Fiddlefoot

by Luke Short

  But his mind kept returning to Frank. All right, I tell him I heard and what does he do? Jonas thought. He couldn’t answer that. If Frank was being blackmailed, then it meant that he must have murdered Faraday, and what could he, Jonas, do about that? Nothing. The kindest thing to do was to keep Frank’s secret for him.

  Once that was settled, Jonas finished shaving, climbed into his shirt, picked up his hat and went out. At the foot of the stairs, he paused and looked over at the freight yard. It was locked up tight, boarded shut; the sight of it brought a quiet curse to his lips.

  He got breakfast, and while he was eating, he heard the church bell ringing, signifying church was out. Afterward, he strolled back toward the hotel, meeting a few stiffly dressed people taking the quiet main street home from church.

  At the hotel, he waved to Mr. Newhouse behind the desk and climbed the stairs to Tess’s room. Her door was open, and he knocked softly on the frame and was bid enter.

  He tramped in and saw Tess at the open window. She had been leaning out, and now she turned to see who it was. She was dressed in a dark suit that made her hair seem pale as taffy and she was, Jonas thought, utterly beautiful. And not for him. She smiled at him and looked out the window again and then said, “I smell a change in the weather, Jonas.”

  “If I looked at the sky, my head would roll off,” Jonas said gloomily. “How are you, Tess?”

  “Sort of sleepy.” She came back into the room and lifted some things from the lone armchair, motioned Jonas into it and seated herself on the bed.

  Jonas sat down and regarded her uncomfortably. “I’m sorry about last night, Tess. I just went to sleep over in my room.” Tess grinned tolerantly. “Maybe that’s the best thing that could have happened to you.”

  Jonas made a wry face. “I make a hell of a cut-up.”

  Tess really laughed then, and Jonas grinned crookedly, “How’d you get home?” Jonas asked.

  “Frank brought me,” Tess said.

  A shadow seemed to cross her face then, and Jonas, noticing it, wondered. He said, “Did Frank have fun?”

  “Yes, he was celebrating, too,” Tess said. There was something in her voice that made Jonas look curiously at her.

  Tess, seeing it, said, in explanation, “He was celebrating his partnership. I guess it’s no secret.”

  “Partnership in what?”

  “Partnership in Saber. With Rhino.”

  Jonas sat motionless several seconds, and he felt something like a cold touch of wind that raised the hair on his neck. Saber was what Frank was going to sign away. This was the blackmail. Jonas thought of that with a deep, shocked soberness, remembering Saber’s vast acres.

  He was silent so long that Tess said, “Well, doesn’t that mean anything to you, Jonas?”

  Jonas said slowly, “No. Why should it?”

  “If Frank’s Rhino’s partner, he’ll tell him our freeze-out scheme.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” Jonas said promptly.

  “He’s afraid of something,” Tess said, with a strange bitterness. “I don’t trust frightened people.”

  “Who said he was?” Jonas asked curiously.

  Tess looked at him wonderingly. “I do. It’s in his face, for the world to see. You can’t loathe a man one day and then take him in as partner the next unless you’re afraid of him. Or unless he knows something you’re afraid of having known.”

  Jonas’s glance slid away from her face, and he studied the pattern on the carpet. She had come close enough to the truth, with nothing but her intuition, to make him uncomfortable. For a moment, he considered telling her the truth. Perhaps the two of them could work something out. And then he knew that was wrong; nobody but Frank himself could work anything out. And it was even more imperative, now that he knew the stakes in this game, to keep silent.

  He rose now and said stubbornly, “Frank won’t tell Rhino about our scheme. You know how you can prove it?”

  “Yes. If I still have a job at the end of next week.”

  Jonas nodded. ‘That’s right.” He picked up his hat now, and walked toward the door. “How’s the freightin’ business goin’, Tess?”

  “Not so well,” Tess said, and she smiled faintly. “I wish you’d stayed in business long enough to haul that two-ton pump from Leadville to Meeker for the Esmeralda people.”

  Jonas grinned. “So you got that job, did you? Why, it’s a cinch. You knock down—” He paused, as Tess raised her hand to stop him.

