Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

  “Fort Crawford.”

  Cass eyed him curiously. “You been there?”

  “This summer.”

  “Then why don’t you loose-herd ’em? It’s wide open country, only a hundred and twenty miles.”

  Frank was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Now he let his hand fall to his lap and regarded Cass levelly. “I may be traveling at night. Then, there’s a cranky purchasing quartermaster at Crawford, and I want my teams in good shape.” He hesitated, Cass thought, before he said, “Another reason, too. This might wind up with a race.”

  “With who?”

  “Rhino,” Frank said grimly. He went to work again, and asked then, without looking up, “Want to take the wheelers, Cass?” He looked up with a wicked mischief in his eyes.

  “Do you need me?”

  “You, Johnny, Red, and Shields.”

  Cass thought a moment. “You settle it with Jess.”

  It was barely full light when they finished and lugged the gear down to the blacksmith shop on the other side of the big log barn.

  The McGarritys’ rickety buckboard stood in front of the shop’s open door where Frank had left it last night. Briefly, Frank explained to Cass what he wanted done: hoops and double cover which he had bought in town last night after leaving Tess were to be put on the buckboard; a handbrake was to be rigged up; the free end of the rope was to be spliced into the buckboard’s tongue; the buckboard was to be loaded with sacked oats, bed-rolls, and grub for three days. The triangle clanged for breakfast as he finished.

  He stopped in at the cook shack and asked that Cass’s breakfast be saved out, and it was the measure of Cass’s influence here that the cook accepted the request without protest. Afterward, at the washbench, he doused cold water on his head. The shock of it wakened him, so that his sleepless night was forgotten, and he went in for breakfast.

  This was his first appearance at Saber since the fight, and he spoke only to those who spoke to him. Cass had not spoken for the crew when he proffered help, and remembering this, Frank kept silent and aloof, but something was afoot and the crew knew it, for Cass’s urgent hammering was threaded all through the meal, and Frank surprised an occasional speculative look in his direction. Breakfast finished, he tramped up to the office where Jess Irby held morning court and parceled out the work to the crew.

  Jess, seated in his swivel chair, listened carefully while Frank made his request. Frank summed it up by saying, “This is a loan from you to me, Jess. If they come they’re on my payroll, and ask them, don’t order them—if you can spare them.”

  Jess nodded gravely. “They’ll go and I can spare them.”

  Frank went out then past the dozen men idling at the office door with their first morning smoke. In the corral he caught and saddled his sorrel and rode out into the horse pasture. With the volunteer help of Ray Shields, the horse-wrangler, he spent a pleasant half-hour rounding up his fifty-odd horses and driving them into the big corral. When the sun topped the eastern peaks, its first touch was warm and pleasant, and he enjoyed the prospect of this job. At the big corral, he found a curious trio of the crew had halted to watch what was going on.

  By the time he and Ray had cut out all the horses who were not solid-colored or who were over nine years old, and had turned them back into the pasture, there were a half-dozen of the crew lined atop the corral. Among them, Frank noticed, was Jess Irby, and Frank knew in their silent way they were measuring him, this time for his knowledge of the business he had told them would be his.

  Johnny Samuels and Red Thornton climbed down from the rail saying they were willing to work for him, and Frank told them what he wanted.

  Afterward, he took up his position in the small corral by the pasture gate, and as the horse-wrangler led the first horse out of the big corral past him, Frank was aware that Jess had moved over on the corral fence behind him. So, he noticed, had the others. This horse was a chestnut gelding whose coat glistened like burnished gold in the sun. Frank looked briefly at him and said, “Turn him out.”

  Red Thornton promptly objected. “Frank, I been usin’ that horse and he’s sound.”

  “He’s fifteen-three high. The Army says fifteen-two, Red.”

  They knew now what he was doing, and while there were some good-natured murmurs of doubt nobody openly questioned him, and the chestnut was turned out. The next four horses were acceptable, and were turned into the holding corral adjoining. By now, a dozen of the crew were watching silently, and Frank knew they would be quietly and mercilessly critical. They knew horses; he would have to prove that he did.

