Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

  Frank said, “Where’s John?”

  “He took our horses to the mountain,” Jonas said gloomily. He looked at his whiskey and said bitterly, “Startin’ Monday, I’m back to punchin’ cows again, Frank.”

  “Give Rhino time.”

  Jonas took a long swallow of his drink and shuddered. He said then, “You think Tess has this figured right? Rhino will quit when it begins to hurt?”

  “I think mountain freighting in winter will break his heart,” Frank said.

  He began to lather his face, and Jonas rose and moved restlessly to the front window and looked out through it.

  Frank glanced in the mirror, thinking soberly, This is the fifth day. He had stopped off at the dance, while the crew, weary and sleep-starved, went on through to Saber. It was only the memory of Carrie’s disappointment that made him do it, and now he wondered if he had been wise. He had seen Hannan and Nunnally at the dance, and Nunnally had seen him, and tonight was Rhino’s deadline. Some faint hope that this might be a bluff which must not remain uncalled prevented him from seeking out Rhino—that, and a deep reluctance to make the decision. He supposed Albie had returned with news of the stampede, or perhaps he was still scouting the canyons into the Gunnison for his scattered horses. There had been no sign of him on the way back from Crawford.

  The first raw rake of Jonas’s straight-edge razor hurt. He took a sip of the whiskey now, waiting for the soap to soften his beard. In the mirror he could see Jonas, still looking out the window into the night, and he noticed that Jonas was a little unsteady on his feet. On Tess’s account he wondered how he could tell Jonas he’d had enough to drink for the night, but the thought trailed off as he remembered Tess and how exciting and beautiful she had seemed when he first saw her tonight. It was as if he were looking at her for the first time in her proper setting; she was all pale gold and white, softly proud and feminine, yet with the easy and friendly way about her that made all people want to like her. She was exciting and warm, and he found himself wondering if all men felt like this about her, and he knew they did.

  The sound of Jonas turning away from the window now broke into his reverie. He began to shave, and Jonas came back to the bed. “Every time I look out that window at the office, I get mad all over again,” Jonas growled.

  Before Frank could say anything, there was the sound of footsteps on the outside stairs. Jonas rose, just as the outside door opened. Hugh Nunnally came slowly in, Morg Lister and Virg Moore trailing him. Moore was a slight puncher, with a determined, oversized jaw that badly needed shaving, and which, in his case, reflected only the determination to drink more than he could hold. He was sober enough now, though, and he stank of horses. He smiled uneasily at Frank, as if he had been forbidden to, but couldn’t find a way around it.

  Nunnally put a shoulder against the wall and said unsmilingly, “Going to the dance, Frank?”

  Jonas stepped out into the middle of the room and halted on unsteady legs. He raised a hand and pointed a finger at Nunnally, and said, in a voice thick with both whiskey and outrage, “I don’t like you, and especially I don’t like you in my room. You can take those other two dogs and get out.”

  Hugh regarded him a calm moment, then pushed away from the wall, took an easy step toward him, and hit him. It was a solid blow, swung with all the corded strength of Hugh’s thick shoulder, and Jonas hadn’t expected it. He went down against the bed, and his head rapped sharply against the bedframe. He lay there loosely, eyes closed.

  Frank’s weight was on his toes when he heard Lister say sharply from the doorway, “All right, Frank!”

  He saw the gun pointed at him now, and he settled back on his heels, looking wrathfully at Nunnally.

  “Frank’s all right,” Hugh said mildly. “Now lug McGarrity into the back room, you two.”

  Hugh moved back against the wall, and Lister and Moore picked up Jonas and carried him back into the other bedroom. Hugh watched Frank now with a level, hard aggressiveness in his eyes that canceled the pleasant half-smile on his straight mouth.

  “Albie brought your saddle in,” Hugh observed then, and he shook his head in wonderment. “The only trouble with you Frank, is that you killed Pete in front of the wrong witnesses.” “He tried for me.”

  Hugh said boredly, “I know. You can tell all that to a United States Marshal and a federal jury.”

