Fiddlefoot
Page 18
They rode into town next day about noon, four of Rhino’s disarmed crew riding ahead. Two of the crew lay dead by the corrals at Saber, and the rest had made a successful break for the hills. The four were Hannan’s loot, and he seemed satisfied.
As they swung into the main street, Frank asked, “Where’ll you be, Buck?”
“At the hotel, I reckon. Why?”
Frank only said, “I’ll see you later,” and fell away from the group and turned up the side street toward Tavister’s house.
Now he slowed his horse to a walk, and looked up the quiet tree-shaded street to the big brick house. It was all the way he pictured it last night as he lay in his room, only last night he hadn’t gone beyond here. In his mind, he had turned up the side street, and the rest of it wouldn’t come.
He saw Carrie in the porch chair as he reined up at the stepping block. He swung out of the saddle now, and tied his horse, and then moved through the iron gate up the walk.
Carrie had put her book down, and now she rose and came to the top of the steps. She was wearing his favorite dress, he saw, and before he glanced up to her face he thought, She’s pretty in it, and then he looked closely at her.
She knows it, he thought then. She didn’t say anything, although her face was tight and unsmiling as he came onto the bottom step and halted. Her arm was around the porch pillar, and for a moment they just looked at each other, neither offering to move closer.
“I don’t know how to begin it,” Frank said then.
“It wasn’t fair, Frank,” Carrie said bitterly.
“I didn’t know any other way to do it,” Frank said humbly. “You see, I’d run out my rope, Carrie. I’d lied to you, I’d lied to everybody. I’d given Rhino half of Saber to keep it from you, and I still couldn’t keep it from you, so I had to tell you.”
“And I still don’t care if you did it,” Carrie said.
“No, you care about me being steady, and staying put, and owning something big. You care enough about that to wait six years to see if I’ll do it, don’t you, Carrie?”
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t wait any more,” Frank said gently. Still she didn’t say anything, and he turned and went down the walk and through the gate to his horse. She wouldn’t call him back, he knew. He mounted and put his horse in motion and glanced over at the porch. She hadn’t moved, and he looked away.
He went down to the main street which was almost empty at noon hour, and he saw the horses out in front of McGarritys’ gate, where Hannan and his men were gathering in Pete Faraday. There weren’t any people standing around watching, so he knew the news wasn’t out yet.
He put his horse in at the tie-rail of the hotel, and walked around the rail and into the lobby, crossing it to the dining room door.
When he saw Tess there, he took off his hat and went over to her table, where she was eating with Mr. Newhouse.
He grinned down at her and said, “You’ve had enough to eat. Come along.”
She smiled and rose, not even excusing herself, and he held her hand as they walked through the dining room and lobby.
Outside, she said, “You look different.”
“I am different,” he said. They turned down the cross street toward McGarrity’s. The Saber crew and Faraday were mounting now, and Frank, still holding her hand, stopped and waited as they passed him, Faraday riding sullenly amongst them.
Cass said, “Hello, Boss.”
Frank grinned, and now he saw Hannan walking toward the hotel, leading his horse. He was mopping his brow with a soiled handkerchief as he came up to them, and he touched his hat to Tess, his handkerchief still in his hand.
Frank looked down at Tess, and then glanced at Hannan. “Buck, I’m not scared any more. You want me, along with those four and Faraday, for impersonating an Army officer.”
He felt Tess’s hand squeeze his.
Buck said mildly, “I wondered when you were goin’ to tell me.”
“You knew it?” Frank said blankly.
“Yeah. Rhino told me last night.” He looked closely at Frank. “I think he’s a liar.”
“No, he didn’t lie.” He told Hannan then how he and Nunnally had worked it, and Hannan listened with an increasing irritation.
When he was finished, Hannan said, “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Whatever’s in the book.”
Hannan looked at him, and then at Tess, and he snorted, “I haven’t heard the Army kick.” When Frank didn’t answer, Hannan just shook his head, touched his hat and walked on.
Frank turned to Tess, bewilderment in his face.
“Maybe he thinks you’ve paid enough,” Tess said gravely.
“Do you think it was wrong?” Frank asked.
“Yes.”
