have used some light because although it was not yet dusk, it was getting steadily darker inside the wagon.

  Charley got comfortable among the bedrolls. Boss rolled their saddleguns in some flour sacks, less to keep them from being dripped on than to absorb the moisture that always filled the air even in dry places during this kind of storm.

  He crawled back where Charley was lying with his eyes half closed listening for even the faintest sound of a change in the downpour. Boss settled and said, “Them clouds reached from here to beyond the mountains. I got a feelin’ this one’s goin’ to be worse than that other one.”

  Charley smiled a little and said something that made it seem he had not heard Boss. “Baxter’s got some crippled-up hands.”

  Boss’s response dripped with sulfurous sarcasm. “That’s sure too bad. An’ him being such an up-standin’ citizen and all.”

  Charley continued to smile, very faintly. “One with a busted hip. I didn’t know you hit him that hard.”

  “I hit the son of a bitch as hard as I could!”

  “And that scrawny one named Gus. Two broken ribs andsomebruisesaroundback.” Charley twisted to look at the older man. “There was another pair. Mose said he broke the arm of one and smashed the face of another one. Boss, if all them things happened to Baxter’s riders, how could he still have four to get ambushed by us and another three to raid the camp?”

  Boss was punching blankets to get more comfortable when he replied. “Nobody said they all rode for Baxter. Them four we overhauled did but no one said the others had to. Not that I heard anyway.”

  Charley went back to squinting past the pucker hole in the tailgate canvas, where rooftops over across Main Street appeared as vague as though they were fifty miles away behind a blanket of wood smoke.

  The gloom increased, the downpour did not slacken, and by the time they were hungry Boss made a s
tatement that pretty well summed up their situation. “We better go over to the cafe. We’d get drowned tryin’ to make a cookin’ fire outside.”

  There were four rubber ponchos in the wagon. One had belonged to Mose; it was big enough to house two men. Another one had been patched with pitch; it belonged to Button. They stood up to remove their hats and pull the other two over their heads and were ready.

  Outside, rain darkened their hats before they got across the alley to walk up through the shadowy livery barn runway to the front roadway. Up there, they halted to watch runnels of water coursing southward, in places as wide as creeks.

  Northward, a man holding a canvas above his head was wading through mud above his ankles to reach the opposite duckboards. They watched his progress. Behind them that scarecrow of a hostler with the milky eyes came up without even a coat. He leaned with a cupped hand to yell to Charley. “If it don’t quit it’ll wash the damned town away.”

  Charley nodded, watching that wet figure up north reach the far plankwalk, lower his canvas, and shake like a dog before ducking into a store.

  Boss removed his old hat, punched it from the inside until the crown resembled a tipi, reset it, and yelled at Charley. “Let’s go.”

  Water swirled up over their boottops in a particularly deep washout they did not know was out there. Feeling cold water around their toes was of less concern than groping ahead a foot at a time to feel for another washout.

  The water’s force was sweeping a slab-sided mongrel dog around and around as he foolishly tried to swim against the current. Boss saw the dog being inexorably tumbled toward them, braced thick legs wide, and leaned with both hands as the terrified dog came past. He got two grips on a skinny back, and as the dog yelped, Boss swung him out of the water and began forcing his passage toward the opposite storefront.

  Charley used Boss’s pathway as his own. Once they both were nearly swept off their feet where a sunken hole had created a small but powerful whirl of brown water.