  Moore and Lister came back now, but Frank did not look at them. He was watching Hugh, trying to reach for the meaning behind Hugh’s words. Hugh saw his puzzlement and he smiled now. “You see, Rhino’s got the letter from Lieutenant Ehret requesting the mounts. Pete was on Army business, you might say, when he was killed on reservation land. The Army can’t let its contractors be terrorized.” He shrugged. “Once Rhino complains, it’s the Army’s affair, and they’ll work through a United States Marshal.”

  Frank looked down at the razor in his hand; he had forgotten it. He turned now and resumed his shaving, thinking over what Hugh had said, and he saw with a bitter clarity that Hugh was right. He did not even have to ask the price of Rhino’s silence, for he already knew it. Like a fly caught in a web, the more he struggled the deeper he became enmeshed, and his small triumph over Rhino had been turned into yet another weapon against him.

  He heard Hugh say to Moore and Lister, “Wait down on the street for me, will you?”

  The two of them tramped outside and down the stairs. Frank went on shaving, knowing Hugh was watching him, knowing what was coming. He hadn’t pictured it as happening like this; he had imagined a bitter argument, and a long process of bargaining before he acknowledged defeat. The possibility of that was gone, now, and at last he was solidly up against the choice. He thought of Carrie, the only decent thing in his life, and he knew now as he had known five days ago that he would do everything in this world to keep her.

  Hugh said in a casual voice, “I’m taking Virg to see Hannan now, Frank. What’ll it be?”

  “I’ll sign,” Frank said calmly.

  Hugh only grunted, and Frank looked at him, surprising a look of contempt in his pale eyes. Frank finished shaving then. Hugh tramped over to the bed, picked up the bottle of whiskey from the floor, recovered Jonas’s glass, and poured himself a drink of whiskey. He made no conversation, and idly watched while Frank, searching for a clean shirt, finally found Jonas’s valise under the bed, and from it unearthed a clean blue shirt.

  Frank combed his hair then, and picked up his hat, ready to move. Hugh, starting for the stairs, said, “‘Better tell the Judge tonight that you and Rhino will be at his office Monday morning to draw the papers,”

  At the foot of the steps Frank said, “How do you know I won’t change my mind, once Virg has cleared me?”

  “Why,” Hugh said mildly, “nobody’s cleared you of killing Pete, have they?”

  The rest of it went off quietly, too, so that it seemed as if nothing were happening.

  At the Masonic Hall Frank and Virg Moore waited at the top of the stairs while Nunnally went into the hall and, after a moment, returned with Hannan. The sheriff nodded to Frank and looked from him to Moore.

  “Hugh said you wanted to see me,” Moore said.

  “I do,” Hannan said. “Do you know where you were between July fourth and ninth?” he asked pleasantly.

  “Yeah,” Virg said promptly. “On July fifth, I and five other fellas was in the Moab jail.”

  Hannan grunted. “And the sixth?”

  “Still in jail.”

  “What about the seventh?”

  “I camped with Frank.”

  Hannan showed no sign he was interested in this fact. “The eight, now?”

  Moore inclined his head. “With Hugh.”

  “That right, Hugh?”

  “That’s right,” Nunnally said.

  “And you were with Frank the seventh. That right, Frank?” “If I knew the date, I’d have told you,” Frank said, playing his part in this farce.

  Hannan was silent a moment, then he asked Moore, “
How come you camped with Frank? How do you remember it?” Moore grinned. “I was supposed to be with Frank all that week. I was kind of throwin’ my hat in the door to see if Nunnally had heard about me cuttin’ out and gettin’ drunk on the Fourth. Frank didn’t know because he hadn’t seen Nunnally, so I took a chance and saw Hugh the next day.”

  Frank saw how skillfully Nunnally’s alibi for him had been framed. Virg Moore had been in the Moab jail on the fifth and sixth, as the records, when Hannan wrote for them, would show. There was Moore’s word that he was with Frank on the seventh. Since it was impossible for Frank, leaving on the fifth, to ride here and return to Moab by the seventh, Frank could not have killed Rob. The simplicity of it was beautiful and final.

  Hannan looked at Frank now and said dryly, “Is he lying? You were afraid he would, remember.”

  “Not this time,” Frank said.