”Tess,” Frank said slowly, “I’m a fiddlefoot. I don’t want Saber for a while. I want to see some country, Utah first. I want to take five thousand dollars, my own, and go through those Utah towns with Rhino’s bills of sale for those horses. I want to hunt up those men and pay them what I owe them.” He paused, “I want you with me. I want to marry you. I—”
“Haven’t you something else to do first?”
“I’ve done that. I told her.”
She smiled proudly then, and she said, without shyness, “I think I’m really a fiddlefoot, too.”
They turned then, walking contentedly back toward the hotel, and it was a minute before Frank spoke. Then he said, with a gay and veiled derision in his voice: “First, though, I’m going fishing. Up in Wells Canyon there’s a big trout as long as my arm. He’s been there six years, the same pool. Fat, dumb, and happy. I’m going to catch him.”
FIN
LUKE SHORT
Luke Short (born Frederick Dilley Glidden November 19, 1908 – August 18, 1975) was a popular Western writer.
Born in Kewanee, Illinois, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for two and a half years and then transferred to the University of Missouri at Columbia to study journalism. Following graduation in 1930, he worked for a number of newspapers before becoming a trapper in Canada. He later moved to New Mexico to be an archeologist’s assistant. After reading Western pulp magazines and trying to escape unemployment, he began to write Western fiction. He sold his first short story and novel in 1935 under the pen name of Luke Short (which was also the name of a famous gunslinger in the Old West, although it’s unclear if he was aware of that when he assumed the pen name.) His apprenticeship in the pulps was comparatively brief. In 1938 he sold a short story, The Warning, to Collier’s and in 1941 he sold his novel Blood on the Moon, aka Gunman’s Chance, to The Saturday Evening Post.
After publishing over a dozen novels in the 1930s, he started writing for films in the 40s. In 1948 alone, four Luke Short novels appeared as movies. Among his notable film credits are Ramrod (1947) and Blood on the Moon (1948). His novel, The Whip, aka Doom Cliff, was serialized in both Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. The first two parts were published in Collier’s in the December 21, 1956 and January 4, 1957 issues. Collier’s then ceased publication. The Saturday Evening Post bought the rights to the remaining unpublished installment and published it on February 9, 1957. Short continued to write novels, despite increasing trouble with his vision, until his death in 1975. His ashes are buried in Aspen, Colorado, his home at the time of his death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Feud at Single Shot, 1935
The Branded Man, 1936
The Man on the Blue, 1936
Marauders’ Moon, 1937
King Colt, 1937
Brand of Empire, 1937
Bold Rider, 1938
Savage Range, 1938
Raiders of the Rimrock, 1938
Hard Money, 1938
Bounty Guns, 1939
War on the Cimarron, 1939
Dead Freight for Piute, 1939 - Albuquerque (film), 1948
Bought with a Gun, 1940
Barren Land Showdown, 1940
; Raw Land, 1940
Gunman’s Chance, 1941 — Blood on the Moon (film), 1948
Hardcase, 1941
Ride the Man Down, 1942
Sunset Graze, 1942
And the Wind Blows Free, 1943—told in the first person—unique for Short
Ramrod, 1943 — Ramrod (film), 1947
Coroner Creek, 1945 — Coroner Creek (film), 1948
Fiddlefoot, 1946
Station West, 1946 — Station West (film), 1948
High Vermilion, 1947
Vengeance Valley, 1949 — Vengeance Valley, 1951
Ambush, 1948 — Ambush (film), 1950
Play a Lone Hand, 1950
Trumpets West!, 1951
Saddle by Starlight, 1952
Silver Rock, 1953 - Hell’s Outpost (film), 1954
Rimrock, 1955
The Whip, 1956
Summer of the Smoke, 1958
First Claim, 1960
Desert Crossing, 1961
Last Hunt, 1962
The Some-Day Country, 1963
First Campaign, 1965
Paper Sheriff, 1965
The Primrose Try, 1966
Debt of Honor, 1967
The Guns of Hanging Lake, 1968
Donovan’s Gun, 1968
The Deserters, 1969
Three for the Money, 1970
Man from the Desert, 1971
The Outrider, 1972
The Stalkers, 1973
The Man from Two Rivers, 1974
Trouble Country, 1976
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
LUKE SHORT
BIBLIOGRAPHY