  Red Thornton led the fifth horse past him now. He was a close-coupled bay, compact as a cob of com, with the flat shoulders and rounded breadbasket the Army coveted. Frank glanced once at him as he was walked by and said, “Turn him out, Red.”

  Jess Irby, from behind him, chuckled. “I’ll fight you on him, Frank.”

  Frank shook his head. “Sweenied shoulder, Jess.” He walked up to the horse and pointed to a faint flat depression in the smoothly bunched muscles of the right shoulder which indicated an atrophied muscle. “That’ll get by the Army vet, but not a line officer.”

  Jess rubbed his chin and said nothing. The men grinned at him, and Jess smiled faintly, too shrewd to argue.

  The crew was uncritical as he turned down the fifteenth horse for calf knees, which they could all see, and only Ray Shields protested stubbornly at the rejection of the twenty-fourth horse for being herring-gutted. “I’ll buy that damn horse, I like his chest,” Ray said, as he turned him out. The crew hooted good-naturedly.

  The fortieth and last horse was a sorrel, bearing, as did all the others, the hilted Saber brand which was Frank’s own, instead of the hiltless Saber which was the ranch brand. The sorrel was bright-eyed, alert, fat and sleek as a woodchuck from his mountain summer. The crew looked at him and there was a murmur of approval.

  Frank, this time, watched the horse pass him and made no comment. He made a circle with his finger, and Johnny Samuels, who was herding him, turned him and led him back. “No, sir,” Frank said then. “No quartermaster would pay for him.”

  A wave of protest came from the crew, and a sudden grin came to Frank’s face. He shook his head and said, “Get down and look at him.”

  A half-dozen punchers climbed off the corral and formed a loose circle around the sorrel. They regarded the horse in silence, and Johnny Samuels asked doubtfully, then, “Fifteen hands three?”

  “Fifteen-two,” Frank said.

  They studied him some more in silence and Jess Irby remarked dryly, “He’s handin’ you taffy, Johnny. He’ll take him.”

  They all looked at Frank, and Frank shook his head. “Capped hip.” He touched the sorrel’s left hipbone, which bore a faint depression in its curve. Sometime long ago, a fall had clipped the point of the hipbone, which was enough to disqualify him for a cavalry mount.

  Johnny Samuels still looked doubtful; he walked behind the sorrel, bent his knees a little and sighted over his back. A baffled expression was in his face as he straightened and shook his head. “He’s hip down, all right.” He glanced over at Frank, and his grin now was friendly. “Don’t you ever sell me a horse, Frank.”

  The crew laughed at that, and Frank joined them. He knew now the truce was over, and that he was accepted. This, and the fight, was the price of readmission to Saber.

  Frank chose from the leftovers now the wheel team, and he and Johnny harnessed them and led them over to the buckboard and hooked them up. A saddle was thrown on the near horse of this team. The long rope, with its iron rings, was stretched out ahead of the buckboard’s tongue. Two by two, the chosen horses were led out by their new six-foot rope halters and haltered, a pair to each ring, a horse on either side of the big rope. When the tenth pair, with the near horse also saddled, was brought out, it was put in harness, and a chain joined the inside hame of each; and the big rope laid over it to keep it from dragging the ground. Ten more pair of horses were haltered ahead o
f this team, and then the lead team was harnessed to the ring in the end of the rope.

  Cass, when he finally stepped into the saddle of the near horse of the wheel team, could look over the backs of twenty-one teams stretched out a hundred and seventy feet ahead of him. The buckboard behind him, with its new snowy cover over the hoops, looked almost diminutive. Red Thornton climbed into the saddle of the near horse of the swing team. Johnny Samuels, on the near horse of the lead team, kept looking back impatiently now, talking with Ray Shields who was mounted on a free horse and who would be outrider.

  When Frank had finished harnessing the team he had borrowed from the McGarritys, he looped up their tugs and tied them to the endgate of the buckboard.

  Mounting his own horse now, he glanced down at the handful of the Saber crew which had been helping. Jess Irby’s expression was one of skepticism; he shook his head and saw Frank watching him. “That’s five thousand dollars on one rope, Frank; take care of it.”

  It was an hour short of noon when Frank rode past Johnny and said briefly, “Get ’em movin’.”