  Hannan nodded curtly and said, “It looks like I’m through with you, then, doesn’t it?”

  Frank nodded and Hannan murmured his thanks to Nunnally and went inside. Hugh grinned meagerly now at Frank and said, “Go have fun,” and he and Moore went down the stairs. Inside, the fiddles were sawing away and Dick Afton’s hoarse voice was calling the last of a set. This is the way you turn a corner in your life, Frank thought bleakly, and went into the hall.

  All through supper, which he had with the Judge and the Maases and Carrie, Frank tried to frame a way of telling Carrie about his change of mind regarding Saber. She would welcome it, he thought bitterly. Of her reaction to his taking Rhino Hulst as partner, he wasn’t sure, but she must be told tonight.

  The opportunity came in the interval between the end of supper and the resumption of the dancing. The Maases and Judge Tavister were deep in a conversation which excluded him and Carrie. They were sitting in the corner contentedly watching the crowd, Carrie’s hand resting in his. He said quietly then, “I had a chance to do some thinkin’ while I was away, Carrie. I’ve decided I won’t put Saber away. Bedamned to Hannan.”

  Carrie slowly turned her head to regard him, and he could see the happiness in her eyes. She squeezed his hand in silent token of her approval and happiness.

  Frank went on then, in a purposely hesitant voice: “But I’m such a knothead about the money end of it, Carrie. You reckon I should get someone in with me, a partner, say?”

  “Yes,” Carrie promptly answered. “I know the man, too. Rhino Hulst.”

  The look of amazement in his face brought a laugh from Carrie. “I know what you’ve been planning, Frank, but I thought I’d let you tell me. Dad told me about Rhino coming in to talk over your offer of partnership with him. Dad thinks it’s sensible, and so do I.”

  Frank looked down at her small hand resting in his, and now he tasted the full measure of his defeat. Rhino had been so sure of him that he had gone to the Judge, paving the way for the deal. And the Judge and Carrie approved. The irony of it was too bitter for his taste, and he found a slow anger stirring within him. Couldn’t they see what Rhino was after? Of course not, he thought bitterly, and was contrite and wholly glum.

  When the music started again, he pulled Carrie to her feet and swung her into the dance. Afterward, he lost track of her. He danced with the girls he had known as a youngster, with their mothers, and he talked with their fathers and with the men he had grown up with, and he found no pleasure in it all. He should never have come, he knew now.

  It was much later that he recognized Tess’s white dress, and he recalled Jonas. He made his way across the floor to her and took her away from three Horn Creek punchers, and as a waltz began, she settled gently into his arms. Oddly, it was disturbing to touch her, and they didn’t speak for a full minute. Presently, Frank glanced down to surprise an expression of utter gravity on her face as she watched the other dancers.

  “Not having fun, Tess?” he asked.

  She looked up at him searchingly. “I was, until a few minutes ago.” She hesitated. “I saw Carrie a moment ago. She said you’d taken a partner for Saber.”

  Frank felt a hot embarrassment then, and Tess looked away from him. “I wish you well,” she said softly.

  There was nothing he could reply to that, and they finished out the dance in silence and he left her.

  The party began to break up in the small hours of the morning. Families living way up around the Grand Peaks began to leave, the children sleeping in the arms of the menfolk. It was then that Frank remembered he had not told Tess of Jonas.

  He mentioned it to Carrie then, and as the dance finished he sent her into the coatroom to tell Tess he would show her across the street. He waited outside the coatroom, standing among the men who were tired and talked out and content, and he felt a leaden discouragement.

  When Tess came out, he fell in beside her and they said good night to couples as they made their way across the floor and down the stairs. On the corner, they waited while a spring wagon, Otis Baily driving the team, pulled past them, and Baily called to them, “Good dance, folks. Good night.”

  The hotel lobby was deserted at this hour. A single dim-lit lamp over the desk was the only light here, and their footsteps echoed loudly in the room.

  Frank halted at the foot of the stairs, and Tess mounted the first step and paused. “I’m sorry about Jonas,” Frank said stiffly.

  Tess looked at him searchingly in the half-darkness, and then she said, “And I’m sorry about you, Frank.”