  She looked at Jonas now and smiled, and he understood.

  “What I don’t know, I can’t be blamed for not knowing, can I?” Tess asked.

  Jonas grinned and stuck out his hand, and Tess took it. “Well, bad luck to your business, Tess,” he said now. “When it gets so bad it looks good for us, you know where to find me.”

  When Jonas was gone, Tess strolled back to the window and looked pensively at the street. She could see the McGarritys’ yard now, as bare of activity as a graveyard. She wished, suddenly, passionately, that she had as much confidence in Frank Chess as Jonas did. His words of last night had haunted her all day, and she would never forget the tortured shame that was in his face as she left him last night. Somehow, fear didn’t fit him, nor did inarticulate apologies, nor pleading.

  Why do I care? she thought angrily, turning away from the window. Why did she? He’d be married to Carrie Tavister soon, and she would shape him into the same dull, dry, gray kind of a man that her father was, cautious and taciturn and proper. By then he would be a fitting partner for Rhino, and the two of them, one with a respectable front and connections, the other with a ruthless cunning, would make undreamed-of fortunes. Only she would miss Frank’s gay, happy-go-lucky way, his mockery and impudence, his fun and his careless friendliness. She found herself standing there, hands fisted, muscles tense in protest.

  She shook her head and relaxed then, and set about her Sunday routine. She had dinner with Mr. Newhouse, and afterward came back to her room and wrote some letters, washed some things, and did some sewing. In late afternoon, she noticed that the sun had gone under the clouds. They weren’t the black, billowy clouds of the summer thunderstorms common to this, high country; they were pale and uniform and spread over all the sky, betokening a long break in the weather.

  Restless now, she took up a light shawl then and went downstairs and outside, turning toward the river in the beginning dusk. The McGarritys’ as she passed it looked as if it had been vacant for years. At the river, she turned downstream, walking slowly along the riverbank. As she passed the rear of the horse lot, she thought again of Frank. Tomorrow noon, he could be Rhino’s partner, and she wondered if the partnership would include the lot, too. Carrie had told her they were signing the agreement Monday morning.

  When it began to grow dark, she turned back, retracing her steps. It was almost dark when she again passed the horse lot, and by the time she reached the side street, it was full dark.

  This time, she took the cinder walk that led past the McGarritys’ and traveled past the high board fence. Passing the gate now she glanced over at the heavy chain and padlock. As she passed, between the crack in the two halves of the gate, the merest flicker of light came to her. She walked on several steps, thinking it might be the reflection on the padlock from the lights of the town up ahead. And then she halted, wondering.

  Coming back now, she put her head to the crack between the gates and peered inside. It was dark; she had imagined it. But just as she was ready to turn away, she saw a light. It seemed as if it came from the far stable, and might be the dim light of a lantern seen briefly as the door was opened and closed.

  Tess stood there a moment, puzzled. It was doubtless some of the town kids who knew the yard was closed and accordingly had moved in to play there. But a careless lantern around a stable was dangerous.

  She backed away and considered. Both John and Jonas were away, and she was more or less responsible for that, so it was up to her to handle this.

  There was en
ough tomboy still in Tess for the fence not to bother her. She moved back to the corner, and then followed the fence along the side. Presently, she came to a stack of empty crates piled against the fence. Climbing them carefully, she achieved the top of the fence and waited a moment, looking at the stable. Through one of the cracks, the dim light was visible again.

  She let herself down on the inside of the fence until she was hanging by her hands, and then lightly dropped the last foot. Cautiously now, but not afraid, she made her way past the open wagon sheds towards the stable. Whoever these kids were, they were going to be surprised, she promised herself.

  As she approached the stable, she heard the low murmur of voices—and they were not the voices of children. Softly, then, she moved against the slab stable and found a knothole through which she could look.

  There was a lantern turned down dim on the stable’s dirt floor. Sitting with his back to her was a man she instantly recognized as Bill Schulte. He was in the act of tilting a bottle in his mouth, but his body hid the figure beyond. The second man was lying on some hay, and there were dirty dishes scattered about him.

  Bill Schulte finished his drink, and rose, and then Tess saw that the man lying beyond was Pete Faraday. His shirt was off, and there was a dirty bandage on his right shoulder.

