Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

  She unbuttoned her drab office dress, stepped out of it, and with a grimace of distaste, hung it in her tiny closet, exchanging it for a plain blue dress starched so stiffly it rustled when she moved it.

  Dressed in it, she took down a small hat and, taking a last look in the mirror, let herself out. Carrying her hat, she went down into the lobby, leaving the key at the desk. The usual bunch of lobby loafers eyed her approvingly, and she was aware of this and even enjoyed it. On the boardwalk, she turned left and took the side street toward the river. The boardwalk gave out two doors past the hotel, and as she stepped onto the weed-grown cinder path along the road, she could see the McGarritys’ wagon yard ahead, with the single spreading cottonwood above it. Surrounding it was a new slab fence, and the sight of it touched her strangely. Slab was cheap; Moffat’s sawmill gave it away for a few cents a hundred feet, and the McGarritys, with seldom a spare dollar, had used it for all their buildings and fence.

  The office was on the road, and approaching it Tess heard a hostler in the back lot cursing a horse with passionate profanity.

  She hoped that it wasn’t Jonas or John McGarrity. They were shy enough normally.

  She entered the open door of the office and looked around her. Jonas McGarrity was looking out the high scales window in the back wall, his elbows resting on the sill. There was a battered desk in the corner, and John McGarrity, neat as always in his black suit, had his feet on it.

  Jonas called out the window then, “Kick him in the belly, Gus.”

  At the same moment, John McGarrity caught sight of Tess, and he came crashingly to his feet. Jonas turned now, and seeing Tess, a deep crimson flush mounted to his morose face.

  Tess laughed. “Don’t mind, boys, I hear that all day.”

  Jonas grinned sheepishly. “I guess we’re not used to women around, Tess.”

  John shoved his chair toward Tess and she sat down. Catching the worried look in his round face, she said impulsively, “I’m not on a dunning job, boys, so don’t look so worried.”

  John looked at Jonas and laughed. “It’s a good thing, Tess. We won’t collect on that job yesterday for another two weeks.”

  He pulled up a rough deal chair and Jonas folded his long legs to sit on the slab bench against the wall. Tess looked around the office and said, “I wish I had this much room. And scales, too.”

  Jonas scratched his head and said, “I don’t, ma’am. You’d have all the business.”

  They all smiled at this, and Tess’s heart sank. How was she going to break the news she must? These men liked her, and she liked them, and there was no way to sugarcoat this pill.

  She began, then, at the beginning, telling of her submission of her monthly report to Rhino, and of his calling her in and complimenting her. As the story unfolded, Jonas gave one puzzled, confounded glance at John, and then returned his attention to her. When she finished by relating that Rhino had ordered her to get their price for the whole outfit, John sat utterly still a moment. He rose slowly then, rubbed the back of his neck with the palm of his hand and circled the room.

  He came to a stop before her and said quietly. “You know how we’re fixed, Tess. We can’t buck you.”

  “Not her; Rhino,” Jonas amended gloomily.

  “Of course,” John said absently. He smiled politely, and Tess felt a twinge of pain. The two brothers stared at each other silently, and Tess knew they wanted to be alone to talk this over. Yet there was something she must say too, and now she murmured, “Then why buck him?”

  Jonas frowned. “You mean we ought to sell out to him at his price?”

  “Never,” Tess said flatly. “That’s what he’s depending on. Just forget yourselves for a moment and think of him. I’ve already chosen an agent in Leadville and written to him, with instructions to advertise our new low rates. What will happen next?”

  “Shippers will leave us for you,” John said.

  “And we can’t handle it,” Tess said. “We haven’t the wagons or the teams or the teamsters. It means we’ll have to buy a lot of new equipment at a top price.”

  “So Rhino does,” John said. “What then?”

  “I’m not sure he does,” Tess said slowly. “He’s counting on your selling to him. If he has to buy new equipment and then keep losing money on his low rates because you’re waiting to jump in with all your equipment, he’ll give it up.”

  “Are you sure of that, Tess?” John asked soberly.