  By the time the long string was out of the meadows headed toward Rifle, both Johnny and Red had learned to keep the tugs tight, and Frank relaxed a little. His gamble might succeed, al-thought the success of it hinged on his beating Rhino’s bunch to Crawford; and they were some seventeen hours ahead of him. The advantage, however, lay with him, for Rhino’s crew did not know they were in a race, and they would loiter, grazing their horses at every opportunity.

  Two miles short of the grade into Rifle at the turnoff to O-Bar, Frank reined up and waited for the string. Once they caught up with him, he untied the McGarritys’ team, and gave directions for skirting town so as not to arouse Rhino’s curiosity. They were to pick up the river road below town, through O-Bar’s range, and keep traveling until an hour after dark.

  He watched them go, afterward hazing the loose team ahead of him down the road, and he was presently above town. It was not until he was off the grade and on the edge of Rifle that he really made up his mind to see Carrie. To explain to her that his plan was conceived in anger and planned in defiance and was to be carried out with some risk would only baffle her, and he had no intention of telling her where he was going. She would ask why he wanted to antagonize Rhino, and where was there an answer to that? Nevertheless, he wanted to see her.

  He hazed his two horses into the side street, and presently approached Tavister’s house, dark and cool in its lawn under the big trees.

  The two loose horses, seeing the lush grass of the Tavisters’ lawn between the brickwall and the road, moved over and started to graze it.

  Frank, some distance behind them, saw Carrie kneeling along a bed of flowers in front of the house, pointing out something to their handyman beside her. When she saw the horses stop, she rose and ran swiftly to the iron fence.

  “Get away!” she scolded. “You get away!”

  Frank reined up in the road and grinned. Carrie saw him and called, “Can’t you keep—” and then, recognizing him, left the rest unspoken. Frank rode up now and Carrie cried in exasperation, “Frank, they’re tramping our lawn!”

  “Boys, quit it,” Frank said mildly to the horses. They went on grazing, and now Carrie had to laugh. Frank stepped out of the saddle and moved across the walk to the iron fence. Carrie looked cool and small, and her face was alive and still lovely from her laughter.

  “Shall I ask them in?” she asked.

  “No, they’re shy,” Frank said solemnly.

  Carrie raised up on tiptoe to kiss him, and then she folded her arms along the top of the fence’s blunt-end iron pickets.

  She said, “Stay for supper?”

  “I’m horse-trading,” Frank said. “I’ll be gone for a few days.”

  “Not through Saturday,” Carrie protested. “Oh, Frank, there’s a dance Saturday night at the Masonic Hall.”

  Frank thought a moment. “I don’t think I’ll be back.”

  Carrie accepted this with a sigh of resignation. “Who’re you trading for? Rhino?”

  “For Chess and Company, horse-traders.”

  “Who’s the company?”

  “The five thousand dollars I hope to clean up on the deal.” Carrie didn’t smile. She said, “So you’re not a rancher any more, but a horse-trader?”

  “If all you’ve got to trade is horses, you’re a horse-trader, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—if it’s all you’ve got to trade.”

  Frank grinned swiftly. “We aren’t getting anywhere, are we?”

  Carrie shook her head too, and then cradled her chin in her arms and gazed across the street into the somnolent afternoon. “No, we aren’t.” She looked obliquely up at him. “Nice to be on the move again?”

  Frank said, “Yes, we’re in a hurry and—”he paused, looking down at Carrie. “You devil,” he said mildly.

  Carrie reached out and patted his hand. “That’s all right. When you can’t sit still, you can’t sit still.”

  “That’s not it,” Frank protested. “I’ve got to make this trip, Carrie.”

  “So your feet will stop itching?”

  Frank said in mock solemnity, “Some day, I won’t come back.”

  “I believe you,” Carrie answered soberly. And then, as if this conversation had taken too serious a turn, she straightened and made a shooing gesture with her hands. “Go on, go on. I’ve got flowers to water.”

  Frank moved over to his horse and mounted. Carrie wiggled her fingers at him and then called, “Please try to be back for the dance, Frank.”

  “I’ll try,” he promised, and now he whistled shrilly at the grazing team. They moved reluctantly back into the road, and he turned them at the next corner, driving them toward the main street. A vaguely guilty feeling remained with him now, when he thought of the dance. Carrie would like it, and he had been home so little lately that he had taken her nowhere.