  She heard Bill Schulte say now, “Want anything?”

  “Gimme a drink, Bill,” Faraday asked.

  “Not to no Injun. You’d be singing in twenty minutes.” Faraday moved restlessly. “When do I get out of here? This ain’t no place to stay.”

  Bill laughed and shoved the bottle in his hip pocket. “I dunno,” he said now. “When Rhino says so.”

  “Ask him how long tomorrow.”

  “All right. You all set?”

  “Leave the lantern.”

  “No. Somebody might see it and there’d be hell to pay.” Schulte picked up the lantern, kicked the dirty tin plates aside and said, “I’ll be movin’.”

  Tess backed away then and slowly retraced her steps. When she heard the door creak open, she froze in the darkness. Schulte, however, took the fence closest to town. She saw the dim bulk of his figure on the fence, heard the thud as he dropped to the ground, and then there was silence.

  Once she was over the fence and on the ground again, she walked slowly toward the hotel. Pete Faraday was hurt, apparently, and Rhino was keeping him hidden. For what reason she couldn’t begin to guess, and sensibly she decided she wouldn’t even try. But the fact remained that Jonas ought to know it. Back in her room, she sat down and wrote a note in pencil:

  Jonas:

  Pete Faraday is hurt and Rhino is hiding him in the stable of your yard. Tell me what you want me to do.

  Tess

  She addressed it to Jonas in a sealed envelope, and downstairs she left it at the desk with instructions to give it to the first O-Bar hand who happened in. Afterward, she went in to supper, and when she came out later, the note was gone. It had been given to a Slash-H hand almost immediately.

  Next day, Tess almost wished that Rhino would fire her. The mail, which Shinner brought in at nine o’clock, held a torrent of letters, mostly abusive, addressed to Manager, Hulst Freight Lines. Among diem were complaints of stations passed up by freight wagons, demands for payment of damages for wreckage incurred by a drunken Hulst teamster at one of the mountain stations, a frantic demand from the Leadville agent for more wagons, and a dirty penciled note from a teamster broken down on the road asking for a new front wheel and a kingbolt. This last had been brought by the mail driver who had passed the wreck.

  Tess spent the rest of the day answering the letters, trying to start the week’s schedule, and rounding up reluctant teamsters in Hugh Nunnally’s and Rhino’s absence. Rhino came in smiling in midafternoon and left immediately. Sometime later in the afternoon, a slow rain began to fall.

  She was working on the last of the answers long after five o’clock when a puncher, his slicker dripping water, laid a sodden note on her desk and touched his hat and went out.

  Tess opened the envelope and took out her own note to Jonas. On the back of it was written:

  Tess:

  That’s what Frank’s been scared of. Tell him. He won’t sign now.

  Jonas

  Tess read the note and a wild elation came to her. She rose, now, a frantic urgency within her. And then she sat down slowly. It was too late. The agreement was signed this morning. Nobody had told her it had been, but the look on Rhino’s face when he came in today was enough. It was too late, she was too late, everything was too late. For no good reason she began to cry then, and this was the only sound in the quiet office.

  Chapter 16

  THE RAIN was falling steadily and implacably for the third day when Frank rode into the last meadows near Saber nestling snugly against the black timber at the far end of them. A curtain of low smoke hung over the buildings. The peaks to the east were lost in gray and heavy clouds, and the valley running north was half invisible through the shifting streamers of mist.

  Under his leg in the rifle boot, he felt the faint ridges of his fishing rod; it had not been out of the boot since he’d left town Monday, after the signing. Rhino had suggested, and Frank had been thankful for it, that he should stay away from Saber the few days it took to get the old crew moved out. Frank had no stomach for making that announcement to them, and having to eat his own words of a week ago; he’d been glad enough for Nunnally to break the news and pay the crew off with a ten-dollar bonus per man. He had gone fishing, and for the past two days he had paced Ed Hanley’s vacant shack, while the rain turned Roan Creek muddy and wild. Idleness and boredom— and finally skeptical curiosity—had driven him home, for he was anxious to see how his new crew had shaped up. For part of the agreement, and written into it, was that he was to handle the cattle end of Saber. This was his own, to stick with and nurse and watch grow until, maybe in the spring, Carrie would believe he was serious, and they would marry.