  Tess shook her head in negation. “No. I’m just counting on his greed.”

  John looked at Jonas, and Jonas said bitterly, “That don’t feed us, Tess—holding on waiting for him to quit.”

  “Then hurry him up,” Tess said vehemently. “Quote me a silly figure of a hundred thousand dollars for your equipment. Board up your windows, lock your gate, insure your wagons, and drive your horses into the mountains. Get a job on roundup, or go hunting. Live on beans or deermeat, and don’t come back till the snow drives you in.” She smiled wryly. “By that time, our wagons will be wrecked, we’ll have a dozen suits for nondelivery of freight on our hands, and I’ll be taking up all his time with complaints. Either that, or we’ll have new wagons, and our rates will have gone up so high you can cut under us.”

  The two brothers looked at each other a long moment, and then John cleared his throat. “Tess, you mind if Jonas and me step out a minute?”

  “I’ll go,” Tess said, beginning to rise.

  John said hurriedly: “No. Please don’t. It won’t take a minute.”

  Tess settled back in her chair, and Jonas followed John out the side door. She could hear an indistinct muttering then, and low serious answers.

  Well, I’ve done it and I feel cleaner, she thought. This decision had come hard to her, for she was by nature a loyal person, and she knew what she had just done was disloyal to Rhino. He had befriended her after her father’s death and given her work, and she had appreciated that. But this that he had ordered her to do had no bearing on that obligation, she felt. She would carry out orders and work as faithfully as she could for him. Would it then be her fault if the McGarritys defeated her, and through her, Rhino, in the end? She didn’t think so.

  She was wondering, a small doubt still within her, when she heard footsteps outside and turned her head. Frank Chess stepped through the doorway, and when he caught sight of her, he halted.

  His swift grin came only fleetingly from behind some deep restlessness in him, and he said reprovingly, “You’re in Indian country, Tess.”

  Tess could feel the color come into her face, and she said quickly, “It’s just business.”

  Frank looked curiously at her, and at that moment John and Jonas came in. Tess noticed oddly that a subtle change came into the faces of the brothers as they saw Frank, and she remembered seeing it before on the faces of other men when they saw him. It was as if he touched everyone with a kind of happy-go-lucky friendliness that had a small magic in it. It seemed as if it had never occurred to him that he could not like everybody, and that everybody could not like him, so they did.

  Frank said, “I’ve got those two teams for you, John, and I’ll trade any part of them for a buckboard. Have you got a buckboard?”

  “How long does it have to hold together?” Jonas asked. “We got a wreck out there, Frank.”

  “I’ll take it,” Frank said promptly. “I’ve got to get it to Saber tonight, though. Got a team free you can loan me? I’ll have them and four good horses back to you tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” John said. He looked at Jonas inquiringly, and then back at Frank. “About those teams, Frank. We won’t need them.” And then, as if he did not want his refusal to sound unkind, he added quickly, “We’re closing up the yard at the end of the week.”

  Tess felt a sobering pride then; they trusted her good faith enough to take her advice. She saw the look of puzzlement on Frank’s face, and now Jonas observed, not without bitterness in his voice, “Rhino’s decided to retire us.”

  Frank glanced
quizzically at Tess now, and John said quickly, “No fault of Tess’s. She’s helped us.”

  Jonas walked to the scales window now and called out to a hostler to hitch up the buckboard, and then he came back to Tess. “Our price,” he said to her with a wry solemnity, “is a hundred and fifty thousand. Make it in two checks, please.” Tess smiled a little, but it really wasn’t something to joke about. John came over now and said in a low tone, “If this got out, Tess, it could go rough with you, couldn’t it?” When Tess nodded, John said, “Shall I ask Frank to forget it?”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Tess said, and she rose. Frank had moved over to the scales window and was looking out into the yard. She surprised a bitter, faraway look in his face that stirred her strangely before he realized she was beside him and turned.

