Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

  Johnny Samuels overheard him, and he looked over his shoulder at Frank. Frank shook his head imperceptibly and said, “He will,” with a faint irony that brought a glance but no comment from Ehret.

  Only once was a horse questioned, and that was when Lieutenant Relitch suggested that a claybank gelding had a tendency to curby hocks. Lieutenant Hardy pounced on him, scoffing, and the vet backed up Lieutenant Hardy. Relitch rode the horse and was satisfied, and as the vet called for the next horse Relitch, glancing at Frank, said slyly, “Dammit, there must be something wrong with one of them.”

  Frank only smiled. When the forty horses finished inspection, Lieutenant Ehret heaved himself to his feet, and Frank rose too. Lieutenant Hardy came over, halted beside them, reached in his shirt pocket, and brought out a long black cigar, which he tendered to Frank.

  “I don’t owe you this,” Hardy said, grinning, “but I made a bet with myself and lost.”

  Ehret laughed and clapped Frank on the shoulder. “I know my dealers,” he said affably. “Come along for your money, son.”

  Frank shook hands with the two officers, and fell in beside Lieutenant Ehret, who seemed in great good humor. As they walked past the stables toward one of the few finished buildings on the parade ground, he explained the post construction, and Frank listened idly. They were chased off the drive by a big construction wagon filled with adobe, and afterward they entered a low, one-story log building bearing the sign Adjutant over the doorway. They were immediately in a big room holding several desks, behind which blue-dad troopers were working.

  Lieutenant Ehret turned right, and paused before one of the desks, saying, “Make out a check for five thousand dollars, sergeant. Make it payable to J. J. Hulst, H-u-l-s-t, and bring it in for my signature.”

  Frank, from behind him, said mildly: “Better make that payable to me, Lieutenant Ehret. The name,” he added to the sergeant, “is Frank Chess, C-h-e-s-s.” He looked levelly at Ehret now. The startled look on Lieutenant Ehret’s face was only momentary. He was about to speak, thought better of it, and said to the sergeant, “Hold on a minute, Grady.” He led the way to one of the offices opening onto the room, stepped aside to let Frank enter, and then dosed the door behind him.

  His voice was still cordial, though wary, as he said now, “I hate to ask this, Chess, but have you any authority from Rhino for this? Some paper?”

  “They’re my horses,” Frank said.

  Ehret frowned, and let his hand fall from the doorknob. Frank, standing in the middle of the small office, watched the bafflement mount in Ehret’s eyes.

  “But these are Rhino’s horses, aren’t they?”

  “No.”

  “You work for Rhino, though, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “He sent you? Maybe he didn’t have the horses at hand?” “No.”

  Ehret said with a sudden suspicion, “How did you know I had called for horses?”

  “Rhino said so.”

  Lieutenant Ehret looked searchingly at him and walked over to his desk, which was placed across the corner of the room, and sat down in the chair behind it. He said carefully, softly now, “What’s going on here? I don’t understand this.”

  “You wanted forty horses. You’ve got them, and they’ve passed inspection.”

  Ehret leaned back slowly in his chair. “I see,” he said slowly. “You just beat Rhino to the post, is that it?”

  Frank nodded. Ehret shook his head and said with a mild irony, “I think I’ll wait for Rhino, Chess, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind,” Frank murmured. He walked over to Ehret’s desk, put both hands on it, and said quietly, “You remember me, Lieutenant. I was here last spring with Nunnally delivering mounts. We got in after you and the vet had rejected sixty Starcross horses that Holborn over in Utah brought here. I was here with Nunnally when he bought the whole bunch from Holborn for forty dollars a head. I was here the next day, after Holborn left, when you bought that bunch and our bunch from Nunnally for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a head. Remember?”

  Color crept into Lieutenant Ehret’s face, and his eyes were ugly with dislike. Frank said now, “Those Starcross brands haven’t been vented. Maybe the Major would like to see them out in the corral now.”

  He straightened up and waited, while Lieutenant Ehret’s baleful glance rested on him.

  “You young pup,” Ehret said bitterly. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Frank turned on his heel and started for the door.

  “Wait!” Ehret said sharply.

  Frank halted and turned.