  He off-saddled, stabled his horse in the big bam, and forked down a generous amount of hay, and then stood in the barn door looking over the ranch. This place, he thought narrowly, was forever spoiled for him. When he and Carrie married, they would build a new house away from here.

  A pair of punchers, unknown to him, lounged in the door of the bunkhouse, watching him. He got his rod and tramped past the bunkhouse toward his room. He nodded to the two punchers, and they nodded curtly in return. No smoke was coming from the office stove, he noted.

  Once in his room, he changed into dry boots, knowing what his next move would be. He’d never seen Rhino’s entire crew, and he wanted a look at them, and behind that wish lay a deep skepticism. They would be trash. But that’s part of the bargain, he told himself grimly.

  He tramped back to the bunkhouse and stepped inside. Here, around the big center table with its overhead kerosene lamp lighted against the gray day, eight or ten men were lounging. Half of them were engaged in a desultory poker game, and when he halted just inside the door, they regarded him in silence. He had seen most of these men before, but he knew the names of only two of them, Morg Lister and Albie Beecham. Albie was standing at the foot of the table outside the circle of light cast by the lamp, a small, wiry little man with an inner viciousness stamped in every lineament of his ravaged face. His eyes glinted with malice at the sight of Frank now.

  Morg Lister was seated at the far side of the table, the greasy deck of cards in his hand. His sallow and taciturn face was expressionless, blank with stupidity. Frank took a deep breath, and because someone had to speak, he said, pleasantly enough, “Howdy, Lister.”

  Morg grunted a greeting, and Frank came into the room. “Where’s Hugh?” he asked.

  “Ridin”

  “I supposed he was,” Frank said, still pleasantly. “Where, though?”

  “He’ll be back in a couple of days,” Morg said evasively.

  Frank sized up the rest of the crew with a slow, searching stare, gauging their temper. It was total
ly sour, totally suspicious. He said now, “Did Hugh tell off a crew for me?”

  Lister looked around at the others, who shrugged, and then he glanced at Frank. It was Albie who answered, though, in a wry, aggressive voice, “He wasn’t expectin’ you back.”

  Frank looked carefully at him, and then at Lister. “All right. Four of you ride out with me tomorrow, then.”

  The men glanced uneasily at each other, and now looked at Morg, who seemed to be the spokesman. Lister said, “We can’t do that. We’re takin’ orders from Hugh, and he told us to stick here.”

  “And do what?”

  “Walt for the horses comin’ up from the lot.”

  A faint temper edged into Frank’s eyes now, and he checked it. There was no sense in quarreling with this sorry crew until it was plain in everybody’s mind as to who was working for him. After that, he would have his way with them, or they would not work here.

  He turned then and went out, pausing undecided on the doorstep. Then he buttoned his slicker and moved off through the rain toward the bam and the outbuildings, no certain destination in mind. He wanted a look at all the gear lying around the place now. Some of the old Saber crew had been here so long that it had doubtless been difficult to sort the ranch stuff from theirs. At memory of the old crew, and of this sorry lot in the bunkhouse, his lip curled in contempt. Riffraff, every man of them, loyal to Rhino and Hugh through God knew what kinds of blackmail and debts. The same as I am, he thought bittterly.

  Their refusal to discuss Hugh’s whereabouts, however, was puzzling. Lister had evaded his question and the others had volunteered nothing, and he wondered what sort of errand would take Hugh and part of his crew out in weather like this.

  He prowled through the blacksmith shop, and noted that Cass, probably out of an understandable spite, had helped himself to the better tools. He didn’t blame him.

  Turning now to look back at the bunkhouse in the fading light, he saw a slickered puncher lounging in the open door of the bam, watching him. The puncher moved back inside as Frank turned. He was being watched, apparently, and the crew must have arrived collectively at this decision, since there was no leader among them. Frank turned this over in his mind now, remembering the suspicion with which they greeted him, remembering, too, Albie’s announcement that Hugh hadn’t expected him back so soon.