  Frank said bitterly, ‘Tess, I—” he fell silent, desperately wanting to explain himself, and knowing he never could.

  “It isn’t as if you didn’t know him, is it?” Tess asked simply. “No, I know him.”

  “Are you that hungry for money?”

  “Don’t, Tess! Quit it!” Frank said miserably.

  “Do you think you’ll ever laugh again?” Tess asked then.

  He looked imploringly at her, and saw the troubled sweetness in her face. She was waiting for an explanation he could never give. He said obscurely, “Tess, you don’t know. Don’t be rough, because I can’t help it.”

  “You’re afraid of something,” Tess said accusingly, and her tone was bitter, too. “I don’t like fear in anyone. Especially, I don’t like it in you. Good night, Frank.”

  She turned, and he watched her go up the stairs, and somehow it seemed the most important thing in the world at the moment that she should turn and come back and tell him in her easy friendly way that it didn’t matter. But she didn’t. She vanished at the top of the stairs and he stood there a full minute, oddly without hope, before he turned and went out.

  Chapter 15

  AFTER FRANK AND NUNNALLY HAD GONE, Jonas lay awake in the darkness of John’s room staring at the ceiling. His mind was fogged with alcohol and his head ached blazingly, but there was no mistaking the words he had just heard. Hugh’s blow had stunned him, but it had not driven consciousness from him— and he had heard something not intended for him.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet now and listened. The last faint sound of their footsteps died, and now he took a slow turn around the dark room. His head throbbed solidly and it was an effort to think, but he reviewed Hugh’s words, trying to read meaning into them. Frank Chess had killed somebody called Pete, someone who worked for Rhino, and knowledge of this was being used by Rhino and Hugh to blackmail Frank into signing something.

  Pete who? he wondered. He recalled the men who worked for Rhino and then it suddenly came to him. Pete Faraday, that damned Ute half-breed, of course.

  Now he went out into the other room and poured himself a drink of whiskey and stood motionless, a gray foreboding touching him. He liked Frank and always had, and he found himself examining the reasons why he should. He had discounted the current story of Frank’s mother, for he had worked around animals long enough to know that a good breed does not come from worthless stock. And he accepted all the stories of Frank’s reckless ways without feeling any censure, because those ways had never hurt anyone. People like himself, Jonas thought, drudged thei
r way out of mediocrity and acquired a liking for people and a kind of trust of them on the way, but Frank had never needed that. There was a deep and careless generosity in him that was as much a part of him as his gentle mockery and his heedless love of fun. He was gay and quick and easy; he could break any woman’s heart, and he didn’t know that he could, and he was too honest to care, even if he did know. Frank was a man who gave everything and he should get everything, Jonas thought without any envy, and now he was being milked by Rhino.

  Jonas cursed Rhino and Nunnally then in an impassioned whisper. The two of them were like a blight, killing everything they touched, and even if Jonas hadn’t liked Frank, he would have wanted to help him now.

  But murder was murder, even if a dog like Pete Faraday was the man who was murdered. A sensible caution that alcohol could not entirely dim told Jonas to stay out of this.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed now, thinking laboriously of this. The more he thought, the more he knew he didn’t want any part in this. The thing to do was stay here, and not even go back to the dance. No use risking Hugh’s suspicion that he might have overheard the conversation. Tess could get home easily enough, and there were enough men there to show her fun. I don’t know anything, he thought.

  And then it all went sour deep inside him, and he felt an obscure guilt. Frank was in trouble and needed help, and Jonas was backing out of it.

  Jonas shook his head and lay down. It was all too confusing, and his head hurt and he’d had too much to drink. He felt sleep coming like an avalanche to envelop him now, and he welcomed it.

  When he awakened next morning the sun was high. He sat up and his head felt as if it were loaded with loose shot that rolled around at his every movement. Slowly, then, the events of last night came back to him, and remembering it all, the feeling of guilt returned.

  He rose now and doused his face with cold water, then stripped out of his clothes and put on a worn pair of denim pants. After that he shaved unsteadily. Today he would ride out to O-Bar to begin work tomorrow, but first, of course, he must see Tess and square things for last night.