  “There’s no moon, and you aren’t asking me,” Tess said quietly, “but I’d like a small ride in your new buckboard, Frank.” He remembered, she saw; he gave her a slow, quizzical smile and said, “All right, Tess.”

  Afterward, the buckboard came, and Jonas helped her up while Frank held the team. She said good-bye soberly to the McGarritys, and Frank put the team in motion, turning down toward the river road.

  The dusty road along the river under the cottonwoods was somehow peaceful and deceptively remote from town, and the smooth oily sound of the river’s rush beside and below them was almost hypnotic. Tess listened to it, covertly watching Frank, studying him now with a close and critical appraisal. Even with a black eye, whose origin teased her curiosity, he was wholly handsome in a way that was exciting and disturbing to her, and there was a careless, friendly charm about him that was as unconscious to him as his breathing.

  She wondered at the present grimness of his face, but she knew that would not last, for there was a deep and irrepressible gaiety of spirit in him that would not be downed, and which touched a fondness deep in herself. She knew of his life, of his bitter quarrels with Rob Custis, and of the wild and reckless and fun-loving way he had about him. Most people, she noticed, openly liked him, but the sober among them held him in a half-derisive affection that she was shrewd enough to understand and discount. They mistrusted their instinct to like him, perhaps remembering the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. But Tess knew that while the industrious ant disapproved of the idle grasshopper, he was nevertheless willing to eat him, and that envy and faded hopes and small disappointments were behind that derision.

  Remembering her purpose now, she stirred herself and said quietly, “Have you put everything together about me and the McGarritys, Frank?”

  “I’m not supposed to, am I?” he asked slowly.

  Tess told him of her errand then, and she found herself wanting desperately to convince him of the rightness of her decision. As she told him of Rhino’s design to ruin the McGarritys, a grim smile flicked faintly at the corner of his mouth. When she finished telling him of the McGarritys’ decision to take her advice about closing, he was silent a long minute, and she watched him obliquely, waiting.

  “That’s good advice. What’s worrying you?” he asked then. “Me?”

  “No, only Rhino’s been good to me,” Tess said hesitantly, feeling for the right words. “I feel disloyal to him—a little.”

  Frank looked straight ahead as he said, “Would you rather live with that, or with the memory of keeping quiet while he strangled them?”

  “With that, if I have to live with either.”

  “You shouldn’t have to live with either,” Frank said musingly, “but that’s what Rhino does to you.” He looked at her now. “Why are you working for him?”

  The transition between the two questions was too abrupt for her, and Tess was silent a moment. This was her first hint that someone else had seen Rhino as she did, and she wanted to ask questions. The chance was past, though, and now she answered his other question.

  “Loyalty again. He gave me work so I wouldn’t have to live on Judge Tavister’s charity.”

  Frank turned his face full to her now, and there was a look of astonishment there. “Tavister?”

  “Yes. Dad was a teamster for Rhino until he was hurt. Then he was driver and handyman for Judge Tavister until he died. Afterward, the Judge asked Rhino to take me in, and he did.”

  “But where was I?” Frank demanded.

  “Drifting.”

  Frank looked sharply at her, and Tess said quietly, “Would you rather I put it another way? I don’t like that word, myself.”

  “No, that word will do,” Frank said soberly, and he returned his gaze to the road. Tess had a feeling she had trespassed on something she did not understand, and she was speculating on this when Frank asked idly, “Did Carrie like you?”

  It was her turn now to be astonished, and now he looked at her with a mocking, friendly curiosity. “I don’t think so,” she said then. “If she remembers at all, she’ll tell you she didn’t like it when I wouldn’t take the room she’d arranged for me with a nice family. I wanted to live in the hotel.”

  “Why did she want you to take a room?”

  Tess shrugged, amused by his curiosity. “The right men would call on me there. I’d be in the right house. After the right amount of courting I would have the right husband.”

  “And you didn’t want one?”