  Ehret said, “I’ll take ten of them.”

  “You’ll take forty,” Frank said, and he started for the door again.

  “Hold on!” Ehret called sharply.

  Again Frank paused and turned. Ehret was chewing the fringe of his mustache, glaring at Frank. “I’m acting absolutely within my orders in dealing with Hulst,” he said flatly.

  “Is it within your orders to reject sixty horses one day, and the next day, after they’ve changed ownership, accept them and pay a hundred and a quarter apiece for them?”

  Ehret didn’t answer.

  “Let’s ask the Major,” Frank gibed.

  Ehret sighed heavily and came to his feet. He crossed the room in front of Frank, flung open the door, and tramped over to the sergeant’s desk. “Make out the check to this gentleman, Grady. Here, I’ll sign it.”

  He signed his name to the blank check, and without a word or a look at Frank, he tramped past him back into his office and shut the door.

  Frank pocketed the check and went out. In the bright sun, he stopped, folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket, feeling no elation, feeling nothing except a dismal resignation. He had used up all the rope, and he was at the end of it now. He was going back to take his medicine.

  Chapter 14

  THE MASONIC HALL was on the four-corners above Carrington’s General Store, and tonight wagons, buckboards, saddle horses and buggies overflowed the hitch-racks on the main street, and filled the side street. Teams were unhooked and tied to endgates where they could feed on the hay in the wagonbeds, for this would be an all-night dance. The whole country, from the Battle Meadows to the Grand Peaks, and all up and down the river, would come with box suppers and the children. The town closed up, save for the saloons, and by dark the fiddle and accordion music was pouring out into the main street through the open windows of the hall, for this was the only break in the long summer’s work before roundup.

  Through the open window of her room, Tess could hear the music, and she hummed along with the fiddles now as she stopped before the mirror, giving her pale hair a final caress. She wished the mirror were bigger, but she had no misgivings about her appearance. This was a foolish dress, all white with a low, tight-fitting bodice and short sleeves with gay blue ribbon threaded through them, but she liked it and it made her feel good each time she wore it.

  She blew the lamp then and went down into the lobby, which was crowded with men in dark suits and couples waiting impatiently for other couples.

  Jonas McGarrity broke away from a couple of scrubbed-looking punchers and met her at the foot of the stairs, a wondrous smile on his usually morose face. He wore a stiff black suit, and his burnished boots shone with the same splendor as his black, smooth hair. By the flush of his face and the brightness of his eyes, Tess guessed he had made several trips to the Pleasant Hour. She was sure of it when he said with an unaccustomed gallantry, “I may not have a freighting outfit any more, Tess, but I’ve got the best-looking girl in town tonight.”

  “The McGarritys are Irish and the Irish flatter you,” Tess said, laughing, but all the same she was pleased.

  They crossed the street to the stairs leading up to the hall. A knot of shy punchers broke for them at the foot of the stairs. Tess dodged a half-dozen kids who were racing up and down the stairs in the last burst of the day’s energy, and emerged into the big jam-packed hall. There was a quadrille being mad
e up, and Tess had only the barest opportunity to look around the crowded room to wave to old Mrs. Bodine, and to hear Dick Afton, the O-Bar’s foreman and the caller for tonight, announce the first set when Arch Ison, grinning his apologies to Jonas, swung her into the set that was formed.

  The dance was breathless. The set was loaded with the men from the Horn Creek country, shirt-sleeved, weather-burned men who knew her from their own dances, and they whirled her and danced with the driving exuberance of friendly men who liked to tease. When the set ended, they gathered around her, and before Jonas could make his way to her the next dance started, and she was taken away again.

  When this dance ended, Tess retreated into the women’s coatroom and leaned against the wall to get her breath. The three women there smiled at her as they went out. Across the small room the table was loaded with the box suppers, and under the table in a big clothesbasket the Oberndorf twins were sleeping. Tess moved over and looked at them. She heard someone enter the room, and turned to look, her face still flushed with excitement of the dancing.

  It was Carrie Tavister who had come in, and in one flickering second Tess saw the envy in her dark eyes, and she knew then, without pride, that Jonas had been right.

  “I never see you, Tess,” Carrie said in a cordial voice. “How beautiful you look.”