  He pushed his team across the main street, left them at the McGarritys’ in care of a hostler, because neither Jonas nor John was in, and then he kept on to the river road and turned downriver. Presently, below town, he was on the main wagon road.

  The horse string was somewhere ahead of him, he knew, but he was in no hurry to catch them. The heat here in the river bottom was a close and constant thing, held by the tawny rock of the gorge that sometimes crowded close to the river, only to fall back at other times for lush meadows and stands of river timber.

  The memory of his parting with Carrie was a small and nagging worry in his mind now, taking the pleasure from the day. There had been an edge to her words today, as if the thought of his giving up Saber still rankled. And she had been quick and sly enough to make his few days’ absence seem like his old restlessness, and his horse-dealing an obstinate whim. Perhaps her skepticism was justified, and now he examined his own feelings. It was true that he was glad to be on the move, to be away from Saber and town, and the reasons were plain enough. He wanted to avoid Hannan and his questions, and Rhino and his ultimatum. The flaw in that reasoning came to him immediately; he wasn’t avoiding Rhino’s ultimatum; he was merely postponing having to think about it.

  He had reacted to that ultimatum promptly and recklessly, the way he had reacted to most things in his life, he understood now. He wanted to hurt Rhino, and getting his horses to Crawford ahead of Rhino’s was a way to hurt him. Beyond that, he had reckoned it would give him a start and a stake—a start that would be stillborn and a stake that would be meaningless in the face of Rhino’s threat.

  That fact, Rhino’s ultimatum, he had not faced. Looking at it closely now, he saw no way to avoid accepting Rhino as partner, for Rhino had summed it up precisely: I can do anything I want with you as long as you’re afraid of that soldier suit. That was true; he could do anything. He had killed Rob and stopped Frank’s mouth. He would get half of Saber, too. A bleak awareness of what this meant came to Frank then, and he thought, He won’t stop there; he wants it all.

  Almost under his horse�
��s feet now, a quail with her four chicks broke out of the wayside brush and started across the road. The deep dust muffled the hoofbeats of the oncoming horse for a few seconds, and then the quail saw him and gave the alarm. She ran across the road, two chicks following her. The two chicks trailing, however, hesitated and dived back into the brush. Passing them, Frank saw them huddled in the brush, utterly still, their topnots unmoving. The sight of them scarcely stirred the moroseness of his thoughts.

  In the late afternoon, he came to a wide meadow crossed by the road, with a thick fringe of trees back against the tawny canyon wall. There was track of a wagon, hours old, across the meadow and Frank glanced over at the fringing trees. Under them he saw a loaded wagon, apparently abandoned.

  Kneeing his horse off the road he cut across the meadow, and when he rode up to the wagon he saw it was a big, high-sided freight wagon stacked high with a clutter of household furnishings. Off through the trees in the deep shade were four horses, heads to rumps, stomping flies.

  And then, from under the wagon, he heard a puzzling sound, and he dismounted and looked. Stretched out in deep sleep was a man he recognized as Bill Schulte, one of Rhino’s teamsters. A stone jug sat upright at his head.

  Frank retrieved the jug and shook it, and it seemed half-full. He regarded Schulte idly; this was the breed of teamster that Rhino was going to lick the McGarritys with.

  He uncorked the jug and took a long pull at the raw whiskey, then swung the jug against a wheel hub. It shattered heavily; Bill Schulte did not stir in his drunken sleep.

  Frank mounted and sought the road again, the whiskey warming him pleasantly. Schulte, he remembered, was one of Tess Falette’s charges, and he found himself recalling her story of yesterday with an odd pleasure now. He remembered how troubled she seemed when she told it. Oddly, there was something friendly and easy and unworried about her, and he found himself smiling at the thought of Carrie firmly trying to make over her life, and of Tess just as firmly refusing to have it made, and of how unlike they were.

  But when the warmth of the whiskey wore off, his old mood returned, and it deepened with darkness, its torment deepening, too, so that an hour after dark, when he came to a large meadow and saw the flicker of his crew’s campfire reflected high up on the canyon walls, he thought it a welcome sight.