  Tess said, without hesitation: “The husband, yes. The careful waiting, no.” She laughed a little. “I like to sit in the hotel lobby and talk with drummers and hear what’s going on over the pass. I like to play poker with Mr. Newhouse and Doc Breathit and Mr. Maas. I like to drink a beer with old John Colby the nights he isn’t driving stage. I like to go way up to the dances at the Horn Creek schoolhouse with some homely puncher and get home at dawn. I make a pretty poor lady, I guess.”

  “No,” Frank said dryly, “you just won’t try to be one.”

  Tess laughed. “Maybe that’s it.”

  They smiled at each other in strange communion and afterward Tess remembered this.

  The river road came into the main road now, and Frank swung the buckboard back toward town. They were both silent now, and Tess felt a pleasant contentment. She had needed that spare and offhand reassurance that he had given her, and later when she was alone, she could ponder his reference to Rhino.

  In the middle of the business block, Tess said, “Let me down at the Tribune, Frank.”

  Frank pulled up the team in front of the newspaper office and glanced at its dark interior. “You’re too late, Tess.”

  “I have a key,” Tess said.

  At Frank’s look of bewilderment she laughed. “I keep Mr. Maas’s books for him. That’s the way I get money to play poker with.”

  Frank looked at her a long moment, now soberly, and then he shook his head. “You’re bad for me, Tess,” he said, and afterward he smiled faintly to reassure her.

  As she inserted the key in the door, she glanced up at the street, and saw Frank in front of the hotel tying his horse to the endgate of the buckboard. In the low sun, whose light lay cleanly on the quiet street, he seemed tall and spare and quick with a sure swiftness in his every movement. Remembering his parting words now, she was oddly disturbed.

  Chapter 9

  THE LONG AND UNACCUSTOMED DAY in the saddle yesterday, rounding up Frank’s horses, had given Cass a restless night, so that he was thankful when his usual hour of arising came around, an hour before daylight. He pulled on his trousers, picked up his boots, went over to the cook’s bunk and shook him, then passed softly on sock feet down the aisle between the rows of sleeping men. Outside, he put on his boots and took a look at the night, smelling the sweet chill of the coming morning.

  Pouring a basin full of water, he bent over and washed. His big rough hands, gnarled and calloused, served as the goad to really awaken him as they passed over his seamed face. He scrubbed at his mustache until it was soft and silky, washed his bald head, dried himself, and then automatically reached for his pipe.

  Loading it by feel with a shaggy black tobacco, he only then notic
ed the lamp lighted in the main house. It had been so long since he had seen a light in that end of the big place that he puzzled for a moment before remembering Frank. Was the youngster just going to bed or just getting up?

  Cass lighted his pipe and watched a minute, savoring the raw raking shock of the tobacco in his lungs. During this time he saw Frank pass back and forth between the lamp and the window several times. Cass strolled over to the yard fence and watched, but even this close Frank’s movements made no sense.

  Cass considered now. Four days ago, his antagonism to this young cub wouldn’t have brought him as far as the fence. Now, however, he had made his offer of help and it had been accepted. He shoved open the gate and walked over to the outside of Frank’s room and halted just outside the sill, silently regarding the lamplit scene before him.

  Frank had a great coil of inch-and-a-half rope on the floor. Every eight feet of its length he was seizing to it with wet raw-hide a three-inch iron ring. Finished with one ring, he coiled up the completed section and measured out another eight feet. He was working so intently that Cass watched two full minutes before he spoke.

  “Ain’t seen that rig used since the war,” Cass observed.

  Startled, Frank wheeled, and when he saw who it was a grin came to his face. “Want to splice the ring in the end, Cass?”

  Cass came in. He picked up the lone ring bigger than the others and began to unravel the rope, observing, “Didn’t know you youngsters knew about this.” They worked in silence many minutes, during which Cass covertly regarded Frank. There was a certain grim temper in his normally cheerful face, and Cass wondered what had gone on with Hannan yesterday. Cass said presently, “How big a string you goin’ to drive, Frank?”

  “How many horses did you and Johnny round up?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Then I’ll get forty out of your bunch and mine, with the culls out.”

  “Where you drivin’ ’em to?” Cass went on.