  Tess flushed, and she was exasperated with herself. She said, with a friendly smile, “You’d never think we lived in the same town, would you?”

  Carrie nodded, and said with a quick grimace, “Sometimes I wish that big bam of a house would burn down, so I wouldn’t have to take care of it. It’s a prison and I never get out of it.”

  She crossed over to the mirror on the wall. She was so short, Tess noticed, that she had to stand on tiptoe to see herself. Carrie pinched her cheeks to bring the color into them, and patted her shining black curls. She said then, with a sigh of self-derision, “If I saw this hair on a dog, I still wouldn’t like it.”

  Tess laughed, and Carrie smiled too. There was a doll-like quality about Carrie that Tess recognized and appraised now; her dark green dress, rich-looking and undoubtedly expensive, molded her slight, full figure with a delicate and delicious skill. Only a faint sharpness in her eyes and a hint of a pinched look around the corners of her barely uptilted nose mirrored the deep discontent that Tess guessed was imprisoned within her. Oddly, she wondered if Frank could read this and was ever troubled by its presence. As for herself, she had made her peace with Carrie some two years back, and it still held in the form of an amicable truce. There was too much iron in this self-willed girl for Tess’s tolerant way, and she guessed there was too much of the casual and easy acceptance of life in herself to suit Carrie’s taste.

  Tess said, “I haven’t seen Frank tonight.”

  Carrie said dryly, “He’s horse-trading somewhere,” and came over to Tess now. She reached out to adjust the bow on Tess’s sleeve, and now she asked idly, “What’s it like to work for Mr. Hulst, Tess?”

  “They’re nice to me there,” Tess said. “It’s—oh, I guess it’s better than teaching school. For me, anyway.”

  “Do you like Rhino?”

  Tess said in a neutral voice what was the literal truth, “He’s always been very pleasant to me.”

  “Does he make money? Is he a good businessman? I mean, that horse lot is so ramshackle and smelly there’s no way of telling.”

  “I think his business is good. It’s certainly big,” Tess replied. This was an odd conversation, she thought, and she wondered what was behind it. Carrie must have understood her thoughts, for she smiled suddenly.

  “I know it’s silly, isn’t it? Only, I’ve always wondered what sort of a man Rhino is, and if his old clothes and his shacky old place weren’t a pose. I guess I’ve always accepted him since I was small, just like the scenery, but I’ve always been curious about him.”

  Tess nodded. “I know what you mean. For the same reason, some day I’m going into a barber shop and ask for a shave, just to see what it’s like.”

  They both laughed then, and moved toward the door. Jonas was waiting outside to claim her, and Tess smiled good-bye to Carrie.

  Jonas swung her into a varsoviana, and they hadn’t danced long before Tess knew Jonas had been visiting the Pleasant Hour again. She accepted this with an easy tolerance because he seemed to be having a good time. When the dance ended, Jonas came to a halt that was not quite steady.

  “Celebrating?” Tess asked.

  Jonas grinned, but there was little humor in it. ‘That’s right, Tess. I’m celebratin’ goin’ back to punchin’ O-Bar cows again at thirty a month—just where I left off three years ago.”

  “That’s only temporary, Jonas,” Tess said comfortingly.

  “Maybe,” Jonas said with a sudden gloom. “Maybe it’s as permanent as Rhino’s bank account, too.”

  She was claimed by old Mr. Jackson for a schottische then, before she could comfort Jonas. After that, she danced with old friends she had not seen for months, and chatted with their womenfolk, and danced again and again. As the evening wore on, the children subsided; they sat big-eyed in the chairs along the wall, listening to tireless fiddles and Dick Afton getting more and more hoarse until they finally curled up and slept. She saw Judge Tavister dancing sedately with Mrs. Maas, and once, when she danced past crippled John Colby, the stage driver, he gave a grave nod of approval and winked.

  It was a waltz that Hugh Nunnally finally claimed. His blocky, massive chest filled out his clean shirt solidly, and there was a kind of mocking courtliness about him that amused Tess. He danced expertly, offhandedly, the way he did everything, and he regarded her with the same bland good-humor he showed her every day. And, as always, she was faintly distrustful of that blandness, and of the unruffled confidence of the man that she had long since rightly read as an inner arrogance.

  When the waltz was finished and he had just touched her arm, she heard a voice from the other side of her say, “Evenin’, Tess, Hugh.” She looked up to see Sheriff Hannan, affable and smiling beside her. Hannan said to her, “You’re looking beautiful this evening,” and gave her an easy smile that she knew was reserved for every woman in this room tonight.

  Hannan glanced at Hugh then and said, “Virg Moore come in from Utah today?”

  “He ought to be in tonight, Buck,” Hugh said. “I left word for him.”

  Hannan nodded and drifted on, and now Tess said, “But Virg Moore has been in from Utah for a couple of days, Hugh.”

  Nunnally smiled faintly and said, “I know. Hannan doesn’t, though. Don’t worry your head about it.”

  In other words, she was to mind her own business, Tess thought. When he delivered her back to a silent and hostile Jonas and thanked her, it was with the same unruffled good-humor.

  Dick Afton was forming a quadrille now, and she and Jonas moved out into the center of the floor. She looked up then to see Frank Chess standing in the doorway looking over the crowd. He was in dusty work clothes, and there was a dark smear of beard stubble on his face. He stood there, hands on hips, hat held in one hand, his dark short hair curly and tousled, and Tess saw the quick gay smile come to his face as he saw Carrie. Carrie made her way across the floor to him, hurrying, and not caring who noticed it.

  Jonas spotted Frank just as Carrie came up to him.

  “There’s Frank,” Jonas said. He grabbed Tess’s hand and moved toward the door, pulling her behind him, calling “Frank, come on and dance.”

  Frank glanced up and saw Jonas and smiled. His glance shifted to Tess then, and Tess saw the quick approval that mounted into his eyes. He said, “How are you, Tess?” in a friendly voice.

  Carrie was smiling happily beside him, and now Jonas said, “Come on, Frank. These girls are dancing my legs down.”

  Frank shook his head and looked down at his clothes. “In these clothes I couldn’t get a partner, Jonas.”

  “You can’t miss this,” Jonas pleaded, and he glanced at Carrie. “Tell him to get in here, C
arrie.”

  Carrie looked up at Frank, and then touched his face with her small hand, rubbing his beard stubble. She said, “Maybe they won’t know him with the fur on.”

  Jonas said quickly, “Look, Frank. Come on over to my room. Shave and get on a clean shirt, and you’ll be back in time for supper.”

  Tess watched Frank look down at Carrie inquiringly, and read her silent pleading, and then he glanced up and said, “All right, Jonas. It’s on your head.”

  Jonas turned and called, “Arch,” and Arch Ison tramped over. Jonas put Tess’s hand in Arch’s and then poked a long finger solemnly at Arch’s chest. “This is a loan, understand?” He grinned at Tess and took Frank by the arm, and they went down the stairway.

  Jonas stumbled once on the stairs and caught himself, and Frank, noticing it, looked sharply at him. He’d been drinking, Frank saw; a secret, alcoholic glumness sat strangely in Jonas’s face and Frank wondered at it.

  The McGarritys’ rooms were over Miss Amy Dunn’s dressmaking shop down the side street two doors behind the hotel, and access to them was by a rickety flight of wooden stairs along the side of the building.

  Jonas preceded Frank through the doorway, turning left toward the front of the building. Frank waited inside until Jonas had struck a match and lighted the lamp, and then he came into the room. It was a small room, holding only an unmade bed littered with clothes, a couple of chairs, a stove in the far corner, and a washstand with mirror above it. These were poor man’s quarters, and Jonas made no apology for them.

  He said now, “You want to wait for hot water, Frank, or would you rather tear your face off?”

  Frank rubbed his beard judiciously, and said he’d take cold water, and stripped out of his shirt. He poured the basin full of water and lathered his face and his upper body. He heard Jonas moving around behind him, then heard a glass set on the washstand, followed by the sound of bedsprings creaking. When he rinsed the soap from his eyes, he saw the glass with whiskey in it that Jonas had poured him, and he glanced at Jonas. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, the bottle between his feet, a drink in his hand, and a kind of brooding anger in his face now.